#george explores his flaws and forces him to start addressing them

[ilynpilled]

what do u think is jaime’s biggest flaw

oh he has a bunch

Biggest one: his fear of truly confronting things. his cowardice (the brave knight is deconstructed)

Arrogance is a given. His obsession with perception and his ego. His destructive dissociative tendencies and forced detachment. His self delusion and cynicism he uses to enable acts that his conscience knows are wrong. He also often falls into the trap of cynicism when he expects quick results and does not get them. When he makes choices to become better and people keep dehumanizing him and expect the worst from him he gets super frustrated and petty (less so atp, just compare his behavior to Brienne’s reaction when he gives her Oathkeeper and she misreads his intensions vs the gate not being opened for him in ADwD) His misogynistic and classist blindspots. Him weighing his values wrong even when his conscience is screaming at him (multiple examples of this, e.g Jeyne Poole: “her eyes were sad and wary”, “then why do you sound so frightened?”: vows from so many vows speech in conflict: obey your father vs protect the innocent. He obviously chooses wrong. George was telling us the way he changed by the end of ASoS is not enough he is not where he needs to be yet) His desperate want to make his “so many vows” compromise instead of making the correct choice and drawing the hard line he already did at 17. His desire to become Goldenhand the Just (just a mess frankly, gold tends to have negative symbolism in his story, his goldenhand also is associated with violence and is his desperate attempt to recreate his old self, his phantom fingers — again, has to be addressed in a dream.) While we are here also his need for his subconscious to literally repeatedly slap sense into him (his dreams addressing things he refuses to consciously address because it would hurt to do so). His tendency to repeat his father’s dogma when he is viscerally aware that that man is the worst man oat (Lannister sibling parallels! uwu!), unwittingly contradicting it in every way, then trying again. His desire to pursue glory as well as honor (and whatever they mean in the subtext) when the symbolism is very clearly established that the two cannot be achieved simultaneously for him, he cannot ride two horses at once. It might be that both get turn down at the end in some form. The honor related to the KG, and the glory related to duty to house Lannister. I think that conflict is getting picked apart right now with the choice he makes in ADwD to abandon his position/hunting down the brotherhood any kind of glory tying to house lannister pursuit etc to follow an injured and suspicious Brienne alone (mind you he was also riding Honor in that chapter, ntm the half moon). I think both honor and glory are very abstract and are rooted in some form in his desire for love as well (honor and glory paid their parts but in the end it was for cersei is something he reflects on) but “the things we do for love” has to be something not destructive and prejudiced. He is disillusioned by both honor and glory, especially after aerys. “What is honor?” A horse. Like deep down he knows. His arc in AFfC-ADwD was about about taking apart and looking at all of these flaws imo, put him in a spot to make his choice in adwd. and all that matters are choices. He is also an asshole.

[redantsunderneath]

I’ve Never Seen David Lynch and George Lucas in the Same Room at the Same Time…

The thematic parallels between David Lynch and George Lucas are something I keep coming back to again and again, but their careers and evolution have a lot of overlap too.  They were born in the earliest Boomer cohort (George Lucas in May 1944, David Lynch January 1946) and had experiences growing up that were colored by the idyllic 1950s, but shifted into a distrust of authority structures that was common for many of their age cohort in the 1960s. They both came of age wanting to do something physical with her hands that felt creative to them in large grimy spaces - fixing cars for Lucas, and painting and installations with a fascination with organic materials, industrial metal, and rot for Lynch. They both fell into film because they were looking for something that satisfied their artistic bent (although film was never a primary aspect of her life to that point).  They wound up making a handful of short films over a 3 year period, culminating in a longer short-film that would eventually get them noticed at roughly the same age (Electric Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB [1967] and the Grandmother [1970] for Lynch).

These films netted both of them a patron (Francis Ford Coppola for Lucas, the American Film Institute for Lynch) and started filming their first feature-length film two years after those films.  They both got their biggest name recognition bump by films released in 1977 and pulled away from the power of the studio system in roughly 1984. Famously, Lucas offered Lynch a chance to direct what would become Return of the Jedi in about 1981 ( I prefer the story where Lucas does this by picking him up in a Lamborghini - I’ve heard a phone call version too, but it’s not as perfect) and Lynch answered something like “it’s your movie George, you direct it.” They both spent the mid 80s in movie jail, and although they took very different paths in general after (I’ve been emphasizing the similarities) there are still things that jibe in the history - they both reminded people of what they liked about them with a late 80s movie, spent a lot of the 90s on TV projects, did one project around classic radio, returned to theatrical notice around the millennium, all the while generally keeping their own council and disappointing a lot of fans.

There’s obviously a world of difference. Lucas is a left brained technologist who equated freedom with an owning of the means of production.  Lynch is it right brained impressionist seeing freedom-as no one ever being able to tell you what to do, acting as a solo artist with collaborators who merge with his sensibilities.  Lynch is a production lone wolf, depending mostly on people believing in him and funding him, and losing out in the popular consciousness by making uncompromising art that may not be what the audience wants, meaning funding is sometimes hard to come by. Lucas is like the Democratic party controlling the Congress and presidency - having total power but unable to turn that into what he really wants to make, somehow. The idea of Lynch selling his body of work to Disney is absurd.

But the correspondences in this are telling and help to explain the thematic similarities and divergences.  Plus, the differences often relate to the similarities - Lucas identifies with corrupted controlling paternalistic power as a horror of inevitable capture of the individual by larger structures, while Lynch sees the corrupted masculine influence as an archetype, the call coming from inside the house, agency coopted by a collective taint in the universal pattern .  But on some level these are the same thing - what is this person I am capable of becoming seeing as I am in control but yet not, doing horrific things?  Lucas’ constant commentary on slavery is about hegemony and a systemic oppression he is complicit in, while Lynch has whole pantheons of beings that turn people into vessels that oblate the self and make them act on subconscious programming.  Neither probably think the word neoliberalism too much but tend to communicate similar things about it is almost diametrically opposed ways.  

