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anakin's dream come true
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Anakin finds the fact that the Force responds to emotions both fascinating (that's so arbitrary???) and obnoxious (that's so arbitrary). She turns out to not... Actually experience emotions as distinct from every other way her brain processes stimuli and thinks and judges and makes decisions, and at first finds poking them separately from all the other brain processes variously frustrating, aversive, and actively unhelpful.

(Not in terms of using the Force, but in terms of controlling herself - it turns out that her strong bursts of anger are possibly actually a reflexive self control mechanism, because she finds them extremely aversive and will rapidly disengage and go calm down, whereas more """control""" over her anger reduces her control on her actual behavior.)

She can learn to get her brain under control, though, step by gradual step, and to calm down the part of her brain that keeps attacking her. She can learn to breathe slowly and deeply, and to slow down her entire body enough her meta-cognition can catch up. (Shuffling her self evaluation to be more strongly running on emotion actually helps. She likes herself emotionally, so her mind is a less aversive place to exist in when her meta-judgment is producing 'I'm neat, but...,' and her emotions are faster at picking up flaws in her cognition than her 'conscious thought.')

(Her emotions actually are the cognitive tool she most intensely ascribes to herself, much moreso than her thoughts - she describes a significant portion of her thoughts as not being thought by her, they're often just random noise or parts of her brain attacking her. She has significant trouble explaining how she knows whether she's the one who thought something.)

And she can learn to tweak her emotions in light side ways and not dark side ways, if she's forming all the related cognitive processes with them, though she would like to express the judgment that this is a very dumb and arbitrary way for the Force to work. 

 

She likes settling down, though. She hadn't exactly gotten in zero book learning before this - she reads everything she gets her hands on, easily managing novels in a single sitting, and she's just as fascinated by books on history and science and philosophy and biographies and travelogs and journals and geographies and cosmologies and languages - and, well, just about everything it's ever occurred to anyone to write down, though she'll concede abstract math gets boring if the author didn't include any images. Having a library with a large collection that they're near for more than a small stretch is very nice. 

(She'd been reading surprisingly well for her age even when Elesse found her. She accelerated dramatically the instant she had the actual freedom to read a book or more every day, to read whatever she wants - within a year she's reading things that well-educated Core worlders three times her age would struggle with. She starts hitting diminishing returns on new vocabulary soon after that, and responds by working on new languages - she already knew at least bits of the ones common in Hutt space, but now she wants to learn every language with a different script from Basic in the galaxy, and every one in common use besides.)

(The restlessness isn't just physical. It's in everything. Nothing about Anakin was made for staying still.)

 

She loves the volunteer work. Loves watching Elesse work. Loves working with kids her age more than alongside them at first, but she makes a couple of friends and gets her foot in the door that way. She takes to medical and care-giving work the most, actually - childcare, teaching kids her age and younger to read Basic, tutoring, visiting the elderly and disabled and helping them... Once she's a bit older she wants to help more with disaster relief type stuff, she thinks. The firefighters and paramedics she's talked to said she's too young right now, but suggested some stuff she could do and study if she still wants to do that when she's older.

She also likes creating things, though. She makes gifts for people in the hospital or the kids she's tutoring or the people she's bringing meals to. She helps as much as she's allowed with building or improving homes and public spaces, and she really likes getting to help paint murals though there isn't a lot of call for that. She submits thoughts and lists and sketches to a contest for the local kids to help design several new public spaces - her design for a children's library/ playground is accepted, which she's extremely proud of.

(Anakin's list of things she wants to do someday is very, very long. She wants to be an artist of several dozen mediums, a pilot, a historian of every field, an engineer, a doctor, a musician, a firefighter, a ship's mechanic, a linguist, a journalist, an author, a philosopher, a physicist, an actor, an architect...)

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They can spend a good couple of years getting settled and exploring some options.

When Anakin has turned thirteen, Elesse asks if she still wants to join the Jedi Order.

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"Yeah, definitely."

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"We'd best find a ship to Coruscant, then."

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"Okay!" Bounce! 

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"You're still excited about this," Elesse observes.

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"Well, something's changing again..."

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"Something is always changing. I was wondering if your desire to be a Jedi might be one of those things, supplanted by a wish to become an actor-architect-artisan."

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Giggle! "Being a Jedi seems like it'll let me do the most things, though, while also having a structure and a community around it."

Like Elesse. Anakin knows she'd be a lot less interested in being a Jedi if Elesse wasn't one. 

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"Fair enough."

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Soft smile. "Anything I need to do when we get to Coruscant?"

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"There'll be some paperwork and you'll have to make some affirmations, take some tests. The Council will likely also want to interview you."

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"What'll they want to know?"

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"What you're like as a person, mostly. Your patterns of thought, motivations, ambitions, connection to the Force. A sense for what kind of Jedi you'll turn out to be."

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"Explaining how I think sometimes takes a while," she teases. 

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"I'll be sure they book enough time for it."

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Giggle. "Thanks."

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"See if you still feel like thanking me when they get to hour three."

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"I'll be impressed if they outlast my ability to talk about myself."

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"Most of them have had a very long time to practice. Don't underestimate them."

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"I won't. I promise."

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"Good."

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Grin.

"What'll the tests be on?"

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"Everything you've been learning til now. They'll want to be sure you're up to basic standards of competence, which I have no doubt you are."

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"You've been a really excellent teacher, so."

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