Removing complaining in Star Wars subpages

What is the aesop being broken?

@Erik: Yes, Narm is a serious and dramatic moment being undercut by silliness. Still, this particular instance isn't Narm. The window you mention is protecting by an awning, iirc, the room is dark, and more importantly, nobody's looking at his general direction. Hell, no adults are even present in that shot; it's just the kids, and they're too busy playing to notice him.

So, not Narm. At least, according to me; waiting for input from other tropers.

The Aesop is "you don't need to be a member of a special family to be special." Broken as "...well no, you definitely need to be a member of a special family, in fact that's why you were special all along."

Now, we could add the feminist interpretation. The Aesop would be "your power comes from yourself, you don't need any man to give it to you", which becomes "...nah, your power actually comes from your male grandfather." That's Never a Self-Made Woman at its finest.

My concern is that it's not that unique to Star Wars to have this sort of thing, it's not special to Rey just because she's a woman. It's not inherently sexist- it can just be interpreted as such. But it's not like Luke and Anakin didn't also have special lineage and backstories; Anakin was basically Space Jesus!

Now I'm not saying this wouldn't be material for an Unfortunate Implications example or something, but we don't need to be bringing this interpretation into a standard Broken Aesop example, when it's based on interpretation.

The only real case I can see is if the previous film had been making a point specifically about how "Rey didn't need men". I've never seen it, so I can only call it the way I see it based on the evidence I'm being presented with.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 27th 2020 at 3:49:47 PM

I'm not arguing about inherent sexist lectures - it's just that, as long as we have a specifical trope for this Aesop as NASMW is, I think it should be mentioned whenever it is broken. Moreover, are not many Aesops based on interpretations anyways?

Yeah, but they should still be based on what objectively happened in the work and not come with an ideologist perspective. However, having NASMW is perfectly fine; I just don't think it has anything to do with the Aesop itself and shouldn't be mentioned in the example.

The Aesop is "you don't need to be a member of a special family to be special." Broken as "...well no, you definitely need to be a member of a special family, in fact that's why you were special all along."

Yes. I agree that this is a valid example of Broken Aesop, and I believe my rewritten version does a good job of covering it.

Now, we could add the feminist interpretation. The Aesop would be "your power comes from yourself, you don't need any man to give it to you",

No. Disagree. This is not an aesop that is ever present in the films. That is you, the viewer, imposing your external politics and priorities. You may have wanted that to be an aesop in the films, but that is not an aesop that it shows any interest in exploring.

Rey never learns a valuable lesson about how she don't need no man. She wants to find out more about her parents, sure. Parents. Plural and gender-neutral.

Edited by HighCrate on Jan 27th 2020 at 3:20:08 AM

Hey I’m sorry I haven’t been back in here for a while, but I looked at the edit to Leia’s page with Informed Attribute and all. It notes Holdo as Leia’s handpicked successor while she’s comatose.

So Leia picked a successor while she was comatose? Riiiight.

Not only that, the Resistance lady talks about how their whole command staff including Ackbar were wiped out, and the chain of command clearly points to Holdo taking over. Leia didn’t pick Holdo as successor, the chain of command did since Holdo was the highest ranking Resistance member with Leia’s incapacitation. To say Leia picked her is flat-out wrong.. on two levels. *shrug* I just wanted to note that here before trying to make an edit of it.

Haha, fine. It actually amuses me that I seem to have become the Devil's advocate in this debate, because I don't usually want to see political messages where there are none. I have no problem if you want to dissociate BA from this NASMW.

I don't think Never a Self-Made Woman or Unfortunate Implications really applies to the reveal in The Rise of Skywalker. My reasoning:

First, Rey's story doesn't change at all if you were to make the character male. Palpatine tried to turn Anakin to the Dark Side out of special interest in him (his raw power as The Chosen One). Vader tried to turn Luke out of a special interest in him (being his son), and Palpatine tried to help out of special interest (Luke having the same potential as Vader). Kylo tries to turn Rey out of special interest (initially her raw power, later their shared connection through the Force and personally). "But wait! Their Force connection develops a clearly-romantic personal connection!" Not really. Take the Shipping Goggles off, and their connection could be read as simple friendship (up until the Big Damn Kiss, anyway). Not saying I don't see or am not a fan of the romantic angle, just that it's not inherently baked into the narrative and character arcs. Just like choosing (or not) to see romance between Raleigh Beckett and Mako Mori doesn't alter their narrative. There's no point in the sequels where Rey's gender is brought up in any meaningful way, she's only ever presented as a capable protagonist who just so happens to be female.

