#in response to me praising rafa for never watching the show

[howtosingit]

Hiii! Could you please explain why you don't like glee? I mean I didn't like it too but when you answer a question you explain it perfectly and I realllly wonder your thoughts about it. My friends at that time ,when the show aired, thought that i was being ridicioulus for not liking the show.

I don’t really want to get too far into it, but I’ll just say: Glee was the first show that broke my heart. It was such a huge part of my identity when I was a teenager (Midwestern gay kid, theatre nerd, I was literally Kurt Hummel, I literally had a frenemy who was Rachel Berry to a fault - all of it), and it absolutely killed me that the writers had no respect for the characters or their storylines. I stopped watching in season 5 when the Klaine relationship (Blaine was the only character I was watching the show for for awhile) became so toxic and unhealthy that they were literally trying to cause physical harm to each other (5x16, which I still haven’t watched because the idea of it makes me sick to my stomach). 

Anyway, it can just be really hard to see yourself in characters that the writers clearly hate or don’t care about, and Glee has kind of reshaped the way that I connect to media and characters in media. 

Also, while the show should be commended for the handful of things that it got right, or the number of conversations that it started, it also fucked up so many things and was incredibly offensive in a lot of ways. I don’t fault anyone for loving Glee, but I consider that show an ex who I had a very unhealthy and toxic relationship with, so I just find it pretty personally unforgivable. 

Also also, Will Schuester is despicable and terrible and just... yeah. 

[gffa]

I KNOW THERE’S BEEN A LOT OF CONTENTION OVER THIS SCENE, but within the episode itself, so far I’ve actually genuinely liked it a lot, and so much of that comes down to who Rafa Martez is and unreliable narrators in the Star Wars universe. Rafa is a character that I actually like very much, she’s incredibly fun to watch and there’s a heart somewhere in there, but this scene also doesn’t come without context.  She’s a hurt young woman who is not a good influence on her sister, even within this single arc she’s been shown over and over again that she thinks she can handle dealing with the Pykes, she drags Trace into trouble and justifies it, she has to admit by the end that she was wrong. Does this mean her hurt at the lack of what she felt from Luminara wasn’t genuine?  Of course not!  For all that “The Force will be with you.” is incredibly meaningful to Jedi and even within the context of the movies, that blessing is incredibly meaningful.

"The Force will be with you” is important enough that it’s one of the biggest bookends for Luke’s entire journey with the Force, as a Jedi. It’s one of the last things Obi-Wan says to Luke on the Death Star before he dies. It’s one of the last things the Jedi say to Rey on Exegol to help her rise up to defeat Palpatine again. This isn’t an empty platitude to the Jedi, nor within the context of Star Wars as a whole, it’s incredibly touching!  The idea that Luminara saying them to Rafa is empty and cold, on a meta level, is to then also say that Obi-Wan’s words to Luke and Luke’s words to Rey, are empty and cold and meaningless. That Obi-Wan’s Force Ghost wasn’t still there encouraging Luke, that Luke’s Force Ghost wasn’t still there encouraging Rey, and we see those are a huge part of the grandness of Star Wars. THESE WORDS HAVE MEANING TO US AND TO THE JEDI. But that doesn’t mean that Rafa has to take comfort in them, especially as a Force-sensitive, that there is absolutely room for both of these points of view within Star Wars and one does not negate the other.  Rafa doesn’t feel the Force in the same way that Luminara does, even though it’s a demonstrable, provable thing that the Force exists, even though Luminara is giving her something that has meaning to her and to us, Rafa herself can’t do much with it, she can’t find comfort in it. This doesn’t make either one of them bad or wrong!  Luminara’s not great at comforting non-Force-sensitives (nobody is obligated to be good at comforting, this is not some terrible sin), but also the specific use of Luminara does not come without context on how people misjudge her and misinterpret her.

Even Anakin Skywalker, a fellow Jedi misjudges her and what she’s actually saying!  She’s not saying to abandon Barriss--we see her helping, we see the concern on her face, we see her joy at seeing Barriss alive again, we see her praising Anakin’s faith in Ahsoka, even as she maintains that being willing to accept the possibility that they can’t be saved is something Jedi must prepare themselves for. And why’s that important?  Oh, right, because THAT HAPPENED IN THE ARC JUST��PREVIOUS TO THIS ONE, TOO.

That is the arc we just watched, where Anakin Skywalker, the character who misjudged Luminara’s heart being prepared to mourn Barriss but let go of her, to celebrate her life, to accept what’s happened to her, is now telling the same exact thing to Rex about Echo. Yes, it’s a moment of irony, considering that we’re this close to Revenge of the Sith and the episodes don’t come without context that Anakin’s basically going to be like “ha ha yeah I’m not absorbing any of my own advice” once he fears Padme’s life is in danger, but it’s still part of the bigger context. --> Luminara’s point isn’t to give up, but that they must accept the possibility that they’ll lose their Padawans --> Anakin’s advice to Rex isn’t that they give up, but that they must accept the possibility that Echo is already gone --> This arc doesn’t exist without context of Revenge of the Sith looming on the horizon --> Luminara being the one to talk to Rafa about the loss of people she cares about does not come without context of all of the above ALL OF THIS TIES TOGETHER. This doesn’t undercut Rafa’s hurt or loss being genuine and valid, but it doesn’t make Luminara wrong, either.  Especially when look at how else Rafa is contextualized within this episode--she’s fun, she’s exciting, that moment in the holding cell is genuine feeling, but how does that scene literally end? With her being willing to sell Ahsoka out to torture, rather than herself.

