#dave Filoni critical

[short-wooloo]

Now that the trailer is out, it's probably best that I get this out of the way before acolyte releases

The Jedi are right about the Force and the dark side

The Jedi did not lose their way

The Jedi were not corrupted

The genocide of the Jedi was not their fault

The Jedi are not wrong for being part of the Republic, it is in fact a good thing

The Jedi are not arrogant for thinking the sith are gone

and while we're at it the sith are evil, always, end of discussion

The Jedi do not steal children

If someone wants to leave the Jedi, that's allowed, no one will stop them

The Jedi are right about attachment

Attachment is not love (SW uses the Buddhist definition because Lucas is a Buddhist and the Jedi are based off Buddhist monks, Buddhism defines attachment as being possessive or unwilling to let go of people or things)

The Jedi do not forbid emotions, they forbid being controlled by your emotions, you must control them

The Jedi are not forbidden from loving people, nor are they celibate, they just can't get married (big whup) because their duties must come first

Being peacekeepers doesn't preclude the Jedi from fighting in war, sometimes to keep the peace you have to fight back, especially when its against tyranny, see WWII (or Ukraine today)

Gray jedi are not a thing

The Jedi are not slavers or complicit in slavery

Oh and of course, the Jedi are not elitists for not training non Force sensitives, (Han voice) that's not how the Force works, dave filoni broke the rules so he could shoehorn sabine into a Jedi (to give the benefit of the doubt, I do believe sabine's role as ahsoka's apprentice was meant for an original character but things got condensed by executives, so maybe filoni isn't entirely to blame here)

(Edit)

The Jedi are not cops

The Jedi are not the government/the rulers of the Republic/galaxy

The Jedi do not persecute other Force groups

Padawans are not child soldiers

Feel free to add anything I forgot

Do not, DO NOT!! add anything Jedi critical, I'm done with it and won't hear it, don't have something nice to say? Then go away, I will block on sight, either reblog without comment (either in the reblog or the notes) or don't interact at all

[hellonoblesky]

I truly will never get over the Acolyte being cancelled. For one beautiful beautiful show I was free. No Skywalker drama. Cortosis in live action. Female leads. Morally grey Jedi. A plot that made me care about the Jedi for the first time in the past 4 years. Lesbian witches. Non-dathomiri zabrak. For one season I was free. For one beautiful season I got to experience something NEW in Star Wars and it got fucking cancelled because everyone somehow forgot that Star Wars as a franchise is mid as hell, and once the nostalgia of previously loved characters (Ashoka, for example, who’s show SUCKED STRAIGHT ASS) is removed they can’t stand the same writing they praise

[antianakin]

Literally why are people who hate the Jedi even writing for Star Wars?

Why do they keep LETTING people who hate the Jedi write for Star Wars?

Can't these people just go make their OWN sci-fi about how selfishness is cool actually? We could all use more original sci-fi stuff anyway, it's vanishingly rare in film and TV, leave Star Wars and the Jedi alone.

[lieutenant-teach]

I love The Clone Wars series. I love the clones. I like both Rex and Cody. But since the very beginning of watching the series, I felt like smth was kind of off about them. Specifically, why do we have so much content about Rex? Why at least part of these clone-centric moments are not given to Cody? He was there first! He’s the only clone in the movies who has some semblance of characterization and he’s actually very important for Star Wars.

Like, the episodes about a clone deserter – why not give them to Cody instead of Rex? Why not use the 212th instead of the 501st? If you imagine Cody instead of Rex, the plot won’t change, the message of the episode won’t change – they both would have similar attitudes to the situation. But we would know more specifically about the most important clone of SW. And I’m not exaggerating this claim – Rex’s presence doesn’t change the movies narrative in any way. I’m not saying they should’ve cut him out completely – just divide some adventures between Cody and Rex.

Being a Filoni original character is very advantageous.

[kanansdume]

What's crazy and really shows off how impeccably awful this show managed to be is how DIFFERENT Anakin feels between the Kenobi show and the Ahsoka show, despite the fact that he's being played by the same actor probably within a year of each other if that.

