#sw visions 2

[space-blue]

Screecher's Reach -- Give me strength

[gizkalord]

There’s something so visceral and unsettling about seeing how the dancer’s lost son was forced into literally maiming himself to erase any “other-ness”

[space-blue]

What I liked about the factory setting is that it didn't feel oppressive, but rather inescapable. As in... There are droids on watch, and the speeders are locked, but Quinn clearly has experience snatching them, and they zip away without a care. They weren't doing so with fear of consequences.

It didn't feel like a forced labor camp of a style the empire might set up in its time... It felt more like a dreary factory town on the edge of nothing, where they aren't oppressed into that life, but they rather have no other choice.

And so when Baython encourages Daal to grab opportunities and not look back, I'm sure he means like... Some crofter offering marriage and taking her out a few valleys over... Or maybe getting a job on a cargo ship and getting to visit off planet here and there?

All he knows is the workhouse, and his soothing platitudes are shared to keep his friend from being too miserable, knowing there's very little hope for her of that future she dreams of.

The way his own words are twisted against him just hours later... And even then she doesn't follow them and looks back.

And then when she reaches for the light, the thing that answers her is the black block.. A chunk of darkness.

That old sith had murals she carved in the walls. And you're left to wonder if she was in hiding, or kept there under threat. Used as a test for any of the miserable young force sensitives in the factories that the sith mother can convince to wander off.

I love how Daal wanted strength to survive a test in her mind, and was instead pushed to show the "strength" to kill a real person.

She says the sith pendant/mother gave her strength, but in that cave she seemed alone. It's a thing she's done. She killed that woman with their own weapon and then it's bestowed on her as a trophy. It's so twisted. The sith mother dirties her hands as a test. Debases her morally and then appears in full glory...

It's all shining metal, red, gold and bursting warm light... But you already know what the end looks like : pale and colourless in a dark cave.

I can't shake the idea the ghost is the Sith Mother's old master.

I love how it's a cautionary tale that doesn't say dreaming is bad. Wanting a better life isn't wrong. But everything is twisted and poisoned by the sith. Every decision Daal makes is already oriented towards the dark.

It's a fairy tale that doesn't even warn you against the sith, it seems. But it shows how they corrupts even the simplest tale of heroism and fearlessness, of wanting new horizons and better things.

Still thinking about Screecher’s Reach, actually. How the red never left Daal’s cheeks from likely years of being exposed to the steam. How Baython’s eyes were heavy and tired, how he kept up a smile for Quinn and Keena. How the ghost’s scream sounded like a TIE fighter when they were sitting around the campfire. How the actual ghost was a blind sith woman using the force to sense intruders in the dark. How Daal’s fist use of the force was to reach for the light, only to then crush and kill what she didn’t understand moments later. How the Sith’s ship looked like an angel’s wings descending. How the Sith guided her into the light of the ship like a lure, and we watched in horror as it swallowed Daal whole. Just, man. I love it when star wars is good.

[darth-memes]

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

Visions s2 really went: here are four new Jedi ladies and they're beautiful and old and gentle and badass and perfect.

[jedi-order-apologist]

I couldn't figure out how to put it in to words last night when I was summarizing my thoughts on Visions S2, but I think "Screecher's Reach" does a really good job with the concept of the Sith/dark side as corruption, in how it takes familiar, positive elements we've seen in other Star Wars stories, and twists them. Everything is recognizable on the surface, but just...off. Unsettling in a way that isn't obvious at first.

For example, the repetition of a mantra. We've seen this before, but usually with something that invokes the Force. An appeal to strength and courage seems positive enough (and in another franchise might very well be), but it definitely seemed odd, not Star Wars-y...until it took a dark turn when the protagonist describes herself as "strong" in reference to her taking a life, and the appearance of a Sith. It made complete sense then.

Another example, the test in a dark side cave. We've seen this before, as a way for Jedi to face themselves and confront their fears. And the narrative seems to travel this route, until it's revealed that the test was not to face herself, but another being - and kill them. Luke fails a Jedi's test by bringing his weapon and fear and anger with him, and sees his own face when he kills the illusionary Vader. This short turns that on its head, with our protagonist passing a Sith's test by taking up a weapon already inside. She sees nothing (that's shown to us) when she kills the real, living Sith. She doesn't face her dark reflection, but it is her reflection since she goes with the Sith in the end.

And of course, the mentor and leaving your old life behind - usually positive in this franchise. But here, while it has all the same trappings of the more positive or bittersweet departures (even echoing Shmi's "don't look back"), the audience knows that the Sith doesn't have any good intentions here, and that nothing but misery waits for the protagonist, not the better life she's expecting.

[antianakin]

What's most interesting to me about the Spy Dancer in this rewatch is how similar it is to Andor. It's a story about regular people (no Jedi or Sith involved) during the Imperial Era, but it manages to keep all of the same themes from the Jedi/Sith conflict and give it a different perspective.

