#but the movie itself is a moral trainwreck so i feel like that needs to be put into the public eye more | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fapangel · 7 years ago

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So you finally watched The Last Jedi. Thoughts?

It is worse than I could have possibly imagined.Sit down and buckle up, because this one’s a doozy. (Spoilersabound.)

AsI’ve previously detailed, it was clear the movie was a trainwreckeven before I watched it due to simple structural issues with thebasic plot, much of it inherited from The Force Awakens (which I didsee.) To wit, the movie is a sequel to the original trilogy, butcompletely ignores everything that happenedin the original trilogy. Having seen The Last Jedi, it’s nowblatantly clear thatthe new trilogy was intended as a reboot - but that’s impossible todo when it’s shamelessly mining the OT for characters, concepts, andinformation. I’m not talking about the shameless density of nostalgiareferences and even aped plots in The Force Awakens, either - I’mtalking about The Last Jedi considered in a vacuum. (Just one exampleis Leia’s use of force power to pull herself back into her ship,which makes no sense without the original trilogy context.) Giventhe high praise some of my friends had paid the show, I’d been opento the possibility of it having merit as a movie, ifnot as a Star Wars sequel, butits inability toescape the structural/sequel critique presaged its complete and utterfailures in writing.

Thisis a point I must make explicit: TheLast Jedi is such a horribly written movie that it transcends merefailure; it is actively harmful and offensive, “problematic” inthe sense that the much-maligned “SJWs” use the term. Thisis the unassailable core of the offense that The Last Jedi (“TLJ”)offers. Much of what I’m about to bitch about, especially anythingto do with pre-established Star Wars canon, could have been glossedover, or even forgiven, if the core storytelling was solid enough. Ifit looks flashy and cool, adheres to rules that the audience knowsfrom prior films, oreven rules the film itself laid down earlier, anyaction sequence or detail of spaceships and tech can be made to work.Star Wars is classic Space Opera centered on Space Wizards; youcan get away with a lotifyou’re making one big concession to enable the plot and not justjerking the audience around every five minutes. But TLJ not only doesthat, it also has no story worth making concessions to enable. Theinescapably lethal flaw of TLJ is that none of the characters areworth a damn, and their arcs simply do not work.

That’sit. Without that, you have no story, period. Withthat,any number of flaws, errors, and plot holes might be forgiven, if thecore story is strong enough. Even if the core story isn’tstrongenough, one could at least acknowledge that the movie wasn’t a totaldisaster, it was just dragged down by too many errors, a death of athousand cuts. TLJ manages to have allof the ancillary problems, andno character story at all to make it worth a flying fuck.

Thiswon’t be a comprehensive dismantling of TLJ, as there’s more thanenough out there - I suggest seeing MauLer’sreviews, either the 30 minute “Unbridled Rage” or thethree-part,multi-hourtakedown for a truly exhaustive treatment. This is mostly Planefag’sPerspective (becuase people like it when I say the funny fuqq wordsapparently,) an explanation to my writer friends (which they’ll findinteresting, as it’s rare for our opinions on works of fiction todiverge so strongly), and presentation of what seems to be aheretofore unmade argument - that TLJ is morally reprehensible bydint of the biases, prejudices and twisted ideas it perpetuates.

Yes,it is that fuckingbad. ButI’m saving the best for last. In order of magnitude, why TLJ is apile of steaming, utter shit:

NOT ONE SINGLEFUCKING CHARACTER ARC WORKS AT ALL.

Thisis the core, unforgivable failing - the complete absence of anyfucking story. This isespecially notable with Rey and Kylo, the lead characters of themovie around which everything else revolves. WhenRey and Kylo first spoke to each other across lightyears, I stood upand shouted “THE FORCEIS NOT A FUCKING SKYPE CALL!” Iwould’ve forgiven the Space Wizard liberties had the interactionsworked, but my wrathproved sadly prescient, as Kylo and Rey’s every interactionthereafter seemed like two teenagers awkwardly flirting over Skype…except they had far lesschemistry than that. As I write this, I find it difficult to evenrecall what they fucking talked about- the first time was Kylo surprised it was happening and Rey callinghim an evil murdering prick (for good reason,) the second time sherang him up when he had his shirt off and he told her to “let go ofthe past, kill it if you must,” and the third time she told him shesensed conflict in him, they touched hands through The Force, and she“saw his future” through this, because Rey Is Very Good At TheForce.

Onthe basis of these three interactions, Reygoes from Kylo Ren’s sworn enemy to moist and thirsty for histhrobbing red lightsaber. I shit you fucking negative. Uponthese three brief conversations,the central character story of the entire movie rides- and they come nowhere close topulling it off. There’s so many reasons for this that it’s hard tosummarize them. Rey’s shown to be pining for her family again(despite having moved past this in her character arc in The ForceAwakens, but Rian Johnson can’t keep shit consistent in his ownmovie, much less thesame fucking trilogy.) She’s angry at Kylo for killing his father,Han, whom she was adopting as a father figure herself (their firstchat takes place after Luke asks after Han and Rey accuses Kylo ofit, so this is expressly brought forward into TLJ.) So when Kylo ripsinto Rey over her parents; pointing out that they were white trashthat sold her into servitude for drinking money and never cared abouther, before telling her to kill her past, he’sonly reminding her that he had something she never did and alwayswanted (a loving family,) and that he fucking murdered saidfamily. There’s no wayRey could empathize with Kylo over this.

Butwe’re supposed to ignore this, and believe that Rey now feels someempathy for Kylo because she 1. saw him with his shirt off and 2.touched his hand and Sensed The Good In Him Through The Force.

Whata load of complete and utter fucking horseshit.

Thereare other arcs, and they all fall flat on their fucking faces aswell. For starters, Luke.Luke’s arc, especially, cannotbe insulated from continuity criticisms because he’s the mainfucking character of the Original Trilogy, andTLJ leans heavily onthat lineage for its setup. The climax of Luke’s character arc wasachieving the seemingly impossible - redeeminghis father, Darth Vader, who had fallen to evil decades ago andcommitted untold numbers of atrocities. Andin TLJ, Luke actually contemplates CHOPPINGHIS OWN NEPHEW’S FUCKING HEAD OFF becausehe “sees darkness in him.” The man who’s crowning, definingachievement was redeeming his Father from the dark side isconsidering NEPOTICIDEbecause the kid mightfall.

Evenif you ignore that, why Luke’sinsists that“the Jedi should end” is never explained, as he never says itoutright and never finishes a single lesson with Rey which issupposed to teach her why.Why does he extrapolate hisfailure to mean the entire galaxy isbetter off without them? His interactions with Rey accomplishnothing; he basically tells her to fuck off for a while, decides to“teach her,” promptly tells her she’s supor haxx0rz powerful likeKylo, watches her master lightsaber-ing because she knows how toswing a metal quarterstaff, and is then told by Yoda himself thatthere’s nothing in the ancient Jedi tomes Rey needs, because she’s sofucking special she knows it all already. Yoda fucking torchesthe ancient temple-tree-library to make his point that Luke’s always“staring at the horizon instead of at what’s in front of him” andthat he needs to focus on the here and now; implicitly saying thatRey was right, and he shouldhump his ass out there to “face down the First Order with a lasersword”…

…but instead of doing that, he literally phonesit in from half a galaxy away with The Force, puttinghimself in (almost) no danger, but fucking dies anyways,meaning he died as he lived; agrouchy old coward who never did face down his own apprentice andanswer for his mistakes. Luke’sarc makes no fucking sense, achievesnothing, and goes fucking nowhere.

