Analysis: Legends of a Fall (etc) by wyncatastrophe (2/3)
A follow up to this - rather shorter, at under ten minutes, but now that I listen back to it, with really weird sound.
(The picture is one I've had skulking around my hard drive for years - I don't remember where I found it, but when I saw it again, it matched up pretty perfectly with Ryn-in-my-head - circa the early Empire, anyway.)
He admired Orun very much, and his nostalgia for their lost friendship - and the bond of shared love for another being - runs through and between his words; but his longing for Anakin is both constantly sharp, present, acute, and an ever-deepening well of sorrow.
That's very ... poetic for our scholarly friend. Also, the phrase "longing for Anakin" seems - a little informal, in that ... uh ... I guess it just seems odd to refer to anyone by their given name. Especially somebody who has a surname. Also the phrase sounds very slashy! And now I'm convinced that our scholar is a shipper.
He is likely the original source for those versions of the Skywalker legend which include the Fight on Mustafar; it is doubtful whether any of the other players had timely access to knowledge of the fight in such graphic detail.
This seems a bit curious. It's established all the way back in The Empire Strikes Back that Jedi (or Force-users) can have visions of the past, of people who have died, of the future, of different places, all over. That's how - it's assumed - Leia remembers Padmé: some sort of vision of her own birth, or even before. It seems to definitely go backwards. So I guess I'm wondering, in the period in which this is written, has this talent disappeared? Is this something that was really only seen widely among the very very powerful and people aren't as strong in the Force any more?
Or ... or is it simply the reliance on physical records when it's well established that there are people who can literally see the past? It tethers it to reality a bit more, but it seems a bit of a break with the rules of the universe itself. Of course, in this instance, it's possible that simply nobody happens to have seen the fight on Mustafar. And then there's the ghosts too - I suppose this goes with the EU, so there's probably some explanation, because I know the ghosts don't show up there, hardly at all. Certainly much less than they do in the actual movies. You know where even Obi-Wan is hanging around, meddling, all the time, and he's frankly much less likely to be attached than somebody like Anakin.
But they can literally speak to the people who were alive then and are now dead, as well as the ones who were alive then and have survived. And so I'm unsure - they seem only to be visible to Jedi, so maybe that wouldn't be admissible evidence? And likewise - I guess I'm not sure how the academia of the time would judge that kind of evidence, but it does seem odd that it's not even alluded to as a thing. Nobody has a vision of Mustafar, nobody speaks to Anakin or Obi-Wan's ghosts, nothing like that.
Anakin Skywalker left almost no trace of himself in writing.
I do like that. That fits really well with him - I think.
In his reincarnation as the Sith Lord Darth Vader, he wrote very much as did Orun:
That is really an interesting parallel - I mean, I do think there is an affinity between young Ryn and young Anakin, but that they're at their closest, perhaps, at least in terms of style, as Lady Vjun and Darth Vader.
in the guise of progress reports, requisition orders, personnel evaluations. One of these evaluations is of “Personal Assistant Llewellyn Vjun,”
Llewellyn seems ... there are certainly plenty of "real" names given. The main character of the first movie was named Luke! But Llewellyn sort of jars me with the, "oh! I know that name!" It seems that as Star Wars went on, it had less and less references to things that sound familiar. And that one is because it's at once it's not a particularly common thing, it's like "oh, it's Welsh, it's a surname generally" - I don't know, it just seems an odd pseudonym.
which several commentators have speculated to be a pseudonym for Orun; the evaluation describes her performance as “satisfactory”
That is so Vader! Love it.
and recommends for her a bonus - of one million credits. Curiously, the line for her monthly salary is left blank; so either Lord Vader was taking the entire procedure less-than-seriously (a mere formality), or Orun had no regular source of income from her employment in his service.
I like this here - in that they have to guess because of the dearth of records, and that - the sort of options that are presented. Presumably, there are others that are theoretically possible, but these are the ones that are about equally possible given his character, given her personality. I can really see him doing either of these things.
