procrastination station

Someone please redraw the “He ordered no pickles” meme but it’s Luke Skywalker with the Mandalorian hiding behind him.

Luke Skywalker, to Bo-Katan: Excuse me, but he said he doesn’t want the Darksaber?

i havent been able to get this post out of my head

Luke compels people with the force a few times but Din never notices it's a force thing, he just thinks it's common sense that people do whatever Luke wants if he smiles a little and speaks softly

His name’s Luke Skywalker and he’s here to rescue you!!

June 15th prompt: Luke and Grogu save Din from Moff Gideon ( @dinlukeweek )

(I switched this days prompt out for this one!)

Bonus:

[insert heavy breathing]

Just... this post by @aclanofthree

I have a bit more free time now since it’s almost the end of term and what do I do but,,, this

POV u tried to throw it back but instead u threw ur back out

So is this the end of the larger story of Mandalore?  Because what’s even left?  The Empire is gone, Gideon is dead, the Imperial base destroyed, the other Imperial Remnants didn’t seem that interested in Mandalore, the Darksaber is gone, Mandalorians are reunited with each other, Bo-Katan has stepped up to leadership, they’ve reclaimed their planet, life is growing there again, is this what the end of approximately 15 years of storyline has been building towards? I guess it’s possible that there may be more, they’re not around for the sequels, so maybe the First Order comes for them at some point, maybe wipes them out, maybe they truly do retire here.  It’s a bit of a strange feeling, this storyline has been threaded through The Clone Wars, through Rebels, through The Mandalorian, and despite that we never see huge chunks of it, it might actually be finished. It’s a strange feeling, I think, because the Darksaber is really the only thing that seemed to connect the storyline to anything that came before, there’s no mention of anything that happened with Satine, there’s no mention of anything of where Sabine is, there’s no mention of any of the other main families of Mandalore, the history they give us is vague at best, and it just makes the whole thing feel half-finished. On their own, these last two episodes of season 3 were probably some of the strongest of the season, but when taken into the context of the bigger story of the events of Mandalore, it feels like a half-finished sketch to me.

There were at least three separate points in this episode where I was on the edge of my seat when Bo-Katan was talking about Mandalore’s history of fighting each other, of her own role in things, where I was sure they were finally going to say her sister’s fucking name, to talk about Satine’s vision for Mandalore, to talk about Bo-Katan’s feelings about stepping into her sister’s shoes, not necessarily to do it the same way, but her conflicting feelings about being someone trying to achieve the same basic goal of healing her people, to talk about Bo-Katan’s own role in fighting and spilling Mandalorian blood against her own sister’s rule, to talk about Bo-Katan’s major role in Death Watch’s history, they brought up Death Watch this episode and she was right there in the scene and I’m willing to give some leeway that I do think she must have at least been thinking about Satine, but it’s getting Real Fucking Telling that this show refuses to say Satine Kryze’s name.  She’s from the same series that Bo-Katan is from, she’s not some obscure bit of trivia that might confuse fans!  She’s from the same series that Bo-Katan is from.  There is absolutely zero reason for Bo-Katan not to say her fucking name.

I have a tinfoil hat theory about what’s going on but idk… Is it possible that they’re never bringing up Satine’s name because the show is desperately trying to avoid mentioning that non-violence - or just a civilian lifestyle - is an option for Mandalorians? Satine’s government worked for about twenty years and it’s the most prosperous and most peaceful Mandalore has had in recent memory, but the audience wants cool badass armored mercenaries living according to an honorable warrior creed, so we have to pretend the only way they can be united is through the warrior ways even when it’s canonically false.

They’re pretending Satine doesn’t exist because she’s kind of the embarrassing reminder that the Mandos we’re seeing onscreen right now weren’t lifted straight from the EU but that Mandalore was rewritten wholesale when it was introduced in canon and the warrior ways were painted as the reactionary terrorist faction and the bad guys to her hippy reform. If we raise the question of non-warrior Mandos, then the warrior ways might be called into question or even meaningfully criticized (beyond just “we shouldn’t fight each other, just other people”), and we can’t have that, so we can’t ever mention Satine.

