veronica (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aberration) wrote2020-01-01 06:25 pm
aberration) wrote2020-01-01 06:25 pm
my girl don't lie to me
aand because I got this done... Happy New Year!
Movies I've logged:
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (2019) ★★★★1/2
Parasite (2019) ★★★★1/2
Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) ★★
Frozen II (2019) ★★★
Love Actually (2003) ★★1/2
Knives Out (2019) (again) ★★★★1/2
A Christmas Story (1983) ★★★
Little Women (2019) ★★★★
Us (2019) ★★★★
Burning (2018) ★★★1/2
(I've also rewatched a lot of Star Wars which is logged but I'm not linking to it.)
And books I've finished recently –
Range of Ghosts -
I enjoyed reading this, but I really wanted to see a review from someone who wasn't white, and preferably was from among the Central Asian cultures/societies Bear adopts into this fantasy setting, but when I did that I basically found white people talking about Mongolians, so that worked out great.
The basic concept seems to be to write a fantasy world but base it in Vaguely Central Asia instead of Vaguely Europe. And I don't feel like I have the ability to... question how she did that, other than that sometimes she would take real world things and like... put them in weird places? Like we have the Uthman Caliphate and there was no real world Uthman Caliphate but there was a caliph named Uthman so. I was sometimes confused on how that was handled. And like maybe it's not great that the kind of Islam-adjacent-thing is where the bad people are, even if they're just one particular group who also happens to be part of the Islam-adjacent thing. I don't know it's a thing.
But I enjoyed the story and the character and a lot of the fantasy elements, especially the idea of the different places having a 'different sky' and Hrahima, I really like her a lot. And I'm now reading the sequel. I would just like. Others' opinions on it.
Last Train to Istanbul -
This is a fictionalized account of real life efforts by Turkish diplomats to help Jewish Turks and non-Turks escape Nazi-occupied France. Overall it was an interesting story, though I found the prose very workmanlike and sometimes kind of dull, and I don't know if that was the translation or not. I also generally felt like the main characters were interesting but the stories tended to take the simplest and generally most predictable routes possible, or sometimes bordered into disconcerting morality tales. Ultimately, I guess I probably would rather just read a nonfiction account of the real people. But it is an interesting story that I think works overall, and I did particularly like when Kulin tackled the contradictions in a cultural context like Turkey at this point in time, particularly in how the central family of the story hovered between progressive and cosmopolitan, and still in some instances clung to the comforting familiarity of the past, even to the point of tearing that family apart.
And the obligatory Star Wars reading –
Resistance Reborn -
So okay, there seem to be two kinds of Star Wars books at this point – those where the author is given pretty free rein to tell a story in this universe, and those where the author has been very clearly given a list of things to incorporate and also very strict parameters around the plot. And this is clearly of the latter mold, which isn't that surprising given that it's acting as a theoretical bridge between two major Star Wars episode-saga movies. Considering this overall, I'm starting to think that the reason I'm more and more preferring the smaller side properties to the bigger Star Wars vehicles is because I more often feel like I'm actually getting a story in those smaller properties, rather than a string of references with some action occasionally happening. But, regardless, with this book Roanhorse was pretty clearly given a framework and quite a few mandates and little room to really maneuver. But more than "Journey to The Rise of Skywalker", I'd call this book a 'follow-up/wrap-up on a bunch of side properties that have been floating around.'
So for your convenience if you haven't read every single property this book is apparently acting as a sort of wrap-up for, I'm going to summarize them to my knowledge. As a note, this contains spoilers for those properties:
- Norra Wexley and Wedge Antilles from Chuck Wendig's Aftermath trilogy – obviously Wedge is from the Original Trilogy, but he's also a secondary character in this series set after the Battle of Endor and I think culminating in the Battle of Jakku, which in the new canon is the decisive defeat of the Empire. Norra Wexley is "Snap" Wexley's mother (the pilot played in TFA and TROS by Greg Grunberg), and I haven't actually read the entire Aftermath trilogy but um, I'm guessing she ends up marrying Wedge.
- Snap, Karé, Suralinda and Black Squadron generally from the Poe Dameron comics – Poe's squad of Resistance pilots that the comics explain were out on a mission during The Last Jedi and so are all still alive and around. Suralinda actually began as a journalist who was investigating the Resistance and was ultimately recruited into it.
- Zay Versio and Shriv from Battlefront II - Shriv was a pilot in the Rebellion (and also a squadron leader, kind of contradicting how he's portrayed here) who along with Lando initially recruits the main characters of Battlefront II, Imperial special ops-turned-defectors Iden Versio and Del Meeko. Zay Versio is Iden and Del's daughter – bonus content for the game released after The Last Jedi shows Del and Iden being killed by the First Order, with Zay and Shriv narrowly escaping to join the Resistance.
