Fic Commentary - The Adventures of Lucy Skywalker (Prologue)
This is the transcript of the audio reading/commentary I did of the prologue to my Star Wars fic, The Adventures of Lucy Skywalker.
The Adventures of Lucy Skywalker
So, I usually like to start these out with a sort of introduction to the story overall, and I guess what I was trying to do with it and where it came from and so on and so forth. So to briefly [laughs] - yeah, me - um, to briefly sum up, I read somewhere, I don't remember where, but I read that for awhile, George Lucas had thought of making Luke a girl. And I thought that was an awesome idea, uh, that in some ways it would have been more original than it was if he had been, um, because his gender is pretty much entirely cosmetic, so it would have been this, very traditional, uh, Hero's Journey, heroic fantasy hero type thing, only with a girl. And for all the, uh, fantasy heroines we get, we don't honestly get very many of those.
And, um, but I didn't think there'd be a point in writing it, just that it would have been awesome if it had happened. Um, because his gender is so cosmetic in, uh, in the actual movies, and, um, [laughs] basically so entirely unimportant, and that if he'd been a girl, uh, in-story it wouldn't really have changed anything. But, being me -- I love genderswaps. Um, my failing with them tends to be keeping things too much the same, uh, probably because my pet peeve is when people change them all over the place for no reason. Anyway, um, so - so I was thinking that, you know, it wouldn't change anything, but I'm me and I love genderswaps, and I got to thinking about, well, really? And ... and I immediately started coming up with things that would change. Um, like, you know, Luke isn't very tall, he's too short to be a stormtrooper. Um, there's no way that a, you know, a short woman would have fit in one of those outfits. You know, that was just, you know, a little thing, but, uh, further down the line, especially around the Empire and Return of the Jedi period, it became completely different in my head.
And, so of course I wanted to write it, but I was already determined to write this other story that was ridiculously involved, um, but [laughs] I did it anyway. Uh, and I signed up for them both and I ended up writing, uh, 80,000 words in around a three month period and I'll never do that again as long as I live but, um, it was fun in a weird and exhausting way. So that's where it came from. So, here we go!
Padmé screamed.
Bail Organa closed his eyes. It didn't feel right, watching her give birth like this, as if she were an exhibit in a zoo. No, it was worse than that: stark walls, cold, shining metal, no life or colour anywhere, nothing but the impersonal murmurs of the droids.
Not a zoo at all. A museum. There might as well have been a plaque beneath the pane. Widow of the Republic. No known creator, but one of the finest examples of early Imperial art. Modeled by Senator Amidala of Naboo.
Okay, this section is really pretty meta, uh, and, I, uh, I find the birth scene to be actually super creepy. Uh, in that, she's lying down, and, and it's like the worst possible position to give birth, just about, um, you know, it's just these droids and, and these people who don't even know her very well. And I ... I am not honestly the biggest fan of her character, but that was one scene where I completely felt for her, and, um, it just seemed this sort of awful, uh, sterile thing. Um [laughs] Bail in the Prologue is pretty much, uh, a sort of weird Author Avatar in that respect. Um, I don't share all his opinions, but quite a lot of them. And yeah, that whole bit was pretty strongly based on a conversation I had with
irnan a few months ago about just how incredibly creepy the birth scene is.
No, it shouldn't be like that. Padmé was Padmé, vibrant and alive and herself, not just a - a sacrificial vessel of the Force. It wasn't right. Somebody should stay with her. Hold her hand. Something.
He glanced at the others. Yoda appeared very much as usual, but Obi-Wan was half-covering his face. Guilt? Shame, at any rate. No surprise there. He'd raised Skywalker, and if he weren't exactly Padmé's friend, he'd cared for her, in his way.
This was a part I ended up having to re-write a ton of times, because I've actually only seen Revenge of the Sith once. I don't actually like the prequels very much. I'm sure that's shocking. Um, and I wrote it based on memory - I don't think I had Internet access at the time. And so I wrote this whole scene out, and went back to check it against the actual scene and found it completely contradicted the scene in the movie.
I had to cut nearly everything out, um, and I was trying to make it fit with the movie, and, um, uh,
hele and
tulina might remember my screaming about it, um, like, uh, especially the bit where he talks about thinking somebody should hold her hand, it's from that kind of early draft. Of course in the movie, Obi-Wan does hold her hand, and I tried to account for it. I'm not sure how well it worked.
