The Dark Side (permanent post)

[annathecrow]

Welcome to the Dark Side. This post’s comment section is dedicated to all the angry, inflammatory, defamatory and otherwise outright negative things you might want to express. Not that saying negative things isn’t allowed in the weekly chat corners, but… you know how you sometimes just Have Thoughts about something, and you don’t feel like you can talk about it because everyone around you seems to love it? Those go here.

 

Some rules:

• No personal attacks.
• If you don’t want people replying to you, mention it in the comment.
• Follow the general comm rules.
• …that’s it, I think.

 

Comments

[annathecrow]

That's a really thoughtful look at Ben Solo as a character, and one that I like a lot. The idea that Leia and Han (and to a degree Luke) messed up a kid is not far from probability, given their lives.

I think Ben could have been a really interesting character, and I do think Adam Driver was very good in the movies, I just... I don't like how his story was executed, and very viscerally dislike the whole relationship between him and Rey. I know some people like it, and I understand it to a certain degree, but for me... nnnnnnno. Nope. Nein.

It's kind of annoying in a way, because had they written Rey and Ben as platonic or sibling-like (which would have been an amazing way to highlight that "failed parenting" angle IMO), I'd like Ben Solo as a character so much more. There is a lot broken about the Sequels, but this was one of my biggest hurts.

(Also, as fleurviolette said, it's alright to have different opinions! I know so much of my views are completely subjective, so it follows that someone else will have a dramatically different experience. Sometimes it's a mindfuck, sure, but being able to understand relativity of opinion is SO valuable - one of the things that fandom-done-right can bring to the world. *steps off her soapbox*)

[fleurviolette]

Hmm, I think the whole implication of Han and Leia not being together or failing their kid, as well as Luke’s Jedi Academy going down in flames (meta wise, Mara Jade and Ben Skywalker, his own family were ‘erased’ from Disney canon) didn’t sit well with some fans.
Even the characters have flaws and their lives are hectic, but some fans still highly admire them and to them, they represent the best of the best.
Personally I wouldn’t want to imagine my favorite canon characters fail and give up on things.

I’m curious about your thoughts on New Jedi Order? The series focuses on the next generation of Skywalker-Solos but it isn’t completely happy either.

Also, that ship, imo, was one of the worst aspects of the sequels. Meanwhile Rey and Finn had good chemistry but sadly he was sidelined and she was propped up as a ‘Mary Sue’. :/

[sathari]

The idea that Leia and Han (and to a degree Luke) messed up a kid is not far from probability, given their lives.

Thank you SO MUCH for this. I mean... hell, I've said on here before that I hate Thrawn, who is apparently a character with enough of a fanbase that he got ported into the new EU when Mara Jade got dumped, so I am entirely with the program about people not liking Ben Solo qua Ben Solo. But the idea that Han and Leia would absolutely have been great parents--- like, on the one hand, Zahn's sequel trilogy gives them seven years out from the Battle of Endor to have worked themselves into less "Battle couple whose ability to communicate when they're not in combat all too closely resembles John Gottman's Four Horseman of the [Relationship] Apocalypse" and more "Yes, we still spar verbally with each other but we also understand each other and we can be chill together when we need to be", and that makes good sense! (To say nothing, nothing at all, of all of the larger family and galaxy-wide issues they need to figure out, like the destruction of Leia's entire homeworld and by extension the entire cultural framework into which she'd grown up expecting to bring any kid she might have, and the whole entire "Vader is Luke and Leia's father" and all the baggage that would have for her around parenting. Never mind the larger galactic scene.)

But the new-ST timeline has Ben being born the year after the Battle of Endor... and there is just about no way that was going to end well; there was just not enough time for them to sort themselves out with each other enough. And I said elsethread that I actually kind of love that a major canon, especially one that I love, embraced a storyline of "being popular characters in a beloved pairing does not always and ever make you capable of parenting in every possible situation," because I've been waiting for that storyline for a VERY long time.