- Ransolm Casterfo from the Leia-centered book Bloodline - Basically like it says in this book, Ransolm was a senator who worked closely with Leia to eventually uncover evidence of the First Order's rise, but he also publicly outed her as Darth Vader's daughter and was ultimately framed for the assassination of another senator and sent back to his home planet for trial and it looked like eventual execution.
Additionally, this book mentions aspects of other side properties, including shoutouts to Hera and Cham Syndulla and to Sabine Wren, and... I feel like others but I can't remember right now. If anything I'm surprised nothing from the Star Wars Resistance show got a mention that I recall.
On the other hand, this book really contains nothing to tie it in with TROS. It hints at nothing that happens in that movie, I can only imagine because what the actual final plot of TROS was not widely known among the people producing this content even pretty late into the process. By contrast, the book Leia of Alderaan was I believe marketed as a "Journey to The Last Jedi" book and contained two major TLJ-related elements, the Rebel base on Crait and the character Amilyn Holdo. And I know I've complained about books like this just containing a bunch of "little prequels," but in Leia of Alderaan I felt like Claudia Gray did a good job of incorporating those two elements in such a way that it just gave them more context rather than, say, being there in lieu of an actual story.
Regardless, there's nothing like this in Resistance Reborn, not even so much as an intro the jungle planet the Resistance eventually makes its base, or a mention of some of the new characters like um that slug or Dominic Monaghan (good riddance on that one tbh), or like idk a mention of how D'Acy is apparently queer especially given that there's a different queer couple in this book, or Poe's spice runner past in fact Poe continues to act like the kind of person that background makes no sense for but whatever, or I guess the real "spoilery" kinds of things but you know, would have actually been happening, like that Leia was trained as a Jedi and trains Rey. Nothing in this touches on anything in TROS. Which I guess is good if you're spoiler-phobic, idk, I just did like what Leia of Alderaan did by contrast.
The basic plot of this book is that what's left of the Resistance takes up temporary residence on Ryloth while trying to collect allies and finding that the First Order is and has been hunting down anyone they believe will be subversives/Resistance sympathizers. Three different groups led by Shriv, Poe, and Wedge/Norra go on missions, with Shriv's group going to… a planet I'm not looking up right now to salvage some more ships for the Resistance, and two others going to Corellia, which has been effectively occupied by the First Order. Poe's team is undercover attending a party where the host will be auctioning off a copy of the First Order's list of subversives, while Wedge/Norra's is going straight to the First Order prison facility to free those already captured, basically because they get a preview of the list and Leia recognizes that one of them is Casterfo and wants to save him. All three teams eventually get what they came for, and the Resistance is forced to evacuate Ryloth after the First Order attacks.
And this is all… fine, it just again feels very tightly controlled and not like it's allowed to be much of a story. And admittedly rescuing Ransolm Casterfo isn't like, high on my priorities of things I'd like to see Leia do (like if we're going to bring back Bloodline characters I want Greer Sonnel please and thank you), but I can also get why whoever is in control of this wanted some follow-up from Bloodline where Leia pretty much had to accept that this terrible, unfair thing was going to happen, so. And a lot of this book is also follow-up from TLJ for Poe, which is something that makes sense, even if I also felt like even in the context of this book it was a little rushed. Like there's basically one big scene where some of the Resistance are angry at Poe and then everyone has this kind of "I've also done bad things" moment and accepts it. I guess I just would have preferred something more like an arc culminating in a moment similar to the end of TLJ where Poe is faced with a difficult decision in leadership and we see how he's grown from his experiences. But I also get that options were limited!
But yeah, that's basically the book. It was fine. It was fine! Ryloth was fine. But I can't say I found it to be a fun story in itself, or that it had very much that really excited me. Just immediate aftermath of TLJ and for some reason follow-up on a bunch of other things I've consumed to um, show editorial remembers them? I guess?
Anyway misc. thoughts:
- Rey's characterization is weird and not good but Rey's also barely in this so it doesn't really matter. But Roanhorse writes Rey like this skittish little kitten and Rey never acts like that so I just don't know where that was coming from at all.
- I was fine with Rey being sidelined in this given that I assumed she'd be doing a lot in TROS (which… uh… sure…), but given how little TROS gave Finn or Rose to do, I wish they'd been given more here.
- I did really love the character beat of Poe showing Finn how to tie a tie. That was probably the most excited I got in this entire book. That kind of thing is my fanservice. Like. That Finn doesn't know how to tie a tie. Not the Finn/Poe. Though also sure the Finn/Poe.