He glanced at the others ... all right, I already read that. [pause] Oh, now I remember. Um, the other thing that's going on here is … I do not actually understand Obidala shipping, and Obi-Wan and Padmé never really even seemed particularly close to me. Um, uh, a little more in Revenge of the Sith, but still, uh, it always seemed to me that, uh, the whole Obi-Wan and Anakin and Padmé thing wasn't really like Han and Luke and Leia, in that with Han and Luke and Leia you have, Han and Luke are - are best friends, and Luke and Leia are pretty much best friends, and, you know, and, and, and Han and Leia are ... not best friends, but, um, you know, they're romantically involved, of course, and, but, the, uh, um, it's this very tightly-knit thing between all three of them in all the directions.
And I never really got the impression of that with Obi-Wan and Anakin and Padmé? It seemed much more that Obi-Wan's only relationship with Padmé was sort of, her as Anakin's love interest, um, but, and, and, and as a senator, but that he and Padmé were not, um, that if it weren't for Anakin, there wouldn't be a lot of common ground between them, so I honestly don't get the shipping? Uh, they just never struck me as that close and so it's kind what I'm alluding to there.
A medical droid stepped forward. "We need to operate on her quickly if we are to save the babies."
Bail's jaw dropped. "Babies?"
"She's carrying twins."
"Save them, we must," said Yoda. "They are our last hope."
I'm not going to even try to read Yoda in Yoda-speech, I'm sorry.
Obi-Wan drew his breath sharply, and followed the droid through the door, taking Padmé's hand. It was something, anyway.
Another voice joined Padmé's, another scream. Bail's eyes jerked down to the baby in the droid's arms, its body a splash of life against the cold sterility of the room.
"It's a girl," the droid remarked indifferently.
"Lucy," said Padmé, her eyes distant.
This is probably as good a time as ever to talk about the name, which probably nobody else cares about, but! um. Originally, I thought of Luka, honestly because it was a character in a game I played and I always thought it sounded oh, like that's girl!Luke. Uh, but I ended up choosing Lucy because there's a coup -- a lot of the Tatooine names seem to have that sort of, uh, Real World traditional pattern like, uh, like the sort of medieval thing where you’re John Skullcrusher or whatever. Uh, TV Tropes calls it Luke Nounverber. Um, so, you get names like Owen, you get names like Biggs, you get these names that sound, uh, very Earth...y...ish, I guess.
And, um - now, not Anakin but Shmi sounds like Lakshmi, and, and, and if I wanted a name that was kind of not something that just sounds like Luke, but ... Luke is a name that sounds very...uh, English in a way,so I wanted a name, you know, a real name like Luke is and one that sounded Englishy like Luke does and even one that’s maybe etym-etymologically similar, um. And, so I chose Lucy because it does sound fairly similar, it has related etymology, and it has... and it sounds very English in that way. Anyway!
An odd name, Bail thought. Not Nubian. Nobody knew where Anakin Skywalker had come from,
That's my own interpretation, uh, I have no idea what the EU or whatever says about that. I have always imagined that Anakin would probably, uh, be deeply ashamed, uh, of having been a slave and uh, and certainly of, uh simply being from Tatooine, which is a total hellhole, um, and that, yeah, it would just be this thing that he never spoke of again. And, uh, so it remained such a part of him because he never speaks of it at all. Um, but, at the same time, I sort of had this idea that he and Padmé talked about names at some point, I assume she didn't just make them up on the spot, and that because Luke sounds very Tatooine-ish, that at some point he did want one from, I guess, his culture or whatever, or - or maybe she did, I don't know, but that ... I don't know, the, the fandom consensus seems to be that Leia's name is a Tatooine type thing and "Luke" is from Naboo, but - for me it just made more sense the other way around, so that's what I'm doing here.
but he'd have wagered his diplomatic immunity that a girl named Lucy Skywalker wouldn't draw any attention there.
Three minutes later, a second infant Skywalker burst into the galaxy, shrieking even more than loudly than the first.
Leia!
"Another girl," said the droid.
". . . and Leia," Padmé whispered.
When they joined Padmé, finally, she was clutching her younger daughter and trying to smile. Her colourless lips hardly moved. Exsanguination, he thought automatically. It had to be. She must have hemorrhaged as they watched her, bleeding out in this comfortless room -
Yeah, this would be another one of uh, my, uh, I know this isn't canon and that actually she died of, uh, lacking-the-will-to-live...otosis, but, um, I just think [laughs] it makes more sense if she just died of something like blood loss. I don't know, maybe it's just me. Um. A lot of people assume that Anakin killed her when he choked her, which is a good reason but doesn't seem to be the case. I mean, I think Lucas goes to some extremes, um, to ensure, to make it clear that no, Anakin didn't kill her, uh, and that in fact her dying was completely unrelated to being choked while eight months pregnant. With twins. On a lava planet.