Finnand Rose was portrayed as a budding relationship, except there wasn’ta single fucking hint of it being romantic till she kissed him at theend of the show after a pat speech about “saving what we love.”In the beginning of the movieshe tazes Finn (yes, the black man got tazed) for trying to skip townin an escape pod, which she found personally offensive because hersister had just died in the opening battle to defend The Resistance.At the end of the movie, Finn is willing to sacrifice his life todefend that same Resistance, his character having actually grown -and Rose rams him off-course before he can do so, despitehaving tazed him earlier in the movie for dishonoring hersister’s sacrifice to defend the exact same cause. Atbest, this means shewas only truly concerned with her personal loss, which would make hera self-centered, selfish cunt, willing to sacrifice the lives of manyothers (and potentially the freedom of the entire Galaxy) for her ownemotional needs. But it’s not portrayed as a selfish decision - it’sportrayed as the right one,which taps into an entire larger problem of its own I’ll touch onlater. It’s the same problemthat’s entirely responsible for crippling Poe’s character arc. Finnand Rose were simply dealt the coup de grace by it, as theirpreceding scenes together were sparse; involving them coming up witha plan to save the rebel fleet (seconds after Rose had tazed him,bro, and had no reason to do a 180 and start trusting him without anexplanation that he never did give,) a monologue about how shitRose’s life was and How Capitalism Is Bad on the casino planet, and abrief “well we’re fucked and by extension THE ENTIRE GALAXY but westuck it to the man, how cool,” and Rose has a moment where shesets an animal free and says that was superior to making baddieshurt, setting up her closing line later.

Andthat’s it. That’s fucking it. Comparethis to Princess Leia in the original trilogy. Her response to aStormtrooper walking into her cell - someone who she has every reasonto assume is there to take her to a torture session (as she wasclearly shown being tortured some minutes earlier in the movie,) isto comment wryly on his height. Andseconds after breaking out of the jail cell, she’s shouting orders atpeople, spraying the air with energy from a stolen blaster rifle, andin fact leading themout of the immediate danger (“Someone’s got to get us out ofhere!”) And during this entire sequence herrepartee and rivalry with Han Solo is already being established, the“excuse me Princess” cranked to the max. The friction that beginstheir relationship is Han butting heads with her before witnessingthat she’s dangerous,composed, and competent in emergency and combat situations. Notonly is their relationship developed during actionsequences of real consequence, as well as down-time chats, but italso takes three entire moviesto build to a climax. Comparedto that writing, Rey jumping on Kylo’s dick after three Skype callsand Rose giving one rusty fuckabout Finn are egregiously bad.If you criticize the OT andthink TLJ is superior, you have a lot toanswer for, right there.

However,Finn himself had potential - if only because his character was theleast tampered with, so one could assume his character developmentfrom TFA was intact, and TLJ’s script hinted gently in support of itand never against it. He started TFA just wanting to run like abitch, and by the end had come to care, at least, about defendingRey. He was trying to hare off after Rey in the beginning of TLJ, andby the end had committed fully to a cause, the opposite cause of theone he’d abandoned at the opening of TFA. It’snever really covered why hegrows like this - at the very beginning he goes from wanting to legit to forming a plan with Rose to save the fleet instantly. He wastalking his way out of being shoved in the brig at the time, but henever takes a subsequent option to duck out; in the space of a fewseconds he’s committed himself to a dangerous recon mission that willend with infiltrating an enemy capital ship withapparently no qualms whatsoever. If this was ever covered indialogue, it was so brief I completely missed it - and this isprobably why his arc “worked” the best; it wasn’t the focus, so Ididn’t care much about how it happened… plus, by the end, Finn isthe only halfway relatable character at all, beating Rose by alandslide because we have awhole movie of development for him (TFA) as opposed to one briefboo-hoo monologue from Rose (oh and her sister died boohoo.) He’s nota fucking Mary Sue like Rey, he’s not entirely certain about his rolein things, and so at the end, when he makes the decision tosuicide-run the Very Big Gun, there’s actually some investment andaudience-character empathy there. Finn,alone, is the only character we can empathizewith.

Andthen fucking Rose putson a stellar display of Asian Driving Skills and robshim of his moment,because-

EVERYBODY WITHA PENIS IN THIS MOVIE IS ALWAYS WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING ALWAYS,BECAUSE FUCK MEN

Thisis not an exaggeration. In my priorcomments I mentioned that just because everyone saidthis was the case didn’t mean Ibelieved it, because I’ve seen the CHUDs hurl the same complaints atobjectively excellent movies (the latest Mad Max, forinstance,) and that’s before theGamer/pol/Gate crowd made counter-bitching at the SJW bitching apastimefor casual amusement. I wasexpecting some token casting, some throwaway GRRL POWER lines, etc.

Instead,I got the most misandrist movie I have ever seen.

It’snot just a matter ofwriting every male character to be stupid and every female characterto be smart - the laws of probability themselves bendover backwards to make everything a woman does the right choice, andeverything a man does the wrong one… except even when the Universedoesn’t do that, theman gets his ass chewed out anyways for making the rightcall.

Butthat came later. My first exposure to the misandry came in the formof Admiral Holdo, a purple-haired, ballgown-clad fleet Admiral wholooked like she walked out of Tumblr SJW Central Casting. But despiteThe Internet having named this character as egregiously bad manytimes, nothing, nothing prepared me for the actualperformance.

LauraDern deliberately portrays Holdo as a venomous, imperiousbully.

Onehas to actually see the performance to appreciate howdeliberate and well-done it is. Laura Dern crosses her arms, doesn’tface the person she’s addressing, literally looks down her nose whenshe does, and even does that particular kind of sneer whereone bites their lower lip and looks at someone like they’re dogshit.Laura Dern’s delivery perfectly matches the scripted lines - sheresponds to a straightforward request for information from Daemon Poeby insulting him, then attacking him- “My plan? Like yourplan which destroyed all our bombers?” She then proceeds to attackhis manhood, calling him a stupid little gung-ho flyboy, and advisinghim to “stick to his post and follow my orders” with the exactsneering tone of someone saying “sit down and be a good littleboy.” The soft-spoken volume of the delivery just drives it home -it’s the “oh, honey” condescending shitpost meme made manifestand played entirely straight.

Theworst part of this performance is that Hold is supposed tobe an Admiral, a military officer. Poe eve drops a line about herbeing the hero of such and such battle to establish that she’ssupposedly respected and famous - and then she proceeds to shredthat impression by acting like anything but a militaryofficer. Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager wasn’t verynice - in fact, she could be an outright rude asshole - but shealways sounded like a Captain when Kate Mulgrew delivered herlines. She didn’t deliberately humiliate or insult people by saying“sit down like a good little boy;” she’d say “I’m the Captain,get the fuck off my bridge before I brig your ass forinsubordination.” That’s how the military works; there is achain of command, and those who challenge it are reminded thatthey’re pissing on God’s leg, and God does not fuck around. Todeliberately portray Holdo as literal stereotype of a “nastywoman” suggests that Rian Johnson actually thinks this is what a“strong woman” should look like. And in fact, Laura Dern saidthis explicitly:

Speaking about her character’sstylish-yet-firm leadership, Dern told VanityFair: “[Rian is] saying something that’s been atrue challenge in feminism. Are we going to lead and be who we are aswomen in our femininity? Or are we going to dress up in a boy’sclothes to do the boy’s job? I think we’re waking up to what wewant feminism to look like.”

