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orcelito · 2 months ago

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I've been working on Finally finishing Naruto Shippuden (after being a Naruto fan for nearly 15 years), & I just finished episode 420. And I have some THOUGHTS about the "Naruto is the reincarnation of Ashura" thing. This started as just me rambling for my normal liveblog posting, but I had a LOT of thoughts about this actually, so I am presenting them to u all Now.

So. Naruto meeting the Sage of Six Paths! Cool!!! I'm finally learning about Naruto being the reincarnation of Ashura, which... honestly is not a choice that I like very much. Narratively speaking, I mean. The Point of Naruto's journey was that he was the underdog, the bottom of his class, the orphan that everyone hated and made fun of. Through hard work and perseverance, he managed to drag himself from being a complete social outcast to someone generally really loved and respected. That's compelling!!! It means a lot!!!

But then the show is like. "Oh...actually, he's the son of the fourth hokage. And Also, he's the reincarnation of the son of the literal creator of ninshuu aka the precursor of modern ninjutsu." I mind him being Minato's son less as a narrative choice (for reasons I will get into shortly), but making him Ashura's reincarnation?? I've got Several things that bug me about that.

So First, for him being Minato's son. It's not like that's ever Actually given him any sort of status (since most people don't know), & Minato was also kind of just a random guy?? Just incredibly skilled, enough so to become the 4th hokage. And then there's also Kushina, descended from a very successful and very Feared clan that ended up almost entirely killed bc of that fear. Naruto being an Uzumaki means great power, huge chakra reserves (not even including the extra chakra he gets from Kurama), & some innate skills (that Naruto mostly didn't inherit, but one can play pretend sometimes). BUT ALSO, they were almost entirely killed off. He's a survivor of his clan's genocide that happened well before he was even born, and he doesn't even REALIZE it yet. So even though being Minato's son means he's the son of a very influential person, it doesn't give him the same leverage as being a Senju or Uchiha would. And the clan he Does belong to bc of Kushina does not give him status either, bc they're almost all fuckin Dead. And we know that Minato is a Namikaze, but as for what that actually *means*.... it's basically nonexistent. There is no mention of a Namikaze clan. Minato was just a prodigy in his own right.

SO.... All that is to say that while appending Naruto's orphan story with a "well, Actually, his parents were very powerful and well respected" does discount it a little bit, it's still not Especially unique in terms of what other people in their world may experience (there are other descendants of current and/or former kage + Many other powerful clans running around) OR in the benefits that it gives him (essentially nothing, outside of his physical strength and the inheritance of Kurama himself)(which inheriting Kurama did grant him access to IMMENSE power, but it also was the source of So Much of his suffering growing up, so I think it balances out).

The "reincarnation of Ashura, son of the Sage of Six Paths" thing tho... that one really kinda does. At that point, Naruto is no longer just the orphaned son of two respected shinobi & the current jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi (something special, but not entirely original, given that there are Other jinchuuriki who are descendants of powerful shinobi). He is now something that NO ONE ELSE ALIVE can be. It is saying that He, above Everyone Else, is special in this way. Outside of Sasuke lol, but I'll touch on that in a moment.

It just feels kinda cheap. It's cool I guess, but at this point it feels like we've completely lost the Plucky Orphan who works hard to overcome his circumstances plot. It's saying that he was Always one of a kind, he was Always destined to become Someone Special (or that he was, in fact, special the whole time). It removes the importance of his hard work in the equation. It makes it so that this is no longer something he earned for himself, but rather something that was a Given, since he is, of course, Ashura's reincarnation.

Cheap. It's cheap. And I don't like it.

Then we get into Sasuke being the reincarnation of Indra. Which I haven't gotten to that yet in the show, but I know from seeing it around. I do enjoy the sun and moon aesthetic between Naruto and Sasuke (so SO much, in fact), but. Making Sasuke the reincarnation of the Other son of the Sage of Six Paths is... frustrating? In several ways. There is of course the fact that Naruto and Sasuke have such extremely gay vibes (and Always Have), so making them the reincarnations of brothers so late in the story feels like an insult to anyone who reads their relationship in that way. Which to be fair, we do see Naruto mention at a few points that he thinks of Sasuke like a brother, but it's only a few points + feels like a kind of narrative cop-out. Sasuke himself said he doesn't think of Naruto in that way (though that could also be his self-denial speaking & it could change. Haven't gotten that far yet.), & I think there are much better choices for Naruto's "brother" figure (primarily Iruka, but people like Killer Bee and any of the other konoha 12 would be fitting too). Personally, it feels like Naruto was trying to put a name to his very strong feelings for Sasuke, & since he doesn't realize being gay is an option (since Kishimoto is clearly homophobic & made this ninja society to reflect that), he settled on Brother. But Sasuke is like "what the fuck? No, my only brother is Itachi." Instead, Sasuke has called Naruto his best friend. Which also doesn't fully encompass their relationship, but it's still closer than Brother.

So here we are, Kishimoto saying around 555 episodes into the plot (only 80 more to go) that they're actually the reincarnations of brothers. And not just any brothers. THE sons of the Sage of Six Paths. Incredibly influential, incredibly powerful, two sides of the same coin and very historically significant figures. Sasuke always had the "descended from an elite, yet disgraced clan" thing going for him, so in my opinion it doesn't hold the same kind of insult to his story that it does for Naruto. But it still feels like an insult to THEIR story.

Naruto and Sasuke were just two orphan boys. Their moms were best friends, but they didn't know that. They died when they were too young. But Naruto and Sasuke still gravitated towards one another. Understood each other like no one else. And got on each other's nerves like no one else. But that irritation stemmed from their genuine admiration of each other. They wanted to be able to beat each other. They became Rivals. And it was on their own terms. No one else pushed them together. Outside of them ending up on the same team, their entire relationship was fueled by their recognition of one another, Jealousy of one another, and the simple enjoyment of being around one another. They were the ones to decide the importance of their relationship. Sasuke recognizing Naruto as his closest friend & thus thinking he was the one he had to cut off to achieve power, and Naruto recognizing Sasuke as his first peer that acknowledged him, a precious bond he finally made, and thus someone he had to cling to FIERCELY. That was all them.

But here we are. They're a reincarnated set. The sun and the moon, but Officially. One could say soulmates in a way, in a non-romantic kind of context (considering the first iteration was a pair of brothers). While this is cool from a story standpoint, it really takes some significance away from their relationship to me. It makes it less of something they chose for themselves and more of a given. Pretty much just like Naruto being Ashura's reincarnation cheapens his own story, it cheapens their relationship too.

I dont want a story about two boys who were destined to be important to each other!!!! I want a story about two orphans who just happened to become important to one another thru a series of coincidences and personal choices. In that way, their relationship gains greater gravity bc it's born from their own hearts Alone. It's Naruto moving mountains for the sake of this boy he loves, and it's Sasuke finally coming back around bc of the force of Naruto's dedication. It means so much more than the implication that they were always meant to be a pair. So I really don't like this narrative choice.

#speculation nation #fanny watches naruto #naruto #narusasu #sasunaru #(i talk about how the reincarnation thing affects the context of their relationship lower down in the post)#naruto spoilers #if anyone still cares about those lol #anyways it's been really cool to finally see all this late-show stuff for myself after being in the fandom for so long #(i was caught up once upon a time. but that was around episode 200 or so lol)#but as much as im enjoying some things in the show. there are other things that i just... dont like.#part of that is nearly Half the entirety of shippuden being the fucking war arc. it's precisely what's kept me from catching up until now #but then theres the loss of the story's original Feeling. the anti-war and anti-child soldiers sentiment.#Naruto being an absolute nobody and watching Haku and Zabuza's ending & being so moved by it that it informs his entire ninja way #but Kishimoto is turning around and saying 'he was actually destined for this the whole time'. which just... i just really don't like it.#this + Neji's death feels like it's discounting their fight's entire point. Neji's entire character arc.#the fact that fate doesnt matter as much as dedication. being a 'genius' doesnt matter as much as effort.#but Neji. the caged bird. dies to protect the main line. driving home that it was pointless for him to resist it the whole time.#and Naruto. the one who worked tirelessly to become hokage against all odds and adversity. turns out it was Meant To Be after all.#sigh... i really do love this anime so much. ive loved it for most of my memory and its characters are so so dear to me.#but i also. really. REAAAAAAAAALLY hate this anime sometimes. damned anime discounting its own points...#alas. i shall continue to watch. because i do want to finally finish it.#i shall simply. probably not watch Boruto afterwards lol

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feathers-second-face · 11 months ago

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Does Alastor actually care about the hotel or it's residents?

I think maybe.

So I JUST got done writing a collage essay of a theory on the Lilith/Alastor thing, so what am I going to do?? WRITE ANOTHER ONE!!

Spoilers

Okay, so I'm gonna start of with the fact that I wholeheartedly believe Alastor was only there because Lilith sent him. The hotel doesn't have any of what he seems to prefer as entertainment (murder, cannibalism, it his friends), so to go there and then do pretty much nothing to actually bring in any guests sorta brings that into questions. He was there because he had to be, not because he cared.

HOWEVER!!

Things can change.

In the pilot, Alastor tried to make a deal with Charlie. I believe he did this entirely for leverage to get his soul back, and when it didn't work, decided to either never bother again or try it again when he'd gained a bit of trust. The thing is, he hasn't done that again. By now, he should now he can EASILY trick Charlie into making a deal with him, but he hasn't. Why is that? Well, unless he's just simply not willing to risk it or forgot about that idea, there's the idea that he cares about her, even a little bit.

Episode 5 rambles, yey. I don't think he sent Mimzy away because if the damage to the hotel, I think it was because if her antics got Charlie killed, he'd face punishment for it, but it's definitely possible that he may have been a bit worried for his friends too.

Now onto my big point, Alastor spite-dadding. Most of us know that it was likely to be manipulative or to piss off Lucifer, but I do think there was some genuineness behind it. Alastor's expressions during his song change quite a bit. Every time he says anything along the lines of her being like a daughter to him, he glared at Lucifer. In one line, though, 'You're like the child that I wish that I had', he looked genuine until he said the word 'child', then finished the sentence looking genuine again, then continued to glare at Lucifer.

This leads me to believe that even thought he's likely VERY MUCH exaggerating their relationship to spite Lucifer, he does care for her, even if just a bit.

He interupted Lucifer's song and then proceeded to tell him to butt out (lol). He clearly didn't like him since the moment he walked in the door and was very much trying to piss him off, but in the end, I think he mostly just wants Charlie to be happy.

In the song at the end of the episode, Alastor is shown watching, and doesn't interrupt. He can see she's happy and her dad is actually trying, so he stays out of it, whereas the song at the beginning was entirely Lucifer trying to get rid of Al (until he interrupted).

I wouldn't say he looks necessarily happy, but he sees she's having a moment and puts his ego aside and doesn't butt in this time. He definitely cares enough to let her sing an entire song with her dad, who he hates. He put her feelings above his spite here, and I think that says a lot.

Another note; The pacing really hurts the judgment on this. It's not Viv's fault, as she was halfway through season 1, and was under the impression that there would only be 8 episodes, but it makes everything so much more difficult. There was a 5 MONTH time skip. 5 MONTHS. Literally ANYTHING could have happened. in his song, Al pointed out that he made her laugh with puns, seemed to have a history with being rather useful, and has likely had casual interactions with her, but because of how little time there was, we weren't able to see that. We couldn't see anything aside from plot point after plot point because Viv needed to get the story out, and there was no time for her to show some of the more casual interactions with the characters. Maybe Alastor DOES spend time with Charlie and care for her. Maybe he HASN'T. We'll never know because there wasn't enough time to show it, and that makes it so much harder to judge.

I will say, however, that Charlie is naive, but not to the level of seeing some guy who she spoke to maybe 10 times claim to be her father figure and agree with it. She 100% thought (whether he's lying or not), that Alastor cared for her like a dad would, and it made sense to her. That says something at the very least, I think.

What we really need is Alastor regretting his wording when Charlie calls him dad.

TLDR; Alastor cares, but dad might be a stretch. The pacing definitely made it hard to just.

#hazbin hotel #alastor #hazbin hotel alastor #hazbin hotel charlie #hazbin hotel lilith #lilith #charlie #please correct me if i got anything wrong #and I'm happy to discuss/debate #the best way to see if my theory is solid is if people try to poke holes in it #if you read all of this i love you #feathers rambling

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silviakundera · 1 year ago

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Lighter and Princess Episode 6

idk if this is on purpose or not by the stylists, but it struck me that he now looks more mainstream. Normal hair, more standard clothes. Is he tweaking his look into what he thinks is more her type? 🤔

Ren Di is completely my type as a university student. Don't leave me girl, I still need my eye candy 😭

can't believe I'm stuck here with class president, ML in his self-important brat era, and a version of the FL that I'm not even horny for 😭😭

Professor X uses a very suspect metaphor to convince FL that ML is not her mom. The true captain of this ship.

wow, that's the lamest bar fight I've encountered in a cdrama. and that's saying something.

but now ML is wooing FL by commenting on her code. That's... pretty much how I had Mark win over Eduardo in my most popular TSN fic. 🙈 So, valid.

"Miss Zhu, what's wrong with me?"/ Nothing. You're good. / (sexual tension you could cut with a knife) / "They're coming." / "Who is afraid, you or I?"

OKKKKKKKAY that was chemistry. And you obviously, obviously are so into each other. So just get together already. I suppose I've been there. They're drawing it out because they're enjoying the mutual chase.

ML totally deserves to be in a horrible bitchy mood after Random Female Extra spilled coffee on his computer (justified homicide tbh) and yet, my dude, there were a hundred more times you'd be justified to be a jerk to Annoying Class President. Like, the 1 (one) thing that's not legit is to shame her for not being as smart as your canon-certified genius self. There are so many other valid reasons she sucks.

As she immediately demonstrates. ugh, can't stand her.

Episode 7

sigh, my second hand embarrassment squick is not enjoying the bid subplot. They do suck at design but ML's methods are also very immature. Most rl professionals wouldn't do business again with a partner that pulled that bullshit on a bid, even if they won it. The narrative tries to excuse it but NO. This is the type of engineer who needs to be transferred to more independent tasks, who you quarantine from having to work with others before he death spirals your staff turn-over rate 😂

His boss boyfriend shtick is age appropriate dumb, so it's endearing. He's been creating reasons to allow her to stick with him for a long time now. And she's actively participating, while pretending to have no choice.

ML recovers his image in my eyes with his practicality at his project being swiped by the org higher in the hierarchy. Pick your battles. It's one thing between independent companies, but this is an internal fight they can't win. They don't have the political muscle in the uni. Unless the professor wants to go to battle for them, or if her mom has a connection. But even then, why spend your social capital that way? I'd just take the L and move on. [Edit: I'm on ep 10 and have to laugh because she DID leverage her connections to win the battle. well ok then, girl! 😂 ]

Episode 8

ha ha I'd also do absolute bare minimum (if that) on the stolen project, so I'm feeling FL at the start. Guys, this is where malicious compliance shines!

ML and Annoying Class President uniting to protect FL was not what I was expecting to start this episode.

"As for Li Xun's matter, I care." sigh. A fool, but a romantic one.

Evil Project Stealer is incompetent. That should be its own vengeance in a way. But sadly there are always those people who are incredibly skilled in managing up and so they coast forever.

Her minion is actually pathetic, though. Those grad school traps where you're blocked from finishing your program & get taken advantage of are very very real. It happens in North America too.

