Finn: Chooses to runaway from the First Order in shame and disgust in what they brought him up to be
Finn: Spares the life of the villagers he’s supposed to be slaughtering because he’s not fucking braindead evil
Finn: Sees Rey (a complete stranger at that point) being attacked; instantaneously runs to her defence because he sees danger
Finn: Takes Rey’s hand when he hears TIE Fighters and realises he’s marked her
Finn: Assures Rey if she’s okay after caught up in the blast
Finn: Takes care of Chewie after he was shot
Finn: Literally fucking requests Rey if she wants to go with him to the outer rim because he KNOWS how fucking dangerous the First Order are, and wants her to be safe from that shit
Finn: Warmly accepts her decline and says “take care of yourself. Please.”
Finn: Cancels the fuck out of his plans when star destroyer is used and fights
Finn: Fucking screams R E Y at the top of his lungs when she’s kidnapped by Ren
Finn: Goes back to his trauma, what he wanted to run away from to get his friend back
Finn: Fights Ren and literally ends up in a coma to defend himself as well as Rey
Finn: Wakes up in a coma and his first inquiry is Rey’s whereabouts
Finn: Literally wants to runaway with the beacon to ensure that when Rey returns, she doesn’t return to danger
LucasFilm: Finn needed to go to Canto Bight so he could learn to stop being a selfish assh0le!!1!1!
I agree with what @reystars, @rose-tico and others are saying about the intended *purpose* of Finn’s storyline: after a lifetime of being enslaved and brainwashed his instinct was to flee as far away as possible and take Rey with him to safety, and it was important for him to understand that there was no safety anywhere in the galaxy as long as the FO existed, because the war affected everything and people were supporting it for their own profit, and therefore Finn needed to join the Resistance and actively fight to defeat the FO in order to create a galaxy where the satefy for him and Rey and everyone else could become a reality. I understand that.
HOWEVER
– if the only way the director could think of to achieve this was to put Finn in a sideplot which nearly every reviewer agrees had no impact on the main storyline and felt tonally disjointed from the rest of the movie;
– if Finn, the male lead, is put in a sideplot instead of the main plot, period (and it was percieved as a sideplot, just check how few TLJ reviews in non-fandom media even mention the Resistance storyine at all);
– if Finn is not allowed to learn the truth about Canto Bight on his own e.g. by observing or overhearing something, figuring it out himself and only then asking Rose for a confirmation/more information, but Rose has to explain the world to a naive Finn instead;
– if Finn, the male lead, is repeatedly used for comic relief; repeatedly physically harmed, often for comedic effect as well; and generally not treated with the necessary respect and seriousness by the narrative (e.g. his duel against Phasma lasting only a couple of minutes and its gravitas diminished by silly quibs like “chrome dome” and Finn and Phasma’s relationship and shared past not further explored; scenes that would have given Finn more character depth and background about his childhood and life as a FO stormtrooper and set up a possible stormtrooper rebellion storyline for episode IX being cut; or even just Finn’s shirtless scene in the bacta suit being presented as something comedic and ridiculous (and used for queerbaiting) with his recovery from a life-threatening injury not further commented on, while Kyle was shown recovering from his injuries over time and his shirtless scene was presented as “sexy”);
…so in short, if the male lead is treated this way then it’s small wonder most viewers do not care about his arc or even realise what his arc is supposed to be in the movie.
Intentions: good, execution: piss poor 😦
Countless fanfiction authors have proven that it is absolutely possible to write a narrative where Finn learns about the state of the wider galaxy and decides to commit himself to the Resistance’s cause wholeheartedly *without* sidelining or disrespecting him, so TLJ could have and should have done better.
(Also Disney really needs to have a serious word with the guy in charge of the SW Facebook account 😦 )
Real talk, what did you think about the new movie? I’m curious on what you think.
For a movie featuring Rey going on a long side trip to bring a Jedi (any Jedi, apparently) back to the Resistance, and Finn going on a much shorter side trip with Rose, there was still quite a bit of pro-finnrey material, and I’m pretty happy about it. Still shipping them for fun, and also still thinking they have a decent chance of becoming a canon couple at some point.
Rey wore a beacon/bracelet that would eventually help her get back to the Resistance again. Leia started the film with the other bracelet/beacon; it quickly passed on to Finn, and while we saw it worn/carried by others, it was clearly meant as a reminder of Rey and Finn’s connection.
Plus they had an EPIC hug near the end.
So yeah. It’s good.
They both went on parallel journeys and found something to believe in. For Rey it was learning to take the principles of the Jedi religion and begin the journey of making them her own. For Finn it was seeing the full dimensions of how inequality works in the galaxy and choosing the Resistance for himself as his way of standing against that. If they go for Finnrey endgame, it’s SO IMPORTANT they they both have something to believe in and find self-worth in besides each other!
As we saw with Rey’s journey… the most naked and blunt vision of trying to make just one person your center that she’s offered is really clearly not good!
Their respective causes also are ones that have been so much weaker because they’ve been separate! The Jedi (Luke) without the Resistance (Leia) have both suffered and lost and been diminished. In the end, they are saved because those two forces come back together. In a Finnrey union we’ll have some of the power of that… *particularly* since Rey will have to come up with a new interpretation of her religion that allows for attachment and marriage if they do Finnrey endgame and it would be a lovely symbol of how the new generation has found their own path for Finn(Resistance) and Rey(Jedi) to be a both symbolic and entirely personal union.
I think by having one of the kids Rose, who started out symbolizing the Resistance and shared that with Finn, identified with turn out to have force powers at the end there’s another way that Jedi and Resistance are part of each other that should not be sundered. In a sense, the First Order has had the Dark Siders who are naturally part of their mission, but the Resistance has been without their spiritual/religious heart and Light Side users??
I think it’s significant that they reunite amidst the rocks Rey is floating with her Jedi powers – powers that have saved the Resistance twice over, through both Luke and her, powers that protect and uplift life rather than destroy it.
