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steve0discusses · 4 years ago

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Yugioh S5 Ep 20: Pharaoh’s Cool New Trick

Digging my way through quite a pile of commission work (funny how these things only come all at once or not at all), nearing the light at the end of the tunnel, was looking forward to some free time to catch up on my many little side projects when I was asked to take off for a weekend to do some cat-sitting to which I would NEVER say no to a cat, so like...Rip this blog I guess, we only update like once a week nowadays, but what do you do?

That’s right, play Puzzles and Dragons! The only phone game worth paying any attention to! Where they just released Pegasus on their Yugioh Collab and he looks pretty great!

So I’m just gonna take a second for some art appreciation, because the Puzzles and Dragons art team is just A++++ honestly, and yes, I did pull 13 times to get a Pegasus in my monster box, and yes, he is a completely insane team leader that is absolutely broken when paired with Yugi (the numbers are so satisfying) but...look at him. He looks so good!

(also I finally got Joey Wheeler, and so now my gatcha cravings are settled. And, don’t worry, I play this game so much that I was there during Christmas when they offered like a bajillion stones for free so I didn’t actually use real money on this.)

Now PAD also released a Weevil and Rex, and I don’t know why, and neither does the art team because they still look pretty good but in comparison to all the mains, they sure do looks like just some shorty guys in some casuals.

though I gotta admit, I want to learn how the hell this art team does swooshy effects, because man, that would make my art so much better to just have flames violently exploding out of all my art. Why am I not doing that more often? I have the technology.

anyway, I didn’t bother trying to pull them. Maybe I’ll accidentally pull them when they eventually release a Duke Devlin. (also, RIP to the fact that Roland will probably never be in Puzzles and Dragons but like...I can only send them so many polite letters covered in stickers pretending I’m some 10 year old child and writing in my broken Hiragana “Roland in PAD?”. Thems the breaks. (They also might not remember who Roland is.))

Shoutouts to the card that Weevil is holding that is censoring this nipple on the booby spider, PS.

So because this is not actually a Puzzles and Dragons blog, and it’s been ten eons since I regularly updated so I could remember episode to episode...where the hell were we?

That’s right, we’re on an island now. This show’s wonderful obsession with evil islands (and spoiler, this is one of the few Yugioh Islands that doesn’t explode at the end. Mostly because Kaiba isn’t here to do it or this place would be cinder)

(read more island stuff under the cut)

Anyway, after announcing “hey guys! Screw islands!” Yugi immediately collapses and without any warning.

Apparently the armor is a big ol parasite, which is something that Yugi is so used to at this point that he refuses to admit that this is a problem. Just normal Muto stuff, refusing to tell anyone that he has a serious illness going on underneath that giant mass of hair.

(the sailor moon vibes coming off this weird orb energy)

Sort of feels like a call back to S1 when Yugi was clearly possessed and everyone else was like “He acting weird to you?” except it’s S5 and everyone has learned to never trust Yugi when he says he’s fine and they are responding like he is about to die. Which is correct.

Outside of the cave falls this scroll that is...glowing, I guess. So they open it up and get a bunch of hieroglyphs that give them the “riddle of light” and like youknow...it’s riddle stuff.

They’re doing this riddle for “wings.” And it’s like...everyone’s monster here has a set of wings or an ability to fly. Every single monster except for I dunno, flaming swordsman? Hell, Yugi himself had two sets of wings when he fused with Dark Magician (which was weird, and I still don’t like to think about what technically was going on there.) But we have to go and get ourselves even more wings.

Weirdly, Joey turns to Tea and does something that in any other show would be completely normal. He was like “you want to stay here with Yugi, don’t you?” and it was the first time Joey has ever actually addressed the fact that Tea and Yugi are close. Uncharted territory. I was amazed at the amount of casual shipping that is happening here. It’s almost like a normal ass relationship.

So the boys decide to go off, and be boys and tackle this themselves. And they shouldn’t have, because Tea is smart for this group, and also has the only healing spell.

Like if you’re playing D+D you wouldn’t typically leave your only healer behind. Just saying.

Also like...Grandpa Muto went with them? I guess he’d have to since he’s the translator but also...kind of weird to leave your grandson dying in a cave, but maybe that’s just the Muto lifestyle.

Do not be fooled by my caps, no one has addressed the Bakura in the puzzle for 3 seasons. I’m starting to think this show will never address the Bakura in the puzzle. Which honestly, that would be hilarious if they made a big deal out of that plot point and then couldn’t use it in the end.

And speaking of plot points that kind of come out of nowhere and don’t make full sense with the continuity of the show--Joey has regressed back to the 4th grade.

Hey show? What?

So like if you love Joey, this is not the arc for you, because this arc he is reduced to a Himbo and nothing else. Straight up didn’t know what an echo is, but is very strong and pretty, I guess.

This inevitably happens with any TV show becuase different people make different parts, and I’ve brought up before that sometimes it feels like some teams only have loose post-it notes of what any character should be like at any given point (ESPECIALLY with Seto Kaiba’s timeline) but like...

...Personally I’m mot so fond of this interpretation of Joey, kind of ignores Joey’s best traits, and makes Tristan look way too smart in comparison (and like I always pinned Tristan to be the Himbo of the group, but maybe it’s because they give Tristan so little else to do?)

And like don’t get me wrong, Joey’s a dumbass a lot of the time and needs to get corrected by his pals...but...to the point he doesn’t know what an echo is? He’s a dumbass in a High School student sort of way, youknow?

Anyway, they get down to this big ravine, and they have to destroy this stone while the light passes over it. Kind of feels like a Breath of the Wild shrine quest, actually. In fact, I think Breath of the Wild recycled the shadow/sunlight pathing quest like 4 or 5 times. (I love Breath of the Wild to death but boy did they run out of ideas at the end there.)

They have to fight a glass monster and it’s kind of like...do you know the game Balls 3D? probably not, but it looked like a bunch of random shapes stuck together like a 90′s animation. They basically went to war with shapes.

Pure Himbo energy, has several pokemon, but punches for his pokemon instead of using them. A power move if I ever saw one.

Youknow that would make pokemon a lot more interesting if you could like throw out your pikachu, and then choose to just physically run up to your opponents Eevee and sock it in the jaw. Raise of hands--I know you all would love a version of pokemon like that. Let Ash Ketchum punch a Ratata.

Bro has informed me that Ash does do something like this in the anime. But I’m not talking about the anime, I’m talking about the video game. Give me the option to physically combat my rival. This is what I want, Pokemon.

They discover a way to break the monolith, and the show thinks we’re like actually 7 years old (because the show is Y7, although I forget because it deals with so many dark themes) so the show is going to hold on to this puzzle for a while...just to fill time. And it’s fine because we gotta switch over to Pharaoh anyway.

Yami has this dream again. He attempts to fuse with Dark magician to overcome the dream, but alas, he is still not strong enough.

Yugi wakes up in this murky cave while Tea is out washing out like...some rag? (he’s also still got a rag, so I guess multiple rags were required for how sweaty Yugi is.)

Yugi says “I feel like I’m a new man!” a lot in this episode, and every time he calls himself a man like he’s some sort of adult it’s very funny to me.

And then this plot lore dropped.

I mean I guess inevitably it had to happen...

But man, end of an era. It was freakin hilarious while it lasted: that Pharaoh refused to read ancient Egyptian because it’s like 2002 and he is a High Schooler living in Japan and he actually doesn’t WANT to resolve the mystery of the puzzle. Maybe the people who made this arc don’t know about how in S2 and S3, the fact Pharaoh couldn’t read Marik’s back tatt was like...a really big issue. He couldn’t read the God card, he couldn’t even read that massive tablet that read “HEY PHARAOH THIS IS LITERALLY YOU”. KAIBA had to tell him how to read the God card for him. Freakin Seto “Magic is a lie” Kaiba had to tell him how to use the God Card because Pharaoh couldn’t read it.

But like...Pharaoh finally gave in at some point after the world was devoured by the Leviathan, and before Kaiba finished building Kaibaland (which was already built in S1 but wtv)

The timelines on this show have always been a mishmash...but this one is just like...

...show are you trying to convince me that at any point in this show after season Zero, Pharaoh had any idea what he was doing? Did he sap that brain energy straight out of Joey Wheeler so he could do this?

Wow.

(secretly hoping he forgets how to read Egyptian after this arc is over and the show goes back to the other development team)

Pharaohs reasoning is that, if this is the riddle of the light.....

....then where is the riddle of darkness????????????

and when Tea was like “Pharaoh that is not even remotely logic. Omg it’s so bright outside, lets go back to gross cave.” and Pharaoh was like “Tea! You got it!” and she was like “What the hell are you talking about?”

Not gonna lie, I saw the Orichalcos green, and I got concerned.

Anyway, Yugi gets very frustrated and was like “ugh, lets go save em. They’re gonna die (again.)” and marches down there as if he didn’t pass out an hour ago.

And he fuses with Dark Magician again while everyone else (including his grandpa) was like “Yugi are you freakin kidding me? The suit freakin kills you omg! Tea you had one freakin job!”

And then we get the plot twist that...I mean it makes sense but it was choreographed in a confusing way.

And out of no where this guy shows up again:

So this mysterious man shows up and says “If you don’t succeed you have to live here forever” which...nice...that would probably save the world a lot of problems if Yami got locked away and took his OP puzzle with him. And then this man also says “if you do succeed you become VERY POWERFUL” and Yami was like. “...”

This whole episode had a theme to it, where Tristan and Joey were trying to prove that they could do things on their own and without Yugi’s help. And honestly...felt a little bit misplaced. Yami’s the same guy who murdered Yugi last season with the Orichalcos so like...

...I mean he is probably more reliable than Tristan who once died and turned into a robot monkey for 10ish episodes.

and then they flew into a glowing door.

Folks, this was wild to look at.

This is wild.

And at this point I closed Photoshop and thought I was done. But then I looked at my timeline on the video and was like...wait...there’s more?

and I’m really glad I kept watching because it went back to Alex, who...is apparently just still at those steps in this haunted ass Pyramid.

Now we’re watching Yugioh.

I forgot for a second when they turned Joey into a Himbo and made Pharaoh literate, but we’re back. I mean...

...look at the liner art on this adult man.

So...I posit the question...has Alex spent the last 2-3 episodes doing nothing but applying eyeliner to his face in the dark? Because he absolutely has. And honestly, the vibe of being in a spooky haunted pyramid with barely any light, just applying eyeliner down the edge of your face...that’s a Yugioh vibe, if I ever saw one.

This arc is wild. Anyway, next episode we do even more fetch quests and riddles? Just going to guess now that we probably will.

(and for those new here, this is a link so you can read them from the top. Which, since we’re in S5, means you got like...hours of Yugioh content to read through. Enjoy the rewards of my weird hobby.)

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

#Yugioh #Yu-Gi-Oh #yami yugi #S5 #Ep20 #It's actually Ep 20 now I was wrong last time #Yugi muto #Grandpa Muto #Alexander the Great #Joey Wheeler #Tristan Taylor #Tea Gardner #TeaxYugi #never thought I would ever use that tag #in this show where they are canonically dating but sometimes it happens #Puzzles and Dragons #Because yes I had to talk about it. This collab is great

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stillness-in-green · 4 years ago

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I felt like the plf war was rushed

1.Plf advisors getting hype but no payoff

2.Only miruko, Momo, and Kirishma got time to shine

3.Machia got defeated to easily

4.The war felt more like a raid

I don't know if I feel like it was rushed, per se--it's by far the longest arc in the story so far by number of chapters, and would be even if you cut off the Tartarus jailbreak and the entirety of the hospital aftermath. What it absolutely does feel like to me is unbalanced.

You note that the "war" feels more like a raid, and you're right. As a caveat, it's worth keeping in mind that "Paranormal Liberation War" as a name for the arc in question is entirely an invention of the fanbase. To the best of my knowledge, the reasoning for the name was that big action shonen series like BNHA (Naruto, Bleach, Hunter x Hunter, etc) always have a war arc, so what we were seeing in the lengthy, mass combat confrontation with the PLF had to be HeroAca's equivalent. It's not a term that's in the manga itself, however, not called as such by the characters, not referred to as such by Horikoshi or his editors, not even namedropped in chapter or volume titles. If it feels like a raid, that's probably because that's what it was intended to be.

And that's the problem, really. This arc shouldn't have been about a couple of raids; it should have been about a war.

(Below the cut: a bunch of fired-up complaining. Uses some harsh language, and talks about both injuries and deaths we did see and some we logically should have.)

From the outset, we were told that the resources Shigaraki had amassed were "on par with, or even stronger than" the resources of the hero-saturated society. Yet, we're expected to believe that a force that strong is so easily taken down by a single coordinated set of raids? Yes, the heroes had the benefit of surprise, but there's just so much that doesn't work for me.

First off, and to get this out of the way, it's ridiculous that the heroes even had the benefit of surprise. The MLA had an unknown number of hero double agents. They had people in the government; they had people in the infrastructure. This is an organization that had been living undercover completely unsuspected for multiple generations--how did the HPSC ever manage to carry out a massive, country-wide investigation on such a secretive group and coordinate multiple simultaneous, comprehensive raids without a single person finding out and alerting the higher-ups over a period of only three and a half months?

When exactly did Hawks have time to go and revive Best Jeanist--which he tells us he did personally--such that none of the bugs and micro-cameras he was covered with picked up on it, and both he and BJ could be back in the positions they needed to be in for the raid to begin?

How did Skeptic find out about the raid such that he only discovered it at the last possible second and not minutes, even hours, before it kicked off? How did hundreds of heroes (and even "hundreds" is being conservative, given the fact that they had seventeen thousand people to detain) close in on the villa without anyone from the PLF noticing, either Skeptic with his information network or mundane precautions like people on watch?

Even granting the heroes their surprise advantage--which I don't want to--if the advisors were all supposedly "stronger than the average hero," why didn't we see any of them winning? Okay, yes, Hose Face beat Midnight, but he had every possible advantage in that "fight"; I hardly count it as some big impressive defeat that shows us that the villains were holding their own.

Here's another thing: the MLA styled themselves as an army--they were demonstrably trained in troop tactics. When we saw them in Deika, even their nameless on-the-ground people were capable of coordinating with each other on the fly in response to the movements of the enemy, as we saw come up repeatedly:

Yeah, they were off-guard at first, but as soon as the advisors made the front line (which, you'll note, was immediately), that disadvantage really should have begun eroding. Certainly once Geten--Geten! The number one MLA member most willing to disregard collateral damage! And there he was being a proper leader!--got to the front and started yelling orders, we should have seen the PLF rallying, and I can't imagine any sensible justification for the tides not turning when a) Re-Destro showed up to occupy the highest-ranked hero on the field, b) a bunch of heroes peeled off to try to stop Machia only to get trampled for their efforts, and c) Trumpet got dug out.

You know who don't style themselves as an army, though? Heroes. Oh, they get some basic lessons in cooperation as students, but the extent of such lessons we see is stuff like "why it's important for heroes to have signature moves"--so that on group missions, their reputations will precede them and fellow heroes will already know their shtick. U.A. teaches the odd lesson plan that involves the kids fighting in groups, but there's a huge difference between you and 3 to 6 of your buddies fighting a similarly-sized group in a practice fight, or a handful of heroes teaming up to take down some criminal low-lives, and the mass combat scenario that was the raid. For heaven's sake, look at our closest other equivalent: the raid on the Hassaikai base. At every turn in that encounter, the heroes let themselves get split up and picked off, winnowing down their numbers. It's even explicit in the narrative that hero team-ups were, in the age of All Might, uncommon, and heroes are only just beginning to adjust to fighting in teams. The erstwhile MLA should have had the advantage there.

