there’s all these aus about vader finding luke and smuggling him away to the empire in a clever moment of mental clarity, but please consider this crack au: after being faced with slavery, his mother’s death, tusken raiders, sand, obi-wan kenobi, seeing the larses, and tatooine in general, vader lays eyes on toddler luke skywalker - his son, which meant palpatine lied, holy fuck i’m a father, oh god padme i’m so sorry - and flips.
this is the straw that breaks the semi-rational sith lord’s back. in true anakin skywalker fashion, vader panics, scoops his son into his arms, charges into mos espa and turns it upside down, steals a shuttle from his own fleet, slams random hyperspace coordinates, and is thrown into space with no real idea where he’s going or when he’s going to get there. with a toddler.
to make things more interesting, obi-wan snuck aboard the ship, but dropped his lightsaber in the ruckus of sneaking into imperial ranks. and poor, poor firmus piett, a lowly officer who just so happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, runs smack into him.
and they’re all stuck on a ship, indefinitely. with a toddler.
sweet baby jesus i love this idea
just vader, picking up toddler luke under his arm like a football, and RUNNING LIKE FUCKING HELL
[darth vader voice] I HAVE YOU NOW
*toddler Luke SCREAMING the whole time*
obiwan just having a nervous breakdown “what what why are you doing this you’re evil but but what what is this someone shut that child up”
i love that people are contributing this is AMAZING
vader hefts the child into his arms - YOU CAN’T HAVE HIM - and literally turns away from everyone else like a kid with a new mcdonald’s toy. you can’t have him, YOU CAN’T EVEN LOOK AT HIM. luke quiets down because he’s up so high and he can see EVERYTHING and it’s fascinating. luke’s an easily impressed kid, after all. (and there are vents up here that he can nearly reach to crawl through!)
obi-wan: you can’t take luke from me, darth. vader, probably: LIKE YOU TOOK MY LIMBS???? HUH OBI-WAN????? HUH?????
What if at one point Obi-wan and Vader get all huffy and refuse to speak to each other and Piett has to act as the go between.
vader: tell that washed up old man that i know exactly what i’m doing
piett: …
piett: yes, lord vader
piett: excuse me, master jedi, but lord vader has everything under control
obi-wan: [huffs] That walking disaster hasn’t had anything under control since he was nine, and you can tell him i said that. In fact, i insist
piett: [looks into the camera like on the office]
oh god i have to write this now. you’ve convinced me, I AM SOLD. THERE IS ALMOST NOTHING BETTER THAN THIS IMAGE.
imagine it gets to the point where vader and obi-wan are screaming at each other with piett stuck in the middle, and luke, his attention torn away from the pretty lights on vader’s chest, clambers up and pats vader right over the respirator. “stop,” luke, a 2 year old, orders, patting sith lord darth vader gently on the face. “is mean,” announces luke.
vader re-settles luke in his arms. “say sowwy,” luke demands. vader, reluctantly, apologizes. he’s not taken with this child at all, obviously he’s just trying to earn luke’s respect, clearly. duh.
luke clambers off vader and toddles to piett to give him the biggest hug. “i sowwy,” says luke, solemnly. piett is about to faint. first lord vader, now the lordling? this is Too Much. vader’s probably giving piett the most terrifying death glare from behind his mask.
with the blessing of the Great and Powerful Luke Skywalker, piett can DEMAND THESE TWO STOP BEING CHILDREN but quietly, with a lot of respect.
obi-wan, meanwhile: i need a drink. i need a whole liquor bottle
Anonymous asked: I'd love to hear any outsider POV about Empress Amidala verse, people looking at Amidala/Vader shenanigans with great fear and confusion (or maybe they're not confused at all hahaha XD)
No one says “Darth Amidala”, but so many people think “Darth Amidala”. Constantly. All the time. They do their good Force DAMNEDEST to never think it in front of Vader, but even if he picked the thought out of their heads he would just be like “well yes, of course, obviously”.
Vader is so obviously Amidala’s. Like, as loyal and terrifying he was as the Emperor’s fucking CYBORG TANK RUN ON NIGHTMARE FUEL, he is worse for Amidala. Amidala he is HAPPY to serve, and Amidala he did not have to shut down his emotional reactions to survive. Also, like, he’s not missing all his limbs, on a respirator, or in CONSTANT FUCKING PAIN. Like–that helps, definitely. Not being in constant fucking pain pretty much ALWAYS helps.
Also-also, he does not give two fucks what anyone not Amidala or the twins thinks of him, and so follows all his random impulses and does all sorts of looks-weird-to-people-not-in-his-head shit. W-why is Lord Vader petting the velvet curtains in this king’s office? Why is Lord Vader rubbing the back of his soup spoon against his neck at this very important dinner party? Why is Lord Vader climbing the outside of the Senate building?