I don't know, but, um, I can see why he would not want to go there, um, I think there’s a number of choices made over all six movies that try to, uh, not cross a line that, with Anakin. Um. It's an odd line. But, um, and I also think that, I, I can see why, sort of, he didn't want it to be the stereotypical “died in childbirth,” um, in that, he didn't want her to be, you know, that mother, yet another mother dies in childbirth like Disney. Um, the only real problem I have with it is it that the solution, that she died of the lacking the will to live, is just stupid. So. I preferred just old fashioned blood loss. Not Anakin, not the choking thing, just...yes.
Obi-Wan stood helplessly beside her bed. Somebody had given the elder girl to him, but he didn't seem to know what to do with her. Padmé's hand twitched and she gasped something that Bail couldn't hear.
And probably wouldn't want to hear even if he could!
Then she was dead.
Without hesitation, Bail snatched the baby out of her limp arms. Leia howled for Padmé and her sister whimpered.
It's probably, uh, [laughs] a ...basically a start on [laughs] their kinds of personalities.
"Strong in the Force they are. Too strong, perhaps," muttered Yoda, and nodded at Lucy. "This one especially."
See, this was something that when I re-read it later, after the au_bigbang, after I posted it, uh, that I was af - it occurred to me, that this could make it seem a little bit Sueish, because, um, it’s never made explicit in the movies that Luke is stronger in the Force than Leia. And the most obvious explanation, um, is, uh, for the reason that Luke is, sort of inherits the legacy and Leia is so comprehensively sidelined is good old-fashioned sexism.
But, um, for this, I do explore the misogyny inherent in the galaxy quite a bit, but the difficulty is that if it’s just because Lei - Luke is the boy and the oldest, uh, and that’s why he’s chosen, and it’s two girls, it’s just even odds which gets chosen. Um, I’m still not entirely clear why they couldn’t stay together. I guess they just ping too loudly in the Force and that’s why there’s the disturbance in Empire or something.
But yeah, I read or heard somewhere, I don’t remember where - again - but that Luke is a little bit stronger in the Force than Leia, and that’s why they sense him and they don’t sense Leia. I mean, obviously it’s the retcon, outside of the story, but in-story, he’s just stronger, he has all of Anakin’s potential...midichlorians or whatever. And, I mean, Leia is...Leia is probably the second most powerful Force-sensitive in the galaxy at this point, um, but it’s still less powerful.
So Lucy, in here, I have, I was, I chose that interpretation just because it was simpler for the story. Uh, I had this list of like twelve different ways that the twinswapping could work just by having Luke be a girl and not having the sexism element. And that was just too complicated. So I went, okay, Luke’s just stronger in the Force so Lucy’s stronger in the Force so it’s her and everything’s the same to begin with. I did want to establish that everything’s the same right now.
Later, as they flew to Theed, he said: "Hidden, safe, they must be kept."
"We must take them someplace where the Sith will not sense their presence," added Obi-Wan.
[laughs] This is, uh, it’s not actually a word for word transcription of the movie, uh, it, what it actually says in the movie is that We must take them somewhere the Sith will not sense their presence. Which when I heard it I thought, it should be somewhere where the Sith will not sense their presence, and then I thought, wait, that sounds awkward, so I can see why they went with one word, but I just switched it to someplace where because...it sounds better? Um, I don’t actually do that very often, but I, I did do it here.
"Split up, they should be."
Bail blinked. It hadn't occurred to him that they would take the twins to anyone other than Padmé's family. Skywalker might not have had any - well, naturally he hadn't, he was a Jedi -
Yeah...
but she had. There was a sister, parents, uncles and aunts, cousins, nieces.
Yeah, this is one of those things that honestly has always bothered me about Revenge of the Sith. Um, I think it’s probably because I read the scripts before I ever watched the movies, um, except The Phantom Menace, which was the first SW movie I ever saw, but, um, so I knew about Sola and you know, her husband and daughters and, and, and Jobal and, basically, that Padmé has family, and I knew that before I ever watched Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith.
So by the time ROTS came around, uh, it seemed really really odd to me that, uh... you might say, okay, Anakin is a domestic abuser, he has no rights to the children and I mean...eh, but even accepting that, Padmé is the mother, and I feel reasonably certain she would not have voluntarily given her children to the Jedi Order...if it’d still been around...and yet you have Yoda and Obi-Wan taking command over her children within moments of her death.
And what I... I guess, I’m probably overthinking this, and I know I already posted about it, but I just find this really weird that...they have almost no connection to these children. You have Yoda, whose only connection is, he is grandmaster of the order that the twins’ father used to belong to. Uh, what? He has...yeah, that’s just weird to me. Why would...what right does he have to take Anakin’s children?