So apparently CaptainJaneway wasn’t a real woman, because women simply can’t beauthoritative and direct, and if they are, they’re just playing asthose toxic men. From the director’s point of view, a “strongwoman” is a viscous, venomous bully who replies to peoplerequesting information by insulting, mocking, humiliating andsneering at them instead of firmly asserting their lawful authorityand citing their own reputation for competence.

Rian Johnson bothdirected and wrote the movie, so in this one scene, everythinghe believes is coming out - the epitome of an entire plot ruledby the iron fist of misandrist horseshit. The scene itself isan example. The movie opens with the Resistance evacuating a planetas the First Order fleet (led by a massive dreadnought with an“autocannon”) closes in. Poe Dameron, the aforementioned “flyboy”attacks and destroys the dreadnought, against Leia’s orders, just asit is explicitly shown to be locking its Big Scary Gun ontoLeia’s command cruiser (there’s even a cut to Leia’s face toemphasize the point.) There’s nothing to suggest that Leia’s cruiserwould’ve gone to lightspeed before then if not for Poe’s attack;despite him landing in a hurry, we know X-Wings arehyperspace-capable themselves (within this movie, in fact, as we’reshown an X-Wing underwater on Luke’s island; presumably his ridethere,) and as a Captain and, apparently, the Resistance’s fieldcommander, Poe would know the rally point the Resistance isevacuating to.

The movie itselfshows that Poe saved the command cruiser, and with it, the entirecommand staff of the Resistance - and for this he is first demoted byLeia for disobeying orders, and then viciously insulted by Holdo whenhe simply asks her for information. When the First Order follow theResistance through hyperspace with some newly-invented trackingdevice, Kylo Ren and his fellow Spess Fighters zoom in and blow upthe cruiser’s launch bay with torpedo-like missiles… and are thenimmediately ordered to retreat because the capital ships “can’tcover them that far away.” This makes absolutely no fuckingsense, as in the battle scene immediately prior, Poe attackedthe dreadnought to take out its “surface cannons” to clear theway for the Resistance’s bomber ships to attack, and the captain ofsaid ship explicitly says that those guns can’t hit fightersand that they should have their own fighters out there - “fiveminutes ago,” no less, as if lampshading the plot convenientincompetence makes it okay. And since two torpedo-like missilesutterly destroy the command cruiser’s launch bay, you can surmise theFirst Order doesn’t require huge, plodding, and stupidly vulnerable“bombers” as the Resistance used to take out the dreadnought.Said dreadnought didn’t have any visible shield protection during thefirst battle; (especially obvious because we’re later shown capitalship fire hitting the shielding of the command cruiser with verydistinctive special effects,) and in fact the command cruiserexplicitly “focuses its shields aft” to fend off thepursuers capital-class weaponry, just to create the opening for Kyloto nuke the hangar bay (and blast Leia into space as well.) Thereis absolutely no fucking reason the First Order fighter-bomberscouldn’t have finished off the command cruiser right then and there,but we’re simply shown Kylo’swingmen being shot down (by what, we never see,) as he’s told “theycan’t cover him out there” as an excuse. The movieviolates its own rules just to take away Poe’s X-Wing and put Holdoin charge.

Andthis is just the fucking beginningof the Universe itselfbending over backwards to invalidate everythinganyone with a penisdoes. Poe is the one that authorizes Finn and Rose’s sidequest tofind a “master codebreaker” at the Gold Saucer (to sneak on thebad guy’s ship to disable their tracker so the fleet can escape,) buttheir plan fails because Fuck Anyone With A Penis. But that’s not theoffensive part. Earlier, Poe sees Holdo’s fueling the transports, andangrily points out that said transports will be sitting ducks for theenemy’s guns. He asks Holdo againfor a plan, and shefeeds him some fucking bullshit non-answer about “hope being aspark that lights a fire.” With the entireResistance Fleet nowdown to one cruiser (outof three starting ships), Poe intelligently determines that Holdo isfucking useless and stages a mutiny so he can see his own planthrough. Holdo defeats her captors by not getting shot the moment shetwitches and winning a point-blank firefight with much younger combattroops because fuck you. Nowback in command, she sees off Leia (just awake after her impromptuspace-walk) and on thetransports, Leia tells Poe that “Holdo knows the First Order won’tbe scanning for small ships like this.”

Yes.That’s the explanation. Poe Dameron - the fleet’s combat commanderand fighter pilot, someone who’s fucking job isto understand the capabilities of the ships in their fleet - didn’tknow this, but Admiral Holdo did because she has a vagina andtherefore is perfect. They’re boarding the transports to “slipaway” to another planet - visiblethrough the fucking window - andyet the First Order - WHOWATCHED THESE PEOPLE EVACUATE THE LAST PLANET ON THESE TRANSPORTS -“won’t know to lookfor small ships like these.”

Butwait - it gets worse. Finn and Rose’s mission failed, not becausethey were simply caught by security or because they were attemptingsomething that Ben Kenobi, an experienced Jedi knight had to give hislife to accomplish in Ep. 4 whenthe enemy was letting them go, butbecause a traitor betrayed them, who also, conveniently, tells thefirst order about the transports, so they’re revealed by a“decloaking scan” (which implies the transports have cloakingdevices; i.e. an inherent designed ability of the vessels, not just asmaller sensor signature inherent to their size, ergo something POEDEFINITELY SHOULD HAVE KNOWN ABOUT.) TheFirst Order starts blasting transports out of the sky, and of coursethis is all Poe’s fault.

Andthen there’s the Robbing of Finn. Admiral Holdo kamikazes the commandcruiser into the First Order fleet with the hyperdrive (itself afucking massive, retarded plot hole to end all plot holes), thussacrificing herself to Save The Resistance. And yet when Finnattempts to do THE EXACT SAME FUCKING THING not20 minutes later in the movie; a kamikaze self-sacrifice to save theentire Resistance, Rose rams into him to stop because “we shouldsave what we love instead of destroy what we hate.” This line isdelivered as the Big Gun blows up the base’s doors, thus sealing theResistance’s Fate… but wait! They all escape through a back doorbecause Rey shows up just in time to use her never-trained,never-practiced Force powers to clear a rockslide for them. Rose hadno way of knowing this would happen; meaning her ramming of Finn was,as far as she knew, condemning everyoneto death and her andFinn, at best, tocapture and execution by the First Order. But as usual, the Plotitself bends over backwards to make her choice the correct one, andFinns the wrong one.

Shortlyafter this, Poe “completes his character arc” by acting on whatLeia told him (“you have to run not fight sometimes”) andparroting that fucking arrogant bully bitch Holdo’s fortune-cookieAesop about sparks lighting fires, finally acknowledging the WisdomOf The Females, despite everychoice he made in this movie beingthe objectively correct ones, given the knowledge that he as acharacter possessed.

