#rebels critical

[ncfan-1]

So is anyone else tired of surprise posthumous babies in fiction? Is anyone else tired of women getting turned into incubators for dead men's legacies, and how rarely the personal ramifications of them carrying those pregnancies to term are even lightly touched upon?

[animazi]

I’ve been rewatching rebels recently, and do forgive me for being a bit critical, I am very aware that a lot of this comes from my own comparative lack of interest in the uh. Rebels. As opposed to the tcw ladderinos who are there

but the way the show pivots from haha funny silly adventures to malachor is honestly ridiculously quick and for me at least felt really out of left field. + I honestly don’t like ahsokas arc that much? In theory I’m down for it, but in practise I was left wondering where the meat of it was. Seeing ahsoka (and rex) begin to put together that vader is anakin before the big reveal would have been really interesting, and would have made her arc and her general presence + the impact and suspense for malachor so much better. I know why they didn’t do this - ahsoka isn’t the main character - but I think in that case don’t introduce vader as your looming big bad for the early seasons; maybe at most have him make some camos and a few fight scenes, but he is kinda irrelevant to the Rebels? He’s not their former master turned Sith Lord, kanan pretty clearly doesn’t feel more anger towards him than he did to the clones, aside from as a representative of the empire, vader doesn’t have the same meaning to them, and it just doesn’t quite click.

(edit: I do know that what maul says in tcw siege of mandalore + general force bs is enough for ahsoka to put two and two together and get vader , but I still think there is a lot of emotional stuff there (esp with rex involved!) that really feels like it should have been explored better. (+ I am a believer that unless something is specifically set up as a sequel you should be able to watch/read it without having seen the connected works) - I don’t think it’s inconceivable that ahsoka figures anakin is vader without a lot of effort, but showing her putting the pieces together and either rejecting or becoming more sure of her conclusion would have made malachor not only hit harder, and her arc feel less like a hanger on from tcw)

anyway. Please don’t shoot me I still think rebels is mostly really good (I don’t like the world between worlds stuff, but that’s personal, and I didn’t like mortis either) and this lil rant thing was mostly prompted by me getting really bored in ep20 and then checking how many were left and being genuinely shocked ghat it was twilight of the apprentice already. This is all obviously just my own thoughts.

[depizan]

I know I’m a really weird Star Wars fan (and always have been). I’m vastly more interested in non-Force Users than Force Users, my favorite Legends writer is Brian Daley, not Timothy Zahn*, and I’ve come to realize that some of my favorite things about the original trilogy are all the tropes it subverted (possibly without noticing), etc.

On top of all that, or as part of all that, I really long for small Star Wars stories. (This would be one of the reasons I <3 Brian Daley’s Han Solo trilogy so much. Although the first two books touch on larger problems, the story focus in all three is small: rescue friends, get money, keep flying.) Here’s this marvelous, messed up universe, filled with people of a staggering array of species, up to all kinds of things! Why does every plot have to be galaxy shaking?

That was one of the things that ended up putting me off of Rebels. (Okay, that was a lost cause for other *coughassholescough* reasons.) We couldn’t just have stories about a rag tag bunch of misfits bouncing around the galaxy helping people, and even helping the proto-rebelion. Oh no, we must drag in every fucking villain that has ever existed. Because why would we want the story to be about the crew of the Ghost. No, far better to have it be all about other pre-existing characters. Because that’s totally what the show claims to be about. (I might still be a bit salty about this, despite my other issues with the show.)

That was one of the things that led to my giving up on the old!EU/Legends stuff (fortuitously right before the aliens from Warhammer 30k invaded): everything was galaxy shaking. (And everything involved the same damn characters. Yegad. Though, in that case, it was that the movie characters had to be mixed up in everything. This was one of the reasons I liked the X-wing books at the time. They were about other people. \o/)

I want The Mandalorian to be about the Mandalorian, god damn it. That’s what it says on the tin. Can’t he and the Child just wander the galaxy helping friends, getting money, and keeping the Razor Crest flying? No? Fuck.

I know. I know. If I want small Star Wars stories about a rag tag bunch of misfits wandering the galaxy helping people, getting money, and keeping their ship flying, I should probably, you know, write them. *sigh*

Maybe I’d be less irritated about what other people choose to do then.

*Though, despite my irritation with the character he’s (unfortunately) most famous for, I have come around to like Zahn’s work. At least his Legends work. *glares at his Nu!EU work and refuses to touch it*

[tobestik]

self care is having r*b*ls blacklisted so you don’t have to see the shitty animation and also the bad takes about everything

[captainmazzic]

(henlo anon from before) is there anything you would change about Ezra? i started to completely dislike Ezra in the episode 'Trials of The Darksaber' when he said "At least you have parents' to Sabine, i thought that was really insensitive, and such an attention-hogging thing to say. tl;dr both the writers and the fandom ruined my kid for me.