The thematic similarities are rooted in a few areas that unpack in to a variety of subspaces which overlap – patriarchal structures as psychoanalytic dynamics (more Freudian father fixation for Lucas, Jung for Lynch), boomer generational failure as socio-first-but-economics-ultimately, the artist as in struggle with larger forces (largely of the self), and an eastern religious metaphysics that is American Christian in flavor.   The major line of difference running through this is gender/sex/desire, Lynch being on main with a lot of spiritual overtones of sin, guilt, and “the fall” and Lucas finding this kind of guilt and sin as a secondary phenomenon that is mostly actively suppressed and unconvincing when it shows up; yet both wind up often finding physical consummation at direct odds with art in a gendered creation way (that also links Eraserhead to Age of Ultron and the original Frankenstein). Try doing a psychosexual reading of Howard the Duck sometime.  

Lucas’ developmental through line is this: dude in love with 50’s culture but informed by 60s counterculture makes a movie where the young granola-ish revolutionaries win against the fascists in an effort to rewrite society but, having secured rights for “independent spirit” reasons now finds himself in control of something huge and immediately starts making art about boomer men becoming their controlling fathers and then moves on to movies where powerless freaks are the real focus.  After a creatively fallow period, he comes back to make a sequel/prequel trilogy that is one of the most misunderstood complicated statements about people becoming what they hate as an eternal cycle at the level of the personal, the societal, the political, the spiritual, the artistic, you name it!

Lynch’s developmental through line is this: dude in love with 50’s culture but informed by 60s outsider/art counterculture makes a movie where the young artist struggles with the idea of a regular life, initiated by fatherhood, which attempts to destroy the artistic spark, after which he enters the Hollywood system and makes an artist as freak movie and a movie about plucky rebels conquering space authoritarianism (that the future of is books about that ending in messianic authoritarianism) and then disavows that system.  He then proceeds to make art about subject and object as a supremely gendered thing, in a land that has fallen from grace, moving inexorably towards the idea of eternal cycle at the level of the personal, the societal, the political, the spiritual, you name it!

They both have an idea of the father-artist identified with the abject oppressed, under siege as figure, resentful from being kept from creation, over a career realizing that their “self” is the horrific villain of their own story.  For Lynch, this is psychosexual, then spiritual, with a resisted toxic masculine urge to control and overwhelm, often in a violent way.  It is the artist’s own urges that get in the way of making art, of desiring in the universe that has an unbalanced power structure from some far off echoes of an original symmetry breaking inherent to the archetypal gender dynamic. For Lucas, it is the realization that the artist in control has a tendency to become the controlling dad and sexual relations are inherently problematic in a political and spiritual way.  Real art seems impossible if the artist has control, identifying with the downtrodden is a bit of a lie, happy endings can’t happen not because of the happiness bit because of the ending bit.  For both, there is a fundamental flaw in the cycle, which is patriarchal in nature, but Lynch just approaches this much hornier.

The boomer part probably requires the most discussion, but the TLDR is that they are both are crawling out, through Vietnam, from the 50s social order, and grappling with how badly the 60s idealism failed.  Lucas does this in the prequels as a big canvas critique of how the social revolution was co-opted by the generation not being able to see its own flaws, of not seeing the system taking over again, an Empire calling itself a Republic.  An inability to look in the mirror and really see.  The wisest oldest hippie is the only one who sees what’s happening, but is powerless as his apprentices are inevitably spit out, and the next generation has to be raised not by a skeptic but a true believer in “liberal” “democracy” (cynic quotes theirs).

Lynch is interesting here in that he most directly addresses this only in Twin Peaks, but we see more naked reflections, divorced of contemporary politics, in his other works. In Twin Peaks, Ben Horn is the Palpatine figure, who winds up a sweet old man buying off the harm his life’s work and progeny have produced while ignoring the poor and next generation personally. Jacoby the neutered, fried Yoda that eventually slides into Alex Jones territory (the canonical Boomer ethos in a nutshell – “what me” neoliberalism and change the world ideology going crackpot).  All of Twin Peaks except for Fire Walk with Me is directly socioeconomically generational (Bobby Briggs becomes a young Republican in season 2, the mill, the trailer park), but the other works are full of class issues informed by Lynch’s age.  From Blue Velvet’s suburban kid exploring his darker side by going to the poor part of town through a career of classist low-life encoding (Bob is a denim jacket wearing homeless person, all the covered in grime by the dumpster/trailer park characters, Ronette as the factory floor version of Laura, etc), culminating in Inland Empire and Twin Peaks the Return chronicling the fall of man as partially an (generationally specific in TP) economic fall into a unequal class defined world of needing an opening and leaving the house to labor as where evil is born. TP OS is about how boomers turned out just as bad, the Return is about how we inhabit the world of their ideological blindness.

All filmmakers seem to, at least to a certain degree, bring the question of creation of art directly into their work via distant or close metaphor. In Eraserhead and Elephant Man, Lynch values the spark of art which the downtrodden protagonist is trying not to lose. In Dune, the visionary with a big project that seeks to upend the system (but that we know eventually become something even worse) is a project that fell apart due to studio interference.  Blue velvet is about the act of watching awakening something uncomfortable in us that is incompatible with normie life (it wouldn’t be weird to say it was about porn). Twin Peaks is about television, FWWM about movies, and all at least partially about closure being a death act in art.  Lost Highway is about the artist tortured by desire, Mulholland Drive about desire being central to be eaten alive by the Hollywood system.  Inland Empire is about filmmaking as a way into understanding the world on a deeper level (as is its unofficial sequel Inception) to cure its ills.  All of this is art’s struggle against power, with an element of the major powers being subconscious forces that control us leading to desires that ablate the artistic impulse.

