#also leida mothma is a child

[itsagrimm]

Leida Mothma and the struggle for identity

Mon Mothma says about her daughter Leida practicing traditions: "It's weird. It's stronger here than it is at home." And I can't stop thinking about Leida Mothma and her portrayal as a very privileged yet uprooted kid with a migrant background being unusually traditional.

Growing up away from the culture and the people she is supposed to be part of, is challenging and confusing. It is hard to find identity as a teenage migrant, culture and personal access to her people's traditions when removed from it. And it is not surprising that Leida seeks out the most overt and uncomplicated access she can find to her culture and heritage, even if those are conservative and regressive. Those practices are a lifeline for her, simply because she has or knows of no other options.

As someone with a fairly similar background IRL I sympathise deeply with her character. It is a failure of the society she lives in to include her as she is in a way, that would not drive her into dogmatic traditionalism for identity. And it is worryingly normal for kids to feel like they have to hyper-conform in one way or another to have access to their migrant families background or the societal expectations of the place they live in now. It's as if we still haven't figured out how to be inclusive of those we don't understand. And the most vulnerable are the collateral of that.

[captainpikeachu]

I’ve seen some folks come down rather harshly on Mon Mothma’s daughter Leida for being “a brat” but I feel like this ignores the serious problems in Leida’s family life that would cause her to react in this way.

First, it’s clear that Mon Mothma and her husband Perrin Fertha do not have a good marriage. It is effectively a loveless marriage. Any child growing up in that environment would have picked up on the hostility and resentment between the parents and it does not create a good environment for a child’s emotional development.

Second, given the dialogue between Mon Mothma and Leida, this is not likely to have been the first time these feelings have been spoken. There is likely a repeated pattern of Leida feeling like her mother is not there for her while her father is. Conversations like this do not just suddenly pop out of the blue, this is probably a continuous issue. One that Perrin hasn’t done anything to help reconcile but also one that Mon Mothma herself is not dealing with it all that well either. When your child is upset, telling them they need to just follow your orders and still keep to the schedule doesn’t exactly inspire them to feel warm and fuzzy towards you. And the reality is, given how much work is on her shoulders, there is the very real possibility that it comes at the expense of her family life, that she can’t always be there for her daughter because she has to be out there doing things to help save the galaxy and start a rebellion. And while we understand that importance as viewers, Leida is a child who doesn’t have our omnipresent outsider view, she’s a child whose mother is not there for her, and that cannot be easy and will take time for a child to truly grasp the bigger picture.

Third, Leida is actually not technically wrong either when she accuses her mother of just using her to show that she’s involved. We know that Mon Mothma is moving about contacting various people in building up this rebellion, and she knows she’s being watched. This means she has to carefully plan her schedule and use various events or people as cover, which is likely why Mon Mothma was rather upset at Leida changing the schedule. Because it changes the plan, she might have to use a new cover that isn’t taking her daughter to school and it might make things more dangerous. She knows the stakes but Leida doesn’t, so to a young girl whose mother is seemingly distant and a politician, it feels to Leida that she is being used, which technically is correct but just not for the reasons that Leida might think.

We know and love Mon Mothma for being this almost saintly rebellion leader, but I think it’s also just important to realize that she is not perfect to her daughter for very valid reasons too, and that’s okay. Just because she is a great leader doesn’t mean she has to be a great parent. It’s okay to let Mon Mothma have flaws, it makes her a complex and interesting character, and it makes us realize that there are consequences to choices she makes, even if some might mean putting more of a distance between her and her child.

[rotzaprachim]

12, 17, and 18 for the asks!

