#truly eclipses my own well-established hubris

[curiosity-killed]

☕ plumbers please?

Context: I’ve been having a Really Shit Plumbing Experience for the past 5 weeks.

In general I am pro-plumber. My parents are intensely DIY folks (as in they built their current house and have done extensive remodeling and repair work on their past house and family members’ homes) but always say that for plumbing and electricity, you call an expert*. Consequently I grew up with a heavy dose of respect toward them, and as part of my tendency to be taken for A Sweet Young Girl, tend to have older plumbers be very friendly and chatty with me. It is, I assume, an extension of my lifelong habit of adopting/being adopted by extra grandpas??

THAT SAID I am currently about one more condescending remark away from starting a fistfight with the next plumber to tell me “it’s hard to track a leak” while acting like I’m a child. Will I win? No, but they will lose.

*this is sort of a lie bc my parents will also DIY rather a lot of plumbing issues themselves and my dad and grandpa did all the wiring in our house (admittedly upside down) but anyway

send me a ☕️ and a topic and i’ll talk about how i feel about it

[smokeybrand]

Rise of the Skywalker

This sh*t with Lucasfilm is wild to witness. I’m not really one to buy into entertainment gossip but i am emotionally invested in Star Wars. I’m an Eighties kid, man. Star Wars helped to shape our childhood growing up. Vader is one of my all-time favorite antagonists. Ahsoka has grown to rival him in my heart as a beloved character. As a cat who creates, myself, i can’t help but adore the passion and creativity i n the entire world lore around the Skywalker legend. I mean, look at everything built around those first three films. Just taking Legends into account, you have the absolutely excellent Shadows of the Empire and the Thrawn trilogy. More than that, and probably one of the best game franchises ever realized, you have The Knight of the Old Republic. F*ck, dude, Revan? Nihilus? Bastila? Kreia? HK-47? This is Bioware at it’s finest, save Mass Effect 2. And then Disney cam in and f*cked it all up.

Kathleen Kennedy has been a poison to the franchise, and not because of her identity politics. Look, you can work in your ideals and messages without being so goddamn heavy-handed with it but this chick, and her “writer’s group.” can’t craft a story to save their lives. That’s the problem here. Not Rey or Finn or Poe. Not Holdo or Rose Tico. Not even Snoke. It’s how these characters were presented, it’s how the writing shaped them. I’ve written at length about how Rey was a missed opportunity and, according to the original leaked treatment, that misstep was more like an outright face-plant The Rey that was to grow throughout the Sequel trilogy, culminating in a battle between a fully realized, Jedi Knight Rey and a fully realized Sith Lord Ren, should have been the Last Jedi we got. Instead, we got what we got and it shattered the credibility of the entire franchise. Star Wars, the most successful franchise in cinematic history until the MCU came through, was on life support. Forty years of solid, narrative storytelling, ancillary material, and fan passion, squandered because the chick in charge wanted to instill everything with her identity politics, using something she had no creative credit toward, co-opting the shine of another, to secure her legacy. And she did just that; Kathleen Kennedy was the person who almost killed Star Wars. Kennedy’s legacy of failure, secure. But then, a new hope. Jon Favreau, the progenitor of the MCU, stepped forward and saved Star Wars with his show, The Mandalorian.

John Favreau is a great creator. Dude not only gave us Iron Man, but Chef, Swingers, and Elf. He gets the content but, more than anything, Favreau understands how to craft a goddamn story. He was appointed to The Mandalorian and given creative control by, at the time, CEO of Disney, Bob Iger. Favreau, in partnership with the genius pariah, Dave Filoni, architect of Star Wars: Clone Wars, Rebels, and the best f*cking character created in the modern era, Ahsoka Tano. With theses two at the helm, Mando returned to the true essence of a Star Wars tale. They created their own pocket universe, one with the evolution of the Mandalorian culture and sprinkled with shenanigans of an adorable, and marketable, Baby Yoda. That first season gave us amazing characters like Din Djaran, Cara Dune, Greef Kaga, and Moff Gideon. That first season of Mando saved the franchises and that is not an exaggeration. It felt like Star Wars. The characters were rich and developed. More than anything, the stories told were absolutely excellent. The funny thing about that? Mando isn’t expected to succeed like it did. No, everyone, including Kennedy, thought it was going to fail. She fought, tooth and nail, against what Favreu was trying to created, sabotaging him at every turn. But he was able to complete his show and the fandom received it with utmost fervor, eclipsing anything Kennedy and her idealouges every created. Then season two dropped.

