#we talked about sw the entire time bc he's been super into sw since he was little and saw me watch a lot of sw

[akari-hope]

I saw a post recently that was talking about how Catra & Zuko’s arcs were both very complex & well-executed, which, yes! Cool, I enjoy seeing favorable comparisons between the two, bc the opposite is FAR more common (w/ Catra & those who relate to her often being the target of contempt.) But then the OP said, “Unlike Zuko, who only ever had Iroh - Catra had many people who care for her. Lonnie, Kyle and Rogelio may not have loved her, but they have their loyalties to the people around them,

2/4  too. Scorpia, a constant source of love and care. Even Adora only gave up on her during the third season only” which kind of sours the post for me tbh. Lonnie (as much as I love her) is canonically shown to bully Catra. She’s apathetic toward her at best & threatening at worst, despite knowing that she’s w/o protection from SW or anyone else. (Hell, she capitalizes on it to assert power by saying just that while others flank her, illustrating Catra’s powerlessness pretty clearly.) Kyle &

3/4  Rogelio were shown as indifferent to her as well. That’s why Lonnie’s, “We were your friends!” line never sat right w/ me- she’s undermined & threatened Catra since they were kids. Scorpia (though I love her too) forced her friendship onto someone who was still wounded & violated Catra’s boundaries again & again despite her clear warnings. I know it’s common to call their friendship not only toxic, but abusive on Catra’s end (& I once thought that myself) but I have to revise that bc abuse is

4/4  predicated on leveraging power & dependence, & neither of them leveraged power over the other or was dependent on the other. I hesitate to even call it a full-fledged friendship. And Adora, in Catra’s mind, gave up on her the second she left the horde, so that point didn’t make since to me, either.

i think i saw the post you’re talking about, and my reason for not engaging with it was the exact same. i’ve never watched atla, so i can’t REALLY speak there (but i am consulting my roommate, who HAS), but the idea that catra had a huge group of people who cared for her is actually funny with how incorrect it is. 

at an ABSOLUTE maximum, she had...3. from the end of season 1 up until the portal, she had adora, scorpia, and entrapta. and even then i have trouble really saying that, bc while adora didn’t hate her they were still on opposite sides of a war, and her betrayal still stung. scorpia cared greatly for catra, but like you said, she was too forceful with it and catra was not ready to really accept something like that. and entrapta...well, while she was never cruel to catra (i like i imagine she genuinely felt a sense of kinship with her), ultimately they just weren’t super close. and like you said, the other cadets weren’t exactly super friendly with her either, with lonnie outright bullying catra. so it’s REALLY hard for me to say she’s got some giant support group. no one is really there to connect with catra, not truly. she’s very alone.

to my understanding of atla, uncle iroh is a figure who is incredibly supportive of zuko. like, completely so. and he always has been. which...catra really just does NOT have a relationship that’s even close to equivalent to that. a long-term support that never wavers or falters, that is on catra’s side and understanding regardless of what she does, even if they do not approve...no, there’s not really anyone who even comes close to that. zuko may only have that singular bond, but the strength of it is what really makes it so powerful. 

and even if catra DID have all those other bonds that op of that post claims she did, the difference is that catra never thought so. zuko always had uncle iroh to depend on and the one time he doubted it, he was still accepted with open arms. but catra always felt alone, and anytime she maybe began to think she wasn’t, she was betrayed, or it was snatched away from her once again. she starts to trust shadow weaver in season 2 and that leads to her escape. she opens up to scorpia in the crimson waste only to have that betrayal come crashing back in her face, with the even worse realization that shadow weaver went running to adora yet again. entrapta trying to stop her from opening the portal, while correct, was yet another betrayal in catra’s eyes. and when she finally pushes scorpia away in season 4, she’s utterly alone. and again, while we have adora’s assertion of “i never hated you” in season 5, that doesn’t mean catra didn’t feel like that bond was thoroughly severed the entire time.

idk, to me it REALLY just feels like catra and zuko are not really comparable characters other than both being people who get redemption. i think it can be fun to put them side by side in order to see how two different forms of redemption can be executed, but the whole compare/contrast thing most people want to do (even though op of the aforementioned post was being positive about both) just doesn’t sit right with me. it always ends up being “who had it easier” it feels. it just doesn’t approach either character with the understanding they deserve.

[permian-tropos]

Ok, my issue with TLJ is the cynical-ness of it. It's written in a way that pokes fun of SW. Like, "all of this is so silly, isn't it. Wink, wink." I don't like how it took the focus off Rey. Ahch-To was filmed from Luke's POV most of the time. I'm not saying TLJ is a bad movie bc it's not! I just felt like I'd been slapped in the face w the fanboy-ness (the ego-ness) of it all. I know you'll break my whole argument down, but maybe I need that.

Can’t help but feel like I’m some kind of TLJ s&m dominatrix now like “this movie made you feel bad and you should be grateful” lmao 

TL;DR: As I experienced it, the movie is actually super sappy and in love with the sincerity of Star Wars just like TFA but taking its own route to convey it. instead of TFA, it’s framed to first appeal to and then sway the minds of an imagined cynical audience, and that audience might actually be 12 year olds and if so, that’s as it should be.

A point about the cynical-ness – it’s interesting you’re talking about the poking fun at SW, since the other way people have called it cynical would be in its depiction of failures and loss. To that, I would argue that it only seems especially dark because the end of the story hasn’t come yet. Which… the movie actually addresses in its story, the “hope is like the sun” line is kind of nudging the audience like “hey the heroes are in a bad spot but they’ll win in the end, don’t forget that”. 

