#not the other way around. and that inspires the selfless love of anakin to return to kill Palps

[blazingstar24]

And if I say that both Anakin and Thrawn suffered the same childhood trauma and it manifests in completely different ways that makes their dynamic very interesting, what then? The loss of a family member and how they reacted to it is crucial in their characters. It is the loss of Shmi that turns Anakin’s love into a possessive, obsessive, abandonment fearing mess. It is the loss of Vurika/Borika, that informs Thrawn’s view of himself and others as just assets to a larger cause.

Regardless if Anakin could or couldn’t have saved his mother if the council listened, Shmi’s death in his mind is framed as an event in that Anakin was too late, he wasn’t there. It is a loss that turns into this idea that if he doesn’t protect what he loves, someone or something will take it from him. We see this in the Rush Clovis arc, we see it in the way he immediately jumps to jealousy at Obi Wan in ROTS despite Obi Wan never having such a relation with Padme. For Anakin, loss is always framed as someone took something from me. Even platonically, we see this in the Rako Hardeen arc. And it is evident that this started after Shmi’s death because Anakin does not have the same sort of hatred for Maul who killed Quigon.

For Anakin, it will always be that someone took something from me, so I have to do something about that. And it’s why Palpatine can manipulate him so easily, because all Palps has to do is point at someone, give him a target to blame and say kill.

For Thrawn, yes it is slightly different as Borika isn’t dead. But it is a loss nevertheless. Thrawn on the flip side of Anakin, registers loss as something inevitable and thus why harbor deep attachments? Not to say he doesn’t care because we know he does. Thrass, Ar’alani, and Eli all speak to the fact that he does very much care and love. But in every instance, he does keep them at a distance, he pushes them away just as they get close. And it stems from Borika because the reason why he loses her is so she could serve the Ascendancy. It is not a choice she made and he knows this. And that informs why everything he does is for this goal, because all he knows is that everything, even things that caused him pain is supposed to be for this goal.

Where Anakin sought to justify the loss in blaming himself and then others, Thrawn justifies the loss by trying to give the pain purpose. If it meant something then he shouldn’t be upset. It is what it is. Yet, just like how Anakin’s possessiveness leads to his downfall by Palpatine, by pushing all his friends away instead of keeping them close, Thrawn leaves himself vulnerable and surrounded by his enemies instead. All those friends will serve the larger goal, the Ascendancy, but who is left looking to him?

Idk what I’m really trying to say other than yeah that’s some interesting character dynamics. The idea that both these characters are defined by loss as much as they are also defined by hope as their shining moments of good.

[darthkruge]

Could you write a cute sequel to the Padawan! Anakin and Padawan! Reader oneshot, where they have a secret wedding two years later?

Anakin Skywalker x Reader ~ Can I Kiss You? (Pt 2)

Summary: Two years after their first kiss, Padawan!Anakin and Padawan!Reader return to the gardens of Naboo for their wedding

Warnings: Nothing. Once again, this is fluff. A bit more emotions thrown in this time, but cute fluff nonetheless!

Words: 1.6k

A/N: I can’t believe someone requested a sequel for one of my fics!! That’s so exciting!! The first part is one of my favorite fics I’ve ever written and I hope I did justice with the second <3. Also! You don’t need to have read the first part to understand this. But I do think it makes it more fun, as I kinda tied them together :)

Part 1

gif credit

“Can you believe we made it?” 

Anakin’s voice broke you out of your trance. You were sitting on the grass and leaning against him, head resting on his shoulder with his arms hugging you from behind. The palace’s gardens once again surrounded you; the familiar fresh, flowery scent intoxicating. 

You hummed, turning your head up and looking at him. He looked down at you and smiled. 

���Hi,” His voice held his laughter, teasing.

“Hi,” You replied, mirroring his happiness. 

You connected your lips with his, both of you grinning into the kiss. His metal hand came up, fingers gently holding your jaw as he deepened the kiss. Your mind wandered, remembering your first kiss. Here. 

You were pulled back to the present as his tongue gently swiped across your lower lip. You opened your mouth slightly, allowing him access. As he swirled his tongue around yours, your head spun. Your hands wove into his hair and pulled on the back of it lightly, making him groan into you. You smirked, loving the effect you had on him. He grabbed your waist, pulling you around so that you were straddling his thighs. You broke from his lips, trailing kisses up and down the side of his neck. 

Missing the feeling of your lips, he pulled you back up, reconnecting them with his own. You kissed and kissed and kissed until you couldn’t anymore, breaking apart only once you were positively breathless. You leaned your forehead against his, chests heaving as you relaxed.

“We’re gonna be late for our own ceremony if you keep distracting me like that” 

You lightly smacked his chest, throwing your head back and gaping in mock-offense. “Now who’s the one that shoved their tongue down my throat?”

“Well I guess that’d have to be me… considering you haven’t kissed anyone else…” He trailed off, looking at you somewhat sheepishly to gauge your reaction

“Anakin! That is rude! And unkind! And completely accurate, you kriffing asshole!” You said, laughing the entire time. Anakin joined in, sighing in relief when he realized you weren’t mad at him. 

“Rude and unkind? I’d say that’s slightly dramatic, Y/N”

“And where do you think I picked up the dramatic flair, hmm?” You shot back, quirking your eyebrows and glaring at him playfully.

Anakin rolled his eyes but, intelligently, didn’t argue. He just chuckled, pulling you back in for another kiss. You obliged but quickly pulled away, laughing as he pouted at you.

“Now, come on! We’re going to be late for our own ceremony if you keep distracting me like that!” You said, mocking him.

You got up and started skipping away before he could retort, smiling as you heard his footsteps scrambling to catch up with you. He pulled your hand into his, leaning down to press a fleeting kiss against your cheek. 

He pulled you forward and you laughed as he stopped to spin you around. Your breath caught as you felt yourself tripping over your own feet and squealed as you came in contact with Anakin’s strong chest.

You buried your face into him and he rubbed up and down your arms. As he peppered kisses into your hair, you did the same on his collarbone. Moments like this were what you wished you could live in forever. Just two people in love. Without the pressure of the Jedi, the Council, any of it. You wished you didn’t need to hide your relationship, your happiness. But you truly believed that any sacrifice would be worth keeping Anakin in your life. 

It had taken months of planning to even get the time to slip away with Anakin. Luckily, the Council thought you and Anakin worked well together and frequently allowed you to go on missions together. Granted, you both usually ended up in front of the Council trying to justify why you disobeyed their orders on these missions. Even if it was your idea, Anakin would always try to take the blame, despite you constantly telling him it was unnecessary. However, Anakin did have a point when he said that he was the Chosen One; they wouldn’t expel him from the order because of a series of poor decisions. He said that even if you didn’t have the Council’s protection, you could count on his.

To be fair, he wasn’t wrong. That’s why those fights never lasted. Most of your fights were like that. Silly, stupid arguments that almost always boiled down to the fear of losing each other. And, by the next morning, you were always curled back in bed together, unable to bear the idea of being apart. 

“Y/N?” 

You looked up, shaking yourself out of your own head.

“Yeah?”

Anakin looked at you quizzically. “You alright, my love?” He asked, concern evident in his voice.

You nodded. “Perfect.”

You were about to marry the most perfect man in the entire world. Kind, beautiful, giving, protective, understanding, flawed, yours. As if “perfect” even began to describe how you were feeling. You weren’t sure anything could. When you joined the Jedi Order, you never thought you’d get this. Love. And yet, here you were. 

Anakin leaned in, kissing your nose. “Me, too,” He whispered in your ear.

You walked up to the secluded altar where Obi-Wan, R2D2, and C3-PO stood. You thanked the stars for Obi-Wan; he had done so much to ensure that your secret stayed that way and you could successfully marry the love of your life. 

You stood, looking at Anakin. He held your hands and you gave his a squeeze. It was a signal that had developed over the years; whenever one of you needed reassurance or just wanted to remind them that you loved them, you’d squeeze the other’s hand. As per usual, he immediately returned the gesture. 

Obi-Wan cleared his throat. “Y/N, would you like to go first?”

You looked at him, mouthing a quick “thank you” and nodding. He smiled right back. Obi-Wan had become a good friend of yours over the years. You were quite grateful that he was here on this wondrous day. 

You took a deep breath, looking into Anakin’s deep eyes. “Anakin, when I first met you I thought you were reckless, arrogant at times, insubordinate…” You trailed off as he gave you an amused look, clearly wondering where you were going with this. 

