#a lot of her mystery is probably due to her being written to be anakin's love interest first and foremost

[levitatingbiscuits]

… that take about padme’s reaction to the massacre really makes me realize how much my own circumstances influence my reading of her, because to me “go super placating, start giving him what he wants in hopes that you can sway him with some doomed to failure tit-for-tat” is an extremely familiar reaction to the realization that the person you have to rely on is capable of extreme violence. like, not a *good* reaction, i guess, but a really familiar one.

Every reaction in a situation like that is a survival instinct. It doesn't matter if it's "good" or "bad." If it keeps you safe, that's all that matters. I would never judge a real person for how they react in a real-life scary situation.

There are a lot of ways to read Padme, and I think every reading has value to it. One thing that's frustrating about her is that it's so damn hard to figure out what is going on inside her head, particularly when it comes to Anakin. We're told she's madly in love with him, but what led her there? Why would she fall in love with a child killer in the first place??

Padme WAS trapped in a bad situation in that scene. She's being targeted by assassins, and the only person on the planet she can rely on to protect her is an awkward teenage boy who has repeatedly made inappropriate (and maybe even illegal, considering she's a senator and he's a jedi) advances towards her that she keeps having to turn down. I think a lot of women would assume she felt uncomfortable around him, given how unsettling or even frightening unwanted advances are irl. And then he comes back, obviously distraught, with his dead mom, then freaks out and starts screaming and crying about how he just killed a bunch of Tuskens, including women and children, and that he feels no remorse, only hatred.

I think a lot of people would do what Padme did in that situation: offer sympathy, soothe him, try to calm him down so he won't act violently anymore. But most people, upon hearing a guy confess to being a dangerous mass murderer, would also get away from him ASAP and report him to the authorities.

Padme doesn't do that.

Maybe that's understandable AT FIRST, because she needs to deal with all the shit going down on Geonosis. Maybe the kiss is even understandable, because she thinks they're about to die and she cares about him/thinks he's hot, so why not give in to the attraction and make out?

But it's everything after that makes me think Padme might have been into Anakin's violence. I don't think it's that she feels protected by him, because he's honestly a pretty incompetent bodyguard in this movie and she can defend herself just fine. I think she might have felt powerful knowing that she had a hot, dangerous Jedi wrapped around her finger. I think she liked that he broke his vows, both because she saw it as romantic and because she thought he did it all for her. (He did not, but she willfully ignored that, a pattern that would repeat right up until he choked her out. I really think she thought the "you're breaking my heart" line would stop him, because she assumed until the end that she held more sway over him than she actually did.)

Maybe she had a bit of "I can fix him" going on too, but we also have to keep in mind that Padme is a very ambitious person who likes having power, and Anakin is very attractive to those types of people, because he's strong and he's easily led. She's also no stranger to violence, and I think she might be a bit of an adrenaline junkie; a rich and powerful senator wouldn't put herself in peril that often unless a part of her enjoyed the excitement. And Anakin is the ultimate adrenaline rush; they're breaking all the rules together, he's powerful, and he's dangerous. But no one actually likes being around dangerous people unless you believe that they're not a danger to you, so I think Padme convinced herself that she was the one holding his leash.

It never would have worked if they had to spend an extended amount of time together, but the war prolonged the fantasy for her. He was the Hero With No Fear! Sure, he was violent, but he was using it for the good of the Republic! And she's the one he came home to, so there's no way he was a threat to her when he had other ways to slake his bloodthirst. Maybe she convinced herself that he was only ever that violent in defense of those he loves, and he loved her more than anyone else.

By RotS, she'd wrapped herself in layer after layer of self-delusion, ignoring every single one of Anakin's red flags so that he wouldn't shatter her romantic fantasy. She couldn't admit that she'd fucked up royally, because then she'd have to admit that what she did was wrong and her whole life (and probably her perception of herself as a good person) would fall down around her ears. And I think she probably downplayed the massacre because it was Tuskens, not humans, and the Naboo humans have a history of tension with the Gungans so she's already primed to see other species as less-than. Sure, she swallowed her pride and begged them for help, but there's gotta be a reason that was the last resort.