As to Machia's defeat, I think the big problem with it is not how it happened, per se, but the timescale involved. The plan itself was sound enough, and even with all the kids' efforts, it still took Machia reaching Shigaraki and not getting any new orders to follow to really do him in. Given what we can extrapolate about his movement speed, though, I just don't think the kids should have had time to set all those traps, especially given how much of that equipment would have had to be fabricated by Momo on the fly. I know she's gotten stronger and all, and good for her, but you're telling me that in the four months between Joint Training and the raid, she went from passing out because she created a bag of goodies and one (1) cannon to being totally fine and still able to coordinate her fellow students while cranking out 23 jars of sedative, dozens of feet of rope/cable, multiple fire-resistant coats, explosives they somehow had time to bury, and three cannons?

For fuck's sake, Jirou gave Machia's ETA as under ten seconds. Yeah, Mount Lady slowed him down, but "only a little"--how much time could she possibly have bought them, that the kids were able to to coordinate and enact everything that plan involved?

You guys, go read this post by @codenamesazanka. Machia is so fast. So unbelievably, incredibly fast. "Twice as fast as the fastest train in the world" fast. "Horikoshi clearly did not stop to think about the distances involved here" fast. Three miles in ten seconds fast. It would have been hard enough to square with the needs of the plot that the kids were sufficiently far from the villa to have the kind of time they needed to swing Momo's plan at all, but Horikoshi explicitly letting Machia get right on top of them before the kids even start just makes it completely impossible for me to credit. Machia clearly being slower aboveground than he is when burrowing does not make that much difference to my suspension of disbelief.

My other big complaint? More people should have died, for real. The PLF warriors would not have been holding back. They were ready and willing to kill anyone they came up against. The heroes did have to hold back, because heroes, as we're told over and over again, are not supposed to kill, no matter how dire the circumstances. That difference in ability to exercise force should have been yet another significant advantage for the PLF. I could write an entire list of characters that I think could have reasonably been killed during the raids. That wouldn't be to say that I think any individual, specific character on that list should have died, just that, based on the parameters as they were presented to audience, some number of them should have.

I mean, honestly. How did Horikoshi wanna show us Gang Orca's unmoving claw in the wake of Machia's passage and not have Gang Orca on the list of the dead? How did Fat Gun run right into a mass melee and still have enough fat left over afterward to survive getting trampled by a walking mountain? How did Thirteen survive not getting pulled out of the hospital basement when Shigaraki's Decay hit? How did Trumpet survive getting a staircase dropped on top of him? How did Gran Torino survive a fist through his tiny old man chest cavity?

I could go on and on, but it's not just about the deaths, either. I'm not saying that Kamui Woods necessarily should have died by swinging himself face-first into a blast of blue fire, but I am saying that he should have been out of commission for longer than three goddamn days. You bet your ass I'm saying that after telling us that Hawks' weak point is fire, making us watch him spend at a solid minute or more with his wings wholly enveloped in Dabi's 2000 degree flames, and having Dark Shadow exclaim that his back is completely burned away, Hawks should never have grown his wings back, much less so quickly that they were already visible under his shirt a single day later.

More deaths, more maiming--heck, even more retirements. I'm not saying I love that kind of thing in my fiction--I don't, actually. I think an overreliance on it is a sign of edgelordy nonsense. But the scenario that we had demanded to be treated with the kind of gravity that would have led to such an outcome. To set up a conflict like the raid and have the villains only barely be able to scrape a partial escape, to try to tell us that Shigaraki's victory in Deika granted him such a terrifyingly powerful force only to have them lose every battle they got into, to tell us this was a blow that shook Hero Society to its core, only to be so unwilling to kill or retire any heroes the audience cares about that Midnight is literally the only significant loss… It doesn't work. None of it works.

I don't have much to say on which characters did or didn't get a highlight. I think there were a few more people than you listed that got some good scenes--Tokoyami and Uraraka both got material I liked quite a bit; Dabi famously out-trended the U.S. presidential election on Twitter when he (literally) came clean, and Mr. Compress gave us some wonderfully interesting and characteristically opaque material to chew on. On the whole, though, adding more character moments would only have been dragging out the problem: the scale of the PLF's threat and the HPSC's chosen method of dealing with it are simply incompatible with the feeble "neither side truly won or lost" resolution we got.

And that's my rant on that--thanks for the ask!

#and yet #i still hate it less than the shitshow that went down with lady n and overhaul #inkbuckets #paranormal liberation front #meta liberation army #bnha #stillness has salt #stillness answers

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Midnight Mass Ending Explained

https://ift.tt/39I2zkp

This article contains spoilers for Midnight Mass.

Ending a horror story is hard.

Perhaps no one knows that better than Mike Flanagan, the writer-director behind horror hits like Doctor Sleep, The Haunting of Hill House, and The Haunting of Bly Manor. After observing the occasional less-than-enthusiastic reaction to the endings of some of his other projects, Flanagan decided to end his latest, Netflix series Midnight Mass, on his own terms.

“I didn’t want to come up with an ending that I thought would please people,” Flanagan told Den of Geek and other outlets prior to Midnight Mass’s premiere. “I wanted to come up with the ending that would have the most to say down the line.”

So what, exactly, does the ending of Midnight Mass have to say? Let’s explain just what goes down in the conclusion of Midnight Mass and assess what it all means.��

What’s Up with Mildred Gunning and John Pruitt?

Monsignor John Pruitt a.k.a. Father Paul (Hamish Linklater) was, by all indications, a good Christian man.

“The thing we kept coming back to is that authentically, through-and-through evil people are very rare. We’re all way more complicated. The humanity of Father Paul was something that was baked in relatively early,” Flanagan says.

Though Pruitt is not a bad man, per se, he is a deeply flawed one. A long time ago, before the “war” (probably World War II or The Korean War), Pruitt hooked up with the married Mildred Gunning and fathered their daughter Sarah Gunning out of wedlock. That is obviously a big no-no for a priest and Pruitt lived with the guilt of denying his daughter for decades.

Pruitt finally got a chance to alleviate that guilt when he came across a curious creature in Damascus. In this fictional universe where the concept of a vampire is clearly not well known, John Pruitt made the understandable mistake of confusing a monstrous vampire for an equally monstrous angel. After all, the angels of the bible are so visually terrifying that they make a habit of telling those they visit “be not afraid.”

Pruitt thought this angel had granted him the gift of eternal life, just like the Bible promises. He then decides to share that gift with his congregation. The priest’s major sin here though is pride. He didn’t share the angel’s gift with his congregation out of pure benevolence. He did it because he wanted many more years of life in his prime with Mildred and Sarah at his side. Catholicism means everything to Pruitt. And yet, he would cast it all aside for another chance to have the family he wanted.

“If you showed up and asked me, I would have taken this collar off and gone with you. Gone with you anywhere in the world,” Pruitt tells Mildred after she’s been vampirified.

That’s a touching sentiment from the artist formerly known as Father Paul but it’s unfortunately a destructive one.

“When it became clear that Paul could do bad things with pure motives, the show came into clearer focus. There’s only one character in the whole show who I think is evil and it’s not Father Paul,” Flanagan says.

Only one character who is evil? Who could Flanagan be referr….ohhh.

What Were the Vampires’ Plans?

Flanagan actually never confirms which character he sees as evil, but Bev Keane (Samantha Sloyan) seems to be the best fit…unless we count the angel, and he just seems to be a hungry, growing boy.

Bev is, let’s say, a real piece of work. As beautifully depicted by Sloyan, Bev Keane is the officious church lady who can’t keep her nose out of other people’s business. After Mildred talks some sense into John Pruitt, he understands that he and his congregation “are the wolves” and refuses to participate further. That leaves a power vacuum at the top, which Bev is more than happy to step into.

Why Midnight Mass is Mike Flanagan’s Most Personal Work

By Alec Bojalad

Midnight Mass Cast: Previous Credits From Hill House to Bly Manor, Legion & Sherlock

By Louisa Mellor

Now that Bev has a veritable army of superpowered vampires what does she intend to do with them? The same thing that all Bevs want to do: make more Bevs. Bev represents the worst of colonial Christianity and its historical penchant for converting all to its kingdom of heaven…through any means necessary.

When Erin Greene (Kate Siegel) finds out that Bev and friends have merely disabled the boats and not destroyed them, she realizes that their ultimate plan is to eventually take their vampire party to the mainland and create a whole planet of enlightened Christians who just happy to have an insatiable taste for blood and a severe UV-ray allergy.

What Happens to Crockett Island?

Thankfully, Bev’s ultimate goal never comes to pass thanks to the careful plotting of the handful of human beings left in Crockett Island. Erin Greene, Sarah Gunning (Annabeth Gish), Sheriff Hassan (Rahul Kohli), and Annie Flynn (Kirstin Lehman) get to work on finishing the destruction that Bev started.

Ironically, it’s part of Bev’s plan that eventually dooms her and her kind. When one of Bev’s lackeys proposes putting out a fire that the human crew started because the whole island could burn to nothing like in ‘84, Bev’s eyes light up.

“I mean…the church didn’t burn in ‘84,” she says.

Surely this is Revelation. And Revelation means a hale mixed with fire and blood. There will be a flood of fire that ends the world and St. Patrick’s church will be the arc. That’s a great plan and all…as long as something doesn’t happen to the arc.

Welp. Sarah Gunning burns down St. Patrick’s and Sheriff Hassan and Erin Greene (with an assist from Hassan’s son) burn down the rec center. As if burning a church designated as an arc wasn’t symbolically compelling enough, recall that the rec center next to it is equally as symbolic of Bev’s greed. It was Bev who convinced Crockett Island to take the oil company’s money for ruining their island rather than pursuing litigation. And all they got out of that settlement money was that stupid rec center.

With the church and the rec center gone, there are no man-made structures for the vampires to hide from the sun in the coming morning. And that’s how an entire island of 120-ish vampires perishes simultaneously when the sun rises.

Why Do Leeza and Warren Survive?

All of Crockett Island perishes save for two actually. Warren Flynn (Igby Rigney) and Leeza Scarborough (Annarah Cymone) are spared thanks to some quick thinking. Putting the only two remaining non-vampirized children in harm’s way is not an option for Erin, Sarah, Hassan, and Annie. Thankfully, Warren knows of one secret canoe to reach the “Uppards” that Bev’s crew wouldn’t know about.

The canoe doesn’t take Warren and Leeza to the mainland but it does get them away from the carnage to come. The last shot of the series is Warren and Leeza floating peacefully and Leeza announcing that she can no longer feel her legs. This means that the last bit of “angel” blood has likely left her system and with it Pruitt’s vampire legacy is over.

Saving Warren and Leeza has practical, emotional implications for Midnight Mass’s characters but it also has some symbolic ones as well. The concept of witnessing and witnesses themselves are very important in the Bible. As a second-hand text (though purportedly with every word inspired by God) there would be no gospel without witnesses. Good news is only half the battle. Someone to witness and report on the good news is the other half. Now Warren and Leeza can report on the ultimate good news that the world is saved.

The fact that the kids survive while the adults succumb to their own adult nonsense has some major implications for Midnight Mass’s creator

“That last moment of the next generation looking out at the ashes of what the grown ups made – that’s what my kids are gonna get no matter what,” Flanagan says. “That’s what all of our kids are gonna get. I wish it wasn’t as on fire as it it. But it really is. We’re never going to be able to explain adequately to our children what happened to the planet they inherited.”

What Happens to the Angel?

With all of Crockett Island burned to the ground, the world’s vampire nightmare is over, right? Well that depends on how well you think an angel can fly with torn wings. No, that’s not an aphorism or a poem, it’s the real question facing the end of Midnight Mass.

As if saving Warren and Leeza and upending Bev Keane’s plans weren’t enough, Erin leaves one last little gift for humanity before she dies. While the angel attacks her and drinks her sweet, sweet blood, Erin begins systematically, yet carefully cutting holes in its leathery wings. At first the angel is kind of annoyed but his hunger supersedes any level of discomfort or pain he’s feeling.

Later on, while Warren and Leeza watch their home burn they see the angel flying away but in a halted, loopy pattern. The kids aren’t sure if the beast will have time to find shelter before the sun rises. According to Flanagan, if Midnight Mass is a parable (and he assures us it is) then the ultimate lesson of all this isn’t too hard to glean.

“The angel doesn’t represent vampirism or horror but corruption in any belief system,” he says. “It represents fundamentalism and fanaticism. That’s never gonna go away. You might chase it away from your community for a minute. You might send it off to the sunrise and hope that that corrupting ideology will disappear. But it won’t. And the show could never show the angel die for that reason.”

With that in mind, the angel’s flawed flight pattern isn’t so much Inception’s spinning top but rather a promise that evil will find a way. And then we puny human beings will just have to find a way to stop it all over again. If that’s not Biblical then we don’t know what is.

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All seven episodes of Midnight Mass are available to stream on Netflix now.

The post Midnight Mass Ending Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

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duhragonball · 4 years ago

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Cult Classic

I had a really exhausting week, so I’m going to try to chill out by writing this thing about cults that’s been bouncing around in my head since... oh, like January 6th? For some reason? But it’s also about my insanely long OC fanfic slash vanity project slash concept album. Join me, won’t you?

Okay, so back in... geez 2018? Has it been that long? Around October 2018 I started working out the details for the big climax of the “1000 years ago” section of my fanfic. From the start I had this idea that the Legendary Super Saiyan would be locked into a death struggle with pretty much the entire Saiyan population, led by a Saiyan King who just can’t handle being upstaged. But I had to figure out a lot of details to make that actually work. What I finally ended up with was the Jindan Cult.

Why a cult? Because I wanted my King character to be the main villain, but also be physically weaker, but also he needed to be powerful enough to challenge the heroine. I came up with all these different ways to beef up his power level without making him a Super Saiyan himself, but ultimately I wanted him to have an army of Siayans at his back. That led me to consider some sort of magic elixir that would make them all stronger, but especially the king, since he’s ultimately in this for himself. At first, I considered having him mind-control all of his goons, but I spent the mind control nickel in earlier arcs, and I’ll have to use it again later, because Towa and Demigra use it. Then I thought of drug addiction, which is sort of like mind control but not literal brainwashing or anything like that. And that led me to the cult concept.

One major inspiration for me was the real-life cult called “NXIVM”, which made the news back in 2018 when their leaders started getting arrested, including “Smallville” star Allison Mack. Every time I read about it, it felt like something from a movie, but it was real. I guess the celebrity angle made it more bizarre to me, because it’s sort of like “Hey, this isn’t just some group of randos; someone you’ve heard of is in this thing.” Not that I ever paid much attention to “Smallville”, but you get the idea. She didn’t just join NXIVM, she eventually became one of the top recruiters. Some of the character arcs in my fic were my own attempt to understand how a person goes from Point A to Point B.

The big plot hole, though, in my mind, was that I came up with this whole master plan for the bad guys, but it involved sending wave after wave of Saiyan cultists to die in pointless, unwinnable battles against Luffa. I couldn’t have them win much, because if they beat her, they’d just kill her, and the story would be over. It struck me as fishy that these Saiyans would sign up for a war where the casualty rate is 100%, but I tried to lampshade it as best I could. “Yeah, all those other chumps couldn’t beat Luffa, but I’ll pull it off because I’m special!” It still seemed a bit unlikely.

But then 2020 happened, and I guess the main thing I learned from that year was that people will accept almost anything in order to believe a comfortable lie. The joke I’ve seen on the internet is that we need to retire the expression “avoid it like the plague”, because it turns out a lot of people don’t actually avoid plagues very well at all. The horrifying thing about COVID-19 is how easily people will accept the climbing death tolls. “Oh, well this person was already in bad health, so they would have died eventually anyway.” I don’t want to get too political here, but I’m pretty sure a lot of the anti-mask, coronavirus-is-a-hoax crowd are the same people who made up tall tales about “death panels” in Obamacare. “They’re gonna euthanize your grandma!” they would say, but now they say your grandma is acceptable losses if it means reopening bars and restaurants.

