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sheepfulsheepyardinspace · 3 days

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I love the love between padme and anakin (dysfunctional as it is, im a sucker for this all-consuming brand of obsession and love and devotion). But i can NOT for the life of me understand narratively, in terms of her character, what it was that makes padme feel that way.

Maybe it's my lack of star wars Lore Knowledge. it's so clearcut why anakin would be so attached to padme. idrk why she's the same way? i trust your understanding of the characters n also u actually seem to like padme as a character and care about her characterization,, so i am hopeful you'll have some insight pretty please

i don't think you're alone, i get some variation of this ask about once a month or so. george lucas doesn't really favor subtle storytelling; if the characters don't blatantly vomit their feelings at some point, or if we're not hit with the symbolic anvil, those feelings really don't make it into the narrative, and this kind of leaves padme's story, her internal feelings and life, kind of grounds for speculation. lucas never really bothers with one of the primary aspects of his story - padme's feelings about anakin - in any in-depth way, because, let's just be honest here, icky when women have feelings, you know? i'll explain what i see.

first, the thing that i think gets underplayed or left out weirdly often is that anakin and padme a) meet in the context of him being enslaved, and b) by the end of their time together in the first episode, anakin is directly responsible for helping her end the blockade of naboo. this is often overlooked as context for their relationship because everything prior to AOTC is discounted due to the fact that anakin is a child, however i think it's important to remember that this history would change padme's perspective on anakin enormously. padme's position in TPM is agonizing; she's a queen forced to abandon her people and beg a slow, corrupt system for any help she can get, and it doesn't work. the galactic structures in place to help her are glacially slow and don't care about the suffering of the people she's directly responsible for. in a situation where padme must feel almost entirely alone, this random kid who has nothing is kind to her.

anakin doesn't race in the boonta eve classic to free himself; he does it to help padme, qui-gon, and jar jar get off of tatooine. she watches people die horribly in violent explosions during the course of that race, knowing that this is a kid younger than she is (and she's incredibly young herself) with nothing to his name, not even his body. in a galaxy where the duly appointed leaders refuse to help her and alleviate the suffering of her people, this random nine year old does. in a galaxy where the senate as institution sits on its hands, anakin - with no training, experience, or skills - is critical to the end of the blockade. i can't emphasize enough that padme has been groomed into a political position, and her entire life has been about serving her people, and the suffering the blockade induced - i mean, there's mention of people being dragged into camps - would have affected her personally. we see glimpses of that in her anger, her determination, and in one of my literal favorite padme scenes ever, that time she's a really sulky fourteen year old and goes WELL THE QUEEN WOULDN'T LIKE THAT >:( at qui-gon while she's posing as a handmaiden. she's so cute, help.

the context they see each other again in AOTC isn't two near-strangers seeing each other again, it's padme seeing someone who, in a galaxy that seemed almost entirely against her, was in her corner. and not only in her corner, but was insanely vital to that effort. he helped her save a couple million people. it was a blockade of an entire planet. that would change how you think of someone; in the same way that anakin remembers padme for that quiet moment where she asked him if he missed his mother, padme remembers anakin as someone so willing to lay down his life to help her, he is actually casual about it. and as skeptical as she was (the queen wouldn't like that! god i love her!) he didn't fail her when seemingly everyone else did.

that's why i don't find it that unbelievable that padme would have a connection with him despite how unabashedly weird he is throughout AOTC. she has the best of assumptions. in such a context, anakin's unabashed weirdness - the fact that he argues with obi-wan, stammers about how pretty she is, babbles about how life is so unfair - becomes a kind of earnestness. padme lives a life where she's frequently lied to and is lying, and we see, at the very beginning of AOTC, the effect this deception has on her - corde dies in her arms, sobbing apologies for failing her. this is gutting, emotionally, and a critical piece of padme's mental landscape going into the rest of the film. critically, corde dies because she's posing as padme. it's a form of deception, although necessary. star wars also codes politics as being inherently shady; padme has, in fact, already been lied to and manipulated by palpatine. padme's life, as a person with power, is filled with people who will do anything to either crush it, take it, or exist close to it. in a life where these deceptions have such brutal consequences, anakin is genuine to the point of constantly embarrassing himself in front of her.