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

uhhh... no one in my particular circle of people with Taste, but Jyn. not even in terms of immediate fandom disk horse, but that in the wider-off tumblr star wars cultural reception, I think that even if rogue one is remembered as that That Time SW managed to Make Another Film That Was Good, the individual characters have been kind of... swallowed up. and that's why i love her. she's such a fucking mess. she's kind of petty and mean but in the space of things feels really human and fragile and somewhere outside the sw Strong Female Character Warrior Queen thing. her introduction scene as an adult where she takes the fucking shovel and just starts swinging is one of my favorite things in sw.

i think the same could be said of a bunch of the individual characters in andor, who i deeply adore, especially cinta, vel, bix, and kleya. not that they're unpopular in the I Hate These Women Way fandom sometimes does but that you just don't really see much... about them. (i do wish things about bix's writing were different, but i am fascinated by her as a CHARACTER and the fact that not only was she part of the extremely nascent rebellion before cassian, before almost everyone we know, if you draw the lines she's probably REALLY central to the axis circuit which is.. fascinating. like because she has no reason to tell Anyone the Truth of her secret dealings, we actually know extremely little about her, and that fascinates me. also she's this woman stuck in a small town she's tied into the fabric of and that's this source of complex ennui and pain i really love seeing in genre fiction and would love to root around in some more.)

vel and cinta... HELLO... vel and cinta.... cinta and vel... my brain is always thinking about them. just a lil.

also! i think leida mothma is second only to dark vader in greatest villains of the star wars universe. she's annoying as hell and she's this generational ticking time bomb about what happens when the kids born into the empire swallow it, when they /aren't/ leia organa.

17. there should be more of this type of fic/art

instead of twitter misogyny i would like to see jyn/bix also jyn/bix/cassian. nothing will save us but bi threesomes.

AU's where cassian drove the van for the aldhani rock group's cringe death metal band (or, if we're placing SW into the 1970's, the aldhani group's 60's scottish folk band.)

honestly extremely attached to any kind of thing where jyn and cassian have a deep connection to each other that isn't laterally a hallmark greeting card. like i actually really find the extremely close FWB vibe with them during the rebellion era to be tremendously interesting, and i don't think fandom does enough with the whole fact that maybe a 70's space-futuristic leftist army /might/ not have the same ideas around social organisation and intimacy as a a netflix rom com OMG ARE YOU GUYS LIKE TOGETHER TOGETHER???? (like i'm sure the goss on echo base was insane but i'm also not sure it might have been That.)

Anything which recognises the Real Fact that Rogue One AU's should be set in the 1970's and everyone should be wearing 70's fashions and there should be way more oblique mentions of bellbottoms and paisley. except arguably andor might be set in the 60's. in which case they should be wearing 60's fashions.

This might be summoning snakes into my house but... you know all the stuff i said about kidfic aus? turns out what i really dislike are bad kidfic aus! because they thing is is that i think jyn and cassian's narratives are profoundly focused on the question of What It Is to be Someone's Child, and sw in general is really interested in the questions about what it is to be someone's parent and someoen's child in extremity (how well they carry this out ESPECIALLy with women is debatable) and there's a lot of room to do some seriously interesting character study work and post-war How Do We Break These Cycles work if it's something aside from the kind of bioessentialist hey guys woman's purpose Fulfilled because she's had biological children/ narrative OR the you can tell how Healed jyn and cassian are and how Over the War is cause they have two (2) biological children in space!suburbia called lyra and galen scenario, which proliferates in fandom. basically what i'm saying is there's no weird indie movie about rey climbing into cassian's car at the Jack-Q service station to steal his potato chips and him being like WHOSE KID IS THIS i have to RETURN you so this isn't KIDNAPPING [terrible flashbacks] and rey being like nooo mister and then they go on a loopy roadtrip to find her parents when of course the answer is in the journey. also nobody's written the scenario of Ye Classic Space!Road Trip to The Beach and the kids in the back seat are like BISCUIT BARON BISCUIT BARON and cassian is squinting over the top of the steering wheel because he thinks he missed the turnoff and pulling ye old Hay Comida En La Casaaaaa but Jyn's just like actually every single Biscuit Baron in the galaxy is closed, just for today, and the only thing they sell is black coffee.

