Sundry things

[sholio]

- I finally finished my Chocolate Box signup, squeaking in under the wire! No real surprises, as I've requested all of these fandoms in previous exchanges. Letter here.

- Several different people told me they thought The Mandalorian would be my sort of thing, because apparently some of my narrative kinks are visible FROM SPACE, and they were not wrong. It’s not flawless, but certain aspects of it are pretty much made for me. (Space western with badass bounty hunter taking care of a baby ... yeah, hi, this is sholio and my id reporting for duty.) So far it doesn’t really seem to be inspiring fannish feelings in me, but we just stopped for the night on episode four, and I flat-out loved that one - it's a very stock plot that delivered everything you might want from that stock plot - so fannish feelings may happen if the rest of the series continues to be like that.

Two small spoilers under the cut:

- I've seen the show criticized for lacking women and they're not wrong, but I flat-out ADORED the former shock trooper in ep. 4. She's wonderful, and I especially love that she's sturdy and burly and really looks like a physical badass. (Orion: "I think her biceps are bigger than mine.") I hope she a) comes back in future episodes, and b) doesn't die. I might not forgive the show for killing her. I have rarely shipped two characters as fast and hard as I now ship her with the nameless protagonist on the basis of one episode.

- Somehow I osmosed that the baby in this show was actually Yoda as a baby and therefore the show was set several hundred years in the past, as opposed to a baby whatever-Yoda-is. (Orion: "But if they did that, you'd know Yoda couldn't possibly die, so the Mandalorian could just ..." *mimes holding up a baby and using it as a bullet shield*)

Anyway, I'm really enjoying the show's depiction of the post-Empire galaxy not as a utopia, or even as a safe and functional democracy, but rather, as slightly seedy post-revolution chaos, with defeated factions of the Empire still scrabbling for power, outlaw gangs preying on isolated planets in the absence of a strong central government, and so forth. I'm also really enjoying the nonstop spaghetti western homages; the first episode was a little ham-handed with it, but since then it's settled into a nice mix of western tropes blended with space opera. I also really enjoy how the Star Wars universe has kept the retro look of the tech and f/x and even the cuts between scenes.

No spoilers for the new movie or for Mandalorian past episode four, please!


Reveals are out on Happy Belated Treatmas! I wrote:

Time After Time (Schitt's Creek, 5500 wds, Stevie & David + canon pairings)
Stevie and David get married on a whim during a time loop. It would really be a shame if the loop ended at that point, wouldn't it?

Basically it's accidental marriage with platonic BFFs, and was really a lot of fun to write.

Comments

[sovay]

Anyway, I'm really enjoying the show's depiction of the post-Empire galaxy not as a utopia, or even as a safe and functional democracy, but rather, as slightly seedy post-revolution chaos, with defeated factions of the Empire still scrabbling for power, outlaw gangs preying on isolated planets in the absence of a strong central government, and so forth.

That sounds appropriately in key with life as we saw it in the first film (which nothing else has ever really been like, except maybe bits of Rogue One), which was not utopian at all, but not correspondingly dystopian either.

[sholio]

That sounds appropriately in key with life as we saw it in the first film (which nothing else has ever really been like, except maybe bits of Rogue One), which was not utopian at all, but not correspondingly dystopian either.

YES. In fact, your comment makes me realize that one thing I'm really enjoying about the show is something none of the movies have actually done well except the first one, which is that it takes the time to show you the lives of ordinary people (and especially rural people). Thus far in the show, as well as the usual seedy bars and that sort of thing, we've spent some time in a rural ranch that appears to power itself with windmills (it's never mentioned, but you can see them), and a village surrounded by fishponds where the villagers make a living by harvesting what are apparently psychoactive fish, as well as a few other places. There's a lot of old rattletrap tech that people are making do with, leftover weapons from the war and that sort of thing.

I think a lot of this is coming about as a side effect of the series actively adapting spaghetti-western visuals and tropes, which means a lot of small towns and isolated ranches and so forth, along with a kind of grimy, make-do feeling to the visuals. But the result is that it's a world that feels lived in, to an extent that most of the movies don't -- but the first one actually does, as you pointed out.

It never really had occurred to me that the movies lost that feeling as they became bigger and slicker blockbusters.

[sovay]

There's a lot of old rattletrap tech that people are making do with, leftover weapons from the war and that sort of thing.

Yes! That is good. I am also charmed by the idea of farming psychoactive fish.

a world that feels lived in, to an extent that most of the movies don't -- but the first one actually does, as you pointed out.

