maeve-on-mustafar

[maeve-on-mustafar]

I’d disagree with this take, mostly because we see in the films that Anakin disagrees with Obi-Wan and Padme and gets into arguments with them, but he still loves them and tries (?) to maintain his relationships with them.

Like, in AOTC, when he and Padme get into their political debate on Naboo, Anakin advocates for basically straight-up authoritarianism, and Padme calls him out for supporting a dictatorship. It then devolves into not-that-deep flirting after that, but then they get married a week later. So what I’m saying is, Anakin is under no illusions that Padme shares all of his beliefs, or even that she thinks any of his (naive and ill-advised) suggestions would work in any capacity.

As for Obi-Wan, Anakin knows Obi-Wan disagrees with him and doesn’t approve of his choices. There’s really no way he can’t know? Like, in either AOTC or ROTS, Obi-Wan is not shy about showing his disapproval for Anakin’s choices, whether it be dressing him down in front of Padme, or telling Anakin that he acted like a jackass in front of the Council, but also he has to accept this mission to spy on Palpatine because the future of the Republic could be at stake. Anakin knows Obi-Wan doesn’t agree with him, because he instantly tries to protest and back out of the mission because he thinks it’s treason, and Obi-Wan just tells him he’s gotta buck up and do the thing. There is no way Anakin can delude himself into thinking that he and Obi-Wan are in agreement on this position.

Honestly, if I had to point to the major problem in Anakin’s relationship with Obi-Wan, I’d say it’s that he knows Obi-Wan doesn’t approve of him but desperately wants his approval, while at the same time, failing to recognize why Obi-Wan might not approve of his choices and actions. I think Anakin is so stuck in “I did what I had to do” mode about his choices at this point in the war that he doesn’t realize reconsidering his actions or mindset could improve his relationship with Obi-Wan. I’m not saying that’s not a problem in itself, but I definitely don’t think the issue is that Anakin is fooling himself into thinking Obi-Wan is 100% in agreement with him at all times.

Do I think that Anakin has healthy relationships with the people in his life? Not really, but given his background, I’m not all that surprised. But I think the issue is more along the lines of Anakin not realizing the impact he has on his own relationships and that he has agency to try to fix whatever problems he’s facing. (Like, if anyone cared, I’d write an essay on the uniquely weird-love hate relationship Anakin has with the Council in the ROTS novelization, where he desperately desires their approval while at the same time being paranoid that they secretly hate him, all the while refusing to acknowledge why they might not trust him all that much.)

Do I think Anakin secretly longs to be loved by all and never have to face conflict with his loved ones? Yes. Do I think he has issues with self-reflection? Yes. But do I think he actually believes that his loved ones are in agreement with him all the time? No, and I’m surprised anyone could walk away from the films with that perspective.

Do you think that Anakin secretly resents Padme's job and beliefs?

Yes, def.

Not like- something very developed or present. If Anakin doesn't like something, and especially if it contradicts a narrative he likes, he tends to not think about it in any depth. I'd say that should also be listed as an Anakin Skywalker character flaw- lack of introspection.

He resents Padme's job- because it keeps her occupied and he has to put effort to get her attention, because sometimes it puts her in danger, because it's one of the few things that ever make Padme try and set boundaries in their relationship. This is all anxiety inducing stuff for Anakin.

As for her beliefs? Eh. He doesn't have to confront them often. Mostly only in that first date and in their final conversation. He doesn't like confronting the fact that Padme could actually disagree and disaprove, tho, so both times he bats the thought aside. Like a bothersome fly.

They go hand in hand tho. Padme is commited to her job because of her convictions- which do tend to go all liquid around Anakin, but that's- we're talking about Anakin's feelings rn.

So Anakin does resent them, but he also resents that he resents them. Anakin builds up an image about their romance and about the kind of husband he is. Thus, he isn't (can't be) too aware of his resentment.