- I did also laugh a lot at Maz having created this suave, handsome criminal character and Poe not getting that it was very obviously meant for him, but. That was also before TROS.
- I was talking tovaradia about a later scene where Finn and Poe are at the fancy party they're infiltrating and Finn's enjoying the seafood and Poe makes a comment about having a bad memory about seafood and I was like "is that from something I'm forgetting" and she suggested it was just a joke about eating bad seafood and I felt stupid. Not everything has to be a reference to something.
- There were also so many characters-from-other-things in this that I felt that with every character I had this uncertainty over whether this was someone Roanhorse created or was from a property I just hadn't read. Though UGH I went and did look up the planet Shriv's team went to and it's Bracca which is the planet your player character is first working on in Jedi Fallen Order which is a totally legit thing to do but also bLArGh just like give me a fucking map so I can track all this.
- Speaking of Shriv, this is me being like overly nerdy, but as I said the depiction of him as not having been a leader before was kind of weird to me because he was clearly a squad leader in Battlefront II, he referred to himself as "Danger Leader." And I'm probably only getting into this because Shriv was my favorite character in the game and… Roanhorse kind of gets his humor here, and I liked his banter with Zay, but it's just not quite right, and then the whole "he's never been a leader before" thing just struck me because I so vividly remembered his line about being a squadron leader. But then really his main role in the game was to undercut the drama of the game's main characters by being sarcastic so taking him out of that role probably had a toll.
- The other major storyline of this book follows a First Order officer-person named Winshurr Bratt, and his two subordinates Yama Dex and Monti Calay, both of whom eventually betray him. And I'd really like to show how Roanhorse writes her major fascist character to other Star Wars authors who seem to fall into admiring their badass fascist villains. She does a good job portraying Bratt as pathetic, weak, and violent, and I think in even tying those characteristics into the First Order ideology that he has subscribed to.
And because yet more Star Wars -
The Mandalorian -
I mean, by the end it was mostly… fine. I wish I were as excited about it as other people, but I mostly feel like I’m just watching for Baby Yoda moments.
I'll acknowledge one major thing: it's really hard for me to get into this loner self-sufficient man narrative at all. And yes I understand that it's a thing, it's just a narrative that I personally really do not like. I guess as a way to illustrate this – one thing I really like about noir as a genre is that it engages in this same sort of narrative of the self-sufficient man who only serves his own agenda, but either advertently or inadvertently often demonstrates the inherent lie in that. Noir detectives, as jaded and misanthropic as the often are, almost always rely on a network of informants and allies who vary in levels of trustworthiness. Contacts in the police and criminal underworlds, femme fatales and Girl Fridays – maybe it's the typical urban setting, but the "self-sufficient" man at the center of the story ultimately depends on a web of social connections. (And I'd guess I'd also argue here that the best noir is relationship-based – for instance, Double Indemnity's drama rests not really on the murder at its center, but on the relationships the protagonist has with his 'femme fatale' and work colleague.)
I think I'm less inclined toward Westerns because I think they tend to work harder to obscure the fact that the 'self-sufficient' man archetype is inevitably a lie. The irony is that the lie is plain in The Mandalorian as well – our "Mando" only survives with the assistance of other communities. But maybe because the 'bounty hunter' work apparently involves less following clues and evidence (even though… why doesn't it, except that somehow people constantly have homing devices leading straight to their targets because… what? How? Why? do some actual work bounty hunters!!!!!), these networks still kind of show up as asides. The Mandalorian community forges new armor for our Mando and helps him escape the Bounty Hunters Guild (though the guild… ends up super not caring about this anyway…), and at various points our Mando has allies who kind of… help him shoot things. But either because of the commitment to the lone-man Western archetype, or just not… being very good at it, the only real established relationship for the Mando is with Baby Yoda, and even that's a lot of Leaving The Baby In The Car or for some convenient Amy Sedaris babysitter to pick up.
I guess I also just still came away with the feeling that the show is walking on eggshells to not commit too hard to doing anything specific. There seems to have been some cataclysmic Imperial attack on Mandalorians during the Galactic Civil War, but the hints about that are really vague. Being a Mandalorian is a creed, not a race, which I can actually go along with fine under the assumption that the old Mandalorian Houses are just families who joined that "creed" earlier, and also I guess the pacifists are really super gone now. But even that's kind of ... super vague? What is that creed? Is it old or new? Don't take your helmet off, okay. (Also if it's a creed why does Baby Yoda seem to be the first non-human welcomed in I'm just saying.)
