The Real Division in the Star Wars Fandom

[Allronix]

On 11/14/2021 at 9:40 PM, EAFSAMWISE said:

Having studied and looked in detail at discussions of Star Wars from multiple angles, I've come to the conclusion that there is one major underpinning that divides the Star Wars fanbase in terms of what it expects: Namely, the issue of love and relationships and how valuable those things are or aren't.

 

1) First, there is the "traditional" view of Star Wars in terms of the metaphysics as partially laid out by George Lucas, that the Jedi code is ultimately correct on an objective level within the universe of Star Wars.

Totally agreeing here. And I think it has to do with some Death Star sized blind spots on Lucas's part. 

And this rant will be long, so it needs to go into several walls of text. 

I'm old enough to have seen ROTJ in a theater and got a crash course in the Legends during college because my sister's roomies were just big old nerds (so was I but didn't know there WAS an Expanded U until then). But given our West End tabletop session was Rebellion era, I knew very little about Jedi. We just had Lucas's word to go on; these supposedly wonderful people who were all about peace and solving conflicts without violence, but lit their sabers as a last resort to protect the innocent. 

And then TPM came out. Now, I go and see it with my niece (really, my pal's kid). My pal is a disabled, widowed veteran. Neoliberal policies being what they are, her benefits kept getting shorted and I was working extra shifts to make sure the kid ate. Said kid is, at the time, nine years old. Same age as Anakin. Single mom and impoverished, same as Anakin.

Now, Lucas is operating off the fairy tale motif of the young hero having to leave the comforts of mother and home and be a brave little boy to meet his destiny. 

I was in the theater watching this jackass from a very powerful organization lie, manipulate, and do end runs over every damn ethical guideline in the book to get what HE wanted - The All Powerful, Almighty Order's potential Ultimate Sith Killer just showed up! 

He wasn't there to free slaves, but he sure could crash on a slave's sofa, raid her fridge, take advantage of her hospitality, conduct a blood test on her kid with no consent...and when the blood test turned out to show the kid was what HE wanted? Well, to hell with the best interest of the kid and to hell with this impoverished, desperate woman in need of the help only a so-called Guardian of Peace and Justice could provide who is still helping him out of the goodness of her heart. He's going to lie, cheat, manipulate, forcibly separate the two, leave Shmi to rot with a bomb in her head, and drag this child off to be shaped into a living weapon for his powerful, Almighty Organization! 

Would my pal give up her kid if it gave her a roof over her head, regular meals, an education, and a way out of desperate poverty, even if it hurts her? Sure. 

Would I want to take a baseball bat and tell anyone who is making this kind of devil's bargain to get off the lawn and perform some unprintable acts with said bat? Yup. 

Okay, so maybe this Qui-Gon guy is just a stupid cowboy with entitlement issues who doesn't see the problem of exploiting a slave to get what he wants.  Let's see what happens when we get the kid in front of the people in charge. Surely they know how to handle a scared, Force Sensitive nine year old. 

Aaaaand they way they handle a scared Force Sensitive nine year old is to haul him in a room full of creepy old men, lock the door, leave him to be interrogated by these creepy old men for hours,  then freak out and scold the poor kid for being homesick, scared, and missing the mother that was left in slavery in the hands of a dirtbag and these "wise and compassionate defenders of peace and justice" have NO #@#@$ intention of HELPING HER OUT OF THAT!  They'll bend over backwards for the rich and powerful, like Padme, Vallorum, Palpatine...but the only powerless, helpless civilian in the entire kriffing trilogy, and they won't do bantha crap, aside from take her little boy away so he can be turned into a living weapon and pointed at their enemies. 

Oh, but he's too old? Really? Nine years old is too old for you clowns to shape him into a proper living weapon?! How young do you need your recruits to be...oh. You need BABIES. And you need them to never see or know their parents/caretakers. Order is mother, Order is Father, Order is your friends, trust the Jedi Order, I guess. (Yuck. Child soldiers should be the first indication your asses are not the good guys here) 

Okay. So we're supposed to agree with Yoda because this is future Vader. and these wise and compassionate Jedi are going to make an exception and take this obviously unsuited boy under their wing, and he is ungrateful and hurts them because no good deed goes unpunished. 

Instead, I wanted to punt Yoda through the Lambeau uprights, punch Qui-Gon, and drag that kid back to his mom after getting enough cash to free her and get them both to safety. 