On both of those journeys, Rey and Finn both met people who… “liked them” and rescued them from death. In Rey’s case, she’s firmly decided that person should EFF OFF lol and in Finn’s case the story probably is about liking Rose but maybe not the way Rose likes him. Though it’s more unclear with FinnRose what Finn’s feelings are exactly I think the kiss felt more like something where you don’t share the romantic feelings of the person doing the kissing. /shrug/ The point is that another life path with another potential person to walk it with opened up for both of them… in Rey’s case it sort of yawned like a huge disturbing galaxy ruling Dark Side chasm (lol) and in Finn’s case it was the more normal experience of maybe not being into someone the same way they’re into you even though you really like them.
That too is important because, if they’re end game, they’re not just choosing each other super young and unaware of other options. They’re actively choosing each other.
Very good points! I also thought it was interesting that Finn and Rey met right as Rey was using her Force powers on a grand scale–and also while the rocks she had lifted were falling, juxtaposed with the force of gravity. I hadn’t thought of the Jedi + Resistance angle and that makes sense, too.
I also thought the ways Finn and Rey had built (and in Rey’s case, ended) relationships with Kylo and Rose were emblematic of the separate journeys they were making and the choices involved. With Rey her relationship was clearly manipulative and unhealthy, and part of her growth was to see through that and realize her self-worth, something she had little of having grown up with nothing and seeing herself as such. With Finn I think it’s going to be about self-awareness and self-assertion, traits that were actively suppressed in him his entire life. If his feelings toward Rose are not romantic, can he say “no” to a friend, trusting in their friendship to survive?
I also really like the idea of Finnrey becoming a couple by actively choosing each other, not because they are each the first (bio) person the other met after a lifetime of isolation.
yo add me!!! being a part of the “antis to block” club is like. my main life goal
i am disgusted. i am revolted. i dedicate my entire life to being an anti and this is the thanks i get?? where ‘tf is my name??
my experience reading this was akin to reading the casting list after auditioning for the lead role and then not even seeing your name as part of the background cast
i’ve been a proud reylo hater since december 2015 and i’ve not even been mentioned??? the audacity……
This list is anti-Asian, guys. @kellymarietran isn’t even on here, @mylongestyeahboyegaever ’s information isn’t current (she’s listed under her old blog, rose-tico), and I am also left out–me, one of the Unholy Trinity along with @diversehighfantasy and @kyberfox (who are also missing I see 👀)!
[Image description: Definition of MURDER 1 : the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought – was convicted of murder]
It’s also yet another word that Reylos evidently don’t know the meaning of if they’d say shit like this:
[Image description:
anonymous said: reylos are pathetic. how can you guys like kylo ren? he’s a MURDERER
answer: Hello, anon, I could give you an elaborate answer, but I’ll follow your (lack of) logic and play along. Yes, Kylo Ren kills people.
But so does Finn. (image of Finn stabbing a Stormtrooper with a lightsaber)]
The post goes on with more examples from Poe, Han, and Rey, and ends with:
[Image description: Welcome to Star Wars, where major characters kill other people. Have a lovely day.]
I’m… actually shaking? This person equated Finn’s actions with those of a mass murderer. Literally every single one of the examples she posted–Finn at Takodana, Poe at Tuanul, and Rey at Takodana–were killings done in defense of self and others, thereby justified, therefore, hello, not murder.
This shitty “answer,” whether in ignorance or dishonesty, completely avoided the point of the question and drew a completely false moral equivalence, trying to blur a crucial boundary.
And you know what, I have people in my line who killed in defense of their loved ones and homes when my country was invaded. They were not murderers. Look at that definition again: Killing =/= Murder. How dare you?
Funny, isn’t it, how this group is so quick to cry “It’s just fiction!” when it comes to their ship, but when it comes to defending their murdering fave they’re so quick to change the definitions of real-life words and insult real people.
I remember seeing the full post, and it was an
exaggeration, but so was the ask – that anon had no business asking such
a question. Some people like fictional murderers. I sure do. Ask a
stupid question, get a stupid answer.
And either way, none of your attempt at logic applies – a) this is
fictional fantasy world. b) the galaxy is at war. and war has different
rules.
Oh, I think we can all agree the anon was being an ass. However, where the ask was asinine the answer goes in a direction that is both disingenuous and dangerous. Seriously, equating self-defense with aggressive violence is how atrocities are justified.
For the record I like fictional murderers, too, and I find Kylo Ren fascinating. What I don’t do is equate his actions with those of characters who were defending themselves and others against unjust aggression.
On to your points, a) no, there is no evidence that mass murder is any less wrong in this universe. In fact mass murder is so wrong in this world that even one of the Stormtroopers who, according to your shitty fave, “were programmed (hurk) from birth,” could see how wrong it was. Show me what alternative rules of engagement apply in the SW verse to make annihilating entire planets okay or defensible. Oh, that’s right, you can’t.
Besides, even if SW is fictional the people who create and consume this fiction are human beings on Earth. Fun fact, the directors and writers of The Force Awakens are Jewish and they certainly have a viewpoint on mass murder and the inhumane treatment of prisoners.
To say you don’t read Star Wars in this way so you can keep your fannish obsession guilt-free is one thing; to say Star Wars can’t be read as a message on oppression and war crimes is just being an asshole.
b) Did you seriously try to tell a lawyer with a doctorate in international law what the laws of war are? Fine, here are the laws of war (emphases mine):
Geneva Convention (IV) on Civilians, 1949
Article 32:
The High Contracting Parties
specifically agree that each of them is prohibited from taking any
measure of such a character as to cause the physical suffering or
extermination of protected persons in their hands. This prohibition
applies not only to murder, torture, corporal punishment, mutilation and
medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical
treatment of a protected person, but also to any other measures of
brutality whether applied by civilian or military agents.
Who are these protected persons who may not be mistreated?
Article 4:
Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find
themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party
to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.
Applying the above, Kylo Ren ordered the murders of civilians in the territory he invaded, which is a clear violation of the laws of war.
You might argue that the inhabitants of Tuanul were armed. Does that change things? Nope. They were not armed at the time Kylo Ren ordered them killed, and even if we see them as captured combatants these provisions apply:
Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 1949
Article 4
A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
6. Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.
