#Brendol is the kind of horrible person who would say those things to his child

[dragonflies-draw-flame]

I just remembered that post where someone said that Kylo tried the “you’re nothing but not to me” line with Rey because it worked on Hux before and DAMN it broke my heart 

but in a non angst note Hux would probably throw his tarine tea into Kylo’s face and refuse to talk to him for a week if Kylo even dared to say the words “you’re nothing” to his face

Kylo: you’re nothing but not to me

Hux, after throwing his tea into Kylo’s face: I am nothing? I had my own group of murderous children following me when I was 7! I am the youngest general in the first order! I fucking destroyed a star! I killed my father and unlike some people I didn’t have a mental breakdown over it

[recklessdarkness]

Please don’t get upset with me, but I’m really curious as to how someone could like both Reylo and Phasma. I see Phasma (at least in supplementary materials) as a unique feminist character, while Reylo is a ship often criticized as sexist. How do you see it?

Hey. Well, first about Reylo: as any fictional couple, much like fictional characters in general, it can be seen in many different ways. For me, this is the magic of fiction.

What drove me into loving Reylo, and connecting a lot with Ben Solo as a character (to the point of calling my cat Ben after him), was how deep and complex their relationship was, and Ben was. As a writer, and reader, and spectator, I personally enjoy complex characters and relationships. That’s one of the main reasons I love Phasma, in fact. I’ll talk about that later on.

Luckily, there’s an old post from a Tumblr user that says pretty much all of what I think about Reylo. I had to look for it for a lot to find it, but eventually I did, and I’ll link it here for you. Basically, this post says - and who writes it seems to have a lot of experience to be writing it - that Ben was a troubled child without an advocate, and that his advocate turned out to be Rey. It’s a long post and a complex analysis, but, as I said before, I enjoy complexity in fiction. It’s what drives me to it. And I encourage everyone who has the same doubt as you regarding Reylo to read this full post. It’s exactly what I think about the ship, and the two characters involved on it. I could write all of that down again, but it would be just a repetition of what that user already wrote.

But well, as I also said before, many people might not agree with that. And that’s totally okay. Seriously, I mean it. That’s also part of the “magic of fiction” that I mentioned. And, again, this is why I like it. Once more, it has to do with complexity.

About Phasma now: I definitely, completely, absolutely, more than anything else in my life as a reader/spectator (and even writer), LOVE HER. And I could talk for days on a row about why this is so true and I wouldn’t finish explaining. But I’ll say it here the simplest way I can find:

She’s goddamn COMPLEX.

She’s complex and deep to the point of many people seeing her as a pure abuser as well. This is how I see her? Not a chance. However, if we only see what she did, not along with why and how she did it, it’s the same as Kylo Ren: killed relatives, sacrificed people in order to rise, was the main figure (not main responsible, let’s emphasize that) in a program that brainwashed children to make them the perfect soldiers.

Now, is that how I see Phasma? Is that how you see Phasma? No. Because she’s not just that. Just like Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. They’re complex characters, and must be interpreted like complex characters.

But how do we interpret complex characters? Well, here’s what I think:

Phasma did all that I said above? Yes, she did. However, what drove her to do it? What was the intention, the reason behind all the horrible things she did? Emphasizing now that I said reason, not justification. Sometimes acts have no justifications at all, but every act has reasons.

Taking a minute to emphasize deeply, to make sure everyone understands this, that I’m talking about FICTIONAL CHARACTERS here. All I’m saying here is regarding FICTION. Let’s not confuse fiction with reality. To debate such topics regarding real life like I’m doing to fiction here, you have to be a mental health professional at least. That’s my opinion.

Now, do you see my point? There are a million reasons why Phasma did everything she did. Like that user did with Ben Solo in their post, I’ll briefly expose some of Phasma’s reasons for being the way she is:

- Rough childhood

- Neglective parents (briefly said on the book, but it was enough)

- Not being allowed, in pretty much any moment of her life, to show weaknesses/flaws/fears

- Anger and feeling of injustice

- Revenge wish for those who caused such injustices to her

- Physical abuse (her parents hit both Keldo and her)

- Mental abuse (Brendol blowing up Parnassos in front of her is more than enough, but there are other moments in the book)

- Sexual abuse

This last one is a theory of mine but I would definitely vouch for it - Brendol did force himself into Phasma, to show power over her, to keep her disciplined, to shape her into what he wanted her to be. I’m working on a dossier to explain to everyone why I think it happened, and I’ll definitely post it here as soon as I’m finished.

I think the right way to analyze anything in fiction is looking through all of it, not just the acts, not just the reasons for the acts. As that post I linked here said, Ben Solo has reasons for being the way he is, for actin the way he acts. Just like Rey has reasons for being the way she is and acting the way she acts, and this includes loving Ben.

