I spend a fair amount of time teaching women to kick men in the balls, and I’ve learned that this activity tends to generate controversy. Here, according to actual adults who have actually said these things to me, are some reasons you should not kick a guy in the balls:
1. It will make him angry.
I should hope so. I’m not sending him a friend request. If I kick him hard enough, there’s a good chance I’ll render him unable to act upon his anger. That’s my goal. His feelings are his problem.
2. It will make him hurt you worse.
Statistics say otherwise. And anyway, he’s already demonstrated his desire to hurt me. Why should I give him carte blanche to decide how much he’s going to hurt me? I’d rather be an active participant in that decision-making process.
3. Groin kicks aren’t really that devastating; I’ve seen lots of guys get hit in the balls and it hardly fazed them.
This response (almost universally from men) is so common I’ve come to think of it as “groinsplaining”—you can see it many of the YouTube comments in the videos linked above. These people rarely volunteer to demonstrate their own iron balls in a real kicking situation, but they confidently assert that men in general can shrug off all kinds of damage to the groin. All I can say is, I’ve seen two-year-olds take down grown men via the groin, and toddlers don’t even have any training. I do. I like my odds.
4. We shouldn’t be teaching people how to kick men in the balls; we should be teaching men not to do anything that would make us have to kick them in the balls.
Hey, that’s a great idea! Do you have a detailed, research-based plan for teaching all men everywhere to behave themselves all the time? And do you have funding for your efforts, and buy-in from politicians and community leaders, and a network of trained, experienced instructors who can effect this change? If not, better get started on your grant proposal. In the meantime, I’ll just be over here teaching people how to kick guys in the balls. That’s what I do.
5. Telling people they should kick an assailant in the balls is the same as telling victims who didn’t kick their assailant in the balls that they did something wrong.
No, it isn’t. It’s a practical way to reduce the number of future victims by giving them more viable options to disrupt and survive an assault.
Fact: We have the power to damage the bodies of men who try to hurt us. You’re saying we shouldn’t let people use that power. I’m offering people more choices; you’re trying to take them away.
6. Kicking a guy in the balls just makes the world a more violent place.
Maybe, in the short term. But if it stops him from killing someone, or putting them in the hospital, isn’t that a net win for non-violence? The Dalai Lama thinks so.
One in four women will have good reason to kick a guy in the balls at some point in her life. Luckily, it’s not rocket science. Anyone can do it! And ball-kicking’s efficacy is beyond dispute, as the men of MMA so nobly helped us illustrate here. Gentlemen, if any of you are reading this, and conscious: Cheers, and get well soon (the non-wife-beaters among you, anyway).
AIA REPORTING FOR DUTY
okay, so!
There is a trick to it. You do NOT want to soccer kick the dude because that’s a little projectile aiming at a littler target.
It’ll do in a pinch, and it’ll hurt, but it won’t incapacitate, which is what you want. You don’t want “ouch!” Or even “FUCK!”
You want him puking on the floor, and this is how we do:
There’s two ranges where a groin kick works: close and mid-range.
Say someone grabs you face to face, or pins you to the wall, and your hands are blocked. Now you’re close-range. What do you do? You come in closer, as close as you can, and with every ounce of adrenaline and aggression in your body, you do a can-can kick.
You know the first step in the can-can, where you raise your knee up as high as it’ll go as strong as you can?
Do that, as hard as you can, repeatedly.
If that doesn’t work, here’s the alternative. You’re going to take your hand, grasp between the thighs underhand. Its going to feel like you’re “cradling” the testicles. Dig your fingertips into the fragile skin BEHIND the scrotum. Then, once you have a good grip, you turn your hand into a vise, with your fingers digging inwards to the material. If you do it right, you should feel the testes INSIDE the scrotum. You want, whenever possible, to hook your fingers under them.
Then, with your hands in a claw and your fingertips latched behind the testes, you turn your hand sharply, as though you were turning a doorknob. Simultaneously, haul your elbow back and up as hard as you can.
If done properly, this technique can tear the scrotal tissue, and done with enough force, can tear the testes out of your attacker’s body.
No matter HOW pissed he is, he’s gonna drop. I’ve tried this technique on guys wearing cups and even with protection, it is not a fun feeling.
If you’re mid-range and have enough room for a kick, the goal becomes to use your shin. The shin is actually called the tibia, which ounce for ounce is one of the strongest bones in your body. So, here’s what you do, my little bloodthirsty beaus:
You aim, you scream “DO NOT COME CLOSER I SAID NO!” (legal purposes, because now you’re officially exercising your right to self-defence). Maintain a 360 degree awareness, just in case he has friends, and then, when he’s close enough, connect your shin full on soccer kick with the delicate squish of his testicles.
What you want is as much upwards force as possible in combination with as much momentum as you can manage. When he collapses, which he will, then stomp on his groin again, and then run.
The latter has less of a trick to it. It’s primarily about momentum and force.
Remember, if you’re close enough to put your hands on him, use your knee. If he’s coming at you, use your shin.
If you can smell the nachos he had for dinner, rip his fucking balls off.
It’s easy to do, they’re tiny little squishiness wrapped in a delicate flap of skin about as thin as a toenail.
Remember: if he’s coming at you, he’s ALREADY out to hurt you. Might as well give the fucker a reason to be pissed.
Someone once told me that the way to train a proper knee in the groin (with appropriate aggression if you want to hurt him enough to let you go is to train and act as if you’re not aiming your knee at the groin, but aiming for somewhere much higher so that your mind knows to really ram your knee upward.
A male friend of a friend of the family once generously and kindly advised me that if anyone with nuts ever got up on me without me wanting him to do so, to “grab his balls as hard as you can, squeeze, and yank away from his body until they feel like marmalade. Then run.”
I have never forgotten this advice.
My self-defense trainer used to say: “Eyes are like grapes. Ears are like pull tabs. And if you’re going to grab some, girls – grab, pull, twist, and bring those balls home to mama.”
…I really need to embroider that on a cushion.
Reblogging for my women followers. Know how to protect yourself, okay?
Fun fact: we did a groin attack drill in krav recently, and one of the guys’ cup was secured improperly. When he got kneed he made a noise like someone dropped a bag of rotten tomatoes from a third floor balcony, and hit the ground retching.
A few of the guys snickered and called him a wimp, so our instructor decided EVERYONE was going to do the drill with no cup to see how little force it took to incapacitate an opponent.
I was paired with a friend of mine who looks like if the Rock and the Mountain Who Rides made a little Boulder Love Baby. I apologized in advance, he said he was ready, and I flicked him in the nuts.
Flicked.
Not hit. Not tap. Not punched. Flicked. The same amount of force I’d use to maybe kill a mosquito, using the blade of my hand.
He went the colour of cement and nearly threw up on my shoulder.
It takes MINIMAL force to fuck a guy up. Now, if you’re grabbed from behind, snap your head back into his face and while he’s distracted you can either make a fist and strike back at the groin (arch your hips to the side for more room) or karate chop from the elbow.
He’s gonna be pissed–but he’s gonna be puking first, and that’s your opportunity to kick him in the kidney and run like the wind.
Mother Nature put mens balls on the outside as as a woman I will 100% use that to my advantage in a fight.
any guy who gets properly hit in the nuts and isn’t phased is an anomaly and as such they should not be used to make some type of new rule disregarding the 99% of guys you can take down via a groin shot
This
😊😊😊
You know you’re following the right people if a “How to Properly Kick a Man in the Balls” guide shows up on your dash.
Some of the ways in which TLJ is a baldly, blatantly, aggressively Christian movie, in stark contrast to the very Jewish TFA:
Pain,
suffering, abject failure and loss, including the deaths of many good
people, are held up to be ultimately positive lessons. In Jewish thought, in contrast, while good can come of suffering pain is not good or holy in of itself. The point in Judaism is to lessen pain and improve life, not to join in suffering.
TLJ shows borderline obsession with “sin” and “sinners” as
salacious and fascinating, hence the focus on Kylo Ren. (I use quote
marks here because he is not just a “sinner,” he’s a criminal and
abuser.) In Judaism, sin is not nearly as big a deal so far as I can tell. It is not a subject of fixation to the point of romanticization.
The doctrine that everyone is a sinner is simplified
down to moral equivalence between good and evil people and
organizations. Of course Luke also had darkness in him because he too is
a sinner, etc.
Self-sacrifice is the ultimate virtue and
washes away any mistakes one might have made, e.g. Luke and Holdo. It’s basically martyrdom in space. In Jewish thought, while martyrdom can be necessary, it is not something to be sought out and should be avoided if possible.
TLJ’s emphasis on forgiveness, redemption, and patience is also very Christian. Rey is suddenly and
uncharacteristically devoted to the idea of saving Kylo Ren, Rose gives
Finn the speech about not fighting what they hate, which doesn’t even
make sense on its face in the midst of a struggle against a genocidal force. In contrast, anger against oppression is an important theme in Judaism and you can see this in Finn and Rey’s anger in TFA. This is one of the ways TLJ marks a sharp tonal departure from TFA.
On a related note, redemption for Kylo Ren as presented in this movie looks a lot like cheap grace, which German theologian and anti-Nazi dissident Dietrich Bonhoeffer described as “preaching forgiveness without requiring repentance.” Significantly, Bonhoeffer was resisting the Nazi influence on the German Lutheran church with his opposition to cheap grace. Cheap grace is an alien and repugnant concept to Judaism–forgiveness is not an obligation even if the wrongdoer has repented and made amends.
Yoda performs a classic smashing of the idols scene with a bait-and-switch book burning. By contrast I am told that book burning
is unthinkable for Jewish people due to the great respect for scholarly
traditions in Judaism. This is especially true for foundational texts like the ones Yoda pretended he was destroying: People have run into burning synagogues to save the Torah, which is a matter of not only scholarship but identity. The scene becomes all the more jarring when juxtaposed against the many purges and massacres the Jedi Order and their followers suffered, including in TFA.
Crait has a very distinct
red-on-white look reminiscent of the Crusaders/Knights Templar. In Jewish imagery blue is the color of supreme importance, and it is even more strongly associated with the good guys in TFA than in the previous movies.
In TLJ lawful authority is
not to be questioned, even if they are violent, seem untrustworthy, and look like they will lead to outright ruin. This is a rather un-Star Wars
message, making it stick out all the more. On the other hand, unquestioning obedience to authority is anathema to Jewish people. They argue with everyone, including God. Especially God.
