Thunderous Applause
- vSh
- 14 hours ago
- 3 min read
“So this is how liberty dies,
With thunderous applause.”
Haunting, these words that are not my own,
A tragic truth: mine are scarcely realized.
Once I was five, and would never be grown,
A movie watched between father's arms,
My biggest despair – the blue now cruel.
This fiction was never something to be known.
So when I close my eyes, I wait.
The deafening quiet – a blissful despair.
My room is a death, but the statistics are alive.
A thunderous cruelty set to throb and pulsate.
Easy woman: a number going around,
Giving is a choice; holding means they'll take.
Small like her body or large like her voice,
The witches to apprise us are buried in the ground.
Flags warn the guns are near,
Bolstering safety – merely proof to kill.
The world was crying as your thrill roars.
Safe – well, not that one. He has something to fear.
Now remember, the empire came, it never won.
Thunderous applause from only within.
The world – a burning planet of brothers betrayed.
The cheers – coughing to an overdose of kratom.
Inspired by the quote from Padme in Revenge of the Sith.
And speaking of, happy (almost: May 19th) twentieth anniversary to my beloved film. Fun fact, Star Wars (specifically the prequels) was the first piece of media I ever consumed fanfiction for. Fun fact # 2: I have all of Star Wars Let it Flow completely memorized by HEART. And I kind of wish I was lying or exaggerating about that, but I can quite literally sing the whole thing unprompted without music at the drop of a hat, ten years after that video was released.
All the movie theaters in my area were having a rerelease of RotS for its anniversary all weekend, and as a normal, cool, twenty-year-old (in two weeks) does, I asked my parents to watch it with me after work. When we were leaving the showing, my mom looked at me and said, "I think I know what's wrong with you. Your first ever crush was on the most angsty man a movie has ever produced." and you know what??
A. ow.
B. CLOCKED
(she was kidding, it was funny, don't come for her)
But hey, hey, in my defense, have you seen Hayden Christensen in that movie? As a kid, I'm watching that like... hm... he just turned against everything he fundamentally believes in because he loves his wife. The fact he force choked her went over my head and out the window because when he woke up limbless and probably in excruciating pain, the first thing he asked was if she was okay. AND it literally came out TEN days after my birthday. I was born, and this movie said, "The world is ready." Now, my favorite pastime is playing devil's advocate, and my brain literally won't shut up about how the world is ANYTHING but black and white.
As an adult, though, Anakin really is as annoying and angsty as everyone has been saying he is. I want to stress, I don't have the same painfully obvious crush I had on him as a child; I actually find him very distasteful and an excellent allegory for how men currently fall for the alt-right pipeline. I'm working on an essay about that, so... stay tuned, I guess. The part that actively haunts me, though (and I'm not about to say when he slaughtered all the children), is at the very end when Palpatine says what happens, and he just takes him at his word?? No further investigation into his wife's death. Doesn't do anything about force sensing that his children are alive, even though it's widely known Padme AND her unborn child die. No motivation to raise them? And don't tell me he couldn't force sense them, because I refuse to believe Mister "Chosen One" couldn't feel his wife's, SENATOR PADME AMIDALA'S, TWIN children in the force. Through the whole thing, he blindly follows the Emperor, which I find so urking because how naive do you have to be to accept that the obvious villain has your best interest at heart? But again, the parallels between Anakin and the fall down the alt-right pipeline really could not have been written more spot on if the movie were written today.
Some phenomenal fanfiction, though.