“Gorgeous,” You added in, “and, truly, so much more. Now, while I still think of you that way, I’ve grown to love it. You inspire me, you believe in me, you understand me in a way that I thought was impossible for one person to understand another. You’re strong and loving and you always keep me safe. You make me laugh and smile and giddy and… happy. I still remember, two years ago, when you made me choke an apple and kissed me, all in one day. And that feeling I had when our lips first touched, it has remained, constant, since that moment. I want to spend my life with you. And I don’t want to put that off for another second.”

Anakin’s eyes were misty with tears by the time you finished speaking. It was hard for him to fathom -- that he’d found someone who cared about him that much. For once in his life, he believed that there was someone who wouldn’t leave. 

Obi-Wan gave Anakin a knowing smile before asking him to begin.

“Honestly, I don’t know what I did to deserve you. You’re perfect, you’re… everything. You challenge me, by the Maker, you challenge me,” Anakin said as you chuckled, nodding in agreement. “And you’re strong and good and selfless. You’ve always seen the good in me, sometimes even when  I didn’t deserve it. You sought to know me for who I am, not for what I could bring to the galaxy.” Anakin paused, looking into your eyes. He swallowed, long and hard, before going on. 

“And I know this wasn’t the relationship you dreamed of. I know I can’t give you much of anything. But I promise that for the rest of our lives I will be right here, by your side. I will love you for as long as this life allows, and for a thousand after that.” 

Tears streaked down both your cheeks, making everything else fade away. The weight of his words sat heavily on your heart; his love for you so powerful it was nearly overwhelming. But that seemed to be a theme in your relationship, didn’t it? Everything right on that edge, so close to falling apart. And yet you and Anakin balanced each other. You wouldn’t crumble. 

You once again traveled back to when all this started. You remember thinking, perhaps foolishly, that you and Anakin would make it. That one in a million couple. You thanked the entire galaxy that you were right.

You looked at Obi-Wan only to see that he was grinning at the both of you. He’d had his suspicions about you two for months before he eventually caught you kissing after you returned from a long mission. Anakin swore up and down that he “fell on you” and was “tending to your injuries” but Obi-Wan just brushed away the excuses and assured the both of you he would keep your secret. 

“You may now… kiss each other. If you so desire,” Obi-Wan said before averting his eyes.

Anakin looked at you, adoration clear in his vision. He held your gaze and gently cupped your cheek. “So… can I kiss you?”

You rolled your eyes, laughed, and leaned in. 

-----

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[primasveraas-writing]

i've heard them calling my name

Anakin Skywalker faces five people after the second great betrayal of his lifetime.

Inspired in part by @naberiie's "thirteen minutes".

WORD COUNT: 1803

XXX

1

Anakin Skywalker isn’t dead, but he is dying.

It hurts, and he is used to the pain, the ache in his lungs, and the throbbing in what remains of his limbs. He’s used to the grief and the guilt and the sorrow.

What’s new is the light flooding him, overwhelming his mind and senses. What’s new is love, the feeling returned after an eternity of bitterness and hatred. What’s new is his son, so much smaller than Anakin in his mechanical suit, dragging him through the hangar, and the determination and compassion that flow from him; Luke the bright epicenter of his suddenly recentered galaxy.

But dying sounds like a horrible, raspy breath, and the wheeze of a failing ventilator.

And love sounds like: “I won’t leave you here. I’ve got to save you.”

Dying is dimness creeping in at the corners, quickly enough to scare Anakin, to rush his goodbyes.

Love is the blue of his son’s eyes, and the kindness shining in his face that reminds Anakin so much of Padmé.

He thinks of his wife, and of his daughter who he never knew, and of his son, and he mourns them all in a second, because the darkness is closing in, and his consciousness is fleeing him as is air, and again Luke desperately promises not to leave him, and Anakin exhales for the last time and his son’s voice is the last thing he knows.

2

There is incredible darkness and Anakin does not know nor think until a voice calls out his name and recognition blossoms with a burst of light flooding the void.

“Obi-wan?”

There is shame, deep and consuming because Anakin has betrayed his son, but he was a brother long before he was a father, and he has ruined Obi-wan with no chance of salvation like there is for Luke, and-

“Master, I’m so sorry- so very, very-”

Obi-wan says his name again, and tells him that there is more, that there can be forgiveness and immortality, and Anakin wants but he does not deserve, but he wants to see Luke again and meet his daughter and Anakin has always been selfish despite the Jedi’s teachings.

And if Obi-wan is truly offering him this chance- Obi-wan, with his fair logic and pragmatism- then maybe he does indeed deserve this, even if all others, Anakin included, do not think the same.

“I failed you, Master.”

Silence. Then, the light ripples, and there is his master, and he is smiling gently, and he shakes his head.

“And I failed you, Anakin. You needed more from me than I ever offered, and I am sorry for that.”

“After all I’ve done-”

“You did what no other Jedi could, in the end, and that is as the Force wills it.”

“I wish-” Anakin’s voice catches. “I wish it were different.”

“As do I.” Obi-wan looks sad now, and that is familiar, but he opens his arms and steps closer to Anakin. They embrace, there is love and comfort between them, things that Anakin has not allowed himself to miss in thirty long years.

When they part, Obi-wan regards him for a long moment, then speaks again.

“I still have much to teach you,” he says slowly, and Anakin nods. This has not changed, even now. “You will see others who have missed you as I have. You will find forgiveness and anger in unexpected places, from those living and dead, but, my dear padawan,” Obi-wan smiles now, a true contentedness painting his features, “you will know peace again. That is what you deserve.”

3

His mother is before him in the emptiness, as if from a dream.

Anakin Skywalker is decades old and a Jedi Knight and a war hero and a tyrant and a Sith Lord and evil personified and the Chosen One, and he sees his mother and runs to her.

Her embrace is warm and tight, and he knows her from the way his head buries into her neck, and the length of her arms around him, and the faint smell of spice on her tunic, and every inflection of her voice as she murmurs his name, and calls him my son, and says how I’ve missed you, and he sobs into her, pulling them both to their knees as he does.

“Mom,” he gasps, and all the shame hits him anew. He is his mother’s son, his selfless, compassionate, angel of a mother, and he is a monster who turned against everything she believed in.

“I love you,” she tells him, and he ducks his head, unable to meet her eyes. Instead, he shakes his head, letting hot tears slip down his cheeks.

“Come now,” she chides, wiping the wetness away with her sleeve. It’s as if he were four again, and he had just scraped his knee, rather than-

“I don’t deserve you, Mom,” he chokes, and although he needs her, it’s true.

“No,” Shmi’s tone is firm and resolute, “it has always been my job to love you unconditionally, Anakin. I’ll not stop now.”

“I did such terrible things-”

“Yes. And I forgive you for them.”

“How? How can you?”

“You are my son,” she says, and she cups his face in her hands and smiles at him, and he knows warmth and love with startling clarity once more. “And you have earned my forgiveness and always deserved my love.”

Anakin sobs again and hides in her shoulder, and Shmi holds him close until the cries subside and he is nearly calm again.

“There is more,” she advises him after a long while, and her warmth and love are still there but Shmi is very serious. Anakin’s throat dries, and he knows they are thinking of the same person.

“Not yet,” she says. “Soon."

“How can I-” the words die in his throat, and Shmi presses a kiss to his brow and looks him in the eye.

“She lived and died for you, Anakin. That love does not mean nothing.”

She smiles at him, her crow’s feet wrinkling, and her love is familiar and good and palpable, and then she, and everything, disappears.

4

There is a beautiful woman, with dark hair and eyes, and a short frame. Her features are sharp, but not harsh or unkind, except in the way that she looks at Anakin, which is with a mask of anger, her mouth set into a stern frown.

His wife’s name is on his lips, but there are differences, slight, but noticeable, and he realizes it’s because one woman aged while the other died, and when Sabé speaks, her voice rings out clearly in the tone of a queen with no time for mercy or forgiveness.

“You killed her.”

Anakin cannot breathe nor reply, so he nods instead, and stares at his feet.

“She was my life, and she died because of you, your selfishness, your rage. I worried from the second she married you, that you would be the death of her, and I was right.

“She let her love consume her, and so did you, but your love was poison,” Sabé spits. “You never deserved her.”

“No,” Anakin whispers. These are not the thoughts that made Darth Vader, but these are the ones that fueled him.

“I buried her. I loved her and I lived for her, and I brushed her hair and dressed her in her funeral gown and I tried to seek vengeance, and years later, a monster came to Naboo to find answers as I did, and I wondered why you didn’t kill us.”

“Because you look like her,” Anakin is still quieted by his shame. “Because I couldn’t destroy what was left of her.”

“I would have killed you then if I knew. I wanted to kill Vader with my bare hands, but you- you betrayed her. Death wouldn’t have sufficed for you.”

