Wow. I want to add actual useful thoughts to this. But you have covered all the high points so completely that there is nothing useful to add. So instead, you get me wandering around in some side points.
- TOTAL side point is that I would give BODY PARTS for ALL THE REDEEMED ANAKIN LIVES FIC EVER. For, as you say, him and the galaxy having to deal with each other and with everything he's done. I wanted this like burning even before TFA. And now I want it EVEN MORE because BEN. Ben STILL IDOLIZING his grandfather TO BITS except Anakin (Vaderkin; let me tell you ALL MY HEADCANON about him ACTUALLY BALANCING THE FORCE and being able to use BOTH LIGHT AND DARK as the situation warrants and the dance of balance is HARD AS HELL but this is VADER) is there and a real person to love and look up to and respond to him, and maybe when Leia's worried about Ben turning Dark, he goes to his grandfather instead of (or maybe after a little while with) his uncle. And Anakin is a much better mentor for him, but more chill in some places and more strict in others, and maybe does teach him to use the Force in balance (oh, man, and Anakin and Luke having all the father-son friendly-family debates about the Light and Dark and balance) and Ben is just a much saner person all the way around. (Ugh, let me roll around in this universe for a while.)
2) ALL THE ZUKO ARC FOR BEN PLS. (I do not even follow ATLA but if that's fandom's name for it, I'm down.) I WANT the complications of "what do we do with General Organa's war-criminal offspring who's also potentially useful?" I WANT everyone having FEELS and Ben being woebegone and try-hard as he does. I JUST WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANT. (Okay, I ALSO want ~all the Skywalker cousinsmishes~ because Rey SKYWALKER (DAMMIT) knows about feeling lonely and abandoned and unloved (look, I have headcanon that their ~worst childhood memory~ is practically a mirror image: hers is the ship blasting off and leaving her on Jakku... his is the Falcon blasting off and leaving him with Luke) and... like, that is never erasing every horrible thing that Ben did, but on the other hand she knows, and, hell, she was willing to stay on this terrible junkheap of a planet because ~family~ (and, you know, she didn't know who her family WAS, they could be slave traders or Black Sun or whatever awful thing, but she was waiting for them and she wanted to be with them even not knowing and I think she's self-aware enough to know that about herself--- her family could be awful people but they're HER awful people and as long as they come for her and love her she'll love them right back and never mind this abandonment business, either, or at least SHE THINKS SO). And she would just feel that at Ben. And possibly be all snuggly and determinedly smishy with him, which would secretly delight him even if he'd make token protests before settling into being her human stuffed Wookiee, in the best tradition of Skywalker family quasi-incest snuggles. Because both of them are touchstarved on top of everything else.
3) OH FORCE THE BRAINWASHING IDEA. I... would like it in any universe but this one, honestly, and for a reason I think you will appreciate: I feel like it kind of undermines this being ALL ABOUT THE SKYWALKERS. Though it does seem that canon is giving Snoke more credit/blame than I want; I could handwave Leia's line about "It was Snoke" being her still not being fully up to dealing with how it was ~insert various family stuff of choice here, I just finished writing 20k of my headcanon about this so I have definite ideas but YMMV~, but apparently the novelization (which I haven't gotten round to reading yet, too busy letting a wee Ben Solo Organa angst his little emowoobie heart out at me over the keyboard) has Snoke having been going after Ben since, like, birth, so, yeah. (And Leia shielding him. Which is ALL MY HEADCANON about how Leia's natural/instinctive Force shields are THE STRONGEST in the history of EVER, and that's how she was right there under the emperor and Vader's noses all that time and Vader never even blinked.)
Also, AGREE COMPLETELY with "Ben has to convince himself that this is what he wants, because he doesn't". My headcanon is less "brainwashing" and more "screwed up kid with a weird talent--- Force telepathy--- that a) is kind of screwing him up in itself and b) nobody else in his family shares or knows what to do with and who is desperate for validation and approval and Snoke carefully doles out dribs and drabs of that in just-sufficient measure that he stays clinging on for the next scrap". Which arguably is in fact a lesser version of hardcore brainwashing. (And also that those rages, especially the first one, are him TRYING SO HARD to feel the ~proper amount~ of ~Dark Side rage~, and not really being there with it--- I LOVE watching Adam Driver just CHANGE EVERY LINE OF HIS BODY LANGUAGE IN AN INSTANT, where he's going from this showy forced tantrum and then the officer mentions "a girl" and suddenly he's THERE, there is SERIOUS EMOTION in every line of him as he Force-grabs the guy. He's gone from phony try-hard to VERY VERY REAL in a heartbeat and it's AMAZING.)
Okay, I think I have tangented at you enough, lol. OH! But you are also making me VERY GLAD not to be on Tumblr, just sayin'.
