Chat corner 28: All Saints Day

[annathecrow]

Welcome to this week’s chat corner!

Optional prompt

In my corner of the world it’s All Saints Day today, so I thought I’d diverge from our regular scheduled programming a little.

We celebrate All Saints by a somber rememberance of the dead. We go clean the graves, light up candles; the weather is almost always dreary, for peak melancholy mood.

So, for this week, I propose talking about the dead and gone of Star Wars. Interpret as you will. Maybe there’s a character death that stayed with you, either because it was poignant or because it enraged you so much. Maybe there’s a character lost to the canon reset that you don’t expect ever getting back into canon.

And maybe the people you miss aren’t imaginary. Family. Friends, even the ones who are still alive, just not friends anymore. Or hey, maybe you miss Carrie Fisher.

Lets light a candle.🕯️

Comments

[annathecrow]

*raises hand* I miss Carrie Fisher. Yeah, parasocial relationships and performative grief, but I've read Wishful Drinking and I think she was a person who got so much crap from life, and still somehow managed to live through it and be kind, and... yeah.

As for characters, I'm still pissy about the Prequels and that Anakin Skywalker had to have two(!) women die for his angst. That's not a reasonable number!

The story death that enraged me the most was Etain Tur-mukhan. I haven't even read the passage, just the fact that she'd been killed off for Skirata to angst over...! BLARGH.

The death that hit me the most...Luke in TLJ, I think. I have Issues with the Sequels, but this, especially the scene between him and Leia, was really well done. I think I actually cried in the cinema.

The death(s) that are currently with me are the Padawan pack from the Star Wars comics. It's... nothing I've seen in TCW managed to drive home how pointless the Clone Wars were as seeing those kids die in some nonsensical proxy war that the Republic abandoned in the end. It's a Vietnam War copy, sure, but it WORKS. I desperately want to write a fix-it, but at the same time I don't because it feels like disrespecting the story.

[kittywhite]

Agreed on Luke, he was handled so poorly and out of character by the new movies but damn it he was my childhood hero T-T

And yeah Star Wars has issues with derailing female characters stories to advance the men’s, sometimes they are “lucky” enough to live but will be severely neutered and forced into the wife/mother role. So many awesome women who could have gone on to do cool things but nup gotta pop out a baby or be in a love triangle *sigh*

[fleurviolette]

It’s okay to feel grief. Carrie inspired a lot of people.

[kittywhite]

My most regretted death was that of Jacen Solo in the novel series Legacy of the Force. We followed Jacen from being an awkward kid who loved animals and told corny jokes to a young man who had questions about the nature of the Force and his relationship to it...to a Sith Lord who gets murdered by his twin sister. Yes we had a whole series to try to explain it and a awkward trilogy with bug sex beforehand (seriously Dark Nest was weird as) but they also had to massacre my beloved Vergere by retconning her as a Sith to even try to make his fall to the darkside believable. It’s been years since I read “Invincible” but I’m still mad :(

(Vergere is my pick for never coming back in canon too, she’s kinda a proto-Kreia. Basically she believes that the Force is neutral and that any darkness comes from within yourself not the external boogyman Dark Side, blew my mind as a teen when she first said that during “Traitor”)

[sathari]

Basically she believes that the Force is neutral and that any darkness comes from within yourself not the external boogyman Dark Side,

*squeaks* That was ever a thing in canon?!?!?!!? I've had variations on that theme as my headcanon for a good long while now, but hearing that it made it into the EU, even Legends, just makes me happy. Thank you so much for sharing, you've made my entire day.

[kittywhite]

You are very welcome :)
This concept was known as “The Unifying Force” and we were all very disappointed when the later writers of the old EU decided to not continue to explore it.
There was backstage drama about the direction the later Legends series would take between authors and they decided to explain it as “lol crazy bird lady was a Sith and Jacen went bad by listening to her”.

[sathari]

:D :D :D :D I love "The Unifying Force" idea. And, ugh, for a beloved character and a really clever and interesting concept getting butchered in canon. But it's definitely my headcanon now!

[annathecrow]

See, this is why I need to check out more of EU/Legends: this all sounds really interesting (albeit enraging). All I know of Jacen is that he's the Evil Twin.

I'm in the middle of KOTOR II, so "proto-Kreia" made me go 👀. I might go and crawl Wkp about Vergere once I'm done with the game.

[fleurviolette]

Padme’s death was sad, and imo, out of character for her. Was she devastated and heartbroken by Anakin’s betrayal and return? Absolutely! But she would have stayed alive for her kids and fought for the rebellion that she founded.

I imagine she went into hiding as one of queen breha’s handmaidens, as well as Leia’s nanny and tutor. She also become one of the early spies until she sacrificed herself to save others.

That way, Leia would have had early tangible memories of Padme.

[extrapenguin]

Your headcanon about her going into hiding makes much more sense than the movie! Watching it, I ended up wishing that if she had to Die For Her Man (blergh), she could've at least done so trying to rescue him (or what she thought would be his corpse) from Palpatine's clutches or something. Or have her undergo a noble sacrifice to save the sparking rebellion. I'm still mad about the amount of character assassination RotS did of her.

[fleurviolette]

Thank you! Yes agreed. I didn’t like how she was reduced and killed off right at the end of RotS. I can see that there was definitely some room for her in the early Empire days, particularly if she passes on her legacy to Leia. That would have been a good set up for Leia and a bridge between the PT and the OT.

Meanwhile, I wished in the movie canon, that Luke remembers Padme. I also imagine that Padme would have sent secret coded flimsis to a trusted rebel courier to send to Tatooine. Only Aunt Beru knows how to decode her messages and respond back. that way, Padme will know how Luke is doing.

