#Sw negativity

[gffa]

Disney, hire me as your Attachment Advisor, I will shove so many George Lucas quotes at your producers and writers, I will shove so many context-laden clips from the movies and TCW at your creatives, I will make powerpoint essays about how it's more Buddhist-aligned, not Attachment Theory-aligned, I will cite literally every time attachment has ever been discussed by Lucas AND in the show itself and show you that it's always aligned with fear, possessive feelings, and selfishness, I will do this work for you for free, I can even literally just point you to my Jedi Citations collection, DISNEY, HIRE ME AS YOUR ATTACHMENT ADVISOR, I CAN HELP YOU.

[david-talks-sw]

I will say that I'm starting to notice a pattern around the approach taken with some live-action Star Wars content.

To give you an idea...

Let's say they announce something called "Dooku - A Star Wars Story".

It wouldn't be too far-fetched to assume it'll be about Count Dooku, maybe about his rise and fall. Former Jedi, evil Sith Lord, you'd expect lightsaber fights galore, him leaving the Jedi, or training under Yoda, training Qui-Gon, studying the Dark Side, stuff like that, y'know?

And instead... instead it would be a story set in the 2-3 years between him leaving the Jedi Order and becoming a Sith Acolyte, and focuses majorly around him getting used to be the Count of Serenno, trying to fight off corrupt bureaucrats and/or pirates/bandits from getting their hands on Serenno and finally, at the end, joining Sidious.

Yoda might make a cameo, Sidious would for sure, but the story's main cast would be a young fish-out-of-water POV character for the audience, the butler of Chateau Serenno, Dooku's sister, a disposable baddie and maybe his political rivals in the House of Lords or something. No one of consequence.

See what I mean?

And I'm specifying "live-action" because I think there's a different approach taken with these stories when they're in live action. Example:

Boba Fett is a bounty hunter. You'd expect a series about him to be centered on that. But nope... let's NOT be predictable, let's make him, I dunno, a crime boss... but not a Peaky Blinders type of crime boss, that'd be too obvious, no let's make him Don Corleone but like 10x softer. See? Now, we're shaking the system! Nobody could've predicted we'd focus on this specific aspect! Fresh, original! AKA quality stuff!

And I know they were going for a decent story, I've already broken it down here. But sometimes, some of this stuff is just straight-forward and seeing them NOT tick those boxes is baffling.

And it's not just an approach Lucasfilm takes, it's all studios.

For instance, the "this superhero needs to spend the whole film in civilian clothing until they earn their costume/powers/name" trope is also a result of this approach.

[not-the-tie-youre-looking-for]

“i can’t wait to see eli vanto in TotE” “i hope the crew of the chimera gets a cameo” “faro would be so cool to see”

no please i beg you please filoni do not TOUCH THESE GUYS bro will retcon every last one of them the first chance he gets. watch this absolute lunatic retcon the entire thrawn trilogy

[writerbuddha]

This is gonna get a bit negative, but I don't understand how some say that they love the George Lucas movies but yet the Jedi were wrong and forbid love and family. Like how???

It's quite complex, Anon...

This has its origins in the way how fans reacted to Episodes I, II and III. When they did not get the young Darth Vader they imagined for themselves, they started to insist, the reason why Anakin Skywalker is nothing what they imagined, is because George Lucas cannot write and/or direct and Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen are terrible actors and they can't portray the character in the correct way. This resulted in that the idea, the story that you can derive from the actual movies is not the real story, embedded itself into popular culture, and it mutated into the idea that you have to "find out" the "real" story behind the fall of Anakin Skywalker.

This idea, "the Jedi were wrong and forbid love and family" is just the latest mutation of this phenomenon, and it fits neatly into the "good idea, bad execution" narrative fans perpetuate, but most importantly: some fans are more comfortable with declaring compassion being unconditional love and attachment as selfish grasping as nonsense and even unhealthy and malicious, than to accept, Star Wars is, in fact, challenging them to think about how they relate to their loved ones. So it makes perfect sense that they insist on this narrative. In addition, there is this cultural notion that you have this list of "must have" things that you need to be content and happy. Just look at Legends stories: they couldn't rest until Luke Skywalker got laid and ended up in a marriage with kids, because, "duh, that's how normal people are" and anything that deviates from that must be in need of a reformer, someone who enlightens/fixes/liberates them. When you add the even more central notion, that children "belong" to their parents because they "made them" and a "truly loving parent would never bear to be without their children" and the idea that when parents are making decisions for their children is somehow letting the children to decide for themselves, you end up with "the Jedi were wrong and forbid love and family" very quickly. And the biggest issue in the Star Wars fandom is that fans are so caught up in fanon that they're no longer able to tell the difference between what is actually in the movies and what they more or less agreed to be in the movies.