Andwe haven’t even talked about Rey yet.

Ohmy fucking god, Rey.

Reyis the biggest fucking Mary Sue I have ever seen. This,like every other blunt statement in this piece, is not anexaggeration, as much as it saddens me. Rey can fail at nothingshe attempts. Rey has towork for absolutely nothing she gains. Rey has as much raw power asKylo, at least (by Luke’s own judgment,)and she is moreskilled than he is at lightsaber fighting as evidenced by her savingKylo afew times during the throne room fight. This,despite having notraining in the weapon(which has no mass and can lop off her limbs easily, unlike the metalquarterstaff she’s experienced with) compared to Kylo, who trainedunder Luke himself foryears before moving on to whoever the fuck Snoke was supposed to be.Rey can just touch Kylo’shand and “see his future” isn’t all dark, when the much moreexperienced Luke did the same and only saw darkness. Rey can temptKylo to betray his master and move towards the light after threefucking awkward Skype calls. WhenLuke ignored his master and left in the middle of his training torescue his friends, he got his fucking ass kicked, his handcut off, and his lightsaber lost. WhenRey does the exact same thing, SHE BEATS LUKE MOTHERFUCKINGSKYWALKER IN A MELEE FIGHT, FLIES OFF INTO SPACE, AND SUCCEEDS ATTURNING EDGELORD MCSITHBOI AT LEAST HALFWAY AND SAVES THE ENTIRERESISTANCE BY LEVITATING A WHOLE FUCKING ROCKSLIDE WITH NO TRAINING,WHEN LUKE, WHO WAS ACTIVELY BEING TRAINED, STRUGGLED TO MERELY STACKONE ROCK ON ANOTHER AND COULDN’T HOIST AN X-WING THAT WEIGHED LESSTHAN THAT WHOLE ROCKSLIDE PUT TOGETHER.

Reyis a stupid boring nothing, who’s emotions and struggles I can’t finda single fuck to give about because she’s never in any realdanger, never has to work for anything she gets, and never developsas a person at all. I didn’t criticize her character arc because shenot only lacks one, she’s arguably not even a character at all -there’s seemingly no limit to her abilities, no flaws or pitfalls forher character, since everything she does turns out to be the rightcall (sound familiar?) and only the barest suggestion of whatpersonal goals she seeks (and those aren’t sold one fucking bit bythe story development.) For all effects and purposes Rey is a walkingavatar of the Plot itself, or as Rian seems to call it, The Force.

FuckRey and the bantha she rode in on.

THE PLOT IS THE MOSTNONSENSICAL, LAZY PILE OF FUCKING SHIT EVER PUT TO PAPER BY MORTALMAN

Muchof the plot’s problems originate from what I described above; thevery rules of the universe bending over backwards to serve RianJohnson’s twisted misandrist worldview. But they don’t stop there,by a fucking long shot.

Muchhate has been thrown at those “bombers” in the movie’s opening,but as I said before, TLJ cannot stand on its own even in relationto itself. Ignoring all of pre-existing Star Wars canon, eventhings belonging to the “new movies” like Rogue One, within TLJitself, fighter-bombers are shown delivering grievous damage to acapital ship when Kylo’s wingmen blow the shit out of Leia’s bridge,using torpedo-like missiles that can strike at a distance, launchedfrom fast, maneuverable craft. Said cruiser’s bridge was explicitlyunshielded at the time, since its shields were “focused aft” tofend off turbolaser fire - something that’s shown with distinctivespecial effects that were totally absent when Poe was blasting lasercannons off the First Order Dreadnought in the beginning (ergo, itwas unshielded for some reason.) So the movie itself has shownthat unshielded targets can get the shit blown out of them byfighter-bombers firing torpedoes and that the dreadnaught wasunshielded.

Ionly mention this because it really pissed me off personally, andbecause it showcases Rian Johnson’s dogshit sense of drama andaesthetics, as he had a hardon for “WWII bombers” and apparentlythought it’d make for a better, tenser combat scene than Y-Wingsweaving and dodging through AA fire and enemy fighters like VT-8making their courageous, doomed run at the Kido Butai atMidway. The actual plot itself doesn’t have “holes,” asthat implies an otherwise cohesive structure with missing bits. Theplot is 90% holes and 10% substance, a sieve trying to hold meaning.

Theentire movie’s plot is set up by a “low speed chase,” theResistance fleet fleeing from the First Order’s fleet at sublightvelocities, because the First Order is using a “hyperspace tracker”that’ll allow them to chase the Resistance at FTL anyways. TheResistance’s cruisers are faster, which allows them to pull out oflethal range of their enemies, but - as a First Order officer says -“they’re faster and lighter but they can’t get away from us.”

Thismakes no fucking sense. If they’re faster - even by a smidgen -they’re faster. If they can pull out of laser cannon range tostart with, they can keep pulling out of range. They mightsimply maintain range once clear, to save fuel (because ships needfuel and they’re low, of course - something never, ever mentionedbefore in any Star Wars film ever,) but this makes no sense when youconsider that the objective of Admiral Holdo (which she won’t tell tofucking anyone) is to reach a planet with an old Rebel base with atransmitter powerful enough to “contact our allies in the Outer Rimand call for help.” In which case it’d make sense to haul ass forsaid planet, so they have some time to call for help and wait for itsarrival without the First Order launching a ground assault almost assoon as they land, right?

Butwait! Rey delivers herself to the First Order’s flagship via zippingin from Hyperspace with the Millennium Falcon, very close - beggingthe question of why the First Order (apparently not low on fuel)can’t use Hyperspace themselves to zip ahead of the Resistance fleet(even if they’ve got to bounce to a neighboring system due tominimum-range reasons) and cut them off, or just do a direct jump tocatch up. Worse, Finn and Rey take a hyperspace-capable shuttle toCasino World to execute their convoluted plan, which begs thequestion - why didn’t Holdo order an engineering team onto theshuttle and send it ahead to the old Rebel base? HOW MANY FUCKINGPEOPLE DOES IT TAKE TO WARM UP A REACTOR, BLOW THE DUST OFF A CONSOLEAND PLACE A FUCKING COLLECT CALL?

Thesecomplete failures of intellect - yes, even the infinitely stupidhyperspace kamikaze thing - all have one thing in common: they orientaround plans and facts that aren’t revealed to us till the lastminute, so we won’t notice these problems. It’s also because RianJohnson only cared about “subverting expectations” and provingthat his super special women were so clever and right all along, sohe clearly pulled plot elements out of his ass as he deemed themconvenient.

Ifyou’re one of my Twitter followers who usually tunes in for my vagueranting about defense-related matters, some necessary context isneeded: I’ve written literally thousands of pages worth of “quest”fiction; where I write anywhere from a few paragraphs to a few pagesof fiction, then have my audience vote on what the main characterdoes next - and the content itself is anime fanfiction. And Iam dead serious when I say that, at my worst, when Iwas pulling shit out of my ass on the spot, writing almost inreal-time and posting updates without stopping to proofread or editat all, I never did anything this fucking lazy. At myworst - writing that was so awful I wouldn’t wipe Assad’sass with it - I put more effort into my plot and consistency thanRian Johnson did with his titanic budget and multi-billion dollarstewardship of a beloved brand and franchise.

