my dudes i was listening to the star wars soundtrack on the bus as one does, and started thinking….you know what a crazy awesome fight scene would be? A duel on a frozen lake (some parts are thinner ice and dangerous!!) !! so next movie how cool would that be. jedi rey and finn vs the knights of ren on a Frozen Lake
so, what you’re suggesting is a environmental flipped duel of mustafar?
The Episode IX trailer should show Rey and Finn kissing. Just drop the mic, JJ and let everyone know what they should expect.
Agreed. But can you imagine the complete and utter meltdown in fandom if that happens?
In addition to such a development making complete sense, if JJ wants to use controversy to drum up publicity and interest after TLJ this would be the perfect way to do it. It would make #BlackStormtrooper look like a pebble plinked in a puddle. Best of all, it would make the racists show their asses all the way because there is literally nothing objectionable about a FinnRey romantic pairing at all.
Okay so apparently people don’t believe me or others when we say that the First Order are basically space Nazis. Here is a link to a direct quote on the subject.
Are we good now? Can you understand why people don’t want these Star Wars villians being treated as misunderstood babies?
And since people keep being gross about this anyway: JJ Abrams is Jewish. Lawrence Kasdan is Jewish. They are unreservedly allowed, as Jewish artists, to write and design stories that are analogs of Jewish experience and use the fantastic to symbolize their own oppressors. They have every right to be as overt or subtle as they want, too – and they went explicit as fuck, so stop ignoring/minimizing their intentions.
They knew what they were doing when they wrote Phasma and Kylo leading stormtroopers in a pogram against an impoverished village of religious outsiders.
They knew what they were doing when Hux gave a Space Nuremberg Rally.
They knew what they were doing doing when, instead of showing their Space Genocide from outside, we watched the Hosnian victims’ dying, horrified faces – unnamed and unknown, but important.
They knew what they were doing when they decided Kylo’s prize trophy was human ashes.
Furthermore, none of the major actors playing FO characters (Driver, Gleeson, Christie, or Serkis) are Jewish, so regardless of fictional Ben Solo’s fictional heritage – which was an intentional choice on the part of his creators when they wrote him as a poster-boy for the FO/gave him a fucking templar cross for a lightsaber – you’re never “calling a Jew a Nazi if you compare Kylo/Hux/the FO to neo-Nazis!!1!”
Denying Jewish artists the agency and legitimacy of their own stories is gross. Don’t do it.
Don’t talk over Jewish fans who keep fucking pointing out that they’re overtly Nazi allegories.
And for FUCK’S sake, stop stanning fucking Nazis.
(I’d also venture to say – the reason JJ and Rian view Kylo so differently is because, as far as I know, Rian is the goyest of goyim.)
This is the literal dictionary definition of pornography, “the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) intended to cause sexual excitement.” There has never been a definition of pornography that excludes drawn and written material and includes only photography and footage of real people. Photography and video, after all, are extremely recent blips in the very long history of pornographic material. Erotic novels and poetry are pornography. Erotic illustrations, comics, and paintings are pornography. Erotic statues and reliefs are pornogrophy. Erotic live action movies and photography simply joined the preexisting tradition of porn when the technology became available, involving new potential for violence and exploitation due to the need for live actors and models.
So yes, if your writing and pictures and so on consist of the depiction of erotic behavior by or done to children intended to cause sexual excitement, meaning intentionally portrayed in an erotic and sexually exciting way (as opposed to, for instance, accounts or depictions of child sexual abuse), it’s pornography that involves children. It may not be as illegal or evil as photographs and videos of actual children being forced into sexual acts, but it’s still pornography that treats children’s bodies as objects of desire. I don’t see what’s so difficult to understand about it.
Yes, I know, she’s from Hays Minor in the Otomak system, but Hays Minor was a poor mining colony, a frozen wasteland only settled for its mineral resources. Even before the First Order took it over and systematically destroyed it Hays Minor was a harsh place, with no indigenous animal species and temperatures so lethal people couldn’t go outside without special protective suits. It’s not the kind of place where people dream of raising their families, but someplace people go because they have to make a living–and, if they have young children, because they have nowhere else to go.
