#it does not fucking matter if the writers have enough basic working knowledge of military theory to do this on purpose

[bestworstcase]

Something I can't help but think of is the Great War in RWBY. How Ozpin in one of his past selves had to basically wipe out entire armies of soldiers and people with a single attack from what was likely the Sword of Destruction.

I have to wonder just how many generations of men and women were wiped out. How many settlements of people basically lost their breadwinners or no longer had anyone to protect them from Grimm.

How many years of battle experience and wisdom about the follies of war, just annihilated in an instant. How many lessons that could have been taught to a new generation made lost forever, ensuring that many of the newer generations could not learn from the past except only through a distorted, flawed lens.

I wonder if this loss might have contributed to Atlas' lackluster military capabilities, because anyone from Mantle who could have held the jackasses at the top to account with hardened experience and wisdom JUST. WEREN'T. THERE.

anon i am grabbing u gently by the shoulders

you have fallen for ozma’s propaganda that he is the Main Character of history. and also activated one of my many trap cards (sorry)

the institution of huntsmen is – overtly, albeit not couched in exactly these terms – predicated on the Great Man, the idea that the course of human history is predominately a product of the decisive choices and actions of Heroes, of individuals whose superior intellect and fortitude and so forth elevated them above the common people. this is the fundamental idea undergirding ozpin’s whole thing – his guardians, the maidens, silver-eyed warriors, his “smaller, more honest soul,” the greatness he promises oscar, the way he describes ruby as possessing “something unquantifiable: a spark, that can inspire others even in the darkest of times” – these are his Great Men. the practical short term purpose of the huntsmen academies is to mold children into warriors in order to guard his fortresses, but in the longer term the point of them is to create Great Men.

narratively, this is an idea that rwby does not agree with; the thematic critique leveled against this view of history begins with the inherent contradiction between ozpin’s soaring rhetoric – the stated ideal of everyone standing together as one – and his actual behavior, which (as salem points out, correctly, in her v3 soliloquy) betrays the hollowness and lack of conviction in his professed “faith” in humanity. to believe in Great Men is fundamentally cynical; it is anti-humanistic; it is self-defeating.

we don’t really have time to outline everything in the CFVY novels that leads me to believe that this narrative critique is building inexorably toward bringing the common people into sharp focus as the true engine of history in vacuo – suffice it to say that there are passages in both books which elevate and emphasize the importance of ordinary people working together to achieve greater things than huntsmen can – but the atlas arc already offers a tangible shift in this direction with civilian politics dawning as a central narrative concern in contrast to the insularity of the beacon and mistral arcs.

the point being that the story structure itself is dismantling ozpin’s view of history; civilians are distant, abstracted set dressing within the hermetically sealed artificial reality of beacon academy, and irrelevant in mistral until the instant the lost fable shatters ozpin’s grip on the narrative and then – bam. brunswick farm is a horror-tragedy about subsistence farmers. the kids stay with the cotta-arcs in argus, and it is this connection with ordinary people that gets the kids to atlas, where class tensions between mantle and atlas and a contested council election dominate the plot and ozpin’s Great Man crumbles because he’s still hermetically sealed inside that artificial reality where the common people don’t really matter or exist in any meaningful way.

you see?

(and of course, professor oobleck, the exception who proves the rule: there is no one still living in the hollowed out ruins of mountain glenn, but that mini-arc is the one time in the beacon arc where the existence of ordinary people feels real and tangible and important, and it is because the history teacher says when i look at these ruins i see lives that were lost. i see a failure that must never be repeated. i see lives, past and future, and this is why i am a teacher, because history is more important than heroism.)

ok. so

the great war.

in qrow’s account of the great war, ozma – the king of vale – is the Great Man. the story of this sprawling, worldwide conflict is that the king of vale tried and failed to avert it, and for ten years the war raged on without an end in sight, until at last the king of vale took to the field of battle himself and single-handedly ended it by the sword; everyone bowed to him in surrender, but he lifted up the world by the hand and established a new world order.

no one else – not a single other participant in this conflict aside from the king of vale and (qrow hints ominously, and completely without evidence) salem – has a drop of agency or even a meaningful presence in the great war as qrow, received from ozpin, would tell it. and i do not think that is supposed to be taken at face value whatsoever; none of the other WOR spots are objective. these are character studies as much as they are worldbuilding shorts.

rwby is a narrative that has rejected this kind of simplicity over and over and over again. the great war was more complicated than that. some big chickens will be coming home to roost in the vacuo arc.

so with all that being said.

the historical exemplar that rwby’s great war seems to be modeled after is the first world war. (in brief: fought 80-90 years ago; the conflict was preceded by decades of increasing tensions driven by imperialist expansion and economic competition between rapidly-industrializing great powers; the war itself famously exploded from a single gunshot – although rwby eschews the political assassination angle perhaps because there were only three extant states in the world; the ending of the war resulted in massive redistribution of imperial territories and the formation of multiple new states. i know the usamerican tendency is to forget WWI happened and that ozma ‘nuking’ the battlefield with the sword to decisively end the war is likely to evoke the atomic bomb in the mind of the average viewer, but here i will remind everyone that the united states massacred nearly a quarter of a million civilians and that figure does not include deaths from cancer or long-term radiation exposure. because we dropped those bombs on cities. in contrast WWI was decided on the battlefield with the hundred days offensive.)

