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gffaღ - I'm clearing out a big of backlog reading-wise, because I'd like to finish Join the Resistance (which I recommend, but mostly as an audiobook, I think it's easier to listen passively to get invested in the kids, rather than try to actively read) before Queen's Shadow comes out. Which is in TWO WEEKS!
I'm sort of hesitant to get my hopes up, because the last book I was excited about was Thrawn: Alliances and that did not go so well, but I'm really curious about it! I wonder if, between this and the two Padme comics that are upcoming and the new toys coming out for her, we'll see this trend of giving her focus continue?
ღ - Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith #3: A lot of what I posted about this issue wasn't precisely meta, but more cackling posts about Vader's level of extra (the water scene that was straight out of a shoujo anime was *chef's kiss against fingers*) but I did like some of the stuff being set-up here!
We all know how this story ends. We know Vader survives. We know that Sidious survives. But, god, this hurt to read, to see Vader getting wrecked like this, to have him so close to the end of his misery, to see him chucked off the side of that cliff and know he fell all the way.
To know that he can never just stop, that he can never just let it end.
No, Darth Vader will climb back up because that’s what he’s been tasked with, because he has all this power that won’t let him be defeated, because his rage will spark back up and feed him just enough to keep him going, never truly getting what he wants. (For someone to just kill him, to end his misery already.)
To have this Jedi look into the heart of him, barely knowing him and still able to read him, to defeat him in this moment and not make the final blow, to kick him down into the darkness where he’ll have to climb out again (not that he doesn’t bring the darkness with him–Vader brings his chains and cage with him wherever he goes).
He’s broken and battered and could have been ended here. But he wasn’t. And now he has a job to do that his Master will not let him leave behind.
And it hurts me a lot to read. Because there’s still the last dregs of Anakin Skywalker that haven’t yet been purged and whatever terrible, horrible, monstrous things he’s done, I still love him and feel every inch of that Black Hole of Depression and Suicidal Ideation that is Darth Vader.
[originally posted here]
Addendum 2019.02.16: Loooking back at this issue and the feelings I had around it, with the full context of everything that happens in this comic, I would say Vader's a little more complicated than just a walking black hole of Wanting to Die, he does want other things, he wants to tear apart the galaxy, he wants to get Padme back, etc. But even with all that, his desire to die, to end this miserable path he's chosen, is very much at the heart of things.
I'm not sure if he's planning to try to revive Padme at this point or not? That would make a big difference to him, because he's hanging so much of himself on her presence, because he idealizes the thought of getting her back and, now that I'm thinking on it, I wonder how it would have gone if he had indeed been able to revive her, if that had been at all possible.
Padme, of course, would not be pleased with this, but she was pretty broken down by the end of ROTS, she'd already been so isolated, having to keep her secrets and not really knowing how to handle Anakin and the crumbling Republic around her so that even her passion for democracy was being smothered out, it wouldn't be a huge leap of logic to see Vader hiding her away, keeping her alone in a room, as she grows duller and duller, until she's not really there in anything but body and spirit.
Would that be enough for Vader? Would he be satisfied with that? In the absence of anything or anyone to check his possessive tendencies and idealizing their relationship, would being able to fully possess her satisfy him, or would he feel the distance and loss of what makes her her enough that it would make a difference?
Anakin and Padme had so little time to come to truly know each other, so Anakin's desperate, "I can't live without her!" isn't about Padme's personality (because, when she disapproves of what he's done, he's furious that she would back away from him) but about how he needs her physically there, he needs her to soothe him. If he has enough of that with her being blank-eyed and stuck in a room, where she'll let him hold her hand or let him rest his helmet against her hair, would that be all Vader really wanted anyway?
Or would he become angry that she's not really there and tear it all down again?
I'm sort of hesitant to get my hopes up, because the last book I was excited about was Thrawn: Alliances and that did not go so well, but I'm really curious about it! I wonder if, between this and the two Padme comics that are upcoming and the new toys coming out for her, we'll see this trend of giving her focus continue?
