They’re not my work. Someone linked to an imgur gallery of them on r/asoiaf, but the gallery disappeared and I had to rip them from the Wayback Machine.
There’s ones for all of the seven kingdoms, and you’ll be able see them all if you look through all of my posts where I collect the politics of the seven kingdom series (once I finish doing that).
I’m not super-happy with them, I’ve done a post somewhere comparing them and the CK2 mod maps, but they’re something to work from.
credit to ser Other-in-law Politics of Dorne Part III With the arrival of Aegon I Targaryen to the Westerosi mainland, we get the most detailed section of Dornish history, with extensive coverage both in the Dorne chapter and the various chapters of the roll of Targaryen monarchs and their foreign policy towards the only foreign kingdom on their content. All the same there are some frustrating…
Luke and Yoda’s burning of the sacred Jedi texts is rather undercut by the fact that Yoda is quite literally fucking with and lying to Luke. Again. You know, for old times sake. Because Yoda almost certainly is 100% aware of the fact that Rey plundered the old texts (and can we get a goddamn holocron up in the movies? Please?) and put them on the Falcon before haring off to go try and redeem Kylo Ren. His last meeting with Luke is therefore predicated on dishonesty and deception in order to manipulate Luke into the proper state of mind, which is, I suppose, classic Yoda.
As for DJ’s being cognizant of the Rebel plans, he gets that intel because he’s listening to Poe and Finn yell at each other over the commlink while he’s hacking the door, and Poe lets slip that information then. It’s really quick and could have been handled better from a writing and cinematography standpoint; but that’s when the relevant information passed to him.
Ironically, Kylo Ren is a better Sith Lord than Vader ever was. He achieved the sine qua non of a successful Sith; he learned everything he could from his master, then killed him and took his place.
I like TLJ, it’s not a bad movie, but… well, to put too fine a point on it, the new trilogy absolutely depends on burning down everything the protagonists of the original trilogy accomplished in order for the new protagonists to accomplish the same things all over again. And that leaves a very, very sour taste in my mouth.
Also, if they’re really committing this strongly to “Luke is a complete failure and doesn’t refound the Jedi Order and when he tries everyone dies” then fuck you for spending four years making me care about Ezra Bridger, Disney. That’s not cool.
Ok, first of all we should probably tag spoilers if we’re not going to keep them below the cut…
My memory might be wrong, but I don’t think it’s possible for DJ(?) to have overheard over the com-link, because Poe didn’t know about the real plan until Leia shuts down the mutiny and knocks him unconscious, right?
I did miss Rey grabbing the old texts, but I don’t think that was the important thing as much as it was about inspiring Luke to reconnect with the Force, reach out to Leia, and save the Rebellion.
Which is why I have a problem with “complete failure.” If my understanding of the reality vs. legend thing: sure, Luke failed Ben, but he ultimately succeeded with Rey (although I would have liked to see her react to Luke’s intervention; that was a weird missing link).
As for The Last Jedi, I enjoyed it quite a bit, although not without a few reservations. Further spoilery thoughts below the cut:
What Worked:
What really made the film work for me, its core, was Rey’s storyline – her “lessons” with Luke, her conversations with Ben, the mirror sequence and the revelation about her parentage, the big fight sequence in Snoke’s chambers, and her showing up with the Falcon to spirit the Resistance to safety. I thought this section did a remarkable job of echoing Luke’s Hero’s Journey while deconstructing it.
And it was deconstruction the way that deconstruction should work: calling into question the status quo (the Jedi Order’s limited views on the force, especially the desire to cut themselves off from the Dark SIde; the series/fandom’s obsession with bloodline and parentage and Chosen One heroes, etc.) and then coming up with fresh new ideas to replace them. And it’s that last step that gives you brilliant moments like Ben’s revolt against Snoke turning out to be a coup instead of turning back to the light like Vader did, or Luke and Yoda’s burning of the Jedi’s sacred writings, or Luke’s final duel/astral projection as a note-perfect send-off for a beloved character.
Also, I generally liked the combat sequences much more than in TFA, which copied Episode IV a bit too closely for my liking. The bomber sequence in the beginning is clearly meant to evoke WWII bombers in the same way that X-Wing fight scenes were borrowed from WWII footage of dogfighting fighter planes, which is a nice twist, I thought the skimmers and their red plumes on the salt planet was a really lovely visual, and the big lightsaber duel with Snoke’s Guard was arguably some of the best lightsaber fighting that we’ve seen in the entire Star Wars franchise.