The inhabitants of Tuanul clearly fit these criteria and are treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. Poe’s status should be obvious, but to elaborate he falls under Article 4(A)(2):
2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
And what are the protections provided to these prisoners?
Article 17, paragraph 3:
No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.
Article 130:
Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, compelling a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of the hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a prisoner of war of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in this Convention.
Therefore, if you view the inhabitants of Tuanul village as enemy fighters, Kylo Ren’s order was still a brieach of the laws of war because they were his prisoners at the time and no longer posed a threat. Poe’s torture was similarly a grave breach, that is an especially serious violation, of the laws of war in the treatment of prisoners.
As for the destruction of the Hosnian system, I can’t believe I even have to cite a law for this outside of basic fucking humanity, but if you want chapter and verse here’s one:
Protocol Additional to the
Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of
Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977
Article 48:
In order to ensure respect for and
protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties
to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian
population and combatants and between civilian objects and military
objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against
military objectives.
The entire Hosnian system was not a military objective. Their fleet, shipyards, military bases and so on would qualify, but not the entire system. It’s clear from our view of the city that these were civilians going about their lives, and the First Order wiped out entire populations solely due to the fact that they lived in the territory of a hostile government. That has never been an acceptable method of warfare, not even at Hiroshima and Nagasaki which you lot love to cite. (Me, I like to cite it as an example of victor’s justice. I’m in a country that was actually under Japanese occupation and am happy as anyone they lost, but as a legal scholar and as a goddamned person I still don’t condone the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians. Funny how that works.)
In conclusion, yes, a person may kill in war. But one may kill combatants who are an active threat, not civilians or prisoners. These are still unjustified killing, i.e. murder, even in times of war, and the killing and torture of prisoners is never justifiable, to say nothing of the destruction of entire planets full of civilians.
So tell me again how different laws apply in war. I know the laws of war, honey, and the First Order committed breathtakingly obvious breaches left and right. Also tell me how a Jewish director and Jewish writers created a movie where mass murder is totally okay and in any way the moral equivalent of fighting back against such attacks. Go on, I’ll wait.
Also the Hosnian genocide was the FO’s declaration of war? The “the Galaxy was at war” excuse doesn’t even hold within TFA itself for the Tuanul massacre, Poe’s abduction and torture, the Battle at Takodana (INCLUDING Rey’s abduction), OR the Hosnian genocide *even if* you’re so unethical that you think torture or the mass, systematic murder of civilians could ever be considered ethical – even during wartime. The Galaxy was NOT at war until the third act of TFA. Everything the First Order did up until then was completely unjustifiable, and if the non-Centrist Senators knew about what the FO were doing, they could have arrested every “officer” (which is in quotes because the FO is not a legitimate military, it’s a militia.)
In fact, the REASON the Tuanul Massacre happens is to prevent any witnesses from reporting that the FO took Poe, a New Republic Defense Force officer, prisoner. The FO’s entire engagement policy is based on “this is an illegal act, so leave no witnesses” – until they declare war by destroying the governing body and official military that could hold them accountable. It’s like, key to the entire ST that war isn’t declared until the Hosnian System is destroyed.
The Poe comics go into detail about how the Resistance’s engagement policy with the FO is that they can never shoot first, because the Galaxy is not at war, and even though the Resistance is an unofficial militia as well, Poe’s status as an NRDF officer* (along with many of the other pilots, and I’d have to guess officers/ground crew, too, but IDK for sure) would give the FO just cause to argue before the Senate that the Resistance-allied planets and senators are the aggressors and that the Centrist/FO-aligned planets have a right to defend themselves through warfare. The Resistance, until the Hosnian genocide, is EXPLICITLY IN THE CANON TEXT, a defense-only organization. Poe is a STICKLER about not shooting first.
Which is why it’s actually really interesting, and important, that he does not shoot Kylo Ren at Tuanul until AFTER Kylo killed Lor San Tekka. Kylo and Lor San Tekka are technically both civilians – the Knights of Ren are, shockingly, not a recognized military organization in the Galaxy – and Poe is not.* He can’t engage on a civilian. It seems from BTA that Poe’s position in the NRDF is like a cross between a cop and a military officer, though, so once Kylo has killed and still has an active weapon in use, Poe can engage. And he tries.
HOWEVER, THEY’RE STILL NOT AT WAR, so the FO’s abduction of Poe is STILL ILLEGAL AND UNETHICAL. HE IS NOT A PRISONER OF WAR: HE’S A KIDNAPPED INDIVIDUAL. (Same for Rey, when Kylo abducts Rey – although the FO has declared war at that point, Rey is a civilian. She’s not part of the Resistance when Kylo abducts and tortures her. She’s just a civilian who defended her own life when an illegal militia stormed the non-combat zone she was in.) Since Poe was tortured for at least 14 hours BEFORE Kylo even went in, we can assume this was the FO acting as an organized group, not just Kylo going rogue because he hates that Poe is close to his mom or something. (Which would also, obviously, not be ethical.)
The point is, they’re not at war, and the main reason they would be heading towards killing Poe is so that he can’t report what happened to him either to the Resistance OR to the NRDF/Senate. Finn’s intervention saved Poe’s life, but also probably bumped up the timeline for when Starkiller was going to be fired, because if Finn and Poe survive their TIE crash and make it to Leia, the Senate will know what the FO did to the Tuanul villagers AND to one of the NRDF’s star officers – with proof. (IIRC, isn’t that part of why Korr Sella is on Hosnian Prime during the genocide? She was there as Leia’s emissary giving testimony against the FO? I can’t remember 100%.)
Everything about how the FO comports itself underscores the fact that they KNOW they have no actual grounds to take any of the actions they take. They hide in the Outer Rim so the NRDF patrols are less likely to discover them. They kill all witnesses. They do not declare war through legal/ethical channels (IE: there’s SPECIFICALLY AND POINTEDLY no warning before they engage in hostilities against the standing government body [which arguably makes the FO a coup, but still, they were NOT at war until after Starkiller’s firing], no options are given to negotiate for neutrality or compromise, and the entire point of the Hosnian Genocide, besides eliminating the governing body that could hold the FO accountable, was a show of force to threaten all of the other Systems into compliance/submission).
