one sentence at a time

Calling Padmé “stupid” for believing in Anakin’s goodness, never losing faith in him, for not believing OW when he told her of how the love of her life had fallen to the darkside, to go and confront Anakin herself and ask him for all she’d heard, then die with the unshakable belief that there was still goodness in him, only for her or be proven correct by the narrative itself all along really makes everyone who said this look completely illiterate and incompetent. Especially when it came to understanding her true character.

It's important to note that Anakin falling to the dark side is UNTHINKABLE to everyone who knows him, except for Palpatine. He is such a caring, loving person, and yes he's passionate and impulsive, but he is truly a good man who's just trying to do his best in each situation he's given.

So Padmé isn't "stupid" for believing in him, it's more like it's absolutely unbelievable that he would ever do this. Because, once again, everyone who knows Anakin KNOWS that he could not do these things. It's even hard for Obi-wan to believe until he sees the footage.

Look, as the audience it only seems obvious to us because we've seen the Prequels and the Original Trilogy, but THESE CHARACTERS HAVEN'T GONE THROUGH THAT YET OKAY. Saying that Padmé is stupid for believing Anakin could not have done these terrible things is basically the same as saying "everyone in the republic was stupid for not seeing that Palpatine was the Sith Lord and he programmed all the clones to kill the Jedi" but like THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN RIDICULOUS TO SAY UNTIL AFTER THE FACT for anyone living in the SW world. It seems like an insane statement until after it happens.

Hindsight is 20/20.

In the US, we're about to have our 2024 elections in November, and right now nobody has any idea how it's going to go or who is going to win. We all have our hopes, of course, but we don't know. After the the election, no matter who wins, we can construct histories and stories about how it should have been obvious to everyone who was going to win the election because of the state of the country, because of the political maneuverings of certain politicians, etc. etc.

But the fact is, when we're in the moment, we have no idea how it's going to play out.

If it was obvious to everyone that Anakin would have turned to the Dark Side, nobody would've trained him as a Jedi. Padmé may not have married him if he'd been the kind of person who was capable of that. And the truth is… Anakin was not the kind of person who was capable of that. That is why Darth Vader is created.

And @skywalkr-nberrie also makes the lovely point that THERE WAS STILL GOOD IN HIM AFTER ALL. Padmé was not stupid for this, she was RIGHT.

Padme's faith in him is the same as Luke's. Luke, despite knowing all the horrors, which Padme didn't, still believes there is good in him. That unshakeable faith is his redemption. I wish there had been more discussion of Padme in OT (I know GL hadn't really conceived of all the prequel stuff then), because her character is so key to his redemption.

I always think Luke is his mother's son and Leia far far more like Anakin in character.

You can point to Anakin killing the sand people if you want, but take that as being out of character and disproven by every other action if you want to better understand.

POV: your potentially groundbreaking news report is completely spoiled by Darth Vader stubbornly pretending to be a regular dude named Glup Shitto.

Also this is definitely NOT a New Republic intelligence agent pretending to clean the surface already cleaned by droid to eavesdrop your conversation with Darth Vader:

But like... imagine how annoying this is. You made up a good excuse to enter that military base, you are ready to confront Vader and make a banger of news report risking your own life. Only to it being turned into a dragged comic skit by Vader who is like that all the time:

obi-wan kenobi

it just occurred to me that darth vader, master engineer, probably looked at the death star plans at some point and noticed the flaw, but didn’t bother to tell anyone about it because he despised everyone who was involved in the project

#krennic and tarkin: [die as a (indirect and direct, respectively) result of the death star’s flaw] #vader, who knew about that flaw and did nothing: unfortunate

“Unfortunate”

Meanwhile Vader, expert ace pilot, acts well below rank to supposedly fight off the attackers. Attackers who, as far as anyone else knows, can’t hope to do shit to the Death Star.

Convenient.

Convenient…

Lol there are some ppl on here all “oh he was feeling a little Light so he knew he had to destroy it to do the Right Thing!!!” like nah. I love my boy but he’s a bag of stinky garbagé at this point and still totally evil.

He just despised the Death Star cuz everyone was all “nyeh heh this thing can do ur job for u u LOSER” and he actively loathed every single person who was on board it. Of course he was petty enough to ignore its self-destruct button. He’s just that bitch.

this seems entirely reasonable sidebar: apparently thrawn treason is, like, mostly Krennic and Tarkin hating each other and i have never read a thrawn book but i might just read that one

Vader is high-key insulted by the existence of the Death Star, the effort and expense thrown into making it, and the way everybody’s praising it as the new ultimate power in the universe, and probably the worst part of the whole affair?

 He has no one to bitch to about it. 

Even the Emperor’s jumped on the superweapon hype train. Even the tolerably-competent officers like Tarkin are all #TeamDeathStar, and then there’s smug assholes like Admiral Motti who just won’t shut up about it, and honestly?

Vader’s probably been on the email CC list for the design since the project started. Years of enduring shitty design and interdepartmental bickering and watching some smarmy asshole in an inferior cloak prance about bloviating about his special superweapon like somebody who has an anime body pillow of the superlaser housing.

And then there’s this one scientist who keeps going on and on about this thermal exhaust problem.

Just. Huge amounts of emails on the subject, going on and on and on about it.