I’m not going to sit her and say that the narrative for Season two was better than the first. It wasn’t. But that’s because season two of The Mandalorian was a love letter to the fans. Favreau and Filoni had a hit on their hands with Mando and, more importantly, they made Star Wars profitable again. This gave the two of them a margin of creative freedom that expanded into something truly marvelous. That second season of Mando was able to dig deep into the lore, introduce fan favorite characters like Ahsoka Tano and Bo-Katan Kreyze, reintroducing Boba Fett while giving him a bad-ass second in Fennec Shand, while expanding the universe for spin-offs and delivery a franchise altering return of a Jedi Knight, Luke Skywalker! Kennedy spent her entire sequel trilogy, discrediting and marginalizing the old trilogy, typified by the complete destruction of Luke in The Last Jedi, only for Mando to overturn, redeem, and empower Luke with a two minute gauntlet of Force awesomeness that rivaled the utter dominance displayed by his father at the end of Rogue One. That tidbit about Vader? Yeah, Kennedy fought against that, too. The Mando came through and proved that fallowing Lucas’ path was the true way of the Star War and Chepek agreed. We now have this entire blueprint of shows birthed from this one season, that will build toward an Avengers-level event. Ahsoka, Rangers of the New Republic, and The Book of Boba Fett will all culminate in a cinematic experience, most likely a theatrical film, based around Thrawn. And, more to the point, people are excited about this sh*t. People are looking forward to this sh*t. People want this sh*t. What they don’t want is more of Kennedy’s politics and bullsh*t hot-takes, masquerading as Star Wars canon. Case in point, the abject failure of The High Republic.

Before Favreau and Filoni came through and saved Star Wars, Kennedy had this entire idea for a full-on Star Wars universe, built upon token diversity and f*cking Space dinosaurs. There was a pitch meeting that showed a literal checklist and story was the third or fourth option. How the f*ck is story not the first thing on the list for an actual narrative you’re writing? Why the f*ck isn’t the Writer’s group, not putting story first, in a narrative they’re constructing by committee? That is the genesis of The High Republic. In the time that Youtube preview hit the fandom with all the force of a wet fart, Mando came through and proved no one wants that sh*t. Then season two came through and rived people want more Luke and more Lucas Star Wars, weeks before The High Republic, the jumping off point for Kennedy’s original vision for “New Star Wars” was supposed to launch. Yeah, that launch ain’t go so well. The High Republic is out, right now, and you can buy it. No one is buying it. They’re all paying for Disney+ memberships to watch Mando sh*t on everything Kennedy has done or will do. Disney announced a whole slate of Star Wars shows and material. One of which is The Acolyte, a spin-off from The High Republic tarring Brie Larson and written by Leslye Headland. The Acolyte is going to bomb for the same reasons The High Republic is bombing; No one wants to be preached to and that’s all these woke, blue hairs, want to do. I know that because they’ve told you as such.

The Force is Female. All of that sh*t with Pablo Hidalgo. The recent controversy of Justina Ireland telling people not to buy The High Republic if they don’t agree with her politics. The fact that Kathleen Kennedy has been trying to get Favreau fired for “sabotaging” her High Republic launch by redeeming Luke and galvanizing the entire fandom. The thing about this, though, is the fact that everything Kennedy has crated, is creatively bankrupt. Everything Favreau and Filoni have built with Mando, has been genuine, organic, and fun. Just to be clear, i actually like Brie Larson. I think she’s an excellent actress with very valid opinions. I think the sh*t she wants to make should be made. I don’t think she should co-opt a long running franchise with decades of lore and a ravenous fandom who are already on the outs with the current management of their beloved franchise. I can’t say i like Headland but i did adore her Netlfix show, Russian Doll. that sh*t was hilarious and dope. I don’t think her type of film making lends itself to Star Wars, however, for he same reason i don’t think Larson should have a show in the fandom either. Having opinions is fine. Installing those opinions in your writing is fine. Installing your opinions in an established property is not fine. You can do that, Back Panther was able to integrate that sh*t successfully, but they did it nuance. It didn’t get clumsy and ridiculous until the end. Kennedy’s writing group started with the awkward preaching. Those weren’t the droids yo were looking for, bro.

Ultimately, The High Republic is going to fail, as will the rest of Kennedy’s Star Wars legacy. Favreau is already working toward altering her most precious OC, Rey Palpatine. There are plans in the works to make her a Kenobi going forward, redeeming the most egregious of Darth Kennedy’s transgressions, something that wouldn’t even be necessary if they had followed the original treatments JJ left for them going forward. Rey Palpatine should have been Rey Skywalker. She should have been Luke’s daughter. She should have been trained by her pops and took that discipline into the final film where she and her cousin would have a proper reckoning. Rey should have been a proper character with an established legacy. Kennedy decided otherwise and in that hubris, she failed. She has failed, not because she is a Femanzi or has an eye toward activism or an agenda to push. Kennedy has failed because she decided to heavy-handedly force those politics down our throats with no nuance or grace, by slighting everything that came before with malicious intent, while bolstering her analogous creations with the worst kind of writing and non-existent development. Favreau succeeded by weaving a compelling tale, that mirrored the Hero’s tale which has been the bread-and-butter of a great Star Wars narrative, filled it with realized characters who became fast fan favorites, staunched in the lore that came before. He respected the genesis and built something great from it, while revering the stuff which came before. Kennedy thought she was bigger than the franchise. Favreau understands he is in service to it. That’s the difference, That’s why Mando is succeeding and The High Republic has been laid low.