Except Harry Potter had flaws. Real ones. Flaws that led him to make some MASSIVE freaking mistakes, and in the case of the penultimate book, ensure that people not take what he's saying as seriously as they should.Gengisgame said:
There are precious few (if any) examples of escapist fantasy where things don't eventually "work out" for the protagonists. This isn't Game of Thrones. This is Star Wars.Metalix Knightmare said:
Yeah things work out for the heroes eventually, but again when Harry screwed up it cost him big. The singular time when Rey screwed up it ended up saving the day.BloatedGuppy said:
1. The quality of fiction is not determined by a contest between two protagonists and how many times each "screwed up".Metalix Knightmare said:
Alright. How about Leia? She screws up in episode 4 with her escape with Luke Han and Chewie and gets the lot of them trapped, Luke nearly eaten, and all of them nearly squished in a trash compactor and required R2 to save them all. (And considering The Empire WANTED them to escape it was also a completely pointless move though she couldn't have been expected to know that.)BloatedGuppy said:
What about it? Did you see me calling Leia a "Mary Sue" or suggesting she was a lousy character who never faced any adversity?Metalix Knightmare said:
You mean his screw up in book 5? Did we not discuss this already? Your contrasting of a completed seven book run against the first film of a trilogy?Metalix Knightmare said:
Soooooo exposing the return of Voldemort, finding out about the link they share, and being vindicated when he was constantly under media attack since the last year doesn't count as anything beneficial. Okay...Metalix Knightmare said:
Luke the best pilot over Wedge, Biggs and Garven Dreis? I beg to differ.BloatedGuppy said:
Well, he accomplished something the rest of them couldn't. That seems like a pretty hearty recommendation. Surely we can debate the merits of whether he was the best or simply one of the best, but he certainly demonstrated more than Rey did. A character who has been accused of being "Better than everyone at everything" and "A better pilot than Han Solo" because she flew the Falcon successfully against two Tie Fighters. Described here as "mooks".Frankster said:
Given he says it immediately as he's unsuccessfully trying to lock on, the obvious implication is that Luke's strength in the Force is making him harder to shoot down. I think it's a rather blatant reach to suggest otherwise. Lucas doubled down on this in (urg) Phantom Menace when Qui-Gon bloviates about all Jedi being slightly precognitive and this is what makes Anakin such a gifted pod racer. We can certainly debate the merits of the prequels, Lucas's writing, and the impact of statements like this on what we think of the Jedi, but the prequels are still considered canonical.Frankster said:
The only real argument that ever applies to the force is that it works at the whim of the author. It does whatever is required. We'd never seen force telekinesis before ESB. We never saw force jump before Luke used it to spring out of the carbon freezing trap. We never saw force lightning before the Emperor busted it out. There's no rulebook for what the force can and cannot do because the force is imaginary and is entirely subject to authorial fiat. We can establish whether or not there is prior precedent for things, but a lack of prior precedent doesn't mean something isn't possible. Kylo Ren could shoot force rainbows from his fingertips in Episode VIII, and it would be canonical, because the films are canon. And as per canon, force sensitives are "precognitive" whether they're in a shitty mood or not. Mood has been demonstrated to be problematic when it comes to force use, but again...the application of that rule is all over the place.Frankster said:
I'm not antagonized. I also don't care if people like or dislike Rey. As I said previously in this thread, I don't have an issue with people's preferences in fictional characters, I just get allergic to people inventing nonsense and/or talking a bunch of shit. As for you getting "tarred with generalizations and BS", I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. The post you quoted wasn't a response to you, and to the best of my knowledge I haven't been "tarring" anyone specifically with anything, aside from Return of Kings, who quite happily tarred themselves.Frankster said:
I trust you're familiar with my weakness at multi quoting more then 2-3 things. So will do it the old fashioned way.BloatedGuppy said:
If this is just the result of catching the end of a conversation and drawing the wrong conclusions then I apologize. But I recall other posts of yours having the same tone. If it's my perception that's faulty, then fair enough.BloatedGuppy said:
Yeah, I think debating if Luke is better than Wedge is a fruitless debate anyway. Just because one person might be the best pilot, compared to others, doesn't mean the rest of them are bad pilots. That's like saying that everyone who only got silver or bronze medals in a competition of the best athletes in the world, are terrible at their sport. Sure there's someone better than them, they are still leagues better than just about everyone else at what they do. I'd be just as scared of going up against the 2nd most lethal fighter in the world, as the 1st most lethal, because they are both still super dangerous people to mess with.BloatedGuppy said:
...so if he used two hands...we could have Double Force Rainbows?!?! :O WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!?!? And now I'm getting a Care Bear Share, mixed with Double Rainbow Guy image in my head, with Kylo Ren in the middle. Yeah, I almost want to make that meme just to see it.BloatedGuppy said:
Nobody (well, likely not exactly nobody, but such an infinitesimally small portion that its irrelevant) claims that flirting is sexist. What is considered sexist is continuing to try to flirt with somebody after they are either obviously visibly uncomfortable or tell you that they aren't interested. This is considered sexist because it displays a sense of entitlement to be able to get that other person, and implies that their choice isn't as important as your desire (using the general "you" here, not saying anything about you specifically). Cold propositions for sex with strangers (asking "you wanna fuck?" to a woman passing by on the street) are also largely considered sexist because they treat women as just tools for sex. People take these two positions and straw man them into "flirting is sexist!" and this happens often enough that even otherwise reasonable people actually come to believe that feminism is all about nobody flirting. Seeing as feminists don't want the human race to stop existing, we're actually quite fine (except a few radicals who, again, are so small as to be irrelevant) with people flirting so long as it is in a respectful way. Sorry I took so much time on this point since it isn't the main point of the threat, but this is a straw man I see over and over that is harmful enough to be worth rebutting.Parasondox said:
Mary Sue comes from a fan fiction written by a woman whose name I don't remember. The main character was named Mary Sue and parodied idealized self-insertions of the author as the lead character in fan fiction, as well as fiction in general. Over time, the term has gone from meaning "idealized self-insertion by the author" to "woman who is too good at stuff". A lot of people claim that Rey is this second definition, which may be true. If it never explains why she is so immediately powerful with the force then she would fit that definition, but I'm fairly sure they're not going to leave the most obvious mystery of the series so far unexplained.Parasondox said:
As I say, it's been inconsistent. At some points, high emotion seems to make force users more powerful (Obi Wan in PM, Luke in ROTJ). Other times it's presented as clouding their minds or messing them up (ESB, TFA). This is what makes the force such a powerful narrative tool (and from a rational point of view, such utter nonsense). It's not a highly rules based form of 'magic'. It's frequently employed for ass pulls or moments of high heroism by protagonists. Personally, this has never really troubled me, the corniness of Star Wars is sort of baked in and part of its inherent charm. When we get into the nitty gritty of trying to debate what the force can or cannot do in a given situation, or whether it's "logical" that one space wizard should outperform another under varied circumstances, I cannot help but feel that we've moved past an acceptable threshold of common sense.Frankster said:
No, I've stated in general terms that SOME people who "dislike Rey" make really stupid, sloppy arguments, employ transparent double standards, and/or fabulate like champions. No one who isn't doing any of those things should feel those criticisms apply to them. I've been quite clear that everyone is free to like or dislike fictional characters in entertainment media without needing to justify or explain their dislike. If they choose to do so and engage in woeful argumentation, I'm going to criticize their argumentation. Not their opinion.Frankster said:
Alas, we're unlikely to get Darth Double Rainbow in Episode VIII. Boyega has assured us that it's supposed to be "super dark". Given Rian Johnson's history, I don't doubt it. This was the man who almost had me stop watching Breaking Bad a couple of episodes from the end because I just couldn't take that shit any more.Happyninja42 said:
The Point.BloatedGuppy said:
Leia's "mistake" gets the essential plans to the Rebellion, and lets loose both the ship that provides the covering fire and the pilot who fires the deciding shot. Yet somehow this is "screwing up and almost getting them killed", whereas Rey "ends up saving the day" because a dual mission to save her/sabotage the shields results in sabotaging the shields.Metalix Knightmare said:
Well how far back are we going to take this blame game from Episode 4? I mean if you're going to blame Leia for "almost getting them killed" when she was solving their immediate problem of "we're about to be killed by a horde of stormtroopers, 'cause we're trapped", then you need to also blame Luke and Han for getting them into that situation in the first place. She didn't make that situation, she was trying to solve their current situation in a way that didn't kill them all. And she did accomplish that. The immediate threat of "Shit, there are dozens of troopers pouring into this room, and we're cornered" was successfully and immediately resolved in their favor. The fact that this then led to another threat isn't her problem, that's storytelling. They were under a continuous state of threat every second they were on the Death Star. So I don't really see how singling out Leia's very smart plan to escape is at all relevant. In the end, it ended up working in their favor, just like Rey's. It got them away from immediate death by blaster fire, but put them into threat of death by alien/crushing. Almost...why yes, just like how Rey solved the threat of "Shit, we're about to be killed by pirates" in a way that then made the situation "Shit, we're about to be killed by an alien." They are the same thing. Threat, escalation, resolution, threat escalation, resolution. That's how scenes progress in entertainment.Metalix Knightmare said:
- Hum I accept the possibility it might be a quirk of mine but I really do feel the emotion rule to make sense, it's not just high emotion but also how pure it is that matters, and being "in conflict" and having competing emotions screws over force users, both light and dark.BloatedGuppy said:
Well, in fairness of full disclosure, I have not consumed much EU material, and since the vast majority of it is now rendered non-canonical, I no longer feel much impetus to do so. I have said that I have a lot of sympathy for EU lovers who are confronted by what is, to them, essentially a re-write of a chronology they'd invested time and energy in. That's a disappointment I'm quite familiar with (cough, Game of Thrones, cough). But that milk is spilled, and we still have six films to give us canon. And those films are all over the place with their presentation of the force, how it's used, how much training things require, what that training even IS, etc, etc, etc. There's room for a huge number of interpretations. Which speaks to the muddy ambiguity of "the force" to begin with. None of which is to knock Star Wars, I love Star Wars. But I don't love it because it's a masterwork of intricate plotting and sophisticated thematic beats. I love it because it's simple, primal, archetypal storytelling.Frankster said:
There's stuff to ***** about, certainly, as there is with almost everything. No one profits by the shutting down of criticism. Yeah there's a lot of drama around Rey, but she and Kylo are the principals, so there was always going to be drama around them. And the internet being what it is, some of that drama has coalesced around very predictable and unsavory lines. That I acknowledge that is not an implicit accusation, it's more of a reflex rebuttal to arguments like "No one is criticizing her because she's a girl".Frankster said:
