- "Well, looks like we're all Sith Lords, now. I hope you've all been practicing your most menacing laughter for our first run in with the Jedi Council."
Sith Lord Swell is a Star Wars fanfiction written by AMournfulHowlInTheNight, author of Conversations with a Cryptid, Cardiac Arrest, and Cadetship Calamity. In it, Luke and Ben Skywalker, along with the rest of Luke's students at the new Jedi Temple, are sent back in time by a sith artifact to shortly before the Clone Wars.
Naturally, Luke decides to make this everyone's problem.
It can be read on Archive of Our Own here
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Tropes relating to Sith Lord Swell
- Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: One of the main reasons why the Jedi can't just remove Vader from power is because he's so effectively wiping out the criminal underbelly of the galaxy and freeing all the slaves in the Outer Rim, making him unbelievably popular. It certainly doesn't hurt his PR that Tattoine, the planet that he's the senator of, has been lifted out of scrap metal and the desert to jobs, air conditioned homes, and effective infrastructre.
- Beleaguered Assistant: Ben, to Luke. Given that he's the one who does public relations and changes Luke's public image from "Luke wearing a mask" to "Darth Vader".
- Bread and Circuses: Discussed by Luke and Ben, when Ben mentions it as how they're going to keep in power. Luke instead states that they're working on jobs and infrastructure first - then, once they have the infrastructure to make the booze and the jobs to run the circuses, the people can have those.
- Dead Person Impersonation: Luke chooses "Darth Vader" as his Sith name to make Sidious's life harder, and his persona while acting as Darth Vader is based around Palpatine.
- The Dreaded: Darth Vader, who tends to cut through swarms of bounty hunters like a lightsaber through butter, which, incidentally, his opponents' armor may as well be made of.
- Evil Chancellor: Palpatine fulfills this role as per usual, but it's thoroughly averted by Darth Vader.
- Evil Laugh: Luke practiced his "Palpatine laugh" enough that, when Anakin first heard it, he was impressed that the wallpaper wasn't peeling from the walls of the Jedi Council's meeting room.
- Forced into Evil: Luke, Ben, and the rest of the students, though it's less "evil", and more "pretending to be Sith". After all, the Jedi of the time are very firm in their belief that their Jedi are the only proper Jedi.
- The Gadfly: Luke. He spends most of his time cleaning out various criminal organizations and pretending to be a Sith Lord for shits and giggles.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: After Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Yoda become acquainted with Luke and Ben in their paper-pusher guises, they quickly befriend the pair and have dinner or lunch together at least once a week and share gossip about the Sith, particularly Lord Vader's opinion on the Banites, despite the fact that Luke and Ben are known affiliates of Darth Vader and thus Sith agents.
- Humiliation Conga: Luke goads a number of criminals into trying to take Palpatine hostage and sell him for ransom so that he has an excuse to "rescue" Palpatine... by dragging him butt-naked through the entire city, intentionally going through the least efficient and most public routes, so that Palpatine's eventual attempt to become Emperor is killed before it even begins due to sheer public embarrassment.
- I'm Melting!: When Lord Vader recruits Maul, he accidentally melts a group of enemies when grabbing them with the Force causes the exceedingly dangerous alcoholic drinks inside of them to burst out and liquify them. Due to Lord Vader's status as The Dreaded, Luke and Ben can't contribute this to dumb luck and spend a while studying Sith Alchemy and experimenting to recreate the "Force Melt" ability Lord Vader is now known to have.
- Loophole Abuse: Accessing the Dark Side of the Force requires you to lord over your inferiors and feed on the suffering of others. As such, Luke and his students terrorize the criminal population and especially the Hutts, and Luke in particular feeds off of the suffering of Sheev Palpatine.
- Odd Friendship: Luke, Ben, Anakin, and Obi-Wan - you wouldn't expect a Sith Lord's assistants to be good friends with the Jedi assigned to investigate the Sith, but they regularly meet to have dinner together. Made even odder, since Luke and Ben secretly are the Sith Lords Anakin and Obi-Wan are investigating, and that Anakin is Luke's father and Ben's grandfather!
- Yoda later also makes friends with Luke, since, as Darth Vader's personal assistant, he can tell Yoda about Sith lore, as well as the various insults Darth Vader has for the Banite Sith.
- Refuge in Audacity: Luke and his padawans have this as their M.O. due to the way that they decide on courses of action: What Would Han Solo Do?
- Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Lord Vader averts the usual tendency of senators ignoring slavery when it benefits them, instead taking a very ruthless joy in putting slavers on the endangered species list.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Shmi Skywalker, who Luke rescues as his first priority.