Especially because, okay, you know, Anakin may very well be incompetent parent. Um, and he’s in surgery at the moment anyway. But Padmé has a whole ton of family who I’m sure would be thrilled to...you know, I, I’m sure they were devastated when she died, and would have been delighted to take the children. And, you know, maybe there are reasons, uh, that wouldn’t be the wisest choice, because Sidious blah blah blah, but they should have at least been informed. Uh, maybe this is inserting too much realism into the space opera...but, um, that’s kinda of what the prequel trilogy did, was insert realism into - into the space opera. So I find that kind of skeevy.
Bail is just a, a political ally who she was sort of friendly with, and Obi-Wan is kind of sort of a friendly...person, but he’s, you know, his connection is really to Anakin too. Um, and none of these people seem to care much for the actu - for Luke and Leia’s actual welfare, they seem to care for them as a, a second chance, Anakin all over again, saviours of the galaxy, or...yeah, I, I find that weird. Anyway.
But of course Palpatine would know who had fathered Padmé's children, and Naboo was his homeworld. If he could sense them, it would be the worst possible place for them.
That’s my fanwank! Canon doesn’t actually provide one.
Yet -
Bail felt the highest regard for Grandmaster Yoda and General Kenobi. He always had. But he didn't like the way they looked at Padmé's daughters, as if they were their hope and salvation. He didn't like any of it. Force-sensitive or not, these girls deserved better lives than their mother's. Than their father's.
Yeah, that’s...kind of, uh, [laughs] my issues coming out. Honestly, there’s not a lot of that in the rest of the story. And, my interpretation of Bail is [laughs] possibly ridiculously sympathetic to my favourite characters. Um, now, I’m not, I’m honestly not really sure how he saw Anakin? I mean, they seemed pretty, pretty friendly in Re - uh, in the beginning of Revenge of the Sith. Of course at this point, there’s [laughs] a lot of water under that bridge.
And, you know, I’m not sure how much he really understands of what’s happened, but in my interpretation, um, he at least has enough knowledge of the Jedi Order to, uh, to know what it was - what it would be like, um, and that, uh, Anakin’s life was not really a walk in the park even if his present choices are completely indefensible. And, and neither did Padmé, with, you know, the, the really weird bizarre political pressures on, uh, children in Naboo, um, and so it’s, you know, kind of, I think he sees the, the kind of, uh, upbringing that these Naboo children get as paralleling in some odd and vaguely creepy ways the way the Jedi children are brought up. That’s kind of what was going there, that they deserve better than their parents, what’s happening to their newly newly cyborged father and their dead mother.
Split up, he thought, and Lucy's stronger, they'll never let go of her, but Leia -
The words were out of his mouth before he knew he had spoken them.
"My wife and I will take the younger girl. We've always talked of adopting a baby girl," he said, and hesitated. "She will be loved with us."
Yeah, this line always reads to me as very sharp, given who he’s talking to. Um, that may just be me, but if, basically it seems to me, saying, assuring two Jedi that this child will be loved, if he knows what Jedi are like, that loving children is not really high on their priority lists, um, that either he is completely clueless about the entire nature of the Jedi Order or that he does know what it’s like. This is a sort of, I don’t want to say it’s snide, because I don’t get that impression from him and this wouldn’t really be the place for it, but just that it’s … that’s what he was thinking of when he says it.
"And what of the elder?" asked Obi-Wan.
Yoda sighed. "To Tatooine. To her family, send her."
So, apparently her father’s mother’s husband’s daughter-in-law and son are her family as opposed to her aunt and grandparents. Yeah.
So Skywalker did have family: or relatives, at any rate. On Tatooine. No wonder he'd never talked about it - the entire population were little more than slaves of the Hutts.
Yeah, Tatooine sucks. I guess everybody who knows that Tatooine exists probably knows it sucks. Um, yeah, I always, uh - my impression was that Anakin’s family was a native Tatooine family. I know that in the EU they come from like some other place and there’s a comic where they arrive, I don’t know, but my impression , but yeah, my impression is definitely that they’re from Tatooine. That’s their home planet. And that they’ve been slaves of the Hutts for awhile. Quite possibly hundreds of generations at this point. Um. So yeah, that’s kind of where that’s coming from.
Now he'd enslaved himself more securely than any Hutt could imagine, and his firstborn child was being sent back to whatever hellhole he'd clawed his way out of.
Yeah, sucks.
Bail walked over to the cribs and stared down at Lucy Skywalker's sleeping face. I'm sorry I can't save you from this, he thought. I'm sorry I can't even try.