ღ - Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith #3: A lot of what I posted about this issue wasn't precisely meta, but more cackling posts about Vader's level of extra (the water scene that was straight out of a shoujo anime was *chef's kiss against fingers*) but I did like some of the stuff being set-up here!
We all know how this story ends. We know Vader survives. We know that Sidious survives. But, god, this hurt to read, to see Vader getting wrecked like this, to have him so close to the end of his misery, to see him chucked off the side of that cliff and know he fell all the way.
To know that he can never just stop, that he can never just let it end.
No, Darth Vader will climb back up because that’s what he’s been tasked with, because he has all this power that won’t let him be defeated, because his rage will spark back up and feed him just enough to keep him going, never truly getting what he wants. (For someone to just kill him, to end his misery already.)
To have this Jedi look into the heart of him, barely knowing him and still able to read him, to defeat him in this moment and not make the final blow, to kick him down into the darkness where he’ll have to climb out again (not that he doesn’t bring the darkness with him–Vader brings his chains and cage with him wherever he goes).
He’s broken and battered and could have been ended here. But he wasn’t. And now he has a job to do that his Master will not let him leave behind.
And it hurts me a lot to read. Because there’s still the last dregs of Anakin Skywalker that haven’t yet been purged and whatever terrible, horrible, monstrous things he’s done, I still love him and feel every inch of that Black Hole of Depression and Suicidal Ideation that is Darth Vader.
[originally posted here]
Addendum 2019.02.16: Loooking back at this issue and the feelings I had around it, with the full context of everything that happens in this comic, I would say Vader's a little more complicated than just a walking black hole of Wanting to Die, he does want other things, he wants to tear apart the galaxy, he wants to get Padme back, etc. But even with all that, his desire to die, to end this miserable path he's chosen, is very much at the heart of things.
I'm not sure if he's planning to try to revive Padme at this point or not? That would make a big difference to him, because he's hanging so much of himself on her presence, because he idealizes the thought of getting her back and, now that I'm thinking on it, I wonder how it would have gone if he had indeed been able to revive her, if that had been at all possible.
Padme, of course, would not be pleased with this, but she was pretty broken down by the end of ROTS, she'd already been so isolated, having to keep her secrets and not really knowing how to handle Anakin and the crumbling Republic around her so that even her passion for democracy was being smothered out, it wouldn't be a huge leap of logic to see Vader hiding her away, keeping her alone in a room, as she grows duller and duller, until she's not really there in anything but body and spirit.
Would that be enough for Vader? Would he be satisfied with that? In the absence of anything or anyone to check his possessive tendencies and idealizing their relationship, would being able to fully possess her satisfy him, or would he feel the distance and loss of what makes her her enough that it would make a difference?
Anakin and Padme had so little time to come to truly know each other, so Anakin's desperate, "I can't live without her!" isn't about Padme's personality (because, when she disapproves of what he's done, he's furious that she would back away from him) but about how he needs her physically there, he needs her to soothe him. If he has enough of that with her being blank-eyed and stuck in a room, where she'll let him hold her hand or let him rest his helmet against her hair, would that be all Vader really wanted anyway?
Or would he become angry that she's not really there and tear it all down again?
no subject
Date: 2019-02-17 01:46 pm (UTC)This, I think. Over and over and over again, like some horrific time loop scenario except that it's not time that's looping, but Vader's rage/shame/horror, especially if he could keep using the Force to bring her back... Which I think might also kill the small spark that was left in him for Luke to finally ignite later, too.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-17 02:41 pm (UTC)I think you're right that that would finally destroy whatever good was still left in him, that looping of his rage/shame/horror at what he'd done to Padme. In DLOTS #25, he can let her go (in a sense) because it wasn't really her, but if it had been really her? He wouldn't be able to until there was nothing left, and that loop would have just destroyed him, rather than suppressed the Anakin in him.
