thatforkedroad

[thatforkedroad]

half of a whole

[also on ao3] It takes Bethany too long to realise she isn’t a twin sister anymore.

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The first week in Kirkwall is spent in constant work and sleeping on Gamlen’s floor; it's not until the tenth night that they have enough coin and time to get something more substantial to sleep on. All they can fit in the hovel is a rickety bunk bed in one room and a tiny scrap of a single bed in the other. Garrett says he’ll bunk with Bethany, even though he’s about a foot taller than Mother and will barely fit on the bottom mattress. Bethany expects an immediate refusal, a loving sputtering of you can’t share a bunk with your sister, that’s improper (what she’d said when she made Bethany finally sleep by herself seven years ago), but all their mother does is blankly nod. She takes the single bed in the other tiny room without complaint or comment. 

Bethany hopes she's sleeping well in that rickety thing. She knows at least the size of their bunk bed isn’t affecting Garrett’s sleep; he’s announcing that fact with heavy snore that ought to belong to a nine-foot-tall qunari. It should be annoying Bethany, but the grating, ever-present noise of life brings some weird sort of comfort. And it’s funny, really. The whole thing kind of is. 

She wants to turn to Carver and point out how silly it is, to be sleeping on a bunk bed at eighteen and Andraste who cursed our brother to snore so loud? 

She almost pops her head over the side before she remembers that it's not her twin brother on the bottom bunk. A queasy feeling of wrong settles in her stomach, like a snake is making a writhing nest in her guts. She’s sharing a bunk bed with her eldest brother. There’s nothing wrong with that, really, she’s shared rooms with a brother before and there’s not enough space in Gamlen’s hovel to do otherwise. There’s nothing wrong with this; it’s fine, she says to herself. But the thing in her stomach is rising up towards her head and it keeps telling her — far, far louder than she can tell herself — this is wrong.

She stares up at the dark ceiling and finds that for the first time in weeks, she’s all alone with her own thoughts. 

The quiet moments on the ship had never been quiet enough to actually think. Even if she managed to ignore the groaning of old wood and the crash of the sea against the ship-side, there was too much happening in the hold to ever tune it out. Thirty-seven refugees had boarded the already-half-full cargo ship, clutching what little they’d managed to take from their now gone homes and hadn’t bartered to pay for the travel. 

Thirty-seven of them were packed into a space barely able to hold twenty. Even if, by some miracle, Bethany managed to ignore the noise, she couldn’t ignore the people that needed her help. Out of the thirty-seven refugees — thirty-six, if she didn’t include herself — twenty-four had been injured as they fled or fought. Technically, she wasn’t the only healer onboard, but Bethany had always listened far better than her brother when their father taught them his work. So faced with a ship of wounded, she could see only one thing to do. 

She only used the tiniest sparks of magic, so small as to be unnoticeable — and when that wasn’t quite enough, Garrett had always been a brilliant distraction. The faint glow of her hands was nothing compared to the starlight of her eldest brother’s smiles and the wild gestures he used when he told a story. Bethany had always joked with— she’d always joked that if Garrett were dropped in a pit filled with Templars and Tevinters, he’d walk out carried on their backs singing a sea shanty with all of them. 

Within the first couple days, he had the entire ship enthralled. The entire hold quietened when they noticed that he was starting a new tavern story or tall tale. 

The urge to turn to someone and make a tired joke about it kept cropping up. Bethany kept working. Her eldest brother kept smiling. 

As long as someone was looking, at least. In those rare quiet moments when everyone was occupied, when nobody was interested in the new life of the ship, he would drop the performance and the smile with it. At least, until he caught Bethany’s eye and the charade went right back up with a wink. 

He even managed to keep it up when he spoke to their mother — or when he tried to. Hawke’s brilliant grin couldn’t make her forget her grief the way it could the other refugees’. It only did the opposite, reminding her of a dead man’s (the father of a dead boy’s) grin. Bethany tried not to notice those conversations, for the sake of Garrett’s pride. She just kept working. 

It probably didn’t help that there had been little opportunity to wash in the cramped belly of the ship. Water on the ship was used for drinking and, if Bethany was lucky, cleaning someone’s wounds. They certainly couldn’t waste it on cleaning themselves, even if they were all covered in ash and dirt and blood. The streak of red on Garrett’s face blended into that mix, as if it were just the result of another fleeing injury, same as anyone else. But Leandra knew it was the wrong son’s blood smeared across his nose. She had seen her youngest — hands red from where he’d clutched his own torn chest — reach for her eldest as she held him pale in her arms. 

Bethany kept working. 