And it's so clearly not the fault of the performer, Hayden Christensen is doing the absolute MOST to give an authentic and familiar performance of Anakin in the Ahsoka show and on a STRICTLY acting standpoint, I think he succeeds. People have pointed out that the Anakin that Hayden is playing in the flashbacks, despite being in the TCW costumes, does not at all feel like TCW Anakin. There's nothing suave or charming about him. When he tries to joke and Ahsoka pushes back against it, he immediately gets defensive, which is perhaps one of the most in-characters thing about the entire performance. And obviously his performance as Sith Anakin is pure perfection.

But it's not just the performance that creates a character. It's the way other people discuss the character, it's the way that character impacts the world around them, it's what we as the audience are allowed to see of them.

In the Obi-Wan show, Anakin at his best is still a whiny little asshole. In the flashback scene, he's arrogant, he's overconfident, he's a little bit of a bully, he's stubborn, and he's a sore loser. It's left a little ambiguous as to whether this scene was a true flashback or something Else, but the dialogue of the scene and who is currently "winning" the match clearly are intended to parallel what's going on in the actual plot between Obi-Wan and Anakin. Which means you can just as easily interpret this as saying that the whiny little asshole you remember from the prequels is still the person behind that mask. Yes, he's got a vocoder changing his voice into something more menacing, his expressions hidden behind an emotionless mask, but that whiny teenager is still calling the shots here. That's precisely what motivates him. Even if it's intended as a more legitimate flashback, that's supposed to be Anakin at his BEST and he's... whiny. He's arrogant. You can say he can grow out of it at this point and that's clearly what Obi-Wan believes in the moment, but the best he's got is... still this.

And he never grew out of it, he never left that arrogance and entitlement behind. He decided to let it define him instead. He might've had promise if he'd chosen to outgrow his more negative traits, but he didn't. He just stayed forever in the mindset of that annoying little 19 year old asshole.

And at his worst, Anakin's a literal unhinged MONSTER. He's casually walking by and murdering innocents just to get Obi-Wan's attention, he's stabbing Reva just because he can, he's ripping open ships, he's burning Obi-Wan alive out of vengeance. His face when that mask comes off has a manic GLEE as he talks about having "killed" himself just to try to manipulate Obi-Wan and the way he screams Obi-Wan's name at the end is so intensely disturbing. So many people saw that moment as Anakin having this moment of mindfulness, but I didn't see or hear a single sane moment in the entire scene. The whole thing is off-kilter and it feels pretty intentionally off-kilter, both in the writing and the acting and directing. Anakin's made his choice. This is it.

In the Kenobi show, Anakin might've once had promise. But he also had immense potential for monstrous evil, that was ALSO there as well. And whatever promise used to be there is now squandered in favor of the arrogance and cruelty and entitlement, which means that it's not worth Obi-Wan's time and effort and energy continuing to wonder what if about it. Because, quite honestly, it doesn't MATTER. Obi-Wan isn't fighting for Anakin anymore by the end. He's not fighting to destroy Anakin, but he's not fighting to save him, either. And the whole point of his relationships with Luke and Leia is that he has to learn to care about them for who THEY are rather than because he cared about their biological parents. He has to see them for who they've become and allow them to grow without worrying about how much like Anakin or Padme they might end up being. They're not Anakin and Padme, they're Luke and Leia, and his relationship with them is ultimately better for letting go of seeing them as anything other than who they actually are.

The people who were in charge of the Kenobi show clearly understood that in order for Obi-Wan to stand on his own as a main character of his own story, they needed to clearly differentiate him from Anakin and FREE him from Anakin. Yes, Obi-Wan is built to be Anakin's narrative foil and has been since day 1. Yes, Obi-Wan's story is very tied up in Anakin's. But this was OBI-WAN'S story and just for this one moment, they could let Obi-Wan be more than just someone who revolves around Anakin. He's his own person who makes his own connections and relationships that have nothing to do with Anakin and he only truly starts to feel like himself again when he walks away from Anakin and leaves him behind and accepts that Anakin has chosen to be someone that Obi-Wan cannot change. No one writing the Kenobi show wanted Obi-Wan to be more IMPORTANT to the narrative than Anakin, but they were able to allow Anakin to take a back seat so that Obi-Wan could actually grow and develop into his own character.

