#book is revenge of the sith by matthew Stover

[pumpkinrootbeer]

Maybe the most devastating element of the prequels

[whumpspacesw]

In time, even stars burn out.

All things die.

Revenge of the Sith, Matthew Stover

[paula-zotter]

And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame. This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker. Forever.

Anakin from the Revenge of the Sith novelization by Matthew Stover.

[is-that-sand-in-my-waffles]

reblog if you've been personally victimized by Matthew Stover's Revenge of the Sith novelization

[legends-expo]

We asked our team: "If you could recommend one piece of Legends material to someone just starting out on their Legends journey, what would it be and why?"

“Stover's Revenge of the Sith. It's got the touchpoint of the movie while weaving in a lot of the Clone Wars multimedia project. A bit weird to start with what is effectively a season finale but I think it does a fantastic job weaving what a casual fan would know with enticing new details from the books and comics. Also it's some of the best mythological prose ever written."

[klazje]

rots novelization…you’re too good for this franchise

[brazen-kenobi]

“Anakin.” Obi-Wan’s voice had gone soft, and his hand was warm on Anakin’s arm. “There is no other Jedi I would rather have at my side right now. No other man.”

Anakin turned, and found within Obi-Wan’s eyes a depth of feeling he had only rarely glimpsed in all their years together; and the pure uncomplicated love that rose up within him then felt like a promise from the Force itself.

“I… wouldn’t have it any other way, Master.”

“I believe,” his onetime Master said with a gently humorous look of astonishment at the words coming out of his mouth, “that you should get used to calling me Obi-Wan.”

- Matthew Stover, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

[fantastic-nonsense]

one surefire way to kill me stone dead at any given moment is putting the opening lines of the Revenge of the Sith novelization in a photoset

[steepedfoxglovetea]

HOLY SHIT GUYS!!

I found a HARDCOVER FIRST EDITION of Matthew Stover’s Revenge of the Sith!!!

AND it’s still in good condition!

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

[rainintheevening]

Drying my tears and blowing my nose.

It is done.

Like seriously. I've read the end in bits over and over, but still. I tell myself not to care so much, and detach my emotions so I can race through the last few chapters.

And I'm still sobbing.

It hurts. It huts so much. I love Anakin so much, and I love Obi-Wan so much, and for everything he did, every horrible act he commits, I understand, I GET it, I know why he did it. And it hurts so much.

One of the worst scenes to read was when Palpatine reveals himself to Anakin, tells him that he's Sidious. The whole time I felt like I needed to spit something nasty and slimy out of my mouth. Palpatine’s slippery, evil manipulations are so horribly obvious from the outside, yet at the same time I'm inside the scene with Anakin and he makes this awful sense.

These bits:

The emphasis on Anakin not eating and sleeping just makes every protective instinct in me rear up ready to fight. I wish SO BAD I could just drop into that scene and take care of Anakin. Stand between him and Palpatine, and give the Emperor what-for. Hit Palpy over the head with my book, and drag Anakin to safety. Everything about Palpatine screams 'NOT SAFE, NOT SAFE'. But Anakin’s too discombobulated to see it.

Of course I love how Stover frames the whole story around Obi-Wan and Anakin. Of course warmth floods my chest when I read all those famous bits:

(The perfect continuation of where Labyrinth of Evil left off.)

^^This!!!!

He is the ultimate Jedi.

And he is proud to be Anakin Skywalker’s best friend.

I mean the whole opening chapter goes like this.

And the capper...

*dies again* *gets revived at the reminder that fix-it fics are a thing* Like, really, this is why I'm doing it. I'm doing it for them. Because even though I understand this story, the original, even though I see what tragedy can teach, and LOVE the redemption we do get from RotJ, I still want another version of the story. I kinda need another version.

Like this. This scene. Can we just stop here, freeze time here?

*sigh*

This isn't an expansive review, nor is it very insightful, and I will probably come back to yell/cry about something else. But for now... Imma go write a happier story.

🫡

[that-gay-jedi]

I'm tryna catch up on self-care chores I'm overwhelmed on but I'm being overtaken by Star Wars thoughts so it's screamin time I guess.

This bit, where Dooku draws the dark side to himself right before his duel with Anakin & Obi-Wan aboard the Invisible Hand:

[Transcript: This was the real power of the dark side, the power he had suspected even as a boy, had sought through his long life until Darth Sidious had shown him that it had been his all along. (highlighted) The dark side didn't bring him to the center of the universe. It made him the center. (end highlight) End transcript.]

There is so much to Stover's philosophy of the Force as elaborated in Revenge of the Sith, Shatterpoint and Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, drawing on all kinds of sources, but one that I think is frequently missed is mainstream modern magical traditions and the historical and theoretical sources they in turn take from.