Despite the cramped, loud, and dirty conditions they’d been in, some of their fellow refugees seemed almost sad that they’d reached Kirkwall. Maybe it was because the reality of their sorry situation had finally dawned on them — or maybe it was just because they wouldn’t see those brilliant grins anymore. 

She tries to remember the other refugees now. She tries to remember their faces, their stories, their thank-yous and hopes. But she keeps thinking of the wounds she toiled over and she keeps thinking of an eighteen-year-old boy in his mother’s arms, stomach coated in red and his own insides. 

Her twin brother isn’t lying on the bunk beneath her. He’s lying dead in Ferelden. 

She almost manages to picture him now, body left to the blight for the sake of their survival. The image never quite forms in full. She can’t think of the wrongness of his abandoned corpse; all she can think of is the fact she’s not sharing a bunk bed with him. 

It’s not right. She shares everything with Carver. They share parents, a birthday, an age, shared the same bedroom until they were eleven. She even shares a name with him, really. Because they were never Bethany Hawke or Carver Hawke; they were always Bethany-and-Carver. Part of a set. Referring to one without the other tastes strange on the tongue. 

The realisation sinks heavily onto her chest. But people can’t refer to her as Bethany-and-Carver anymore. There is no Bethany-and-Carver anymore. And so her hollow heart begs one question; who is she supposed to be now?  Bethany-and-Garrett? Bethany-without-Carver? Bethany-and-a-corpse? 

Just… Bethany? 

Bethany-and-nothing curls into herself, barely feeling the wetness on her cheeks through the absence all around her. 

[thatforkedroad]

WHAT is even the point of mind controlling a hero if it doesn't feel good. if you can't make them like it. if they don't learn to want it.

[thatforkedroad]

the handmaidens are SUCH a cool concept to explore when you don't have someone in your ear telling you they're padmé's gal-pals

[thatforkedroad]

seeing mon and kleya’s thrilling escapes from coruscant makes leia’s first reaction to luke and han even funnier. leia must’ve heard about these highly skilled rebels but then when she gets captured, she gets a hillbilly farmboy and an idiot smuggler to rescue her

[thatforkedroad]

luke skywalker in the context of andor is sooooo. smiley insane overpowered teenager from the middle of fucking nowhere shows up at the eleventh hour No credentials No connections No resumé just happened to somehow rescue alderaanian senator leia organa from the death star with an absolutely braindead gambit in which he just. pretended to be a stormtrooper, with a wookiee in tow. then he gets in an X-wing for the first time ever, turns off the targeting computer, and blows up the greatest weapon the empire has ever created with one fuckoff impossible shot. meanwhile all these rebels who have spent years, their entire lives, existing in fear and deprivation and exile, painstakingly building this movement with their bare hands, paying in blood and sweat and tears, so far removed from the world of the jedi that the knights and the force are just stories now, to most of them -- these brave exhausted souls who know that no one person can stand against the empire, that it takes community, it takes trust, it takes you and the guy standing next to you -- find themselves watching essentially the rebirth of a mythological protector, in the form of a guy who's probably not legally old enough to drink, who sulks like a teenager whenever notorious smuggler han solo doesn't pay attention to him, who follows biggs around like a puppy, who falls for literally every prank anyone ever plays on him. and this idiot kid is the first person in a generation who can stand up to the empire, all alone, and make a difference. how much must they hate him and how much must they love him and how much must they fear losing him.

[thatforkedroad]

Have said it thousands of times but gonna say it again, i think is insane that there's no questions asked about Luke forgiving/ sparing/loving Vader, he's just a sunshine, he just loves his dad, he's just heroic, he's sweet and a beacon of light, reaching for Vader who's actively evil and has killed countless is just inspiring and awesome.

But we have to psychoanalyze Padme to the end of hell and back and make disclaimers and make sure you repeatedly state you don't defend domestic violence. Luke is sunshine and perfect but Padmé: she's a woman and she's insane, she ignores red flags, she's like Bella, she's a proto tradwife, she's a Bad Character, she doesn't make sense, she was badly written, she has internalized misogyny, she was blind, she was stupid and weak for being in love, she should have murdered him, she's clearly dumb because she should have gotten with Obi-Wan, she was written by men and it shows because she chose Anakin, she's this and that. Anakin had to use mind control on her. She had Stockholm Syndrome. She would have allowed Anakin to abuse their twins. She should have ran away with a girl, she had 13 handmaidens to chose from. Her neurons were fried. She romanticizes abuse/toxic relationships. It would be more interesting if it was a darker ship and she was abused and had no say on it. She's a bad mother. She's an enabler. She should have cared more about her job. She should have led the rebellion and fight against Vader. Leia would hate her. Her hair is stupid. She wears dresses.