Lucas' projects have over time been about a young upstart independent filmmaker, losing his soul by becoming successful, and becoming the system, man.  He then tries desperately to identify as really not the one in charge, until he admits to what he has become.  He consistently dips back into filmmaking as an adventure or a good fight, but he has to set these in a time period before his birth.  As in Lynch, having a child is equated with not being able to fulfill the kind of artistic destiny, but Lucas goes further in equating it to an excuse for why the powerful artist goes bad and needs redemption.  He had a naïve or-is-it canny motif focused on the short inhuman outsider, often related to music or primitive settings (often with wooden cages) as a recurring thing for a while.  These characters are often wise, or at least no filter tell-it, and are similar to the Elephant Man.  This is a trope, sure, the wise different wavelength other, but there is also an identification of the artist at knowing and right yet impotent and a clue to the author’s metaphysical system.

Lynch is the mainline protestant in upbringing and very much influenced by a kind of proto-eastern religion (you can just say the Vedas for shorthand).  Lucas is not very religious, but was brought up Christian, influenced by Christian symbolism and became interested in world religion as narrative via figures like Joseph Campbell.  Hence, they both gravitate towards some kind of Gnostic Proto Christian, So-Cal zen, Thomas Aquinas “gets” Plato kind of amalgam, which informs their work.  Lynch has veered towards an eternal cycle framework, and the very physics compatible idea of something in the past breaking and causing consciousness/suffering, through which we can achieve joy as a counter only through letting go of the self, and the recurrence of ruptures on all scales demonstrating a fractal pattern of hurt and redemption.  Lucas also sees a big cycle, but it is one more of human existence as narrative that has a tendency to return, with a little bit of Nietzsche and movie eastern spirituality thrown in. Both believe in a recurring pattern that plays itself out in a way that is terrible, but hopeful, as the struggle is where hope derives from.  Both have inherently Christian ideas and symbols in their work but lean back on non-Christian ideas that the Christian ideas have a history with. Lynch has his virgin Mary as the real Christ figure female angels that show up, while Lucas has turnt space Jesus.

Suffice it to say that the tree trial scene in the Empire Strikes Back and the lodge sequences in Twin Peaks are a very good place to start looking for how the two auteurs meet.  Compare Anakin/Luke Skywalker to Mr C, look at the 90s turn they both made, register their seeing the “sleeper must awaken” of fiction being terribly fraught, compare the force vs. the universal field, the way their relationship status and partners carve their work into eras, and their continued existence as mainstream experimental filmmakers. 

[myevilmouse]

In Defense of The Rise of Skywalker

Or...how I learned to stop hating and enjoy a movie

Spoilers and random thoughts below the cut.

I hate the abomination that was/is The Last Jedi.  Let’s get that out of the way.  I’ve already explained the hundreds of reasons why, the biggest and most unforgivable being the character assassination of Luke “I call him Jake” Skywalker and the invalidation of every victory of the OT.  I resent this making people lump me into a “gatekeeper” sect, or accuse me of racism (Rose was annoying and ruined Finn’s heroism, jeopardizing hundreds of lives for her own selfish reasons without building up a convincing romance and blah blah etc).  It has nothing to do with her gender, race, or anything.  It has to do with poor character development and inconsistent motivations/messages. 

I’m also not a huge fan of The Force Awakens, mainly for its lack of originality and the treatment of Han/Leia, but otherwise I thought it was OK.  I liked Finn, wanted him to become a Jedi, found Poe to be a worthy heir to our antihero mold.  Rey left me indifferent and Kylo Ren was a temper-tantrum throwing teenager, but anyway...

Let’s keep that as background/context and not get bogged down.

Since they announced the title of this movie, I have been livid with rage. How dare they use my man’s name to sell their disgusting imitation of a beloved universe?  I was certain, ever since it was announced, that Rey would take Luke’s surname, despite having treated him so horribly in TLJ, despite having done nothing to earn it, despite having spent far more time with Leia, so if anything a Solo/Organa family name would make more sense.  It was just to sell tickets and I was furious.

I read all the spoilers.  Worst fears:  confirmed.  I looked at leaked photos.  I raged over the inanity of the plot and the sad conclusion to the Skywalker Saga, which in my mind will always end with ROTJ.

Still, I love Mark Hamill, and I decided to treat this film as a MH film. The completist in me required theatrical viewing.  Rare to get our man in a cinematic release.  So I went, ready to hate watch, prepared to dull the bitterness and betrayal with wine.

But….JJ Abrams directed a fix it fic.  And it’s good.  This film not just address the real injustices and horrible story decisions of TLJ, but also addresses some of the major problems of TFA too. 

I tried to go in with an open mind, but obviously I had many preconceived notions, and already knew almost every single story point and character beat.  I was ready to roll around in my hate and slam the abomination.  I want to emphasize that I am one of those people that was COMPLETELY prepared to hate EVERYTHING about this.

There are flaws. 

But there is so much that is great. 

I really really liked it. 