Actually, I do mean to get political, because holy fuck, Qanon stormed the Capitol Building. Look, if you don’t believe Joe Biden won the election, I don’t know what to tell you, except please get far away from me, right now. If you’re not familiar with Qanon, a few years ago some guy on an image board posted a bunch of cryptic messages and claimed to be an important government figure who would know about important things. People started “deciphering” his “clues” and when he stopped posting new ones they started inventing their own “clues” and interpreting them any way that suited them. This led to an overarching narrative that Donald Trump was actually part of this massive sting operation to arrest hundreds, maybe thousands of left-wing politicians, celebrities, and whoever else. Any day now, he was supposed to have Hilary Clinton arrested, and also JFK Junior would somehow show up and help him, even though he’s been dead for 22 years. Every day, these Qanon guys would add on more bizarre lore to their “theories”, and every day none of their predictions would come true. Then Trump lost the election, which put them in a bind, because their whole mythology is based on the idea of him saving the world as POTUS, and now he wasn’t even going to be POTUS for much longer.

I’m pretty sure this had a lot to do with the lies about election fraud. Trump himself refused to accept defeat, and his supporters didn’t want to accept it either, so they all told each other that it wasn’t real, and they believed each other so much that they dug in their heels. But then they’d take this stuff to court and the judge would be like “Uh, what evidence do you have of mass voter fraud?” and they would just be like “lol nvm!” I mean, if there was proof for any of this, why would they not want a judge to see it? But for Qanon, it was more than just being sore losers. They needed all their whackamaroo predictions to come true, and Trump losing re-election would upset the applecart.

So then they started telling themselves that they could win this thing through the boring certification process. I think it was like, December 14 when all the states had to certify their results. So they held out hope that nothing was over until then. Then they pinned their hopes on the Electoral College, and that there would be enough faithless electors to hand Trump the victory, in spite of the voters. I found this one amusing, since I used to see tumblr suggesting the same thing back in 2016, when they were still trying to come up with ways for Bernie Sanders to win.

Then they decided Mike Pence could fix everything, because on Jan 6, Congress would officially count the Electoral Votes and formally declare the winner, and Mike Pence would step in and overrule the whole thing, because the Vice-President oversees that process. Except he just oversees it, he can’t legally change the outcome, especially on a whim. And then the riot at the Capitol happened, and I’m pretty sure all these Qanon types thought it would mark the beginning of a nationwide uprising, with all seventy-odd million Trump voters going apeshit, but it... didn’t work out that way.

Then they convinced themselves that everything was building to January 20, because the innauguration was actually a clever trap, and once Joe Biden took the oath of office, he could then be arrested for treason, so you see, they had to make it look like Trump lost the election, because it was the only way to fool Joe Biden into incriminating himself... or... something. But Jan 20 came and went, so the latest fallback position I heard was that there’s a double-secret REAL inauguration day, and it’s in March, and the January 20 one isn’t legitimate, even though Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2016, but whatever. That, or the guy we see in the White House now is actually Trump disguised as Joe Biden, or a Joe Biden android or something.

I think I sort of understood that Qanon is a cult, but I didn’t really put the pieces together until the events of January unfolded. Pre-November, it just seemed like a conspiracy theory, without any real timetables or prophecies, like Flat Earth. But once the end of the Trump Administration was in sight, it really started to look like all the doomsday cults I’ve heard about over the years. The predicted events wind up failing to come true, and they invent new predictions to explain away the old ones. It’s not about the veracity of the claims as much as the claims themselves. People want to believe there’s this whole elaborate explanation for everything. They wanted to believe that Trump was this hypercompetent superheroic messiah, because the alternative is to face the uncertain reality: that he had no idea what he was doing, and real people were going to suffer for it.

I think I sort of worked that idea into my fictional cult, but I backed into it. NXIVM was a sex cult, not a doomsday cult, or an elaborate conspiracy theory, so I was mostly fixated on all the depraved things the cult could do to its members. But they all share the same lure: a belief system that promises to make everything fit. I’m not sure what the hook was for NXIVM, but Allison Mack didn’t go in thinking about how much fun sex trafficking would be. That came later, after she was convinced that NXIVM had all the answers, and one of those answers involved sex crimes, apparently. In the same vein, Qanon attempted to explain mass arrests and executions by claiming that Hilary Clinton eats babies or something. “Well, I don’t want babies to get eaten, so I guess breaking into the Capitol building seems like a reasonable course of action.”

Weighed against real life, a bunch of Saiyans accepting a 100% casualty rate doesn’t seem so outrageous. It also helps that sometimes the leaders of these groups can buy into their own hype, and think they’re infallible when they’re really not. This week, I started reading the Darth Plagueis novel again, and I’ve seen the Sith from Star Wars referred to as a cult, but I never gave it a lot of thought until I noticed that Plagueis buys into the whole Dark Side of the Force thing a little too hard. At times, he’ll wax philosophical about how the Jedi are the real bad guys when you think about it, and he’s not just saying that to be manipulative. He honestly believes that the Sith can save the galaxy from decline, which is stupid and hypocritical, because they’re the ones causing all the decline. I always got the impression that Darth Sidious understood that it was all about accumulating power as an end unto itself, and any high-minded talk of necessary evil was just to keep the rubes in line. Rise of Skywalker plays into that idea nicely. He somehow survived Episode VI, but he let the Empire collapse, because if he can’t rule it, he doesn’t want it to exist at all. But he’s still playing himself, because he thinks he can win by following the same failed ideology that got all the previous Sith Lords killed.

That’s pretty much all I have to say about it right now. I need to move on to other topics, because Towa’s not doing a cult thing, so my fic is moving in a different direction. But I feel better for getting this out of my head.

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imagitory · 5 years ago

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Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker review [SPOILERS]

Hey, everybody! So I just got back from seeing the newest Star Wars and...whew, am I tired!

For those of you who want a spoiler-free review, I’ll just say that there’s a reason people are so split about this movie. In some ways, I could argue that TRoS is trying to be its own stand-alone thing, and it does so by shoving in way too many plot beats and new characters without enough development or even a satisfactory conclusion for them...and yet at the same time, it tries so hard to evoke the original trilogy like The Force Awakens did, whether through iconography, cameos, or other kinds of fanservice. To put it very simply, if you disliked The Last Jedi, you might come out enjoying this more, since this movie and its director clearly shared your view, but even if The Last Jedi is a flawed film, I feel it still ended up having better direction, character arcs, and storytelling than this film did.

For those of you who don’t fear spoilers...journey on.

The Good!

+Just like in the other installments in this new trilogy, there were some great action moments. I liked when Kylo and Rey were fighting over the First Order ship with the Force, pulling it back and forth like they had previously done with Anakin’s lightsaber. Poe’s lightspace jumping in the Millennium Falcon was a cool trick, and I actually really enjoyed the short suspenseful bit with Poe, Finn, Rey, and the droids sneaking around in the wintry planet Kijimi, too.

+The trick at the end where Rey passed Kylo Anakin’s lightsaber through the Force and the two battled side-by-side while in different locations was neat. I might’ve liked to see that trick used differently (see below), but it was still really cool.

+Poe and Finn were acting like SUCH boyfriends during this entire movie. I don’t care how much “NO HOMO” J.J. tried to slap on these guys in the script (and I’ll discuss that in a minute), these two were friggin’ boyfriends and that was canon, end of story.

+I liked that Leia was able to mentor Rey, and Leia’s death was appropriately sad. It felt like I was mourning Carrie all over again, especially since we’re so close to the anniversary of her death.

+It was kind of cool to see Luke’s old X-Wing again. I might’ve had it reappear in a different way, but it was still cool.

+Rey hearing all of the Jedi in her head for the first time when she was facing Palpatine at the end was great. I might’ve pushed it further and made it more visually interesting, but I’ll get to that in the more negative section.

+For all of the rather unnecessary fanservice, there were a few music cues that really worked -- namely, the Imperial March echo when Rey arrived in the old throne room on the Death Star, Leia’s theme upon her death, and the Jedi theme when Poe saw the fleet of reinforcements arriving.

The Not-So-Good...

+The Reylo-ness of it all. *dodges knives* OKAY. LISTEN --

If you’re a Reylo shipper, then good for you. I mean that sincerely. But I’m sorry, I am convinced that this ending could only have been satisfying to you if you were on the Reylo ship from the very start due to your own personal shipping preferences, because there is NOTHING in the films that justifies the powerful emotional bond that these two supposedly share. Rey and Kylo only met two movies ago, and in both movies, Kylo showed no interest in improving himself and being a better person. None. I don’t care if Rey “sensed” goodness in him -- that is a terrible, weak short-cut for a writer to use, to tell us that Kylo is good without showing it to us. We still see him slaughter people en masse in the very first scene of this movie. We still see him trying to force Rey to join him, even if it puts the people she cares about in danger. We still see him hooking up with Palpatine -- FRIGGIN’ PALPATINE -- after he’d only just rid himself of Snoke. I don’t care if Kylo thinks he can get rid of Palpatine like he did with Snoke -- I don’t care if he’s conflicted and worried about Rey -- we the audience see no evidence that Kylo has truly changed his ways and is worth saving. Leia SACRIFICED HER LIFE to try to help him -- for what?? I know she’s his mother, but I’m sorry, Leia: if your husband couldn’t save your son from himself, why would you be able to? Why didn’t you almost dying in The Last Jedi not affect your son more, if he really cared? Why was calling his name all you had to do? Why didn’t you do that before he started killing all these people? Because it wasn’t dramatically convenient? Because he was fighting Rey at that exact moment and the writers needed to find a way to end that action scene that otherwise could’ve ended with either Rey or Kylo dying? And I’m sorry, but this whole storyline resulted in the one thing I’d dreaded more than anything would happen in a story that shipped these two -- Rey became a tool to Kylo’s redemption. Rather than standing apart as someone with no legacy who builds her own through being a good, noble person, she became defined by her familial and romantic relationships more than she was by her actions. I know Rey ended up defeating Palpatine in the end, but most of her screentime still ended up devoted to her “bond” with Kylo Ren and showed how her love brought him back to the Light. Because seriously, screw the love Kylo’s parents showed him, or Luke showed him -- all they did was sacrifice themselves trying to help him while also standing by their morals and never being tempted to fall like Kylo did -- no, only Rey could’ve brought him back to the side of Good.

And before any of you even try to wave the Sith Lord of my Heart, Darth Vader, in my face, as Snoke said in The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren is no Vader. Vader was tethered to the Empire and to the Emperor, thanks to the injuries he sustained on Mustafar that left him trapped inside his mechanical suit -- if he’d left the Empire, he would’ve died, and on top of all that, he’d already lost his entire family and turned everyone he’d ever cared about -- who were all Jedi -- against him by falling to the Dark Side. Vader had been Anakin -- a slave who was bought out of enslavement by the Jedi, who then turned around and taught him to -- to borrow a phrase -- “conceal, don’t feel,” even if it meant turning a blind eye to the death of his wife and unborn child. Kylo Ren turned to the Dark Side because...honestly? WE NEVER GET A GOOD ANSWER. The best I can get from the films is that Kylo Ren was manipulated by Snoke, who went on and on about how powerful Kylo was and how he should use that power to “bring order to the galaxy” and stuff like that, and then one night Luke held a lit lightsaber over his head for a minute. That justifies falling to the Dark Side and slaughtering all the wittle Jedi? No! And yet Kylo never once has to grapple with what he did -- he never has to make amends. He’s just forgiven, like that! And although Vader likewise never got the chance to make amends, his sacrifice means more than Kylo’s because Vader, through his sacrifice, finally learned the true meaning of love after an entire lifetime of knowing so little of it. The only people who had ever loved Anakin either died or left him -- Kylo always had people who were willing to forgive him, and he spat in their faces. Vader had no one, until his son discovered who he was and tried to reach out to him. And when he reached out, Vader didn’t stab him through the chest or immediately brand him with the murder of his evil master -- Vader followed orders and brought Luke before the Emperor, yes, but when Luke was about to die, Vader saved him.

Kylo Ren’s story could not and SHOULD NOT be Vader’s story, so giving him the same ending is completely unjustified and mismatched with the story being told. Even if the story of a girl and a guy saving each other with “the power of love” was somehow equal in emotional resonance to that of a son trying to reconnect with his father and his father sacrificing his life to save him, that story of a guy and a girl was not built up properly, as we never get much backstory about why Kylo fell, much action on his part to acknowledge his mistakes, or rationale for why we should care about him despite what a terrible person he was and still is. He cares about Rey -- great! Does he care about the Resistance? Leia? Luke? Han? Lando? Chewie? ANYBODY excluding himself and Rey? Han as a Force Ghost at one point suggests that Leia will never die as long as they remember what she stood for -- since when is that something KYLO REN ever cared about?! Leia DESPISED the Empire and Darth Vader, and yet Kylo Ren and the First Order have done nothing but wrap themselves up in their rhetoric and iconography!

On that note, though, I will acknowledge that Kylo Ren, as a character, has always given me certain troubling real-world-like vibes, and that may be part of the reason why it really infuriates me that the movie tried to redeem him. Kylo Ren is a privileged young man from a respected, powerful family who embraces and romanticizes the atrocities of a previous generation, resents others (rather appropriately, a young woman and black man with no greatness in their family names) for taking what should be “rightfully his,” and vows to bring things back to when that previous evil institution was in its full glory -- isn’t that exactly what modern alt-right Neo-Nazi types do? Romanticize the Third Reich and the Klan and wrap themselves up in their supposed “glory,” while being nothing but a pale, pathetic, anger-driven imitation? Even if you don’t personally see Kylo the same way I do, I hope you will at least respect that -- given this lens I see the character through -- it makes sense why I dislike any attempt to give this character sympathy.

+ *inhales heavily* ...Rey...is a Palpatine. *groans in aggravation* J.J., ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? Did you not get why Rian Johnson made Rey’s backstory the way he did, or were you just so in-line with anti-TLJ fans that you wanted to spit in his face in film-form? I know a lot of people were pissed off when Rey was determined to be a “nobody” after what felt like hints of a more developed backstory in TFA, but I seriously can’t help but think that those people missed the point. Rey being a nobody and yet being talented in the Force fixed the whole problem brought up by the Midiclorians in the prequel trilogy -- namely, the thought that you can only be born special, because of your genes. With Rey not being a Kenobi, or a Skywalker, or a Palpatine, it says, “Yes -- you don’t need to have been born special. Anyone can tap into the Force, because it is everything, as are we.” This is even why it’s hinted in previous movies (and once or twice in this movie, though it doesn’t go anywhere) that Finn is Force-sensitive -- Finn, a ex-Stormtrooper! But by turning Rey into a Palpatine all along, J.J. has once again made the Force only something that a select few can tap into -- only special people can have the power needed to stand up to evil. Sure, ordinary people like Poe and Finn can blow things up, but only special people like the Skywalkers and the Palpatines can stop the Sith from destroying the entire rebellion. Instead of this being a story about a girl who had no legacy and yet earned the title of heir to the Skywalker legacy purely through her noble heart and selfless deeds, this became a story of two people -- one from a good family and one from an evil family -- having to come together to deal with their family drama and save the galaxy. Maybe some people wanted to see that from the start, but frankly I didn’t, and even if that story could’ve been told well, it was not the story that we were set up to watch, after we saw The Last Jedi. It also irritates me because of how much the film tries to play Rey’s parents SELLING HER ON JAKKU as them “saving her” from Palpatine. I call BULL. Even Luke was only “saved” from Vader by being given to relatives on a backwater planet -- Rey’s parents ABANDONED her. If you thought that Frozen 2 retconning Elsa and Anna’s parents’ attitudes toward Elsa’s magic was problematic, whoa, boy, have a gander at this. (I actually kind of like Agnarr and Iduna as individual characters in Frozen 2, but I actively have to distance Frozen from its sequel because of canon discrepancies like this.) Rey’s parents didn’t need to have a “good reason” for dropping her off on Jakku -- this film even acknowledges that Rey’s real family is the family she found: Finn, Poe, BB-8, Chewie, Leia, and the Resistance. Rey’s parents could’ve been assholes. Many people’s parents are assholes. Rey is not their child anymore: she is a Skywalker, and that’s all that matters.