[thatforkedroad]

I’m sure other people have talked about this more at length and know more than me but I would like to see a true-life rendition of the Middle Ages and Renaissance where gay marriage is on the table.

Because it actually is very diplomatically useful! One thing you want as a member of the ruling class is children to 1) inherit your lands and titles and 2) to make alliances with other rulers. However, there are many cases where marriages made for alliances resulted in children that disrupt the line of succession or planned inheritance (differently under primogeniture than under split systems). (See Henry VI)

If rich people in that time weren’t pretty solidly convinced that marriages were solely between one man and one woman, they could have had the benefit of alliance without the muddling of the inheritance tree.

A lot of wealthy young men and women, even members of the ruling class, were committed to the church partially (there are a host of other reasons) to avoid their offspring making competition for their siblings (this was largely centered around gender, too, in eras where women came after their brothers in succession). (See Queen* Matilda) A child living as a member of the church can do you some favors, but arguably so can a child in a guaranteed-childless marriage.

And then there’s sooooo much diplomacy required to feel out this stuff. If you offer a childless marriage to another ruler who NEEDS descendants, he’s going to take offense, whereas if the marriage seems like your own family grabbing for his power via succession, he might prefer a childless one. Think of how courting and arranged marriages would be handled differently, and the amount of intrigue required.

Oh, the third son stood to inherit little, and was betrothed to a man, but then his elder brothers die and he is suddenly in need of an heir? Alas! Whatever shall he do!

Oh, the most eligible bachelorette in the land is seeking male OR female suitors… how interesting… I wonder why her father has arranged it so…

Oh, the lord chose to marry another man for love and lo and behold! This man hath conceived, and his family confirms that he in his childhood bore a girl’s countenance and bearing!

[thatforkedroad]

One thing I’d like to see in SW media is the presence of more fully adult padawans. Obi-Wan was 25-26 in TPM and nowhere is this implied that it is abnormal. In AOTC, Anakin is 20 and mentions that he wouldn’t be the youngest to take the trials successfully, implying that taking the trials at his age isn’t exactly common. But sometimes it feels like being elevated to knighthood is presented like graduating from high school or something. I like the idea of an extended apprenticeship not just to make sure a Jedi is “good at the Force” or whatever, but to make sure they’re able to prove an ongoing, steadfast commitment before they devote their whole life to the order. It also gives them plenty of time to decide if they want to leave to get married or do something else with their life. It shouldn’t just be about raw power.

It still kind of annoys me that the actress who played Barriss in AOTC was about 24 at the time but the writers chose to age her character down to a teenager for TCW (Not to mention other annoying things about what they did to her character but that’s a digression).

[thatforkedroad]

Even if Anakin was never found by Qui-Gon, remained as a slave, stayed on Tatooine, etc etc… none of Palpatine's plans relied on him.

Palpatine was already senator of Naboo and had manipulated (if not outright caused) the situation between the Trade Federation and Naboo before he ever met Anakin. The Sith were already at the heart of the Republic.

[thatforkedroad]

Obsessed with the portrayal of the Force in Andor leading up to Rogue One. Like it's not all action and coolness and lightsabers. For the average person it's just... uncomfortable? Piercing? Unsettling? An encounter with a stranger who knows too much about you? The Force actually feels mystic and vast when that Yavin healer speaks. Really shows how the rest of the galaxy at large, trillions of people who are unfamiliar with it, deals with its power outside of the very, very few who get to be Jedi. It's so cool and interesting!!

[thatforkedroad]

i think theres a deep uncanniness to luke skywalker. i think that even before he was trained there was just this eeriness about him. maybe sometimes the sand would part for him to walk through. maybe sometimes he pulled off maneuvers that were physically impossible or survived crashes unscathed when they shouldve killed him. maybe sometimes hed answer questions before you asked or look into your eyes and read your soul. maybe sometimes hed glow brighter than the suns and singe the air around him. maybe hed make the hairs on your neck stand up. maybe his smile would melt and the primal part of your brain would start screaming that youve just awoken a predator.

the skywalkers are all incredibly powerful but unlike most force sensitives they arent going to lose their strength if theyre untrained because the force is literally Part Of Them. i think if left alone it would fester in little moments that leave you unnerved, make you want to keep your distance. but at the same time theyre so good and captivating that you cant help but want to be closer

[thatforkedroad]

do you think the birth families of the jedi mourned when they heard the news about order 66. do you think they worried and that they weeped when the clone wars began and they heard that their children were going off to fight in it. do you think they looked at their calendars and kept track of how old their children had become every birthday. do you think they knew that their child was only 10 when they were murdered during order 66. do you think any jedi went out to find their birth parents after losing the only family they really knew. do you think any families sheltered other escaping jedi, knowing what likely happened to their own. do you think the families cried. do you think they mourned. do you think, even though they hadn't seen their children in years... they still weeped?

