@cornerbackcastiel replied to your post “So I just saw The Last Jedi.  I liked it a lot, personally. I…”

As I just walked out of the theatre as well, I’m excited to see your thoughts! 🙂

Oh man I don’t even know where to start, honestly! I’m still processing most of it (and this is after spending hours last night discussing it with my giant nerdy brother.) Uhmmm, spoilers below the cut I guess. 

I really liked the character development we got from this film, honestly. The stuff with Poe and Holdo was well done and allowed him to grow into the leader we’re probably going to see him become in ep 9. Also I loved watching his flying in this movie. Rouge One was the first time I’ve ever seen a space battle that I was 100% interested in and this outdid that imo. And! Holy crap! The visual of Holdo flying the cruiser through the star destroyer?! Killed me! So gorgeous! But I loved the lesson Poe learned and how that was really clear at the end when his mission was not to fight and die but get the rest of the rebellion to safety. 

I really loved seeing Luke Skywalker again. My brother has some issues with his whole… fucking up royally thing and I get that completely but I also think it kinda worked. Like, imo, the idea that if you built up a character as The Good Guy and A Legend that tends to go to a person’s head and they can wind up screwing the pooch. I mean, to me, the whole thing between Luke and Ben is like a microcosm of the Jedi Order and the Sith. The Jedi create their own problems b/c they’re The Good Guys and offer no solutions for dealing with potential darkness other than like.. killing it or kicking it out. (That’s how you get Sith lords, guys.) So like, I get why people are upset by it with the whole “Luke Skywalker would never” thing which I do understand but I actually don’t think it’s too far out of the realm of possibility. 

Rose was adorable and I loved her. She was kind and badass and self-less when need be but wasn’t going to stand behind sacrifices that didn’t really need to be made. (I really didn’t want to see Finn die.) I did think the romance between her and Finn was a little… meh but it didn’t make me super mad or anything. It was just… meh. The Casino stuff dragged a bit but I also liked that they brought up the war machine and how when it comes to war profiteering there are people who play both sides. That was kind of important I thought. 

I still love Rey. She’s a little up in the air for me in terms of what she’s going to do and how she’s going to fit. Like, don’t get me wrong, I get that she’s the light side character and she’s gonna defeat the evil and all but I’m not sure how and where we go with that based on what this movie just told us, you know? Like, the Jedi kinda sucked at their job so we need something else to balance the force. I mean, if this means grey Jedi I’m all over it like white on rice and I will die happy, but if not it’s kinda… why? Why have that whole thing about dark and light and balance and all that if you’re just gonna do more of the same in the end. I dunno. I will hold out until the final ep to talk about that. 

Hux is a fucking snake and he’s gonna be a big problem in ep 9. Mark my words. 

Okay so here’s the part I lose a bunch of people. I love Ben Solo. Like, maybe it’s the soft squishy part inside me that loves villains or maybe it’s be possibility that he could be saved from his own inner darkness, but I just love the character. He’s fascinating to me and I really feel bad for the guy. The part where he killed Snoke and then he and Rey teamed up to fight the guards was so fucking badass and I wanted to scream b/c holy shit!!! Yes?!?!?! It was fun to watch and I wanted sooo badly for him to just decide he was done with it. (I mean, I think he is as it is with the whole “no jedi, no sith, no first order, no rebellion” thing, but he’s got a ways to go still if he gets to join the right side.) It will be interesting to see what happens in the next movie b/c I personally don’t think he could lead his way out of a wet paper bag and that Hux is going to use that to his advantage, but that’s just me. 

Okay and the shit with Luke at the end was so badass. I really loved what this movie did with the force and advancing what can be done with it. 

And obviously I loved looking at it. There were some down right beautiful shots and the colors were great and it was just… I really loved it and I don’t have all the words to describe why I loved the cinematography but I did. 

So those are my thoughts. My long, rambly thoughts lol. 

So I just saw The Last Jedi. 

I liked it a lot, personally. I definitely understand some of the complaints I’ve heard about it, though. But it was beautiful to look at, the space battles were great and I definitely have thoughts and opinions about it. 

So, overall, good movie going experience! 

”Every Jedi is a child his family decided they could live without” That line is so painful and interesting to me. Would you expand on why you think its heart of jedi tragedy?

notbecauseofvictories:

Full disclosure, I borrowed that line from Yoda: Dark Rendezvous—a book I have not read, but acknowledge because fallen Jedi Dooku telling Yoda that the Order is a fucked up institution that steals children and turns them into soldiers is something I can get behind. The full quote is: “Every Jedi is a child his parents decided they could live without. I wonder, sometimes, if that is what drives us, that first abandonment. We have a lot to prove.”