And one last thing: that post was from before TRoS, so I have to add: Ben gave his life to save Rey. He indeed redeemed, for her, like that post said he would do. That doesn’t make Rey less than him, neither it makes her less powerful or less of a feminist icon (I usually say feminist icon because feminism as we know it in our society - the one that started with the suffragette and developed with all that came later on - does not exist in Star Wars’s society, so it’s kind of an add of ours to the characters). Rey defeated Palpatine. Rey gave her life to destroy the dark side of the Force. Having her life saved by Ben Solo after that doesn’t lessen anything she did. At least, not for me.

That’s basically what I think about this topic, I can say. The reason why I both ship Reylo and love Phasma is all about the complexity of the characters and/or the relation between them.

[moon--vixen]

The Phasma book is absolute dogshit

and here’s why.

short, TL;DR version: Phasma is a secondary character in her own book and not allowed to tell her own story (or have any agency what-so-ever), we have an unreliable narrator who admits to embellishing the story so we don’t even get to hear the true story, there is no story arch, character growth, or anything aside from 400 pages of “Phasma’s bad, m’kay?” and anyone-who’s-not-straight-phobic and misogynistic bullshit

full version:

Phasma is a secondary character in her own story, and has no agency

her story is told through an unreliable narrator intent more on controlling the emotions of her captor rather than telling the audience an accurate account of events (which is already being retold, making this essentially the result of a game of telephone with a straight up liar playing), meaning we can’t know what’s real and what’s not, what’s accurate and what’s embellished.

it is also colored by the person who told the unreliable narrator, and half the story is lost because she couldn’t tell what Phasma was feeling while under her various masks. we have scenes of Phasma crying, but not only do we not know if that actually happened, but also why she was crying, minus one moment where the narrator can only guess that she might be due to the fact that she was once again wearing a helmet.

Phasma also has her privacy violated in a way that is completely unacceptable. the story is told from a resistance spy to Phasma’s coworker (he trains the children, she trains his graduates) so every single thing we’re told, he’s told.

including that Phasma’s a virgin. in no situation was that relevant to share, particularly to her own coworker, besides instilling with the surrounding context that something’s “wrong” with her (she doesn’t like physical touch or affection like everyone else, reinforcing the ‘asexuals are cold, unloving, and inhuman compared to proper, loving, human heterosexuals’ trope, and with her also shipping kylux, there’s the uncomfortable implication that anyone who isn’t heterosexual is inherently bad, as everyone good or innocent is specifically pointed out as being heterosexual)

but on top of that, at the same time she’s treated as a sexual object, as when her coworker and her are in a physical fight to the death, the feeling of being on top of her and her on top of him in this physical brawl gives him a boner that the author took extra care to describe in detail.

Phasma’s lack of agency is appalling, and offensive, as is her lack of character.

the ENTIRE book, all 400 pages, pretty much exist only to repeat “Phasma’s bad, m’kay?” over and over and over and over again. I have never in my life seen anyone beat a dead horse as much as this book.

the reason it sounds like I’m just generalizing when I say Phasma’s character is just evil and there’s all there is, is because that’s all we’re told. any time we’re shown something that seems like a personality outside “I will do anything to survive”, we’re told “well actually, it seems good/heroic/ext on the surface, and actually would be good and heroic when done by anyone else, but when done by her it’s actually evil and self serving and here’s why”.

there’s also the horribly misogynistic treatment of her character over others. we’ve already seen that she’s treated like a sex object, but she’s also held to a different standard.

the brainwashed child soldier that is her coworker is referred to as a “white night fighting for justice” who is redeemed by the end of the book. he’s shown as an inherently good person who wants to do good, but was simply “misled”, while Phasma, a child desperately trying to survive on a planet that rains acid onto her only home, rocks that are too poisonous to touch and jutting haphazardly far above an ocean full of giant creatures just waiting to eat you, is just inherently evil, and that’s that.

anything she does is bad, with an ulterior motive, but when the ~white night~ does it, it’s totally for good reasons. (example: he memorizes the numbers of all the troopers he trains because he’s proud of them and their accomplishments. she memorizes all the troopers numbers because she’s keeping an eye on them lest she need to make one of them disappear or die in an accident, like her own niece, whom it’s simply assumed that it was a cover up of a murder simply because ~she’s evil~ even though not a few pages before, we’re told she protected the child from witnessing Brendol Hux destroying their planet while Phasma presumably cried. but then again, what’s real? did that really happen? did any of it happen? we just don’t know, because our narrator is an admitted liar)

but beyond all the specifics that are so horrible, there’s no story arch. there’s no real climax, and it’s inconsistent as hell.

like, just to start,

the dogs (”skin wolves”) are diseased and disgusting, and Siv doesn’t want to use her machines on them because she isn’t sure how safe the product would be for use yet 30 pages later she sees more of them die and is sad at the waste of life because she can’t use her machines on them.