So of course he supports Padme's projects and the strength of the soul of his darling angel and blah blah blah, would be nice if she were to set that aside when he's around and just accept the position of galactic empress, tho. 🙄

#Anakin Skywalker #obi wan kenobi #padme amidala #my meta #star wars prequels

[maeve-on-mustafar]

Hi how are you doing?

Not great. I’m in a place where I really want to write, but I know my fic ideas go against popular fanon, and are therefore doomed from the very start. No one would like them, and no one would give them a chance. I’d be writing, but no one would read, and if that’s the case, why bother?

But I really, really want start writing Obikin, and most of all, I want to write a few of my gentle!Dom/hurting!sub ideas that I have for them. But I know it would never fly in Obikin fandom. Human disaster!Anakin reigns supreme, and the only sub!Anakin that people want is when he needs to get taken down a peg or several dozen by Obi-Wan. I think people find gentle!Doms boring in every fandom, so I don’t think Obikin is unique in that regard, but I really hate that I have this idea I so desperately want to write but know there’s no audience for it.

Overall, though, I just hate how there’s never any room for anything new in fandom. Popular fanon guides how all fic must function, and even if you want to try to write something different, it’ll just be instantly rejected. No one is ever willing to give anything different a chance. If you’re not following trends, as far as fandom is concerned, you’re not writing at all. You’re confined to writing what’s already been done, what’s already expected, and what’s already popular, and if you try to break away from that formula, no one is ever going to give your fic a chance.

I just feel paralyzed and frustrated. I’m constantly caught between wanting to write and knowing fandom will think all of my ideas are worthless if I do. So I just end up not writing, day after day after day.

#anakin skywalker #star wars prequels #obi wan kenobi

[maeve-on-mustafar]

People who are all “Anakin was nothing but a selfish spoiled monster” should take note.

All Anakin ever wanted, was to help. All the times (that I caught) Anakin helping people. Long post, buckle up. I have feelings about the prequels.

Anakin casually helps and saves JarJar, with bitey remarks. 100% in character.

Don't go to your ship new friends, I can help you get shelter.

Hobby project for Mom? Sure thing!

Let us share our meager resources with all of you, basically strangers. It's a Skywalker thing.

Let me casually risk my life for you please!

I will never be over these two. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Rushing to help.

Please, let me do your job for you.

Not technically helping, but diffusing her anxiety with a bit of humor.

Gentleman vibes.

Mom's in trouble :(

He just can't help himself, can he?

THE couple everyone. A very, like attracts like situation.

Oh hi Master, we're here to help you.

Good job.

Nevermind me, I'm dying here. Oh, Obi-Wan's in trouble?

Always there to give a hand. (Too soon?)

His first impulse. Always.

Obi-Wan: "Anakin, the mission, leave me." Anakin: "Lol, no."

You heard him.

Bonus, because, well.

It's a habit at this point.

Oh sweetlings, it will be your undoing.

Find part two here!

#anakin skywalker appreciation #anakin skywaker #star wars prequels

[maeve-on-mustafar]

I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been poisoned by your workplace, but I hope you’re doing better now! (Also, not to pressure to do anything, maybe legal action is a consideration, if possible?)

okay i have Posted. enjoy my friends i heart emoji all of you. i must sink back into TBI hell. as a note for you all, please do not get two concussions in short order, this shit does not fuck, it does not hit, it is so very ow. cannot not recommend this sensation enough

#fandom life

[maeve-on-mustafar]

Yes, for real! It always bothers me when fandom rechristens Padme as this flawless Awesome Lady (tm) who is this pillar of morality and justice who could do so much better than Anakin. Like, this is the woman who knew Anakin had slaughtered the Tusken Raiders and knew of his frustrations with Obi-Wan and chose him anyway. This is the woman who was perfectly all right with Anakin lying to everyone in his life so they could have a secret marriage. Padme makes questionable decisions right along with everyone else, and TBH, I feel like it’s more regressive than progressive to insist we need to ignore a female character’s flaws and make her better than she is in order to enjoy her as a character.

honestly I do think a Padmé who was actually principled and courageous would have been a fantastic character if they’d managed to write her that way but part of me really does love the mess of ‘I can fix him’ living-in-a-barbie-dreamhouse-fantasyland Padmé we actually end up with when all the pieces of her character that we actually got are cobbled together

#anidala #padme amidala #Anakin Skywalker #star wars prequels

[maeve-on-mustafar]

“never let a few artificial numbers on the internet dictate to you what is and isn’t worthy writing.”