Lucy stirred, already restless, and Leia began to scream.
The Adventures of Lucy Skywalker
So, I usually like to start these out with a sort of introduction to the story overall, and I guess what I was trying to do with it and where it came from and so on and so forth. So to briefly [laughs] - yeah, me - um, to briefly sum up, I read somewhere, I don't remember where, but I read that for awhile, George Lucas had thought of making Luke a girl. And I thought that was an awesome idea, uh, that in some ways it would have been more original than it was if he had been, um, because his gender is pretty much entirely cosmetic, so it would have been this, very traditional, uh, Hero's Journey, heroic fantasy hero type thing, only with a girl. And for all the, uh, fantasy heroines we get, we don't honestly get very many of those.
And, um, but I didn't think there'd be a point in writing it, just that it would have been awesome if it had happened. Um, because his gender is so cosmetic in, uh, in the actual movies, and, um, [laughs] basically so entirely unimportant, and that if he'd been a girl, uh, in-story it wouldn't really have changed anything. But, being me -- I love genderswaps. Um, my failing with them tends to be keeping things too much the same, uh, probably because my pet peeve is when people change them all over the place for no reason. Anyway, um, so - so I was thinking that, you know, it wouldn't change anything, but I'm me and I love genderswaps, and I got to thinking about, well, really? And ... and I immediately started coming up with things that would change. Um, like, you know, Luke isn't very tall, he's too short to be a stormtrooper. Um, there's no way that a, you know, a short woman would have fit in one of those outfits. You know, that was just, you know, a little thing, but, uh, further down the line, especially around the Empire and Return of the Jedi period, it became completely different in my head.
And, so of course I wanted to write it, but I was already determined to write this other story that was ridiculously involved, um, but [laughs] I did it anyway. Uh, and I signed up for them both and I ended up writing, uh, 80,000 words in around a three month period and I'll never do that again as long as I live but, um, it was fun in a weird and exhausting way. So that's where it came from. So, here we go!
Padmé screamed.
Bail Organa closed his eyes. It didn't feel right, watching her give birth like this, as if she were an exhibit in a zoo. No, it was worse than that: stark walls, cold, shining metal, no life or colour anywhere, nothing but the impersonal murmurs of the droids.
Not a zoo at all. A museum. There might as well have been a plaque beneath the pane. Widow of the Republic. No known creator, but one of the finest examples of early Imperial art. Modeled by Senator Amidala of Naboo.
Okay, this section is really pretty meta, uh, and, I, uh, I find the birth scene to be actually super creepy. Uh, in that, she's lying down, and, and it's like the worst possible position to give birth, just about, um, you know, it's just these droids and, and these people who don't even know her very well. And I ... I am not honestly the biggest fan of her character, but that was one scene where I completely felt for her, and, um, it just seemed this sort of awful, uh, sterile thing. Um [laughs] Bail in the Prologue is pretty much, uh, a sort of weird Author Avatar in that respect. Um, I don't share all his opinions, but quite a lot of them. And yeah, that whole bit was pretty strongly based on a conversation I had with
irnan a few months ago about just how incredibly creepy the birth scene is.
No, it shouldn't be like that. Padmé was Padmé, vibrant and alive and herself, not just a - a sacrificial vessel of the Force. It wasn't right. Somebody should stay with her. Hold her hand. Something.
He glanced at the others. Yoda appeared very much as usual, but Obi-Wan was half-covering his face. Guilt? Shame, at any rate. No surprise there. He'd raised Skywalker, and if he weren't exactly Padmé's friend, he'd cared for her, in his way.
This was a part I ended up having to re-write a ton of times, because I've actually only seen Revenge of the Sith once. I don't actually like the prequels very much. I'm sure that's shocking. Um, and I wrote it based on memory - I don't think I had Internet access at the time. And so I wrote this whole scene out, and went back to check it against the actual scene and found it completely contradicted the scene in the movie.
I had to cut nearly everything out, um, and I was trying to make it fit with the movie, and, um, uh,
hele and
tulina might remember my screaming about it, um, like, uh, especially the bit where he talks about thinking somebody should hold her hand, it's from that kind of early draft. Of course in the movie, Obi-Wan does hold her hand, and I tried to account for it. I'm not sure how well it worked.
