I think the most honest aspect of Crazy Rich Asians is that Asians born and raised in Western Cultures will always been seen as foreign and as outsiders to Asians born and raised in Asia and it is something white people will never fucking grasp cuz they see us as all the same lmao
This is especially ridiculous when white people go “See? Asians in Asian country where they’re not marginalised aren’t offended by racism” because that xenophobia and racism doesn’t even touch them and they see themselves distinct from us western born Asians
But white people think solidarity is something inherent amongst Asians when there’s major issues of classism and racism amongst the many groups within Asia
Trayvon Martin was walking home from a store. George Zimmerman falsely accused him of being a criminal.
Philando Castile was reaching for his license. Jeronimo Yanez falsely accused him of reaching for his gun.
If conservatives are so worried about men’s lives being ruined by false accusations, why didn’t they feel the same way about these men being falsely accused?
People still think of Lando as “The Guy Who Betrayed The Trio” and that’s some grade A bull.
I mean what would you do if you had people to protect and Darth Vader, Scariest Dude in the Galaxy, comes marching up to your door with a whole battalion of soldiers? Like? How much choice do you think he actually had here? Not much because Vader literally changes the rules on him every scene they’re together so the deal goes from “Trap the smuggler and his friends” to “Han’s being tortured and frozen in carbonite and taken away and the others that were supposed to be left untouched are also being taken capture indefinitely right now” and Lando has all of no control over any of it.
And then the second he realizes what’s happened he risks everything to help Chewie and Leia out. Leaves his cozy home to help them. Joins the Rebellion? Frees Han? Blows up the second Death Star?
But sure he’s just that sleaze ball who betrayed the gang. Sure.
I do not trust people who rag on Lando.
Seriously? Did they just sleep through Return of the Jedi?
Also, “They showed up here just before you did” gives us context to when Han arrives unannounced, and Lando tries to get Han to lose his cool and book out?
“ Why you slimy, double-crossing, no-good swindler. “
Lando opens with giving Han an excuse to say “Same to you Bantha herder, Chewie, we’re out”. Lando insults a smuggler known for his pride, hoping to get a rise and a reaction and risks his life to try to insult Han off the trap
“ You got a lot of guts coming here, after what you pulled!”
Also, assume that Lando’s just been ambushed by the Empire, and told that Han Solo is headed here, and that it’s the same Han Solo who just ran a blockade on Hoth, and Hoth is within non-hyperdrive flight range of Bespin.
Lando literally opens with a coded “You ran an Imperial Blockade and now you’re flying in openly at the nearest system?”
If the Han Solo of ANH and, as recently as Hoth base (Who’s scruffy looking?), had been as a hot headed as Lando expected, he would have walked back up the ramp and flown off in a huff. Lando tries to salvage the situation from before we even know there’s a problem
Lando was administrator and responsible for tens of thousands of lives. From the radio play “You should have looked around more, Han. You’d have recognized a lot of faces. A lot of people here are at the end of their ropes. This is their last chance for any kind of life.”
Yup. Lando’s actions are “Try to get Cloud City out this, try to get his friends out of this, try to get out of this himself, got out? EVACUATE THE CITY. Then save friends and self”
He could have flown off quietly, Lobot could have been instructed to prepare the escape vehicle. No, Lando gives the evac signal by announcing it’s him, and announcing the Empire has control of the city. Yeah, way to paint a target on your back there. No “Hit the fire alarm” button and run, no sneak off in the night.
Lando Calrissian was trying to save the most people possible without being willing to simply sacrifice his friends for the most efficient gain
Lando Calrissian is one of the most ethical characters in the original trilogy. He was stuck between a rock and a hard place, but he also turned on Vader/helped Leia and Chewie as soon as he could do so. We last see him in Empire setting off to help track down where Boba Fett took Han.
We see him next in Return of the Jedi, saving Han. And then volunteering for a possibly suicidal mission. Lando’s proven himself a hundred times over.
“Yeah, I’m responsible these days. It’s the price you pay for being successful.”
Lando’s joking there, but he’s also telling the truth. Responsibilty brings success, and success brings responsibility. And he lives up to it in full!
And one more thing… This quote comes right in the middle of Han going through the same process.
We meet Lando, as an example of a smuggler, a scoundrel, becoming a responsible and honorable person, roughly in the middle of Han’s arc of character development.
The growth that started when he listened to Chewie and followed his conscience back to Yavin IV, and culminates in him volunteering to lead the commando attack on Endor, is an arc from irresponsibility to responsibility. We can infer that Lando made a similar arc when he came to Cloud City. Speaking of which, Han’s act of volunteering? It’s NOT on-screen, not played up as a major plot or character development event. We don’t see Han decide to volunteer, he has already decided! As has Lando. They both remain roguish to the end, but they are far from the self-interested scoundrels they began as.
I don’t think Finn fans should put any trust in IX. It will
treat him better than TLJ but that’s only because TLJ buried the bar
under the ground. JJ was the one who pulled the rug and left him in the
dirt giving Rian the option to safely ignore him. JJ was the one who
forced Rey into Kylo’s path and made her his foil, so that Finn could be
sidelined when there was the natural choice. I don’t think we’ll see
Bendemtion, but Rey will be the one who shines in IX and Finn is
sidelined completely.
Why do I think this? Because it’s what JJ, the man you all put
your faith in, set him up for. Look at the end of TFA, there’s nothing
else there for Finn. his story has no clear progression but is left
hanging like some appendix they can deal with in whatever way, there is
no clear progression. Rey is set up on Kylo’s path and she’ll be the one
to ultimately take him down. Finn might get to be a bit of a hero in
the Resistance part but he’ll still be secondary to Rey.