I don't know it's just these little tip-toe steps into doing something new and then right back to 'hey look it's X-wings don't you like X-wings' like yes I've seen X-wings thank you. That kind of thing is why what I most enjoyed in this show are only things I can really describe as little moments. Like:
- I liked that in the episode where they hide out on that planet with the villagers and fight off the AT-ST, the villagers caught these bright blue alien-looking prawns, and also I just liked the feel of the cantina in general. The actual plot of the episode was again pure D&D session but I just liked these small new touches that were elements I hadn't seen before.
- I generally really hated the Tatooine episode but I love love loved the sign language with Tusken Raiders scene
- Like forget that whole plot give me a 'Mando and Baby Yoda hang out with Tusken Raiders' episode
- I liked that the episode where they break into the New Republic prison vessel shows that the New Republic repurposed Imperial mouse droids. Though again I really didn't like the plot of that episode especially since it was literally the same plot as the Tatooine episode. Mando makes an alliance and that alliance betrays him and tries to steal Baby Yoda, that's it. I also really hated the ending of that prison vessel episode because it was like, Mando didn't really have any solid basis for thinking his old business associate was definitely going to kill him but he conveniently he was right which retroactively makes his actions in setting up said business associate to be killed justified.
Anyway, yeah, Mando always wins and outsmarts everyone and is Mysterious and Manly and doesn’t even get accused of being a Mary Sue over it, so that's nice.
And I'm not saying I needed a woman protagonist, but the treatment of women in this show… isn't great. Yeah, Cara Dune exists, but she doesn't really do that much besides action hero woman and being Mando's emotional translator that one time. And also reminding us that she was a Rebel Shock Trooper, I hadn't forgotten. There's potential for her but just… not very much is done with it. Though tbf that's not specific to her – like even with the Mando, the finale reveals that he was saved by a Mandalorian during presumably a droid attack in the Clone Wars and I'd already basically figured that out. It wasn't something that needed be to dragged out over this whole season, they could've fit a lot more in there or had fewer episodes. And like – I like Pedro Pascal! But I don't even know if that's him in the suit all the time, there's apparently an entire episode where it's not? So it's like, his character mostly ends up being action and then stoic voiceover. His best moments are when he's allowed to act like a kind of goofball human, like his yelling at Taika Waititi not to self-destruct in the pilot was pretty great (and that even came back in the end, yes, good job show) but there can be entire episodes where that doesn't happen at all.
Anyway, the Mandalorian Armor Forger Woman gets some big badass moment in the finale but like… presumably more Stormtroopers are going to keep coming, it doesn't really have much consequence. And everyone else falls neatly into Babysitter or Seductress. Which isn't meant to insult those characters, nor am I saying those kinds of roles are inherently bad (well… I mean I can love a good femme fatale but both Fennec and Xi'an were treated like crap), but it seems pretty clear the all-male writers of this show (or at least, only male writers were episode-credited) have a pretty narrow idea of the roles women can play. There's no reason why a woman can't teach the Mando how to ride a Blurrg or be the Bounty Hunter Guild Leader or an Imperial Moff or weird Werner Herzog Imperial dude but like. There's a reason it's not happening.
(Also what they did to Ming-Na was just plain insulting. And boring. And Amy Sedaris playing cards with her pit droids was pretty amazing until – yep she's just here to be babysitter, which in isolation isn't inherently bad but in the context of women generally on this show, not great. And I'll admit to having a bit of a sore spot when it comes to Twi'leks and loooool wow. I had this idea in my head that Xi'an and Qin are basically like the Twi'lek-stereotypes as portrayed in Imperial propaganda/media generally.)
So like… there's potential, I think it could be a cool story, though I'll freely admit to not really being fond of the underlying narrative it seems to want to evoke. But I also feel like it overall does little to challenge or expand the Star Wars universe and at its worst falls right back into 'string of references with some action' which I'm getting especially tired of. Maybe with no major movies on the horizon they'll get a bit braver, I don't know.
BUT – if you're going to introduce the darksaber, you have to bring in Sabine Wren. I don't make the rules this is just a fact. Don't take women's stuff and give it to men. If Mando basically gets Sabine's storyline but repackaged for him with no hint about her, I'm sure going to complain about it a lot. And the thing is it wouldn't actually be that hard to do this, I don't think? Tiya Sircar could totally play a live action Sabine! She's close enough in age to the I guess mid-20s Sabine would be at that point, and she's great, she could totally do it.
(and yes I know Mando has a name now okay I know it's ... Din. on the scale of one-syllable Star Wars names it's not my favorite, 2.5 Poe Damerons)
I had some further thoughts on TROS and the trilogy series as a whole, but I've set it aside for now because. meh. but it does have some funny galaxy brain comments so it'll be coming at some point.
