Confession # 8: I Used To Be Terrified of Darth Vader

So, I don't like Anakin.  I love Darth Vader.  And I used to be terrified of Darth Vader all at the same time? Yes.  Well, technically no, I suppose.  I didn't know anything about Anakin for most of my life.  I already loved and was terrified by Darth Vader long before the Prequels came out.  Never let it be said that I am an uncomplicated woman.

I had a recurring nightmare about Vader for years.  It began in my early childhood, after I saw Star Wars, and it continued well into my adult life.  In the dream, Luke and Leia had been captured and were being held on a spaceship.  I think it was supposed to be Vader's flagship, Executor, but I'm not sure since Executor appeared in The Empire Strikes Back, and the ship in my dream looked more like Tantive IV, the one where Leia was boarded and captured in the original film.

Anyway, I snuck on board the ship and was trying to rescue the twins, but Vader knew I was there and found me.  The bulk of the dream consisted of me running through the white hallways with Vader chasing me.  Eventually he would draw his lightsaber and close in.  There were sometimes more details, depending on whether or not I made it to the twins.  If I did, there were some lines of dialogue, but only Vader did the talking, and the only other sounds in the whole dream were his breather (getting closer) and the snap-hiss of his lightsaber.

I didn't stop having that dream until around 2008, when I was deep in the heart of a Vader related project with Aruna7.

Confession #7-I Love Darth Vader

Earlier in this series, I wrote at length about how much I dislike Anakin Skywalker.  It should follow then that I hate Darth Vader, but I don't.  I was afraid of him for a long time (I'll talk more about that next week) and I always thought he was horrible to Princess Leia, but he intrigued me.  His dialogue with Obi-Wan in A New Hope showed me someone who was, for all his apparent strength, still trying to prove that he was better than his old teacher.  His interactions with Luke showed me someone who was capable of acting with honor--in a bizarre, twisted way.  So, I came to like Darth Vader a whole lot by the time he died.  I just wish that Anakin Skywalker had lived up to Vader's potential.

I learned to love him a whole lot more by writing about him.  I'll (hopefully) be talking about that again when I return to my 100 Things I Learned From Writing Fanfiction later this year.  Granted, the things I wrote about in my fanfiction were based on my own inferences and observations, so, maybe I love my own ideas of Vader's character a little more than the person we see on the screen but I'd like to think that I learned a little something about the Dark Lord from all the time I spent exploring that character.

Confession # 6-I Wanted to Marry Lando Calrissian

This is going to be a short post in comparison to most of the others in the series.  There really isn't a deep confession here.  Remember that I was a little girl when I first watched Star Wars.

I think I shipped Han and Leia before I knew what "shipping" a couple meant.  The term most likely hadn't been invented yet.  Either way, I knew that Han and Leia were going to get married someday.  I never liked Luke, so even though I thought it would be awesome to be Princess Leia's sister, there was no way I could marry him. 

Somehow, it occurred to me that I could marry Lando.  Lando was pretty awesome.  He was charming, funny, a little bit dangerous and prone to getting into trouble.  He probably needed to have a wife to keep him in line.  If I married him, I could have all kinds of adventures, and I'd probably get to hang out with Han and Leia all the time!  So, there you have it.

...I feel the need to mention that I also wanted to marry Michael Knight,  Danny Williams from the original Hawaii 5-0 and James T. Kirk.  I guess I was going to be a polygamist.

Confession # 5 I despise the Anakin/Padmé relationship, but I once shipped it.

My first exposure to Star Wars was as a young kid watching the Original Trilogy.  By the time I saw Return of the Jedi, I had my own ideas about Anakin Skywalker and his then nameless wife.  I'm sure that I'm not the only one.

I knew something horrible must have happened to Anakin, but I was under the impression that his marriage was a public event and that his wife was someone Obi-Wan took care of for some time after Anakin fell to the Dark Side.  On top of that, I just don't like unbalanced relationships, and I think "secret romance" is just about the cheapest plot device going.

So, okay.  I admit, I was predisposed to be uneasy with the direction things were heading in Attack of the Clones, but because it was Star Wars, I was prepared to let go of the story in my head and keep an open mind about the one unfolding on the screen.

Confession #4: I think the Sith were actually less disturbed than the Old Jedi.

I think the Sith are terribly misguided.  Their philosophy is flawed to a frightening extent, and their actions in the Star Wars franchise run the gamut from reprehensible to horrifying.  Emperor Palpatine is clearly sociopathic.  So, how can I say that I think they're less disturbed than the Jedi of the Old Republic?  I'll point you back to last week's post on the Old Order and let you decide for yourself.

I see the Sith as the other side of the same coin or the other end of the same Force-using spectrum that the Jedi are on.  Both groups take their philosophies on the Force to an unhealthy extreme, (which is why the Force needed to be brought back into balance, but that's another series altogether) and they use opposite but complimentary methods to achieve basically the same level of mystical power through it.

Confession # 3: I think the Old Jedi Order was run by emotionally disturbed morons.

I know there are a lot of fans out there who think the Jedi are awesome.  You know, they run around in robes and wave big shiny swords with blades made of light.  They have cool mental powers, and they make a lot of mystic-sounding noise about peace, balance, and trusting their feelings.

A closer look at the Old Order Jedi we've seen in the Star Wars films shows a group of people who don't know anything about their own feelings beyond a vague kind of intuition that they get when the Force tugs them in one direction or another.  These people live very long lives, and anything we know about their backgrounds indicates that they've spent a great deal of that time involved in social or military conflicts.  So they know very little about external peace, but are expected to maintain a constant sense of inner peace.  The dichotomy leaves most of them pretty unbalanced and badly equipped to have relationships of any kind.

Confession #2-I Don't Like Anakin Skywalker Either

This one went longer than I planned.  I guess that's what happens when I try to write something a paragraph at a time over the course of a week.

I tried very hard to like Anakin.  He had a lot to recommend him.  Obi-Wan Kenobi--who is tied with Princess Leia as my favorite Star Wars character--gave him high praise in Star Wars: A New Hope.  He tells Luke that Anakin was "the best star fighter pilot in the galaxy, a cunning warrior...and he was a good friend."

Confession # 1: I Don't Like Luke Skywalker

When I first watched A New Hope, way back when it was just called "Star Wars," I thought Luke was a whiny little brat.  In The Empire Strikes Back, I saw him go from whiny to cocky and rude.  Yes, I'm well aware that it's probably an intentional character development arc, and I understand the progression of the protagonist from immature and (somewhat) self-centered to over-confident and then finally to the mystic hero and leader we saw in Return of the Jedi.  That doesn't mean I have any reason to like Luke.  I'm definitely sorry for him.  I sympathize with his feelings of being trapped on Tatooine.  I know he feels guilty and never had a real chance to grieve for Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen. I cheered when I decided to go after Han and Leia because they were his friends and it was the right thing to do no matter what Yoda or Ben had to say.  He was put in a really awful position in Return of the Jedi.  None of those things make him interesting or likable.  They just make him a classic hero.

I always thought Star Wars would have been a much better series if the story had been told from Princess Leia's point of view, and if she had been allowed to explore her heritage as a Jedi along with her brother.  I don't like very much of the Star Wars Expanded Universe (that's a whole other post) but one of the things I like least was the utter failure of its writers to do justice to Leia Organa's character, especially when it came to her development as a Jedi.

That really has nothing to do with my dislike of Luke, but I wanted to say it and I figured this was as good a place as any.

Tune in next week to hear why I don't like Anakin either.