the real great war lasted from the summer of 1914 to the autumn of 1918. four years, three months. do you know how many people died?

an estimated 9 to 11 million military deaths, and 23 million more wounded. 7-8 million of those deaths were combat-related. upwards of 6 million civilians died. one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and aside from WWII (in which as many as two thirds of fatalities were civilians and genocide and war-related famine killed millions and millions of people, so many of these deaths were not combat-related), the only two conflicts in history that killed more people than WWI lasted 14 years, and 47. again, WWI lasted just four years.

ok. the reason WWI was so deadly, and the reason almost all of those military fatalities were combat-related is because of when and how this conflict was fought. in 1914 when the war began, the world was just coming out of the second industrial revolution. that was a period when railroads really began to proliferate, mass-manufacture of steel became possible, rise of production lines, automobiles, the telegraph, that kind of thing.

cannons, and things, had existed for a relatively long time at this point, but the second industrial revolution heralded the dawn of modern artillery weapons, and warfare, cultural conceptions of how wars are fought, had not caught up yet to the sheer scale of destruction that were now possible because of this new technology. which meant that WWI was the last conflict where war meant lining up troops on the battlefield and smashing the armies together, except everyone had things like rapid-firing heavy artillery, and explosive shells, and machine guns, and barbed wire, and chlorine gas.

this is what led to horrible, bloody stalemate of trench warfare and the unprecedented scale of casualties and the idea of “no man’s land” – it’s why the cultural image of what a battlefield looks like in the popular conscious for decades and decades after this war has been and often still is just a barren, muddy, completely obliterated wasteland strewn with debris. WWI was the transition between pre-industrial and modern warfare where industrialization had led to the development of military technology that rendered the old way of doing war obsolete. suicidal.

in the WOR spot, those are exactly the the conditions surrounding the great war except more lopsided because one side has a massive technological advantage. vacuo wasn’t even a state, it had no formal government of its own and it was under mistrali occupation when the vacuans rebelled. not an industrialized nation. vale was had probably industrialized to some degree (the artwork in the WOR spot doesn’t reflect this, but “no one knows who shot first” and vale/vacuan forces were reliant on dust munitions – everyone had guns) but mantle was significantly ahead of the curve.

so.

you have ten years of trench warfare – more than double the length of our own great war. you have the grimm, who are drawn to all negative feelings but especially to violence. you have huge swaths of territory that are just annihilated and never reclaimed. qrow mentions food rationing, so there were probably widespread famines caused by the loss and destruction of farmland. and this was happening all over the world, on every continent, including the unnamed continent that is now literally uninhabited – it wasn’t always, there used to be settlements there, they’re shown in i think WOR: vale – for a decade. right

ozma brought the sword of destruction onto the battlefield to break what was either a brutal stalemate or a slow grind of brutal attrition depending how lopsided the technological advantage was – after ten years of what had to be every military commander and every leader trying everything they could think of to force a surrender because nobody wants this – in the single bloodiest battle of the war, which, yes, means he personally killed an unfathomable number of people because trench warfare is a uniquely deadly form of warfare –

but the vast, vast vast majority of people who died in the great war were not killed in that one battle. remnant’s population is a lot smaller than ours – millions, not billions – so it’s unlikely that millions of people died. but proportionally this war probably killed hundreds of thousands of people and i would not be surprised if at some point a character drops a figure like “almost a million” or even “over a million” – like just. in raw terms, thinking about this as remnant’s great war – the historical exemplar is really not. subtle – that lasted for a decade, this is a conflict that wiped out a significant percentage of the global population.

all that said,

the military tacticians and strategists largely would have survived and military historians would have been all over this conflict. lessons learned. the infantry poured into the trenches were not gaining any battle experience other than “this is actual, literal hell��� while they endured hours of artillery barrage. the only wisdom that can be imparted by trench warfare is that it must be avoided at any cost because the only way to win is for the other side to run out of men or ammunition or popular resolve first. pure attrition. that’s the only takeaway. never let this happen again.

i think this is why the atlas military immediately pivoted to, like, robotic soldiers and armored mechs and the warships. that is “we cannot do trench warfare again. we cannot do trench warfare again.”

