#fuck off filoni

[coruscanti-arabi]

Apparently "That Business On Cato Neomoidia" was that Kenobi had inhaled some sort of drug and was fighting while high out of his mind and Anakin was called in by Commander Cody to circle back and provide aid.

Why has no one told me this until now?

[just-an-aussie-fandom-hermit]

Huyang describing Anakin as “intense” sent me through the roof. What a succinct, accurate way to describe the absolute maelstrom that is Anakin Skywalker.

[stairset]

The Ahsoka show might be great. It might suck. It might just be mid. Either way I’m glad Rebels is gonna be essential viewing (I mean more than it already is) and the normies will no longer have any excuse to blatantly ignore it just cause they assume it’s Too Kiddy because of the art style. I had to deal with people saying Solo was the first time the Imperial March was established as the Empire’s in-universe national anthem. I had to deal with people saying Fallen Order was the first time a Jedi knighting ceremony was shown in canon. I had to deal with people watching Clone Wars season 7 and thinking Ursa was the Armorer cause they didn’t take five seconds to read the end credits. I had to deal with people who didn’t watch Clone Wars OR Rebels talking about Mandalore stuff and thinking they know more than me cause they skimmed a Wookieepedia article. I had to deal with people saying the Obi-Wan show should’ve been about Maul hunting down Obi-Wan as if it wasn’t a story that had already been told 5 years prior. No more. At long last I shall be free.

[cambion-companion]

The Jedi...the Witch...the Warlord...

Ugh.

Jesus.

I assume the Warlord is supposed to be Thrawn, yes?

[jewishcissiekj]

hissing and doing this with my teeth at TCW Anakin

[knife-em0ji]

I’m taking this weekend off to catch up on all the estar guars shows I missed and like. Hey. Was anyone going to tell me that andor is the best Star wars show ever made

[zaptrapp]

Sorry to spill the tea for you but without Tech the whole squad would last for about 2 to 3 business days and then it’s over and they all perish. 

They better get this right at Disney.

[imfromthemiddlekingdom]

I am going to refuse to engage in any content felony makes. I am not going to engage in media that makes me angry. I am not going to punch him in his stupid fugly face if I ever meet him irl because that will be assult and I do not want to go to jail. He deserves it but I will not jeopardize my own freedom to take him down a peg. Fucker needs to wake up and read the source material. The universe is not your sandbox to play with Dave. Write fanfics like the rest of us if you want an ultra op girlboss that will willingly ignore the atrocities her master committed because she is too busy blaming the council for her own actions during the wrong jedi arc.

[engagemythrusters]

YEAH LETS JUST KILL OFF ALL THE DISABLED CHARACTERS WHY DONT WE

[rebelsabers]

“I 100% sympathize with that choice and would absolutely do the same thing [commit genocide and massacre an entire town, including infants]”-@askshivanulegacy

“You can want to wipe out the village of torturers and murderers and that's fine”@askshivanulegacy

You would what?

This reminds me of this counter argument that’s going around right now in the Palestine vs Israel discussion where people are like “So if your parents were being held hostage by 1 bad guy, you’d be okay with just bombing the place instead of even trying to extract them safely? If the person who killed your parents was holed up in a house with a bunch of children they were using as human shields, you’d be OK with bombing the house in order to take out the one killer?”

Maybe not entirely accurate but what’s going on in Palestine is genocide and it’s insane how people who are trying to justify that genocide are always met with counter arguments like the above which highlight just how stupid and flawed trying to justify the genocide is (even if you ignore how it’s just flat out evil).

I know someone might easily think: “Why are you bringing Palestine vs Israel into this?” but Star Wars is based off of real life events. Sci-fi and fiction are almost always heightened reflections and critiques of real world issues and this discussion we’re having is about genocide which the world is witnessing happen before our very eyes right now in Palestine so it seemed relevant. I think it’s worth mentioning because people get on the internet and write excuses for genocide, sympathy for those who commit it, and boldly proclaim that they would have done the same. Those are things that are not actually existing within a fandom bubble; it’s being seen by people on the Internet who are also watching non-fictional versions of this happening on the news to real people in the world. It’s being seen by people who are survivors of genocide. If you or anybody else is saying things like this and then turning around looking at the news on the TV or your phone to see what’s happening in Palestine, it’s frightening to think about what goes through your head when you see real life instances of this. Yes, fiction is fiction and fandom shouldn’t be activism, but for fuck sake! Watching these atrocities happen in the world, proceeding to then get online and play devils advocate for people carrying out these very evil acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, bigotry, etc. that take place in Star Wars or other fandoms, and acting like it’s not that big of a deal because you’re talking about made up characters in a made up universe is not only concerning, but harmful. If you’re someone pretending like it’s different or that it’s not dangerous; you’re either someone being willfully ignorant in an attempt to excuse what you write and publish on the internet for the world to see, or you’re actually that fucking stupid and out of touch with the world which means you probably don’t realize how lucky you are to be able think that at all.