I would honestly wager that part of why Hux hates Kylo is that Kylo doesn’t care about not drawing attention to himself, and he could get them ALL caught and tried for treason. (Maybe that’s why Phasma and the troopers are sent with him to Tuanul in the first place? ‘Clean up after Kylo.’)
ANYWAY, that’s all to say that the Galaxy is absolutely NOT in a state of war, and yes, every single murder committed by Kylo, Phasma, and Hux during the TFA is murder, and every killing committed by Finn, Poe, the Resistance, and Rey is self-defense and the defense of others; thus, not murder.**
*There’s mixed canon about Poe’s status in the NRDF. The comic states that he is an active officer on leave, the Logbook states that he resigned, and iirc another one of the books says that he’s AWOL, but I’m not sure which one that is or if I’m remembering that part correctly. Either way, the canon status of Poe’s NRDF enlistment is not 100% clear.
**The Galaxy is also not at war when the Empire commits the Alderaanian Genocide, which was another show of threat meant to cow other Systems into submission. The difference there is that it WAS committed by the official military, but like, you’re still not allowed to commit genocide. That’s the whole… Nazi parallel… rearing its head again…
^^^^Holy shit, this is such a magnificent breakdown and exposes the utter bankruptcy of the argument that the laws of engagement as we know them don’t apply to the GFFA.
And yes, Korr Sella was on Hosnian Prime as Leia’s emissary to inform the Senate of what the FO was doing so the New Republic could take action. I’m pretty sure that was why Snoke & Hux fired the weapon when they did, so they could gain the upper hand in the coming war.
In the year 1905 my paternal great-grandmother, a Jewess from Austria-Hungary, left her homeland–although perhaps “fled” would be a better word–with nothing but a suitcase, the clothes on her back, and the potential promise of finding work with a distant cousin who had been living in the slums of Victorian Glasgow in Scotland since the 1890s.
During that time she married my great-grandfather, an Irish Catholic immigrant who lived in the notorious “Rat Pits”–so called because the Irish (and therefore inherently Catholic) residents “bred like rats”–and worked as a boat smuggler (meaning he smuggled people and other commodities into Scotland from Ireland on a boat, he was not in fact a smuggler of boats), a shoe maker, a wood carver and general jack of all trades master of none, with a stereotypical love of drink and a violent temper to go with it. But he provided for her and didn’t force her into sex work like so many girls her age were, so she forgave a great many things that would no longer be forgiven and had lots of children, many of whom died.
Dad tells me he remembers her “singing” their names and lighting candles at specific times, but only when his grandfather was “out” (smuggling, or visiting another woman, he never elaborated on this) because she sang her prayers in Yiddish and they’d spent many years trying to hide her Jewishness.
Being a Catholic in the turbulent streets of Glasgow where Protestant faith is still practiced militantly in some areas, was troublesome, but it was infinitely less trouble than being Jewish during the years that would lead up to two world wars. So she hid behind his Catholicism and his large family, and watched as the world turned against her and her people once more. And despite her pale skin and bright eyes and her passing status as an equal among the Irish matriarchs of the slums, they still woke to blood smeared over their front door more than once, or were spat on in the streets. She told my father, jokingly, it was her nose, though to look at photos you’d never notice she was different from anyone else. That was the joke.
After her husband died she became unapologetic about her Jewishness. She spoke Yiddish at home and made sure my father, who had been living with her from the age of seven, knew some words too. He was fourteen years old when he heard her “sing” his mother’s name and
watched her tear the clothes she was wearing, having now outlived all of
her children. She outlived many of her grandchildren too. And when no one was left to make the meal of condolence, my mother–a gentile girl from the neighboring street–found out, she tried her best to make one.
Dad tells me it was largely inedible, not least of all because it wasn’t kosher, but for his Maw (Scots slang for mother) it was one of her first memories of someone not of the faith acknowledging her Jewishness with kindness. She was sixty years old and had been living in Glasgow for forty five years.
And she spent the majority of that time forced to move from slum to slum by her faith, until eventually in post World War Two Glasgow, the local authorities either had to dig mass graves or deal with the conditions of the poor and chose to be merciful and built better housing instead. She was eventually moved to a housing estate where she could look out and see a garden rather than squalor and degradation and no one charged her extra rent because everyone knows people like her have secret stashes of money and will pay anything not have their windows broken or pigs blood slashed over the door. The history books never tell you that sort of thing. They only tell you about the selective moments in history when tyrants had the audacity to threaten other tyrants, and only then does mass discrimination, abject poverty and genocide through the former become an unpalatable evil that needs to be stopped.
Nothing much has changed.
She lived long enough to hear about Holocaust deniers and my father tells me, spat
their names with all the vitriol of an ancient curse held dormant in the fires of the earth. And when she was buried, the man who cut her tombstone informed my father it probably wasn’t a good idea to put a Star of David on the stone, because those were the stones that were the most often attacked, the graves desecrated and the grass salted so nothing would grow.
And this is no ancient history. This was in the UK, in 1979. This was less than forty years ago. And still whenever my father visits he will find some form of vandalism enacted on her tombstone. It’s her name you see, even in death it doesn’t sound right.
Margarethe Ingrid Fehrenbach Patton. Or “Maggie Patton” as she was known for most of her life, never hearing her own name save for the few times she went back to the degradation of the Gorbals, usually when someone had died and there were traditions to be kept. And forty years on some dull and depraved bastard still feels the need to paint a swastika on her grave in neon paint or tip it over and smash the urn of flowers, because not even death is free of persecution.
And this is not just my family history, it is many family histories told over and over again, and I get to recount it from the safety of 2015, with my gentile name and baptized gentile faith.