(in combination with radically changing the way you deploy troops, tanks and aircraft is indeed how you never do trench warfare again – there were tanks and light aircraft during WWI but none of them were good enough to break the stalemate.)

the problem, largely, for the atlas military – in terms of tactical innovation – is that in the eighty years since the great war, there’s only been one large-scale conflict and the faunus revolution was an insurgency, which – had to have been a protracted war waged by some phenomenally tactically ingenious faunus because the insurgents won – and that is a completely different kind of ballgame.

strategic doctrine and military tactics are developed and tested through practice. we did not jump from WWI straight to modern warfare, there have been many many regional wars and smaller conflicts between then and now. after a war, win or lose, you can theorize all you want but until there’s another war that puts your new technology or new tactics to the test, there’s not really a way to know if you’ve learned the right lessons and corrected successfully from whatever errors you made in the previous war.

in a world like remnant, where there are only five states in the entire world and there is so much pressure against open warfare, military innovation is going to be really slow. glacial even. stagnant. the horrifying scale of the great war is not something anyone wanted to ever repeat, and you can see that in the development of atlas’ military technology since then. but, as we can see when salem begins her assault on atlas:

the doctrine has not changed significantly. we have unmanned robotic light infantry arrayed in formation support the atlesian equivalent of tanks, with heavy artillery mounted on the warships in formation above. and, in the back, trenches for the human shock infantry and huntsmen. this is still very much warfare in the pre-industrial mode.

the calculation that the atlas military made here is quite clear – pursue aerial superiority to control the skies so you can eliminate ground-based enemy artillery, mass-manufacture lightweight disposable robotic infantry to feed into the meat grinder, deploy soldiers in heavily-armored mechs supported by those disposable infantry bots into the no man’s land to lead the advance and clear a path for the human rear infantry (<- those mechs would be excellent for cutting rapidly through barbed wire, a major advantage over tanks in another WWI-style conflict).

this is a military that reacted to trench warfare by investing in armored ground vehicles and heavy aircraft (✅ tanks and bombers), and by substituting disposable drones for human shock infantry instead of the shift toward evasive maneuvering and detection avoidance that undergirds modern warfare. which is not unreasonable! if in 1918 it had seemed remotely possible to anyone to replace human troops with little war machines, people would have tried! and in a world where a) the technology to do that proves viable and b) the great war is followed by an 80-year period in which the only major conflict is an insurgency, it’s inevitable that the doctrine stagnates there because it’s untested.

no matter how many drills and VR scenarios and war games you do, you can’t know how this new approach works in a real war until you fight another war. the iterative process of improvement is stalled.

and the terrifying thing about salem is she knows what the fuck she’s doing. it is clear that one of the lessons ozpin took away from the great war is that the general public cannot be entrusted to know that war is on the horizon – he’s furious with ironwood for bringing warships to vale because (aside from risking a bona fide diplomatic incident that could inflame tensions between vale and atlas should the vale council take issue with the uninvited presence of a foreign state’s air force in their kingdom!) he’s concerned that it will make people tense.

you know, like how people were tense when mistral occupied eastern vale and ozma tried to avert war by appeasement, and then there was a deadly riot that exploded into a decade of trench warfare. like how things were probably pretty goddamned tense before the faunus revolution broke out in response to humans being – as oobleck very delicately put it – “quite, quite adamant about centralizing the faunus population in menagerie.”

(that’s code for, at best, systematic persecution intended to make living outside menagerie so untenable that faunus would leave en masse; mass deportations and genocide at worst. in case that isn’t clear.)

i doubt ozma was remotely as obsessed with absolute secrecy such that the common people don’t even know there’s anything unusual happening prior to the great war and the faunus revolution. ozpin is a trauma reaction to those conflicts, deeply and profoundly shaped by them and terrified to the point of irrationality of allowing the “energy” that preceded the outbreak of those wars to happen again.

salem hits beacon with three separate and extremely public terroristic attacks all on the same night – she planned for four, but one fired early – all of which were broadcast internationally, live. she spent eighty years observing how oz reacted to the great war and then struck at him in a manner he would never be able to conceal, and (if he’d survived) would have gotten him stripped of power and cast out of his fortress in disgrace. i think her calculation here is that ozpin would either be dead for at least a few years or self-immolate out of panic.

haven, of course, she had lionheart in her pocket and planned a covert operation. low risk, quick and quiet.

but then, when her plans shuffled and brought her to atlas – a military power that has spent eighty years preparing for war between industrialized states, trying to claw its way ahead of the curve so it won’t be trapped in a trench stalemate again – salem made an inexhaustible force of grimm and delivered a an old-school siege, because a post-industrial military that has focused for eight decades on the problem of avoiding trench stalemate is not prepared to handle an enemy force that is effectively immune to artillery fire.

i think the atlas military would have done a lot better in a round two of the great war. but that’s not the war it got. it got a premodern siege by the eldritch roman legion with instant and infinite respawns so artillery barrages just don’t matter. it’s not about overpowering the enemy! it’s about taking away what power they have!

(this, plus the atlesian military’s development of devices that provoke massive grimm swarms as per arrowfell, makes it emphatically clear that the atlas military does not exist for the purpose of grimm extirpation. it’s an institution that has been built from the ground up for open warfare with other states.)

[tessatechaitea]

Superman: Year One: Book Three

Here's the back cover instead because I misread it as "We serve one purpose: Jesus," and I was ready to accept that.

Due to the amount of lava and debris, I would have gone with "sharts."

