animazi

[animazi]

obi wan cannot understand that all this evil has been done by anakin so rejects the idea that there is still good in him, that there is anything but vader left. anakin also seems to conceptualise of vader as a separate identity, one that can be well. taken off. is vader not a created & imposed thing? stepping back into the light, choosing love over loyalty, it’s all a rejection of everything vader represented & so at the end he is anakin again (1). in dying as anakin there is no internal struggle with the weight of vader, it’s very clean cut identity wise. it’s only really luke that adds any nuance to the conversation - like padme he struggles with and then accepts the fact that vader & anakin are the same person, that his mythologised father is this terrifying monster, the most visible symbol of what he’s fighting against, and that he is still willing to be there anyway. below cut is bonus yapping about questions raised by rotj force ghosts:

who in universe deciders how force ghosts appear? if it’s the force is that *not* inherently a statement on the ‘goodness’ levels between anakin & vader? - a question that raises a new set of questions around identity & how far he is ever given room or space to self define

if it’s him, then the decision to appear as he perceived himself as anakin is as telling as taking the mask off. vader then is an outside force, padme died (+ the fight with/loss of obi wan provided the background) and vader was born, and vader died and anakin was restored, a process that does place more of the weight on him rejecting vader

[animazi]

it’s always been fascinating to me how uninterested the prequel trilogy is in the prophecy of anakin’s birth, how he is supposedly destined for greatness. sure it moves the plot forward, and there’s some deleted stuff going into palpatine’s machinations, but the overall effect is a de-prioritization. anakin’s mindset and his choices are what the movies care about.

This is a pretty interesting analysis. I've seen plenty of media about Chosen Ones,and Anakin never struck me as anything other than an extraordinarily intelligent,talented boy/young man. Namely,a prodigy - and we see plenty of them even in real life. He doesn't seem to be particularly kindhearted(other than in TPM) nor uniquely resilient from a moral standpoint.

Those are my two cents. I just found it interesting that Anakin was a promising,selfless young child and became Vader,then he was the main enforcer for an evil overlord and decided to stop the horrors.

yea i’ve faced some pushback for not really caring about “inherent good”/“inherent evil” in star wars, and i won’t say the moral stakes of the saga aren’t often done in black and white, or that star wars doesn’t pull heavily from mythology. but i think a relinquishing of supposed all powerful destiny & fate is built into luke’s arc as well. and that is enhanced by the pt!

from birth the jedi are counting on luke to kill vader. he has a lifelong obsession with his father. vader tells him his destiny is the dark side; yoda tells him there’s no room for error, if he starts down the dark path, he’ll always be that way. and there is a lot of conflict in luke’s psyche: the dagobah forest vision gets this across very strongly lol. & the culmination of his arc shows luke going against both what the jedi & the sith believe he was prophesied to do. and luke’s plan changes all the time, and he nearly does fall to the dark side. he does start down that path. and what saves him is who he wants to be, the choices he makes.

& with anakin, i mean i would say he shows kindness in aotc and rots lol, but i get what you mean about it not seeming like an “inherent” trait, because anakin is an even more conflicted young man, and whereas luke wants to be good, anakin wants to be a good jedi. and it’s again, illustrated very bluntly, that he thinks being a good jedi is antithetical to being in touch with his emotions . (people can debate whether that is the #real jedi training or not all day. it remains central to anakin’s emotional spiral that he feels he must split himself in two!) so he gets so wound up in duty and possessiveness, he ends up more impersonal and clouded.

no one seems to care about this parallel besides me and a few fellow insane people in my mentions, but palpatine and obi-wan serve a similar narrative role in their respective trilogies as mentors who move the red thread of fate along, with anakin’s fall being that he commits to his mentor’s quest for bloodshed, and luke’s triumph being that he rejects obi-wan’s call for more of the same. and either way it’s not about who deserves to suffer or to be redeemed, but that stopping suffering is good and damning people forever is bad. so much is internal!

[animazi]

vade mecum v

dhuoda’s handbook tr. c. neel // the phantom menace // revenge of the sith// return of the jedi

vade mecum, latin: ‘go with me’, a handbook. vader, latin: 'to go'.

be brave, and don't look back.

prev

[animazi]

anyway this obviously isn't to say that anakin is like. actually a different special person who was Good as opposed to vader. I don't believe that. I don't think the films support that. I think the films do conceptualise him in an interesting way around how he sees himself & identity & the way they emphasise a(n artificial) separation between anakin and vader supports a return rather than an evolution wrt to his ending. I think the choice to have hayden be the force ghost at the end of rotj says that.

by having anakin's force ghost be rots-era, glucas is very deliberately making a statement about the whole idea of vader vs anakin & how far they exist as separate entities, the answer to which imo is fairly weighted in them being seperate. this is part of why I think the redemption debate is pointless, bc it isn't even really in the spirit of the text: vader is redeemed insofar as he is restored - the question that sw poses about him isn't 'can vader become Good again', it's can he become anakin again which is part of why his transformation into vader is such a big deal, he's not like palpatine who slips between sheev and sideous, he becomes vader (as padme & love) dies. this isn't to say things don't carry over from one to another, but the visual contrast between vader and anakin is deliberate, as is the restoration of anakin pre-fall w/the return and persistence of love.