“I deserve that,” Anakin says, clear and loud. Sabé doesn’t disagree, but she regards him for a moment, studying his face, her own features still set in anger.

Then: “She forgives you.”

“What?”

“She wants to see you.” Sabé sighs and confusion overtakes Anakin’s shock, his heart pounding in his chest. “She loves you.”

“I love her,” Anakin blurts, and he tries not to shrink under Sabé’s scrutiny. “I love her still.”

“So do I,” Sabé says bluntly. “Which is why you’re seeing me first.”

“To berate me?” It makes sense to Anakin, although he has not particularly enjoyed this conversation, but Sabé seems amused, her eyes glinting.

“To tell you that you have served a penance. To show you that many will not grant you forgiveness.”

“Do you?” He suspects the answer, but the question

“I love Padmé. I follow her lead.” Sabé tilts her head to the side. “Though I keep my own reservations.”

She smiles faintly at that, then she is gone.

5

Padmé stands three feet before him, and she smiles.

Anakin staggers forward and stumbles, sinking to his knees. Tears are already streaming down his face when he murmurs her name, mixed with apologies and said like a prayer.

“Anakin,” Padmé says, and she holds him, tangling her fingers in his hair. “Oh, Anakin.”

He breathes her in; he still remembers the scent of her perfume and the softness of her hair, and the way her body fits against his own larger frame, and the gentleness of her touch and her voice, and he has loved her since he was nine years old, and through war and darkness and villainy and death, he has not stopped loving her.

“I love you,” she tells him, and presses a kiss to his forehead. Anakin sobs, cradling Padmé against him, and begs her again for forgiveness. “I love you, Anakin.”

“I should have- I-”

“I know,” she says, and her tone is firm. “In the end, you have made things right. That is what matters to me”

“Our children,” he whispers. “Luke saved me.” He finally looks up at her, sees the warmth in her brown eyes. “He’s like you, Padmé.”

“I believed in him as I believed in you.” His wife smiles again. “I always did.”

“I missed you,” he breathes, and Padmé squeezes his hand.

“I missed you, too. I waited so long to see you again.”

“I’m here,” Anakin exhales, shaky. “All I wanted was to be with you again.”

“I have you now.” Padmé leans in, kissing him, then rests her forehead against his.

“Now I am complete.” Anakin echoes his mother’s words from all those years ago, and he knows they are true.

Padmé rises with him, wrapping both her hands around one of his, and reaches up to kiss him once more. He holds her with his free arm, never wanting to leave her embrace, and content in the fact that he does not have to let go.

[allgirlsareprincesses]

The Quest for the Lost Bride: Anidala (and Reylo) as Orpheus and Eurydice

One of the theories I’ve found intriguing since belatedly joining the Reylo fandom has been that of Reverse Anidala, or the idea that the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala is being told in reverse, as the joyous romance of Ben Solo and Rey of Jakku. When researching folktale types for my Reylo as Eros and Psyche analysis, I came across the apparent inverse of ATU 425: The Search for the Lost Husband, which is ATU 400: The Quest for the Lost Bride. If Star Wars does indeed draw on mythology from around the world, and the theory of Reverse Anidala is correct, it seems reasonable that Anakin and Padme’s tale would match closely to these Lost Bride tales, the most famous of which is that of Orpheus and Eurydice. On the surface, the mythological motifs in the Prequel Trilogy didn’t seem as distinct as those of the Sequel Trilogy, but a deeper dive demonstrated that George Lucas is, in fact, the inspired genius we all know him to be (awkward dialogue notwithstanding).

Quest for the Lost Bride tales include, just like Search for the Lost Husband stories, variations such as the Animal Bride and Supernatural Bride. There is slightly less standardization in the Bride tales than the Husband ones, even within a single cultural tradition: for instance, some versions of the Orpheus tale end with the eternal separation of the lovers, while others include the eventual happy reunion in the Underworld after Orpheus’ death. However, the most well-known of these stories are tragedies, so I’ll be focusing on those, including both Virgil and Ovid’s versions of Orpheus and Eurydice, several versions of The Swan Maiden, The Crane Wife, the Shinto creation myth of Izanagi and Izanami, and more. As some of these involve faith traditions that are still practiced to this day, I will try to handle them respectfully, but I would appreciate a generous correction if you feel my treatment has been in any way insensitive.

Orpheus was the son of Apollo, the sun god, and Calliope, chief of the muses who presided over epic poetry. He was best known as a uniquely-skilled musician and poet, whose music could charm all living things and even cause rocks and trees to dance. In some versions of the tale, Apollo gives Orpheus a golden lyre and teaches him to play it, and this hero is nearly always associated with magic or witchcraft. While the Greek story presents Orpheus as an artistic soul, both contemporary and later critics scoffed at this as his “unmanliness.” They would often blame the hero’s loss of his wife on the husband’s failures of traditional, aggressive masculinity. Accordingly, later iterations of the Quest for the Lost Bride folktale type have the hero as a warrior, king, or prince.

There’s a lot of Anakin Skywalker here already, both from a canonical perspective and a fandom perspective. The son of an inspiring woman and The Force itself (which is the deity of the Star Wars universe), Anakin is essentially a demigod, and his extraordinary skill with the Force is clearly a gift from that powerful “father.” His power does sometimes take on an artistic, charming character (and as a calligrapher, his grandson has clearly inherited this artistic spirit), as when he floated the pear to Padme, but the Jedi force him to turn his skills to war instead. Anakin is pressed into a violent role at odds with the selfless soul his mother Shmi describes, and even the fans at times seemed dissatisfied with his softer nature. This is part of the reason that the Clone Wars TV show portrayed him as much more traditionally masculine. We recognize both versions of the character as Anakin Skywalker, but they each reflect a particular audience perspective, just as the different mythical Husbands do.

Eurydice, on the other hand, is hardly described at all in the myth. Unusually, there’s not even a mention of her particular beauty. It seems she is just the object of Orpheus love and no more, leading to a great deal of excellent feminist criticism (which we’ll get into later). However, other versions of the Lost Bride give us more detail: most notable is that the heroine is nearly always a fairy or other ethereal creature, who hails from a mystical world apart from the mortal realm. She might be a fairy princess, a selkie, a mermaid, a swan, a crane, or even a goddess. Frequently, she must be enticed or abducted from this other world and her means of returning to it must be destroyed (usually with the typical burning of the animal skin). In some versions of the tale, she even had another husband before the hero captured her. She comes to love her new husband sincerely and live happily with him for a time, but there is always a sense of her being out of place.

When Anakin meets Padme as a child, his first words to her are “Are you an angel?” This has always struck me as a fascinating artistic choice by George Lucas, a man who so enjoyed worldbuilding that he frankly got a little carried away with it in much of the Prequel Trilogy. He certainly could have chosen a Star Wars-y sounding name for this alien race of ethereal beings from the moons of Iego, but he chose something with a very specific and recognizable meaning: Angel. He knew that this word would immediately communicate what a convoluted explanation of in-world lore (*cough* midichlorians *cough*) would not: an image of purity, kindness, and beauty. Padme is cast as a supernatural image of perfection, and we understand immediately that the lovesick Anakin has placed her on a pedestal, seeing her forever as Angel rather than as Woman. To marry Anakin, Padme must to some extent turn her back on her principles (remember her insistence that she couldn’t “live a lie?”), and is then torn between her loyalty to her husband and to democracy. In a sense, she has been plucked from the fairy world of Naboo and drawn into a marriage that, though filled with genuine love, places her at odds with her true nature.

In Quest for the Lost Bride tales, this duality of the lady is often expressed by the Animal Bride motif, with the heroine taking one form when she is away from her fairy world, and another when she is in her natural home. This might be taken further by having a false bride, a variation best known from the Black Swan of the Swan Lake ballet. In this example, the bride’s false nature is personified as a completely separate woman, while her true self exists in the form that the hero first falls in love with. Interestingly, this appears to be referenced in the costuming of Queen Amidala and her decoy, Sabe: During the invasion of Naboo in The Phantom Menace, Sabe wears a towering robe of black feathers. Later in the finale, Padme wears a similarly-feathered gown of soft white layers.

In Attack of the Clones, we see this duality within Padme herself in the two scenes in which she confronts her feelings for Anakin: When she denies her feelings for him and declares that they cannot be together, she wears a jarringly seductive black dress. This is clearly not her true self. Later on Geonosis, when she finally declares her love for him, Padme is clad in pure white. She then wears white again as she binds herself to him in marriage. Still another variant of the two brides theme is the human woman versus the shade (sometimes a rotting corpse), but we’ll get to that later….