What Didn’t:
What didn’t work as well for me was the casino plot with Finn and Rose and Poe’s plot. Let me be clear: I thought all the actors involved were giving a hell of a performance, and I see a lot of potential in the underlying ideas, and there were plenty of moments I liked in them, but there were some underlying problems with both.
To start with Finn and Rose: while the two actors have instant chemistry together (not talking about romantic chemistry, I have no ships to defend), their initial meeting was a bit muddled (several reviewers mentioned Finn initially trying to run away repeating his arc from The Force Awakens as a negative point, but Finn does mention that he’s not trying to run away but warn Rey about returning to a trap. That probably could have been made more clear in the dialogue).
The idea of a casino plot is brilliant – done right, you could have done a nice mix of Casablanca and the Mos Eisley Cantina, and who wouldn’t love that, I thought the underlying theme of arms merchants selling to both sides as an interesting idea – but there were definite problems in the execution. Namely, I think the animal racing chewed up screen time that was needed to build a rapport with Benicio del Toro’s character so that his heel turn (or was it?) lands with more force, and the casino interior scenes were not particularly memorable to make the place feel as lived-in and intruiging as the Cantina. Overall, this sequence kind of bogs down the second act and doesn’t quite mesh with the ticking-clock tension of the other plot.
Finally, there was a weird thematic conflict with Poe’s plot when we get to the salt planet: Rose’s argument that the Resistance will win not by suicide-charges against our enemies but by keeping our friends alive clashes pretty sharply with the valorization of Vice Admiral Holdo doing the exact same thing that Finn was trying to do with the battering ram.
Now with Poe’s plot: as with the other one, there’s a core idea here that I like a lot – deconstructing the loose cannon/hot-shot hero in favor of an argument that we should listen to and respect older women, and deconstructing the “so crazy it could work” plan by showing it fail. However, the way they made it work was by withholding information from characters and the audience to an unreasonable degree. I completely buy the argument that Laura Dern’s character didn’t owe Poe anything given that he’d just been demoted and she outranked him, but withholding information from the entire Resistance to the point where a mutiny breaks out that threatens the whole endeavor doesn’t make sense.
And I don’t think they quite stuck the landing on Poe’s arc. Yes, he sees his plan fail and the Resistance suffer as a result (for the second time in the film), but he doesn’t really change his behavior as a result, yet both Leia and Holdo’s dialogue toward the end of the film suggests that he has. “The spark that lights the flame” isn’t really enough to be going on with.
(Incidentally, it’s possible I missed something important, but how did Benicio del Toro’s character leak the actual rebel plans to the First Order when neither Rose, Finn, nor Poe knew what they were? This seems a rather important causal link.)
They probably would. While being in the crypts means they wouldn’t be exposed to the wind (and thus weathering), you’d still run into problems where damp would slowly erode the stonework.
At the same time, I don’t think that “mutants are dangerous” is a good counter-argument; show me a persecuted minority that wasn’t believed to be dangerous to the majority or to have unnatural abilities. The fact that mutants exaggerate the historical rhetoric doesn’t make it a good argument.
Mutants exist in a world in which Galactus and Mephisto are real; the fact that public policy focuses on the “mutant threat” is ultimately due to feelings of inadequacy, of being an evolutionary dead end, not a clear-eyed risk assessment. Hence the constant use of the scientifically-incorrent Neanderthal metaphor:
That’s certainly an option, even though the MCU has tended to avoid story filtering upwards from the TV shows to the movies, and the whole drive to get Inhumans to replace the X-Men is dead now that the deal with Fox has gone through.
If I were going to do it, I’d start from the Sokovia Accords: world governments were freaked out enough by a small team of superheroes, several of whom are baseline humans, and many of whom are sui-generis accidents, that they passed a global registration initiative, backed up by black site prisons, indefinite detention, and UN-backed death squads.
Now all of the sudden there is an entire population of people who are born superheroes, no one knows how many of them there are, and their most prominant public figure is Magneto, who’s loudly proclaimed that he views the Sokovia Accords as a genocidal threat to his people.
Part I of V in a collection of writings regarding the mysterious and ‘late’ Ashara Dayne, her potential effect on narrative, and compelling arguments for and against her fate. Part I explores House Dayne and Ashara’s timeline during the Rebellion and other perspectives surrounding her character.
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