#also the history diorama and falling down the well are funny to me but my dad didn't think so

[clairen45]

Hey :-) In the new Anidala comic there is a interesting thing: the actress's museum is called "thousand faces museum" and I was never a believer in the reincarnation theory but in my opion, this is telling. Anakin and Padmè, both of them walking through this museum, which shows important moments of history. And on top of that, there is a picture of the place where Anakin and Padmè had married, but this picture is still "work progress" What do you think about all this new stuff?

Oh dear anon, these two issues from Star Wars adventures, issues 12 and 13, are so ripe with meta textuality that it’s not funny. This comic blew me away with the clever references and jokes. It’s all about reverse Anidala and the Skywalker saga coming full circle with Reylo. From the cover of 12 that looked so much like Rey and Kylo fighting back to back, to all the winks in there. This stuff is so great.

Ok, museum of the 1000 faces. Fans of GOT could love that one too because you have this idea of a character being able to wear the face of someone else and become this character in order to fulfill a mission, right? Given that the TV show (not sure what the book series will do) is following the path of descendants fixing the mistakes of the past (fire and ice, Starks and Targaryens), and of chosen ones coming back (Azor Ahai, the Prince that was promised), this is also a noteworthy parallel. Even more so that Arya, the one whose arc goes through the hall of faces, also becomes an actress (in the TV show she is fascinated by plays but does not become part of the troupe).

The idea in the Star Wars comic is that Madam Synata is a versatile actress that played all these many characters: hence the Thousand Faces Museum. She is also two-faced in real life since she is actually working for Dooku.

Funny anecdote, she is supposed to be this great famous actress in the galaxy, yet she is introduced to Anakin in the comic through an obvious parallel with faded silent film star Norma Desmond from Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard

Besides the pose, the staircase, the dramatic walking down the stairs, actress Gloria Swanson, who plays Norma Desmond, would have favored this kind of feathered dress and hat…

I think the reference is here to point out everything that does not work out about her. She gets her facts all mixed up and wrong, as repeated over and over again in the comic, as we can see here for instance:

And of course:

If Risha does not get the end she was expecting because “she was not the hero of the story”, the idea that there are “two sides” to a story is still an essential one in the saga. From Obi Wan’s “certain point of view” sentence to the scrolling credits to ROTS that boldly state that there are “heroes on both sides” of the war. This is not minor and it indeed matters. So even if Risha gets it all wrong (beginning with the side she chose),  there is still some value to take away from this story. And mostly, this  comic raises a lot of question about where the Skywalker as a whole is headed and offers a bridge between the PT (where this story takes place) and the current ST.

Let’s come back to this Thousand Faces museum. Contrary to GOT’s Hall of Faces, the point is not really about the diversity of faces exhibited. Even though you get different dioramas of scenes presenting mannequins or animatronics with various settings, the point of the museum is to showcase Risha’s face in various poses and costumes over and over and over again. So these thousand faces are really just the one face of Risha in 1000 different settings, poses, and costumes. As you can see there examplified:

In terms of the ST, this should ring a bell. We got a thousand faces and yet only one face represented on screen, right?

And interestingly, Risha belongs to the Dark Side, like the cave on Ahch-To, and acts like a mirror, reflecting everything wrong: her stories are never accurate. Another huge wink at Rey we get earlier (so that Risha dons both Padmé and Rey’s costumes or attitudes in this comic) :

So what else do we get that should give us matter to pause and ponder upon?

You very rightly, dear anon, pointed out the “work in progress” reference to Naboo.

The comic is not even subtle about it, commenting right away about the meta aspect of this: our PT love story is a tragedy, we are a work in progress. Ok, gotcha. But what the story tells us too is that Anakin and Padmé are unfinished business, right? A part of a bigger story that still requires completion. Like a PT that can be completed with a ST? So what scene needs to get completed? The wedding scene of course, the exchange of vows, what normally constitutes the climax and perfect ending to any self-worthy fairy-tale.

