Remember, peeps, searching your own name on Twitter or anywhere else is stalkerish and weird. Don’t do it! Obsessively hatereading a blog you despise, on the other hand, that’s completely normal and A-OK. 👌
…Is she denying that she wrote this tweet? I guess this totally normal and non-weird person is going to delete anything that I don’t keep direct receipts for, hence the screenshots.
Who’s dissing Poe or Oscar? No one is saying an interracial relationship between a white woman and a Latino man on screen is not progressive. We’re saying Poe and Rey hardly know each other while Finn and Rey are canonically the most important people in each others’ lives, and putting Poe and Rey together in a hurried pairing with no buildup would be nothing but a transparent attempt to avoid Finnrey. Daisy herself said she doesn’t support Damerey, is she dissing Oscar too?
Like, you weird manipulative Doomereys can stay the hell away from my inbox. You’re more annoying than reylows, who at least know not to come at me anymore.
Started listening to the audiobook version of Inferno Squad and Janina Gavankar’s voice is 👍❤️😍 It saddens me a little sad that tie-in audiobooks seem to be the only SW products where these insanely talented actresses of color are front and center.
It’s fascinating to see what a loyal and elite subject of the Empire thinks of its atrocities. The book opens with Iden being excited about the destruction of Jedha, Scarif, and Alderaan, and I don’t think I’ve been so angry at a protagonist in the opening moments of a book. If I’d had a more personal relationship with the subject of genocide I can see myself ditching the book altogether.
I thought maybe Iden was kept from knowing the full details, but no, she knew Jedha was no mining accident (the derisive way Janina reads “mining accident,” just… I love this woman), and she knew millions of innocents had died on Alderaan.
Iden could justify the Empire’s actions to herself because she interpreted the same information completely differently. To her, Jedha was a successful anti-terrorist operation and a strike against a harmful superstition from a bygone age. The deaths of innocents at Alderaan were the fault of the Rebel leadership who had put them in harm’s way. And finally, with the imminent destruction of the Rebels and the advent of peace, the Empire could direct its energies to helping people instead of restoring order.
Iden’s thought process is chillingly familiar, really. She sounds like any good patriotic American who defends their country’s actions and is a believer in the enlightenment their way of life will bring. She is frightening not because she is outlandish but because she is so prosaic and familiar.
These thoughts were running through her head during the Battle of Yavin, so let’s just say I’m thoroughly enjoying this asshole’s shock and awe at the destruction of the Death Star. How do you like that taste of your own medicine, bitch? I hate her so much right now and am looking forward to her changing sides in large part so she’ll suffer horribly from what she did.
That said, despite the fact that the opening has Iden cheering at genocide and killing Rebel pilots left and right, nothing about this character comes across as irredeemably evil. These actually are the normal actions of a soldier in wartime, an excuse often bandied about for Kylo Ren but doesn’t work because he wasn’t brought up to that way of thinking. I can see how Iden might believe the things she does and why she might change, though I’m hoping it will be a difficult process.
Considering what eventually happens, Gideon and Iden being close friends and pseudo-siblings is bringing out all kinds of Feels. It makes me uncomfortable to see Gideon as such a warm and caring friend who is genuinely concerned for Iden, and without any gross Nice Guy™ undertones at that. It’s a good thing that I’m uncomfortable: Evil is a human phenomenon, after all. It adds another dimension to his character that his parents were killed in a Rebel attack when he was young, an interesting facet of the conflict. Gideon will come to be Iden’s path untaken and vice versa, so it makes a whole lot of dramatic sense for the two to be so close and to mean something to each other starting out.
Speaking of the humanity of evil, the amount of trauma and grief Gideon, Iden, and the Empire ranks at large are going through at the destruction of the Death Star is fascinating in a “You’re so close to getting it!” kind of way. If only they could realize that the destruction of the Death Star, unlike that of Jedha and Alderaan, was a justified self-defensive action. If only they could extrapolate from their own trauma at losing hundreds of thousands of colleagues to seeing that the Rebels are feeling the same kind of trauma and fear on a massively larger scale. If only they could realize that their pain, while understandable, is ultimately the fault not of people who were defending themselves and the galaxy from more terror and mass murder, but of the Empire that turned them into weapons for the destruction of their fellow citizens. Iden and Del get there eventually, and Gideon will not. I look forward to how their choices will come to define them.
Okay, that business with the Squad members being made to compete against each other for leadership with individual mission proposals was bullshit and, thankfully, acknowledged as bullshit by Iden. What are they, contractors submitting bids? It’s inefficient and harms teamwork.