Ahsoka is defending her, saying the Pykes won’t touch Rafa!  Rafa’s immediate response is, “Yeah!  She’s right!  Take her instead!” and pushes Ahsoka forward. She’s still hilarious, she’s still a blast to watch, but maybe Rafa isn’t the best person and that throws her status as a reliable narrator a lot closer to being an unreliable narrator. So much of her actions clearly come from a place of being hurt, her willingness to do all sorts of shady things, her willingness to drag Trace into all of this, her willingness to overlook the spice that’s going to actively destroy lives, but as long as Rafa gets hers, it’s fine, her willingness to actively sell Ahsoka out or abandon her, is the context of where Rafa is coming from.  Hurt, anger, and selfishness of someone who experienced tragedy and let it color her view. And that is also the source of what she says about Luminara.  Not coming from a place of evil, but of someone who let tragedy color her view of the galaxy and the way she relates to people. I mean, look at how she treats Ahsoka, someone who has constantly been trying to help both her and her sister, that she’s ready to ditch Ahsoka constantly, even when Ahsoka hasn’t even tried to get across the bridge, she’s ready to just ditch her and leave her to the Pykes.

Literally five minutes after the conversation in the cell, we have Ahsoka talking to her about her relatonship with Trace--not just that Rafa drags her sister into these missions without recognizing that Trace really kind of couldn’t say no to her, but specifically in the context of, “Trace would never believe you don’t have her best interests at heart.” Rafa genuinely, clearly cares about Trace!  But Ahsoka is our reliable narrator in this arc and we can trust a lot about what she asks, the points she makes--and she’s pointing out that Rafa is not actually coming from a place of reliability or true care. That she speaks to Rafa with softness, rather than anger, also speaks to that she recognizes Rafa’s hurt, but that doesn’t mean she’s not spot on about how Rafa isn’t actually thinking about Trace, that she’s justifying and rationalizing a lot of things, that Rafa is not the reliable narrator she presents herself as.

And if that weren’t enough, there’s still more!  The way Rafa treats the Gotal who asks her for credits is dismissive and uncaring.  It isn’t that she has to give him money, but the way she tells him to buzz off, the way Rafa treats people in the galaxy (and maybe once upon a time she was a sweet girl, I could easily see that! but now she’s not acting out of an unbiased place, all her actions/words are coming from a place of bias now) DIRECTLY leads to the Gotal telling the Pykes about them. Attitudes towards people and reliability as a narrator have direct consequences even within a single episode!

And, finally, the thing that made me clutch my heart was Ahsoka’s words about why she’s doing what she’s doing, especially as it’s also directly tied to Rafa’s treatment of Trace, that that was the conversation right before this moment: “In my life, when you find people who need your help, you help them, no matter what.”

This is a Jedi right in front of Rafa.  For all that Ahsoka isn’t a Jedi any longer, this arc is her struggling to find her place in the galaxy, to find the path forward for herself as someone who was raised by the Jedi, who believes in their teachings, who is the person they helped her become, that is a good person because she herself is a good person, but also because that’s how Anakin and the Jedi taught her to be. It’s about Ahsoka struggling to accept that not everyone sees the Jedi in a positive light, but Star Wars is not a series that’s about straightforward or even honest narratives, from the very beginning it’s been baked into the foundations that the propaganda in the galaxy is a huge, huge factor, that misunderstanding who the Jedi are (and thus being willing to overlook a literal genocide against them, against their children, who were murdered just for being Jedi, to overlook that you can’t even talk about the Jedi or practice their culture without “disappearing”, it’s the literal definition of a genocide) and that what we’re told versus what we’re shown is often two entirely separate things and that these things ARE NOT CLEARED UP. These things are let go and never made right.  The galaxy’s view of the Jedi is never cleared up.  The galaxy’s view of the clones and the horror that happened to them with their minds being taken away from them is never cleared up. So we, the audience, know these things that the characters don’t always know and maybe won’t find out, ever. Thus seeing Ahsoka with our own eyes vs Rafa telling us her experience--an experience that is real from her point of view, whatever else is coloring it--fits in with the bigger structure of Star Wars pretty damn well and it’s up to the audience to remember the context, because the show won’t, as that’s not really how SW works. And none of this makes Rafa bad, she’s a valuable, worthwhile character and I adore her, she’s so much fun and we can all feel there’s a heart in there and I want good things for her!  But this arc is illustrating that the galaxy is a complicated place--as Trace says, “This life I lead?  It’s not how I was raised.  It’s how it is.” is about the entire galaxy, not just one small sub-corner of it.