Orpheus and Eurydice’s union seems to be doomed from the outset, as Hymen, the Greek god of marriage, fails to bless their marriage. Eurydice is then pursued by an insistent suitor, and in fleeing him, steps on a viper and dies of a poisonous bite to the heel, descending to the Underworld for eternity. In other Lost Bride tales, the enchanted wife returns to the fairy realm or retreats into her animal form, often after a betrayal by her husband. In the Maori tale of Mataora and Niwareka, husband Mataora strikes his spirit wife Niwareka across the face, and she flees back to her homeland because domestic violence is unheard of among her people. And in the Shinto creation myth of Izanagi and Izanami, wife Izanami dies in childbirth, burned to death when giving birth to the fire god Kagutsuchi. In fact, it’s extremely common for the fairy wife to flee or die after giving birth to her husband’s children.

Again, the parallels to Anakin and Padme’s story should be obvious: Since marriage is forbidden by the Jedi Order, the couple’s nuptials must remain a secret, meaning their union is never blessed by the powers of their world. Though Padme has no suitor, we see Anakin in Revenge of the Sith split into two people: the Jedi who loves his wife, and Darth Vader, who bids her join him in his galactic domination. In that sense, Vader is the dark rival for Padme’s affections. Further, he cements the loss of his wife with the ultimate marital betrayal, attempting to strangle her with the Force. And finally, Padme dies after giving birth to the twins, at the same moment that Vader rises from the flames that consumed Anakin Skywalker. The Lost Bride descends to the Underworld, and now begins the husband’s Quest.

One of my favorite sources for this analysis was In Search of the Swan Maiden: A Narrative on Folklore and Gender, by Barbara Fass Leavy. I strongly recommend checking it out, but this is one of her excellent points that caught my eye:

“.... according to the tale type Index, wives search for their lost spouses, whereas husbands who have lost fairy wives embark on quests - a particular irony given that the searching women characteristically win back their spouses and the questing men characteristically do not.”

I find this fascinating as a commentary on the perspective of both the storyteller and the audience in the Prequel Trilogy versus the Sequel Trilogy: the traditional tales seem to assign greater agency to the men, but greater success to the women. This can be seen in the prequels when Padme seems unusually passive and even dies of a “broken heart,” despite having two children to live for, as many have pointed out. Further, the first six films of the Skywalker saga are told from a masculine perspective, so a Quest for the Lost Bride tale seems like a natural fit. In the sequels, however, the perspective has shifted to the feminine, attempting to assign greater agency to the heroine and leading her toward a successful retrieval of the Lost Husband. This is important, because from this point onward in the myth, I’m going to be applying more and more of the story motifs to the Sequel Trilogy, not just the Prequels.

Back to the Quest: Orpheus, devastated by his wife’s death, roams the earth playing mournful tunes on his lyre. Eventually, he decides to descend to the Underworld and plead with Hades and Persephone for his wife, referencing their own love story to appeal to their empathy. Just because it’s gorgeous, here’s part of his song:

“Let me again Eurydice receive, 

Let Fate her quick-spun thread of life reweave. 

All our possessions are but loans from you, 

And soon, or late, you must be paid your due; 

Hither we haste to humankind's last seat, 

Your endless empire, and our sure retreat. 

She too, when ripened years she shall attain, 

Must, of avoidless right, be yours again: 

I but the transient use of that require, 

Which soon, too soon, I must resign entire. 

But if the destinies refuse my vow, 

And no remission of her doom allow; 

Know, I'm determined to return no more; 

So both retain, or both to life restore.”

*MELTS* So anyway, his song works and they tell him he can lead Eurydice out of the Underworld, BUT she must walk behind him and he must not look back at her even once, or else she will spend eternity as a shade in Hell. In other tales, the husband might be instructed never to look upon the wife’s animal form (The Crane Wife), or upon her rotting corpse (Izanagi & Izanami), or he may be given another admonishment from his father-in-law as to the acceptable treatment of the daughter. Invariably, the hero swears he will obey, but whether an hour or many years later, he fails. In Orpheus’ case, he is nearly returned to the land of the living when he is unable to resist the temptation to glance back and check that Eurydice has not lost her footing. She vanishes, and Orpheus (described thereafter as having a “frozen breast”) is again wracked by grief, swearing off of [sexual] contact with women and again roaming the world singing songs of sorrow.

If the “look back” can be seen as a loss of faith, or a fall to the temptation for power, then Anakin certainly demonstrated this in his reach for the power that Sidious offered. Padme begs him to run away with her, to turn back toward the Light, but Anakin “looks back” to the powerful promise of the Dark Side and loses her forever. Similarly, Ben Solo gazes at Rey across the burning throne room, clearly thinking only of being with her…. Until he “looks back” at Snoke’s throne, and is pulled back into the fear and bitterness that have kept him trapped in the dark for so long. Within her own Search for the Lost Husband journey, this is the moment that Rey also sees Ben’s true form, and realizes that she has to leave him. The lovers are separated (for now), until the husband can reject the lure of power and keep faith with his wife.

I’m very much not the expert here (that’s @corseque ), but we know from the Darth Vader comics that he was trying for the rest of his life to bring Padme back from death. We don’t really know how near he was to success, but that story may be relevant to the plot in The Rise of Skywalker. In any case, the myth now starts to get very interesting: Feeling spurned, a group of Maenads (female devotees of Dionysus) attack Orpheus in a forest and literally, gruesomely tear him limb from limb, until the ground is littered with body parts. This is actually a fairly common event in Greek mythology, such that it even has a name: Sparagmos, “to tear apart.” TEAR APART. Anakin, of course, did indeed lose limbs at the time of his “death,” when Obi-Wan cut off his legs and then Sidious raised him as Vader. If Reverse Anidala is true, and Ben Solo begins his story at a moment parallel to when Anakin Skywalker ended his, then of course the son of Leia sobs in the first sequel film: “I am being torn apart.” It’s poetry; it rhymes.

(GIF source: @mamalaz)

After his death, Orpheus’ head floats down a river on his lyre, continuing to sing his mournful songs to all who will hear. It eventually lands on the island of Lesbos, where it prophecies and eventually becomes as famous as the Oracle of Apollo. As I mentioned in my previous post, the iconic helmet of the tragic fallen hero does make an appearance in the ST, and it even seems that Kylo Ren is seeking wisdom from it. Apollo and the Muses finally take pity on poor Orpheus, and they bury his limbs. In some versions, the story ends here with a nightingale taking up the song of the lost lovers, but in others, Orpheus finally descends to the Underworld and is reunited with Eurydice, and they spend eternity together, hand-in-hand. Perhaps this means that Anakin may finally return to Padme and they may be together in the Force.

Among the other stories of the Lost Bride type are details that also align well with the Skywalker Saga: In the Shinto tale mentioned above, Izanagi fails to retrieve his wife but then begets Amaterasu (the sun goddess) and Tsukuyomi (the moon god). Anakin’s children Luke and Leia are visually associated with the sun and moon throughout the films, and similar imagery is used for Ben and Rey (NOT suggesting they’re siblings, people, just descendants of the Skywalker legacy, geez).

Another feature of these tales is the original meeting of the wedded pair: While in Orpheus and Eurydice their initial meeting is unrecorded, most stories actually include the abduction of the bride, either physically or by default because the husband has hidden or burned her animal skin. While this doesn’t really apply to Anidala, it certainly applies to Reylo, as Kylo of course carries Rey off to Starkiller Base. But it applies in another way, as well: In The Last Jedi, Ben breaks down Rey’s lies that she has told herself about her parents, in a sense burning away the protective skin of denial that she has, rendering it impossible for her to return to her childlike state. This is in a way another abduction, as Rey is forcibly pulled from her enchanted form to her true self.

(GIF source: @lyanna-stark)

There is also the common motif of recognition, which appears in the Search for the Lost Husband, as well. Often, when the lovers are separated, the lost spouse forgets the questing spouse and does not recognize them when they come to the rescue. Their memory is usually jogged by the spouse performing a unique task that only they can do, or by returning a gift which was once given before. From The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales: “It is interesting to note how these extended narratives tend to duplicate the motifs by repeating them in reverse order - she recovers her suit, and he recovers her; she presents a ring, and he represents it to regain her.”

In Revenge of the Sith, Padme cries to Anakin “I don’t know you any more!” clearly stating that she no longer recognizes her husband. While we have yet to see those characters’ reunion, there is a particular moment of recognition in the ST, related to a powerful object which has been previously offered as a gift: the legacy lightsaber. When Rey calls the saber to her in The Force Awakens, Kylo breathes “It is you” in the novel, clearly recognizing her in some way. There are hints that Rey also recalls him on a subconscious level, though for now we can only speculate how. Still, it’s clear that many more legacy objects are going to appear in TROS, so there will be plenty of opportunity for Rey to get a reminder!