Movies I've logged:
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (2019) ★★★★1/2
Parasite (2019) ★★★★1/2
Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) ★★
Frozen II (2019) ★★★
Love Actually (2003) ★★1/2
Knives Out (2019) (again) ★★★★1/2
A Christmas Story (1983) ★★★
Little Women (2019) ★★★★
Us (2019) ★★★★
Burning (2018) ★★★1/2
(I've also rewatched a lot of Star Wars which is logged but I'm not linking to it.)
And books I've finished recently –
Range of Ghosts -
I enjoyed reading this, but I really wanted to see a review from someone who wasn't white, and preferably was from among the Central Asian cultures/societies Bear adopts into this fantasy setting, but when I did that I basically found white people talking about Mongolians, so that worked out great.
The basic concept seems to be to write a fantasy world but base it in Vaguely Central Asia instead of Vaguely Europe. And I don't feel like I have the ability to... question how she did that, other than that sometimes she would take real world things and like... put them in weird places? Like we have the Uthman Caliphate and there was no real world Uthman Caliphate but there was a caliph named Uthman so. I was sometimes confused on how that was handled. And like maybe it's not great that the kind of Islam-adjacent-thing is where the bad people are, even if they're just one particular group who also happens to be part of the Islam-adjacent thing. I don't know it's a thing.
But I enjoyed the story and the character and a lot of the fantasy elements, especially the idea of the different places having a 'different sky' and Hrahima, I really like her a lot. And I'm now reading the sequel. I would just like. Others' opinions on it.
Last Train to Istanbul -
This is a fictionalized account of real life efforts by Turkish diplomats to help Jewish Turks and non-Turks escape Nazi-occupied France. Overall it was an interesting story, though I found the prose very workmanlike and sometimes kind of dull, and I don't know if that was the translation or not. I also generally felt like the main characters were interesting but the stories tended to take the simplest and generally most predictable routes possible, or sometimes bordered into disconcerting morality tales. Ultimately, I guess I probably would rather just read a nonfiction account of the real people. But it is an interesting story that I think works overall, and I did particularly like when Kulin tackled the contradictions in a cultural context like Turkey at this point in time, particularly in how the central family of the story hovered between progressive and cosmopolitan, and still in some instances clung to the comforting familiarity of the past, even to the point of tearing that family apart.
And the obligatory Star Wars reading –
Resistance Reborn -
So okay, there seem to be two kinds of Star Wars books at this point – those where the author is given pretty free rein to tell a story in this universe, and those where the author has been very clearly given a list of things to incorporate and also very strict parameters around the plot. And this is clearly of the latter mold, which isn't that surprising given that it's acting as a theoretical bridge between two major Star Wars episode-saga movies. Considering this overall, I'm starting to think that the reason I'm more and more preferring the smaller side properties to the bigger Star Wars vehicles is because I more often feel like I'm actually getting a story in those smaller properties, rather than a string of references with some action occasionally happening. But, regardless, with this book Roanhorse was pretty clearly given a framework and quite a few mandates and little room to really maneuver. But more than "Journey to The Rise of Skywalker", I'd call this book a 'follow-up/wrap-up on a bunch of side properties that have been floating around.'
So for your convenience if you haven't read every single property this book is apparently acting as a sort of wrap-up for, I'm going to summarize them to my knowledge. As a note, this contains spoilers for those properties:
- Norra Wexley and Wedge Antilles from Chuck Wendig's Aftermath trilogy – obviously Wedge is from the Original Trilogy, but he's also a secondary character in this series set after the Battle of Endor and I think culminating in the Battle of Jakku, which in the new canon is the decisive defeat of the Empire. Norra Wexley is "Snap" Wexley's mother (the pilot played in TFA and TROS by Greg Grunberg), and I haven't actually read the entire Aftermath trilogy but um, I'm guessing she ends up marrying Wedge.
- Snap, Karé, Suralinda and Black Squadron generally from the Poe Dameron comics – Poe's squad of Resistance pilots that the comics explain were out on a mission during The Last Jedi and so are all still alive and around. Suralinda actually began as a journalist who was investigating the Resistance and was ultimately recruited into it.
- Zay Versio and Shriv from Battlefront II - Shriv was a pilot in the Rebellion (and also a squadron leader, kind of contradicting how he's portrayed here) who along with Lando initially recruits the main characters of Battlefront II, Imperial special ops-turned-defectors Iden Versio and Del Meeko. Zay Versio is Iden and Del's daughter – bonus content for the game released after The Last Jedi shows Del and Iden being killed by the First Order, with Zay and Shriv narrowly escaping to join the Resistance.