What I think would have happened if some bigwig had tried to pull that shit in the Rebellion: the squad would have pooled their skills and resources together to come up with a totally kickass plan and all four would have submitted identical proposals. When called on it they would have pointed out that this was how they would work together in actual missions, working as a team and not four separate competitors. And that would have been revealed to be the test, of course, for them to work as a unit and refuse to be pitted against each other just because someone told them to.
I actually kind of expected the above to happen with the other three in the Squad who were chatting and getting to know each other while Iden wrote her proposal. I thought maybe, since this was supposed to be a relatively autonomous unit, they’d show some outside-the-box thinking and the ability to make their own rules instead of playing the game as presented to them. But I guess that shit doesn’t fly in the Empire. Maybe it’s just as well, too: Fascists are doomed to lose wars, indeed.
Iden’s determination, no desperation to be the Squad leader struck eerily close to home because it was so clear that the obsessive nature of the desire was about getting her father’s approval. And her father acts exactly as emotionally abusive and withholding parents do, sending mixed signals and keeping the child always guessing, setting the bar so high that even an incredible result is just the minimum expected, mixing praise with doubt to keep the child anxious and on their toes, dangling the promise of acceptance always juuuust out of reach. If you work harder than anyone, if you fucking KILL yourself working, you just might get there. But you never will, of course, because acceptance is a mirage. The point was always to keep you hanging on your parent’s every word for the promise of love that will never be real, so that you will never have an independent existence that does not hinge on their approval.
(Yes, I’m maybe a little bitter lol. Serious kudos to the author btw.)
The book’s portrayal of the Imperial elite is so layered and multidimensional, with everything seeming so normal, or at least relatable, and then BAM! Some fucked-up shit hits you right between the eyes. Like Alderaanian wine being left in Inferno Squad’s quarters, holy shit. Iden feeling a pang at the sight, wishing the Rebels hadn’t “made” the Empire destroy Alderaan while recalling her father extol the necessity of killing children who will grow up to be enemies. Like I wanted to beat those fascists to death with the wine bottle. And yet they’re people just like me, because that kind of evil is committed by people just like me. It’s complicated.
I have talked before about how the Resistance could still grow its forces post-TLJ (link). However, in light of Oscar Isaac’s comments about the Resistance being a smaller, underdog guerilla force, I’ve also started thinking about how the Resistance could win without being a huge military force like the Rebellion was. According te Oscar:
“[The Resistance] are guerrilla fighters, adhering closer to something like the Revolutionary War fighters or even the guerrillas in Cuba with Che and Fidel and all these guys living in the mountains, coming down to do some attacks, and going back and trying to hide from the ’empire’ of the United States. It’s that kind of ragged at this point.”
Episode IX could still show the Resistance growing, of course; Oscar could be talking about an early stage in the movie, since he says “at this point.” However, if the Resistance is a much-outnumbered guerrilla force for most of Episode IX, could they still win?
A depressing possibility under the small-Resistance scenario, of course, is that the Resistance is defeated or reaches a ceasefire with the FO so that both sides retreat to their own regions of space in preparation for farther movies and series. I’ll rule that out for the moment, though, because it would be a rehash of the TLJ ending and is not a real ending to the saga at all. Besides, this entire situation with the FO has its roots a compromise with the Empire remnants and I highly doubt it’s a good idea to let that history repeat again.
Another point is that Oscar referenced victorious guerrilla fighters, the
Continental Army and Castro’s 26th of July Movement, each of which won their wars and
successfully took power. (What they did with the power afterward is
another matter. This is not meant to be an endorsement of either the U.S.’s or Cuba’s political systems so hold off on the anons please.)
If we leave out the unsatisfactory defeat/ceasefire ending and assume the Resistance stays small, there may still be paths to victory. To that end let’s examine Oscar’s historical parallels.
The British Empire lost to the Continentials because of lack of political will (many in Britain did not believe war was a solution at all), lack of command skill and command line coherence, lack of supplies in hostile territory, the failure of expected Loyalist support to materialize, and the Continentals gaining useful allies like France and Spain. The Cuban government under Batista lost because his commanders made crucial mistakes, he couldn’t get necessary arms and parts for his military due to a U.S. embargo, and he lost both United States and domestic support.
These factors can be boiled down to four things: Unity, supplies, support, and allies. If the FO is disunited and its command are at each other’s throats or simply failing to coordinate; if it loses crucial sources of supplies and has its supply lines disrupted; and if the populations of the occupied territories rise up against it while the Resistance gains allies, there is a chance for even a small Resistance to prevail.
For one it gives an alternative type of conflict, or at least how the conflict plays out, to the last two trilogies.
Another is that this gives Rose a place and time to shine as a mechanic. Who better in the Resistance to know where they should strike and how? She never got to show off her abilities in TLJ with this she has a great chance.
