#grandvader

You know, my parents got married on Endor. As in…where the Ewoks live.

And then I was born nine months later.

…Is this anything

Oh, HA HA HA. It’s not happening. The babies, or those names.

…Although, I don’t think I’d mind naming my kid after Anakin. I’ve, uh…looked up to my grandfather throughout my life…in some…different ways…but, as I’ve talked about before, his story means a lot to me. The hope that anyone can choose to make new choices at any time.

I also kinda like the name Jacen? I used to have this friend named Jacen when I was a kid—we would play together when our moms hung out sometimes. He was a few years older than me, and Mom said he was a bad influence. Both him and his family’s droid—what was its name, Chopper or something. I never talked to him again once we got older, but I definitely have some core memories of our playdates. We got into some messes. Heh.

Actually, now that I think about it, he was Twi’lek-human too, like our kids would be. I didn’t really register that as a kid. Like, I had eyes, I could see his mom was Twi’lek, but…he kinda just looked like a human with green hair, so that was always how I saw him I guess.

Hm…I guess Annie could be a girl version of Anakin. Maybe a girl version of Jacen could be, like…uh…I don’t know—Jaina or something. Jaina or Jacen Solo? Or Anakin Solo? Wait Anakin Solo sounds so weird.

Oh, but Fannie would love the name Anakin. For one thing, she’s pretty big on the redemption thing too—I mean, c’mon—she’s marrying me—but…also ‘cause she would probably want to call them Annie, regardless of Annie’s gender. You know. Her thing with the nicknames.

Also, have you met someone called Matt the Radar Technician before?

Hey! Thanks for sayin’ hi—right back atcha!

Ah. That is a great question. One that’s become really significant and personally meaningful to me.

I think that Anakin was always Anakin, whether he wanted to be or not. He tried to destroy who he was, and by all visible appearances he succeeded—I mean, even to this day, barely anyone knows or believes in Vader’s true identity. But he could never really forget who he was and who he was meant to be: the core of his being, his innermost spark of humanity. He claimed that Anakin was dead, but it wasn’t a finished murder: it was a continual asphyxiation he perpetuated day by day.

But, in Vader’s final moments, he quit trying to kill Anakin, and stepped once more into who he truly was. In the end, it was Anakin who killed Vader. And you asked me what I think about that, and what I think about that is it’s incredibly relieving to know that there’s always the option to turn yourself around—always. And, if we’ve got any luck…we can do it long before we ever kneel to a dark Emperor and become a Sith Lord, and a scourge of worlds and a terror to the galaxy and all that jizz.

Now, as for your second question…

How’d you get my mom to stop calling every day? I ask, and his blue eyes crinkle (he has left Tatooine, but still he spends so much of his time outside).

Well, she has to listen to me, Ben. I’m the older twin, you know.

Are you actually?

And he laughs and shakes his head. No—we don’t know who’s older.

I don’t know who’s older, either, but both of ‘em are old—they were old when they were my age; much older than I am now—old enough to mourn their families and watch their childhood homes go up in flames; old enough to watch their comrades die ten feet in front of their faces and too old to break down and cry.

I wonder how they must see me: a half-baked adult, older than they were and yet so much younger, having lived through so much and accomplished so little.

…No.

Well—more accurately, they don’t know that Anakin Skywalker ended up becoming…you-know-who.

People do know that Mom and Uncle Luke were, y’know—Skywalker and Amidala’s forbidden love babies. Oh, they eat that crap up. Mom had to hire legal counsel when one of the big networks started planning a soap opera that very suspiciously mirrored our family history.

Anyway…the general belief is that Anakin Skywalker was murdered by Darth Vader, along with the rest of the Jedi that died in the great purge. Mom told me that story, too.

It was Uncle Luke who finally told me different.

...I don’t know what would happen if the public found out about my granddad. It wouldn’t be good—that’s for sure.

...Oh, my Force.

When the Civil War was over and we all found out he had become Vader and betrayed the Republic…it was difficult to reconcile that with the young man I knew. It still is. I can’t imagine what drove him to that point. I can imagine that it wasn’t anything good.

The war was hard on us all. I wish he would have spoken up. Asked for help. Any of his friends would have been there for him.

I’m so sorry we didn’t notice him slipping. The final days of the Clone Wars were…a lot. But that’s not an excuse.

My heart breaks for the burden he has put onto your family.

