New fic pet peeve

[ladyaeryn]

I was just reading a Vader/Padmé AU fic on the Pit - sort of, I guess, the SW equivalent of Twilight for some people: easily digestible romantic flangst, decently executed enough in some areas to continue reading, but deep down you know it's pretty mediocre overall. Anyway, the one thing that did make me nearly hit the back button

Comments

[ladyaeryn]

The "too sudden" turn isn't something I agree with, either. As you say, the seeds have been there since TPM: hell, Yoda lays it out word for word in the Anakin-meeting-the-Council scene. Anakin does make a couple of huge drastic decisions in RotS, but to me that just seals how he feels things are just falling apart so rapidly apart that he can't think straight.

In all fairness, I don't think "revenge" is any more or less clichéd than "oh no I can't lose my wife." They're both motivations that have been used countless times in many fall-from-grace tales. But I do prefer this version, yes, because it puts more culpability on Anakin instead of whitewashing and making him a complete victim of tragic circumstance.

Instead, it's his own lust for power, which he covers with his desire to save his wife...

After his turn, yes. But according to GL in the RotS commentary, Padmé was Anakin's original motivation for seeking power - having the power to save her just made him realize he could have the power for other things too. Like Willow in the season 6 Buffy finale: she drew on the power of darkness to try to bring back Tara, but couldn't, but realized she still had the ability to command great power for other things. The original Tara motivation was simply consumed by her increasing hunger for power, which blinded her to even her love for most of her friends.

Agreed on the "I'm pregnant" scene - you see Hayden/Anakin's face cycle through a million emotions, from ohshit to ohwow. Brilliant bit of acting. And you should go for the fic! :)

[may_child]

In all fairness, I don't think "revenge" is any more or less clichéd than "oh no I can't lose my wife." They're both motivations that have been used countless times in many fall-from-grace tales. But I do prefer this version, yes, because it puts more culpability on Anakin instead of whitewashing and making him a complete victim of tragic circumstance.

Good points. I also like the fact that Lucas didn't "let Anakin off the hook," so to speak, lessening or even eliminating his culpability for his actions. That's what EUwwwwwwwwww authors do, like with the red-gold pestilence and various other EUmperials. The red-gold pestilence was "brainwashed," and therefore totally innocent. Thrawn was just trying to restore order to the galaxy. And so on.

Stupefyingly enough, I've seen EUniks crap on the prequels, and Lucas, because they "let Anakin off the hook." I have no idea how to even begin to make heads or tails of that reasoning, so I'm not going to try. Then again, these are the kind of folks who said in 2005 that they hated Episodes 1 and 2 and they knew they'd hate Episode 3 too, but they bought their tickets and would "force themselves to sit through it."

Morons, in other words.