Second, Rey getting her power from her grandfather. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but every female who exists owes part of that to a paternal grandfather (and father, for that matter). Palpatine didn't deliberately hand Rey any assistance getting where she is, and in fact the film pretty much states her life would have been much worse if he had been in it earlier. Furthermore, the whole point of the film is that Rey's bloodline doesn't matter (beyond the raw power it grants her), but it's who and what she chooses to be that counts. Her arc is all about rejecting absolutely everything Palpatine has to offer her and choosing her own path despite her familial connections. That, to me, seems the exact opposite of Never a Self-Made Woman. To draw a more mundane comparison, would it still be that trope if the daughter of a powerful political family rejected going into politics, and instead built her own successful business with no help from her family and their political connections? Does it count as that trope if a woman inherits characteristics (say, athleticism or intellect) from a paternal ancestor, but uses it in a manner entirely of her own choosing?

Anyway, that's just how I feel about it.

I feel your lecture about their relationship not being romantical beyond the fans' Shipping Goggles gets fundamentally refuted by the kiss, but that wasn't the topic I was talking about anyway.

About Rey and Palpatine, the film all but states Rey's massive Force levels come from belonging to the bloodline of a massively powerful Force user. Palps might not be lending her any intentional assistance, but it cannot be denied that her power comes from his mere existence, and having enough power defeat the First Order is the biggest part of her personal arc - after all, if Rey had the Force levels of a regular galactic rando, she would have not been able to defeat Kylo, break out of her cell, beat him with lightsabers, etc, regardless of how moral or honorable she were. She had the tools to change the events of the galaxy because she had inherited Palpatine's unlimited powah.

In fact, as of ROS, the sole reason why the Resistance defeated the Final Order is that they happened to have a Force user capable to channel all the Jedi, who is Rey. And again, the reason why such Force user exists is because Palps (somehow) had a son, who in turn had Rey. (That technically makes her a double NASMW, being the work of not one, but two males lol.) At the end, Rey's personal decisions amount to how to use a power that comes granted by her sole birth and not by any incredible training or hard work. TFA underlines this by having her not needing any training to do things that Jedi knights need years of work to do. She only needs to be a Palpatine to be that awesome.

Edited by Cieloazul on Jan 28th 2020 at 9:26:47 AM

Force sensitivity is heritable. Rey got it from Mysterious Junk Trader Parent (I see a lot of people assuming her father, but I don't think it's ever said whether it was him or her mother?) got it from Palps. Luke got it from Vader, who got it from... well, that's a whole thing, let's not get into that. Kylo Ren got it from Mommy Leia got it from Vader.

It's not a sexism thing, it's just the way it works in the Star Wars universe. (Except for like 10 minutes at the end of the The Last Jedi where it looked like it didn't work that way, before they retconned it again.) Rey didn't inherit her Force powers because she's a gurl, she inherited them because that's how everyone gets them.

Edited by HighCrate on Jan 28th 2020 at 10:22:01 AM

Though that brings up the "how much training do Jedi really need?" argument, also oft-tread in regards to Rey. Since Leia was the one training Rey at the start of Rise, and Rey starts the film trying to summon all the Jedi, it seems unlikely this ability was unique to Rey or the Palpatine line. Heck, there's nothing (that I'm aware of) that says it requires a Force-user of a specific "power level" to use. . . though there's nothing that says it doesn't, either.

Edit: Well, Force-Sensitivity isn't strictly inherited, otherwise the "no marriage no kids" PT Jedi would have bred themselves to extinction. Skywalkers are the exception, thanks to Anakin. Palpatines apparently are, too.

Edited by ErikModi on Jan 28th 2020 at 12:21:02 PM

High Crate: Yes, they said it is the father. According to the official canon, Rey's father is Palpatine's son, while Rey's mother is an unknown woman.