[thatforkedroad]

could this mean that I'm coming home

summary: Luke Skywalker’s relationships with other Jedi as he builds his new order and academy.

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It takes some time for the festivities on Endor and in the wider galaxy to fizzle down, and even longer still for anything to even slightly settle long enough for both of them to rest. There’s always some new problem arising, some new political drama or skirmish with remnants who don’t take the Emperor’s death well or don’t believe in it at all. But Luke and Leia have always been good at adapting and they always manage to squeeze time to talk to each other, whether it’s in the corner of a peace gala or in a dropship headed to the frontlines. 

For those first few weeks, their conversations always seem to circle back around to the fact that they’re twins, and what this means for them both.  In some ways, there’s not a lot to discuss; their bond goes deeper than blood or friendship, it runs through the songs of the Force, stronger than anything Luke has ever felt.  One night, they spend hours comparing and trying to work out what was coincidence and what were actually latent Force abilities. They talk about childhood dreams of each other’s planets and how — despite both losing all they had once called home only hours before and the imminent threat — everything just felt right when they reunited on the Death Star. Like a small part of them had been missing until then, tied by invisible string to something very far away. 

Outside of it connecting her to new twin, Leia does not seem interested in the Force. She listens intently when he tells her what he knows of the Force, but Leia has never wanted to be a Jedi. She is a politician, like the mother and father who raised her were. She spends her busy days on Coruscant and Chandrila and wherever else she’s required to go to build the fractured Republic her parents tried to save. She finds as much time as she can for him , but she finds time inside of that only to learn the basics of Jedi training, nothing more.  

Luke understands. It’s alright. He’s sure more Jedi will resurface soon, now the Empire has been defeated. It’s just a matter of time...

>> READ THE REST ON AO3

[thatforkedroad]

that era in vader's life immediately after rots where he's still fresh to the 'borg life and also in his early 20s is seriously so fascinating. like, mustafar was this big, identity destroying trauma for him which his already turbofucked scrambled egg brain couldn't cope with and this is precisely why he then spends the rest of his life trying to simultaneously punish himself for what he did and distance himself from the core of who he was, as a person. a completely normal self-contradictory loop of mental agony every college dropout has experienced at least once, really. and i think none of the traits he has in his vader years are new, exactly, just amplified bc the thing that IS new is his commitment to 100% knowingly getting worse and worse while still somehow finding some reason to keep on going. like, he wakes up on that table without wife, baby, friends, limbs, lungs and most of his skin and with the kind of fragile grasp on sanity that already led him from being an expectant father laughing at sex jokes and into this exact situation hes currently in. the process of rebuild after all of this wasn't shown bc you can guess the gist of it but im fascinated by it anyway. bc on one hand you have this delusional, semi-blank page of a person looking for some kind of suggestion on how to keep on being while understanding he's the worst and that his life is effectively over. and then on the other hand you have evil incarnate specifically in charge of teaching him the ways of existing as a perfect evil henchman. in my very humble opinion, this was actually the single most vulnerable period in anakin's life because he was mentally and physically fucked and completely devoid of hope and he spent it alone with palpatine. vader to me is an amalgamation of his own existing personality (in its worst traits anyway) and a series of deeply conditioned beliefs and responses and i feel like this is where they come from. like, the stuff palpatine told him in that time was soo important and its fascinating to think about what exactly it was and how it affected him. i WANT to see the evil therapy. if vader was still capable of things such as eating, palpatine would be offering candy while preaching the therapeutic powers of murder but alas, he has to reach the same effect by alluding to the times he USED to give anakin candy (not as common as he implies) despite obi-wan hating it (exaggerated) or the time he got him a toy ship model for space christmas (obi-wan actually got it for him) and the jedi forbade it (never happened). & vader w his confused sense of identity is not in the headspace to think abt any of this so he just accepts it

[thatforkedroad]

When did the Jedi lose their way?

A notion put forward by Tales of the Jedi and The Acolyte is the idea that the Jedi were losing their way, as an Order, by letting themselves become more institutionalized and mired in bureaucracy.

Is that the intended narrative? Nope!

Because here's the thing, Lucas acknowledges the fact that the Jedi start to be corrupted, at some point. But if you ask him, that happens as a consequences of being used as generals during the Clone Wars.

