#the yacht piss rumours make sense now

[sortyourlifeoutmate]

Nincompoops of the First Order

In which a jackass rambles about, well, the First Order, mostly. And some TLJ stuff. But mostly the First Order.

It's like, I get why the First Order exists. In a general sense. The new films needed a big, bad enemy to rally a plucky underdog against. What are you going to pick? Something new and outside context that might risk alienating and confouding people - people being notoriously fickle and difficult to please? Something new without TIE Fighters, Stormtroopers or AT-AT's? People love that shit!

So just resurrect the Empire! And give it a dumb new name, whatever.

But wait, isn't the Republic back? Wouldn't they be a little concerned about that? Wouldn't they have spent some years, you know, ensuring that the Empire's powerbase was entirely broken so this sort of shit wouldn't happen?

Nope, no, apparently not.

Reading about it, it has something to do with the Empire setting up shop in the Unknown Regions or the Outer Rim or some such nonsense and from what I remember of the Force Awakens the Republic just didn't seem especially interested in following up on the rumours of these jackbooted thugs coming back again. Which was why instead of, you know, A REPUBLIC ARMY being the ones fighting you 'The Resistance' who had nominal support but nothing really impressive. Hence Underdog.

Practically speaking "We need the Empire and the Rebellion again - make that happen."

Which is, uh, fine. I guess. It works, certainly. The lack of any immediate explanation about Snoke is incredibly galling. The Emperor's existence was understandable because if there is an EVIL EMPIRE it stands to reason there is an EVIL EMPEROR. And if the EVIL EMPEROR has someone like Darth Vader at his beck and call it figures he'd have crazy space magic too, so go nuts. That's fine. He didn't need an explanation. Snoke, however, did. And he didn't get one. And it unlikely to. Which just makes him a fucking bolt from the blue that really, really requires seeing to.

You know how in things sometimes a new character will come in and everyone you're used to will be all like "Oh hey! That guy! We all know that guy! Oh that guy, what a rapscallion!" and you're sitting there like "Uh, what? Who? When? Why? Huh?" It's like that.

Snoke is a significant factor of this major faction involved in the conflict! He is the Supreme Leader! And he just popped out of thin air?! Super powerful and hyper-mysterious? And everyone knows who he is?!

That drives me up the bloody wall.

While I'm on the subject of petty annoyances I'm going to whale on Hux, too.

I don't like Hux. Because he's a frothing, goggle-eyed incompetent who is plain, straight-up bad at his job. The only reason he has any success is that he is on the side with the biggest and mostest guns. His idea of grand strategy is to take all these guns, put them in a heap, and shove them towards whatever problem is confronting him that day. And he fucks it up.

Snoke! You're Supreme Leader! You have lots of people perfectly willing to obey orders that you give! Many of them are probably not massive idiots! Hell, you're an evil overlord - just kill Hux on the spot and replace him! You won't even notice the difference! Except that now things aren't quite as fucked up as they were before.

A buddy of mine floated the idea that Snoke kept Hux around deliberately just to annoy Kylo Ren. Which I can believe, actually.

And oh Phasma. Poor Phasma. Supposedly an initial design for Kylo Ren kept around because they liked the look? Shame they pissed a vaguely interesting character up the wall.

Remember how in the Force Awakens her contributiosn to the plot are A) Betray her own side leading to however deaths and B) Getting thrown in the trash? Sublime. In the Last Jedi she gets a chance to throw down properly! She tanks a blaster bolt like a boss! She, uh, gets smacked down like a chump a minute later and falls into a fire hole.

Wah wah.

Apparently that Chromium armour of hers is made from Palpatine's salvaged yacht? I read that somewhere. Dope as shit, that. Adds nothing to her in the films as no-one says it and she still fails to do anything useful. Which is a damn shame.

So yes. The First Order exists solely because "We need the Empire back, stat!" and they're rubbish.

But what else were they going to do?