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blobracing · 4 months

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2) Splinter of the Mind's Eye, by Alan Dean Foster

Featuring classic scifi’s issues with women and racism, “He Would Not Fucking Say That”, and more . . . .

Splinter has lived in infamy with me for a while: I didn’t like it as a kid, when pretty much anything with the Star Wars label would get a mild thumbs-up at worst. The complaints I’ve repeated to myself from that time was that I didn’t like the prose, it felt like something was wrong with the characters, and every chapter– or scene change– would end with a trailing ellipsis. You can set your watch by it.

I’m not sure it would be worth it to harp on things I dislike about the prose now– even those ellipses strike me as kind of charming, in that they feel left over from conventions about serialized adventures ending in cliffhangers. Like, it’s not to my taste, but who’s it hurting?

In scrolling through the first pages of Goodreads reviews to see if I could snag more succinct blurbs and pawn off some of the work, I noticed that none of the reviewers mention any of the physical violence, condescension, or sexual threats made against Leia. I don’t mean to pearl-clutch, and I’m the last person to worry about or condemn “problematic” writing, but there’s something about the more-explicit-than-casual sexism going unaddressed in a Star Wars novel that feels… weird. There’s an argument to be made that Splinter is essentially a pulpy scifi novel, that the concept of “a Star Wars novel” with all the caveats of adhering to canon (or keeping romance very courtly and mostly chaste) didn’t exist yet. Foster was set the task to write a follow-up for Star Wars following the genre conventions of the time.

Unfortunately, those conventions suck. Leia pendulums between Annoying Princess and Active Obstacle, Luke is full of derring-do, better ideas, and in the last half of the book seems to be getting paid by the word. No aliens have speaking roles, and come in three varieties of Savage– Pathetic, Useful, and Too-Primitive-To-Be-Truly-Noble. Vader is verbose (boo), briefly sexually threatening ( 👀) and ultimately a blathering fool not that far off from the throwaway Imperial commander antagonist that wastes a lot of our time earlier in the novel.

So, let’s get into it. We’ll do the world’s fastest plot summary, get into why the characterization fails and the silliest examples of it, and maybe I’ll have finally worked this splinter out from under my skin.

PLOT SPEEDRUN:

Luke and Leia are on their way to a planet to negotiate its support for the Rebel Alliance. They crashland on a nearby planet, find a secret Imperial mining colony, and are drawn into helping a Mysterious Eccentric Old Woman find a legendary Force-enhancing crystal. They’re briefly captured by the Imperials, break free with the help of two aliens, run from a giant worm and fall into an underground labyrinth of caves that ends in a long-abandoned city. Ritual fight to establish dominance over the “primitive natives,” Vader shows up, there’s a firefight, they find the temple with the crystal, Luke fights a beast, Vader shows up again, final fight, Vader gets dropped down a hole and the crystal revives Luke from death so he can heal Leia, done.

Wookieepedia has a more in-depth summary if you’d prefer a nittier gritty.

It’s a little meandering, and has the cadence of a couple sessions of D&D where there are only two players and a DM with more setting ideas than story beats. The setting of a boggy planet full of ancient temples waiting to be explored and underground caves full of mysteries and aliens kinda fucks, and it feels like there may be some of Dagobah’s DNA in the descriptions of the swamp filled with alien birdcalls. (The Force-sensitive eccentric “oldster” [one of Al’s favorite words] Halla bears only a passing resemblance to Yoda in that Luke sort of forcibly adopts her as a mentor figure and she loves to lie.)

OKAY COOL WHATEVER GET TO THE PART WHERE YOU TALK ABOUT LEIA:

As one of three returning “"canon”” characters and one of two main protagonists, Leia gets a lot of airtime and really doesn’t do much in the first half of the book besides scold Luke for acting sensibly but against her sensibilities, worry about the wrong things and get corrected for it, and get slapped either literally or by the narrative. It’s difficult to try and remember that at the time this was written, there wasn’t a large corpus of work that helped flesh out her character and give her agency and respect– but I don’t think that’s really an excuse. In Splinter, she’s frequently shrill and stuffy, infantilized, and in turns both naive but somehow knowing more than Luke– although his instincts usually prove to be right over her experience.

Goodreads reviewers correctly note that the sexual tension between Luke and Leia is pushed hard and makes the reveal in Empire that they’re siblings… complicated. Luke/Leia has legs as a ship and I’m not about to deny it, but unfortunately the things that would make it interesting or compelling– the separation and then reuniting, both of them giving Han grief, the tension and intimacy granted by their potential bond through the Force– are best left in the hands of fic writers, since obviously it would never be even remotely embraced in canon. Foster’s take on Luke’s attraction to Leia is blithely and standardly horny in a boring way. After a day of trudging through the swamp and Leia harping at him, they huddle together for warmth at a campfire.

“Then he happened to glance down at his companion’s face. It was not the face of a Princess and a Senator or of a leader of the Rebel Alliance, but instead that of a chilled child. Moistly parted in sleep, her lips seemed to beckon to him. He leaned closer, seeking refuge from the damp green and brown of the swamp in that hypnotic redness.

He hesitated, pulled back. [...]

His assignment was to protect her. [...] He would do it out of respect and admiration and possibly out of the most powerful of emotions, unrequited love.

He would even defend her from himself, he determined tiredly. In five minutes he was fast asleep. . . .”

Damn, dude. The hypnotic redness? This part mostly stands out to me as being purple prose and a relic of “ohoho, this was back before we knew they were twins” writing– cherry on top being the idea of her as a “chilled child,” and the weird sort of babydoll innocent-sexy convention that we all know by now. It’s not worth excoriating Foster for this, we all know the real ways that it sucks and the tiredness of it as a fictional trope. It does tie into a lot of her (mis)characterization and irrationality in Splinter.

Later, the two have snuck into the Imperial mining town after stealing some mining duds to blend in (which Luke steals, because Leia refuses to. Yeah, Leia ‘famously worried about personal property’ Organa.) and are getting something to eat at a tavern. Luke’s made a point to tell Leia to walk differently, to put dirt on her face, to disguise her regal bearing, but attentions from an officer make her anxious.

“They do suspect!” she whispered tightly. She started to stand. “I’ve had enough, Luke. Let’s get out of here.”

“We can’t rush off, especially if we’re being watched,” he countered. “Don’t panic, Princess.”

“I said I’m leaving, Luke.” Nervous, she started to turn and leave.

Without realizing what he was doing, he reached out, slapped her hard across the face, and as heads turned in their direction said loudly, “No favors for you until I’m finished eating!”

One hand went to her burning cheek. Wide-eyed and voiceless, the Princess slowly sat back down. Luke frantically attacked his steak as the uniformed Imperial sauntered over to them, backed by the attendant at a discreet distance.”

Luke spins them a tale of how she’s a servant he bought and is still breaking in, and they buy it and congratulate him on his taste.

“It was the first logical thing I could think of,” he insisted. “Besides, it explains you as well as anything could.” He sounded pleased. “No one will question you once the word gets around.”

Like, what happened to protecting her hypnotic redness? What makes this even more dumb and insidious bad is that occasionally, the story will cue us that Luke is being prompted by the Force to do things, even his hunches are usually correct, and none of his plans completely fail. The servant story is bought until they’re brought before the Imperial boss of the place, who proceeds to beat Leia until Luke spins him another story that’s miraculously believed.

Beyond the shittiness of Wormie Skywalker, who has now been portrayed by doe-eyed cat-cuddler Mark Hamill, slapping Leia and then propping it up with a cover story, it’s the fact that he never faces any prompting from the narrative that this was, perhaps, shitty!

When they’re outside, Leia kicks his shins to get back at him and he then instigates a mud-throwing fight– yeah– that evolves into wrestling in the mud– yeah, no, yeah– that gets to the point where local roughnecks show up to join in and try to get in on assaulting Leia once they see that she’s Beautiful Woman. That leads to their Imperial capture and drags the plot along by the barest of sinews.

Blah blah, Leia is ogled and beat by the bog-standard Imperial Badguy officer, yadda yadda, thrown in a prison cell, Luke befriends the Yuzzems while Leia does nothing. Officer Badguy returns briefly to inform them that he’s called his bosses and an Imperial Governor will be by soon– which, interestingly but unsurprisingly, sends Leia into a panic attack.

“Imperial governors don’t take an interest in common thieves, Luke,” she whispered tightly. Something was clutching at her throat. “I’ll be interrogated again… like that time… that time.” She broke away, threw herself up against the back wall of the cell.

That time back on the Death Star. Small black worms crawled through her head. [...] The remorseless black machine, illegal, concocted by twisted Imperial scientists in defiance of every code, legal and moral.

[...] Screaming, screaming, screaming never to stop she was…

Something hit her hard. She blinked, burned to see Luke looking at her, worried. She slid down to sit up against the wall.”

Nothing in the text contradicts the implication that Luke slaps her out of her panic attack.

Later, she has some kind of screaming fit in the underground caverns and berates herself for missing a shot against Darth Vader in the middle of a fight. I could keep transcribing passages but like, I’m hoping you get the idea.

Her one moment of sort-of triumph is when she takes up Luke’s lightsaber to duel Darth Vader– Luke has his leg trapped under a rock like on the cover and is momentarily out of commission. She surprises him at first but then spends the rest of the fight being wounded and toyed with until Luke is ready to get tagged back in. She dies? Or something maybe? And then gets healed– no scars, thank god, can you imagine if she wasn’t fuckable– wakes up, and has no speaking lines after wondering what happens to Threepio and Artoo. The old woman with a heart of gold gets cajoled into the Rebellion by Luke and everyone laughs.

It sucks. It sucks! It’s so clearly just Default Woman Character and not informed by Carrie Fisher’s performance or anything other than the laxest tropes in adventure novel writing. And it’s not just her. This is nowhere more evident than the fact that Leia is characterized as not knowing how to swim– but Luke does.

OH SHIT, WHAT ABOUT LUKE?

Luke who? Luke Skywalker doesn’t exist here in any recognizable form. This is distilled perfectly in the last fourth of the book after he’s won his duel against a “primitive alien warrior.” Imagine this falling out of his cute little twink mouth:

“Don’t you understand?” [Leia] asked brightly. “You won. We can all go free now. That is,” she continued in a more subdued voice, staring around at the silent crowd and trying not to show any fear, “we can if these creatures have any sense of honor.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that, Leia,” he advised her, wiping water from his face. “Canu has judged, remember? Besides, it takes many thousands of years of advanced technological development for a society to reduce honor to an abstract moral truism devoid of real meaning.”

AND… THE RACISM?

Right, whoops. Let’s see– our three kinds of indians– I mean, uh, natives– I mean, native aliens! I meant aliens. The three kinds: pathetic, useful, and too-primitive-to-be-truly-noble.

Pathetic: Local humanoid-but-furry aliens are seen speaking in broken English and begging Imperials for liquor. See: the firewater myth and stereotype of the Drunken Indian.

Useful: Luke and Leia meet two almost-humanoid-and-furry, ultra-strong Yuzzems, Hin and Kee, who were also imprisoned by the Imperials for accidentally signing themselves in slavery and then getting drunk and trying to wreck the mine. They don’t have any speaking lines, and are only able to communicate through Luke. They function as a kind of “shit, we need the characters to get this resources” tool and nothing is ever learned about their personal lives or personalities beyond their ability to tear Imperials limb from limb. One of them gets gonked offscreen by Vader and the other one lives long enough to die helping Luke in the final fight. No time is spent mourning them.

Too Primitive To Be Truly Noble: In the underground city, Luke and Leia meet a settlement of humanoid-but-furry aliens called the Coway, who appear to be living in the remains of a more ‘advanced’ civilization. They challenge Luke to a ritual duel to determine if he and his captured friends should be set free, which Luke wins through an instinctive use of the Force. The Coways they kill before this point aren’t mourned by their people, and for winning the fight they throw Luke and Luke’s Friends a party. The settlement is attacked soon after by Imperials, but thanks to Luke and Luke’s Friends marshalling them, they defeat the stormtroopers. After the battle is done, the Coways kill any injured Imperials, which Leia condones and Luke finds morally repugnant.

I don’t super want to quote any of the passages illustrating how the narrative feels about these characters. It shouldn’t be shocking: old scifi is frequently as racist as it is misogynist. New scifi is frequently as racist as it is misogynist. (Shoutout to Rebel Moon, woo! Time I’ll never get back!) Part of Star Wars' genetic material is that of westerns, for good and ill.

DO WE HAVE TIME FOR HORNY DARTH VADER? WOULD THAT LIGHTEN THE MOOD? :(

“Do you remember that day back on the station,” Vader mused, with deliberate patience, “when the late Governor Tarkin and I interviewed you?” He placed a peculiar stress on the word “interviewed.”

Leia had both hands on opposite shoulders and was shivering as if from intense cold.

“Yes,” Vader observed, perverse amusement in his voice, “I can see that you do. I am truly sorry I have nothing as elaborate to treat you to at this time. However,” he added, swinging his weapon lightly, “one can do some interesting things with a saber, you know. I’ll do my best to show you all of them if you’ll cooperate by not passing out.”

Incredible prediction of itsorlo’s steez.

FINAL THOUGHTS

My allotted “Um, Actually” for this post is pointing out that Luka and Leia navigate an underground lake by using rods of selenite as paddles on a giant lily pad– selenite is water-soluble.

The first use of “stang” as a curse word shows up– “What the Stang!” Probably my preferred Star Wars expletive, considering how goofy they get.

Oh– Leia does say “Well, darn” after missing Vader with a rifle shot.

Do I recommend it? It's an unimpressed and dispassionate no from me, bud. The things that made Foster’s work charming in the ANH novelization are fewer and farther between, and additionally now that we know who Luke and Leia are, their mischaracterization means the only thing left of interest is the worldbuilding. Even that’s shallow at best, and not remotely worth the weird racist mouthfeels and seeing Leia get shit on. There are better adventure novels, there are better scifi novels, and there are better Star Wars novels.

NEXT TIME:

Han Solo at Star's End, by Brian Daley.

#star wars #sweu read #star wars expanded universe #alan dean foster #splinter of the mind's eye #book post

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stateofsport211 · 3 months

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Nottingham (IH) Ch D SF: Joshua Paris/Antoine Escoffier def. Ryan Peniston/Billy Harris 6-4, 6-2 Match Stats

📸 ATP official website

Stemming from R. Peniston/Billy's second serve problems, Escoffier/J. Paris took advantage of that situation with their anticipation on return, which often produced return aces to nail some crucial points. This contributed to some of Escoffier/J. Paris' 10 break points, with a 40% break point conversion rate added by their point construction. Although R. Peniston/Billy tried to create more damage in the deciding points, it was insufficient for them to stay in the match, especially in the second set considering they were being out-paced toward the end.

Besides, J. Paris/Escoffier had a solid service game throughout the match. From their first serves, they stood out by 8% with a 75% winning rate, backed up with their 5 aces. However, R. Peniston/Billy's second serves turned out to be problematic as they only had a 28% winning percentage even though they double-faulted just thrice, which implied the former pair might have risked their second serves, but still managed to win 60% of their second serve points.

In their maiden Challenger final as a pair but third Challenger doubles final for each of them, Escoffier/J. Paris will face another Czech pair in Patrik Rikl/Petr Nouza, who stunned second seeds Luke Johnson/Ben Jones 6-7(5), 6-3, [10-8] earlier before this match. While this match could be competitive on its peak, this will depend on their balance, especially from their serves and how to carry their anticipative return moving forward. Should also be a fun watch!

#atp world tour #atp tour #atp challenger #atp challenger tour #tennis updates #match stats #nottingham (ih) challenger #lexus nottingham challenger #antoine escoffier #joshua paris #billy harris #ryan peniston #WatchChallengersFolks #ChallengerMatters #WatchMoreDOUBLES

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sepedarodatiga · 3 years

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Symbolic marriage in the story only serve to disappoints, why would they give us that

I’m just going to put it out there, I ship jonsa and reylo. Even though there are people who ships both just like me, I think there aren’t very many. Most people, if they ship one, don’t ship the other and even leaning towards a different ship. So I apologize in advance if this post found the wrong people. I will try to tag appropriately.

I have recently came across a hero archetype defined by Lord Raglan, an anthropologist who studies folklore. This simple discovery has led me to a revelation on why this is the two stories that I am invested in, because they are essentially the same story, following the hero archetype that Lord Raglan had defined. Here is how Jon Snow fits into the archetype and here is how Kylo Ren fits into the archetype.