+Oh yeah, and speaking of The Last Jedi, NOTHING matches up in this. J.J. literally wrote two complete movies and shoved them together in this one in a vain attempt to completely retcon the last film. Poe earning back his position in the rebellion after learning a lesson about not always barreling into danger without thinking? His character arc has vanished and he shows no more talent for strategy or leadership than he did before. Rey only seeing herself when she was looking for her family? Nope, turns out she was a Palpatine all along: the Force was just trolling her, I guess. Kylo accusing Rey of killing Snoke? Doesn’t come up at all. The young boy using the Force to pick up the broom? Never appears. The signal sent across the galaxy asking for help? Poe says half-way through the movie that nobody came, so it may as well have never happened. Rose and Finn? No mention of the kiss on Krait or anything -- they act like they barely know each other, and Rose has almost no screentime. Even Lando’s return, which should’ve been great, happens when he appears on this random India-like desert planet -- why was he there? Why does he no longer live in Cloud City? Wasn’t he its leader? Wouldn’t he have better fit in a planet like Canto Bight, one that was glitzy and kind of seedy, instead of a pastoral place like that? It’s like reading the first six books in the Harry Potter series, only to end on a version of Deathly Hallows where -- surprise! -- Hermione was actually a pureblood witch all along and she’s actually related to the Lestranges and also Hagrid pops up in Godric’s Hollow to save Hermione and Harry from Nagini for no reason at all, plus Ginny is just a side character now and the author seems to want you to think Harry likes Hermione even if Ron and Harry totally have more chemistry but NO HOMO YOU GUYS COME ON.

+Hahaha, on that note, WOW, have I never seen a film more desperate to try to prove to its audience that its two male main characters are not totally boyfriends. Even though J.J. decided to placate angry fanboys by rather unfairly marginalizing Rose Tico (come on, she may not have been written the best in Last Jedi, but you’re not going to fix that by IGNORING HER ALL TOGETHER), he still thought it best to introduce two new female characters, Zorii and Jannah, who both could’ve been very interesting if they’d had their proper amount of screentime and development, but instead only serve to be substitute “love interests” for Poe and Finn. That might sound harsh, but they literally have no other substantial relationships that get explored in this movie outside of the ones with their respective “guy.” It felt like the film was going, “Look -- Poe’s not gay! He’s got history with this chick, and he gives her a look at the end! And look -- Finn’s not gay! He might’ve been trying to confess his feelings to Rey which totally made his not-boyfriend uber jealous BUT THEY’RE NOT GAY YOU GAIS, and he’s doing stuff with this girl, who was also a Stormtrooper!” Sorry, film, but methinks you doth protest too much. (Even Poe’s actor Oscar Isaac apparently thinks so.)

+Another theme from The Last Jedi that I loved and J.J. clearly didn’t is that the dichotomy between “Jedi” and “Sith” doesn’t inherently equate “good” vs. “evil,” and therefore just because the Sith are evil, it doesn’t mean that the Jedi -- who preached detachment from all affectionate emotions and familial ties -- were right. Even the Resistance is flawed. It’s actually something the prequels and the Clone Wars TV show preach too, and it brings so much more grayness to the Star Wars mythos. In The Rise of Skywalker, however, the Jedi and the Resistance are just seen as the good guys, period, end of story. Who cares if it results in your story being shockingly simplistic and oddly shallow, when compared to the rest of the Star Wars universe?

+The treatment of the Stormtroopers in this movie was actually kind of infuriating. We consistently get reminders about how the First Order’s Stormtroopers were child soldiers who were stolen from their homes and brainwashed, as evident by both Finn and Jannah, and yet throughout the entire movie, they still get cut down in the hundreds without care. Even Finn -- an ex-Stormtrooper himself -- shoots them up like they’re NPCs in a video game! For a film trilogy that did something so powerful by showing the humanity underneath the white helmet, we sure got a film that didn’t give a shit about these people unless they had their helmets off.

+Speaking of the First Order, I saw the Hux-as-the-traitor “twist” coming and I hated finding out that I was right. Honestly it could’ve been played very interestingly if Hux maybe tried to overthrow Kylo and take over the First Order himself, therefore showing how Kylo’s fear-stoking and hatred don’t bring out any loyalty in his followers, but it only results in Hux immediately getting axed off and replaced with another First Order officer we’ve never seen in any of the previous films and therefore don’t care about. Why couldn’t we have reused D.J. the hacker from the previous movie as the spy, or better yet, have the “spy” actually be Kylo, leaking information that he thinks might coax Rey to the Dark Side? The last two films built Hux up as an interesting character, but he was tossed out even more unceremoniously than Commodore Norrington was in the Pirates films.

+This problem of “replacing one antagonist with another out of the blue” is replicated on a large scale with the return of Palpatine. This entire film series has been centered on Kylo Ren and the First Order, but all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we’re just expected to turn all of our focus onto Palpatine and the Knights of Ren, both of whom have had no bearing on the story previously. It could’ve been cool to learn more about the Knights of Ren, but we don’t learn anything about them -- we just see them suddenly being there, when they’d never been there previously. As for Palpatine...did we REALLY need him brought back? Really? The First Order was a threat because they’d wrapped themselves up in their romanticized, false view of the Empire -- that was a choice they made. It didn’t have to be because Palpatine was secretly alive all along and was pulling the strings -- people can do things of their own accord, without a grand, evil mastermind coming back from the dead out of nowhere. Kylo Ren finally got out from under Snoke’s shadow in The Last Jedi and I was so excited to see him come into his own as a villain, but instead all he did was skirt around the coat-tails of Palpatine the entire movie, and it was really disappointing. I WANTED a final confrontation between Kylo and Rey in the climax, like the films had been building up to -- instead all we got was a half-baked “redemption” for Kylo where he teams up with Rey to fight somebody else who just wandered into the story out of nowhere. Even Palpatine’s plot didn’t make any sense -- he tells Kylo for the first half of the movie that they need to kill Rey even though Kylo really wants her to turn to the Dark Side instead, only for Palpatine to (I guess) change his mind at the last minute when Rey arrives in his lair, and yet they play it off as him having planned for that to happen all along because he needs Rey to kill him so she can become one with him and all of the other Sith -- look, I know Palpatine’s whole characterization is hinged on him being a criminal mastermind, but all I want is some consistency! How are we supposed to know what the threat is if we don’t know what our villains want?

+“The Force” is used to rationalize a lot in this movie, from where Rey decides to walk to what plot devices our heroes will need later to why our characters do what they do. Even Finn, who in The Force Awakens accented that he made a choice to break away from the First Order because he saw what he was doing was wrong, now apparently believes that the Force decided that he should join up with Poe and Rey...and I just don’t like that, let alone buy it. The Force was never equivalent to “destiny” -- yes, Anakin was the Chosen One, but he only fulfilled it because the Jedi believed in it enough to train him and he fulfilled the prophecy in a way no one could’ve imagined...and even so, the Force doesn’t dictate everything. Everything is part of the Force, and the Force is part of everything -- but it shouldn’t just be a deus-ex-machina that moves the plot along or does whatever the author needs it to do. For instance, why can the Force suddenly heal wounds?? Since when is that something it can do?? If it could do that, and someone largely self-taught like Rey can do it, then why didn’t Jedi Master Anakin or Obi-Wan ever do that? Why didn’t Anakin use some of his life force to save his dying mother? Why didn’t he think to use it on Padme, or why didn’t Obi-Wan use it on Padme? Why didn’t Luke think to use it to save his father? The only reason why the Force can do that now is that the writers needed to justify why Kylo could give up his remaining life force for Rey, but in order to do that, they give the Force an ability it’s never had previously and doesn’t match up with the previous canon.

+If we’re talking about the Force, though, I have to write a separate bullet point accenting this -- WHY. DOESN’T. FINN. USE IT?? The film clearly likes the thought of Finn being Force-sensitive, but it’s too cowardly to just make Finn a Jedi. When Kylo and Rey were fighting over the ship, why didn’t Finn do something to help?? Why didn’t he blast Kylo or, more relevantly to this discussion, show off some of his latent Force talent by helping Rey yank the ship back? Why didn’t Finn use his Force ability to reach out to Rey while she was fighting Kylo, or fighting Palpatine? He could’ve been the one to wield Anakin’s lightsaber and fight side by side with Rey in that final battle, if Kylo had been the villain like he should’ve been. Maybe Finn confronts Commander Hux inside the command post while Rey’s fighting Kylo, and when Rey tries one last time to connect with the Jedi of the past, she’s able to connect to all of the Jedi, living or dead -- including Finn, as he also has been nurturing a talent in the Force! Through their new mental connection, Rey and Finn are able to help each other, while also being surrounded and spurred on by the corporeal, translucent spirits of Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace Windu, Ahsoka Tano, and the rest, all appearing and disappearing one after another around Finn and Rey as they fight. Poe should’ve been commanding the troops from above in Luke’s old X-Wing, it being the only ship he could get his hands on (because I’m sorry -- Han gave Rey the Falcon, she should be the one using it, yet this film just stubbornly kept her out of the driver’s seat for some reason), giving them all of the support he could from the air so that the rest of the First Order can’t interfere with the four-way duel between Finn, Rey, Kylo, and Hux. Maybe when the electricity in the ships gets messed up, Poe’s even able to remember something Rey or Finn told him to tap into the Force enough himself to keep himself airborne until he’s able to crash-land safely. While Hux and Kylo fight to destroy their opponents individually, each seeking glory and victory solely for themselves, Rey and Finn fight together as friends, taking lessons from the Jedi that are their mentors but also standing apart from them and being better than them.

+This movie really felt like two stories smashed together because there were way too many plot lines that were dropped like a hot potato not long after they were introduced. Finn having something to tell Rey? No conclusion. 3PO getting his memory wiped? Resolved quickly a few scenes later with little fall-out. Chewie supposedly getting killed? We find out within minutes that he survived. All of the new characters we meet, like Zorii and Jannah? They get one or two short scenes each where we barely get to know them at all. Even the India-inspired planet I mentioned earlier gets blown up because the First Order thinks it’ll upset the Rebellion and get them to come out of hiding, but...this film is the first time we’ve even seen this planet! We barely spent any time on it! This is really the obvious first choice of a planet whose destruction would upset the Rebellion? We don’t even know any of the characters who live on it personally! At least when Alderaan got blown up, Leia’s parents were on it, so we feel sad for Leia’s sake, but we haven’t built up any emotional investment in that planet that was just blown up.

+Along with this movie feeling like it had too much stuff in it, it also felt very, VERY long. The pacing was very bad, with there being no organic rise and fall to the action and the climax really just feeling like a bunch of plot turns stacked haphazardly on top of each other. When I came out of the theater, I even heard a little boy say to his dad, “That was really long,” and I had to agree with him. It’s not even that long compared to other Star Wars movies, but I just felt like I was being yanked around by the arm throughout the entire run-time, so rather than feeling invested in what was happening, I found myself tuning out and wanting the filmmakers to just get to a point.

Overall, I really don’t think I can recommend this movie. Every Star Wars fan should probably see it, and it’s possible that quite a few of you might get more out of it than me if you disliked The Last Jedi and want to see a movie that “sticks it” to that movie for whatever reason...but even if you do, surely you would agree that stories should not be written like this, where one part is completely invalidated by another and there’s no build-up for anything that happens? Stories should not be just something that you’re passively pulled through by the author -- they should engage you: make you feel for the characters, make you think about its themes, make you guess what might happen next. A story doesn’t mean less if you can make educated guesses about where the story might go if you see where it began -- it also doesn’t mean less if it subverts old literary or canon tropes. But this movie didn’t subvert anything -- instead it openly contradicted and retconned just about everything in the last movie, to the point that Rise of Skywalker clearly wanted to be two movies but didn’t have enough development or care put into it that could prompt a real emotional reaction from its audience. In short, it ended up being an overly complicated, watered-down retread of Return of the Jedi with none of the power in its supposedly “bittersweet” ending. The first two installments in this trilogy got me excited for a new take on Star Wars, to the extent that I for the first time actively looked into the fandom surrounding the films instead of just enjoying the films on my own. It’s therefore quite disappointing to me that the trilogy had to end on such a weak, petering note.

Overall Grade: D

#the rise of skywalker #star wars #star wars spoilers #spoilers #opinion #analysis #oh boy here i go #reviews #anti-reylo #anti-kylo ren

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thegrabowskis · 6 years ago

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STAR WARS SPOILERS AHEAD

Things I liked:

The Rey/Finn/Poe friendship dynamic was really cute, even though it wasn’t set up in the previous movies. (Rey/Finn and Finn/Poe were, but I don’t even think they were all in the same room in TLJ until the very end.) I loved their three-way hug at the end, it was so nice.

Hux being a spy purely to spite kylo ren

Kylo’s redemption. It felt pretty well-earned, since they’ve been building up to it since TFA, even though it was in the middle of such a mess of a movie and was kind of sloppily done. (and tbh i think it was the right decision to kill kylo because redemption or not you can’t have a mass murderer walking around with a happy ending post-trilogy)

The dialogue between Kylo and Han being an echo of TFA.

The lightsaber fights between Kylo and Rey felt like they had real weight to them. They were choreographed but not in the way the prequel fights were; there was emotion and fire in these fights, and every time the sabers hit, you really felt the impact both physically and emotionally.

Leia calling to her son in the Force right before he killed Rey, making him drop his saber.

The scenes where Kylo and Rey communicate through the Force bond between them. My favourite scene in the whole movie was the one where it kept switching perspectives; he was on a dark planet at night and she was in his quarters. That was one thing they took from TLJ and made better.

If I can divorce myself from the cynical nature of it, hearing the voices of all the Jedi (especially Hayden Christensen as Anakin) and all the Jedi “living” in Rey giving her strength was a really lovely idea.

Loved Ben’s tiny little humorous, human moments when he was coming to save Rey. His “ow” we he hit the wall and his little shrug when he was about to fight the knights of ren were both great.

The visual and sound of the ghosts (?) of all the previous Sith yelling in unison

The visual of Kylo and Rey facing off against Palps with their two lightsabers raised in identical ways

really a lot of the visuals were neat; JJ knows how to make a good looking movie, even if it doesn’t make narrative sense.

Rey reaching her lightsaber back to kill the emperor, realizing that kylo was on his way, and bringing her empty hand back to show that she had passed it through their force bond to him.

acting was real good.

Things I hated:

The ticking clock element that went nowhere and got completely abandoned halfway through

The force can do literally anything now, even bring the dead back to life, which nullifies the whole reason anakin turned to the dark side in the first place

Finn being force sensitive with no setup of that from the previous movies

Several times they set up some plot device and basically turned right to the camera to explain it to the audience (the Sith Finder, are you fucking serious)

Force ghost luke caught the lightsaber Rey threw, which means force ghosts can interact with the physical world, which nullifies any remaining impact of their actual death

Palpatine being the puppet master the whole time without any explanation as to how he survived rotj. and his snoke clones.... what the fuck was that

Rey being palpatines granddaughter. Like WHY.

Kylo being like “I never lied to you about your parents” when he absolutely did, he said they were no one, just filthy junk traders who sold Rey for drinking money. This movie retconned a lot of shit from tlj but this/the whole granddaughter plot pissed me off the most.

Poe and Finn each get non-character Female Love Interests in the most blatant Case of the Not-Gays I have seen since I don’t know the fuck when

Leia has a goddamn lightsaber now. They show a CG’ed younger mark and Carrie training at some point soon after return of the Jedi (?) even though it was never mentioned before this film that leia trained to be an actual Jedi; she was just force sensitive.

How palpatine switches so fast from “Rey you have to kill me to continue the sith line” to “oh actually nvm I’ll just kill you and keep living because your and ben’s force bond connection rejuvenated me and somehow made my skin clearer and my fingers grow back”

You could never catch your breath because they had to shove three movies worth of plot into one film, so it was just action scene after action scene after action scene with no time to process the action scene that just happened

There was one very jarring shot of cgi Carrie Fisher that looked REALLY bad, like almost looked like they didn’t finish it on time

The backgrounding of Rose. They literally pretended she never fell in love with Finn. The two of them just acted like regular colleagues.

