Tag: ask

reylos: “People will say Kylo is representative of the alt-right all day long but absolutely refuse to acknowledge Poe as a commentary on problematic leftist dudes”

Unpopular opinion: Kylo IS that problematic leftist dude. Don’t get me wrong, he is representative of the alt-right, but one of the powerful and frightening things about fascism is that it cuts across traditional ideological boundaries to unite the left and right. I see a clear parallel between Kylo Ren being Han and Leia’s son, and the fact that a LOT of prominent alt-right figures in real life (including that shithead who stabbed his own father to death) are the children of liberals and used to be liberals themselves.

I mean what happens when you tell a whole generation of children that they are good and special people destined to save the world, but they never learn to scrutinize the structures of oppression their world is built on? Every attempt by one of the people they step on to get out from underfoot shakes their footing and becomes a personal threat. They are special people and cannot be treated this way, they are good people and will not be attacked like this. The belief that they are fundamentally special and good becomes warped into a sense of aggrieved entitlement and, in some cases, they become radicalized. Kylo Ren’s story is the story of the inevitable failure of white liberalism.

Recommend any good SW viewing orders to get ready for IX? I’m doing (IV, V, I, II, III, R1, VI, VII, VIII), where there’s a 4 movie long prequel flashback between V & VI. There’s also Chronological Order (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII), Release Order (IV, V, VI, I, II, III, VII, VIII), Alternating Order (I-IV-VII, II-V-VIII, III-VI-IX), and Flashback Order (VII, IV, V, I, II, III, VI, VIII), among others.

I like that first sequence you mentioned. On suggested variation is to watch R1 first ahead of IV. Chronological order makes sense, too, as does release order.

Re: Padmé. She does very little post-TPM to end that separations. It’s entirely superficial and ceremonial, such as naming Jar Jar as her aide. As shown in TCW and Aftermath gungans still largely live separate from the Naboo human populace, and when they do live among humans it is usually in poverty. As for Padmé being pro peace again it is only her version of peace that matters, not to mention she’s unwilling to walk her talk and do something about the parts of the Republic 1

that made the CIS planets secede in the first place. Most tend
to forget that a large number of planets turned against the Republic
because the Republic had been exploiting them for centuries and giving
nothing in return. They had been leached of resources, yet offered
nothing of the wealth they created for the Core planets. That was a
system Padmé was never willing to touch. Again, Padmé’s kind of peace is
the one who benefits only her and her own, not everyone. She’s you
typical white liberal.

Yeah, there’s a reason people say peace without justice is no peace at all. I believe Padmé always meant well, but she wasn’t willing to examine how incomplete and flawed her perspective was from her own place of privilege. In this she is much like white liberals in our world.

TCW is a giant, toxic mess in general, with creepy heroification/woobification of the clone army (I hate narratives where the soldiers are cinnamon rolls forced into war and everything is the evil politicians’ fault; it smacks of postwar Wehrmacht apologia) and much worse racist coding among the CIS, but it wasn’t really Padmé’s fault that the only decent Separatists are other attractive humans. The Tusken thing, sure.

I’m not sure how that ties into Padmé’s culpability. Meta critiques of a narrative don’t change the moral valuation of a fictional character’s reactions to in-world events. Also, while I agree the narrative you speak of can be problematic, it’s also true that in real life people are conscripted or pressured into being cannon fodder in wars for politicians’ and capitalists’ gain. The clones are just an extreme version of soldiers who had no choice. In the meta I linked I think the issue wasn’t that the decent Separatists were conventionally attractive humans but that they were privileged elites.

Do you have any fave Star Wars fics that you are reading at the moment? Or fave authors?

I liked @awakening5‘s A New Order (link) and @the-bi-writer‘s There Is No Redemption Here (link). They’re on opposite ends of the ST timeline, with ANO being a vision of a possible Episode IX while TINRH is a timeline fork just before TFA. They’re both Finnrey fics, with ANO featuring a sweet slow burn and TINRH lots of steamy action (but SFW versions of chapters are also offered). Both fics also feature Force-sensitive Finn, and shows Finn growing into his powers. There are probably tons more, but I haven’t been reading a lot of fics recently.

The First Order is like ISIS if all of the right-wing fears about Middle Eastern terrorists were valid (they’re everywhere, they can kill us all, etc.), the Republic is a right-wing fantasy about the stupidity and passivity of the federal government, and the Resistance is the heroic militia organization that knew that DOOM was coming, but no one believed them. The entire structure of the ST is fucked, but the FO being white is at least enough to keep the right from rooting for the Resistance.

J.J. Abrams himself explicitly compared TFO to much better organized neo-Nazis (link). The FO stanning and apologia and the demonization of the Resistance are pretty frightening to watch, frankly.

Oh, I saw that ask, but I disagree with it. As one of the Republic’s elites, it would have been well within Padmé’s interests to see the CIS crushed, but she remained an ardent proponent of peace even when it was politically unpopular. She was also the one to reverse the Naboo’s alienation from the Gungans.

Idk about that, since it seems her idea of peace was largely for other elites like herself (link). She was also mighty quick to throw the Clones under the bus even though they had been created for the convenience of the Republic and had never had a choice when it came to their involvement in the war. Maybe she did better with the Gungans than prior queens of Naboo, but she sure didn’t seem to give a shit that Anakin had murdered Tuskans en masse.