This reaches a new level when people are trying to impose this kind of narrative because they want one of the most popular stories of the globe to affirm their values and ideas and way of life, I wrote this about in detail here:

[cross-d-a]

you know… now that I’m thinking about it. I think what makes The Acolyte feel so non-canon to me is that it really DOES seem like someone’s rpg or self-insert fic. Which isn’t inherently a bad thing!! Bc so much can be explored and analyzed and you can have SOO much FUN with those things!!! I guess my problem is that at the heart of it, The Acolyte doesn’t feel like it perfectly fits into the Star Wars canon. And this IS supposed to be canon, which is the Problem, for me. If this was a fic I’d have some questions but be mostly satisfied, because it’s just someone playing with the Star Wars canon and emphasizing the parts of it they like. I’d enjoy their take on it, even if I didn’t agree or it felt out of character for canon.

But again. This is Canon, and it doesn’t wholly feel like canon. It feels like someone who’s extremely passionate about Star Wars focused only on the things they cared about, and waved away certain parts of canon to support their own desired story.

Which is an issue because Star Wars is a Shared story. It’s a shared, beautiful universe that SO many people have had their hands in. And when you’re given the chance to dig your hands into it and shape something of your own, you can’t just think of your own wants. You have to think about the needs of the overall GFFA. It’s your responsibility to emulate the heart and soul of the universe that George Lucas created. You have to respect the already established canon and all the creators who have come before you and all the creators who will come after. That’s what creates a good, strong universe where everything informs and supports each other.

Not that the creators of The Acolyte don’t respect other SW creators, I just think they lost sight of the greater GFFA in the excitement of creating a uniquely placed story within an already established timeline.

I think Darth Plagueis’ appearance really brought this home for me, because after the initial shock of OMG ITS HIM!!!! I realized..Oh. So the creators are doing the fanfic kind of thing where you write in the blank holes to explain what happens in pre-established canon, but they’re doing it with an RPG flare. The creators have a very specific story they want to tell. And it’s this very specific storyline that they desperately want to fit into a very limited number of episodes that makes you realize: Oh. The plot is leading the characters instead of the characters pushing and informing the plot. It feels far less organic this way.

Like “Oh, we need to explain Darth Plagueis and how he led to Palpatine so we’re gonna fit some spunky characters in there to play out a very confined and specific storyline where we get to have some fun with things!!” Except it’s hard to have a successful story when you somehow both limit yourself and give yourself TOO much leeway. Because again, you need to respect ALL of established canon even when you don’t like it. And if you don’t like it, write it so it makes sense to you, write it so you can Explain it to yourself. I’ve done that with plenty of characters and canon plots, where I play with canon rules but expand it in a way that I’m satisfied with (I’ve come away from these fics liking characters I absolutely hated before!).

But I digress. I don’t really want to be negative about The Acolyte, because everyone involved with the obviously has a lot of love and passion for Star Wars, and there’s no way I can resent them for that. Because they did create something amazing and did a lot of super cool things and I did, overall, enjoy it (even if it broke my heart). All the actors were brilliant and I adore them. Every single person involved put so much hard work into it and I don’t want them to feel discouraged. And I really don’t want them getting any hate. They don’t deserve that. We saw what happened with Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen and Ahmed Best and I think it would be really fucking awful if that got repeated. No one’s mental health is worth a click-bait video or hate tweet. Absolutely no one.

So it’s with this in mind that I think the creators did their absolute best, but should have gotten more direction so they didn’t lose themselves in the process.

Ultimately, it’s an enjoyable show for me personally. They explore some cool concepts and I lost my mind over Plagueis. I just wish the characters had time to grow and feel Real. I wish the actors got more TIME with their characters, too, because they really put their hearts and souls into it. I wish it hadn’t felt like they were completely focused on explaining how the High Republic declined while Palpatine and the Empire rose to power. There’s ways you can do that in a story that feels like its wholly its own, rather than something borrowed, or feeling like you’re cramming your story into a very narrow space in the timeline hoping it’ll fit. And even though they clearly plan for a second season, I wish we’d had a much longer season, so we could feel more emotionally connected and involved with the characters and storyline. I wanted a story and characters that feel less contrived and more real and whole and like actual living, breathing people. Like a story I’m devastated I cannot change, because it DID actually happen a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