As someone whose fingers have been in several occult pies since I was a smol idiot preteen, this part with Dooku could be word-for-word from any introductory primer on things like the Middle Pillar exercise and the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (abbreviated LBRP).

The LBRP is a basic ritual common to practically any westernized spellcasting tradition that appropriates from and kind of mangles kabbalah (as chaos magic, various attempts at reconstructing demonology and angelology, and almost anything drawing on medieval Christian gnosticism do)*. It shares common history and structural progression with the form of circle casting observed in Wicca and so many other neopagan systems.

LBRP's base purpose is to remove negative energy from oneself and surroundings, but for many a beginning mage learning from randos on the internet or reading the mainstream magic books, it's also performed daily as a means of getting oneself used to rituals and practicing the mindset these systems recommend for spellcasting.

For the majority of people practicing it in its vanilla form (I.e. people identifying as chaos magicians), one fundamental skill being practiced is that of making oneself the center of the universe. The LBRP is supposed to be performed while envisioning oneself as the center of the universe, which is frequently done via the Middle Pillar exercise: symbolically drawing the metaphysical structure of all things into and along the lines of the body (this is the part that pulls most heavily from kabbalah, as it takes the kabbalistic tree of life wholesale).

To get an idea of what I mean, take a look at samples here, here, and here. Were I 11 years old today and just researching spellwork for the first time, sites like these would likely be among the first I'd be directed to by older members as beginner resources.

Now, the dark side of the Force is not 1:1 analogous with any particular real world label, but has commonalities with quite a few (not unlike how the Jedi are not 1:1 analogous to any one form of Buddhism, but based on an amalgamation of everything GL thought of it at the time). Practitioners of chaos magic often regard it not as a belief system or magical tradition but as a means of approaching belief and ritual, a meta-framework.

The point here is merely that Stover is a smart cookie and did his homework, and chose sources which would be recognizable to anyone with a background in contemporary spellwork amid the target audience.

*I don't personally perform kabbalah-derived practices nor known derivatives thereof out of respect for Judaism. My own spiritual bent is not chaos magic, neopaganism nor reconstructionism, and is loosely describable as state-of-mind-seeking, meditative, and experiential.

[darth-jess]

Well fuck

@prequelsnet prequels appreciation week: day 2 — antagonists

↳ Anakin Skywalker

But you remember...You remember all of it. You remember the dragon that you brought Vader forth from your heart to slay. You remember the cold venom in Vader's blood. You remember the furnace of Vader's fury, and the black hatred of seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth—

[david-talks-sw]

Finished Star Wars on Trial and Matthew Stover manages to perfectly encapsulate how I think everyone should approach watching Star Wars material they don't like.

"The plot holes are essential. Because inside every single hole in the entire Star Wars saga - in every flaw in the franchise - you can find a Cheshire grin floating above a flannel shirt, and a fading echo of... "Ha-ha - made you look!" When I was at Skywalker Ranch to meet with George Lucas, I brought up the sliding-around-the-turboshaft business in Revenge of the Sith. I said, "They're in orbit -- gravity just doesn't work like that-" The answer I got, verbatim, was: "That's the point." Each of you on this jury - each of you reading this book - is here because you have one of two fundamental reactions to this. One is to frown. "Quit it! Quit or I'm telling! And I won't be your friend anymore!" The other is to grin right back. "Okay, you got me. What's next? Let's go!" Because your reaction is a choice: You can take that made you look as an insult. Or you can take it in the spirit it is intended. As an invitation to play. George says: "Let's pretend!" What do you say? Me? I grin. I always have, ever since a hot summer afternoon in 1977, when I was fifteen years old and a kid knocked on my door and told me about this goofy movie he wanted to see."

The whole point of Star Wars is to help you be creative and think outside the box. It's a fun make-believe story.

If there's something you don't like about a Star Wars movie, or any movie, you can either rage about it or get creative and come up with a headcanon that makes it work better for you.

Instead of saying "TLJ Luke wouldn't do that!" I try to ask myself "what would make Luke do that?"

Instead of disliking the Dooku episodes in Tales of the Jedi, I just tell myself that they're all seen through Dooku's own unreliable lens and immediately it all makes sense.

It's a lot more fun when you choose to grin instead just going "Quit it!" and I'm making an effort to do the former more than the latter, especially when The Acolyte will come out.

[sith-obikin]

A happy Valentine’s Day to our favourite tragic boys!

To Obi-Wan especially who has never stopped loving his dear Anakin, despite everything💔

Book excerpts from Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover and The Last One Standing by Jude Watson