allronix

[allronix]

I mean, you can put a Mando'ad in a fancy dress and jewels...but you can't entirely take out the attitude.

Guys, I love her so much. How many times did she look at Obi wan like this in that year on the run?

[allronix]

Um...good soldiers follow orders?

Seriously, this is partly WHY the PT era needed citizen soldiers. Because Scorch, Fox, and Cody wouldn't know the difference between a moral order and an immoral one...But Carth Onasi, Aric Jorgan, and Felix Iresso would.

How to hit a new line below

I am sorry?

So, the goverment can be corrupt, but their enforcing organization is not and can not can be called out for their mistakes?

I can see the pattern though...

"Freikops was not corrupt, they continued to do their job! So, it is perfectly fine to kill opposition leaders on the streets(Carl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg) without giving them a fair trial!"

"Berlin police was not corrupt, they continued to do their job! So, it's fine to start shooting the peaceful demonstration at May 1929! And of course, Hans Litten is not right for attempting to sue Noske and Zorgiebel for this massacre!"

"Ohio National Guard was not corrupt, they continued to do their job! So, they were justified in attacking anti-war demonstration in Kent University, killing four people, two of whom(Sandra Lee Scheuer and William Knox Schroeder) were not even part of it, and wounding many!"

"West Berlin police at 1968 was not corrupt, they continued to do their job! So, it was fine for them to shoot Benno Ohnesorg, while aiming at Thomas Giefer, and brutally repress people protesting Shah's visit!"

"South Korean armie and police at 1980 were not corrupt, they continued to do their job! It was fine for them to start shooting and arresting Gwanju students who were demanding democracy!"

"USA poilce at COVID was not corrupt, they continued to do their job! So, they were fine with strangling already apprehended George Floyd to the death!"

Ironically it stance have one really weak point. It reminds quite a bit of one Nuremberg trial defence, made by no other by Otto Noelte:

Noelte: What was your attitude, as a soldier, officer and general, to the problems you had to face in your profession?

Keitel: I can say that I was a soldier by vocation and conviction. For more than 44 years without interruption, I served my country and people as a soldier (...). I did this with equal dedication under the Kaiser, under President Ebert, under Field Marshal von Hindenburg, and under the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler.

No matter, what goverment, no matter how corrupt, no matter what it did(like allowing Kalee to starve or ignoring Jabiim being attacked by pirates), you should serve and not ask any poignant question! Woah!

Dear Jedi cult, I know how much you love to compare Order 66 to Holocaust, but remmember, please, that references to the World War 2 doesn't stop here.

"Just serving" does not absolve you of your actions. "Just following orders" is not an excuse since 1946, especially in the fiction. Hope it helps.

[allronix]

In any other universe, I say "This side conscripts children and trains them with deadly weapons. They forbid these children from ever seeing or hearing from their families once recruited in infancy because the organization is their family now. And to defend the government they serve, they allowed themselves to become the overseers and commanders of an army of slave soldiers to suppress internal dissent," we would look at that and think these were the guys we were trying to fight against.

So weirdly, we have the Jedi set up to be these ultimate heroes and good guys, yet they are just soaked in the tropes and trappings that would mark them as the bad side in any other piece of work depicting a dystopia.

The whole Jedi recruiting is Dystopia 101. You want to establish that this is a bad place to live? Establish that the people in charge recruit kids and take them away from their parents. Even as recently as the HP Fantastic Beasts films, Newt's introduction to America's Wizarding World being a dystopian system was when Tina and Queenie pointed out that American mage children born to "No-Maj" (muggles) were taken from their birth families and their muggle relatives and friends mind raped into forgetting them. (One wonders if the Jedi would use this and bullshit some reason about sparing those left behind the pain of loss...). You also get the Babylon Five Psi Corps or the Dragon Age mage towers. Hell, even in Disney canon, one of the things that establishes the First Order as grade A dirtbags is Finn telling his new comrades that he was recruited as an infant.