(via kyberfox) “Godspeed, Rebels.” First of all it’s the Resistance, but… excuse me, God?? What? God??!!? Also, Kylo Ren asks Luke if he came to save his soul, another blatant and aggressive insertion of Christian concepts into Star Wars.
(I am so deeply indebted to @kyberfox and @attackfish for this list that giving individual credit for the ideas would be distracting. Suffice it to say substantially all the perspectives on Judaism and many of the points on Christianity are theirs.)
Note: Below is a submission that I was asked to add anonymously to this post. TW for sexual assault, aphobia, gaslighting, abuse.
I was raised Catholic, and a small branch of my family is Jewish. I
probably know more than the average goy about Judaism, but not by a lot.
I am the survivor of a lot of sexual assault and harassment that took
place at Catholic school. I was 13, and the other kids wanted to know
who in the class I thought was hot, I said I didn’t think anyone was
(turns out I’m aroace, and yes, even the Catholics recognize that as not
being straight), and they took that as something that could be
corrected by force. They groped me, destroyed my possessions, scraped me
across a brick wall, and held me down to put makeup on me. In
hindsight, the worst part was that the teacher’s son would come over
from the high school on his lunch break, sit on my desk, and sexually
assault me during class while his mother taught and pretended nothing
was wrong. Then she would gaslight me about what he, and the other
students had done. The teachers knew what was happening, it happened in
front of them, and obviously the one I previously mentioned knew about
enough of it to gossip to her son so he would come join in. They didn’t
care because they knew I was queer before I knew I was queer, and this
is what happens to queer kids at bad Catholic schools. The teachers let
it happen, because they think it’ll turn you straight. And if not and
you kill yourself, no loss. You’re going to hell anyway.
They
would make me say that I forgave the boys who assaulted me. Because that
is a big part of being a good Christian, forgiveness. It took me a
long time to realize that the only people who deserve forgiveness are
the ones who are actually sorry, and aren’t going to do it again. The
rest can piss off. That’s what TLJ missed, and what is so Christian
about it. Your abuser doesn’t deserve your sympathy. Turns out that the
teacher’s son who abused me was the product of rape himself, and other
adults in the community tell me that I should feel bad for her and him
because of that. I was supposed to feel sympathy for her, but she stood
by and did nothing while her son assaulted me. I am sorry that she was
raped and that’s why he exists, but that doesn’t absolve her of standing
by and watching him hurt me. She doesn’t deserve my forgiveness, and
neither does he. Kylo doesn’t deserve Rey’s forgiveness either. He has
done nothing but hurt her and the people she loves, and while he may be
feeling some regret, he would absolutely do it again (i.e. not wanting
to save the Resistance fleet), and therefore she owes him nothing. Not a
single bit of sympathy, and definitely not forgiveness. Sure, he has a
tragic past, but he’s still making choices as an adult to hurt people,
and be skeevy to a teenager a full decade younger than him. Rey has no
reason to feel like she owes him anything, unless she’s being subjected
to shitty Christianity. (I saw shitty Christianity because I know that
not all of Christianity is like this, but tbh a lot of it is shitty and
is exactly like this)
It took me years to realize this for myself,
and to realize that the only people responsible for my abuse were my
abusers and it wasn’t my fault. I’m seeing a therapist now, and was
diagnosed with PTSD, and things got better once I was able to talk about
it in a more reasonable setting than Catholic school. TLJ threw me for a
fucking loop though. Kylo is so much like the people who abused me. In
TFA it was empowering to see Rey interact with him because it was
obvious that there was this angry feral part of her that wanted to tear
out his throat. That anger was good. That anger was something I hadn’t
been allowed to have in Catholic school. I had to be meek and forgiving.
I had to be like Rey in TLJ where she says “Ben,” so quietly when she’s
trying to turn him to the light. What I loved about Rey in TFA was her
anger, and from what I read in the Old Testament and what I hear my
cousins talk about in the Torah, TFA Rey absolutely acts like a Jewish
girl from those stories. Her anger would have been a so much better
direction for the story line to pursue in TLJ, if her temptation to the
Dark Side was due to her (justifiable) anger at Kylo. But that’s not
what happened, because exactly as you said, the narrative took on a
distinctly Christian slant of forgiveness, even when that forgiveness
isn’t justified.
I am so glad that this movie didn’t come out
while I was still in Catholic school. Star Wars was my escape from that,
and if I’d seen a Star Wars movie where the heroine is forced into a
narrative of forgiveness towards her abuser, and Luke Skywalker is
depressed and hopeless and sacrifices himself in what really seems to me
like a suicide, I would not have gotten through those years because it
would have been the wrong message from one more source and I don’t think
I could have taken it.
Being able to pinpoint that there was a
Christian shift to TLJ helped me a lot in understanding why that movie
was so upsetting to me, so I’m sharing this in hopes that it helps other
survivors, and also maybe helps people who haven’t been through this
sort of abusive shit understand why the narrative of forgiveness in TLJ
is so nauseating.
I am so intensely tired of all of these stories and sequels that are all about how much life sucks and your heroes are terrible and your Bright Hopeful Determined Protagonists whose struggles ultimately don’t mean anything go on to lead terrible lives full of sadness and grief and loss and become terrible parents and mentors
give me my happy endings and my hopeful bright characters that stay bright even in the midst of such tragedy and grief. Let them live to teach the new generation how to fight the battles they left behind. Let them love intensely and fiercely, and let them accomplish great things. Let them be good parents and mentors to the next generation. Above all, let them be happy. Let their trials and suffering not be in vain; give them happiness and a well-lived life. Real life is so rarely full of these things, but my fiction doesn’t need to be full of grim, stark pessimism masquerading as “reality” too
Look I feel this in the general sense. It’s why Return of the Jedi is very high on my Star Wars list. But I think Star Wars needed The Last Jedi, and Star Wars fans need to let go of their preconceived notions of what Star Wars is or is not. The story has to move forward, not backward, and the Force is what it is despite what you think it is. This is not the end of the Story…just as Empire was not the end in 1980.
This movie was not constructed for optimism, not in times such as these in which optimism is blind and naïve and impotent. This movie was constructed for hope.
So. Let’s discuss this.
Yes, technically this was about Star Wars. But it was also about how this is like the sixth fandom in the last five years that has pulled a sequel set several years after the end of the main series that does this: Harry Potter (The Cursed Child with the Trio) and Avatar (Legend of Korra with Aang) are the most notable ones, but I can pull everything from DC Comics to Naruto out at this point.
As a sidenote, it’s the same Hollywood wave that’s giving us all of these “grimdark” “gritty” fairy tales movies that started with Alice in Wonderland and Snow White and the Huntsman (films that were followed by movies like Beastly, Pan, Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Jack the Giant Slayer, etc) that have destroyed the core moral, ethical, and narrative points of nearly every fairy tale/fairy tale fantasy from Sleeping Beauty to The Wizard of Oz (Cinderella 2015 being a notable exception) and where they can’t seem to figure out that putting a sword in a woman’s hands doesn’t make her a “strong female character” or give her inherently more depth than a woman who never takes up arms.
But yes…let’s talk about Star Wars, since that’s what the post was technically about. And let’s talk about how you are instantly dismissive of the “preconceived notions” of fans of the saga despite them not being preconceived notions at all.
So let’s talk “the Force not being what you think it is.” Because what on earth do you think it is or what it means? If you’re talking about Rey’s parentage, let’s talk about how much bullshit that was because apparently Rey Random reminds us that “anyone can be powerful!” like literally every single Jedi in the prequels from Mace Windu to “literal desert slave-child” Anakin Skywalker to “almost became a farmer because no Master would take him” Obi-Wan Kenobi didn’t prove that. “The Force can belong to anyone, not just the Jedi or the Sith” like literally every Force Sensitive that doesn’t identify as a Jedi/Sith we’ve ever been introduced to from Ahsoka Tano to Baze and Chirrut didn’t show that. “Rey Random shows anyone can be a hero despite their origins” like Force Sensitive!Finn wasn’t literally handed to Rian Johnson on a silver platter.
Luke is only “important” because he is Anakin’s child. He is the legacy of one of the most powerful Force Sensitives in the galaxy, true, but it is his status as the son of Anakin Skywalker that makes him important to the story the Original Trilogy tries to tell. Not because he’s important to the Rebellion’s success (though he is), but because he is the catalyst to Darth Vader’s redemption. Specifically because he is Vader’s son, because Star Wars is a family drama. Other than that, he wasn’t important either; Luke Skywalker was a naive farmboy from a backwater desert planet that got a lucky hit in because he happened to have a powerful connection to the Force. So shut up about all of this “Rey Random is important!!!!!!!” nonsense. It’s just more garbage erasure of the backstories of basically every other protagonist of the Star Wars saga except our royalty (Padme and Leia) and erasure of the basic narrative point of Star Wars (family and redemption).
“This movie was not constructed for optimism” well fucking duh. But Star Wars is. And like, I’m sorry if that’s such a novel concept for you to comprehend, but if you don’t like optimism in the face of staggering odds, why the actual fuck do you even watch Star Wars? Because let’s take a look back at the rest of the series, because there are a myriad of instances where the saga has done failure and still maintained that theme of hope and optimism. TPM ends with Qui-Gon’s death, but also with the Peace of Naboo and the promise of Anakin becoming a Jedi. AOTC ends with the Battle of Geonosis, the beginning of the Clone Wars, and the murder of at least 200 Jedi, but also with the marriage of Anakin and Padme and the hope for a better future. ROTS ends with the rise of the Empire, the destruction of the Jedi Order and literally the murder of almost every Jedi alive, Anakin becoming Vader, and Padme dying in childbirth, and yet the Skywalker twins provide hope for a better future. Rogue One ends with the deaths of literally every single main character in the entire movie and yet ends with the successful theft of the Death Star plans and Leia Organa literally talking about how the plans have brought “hope” to the rebellion. …I can go on to the original trilogy if you like, but I feel like I would just be belaboring the point.
Star Wars is about optimism. It’s about family and redemption and love and triumphing in the face of staggering odds. Those are the core moral and thematic linchpins of the series. If you want nihilism and pessimism and “grim gritty realism and not idealistic ideals are going to save the day”, go watch Watchmen or James Bond or some other series where that’s the point. And those ideas have their place in storytelling! But stop acting like Star Wars somehow “needed” to be tainted by that idea to move forward with its storytelling. It didn’t. It was perfectly possible for the series to move forward quite easily while maintaining its core themes of family, redemption, and optimism in the face of overwhelming odds.
