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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sunseeker" data-source="post: 6852308">Anakin's story was horrible.  Lucas' writing was horrible.  Having it be nothing more than backstory that Vader was once a great and noble Jedi who fell to the dark side because he had a lot of unresolved issues was okay.  Not great, but okay.  When it was actually written out?  It was horrible.  Bad people killed my mom!  I'll use my great power to murder them!  Bad people may kill my wife in the future!  I'll use my great power to kill everyone!  It was whiny, pathetic, and just downright bad.  I'd be MUCH happeier if they rewrote Anakin to be a bad-guy from the start!  Anakin: lowly child was raised as a slave but was too old and too angry for Jedi training.  At some point he discovered his latent force abilities and used them to seek revenge against those who had imprisoned him and his mother and harmed all his poor-kid friends.  But soon the mob bosses and criminals who supported those slavers wanted revenge in turn and Anakin's powerful force abilities attracted "Dark Powers" who trained him in even more exceptionally deadly dark arts!  Soon Anakin took charge of these many criminal organizations and allied himself with the Trade Federation, being tricked by the "Dark Lord" into thinking that everything that happened to him was a result of the failure of the Jedi and the Republic to protect his backwater planet!  A great war broke out!  Anakin was a merciless warlord!  He met this hot chick who wasn't that interested in him, but he thought if he became powerful enough, she'd love him!  It didn't work!  Soon Anakin was killing for the sake of killing!  His love betrayed him and lured him into a fight with Old-Guy Man!  Old-Guy Man nearly killed Anakin, but the Dark Powers saved his crispy bacon!  With the Dark Powers plot revealed, the new Darth Vader laid waste to the Jedi and became right-hand-man of the new Emperor!See, much better.  No more twerpy emofest.  No more angst-ridden writer insert.  Still keeps the important parts, but wraps them up into a much more believable, much more reasonable story than "Angry emo kid goes crazy 'cause not-girlfriend doesn't go for him."Lets try again!Romeo, the poor kid from the wrong side of town falls for Juliet, the rich girl with all the right curves!  But alas!  It is not meant to be!  So Romeo dedicates himself to becoming rich and powerful so that her family might respect him.  Alas all he knows is crime, but he sure does know his crime, so Romeo becomes a powerful crime boss!  He spends years of his life moving up the ranks and soon he is rich and powerful, even moreso than Juliet's family, but alas they are old money and see him as new money, unworthy of their bloodline.  Angered by this, Romeo seeks aid from the Dark Powers to twist the fates and make it appear that he is indeed Old Money.  But alas it is not enough, for Juliet does not love him!  Instead she has fallen for his humble brother, who owns nothing more than a farm.  Romeo has everything!  Money!  Power!  But now the one thing he wants is beyond his reach forever!  In a fit of rage he destroy's Juliet's family, his own family, even his brother and Juliet!  Saddened by his loss he strikes a new deal with the Dark Powers so that Juliet may live forever and one day love him!See, the love is a good sort of background motivator for the character.  It drives him.  It moves him.  It underlies his very existence!  But at the same time, his descent into madness is slow and painful and the more powerful and more depraved he becomes, the more his Love is pushed away from him.  He is obsessed, but singleminded.  The loss of his love is the straw that broke the camel's back, not the sudden turning point in his life where he went from flowers and puppies to violence and depravity.Gothic literature is also very much about inescapable fate.  We, the reader know what is going to happen, but we keep reading because Strahd doesn't and if he does (say, via a card reading) he ignores it!  His chances to change his ways show up over and over and over again and each time he dismisses them because magic or because he is so close or because he has great power.  We want to see Strahd succeed as much as we want to see Strahd fail.Personally, I don't see the original telling of Strahd as being a very good representation of gothic writing or even a very good representation of writing at all.  It's VERY Anakin.  Couple rough points in his life and suddenly has a vision of doom and decides to save the Evil Emperor for no good raisin and then every bad thing he saw coming happens because it's all his fault.  Okay, that last part I actually like.  But I don't really much care for characters who "suddenly snap".  It's fine for psychos, guys who go around murdering teenagers once a year with chainsaws.  It's not really that good for villains.  EX: I just watched Jessica Jones, their portrayal of Kilgrave varied greatly from the original (where he was kinda lame, powerful, but not a real great character) and they made him into someone who was absolutely depraved, but all of his depravity stemmed from two things: he could get anything he wanted...except the one thing he really wanted.  And he just completely lacked any sort of moral compass on how to get it so he just went with what he knew.  That's Strahd right there.  The guy who has everything and wants the one thing he can't have, but will do anything to get it, and the harder he tries to get it, the more it slips through his fingers.*shrug* as a long-time comic book reader you have one of two choices when dealing with retcons:A: Deal and keep reading, knowing it will likely change again, and again, and again in the future.B: Stop reading.I choose A.</blockquote>

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