So yes, it matters that we are seeing a new wave of antisemitism, online and in the physical world. It matters that there are blogs being set up for the purpose of sending images of dead bodies and gore to Jewish people and their friends. It matters that those people are losing friends because it’s the only way to not also be harassed and retain their own freedom of communication the way theylike it. It matters that people feel the need to ask what is wrong with Nazism in the same way one might ask what is wrong with a little rain. It matters that Jewish characters in popular media are stripped of their ethnicity and faith and made not only into Neo-Nazi sympathizers, but volunteers to a Neo-Nazi regime (if you can’t work out why this is horrifying, here). It matters that a family in Houston Texas found the mezuzah of their door violated with the symbol of a Nazi swastika. It matters so much because this is not the past, nor is it some distant land you can pretend you can neither see nor hear. We live in the age of constant communication, we are no longer blind, except to things we do not wish to see.
We cannot pretend that horrific acts of violence are not enacted against others on a daily basis, because if we do so then we are enabling these acts. You cannot stand silent against hatred, otherwise you enable things like this:
It’s happening in the way in which people insist on calling the black people being murdered by police “thugs” while white protesters are cited the rules of Baseball (three strikes and you’re benched with a fine or jail time, not murdered), it’s happening every time someone says “well maybe they shouldn’t name their children ghetto names" as a means to dehumanize another human being, it’s happening whenever someone cites free speech in the protection of hate crimes. It happens every time you think “well it’s not happening to me so it can’t be that bad” and close your eyes and make the horror of it all into a mere inconvenience interrupting your enjoyable browsing time between mainlining netflix and cat gifs.
It’s happening. And we don’t have the excuse of ignorance to hide behind, it’s there.
And I don’t know what the fuck to do. I can block and report all the live long day, but it doesn’t solve the issue of tumblr and other social media platforms being like “just ignore it, dont feed the trolls”, like sticking a band aid over a gaping sore in need of urgent surgery in the hope that it will somehow go away. You might think someone receiving gory images and threats is not the same as an act of physical violence, but it is undoubtedly violence. It’s people painting pigs blood over my Great Grandmas door and telling her she doesn’t belong in the country that she thought was safe and being told snidely to be thankful it wasn’t worse.
To you it might be petty and mildly distressing, but to another person it’s salted earth and the promise that not even death is safe.
And you are either complicit in this, or you are against it.
Decide.
I’d say sorry for reblogging this again, but I just had to read Nazi apologism with my own two eyeballs in the year 2017 and I’m this close to hauling off with an axe.
I reiterate my previous statement from two years ago: you are either against these atrocities, or you are complicit in them. Decide.
[edited to fix the use of language in original post, if you reblogged this earlier, please delete and reblog without the unintentional use of a slur word used to describe sex workers.]
“The confederacy of planets and moons that formed the Independent Faction was doomed from the start.”
“While leaders among the scattered outer worlds expressed concern over the formation of the Union of Allied Planets, most folk didn’t much care, figuring it wouldn’t affect them.”
Note the use of the terms ‘confederacy’ and ‘union.’
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“A CIVIL WAR NOVEL INSPIRED THE FIREFLY UNIVERSE. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels from author Michael Shaara was Joss Whedon’s inspiration for creating Firefly. It follows Union and Confederate soldiers during four days at the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. Whedon modeled the series and world on the Reconstruction Era, but set in the future.”
~ Rudie Obias, “23 Fun Facts About Firefly” [source]
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Note similarities between Malcolm Reynolds’ character biography and the biography of actual confederate general Jubal Anderson Early.
When the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered on April 9, 1865, Early escaped to Texas by horseback, where he hoped to find a Confederate force still holding out. He proceeded to Mexico, and from there, sailed to Cuba and Canada. Living in Toronto, he wrote his memoir, A Memoir of the Last Year of the War for Independence, in the Confederate States of America, which focused on his Valley Campaign. The book was published in 1867.
Early was pardoned in 1868 by President Andrew Johnson, but still remained an “unreconstructed rebel”. In 1869, he returned to Virginia and resumed the practice of law. He was among the most vocal of those who promoted the Lost Cause movement.
From the Malcolm Reynolds entry on the Firefly Wiki [link]:
His contempt for the Alliance never completely disappeared (although he once said that he “wouldn’t mind makin’ a buck off ‘em”, and was shown in multiple episodes willing to steal Alliance supplies for a job, as long as it doesn’t affect the people), and, although he was on the losing side of the Unification War, years later he still wasn’t convinced it was the wrong one. Mal expressed what seemed to be his manifesto—"[The Alliance] will swing back to the belief that they can make people… better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave.“[1] His anti-government attitude was reflected in his choice to live on a spaceship, drifting from world to world, as far away from Alliance interference as possible.
Yes, that’s right. Joss Whedon asked a black actor to play a lunatic rapist bounty hunter named after a real life confederate general. Joss Whedon has even stated in an interview that he “loves that character.”
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Now I mentioned “cowboys vs injuns reavers” earlier:
In the unaired pilot Simon Tam explicity refers to the reavers as “savages” – one of the more popular Native American slurs used by settlers in the North American “Old West.” In the same episode we see Mal and Zoe riding through an open plain on horseback wearing chaps and carrying shotguns. Right from the get go we have protagonists dressed like cowboys in a spaghetti western, shit-talking an entire culture of supposedly “mindless savages” (yet not so mindless they can’t still practice guerrilla warfare in a fairly organized fashion).
The episode “Bushwhacked” features a character – the lone survivor of a reaver ambush – who’s “gone native” and become a reaver himself. He completes his transformation from sane pilgrim into savage reaver by “cuttin’ on himself’ to making himself “look like one of them” – which he accomplishes by giving himself facial piercings which I, for one, found oddly reminiscent of those warn by certain Native American and Pacific Islander cultures.
He proceeds to attack the Firefly crew using guerrilla style tactics.
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People want to believe that they can weed out the Orientalism, shovel off the bastardization of the Chinese language, and jackhammer their way through the thick crust of cultural appropriation to reveal a better, purer show buried underneath.
But they can’t.
Firefly’s bedrock is racist.
Firefly is racist all the way down to its molten core.
Just go watch Killjoys already.
Fuck’s sake.