Finally there’s the possibility that the end game battle will be fairly small. As in, not a whole lot people involved. And I know there are people who hate that idea, but to me the battles in the Star Wars movies that kept me engrossed had nothing to do with how much pew pew was going on.
Think about the climatic battle in RotS? It’s basically two one on one duels: Anakin vs Obi-Wan and Sidious vs Yoda.
Or for that matter the action climax in ESB. Vader vs Luke and Leia, Lando and Chewie’s desperate attempt to first rescue Han and the escape the Empire all the while picking Luke up.
Or TPM. The battle with the Gungans on the plain and all the shenanigans up in space are really distraction from the main plot, Padmé capturing the viceroys. And a lot of emotional payoff is invested in Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan vs Maul.
Last, but certainly not least, TFA. Yes we have pew pew up in atmosphere above SKB and yes we want Poe and Red and Blue squadron to blow it up. But where is our attention and emotional investment? Down on the ground, with Finn, Han, Chewie and Rey. In the end all the pew pew up there feels like a distraction from the “actual” battle.
So small scale final conflict does not to me mean lack of payoff for the trilogy or IX on its own. Maybe the final battle is an attempt to capture or kill key First Order officers in an attempt to cut off the head of the snake so to speak. If the First Order is already pressed and internal conflict rampant, removing key figures one way or the other could be a method how a fairly small group of people, or number of small groups, could bring down a behemoth like the First Order.
You’re right, supply attacks would be a PERFECT way for Rose to shine! She’s built a crucial new technology herself and has experience with supply runs. I really hate how she was reduced to searching for a dude hacker in TLJ and then ending up with a different dude hacker. From TLJ you would never know that she was a brilliant mechanic and inventor who had supervised a whole team of bomber flight engineers to implement the technology she built. Having her cause chaos in the FO by cutting off its supply lines with maximum effect would go a long way toward doing her character more justice. Put your fist through the FO the right way, girl.
Yes, the climactic last battles in the SW movies have always been personal, even intimate. Even the destruction of the Death Star in ANH came down to Luke, his connection to the Force through Obi-Wan’s ghost, Vader trying to shoot Luke down, and Han coming through for a last-minute assist. One hero, the hero’s mentor, the hero’s implacable shadow, and the triumphant culmination of the friend’s character arc.
In fact, the operations to ultimately take down the FO as I outlined in the op are so vast they’d be a better subject of a between-movies TV series along the lines of The Clone Wars. (I wonder what this war against the FO would be called? The Shadow War? The Force War? The Star War?) Episode IX can show the final results, with a little exposition on how they got there, and then have our core group of heroes finish things off. It’s the Star Wars way.
It’s different from the U.S. or anywhere else for that matter, since every community is different, but racism, colorism, and antiblackness are still very much present. White foreigners are lionized while SE Asians and Black people are looked down on. There’s a large population of marriage immigrants from Vietnam and elsewhere who endure high rates of abuse and violence from their husbands and in-laws, often in isolated rural settings. Workers from SE Asia, Africa, and the Middle East often suffer from bad working conditions and have no bargaining power under an immigration law that gives all the power to employers. A few hundred Yemeni refugees arrived in Jeju Island back when it had a more liberal entry policy, and the widespread pushback against accepting them has been heartbreaking and infuriating.
There’s xenophobia that can’t be neatly fitted into racial categories, for example against Chinese citizens of Korean heritage who are technically the same race and ethnicity as Koreans. There’s a class element going on here, too, as Korean Chinese are treated very differently from Korean Americans who are assumed to be richer and better educated. There are cultural clashes with and prejudices against Korean Americans as well, of course.
We have serious prejudices against Koreans against mixed heritage. The nationalist myth (and it is a totally fabricated myth) of Korean “purity of blood” has a toxic effect on the lives of people with a non-Korean parent. Mixed Koreans with a white parent are treated the least worst, although they too are subject to unwanted attention and fetishization that I imagine is uncomfortable for them. Koreans with a Black or SE Asian parent are treated considerably worse, subject to the racism faced by their non-Korean parent and lack of acceptance as Koreans. North Korea has the same prejudices, only more violently expressed under an authoritarian regime. I have read reports of North Korean authorities committing infanticide against babies born to NK women returned from China, the reason being that the babies were “Chinese seed.”
A huge number of Korean children of mixed heritage, generally those born to SE Asian women, are subject to racist bullying in school. The first generation of these children since the start of marriage immigration policy are now grown and we should be seeing them in society, but we just… don’t. They don’t seem to be going on to higher education or being hired for jobs. This is really disturbing, that we now have an entire contingent of Koreans who have been pushed out from mainstream Korean society by racism. This is not to say that other factors like class and the marginalization of rural areas are not issues, but racism is a huge factor as well.
