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bedlamsbard · 3 years

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I got a couple of different asks about Luke and Ahsoka in other side AU 10, so I guess I will just make it a regular post after all so I can answer all of them at once.

@slecnaztemnot:

Okay i just read your latest other side chapter and I wanted to ask about Ahsoka and Luke dynamics. I wonder what exactly where their heretics disagreemts about the jedi doctrine? while i can guess some of the stuff like attachements i guess i mostly see ahsoka as nonjedi and therefore someone who should not be attached to doctrine about attachements (haha) so i am wondering how you see her. i would actually love your take on how their first meetings went. continued in next ask, 1/2

1/2 continuation since most people write them as Ashoka immediately spilling the beans about the whole Vader situation to Luke and yours Ahsoka didn't. So I am curious what do you think Ahsoka feels about it. I got of course lot of it from the fic itself so i am mostly asking about how did you base your interpretation, if that makes sense and what led you to the narrative choices to portray their relationship in such way.

@comentter:

I'm most interested in what Luke and Ahsoka know about each other. Luke doesn't know much about Ahsoka obviously, but does he have any idea why she seems to hate him? He must be desperate lol. And how much does Ahsoka know about what happened on the DS2? And how much does Kanan know about these events? What was Hera able to tell him and what else did Luke and Ahsoka tell him? I always figure that everyone but Luke and a few people he told (like Leia) think the Emperor and Vader from the DS2 explosion.

I now have this image in my head of Ahsoka spending time with Rex and her laughing as Rex does something like tell a joke or a specific gesture. Then Luke walks by, does the exact same thing and Ahsoka is like "Of course, you'd do this stupid thing, you idiot!" :D

I think shortly before I started writing this sequence I had seen some cute art of Luke and Ahsoka hugging, which is a pretty common art trope and which has never sat quite right with me. I also have the tendency to want to do the opposite of common fanon, which I can’t leave out either. I also wanted to logic out what the hell was going on with Ahsoka’s charaterization in her Mando episode on a Watsonian level rather than a Doylist one (which I did a few weeks ago), even if other side takes place well before Mando and doesn’t intersect with it in any meaningful way.

When it came to the Luke and Ahsoka relationship (or lack thereof), it came down to three questions for me:

Who knows what?

What do they know?

When do they know it?

I made the decision early on in the chapter to leave Leia out of this relationship entirely, since the new canon seems to at this point in time (within a year of RotJ) be keeping it relatively quiet that she and Luke are siblings, and it’s not something that Hera would have a reason to know. (Note also that this entire sequence is told from Hera’s POV, which plays into the “who knows what when” angle.)

As per Rebels S4 (not the epilogue, because Mando’s thrown that out the window), Ahsoka knows (or has good reason to believe) the following:

Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader, Sith Lord

Darth Vader was directly or indirectly responsible for the genocide of the Jedi Order and the deaths of any Jedi who survived the Purge (”you and your Inquisitors saw to that”)

Padme Amidala is dead

Obi-Wan Kenobi is dead (Obi-Wan was not dead, but she has no way to know this)

no Darksider can return to the Light side

At the end of RotJ (not taking into account anything that happened in the comics or ancillary novels, which I’m not up to date on), Luke knows (or has good reason to believe) the following:

Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker

everyone Anakin ever knew is dead, mostly because of him

Vader returned to being Anakin Skywalker at the end of his life

(Leia presumably also knows all of this, perhaps with a few more details based on things her parents might have told her, but her feelings about Darth Vader are: Bad, Do Not Want, to be glib about it.)

Now, there’s one other factor here, which is Rex. Rex knew Anakin and knew Ahsoka and was in the Rebel Alliance -- we know that he was on Yavin IV prior to Luke’s arrival and we know that he fought in the Battle of Endor. (And turns up in a couple of scattered art panels from the comics.) If we want to take his brief appearance in Galaxy of Adventures with Han Solo’s strike force as canon, then he may have also known Han and probably Luke -- certainly his ears would have pricked up at the name “Skywalker.” (Okay, there’s one other factor, which is R2-D2, but Artoo never tells anyone anything despite knowing...everything. Or most things, anyway.) Rex doesn’t seem to know that Anakin became Darth Vader (I believe there’s an interview somewhere where Dave or Pablo or someone says that a meeting between Rex and Vader would be “awkward,” but there’s no canonical reason to believe that he knew about the Anakin/Vader connection), but he probably found out at some point that the 501st was the battalion involved in the assault on the Jedi Temple. He also, as of Rebels S3-4, assumes that Vader killed Ahsoka -- presumably Ezra would have told him as much as he could. (And Ezra does know that Vader is Anakin, so he may have told Rex that as well.) Rex also knows that Anakin Skywalker was having an affair with Padme Amidala, but presumably didn’t know about (a) the marriage or (b) the pregnancy, because how would he know?

Then we come to Ahsoka’s return and unfortunately the current canon gives us no time point for when it actually happened: presumably Ahsoka did not or could not return to the greater galaxy at the point she “left”, during the fight on Malachor (3 BBY), because as of Rebels S3-4 everyone still believes she’s dead. Maybe she’s still stuck on Malachor without a way to get off, who knows; maybe after S4 Ezra grabbed her into the World Between Worlds she decided to stay on Malachor until she ~caught up with the main timeline, which...you then have to believe that Ahsoka is going to deliberately remove herself from the war, which I can get to, but is not something I’m totally comfortable with. Or she pops out in the timeline at the same time that Ezra returns to the main timeline and is able to more or less immediately return to the main timeline narrative, plus or minus a few weeks. (There are, after all, still a couple of Advanced TIE fighters parked in the Sith temple, even if they were potentially damaged in the temple collapse. Ahsoka could have repaired them or used the comms systems to call for a pick-up -- this is, btw, what happens in Crown.) We don’t know when the S2 finale scene/S4 WBW scene of Ahsoka walking back into the temple actually takes place in the timeline; it doesn’t have to be at the exact same time as the rest of the S2 finale sequence (since obvs Vader dragging himself out, Maul flying off, and the Rebels crew looking sad doesn’t all take place at the exact same time).

Other side AU is deliberately vague about when Ahsoka returns from the World Between Worlds/Malachor/to the Rebel Alliance; it’s not stated in the story, but I made the assumption that she came back shortly after the (non-epilogue) end of the Rebels finale, but was still deeply messed up from her Malachor revelations. (Also, like, Sidious, I guess, but she was probably so messed up about Anakin/Vader that Sidious being around barely registered.) Since she never seems to have held a formal position in the Rebel Alliance, I assumed that after she returned and let everyone know she was still alive, she then immediately took off to try and figure out what the hell happened with Anakin at the end of the Clone Wars, since she saw him like a week before he snapped and at the time he seemed fine.

The problem is that almost everyone involved is dead.

Now, at this point (shortly before Scarif and ANH), a few people are still alive who then die shortly, but whom Ahsoka may have no reason to believe were involved. Bail Organa, for example, is still around, but aside from him being Padme’s friend Ahsoka doesn’t have a reason to know that Bail was there when Padme died -- and since they were in contact for the nineteen years preceding there’s no reason for her to assume now that he was keeping something for her. Back in the comics (before I stopped reading them), Vader did some digging to figure out what was going on with Padme and his child; Ahsoka probably would have done the same digging (without having to torture anyone), but without necessarily knowing that Padme was pregnant. Knowing the date of Padme’s death (same as the Republic, essentially), she may have had a previous assumption that Padme was assassinated on Palpatine’s orders, but knowing that Vader is Anakin probably moves that assumption closer to the truth, that Anakin was somehow involved in Padme’s death one way or another. Sooner or later Ahsoka will turn up the fact that Padme was pregnant, come to the obvious conclusion that Anakin was the father, and possibly find out the same thing that Vader does in the comics -- that the child was born before Padme died. (But also probably not that Padme was carrying twins, but even if she found that out, it wouldn’t make a difference.)

While Ahsoka is doing her digging (and there really isn’t much information out there to find), the events of Rogue One and ANH happen, and Ahsoka comes back to the Rebel Alliance to find out which of her friends are still alive. (Maybe Rex is with her at this point, who knows.)

Everyone in the Rebel Alliance is talking about some young hotshot named Luke Skywalker.

Luke Skywalker who has a very familiar lightsaber, who claims his father was Anakin Skywalker, and who had some kind of relationship with Obi-Wan Kenobi, who turned up on the Death Star, fought Darth Vader, and died.

Ahsoka has just spent the past few months trying to figure out what happened with Anakin, and as best she can reassemble the facts it mostly comes down to “Anakin did something dumb for Padme, that something dumb was ‘turn to the Dark Side and kill literally everyone,’ and then Padme died, the Republic was overturned, and the Jedi Order was wiped out.” Ahsoka presumably walks into a room, hears the name Luke Skywalker -- maybe sees him -- and is all at once face to face with the living evidence of just how badly Anakin fucked up.

This is just too much for Ahsoka to deal with at the moment, so she takes off again, and spends the next five years brushing in and out of the Rebel Alliance doing odd missions that can really only be done by a trained Force-user. Rex, who seems to have a more stable position in the Alliance, is always going to side with Ahsoka over anyone else; if she tells him not to tell Luke that she knew Anakin, he won’t. (And for that matter, he may have somewhat fraught feelings about Luke himself.) She may have the odd interaction with Luke -- who has heard that there’s another Jedi in the Alliance and wants to be friends/get real training -- but Ahsoka just does not want any part of this. It’s irrational! She knows it’s irrational! But this is the living evidence of Anakin’s failure, Anakin who last she saw him TRIED TO KILL HER, who was at least partially responsible for the deaths of everyone she ever knew. (And honestly, finding out that Vader topped it all off by killing Obi-Wan is not going to help.)

Ahsoka may also be feeling a certain amount of survivor’s guilt: if Ezra had not pulled her out of the Malachor temple at that exact moment, she came pretty close to bringing the temple down on both herself and Vader, and may have succeeded in killing him. She did not do so, and who knows how many people died because of that in the years between Malachor and Yavin? (Just because Tarkin was the one who gave the order doesn’t mean that Ahsoka may at least partially blame Alderaan’s destruction on Vader, if she knew he was on the Death Star then.) She knows he killed Obi-Wan.

The Yoda lineage is very good at going “yikes, I am going off to live alone and beat myself up over my failure for years” and Ahsoka is very much an example of that lineage.

She and Luke have a relationship of “Hi, I’m Luke Skywalker, do you want to talk?” and “I have to leave immediately,” maybe with the odd “please stop using that lightsaber grip it is physically painful for me to watch, do it like this instead, okay, bye.” Luke probably told all of two other people about what happened with Vader on the Death Star, Leia and Han; he has no reason to tell anyone else about it because it won’t matter to them. Why would he tell Ahsoka, whom he has no relationship with? He doesn’t know that Ahsoka knew Anakin Skywalker and would only know if one of four people told him: Ahsoka herself (no), Rex (no), R2-D2 (maybe), or Admiral Ackbar (would never have occurred to Luke to ask, might have occurred to Ackbar to say). (We also don’t know that Mon Mothma knew Ahsoka very well, or at all, for that matter; they never interacted in TCW.)