“not in times such as these in which optimism is blind and naïve and impotent” Again, if you don’t want optimism, why the fuck are you watching Star Wars? Why are you so intent on destroying the basic underlying theme of the entire saga like this is somehow a good thing that needed to happen? Fuck that.
“This movie was constructed for hope” bitch where? Where was the hope besides Luke’s vague “I will not be the last Jedi” and that random slave child (that Finn and Rose left despite freeing the animals, btw) with the broom? You just spent your entire response talking about how TLJ was about pessimism and stark reality and then you turn around and try to say this is a movie about hope? What are you even playing at?
Like, I don’t think you understand the actual point I’m getting at here: Hollywood doesn’t seem to fucking understand that all of this “grimdark gritty depressing” stuff where your bright determined heroes grow up to be terrible role models and lead depressing lives is exhausting. Being told that your hope and idealism is stupid and that dark realism is going to win the day is tiring. Being told that you were wrong to get attached to and love these characters when they were the protagonists because they’re ultimately going to grow up to be shitty people or lose everything they love piece by piece turns me the fuck off from ever wanting to consume anything related to that piece of media ever again, because it’s depressing. Real life is terrible enough; I don’t need my fiction to reflect that too. Fiction is escapism. That’s the point. And sometimes, yeah, sad and tragic endings are good, because they fit the story. The Hunger Games was never going to have an unambiguously happy ending, and I was perfectly okay with that, because given the setting and the tone of the books, an unambiguously happy ending would have been unrealistic and not fitting with the overall tone.
But Star Wars? A series that, no matter how dark and terrible things get, always reminds you that there is hope and light and good people and heroes and unambiguously happy endings? That’s not what Star Wars is about, and that’s never what it’s been about, and I’m so tired of people telling me I’m just an “entitled fan” for thinking the basic linchpin of the entire saga shouldn’t be thrown away from some surface-level narrative about how “failure is good!!!!!!” that’s handled terribly and awkwardly and ultimately doesn’t even succeed in making the point it’s trying to make. Because I can reel off at least a dozen Star Wars stories that are technically about failure that manage to be as such while still maintaining the “Star Wars” feel. And that’s where TLJ failed…because it no longer feels like Star Wars. And I don’t care how you think of it, that’s a goddamn problem.
Please enjoy this page from the most recent Poe Dameron Comic in which Leia explains the whole plan to Poe (even the bits he isn’t a part of!) in a flashback while he carries out her orders without a problem, which I am posting for no particular reason whatsoever right now.
Yeah, I like how Poe already earned Leia’s respect and trust, and had an integral part to play in the plan that gave his commanding officer any reason to tell him the plan.
I also like the way Poe already understands Leia’s form of both femininity and leadership and trusts her to make good calls, and follows her orders without assuming she must be crazy or a traitor.
These are things I say also for no particular reason whatsoever right now.
Yes, understanding your leader’s form of femininity is of key importance in military operations.
Yeah, it helps you recognize them as a competent leader and strategist and not underestimate them or assume they must be traitors.
So does introducing your next in line in the chain of command to everybody before they’re actually forced into a position of command.
Yeah. Everyone needs to know absolutely everyone else in the militia, just in case, for example, all of your leadership gets killed at once and only one or two admirals are left, then everyone can already be on board. Letting anyone possibly not know anyone else is just bad planning, not a completely reasonable logistical scenario.
Failure to communicate is failure of leadership. If someone wants to be recognized as competent they need to act competently, which Holdo did not.
The plan was need-to-know. Poe did not need to know. Especially given that as soon as Poe knew the plan, he overcommunicated and the First Prder found out.
Holdo followed military protocol, had a good strategy, and made sound decisions about disseminating information regarding that strategy. Stop trying to paint her actions as incompetency.
Yet half the crew mutinied against her… because it looked to all hell like she was going to get them all killed… because off her off-putting and secretive leadership style, which is how the tlj visual dictionary describes her. It was a flaw and failure on her part, not some kind of brilliance. Do try to keep up.
It was four people.
Four people mutinied against her.
Do you think the crew was eight people?
Also, Poe leading a mutiny against someone and ruining their best strategy for survival, to the point that Leia was willing to stun him over it, is not an indicator of Holdo’s flaws. It is, in fact, a big indicator of Poe’s flaws, and was an intentional story beat as part of Poe’s overall arc where he learns, from Holdo, how to be a leader.
The best version of events, for the Resistance, would have been of Poe followed orders and trusted his commander. That he was unwilling to do so, because of his unchecked hero instinct, is not a strike against Holdo.
I love how you think the four people shown on screen are enough to effectively mutiny against a ship crewed by hundreds. There were officers among the mutineers and what do officers do? Lead people.
Lieutenant Connix, a member of the bridge crew who was level-headed and well-regarded enough to be overseeing the evacuations from D’Qar also joined Poe, so it wasn’t just Poe being a hothead.
Poe learned from Holdo how to be a leader–as in be so authoritarian and uncommunicative that he loses his grip on his own people? Sounds like a hell of an improvement.
I like how you think Poe’s having an arc is mutually exclusive with Holdo having flaws as a leader as well. Because female characters have to be perfect in every way in order to be valid, right? Boring.
I love how you think they mutinied effectively.
Buddy, they had to lock the bridge with only two people inside (save Threepio). The mutiny lasted all of five minutes on-screen, maybe an hour tops in-universe.
Holdo can have flaws as a character in the same way Leia can have flaws: namely that they exist, but they aren’t relevant to the plot because she’s not one of our heroes who is growing as a person.
And her flaws are not the things you’re pointing out because, guess what? Not telling the need-to-know plan to the hot-shot who just got demoted by your best friend because he prefers dramatic heroics and insubordination, where the Resistance sustains losses it cannot take, to protecting the light – the exact opposite of what the plan actually is – especially when he, again, does not need to know, is not a flaw.
Tell you what, you guys actually watch the movie – it’s good, I promise – and then get back to me about what happens in it, because so far it looks like none of you were actually paying attention.
So Poe was demoted. What was Holdo’s reason for not telling Connix and the others? Do you have reasons for that, or are you starting from the conclusion that Holdo can do no wrong and everyone who opposed her was automatically an asshole?
If you want to talk bad attitude, let’s talk about yours. There’s this thing called differing reactions to media. People are allowed to see flaws in a movie you yourself liked. Yet you found it fit to barge in on a post by someone who didn’t experience the movie the same way as you did to try and cram your opinion down their throat. No wonder you find Holdo’s leadership style–which canon material itself describes as flawed–so perfect if you think this is good communication, or needed or wanted in any way.
The dollop of condescension to top this all off is a nice touch, too. Oh of course anyone who has reservations about Holdo or TLJ must not have been paying attention. How’s that szechuan sauce?
Okay but you are aware that Poe actually couldn’t have given the plan to Finn and Rose because at the time they got captured Poe didn’t know the plan and then got stunned. He was still unconscious when DJ told the FO about the plan and woke up minutes before they started firing at the shuttles right? So how the fuck should have Poe told Finn the plan? Wait let me guess it’s force Skype right? RIGHT?
Poe’s “dramatic heroics” saved the entire resistance fleet because guess what, a Dreadnought that is able to bombard a planet FROM SPACE is also very likely to rip through three puny resistance ships without effort. Poe called it a “fleet killer” What do you think would have happened if that Dreadnought was still around by the time they jumped out of hyperspace?
And if Leia was so against the plan, she could have called the attack off any time she wanted to, because she is THE GENERAL. But she didn’t. Which paints her as incompetent leader who blames her mistakes on other people. (not to forget they lost 50 people, the FO 200.000)
And while we’re at it, Poe got demoted yes, but he was still A CAPTAIN. That makes him a commanding officer and Holdo’s second or third in command. Which means if Holdo dies, Poe is the leader anyway. So not telling anyone the plan, when there is a off chance of death which would leave everyone helpless, is fucking stupid.
If Holdo doesn’t want Poe as her commanding officer, she should have said so and not let him on the bridge. She didn’t do that, which means she left him in a high commanding position and then refused to give him orders because she has no idea what she is doing and she has no place on or near the bridge.
Please enjoy this page from the most recent Poe Dameron Comic in which Leia explains the whole plan to Poe (even the bits he isn’t a part of!) in a flashback while he carries out her orders without a problem, which I am posting for no particular reason whatsoever right now.
Yeah, I like how Poe already earned Leia’s respect and trust, and had an integral part to play in the plan that gave his commanding officer any reason to tell him the plan.
I also like the way Poe already understands Leia’s form of both femininity and leadership and trusts her to make good calls, and follows her orders without assuming she must be crazy or a traitor.
These are things I say also for no particular reason whatsoever right now.
Yes, understanding your leader’s form of femininity is of key importance in military operations.
Yeah, it helps you recognize them as a competent leader and strategist and not underestimate them or assume they must be traitors.
So does introducing your next in line in the chain of command to everybody before they’re actually forced into a position of command.
Yeah. Everyone needs to know absolutely everyone else in the militia, just in case, for example, all of your leadership gets killed at once and only one or two admirals are left, then everyone can already be on board. Letting anyone possibly not know anyone else is just bad planning, not a completely reasonable logistical scenario.
Failure to communicate is failure of leadership. If someone wants to be recognized as competent they need to act competently, which Holdo did not.
The plan was need-to-know. Poe did not need to know. Especially given that as soon as Poe knew the plan, he overcommunicated and the First Prder found out.
Holdo followed military protocol, had a good strategy, and made sound decisions about disseminating information regarding that strategy. Stop trying to paint her actions as incompetency.
Yet half the crew mutinied against her… because it looked to all hell like she was going to get them all killed… because off her off-putting and secretive leadership style, which is how the tlj visual dictionary describes her. It was a flaw and failure on her part, not some kind of brilliance. Do try to keep up.
It was four people.
Four people mutinied against her.
Do you think the crew was eight people?
Also, Poe leading a mutiny against someone and ruining their best strategy for survival, to the point that Leia was willing to stun him over it, is not an indicator of Holdo’s flaws. It is, in fact, a big indicator of Poe’s flaws, and was an intentional story beat as part of Poe’s overall arc where he learns, from Holdo, how to be a leader.
The best version of events, for the Resistance, would have been of Poe followed orders and trusted his commander. That he was unwilling to do so, because of his unchecked hero instinct, is not a strike against Holdo.
I love how you think the four people shown on screen are enough to effectively mutiny against a ship crewed by hundreds. There were officers among the mutineers and what do officers do? Lead people.
Lieutenant Connix, a member of the bridge crew who was level-headed and well-regarded enough to be overseeing the evacuations from D’Qar also joined Poe, so it wasn’t just Poe being a hothead.
Poe learned from Holdo how to be a leader–as in be so authoritarian and uncommunicative that he loses his grip on his own people? Sounds like a hell of an improvement.
I like how you think Poe’s having an arc is mutually exclusive with Holdo having flaws as a leader as well. Because female characters have to be perfect in every way in order to be valid, right? Boring.
I love how you think they mutinied effectively.
Buddy, they had to lock the bridge with only two people inside (save Threepio). The mutiny lasted all of five minutes on-screen, maybe an hour tops in-universe.
Holdo can have flaws as a character in the same way Leia can have flaws: namely that they exist, but they aren’t relevant to the plot because she’s not one of our heroes who is growing as a person.
And her flaws are not the things you’re pointing out because, guess what? Not telling the need-to-know plan to the hot-shot who just got demoted by your best friend because he prefers dramatic heroics and insubordination, where the Resistance sustains losses it cannot take, to protecting the light – the exact opposite of what the plan actually is – especially when he, again, does not need to know, is not a flaw.
Tell you what, you guys actually watch the movie – it’s good, I promise – and then get back to me about what happens in it, because so far it looks like none of you were actually paying attention.
So Poe was demoted. What was Holdo’s reason for not telling Connix and the others? Do you have reasons for that, or are you starting from the conclusion that Holdo can do no wrong and everyone who opposed her was automatically an asshole?
If you want to talk bad attitude, let’s talk about yours. There’s this thing called differing reactions to media. People are allowed to see flaws in a movie you yourself liked. Yet you found it fit to barge in on a post by someone who didn’t experience the movie the same way as you did to try and cram your opinion down their throat. No wonder you find Holdo’s leadership style–which canon material itself describes as flawed–so perfect if you think this is good communication, or needed or wanted in any way.
The dollop of condescension to top this all off is a nice touch, too. Oh of course anyone who has reservations about Holdo or TLJ must not have been paying attention. How’s that szechuan sauce?
They did not need to know.
What part of this being a need-to-know plan do you not understand? The plan is not served by sharing it liberally. Doing so endangers it because it makes it more likely the First Order finds out about it. The people who need to know the plan are the people immediately involved in it. None if whom were involved in Poe’s mutiny.
And if you think that I was the first person on this post to be condescending, or even that I condescended to you before you did to me, then my judgement about your media comprehension was spot-on. The reason I’m convinced none of you paid attention to the movie isn’t that you didn’t like it, it’s that you keep asserting things that are directly contradicted by the movie.
Also, visual guides aren’t canon. They’ve been specifically stated not to be canon.
I can’t even be mad anymore, the way you straight-up make shit up and speculate, starting backward from the conclusion that Holdo was unquestionably right, is faintly disturbing. I hope you find some closure in whatever personal reasons that drove you to come onto this post and choose to argue this issue to the death.
I mean, Story Group member Pablo Hidalgo is on record referring fans to the TFA Visual Dictonary as the best window into canon, but obviously canon is whatever you say it is. Have a good day.
Please enjoy this page from the most recent Poe Dameron Comic in which Leia explains the whole plan to Poe (even the bits he isn’t a part of!) in a flashback while he carries out her orders without a problem, which I am posting for no particular reason whatsoever right now.
Yeah, I like how Poe already earned Leia’s respect and trust, and had an integral part to play in the plan that gave his commanding officer any reason to tell him the plan.
I also like the way Poe already understands Leia’s form of both femininity and leadership and trusts her to make good calls, and follows her orders without assuming she must be crazy or a traitor.
These are things I say also for no particular reason whatsoever right now.
Yes, understanding your leader’s form of femininity is of key importance in military operations.
Yeah, it helps you recognize them as a competent leader and strategist and not underestimate them or assume they must be traitors.
So does introducing your next in line in the chain of command to everybody before they’re actually forced into a position of command.
Yeah. Everyone needs to know absolutely everyone else in the militia, just in case, for example, all of your leadership gets killed at once and only one or two admirals are left, then everyone can already be on board. Letting anyone possibly not know anyone else is just bad planning, not a completely reasonable logistical scenario.
Failure to communicate is failure of leadership. If someone wants to be recognized as competent they need to act competently, which Holdo did not.
The plan was need-to-know. Poe did not need to know. Especially given that as soon as Poe knew the plan, he overcommunicated and the First Prder found out.
Holdo followed military protocol, had a good strategy, and made sound decisions about disseminating information regarding that strategy. Stop trying to paint her actions as incompetency.
Yet half the crew mutinied against her… because it looked to all hell like she was going to get them all killed… because off her off-putting and secretive leadership style, which is how the tlj visual dictionary describes her. It was a flaw and failure on her part, not some kind of brilliance. Do try to keep up.
It was four people.
Four people mutinied against her.
Do you think the crew was eight people?
Also, Poe leading a mutiny against someone and ruining their best strategy for survival, to the point that Leia was willing to stun him over it, is not an indicator of Holdo’s flaws. It is, in fact, a big indicator of Poe’s flaws, and was an intentional story beat as part of Poe’s overall arc where he learns, from Holdo, how to be a leader.
The best version of events, for the Resistance, would have been of Poe followed orders and trusted his commander. That he was unwilling to do so, because of his unchecked hero instinct, is not a strike against Holdo.
I love how you think the four people shown on screen are enough to effectively mutiny against a ship crewed by hundreds. There were officers among the mutineers and what do officers do? Lead people.
Lieutenant Connix, a member of the bridge crew who was level-headed and well-regarded enough to be overseeing the evacuations from D’Qar also joined Poe, so it wasn’t just Poe being a hothead.
Poe learned from Holdo how to be a leader–as in be so authoritarian and uncommunicative that he loses his grip on his own people? Sounds like a hell of an improvement.
I like how you think Poe’s having an arc is mutually exclusive with Holdo having flaws as a leader as well. Because female characters have to be perfect in every way in order to be valid, right? Boring.
I love how you think they mutinied effectively.
Buddy, they had to lock the bridge with only two people inside (save Threepio). The mutiny lasted all of five minutes on-screen, maybe an hour tops in-universe.
Holdo can have flaws as a character in the same way Leia can have flaws: namely that they exist, but they aren’t relevant to the plot because she’s not one of our heroes who is growing as a person.
And her flaws are not the things you’re pointing out because, guess what? Not telling the need-to-know plan to the hot-shot who just got demoted by your best friend because he prefers dramatic heroics and insubordination, where the Resistance sustains losses it cannot take, to protecting the light – the exact opposite of what the plan actually is – especially when he, again, does not need to know, is not a flaw.
Tell you what, you guys actually watch the movie – it’s good, I promise – and then get back to me about what happens in it, because so far it looks like none of you were actually paying attention.
So Poe was demoted. What was Holdo’s reason for not telling Connix and the others? Do you have reasons for that, or are you starting from the conclusion that Holdo can do no wrong and everyone who opposed her was automatically an asshole?
If you want to talk bad attitude, let’s talk about yours. There’s this thing called differing reactions to media. People are allowed to see flaws in a movie you yourself liked. Yet you found it fit to barge in on a post by someone who didn’t experience the movie the same way as you did to try and cram your opinion down their throat. No wonder you find Holdo’s leadership style–which canon material itself describes as flawed–so perfect if you think this is good communication, or needed or wanted in any way.
The dollop of condescension to top this all off is a nice touch, too. Oh of course anyone who has reservations about Holdo or TLJ must not have been paying attention. How’s that szechuan sauce?
1. Where is the research on how media you consume can directly, negatively affect your values? Everything I’ve seen says that, on the whole, it makes you more empathetic and thoughtful, things which would be directly counter to the normalization of horrifying acts.
2. What is your basis for saying that what someone enjoys in fiction or fantasy is what they enjoy in real life, or would enjoy if they had a chance? You make fun of the argument “enjoying horror doesn’t make you a murderer”, but I’ve never seen a meaningful counter to that.
3. What is it about sex that makes something inherently bad? I’ve seen a lot of arguments along the lines of, “Portraying X is fine so long as it’s not sexual”, but isn’t being sexual a part of many people’s lives, good and bad? How are you coming to the conclusion that people universally endorse the reality of the ideas that they find sexually arousing?
4. Why do the needs of victims who are triggered by content overrule the needs of victim who find comfort in communities surrounding that content? Isn’t the solution to just keep the communities as separate as possible?
5. What is your goal? Do you really think removing all the content you find objectionable from a fandom is possible? Do you really want to leave a string of suicides in your wake of victims who blame their trauma on the fiction they chose to create and consume?
There questions are asked in good faith, and I’d love it if you answered in good faith. With reliable sources, if at all possible.
We have to talk. We have to. We have to come back to the middle, at least a little bit, or fandom and creative communities all over the internet are going to tear themselves apart. So: it’s possible that I’m wrong. I don’t think I am, but I try as hard and as often as possible to prove myself wrong, to combat confirmation bias. So: prove me wrong. How did you get to where you are, and what’s your evidence?
Fandom is a reflection of the real world, it isn’t what happens when “morally questionable” media is embraced.
When a movie or show has an inclusive cast of characters and fandom makes everything about white characters (and, for the record, this happens again and again across multiple fandoms, including Blade, Bright, and Orange is the New Black to name just a few), that says something about the real world. We know that something is harmful. The empathy gap – which can be summed up as feeling white pain but not Black pain – is real (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3108582/), and serious, and it’s on display every day in fandoms.
The Last Jedi didn’t make anyone more empathetic to Kylo than Finn. In fact, the narrative did not ask that of the audience at all.
Researchers studied how viewers were affected by nonverbal behavior on 11 popular television shows, such as CSI: Miami. Characters on these shows displayed more negative nonverbal behavior toward African-American characters than toward white characters. Exposure to pro-white nonverbal behavior increased racial bias among viewers, as determined by a test that measures unconscious biases, even though viewers did not report noticing patterns of biased behavior on TV. This study suggests that subtle nonverbal behavior on TV can influence racial bias in the real world. —Kat Saxton
This is an interesting study, but the fact is, viewers will demonstrate bias against Black characters even without negative nonverbal behavior toward them. All they have to do is exist. (Citation: Many years of watching and participating in fandoms first hand.)
I think 1-2 have been answered by @diversehighfantasy or rather redirected to more relevant questions. To add on, my response to Question 3 is that I don’t have a problem with sexualizing a situation/relationship itself, but I do have a problem with being told that harnful behaviors are actuallly unobjectionable and is/should be canon. For instance, that a minor-adult sexual relationship is unharmful or beneficial, that torture and mass murder are justifiable acts of war, or that it’s not abusive to tell a woman she is nothing except to a specific man.