None of this registered with me, maybe because I’m not from the US so my knowledge of Civil War stuff is limited (I only found out what ‘Manifest Destiny’ was after you know which movie brought up a discussion) I obviously thought the lack of Chinese characters in a future where everyone speaks Chinese was…fucked up? But this??
How the fuck.
I want a reboot of Firefly that has nothing to do with Whedon, and which corrects his bigotry, racism, and misogyny.
Hi. OP here. I wrote this post because I saw people on my dash saying exactly what you’re saying – “We want a non-racist, non-sexist Firefly reboot.” I wanted them, and you, to realize that racism and sexism is so intrinsic to every single aspect of Firefly’s composition that by the time you take out all the bigotry, racism and misogyny, there’s nothing left to reboot.
Look at the show’s core team dynamic, for example:
Mal is a reboot of Rhett Butler.
Zoe is nouveau!Rhett’s loyal hand (notice she doesn’t call him by his name as one would a friend, but instead always refers to him as Sir – and then consider what it means for a black woman to be constantly referring to her white confederate superior by a title that signifies dominance).
Wash, Zoe’s husband, is the nerdy self-insert though which Joss racially fetishizes Gina Torres and projects his sexual/romantic insecurities (remember how Firefly devoted an entire episode to Zoe reassuring Wash that her relationship with Mal wasn’t a threat to their marriage?) (remember how Wash spent a scene sexually objectifying his wife’s body parts to an audience of Alliance interrogators).
River Tam is a whitewashed anime archetype.
Inara is a whorephobic westernized caricature of a geisha. I’m not going to go into that here but there are plenty of essays that describe the problematic Asian elements of Firefly in greater depth
And that’s just the main protagonists. That doesn’t even take into account the minor characters, villain archetypes, politics, narrative tropes, worldbuilding, etc. of the Firefly universe, all of which are also racist and misogynist.
Also, consider that Joss Whedon thought “rebooting” colonialism as men vs. zombie freaks was less racist than honestly representing the exploitation and genocide of Natives by colonizers.
Racist history needs to be told. Erasing the racist truth of a historical situation doesn’t “take out the racism.” That’s whitewashing. Whitewashing is in and of itself a form of racism. Firefly is racist because it tries to whitewash a racist history. Any Firefly reboot that attempts to whitewash Firefly’s racist premise will only be perpetuating the cycle of whitewashing and erasure.
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I think what people really want is another show about a quirky band of leather wearing gun slinging rebel merchants with snappy dialogue going on adventures in outer space. You don’t need to reboot Firefly for that. Killjoys fits that description, and it’s not a Firefly reboot. Cowboy Bebop and Farscape both fit that description, and they both pre-date Firefly.
Fandom doesn’t need a Firefly reboot.
Fandom needs to give Firefly the boot.
It makes me sad to realize everything you say, @lierdumoa, is true. You have a brilliant analytical mind for sniffing out this sort of thing.
All the conversation lately about Confederate statues and Civil War history made me go back to find this series of posts.
It also led me to read this interesting piece that really gets one to re-examine the narrative of American history that even those who grew up in the North were fed.
Turns out that General Sherman’s often-criticized “total war” campaign in the final weeks of the war – which finally put down the rebellion and saved the nation – might not have been the atrocity it’s depicted as in movies, and was far from the brutality exhibited by the famous American generals of the 20th Century who waged campaigns of true total war.
Yet Sherman’s still considered a villain by many modern Southerners, while our much-worse recent generals are considered heroes.
And this Confederate propaganda has been so successful in shaping our view of the Civil War that douche-canoes like Joss Whedon can get away with creating much-loved shows based on glorifying the villains of US history, and few notice until later.
I feel ashamed now that I once adored this show so much. I blame my lack of knowledge of US history at the time, and I was far from alone among ignorant Northerners who loved it.
A positive conclusion: Gonna have to find Killjoys!
This stuff really does fly right over your head if you’re not from the South. I learned most of what I know about the confederate imagery/storylines/politics of Firefly because I was researching to make a fannish songvid for Firefly, back when I was still a fan, and I fell down a wikipedia hole.
We’ve definitely hit a turning point in politics where Americans living in the North and on the coasts can no longer afford to remain ignorant of confederate history, or remain oblivious to confederate iconography/ideology/propaganda in the media.
What pisses me off the most is that Firefly has such cult status in fan communities – Whedon essentially made it acceptable for racists to cosplay as confederates in fan spaces.
Nick Spencer (what is up with dudes named Spencer being nazi apologists?) has control of the Captain America comic. Now HBO is making an alternate reality genre show where the confederates won and I can only imagine it will get worse. It’s getting to the point where I don’t know if POC will be able to feel safe at Comicon anymore.
Carrying the fandom load
It does get tiring at times staying conscious of bigoted tropes in fandom, deciding not to support racist art, wondering if a quote is appropriative of Jewish experiences, discarding a homophobic fanwork idea, and more.
So as a Fandom Old I can see why some fans long for the “good old days.” Back then anything went! Total creative freedom! We were wild and unfettered! None of these long-winded discussions, we just went and did it and did not give a single fuck!
Except freedom wasn’t for everyone, was it? You only had that total freedom if you were unaffected by fandom’s racism, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, ableism, and a host of other bigotries that are a reflection of the world we live in.
Fandom was never the carefree, escapist enterprise some of us like to think it was. It’s just that minority fans were bearing the load of others’ freedom in silence. Too often, fans who were marginalized in real life could not escape to fandom because fandom would uncritically celebrate their oppression and trauma. And if they dared to speak about it they were bullied and shouted down into silence, into leaving.
I speak in the past tense but this is still ongoing, obviously. Fans of marginalized identities are a little more vocal now, but are facing a sustained and vicious backlash that accuses them of being “bullies” and starting “discourse” and “drama” and of “virtue signalling.”
It’s not about discourse or virtue, though. It’s about fans being told that they are not welcome unless they bite their tongues, grin, and go along with a thousand stings and slaps in the very spaces they go to have fun. It’s about fans having to watch characters who look like them be constantly erased and demonized. It’s about fans having to spend endless amounts of time and energy educating other fans about their oppression when all they’d like to do is unwind after a long day made longer by those very issues.