Unfortunately, that is a fail for the PT, as we well know. Since Risha usually gets stories wrong, though, it’s a good thing this story still needs to be completed. Padmé bets that Risha would have ruined the scene with a tragedy, which, given that Risha gets things inverted, means that the story would have ended happily. Nope. So better leave it unfinished. The couple missing on the painting is not Padmé and Anakin. Possibly it hints at Rey and Kylo (though not necessarily wedding on Naboo, this is just symbolic). Also again, inversion of the story: Anakin poor boy falls for royalty, and Kylo royal boy falls for poor girl. Ummmm, subtletly be damned. Work in progress indeed, since the ST and the saga are not completed and are currently shooting.

More stuff. Funny how this sentence is repeated over and over again, even by a Yoda animatronic:

Padmé has escaped many dangerous situations and assassination attempts. Sure, she will still escape this time around, but eventually, we know that she won’t. It’s like the ticking of a clock, and clock ticking, well, that’s another way of talking about the need felt by some women to have babies…

Even better stuff; Have you noticed these little sceneries as our heroes run down the hall?

Ok… So they are running from Tatooine to Endor!!! Tatooine is the passageway to their escape. Sure, it’s the transitional planet between the PT and the OT, the only planet that they both feature. It’s the last one we get from ROTS and the first one we get in ANH. The Ewoks and Ewok village that’s unmistakably ROTJ. So the characters have escaped the setting of the PT to run through the OT (and the planet that sees the funeral of Anakin). What is the next scenery we get?

A snow planet. I would not necessarily pay any attention to the characters in the background. but look at the way Anakin and Padmé are flying about in a snow-covered landscape… Do you remember Kylo chasing Rey on Starkiller base?

And then in the next issue, it’s like going backward with this scene that could TLJ’s Canto Bight (which is oddly enough totally unrelated to Kylo or Rey):

And straight to the beginning of PM with Naboo’s sea monsters:

“We’re close”… meaning close to the final act, the end. And what is the final act about in this story?

Which does not work out for Risha, of course. Which does not work out for Anakin, but certainly did work for Luke in the OT and is bound to work for Kylo in the ST.

Cross this with this very important line from the TLJ graphic adaptation:

So we keep on saying the same references to the circle, to repeating history, to getting it right after many mistakes and failures, be it in litteral sentences or through the actions of the main characters. So, of course, Reylo. Look at the next two pictures depicting Luke’s death:

The light of two suns…Which fuse into one. 2 suns meeting to “step into a larger world”. This is not death, this is rebirth, this is birth. Womb/Tomb. The cave entrance. Death feeding life, right? This was an important part of the first lesson Luke gave Rey on that very spot. The utlimate metaphor of the two suns fusing, like two people becoming one through love, a wedding, sexual union, and creating life. A work in progress?

There is a lot to cover in these silly cartoons that are actually incredibly clever and thoughtful. I also love the tongue-in-cheek quality of such a line:

Does Star Wars produce too many shows?

And I had to edit this OP with the very important note made to me by @toawaterfowl. What work did Lucas credit for being essential to the concept of this saga? Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Of course!

[hoodieimp]

So I had a really wild dream last night...

I personally blame @eclectic-spaghetti ’s BatIM AU writings for inspiring at least half of it…

(Putting the full text under a readmore because sweet Lordy LOU this is gonna get long…)

It started with my family visiting my aunt’s “summer house”, which had apparently been renovated since we’d last been there. So my aunt was showing us around, going through all the new rooms that had been added and whatnot (although, like in most dreams of mine, the architecture was all nonsensical and fluid, changing from moment to moment).

When we got to her “office”, she began showing us a bunch of old photo albums, souvenirs, and other junk from past vacations. Amongst all the clutter, something caught my eye: a bundle of old theme-park brochures and assorted papers, including an “employee handbook”/maintenance manual of some sort, seemingly written by a “Henry Iwerks”(!!?!?!), and a series of rough blue-pencil sketches that, when flipped through, created a rough animation of Boris dancing.