And what was Jedha known for? Force religion, sure, but also for mining kyber crystals. It would have been home not only to believers and clerics, but also to skilled miners experienced at extracting these invaluable resources. And also to violent partisans, of course, a backlash to the Empire’s anti-religious repression and ruthless exploitation of the area’s resources, but for now let’s look at more ordinary citizens just trying to go about their lives.
Imagine you are a miner on Jedha.
You were fortunate enough to survive the blast of the Death Star. Maybe you escaped into space like the Rogue One crew did, or maybe you didn’t live in the Holy City–maybe you were working on a mine elsewhere. Even if you were not in the City or its outskirts, though, you have to get out eventually because the blast is breaking the whole moon apart, kiling your world. You’ve lived on Jedha for generations and have no ties anywhere else. Where do you go?
The galaxy is wide, but the reach of the Empire is long. The stigma of being from Jedha clings to you and comes back in the form of refusals to let you settle, even violence from the authorities or from neighbors. Maybe one of the excuses is that you’re a terrorist, because your origins are associated with the memory of the partisan zealots who held out against the Empire in a mountain fortress until their violent ends.
Maybe you settled on other, more hospitable planets only to be driven out, losing everything you built and barely escaping with your life. Others were not so lucky. Maybe you learned to change your dress and customs so you would not stand out, learned never to talk about Jedha so you would not draw unwanted attention. Even your spouse might not know, if you met them after Jedha. (All things in your life are divided into before and after Jedha.) Maybe your spouse is from Jedha, too. Maybe you met them in the diaspora, which is bittersweet because you never would have met and fallen in love on Jedha. The two of you agree that it is best to stay silent about the home whose name still echoes in your hearts. Survival comes first.
You never talk to your children about Jedha. You don’t tell them what the ceremonies you hold from time to time mean, religious ceremonies from home that you carry on in secret, mourning what can never be again.
Maybe you even fought in the Rebellion yourself, finally free to shout and scream and sob the name of Jedha when you run into battle, a cry for justice. It hurts every time to say it but you do it anyway, letting the name tear your throat and your soul, Jedha, Jedha, Jedha, so you will not forget, so the world will not forget.
Maybe, despite using the name as a rallying cry, the other Rebellion fighters did not always look kindly on you and the other Jedhan fighters. The whispers of “extremist” and “fanatic” still cling to you, and the same people who say “May the Force be with you” to each other may find your ways in the Force strange. There are a thousand glances and words that cut and every time you have to wonder, is this because I’m Jedhan? You try not to be so sensitive. You pick at the meanings behind meanings, trying to disentangle the threads that trip you up. You hope for a better galaxy anyway, and that’s what you’re all here for no matter where you’re from, right?
When the Empire collapses you rejoice and weep, and say a prayer of thanks. There can be justice at last, and better days for the Jedhan refugees. The New Republic promises to do right by you and the Alderaanians, to all the people who lost everything to the Empire.
The promises, fragile and hollow, break under strain. You, like much of the Jedhan disapora, are vocal against the truce with the Empire’s remains, warning they’ll be back. You are called warmongers and extremists. You and your fellows ask for the New Republic‘s assistance with resettlement, demand that the Empire officials’ riches from the lifeblood of your people and peoples elsewhere be returned to the Jedhan diaspora and so many others displaced by the Empire. You are called greedy and a nuisance.
You are still not welcome anywhere, and if anything seem to be an inconvenience to a universe that wishes to move on and forget. You drift, body and soul, without a home, and survival becomes increasingly more pressing as your family grows.
Then you hear about a mining colony far out in space–an inhospitable place, a deadly place actually, but they’re looking for people and they can use your skills. Maybe you even hear of it through the refugee grapevine, and other Jedhans are going so it’ll feel a little like home. Nothing will ever be home, but it’s a living and a community. You could do worse than that.
So you raise your daughters on a frozen planet, in a shelter specially shielded to keep the planet from killing you all. You watch them play in the artificial light, happy and smiling and alive, and you are content. You are luckier than many, so many that you will carry to your grave.
You don’t talk to your children about Jedha, the old fears locking your lips, not wanting them to go through what you had to as a Jedhan. When you and your spouse make them matching medallions you tell them they represent the twin planets of Hays Major and Hays Minor. In your heart of hearts you think of them as being Jedha and NaJedha, orbiting each other even in ruin. You hope your daughters’ lives will be better, not touched and tainted by destruction as yours was. Maybe that’s another reason you don’t want to tell them about Jedha, because you don’t want that shadow over their lives.
