Hey Rockstars,

A quick warning before we begin: This post contains major spoilers for Star Wars, Harry Potter, and The Hunger Games. Some of these stories have been around for decades, but I’m still processing them emotionally, so consider yourselves warned.

I have recently decided that I’m not going to finish a book I’m currently reading. But not because it’s bad, mind you, quite the opposite. I’m obsessed with it. It’s beautifully written, the characters are wonderful, and I am having an absolutely fantastic time reading it. Unfortunately, I also know exactly how it ends, and I’ve decided that I would simply prefer not to participate.

I’ve been trying to read this book for months, simply because whenever I read it, I’m completely engrossed and don’t want to get any closer to the ending. The book in question is Matthew Stover’s novelization of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. And yes, before anyone points out the obvious, I have seen the movie. I know what happens to Anakin Skywalker. I know what happens to Padmé Amidala. I know what happens to Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Jedi Order. I know about Order 66 and Mustafar and Darth Vader and the Empire. None of this is new information. But knowing what happens in a movie and then sitting down and reading a book with so much more detail that I can visualize it is an entirely different thing.

But I started it again at the nail salon on Friday – my new thing is now reading at the salon while my fingers get radioactive under the UV gel finalizer thing.

So currently in the book, Obi-Wan and Anakin are fighting General Grievous. And it’s wonderful because we get to see how close they are—not just as Jedi, but as best friends (dare I say, brothers)—and how beautifully choreographed their lightsaber fighting is. They’re an extraordinary team who have spent years fighting alongside each other, and Stover writes their friendship so beautifully that I find myself rereading certain passages over and over again because I want to savor the moment.

… So I’ve decided that this is a perfectly acceptable place to stop reading.

Five stars. Wonderful book. Everybody is doing great. Please don’t ask me any follow-up questions.

I have this problem with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, too. To this day, Sirius Black is my favorite character. I absolutely adore Sirius Black, and every time I reread the book, I become increasingly reluctant to continue as I get closer to the Department of Mysteries. It doesn’t matter that I know what’s going to happen. Some part of me still wants Harry to use the two-way mirror, or Sirius to stay home, or someone to make one different decision that will spare everyone the heartbreak that’s coming.

In fact, I texted Artur back when I was rereading the books. I told him that I powered through 3 and 4, but “5 is taking me…longer than I planned. I’m literally in the last few chapters but I don’t want to read it because Sirius dies and I refuse to believe that actually happens. I should just skip it, pretend it doesn’t happen, and keep it moving.” Artur reacted appropriately and beautifully: “Exactly. Just skip it. His life is in your hands. Keep him alive.”

And I think that’s what fascinates me about tragedies. In a mystery, you are sitting at the edge of your seat flipping the pages because you can’t wait to figure out what happens next, who the killer is, or what the twist will be. But with tragedies, it’s almost worse. You get to the end of Sunrise on the Reaping and you know exactly what is about to happen to Haymitch, and you want to keep reading, but something in your head is saying, “no, no, no, I don’t want to hear this.” And either you see it coming and can’t bring yourself to turn another page, or you read the words and you’re devastated.

I’ve been going through something of a Star Wars renaissance lately, which is funny because if someone had explained the premise of Star Wars to me years ago, I would have been watching these movies a lot sooner. For some reason, everyone emphasized the “high ground” and the spaceships, and the complicated family trees, which yes, fine, but they neglected to mention that the whole thing involves a man who loves a woman so desperately that his fear of losing her eventually destroys everything he’s trying to protect.

I’m sorry, WHAT? Why was this not included in the sales pitch??

Also, lightsaber fighting is basically a beautifully choreographed dance, and you all know I love dancing. Do you know how deep my nerd could have gone if I was regularly quoting Star Wars along with Harry Potter, Hunger Games, LOTR, and Star Trek??

I was explaining this revelation to my friend Sam recently, and he immediately told me, “You love that shit.”

“Love what?”

“Someone who loves you so much that he defies the rules and fights the entire world for you.”

Well, obviously??

Although I should clarify that while I appreciate an extravagant romantic gesture, I would generally prefer one that does not involve overthrowing a democratic government or murdering innocent people. I feel like there are other ways to demonstrate affection. But damn, “I’m breaking the rules by marrying you and love you so much” – SIGN ME UP.