this is where i would argue that anakin's complete inability to be normal was the thing that actually mattered the most to padme, rather than being this roadblock she has to mentally overcome in order to take the plunge. everyone's been theorizing incorrectly about this the entire time. anakin, critically, does not get less weird; i think it's important that he demonstrably listens to her boundaries, like when she tells him to stop looking at her like that, he does. she initiates their kisses, not him. but he does very much go YOU'RE ASKING ME TO BE RATIONAL, AND THAT IS SOMETHING I KNOW I CANNOT DO!!!! he never loses that earnestness, to the point where i am convinced he actually has no idea how many social faux pas he's added to his social faux pas counter throughout the film. he has no idea he's being odd. he's just being anakin. but, again, earnestness is the point. anakin not lying to her is the point. this is what, to padme, would be new, and refreshing - her career is filled with profoundly good orators, people who have mastered manipulative speech, and this guy goes, "i don't like sand," and just leaves that on the table! no follow up. he just doesn't like sand, simple as.

there's another aspect of this; unfortunately for us all, anakin's doofus behavior is deeply funny. padme visibly enjoys it. he does stupid shit, like trying to surf on a space cow, and then fakes unconsciousness to mess with her. they have a goofy picnic where anakin's like i'm not teasing you but i'm also so teasing you. he uses the force to float a pear to show off. these are childish behaviors, but, critically, padme laughs at all of these. in every scene outside of anakin, padme is a deeply, deeply serious person - her voice is strict, her manner is strict, her manner isn't unkind but she isn't given to wanton joy. but in these scenes with anakin, at points she almost seems overwhelmed with humor - they literally frolic in a field of flowers. for padme, who just lost someone dear to her, whose life has become so stressful that it necessitates a wizard bodyguard, interacting with anakin must be a relief; he listens to her, says every thought in his damn head like a complete fool, and is fun to laugh with. with the background that he has with her - a tragic story she's deeply sympathetic towards, that he somehow overcame just when she needed it - and clear physical attraction (sorry, guys, "my, you've grown," is just as profoundly awkward as the beautiful for a senator bit, we just need to accept that) we're ready to light the theoretical match.

AOTC happens in the context of padme losing someone close to her because of their devotion to her, and bawling apologies to her with their literal last breath. AOTC is a movie where padme's guilt about that is the unspoken undercurrent; i truly think guilt burns her alive in this film, and when shmi, a woman who had opened her meager quarters to padme in the past, who explicitly suffered more because anakin went to specifically padme's aid, dies, i think padme's response is guilt. she is constantly in the position of being the person others are suffering for. (needless to say, anakin's actions in ROTS are the ultimate betrayal of padme in many ways.) the reason padme responds with empathy to anakin's confession is because she is currently living with the guilt of someone she loves dying because of her actions. i don't think she ever thinks anakin's actions were good or moral; i think padme believes it could never happen again, because there is simply no one else in the universe anakin loves more than his mother, and frankly, at that time, this was true. padme doesn't have foresight, and personally i think she's quick to discount her emotional importance to other people because her life simply doesn't allow for a lot of those personal connections - she doesn't know anakin will be similarly motivated to do some murders in her name, someday. we, the audience, project that onto her, assume that she should know that, but she doesn't and shouldn't.

this is why i also think padme's enthusiasm to go rescue obi-wan is as forceful as it is - anakin is all but confessing that he can't go save obi-wan because it would deviate from his current mission, but padme must be completely exhausted of people suffering in her name. she must be completely exhausted of simply being the witness. i think her emotions in AOTC build quietly into this tangled mess, and then geonosis, the fear of potentially losing anakin, too, really closes the deal on padme's end - she's officially willing to hold on no matter what, because anakin has proven to be special enough in her life that she wants to keep him in it. long story short padme is literally moronsexual.