Superman saves Lois Lane from dying under the ocean which probably means she's going to reward him with her big city sexual prowess. But before Superman can accept his reward for being a nice guy, he has to defeat a troop of Navy SEALS who have come to capture him. So everybody's looking for Superman now because he showed off a few too many times while training in the Navy and his commanding officer became jealous that the mermaids let Clark fuck them. So Superman's big enemies are the god Poseidon and the American military, both because Lori Lemaris chose to fuck Superman instead of them. You might think I'm concentrating too much on Superman fucking the women he saved, and people being upset that they didn't get to fuck those women. If you are thinking that, it's probably because you haven't actually read Frank Miller's Superman: Year One. You'd totally understand that it's not me who is obsessed with Superman getting laid for fighting for truth, justice, and the American Way (honorably discharged version). It's apparently the entire theme of Frank Miller's Superman story. I just realized that I was going to make a Batman sucking Superman dick's joke based on the cover but then I didn't scan the cover. Oh well! Lesson learned! Any time somebody says, "Lesson learned," you should immediately ask them, "Oh? What was that then?" I bet most of the time, they won't be able to explain how they learned anything. The good thing about the cover of Book Three is that it was drawn by Frank Miller. And no matter what you think of Frank Miller's art, you have to agree (or at least better agree or we're going to have a problem) that it's better than John Romita Jr's art and better than Frank Miller's writing. After beating up the Navy SEALS and rescuing Lois Lane, Clark Kent winds up graduating from college and interning at the Daily Planet. Don't ask me what happened to Lori Lemaris and Atlantis! I guess it was such a terrible break-up that even Frank Miller doesn't want to write about it.

You can tell how dumb a person is by how much they defend Trump and blame the mainstream media. The fucking mainstream media bends over backwards not to point out just how fucking ignorant Trump is about everything!

Stepping away from the comic itself for a moment, here's what John Romita Jr had to say about this comic book after it was announced amidst a lot of "eye-rolls and groans" at San Diego Comic-Con. "The cynics that don't like my artwork or Frank's work were everywhere on the social media. Now we'll see what they have to say, because this is damn fresh, and I'm really proud of it." Well, I didn't have anything to say about it before reading it. I even bought it mostly knowing that I wasn't going to enjoy it even though I always hope that I enjoy everything I purchase as entertainment! Why else would I bother if not to hopefully be surprised and elated? Well, let me tell you, I was not surprised nor elated. Superman in the Navy might be fresh but it's also pretty fucking stupid. The whole idea was that Superman would join the Navy so he could see the world? But then he spends his entire time training in California where he learns he doesn't want to kill people after battling pirates in the Pacific waters off of the coast of California? Also he fucks mermaids during that time because why the fuck not? Now imagine reading all of that while looking at John Romita Jr's terrible facial expressions. The announcement of this comic book with this creative team should have garnered a lot more than groans and eye-rolls. There should have been jerking off motions as well. Working at the Daily Planet with Lois Lane (who, if you remember from the part where I said she wants to fuck him, wants to fuck him), Clark Kent realizes he needs a disguise. So Frank Miller makes sure to explain how the hat and glasses work as a disguise. The hat "changes his silhouette" and the glasses are just "the geek factor" he needs. The whole "dress to unimpress" angle is the disguise. Fucking bullshit. We all know that the glasses and the outfit are the least part of the disguise. He needs to discuss how he changes his posture, how he acts clumsy, how he puts on the air of naive farm boy, how he's terrible at pleasing a woman in bed. These are all aspects that work to make it unbelievable that he could be Superman. Christopher Reeves in Superman nails all of these aspects and I wish writers would be more upfront about how Clark Kent's disguise is less about the accouterments and more about the act Clark puts on. Superman begins deciding how to fight crime now that he's come to Metropolis. And his logic goes like this: "What do criminals want? Money! Where is the money? Banks!" And just like that, he becomes the protector of corporate America! He even thinks, "Never mind the third rate muggers and street swindlers." No wonder Batman doesn't respect this asshole! A third rate mugger killed Batman's parents and Superman is all, "Bah, they're harmless! Better get the guys going after the money that's insured!" Fuck this Superman! Next Superman goes after street level drug makers. That's better, I guess, but couldn't he go after the pharmaceutical industry itself?

What the fuck is "factory brand duct tape"? Having managed a warehouse on the Netscape campus back in the 90s, I'd say they should be wrapped in shrink wrap.

This morning, I discovered Carrot Cake flavored Oreos. It was nice living without diabetes but I must say goodbye to those years now. Later, Superman stops a man from abusing his wife and kids. I don't find out if she thanks him with her sex. But from what the previous chapters of this story have taught me, she did. After that, Superman frees some hostages from a hostage situation that was set-up by Lex Luthor so he could meet Superman. Lex manipulates Superman into working for him to stop Batman. Why does Lex care about Gotham and Batman? I don't know! I don't even really know how Lex manipulates Superman! And I don't think it's because I'm too stupid to follow the story. I'm pretty sure I'm smart enough to understand a comic book! But this comic book feels like a bunch of pages are missing. Hell, Superman's first words to Lex Luthor upon meeting him for the first time are "You're a damned liar!" What did he lie about? When did he ever say anything to Superman? What the fuck is going on?! Over in Gotham, Batman uses a gun. Okay. Whatever. Let's wrap this shit up.