I so badly want to follow this advice, and I truly wish I could just write what I want to write without worrying about what the stats will show. But I can’t stop being stressed about how my fic will be received, if it will get recced, if my fellow fans will accept my take on the characters or reject it for being too different, etc.

Fandom hasn’t been fun for a while now for me because I feel like I always have to ignore my ideas that I know are doomed to poor stats from the start. Would it make me happy to write them? Yes. But would it make me happy to post them? Not when I’d have to see that everyone ignored them and my efforts were all for nothing.

Everyone always says, “Write for yourself!” But I don’t think they get how lonely it is to be writing and producing content in hopes of finding a community, and to never be able to locate one, and also to find out at the same time how little fandom thinks of your fic.

listen. l i s t e n. listen. kudos does not equal quality. popularity does not equal quality. i have read some “fandom classics” that i could barely fathom how boring or terrible i - personally - found them, and i have stumbled across some absolute gems that didn’t even break 100 kudos. 

what is good doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves. it’s sad, but true. just because you haven’t - or possibly never take - off in fandom doesn’t mean your work isn’t astounding and beautiful, it doesn’t mean you should stop writing; it just means that a very select corner of the internet missed the diamond in the rough. 

fanfiction is flooded with content, there are so many of us out there producing it these days, and having a fic that takes off is almost as much about luck as it is about talent. never let a few artificial numbers on the internet dictate to you what is and isn’t worthy writing. 

additionally, you don’t have to read or enjoy fics just bcs they’re big. i cannot count the amount of times i’ve read the first paragraph of something fandom adores and immediatly exited out of it.

just… do what makes you happy. write what you wanna write, read what you wanna read. understand that while we all want recognition - and some deserve it more than others - we did not get into fanfiction for that recognition.

recognition is good, but sometimes we get all tangled up chasing it and stop enjoying writing and reading and fandom as a whole along the way. be careful of that, please, or you’ll burn yourself out.

#fic writing woes #star wars prequels

[maeve-on-mustafar]

I’ve been contemplating if I finally want to try writing some of my fic ideas about Cissie, but because I keep checking her tag, I’ve started to get recommended posts about Tim Drake. If that’s not representative of DC fandom in a nutshell, IDK what is. Tumblr has spoken, and my Cissie fic ideas shall remain headcanons. 😂

#young justice #cissie king jones

[maeve-on-mustafar]

-Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights

@pscentral​ take two 2.0: love SHALE’S 1K PARTY ☆ for Oli

🎉+Wuthering Heights for @anakinskywalkerog

#anakin skywaker #padme amidala #anidala #star wars prequels #this is so pretty omg

[maeve-on-mustafar]

And then when you do have interesting ideas or different aspects of canon you want to explore, there isn’t any kind of an audience for it, because now everyone only wants the fandom cliches and aren’t willing to try anything different. 😔

me whenever I see posts about how canon is shit and can be discarded

#star wars prequels #fic writing #writing woes

[maeve-on-mustafar]

#anakin skywalker #star wars prequels #jedi culture #jedi order

[maeve-on-mustafar]

@raineydaywrites Would you be willing to elaborate on Obi-Wan’s bitchiness in canon vs. fanon? I just want to make sure I’m writing Obi-Wan’s bitchitude as authentically as possible.

canon bitchy obi-wan is better than fanon demure obi-wan. you agree.