JJ set up Finn to be A Leia in the ST. He’s plot relevant in the
first movie and drives it forward and then he’s dumped because the real
hero, Rey, has stepped up. So if you ask me Finn fans should get out
while they can and before it hurt to much. If they’re looking for
another major scifi franchise with a Black lead Discovery season 2 looks
promising after they showed the latest trailer and there’s a lot of
others out there. But don’t bother with Star Wars, it won’t treat Finn
well.
Finn being sidelined is a possibility every fan should be prepared for, obviously. I don’t want to tell anyone to get their hopes up for JJ or IX, and I encourage people to disengage from SW if that’s what they need to do.
That said, I disagree with the arguments there. For one thing, I don’t think Rey was made to be Kylo’s foil–it’s clearly Finn who’s been set up as Kylo’s opposite in every way. Foil does not mean simply an enemy, it’s a specific literary term for a character that contrasts with another character. The foil relationship between Finn and Kylo continued even in TLJ. If Rey was set up to be anyone’s foil it was Luke in TLJ far more than Kylo.
For another, Finn’s story was not directionless at the end of TFA. You might as well say Luke’s story had nowhere to go at the end of ANH because his arc was complete. Comparing him to Leia is plain inaccurate when Leia did not have a protagonist’s arc or hero’s journey in ANH like Finn had in TFA. Luke had the hero’s journey in ANH, and Leia was in charge of his call to action. It wasn’t a case of Leia stepping aside for Luke, it was Luke’s story from the start that Leia had a role in.
It’s also disingenuous to validate RJ’s writing choices as flowing organically from JJ’s when multiple people involved with TFA and the franchise–Mark Hamill, Alan Dean Foster, John Williams, and Simon Pegg just off the top of my head–have publicly voiced doubts and disagreements with different aspects of what RJ did.
As a black fan myself, I also disagree.
Saying Finn’s storyline could go nowhere after TFA, is like saying Rey’s storyline could go nowhere after meeting look. A lack of imagination is all to blame for Finn’s role in TLJ and certain fans not caring about a character who doesn’t look the way Hollywood has taught them to care about. I’m not going to just re-write what @lj-writes just said, but I can think of a million of ways Finn’s story could have gone after TFA, hell I can still think of ways his story could go after TLJ.
The fact is, some people have no imagination on what to do. Johnson being one of them.
Full offense, but if your coping mechanism involves hurting others, or other people are hurt as a result of your coping, then it is in fact a shitty coping mechanism that you need to get rid of, and the people you hurt have every right to be angry with you and call you a shitty person.
Just because two people aren’t romantically involved doesn’t mean they can’t be super important to one another.
Just because two people are super important to one another doesn’t mean they have to be romantically involved.
It is okay to love people deeply without wanting to be with them romantically and people should not make your friendship uncomfortable by consistently nagging you to date.
Let’s appreciate and support friendships and stop demanding people to have feelings they don’t have.
God I hate the “too well adjusted to be traumatized/an abuse survivor” argument. Apart from the clear racist bias there I hate it because it dismisses any survivor who’s coping mechanisms aren’t overtly destructive or self-destructive.
Just because Finn’s coping mechanisms doesn’t involve throwing tantrums, assaulting or screaming at people, doesn’t mean he doesn’t display clear coping with trauma, or that he isn’t traumatized by what the FO did to him or that he grew up in a very abusive environment.
For one thing he’s clearly compartmentalizing the hell out of his life and he also seems to use goal orientation as a coping strategy to avoid dealing too much with the chaos that is inside of him. But that chaos and his emotions does overflow at times.
But then he’s right back to coping again. Every time one of his goals are achieved he tries to pick up a new one. It is so damn obvious. And yes it helps move him (and the plot) along, but that’s because he is in action oriented situations so far.
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t coping mechanisms and that these might become bad in the long term. It could be interested to see what Finn ‘sans goal’ for a lengthy period would do to deal. We’ve already seen him when his compartments bled and how that makes him panic.
But non-destructive coping mechanisms – self or otherwise – doesn’t mean “well adjusted”, doesn’t mean “not traumatized” or “less traumatized”. It just means “the way this person copes fits their current situation, but that doesn’t minimize the pain and trauma they’ve suffered”
I could easily have continued here because Finn displays far more than just this. But I felt my twitter novel was long enough and I hate the character limit on that platform.
So yeah, apart for the obvious racist bias in the argument in displaying a complete lack of ability to emphasize with a Black man’s pain, people who do this have also just dismissed every single “good survivor” out there who’s coping mechanisms aren’t openly maladjusted.
But to reiterate. Coping in ways that aren’t overtly damaging to self or others doesn’t mean a person was less abused or is less suffering/was less harmed/is less in pain from what they were put through. It just means that they’ve found coping strategies that aren’t openly harmful to others and not immediately harmful to themselves either.
Though Finn’s methods of compartmentalizing and picking goals to avoid dealing with his emotional chaos and pain can easily long term come back to bite him in the ass and become maladjusted and harmful. But for the time being they have helped him along rather than hindered him.
And you know, that’s what coping evolves to do. Help you in a situation where everything is fucked up.
“Writing is the only hobby where people consider themselves a failure at it if they don’t become professional. My advice to writers– I’ve known a lot of writers who have that “I’m gonna write this book, and I’m gonna sell it, and I’m gonna be rich and famous” [attitude]. If they wrote it and sold it and were rich and famous, they would hit their base expectations and be merely satisfied. And instead, if they miss that, they are angry, bitter, and they grow increasingly twisted up inside, psychologically, and they’re really unhappy. Do you like it? Is it fun? Do you enjoy it? If you enjoy it, every time you write, you have completed something that has paid you off.”
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Wednesday Club, 07/11/2018 (via mudkippy)
L.J.'s Obsessions 