But that’s also what makes Anakin’s story so upsetting to me. Anakin was actually surrounded by love – his mother, Obi-Wan, and Padmé, to name a few. There was no shortage of mutual care between them. And somehow, all of that love wasn’t enough to prevent everything that happened. In fact, Anakin’s fear of losing the people he loved became the very thing that led him to lose them. I know that’s the tragedy, and I understand why it’s such brilliant storytelling, but I would personally appreciate it if everyone could stop making such terrible decisions for approximately five minutes.

And I know Anakin isn’t blameless here. Not even close. His childhood was heartbreaking, and Palpatine spent years exploiting his fears, but Anakin also made his own choices. Terrible ones. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan endured an extraordinary amount of suffering, too, and never turned to the dark side. I can feel tremendous sympathy for Anakin without pretending that becoming Darth Vader was the only possible outcome of his life. If anything, the fact that he could have chosen differently makes it worse.

Because I keep thinking about that little boy on Tatooine. He was born into slavery, and even when he was freed, his mother wasn’t. He grew up, became a Jedi, fell in love, and dreamed of a future with Padmé, only to become so terrified of losing her that he surrendered himself to Palpatine. The boy who wanted freedom ended up serving another master. I find that devastating, especially because somewhere along the way, his desire to protect the people he loved became something that hurt them.

And then I think about Obi-Wan, and I get upset all over again.

I mean, HAVE YOU READ HOW STOVER WRITES THESE TWO? Their friendship is incredible. They know each other so well that their movements in battle almost become instinctive, and there’s something about the way they trust each other that makes me want to stop reading and stay in those scenes forever. They’ve survived years of war together. They’ve saved each other’s lives. They’re funny together! They annoy each other! They are, by all accounts, two people who have developed an extraordinary friendship, and I am supposed to willingly continue reading until one of them is standing on Mustafar telling the other that he loved him?

Absolutely not.

And please, no Obi-Wan slander. I know there’s an argument that Qui-Gon might have been a better master for Anakin, and maybe he would have been. But Obi-Wan loved that boy. He took responsibility for him after losing his own master, and over the years, that responsibility became a friendship, and that friendship became a brotherhood. He didn’t simply lose his apprentice when Anakin fell to the dark side. He lost his best friend, his brother, and the person who had been beside him through so much of his life.

And Anakin lost Obi-Wan, too. That’s the thing I keep coming back to. Whatever feelings Darth Vader had about Obi-Wan in the years that followed, I find it impossible to believe that all those years of friendship simply ceased to matter. They were brothers. They knew each other in a way that comes from spending years together, surviving things together, and becoming part of each other’s ordinary lives. And then, suddenly, they weren’t.

I think that’s the part of love that people sometimes overlook. You can love someone romantically, or as a friend, or as family, and what makes losing them so devastating isn’t necessarily just the absence of that particular relationship. It’s the loss of someone who knows you. Someone you would have told about your day, or called when something ridiculous happened, or turned to because you knew they’d understand. Someone who has spent years learning who you are while you’ve been learning who they are.

I mean, can you imagine how many times Obi-Wan must have encountered something and thought of Anakin? How many conversations they never got to have? How many times Anakin might have wanted to tell his old friend something, only for the reality of what he’d become to make that impossible? I know that by then their relationship was tangled up in anger, betrayal, and terrible choices, but I cannot believe that makes the years they spent loving one another any less real.

And Padmé. OH, PADMÉ. She loved Anakin, and he loved her. That’s what makes the whole thing so horribly frustrating. His fear of losing her was so consuming that he destroyed the very future he wanted to protect. And even knowing that, even understanding that Anakin bears responsibility for his choices, I find myself wishing he had just stopped for a moment and listened to the people who loved him. Because there was so much love there, and somehow they still lost each other.

I think that’s why found family gets me every single time. There’s something extraordinary about the way people become important to one another, not necessarily because they were born into the same family or obligated to spend their lives together, but because they found each other and decided to stay. And over time, they become part of each other’s lives in ways that are difficult to untangle. Which makes losing them feel like losing not just a person, but a whole collection of ordinary moments that will never happen again.

Which brings me back to Sirius Black, because I genuinely cannot think about that man without becoming upset all over again.

Sirius especially breaks my heart because the poor man spent twelve years in Azkaban for something he didn’t do. Twelve years! And when he finally got out, he was still a fugitive. He still couldn’t simply live his life. Then he and Harry found each other, and here was this boy who had spent so much of his childhood without a family who genuinely wanted him, and this man who had lost his best friend and so many years of his own life. They loved each other. They wanted to be family. They were finally beginning to figure out what that might look like.

