Thoughts on Cut Strings

[unspeakablehorror]

I think writing Cut Strings has been very helpful for me in thinking about anger.  This is a central theme of this story, and I've been exploring it from a number of angles.  The crux of this story is that Grievous has had his anger manipulated so that he could be more easily used for the purposes of others, but he also has some very legitimate anger towards the Jedi, the Sith, the Huk, and of course, San Hill.

I want to talk a bit about this theme of anger.  Too often I hear very binary judgments about this emotion, when I think the truth of how we should think of it is much more complex.  It can be important to spurring us to action, or focusing our attention, but it can also be used to manipulate us.  Those in power will carefully craft narratives to direct anger away from themselves and towards those they wish to keep disempowered.  After all, creating this anger allows them to get those they oppress to focus their attacks on each other.  Anger can be difficult to quell in ourselves even when we decide it should be.  It can be frightening to see when expressed at us or those we care about. It is a powerful motivator, and it can be directed at good and evil alike.

So I write a lot about Cut Strings Grievous trying to regain control of his anger and also to reintegrate his other emotions.  Ultimately, I think there's a lot that can be explored here.  I very much question the narrative of anger being evil regardless of context, and think there's a lot of important questions we can ask about this often unexamined emotion.

Comments

[second_evtales]

I agree on the fact that anger is used as a political tool to control the masses, especially by fascism, by identifying an enemy for them to focus on while other stuff (capitalism) goes on unfettered in the background.

I also think that Anger = evil is a very useful misdirection tactic that people use against minorities. Like, if I had a £ for every time some of the WASP people around me told me to calm down because I was "not rational" and "too emotional" to discuss something with them, I would be able to buy myself a new laptop (I am white-passing, but Latinx).

It makes people focus on their anger as the problem and strive to be "rational", "professional" and "poised" even when they are facing discrimination and injustice, policing their feelings and the way they express opinions, and subjecting them to extra stress on top of everyhting else, while preserving the respectability and the feelings of those who hold the power.

I think that Grievous has every right to be angry, given what happened in his EU backstory, has every right to hate the Huk colonisers, the Galactic Republic and the Jedi who helped and enabled them and the IGBC who exploited the situation.
The way I see it, he was meant to be an in-Universe equivalent on a post-colonial indigenous leader stuck in the debt trap and trying to fight for a better future for his people. He couldn't have been anything but angry.
And of course Sidious and Dooku made sure all that was left of him was that anger, so they could manipulate and direct it.

Side note: the lore associates the Dark Side with anger, but the leaders of the Sith (Dooku, Sidious, Plagueis and Snoke) are very rarely angry. They are cultured, refined, wealthy people with lots of political an economic power, who see others (the poor, the non-Forceful, etc...) as objects rather than people, as disposable tools to achieve their plans. They use violence as a political tool, not an outlet, and turn people into wapons using their anger.

Grievous is a case in point, but the newest comics make a strong point also for Maul, and it could be argued also for Kylo Ren (whom I tend to consider more as a "neofascist" fuckboy, though)because Snoke must have used his sense of betrayal to push him into working for him.

I too like to write stories where these oppressed, manipulated, angry characters get to reclaim their anger, to use it to make their own changes in the world and find their own place and position in the political landscape.

Finally, I define myself as an antifascist and as an anticapitalist and while antifascism certainly is loving and promoting democracy, equality, social inclusion and social justice, is it also hating injustice, privilege, greed, exploitation and fascism.

Anger and hate have a rightful place alongside more positive emotions in the liberation of people from the evils of colonialism, imperialism, fascism and capitalism.

[unspeakablehorror]

Anger certainly is used and manipulated by the powerful, but I don't really make a division between people manipulating anger and people feeling it. These aren't dichotomous behaviors and in fact can occur simultaneously. What I think is important to identify is what causes this anger and how it is acted upon.

As an example, I’d like to consider Palpatine. In the Book of Sith, Palpatine devotes an entire section, the Book of Anger, to both the personal use of this emotion to channel enormous power and the manipulation of it in others. Like many Sith, Palpatine saw immense value in cultivating this emotion in himself. My personal interpretation of the character, for which I believe there is also a vast wealth of canon evidence, is that anger is a key part of his emotional landscape, and that his genial, calm appearance when hiding his true nature is nothing more than a front. That look of incandescent rage he gets whenever he fries someone with Force lightning is to me one of the purest expressions of his true feelings. At the same time, he also manipulated the anger of Maul, Dooku, and Vader to serve his own purposes, as well as devising ways, such as the Imperial Security Bureau (also mentioned in the Book of Sith), to systematically redirect the anger of the populace away from the Empire and towards aliens. He really is quite terrible!

