Tag: ask

Yeah, if Ben Solo wasn’t scared of the dark side, he’d basically be Palpatine. People like Momin aren’t afraid of the dark side, so they basically become Sith at age six. But Ben’s fascination with darkness is caused by an inferiority complex rather than sociopathy, so he has emotions that conflict with his fascination. His arc is about shaping himself into a sociopath so that he can satisfy his inferiority complex.

If anything he seems to have way too much entitlement going on. I agree he’s not sociopathic in the clinical sense: he’s perfectly capable of distinguishing between good and evil, he just chooses to do evil. He doesn’t seem to have a personality disorder or a mental illness other than perpetration trauma, he just has the wrongful belief that he is entitled to use others as a means for his own ends. I think his arc is about overcoming his remaining scruples so he can resolve this conflict in his beliefs in favor of sense of entitlement.

I think one way to do the pro-Republic idea interestingly is to have the galaxy already be split into a bunch of warring smaller factions and to have the heroes be working on uniting it.

Well, maybe. I’m skeptical of the idea of the Republic myself, though perhaps a better one can be built. Certainly there needs to be a system for worlds to coexist peacefully with each other, but the Republic’s track record isn’t all that good. And that’s if we leave out the Empire period.

I have a low opinion of Ruth Bader-Ginsburg but if you’re making a film celebrating the accomplishments of a (still living!) JEWISH woman, you cast a JEWISH actress. I don’t understand why xwashing is still a thing. People go crazy for good representation and it’s often a big break for unknown actors of color. So the “not bankable” excuse doesn’t hold up, because if your movie is good, your “unbankable” actor will NOT stay that way. Look at John Boyega. Whitewashing/goywashing is stupid.

I think antisemitism works pretty differently from racism. Jewish people in the West are perceived to be white (and are, in many cases? It’s a fine distinction that I’m not always up on), so representation for them often isn’t perceived to be the same kind of diversity win, one that even conservatives grudgingly acknowledge, that it is for more visible minorities. It’s also disturbingly popular on the left to bash on Jewish people and the issues they face, so a lot of the times Jewish people don’t get the usual allies that efforts toward representation do, while their complaints can be dismissed as the whining of a privileged white or white-adjacent group (with Jewish people of color neatly erased in the process.)

Black people being a more visible case of representation in media isn’t privilege, of course, but rather seems to be a symptom of hypervisibility. It seems to me–and this is from a strictly outsider standpoint, of course–that antisemitism works almost the opposite way, by erasure and forced assimilation. The different struggles each group has with representation appear to be outgrowths of the different ways violence and hatred against their identities are expressed.

I have a great idea for a movie. The premise: every bad person has a reason for being bad and if you can understand them you can help them not be bad. But then we learn that some bad people don’t have solid reasons for being evil and the whole movie was wasted figuring that out. Actually that sounds like a terrible idea nobody do that that’d be a stupid movie

Worse, the entire point was to yell SIKE!! at the fans for daring to speculate or have theories about anything ever.