AND THEN HE DIES???

I’m sorry, but I reject this outcome.

And before anyone tells me that these stories are supposed to be tragic, I know. I KNOW. I understand that Sirius’s death matters to Harry’s story and that Anakin’s fall is essential to Star Wars. I understand that these events shape the characters who survive them, and I understand that we probably wouldn’t love these stories quite the same way if everything worked out beautifully for everyone involved.

But I think there’s a difference between appreciating a tragedy and wanting the tragedy to happen.

Because when I think about Sirius and Harry, I don’t necessarily imagine them living together in some perfect little house where Sirius suddenly becomes the world’s greatest guardian and Harry never has another problem. And when I think about Anakin, Padmé, and Obi-Wan, I’m not imagining that they would have lived happily ever after without arguments or complications or any of the ordinary difficulties that come with loving other people.

I don’t know what their lives would have looked like. Maybe their relationships would have changed. Maybe they would have made mistakes, disappointed each other, grown apart, or found entirely different things they wanted from life. That’s fine! People do that! People change.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite lines from Girl Meets World: People change people.

It’s so simple and so true, and dare I quote Cory Matthews, it’s the secret to life. We become different people because of the people we meet, the people we love, the people who challenge us, and the people who introduce us to things we never would have discovered on our own. Sometimes they change us in enormous ways, and sometimes they leave behind tiny things we don’t even realize we’ve picked up. And those changes don’t stop once we decide we love someone. We keep learning about each other, annoying each other, changing our minds, growing older, and becoming people we couldn’t have imagined being when we first met.

That’s what I wish these characters had been allowed to do.

I don’t need to know that Sirius would have been a perfect godfather, or that Anakin and Padmé would have had a perfect marriage, or that Anakin and Obi-Wan would have remained inseparable forever. I just wanted them to have the opportunity to find out. To have years of ordinary, imperfect life together. To keep changing each other, and to find out who they might have become along the way.

And perhaps that’s why these stories are so difficult for me. I don’t just love the characters. I love the relationships they’ve built, the friendships they’ve found, and all the little pieces of themselves they’ve given to one another. And when those relationships end, whether through death or betrayal or someone’s terrible decisions, it feels like losing so much more than the person standing there. It’s losing the person they were to everyone who loved them, too.

I know that to love someone is to accept the possibility of losing them. I know that no amount of love guarantees a particular future, and that sometimes people make choices that take them away from the very things they wanted most. But knowing that doesn’t make me any more willing to watch it happen. Especially when, for a little while, everyone was happy and something beautiful was still possible.

I actually find the ending of Return of the Jedi incredibly beautiful because, after everything, Anakin finally breaks free of Palpatine and saves Luke. Padmé was right: there was still good in him. And Luke believed in his father when almost everyone else had given up hope. I know that Return of the Jedi can refer to the return of the Jedi, but I also love thinking of it as the return of one specific Jedi: the love of my life, Anakin Skywalker, finally returning to the light after years of being Darth Vader. Welcome back, Jedi. AHHHHHHH.

I love that he gets to make that choice. After spending so much of his life afraid of losing the people he loved, he finally saves someone without trying to control the outcome, knowing it might cost him his own life. And in doing so, the little boy from Tatooine, who spent so much of his life serving someone else, is finally free.

But, oh my god, think about everything that happened before he got there.

Think about all those years he never had with Padmé. All the years Luke and Leia grew up without knowing their father. All the years Obi-Wan spent believing Anakin was gone, missing the man who had been his brother. And all the years Sirius never got to spend with Harry, after already losing twelve years of his life to Azkaban.

Anakin’s redemption matters. It matters enormously. But it doesn’t give anyone those years back.

And that’s the part I can’t get past. I don’t need to imagine a happily-ever-after for these characters. I don’t even need to believe they would have been happy all the time. I just wish they’d been allowed to live their beautiful, complicated, imperfect lives and see what happened next.

I know perfectly well that my refusal to finish a book isn’t going to save anyone. I’ve seen the movies, read the books, and spent more time than any reasonable adult should contemplating the emotional consequences of fictional events.

So, for now, I think I’ll take Artur’s advice and leave everyone exactly where they are. Sirius is alive as long as I don’t turn the page, and Anakin and Obi-Wan are still fighting side by side. Padmé is alive, the Republic is standing, and nobody needs to discuss what happens on Mustafar.

Five stars. Would not finish.

Until next time!

xo

Sandhya

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