I have more specific thoughts about the portrayal of Jedi and Sith and the regular galactic citizen— because the use of perspective and bias and unreliable narration is actually SO incredibly fascinating and skillfully used in this show. Though I don’t necessarily approve of the corrupt Jedi storyline, because NO ONE should be blamed for their own genocide and it very much strays from the fact that the Jedi Order is based in Buddhism and not whatever Western religious (probably traumatized) perspective has informed The Acolyte and parts of the fandom. I’m not a fan of “edgy” takes just for the shock value or angst bc! again! please respect the canon as a whole. And there’s a way to handle the fall of the Jedi that both respects them and admits their faults and also!! Talks about!! How the relationship between the Republic and the Jedi warped through unreasonable obligations! And how the Sith were the downfall of the Jedi!! And how they PLAYED the Jedi!!! That’s what makes Palpatine so terrifying!!!!!!!!! But that’s a whole other post.

But I’ll leave it off here. In the end I hope they get green-lighted for a second season and that they learn from this first one. But I also hope they don’t come away from this discouraged and that ultimately it’s a good experience for them. For my part, I also hope I get to have some more favourite Jedi characters and that I get to spend a little longer time with them :’)

[gizkalord]

“It’s only season 1 it’s setup” yeah but setup doesn’t mean that the central relationship of the show is still as inexplicable and vague as it was in episode 1

[gil-estel]

reasons why "ahsoka" would be better as an animated show

- better acting

- better writing

- seriously. I think the stilted dialogue would work a lot better in the context of a 25 minute episode performed by experienced voice actors who could actually make spoken exposition sound INTERESTING and ENGAGING

- more humor

- more chopper

- sabine could have her jetpack and her helmet back

- you'd actually be able to see what happens

- forreal just think about what it would be like if this show had the production quality and amazing lighting of the bad batch

- I'm sorry the volume just looks so obvious and artificial in this show

- WE'D ACTUALLY GET TO SEE ZEB

[ct-hardcase]

one thing I have noticed in the last few years of discourse about star wars canon is the attitude from some parts of fandom, where when people go "hey, I don't like this problematic aspect of canon/I don't like that this canon significantly contradicts the other", others will respond, stating that star wars is a tapestry of stories, and that it's fine, actually, because you can just take the parts you want and/or to just cobble one's own canon together from whatever.

this isn't bad advice per se, and if that's someone's preferred way of interpreting canon or dealing with discrepancies, I'm genuinely happy they reached that solution (hell, I even do it myself sometimes—rey mind-tricking finn and poe in the tros novelization is something I absolutely choose to ignore on account of it being ooc and not in the movie), but the majority of the time, I like treating canon as a puzzle that I can put together, and when some of the pieces simply can't fit right, or if there's blatant disrespect to the other stories in the tapestry (hi, caleb in tbb), I don't think it's wrong to be pissed at that and expect the corporate entity managing the product to do better.

[space-blue]

Ezra, a guy who exiled himself to ANOTHER GALAXY with no hope of return to take out a critical enemy, and has been isolated for years, potentially without any human contact... Sees his friend who just found him and eagerly asks : How did you find me? How did you get here??

Sabine, supposedly a good person, who got here by betraying her master's will and last orders and siding with the villains without any backup plan or even a wish to betray or manipulate them : (deep sigh) Let's not talk about that. Not right now.

Ezra, very much entitled to having his most basic concerns answered : Sabine...

Sabine, a manipulative bitch now too, apparently, cutting him off : Hey! I just wanna be happy that I found you. After all this time, can I have that?

Ezra, cucked by the script writers because they can't have the dialogue conflict happen until next episode : Of course.

And you, Ezra, you get nothing. You just get to catter to the selfish desire of the person who didn't come here with a rescue plan for you.

[cryiling]

sorry but i really hated these last few episodes of the acolyte. tbh i stopped being super invested in the show once jecki died, but i swear i tried to give it a chance after that. i'm just so so angry that they killed jecki and yord AND SOL. and it literally made no sense why osha would kill him. like i knew it was gonna happen bc the show made it sooo obvious, but i cannot understand how her character would have actually done that. i'm so glad the acolyte probably won't get a s2 because there's no way i'd be able to root for osha and mei. i thought their characters were pretty cool but this last episode lowk made me hate both of them 😭

aside from that, i'm honestly rlly uncomfortable by the way qimir and osha's relationship has been playing out. physically they're at least 10 years apart, but qimir had phrased his backstory as if he's SIGNIFICANTLY older than osha, which is....... i mean ship what y'all want but don't go around saying that this is the better version of reylo 💀

the only positive thing i have to say abt the show is that the fight choreography has been consistently top tier, easily the best of all the live action shows. the outfits were pretty cool too honestly. and ofc i lovedd the lesbian witches 😝 and jecki and that awkward guy that kept following vernestra. i did not care for the rest of the show tho