#god husborth u are once again the biggest brained around #star wars #padme amidala #anidala #darth anakin #swpt #swtcw #sw meta #sw #padmé’s guilt complex is tragically under researched. our Q4 goals have not been reached and we need to invest more in this critical sector

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sheepfulsheepyardinspace · 5 days

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Does the way Padme and Shmi are discussed in fandom ever make you . . . uncomfortable? I feel like Padme gets bashed a lot (with positive media about her being dismissed because it makes her “too perfect”), while Shmi gets this weird treatment of held up as this paragon of virtue and morality in way that seems to deliberately ignored just how much her life fucking sucked and refuse to engage with the slavery issue at all. I think the canon writing for them can and should be criticized, but some of the fandom criticisms get to be just as problematic, IMHO. With Padme in particular, I get the sense a lot of the criticism doesn’t even stem from actual analysis of her character, but fans who are upset that it’s Anakin who she loves. I get the feeling that if her character remained precisely the same, but it were a different dude who she married, she wouldn’t get nearly as much criticism from certain segments of the fandom. Am I wrong on this one? What are your thoughts?

no i would agree! i do think it is weird. i think it's a combination of factors, primarily that these are female characters and people are always weirder about female characters for systemic reasons, and then, yeah, the inherent arms race of the Did Darth Vader Do Something Problematic Discourse. buckle in. this..... long.

luke and anakin are the main characters of the series, and by virtue of being the ones to carry the narrative, a lot of how you read star wars is dependent on how you read their stories, and how you read their interactions with each other. they carry a lot of the themes of the saga - it's not only their story, but they are the biggest players in it, and their stories are designed to reflect each others', to be mirrors, to tell the story of how evil can corrupt good, but evil is not absolute, and love is where it loses. for all that i've written literally hundreds of thousands of words about The Meaning Of Star Wars, it's not altogether that complicated a premise. i watch these movies the way i do because this is the story i see in it. because i see that kind of a story, that reflects on how i see everyone else in star wars.

if star wars is about how evil is inherently weak because unconditional love is always stronger, then the part of ANH where han chooses the rebellion over his life as a smuggler becomes about that. the part where leia says, "someone who loves you," becomes about that. when leia strangles jabba, it is about that. when leia comforts luke over the loss of obi-wan kenobi, the fact that luke even grieves a man he barely knew, it becomes about that very thing. the cheers and frantic hugging and bright, happy joy of the rebellion after luke destroys the death star becomes about that; the rebellion is cast as a large, loving group, united in their desire for something better, filled with people who love each other and are excited to succeed because they do. the climax of the series becomes about this very thing.

if the OT is about unconditional love and its ultimate, unstoppable power to level the playing field and destroy the root of all evil, the PT is about what can happen to that love in the face of tragedy people are ultimately helpless to stop. anakin is not capable of saving his mother. he wasn't capable as a child, and although he had the power as a jedi, through systemic forces and death itself, he never did. anakin is not capable of ending slavery as a child, and neither is he as a singular jedi knight. the things and causes that matter to him only eat him alive, because he can never act on them; the war he fights in is not a violent struggle for justice that can satiate this, but a sham war, state violence for meaningless purpose. he's never capable of saving padme, and even outsources his only idea to do so to someone who will accept, "will you do what you're told?" as payment. it's easy for me to see - compared to the rebellion's open joy, luke's gaggle of friends who he saves again and again, who save him again and again, who hold each other in their joy and comfort each other in their sadness, who openly love each other to the degree where han abandons a probably fairly well-paying life as a smuggler to become a terrorist hunted by the empire, an act which causes him no small amount of suffering but we never see him once genuinely regret it - why anakin's story ends differently from luke's, because, like, that's just what i see in the story.