And Hays Minor has been good for your family, after all. Your daughters can do worse than think of a community of courageous, hard-working, honest people as home. This is enough. Not perfect (not Jedha, never Jedha) but enough, and maybe you’ll save up to move to a kinder planet where life isn’t quite so harsh, a place where your eldest can see and touch the animals she’s always talking about, where she and her sister can stand in the sun and breathe unfiltered air.
Your dreams and your heart shatter when a Star Destroyer blots out the sky over your home a second time. They will be back, you and your people warned the galaxy. You just didn’t think, never let yourself imagine, that they would come for your home and your family first. Not again.
JJ didn’t say so, but the parallels are unmistakeable and blatant (link). I’m not in a place to judge whether a PoE Finn AU is appropriate, but if the ones doing it aren’t Jewish themselves I wish they wouldn’t. It would be so much better to carry forward the common themes in Finn’s and Moses’s stories to tell Finn’s own awesome story.
I personally don’t think SW characters should be written in AU’s about religious figures. That’s just asking for trouble.
But I don’t see anything wrong with people drawing Parallels and metaphors in their stories about Finn being the Moses of Star Wars. Jesus Parallels have been used by movies for decades. Anakin has been called space Jesus for years due to his conception.
If a Stormtrooper rebellion happens, Finn is metaphorically space Moses.
If you ask me then TFA is a Prince of Egypt AU, just done GFFA style.
As for the Stormtrooper rebellion being necessary to finalize that I have to disagree. For one thing it’s an “AU”, it is so to speak “based on Exodus” but it isn’t Exodus. And Finn isn’t Moses, he’s a Moses analogy.
Furthermore it depends on who the story decides to frame as Finn’s people.
Remember Moses’ story?
Moses’ mother contrives to hide him so that he’ll survive Pharaoh’s edict to kill all male Israelite children and he ends up being found by the Pharaoh’s daughter. Now we don’t know how or when Finn ended up in the First Order, but given that he has no memory of his family and that the FO literally have baby pictures of him it’s a good bet her was tiny indeed, possibly an infant. Like Moses.
Then Moses (Finn) is raised in the house of Pharaoh (First Order) among Egyptians (Stormtroopers) but he’s not one of them and deep down knows he never will be.
And remember why Moses turns against the house of Pharaoh and have to flee in the first place? He watches as an Egyptian (Stormtrooper) strikes down an Israelite, one of his own people. He ends up killing the Egyptian, his crime is discovered and he has to flee into the desert.
You know, kinda like Finn reject the First Order with the massacre of Tuanul when the Stormtroopers slaughters the villagers. He refuses to participate and his “crime” – from an FO pov at least – is discovered and he has to flee and ends up in the desert. Where he meets this girl, like Moses met
Zipporah.
Furthermore when G-d wants Moses to be his chosen and free his people Moses at first refuses and argues with G-d about his choice. Again kinda like Finn tells Maz nope when she says that they all have to fight the First Order. (Which makes JJ’s stand in for G-d in this universe a Black woman, albeit one in alien makeup.)
So who is Finn’s people? The Stormtroopers? Or maybe its the Force worshipers? Or maybe the story will tell us its a bit of both, one does not preclude the other and when the Israelites left Egypt, several Egyptians went them.
And really it fits with many of the other characters too.
Rey is a mix of
Zipporah, Miriam and Aaron. Snoke is the original Pharaoh and Kylo Ren the one who starts as the heir to the throne, but eventually becomes Pharaoh himself and the main antagonist in the story. (This last but is why I always thought the narrative would end up doing away with Snoke one way or another and have Kylo take the reins of power fully.)
No it’s not a one to one translation anymore than Anakin was was a one to one translation of Jesus, but both stories are clearly inspired. Anakin’s story was a Messiah narrative as is so common among fantasy stories – scifi too – told by white Christians. Finn’s story on the other hand, and I still hold out hope all of the ST as envisioned by JJ – is based on Moses’ story.