- Ransolm Casterfo from the Leia-centered book Bloodline - Basically like it says in this book, Ransolm was a senator who worked closely with Leia to eventually uncover evidence of the First Order's rise, but he also publicly outed her as Darth Vader's daughter and was ultimately framed for the assassination of another senator and sent back to his home planet for trial and it looked like eventual execution.
Additionally, this book mentions aspects of other side properties, including shoutouts to Hera and Cham Syndulla and to Sabine Wren, and... I feel like others but I can't remember right now. If anything I'm surprised nothing from the Star Wars Resistance show got a mention that I recall.
On the other hand, this book really contains nothing to tie it in with TROS. It hints at nothing that happens in that movie, I can only imagine because what the actual final plot of TROS was not widely known among the people producing this content even pretty late into the process. By contrast, the book Leia of Alderaan was I believe marketed as a "Journey to The Last Jedi" book and contained two major TLJ-related elements, the Rebel base on Crait and the character Amilyn Holdo. And I know I've complained about books like this just containing a bunch of "little prequels," but in Leia of Alderaan I felt like Claudia Gray did a good job of incorporating those two elements in such a way that it just gave them more context rather than, say, being there in lieu of an actual story.
Regardless, there's nothing like this in Resistance Reborn, not even so much as an intro the jungle planet the Resistance eventually makes its base, or a mention of some of the new characters like um that slug or Dominic Monaghan (good riddance on that one tbh), or like idk a mention of how D'Acy is apparently queer especially given that there's a different queer couple in this book, or Poe's spice runner past in fact Poe continues to act like the kind of person that background makes no sense for but whatever, or I guess the real "spoilery" kinds of things but you know, would have actually been happening, like that Leia was trained as a Jedi and trains Rey. Nothing in this touches on anything in TROS. Which I guess is good if you're spoiler-phobic, idk, I just did like what Leia of Alderaan did by contrast.
The basic plot of this book is that what's left of the Resistance takes up temporary residence on Ryloth while trying to collect allies and finding that the First Order is and has been hunting down anyone they believe will be subversives/Resistance sympathizers. Three different groups led by Shriv, Poe, and Wedge/Norra go on missions, with Shriv's group going to… a planet I'm not looking up right now to salvage some more ships for the Resistance, and two others going to Corellia, which has been effectively occupied by the First Order. Poe's team is undercover attending a party where the host will be auctioning off a copy of the First Order's list of subversives, while Wedge/Norra's is going straight to the First Order prison facility to free those already captured, basically because they get a preview of the list and Leia recognizes that one of them is Casterfo and wants to save him. All three teams eventually get what they came for, and the Resistance is forced to evacuate Ryloth after the First Order attacks.
And this is all… fine, it just again feels very tightly controlled and not like it's allowed to be much of a story. And admittedly rescuing Ransolm Casterfo isn't like, high on my priorities of things I'd like to see Leia do (like if we're going to bring back Bloodline characters I want Greer Sonnel please and thank you), but I can also get why whoever is in control of this wanted some follow-up from Bloodline where Leia pretty much had to accept that this terrible, unfair thing was going to happen, so. And a lot of this book is also follow-up from TLJ for Poe, which is something that makes sense, even if I also felt like even in the context of this book it was a little rushed. Like there's basically one big scene where some of the Resistance are angry at Poe and then everyone has this kind of "I've also done bad things" moment and accepts it. I guess I just would have preferred something more like an arc culminating in a moment similar to the end of TLJ where Poe is faced with a difficult decision in leadership and we see how he's grown from his experiences. But I also get that options were limited!
But yeah, that's basically the book. It was fine. It was fine! Ryloth was fine. But I can't say I found it to be a fun story in itself, or that it had very much that really excited me. Just immediate aftermath of TLJ and for some reason follow-up on a bunch of other things I've consumed to um, show editorial remembers them? I guess?
Anyway misc. thoughts:
- Rey's characterization is weird and not good but Rey's also barely in this so it doesn't really matter. But Roanhorse writes Rey like this skittish little kitten and Rey never acts like that so I just don't know where that was coming from at all.
- I was fine with Rey being sidelined in this given that I assumed she'd be doing a lot in TROS (which… uh… sure…), but given how little TROS gave Finn or Rose to do, I wish they'd been given more here.
- I did really love the character beat of Poe showing Finn how to tie a tie. That was probably the most excited I got in this entire book. That kind of thing is my fanservice. Like. That Finn doesn't know how to tie a tie. Not the Finn/Poe. Though also sure the Finn/Poe.
