singmanyfaces

I’ve been spending time expanding out an AU a bit—a piece I’d originally meant to be a one-shot is going to get a few more chapters because it ended up taking more space in my head than I thought it would. So I’ve been giving a lot of thought, off and on, about what parts of the canon version of the character would stay and which would get changed. (It’s Anakin, no one is surprised.) And it’s just sort of reinforced part of my interpretation of him, which may be a bit of a hot take, I’m honestly not sure. But I don’t actually think Anakin’s physical scars are essential parts of his character.

They absolutely inform his character in canon, I know; outside of the text, it’s really interesting to me how effects/budget impacted them, which then also informed the character. It’ll forever be wild to me that books written between AOTC and ROTS coming out characterized him as completely unashamed and even proud of his prosthetic, always wearing it uncovered, when that is…not what we got from ROTS forward. XD Also the implication that he actually does like the scars on his face, because we’ve seen bacta completely heal so much worse. So he must have chosen to keep them.

But for my mileage, all of them are entirely situational to me. Like, if Anakin is in a world where he never fights Count Dooku, he never loses his arm. If he doesn’t fight Ventress, he doesn’t get the ones on his face. Admittedly, I’m more likely to find an excuse to keep the facial scars; I feel like it’s easier for someone to pick approximations of those up in a different way than to lose an appendage. There are just other parts of his character that seem so much more a part of the core of him to me.