Listen. A lot of what Star Wars has to achieve is via shorthand—the whole canon is less than 20 hours, which means it has to communicate a complex world, plus plot, is a very abbreviated way. Which is why the Empire borrows the design and aesthetic of fascist dictatorships, and why the Jedi Order steals children. They’re very simple ways of communicating, “this is really fucked up, we can’t show you the extent of how fucked-up it is, but trust us. it’s real fucked.”

Obviously, the reason that the Jedi Order is fucked is shown to us in real time; they’re the primary agent of a pointless, reasonless war ordered by the galaxy’s elected body out of pure politics. (I will fight anyone who says the prequels have no political grounding, they are so early 2000s US of fucking A; george lucas is a numbskull but he knew what he was about.) The Order is an institution, it is woven into the fabric of the galaxy, such that Qui-Gon never thinks twice about Outer Rim slavery and Obi-Wan understands the role the Trade Federation plays in Galactic politics. It’s not the fact that nine-year-old Anakin is a child that keeps him from being indoctrinated into the huge, martial system; it’s that he’s too old for a child. They want someone more malleable.

(There’s an entire scene when Anakin, who has been recently freed from slavery and watched a man die in front of him, must watch strangers debate his right to exist as a Jedi. You can say a lot of things, but there’s that. You have to deal with that, you have to understand that.)

Plus, there’s something unspeakably horrible once you consider that—Obi-Wan, Yoda, Qui-Gon, all these pillars of Jedi wisdom were taken from their families before the age of nine. As early as possible, when children are at their most malleable and plasticity-brained. The Jedi Order wanted them as untainted as possible, and maybe it was for religious reasons. I doubt it, but hey, maybe. (The Catholic Church used to castrate young boys to keep their voices high, pure. Do we think that was religious? Or aesthetic?) But was it any surprise, when they moved on to actual clones, manipulated from before even birth? 

I mean, stop asking nature versus nature—control both and you have the whole creature in your hands.

The problem with the Jedi Order is that at the end of the day, they were convinced they were Light. And while they were probably right by dint of no other good options (the Dark built Death Stars) that sheer belief is dangerous. It makes you untouchable, even when you do horrific things in the name of Light. You take children, and accept it as your due; you swallow half the galaxy and think they’re better for it. There’s a self-propagated lie at the heart of the Jedi Order, which is that the Light of its goals justifies all it does in the dark.

Even taking children. Leaning on families until they give up their precious daughters, or sons, or hatchlings, or—

Even that.

Everything else comes from there, from that central conceit. If the Jedi Order is justification enough to say “we deserve the offerings of your infants” then they deserve everything else. Death and blood and clones and privacy and freedom and democracy. Asking for their babies paves the way for all the rest. Shattering families is the original sin of the Jedi; if they hadn’t asked for such a sacrifice, or if the very idea of offering up your children to the ever-gaping maw of the Order was more horrible, unthinkable.

Every Jedi is a child who wasn’t wanted enough by its parents to keep him or her from the battlefield. The tragedy at the heart of the Jedi Order is exactly that—not that they were unwanted, or even horrible, but just not enough. Not to keep them from bloodshed, or uncertainty, just. Not enough.

rosemoonweaver:

Dean is sixteen the first time he kisses a girl. His heart is pounding so loud he can it like a drum beat in his ears. She leans over first, planting her soft lips against his, and it takes him a moment to get with the program. His lips are slow to move, too caught up in the shock of it all to really make an impression. It’s over all too soon, and he’s left dizzy, wide-eyed and stunned as she smiles down at her hands. Her name is Robin, and she probably won’t remember him in the years that come after this, but Dean’s never going to forget her.

Dean is seventeen the first time he kisses a boy. He’s got the hang of this thing now – the whole kissing thing – that is. He’s apparently good at it, and it’s a fun time for all involved. He’s in some small town in West Texas at the time, with a guy who he met at the county fair. He’d been wandering through the animal stalls, making faces at the sheep when he spotted that slick little smile underneath the brim of a cream-colored cowboy hat. His name is Aiden, and he’s much taller than Dean. He’s slim, all lean muscle and easy smiles and Dean thinks fuck it – no one is gonna care. No one is gonna see him. He’ll be gone in a week or two anyway. They kiss after the sun sets, behind the Ferris Wheel, hidden in the shadow of the tall fence along the perimeter. Dean’s whole body shudders when Aiden licks his lips, when his palms slide across Dean’s neck and his fingers edge into the ends of Dean’s hair. He smells like sweat and leather oil, and his groans cause Dean’s hips to jerk forward eagerly. He chuckles, easing Dean like a startled animal, drawing him forward with lips and teeth until they’re both breathless and giddy. They tease each other while throwing darts and gorging on fried cheese. Dean pretends his heart doesn’t hurt when his dad wrangles him and Sam into the car the next morning.

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