Saga The Sith Who Brought Life Day--humor/angst, OC's, Vader, Luke **One Post**

Happy 1 month before Life Day, everyone ^^
I figured this deserved a bump. Cause it rocks.

 

I remember reading this fan fic a long time ago and I loved it then. And now I found it, read it over again and I am still very much in awe of it. The narrator's tone and the sheer amount of detail you went into about Imperial procedure was just inspired. I'm so glad you wrote this. It was excellent.

 

I loved this, not just because of the idea but all the little details, like Luke's crappy schooling or his complete lack of knowledge of citizenship. Also his 'recruitment' video was hilarious. Also your OC is great, I hope you use him again.

 

This is one of those stories that needs to be reread for its magic once a year, like A Christmas Carol and Mixed Nuts.

 

This is incredible.
It has also really helped me with my own fan fiction, I have Vader in mine too.(It's as yet unpublished)
It's good to get anothers insight into how the Dark Lord thinks and speaks.
Anyways, I much prefer this version as to how Lord Vader finds out the Rebel Pilot's identity rather than the story Vader's Quest.

 

Poor guy got scared out of his wits but at least he's still alive and got to see his mother to boot.

I loved the irony of 'glad Anakin Skywalker's dead and that Vader is on our side' thought.

And I could go on and on.

 

This is one of the most amazing SW stories I have read in a long time. It manages to be funny and moving, incredibly clever and completely drawing us on the side of its charming, highly unreliable narrator; and eventually more tragic than what George Lucas has ever been able to come up with. ("What we all want, family" is superbly ironic.) Aswald Vorgartin (an homage to Lois McMaster Bujold?) is a wonderfully recognisable human type; with that rarity in any fiction, pro or fan: a believably evolving character (loved how he recognised the value of Captain Wyer's advice on Kalac.) This is a resounding success & I have rec'd it on LiveJournal at our SW community, EchoStationn (echostation.livejournal.com ; I also plan to rec it at my own journal tomorrow, shezan.livejournal.com )

 

Get it out there, Shezan.

This fiction rules. Full Stop.

 

I hesitate to recommend this, but really, I think Ophelia should archive it at fanfiction.net. It's uneven, but it still is the largest fansite - this story deserves MORE READERS!

 

If I come across any Star Wars fanfic reccomendation thingies, I'll be sure to reccommend this one Like the Saga itself, it never gets old.

 

You know, there are certain things I do every holiday season. Sing Handel's "Messiah." Cry at the last page of "The Polar Express." Drink my eggnog with Sprite. Read the ridiculous bit about how losing at poker got Vader his son back. I beg you to, if you ever get back to writing, continue the stories of at least Vorgartin and Kalec.

 

Time for another bump, because it deserves so much more than that

 

Nice! Is there anywhere else to read this?

 

This is one of those stories that gets better with age, like a fine wine.

 

When I first opened this thread, I honestly expected to find something completely ridiculous, possibly along the lines of the old Vader Monologues or one of Ewok Poet's hilarious masterpieces. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. Laughter is the best medicine, after all.) But I was pleasantly surprised to find that you were able to write this super silly plot bunny which one would expect to generate total crack in a way that was not crack at all. Bravo.

 

Thank you so much! <3 I hadn't realized this was still up here and apparently non-truncated. For the record, it also exists on Archive of Our Own, under the username ophelia_interrupted.

 

I remember when it was on fanfiction.net too! I though you had edited it in 2014 to un-truncate it XD

 

Because I had adopted another of Binder-lover's plot bunnies, I was looking through her profile, then decided to see what she had bumped.

Somehow I arrived in the middle of the sabacc game, and rather than having been pre-warned at the top of the screen, had the emotional shock of no....Lord Vader!!! as the Life Day recipient.

The descriptions of the four mates, Kalac, the variations at play during the game, were already spellbinding, but then you launched into this massive investigation, featuring depths that would have crushed most submarines.

@Ewok Poet - you like investigations, do you?

The detail was splendid:

Luke's holocam footage, from "Is it on?" to rambling about farm equipment, then his skyhopper prowess.

The lieutenant's running commentary, and how you built and filled out this world through his eyes, eg. Not-too-bright parents naming their child after a jedi, just after they had been declared traitors.