That's why she was unable to accept that Anakin had killed children, even though she's the only one who knows about his history of child murder. That's why she was willing to have children with a child murderer, and never once thought he would be a threat to them. After all, those Tuskens were Outer Rim nobodies hated by the humans on their planet; they didn't count. Those kids he killed weren't Core-world human kids like their babies would be. They weren't kids at all, to her. But she knew and cared about Ahsoka, so hearing that Anakin killed a bunch of Jedi children just a few years younger than her was too much for her to process, and she went into denial until Obi-Wan told her there was footage of him doing it. (She never saw the Tusken massacre; with her it was very much out of sight, out of mind. She might have even convinced herself he was exaggerating.)

I don't want to victim blame Padme for being in a bad relationship. However, I will blame her for letting mass murder slide. She should have never let Anakin get away with it, and as a legislator it is literally her job to prevent and punish shit like that.

Padme is fascinating, honestly. I want to study her under a microscope bc WHAT THE FUCK WAS SHE THINKING?? LUCAS I MUST KNOW

[astarsdarkheart]

3 8 11 14 for the star wars asks? :)

3. Which character are you actually most like?

Aah... I think I fall somewhere between Anakin and Leia, honestly. I’ve got Anakin’s whole ‘gifted kid turned neurotic and mildly dysfunctional adult’ thing going on (and am generally unreasonable and bad at managing my emotions when something does set me off) but Anakin is very much loyal to people in a way that I am not. Contrast that to Leia, who generally comes across as being rather more on top of life but focuses on political goals and ideals (a sore point between her and Han if their fighting on Hoth is any indication) in a way that’s much more natural to me than Anakin’s people loyalty.

8. What is one thing you would change about any movie, show, book, etc?

The more I think about it, the more the way Shmi’s death in the Tusken Raider camp is set up bothers me. The Tusken Raiders as written are not perhaps a stellar example of cultural worldbuilding all on their own, and it’d be good to have a more nuanced take on them as a whole. Having Shmi be just arbitrarily kidnapped and the rescue mission be a lost cause is just a little too obvious about how her death was plot-mandated rather than a natural outgrowth of said plot - too on the nose, perhaps. It wouldn’t take much to make that satisfying - a decent rewrite of the scenes at the homestead and a bit more exposition in the dialogue would probably cover the gaping holes. But it could certainly have been done a lot more smoothly than it was.

And @anghraine’s recent post about how the foreshadowing of Anakin’s fall is laid on a bit thick in relation to that scene is also something I find myself agreeing with, but I can’t provide much insight of my own to add to that post so I’m just going to leave a link.

11. Who is the most underrated character?

Who one sees fandom appreciation for depends a bit on one’s social circle, but I don’t recall ever seeing much about just how canny Maz Kanata has to be to maintain her castle and business for so long with the kind of clientele she’s dealing with. (And also the whole thing about how she acquired the lightsabre and then magically realised when was a good time to get it out of its box, that’s a mystery all by itself.) We get a glimpse of how well she’s learnt to understand the nature of people, but I’d be curious to see just how and why she had to learn all that so well.

Honestly, though, I think there’s a general problem with characters having certain traits be overlooked in favour of focusing on the One Cool Thing, at least in fandom spaces like Tumblr? And it results in all the characters being somehow overrated and underrated all at once because one trait gets unreasonably hyped up and others get downplayed even though they’re a major influence on the story.

14. What is your favourite alien species?

By virtue of the fact that my knowledge of Star Wars gets patchy in the extreme beyond the films, my knowledge about most alien species is not impressive, but in terms of just looks I do like the Togruta design. Their colouring’s pretty cheerful and distinctive without being a major eyestrain due to excess bright colours, and then the white and blue of the lekku is just nice.