And the ship.. well the shipping part occurs because of the tension built by the story between the two characters with their respective love interest. That is also why I got involved shipping two ships that are... controversial? problematic?... I mean, yes exactly, the tension is what making it interesting. Jon and Sansa are siblings but secretly they are cousins who can marry? OH MY GOD. Kylo and Rey are attracted to each other but they are on opposite sides? OH YES, gimme.

Anyway, following Raglan’s archetype, the two protagonists (Kylo Ren is a villain protagonist), would have married their love interest, before they become King (or Supreme Leader). And (shippers had found) that it DID happen in the story, BUT ONLY SYMBOLICALLY.

I mean, yeah, thanks very much for giving the tension relieve symbolically. No wonder non-shippers totally missed that and accused shippers as delusional. And moreover, we are STILL waiting for the actual relieve. We are STILL waiting for an ending and resolve that NEVER CAME because the story just move forward with its trajectories and leave us shippers behind.

I felt like now I owe an explanation on what I mean with symbolic marriage. In Raglan’s archetype, the protagonist “marries a princess, often daughter of predecessors” before they becomes King. I will break it down one by one starting with reylo.

Rey is not a princess, but she an equivalent of a princess in this story, being the main female protagonist and a jedi knight. Kylo’s “kingship” is being the Supreme Leader that he took from Snoke, and Rey is also not Snoke’s daughter, but she is Luke Skywalker’s apprentice, another patriarchal figure in Kylo’s story. Maybe I’m pushing it a little, but I do think it still fits. You are of course free to think otherwise.

I have read meta from reylo shippers that the hand touch scene during the force bond seems to emulate Hindu marriage rituals where the bride and groom will clasp their hands around a sacred fire and say their vows. Kylo and Rey did this. Their hand touches near the fire and they say their vows: you are not alone/neither are you.

What follows after this they slay Snoke together (so actually the sequence is a bit messed up, but not by a lot) and then Kylo becomes “King”. And of course after that the story moved on to which he lost favour of his followers and driven away followed by death. So the marriage, the slaying of the beast and the ascension to the throne was the story’s climax, there was no happy ending to look forward to, only a tragic ending. And the marriage, which is the culmination of the story, was only done symbolically. I don’t know why they think that will ever going to satisfy viewers?

Now on to jonsa.

Jon’s kingdom is the North; he has become the King in the North in the story, and therefore the princess, daughter of predecessor, is a Northern princess. Sansa Stark fits into this as the daughter of Ned Stark whom Jon met before he is hailed as King in the North. And just like reylo, their marriage only happened symbolically.

Jonsa shippers had noticed that Sansa was given Jon’s cloak after her arrival at Castle Black when they were eating their soup by the fire reminiscing about the past and asking forgiveness. In Westeros, a wedding ceremony would involve the groom covering the bride in his cloak. And then after they were talking about the past, they drank ale from the same cup which is a common wedding ritual practice from around the world, including from Scotland where The North in Westeros is sort of based upon (cmiiw). Followed after that is their vow for the future: “where will you go/where will we go”, and “if I don’t watch over you father’s ghost will come back and murder me”, effectively taking over Sansa’s protection from his father. In return, Sansa gave Jon a cloak just like the one Ned Stark used to wear, as a form of blessing for Jon to become Ned’s successor.

And then they continue slaying the wild beast Ramsay and Jon becomes the King in the North, with Sansa by his side.

Then the story move on with Jon reigning uneventfully for a time and then he decided to make alliance with Daenerys and so on to his tragic ending. Jonsa shippers weren’t given an actual romantic relationship between them, only in the subtext.

At least reylos was finally given a confirmation in the last minute, but jonsas are being kept in the delulu land, while the books are not out yet which gave us only another source of frustration. But for both, the UST stays unresolved, because the marriage is only symbolic.

So I just want to say....I don’t know, thank you for the double disappointment I guess? I do hope other people had it better than I did.

#jonsa #reylo #symbolic marriage #lord raglan archetype hero

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frumfrumfroo · 3 years

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I'm very curious as to what you mean by "invoking the shadow of Palpatine" being appropriate for TRoS VS what we got. Like, a flesh and blood zombie Grandpa clone dangling from his little Space Crane was certainly one of the most embarrassingly stupid film moments I've ever had to witness, but do you think revealing Palps in some form as the power behind Snoke and the source of Ben Solo's torment is still inappropriate narratively, if it had been handled better and actually resolved?

Basically just that he is The Big Bad of the saga who personified temptation and it’s appropriate to tie the story together by making the last trilogy sort of the ‘clean up crew’ who need to mop up the scattered evil Palpatine left behind. The ST is about loose ends, really, which is the only way it works since its setting is just a reheated OT setting.

I was thinking anything on a scale from ‘his influence lingers in the form of a power vacuum easily filled by another authoritarian who carries on his legacy of appealing to fear, selfishness, and pragmatism’ through ‘Palpatine had some kind of auxiliary plan in place which is triggered/exploited by Snoke/Hux/the Knights of Ren’ all the way to ‘someone gets deep into dark side shit and can use his voice/appearance to fuck with Ben/Leia/anyone old enough to remember the Emperor’.

Like, having him not be dead was always going to be really problematic and undermine the existing story. But I don’t think the connection needs to be as explicit as Palpatine being the literal power behind Snoke. It originally appeared that Snoke was just an opportunist who exploited the Skywalker family’s failure to fully reconcile with Anakin and the weakness of the New Republic in the wake of the Empire’s collapse. I think it’s enough for Snoke to be a Palpatine wannabe and they could easily have included background to that effect in an episode IX where Ben gets to be an actual character whose fall is further clarified (in a scene with Luke where they finally talk about the temple and what really happened) and who speaks post-redemption.

The source of Ben’s torment is the Skywalker legacy, which is Vader’s legacy, and that’s already intimately tied up with Palpatine. They could have just put a bow on that with a very brief flashback to the way Snoke manipulated him with his family’s fear and with their history where he invokes the Emperor. Or just cover it in dialogue with Ben and Luke or Ben and Rey.

And the physical aspect of the fight could be the First Order military (lead by archetypal True Believer Hux) and the Knights of Ren (or ‘Sith cultists’ or the Vader cultists who were allegedly in tros could be trying to manifest the Emperor with dark energy or whatever nonsense if you absolutely have to have a Force user battle). They’re a ‘remnant’, too, so they are part of Palpatine’s shadow already. Fear and complacency allowed the Empire to rise in the prequels and will allow it to return if people don’t stand against it. TLJ did the heavy lifting on reiterating this point already, you just need to follow through. The movie they should be trying to mirror thematically is, appropriately, The Phantom Menace.

Really, the Force plot/A plot could just be Rey saving Ben while the Resistance struggles to survive as more FO generals seize power and shit gets more out of hand without a functional supreme leader holding things to a plan, second act climax be his redemption and defection, and then the third act be F/nn rallying the galaxy to defeat the First Order while Ben and Rey work together on an ultimately life-affirming Force mission of some kind which requires both of them (rescuing Leia from Vader cultists maybe?), plus positive new growth plus reconciliation.

#writing #episode ix #the legacy

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shakingthestars · 4 years

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The problematic conclusion of the Rise of Skywalker – a “whitewashing” of the Skywalker legacy ?

Art by kasiopea-star-wars

Nearly two months after The Rise of Skywalker came to theaters, I have finally found a way to express my throughts about the conclusion of this galactic journey. As a new Skywalker trilogy was announced years ago, I remember not feeling thrilled by the idea of a sequel, asking myself what would be the added-value to the story for an arc that started and ended with Anakin Skywalker. Yet I remember feeling pleasantly surprised by how promising The Force Awakens (TFA) was in introducing the characters, playing on their dynamics and setting up the family dramas : a stormtrooper taken away from his family ; a scavenger waiting for the return of her parents ; an heir rejecting his birth name ; a family desintegrated by a repeating tragedy. The Last Jedi (TLJ) felt refreshing by bringing the family drama to a higher level, deepening the heroine/antagonist dynamic and paving the way for a refined sight of the Jedi philosophy. As much The Rise of Skywalker (TROS) has its entertaining moments as a standalone, I couldn’t help feeling growingly unconfortable about this movie as a conclusion of the Skywalker story.

Why Return of the Jedi (ROTJ) originally felt like a satisfying conclusion of the Skywalker story…

Among the several reasons why TROS fails to deliver a satisfying conclusion to this 42 years old arc, the very last act of the franchise stands out as strangely dissonant with the rest of the entire story. Let’s have a look back at the original ending set up by Return of the Jedi (ROTJ). Far from being my favorite Star Wars movie because of the Jabba the Hutt sequence, ROTJ never failed to get me emotional by the way it beautifully concluded the Skywalker arc. Beyond the joyful atmosphere around the galaxy and the celebration of the victory on Endor, the last sequence sets up a powerfully emotional ending because it’s all about healing the wounds through reconciliation : reconciliation of a man with himself, reconciliation of a father with his son but also reconciliation of a fallen Jedi with the old friends he once betrayed. Thus, as sad as Anakin Skywalker’s death may be, the outcome of his tragic life is counterbalanced by what we get to experience on screen with the characters, from his funeral scene to the appearance of the Force Ghosts. Everything is synchronized in a way that enables the viewer to feel that the hero of the OT, Luke Skywalker, has now completed his journey to find himself, can let the past behind him and move on to build a brighter future surrounded by his « family ». At that point, this conclusion left me as the viewer with the satisfying feeling that the Skywalker arc is complete, bringing me back to my initial question : what was their story worth to continue for ?

…that left the Skywalkers with an unresolved family business

Yet, when we meet the Skywalkers again 30 years later, it appears that the family has completely imploded : a fallen son enrolled in the ennemy camp, the parents separated, the uncle exiled on a planet far far away. TFA introduces the viewer to a family tragedy that repeated itself with a kid targeted by a master puppet for his “mighty blood” in order to follow his grandfather’s footsteps. We learn from the canon novel Bloodline as well as TFA make it clear that neither Leia nor Han ever forgave Vader and very much feared that their only son would take after him: “We’ve done everything we could have done. There’s too much Vader in him”. As impressive as his sacrifice might have been for a 1983 viewer, Vader’s redemption was the result of a sudden turn for the sake of one person, an action that neither Leia nor the Galaxy got to witness, making Anakin only an unsung hero of the victory against the Empire. His sacrifice didn’t enable any reconciliation of his daughter with the dark side of his legacy, paving the way for the tragedy to repeat with his own grandson. As unsettling as Luke’s characterization may have been in TLJ, the attempt to kill his own nephew in his sleep suggest that he probably wasn’t as reconciled with his father’s legacy as he thought. In other words, the wound healing through reconciliation set up in ROTJ was uncomplete and left door open for the tragedy to repeat, which leads to consider the importance of Ben in the sequel trilogy of a family arc that has been told over 42 years in 9 episodes :

- A son who witnessed his slave mother dying in his arms

- A mother who died in childbirth from a broken heart

- Husbands and wives who losed their respective partners

- Parents who lose their daughter

- Kids who got separated from their parents

- A nephew who witnessed his adoptive parents getting killed

- Fathers who died sacrifying for their sons

- An uncle who died apologizing to his nephew

- A son who lose his mother after she sacrificed for him

"As I once fell, so falls the last Skywalker”

Named after Ben – “You’re my only hope” – Kenobi, Ben Solo represented the hope that at least a Skywalker could finally make it through darkness. He was not just the only descendant of the Skywalker family. He was also the bearer of all the abuse, pain and tragedies that this family has been through since his grandfather himself was targeted by their sworn ennemy: Palpatine. Thus, he is the recipient of all the wounds that didn’t heal properly within the family, making his manipulation by Palpatine, his feeling of rejection by his parents and the murder attempt by his uncle all the more tragic. The fact that Ben – and the Galaxy – was kept ignorant of the family connection with Vader certainly didn’t help, making him from early age an ideal target for the revenge of Palpatine: “I have been every voice you have ever heard inside your head”. People may argue that the outcome is okay since there will be no Skywalker descendant for the tragedy to repeat one day and that Rey will ensure that their legacy lives on by carry on the name. That Rey deserves to be part of the Skywalker legacy through her personal achievements is unquestionable. However, she is not the bearer of the tragedy that has plagued the Skywalker family for the viewers to witness over 9 episodes. Although her backstory is heartbreaking to say the least, TROS doesn’t let the viewers time to feel the depth of her own tragedy adding to the fact that we didn’t get to relate to the tragedy of the Palpatine family over long-run. Even if Rey shoudn’t be reduced to her bloodline (which was the risk of making her a Palpatine through), didn’t Palpatine achieve what he wanted in the end ? People may argue he lose since his own granddaughter will carry on the Skywalker name as a Jedi. However, if his personal revenge against the Skywalkers was to end their bloodline, then he definitely got what he wanted after being the cause of most of their tragedies:

- He predicted Padme’s death, which he brought Anakin to provoke

- He wanted Anakin’s death, which happened through his sacrifice for Luke

- He wanted Han’s death, which he brough Kylo to provoke

- He wanted Luke’s death, which indirectly happened through his sacrifice

- He wanted Leia’s death, which happened through her sacrifice for Ben

- He wanted Ben’s death, which happened through his sacrifice for Rey

The problematic execution of Ben Solo’s redemption

From the moment TFA had Ben Solo aka Kylo Ren commit a parricide, the question of his redemption was at the heart of his character arc. Beyond the passionate discussion about whether or not he should have lived given his dark actions, it’s the way he was treated in the last act that doesn’t feel right put in the bigger context of the story. It is legitimate that Rey was the one person to ultimately take down Palpatine, all the more so that she is revealed to be a Palpatine descendant. Yet, the role in which Ben Solo was relegated during the final battle on Exegol doesn’t feel right within the framework of the entire arc. The Skywalker descendant – as bearer of the family tragedy – got to stand barely 5 seconds against the abuser of his family, only for his body to be used as a mean to resurrect Palpatines, grandfather and granddaughter. Worse : the entire set up for the Force dyad in the ST was made useful for that sole purpose : draining the Force energy of the Skywalker to death so that the Palpatines could live on. Even if the last Skywalker was meant to die anyway, why giving him the same redemption as his grandfather, knowing that this redemption path only reconciled one person – Luke – with the dark side of the Skywalker legacy? Why having him sacrifice for the sake of only one person instead of putting him in front of a dilemma that would have required to overcome the evil voices once and for all for the greater good of the Galaxy? Why having no witness of his ultimate inner struggle instead of letting the Galaxy finally know what was behind the darkness of both Skywalkers grandfather and grandson ? I am aware that this is easy to critisize directing choices once the movie is out but based on all what was demonstrated above I believe that the Skywalker family would have deserved that their only descendant had a more active part in overcoming their abuser once and for all by overcoming the darkness he planted in them. In my ideal scenario, Rey would have taken down Palpatine all alone in her badass way all alone but there would have been an ultimate twist. The remaining fleet would have been programmed by Palpatine to execute the last order, from a signal sent from a dark artifact on Exegol for all the Galaxy to witness in horror. The only way for someone to desactivate it would have required to overcome his/her darkest struggles within, which would have been a meaningful way to confront Ben with his family tragedy, the dark legacy of his grandfather and his own dark actions. I would have loved the idea that the evil voices put him in front of a dilemma and that his grandfather finally helped him to take the right decision based on his own fateful experience: choosing between saving a loved one from her death state or saving planets from destruction for the greater good. There were several meaningful scenes that could have foreshadowed this kind of scenario. Instead, TROS gave us the same redemption as ROTJ :

- A short-term redemption path

- A sacrifice for the sake of one person

- No witness of the good action other than said person

Yet, disappearing to never be seen, mourned or mentioned ever again...

