So Im all here for the Pretty Ladies who dress nicely doing all the politics, wonderful court intrigue right here, are we gonna talk about in the back ground the majority known Male characters are in War killing dying thing? this story IS about the back room deals and others as main setting, (although we should tease you about dodging the wars in Star Wars sometimes just as a little poke.) curious cause the 4 main Male politco 2 are enemies in Rush and Palps. Kamino had a fem evil Senator! use??
Who wants to talk about ✨🌈Palpatine🌈✨!
There haven't been a lot of opportunities to talk about the structure and the influence of our main villain textually in the story, because Leia is kinda blind to her own bias, and also a lot of stuff that I have as part of his character just...doesn't come up.
So, keep two things in mind as I talk about DLB Chancellor Sheev Palpatine and pull back the curtain just a little.
His character is coming pretty exclusively from the OT and PT movies (with minor exceptions).
I'm taking advantage of a lot of silences and time period circumstances to draw conclusions about his character, so don't be surprised if I say something that isn't said out loud at some point.
Ready? Let's go!!
The OT features an overabundance of male humans in positions of power in Palpatine's government. This may have been balanced out slightly by novels that I haven't read or newer shows that I haven't watched, but the people Palps promoted to his special seats of power (Moffs, military leaders) are overwhelming human men. If we stretch canon to include the two Clone Wars cartoon series, the only women brought into Palpatine's plots are brought in by Dooku or other associates, not Palpatine himself. Of the three apprentices Palpatine has, two are human and one is humanoid.
I don't think I'm breaking anyone's brain to assert that Palpatine is sexist and racist. I know I'm not the first person to suggest or write this sort of character.
What I'm going to assert, beyond those points, is that Palpatine is only really impressed with himself, and assumes that anyone lacking qualities that he has is progressively less useful and important than him. So he's also, for lack of a better word, Force-ist.
(Ugh, nope. I still don't like it, but I don't have anything else.)
Palpatine absolutely has loyalists and panderers that are women. But as far as DLB is concerned, he's not promoting them, searching them out, or impressed by them. So women are going to be antagonists in this story more incidentally. On a small scale. Major antagonists are going to end up frequently being male and human. And I'm not going to try and change that.
Only tangentially related, but a little important because Leia comes into the Senate through Padmé's office, because of the prejudices listed above, I will pretty much die on the hill that Palpatine loathes Padmé. And he really loathes that he loathes her. That he has to have any feelings about her at all.
She's young. She's a girl. She isn't Force sensitive. He plucked her out and carefully curated her early political experience and was probably violently influential in her success in getting elected the first time. He had a tiny, fragile, 14 year old stumbling under the weight of the crown, ready to start his civil war and initiate the end of the Republic. She gets him elected. His plan is flawless.
Until it turns out that she has a spine, and humility. She has the courage to face danger and the grace to bow to another sovereign power. She trusts Jar Jar Binks when he suggests that the gungans have an army. Like this is somehow a viable plan for taking back her people, when Jar Jar isn't even slightly popular or powerful.
And she wins. Palpatine loses Maul, he loses Naboo, and he loses the opportunity to start a war. She sets him back a solid decade, at 14. On a hope and a the thinnest apology.
DLB isn't so much about creating a perfectly equitable Star Wars universe. I'm not equipped for that, and it wasn't the goal. This story is about a bunch of ladies doing politics and kicking Palpatine's plans to the curb because he was always vulnerable to the people he dismissed the most.
Palpatine's plans had the Jedi and the Senate in a steel trap of lose-lose situations. But he loses, over and over, to kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and diplomacy. He's stymied by it. He literally can't plan for it. I've had all sorts of fun having Leia and Padmé do "mother-daughter" politics together, but I love that in RotJ Luke Skywalker looked the Emperor dead in the eyes and said, "No. No you can't make me do this." Like his mother would have. It had to drive Palpatine completely nuts. And it worked.
Anyway, all that to say, there's a lot of story left, and I'm not going to give away all of Palpatine's plans and plots. But part of how Leia got this far without any resistance was that Palpatine saw a short, unconnected woman from the outer rim, had no idea she could use the Force, and went, "Not important."
And he was very, very, very wrong. :D
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Billy Hargrove's death was selfless, which means he died for others. But it's still not enough.
Say he ended up surviving the Mind Flayer. Would anything he does ever be enough to please this fandom?
I think we all know the answer to that.
It's very telling that if Billy had survived a majority of people would rather him go through a bunch of mandatory trials to fill some quota that let's be honest would never really be filled than separate him from his abusers so he can heal in a safe environment.
You'd rather have an abuse victim dance on hot coals for forgiveness than punish his abusers.
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Who was y'all's, like, first actually fully redeemed villain? I don't mean "dies to help the protags" or "survives but we basically never see them again outside of maybe one extra episode" or "clearly was barely a villain and going to defect from the villain group at the first real chance", I mean "was an active, big threat to the protag(s) and then went on to become a solid presence on the protag side"
I'll go first, mine was Ken from Digimon 02
(Technically Gatomon, whom I also love, but they really dug into the "her actual place is with the protags" foreshadowing, doubly so if you actually knew what a Gatomon was beforehand, Ken was the first one where the show went a substantial amount of time without giving any big indications he wasn't going to be an asshole forever)
(Also not that anything's wrong with the previous choices necessarily, they also serve their purpose well, like any other kind of story beat! But I wanna talk specifically about these kinds of characters)
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