No one is more shocked than I at my own reaction.  I was ready/willing/wanting/primed to hate everything about this.  Please keep that in mind.  Hahah and no one is paying me to write this post 😉

I decided to write this because I also read all the negative critical reviews online from the pro critics yelling FAN SERVICE.  And I’m like…damn straight?  Ever since George Lucas made Han shoot second, fandom has understood that we understand this franchise better than film executives.  We aren’t concerned with adding an extra dewback or improving special effects.  We love these films the way we first experienced them, and they cannot and should not be “improved” to the ultimate detriment of the brand.

I’m here to tell you that the critics are not being fair.  The spoilers on reddit were true, but the movie works. Let’s accept, before we go further, that Abrams couldn’t entirely rewrite the mess that he stepped into/helped create. So I can’t defend the fact that Finn isn’t a Jedi yet or the mess that is the new Rebellion/failure of the old. I, like many fans, wish we had been given a different/better story from the beginning.  Sadly, we were not.

That is something we don’t have to accept (I certainly don’t consider these films “canon” in my mind—Mara Jade forever!) but let’s approach this film in the spirit it seems to be intended:  An attempt to address the very valid criticisms loudly voiced about the others in the trilogy, with the caveat that we are stuck with TFA and TLJ no matter how much we hate them.

First, the music is amazing, as we all knew it would be.  The acting is stellar.

Some of the things Abrams “fixed:”

“Rey is perfect/Mary Sue/good at everything”.  There is a conscious effort in this film to show her training, with Leia as her Master.  There is a good scene foreshadowing her final struggle, where she strains to hear the voices of Jedi past and fails.  There are several signs that she is not a Jedi yet, including how Palpatine talks about her, and perhaps my favorite, when she tells Leia she hasn’t earned Luke’s lightsaber.

Me: Damn straight you haven’t.

And Leia AGREES, keeping Luke’s weapon because Rey isn’t ready for it. She’s still learning.

Further proof of her non-Jedi status, when Rey is killed, she doesn’t join the Force.  She is a corpse.  On the other hand, Ben Solo, once redeemed, disappears as we would expect a good Jedi to do.  A clear distinction between the two of them.

And speaking of Leia:

Leia’s character:  TFA and TLJ Leia is weak and sends other people to fight, whereas our brave Princess from the OT is volunteering for suicide missions, grabbing weapons from the hands of her rescuers, and running into danger for a good cause.  It always bothered me that she didn’t go after Kylo herself (or with Han).  In this, we see her as a Jedi Master, training Rey, with her own lightsaber.  Leia is once more a badass, true to her character.  A legitimate Jedi who also joins the Force (although not sure why it took her so long post-mortem, that was weird).

Luke’s character:  Hello, I am A LUKE FANATIC.  The biggest sin of TFA and especially TLJ was this idea of Luke hiding out and becoming the disgusting, pessimistic coward he was shown to be.  Abrams ignores this pretty much entirely, starting with the revelation that Luke was actually going on missions with Lando to hunt for a Sith artifact to help the Rebellion.  Luke kept notes, he was busy and ACTIVE.  He wasn’t giving up; he was leaving a trail to help anyone who followed.  The best ‘fuck you’ in the whole movie was Luke catching Anakin’s lightsaber when Rey throws it away.  The ultimate rejection of his TLJ characterization.  

Luke’s conversation with Rey echoes very much the ROTJ “you must confront Vader” conversation.  There are many echoes of ROTJ but given the restrictions on what we are working with, I accepted this parallel.  Much like Luke had to face his unfortunate inheritance, so must Rey.  It’s not terribly original, but these films aren’t.

I also loved the simple line “I was wrong” when Rey asks why he did what he did in TLJ.  This to me is simply “Rian Johnson was wrong/The Last Jedi was wrong.”  There is no excuse that is acceptable, but this is a filmmaker acknowledging an injustice, and I appreciated it.  (Did I mention these films are not canon for me? They aren’t, just giving credit for this attempt.)

Han’s character:  I hated SO MUCH how they turned Han into a failure in TFA.  A buffoon, not even a good smuggler anymore, a failure as a father, a husband.  When I heard he was going to be in this I was like HUH?  But this “memory” of his father that Kylo Ren sees after Rey heals him and departs, after he’s lost his mother, is another attempt to redeem the injustice to Han’s character.  Han is the one in the movie who brings Kylo Ren back to the Light, not Rey.  It is a very short scene, but effective.  The acting is poignant, with the “Dad” working for me.  Maybe I’m a softie.  But I appreciated this brief proof that Han Solo, in the end, didn’t suck as a father, and ultimately, even as a hallucination, inspired the love that saved his son.

Chewbacca got a medal:  I said Abrams was fixing things in the sequels, but I admit I was choked up to see this fixit from A New Hope.  Finally Chewie gets the medal he is LONG overdue.

Team dynamic with the new characters:  Finally we understand why these people care about each other.  They go on shared adventures, they have banter (and some good jokes, not the stupid bathos of TLJ), and there is finally some sense of camaraderie that was discarded in TLJ.  There are several references to Rey’s “new family,” clearly referring to this band of Rebels, and it was far more compelling than in earlier films.

Finn’s Force Sensitivity:  I, like many, desperately wanted Finn to be a Jedi.  Since TFA, it seemed inevitable!  I loved how he used the lightsaber, how he seemed to have Force abilities (that were never really explored).  TLJ ignored that potential completely, sidelining him on that stupid Canto Bight quest and pulling him away from Rey.  There are so many signs that he is destined to be a Jedi in this film, I was thrilled to see them.  Knowing things without explanation, doing amazing things, sensing things, trusting his feelings, it’s another ‘fuck you’ in my opinion, to RJ for ignoring this former stormtrooper’s destiny in favor of overblown set pieces and pointless CGI theatrics.  When he says, towards the end “I can feel it,” I wanted to fist pump.  YOU GO BE A JEDI FINN!  THE FORCE IS WITH YOU.  Personally, I would have loved for Finn to be the main protagonist of all three films, but I appreciate us getting what we got, since we can’t get what we want.