The Emperor hitting other tots with his rattle.

A nerf fitting into, or not, a vending machine slot.

Everything about Vader was spot on. How he looked. How he spoke. How he dented the reader, and played the footage twice and closeup, the light playing across his mask.

The Captain (not Geer), getting the story out of why he wanted to see Vader personally.

E V E R Y T H I N G

Simply brilliant.

Thank you for putting this together.

 

Aww, thank you! I was really surprised to see this bumped after all these years. I'm glad to hear the story has withstood the test of time.

 

In terms of who I thought were the best fanfic writers, and what was the best story I had ever read on these Boards, the world was one way, and now it is another...

The subtle elements as well:

Yeah, I just accepted that by time ESB came along, the Empire had Luke Skywalker's name; but it slowly dawns on me, fairly deep into this, that this is how they find out.

Other subtleties - if Luke had been born 12 hours earlier, he would share the Empire's birthday. My mind's eye is drawn to ROTS, and I'm thinking, Oh yeah.

Ah, Yoda. Can barely see over an end table.

 

It's that time of year again! Every year around Christmas (and sometimes other holidays too) I reread this story to get in the Star Wars holiday spirit. (It sure beats the Holiday Special XD)

 

I'm nearly 20 years late in reviewing this fic, which I remember reading way back when I was lurking here before I even registered as a user of the boards. Thankfully @DarthIshtar mentioned it in the Quotes thread and gave me an opportunity to rediscover it, and it was a treat again the second time around.

From the very first line I knew I was going to have a lot of fun with this, but even as the story progresses and keeps that zany undertone, you managed to make Aswald Vorgartin II a character I really felt for. I can picture this young man with his family history and his homesickness getting tricked into doing something really stupid by his friends (or maybe I should put quotation marks on "friends", because he clearly deserves better than them). And the entire sabacc game felt like the sort of nonsense that happens in this sort of all-young-male environment, except that it began with sausage party comments about Therhurladde Clebur and evolved into something potentially lethal. It says something about Vorgartin that he doesn't even consider backing out of the deal, which is clearly what Kalac expects. His middle name is "stubborn", he just doesn't realise it.

It also says something about him that, after considering the various hilarious Life Day present options (I never knew that I needed to see Vader with pretty charms hanging from his cape chain) he actually thinks of a truly appropriate present and decides to figure it out. Even amid the insanity, he's very much a professional.

The investigation sequence was absolutely great to read, both for the investigation itself but for all the little elements of lore- and world-building that you managed to insert in there: Vorgartin's thoughts about the Jedi gave us a lot of insight into what young Imperials were made to believe, and his research process through the various databases also told us a lot about the political and administrative organisation of the Empire. Again, amidst the zaniness there was this chilling idea that the Empire has listings of everyone, everywhere, and that they can find out "stuff" about you no matter how much of a nobody you are.

And then, we reach the bit of this story that made me quite literally howl with laughter: Luke's holorecording. Man, I was laughing so hard throughout, I almost fell from my chair. It's such a perfect portrayal of 16-year-old Luke, and as crazy as the premise of this story is, he felt perfectly in character rambling about the farm and the equipment and his achievements in a speeder and... I'm laughing again as I type this. It's a truly magnificent piece of humour writing and it makes my day just to think about it – and what makes my day even more is to think that *this* is how the Empire identified Luke.

The scene between Vorgartin and Vader was similarly fantastic and it was the epitome of fanfic, in that we, as readers and SW fans, know an awful lot more than Vorgartin about what is truly happening in this conversation, and I did expect him to get a bit manhandled by Vader in a suitably terrifying way – but the fact that Vader just stood there muttering to himself and watching Luke's holo made it all even more terrifying. There's such a unique combination of circumstances to create a situation where Vorgartin could say "happy Life Day" to Vader without being killed in this story, and Vorgartin himself has no idea about it. Oh the irony, and the very last line was the perfect conclusion to a perfect story in that regard. If only Vorgartin knew that what he brought to Vader for Life Day was, indeed, family!

Bottom line, I love this story, for its humour, for its angst and most importantly for its subtlety, and I know that it's a story I'll be regularly re-reading in the years to come!