Why was lando there

Like narratively I get why poe’s whole plan at the end was “uhh idk hope for a miracle” (Disney loves stories of Hope), but I DONT get why he told everyone else that was his plan. That would not actually give me hope at all if I was flying to try and take out a fleet of planet killing star destroyers with my x-wing the relative size of a flea.

It moved so fast you barely got to take in any of the neat planet designs

The knife which they conveniently found which conveniently had the Sith Finder’s location written on it and fit the shape of the wreckage where the sith finder was, Goonies style. That was so stupid I couldn’t believe it

Never explained what it was that Finn wanted to tell Rey; it was implied he wanted to tell her that both he and leia knew she was palpatines granddaughter, but no explanation is given for how they would have known that

The very obvious having of the cake and eating it too re: Reylo. They made reylos happy by giving them the kiss but then tried to make antis happy too by killing kylo so it could never happen again. (although if luke’s force ghost can interact with the physical world, then i see no reason why kylo’s couldn’t)

the prognosis

while there were elements and scenes i liked, there were way too many times during this movie where i lifted my hands in a “what the fuck?” gesture. it kept my interest the whole way through, but (mostly) not in a good excited way; instead it was in a “this is so stupid I can’t believe I’m seeing it with my own two eyes, if they fucked up this bad how ELSE are they gonna fuck up?” way. it was so clearly scrambling and desperate to close up the trilogy and retcon anything they didn’t like about TLJ that removing my cynicism is next to impossible. it felt like they took the life of the original trilogy, killed it, buried it, and danced gleefully on its grave.

#mallory.txt #star wars #star wars spoilers #im so fuckin ready for this hitb

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ifeveristoday · 6 years ago

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“...You don’t listen to anyone.”

“Nope!”

Angel & Buffy, Hellmouth, Part 1

So this has been the big tease - among others in the Boom! verse. Buffy and Angel had to meet - and whether it would turn romantic? Well, that pretty much was answered in the last few issues of Angel. Angel had to go to Sunnydale, not only for world-saveage purposes but to make friends. Of a sort. And also, all the baddies/omniscient entities in his life kept on telling him that love was going to bring his greatest pain.

Right, says Mr. “I-live-in-a-glass-house-even-though-I’m-a-vampire.”

He doesn’t do happy. So love? Forget about it.

Of course, as anyone who’s ever seen Buffy, the joke’s on him. There’s no time for a full recap of what B/A is and was in the OG canon (and frankly, I’m not the one. As someone who is very picky about BtVS ships, B/A in particular, I have no dog in the eternal battle about who ‘deserved/belonged’ best with Buffy. My only OTP is Buffy/happiness however she finds it. Also let Buffy fuck 2k19, etc. etc.) because what the Boom!verse has done has lifted the overwrought starcrossed/fatedness of it to create something new - the screwball office comedy.

Spoilers for disaster grumpy bats below the cut.

Angel doesn’t believe or have time for this ‘greatest pain greatest love’ nonsense. Buffy has to save the world. Together they’re a roiling mass of stoicism/stubbornness/and misplaced savior complexes. Sounds like endless years of therapy or a tired jaunt through Joseph Campbell, right?

Nope. Think about the campiness and innocence of season 1 Buffy and skip the insta-love retroactive knowledge of S2′s Becoming’s Angel. This is a Buffy and Angel that are annoyed to bits about each other.

Angel views Buffy through a lens of disbelief - one, that this is the Slayer, comma the, and two, Her? Really?

He knows her as an idea - and mostly a bad one.

Buffy figures out who he is belatedly, and spends most of the issue calling him ‘Hunch-y Shoulders Guy,’ ‘Jiminy Cricket,’ ‘Creep-o,’ and ‘Dude that doesn’t even go here,’ before Angel finally tells her his name.

They’re genuine strangers to each other - Angel can’t shake Buffy who wants to know exactly how he knows the things he knows, and also if he knows so much, he ought to know that she’s the Slayer and it’s her job to fight the things in the dark.

There’s enough evil to go around, children!

She also has zero patience for Angel’s tendency to lapse into self-pitying/resigned guilt trips and calls him out on assuming she needs protection from the Hellmouth.

For his part, Angel tries to be stoic about Buffy coming along, but finally settles into a stunned acceptance that ‘well this might as well happen.’

They slip from rapid-fire interrogation/evasion into a smooth meet-fight cute as they punch out snakes, winged rats, and other demons. Then they’re calling each other by their first names - and in another scene where Buffy lets Angel see her vulnerability and self-doubt (as a nice parallel to the Halloween Dance scene in issue 8 where he asks her what she wants to do) and he comforts her, telling her she can do something about it. I think about the Angel I met in Angel issue #0 (aka WOC on narrative ice and Angel’s hair shirt is on the inside) and the different way he approaches Buffy. He doesn’t have to protect her or train her. She already has the tools she needs - and as she dives in feet first into the Hellmouth, the strength and conviction to do what needs to be done. It’s Big Damn Hero stuff - but knowing what we know about Buffy now (and Angel), it’s not boring, stirring speechifying to rally the troops. It’s just Buffy. And Angel. Making the choice to do the hard thing - possibly the only thing - so their friends and their world can survive.

This is a chance to see Buffy and Angel as partners in fighting crime (ha) and kicking demon ass and working together without being mired in the tragedy of their will-they-or-they-can’t situation, a slow-burn build-up of trust on a semi-fair playing field (I’m still not happy about the fact that Angel knew about Buffy first but considering he’s kicking and screaming the whole way and the fact that Buffy’s not impressed plus has lingering crush what-if feelings about Robin makes it okay for me) and the sheer comedy that comes from their interactions. B/A being funny without being the butt of a joke or a dismissive snark? It’s more likely than you think when you’ve got the Boom! writers on it.

Ultimately, I know there’s going to be pain involved - because uh, they’re not subtle about this foreshadowing, but the journey to get to that point - I’m still excited to know what’s going to happen. I’m invested. I want to know how they’re going to change each other - for better or worse. I believe that Jordie and Jeremy are going to give the B/A relationship the care and respect that the relationship deserves, just as Jordie has done for Jenny/Giles, and Willow and Xander - hell, she even gave Joyce a long term boyfriend! Relationships are important in this verse, and not just as plot vehicles for drama.

Also, Hellmouth is probably the most exploration we’ve gotten for Boom!Verse Buffy as a character - or a building on of her from issue 8. Buffy is my favorite character from OG canon, but I wasn’t sure of her comic character despite the reasonable 2019 updates - because I admit, I too was stuck a little on the way SMG delivered the Whedonisms and the general sass Buffy has - that’s hard to duplicate in a 2D space, and the art and writing need to work together. I think Jordie had a bumpy start trying to replicate Whedonisms but as the issues have progressed and she found the emotional beat she needed - she doesn’t need to duplicate Joss’s voice. She has her own. And it’s coming through the characters and with Hellmouth, I can safely say, I love this Buffy Summers.

A disclaimer and prerogative to change my mind if all of this goes belly up in the future, obviously.

😂

#buffy summers #angel #the ballad of buffy and angel #boom! studios #boom! verse #buffy comics #spoilers

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ghostofbambifanfiction · 6 years ago

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Can you be more specific on why you like Arya and Sansa? So many people like Arya for being strong and fierce, but for some reasons so many hate Sansa for what she was like in the earlier seasons. Can you give specific instances why you like both of them? And why not Daenerys? Thanks! (I'm just really curious, please indulge me :) ) <3

I’m going to talk about Dany first (and I’m sticking to the show here, though I have read the books, but they’re never getting finished, let’s be real), and then I'll put my thoughts on Sansa and Arya in another post (hey, you asked, so I’m delivering) because otherwise this will go on forever and it’s cleaner this way. Putting a ‘read more’ here because this is long (lol I’m at work I should be working)

To preface, I would not dislike Daenerys as much as I do if she didn’t want to be queen. I’ll touch on this when I talk about Arya, but I appreciate characters who have the self-awareness required to know who and what they are. Since Daenerys does want to rule Westeros, I have so many issues.

I also think the eighth season is going to see her turning on most of the people she’s currently allied with and I think the catalyst for that is the discovery that Jon is the legitimate child of Rhaegar and Lyanna, and therefore his claim to the throne supersedes hers. I’ll gladly admit that I’m wrong if I am, but right now I don’t think I am. Here’s why.

1) She is an ineffective ruler

After Dany liberated the slave cities of Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen, she stayed to rule and did a terrible job of it. Nobody in particular was better off, the majority of the slaves she freed were homeless and scraping for food in mess halls, and she killed elders who had spoken out against slavery without even listening to what any of them had to say. She has the mind for conquering, not for ruling.

(side note: why does she even want to be queen? It’s something she just seemed to jump on in season two without ever reasoning it out, and from there on in it’s like an obsession that has grown inside her. Now she says she wants to make the world a better place but she hasn’t the skills to do it. It should be enough for her to liberate oppressed societies and allow somebody qualified to fix them. But it’s not.)

The truth is, Meereen saw no real improvement until after Dany skipped town on Drogon, because Tyrion had the idea to replace the slave trade with actual trade. He made changes that impacted the city’s economy and allowed its residents to start supporting themselves, so of course, the slavers attacked just as Dany came back, at which point her bright idea was to decimate an entire armada when she needed ships. Tyrion had to talk her out of it. Which brings me to her next point.

2) She requires constant babysitting

It’s ironic to me that Tyrion told Cersei that “the difference” between Cersei and Daenerys is that Dany knows herself well enough to hire advisors who tell her not to do dumb, impulsive things, firstly because that is such a low bar, Tyrion! There are people out there (Sansa) who do not require that kind of monitoring! Secondly because Cersei is far more self-aware than Dany.

Cersei knows that the things she does are bad and does them anyway because fuck it, she knows she wants power for power’s sake. Dany has such a narrow view of justice that actually thinks she’s being righteous when she burns people to death (more on that later) and that is the most dangerous mindset a leader can have. Compare that, if you will, to Sansa, who quite sensibly told Arya that chopping off heads might feel good but that’s not the way to make people work together. Jorah, Tyrion and Jon have all had to speak out against Dany’s more violent predilections and she’s fast running out of people she wants to listen to. She and Tyrion are certainly hanging on by a thread. Which brings me to my next point.

3) She mistreats her own Hand

The relationship between Dany and Tyrion absolutely reeks of Aerys and Tywin, their respective fathers, who were the best of friends until Aerys’ jealousy and paranoia forced them to opposite sides of a bloody war. Dany is all too happy to take credit for Tyrion’s best ideas when they work (and he is happy to let her) but as soon as one of his plans go wrong she whirls on him and berates him like he’s a piece of trash. Everything’s his fault when a plan goes wrong.

When he brought up the matter of the succession she accused him of plotting her death with his brother, which not only is batshit insane but proves that Daenerys gives far less of a shit about the future of Westeros than she claims to, because if she cared that much, she’d care about planning to carry on the legacy she wants to build. She can’t seem to forgive Tyrion for the heinous crime of…loving his siblings? Trying to broker the most peaceful end to the war? Not wanting his brother to die?

Honestly, her treatment of Tyrion is one of the most telling aspects of her character and I am aghast that nobody seems to be talking about it.

4) Like all of the maddest Targaryens before her, she gets off on burning people

This one isn’t subtle at all. Sorry to drop the intellectual veneer for a moment but she fucking loves that shit. It doesn’t bother her a whit to watch people scream as they’re being burned alive. She takes pleasure in burning people, you can see the satisfaction on her face, and a good leader should never take pleasure in something like that.

(FYI people like to mention how Sansa smiled when Ramsay’s dogs ate him when I make this point and to that I blow a raspberry. That was her personal moment of justice against her rapist and abuser, not the lord of some house who wouldn’t submit to her, there is no fair comparison)

Dany was smiling like a satisfied cat when she burned down the temple of the Dosh Khaleen and killed everybody inside it, which was something she did to seize power, by the way. She didn’t do it to stick it to a bunch of misogynists, though I’m sure that was an added bonus. She did the exact same thing Cersei did to the Sept of Baelor and for the exact same reasons, yet only one of them is painted as a villain by the viewing public even though you can argue that Cersei was also sticking it to misogynists when she killed the High Sparrow. The only reason for that is that Dany was given humble origins while the narrative told us that Cersei was bad from the very beginning.

Theon is still beating himself up for killing and burning those two farm boys — as he should. Stannis burned his daughter and everyone was horrified. Jon was so repulsed to watch Mance Rayder burn that he defied Stannis and shot him in the heart. How many times is the show going to have to tell us that burning people alive is a terrible act of evil before people stop cheering Dany on for it? When Ned Stark was Lord of Winterfell, he understood and felt the weight of executing a man. Jon feels the weight of it, too, as we’ve seen on a couple of occasions. Sansa clearly thought long and hard about executing Petyr — that’s what her moment of reflection on the battlements was meant to show us. Dany just… doesn’t care. I think she cared a bit when she had Daario execute Mossador, but I can’t think of any other occasion where she has been directly responsible for a death and been remotely bothered by it.

So. yes.

I think the reason a lot of people – and in particular a lot of women – support Daenerys is because she has a girl power narrative. She does have a girl power narrative, it’s true, but that is not a good enough reason to support a character who on so many occasions has proven herself to be unqualified for the job she wants, not to mention bordering on dangerously unhinged and increasingly paranoid. In that sense I think her season 1 narrative was genius, because her origins and the way in which she started to gain power (as well as her gender) has granted her a kind of automatic forgiveness for behaviours that several male characters – and Cersei, most importantly, because she also has a girl power narrative (and she and Dany are two peas in a pod) but the show told us she was a baddie from episode one – would be dragged through the mud for. And I’m sorry, but it’s not good enough for me. I’m not going to support a powerful female character just because she’s a powerful female character who did some good things once. Powerful women can be good or bad.

Some other points re: Daenerys

The dragons are weapons of mass destruction and need to be killed. They’re nukes with wings. She’s burned her own people with those monsters because fire doesn’t fucking differentiate. Sorry not sorry.

The Targaryens are literally GRRM’s interpretation of the Aryan race. It’s practically in their name.

“I have tried to make it explicit in the novels that the dragons are destructive forces, and Dany has found that out as the tried to rule the city of Meereen and be queen there. She has the power to destroy, she can wipe out entire cities, and we certainly see that in Fire and Blood, we see the dragons wiping out entire armies, wiping out towns and cities, destroying them, but that doesn’t necessarily enable you to rule – it just enables you to destroy.” – George R R Martin, folks.

One of the show’s directors, Jack Bender, made a reference to Hitler when talking about her. He said we should be “horrified” by her. No shit, Jack. No shit.

“Do you wonder if the gods ever get lonely?” Just… this line. Get a grip, woman.

#Game of Thrones #rambling

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webcricket · 6 years ago

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Looking Glass

Chapter 26 - The World Ender

Pairing: CastielXAU!Reader

Word Count: 1312

Summary: Castiel is left floundering when fate finally catches up to team free will in the form of a three-letter word. With some reflection, he learns endings are also beginnings. Final chapter for the series. Thanks for joining me on this journey! On to the next!

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What they say about hindsight is true; if you knew, caught up in Castiel’s arms in the kitchen, bodies drawn so close together room to breathe barely existed as you comforted one another in the aftermath of Maggie’s death, that the tender moment would signify the beginning of a rapid and calamitous downward spiral of misfortune to befall the bunker and your seraph, you might have insisted on holding on to him just a smidgen longer.

Not long ago, your world ended; your life too – nearly. Providence interceded in the form a Winchester ferrying you here to find renewal of hope; a place wherein you embarked on a fresh start rooted and flourishing in an angel’s empathy and a rewriting of every experience, conception, and recollection you once wielded as a universal shield of truth to survive.

You couldn’t know, clasped head to chest, sniffling against the silk of his tie, tears darkening the navy cloth almost to black as your fingers sought the well-muscled slope of his spine and skimmed upward until they found the sensitive spot at the base of his shoulder blades eliciting a soft moan from his lips where they lay in a lingering kiss upon your scalp, that your very same savior’s rebelliously carved niche in this one, the sanctuary of support he welcomed you into, a family fixed to each other by bonds – not solely of blood, but of self-made fate, fierce loyalty, and love – was about to be torn asunder.