#obi wan kenobi #writing

[maeve-on-mustafar]

Demure Obi-Wan is so boring, and I adore it when he’s snarky and bitchy and has maybe just a little of a superior attitude, instead of the fanon version who’s constantly composed and proper and never would say a sarcastic word about anyone.

Also, he was not a fan of kid!Anakin at first, and I wish more fics would lean into the difficulty and awkwardness of ending up raising a child you didn’t want because your now-deceased mentor guilted you into doing it as he lay dying.

canon bitchy obi-wan is better than fanon demure obi-wan. you agree.

#obi wan kenobi #anakin skywalker

[maeve-on-mustafar]

There’s nothing I hate more in Mace Windu memes and videos than when he’s suddenly characterized as talking in “gangsta” slang and “hood” speak.

He doesn’t talk like that in canon. Ever. At all. The only reason people suddenly have him talking like the Black Best Friend in Not Another Teen Movie is because he’s black.

There is no other reason. There is no other reason to have him suddenly drastically switch speaking patterns than the color of his skin.

It’s racist. Stop it.

#mace windu #tw: racism #star wars discourse #my meta #star wars prequels

[maeve-on-mustafar]

Me when I’m trying to have a conversation about Anakin and his relationship to the Jedi Order.

“Well, Anakin was WRONG to kill the Jedi Order—”

Yes, thanks, I know. I watched the same movies you did. In the first movie Anakin appeared in, he annihilated an entire planet from orbit. I’m not trying to say he’s morally superior, I just want to analyze, IDK, whether he actually knew and interacted with the Jedi Council when he was growing up.

Well we can’t condone their actions—

Well they still need to be held accountable—

Well I’m not excusing what they did—

My brother in Christ it’s a fictional character. The point of storytelling is not to like the character or imprint on them. A protagonist doesn’t have to be a good person a protagonist is who the story is about. Sometimes the point of a narrative is to tell the story of a little freak of a fella. Society has lost the plot,quite literally.

No they don’t need to be held accountable nor do I need to excuse or not excuse their actions nor do I need to condone the little creep I’m reading about. Sometimes fiction is about morally reprehensible little disgusting wretches and that’s literally the point.

#anakin skywalker #star wars prequels

[maeve-on-mustafar]

Hey, Maeve! I read your stories in AOC and I love them. It's so nice to find a writer that actually writes Anakin as this super competent and kind person he was. You said to tell you if we would like to see a fic based on your prompts. I would really like to see Mace respond to Anakin's training with Soara Antana

Thanks, that’s really kind of you to say, and I really appreciate it!

I’ve actually had Anakin’s various traumas during Jedi Quest on my mind a lot lately, and in particular, that time he was captured and experimented on by Jenna Zan Arbor. I felt like the way Obi-Wan treated Anakin after he realized he’d been drugged during his capture was . . . questionable. At best.

But I’ve also been tossing around a couple of scenarios with Mace responding to Soara’s “efforts” at training Anakin. The first I thought about it, it was just in my “Anakin is Mace’s Padawan” AU where Mace is off on a mission when Soara begins training Anakin, but the one I’ve actually started writing is a sequel to “we find ourselves in each other”. Currently, it’s been a little while since I looked at it, but I’m hoping to get back to it in the New Year!

Thank you so much for your suggestion! I always love hearing what my fellow fans want to see for Anakin (or Mace)! ❤️

#anakin skywalker #star wars prequels #my fics #mace windu

[maeve-on-mustafar]

I saw ur post about fanon interpretation of obikin and I just wanted to say I ADORE what you described as your vision and would love to read fics with your dynamic in mind!!!!

Thank you, anon. I really appreciate it, and it’s really kind of you to stop by and let me know you like my headcanons/plot bunnies.

Honestly, though, I wish I just liked the standard fanon. It’s no fun having new ideas, because you know the rest of the fandom will never want them. It’s no fun not being into the ubiquitous fanon, because you know if you wrote fics that don’t use it, those fics will instantly be dismissed as inferior for going with a different idea.