[animazi]

i truly think it is a better, more interesting and more accurate characterization to have obi wan view the twins as this burden that he was saddled with and doesn’t want (much like anakin) as opposed to him wanting to raise them or be present in their lives. obi wan being consistently saddled with the responsibility of raising kids when he hates kids and just wants to be left alone is special 2 me

[animazi]

people have pitched padme explictly dying by anakin’s hand again & again to me & i fear none of this r/starwars “but is the space opera MEDICALLY SOUND” shit will ever be half as emotionally impactful as anakin singlehandedly destroying any hope padme had of a better life and her choosing to die from the pain of that . unbelievable to me that people either think the physical abuse doesn't fit in with his evil turn or that it had to be deadly to matter. she spent months in total secrecy hiding their child and waiting for him because she wanted to run away and be free. and he turned her one dream into a reason to commit mass genocide. and every day people tell me in this situation they simply would've handled it. no you wouldn't !

[animazi]

i can’t explain how every scene with shmi makes me feel. pernilla august’s performance is so underrated and enigmatic. you already feel like she’s preemptively mourning her son’s future

[animazi]

Anakin Skywalker + Cúchulainn, the Hound of Ulster from Táin Bó Cuailnge // The Cattle Raid of Cooley

Sources: The Cuchullan Saga in Irish Literature, ed. Eleanor Hull (1898). The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Táin Bó Cúalnge, trans. Joseph Dunn (1914). The Tain, trans. Thomas Kinsella (1969).

Art: "Cuchulain in Battle" by J. C. Leyendecker Photo of Emain Macha, ancient seat of Ulster, Armagh, N. Ireland "Cuchulain Desires Arms of the King" by Stephen Reid "Setanta Slays the Hound of Culain" by Stephen Reid "Cúchulainn rebuked by Emer" by H. R. Millar Original brush painting for The Tain by Louis Le Brocquy image descriptions and more info in alt captions

[animazi]

Padmé's post death reputation is so interesting to think about, because she was the Queen who freed Naboo from the Trade Federation, she vocally opposed the Military Creation Act, and we know that she was one of the leaders in the Delegation of 2000… but she was also the Queen that helped get Palpatine elected to Chancellor, it was her Junior Representative who proposed that Palpatine be granted emergency powers, and she was present at the first battle of the war.

How does that get reconciled with the public? Do they believe that her ideals were just a fiction and she was helping Palpatine? Is she regarded as a Palpatine's naive tool? Or do people remember her speeches? Are her words repeated - by people who once saw a holo of one of them and remembered a phrase and passed it? Does Palpatine try to smother her reputation or use it for his own purposes? Who - apart from Mon Mothma - even knows that Padmé was a leader of the Delegation of 2000? Has the galaxy forgotten her? Does Naboo remember?

[animazi]

I enjoy data tracking <- words of someone bewitched by big spreadsheet

[animazi]

no one can be normal about this ever but anakin does objectify padme & act possessive towards her, he does idolize her, he does put her in the place of his mother, he does exhibit all these behaviors and also form a deep connection with her that is incredibly personally fulfilling for both of them. it’s not either/or and in fact it’s a key part of their dynamic. his first line to her is “are you an angel?” and then he spends ten years meditating on her, dreaming of her—that is deification, that is putting her on a pedastal. she in turn sees him as this token from an old era of her life, she keeps his good luck charm for all of those ten years and carries that memory of his innocence. there’s always this tension between the real world and their own special secret world, the adult duties they have and the arrested development of their childhood traumas, whether they can run away together, whether these visions anakin has of the people he’s not supposed to love are real, all this fog. & to combat this, they carve out a little hole in the galaxy that’s only theirs. it’s idealism. they both represent to the other something real and freeing and scary and transgressive. and that does play into the violence, the mega stakes of what it means for anakin to think padme has sold him out. that’s not an excuse and that’s not me saying they’re a straightforwardly abusive relationship, but they are a deep bond formed amidst serious turmoil. and palpatine preys on that. he ferments that shit. & it’s unfortunate because 9 times out of 10 you can’t get past the “well are they abusive/toxic or not” thing & people expressing general performative disgust at a fictional dynamic being less than a platonic ideal . when this is melodrama

[animazi]

Padme

[animazi]

dear [university name] please give me £500,000 to think about the Thornham Parva retable thank you, [star wars blog]

[animazi]

they put storage space limits on phones as a personal attack. I need every one of those 22k photos they are all very personal and special tome

[animazi]

anakin and identity is a very fun angle of reading bc you've got the classic denial of agency and (self-defined) identity that he tries to push back with wrt his whole deal. like him marrying padme is as has been said manymany times is a reflection of them both wanting something for themselves & actually acting on it. very fun that that is in the same movie as the enforced bad haircut :) and him showing up in edgy jedi robes. the fact that the creation of vader is so physically destructive to him...you get it

by having anakin's force ghost be rots-era, glucas is very deliberately making a statement about the whole idea of vader vs anakin & how far they exist as separate entities, the answer to which imo is fairly weighted in them being seperate. this is part of why I think the redemption debate is pointless, bc it isn't even really in the spirit of the text: vader is redeemed insofar as he is restored - the question that sw poses about him isn't 'can vader become Good again', it's can he become anakin again which is part of why his transformation into vader is such a big deal, he's not like palpatine who slips between sheev and sideous, he becomes vader (as padme & love) dies. this isn't to say things don't carry over from one to another, but the visual contrast between vader and anakin is deliberate, as is the restoration of anakin pre-fall w/the return and persistence of love.

[animazi]

I do think there needs to be a distinction between saying anidala’s was ultimately vindicated by the story and saying anidala was only good and had zero toxicity cause the latter is wrong

[animazi]

An unwanted effigy

Yes in the process of this drawing it DID occur to me that her funeral blue makes her look like the Virgin Mary. Yes i DO feel normal about this