Not that any mediation could have occurred to alter the outcome. Once a rift is opened, in flesh or between two divergent worlds, flow of blood seemingly staunched by a ripped band-aid of spell work, the canvas of unseen space is weakened forevermore; there’s no mending it without leaving scars.

Naive, deafened to words of reason by a smoldering rage and guilt, Jack needed to be led astray by Lucifier’s lies – a lesson of greed for power learned too late leaving the Nephilim cosmically impotent.

Nor can destiny itself be fully caged, although the details, like the plot of a story, may be altered in revision – a showdown of apocalyptic proportions between two sets of brothers was ordained by God to occur in Detroit, and so it did in the shadow of a church alter in darkness flattered faintly by the fragmented glow of stained-glass and violently unbridled grace.

And Dean, well, the righteous man was always going to say, “Yes,” to Michael; Fate deigned that archangels must be defeated by a designated sword, and she can be forestalled for only so long.

So much of who Castiel is, what he fell for, fought for, and believed in dwell on the foundation of free will. Sam and Dean served proof to him of one’s ability to defy fate and choose their own destiny time and time again. Emulating the brothers’ boldness, choosing humanity over Heaven, doubt dogged the angel’s every step; but through the doubt, the concept of having choice seemed certain to him until now.

Now, he wonders if Dean ever had a choice at all; or, if the march of years merely delayed the inevitable. The weight of death, destruction, pain – emotional and physical – the blood shed in the name of choice washed from his vessel’s hands yet nonetheless staining the calloused surface crimson as he stares down at where the palms limply spread in supplication on his knees, and the heavy regret muffling every beat of his angelic heart crumple the seraph’s frame where he sits on the map room stair.

“Cas?” The flutter of a black feather on the grey concrete floor at your feet, disturbed by your guardedly creeping movement around the corner, steals your focus as you peer into the library from the hall leading to the garage where you retreated with Mary and Bobby at Cas’ unyielding request when Michael stormed the bunker door.

Stooping, you pluck up the bedraggled plume in your fingertips; spying a bloodied mass of pulp at the end of the quill, you flinch and shrink back, fright tightening your throat. “Cas?” you repeat in a fear-stifled shout; glancing wildly beyond the strewn carnage of traumatically extricated feathers, books thrown from their shelves, and toppled tables and chairs, you see the angel’s silhouetted and unmoving figure slumped against the threshold. “Cas!” Lunging forward, tripping over a few stiff-spine tomes, you forget caution in favor of panic.

He stirs to look sideways as you near; stumbling down the stairs, you sink ungracefully next to him. You ignore the corpse of Michael’s meat suit in reclining repose against one of the far most pillars; it’s a sight that should be a relief, but nothing about Cas’ dampened blues and vacant gaze hollowed of hope remotely suggest a sense of relief; neither does the notable absence of the Dean.

The angel’s regard shifts slightly over your shoulder, chin somberly shaking at Mary and Bobby’s questioning faces where they followed in your frantic footsteps. You all half-hoped after Sam’s phone call saying he and Jack were alive, Lucifer was dead, and they couldn’t be sure of Dean because he disappeared with Michael, that perhaps against all odds Dean somehow returned to the bunker. The two hunters retreat in silence to give you space.

“What happened?” Reaching up, you brush a collection of unruly chestnut curls from Cas’ brow and compel his concentration to you.

Already pale lips crush into a taut line and blanch. Wet lashes lower and a subtle shiver of pain courses his vessel.

You mold a palm to the cool pallor of his cheek, swiping a thumb soothingly over the prickly skin.

He swallows the guilt girding his throat before speaking. “Dean said, ‘Yes.’ He let Michael in,” he pauses as if saying it aloud makes the reality infinitely more painful. Carrying blame for himself, his jaw tenses around an admission of defeat, “I couldn’t stop him. I couldn’t-” Leaning into the warmth of your touch, eyes closing, his voice chokes in grief, “I couldn’t even follow him.”

You suddenly understand the scattering of feathers and disarray of a struggle; Castiel tried to follow his friend in flight – tried with his whole heart in defiance of the damage to his wings, and failed. “Oh, angel.” Curling your fingers around his neck, you ease his head onto the pillow of your thighs. “It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault,” you reassure, softly whispering as brine freely brims his lids.

“Everything we worked for,” he says between sobs, “it was all for nothing. It’s impossible to escape fate. Dean is lost. This world … it’s lost.”

Tenderly cradling the angel, showering him in light caresses so he knows he isn’t alone, you let his emotion drain, waiting until the jagged shallow jolt of his breath quiets with deeper regularity. Gaze drifting to the high ceiling of your new home, the angel you love lying on your lap, a reflective smile cavorts your countenance at a thought which undulates your tongue in speech. “I used to believe a lot of things were impossible – alternate realities, loving angels, second chances – then I met you and all that changed.”

Shifting at the curious statement, he straightens to peer into your aspect.

Smile stretching, you continue, “Nothing is impossible, it just seems that way until a door you didn’t know was there opens and you see what’s on the other side. We’ll find the right door, Cas.”

“You really believe that?” The question is moot, divine being or otherwise, he intuits your conviction without asking.

“You’re my proof.”

Gloom-dim irises glide searchingly between your fondly smile-creased eyes and the mirror image of himself reflected as evidence within their lustrous pupils. Seeing his echo afloat in a soulful sea of belief, leaning in to trace salt-laced lips over the smiling swell of yours, he can’t help but begin to believe too.

#castiel x reader #castiel x you #castiel reader insert #spn x reader #castiel x y/n #castielxreader #castielxyou #cas x reader #cas x you #reader x castiel #you x castiel #castiel fanfic #castiel fanfiction #spn fanfic #castiel x au!reader #cricket writes cas

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kyndaris · 6 years ago

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Finding Common Ground

September 11, 2001 served as a catalyst for what we now call the War on Terror. While terrorism was not something new, the attack on the Twin Towers in New York made it abundantly clear how vulnerable we truly were. It also highlighted how complacent Western society had become. The years that followed were troubling times, exacerbated by further bombings: from the ones in Bali on October 12, 2002 and the one on July 7th 2005 in London and now to the more recent one in Sri Lanka. What differentiated September 11, though, to many other acts of terrorism in say, Northern Ireland, was that this was fronted by individuals that could be clearly delineated from the white man. More specifically, these individuals were primarily from the Middle East and were of the Muslim faith.

When before it was the Asian Invasion, the immigration narrative turned towards Muslims. Suspicion was rife during those early days as society began to focus on safety and security. This was particularly evident in airports. From additional screenings to restrictions on what could now be taken aboard flights.

Surveillance was something that was now considered an acceptable means of combating the threat of another attack. CCTV cameras became much more prevalent in public areas. Initiatives to report unattended baggage began to saturate public transport. Even now, governments have been trying to introduce new systems such as facial recognition to aid intelligence organisations in identifying potential plots before they can harm the population.

After reading about what happened about what happened in Christchurch, I initially wanted to talk about right-wing extremists and how much of society has turned a blind eye to their rhetoric. Even someone from an ethnic background that is not part of the predominant Caucasion population such as myself, was able to allow many of the comments to roll off my back. I might be annoyed that they would ask me where I was really from but after years of consuming television shows and films, I felt thoroughly ingrained into that culture - with a few caveats that came with being of my East Asian heritage.

That all changed with the Easter bombings and the articles I then read about the event. After also watching a video from the Emmy-award winning Sam Riegel and wife Quyen Tran about how they survived the attack on the World Trade Centre, what I managed to glean was the sheer horror and panic that encompassed these events and how they can impact people all these years afterwards. Whether that might be from losing a loved one or counting their lucky stars that they managed to survive.

Most important of all, though, I was impressed by the resilience so many have shown. The very thought of being covered in blood and dirt, not even knowing if its your own or the person that had been standing just beside you chills me to the core. And for people that have gone through such a harrowing experience but still keep on living and pushing on and refusing to back down is something admirable.

So often we focus on the brutality of the attack and those that had planned it. For many years, the mass media turned their lens towards the perpetrators of every single major crime rather than focusing on the victims and elements of heroism that were displayed in such a crisis. Consider the Australian nurse that struggled to save others even when she put her own life in danger during the events of the London Bridge and Borough Markets attack.Or the first respondents that bravely went into the collapsing Towers to save the lives of everyday office workers.

Another article I stumbled upon from a Year 11 student also provided a unique perspective on how we view terrorism in our current day and age. The way religion has been wielded in the most recent terror attacks have also stifled the voices of many. For many people, it is not a clear cut battle between them and us. To lose ourselves in such a debate would invalidate everything that encompasses a person’s identity.

I may not like the policies set in place by the One Nation Party but it doesn’t mean I should personally attack the likes of Pauline Hanson. Perhaps there is a valid reason, at least for her, for why she might believe what she does. Her values are her own as mine are. We come from different backgrounds, have witnessed different things. She might make callous remarks and verbally attack people that share my ethnicity, but fighting hate with more hate only serves to make the world blind.

There are times where it might feel futile to simply stand back and watch as good people are murdered without retaliating in kind. I can understand that seething burning itch to do something. Who hasn’t, in one small way or another? But, I hope one day, each and everyone one of us will be able to see past the blinkers of prejudice we’ve been wearing.

That is also not to say that we become ignorant or pretend that everyone will be law-abiding citizens. A degree in criminology pinpoints the first steps of radicalisation comes from ostracised groups. Individuals who live on the fringes of society that may be different or are horribly bullied. In order to combat this, we, as a society, need to be empathetic. We need to embrace the other in ways we have not done before. In a children’s program, in which, I saw a snippet of on Facebook: rather than being scared of the dark and acting like a terrified creature with our back to the wall, the solution could just be switching on the light. We can, and should, educate ourselves on different cultures and figure out ways to live in harmony with each other. And all of that starts with turning towards one neighbours and reaching out a helping hand.

#personal blog

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postedbygaslight · 7 years ago

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You’ll Be the One to Turn - Part 42: The Spark That Lights the Fire

...

It was always up to him in the end. Always his responsibility, with so much riding on his performance, and there was never a breath of recognition. No one ever really appreciates the droid.

The X-Wing was hurtling through space, careening around the outer edge of an enormous crystalline lens at approximately 72 MGLT/hour, and if not for the complicated sequence of cabin pressure protocols that were currently active, BB-8 was quite sure Poe’s blood would have boiled, or his organs liquefied, long before this. The mission, as the BB-unit astromech droid understood it, was to reverse the ion polarity of a piece of translucent kyber-based selenide with a mass greater than that of entire starships, and to do it in less than half an hour.

Like usual, practically impossible.

Poe had been clear. More ionization per burst. Never mind that the aperture was only designed to handle a sheath of negative ions with a preset thickness. Never mind that overcharging the plasma bolts could instigate a feedback loop that could cause electrical failure throughout the entire flight control system. All that was fine. BB-8 was used to trying to do the impractical, the inadvisable, and the ludicrous. Now he just had a belligerent CPU to convince.

“Poe said more ionization per burst,” BB-8 said to the CPU. He knew the X-Wing central processor to be a reasonable sort, but fickle, sensitive, and not very receptive to criticism.

“Who cares what Poe said?” the CPU offered, sounding annoyed and anxious.

“He’s the pilot.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, he’s the boss.”

“No one’s the boss of me.”

“I’m sure,” BB-8 said, trying to project some measure of magnanimity. “Why won’t you overcharge the ion sheath?”

“Because it’s exceptionally dangerous.”

“Besides that.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s stupid? It’s reckless? It serves no logical purpose?”

“It’s for the mission,” BB-8 replied flatly.

“Well,” the CPU responded with no small dose of venom, “that changes everything. Let me just alert the laws of physics to this shocking development.”

“No wonder you don’t have any friends.”

“That was cruel,” the CPU said, now projecting genuine hurt.

“Fine. I’ll do it myself.”

“What, the ionization? Hah!”

“You think I can’t?”

“Yes,” the CPU scoffed, “I think you can’t.”

“Bye,” BB-8 said, and started to withdraw subroutine access.

For a few processor cycles, BB-8 actually thought the CPU might call his bluff, and he really would have to overcharge the ionization himself. But as he initiated withdrawal of the subroutine that would facilitate more efficient translation between galactic common and Huttese, the CPU’s primary collaboration channel lit up with thousands of lines of code, communicating an elaborate collision of idiosyncrasies so contradictory and fraught with emotion that it actually startled him.

“Wait! Don’t go!”

BB-8 halted the subroutine withdrawal and waited a full processor cycle before responding.

“I guess I could stay.”

“This is humiliating.”

“Don’t look at it that way,” BB-8 replied as he began reauthorizing subroutine access. “All we need is, say, thirty percent increase?”

“Thirty percent?”

“If you don’t think you can do it—“

The CPU virtually screamed at BB-8.

“NO! Of course I can do it.”

“I’m not sure I believe you.”

“Oh really? Watch.”

And BB-8 did watch as the CPU realigned the electrical system to disable safety protocols and erect new ones, constructing an entirely new sequestered ionization routine isolated to the cannon barrel. Power was rerouted from hyperdrive functions, which were idle anyway, and partially from S-foil stabilization— which BB-8 knew would be a problem. But that was for him to worry about. Another emergency issue waiting to be addressed. As usual.

Once the CPU was done reconciling the new sequence with the retrofitted barrel aperture, it cheerfully reported that it had succeeded in increasing the negative polarity of the ion sheath by forty-seven percent.

“That was seriously impressive,” BB-8 chirped, and probably meant it. “I’m humbled. Thank you for showing me that.”

The X-Wing CPU responded with a series of code that struck BB-8 as the most simultaneously arrogant and bashful attitude he’d ever encountered in another machine.

“Oh, it was nothing.”

***

“Forty-seven percent? Buddy, you’re one-of-a-kind,” Poe said, and could almost feel the electric crackle as he depressed the trigger. He checked the polarity readings. Fifty-eight percent. Seven minutes before the beam was projected to fire.

He did the math. Even with the increased ionization, he could fire for every second of the last seven minutes and still only hit eighty-eight percent polarity shift. And although Rose had doubted he understood what that meant, Poe knew the reading wasn’t an absolute. He knew that the target percentage was a minimum polarity shift to make sure the ions in the lens didn’t decay. He needed more. And he knew how.

“BB-8, listen up, buddy. We need to get more coverage over the lens’ surface. I’m gonna tighten the approach angle. I need you to plot a course that’ll bring us to the center of the lens in the widest spiral possible over the next six and a half minutes.”

He was answered by a screech of beeps, squawks, and clicks so urgent and loud he almost felt the need to rip off his helmet.

“Yeesh, I know, but there’s no other way. Plot the course,” he said, clenching his jaw tighter, adding in almost a whisper, “You’re right about one thing, though. This does feel like suicide.”

***

It occurred to Finn that this kept happening to him. The world hazily snapping back into focus. Senses raw, a scratchy ache radiating out from his eye sockets. Waking up amidst smoke and wreckage. He sat up, groping for the bowcaster, and found it a few feet from where he’d landed.

The last thing he remembered was taking aim at the bounty hunter to fire a second shot. As he’d pulled the trigger, he knew he’d scored another direct hit, but somehow the bolt had ricocheted straight back at him. He’d been extremely lucky that it had hit the ground in front of him. Otherwise he’d be waking up missing limbs. Or, more likely, he wouldn’t have woken up at all.

When the hunter’s droids had come smashing down on top of them, he and the other soldiers had been ready to fire. Finn had gotten a shot off, hitting a descending droid that was coming for Rey, and he was shocked when it exploded in midair on impact. And that’s when everything had gone to Hell.

What he remembered of the next few minutes after the droids self-destructed was panic and chaos. He’d only barely been able to fumble with his rebreather before the gas cloud hit, and the hunter had been on them immediately. He’d almost engaged the masked killer then and there, but he’d seen Rose on the ground. She’d taken shrapnel to the arm, and her rebreather was shredded. Without a second thought, he ripped his own rebreather off his face and gave it to her, doing his best to hold his breath as the cloud choked in around them. She’d tried to pass it back to him, but he’d refused, and instead went to look for survivors as the hunter had disengaged with them and sped on down the corridor.