(My species lives longer than humans—so yes i’m old haha)

-W

…It scares me, how much your version of his story reminds me of some of the things I’ve been through.

I don’t want to believe that I’m as like him as my mom seems to fear I am. But…

Can someone really change so suddenly?

I…haven’t heard from Snoke, since I told my parents about dreaming about him again and I had to move back home. Mom is pretty relieved that he’s leaving me alone again, but I’m not so sure…

Not that I’m about to tell her that. Things are easier, now that she feels like I’m safe.

I thought he had lost interest in me, after he first tried to win me and failed. But…I wonder if he wasn’t just biding his time, waiting to get me where he wanted me—after all, it was because I hadn’t heard from him in so long that my mom let me move away to Naboo for college. And then, after I had spent a few years there, it was my newfound taste for independence that he exploited to keep me from telling her about him—

…No, no; I’m working on taking responsibility for my own actions, here—it was less that he exploited it, and more that he was testing me, I think—testing me to see how much I had let my guard down, how much I was willing to conceal from my family again…

And now I wonder if he hasn’t just goaded me back into the place where he wants me. I don’t know why he would want to drive me back home, to bring me closer to my parents and my sister and my uncle when it would make more sense for him to try and isolate me…but at this point, I’m hesitant to interpret his silence as retreat. It may just as well mean he’s already accomplished what he wanted to, for the time being.

It has also occurred to me that he might not have any sort of plan after all. Maybe he’s just…toying with me.

OH yeah it is unauthorized mailbag hour my dudes*

*unwillingly paid for by The Chommell Sector Daily

…I so wish they wouldn’t still call it that.

Rey's usual babysitters (these two girls my mom knows, who are sisters, I guess) aren't available for the full weekend, which is why I'm coming over. But they're gonna take her trick-or-treating for Halloween, and they said I'm invited.

Rey’s thirteen, for Force’s sake. Turning fourteen next month, actually. Isn’t that a little old for trick-or-treating? I mean, sure, she grew up on the side of a rock for the first seven years of her life—but does she not know that she can just…go to the store the day after Halloween and get tons of candy for half off???

Anyway. Rey said she’s gonna dress up as Emperor Palpatine.

“Isn’t that a little...soon?” I asked, alarmed.

“What do you mean? He died over twenty years ago!”

“Yeah, like just a little before I was born, kid!”

“Exactly!”

I asked Mom and Dad if they found this in any way concerning. I was then brutally roasted with a fifteen-minute presentation and slideshow about how I dressed up as Darth Vader for five Halloweens in a row.

The CIS had just attacked Coruscant and kidnapped Palpatine (in what we all now know was self inflicted BS). Almost everyone from the Outer Rim had been called in to help, including me, and including your grandfather and Obi-Wan.

Afterwards, I saw him on the ground. I asked if he was okay. He said he was and I took him at his word. He asked if I was okay and I said I was. Then I went back to the Outer Rim.

He looked tired. But we were all tired so I didn’t think anything of it.

Obi-Wan had gone to fight General Grievous. Ahsoka had left the Order. Rex on Mandalore (I think). He must have felt very alone. I’ve often wondered if that played a part in it.

When I heard about the Purge, I figured they all were dead, including your grandfather. When I heard about this new guy in the Rebellion named “Luke Skywalker,” I figured he was, like, a cousin or something. Especially since the Jedi weren’t really allowed to have kids!

With the timing, he must have fathered the twins during the last hours of the War. I wonder if knowing about them would have stopped him from turning, or if it would have made his stress worse. The galaxy was in a bad shape to bring kids into.

-W

You know…it used to be that when I heard stories about the old days, I felt a sense of relief that I never had to live through those times and that things aren’t like that anymore. The Empire is gone. The Jedi have returned. There is hope in the galaxy again. That’s what I was always told as a kid.

Now that I’m not a kid…I’m seeing that it isn’t so simple. I spend the weekdays with Mom, watching her try to wade through New Republic drama, and the weekends with Luke, watching him try to rebuild the Jedi community.

I haven’t talked about Uncle Luke in a while. I think I told you…around Life Day, when I talked to him for the first time after the…saber…incident, I noticed that he seemed kind of troubled and distant.

I haven’t asked him about it directly, but I’ve been able to piece things together. I think things are harder for him now that his first generation of students is grown-up, and it seems like a lot of his relationships with them have grown complicated.