Vader is totally the only person who actually reads these after the first, like, five of them. Everybody else just skims through them with a side of “Seriously, Galen? Another one? Force-dammit, Krennic, couldn’t you have left him on that mudball with his family?” But Vader is bored out of his skull with 90% of his job anyway, and it’s not like he has anything better to do. Besides, viciously judging other people’s design abilities is the closest thing to pass for fun when there aren’t any Rebels to slaughter or armies to curbstomp, and there’s plenty of shit design for the judging.

He spots the flaw in the reactor the first time it appears in the plans.

He’d have shit himself if it wasn’t for the suit.

He promptly makes a bet with himself on whether anybody is going to spot it.

Nobody does.

They’re a pack of idiots. Every last one of them.

Maybe he contemplates telling them for like two-thirds of a second. It would be fun to lord his actual mechanical expertise over that little shit, Krennic.

But then he considers that he can only tell them once, and what if it were after the thing blew itself right the fuck up, what if that? He can still point out the flaw, and he can throw everyone’s stupidity right in their stupid faces, but also there’ll be no more Death Star.

So when Galen Erso sends out Thermal Exhaust Problem Analysis Report #6,109 and buried in paragraph 37 is a suggestion of an extra exhaust port, and Krennic responds with “SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT YOUR GODDAMN THERMAL EXHAUST PORT, GALEN, I DON’T GIVE A SHIT!” and Erso goes, “So you approve the solution?” and Krennic goes “S***** F*** LKJDGJFKL!!!!LJF$%#$DJF! YES!” Vader saves the email exchange for posterity and is downright cheerful the rest of the week.

True, he acts in its defense, chasing down Rebels when the plans are stolen. Of course he does. They’re Rebels, and hunting them down is his job and one of the very few pleasures of his existence. But it’s not for the Death Star. In fact, if one of them were to escape with its plans, and hide them successfully, and keep their location secret through torture and worse, and if another of them were to fly a starfighter well enough to keep from being destroyed long enough to drop a torpedo through that vulnerable exhaust port and touch off that reactor instability and turn the whole massive, ridiculous, wasteful, absurd, and vaguely insulting contraption into so much spacedust …

… well …

… oops.

Vader’s only regret about the whole affair is that Krennic predeceased it and is therefore unavailable for gloating to.

It doesn’t stop him from snagging a copy of the Rebels’ footage of the Death Star blowing up and posting it anonymously to the holonet with the added caption “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

sorry to put this post back in your notes op but this is probs my fave text chain i’ve ever participated in and reblogging it whenever i see it always brightens my day xD

the dark lord of the boop

(my fuck this is the shittiest thing i have ever posted but april fool is april fool)

quick photo study, trying couple things with the brushwork. follow my instagram! https://www.instagram.com/algenpfleger/

I am… questions about

I thought this was an actual photo and I didn’t even question it

It IS an actual photo and it’s as old as the internet

Holy shit

I really love Vader´s short scenes with Daine Jir, General Veers and Admiral Piett, they were bassically his right hands there, he listens to them even when it´s advice he doesn´t agree to and they are in fact working together as group. As long as they were competent and did their job Vader worked with them and listened to their advice.

I like the prequels but in a way I believe some creators post PT have forgotten this about Vader, especially in the comics, they are trying to write Vader as a kind of extension of Anakin circa 23 years in the middle of his breakdown in ROTS instead of writing him as the 40 year old man Darth Vader is, the guy who wanted to bring order to the galaxy, who actually believed the Empire was the best way to achieve that, who believed the Senate still had a part to play in this whole thing and who believed the Death Star was a tecnological terror, who actually had forgotten about Obi-Wan and Yoda and whose only disloyalty towards the Empire and the Emperor was over Palpatine´s intention of killing Luke.

As Lucas said Vader at 40 is a man with a job with a twisted perception of reality and deep in the darkside but whose main motivation, peace in the galaxy, was something that still appealed to him. He didn´t go on a killing spree every tuesday for shit and giggles.

This also can be seen in his interactions with Lando and Boba Fett.

I personally love the part from ROTJ novelization in which Vader thinks to himself why is Luke saying he has to let go of his hate if he doesn´t hate anyone(except for himself, deep denial there but this is Vader´s honest pov)

DARTH VADER | Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back [1980]

You have learnt much, young one. You'll find I'm full of surprises

one trend that's been interesting for me to observe in the star wars fandom is that people just cannot handle the idea of Vader's redemption, specifically that he's forgiven. It doesn't help that the sequels pretended as if it had never happened, but I've seen behind the scenes sketches where ghost Anakin is still half Vader, people saying Luke didn't really forgive forgive Vader, people acting as forgiving the unforgivable is out of character for literally anyone, and the list goes on. Although I don't keep up with the Disney shows, I get the impression they play into this too. It's easier to soften the message than to lean into how radical it is.

So, this is me saying (& I know its pointless) that I find star wars interesting only because Luke forgives Vader. To me that's its heart and soul, and that's what distinguishes it from the illionth marvel show et al. To those who say Anakin has committed warcrimes: exactly. To those who say Anakin committed crimes personally against Luke and Leia: exactly. To those who say he spent most of his live sunken in evil: exactly. That's the point. There's a reason George Lucas wrote Luke's dad as a symbol of evil itself, instead of a somewhat morally grey half-villain. The reason why forgiving Vader can seem ridiculous and even laughable is because it is, and that is precisely what makes it so powerful.

Destruction and creation are the same thing after all

The mighty always fall

Inspired by kantakerro on Instagram

It’s been a while since I have drawn sith-obi and Vader.

As usual, that guy seems to be drowning in him.

'Ambition Of Anakin' by Tsuneo Sanda

Breathtaking