On Questions 4 and 5, my goal is not to remove shipping or shipping content, and I do not know any anti who thinks that’s a feasible goal. For the most part antis I know go to great lengths to avoid content we find objectionable, including filtering and blocking, and excluding some shippers from our own self-organized fandom activities like blog rings and Discord chats.
I think one main source of misunderstanding is that you as the op don’t see the difference between “This fandom trend is a reflection of real life biases and decreases the enjoyment of marginalized fans” and “This fandom trend must be forbidden altogether.” It is possible to criticize a thing without infringing on the right of others to enjoy it. Critique is not the same thing as prohibition, and the right to create and enjoy content doesn’t mean the right to be free of criticism.
Okay, I want to give an in-depth response to these points, but I wanted to first clarify something that may have gotten lost as this post left the context of my blog:
It is possible to criticize a thing without infringing on the right of others to enjoy it. Critique is not the same thing as prohibition, and the right to create and enjoy content doesn’t mean the right to be free of criticism.
I 100% agree. I’ve actually said the same thing multiple times, and I am vocally pro-criticism, especially regarding racism in fandom.
(As a side note: the original post was way more about sexual policing than racial criticism, as I think they’re different issues that need to be handled differently. To that end, I’m probably going to remove the anti-Reylo tag from the original post, as I’m not involved enough with the fandom to properly address any racial issues there. It was far more about the question of whether shipping enemies together is romanticizing abuse, but there’s years of discourse aside from that that I’m just straight-up not informed on.)
Honestly, this is the first moderately pleasant interaction with antis that I’ve had. To understand where I’m coming from, it’s helpful to understand that most of the antis who have sought me out – and therefore the extent of my exposure to this side of the fandom – have been people like this. Or this. Or this. Or the Halsey thing. Or this. Or – ok, you get the point. So that’s the perspective I’m coming from. I’m anti-harassment of creators, not anti-criticism of fandom trends and fanworks.
And in my view, right now, many creators aren’t even hearing the valid criticism over the harassment.
I’m glad you find the exchange productive. I think this is one of the few reasonable exchanges I’ve had with someone who is critical of antis, too. Both @diversehighfantasy and I are aware that there are antis who are harassers and speak against it. I see harassment as a simplification and degradation of social justice-based critique, but that’s a different subject.
I have two points I’d like to add in response to your answer. First: I think it’s a false metric to focus exclusively on whether fictional portrayals transfer directly to reality. The people who create and, more relevantly in this case, consume fanworks are real people. It negatively affects, say, a Black fan to be constantly reminded of racism in her fandom activities, or a transgender fan to have transphobic portrayals thrown in his face, and so on. It is not fun to see your real-life oppression celebrated in the spaces where you go to have fun. It’s long been pointed out that fandom, just like society at large, is extremely hostile to marginalized groups, and “antis” are often trying to make fandom more inclusive by raising awareness.
Second, on a related note, “tag/warn appropriately” only works when the content creator is self-aware enough to tag or warn. If I’m writing, say, a slave AU fic I am likely to add appropriate tags and warnings, but if I am, say, romanticizing emotional abuse in a fic I am probably not self-aware enough to include a warning for that. The people who create this content are the same ones who are likeliest to respond with angry denials if called on it. Implicit bias is difficult to tag or warn for because it’s, well, implicit. That’s where awareness raising and criticism come in.
This may also be an area where we come from really different contexts, by the way, since I think most sexual content and pairings are easily recognized and tagged. The complexities of social and psychological phenomena like racism, not so much.
I would argue that even tagging is an imperfect solution, though. If, say, the first 1,000 search results for fics including a character are pedophilic pairings, or–more likely–racist stereotypes and romanticization of abuse are rampant in fanworks, that sends a message. It has a cumulative effect on fans even if they can avoid objectionable fanworks.
On solutions, in addition to marginalized fans speaking out, fans also have implemented solutions like blocking and excluding fans of an objectionable ship (which shippers criticize as “gatekeeping”), circulating lists of objectionable fanwork creators, or circulating non-objectionable fanfic recommendations. I think a more curated fanwork database may be a solution as well, though it would be substantially smaller than free submission databases.
Cultural appropriation and cultural sharing in Avatar: The Last Airbender compared.
Reblogging myself to talk about the ‘Disrespectful’ gif because Mai and Ty Lee’s disrespect in that scene is toward not only the Kyoshi Warriors’ culture but to the Warriors themselves as well. But that’s always the case, isn’t it? Cultural disrespect always goes with personal disrespect. Always.
Mai and Ty Lee’s attitude here plays into a really pernicious stereotype about women in colonialized cultures, that they are hypersexual seductresses out to sink their claws into men, especially men of the colonializing group. Of course the reality is that men of the colonizing group, and often women as well, hypersexualize and prey on the colonized people.
I mean, the Kyoshi Warriors were foraging in the middle of nowhere. They weren’t dressed up to look pretty: their clothes and war paint were their uniforms and ties to their heritage, not look-at-me-I’m-so-beautiful decorations. Yet so ingrained were the stereotypes Mai and Ty Lee had been taught about Earth Kingdom women, they took one look at the Kyoshi Warriors and dismissed them as exotic, sexualized creatures. The Fire Nation girls even seem to take OFFENSE at how the Warriors are dressed, as though their clothes are somehow demeaning or a provocation.
In the process Mai and Ty Lee subtly set themselves up as the more liberated women, the serious fighters as oppsed to these frivolous foreign girls. And I’m willing to bet a lot that the Fire Nation used its comparative gender equality for propaganda purposes, harping on the need to save the oppressed Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom women from Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom men. Sozin’s own stated motivation for starting the war was exactly what we would call a white savior complex if he were white. This is how white feminism and the white savior complex work to reinforce colonialism in our world.
While all the characters in ATLA are coded as POC, mostly Asians, these dynamics of colonialism and supremacy apply across culture and race. In fact I’m quite happy that ATLA depicts these issues between nonwhite peoples. Though colonialism by European and European-descended cultures is the most dominant currently in our world (hence the descriptor ‘white’), it has never been solely a European issue. Just look at how the Air Nomads are explicitly based on Tibet, which is suffering from decades of Chinese colonialism. China and other nonwhite colonializing powers have used their lack of European descent as a shield, but it’s not a defense. Just because European colonization has been massively destructive doesn’t mean other peoples can’t be oppressive as well.
I’d like to add to this idea that Earth Kingdom women are treated to a gendered form of racial or ethnic prejudice, because it runs though more than just the interactions Azula and her minions have with the Kyoshi Warriors. In “Zuko Alone,” for example, when Iroh sends Azula an Earth Kingdom doll, he writes, “And for Azula, a new friend. She wears the latest fashion for Earth Kingdom girls.“ What’s stressed are the aesthetics of her dress, and a hobby that Azula, and later Mai and Ty Lee, plainly associates with girlyness, not only femininity, but a childish, useless femininity.
This derision of Earth Kingdom girls and women as “girly” and overly feminine comes up again not only during the battle with the Kyoshi Warriors, but after as well. Mai for example talks about wanting to get out of the girly disguise she has to wear, i. e., dressing as a Kyoshi Warrior, and when Ty Lee suggests that the Kyoshi Warriors have less depressing make up than Mai.
We can contrast this with what Suki says about her uniform: “It’s a warrior’s uniform. You should be proud. The silk threads symbolizes the brave blood that flows through our
veins. The gold insignia represents the honor of the warrior’s heart.”
Later, in the Comic “Going Home Again,” Azula puts a brainwashed Joo Dee in nominal charge of Ba Sing Se because she is so pliable. If the subjugation of Earth Kingdom girls is a rallying cry for public support for the war in the Fire Nation, it certainly does not trickle down to what happens on the ground. Just as normally happens in real life, Azula is perfectly happy to take over exploiting Earth Kingdom women in a gendered way similar to the way Long Feng did. There isn’t any enlightened spreading of feminist values here, not when gendered exploitation is so useful to the new colonial government.
The implied view that all Earth Kingdom women are oppressed also shows a cultural flattening of the Earth Kingdom. It’s pretty clear from the series that Kyoshi Island culturally distinct from Ba Sing Se or Gaoling. They have different gender roles and norms, and this is entirely ignored by Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee. This is also common to colonial powers historically, and still common today. Think of the way so many white western people treat East Asian ethnicities as interchangeable, especially with regards to and fetishization. In many ways, the implied attitudes of the Fire Nation people toward Earth Kingdom women and girls functions as a G-rated version of that same fetishization process.
Yup, the thing about the colonialist savior complex is that there’s no actual saving involved. These women are exploited in rhetoric to justify colonialism, and also in reality as well. It’s no wonder the Dai Li switched allegiance to Azula–she perpetuated the same system they were part of and benefited from, she just played the game better than Long Feng did.
One of the things I really liked about ATLA was how it showed the Fire Nation’s distorted perception of other cultures compared to their perceptions of themselves. The Kyoshi Warriors are a good example of this as you point out, as is what Earthbending means for Haru vs. the prison warden’s contempt for Earthbenders in the episode “Imprisoned.” The Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe characters have prejudices against Fire Nation people, too, with nearly deadly results when Jet tries to wipe out a village, but it’s also clear that the harm isn’t equal when the Water Tribes and the Earth Kingdoms are undergoing systematic genocide while the Fire Nation is facing, at its outskirts, insurgent pushback–some of it terrorist in nature, as in Jet’s case–from its aggression.
I like how the show’s response to all these complex issues was showing the diversity not only between common groupings but within them. Some Earth Kingdom women, like the Ba Sing Se upper crust, really are pampered and hyperfeminine, and that in itself isn’t a bad thing (though the system of economic exploitation underlying their luxury certainly is), the show’s subtle devaluation of girliness as bad notwithstanding. Katara, Toph, and Sokka all find something to enjoy in the Ba Sing Se high culture that caters to and is shaped by noblewomen. Some Earth Kingdom women are warriors and healers, others are everyday working class people like Jin. That kind of variety is a great antidote to the flattening view the Fire Nation imposed on other cultures, and in a way the whole show gives the lie to the idea of Asian interchangeability. (I mean it’s not perfect–it still follows the trope of “Asia” being primarily East Asia, with what could be a Southeast Asia analogue played largely as a joke and the Tibet stand-in presented as already dead and gone. But one story can’t do everything, and I can still enjoy it while seeing where it falls into common traps of thought.)
This was a very interesting discussion. Both @lj-writes and @attackfish brought up things I never really thought of, but it definitely makes sense.
