Don’t ask how

there’s a lot of heavy emotion interspersed with anakin and luke accidentally blowing up half the hangar

i think about that comic where vader finds out that the empire is using slave labor, and he goes to palpatine and is actually genuinely upset by this - because can't you just see it? palpatine promising a sobbing ten year old that if he had all the power in the universe, he would eradicate slavery? vader truly believed in that promise for so long that even after everything palpatine reveals himself to be, vader is still shocked by this betrayal. like, dude fucking bought in about as hard as anyone could. this is all to say, if anyone around anakin at any point had introduced anakin to the concept that it's a) not his fault his mother continued to suffer while he didn't, and b) still fucked up that the concept of paperwork prevents people from doing what's right, and c) what if we helped people Anyway, his eyes would dilate like you'd dosed him with space ketamine. Secret Third Option: Ignore Authority would change his life. he is of sufficient malleability to be equally and oppositely radicalized. this is to say, the person anakin always wanted to be is exactly who luke skywalker is. related question, do you ever open your mouth and scream?

- Star Wars: Clone Wars: Gambit

it's preteen anakin in rogue planet earnestly telling obi-wan he's the best jedi ever, and obi-wan stays silent. it's later in that same book where obi-wan looks at his sleeping charge and wonders if the affection he feels is how fathers feel about their sons. it's anakin saying obi-wan is the closest thing he has to a father, and then in the AOTC novelization obi-wan asks him, "then why don't you listen to me?" and the comic where obi-wan tells anakin he thinks anakin is part droid, and then tells him it wasn't a compliment. it's anakin feeling like obi-wan was holding him back because anakin just wants more and more. it's obi-wan in jedi quest letting his thirteen year old drive. it's anakin in the gambit duology watching obi-wan be emotionally loving to taria and getting wickedly, viciously angry because obi-wan's love is lying to him. it's obi-wan defining himself by how much he believes in anakin. it's obi-wan in labyrinth of evil joking that qui-gon should've left anakin in slavery. it's obi-wan offering to leave the jedi order just to be with anakin, if that's what anakin needed. it's anakin losing faith enough in obi-wan that by ROTS, palpatine is the father he chooses, when obi-wan still believed in him. it's the force showing vader that if he went back to obi-wan, obi-wan would still call him anakin. it's also me fucking crying in this bitch

anakin, with the only distraction he can possibly imagine in his baby mind: HAS ANYONE SEEN A PODRACE?

no notes. no thoughts head empty this is grand. vader moving from my prey to my apprentice to the cut-off my child as he zeroes in, obsesses, gets lost in desire. that’s my fucking shit, dude. fuck yes. my perfect son.

luke connects with the naberries after ROTJ and tries to explain the insanity of his parentage, and his relatives foist on him a locked wooden chest lovingly carved with naboo equivalent of cupids and arrows, and they're like, well, we never had the key, but it belonged to aunt padme, so you should have it. luke uses the force to open it and finds three years' worth of wartime letters flattened and annotated with padme's loving notes and whatever holos existed of his parents, her wedding dress, just a treasure trove to a dude desperately trying to understand his insane family history. in luke fashion he summons the ghost of his dead, formerly homicidal dad, and anakin hunches there and has to explain that, uh, unfortunately, they were Those People. they were That Couple. darth vader's ghost must delicately request luke not read the letters rolled in red twine, because those are the ones that included graphic depictions of the sex they were going to have when they saw each other again. "that's almost half the letters in here," luke says. the ghost of darth vader shifts uncomfortably.

darth vader: ok i will make an exception because he looks very polite

no wait this is something hold on

darth vader: you are about to defend your right to live within my sight.

darth vader: now was that so difficult? get on with it. you waste my time.

also "he had done his duty. and now he couldn't imagine why." is just like. anakin skywalker thesis statement

found an old sketch