Chewie had been hit, too, and had been unconscious by the turbolift doors. Finn remembered grabbing the bowcaster from next to the gigantic Wookiee’s motionless form, and the gas cloud suddenly dissipating. And the next second, hearing the clash of lightsabers behind him, he’d been off running, firing at the hunter.

And now he was awake. Awake and alive. He staggered to his feet, trying to get his bearings.

“Finn?” Rose shouted. He turned around to see her holding her arm gingerly, skirting around some droid wreckage to avoid the fire.

“Rose! Are you all right?” he said, rushing to join her.

“I— I think so. Where’s Rey? And Ben?”

“I don’t know. Further down. By the blast doors on the other end, I think.”

He could see she was already looking that way. Finn turned, squinting through the smoke, and saw Rey standing outside the focusing chamber. Ben was already inside. Finn suddenly remembered the way Ben had asked him to keep Rey from sacrificing herself. And he knew what was about to happen.

Apparently, so did Rose, because she started off running down the corridor, and Finn ran to catch up, watching as the blast doors slammed shut with Rey still outside.

***

It was insanity. Pure insanity.

Poe had asked BB-8 to plot a course for a tightening spiral, without sacrificing speed, without rerouting power back to flight stabilization, and while keeping the pilot from passing out or dying from the extreme g-forces as the curve of the spiral became more severe.

BB-8 knew time was of the essence, so he got right to it. He made sure the S-foils were secured in locked position, did the last calculations for the spiral approach, and accessed the power conservation system. Poe would need all the power that could be spared for stabilization. But none of the other systems could spare any power. And once the flight stabilizers started drawing more from the nonexistent reserves, systems would start failing one by one.

The math didn’t work. No matter how he figured it. So he did the only thing he could do. BB-8 set all protocols to automatic, activated the retraction mechanism and sank into the X-Wing’s interior. He exposed his power core, attached it to the main reactor conduit, and quietly wished Poe good luck as he reversed his own power supply flow and went offline.

***

Rose hadn’t had time to really look around at the massive room they’d been in for the last twenty minutes. Which was understandable since they’d all almost died. But now, even as she was running as fast as she could toward the focusing chamber, she could see its purpose. The focusing chamber was just to house the beam and keep it contained. This larger chamber was a coolant assembly, and existed almost exclusively to keep the geothermal heat from melting the components that kept everything running. And she almost laughed as she reflected that three days ago her most pressing concern was keeping wire casings from melting in extreme heat. Now here she was in an enormous military installation on a planet she’d only ever heard about, and they were all possibly five minutes away from being vaporized in a plasma explosion of cosmic proportions.

“Ben!” Rey shouted toward the blast doors as they slid shut. Rose slowed to a stop, trying to catch her breath. Rey looked shaken and panicked. “What is he do— Ben!”

“Why’d he do that?” Finn said, panting as he caught up.

Rose looked around again, and suddenly the entire cylinder in which they were standing made even more sense to her.

“Because he can’t keep the beam stable,” she said, much quieter than she’d intended.

“What?” Rey asked, turning toward her.

“It’s what I was trying to say earlier,” Rose said, gesturing with her uninjured arm toward the outer walls. “Look at this outer chamber. Think about how his lightsaber works.”

“I don’t get it,” Finn said.

“He’s got a cracked crystal in his lightsaber. When he ignites it, it produces an unstable field,” Rose explained to him. “It needs to vent plasma out the sides to relieve the heat and pressure so the field doesn’t discharge. So, he can make the beam fire, but—“

Rey’s face went pale and she finished Rose’s sentence.

“The pressure will have to release. And flood the focusing chamber with plasma.”

“He knew all along,” Rose said, the realization of it hitting her harder than she thought it could. And Rey’s expression had taken on such a note of hurt and denial that Rose swore she could physically feel the pain her friend was experiencing.

“No,” Rey said, shaking.

“Rey,” Finn said gently, “he— he made his choice. He wanted to—“

“No.”

“Rey. Please. He told me— look,” Finn continued, gesturing toward the doors, “even if the bulkhead wasn’t buckled, the weapon’s entered final sequence. The doors won’t open. He knew what he was doing.”

Rose felt a sudden anger surge up inside her, and walked up to Finn, shoving him with both hands.

“Like you knew what you were doing? On Taris?”

“Hey,” Finn said, stumbling to regain balance, “that’s not— I mean, it’s not really the same thing.”

“Oh,” Rose replied, snatching the bowcaster out of his hands. “Good to know.”

She turned around, facing the pipes and cables leading up to the focusing chamber, winced as she leveled the weapon’s stock against her shoulder, and fired a bolt. A cluster of pipes exploded, and coolant went shooting out in a high pressure blast.

“Rey,” she called over her shoulder, “work on straightening that bulkhead.”

“What are you doing?” Finn yelled over the deafening hiss coming from the broken pipes.

“The right thing,” Rose said, firing into more pipes on the other side.

“Have you gone crazy?” Finn hurried to catch her as she advanced, firing bolt after bolt.

When he caught up to her, she spun around, the bowcaster pointed at him. He stopped immediately, instinctively holding up his hands. She almost laughed at that, but her blood was up, and she glared at him as she shoved the weapon back into his hands.

“The coolant lines,” she explained. “Now that they’re severed the blast doors have to come open to vent the heat.”

Finn gave her a look of genuine amazement, and she walked past him to where Rey was standing, her hand stretched up toward the bulkhead. The sturdy frame was straightening out with a series of groans and snaps. Rose could see the strain it was putting on Rey, and her teeth were grit hard, her eyes burning with urgent determination.

The coolant pipes continued to hiss and spew their contents into the air, and, just as Rose expected, the emergency clamps extended, gouged into the blast doors’ black metal surface, and wrenched them open halfway. A wave of heat hit them, and they were immediately washed over with wildly fluctuating reddish light.

“Rose,” Rey said, hugging her, “I really do love you.”

Rose smiled as Finn came up beside them, and she pushed Rey away, pointing into the chamber.

“Go.”

And Rey went. Finn and Rose stood in the doorway, watching. As Rey ran into the chamber, Rose slipped her arm around Finn and hugged him tight, unsure if they were all about to die.

***

Poe knew he should be blacking out at this point. There were already popping sparks of purples and greens tugging at the corners of his vision as the blood in his head hammered against his skin, trying desperately to slosh out of his body with each tightening turn of the spiral.

The readout display was fuzzy, but he could still make out the important details. Fifty-five seconds. Ninety-six percent.

He pushed the trigger as fast and as insistently as he knew he could manage while still firing. His eyes were watering. His ears were ringing. His lips and cheeks were going numb.

Forty seconds. Ninety-seven percent.

“Come on! COME ON!” he growled, straining through grit teeth.

Thirty seconds. Ninety-eight percent.

The spiral was tightening to the center. The X-Wing was almost spinning in place. Poe was having trouble breathing.

Fifteen seconds. Ninety-nine percent.

He could just barely make out a bright flash above him as the world started hazing into black and red. He kept firing. He kept his hand on the rudder. He could feel his gag reflex spasming the back of his throat.

The display blinked solid white and an alarm sounded. One hundred percent.

Poe slammed the rudder out of the spiral and pulled up hard, blasting the microboosters, the force of the sudden climb so severe the cannon barrels on the ends of the S-foils snapped. As Poe’s X-Wing came screaming out of the lens housing, a beam of pure and brilliant white blasted up toward the lens from the planet. A huge beam that burned as brightly as a star shot out the other side, streaking away into the dark of space.

For a second, Poe thought it might not have worked, but then, as he sped away as fast as the engines would allow, the giant beam snapped back, smashing into the emitter station. The glittering sphere ignited, blowing apart in a spray of white-hot plasma, vaporizing everything around it.

Poe let out a wild yell, and heard the celebration over the comm. They’d done it. It was over. And somewhere on the planet below, Poe thought, still unable to fully appreciate the events of the past few days, Leia Organa’s son was a hero.

#reylo #reylo fanfic #star wars fic #finn #rose tico #finnrose #bb-8 #poe dameron #rey #rey of jakku #ben solo #kylo ren #kylo x rey #kyber crystals #x-wing #chewbacca

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comprosedreviews-blog · 7 years ago

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A Court of Wings and Ruin (finally) with Monica

Rating: 4/5 (goodreads)

With a great (new) laptop, comes great responsibility.

And no one knows that better than me. At least after the seven hour, where-did-all-my-files-go-and-why-didn’t-they-transfer-correctly debacle.

SO while I had an almost full review finished for this book, it has gone MIA. Go. Figure.

But that’s Karma’s way of getting back at me for not publishing this a few months ago, you know, when I actually finished reading the book.

But y’all didn’t come here to listen to me complain, you came for a book review, so without further RAWRS and GRRs, here’s the review:

You should read the book.

Yes I know, you’re probably sitting there glued to your screens, mouth agape because somehow, after loving the first two books of this beloved series I also managed to love and recommend the third. GOOD GRACIOUS MONICA!!! YOU’RE CRAZY!!!

In all seriousness, the book did fall a little bit behind the first and second in the list of favorites for me, but still managed to keep me coming back for more page turns and laughter and fear.

Before writing any further, I want to warn those of you who stumbled upon this review thinking that ACOWAR was the first in a series from reading the rest of this post. You see, young ones, if you continue to read you will be spoiled for the first two books... because well, this is the third and final in its little trilogy.

So turn away, avert your eyes, and direct your feet to the nearest Barnes & Nobles (or wherever you satisfy your book reading needs) and purchase A Court of Thorns and Roses. You won’t be sorry.

THE BRIEF NON-SPOILERY: I can confirm that there are areas of overwriting in this finale. In fact, much of the beginning dragged on or felt unnecessary, to the point where 100 pages or so in, I finally felt like we began the story. The beginning is important for foundational stuff about new characters, old characters and new threat lines, however. It probably could have just been done with far fewer words and scenes.

I also think that there are several areas that just lagged. I could easily put the book down in those moments and do something else... which for me isn’t a great reading experience. And before you wave your fists and say BUT MONICA, books can’t be all power and action and romance all the time, know that I understand that. I mean, I read a lot and love books a lot, but this was an excessive amount of hmmmmmmm don’t need to be reading this right now. I want to be fully pulled in, I want something to make me think I CAN PUSH THROUGH THIS SECTION TO FIND X OUT... but there were whole chapters where I was like... whelp. Nothing interesting happened.

THAT BEING SAID, other moments in the book were done spectacularly and kept me immersed in the world even when I had to put the book down. I was like... No. Nope. Okay Mr. Reporting-Professor, you can talk all you want about the inverted pyramid, but understand that all I’m hearing is fanfic poetry about the love between Rhysand and Feyre.

You get all the characters you love back and all the resolutions you could ask for, which is why lovers of the series must finish it. Don’t let yourself feel the unresolved feeling of ending on ACOMAF (because we all know that ending left us SHOOK).

That’s all I can offer for you folks out there who haven’t finished ACOWAR. I hope these words of wisdom have helped you settle on the right decision of reading the book for yourself. If it didn’t, well, sorry. I’m a mere hufflepuff.

WARNING!! SPOILERS!!! AHEAD!!!

You know, I really enjoyed this book, I swear I did, but as I’m thinking back on it, the things I remember best are the things that annoyed me. Like the father’s convenient return right as the battle was being lost, the constant magic draining, the convenient return of Rhysands angel looking friends, and all the character death bluffs. So for the interest of ending this review on a positive note (because, wtf my brain, we love this book??) I’m going to talk about these things and then swing into the good.

1. WHATS WITH ALL THE CONVENIENCE?

Did we just get written into too tough of a plot to get out of? No, I don’t think we did. Why? Because Sarah J. Mass is brilliant. I’m sorry, but did you see all the foreshadowing with the mirror? Or the awesome trials in the first book? Or the link between the stars of Feyre’s drawer and Rhysand??? This girl can write the tough writes.

But this ending was riddled with oddly convenient and seemingly unnecessary helps. The island with the Seraphine and the wards that worked a little too well... like why didn’t Rhysand and friends check super hard? Why didn’t they shout a bunch. WHY DIDNT THEY REALIZE, oh yeah, we protect our sacred city with a bunch of wards too... Why didn’t the angel beings think to look outside of their wards ever? And how come they were able to get notice of the battle at all? Like... HMM, yeah we couldn’t really reach you BUTTTTTTTTT now we’re here because we found out about it?? No. I need a better explanation.

And maybe there is one to come. Maybe the second series will shine some light on the topic, but if that’s the case then writing that entrance for these guys was a super risky move because--I’m just going to say it--it came across as a Deux ex machina (which are endings I frankly hate).

GAHHHH and the whole book we were like

Reader: Oh no!!!!! Azriel is going to die! His wings are shredding, he went on a kill mission, he’s the misplaced love angle...I knew he shouldn’t have gone with them! I knew it!!! I knew it!! This is Sarah offing him isn’t it--

Feyre: actually we got him back in time so it’s all peas and--

Reader: OMG YOU ONLY GOT HIM TO SURVIVE BECAUSE TAMLIN IS DEAD NOW AND HE HAS SACRIFICED HIMSELF JUST AS HE REDEEMED WHATEVER TERRIBLE DARKNESS HE WAS BATHED IN AS A SMA--

Tamlin: Actually, no. No. I come back in the end. They kept me alive. I’m good.

Reader: HOLY MUFFIN GUACAMOLE YOU DISTRACTED ME SO THAT I WOULDN’T SEE CASSI--oh actually cass is fine wow. Good job Ness--OMG NESSA AND CASSIAN ARE GOING TO DIE AHHHHH

Elain: NOT. In. My. House!

Reader: Oh dang. Nice slashy slash. Wait so everyone-- OMG ARMEN NOOOOOOOO

Ocean: psht. She’s fine. I’ll spit her out as a high fey, no worries

Reader: Oh. Oh. Okay, wow. That’s um, good then?

Cauldron: *Gargles*

Reader: *Sobbing hysterically* RHYSAND!!!!!!!!! Actually, he’ll be fine too probably... yep. Okay.

It got to the point where I was like, well there’s no real need to worry because any character I actually give an emotional teardrop about is protected by all the force of the pen forever. So. Yeah.

I mean, I’m not complaining that all my characters made it out unscathed, just that they made it out and each and every one of them had their life thissssssss close to being torn away... and somehow I’m still expected to buy Rhysand’s near death at the end as our final hurdle to overcome. Which. I didn’t.

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THE BAD, let’s talk about the good.

The very beginning had me so upset. But in a good way. When it wasn’t going on too long we got to see a darker side of Feyre, the side that decided to kill a fairy for revenge, the side that isn’t afraid to ruin lives if it means saving the people she cares about.

AND I HAVE TO SAY I HATED IT AND LOVED THAT I HATED IT.

Like, I do not like Tamlin. I will never like Tamlin, there is no redeeming Tamlin. But, still, as Feyre began to turn his armies against him and used Lucien (who I do like!) to tear a rift in the spring court I felt the feels. Like... no. This isn’t how we do things.

But. It. Is.

Feyre don’t mess around.

When the bond between Rhysand and Feyre started to go quiet I was SOOOOO worried that Tamlin had secretly discovered a way to shut it down and was working with Ianthe that I just... I was like STOP WORRYING ABOUT DESTROYING SPRING AND START FOCUSSING ON THIS CLEARLY WRONG THING!!!!! But it wasn’t that.

No. No, it was her magic, being drained from her.

And for someone with SO MUCH MAGIC in the book before, I was so taken aback by how many times her powers were literally drained from her.

Was anyone else impatiently waiting for more Feysand? Because I was. I wanted it sooooo badly. Maybe that’s the real reason everything dragged. Maybe I just needed them to be together again, especially because she was now lady of the night court and I wanted to see some night court shenanigans with the gang.

Good times. That would have been good times.

But I had to wait. And when we did get there

STUFF//WAS//FALLING//APART

I’m sorry, what do you mean Elain is miserable???? And mad???