It’s so annoying too because Satine’s government had plenty of issues but it was an incredible idea and a mindblowing cultural revolution. She saw her people were absolutely sick of centuries of bloodshed, said ‘okay, we’re done with that’ and it WORKED. But nooope. Can’t mention that. Can’t even mention that the Children of the Watch’s survival is due to her putting the warriors on Concordia. Blasters and impenetrable armor and invincible warriors who can take on trained Force-sensitives are cool so nevermind the anti-war arguments.

So Din was Just Some Guy who mumblefucked his way into being the father of a force sensitive child, and becoming the mand'alor. He was someone who didn't want to be the main character, being shoved into the role by the narrative. The entertainment in the show was partly just watching din slowly accept that he wasn't Just Some Guy anymore. Watching him slowly accepting his role as a father, watching him become significant to the sw universe kicking and screaming. It was interesting and compelling and it made for a really great main character and really great tv.

But in this season all of that was kicked out the window. He's not even a main character anymore, let alone the main character. The guy who was Just Some Guy has finally been relegated to insignificance. All of his character development washed down the drain. all of the earlier set up gone. This is the Bo-Katan show now, and yes, she's a mandalorian so we should be pleased but honestly fuck bo-katan.

Bo-katan works as a side character, she works as a villain, she works as an ally, she works as a foil, and if done very carefully, she works as a main character. But instead she's been hamfisted into the lead role by a creator who's clearly enamored with her. She doesn't earn her state as new main character.

We also never see her fail - notice that? She has (apparently) failed offscreen, but that state of failure lasts for maybe five minutes. In season 2 she's livid that Din has the darksaber and believes she has the right to rule mandalore because her family did, then we see her briefly dejected, only to be divinely proven to be the true mand'alor. She hasn't struggled at all in the mandalorian, she hasn't gone through any development that we could see. she started in one place and ended in one place.

Anyway I hope she literally dies in the next few episodes I'm so sick on this.

don't get me wrong, i love miss bo katan, but I don't want to see her, for the third time, try to retake mandalore and just in some way of another fail, like what would be the point of the story? and what about mando? like sorry din you displayed the most mandalorian traits ever but bo here is a princess!!! who walked two pats, with some terrori*sm in the side, but hey, she would be a good ruler!

i want din, the orphan foundling ex bounty hunter dad of an exjedi green baby, to rise above every expectation of him, above the creed, above his status, above everything, and become mandalor'e, like that's what this is for right? to teach people that no matter where you come from sometimes you are meant for something so much greater than you can ever imagine?

i am so frustrated with bo-katan's THIRD shot at being mand'alor as she just TAKES OVER the season. Like she's given this arc about learning she's worthy to be a leader... but she knew she was worthy in season 2. literally she's just the leader because her father was. miss disney princess over here.

Meanwhile our main character just does not exist. His story arch is done. There has been no emotional depth to him this season, which makes sense because we've had barely any of his perspective.

the individual intentions of the writers feels kind of secondary when talking about how reactionary the mandalorian has become, but if you wanted to be extremely generous about what’s going on, I think that the very simple and boring answer is that there is no financial incentive to care about what happens in the show anymore. Disney lost over a billion dollars on Disney+ last year, despite the wild success of the mandalorian and other D+ shows. I’m assuming the primary way they make money is off of mando and baby yoda merchandise - this would explain why the showrunners reunited both of them before the first episode of the third season even aired. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the mandalorian now exists primarily to sell the mandalorian merchandise. it has become an advertisement for itself.

and this would explain a lot! It explains why virtually all of the narrative threads from the previous two seasons have either been dropped or quickly resolved. It explains the exponential increase in nauseating Star Wars references like “Han shot first” “it’s a trap” yoda doing backflips etc. It explains why Din has become something of a zombie, going through the motions without any particular motivation beyond whatever deranged escapade he and Bo-Katan get up to on a given week. There’s no point to caring because the only real pressure is getting eyes on the screen and selling more baby yoda stickers. This is why we went from an Ahsoka cameo in season 2 (an obvious ploy to launch another show but still somewhat reasonable for the story) to having Lizzo and Jack Black in season 3 (literally no narrative reason at all). Those celebrities are really popular and their inclusion in the show produces media headlines that combine their names with the mandalorian, optimising search engine results and presenting the opportunity to sell merchandise to Jack Black and Lizzo fans, even if they aren’t Star Wars fans.

