The Prequels Strike Back!

Originally posted December 14th, 2015

Why is there a new hope for lovers of the Star Wars prequels?

Back in 2005, not long before Revenge of the Sith was released, my eleven year old self had fairly recently discovered the Star Wars fandom. It was the first time I’d ever been part of a group united by its shared love for something, and I quickly fell in deep, taking part in forum discussions, reading blog posts analyzing characters and their motivations, and discovering the joys of the (now retired) Expanded Universe.

But while I was in this community, I noticed something peculiar: everyone, regardless of age, race, class, or gender, hated the prequels, with a particular amount of derision going towards The Phantom Menace. This made no sense to me; I had fallen in love with Star Wars after seeing Menace, and while I had to concede that the original trilogy was better, it struck me as incredibly strange that these films which had brought me such joy would be so thoroughly reviled by its own fans!

Fast forward to today: it’s 2015, The Force Awakens is coming out in a few days, and in the last few months leading up to its release, I’ve seen a number of articles and opinion pieces looking back at the Star Wars prequels and defending them from the scorn and criticism they’ve constantly received. And as much of a change as that is, it’s even stranger still to see that the people defending the prequels are using the same essential argument my eleven year old self did: the prequels aren’t bad, they’re just not as good as the originals.

Now, I’m incredibly happy to see these pieces being written, but I have to question why they couldn’t have been written by other critics back when I was a kid and needed my love for the prequels to be validated.

I’ve come up with a couple of explanations for this. The first and most cynical one is that the reason prequel defenses have been written more recently is because all of the people who were previously cynical about the prequels have been blinded by the hype surrounding The Force Awakens.

I see this as being entirely possible, though unlikely; it’s possible because people were still excited for The Phantom Menace when it was released despite Lucas’ special editions of the original trilogy being met with a lot of derision, but it’s unlikely because from what I’ve seen, most of the excitement for The Force Awakens has been tempered with an appropriate amount of caution and skepticism, since as a fan community we are all already familiar with the pain of a disappointing Star Wars film.

Except, we’re not all familiar with that, and that’s where my second explanation comes in. See, Star Wars fans that are currently my age were, like me, children when the prequels came out, and for a lot of us, The Phantom Menace was our first Star Wars film. But in spite of the prequels’ inferiority to the rest of the Star Wars saga, we fell in love with Star Wars anyway, and were forced to hide our love for them at the risk of being ridiculed by the rest of the community.

Now though, we’ve grown up, and those of us who have become writers have matured enough and gotten clever enough to defend the prequels from its detractors; the only reason our defenses of the prequels are popping up now are because there’s a new Star Wars film coming out, and it’s a topical subject.

The second explanation makes the most sense to me, because as anyone who has ventured into the comments section of a YouTube video will tell you, the internet is an echo chamber of endless hate and derision, and this leads to minority opinions being silenced extremely effectively. And so I didn’t see any defenders of the prequels when I was younger because to attempt to defend the prequels was going to be a waste of time and energy, since your defense would be quickly drowned out by the thousands of fans who disagreed with you.

Of course, perhaps the reason these defenses aren’t being shot down now is because the fandom is too wrapped up in excitement over The Force Awakens to continue in their derisive ways, and that means that if The Force Awakens turns out to be a Phantom Menace-esque disappointment, the hate for the prequels will resurface, and I’ll never get to see anyone defend them again.

Here’s to The Force Awakens being good so that that doesn’t happen!

Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".

Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"

And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".

Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.

At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.

So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!

Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!

Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!

Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.

he says i hate everyone except you and that is addictive and that is kind of romantic and beautiful because you're young and you're kind of a sarcastic asshole too and you don't like bad boys, per say, but you don't really like good ones either. and you like that you were the exception, it felt like winning.

except life is not a romance book, and he was kind of being honest. he doesn't learn to be nice to your friends. he only tolerates your family. you have to beg him to come with you to birthday parties, he complains the whole time. you want to go on a date but - people are often there, wherever you're going. he's just so angry. about everything, is the thing. in the romance book, doesn't he eventually soften? can't you teach him, through your own sense of whimsy and comfort?

at first - you know introverts often need smaller friend groups, and honestly, you're fine staying at home too. you like the small, tidy life you occupy. you're not going to punish him for his personality type.

except: he really does hate everyone but you. which means he doesn't get along with his therapist. which means he has no one to talk to except for you. which means you take care of him constantly, since he otherwise has no one. which means you sometimes have to apologize for him. which means he keeps you home from seeing your friends because he hates them. you're the single exception.

about a decade from this experience, you'll type into google: how to know if a relationship is codependent.

he wraps an arm around you. i hate everyone except you. these days, you're learning what he's actually confessing is i have very little practice being kind.

I think one aspect of Nie Mingjue that is critically overlooked in fandom is that he failed.