Started listening to the audiobook version of Inferno Squad and Janina Gavankar’s voice is 👍❤️😍 It saddens me a little sad that tie-in audiobooks seem to be the only SW products where these insanely talented actresses of color are front and center.
It’s fascinating to see what a loyal and elite subject of the Empire thinks of its atrocities. The book opens with Iden being excited about the destruction of Jedha, Scarif, and Alderaan, and I don’t think I’ve been so angry at a protagonist in the opening moments of a book. If I’d had a more personal relationship with the subject of genocide I can see myself ditching the book altogether.
I thought maybe Iden was kept from knowing the full details, but no, she knew Jedha was no mining accident (the derisive way Janina reads “mining accident,” just… I love this woman), and she knew millions of innocents had died on Alderaan.
Iden could justify the Empire’s actions to herself because she interpreted the same information completely differently. To her, Jedha was a successful anti-terrorist operation and a strike against a harmful superstition from a bygone age. The deaths of innocents at Alderaan were the fault of the Rebel leadership who had put them in harm’s way. And finally, with the imminent destruction of the Rebels and the advent of peace, the Empire could direct its energies to helping people instead of restoring order.
Iden’s thought process is chillingly familiar, really. She sounds like any good patriotic American who defends their country’s actions and is a believer in the enlightenment their way of life will bring. She is frightening not because she is outlandish but because she is so prosaic and familiar.
These thoughts were running through her head during the Battle of Yavin, so let’s just say I’m thoroughly enjoying this asshole’s shock and awe at the destruction of the Death Star. How do you like that taste of your own medicine, bitch? I hate her so much right now and am looking forward to her changing sides in large part so she’ll suffer horribly from what she did.
That said, despite the fact that the opening has Iden cheering at genocide and killing Rebel pilots left and right, nothing about this character comes across as irredeemably evil. These actually are the normal actions of a soldier in wartime, an excuse often bandied about for Kylo Ren but doesn’t work because he wasn’t brought up to that way of thinking. I can see how Iden might believe the things she does and why she might change, though I’m hoping it will be a difficult process.
Considering what eventually happens, Gideon and Iden being close friends and pseudo-siblings is bringing out all kinds of Feels. It makes me uncomfortable to see Gideon as such a warm and caring friend who is genuinely concerned for Iden, and without any gross Nice Guy™ undertones at that. It’s a good thing that I’m uncomfortable: Evil is a human phenomenon, after all. It adds another dimension to his character that his parents were killed in a Rebel attack when he was young, an interesting facet of the conflict. Gideon will come to be Iden’s path untaken and vice versa, so it makes a whole lot of dramatic sense for the two to be so close and to mean something to each other starting out.
Speaking of the humanity of evil, the amount of trauma and grief Gideon, Iden, and the Empire ranks at large are going through at the destruction of the Death Star is fascinating in a “You’re so close to getting it!” kind of way. If only they could realize that the destruction of the Death Star, unlike that of Jedha and Alderaan, was a justified self-defensive action. If only they could extrapolate from their own trauma at losing hundreds of thousands of colleagues to seeing that the Rebels are feeling the same kind of trauma and fear on a massively larger scale. If only they could realize that their pain, while understandable, is ultimately the fault not of people who were defending themselves and the galaxy from more terror and mass murder, but of the Empire that turned them into weapons for the destruction of their fellow citizens. Iden and Del get there eventually, and Gideon will not. I look forward to how their choices will come to define them.
I mean they did decide that a white girl with a careful, aesthetically pleasing tan and a few cute freckles–but not, like, scarred and splotched from the sun–is better than a brown or Black woman. And even the tan and freckles had to go at the first opportunity because being pale is way more important than being consistent! Maybe there’s a better term than brownface, but it’s really racist at any rate.
It’s not brownface. I get it – they could have cast a brown or Black actress instead of a white actress with a tan (which fits the narrative) in TLJ, but it’s not like they gave her a tan and said she’s the daughter of Luke and Nikari or she’s the bio daughter of Bale and Breha (I know those wouldn’t add up, just as examples). That would be brownface. There has to be an ethnic element, and Rey isn’t coded as any particular race. Which means she doesn’t have to be white, and I agree with questioning why a race-neutral character was cast as yet another white brunette. The term would be white prioritization, as in they couldn’t imagine not having a white lead even with an inclusive cast.
RJ making Rey look fairer in TLJ when she’d still have a tan is sketch tho, because he clearly wanted to make her more “attractive,” including the out of place full face of makeup.
L.J.'s Obsessions 