Cutely drunk FL is an overused cliche BUT I am enjoying the dynamic of Ren Di with the budding couple and most importantly, FL is indeed adorable smooshing her face into his neck. and then clutching his hand ❤

I applaud her crawling into his bed. But the fact that he wasn't in it reduces 2 stars.

A+ collapsing against his shoulder to sleep, though. awww he admitted she affects him.

#lighter and princess #cdrama #lp spoilers

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clusterduck28 · 2 years ago

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Now that I think about it, it would be kinda interesting to get a season about Retsuko's and Haida's quiet everyday life together where nothing batshit crazy happens. The show's slice-of-life aspect was always the strongest in my opinion and while the big season-long storylines were pretty compelling for the most part, I can't help but wonder what it would be like if the creators mostly stuck to their sitcom roots.

In other words, the slice-of-life-ness is the foundation of the show, the thing that keeps the whole structure standing, but the taller it grows, the less stable it becomes eventually reaching the point of diminishing returns. So what if we stripped everything down and just kept the foundation? What If, say, Aggretsuko wasn't a netflix production but a regular network tv thing created with less emphasis on overarching storylines and with more of an episodic format? Usually I find myself in the opposite camp of this discussion, preferring plot-driven shows over episodic ones but in this particular case I think there is a compelling argument to be made for a less plot-focused version of Aggretsuko. To me that change is one obvious way to leverage the strong aspects of the show over its weaker ones.

I have a bunch more to say on this but I'm too lazy to type all that out so I'm just gonna summerize it as this:

The most memorable part of S5 for me was the persimmons storyline. It was minor and inconsequential to the point that it could've been cut out entirely without affecting the main story BUT It was silly, down to earth, relatable, adorable even, dare I say it...iconic. Now what if a whole season was made up of multiple interconnected persimmons-type storylines? A whole metaphorical box of persimmons, if you will. Anyone got a spare box of fresh persimmons by any chance? Hit me up, I'll be all over that shit

#aggretsuko #I feel like the first seasons were meant to be kinda like that but then shit escalated #need to rewatch the whole thing some time soon to see the bigger picture

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unproduciblesmackdown · 9 months ago

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yeah yknow all of wde is Revealing in like okay so the way billions saw the entire potential of winston as a character (besides the overlapping "plot device for others" given to any/all roles at points) was defined & bounded as "a transgressor (should not be here) who IS here so that he can be a punching bag (for the power trip delight of other characters, but even more so for the power trip delight of viewers, since all characters apparently would be even more delighted by getting rid of him, but don't, for no reason internal to the show (it's for the delightful power trip pov voyeurism for viewers))"

but it also feels like a particular little bonus Telling element that in this episode, there's two separate & unrelated instances of "taylor says we're killing winston. sacker says not literally, for legal record. taylor says Maybe idc" and "rian says you're killing winston, not literally, & i don't want to Help unless you ask me twice, in which case, okay, idc" like. it's almost as though the show for all intents & purposes Is making the grand finale logical conclusion for "this punching bag shouldn't even be here!!!" be, in fact, to essentially let people kill him. first of all, obviously, it gets rid of him. second of all, it's Okay because billions absolutely has Us, team Selves, the Winners, versus Those guys, team Others, the Losers (as ever, with some gradation along the dichotomy)....the peak winners have motivations & feelings (wendy. wendy is the peak winner. lesser winners' motivations & feelings are determined by what preserves the priority & Fact of wendy's Good Intentions / Correctness) & the more of a loser a character is, the less interiority they have. always expecting the effort put into showing fleeting Reactions of winston being hurt / expressing this to get Any later payoff &/or at least be intended as inspiration for the audience to critically reflect on how other characters are acting towards him, but no, actually it was to voyeuristically relish the power to make your cringe annoying coworker suffer & withdraw / shut down as a result. got their ass

we have all these same characters like :o hand to face Morally Aghast that prince & scooter wouldn't write off killing an employee so that prince doesn't look bad for leveraging compounding superiority in most forms of power to use that person as he wanted, knowing it would hurt them, knowing his power constrains their autonomy, yknow, a context of abuse. (while billions thinks it can Preclude abuse(tm) so we're not Too shocked by going way too far out of its way to assure us physical force wasn't involved, don't worry about prince in fact precluding all employees' choice to show up at his house rager by making it a Work Requirement under false pretenses, it's masking the very power as everyone's mega boss he used to make people show up to be like see haha we're not talking work & it's fun pranks. & then billions is like yeah i guess if prince was like "i'm sorry you feel that way" he'd be in the clear but b/c he talked to an Inherent Winner, who just so happens to be much more vulnerable hegemonically, in a rude way as though they were an Inherent Loser who is much more vulnerable Deservedly? only now are we sure like oh he Could've been a little birthday boy who can't help being horny which means Needing to have sex with a woman & oh no the employees his kids' age are totally seducing him anyways what's he supposed to do? take responsibility for his actions? well he had the benefit of the doubt until he Confessed that he knows the victim in this scenario was not actually the only person capable of making choices & dealing with the consequences of their actions, & again, did so by suggesting they're Not as much of an inherent winner as we know they are! lord. like this said Nothing no wonder it was dropped into effective irrelevance immediately afterwards. will just hold a grudge forever it was written at all. oh & we're worried about Literal murder, so again just expecting a surface level kneejerk "well. that's bad. right" from the audience.) end parenthetical relevant segue into:

that b/c we're standing at the podium slowly trying out "uh we all agree....murder. is....bad. right" if we keep saying "not literally killing haha. not literally murder. maybe. but we're not that concerned, Caring re: winston might suggest he's too winnerly (a person) after all & start toppling things, so a) nobody cares too much about there being any particular line between winston's 'metaphorical' killing (death! it just Happened! taylor said we unalive whoever takes from us. nothing Unlike prince about this, nothing his enemies whose campaign against him is the entire point of the season & this series conclusion should have to confront or like spare a passing thought about or Not confront, where that has any relevance. see: no difference between wendy & prince? but we didn't see Her do physical violence At A Winner (didn't we enjoy the physical violence towards winston, a loser, in wde just as in times before? not like he might die, so! wahoo) & she's not talking about nukes being on the table for her presidency, so! like yeah this was truly the most thought provoking conflict between two characters that really Said Something. let's revisit our "reveal" that prince is bad b/c he talks down to a victim who, crucially, is too inherently epic to be a victim b/c that's a State Of Mind, not status based on experiences in the context of power dynamics, control, whose autonomy is restricted. in fact, this victim is so inherently epic as to, again, Also be the exact same & feel entitled to, for one, sex with whomever they want b/c they want it, as well as partners with no privacy from them, and oh yeah their good friend winston who is a victim of theirs based on his experiences (being hurt by them, repeatedly & deliberately) in a context of power dynamics (rian preferred & supported by all shared higher ups via their formal & informal power, winston autistic, last & actually least but not irrelevant, rian being aware winston likes her being another tool to leverage in Knowing he has a bonus layer of vulnerability here) & control & whose autonomy is restricted (winston's, amidst the general hostile work environment / bullying from all levels but also having the most regular/specific bully in rian, all higher ups hate him, all coworkers too (emphasized in wde. this Extra hates him!!), rian's the one who gets to tell him to shut up & go away after she's participating in / oft initiating a 1 on 1 exchange with him, jumping in to insult him, Be In Charge of the dynamic which always looks like successfully shutting him down / hurting him, while winston never has any such leverage, & his much more subdued / indirect efforts to get her to stop (e.g. even Showing he's been hurt, Withdrawing b/c he's being hurt) have no effect)

how many parentheses were open idek. wait i did an a) and not yet the b), classic. okay a) nobody Actually cares about "of course there's a fiery line b/w Not Killing For Real & Killing For Real :o" despite this being expressed so clearly 4 min ago by again basically everyone involved in wde, & b) i'm not sure what my original idea of (b) was but another thing is that even the people who "care" Do Not Care. rian's patronizing "it's wrong, but i value him at all" perspective towards winston where she's thinking of herself as his older sibling, for no reason but the show's perspective of infantilization of an autistic character as channeled through rian, next best winner after wendy perhaps b/c they didn't think of anything for rian to do but be the correct body available for a man's subplot ft. his sexual activity (with a woman. the only possibility for non losers. rip the one married gay guy) amidst the higher calling of: just channel Correctness at all times. scintillating stuff, totally doesn't make her not a character. the fact that this non character's trait involves "inevitably is absorbed into being an interchangeable bog standard axe capper totally at home amidst the other [no transcending] assholes" and "the entire time her main idiosyncrasy was abusing winston" but no criticism to be done there about Correctness seen in billions' characters! she was always Too Nice! b/c other sufficiently correct characters said so, & this was supported by the broader context of the material as a whole. rian learned So Much from taylor! b/c she said so! are you not convinced? check out: the blatant evasion of providing even One Specific Example! wendy did so much crucial copiloting for taylor even when they Thought they should fly solo! b/c they said so! It Makes Sense! why, remember the time wendy narced on what taylor confided in her to axe to enable axe's shitty treatment of them? then hurt them as much as she possibly could with legally confidential patient info b/c she Didn't succeed in enabling axe b/c taylor had known she would try? & then chastised them for reporting the hipaa violation even though it wasn't them & she violated hipaa? remember when wendy couldn't be fucked to tell axe cappers to maybe stop trying to do transphobic assaults targeting taylor & anyone else until an investor Could've seen signs of Antics & then she did so by making taylor & co be there while she said Both Sides? perhaps when taylor offered a new business partnership to wendy at 40% against their own gf's (& everyone else's) advice & wendy was like Okay Thanks, lost interest immediately, then gave her shares to axe despite taylor specifically asking her not to do that b/c of how vulnerable that made them & tmc to axe & his bullshit, from the malicious to 'i don't care but that doesn't mean i can't or won't crash this into the ground & you with it? it's an expression of my power how much i don't Have to care, And how much it hurts You despite this!'"

i'm sure you Know wendy was that crucial copilot all along. & i'm sure you Know winston is an insufferable nonperson who is The One Person With Responsibility For The Consequences Of His Actions every time he speaks & everyone around him goes sicko mode to force him to shut up now & forever. this is because!! you Know it because!!! he's so!!! he's always!!!! well anyways & did i mention that the degree to which I Don't Have To Care to dole out destructive effects b/c of my power over you & you having to care very much about said destructive effects is also the manifestation of the power context here? well. what's that have to do with winston. we aren't Really killing him for real, but we don't really care about that, someone else will say yeah the goal is his (metaphorical!) death but i care to just Not directly contribute, except, i do not care. like how i don't really care to Not treat this person with contempt & always only in ways in accordance with our Superior/Inferior Winner/Loser Person/Object dynamic, that is: doing what i want to him, the more hurtful = the more blatant the expression of power = the more rewarding! we're only killing him figuratively which isn't a sin okay. but we don't have to care & we Do have to enjoy the power trip as much as possible b/c this is the point of the episode, b/c this is billions' own logical conclusion in its idea of winston, the inferior mostly not a person who definitely shouldn't get to be here, & when that sure might extend to "in this plane of existence" like well don't worry anyways b/c we aren't just killing him metaphorically, but narratively ;) he's a fictional person who is just written out now, as he Must be, b/c he's a transgressor with mere "abilities" rather than having Inherent Value as an winner allistic True Person with those abilities. there are no consequences to winston being hurt b/c the only consequences written are [none] & it's just assumed everyone, of Team The Consummate Self vs these inferior Others whom We recognize in winston, Correctly enjoys [power trip: attack assault harass surveil violate the autist!] pov, the episode, the experience

but they did sure write in Twice an acknowledgment "so we're basically killing him? god fucking finally?" kind of as though it was Unavoidable in this escalation of like ooh teehee what is Everything We Want To Do To Winston? well it's clear he's considered wrong to exist, yeah. & by "he's considered wrong" i also mean that billions means "the actions of his Betters to 'punish' his existence, i.e. use him however they want, since that's all that can validate the sense of Superiority that just might be the core of one's identity, which can sure include enacting whatever seeming control over the situation, like ability to inflict harm/destruction & otherwise be suppressing ways for the inferior party to act autonomously. oh what's that, there's no Hard Line between this & "kill them if you want to, b/c you can?" when it's like well, Some People bring it upon themselves in being inferior & certainly in being inferior & Transgressing the "norms" of their place in the hierarchy (we were all simply Glad winston was leaving, glad to show up & throw things at him at his way out & take this last chance to punish his existence! but then he disrespected our property rights :( which needs to be answered by a show of force against Him, the person. for our image. aaand wags's ego!!! some strangers said they didn't think he was epic & Powerful :( restoring reputation of epic powerful man means killing the autistic guy) rather than an Actual universally applied rule of sputtering indignation whoa whoa of Course literal murder is ridiculous to truly consider. i mean, how could any of you sickos. just b/c an employer could look bad? are you kidding? smh! but we're still cool :)

it's kind of like a quicker version of billions trying to Just Say It Correctly walk through its attempt to invoke like "men in business/political power taking advantage of various aspects of that power to extract sex from women navigating their kingdom on their whim? i mean. that's bad, right" despite this being irreconciliable with billions' belief that if you are a winner you do in fact Deserve to have sex b/c you want it. you Are entitled to it. you see, in this fictional world where we just write that happening, sexual partners do keep cropping up voluntarily for winners! of Course everyone's down! with the counterpart of losers being unfuckable, with Incorrect sexualities that, like said losers as "people," Transgress by existing, & are treated as obtrusive, disgusting if not threatening, deviant if not pathological. winston is treated worse for "he was nice to rian after everyone knowing about her cringe comp sexploits w/like the worst person possible. b/c he's been nice to her as coworker & friend all along WRONG b/c he LIKES her i.e. ew ew ew ew god he's horny" than prince is treated for being the one who took advantage of her b/c hey he's only human, he's horny sometimes, cmon. it's not His fault he knowingly uses his superior power to ensure he gets off using much more Vulnerable people's bodies so they'll try to survive that power difference by keeping quiet & protecting his image XD it IS winston's fault that well just look at him. :/ well you just Know he has [imagine any trait you'd put in a Cringe Comp of Loser things! apply it yeah it's canon nobody cares, lol] you just Know he doesn't have a Good Dick, b/c there are Good Bodies and god gives them to Superior people, we're Telling you he doesn't, as is Deserved by him, like the show put On Screen Factual Text to virtually pants him & him alone as a joke in the burn rate episode. like the show keeps having people physically assault him & sexually harass him but haha they wouldn't literally fuck him so it's not actually that! they wouldn't literally kill him so it's Fun & Epic!! but i mean winston Is someone who like, has to Learn things about sex. who else has had to? women? queer people? disabled people? that's right, Inferiors, billions doesn't have to say, b/c billions can just present this romp through indulging the desire to punish autistic existence. wendy experiences the consequences of her actions & feels bad, & while billions doesn't suggest she Shouldn't, it also handily tempers it by being like "she's back at it again 5 min later though. & forever after that. to her inevitable ultimate reward b/c we decided from the start she's our heart & our hero b/c she's the Elite 0.01% in her interiority :) she Deserves it" & "wow, often taylor, don't you feel bad for taking action so that wendy experiences a consequence of her hurting you, like even expressing that she did as much? there will be other, more lasting consequences for you too still. you Should be at the center of the s7 Kill Prince (not literally. we don't even have to clarify! we would have no contempt if we did!) subplot but sorry :) you were not Born in this series as Best Person, wendy. stay out of her way"

