Hello everybody! Welcome back to Tanner's Books and Beyond and Day 9 of VEDUS!
I'm running out of fingers.
Let's get right into it.
Today's Certain Point of View story is by Meg Cabot and it is "Beru Whitesun Lars",
which is about...Luke's aunt, Beru Whitesun Lars.
And unfortunately, I feel it's the weakest one so far, which sucks because I was really
looking forward to it.
Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen are those characters that you don't get a lot of backstory on them;
they really deserve to have some look into their lives, what it was like raising Luke
and knowing what his destiny might turn out to be, and all the trials and tribulations
and the potential of other people looking for him, of having to deal with Obi-Wan if
he tried to check in on Luke or asked them "hey maybe it's time for him to start his
training to be a Jedi at some point?"
I think part of it might be because of how it's framed.
It's all done all in the first person and it's also done after Aunt Beru has died, so
it's...this weird self-eulogy thing that she gives herself?
Plus the fact that she does it so casually, just talking about the events of her life
that so much of the potential characterization and emotion that we could get from a story
like this, it falls away.
There are several interesting ideas in this story about what Aunt Beru hoped for Luke
and what she was afraid of and those times when she thought maybe he went to the Academy
then they wouldn't be hunted down?
Maybe they wouldn't have gone in the line of fire?
But none of them are expanded upon.
But there's ONE little detail, like the most tiny inconsequential thing that Aunt Beru
keeps on bringing up in this thing is that one time she took a cooking class in Mos Eisley
and the teacher said that she made the best blue milk cheese - and then every other paragraph
she's bringing up the blue milk cheese.
"Damn, one day I could've made the best blue milk cheese, Luke loved my blue milk cheese,
I could've opened a cafe and served only blue milk cheese.
Blue milk cheese! Blue milk cheese! Blue milk cheese! Ugh! It was exhausting. It was...*sigh*...
it wasn't awful, like, I don't wanna call any of these stories bad
because nothing has been bad so far.
Some things have been underwhelming, some things have been weaker than others, but this
story was frustrating because it seemed like a lot of missed potential that happened...the
only upside that I can think of is that so few things where actually genuinely talked
about that it leaves a lot of space open for someone else to come in and write another
story about Aunt Beru.
But in the end I feel like...this is the kind of story that should help me learn and appreciate
the character more and it FAILED at that completely and it's...it's a bummer, man!
Anyways, let's just move on to something a bit more positive.
The Clone Army Attacketh!
I'm feeling a lot better about it now.
I was able to read all the way to the end of Act II, so that takes us in movie terms
to the end of Obi-Wan's visit to Kamino and the cloning facility.
I think one of the reasons I've managed to start liking it more is because...'kay, in
the movie the longer Anakin was around Padme the more flower his dialogue gets, and that's
not necessarily..."better" in the movie but it really helps here because Doescher can
take that dialogue and tweak it and expand upon it and, mmm Shakespeare-ify it essentially!
And it can become these really good monologues that are really nice but also have this undercurrent
of the aforementioned obsession and this growing darkness that Anakin has always had, ever
since he was separated from his mother.
And that's another thing! He brings up his mom a lot, and other people do it to.
And yes, that was a huge thing in the movies, but here you feel it more and you notice it
more, you notice how terrified Anakin is for her sake.
You really start to see how Anakin is kind of this amalgamation of the worst traits of
Shakespeare's heroes because he's got the youthful inexperience and impulsiveness of
Hal, he's easily manipulated like Othello was, he's whiny like...god there are so many
whiny Shakespeare heroes.
And on the flip side of that coin we've got Palpatine, who's this terrifying combination
of Iago and Falstaff because like Falstaff he takes a mentorship role over Anakin and
he holds way more influence over him than Obi-Wan does, but instead of trying to get
him to give up his duties and extol himself in debauchery, he's planting all of the seeds
that would cause him to become Sith, he's manipulating him the way Iago manipulated
Othello, turning all his emotions against himself and working them towards Palpatine's own agenda.
That being said, on the less highbrow side of things, remember when Obi-Wan visited his
friends who had all those arms?
Well he shows up in here and every single one of his lines has an arm pun, so...that's great!
And that concludes today's update, but if you'd like to see my other VEDUS videos as
well as other bookish videos in general then be sure to subscribe to my channel.
You can also check out my instagram for other daily updates or my goodreads to see how I'm
progressing through my books.
And until tomorrow I'll see you all *snap* later!
*funky music*
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