Here's a terrible picture of Superman since I can't write about a story I can't follow.

The gist of the rest of the story is that Lex Luthor is tired of Batman and Superman foiling his crimes. So he decides to convince Superman that Batman is a jerk. After they get done killing each other, Lex Luthor will profit. Not that he isn't profiting already. But he'll profit more, I guess? Superman lands in Gotham to speak with Batman and Batman instantly tries to kill him. Oh yeah, Frank Miller totally understands these characters. Batman wants justice but is willing to kill Superman because Superman wants to talk to him. And Superman goes around doing good while constantly thinking, "I'll show them!" and "I could kill these guys!" and "Which other woman should I save so I can fuck her?" Batman tries all kinds of violence on Superman while telling Superman smarts are what counts. If only he'd use some and realize he can't hurt this guy. This might be the dumbest version of Batman I've ever seen. Eventually Wonder Woman arrives to point out to these two blockheads that maybe they should stop fighting and work together to make the world a better place. Batman is all, "Well, I can't hurt him anyway so I guess I'll work with him." And Superman is all, "How is she stronger than me? She doesn't need rescuing from anybody. Has she ever gotten laid?!" The issue basically ends with Wonder Woman telling Superman that she's ready to fuck him after he goes into space to learn to fuck (by fighting Brainiac?) and Batman telling Luthor he hopes he gets raped in prison. So exactly the way I'd expect a Frank Miller Superman comic book to end.

I wish I were right popular in high school.

Superman: Year One: Book Three Rating: What I learned from this comic book is that every woman in the DCU wants to fuck Superman and every man in the DCU is jealous of all the women Superman gets to fuck. What I also learned is that I should have read this series before purchasing Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child. I'd still like to know what happened between Clark and Lori. I guess he just left her the same way he left Lana and the same way he left Wonder Woman (who he fell in love with immediately, I guess?).

[starburstonlayaway]

for @elizabroadwaytrash and i

Current word count :

40,813

Basic summary:

Tyler and Ethan’s family goes through a lot of changes following their marriage. They lose people, take others in, and new journeys are ventured on every day, no matter how scary or exciting.

Title? WIP? Alternate titles?

“Leave a Message.”

Yes, it is a work-in-progress.

I don’t believe we had any alternative titles, and if we did, I do not recall them.

Favorite character and how they are introduced:

Tyler. He’s introduced at the beginning of the first chapter, seen before anyone else.

Favorite ship:

Rose/Victor! I haven’t gotten to writing their relationship and build-up, but from our plans and how we’ve designed Victor’s character to be, I’m excited.

MC’s biggest mistake:

Rose is probably more of an MC than the others, despite it being a Tyler/Ethan fanfic.

Her biggest mistake was probably refusing to give up on Carter. While he was her boyfriend, his actions toward her (and later, Jazzy) were unacceptable after she came out to him. She isn’t to blame at all, but it’s definitely the thing she regrets most.

Inspiration:

A webcomic on Webtoon called “Always Human.” The comic explores the events happening to the girls Sunati and Austen throughout the course of their relationship. Beautiful art, realistic problems (despite being set in a futuristic utopian society), representation, and well-written romance. I wanted to incorporate these factors into LaM to make it similar to a story I enjoyed very much that left an influence on me.

Underrated character appreciation:

Jazzy! Rose’s best friend. Even in the separate story where she’s one of the main set of characters, she’s still very overlooked. She’s very upbeat and friendly, with lots of knowledge on wlw pop culture and history!

A few favorite dialogues:

“I’m ready, but we’re not in a rush or anything.” “Of course we’re in a rush, you slut! The sooner you guys get married, the sooner you have kids, and the sooner I’m an uncle!“ “Aren’t you occupied enough as it is? If you’re so involved in the idea of having a family, then why haven’t you and Jack had any kids of your own yet?“ “Don’t roast us like this.”

(spoken angrily) “Hey, Mister, that’s my soup!”

“That’s Amy! She’s probably Chica and Henry’s favorite out of all of us, but WE SHOULD REALLY SHARE CUSTODY OF HENRY.”

“Uh, I like to read, mostly, but watching older cartoons is also fun.” “Ooh. What cartoons do you like?” “My current favorite is Adventure Time!” “Adventure Time is considered an older cartoon now?” “Guess so.” “Damn, we’re getting old.” “We’re already old, dude.” “Thanks I feel worse.”

“What kind of cancer is it again?” “Leukemia.” “The survival chances of that aren’t terrible.” “Wow. Thanks.”

“You punched Jazzy?! You fucking punched Jazzy?! What the fuck is wrong with you?! Why would you punch someone for standing up to you when you were the one being a dick?!” “She wouldn’t get out of my face—” “I don’t wanna hear that bullshit! Carter, you can hurt me all you fucking want and I won’t care, but you’ve crossed the fucking line. Jazzy is the only person that’s been nice to me all year. She’s supported me and loved me no matter what, something you never fucking did!” “What the hell are you—” “We’re done, Carter! I never want to see your ugly transphobic douchebag ass again!”