It’s not about virtue. It’s about people.
The thing is, fans who criticize minority fans and their allies for “discourse” aren’t angry about the fact that fandom puts these psychological burdens on minority fans. They’re mad about having to share a tiny little part of the burden minority fans, most visibly Black women, have been carrying for too long. In the minds of these “discourse”-critical fans the burden of considering the impact of fandom and fanworks is not theirs to bear. It is the lot of fans who are not them, “others,” to pay the cost for the majority’s creative freedom. The very suggestion that the load exists, and worse, that all of fandom should share in it so marginalized fans don’t carry it so disproportionately, is enough to make a lot of fans uncomfortable. I know, because I feel that discomfort at times, too.
The thing is, the load of thinking about marginalization in fandom spaces was always mine to bear. It’s every fan’s responsibility to be conscious of how they create and consume fanwork so that they don’t hurt other fans, so fandom can be inclusive and fun for everyone.
No, it’s not pleasant. It’s not fun to always watch yourself and second guess your choices, to fall short anyway and be called out and confront the fact that you have so many unconscious biases and have hurt others. I get it. I do. I want to think of myself as a good person. I don’t like admitting to wrongdoing. I hate challenging myself. I don’t want to think about this hard stuff. I just want to have fun!
But think about how much LESS fun it is when it’s your own humanity on the line. Many marginalized fans don’t have the luxury of just letting go and having fun, not when they always have to brace themselves for the next psychological assault.
These fans have been carrying this fandom burden and are punished for saying it’s too heavy. If you’re feeling a little less feather light in fannish activities than you used to, that’s a good sign! It means you’re starting to carry, in a very small measure, the fandom load of consciousness. It’s something you should be carrying as part of a community, and chances are it’s still not nearly as heavy a load as many marginalized fans are still made to bear.
A community joins together, watches out for its members, shares in the good and the bad. If some members are asked to bear the costs of others’ fun and either stay silent about it or leave, then the promise of community rings pretty hollow, doesn’t it? Sometimes discomfort is a good thing, and if my small discomfort means I am sharing in a tiny measure of my rightful load in fandom spaces, then it is a very good thing indeed.
If so, it may be that the other TLJ plots involving Finn and Rose, the mission to the casino planet and infiltrating a First Order star destroyer, are lead-ups to that event. Do Finn and Rose go on a mission to get in touch with the leaders of this uprising? Does this meeting lead further to the two of them posing as First Order officers in order to get the mutiny started?
Information about this possible uprising could be what convinces Finn not to leave the fight. The trauma from Slip’s death was part of his motivation for leaving the First Order, and he can’t leave thousands more like Slip to be destroyed when they are desperate for a leader–for him, the symbol of the humanity and defiance behind the helmet.
Tying this in with earlier information and speculation about the remnants of the New Republic fleet and the original Resistance being in a power struggle, maybe the Republic faction is willing to leave the mutinous Stormtroopers high and dry. It’s too risky, Vice Admiral Holdo may decide, and it could be a trap. She may pay lip service to Finn’s bravery, but now that tens of thousands of others like him are willing to do the same thing she’s willing to let them die, showing just how much she really cares.
This would anger Finn and leave him with an even greater sense of obligation, and when Leia offers him a risky mission to get him in contact with the leaders of the uprising he snaps it up. If we go with the theory that Rose is a Republic soldier herself, she might volunteer and be chosen as a way for the Republic fleet to claim some stake in the mission. Maybe no one expects her to do much but she would prove them very wrong.
The First Order would obviously be looking for Finn, too, and the Stormtrooper secret police would probably be doing double duty tracking down internal signs of disloyalty and also the heart of the brewing revolt–because make no mistake, Finn is the soul and heart of the uprising no matter where he may be. The Order would love to see him dead, or better yet, captured, reconditioned, and turned into a mouthpiece.
Captain Phasma would love to see Finn a corpse or a husk, too, though unlike the Order she prefers the first option. Finn not only threatened and humiliated her, he knows that she was the one who dropped the shields on Starkiller Base. She evidently wiped the computer records to cover her tracks (God I love this self-serving bitch), but there were three witnesses to her act. One is dead, the other’s whereabouts are unknown, but If the third, Finn, should show up? Well, the reconditioning had better be good because if there’s any chance of him ratting her out she’ll make certain he never talks again.
The progatonists’ and antagonists’ plans collide when the purported contact with the leadership of the uprising turns out to be a trap to lure Finn into the First Order’s power. Finn and Rose fight their way out and go to Crait? Idk. Kylo Ren realizes his quarry has fled and pursues him to Crait.
Turns out, Rey and Luke are on Crait, too! Maybe Rey had a vision much as Luke did in ESB and saw Finn being captured on Crait, and rushed with Chewie to rescue him. Luke might be all hell yeah, good riddance for a while before he realizes the girl got to him more than he’d thought (or wanted) and follows after her.
Epic battle is joined on Crait, including a reunion between Kylo and Luke and a rematch. Maybe Luke and Rey will double-team Kylo! But the Knights of Ren are there and their Master is stronger than before, and Luke is fighting his own anger and despair and trying not to turn as Kylo urges him to and Rey warns him against. Rey herself is trying not to be overwhelmed by her rage, too, at the memory of Han’s death.
Enter Finn! He, Rose, and the Resistance keep the Knights of Ren busy. Kylo goes into a berserker rage at the sight of Finn in a way that has nothing to do with the First Order and everything to do with his own insecurities. Finn realizes he can make Ren lose control just with his presence, plus maybe a few well-timed insults. Seeing Finn has the opposite effect on Rey, who becomes calmer and stronger.
Finn and Rey banter in the midst of battle even while Kylo Ren goes increasingly haywire. Meanwhile the First Order troops arrive, cutting a swathe through the Resistance and trying to get at Finn. He shoots down Stormtrooper after Stormtrooper before he realizes they are trying to capture him alive. In the sky Poe’s squadron is in danger and Poe himself is just barely keeping himself in the air under heavy fire. Resistance reinforcements led by Admiral Holdo are to arrive any moment, but no one is sure they can hold on that long.