Andthat’s why I don’t find the hyperspace kamikaze moment offensive onits own merits. It’s horrific, yes - it invalidates space combat inthe entire setting, as well as begging questions specific to themovie (why didn’t Holdo use it outright, for instance?) but thesearen’t any worse than the numerous other stupidities that belabor theplot. What makes the hyperspace thing stand out to me is the attemptto excuse it - two throwaway exchanges. A First Order bridgeofficer notes that Holdo’s cruiser is spinning up its FTL drive, andthe commander dismisses it as an attempted diversion to lead themaway from the transports they’re potting like ducks. This isapparently the excuse for why Holdo didn’t do it earlier - she neededa distraction to allow time to turn. Nevermind that the other twoships with them - that ran out of fuel and were destroyed, afterevacuating their crew to the command cruiser - could’ve providedthis option hours earlier. The two lines make it clear that RianJohnson was aware of this plot hole, and he tries to paper it overwith two brief dialogue lines, as if that’ll excuse everything.

Theentire fucking movie is riddled with lines like this; barebreaths that have to carry the entire movie’s fucking plot setup. Reymentions to Luke that the First Order will “control all the majorsystems within weeks” at the beginning. The Order officer’s singleline that explains the Low Speed Chase the entire movie revolvesaround. Leia’s offhand mention of the old base with the Transmitterof Sufficient Power to reach Their Allies In The Outer Rim. Etc. TLCis demonstrably lacking “downtime” as a movie - think Luke, Hanand Leia chatting in the base on Hoth (“laugh it up, furball,”)the briefing in Episode 4 laying out the Death Star attack, etc.Fiction writing calls it pacing, and scriptwriting calls this “storybeats;” you need the right tempo of fast and slow to properly pacea movie. TLJ never slows down long enough to fucking explainitself, compared to the earlier movies - and the OT didn’t domuch of that to begin with! But it did more than enough to ground theentire story in a larger framework of what the situation was, andwhy the character’s actions mattered. We don’t get that in TLJ.Even the fucking opening scroll narration is inferior in termsof information density. It’s almost like there isn’t a plotworth a damn, just whatever horseshit excuse Rian Johnson squeezesout of his anus next, and if the movie stops cramming glossy CGI andaction figure product placement down your throat for five fuckingseconds, you’ll probably catch on.

Thekorn kernel atop this turd sundae was the ending - with the entirefucking Resistance reduced to maybe a dozen or so personnel - andnone of the command staff, save Leia - on board the MillenniumFalcon, which is only a light freighter, capacity-wise. The “outerrim allies” never show, so this is the entirety of the Resistanceforces. They have no combat fleet, no combat personnel, nobases, no resources, no guns, no ammo, no snub fighters, nothing buta single light freighter and their own limp dicks.

Butthe end of the movie shows them flying around handing out secretResistance rings to force-sensitive kids, as if cereal-box decoderrings are enough to overthrow a vast evil galactic empire. Your AR-15can’t stop a government with tanks and fighter planes, but RianJohnson expects us to believe that the ability to levitate rocks andplace intergalactic Skype calls without paying ComStar can overthrowSpace Nazis.

RianJohnson couldn’t write his way out of a Naruto fan forum.

THIS MOVIE IS AMORALLY REPREHENSIBLE SHITPILE THAT NORMALIZES LIES ABOUT ABUSIVEBEHAVIOR BY MALES TOWARDS FEMALES IN ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS

That’sright. I said it.

Thismovie is actively harmful and insulting to women and girls.

Theblatant misandry is bad enough, but the messages it teaches girls areeven worse, the chief one being the normalization of Kylo Ren,the mass-murderer and fratricide “bad boy,” as someone who’s“good, deep down,” If Only The Right Woman Could Cure Him. Thisis a misguided fantasy that dates back to Wuthering Heights, and wasrecently resurrected by Twilight, the fantasy of “saving” a manwho’s violent, misogynistic and cruel. Fantasies aren’t realistic bydefinition, and they all feature in fiction because they’ve an appealto a certain audience - what makes them good or bad is the damagethey do to readers in real life who don’t discern the differencebetween fiction and reality until their misunderstanding leads theminto serious harm. The classic “beauty and the beast” theme of“taming” a “bad boy” stands chief among the offenders inthis category - but don’t ask me, just sample what countless others have written on the topic. Rey going from angry, grief-stricken accusations ofKylo the Fratricide to longing for his lightsaber after three briefskype calls, a look at his Rock Hard Abs and touching his hand once?It’s textbook Beauty And The Beast bullshit, and apoorly-written example, at that.

Thisis in addition to Rian’s explicit view that - as elucidated byHoldo’s own actress - a venomous, sneering bully is what aStrong Female Leader looks like; reinforcedby how the plot bends over backwards to portray Holdo as a hero. Inretrospect, the liberties taken to put Leia into a coma for most ofthe movie was probably done because Carrie Fisher just couldn’t actthe role of a bullying bitch, and that’s the character Rian Johnsonwanted to showcase as a feminist icon. Again, quoting Holdo’sactress, “[Rian is] saying something that’s been atrue challenge in feminism. Are we going to lead and be who we are aswomen in our femininity? Or are we going to dress up in a boy’sclothes to do the boy’s job?” The message here isn’t that girlscan be hot-shot fighter pilots or gunslinging heroes too - it’s thatmales are toxic, testosterone-driven fools and Real Women are “womenin their femininity.” Not “youcan be anything you want to be” but “feminimity is good andmasculinity is smelly dumb mansplaining scum.” Thisis fucked in the head, andI challenge anyone- especiallythose who recommended I watch this movie - to deny the charge Ijust leveled.

Andfinally, there’s the actions of Rian Johnson himself, the misandristfuckhead who wrote this pile of shit. He was building off the workand script of JJ Abrams, including all the character development that went into it - and now we can see what he decided to do with it.Rian didn’t just fail to make a movie - he actively threw away anopportunity to write a script with realprogressivesensibilities, substituted cheap “subversions” instead, and thenjerked off on Twitter about how fucking woke and progressive he is toget all the fawning accolades anyways.

RIAN JOHNSONPISSED AWAY THE MUCH BETTER STORY SET UP BY JJ ABRAMS IN THE FORCEAWAKENS, AND STILL HAS THE FUCKING GALL TO ACT LIKE HE DIDN’T

I’vebeen told - in various articles and in person - that TLJ achievesbrilliant subversion of expectations and fights against tired oldtropes that reinforce social status norms by bucking the Chosen Onewith Significant Bloodlines thing, most notably with Rey’s parentagerevealed to be of no consequence and Kylo’s focus on “killing thepast” and rejecting moral binaries to forge his own path.

So,on that note, let’s talk about Finn.

Finnwas a brilliant character in concept, the kind I often try to write -a common man, a faceless member of the rank-and-file who finds thecourage to step out of line, think for himself, and eventuallybecomes a hero in his own right. The opening of TFA, with the bloodyhandprint on Finn’s helmet serving to identify him and give a “faceto the faceless,” was a brilliant bit of visual storytelling, andFinn himself has a difficult and dangerous journey as a character.He’s limited in his abilities - he can’t pilot a ship, for instance -and for the longest time his only desire is to run as far away fromthe First Order as he possibly can, to live his own life in peace. Bythe end of TFA, he’s grievously wounded fighting an opponent he knowsdamn well outmatches him, all to defend the life of his new - andonly - friend, Rey. Goinginto TLJ, Finn is poised both as Rey’s most probable love interestand as a walkingrefutation of the Chosen Heroes trope; having gone from randomfaceless goon to the man who was responsible for destroying the DeathST- I mean Starkiller Base. Heknew the way into and out ofsaid base because he used to be on the sanitation detail, aquirk that makes perfect sense andemphasizes how the “little people” in inglamorousjobs often know cruciallittle details like that (like the back door the smokers use.)