Loi'e has lost hope almost entirely. She's helping the rebels on her planet, but she's doing it because it's necessary. There's no real joy for her, no real emotional connection to the people around her. She lost her son twenty years ago and so she refuses to make new emotional connections to anyone else ever since, no matter how much they love her. Hétis and the other workers would clearly do just about anything for Loi'e, they'd die for her if they had to, and she inspires them as a leader. But Loi'e is convinced she has to do everything alone and keeps pushing everyone around her away, even if it could mean her death as a result.

In the end, Loi'e finds her long lost son and it gives her hope again, but she still has to walk away from him and leave him behind. She COULD stay with him, but she'd die as a result and then he'd never have a way to escape the Empire. For both their sakes, she has to let him go, even if just temporarily. She doesn't give up on trying to save him in the long run, and this renewed hope gives her the ability to keep fighting and to choose to trust the family she's built around her and connect to them in a way she never has before.

And it's that selfless love that seems to get through to Loie's son, long after the two are separated again. Loi'e gives him a CHOICE to make, to follow the path she's left for him even when it's painful, or to continue to ignore the truth about himself. We'll never know what his choice is, but the fact that she intentionally gives him a choice he's never been offered before hits so hard and so good. Choice is SO important in Star Wars, and while Loi'e's son obviously has an immensely tragic story that led him to being an Imperial, it's important to recognize that he does HAVE a choice and is still capable of making it. The lies the Empire has told him have kept this choice from him before (he would have had a choice still, it just would have been to abandon the only family he knew in order to help the local rebels or stay with the people he believes raised him and loved him and help protect their cause), but his mother has gifted him with knowledge that puts this new choice in front of him.

And that's at the heart of Star Wars, that is the heart of Anakin's story, that he's ALWAYS had a choice. Luke offers his father assistance down this path, but only Anakin can actually make the journey. Similarly, Loi'e offers her son assistance but she can't force him to make this choice.

[gentlespace]

thank you visions season 2 for giving me these two I love them so much

[short-wooloo]

Some idiot commenting on a Twitter post for SW Visions S2: "learn your own lore! Jedi don't conceal their lightsabers! That's a sith thing!"

Replies:

"Guess Luke isn't a Jedi" (hiding his lightsaber in R2 in ROTJ)

"Just admit you're making up shit to bitch about new SW"

"Kanan concealed his lightsaber"

"Tera Sinube's lightsaber is hidden in his cane"

"The Jedi have to conceal their lightsabers to survive after order 66"

"Visions is a non canon reimagining, it doesn't have to follow the lore (but also it isn't ignoring lore, plenty of Jedi conceal their lightsabers, especially after order 66)"

(Personal favorite) "Because all Jedi are all exactly the same at every point in the timeline, even in alternate universes"

"Breaking news, Master Sinube is a sith lord"

[stuffedeggplants]

The horseback "insurgents” in Bandits of Golak are a reference to the dacoits (bandits) of northwestern India. Charuk calls the bandits “rebels,” harkening back to some historical/famous dacoits as people who also resisted/fought the British Empire. 

The people of Golak are rebelling against the Galactic Empire where people of India rebelled against the British Empire.

[thevipersnake]

Turn arounds I did for Star Wars Visions season 2 : the Spy Dancer (character designs by Camille de Knyff and Julien Cheng at Studio La Cachette)

Follow me on instagram @arthur_blavier

[space-blue]

Screecher's Reach -- Make your choice

[gizkalord]

look at the lightsaber animation in the el guiri short, i’m literally salivating

[unspuncreature]

the way sw visions season 2 visually depicts force sensitives experiencing and interacting with the force in VASTLY different ways is STILL making me soo crazy

[darth-memes]

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

I'm in love with how this season of Visions made the Force so wonderful and big in the way it can be accessed. It also rightly made the Dark Side utterly vile, terrifying and disgusting. But the way young Force-sensitive really discover the Force for the first time? (Or rediscover it, in Toul's case.) It's so magical.

It's light from your planet's plantlife and it's memories you couldn't reach before showing up as dancing paintings.

It's foggy visions on wet stones.

It's the clarity of facing yourself.

It's glowing statues, showing you that hope exists in equal measure to despair.

It's the light of a kyber choosing you reflected in your eyes.

And it's a thousand songs calling to you, so you can sing back and heal the corruption.

It's light and music and it's so personal and unique and multifaceted and nobody experiences it quite the same aaaaaah i love it so much!!!! This feels like Rebels!!!! It's like Lothal and the dancing paintings and the World Between Worlds and the wolves!!!!

HECK YEAH. That's why Star Wars needs animation, not just live-action. How do you communicate to an audience what the Force even is if you can't have moments like this? It actually felt like being there with the characters learning what the Force is, and seeing and feeling it! That's the kind of stuff I want to see the most.