Isawyvern

Y’all want to see a page from the comics that Haunts Me™

Star Wars: Darth Vader and the Cry of Shadows #5

😬😬😬😬

Anakin Skywalker Darth Vader: Child Killer is such a Theme in Star Wars media. It should just be a cliché. It’s a very easy shorthand to communicate to an audience that a person is losing or has lost their humanity, and is becoming the embodiment of pure evil, and yet, every time, it makes me cringe.

It reminds me of a fascinating sequence when Vader kills his younger self in a vision in Darth Vader (2015) #24. There’s this really charming exchange where he kills Obi-Wan (again) and gets the last word this time (not that he’d probably been obsessing over what he wanted to have said or anything of course not).

“I’m more powerful with every step I take away from you.” Sure, Jan.

Anyway, the memory of young Anakin Skywalker shows up allllll angry because Darth Vader killed his beloved Master!!

They fight, and of course Vader wins (it is his vision after all). He then says it himself:

“You were a child. I am well accustomed to killing children.”

Anakin Vader knows what he’s doing. He knows what he’s done. He is able to admit it to himself, without any self-censure. It’s just a statement of fact. He is an executioner of children. This is the evil of the dark side at play. He’s lost all compassion, all humanity.

It’s very fun to tell stories about ~sexy and morally ambiguous gray jedi~ and easy to avoid engaging with the premise of Star Wars worldbuilding that the Sith and the dark side are evil, and that evil has a real, concrete meaning (aka children die).

I love the comics a lot for not shying away from engaging with Vader’s worst deeds. There’s so much fascinating characterization and worldbuilding going on, and you get to see panels like the first, which can haunt your nightmares! So it’s good times all around, highly recommend 😂😭

It’s apparently impossible to even open a Darth Vader comic without the younglings showing up hahaha sorry after finishing this post I just opened Darth Vader (2020) #7 and this flashback was the beginning haahah it’s almost like Anakin isn’t over it, or something.

Though that makes sense from this from Darth Vader (2017) #21:

What I find so interesting about this motif is the unsaid implication of what Anakin believes he did. Darth Vader is not only an executioner of children but he believes himself to be the executioner of his own child. I have thought so many times about the murder of the children,and specifically his belief that he murdered his own child being the cornerstone of what keeps him in he dark side and unable to turn back when he has so many chances. The comics further do a wonderful job,like in his force vision of Obi-Wan forgiving him,showing that it is his own self hatred and belief of going too far that keeps him in the dark and under the assumption that there is no going back or returning to the light.

And you show perfectly how it’s a reoccurring theme in the comics that it is the children he focuses on and comes back to again and again. For the audience absolutely,it is the ultimate act of evil that humans abhore,the abuse and murder of children,the ultimate innocents. But I think it further illustrates his absolute self hatred,because as you said he knows what he did,and he knows what he is. And that specific self hatred,Anakin Skywalker child killer,Anakin skywalker slaughterer of his own child,it is the root of his own self agony and loathing that keeps him so firmly planted in the dark.

I love the comics for that further layer of nuance it lends Anakin’s redemption and relationship with Luke. We know why and how Anakin is redeemed,but it is interesting to examine that the revelation that he didn’t butcher his own child like he thought,was the slightest,minuscule lessening of guilt and self hatred that could allow the dimmest glimmer of a thought that a return to the light and redemption was a possibility. With the knowledge that there was one less child he slaughtered,it allowed Anakin the forgiveness he had sought all along,not Obi-Wan’s,who would have willingly gave it,but his own,which he was unable to give and why he stayed in the dark.

probably waiting for Padme and Luke at the spaceport or sth ajshdgkasd

anakin skywalker would be SUCH boyfriend material, but not in the harsh love and dark romance type of way, let's be honest.

he'd be the type of boyfriend to hold your face in both hands when he kisses you, learn to braid so he can toy with your hair at night. constant and incessant "i missed you"'s and YEARNING, but really, he just can't help it. he'd be the distantly jealous type, not the rude and controlling, because he isn't possessive of you, just so infatuated, that his first thoughts are 'what am i doing wrong?'

a relationship with him would mean random "i love you"'s just for being your usual self around him, it would mean experiencing the heart-bursting feeling of overwhelming euphoria to the point where you don't even know what to do with yourself. he'd be such a cameron james from 10 things i hate about you instead of a patrick verona.

point being, anakin skywalker would love you THOROUGHLY, not jaggedly or harshly.

Dragon Anakin! NOW WITH LENS FLARE! (⌐■_■)

This is UNCANNY.

@vurelly

This genre of re-enactment of video game logic/bugs/behaviour will never cease to be immensely funny

Not to mention everyone who does it is so insanely talented at portraying not only the vibes, but being dead on with the motion. I mean the courier in this alone has amazing core strength and rag dolls the EXACT way that bodies do in game. It’s honestly incredible.

Knitting youtuber: I like to knit for 25 minute long blocks at most at a time with a 5 minute break within each so I do not get injuries.

Me who did a 14 hour marathon on the weekend with a team of 7 spinners and knitters to shear a sheep and knit a man's jumper in as short a possible time:

Here's the jumper by the way. 14 hours earlier it was on a sheep.

We came second out of the three teams competing.

Extreme sports are WILD huh

Dog toy plushies have fundamentally different souls than that of regular plushies. Unlike regular plushies, which are content with just existing (and just go to regular heaven when they get destroyed and don’t mind being resurrected), dog toys seek Valhalla. This is why you don’t need to feel bad when your dog/cat/especially strong bird rips it to shreds, because this was the warriors death they were seeking all their life

I love those "asking cosplayers at a con what their day job is" videos because it's always like

*muffled voice issuing from a huge suit of armor* im a cybersecurity specialist

did anyone ever tell the Backstreet Boys why

My FAVORITE quote, of all time, is from the like, 2008 VH1 Top 50 Best Boy Band Songs special when AJ was commentating this song’s #1 win and he said, “I’ve never understood this song. WHAT WAY do I want it? And why DON’T I want it that way if SHE wants it that way? What’s the way? This song makes no sense. But man, they paid me to sing it.”

He was so distressed about his confusion, and I loved it. I love this song. It is truly the song of all time.

The songwriter, Max Martin, has written or contributed to the lyrics for a huge number of pop hits since the 90s. Max Martin is Swedish, and English is not his first language, a fact which feels incredibly obvious once you know it.

It’s not my intention to mock him for this–his English is miles ahead of my Swedish!–but this sincere vagueness and novel interpretations of English grammar are a noticeable quirks of his songs, especially his earlier work, so much so that trying to tease apart the individual words and phrases of the songs is a task designed for a Greek tragedy. His songs are the aursl embodiment of “no thoughts just vibes.”

Citation: Slate’s 2014 article/highlight reel of some of Martin’s most baffling lyrical Decisions:

They don’t bring it up in that article, but Martin is also responsible for Britney Spears’s “…One More Time,” and I’m sorry to anyone in whom something was awakened with those lyrics, but our good friend Max thought “hit me” was contemporary American slang for “call me.”

I feel like this adds a thin, waxy coating of surrealism in a genre whose worst examples can lean hard toward bland vapidity, and I love that Backstreet Boys lyrics are still making people question their sanity 25 years on. But mostly I can’t get over the thought of all of these singers–many of them already really big before they worked with Martin–puzzling their way through these lyrics enough to figure out how to sell the shit out of them.

“hit me up” the phrase he was probably thinking of was “hit me up”.

companions about cullen romance

hugs 🦁