anyways & it's like, yknow, same as how we could get "wow The Cost Of Business Moves, The Cost Of Power Therein, The Cost Of Emotional Hangups Behind It All...." like montage, break out a song, just have the shot of someone like damn :/ whatever whatever, over similar conflicts & breakups so long as winners were involved (winston's material here being very much like lauren's, oh you're not loyal enough (and wendy just betrayed me & to my face expressed she doesn't give a shit & will do it b/c she feels like it & i'm lashing out with that Extra motivation behind it)? sabotaged! lauren comes back like "well we can be business friendly right?" wrong, again for no apparent reason taylor cares so much about Image that ep & prince cares so much about the principle of power relations over anything else! he might be fine though. except both instances lauren gets a mini monologue to criticize / respond to taylor on her way out (even when Likewise business sabotaged in the very end too) while winston gets One frustrated remark to them that is deflected like yeah well up yours rword, and tbt the time he Did get to successfully mini monologue criticize them, mafee got to yell at him over him being a loser as everyone else watches & approves, lauren later Personally agrees ft. pranking taylor by pretending to break up with them & they still compliment her & approve, taylor only comes around between eps with no credit to winston's points. & of course, lauren gets to date taylor winner 2 winner, while the idea winston could cozy up in kompenso & make a move b/c Of Course? laughable &/or repulsive, comedy or horror At him. oh yeah honorary mention to how it was only laughable &/or repulsive he had a crush on rian but they do make sure to throw it in his face this episode, b/c just like the rest of it, winston isn't a person in his world, he is a primarily External Phenomenon & our reactions to it are what define reality. ha ha tell him his crush helped destroy him b/c nobody cares, why? b/c this is all about the power trip baby, it's Yours by proxy!!!) like again billions Kind Of realizes some problems here but a) i mean haha you get it. you get why it's nbd. & b) again hey just say it. have a character correctly go "pffft i mean that was like, quote unquote Mean lmfao but soooo fun epic i love you you're truly The Winner" just have characters be like "yeah time for him to be dead. figuratively i guess. we don't care about that. we care about Our Journey making it happen" like yes truly you reconciled it. no way would it have actually been completely set up by precedent & validated by relevance to Themes, Character Arcs, did i mention the most important Themes including stated expectations that the viewer question & criticize people like axe, gasp, in season 1, whoa, Literally killing someone???? but hurting your local autist as much as you want is fun & games & we do like that haha god fuck them so hard, figuratively! b/c lmfao gross they objectively deserve to never have sex & Transgress to want to, (WE'RE only human. them? not so much) much less have it (these aberrations will realize their sad mistake. or just get sick of dating someone with this insufferable personality! (laundry list of ways ableist ppl describe autistic ppl w/o knowing they're autistic. winston's annoying! obnoxious! a dick! etc whatever. i mean you get it. you objectively agree. he Is. don't you see, can't you just tell. We know how They are))

anyways can you imagine if everyone who is doing the same shit prince does was confronted with "despite how the episode is written, winston didn't just get here today, could expect an Unfriendly business relationship no matter what (or just be pissed off about the one he had as an employee the whole time, even in tmc's peak independent heyday. do it pettily) & be ready to counter with a bunch of actually relevant dirt on people & their business enterprises, which they have to at least think about & like decide why they're Beyond that, decide how they have to change to Become beyond it, or, yknow, Not be beyond it! themes besides that billions makes sure to execute "win for violent ableism simmering within you. and probably without, this is in fact bog standard 'every day treating winston like this b/c he dared exist' shit in reaction to someone being autistic" more than it makes sure to execute "why These characters have meaningful motivation against These characters, as the main plot of the whole series finale season, kind of pertinent to peak important themes!!" like ah fuck that. if you're not favored by the gods for your winnerness no matter you're actually doing, then yeah, billions has some problems! which it is Not willing to tackle, thanks. didn't you all enjoy seeing the Finale of finally, finally, getting to make winston stop existing? not literally, in that world, but eh not b/c anyone Cares or Wants to. for the legal record. and when, in fiction, he does just stop existing in the story, last minute reappearances to merely be Used once more barely withstanding. and all the characters forget about him, including the Weirdos who Cared Too Much, tuk who has to be punished out of actual friendliness towards winston, rian, who is the most hurtful towards him but if she went Out Of Her Way to hurt winston, Or to actually help him, soooo for no reason yeah sure she'll actually help kill him if you ask & have no followup questions for him or anyone else much less being the vessel for criticism over it, like she had to be for lauren's sake, winner 2 winner. billions would be in shambles otherwise. and that's the power of an autistic character. like taylor & their power as nonbinary character: if you don't stop holding them back by the scruff of their neck & placing others immutably above them in the billions hierarchy, it all falls apart. it would've also been Very Easy for: winston agrees to do taylor a favor, this feuding & dragging winston back into line is a stunt that gets this algorithm situated at mpc with no questions asked in the face of the satisfaction of a successful power trip, they just ask winston to sabotage things later. no changes needed. we just dare to mitigate the contempt for & ever exacerbated gulf between any winners & winston, who we Love to hate. & there'd have to be Reasoning in dialing it back. which i guess was exhausted with s3's "oh well winston is chastened. he was in the wrong for bucking the potential employers' power trip, taylor lashing out at him for lashing out at that? welcome to the double standards he doesn't like & is wrong about. b/c he's obnoxious." & the reasoning might just unveil some issues & inconsistencies in Other ideas employed & assumed around here. like the ones behind "oh haha we hate winston. we love to kill him. on sight" & ramping that up forever, maybe

anyways winston & taylor & tayston & riawin & rian (nonbinary if you're not a coward. an actual character if you're not a coward. someone who is actually against bullying, for reasons, instead of "when it's done to her. bullying's #1 fan when it's her #1 hobby b/c winston's inferior & b/c She Can" if you're not [billions can't Argue a "bullying is bad??" stance b/c it's not if it's winston]) all too much for billions. a firm anti bullying stance too much for billions. anti compulsory sexuality stance too much for billions. thinking about power dynamics, thinking about "maybe reality isn't an Objective dichotomous hierarchy of winners & losers where abuse just needs to happen by the right people against the right people," too much to actually assume a kneejerk response against "well let's just kill him. brought it upon himself." (we do not consider killing prince for a moment lmao. even as we make clear we Need to take him out b/c of all the people he Would consider killing, amidst his politics that some superiors deserve to reign over some inferiors lives). rimming is too much for billions lmao. jerking off. everyone being people. autism. transgenderism. it's shit over there

#winston billions #winston & taylor's autistic handshake trans resonance parallels intertwinings alliances understandings appreciations etc....#autism acceptance day/week/month. it sure is #the punctuation here is just gestures okay lmao so many only opened never closed brackets parentheses quotation marks....#it's called creating possibilities #same with sentences; paragraphs just kind of transforming into other threads along the way lol #tayston #riawin #didn't quite mention winstuk or benston. sorry fellas. winston and his Impossible To Be Truly Cishet self latching onto the nonbinarity....

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ivy-miranda-2390 · 4 years ago

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In Defense of Anakin Skywalker (and Hayden Christensen)

I grew up with Star Wars, my whole family loves Star Wars. I was 8 when I saw Episode I and afterwards, I was completely immersed in the Star Wars universe. Ewan McGregor's Obi-Wan Kenobi was probably my first fictional boyfriend and I'm unashamedly still in love with him too.

Episode II: The Attack of the Clones came out when I was 11 and so naturally I was excited to see the continuation of the Star Wars prequel universe. However, nothing could have prepared me for the absolute utter gorgeousness of Canadian actor, Hayden Christensen who was cast to play the adolescent Anakin Skywalker.

My memories of first seeing Episode II are fond because I got to see the movies with my older siblings while on vacation in Myrtle Beach. It was probably my first experience of being accepted among my older adult brothers and sisters or the feeling of 'grownupness' as I like to call it.

So Attack of the Clones has always been an special film to me because I saw it at a time when I was no longer being viewed as a child, but as a growing teenager.

It's also why I've always been rather defensive of the film too. While the film was titled Attack of the Clones, it may as well have been re-titled, "Attack of Anakin Skywalker (and subsequently, Hayden Christensen)". For over 20 years, there has been an absolute and indescribable hatred of Anakin Skywalker and many people blamed both Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen's supposed poor acting as the result of a badly done Anakin.

And to be honest even though I had a massive crush on Hayden Christensen and was hardly a movie critic at the time, I felt that at times that Anakin could have been better acted. However, I was young and didn't care about the script or the acting. Yet, for years I constantly defended, Attack of the Clones, Anakin Skywalker and Hayden Christensen. Partly due to nostalgia, partly to being a teenage girl and most of all partly to do with understanding the character of Anakin as being misunderstood, misinterpreted and not being treated as an adult by the elders in his life.

Did Anakin have problems? Yes.

Were most of these problems his fault? No.

Did Anakin ever try to fix these problems and better himself? Everyday of his life.

He had nothing, but he gave everything

The prequels were written as a timeline of a boy's journey from goodness into darkness. Anakin's life is a story arch of sacrifice and redemption. Life has not always been good to Anakin. He was born a slave with no father. He was raised in the strong love of wonderful mother Shmi Skywalker. While Shmi may have been scared and confused as to how she conceived a child without a man, she raised her son in love and simple contentment.

Chances are Anakin and his mother probably faced terrible abuse in their time as slaves and more than once, Anakin may have been separated from Shmi as leverage for greedy slave owners. Although a slave, Anakin was never a victim. He may have been physically owned, but his heart and mind were free. He was his own person, always thinking outside of the box, building, creating, questioning everything and everyone. Not to mention a little wild and rather reckless.

Even as a child Anakin was a little strange to people. For a slave to have such a hopeful and positive attitude may have seemed bizarre to outsiders, but that was just the norm for him. Shmi once remarked that her son knew nothing of greed. For a boy raised with nothing, all he had were his talents as an inventor and growing pilot. And he used his talents for other people. He built C-3PO to help his mom, he entered the podrace to help Qui-Gon Jinn, he always gave without any expectation of being thanked.

A spirit that refused to surrender

After Anakin is freed and sent to train as a Jedi, that wild spirit was still intact. Much to his by-the-book master's dismay. Anakin didn't have the opportunity to grow up in the strict Jedi Temple that was built on order, rules and tradition. As a child, Anakin was use to being himself and not fitting into anyone's mold. His original dream was to be a pilot, not a Jedi. No one asked him if he wanted to be a Jedi, no one asked him if he wanted to be trained by Obi-Wan Kenobi.

While Anakin may have been grateful for both opportunities presented to him, overtime he may have seen this new life as not to different from the one he left. A life run by others. Telling him what to do, where to go, how to dress, how to behave. He survived as a slave because he dared to dream and imagine and refused to be defined by others.

Now he's thrown into a culture where individuality is looked down upon. He lived through the stifling Jedi order because he still held onto those qualities. He was going to be himself on his terms. He would nod his head and say yes when he needed to, but off the clock he would live by his own rules. Something that Obi-Wan and the Jedi order could not understand. And Anakin is getting frustrated by this.

So now we get to Attack of the Clones (and the Attack of Hayden Christensen). Critics came down hard on both Anakin and Hayden. Constantly complaining about Anakin's constant complaining, his tantrums, broodiness and being a crybaby about everything. Critics blamed the disaster of Anakin Skywalker on the terrible miscasting of Hayden Christensen. The only redeeming quality Hayden Christensen had that saved him was the fact he was so easy to look at.

For years, fans were desperate to know who Anakin Skywalker was. And so the pressure to deliver a good character that could measure up to the icon of Darth Vader may have seemed insurmountable. And so when people got this confused, overemotional 19 year old, who has no experience in love or sex, but is madly in love with a beautiful young women; and who wants to be respected in a highly established culture, without losing himself or conforming, well people were just disappointed. The disappointment can be explained in one of Anakin's most famous lines.

"HE'S HOLDING ME BACK!"

He, being George Lucas who was holding back Hayden's actual talent to create a good three dimensional character. Plus his bad script writing. Poor Hayden was just made to read lines on a page and somehow make this sad character somebody that people can root for. Unfortunately fans and critics ate him alive. It's only in recent years that people have begun to realize that they were blaming the wrong person. And by blaming Hayden, they were completely misunderstanding Anakin as a character.

His most beautiful gift, his most fatal flaw

Of all of Anakin's gifts, his ability to love deeply was probably his most profound and his most dangerous. The Jedi Temple forbade romantic attachments to others and for good reason. When you become attached to or love someone beyond the boundaries of platonic friendship you become afraid of losing them. The end of my review for the Star Wars prequels sums it up the best:

In The Phantom Menace, Yoda warns Anakin about the dangers of being afraid. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. Anakin's most beautiful attribute is also his most fatal flaw. His ability to love deeply. Yet, if you love someone you will always live in fear of losing them. Anakin was created by darkness, but raised in the light of his mother's love. His own love was made manifest by Padme and then by their unborn child/children. However, Love no matter how strong can be weakened and even be destroyed by the evil of fear. If the prequels taught anything about life, it taught how fear (even in its smallest form) can be be our most detrimental enemy. Living alone in fear and not seeking help is a signing of our own death warrants. What might have happened if Anakin had gone to Obi-Wan and seek his help? Would things have been different? The prequels were not meant to tell a happy story. They were written as a timeline of a boy's journey from goodness into darkness. No, they don't have the silliness or humor of the Originals, because there is nothing humorous about someone's self-destruction. Yet, the story of Anakin Skywalker's transformation had to be told in a way that was real and heartbreaking. To take Darth Vader and make him a human who could feel and understand and love could be an insurmountable task. Yet, you only need to watch his death scene at the end of Return of The Jedi to see that the humane part of Anakin Skywalker had always been there. The prequels were made to be built on that final scene of redemption and human love. A husband's love to save his wife became a father's love that could overcome darkness and hate. An extreme love that defied fear and held on to hope. That was the love of Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin could be a bratty and immature young adult. However, to only base a character by his few annoying flaws is overlooking the bigger and better picture. Anakin was an outsider his whole life and yet that never seemed to bother him. He never cared about fitting in. He was content being himself and he refused to let Obi-Wan or the Jedi Order or even Padme change him. He held onto who he was for as long as he was able to. Then the tragedy of losing his wife changed that. The indomitable spirit wasn't broken, it was destroyed. Anakin re-entered a life of slavery for over 20 years.

And he was ultimately freed by one person. An orphan who once had nothing but a talent as an inventor and dreams of being a pilot. A young Jedi with an unbreakable spirit that refused to surrender to evil or fear or pain or loss. A son who loved his father so deeply that he would fight to the death to free Anakin Skywalker forever.

#star wars #anakin skywalker #hayden christensen

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diloph · 5 years ago

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Diloph, I don't mean to bring SU discourse to your blog, and I haven't actually watched in a long time, but I was wondering what you think of how the Diamonds have been handled. I'm not against evil people being redeemed, but everyone just being a-ok with them feels off. They're the reason Pink was such a horrible person, they mutilated their own people into forced fusions, and implied genocide. Meanwhile Jasper had to go through hell, even though she was just following the diamonds orders.

It's... a difficult question to answer, really.

I don't think they're irredeemable, though before Pink's “death” (and her subsequent, literal death), it might have proven impossible to find a chink in their self-absorbed way of thinking. I've seen far worse villains being offered redemption with angst and sympathy about them not taking it or what they could be if they did, as well as worse villains actually taking the redemption and making it stick.

Part of me thinks that people struggle to reconcile the idea of the Diamonds being redeemed because of who they are. The Diamonds are the absolute highest authority when it comes to Gem society and all the things that Homeworld has done. Every move they've made that's hurt somebody, unless it was based in individual biases, accidents or coincidence and so on, has come from orders from the Diamonds, or Gems looking to please the Diamonds by fulfilling a function.