What? I'm not saying she inherited his powers because she is a girl. I'm only saying that she is a girl yet the source of her powers is a man, which is exactly Never a Self-Made Woman's meaning. "Behind any woman's achievements, whatever they are, there's the expertise or role of a man." In this case, behind Rey's achievements accomplished mainly by her immense Force levels (as we apprently agree she would have achieved nothing without her raw power), there's the role of Sidious as the transmitter of the bloodline who gave her such levels. Without mentioning that yet another male, her father, was the intermediary.

(And really, given that we know nothing about Canon!Plagueis and Palpatine's Canon!training, who is to say Palpatine is not even the originator of those Force bloodline? Maybe he used Plagueis's techniques on his own DNA to increase his own Force powers and it passed on to his son. This goes off-tread, but I mention it because it shows that expanding on what we know only reinforces Palpatine's role in Rey's powers.)

Erik Modi: Difficult question. Even if it was Leia who taught the Jedi summoning technique to Rey, it seems to me that the movie-verse implies it took someone as powerful as Rey to actually master it - if not, why didn't Leia, Luke, Ben, Yoda or any other previous Jedi ever use it? The Doylist explanation is clear, but the Watsonian one is probably that none of them (not even Yoda) was actually at Sidious's powah level. At least, I can't see another right now.

Edited by Cieloazul on Jan 28th 2020 at 11:46:32 AM

I still don't think inheriting an intrinsic characteristic (physique, athleticism, intellect, magic powers) would automatically disqualify someone from being "self-made."

Unrelatedly, I'm curious: is there an effort towards cleaning up the Headscratchers pages for Star Wars? There is, to quote Captain Pelleaon, "a long and barely-civilized argument" on the ESB page about why the snowspeeders didn't stop, hover midair, and snipe weak spots on the walkers, and many of the pages are cluttered with redundant questions and rephrased answers.

I believe it does whenever that characteristic composes most of your role in your story. And let's not forget the sequel trilogy makes explicitly the point that Rey needs little to no training to do the awesome things she does. Her raw, innate power is her main asset.

Now, if Rey had inherited just average Force levels which she had polished like crazy during years and years until becoming the powerhouse she is, then I would accept she is a self-made woman, regardless of who is her ancestor (I'm pretty sure there would still be a political narrative that would claim she is still not a SMW, but that would not be my business).

Edited by Cieloazul on Jan 28th 2020 at 3:30:23 AM

I think the issue is whether or not her gender is relevant. Do they make a big deal out of Rey being a woman, or would it be the same story if she was a male character, instead? If a genderswapped Rey would still produce the same story and be treated the same way in-story and by the narrative, her gender is incidental, and that kind of changes how the tropes are used. See, I feel that NASMW makes sense if the male characters don't have the same thing going for them. If all the major characters have some lineage granting them their abilities or were trained by a male character or something, then it's just how the world works; if it's just the woman, it's giving her less agency than the males.

I don't agree that all male characters have to be self-made in order for a not-self-made woman to count as such, but if you insist, I believe could definitely say male characters don't have the same thing going for them in this case.

We can compare Rey mainly to Luke. Both of them inherited their powers from their bloodline, but the innate talents granted to Luke by those powers were actually not very decisive, as his only innate knack seemed to be some super-dexterity for piloting and minor mechanics - he was not beating lifelong trained Dark Side users in their very first lightsaber duel ever nor lifting tons of rocks after a day or two of training alone on an island. Now let's gender-swap Luke and let's call him Lucia. I don't think Lucia would count as NSMW only because she inherited the Force from Anakin - most of her competence with the lightsaber and Force powers would have come from her training at those areas, not exclusively from the Force levels inherited from her father.

(Now, I know, we could still make a NSMW case because Lucia's trainers Obi-Wan and Yoda were still male characters... but if we leave Anakin as a male yet turn them into females, Obi-Wane and Yoko, it is even clearer that Anakin's bloodline doesn't take any merit away from Lucia.)

