An American Werewolf in London (1981) dir. John Landis
i also think some of the major appeal of vader time travel AUs is the look on obi-wan's face when he realizes there is a permutation of anakin that gets even taller than anakin already is. i want to prioritize the look of incohate rage on obi-wan's face when he realizes that this variation of his little brothersonchildboy is nearly a foot taller than him. that fury is PRIMAL. he's living the horror of being outgrown all over again
like yes time travel AUs exist to make people feel horrible devastation about anakin's dark deeds... but also Shittier, Older Future Anakin dresses in his boss-mandated uniform that renders him a seven foot tall oubliette. i'm sure everyone has a lot of questions not only about anakin's taste but about where he's been hiding the extra half a spinal cord. it's not like anyone but vader and palpatine are aware that the answer was palpatine giggling like a madman with a hacksaw and artistic vision
ahsoka assumed because she was a togruta she would eventually get to throw all of anakin's short jokes about her right in his stupid yet strangely delicate for a one-man atom bomb face, but no; that motherfucker found a loophole. he's escaped the consequences of his actions yet again. the sibling seethery that she is doing.
not to commit the cardinal sin of Taking The Joke Too Seriously, but the general take on vader time travel AUs (which are a niche love of mine) is that people are disturbed and horrified by what anakin will become. and i’m not saying that they wouldn’t be, because obviously Shittier, Older Future Anakin is very evil and shitty, it’s just that i don’t think anyone would realize that their particular anakin is equally capable of that degree of carnage in just the same way. i don’t think just because a brand new sith oubliette shows up on the block and it’s Shockingly Revealed that he was once anakin skywalker (but that name has no meaning for him anymore, of course) that our ragtag band of heroes automatically assumes their anakin is capable of the same; a time traveling darth vader, to obi-wan, is a busted version of his best friendsonbrother, not something that his own anakin could ever actually become. (obi-wan, like most people who loved anakin, was super wrong about anakin’s capacity for incredible violence.)
the sanity xerox machine ran out of ink for vader in particular might well be the prevailing belief, especially given that every evil thing vader’s ever done ostensibly happened in a completely different timeline. those crimes only exist in vader’s mind at this point - spacetime has conveniently undone them, those younglings are still very much alive. he’s the only one who remembers exactly what he did. no one’s treating him like the slaughterer of all the jedi - he’s the only person who can say he did it, and i’m gonna be real, i don’t think vader appears particularly sane even on his best days. there’s a huge possibility that even if, like - if you invent enough reasons in the theoretical time travel story this takes place in for vader to try to confess to those crimes, predominantly as a warning like HEY THE UNIVERSE IS ABOUT TO END AND I DIDN’T LIKE WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THAT AND NEITHER WILL YOU, who would believe him? what jedi - prior to it actually happening in ROTS - would think this singular guy could walk into the jedi temple, a jedi stronghold for thousands of years, with a battalion and then kill them all and leave without so much as a scratch? before ROTS, that had to be unthinkable to any jedi. there would be a lot of fun to be had with toying with the dramatic irony of the only two people who have any sense of just how inevitable anakin’s dark deeds are being palpatine, and vader himself alone. but then the idea that no one else but them realizes what the stakes actually are in the first place, now that’s intriguing. because then - if vader wants to avoid his own tragic fate, which he generally does - the only person who can act on that (technically hindsight) foresight is the guy who burned it all down in the first place. and that’s just really fucking funny
was hunting for a detail in something i wrote to maintain Internal Consistency and found genuinely one of the most Paragraphs i have ever written.
someone once responded to a star wars post i'd made and said, "yeah, between that and his cocaine addiction, no wonder anakin was crazy," with such brazen confidence that i spent several hours trying to hunt down where this was addressed. i mean really and truly i gaslit myself into believing there had to be deleted scenes about this. no one is that confident about something that specific if they're wrong, right? incorrect, people are confident and wrong all the time. but because of the sheer hilarity i'm choosing to believe that anakin had snorted coke in every bathroom in the jedi temple before he was 22, and i'm going to gaslight everyone i know about this. that in fact happened. two deleted scenes about it.