A whitewashing of the Skywalker legacy

The ending scene of the Skywalker franchise takes place on Tatooine with Rey burrying the Skywalker lightsabers in the sand as a funeral, which is meant to enable her – and the viewer – to move on peacefully. According to Lucasfilm VFX supervisor Roger Guyett and screenwriter Chris Terrio, no Force ghost of Ben was created because “when you see Luke and Leia there, it’s about the Skywalker legacy”. For a movie that was supposed to tie all 9 movies together, the Prequel Trilogy (PT) doesn’t seem to exist as if the Skywalker story began with the Original Trilogy (OT). We get to see Cloud City and Endor after the final victory but no shot of Coruscant & Naboo. The family tragedy begun with the separation of the twin but the grooming of their father and the death of their mother doesn’t seem to be part of the traged. The Skywalker lightsaber is primarily presented as Luke’s lightsaber as if he was its original owner. What is canonly established through is that the Skywalker story began with a slave boy named Anakin Skywalker who was believed by the Jedi to be the Chosen One, which made him the target of a Sith named Palpatine, which led to a long-run family drama in the middle of a never-ending battle between the dark side and the light side. Given the importance of his fall to the story and how it fed the family drama beyond his death, his absence in the sequel trilogy is surprising, aside from a very discreet line to Rey : “Bring Balance as I did”. Shouldn’t Anakin have guided his fallen grandson too instead of helping only the granddaughter of his sworn ennemy ? More problematic is the way the family drama is resolved with the ending of TROS. While the family was split at the beginning of the ST, TROS doesn’t care to show the healing of the family wounds, except for the memory scene between Solo father and son. The reason why this scene is the most powerfully emotional moment of the movie in my mind is precisely for its ability to symbolize the reconciliation of a man with himself and a son with his father. Yet, the ending scene is only about reuniting the all in the white Holy Skywalkers who have never “sinned”, giving the unconfortable impression that the Skywalker descendant was disposable because he wasn’t worthy to have any place in the Skywalker legacy contrary to the heroine. After all, the original script of Duel of the Fates by Colin Trevorrow had Luke telling his nephew “You are no Skywalker”, as if the Skywalker legacy wasn’t made of both darkness and light and Luke himself didn’t contribute to this with his own mistakes. Although TROS is more subtle in its approach, the difference in the handling between Anakin Skywalker and Ben Solo’s redemption after their death is telling: kept a guarded secret by the person he saved; not even mourned by the only person he bonded with; not even shown alongside his family. Dead or alive, his treatment on screen left me as a viewer with the unconfortable feeling that the Skywalker family as a whole wasn’t reconciled with the dark side of their legacy. Which brings me once again to the same question: what was their story worth to continue for?

Excerpt of the canon novel Bloodline

The purification of the heroine

Let’s talk now about how Rey ends her heroine’s journey compared to where she began. That journey was announced by Maz Kanata already in TFA: “The belonging (family) you seek is not behind you (birth family), it is ahead (found future)”. She was introduced as desperate to find a place to belong because of her feeling of loneliness, which never incapacitated her ability to be a strong independant woman who knows how to handle herself. Yet, her heroine journey alone on Tatooine where she takes the Skywalker name looking at the Binary Sunset under the watchful eye of the Skywalker Twins as Force Ghosts. Some may argue that she will be okay since she found a family in them and her Resistance friends, which is true to some degree but uncomplete through. However, the ending looks out of place with a key character missing in this scene, whether he was supposed to be dead or alive: Ben. Although it was important to show in TROS that Rey was well surrounded by a supportive entourage (as a constrast to Ben before his fall), the ST established that the deepest emotional connection she had was with Kylo Ren/Rey. I wouldn’t allow myself to judge those who find Reylo abusive and/or questionable because of his actions but I personally don’t think that the outcome of TROS is a feminist as it was meant to appear by having the heroine as a strong independant woman free from any romantic involvement . The ST makes it clear all along that although Rey obviously suffers from abandonment issue, she is more than capable of handling herself, know by herself what is right or not and decide conciously what (who) she wants for herself. Some people may disaprove the very idea of “Reylo” for valid reason but claiming that the kiss came out of nowhere doesn’t make sense when one look closely at their interactions all along the ST. TLJ shows that the hand touch she initiated is the decisive moment where she gets to see what the viewer finally get to see only at the end of TROS : the true face of Ben Solo, without the mask named Kylo Ren behind which he hid himself. From this moment on, my understanding is that Rey perfectly knew how to dissociate the person from his persona, thus her disenchantment in the Throne Room while confronted to his unwillingness to let go of his dark persona. With Rey shutting the door of the Millenium Falcon to his face, TROS could have made their dynamic an unrequited villainous crush afterwards. Although this is what it looks on the surface, the visual subtext tells a different story, which is a huge reason that makes their interactions so compelling to analyze. On Pasaana, Rey is shown staring longingly at little kids, sadly confessing that she has no family (despite living with the Resistance and her friends for a while) and being in deep thought at that moment. Barely 2 seconds after enter her dyad to renew his hand proposal. Of course, different interpretations can be made about this scene. I would argue that the chain of events in a matter ofminutes is meant to convey a specific message if one accept the idea that the hand proposal is metaphorically a marriage proposal. The ST sets the record straight through that despite her attraction to him Rey always rejected Kylo Ren and his entitled behavior while making heart eyes to Ben Solo and the selfless person she knew he was deep inside through their bond. The core of their unresolved business in TROS is all about him being desperate to know why she wanted to take his hand while being frustrated by her refusal to acknowledge it and her being desperate to hide the reason why she didn’t take it while being frustrated by his refusal to acknowledge who he really is. Both lied to themselves and each other out of fear of being rejected and disentchanted again. Thus, the tension rising until a confession that changed everything : “I wanted to take your hand, Ben’s hand”. Rey chose consciously to kiss Ben only once she was sure that the mask had definitely dropped and he had renounced to be someone else than who he really is. Although Kylo Ren was chasing Rey, she was always the one who set the rules and initiated willingly any further step in their relationship and only when she felt he was his true self with her. This teaches an important lesson – especially to teenage boys – that you don’t earn the feelings of someone (no matter what feelings he/she has for you) by hiding yourself behind a virile persona and/or showing off toxic behaviors in order to impress said person. In other words, the love triangle was always between Rey, Kylo Ren and Ben Solo from a female gaze perspective: it’s Ben who was presented as “object” of desire all along. Yet, the choice that Rey willingly makes – and the desire that goes along with it – is taken away from her as if it was decided at her place that Ben Solo was never the right partner for her anyway. After three movie setting up that the heart of her emotional journey was with him, the fact that he is totally erased from screen after – and despite – their love scene looks like a puritan attempt to purify the heroine from the sin she has committed. Worse, she ends her journey where she began: on a desolated sand planet, sliding innocently the dunes, wearing the same all white costume and an adopted child under parental watch. In a nutshell: pretty much like Luke at the beginning of his hero’s journey.

Rian Johnson: “ The hand touch is the closest thing we’ll get to a sex scene in Star Wars”

Luke Skywalker (deleted line): “You’ve opened yourself to the dark side for a pair of pretty eyes”

Tatooine: an iconic place...of desolation

Although Tatooine may appear as a logical choice for the ending scene, the intention to recreate the atmosphere of the iconic scene from ANH falls flat in the context of TROS but also in the context of the whole franchise. According to Chris Terrio, the point was to fix the original sin of the franchise, which was the separation of the Twins by tying the lightsabers together like newborns. Did it make sense through to burry them on Tatooine ? Based on the Prequels, the Skywalker/ Palpatine arc has its roots on Naboo, when a Queen was forced to flee in order to meet the Senate representative of her home planet on Coruscant but met a slave boy from Tatooine on her way. Naboo may have been a less iconic choice for fanservice but in regard to the heartbeat of the Skywalker story, this is where Anakin and Padme’s love story blossomed, where Padme planned to give birth to their babies, where she is now resting forever: “Ani I wanna have our baby back home on Naboo”. Wasn’t the original sin that these kids were separated from their parents and all of them never got reunited ? Yet, Padme’s babies - and her husband by extension - were metaphorically burried on the very planet where Luke was never supposed to end up had the family tragedy not happened, where his father grew up as a slave, where his grandmother had a painful death, where his adoptive parents were murdered, where his sister was enslaved, where his brother in law was imprisoned, where he himself never wanted to return. Yet this is also this place that was chosen to end Rey’s heroine journey. She ends up being the spiritual heir of the Twins, especially the Jedi that Leia would have become by her brother’s side had she not chosen romantic attachment over that path. In general, the ending sends the message that romantic love and children only cause destruction while preventing parents from achieving their ambitions. Padme and Anakin’s love created destruction through the immiment birth of the Twins ; Han and Leia’s love created destruction through Ben’s upbringing, only to have their sacrifice rewarded with his death and his sidelining of the legacy. Terrible message for teenagers that no matter the selfless acts you do, you still deserve to be forgotten or even replaced with someone more worthy if you lose yourself following the wrong way because you were a problem from the start. On a sidenote, DLF probably failed to get people invested in the new characters, precisely because most of the characters and their interactions turned out to feel superficial, interchangeable and disposable on the long run. Jahnnah was introduced to Lando in the very end for no particular reason, except maybe baiting the fans with future added-materials about a potential father/daughter dynamic. Finn and Rose kissed in TLJ? Let’s have her sidelined, Finn friendly tapping her shoulder, telling her to stay away and choosing the company of someone else in the next film. Zorii asked Poe to come with her? Let’s have her refusing to be with him, barely hours after their conversation. Rey and Ben kissed before he died? Let’s have her flying out of Exegol with fanfare, happily reuniting with her friends and paying tribute to the Twins without showing an once of interest in the fate of her dyad. In general, the movie leaves the feeling that there is no deep sense of belonging for anybody and that they all are pretty alone despite forming a big "family" of friends on the surface. The ending feels even more out of place knowing that Rey’s journey was never meant to parallel Luke’s, who only wanted to become a Jedi like his father and ultimately became one. It was never the motivator of Rey’s journey to fight for a higher cause by becoming a Rebel or a Jedi in to follow the footsteps of a loved one and/or a mentor. Yes, she accomplished great things and it is absolutely right to enable her to fulfill any ambition she wishes to accomplish in the future. However, it is not because she had simple human needs too that they were unimportant and meant to diminish her character. Let’s go back again to this Pasaana scene where we are reminded of the core of her heroine’s journey: “The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead”. Of course, that could be interpreted in retrospect as a foreshadowing that she will take a new generation of Jedi as Rey Skywalker continuing the legacy of Luke. But again, the directing choices suggest otherwise: why showing her staring at 1-2 years old babies instead of 9-10 years old kids? Why suggesting that she may not have a family at that point but that she will have this possibility at the end of her journey? More important: why suggesting through the hand proposal that Ben Solo is the one through with she is meant to have a family ? Although her thoughts ain’t explicit, the chain of events suggests an underlying desire: marriage proposal, forming a family, having babies. Yet, Ben and Rey finally coming together resulted in a kiss of death and her ending like a virginal nun metaphorically burrying the kids she’ll never have with him. Terrible message for girls from a female gaze perspective that no matter how heroic she was and all the harships she went through, she is not allowed to get the belonging she chose willingly (contrary to most male heroes). Terrible message in general that the wants openly expressed by women never really come true in Star Wars: Padme never got her babies back home on Naboo; Leia never got her son back home alive; Rey never got the home she really wished for with Ben. Even if Ben was meant to die like Jack Dawson from Titanic (given the few parallels used by TROS), his total absence after his death feels incredibly wrong, especially given how the only person whom with he bonded emotionally appears indifferent on screen to his fate. This closure on Tatooine without him rubs the viewer from witnessing the definitive healing of the family wounds but also from the feeling that the heroine can move on peacefully with her life: fulfilling her goals, being surrounded with her friends and why not raising a family until she’ll be ultimately reunited with Skywalkers in death. Thus, a tragic ending like Titanic where you are aware as a viewer that Jack and Rose technically can’t be reunited in the afterlife feels strangely more uplifting than the ending of TROS where it’s technically possible that Ben and Rey get reunited someday. What is shown on screen is what remains enshrined in the mind of the viewer. An ending scene on Naboo with Ben (alive or dead) would have given a different vibe, reuniting metaphorically all Skywalkers (except Shmi Skywalker-Lars) in the same tombstone and symbolizing the family reconciliation: a husband with his wife; parents with their twins; a nephew with his uncle; a son with his mother ; a father living in his son’s heart since his death. Beyond that, what more meaningful message for Rey Palpatine than choosing the Skywalkers on the very planet where her own grandfather came from like Padme and began tormenting the Galaxy and her family ? Alas, the conclusion of the franchise shows the heroine ending her journey alone on a desert planet, her birth family dead, her found family decimated, without her lover and her friends to be seen, surrounded by robots and ghosts…but with a cool name as consolation prize!

#the rise of skywalker #star wars #rey #kyloren #ben solo #reylo #adamdriver #daisyridley

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chipsandcoffee · 4 years

Text

Whouffaldi Fanfic

“You Sound Like a Song”

Post-Hell-Bent, fix-it of sorts, memory loss, confessions, angst, romance, eternal love, s10 spoilers, canon compliant (well technically at least), cameo appearance by Bill Potts

Also on AO3 at this link.

______________

He knew her name was Clara. He knew they’d travelled together. But that was all he knew.

The list of things the Doctor didn't know about Clara was so much longer and went so much deeper, prodding away at him from a restless corner of his mind. What was she like? What had they meant to each other? Why would he have wiped the memory of her from his mind? And the one question that troubled him most: what had happened to her?

He ruminated on these questions yet again as he slumped in a leather armchair in his office at St. Luke's University, absent-mindedly strumming his guitar. He often felt a sense of melancholy on these solitary nights. Nothing was sad until it was over, he thought. Then everything was.

He had spent a long time trying to look for Clara (being stuck on Earth for a number of years hadn’t stopped him, for he was based where she was most likely to be). Of course he didn't know who he was looking for (hadn't someone told him that once?), but he believed he would know her if he met her again, and she would surely know him. But it had never happened. And he’d never heard a word from her.

He'd eventually reached the most logical and painful conclusion: she was dead. She'd likely been dead all along, even before he’d erased her from his memory (he could tell he’d used a neural block, could feel the sensation of a hole in his mind where something ought to be). Maybe that was why he'd taken the drastic step of eliminating those memories in the first place: her death had simply been too painful for him to bear.

He obviously had no idea how Clara had died, but he had the painful feeling that it had somehow been his fault. Hers was probably another life cut tragically short because of him, just like too many other people he’d been close to.

Indeed, he’d experienced more than his fair share of loss over his long life, and the last few decades had certainly been no exception. River had gone to her inevitable death shortly before he’d arrived in Bristol (at least by his timeline). He’d also very nearly presided over the execution of Missy before rescuing his oldest friend and bringing her to St. Luke’s. But for reasons he couldn’t quite grasp, the very idea of Clara being dead made his hearts ache in a way nothing else did. Perhaps more than anything else ever had.

It was strange grieving for someone he didn’t remember. His grief after losing River had made sense to him, and he’d been able to move on from it (even if Nardole, devoted to River as always, continued to assume that any sign of sorrow from the Doctor was connected to his late wife). But he had a vague, shapeless sense of loss deep in his bones that he knew, he just knew, was the grief he was still carrying for Clara. He obsessed over the unknown and unknowable details of her life, their life, and her presumed death.

His grief frequently bubbled up to the surface when he played his guitar. In fact, as he sat there in the shadows of his office, he realized that he'd once again started playing a variation of a song from long ago that he knew was called “Clara.” Bill was always curious about that tune, but he'd never told her its true title. How would he begin to explain the story behind it when he didn’t understand it himself?

The Doctor suddenly recalled with regret that he’d been rather curt with Bill earlier that day when she'd teased him that that particular song was the only one he knew how to play. He thought maybe he should say something to her by way of apology when he saw her again. He also knew he was rubbish at such conversations, so he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and fished out the stack of dog-eared index cards that he relied on for such occasions. He'd had them for many years, each card a neatly-written sentence that he could use in tricky social situations (which for him was most social situations). One of his companions had probably made them for him at some point, but he couldn't remember who. He liked to imagine they came from Clara, that he still had something tangible left of her that he carried with him. He wondered if she would have liked that.

The Doctor put his guitar aside, ran his hand down his face, and started pacing around his office. All this brooding wasn't doing him any good. He needed a distraction. He paused, fingers drumming on his desk, as his eyes fell on his TARDIS parked in the corner following his last outing with Bill. He'd been thinking recently that the timeship’s interface stabilizer could use an upgrade; that would keep him busy for a while. But he’d need to get his hands on a few parts first. He considered his options.

His favourite place to get spare parts for the TARDIS was at a marketplace on the planet Haligonia. Of course Nardole would give him grief if he found out that the Doctor had travelled off world, but Nardole was currently occupied with tinkering with the locks on the vault deep under St. Luke’s and likely would be for a while. The Doctor could be gone and back before Nardole knew he’d left. He rubbed his hands together, his decision made. He pushed open the TARDIS doors.

