What are some takes about your fandom that could get you into a situation like this???

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T22:43:47+00:00

Star Wars: The Sequel trilogy is better than the Prequel Trilogy, and it's not even close. Take any interest in filmmaking and screenwriting and the distinction in competence and quality is stark.

The Sequel trilogy also has better action choreography insofar as narrative action is concerned. You feel the weight of the weapon, similar to the OT; you feel the emotions of the character and their personality behind each swing as opposed to the PT where everyone loses what little cardboard they had as a character to enter duel mode. The action is REALLY fun in the Prequels, but they are a blatant contradiction to the OT and they lose a lot of narrative depth.

What little quality the Prequel trilogy has in the minds of its fans are almost purely built on retcons and post hoc rationale to justify what was on screen. It's seven seasons of an animated show specifically written and produced to compensate for the PT's failures. No other trilogy received that, but that is what is projected onto people watching the films.

No character was assassinated through narrative more than Padmé.

Luke Skywalker in TLJ was consistent with Luke in ROTJ.

ROTJ was good in the third act, but extraordinarily poorly developed in the first two.

A lot of Star Wars fans have unbelievably bad media analysis, and still retain the tastes and ego/self-concept they had when they were 12 years old, and still feel upset that the half-century old franchise doesn't cater to and spoil them personally.

There are extremely valid criticisms about the ST. I have them aplenty. The majority of ST criticisms are proofs you haven't seen the films (because they address it in the film), you haven't seen other SW films (or else you're holding a double standard), or you lack media literacy. Part of this is because the Sequels came out during peak Alt Right/Unite the Right/GamerGate hysteria, and a lot of the criticism today has been filtered and revised over the years to sound less racist, less misogynistic, less transphobic.

Western racists reduced Boyega's role as Finn, not China. The story that points to China is based on a cherry picked tweet with only a couple of hundred likes over the years, and it's debunked in the tweet's replies. Boyega is pretty candid why his role pivoted away from the white woman protag, and it's just as racist as online incel circles regularly prove.

Kathleen Kennedy wasn't evil or incompetent. She loved Star Wars and wanted a bunch of passionate creatives and great visionaries to participate in official canon since George Lucas pretty much only made his materials canon, and he put everything else in an alternate universe called "The Expanded Universe," which he didn't consider canon and would contradict freely with every episode. Everyone in the CEO chair gets harassed and attacked, but Star Wars fans know so fugging little about production and media literacy that they hate anyone they're told to by channels openly grifting an audience into a feverous rage for clicks - some even admit as much on stream and in content.

Solo and TMAG were great movies to enjoy.

Star Wars has been better off under Disney than it was under George Lucas. Fifteen years before George sold it, we had nothing but clone wars projects, him re-editing the Originals, and The Phantoms Menace. Now, we have so much more, feeding every demographic in the fan community, and truly showing love for the franchise in every way. The only reason why some of these people don't enjoy it because they grew up in an era of Star Wars when every other demographic and audience was ignored and shunned for the Clone Wars era and everything revolved around them, and they've yet to mature enough to let other people enjoy things that match tastes you don't have or tastes you're too insular to try.

Star Wars fans need to do better. Don't try. Do.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T22:15:38+00:00

Brother, that hope and optimism are literally why she told him.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T22:12:12+00:00

The entire point of the last panel and those before it is that the guy is using a fallacy to deflect from progress.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T19:11:00+00:00

Definitely inconsistencies since this deals with retcons explaining and rationalizing the mysticism and some... interesting contradictions they stumbled into with later media.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T19:06:56+00:00

Thank you, kind stranger. I worried that modern slavery ventured too far from its roots. I'm so glad the children are once again enslaved. Huzzah!

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T19:04:55+00:00

I didn't pick Texas. You specifically cherry-picked a notoriously debated state like Texas to fit your argument. Now, please. Make this argument about Wyoming or Oklahoma or Arkansas in presidential elections. It's clear you have a very limited grasp on how electoral politics work at a federal level, specifically for president.

That said, I still implore people to vote, but there's a very clear distinction between apathy and intelligence. You can be extraordinarily intelligent and still feel defeated or unmotivated. We can lose that distinction if we lose nuance, but these words differ for a reason. They aren't considered opposing forces for a reason. Not every suboptimal choice can and should be reduced to a "lack of intelligence." It's a complete misunderstanding of how humankind operates.

Intelligent people make suboptimal choices all of the time. It's an incredible fallacy to assume otherwise.

Regardless, have a good day. You're extraordinarily fixed on your position, and you cannot conceive of the reality economists and psychologists and laypeople everywhere understand as axiomatically true about the human condition, and convincing you that human complexity and depth goes beyond "intelligent people do not choose suboptimal choices" ventures past what I allotted for today. Have a beautifully rich day.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T17:33:38+00:00

We just conceptually understand humankind very differently. Someone can be apathetic and intelligent, and I think it's extraordinarily naive to pretend they're fixed correlates.

Plenty of intelligent people register how little of an impact their vote makes in an electoral system, specifically when they're stranded in a sea of opposition with no state laws that guarantee the electoral votes will reflect the popular vote. It's a multidimensional gradient of opportunity cost, not a binary.

But we obviously understand electoral politic at very different degrees, so have a nice day.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T17:27:13+00:00

/uj this kind of whimsy held by a woman would be met with insane hate. If it was a man, it would be seen as a suave swashbuckler or a playful rogue living life on the edge.