They aren't soldiers, or henchmen or superweapons given sentience, they're the top dogs. So far as we're aware, there's nobody above them. They are accountable for everything.

I kinda look back at what Pearl said in an earlier episode, that humans like to rationalise that all the evils of the worlds can be taken to some higher place, some ne'er do-well who can be confronted and defeated, allowing us to live in a place where everything is good forever, or at least until the next one chances their arm.

The Diamonds, particularly White, are those figureheads.

While the specifics are blurry (how many worlds and lifeforms, let alone sentient lifeforms for example) and we don't know how far reaching the consequences are in full, it's clear to me that the Diamonds have done some pretty terrible things. Just their treatment of Pink and their own subjects alone is plenty evidence for them to be marked as evil. In turn, their evil acts inspired or instructed others to do evil acts, with all the consequences that followed.

Enter Steven.

Steven Universe is a show based in optimism and hope; acknowledging that everybody makes mistakes and can be a good person, if they're willing to put the effort in. However, I don't think it pulls any punches when it comes to the fact that it acknowledges that evil and cruelty etcetera are things to be confronted and fought against.

In that sense, the Diamonds are certainly given a lot of leeway. They've perpetuated a system that has caused rampant destruction and suffering, even amongst their own subjects, even amongst themselves and the show believes that they can be redeemed. How? How can they possibly ever account for all the suffering they've caused?

I think the answer to that lies in the fact that Steven, as Pink's son, has the leverage over the Diamonds that Pink never had. He has given them hope after they spent millennia in mourning, hatred and stagnation. Even the mighty White Diamond, arguably the most powerful being in the universe, will bend over backwards to please Steven, even in the slightest way, just if it keeps him around, just if he can fill the void that Pink left behind.

That in mind, we're faced with another question. What happens when Steven dies? 100 years after that? 1000? 10000? Even longer than that? What's to stop them from shrugging their shoulders and just starting up the colonies again?

The answer, is of course, we don't know. We don't know if the Diamonds are simply biding their time, smiling through their teeth, until Steven carks it and then it's back to razing civilisations they go, but given the general tone of the series, I doubt that Steven Universe is as cynical as that.

It's certainly not realistic. People do that all the time. But equally people do monstrous things, realise that they have done monstrous things and then try to account for them. Whether they can or not is subjective, but equally it's just as unrealistic to believe that absolutely nobody would ever do the right thing because they've done the wrong thing, or have remorse and regret over their actions.

Steven Universe is an escapist fantasy series about a magical boy and his magical rock mothers and their cool adventures. It's not to say that the issues can't be addressed ever, but people are far, far too cynical about it; I think that we're meant to it, to believe that such a world could come to pass if we tried hard enough. Wouldn't it be great if we could get through to everybody with a smile, a song and a speech? That people who have done great misdeeds can make up for them?

Ultimately, the Diamonds have made the first step. They want to interact with Steven and as a result, they are capable of feeling empathy (though whether they lacked it before or had simply repressed it or were even simply ignorant to the suffering of “lesser” beings because of how they were made) and the test will come as life goes on. We may never see that effort in full, hell, Steven may never see that in his lifetime, but he hopes that they can change.

It's not without evidence. Blue speaks at length about it before White Diamond assumes direct control of her. White gives up when Pink Steven knocks her down and unites with Flesh Steven to make good ol' Regular Steven, beyond throwing a tantrum for a bit. They go to Earth and help to uncorrupt some of the many Gems that they're responsible for harming. By the movie, even their Pearls, who are meant to be sycophantic slaves, programmed for that even, have enough freedom of speech to snort and sneer at their former god-empress.

A lot of willpower has went into them making changes, prompted by Steven or not and things are looking bright so far. If they really wanted to, the Diamonds could answer to absolutely nobody. For the longest time, they believed that they were all-powerful, immortal and invulnerable. Prior to the war on Earth, it was believed that Diamonds couldn't be shattered. Now that we know the circumstances behind it, for all we know, they can't be shattered at all.

Even making them retreat into their Gem is hard enough; Yellow couldn't poof Blue (though, again, whether she was trying to and not capable remains to be seen) and Pink needed to be “shattered” with a specialised weapon to poof her.

Oh, sure, people are quick to rally around the Breaking Point, but they forget that it was never used against anybody, let alone the Diamonds. We don't even know how practical it would've been to use in battle, after all, the only person using it and knew how it worked intimately was defeated by a child with a sword while he was trying to run away.

Whether the Breaking Point or indeed anything could kill a Diamond, so far, the only weapon that has even came close to inhibiting a Diamond's Gem was Spinel's Rejuvenator, but I'd argue that's a moot point. Even if the Diamonds could be fought, defeated and contained through struggle or the efforts of some Super Fusion, it might not be possible for them to account for their crimes in a way that deprives them of their lives.

Incarceration or bubbling might work, but they could always be freed. How long do bubbles last, how long would it be until a mistake frees one of them or loyalists free these immortal and unkillable beings?

Conventional methods of “dealing” with the Diamonds are entirely speculative and until Rebecca introduces something like “Diamond Smasher” missile platforms, invented by Peridot and Bismuth collaborating, I would hazard that Steven's method of influencing these Gem matriarchs is probably the best in the long run.

The effort he's going to isn't to destroy the Diamonds, it's to save them and in turn, the people they could hurt if they were allowed to continue on. The people that they have hurt, to allow them to recover. To make them into better people that will feel guilt and remorse for their actions, try to account for them by protecting all life they come across for the rest of time, to the fullest of their abilities. If they are immortal then they require an immortal solution.

It doesn't mean that those they hurt (and are alive and are still capable of thought, because man the things that people can do to others in real life are fucked up enough, let alone in magic sci-fi land) are going to forgive them. Why should they? They are the victims, they have been hurt. Turning the Diamonds into better people is to stymie more people getting hurt, to account for that damage they caused. It may never be enough, it can never be enough, but it's better than nothing and it's certainly better than the opposite.

Who knows how the Diamond's saga will end? Actually, no, stupid question; Rebecca Sugar, probably, but as for the rest of us, we're in the dark. Will the Diamonds step down as leaders, even as figureheads, of Homeworld? Will they leave their species in order to make a fresh start in some new quadrant of the universe where they can help others and those that they've hurt don't have to look at them? Will they depart unannounced one day and sit on a ship, gathering dust, for all eternity? Would they even try to kill themselves if the guilt got too strong?

To sum it up, I don't know. I want to believe the best in people, that everybody can account for their actions to some degree because I'm a bit of an optimist, but I realise that there are some things that can't be forgiven or absolved or made up for or whatever. But, maybe, in that universe, they can. Maybe they can heal the Cluster? Maybe they can help every single shard? Rebuild every ruined life? Its nature as a lighter shade of a complicated universe means that there is potential and there is hope to do so.

And now that we're in Steven Universe Future, it's clear that the Diamonds aren't being absolved of all sin. Pearl assumes that White Diamond was the one behind Volleyball's (no, sorry, can't do it) Pink Pearl's damage and she's furious. When she realises it was Pink, she's shocked and disturbed, but is still supportive of her older counterpart. She doesn't hesitate to comfort her or when Steven snaps, defend Pink Pearl against her own son. She recognises that the person she'd loved did a terribly fucked up thing, intentional or not and moves to comfort the victim.

Steven finds their attentions exhaustive in the movie, though that is probably down to spending so much time with them and investing so much effort in getting them to change, leading him to leave them abruptly despite their pleas to stay (and resume his post so to speak, but probably just as much for the company). When they appear at the end, Steven, who has had a rough day, doesn't particularly sweet-talk them into going so much as flat out telling White that he wasn't crazy about them living on Earth, even as White tries the dramatic grandma act.

It's probably why I'm a lot more kind on the ending of the film having Spinel leave with the Diamonds. They both need somebody to help them with their problems and they sort of fill the niche that they each want from the other, while acknowledging that it isn't going to be as it was before and that they aren't the person who they are replacing. They will try.

(And for the record, if things go to hell, Spinel can take care of herself. In fact, I'd worry more about the Diamonds pissing off her than the other way around, she's a smart cookie.)

Honestly, it's the layers of complexity that Steven Universe has that makes a simple question like the one posited kinda difficult to answer. Referring back to that, Jasper for example, why does it seem like she's having to work super hard for a redemption? The answer is that she's pretty complex too.

From what I've read and seen about Jasper, her biggest failing is that she's Gem Vegeta meant to be this perfect super soldier, indestructible and unbeatable. She was built to fight and relishes battle, loves any opportunity to prove that. She takes pride in her abilities because she was literally the best type of gem to do them and was born as a flawless being in Gem eyes. She fulfils her function and she's equipped to do so with maximum efficiency.

Naturally, to quote the saying, pride goeth before the fall. Jasper's hangup is that she does not cope with failure well; she acknowledges that it happens, but constantly rails against it. New strategies, new tactics... new excuses for her failure. New people to blame.

Jasper's biggest failing is that she believes that, despite being the perfect Quartz soldier, she was also born a failure. The colony failed and their leader, a Diamond, was destroyed by the rebels that she went toe-to-toe with and could not beat. She failed in protecting the being that she was most loyal to... and that failure haunts her.

When it came time to bail and nuke Earth from orbit, Jasper was left without a chance to avenge Pink, settle the score and find closure. No matter what she did and was that she failed Pink Diamond and everything else from thereon in was a failure as a result.

But failure was something that imperfect, flawed Gems did. Failure was something that you'd expect from some know-it-all Peridot, getting too big for her boots. Not her. Not the perfect Quartz. The perfect Quartz won any and every battle it was deployed in, shattered every enemy it faced. And, wasn't she the perfect Quartz? Didn't Homeworld call her a war hero? Didn't Yellow Diamond herself take her into her court while all the others of her Kindergarten get relegated to some dusty relic in space?

In a way, Jasper fell into her own legend. She had an idealised version of herself that she knew, subconsciously, that she could never truly be. This self-hatred drove out all of her positive traits, save for determination and reinforced her negative ones. It overshadowed her when Steven tried to help her, because accepting the help would make her weak and she despised being weak.

It's also the character niche that she fills too. Jasper was the first enemy that the Crystal Gems faced that didn't appear sympathetic on the surface. She was more directly involved in the plot than the Diamonds were for a long time, they were distant figures who had orchestrated the war. Now, here was an antagonist that worked on a more personal level by targeting “Rose” and “her” fellows directly.

Jasper despised weakness and when faced with the Crystal Gems in person, all she saw was weakness. A random Pearl that got it into her head that she was free to do whatever she liked while Jasper and everybody else followed orders. Some fusion between two Gems of completely different classes, outright heretical. This... malformed, tiny Quartz that came from the same place as her, could have been a functioning soldier like Jasper or worse, Jasper like her.

Even then she could shrug that off. They were clearly some rag-tag band of survivors from Homeworld's attack, they just got lucky. Have Peridot annihilate them with the ship and be done with it. But hey, at least Rose Quartz is dead, even if she didn't get the satisfaction of shattering her. Killing the last of the rebels was still closure, of a sort.

But as events unfolded, to Jasper, it seemed like Rose Quartz wasn't dead at all. Her greatest enemy, Homeworld's Most Wanted, Rose Quartz... was hiding behind her soldiers, in the body of and mimicking the simpering attitude of a human child.

Rose who she respected the tactics of. Rose who found a way to kill a perfect being. Now a weakling. These were the people that defeated Homeworld. Shattered a Diamond, her Diamond. These were the people that defeated her. But if they were so weak, wouldn't that make her even weaker?

No. That was impossible. She would prove it by taking them down, making them account for their crimes.

So, Jasper became obsessed with taking down the Crystal Gems by any means necessary. Anything she could justify to prove that she was the strongest, that she could think on her feet, that she was successful and everything that she was made to be.

Had you told the Jasper in “The Return” that she would be out in the Earth wilderness, trying to put together a motley crew of corrupted Gems in “Earthlings”, she'd have laughed you out of the room or killed you for even implying she could fall so low, fail so hard. But she could reason with herself that if her enemy was going to “cheat”, why shouldn't she?

Fusion went from a “Cheap tactic” to a viable weapon; Malachite gave her all the power in the world, if she could only use it. Rose Quartz had her misfit army, so Jasper forged her own, giving these lost individuals purpose again, just like she did. If it were her in the same situation, she would be grateful... except she wouldn't be in that situation because she was perfect.

Except she wasn't perfect. Jasper kept failing. In fact, that's all she ever seemed to do on the planet of her birth: fail. So, her loathing grew. She couldn't fail, so she would just try something else. Whatever it took.

And all those failings kept coming. Starting off by going against the orders to check on the Cluster in favour of carting Rose back to civilisation despite protests only got her ship destroyed and both her and Peridot marooned on a hostile planet. Garnet matched her and defeated her. Lapis trapped her in a fusion. Alexandrite defeated Malachite, Lapis refused her, she lost against Stevonnie despite having “backup” and trouncing Amethyst. Then, against Smoky Quartz, she met her downfall by fusing with one of the corrupted Gems, infecting her as well.

Jasper's hell was that most of it was a result of her failure to back down. She might not have deserved to be held by Lapis in Malachite, but she didn't exactly have many other people to blame for forming the massive Fusion when her sole objective was to murder the Crystal Gems. When she got control of Malachite, she went straight to murder. When they were separated, she went to Lapis so that she could get the power back that eliminated her weakness so that she could murder. She built an army to lead against the Crystal Gems because she wanted to murder them. She poofed Amethyst with the intent to shatter her. She fused with a corrupted monster because she wanted to murder Smoky Quartz.

Jasper had a spectacular talent of getting herself into messes because she can't let go of hatred and the need to cause harm. Granted, that is as a result of her attempt to heal her own wounds, prove to herself that she isn't a failure, but she's still trying to kill our protagonists and a lot of the time, laughing as she does it.

When, finally, Jasper is at her lowest, corrupting and abandoned by her feral army of monsters, she rejects Steven's help. Why should she accept it when she sees the truth of it all; that Rose Quartz manipulates the weak and abandoned Gems, giving them purpose again. Makes them all into bodies to put between her and the forces of Homeworld under the guise of love and caring.

To accept help is weak. She refuses to believe that she is weak, but at the same time, knows that she is. Jasper has struggled with that dichotomy for all of her existence and it kills her. She's trapped in her own logic. If she accepts help, then she proves herself to be a weakling. But if she fights against it, then that proves that she is strong. Strong enough not to break down or corrupt.

Ultimately, this attitude gets the character put on hiatus, poofed and bubbled. When we see her cured in Rose's Fountain at the end of the original series' run, she still hasn't learned the lesson. She has a moment of confusion at where she is, then she sees Steven. Crash Helmet activated, Jasper moves in to fight... then spots Yellow Diamond glancing at her out of the side of her eye. Sees Blue and even the mighty White Diamond sitting there in the water.

All around them, Gems she knew, Gems she didn't, Homeworld and Crystal Gems all talking and laughing and hugging and healing from this corruption. Even the Crystal Gem that she'd went out of her way to rile up the most, Amethyst, gently reassures her as the truth hits her.

Jasper was made for fighting and the fighting is over. It shakes her a lot. Suddenly, everything she's hated herself for is moot. She's left without a purpose.

When we see her in Future, time has passed and it's clear she's still struggling with the hatred, because all she has known through most of her existence was that hatred. It is a part of her. She's beginning to recover slowly, make a change, but she's not there yet.

In the time that's passed, we know things have changed a lot. Given how dismissive Amethyst is towards the concept of Jasper joining Little Homeschool, any attempt to connect with her fellow Quartz has been unsuccessful at best. Jasper is still turning down help.