It also explains why Katara is weirdly sexualized in “The Ember Island Players,” and why she is the only girl to receive this treatment in the play.
Here, the play denotes Katara to the role of the exotic foreigner that’s meant to be feminine and hypersexualized.
This also adds a much more uncomfortable note to the “Crossroads” portion of the play, almost making play!Katara a temptress where all canon!Katara did was offer to heal his scar.
Edit
Yue also gets this treatment, but Katara somehow has more cleavage:
Also, they’re still more sexualized then the girls from the other nations.
Omg I never even made that connection! (Maybe because I seldom felt the need to go back and watch EIP…) Good catch!
Remember the time Leia electrocuted Han for leaving the Rebellion in A New Hope? God, that scene was so funny. Remember also how she punched Han across the room as he was recovering from being frozen in Return of the Jedi? A total laugh riot. What a wacky, endearing character!
These things didn’t happen, of course, because it would have been completely off in tone and made Leia look like a weirdo. It would have cheapened Han’s character and the story as a whole.
So why is it okay for Finn, and why are viewers falling over themselves trying to find excuses for Rose? “She lost her sister-” Leia lost her planet. Next excuse.
I’m not saying you’re a Bad Racist Person if you liked The Last Jedi. I hope you enjoyed it and it rekindled your love of the franchise. That’s what we’re all here for, the fun and joy of loving these adventures.
I’m saying that Hollywood and audiences alike have a bias when it comes to whose pain is given respect and whose pain can be played for a laugh. And that bias is not only hurtful to fans caught on the wrong side of the empathy gap, it also hurts the quality and integrity of the works themselves.
It’s possible to love a work and also see how others might not feel the same way about it. Being a fan doesn’t mean you have to be a dismissive jerk or wilfully deny a work’s flaws. It’s fun to be a fan, but it’s imperative to be a person.
You know, it’s amazing how bad things can sound when you take the context out of them. It’s amazing how you talk about being critical about things you like, similar to how a rational person would, when you’ve been on an Anti-Rose-Tico tirade since before you even saw the movie – if you’ve even seen it at all at this point.
Anyway, so, Rose is positioned – presumably by a superior – to guard the escape pods from deserters. These deserters could likely be trained fighters, so they give the mechanic Rose – who probably isn’t that good at hand-to-hand combat – a weapon: a stun gun. Harmless in the long run, it knocks out its victims for a brief period of time, enough time for Rose to get any would-be deserters to superiors to be dealt with. Makes sense, right?
So this guy – Finn – comes by near the pods. Rose has had to stun several people by this point, but she’s cool with Finn. She doesn’t know him, but, after all, he’s a Resistance hero, who bravely risked his life to fight against his former captors, and was quite skilled at it too, and – is that a bag?
She stuns him after pitiful excuses, like “it’s not what it looks like!”, and “i mean, i was planning on leaving, but not deserting, i swear!”. She’s heard it all before, presumably. And this Finn character – she doesn’t know him, and has no reason to trust that he was actually trying to help the Resistance.
She did her job and stopped who, to the best of her knowledge, was a deserter, and, somehow, she’s a villain for that? Anti-black? Extremely violent? That’s a pitiful claim, too.
And she punched him across the room – when, how? I may have just forgotten, and, if that, please explain to me when that happened. But somehow, the description seems unlikely.
There’s one more claim to address, though – your claim that her crashing into Finn to stop him from committing a pointless heroic sacrifice was violent. What else was she supposed to do – watch Finn kill himself in a pointless endeavor that had more loss than gain; wave her arms and hope he stopped; or take charge of the situation to save her friend? You chose!
There’s being critical of a franchise, and then there’s downright being hateful, hypocritical and mocking people who hold a different opinion on your blog. Hint: you’re not the former.
Oh hey, everyone, criticizing the way Rose is written is now being anti Rose! Like, don’t think I can’t see you using a female Asian character to shield a white dude’s writing decisions from criticism.
You know what you sound iike? You sound like one of those dudebros who get suuuuper defensive about sexual objectification in video games and comics, saying shit like, “Of course her tits were hanging out, she was in hand-to-hand combat against a claw monster with a lactation fetish! Do you expect her clothes to be all pristine and intact after that?!”
News flash: The context does not grow out of the earth. Rian Johnson wrote it and specifically cooked up a situation that “justified” Rose tasing Finn. Even worse, he played it for a laugh. That answers the speeder crash part, too. Johnson also made it so that Rose “had” to crash her vehicle into Finn’s.
And even in the situation you mention the tasing doesn’t hold up because Finn is–guess what? Not a Resistance member. Hence, he can’t be a deserter. He was a free agent who did more for the Resistance than anyone could be expected to, and was receiving medical care from them as a result.
This is specifically why I compared him to Han at the end of ANH because Han, too, was an outsider. Unlike Han Finn wasn’t even trying to leave the Resistance for good, he was trying to protect two of its major allies, Rey and by extension Luke.
And like, thanks for making your own racism crystal clear by calling Finn’s reasons “pitiful excuses.” I’m sure you’ll sound so much braver and more coherent when someone’s menacingly waving a weapon at you that causes excruciating pain.
You also directly contradict yourself by saying that Rose was cool with Finn because of the way he bravely risked his life and then, in the next breath, saying she doesn’t know him and has no reason to trust him. Like, even to listen for half a fucking second?
And yes, it’s antiblack as fuck to contrive a situation to make a Black character suffer and pass out for no good story and character reason, and to play his pain for laughs. It cheapens Finn’s character arc because he didn’t get to make a choice to stay the way Han came back of his own free choice. Finn spent his entire life being controlled by pain and fear, and at Rose’s hands he gets more of the same.
By Leia punching a recovering Han I was referring to Rose making Finn, who had just recovered from a life-threatening injury, fly backward with the taser.
The op was like literally the mildest possible critique of the tasing incident yet here you are on my post, choosing to be hyperdefensive and fragile about it. I guess the exhortation to have some empathy really does sound like a threat to some people.
Well, first of all,
Yes, tagging something anti Rose, does mean, that, in fact, your post is being titled by you, the writer, as anti Rose! So, guess you’re just criticizing yourself at this point.
And nice job spending around ¼ of your rebuttal criticizing me as a person instead of my argument! I just think it really shows the lack of strength in a person’s debate if they can’t even scrounge up a few measly criticisms on my actual argument, but, instead, spend their time comforting themselves by changing my gender and adding 20+ years to my age so they can think that, at least, they’re not the loser living in their mom’s basement.
And what, Johnson specifically writes situations to put Finn in pain? He thought, Hey, why don’t I stun Finn, cause’ I hate him, but, oh, how? I got it! I’ll make it so he attempts to leave the Resistance and gets stunned by Rose! It sure is fun writing a significant scene that introduces a new main character and starts a new sub plot based specifically on causing one character pain! I love ruining Star Wars!
And I also guess literally any other use of stunning (which, in the Star Wars universe, is a heck of a lot, and in The Last Jedi, a decent of a lot, since it was established as a weapon early in the film that then justified its use later in the movie while also making sure the audience wasn’t jarred by the sudden use of a completely new weapon in an important battle – hey! another reason why Finn could have been stunned by Rose!) is also racist and made by Johnson specifically to hurt characters! Wow, amazing how stupid that sounds!
And maybe, just maybe, Rose crashing into Finn to save him from sacrificing himself was a culmination of the human life vs. military gains debate that had been raging throughout the entire movie since the death of the bomber squad to take out the dreadnought as well as showing how Rose, despite not being able to save her sister, took the chance to save another one of her loved ones at great personal risk. Because, let me remind you, Finn was fine after the crash, being able to run and walk around immediately after, while Rose was the one bloodied up and needing medical care.
And considering Finn was kept with the Resistance and fought for their causes, it may seem to a low-level mechanic that he was, in fact, a member of the Resistance! Shocker what we can discover when we look at what a character would know in context of the story, and not what we, the audience, knows.
Also, nice job on having zero reading comprehension skills, since it’s quite clear that “pitiful excuses” is referring to Finn’s failed attempts to explain to Rose why he was leaving through Rose’s eyes and not his actual reasons for leaving. And how is that even racist? Isn’t something racist supposed to relate to the race of a character, like, say, making an assumption based on their race? Cause, please, I fail to see how saying Finn did a poor job of explaining himself is racist.
And Rose knew Finn at that point similar to how someone like me knows Ryan Gosling. A celebrity, maybe someone you adore? Sure! But not someone you would place the same amount of trust in as a friend or family member.
And why would you make a reference to the same thing twice in different ways? Literally just make your one reference and go, don’t make it seem like you’re referring to two different situations.
And nice job dodging the fact that you started hurling criticisms at this movie before you even saw it. After all, how can someone construct a thorough review on something they didn’t even see?
That’s…. your supposed gotcha? I don’t know whether to laugh or feel sorry for you. It’s called tagging etiquette, keeping critical content out of the character tags. “Anti” is just one of the tag conventions for such posts.
You sound like a dudebro =/= you are a dudebro. I’m not even sure where the age thing comes from, dudebros are YOUNG guys between 16 and 25. Is this your way of telling me you’re a fetus? #PlotTwist
It doesn’t matter what Johnson’s specific intention was, the impact is what you described in italics. (A very apt summary, thank you.)
Since it looks like you stopped reading everything in the paragraph after “dudebro,” let me elaborate on that comparison. Let’s say I had a female character get into a fight and had her breasts hanging out of her torn clothes as a result, and treated that visual in a very sexual way. It doesn’t matter whether I started out intending to objectify her, it’s still objectification and it’s still sexist. I wrote the plot that would lead to the character’s breasts being exposed and sexualized, and I don’t get a pass for that.
The same goes for the tasing and crash scenes, somehow Johnson didn’t write scenes so that Finn could have his own realizations and make his own crucial choices but rather had to be hurt “for his own good” and I find that objectionable.
You might want to look up what “implicit bias” is. I was pointing out the seeming contempt for Finn in a situation where he was clearly scared of having more pain inflicted on him. How’s that for an empathy gap?
I guess I assumed that people who saw the movie would remember that Finn went flying across the room because it’s uhhh rather memorable? I mean it looks like the couple hundred people in the notes got it without any problem.
On a side note, human lives vs. military gains is such an odd way to frame that scene because I think the Resistance who were going to be killed by the FO also consists of human and also alien beings?
You seem pretty well acquainted with my recent blogging history, not to mention really fucken’ obsessed with my media consumption like a few anons I was getting a while back. As I told one of those anons, if you don’t like how or at what point I’m talking about a movie you’re free to ignore me? I keep my TLJ-critical posts out of the main tag and the character tags so it shouldn’t be hard to do.