Andwhat did Rian Johnson do with this setup?

Finnwakes up and is immediately used for comic relief, smacking his headon the medical scanner, then staggering around in a bacta suitleaking fluid everywhere. Thenhe tries to hare off after Rey, only to get tazed for trying to steala vehicle. Then he’squickly shuffled off to the side with Rose while Rey is suddenly, andwith very poor setup and justification, set up with Kylo and hisneon-white abs as her love interest.

Is now a goodtime to remind you that Finn is black? Yes,the black man gets 1. played for comic relief, 2. don’t tazeme bro, 3. shuffled offscreen while Rey is set up with a white boy toavoid any possibility of an interracial romance. Andall that’s in additiontoFinn’s noble sacrifice being portrayed as bad and wrong, while MightyWhitey Kami-Kaze Holdo is made out as a huge hero for the exactsame act.

Comparewhat Rian Johnson did with what he couldhave done, and thentry to tell me thismovie had any redeemingthemes, arcs, or execution. I fucking dareyou.

AVALON HAS FUCKINGFALLEN

TheLast Jedi is a towering monument to the rot at the heart of ourartistic society. The Force Awakens was a shameless regurgitationdesigned by a soulless corporation to bilk our nostalgic childhoodmemories for every penny we were worth, but at least it had acompetent writer/director at the helm that had some pride in hiswork. By contrast, The Last Jedi had that same greedy, scum-suckingcorporate machine at the helm and a writer-director thatepitomizes the creature that now infests Hollywood: an arrogant, self-congratulatory prick concerned onlywith vigorously stroking off his fellow wealthy cultural elites, sothey may take smug satisfaction in their moral superiority over theproles. Therecent spate ofself-described “male feminists” who’vebeen revealed to use their professed politics as cover to prey onwomen illustrate the forces at work here - if one utters theApproved Doctrine, everything else can be overlooked and forgiven.Portray Women as Good, Men as Bad and with a few cheap shots atCapitalism in the middle, and you can get away with not writing aplot at all, lazy and poorly-storyboarded CGI scenes that pushmerchandise, and even reducing a black man to comedic relief. This iswhat our corporate-run entertainment industry now rewards - to thetune of tens of millions of dollars - and what countlessleft-wing culture-war publications vigorously and viciously defendwith endless column inches of simpering praise and even asinineconspiracy theories about the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy “gaming”Rotten Tomatoes user review scores to cover up how much audienceshated this fucking trash.

Asa writer, I happen to believe that Art means something. It matters.It nourishes the soul and teaches us lessons about why to liveour lives, not just how. Mankind has been telling stories forthousands of years before anyone figured out how to write them down,much less make a profit off them. As a species we are wired to thinknarratively, which is why stories have power - never a righteouskingdom nor a vile dictatorship has existed that didn’t invest greateffort in fashioning myths and legends to justify and strengthen itslegitimacy with the people. Stories can help, and they can even harm.

Storiesare serious fucking business. And Rian Johnson’s betrayal anddesecration of his art and craft is emblematic of what the very, verybig, wealthy and powerful entertainment business thinks isacceptable. The business of multimillionare serial rapists that arealso major political donors, the business of complicit yes-men actorsthat routinely use their fame, wealth, and cultural influence to tipthe scales of our national political debate - that business.

Ifyou’re like me; if you dream of telling stories that matter,stories that change peoples lives and give them hope as other’sstories have done for you - prepare for dark times ahead. It’s clearnow that Avalon has fallen; that the existing establishment is toothoroughly corrupted to serve society any useful purpose. We’ll haveto use the internet, vanity presses and small websites - as long asAmazon, Google, and the other West-coast headquartered monopoliesallow us them, that is - and do the best we can. Whatever Hollywoodin particular and the entertainment industry in general is puttingout anymore, it sure as hell isn’t art, in any sense ofthe word you might imagine. The real artists will have to starve,scrape, beg, and struggle - but what they make will be worthwatching, instead of an affront to common sense and common decency.Call them Rebels, or perhaps the Resistance - just don’t callthem surprising, because I FUCKING TOLD YOU SO.

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joannalannister · 8 years ago

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Is there any chance of a happy ending for the Lannisters? I know they are awful people but why develop their motivations and give each of them a genuine moment of compassion if they are just going to murder each other? Every other POV gets a moment of truth/redemption why not the children of Tywin/Patriarchy/Aerys and Disability? I'm a bad person myself so I need to believe the Lions can defy themselves and prophesy and overcome their nature or what's the point? Not all of us are born Starks.

Hey! So it’s gonna take me a few minutes to answer your question, but I promise I’m gonna get there.

In one of the other shows I watch, an actor commented on the banality of evil. He said that evil is something commonplace. Given the right circumstances, great acts of evil could be committed by your neighbors, or your friends, or you, or me. Because evil is so easy. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” You needn’t be a monster like Gregor to commit evil; you need only be human.

As that actor said, it’s very dangerous to think “If they do something evil, they’re a monster, because regular people could never do that.” But regular people could do that, and they have, throughout history. But in fiction, we like to other evil. We like to say, “Those are the bad guys, see their uniforms? They’re not us, they’re not on our side.” It becomes very black and white, and it’s one of the reasons for the enduring popularity of a certain type of movie. “We’re attracted to it because of its moral certainties.” For the record, I really like that genre of movie. But we should be asking ourselves why. We as human beings prefer to simplify and distance ourselves from evil, and to ignore or diminish our own atrocities, which we rarely make movies about. It makes us feel better about ourselves to ignore the bad parts of ourselves, and to play the hero. Even Cersei does this; think about Cersei’s revisionist memories of what happened to Melara Hetherspoon.

GRRM doesn’t want his readers to have an easy time distancing themselves from evil. ASOIAF is never, “Here are the Bad Guys in their Clearly Marked uniforms with their Bad Guy flag flying high.”** In fact, GRRM even said that he deliberately wanted the Night’s Watch, the people fighting on the front lines of the Other invasion, to wear black because he wanted to mix up the color symbolism in fantasy. “Before you can fight the war between good and evil, you need to determine which is which, and that’s not always as easy as some Fantasists would have you believe.”

(Tangent, but an interesting thing about Jaime imo is that he doesn’t always know where he stands in terms of good and evil. Sure, he knows that things like rape are wrong on an individual level, but on an institutional level, he thinks nothing of the institutionalized rape of Sansa Stark or Jeyne Poole, and he legitimately thought Tysha was just a gold digger. He doesn’t think House Lannister as an institution is bad, so he willingly does things like kick the Tullys out of their own home. There’s this narrative going around in fandom that Jaime’s actions during the FeastDance are things he’s done against his will, but Jaime participates willingly, in thought and deed, and he actively wants to keep Tommen on a throne to which the boy has no right. Even in ADWD, Jaime still thinks, like, “Well, massacring a whole family takes care of the problem.” If you’re looking for someone who actively criticizes and rebels against the Lannister regime, both in his thoughts and in his actions, that’s Tyrion.)