A few minutes later, the Doctor was strolling through the bustling marketplace on 48th-century Haligonia. The planet was a human colony, but the well-known market attracted shoppers of a variety of species from all over the galaxy. It was a warm, sunny day, and the breeze carried smells of local street foods as he made his way past vendors selling everything from the latest tech gadgets to exotic jewellery to flowers of every possible colour.

Soon enough he spotted the parts dealer’s stall. As he approached it he noticed there was a rather spirited conversation going on between the tall, burly dealer and a petite young woman. The customer was dark-haired and wore a black leather jacket with a well-worn satchel slung over her shoulder. Her clear voice stood out over the din of the market, and as the Doctor walked up behind her, he could hear her haggling over the price of something.

“Come on, this would've cost less when it was new than what you’re asking for it now.”

The dealer folded his arms. “Yeah, well life’s not fair, lady. And if you can find it new somewhere else, feel free to buy it there.”

“Fine,” she said nonchalantly, “I will then.” The woman spun around and began striding off, nearly walking into the Doctor.

“Sorry,” she said, glancing up at him. She did a double take and suddenly froze, staring at him, her strikingly large eyes becoming impossibly larger. She stood stock still for a long moment. “Doctor,” she breathed.

He peered down at her, knitting his eyebrows and squinting slightly. “Have we met?”

“Yeah, yeah we've met,” she said faintly, sounding dazed. She continued to stare at him, and now her eyes were starting to look distinctly watery.

The Doctor became increasingly concerned that this stranger might inexplicably burst into tears right in front of him, a prospect that he found rather frightening. He reached into his pocket for his social cue cards in a desperate attempt to find something to say that might diffuse whatever was happening.

He found one of his frequently-used cards, and recited, “I apologize for not recognizing you. I am a time traveller and I sometimes meet people out of order.”

The woman tore her eyes away from the Doctor's face to look at what he was holding. However, much to the Doctor's horror the card had only made things worse, as she had clasped her hand over her mouth and a tear trickled down her face.

“I, um,” he spluttered, his arms flailing.

The woman suddenly seemed to snap out of her emotional state and darted her eyes around the marketplace, as though searching for an escape route. “I'm um, I'm so sorry,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to smile. “Have a good day.” And with that she turned and strode away without a backwards glance.

The Doctor felt somewhat relieved that this problematic encounter appeared to have resolved itself. But he also felt responsible for upsetting this person, and he found himself chasing after her through the crowd of shoppers.

“You there,” he said, starting to catch up to her. “Are you okay?”

He thought she must not have heard him, because she kept on walking. But then she came to a sudden halt, and the Doctor had to stop himself from running into her from behind. After a moment’s hesitation, she turned around, her face somehow conveying trepidation and relief at the same time. The Doctor was baffled how she managed to do that.

The woman heaved a long sigh. “I am so sick of hiding from you.” The Doctor frowned as she stepped towards him, the crowd swirling around them. “The reason I recognize you but you don't recognize me isn't because of time travel. It's because you’ve forgotten me.” She paused for a second and wiped away a tear. “You, um, you chose to forget me.”

The Doctor felt as though his hearts had stopped and that all the blood had drained from his face. His mouth fell slightly open. Some distant part of his brain thought he must look like he'd seen a ghost. To him he had.

“Clara,” he whispered. It wasn't a question. He knew somehow, he was certain who she was.

“Yeah,” she whispered in return, gazing into his eyes.

“You're not dead,” he blurted out, immediately realizing how ridiculous that sounded.

“Yeah,” she frowned. “Why? Have you remembered--”

“I haven't remembered anything. I'd just… guessed. That-- that you were dead.”

Clara looked into the Doctor’s eyes and he immediately felt like she could see into his soul, into every lonely, hopeless night he’d spent grieving for her. Her face grew concerned.

“Oh, Doctor.” She reached up and laid her hand on his cheek, and the Doctor surprised himself by not flinching under her touch. “I think we should talk.”

______________

A few minutes later, the Doctor found himself incredibly, miraculously sitting with Clara at a small table in the corner of a quiet cafe on a back street near the marketplace, a steaming mug of herbal tea in front of each of them. They sat in silence at first as they stole glances at one another and tried to figure out how to navigate this strange situation.

“I like your coat,” Clara started, nodding at the blue-lined black velvet jacket he'd favoured of late.

“Oh, um, thanks.” He felt himself blushing. He wasn't used to people saying that sort of thing to him. Another moment passed and he asked, “How did you travel here?”

“In my TARDIS,” she answered easily, as though that were something that humans did all the time.

“What?” He was flabbergasted. “You have a TARDIS? How?”

Clara sighed. “Oh, this is going to be a very long story, Doctor.”

Several cups of tea later, Clara had told the Doctor the story of their final days together: the raven on Trap Street, the Doctor pulling Clara from her time stream on Gallifrey (which partly explained the vague memories he’d had of being trapped for a very long time in his confession dial), and her escape in a stolen TARDIS (oddly with the immortal woman Ashildr).

Once Clara had finished her story, the Doctor sat in stunned silence, attempting to make sense of it all, of the extreme lengths he'd gone to for Clara. He tried to wrap his mind around the idea that he’d actually plucked this woman from her time stream right before her death. And here she sat, still time-looped. Still, in essence, alive.

“You know how to fly a TARDIS?” It probably wasn’t the most important question, but it’s the one that popped out of his mouth.

“Yeah,” she laughed, her eyes twinkling, and the Doctor thought her laugh was perhaps the loveliest thing he’d ever heard. “I picked up a thing or two in the years we travelled together.”

The Doctor was impressed. “So how long has it been for you since you last saw me?”

“Oh, um, I'm not sure anymore. A while back I stopped keeping track of how long it’d been. It was--” She paused, lowering her eyes, a hint of pain crossing her face. She cleared her throat, met his eye again and continued, “I figured that was for the best. But I guess it must be close to a hundred years now.”

The Doctor raised his eyebrows slightly. "I think it's almost exactly the same for me."

The corners of Clara's mouth quirked up. "Yeah, that's just the way things seem to go with us. We've always been… connected, somehow.”

“What have you been doing all that time?”

“Oh you know, flying about a bit, watching the odd star being born, saving the odd planet.”

The Doctor couldn't help but laugh at Clara's jokingly casual tone, and he marvelled to himself at this amazing woman. But there was an important issue that Clara hadn’t yet explained.

“So why don’t I remember you, Clara? Based on the type of amnesia that I experienced, I’m guessing that I used a neural block of some sort?”

Clara’s face turned serious and she glanced down.

“Um, yeah, you did.” She gave a puzzled frown. “It's weird though, I saw you shortly after the neural block, and you seemed to remember a bit more than you do now. At least some of what had happened on Gallifrey.”

“Ah, well it's not uncommon in the early stages following a neural block to be left with some disjointed shards of memories. Over time, if the brain can't process those fragments, they're forgotten. It's sort of like forgetting a dream shortly after awakening.”

“Right, okay.”

The Doctor searched her face. “Clara, why did I use a neural block to forget you?”

Clara looked upwards as if searching for inspiration on how to respond to the Doctor’s question, tears threatening in her eyes again. She took a deep breath.

“It wasn't meant to be you, not at first.”

“What do you mean?”

“You, um, you were going to use the neural block on me. You thought I'd be safer from the Time Lords if I didn't remember you.”

The Doctor frowned in confusion. “So what happened?”

Clara lowered her eyes. “I used your sonic sunglasses to reverse the polarity on the neural blocker when you weren't looking.”

“You what?”

“I didn't want it to go off on you, I just didn't want you to use it on me.” She began to raise her voice while a tear spilled down her face. “I didn't want you to use it at all, I told you what I'd done!”

Her voice broke and she paused, catching her breath and wiping her face. The Doctor felt a rush of sympathy and heartache for her. He realized that as difficult as it had been for him to live with his missing memories, Clara had suffered too, in a different way: she'd had to carry around the weight of everything they'd been through, while he had been blissfully ignorant.

Clara continued, speaking more quickly as she got through the rest of her story. “So. You didn't know at that point what would happen when the button on the blocker was pressed. That's when you suggested that we both press the button together, knowing that one of us would forget the other, but not knowing which one. Better than flipping a coin, you said.” Clara dropped her gaze and her voice fell to nearly a whisper. “And I guess you kind of lost the coin toss.”

The Doctor watched Clara for a moment, her head bowed. Then he found himself leaning forward and placing his hand on hers. Clara looked up at him, surprised at the contact.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“For everything, I guess. For forgetting you. For trying to make you forget me. I'm sorry that you feel bad about what happened with my memories, because it wasn't your fault, Clara. We knew the risks and we pressed that button together.”

She squeezed his hand, a hint of relief on her face.

“You didn't say why I thought one of us needed to forget the other,” the Doctor continued. “But I think I'm starting to understand. Everything I did, the confession dial, the extraction chamber, my plan to hide you away and make you forget me.” The Doctor felt his hearts stirring as he now wrapped Clara's hand in both of his. “I think I would have torn the sky apart for you, Clara Oswald. And I think I knew that.”

A sad smile crossed Clara's face. “And I would have done the same for you.”

The Doctor and Clara gazed silently at each other, her small hand wrapped in his two, lost in the universe that was each other's eyes.

After a while Clara swallowed, leaned forward, and spoke in a quiet voice. “Doctor, there's one more thing I still haven't told you. When you and I were on Gallifrey, we sat together in the Cloisters, and I told you something important, something I'd never told you before.” Clara took her free hand and laid it on top of his, her eyes round and sparkling. “I told you that I loved you. That I'd always loved you and I always would, and that I wished I'd told you a long time ago. That maybe if I had, things would have turned out differently.”

The Doctor had been surprised by many things Clara had told him that day, but somehow her declaration of love wasn't one of them. He’d known it, felt it, from the moment he'd met her in the market outside.

“And how did I respond?” he whispered, scarcely breathing.

Clara gave another sad smile and shook her head. “You didn't. That was the moment you got the service hatch open and, well, we had to keep running.”

“Ah,” was all he could think of to say.

“Yeah. We’ve had a lot of bad timing, you and me.”

As if to emphasize the point, the cafe owner at that moment walked by their table and turned off the “open” sign in the window, pointedly clearing his throat as he did so.The Doctor glanced around and realized that he and Clara had been alone in the cafe for quite some time.

“I think we’re being kicked out,” Clara whispered loudly, her eyes twinkling.

“Looks like it,” the Doctor replied with a crooked grin.

Outside, the Haligonian night had fallen, and the streets were nearly empty. The planet's two champagne-coloured moons shone overhead, and the air felt damp and cool after the warmth of the day. The Doctor and Clara wandered together through the town for a while, swapping tales of adventures and wild escapes, their bursts of laughter ringing through the stillness of the evening. The streets and laneways they walked eventually gave way to a green, park-like area on the edge of town where the scent of blossoming trees drifted through the night air. The Doctor wished they could keep walking forever, but as his TARDIS came into view in the moonlight, he was reminded that their magical day had to come to an end.

They walked together across the dewy grass and stopped near his blue box, standing in an uncertain silence, the only sound a nocturnal bird calling in the distance. Clara finally spoke. “So what happens now? Me and you, what do we do now?” The hint of tears glistening in her eyes told the Doctor that she probably already knew the answer.

“Oh, Clara. I don't even need my memories to know that there’s nothing in this universe I’d like more than to travel with you again. But I said today that I would have torn the sky apart for you all those years ago, and I know in my hearts I still would. And that you’d still do the same for me.”

He took a step closer to her. “Everything you’ve told me, everything I can see and feel now tells me that we were amazing together. But also that we were dangerous. And I don't think there’s any way to stop that from happening again, because of who we are, and because of--” He paused and took a deep breath. “And because of how we feel about each other.”

Clara looked down and nodded, a tear falling to the ground. “Yeah,” she whispered.

The Doctor tenderly placed his hand on Clara’s cheek, and she looked up at him. Clara had told him so much that day. Now there was something he felt he had to tell her, something that was burning within him. He wasn't going to let the opportunity pass him by again, not this time.

“Clara, I never got the chance to respond to you in the Cloisters, and I know a lot of time has passed since then and I’ve forgotten so much. But I know, I’m certain of one thing. I loved you, Clara Oswald. I loved you-- I love you with both my hearts. And I always will.”

Clara smiled up at him, even as another tear rolled down her cheek. The Doctor wiped away the tear with his thumb, feeling dizzy with the emotions swirling inside him. He found himself slowly leaning towards her, feeling a pull as irresistible and inevitable as gravity, as Clara ran her hand up his arm. Their lips met in a soft, heartfelt kiss. To the Doctor it felt surprisingly natural, right, perfect. It felt like the long-awaited conclusion to a conversation begun 100 years ago.

The Doctor stepped back and took Clara's hand as he stood there smiling softly at her, warmth and contentment infusing his body. She smiled back at him, all dimples and shiny eyes.

“I’m really glad I got to see you, Doctor.”

“I’m really glad I got to see you too, Clara Oswald.”

But his smile faltered as the reality of his situation sunk in. Clara frowned.

“What’s wrong, Doctor?”

He released her hand and sighed. “My neural block, Clara. I don’t know what'll happen when I leave tonight. Seeing you today, talking to you, learning all about you, about us. I don’t want to forget any of it, not again. But my brain has blocked my memories of you for a very long time, and I'm afraid it'll do it again.”

Clara’s face was filled with concern. “There must be something we can do.”

He shook his head and half-shrugged his shoulders.

Clara’s eyes lit up. “Hang on, I have an idea.” She tucked her hair behind her ears and opened her satchel. After some rummaging around, she pulled out a small cardboard box and opened it. “I carry these around with me. They still come in handy for all kinds of things.”

______________

Bill started packing up her things as the day’s tutorial with the Doctor wrapped up.

The Doctor was sitting behind his massive desk, continuing to flip through the book they'd been discussing. “And don’t forget that your research paper on laser-cooled ions is due tomorrow.”

Bill rolled her eyes good naturedly. “Don’t worry, you’ll get it.”

“Good.” The Doctor tried to look stern, but he had a feeling he wasn’t quite pulling it off. Tossing aside the book, he stood and picked up his guitar from the chair where he'd left it, wandering around his office as he played the song that he now knew was named for the woman he loved.

Bill paused as she walked towards the door. “Don't think I've heard that version before. It's, I dunno, cheerier.”

The Doctor smiled to himself. “Good night, Bill.”

“‘Night, Doctor. See ya tomorrow.”

Now alone, the Doctor played for a while longer before setting his guitar down. He relaxed into his favourite armchair and reflected on how different things were for him since his trip to Haligonia a few weeks earlier. He could still remember much of his wondrous encounter with Clara, though some of the details were growing hazy, almost as though the whole thing had been a dream. Sometimes he thought maybe it had been a dream. But whenever that unsettling feeling arose, he would do as he did now. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small stack of index cards. Some were old and dog-eared, but some were new. All of them had the same neat handwriting, and now he knew whose handwriting it was.

He picked out the new cards. The one on top read, “Clara is alive and doing well. She wants you to be happy.” He gave a contented sigh. The next two were his favourites.

“Clara loves you. She always has and always will.”

“You told Clara that you love her, and she will always cherish that.”

He smiled even as his eyes felt wet with tears (perhaps he was malfunctioning). He gazed at the cards for a long time, his fingers running lightly over the words.

He knew her name was Clara. He knew they’d travelled together. He knew she was still out there, exploring the universe. He knew they'd loved each other deeply and truly, and they always would.

He also knew that nothing was sad until it was over. And he and Clara would never be over. Not in his hearts, not ever.

______________

Thank you for reading! This is my first fic and any feedback would be very welcome and appreciated!

#i'm so nervous/excited to finally publish this #my first fic #whouffaldi #fanfic #fan fiction #my fanfic

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ninasfireescape · 4 years

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The ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ review no one asked for

I wanted to enjoy it. I really did.

I was one of the people who didn’t dislike The Last Jedi. Sure, I didn’t love it. When I watched it, I thought it was too long and had made certain characters choices I wasn’t too happy with, but overall it was enjoyable and left me feeling satisfied. It was not as good as The Force Awakens however and hearing JJ Abrams was returning, I thought he might be able to restore the final episode to its former glory.

That indeed seemed like the case for the first hour. The gang were back together, it was quick-paced, I had an emotional investment in what was going on (and it seemed like they were taking the Finnrey route I wanted them too). I couldn’t exactly follow every plot specific but does that really matter in Star Wars when it’s so exciting? The bit on Star Killer base was genuinely inspired, I was laughing away at once again what terrible shots the stormtroopers were and at Hux being the spy. Every scene with Lando in was gold.