So I see Kylo Ren and Palpatine as somewhat similar characters, in fact, in part because both feel great anger and use that to justify oppressing and killing others, as well as using anger to manipulate (eg. Kylo’s attempt to manipulate Rey into joining him vs Palpatine manipulating, well, just about everyone, but eventually failing with Luke). So Snoke tried to create another Vader, but he actually created something much closer to another Palpatine.

I also think I may have a different perspective on expressing anger than you. In my own personal life, I often feel anger, but I don’t as often express that anger. This is because I have very negative reactions to confrontation, and expressing anger towards someone is by its nature confrontational. I also do not find expressing uninhibited anger empowering in the rare times I do express it, because I am rarely backed up in that anger. Powerful people have their anger validated by society, so they can express their anger and even if its irrational, people will validate it. But even if people’s anger is not validated by society, sometimes they have a community or friends who will validate it. I’m not good at asking people for help or to listen, though. So intense anger just tends to isolate me, because I don’t know how to talk to people about it. But also—I don’t find uncontrolled anger empowering because acting without thought or consideration to the consequences can harm innocent people.

Doing the right thing requires more than good intentions, it requires good information and an understanding of the world we live in. Anger does need a rational basis to it to be good—we need to be acting on real information, and our actions need to be thought out to be effective. What I find objectionable are people who define ‘rational’ as things that are anything but, and there are so, so many people like that. So from my perspective, what’s happened is that certain people have redefined ‘rational’ to mean ‘agrees with societal norms’ or ‘agrees with me’, and that’s not rational at all!

Well, there’s much more I could say, but this is already becoming rather long. I really do have a lot to write on this topic! Feel free to tell me what you think. Also, I notice that you mentioned you write Star Wars fic as well. Do you have an AO3 account?

[unspeakablehorror]

Okay, I'm going to ask you to remove all mentions of the current US president and not mention him again on my blog. That's a trigger for me.

[second_evtales]

Apologies for making you uncomfortable. I didn't know.

I have removed the comment because I could't edit it. I will report it leaving out the mentions.

edited comment

[second_evtales]

In my view , the key point of Sidious as a character is that he is a fascist. He uses political and economic power, and his not inconsiderable privilege as a white human man from a Core-ish world, to subvert democratic institutions through corruption and the manipulation of public opinion. He instigates conflict and ethnic hatred against non-humans and Rim-dwellers to build himself a platform to rise to power. Whether he is angry inside or outside or whatever, the substance does not change greatly. He is a privileged person from a privileged background who thinks everything is owed to him and others exist only to serve his needs. I don't greatly care for his feelings or for those of Kylo Ren, for that matter, more than I would care for Salvini's or any other fascist's.
They are evil not for what they feel, but for the harm they cause to the vulnerable and the oppressed.

Anger is also an inscindible part of fighting against oppression and the syllogism "anger=your position is morally or intellectually invalid" is another tool of fascism. Policing anger, especially when it is directed against a system of power and oppression is a dangerously pro-system position. Oppressed and marginalised groups are often depicted as violent and angry and it is notewortrhy that violence by oppressed, marginalised groups is reported much more often and in more graphic terms than violence by the people in power, which is seen as normative.
Anger can stem from the very informed position that capitalism is stealing peole's lives and their future through the destruction of the environment, or from the fact that PoC people are disproportionately affected by police violence, mass incarceration, environmental degradation and working poverty.
Instigations to indiscriminate meekness, forbearance and humility are just as harmful as instigations to indiscriminate (or worse, specifically targeted) anger.
I think anger is a sentiment worth reclaiming for how it can empower people to do something about their fate, when married with an educated analysis of causes and consequences. Otherwise there is always the risk of falling prey to the Salvini or Sidious of the moment.

On your second point, I am usually quite proactive about my anger, but not indiscriminate. I tend to let slide minor interpersonal conflicts about the practicalities of life with people I trust and respect, but If people tickle my sense of injustice, I get angry very easily and actively try to instigate conflict. I have quite a few specific litmus tests that trigger it: if I hear antisemitic, anti-islamic, misogynistic, homophobic or TERFy dogwhistles, apology of economic exploitation, pro-capitalist gaslighting or something like that, I am pretty much guaranteed to go off.
The way I see it, at least I'll get catharsis and satisfaction, at best I'll roast an asshole so hard that they'll think about it twice before they show their face again. Actively alienating fascists, TERFs and capitalism fanboys is one of the satisfactions of my life.
Feel free to call me a SJW. This is a label I claim for myself.

I am Sereq_ieh_Dashret on AO3. We have already interacted on that platform, and perhaps even on Tumblr (I am secondgenerationimmigrant or sereqwritesfanfic).

[unspeakablehorror]

Thank you!