SO ANYWAYS, grrm doesn’t want you to be able to say, “Those are the Bad Guys over there. We’re gonna go fight them and kill them.” (He actually says the opposite tbh: “Those are brave men. Let’s go kill them.”)

GRRM wants you to pull those Bad Guys in close and have them put their head on your shoulder as you whisper softly, “I understand. I know this pain you’re in. It’s my own.” And then, after you’ve smoothed their hair and made them a nice cup of hot cocoa and gotten them comfortable and maybe had a good cry together, you’re supposed to look into that character’s eyes and say, “WTF is wrong with you? Look at your life; look at your choices. I’ve dealt with these same issues my whole life and I never became a mass murderer or did any of the other horrible shit that you did. You need to shape up, or else you’re going to be fucking doomed. You don’t get to keep digging this hole deeper for yourself and think it’s gonna come out ok!! You’re literally in a fucking GRRM novel ffs, do you even know how high that guy’s kill count is???”

(This is literally like Sandor Clegane’s story. On the Quiet Isle, he figures out he needs to shape up. He no longer works for the Lannisters. Not everybody’s story needs to be about redemption, though. Some stories are tragedies.)

If the Starks are the characters you should aspire to be (and lbr, the Starks are who you should aspire to be; there’s a reason everybody in canon wants to be a Stark, from Robert to Theon to Barbrey etc)

then the Lannisters are the warning against who you could become, if you aren’t careful. You came to me saying, “I’m a bad person myself.” idk if you wanted me to tell you, “That’s ok, it’s all going to work out” but I’m not gonna do that. That’s not how it works, in either fiction or real life.

I see a lot of myself in House Lannister. Selfishness. Avarice. Pride. Shame. Perfectionism. These things resonated with me when GRRM wrote about them in the Lannisters, precisely because he made the Lannisters so real. In other fantasy stories, sure, the villains are proud or selfish or whatever, but they’re so clearly the Evil Bad Guys that they were never relatable to me.

GRRM brought so many of his antiheroes / anitvillains / villains so close to home that I couldn’t ignore them. I couldn’t other them and dismiss them. The Lannisters called to me. They demanded I read and write fanfiction, even, to explore these issues further. The Lannisters showed me who I could be, and what terrible, terrible things I might be capable of, in the right scenario. GRRM turns it up to 11, but still. The Lannisters warn me: don’t be that person.

That’s why I get so happy at the idea of the Lannisters being brought down. It’s a very personal victory; that ugly, horrible person I could have been was defeated.

Cersei has her moments of truth in the narrative where people tell her she needs to shape up, and she ignores them. Outside the sept of Baelor, the people tell her they don’t want vengeance; they just want to live their lives in peace. And Cersei doesn’t listen. If you’re heading for a trainwreck and you don’t heed any of the warning signs, I’m sorry but it’s not going to be okay in the end. For Jaime and Cersei, I think their story is about existential tragedy - they will ultimately be unable to rise above their Lannister ideology, and for that the narrative will demand their deaths. And that’s ok. The Bad Guy characters can crash and burn, but you don’t have to if you heed the warnings they ignored.

The other thing I will say, after reading other works written by GRRM and getting a feel for his endings … it’s not about whether you live or die. We all die. Every single person who reads this is going to die. It’s not about the happy ending, either. Winter – the bad times – come for us all. Maybe the bad times will come again only after 10 years, or 20, but they will come. (lol at theories that the seasons will be “normal” in ASOIAF at the end.)

What matters in GRRM’s stories is whether the character took a stand. Did they fight for what was right? Did they do that good thing when they had the chance? Did they achieve that existential victory? I think this is the part that applies to Tyrion especially.

Tyrion is GRRM’s fav and he’s one of the greyest of the greys. He does horrible unforgivable things in the books. But there’s going to come a pivotal moment when Tyrion has to choose, and I think that he will make the Good choice, even if it kills him. (Perhaps especially if it kills him, in the ultimate self-sacrifice.) Because it doesn’t matter if he dies. Like I said, we all die. What matters is what you did with your life. Were you victorious in that moment when you had to make a choice between Good and Evil?

And that’s something that I love about ASOIAF tbh, that GRRM brings the War for the Dawn home. It’s a war inside each of his characters (#body as battleground, im gonna keep saying it), it’s in the conflicts of the human heart, in the choice between good and evil.

“The war has been waged since time began, and before it is done, all men must choose where they will stand.”

“It hurts, boy,” he said softly. “Oh, yes. Choosing … it has always hurt. And always will. I know.”

The point of art isn’t necessarily the art itself but how we respond to it. How did it make you feel? What did it make you think about? What did you do, after you put the book down and went out again into the real world?

As we ride around in these characters’ heads, the War for the Dawn becomes our war too. It’s our fight between good and evil. It’s a war that’s more real than a battle against orcs and monsters. (Think about Jon Snow’s choice to let wildling refugees in through the Wall, and how many senior Night’s Watch officials oppose what he’s doing. Think about it.)

Like I said above, not every story is a redemption arc. I don’t think Jaime’s story is a redemption arc, for example. Some stories are tragedies, where the character dies in the end, because they couldn’t overcome their nature (like Jaime as the valonqar). It’s not the death that’s the point, but the journey you went on with that character. How did it make you feel?

I mean, GRRM is literally making you feel empathy for murderers.

Would you be half so concerned with what’s going to happen to the Lannisters at the end if GRRM wrote them as Pure Evil™, without any of those sympathetic moments? In other words, how do you feel about Gregor? Will you care when Gregor dies? I know I won’t. GRRM wrote the Lannisters the way he did, with complex motivations and heartbreaking moments and compelling backstories, because he wanted to breathe life into them and make them real.

GRRM wanted to make you care before he kills them, so that their deaths will affect you more strongly, so that these feelings, these critical thoughts, these lessons you learned will linger looooong after you turn the final page. (Have I told y’all how much Fevre Dream and With Morning Comes Mistfall HAUNT me??? Oh god do GRRM’s stories linger. Y’all think this is all gonna be over and done with after we turn the final page of ADOS and Blood of Dragons and D&E. Heh. I know better. I know better. ASOIAF is for life.)

If the thesis of ASOIAF is to recognize our common humanity and to understand that dehumanizing people is wrong, your sympathetic emotions toward the villainous Lannisters go a long way toward supporting GRRM’s thesis on a meta-level.

**The Others are clearly evil eldritch slavers, but the focus of the story is never on them. We’re almost exclusively focused on what humanity is doing, for 5 books now.

***Also, I’m not sure why Aerys is included here when referencing Tywin’s children, but I’m going to overlook that and point you here: #A plus J does not equal T

EDIT: I think I said this better over here so I’m just gonna paste it below:

GRRM brings the war home when he writes about the conflicts of the human heart. It implies a personal battlefield inside each of us, a perpetual fight of Good versus Evil, consisting of all those choices we make, each and every day. (Even the choices you make about ASOIAF. Doesn’t that make you feel … idk … bigger … more important … more involved … as a reader, that one of the great battlefronts of the War for the Dawn is located inside your head, in terms of your opinions about and reactions to ASOIAF?)