And with Luke--- omg, clear back in Zahn's sequel trilogy (I will not call it the Thrawn trilogy, see above) a huge part of his character arc was his concerns about his teaching ability and even his concern that Leia would fall to the Dark side because of it, based on what happened to their father under Obi-wan's teaching. And, NGL, I think that was not just good characterization for Luke as a particular character, but also a really important larger theme: that just being epic-class god-tier mode at a given thing does NOT mean you are equally good at teaching it. (A real-world parallel to one of Luke's own demonstrated god-tier mode skills, namely piloting, is on point: the highest level of license is "instructor", meaning you don't just know how to do the thing, you know how to figure out where other people are relative to being able to do the thing and then help them learn how to do it, or do it better.)

And I think the reason I'm particularly queasy about the one particular fannish narrative that is basically "we love some combination of Han, Luke, and/or Leia, and so they MUST be great parents and/or teachers and so it is basically the fault of their ingrate of a child that he is not X, Y, and Z"... is that Life too often imitates Art about that kind of thing, in various ways, whether it's pushing people into having spouses/children they don't want or blaming kids for their family's problems (and worse).

(I may feel particularly strongly about this in Star Wars, specifically, because I remember reading Zahn's sequel trilogy when it came out and I basically came out of it feeling like I would be terrible at being a Jedi as Luke wanted them to be, like, I would last about five minutes before I went looking for a Sith temple to pledge myself to, and that this was a failing on my part--- and this was even with Luke admitting to his own inadequacies as a teacher! And I kind of feel like Luke's arc with both Ben and Rey in the new-ST is vindication for teenage!me.) (The whole non-emotion thing was what got me... and then I later discovered the real-world concept of positive disintegration and fantasized about setting up a rogue Force order that involved emotional intensity as the key to ethics rather than the root of evil, but I can be really nerdy sometimes.)

As far as the Ben/Rey ship... I have a response that... is sort of adjacent or maybe orthogonal to yours, maybe? Because I walked out of my first viewing of TFA thinking that I had finally gotten the femdom hero/malesub villain canon pairing that I had spent probably about two decades writing AUs of for like every fandom I was in at some point. It's basically the OTP of my heart! And I think I said somewhere else in this comm that the only thing that annoys me more about my OTP than the antis who insist that it's abusive is the subset of my fellow shippers who seem to want to prove them right. (Also, I feel rather strongly that Ben|Kylo/Rey in canon is more on the femdom/malesub side than otherwise, even if fandom has run in other directions with it. ;> ) But the way fandom tends to treat the ship, whether they love it or hate it, is probably one of my biggest hurts, next to the thing I said above about the parenting issue.

(I love your soapbox. I love that you have made this comm a place where this happens--- starwarsfruitbowl was very similar back in the day, and I am so glad you've stepped up to make another place like that for SW fans! Thank you!)

[annathecrow]

Han, Leia, Luke and parenting:

Good points. I haven't realized when Ben was supposed to have been born - if that's the case, it does make the whole ST situation that much more believable.

Although, I do understand why people don't like the idea of Han/Leia being bad parents, or Luke a bad teacher. It's realistic, yeah, but it's not something they want to watch. I'm like this with characters I really love as well - the only reason why I don't mind it in ST is because I'm not on that level with the OT trio. The role of fiction, wish-fulfilment, etc etc... I sense an interesting thought hiding in here about the need of a reader vs realism vs ideas what makes for a good story, but I don't have the brainspace to formulate it right now. *notes it for later*

Also, thanks for reading material: I've looked up the Four Horsemen and I've saved the positive disintegration to read later - I've read a few paragraphs from the intro and the outlined concepts are very intriguing.

Ben/Rey:

Thank you for the insight into your reasons for liking this ship. I consciously avoid it as much as I can, but the unintended consequence of that is that I have no idea why people ship it, aside from it being canon.