Do I still want a Stormtrooper rebellion or for the story to do something with the Stormtroopers by and large apart from using them as cannon fodder? Yes, because it reframed them with the little we have of Finn’s background story, but I’ll would venture that a Stormtropper rebellion isn’t necessary for Finn to be the in-universe equivalent on Moses, nor Finn’s story be based on Moses. It already is and much depends on who the story decides to frame as Finn’s people.
This is where I find @lj-writes‘s theory about Finn possibly being from Jakku and at least being the child of a Force worshiping group interesting, it would add yet another layer as to why Finn reacted so strongly to the assault and massacre. Moral decency and the fact that he’s the male, heroic lead of the story is more than enough to warrant his reaction, but it does not therefore follow that there was never meant to be anything more to it than that.
Fandom’s main excuse for hating on Finn is basically “op literally killed the Egyptian for striking the Jewish slave but go off I guess,” with healthy doses of both sides are wrong uwu violence is bad uwu uwu. It’s funny how an enslaved soldier refusing to kill unarmed prisoners, escaping to freedom, and defending himself and others from imminent death raises more ire than the slavery and genocide he was running from and defending others from.
The First Order claims to have trained Finn from birth, according to the Visual Dictionary page that you excerpted, which leads me to wonder if he was taken very shortly after birth (like Moses) or actually born in captivity (also like Moses, who was born in slavery). I firmly believe the deleted scene where Finn lets the woman in Tuanul go (link) was meant to be a callback to Finn’s own kidnapping, at least in the sense of him wondering if this was how he was torn from his family. The woman seems to be holding a baby, from the way she clutches the bundle closer rather than drop it in her fright. It’s probably a deliberate choice to cast her as a Black woman, too.
Also does this mean the lightsaber is the burning bush? XD Finn and especially Rey are afraid of/refuse the lightsaber at first before they embrace its power. Y’know, the divine fire that burns without consuming its source…
Kylo Ren is like the Rameses character from the PoE adaptation, I think, minus the personal rapport with the male protagonist. Though he had no real relationship with Finn, there was something that passed between him and Finn at the village. Kylo also fixated on Finn and took the “betrayal” very personally in a way Snoke and even Hux were never shown to.
The PoE Rameses-Moses connection has a stronger parallel in Kylo Ren and Rey, in no small part because RJ could give a rat’s ass about Finn and his story, but it is a continuation and intensification of Moses’s story being split between Finn and Rey. Even in TFA, Kylo Ren wanted to destroy Finn but wanted Rey to join him. (In TLJ he evidently forgot Finn exists, much like RJ did.) They share an actual connection in TLJ where he further works her over, building rapport while isolating and manipulating her, all to convince her to join his side much as Rameses dreamed of ruling with Moses by his side. Kylo then becomes the successor to the original ruler, the one who had the perfect chance to end the destructive policies of his predecessor and was urged by Rey to do so, but ultimately refused and tried to kill her instead.
When Kylo was gazing up at Rey and she literally shut the door on their connection, it was a bit like that last moment between Rameses and Moses in PoE when Rameses (also on his knees, defeated and vulnerable, realizing that the link to his father has slipped between his fingers) screams Moses’s name in rage and loss while Moses looked across the divide to say a silent farewell. It’s not as wrenching in TLJ because the bond between Kylo and Rey was false on many levels and Rey feels so little for Kylo at this point, but the moment is still there where the bond is broken for good, or acknowledged as broken.
Coming back to Tuanul/the Church of the Force possibly being tied to Finn’s origins, it’s been pointed out that Finn may have awakened in the Force on Tuanul. My variation on that theory is that he is Force immune and Kylo Ren sensed this in the ruins of Tuanul (link), which Moth and @themandalorianwolf speculated as Finn being a wound in the Force like the Exile in KOTOR 2 (link). There’s also the fact that Jakku has all kinds of lore tied into it, as you pointed out re the Wadi Rum shooting location (link).
I mean if Finn is Force immune or otherwise Force sensitive as a result of trauma like the Exile, being in the middle of a massacre like one he may have experienced as a baby would be enough to activate those abilities. For me God tier is Finn being a descendant of Jedhan refugees who were Church of the Force members in the disapora. Mega Ultra God tier is Rose also being from the Jedhan diaspora. I know, I know, there are no confirmed links, but that’s a whole another tinfoil hat rant that is way off topic and will be in a separate post (link).
L.J.'s Obsessions 