As for her swinging harder into overt Jedi-ness by Mando after her blatant “I am no Jedi” of Rebels, it reads to me as a response to the Anakin/Vader revelation (especially the attachment thing). She had made certain assumptions in the TCW period (see her saving Rex in the TCW finale) and prior to Rebels; Kanan’s method of Jediness was something she could accept in the time period and in those circumstances; the Anakin/Vader revelation shattered all of that, followed immediately as it was by Kanan apparently going full Jedi self-sacrifice despite his attachments. (Her reaction to Ezra being a trauma response about two very different circumstances.) All of a sudden what she thought might have been mutable based on the circumstances became something that had to be adhered to in case of dangerous results, which she had just had brought home to her in extremely bad circumstances.

I made a crack somewhere about Mando’s central tension being between “being Mandalorian” and “being doing Mandalorianness”; I think in the post-OT period with Ahsoka and Luke we’re seeing something similar with “being Jedi” and “being doing Jediness.” Even if Ahsoka isn’t actively claiming the title Jedi anymore (because what does that accomplish in most contexts?), she’s leaning far more into the tenets of the Jedi Order -- which Luke doesn’t know and doesn’t know he doesn’t know.

Thus the doctrinal dispute.

Ahsoka grew up in the Jedi Order. That’s what she knows, that’s how she knows how to be a Jedi; for her being a Jedi is being part of the Jedi Order, whether or not the actions associated with performing Jediness are being actively practiced. Luke doesn’t have that context. For Luke, being a Jedi is...being doing Jediness. (This is super awkward phrasing.) Performing the actions of a Jedi. Luke has a few holocrons, but I’m guessing that a lot of what is on those holocrons makes the assumption that whoever is opening with them has the context of being a part of the Jedi Order and doesn’t explain really basic stuff about the Order or what that means. Luke’s Jedi Order is not going to be the Republic Jedi Order made anew; it’s going to be something that has a resemblance to it and is based on a similar view of the Force, even arguably its heir, but is just not going to be the same thing. It can’t be. Luke doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.

Kanan, of course, is coming into all of this from a similar context as Ahsoka: he grew up in the Jedi Order, it’s what he knows, it’s who he is. Except Kanan never walked away from the Order, so while Ahsoka had been disconnected from her Jediness at the time of the Purge, he never lost his -- part of Ahsoka’s tension from TCW S7-Rebels was “I can’t be a Jedi because the Order is gone” and Kanan’s was “can I be a Jedi without the Jedi Order?” (Ezra is a whole ‘nother thing but is somewhat outside the scope of this.) The Jedi Order never factors in Luke’s Jediness at all. (There’s some lineage doctrinal dispute here as well -- the Yoda lineage seems to be very closely connected to the Order as the font of Jediness, the Windu-Billaba lineage somewhat less so. The Yoda lineage is like...the hardcore conservatives of the Jedi Order, though, and are probably not typical.)

Poor Kanan came back from the dead, after a week in another universe (which had its own problems; he’s been trying to very gently convince his counterpart that even after being an Inquisitor for months he can still be a Jedi), into Luke trying to build a new Jedi Order from scratch, Ahsoka firmly believing it couldn’t and shouldn’t be done and not wanting to be in the same room as Luke at all (not to mention that she really did not believe that they should have gone for “hey, let’s send Hera Syndulla to another universe” as even being an option), and both of them having essentially incompatible notions of being a Jedi at each other -- this is probably the most time Luke and Ahsoka ever spent in each other’s presence. They’ve probably never articulated their problems at each other, just assumed that the other knew them. And Kanan has his own “how to be a Jedi” approach, which is from a very different than either Ahsoka or Luke because despite originating from the same context as Ahsoka, he had a very different path to get to his present position.

As for what Kanan knows -- uh, pretty much only what Hera knew, and Hera knew very little? She was friendly with Luke and Leia, but didn’t have much interaction with them -- she states that she had a tendency to avoid Luke because even if she would never say it to Luke’s face, she silently believes that if any Jedi should have been in the Rebel Alliance, it should have been Kanan and Ezra and not this relative newcomer. If the Death Star 2 news about Vader and Palps was never common knowledge, then Hera wouldn’t have known it. Kanan’s in a position of having to play catch-up, but also having a completely different priority (finding Ezra). He sat through this meeting where after they’d finished grilling him on “you were in ANOTHER UNIVERSE and also you CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD?” they politely sniped at each other with a bunch of context he didn’t have and flat out decided that wow, he did not want to deal with this at all, whatsoever.

(This is also not stated in the story, but Luke and Ahsoka also disagreed about whether Jacen should be trained or not: Luke said, yeah, of course, when he’s a little older! and Ahsoka said nope, he’ll be fine, it will go away. Hera was just very “...I will deal with this later” about it since it wasn’t an urgent issue.)

#also thanks to reena-jenkins and isweedan for talking this out with me #other side au tag

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threadsketchier · 4 years

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I know George can be weird sometimes and we don't always like him but I love that he casted someone like Mark for the lead, as the main hero. Mark especially at that age looked like the softest boy possible. He was tiny, soft and cute. Not hot, tall, buff or had the badass look until rotj. I wonder if George just randomly decided to go for Mark's looks (soft, small, blond, blue eyes etc) or he was planning this look for Anakin and Luke long before

oh I beg to differ on the not hot

Also, he was plenty buff before ROTJ:

I’d post way more but the answer button started getting cranky and didn’t want me to picspam apparently so alas

BUT YES, Luke/Mark is also smol and soft and cute. The perfect package, I dare say. ;D However, George kind of had Luke’s design all over the place before filming ANH - at one point he was a wizened and grizzled middle-aged warrior, then a young woman, and at another point concept sketches showed a fuller-figured young man in the farm costume. When he was casting I think he primarily had personality in mind over looks. This seems pretty apparent when you take into account the various actors he’d narrowed down for Luke in the screen tests; they’re quite varied. It was just our luck he decided Mark was the right guy to bring Luke to life.

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arabian-bloodstream · 4 years

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Star Wars: The Flashback Cut

If you’re stuck at home and feel like giving Star Wars a binge-watch, here’s a potential new way to watch it. This is my preferred way of watching The Star Wars Saga. It keeps the vast majority of big surprises intact, while preserving the story integrity. It also links narratives and character arcs, and strengthens those narratives and arcs overall, in my opinion. I also feel that in doing so it makes the Prequel Trilogy and Rise of the Skywalker (some of the weaker films in the saga) feel more seamless and part of the greater whole, thus stronger.

*Note if you prefer The Skywalker Saga you can cut out Solo.

STAR WARS: THE FLASHBACK CUT

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Episode IV: A New Hope

Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode I: The Phantom Menace

Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

Episode VII: The Force Awakens

Episode VII: The Last Jedi

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Episode IX: Rise of the Skywalker

AND WHY THIS WORKS (FOR ME) ...

Rogue One

- R1 makes perfect sense having no scrawl because the A New Hope scrawl recaps the events of R1 whereas R1 started the story.

- Everything with the single reactor blast destroying the Death Star explains that "plot hole" in ANH now.

- Knowing all of these people and all they’ve done and their sacrifice adds so much resonance and power to the Rebellion and what they’re doing/fighting for before we hear Luke talk about them in ANH.

- Bail shows up and has focus and it’s like why? But then towards the end, his final scene explains that he has to get back to his people on Alderaan but he has someone he trusts with his life to help, leading to the Leia scene at the end. This not only sets up and leads to ANH, it also means that when Alderaan in ANH is blown up, we actually know someone on that planet now. That gives it some more emotional heft too.

A New Hope

The Empire Strikes Back

- The explanation of the Dark Side of the Force, how it works, how it brings people in, and how Obi-Wan lost Anakin… I know that is set up for the reveal of who Luke is and the redemption of Anakin in the third act of Return of the Jedi, but watching this before the Prequel Trilogy as if they are a Flashback set of films telling the story of what happened really strengthens that narrative. And it does so beautifully.

- It’s very, very obvious from TESB that a love triangle was VERY much in play between Luke, Leia and Han. The beginning sets up Han/Leia with a bit of Luke thrown in with that kiss, and then the bulk of the film is with Han and Leia. However the final bit has Luke and Leia with their connection, her kissing him (again) on the lips, and the two together while Lando and Chewie are off to find Han.

They could have easily set it up so that by the time the third film had rolled around, Leia and Luke were involved–and the “other one” was to be introduced fresh in the third film. (As was originally intended.) Now, I still think that if they had done that, it would have been Han and Leia in the end as the bulk of the love story we saw was Han and Leia, but they did still definitely set up the triangle (that was hinted at in the first film) to go full throttle in the third movie.

Going with The Flashback Cut actually helps eliminate any sense of that once we return to the trio because of the reveal of Luke and Leia being twins at the end of Revenge of the Sith before you go into Return of the Jedi.

- Having Luke asking Ben “Why?” a couple of times regarding the Anakin/Darth Vader lie at the end of TESB before going right into the Prequel Trilogy makes so much sense. It sets it up that we are going to be told--in a very long flashback--why.

The Phantom Menace

- In about a minute into the film, young Obi-Wan is introduced. He is the first character’s whose name is given and coming into this from TESB and that final minute which literally had Luke asking “Why, Ben?" twice, viewers get that question answered. Here’s the story; here is what happened. This is why.

- Just a quick note, but I wanted to point out why I feel the Machete Cut (which completely excises TPM) doesn’t work. The entire Trade Federation story is not only the entire backbone to how Palpatine rises to power, but it’s also why Amidala (and thus Anakin) has the relationship with him that she does. These are two huge reasons as to why the Machete Cut doesn’t work.

Another is the scene where young Anakin is being questioned by the Jedi Council. That scene right there, in a nutshell, tells us what will be the main turning point that starts Anakin on the Dark path. He’s asked about missing his mother. Young Anakin questions what that has to do with anything and he’s told it has everything to do with it. He fears what will happen to her, and fear leads to anger and aggression and aggression leads to the Dark Side. And we all know that is *exactly* what happens.

Attack of the Clones

- Another reason that the Machete cut doesn't work is that it's several minutes into the film before before we meet any character we know from the Original Trilogy (in the elevator scene with Obi-Wan and Anakin). Also, it isn't a bit longer before Anakin himself is referenced by name. Amidala calls him "Ani" instead. So as a starting point into the Prequel Trilogy (and definitely as a Flashback between ANH/TESB and RotJ) the Machete Cut is very confusing. (And, again, this doesn't take into account the issues mentioned under TPM.)

Revenge of the Sith

- Bringing baby Luke to Tatooine at the end of the film signifies that Anakin’s story is over and settles us right back in for the return to Luke’s story. It segues beautifully into the title of the next one: "Return of the Jedi" in a couple of different ways. We’re done with the Sith story and now we’re going back to the Jedi. Also, Luke is the Jedi and we’re returning to his story: Return of the Jedi (aka Luke).

Return of the Jedi

- Watching Yoda’s death scene really is enhanced by having just watched the Prequel Trilogy, especially the last third of RotS, before it. Him talking to Luke about not underestimating the power of the Dark Side as they are talking about Anakin/Vader adds so much depth and emotion for the viewer to that conversation.

- Leia being revealed as his twin was just not this big OOH! moment; it just seemed kinda, throwaway? So being revealed in the PT is an OK loss in my books for all we get in return.

- Finally, the biggie... we just watched Anakin's entire story play out from a young, innocent enslaved boy to becoming a slave to the Dark Side and Palpatine's power and control. And here we see him break free, once more the emotional pull between a parent and a child being the catalyst, but this time it's the reverse. Anakin is the parent, and it's love that is the motivator not hate.

The Force Awakens

The Last Jedi

- There is the dice that we saw on the Falcon and that dice comes into play in the closing scenes with Luke and Leia, and then especially Kylo/Ben as he's kneeling before the Falcon that disappears in his hand.