So...um...why in the HELL are we supposed to see this Jedi practice as happy, fluffy, adoption?! Or at the very least take the whole "Oh, but this is all willing! It is a great honor for the family to sacrifice their child!" without a 55-gallon drum of suspicion? In real life, children were recruited from peasant families or other disfavored populations to serve as concubines (if female), soldiers (if male), servant/slave labor, or human sacrifice. It was a way for the elites to tell these disfavored populations that they could do whatever the hell they wanted, especially destroy any future or hope for the future. And the only thing these disfavored people could console themselves with is the elite's excuse that having their child "chosen" in this way was an honor.

Another dystopia trope is the whole Word of Lucas that Jedi can have casual sexual relations but not emotional attachment. Well, that was a common thing in sci-fi dystopias. Logan's Run with the glasshouses where people hooked up with strangers and watched each other get it on. Brave New World with the Orgy Porgy. That sort of thing. And it was a thing in real life for people conscripted to military or religious service to not be able to marry but they were fine with...er...more transactional forms of sex. The elite of the Catholic church are what gave us the courtesan, prostitutes trained to be elite and educated companions to the Papal court. Buddhist monks of Edo Japan having ritualized pederasty with the acolytes. Both regulated brothels, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't just because they were doing the health inspections. We know sex work, sex slavery, and that sort of thing is all over the GFFA and given a wide tolerance. We also know that Jedi do espionage type missions and that honey pot espionage is never going away. We also have the sticky bit that Force Sensitivity has a strong (though not guaranteed) genetic component. So there may be a few unpleasant reasons for this dystopian edict as well. Only made more salient by the nasty misogynistic treatment if a female/carrying Jedi gets pregnant.

The last dystopia trope is the removal from the natural world. Much emphasis is put on the natural aspects of the "good" guys versus the cold tech of the "evil" guys. Or if we have a world where everyone lives in cyberpunk hellscape, only the rich and powerful (usually the bad guys) get to see an actual tree. Okay, the alleged "good" guys are sitting in the middle of a cyberpunk hellscape world. And like the rich elite, they have actual real trees in a place where most citizens will never touch real soil! At least with Legends, you got Jedi enclaves and outposts in really nice locations surrounded by nature and life; Tython, Dantooine, Ossus. Tenoo if you want to throw a Disney example in there.

The average muggle citizen of Star Wars lives in horrible poverty. To the point where a one-room apartment in a slum building on the SURFACE of Coruscant is considered luxury. Many more live in subsistence farming like medieval peasants. Others under the thumb of corporate rule because companies like Czerka own entire planets.

Granted, it's better than various incarnations of the Empire because it's not just open slavery led by ax-crazy theocratic whack-jobs too busy backstabbing and power jockeying to get anything done but warfare. But...well...being better than Sith is textbook faint praise.

Dystopian themes in the Prequels

“Looking back is helpful in understanding his work. Lucas started out in the 1960’s as an experimental filmmaker heavily influenced by the avant-garde films of the San Francisco art scene. Initially interested in painting, he became an editor and visualist who made abstract tone poems. His first feature, THX 1138 (1971) was an experimental science fiction film that presented a surreal, underground world where a dictatorial state controls a docile population using drugs. Love and sex are outlawed, procreation is controlled through machines, and human beings shuffle meaninglessly around the system.”

—Anthony Parisi, 'Revisiting the Star Wars Prequels'

The bolded parts in this description correspond with the Coruscant Underworld, the Jedi Order’s code, and the creation of the clone troopers, respectively.

Notably, in THX 1138's setting, emotions such as love and the concept of family are taboo:

I’ve always found it so interesting that Lucas incorporated the dystopian elements of his earlier sci-fi into the Prequels, taking place as they do in the context of the final years of the Repubic, with all its colourful and sumptuous visual spendour. In comparison, the post-apocalyptic ‘Dark Times’ of the Original Trilogy would seem on the surface to be the more outwardly ‘dystopian’ setting of the two—however, the actual story of the OT is a mythic hero's journey and fairytale, complete with an uplifting and transcendent happy ending. The OT's setting may be drained of colour, and its characters may be living under the shadow of the Empire, but as a story it is far from bleak or dystopian in tone. Rather, fascinatingly, it is the pre-apocalyptic era of the Prequels that is presented as the more dystopian storyline:

“On the surface, [The Phantom Menace] is an optimistic, colorful fantasy of a couple of swashbuckling samurai rescuing a child Queen and meeting a gifted slave boy who can help save the galaxy from the slimy Trade Federation and its Sith leaders. But beneath that cheerful facade is a sweatshop of horrors.” —Michael O'Connor, 'Moral Ambiguity: Beyond Good and Evil in the Prequels'

This is referring to the state of the galaxy during the Prequels era, including the fact that slavery is known to exist, but is largely ignored by the Republic and the Jedi alike due to being too economically inconvenient to combat. It also refers to how the Jedi of the Old Order come across as cold and distant atop their ivory tower on the artificial world of Coruscant, far removed not only from the natural world but also from the true realities of the people they claim to serve. And then there is the additional revelation in Attack of the Clones that love and family are 'outlawed' within the Jedi Order, creating an environment in which their own 'Chosen One' is unable to flourish, leaving him vulnerable to the Dark Side. Finally, there's the fact that the characters end up so distracted by fighting a civil war (something that goes against their own principles and involves the use of a slave clone army in the process), that they are blinded to the entity of pure evil that is guiding their every move...until it is too late.

“Without a clear enemy, the Jedi Order, the Galactic Senate, the whole of the Star Wars galaxy bickers and backstabs and slides around the moral scales. But there is one benefit to Palpatine’s pure evil crashing down upon the galaxy; against its oppressive darkness, only the purest light can shine through.” —Michael O'Connor, 'Moral Ambiguity: Beyond Good and Evil in the Prequels'

If anything, the Dark Times allows for the OT generation's acts of courage and heroism to flourish and succeed, because they are not hampered by the Old Jedi Order's restrictive rules, nor by its servitude to the whims of an increasingly corrupt Republic—so corrupt, in fact, that by the time of RotS, it is practically the Empire in all but name. Indeed, one of the key features of the Prequels, and what makes them so tragic, is that the characters are already living in a dystopia...they just don't know it.

There is, paradoxically, a level of freedom to be found in the midst of the Dark Times which had not been possible during the Twilight era, which allows Original Trio to rise above the tragedy that befell their predecessors. They are able to act as free agents (not as slaves of a corrupt government), serving only the fight for the liberation of all the peoples of the galaxy (not just citizens of the Republic), and are likewise free to live (and love!) on their own terms. Free to act on their positive attachments to one another, without having to hide the truth of their feelings. It's particularly telling that *this* is, above all, what makes the Prequels era so dystopian—the characters' inability to freely and openly participate in normal familial human relationships.

[allronix]

@invincibleinck - The true mystery of that film is how Lora did not lose her damn mind sitting between her Mister and the Ex.

✨flynn✨

[allronix]

Even if you get Jet in the shot? It helps show that the suits really are fantastic. No sleek monochrome minimalism. No, full on elaborate lines and neon colors.

The environments in this game slap

Now THIS is a GRID. Take notes, Kevin Flynn!

[allronix]

Figures the guy who did live action Scooby-Doo, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and The Specials (look it up, it's hilarious) would put Krypto the Super Dog in his Superman film.

I never feel more 'are ya winnin', son???' than when I need to do literally anything on instagram other than post photos, so if you'd like to see my sad attempt at a probably already played-out meme, the reel version of this is over there. XD But I liked the snoot view of Krypto, so here we go!

[allronix]

Here’s to 2023, a year of as many little courageous kindnesses as possible. ♥️

[allronix]

well it finally happened

so my dad is almost 80, this man's been making Spirk content since Star Trek started airing basically

he never knew ao3 existed, he just thought people stopped writing fanfic when ff.net died, like it was a fad that had outgrown him or smth

he clicked an ao3 link in my pinned last night, realizing that they were in fact clickable

he's mad at me for not telling him earlier. "I don't have a lot of years left in me and there's so much to read"

he's gonna spend his whole retirement reading trek fanfic now jesus christ

[allronix]

The fun part about having Tron as a blorbo is that a good chunk of the people in-universe are equally as deranged about him, if not more

[allronix]

Looks like the best parts of all three worlds. The elaborate design of 1982? The shiny armor of 2.0, and the disc of Legacy