- I did also laugh a lot at Maz having created this suave, handsome criminal character and Poe not getting that it was very obviously meant for him, but. That was also before TROS.
- I was talking to
varadia about a later scene where Finn and Poe are at the fancy party they're infiltrating and Finn's enjoying the seafood and Poe makes a comment about having a bad memory about seafood and I was like "is that from something I'm forgetting" and she suggested it was just a joke about eating bad seafood and I felt stupid. Not everything has to be a reference to something.- There were also so many characters-from-other-things in this that I felt that with every character I had this uncertainty over whether this was someone Roanhorse created or was from a property I just hadn't read. Though UGH I went and did look up the planet Shriv's team went to and it's Bracca which is the planet your player character is first working on in Jedi Fallen Order which is a totally legit thing to do but also bLArGh just like give me a fucking map so I can track all this.
- Speaking of Shriv, this is me being like overly nerdy, but as I said the depiction of him as not having been a leader before was kind of weird to me because he was clearly a squad leader in Battlefront II, he referred to himself as "Danger Leader." And I'm probably only getting into this because Shriv was my favorite character in the game and… Roanhorse kind of gets his humor here, and I liked his banter with Zay, but it's just not quite right, and then the whole "he's never been a leader before" thing just struck me because I so vividly remembered his line about being a squadron leader. But then really his main role in the game was to undercut the drama of the game's main characters by being sarcastic so taking him out of that role probably had a toll.
- The other major storyline of this book follows a First Order officer-person named Winshurr Bratt, and his two subordinates Yama Dex and Monti Calay, both of whom eventually betray him. And I'd really like to show how Roanhorse writes her major fascist character to other Star Wars authors who seem to fall into admiring their badass fascist villains. She does a good job portraying Bratt as pathetic, weak, and violent, and I think in even tying those characteristics into the First Order ideology that he has subscribed to.
And because yet more Star Wars -
The Mandalorian -
I mean, by the end it was mostly… fine. I wish I were as excited about it as other people, but I mostly feel like I’m just watching for Baby Yoda moments.
I'll acknowledge one major thing: it's really hard for me to get into this loner self-sufficient man narrative at all. And yes I understand that it's a thing, it's just a narrative that I personally really do not like. I guess as a way to illustrate this – one thing I really like about noir as a genre is that it engages in this same sort of narrative of the self-sufficient man who only serves his own agenda, but either advertently or inadvertently often demonstrates the inherent lie in that. Noir detectives, as jaded and misanthropic as the often are, almost always rely on a network of informants and allies who vary in levels of trustworthiness. Contacts in the police and criminal underworlds, femme fatales and Girl Fridays – maybe it's the typical urban setting, but the "self-sufficient" man at the center of the story ultimately depends on a web of social connections. (And I'd guess I'd also argue here that the best noir is relationship-based – for instance, Double Indemnity's drama rests not really on the murder at its center, but on the relationships the protagonist has with his 'femme fatale' and work colleague.)
I think I'm less inclined toward Westerns because I think they tend to work harder to obscure the fact that the 'self-sufficient' man archetype is inevitably a lie. The irony is that the lie is plain in The Mandalorian as well – our "Mando" only survives with the assistance of other communities. But maybe because the 'bounty hunter' work apparently involves less following clues and evidence (even though… why doesn't it, except that somehow people constantly have homing devices leading straight to their targets because… what? How? Why? do some actual work bounty hunters!!!!!), these networks still kind of show up as asides. The Mandalorian community forges new armor for our Mando and helps him escape the Bounty Hunters Guild (though the guild… ends up super not caring about this anyway…), and at various points our Mando has allies who kind of… help him shoot things. But either because of the commitment to the lone-man Western archetype, or just not… being very good at it, the only real established relationship for the Mando is with Baby Yoda, and even that's a lot of Leaving The Baby In The Car or for some convenient Amy Sedaris babysitter to pick up.
I guess I also just still came away with the feeling that the show is walking on eggshells to not commit too hard to doing anything specific. There seems to have been some cataclysmic Imperial attack on Mandalorians during the Galactic Civil War, but the hints about that are really vague. Being a Mandalorian is a creed, not a race, which I can actually go along with fine under the assumption that the old Mandalorian Houses are just families who joined that "creed" earlier, and also I guess the pacifists are really super gone now. But even that's kind of ... super vague? What is that creed? Is it old or new? Don't take your helmet off, okay. (Also if it's a creed why does Baby Yoda seem to be the first non-human welcomed in I'm just saying.)