but the shape of this not-caring takes on a particular political form in the show - its lack of care for politics doesn’t equally produce progressive and reactionary political conflict, it’s only reactionary. And one of the reasons for this is because I think a lot of pre-existing Star Wars canon, which this show is leaning more and more heavily on, is so politically fraught that using it without thinking about it produces reactionary narratives. I think this is a large reason why 3x03 was so deeply disturbing politically, because it was all set-up for the arrival of the First Order in the Sequel Trilogy. The show doesn’t seem to take any specific perspective on this aside from telling the audience that its all very ominous, but it’s only ominous because the First Order are established as the villains of the Sequels, not because the rise of fascism in a fictional world is a specific horror that Favreau wants to explore, and the reasons for its rise are extremely lazy, boiling down to “the government is too wrapped up in bureaucratic processes to care and too forgiving of the empire to notice.”

and two I think that in general, positioning your story in opposition to politics - not a specific set of political beliefs, just “politics” as a whole - also produces de facto reactionary narratives. the show is not espousing any positive beliefs about what an ideal world may look like, nor is it precise in its criticisms about what it believes to be the flaws that currently exist in the present day world. It’s just against bureaucracy in general, democracy in general, technology in general. and the show abdicates responsibility for taking a position on why it thinks any of these things are bad. Din dismissively scoffs “politics” in 3x06, perhaps the laziest possible admission that the show is not interested in exploring anything it considers political, and aims to position the characters as being outside of politics. but that itself is a reactionary position, to assume that presenting a “direct democracy” as an overly-decadent, hyper-tolerant society who is too scared to give cops guns but will arm citizens if their cultural “feelings” allow them to carry firearms as “not political.” Again to be way too overly generous, perhaps Favreau is attempting to wave in the general direction of current society and say wow doesn’t this suck! too much democracy produced trump, too much technology produced ipad babies, too much bureaucracy produced complicated tax forms. That’s still stupid and wrong but it’s at least not an openly fascist position. but when you don’t confront those things as political and just say “they suck” in a way that you believe to be outside of politics, the perspective you take is that of a reactionary. a refusal to confront what you consider political is itself a political position, one where you intentionally shrink your imagination of politics to, like, government employees who work at the government building, and everything outside of it is just “natural” society - or, in this case, deeply unnatural, perverted by politics. the only apparent solution for the political conflicts in the show is to scale back “the politics” that are preventing natural society from flourishing. That’s fucking reactionary! and like sorry to pull this card but the whole “I’m above politics” schtick has a pretty extensive history of appearing in fascist slogans, from Mussolini to fucking Alex Jones, a rallying cry that these people eternally get behind - “We’re above the Left-Right divide.” positioning yourself as above politics is itself a political act, one that has a lot of baggage that, by virtue of positioning yourself as being too good for politics, you will not engage with.

so like I don’t know if Favreau is “really” a reactionary. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter because his current cultural output is deeply reactionary. but I don’t think any of this is done with intentional malice. I think when you turn art into a purely financial instrument you produce art that is fascist by default, because its only goal is to concentrate financial and political power for the ruling class by appealing to “common man” interests like. fucking Star Wars!!!!!!

I’m curious about like what actually happened internally to make season 3 so bad. is this what you get automatically by doing “mcuification” to Star Wars? Like are there specific writing mandates that go along with that process? were there demands for scripts to be finished on an extremely short time frame and this is all just first draft writing? I’m not trying to be conspiratorial but this season feels completely different and disconnected from the previous two seasons in a way that “Disney wants more cameos this time” can’t explain alone

Din: Stop being a brat.

Luke: no :)

Zeb: at a bar drinking and relaxin

Kallus:

- Mand’alor -

As much as the thought of Din at some point properly wielding the darksaber is amazing, watching him struggle with it is also infinitely entertaining…..

hung pictures of old jedi masters up on my wall

to remind me that i am a fool