As for how people talk about it online... well. I have been openly and vocally bitter about it myself. It's really hard not to be, when it's something this emotionally charged for me. I do want to try harder to keep it to spaces where it belongs, though - my own blog, where it's only us haters, etc. Maybe having a specific fan in mind might help me reconsider before I spill my vitriol in shared spaces :)

The comm:

I'm glad to hear that the comm works for you! So far it's been going well, and I'll do my best for that to continue. I'm still nervous, we haven't really had any big storms yet - this thread is probably the closest I've seen to a conflict of opinions - but I do hope. (This year I've seen a beloved event go down in flames for completely baffling reasons. Fandom-done-wrong is a scary place.)

[fleurviolette]

Yeah, that’s probably why I’m still highly critical of the disney sequels on how the original characters were written ooc, it didn’t make any sense. Plus, the Disney ST was a copy + paste of the OT but written poorly.
It’s just weird that we didn’t see the trio reunited, which was a huge missed opportunity.

Side note: I have a friend who has delved more into the EU, and noted that some authors have written Luke as a bad mentor, that negates his core character from the original trilogy, which I found shocking. I’m not going to read those stories. Now if only I had that same luxury with TLJ, like if I had found out that Luke was horribly treated in that story, I wouldn’t have watched it.

I sense an interesting thought hiding in here about the need of a reader vs realism vs ideas what makes for a good story

Oh definitely, some like the realism, and some read fiction to escape from the realism, among other things. Also add in there ideas that would make profit, because that would be another great discussion lol

[sathari]

Thank you again so much for your thoughtful replies, and this comm in general!

Han, Luke, Leia, and parenting:

It's kind of awesome the point you made about people's attachment to characters and how it affects what they want to see them do--- this goes right back to the point you made in your first comment here about the whole "Babies ever after" thing. Because it's... actually kind of wish-fulfillment for me personally to see Luke, Han and Leia, who are characters I grew up loving, be bad at parenting and teaching! I'm positively giddy at a story where those aren't "just basic adulthood"/ entry-level humaning skills, and how people who can do certain things really well can't do other things that are, arguably, very different skillsets well. And it does go back to my frustration with the "Babies ever after"/ "rocks fall, everyone breeds" trope and for that matter the times people try to make Life imitate Art about it.

And on the linked/referenced material: Oh, no, I think I just offered up a real-time example of what I mean about Luke's teaching skills in my own behavior, because that positive-disintegration link is probably not the best introductory piece to the concept in existence! :{ (Comprehensive and arguably authoritative, probably; intro to concept, ah, not so much.) This or this might be better as an introduction.

Ben/Rey:

Thanks for your willingness to hear me out! And, on the flip side, when I saw the direction the fandom was going with it, I probably should have done more to "be the change I wish to see in fandom" and written more femdom/malesub fic and meta for the pairing in places other people could see it, instead of slinking off in resignation as ~traditional gender roles~ reared their ugly head regardless of what I at least was seeing on the screen. And on the flip side, I could totally get behind platonic bromance Ben/Rey stories--- I mean, I generally write him as being bromantic with Phasma and/or Rose, so "Ben has one or more women BFFs" is absolutely a thing I can see. (And on yet another flip side, it took until TROS for me to see Finn and Rey's relationship as anything but a hot mess in which he treats her as an object to be dragged around and "saved" whether or not she actually needs it and she has to lie to him about her awesomeness. I get why anyone would want to see an interracial couple succeed, but to me that means the writers need to up their game as to how they put that on the screen. In contrast, I love Finn and Rose, because they seem to be pretty able to treat each other pretty well as equals... and, okay, maybe my love for femdom/malesub is showing, because if anyone's doing the "grab and drag and save your partner" thing more, it's definitely Rose. And the two of them and Poe together show the potential for awesome brainstorming dynamics! On which note, I hated Rose's sidelining in TROS with a passion.)

The comm:

Seriously, I'm impressed with what you've made here so far. And, oh, yeah, when fandom goes wrong, it can go very, very wrong.