18. it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

not to be like people would Care if they were white men BUT the amount of press and buzz and fics there would be if velcinta were white men like literally shut up about white war criminal superhero x white war criminal superhero when there's antifascist lesbian guerillas shooting fascists AND wearing twee hats in the highlands while they feed sheep in their lil space!scottish brokeback moutain moments. i think they're slept on as individual characters and as a ship especially when Cinta is one of the only women of color in the modern star wars and vel's story is on some level literally about queerness, being a queer woman in a conservative society (always hiding, always changing.)

jyn and cassian's matching magical girl anime moment soulmate chrystal kyber necklaces

still boggling over the fact that cassian and jyn's Rebellion Kidnappers/Dads canonically are people with History, c'mon guys, there's an infinite amount of stuff to do with saw and luthen accidentally setting their kidnapping victims/adoptees/proteges up together. (also i'm just extremely fascinated by saw and luthen as characters, up there with Guys Fandom Sleeps on.)

[teagrl]

Andor 10

Amazing to have a show to love every week.

Prison break! Prison break! That whole sequence was truly amazing. I enjoyed it so much more than Aldani, mainly because of Kino. You couldn’t take your eyes off him. 

Throughout I kept thinking about how good Cassian is at being a second (the King’s/Queen’s Knight! A figure I love). He knows he doesn’t have the leadership to move masses of people. He is intelligent enough to recognize that his talents are to set up the conditions to make a ploy work. He’s ruthless and observant and cunning. I appreciate that so much, since we get so much emphasis on “leaders” and “heroes” elsewhere. Cassian is a hero, don’t get me wrong, but he’s a hero like Luthen is a hero. His heroism is about working behind the scenes, he wouldn’t be the kind of hero to be lionized and fawned over (and that is even beside the issue of his beginnings not being innocent). I think about Kino’s heroism too, he gets everyone out (I LOVED the bit where he asks the prisoners to help each other!), but then he can’t swim and he knows it throughout which makes that part when we, the audience, find out incredibly wrenching.

Nowhere is it as obvious that this show is deconstructing heroism as it is in the Mon Mothma bits. You see her shocked at Luthen’s plan, but now you see her walking into something that’s worse, because it’s *personal*. Mon’s built her standing on her principles, but principles aren’t enough anymore. She’s being pushed to open her home to this dude she views as a thug so he can launder her Rebellion money. And it’s obvious from what I reblogged, but what struck me about the whole thing is that Mon’s nightmare scenario is not about being forced to present her daughter for a child marriage. It’s that Leida has already grown away from Mon and she’d be open to influences that Mon disparages simply because it would revolt Mon. That banker dude WOULD just have to introduce his son and Mon’s reaction would be enough to make Leida intrigued. In itself, that’s dangerous -- all the more coupled with Perrin who the banker also mentions. It’s all so fraught and fascinating. I wonder how she’s going to maneuver there.

And! Lonnie. If Mon’s segment shows the way even Rebellion royalty have to compromise (haha here I think about that legendary dirty liberal thread), the bit with Luthen and Lonnie shows how the Rebellion have ALWAYS been a bare knuckle fighters. We forget that sometimes because in the OT there’s no space for quagmires of that sort. I kind of wanted that way back when the trailers of Rogue One started coming out and Jynn Erso was depicted in her Imperial get up with Saw yelling, “what will you become.” In Legends we see quite a bit of Imperial spies *ahem*, but I think Rebel spies with the texture we saw today with Lonnie are quite rare. Living a full double life? HATING the Empire but then actively doing its bidding, ie the killings, the torture, etc just to find the most vulnerable spot to stick a knife in? And this is without counting the situation he meets Luthen over, how he has to take the info of Rebels marching into their deaths in stride and sleep knowing it, because that’s what it takes to keep operating one step ahead. They die so he can keep betraying the Empire. So brutal. I love it.