It was just after they got to the water planet that things started to go wrong. I’m not sure quite what it was exactly that made it so disappointing from this point onwards. Perhaps the gang splitting up or the rather horrifically done Leia death scene. I know they didn’t really have much choice with what footage they had but having watched each member of the original trio died, this death was devoid of emotion and predictable. And she died to make Kylo Ren hesitate for one moment. What a waste!

Then the pointless force ghosts! Seeing Luke was nice but it felt like he was just there to add clunky explanation since the plot made so little sense at this point. And when Han appeared, I actually laughed. It was so inconsistent with the tone of the film and he appeared all while Kylo Ren was standing in the middle of a stormy sea that he could fall into at any moment, right in the most climactic section of the film, just to have a conversation with the son who killed him! It was the most outrageous example of a fan service cameo that just didn’t assimilate with the rest of the film.

I don’t actually have a problem with Rey Palpatine. If anything, I thought it was really cool she was a Palpatine. I really didn’t want her to be a Skywalker because I felt it would be predictable and repetitive. Her being a Palpatine also sends the message to young viewers that blood relations don’t make a family which I think is very important for children to hear. Honestly, the only problem I have with it is that it means some poor lady had sex with Palpatine. I agree that it was a ridiculous retcon of The Last Jedi but then I didn’t like the reveal about her parents in TLJ anyway because of how it was executed. Another thing that bothers me about it is the utter lack of information we get about Villanelle Rey’s mother. Already we don’t know much about her father other than that he’s Palpatine’s son but with her mother, we get nothing. With Rey having wondered about who her parents were for so long, surely it would make sense for her to want to know more about her mother and maybe even take her surname in place of ‘Palpatine’. I also firmly believe Rey’s mother should have been played by Hayley Atwell because she looks so much like Daisy Ridley. And while Jodie Comer is an amazing actress, I think 1. She deserves a bigger role in the Star Wars franchise and 2. Her casting as Rey’s mother exemplifies Hollywood’s fear of casting older actresses as mothers. A twenty six year old as a mother!?

About Zurii, I always appreciate new female characters in Star Wars and I thought she had a great design. However, it is blatantly clear what her purpose in the film was. It was to stop people calling Poe gay, inserting a female character for one scene (she barely spoke in her other scenes so I’m not counting those) with no backstory of her own, just to prove he is attracted to women. Well, first of all, he can be bi, secondly, that’s not going to stop people shipping Finnpoe at all. I didn’t clock until afterwards when I saw people talking about it online, but it was super problematic to make Poe a former drug dealer. Sure, the only Latino character in this trilogy. Also, it in general complicates the little we know about Poe’s backstory so far.

With Rose, all our worst fears were confirmed. She just wasn’t there. She appeared in a couple of scenes and had some lines but you’d think she was no more than another miscellaneous rebel, no more significant a role than Billie Lourd’s character. Did they really give into the white fanboy pressure? How could they erase Rose when she was such a good character? She was tough and fought strongly for her beliefs, but she was also compassionate, sensitive. Now, I never particularly shipped Finn and Rose in TLJ. I thought it seemed a bit of a rushed romance and Finn didn’t seem that invested in the kiss they shared. However, you can’t just pretend they didn’t kiss in the last film. They interacted a few times but there was no sense of any bond between them. Where there relationship stood was unclear. Were they now a couple or had they had an offscreen conversation where they decided they were better off as friends? Who knows?

And now onto the worst part of the film: Kylo Ren and more specifically that kiss. Gross. Okay, to be clear, I wasn’t entirely opposed to a redemption arc for Kylo Ren. Sure, it would be predictable, but it’s not like Kylo Ren’s crimes are any worse than those of Darth Vader and he was still capable of redemption. I liked Kylo Ren as a villain. He perfectly depicted that type of whiny, entitled white man who we see so commonly in real life, but again, he could have achieved some redemption if it were implemented correctly. What we got in the film was not this. He was still committing genocide at the start and carried out one good deed which was saving the woman he had a crush on. For this one good act, he was entirely forgiven and somehow all of the genocide wasn’t his fault. And he got rewarded with the woman! If anything, I’d call that act selfish since he only wanted to save the woman he liked. Adam Driver did the best he could with it but everything about it was awful. And it was out of character for Rey to kiss him and forgive him. She stabbed him little more than half an hour earlier! At the end of the last film, she slammed a door in his face. It makes no sense to me how she could suddenly be so invested in him becoming a better person. There’s also the fact that wasn’t included in the films that Rey and Kylo Ren are related (aunt and nephew to be exact). I wasn’t aware this was Game of Thrones! And according to Wookiepedia, Rey was 18 at the start of the films and is now 20 whereas Kylo Ren is now 30. A ten year age different would be fine if Rey were older but at this point, the age gap is uncomfortable and very borderline.

If they’re going to make the claim that it wasn’t actually Kylo Ren who was doing the evil deeds but some dark force corrupting him, they should have explained how the mechanism works. At least in the prequels, we got some sense of Anakin slowly being corrupted. To me, it reads like in some horror films when the abusive characters are found to have been possessed by demons or something. It trivializes abuse which is something very real, acting instead as if no abusers can actually be responsible for their actions and it is the cause of some supernatural force instead. I suppose the kiss doesn’t have to mean anything. After all, Leia and Luke kissed in the original trilogy and Finn and Rose kissed and apparently that meant nothing.

I firmly believe the series intended a Finn and Rey romance. Lest we forget The Force Awakens, Finn awkwardly asking Rey if she had a boyfriend. That was clear coding for him having a crush on her. In that film, the two developed such a strong bond, and they have so much more chemistry than Rey and Kylo Ren ever had. All the scenes with Rey and Finn (and Poe) were full of light and emotion. The scene at the end where the three of them hugged was honestly the high point of the film. Now, when I left the cinema, what was plaguing my mind the most was that throughout the film, Finn had a secret he wanted to tell Rey. It was first suggested when they thought they were going to die in the quicksand. “Wait, Rey, I never told you!” It had to be that he loved her. What else could it be? Supposedly, it was that he was force sensitive. I don’t believe that for one second. If he needed to tell her that, why couldn’t Poe be included? And why did he never get the chance to tell her? It was a build-up I got invested in with no payoff. It must have been that he loved her. So, if that was the case, that leaves us with two options. Either there was a Finnrey subplot that got cut but they forgot to cut these scenes out (or simply couldn’t be bothered to), or they thought it would be funny to have the black supposed male lead chasing after the white female lead who didn’t love him back because she was instead in love with the genocidal white villain. I ship Finnrey so much and find the second option so horrific but I wouldn’t put it past the writers. Finn played such a significant role in the first half of the film, as he should since he’s meant to be the male lead in the series, but after that, he was dangerously underutilized. At least the ending where no one ends up with each other is compliant with my headcanon that Rey, Finn and Poe (and I don’t mind Rose being in the mix too) all end up married to each other and adopt a bunch of porgs.

And lastly, the lesbian scene. Pathetic. We don’t know the character names and I can’t even find out who the actresses were that played them. Okay, they kissed which is a pretty big deal (even though kisses apparently mean nothing in Star Wars) and it’s certainly a step forward from the Avengers: Endgame ‘’’’representation’’’’, but it’s still rather useless considering the big deal JJ Abrams made about how there would be representation.

#alexia reviews #star wars #star wars spoilers #tros #tros spoilers #the rise of skywalker #the rise of skywalker spoilers #anti tros #anti reylo

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textualdeviance · 4 years

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OK, so here’s some TROS blather. Spoilers ahoy, and be aware that I block people who are looking for a ship-war fight because that shit is just tiresome and I have better things to do.

First, a caveat: Yes, there were/are problematic aspects. There always have been, always will be. It’s a blockbuster, global-release movie made primarily by abled, allocishet white people trying to make a shit ton of money by appealing to the broadest audience possible. There’s no getting around the issues that will inevitably arise from those foundations. It was also just too much movie crammed into 2 ½ hours; I’ll be interested to see the deleted scenes they release later. But I’ll dig into that stuff in another post later. For now, some character-dynamic stuff re: our main trio, starting with Rey.

(Or skip to Poe and Finn)

Rey: "I need to go alone." Finn: "Yeah, alone with friends."

I admit I’m actually pretty shocked that the ship that went canon endgame (in a manner of speaking) was the trio. I figured that JJ would go the safe route and pair everyone off: Finn with Jannah, Poe with Zorii, Rey with KR. Yeah, we got the eyeroll Rxylo stuff–we knew that was going to happen, yes?–but that was over almost as soon as it started, and honestly? I think the story earned it. More on that in a moment.

The overall pattern for everyone is that they all dipped a toe in other waters in the course of exercising their character arcs and then came home. To each other. Yes, Rey took the little epilogue trip to Tattooine, but she wasn’t going to stay there. She was symbolically burying Luke and Leia, not setting up a homestead. She wouldn’t have taken Poe’s little buddy–his child, effectively–without intending to return. She knows where her home and family is. She knew it in that final battle with evil granddaddy. Shit, her whole goddamn arc was about finding out who she is and who her family is. She found them. She came home to them. Both of them.

There were things that irked me–I’m annoyed that Rose didn’t get more screentime, nor a resolution for her feelings for Finn, for instance. But thematically, the way this worked made sense. Let’s go character-by-character to explain this.

Rey:

First off, let me say how goddamned DELIGHTED I am that they committed and followed through on having a woman as the story’s main protagonist. We’ve had a fair handful of action movies with female leads lately, which is great, but a lot of those have been one-offs, and the two big ones–Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel–were characters who are primarily known as members of a much larger team that has other (male) leaders. Indeed, one of the biggest points of contention for the White Dudes Are the Only Heroes contingent is that they believed that, as the Skywalker saga, the protagonist for this series should have been a Skywalker by birth. Their concept of what this story arc should have been was: Anakin started good, went bad. Luke started good, stayed good. Ben started bad, went good. Balance. Bookends. But to paraphrase Luke, that’s not how this story was going to go. The story was much bigger than the biological lineage of one Force-sensitive family. It was about the Force itself needing to resolve its light and dark sides in a single person.

I’ve seen some folks complain (and not without merit; I can see it from this side) that once again, a woman’s story got turned into her sacrificing herself/sidelining her own story as an element of redemption for a bad boy. But honestly, that trope got subverted! Who got fridged so the story’s protagonist could come into their true power? The white dude.

Remember that Rey’s core character arc was finding herself. She had to figure out who she was. She had to know what all those feelings she’d had were about. And some of those feelings were the pull to the dark side. She absolutely knew that. She knew she had that anger and darkness, and was terrified of it. The reason she invested in saving KR wasn’t because she had romantic feelings for him. It was because she needed to know she herself could be saved.

Think of Rey’s arc a bit like Frodo’s: By rights, he should have considered Gollum an enemy: Someone who was once a full person, but who had been twisted by an evil power into a monster. But Frodo knew he himself was being twisted by that power. He was terrified of ending up like Gollum, so he had to invest in bringing Smeagol back, to know that he himself could come back, too. Ultimately, his choice not to kill Gollum right away saved the world, just as Rey’s choice to heal Ben saved the galaxy. I personally think we could have done without that fanservice kiss, but that small moment aside, the rest of this dynamic was entirely about Rey saving herself by pushing Ben to the light. Once she had done so–once she knew he was there to fight with her–she was free to concentrate on saving her family.

And that’s exactly what she did. Did she fight Palpatine to save Ben? No. She did it to save her family. Because she knew very well by that point that that’s what they were to her. He knew he wasn’t reviving her to keep her for himself. He knew that he was saving her to let her go back home. To her real home. And she knew that’s why he did it. That little kiss before he faded was “thank you, go in peace.” This is why we didn’t see any long scenes of her mourning him, as she would have if he were her fated beloved or something.

Being dragged away for the moment, so I’ll do Finn and Poe in other posts later!

#jedistormpilot #finnreypoe

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irinapaleolog · 4 years

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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker had raised the hopes of Reylos, fans who longed for Rey and Kylo Ren to end up together in the end, healing the wound inflicted on the galaxy two generations earlier by Emperor Palpatine and Anakin Skywalker. The marketing certainly hinted at such and, at least for less-invested viewers, the film delivered on its promise of romance: Reylo (and Bendemption) did occur, and Rey and the redeemed Ben Solo shared a passionate kiss, which is why it may be so perplexing for the general audience that Reylos hated the ending. Two weeks after the release, they're still mourning on social media, and demanding for Disney to #RealeaseTheJJCut, a reference to an edit that would have delivered the conclusion they wanted, and purportedly what director J.J. Abrams intended. So, what happened, exactly?

While romance is certainly not a new concept to Star Wars, it was never depicted from the perspective of a woman. However, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi made moves to remedy that: The camera stays with Rey when she interacts with Kylo; the lighting, music and the chemistry between the actors drew in many women. The trope being trapped was "enemies to lovers," a classic of romance literature. In The Force Awakens, Kylo is infatuated with a "lowly scavenger," despite himself and his training. In The Last Jedi, the two characters establish a connection that goes deeper than their pasts, ripe with wedding imagery from around the world, before separating again.

The comparisons with the doomed romance of Anakin and Padmé popped up. If the tragic lovers of the prequel trilogy married in the second movie and died in the third, surely the sequel would turn it around, allowing the last descendant of Anakin Skywalker to fix what he had broken and to triumph where he had failed.

It's easy for a certain segment of the audience to dismiss the power of romance, but it remains most lucrative literary genre in the world. Romance writers master the art of the promise and the delivery, which is a happy ending for the main couple. There are tragic romantic novels in which one or both of the lovers die, but that's not what Disney was promising with Episode IX. From that perspective, The Rise of Skywalker punishes the male lead by killing him the moment he chooses to save the love of his life. Abrams and his co-writer Chris Terrio were going for a parallel with Return of the Jedi, but that movie was never promoted as having romance at its core, and Darth Vader didn't have his entire life in front of him.

The Rise of Skywalker then goes out of its way to show how little Rey really cared for Ben, to the point where, after watching the final scenes, it's difficult to assess what impact he had in the plot. The film also does that to Hux and Rose, but in the case of Ben Solo it's particularly egregious because he's the last of the Skywalker bloodline. If they were going for Return of the Jedi parallels, they could have included either a funeral or a Force ghost, but the audience is denied that, which is a strange and cruel narrative choice.

Even worse, the ending broke the promise made in the promotional material. Yes, there was a kiss, but it's swiftly punished: The heroine ends up alone in a barren planet; the Byronic hero is never mentioned again. The other side of fandom might argue that Star Wars should have never catered to romance, but they would be the first to complain if a film advertised like Fast & Furious turned out to be a family comedy; false advertising elicits the same kinds of reactions in everyone.

Ben Solo's death, isolated from the romance, is also problematic because he was coded as a conflicted, groomed, abused, abandoned and brainwashed child soldier fighting to break from his programming. The ancillary material supports this, and in Marvel's The Rise of Kylo Ren, it's shown he never attempted to kill Luke Skywalker, he didn't burn the Jedi temple, and he didn't attack his fellow students. It was a set-up designed to turn his family against him and place him within the First Order. Han, Leia and Rey work for two entire movies to try and bring him back. By killing every single character that even attempts to turn around, the film confirms their worst fear -- that the only way out is death.

There'ss another horrifying message lurking in The Rise of Skywalker, however, if you are coming to the film from this perspective: that your family will disown you and forget you the moment you misbehave, replacing you with a "good child." That's exactly what happens to Kylo Ren; despite his efforts to come back as Ben Solo, neither Luke nor Leia nor Anakin help him. Ben has to imagine a conversation with his father to move forward, and in the end, his mother and his uncle replace him with Rey, who becomes their "found child" and assumes the Skywalker name.

But Kylo was filling a different role too -- the monster boyfriend, whose most famous example is Beauty and the Beast. While the original purpose of tales like Beauty and the Beast was to prepare girls for marriages in which they would be under the authority of their (potentially monstrous) husband, the tale evolved, and the monster became a focus for those that society had misunderstood or repressed. It's the grown-up version of little children, who feel powerless most of the time, preferring the Hulk over any other superhero, only with romance, darkness and danger thrown in; it's a way to explore a problematic aspect of reality through fiction. Unfortunately, instead of allowing fiction to play its role for women, the monster boyfriend trope is incredibly policed ("it's toxic!"), a criticism that doesn't extend to monster girlfriends (see Mara Jade's murderous origins and her eventual marriage to Luke Skywalker in Legends).