Scholars have predictably been too preoccupied with speculating on just what tasks she might have performed “satisfactorily” to merit a million-credit bonus to concern themselves with the question of her economic status.
I like the sort of snarky, snide jab at other scholars who undoubtedly have spilled lots of ink - or the SW equivalent thereof - arguing about the exact nature of their relationship. I used to be a history major, so I'm just "ah, I know this would happen!"
But in fact it is of great significance; if the line was left blank because whoever was processing the form could be assumed to be already familiar with the particulars of Orun’s situation, that sends one message; if, on the other hand, it is left blank because Orun had no regular paid employment, then the obvious conclusion is that she was entirely dependent on Vader’s continuing largess, which means something quite different.
Or just that it's not regular. She could very well be a bounty hunter or something, in a position rather like Han or Boba Fett had in respect to Jabba, which this scholar doesn't seem to consider - which I find interesting, given her, or his, the scholar's, obvious disdain for the other scholars' fixation.
The best material evidence for the experiences of the saga’s central figures as “lived reality”
Referring to it as "the saga" seems a little odd. I don't usually hear historians referring to anything that happened and is known to have happened in real life as a saga. That seems very literary.
comes not from the written record, nor even from the New Temple holocrons, but from Restoration University’s Skywalker Museum of Galactic History.
I just love the names of these places, and the idea of the names getting attached to these little museums and things. It doesn't take a lot to make me happy.
The museum itself was built on ground endowed for the purpose - on Bellassa, not coincidentally - by Darra Antilles, a lateral descendant of Roan Lands, whose part in the saga is minor, but controversial: he is twice described as Ferus Olin’s “partner,” but the meaning of this designation is not clear; and in Luke Skywalker’s account (but not in most of the oral narratives I have encountered), Olin is romantically linked with Ryn Orun during at least part of the Imperial era.
I also liked the divergence between the accounts, the scholars trying to bring them toghether and forge waht the likely narrative to me. It just seems very very true to what historians have actually to do - of course, especially when you have written histories composed after the fact, and oral narratives passed down, you do get a lot of divergences.
Click to view(The picture is one I've had skulking around my hard drive for years - I don't remember where I found it, but when I saw it again, it matched up pretty perfectly with Ryn-in-my-head - circa the early Empire, anyway.)
He admired Orun very much, and his nostalgia for their lost friendship - and the bond of shared love for another being - runs through and between his words; but his longing for Anakin is both constantly sharp, present, acute, and an ever-deepening well of sorrow.
That's very ... poetic for our scholarly friend. Also, the phrase "longing for Anakin" seems - a little informal, in that ... uh ... I guess it just seems odd to refer to anyone by their given name. Especially somebody who has a surname. Also the phrase sounds very slashy! And now I'm convinced that our scholar is a shipper.
He is likely the original source for those versions of the Skywalker legend which include the Fight on Mustafar; it is doubtful whether any of the other players had timely access to knowledge of the fight in such graphic detail.
This seems a bit curious. It's established all the way back in The Empire Strikes Back that Jedi (or Force-users) can have visions of the past, of people who have died, of the future, of different places, all over. That's how - it's assumed - Leia remembers Padmé: some sort of vision of her own birth, or even before. It seems to definitely go backwards. So I guess I'm wondering, in the period in which this is written, has this talent disappeared? Is this something that was really only seen widely among the very very powerful and people aren't as strong in the Force any more?
Or ... or is it simply the reliance on physical records when it's well established that there are people who can literally see the past? It tethers it to reality a bit more, but it seems a bit of a break with the rules of the universe itself. Of course, in this instance, it's possible that simply nobody happens to have seen the fight on Mustafar. And then there's the ghosts too - I suppose this goes with the EU, so there's probably some explanation, because I know the ghosts don't show up there, hardly at all. Certainly much less than they do in the actual movies. You know where even Obi-Wan is hanging around, meddling, all the time, and he's frankly much less likely to be attached than somebody like Anakin.