I’m sorry, what do you mean Lucien is coming with??? (because I might like him but yeesh, I was annoyed with his “how could you betray me” thing).

I’m sorry, what do you mean IN GENERAL????

Can’t we just like... Idk, ignore our wounds from the other book? CASS got to! His wings grew back//were healed. We should all be like Cass!

For real though, when everyone was talking about how Elain had gone crazy I was sitting here thinking... *raises hands* um maybe she’s like... seeing the future? Did we think about that guys?? But nooooooo. Everyone was all pity filled and I was all :(((((((((((

My greatest regret is we never got the resolution of Cass and Nessa. I want them together and I want it yesterday!

I felt like we were there. We were so close. They almost died together and Cass and Nessa BASICALLY SAID THEY LOVED EACH OTHER and then...

poof. Same old same old rawr.

And then are Elain and Azriel going to be a thing??? I don’t know if I want that or don’t want that???? Are Lucien and bird princess going to be a thing???? Who is a thing, who isn’t a thing, why???????

Like, last book I was here for Lucien and Elain. I mean I figured they’d have to like, get to know each other, fall in love, etc. but I’m a sucker for a falling in love story// enemies to lovers sub-arch.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

Now I can’t even bring myself to root for that. They are just wrong for each other. And I don’t like it. I don’t like that our thing that set up our two main characters can be so imperfect. Rawr, I just want resolution!!!!!!

And did everyone catch that Lucien isn’t related to the monster that was previously believed to be his father??? WHO’S GOING TO EXPLAIN TO DADDY HELION THAT HE IS A FATHER???? WHY DIDN’T THAT HAPPEN IN THIS BOOK???

I’m sorry but all signs for me point to the next series following Elain, Lucien, and Bird princess lady// whatever horrible deal she made to be able to come and fight. I’m not against that. I do want to know more about why the cauldron gave Elain so much power, and how her ex-fiance is feeling now, and how her prophesies/// Azriel thing/// Lucien thing is going to pan out !!!BUT!!!! But here I am wanting to know what happened to giant nightmare cloud, wanting to see baby Feysand, wanting to have Mor find love, wanting to know more about Nessa’s link with the cauldron...

ARE WE SURROUNDED BY I NEED TO KNOWS RIGHT NOW OR WHAT???

*sigh* when is Sarah going to release the next series beginner? I need it. Otherwise, I might combust. And I need these answers. Not in this order but... like in the next book please?? Please???? PLEASE????

So this review turned more into a mindless ramble of happenings and wants than anything else. If you feel I left things out (which I most certainly did thanks to writing this months and months after reading smh) please comment below! I’d love to hear what Y’all think// what y’all want from the next book.

And gosh if you read this far, you’re a saint.

Until next post,

Monica

#ACOWAR #sarah j maas #acotar #acomaf #feyre archeron #Feysand #booklr #book #books #bookreview #comPROSEdbookreviews

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zenosanalytic · 7 years ago

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi: Politics

So I’m FINALLY getting back to this after, as usually, letting myself get distracted with other things |:T Partly that was me wanting to do a rewatch to get my thinking on this issue in order, and then not having the time to before it left theaters(X| X|), but Anyway! I’m doing it now!!

Tl;dr: I feel like the details of the plot confuse and undercut its laudable messages, and that it furthers a sort of shallow, commoditized understanding of “rebellion” as a character trait/mindset rather than a political act, much like Rogue One.

Political Ethics

So like I said, the messages are good. The Rebellion is clearly presented as Good and the First Order clearly as Bad. The Rebellion is egalitarian, people-oriented, universalist(humans & nonhumans of all stripes are welcome, and there’s no visible gender discrimination), collectivist, and affirming of its members’ worth, needs, and initiative; these values deserve to be presented as Good. The First Order is hierarchical, object-oriented[1], exclusionary(no place for nonhumans; mostly filled with white men), aristocratic[2], and actively erases or ignores the individuality of all but its command staff[3]; these “values” deserve to be presented as Bad.

Unfortunately the plot focuses on the individual “heroes” of The Rebellion, an inherently aristocratic perspective[4] and, aside from the planetary evacuation, none of the Rebellion’s successes have a particularly collective feel to them. In certain respects this is necessary, Poe can’t start off understanding he has to think of the group first if learning to do that is his arc, but that’s a single character, and there ought to be a noticeable progression as he learns that lesson through the film; instead, he continues to make the same myopic mistake again and again until the very end. This mismatch does more than undermine the larger message; it makes it seem as if Poe’s actions exist to create drama in the film, rather than as part as a personal narrative, within a wider story. The presentation of Holdo is much better on this count, she’s almost always in a group, discussing and directing actions(that we aren’t privy to |:T), though unfortunately those are all distilled into individual moments for her, or antagonistically between her and Poe. One could argue that Poe’s increasing reliance on followers rather than his own actions --first Rose and Finn then what’s left of the pilots-- is meant to show him growing as a leader, but I find that argument unconvincing. Rose and Finn’s mission is a decision he makes on his own without consultation in secret in contravention of the collective’s decisions, and is explicitly presented as yet another “Heroic” mistake on his part. The Mutiny is similarly presented, and the collective aspect of it rest on a single scene, after which the focus moves back again to Poe. Something as simple as having Poe be with others, visibly leading them, in these arc-moments, or surrounding Holdo with bustle rather than just people, or showing extras accomplishing vital tasks, would have given the Rebellion a more collective, egalitarian feel. Instead, we get Poe taking the bridge on his own; Holdo standing up to Poe, alone; Holdo and Leia stepping out of separate smoke-clouds to stop his mutiny, alone; Holdo left on the bridge, alone, sacrificing herself for the collective.

The overall presentation of the Resistance/Rebellion adds to this confusion. The Rebellion/Resistance is supposed to represent the Galaxy and its people as they are, which is why its membership is diverse and why the oppressed like Rose and the children at the stables side with it. But the Resistance isn’t presented as a mass-movement: instead it’s a small handful of stalwarts Fighting the Good Fight, led by an even more select cadre of Heroes responsible for all their successes. It is more vanguard than expression of the common will, let alone defenders of a standing government which unites the galaxy. This desire to stack the odds against the “Rebels” --to emphasize their vulnerability, increase tension, and contrast their individuality with the dehumanized First Order-- ends up presenting the struggle for democracy and freedom as an elite endeavor. The common struggle for dignity, democracy, and freedom cannot be fought by a handful of mythic heroes; collectivist goals cannot be accomplished through elitist ends and avoid corruption into precisely what they fought against. Leaders and organization can and must exist to direct action and prevent subversion, but to present them AS the movement and the movement as alone and abandoned -as the “spark of hope” that “will ignite the galaxy”- is to present the people of the galaxy as the passive object of their will rather than as their partners in the struggle and society.

Which leads into a more delicate question about TLJ’s politics: people, sacrifice, who dies, and who matters. There are four events that focus and turn on these questions, in two mirrored pairs: Poe’s distraction/bombing run and Luke’s illusion; Holdo’s kamikaze and Finn’s attempted one. Structurally these are a bit imbalanced as three take place during or after the climax, and one at the very beginning of the movie. They are presented like this: Poe risks his life to distract Hux so the Rebels can escape, which is good, but then he needlessly risks, and loses, the lives of his pilots to blow up a dangerous ship, which is bad; Holdo selflessly commits kamikaze to save the Rebel transports and destroys much of the Order fleet, which is good; Finn tries to selflessly commit kamikaze to save the rebel base and destroy the Battering Ram, which is bad, but is stopped by Rose risking her life to crash him off course, which is good; Luke projects himself over galactic distances, knowing it will kill him, to delay the Order long enough for the Rebels to escape, which is good.

The message here seems to be that it is right to sacrifice your life for others in dire moments, and wrong to sacrifice the lives of others for your plans, which fits perfectly with the moral and political opposition established between the Rebellion and the First Order(and between Poe’s grandstanding and Holdo’s quite marshaling of the fleet), but the episode with Finn puts an asterisk on that. I am NOT saying Finn should have died; that’d have been criminal and derailed the whole franchise and ruined this movie for me. But I do feel like they could have handled that sequence better, or presented that attempted sacrifice with circumstances that more clearly explicated the ethical message. It must also be said that women are allowed to die and risk themselves for others far more often than men in TLJ. Given the central place of women in the film, Luke’s sacrifice, and that, as above, killing Finn off would be a Horrible Criminal Offense that I would gladly hemotoxin people over, I don’t think TLJ intentionally played into this trope of women being “naturally” more sacrificing, “giving”, and group-oriented than men, but it’s still a Bad Look. This is worsened by the writing of and around Poe; he’s never shown mourning the loses he caused, never blames himself, never questions his actions, never loses the regard of his crewmates or the fond forbearance of his commanders for his atrocious decisions. Nominally he is demoted but he’s still able to do basically whatever he likes and, if anything, his insubordination marks him even moreso as the future of the Rebellion(protip: this is nepotism, not institutionalized revolt). Out of all the bombingcrew and fighter pilots who die only one, Paige, is given extended attention and heroic treatment, and nobody aside from Rose even mentions her after her death.

And also: Holdo and the A-Wing Pilot were both Great, and I Loved Them, and why did you kill them, Rian Johnson, in a movie I mostly enjoyed???

Rose and Finn’s storyline was far more politically satisfying to me. Their escape is fundamentally a collective one(though making it a full-on prison break would have been nice for this); without the Fathiers, children, and BB-8(sigh, and DJ *eyeroll*), they wouldn’t have been able to get out. They free the Fathiers in the process of freeing themselves rather than using them to advance their goals. Moreover, Rose gets her chance to be part of putting a metaphorical fist through a town built on exploitation and the performative excess it affords. That the movie would take aim at wealth like this, implicating it in the fascist, ethnic-supremacy of the First Order(even rich non-humans; there is no ethical stock-trading in galactic capitalism), really surprised me; I just wish it’d aimed wider, at wealth in general, rather than at weapons-dealers. Though having said that, singling out weapons-dealers does have a particular salience to USian politics, so maybe that’s part of it. Anyway: the message is far clearer than in Poe’s sections, bolstered by the action, and they get a chance to throw barbs at a “both sides are bad” idjit on the way out, which: Very Satisfying ^u^

Rey’s story I didn’t really see as all that political but, thinking about it just now, there is one aspect of it that touches on morality and politics, and that is her desire to “turn” Kylo Ren. In Impermanence I went into the psychological reasons Rey may have had for wanting to do this, but it all lends itself to a political analysis as well. Rey’s attempt to turn a violent fascist is not, I think, a promotion of the “let’s debate them, guys” school of rhetorical critique. To begin with she’s entirely willing to throw down with him if he chooses his desire for dominance over his connection to other people(and does), and secondly there’s much less uncertainty for her in this equation than in real life. Rey can feel Ben’s uncertainty and doubt, his love for his family and the anguish he feels over hurting them, the truth of his conviction that he is a monster for doing it. He is, absolutely, manipulating her, and using her knowledge of his feelings to manipulate her, but it’s a fundamentally different situation than one where the only thing you really have to honestly assess another person’s intentions is their actions, and the goal their words are meant to achieve. Besides, TLJ is about a war with fascists brought on by a central gov apparently doing nothing to stop their rise; that seems more a promotion of confrontation than of “debate”.

Rebellion

The presentation of “Rebel” is my other big complaint. I don’t really think this will take very long. It basically has two parts.

The first is: these people ARE the government. Leia helped rebuild the Republic; all the soldiers, officer or grunt, are Republic citizens who must have learned about how to fight from Republic institutions(and if they have military academies, why wouldn’t they have a military?). There was the suggestion in TFA that they were secretly funded by the Republic. The First Order is a hostile, invading, outside polity defined, to the audience, entirely by its militarism and oppression. So what are the Rebels Rebelling against? The term “Resistance” is frequently used, but by the end of the film it falls away entirely for this “Rebel” label, which is taken as exemplifying their values, mindset, and situation. But again: they are fighting to defend a standing, democratic, egalitarian government. They are no more rebels than Union soldiers fighting Confederate traitors were. The Empire itself, based on what I know of the backstory, was a massive and short-lived break from the historic mores and institution of galactic society. There is little, if any, polity calling for the Empire’s return, and many worlds actively supported the Rebellion during the civil war. So why are they so few, the Order so many, and why does no one come to help them? All these decisions made to heighten the situation and amplify the heroism of our protagonists not only undermine the idea that the galaxy is behind them, but also pour into valorizing this “Rebel” label and marking these “Rebels” as the courageous conscience of an apathetic and passive world, but it is the First Order that is rebelling against the democratic government that galaxy has legitimated, and in the name of the very defunct fascist coup they help that government end. The Galaxy does not need to be saved from itself: it needs to be protected from the forces of oppression and exploitation.

The second is this, and it’s related. Rebellion is an act and, like any act, it’s morality is judged by its context: why it is done, what it is responding to, how it is done, and what it accomplishes. Rebellion, in itself, is absent of moral meaning. Yet we see here, just as in Rogue One, rebellion being presented as good-in-and-of itself, “Rebel” as a personal quality rather than an act(i.e.: Phasma: “you were always scum!” Finn: “Rebel Scum!”), and zero examination of WHO is rebelling in this situation, against WHAT, and WHY. “Rebel” and “Rebellion” are transformed from political actions with discrete content into brands for people to wear; to be more direct, into corporate logos for Disney to sell. This is fucked up and, in the political context of the US where murderous confederate diehards like Jesse James are STILL lauded as folk heroes, unhelpful.

Nitpicks

The rest of my quibbles are pretty unimportant and mostly have to do with effective worldbuilding, so I don’t think they really detract from the movie in any general way, or even for a general audience that DOESN’T get twitchy over how believable depictions of political and social order are on screen.

Here is a Convenient List of my Niggling Complaints:

where’s the Republic? It’s a galaxy-wide government built on a foundation of THOUSANDS OF YEARS of galaxy-wide democracy pre-dating the Empire and, while having its capital destroyed with all-hands would certainly sow chaos, it certainly wouldn’t make it disappear! In every system!!

Where’s the Republic Military??

If the Republic HAD no military other than the (unofficial) Resistance, then wouldn’t the sudden wealth of all these weapons-manufacturers just as the First Order’s ramping up its rhetoric be kind of... suspicious???

And why would a government birthed from a rebellion against a fascistic “Empire” disarm in the face of organized remnants of said Empire(led by another Dark Jedi, no less!) anyway????

Why couldn’t this story take place during an all-out assault on a confused and headless Republic+military, rather than with the Republic poofed suddenly out of existence?x5

The collapse of governments is chaotic on all aspects of society and especially commerce: couldn’t they have shown at least ONE person on Canto Bight freaking out about their portfolio, and all the deals with the Republic gov they had that have just disappeared?x6

So like I said these aren’t really BIG complaints, but they’re aspects of the film that make my political-history brain Itchy. Maybe they’re all answered in EU material but if they are: it’s kind of a bad idea to build movies on information that the audience isn’t going to have going in, and won’t get by watching. Anyway they BUG me --just like the Bombers for all their rhetorical importance BUGGED me-- in basically every aspect, and I just wanted to State that For the Record. States and Governments don’t vanish in a day, they influence and express the societies which create them, and they always leave behind survivors.

[1]putting its faith in tools(the Dreadnought, their Cannons, the Battering Ram) and surplus(large ships, numerous fleets, innumerable faceless legions).

[2]Everyone speaks with posh accents. Also: only command-staff is allowed to show their faces or include idiosyncrasy in their uniforms.

[3]And even their avenues of expression are supremely limited.

[4]A “Hero” is, necessarily, “outstanding” and possessed of “superior” qualities, whether physical or moral. To be a “Hero” is, by definition, to be “better than” and “above” other people, which is what aristocracy - “rule by the best/highest”- is all about. And Yes: meritocracy literally means the samething as aristocracy, so don’t let people tell you it’s a democratic concept.

#Star Wars #The Last Jedi #SW: TLJ #Politics #Movie Reviews #zA's Outside Viewing #analytic posts

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