potboy

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saturnmond:

Armitage,

You were born the heir to a war you only saw in brief glimpses when you were awoken in the middle of the night and dragged from your home planet into the outer regions. There were strangers and feral children who followed you with hungry eyes. You were convinced they were planning to tear you apart, limb from limb should you ever give them the opportunity to do so. You were such a scared child.

It wasn’t like feeling threatened was very hard. Your father despised you for the crime of being born a child. He struck you often, but it were his words which really bruised you in places were his fists could not reach.

You wished you could grow and grew, you did. Grew more vicious. Angrier. Destructive.

If you could ever reach the top, then no one would ever be able to hurt you anymore. And if you learned one thing, then it was that everyone could harm you on a whim. Pain was just another fact of life, like breathing. Or the rough fabric of a uniform you always wore a size too large, so that no one could see the small frame beneath it.

Armitage, you grew up to be a monster. A Starkiller. Destroying worlds with an unblinking gaze, murdering those who laid their hands on you. Showing regret was weakness and weakness would be punished. You never wanted that again.

Yet, it did. Time and time again. When Phasma plotted to murder your father you let her gladly. When Cardinal stared at you, you felt hatred dwell within you: “If he knew anything about the human heart…”, but did you? You fought back by killing the general who made you lick a spilled drink of the floor. You had been a child and so sorry, why could he not have let you go?

You mistook obedience for strength.

By killing these men, you did what they wanted. You gave to the Order and the Order took. Like a great beast it devoured your energy, your sleep, your health, your personality, your humanity. You thought you were fighting back but you were still holding on to a war that was never your own.

You never stood a chance. You never had the force. You were not the descendant of some age-old, magical blood line. You were Armitage Hux. Thin as a slip of paper and just as useless.

And then you woke up. The moment you decided to help the resistance, was the moment you gave up on a dream that was never of your choosing. You gave up on fear.

“I don’t care if you win.”

Means: “I don’t care if we lose.”

For the first time, you blinked and saw yourself. You chose yourself before the hands that had always pulled you back onto a stranger’s path. You were ready to let the Order burn. It was a symbol for every harm that had ever befallen you. A symbol for a stolen childhood. A symbol for a man you would never become.

What would have happened, if you could have fled?
What would have happened, if they had let you discover your own personality?
What would have happened, if you had been allowed humanity and dignity?

They gave you neither. And I am so sorry, Armitage. You deserved to discover who you are. You deserved to see what you have done. You even deserved to suffer and repent. You deserved to give your life some meaning.

You deserved better.

And for you, I raise my voice because you cannot speak any longer.

FUCK YOU, JJ ABRAMS AND YOUR GOD DAMN HACK-ASS!

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gamebird:

lightaroundthecorner:

bensolodidnothingwrong:

snowstcrm:

TROS, mixed feelings

I’m going to try and get all my thoughts in order about The Rise of Skywalker. I had some general points I wanted to write about but lost my focus when I came home to a pet emergency.

The first thing I want to say is that the movie is good, in the sense that the spectacle is enjoyable to watch. There are some amazing sequences and some awesome beauty shots. One that sticks out to me is Rey walking to the throne room and it’s this really wide shot of her underneath that large mass and the blue lighting in the back.

So the pros are:

Beautiful shots I’m sure were taken straight from awesome concept art

Good action movie if you aren’t emotionally invested/don’t know much about star wars

I did find myself enjoying it at parts, but it was at surface level. With each new plot development, I felt the established canon collapsing in on itself and it was upsetting if you decided to focus on the plot.

Kylo and Rey / the Force side of the plot continued to carry the trilogy. There were many cool things done with the force bond, including objects being passed through their connection.

Getting confirmation that the Sith kill one another so their souls transfer to the younger stronger vessel and then continue to get passed down

More talk about the Jedi and Sith in general. I personally always enjoyed this part of star wars more than the rebellion plots

Now onto the cons…

Just.. too much. Way too much plot stuffed into one film, which then contributed to too much force-fed exposition, and just too much dialogue. Characters literally NEVER stopped talking. Less is more, and that showed when the most powerful scenes were ones where the characters would just shut up for two seconds and let the audience form their own thoughts.