He glanced at the others ... all right, I already read that. [pause] Oh, now I remember. Um, the other thing that's going on here is … I do not actually understand Obidala shipping, and Obi-Wan and Padmé never really even seemed particularly close to me. Um, uh, a little more in Revenge of the Sith, but still, uh, it always seemed to me that, uh, the whole Obi-Wan and Anakin and Padmé thing wasn't really like Han and Luke and Leia, in that with Han and Luke and Leia you have, Han and Luke are - are best friends, and Luke and Leia are pretty much best friends, and, you know, and, and, and Han and Leia are ... not best friends, but, um, you know, they're romantically involved, of course, and, but, the, uh, um, it's this very tightly-knit thing between all three of them in all the directions.
And I never really got the impression of that with Obi-Wan and Anakin and Padmé? It seemed much more that Obi-Wan's only relationship with Padmé was sort of, her as Anakin's love interest, um, but, and, and, and as a senator, but that he and Padmé were not, um, that if it weren't for Anakin, there wouldn't be a lot of common ground between them, so I honestly don't get the shipping? Uh, they just never struck me as that close and so it's kind what I'm alluding to there.
A medical droid stepped forward. "We need to operate on her quickly if we are to save the babies."
Bail's jaw dropped. "Babies?"
"She's carrying twins."
"Save them, we must," said Yoda. "They are our last hope."
I'm not going to even try to read Yoda in Yoda-speech, I'm sorry.
Obi-Wan drew his breath sharply, and followed the droid through the door, taking Padmé's hand. It was something, anyway.
Another voice joined Padmé's, another scream. Bail's eyes jerked down to the baby in the droid's arms, its body a splash of life against the cold sterility of the room.
"It's a girl," the droid remarked indifferently.
"Lucy," said Padmé, her eyes distant.
This is probably as good a time as ever to talk about the name, which probably nobody else cares about, but! um. Originally, I thought of Luka, honestly because it was a character in a game I played and I always thought it sounded oh, like that's girl!Luke. Uh, but I ended up choosing Lucy because there's a coup -- a lot of the Tatooine names seem to have that sort of, uh, Real World traditional pattern like, uh, like the sort of medieval thing where you’re John Skullcrusher or whatever. Uh, TV Tropes calls it Luke Nounverber. Um, so, you get names like Owen, you get names like Biggs, you get these names that sound, uh, very Earth...y...ish, I guess.
And, um - now, not Anakin but Shmi sounds like Lakshmi, and, and, and if I wanted a name that was kind of not something that just sounds like Luke, but ... Luke is a name that sounds very...uh, English in a way,so I wanted a name, you know, a real name like Luke is and one that sounded Englishy like Luke does and even one that’s maybe etym-etymologically similar, um. And, so I chose Lucy because it does sound fairly similar, it has related etymology, and it has... and it sounds very English in that way. Anyway!
An odd name, Bail thought. Not Nubian. Nobody knew where Anakin Skywalker had come from,
That's my own interpretation, uh, I have no idea what the EU or whatever says about that. I have always imagined that Anakin would probably, uh, be deeply ashamed, uh, of having been a slave and uh, and certainly of, uh simply being from Tatooine, which is a total hellhole, um, and that, yeah, it would just be this thing that he never spoke of again. And, uh, so it remained such a part of him because he never speaks of it at all. Um, but, at the same time, I sort of had this idea that he and Padmé talked about names at some point, I assume she didn't just make them up on the spot, and that because Luke sounds very Tatooine-ish, that at some point he did want one from, I guess, his culture or whatever, or - or maybe she did, I don't know, but that ... I don't know, the, the fandom consensus seems to be that Leia's name is a Tatooine type thing and "Luke" is from Naboo, but - for me it just made more sense the other way around, so that's what I'm doing here.
but he'd have wagered his diplomatic immunity that a girl named Lucy Skywalker wouldn't draw any attention there.
Three minutes later, a second infant Skywalker burst into the galaxy, shrieking even more than loudly than the first.
Leia!
"Another girl," said the droid.
". . . and Leia," Padmé whispered.
When they joined Padmé, finally, she was clutching her younger daughter and trying to smile. Her colourless lips hardly moved. Exsanguination, he thought automatically. It had to be. She must have hemorrhaged as they watched her, bleeding out in this comfortless room -
Yeah, this would be another one of uh, my, uh, I know this isn't canon and that actually she died of, uh, lacking-the-will-to-live...otosis, but, um, I just think [laughs] it makes more sense if she just died of something like blood loss. I don't know, maybe it's just me. Um. A lot of people assume that Anakin killed her when he choked her, which is a good reason but doesn't seem to be the case. I mean, I think Lucas goes to some extremes, um, to ensure, to make it clear that no, Anakin didn't kill her, uh, and that in fact her dying was completely unrelated to being choked while eight months pregnant. With twins. On a lava planet.