(note the keywords "used" and "forced"... aka they didn't willingly join the war, they were drafted by the Senate to fight in it, see here for more research & quotes)

But during The Phantom Menace? The Jedi are in their heyday.

"You see the heyday of the Jedi, when they are the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, sort of like the old marshals out West. And there's thousands of them." - Vanity Fair, 1999

Their only fault is that:

the Senate is their boss and the Senate is corrupted af which limits their mandate greatly (so not really the Jedi's fault, but it does make their hands tied)

they're oblivious to the Sith's scheme.

This notion that "they were so institutionalized/detached from the regular Joes of the galaxy that they became dispassionate and lost their way, forgot about the little guy" is absolute headcanon from fans and current authors. Lucas never brings it up once.

On the contrary, during development, he and concept artists took measures to make them look less institutionalized and heartless.

The Jedi temple isn't meant to signify an ivory tower, it represents a place of warmth/worship that contrasts with the coldness dispassion of the Senate building.

The Jedi used to wear uniforms, it was softened to a humble tunic.

Because the intended narrative is that the Republic (including the Jedi) and Anakin's downfall are paralleled with Palpatine's rise to power. There is a direct correlation, both in-universe and thematically.

As Palpatine becomes Emperor, the Republic dies under thunderous applause while the Jedi get slaughtered, and Anakin becomes Darth Vader.

As Palpatine gets emergency powers, the Republic weakens because of the war, the Jedi's values are foregone and Anakin is put in situations where he fails to uphold the Jedi teachings, over and over.

And it all starts when Palpatine becomes Chancellor after pushing out Finis Valorum, marking the end of age of a time of value.

(Get it? Finis Valorum? "Finis", latin for "end", "Valorem", latin for "value" puns are fun!)

[thatforkedroad]

i remain obsessed with the actual scene where anakin becomes darth vader. no one tells anakin to kneel to palpatine, he does it himself, and he swears that he will do anything palpatine asks - he pledges himself to palpatine, and the first thing he does as a sith lord is the only thing he ever really does as a sith lord, which is get off his feet and do what he’s told. no one tells anakin to immediately start referring to palpatine as his master, as “my master” even, there’s no existing sith protocol or etiquette that anakin would know about; anakin does all of that of his own accord. it seems, on paper, like a massively sudden change in attitude when anakin’s been treating palpatine like his family, like his father, for over a decade, but i just think it’s indicative of exactly how much anakin believes he’s supposed to defer to authority, even if he considers that authority family, even if he loves that authority. especially, actually, if he loves that authority.

the only other person who hears “i will do anything you ask” from anakin is padme. and she doesn’t buy into that, she doesn’t let that anakin do that, but if she had - if she’d been willing to leverage anakin like that - he would’ve followed her the same way he follows palpatine. he actively tries to do that, on mustafar, where he essentially offers her the galaxy so he can follow her instead of palpatine. i think it’s indicative of the fact that, on some level, anakin always believed that this is what people expect from him, and all his raging against the council - who are, largely, a benevolent force - is because he’s refusing to do that, because for a lot of reasons, the council (and by extension, obi-wan) never meet anakin’s internal set of criteria for it. i just think it’s majorly fucked up how quickly anakin takes to being subservient to palpatine, and the fact that it’s probably because to anakin, there isn’t a huge difference between loving someone and being willing to sell your soul to someone, and by “not a huge difference” i may as well say he probably considers them damn near the same thing.

[thatforkedroad]

ruminating on vader further: i think after all these years of Total Cultural Dominance and of course the immense sympathy the prequel trilogy bathes him in, it's easy to overlook how terrified the original trilogy is of vader. he spends very little time as a character and much more as this creeping manifestation of everything our heroes dread. where there's dark, there's vader. where there's violence, there's vader. multiple shots position him against the vastness of space, almost blending into it, just this omnipresent demon. the jedi's plan is to get luke to kill him. that is all. obi-wan and yoda have spent ~2 decades of their lives hoping and praying and aspiring to getting luke to kill him. luke loving vader and bringing him to the light isn’t something they can even entertain, and they think any attempt will only lead to more darkness. it is the ultimate, near-supernatural feat for luke to do so. and even then, vader is in the light for about five minutes and dies in agony. it's why i can't take a lot of posts these days that fret over anakin being possessive or angry or people liking anakin seriously. like first of all, he is the greatest and most famous bottomless pit of misery in american cinema, no amount of anakin blogging will undo that, and he's not real. second of all, star wars works best when it's about this tension between vader as something unspeakable and evil, and vader as a real person that does love and has been loved in return. it's just what's like to have a dad, really,