In Barbara Leavy’s book, she mentions that the central thesis of these folktale types seems to be that the relationship between spouses is the basis for peace and stability in the world:

“These examples of emotional failure are significant because they suggest that even were it true that romantic love is an invention of modern Western literature, its elements not to be read into narratives where they do not apply, the importance of emotional bonds in the marital relationship has probably always been recognized. The breakdown in the attachment of husband and wife is a significant feature of some of the world’s most widely-told stories. So long as the family supplies society with a basic structural unit, the affective tensions within the family will be crucial aspects of daily life and the narratives that grow out of it.”

As applied to the Skywalker Saga, I take this to mean that the wars of in “Star Wars” are tied to the breakdown of the marriage of our central characters: Anakin and Padme, and later (to a lesser extent) Han and Leia. It follows then that this central conflict can only be resolved by the healing of the bond between husband and wife. When we say that the Skywalker Saga is the story of generational trauma, this is what we mean, and it is a tragically relatable tale for much of the audience. We see the sorrow of our broken families writ large in a violent conflict across an entire galaxy far, far away, and we yearn for hope and healing.

Leavy further illuminates an aspect of these stories - Psyche’s Search and Orpheus’ Quest - that I find particularly fascinating in light of the frequently gendered discourse around Star Wars:

“If it is true that the Orpheus tale is as favored by men as the Cupid and Psyche tale is favored by women, then male storytellers appear to be expressing through these narratives their difficulties in achieving self-definition consistent with stereotypical ideals of manhood. The typical success experienced by Psyche and the equally typical failure encountered by Orpheus can be profitably analyzed in the context of a recent study of the difference between the ways in which men and women respond to their own fantasies:

‘women would see deprivation followed by enhancement, whereas men would see enhancement followed by deprivation.’ In contrast to women, ‘men showed a preference for extreme endings, which revealed itself most clearly in the tendency of men to see any decline or fall as abrupt, total and final. The possibility of a resurgence or second chance, which is implicit in the female pattern, does not seem very real for men. Perhaps an important difference is that the woman is socialized to lose (or give up) control without panic, and that she picks up as a positive concomitant to her submission confidence of recovery in the face of failure or suffering.’”

If I may generalize, the Star Wars fans who seem to want or expect a tragic ending for Ben Solo predominantly identify as men, whereas those who want or expect his redemption and happy ending predominantly identify as women. It seems that the Star Wars fandom does bear out Leavy’s claim that men relate to the tragic Quest for the Lost Bride, which contains harsh punishment for the failures of its hero, while women prefer the Search for the Lost Husband, which rewards its heroine’s persistence with a passionate love. Again, this is a generalization, as obviously individuals of all genders and none can enjoy a wide range of stories.

Many critical analyses of Orpheus and Eurydice point out that there is a distinct power imbalance between the pair, and that therefore a happy ending can only occur if the husband successfully subjugates his wife. Much of the hero’s actions seem to be an attempt to control his wife or control her fate, and this is nearly always characterized as a character flaw on his part. In fact, the descent into the Underworld is sometimes interpreted not as an expression of death-defying love, but of an unwillingness to accept the finality of death, or a failure to accept that the fairy wife has chosen to flee of her own volition. On the rare occasions when the husband successfully retrieves the lost bride from the mystical realm, it is usually not because he approached her with humility and remorse for his lack of faith, but because he vanquished her demon lover. On the other hand, some stories actually switch perspectives from husband to wife after the bride is lost, and the tale suddenly becomes the Search for the Lost Husband, with all its typical features. When the lovers are equals and the wife pursues the husband, then their reunion is successful and lasting. This seems to be happening both on a large scale within the full nine films of the saga, and on a smaller scale within the Sequel Trilogy itself, as Anakin and Ben follow Orpheus’ path while Rey alone follows Psyche’s, which is an excellent sign for Ben’s redemption and happy union with his bride in The Rise of Skywalker.

So there you have it…. Yet another big-ass meta that hopefully demonstrates the genius mythology of the Star Wars saga, and not just the fact that I’ve spent way too much time researching this. Thanks for reading and as always, feedback is welcome!

Previous posts in this series:

The Search for the Lost Husband: Reylo as Eros and Psyche

More Search for the Lost Husband: The Burning of the Beast’s Skin in Star Wars

This post is dedicated to @ahsokaeden65, who gave me a gentle kick in the butt to finish it! <3

[lj-writes]

Rey is selfish and flawed (and that’s a good thing)

I immensely enjoyed Mara( @jewishcomeradebot)’s recent Rey-centric meta (link with my addition), and the central thing I appreciate about her take on Rey is that she doesn’t posit Rey as this vaguely positive altruistic figure. Rather her read of Rey is fiercely self-interested and focused on her own desire, a rare perspective in fandom. Mara’s posts helped me bring Rey into clear focus as a character for the first time.

I think people’s perception of Rey is distorted in part because we tend to attribute altruism as the primary virtue for women, both real and fictional. This is reflected in the characterizations of the Star Wars heroines as well: Leia and Padmé are defined by their dedication to the well-being of others, or the greater good. They have things they want for themselves, primarily close relationships such as romance, but their primary driving motivations are to save others through armed struggle or politics.

I get that female characters being driven primarily by larger galactical matters rather than romance was and to an extent is still revolutionary. I don’t mean to detract from anyone’s love of characters like Leia and Padmé, and I love them myself. In fact, it is almost impossible not to love them because there is nothing controversial about them and what bad things did come out of their decisions (such as Padmé marrying Anakin post-Sand People massacre) came out of the men in their lives being trash.

That said, I am also dissatisfied by heroine motivations that basically go, “she loves the entire UNIVERSE and wants what’s best for it.” It’s a continuation of the old stereotypes of women being selfless nurturers, just with more politics and guns. While the politics and guns are arguably progressive, these arcs are in stark contrast to those of male protagonists who get to want things for themselves.

Luke is a good case in point. His goal was primarily for himself, to leave Tatooine and to become “a Jedi like my father before me.” He ended up helping the Rebellion and defeating the Empire along the way, but it was his personal goal to claim his heritage and realize himself as a Jedi that his story revolved around. Anakin’s ultimate goal was to keep his loved ones safe, which can be framed altruistically but in the end turned out to be about himself and his trauma, not the people he said he loved. Luke’s goal could also have turned out badly if he had chosen his desire to connect with his father over the desire to be a true Jedi and joined Vader. Anakin’s goal could have turned out well if he had chosen to let go of his need to control Padmé’s fate and overcome Palpatine’s temptation.

Luke and Anakin’s self-interested goals were thus morally neutral and could have gone either way depending on their choices, unlike Leia's and Padmé’s goals which were inherently moral. Framed more precisely, Luke's and Anakin’s goals had conflicts built into them that led to a moral dilemma, such as “do I kill my father or join him?” Leia and Padmé, on the other hand, were never seriously morally conflicted. The boys choose between good and evil, but the girls are all good.

In Jyn from Rogue One we see a female protagonist with a conflicted goal, but with a thumb, no scratch that, a giant boulder on the scale. Jyn wants to stay away from the Empire that destroyed her life, but behind her trauma and cynicism she wants to reconnect with her father and the love she once knew as a child. Well guess what? We’re going to shut down her desire to run away by blackmailing her and taking away her agency. Also her dad was working for the Rebels all along. Saw, her foster dad, also wants her to save the Rebellion. And, with her father gone, it is only through the Rebellion that she will carry on his legacy and find the love and connection she yearns for. Yay for choice!

So while Jyn has the appearance of a conflicted goal that she wants for herself, the actual story pushes her toward the altruistic choice for the greater good. If anything Jyn has even less choice than Leia and Padmé, who at least chose their paths and did not have to be strong-armed. Leia’s and Padmé’s choices were in the distant background, however, and the stories did not hinge on their moral choices like they did on Luke’s and Anakin’s. As far as the stories are concerned Leia and Padmé doing the right things are simple constants.

In this tradition it’s no wonder that a lot of us have trouble seeing Rey as wanting something for herself and striving for her own goal. The proud but chequered tradition of SW women, to say nothing of the cultural background that casts women as either caring angels or depraved villains, predisposes us to see her as another altruistic, or driven-to-be-altruistic, heroine in Leia’s, Padmé’s, or even Jyn’s mold.