It's OK that we don't see Solo before TLJ, because we don't need to know where the dice come from because they’re just symbols at this point–they were important to Han and that was their only needed key point in this film. Also, since TFA ended on a cliffhanger, having a flashback film between them would completely throw the balance off. TLJ *has* to come immediately after TFA for that reason.

Solo

- On the other hand, it is cool to find out why the dice we’re important to Han and we do in Solo.

- As well, the talk of the stuff that's happening with the Empire/the Emperor in Solo sets up the horror of what could happen with the Emperor coming back in The Rise of Skywalker.

- Also, seeing Kylo/Ben’s father going from a good kid who loses his way, lost and trying to find himself just as Kylo was at the end of TLJ (and like Han, he didn't get the girl) works well.

- Plus, it also gives a breather that helps fill the stretch of time between TLJ and TRoS.

- There’s no traditional scrawl here which lets us know right away that something different is going on and we meet a young Han in the first scene.

* As I stated atop, if you just want to do The Skywalker Saga binge, Solo can easily be dropped from the watch-list.

The Rise of Skywalker

- With the horrors that the Emperor and his Empire made of the galaxy fresh in our mind, viewers really will not want to see a return of the Emperor. (OK, not that they would anyway.)

- We just saw a young Lando come out of the shadows deciding to fight the good fight... and here he is forty years later, doing it all over again.

- Just having watched Ben's father's idealistic self turned into a cynic by what the Empire/the Dark Side had created of the Galaxy visited upon his son--and turned him even worse--and then flipped on his side is a beautiful thing as Ben helps to keep that from happening all over again.

So there you go, my Star Wars: Flashback Cut (and why):

The Star Wars Saga - All released SW films: R1, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, Solo, 9

The Skywalker Saga - All SW films w/Skywalker characters: R1, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9

#star wars #original trilogy #prequel trilogy #sequel trilogy #rogue one #sw: solo #adam driver #the last jedi #the rise of skywalker #return of the jedi #revenge of the sith #the empire strikes back #the phantom menace #kylo ren #ben solo #han solo #lando calrissian

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atamascolily · 4 years

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I never actually read Junior Jedi Knights #1: The Golden Globe by Nancy Richardson before, so I figured I’d give it a shot. Like most of Star Wars Legends, it is a trip, but in a fun, if confusing way.

The academy was built to train people to become Jedi Knights, protectors of freedom and justice. Only beings who had shown they were skilled in working with the Force had been invited to attend the academy. Anakin was one of those chosen to attend the first session created for younger children and aliens.

So... Jedi Hogwarts, then. The first Harry Potter book was published in Britain in 1997 and in the US in 1998, and this book was published October 1, 1995, so it actually predates Hogwarts, but I’m still calling it that.

Leia “can’t bear” to have all three kids away at Jedi Hogwarts at the same time, so now it’s Anakin’s term. I’m raising my eyebrows because Leia is a politician assuming she’s not actually Chief of State right now; she’s super-busy and Winter took care of the kids for much of their childhood. It does explain why we never see anyone from the YJK books in this series, and the good-bye scene between Anakin, Leia, and Han is 300% more believable and heart-warming than anything in the Disney ST, so I approve.

Also, here’s some world-building for all your Yavin 4 fics:

“The Great Temple hasn’t been changed much on the outside,” Luke said. He had sensed his nephew’s curiosity. “But we had to change the inside in order to create the academy rooms. We’ve divided some spaces into sleeping and refresher units for you and your classmates. And we’ve hung heavy drapes above the open windows. The windows in the Temple have no glass because the climate here is so warm that we rarely need it. However, every few months we have terrible storms. The temperature drops and rain and winds whip through the jungle. When that happens the heavy drapes keep the temple warm and dry. There’s one place that we haven’t touched, though-the Grand Audience Chamber at the top of the Temple. All of the instructors and students here agree that it is just too beautiful to change,” Luke explained.

(And then everyone who’s seen the movie would be confused! LOL)

HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I LIKE THAT TIONNE IS A MAJOR PLAYER IN THESE BOOKS? Because I do. Traveling with Luke and rescuing kids, singing songs, being kind... #legend. I don’t think we ever see Kam, though, so I don’t know what he’s up to. It’s literally just Luke and Tionne, plus a bunch of NPCs here.

I don’t get how Anakin can be so good with droids yet not understand Artoo’s Binary, but okay. I love how Artoo just follows him around for... reasons, or he would except Anakin cheats by using the stairs. Ignore Artoo at your peril, kid.

More world-building:

Anakin had reached the Grand Audience Chamber. It was the highest room in the Temple, and unlike the other rooms, it had not been rebuilt for the academy. Gently Anakin pushed open the large doors. He walked into the center of the Grand Audience Chamber. The walls were a deep tan stone, worn smooth over the years. Blueleaf shrubs, the most common shrub on the moon, poked through several cracks in the stones. They attached themselves to the stone with suckers. The shrubs were electric blue, and as Anakin leaned close he could smell a spicy perfume.

(As an aside, I don’t understand why Legends makes the Grand Audience Chamber at the top of the Temple - the room we see in ANH seems too large to fit at the top of a pyramid the size the ones in Chichen Itza. Does anybody have any drawings of the interior of the Temple of Kukulcan or any other Meso-American step-pyramids to confirm or deny this? Also, I don’t get why an audience chamber would be at the top of so many stairs - it seems like you’d want that to be closer to the ground for easier access for the plebes, and keep the upper levels as private space for the aristocracy. But I digress...)

Anakin meets Tahiri, who is from Tatooine and raised by Sand People, because we need to have more movie references and there are only like 5 acceptable planets for Star Wars writers, because movies, so that’s fine. Her defining character traits are impulsiveness, constant chatter, and a distaste for shoes.In light of the prequels, her comments on sand have aged well:

“Where I’m from it’s hot and there’s sand everywhere - gritty sand that sticks between your toes. So, aren’t you going to say something?”

Tionne shows up and sends them to bed. Anakin’s not a morning person. #Relatable. At breakfast, his reaction to Tahiri’s account of her dream in which he saves her on a river is priceless:

Anakin was silent. So this was what his brother Jacen was always talking about. I guess girls do get crushes on boys and say things that make no sense, he thought.

LOLOLOLOL. Also, Anakin says Jacen and Jaina are his best friends and Tahiri laughs and says No, I’m your best friend now like I said yesterday, and MY HEART. These kids. I love them.

Anyway, Luke lectures them on the Force, and it’s mostly Yoda’s sayings all mushed together, and apparently “Believe and you succeed” really is a part of it, so okay then. We swing suddenly from Anakin’s POV to Luke’s and it’s kinda jarring, especially since Luke is only interested in recapping his own personal history and has nothing new to say.

Anakin starts dreaming the same dream as Tahiri and hearing voices, so they sneak out to investigate even though Luke has explicitly warned them not to. Anakin’s so worried about being kicked out, it’s charming...

LOL, Tionne expects them to lift 2-kilo weights with their minds on the first day. What. They do it through the Power of Friendship, because of course they do, in between plotting how to get out of the academy and investigate the dream.

Fortunately, Artoo is there to help! Good old Artoo! He’s got a lot of practice in being sneaky. I have no idea why the raft is conveniently there waiting for them in the jungle, but okay. Tahiri falls in during the storm, but fortunately Anakin is able to use his lesson in TK to save her. They lift Artoo out the same way once they get to their destination, but Tahiri drops him in the water when her control slips. Good thing he’s waterproof!

Anakin name drops Exar Kun and a bunch of Yavin IV backstory. I like that Anakin is Indiana Jonesing his way across Yavin while simultaneously wondering if his uncle’s going to kick him out. Also Artoo brought the only light. They find a mysterious golden globe and a cute animal named Ikrit and cover themselves in glitter before heading back.

Tahiri’s already willing to sacrifice herself for Anakin in case Luke wants to kick them out and they’ve literally just met and this makes me wish I didn’t know what I know about NJO, because now everything hurts.

Luke’s waiting them for them, all stern in his Jedi blacks and.... Artoo steps up and lies for the kids, and he decides he’s not going to end their careers as a Jedi students just yet. LOL.

Meanwhile, Ikrit is curled up in Anakin’s bed - turns out he’s a secret Jedi Master and the voice in Anakin’s head. Turns out the globe is full of trapped children because Exar Kun is a jerk and they can’t tell any adults or it will be destroyed. Ikrit’s been sleeping for hundreds of years waiting for the right kids and he chose them. Of course, Anakin and Tahiri vow to do what they can to help, even though it’s going to be difficult, because of Luke’s lecture earlier, which Anakin can recite from memory (he really does have an eidetic memory, doesn’t he?). The end.

I have so many questions. Why did Artoo help them out? (I assume Ikrit, but I don’t remember if that’s ever explicitly spelled out. And can Jedi talk to droids with the Force? How did Ikrit meet Artoo? It just raises more questions.) Was it Ikrit or Artoo who set up the raft? How did they do that and where did they get it? Does Ikrit even have thumbs? Why couldn’t Anakin and Tahiri just walk to the Palace of Woolamanders or whatever? Did Ikrit really hibernate for four centuries straight or did he wake up every couple of years to stretch his legs and whatnot? Why did he do that rather than, you know, get help or something? Why has Tahiri been dreaming of the river her whole life, only for the dream to suddenly jump to Anakin? Is Ikrit sending her the dreams or is the Force?

I like how there’s such an emphasis on training, when they’ve been on-planet for less than a week (three days??) because that’s how fast the plot moves when you’re eleven (and Tahiri is NINE!). These kids! Did I mention I love them?

Ikrit is technically a Kushiban and not a Hoojib as I’d originally thought. I’m not sure exactly what the difference is, since they’re both sentient telepathic lagomorphs, but that’s fine, I guess. I am fond of the Hoojibs, but I didn’t know about them until @joysweeper posted some Star Wars Marvel comics from the ‘70s with Plif, so they’re not exactly common knowledge. That said, I really like the illustration of Ikrit on the cover, and I’m also absurdly fond of him in spite of the fact that canon is so flimsy here.

#star wars legends #junior jedi knights #the golden globe #book reviews #eu fuckery #jedi academy shenanigans

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gffa · 5 years

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hi! i really want to get into the EU stuff, but i have absolutely no idea where to start. can you point towards a few good books, maybe? thank you, and i absolutely love your account btw!

Hi! Thank you for the kind words, I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog. ♥ Recommendations for EU stuff often depends on what you’re interested in, because there are a lot of books I really enjoyed, so I’ll organize them by era, since that’s how fans are often divided. I’ll also include comics, because often times the comics are some of the absolute best stuff!If you haven’t watched The Clone Wars and Rebels yet, those are absolutely the places to start as they’re key to the fabric of the bigger story, imo. Not that you can’t understand the movies without them or anything, but TCW is especially important for understanding just how grueling the clone wars really were. And Rebels is important for showing the fates of a lot of the TCW characters and seeing the Empire vs the Rebellion (it does a lot to flesh that out, too).PREQUELS:

Any of the Star Wars Adventures comics that contain the prequels characters are great. Well, ALL of the Adventures comics are great, but the prequels ones are adorable, funny, and yet really well-told. They’re light-hearted and largely oneshots, but the IDW comics have been incredible for still being some of the absolute best SW content out there. Especially a not-miss is #12-13 and the 2019 Annual for the Padme&Leia&Breha story.