Characters were being dragged by their hair through this plot. Their actions and dialogue didn’t feel like it came from internal motivations, but because the plot needed the characters to do things and therefore they did.

The attempts to throw in new characters into the plot, which leaves them half-assed and better off giving that screen time to characters that are already established. I understand there was backlash against Rose’s character but the solution shouldn’t have been to just erase her relevance.

The forced trio dynamic.. it just doesn’t work for these three… Rey spent some time with Finn in TFA, spent a whole movie away from the Resistance in TLJ, and is now forced by the writers to stick around Finn and Poe when she continuously is breaking off from them anyway. They’re all constantly arguing with each other, and the tone is off. They were going for a cute bickering between friends but they all just seemed annoyed with one another.

Chewie’s death fakeout was so absurd. They really tried to explain it off with “it must have been a different ship!” when they were in the middle of the desert and there were no other ships to be seen. It was so forced and dumb it was difficult to feel anything.

The overall lack of direction for Finn’s character in this trilogy. I kept holding onto hope for Finn’s character to stick the landing in the final episode, but the writing failed him. His love for Rey is dialed to 100 and he keeps chasing behind her when she is ten steps ahead. It’s just sad to watch at this point, especially when the story has already established the foundations of Finnrose. The romance set up was completely trashed by this movie in favour of him chasing after a girl who has no interest in him. His entire story this whole trilogy revolved around Rey.

Leia’s Jedi training past we’re just finding out about now..?? I feel this was completely tossed in with no regard to spinoffs. I read Bloodline and there was absolutely no mention or fit for Leia to have done Jedi training (to the skill level of constructing her own saber no less). This is a cool idea, but again it felt STUFFED IN.

Lack of presence from the force ghosts when they’re needed makes their appearance lackluster. It feels deeply cruel for the Skywalkers to not reach out and speak to their own blood when he needed it most, especially Anakin who if he spoke to his grandson in the FIRST FILM, Ben would have been on a complete different trajectory. The OT force ghost characters not reaching out to Ben makes their presence in these newer films all the more bitter. Ben was so desperate for guidance that it resulted in manifesting a memory of his non-force sensitive father. The scene was touching, but it was literally Ben having to talk himself through his decisions all alone while Rey gets love and support from thousands of generations of jedi when she needs it.

Rey’s god force abilities. Now listen, I’ve been adamant about defending Rey’s capabilities in the force, but TROS has just made it too impossible for me to continue to feel that. She displayed far beyond what her skill level should be after receiving minor training from Luke and then some nondescript training from Leia. She used force lightning, life force transfer and healing, and lastly turning Palpatine’s own lightning against him when he’s in a state stronger than he’s ever been before, and the explanation for all of this is…

Rey is a Palpatine… I had made a tinfoil hat theory about this back during TFA. She has the accent and her character story starts out in the ruins of a Star Destroyer. I guess it could have been a decent reveal if they had spent the last two movies actually building that. Over the years I had come to love the idea of Rey truly being no one, that the force didn’t only favor those with bloodline. It could call on anyone, even those who by the world’s eyes is worth nothing. Rey Palpatine should have never been a thing, and Palpatine showing up in these movies at all when Anakin’s entire 6 episode story arc was him eradicating that evil for the love of his son. Anakin’s powerful and sacrificial actions really lose weight within the story when the evil was never really killed.

Things that mattered werent dwelled on enough for the audience to process them. The movie was so eager to race to the finish line that information/events that should have deeply effected the characters didnt.

Im biased but I truly believe that Ben shouldnt have died. That’s not how his arc should have ended. It’s far too cruel, especially because his death was unceremonious and as an audience we were expected to move on because LOOK!! everyone’s hugging!!

The ending felt deeply uncomfortable. It’s like watching a tragedy but with happy swelling music in the back and characters smiling.