Also I imagine Padme being family oriented, she would keep either Luke and Leia with her or send Luke to her family to take in as their own. The latter would set up an interesting au if Luke was raised as a Naberrie in Naboo.

[primeideal]

At the risk of tangenting, All Saints' Day has some of the coolest hymns! Hope the celebration is a meaningful one. :)

[annathecrow]

Hmm, I ought to look some up, I don't think I've ever heard one! I'm only culturally Christian, not religious, so my experience is sort of spotty :D

[primeideal]

"For All The Saints" is probably the best-known and most popular one. I also like one called "Sing With All The Saints In Glory."

And I recently learned a song (more targeted at younger kids) called "I Sing A Song Of The Saints Of God" which is a little too over-the-top cutesy for me, but just in terms of the weird specificity of the language used it makes a nice change of pace. :p

[sathari]

Carrie Fisher's death was a gut-punch for me, NGL. Especially when it happened. And then Leia's death--- I wish they could have done that at the end of TLJ--- maybe even have Luke and Leia argue about whether Ben can be saved, with Leia taking her son's side, and then Leia reaches out to Ben in the throne room as he's making his sales pitch to Rey. (And then I get a whole movie with Ben Solo in the Resistance, although I think I'm the only one on this comm who wants that.)

Speaking of whom, I'm committed to my theory that Ben Solo is spending his afterlife as Rey's on-demand astral booty call/cuddle-partner, so I can deal with his death.

I don't like the particulars of Padme's death... but for whatever reason, somehow the makeup artists/lighting people managed to make her look exactly like the picture of "textbook hyperthyroid condition" that's been hanging somewhere in every endocrinologist's office I've ever been in, and hyperthyroid "stuff" is one of the things associated with pregnancy complications/high-risk pregnancy, and to top it all off, since Padme was trying to keep the pregnancy secret, she was probably not getting the medical care she needed, so it could have gone undetected. (It also causes mood/affect symptoms--- this explains to me part of why Padme the practiced politician did not do a better job of talking her Sithlord husband right into the Rebel Alliance--- the greater part is the Obi-wan stuck his nose into their marital difficulties where it didn't belong.) So that's what killed her, in my book, not this "lost the will to live" nonsense--- her body was just overclocked, and the whole horrific shock, fight with her husband, Force-choking, going into labor thing was the last straw. (I have to admit that I do kind of like that Anakin's whole schtick was being willing to effectively commit heresy to save his wife from dying in childbirth, because I know some Catholic women who wouldn't use Catholic hospitals for childbirth because they won't save a pregnant woman's life at the expense of the fetus. So "dude who sacrifices his immortal soul in the cause of trying to save his wife from dying of the child he'd fathered on her" is a feature, not a bug to me. ;) )

[annathecrow]

You know what, the "Padmé had actual medical condition that killed her" would be way more palatable to me than what the movie did. Sometimes I kinda want to write a fic where she dies a realistic childbirth death, something a bit gruesome even - I won't, because wtf me, but the nice and sanitized death with genteel pronouncement of how Anakin is still good just enrages me unreasonably.

[sathari]

Yeah... I mean, I actually like that death in childbirth is almost treated seriously in this movie. Like, the fact that it's not necessarily a low-risk proposition. Also, I would totally read the "Padme's death in childbirth is treated with some realism--- or at least as much gore and body horror as Vaderkin's insertion into the suit is even if it's equally canon-typical space-opera medicine". But then, I've periodically contemplated sitting down and doing the "Padme's developing pregnancy-related hyperthyroid issues and refusing to see a doctor because secrecy" fic at least somewhat. (The challenge is doing research that accurately reflects a medical issue that someone's not seeing a doctor for, because most of the decent websites with reference material are, of course, on people who have gotten their medical issues treated.)

[extrapenguin]

Poignant Deaths
I would list Ahsoka's death in Rebels here, but that was a complete fakeout, so it doesn't go here. Unfortunately. (I think it would've been a very large gutpunch! I can see why they didn't – they wanted to keep her in reserve for EU stuff – but it would've fit.)

For actual deaths, however, we have Darth Marr in Star Wars: the Old Republic. For years, he's served the Sith Emperor Vitiate; however, Vitiate gets defeated by a Jedi and temporarily disembodied. Marr is left to pick up the pieces. Later, Vitiate returns and consumes all the life force of a planet from his Empire, reducing all the people and animals and plants to ash. Then a new power emerges from the galaxy's edge, destroying everything in its wake. Darth Marr is one of the people captured and brought before its leader – who is none other than Vitiate wearing a new body. We then get this hero of the Empire, a Sith Lord whose face we never see as he's wearing a suit of armor, say to the man he once venerated as a god: "Never again will I kneel to you!"

(It probably loses a bit having it all explained, but it was great. Marr, in grand Star Wars tradition, checked in a few times as a Force ghost, but the death stuck and I think he's currently one with the Force properly.)

Enraging Deaths
People have already mentioned Padmé and Shmi (though with Shmi, what most enrages me is TPM, actually – it would've been so easy to have her say Anakin had a brother who was sold separately and now that they're both free she's sending Anakin with the Jedi and staying on Tatooine herself to find her other child! This would fix a bunch of plot holes WRT no-one caring enough to come back for her, Anakin included, as well as Obi-Wan knowing the Larses existed, since I don't see Anakin ever mentioning them in canon) so I'm going to continue with my SWTOR roll and say Darth Acina. She took over the Sith Empire after Marr's death and ran it well! Then a new expansion came and players were given a choice between allying with one and killing the other of a Republic general and Acina, Empress of the Sith. Never mind that based on her previous characterization, Acina would never have made the choices that led to her death. What makes matters worse is that they did have a few other Imperial characters they could've used in her stead, like the guy who inherits her throne in the worldstates where she's dead.