Obi-Wan & Anakin comic by Charles Soule. A five-issue mini series that has the most stunning art of all the comics I’ve ever seen pretty much, it’s also a really good look at the time of Anakin’s apprenticeship and provides some interesting glimpses into their early days together.

Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith comic by Charles Soule. This comic was an absolute phenomenon to read month to month and one of the comic series that I’ve spent the most time analyzing and felt it’s really held up to scrutiny, which shows just how much thought went into it. It’s 25 issues of Vader fresh off Revenge of the Sith, over the span of a couple years, and really does an AMAZING job of exploring Anakin Skywalker as Darth Vader, all the choices he made and the themes of the comic are all about showing he can’t admit to the HUGE mistakes he’s made. It was incredible.

Choose Your Destiny: An Obi-Wan & Anakin Adventure by book Cavan Scott. I’m not usually a fan of Choose Your Own Adventure style stories, but this one was worth it to me to get an absolutely DELIGHTFUL book with Obi-Wan and Anakin, who are cranky with each other, but ultimately show that they can come back together and obviously care about each other. Sprinkle in some other cool stuff (Jedi details, Bant Eerin being recanonized) and it was lovely.

Dooku: Jedi Lost audiodrama by Cavan Scott. If you’re interested in Dooku, Asajj Ventress, or the Jedi at all, this drama was pretty amazing, it gave a ton of worldbuilding detail, but also did a lot to fill in the backstory of Dooku and gave us a long look inside Asajj’s head as well. Qui-Gon makes some appearances, he has an amazing dynamic with Dooku, and my heart as always skips a beat for how much I love the Jedi.

Age of the Republic comics by Jodie Houser. Holy shit, these comics were SO GOOD. They’re a series of oneshots about the various heroes and villains of the time, a glimpse into the lives of all of them, and Houser really nailed it here. My favorite is the Obi-Wan one, because the conversation he has with Anakin about Qui-Gon is a must and delves deepest into the characters’ stuff, but all of them are worth reading.

Jedi of the Republic - Mace Windu comic by Matt Owens. A five-issue mini series that, okay, the art is Like That but the storyline really worked for me because it’s a really good look at Mace’s character and his belief in the Jedi Order and how he came to master himself and how the galaxy looks at Jedi. It’s woven around a fairly typical action plot, but one of the things that always strikes me is the compassion the Jedi show one of their own, even when they’re falling into darkness, as well as this is a comic about Mace Windu’s faith and his work to master himself and it’s SO GOOD.

Kanan: The Last Padawan comics by Greg Weisman. Stunning art plus a look at some of the characters/relationships that I want so much more of (TELL ME EVERYTHING ABOUT DEPA BILLABA) and more glimpses into life at the Jedi Temple, as well as telling the story of how the character went from Caleb Dume to Kanan Jarrus, all of it heartbreaking and so, so good.

While the Revenge of the Sith novelization by Matthew Stover is no longer canon, but it does an absolutely phenomenal job of breaking your heart all over again for the characters and expanding on everything that was going on during that time and really, really gets into the headspace of Anakin’s character in a way that was line-edited by George Lucas himself, so I think of it as having a lot of emotional truths to it, rather than being part of canon (which it’s specifically said as not being).

ORIGINALS:

The ongoing Star Wars comic (by Jason Aaron, then Kieron Gillen) + the original Darth Vader comic (by Kieron Gillen) are the absolute best place to start, they’re an incredible addition to the characters’ journeys between ANH and ESB. The two comics are meant to be read concurrently, so I recommend them together, they often show the same scenes from different points of view, but you can roll with either of them if they’re going well for you. They’re my favorite for what they add to the story.

Star Wars Battlefront II’s storyline can be watched on YouTube like a movie, which is about two hours long, has some fantastic characters (Iden Versio and Del Meeko are amazing, but also the brief storylines the OT trio have in the game are fantastic) and it does a really great job of helping to bridge the gap between the OT and the ST, explaining a lot about Jakku’s significance and how the First Order popped up.

From a Certain Point of View novel by various. MY FAVORITE BOOK IN THE EU, FULL STOP. A series of point of view stories from various supporting characters during A New Hope is exactly what it sounds like and, okay, not all of them worked out for me, some of them are very skippable if you’re not enjoying it, but the Obi-Wan one, the Qui-Gon one, and the Yoda one are all must-reads because they are HEARTBREAKING and fill in so much of what’s going on with those characters in the OT with regards to the PT events. Also the Motti one is the single funniest thing Star Wars has ever put out.

Lords of the Sith novel by Paul S. Kemp. While I’ve only read about a third of this one so far, I’ve enjoyed it a lot, as it’s a look at some of the worst parts of SW’s timeline, where Vader and Palpatine are at their worst, where Ryloth is suffering, but it’s done with deftness and gravitas, imo. Possibly better after you’ve seen TCW and Rebels because Cham Syndulla’s character will have more weight then.

Legends of Luke Skywalker novel by Ken Liu. This book came out around the time that The Last Jedi came out (or at least that’s when I read it, iirc) and it was a balm for my soul that needed Jedi Master Luke Skywalker. It’s an in-universe series of myths, so it’s not literal, it’s stories told about Luke Skywalker as he travels the galaxy trying to understand the Force and the Jedi. It’s lovely!

Thrawn novel by Timothy Zahn. I still think the first Thrawn book was really good (even if the shine came off the apple after that) and it does a fantastic job of setting up the character’s backstory, intro into the Empire, and creating the character of Eli Vanto, WHOM I LOVE. It’s a great read and some of the best of Zahn’s Thrawn work.

ROGUE ONE + SOLO:

The Rogue One novelization by Alexander Freed. I had trouble connecting to Jyn Erso when I first watched the movie, but the way Freed wrote her as this messy, complicated, thorny person who was trying to do the right thing was perfect for making me fall in love with her. (Freed is really, really good at writing messy, complicated, worthwhile women, imo.)

Most Wanted novel by Rae Carson. I loved this book a lot, where it’s a young adult novel set before the events of Solo and helps tell Han and Qi’ra’s backstory and is a great space adventure at the same time.

Catalyst novel by James Luceno. This does a really great job of bridging the Republic era with the Empire era, how the galaxy went from the Clone Wars to what we see in Rogue One, AND expanded a ton on Galen Erso’s character, his relationship with Orson Krennic and Lyra Erso and Jyn, so it made the R1 experience just a ton more valuable for me.

SEQUELS:

Bloodline novel by Claudia Gray. This book still does the absolute most to bridge the gap between the OT and the ST, to explain the events of what happened in that time period. Gray’s writing is best when she’s writing Leia as a character and this book works as a novel for her and as a story about the rise of the First Order and some of the problems of the New Republic.

Spark of the Resistance is a young adult novel (so about 200 pages) by Justina Ireland. I only recently read this one and I just thoroughly enjoyed it, it was Rey and Rose and Poe off on their own adventure, which was typical cute Star Wars stuff, but the chemistry and adorable banter between these three was so good I could have read an entire series for them! (I also liked her Lando’s Luck YA novel, if you’re interested in his character.)

Poe Dameron comics by Charles Soule. Soule’s writing is some of the best stuff in SW so far and he does an absolutely phenomenal job of capturing the charisma of Poe’s character, while also giving him an actual character arc to work through. The comics just fly by, they’re so good and so smoothly easy to read and so damn charming.

Cobalt Squadron novel by Elizabeth Wein. If you get the audiobook of this, it’s narrated by Kelly Marie Tran, who does a love job of reading it, and was a book that helped me just utterly FALL IN LOVE with Rose Tico. It’s a book that does a lot to explain her back story and who she is and it’s just absolutely wonderful.

The Last Jedi novelization by Jason Fry. If you really, really hated TLJ, this might not be the book for you, but I found it to be a book that helped fill in some smaller details that made the movie work better for me and got inside the characters’ heads just enough to help grease the wheels to put me in a better place with the movie, so I always really like it.

#fic recs #(not really but that's my tag)#novels #Anonymous

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heliotrope-r · 5 years

Note

What do you think of explicit Reylo and a bittersweet “we’ll meet again someday” parting for the end of TROS? The romance is confirmed but their future is left open, and it would probably be the least controversial way of doing a full Reylo ending because Rey preserves her agency completely and the implication is that they might be together after Ben has gone through more toils for redemption and tried to be better for years

The one word we’ve been told over and over again describes the ending of TROS is “satisfying”. Does an ending like that, with Rey and Ben clearly in love with one another but forced to remain apart as Ben does penance for his sins and tries to earn forgiveness for an indefinite period of time, sound like it would satisfy a general audience? Will the 12-year-old viewers (for whom George Lucas himself says the STAR WARS movies are made) think that is just a nifty keen way to end the story?

And what about Rey? Her whole story has been about longing to be loved and have a family to call her own. But her attempts to find father figures in Han and Luke failed, and while she has a deep bond of affection and friendship with Finn, it isn’t enough to keep her from looking wistful and lonely at the end of TLJ when she sees him tenderly covering up the unconscious Rose. She values her friends and allies in the Resistance, but there’s still something missing in her life, an empty place in her heart. How satisfying will it be if we leave her at the end of TROS with that emptiness still unfilled, with her still facing an indefinite separation from the man she loves? And how does it give Rey more “agency” to deny her the love, and the man, that she wants most?

Also, STAR WARS has never been realistic in its portrayal of consequences, or in holding its characters to account for their actions. Han straight-up shot Greedo under the table in ANH and threw a Kanjiklub member into a Rathtar’s maw in TFA, and Luke force-choked one of the Gamorrean guards in RotJ, and Poe’s rash actions in TLJ resulted in the deaths of hundreds or even thousands of his own fellow Resistance members -- but that all gets glossed over because they’re our heroes (or scoundrels on their way to becoming heroes, in the case of ANH Han). All Ben really has to do in TROS to be forgiven by the narrative and most of the general audience is to visibly turn against the bad guys and do something really noble and unselfish and good to help Rey and the Resistance win the war.

In short, I don’t expect TROS to cater to a relatively small group of fans who dislike Ben Solo and keep a laundry list of all his crimes ready to hand, and are vocal in insisting that he doesn’t “deserve” to be redeemed and have a happy ending with Rey, no matter what he does. I don’t think those fans will ever be happy with anything short of a miserable death for Ben Solo anyway, any more than the people who sneer that Kylo Ren isn’t “cool” enough to be a “real” villain will be happy with seeing him do anything but plunge wholesale into the Dark Side and become a cold-blooded killer like Vader was. There’s no way to please both those groups no matter what fate JJ & Co. have decreed for Kylo/Ben, so why should they be more concerned about appeasing one group than the other? Why wouldn’t they simply tell the story they always intended to tell, the one that actually aligns with the values and spirit of STAR WARS as we know it, and let the chips fall where they may?

So no, I don’t think Ben is going to be sent into some lonely exile to atone for his many crimes while Rey sadly watches his ship fly away into the distance. I think he may well die or seem to die in some great act of self-sacrifice, but if so he’ll be reborn and reunited with Rey in time for a truly satisfying ending, where we see them hand in hand, facing a bright and hopeful future together.

#anon #asks #reylo #TROS predictions #Anonymous

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scav-eng-er · 4 years

Text

Thank you @maywemeetagaincommandr for this! I’m so excited to just POUR all my SW love into this!

Rules: Answer the 25 questions and tag some people you think might like to play.

1. When did you start shipping Reylo?

The interrogation scene in TFA. Rey’s ability to get into his head made me realize how equally strong they were and how exposed she made him. I don’t think I officially started this account until TLJ though.