Many women in Star Wars fandom identified with Kylo Ren for those reasons, and the more the character was attacked on social media ("he killed his father!" "he's ugly, unworthy of being a hero!"), and the more stories about what really happened to him were published, the more affection he drew.

And while we are talking about ancillary material, The Rise of Skywalker contradicts almost every single narrative thread about Kylo published to date, which were hinting at redemption as far back as 2017. Most Reylos engaged with that material wholeheartedly. Despite the amazing talent involved in its creation, those fans view the ending of Episode IX as a slap in the face, and many women feel like they have wasted their time buying into a franchise that ultimately never cared about fulfilling its own promises about happy endings, telling a complete story, or even offering hope and compassion to the characters that needed it the most.

However, all of that might have been better received had the film been generous with the heroine, the first woman to be the primary protagonist in the Skywalker Saga. For two and a half movies, it even looked to be a story in the fairy-tale tradition, with a poor orphan discovering her inner power, defeating an unspeakable evil, forging friendships and, ultimately, finding the love of her life and becoming the leader of her people.

Instead, The Rise of Skywalker leaves Rey effectively where she started, on desert planet, taking with her someone else's droid and someone else's name. She doesn't grow, and she doesn't even confront or integrate her inner darkness. Rey, who had been wonderfully feral up to that point, becomes a creepy Stepford smiler.

That, in a nutshell, is why Reylos are angry, despite getting their space kiss. For many, The Rise of Skywalker felt like a bad punchline after a long con from Disney, and Star Wars has the bitter taste of a franchise that accidentally tapped into women's interests but had little interest in them as intelligent viewers engaging with the material.

#the rise of skywalker #reylo #kylo ren #rey

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moviehealthcommunity · 4 years

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Star Wars Episode IX SPOILERS

This post details what one will miss if they hide their eyes during the sequences of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker that contain extreme strobe effects. If this shows up on your dash despite spoiler tags being blocked, we apologize.

About 3 minutes into the film, we are introduced to a stormy planet, Exegol. As Kylo Ren lands on Exegol, lightning is striking from all directions. He goes inside a run-down lair, where the strobe effects continue. As the voice of Emperor Palpatine explains the backstory behind Snoke, we pass a vat in which two dead Snokes are floating, previous failed attempts by the Emperor to create him. Ren approaches the Emperor, whose face and hands are decayed, his eyes washed white, some fingers shorter than others. The Emperor raises a very large armada of stardestroyers out of the planet. The scene transitions to the Millennium Falcon in hyperspace, which has its own effect that may be problematic to photosensitive viewers, but this only lasts a moment. Until the climax of the film, the rest of it is the normal level of risk that one would take with any other Star Wars film.

When we return to Exegol, Rey goes underground, and everything featuring her includes strobe effects. When it cuts to the space battle above, these effects are nearly nonexistent. Rey finds herself in an arena, filled with thousands of spirits of the Sith, who are all watching her on a stage area, at the center of which is the Sith throne. Emperor Palpatine stands next to it, still appearing decayed as before, and attached by the back to a large mechanical arm, allegedly meant to keep him alive. While the Emperor tries to convince Rey to kill him, Ben Solo sneaks into the lair. Ben is confronted by the Knights of Ren, and appears to surrender, kneeling and placing his hands on the back of his head. Rey ignites the lightsaber of Luke Skywalker, threatening to kill the Emperor, but she takes the same position with her arms as Ben, and the lightsaber disappears from her hands, appearing in Ben’s. Ben kills all of the Knights of Ren, and Rey pulls out Leia’s lightsaber. Ben and Rey confront the Emperor together. The Emperor sucks life out of both of them, with an effect similar to the dementors in Harry Potter. He grows his fingers back, his skin heals a little, and his eyes turn back to their signature yellow. He uses the Force to push Ben into a glowing chasm. The Emperor shoots his Force lightning into the sky, affecting all of the Resistance ships fighting above. Many ships go down, including Snap Wexley. As Rey hears the voices of many past Jedi, she stands up and ignites Leia’s lightsaber. The Emperor attacks her with Force lightning, which is absorbed in the lightsaber. Rey Force-grabs Luke’s lightsaber, crosses the blades, and reflects the lightning back at the Emperor, causing his skin to flake away, eventually obliterating him. Ben crawls out of the chasm with a limp and embraces Rey, who appears to have died. Ben heals her with the Force. They share a kiss, and Ben dies, disappearing and becoming one with the Force.

This concludes our spoiler-filled post.

#Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker #Spoilers #Spoiler Warning #Actually Epileptic #Spoiler Alert

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theanarchistfaery · 4 years

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Star Wars Episode VIII - The Last Jedi Review

Thanks to a certain streaming service I was finally able to watch Star Wars Episode VIII – The Last Jedi. And I guess I have an unpopular opinion on it. It seems no other Star Wars movie, not even The Phantom Menace, received such a major backlash. Nonetheless I am trying to be unbiased and as honest als possible. As always, spoiler alert.

Ready for light speed!

The film opens wih the First Order (basically the Empire) hunting down the remains of the Resistance (basically the Rebel Alliance) after the destruction of the Starkiller Base (basically a more powerful Death Star). The Resistance is having a hard time losing their enemy, because, as it turns out, they have a device which allows them to track down ships while they are in hyperspace.

Finn, the deserted stormtrooper meets Rose Tico and together with Poe Dameron they develop a plan to infiltrate the First Order' mothership Supremacy and deactivate the device. But they keep it secret, because they fear that Vice Admiral Holdo would never agree to it. Finn, Rose and BB-8 fly to a casino on Cantonica to get the best code cracker in the galaxy. They hire DJ instead, a dubious code cracker who helps them in exchange for Rose's amulet.

At the same time Rey is trying to convince Luke Skywalker, who lives in exile, to help the Resistance. He refuses, stating that he blames himself and the Jedi for the treason of Ben Solo a.k.a. Kylo Ren.

While at first every word she said was wrong, Rey learns the true nature of the force herself, cuts a stone in half with a lightsaber and even has a telepathic conversation with Kylo Ren. He then tells her that Luke had tried to kill him. Luke on the other hand tells Rey, that Kylo destroyed his Jedi academy and killed most of his students. Rey however believes there is still something good left in Kylo, so she hops on the Millennium Falcon and leaves Luke behind on his exile planet, hoping she can bring Kylo over to join the Resistence.

Luke then tries to burn all that is left from the Jedi scripts. Yoda's force ghost appears and he tells him in his iconic grammar that failure the greatest teacher is.

Meanwhile Finn, Rose and DJ managed to infiltrate the Supremacy. Rey arrives there in an escape pod and meets Kylo. He brings her to Snoke. It comes to a dramatic showdown, where Kylo kills Snoke and helps Rey to escape. He does however not switch sides.

Finn, Rose and BB-8, who were surrounded by Stormtroopers thanks to DJ's betrayal, also escape. Poe has raised a mutiny against Holdo to buy them some time. He puts her under arrest and goes to the bridge. But then Luke Skywalker or rather a mental manifestation of him, shows up.

The First Order's fleet is still after them, so they decide to abandon the Raddus. Holdo however stays behind onboard the Raddus and performs a kamikaze maneuver, flying the ship with lightspeed into to the Supremacy so it gets destroyed and the Resistance ships can escape to a base on planet Crait.

Here the First Order makes a last attempt to smash the Resistance but Luke's projection shows up to distract them. The Resistance escapes and Luke, who never physically left his exile, exhausted from his massive performance, dies in a similar way Yoda did in „Return of the Jedi“.

In a final scene, back on Cantonica, we see a bunch of children who are obviously force sensitive and telling each other stories about Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance.

This may come as a shock to some of you, but I really liked it. I even would go so far as to say, and as blasphemous as it sounds, it captures the very essence of Star Wars. While „The Force Awakens“ felt more like a retelling of „A New Hope“, just with different characters, which was fine but not great, this film dares to be different and original. Sure it has some pacing problems. The sub plot with the resistence fleet trying to escape the first order and with Finn and Rose is a bit too long and too complicated, but it wasn't too bad. What I liked the most about it, was that we finally could see some conflict within the Resistence.

I'm glad they went back to explaining the force like Yoda did originally. As this mystical energy field that is generated by every living thing and that holds the galaxy together. No pseudo-scientific explanations here. Midi...what? Midichlorians? Never heard of those.

Star Wars has a tradition of drawing clear moral lines. There is good and bad, the Jedi and the Sith, the force and its dark side. My personal interpretation is that Luke's statement that the Jedi need to die is a reckoning with the black and white thinking of the past. Obi-Wan once said, that only a Sith deals in absolutes but on more than one occasion the Jedi did this as well, when they for example said that someone who was once tempted by the dark side, can not be redeemed, or when Yoda said „do or do not. There is no try.“ The truth Luke learned was, that the force itself is amoral, and that both the Jedi and the Sith can be arrogant and ruthless in their actions. He is convinced that as long as Jedi exist, there will be people who get tempted by the dark side.

For the first time, not only in the expanded universe, but actually in a movie, so as canon as it an get, the Jedi's ideology is scrutinised. Not only that. It is questioned by Luke Skywalker himself.

We also learn that Rey's parents were complete nobodies. Kylo Ren however is the son of Han and Leia. He is the heir of both Skywalker and Solo, and yet he was tempted by the dark side, or rather in a morally grey area. The message could not be clearer. Heritage means nothing.

At that one scene where Rose keeps Finn from sacrificing himself to destroy this weapon of the First Order, I at first could not decide if it's brilliant or stupid. Sometimes, and especially to win a war, sacrifices are nessecary, but if everyone sacrifices themselves in order to survive it kinda defeats the purpose, so I can't help but agreeing with her.

If I have anything negative to say about it, I'd say that it could have been at least 30 minutes shorter. The Finn and Rose scenes as well as the final showdown have a pretty problematic pacing.

And yeah it is a little irritating how good Rey is with literally everything, from lightsaber fighting to using the force. Things that normally take years, she manages within a short amount of time, depending on how convenient it is for the plot. Many people already called her a Mary Sue character and I can see why.

But maybe this is the point. Luke in his exile shares some similarities with the protagonist of Friedrich Nietzsche's „Thus spoke Zarathustra“. They both live as eremits and they both in a way speak about the death of God, which stands for the fall of an old belief system leaving us in a state of nihilism.

If you look at it that way, Rey could be a quite literal representation of the Übermensch, a being that actively overcomes nihilism and leads humanity to a new moral system that is beyond the categories of good and evil from the Jedi's perspective. She is not a superhuman because she is extremely powerful but rather because she realises a deeper truth, that the force can not guide her to what's right or wrong and that she has to figure this out for herself.

But if we consider what happens in the final scene in which the children draw hope from the old stories about the Jedi, this theory either falls completely apart or the movie totally misunderstood what Nietzsche was trying to say.

What the movie did surprisingly well was that it deviates from everything that came before where it needed to do that, while keeping true to its legacy. It may not be perfect, but I prefer this over the prequel trilogy anytime.

#spoilers #starwars #thelastjedi #rey #finn #lukeskywalker #kyloren #yoda #leia

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onwardintolight · 4 years

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Canon Catchup

With TROS coming out soon, I’ve been doing a lot of catchup on canon material that I’ve missed, particularly that which I think will be most relevant either for the movie or for Resistance Reborn (which I finished yesterday and will talk more about below). I will avoid major spoilers, as excited as I may be about some of them, haha, but I wanted to write out a few of my thoughts here while they’re fairly fresh.

A Crash of Fate by Zoraida Córdova and Galaxy’s Edge by Delilah Dawson—these don’t seem quite as relevant to TROS, but I read these two Galaxy’s Edge tie-in novels a few months ago and I thought I’d say a few words. I REALLY enjoyed the A Crash of Fate; it was such a lovely, heartwrenchingly beautiful story that reminded me a little of Lost Stars in the way that it focused in on a friendship/romance between two people who wouldn’t ever be main characters in the movies. The story was told primarily over the span of a single day, and wow did I not expect my heart to be pulled in so many different directions. Definitely one I will read again and again.

I’m not sure I’ll do the same with Galaxy’s Edge. It was a super fun read, with some great, Indiana Jones-like action sequences, and I’d recommend giving it a go especially if you’re planning on ever going to Galaxy’s Edge—but it also had a few seriously problematic elements that I just couldn’t overlook. For one, NO WAY is Leia going to force Vi to work closely with someone who tortured her, and speaking of torture, many black people have already commented on the problematic nature of the excessive violence Vi undergoes in this book.

TFA and TLJ Junior Novelizations by Michael Kogge—I wanted to get a refresher on these stories, and since I’d never read the junior versions, I decided to give them a try. Overall I enjoyed these quite a bit. The TFA one was way better imho than the adult novelization by Alan Dean Foster, and both had some really meaningful character moments. There was one Leia scene at the end of the TFA one that brought me to tears.

Aftermath: Life Debt and Aftermath: Empire’s End by Chuck Wendig—I’d originally read the Aftermath trilogy as each book was released, but with everything I was hearing about Resistance Reborn, AND with the return of Palpatine in TROS and the promise of finally figuring out what’s been going on in the Unknown Regions, I thought it was a perfect time to revisit it. I skipped the first one (my least favorite of the three, and also my copy is in a box somewhere from when we moved last and the library’s audiobook copies were checked out) and read a synopsis instead to refresh my memory, then dived straight into Life Debt. Both of these books were as good or better than I remember them. I enjoyed them the first time, but I enjoyed them even better this time around. I feel like they’ve gained even more significance now. My HanLeia shippy heart is happy with some of their scenes, and also I rediscovered that I absolutely adore and would probably die for Norra, Wedge, Jas, Sinjir, Temmin, and crew.

Spark of the Resistance by Justina Ireland—this was a super cute but ultimately rather forgettable junior novel. The best part about it was seeing Rey, Poe, and Rose interacting. I may revisit it sometime after TROS and see if my unexpectedly skyrocketing feels for these characters (see below) makes it better.

The Poe Dameron comic run—I’d previously read the first trade (Black Squadron), the third (Legend Lost), and maybe a tiny bit of the second (The Gathering Storm), and aside from a really poignant bit in Legend Lost I just didn’t find myself very invested. This time around, however, flipped that on its head. Trades 4 and 5 (Legend Found and The Spark and the Fire) completely did me in, and without warning, I found myself 100% invested in Black Squadron. Poe, Jess, Snap, Karé, Suralinda, and L’ulo have officially joined the Aftermath crew in my list of characters I would die for. I just want all my babies to be okay! There were numerous moments in those last two trades (including the AMAZING Annual #2, a must-read for HanLeia new canon fans) which made me cry. I’m not even joking. So good. Well done, Charles Soule.

Resistance Reborn by Rebecca Roanhorse—Buckle up because I have a lot to say! I HIGHLY recommend reading the Aftermath trilogy, Bloodline, the Poe Dameron comics, and watching the Battlefront II campaign (which I talked about in another post) before reading this because HOLY MOLY. You won’t be lost if you don’t, but it will mean so much more to you if you do. Speaking of crying, I literally lost count of the moments that brought me to tears, and so many were significant because of how all the stories I mentioned and more have been so beautifully interconnected in this one. Wedge and Norra, Zay and Shriv, and so many others—each was given their due and it was amazing. One character’s surprise appearance had me practically on my knees with joy and heartbreak all at once, and I would say more but I’m really trying to keep that promise not spoil you, haha.

If the Poe Dameron comic weren’t enough to win me over, this book has officially cemented Poe as one of my favorite sequel trilogy characters. Tbh, I’ve had trouble feeling much of a deep connection with any of the sequel trilogy leads—I love them, sure, but not like Leia, Han and Luke, the trio I grew up with. I’ve wanted to love them more, I’ve wanted to be more invested in them, but it just hasn’t happened. I’m really glad I read this book before TROS, because I think this has changed that. I was definitely getting a few OT golden trio vibes with Rey, Finn, and of course, my Boi™ Poe—except they’re completely their own characters, and I’m really starting to love them for who they are.

Overall, I absolutely loved this book, it felt really meaningful, and I can’t wait to read it again.

That being said, when I finished it yesterday I felt a little bit disappointed, like it tasted a little bit bittersweet. I’m still trying to figure out why that is, but I think it may be down to three things:

1) Though there were a number of fantastic character reveals, there were some obvious people absent and I can’t help but wonder where they are. I hope they’re not dead. I hope TROS includes some of these characters, too. I hope we get the rest of their stories either way.