When Steven wanders over, she begrudgingly explains that she's listless. The fighting is over, so all she has is to prepare for the next war, if there even is one. She still sees herself as something to be proud of, something to be held above others, so she removes herself from the other Gems and lives in solitude. Any organic life on her territory is eradicated with no mercy, even if it's a frustrating inconvenience.

And as Steven isn't Pink, she doesn't have to treat him like a Diamond, even if the others do (out of misunderstanding or genuine gratitude for saving them or simply making him synonymous with a Diamond). I get the view that she finds him insufferable or at the very least annoying, because now she's getting the “peace and love” speech in person every so often and can't really do anything about it.

After she bemoans that nobody is willing to fight her anymore, Steven calls her out on the fact that she has done this to herself. She keeps refusing help because she's too mired in her ways, too proud to let herself be “weak” again. Hence why she's living in a cave in the woods, only marginally better than when she was trying to recruit corrupted Gems to take down Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl.

Of course, Jasper blows this off and ignores him until Steven agrees to do the one thing she wants, just so he can get through to her. He'll fight her. It's like switch is flicked. Jasper expresses genuine happiness and anticipation. She can do what she's good at again! She can relive the glory days for this one moment! Prove to herself that she wasn't weak for losing in a fair fight for once!

And she loses. The fight is fair, it's really one on one as she'd requested, but she loses. That's because she slips into her old habits of dissecting what she sees as weakness and once again, it costs her the battle.

To her, Steven always had backup to take her down, so even now, with all his powers, he's still no match for the orange Gem. However, when Steven gets mad and goes pink he completely flattens her.

But the biggest difference in all of this is that even though she doesn't win the fight, like she believed she might have, Jasper succeeds in getting what she wanted and getting something else out of Steven. She wanted a good fight and got one. Even though he beats her, he's showing physical strength now, anger and annoyance... he's just as flawed as everybody else is. He challenged her to a fair fight and she lost that fair fight because he was the stronger opponent. No “tricks”, just brawling. How it was meant to work.

She even scolds him for apologising for knocking her around because she got to live again. When Steven asks Jasper to tutor him, to show him how to harness his aggressive feelings, good... gooooood, young Skywalker new powers, she does what the earlier Jasper would never do. She gets on his level and gently lets him down.

That's a huge step. She recognises that she can respect Steven, even slightly. Sure, she might not be into what he's selling most of the time, but she realised that there is some common ground for the two, just enough to engage with him for a moment. She's progressing.

So, in conclusion, what's the difference between their arcs? The Diamonds committed terrible crimes, but unlike Jasper, they seem to be taking steps to change and become better people by recognising that they've done wrong. When called out on how they treated Pink and the other Gems, they turned within the (admittedly hour long) episode. Blue Diamond tried to reason with Yellow, then both of them with White and finally, White. They had the will to change because they realised their actions had consequences and will, hopefully, be able to account in some way for the things they have done.

Jasper, on the other hand, doesn't have such grave crimes to account for, but for her, everything was much more personal, much more cerebral. She refused to give in because not only was she determined, but she was actively trying to thwart her own self-hatred by succeeding. Jasper didn't see what she did was wrong, I'm still unsure if she does now, but she's finally started on the path to healing now because she's finally found something of worth from a Crystal Gem, even if said Crystal Gem isn't in the healthiest place right now.

Speaking of, her remarks about Steven were pretty on point as we see later in Future. Steven is worried about everybody not needing him any more and he lashes out as a result. Maybe part or indeed a large chunk of Jasper's redemption will be seeing the same self-loathing she experienced grow in Steven and empathising with him and trying to help him, given that the seeds of respect were beginning to form between them. And hey, given her ability to diagnose psychological issues in a heartbeat, she might have a career in that later on, as unlikely as it sounds. Little Homeschool is always recruiting.

The fact is that while I believe that both the Diamonds and Jasper have a long way to go when it comes to redemption, either to account for the magnitude of their crimes for the former or to finally accept help from others, putting one's own demons to rest in the case of the latter, they've started off the whole process with Steven's help. It may be slow and difficult for them, but they have a chance to make themselves and by extension, their whole world, better.

And isn't that what Steven Universe is about?

#Steven Universe #this took a lot longer than I thought it would #surprisingly Jasper's part took longer to articulate than the Diamonds'#probably because I've had a chance to speak about them before with friends

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dovesdanceatdusk · 7 years ago

Note

Are angels's powers not working in the AU? Is that why Castiel couldn't resurrect Sam or even smite the nest? I'm wracking my brain trying to remember if that's ever been mentioned but I don't remember it being mentioned ever.

I think this answer depends on a few factors.

Gabriel does not have enough angel grace to smite or resurrect. Having him admit so reinforces the dangerous stakes the group were up against in 13x21.

Angels in Apocalypse World (AW) are another story. They wear bulletproof vests and use weapons. However, in 13x18, right before Dean and Ketch found out about AW!Charlie, they witnessed the angels smiting others in a twisted form of justice in the name of AW!Michael. The AW angels could also fly in 13x18. Here is a link to the clip: [ https://youtu.be/x6tMM-w0ylw?t=34s ]. It should start at 0:34 seconds (if not, start at 0:34).

Therefore, no. Angels in AW have full power there. It is implied AW angels can be a little extra when it comes to killing humanity though; for example, in the same episode, they wanted to chop AW!Charlie’s head off while she was tied to a post. Couldn’t they just smite her quickly like the other people, as seen in the clip above? They wanted to make an example out of her.

More findings, musings, and some rambling below the break; TL;DR towards the end.

The answer to your second question is trickier because we don’t know why Castiel couldn’t resurrect Sam or smite the nest. Not the Watsonian reason anyway. In 13x06, Castiel faced the same problem with resurrection. Castiel couldn’t heal or resurrect the security guard after Jack accidentally killed the man. The why has not been revealed yet, but it most likely ties into why he couldn’t resurrect Sam in 13x21.

As far as smiting is concerned … plot device? Evidence of Castiel smiting in season thirteen is found in 13x12. When Castiel and Lucifer were fighting off the demons back in the asylum/topside hell. Smiting happened; I think I even called that out when that episode aired (”Cas could smite but he couldn’t heal???”). Here’s a clip of that scene: [ https://youtu.be/kY4xKKA-imk?t=48s ]. Smiting should start a little after 0:48 seconds (if not, start at 0:48 and go from there).

So, Castiel can smite, but he did not smite in 13x21. Unless I missed something. Lack of smiting in 13x21 has nothing to do with the laws of AW because the angels there could smite too. So it had to have been plot convenience.

For Sam to die and be resurrected by Lucifer, to raise the stakes and shift Lucifer onto the playing field the way 13x21 happened, the plot needed to inconvenience two possible, powerful, go-to solutions (Gabriel and Castiel). Gabriel with his low grace; Castiel with the ‘I can’t resurrect’ mystery. Bonus: Plot had Castiel conveniently forget that all he had to do was smite his way through, or at least level the playing field.

Add Floyd(?) and Maggie into the plot. Along with watching Castiel, Gabriel, and Sam, Dean had to also make sure Floyd and Maggie were okay (and vice versa: along with watching Castiel, Gabriel, and Dean, Sam had to make sure Floyd and Maggie were okay). Sam and Dean had each other’s backs, but similar to Red Meat, Floyd and Maggie’s safety–Maggie’s since Floyd died too–was a priority just as much as it was getting to Dayton to find Mary and Jack. Watching the brothers over the years, I thought for a moment Dean would go after Sam and leave Floyd and Maggie, well Maggie, to Castiel and Gabriel. However, I also could believe one of the brothers would focus on getting the civilians out safely first and then do what they can to save the other brother (based on what I saw in Red Meat).*

I agree with how odd that scene was. Castiel and Dean were on the other side of the room, so if Castiel wanted to smite the horde of vampires that ambushed Sam, Maggie, and Floyd, it would have taken him a minute or two to reach them. I do not agree that the group did not have time. Sam, Dean, Castiel, and Gabriel left their world with the thought Lucifer was draining grace into the bowl near the rift while Rowena kept watch. To them, at that moment, they had plenty of time–at least longer than a day anyway. If a time lapse between the gruesome scene in the tunnel and the walk towards the camp in Dayton was nonexistent, Sam died near the camp. A counter-thought: it is possible a time lapse did happen, and I missed it. Another counter-thought: although the group had more than a day’s time through the rift, they did not know how long they had before it closed.**

I can also see, in a way, how Castiel and Dean did not go after Sam. The vampires tore out Sam’s artery. By the time they reached him, if they ran after him and fought off the horde, he would have been dead. He was gone, regardless (and I hate typing that, I really do). What I did not find believable was how quickly Castiel wrote Sam off as a lost cause. Dean could have been in shock, although, I did read a lot of viewer reactions calling Dean’s behavior out of character, so ymmv. But ‘Nothing is worth losing you,’ Castiel confirming Sam’s death quickly instead of doing what he could to stop the horde from dragging Sam away? Wow. Smiting the closer vampires so Dean could have a chance to retrieve Sam’s body and get the heck out of there could have been more believable, but rationally Sam had to die for the events in 13x21, 13x22, and 13x23 to play out, *sighs*, the way they were written (see third asterisked note). Out of character behavior for the plot to move forward.

I have not found evidence, reliable evidence, Castiel healed anyone this season. He could smite and he could scramble a mind enough for a person to become brain dead (Donatello). But he can’t resurrect or heal–at least to my knowledge. If you know a point in season thirteen where Castiel did heal at one point this season, I would love to change this paragraph with an edit or author’s note. Along with Gabriel’s low grace levels, Castiel not being able to heal anyone amplifies the risks Sam and Dean were going through to reunite with Mary and Jack.

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ETA: Someone pointed out Castiel did attempt to heal Gabriel, but he did say angels don’t heal archangels. So, it is implied Castiel can heal, but he did not heal Sam in 13x21. If he had a chance to, he probably would have; I wrote above about Sam bleeding out before Castiel or Dean could get to him. Now that I think about it, Castiel can still heal. Scoobynatural. He healed Shaggy’s arm. *facepalms* I was really in the zone, wasn’t I?

I did not check the notes yet, other than reading a DM, so if you have pointed out examples of Castiel healing, thank you. I will not add them here, but I will direct anyone who wants specifics to read the comments in the notes.

[[Ramble: I would have been happier if the vampire horde scene went down like this: Dean and Castiel are moving boulders aside to get through the tunnel. Sam, Maggie, Gabriel, and Floyd are near Dean and Castiel, keeping a wary eye on the opposite side of the area. They hear growls and other sounds, but they do not investigate; they know what it is, know what is coming. They prepare for the onslaught from there.

Or:

Gabriel and Castiel are moving boulders aside to get through the tunnel. Sam and Dean are near Maggie and Floyd, but the group stay together. They prepare for the onslaught from there.

Or:

Castiel and Sam stay near Maggie and Floyd. Dean and Gabriel are moving boulders aside to get through the tunnel. Castiel (or Gabriel), with fine tuned angel hearing, hear the horde approach. Sam and Castiel move Maggie and Floyd closer to Dean and Gabriel. Prepared to smite and dismember, Sam and Castiel wait for the onslaught from there. The group is still together on the other side near the boulders. ALTERNATIVE: Floyd offers to help Castiel and Dean pulls back to check in on Sam, Gabriel, and Maggie. Dean hears noises and suggests the group pull back a little. The rest of the group move closer to the side with the boulders. They prepare for the onslaught from there.

I don’t know, something, anything, but what I saw on Thursday. I know it had to go down like that for the events in 13x22 to align with 13x21; for the transition between 13x21 and 13x22 to make sense***. Sam was the leverage needed for Lucifer to bond with Jack (or so Lucifer thinks). Sam’s death had to be that push over the edge for Dean to do that reckless move everyone is speculating he will do in the season finale (that is if Dean is the one to make that move). It may also add more wariness towards Castiel’s reliability (if, based on the events in the tunnel, it is weird enough for Dean, Sam, and others in the group to be more wary towards him). That last thought might not even come into play; looks like the group are going to have their hands full in 13x22 as it is.]]

TL;DR: anon, the answers to your questions: No, fully functional angels are in the Apocalypse World. No, but the reason may lie outside of 13x21. Castiel can smite but did not do so in 13x21; Castiel cannot fly, resurrect or, as far as I know, heal. ETA: Castiel can heal but did not do so in 13x21. Castiel can mind scramble, he still has his celestial knowledge, and it is possible he still has angel strength. None of the other angels from SPN world, the world we have known for thirteen seasons, sensed anything amiss with Castiel yet, but Sam and Dean (mainly Dean) have grown suspicious of Castiel. Not enough to act based on their suspicions, keep him at arm’s length, or turn away his help.

________________

NOTES:

* Then again, we have 13x05 (suicide to free souls), 13x09 (held Kaia at gunpoint), and 13x20 (face off with Loki), in season examples of how far Dean would go to do what is necessary. 13x05 and 13x20 also show a glimpse to how Dean does not care about his life in comparison to saving others or protecting Sam. So a part of me was expecting Dean to go after Sam despite Castiel saying it was too late.

** No one, Sam, Dean, Gabriel, Castiel, or Rowena, knew how long they had in AW. So maybe they did not have time. But how would Castiel know? As far as I am concerned, he did not. He should not have known if there are implications he did know they did not have time. Because if he did, why did Gabriel not know? Gabriel was low on grace but he was still an archangel.

The alternative trek through the mountains to get to Dayton would have been a gamble if Sam, Dean, Castiel, and Gabriel did not know how much time they had. Would have been nice though. I mean, Sam would have been alive throughout the entire episode and he would not have to face Lucifer, his abuser and torture for hundreds (maybe thousands) of years, alone. But if the events played out in the Men of Letters Bunker the same way, Lucifer would have been to the camp before Sam, Dean, Gabriel and Castiel. That would have been a nasty pickle to deal with.

*** (*shudders* BuckLeming wrote 13x22. Dabb wrote 13x23. What I mean by ‘wrote’ is being at the helm of the episode; I know other writers, crew, and the powers that be (tptb) contributed and pitched in. As it stands, and the evident pile of more hits than misses, I still shudder at what’s to come. The only comfort I have is Jared hinting at something worth seeing in the season finale. So, there is that.)

#discussion #spn critical #castiel critical #(just in case)#13x21 #hopes this answers your question anon #research #response #musings #speculation #long post #Anonymous #post has been edited; thank you #spn s.13

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ganymedesclock · 7 years ago

Note

Since you've gone in depth in the past as to your reads of both Lotor and Zarkon's personalities and characteristics and how they differ from one another in both strategy and general outlook, I'm curious to hear what you think some of their big similarities might be? Lotor consistently feels the need to insist that he's not his father, and yet Haggar (who would arguably know the most about the two) said they're similar. Thoughts?

I would really hesitate to say that Haggar claiming Lotor is like Zarkon is actual evidence of their similarity.

You have to understand Haggar is a very manipulative person.

Remember this? Virtually all of Haggar’s tactics during s1e11 are not about using her incredible magical might to subdue or destroy Shiro immediately, or even quickly. There is nothing efficient about her fighting style.

What Haggar is doing here is an extensive, morbid psychological attack. She confronts Shiro with an image of himself, in prisoner’s rags, trying to kill him. She gets him at her mercy, several times, and uses it to pressure him to further stew in his discomfort and fear. She circles, she taunts. None of this indirection is actually necessary. We see Haggar immobilize Allura- a capable frontline fighter just like Shiro- effortlessly. If Haggar wanted to just overpower Shiro and be done with it, she could.

But there’s also what Haggar says to Shiro.