one thing i love about vader's armor is its impassivity. the mask is opaque and completely expressionless, while vader underneath it is in some form of perpetual organ failure, hovering near septic shock, starving and ready to throw up at the same time, bleeding. gangrenous, etcetera. like you pull off his mask and he goes from a distant oubliette, impassive, to very wet, very pathetic, slightly gooey. i think part of the reason vader getting unmasked is so satisfying is because it's like ripping out the claws and teeth of a tiger. without the armor he's just wildly ill under there.
in star wars fandom how is everything about anakin's fall always everyone else's fault except the guy who personally designed it to be a no hit run of Sith Apprentice Generator IV
in addition to the vader time travel AUs that i entertain so lovingly, i am known to be a luke time travel AU enjoyer, but specifically because i think luke is woefully underprepared to deal with the fact that darth vader was bullied in high school. like everything luke knows about his father revolves around vader being a nearly unstoppable murder machine that answers seemingly exclusively to the emperor, and the revelation in ESB that vader has personal desires is kind of shocking because of who vader is; he’s like this domineering, malevolent force of nature. a time travel AU forces luke to encounter the soft, fleshy variation of his father, who is at best asocial and cries frequently and learned the Beep Beep language so he could talk to robots because he thinks robots are cool. i won’t lie, luke is kind of hot shit in the rebellion. he’s an ace pilot and a sorcerer and then later the only guy that ever dueled darth vader and escaped with his life, and luke is fairly good with people, even though he’s a little on the temperamental side from time to time - anakin would gravitate towards luke (unknowing of the temporal circumstances) for a lot of the same reasons he gravitates towards padme, and quite frankly luke is just not ready for a guy who responds to “how’s your day going?” with a melodramatic sigh and, “do you ever feel ashamed that the stars can see you?”
luke, sweating: uh, why do you… why do you feel ashamed that the stars can see you?
anakin: they are beautiful, far away and high above. do you not think they pity you? do you not think the stars see you and see something worth nothing at all?
luke, quietly: holy shit
Had a dream that I was going to band camp on the moon and to save fuel they had us leave our instruments and clothes behind and only use the camp uniforms and equipment. When we deboarded the space shuttle my middle school band teacher handed me a spacesuit and a box that looked exactly like a box of pasta with the little cellophane window, but instead of pasta there were very tiny woodwind pieces and it said BASSOON on it. "BASSOON: add water."
like this
Ok this is all fine and good but op why the hell were you marching a bassoon
I dunno, but I like how this was the most unreasonable part of the dream to you.
Oddly Specific Tarot: The Moose
Meaning: Unconquerable wrath. Natural disaster. Rage that can be neither contained nor reasoned with, only escaped. Large hostile ungulates.
Reversed: Canada.
Yesterday I made a cup of tea and sat down with A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske and ended up there for six hours devouring it cover to cover. Really, really enjoyed it; all the magic worldbuilding and familial dynamics were so well laid out and so gripping.
So I did a very, very loose Leyendecker study. Of… that one where one guy’s got a golf club and the other’s got a pipe. Couldn’t find a title for it but I’ll put it under the jump haha.
…realized after the fact that you’d think looking at this that Robin was the one with magic lol. No he’s just playing with his guidelight
If you want to write a dumb little story with a dumb little plot and ridiculously silly characters. No one's stopping you. Genuinely, no one should be allowed to stop you. Write that dumb story with your whole heart and don't hold back.
ok the dumb little story turned into a lot of work why does this always happen
brains. totally an inside job. you just can't trust those little grey fuckers. outline all you want, they will find a way to take a 7000 word short story and add 35,000 words of plot while you were sleeping.
Wringing my hands and rattling the bars of my cage over the writing for this show. They brought so much depth to to Cassian. His quick reactions and cold nature at the beginning of Rogue One make so much more sense when you see the unimaginable loss that he has suffered.
But what I’m stuck on, is that he spent his time in prison building the Death Star. What a cruel addition to his storyline. He’s already dead, but the writers said “you know what would be fucked beyond belief?” They really said his government name is Cassian Doomed-by-the-Narrative Andor