2. Favourite Reylo moment?

It’s a tie between their fight in TFA or the iconic kiss. The colors that sparked in the snowy forest and her close up of reaching out to the force was like eye opening to me lol. Or of course, the kiss because it is the definition of LOVE.

3. Three words to describe Reylo?

Passion, strength, vulnerability

4. Favourite thing about Reylo?

They are the only ones who can tear each other down or bring each other up. The yin yang concept behind them where he is dark with a hint of light and she is light with a hint of dark is always captivating in a romance story because she’s not the innocent girl and he isn’t the brooding villain. We see her become somewhat untamed and wild when she fights, like when she bares her teeth or shouts. Whereas he is SO agile and almost graceful when he fights. He also never pulls the first move, he defends only until he has to push back.

5. Favourite character?

Rey. Literally my whole account aesthetic is “Rey of Jakku” or “The Scavenger.” I love my sand gremlin so much. I don’t know why I am so drawn to her. I either want to be best friends with her or actually be her. She is so strong and stubborn and caring but she has flaws that are so relatable to so many people. Seeing her makes me feel like I don’t have to put on a certain act as a woman because society or whatever tells me to.

6. Favourite droid?

BB-8

7. Favourite planet?

Takodana or Coruscant

8. Favourite spaceship?

Millenium Falcon

9. Favourite alien species?

Baby Yoda.

10. Favourite actor/actress?

Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver

11. How did you get into Star Wars?

I had seen the movies and liked Padme but it wasn’t until Rey that I felt more connected to the films. I knew Adam from a previous movie “This Is Where I Leave You” and was like “huh, he plays a villain in star wars, lets check it out.” And all the trailers portrayed Finn as the main character so when Rey was introduced, I was like “wait yes I found my new obsession”

12. Most memorable Star Wars moment?

Rey catching the saber in TFA. Before the ST came out, I was obsessed with Han being so jealous and protective of Leia in ESB.

13. Anakin Skywalker or Darth Vader?

Vader. When we see the shot of Anakin’s saber ignite in front of the younglings in ROTS, he became dead to me. I think I’m very maternal and their reactions made me emotional

14. Ben Solo or Kylo Ren?

Ben Solo in the streets, Kylo Ren in the sheets.

15. OT, PT or ST?

16. TLJ or ESB?

Both (can i do that?)

17. ROTS or ANH?

ANH

18. ROTJ or TFA?

TFA

19. TPM or TROS?

TROS

20. Rogue One or Solo?

Both (im doing it anyway)

21. Favourite quote?

“You already have [saved me]. Luke, you were right.”

or if we’re gonna be funny

Hello there.

22. Favourite meme?

Ben Swolo or “Disloyal man” where rey is about to risk it all for Ben Swolo

23. Favourite gif?

Literally i love them all but I’m feelin this one

#powercoupleof2019thecentury

and this one right now

#actualsoulmates

24. If you could change one thing about the Skywalker Saga what would it be?

#BRINGBACKBENSOLO or just don’t kill him.

Not killing Ben = Saving the Skywalker family

25. Top 3 Star Wars movies?

1. TFA

2. ANH

3. ESB/TLJ

Tagging @reylo-trash-4ever @mojona1999 @solanaberrie @lovereadandwrite @firethebluesky @starxdust22

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roxannepolice · 5 years

Note

How could IX tell the story of Irredeemable Kylo and Unattached Rey, in your opinion? If we’re not precluding it then we might as well speculate seriously about it.

I gave what I find acceptably exhaustive account of how I can see that rolling out here. The crux is that they can either make Ben into a Palps 3.0 indeed or take a tragic villain journey route, making Rey an ANH Luke or suffocating paladin accordingly. The former is in a way more likely if EPIX’s purpose is indeed only to lead the franchise into a new era of wholesome heroes, but the latter is undeniably more interesting to discuss.

The problem with all predictions which assume a completely straightforward Ben just has to make a choice to leave fo and all will be fine aside from the elephant in the room trumpeting that he’s the one giving orders now is that it really doesn’t do much to deepen the theme of redemption and one’s moral choice in comparison to ot, so in a way a firm statement you can always make a choice, but you can’t make a choice you don’t want to make would be paradoxically more in line with deepening ot themes – deepening through limitation. I think a major problem with concluding this trilogy is that there’s a really huge tonal shift between RotS and RotJ, so epix not bringing anything at least a bit mind blowing (so simply Ben staying alive unlike Anakin won’t really cut the deal) into the picture will leave a sense of ok, but did it really have to take 30 years and a blown up system to figure out we were right all along?

I must confess, there are times I really like to indulge myself in imagining a space Don Giovanni unfolding this December particularly when shipdom goes unnecessarily defensive over being wrong about some minor detail and making it sound as if we had to choose between redemption and a good movie is this why I decided to answer this ask now possibly. Inviting a murdered father figure to supper, mockingly rejecting redeeming love some of y’all could really use listening to Mi tradi quell’alma ingrata, that’s how devastation over beloved’s moral choices should feel and finally declining a call to repentence straight from the afterlife because repentance would be sheer hypocrisy now? It’s very very very not for children but then again people think they should only listen to Mozart when they sleep.

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clairen45 · 6 years

Text

The Millenium Falcon: That’s My Ship!

My thoughtful Anon sent me one last long ask before coming out of anonymity. So I’m calling you out @lightaroundthecorner, and bid you an official welcome into the community. Wishing you all the best! This is how it went... I thought it was funny you assumed the “CocoReylo” moniker for a while. This was actually a pun for my French-speaking Reylos, since Cocorico is the rooster’s cry in French (and roosters are the emblem of France). It is a good one though, especially since you brought up Coco, the movie, the first time you reached out to me.

Hey Clairen, it’s the Coco Reylo Anon lol. Thx for the reply insight and analysis ♡(´ ▽｀).。! I’m also debating if I am glad or not I am a 2nd waver, but in the end I am just glad I did jump on the ship 3 months ago! It might sound odd but all the meta’s I’ve been reading really make my day and help me grow and better understand a story I love so much. It is a wonderful fandom! After what you wrote about creating a Tumblr account I am seriously considering it! I’ll let you know when I create. I’m also not a grand fan of the new BatB film and have my fair share of issues with it, but having watched it after hearing a great amount of comments I decided to go to the movie and see if I could make sense of the plot emotionally speaking and I’m glad it worked! It is crazy how these plots end up having so much in common (they are so organic / happen to naturally parallel). I never thought about the book / mirror and rose parallels but I loved what you brought! I remember wayward Jedi mentioning that a wilted flower represents lack of love. Rey’s parents are not coming back and Beast could only be saved if he loved someone and that person loved him back. The Heroine journey is truly about intimacy and belonging (Ben and Rey need each other’s magic). Now what hit me hard was the MF parallel!!! Never thought of that, although I admit I have this canon in my head that after Ben comes back he will feel he can’t stay with everyone and act like nothing happened. So, in a way like his father, he would feel the need to travel with no destination in mind (a need to see the galaxy and try to see things from a different perspective, as well as time to center himself and heal), but he wouldn’t think about getting the MF, for obvious reasons. Rey would sense/know it (I just love how much they understand each other without really saying everything) and when he is decided to leave she would convince him they should get the MF and without saying a “proper goodbye” they would go. I also think that Finn, Rose and Leia would understand an indirect “see you soon”, because they will see everyone again. In my canon I am not sure if Chewie would go with them or not, but I still think he would be with them again. So that Reylo can be associated with Persephone and Hades and MF 3 brains with Cerberus is just really crazy! Especially when we consider the fact that MF is the home he makes amends to (it was Han, Chewie, Luke and Leia’s home, and to go back to it means comeback to his family like you said, being accepted and loved). MF has also been compared to the Chariots of Gods that protected the Skywalker siblings from the Emperor and Vader. The fact that Rey goes to Luke in the MF, later to Kylo and later to save the Resistance, all seems to hint this is where Ben/Kylo should be. The anger he has for the “piece of junk” equals the anger and longing for his family, and it’s always with him. Ok, this got long again o.o’’’. See you soon!

So, dear Anon who is no longer anon but now @lightaroundthecorner, sorry I took so long to answer. As I was telling other fellow bloggers, real life caught up a bit with me lately. Nothing but good things, but I haven’t been able to properly monitor my account for a while, besides the reblogs and short comments. Sorry, because I am late in my meta projects (sigh), and also I am late in my asks (I have not forgotten you, nice people who send me great questions, do not worry! I promise I will answer shortly!). (Gif found on @reylo-hill)

I am just adding on and expanding from your previous comments. Yep, the MF is probably the core of the ST. Everything revolves around it, and they have distilled so many clues about it, its role, and what it represents for every character, and how they come to interact with it. It is not just the nostalgia and the old jokes about Han’s piece of garbage. The MF, for some reason, though it comes from Han’s side, has come to stand for something important in the Skywalker’s family: their future, something that is, if you think about it, rather paradoxical. This piece is an antique, a thing of the past. But no, in the ST, the MF is really the future. Because something about the MF points to Ben Solo all the time, and Ben is, after all, the only future left for the Skywalker family. Of course the Skywalkers would look to the MF as a place of nostalgia: this is where Luke’s big adventure began, what saved him in ANH and ESB, where Leia and Han fell in love and first kissed. Han and his ship seem as inseparable as Han and Chewie. Funny thing, though, is that at the end of ROTJ, Han had -very reluctantly- moved on from the MF, lending it back to Lando (even if just temporarily), as if he was symbolically ready to grow up and start a new life with Leia. And it would have made sense to see him start something like that.

But in TFA they decided to bring back the MF, and despite the usual critiques on TFA about the fact that the movie was just a rehash for the nostalgic of the OT, I think the choice to pull out the MF out of retirement meant something important. It was there, as a matter of fact, on the Vanity Fair cover that was bringing us the new characters and the old, the common thread between them all, what creates the connection.

They did not JUST use the MF to make us feel fuzzy inside. Nope, the MF has a story to tell. The first obvious thing is the path to HOME.

And who needs to go back home? Not Han... Han does not really pine for home... He is a roamer, always been. But Ben... The MF is and will be the HEART of the ST, because the ST is about the fight for Ben’s HEART. if the MF has always been Han’s pride and joy, what about little Ben? Of course he was his father’s pride and joy. Check out that cutesy promotion for Empire’s End:

And just read the few lines at the end of Aftermath’s Empire’s End when Han talks to his baby boy... Heart wrenching....

Hey. It’s you and me, kid. Whole damn galaxy against us but we’ll make it through okay. I’m not always gonna be the best dad- c’mon, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. I can barely take care of myself. But I’ll always keep us pointed in the right direction...even if we zig and zag a little to get there. There’s your first lesson. Sometimes doing the right thing doesn’t mean following a straight line.

This zig and zag is a bit like the MF itself... And when Han promises his newborn son to point him in the right direction, the MF also plays that part, pointing him to Rey.

Just the way they bring back the MF says something... The MF, just like Ben, has been lost to Han for a while. It has suffered years of neglect and tampering with. It has been abandoned and considered lost for good. Ben chose to assume a distinctive archaic look (medieval by our own standards), with the cowl, crossguard, robe. And what about his saber, which, just like the MF is archaic, poorly constructed, rugged. And the MF, surrounded with the relics and the wreckage of the Empire, is also pretty much like Ben, surrounded with other relics of the Empire (the Vader mask, the First Order as the copy of the Empire, the decrepit Snoke).