The same cannot be said for the Ahsoka show.

In the Ahsoka show, Anakin is portrayed IMMENSELY positively. At his best, Anakin is a wise powerful sage watching over someone he cares about and pushing her to be better. At his worst, he's... pushing her a little? They MENTION he's intense, and we see visions of him as a Sith, sure, but if that was Anakin at all, then it leaves you with the impression that he only pushed Ahsoka because he cared about her and she needed it and he was ultimately right to do so anyway. Was it tough? I guess, but nothing that would ultimately truly hurt her at all. Anakin's worst sins aren't touched on at all. Anakin is constantly remembered as someone who was GOOD without really acknowledging that while he might've been good at times, he wasn't always. Even when Ahsoka remembers him as a good master, he was still someone who believed in fascism and had massacred an entire village down to the last child. That person Ahsoka remembers was still a bad person and this show desperately wants you to forget that any of that is true about him.

And via proxies like Sabine and Ahsoka herself, this show DEFENDS Anakin's choices across the board. It's not even just that he was a good master, but that he ultimately did the RIGHT THING by choosing Padme over the galaxy because he did it out of "love," turning the genocide of the Jedi into something that was caused by their OWN failures instead of Anakin's failures.

There's zero recognition that Anakin was, ultimately, a failure. He was a failure as a Jedi, a failure as a master, a failure as a husband and a father, and a failure just as a generally good person. Anakin was a bad person who did bad things. Maybe he wasn't always, maybe he had his moments, fine, but overall? What's the legacy he leaves? What are people going to truly remember him for most? Despite his choice to save Luke in his last moments, his impact upon the galaxy is still a net negative.

And Ahsoka can have good memories of him and still recognize that Anakin's impact upon the galaxy was a bad one. She can choose to focus on the good memories she has without pretending like he was in actuality a good master who did nothing wrong. It's not like those two things can't co-exist and that is, in essence, exactly what Obi-Wan has to do. It's why he can say honestly and genuinely tell Leia at the end of the show that her father was "passionate, fearless, and forthright" even though just a day or so ago he'd accepted that Anakin himself had chosen to be an evil person now. He can remember Anakin as the friend he'd cared for AND recognize that the person Anakin is now is not that person anymore. Anakin NOW is evil, Anakin NOW doesn't deserve Obi-Wan's time or focus or grief, Anakin NOW needs to just be let go of. They aren't two separate people, obviously, but people do grow and change, and Obi-Wan once loved Anakin, but the boy Obi-Wan loved is gone because Anakin has chosen not to be that kind of person anymore. He's not kind, he's not compassionate, he's not merciful, or thoughtful or any of the good qualities he used to have. The Kenobi show forces both Obi-Wan and the audience to recognize that no matter how good someone might once have been, it's important to recognize when they're not acting like that person anymore and it's better to let them go and walk away.

And the reason Ahsoka can't do that is because the writers can't. The people in charge of writing Anakin in this show see him so differently than the people who wrote Kenobi. The the writers of the Ahsoka show, Anakin is "the greatest of all of the Jedi," not even just for raw power reasons, but because he understood what love was all about and felt it so deeply. So instead of that love twisting him and being in so many ways his greatest flaw, it turned into his greatest strength, something the Jedi just didn't understand. They're coming at Anakin from a WILDLY opposite direction here and so the way he gets depicted and spoken about comes across so unnervingly different.

You CAN see it as Ahsoka just... viewing Anakin differently. Obi-Wan knew Anakin as a child and was a Jedi Master before the betrayal, so he is more capable of viewing Anakin as the whole of what he was and letting him go. Whereas Ahsoka was a lot younger, she barely got any training before the betrayal, so her perspective on him is intensely skewed by this. She can't truly conceive of Anakin as both the good master she remembers AND the nightmare monster she knows he became, so she just... picks one. She chooses to see him as a good master and that's it. Nothing else he ever did matters. She never has to think about the genocide, the murders, the enslavement, the betrayals. He was a good master, and that's the end of the story. This is the best way she can learn to cope with this particular trauma is to just... ignore it and decide it didn't happen and so her version of Anakin is the ONLY version of Anakin.