MC moodboard:

N/A

MC’s fondest memory:

Probably when she was adopted. It was the most exciting day of her life, and lead down a journey of self-discovery.

In close second is the day she became friends with Jazzy. She was there for her when she needed her most.

Songs that remind of LaM or the characters:

“What About Us” by P!nk, probably definitely because it’s the song I used for Tyler and Ethan’s first dance.

“Leave a Message” by gnash, the song I named the book after! This one doesn’t need much of an explanation.

“Party Tattoos” by dodie. I plan to use this song in the closing chapter, sung by Rose.

Enjoy torturing the characters?

Not really, but I do it anyway. Good for character development, which there’s a lot of. But I don’t enjoy it, no. I love the characters in this book like my cat and dogs: with all my heart.

MC’s biggest fear:

Being unaccepted. This fear makes itself evident after what happens with Carter. Her mother’s reaction enforces this more.

Goals:

To finish LaM by the end of sophomore year, editing and all.

To be proud of the finished product.

To use this book as a reminder that I can do it. I can write.

Characters’ secret talents:

Ethan, despite not playing for many, many years, still excels at playing the ukulele. This becomes not so much of a secret later on in the book.

Rose is surprisingly good at tic-tac-toe. Not necessarily a talent, but definitely something she’d want you to note.

Turned into a media? Cast?

Seeing as LaM is a piece of fanwork, I don’t believe I would turn it into a media.

If it was to be a media, however, along with Tyler Scheid and Ethan Nestor to play Tyler and Ethan, as well as Mark Fischbach, Amy Nelson, and Kathryn Knutsen to play their friends, a few choices I would make would be to cast Janet Mock as adult Rose Scheid and Elliot Fletcher as adult Adrian Garcia.

MC’s basic morals and general beliefs:

Rose’s number one moral is to never make someone feel shut out. Having been rejected (as well as accepted) many times in her life, she knows that she never wants anyone to feel like that, and makes an effort to be the reason.

How MC found out the tooth fairy doesn’t exist:

She never really believed in it, to begin with.

Best name:

Jasmine “Jazzy” Hinojosa-Mills.

Least favorite OC:

Carter. Abusive transphobic asshat that left Rose with lots of insecurities and trauma for years to come.

Snippet:

Mark really had gone all out with making the altar just like Tyler had wanted it to look. The arch was made out of ebony wood that had been painted white with golden accents. Flowery vines were twirled all around the wood, the flowers colors of black, grey, purple, and blue. The chairs surrounding the aisle were all made of the same wood as the arch, the cushions blue and grey. Both Ethan and Tyler’s family alike filled those chairs, chattering away with one another. Tyler quickly scanned the side filled with Ethan’s relatives, and wasn’t surprised to see Ethan’s aunt and uncle were not present. He hoped to god that Ethan wouldn’t notice. The guests quieted down and turned their heads to look at Tyler, and he felt put on the spot. Most of the guests smiled at him, others clapped quietly. He could see that two people in particular were both smiling and clapping. Seeing Jack and Kathryn so supportive of him was majorly comforting to Tyler. He exhaled, and glanced at Mark behind him. Mark was already smiling, and nudged his head towards the arch. Tyler walked down the aisle and received praise from just about everyone sat in chairs. He high-fived Jack on his way to his place next to the officiant. The lady smiled at him, and he returned the gesture. She opened her book as Mark took his place next to Tyler, gazing over his friend’s tux and wiping off some dust quickly. Mark gave Tyler a thumbs-up, and Tyler couldn’t stop smiling. Now that he was actually out in front of the guests and standing where he was meant to be, his nerves relaxed. In fact, every thought he’d ever had in doubt of this marriage before that moment vanished, as soon as Ethan walked out.

WIP representation:

LGBT

Tyler/Ethan

Rose is trans

Jazzy is pansexual with two moms

Adrian is trans with two moms

Marcus has two dads

POC

Rose and her mother are black

Adrian and his mama are Mexican

Disabilities

Marcus has leukemia (cancer of the white blood cells)

Standalone or part of a series?

Standalone. Although I suppose you could call it a spinoff of one of our other works, the reader does not need to read that series to understand this story.

Biggest character development:

Definitely Rose. Seeing as the story follows the changes through most of her life, there’s a big difference in her character comparing the first chapter she is introduced to the closing chapter, where she takes center stage.

People who know of the WIP:

My co-writer, Caroline. Though I’ve done most of the writing, Caroline and I brought the idea for this story to life together, creating a unique cast of characters such as Jazzy, Rose, Adrian, Marcus, their families, Victor, Rose’s mother Aaliyah, and Ethan’s uncle Zane. Without her, the story would not have been written in the first place.

The lovely readers on AO3. I’ve uploaded chapters of the WIP onto there, updating at least once a month. It feels good to be putting some of my work out there for other people instead of just keeping such a joy all to myself. Of course, this is just a personal opinion.

Characters’ annoying habits:

Jazzy’s very short-tempered. Make one wrong move, anyone could get shouted at, lectured, maybe even a blow to the face.