I really wish I could just love what’s popular and never have any urge to write anything outside the norm and just be happy writing the most popular everything. In general, I don’t think fandom wants new ideas. I don’t think people see them as worthwhile. I just want to feel okay writing what I like and what I want, but I don’t think fandom would ever want what I have to offer. So my solution for a while now has been never to try writing Obikin so I can avoid that experience.

I know I’d like to write Obikin someday. It’s just that I’m certain the fandom would hate my fic.

#anakin skywalker #star wars prequels #obi wan kenobi #obikin #my asks #answered asks #my writing #my fics

[maeve-on-mustafar]

Anon, not sure if you’ll ever read this, but please know I also love Gar and Vic/Gar and I have a half dozen ideas for fic about Gar that live rent-free in my head at all times. I’d give just about anything for there to be an active DC fandom that wanted fic about non-Batfam characters so that I could write any of these fics, but fate has stopped taking my calls, lol.

For Vic/Gar moments, I would recommend NTT #10-11 in particular, which starts out with Vic and Gar hanging out one-on-one (which involves Gar making the “lube job” comment to Vic and hanging around him in a skimpy bathrobe) and ends with Vic freaking the fuck out and panicking when Slade shoots Gar. NTT #11 features Vic staying by Gar’s side as the Titans rush to get him help, with Wally and Dick remarking on how close they are.

NTT #12 focuses on some dude from Greek mythology trying to marry Donna, but NTT #13 has Vic worrying about Gar from a distance, and NTT #14-15 involve Gar resolving some of his lingering issues with the Doom Patrol and feature his reunion with Vic. (This is where the panel of Vic tossing Gar up into the air and exclaiming, “You’re alive! You’re really alive!” comes from.)

ToTT #50 is Donna’s weeding to Terry, and not only do we get the adventures of wedding planning with Gar, but there’s also an argument between him and Vic, followed by then apologizing and then making up with one another. It’s actually very sweet, and I love this issue even though I don’t care for Donna and Terry as a couple.

I would also rec the immediate aftermath of the Judas Contract and Terra’s death in ToTT #54-55, when Gar is freaking out about Terra dying and plotting to kill Slade. Vic is the only Titan to try to reach out to him (though in fairness, Gar isn’t making it easy by acting a total lunatic).

And it’s been a while since I read it, so I could be remembering through rose-colored glasses, but in the opening few arcs of Geoff Johns’s 2003 Teen Titans run, I definitely got the vibe of “old married couple passing on their wisdom to the next generation of heroes” vibes from Vic and Gar in their mentoring roles. (Though Gar was de-aged to 19 in that run, so he’s still basically in the same generation as the YJ4, but I digress.)

Happy reading, anon, and maybe one day we’ll get a DC property that ends up encouraging a glut of Vic/Gar fic, and we can all be happily reading and writing away, lol.

this is random sorry but i was just going through your beast boy tags (just cause i wanted more content lol) and mourning all over again how criminally underrated he and vic are both as characters and as a pairing, and i feel like i remember a post with comic recs for an intro to their comics dynamics but i can't seem to find it now, so was wondering if you had any or if you happened to have it on hand by any chance?

I don't, sorry! I was working on a massive post full of key panels of them being desperately in love with each other but then my life exploded (in a good way) and my free time disappeared.

For comics recs, I would honestly say just start at New Teen Titans #1 and go from there. Their relationship builds over little moments of them hating each other, then thawing, then becoming inseparable, so it's hard to say "oh, it's this issue and then this one and then this one" because it's such a slow burn in the background of everything else.

For me the romance peaks in JLA/Titans: The Technis Imperative, though there are also some good moments in Titans 1999. (If Devin Grayson doesn't ship it, I'll eat my hat.) Gar is in full "If I just love you hard enough it will fix all of your severe trauma, probably" mode and I'm a sucker for that.

#dc comics #garfield logan #gar logan #vic stone #victor stone #cybb #new teen titans #teen titans