everyone’s described as never knowing life without the pangs of hunger, stomachs are concave and ribs are countable, but Phasma, being EXTREMELY malnourished her entire life somehow managed to grow to her canon 6′8 (even though a lack of food stunts one’s growth, and there’s no way in hell 6′8 is stunted for her), and has enough energy to fight just as well on Parnassos as she does after having lived with the FO for 10 years even though she’s literally constantly starving and shouldn’t even have the strength to hold up her immense frame.

and to build on that, how is anyone even getting pregnant? in a world where they’re having to drink their own urine to survive, you’re not menstruating, you’re not getting pregnant, and you’re not bringing it to term. and even if you are, why would you be wasting so much energy and precious fluids to have sex, and therefor doom even more to your suffering? even if you didn’t view it like that, in a society where spitting is blasphemous and you have to consume your own urine to survive, you’re not wasting that much energy and fluids in order to do something that most likely won’t even come to fruition, and that’s even if you HAVE the energy for it in the first place.

and then most of the story is spent talking about how hard it was for the group to trek all the way to Hux’s ship, how daunting it was and how even the full bellied and well trained troopers were struggling with some of what had to be done to traverse the area, things like scaling sheer cliff edges for hours using nothing but the claws attached to their hands and feet and fight groups of people who are accustomed to fighting on sand and control large beasts, and yet everyone else from the remaining tribes were able to catch up to the group no problem and get to the ship at the same time Phasma’s group does, even though their group is comprised of those who were too weak to be warriors, the disabled like Phasma’s brother, who’s having to be pulled by a sled because he can’t walk, and children, one only a few years old.

this wasn’t a book I just couldn’t put down. in fact, I had to put it down many times and had to force myself to finish it. and whenever someone died (which was pretty much all the characters) it felt empty. there was so little to them that their deaths weren’t emotional in any way, besides annoyance at how unnecessary it all was.

her brother is kind and smart and charismatic, but we’re only told those things rather than shown (and it’s clear that the view we’re given of him is colored by the source because she loved him and he was the possible father of her child). the only thing we are shown is that he brought everyone into an area full of radiation poisoning, including a 6 year old child, on a suicide mission, but this is only referred to something that was “wrong”, as in, a single bad decision, but not something that made him inherently bad, and his death is seen as just more proof of Phasma’s nature, proof that she is inherently bad.

there’s one man who’s name I can’t even remember who was supposedly the funny one of the bunch, the lighthearted one that kept everyone smiling when times were tough (which was all the time), but again, we’re only told and don’t get to see it at all as he dies very early on. in fact, when we’re told that’s who he is, his death is only a few pages later. prior to that he was just another one of the warriors Phasma brought with her.

there’s a child (13ish) who’s just childish. that’s really all she is. she’s sneaky in battle, bubbly and childish, idolizes Phasma, but we never really get to see her do anything because the person whom we get these stories from is constantly protecting her and only watches her being a playful and curious child. her death likewise feels more like an unnecessary annoyance, an attempt for extra Phasma-is-evil-ness (as it’s specified she idolizes Phasma in the moment Phasma allows her to die while she’s screaming her name and begging for help) before getting back to the plot progression, than an emotional death of a character who’s been a part of the bulk of the story.

there’s the (potential, but implied) father of the child of the person telling the story. he’s a gentile giant. period. that’s literally all there is to him. he’s a gentile giant who’s good at fighting, and his death too is only ‘sad’ because the eye witness of the story is sad, but it doesn’t actually FEEL emotional. just like the child’s, it just feels unnecessary and taking time away from the story progression.

this woman had an entire book to make us fall in love with these characters. to learn about them, to love them, to feel their struggle and pain, and we don’t get that. NOTHING in this story is dynamic, at all.

hell, every time there’s a moment attempting to give Phasma more of a character (besides obvious lying on the part of our unreliable narrator), such as when her coworker attempts to explain away an action as avenging the death of her brother, our narrator shoots him down and reminds him that she’s inherently evil, and her only motive for anything is for her own gain, because she is unable to feel things like love and affection and even justice, and therefor it makes ~infinitely~ more sense for her to be getting rid of witnesses of her crime rather than avenging anyone. Even Harry Potter, who has a villain unable to feel love, explains why. Voldemort can’t feel love because he was conceived under the effects of a love potion. what’s Phasma’s excuse? oh right, she’s ace.

the only saving grace is the very last chapter, which is FINALLY a moment that we get to see from Phasma’s point of view, but it is far too short, and only serves to tell us how her armor came to be.

had the entire story been like that chapter, had we gotten to see her pov and her motives from her own mind, had she been allowed to be a human being like everyone else and tell her own story, it could have been great.

but as it is, it’s absolute dogshit and Delilah doesn’t deserve a single penny of your money.