Thanks for missing the point of every single one of my arguments and instead focusing on very minor points! Seriously, “you’re a fetus”? I’m so hurt.
And, no, “anti” in the context of tumblr 2017 very specifically means you are “anti” or against said thing. I’m sure you know that by now.
And how about I put it this way? A female character getting her breasts exposed serves no other purpose than to provide fan service for those who swing that way. Finn getting stunned, however, A: moves the plot forward (without Finn being restrained in some way, he would have left and thus not be able to travel to Canto Bight and make all those revelations and character revelations and connect with Rose…etc. Finn is rather headstrong, and if he could have, he would have escaped to make sure Rey was safe, not sit around and play story-time with Rose if she did not pose an immediate threat to his plan. He was under a time crunch, after all) B: puts the stun gun as a weapon in the audience’s mind, thus setting up all the other uses of it throughout the film (like Leia stopping Poe’s mutiny) and C: establishes Rose’s allegiance to the Resistance as well as, despite her being introduced crying, do-what-you-got-to-do attitude.
And how do I show contempt for Finn? Do I say he’s stupid? A bad person? I said he gave poorly-word excuses. No need to blow it out of proportion.
Okay, how about this: humans-and-sentient-creatures-who-are-often-humanoid lives vs. military gains. Better?
Also:
“I keep my TLJ-critical posts out of the main tag and the character tags so it shouldn’t be hard to do.”
Can you at least make up a better lie?
in other words, you didn’t know what a dudebro is and got mad at me for your own ignorance. Okay.
Are you saying I should use the Rose Tico tag with content critical of Rose? But then you’d be mad at me for crosstagging. As the late Admiral Ackbar said, “It’s a trap!”
So it’s not racist at all to have a Black character repeatedly hurt for humor and to take away his agency as long as there’s a plot purpose. Okay. Never mind that the plot could have been written in a completely different way. Obviously this was the only possible plot and Rian Johnson was forced to make choices that humiliated Finn.
You show contempt for Finn by talking about how pitiful his excuses are without the least empathy for his pain and fear. I mean you don’t even remember the part where he flew across the room and hit the wound on his back, which tells me how little his pain matters to you.
Since I must evidently spell every single thing out, I’m saying Rose stopping Finn was not a case of choosing lives over military gain because she condemned Resistance members, who are sentient beings, to death.
I laughed so long and hard at your “receipt” and had to reblog it for posterity because… how to break it to you? Tags to additions don’t show up in the main tags. They’re only relevant to my blog. The tags of my op, which you also faithfully screenshotted a few posts up, clearly show me staying out of the main and character tags. (I used #star wars because I assume it’s such a big and unfocused tag that no one really uses that to browse, but I can take it out or move it to the back so it won’t be searchable as tagged.) This is yet another case of you being mad at me for your own ignorance. Nice coloring job, though.
I really think you’re the one who should be checked for their reading comprehension skills. Especially since your argument keeps flip-flopping as you try to avoid debating what I’m saying.
Maybe use Rose critical, like you do your last jedi tag? I’m sure you’re smart, you can think of something.
And I’ll think I’ll quote what I said, since I have to evidently spell everything out for you.
She doesn’t know him, but, after all, he’s a Resistance hero, who bravely risked his life to fight against his former captors, and was quite skilled at it too, and – is that a bag?
She stuns him after pitiful excuses, like “it’s not what it looks like!”, and “i mean, i was planning on leaving, but not deserting, i swear!”. She’s heard it all before, presumably. And this Finn character – she doesn’t know him, and has no reason to trust that he was actually trying to help the Resistance.
First, it’s from the viewpoint of Rose in that moment (once again, assuming what the character would know, not the audience) and she has just spotted him trying to leave in a pod, after several other people – deserters – has also tried. He fails to explain his actions in a clear-cut manner under pressure, and thus, she would find those excuses “pitiful”, since it would seem similar to a many poor excuses thrown to her by deserters. She has also done this many times, and is understandably angry that many who had pledged themselves to the cause are now escaping like cowards when her sister had died for it.
Now, I’m sorry I did not unnecessarily bring my own personal thoughts of this moment into the paragraph, since apparently you need assurance on the moral fiber of my character. Here you go: I don’t hate Finn. I do not think his reasons for leaving were somehow sad or pathetic, but a natural extension of his loyalties and thought process seen thus far. I do not think he was trying to desert, or that he had sworn loyalty to the Resistance. I also do not think it is somehow sad that Finn failed to articulate his thoughts clearly under pressure, cause literally everyone does that. Are you happy, and will stop trying to derail my main point by making unnecessary accusations on my character now?
I’m also sorry for not remembering every minute detail of this movie that, at the time, I have no reference for while writing this considering it’s still in theaters.
Also, come on. I have explained to you in great detail why A: It is wrong to characterize Rose as violent or bad by her stunning Finn, and B: What purpose that scene did for that movie, as well as what purpose the stun gun, specifically, being included served. Yet, you persist. I just. Can’t continue repeating what I’ve been saying.
And, really, what you’re saying is false? This scene is literally the only one where A: Finn is hurt by an ally (I already explained the crash scene, just scroll up), and B: when it’s played for humor (? I don’t remember this being played for humor, but, I’ll trust you? Ugh). Hardly repeatedly.
Anyway, take his agency away, hardly. He eventually makes a new plan with Rose, of his own will. While saving Rey was noble, it was selfish and a hasty decision, as it placed his attachment to her over what she wanted to do, which was to return and help the Resistance (she didn’t even know Finn had the locator, she thought it was still with Leia) as well as place the Resistance in further danger, as it is (actually) repeatedly stated that they need Luke (who Rey was going to bring) to change the tide of the war.
And Finn and the rest of the pilot were told specifically to pull back by their leaders in that scene, as they determined it was an ultimately useless move as many pilots were being gunned down and that (say it with me now) the loss of lives was outweighing the need to take down the blaster. Finn continuing was not only disobeying orders, but putting an important member of the Resistance in danger for an, ultimately, futile quest.
You also tagged it rebelfinn in your original post which is, sorry to break it to you, a main character tag.
Thanks for the coloring compliment too, and do think it’s quite aesthetically pleasing! (Yes, I know that was sarcasm. The former was too).
And maybe insult me to my face, instead of hiding in the tags?
You’re saying the exact same content can be tagged “critical” and I wouldn’t be anti-Rose? Like, your sole basis for saying I’m anti Rose is for tag wording choice? Cool, I can change the tag.
Re empathy with Finn, you seem to be saying that Rose can’t empathize with Finn’s fear in that moment, that she has only contempt and anger for him and put an injured man through excruciating pain. With fans like these, who needs antis?
Your focus is so narrow that you are unable to comprehend what I’m saying. The scene was not some force of nature that had to happen, it was in there because Rian Johnson, the writer, wanted it to be in there. By your own admission it wasn’t necessary for even the story as it currently exists, because Finn came around to helping the Resistance of his own will and didn’t have to be hurt or made unconscious. I think that was bad and unnecessary and yes, his pain was portrayed as humorous where it didn’t have to be. There was no story purpose for that and it was very, very uncomfortable for many viewers, particularly Black audiences.
I think you should look up what passive voice is. When I said Finn was repeatedly hurt for laughs I didn’t mean just him being hurt by allies, I meant things like his literal first appearance after falling into a coma being falling out of bed. Like, holy goalpost moving, Batman.
Umm after Rose stopped Finn the cannon blasted a hole in the Resistance’s defenses and they were sitting ducks. Maybe Finn wasn’t acting out of hatred like Rose said, maybe he wanted to save lives? Or something? The dichotomy you posited doesn’t really work for that scene.
I tagged it rebelfinn because it’s about Finn, lmao. Those who don’t want to see Rose-critical content in the Finn tag can filter #anti rose tico and #rose tico critical. See how that works? But, you know, nice job wanting to drive Finn content out of the Finn tags. That makes a whole lot of sense.
How the hell does mocking you in my tags constitute hiding when you’ve literally screenshotted them twice in this very thread? You seem to be as obsessed with my tags as you are with what media I consume. I meant for you to see those, so… enjoy.
Remember the time Leia electrocuted Han for leaving the Rebellion in A New Hope? God, that scene was so funny. Remember also how she punched Han across the room as he was recovering from being frozen in Return of the Jedi? A total laugh riot. What a wacky, endearing character!
These things didn’t happen, of course, because it would have been completely off in tone and made Leia look like a weirdo. It would have cheapened Han’s character and the story as a whole.
So why is it okay for Finn, and why are viewers falling over themselves trying to find excuses for Rose? “She lost her sister-” Leia lost her planet. Next excuse.
I’m not saying you’re a Bad Racist Person if you liked The Last Jedi. I hope you enjoyed it and it rekindled your love of the franchise. That’s what we’re all here for, the fun and joy of loving these adventures.
I’m saying that Hollywood and audiences alike have a bias when it comes to whose pain is given respect and whose pain can be played for a laugh. And that bias is not only hurtful to fans caught on the wrong side of the empathy gap, it also hurts the quality and integrity of the works themselves.
It’s possible to love a work and also see how others might not feel the same way about it. Being a fan doesn’t mean you have to be a dismissive jerk or wilfully deny a work’s flaws. It’s fun to be a fan, but it’s imperative to be a person.
You know, it’s amazing how bad things can sound when you take the context out of them. It’s amazing how you talk about being critical about things you like, similar to how a rational person would, when you’ve been on an Anti-Rose-Tico tirade since before you even saw the movie – if you’ve even seen it at all at this point.
Anyway, so, Rose is positioned – presumably by a superior – to guard the escape pods from deserters. These deserters could likely be trained fighters, so they give the mechanic Rose – who probably isn’t that good at hand-to-hand combat – a weapon: a stun gun. Harmless in the long run, it knocks out its victims for a brief period of time, enough time for Rose to get any would-be deserters to superiors to be dealt with. Makes sense, right?
So this guy – Finn – comes by near the pods. Rose has had to stun several people by this point, but she’s cool with Finn. She doesn’t know him, but, after all, he’s a Resistance hero, who bravely risked his life to fight against his former captors, and was quite skilled at it too, and – is that a bag?
She stuns him after pitiful excuses, like “it’s not what it looks like!”, and “i mean, i was planning on leaving, but not deserting, i swear!”. She’s heard it all before, presumably. And this Finn character – she doesn’t know him, and has no reason to trust that he was actually trying to help the Resistance.
