Why?

Look at the time. Today is Sunday. Why am I awake? Because I have my English Research Paper Topic Proposal burning a hole in my head.

Research Topic Proposal

Most people are familiar with the Star Wars series of movies, both the original trilogy (A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi) ; many people have also seen The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, the two recent additions to the series. Darth Vader is one of the most familiar characters, with his menacing attitude and sinister appearance.

With the release of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, some avid Star Wars fans got rather riled up over the portrayal of young Anakin Skywalker as a whiny brat, and later, as a rather creepy young man that no young woman in her right mind should be closely associating with.

The purpose of this paper is to track Anakin Skywalker’s emotional development associated with romantic and parent-child relationships, and to argue that the portrayal of young Skywalker in the two prequel movies is completely consistent with Darth Vader as portrayed in the original trilogy. This paper will be intended for a scholarly audience with a vague familiarity with both Star Wars and basic psychology. I am interested in this topic because I enjoy Star Wars, and participate in online fan discussions of the series, including the infamous Sith Academy discussion group (the Sith Academy is found at http://www.siubhan.com/sithacademy); the Sith Academy is known for extensive reading between the lines in the source material, and coming up with interesting interpretations.

The portrayal of Anakin Skywalker in the movies The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones is consistent with the portrayal of Darth Vader, especially with regard to interpersonal relationships with his family and family-like relationships (such as Master-Padawan). Among the points touched on will be his relationship with his mother, with Qui-Gon Jinn, with Obi-Wan Kenobi, with Padmé Amidala, with his stepfather Kleig Lars, and of course his relationship with his friend and mentor Senator Palpatine. These will be compared to his later interactions with Emperor Palpatine, and his interactions with his children, Leia and Luke. His probable isolation from other Jedi his own age will be discussed.

Source material includes the five movies and the associated novelizations as well as critical reviews of the movies and fan discussions and analyses. Also of interest would be works on clinical psychology to help in identifying some of the probable causes of Skywalker’s general issues.

Wow. That only took 48 minutes.

Field Trip

Visiting Biosphere II today. W00t. Will be having much with the fun. Packed along The Vor Game for reading in the car. Should grab stuff and go -- the carpool leaves at nine.

Back

Back from the Biosphere 2 trip. Once Miss Ironwood dropped me off, within the next two minutes evealone was knocking on the door. We're headed out to get fishies for Nephew's tank now.

Miss Ironwood and I talked shop on the way back, when we didn't have the sleeping guy in the back of the car to think we were completely nuts. She's a Yoga practitioner, and is familiar with the Tarot, et cetera. We had a blast, singing along to Crosby, Stills, & Nash and the Beatles.

Happy Poll-thing

evealone and I were chatting, and now we want to know...

[Poll #54435]

Fishie?

Went and bought a goldfish and a snail for Nephew. This made the crowd hungry for fish, so we went out in search of him. We located a nice place, which advertised a seafood buffet on their outside sign. 1951 W. Indian School, for anybody who's interested. $4.99 buffet dinner, a dollar less for lunch, terms and conditions stated elsewhere. Ate dinner, noticed a general lack of seafood. Yummy anyway. They're spoiled with my teriyaki chicken.

Finished quickly despite the runic readings on palmtops. Did a reading on a certain situation: ran into some difficulties in there, and went into Research Mode then and there. Seem to have tracked the source of the difficulty; will be keeping a weather eye out.

Came back; was instructed in astral travel into dreams. Interesting course. Flew around for a while, as this had evidently been one of the things that I've been doing for a while without really noticing that I'm doing it, just needing a name to put to it. This was much in the way of helpful in actually leaving body for a bit: that's my biggest hangup. After a while of practice, I'll possibly get good enough to start seeing real places instead of just dreamscapes.

There was a trippy moment at the beginning where another identity was attempted to be imposed upon me. I shook it off, and showed myself as I was. There was mass confusion, and no little emotional shakeup. I was there for it, and was there, and was there. I will appear as the self I most often wear, thanks.