The way Haggar talks about it, you would think that she gave Shiro a gift out of the goodness of her heart and he spurned her benevolence and went on to hurt her.

That is not what happened. Shiro was her prisoner. She tortured him and experimented on him to the point of hacking off one of his limbs. And this is not Haggar being oblivious, either. Again- look at the expression on her face when she stabs Shiro.

Look at her expression- wide eyes, toothy grin. She loves this. This scene, how it’s framed, what it looks like- this doesn’t feel like a battle. Again- Haggar has been holding back and toying with him. She’s been doing unnecessary things to scare Shiro, make him feel powerless and isolated.

Haggar willfully and consciously is framing what happened between her and Shiro as his fault. She talks about it as if she did nothing wrong, and that he’s the one creating a problem here. This is a textbook abuse tactic.

So what does this have to do with Lotor?

I think Haggar’s relationship to Lotor is a lot like her relationship to Shiro.

Look at the specific context around which Haggar says that Lotor is like Zarkon. This talk happened because Haggar assigned Raht, a full-grown, physically powerful and armed (he has a weaponized prosthetic) military commander, to stalk Lotor and report on his behavior.

Haggar is violating Lotor’s privacy and boundaries, without any reason whatsoever to be concerned or suspicious of him. She is telling- again, a powerful, dangerous older man- to stalk her adolescent son and tell her where he’s going.

Lotor captures Raht, kills him, and in a manner far more aggressive than he normally is, confronts Haggar about it.

And, just like in Shiro’s confrontation, Haggar’s immediate response is to talk about it in a way that sounds like it’s Lotor’s fault. Without addressing or even acknowledging that she’s making people follow Lotor, the first thing out of her mouth boils down to “you aren’t doing what you’re supposed to.”

The clear implication is that Lotor brought this on himself. That people dogging his tracks, not knowing when he is or is not being observed, and not being able to go where he wants to, are just natural consequences for not obeying mommy dearest.

Or: According to Haggar, Lotor’s privacy and autonomy is entirely contingent on whether or not he’s obedient. If he isn’t, he loses these things.

Haggar is using the same tactics she has used on her literal prisoners.

Lotor goes into this conversation practically snarling because this is what he’s used to. His hackles are already up because he anticipates her abuse before she even starts talking. And we see this color a lot of their interactions. In s4e3, Haggar greets Lotor neutrally and calmly, and asks that he follow her.

Lotor balks as soon as he sees her, and stares long and hard after her retreating back before he actually makes any move to follow. This is the behavior of someone who is scared, and went on high alert. Hell- the fact that he accurately predicted exactly what Zarkon wanted with him, but still didn’t want to go anywhere near his parents without backup should tell us something.

So- let’s get back to s3e5.

(First, with as much as there is to compare about Haggar’s treatment of Shiro vs. Haggar’s treatment of Lotor, I don’t think it’s a coincidence we see this first telling interaction between Lotor and one of his parents in the episode where Shiro is desperate, repeatedly hurt, and trying to crawl his way from the empire after they did something harmful to him)

“I know many ideas float through your head, just like your father.”

But everything Haggar is saying and suggesting here doesn’t back this up.

Zarkon doesn’t really get a lot of ideas. He’s pretty traditionalist- the person really scheming up new ways to do things is Haggar, and Zarkon’s more her patron than he is her peer scientifically. All he really cares about is results, and he’s content to repeatedly sledgehammer things until he gets his way.

And that’s the other thing: Haggar is comparing Lotor to Zarkon, at a point where she is functionally telling him to shut up and be a good little cog in the machine. She wants him to abandon what he wants, what he’s working on, and obediently maintain Zarkon’s status quo until Zarkon returns to the throne and Lotor can be put right back in his box where he belongs.

Haggar repeatedly changes tactics around Zarkon to carefully work around him because she knows, full well, that once Zarkon wants something he will never let it go. Zarkon hates being contradicted, challenged or anything like that.

Haggar saying Lotor is like Zarkon is facetious, because she claims they’re both thoughtful people when they aren’t, and she compares Lotor to Zarkon while demanding that Lotor behave like a subordinate- when Zarkon, given that same demand, would sooner kill the person asking it of him than even consider the idea.

It’s a shutdown. And I’d guess, it’s probably Haggar deliberately making Lotor uncomfortable so he won’t hold his ground in this argument. Because Lotor hates Zarkon, he hates being compared to Zarkon. He explodes immediately and then recoils and leaves. Which is probably just about what Haggar wanted him to do. She’s said her piece, so, now she wants him to shoo.

So I suppose at a glance you could say that Zarkon and Lotor are alike in that they’re both incredibly driven, but, even then, I would argue their contexts make that irreconcilable.

Because Zarkon’s drive boils down to entitlement. He is obscenely, egregiously entitled. Zarkon thinks the universe, the fabric of reality itself, owes him. That there is a massive debt that everything and everyone is constantly paying off to him. He has more than what he needs, he has everything he wants except Voltron, but he demands more, more, more, because none of it is never as much as what he thinks he deserves. If it exists, it is his, and he wants to take it.

Lotor’s drive is pretty simply because if he doesn’t succeed he’s going to die. Again, his parents are leveraging tactics against him similar to those used on Shiro- who Haggar considered a slave and an experiment. Lotor is viewed as a possession by these people, and if they want him at all, they want him to live in a little glass box and never do anything they don’t demand of him.

So yeah- both Zarkon and Lotor are very aggressive and focused on getting what they want. But Zarkon’s ambitions are grandiose to a hubristic degree.

Lotor’s ambitions are basically his own freedom and safety. It’s getting away from his abusers- and if he acts on a grandiose scale, it is because the sheer scope of Zarkon’s power forces him into a position where the only way Zarkon will ever hear him saying “no” is if Lotor becomes, or commands, a monster even Zarkon is afraid of.

He has to be bigger, he has to be tougher, he has to become something Zarkon can’t destroy because that’s the only way he’s ever going to survive.

Even when we see Lotor and Zarkon put in comparable situations, their responses just further emphasize the divide. Consider s3e7 vs. s4e3. Lotor and Zarkon, both have their teams, led by their “right hand”, turn on them.

Zarkon responded by denying any and all culpability, massacring his team, burning Altea to the ground and plunging the universe into ten thousand years of darkness.

Lotor, when hearing his team was literally going to turn him over to his abusers, responded that he understood, told them to do what they needed to, and then fled the situation in a manner where he could’ve probably injured Acxa and Ezor, and absolutely could’ve killed Zethrid, but didn’t fire a single shot after them. The only person he attacked, Narti, he perceived as endangering all of them, not just himself, and had no idea why, which is why it clearly unsettled him as much as he did- he didn’t offer any explanation because he had no explanation for what had just happened.

Someone like Zarkon would never have been at a loss for that. It would’ve been, and it was- very easy for him to immediately put the blame for the loss of Daibazaal on Alfor- when he himself was the one who left the rift open, destabilizing the planet and endangering everyone, and then forcing it even wider, until the only way it could be closed was by shattering the planet itself.

Lotor is silent on the matter of Narti, and when talking to Zethrid about the rest of the team leaving him, his dialogue tells us that he sees this as the generals just doing what they have to.

TL;DR:

Haggar is an unreliable narrator on purpose when talking to certain people. She said that to Lotor most likely because she knew it would hurt him to hear it.

I talk a lot about Lotor and Zarkon’s differences because their similarities as I see them are ultimately fairly superficial and driven by radically different undercurrents. They exist, but only to further characterize how massively different they are.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Lotor #Haggar #Zarkon #readmore #abuse /#Anonymous

116 notes · View notes

izzyovercoffee · 7 years ago

Note

The thing is, I never read Legends, so I always saw the warrior mandalorians as imperialist. Both of the houses we see (Kryze and Viszla) are headed by white, blonde families and Clan Wren are the descendants of a people who were conquered, converted to Mandalorian ideals, and placed in a subordinate position under Viszla. Bo Katan, a traditionalist, rejects Maul as unfit to rule because he's an alien. And this was all decided before the reboot with Legends so....I'm confused.

Confusion is totally understandable!

For the record, because this got so long, it has to go under a cut. I apologize for the length, and if my tone is off it’s not intentional. I’m, essentially, info-dumping, because there’s a lot of extraneous information that applies to the arcs I’m gonna try to address under the cut. I’m also reading your ask as if you didn’t see Satine’s New Mandalorians as imperialist, bc that seems to be what you’re implying in the ask? If I’m off, I apologize in advance.

Also even though I say “you” in this reply, I don’t mean you specifically, I’m meaning to address a general “you,” not you you.

The short answer is that even if you are not familiar with Legends material, reading only one of the two houses as imperialist kind of misses all of the subtext conveyed purely by the information presented in the arcs themselves, and oversimplifies imperialism. It is easy to miss, though, and imperialism itself is a complex subject that isn’t discussed as well as it should be.

But, ultimately, even if we were to ignore Legends and only look at canon material, we still have what boils down to this:

The New Mandalorians, an all white faction of mandalorians:

exiled people of a differing cultural philosophy

has a society not achievable through means that don’t involve steps towards ethnic cleansing

declared pre-established nonwhite mandalorians as not mandalorian, thereby stripping any claim to that cultural identity, in the same vein as calling them the equivalent of savage

were part of a regime change backed by an outside stronger, larger military force invested in that regime change

All of these things, together, paint House Kryze and the New Mandalorians as Imperialist. Regardless of Legends material, regardless of how anyone feels about Death Watch.

And even though the writing does not really carry the kind of awareness that definitely points to a lesson on imperialism, if we entertain that as the conclusion to all of the arcs … it would have been more effective to make Sundari diverse in comparison to Death Watch, and have that diversity leverage Death Watch’s war crimes directly, rather than make Sundari the accidental genocidal Imperialist power by poor design decision.

Furthermore, as much as I would rather not bring it up as it’s always used as a straw man argument against the existence of racism, the fact is that Imperialism is not the sole purview of white people. Chinese Imperialism exists. Japanese Imperialism exists. Both are as effective analogues for Imperialism, and both are closer to actual Mandalorian history than the space!Nazi aesthetic the writers went with—not just for obvious reasons, but because the space!Nazi aesthetic implicates an altogether different type of imperialism.

And it’s a type that completely distracts from and undermines the ultimate goals of their storytelling in those arcs.

Moving on to that last point, though … that scene where Bo-Katan rejected Maul, can be read differently—as in, she did not reject him because he was an alien so much as she rejected Maul because he wasn’t mandalorian. Or it could be both of those things, but it’s an important distinction to make—it’s important to not forget all of the things Bo-Katan, specifically, was fighting for.

Bo-Katan fought to save the culture Satine was trying to eradicate — and in terms of cultural genocide, if Maul was to take up his position as leader of mandalorians, that is just trading one type of cultural genocide for another.

It is, under no circumstance, the same as framing it as a simple rejection of Maul because he’s an alien. Him being an alien literally does not matter in that moment, tradition or not, because Maul had no stake in it—because it’s not his culture on the precipice of extinction. To treat that scene like it was … well, was to miss the point.

The very long longer answer goes under the cut.

To warn you about what’s under the cut, as it’s, again, very, very long. I’m basically going into a detailed explanation about:

Legends & why/how Legends applies to the Mandalore arcs

a longer diatribe on imperialism: —To Legends or Not to Legends —Why does Legends help the New Mandalorians?

how & why the New Mandalorians are Imperialist: —A Diatribe on Imperialism

and their platform is transparent and hypocritical w/o the additional context of Legends to soften the edges: —Satine Kryze and the New Mandalorian’s Transparently Hypocritical Political Platform, and more on Jango Fett

a longer explanation on Bo-Katan and Maul: —Xenophobia versus Continued Cultural Genocide

the actual events that are contextually relevant to the Mandalore arcs: —Legends: The Aftermath of the Mandalorian Wars—Legends: The Mandalorian Excision

what I mean by the Fetts were established as mandalorian before the Mandalore arcs aired: —Why the decanonization of the Fetts matters, in the context of the story and canon —An aside: Separating “Boba Fett” from “Mandalorian” after 30+ years

As I’ve said, it’s a lot. Mostly meant to be used as a reference, I guess. I apologize if I repeat myself too much. I wrote this in chunks and threw it together, so if it’s messy or even more confusing, that’s 100% on me.

[[ EDIT:: it has since come to my attention that George Lucas was the mind behind the retcon, stated once in a special featurette for TCW DVD set for Season 2. Him being known and expected to be (hopefuly for obvious reasons) incredibly racist makes it all a little less surprising, but no less fucked up. That the writers still stick with it now, after he’s out, is disappointing, and I maintain that that tweet by Hidalgo was unnecessary. Nothing else about the argument changes except on who to blame and criticize more than the others. ]]

To Legends or Not to Legends

The Imperialism implied in the show was based off of a larger context of conquer and destroy that exists in Legends, and at the time of airing took for granted that the viewer would have at least some knowledge of that mandalorian history, but would still work overall if the viewer did not know those details.

So, even if you are not familiar with Legends the show at the time took for granted at least superficial understanding of the KOTOR series and The Mandalorian Wars that occurred 4000 years prior to the events of the show. The Mandalore Arcs make multiple references to a history of galactic-scale war and conquest, but nothing was ever established even close to threatening outside of the events leading to KOTOR i & ii. The writers, themselves, also indicated familiarity and desire to canonize the KOTOR events (writing Revan, for example, into the show and having them voiced until, ultimately, Revan was cut from that episode. It doesn’t make KOTOR canon, but what it does do is build a case and point to the inspirations of where the writers were coming from).

The Expanded Universe was still referenced even if it was obliquely—and under that knowledge, Expanded Universe / Legends material therefore matters when it comes to talking about the context of the Mandalore arcs.

I mean, obviously it wasn’t required knowledge, as anyone can watch the episodes and follow for the most part, and at this point because most of those things are now relegated to a time period that, most likely, will not be addressed or brought up in canon material from this point forward, it’s hard to gauge if it will ever “matter.”

But, regardless, the intent to reference the old republic can still be seen in there, and the Mandalore arcs make more sense, overall, politically and otherwise, when the Mandalorian Wars were / are taken into account as compared to how the arcs stand without that background.

At the time, while Legends wasn’t rebooted yet, only the highest levels of canon really “mattered,” and those were movies and TV. They both did and did not matter, because the showrunners ultimately had the final say of what they wanted to present. They could draw from the expanded universe material, even extrapolate on what was set up as a foundation—or they could do as they ultimately did and annihilate what was previously established.

To reiterate, the movies, and the shows, had the power to erase pre-established expanded universe canon, as it was canon at the time, just a “lower level” of canon. It wasn’t a clear cut line like it is today, where Legends is Legends and doesn’t “exist” in the star wars universe. Expanded Universe was canon-enough right up until the movies and the shows decided otherwise. Expanded Universe was canon right up until the show decided to outright erase some parts and rewrite it.

And that’s ultimately what happened to the mandalorians.

A Diatribe on Imperialism

So, to come back to the topic of Imperialism, Imperialism absolutely was the topic of discussion. But, again, because of the design decisions, even though they framed the New Mandalorians as the radical faction that came as a direct counterpoint to Death Watch and Mandalore’s history of war and conquest, the visual notes and hints they ultimately settled on implied a wholly different background that really … can’t conceivably be what they intended from the beginning.

Both Houses were Imperialists, and both of them carry a violent history.

I also want to reiterate: Imperialism is not the sole purview of white people. Other races, other Empires, have also expanded their respective territories, have also conquered huge territories, have forced assimilation of local peoples into their respective Empires. The Mongolians. The Chinese. The Khmer Empire. The Vikings. The Romans. The Japanese. And so on, and so forth.