I AM TRYING NOT TO GET EXCITED ABOUT THE NEW TRON DESIGN AND FAILING

[allronix]

Honey also has micronutrients and some pollen residue, so getting LOCAL RAW versions, it can help with allergies. RAW Honey is also an antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral, good for treating small cuts. Also good as sore throat care and cough syrup (cheaper and tastier than the commercial stuff)

Ayoo just to preempt the inevitable dumb takes we’re about to start seeing;

I am PRO-WOOL

I am PRO-LEATHER

I am PRO-BEES

Fuck the idea of replacing durable, sustainable animal products with cheap, flimsy plastic that doesn’t bio-degrade. Agave nectar and other artificial sweeteners are expensive, labor-intensive, and destroy the environment to be farmed.

Do not buy into pernicious marketing campaigns pushed by dickhead organizations trying to stay relevant, like PETA.

[allronix]

One of the worst pieces of "advice" I got when I was starting out in fanfic was "If you want to be considered a good fanfic writer and taken seriously in fandom, stop wasting your time with female characters and het ships. Start writing M/M slash."

Female characters, even canon ones, were silly self inserts. A male character gave you the proper "distance" between yourself and the character. Besides, we all kmow good female characters don't exist. They only exist as Sexy Lamps or to be Fridged or to be objects and foils for male heroes. The REAL story is about dudes.

Besides, heterosexuality is retrograde and homophobic. You want to show you are a good person and demonstrate the right values. And don't bother with F/F - no good female characters, remember? And that is ew, Male Gaze.

And these were women saying this shit.

This has nothing to do with being a mature and good writer and nothing to do with no good female characters or support for persecuted homosexuals or whatever. It comes across as a bunch of Buzzword Bingo amounting to "I want to see two hot men boinking and there better not be some bitch prettier than me spoiling the view."

That's one of the reasons I double down on female characters and het ships. Because fuck that noise. I started writing fics because if I wanted the Good Troi Episode, I had to DIY

Fandom Problem #6730:

People genuinely getting upset and angry when someone ships a character with the opposite sex and not in a same sex pairing.

Like you're free to not like certain ships, but it's not an excuse to be a ass when people have different ships than yours. Especially, when said character has no confirmed sexuality.

(Also, bi and pan people exist, but we all know they would be biphobic/panphobic anyways)

[allronix]

Given what the Expanded Universe has said about each and every patron in the place? That's not a bunch of Muppets, more like the Feebles (look up Peter Jackson)

U can watch Star Wars so many times and it doesn’t prepare u for how dumb Star Wars is. For one thing I think we gloss over how kenobi (who has definitely been at the club. Please.) describes the mos eisley cantina as the worst most villainous place ever and then u get inside and it’s a pack of muppets vaping

[allronix]

The argument is that "attachment" means "obsessive or possessive clinging" or "treating people with their own lives and agency as objects"

Yeah. Makes sense. So give us an example, Masters Jedi...

"We recruit infants before they can form strong memories of their parents because a child's love for their parents is attachment."

And fuck you, I'm out

holy shit no thinking that the jedi order PT's interpretation of attachment includes healthy love does not mean we are people to be pitied or have a warped view of love, ffs

it means we can properly interpret the movies

'yeah, the bond between parents and children is inherently unhealthy, that's why it's bad that anakin is scared for the life of his enslaved mother, WHO HE LEFT BEHIND'

these people -

once again.

the PT interpretation of attachment does not align, on screen, with the buddhist interpretation/conceptualisation. it is warped and extreme and apathetic; it is inflexible. it does include love.

kind of a crucial part of the PT.

just a little bit

[allronix]

How about "my rent quadrupled and the only place I can fucking afford is in the burbs?"

Carbrained suburbanidiots piss me off. There’s no excuse for you to not live in the city in current year

[allronix]

Fandom Problem #6686:

If you want a whole fandom to love and adore a female character, you can't go around saying men aren't allowed to like her.

Fandoms are made up of women and men.

[allronix]

the issue with writing for yourself is that you will get sucked into rereading your own fic over and over and pretend it’s “editing,” but really you’re just reading because it’s exactly what you want to read. because you wrote it. for you.