now my arrival to the point; if you're seeing that story, shmi's life becomes a horrible tragedy. she's a woman left in enormous, incredibly pointless suffering. her name fades out of history, and the only person who remembers her is the proverbial monster at the end of this book. to me, when tiny anakin runs back to shmi, mourning leaving her, i see the only display in that entire film we have that anyone cares that shmi skywalker is enslaved. everyone else quietly moves on. qui-gon says they're not there to free slaves. her words, "be brave, and don't look back," become horrifyingly tragic in such a context, because she's losing the only person who is showing her real compassion, because unfortunately that only person is her nine year old son, whose safety she wants to to ensure by sending him with qui-gon.

if you're seeing a story about how anakin is bad at accepting change and bad at letting go, how his attachments are possessive by some inherent quality, then shmi's wisdom - "be brave, and don't look back" - would make her a paragon of virtue in such a story, and her being enslaved would be this weird piece of set dressing, not easily reconciled with the rest of the plot. they're not there to free slaves. this is why people who do see this story in star wars frequently dismiss That Whole Slavery Business as being pointless; it's either a metaphor for childhood being restrictive, or anakin's childhood was actually supposed to be totally fine, or everyone's just making a big deal out of it because people love woobifying villains. this is a fine thing to see in the story, i guess, although it's probably obvious i personally don't buy it. this interpretation is not without its side effects, however, and i think this idea does an enormous disservice to shmi, whose frankly intense onscreen suffering (she is tortured to death, holy shit) probably should be allowed to matter more than being the highlighter over anakin's possessive attachment issues. her suffering becomes even more meaningless, because the only person who, onscreen, extends shmi skywalker any kind of compassion - who cares, demonstrably, if she's hurting - is explicitly condemned for doing so.

this isn't to say anakin's response to her death is morally correct, because it obviously is not! and maybe this would be a story about possessive attachment if shmi's death was natural and unavoidable and anakin still responded with explosive violence, but simply put, it isn't, and that changes the narrative enough for me to discount that as being true. if you have deduced anakin's problem is attachment, rather than his inability to act on those attachments in any meaningful way, you've created a world where no one was supposed to care that shmi was enslaved. anakin was supposed to be able to leave her behind without feeling guilt, and he was supposed to be able to ignore his visions of her suffering. dreams pass in time. this is a world where it's not just okay for the suffering of the people you love to not matter to you, that is, actually, the only virtuous way to live your life. with regards to shmi, this turns her personal agony into a footnote, the warning that anakin got of the darkness growing within him before it completely took him over, instead of shmi's personal agony mattering because it's inherently unjust to do to someone what she was forced to go through. shmi doesn't matter because she was an innocent person in pain; she matters because she was a warning anakin ignored.

that's why shmi as a paragon of virtue can never be discussed with shmi as one of the most tragic characters in star wars; they can't really coexist, can they? because it would be kind of uncomfortable to go yes, this woman was enslaved, her labor was coerced from her via an explosive implanted in her body, she lost her only family and continued to be enslaved for years, until one good thing maybe happened to her, which was brutally cut short by being tortured to death, and the last she saw of her son was dying in his arms, but no, dreams pass in time. no one should have particularly cared that this was happening to her, and in fact, onscreen, the only person who does is anakin, and even then he's tormented by the fact that he cares. he is explicitly not supposed to. dreams pass in time. the two conceptions of shmi cannot coexist, or the argument becomes kind of cruel. you essentially have to lessen the degree to which she suffered. which is fine, i guess. you do you, or whatever.

to contrast, luke sees his father, who is demonstrably much worse on a moral level than shmi, who luke would have legitimately had every right to abandon, and goes to free him from a form of slavery anyway. and he is completely and entirely vindicated for this in every conceivable way. do we all see where i'm going with this? i think i'm belaboring the point by now. i can move on.