Also consider the information given by The Visual Dictionary: Unkar Plutt has refused to let the scavengers plunder it because it “can still fly and he has big plans for her”. Just like Snoke has big plans for Ben.. And look at the Breakdown part and the words used:

An energy flux in the motivator bleeds back (...) causing a surge (...). Liquid metal fuel overflows (...) overheating components and rupturing a jucture. The liquid fuel sublimates into a poisonous gas that fills the freighter.

“Bleeding” is the word used by the Sith to turn the kyber crystal of their saber into a fiery red, knowing that, in Ben’s case, he probably bled his own Jedi saber, and not another Jedi’s, as is the Sith custom. “Surge”, “overheating”, “overflow” are all words that evoke, unequivocally, Kylo’s fiery bouts of rage in TFA.

And the term “poisonous” can equally apply to the way Kylo has been, for years, filled with Snoke/snake ‘s poisons, and his own dangerosity. Note that Rey is fully able to circumvent the potential danger posed by the MF.... But all this time, think about it, it was SO close to Rey. It was with her all the time, owned by Unkar Plutt, the very bane of Rey’s existence, which creates yet another invisible thread between them. What about Rey’s epidermic reaction to it: “This is garbage”. That goes, when faced with no other choice to “The garbage will do”. And then, the magic: she can handle it. She knows how to handle it. She understands it instinctively and knows how it clicks. She can figure it out, find what is wrong with it and repair it. She can fix it.

And she also admires it when she realizes what it is:

Remember Han? He never really could figure it out or repair it for good. She can. Obviously, major outcry about Rey being a Mary Sue! How could she? How dare she? Pilot and fix the MF? But people failed to understand (because it took the ST as a whole, as a perspective) that the MF was a metaphor all along. What Rey’s SPECIAL relationship to the MF was supposed to do is FORETELL us all along what her special relationship to Kylo/Ben Solo would be.

Just like the MF, she first reacts strongly against it. But then she gathers that she will have to deal with it anyways (that is what the Force bonds mean). And eventually, she realizes that she is, indeed,the only one who understands him. Who knows how he functions. Who can handle him. She also comes to respect him. Possibly help fixing him?

What about all these details about the MF that they brought us in the novelization. The hilarious idea that there are three brains in the MF constantly bickering... Just like in Ben Solo’s little head there were probably all these voices bickering and fighting all the time. I will exclude Snoke because he is an alien voice, coming from outside as a parasite to bug and hijack Ben Solo. But the three brains that have been fighting in Ben’s head, couldn’t they be Han, Leia, and Luke, who were respectively supposed to have one movie of the ST centered around them? As if, one by one, the fighting heads would get shut up, and forgiven, to finally find peace.... So yea, the anger he is directing towards the MF can be explained by the anger he is still directing towards his family...

Which is why Kylo has still to remain banned from the MF. In order to get back in, he needs to accept being Ben again. He needs to make peace with Ben Solo, with this part of himself. When I first heard of the deleted scene on TFA where Kylo gets to step inside the MF on Starkiller, I initially thought “Oh, what a shame!”.

How stupid of me! I know truly believe cutting it was a brilliant move, very coherent on a symbolic and narrative level. Of course, they would and should NOT let Kylo back aboard the MF at this point of the ST... His whole journey is about going back home. And obviously a “home” he can share with Rey (nesting porgs, I already made that point here). We are supposed to see them together aboard the MF on IX. That’s all. Twice, at the end, Rey goes alone aboard the MF and turns back to look behind, turning to look back at HIM, who never makes it to the MF. Rule of 3 applying, he has to make it to the MF eventually. She has to usher him there.

And from Ben, the MF has even come to stand for the relationship between him and Rey. It’s a nest, it’s a home, it’s a future together. I am pretty sure that RJ had his own little wink wink moment at the anti Reylo with the “Blow that piece of junk out of the sky” and “They really hate that ship” on the battle of Crait. If you hate Reylo, pretty much, you should hate the MF and all it stands for at this point.

And what about the new Han Solo movie? Of course they would do a Solo movie. I think they are trying to tie up all the loose strings here and there into a tight story. The MF is the core of the ST. So, in the Solo movie, we will get something about the MF. Remember the emphasis on the dice (and their part in TLJ) in the trailer, this eerily familiar new villain that is reminiscent of Kylo’s mask, and the mad theory I have been cooking with fellow blogger @antbee17 about the possibility of ...maybe... possibly... pretty please... finger crossing... getting a Harrison Ford voice over at the end narrating the story to an entranced little Ben...

Maybe I am projecting a lot into this (for sure into the Solo movie), but, about the MF and its connection to Ben and Rey, nah, I am pretty sure!

#reylo #reylo fam #reylo evidence #reylo meta #star wars meta #reylo fandom #kylo and the millenium falcon #save ben solo #ben solo and the millenium falcon #milleniumfalcon #han solo's pride and joy

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sethnakht · 6 years

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For the character ask meme - I have an inkling you’re going to be asked Leia like three times, so Lando please? :) @azalea-scroggs

thank you for this, darling!

First impression

I don’t remember the first time I saw the OT - I suspect it was on VHS tape, as I have a very early memory of the scene in ANH where Luke looks at the burning bodies of his aunt and uncle. I do have a very strong memory of the first time I saw ESB in theaters (this was in the 90s, the theatre had a copy of the OT films that they projected on special occasions), specifically of Lando’s entrance.

It’s funny - ESB terrified me as a little girl, particularly the shots of Vader sitting motionless in his pod, but perhaps the most frightening scene of all was that long, silent sequence after the Falcon has landed on Bespin, where it first appears that no one is coming to greet Han and Leia, only for the door to suddenly open and reveal Lando and Lobot plus entourage. I think the original cut of the film was darker or noisier than the remastered versions: they all looked like shadows - I specifically remember associating with 2001, the film that had frightened me most to date - and it was the look of the scene and the relative silence and tension that had me almost panicking. Once Lando began to smile and joke around with Han, though, I thought he was the funniest, most charming, etc. etc.

Impression now

I love Lando! He was the highlight of Solo for me, full stop - I could have watched an entire movie of just him. I love him both as a charming scoundrel causing mischief and havoc and as the character faced with an impossible choice who chooses to save as many lives as he can.

There’s something very powerful to me about his role in Empire, about how he takes responsibility for that choice, holds Vader accountable for every single change made to their agreement - consider that for a moment, the guts it must take to stand up to Vader in this situation, to continue to protest, to speak out, knowing how many lives are on the line! For as long as we see him in the film, he never stops taking responsibility, either - once he changes his mind and decides to help Leia, he also works to sabotage the Stormtroopers and keep the citizens of Bespin informed, etc. etc.

Favorite moment

Hm, it’s probably a toss between when he checks on Han’s vital signs after the carbon freezing - the choked, forced calm of his voice as he reports what he sees - and his accosting Vader after he realizes that Han is being tortured, that scene is something else

Idea for a story

oh dear, aza, I don’t even have ideas for my dissertation, let alone for fic … I would love to read a story that makes use of his recorded chronicles, someone coming across them perhaps later on in time, piecing together from the unreliable narration and saucy anecdotes an absolutely wild story in the process that sort of plays with what the reader knows cannot have happened and thinks might be plausible, etc

Unpopular opinion

I harp on RotJ too much, perhaps, but … idk. Lando isn’t in it enough for me, personally. I mean, he’s there for Han’s rescue, if a bit useless, and he becomes a General, and flies the Falcon, and that’s all very nice, but there’s a difference between having him as a character who actively shapes the narrative by making difficult choices and as a character whose presence is mostly shown through tricktechnik … what’s the name for it, special-effects … anyway I will stop right there

Favorite relationship

hm, difficult - I loved his comic with Sana (Star Wars #34), I loved his conversations with Q’ira … but nothing quite tops his love-hate relationship to/obsession with Han

Favorite headcanon

glompcat recently posted some information from the visual dictionary that suggests Lando stopped wearing capes after Han was frozen in carbonite, and only began wearing them again after Han was back - while this also could be explained with Doyleist reasoning, I do very much like that Watsonian reading

#apologies that this took so long!#i struggled a bit on headcanons #i'm not creative enough to come up with them I think #thank you for the ask dear aza #would love to ask you this one back!#character meme #long post #submission

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him-e · 6 years

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It bothers me people complaining about Luke in tlj, I know int the ot he's this hopeful hero and I know the character is iconic but you can't expect Luke to be the same before and after rotj, I mean, Vader death and redemption affected him, becoming a master affected him, Ben and the rise of the first order affected him. If they have put a Luke that was the same than in ep iv it wouldn't be realistic, Luke has grown, it's not the same 19 years old boy

Sometimes growth weighs you down, instead than lifting you up. Also, I feel like this sort of (not really) antiheroic-anticlimatic approach is just par for the course with the setup for this new trilogy. The OT’s curtains closed on such a finite, unequivocal happy ending that a sequel trilogy couldn’t be anything but disruptive of this happiness and fulfillment not only on a galactic scale, but on a personal level too. (after all, the “star wars” in star wars are all but a backdrop to this huge familial drama, aren’t they?)

You have what’s basically a carbon copy of the old Empire on the rise, and this happens despite the fact that our heroes have been in charge of the galaxy for all these years. So what went wrong this time? Because, obviously, something DID go wrong. And this time you no longer have the Jedi Order or the corrupted Republic of the prequels to blame. By signing up to the entire premise that kickstarts TFA, you must know you’re going to be faced with some hard truths, uncomfortable truths about your heroes, sooner or later.

and like, I’m a major Kylo/Ben stan and even I don’t think that Luke’s misstep destroys his characterization. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t devastating from Ben’s perspective, because it was—waking up to your uncle and most powerful jedi in the galaxy hovering on you with his lightsaber ignited because he’s afraid of you? TERRIFYING. Twice as traumatizing if you consider that Ben’s parents (from his perspective) gave up on him and passed him off to Luke, so the moment when Luke, the last person entrusted with his *soul*, no longer thinks he can be saved, is the moment when Ben just stops fighting and lets his shadow loose (and for god’s sake, I can’t stop thinking about this, it’s haunting me. when did this account become so deep).

But on Luke’s part, it’s just human. A human error.

And to be clear I think there’s a fundamental difference between the joyous, abstract idea that “everyone can be saved”—and getting to actually save in a blaze of glory, age 24, your absentee murderous father whom you have never spent more than 3 hours in total with—versus living every day, every hour of your life with someone who is practically your own child and pouring in him all your love and your wisdom AND YET. The darkness continues to only grow and grow in this kid, and it seems that whatever worked on your father isn’t working on him for some reason and maybe you’ve grown old and the Light has dimmed in you and maybe you were wrong and some people are just too dark to be saved and maybe…. Luke doesn’t outright say it, but I think these thoughts were the dark side tugging at him without he realizing it. Not Snoke, just Luke’s own dark side that has always been there. It tugged and tugged until something snapped. And you know the rest.

So what is that destroys Luke’s character? This one moment in which he thought he could save a million lives by killing one à la Stannis (or, like any parent of a problematic child knows, has a fleeting “I wish you were never born” thought and instantly regrets it)? The fact that he didn’t try to fix it immediately later? The fact that maybe he felt so ashamed and guilty and devastated that he had to literally cancel himself from existence, not even telling Leia? (he still can’t tell the truth to Rey, a perfect stranger who has almost no dog in this fight, six years later, so it’s clearly something that ripped him apart)

Oh, okay, Luke isn’t hopeful anymore. And? I will always scoff at the idea that once people subscribe to a happy, bright, optimistic version of yourself, you are forever obligated to perform that character even if it doesn’t represent the real you anymore, and you’re not allowed to show your scars. Life has a tendency to break you. Especially as you grow old.