It would be patronizing but… this movie is meant to be seen by 12 year olds as well as adults so maybe it’s okay that it’s kinda blunt about some things? Star Wars actually draws in a much younger audience than I think other PG-13 level movies do. Hiding all the messages in subtext isn’t fair to them so I think people get tripped up with TLJ thinking that it’s not saying exactly what it seems to be saying, and just communicating that message on a myriad of levels.

Like as someone who has written so many metas about TLJ – a lot of my analysis boils down to “I don’t think the movie is hiding its message very much, it’s kind of all right there, but there’s also a lot of extra layers enhancing it”. 

When the movie goes, “this is so silly, isn’t it?” (and also it doesn’t do that nearly as much as I’ve seen in some franchises) I sort of imagine what a 12 year old, having grown up in this cynical age of deconstruction of sincerity, and also being right at that age where you might look at your younger childhood loves and think “so silly”, would take from it. I don’t see them being so hurt or offended. They aren’t nostalgic for the OT yet. Their nostalgia fodder is being formed as these movies are coming out. Actually I remember being 12 and being oversensitive to people bashing sincerity – because all my peers were 100% in love with cynicism and I was well uhhh neurodivergent and at a different stage of emotional development.

Older people have a very different relationship to their childhood, often longing for the simplicity of it, or cherishing the joys. But you have to have some distance to really see that. Many movies for a pre-teen or young teen audience are about reminding them not to be too cynical, while showing an understanding of their sense of cynicism. They’re about telling kids “hey I get it but don’t rush into adulthood too fast”.

The Last Jedi concludes on sincerity, really bluntly. Rose saving Finn is about rejecting the nihilism of “the only way to prove you care about a cause is to die for it” – this isn’t true, and it’s why Holdo’s sacrifice isn’t the same. Holdo is deliberately trying to save the fleet, but the First Order, when you think about it, has cornered the Resistance on Crait whether they blast open the doors right away or besiege them for days. Finn’s sacrifice would actually just delay the inevitable and that’s not worth dying for. And “saving what we love” is this deeply sincere message.

Poe getting to save the Resistance by noticing the vulptices are leading them towards the exit is super sincere, that’s so freaking corny, it’s unreal. Cute animal friends save the day. 

Rey and Finn’s reunion is CORN HEAVEN it’s literally every run-into-your-beloved’s-arms scene (actually my first association with it is how the movie Madagascar parodies that trope with the zebra and the lion whose names I am not going to bother to remember). Rey lifting all those rocks is sincere, Luke mocks her earlier for claiming the Force is about that but guess what? It is about that! And it looks awesome and it saves everyone’s lives. Leia telling Rey “we have everything we need” is optimistic. It’s saying they’re not going to wallow in their losses. They will keep moving forward, they will take strength from failure, not despair.

Luke starts off the film thinking heroism is meaningless. He ends the film doing exactly what he said would be absurd – walking out with a laser sword and facing down the First Order. He starts off filmed with this shroud of overcast shadow around him, and ends with his face illuminated by nostalgic callback to the twin suns of Tatooine. Yoda even encourages him to remember his youthful dreams and desire for adventure – stop being such a cynic, Young Skywalker, I know you’re still that boy who stares at the horizon. 

And of course, the entire last scene with the slave kids is painfully adoring of Star Wars and its importance to kids. It’s wretchedly corny. I’ve said it elsewhere but the slope of the floor, leading up to a field of stars, actually parallels the slope of the opening crawl. That’s how meta the cinematography went. It went there, it poked that fourth wall. The movie ends with a promise that any little child who loves Star Wars is as special as the saga’s heroes, and that’s actually the most sappy thing in the Whole Entire Saga. 

So the movie basically argues with a hypothetically cynical audience. And if it feels weird, like it’s assuming you’re cynical (which is insulting because no, you unironically adore Star Wars, thank u v much)… I suppose maybe give the movie a fair shake and remember its most important audience is 12 year olds, who have all their little quirks and emotional hangups. No matter what this movie means to you, it will never ever compare to the place it will hold in the hearts of its preteen audience. That’s how Star Wars is supposed to be.

I have no idea the consensus on this film from 12 year olds but I really hope they don’t get overwhelmed by 20-somethings pressuring them to hate it.

Side note on “Ahch-To was filmed from Luke’s POV” – I’m pretty sure it’s the opposite?? people ran into this before where they thought the movie was siding with Kylo and showing his POV when he’s never the POV. Do people just have it backwards? Please okay I feel weird breaking something so simple down but…. the character that is being stared at a lot by the camera is the Object. The character who you presume to be doing the staring is the Subject and POV. Rey is the subject and Luke is the object. Rey is the subject and Kylo is the object.

The fact that the two leading white men of the movie are almost always Object is, I think, actually a point of confusion, because that’s not how it ever is, but it’s how it is in TLJ. They’re not being favored over Rey, we’re seeing her perception of them, so she’s even closer to the audience than they are. Except for the Luke and Yoda scene, nearly everything from Ahch-To is from Rey’s perspective. She seems invisible because she’s actually omnipresent. It is highly unfamiliar to have a woman seem invisible for that reason, but this is a thing I’m super confident about. 

Rey is POV, as she should be of course, and actually she is more POV than in The Force Awakens because Finn gets that role a lot more and he gets that role when he’s with her. We’re probably actually used to Rey-as-Object despite thinking of her as the protagonist because she’s framed like that in TFA. I’m extremely pleased that Episode 9 will have Finn and Rey in an adventure together, but it wasn’t even that bad to have them apart for one movie because it let us get to know Rey on her own terms. 

I could honestly go through the whole sequel trilogy and break down who is POV in what scene and make some kind of infographic lmao would I actually be that extra TM??? who knows