She did her job and stopped who, to the best of her knowledge, was a deserter, and, somehow, she’s a villain for that? Anti-black? Extremely violent? That’s a pitiful claim, too.
And she punched him across the room – when, how? I may have just forgotten, and, if that, please explain to me when that happened. But somehow, the description seems unlikely.
There’s one more claim to address, though – your claim that her crashing into Finn to stop him from committing a pointless heroic sacrifice was violent. What else was she supposed to do – watch Finn kill himself in a pointless endeavor that had more loss than gain; wave her arms and hope he stopped; or take charge of the situation to save her friend? You chose!
There’s being critical of a franchise, and then there’s downright being hateful, hypocritical and mocking people who hold a different opinion on your blog. Hint: you’re not the former.
Oh hey, everyone, criticizing the way Rose is written is now being anti Rose! Like, don’t think I can’t see you using a female Asian character to shield a white dude’s writing decisions from criticism.
You know what you sound iike? You sound like one of those dudebros who get suuuuper defensive about sexual objectification in video games and comics, saying shit like, “Of course her tits were hanging out, she was in hand-to-hand combat against a claw monster with a lactation fetish! Do you expect her clothes to be all pristine and intact after that?!”
News flash: The context does not grow out of the earth. Rian Johnson wrote it and specifically cooked up a situation that “justified” Rose tasing Finn. Even worse, he played it for a laugh. That answers the speeder crash part, too. Johnson also made it so that Rose “had” to crash her vehicle into Finn’s.
And even in the situation you mention the tasing doesn’t hold up because Finn is–guess what? Not a Resistance member. Hence, he can’t be a deserter. He was a free agent who did more for the Resistance than anyone could be expected to, and was receiving medical care from them as a result.
This is specifically why I compared him to Han at the end of ANH because Han, too, was an outsider. Unlike Han Finn wasn’t even trying to leave the Resistance for good, he was trying to protect two of its major allies, Rey and by extension Luke.
And like, thanks for making your own racism crystal clear by calling Finn’s reasons “pitiful excuses.” I’m sure you’ll sound so much braver and more coherent when someone’s menacingly waving a weapon at you that causes excruciating pain.
You also directly contradict yourself by saying that Rose was cool with Finn because of the way he bravely risked his life and then, in the next breath, saying she doesn’t know him and has no reason to trust him. Like, even to listen for half a fucking second?
And yes, it’s antiblack as fuck to contrive a situation to make a Black character suffer and pass out for no good story and character reason, and to play his pain for laughs. It cheapens Finn’s character arc because he didn’t get to make a choice to stay the way Han came back of his own free choice. Finn spent his entire life being controlled by pain and fear, and at Rose’s hands he gets more of the same.
By Leia punching a recovering Han I was referring to Rose making Finn, who had just recovered from a life-threatening injury, fly backward with the taser.
The op was like literally the mildest possible critique of the tasing incident yet here you are on my post, choosing to be hyperdefensive and fragile about it. I guess the exhortation to have some empathy really does sound like a threat to some people.
Well, first of all,
Yes, tagging something anti Rose, does mean, that, in fact, your post is being titled by you, the writer, as anti Rose! So, guess you’re just criticizing yourself at this point.
And nice job spending around ¼ of your rebuttal criticizing me as a person instead of my argument! I just think it really shows the lack of strength in a person’s debate if they can’t even scrounge up a few measly criticisms on my actual argument, but, instead, spend their time comforting themselves by changing my gender and adding 20+ years to my age so they can think that, at least, they’re not the loser living in their mom’s basement.
And what, Johnson specifically writes situations to put Finn in pain? He thought, Hey, why don’t I stun Finn, cause’ I hate him, but, oh, how? I got it! I’ll make it so he attempts to leave the Resistance and gets stunned by Rose! It sure is fun writing a significant scene that introduces a new main character and starts a new sub plot based specifically on causing one character pain! I love ruining Star Wars!
And I also guess literally any other use of stunning (which, in the Star Wars universe, is a heck of a lot, and in The Last Jedi, a decent of a lot, since it was established as a weapon early in the film that then justified its use later in the movie while also making sure the audience wasn’t jarred by the sudden use of a completely new weapon in an important battle – hey! another reason why Finn could have been stunned by Rose!) is also racist and made by Johnson specifically to hurt characters! Wow, amazing how stupid that sounds!
And maybe, just maybe, Rose crashing into Finn to save him from sacrificing himself was a culmination of the human life vs. military gains debate that had been raging throughout the entire movie since the death of the bomber squad to take out the dreadnought as well as showing how Rose, despite not being able to save her sister, took the chance to save another one of her loved ones at great personal risk. Because, let me remind you, Finn was fine after the crash, being able to run and walk around immediately after, while Rose was the one bloodied up and needing medical care.
And considering Finn was kept with the Resistance and fought for their causes, it may seem to a low-level mechanic that he was, in fact, a member of the Resistance! Shocker what we can discover when we look at what a character would know in context of the story, and not what we, the audience, knows.
Also, nice job on having zero reading comprehension skills, since it’s quite clear that “pitiful excuses” is referring to Finn’s failed attempts to explain to Rose why he was leaving through Rose’s eyes and not his actual reasons for leaving. And how is that even racist? Isn’t something racist supposed to relate to the race of a character, like, say, making an assumption based on their race? Cause, please, I fail to see how saying Finn did a poor job of explaining himself is racist.
And Rose knew Finn at that point similar to how someone like me knows Ryan Gosling. A celebrity, maybe someone you adore? Sure! But not someone you would place the same amount of trust in as a friend or family member.
And why would you make a reference to the same thing twice in different ways? Literally just make your one reference and go, don’t make it seem like you’re referring to two different situations.
And nice job dodging the fact that you started hurling criticisms at this movie before you even saw it. After all, how can someone construct a thorough review on something they didn’t even see?
That’s…. your supposed gotcha? I don’t know whether to laugh or feel sorry for you. It’s called tagging etiquette, keeping critical content out of the character tags. “Anti” is just one of the tag conventions for such posts.
You sound like a dudebro =/= you are a dudebro. I’m not even sure where the age thing comes from, dudebros are YOUNG guys between 16 and 25. Is this your way of telling me you’re a fetus? #PlotTwist
It doesn’t matter what Johnson’s specific intention was, the impact is what you described in italics. (A very apt summary, thank you.)
Since it looks like you stopped reading everything in the paragraph after “dudebro,” let me elaborate on that comparison. Let’s say I had a female character get into a fight and had her breasts hanging out of her torn clothes as a result, and treated that visual in a very sexual way. It doesn’t matter whether I started out intending to objectify her, it’s still objectification and it’s still sexist. I wrote the plot that would lead to the character’s breasts being exposed and sexualized, and I don’t get a pass for that.
The same goes for the tasing and crash scenes, somehow Johnson didn’t write scenes so that Finn could have his own realizations and make his own crucial choices but rather had to be hurt “for his own good” and I find that objectionable.
You might want to look up what “implicit bias” is. I was pointing out the seeming contempt for Finn in a situation where he was clearly scared of having more pain inflicted on him. How’s that for an empathy gap?
I guess I assumed that people who saw the movie would remember that Finn went flying across the room because it’s uhhh rather memorable? I mean it looks like the couple hundred people in the notes got it without any problem.
On a side note, human lives vs. military gains is such an odd way to frame that scene because I think the Resistance who were going to be killed by the FO also consists of human and also alien beings?
You seem pretty well acquainted with my recent blogging history, not to mention really fucken’ obsessed with my media consumption like a few anons I was getting a while back. As I told one of those anons, if you don’t like how or at what point I’m talking about a movie you’re free to ignore me? I keep my TLJ-critical posts out of the main tag and the character tags so it shouldn’t be hard to do.
Thanks for missing the point of every single one of my arguments and instead focusing on very minor points! Seriously, “you’re a fetus”? I’m so hurt.
And, no, “anti” in the context of tumblr 2017 very specifically means you are “anti” or against said thing. I’m sure you know that by now.
And how about I put it this way? A female character getting her breasts exposed serves no other purpose than to provide fan service for those who swing that way. Finn getting stunned, however, A: moves the plot forward (without Finn being restrained in some way, he would have left and thus not be able to travel to Canto Bight and make all those revelations and character revelations and connect with Rose…etc. Finn is rather headstrong, and if he could have, he would have escaped to make sure Rey was safe, not sit around and play story-time with Rose if she did not pose an immediate threat to his plan. He was under a time crunch, after all) B: puts the stun gun as a weapon in the audience’s mind, thus setting up all the other uses of it throughout the film (like Leia stopping Poe’s mutiny) and C: establishes Rose’s allegiance to the Resistance as well as, despite her being introduced crying, do-what-you-got-to-do attitude.
And how do I show contempt for Finn? Do I say he’s stupid? A bad person? I said he gave poorly-word excuses. No need to blow it out of proportion.
Okay, how about this: humans-and-sentient-creatures-who-are-often-humanoid lives vs. military gains. Better?
Also:
“I keep my TLJ-critical posts out of the main tag and the character tags so it shouldn’t be hard to do.”
Can you at least make up a better lie?
in other words, you didn’t know what a dudebro is and got mad at me for your own ignorance. Okay.
Are you saying I should use the Rose Tico tag with content critical of Rose? But then you’d be mad at me for crosstagging. As the late Admiral Ackbar said, “It’s a trap!”
So it’s not racist at all to have a Black character repeatedly hurt for humor and to take away his agency as long as there’s a plot purpose. Okay. Never mind that the plot could have been written in a completely different way. Obviously this was the only possible plot and Rian Johnson was forced to make choices that humiliated Finn.
You show contempt for Finn by talking about how pitiful his excuses are without the least empathy for his pain and fear. I mean you don’t even remember the part where he flew across the room and hit the wound on his back, which tells me how little his pain matters to you.
Since I must evidently spell every single thing out, I’m saying Rose stopping Finn was not a case of choosing lives over military gain because she condemned Resistance members, who are sentient beings, to death.
I laughed so long and hard at your “receipt” and had to reblog it for posterity because… how to break it to you? Tags to additions don’t show up in the main tags. They’re only relevant to my blog. The tags of my op, which you also faithfully screenshotted a few posts up, clearly show me staying out of the main and character tags. (I used #star wars because I assume it’s such a big and unfocused tag that no one really uses that to browse, but I can take it out or move it to the back so it won’t be searchable as tagged.) This is yet another case of you being mad at me for your own ignorance. Nice coloring job, though.
L.J.'s Obsessions 