Setting: Star Wars
Location: the desert planet of Tatooine
Anakin's Folly actually started with "Force On The Move" a SW fanfiction that nearly turned my character into a cringy Mary Sue for a angsty Gary Stu named Anakin Skywalker. He makes a huge mistake at the start of the story that he cannot live down. That one ended on a good note, and even that story had a re-start because the first attempt was a train wreck.
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Part 1: Force On The Move
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So a second story was started and meant to be a continuation from the above. It was soon abandoned because my character will not be an Anakin Sue, or a Sue for any canon character - but especially not him. Ugh! I have no desire to write any Anakin romance stuff, so can't even stomach the idea of just making up some generic character for that purpose.
when it became clear from my co-writer that the emperor was willing to banish my character for merely shouting out of aggravation over the Anakin-adoration, while Anakin got ridiculously coddled over his 'so sad tragic' past, and that would be considered cool if she was 'gone for a while' because Anakin..., the joint effort was abandoned.
After we scrapped it with my character leaving, I still needed To completely Un-Mary Sue Ocean Elf, by nixing out any such Anakin+Ocean Elf ideas/associations.
The continuation I wrote carries on from just after the new emperor basically tells Elf to go fly a kite because she is cuttingly breaking Anakin's heart and being too much of a rebel. Yep, yelling "Oh please!" to him could get you banished unless you were Anakin freaking Skywalker. If it had been Anakin instead of Ocean Elf having that conversation with the emperor, he would not have been threatened with banishment or told "I relieve you of your duties here." Anakin would have been coddled and drenched in sympathy.
From section 3 of the following story, people finally begin to stop letting Anakin invade their minds and run their lives for his interests, and it is eventually made clear that Anakin does not love Ocean Elf. He only thought he had.
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Part 2: Anakin's Folly
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Later, for my friend's benefit, a very watered-down version was cobbled together where Anakin/Vader gets to simply die and get a funeral pyre instead of having to face some cold hard facts and wander off in a sulk. She would no doubt prefer the honoured in death version, while I prefer the foefiction above.
The sections from "Anacreep" on were heavily edited and boiled down to make Anakin look less culpable, and renamed as follows:
Ugh.
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Anakin Should Not Have Been Redeemed
Graves101
Graves101
Jedi Padawan
star 1
He basically killed Mace Windu, killed dozens of Jedi and younglings, and scorched the Jedi temple of all life, planned to kill Sidious, his "friend", to presumably become an even worse Sith Lord, mercilessly killed the whole Separatist Council, basically killed his wife, the selfish reason he did all the former, tried to kill his master, would slay thousands of Jedi during the campaign of the Purge, killed his own Imperial troops for mundane reasons, killed billions of innocents with the Alderaan incident, betrayed his own apprentice twice, while deceiving him the second time, and so much more. But it's ok to say he is forgiven because he saved his own son? After all that, one little action should not have redeemed Anakin.
He still deserved damnation,
Ocean Elf: I completely agree with the above. Unfortunately, this crap was added, wrecking the whole point...!
Graves101: far, far more than Darth Caedus.
Ocean Elf: No! They both deserve damnation, because they both committed torture. There is no redemption from that.
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Redeemed my foot. No amount of sadness/pathos will erase the commission of power-hungry and sadistic acts in Anakin Darth Vader Skywalker's past - the guy was capable and he did it...
Anakin can be as big a Gary Stu as they come, but Ocean Elf will never be a Mary Sue to a famous character, and especially not one with the commission of mass-murder and torture in his past. She wouldn't knowingly give some fan-created character with that kind of crap in his past the time of day either.
Imagine trying to make her hook up with Jeff The Killer after Jeff killed Slender Man (which he did not), and because of sympathy over Jeff's angsty "I gots bullied!" past which is why he started killing - but could redeem himself by killing Slender Man so should be pitied and forgiven and find true love.
Ugh! No!
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