Darth Vader and Son
is a Star Wars fanfic by Cabochon based off of the illustrated Jeffery Brown book of the same name.
Both the book and the fanfic are about Darth Vader doing his best to raise his four-year-old son Luke Skywalker. Unlike the book, the fanfic takes the illustrations and reframes them in a way so that they could conceivably fit into canon, expanding upon the surrounding context for the illustrations and in a few cases linking together several loosely related (or in some cases unrelated) pictures.
Darth Vader and Son provides the following tropes:
- Adaptation Expansion: The fic provides additional context for the events depicted in certain illustrations.
- Adaptational Context Change: In canon, Vader's "I am your father" is delivered to an adult Luke where it’s treated as a big reveal. Here it’s spoken by Vader to a four-year old Luke as a reminder of his authority.
- Anachronic Order: The individual chapters appear to be told out of order, as the second chapter takes place some time after chapters three and four.
- Assassination Attempt: The Executor's kitchens have to be closed due to one involving flesh-eating, semi-sentient bacteria.
- Behavioral Conditioning: Discussed between Luke and Vader when Luke suggests that people under Vader's command should be rewarded with treats so they'll perform well, rather than being force-choked as punishment.
- Big "NO!": Luke when Vader tries to get him to go to bed.
- Catch Your Death of Cold: Vader warns Luke that he'll get sick if he stays out in the rain.
- Dead Fic: The last update was on December 22, 2012.
- Death Glare: Vader delivers two to two separate characters.
- Didn't Think This Through: After pressing the emergency release button on his father's crashed TIE fighter, Luke realizes that he should've given more thought about the possibility of landing in a quagmire.
- Flat "What":
- Vader after learning that Luke has fallen into the Rancor pit.
- Vader after Luke asks him if they can keep Salacious B. Crumb as a pet.
- Gilligan Cut: Vader firmly tells Luke that they're not going to adopt Salacious B. Crumb as a pet. The very next scene is Salacious B. Crumb watching Luke and Vader from a Krayt Dragon skeleton, having been adopted.
- Harmful to Minors: Luke witnesses Vader Force-choking a man.
- Hold Your Hippogriffs: "Son of a Bantha".
- Humiliating Wager: Sergeant Russ's uniform gets completely covered in sparkling gold glitter after losing a bet.
- I Do Not Own: Every chapter begins with some variation of the author announcing that they don't own Star Wars.
- Little "No": Vader flatly states "No" before the 501st can ask him if they can take Luke trick-or-treating.
- Mythology Gag: At one point, Vader notes that Luke takes to space like a duck to water, prompting Luke to ask what a duck is. A similar conversation happens between Luke and Obi-Wan in the novelization of A New Hope.
- Noodle Incident: Luke had an "unfortunate incident involving an inadvertent food fight" at some point in the past.
- Oh, Crap!: Captain Sankaran's reaction upon learning that Vader is the father of the boy he was considering throwing into a cell.
- Past Experience Nightmare: Vader has bad dreams about killing younglings and force-choking his wife, among other things.
- Quicksand Sucks: Luke and his father find themselves slowly sinking in quicksand after crash-landing on Dagobah.
- Shout-Out: Luke greets the "Little droid that goes around the hallways".
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: While preparing to fight Yoda, Vader notes that the former has a weakness for children and thus won’t hurt Luke.