I feel like the statement above is just one more example of how Star Wars fans always have excuses and justifications for the actions of the Sith, the Empire, and Anakin Skywalker. They’re always undoubtably paired with pro-genocide/pro ethnic cleansing comments that i frequently non-stop see used in an attempt to try and deflect responsibility for the genocide that takes place onto the victims rather than those responsible. This behavior in the Star Wars fanbase is more harmful than ever before with the current state of the world.

I don’t understand how people can continue to say things like that and not understand that the full weight of what they’re actually saying. How do you not understand that it actually isn’t being said into the vacuum of a fandom space? How do you not see that discussions about these things have always been viewed by people who are either descendants of genocide survivors, are watching this very thing happen in the news, or are victims of current genocide? That people come here, maybe for a distraction or to entertain themselves, read someone’s excuses for genocidal ethnic cleansing and fascism, then take their impressionable/stupid/bigoted minds back to the real world and form opinions about what’s happening on the news based off of what they just read either consciously or subconsciously. There are people who come here to enjoy Star Wars content and witness people relentlessly making statements of support and/or excuses for fascism, genocide, and ethnic cleansing while even claiming that they would also inflict those evil crimes against humanity. They see that and then get to think about what they just read as someone who might be related to a genocide or holocaust victim. Or maybe they are experiencing it right now. Maybe they’re just someone keeping up with the news and seeing the daily updates that report how the people being massacred through a systematic genocide (like the one that’s being discussed in this post) are suffering. People are watching the news and thinking about how there really are people who are so boldly endorsing horrific genocide like the kind that’s happening to the victims of Palestine.

This isn’t just a fandom discussion. It’s a pretty damn upsetting display of people’s ability to take a stance on the side of fascism and the perceived right to commit genocide.

It's probably been around a while and I just haven't encountered it before now, but the "yes everyone would have murdered a village down to the last child in that situation" take is a new one for me! Like would I have been justifiably upset in that situation? Yes. But what would I have done in that moment myself? Probably run. Granted I am not a person with a ton of unfathomable powers and a weapon I have spent a decade training to use that can cut through literally everything, but still. The argument that "well yeah EVERYONE would've done exactly what Anakin did" kinda falls apart when you think about it for two seconds because wow is that not what I would do when faced with being alone in the middle of an entire community of people who just captured and tortured my innocent mother for several weeks.

But it's also VERY hard to argue that this is even how everyone would react to this situation in Star Wars.

They literally have an entire arc where they explicitly have Obi-Wan's old nemesis who killed Obi-Wan's Master come to attack the home planet of someone he loves, captures her, and then murders her right in front of Obi-Wan with Obi-Wan helpless to save her. He then goads Obi-Wan into reacting in anger and Obi-Wan's reaction is to refuse to engage. He very explicitly refuses to even attack Maul because he knows he'd be reacting in anger and he's literally seen exactly where that leads before and overcome it. So when Obi-Wan IS put in an extremely similar situation, he chooses not to just go out and attack everybody as a result. He doesn't give in to his anger and fly to Dathomir to go kill every single Nightbrother on the planet as a form of justice for Satine, which is what this person is arguing is how literally anybody would react when placed in that situation.

Reva Sevander has every reason to despise Anakin, more reason than Anakin had to despise the Tuskens. And yet when she goes after Luke to try to kill him after she fails to kill Anakin, that becomes a line she can't cross. More accurately, it's a line Reva CHOOSES not to cross. So when put in that situation with all the same anger and grief as Anakin had with the opportunity to get her vengeance by killing an innocent child, Reva makes the active choice not to do what Anakin did. So while the impulse obviously was still there with Reva, she was fully capable of choosing not to go through with it. And Reva's been soaking in Darkness since she was about 8-10 years old, getting tortured and broken as an Inquisitor, surrounded by the corpses of her people, with zero support of any kind that she can turn to for comfort or guidance. Anakin had spent the last 10 years in a warm loving environment with people who cared for him and still had most of those people available to him to support him in this time of grief. And yet when faced with the same choice, Reva chose to pull back and let Luke live, but Anakin just kept going and massacred an entire village. It's a CHOICE, not an uncontrollable urge.