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ninetydegrees
no subject
on 2016-01-08 08:46 am (UTC)- TOTAL side point is that I would give BODY PARTS for ALL THE REDEEMED ANAKIN LIVES FIC EVER. For, as you say, him and the galaxy having to deal with each other and with everything he's done. I wanted this like burning even before TFA. And now I want it EVEN MORE because BEN. Ben STILL IDOLIZING his grandfather TO BITS except Anakin (Vaderkin; let me tell you ALL MY HEADCANON about him ACTUALLY BALANCING THE FORCE and being able to use BOTH LIGHT AND DARK as the situation warrants and the dance of balance is HARD AS HELL but this is VADER) is there and a real person to love and look up to and respond to him, and maybe when Leia's worried about Ben turning Dark, he goes to his grandfather instead of (or maybe after a little while with) his uncle. And Anakin is a much better mentor for him, but more chill in some places and more strict in others, and maybe does teach him to use the Force in balance (oh, man, and Anakin and Luke having all the father-son friendly-family debates about the Light and Dark and balance) and Ben is just a much saner person all the way around. (Ugh, let me roll around in this universe for a while.)
2) ALL THE ZUKO ARC FOR BEN PLS. (I do not even follow ATLA but if that's fandom's name for it, I'm down.) I WANT the complications of "what do we do with General Organa's war-criminal offspring who's also potentially useful?" I WANT everyone having FEELS and Ben being woebegone and try-hard as he does. I JUST WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANT. (Okay, I ALSO want ~all the Skywalker cousinsmishes~ because Rey SKYWALKER (DAMMIT) knows about feeling lonely and abandoned and unloved (look, I have headcanon that their ~worst childhood memory~ is practically a mirror image: hers is the ship blasting off and leaving her on Jakku... his is the Falcon blasting off and leaving him with Luke) and... like, that is never erasing every horrible thing that Ben did, but on the other hand she knows, and, hell, she was willing to stay on this terrible junkheap of a planet because ~family~ (and, you know, she didn't know who her family WAS, they could be slave traders or Black Sun or whatever awful thing, but she was waiting for them and she wanted to be with them even not knowing and I think she's self-aware enough to know that about herself--- her family could be awful people but they're HER awful people and as long as they come for her and love her she'll love them right back and never mind this abandonment business, either, or at least SHE THINKS SO). And she would just feel that at Ben.
And possibly be all snuggly and determinedly smishy with him, which would secretly delight him even if he'd make token protests before settling into being her human stuffed Wookiee, in the best tradition of Skywalker family quasi-incest snuggles. Because both of them are touchstarved on top of everything else.3) OH FORCE THE BRAINWASHING IDEA. I... would like it in any universe but this one, honestly, and for a reason I think you will appreciate: I feel like it kind of undermines this being ALL ABOUT THE SKYWALKERS. Though it does seem that canon is giving Snoke more credit/blame than I want; I could handwave Leia's line about "It was Snoke" being her still not being fully up to dealing with how it was ~insert various family stuff of choice here, I just finished writing 20k of my headcanon about this so I have definite ideas but YMMV~, but apparently the novelization (which I haven't gotten round to reading yet, too busy letting a wee Ben Solo Organa angst his little emowoobie heart out at me over the keyboard) has Snoke having been going after Ben since, like, birth, so, yeah. (And Leia shielding him. Which is ALL MY HEADCANON about how Leia's natural/instinctive Force shields are THE STRONGEST in the history of EVER, and that's how she was right there under the emperor and Vader's noses all that time and Vader never even blinked.)
Also, AGREE COMPLETELY with "Ben has to convince himself that this is what he wants, because he doesn't". My headcanon is less "brainwashing" and more "screwed up kid with a weird talent--- Force telepathy--- that a) is kind of screwing him up in itself and b) nobody else in his family shares or knows what to do with and who is desperate for validation and approval and Snoke carefully doles out dribs and drabs of that in just-sufficient measure that he stays clinging on for the next scrap". Which arguably is in fact a lesser version of hardcore brainwashing. (And also that those rages, especially the first one, are him TRYING SO HARD to feel the ~proper amount~ of ~Dark Side rage~, and not really being there with it--- I LOVE watching Adam Driver just CHANGE EVERY LINE OF HIS BODY LANGUAGE IN AN INSTANT, where he's going from this showy forced tantrum and then the officer mentions "a girl" and suddenly he's THERE, there is SERIOUS EMOTION in every line of him as he Force-grabs the guy. He's gone from phony try-hard to VERY VERY REAL in a heartbeat and it's AMAZING.)
Okay, I think I have tangented at you enough, lol. OH! But you are also making me VERY GLAD not to be on Tumblr, just sayin'.