padme makes, essentially, a very similar choice to the one luke makes; the narrative itself has shown you previously that in the universe of star wars, showing unflinching love in the face of evil can work. but her decision is cast as rash and naive because she fails, which is a really weird way to blame padme for being strangled. because she failed, it's her fault, but because luke succeeded, he's the hero. padme dies because she goes into labor - there's no sign in the film prior that she was anywhere close - which was induced by being strangled into unconsciousness, and fans for years have been obsessed with how "weak" this makes her. these arguments are honestly just bold misogyny. i used to pay lip service to the idea but i've since come around; i think it's fucked up, plainly, to act like padme was at fault for something anakin did to her, and it is downright batshit insane to act like it would be impossible for a pregnant woman in surprise labor who is unknowingly giving birth to twins who has just been strangled so severely she passed out from oxygen deprivation to die because of that. padme is not even allowed to die directly because of anakin's actions without people going, "but padme was so toxic, she was obsessed with him, they're both examples of possessive attachment!"

but it continues! people go from that point, and work their way backwards - it was weak, of padme, to love anakin at all. luke gets a pass because he's male, and successful. obi-wan gets a pass for loving anakin, because he's male, and sad about it later. ahsoka gets a pass, because she's a female character but a Strong Female Character - she's a fighter, she's badass, so it can't be her fault that she made the mistake of caring about anakin skywalker. but padme. we have to come up with endless, endless theories as to how padme could possibly come by the same affliction everyone else in the prequels does; she should have been written to be older, she must have been just as possessive, toxic, and fucked up, there's no possible way that this woman could have had feelings like everyone else did. it's just implausible. it begs explanation. when will padme answer for her mistakes, which were the same mistakes everyone else made? luke's only explanation for returning to save vader's immortal soul is literally, "i have a feeling," but it's instead padme who is the subject of endless, endless interrogation. part of this is because george lucas doesn't spend a lot of time developing padme's interiority - her family, her life, these are left to interpretation, and suffice to say, you can't leave a female character with blank spots without people being intensely weird about it.

the above isn't particularly related to what someone gets out of watching the saga, the way interpretations of shmi are, in my view, inherently reliant on someone's point of view; a lot of the issues that surround padme are classic misogyny-reflected-in-fandom. they are intensified, definitely, by her relation to the Did Darth Vader Do Something Problematic Discourse, purely because in the narrative she chooses a relationship with anakin, whereas most other characters in the prequels just have anakin foisted on them. that act of it being padme's choice stokes a lot of bad will for the character from the crowd of people who dislike anakin intensely. if you fundamentally don't want to engage with the idea that the prequels as a story of good turning into evil, then the decisions everyone makes in that story will, yes, look crazy to you, and because of the above, padme gets the brunt of that criticism where there's more effort to understand characters that are more palatable. if you believe anakin just was evil, that he was always predisposed to it, and that his redemption in the sixth episode doesn't qualify as a redemption, then, yes, padme's choices look unhinged, and it's easy to put the onus of that on her because she's the easiest target. it's simple to project on a blank canvas.

it goes without saying that this particular set of criticisms is kind of bullshit, really. it's not someone watching the movies and enjoying them for what they are, or even disliking them on the basis of what they are, as much as it is people huffing the fumes of the point in order to make polarizing posts on the internet for a quick hit of dopamine when the numbers tick up. even the people who i disagree with about the saga's general themes broadly accept the idea that star wars is about how evil can't be absolute as long as love persists, because they actually do like the movies, they just happen to like them in a different way, which is fine. this new kind of criticism is a little more disingenuous. like i said at the start, anakin and luke are the main characters, through which we perceive the world of star wars and how its themes are fed to us, the nerds. if your answer to one of the main characters of the series and its actual climax is, "no," then, i'm sorry, the actual criticism you have of star wars is that you fundamentally do not like it, and, "i don't like this," is not a very hard thought to have, and you probably shouldn't pass it off as critical thinking. it's just not padme's fault as a character that you, the nerd, are bad at watching movies, and weirdly proud of it, and no one is really obligated to take you seriously because you're oddly determined to do nothing, add nothing, and say nothing. it's such a bullshit set of criticisms there's not really anything else i can say than, "i guess?" which is what this paragraph is trying so hard to get at.

anyway! no, i don't think you're wrong, i actually agree, and these are my thoughts! hope you enjoyed this brick of a post hahaha

#star wars #sw meta #sw #shmi skywalker #padme amidala #swpt

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