So yeah.. I feel like there’s more I could say but Im sure other people have said the same things with better words. Despite my list of complaints being large it genuinely was entertaining… As mentioned if you try not to focus on the plot too much it can be really good at a surface level.

I knew something felt off about the Han / Ben moment, but I couldn’t put my finger on it before reading this. Not to mention the fact that JJ effectively recycled TFA dialogue, which only reminded me that Ben was forever haunted by his biggest mistake. It didn’t feel like closure.

Rey had pep-talks from Luke, Leia, Anakin himself, every Jedi who ever lived apparently… but Ben was left to his own thoughts. Which haven’t exactly been kind to him.

EVERYTHING IN THIS^^^^

All of the stolen children of the galaxy died

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baixueagain:

seriously though, no wonder Hux finally snapped and went rogue.

by TROS, he’s no doubt spent the better part of a year being sidelined from power as Pryde stepped in, watching his life’s work being slowly dismantled by Kylo Ren and Pryde pursuing their own priorities, and then finally learns that the First Order has been a shell organisation this entire time to distract from what’s really going on. basically, he’s watched his life fall apart and then learned that it was all a lie anyway.

with all that in perspective it’s obvious why he’d say “fuck it” and try to spite Kylo Ren one last time by helping out the Resistance. my poor baby ;-;

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kotyzpolonii:

ì am so sad and pissed about hux’s death like… it was so unnecessary and stupid. he is my favourite character but besides that I think he had so much potential of being a reformed character. imagine him escaping from the first order with Poe and Finn and then seeing the power of teamwork and love. he could have changed and fought for the resistance. ahhh it was so sad I literally cried in the cinema.

I mean it was one of the most easily retconned deaths in SW. He dropped, laid still, everyone walked away. It’s easy to imagine that as soon as they were gone he made his way to an escape pod or shuttle, either with medical facilities or without them (because he didn’t need treatment, because he regularly wears body armour under the tunic.)
SW is full of people apparently dying and then turning out not to have died after all. I don’t see why Hux should be different.

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sunangelflowers:

They created a martyr - and fans will fix whatever BS they throw at us.

imperialcantinajam:

*Rise of Skywalker Spoilers*

LucasFilm: We’re going to kill Hux.

GingerPilot Fans: If you strike Hux down, we will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine…

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Yet more TRoS reactions now I’ve had a bit of time to think about it. Obviously very spoilerific

Things I didn’t like about TRoS in no kind of order

the massive sideways jerk of the story. If the trilogy had been written as a coherent story there would have been foreshadowing of both Palpatine’s return and the importance of General Pryde from TFA onward. In a well written story you do not suddenly drop everything to tell an entirely different story with entirely different villains two thirds of the way through.

Why is everyone so damn disrespectful to C-3PO? The guy’s a veteran of more wars than they’ve had hot dinners. Why are our heroes - who are supposed to be the nice ones who behave well to droids - pressuring Threepio to be mind-wiped and then acting like it’s no big deal? Shame on them all.

The sidelining of Rose. What was the point of introducing her character if she was just going to be left behind and even (possibly) superceded as a romantic interest for Finn? I mean, okay it’s very like life for some people to be very important for a while to you, and then be less important as you drift apart. But Star Wars is not like life.

Making Poe an ex-Spice runner. Again, okay, I think what they were trying to do was to make him the Han Solo of the new trio, with a girl in every port and a shady smuggling background, but frankly making your Latino hero an ex-drug smuggler doesn’t play well to me for obvious reasons.

The fact that the Force using characters were so enormously powerful that they had to be isolated in their own story because they could no longer interact with normal humans in any kind of equal way. Possibly SW has always been like this and I’ve only just noticed, but it did make me very sympathetic toward Order 66, which is not an ideal outcome.

I’m really not convinced by the Rey/Ben romance, but tbh I also thought that the Anidala romance was creepy and unbelievable. So creepy and offputting het romance is a time honoured feature of Star Wars, and this one was no worse than the last. At least this time Rey continued to say no to Kylo until he proved that he had changed for the better - which is an improvement on Anidala.

