Tumblr crosspost (23 July 2020)

[anghraine]

ronear on Tumblr sent an ask:

Do you you still take Star war prompt? Anakin is the son of the Force. Which can be considered some sort of powerful eldritch entity. So the Skywalkers are one too. Including all those disturbing and horrifying things that come with them.

I replied:

I’m always happy to talk about SW!

I would say that there are a lot of ways to interpret Anakin’s exact relationship to the Force/conception, and it’s possible to fairly interpret it differently. I mean, I think things like “Shmi was lying” are taking the cheap way out, but other than that.

Personally, I do headcanon that Anakin is effectively the son of the Force and that it creates a slightly … off strain in him and his descendants. (I recently-ish wrote this into a fic!) I also headcanon that this was part of why Padmé was so drained by her pregnancy.

That said, I don’t see the Force as a negative power in the universe overall, so I don’t think it makes them act in disturbing and horrifying ways (Exhibit A: Leia), though it’s one of the many factors at play in their heads (it’s not like Leia is wholly normal).

Comments

[slashmarks]

I wouldn't play "Shmi was lying" as serious meta or as an answer to what it means for the Force to 'father' a child, but I do think it has some potential as an AU lever into the fucked up dynamics of Qui-Gon gambling for a slave kid on the basis of his Force sensitivity to take away to the Jedi. Like, if you take "Shmi was lying to try to get the Jedi to see her son as valuable" as the starting point for an AU, at what point does Anakin find out about the lie, and the prophecy Qui-Gon assumed he answered because of it? How often does he have to *keep* lying? Did he know his father, or know *about* his father, and who was he? How does he relate to the prophecy for the rest of his childhood, 'knowing' that he isn't really the prophesied child but that he is free in part because the Jedi think otherwise? Etc.

[anghraine]

I do think the dynamics with Qui-Gon are very fucked up, and I agree ... theoretically, I think, that a fic could effectively use the premise in that way. But just speaking personally, that kind of drastic undercutting of the apparent narrative is something I find intensely irritating and which always feels a bit like cheating to me, even when I don't like the aspect of the narrative being undercut. So it could be done, and done well, but I still wouldn't like it.

[slashmarks]

Fair enough! My own fault for free associating off something you said you didn't like, lol.

[anghraine]

No problem!