Stuff that worked:

The Wedge cameo:  Yeah.

Lando:  Wonderful. His dialogue, especially at the beginning, does a lot to fix our view of Luke.

Kylo’s redemption:  See above re: Han.  I’ve seen a lot of criticism about the kiss.  I get the whole “female character’s purpose is to validate the evolution of the male” criticism, but I want to point out a couple things about this. First of all, it’s not a “Reylo” kiss. Kylo is gone.  This is well after Kylo is redeemed.  He’s been of the Light for a while before this, it’s clearly Ben at this point.  It’s also obvious Rey knows that, and like Luke forgave Vader for his abuse, she forgives Ben Solo for his.  So I understand also the criticism that is making people puke about Rey kissing her abuser, but again, Luke sheds tears for the father he loves, who maimed and traumatized him.  Star Wars is about redemption and forgiveness that accompanies it, and I don’t have the same issue with this.  If she kissed KYLO without him being redeemed before he died, for example, I would be disgusted.  This is not that.

The cinematography/pacing/story:  So many critics and the spoilers made it sound like this was a convoluted mess.  I went to see it with a non-native English speaker and neither of us had any trouble following the plot.  Yeah, a lot happens, but it all is linear and consistent within the film.

The humor/dialogue:  Felt way more Star Wars-y and better placed than the last two films.

The Jedi Helping Rey:  As much as I thought I would hate this, it was really well done, largely, I think, due to the foreshadowing during her earlier training.  When Palpatine says all the Sith live in him and we know what she’s gonna say but it still works SO WELL.  I was rooting for her and I’ve never been a huge fan.  But at that climactic moment, I was a believer.

Major flaws

Of course there are some.  For me the most major:

A Jedi Strikes Not In Anger: In every single lightsaber battle (pretty sure, I only saw the film once), Rey is the first to strike.  She always seems to be fighting from anger and with negative emotion.  This is not at all Jedi-esque and I found it particularly jarring in her duels with Kylo Ren.  This bothered me more than almost anything else in the film because it is never addressed.  She fights ANGRY and she fights FEARFUL and then somehow when she’s supposed to strike down Palpatine, she has it in her to resist.  This, above all else, makes me not like her as the “heir to the Jedi”.  I thought it was a real problem, and makes her ultimate evolution at the finale less convincing.

Rey Skywalker:  I get why they did it, but I stand by my earlier thoughts regarding taking the Solo or Organa name.  I have nothing against adopted families.  And I found it SLIGHTLY more palpable because since the Emperor refers to Ben as “the last Skywalker” and then since he transfers his entire life force into her, you can argue that she has “Skywalker” literally in her spirit now.  OK fine.  But I still don’t really think she earned it.  She came CLOSER than I thought she would and I didn’t ultimately want to burn down the cinema as I expected I would want to.

Force Resurrection:  No. Just no.  This changes so much and makes so much of the earlier films moot. Why wouldn’t Anakin just resurrect Padme?  Don’t get me started.

Other random new Force things:  Like Force Ghosts touching shit.  Yeah I know Obi Wan sat on the tree in Dagobah, I know, but we keep learning new and more powerful Force shit each film.  Teleportation of objects (that lightsaber?!), astral projection, rapid healing, and now playing catch with your ghost friends.  I get they are important to the story but it feels lazy.  But my exception here was Luke catching the saber because FUCK YOU RJ. 😊

Redemption=Death:  I wanted Kylo Ren to die for his sins too, but I recognize this strange thing we have going on in the GFFA that if a baddie goes good they die.  It’s the equivalent of the horror movie “fuck and the killer gets you” trope.  I didn’t necessarily mind Ben dying, but it seemed … lazy.

The final shot:  It was a mistake to even touch this iconic moment.  It wasn’t earned.  Make your own legend/iconic moment and leave my farmboy his.

Something no one can fix:  The sucky destinies of Luke Jake, Han, and Leia.  They didn’t live happy lives, they didn’t see the end of tyranny, they all died with only the hope of success.  I will never forgive the attempted destruction of the legacy of the OT (attempted cause it’s still how it all ends in my world), this disregard of the triumph of the Rebellion over the Empire, and I will never believe that the New Republic failed so completely and miserably.  Bring on the EU/Legends and forget this shit.

Final thought:  I went to this expecting the cinematic equivalent of a back alley abortion and instead I got what felt like an apology.  An entertaining and polished and sincere apology.  We deserved better, and I think the people who made this film realized that and did their best.  TROS had to wrap up something that was divisive and imperfect and misguided, and tried as hard as it could, in my opinion, given what they were working with.

It was a good movie.  Ambitious, with flaws, but I am glad I saw it, and I hope you will be too. <3  May the Force be with you.

[driftingglass]

How did you develop your writing style? It's so unique and descriptive. Did you take inspiration from anyone and build on that, or was it more like writing until you gradually became better at it? I'm having a crisis because I want to develop a distinct writing style, but I don't know how. I don't know if you can compare it to an artist finding their style or not, so I don't really know what to expect. eh, sorry if this didn't make any sense (ᵕ̣̣̣̣̣̣﹏ᵕ̣̣̣̣̣̣)

Very interesting ask.

Thank you for the kind words in the beginning of your ask, first of all. I think this is a very important thing to address for writers in general because it’s a struggle that we all go through at one point. And, for others, it’s a constant battle… for most, if not all, it’s a necessity. 

I’ll be answering this in two parts, because one is more personal while the other is more objective. I hope that these answers and thoughts will help in some capacity.

