Entries tagged with canon: sequel trilogy

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Skywalkers Ruin Everything?

Earlier this week, I read a joke on tumblr about how the Skywalkers were responsible for everything wrong with the GFFA. But, are they? It's an easy assumption to make. They are the main characters of the trilogies, after all, but let us examine the evidence.

To the meta!

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Finn's style in The Rise of Skywalker and Its Significance

This may seem like a small detail, but I'm excited and emotional about the fact that Finn's hair is longer in TROS and he is otherwise developing his own distinctive style. It shows how he is growing out of the long shadow of the First Order's brainwashing and is becoming his own person, and implies that the Stormtrooper program itself--indeed, all attempts to turn humans into unthinking machines--is ultimately a failure. I find that to be a tremendously positive and life-affirming message.

Link to full meta

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Vice-Admiral Holdo and the Importance of Costuming

I recently came across this Hollywood Reporter interview with the costume designer for The Last Jedi. Here's the bit I want to talk about:

One of the film’s most feminine looks was a draped, cape-back jersey gown worn by Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern).

I thought when I read the script that Holdo would be wearing a uniform, so I did some uniform designs and showed them to Rian and he said, "Oh no, no, no, no. She’s flirting with Oscar Isaacs’ character, I don’t want her to be in a uniform, I want her to be unique and almost balletic." He said, "I’d like to see her body and her body language, and her silhouette, and have her be more feminine." So I started thinking about feminine balletic design, and something kind of Greek, which made me start thinking about jersey, and then I started thinking about Madame Gres. So that’s where that came from.

On to the meta

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Kylo Ren: Mentally ill or just entitled?

Kylo Ren/Ben Solo is often held up in fandom as an example of a mentally ill abuse survivor whose prospect redemption is said to be an inspiration and hope for fans who are mentally ill and/or have survived abuse. His bouts of rage seem to be a major basis for this assertion, with the reasoning being that no one would be that irrationally angry if they were sane/neurotypical. His uncontrolled temper, these fans say, must be a sign of trauma, or borderline personality disorder, or some other neurodivergence.

Or maybe it's a sign of a deeply entitled and abusive person?

Link to full text (CW abuse, trauma, Nazis, misogyny, suicide mention)

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Could be wicked and wouldn't

“I wouldn't want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I'd like it if he could be wicked and wouldn't.”

This quote from L.M. Montgomery's Anne of the Island sums up my feelings about Finn, marriage part very much included. He tends to get portrayed as either this hopelessly good, nice dear who couldn't hurt a fly or a ruthless killer who turned on his former comrades without a second thought, but the character as presented in canon is neither. He is good and conscientious not because he couldn't be any other way but because he actively fought to be.

That's another way he and Kylo Ren are foils. The former Ben Solo was brought up to be a protector and has capacity for good (+ gets a fuck tonne of credit for it despite never acting on it</salt>), while the former FN-2187 was brought up to violence and has the capacity to be evil. Both men chose in the opposite directions, and their choices and not their upbringing are what would come to define them.

Finn's subversive decency