[fleurviolette]

We definitely have different definitions of wish fulfillment lol

Initially I shipped Finnrey after watching TFA. I liked the fire forged friends potentially turning into a romance based on their friendship later on. One of the biggest mistakes in TLJ was separating the two. And in TROP (lol rise of Palpatine) definitely Finn was sidelined while Rey turned into all the Jedi for some reason. That last movie was an ooc mess, (Poe being retconned to a spice dealer from being the pilot and son of Rebel veterans was pretty racist.) even tho I liked the parts that retconned TLJ regarding Luke.

Yeaaa I didn’t like R*ylo to begin with because I thought their dynamic was abusive and creepy from the start. It definitely did not help that a few obsessive shippers took it too far by harassing the actors and other fans on social media.

[sathari]

Yes, indeed--- I've been wanting even one story about how not everyone is going to be good at parenting, much less enjoy it, and except for one quasi-throwaway line by a minor character in a Richard North Patterson novel about how she loved her prospective children too much to inflict the kind of mother she'd be on them, nada. And then suddenly it is right there up on the screen in the fandom that's been the fandom of my heart for my whole life, practically, and I am just like, "There. There. Just because we like people or characters and just because they are epic at one thing does not make them good at this whole other skillset." (And then a whole chunk of fandom went and treated Ben like an Identified Patient. Sigh.)

Honestly, Finnrey trips a whole lot more of my personal cues for both racism and sexism than anything involving Ben and Rey.

And on the subject of Ben and Rey, do you mind if I ask what you think Anakin's relationship with his surviving family would have been like if he'd lived after ROTJ? Because... for me, I think that really did influence a lot of how I think about Ben and Rey, and the assumptions I went into the ST trilogy with about how relationships in the series work. I mean, I personally don't think that any post-ROTJ Skywalker family dinners where redeemed!Anakin was present would involve blaster shots, torture, and dismemberment (like the one they had at Bespin did) so I approached Ben and Rey with the same attitude--- not least because he's arguably less worse to her than his grandfather was to Luke, Han, and Leia--- and he'd been explicitly set up as wanting to follow his grandfather's legacy, which not only includes the redemption arc but turning your cape for the woman you love, it's just that Ben's turn would be in the other direction. So when I see fans in general assuming that Ben's behavior to Rey wouldn't change with a redemption arc, I... just wonder what they thought a post-ROTJ Anakin's relationship with his family would be like?

[fleurviolette]

Just because we like people or characters and just because they are epic at one thing does not make them good at this whole other skillset.

I agree with that statement. People have skills and flaws, and so will characters. With that said, people will idealize their favorite characters regardless of those flaws, because it’s fiction. Characters mean a lot in different ways to many different people, if that makes sense. Personally, I’d rather see Leia able to balance her work and her family life well. Also, I like to see Luke balance his efforts to rebuild the Jedi without repeating the mistakes of the old order, and being happy with Mara Jade, thus with Ben Skywalker along the way. (Yeah and in that timeline, Ben will become an older brother to his younger siblings lol)

Regarding Finnrey, I initially liked the ship before TLJ derailed my fannish interest in Star Wars. I’ll just say that I disagree with your statement, and leave it at that.

I have not thought of Disney Sequels!Ben at all, or Rey. Definitely not them together. (This convo is probably the most I’ve ever talked about him lol) I mainly recognize “Ben” Kenobi from the original saga, and Ben Skywalker from the classic Expanded Universe.

I imagine Leia has an understandably difficult time accepting or forgiving Anakin for what he did to her as Darth Vader, among other things, but gradually, she at least acknowledges him as her father, which eventually leads to letting go of her anger to forgive him. Leia of course has a compassionate heart like Luke, she’s set up more of a realist with a strong exterior. (Meanwhile, Luke shows his compassion more, he’s more like Padme in that sense.)

Now, it would be very interesting if Padme survived.