But they can literally speak to the people who were alive then and are now dead, as well as the ones who were alive then and have survived. And so I'm unsure - they seem only to be visible to Jedi, so maybe that wouldn't be admissible evidence? And likewise - I guess I'm not sure how the academia of the time would judge that kind of evidence, but it does seem odd that it's not even alluded to as a thing. Nobody has a vision of Mustafar, nobody speaks to Anakin or Obi-Wan's ghosts, nothing like that.
Anakin Skywalker left almost no trace of himself in writing.
I do like that. That fits really well with him - I think.
In his reincarnation as the Sith Lord Darth Vader, he wrote very much as did Orun:
That is really an interesting parallel - I mean, I do think there is an affinity between young Ryn and young Anakin, but that they're at their closest, perhaps, at least in terms of style, as Lady Vjun and Darth Vader.
in the guise of progress reports, requisition orders, personnel evaluations. One of these evaluations is of “Personal Assistant Llewellyn Vjun,”
Llewellyn seems ... there are certainly plenty of "real" names given. The main character of the first movie was named Luke! But Llewellyn sort of jars me with the, "oh! I know that name!" It seems that as Star Wars went on, it had less and less references to things that sound familiar. And that one is because it's at once it's not a particularly common thing, it's like "oh, it's Welsh, it's a surname generally" - I don't know, it just seems an odd pseudonym.
which several commentators have speculated to be a pseudonym for Orun; the evaluation describes her performance as “satisfactory”
That is so Vader! Love it.
and recommends for her a bonus - of one million credits. Curiously, the line for her monthly salary is left blank; so either Lord Vader was taking the entire procedure less-than-seriously (a mere formality), or Orun had no regular source of income from her employment in his service.
I like this here - in that they have to guess because of the dearth of records, and that - the sort of options that are presented. Presumably, there are others that are theoretically possible, but these are the ones that are about equally possible given his character, given her personality. I can really see him doing either of these things.
Scholars have predictably been too preoccupied with speculating on just what tasks she might have performed “satisfactorily” to merit a million-credit bonus to concern themselves with the question of her economic status.
I like the sort of snarky, snide jab at other scholars who undoubtedly have spilled lots of ink - or the SW equivalent thereof - arguing about the exact nature of their relationship. I used to be a history major, so I'm just "ah, I know this would happen!"
But in fact it is of great significance; if the line was left blank because whoever was processing the form could be assumed to be already familiar with the particulars of Orun’s situation, that sends one message; if, on the other hand, it is left blank because Orun had no regular paid employment, then the obvious conclusion is that she was entirely dependent on Vader’s continuing largess, which means something quite different.
Or just that it's not regular. She could very well be a bounty hunter or something, in a position rather like Han or Boba Fett had in respect to Jabba, which this scholar doesn't seem to consider - which I find interesting, given her, or his, the scholar's, obvious disdain for the other scholars' fixation.
The best material evidence for the experiences of the saga’s central figures as “lived reality”
Referring to it as "the saga" seems a little odd. I don't usually hear historians referring to anything that happened and is known to have happened in real life as a saga. That seems very literary.
comes not from the written record, nor even from the New Temple holocrons, but from Restoration University’s Skywalker Museum of Galactic History.
I just love the names of these places, and the idea of the names getting attached to these little museums and things. It doesn't take a lot to make me happy.
The museum itself was built on ground endowed for the purpose - on Bellassa, not coincidentally - by Darra Antilles, a lateral descendant of Roan Lands, whose part in the saga is minor, but controversial: he is twice described as Ferus Olin’s “partner,” but the meaning of this designation is not clear; and in Luke Skywalker’s account (but not in most of the oral narratives I have encountered), Olin is romantically linked with Ryn Orun during at least part of the Imperial era.
I also liked the divergence between the accounts, the scholars trying to bring them toghether and forge waht the likely narrative to me. It just seems very very true to what historians have actually to do - of course, especially when you have written histories composed after the fact, and oral narratives passed down, you do get a lot of divergences.