Introducing Zori entirely so audiences are no longer allowed to see Poe’s sexuality as whatever they want.

The problem of fighting a bunch of brainwashed child soldiers was retconned by making it apparently so easy for Stormtroopers to desert that the FO could lose whole squadrons of them without taking action. (Thus proving that the ones who stayed did so because they wanted to, but destroying the whole “conditioned from birth” thing that had been such a big part of the first two movies.)

More things I liked about TRoS in no kind of order

Finn has really matured into a take-charge hero without losing the kindness and empathy that characterized him from the start. Finn’s arc has been the only hero arc in the new trilogy that I really liked, and now that it’s been strongly hinted that he’s force sensitive too, I would love to see him in a new series being the next Jedi.

Creepy Palpatine hanging from a spike. Good for him. Nobody does balls to the wall evil for the sake of it like good old Palpy

The Dark side is a pathway to many abilities some would call unnatural. Ha! An actual tie in to an earlier episode used in a way that makes sense of what’s going on in this one. Excellent!

Jannah. Despite my reservations about how easy it is for stormtroopers to leave the FO, I did like her very much, and I loved that little bit where Lando suggested she find her parents now. Maybe there are now many escaped FO personnel who can come out of hiding and find new homes? For me it’s the main hopeful thought of the movie.

The subtle way in which the entire FO had changed, which helps make sense of why Hux would think it was no longer worth fighting for. (That and the fact that a massive Imperial fleet makes the FO redundant. Hux’s vision of the galaxy is not going to happen regardless, so why not go down while fucking up Kylo’s?) Armitage Hux saves the effing galaxy, people! I’m so happy :)

Kylo’s redemption. I’m not honestly very fond of Kylo, but it would be very unfair of me to want redemption for one abused boy and not for the other. I’m over the moon that I got both! I’m not going to deny being very glad that there is a happy ending for Han and Leia as well as Kylo in the afterlife.

The Force ghosts of Leia and Luke welcoming Rey to shed her evil heritage and take up their name instead, because they loved her and she’d chosen them.

The D-Day finale. OMG I was genuinely moved by Poe losing hope and then the day being saved by a rag-tag collection of private ships. “It’s not a navy, it’s just people.” Perfect - I welled up, and I am doing so again thinking of it.

On balance it’s still a huge positive. Admittedly, my expectations were very low, but they are exceeded.

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filigranka:

filigranka:

filigranka:

Well, well, well, it seems, from what Reddit got, leaks were true. Burger King adds, too, therefore.

I SO wish sequels never happened and we got no more ‘canonical’ films/info about OT trio, only EU. No sequels. Can we cancel them? 

Very incoherent venting below. Based mostly on Reddit’s spoilers.

Edit: oh wait, now Disney tries to delete them. And Reddits responds by reposting screencaps, because Disney, focused on premiere, let the images float for a good hour or two. So now it’s disney vs. redditers. 

Pffft.

At least their comments and jokes, and critique are pure gold. If they will shut down the channel - and the other ones, which will be created - it’ll become a pure gold, too. Battle against monopoly of our time, battle of information. :DD 

No, really, Reddit’s critique is on point and 100%, inside-world, outside world, meta level, everything. I always liked meta fandom. <3 <3 <3 

Czytaj dalej

I wake up and they’re all true. 

Well, at least my predictions that poster shows us Weltschmerz Hux aka he’ll help our heroes and get some sort of “I was killed because of my work for the good guys, so, in SW universe reality, I’m redeemed” ending. Which, eh, is Ok for me, because at least we’re not getting the terribly unmoral “kids of bad guys can’t get redeemed, redemption is for Skywalkers only”.

So this is good. At least this, there’s one good thing I didn’t dare to hope for done, apparently? Perhaps. This is good.

