Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

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)

suzukiblu:

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. 

Anonymous asked: Shmi Skywalker and Padme Amidala, the Force ghosts that never were.

peradii:

• One day in the future, a girl will ask of her maybe-father definitely-teacher (one is likely; the other is a certainty; she calls him Master because she wants no other family than that she has chosen): where did Skywalker come from. And the Master will say from my father he was a great man and a terrible one and – and the girl will shake her head, chew her lip, say, did he choose it and the Master will frown (a pucker between his brows; a corrugation of his lined, weatherbeaten face) and say, no his mother chose it and the girl will say who was she and the man will say a slave on Tattooine; my uncle’s brother’s second wife and no more. He knows no more. Don’t blame him.
  
• Do not blame the teacher-before either. You knew him as an old man, old and strong and lonely, but once he was a boy with a snake-tail of a braid and an empty space under his heart where love once rested. He watches his Master die and he tries to shoulder a burden that is absurd in its immensity. Train the boy who will save everything. Imagine that. Imagine. And, yes, he says this boy must come with us but remember: the Force is endless hunger, an animal. It isn’t willfully cruel – no more than the ocean. But if you do not learn to swim, you die. If a boy strong with the Force is not trained, he will surely perish.
• (or worse. There are horror stories.)
• Blame, perhaps, the council, so anchored in their ways that they do not permit the child to see his mother. Blame, perhaps, the Jedi so ancient and so wise who take their Chosen One and tell him that he can save the universe and all he loves, blame them who take a nine year old from his mother and give him weapons to hold instead of hands. Fight fight fight but only when you are told to. Kill without mercy when we say otherwise show limitless mercy. Do as you are bidden always and forever. Save everything. Master your feelings. Have no feelings.
• From my point of view the Jedi are evil! – what are those but the words of a lost, stupid boy, trusting only in the fierceness of his own heart and the iron surety of his convictions.
• Blame the boy. Maybe. After all: this was his choice. He did not have to listen to older and wiser heads that said go to war and afterwards tend to your mother. He did not have to cut down children. He did not have to.
• Children. Definition: the youngsters of any race. Before the younglings in the temple there were the Sand People, the tiny ones, J'Wratha and Taraka and those are only two, sliced apart in front of their mother. He was damned before the temple. Do you understand?
• If you do not: we return to Shmi. And here she is:

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