We’ll go with the objective one first. (This will be long. Sorry. I can’t answer this question in a short way without any depth.)

. Where Do You Aim When Crafting Your Writing Style? .

Anon, if I were to be honest, the actual act of aiming to develop a distinct style, rather than focus on developing your craft in terms of grammar, syntax, and variation in imagery, leads to obstacles more than anything. 

I know from personal experience that being obsessed with being different (and this is more recent in my years as a developing writer, rather than towards the beginning) prolongs the frustrations and even causes writers to stumble and overthink about their style. 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve struggled with enjoying my own writing because of my very descriptive use of words and imagery, even though that’s what differentiates me as a writer. 

(And there are plenty of flaws that develop with every single style, and I can tell you a dozen frustrations I have for every one positive thing I like about my own. Of course, that will be expanded on later.)

The first step into coming into your own writing style, Anon, is understanding that trying too hard to emulate another’s style will only halt you in crafting your own. There is nothing wrong with drawing influence and finding inspiration in authors, of course, because that’s how we function. 

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be similar or even outshine the authors we admire, whether it’s in terms of the actual style itself, the content, the plots, the characters, the settings, etc. In fact, it’s encouraged for writers to explore the secrets and methods that the most esteemed and successful authors use, because that’s where you learn.

Writing is, in fact, an extremely meticulous and even mechanical process. There is a sort of science (if you want to view it that way) to the way stories are structured, how certain styles work with certain readers and so on. 

Your motivations behind why you want to develop a distinct style should be made clear before you move forward with practicing and continuously exploring what you have to offer for yourself, rather than your wish to imitate other people.

Now, there are countless different ways you can discuss the writing styles of different authors. For one thing, there’s a very descriptive elegance and simple depth that is often found in the works of Ian McEwan, for instance, the author of Atonement, Nutshell, and Sweet Tooth. 

His style is very heavy on summarization of his characters, almost, which can either draw the reader in or immediately turn them off. Some absolutely despise this style because they claim it lacks depth or connection between the reader and the characters.

I absolutely love Ian McEwan. I’m one of millions of readers who enjoy his style, and I oppose the viewpoints of millions of readers who absolutely detest his style. But what makes Ian McEwan Ian McEwan is… well, Ian McEwan’s writing style and process. 

When you criticize or praise Ian McEwan, you’re not criticizing his style for emulating J.K. Rowling or George R.R. Martin or C.S. Lewis or any other writer, but your’e criticizing and praising him for his style. He is well into his own work because, through being influenced and learning from his own idols, he’s grown into his own style. 

Ian McEwan’s style, not a… say, “polished imitation of Rowling or Martin.”

It’s just his own.

This is a very important differentiator because it’s incredibly easy to become enveloped in the idea of wanting to be the “next J.K. Rowling” or the “next Stephen King.” I guarantee that it happens to every writer, and maybe my opinion isn’t exactly universally viewed as accurate in this regard, but I think this is a dangerous way to view writing.

Desperately trying to emulate another’s style through forced, unnatural and exhausting means, leads to burnouts and a quick recession of passion and even frustration that you can’t even pinpoint as a writer.

You will often ask yourself: “Why isn’t this working? I’m doing exactly what my favorite author is doing!”

And that, right there, is where you know you’ve slammed headfirst into a wall.

Do you write because you want to express the style of a different author? Or do you write because you want to express yourself?

Most, if not all, writers would say: “well, obviously myself. Why else would I write? I’m not trying to copy every other person out there.”

Of course writers aren’t always actively trying to do just that, but sometimes it’s inevitable when you’re focused so intensely on wanting to create your own style amidst a pool of millions of writers who could not be more different. Sure, some styles are going to be similar no matter what, but there are always elements that show your personality as the author in your work.

You should write, ultimately, for yourself first before anyone else. Thus, your style should be, ultimately, you. 

How do you become a better writer? You read and you write every day. It’s a simple, yet very tasking process, and part of what, of course, draws from us, as writers, to look to our idols and what causes us to create a new style based off of what we know. 

It’s the basic fundamental of writing, from beginners to the most advanced and successful published authors around (and beyond).

So, instead of aiming to mimic other styles and trying too hard to emulate your favorite authors, start with drawing inspiration from them and just… losing yourself, to a few tries. In order to evolve into your own style, you must freely write and just let your typing/writing fingers speak for themselves.

It’s a very daring process and it’s extremely difficult to do, especially for over-thinkers like myself, but trust me, the payoff is absolutely rewarding. 

[ Alright, moving on to the more personal aspect. There will be answers that aren’t explored in this one because they should be exemplified more in the second half of this post. Fair warning. ]

. So, Let’s Talk About the Relationship Between Style and Writer .

Oh, boy.

Honestly, this ask resonated so much with me personally that it’s difficult to write all of this out, but it’s important. And, as much as I actually detest and obsess over changing my style each and every day, there’s something I need to make clear about how it works in general.

My style actually fluctuates depending on which tense I’m writing. 

In fanfiction, I often write in present-tense. Why? It’s fast. It’s quick. It immediately appeals to the senses and allows more freedom and control over the characters in how they move, talk, etc. It also motivates me to write faster because this type of style emulates how I dabbled in poetry, which I’m very fond of. 

My writing is… very descriptive, yes, but this started out as my biggest flaw. In fact, it’s still considered a flaw. 

Sometimes I use far too many adverbs and far too many words to reach a certain point, and overly describe each scene and movement between characters because of how specific and vivid my visions are for each story.

It’s part of my controlling nature as a writer. Boohoo, I’m a horrible person. Whatever. 