And if ressurections are now confirmed in SW universe, then all of them, Kylo, Hux, Leia, Luke etc. may come in EU. Or in fics. Or I may write ghosts’ orgy. Because the Force can create children and they can use the Force - Rey might yet have a ghost!baby. ;)

And if it’s so easy for the ghosts to appear and be, then Rey might even play a family with her ghost!parents Leia and Luke. Leia/Luke shippers - after so many years, you’re validated. ;)

I’m heartbroken and trying to joke, because, well.

Stuff with Rey’s parentage is just - oh. it’s so OTT. It - like, really, it feels like she’s supposed to be a self-insert in a romance VN and therefore she gets it all, including being the chosen one and female version of Anakin. I’m just - I’m just - why and how, and how terrible…

I cried so much.OT’s ruined. I’m back to crying, I guess. 

It’s probably, considering reviews, a fun movie, action-packed, with problems with too many plots, but fun and making you feel, if you stop thinking about plots, narrative etc. Epic. Of course people cried, but c’mon, you had Leia dying and then her son dying and then her appear as a ghost with Luke, of course people cried. It was easy. It was a movie which handed the bulletproof ways of making people cry to the creators, they didn’t need to do literally anything.

But I think for those who are interested in ST mainly and don’t care much about politics, or just are casual fans, not attached to OT etc. - and like fast paced action films, epic and bombastic, it’s a fun movie. Well-made (although the cg and make-up surely look terrible in leaks). Fun. Adventure. Feelings. 

But it totally undermines OT and everything else, it makes them all like - pointless. Broken experiments. It’s horrible.

I don’t know if there’s enough of meds and alcohol in the world to help me.

I’m still crying and shaking.

But it’s also impressive, they managed to cancel and retcon and destroy both OT and PT despite the contract which forbade them from changing them. But also, from the editor’s point, OT is pretty totally meaningless now. 

And I have no idea how the creators might think this is a hopeful ending. I mean, only if you completely stop thinking about OT characters and their arcs and treat them as props for nostalgia and Rey’s story? If you take only ST in account - but even then, who survives? Palpatine. Skywalker as family are actually dead (and, like, Rey spent three days with Luke, she should call herself Solo or Organa, if anything). Republic, heh, perhaps there’s some new republic, we saw how it ended in the last time (because of course Rebellion fought for Republic and conflict in OT was political, but now it’s only about balance of the Force, actually, you see. sure, we bet bad guys, but do you think new new republic would be better than previous one? there’s nothing to base this off and this is what Luke and Leia fought for, this is for what Alderaan and Hosnian was destroyed, how one can make such a cruel, stupid, amoral narrative, really). All Skywalkers aka our heroes died young and saw their works well, in ashes. They saw their son and nephew went the same path as their father, being cruel, killing them, destroying planets etc., everything they fought against - and at the consolation they might have the fact he perhaps died redeemed and is with them in the afterlife. They didn’t even defeat Palpatine or Empire and it’s actually Rey who’s chosen one or at least another one, and can be Skywalker because. I mean, this destroyed any sense of OT, why not skip OT and new republic and go real saviour Rey, then.

But also, how on earth one may consider such an ending of all 9 films - from which 6 wasn’t about Rey, Disney - of Anakin’s and Luke’s and Leia’s, and Han’s, and Republic’s and all other’s fate “hopeful”? I mean, on which planet. And they honestly believe it just - how?

i mean, for casual viewers who don’t care much about Skywalkers’ history or previous films it probably is hopeful, but if you’re boasting about ending the saga you should probably take the actual previous stories and characters’ arcs into account, right?

But I have to say, it’s almost impossible how viciously, cleverly they did Lucas dirty. How they destroyed the characters’ and arcs he built. Made them nothing. It’s - almost an art. How they managed. 

Well, perhaps this is what Lucas wanted. His revenge on the fandom.

I haven’t seen it yet, and with my broken messenger system and lack of asks I can’t send you a private message to say how sorry I am that this has upset you so much and that it was all so much of a disappointment/offense. So Im’ reblogging with nothing to say about the film, but just to say *hugs* and I sympathize with the feeling that fandom has become bad for the mental health. Maybe we could get into writing original fic instead?