You know the only other person I can think up off the top of my head who DOES canonically have a similar reaction to Anakin's?

Aleksander Kallus.

Kallus explicitly states that he leads a genocide against the Lasat as vengeance for ONE Lasat killing a unit of Imperial soldiers in self defense. An entire species is nearly wiped out of existence because Kallus decided to let his anger control him.

But there are NUMEROUS other characters in Star Wars who we see lose people they love and proceed to not go on a murder spree against innocent people and children as a result. And the ones that do are pretty explicitly villains whose actions when in those situations are used to showcase just how villainous they are. Which indicates that it's NOT a normal reaction because otherwise it wouldn't really mean anything as a villain identifier. If it's something just about anyone would've done, it's probably not that villainous. The point of it NEEDS to be that most people WOULDN'T do that, even in justified anger.

[tired0artist]

I said it before, and I'll say it again. I'd watch the FUCK out of an clone wars animated show featuring Leia, Luke, Han and Chewie post Return of the Jedi. Make it an adventure of the week or some shit, I'll watch it.

Give me Luke searching for Jedi artefacts. Trying to set up his own school.

Give me Leia working on Chandrilla trying to get the New Republic going with Mon Mothma.

Give me Han trying to fit in with Leia's lifestyle and also going off on his own adventures. Or even accompaning Luke on his.

Give me Leia and Luke bonding as siblings. And her struggling with who Vader was to her, all while searching for more info on her birth mother. Allow her to grive her planet and family properly.

I don't know, just give them to me. Clone Wars was such a great inside to what was going on with Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padme. Let's just do it again, without using AI faces and bending backwards to write off Leia not apearing in a show or some shit.

JUST MAKE THEM AN ANIMATED SHOW LIKE THEY DESERVE FILONI!

[waywardsou2]

Ok listen up, this had been rolling around in my head for ages now and my dumbass is finally making a post about it!

When Hunter missed that jump to the Marauder on Daro he fell off a fucking cliff like...if y'all go back and watch that episode he fucking sliped, fell onto his back, down a mountain, a really long fall onto some trees down another cliff and onto the ground.

YET HE GOT UP RIGHT THE FUCKING WAY AND WAS READY TO FIGHT

YET WHEN TECH FELL FROM THAT RAIL CAR ON EIRADU HE JUST DIED AND LEFT NO TRACE?!?!?

DAVE FILONI WHAT KIND OF BULLSHIT OF THIS?!?!?!?!?! HMMM? EXPLAIN THIS SHIT TO ME?! COME FIGHT ME AND EXPLAIN THIS TO ME, RIGHT NOW!

[andychaosblog]

I've said this before on my old account,but I must reiterate this:

Mandalorians are fucking boring.

From Bo Katan, to Din Jarin, their all the same, "Warriors code means everything to me", and "Mandalore is my sole identity".

That's boring. Really, REALLY boring. But there's one who broke that stigma, and grew to be someone all her own:

Sabine Wren.

Sabine, even from the moment we first meet her, is fun, wild, reckless, and just, everything the Mando's aren't. Hell, I think she was the first we ever saw to break the "No taking off Helmet" rule.

(Which is rare, considering Dave Filoni was behind her creation, and I cannot STAND Dave Filoni...)

Cause everytime I see fandom brats nearly cum themselves everytime Din, or Boba Fett appear, I'm reminded these are the same people who shunned a traumatized black woman just because she survived Order 66....

I think you can understand my problems with the Star Wars Fandom a lot clearly now, huh?

[david-talks-sw]

When 'Star Wars' dilutes the impact of a "Kurosawa samurai standoff"...

It's no secret that one of the major inspirations for Star Wars was Akira Kurosawa movies. The Hidden Fortress influenced the basic structure of the first film, was a basis for Lucas' character archetypes and his use of narrative POVs.

But, really, all of Kurosawa's films were an influence on the making of Star Wars. Including the duels seen in his and other samurai films from the 60s.

Dunno if you've seen a kendo fight, but they're pretty similar.

The duelists size each other up, and there's a lot of mind games going on before the strike actually happens.

If you hold your sword this way, the other guy adjusts his stance.

You move your foot that way, the adversary responds accordingly.

Cinematically, this process allows you to play with a whole treasure trove of elements to build up the drama and suspense. We see this slow-yet-tense approach to dueling reflected all over the Original Trilogy. And we've seen it again in recent Disney-released content.

The perfect and first real example of this in Star Wars is the fight between Ben Kenobi and Maul, in Rebels.

The tension increases more...

... and more until the two fighters move, the music swells...

... and then it reaches its climax.

Beautifully executed.