But what prevents it from being a bleak narrative is that Luke actually has his own [ redemption ] arc in this movie and reacts. He reacts because Rey makes him react, she violently calls him out on his apathetic bullshit and leaves with so much of his old stubborn hopefulness that it reminded of who he STILL is (so much for *Rey only revolves around Kylo*—Rey is MUCH more proactive and assertive of her own agency in this film than in TFA, where she just reacted to what happened to her. In this movie? She’s deliberately the catalyst for MANY things. She actively makes choices. On her own).

It’s like he suddenly wakes up.And what he does is going to confront Kylo, who is entirely his demon, his own Frankenstein’s monster, created by his hubris (so much of TLJ is about hubris and its natural consequence, failure), and ask Ben forgiveness. This is truly the most heroic thing to do, for someone who spent years wrapped up in his own guilt and unable to process it and believing the only way to atone was to die like a hermit. I was actually surprised they gave the climatic Jedi vs Sith lightsaber battle to Luke (I was expecting Rey), and I’m still shaking for how beautiful and poignant that scene is. “See you around, kid”.

That’s a lot like Obi Wan in ANH but also… much more complex than Obi Wan in ANH. While Obi Wan was guilty of seeing the darkness too late, Luke is guilty of being hyperaware (perhaps, it’s precisely Anakin & Obi Wan’s cautionary tale that made him paranoid about Ben’s darkness, effectively turning his legitimate concerns into a self fulfilled prophecy). In the end, the stakes of Luke’s sacrifice are even higher than they were for Obi Wan in the OT, because a) that’s literally all that’s left of the Resistance that he’s dying to save, and b) we know that the root of Ben’s wrath is precisely his relationship with his family and specifically with Luke. Luke who failed Ben so BAD because it was a relationship that involved trust, parental care, and power imbalance. Luke who still loves Ben so much. Luke who was probably (at some point) Ben’s one true hero, even more than Han. We already have the backstory at this point in a way that we didn’t when we saw Vader strike Obi Wan down—but Ben/Luke is much more visceral, much more painfully the decisive factor in Kylo Ren’s villain origin story than Obikin ever was in the creation of Darth Vader. So the last duel is emotionally charged in a way that the OT’s Vader/Obi Wan one wasn’t, because we have taken young Luke’s place in watching his mentor (and hero) sacrifice himself for him (for us) and it’s much clearer that he’s also sacrificing himself for the villain, too.

#but most importantly:#it bothers me how depression and inward tragedy/trauma are always treated by fandom as 'bad' storylines #or 'bad' characterization #that's all #bye #anon #asks #luke**#tlj wank #tlj discourse #sw wank #sw**#sw asks #sw for ts #ben solo #luke and ben #sw discourse

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anghraine · 6 years

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Okay, so the follow-up to this post: here are the actual reasons that I prefer to err in the direction of longer rather than shorter starship travel (and offscreen time in general).

(Caveat 1: I know that SW ships actually travel at the speed of plot.)

(Caveat 2: These are reasons that I prefer it, not reasons that have no other explanation or which can’t be interpreted in any other way.)

(Caveat 3: Feel very free not to talk to me about the EU. Yes, haha, [obligatory European Union joke], but I genuinely care no more about it than any random person’s interpretations and imaginings.)

In ANH, Luke develops a close relationship with Obi-Wan, whom he did already know, but only as a strange neighbour.

Luke is devastated by Obi-Wan’s death and, retroactively, by his deception. Once he comes to terms with it, however, he continues to feel a profound respect and affection for him, to the point that his sister names her only son after Obi-Wan without having ever met him.

(Han met him, of course, but didn’t care for him—it seems pretty clearly via Luke.)

Han and Luke bond over the film, if in a somewhat adversarial way, and are friendly enough that Luke feels betrayed by Han quite predictably leaving the Rebellion to its fight.

Leia, at first similarly outraged by Han’s contempt for the revolution, has become positively zen about it by the time Han actually leaves.

Also by that time, Han invites Luke to become part of his and Chewie’s team/surrogate family. At Luke’s angry dismissal of him, the prickly Han attempts an awkward gesture of conciliation.

Ultimately, Han feels such a profound depth of friendship that he uncharacteristically abandons his self-interest and risks his life to turn back and help attack a planet-destroying space station.

Despite being a longtime member of the Rebellion, Leia seems closest to Luke and Han by their return to Yavin, and runs off with them to celebrate the destruction of the Death Star, rather than any of the people she’s known for her entire life.

In ESB, Luke undergoes a rigorous extended training with Yoda by the time Han and Leia get from Hoth to Bespin (in fairness, without hyperdrive). As with Obi-Wan, he develops a profound respect for Yoda and is grieved by his death.

During that journey from Hoth to Bespin, Han and Leia’s relationship drifts from adversarial UST (if with genuine affection) to love that seems largely steady and amicable, even tender.

Han formally leaves the Rebellion on Hoth, his departure delayed by factors beyond his control, which also lead to the sidetrip with Leia. He gets frozen into carbonite on that sidetrip and remains frozen throughout the entire gap between ESB and ROTJ. After being rescued from the carbonite, we next see him as a general in the Rebellion.

Jumping, of course, to Rogue One:

On Yavin 4, Jyn and Cassian regard each other with mutual suspicion and little short of mutual antagonism. Cassian tells Kay that he doesn’t want her along; Jyn steals his weaponry and then shamelessly lectures him on trust.

On Jedha, Jyn is getting a kick out of trolling Kay. Cassian watches with wry amusement; he seems to find the bickering both entertaining and rather endearing.

Throughout the Jedha scenes, Jyn is skeptical but civil, while Cassian is brusque but respectful; when she has a question, she simply asks it, and Cassian simply explains. Neither really leaps to assumptions.

Despite the bickering, Jyn rushes to protect Kay when she thinks he’s in danger.

Jyn and Cassian protect each other in battle, and stick unnecessarily close together even when not.

When the Death Star attacks Jedha, Cassian already has the information he needed Jyn for. Nevertheless, he sends a potentially valuable Imperial defector off with two men he’s just met and rushes after Jyn, risking death and by extension the entire operation.

This is a man who has literally murdered someone for this operation.

When they address each other by name, it’s “Jyn” and “Cassian,” never surnames/titles (where e.g. Chirrut persistently addresses Cassian as “captain” or “Captain Andor”). Jyn shouts his name during the battle and Cassian shouts hers when he runs off to pull her out of the destruction of Jedha.

By the time that they arrive at Eadu, the team appears to be on fairly comfortable terms. Baze says Cassian has the face of a friend (not, shall we say, the first impression that Cassian gives).

Jyn, prickly and suspicious, with a history of abandonment, doesn’t even contemplate the possibility of Cassian betraying her trust. She’s shocked as well as angry.

Cassian tries to halt an entire Alliance assault to protect Jyn, and then risks his life, again, to extract her from danger.

When Jyn confronts him, Chirrut(?) gives her hand a supportive squeeze. The team is silently judgmental with her; here and on Yavin, they seem intensely loyal to her.

Cassian is upset by her (justifiable!) anger and snaps out the (justified!) point that he didn’t actually do it and defied orders in the process. When Jyn uncritically seizes on “orders” and accuses him of being like a stormtrooper, he lashes out with a rant that a) takes no account of her father just dying in her arms, b) doesn’t really have much to do with the situation at hand, but seems to have been building for awhile, and c) is painfully accurate.

When they arrive on Yavin, they’re partners again. Jyn seems to expect that Cassian will back her up, and is openly bitter when he appears to have betrayed her trust again. It turns out that Cassian trusts her implicitly and, after twenty years of unwavering service, not only is willing to go rogue with her but raises a team to help her do it.

Cassian publicly bares his soul to her while framing the strike team as following her, although he recruited them and they’ve barely met her. Although this is pretty clearly a polite fiction as far as the soldiers are concerned, he now takes care to run his orders past her before delivering them.

While Jyn expected him to back up her testimony, she didn’t expect him to take the harder route of actually sticking with her in defiance of the Alliance’s decision. She’s enormously touched and as they’re (literally) circling around each other, says she’s not used to people sticking around when it’s difficult. Cassian leans in and says “welcome home” as they gaze into each other’s eyes.

It’s worth pointing out that it would make zero sense for the home in question to mean the Rebellion. The Rebellion just very publicly refused to stick by her because it’s difficult, as he fully expected. And it’s a direct response to Jyn addressing him, personally. “Home” has to mean Cassian himself.

Again: the last time we saw them really interact, Jyn was saying that he’s no better than a stormtrooper and Cassian was accusing her of egocentric moral cowardice.

In the shuttle, Jyn and Cassian impulsively smile at each other, they both turn shy, and just about short-circuit when their arms brush.

Also in the shuttle, Baze affectionately calls Jyn “little sister.”

*deep breath*

Okay, I’m definitely firm that literal time spent together is not the sole determiner of intimacy (and esp in high-pressure situations, is not required for it!). e.g. Luke and Anakin Skywalker spent a sharply limited amount of time in physical proximity, but felt a very profound love for each other in the end.

(No, not interested in hearing that they didn’t really, it was just xyz.)

That said, it seems pretty clear that significant advancements and even interactions happen offscreen. It’s not just that we’re missing the sort of detail you get in narratives more exclusively focused on character; there seem to be genuinely important developments and interactions that we simply don’t see. We get more of a highlight reel than anything else: a few representative, dramatic incidents that give us an idea of the rest, rather than actually all that’s significant. SW gives us forests rather than trees.

Whether that’s a persistent flaw or not is another conversation. But I do think that there is a lot we don’t see that would take up a longer period than is generally assumed. Jyn and Cassian, Luke and Obi-Wan, Han and Leia, and the rest—there was more than enough time to know and love each other, in all their different ways.

#sweu critical #not about that but for the note and ... aggressive indifference #anghraine babbles #hmm it's mostly summary but there's enough interpretation that i'll upgrade it #anghraine's meta #/#//#///#////#/////#star wars #tfa for ts #though the reference is barely present! it's really all about the ot+rogue one #(...surprise)#this is definitely something i've been thinking - and thinking /about/ - for a long time #esp with regard to the anh timeline (because so much turns on it relationship-wise)#but ro's larger main cast makes it particularly glaring i think #just in a way that's fundamentally the same #in conclusion: alexander freed can fight me

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arabian-bloodstream · 4 years

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Star Wars: Flashback Cut (and why)

I know I just posted this, BUT... I also posted it on a Star Wars subreddit I’m a member of and someone had an awesome suggestion in the comments and so I made a change that I think works so much better:

If you’re stuck at home and feel like giving Star Wars a binge-watch, here’s a potential new way to watch it. This is my preferred way of watching The Star Wars Saga. It keeps the vast majority of big surprises intact, while preserving the story integrity. It also links narratives and character arcs, and strengthens those narratives and arcs overall, in my opinion. I also feel that in doing so it makes the Prequel Trilogy and Rise of the Skywalker (some of the weaker films in the saga--again, my opinion) feel more seamless and part of the greater whole, thus making them stronger.

*Note if you prefer The Skywalker Saga you can leave Solo out.

STAR WARS: THE FLASHBACK CUT

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Episode IV: A New Hope

Episode I: The Phantom Menace

Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

Episode VII: The Force Awakens

Episode VII: The Last Jedi

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Episode IX: Rise of the Skywalker

AND WHY THIS WORKS (FOR ME) …

Rogue One

- R1 makes perfect sense having no scrawl because the A New Hope scrawl recaps the events of R1 whereas R1 started the story.