Rey’s actual goals are very different from Leia’s or Padmé’s, however. Much like a younger Luke she dreams of heroism and admires the legends of the galaxy including Luke and Han, but her primary goal was not to reconnect with her heritage by becoming a hero herself. In fact she had no reason to believe, though the fandom may have, she had any kind of heritage or famous parents. If heroism were her primary goal she would have jumped at the chance to leave Jakku and join the Resistance, but instead what does she want to do after she was forced to leave? She wants to go back. She doesn’t want to be special, nor does she believe she is. She just wants her parents back. A special destiny was thrust upon her against her will, not because she sought it out.

The character whose driving motivation is most like Rey’s is Anakin Skywalker, the “Chosen One” who was taken from his mother and spent a lifetime aching from the loss. Anakin may have been a hero, but that was a job he did because he was told to, not because he was driven to it by his own needs and desires. His underlying desire was to love and be loved again, and after being separated from his mother he found that in Padmé. When his own fears and Palpatine’s deception led him to dread losing Padmé, he chose to take Palpatine’s offer of ultimate power to avoid losing his loved ones ever again.

Rey’s goal, then, like Anakin’s, is a) something she wants for herself and b) something that could be moral or immoral depending on her choice. It is not an altruistic and inherently good goal but a self-interested, morally neutral one. This is the Star Wars heroine who is the protagonist of her own story with the agency to match, and not a helplessly good inspiration and role model.

That is not to say her arc was necessarily handled well. The events of TFA take away her ability to return to Jakku by having her knocked out and kidnapped by the bad guy, much like RO did to Jyn’s ability to avoid the Empire-Rebellion conflict by having her jailbroken, knocked out, and kidnapped by the good guys.

Obviously both TFA and RO would have been boring stories if Rey and Jyn were simply allowed to return/disappear, but the stories could have been designed differently so the heroines had opportunities to make actual choices while still engaging with the plot. Rey, like Finn, could have returned to the fight of her own free will. The Rebels could have dangled a potential lead to finding Jyn’s father to lure her in. Creators make choices when they tell stories, and they chose to advance--or fail to advance--these female protagonists’ stories by using tired kidnap plots.

Thankfully Rey did get the chance to make a choice at the climax of TFA, when she chose to take up the lightsaber and fight Kylo Ren instead of using Finn as a distraction to run away and find the Millennium Falcon on her own. Of course the outcome was hardly in doubt; she was clearly an important character with newly emerging Force powers, her kindness toward others was an established trait, and her preexisting bond with Finn had grown nearly unbreakable when he came back for her. No one thought Rey might turn her back and run, and so there was no suspense.

From an in-story perspective, however, it was still a choice and a difficult one for her. Ren is a powerful Force user, one she had just managed to get away from, one who had tortured her, whom she had watched murder his own father and cruelly cut Finn down. Her mysterious Force abilities, which allowed her to push him out of her mind and escape him, were a source of uncertainty and fear. She had vowed to Maz never to touch Luke’s lightsaber again after it gave her traumatic visions.

Most of all, there was her prior drive to go back to Jakku where her parents could find her. She would never have a chance of seeing them again if she were killed or captured here, or if the duel simply took too long and the planet exploded with them on it. Given her history and personal goal, running for it while she could was actually a pretty logical choice.

So why did she stay and fight? Had she given up on her goal to reunite with her parents and belong with people who loved her?

I would say her goal was still constant, the path to reaching it had simply shifted. To borrow from Maz, the belonging Rey sought was not behind her on Jakku, it was ahead, and she had found it in Finn. Finn was the first person in memory to ask her if she was all right, the one she begged to stay with her, the one who came back for her. He was the love and belonging she had sought. He was worth fighting and dying for.

This is another distinction between a self-interested goal and an altruistic one, by the way, and why Rey’s story doesn’t revolve around Finn or Anakin’s around Padmé even if Finn and Padmé, respectively, were key to their goals. Story-wise Rey’s goal isn’t to do whatever it takes to defend Finn. Rather she is doing whatever she can to defend Finn because she is pursuing her own goal through him--to be loved and cherished as she never got to be as a child. Under the right circumstances the person to fulfill her goal could shift, as it shifted from her parents to Finn, and potentially could shift again. And that is a key point of TLJ, as I will discuss below.

So how do we know Rey’s path to her goal shifted from her parents to Finn? Two points: First, after the ground opened up, separating her and Ren, she ran to find Finn but not to escape with him or seek help. She lay down to, for all intents and purposes, die with him. She did not try to find the Falcon, did not try to carry Finn away, did not try to attract the attention of passing vessels while the planet disintegrated around them. She felt for his heartbeat, wept over him, then lay down on his chest sobbing in a way that reminded me of nothing so much as Juliet collapsing on top of Romeo.

The second point is that after she and Finn were rescued and she was free to go back to Jakku if she wished, she instead went to Ahch-To to bring Luke back. And why? She’s helping the Resistance, sure, as she was before, but how does that tie into her established goal?

I think TFA was heavily setting up a deep emotional bond between Luke and Rey, with her literally dreaming about his island, her Force vision when she touched Anakin’s lightsaber, her immediately thinking of Luke when Maz said the belonging she sought lay ahead and not behind, and their incredibly emotional meeting at the end.

However, since TLJ borked all that, I now think Rey was helping the Resistance primarily for Finn much as he helped them for her sake. This way Rey’s departure still ties into her story goal and makes her a protagonist, not a passive plot point that bounces around whereever she’s told to go. This way Rey becomes a self-interested character with potential for moral conflict, and not yet another entirely altruistic, inherently good heroine who does whatever is in the greater good.

Think about it. Finn is injured and needs intensive medical care. He has nowhere else to go, no one else both willing and able to take care of him and protect him. The FO if possible hates him worse than they did before for his role in destroying their superweapon. Yet the Resistance is a target too, and they need Luke. Finn and the Resistance are on the same storm-tossed boat now, and if Rey is to think about any kind of future with Finn she has to save the Resistance first.

If you view TLJ in this frame, this is the movie where Rey has an actual self-interested goal and takes actions that could be morally complex. If we posit that her goal is consistent from the end of TFA and she hasn’t become a completely different person between one movie and the next, she still wants the same thing as she did at the end of TFA: Save the Resistance and protect Finn. She thought Luke was key to that, but he refused.

In her desperation she turned to Kylo Ren because, again, she has a self-interested goal--be with Finn--that could lead to moral or immoral outcomes depending on her choices. She’s not being an all-good and all-altruistic figure whose sole wish is to save Ben’s soul or the universe as we expect of our heroines. Rather she is desperate to achieve her goal and willing to push the moral boundaries in service of it.

I can also answer the criticisms of Rey being out-of-character. Daisy Ridley has said in a cast interview that she played Rey as always thinking of Han on some level, which seems at odds with her playing nice with Han’s murderer. On the other hand, what did Han die trying to do? Redeem his son.

Therefore I read Daisy’s comment to mean that Rey is still grieving Han--it’s only been a few days since she watched him murdered, after all--and wants to believe that he did not die in vain. If she can turn his son, then she can prove that Han was right and his life was not wasted.

But why should that grief take the form of being so solicitous to Kylo Ren, the man who not only killed Han but hurt her and Finn so badly, in addition to numerous other crimes? Isn’t that out of character for Rey, who is so strong and a fighter, who fought back in rage at the end of TFA?

Rey is not primarily a fighter, though. Those are the parts we remember the most vividly, but she is primarily a survivor who adapts to her circumstances. That means employing whatever means necessary to survive, including fighting if the need arises, but also being passive and accommodating if that serves better.

We have in fact watched Rey be passive in the face of numerous wrongs done to her in her interactions with a character who shaped her life: Unkar Plutt. I mean my Reylutt ship manifesto (link) may have been a joke, but her interactions with Plutt do a great deal to foreshadow her interactions with Kylo Ren. Plutt was an abusive authority figure who kept her on starvation rations and systematically exploited her, but she still stayed with him for over a decade in seeming passivity. We see her visibly swallow down her rage when he cut her portions yet again and can only imagine how many times she had to do so over the years. The only time we see her fight back physically was when he used violence first by sending his goons to seize BB-8.

The thing is, much like saying someone can’t be a victim of abuse if they fight back, it’s also inaccurate and hurtful to say the only “right” way to react to abuse is by visibly fighting back, or, worse, that you’re not really a victim unless you’re angry. A lot of victims are forced to stay passive, for the sake of their own physical and psychological safety, in the face of mistreatment because that is oftentimes how abuse works. Rey, especially in her early years, could not have survived as she did if she were always dwelling on how she was being treated and lashing out. She had to take a variety of strategies including passive waiting and patience in the face of injustices, not just fighting back against immediate threats, to survive deprivation and exploitation.