2) The book is way too short. Especially on the heels of the Aftermath trilogy, this feels like only the first act of at least three. The ending comes way too soon, just after it really seems to get going. This I don’t blame the author or the publishers for at all; they are very limited, after all, in what they can portray leading up to TROS. But it really left me longing for more. This book had such a wonderful focus on character, but in the end, I wanted to see the character arcs get even more resolved than they do here... but I guess they really couldn’t be, and that’s what TROS is for. I just hope the movie does it well! I need all these people to be okay <3

3) It doesn’t shy away from grief, struggle, and the mental cost of war. Honestly, that’s part of why I love it so much, but I think that’s also part of why it left me feeling a little melancholy. The Resistance is in such a seemingly hopeless place, and while things do get better over the course of the book, there’s still such a terribly long way to go.The First Order rains merciless terror on anyone or any planet who gives even the slightest hint of opposing them or of aiding the Resistance. The whole galaxy is afraid. Poe struggles deeply with guilt and with how to make up for the horrible mistakes he made in TLJ (this is not brushed off in the slightest, not by the book or by the characters in it, and I appreciate that). Rey is confused and still unsure of her place in things. Characters are faced with the fact that they will almost certainly die because of their choice to join the Resistance, and it’s heavy. And Leia. Oh, Leia. I am deeply grateful to Roanhorse for her very realistic portrayal of Leia as someone who has lost so incredibly much (most recently her husband and brother), most definitely has PTSD, and probably is dealing with a bit of depression. Leia is weary. Leia struggles to keep stepping forward, struggles to figure out the next step for those she leads. Leia struggles to keep hoping. The battle between hope and despair in the face of terrible loss and terrible odds is very much felt in this book. But as ever with Leia, hope always wins in the end. By the end of the book, you can still feel the struggle, but hope wins.

I think that because I personally relate so much to Leia, reading some of that was hard. Not because I feel like it’s contrary to who Leia is, but because I resonate with it so much and because it reminds me in a particularly strong way of some of the struggles I’ve dealt with that I’d like to forget. It’s no wonder that my heart felt heavy after I closed the book. But along with that, I also see how Leia perseveres, how she’s finally gotten to a place where she lets herself rely on and be comforted by others, and how she accomplishes the seemingly impossible just because she damned well refuses to give in to despair, no matter how tempting it may be. It reminds me that I, too, can accomplish incredible things despite all my struggles, despite the odds stacked against me.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book. Resistance Reborn hasn’t quite come up to the level of Bloodline or LPOA in my personal ranking, but with future rereads, it very well might someday.

This book—along with all of this reading—has put me even more on the edge of my seat for TROS than I was before, if that’s possible. I desperately want it to be the best ending possible for the Skywalker Saga and for all these characters who’ve become so beloved to me. I’m trying to temper my expectation—TFA still isn’t especially my jam, after all, and while overall I’m a fan of the ST (the TROS trailers made me cry, for goodness sakes), I have a somewhat complicated relationship with it in general—but goddammit, I’m hoping anyway. There’s so much beautiful setup in the new canon EU, such a deliberate focus on character, and so many hints that this might reach through the whole saga and bring together something bigger than we can imagine.

I’m hoping anyway.

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atamascolily · 4 years

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Continuing with The Vein of Gold exercise, more films, more themes. I’m so predictable, y’all.

(Aka what Captain America has in common with Matilda)

9. Matilda

Nobody does montages like this film. There are at least three, and they’re all amazing.

10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (live action I, II, and III)

(I didn’t hallucinate these films, okay??)

11. The Shadow

12. Jurassic Park

13. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

This particular gif looks like it ought to be Renaissance painting or something.

14. Night at the Museum

15. Hanna

Apparently, freeway fight scenes are a thing for me? They’re a staple of CA:TWS, along with Terminator and the Matrix films. Not to mention a lot of the Inception set pieces. Basically, if a film is set in modern times and has any action scenes whatsoever, I want one on a freeway, kthanx. Maybe because I hate being stuck in traffic? Or maybe just because it looks cool?

Identity issues: boy does CA:TWS have them in spades. From Bucky’s brainwashing--”Who’s Bucky?”--to Natasha’s ��Who do you want me to be?” questions abound. Natasha is constantly changing her identities--literally in the climax--and her hacking saves the day. Her final scene is very reminiscent of Sarah Connor’s in Terminator, too. For the first time, Steve faces an opponent who’s literally his equal and opposite, so the doubling/duality motif is reminiscent. And the Winter Soldier is also a slightly-more-human version of the Terminator! He even has a metal arm and programming!

Also, the film as a whole is super-suspicious of technology, and there’s the ‘80s references of the old computers in the bunker and “Shall We Play A Game?” Not to mention HYDRA’s surveillance thing is kinda like Skynet, plus they intend to target people for what they might do in the future, and not stuff they’d already done...

(NB: Both Terminator and CA:TWS are thematically reminiscent of Three Days of the Condor--which I have not seen, but have read the novelization. I fucking hate Condor, because it is such an obvious Male Fantasy, with an obvious Male Gaze, Cardboard Cutout Female Characters and a Doormat Obligatory Love Interest. Maybe the movie is better?? God, I hope so. But aside from its initial premise, Condor is thoroughly grounded in “the real world,” lacking super-soldiers or robots to make it engaging for me.)

What can I say about the three live-action TMNT films? Um, so they tap into the “underground” theme I have going, and also “nifty puppets/sfx”, “so much the ‘80s/early ‘90s,” and martial arts mastery. April and Casey are weird foils to Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese, and the Shredder and Darth Vader have a lot in common, as do Splinter and Yoda. April is inducted into the weird alterworld of mutant turtles and yakuza gangs, and the turtles get mistaken for entertainers/performers at several key points across the three films. The first two films are set in New York, with a focus on sewers and urban squalor, but also a pastoral retreat to April’s family farm during the training montage/rest and recovery sequence. Leonardo--always my favorite--communicates telepathically with Master Splinter, and the turtles stage a rescue like Luke tries in ESB and succeeds (on several occasions) in ROTJ. There’s a constant tension between maintaining the masquerade and uncovering the truth. There’s even a time-travel plot to take them back to medieval Japan, thus melding all of the themes/motifs together!

Not to mention the radioactive ooze that creates the turtles in the first place as a comment on questionable tech--it also creates some of the antagonists in The Secret of the Ooze AND GIANT MUTANT DANDELIONS.And there’s a sequence where they break into a lab full of early ‘90s computers that could be straight out of Jurassic Park. So, um, yeah, about that....

Jurassic Park: amazing sfx and puppetry. Human interactions with the other--usually but not always negatively. Badass botanist (wish Ellie were the main character instead of Grant but still!). Ominous jungle setting. Tension between science/tech and biology. Mutations as a plot point. “Life, uh, finds a way.” A corporate museum getting trashed by a T-rex in the climax--contrast with Night at the Museum, for a more docile take on the same motif! Tension between the truth and maintaining the masquerade. The perils of corporate power--see Ian Malcolm’s speech on the importance of moral responsibility and power. (Yes, he is an asshole and the author mouthpiece, but he’s also Jeff Goldblum, so he gets away with it.) Contrast this with Cyberdyne System in Terminator, and HYDRA’s surveillance system in CA:TWS. Also, shirtless Jeff Goldblum - contrast with the male nudity in Terminator, and Captain America’s and Luke Skywalker in tank tops and short sleeves. Also, “Dinosaur eats man / Woman inherits the earth” exchange. And GIANT REPTILES just like TMNT!

The Shadow: huge Asian/martial arts influence on the hero. Rigorous training with mystics in the wilderness. Psychic powers. Secret identity, keeping up appearances, and maintaining the masquerade. Self/shadow--it’s the hero’s superhero NAME; IT’S NOT SUBTLE. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? THE SHADOW KNOWS! *ominous cackling* Fabulous fashion. Plot points involving a sarcophagus and busting into a museum (paging Night at the Museum). Amazing scenery, especially all of the hotel sequences. As always, I’m more interested in the female side character--in this case, Margo Lane--than anything else. Also, a scientist character played by Ian McKellen with questionable tech!

(I will never claim this film is good, and it has a TON of problematic elements, but even so, it made an impression on me, especially since I had been listening to a lot of vintage “The Shadow” radio dramas before I saw this, so I was familiar with The Shadow’s basic schtick. Also, even though it sounds like a cliche, The Shadow pretty much invented all the superhero tropes, so technically Batman and Dr. Strange owe him a debt and not the other way around... )

Hanna is very similar to Terminator, CA:TWS, and Matrix in that it features a protagonist being relentlessly hunted--in this case, by government agents very similar to those in the latter two films, only played by Cate Blanchett. Amazing underground lair/chase sequence, plus a fight in a German subway station; not to mention great desert sequences (hi, Star Wars!) and an abandoned theme park.

Matilda: the power of reading, a young girl saving the day because Adults Are Useless, classics references, newts, telekinesis. Like Steve Rogers, refuses to be cowed or lie, even when it would be in her own best interest to give in to tyranny. Interesting foil with Hanna, in that both are named after their super-powered protagonist, only Hanna’s powers are all based in incredible violence. Hanna is also wrestling with the question of who she is and what her purpose is in life, and she’s a survivor, just like Sarah Connor in Terminator. Also, a question of heritage and origins, as in Star Wars.

Night at the Museum: I usually don’t like Ben Stiller, and I think this movie would be stronger with a different lead actor, but Robin Williams is great as Teddy Roosevelt (mentor figure!) and it’s a natural history museum coming to life after hours with a giant T-Rex skeleton. Also, the miniatures are hysterical, and Akmenrah is great (contrast with The Shadow for their museum MacGuffin, too). Great sfx, too. Contrast with Jack Pumpkinhead and the Gump in Return to Oz, too. See also Steve stealing his uniform out of the Smithsonian in CA:TWS. It’s also a Found Family (or Family Reclaiming, depending on your point of view) along with The Secret Garden, and Matilda, and Star Wars and...

Anyway, I’m pretty sure a bot armed with this information could be used to generate stories tailor-made for me, which is both hilarious and frightening to think about.

Stories: I have a type.

#personal writing meta #favorite gifs #fun with tropes

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monsterislandbuddies · 5 years

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Why the Trendmasters “Godzilla Wars” Package Design is Awful

Before we start, an important note about context...

In the 1990s, now-defunct toy company Trendmasters released several waves of Godzilla action figures in the United States. For the purposes of my upcoming criticisms, context is extremely important: from the mid-1980s to 1998 (when Tristar’s Godzilla film hit theaters), there wasn’t much Godzilla activity in the states. Most Americans were unaware of the new movies being produced in Japan, and aside from a Nike commercial here or an MTV Lifetime Achievement award there, Godzilla was rarely on the minds of the average American.

Therefore, for this deep dive, please keep in mind that Trendmasters already had an uphill battle as there were no movies, comics, video games, or TV shows to support their first waves of Godzilla toys. They were riding almost entirely on Godzilla’s position as a tremendously recognizable IP.

The first Trendmasters line of action figures were under the name “Godzilla: King of the Monsters”, with the second main line being “Godzilla Wars” in 1995. I recently added a “Godzilla Wars” Baragon to my collection (seen above), and I couldn’t help but study its packaging. Out of the gate, I like how I was able to remove Baragon without damaging the box at all. But other than that, I found the box art and copy to be so atrocious that I personally believe it stunted the success of this toy launch. Everything I’m going to say is based on my own opinions but I do want to note - without divulging too much personal information - that my career is in this field and has been for over a decade. That doesn’t make me automatically right, so in the end, I invite you all to share your thoughts! Now, let’s begin...

What's the “Story” Here?

Let’s break down the act of marketing an action toy line to it’s bare bones: most lines have a main hero, and then the main adversary. They’re the two figures kids should want first (and the two toys your company is almost guaranteed to sell). He-Man and Skeletor. Optimus Prime and Megatron. Luke and Darth Vader. In a Godzilla line, the prime character (and probably the only one kids have any vague familiarity with) is Godzilla. After Godzilla, where do you go? What are the “Godzilla Wars”? Let’s investigate.

This art includes Godzilla, as it should. Behind him is... a second Godzilla? With a spike of some sort on his head? Remember: this is 1995. It would still be a few years before Godzilla Vs. Space Godzilla would come to America on VHS. In the states, most people don’t understand who that character is. Is it a supercharged Godzilla? Or is it the foe we’re going to war with? Maybe the back of the packaging will offer some help...

There’s no story synopsis on the back, and that’s sometimes okay... but in this case--where the toys have no support in other media--a brief synopsis is a good idea. Even a blurb under the logo would be helpful. For example (off the top of my head):

Earth’s armies are helpless as giant-sized aliens invade with one goal in mind: DESTROY. Only Godzilla and his friends are powerful enough to defend our planet, but will their war save humankind... or end it?

A little blurb like that is a great way to kick-start the imagination and inspire someone to purchase these toys and play out the story. Plus a “war” implies ARMIES, so this incentivizes kids to want to collect as many “soldiers” as possible!

Back to interpreting the story as it’s presented: does the front picture imply that Space Godzilla is the main villain? The back of the box has him all the way in the bottom right corner, so not likely. If he is the main villain, Space Godzilla is better served at the top of one of the two columns (preferably right next to Godzilla). Even better, the columns should be split with heroes on one side, and villains on the other. This will would help kids instantly understand what the sides are in this war.

To understand the story of “Godzilla Wars”, it seems that all we have to go by are the character descriptions, and they are the most offensive part of this entire box...

Who Are These Characters?

I cannot stress this enough: the Heisei era Japanese Godzilla films were not wildly available in America in 1995. For this section, you need to divorce yourself of all of your current Godzilla knowledge and pretend you’re being introduced to many of these characters for the very first time.

In general, Americans read from left to right and top to bottom. The layout of these columns is already confusing because I’m not sure if I should start at Supercharged Godzilla (left) or regular Godzilla (top). Let’s start with regular:

He began life as Godzillasaurus--millions of years ago when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Exposed to radiation in the mid 1950′s, Godzilla--as he came to be called--transformed into a towering monster capable of delivering a devastating atomic blast with his breath. Since then, Godzilla has menaced the cities of Japan and fought off many seemingly unbeatable adversaries, earning him the title, “The King of the Monsters”.

It’s not a bad description of our hero. Personally I would’ve simplified the opening and cut the “Godzillasaurus” stuff:

Once a slumbering prehistoric monster, Godzilla was awakened by man’s atomic testing in the 1950s. Now radioactive with a devastating atomic blast, he has risen to release his fury on all of us! But when Earth is invaded by powerful monsters from far away galaxies, Godzilla may now be our only hope for survival!

This revision quickly explains Godzilla’s origin and ties him to the toy line’s story in a meaningful way. Now let’s see what Supercharged Godzilla is all about:

Caught in the powerflux of Dr. Shiragami’s Re-Genesis trap...

...and I’m already lost. Dr. Shiragami? Powerflux? Re-Genesis trap? I appreciate the attempt at creating a specific explanation for Supercharged Godzilla, but this description has too many unfamiliar ideas and can actually intimidate kids away from the toy line. Always keep it simple:

Godzilla’s heart is a full-blown nuclear reactor, and to stay energized, the king of the monsters needs to feed off of our power plants! But when he absorbs too much energy, Godzilla’s skin turns black and his atomic powers temporarily DOUBLE in strength!

A nice, easily digestible explanation like this is much more inviting to children. Now for Mothra’s blurb (the first non-Godzilla description a kid might read):

Hatched form an egg that flew from space, Mothra fires an ultra-sonic wave beam of considerable destructive force from his antennae. The poisonous powder stored in his wings can temporarily paralyze the muscles in Godzilla’s body, and neutralize Godzilla’s atomic blast.

There are three things I would immediately change: first, I’d remove the “space” part of Mothra’s origin. Remember, in my Godzilla Wars, the alien invaders are the bad guys... and we want Mothra to fight for good! Second, I don’t see any reason Mothra can’t be a female here. Last: why is half of this description about how Mothra can attack Godzilla when they’re on the same side? I suggest:

Worshiped by natives as a goddess on the secluded Infant Island, Mothra has been a spiritual protector of the Earth for thousands of years. She saved Japan from one of Godzilla’s earliest attacks, but now they must work together to defend our planet from dangerous new foes.

Since there’s a chance people might be more familiar with Mothra (due to seeing Showa-era films on broadcast television or posters in video stores), her position on the packaging roster is not bad. Who’s next?