I don't know, but, um, I can see why he would not want to go there, um, I think there’s a number of choices made over all six movies that try to, uh, not cross a line that, with Anakin. Um. It's an odd line. But, um, and I also think that, I, I can see why, sort of, he didn't want it to be the stereotypical “died in childbirth,” um, in that, he didn't want her to be, you know, that mother, yet another mother dies in childbirth like Disney. Um, the only real problem I have with it is it that the solution, that she died of the lacking the will to live, is just stupid. So. I preferred just old fashioned blood loss. Not Anakin, not the choking thing, just...yes.
Obi-Wan stood helplessly beside her bed. Somebody had given the elder girl to him, but he didn't seem to know what to do with her. Padmé's hand twitched and she gasped something that Bail couldn't hear.
And probably wouldn't want to hear even if he could!
Then she was dead.
Without hesitation, Bail snatched the baby out of her limp arms. Leia howled for Padmé and her sister whimpered.
It's probably, uh, [laughs] a ...basically a start on [laughs] their kinds of personalities.
"Strong in the Force they are. Too strong, perhaps," muttered Yoda, and nodded at Lucy. "This one especially."
See, this was something that when I re-read it later, after the au_bigbang, after I posted it, uh, that I was af - it occurred to me, that this could make it seem a little bit Sueish, because, um, it’s never made explicit in the movies that Luke is stronger in the Force than Leia. And the most obvious explanation, um, is, uh, for the reason that Luke is, sort of inherits the legacy and Leia is so comprehensively sidelined is good old-fashioned sexism.
But, um, for this, I do explore the misogyny inherent in the galaxy quite a bit, but the difficulty is that if it’s just because Lei - Luke is the boy and the oldest, uh, and that’s why he’s chosen, and it’s two girls, it’s just even odds which gets chosen. Um, I’m still not entirely clear why they couldn’t stay together. I guess they just ping too loudly in the Force and that’s why there’s the disturbance in Empire or something.
But yeah, I read or heard somewhere, I don’t remember where - again - but that Luke is a little bit stronger in the Force than Leia, and that’s why they sense him and they don’t sense Leia. I mean, obviously it’s the retcon, outside of the story, but in-story, he’s just stronger, he has all of Anakin’s potential...midichlorians or whatever. And, I mean, Leia is...Leia is probably the second most powerful Force-sensitive in the galaxy at this point, um, but it’s still less powerful.
So Lucy, in here, I have, I was, I chose that interpretation just because it was simpler for the story. Uh, I had this list of like twelve different ways that the twinswapping could work just by having Luke be a girl and not having the sexism element. And that was just too complicated. So I went, okay, Luke’s just stronger in the Force so Lucy’s stronger in the Force so it’s her and everything’s the same to begin with. I did want to establish that everything’s the same right now.
Later, as they flew to Theed, he said: "Hidden, safe, they must be kept."
"We must take them someplace where the Sith will not sense their presence," added Obi-Wan.
[laughs] This is, uh, it’s not actually a word for word transcription of the movie, uh, it, what it actually says in the movie is that We must take them somewhere the Sith will not sense their presence. Which when I heard it I thought, it should be somewhere where the Sith will not sense their presence, and then I thought, wait, that sounds awkward, so I can see why they went with one word, but I just switched it to someplace where because...it sounds better? Um, I don’t actually do that very often, but I, I did do it here.
"Split up, they should be."
Bail blinked. It hadn't occurred to him that they would take the twins to anyone other than Padmé's family. Skywalker might not have had any - well, naturally he hadn't, he was a Jedi -
Yeah...
but she had. There was a sister, parents, uncles and aunts, cousins, nieces.
Yeah, this is one of those things that honestly has always bothered me about Revenge of the Sith. Um, I think it’s probably because I read the scripts before I ever watched the movies, um, except The Phantom Menace, which was the first SW movie I ever saw, but, um, so I knew about Sola and you know, her husband and daughters and, and, and Jobal and, basically, that Padmé has family, and I knew that before I ever watched Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith.
So by the time ROTS came around, uh, it seemed really really odd to me that, uh... you might say, okay, Anakin is a domestic abuser, he has no rights to the children and I mean...eh, but even accepting that, Padmé is the mother, and I feel reasonably certain she would not have voluntarily given her children to the Jedi Order...if it’d still been around...and yet you have Yoda and Obi-Wan taking command over her children within moments of her death.
And what I... I guess, I’m probably overthinking this, and I know I already posted about it, but I just find this really weird that...they have almost no connection to these children. You have Yoda, whose only connection is, he is grandmaster of the order that the twins’ father used to belong to. Uh, what? He has...yeah, that’s just weird to me. Why would...what right does he have to take Anakin’s children?