Presenting imperialism = white is a very narrow, limited view of imperialism, and inaccurate (Chinese Imperialism is a real thing, Japanese Imperialism is a real thing. These things really happen today, and affect real people, and so and so forth).

Not only white Europeans colonized huge chunks of the world, but generally white Europeans did so to such a degree that world is still fucking wrecked by it even to today. (But that doesn’t make the survivors of other imperialist conquests any less significant. It doesn’t make ethnic cleansing and intra-racial imperialism and genocide any less heinous, but I digress.)

Beyond that, though, while Imperialism and its effects absolutely is an important discussion to be had, by oversimplifying imperialist = white, and “warrior white” = imperialist, we fail to recognize the other types of imperialism in effect today (and in the star wars universe) that absolutely should be acknowledged and discussed.

Contrary to popular belief, there are other visual analogues that exist outside of centering white supremacy, even when that centering is meant to be in criticism of it.

Further, Imperialism isn’t only perpetuated through physical violence—and, in fact, in today’s world it’s more effectively perpetuated through other means, through policy. Satine Kryze’s reign is, yet again, another example of how a superficially nonviolent society can still wield imperialism through policy and not be demonized because, technically, they’re not violent like those other guys, aka Death Watch.

It’s easy to defend something terrible when the only other comparison is a group of extremists already demonized by history that are marginally more obviously terrible.

But, again, if the racism inherent in the episodes is missed, then it’s very easy to miss all of the unfortunate implications tied in with it. It’s also then easy to miss how the whitewashing comes in. And, ultimately, it’s easy to miss how that decision distracts from and completely undermines the point of those arcs.

Satine Kryze and the New Mandalorian’s Transparently Hypocritical Political Platform, and more on Jango Fett

When the writers chose space!Germany, space!Nazis, they implicated Satine Kryze and the New Mandalorians in a specific type of imperialism, and a specific type of genocide. And even though I cannot make any claims as to fully know what they intended to indicate, from what can be determined watching the arcs, the intention was not to paint Satine Kryze and the New Mandalorians as having that history of genocide. She was supposed to be a symbol against those war crimes, not a symbol whose power stems from it.

To reiterate, it was not one they wanted to implicate her and their faction in—it was one they wanted to implicate only Death Watch in, alone. But because of all the things I’ve pointed out in previous posts and above, there’s no other way to interpret the visual presentation of Sundari as anything but carrying an implied violently racist society. Because you cannot achieve a population that looks like that without eugenics, without genocide.

And if you still don’t see it now, after myself and other people have explained how and why Sundari is the perfect example of what that looks like … well.

Coming back to the white = imperialism analogue, that’s where, I think, the “well, of course they’re all white / blond / blue-eyed!” analogue falls short. Because the actual comparison of space!Germans? Space!Nazis? It just doesn’t work. It does not fit. The quick and easy analogue of Imperialism that the writers chose to go with, does not match what the apparent goals of either the longer Legends-inclusive bloody history nor the Mandalore arcs were trying to convey.

And as I’ve said before: we, the viewers, were supposed to sympathize with Satine Kryze and the New Mandalorians, but for anyone even remotely familiar with the concept of eugenics, anyone who knows what the extreme conclusion of a racist society looks like, looks at the New Mandalorians and Sundari and sees them as the defacto success story of space!Nazis.

To say “it’s not that deep” is to, ultimately, pick and choose when and where one cares about visual details in a visual medium—when and where one cares about how information and story is illustrated through setting—and that’s really not an effective way to learn how to improve storytelling in a visual medium, nor learn why these interpretations arise and how to avoid (or fix!) them in the future.

On top of that, it ultimately takes away from the story. It takes away from the arc. It undermines anything Satine and the New Mandalorians could have stood for, because instead of being a Pacifist society out of a willingness to change and be better than what their history says they are, they’re a Pacifist society that had a successful implementation of a eugenics and cultural genocide program and that’s how they maintain their stability. And that’s monstrous.

It made Satine into a monster, by sheer accident and oversight.

When they made that design decision, they unfortunately implicated all of the white New Mandalorians as complicit in a specific type of genocide, one that can only be associated with space!Nazis, because that was the visual shortcut they decided on using.

We were supposed to see the monsters only in Death Watch, not in the New Mandalorians, and not in Satine. The intent was to implicate Death Watch as all massively violent criminals and murderers, not make them victims to stand on ground equally bad. Not to inadvertently make them sympathetic.

It was just not reflective of the context they were pulling from at the time, nor was it effective for the story they wanted to convey. In no way did it make Satine Kryze sympathetic, because how could it?

Their writing choice had the exact opposite effect of their intended goal.

Why the decanonization of the Fetts matters, in the context of the story and canon

Moving on from that, I, generally, would couch against oversimplifying Satine’s (and the New Mandalorian’s) position: what they were doing, in no uncertain terms, was taking a culture that was, before the Mandalore Arcs, established as a nonwhite culture and declaring them savages that needed to be colonized for their own good. Almost literally exactly how the Fetts were decanonized within the show.

That is a type of Imperialism. That, in itself, is a type of colonization that has already happened in our history in the real world, worldwide, to countless native societies and people.

Whether Filoni and Hidalgo George Lucas and the other writers liked it or not, the Fetts were still mandalorian as of the movies’ airings, and his retcon delivered through the show didn’t come until years later. So that retcon, that declaration, cannot be separated from what was established as canon beforehand and at the time of that episode’s airing—no matter how much the writers seemed to want to erase or ignore 30+ years of the larger franchise establishing otherwise in expanded materials without conflict.

And because it cannot be separated, that directly implicates Satine Kryze and the New Mandalorians as just as Imperialist as Death Watch, except they’re less “terrorist.” But terrorism, in general, is determined by governmental and institutional power, and because the New Mandalorians wield all the power in mandalorian space, any act of obscene violence they may or may not wield on their marginalized populations will never be called terrorism—because, again, terrorism is the sole purview of people who don’t wield institutional power.

So, to reiterate, as I’ve said before, and as someone rightfully pointed out in the notes of the previous posts, by having the Fetts identified as mandalorians in canon material prior to the Mandalore arcs of the show, it was implicated that mandalorians as a cultural identity were nonwhite.

To then introduce the New Mandalorians as all-white out of nowhere, and have them thereby declare:

the Fetts as not mandalorians, and

fighting as veneration was unconscionable

basically made the New Mandalorians echo real-world violent colonialism in the terms of the White Voice Of Reason coming to Tame The Savages and make them “reasonable and cultured.”

So on the one hand, you have white Death Watch who is obviously Imperialist, yes, but then by doing the above the writers accidentally made it impossible to separate the New Mandalorians from a different but still clear Imperialism. I say accidentally because, generally, the writing of the early arcs didn’t seem to be all that self aware in those implications for Satine.

I mean, also consider that the Death Watch of the show also had:

a white woman in a position of power who wasn’t white supremacist pale / blond / blue-eyed, and

later established that they had nonwhite people among their ranks in respected positions

In comparison to New Mandalorians? Imperialism is still present, but the ethnic cleansing and the eugenics is not.

The impression that Clan Wren’s ancestors were subjugated by Mandalorian Expansion may not be wrong, or it may be. But consider why you want to make that assumption, if it’s necessary, and if it’s coming from a place of “well, of course they’re not naturally mandalorian, because they’re not white!” And if that perspective is being used to form a complex history and relationship with their cultural identity, or if you’re only doing it for superficial flavor that adds nothing to the story nor context. Because if it’s the latter, it’s not a decision that is made in vacuum, but rather one that can contribute to racism / racist narratives.

It’s racist in much the same sense as saying that someone cannot be British if they’re Asian. That someone cannot be American if they’re Asian. These assumptions that are being made, they’re not factual statements built from nothing but racist assumptions that don’t hold up under their own weight or logic.

Which isn’t to say that Death Watch isn’t terrible—they absolutely are.

The implied Imperialism of Death Watch is very real, yes. The problem is that I haven’t seen anything to implicate DW as subjugating the Wrens or other humans, if we’re looking at the show and canon only.

I say that because … we only have the word of the New Mandalorians, who are speaking from a position I’ve hopefully explained in great detail as hypocritical at best, as well as the word of the Jedi Order / Republic, who both have a vested political interest in making damn sure the New Mandalorians keep their seats of power and would not want to undermine that stability (because the New Mandalorians are Republic-friendly and Death Watch is quite clearly Republic-unfriendly. Not to mention that both the Jedi Order and the Republic had a direct hand in the war to keep the New Mandalorians in power years before, when Satine rose to the duchy. And yes, this was stated in the arcs themselves, is canon and thereby not relegated to Legends information).

None of the people pointing fingers at Death Watch are speaking from an unbiased position—and if the writers really wanted to make those accusations clearer and from an actually sympathetic POV, they would have made Sundari not all white, and gave minor airtime to a nonwhite mandalorian leveraging those crimes against Death Watch.

But, they didn’t go down that route, so instead we have a conflict that is murky and convoluted with no right side. And as much as I detest Death Watch, the accusations towards them are not coming from a source that doesn’t benefit from villainizing everyone who contradicts them across the board.

And that’s a problem when the story arcs, themselves, expect us to just see Satine Kryze and the New Mandalorians as the “obvious” correct side without any kind of deep or critical thinking.

In Legends, Death Watch has always been anti-alien, but again, because of that lazy design decision … the writers relegated the anti-alien sentiment to all of Mandalorian space as a whole, as opposed to just Death Watch.

Like I said, it’s distracting from the points and sides they were trying to make.

We also have another canon man native to Concord Dawn to compare Jango’s status to, because the excuses that we’ve been given so far has been “he’s not a mandalorian but he’s native to Concord Dawn” as if that should be an easy distinction to make … yet we have someone else who is also native to Concord Dawn, who was never part of Death Watch, and yet he’s still considered mandalorian.

That man is Fenn Rau.

Canon material shows us:

Fenn Rau is a mandalorian, despite being from Concord Dawn, while

Jango Fett is “not,” when he’s also a Concord Dawn native

Concord Dawn sits firmly in Mandalorian Space, and Fenn Rau was a True Mandalorian, as was Jango Fett—also known as the Journeyman Protectors. They were a different faction who ultimately sided with the New Mandalorians against Death Watch—but unlike the New Mandalorians, they always dropped everything to fight whenever DW so much as blipped once on a radar.

We also have the now-canon information that Fenn Rau was on Kamino and trained the clones, and from what Legends tells us … Jango Fett was the one who recruited a good number of mandalorians to help train the clones. At the very least, they must have known and interacted with each other, having been of the same factions and in the same space multiple times.

Again, the things Fenn Rau and Jango Fett have in common:

natives of Concord Dawn

part of the Journeyman Protectors third faction

and the things they don’t have in common:

Fenn Rau is white

Jango Fett is not white

So.

There is no real logic involved in these writing decisions, outside of explicitly implicating the New Mandalorians as an Imperialist force complicit in racial & ethnic cleansing. That would be the most logical leap to explain why Fenn Rau is a mandalorian, but Jango Fett is not.

Literally none of it makes sense story-wise in canon otherwise—because that’s, literally, the shortest logical leap that can be supported by the information provided by canon without bending ass over head and making weak excuses.

And, well, even so … If you only look at it from what you see on the shows and movies, it still doesn’t make much sense. Canon as it stands alone frames Satine Kryze and the New Mandalorians as a faction that stands on a position built on transparent irredeemable violent hypocrisy.

Xenophobia versus Continued Cultural Genocide

And once more I come back to that scene where Bo-Katan rejected Maul.

To reiterate, I argue that him being an alien does not matter. She may have said it, it may have been implied, but identifying him as an alien in that specific scene once Pre Vizsla was killed does not automatically mean xenophobia—especially when that scene was meant to be a defining point between continued cultural genocide and survival. Whether mandalorians would be willing to crucify itself on its traditionalism and be totally extinguished by accepting Maul, or by standing true to survival and rejecting an outsider from assuming a culture with which he has no stake in.

Rejecting Imperialist cannibalism, yet again.

Allowing Maul to lead the Mandalorians after executing Pre Vizsla would have been trading one violent subjugation for another—trading Satine Kryze’s cultural genocide in the forced conversion to Pacifism for the subjugation under the violent rule of a person who wasn’t mandalorian and had zero stake in what they, as a people, had to lose (once again, their cultural identity).

And that context matters. It matters. She didn’t make that decision from a position in which she was given much choice, regardless that allegiances split on that decision. Bo-Katan was fighting for traditionalism, yes, but that traditionalism is built on a foundation of mandalorians surviving mandalorian cultural genocide at all costs — first from the New Mandalorians and the Republic, 700 years prior, then the New Mandalorians and Satine a few decades prior to the show, and finally, if you take Legends context of The Mandalorian Wars, a survival of cultural genocide as brought into play by Sith manipulations.

Pre Vizsla died because his rigid traditionalism was the sword on which he was willing to impale himself on before he was willing to change. And that kind of rigid inability to adapt would have meant the death of mandalorian culture.

So … don’t oversimplify that scene. Context matters. Everything that leads up to that moment in the show matters.

Legends: The Aftermath of the Mandalorian Wars

What ended The Mandalorian Wars?

The Jedi Order was, essentially, split into two: The Jedi who would fight, and the Jedi who Refused to fight. The Jedi who left to fight followed in the steps of Revan and Alek, and the Exile.

What ended the war was this:

At the Battle of Malachor, the Jedi Revan executed Mandalore the Ultimate, and

stole the ceremonial mask needed for any Mandalorian to declare themselves Mandalore and lead the people

At the same time, The Jedi Exile, a High General, made the decision to activate the Mass Shadow Generator, which wiped out the entirety of the Mandalorian Army, and

nearly killed off all of the mandalorian people in the known galaxy in that same action

The entirety of the Mandalorian Army was, simultaneously, the entirety of the Mandalorian People. And because the majority of Mandalorians, at that time in history, served both in a civilian and a military capacity, when the Jedi Exile initiated the super weapon, she nearly wiped out the entire population of Mandalorians from the known galaxy.

From that point forward? Mandalorians, as a people, were forced to change their philosophy in order to survive. Mandalorians, as a people became a people focused on survival instead of conquest. Fighting was, is, central to their culture, but the fight stopped being about conquering and became about survival.

But later, when they eventually recovered their numbers, different factions within the Mandalorians would pop up.

There were:

Extremists, who wanted to return to their conquering ways, irregardless of the fact that conquering directly lead to their annihilation. These people would venerate Mandalore the Ultimate for all the wrong reasons.

Isolationists, who wanted to focus only on the growth and continued survival of the mandalorian people, who wanted to continue Mandalore the Preserver’s work — and never regress to the old, conquering ways, because that’s ultimately what killed them.

From these two factions, eventually, over the millennia that followed, would continuously fight each other: because Extremists wanted to return to the toxic ‘old ways’, and Isolationists saw conquer as an invitation to the Republic (and the Jedi) to finish their path of genocide.

And the thing was: they weren’t wrong.

And this is important as historical context to know, when taking in the Mandalore Arcs of the Clone Wars, because in those arcs, it’s clear that The Republic and The Jedi Order have not only had a vested interest in Mandalorian politics—Kenobi clearly references a time when he was directly involved with keeping Satine Kryze in power.

Historical context.

Because of the sheer scale of catastrophe the Mandalorians successfully caused to the galaxy during the Mandalorian Wars, The Republic and The Jedi Order would forever remember those events and continue to act accordingly to prevent them from ever happening again, no matter the cost.

THAT is why both The Jedi Order and The Republic have such a serious and vested interest in Mandalorians remaining demilitarized and passive.

