#there's a whole other category for my sincere dislike of human!bill but that's not germane to these particular questions

[legobiwan]

1-the character everyone gets wrong for Gravity Falls and 16-you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc) for Star Wars ??

The character everyone gets wrong (Gravity Falls)

I want to preface this answer by saying that I think there are a plethora of fantastic Gravity Falls fics, comics, and metas out there that address and explore Stanley's possible mental health issues in light of everything we've learned about his backstory, which is pretty damn bleak. And yes, I do enjoy reading this angst.

The fandom tends to focus on this particular side of Stanley and with good reason - it is absolutely fertile ground for analysis and there is no doubt he is a tortured individual.

But there is a tendency to "blorbo-ize" Stan and his sympathetic history. While he was absolutely forced into some horrendous situations and had to make decisions based solely on survival probability, this is also a man who has a rap sheet a mile long, has outstanding warrants throughout the majority of the country, and is heavily, heavily implied to have been dealing in cartel business.

You don't get that far in these circles without having a backbone of steel and the capacity to do some seriously shady - and bloody - shit. Sure, Stan eventually bailed from the more hardcore aspects of his existence. And this isn't to say he's fundamentally a bad person or even liked everything he was doing - but he is a dangerous man, whether that danger comes at the end of a gun barrel or a marked ace of spades.

And I think this aspect of his character gets underplayed in a lot of fandom. (Interestingly enough, Ford is the one who is generally allocated this role, due to his dimensional hobo life on the run. And Ford is a badass, but Stan is equal to his brother in this, albeit in a different context). Stan maybe wants to forget that part of his life (understandable), but he didn't get as far as he did being a criminal (you don't get to rack up that kind of sheet and stay mostly clear of the law without some considerable feats) without developing certain skills and he'd be dead five times over if he weren't some kind of threat. Yes, by the time we meet him in the show, those instincts may have been dulled, likely intentionally, but this is the same man who admits to having 10 firearms in his household, even if his reasoning is (seemingly) ludicrous.

Runners-up: Mabel and the Flanderization of her zaniness. (Let's not forget she put the majority of the puzzle pieces together in Not What He Seems). Ford's seemingly god-like combat skills (the man gets his ass handed to him on multiple occasions in the show and is in constant need of rescue after he comes back from the Portal. Don't get me wrong - I love a badass Ford - but he wasn't exactly batting 1.000 after returning to Gravity Falls).

16. You can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc) (Star Wars)

I fully expect to get pilloried by certain factions of the fandom for this opinion, and to be honest, it's been a long-standing thorn in my side.

The Jedi were not 100% without fault and yes, some of decisions they made fed into their ultimate demise.

Was it deserved? No. Were they evil? No.

Were they a stagnant organization led by a creature who had lived long enough to distance himself from the day-to-day concerns of the majority of mortal beings under his care? Yes. Did they have an effective strategy to combat their massive, massive PR problem - a problem which ended up with them characterized as a baby-snatching cult of superbeings that could easily usurp the will of a (corrupt) Republic government? Nooooo, not at all.

They refused to play politics. Until they had to play politics. And they lost on all sides.

There was so much emphasis on tradition and purity of said tradition in the organization - even if the highest members of the Council didn't necessarily 100% agree with this - the mythology of it was present enough in the Jedi Temple, that constant, subtle pressure to do things in a certain way, to avoid wholly the Dark Side (even if the individual teachings of the Masters went against this). The Jedi wanted to change, but at the same time, couldn't budge the 1,000 ton boulder of their past until it was too late to avoid Palpatine's machinations.

The ultimate tragedy is that the Jedi meant well, but couldn't collectively nudge their organization towards change.

And they did make some baffling decisions - Anakin being allowed to train at all being peak among them. (And then letting Obi-wan - a grieving 25-year old being held hostage by a deathbed promise - to train Anakin, as per the "will of the Force..." This was not well-thought out by anyone involed.)

Dooku had legitimate criticisms of the Order, even if he ultimately expressed his grievances by betraying everyone and everything he loved and aligning himself with an ultimate evil that not even he could overcome. Qui-gon, for all of his many fault, had some great ideas for the Order and should have been on the Council - if for not other reason, than to upset the status quo (and yes, I know he turned it down, and that's another story altogether).

It feels, that in a certain way, the Jedi were crushed by their own mythology, and by the time that leviathan breached the surface, it was far too late for change.

Discussions of the Jedi have a tendency to polarize quickly, and I'd love for there to be more space for exploration of where they did fail without consigning the whole organization to the out-of-touch and evil-by-incompetence box.

(And caveat lector: post this fully admitting I haven't meditated on Star Wars lore in quite some time, so excuse some of the broader strokes of this analysis).

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