 

 

 

Edited January 17, 2023 by Allronix

[Allronix]

On 11/14/2021 at 9:40 PM, EAFSAMWISE said:

Thus Anakin's relationship with Padme was therefore inherently wrong and Luke is seen as surpassing this by not following in his father's footsteps (despite failing in other ways and of course this is the new "canon" imposed by Disney that not all of us accept). George Lucas himself even stated his objection to Luke having a spouse, on the grounds that it would go "against Jedi teachings" and that in the Star Wars world, Jedi teachings are inherently the "good side."

Okay, wall o text Number Two.

After the Jedi managed to make exactly the wrong impression in TPM? Well, maybe it was just a bad day on everyone's part and we just started on the wrong foot. Surely this new film will show us just how wonderful these guys are...

Well, once again, they're pretty much the Senate's not so secret police and enforcers. Um...okay, Kenobi just sliced someone's arm off again and it's not some dive bar in a lawless dump like Mos Eisley, but a dance club in the middle of the capital city. Shouldn't there be some actual oversight here? And the whole "Jedi business, go back to your drinks..." Uh...this kind of "maiming a suspect in public" is not only acceptable, but apparently standard procedure? This is a universe where reliable stun weapons exist, so why are those not used? So less than thirty minutes in and we already see some pretty interesting (if gross) use of permanent injury brute force on an uncharged suspect. 

And after a decade in the care of Jedi (who Lucas has called "intergalactic therapists") Anakin has grown from a sweet, reasonably well-adjusted little boy to...an emotionally needy, mentally unstable hot mess who thinks violence is the answer to everything. Isn't the point not to make the patient worse? Well, I guess if you want to shape a child into a living weapon, this is what you'll get. (Well, that and Darth Zannah, but she's a different story)

Okay, Anakin and Padme are a complete disaster in the making. They were put in the spotlight way too young by adults who didn't give a damn about them as people, only about what those gifted kids could do for THEM. It clearly shows, and they're going to be like two ex-child stars who run off to Vegas after a weekend. 

Okay, confirmation the Jedi did absolutely nothing for Shmi. Explains the Lars connection, though. And here's where I have another big problem. Lucas points to the funeral as an example of healthy love versus unhealthy; Lars stating "thank you" at Shmi's grave (meaning that he "let go" of her in a healthy way) where Anakin goes "I miss you" (which centers it on him and his own feelings and is an unhealthy clinging). Here's the ugly part; Lars BOUGHT Shmi like a household appliance and then apparently discovered a bed warming function. Okay, he "freed her," so what? Where could she really go if she wanted to leave him aside from back to a slave pit? 

The "healthy" relationship Lucas argues, is the one where the woman is purchased like a tool by the male and has no autonomy or choice. Meanwhile, the woman who has the wealth and social class to freely choose her mate is the one who is the "unhealthy" relationship. See the issue here? 

And then we get into the hoary old sexist tropes of women being a threat to male sanity and a dangerous temptation away from the proper male role of being warriors. She has more social and political power than him, and that can't fly. So, she falls under the category of being an unwitting destroyer of the Heroic Age, like Guinevere of Arthurian Mythos, Helen of Troy, Pandora, or Eve. If she was a "good woman" minding her place, then she wouldn't hook up with Anakin, and he would be Ultimate Sith Slayer because he wouldn't be distracted by the love of a woman.

Now add that the only female Jedi with a speaking part in the PT was Jocasta Nu, who fit safely into "harmless old crone" because she provided nothing of use.

Yeah, Lucas has some issues here.  And it's a bit like the Buddhist monks of Edo Japan who saw women as ritually impure and unclean, something that was an annoying distraction to good, holy men. (Misogyny - not just for Abrahamic religions!)

Edited January 17, 2023 by Allronix

[Allronix]

The third and final strike was the slave army. As far as Lucas is concerned, he has this recurring thing that organic is superior to mechanical. See the whole deal with the Empire  - all shiny and chrome. And Vader, more machine than man.

(On a related note, while it was needed for Vader to survive Mustafar with horrible burns, the way it was handled was also a "Huh?!" as far as the Jedi compassion front. I could get it if Obi-Wan could not reach him or if it was a reasonable assumption that dude was dead, but leaving him there to burn without putting out the flames or a mercy kill? Huh?)

So of course, Lucas Logic is that the clone soldiers are organic beings, which makes them okay for Jedi, but "not of woman born," which makes it not an issue about the WHY they were born (or maybe some weird ideal state...see his sexism problems above). Human enough for the organic Jedi to work with, as  compared to the technological droid army, but not human enough for the slavery issue to occur to him. And because of the slavery issue, Disney has to pile on increasingly convoluted bits like the control chips and go out of their way to show happy clone slaves...er, soldiers...serving their wonderful, benevolent overseers....er, Jedi.  And it's all the fault of those meenie Republic citizens who forced the poor widdle Jedi into taking care of their wonderful clones...

