For the character ask meme -- Padme Amidala, please!
favorite thing about them: I think I’ve told this story on here before, but Natalie Portman is from two towns over from where I grew up. A year or two before The Phantom Menace came out, I was at Barnes and Noble buying some Star Wars novels. The person working the check out looked at the books I was buying, and then informed me that a girl from her school was cast in a major role in the next movie. As soon as I got home, I looked up everything I could about Portman, because it really meant a whole lot to me that a Israeli-American from my area was going to be in Star Wars, and be in such a huge role in Star Wars at that. Once I was actually seeing the movie, all that other amazing stuff like being a politician and being respected as a leader it was all secondary to the knowledge that Portman was a big movie star and also in some small way like me. She grew up in my area, her family was Israeli, she liked science and she was in Star Wars. As far as my ten year old self was concerned, that was the coolest thing in the history of ever. With time I did come to appreciate Padmé’s commitment to politics, to peace, to doing what she believed was right and carving out the appropriate systems to achieve a stable and lasting greater good for the galaxy, the sort that can NOT be gained through war, but there is still a part of me that still views her through the lens of the child I was way back when.
least favorite thing about them: I wouldn’t say it is my least favorite thing per say, but it is def. her biggest flaw and it kind of bothers me to see it glossed over time and time again by the fandom as a whole? Which is Padmé’s massively unchecked privilege (oh yes my father the PROFESSOR WHO TEACHES ARCHITECTURE AT AN UNIVERSITY is ~~~a simple builder~~~, and let me tell you former slave boy about my days at this massive lake mansion as a child as if this is no biggie, and I think I’ll wear my haute couture on this trip to the crappiest desert to ever be crappy even though I have been to Tatooine before and should know better and when one of the people in my employ opens up to me about the fact she is struggling to pay her rent my reaction is to blame the system, and blame it so hard I build an entire speech for the senate around that fact, rather than examine my own role in this problem AS HER EMPLOYER WHO COULD RAISE HER FUCKING SALARY IF I SO DESIRED - also did she even get Tekla’s permission before telling the senate about how poor and unable to provide for her family she is???), I mean compared to the flaws of other people in canon (*cough* ANAKIN *cough*) it is really no big deal, but it is a real character flaw that deserves to be explored (I am faaaaaaaaaar more interested in Padmé as a flawed human and not Padmé as a perfect icon on a pedestal).
favorite line: “So this is how liberty dies … with thunderous applause.”
brOTP: I have two Brotps for Padmé, Bail Organa and Sabé (I also ship her with Padmé buuuuut yaknow)
OTP: It took me some digging (sorry for the extreme delay between when you asked this and when I answered it, lol) but I found some meta I wrote a while back in a conversation with @sethnakht that really sums up a lot of my feelings with regards to Padmé and Anakin. Because that is part of the problem with Padmé, since (unfortunately) so much of her characterization in the movies themselves was tied to her primarily being there to be the object of Anakin’s affections, it is a key part of who she is and it is very hard to really get at who Padmé is, romantically speaking, apart from Anakin. I also think they are both really…. fucked up romantically in a way that makes their relationship work but would not work with others. I should also say that I was not the least bit sober when I wrote the quoted text:
Anakin and Padmé are that car crash in action I can not look away from or stop thinking about? If that makes sense?
As like… I really 10000000% get why each of them is in love with the other, it makes sense. But I also think each of them had very very different expectations, desires, and long term plans and goals (aka one of them had these things and the other did not at all) and things were compounded by things like them never spending more than a week together ever.
And they fascinate me. They reaaaaally fascinate me, as they both bring out the best and the worst in each other. They draw these thing out of each other and both are so very devoted to the point of being unable to imagine not being together. They are so fucked up, and so sweet, and so wrong, and so right, and they never ever could have worked in the long term, yet they could have managed to get to a healthy place and actually make it if they both just really talked things through.
Weirdly it’s like if someone asked me if I like Vader? I mean I do on the level of him being an interesting fictional character, but 100000000% not as a person? It’s like that, but for a relationship. They are soooooooooooo good for the story and fit it just right and make so much sense on that level… but I just… I really don’t know if I’d call that shipping it?
Although I suppose enjoying seeing how they play off each other - the ways Anakin draws out the parts of Padmé she never let herself explore too much in the past (selfish desire, lack of planning and forethought, just being young and silly and this weird playacting of normalcy and her pretend suppressed desired life where she just quits politics and is young and in love played out a weekend every other month), how Anakin both builds so much up around her and yet really barely really thinks of actually planning things with her. She isn’t someone he will change for really, a life with her is not a real thing for him, not something he values/desires enough to leave the Jedi for, not really. She is more an object for him to possess than a full and real other person with her own wants and desires for him to consider. He wants everything all at once and will not confront ways he can have something stable and real. He’s fine with how it is so long as she actually puts things down to be there when he is available and it is all such a massive enabling thing for both of them and neither of them would really work with anyone else, I don’t think, as there are these parts of themselves they hide just for each other, and these things they can do for each other no one else can, and just… yeah. YEAH.
nOTP: This made me for a sec try to imagine the worst possible Padmé ships I could think of, and then check AO3 to see if anyone had written any of them. As soon as I discovered 14 whole Padmé/Palpatine fics on there, I decided it would probably be best if I turned back now and stopped seeking that sort of thing out.
random headcanon: Sola knows about her relationship with Anakin, but her parents don’t.
unpopular opinion: I’ve actually never been a fan of her elaborate dresses and makeup.
song i associate with them: Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn tbh
favorite picture of them:
Look at her! She’s escaping the male gaze for a few scant minutes of screen time.