And THAT is why, ~700 years prior to the events of The Clone Wars, roughly 3300 years after the conclusion of the Mandalorian Wars, The Jedi and The Republic carpet bombed the fuck out of Mandalore without provocation. It was thenceforth referred to as the Mandalorian Excision

Legends: The Mandalorian Excision

When the arcs were written, imperialism was both a direct reference not to a recent campaign, but to a literal galaxy-wide imperialism ~4000 years before the events of the Clone Wars, as well as the one ~700 years before.

The Mandalorian Excision came after the end of the Thousand Years War in which the Jedi waged a millennia-long campaign against the Sith and wrecked the galaxy, again. The Republic, weakened by the war against the Sith, could not survive another galactic wide conflict.

But, after the rise of Tarre Vizsla ~1000 years before the events of TCW, the warring Houses of Mandalore banded together to join a united Mandalore. The constant fighting and war left Mandalorian Space very, very weak, but of the factions that arose out of that peace, half wanted to regain their power and conquer the galaxy, while the other half cautioned for pacifism and peace.

Unfortunately for all of the Mandalorians, the Republic got wind of the ancestors of Death Watch — and even though Mandalorians were undecided as how to proceed, and didn’t have any power whatsoever to follow through on those desires because they were still extremely weakened from both the galactic-wide conflict and their own inter-clan and inter-house fighting, The Jedi Order led the “preemptive strike” and glassed Mandalore.

Preemptive strike is interesting language choice, because what that ultimately means, and what actually happened, is that Mandalore did nothing to provoke that attack because they were nowhere near to threatening to anyone in power, and the Jedi and the Republic still decided to base delta zero Mandalore anyway, just to be safe.

Because we can’t be having any repeats of The Mandalorian Wars, even though that was ~3000 years before.

And after they carpet bombed Mandalore, the Republic and the Jedi Order then invaded the planet, and installed a new government as ruled by the New Mandalorians, under the agreement that they would never move against the Republic.

The New Mandalorians then began the exile-or-die campaign, with the “help” of the Republic. Anyone who was unwilling to denounce “the old ways” would be killed or exiled.

Why does Legends help the New Mandalorians?

Because without the above context, without the very extreme, very dramatic, very real threat of genocide by the Republic to the Mandalorians, there is no motivational pressure for the New Mandalorians to act like they do — to force pacifism to such an extreme.

But when you’re in a position of be pacifist or the galaxy will crush you again, and this time they might wipe out everyone, then there’s a literal galaxy’s worth of motivation to force cultural genocide to kill the literal thing that has made you and your people a target for elimination if you so much as breathe the wrong way.

And that context, above, was the context in which the episodes were written. Because, like it was said, the Legends reboot didn’t happen yet — so all of the expanded materials attached to the Mandalore arcs lay out a very real, very clear wider view of why the New Mandalorians violently enforced radical Pacifism.

This isn’t to say that the implied ethnic & racial cleansing is forgivable, and this isn’t to say that cultural genocide is forgivable, because these things are literally unforgivable, heinous, and monstrous — but given the situation, given their position in the galaxy, given everything that was at stake … can you blame them?

I mean, obviously, duh. Yes. You can blame them. You should blame them.

But … it gives that extremism more sense, on all sides of the conflict.

An aside: Separating “Boba Fett” from “Mandalorian” after 30+ years

Yes, I’m back on this. I promise this is the last section. I just wanted to clarify whitewashing and what I meant when I said 30+ years of the franchise.

At the time of the show’s airing, by making the decision to make the second-highest level of visible canon mandalorians white (as TV came just under Film at that time in terms of validity) and in that same arc retcon the Films’ non-white Fetts from that same category, that was an act of white-washing. That is essentially the most obvious and easily pointed out example of whitewashing.

It was literally an act of rejecting and delegitimizing nonwhite representation on-screen when that nonwhite representation had many years of worldbuilding and detail behind him/them. Boba Fett, himself, was named as a mandalorian bounty hunter as far back as the late 70s (I apparently have official trading cards from the 80s that say this, too). Since Jango Fett’s debut in Episode II: Attack of the Clones in 2002 he was written as mandalorian.

That’s 30+ years of the name Boba Fett associated with Mandalorian.

And, decades later, when it’s revealed that Boba, and Jango, are not white, it’s mysteriously retconned in a TV show that neither of them are mandalorian? After more than 30 years of the franchise establishing the exact opposite?

TCW canon erased “mandalorian” from the Fetts, redefined mandalorians as white with the introduction of the two Houses and Sundari, and then obliterated expanded universe all in the very same arc by taking what was the capital planet of Mandalore space and glassed it, then gave it Sundari as its central city. The capital planet that was, before the show, ethnically and racially diverse with different climate zones and flora and fauna.

The mess that was the mandalorian fandom trying to make sense of it all was … even now, years later, the community is still reeling from it.

The most grievous, obvious, in-your-face racism and whitewashing done in a long time in the franchise. There’s no way to argue that it isn’t.

Unintentional? Sure. Accidental? Probably. But still, it is what it is.

The thing, though, that gets me the most? Is the out-of-context tweet to confirm it, one that was entirely unnecessary and unneeded.

Why unnecessary? Because mandalorians, as I’ve said time and time again, have a history in Legends-to-Canon of fighting over identity politics, of literally starting wars over the “right” way to be mandalorian.

To have White Mandalorians look at a Brown Mandalorian and say “THIS MAN, this man who was born in mandalorian space and taken in and raised by a mandalorian clan to become a mandalorian warrior and then elected mandalorian leader of the True Mandalorians, he is NOT A MANDALORIAN!” … is par for the course in the world of mandalorian politics in the larger context of mandalorian history. Mandalorians.

They do this shit, all the time.

It could have been left alone, to be taken as one will—and it should have been. But instead of doing that, Pablo Hidalgo, in a tweet, “confirmed” that Jango was never mandalorian at all, thereby eradicating any of the complexity that can be inferred on the in-context declaration in the show, and supporting what is, ultimately, an act of racist writing that was as I’ve already said, unneeded and unnecessary.

After 30+ years of Boba Fett established as mandalorian, and 6+ years of Jango Fett as mandalorian, suddenly … he was not white enough to be mandalorian in a show that had higher canon validity than 30+ years of expanded material.

And if you read that section above comparing Fenn Rau and Jango Fett … well. If you can’t see why it’s messed up … I don’t know how else to better explain it.

#Anonymous #asks.txt #i am so sorry about the length im just like #I want to explain why Legends applies bc this is just #it's a lot tbh #meta: new mandalorians #meta: mandalorians #izzy talks mandalorians #c: Satine Kryze #Satine Kryze #listen people this is like 5700 words long #it is LONG #it is probably gonna be moved to ao3 in the future too #but like #consider yourself warned #izzy talks clone wars #some editing done to make it cleaner / easier to read / more concise #still long as h e l l though

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xtruss · 5 years ago

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COULD THE SENATE CONVICT DONALD TRUMP? HERE'S WHAT MITCH MCCONNELL WORRIES ABOUT!

BY BILL POWELL , 11/15/19

Convincing 67 Senators to convict Trump will be tough. But Democrats knows a path to victory.

Mitch McConnell has reason to worry—and that means Donald Trump does, too.

To convict President Trump of an impeachable offense, the Democrats have to muster a two-thirds vote in the Senate: at least 20 Republican senators (and probably more like 22 because of expected Democratic defections) would have to break ranks. That math sounds unforgiving, and it's true that the road to 67 votes is a narrow and bumpy one. But the Senate majority leader and the White House fear that if more than a couple of GOP senators say they intend to vote against Trump, there will be something of a traffic jam as Republican senators turn against the president.

For starters, it's no secret that some senators can't stand Trump. Former Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, famously a "never Trumper," said in September that if it were a private vote, 35 senators would vote to oust the president. Utah Senator Mitt Romney stands out among this group—and for Trump the feeling of disdain is distinctly mutual, never mind that during his transition the then-president-elect actually interviewed the former GOP standard bearer for Secretary of State. Romney recently called Trump's interactions with Ukraine's president "appalling." Trump called Romney "a pompous ass" on Twitter. Though Romney has said he has an open mind and will see where the facts take him, Trump vote-counters already assume his vote is lost.

The White House—and McConnell—have their eyes on two senators in particular: Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. They are no fans of the president. Murkowski famously voted against the bill repealing Obamacare in 2017, thus helping save it and dealing Trump a bitter defeat. Collins, who is up for reelection in what is expected to be a close race next year, has repeatedly criticized Trump. She said he "made a big mistake" asking Beijing to investigate Hunter Biden's business dealings there and called for the president to retract a tweet in which he compared the House impeachment investigation to a "lynching."

McConnell is worried their votes are not safe. In fact, in his role as Trump's sherpa—the calm hand who knows better than anyone how to count his caucus' votes—McConnell counseled the president to call Murkowski and pledge to work with her on an ambitious energy bill that the Alaska senator has been pushing for three years. He also told Trump to knock off the juvenile name-calling of Mitt Romney, which other senators found distasteful.

"[McConnell] has stressed to the president that he thinks he can keep the caucus together, but Trump needs to help," says a Senate source familiar with McConnell's thinking. "He can't just demand loyalty and expect to give nothing back. That's not how this is going to work."

The passionate partisanship that has kept Republicans aligned with Trump until now might work against the president and McConnell. University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato notes that "the nationalization of politics—how people feel about the president—is bleeding down the ballot to an extreme degree." In 2016, every state with a Senate race voted for the same party for senator and president—the first time that's happened since 1912, when the era of popular voting for the Senate began. And as Sabato says, "impeachment may be the ultimate nationalizing event" for Senate members.

Will the Senate convict Donald Trump (if the House impeaches him)? Mitch McConnell is worried

To understand the implications, consider the GOP senators up for reelection in purple swing states: first-term Senators Cory Gardner of Colorado, Martha McSally of Arizona and Joni Ernst of Iowa. The first two are in races viewed as toss-ups; in Colorado Trump is deeply underwater and in Arizona only slightly less so. If the nationalization thesis holds, it could be risky for Gardner and McSally to vote to acquit an increasingly unpopular president.

Senator Ernst at this point is a slight favorite to be re-elected in Iowa, but the race will be tricky. Trump's trade war with China has hurt the state's agricultural sector. Ernst also, associates say, has complained about Trump's boorishness: the hush money payments to a porn star, the Billy Bush "locker room talk" video. She publicly has been supportive of Trump but privately isn't much of a fan.

If she defects, it could prompt some others—who are currently saying all the right things to the White House—to consider it, too. Tom Tillis of North Carolina is in a race considered a toss up. Trump won North Carolina in 2016, but is no lock next year.

This is the scenario the Trump White House dreads, and for good reason. The risk is not, at this point, that enough GOP senators will defect to oust him—at least not, again, based on what's currently known about the Ukraine affair. The risk is that even if he's acquitted, he begins to look politically weak in his own party, becoming a drag on down-ballot candidates.

Trump Impeachment Has More Evidence Than Nixon Faced: Watergate Witness

A Senate trial will be open and reasonably fair. It will not look like the president is being railroaded. It will be presided over by John Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the president's defense team will be allowed to cross examine hostile witnesses and call their own to testify. If, given that, several GOP senators still end up voting for removal, Trump potentially is a dead man walking. "He won't just look weaker going into the general election, he will be weaker," says a source close to McConnell. "If you get Joni Ernst and Martha McSalley, military veterans both, voting against you, you've got trouble."

Other GOP lawmakers are making their own calculations, driven by the ambivalence—usually expressed only privately—that many Republicans in both the House and Senate feel about Trump. Unlike the president, most are used to operating in traditional ways. The president's crassness, his chaotic White House, the recent sellout of the Kurdish fighters in Syria, the "lunatic" effort to strong arm the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden, as one senior Senate staffer describes it: all serve to make Republicans distinctly uncomfortable.

There's an ideological factor at play as well. The vast majority of GOP-ers in both House and Senate believe in longtime Republican policies like free trade and fiscal sobriety. The Tea Party elected 138 House members in 2010 largely as a protest against what was then viewed as out-of-control spending in Washington. In the Trump era, free trade is dead and no one ever talks about spending. "It's as if they've been lobotomized," says Justin Amash, the Michigan Republican who announced his intention to leave the GOP this summer. "I was a Republican, but not a Trump Republican. There are any number of people up here who feel the same way, they're just not willing to say so publicly."

The reason for that is simple: as politicians, they know how to read polls. And while in several recent polls a slim majority of Americans now believe Trump should be removed from office, his support among Republican voters remains rock solid. In a recent Fox News poll in which 51 percent favored his removal, only 16 percent of Republicans did. Trump's overall approval rating was 86 percent among Republicans.

Apostates within Trump's GOP are not treated kindly. Ask Francis Rooney, a representative from Naples, Fla. Last month he gave a television interview in which he equated Trump's Ukraine scandal with Watergate. "I'm very mindful of the fact that back during Watergate everybody said, 'Oh, it's a witch hunt to get Nixon.' Turns out it wasn't a witch hunt. It was absolutely correct."

The backlash from his district was swift, intense and stoked by a furious White House. Several constituents called his office and said if he wasn't prepared to support the president he should stand down. The reaction stunned Rooney; so much so that the next day, he took the advice and announced that he would not run for re-election next year. The episode, more than anything, showed "that this is not the Republican Party anymore," says political scientist Sabato. "It's the Party of Trump."

McConnell has already spoken directly with the president on "multiple occasions" about the impeachment trial, according to four Capitol Hill and White House sources. At this point, sources familiar with McConnell's thinking say, the majority leader does not disagree with the conventional view of the forthcoming impeachment drama: the country's founders made it difficult to remove a president. Based on his understanding of the facts surrounding the Ukraine affair, in which the president allegedly tried to leverage military aid in return for a Ukrainian investigation into political rival Joe Biden and his son, McConnell believes there is little chance Trump would be convicted in the Senate—particularly if a vote to impeach in the House proceeds strictly along partisan lines, which is expected.

McConnell, White House sources say, has told Trump that privately. He is said to be dismissive, too, of the charges Democrats are likely to bring in the House that the Trump White House obstructed their investigation into the Ukraine matter.

Asked if Trump could be convicted, GOP Senate staffers answer with a standard caveat: "If all we know [about Ukraine-gate] is out there now, and nothing new emerges or happens, then no, he would be acquitted," says one staff member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bottom line, for them, is that the military aid money ultimately flowed to Ukraine, and the government in Kiev never investigated the Bidens. Trump's alleged intervention in the affair ended up being of no consequence, and the idea "that this amounts to an impeachable offense is a joke," as South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham puts it.

But with Trump, this source acknowledges, "you never know." After all, it was just one day after Robert Mueller's Congressional testimony about so-called Russian collusion—which buried Democratic dreams of impeaching Trump on that issue—that the phone call between the president and his Ukrainian counterpart took place.

An impeachment is fluid. Things may not proceed precisely as the political pros believe they will. If Trump loses key votes of support in swing states he needs to win the election, how nervous will the party get? Is it possible enough senators get so nervous they go to the White House and ask that Trump resign, rather than have to put lawmakers on record voting for or against him? Might a weak president put the GOP's hold on the Senate at risk next November?

As of now, the president's rock-solid GOP polls make that seem unlikely, and the Trump base would be enraged and very unlikely to vote for Mike Pence, Nikki Haley or anyone else who might gain the nomination in Trump's wake. Trump may survive and even flourish, much as Bill Clinton did after the GOP's misguided impeachment effort in 1998.

But it isn't a lock. Trump's election upended all political norms and expectations; his impeachment trial is likely to do the same.

— Newsweek

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