Especially because, okay, you know, Anakin may very well be incompetent parent. Um, and he’s in surgery at the moment anyway. But Padmé has a whole ton of family who I’m sure would be thrilled to...you know, I, I’m sure they were devastated when she died, and would have been delighted to take the children. And, you know, maybe there are reasons, uh, that wouldn’t be the wisest choice, because Sidious blah blah blah, but they should have at least been informed. Uh, maybe this is inserting too much realism into the space opera...but, um, that’s kinda of what the prequel trilogy did, was insert realism into - into the space opera. So I find that kind of skeevy.
Bail is just a, a political ally who she was sort of friendly with, and Obi-Wan is kind of sort of a friendly...person, but he’s, you know, his connection is really to Anakin too. Um, and none of these people seem to care much for the actu - for Luke and Leia’s actual welfare, they seem to care for them as a, a second chance, Anakin all over again, saviours of the galaxy, or...yeah, I, I find that weird. Anyway.
But of course Palpatine would know who had fathered Padmé's children, and Naboo was his homeworld. If he could sense them, it would be the worst possible place for them.
That’s my fanwank! Canon doesn’t actually provide one.
Yet -
Bail felt the highest regard for Grandmaster Yoda and General Kenobi. He always had. But he didn't like the way they looked at Padmé's daughters, as if they were their hope and salvation. He didn't like any of it. Force-sensitive or not, these girls deserved better lives than their mother's. Than their father's.
Yeah, that’s...kind of, uh, [laughs] my issues coming out. Honestly, there’s not a lot of that in the rest of the story. And, my interpretation of Bail is [laughs] possibly ridiculously sympathetic to my favourite characters. Um, now, I’m not, I’m honestly not really sure how he saw Anakin? I mean, they seemed pretty, pretty friendly in Re - uh, in the beginning of Revenge of the Sith. Of course at this point, there’s [laughs] a lot of water under that bridge.
And, you know, I’m not sure how much he really understands of what’s happened, but in my interpretation, um, he at least has enough knowledge of the Jedi Order to, uh, to know what it was - what it would be like, um, and that, uh, Anakin’s life was not really a walk in the park even if his present choices are completely indefensible. And, and neither did Padmé, with, you know, the, the really weird bizarre political pressures on, uh, children in Naboo, um, and so it’s, you know, kind of, I think he sees the, the kind of, uh, upbringing that these Naboo children get as paralleling in some odd and vaguely creepy ways the way the Jedi children are brought up. That’s kind of what was going there, that they deserve better than their parents, what’s happening to their newly newly cyborged father and their dead mother.
Split up, he thought, and Lucy's stronger, they'll never let go of her, but Leia -
The words were out of his mouth before he knew he had spoken them.
"My wife and I will take the younger girl. We've always talked of adopting a baby girl," he said, and hesitated. "She will be loved with us."
Yeah, this line always reads to me as very sharp, given who he’s talking to. Um, that may just be me, but if, basically it seems to me, saying, assuring two Jedi that this child will be loved, if he knows what Jedi are like, that loving children is not really high on their priority lists, um, that either he is completely clueless about the entire nature of the Jedi Order or that he does know what it’s like. This is a sort of, I don’t want to say it’s snide, because I don’t get that impression from him and this wouldn’t really be the place for it, but just that it’s … that’s what he was thinking of when he says it.
"And what of the elder?" asked Obi-Wan.
Yoda sighed. "To Tatooine. To her family, send her."
So, apparently her father’s mother’s husband’s daughter-in-law and son are her family as opposed to her aunt and grandparents. Yeah.
So Skywalker did have family: or relatives, at any rate. On Tatooine. No wonder he'd never talked about it - the entire population were little more than slaves of the Hutts.
Yeah, Tatooine sucks. I guess everybody who knows that Tatooine exists probably knows it sucks. Um, yeah, I always, uh - my impression was that Anakin’s family was a native Tatooine family. I know that in the EU they come from like some other place and there’s a comic where they arrive, I don’t know, but my impression , but yeah, my impression is definitely that they’re from Tatooine. That’s their home planet. And that they’ve been slaves of the Hutts for awhile. Quite possibly hundreds of generations at this point. Um. So yeah, that’s kind of where that’s coming from.
Now he'd enslaved himself more securely than any Hutt could imagine, and his firstborn child was being sent back to whatever hellhole he'd clawed his way out of.
Yeah, sucks.
Bail walked over to the cribs and stared down at Lucy Skywalker's sleeping face. I'm sorry I can't save you from this, he thought. I'm sorry I can't even try.
Lucy stirred, already restless, and Leia began to scream.