How is this relevant to her scenes with Kylo Ren? When she was actively defending herself with Force and violence he was an immediate threat to her, to the Resistance, and to Finn. In the Force(d) Bond situation, on the other hand, she had no way to get away from him but at the same time he did not know where she was and could not get to her. Raging at him might be satisfying, but was hardly practical especially as he became increasingly useful to her. She had, after all, a lot of practice burying her resentment for the sake of survival and her own goal of reuniting with her family. Once the threat moved from acute to a “merely” persistent thing, a different set of reflexes took over.

Another fact about abuse is that the victim may traumatically bond with their aggressor. It is how people psychologically survives at times, gaining a sense of control in a situtation where they have very little, believing that you can be safe and not be hurt anymore by gaining your tormentor’s approval and love. Subjectively it can feel a lot like love, too, because this is a powerful psychological mechanism for our survival and, in the immediate situation, our subjective mental well-being. It’s one of those things that make the unbearable bearable.

This was another way that Rey’s personal, selfish goal could have led to an immoral or unhealthy outcome: She could have mistaken Kylo’s manipulation and her own traumatic bond to him as the love and belonging she sought, and chosen to stay with him at the end of the movie.

In this Rey closely parallels Anakin, who accepted Palpatine’s offer of power as a substitute for love and so became Palpatine’s servant. Her overriding goal of knowing love and safety once again had transferred once before already, from waiting for her family on Jakku to protecting Finn and reuniting with him. Could it transfer once again, as self-interested rather than selfless goals can, this time to a fundamentally destructive relationship that only had a facade of love and belonging?

I think this was the reason, little as I may like it, that Rey was separated from Finn for most of the movie and why Luke treated her so poorly. If she hadn’t been isolated from Finn, or had been nurtured better by Luke, she would have been much more centered and healthier and there would have been no suspense about the outcome when she reached out to Kylo on board the Supremacy. I would dispute how well it worked, but I think that was the intention. 

Ultimately Rey made the right choice, as we know. The point as far as this essay is concerned, though, is that she COULD have made the wrong choice as Anakin did in the pursuit of her own goal. This makes Rey the first Star Wars heroine in the theatrical releases with a genuine moral choice to make, who is not all-good and all-nurturing and therefore morally unassailable like Leia and Padmé, and who is not strong-armed both by her “friends” and the story to make the right choice as Jyn was.

Like Anakin and Luke before her, Rey is a selfish and flawed character. Her self-interested goals and her own complex psychological profile lead her to genuine moral choices and mistaken judgments. Flawed execution aside, that is a very good thing indeed. To me it’s more progress than any amount of guns and politics.

Rey ultimately failed in her mission, as Luke warned, though she at least managed to return to the Resistance with her conscience and freedom intact and to save it. Now she is faced with the reality that she has to be the Jedi and hero. Luke is gone, Kylo is the Big Bad, and she can’t look to anyone to solve her problems for her.

What’s more, Finn himself, who had asked her to leave with him in the first place, now has a new commitment to the Resistance/Rebellion and possibly a personal and emotional commitment to someone new. As John Boyega who plays Finn has said, the look she gives Finn and Rose says it all.

These developments point to interesting directions to take the character. I hope Episode IX carries Rey’s development forward with better writing and challenges her harder, developing her more and having the story hinge on her moral--or immoral--choices.

[clairen45]

The Dark Crystal Connection

First, kudos and shout out to the first bloggers who brought forth this amazing connection between the ST and this hauntingly beautiful 1982 movie whose main message was: evil and good must unite because out of their division comes death and decay. Sounds familiar? Maybe there is a lesson learned there. Because Frank Oz, one of the chief engineers of that beautiful movie that entirely puzzled me as a child, also worked on the original trilogy. So it would come full circle, in a poetic way, if the ST reflects some of his work. @karlaaaay for instance points out, very cleverly that the code name for episode ix, Black Diamond, might be just that: a clever reference to Dark Crystal. The idea has definitely some merit, even though we can also keep in mind what the gem also stands for (I did one of my first posts on that). But let’s give Dark Crystal a try.

Ok, so what about the similarities, what elements have we seen, and what could we infer from there? So we have a kingdom divided between the Good pottery and music loving Mystics on one side and the evil, power driven Skeksis on the other. The Skeksis live in a castle built around a purple crystal that was shattered long ago. They commit genocides, exploit and enslave creatures that they use to steal their essences in order to stay alive. Both Mystics and Skeksis are a dying race whose fates are intertwined: each time one of them dies, death comes to one of the other side. A prophecy states that a gelfling (a race that has been almost exterminated by the Skeksis) will destroy the Skeksis and repair the Crystal. As it turns out, the fate of this world lies in the hand of a couple of gelflings, Jen and Kira, who both thought they were the last of their kind. They finally restore the missing shard of the crystal and Skeksis and Mystic are fused together into creatures of light, bringing back peace, harmony, and life.

As @karlaaaay pointed out, the names Jen and Kira have some resonance for the new trilogy. Jen is reminiscent of Ben and Kira was the name originally used for the character of Rey. But it is highly debatable if Jen is Ben and Kira is Rey as I will stress out later. It is hard not to miss all the similarities though. You have the Skeksis with a dying emperor, their feuds of succession and power, their armies of armored creatures and flying spies, so pretty much the First Order. And you have the Mystic, peace loving creatures, living like hermits in nature, who adopt and teach a young one that may be the chosen one to bring back balance to the world, so pretty much Obi Wan, Luke and Yoda. When the emperor of the Skeksis dies, his body is shattered and crumbles to pieces, like Snoke in the throne room. When the leader of the Mystic dies, his body vanishes into thin air like Obi Wan, Yoda, and Luke. The emperor clings desperately to life (I am still the Emperor) like Snoke affirms being unbeaten and unbetrayed at the very moment he is. The Mystic accept their death with peace and serenity like all the characters afore mentioned.

Another character that seems to have been transplanted straight from Dark Crystal is Maz Kanata. In the Dark Crystal, Jen has to go see Augrah in order to find the missing shard that he is supposed to return to the Crystal. Augrah is a thousand years old, has terrible sight since she only has one eye that she can remove and put back as she pleases, and besides owning a significant piece of the puzzle, has more questions to offer than answers: “you want to know what it is all about?”, “too many questions “, “there is much to learn and you have no time”. Sounds familiar yet? Maz is the same age, is pretty much defined by her huge glasses, holds Anakin’s lightsaber for some mysterious reason, and also delivers lines like “a good question for another time”. Besides, Augrah’s mysterious cave is attacked by the Skeksis army just after Jen’s arrival, like Maz’s castle is attacked right after Rey’s arrival. And Jen happens to run in a forest to cross the path of two significant characters right after fleeing Augrah ‘s cave: the banished Chamberlain who is following him from a distance, and Kira, the other gelfling and future love interest. When Rey flees into the forest, who does she meet but Kylo Ren? So if we follow the parallels between the two stories, Jen’s journey is more reminiscent of Rey’s journey. At the same time, Rey, like Kira, is followed by a little companion, since in TFA she is followed by BB8 until she meets Kylo. And like Kira, Rey is able to understand and communicate with many different creatures. So you could say that Rey is a mix of both Jen and Kira.

Yet, how does Kylo Ren fit in? When Kira and Jen meet for the first time and touch hands, they exchange immediately all their memories, something called dream fasting. In TLJ, something rather similar happens to Kylo and Rey as the Force brings them together and they start having flash forwards when their hands meet for the first time. But Jen and Kira are a unit from the get go, they are the last of their species. Kylo and Rey could be similar because they are also the last of their species in a way, they are the last Jedi (even though it turns out others are Force sensitive), they feel constantly alone, which makes them akin to each other. And when they are able to function together, in the throne room, they form a great partnership. But, remember that in the forest, also lurked the banished Skeksis. So when Rey meets Ben, she meets her other half but she also meets her opponent. Kylo is the gelfling but also the rogue Skeksis, the one that does not belong, has been brutally victimized, and strives for power and revenge. One line from the Chamberlain is also a give away. When he tries to lure the gelfling back to the castle, seeing he is failing, he keeps on pleading: Please? please? So, to me, Kylo is both the gefling and the Skeksis.

Another important element would be the shattered crystal. I think it could be 2 different things here. It is hard not to see a wink between the shattered crystal and Kylo’s shattered kyber crystal in his lightsaber. And because the saber is so much a part of his identity, it is also hard not to see this shattered unstable saber as a metaphor for his shattered unstable identity. So Kylo is the Dark Crystal of sorts. He is the pure power that has turned to the Dark side because something is shattered in him, because something misses to make him whole again. What is missing? Something Rey, like Jen and Kira, could bring him: the healing power of Love. And Rey, as his other half, has the power of making him whole, just like he has the power of making her feeling whole again. Together they are no longer alone. Just like Jen reacts to Kira: “I thought I was the only one”.

