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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?