What I mean is that I think it's strongly implied that a significant part of Nie Mingjue's moral rigidity and his tendency to universally fall back on his principles instead of trying to see the unique context of a new situation is that he is strongly aware that at some point his sense of judgement will be greatly impaired due to the saber curse, and he hopes that a strong rule-based morality system that he sticks to at all times-- ignoring any specfic feelings or doubts that may arise-- will help mitigate the damage when that happens. If he's trained himself to ignore his instincts and stick to the rules, he can continue doing the right thing even after he emotionally can no longer tell what the right thing is!

And it fails! Miserably! He essentially tried to destroy his ancestral curse with Facts and Logic and it didn't work! And he doesn't even realize that it's no longer working because surprise surprise: the curse that severely affects your sense of judgement also ruins your ability to gauge whether you're still standing by those rules you made up for yourself.

And the system was flawed from the get-go, because there is no such thing as a set of moral rules that are so universally applicable you'll never have to make unclear decision in edge-cases or re-evalutate the rules themselves based on new information-- a thing this system won't let him do because What If That's The Curse Talking? (nmj is basically a walking version of the slippery slope fallacy. Any small change is bad because it will lead to eventual catastrophy)-- and also because facts unfortunately do in fact care about your feelings and your attempt to be objective and unclouded by your emotions is still going to be subjective and informed by your own views, which is why Nie Mingjue's moral code has a core tentant that says self-sacrifice is not only Good but Mandatory and wanting to live is Bad, actually.

But even if the rules had somehow been perfect it would still, in the end, have failed. Right as the moment Nie Mingjue made that whole fucking system for arrives, it becomes useless. It's honestly really dark and tragic and deeply fascinating because of that.

Any fix-it that includes Nie Mingjue recovering from late stage saber poisoning should include him being absolutely horrified. Not just in the generic "oh my god I'm so sorry I hurt you" way, but in the sense that the thing he has committed to to the utmost degree since he was a child failed completely and instantly without him even noticing. Dedicated most of his life to it and it didn't matter at all. That's gonna fuck with a guy's head.

sometimes i feel like i hate everyone

can someone just take Mike's twitter account away from him already. i'm so fucking tired.

like dude just shut the fuck up.

Anyway. I vote we just ignore him forever actually and we do whatever we want with canon now. These two don't deserve it. And no I'm not just talking about this incident.

There's more. [x]

LOTS MORE. [x]

Tony Becker is one of the only times that I've seen that a character has actually been doomed by the plot when people say he is

oh! oh </3 oh!! okay!

The most beautiful thing in the entire Trolls franchise will always be Branch's character in the first movie when he wanted Poppy to understand that life isn't as perfect as she thinks but when she got betrayed and hurt and lost all hope he did everything to make her happy again because he wanted her to understand the pain but not experience it because she didn't deserve that and he didn't think that others have to suffer because he did.

for the ship ask game, have you ever thought about simm!master/eleven? would you like to?

would i ever!!!!!!

this was the basis of one of my posts about little amy so long ago. a hypothetical s5 where the master sticks with the doctor after he regenerates. but like can we talk about how insane that dynamic between him and amelia, the literal eight year old, would be. look at me. one of the defining things of eleven's run is that the first face he saw was amy's. seared onto his hearts!!! now, imagine that happens in a world where the master did everything right to be that person, and it was still amy. the tardis crashed, and the doctor went one way and the master went the other, and by the time the master drags himself soaking wet out of what was the swimming pool and into amelia's garden, the doctor is already having dinner with some random human child.

things simm!master is not above: being a little bitch to amy about this. yes, even when she's eight. (amelia pond with her stories about her magical raggedy doctor!! ...and the trash rat who crawled out of his time machine after him and threatened to eat her. wait okay hold on i know im getting distracted here but aslkjdalkjsd rory who amy makes dress up as the doctor vs mels who insists on dressing up as the master because she craves violence and an excuse to bite people.)

ANYWAY. god. eleven who is this bottomless well of grief and rage. and the master who is so much like him in this incarnation. silly goofy guys who burn too bright, burn up everything and everyone around them. what is simm!master if not a version of eleven untempered by kindness. i wonder what the master would have to say about a version of the doctor who is aware of how scared people are of him and uses it to his advantage. who scares the rest of the universe so much that they try to lock him away and kill him and do anything they can to get rid of him. when they lock the doctor up in the pandorica, does the master give him the final shove into the chair or is he a few feet away, just barely restrained, impotently snapping and snarling to prevent this?

but never looking at it directly, right? neither of them would be able to. not at what's between them, not at what came before. if you don't talk about that time you both saved each other, then maybe you can pretend it didn't happen.

i think the master would make eleven worse, no doubt about it. i think eleven might just make the master a little better, and he'd hate that but that wouldn't stop it from happening. they might find some sort of equilibrium, just this once, a little willing to bend in the aftermath of the events of the end of time. that part of the master that will be missy one day wakes up. the part of the doctor that was once the time lord victorious gets a last glorious breath. they can have that, together.