You are not alone

Neither are you

But the Dark Crystal could also stand for the Force itself, that has been shattered between the Dark side and the Light side, something that after thousands of years, is finally not satisfactory. What is the solution? They have fought each other, Sith and Jedi almost extinct. Kylo’s solution would be to let them die, to kill the past. But there is another solution that has not been attempted yet, and it is to fuse the two together, like at the end of Dark Crystal. Maybe Rey will realize that, or maybe that will just come from them coming together as they are.

The final element that the movies have in common is the prophecy of the chosen one. In Dark Crystal, a gelfling is supposed to restore the shard and save the world. In the PT, Anakin is proposed as the chosen one, the one that will restore balance to the Force. Failure. Luke is a likely candidate. Failure. If the chosen has to be a Skywalker, Kylo is the last in line. Maybe he is the chosen one, maybe Rey is the chosen one by helping him figuring out who he really is, maybe they both are and their coming together will restore the balance.

The end of the Dark Crystal shows that restoring balance between the conflicting natures of good and evil demands a sacrifice. But once the sacrifice is accomplished, and order is restored, peace, light, and life are restored. The lines uttered by the pure being of light at the end of the movie, as Jen is carrying the lifeless body of Kira, would fit right at the end of the saga:

Now the prophecy is fulfilled. We are again one. Many ages ago, in our arrogance and delusion, we shattered the pure Crystal and our world split apart.Your courage and sacrifice have made us whole and restored the true power of the crystal. Hold her to you, she is a part of you, as we are all a part of each other.

Kira is brought back to life

Now we leave you a crystal of truth. Make your world in its light.

We have already got the line about delusion and arrogance from Luke when he talks about the Jedi. We know that both sides have erred. Replace crystal with Force and you get the picture. Kylo’s insistance about killing the past may also be prophetic of the fact that one of them has to die in an act of pure selfless sacrifice to save/help the other. Can the Force bring a person back to life? If the ST is inspired by the Dark Crystal, it might just happen. And it would be a beautiful end to the saga to see the Force restored and whole, and these two, part of each other, able to create a new generation of Force users, a new world.

[lonely-boy-publishing]

Axiology: A Journal Entry One

This is a True Story that is written as it happens.

Obviously, the names have been changed to protect the identity of those involved.

I sat there in my student house garage with a recently used bong on the table and my phone at hand. “Another disengaged millennian,” I wrote.

I wanted to write something impactful. I’m a writer I tell people, and I go to school for it so I feel like I’m supposed to just shit out profound words anytime I get a chance right? We all know that's not how it works.

I had written a  piece of poetry that felt like a good reflection of what I believed in. Cents it was called and it was about the play on the sound of sense and cents which let me send messages from my manifesto as I call it.  

I have big ideas you see and for a lot of my life I debated making a career in politics but ultimately I felt politics were fake and I ultimately dislike fake interactions.

“I suppose they are inevitable,” I wrote. It kinda rhymed. I kinda like rhyming and playing with words, so I play as much as I can when I write poetry. I counted out the syllables. Mi-lle-nni-al, four. In-ev-it-ab-le? Wait able sounds like one when you say it. Is it one? A quick search would give my answer and I learn I’m way off, some writer right?. In-ev-i-ta-ble five syllables.

Could the Iambic pentameter work? That’s Shakespearean for ‘Does the line’s syllable count match’. I wouldn’t know find out then, as I was about to be distracted by the sound of faint rap music. It was Eminem and I know almost every Eminem song and consider myself to be an exper,t but I couldn’t remember the name for some reason. I knew the beat well, however, so I bobbed my head accordingly.

I didn’t look up when Brody walked in. Brody wasn’t a roommate, he didn’t pay to live here, and he actually lived with his parent's several blocks down the road, but Brody was always here and I didn’t complain as I liked his company. He kept his bong, which was a beautifully crafted Green Hoss we used for “green” bowls here so there he made me a pretty happy person.

Just for context: Green bowls is just smoking pot of a bong. A Popper is when you smoke tobacco and pot in the same bowl, the bowl being the small glass bowl-shaped piece where you load your weed. You can smoke a popper any way you want. You can put the tobacco first and then the weed as I do, you can layer it in what we Oakvillians call a Big Mac after McDonald’s cheeseburger since it is layered as such, and you can layer weed first and Tobacco second a method that I just don’t like.

Brody didn’t hit poppers, but he used to. His piece was for nice clean green bowls which kept a bong from becoming filthy from tobacco use. Don’t get me wrong, weed bongs can get bad, but nothing is quite as bad as a popper bong. Poppers leave a gag causing aftertaste that most pot smokers can notice when they smoke the bong. Brody quit smoking poppers and recently cigarettes as well so I was actually in admiration of him.

Brody saw me bobbing my head and jamming to the familiar beat and called out:

“AYYY” all energetic like. 

I laughed and kept bobbing my head without making eye contact I was staring at the page. When I finally turned my head to face him he was smiling a genuine happy-go-lucky kinda smile.

“What’s good?” He said to me as my eyes returned to my mainly white screen.

I’m really quite a boring person to socialize with. I don’t say much unless I really like what we’re talking about. Normal small-talk just doesn’t cut it for me but for the guys I see all the time, I do try, mainly out of respect.

“Not much man, just trying to think of something,” I immediately changed the topic to something that intrigued me that wasn’t me babbling on about my writing. “What Eminem song is that? It’s a Dre beat right, something like recovery album?”

“Almost Famous.” He said as he danced with the song. His dance was infectious and I started kinda grooving too.

I stared back at my screen. The blue line where my type had ended flashed repeatedly.

“I shoulda known that,” I said stopping my groove.

Sometime later many other common house people including some roommates walked in. I think it was, Anakin who wasn’t a housemate but instead one of the Den-mothers for our house, Terry who was Brody’s girlfriend, as well as Brick and Ethan who are both housemates. We all exchanged greetings and sat in some of the many seats available in the garage. We had two old blanketed couches that could seat three and four people, a yellow chest that sat two, and two single chairs, one Muskoka and the other an office chair that spun around and had wheels.

I don’t remember who sat where, but I remember I was sitting in the corner. Unfortunately, it was the wrong corner, the one that connected the two couches where everyone sat. Soon it became a chaotic series of conversations that overlapped each other.

I stared at the blinking blue line where my type ended for a majority of the conversation until I heard the word “Strike”. My eye remained on the screen but I was listening intently.

Our school, the one that connected all of us ultimately, as well as all other colleges in Ontario, was on strike. At that point we had all been on a five week “break” that was going onto its sixth.

No one thought it would last this long. The semester was in danger of being lost if not lost already and many of us were put into weird situations. Co-op students have jobs lined up in the summer and many are concerned about their qualifications. It was essentially putting everyone in stasis

This effected me in a weird way too. I had been out of high-school for three years at that point and dropped out of three different programs. each lasting only a semester. The truth is, I don’t know what I wanna do. The other half of the time out of school I spent hating my life as a waiter.

Remember how I said I hate fake-interactions? Yeah, I do, but it makes money. I tell myself the hours are good and so is the money but after doing it for now over two years, I’ve begun to turn into something a younger me would have never allowed. A sell-out. I still work as a waiter and to be frank, I’m still in debt. I’m not even making enough money to clear it. I’ve been working more since then but I don’t work every day. I have an existential crisis every time I get ready for work and barely tolerate my radical behavior three times a week. The other four I spend doing what I call leisure which I consider writing, gaming, learning and very rarely cooking. 

The young me was an interesting kid, he and I still share the big dreams that we believed in but now, I don’t think I can do what he thought I could. The kid was so ambitious, and he loved Batman, oh god did he idolize Batman. You don’t understand, he wanted me to be him. The kid was obsessed with heroes. Genuinely obsessed. He wanted to be one, one that was like Batman. He wanted to channel all the rage in his soul and use it to change the world to be a better place. He wanted to do those violent things for people. He wanted to be a martyr of sorts without even knowing what martyr meant.

Martyr:  a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle

-Merriam Webster.

 The Dark Knight Trilogy didn’t help. God, they were so good. Hard to believe more people didn’t believe the way that kid did. I still think it’s pretty damn inspiring. Selflessness. Damn haha. 

How Naive we are as children, yet so hopeful and optimistic. 

Sincerely,

Ben. Che (this is my pen name lel)