Dave Filoni's done his homework, it shows, and while it's an awesome homage, narratively it also holds weight. There's a reason why this fight is so quick:

This time, Obi-Wan isn't fighting to avenge the death of his master, he's not fighting to save his own life... he's fighting to protect Luke's. And that means there's no time to fuck about. He'll end the conflict swiftly and decisively, he won't let it come to a prolonged acrobatic fight. So he lures Maul in by making him think he's taking Qui-Gon's form, and strikes true when Maul, increasingly consumed by his own rage to the point of blindness, falls for it.

Again: a wonderful fight and an excellent homage.

Then we get to Luke's stand-off with Kylo on Crait, in The Last Jedi.

An interesting take on the trope, also with meaningful narrative impact. As Rian Johnson writes in the TLJ screenplay:

"This is not like a saber fight. This like an old-fashioned samurai duel."

Here too, the tension gets built up...

... and every time we're close to getting that climax, Luke dodges.

It leaves a feeling of dissatisfaction, which is exactly what Kylo is feeling as he boils with rage.

Suddenly, we do get the climax...

... and a twist. Luke was never actually there. Boom. Those inserts during the build-up phase? If you look at them again they're clues (Luke doesn't leave a mark on the ground, salt doesn't land on his clothes, etc). Luke wasn't engaging because he wasn't actually there, he was buying time for the Resistance to escape.

Okay. Cool.

Next time we see a "Kurosawa" duel... it's here, in The Mandalorian.

Again, a lot of posing, slow movements and patience, as is expected from the trope.

But we know nothing about the opponent Ahsoka is fighting other than her name is Morgan... so no emotional impact, there.

At some point, Ahsoka loses a lightsaber. The apprentice to the Chosen One is struggling against some rando.

We find out later on that Morgan is a Nightsister from Dathomir, and that's cool... but we already know how Jedi-trained folks fare against the Dathomiri.

If you ask me, it feels like manufactured stakes. But that's beside the point. In fact, y'know what? It's fine.

Though the impact of this duel isn't as great as its predecessors, the whole episode is filled with visual homages to Kurosawa's work.

It makes sense that the duel would be too. Also it's the first time we're seeing Ahsoka in live action, in a lightsaber duel, the hype is real. Let's cut 'em some slack.

So we come to the series Ahsoka... where almost every duel in the the show has the Kurosawa posturing and tip-toeing and... I dunno. I was bored?

Like, the primary purpose of this approach to duels is that it's meant to be suspenseful and intense... and now it's not.

Because we know Ahsoka is gonna beat the crap outta these droids...

... so why even bother faking some semblance of "what's her next move gonna be?" suspense? There's a hole right behind her, gee, I truly wonder.

Oh, you think putting her against an Inquisitor's gonna make us fear for her life, wonder if she's gonna get outta this situation unscathed?

She was wiping the floor with two of them at the same time, a decade prior. At 17, she was killing Inquisitors while disarmed.

Do you really expect your audience to fear for her life in a fight against Marrok?

So we get to the fight with Baylan, and the posturing and studying opponent's next move would be welcome here (two Order 66 survivors, knew Anakin, both well-trained former Jedi)...

... if we hadn't literally seen that same dynamic with Marrok who, again, we knew was gonna die.

No tension was built in either moment, the only thing it achieved was me pressing >> on my keyboard.

It's not captivating anymore, it's just slow and un-dynamic.

Bottom line:

Tributes to Kurosawa are nice. They're part of what makes Star Wars what it is. But c'mon, we get it already.

Lightsaber duelists don't need to tiptoe around each other and change poses at every fight. Because when the actually meaningful duels come up (like the one with Baylan), the impact will be lessened.

The "Kurosawa samurai duel" is artistic and interesting, but it should be used sparingly in order to maintain its charm and not get old and trope-y. AKA too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing.

[samaspic31]

Exactly. has star wars always tried to be radically progressive ? sure, yeah, the ot compared the alliance to vietnamese anti american imperialism resistance, the prequels depicted victims of religious persecution and genocide as sympathetic at the height of demonisation of islam and violence in the middle east. Has it always suceed? does it give characters played by actors of all ethnicities the same care ? does it avoid falling into racist tropes? fuck no. And it’s undebatable it historically has centered white characters. So yeah the dudebros are wrong to say star wars’ thesis is either politically neutral or milquetoast liberal “both sides have flaws”, but that doesn’t make star wars good at being radical and exempt of examination of how itself perpetuated racism in many instances. both can coexist.

"in star wars, the villains are old white men for a reason" and the heroes are almost always young white people. So.