"the twins would be happier if Leia was sent to Tatooine and Luke got to be prince of Alderaan." No they fucking wouldn't.
Our first introduction to Luke is him trying to get out of chores to hang out with his friends, and you want him to be in charge of a planet?
Luke Skywalker, the guy who put his whole heart and soul into piloting and being a Jedi? The guy who blew up the Death Star and redeemed Darth Vader? The guy who risked his life to save a woman he hadn't met? The guy who chose a life of solitude to dedicate himself to teaching a dead religion? You think he'll enjoy discussing things in committee?
And you think Leia Organa, cut-throat, analytical Leia, would be satisfied as farmgirl Leia Skywalker?
The woman who called Tarkin smelly while being kept as a prisoner? The woman who resisted Darth Vader's torture as an adult and Reva's interrogation as a child? Who watched her home and her people destroyed and not even an hour later was arguing and insulting her rescuers? Who held a primed thermal detonator in her hand without blinking? Who strangled Jabba the Hutt with the chain he put around her neck?
You want that woman living in the same household as Owen Lars? They'd kill each other!
You want Leia Organa forced to stay home and do her chores instead of fighting the Empire? Be a farmer like Owen or a housewife like Beru? Never straying further from home than to Mos Eisley? You think she'd ever stand for that?
ffs, just cuz Luke likes fashion and Leia likes fighting doesn't mean they were put in the wrong families! Leia could have been a pilot or a Jedi, but she chose to be a rebel and a leader. Luke could have been General or a diplomat, and he chose to be a Jedi.
TL;DR: If we were to take Luke and Leia the way they are in the OT and switch their childhood circumstances, neither of them would thrive in each other's shoes.
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A little bit of GOS2 criticism crossed my dash, mostly of the not like the book variety (not plot-wise, obviously, only in the sense that it went away from the spirit of the book). Leaving aside the fact as a Stanley Kubrick* fan I don't find this a compelling argument at all, I'm really not raging against the fact that there are people who dislike the things I like, not even blocking anyone, that's for politics, filtering serves just perfectly. But I think I see a pattern in the criticisms original/classic material fans levy against adaptations/continuations in Good Omens (that sometimes includes the first season too), Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes fandoms. If you bite your way through the overgrow of whatever social policy is on the menu it boils down to overfocusing on characters, and in the case of GO overfocusing on characters that aren't even strictly protagonists. And if you've followed me for a while you may have noticed that this sometimes annoys me, too. Sometimes I dress it in fancy wording of precession of simulacrae, sometimes I just bitch about TTC. So I started thinking about why it doesn't bother me, and in fact is a thing that fills me with insane feuertrunkenness** when done right - by which I mostly mean 2nd season of Sherlock, RTD/early Moffat era of Doctor Who, and the 2nd season of Good Omens. So, obviously, I started thinking of Francisco de Goya y Lucientes.
Say hello to my icon and one of most favourite works of visual arts. The simple truth about Goya is that he was an absolute genius in realistic painting. He was flexing away his way across the Spanish court with his compositions, and fabrics, and wrinkles, and light work. He was straight up academically and technically brilliant. He was a product of the European fashion of the time. And yet he could also, especially as his own health and political situation in the country deteriorated, he could also do so. much. drama. So much vision, so much phantasmagoric nightmares. So much introspection. Without even for a moment falling down the chute of sentimentalist navel gazing that the romantic era so often went down.
I don't really like periodization, good art is good art, but paradigmatic shifts are definitely a thing. And there are those amazing artists who bring the older, more established, more as Jung would put it, externalized paradigm to perfection and push it further without losing the sight of it. This is Goya, this is Botticelli, this is Goethe, this is very late Mozart, this is Beethoven. Wagner is a great example because there's this definite moment around the Flying Dutchman and Lohengrin when he finds his style without overpompousing it. And this is an extremely difficult rope to walk! Falling down the rabbit hole of overthinking your own work, and especially overthinking pop cultural phenomena is way way wayyyy too easy for anyone to walk it. The temptation to overpower them is way too strong for mere mortals to resist it.
But it is possible. RTD showed it is possible to do so for over 50 hours of material. The point be that the drama, the sturm und drung and lebenschmertz and whatnot emerge naturally from the story, rather than fitting the story specifically to make it dramatic and navel gazy. It'll be a bit mean now, but it's the difference between the self made tragedy of the last of the time lords and a literal species ready to change reality to find out the Doctor's true name, which matters, but not, but does.
And I think Neilman did hit that sweet spot in the second season. Yes, people are complaining about Aziraphale and Crowley coming off as "too important", especially Crowley***, which is completely contrary to the book, but this remains elegantly within the realms of interpretation. It's introspective and dramatic without navel gazing and tragedy for tragedy's sake. And knowing his other works I feel fairly confident he won't be falling off that rope.
And I wouldn't be a McLuhanist if I didn't mention that television is a medium naturally more likely to focus on characters because of its episodic character (stories end, banter is forever) and the fact it was the first medium where characters were literally at people's homes.
* Don't inform me that he wasn't the nicest person but was a veritable nightmare to work with, I mean his FILMS.
** Sorry for the German vocab, but what can I say, they really made a point when they started splashing words together.
*** My three cents on pre-fall Crowley's archangelic status is that I still like the inversion and irony, but I liked it better when the theory was getting excommunicated as *checks notes* too classist, rather than sth you vagued Neilman about on Tumblr.
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“If oxys missing I think we all know who took it.” FUCK ALL OF YOU??? if you can come to that conclusion in the first place then why have you been ignoring it until it’s staring you right in the face and there’s 20 pills missing? Especially Paul and Paige-who have probably been paying the most attention to Mike and talking with him-ironically also the two people with the most experience with addicts and how they act?? Mike may be smart about hiding his addiction and problems but everybody else in that house is smart and istg, at least Paul and Paige, knew something bigger was going on with Mike and they just pretended like they were checking in with him without wanting the responsibility of doing anything even though they wanted it to seem like they were taking care of and cared about Mike. This man comes downstairs after locking himself in his room for ten days, obsessing over 47 red birds and a the V of the clock hands at the time 10:10 and obviously mentally going through it and??? Paige stands up and walks away?? YOU DID THIS TO HIM HONEY. She didn’t even have the decency to pretend to care or listen-I think patronizing/pity would be a step up from complete disregard. And Paul is just straight up using Mike’s situation to his advantage so he’s playing along in that caring role until he can manipulate Mike from behind the scene to do what he needs to do to suit his needs. Charlie, Johnny, DJ have their own shit going on but at least voice that something’s going on with Mike and the few times they do talk with Mike-it’s a real conversation and not whatever the fuck a Paul was doing with him(manipulation). Paul and Paige act like they’re taking care of him but it’s all a lie-they don’t really care. The people who actually care have been fooled-or just didn’t pay enough attention because they wouldn’t expect addiction from golden boy Mikey. I also don’t know why everybody views mike as this inhumane robot(ya know bc he’s no sentimental, etc), he cries and cares and gets scared more than anybody and he was murdered?? He left the hospital and got put back on the field earlier than he should have but they just think he’ll be okay. Maybe Mike isn’t their responsibility but they want to say there’s no secrets in graceland and graceland is like a family but then they just leave mike to fend for himself because he’s Mike. And when they try to help him- cue the worst possible intervention-it’s more like ganging up on him and then giving up as soon as he fights back. Mike is all alone in this world.
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