Well this is an odd (but at least familiar) bunch of characters to present in this order. Rodan’s blurb isn’t great, but it’s also not offensive so I’m going to skip that one. This brings us to King Ghidorah, and oh-boy:

Engineered by the Earth Union Organization in the year 2204 as a bio-weapon with which to destroy Japan, three Dorats were sent back in time to the 1940′s where they fused into the three-headed King Ghidorah! But the EUO’s plan to destroy Japan was soon put to an end by the mighty Godzilla!

Questions: why would the Earth Union Organization want to DESTROY Japan? What’s a dorat? Why did they send them to 1940, and how’d they get back to the present? I appreciate how Trendmasters wanted to respect the source material, but that source material was only available in Japan at this point! Without context, King Ghidorah’s description is puzzling. It’s also not a good idea to imply that this character was already defeated.

Further, like Mothra, there’s a chance people might actually recognize King Ghidorah. Therefore, it’s a smart idea to stick to the Showa-origin for this character and (again) keep it simple. I submit:

One of the most dangerous monsters in the universe, King Ghidorah has traveled across numerous planets and galaxies leaving only a path of destruction behind. Now, this three-headed monstrosity has landed on Earth, and it will take the combined forces of ALL of our mightiest monsters to stop him!

No more implying that King Ghidorah was already defeated; instead, let’s beef him up. If anything, look at it from a commerce angle: Godzilla can’t defeat King Ghidorah on his own, kiddies... you’re going to need to buy him some help!

Mecha-King Ghidorah’s blurb is also problematic:

After a losing battle with Godzilla, Ghidorah lay at the bottom of the ocean. The Earth Union Organization salvaged the battered bio-weapon and gave it a new life as Mecha-King Ghidorah--an even more powerful Cyber-Monster--and returned him back in time to face Godzilla!

This is a tricky one. We just read a blurb about King Ghidorah, and now we’re reading about how he already lost a battle with Godzilla. We don’t want to make King Ghidorah sound weak right out of the gate, but how else do you describe his cyber transformation? I say keep it vague:

The only thing more powerful than King Ghidorah is the enhanced Mecha-King Ghidorah! This near-invincible cyber monster is faster, stronger, and worst of all, SMARTER. But who provided all of these mechanical upgrades? Is someone on Earth rooting for the space monsters to win?

A smarter King Ghidorah? A human conspiracy? Just writing that made me want to go home and start playing with my toys! Here’s what they have for Mecha-Godzilla:

In 1992, the Godzilla Force recovered the remains of the decimated Mecha-Ghidorah...

Hold up. So you mean to tell me that my King Ghidorah action figure was already defeated, and he became Mecha-King Ghidorah, and now THAT character was “decimated”? Why would I want to buy any of these toys if they’re all defeated already? The box copy already had my play time for me!

Now we’ve got a couple of characters who are very likely new to Americans: Battra and Biollante. I think Battra’s description is decent; we understand that he’s evil, and we understand his relation to Mothra.

Biollante, on the other hand, starts off with a very confusing statement:

Biollante is the genetic combination of a plant, a human and the mighty Godzilla himself.

Reading that (and seeing Biollante’s human-like legs), I would assume that she used to be some type of mad scientist who injected both plant and Godzilla DNA into herself only to mutate into Biollante! To avoid confusion, I would remove that first sentence entirely and start with the next one:

Created by Dr. Shiragami in an effort to produce an immortal plant, Biollante instead grows to become a giant monster of unthinkable power!

There’s Dr. Shiragami again. As you might have guessed, I would remove his name (and just have it say “Created by a team of geneticists”). To fit the “alien invasion” narrative I pitched earlier, I’d also throw in a line such as:

Now, Biollante has sided with the alien army, united by their hatred of Godzilla and ANY monster that stands in their way!

Gigan’s description is decent, so let’s jump ahead to the last three monsters.

Anguirus is the first and only monster described as an ally of Godzilla. I also believe his description to be the best one currently on the box. It’s the only one to mention Monster Island, it guesses (but doesn’t confirm) his origin, it explains his relationship to Godzilla, and it explains his skill set. The only change I’d suggest is shortening the word count 2-3 lines.

Moguera, on the other hand, is an assault of overwhelming information.

The newest and most powerful of all Godzilla destroying weapons created by the U.N.G.C.C (United Nations Godzilla Countermeasures Center), Moguera is actually two ultra war vehicles: The Land Moguera and the Star Falcon.

In all of these descriptions combined, we’ve been introduced to THREE human organizations with the exact same goal: destroy Godzilla. In my opinion, only G-Force should be involved with this universe. "G-Force” is easy to read, it’s easy to remember, and Trendmasters already had some G-Force-related toys at this point so there IS a little familiarity.

Second, unless the toy itself can split into two vehicles and recombine into Moguera, I would leave this transformation line out of the description entirely. In a void, it reads like this will be a feature of the Moguera toy, and that’s misleading.

FINALLY we get to SpaceGodzilla (remember him? He’s the guy on the front of the box art with Godzilla). And guess what’s in the very first sentence? “The dead monster Biollante...”. Another monster is already dead! That’s four in total! Why would I want to ask for toys that are already dead?

Here’s something you may have not noticed: this is the Baragon box we’re looking at, and Baragon’s nowhere to be found in the character roster on the back! Neither are Megalon or Varan, who are also in the Godzilla Wars toy line.

Size Matters

Before we wrap this up, I want to show you one more thing real quick. Look at this packaging for the American Dreamworks Ultraman line. I’m not suggesting that this is far superior box art, but one element I really like is the inclusion of the skyline at the bottom of the box. This visual helps you immediately understand that these are GIANT characters.

I like the Trendmasters Godzilla toys themselves (for what they are), but there’s nothing in the presentation to help me remember that these are giant monsters I’m playing with. Even some simple art on the front or back of a couple of buildings around Godzilla would be helpful. I know that most people understand that Godzilla is enormous, but the added visual would sure make for a great reminder that this toy can theoretically CRUSH every other toy I own.

In Conclusion

Godzilla is one of the most recognizable fictional characters in the world, and in my opinion, there’s no reason this popularity can’t thrive in mainstream American culture. Toy companies who are marketing toward kids need to find a balance of giving kids enough context so they’re attracted to new characters, while also leaving OUT enough information so the kids’ imaginations can fill in the blanks.

More important, if you hand kids a conflict and the beginning of a story, it’ll excite them into engaging with the toy line by keeping the story going. Think about it: without a story, why exactly IS “Godzilla Wars” different than the previous Trendmasters toy line?

The primary purpose of this post is to let all of these thoughts spill out of my noisy head... but the second purpose is to hopefully inspire you to think a little more about packaging: when you’re attracted to toy packaging, can you pinpoint why? What kind of elements repel you? And as a G-Fan, what do you think American-produced Godzilla toys can do yo appeal to broader audiences?

Action figures can be works of art, and their packaging can be too. I hope this stream of consciousness will get you thinking about it - even if you disagree with everything I’ve said.

Thank you for hearing my thoughts!

-MIB

#godzilla #trendmasters #advertising #marketing #package art #vintage #1995 #godzilla wars #mothra #rodan #spacegodzilla #King Ghidorah #king of the monsters #Mechagodzilla #battra #anguirus #biollante #varan #megalon

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jackiestarsister · 4 years

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My thoughts on “The Rise of Skywalker”

I just saw The Rise of Skywalker with my friend @ewoking-on-sunshine. I’m still processing it, but I have many thoughts. Spoilers below the cut.

It’s not a perfect movie. But I enjoyed it and am, for the most part, satisfied. All I wanted was for it to be enjoyable and make sense and bring some resolution to the story. I think it succeeded overall.

I feel like I can’t complain too much, because the biggest things I wanted to happen did happen: we got Ben’s redemption, a freaking Reylo kiss, and Ben smiling. We even got beautiful things I wasn’t expecting, like Han’s scene, and the revelation that Leia trained as a Jedi for a time. I think it can stand on its own as a story in itself, though The Last Jedi may remain my favorite installment as far as story craft.

Here are my miscellaneous thoughts and opinions:

~ Much of it feels like fan fiction. Whether that is good or bad, I’m not sure. It could just be that the fans were particularly good at predicting possible developments and the general direction of the story.

~ Nothing was revealed about Kylo’s style/method of governing, or whether he did anything to expand the First Order’s power as Rey predicted they would do in TLJ

~ Palpatine’s return could have been set up better

~ The symbolism and significance of Kylo killing his abuser is changed, if not completely ruined, since Snoke was Palpatine’s puppet, and Kylo seems to enter Palpatine’s service after learning that he was the one who manipulated him throughout his life. Maybe Kylo thought if he refused he wouldn’t be able to get away alive?

~ Palpatine’s plans are as confusing as ever. Just how much he controlled, what he was aware of, and what his true intentions were is unclear. In particular, I’m confused about the fact that Palpatine made Snoke, who seemed ignorant of Rey’s origins and told Kylo to kill her, and the fact that Palpatine told Kylo to kill Rey when it turned out he wanted her to come and kill him. Were Snoke and/or Palpatine using reverse psychology in giving Kylo those orders?

~ Palpatine probably had the means to prolong and/or restore Padme’s life the whole time Vader was trying to find a way to do so

~ It is unclear whether Rey ever told anyone about her bond with Kylo or how he killed Snoke (which is pretty relevant information for the Resistance).

~ It’s unclear whether Rey and Kyko have seen or felt each other through the Force at all in the past year. Each movie shows several Force bond connections in a short period of time (one or two days each), and that would add up to a lot in a year, so I’m guessing they didn’t have any for that interim. It seems that although Rey closed the door, Kylo opens it. I don’t really like what that implies.

~ The beginning revealed so much and moved from one set of characters to another so quickly that I wondered whether the story was going to continue following the hero/heroine’s journey(s). Eventually it did, but it felt like the strangest beginning for a Star Wars movie, especially compared to the brilliant opening sequence of The Force Awakens.

~ Rey and Poe’s bickering was fun to watch

~ They did pretty well using those bits of Carrie Fisher footage and making Leia’s death play a role in the story. I’m sure if Fisher were still alive they would have had more justice for Leia.

~ I wish Rose had played a bigger part in the story, and that her relationships with other characters had been clarified and explored more.

~ I wish Ben had interacted with other members of the Resistance. He and Finn had so many parallels in their arcs, and the two of them actually had a couple scenes together, but they were always distant, with Finn watching as Rey interacted with Ben.

~ What was Finn going to tell Rey? What was their relationship about when it came down to it? They had such a wonderful dynamic and intertwined arcs in The Force Awakens, but in this installment it felt like they were running parallel to each other.

~ Giving Poe a shady past as a spice smuggler contradicts his canon backstory revealed in Before the Awakening by Greg Rucka.

~ Hux’s death was disappointingly anticlimactic. Seemed like a waste of his character. I’m not sure how I feel about the twist of him being the spy. He seemed so much less the crazed man who fired Starkiller or the calculating menace who considered killing an unconscious Kylo. Before TROS, Hux’s motivations seemed more political and ideological, a contrast to Kylo’s motives which seemed personal.

~ In what capacity did Pryce serve Palpatine in the previous war?

~ The fact that Rey is a Palpatine raises all kinds of questions about her family. There could be a whole trilogy about what kind of relationship Sheev and his child had. I wonder if the mother of his child was Mara Jade or someone like her who worked closely with him. But the mention of cloning and other strange techniques for making or passing on life makes me wonder if his child was even “natural” or somehow made.

~ Rey’s Dark Side heritage makes her affinity with the light side even more ironic and miraculous. Or maybe the irony is that someone as dark as Palpatine could come from such an idyllic utopia as Naboo. Maybe they are trying to show that it is our choices, not our origins, that define us.

~ The fact that Rey is descended from a powerful established character takes away from the idea that Rey represented for me and many others, that a great person can come from humble, unimportant origins.

~ Finn’s arc was opposite of predicted stormtrooper rebellion. The stormtrooper paradox still holds.

~ The hunt for Sith clues doesn’t make sense. It makes even less sense than the search for Luke in TFA, which was full of holes and unexplained coincidences.

~ The way Ben stands on the Death Star looking out at the horizon was 100% Byronic hero, but also similar to Luke’s posture when looking at the Tatooine suns.

~ Seeing Kylo talking to Han and Rey talking to Luke underscored how Kylo and Rey are co-protagonists.

~ How long did Ben stay at the Death Star ruins contemplating his and Rey’s situation? Apparently long enough for Rey to go to Ahch-To, talk to Luke, and go to Exegol, because he arrives there later than her. Time and distance in these movies have never made much sense, but I wonder if there might be some deleted scenes involving Kylo at this point. Did he realize he had lost control of the First Order? Did he ever think about ordering them not to follow Palpatine?

~ Regarding minor pilot characters: Happy to see Wedge Antilles back, sad to see Snap Wexley die.

~ Poe could have had better resolution for his arc as an emerging leader

~ Finn tries once again to sacrifice himself despite what Rose said to him after he tried to do that in TLJ. (While I don’t think it was necessary, Ben’s death was in keeping with her words because he died to save what he loved.)

~ We finally got a Reylo music theme! If I’m not mistaken, it had the Force theme sort of underlying it but there were other things going on too. I look forward to hearing the What the Force podcast’s discussion on this.

~ Rose was right that they would win by “Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.” Rey refused to even hate Palpatine. Ben came to save Rey and that enabled her to save everyone else.

~ My favorite moments of each sequel involve Rey, Ben, and a light saber passing between them.

~ Everything that was said to Rey and Ben about home, family, coming home, coming back ... it was all leading up to their teaming up. Palpatine was wrong when he said he was Rey’s only family. Ben became her family, and that was part of the reason why she took his family name. Whoever wrote the caption “The belonging you seek is in Ben Solo’s arms” was right.

~ We still don’t know what, if any, ideology Ben held, how he felt about political power and different forms of government. That pretty much reinforces my belief that for him this has never been about politics, it’s all been personal for him.

~ Ben’s death is problematic if he is supposed to represent people who have been abused and made poor life choices. It’s a beautiful sacrifice, but did Rey really have to die and necessitate it? She could have been mortally wounded, and he could have healed her without dying himself.

~ If passing his life force to Rey cost his life, Ben should have died before Rey kissed him.

~ Ben’s death is tragic, but not technically a tragedy in the literary sense, because it’s not about learning how to avoid making mistakes like his. For all his faults (narcissism, anger that manifests in violence), Ben didn’t have a particular fatal flaw. He fell because he was a victim of circumstances and forces beyond his control. He died saving the woman he loved, which sounds like a good thing.

~ I’m surprised the Lars homestead was still standing after it seemed to have burned to ash in A New Hope, and I find it difficult to believe that on a planet like Tatooine someone else would not have claimed it.

~ The title refers to both Ben and Rey, since Rey becomes a Skywalker

~ From a certain point of view, Reylos and Rey Skywalkers were both right, and both wrong.

~ Why didn’t Ben become a Force ghost like Luke and Leia? Can he become one in the future? I find the matter of whether a Jedi/Force-user leaves behind their physical body or fades away to become one with the Force, and whether they become capable of manifesting as a ghost, sketchy and inconsistent.

~ What is Rey going to do now? Was she moving into the Lars homestead? Will she raise a family of her own? I think it unlikely that she would fall in love with anyone as deeply as she did with Kylo, and I think she might be hesitant to have biological children who would inherit her (Palpatine) Force abilities, but I can picture her adopting and/or mentoring children.

~ The theme of IX seems to be “You’re not alone,” the way 8’s was “Failure is the greatest teacher.” It is the lesson Rey, Finn, Poe, and Ben each learn. But in the end Rey does seem alone.

~ Rey’s greatest fears were being alone and being insignificant. Is the takeaway supposed to be that she is okay with being alone? That would go against the movie’s overarching theme. Similarly, Star Wars is about family, and while that theme definitely comes through, it would have been so well punctuated if the story ended with the main characters starting families.

~ Nothing was resolved regarding the government(s) of the galaxy. Is it in a state of anarchy now? Were they able to learn from the mistakes of the past two republics?

~ Did Rey, Ben, the Jedi, and/or the Resistance bring balance to the Force? Is the corresponding rise and fall of the light and dark finally over? Will this peace last? Will Rey be the last Jedi or will she pass on their legacy?

~ What was the point of this trilogy as a whole? What message are we supposed to take away from it? Is it still a Prodigal Son type of story?

Now I’m going to spend time thinking about how this will impact my fan fiction and my essays on the Christian themes of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. I will look forward to reading the (apparently expanded edition) novelization and having good quality screenshots and one more Shakespearean parody by Ian Doescher.

#The Rise of Skywalker spoilers

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