But the narrative itself sort-of presents this as the honest truth of Anakin rather than just Ahsoka's perspective on the matter. It's not that Ahsoka just can't cope any other way, it's that this is, legitimately, who Anakin was. Anakin WAS a good master and the fact that he abandoned Ahsoka to die and tried to kill her and genocided her people and desecrated her home apparently doesn't change that at all. Because he did all of it for love. And the fact that Anakin was the "greatest of all the Jedi" because of this means that Ahsoka gets exalted even more so because of that.

But Obi-Wan doesn't need that. He doesn't need to be exalted as better than everyone else, he doesn't need to be made important by manipulating the narrative. He already IS important and the people writing his story know that. He's not important because he's better than Anakin, he's important just because he is. He's baked into this story and can't be removed from it without completely undoing it and telling a totally new story. Obi-Wan and Ahsoka are, in some ways, total opposites. Obi-Wan is a massively important character to the narrative who's never been the main character of his own story before the Kenobi show, while Ahsoka spent a long time as the main character of her story but has never and will never be that important to the narrative. She can be added to it and give some extra dimension to it, but she can be pretty easily removed from it, too.

And their relationships to Anakin in their respective shows seem to reflect the way the writers feel about those facts and their understanding of the characters themselves.

[godempworm]

Well, that explains a lot a man who only a handful of episodes of Rebels believes he’s the most knowledgeable on Rebel characters

And here’s the link to the article

[itsonlymyecho]

I'm sorry but it's textbook Star Wars that putting one person above the entire galaxy is a dark side move.

[thrawns-backrest]

Prompted by this post and the related interview, reason 15467352 why I think Dave Felony isn’t up to the task of writing live action Star Wars.

I was going to harp about how this proves Filoni hasn’t read the books but this interview is from before the canon trilogies were out so touché on that. And yet this just proves to me why Filoni isn’t the guy for the job of writing Thrawn. Or any live action imperials for that matter.

I’ll start by saying that one thing I will concede is that the notion of the Imperial military being plagued by incompetent officers is not entirely unrealistic. Given that it’s a stratocracy, you can expect to find people who used politics to climb the ranks rather than actual military competence - it’s a kind of French Revolution situation kind of thing. Historically it’s been known to happen in our world.

Combine that with the fact that the Empire is racist, elitist and (kind of) sexist as all hell and you have a limited pool of people to pick from when filling its ranks, pushing some genuine talent to the fringes or excluding it altogether.

The thing I’m entirely tired of seeing though is the implication that it’s the majority of Imperial leadership that’s like this and by this I mean incompetent. The overwhelming majority at that. But more on the Empire’s moronicity later, let’s talk about Thrawn.

“He’s not ambitious in the way where he needs to see himself promoted, or a governor one day. He purely wants to dissect them; that’s what he enjoys!” This. This grinds my gears so much. For starters it proves that Filoni sees Thrawn as this ‘quirky baddie’ where Zahn treats him as an actual person. There’s something almost condescending in taking a neurodivergent coded character and being like ‘aww, look at them, they’re so happy doing their little thing they don’t have any other goals and ambitions whatsoever :)’.

To get things straight, Thrawn has always been annoyed by the limitations placed on him by an inferior rank. You could argue it’s for the simple reason that a higher rank gives him more freedom to act and pursue his goals but that’s just what that is, a simplification.

And that’s where Filoni’s problem lies:

Filoni is good at writing cartoons. And before people raise their pitchforks, I don’t mean this in a negative way. Writing cartoons forces you to squish complex ideas into a digestible format, the genre needs simplification and caricature to work and doing that well is a talent all by itself.

You’re meant to put in some extra effort to suspend your disbelief in order to enjoy the deeper complexities of the story. Where that stops working though is when you step out of the genre and move into live action and our good buddy Dave doesn’t seem to realize that.

It may admittedly sound like I’m being unnecessarily harsh on him and I probably am but I do realize the guy is just doing what he does best. I doubt he has any real beef with neurodivergents or has no actual clue that militaries need a base level of competence in order to function and thrive.