Uh. Yeah. Keep digging Lucas. Add this to Shimi's handling and I'd wonder if you also unironically sided with the South in a civil war film. 

Add this to the child soldier angle (the only time we see a youngling class in the PT, they are not studying meditation, or languages, or playing. They are training how to use a weapon that maims at best. They are training how to kill, and Lucas frames it as all cute and adorable), and I was pretty much ready to storm out and never even touch anything with the Star Wars label again.

Sadly, this colored my view of the OT. no longer did I see Obi-Wan as a benevolent teacher or Yoda as a wise and kindly old man.  Instead, I saw a pair of people who failed to turn Luke's dad into their fabled anti-Sith weapon, so they had to lie and manipulate the hell out of Luke to be that weapon instead. they didn't tell Luke not to go to Bespin out of concern for his safety, they just worried about the truth coming out. They weren't telling Luke "Hey, Han and Leia are soldiers and they know the risks. Don't make their sacrifice in vain," it was "If we toss Han under the bus, it's okay. He's nothing. Leia, more regrettable, but still okay. But if Luke doesn't have those messy friendships to distract him, he'll be more motivated to go and kill Sith and be completely loyal to us because he has nothing else. And hopefully, he never figures out we're setting him up on a wetworks op on his dad."

 

On 11/14/2021 at 9:40 PM, EAFSAMWISE said:

2) Thus, many Legends authors (their efforts culminating ultimately in games like Kotor and Swtor) sought to rectify this by in fact asserting an underlying notion woven throughout much of their literature and to an extent their games that Love is in fact not a wrong thing in itself but it's how one goes about Loving others and forming relationships with them.

KOTOR was what convinced me to give Star Wars another chance after being so disgusted with Lucas having the nerve to ask me to cheer on a faction of child soldiers and slaves.  That and Karen Traviss, take it as you will. Instead of trying to mitigate or apologize or hide the sheer "Wow, this is f---ed up!", they totally lean in and go in as hard as they can on the f---ed up. Whether it's the Clones understanding they're slaves and having an uneasy relationship with the Jedi while embracing the "third option" style Mandalorian. Or sympathetic Sith like Yuthura Ban, who does more to explain the Sith in six minutes than Lucas did in six movies. Or the sheer "how many levels of f---ed up can we put on one ship" that was KOTOR 2, or how no one really knew or cared about the difference between Jedi and Sith. Or how Kreia laid out a devastating case arguing the Force was anything but benevolent. 

Or SWTOR where we have Malgus "marrying" his sex slave, then killing her in her sickbed because some other sith pointed out she's a potential weakness. Or a Jedi purposefully inflating the crimes against the Bounty Hunter (who really is a nasty sort, but not quite THAT bad), or Nomen Karr hiding how screwed up he's become out of revenge, etc.  I mean, the Empire is a fascist, gas station toilet run by idiots and madmen, whose emperor is an omnicidal nutjob. Clearly the bad guys. The Jedi and the Republic are far better by comparison, but only by comparison.

[JakRoanin]

OMG Allronix! You wouldn't happen to remember a SilverSentinal21 from KOTORfanmedia would you? Still the same after all these years! LOL Well I haven't changed much either. I still cut Qui-Gon slack because the novels, comics, and TV shows all say he was going back for Shmi but Maul put a hole in his chest first. I still say GL makes no sense about the light and the dark, and Han shot first. But I also still believe that while their methods leave a lot to be desired the goals of the Jedi are worth getting to.

[Allronix]

Yup. Same old me. Used this handle for almost 30 years now and see little to no reason to change it. 

And yeah, the Expanded U did a lot to help rehab Qui-Gon (it also did a lot of things to not rehab the guy, see Jedi apprentice). It also softened the whole Shmi and Cleigg situation to something far less gross. 

And that's what I think Legends/Expanded U does best, because Lucas world-builds like a champ, yet leaves all these uncomfortable bits behind that make his heroes much less heroic. (His villains are always completely vile, so no worry about undue sympathy there)   When presented with this gap, you can either lean in to the messed up angle or you can try and step back and try to make it not as bad as it looks like with a good explanation. 

[JakRoanin]

I can't believe I have a fellow Kotorian around now. Coolies. I'm always going to look for the good in things first simply because I would have major sanity issues if I don't. Despite it all, I can't classify Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, and Yoda as evil because they truly wanted to do good, and loved people in spite of their own dogma. But Plo Koon came as close as possible to what a Jedi should be. Still, it would be wrong to condemn the Jedi for things beyond their control and there was plenty of that.