Marcus feels a lot of self-pity and spite. He wishes his parents wouldn’t baby him so much just because he has cancer. This, later on, leads to him participating in multiple illegal activities to antagonize them.

Adrian grows to be more selfish as he gets older, even going out of his way to go into the military and disappear from Rose’s life out of the blue one day without telling her. He later regrets this.

Rose has plenty of autophobia to go around. After her mother gave her up to the orphanage at a young age and Carter’s abuse towards her in her late middle school years, followed by Adrian’s sudden leave after high school, she always fears being alone or abandoned by the people she cares about.

Tyler and Ethan both never seem to recover from the grief of their first child’s loss. This makes them closed off to people who ask about the incident, and could sometimes bring them back to their depressive state.

Very last three lines (with context):

“Unsure was she on how to approach this. She’d felt it since that first night she met him, but it’d grown more and more out of hand since. They’d also became closer as friends, even now sometimes hanging out without the needed assistance of Marcus and Jazzy by their sides to ease the tension.”

Context: Rose had just come to the conclusion she had a crush on Adrian.

Characters: Based off IRL people(through looks, personality, or habits)?

Tyler, Ethan, Amy, Kathryn, Mark, Jack, Chica, Henry, and all of the parents in the story are based off IRL influencers. The characters have only been switched and changed a bit, as well as the relationships, of course, to fit the story.

Impossible friendship:

Carter and Jazzy. Don’t really need to explain it if you’ve read the work. They hate each other’s guts more than anyone, and they could never kiss and make up. As characters, they aren’t the types to do that at all, especially with each other.

Am I proud?

Yes. Leave a Message has been my most dedicated piece of work so far, and I’d say I’m well on my way to reaching my personally-set deadline next year if I keep it at the rate I’m going. Not to mention the characters and plotlines are exciting and realistic, in my own opinion. There’s still a lot left to be written, but I’ve got everything planned out. I don’t plan on stopping until I’m finished with it.

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael After Midnight: Avatar

Hyperbole is a real bitch. No matter what direction it goes in, it can seriously hamper a movie’s reputation. It’s the reason why I always just give a broad recommendation at the end of my reviews rather than a score; I find saying “Hey if you like this genre/subject matter/actor/etc, you might like this film” is a lot better than saying “This is a 10/10 five star masterpiece that all humans who ever shall exist need to see.” All too often the latter is what you get from mainstream publications when they praise a film.

Look what happened to Frozen; it was called one of the better Disney movies in recent memories and was praised to the heavens and back, which led to a bunch of people on the internet vocally disagreeing with said opinion, which then led to an entire anti-fandom of obnoxious basement dwellers who felt the need to constantly remind everyone Frozen sucked on any animation post they could find. All of this for a movie that, in hindsight, is just a solid, standard Disney princess flick.

Tonight we’re talking about a similar case, a film that when it came out was hyped up as a groundbreaking masterpiece of visual effects and a box office smash that grossed insane amounts of money… and was then derided as forgettable and a ripoff of Pocahontas or FernGully or what have you in the years to come. Yes, tonight we are talking about James Cameron’s smash hit, Avatar, and honestly? It’s probably the second best thing named Avatar out there, after Nickelodeon’s series about the last Airbender. After spending years being an obnoxious hipster douchebag and not watching it because it was popular followed by several more years of being an obnoxious douchebag who bashed whatever it was that was popular to bash, I finally sat down and watched James Cameron’s silly blue alien environmental movie… and frankly, it’s a pretty damn good movie. And I don’t just mean “oh it’s better than I expected but not great,” I mean “I can genuinely see to an extent where people were coming from when they were praising this.”

The story goes like this: In the far future, Earth is a polluted pile of fuck, so humans have taken to looking for resources elsewhere. One elsewhere? The moon of the planet Polyphemus, known as Pandora, which is home to a rare mineral that humans ironically dubbed “Unobtanium,” as it is rather hard to obtain due to the richest source being located amongst the native population: the ten-foot-tall blue alien beings known as the Na’vi. Jake Sully, a paraplegic former marine, is selected to utilize a remote-controlled artificial Na’vi body called an “avatar” so he can gain the native’s trust and maybe convince them to move, though there are tons of problems he has to overcome, not the least being that he starts crushing hard on Neytiri, the daughter of the chief (and seeing how she’s a hot blue alien played by Zoe Saldana, can you really blame him?). Can Sully help the humans and Na’vi reach a peaceful conclusion, or is the warmongering Colonel Miles Quaritch gonna get his way and start routing the natives out by force?