Neither is he the only one guilty of implying the Empire’s competent staff can be counted on the fingers of one hand. “It’s just so different for them to have a bad guy that’s, you know, actually smart with how he uses the Imperial war machine!” Okay, Dave. Sure Dave. “[…] with the exception of Tarkin – Tarkin’s strategically intelligent” Oh so there’s two of them! (okay okay, I’ll stop here)

My point is, you can’t get away with making the antagonists so stupid in a realistic setting. I recently saw someone compare Kenobi and Andor in terms of portraying your antagonists correctly and I have to agree that Andor is the only star wars live action media in recent memory that gets it right. (Though even Andor is guilty of injecting some stupid into its plot in order to enable implausible events to happen. I’m looking at you, Maarva’s speech.)

Because the thing is, the more bumbling and idiotic you make your antagonists, the more it detracts from the efforts and skills of your protagonists when defeating them. The Empire is sprawling and all powerful, so much so that it takes several force users pulling deus ex machinas out of their ass to bring it down. In conjunction with the extreme dedicated efforts of the Rebellion mind you.

It took a timely coincidence of hubris, political corruption and flawed strategy working together to allow it to happen. Give me media that explores why the Empire endured for so long, the mechanisms in place that made ordinary people turn into cogs of the machine, the selective process behind constructing an absolutely ruthless, dangerous leadership, media that looks at how these same conditions can come about in our world rather than the unrealistic explanation of ‘people bad because bad’.

Zahn, Gilroy, Luceno and many others are examples of writers that do this justice. Pass the baton on to Filoni and you end up with an antagonist who’s smart as an exception because ‘he’s just so quirky’ while still bearing all the hallmarks of a cartoon villain, the ominous gloating speeches and sadistic behaviour and whatnot.

I’d be hella remiss to say it hasn’t left its mark on the fandom either. The amount of times I’ve seen characters like Tarkin, Krennic, Palpatine, etc. be moronified (while Thrawn inevitably gets his victim treatment) while completely ignoring the fact that defeating them was no small feat and their having weaknesses to exploit isn’t something that detracts from just how dangerous and scary these motherfuckers were.

The Clone Wars was a good show. Rebels was a good show. But by god is Filoni bad at transferring his skills to live action and no one can convince me that Thrawn isn’t the best example of that.

[just-prime]

Tales of Squandered Potential

Oh hello again everyone who follows me for my Star Wars ranting!

So! Tales of the Empire. The Hat Man is at it again.

Episodes 1-3 : The Path of Boredom

As expected, all of the Morgan stuff was not my thing. She was boring in Ahsoka, she was boring here. The entirety of the three episodes just hammered home "this lady is angry" in a way that felt overdone because there is no arc. There's no growth, no interest, no nothing. It all just feels like Filoni trying to retroactively make his one dimensional character that gets killed off in the stupidest way possible feel super badass. However because we know that she gets killed in the stupidest way possible, everything falls flat and none of it feels earned. It also doesn't actually answer any of the many many questions that Ahsoka raised about her. She's just there, standing in front of a fire. That's all she does.

Thrawn is there for all of about two seconds, and every moment of it is painful, because here's the thing. WE KNOW WHAT THRAWN WAS UP TO AT THIS TIME!!! We have the book that explains all of Thrawn's many exploits as an admiral. This is only more evidence for the idea that Filoni has never actually picked up any of the canon Thrawn books. Which we kinda already knew, but this is all but confirmation. As I've previously said, and will continue saying, Filoni needs to contextualize Thrawn as a 100% big bad otherwise his Heir to the Empire fanfilm won't actually feel earned, so he is systematically destroying any and all nuance that Thrawn has had to make sure that new viewers only ever see him as an unredeemable evil.

And I know that there are a lot of you out there who are holding out for the possibility that this is all a misdirect by Thrawn! That this is all part of his grand plan to go back and help the Ascendency, and that he's lying to everyone about his intentions. But the sad truth is that Filoni doesn't give a rats ass about anything other than cartoonishly evil Thrawn which means we're never getting Eli, or Karyn, or Hammerly or any of the characters from the six fantastic canon books that Timothy Zahn so lovingly created. That was made very clear with Filoni's prioritization of Admiral Pellaeon, who for those who don't know is actually in the new canon Thrawn books too! He wasn't just left behind in Legends, Zahn brought him back into canon too! But again, being the Legends fanboy that he is, Filoni doesn't care about where Pellaeon should be canonically, so instead he's just shoehorned into the episode for no other reason then Filoni likes him.