[gffa]

Probably the biggest problem with The Acolyte is what really bit it in the ass in the finale--its main characters did things because of the plot, not because they were organically built up or made sense. I could mostly overlook it in previous episodes because it felt like there was still more time to reveal the characters' motivations, but now that we're at the end, there's just so little throughline for either of the twins' characterizations. Mae makes the most sense, you get why she was so angry, she always wanted Osha to stay with her, of course she'd drop everything when Osha was alive, but then suddenly she's just completely okay with Qimir erasing her memories of Osha? Of giving up that relationship that drove her the entire time--and Qimir says this was permanent, I doubt Mae had reason to think otherwise--in half a second flat, not just physically separating her from Osha, but erasing her entire relationship with her?? And Osha makes even less sense, we all joke that about how hot Manny Jacinto is and how he ~seduced her to the dark side, but honestly her motivations just seemed utterly gone in the previous episode, she's 100% ready to drop everything she believed in and go with him just because? And up to this point she's barely shown any interest in her connection to Mae, it's all "tell not show" that Osha cared about her, we're told that it was her biggest wound, we're told that she felt that connection, but we don't really see it until suddenly she's running away with Mae because apparently all along she felt that pull towards her? Intellectually, there are reasons given in the show, but I didn't feel any of them, it was more "Osha behaves this way because the plot needs her to behave this way." It's the same reason Sol can't say, "It really looked like your mother was going to kill you when she started Force-dissolving you, so I reacted without realizing what she was doing." because if he's allowed to explain, then the plot falls apart. The plot demands that he half-ass his explanation rather than because that felt natural to Sol's character. Things happen because the characters need to get from point A to point B, so point C can happen, rather than because the characters felt like they would actually do that. And it's worse because these are your main characters, the entire plot of the show is set around them.

[david-talks-sw]

Hey, remember how I've been writing pro-Jedi posts here and on Quora since about 2020 and how there's awesome blogs on this site that have been doing it for even waaaaay longer?

And like, all these pro-Jedi meta accounts and posts were really a minority in a fandom that, for a while, had kept repeating the same "ACSHUALLY, the Jedi are the bad guys if you think about it!" line?

Until The Acolyte began to be marketed as a story seen from the Sith's POV, where the Jedi would be antagonistic... and suddenly a buncha people came out of the woodwork saying "the Jedi were the good guys!"

Remember how I previously said that this all felt to me as if this was all really just a big chunk of Star Wars fans going "ewwww girls"?

I stand by it.

Edit: AND it's really frustrating. Because now the counter-arguments are stuff that I know and can demonstate is factually incorrect...

... but so if I say anything, I'll get thrown into the mix with the "ewww girls" crowd. Fuck's sake.

[sonic-fairyspell]

I'm just not all that excited for Inquisitor Barriss. Like i just do not like it. Its doesn't Vibe, if you will. I hope instead of making her a full Inquisitor, they have a Barriss redemption arc, and return to the Light and be a Jedi again. That would be great! Instead of icky "Empire is so good" nonsense. Bleh. I also hope they don't want us to feel so bad for Morgan Elsbeth because of "tragic backstory" when she is evil and bad. Sucks the Nightsisters all died, but eh, I feel nothing of Elsbeth.

Not all that excited for Tales of the Empire. I'm extremely wary and hesitant, but we'll see i guess.

[chissjedi]

Ahsoka taking in Sabine as an apprentice is not an inherently bad decision. Ahsoka taking the role as a mentor is fine. They both could learn a lot from each other.

It is the use of the term Padawan that is wrong.

Ordinary people use apprenticeships to train and teach before becoming a master of an art. Even the Sith use that method and terminology.

However, Padawan is a very specific term used exclusively within the Jedi Order. Using this term liberally, incorrectly, could be considered cultural appropriation.

And Sabine's relationship to her Mandalorian heritage was a key part of her story in Rebels. She was strongly invested in preserving their art and history.

Pushing Sabine into a Jedi lifestyle is not only unnecessary, but disrespectful to both cultures and her character development.

I am not saying a Mandalorian cannot also be a Jedi; that is exactly what Grogu's story is about! But, for these characters with this background, it is inappropriate and pointless.

Maybe if we get more insight into Sabine and Ahsoka's history together and her rumored sensitivity it will be okay, but right now it makes me very uncomfortable.

[gizkalord]

this can't be the same guy who wrote trials of the darksaber

[gil-estel]

you gotta admire the talent it takes to create a show that is inaccessible to anyone who hasn't watched rebels while also perfectly engineering it to send fans of rebels into a blind rage