Edited by Cieloazul on Jan 28th 2020 at 3:54:59 AM

In A New Hope, aside from Vader's Force Choke and Luke's torpedoes' 90-degree turn (both of which could have been the result of some other application), we're given no hint that telekinesis is a thing the Force lets you do. At the start of The Empire Strikes Back, Luke can summon his lightsaber to his hand (with some effort). Ben is never shown teaching him this ability, Luke just spontaneously picked it up sometime in the time skip between films.

The only difference between Luke and Rey is that we're shown her learning new Force powers onscreen. Luke learns all of his when the camera cuts away (between films or while showing what's going on aboard the Falcon).

It just doesn't take decades of study to learn to use the Force. Prequel-era Jedi took decades training padawans because they were indoctrinating them in the Jedi religion, teaching them what they considered proper behavior and conduct for one of the Jedi Order. Anakin's whole arc in Attack of the Clones is him believing he's ready to be a Jedi Knight, he's as skilled and powerful as any Knight or even some Masters (and apparently moreso, since he survived the Geonosis Arena and lots of other Jedi didn't). The Council is holding him back because he doesn't have the maturity or patience to be left to his own devices.

Learning to use the Force is easy. Learning to use it with wisdom and responsibility is hard.

Hey just wanted to try to touch base again, am I clear to remove the note about Leia picking Holdo as her successor?

Chris 116, I have no problem with it.

Attracting a lightsaber to your hand is a very minor trick - a lightsaber probably has the weigh of a TV remote, and all you have to do is make a small telekinetic pull. That's not comparable to lifting tons of separate rocks or controlling the mind of a living, intelligent lifeform. (And if we accept the novelization as canon, absorbing all the Force experience of someone in midst of a duel.) Also, maybe I'm wrong, but I remember the torpedoes making a downward curve was not a Force action, but what what they were meant to do after being fired. I believe what Luke used the Force for during the attack on the port was simply to sense the right moment to fire the torpedoes, not to telekinetically guide them. That was what the X-wing shooting computer was for - he turned it off because the Force would serve him better.

That comparison of yours is a false equivalence. What Luke learns by himself before training with Yoda is just a padawan trick, and he learns it in an amount of time not shown but presumably longer than a few days. In stark contrast, Rey learns completely on the fly techniques that are either very advanced or downright masterful. Let's not forget the story of TLJ starts mere seconds after the ending of TFA.

I don't think current Canon supports your theory that formal padawan training is 90% philosophy and 10% Force. Moreover, I think Anakin's arc about "how I'm not a master, I'm stronger than all of you" only proves him wrong at the end, as he ends up crushingly defeated by Obi-Wan, who is not supposed to be a Force supernova, only a more grounded person. If only, that arc only proves how arrogant Anakin was and how much he overestimated his own power - traits that led him to become a Sith. About the Geonosis battle, well, Padmé also survived the massacre, and she was fighting and shooting droids just like anybody - does that mean she was stronger than all the fallen Jedi masters too?

What is the wisdom and responsability without having the massive Force powers to summon the Jedi and beat ol' Palps? Moreover, it's not like Rey ever achieved an enlightened state of mind or something anyways. By the point she fought Palpatine, she was the same grimacing berserk as always. Luke at least defeated Palpatine by surrendering like Gandhi, but Rey defeated him by kicking his ass.

Edited by Cieloazul on Jan 29th 2020 at 8:22:21 AM

"Size matters not." You can move a lightsaber, you can move a Death Star (theoretically, at least). But the point is, Luke did the exact same thing as Rey — pull a completely new and unforeshadowed (at the time) Force ability out of his ass — and no one cared. Rey does it, and she gets called crazy stupid ridiculously OP.

And Rey doesn't defeat Palpatine by "kicking his ass." She defends herself from his Force Lightning, which rebounds on him (the same way it did when Mace Windu did the same), and that kills him. Rey doesn't kill Palpatine, he kills himself. This leads to another point: many speculated that Rey's "raw power" in the Force, especially in The Force Awakens, really only amounts to being naturally talented with one Force power: Force Deflection (specifically, the aspect sometimes spun off into its own distinct power, Rebuke), which allows you to defend yourself from Force powers used on you and, if you roll well enough, turn them back on your attacker. This is what Mace Windu used on Palpatine's Force Lightning, what Yoda used against Dooku and Palpatine, and what Rey uses against Kylo Ren's mind probe. And what she used to ultimately defeat him without "striking him down."