Usually when I reread my drafts (which is either obsessively repeated or not done at all…) I cut away the excess descriptions because, ever since I started writing, I would over-write. I was desperate and even more insecure in my craft, and it showed. 

When I write original works, I write in the past-tense. And, strangely enough, my style just… changes. 

It’s often recommended not to have different writing styles for certain settings. If I had to simplify my style I would say it’s very descriptive and is pretty minute in what it pays attention to, but it can get lost in the fray and is usually best observed between character interactions and descriptions of scenes upon envisioning them for the first time. 

My past-tense style, when compared side-by-side with my present-tense, holds some key similarities but are, ultimately, quite different. It’s more blunt, still highly visual and sensual, but it is still, essentially, my style.

Everyone develops their style in a different way and over time through practice and just… discovering what you enjoy most about writing. 

Do you love appealing to the senses the most? 

Do you love imagining landscapes and describing the different ways a sunset or sunrise can look? 

Do you love architecture? Buildings? Moss on the walls? Thorns on a vine? What roses smell like in winter if they still retain their fragrance?

Do you love witty banter and short, snappy descriptions and fast-paced action? 

Do you love dialogue more than the setting?

Do you love the setting more than the dialogue?

Do you love both equally and seek a balance?

Do you love slow-building drama and angst? 

Do you love describing economics and politics?

Do you love describing romance and sex? 

Do you love laying out emotions as they are bluntly or relating them to more palpable things? 

Do you love fantasy? Contemporary? Thriller? Mystery? All of them? Everything and anything in-between?

Do you love more minute or expanded details? 

Do you love skipping over details in general and just going straight to the point? 

Do you love writing?

All of these aspects and many, many more, make up the many different styles that writers wield and hone to their own ability each and every day. It requires discipline, a lot of practice, insight, and willingness to delve deep into oneself and think: “will I like reading what I put down?”

Be honest with yourself. Experiment. Try new things. It’s normal to be confused and stuck in a rut, Anon. I struggle with my own style every day and obsess over it far too much, but it’s a constant uphill battle with unimaginable rewards when you start coming more and more into those moments where you can lean back and loudly proclaim:

“Yes. I fucking wrote that, and it’s brilliant. I love this style and I’m going to keep using it and building on it and making it the best of what it can be because it’s mine and I want to be proud of it.”

Good luck, Anon. And to anyone else reading this! I hope it provided some value! Thank you for the wonderful question and I wish you the absolute best.

[jasonfry]

Notes: Rebel in the Ranks, Pt. 1

WARNING: These notes will completely spoil Servants of the Empire: Rebel in the Ranks. If you haven’t read it, stop and go here.

(Here are notes for the first book in the series, Edge of the Galaxy.)

On the surface, Rebel in the Ranks seemed like an easier project than its Servants of the Empire predecessor, Edge of the Galaxy. With the first book, I’d had to introduce Zare Leonis and his family and show how an Imperial poster boy was plagued by doubts and finally decided to resist the Empire. Rebel seemed like an easier lift – that work had been done, and about a third of the new book would be based on “Breaking Ranks,” the Star Wars: Rebels episode that introduced Zare.

I was wrong about the easier part, I think because Rebel was a larger story that needed to incorporate an adaptation. I had to work up to moments in “Breaking Ranks” that the show used as starting points, explain some things that worked on TV but not on the page, and figure out how to go beyond an adaptation without drifting into filler.

I learned a lot and it was a lot of fun. But not without some nervous moments.

Prologue: The Intake

The prologue’s main purpose was to catch the reader up on what had happened in Edge of the Galaxy: we get a quick review of Dhara Leonis’s disappearance, Zare attending Lothal’s Imperial Academy under false pretenses, and that Zare’s girlfriend, Merei Spanjaf, is helping him.

Exposition is the bitter medicine of storytelling, so you want to cover the taste with a little sugar. One technique is to deliver the exposition through dialogue, ideally as part of a conversation that has some other purpose and its own tension. I couldn’t do that everywhere here, as Zare has to keep secrets from Sergeant Currahee. But it works because Zare is essentially having a conversation with himself even as he’s answering Currahee’s questions.

The section also spins up the wheels for what's to come -- the most effective scenes do more than one thing. The reader meets Currahee, who’s straight out of central casting as the tough-as-nails drill instructor. And both Zare and the reader are tantalized by the possibility that the truth about what happened to Dhara is close at hand, maybe even displayed on the datapad that Currahee can see but Zare cannot.

We also get something new: a question that Zare, the reader and Currahee herself didn’t expect. Currahee asks if Zare ever dreams about his lost sister. What could that mean? We’re not going to find out, though – at least not yet. Currahee welcomes Zare to the Empire, and off we go.

Currahee’s name is an homage to Band of Brothers – it’s the name of the first episode, and an actual mountain in Stephens County, Ga., that paratroopers from Camp Toccoa had to run up and down.

Part 1: Orientation

Merei and Zare’s stories necessarily unfolded in parallel, as Zare is stuck at the Academy – a limitation that worked fine in Rebel but would nearly be the death of me in the third book, Imperial Justice. Fortunately for both books and the overall series, Merei had evolved from a supporting character to a main one who could hold her own with Zare – a happy accident I discussed in the notes for Edge of the Galaxy.

My starting point for this section was Ezra Bridger, AKA Dev Morgan. When we see "Dev” in “Breaking Ranks” it’s clear that he’s a new cadet. Maybe the Rebels producers intended the exercise in “Breaking Ranks” to be the first day of orientation, but it didn’t feel that way to me. But if Dev was a newcomer to the ranks, whose slot had he taken?