Ugh, it's a horrifying thing to think about, but also kind of darkly fascinating, ANAKIN, WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?
no subject
Date: 2019-02-17 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-17 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-19 01:55 am (UTC)I've been mulling over why Vader's limbs are torn off him during the challenge. To show the power of the mountain & Kirak? To show his dissolution in the face of such determination to wipe him out-- somehow a callout how his evil intentions disintegrate compared to the more moral ones (avenging) from Kirak?
It's interesting that Kirak calls off early the different stages of the ordeal :D I don't know, I get the feeling from him that he's *relishing* this fight; eager to finally fulfill his purpose. He's absolutely convinced that his duty is to kill this beast (such as he calls Vader). Yet of course he can't, won't, and will die in the process. How could he have been so sure yet so wrong, if he was so wise?
no subject
Date: 2019-02-20 02:06 am (UTC)I keep coming back to how this is, in some ways, an echo of what happened on Mustafar, where we think Anakin should have handily won that fight, because he's so incredibly strong in the Force. But Obi-Wan holds his own and even wins the duel. Here, Infil'a is strong in the Force, but this is Anakin, even freshly wounded and still getting used to his new body.
His wounds are similar--he loses his limbs, he takes a fall that would have killed nearly anyone else, yet he survives it. Here, he has the capacity to climb back up the mountain (like he may have climbed up the embankment on Mustafar if he'd been able to) and does something so evil and vile, that Infil'a couldn't predict it.
Would Infil'a have won, had Vader not used the villagers against him? Was Vader's power too great for Infil'a to beat him, no matter how much it seemed like he was winning? Was the Force backing one of them over the other? Was that why the battled turned out the way it did, despite that it seemed like Infil'a should have won?
Would Anakin have won that battle on Mustafar eventually? Was his power so great that Obi-Wan couldn't have beaten him, except that he knew Anakin so well? Was the Force backing one of them over the other? Was that why the battle turned the way it did, despite that theoretically Anakin should have won?
Did Anakin learn a lesson from that fight on Mustafar, to not assume anything, because that's what got him in this suit in the first place, that Infil'a assumes the Force is with him? Just as much as as he learned how to grab hold of the sunken cost fallacy that his life has become and the rage and hatred in his heart to carry him through?
Infil'a and Anakin are negative images of each other in some ways--Infil'a is fighting for the light, he's fighting for good, he's horrified at the evil things Vader does, this isn't being made into a personal thing for him. Infil'a hasn't just murdered a bunch of children and, actually, dies to save those people's lives. But, at the same time, they're similar in that they feel the Force guiding them and they're so sure that they're right, they might even have won if they hadn't assumed so much about their opponents.
Anakin loses because he jumps after assuming his skill is greater than it is. Infil'a loses because Vader leverages the town over him. But they are similar in that this could have been Anakin, this could have been who he was. Of course Vader has to kill him, has to survive this fight and murder this potential path, to prove that his walking into the dark side was the only thing left for him.
Though, one thing you said is really beautiful and I love it: To show his dissolution in the face of such determination to wipe him out-- somehow a callout how his evil intentions disintegrate compared to the more moral ones (avenging) from Kirak?
That's a beautifully phrased question. I think, rather than the dissolution of his determination (because he never really seems to lose that) it's more the dissolution of the facade he presents. Infil'a is seeing right into him, he nails down so much about Vader, how he's weak in his heart and there was someone else driving this. Tearing off the pieces of Vader--the limbs that are symbolic of the machine part of him (as problematic as that metaphor can be, because artificial limbs shouldn't be seen as less than human, but I don't think that's the bigger message of SW, because Anakin's prosthetic hand never seems to get the same treatment in canon, Luke's hand doesn't get the same treatment in canon, it's VADER'S machinery, how HE uses them that gets this treatment)--is tearing away the false front he's presented and seeing the pathetic wreck he actually is.
It's just that, even as Infil'a is right about those things, he's also missing a huge component of just how strong in the Force Vader is, how he can survive so much that anyone else couldn't, and his determination to prove that the galaxy wronged him and he took the only path that was left to him.