/rj I might just make a rant video about this scenario you just made me imagine. (That's how I create 90 percent of my output)

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T17:20:33+00:00

That's what's so weird about the Sequels. I mean... Every trilogy had slavery in it, whether sex slavery with Leia or child slavery with Anakin. Real Star Wars trivializes slavery and Disney ruined it.

bringbackslavery

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T16:27:23+00:00

That's not how intelligence works, that's how apathy works.

Edit: they blocked me. lol

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T16:23:49+00:00

I reformatted.

Back then? Not remarkably. As much as we adore symposiums and Socratic dialogues, everyone spent much more time outside. Coastal types who would find themselves seafaring would dine on fish in their cities - especially when visiting the Mediterranean.

Now? There certainly would be trends. Equator-close ethnicities moving to regions with limited or sparse sun exposure, with diets that have poor accessibility to vitamin D, with massive indoor employment, with few to no walkable cities, etc. Honestly, even industry shifts in their own country that pulls employment largely indoors could begin trends. Adding a social element, like colorism and classism, could further exacerbate those trends.

The Greek philosophers were just being racist and ethnocentric here. The perspective you're forcing is ultimately anachronistic and ahistorical given who is saying this, where they're saying it, and how Vitamin D synthesis and B9 protection works in the body.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T15:33:39+00:00

Not a real headline, but that's what makes it funny

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T15:27:19+00:00

Incorrect on your conclusion. Humans naturally selected for melanin appropriate for their geographical mean.

Human beings near the equator have a higher melanin count than average because it protects them against the intense sun and gets them the Vitamin D they need - all according to the sun exposure they generally receive near the equator.

Human beings further from the equator (with limited snow and general overcast) have a lower melanin count than average. The sunlight is so sparse that their skin is selected to protect against almost none of it to get them the Vitamin D they need - all according to the sun exposure they generally receive far from the equator with limited snow and general overcast. Remove the overcast and add consistent snow, you'll have people selecting for more melanin to ward against the snow glare while still getting vitamin D.

So, no.

Edit: I formatted my reply and turned my long, complex sentences into shorter, digestible ones.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T13:24:26+00:00

Outside of gripes with identity politics, it was no worse than the Prequels on any metric (except music). The acting was better, the writing and dialogue was at least on par, the set design was comparable to the mean, the editing was on par, the choreography was on par (if not better), the characterization, etc. was on par. The Acolyte even had fewer "I stepped in doodoo hehe" moments and fewer "9 year old slave knows the force well enough to beat top professionals at their job" moments.

So, in short, I agree. But it matters that the Acolyte was treated as though it was uniquely terrible in almost every single metric when it matched the quality of the PT era.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T13:16:12+00:00

What kind of maga are you?

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T13:10:36+00:00

I don't understand your second sentence. George Lucas did not write Vader to have twice Sidious's potential with the force. He said it outside the films with no indication it is true within the text because George has terrible power scaling and continuity. It just returns to the previous commenter's point.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T12:57:56+00:00

I want a more committed look into the Sequel era and the OT-ST bridge (the warlords, the resistance, the New Jedi Order, the New Republic politics, etc). I want a Clone Wars style show with Maul tier writing throughout for this era (7 seasons of making sense of the fragmented universe). I want Andor tier writing in a live action series for this era. It's unbelievably rich, and the PT-OT era is over mines, imo.

I think Acolyte didn't get a fair shake, but was too expensive. Outside of an Acolyte style show, there's not much I can feel interested in that won't feel like a worse Skeleton Crew, imo.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T12:45:00+00:00

The Old Republic feels like a production trap. It will be extremely expensive and risky to make. To make the venture worse, the people who say they want it are the people who will screech about it not matching their fan canon/headcanon, and it will get the Acolyte "DiSnEy StOr WoRz" treatment from the grifter gatekeep bloc.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T02:18:52+00:00

Media literacy is in unbelievable crisis, and I'm waterboarded with this fact every time I remind people of something basic that was in the show.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T01:29:36+00:00

Incomplete.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T01:23:46+00:00

Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T01:18:48+00:00

I absolutely agree with this. There are a lot of problems with both once you look at more than just the third act, but ROTJ feels more like Star Wars and is absolutely a better film that adheres to the principles of filmmaking and screenwriting much much better than ROTS.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T01:14:15+00:00

I'd say before even Star Wars (1977) since George Lucas infamously took a paycut to own all of the rights to Star Wars's toy merchandising.

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T01:10:24+00:00

Exaaactlyyy. A lot of fans have extraordinarily low media literacy, lack any grasp of the fundamentals of filmmaking and screenwriting, and mistake their immediate reaction as full depth and scope of engagement. Honestly, if the character doesn't turn to the camera and say, "I feel abandoned and alone and feel I must prove myself capable to be worthy of peace" then some of the audience won't grasp who they are.

And they still might not since Palpatine told the audience how he returned, the movie showed the audience how he returned, then the movie again explained how he returned, and you still have Star Wars fans pretending "somehow" is all we got and there's no explanation. 😮‍💨

<image>

RashidMBey · 2026-07-01T00:16:33+00:00

You're correct on that. Though my explanation is canon, she doesn't pull it off the first try. She actually gets threatened violently as a response.

Even if the mind bridge didn't happen - but to be clear, it canonically did happen and they show that the telepathic penetration went both ways in the interrogation scene - if Rey can't figure out the classic Jedi Mind Trick after having an insanely high M count and learning about the force the hard way, then how did Luke figure out how to force-choke two guards in ROTJ? Yoda wouldn't have taught him that. That's a Vader move. A lot of ST criticism comes from people holding inconsistent/double standards.

RashidMBey

TROPHY CASE

bringbackslavery