About Padmé's Death

[chameleon_irony]

In response to this post by Tricia and Lex at FANgirl Blog:

What's wrong with Padmé Amidala losing the will to live at the end of Revenge of the SithWhat happened to her on that day would have sent many a normal person into an extreme clinical depression, the kind where you - yes - lose the will to live. And it's consistent with her

Comments

[irnan]

There are other ways to change: acting/experience/doing things, introspection, learning.

But of course - yet all of these things, I would say, involve outside influences. There are so many of my experiences I haven't had control over - I've given basic consent and then it all blew up in my face and I came out the other side the person I am today. Uni, for example. I sign up for a moot court and a year later I've been dragged halfway around the world and worked myself half to death and been made to have experiences that I never would have thought to without the influence/presence of these certain people in this certain time, and not a whit of it did I control. It's the same with stories, for me.

(Although I will say that it took a correspondingly long time, afterwards, to sort out of myself what I was prepared to take with me and what I wasn't.)

You know better than they do who you are, who you want to be, and what's good for you. That's all it's safe to assume you know better than they do.

How? That bothers me, and I don't know if I'm putting this the right way, but: how do I know that I am who I want to be if I don't allow myself to be presented with other options? I'm sure that's an awfully uncertain way to think of oneself. But it's kind of exciting, too ;)

Yeah, I'm very much coming at this with the perspective of a reader. My early attempt being a writer was awful, and thus soon abandoned ;)

Or simply find its truths and philosophies interesting, more so because they are different from yours.

But even then I find I accept them as true for a while, in order to study them or argue with them - does that make sense? That the act of being interested involves acceptance: as logical, or as true, or whatever. After that I take them apart ;)

[chameleon_irony]

I knew you were going to bring up that point: what is influence and where does it begin/end? ;)

how do I know that I am who I want to be if I don't allow myself to be presented with other options?

You don't. But how would anyone else know it? Your knowledge of yourself is far from perfect or complete, but it's more complete than other people's knowledge of you... unless you really lack self-awareness. ;)

That the act of being interested involves acceptance: as logical, or as true, or whatever.

Something can be logical without being true or right.

[irnan]

Haha, yeah - are we both being influenced by this argument, etc. ;)

Your knowledge of yourself is far from perfect or complete, but it's more complete than other people's knowledge of you... unless you really lack self-awareness.

I guess that's a pretty fair assessment.

Something can be logical without being true or right.

"Logic is a wonderful thing, but it doesn't always beat actual thought". That's Pratchett... But I think for me, to find something interesting is to... to treat it as something that may be true. That may apply to me. At least for as long as it takes to formulate a counter-argument! You give it a chance, and then you counter-argue, and then see which wins out.