- Everything with the single reactor blast destroying the Death Star explains that “plot hole” in ANH now.

A New Hope

The Phantom Menace

- Doing this gives us a much broader history of the Jedi, we find out more about Obi-Wan's history and we feel his loss much greater, and we really mourn the fact that Luke never knew his father.

- In about a minute into the film, young Obi-Wan is introduced. He is the first character’s whose name is given and coming into this from ANH, we know who he is and it's clear that we're going to find out his story.

Attack of the Clones

- Another reason that the Machete cut doesn't work is that it's several minutes into the film before we meet any character we know from the Original Trilogy (in the elevator scene with Obi-Wan and Anakin). Also, it’s a bit longer before Anakin himself is referenced by name. Amidala calls him "Ani" instead. So as a starting point into the Prequel Trilogy (and definitely as a Flashback between ANH/TESB and RotJ) the Machete Cut is very confusing. (And, again, this doesn't take into account the issues mentioned under TPM.)

- Now we see Luke's father, roughly the same age as he was, so similar as the boy we met in ANH and we also know that the girl we met in TPM is his mother. So, we've met both of his parents, we've seen them fall in love. This beautiful tragedy is going to play out soon enough, we just don’t know how. And at this point we (well, new viewers) don't know that Anakin becomes Darth Vader.

The Empire Strikes Back

- Aha! By having TPM and AotC before this one, we've only met Anakin, but we really know him now. So to find out that *he* becomes Darth Vader will truly, deeply have an impact like HOLY SHIT!

- Having Luke asking Ben “Why?” a couple of times regarding the Anakin/Darth Vader lie at the end of TESB before going into Revenge of the Sith to find out how it happens makes so much sense. It sets it up that we are going to be told why.

Revenge of the Sith

- With TESB ending on Luke asking Ben “why?” we follow up immediately with the answer in full detail.

- Bringing baby Luke to Tatooine at the end of the film signifies that Anakin’s story is over and settles us right back in for the return to Luke’s story. It segues beautifully into the title of the next one: "Return of the Jedi” in a couple of different ways. We’re done with the Sith story and now we’re going back to the Jedi. Also, Luke is the Jedi and we’re returning to his story: Return of the Jedi (aka Luke).

Return of the Jedi

- Leia being revealed as his twin was just not this big OOH! moment; it just seemed kinda, throwaway? So being revealed in the PT is an OK loss in my books for all we get in return.

The Force Awakens

The Last Jedi

- There is the dice that we saw on the Falcon and that dice comes into play in the closing scenes with Luke and Leia, and then especially Kylo/Ben as he’s kneeling before the Falcon that disappears in his hand.

Solo

- On the other hand, it is cool to find out why the dice we’re important to Han and we do in Solo.

- As well, the talk of the stuff that’s happening with the Empire/the Emperor in Solo sets up the horror of what could happen with the Emperor coming back in The Rise of Skywalker.

- Also, seeing Kylo/Ben’s father going from a good kid who loses his way, lost and trying to find himself just as Kylo was at the end of TLJ (and like Han, he didn't get the girl) works well.

- Plus, it also gives a breather that helps fill the stretch of time between TLJ and TRoS.

- Even though, the opening crawl is written differently than the other films, unlike the R1 story, Solo still at least has the crawl, and by not being the traditional crawl, it lets us know right away that something different is going on. Then, boom! We meet a young Han in the first scene and we're on our way, but it was that untraditional crawl that already set us up to expect a swerve away from the continuation of TLJ.

* As I stated atop, if you just want to do The Skywalker Saga binge, Solo can easily be dropped from the watch-list.

The Rise of Skywalker

- With the horrors that the Emperor and his Empire made of the galaxy fresh in our mind, viewers really will not want to see a return of the Emperor. (OK, not that they would anyway.)

- We just saw a young Lando come out of the shadows deciding to fight the good fight… and here he is forty years later, doing it all over again.

- Just having watched Ben’s father’s idealistic self turned into a cynic by what the Empire/the Dark Side had created of the Galaxy visited upon his son–and turned him even worse–and then flipped on his side is a beautiful thing as Ben helps to keep that from happening all over again.

So there you go, my Star Wars: Flashback Cut (and why):

The Star Wars Saga - All released SW films: R1, 4, 1, 2, 5, 3, 6, 7, 8, Solo, 9

The Skywalker Saga - All SW films w/Skywalker characters: R1, 4, 1, 2, 5, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9

#star wars #tlj #tros #tfa #anh #tesb #rogue one #sw solo #aotc #rots #tpm

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starwarsolo · 6 years

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of TLJ

I just want to cry. I want to fucking cry. Why does the world hate women so much? Since TLJ opening it’s like the world has turned into reylo and this is my personal Hell™. Stephen Colbert, of all people, doing that disgusting thing with Rey and Ren’s figurines, Mark Hamill, of all people, saying there’s romantic tension between Rey and Ren and saying that “girls love the bad guys” and that kind of bullshit, even the fucking Emo Kylo Ren twitter account whom I thought understood his character, and all the shit that I probably haven’t seen and have no intention of seeing, it really feels like everybody is fucking pro-reylo and I’m fucking devastated because now I learned that Rian Johnson actually INTENDED for them to be romantic in the movie when I came out of it thinking this was a great depiction of what toxic and abusive behavior is and how to recognize it and flee the second you realize it is being done to you, a very well done cautionary tale not just for women but for everyone to identify the way you can be manipulated and played with and degraded by other people, that’s what I took from TLJ where Kylo Ren and Rey were concerned. But no, here we are, a-fucking-gain, al-fucking-ways with this “ooooh this is a romance and a great one at that” utter bullshit, why? Why? How on EARTH can you think Ren feels anything romantic for Rey when all he’s ever done since TFA was hunt her down, neutralize her, torture her and want to literally kill her and her friend right after having killed his own father whom she just had taken as the parent figure she’d seek all her life, and probably even worse in TLJ where he STILL wanted to kill her, then being literally forced to communicate with her when he had 0 intention to (the Force bond was forced on both Ren and Rey) and taking this opportunity to manipulate her into feeling compassion for him, resulting in pitting her against Luke and being able to neutralize her once again to take her straight to Snoke so she could once again get tortured and abused, taking the opportunity of her being there and seemingly being on his side to serve his selfish ambitions to be able to strike down Snoke and the Praetorian Guards, offering her a place in his godawful world-domination plan just because he’s probably even more scared of her than of Snoke and he knows damn well that if she’s not on his side then she’s a formidable opponent and probably the only one who can stop him, doing that BY BELITTLING her and being toxic and abusive ONCE AGAIN, and finally ordering his army to take down the Falcon, which he damn well knows she’s on, and later declaring to Luke that he’ll “destroy” her, among others. HOW is that either attraction or love? All this gets even worse when you get Rey’s POV: she ultimately rejects him and his offer because she realizes what a gigantic mistake she’s made in not trusting her original instincts and opinion of him in the first place. She flat out rejects him, still leaves him one last chance to do the right thing by not apprehending him (like he would do and has done to her in her place) after Holdo hyperspacing into the ship they were on in hopes he could stop the First Order from hunting down the Resistance, amongst whom her friends and surrogate family, then ultimately both figuratively and literally closing the door on him and all the compassion she might have briefly felt for him because he did not and never had the intention of taking that last chance she’d offered him. Once again NO romance on her side, compassion maybe, mutual understanding when it comes to feelings of abandonment by blood-family surely, but it just stops there. Yes they have traumatic childhood issues in common but that’s about it, that’s all they share except for the fact they’re both very powerful Force-users (which they’re not the only ones either in TFA nor in TLJ -see: Snoke, Luke, Luke’s ex-students of the Jedi academy, the stable boy from that last TLJ scene, even Leia and maybe Finn too), nothing else, na-fucking-da. And really even with that in common they still can’t seem to truly understand each other, this romance is not only wrong it’s just plain implausible and illogical.

The worst is that it doesn’t even fucking stop here with this movie. Like, beyond the issue of reylo there’s the whole issue of absolute blatant mischaracterization (and I’m not just talking about Luke here, I’m talking about basically every.single.fucking.character.), overdone humor and confusing cinematography, and the worst of worst the treatment of characters of color, which I am utterly ashamed to have not noticed as soon as my first viewing of the movie. I’ve seen TLJ twice and I’ve seen a lot of reviews both from professional critics and regular fans like me and I’ve taken a step back to analyze and digest the movie and now I’m left with the most mixed feelings and conflict over a movie I’ve ever had (so not only out of all the Star Wars movies, but out of all the movies I’ve ever seen). I and everyone were led to believe this movie was going to be awesome and I honestly trusted Rian Johnson and Lucasfilm but at this point in time I’m just mad at Rian Johnson and do NOT want him ANYWHERE NEAR the next trilogy Disney and Lucasfilm are planning, I’m absolutely terrified of where Episode IX is going if Kathy Kennedy actually accepted Johnson’s script of TLJ and continuously praised him and this movie and even offered him the next Star Wars movies, my only hope is that JJ Abrams coming back for IX will make it all alright and back on the greatness TFA had made us believe in (help us JJ Abrams you’re our only ho). And I mean okay TFA’s main flaw was that it was basically a remake of ANH and a lot of people wanted a fresh take on the Star Wars universe and okay that’s exactly what TLJ did but the huge problem is that it did so but in the most fucking awful manner. There are things I loved about the movie and I do love it but it’s extremely flawed and honestly feels like a joke, I’m honestly more and more leaning towards it not really counting in this trilogy, this movie and its fiasco really have the possibility of not counting if JJ and Lucasfilm really deliver for Episode IX and make it right. Please bring back the gays and make it canon, bring back the badass ordinary female lead that kicks ass and defeats abusive fuckboiz with too much power and privilege and make it canon, bring back non-racist POC characterization and expand it and make it better and make it canon, I’m not asking for a movie where I get everything I want in a Care Bears kind of way but at least a movie that’s done right and doesn’t take us 5 billion steps back from what we had in TFA and from what the world should be aspiring to be (intersectional feminism, anti-racism, anti-fascism, I could go on). I know I’m in no position nor have the authority to do that but I would strongly advise Lucasfilm to actually recognize and take notes of all the criticism this movie is getting because not doing so could lead them actually losing all the precious money they intend to keep accumulating with future Star Wars content (but then again maybe that’s how they would learn since according to their latest release “the greatest teacher, failure is”).

#i had to let it all out #i was stressed for the past few months over this movie #and now i realize i was fucking right to be and i'm stressed even more about it all #mostly im just fucking tired of this godawful world that hates women and poc and lgbtq+#i dream of the day the sw cast is no longer under contract and can actually give us their sincere opinion of this movie and trilogy #because i cannot believe either mark daisy john oscar kmt gwen christie and adam and all the others would 100% agree with the johnson shit #txt #tlj #tlj spoilers #also you're telling me all you had in store for kylo ren's character is a rip-off of jk rowling's snape and a worse version of that too #this is just bad writing and an awful copy-pasting characterization #it's purely bad fanfic material that i am definitely not here for #my god 2017 is truly the darkest timeline wow #also i know this looks like i'm flip-flopping on that movie #but really with time and perspective #and mostly learning that what i got out of this movie is not what was intended has really made me think twice about it #i'm just ultra disappointed and tired #because i care a lot about this franchise but maybe i care too much #so i just need to chill but also i will not not be vocal about this whole fuckery #okay im done and shutting up now

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