Episodes 4-6 : The Barriss Content

Soooooo, why didn't Barriss get a full fucking season to herself??? I get the idea behind the 15 minute episodes, but it really makes it hard to tell any sort of cohesive story. It works far better as a snapshot of a couple of days in someone's life. So unfortunately, while I did enjoy them, Barriss's episodes felt really rushed and I found it really hard to tell when things took place. How long was she at the Inquisitor training center? Was it a day? Was it a month? Really would have been interested in actually seeing the inner workings but it all has to get brushed over in favor of her becoming an Inquisitor. A seemingly intentionally not named Inquisitor which makes me feel like they've run out of early Inquisitor names. Unless there's a trial period before you get a proper number? I don't know it was just one of those things that niggled at me. Another thing that niggled at me (which was also mentioned by the wonderful artist @stealingpotatoes, go give her art some love) is that her design is kinda boring as fuck? Like, you have Birdy-Mc-Skullface right there with such a neat design and yet all Barriss gets is a motorcycle helmet with very slight voice modulation.

But I digress. The fact that Barriss commits herself to the Inquisitorium via a ritualized fight to the death, and then goes "wait, the red light saber wielding, all black wearing, Darth Vader serving inquisitors aren't here to help people?" before immediately bailing is so funny to me. This girl cannot for the life of her commit herself to an organization without becoming disillusioned within 1-3 business days.

I'm not sure how I feel about it all being about Lyn? I was very much rooting for her to totally die in the ice shafts instead of what felt like a very last minute redemption arc?

Though speaking of the last episode...HOLY SHIT OLD BARRISS IS FUCKING HOT. *coughs* Excuse me. Anyway. I would have loved to see more of what happened in between eps 5 and 6. Seeing how she and the jedi kid escaped the planet, and where the two of them did after than in the very hostile Empire would have been a facinating story watch play out. Also, who is this female friend that Barriss is referring to when she sends the child away? Is it Ahsoka??? If it is...WHY WOULD YOU NOT SHOW US THAT REUNION??? Like I get the whole point of this is to set up Barriss to make the jump to live action like every single other Filoni character is curseddestined to do, but also you've had people waiting years to find out what happened to Barriss and it feels like they burned their biggest story possibility on a throwaway reference. Did she find Ahsoka? Did Ahsoka find her? When did they find each other? Was it pre-Rebellion? Was it after Ahsoka was already functioning as Fulcrum? Given that we now know the Fulcrum name originated from Anakin, did Barriss recognize the name and seek this mystery person out? I don't know it just feels again like more wasted potential.

Final Thoughts

Fuck this animation is good now! Can we get a new writer?

Like, even for the shit I was annoyed by, the entire show just looks fabulous. It makes me really really wish that ANYONE other than Filoni could make content in this style. Let the writers of Jedi: Fallen Order and Survivor do a Merrin episode or a baby Cal episode. Or the people doing The Acolyte, let them do Tales of the High Republic! Let anyone other than Filoni have a chance to create within the world of Star Wars animated content.

[short-wooloo]

Oh my fucking God

Chirrut does not prove that a non force sensitive can be trained as a Jedi

1. He's not a Jedi, he's a guardian of the whills

2. He still cannot use the Force, he doesn't use it in the movie, Chirrut trusts in the Force believes that it will guide him, but he cannot consciously feel or use it

The whole point of Chirrut's character is about faith

He is the believer to Baze's jaded doubter

Chirrut puts his faith in the Force, that it will lead him to his destiny and the forces of good to victory, and in turn his faith inspires Baze to regain his

And we never know with certainty that Chirrut was guided by the Force

But that's the point of faith, we don't know, we can't know, it's a matter of belief

Maybe the Force did help him, maybe he did it all by himself, or maybe because the Force exists in everything, Chirrut's action was the Force intervening

[garden-bug]

Not to be a hater BUUUT-

Every time I hear anything abt the Ahsoka series doing ‘well’ I am baffled.