My aunt saw me looking and said something along the lines of, “Oh, those are from our trip to Drew World! Don’t you remember, honey?”

And suddenly, in that weird dream-way where you somehow instinctively know about things that never happened to you, I did remember. I remembered it so vividly, in fact, that it catapulted me into a sort of full-body flashback.

Cut to all of us–my sister and I, my parents, and my aunt–on vacation at mother-flipping Joey Drew World, of all places. From what we saw of the park, it actually looked quite nice and well-kept–lots of rolling lawns, flower beds, and a miles-long manmade “river” with paddle boats you could ride in. Joey Drew himself (who appeared like a cross between a younger Cab Calloway and good ol’ Walt Disney, albeit with wilder hair) kept joining our group at random moments, acting as an impromptu tour guide of sorts, answering our questions about the park’s history and all the different attractions and whatnot.

However, there were times when he seemed to decide that we were getting a lit-tle too nosy with our questions, at which he’d pull out this weird device: a foldable wooden diorama with a tiny picture in the middle that spun when he turned a crank, so you could never quite make out what it was supposed to be (basically a more complex version of the World’s Most Distracting Object from Gravity Falls). He’d have us stare into it while he cranked it and gave some spiel about “focusing on what really matters” or some shit, until we’d either a) completely forgotten what it was we’d seen, or b) been hypnotized into thinking whatever strangeness we’d glimpsed was completely normal.

And believe me, there was a LOT of strangeness. Me being the ADHD kid I am, I kept getting bored and wandering off to other attractions or into “employees-only” areas, and every time I inevitably stumbled across some weird shit. Turns out the entire park was basically one huge thinly-veiled supervillain setup meant to turn all the unwitting park-goers into toons for God-knows-what purpose. Among other things, I found:

“The Infirmary”, where newly-transformed toons were kept briefly in order to “adjust” before heading out to work in the park–I walked in on Boris (or at least a Boris) laying in bed while a nurse peeled bandages off his chest (He let out a very Goofy-esque “Gawrsh!” when he saw me, but strangely, the nurse didn’t object to some random kid strolling in).

(Also present was a toonified version of my cat, Lola. Because apparently hypnotizing my immediate family wasn’t enough for Joey; he had to kidnap (catnap?) my pets, too.)

A big industrial kitchen where all the park’s food, from restaurant fare to concession stand snacks, was “prepared” (read: laced with–what else?–ink)

[This actually kind of tied in with a previous part of my dream–I’d been eating some fruit snacks earlier that I thought tasted funny, but no one had believed me when I complained…]

A guy playing an old-fashioned fairground calliope (that had a likeness of Scrooge McDuck on it for some reason?) that caused everyone in the vicinity to break down in hysterical laughter. Like, Joker Venom-induced levels of hysterical. But for some reason I was completely unaffected–classic dream protagonist logic, I guess? 

I didn’t see him face-to-face, but i overheard somewhere that all the fucked-up processes that went into “toonifying” visitors were being overseen by Henry of all people??? Which begs the question: did Joey press-gang him into it, or was he in cahoots with Joey and doing all this shit to innocent people willingly??

More of a weird sidenote than anything, but throughout all this, there was a…conspicuous lack of Bendy?? Like he appeared on one or two signs or pieces of merch, but the actual Little Devil Darlin’ himself was nowhere to be found? (which was probably a good thing given the circumstances but also kinda ominous as all hell)

Also, at one point I was riding around the “river” in one of the paddle boats and trailed my hand in the water, only for Joey to pop up from behind and cheerfully inform me:

“Oh by the way, we’ve got a bull shark living in the canals who likes to nibble on people’s fingers! But not to worry, she’s vegetarian, so she won’t bite that hard!" 

At which I SHOT out of the boat and into the air, cartoon-style, with such force that I started FLYING over the park and didn’t come down for another five minutes, before abruptly crash-landing and waking up.