I’m having that same problem, although mostly on the writer end of things. Honestly for half of season three I couldn’t really even see him as being the same character, he just… fawning over Kanan and thanking him profusely (for doing NOTHING mind you), and then being really antagonistic and hostile towards Maul when like, it was kind of a thing that he was waffly about Maul. Where did that go? Oh right, out the window. Like all the rest of the good things about Rebels. And then just leaving Maul and Kenobi to their “fight” without a word. I just… I can’t see Ezra doing that. He’s too much of a meddler, too curious, too on-the-fence about what’s going on, and too much of a hands-on kind of guy to just shrug obediently and leave.

But honestly Ezra is not even the bulk of why I’m exasperated with Rebels. I’m just really disappointed with this show. It makes me tired and angry just thinking about it. It’s turning into about as much of a canon fiasco to me as the Holiday Special, tbh.

[defira85]

jedimasteramell replied to your post: idk why I’m surprised that Dave “let’s give the...

I apparently haves missed a lot today, what happened and whod he give a redemption arc too?

it’s in Rebels, one of the many reasons I stopped watching it. Agent Kallus, who proudly talks about his involvement with/leadership of the genocide on Lasan, to the point of mocking one of the survivors of said genocide repeatedly, is now a rebel informant. He and Zeb had that episode together in season two where he talked about how ~sad~ it was that his unit was killed by a rogue Lasat during the war and how it traumatised him and somehow... that... was the same as the trauma he inflicted by deliberately trying to wipe out an entire species??? And then he was sad that he had no friends so now he’s an informant or something????? 

anyway season three is on at the moment and he’s now Fulcrum which used to be Ahsoka’s title and ask me if I’m bitter about that!!!!!!!!!!

cassian andor kills him and takes the title back in honour of ahsoka who used to be his mentor

[depizan]

Another unpopular opinion: I would rather have no characters returning from the old EU/Legends than have only male characters returning.

I sorta accepted Playdoh!Thrawn because Thrawn is an extremely popular character, so, hey, his return made a lot of people happy and at least suggested we might see more EU/Legends folk return.

That the next to return was Ruhk tipped me right into, no, you know what, just set everything on fire. It’s better that way.

It’s not Ruhk by himself, it’s a combination of the fact that adding him back in without the surrounding Noghri storyline (a storyline that involved Leia, I might add) makes him pretty much just random warrior alien and, well, the animated shows’ focus on male characters over female ones. People have listed all the women fridged in Clone Wars already, but just on Rebels we get Maul back again (Jesus Christ is he dead yet!? Will he respawn again and show back up when we least expect it? Does he need to be cast into Mount Doom?*) we get Maketh Tua’s heel face turn ending in her death, but the much less well...anythinged heel face turn of Sideburns McGenocide ending successfully for him, we get an endless parade of male villains who really aren’t even the right power level for the show, and now...Ruhk.

And, again, Ruhk separated from his people and a storyline that actually involved a female character.

Yeah, I know Hera and Sabine are important characters on the show, even if it is mostly the Kanan Show. But until a female character makes the jump back into continuity, or comes back from the dead, or is prioritized over their male counterparts, I’m going to be over here with my pillars of salt making rude gestures.

*Really sad thing: I was kind of disappointed that he died after so little in Phantom Menace. And then he kept coming back from the dead like a South Park character. I will never be disappointed that a villainous character is dead again.

[depizan]

paradife-loft replied to your post: I tried to be good, but I just can’t.[[MOR] This...

each time I see this quote anew I find something more to hate about it, and this time it’s “isn’t Kanan’s attitude here like, the polar opposite of how Jedi are "supposed” to act wrt individual relationships vs greater causes, too ??“ so, there’s that :)

Indeed. Much as I hate Yoda’s terrible advice and attitude toward people, he seemed to be living his godawful advice. Kanan, however...

And that’s what makes it so frustrating in regards to how he (and the show) treats Ezra. Kanan’s allowed all kinds of emotional reactions, and it’s fine. Ezra gets punished - either chewed out by Kanan or narratively - for not having perfect Jedi control of his emotions. Kanan can be tired of the Rebellion and want to fuck off with Hera, and it’s...romantic? ...? Not being framed as *gasp* “How could he say that!?” Ezra had to accept that his “friends” kept him from information that his parents were alive and felt that it would’ve been a “distraction.” (I will never be over that. Never.) 

There are literally episodes where Kanan mocks Ezra for trying something, then turns around five minutes later and berates him for not trying the same thing. The same rules never apply to them. Ezra is always wrong. Kanan is always right. Even if they do the exact same thing.

The Jedi Code isn’t some ideal on Rebels. It’s an emotional bludgeon for Kanan to use on Ezra. (While merrily ignoring all of its tenets himself.)