At most it was a little entertaining and some of the designs looked good. The plot and character work and just everything else was abysmal.

Oh yeah and it reminded us that The Clone Wars and Rebels was a show. That was new and really enriched the world of Star Wars.

[antianakin]

What irks me about Filoni is that despite - as far as I'm aware - him working directly with Lucas during the production of TCW seasons 1-6, he somehow completely failed to grasp the intended interpretation of the Jedi (benevolent, honorable peacekeeper space wizards who just wanted to protect the people of the Republic/Galaxy, and whose only real flaw was being willing to drop some of the benevolence, honor and peacekeeping when necessary) as well as the intended message of "attachment is selfish possessiveness in this universe, and thus is a Bad Thing, especially when you don't think things through in regards to protecting the subjects of your attachments". Say what you will about Headland, but at least she has the excuse of not getting such an opportunity to consult the franchise's creator.

I don't remember which blogger said this now, but someone's answer to a similar question about Filoni pointed out that Filoni absolutely GETS what attachment is, generally, and he even understands what the Jedi were intended to represent, he just personally seems to interpret the Jedi in the Prequels as failing to live up to what the Jedi SHOULD be. Back in TCW, most of the time at least, it's usually represented as not the Jedi's FAULT that they aren't living up to what they should be but the fault of the circumstances they've been forced into. But as Filoni's moved forward on his own, this has sort-of evolved further and further away from that more sympathetic and tragic view of the Jedi and into something a lot more vitriolic and unsympathetic in the extreme.

So, yeah, I think he GETS IT, he just doesn't LIKE IT much and now that Lucas isn't around to point things in a particular direction, we're seeing more of Filoni's personal feelings change the way the characters get represented in his stories, and less of Lucas's original themes.

[varpusvaras]

This isn't just the story of one bad show. Really, it's the story of the life and times of it's lead writer, David Christopher Filoni.

Filoni got spat out of a hole in the ground in Mt. Lebanon in 1974 with the straightforward mission of systematically destroying all of Star Wars' lore and the rest of the canon and characters, and no one's stopped him yet-

[kanansdume]

In all of the discussions about Ahsoka being called a "former Jedi Knight" in the opening crawl, I am remembering that Felony recently did that interview where he claimed that Luke Skywalker was not TECHNICALLY a Knight because no one ever officially knighted him, and uh.

Hm. The hypocrisy is just... so pungent.

[heirtotheempire]

Prefacing this with mentioning that I'm autistic and Star Wars as a whole is my special interest/fixation/whatever the term is. So it really, really, REALLY gets to me when the lore and context and history of this franchise gets stepped on.

If Filoni wants to write his fanfiction and do whatever he wants then that's fine go make something on AO3 or whatever. The issue is that this is official. And like, maybe I'm insane for thinking this, but official material should probably stick with the official lore. Lore that states midichlorian count is what determines force sensitivity. Not training. Lore that has had examples of lightsaber wielding characters that did not have to be called Jedi or have to train as Jedi. General Grievous is the best example of this. He was never Sith, he was never force sensitive, but he was really good at using lightsabers.

If Sabine wants to train using a lightsaber, then I don't see the problem. But I DO see an issue in trying to shoehorn in the idea that she has to be trained as a Jedi for it, or has to be force sensitive for any of this.

Hating the official lore (from the OT, Prequels, Sequels, etc) is fine, you do you. I understand critiquing canon and wishing it was different. But as fans, we aren't influencing canon by having these views or writing fanfic and drawing fanart about it. The stuff that is set in stone doesn't change when we have headcanons that go against lore. But Filoni seems to.... Want to alter how canon is based on his headcanons. Which results in a clumsily written show that steps on itself trying to tell a story.

Regardless of if you like Filoni's interpretation of things or not, he kinda needs a check on his power and influence. He isn't the king of Star Wars, he isn't some God that can only create good content. If anything, Mando S3 kinda proved that he can make something absolutely awful out of what was great. And I really hope that he recognizes that maybe he should re-consult the lore specialists a bit more for the official work he does before charging ahead and assuming everyone thinks hes hot shit.

[itsonlymyecho]