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #house lannister #heatherlanntheclever #replies #the meaning of asoiaf #lannister thoughts #endgame

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mirceakitsune · 8 years ago

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Biggest internet censorship scheme ever attempted (Digital Economy Bill)

I believe at this very hour, I'm finally able to gather my thoughts on certain matters enough to write a coherent journal about them. Something I wouldn't have been able to do during the rest of the day, after having come across the shit I was about to witness. As usual I will be cross-posting this on all of my profiles, in hopes that people will be able to offer some insight that might snap me back to sanity.

So as my watchers know, I frequently make journals discussing emerging threats against online freedom, namely when big censorship initiatives are launched by governments and corporations. I broadly discussed SOPA around 5 years ago when it almost happened, I talked about issues like art being criminalized as a means of gun safety, and more. What I want to discuss today however, makes the famous SOPA / ACTA look like an absolute joke, as they were nothing compared to something that's happening right in our days.

http://theregister.co.uk/2017/01/20/lords_slam_untrammelled_data_sharing_powers_in_digital_economy_bill http://independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/porn-digital-economy-bill-age-verification-law-house-of-commons-parliament-a7445086.html http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2017/01/digital-economy-bill-govt-seeks-to-bypass-eu-law-with-porn-blocking-filters/ http://edri.org/the-uk-digital-economy-bill-threat-to-free-speech-and-privacy/

Meet the only legal initiative in a democracy capable of rivaling China's internet censorship system: The UK's Digital Economy Bill. This piece of dystopian science fiction brought to life, which literally feels like reading a news terminal in a game of DeusEx, is a plan to censor the internet unlike anything we've seen here in Europe and America. I'm not even sure where I can begin with it, but I guess the starting point would be as follows:

The UK government wants complete control over what kinds of websites its citizens may visit. ISP's will be forced to block any website in the world that's deemed bad by the regime, including all overseas websites that don't obey to its new program (Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc). Now I know what you might be thinking: "Yeah, we know... copyright and all that". Nope... this is not about copyright at all! Hold on to your computer chairs, because here comes the real reason behind this entire madness: Porn. Yep... the biggest censorship scheme ever seen in the occident is about to unfold for the purpose of blocking god damn internet porn! There will be two categories: Porn deemed indecent by the state, which is to be blocked for all citizens... as well as any kind of porn, which is to be blocked exclusively to the mentally apartheid (also known as "everyone under the age of 18"). An institution that handles ratings for DVD's will be given the responsibility of being the 21th century's religious police, deciding what kind of media is moral and who should be arrested for watching heretic content... similarly to China which has an institution tasked with video game and film censorship, in case something might be bothering the CCP and spreading occidental values.

Before I continue with this trainwreck, there are a few things I want to clarify regarding my stance: First I know that certain people out there want to say "Aaaahaha you're pissed that the government might be banning the sick porn you watch, serves you right". If by any chance someone reading this journal is one of those idiots, though even I doubt it, I'm complaining about the idea the approach and the precedent being created. I couldn't care less whether it's about porn or anything else... and by the way the law also contains much of SOPA, such as criminalizing websites that even talk about copyright infringement in a manner deemed as "aiding the enemy" (such as speaking about links or IP addresses). What's happening is a variety of abuses:

1. A gruesome attack on people's freedoms and liberties in general.

2. An unprecedented attempt at internet control and censorship over the last two decades, as far as any country considered the 1st world goes.

3. A call for going back to the medieval age, relatable to when people were arrested and chained for allegedly promoting ideas deemed ungodly by the religious police.

4. Bone-chilling ignorance and lack of understanding of how the internet works, and what side effects this initiative might have worldwide.

5. Shocking ignorance about the importance of privacy and data security on the internet, granted they want some sort of internet-wide age verification system.

6. What strongly looks like the imposition of a fanatical purist ideology. I'll take the liberty of comparing this to the Chinese cultural revolution, when books promoting undesired ideas were burnt and artists dragged away in chains. Once again, using porn as an excuse makes absolutely zero difference in this regard, grow out of your bubble if this is how dense you are!

7. All of the above is for an absolutely ridiculous reason, which makes it all the more hallucinating: Banning god damn porn on the internet... in year 2017 when no sane person gives a shit about this sort of thing! If a parent still cares about this crap, they can easily install censorship software on their kids device or request the service from their ISP... what the hell? It's as if a bunch of people were teleported from the victorian age, seized control of the state, and are about to bring back the papal government and the guillotine because no one's yet told them that times have changed and that would be stupid.

Now no, I'm not from the UK myself. If I was British, granted multiple things that are happening there right now... either I'd have fled the country and would be sleeping on the streets of a civilized EU city where I'd feel safe, either I'd be floating in a river with a note attached to my neck, either I'd be on the 6 o'clock news for opening fire on the government building and the Tories infesting it (the least likely of options). I will never the less offer condolences to everyone who lives there... because the fascism taking place back there is worthy of such, and I'm legitimately sorry for everyone there who has to deal with these psychopaths. Never the less, I too have reasons to be concerned about some things, as do all of us:

1. This is all happening in a place that was (and technically still is) part of the European Union, which is supposedly the 2nd beacon of democracy alongside America. This madness hasn't started in Africa or South Korea or the Philippines or some other developing country, where the news would be less of shock: The UK is considered a developed country and a world leader, like France or Germany or the US! If a world leading country threatens to take down a whole portion of the internet and endorse identity theft, literally over a fit of medieval rage... who's to say other governments won't lose their minds and start doing god knows what? This is a fail for humanity and progress as a whole, which in and of itself is despicable.

2. What they're doing may affect websites worldwide, not just those in the UK! Any site that has NSFW material can be demanded to adhere to their moral code and steal people's ID, otherwise it may be banned in the UK altogether. Places like Furaffinity for instance will either have to censor new types of art deemed immoral by the Tory cult, or the website will be blocked by the Great Firewall of the UK... in which case I hope it's the later, as much as I feel horrible for any UK furs who will wake up to find it and other art websites gone one morning.

3. Several groups I'm part of are targeted and affected. And no I don't feel that this applies just to things that may be considered of sexual nature: It can at face value, but in the long run it extends to more. Ideology filtering comes to mind, in terms of what might follow next... just thinking about the people who must have proposed such a thing makes the "A Brick in the Wall" music video pop to mind.

There was more I felt like going into, but I figure this is enough for one journal. Ironically I found out about the whole thing while searching for something comparatively less bad: I was looking at how US authorities now want to demand passwords for phones and social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, etc) for non-citizens entering the country... another hallucinating violation of people's privacy, which I didn't even believe could be real until recently. I was actually going to complain about that instead, but after what I heard about the UK I realized that's nothing in comparison.

All I can add is that, I'm extremely worried about the future in general: A world just like the dark scifi movies is coming... where armed troop sit at every corner and point a rifle to your head as you walk by, cameras are on every pole and you're just waiting for a system error to cause a turret to shoot at you, whereas the internet is centralized through one institution and you need a pass from the government to even use it. The city we see in the beginning of Half-Life 2 (less for the aliens roaming the place) will probably be a reality soon... and if it will, it will likely start in the UK. Oh... and if I had the power to register extremist groups responsible for spreading terror among people, believe me the Tories would be officially on it right now.

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