The answer to that question became Part 1, with Zare assigned to Unit Aurek with three other cadets: Jai Kell, Nazhros Oleg and Pandak Symes.

Jai’s role in the story was a straight line to the events of “Breaking Ranks” – he’s a talented, happy-go-lucky cadet who believes in the Empire but has no idea he’s Force-sensitive. Basically, he’s what Dhara was before she suffered the fate Jai must now avoid.

Oleg was a more interesting nut to crack. In “Breaking Ranks” he’s literally a faceless villain – we never see him with his faceplate open, undoubtedly to avoid stretching the animation budget. 

“Oleg” sounds like a first name, but the forms of address used in “Breaking Ranks” made it clear it was a last name, so I called him “Nazhros.” I suspect the starting point for Nazhros was “nauseous.” In creating names, I like taking words that get at something fundamental about the character, then fuzzing up those words. I learned that from George Lucas himself, who once explained how “Darth Vader” emerged from blending “Death Father” and “Dark Water.” (The Secret History of Star Wars found a high-school classmate of Lucas’s named Vader, but that’s not necessarily a contradiction – we subconsciously channel stuff all the time.)

I crafted a bit of a backstory for Oleg to set up a payoff in Imperial Justice and to give the character a bit of shading. Oleg is basically an abandoned child who’s been left in the indifferent care of his uncles. I intentionally didn’t go too far beyond that – the world is full of antisocial jerks whose stories of how they got to be antisocial jerks are depressingly simple. I also wanted to be true to the show – doing more with Oleg helped my story, but doing too much more with him might have wound up feeling like an inversion of the episode.

That left Pandak Symes. Pandak arrived “pre-doomed,” fated to be replaced by an undercover Ezra. But in that I saw a story to tell. The Zare we meet in Edge of the Galaxy is a natural leader who inspires, instructs and cajoles his grav-ball teammates into becoming league champions. His instincts would be to do the same as an Imperial cadet, and he’d try to help Pandak through his struggles.

That gave me not one but two obstacles for Zare. The first was obvious – the physical and mental rigors of boot camp, which would show Zare gaining strength and discipline and demonstrating his gift for leadership. But there was another wrinkle: boot camp was designed to turn out officers for the very Empire that Zare had sworn to defeat.

That put Zare’s instincts in collision with his goals, which was a dilemma not just for him but also for the reader. Zare helps his fellow cadets because of a basic decency that makes the reader root for him, but that same decency drives him to work against the Empire. There’s a queasy tension there for both character and reader.

My other major character was created to heighten that tension. Lieutenant Chiron is “the good Imperial,” a capable leader and mentor for Zare and other cadets. (In Greek mythology, Chiron is the wise centaur who tutors Heracles, Achilles, Jason and other heroes.) Chiron’s good qualities are real, but undermined by a fatal flaw: his inability to see that the system he supports is evil and cannot be reformed. From the beginning I knew that Chiron would be part of the series’ endgame, so I got to work early.

Quick notes on Part 1:

The book’s working title was The Rogue Cadet. I liked that, but Rebel in the Ranks tied in nicely with “Breaking Ranks.”

Merei’s alarm is a song she hates -- a treacly ballad called “With You Among the Stars.” I thought that was a revealing and funny character moment for her. The song is by Plexo-33, a band mentioned way back in HoloNet News. Heavy isotope was mentioned in the first Medstar book.

Chiron’s speech about “every morning in the Emperor’s service” was a goof on Sergeant Apone’s oorah call-to-arms in Aliens. Which, of course, was itself an homage to innumerable boot-camp stories. Currahee yelling at Pandak about his shower shoes, on the other hand, was a nod to Bull Durham, my favorite baseball movie.

I needed to map out the Academy system a bit here, and drew on The Essential Guide to Warfare. Lothal isn’t the same kind of academy Luke wants to attend in A New Hope – Zare is only 15. Rather, Lothal is a one-year junior academy, with those who do well going on to a regional senior academy. The course of study at a regional senior academy would typically last three years, with top cadets graduating to specialized service academies for officer training within a branch of the Imperial military. I kept all this a bit vague to avoid tying future storytellers’ hands. 

Chiron and Currahee transferred to Lothal over the summer from the Imperial Academy on Marleyvane. That meant there was no way they could have been involved in Dhara’s disappearance, increasing the tension as Zare tries to reconcile the idea that there might be “good” Imperials with their support of an evil system.

Note Unit Forn is all-female. We don’t see female cadets in “Breaking Ranks,” but we know they exist – Dhara was one, after all. And female officers and stormtroopers are increasingly common in Star Wars storytelling – something I explored in Warfare.

I turned to the cutaway view of a stormtrooper helmet in The Complete Visual Dictionary to figure out the positioning of the atmosphere intake and the suit-air intake, then checked it approximately 8,000 times to make sure I hadn’t reversed them in my mind. Just checked it again, even though it’s years too late. Make that 8,001.

There’s a quick reference to seatroopers -- a stormtrooper class introduced in Legends -- helping the cadets. I described them sparingly to give future storytellers as much flexibility as possible.

In the obstacle course, Zare directs his unit to switch between wedge and file formation. I read up on the relevant tactics for scenes in Rebel in the Ranks and Imperial Justice, but didn’t go beyond the basics here to avoid slowing things down. That happens a lot as an author – you do a bunch of research that winds up getting boiled down to a sentence or two. But if that makes that sentence ring true, it’s worth it.

Zare’s sports experience comes up a couple of times in this section. He describes his tactics in the obstacle course as a weak-side carry, and accepts Pandak’s departure after Chiron compares the cadet’s weakness to a grav-ball teammate not making plays.

Next up: Naming confusion and the mechanics of a successful computer hack.