So I cannot point to the discussion because it took place a long time ago in an LJ far, far away, but in 2006 I rewatched the original trilogy on unaltered VHS for the first time since high school and the thing that impressed me most strongly about Star Wars (1977) was how alien it felt to me. I loved it. The plot isn't a streamlined hero's journey; it's a messy katamari that bashes around the galaxy until it's got enough significance stuck to it to achieve narrative mass. Here are two droids and a MacGuffin. Here's the human kid they run into, not flagged as any kind of hero beyond his immemorial small-town quest to see something of the world beyond the horizon he was born to, certainly not a rebel when the best route offplanet is the Imperial Academy; he's starstruck by the staticky hologram of Leia and intrigued by Kenobi's stories of the Jedi that promise to tell him something about his never-known father, but he honestly leaves for Alderaan because the only family he's ever known has been horrifically murdered and he has to get the hell out of moisture-farming Dodge. Every time a conventional arc seems to be forming, it gets short-circuited, blown off in a new direction. Okay, here's a smuggler, and he's kind of a dork. Okay, here's a princess, and she is a pistol. Here's the terrible sphere of dust that used to be Alderaan. Here's a duel to something stranger than the death, the last move in a dance as thorny and half-legendary as everything to do with the Force. Mobsters! Trash compactors! There goes Peter Cushing! By the time we wind up with Luke strafing the Death Star, pursued by Darth Vader and guided by the Force, we have in no way followed a foredestined path so much as ricocheted to this moment. It's wholly believable. People's real lives are this unplanned, this fortuitous, this catastrophic, this ordinary. (There are a lot of ordinary people in the first Star Wars. Including, at least at this point in time, the protagonist.) It matches the film's world which is knocked-about, scratched-up, offhandedly evocative and full of touchstones that are never—and should never—be explained. There's an incredible sense of mismatched time, unfathomable history: the lightsaber is such a perfect fusion between the medieval and the futuristic, I'm not surprised it became the signature symbol of the canon. It's not shiny. It's organic. I love The Empire Strikes Back, but even it doesn't feel quite like its predecessor; it's grander, darker, still full of pleasingly random details and worldbuilding no one diagrams for you, but much more tightly plotted. It doesn't spend so much time on the ground. I am intrigued by The Mandalorian if it does.

[sholio]

Yes!! I think I always forget what an atypically paced movie it is whenever I haven't rewatched it for awhile, but I completely agree with you and I think it's one reason why that movie is so rewatchable. It's rough-edged and weirdly paced and not at all tidy, and while I don't think I'd ever fully realized this 'til reading your wonderful analysis above, I think it does make it feel more real than most of its imitators and sequels. My favorite movie of the series has always been Empire, but while I always remember how much I love that one, the first one wins my heart anew every time I watch it (and does certain things much better).

That weird, sprawling pacing is one of the reasons I enjoy CJ Cherryh's books as well. The woman has clearly never met an outline that survived first contact with the enemy, but that rambling messiness -- the way that characters and plotlines wander in and wander out, and references appear without explanation -- is one of the reasons why her books somehow have an emotional reality that many much more polished and tightly plotted books don't.

I wouldn't say that The Mandalorian is like the first Star Wars movie, exactly. But I think it does actually remind me of it more than anything else I've watched in the Star Wars universe.

[sovay]

I think it does make it feel more real than most of its imitators and sequels.

I suspect it's like the thing where actual Tolkien is significantly weirder than almost anyone who took him as a model. (I actually suspect this is true of most things that are widely imitated, but Tolkien and Star Wars are the two where it really leaps out at me; what's then strange about Star Wars is that not even the original sequels are weird in the same ways.)

What are the certain things you think it does better than Empire?

The woman has clearly never met an outline that survived first contact with the enemy, but that rambling messiness -- the way that characters and plotlines wander in and wander out, and references appear without explanation -- is one of the reasons why her books somehow have an emotional reality that many much more polished and tightly plotted books don't.

I bounced severely off Cherryh on the prose level (it wasn't the style per se; I've described the experience as like trying to climb a glass model of someone else's brain), but people keep recommending me to her on other levels and I keep feeling I should try her again just to see what happens.

But I think it does actually remind me of it more than anything else I've watched in the Star Wars universe.

That really is neat.

[sovay]

It never really had occurred to me that the movies lost that feeling as they became bigger and slicker blockbusters.

As long as we are talking about Star Wars, I am going to leave my favorite related vid here: it takes a dead obvious concept—Imperial officers to the tune of Lorde's "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"—and gets neat amounts of horror and empathy out of it, never losing sight of the fact that being a galactic fascist is not actually a good life decision. I tried to track the vidder down on AO3 once I had an account to tell them how much I loved it, but was not able to find them. I realize it is also germane to the previous comment in that it illustrates that the one sleek, frictionless, classically futurist sphere of the original movies is the one you really don't want to live in: it's the echelons of the Empire. (I remain disproportionately fond of Admiral Piett and delighted that it's really not just me.)

[sholio]

Ooh, thank you! I will look forward to watching this tomorrow.

it illustrates that the one sleek, frictionless, classically futurist sphere of the original movies is the one you really don't want to live in

Oh yes, that's an excellent point.

[sovay]

Oh yes, that's an excellent point.

The vid made it click for me. I'd never spent that much time immersed solely in the Imperial aesthetic before.

[schneefink]

Thanks for the vid rec, that was great :)

[sovay]

Thanks for the vid rec, that was great

You're welcome!

[sovay]

the first film (which nothing else has ever really been like, except maybe bits of Rogue One)

Apparently I am not the only person who felt this way, and also it seemed germane to the conversation.