okay. okay. one last thing. gets ill thinking about eleven who is so physically affectionate being that way with the master. with mr 'im going to kiss my wife i married for political gain like im starving'. with mr 'time lord telepathy does not require physical contact but if we don't touch foreheads right now ill die'. with mr 'fuck u but also im gonna die in your arms, don't leave or let me go before everything falls quiet.' thinks about eleven touching him and hugging him and kissing him and- thinks about the master recoiling from it, hackles raised, or shoving the doctor away when he does. thinks about the doctor not stopping. thinks about the master getting accustomed to his touch, taking it greedily. (thinks about missy kissing the doctor to greet him later.)

yeag <3

[put any ship in my ask box and i’ll give my brutally honest opinion]

Me, a physically disabled (high support needs) neurodivergent (mid to high support needs) person: Hey, my neurodivergence IS extremely disabling in a way that a lot of you say "isn't possible" and also my physical and neurological disabilities often combine in ways that can't be separated and produce symptoms that are new or of added severity for me.

Responses I've gotten from disabled exclusionists (some of whom are also both physically disabled and neurodivergent):

"What drugs are you on, you delusional freak?"

"I've never experienced this and therefore you're a dirty lying physically abled neurodivergent person who just wants to be more disabled and oppressed than you are. My experiences are universal and anyone who has different experiences is a lying liar. No one can ever prove otherwise because my axiom is that anyone who claims otherwise is lying."

"The ableds are at it again."

"Sit down and let the REAL disabled people talk."

"You're never allowed to find similarities between disabilities that are of different types, even ones you have, and if you do you're actually the reason why accessibility is such an issue because conflating them is why ableist doctors don't give us what we need and why society thinks medical gatekeeping is good, actually."

"If you're that suicidal do us all a favor and kill yourself."

This is without even getting into stuff about how disabled labels often apply differently to systems. The big discourse now is "nonverbal" labels for headmates who are permanently, always nonverbal, primarily by people and systems who refuse to view systems as anything but "parts" of a single person. Which is funny to me because ah yes, we have actual studies showing physical disabilities such as allergies can apply only to individual headmates, but gods forbid you apply a neurological label to someone whose brain activity is not only visibly different on scans from yours, but to the extent that it changes your entire shared physical body!

Like here's a novel idea: maybe we could just stop policing how other disabled people talk about their disabilities forever! Maybe we could blame any and all harm done even from the unicorn-rarity "actual fakers/liars" (also don't think I don't see you being ableist against people with actual diagnosed that cause compulsive lying) on the ableists DOING the harm because it's actually perfectly possible for them not to cherrypick our words and listen to the MAJORITY of us!

Maybe, just maybe, we could form a coalition, focus on the REAL enemy (ableist medical professionals and lawmakers) and push for actual change for ALL of us!

thinks about the mighty nein. throws up blood

A mutual reblogged a pr*ship post and their dni is now neutral. Unfallowed. Bolcked.

I don't think people put much thought into the "You're not dumbing me, I'm dumping you" scene in prison. Those words had so much emotions behind them. Mickey, the guy that went against everything he was raised to believe and be in order to be with Ian, the guy that came out in front of his entire family to not lose Ian again, the guy who was there for Ian taking care of him and playing nurse when his BPD hit, got broken up with in the most heartbreaking way possible in the end of season 5. He sacrificed so much for Ian and Ian broke up with him essentially on the basis of "I'm not broken and you're trying to fix me so buh-bye". He got dumped after being the most vulnerable he had been in ages and that must have been excruciating for him. His ego must have been at an all time low. Season 7 he's reunited with Ian only to be left again, this time at border. That breakup was especially rough because Ian had made him believe that he would come with him to Mexico up until the last possible moment. Mickey must have imagined their new lives together in Mexico and built a future in his mind, only for that to, once again, be ripped out of him violently. Once again, he must have been devastated, being so open and emotional and unlike his old self and getting brutally rejected. So when they're at the prison and Ian tries to break up with him a THIRD time, he can't handle that. He's got to have some self respect and dignity left. He can't be the dumbed for the third time, he just can't. Every single time he allowed himself to be vulnerable and emotional and honest about his feelings in this relationship Ian turned him down in the most heart wrenching ways possible and a third time is just too much. So yeah. "You're not dumbing me, I'm dumping you". And my point is proven by Ian's reaction. When Mickey tells him that he will stab Chester and get thrown into solitary instead of him, Ian tries to race him for it. Why would he do that? I mean, theoretically, all he wanted was some time apart. He would have gotten his time apart plus he wouldn't have to be tortured in solitary. This was a win-win situation for Ian. But he couldn't let that happen. You know why? Cause he fucking wanted to be the "winner" of the breakup, that's why. He wanted to have the moral high ground. He wanted to be the one to break up with Mickey because if Mickey broke up with him, it would have been a massive hit to his ego, because he would have felt exactly how he made Mickey feel the last 2 times. And he didn't want that.

no cuz they rlly put jesse pinkman in a HOLE in the GROUND and those n*zi fucks YELLED at him and TORTURED (!!) and ENSLAVED (!!) him after he’d already been through hell and back like ????? the writers were genuinely so sick and twisted for that 😭

Ah lads here we go again. Chat, who's going to tell them