Edited by ErikModi on Jan 29th 2020 at 11:01:24 AM

@Erik Modi No, Vader's Force-Choke was a demonstration of the Force. Keep in mind, he only used it because Motti decided it would be a good idea to dismiss the power of the Force right in front of Vader, which Vader responses by Force choking him, snidely remarking that he found his lack of faith disturbing.

Plus, whatever Luke learned in between ANH and TESB is mitigated by Master Yoda and Darth Vader putting the young hero in his place. Oh Luke certainly gotten better in TESB but he was also brutally beaten to a pulp with permanent physical scars along with the psychological scars. And he is forced to dwell on it for the remainder of his screen-time.

The Force ability that Luke pulled out of his ass was neither new (Vader had shown telekinesis in the previous film) nor overpowered (it amounted to pull a small object from a bunch of snow, for God's sake). On the other hand, Rey did both: she showed a completely unprecedented technique (the experience-absorbing technique against Kylo) and mastered in much less time techniques that were either too complex for what the franchise had established for a complete newbie (mind control) or simply staggeringly powerful (levitating huge amounts of rocks at once, which at least equals Yoda's best feat in AOTC and ESB). You have already tried to establish a false equivalence and it doesn't hold water.

So what? Force deflection is still a fighting technique. On the other hand, Luke literally threw the fight aside and allowed himself to be zapped by Palps. Who won through wisdom and enlightened good, and who won through raw power? But that thing about wisdom and such was your point, not mine. In any case, Rey being good at Force deflection still doesn't explain any of the previous - unless now Force deflection is magic, of course.

In fact, I now realize that, while I'm bothering to answer every point you brought, you are repeatedly ignoring my arguments in order to insist with your version, which makes me wonder why are you wasting your time in a debate when you seem unwilling to listen. I'm really hoping for the rest of the thread users to read us and opine on it, because otherwise we will be all the day like this.

I'm sorry, I've actually been enjoying our civilized, intellectual debate free from vitriol (a rare thing to have regarding Star Wars). I apologize if you don't see it the same way.

The problem is I'm not seeing false equivalence you are. Yoda's whole point in ESB is you don't need to be especially powerful in the Force to do impressive things: the Force is all-powerful, you just have to know how to channel it and believe it can do "impossible" things. This is even mentioned on The Force Awakens Fridge page. Yoda tells Luke "You must unlearn what you have learned" (a human can't use space magic to float a starfighter through the air). Rey's heard stories of Luke and what Jedi are capable of, so she's more capable of trusting in the Force than Luke initially. Luke has a mental block to break through, Rey doesn't, that's the only difference.

And my point wasn't that Rey had some deep Jedi-like sense of wisdom (and I missed that you thought that, again I apologize). Rather, my point was that, going by how things have been presented in the new canon thus far, it is clearly far easier and quicker to teach one how to use the Force then previously thought. And even in Legends, most Force-Sensitives were already drawing on the Force in some way with no training and without knowing what they were doing. That's what made Anakin and Luke such great pilots. Streen from Legends was a very powerful telepath, another ability most Jedi have to train diligently to use half so well (indeed, Streen's problem is he can't shut it off). Stating that Rey's using abilities "beyond the capabilities of newbies" just doesn't seem like it's true based on the new canon. The Child, at the biological age of about five, is lifting massive animals and perfectly healing fatal injuries. Ahsoka in her teens was keeping up with Anakin, and Ezra has some Force feats under his belt that pale anything Luke accomplished. Despite what a portion of the fandom (and Legends authors) like to claim, "Force power levels" don't really matter. If they did, Anakin (and therefore Luke and Leia) should have been invincible, having the highest Force power levels ever. It was really the fandom who insisted Rey needed an excuse for being "obnoxiously powerful" (when, by the standards of the new canon, she really isn't) that lead to the retcon of her being a Palpatine.

But the real point I'm trying to get at is: however Rey came by her power, it's hers, and she's the one who chooses how to use it.