As far as Vader is concerned being Dark means he can do anything he wants, pretty much. He doesn’t need to put on a show of being dignified or do anything to demonstrate that he’s scary or dangerous; he just DOES things and that’s it. People who do not want to be under Imperial rule and people who try to subvert Empress Amidala’s orders RAPIDLY learn how terrifying it is to one moment be dealing with a man who’s playing with a pretty little compact mirror he got from who knows where to a man in fucking MURDER MODE because you said something that could be interpreted as less than entirely worshipful of his Empress.
And as terrifying as he is, he still spends literally all his time on Coruscant trotting after Amidala like a fucking puppy trying to get scritches. He has literally DIVERTED TROOPS’ MOVEMENTS in the interest of getting five minutes of direct attention from Amidala before going back to decimate the surviving dissidents.
So yes, the outsider POV of their relationship is FASCINATING. And kind of traumatized, sometimes. Frequent times. MANY times. Oh Force, Lord Vader, please don’t kill us, WE’RE VERY SORRY WHAT WOULD THE EMPRESS LIKE IS THERE SOMETHING WE CAN DO FOR HER.
modularnra40 asked: I just read through your Empress Amidala tag. I love it. I love Padme's trauma. But. I want to know. Are there ever any times when Padme. forgets? To be horrified? Like, something will happen - some horrible thing, and she can just *fix* it. And every now and then it's soooo eaasy. Instead of bickering senators immorally arguing politics, she can just order the starving citizens fed. Or on a personal level (Vader is still Anakin, she still loves Anakin, qed she loves Vader) Then she remembers.
That sounds like the kind of thing that Padmé is going to occasionally have a problem with, yes. Like, yes, sometimes Vader shows up all happy and sweet and kisses her face and plays with the twins and is entirely useless at helping her get her paperwork done and is just so content and KIND, and sometimes there’s a natural disaster or a pirate attack or problems with the Hutts and she can just send aid or drop the FUCKING hammer and it’s DONE and sometimes some senator or another is being fucking selfish and hateful and greedy and she can just LOOK at them and they will backpedal for their FUCKING LIVES and it’s–it’s–
Fuck, it’s TERRIBLE, actually, it’s the worst thing Padmé’s ever done IN the Senate, short of accidentally playing right into Palpatine’s hands and getting him elected. But what else is she going to do, exactly?
Anonymous asked: Imagine Palpatine giving Anakin a clone of Padme. On the surface Palpatine claims he is rewarding Vader for exemplary service, but really he's rubbing Vader's face in it over Padme's death.
Holy shit, that clone better be the goddamn FASTEST TALKER in the galaxy, man, because I cannot imagine her surviving five minutes alone with Vader otherwise, “reward” from Palpatine or NOT. Unless, like, sheer spite spared her, maybe, maybe just sheer spite. Of course she is not a reward, of COURSE not, Vader KNOWS she’s not, he–he–
Force, she looks just LIKE her. She doesn’t have the memories, obviously, but the Force signature and the lilt of her accent and the particular tilt to her head and the spark in the back of her eyes are all so, so similar, so very nearly PERFECT, so very nearly … so very nearly …
“Angel”. That’s the name the Emperor gave her.
It’s actually almost sad how here for the Vader/Padme pain I am.
do you ever think about your oc and you’re like “i headcanon that—” and then you stop and realize that this is YOUR character and all of your headcanons are canon and you are powerful and should be feared
Honestly I will always be grateful to Brooklyn 99 for giving us “cool motive, still murder” as a quick, no-frills response to all these weak white boy villains with woe-is-me backstories that fandoms inevitably try to woobify.
English Literature now:Shakespeare. Debate. Arguments. Mostly polite.
English Literature in the future:Harry Potter: Yelling. Unfettered Fury. Duels at Dawn. Blood.
Ahhh but there’s nothing polite between the Stratfordians and the Oxfordians. I love Ian McKellen’s story about Derek Jacobi refusing to discuss his Oxfordian beliefs with him because “you’ll only shout at me.” McKellen promised he would do no such thing, but the story ends with him bellowing “OH REALLY DEREK!” (Which, to be honest, is probably how I’d react too.)
Let me offer a small sample of real things that have happened in the world of Shakespeare scholarship recently:
There was a bloodbath over the digital rights to the Oxford Complete Works which ultimately resulted in an entirely new Norton edition
Stephen Marche said of Contested Will that “using a brain like [James] Shapiro’s on the authorship question is like bringing an F-22 to an alley knife fight”
A prominent Jewish scholar was asked about Anonymous and basically called Roland Emmerich a Nazi
It’s an industry full of people who spend their days picking apart plays about cannibalism, gang murder, and dismemberment. Trust me, there’s nothing polite about it.