I don't know it's just these little tip-toe steps into doing something new and then right back to 'hey look it's X-wings don't you like X-wings' like yes I've seen X-wings thank you. That kind of thing is why what I most enjoyed in this show are only things I can really describe as little moments. Like:
- I liked that in the episode where they hide out on that planet with the villagers and fight off the AT-ST, the villagers caught these bright blue alien-looking prawns, and also I just liked the feel of the cantina in general. The actual plot of the episode was again pure D&D session but I just liked these small new touches that were elements I hadn't seen before.
- I generally really hated the Tatooine episode but I love love loved the sign language with Tusken Raiders scene
- Like forget that whole plot give me a 'Mando and Baby Yoda hang out with Tusken Raiders' episode
- I liked that the episode where they break into the New Republic prison vessel shows that the New Republic repurposed Imperial mouse droids. Though again I really didn't like the plot of that episode especially since it was literally the same plot as the Tatooine episode. Mando makes an alliance and that alliance betrays him and tries to steal Baby Yoda, that's it. I also really hated the ending of that prison vessel episode because it was like, Mando didn't really have any solid basis for thinking his old business associate was definitely going to kill him but he conveniently he was right which retroactively makes his actions in setting up said business associate to be killed justified.
Anyway, yeah, Mando always wins and outsmarts everyone and is Mysterious and Manly and doesn’t even get accused of being a Mary Sue over it, so that's nice.
And I'm not saying I needed a woman protagonist, but the treatment of women in this show… isn't great. Yeah, Cara Dune exists, but she doesn't really do that much besides action hero woman and being Mando's emotional translator that one time. And also reminding us that she was a Rebel Shock Trooper, I hadn't forgotten. There's potential for her but just… not very much is done with it. Though tbf that's not specific to her – like even with the Mando, the finale reveals that he was saved by a Mandalorian during presumably a droid attack in the Clone Wars and I'd already basically figured that out. It wasn't something that needed be to dragged out over this whole season, they could've fit a lot more in there or had fewer episodes. And like – I like Pedro Pascal! But I don't even know if that's him in the suit all the time, there's apparently an entire episode where it's not? So it's like, his character mostly ends up being action and then stoic voiceover. His best moments are when he's allowed to act like a kind of goofball human, like his yelling at Taika Waititi not to self-destruct in the pilot was pretty great (and that even came back in the end, yes, good job show) but there can be entire episodes where that doesn't happen at all.
Anyway, the Mandalorian Armor Forger Woman gets some big badass moment in the finale but like… presumably more Stormtroopers are going to keep coming, it doesn't really have much consequence. And everyone else falls neatly into Babysitter or Seductress. Which isn't meant to insult those characters, nor am I saying those kinds of roles are inherently bad (well… I mean I can love a good femme fatale but both Fennec and Xi'an were treated like crap), but it seems pretty clear the all-male writers of this show (or at least, only male writers were episode-credited) have a pretty narrow idea of the roles women can play. There's no reason why a woman can't teach the Mando how to ride a Blurrg or be the Bounty Hunter Guild Leader or an Imperial Moff or weird Werner Herzog Imperial dude but like. There's a reason it's not happening.
(Also what they did to Ming-Na was just plain insulting. And boring. And Amy Sedaris playing cards with her pit droids was pretty amazing until – yep she's just here to be babysitter, which in isolation isn't inherently bad but in the context of women generally on this show, not great. And I'll admit to having a bit of a sore spot when it comes to Twi'leks and loooool wow. I had this idea in my head that Xi'an and Qin are basically like the Twi'lek-stereotypes as portrayed in Imperial propaganda/media generally.)
So like… there's potential, I think it could be a cool story, though I'll freely admit to not really being fond of the underlying narrative it seems to want to evoke. But I also feel like it overall does little to challenge or expand the Star Wars universe and at its worst falls right back into 'string of references with some action' which I'm getting especially tired of. Maybe with no major movies on the horizon they'll get a bit braver, I don't know.
BUT – if you're going to introduce the darksaber, you have to bring in Sabine Wren. I don't make the rules this is just a fact. Don't take women's stuff and give it to men. If Mando basically gets Sabine's storyline but repackaged for him with no hint about her, I'm sure going to complain about it a lot. And the thing is it wouldn't actually be that hard to do this, I don't think? Tiya Sircar could totally play a live action Sabine! She's close enough in age to the I guess mid-20s Sabine would be at that point, and she's great, she could totally do it.
(and yes I know Mando has a name now okay I know it's ... Din. on the scale of one-syllable Star Wars names it's not my favorite, 2.5 Poe Damerons)
I had some further thoughts on TROS and the trilogy series as a whole, but I've set it aside for now because. meh. but it does have some funny galaxy brain comments so it'll be coming at some point.