Finn then goes into a sort of momentary trance where all the information he learned so far clicks to a conclusion, and he makes a choice. He does the last thing his enemies, or indeed his allies, expected: He lures Kylo Ren into being captured, but in the process also walks into the First Order’s clutches himself. The entire Resistance are aghast and Rey struggles to fight her way to his side, but he tells her, even while he’s being held down and cuffed, to concentrate on securing Kylo Ren. He gets it now. He’s going to start the Stormtrooper uprising from the inside.
The First Order, now that it has its main target, hurries to retreat ahead of the Resistance reinforcements. The hard-pressed ground and air forces gain a sudden reprieve. Rey, watching helpless from the ground with too many enemies between them as Finn is manhandled onto a First Order ship, says very calmly–we don’t hear her voice, only see her lips move through the noise and the viewport of the ship–I love you.
Finn smiles slowly, tenderly back, though he knows she can’t see him. He says nothing, not even to mouth the words, but we can all fill in the “I know” for ourselves. Despite the fear in his eyes he is peaceful; the path is clear ahead of him, though far from easy.
In space, the Resistance reinforcements arrive but the First Order blinks into hyperspace ahead of them. Poe is ordered to cease pursuit–they have no chance if they fly into First Order space. Poe hits his console in frustration and promises his buddy they’re not giving up on him.
Ever since we got the teaser trailer for Pacific Rim Uprising and I got some “semi creepy propaganda” vibes of it and its promotion of the Jaeger program, I’ve been wondering what the Jaeger program turned into post the First Kaiju war. And with the trailer released I’m wondering even more.
Because the Jaegers and the Jaeger program aren’t phrased as a good here – they’re literally called “the monsters we created” and it’s Jake who’s talking here – but as a necessary evil to fight a greater and more destructive evil.
I’m wondering if the Jaegers were used to keep a fearful populace in check? If Jake saw where it all was headed even before the end of the first war and that that is why he left the program? If he had a falling out with his father and sister about it? And if that’s why he got caught up in the criminal underworld which might be the only “free” place left?
Of course, with the Kaiju back in force the Jaegers are once more a very necessary evil and Jake decides for his own reasons to join up again to help.
A few more thoughts after watching the trailer again.
This would go a way to explain Amara, that 15 yo Jaeger hacker that’s in the movie. Why would someone hack a Jaeger?
Okay I know it’s common human nature for some to try and break into stuff where they shouldn’t be, not out of malice but just to see if they can. But on the other hand, it might indicate that some humans anyway seems to need/want protection from the Jaegers.
And then there’s the opening scene where we see said hacker standing in the middle of what looks like a Jaeger attack, but there seems to be no Kaiju around. It looks more like the Jaegers attacking ordinary humans. Then a bit later we see Jake get off something (a helicopter carrier?) along with the 15 yo girl. So she’s with him, and by extension probably part of that criminal underworld mentioned in the synopsis.
Holy shit, I think you’re on to something! You’re right that we don’t see kaiju in the opening of the trailer. In fact, look at what a Jaeger is doing in the background here:
It’s smashing an aircraft, not fighting Kaiju. This is either Jaegers being used in warfare or in some kind of civilian repression, and I’m guessing the latter because this is clearly an urban area and not a battlefield.
Also, I went back and listened to John’s narration as Jake, and noticed something weird in the opening sentences. So my first impression was that the narration was supposed to go like this:
“We were born into a world at war between the monsters that destroyed our cities and the monsters we created to stop them. We thought we had sacrificed enough.”
Which would be straightforward, right? There was a war between the Kaiju and Jaegers, a war that caused untold loss.
But that reading is strange on a couple of levels. For one thing, the war wasn’t between Kaiju and Jaegers, it was between the Kaiju and humans. It would be like saying World War 2 was between Japan and nuclear bombs, it doesn’t fit. For another, that first sentence, “We were born into a world at war” sounds like a complete sentence and the next part, “between the monsters…” reads like the beginning of a new sentence.
So what if the narration actually reads like this?
“We were born into a world at war. Between the monsters that destroyed our cities and the monsters we created to stop them, we thought we had sacrificed enough.”
Completely changes the meaning, doesn’t it? It gets rid of the awkwardness of putting Jaegers, which are weapons of war, in the position of a party to the war. It also sounds closer to my ears to how John is reading the words.
Most significantly, this reading presents the Jaegers as an evil or at the very least a tremendous drain that demanded sacrifices–of expenses and resources, for a start, but what if there was more? Civil liberties? Human lives?
There’s more evidence that Jaegers are being used in conflicts between human groups. There’s the scene of missiles flying in from behind Jaegers to hit some kind of command center, and since when do Kaiju shoot missiles? Those are clearly of human make.
And of course, since those in power make the rules, the “criminal underworld” may simply be people trying to live away from the police state’s control and outlawed for that reason. This possibility helps me feel a lot better about the whole criminal angle, because I really was not looking forward to the prospect of Jake being some unruly delinquent that Mako has to talk into doing the right thing.
If the Jaeger program did go bad, it’s likely to be after 2025 when the events of Pacific Rim took place, since the program was being shut down in the early to mid 2020s and wasn’t in a position of power. Since Stacker died in 2025 before the Jaeger program was diverted Jake’s fallout is unlikely to have been with him, at least over this particular issue.
The period after 2025 and Stacker Pentecost’s death would be a perfect time for the rot to set in. There would be the enormous political capital from the awe toward Jaegers and pilots, the surplus military hardware available at a time of peace (from the Kaiju, anyway), and the militaristic mindset of preparing for the next war through “unity” which would really be thinly-veiled code for obedience and suppression of dissent. All this would set the stage for the countries in the Pan Pacific Defense Corps to turn against each other and/or their own populations.
Assuming Jake had moral objections to the direction the Jaeger program was taking he’d have all the more reason to get off the grid into the underground. Much like Mako, he’s a child of Stacker Pentecost and a perfect pawn for propaganda. If he wants no part in that he’d have to go into hiding because repressive police states are not known for taking kindly to rejection.
L.J.'s Obsessions 