Interestingly, a lot of the movies that people claims this ripped off came out after this movie had been written; Cameron’s been working on this movie since 1994, when he wrote up an 80-page treatment for the film. He wanted to start working on this after Titanic, but the technology of the time just wasn’t right to fulfill his vision. Frankly, it’s a good thing he waited, because as I’m sure you know from all the praise it got, the visuals in this film are simply stunning. The Na’vi, the creatures of Pandora, the forests, all the glorious details of this alien planet and its inhabitants are just incredibly well done. If this had been done earlier, there is no way the Na’vi would have avoided the uncanny valley as well as they did; as it stands, they’re probably one of my favorite alien races in fiction, just from the visual standpoint alone. How good this movie looks compared to the story - which by comparison to the groundbreaking effects is rather basic - would almost make you think this film is just style over substance…

...But I’d argue that’s not exactly the case. While it’s glaringly obvious that the effects are the biggest draw, the story is still enjoyable and solid. It may seem rather derivative, but that’s mostly because in the span of time the film took to get made everyone and their mother cranked out environmental films or films about aboriginal people being joined by an outsider who learns from them and then fights back against people encroaching on their way of life, especially during the 90s. This movie quite frankly has an edge over all of those films; for one, this film looks way better than any of them, even Pocahontas (which is undeniably a beautiful film to look at). It also helps this film avoids the, uh… unfortunate implications that often come with these kinds of stories. I’m not here to get to into this aspect of those kinds of movies, but in the hands of less talented writers and directors there tends to be really nasty undertones. While Jake Sully does help lead this foreign culture to victory over their technologically advanced foes, it’s more due to him having knowledge of how humans work combined with the skills the Na’vi themselves have. Neither would have won without the other’s help. So yeah, the story is pretty simple, but pretty good. Not truly groundbreaking or original, but it really doesn’t have to be.

While I will say the story is the weak point, it IS carried by some truly great characters… just not Sully. While he’s a decent protagonist and all, he’s quite frankly overshadowed by just about everyone around him, with three enormous shadows being cast by Grace, Neytiri, and Quaritch. Grace is played by Sigourney Weaver. That is literally all you need to know to understand why she utterly steals every single scene she’s in, but for the sake of this review, let me explain in a bit more detail: her establishing character moment has her awakening from her avatar pod asking where her cigarette is, she openly is suspicious of Sully being added to the avatar program, she is the most honestly sympathetic and noble character in the entire movie, and her avatar is a stunning work of CGI. There’s really not a bad thing I can say about her; she’s basically Ellen Ripley with a more positive attitude towards aliens. She takes no shit and she does all she can to keep these people from being exploited by the greasy corporate shitweasels, no matter what she has to do. What a fucking hero. Can you see why Sully just seems kinda weak in comparison?

Then we have Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldana. She’s gorgeous, she’s badass, and she has quite the likable personality. She almost singlehandedly gives Sully a basic rundown on how not to die and spends most of her early screentime saving his ass. This was one of Saldana’s big roles in 2009 alongside playing Uhura in the Star Trek reboot series, and it brought her tons of praise, fame, and helped get her typecast as “Badass space babe with colorful skin.” Without this, Gamora might have gone to a less impressive actor who wouldn’t have been able to showcase the emotional range required, so at the very least I’m thankful to this movie for that.

And now finally, and perhaps most importantly, we come to Colonel Miles Quaritch, played by Stephen “You wished he was Cable until they cast Josh Brolin” Lang. Quaritch is what seems like such a simple villain: a military man with some serious bloodlust, a guy who just seems to be itching to go to war. But really, there’s a lot more to him than that. One really gets the sense Quaritch really does believe what he’s doing is for the betterment of humanity, and he doesn’t go right to gunning down the Na’vi even when he’s given the word to remove them by force. There are a lot of ways to interpret him, but frankly, no matter what way you cut it he’s at the very least genuinely concerned with the safety of his subordinates (outlined in his establishing scene); this leads him to becoming probably one of the single most badass anti-villains ever conceived. The man frequently steps out into the hostile atmosphere of the moon, holding his breath, to take shots at foes before putting on a breathing apparatus. He jumps out of an exploding plane in a mini-mech, which he uses to get into a knife fight with Sully. And every heinous and violent action he takes is one he takes to protect men from dying, something he has seen far too much of. And while this makes him sympathetic to a degree, his utter disdain of the Na’vi and his bloodthirsty attitude also makes sure you want to see him gets what’s coming to him.

There’s some side characters here and there that are good, but it’s mainly these three carrying the story when it starts seeming a bit too basic for this lofty world Cameron has built. And really, this is a fantastic world he’s created. This is truly a stunning film visually, with some flavorful characters to ensure that the vision doesn’t wear on you throughout the running time. For the most part, it really does work; guess that’s just the magic of James Cameron.

This is a very good film. Not the greatest film of all time, but definitely an enjoyable, ambitious, and groundbreaking one. If I ever make a list of the best sci-fi films (and you know I will eventually), this will most certainly be on there… somewhere. It’s at least top 25 material. While Aliens and the first two Terminator films are definitely the best stuff Cameron has done, this is still quite an impressive piece of pop sci-fi he created; if you like environmental movies, science fiction, creative worldbuilding, awesome visuals, or James Cameron movies, this film is worth a watch. Hell, it’s worth a watch if you’re a fan of Weaver, Lang, or Saldana too, because their performances really drive this film. It’s a good movie, plain and simple.

...Though I don’t think it’s good enough to warrant four sequels. Fuck off, Cameron.

[izzyovercoffee]

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.