~

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Me: I mean depends on your tolerance for this type of racism, but like I said it's my favourite show, it def has some great parts if you're up for it.

Them: Oh so it's not racist.

Me: It absolutely is.

Them: So you're saying racism is ok??

Here is my mostly headcanon driven but heavily based on canon analysis of the gender functions and diversity on Dathomir, focusing on Night clan. Enjoy~

Disclaimer 1- based it on my brief (watched a few videos, read some articles) research on recognised gender diversity across the world- just so you know i’m not pulling all of this from my ass

Disclaimer 2- i do not love the nouns female and male and so I used them as little as possible and im open to suggestion how to replace them entirely with other descriptors

*jingle-jingles u with concept art now read even more*

Since the society is matriarchal in nature and because of highly visible sexual dimorphism the categories of gender it concentrates on that visual presentation and performing roles and duties. As a woman, you are most importantly a part of a clan and so a superior body under protection of the Mother, have access to magick and are the one to dictate the norms. And all that claimed by your pale skin adorn with subtle tattoos and an elongated skull that may be covered with hair. Similarly, before you are a man, you are a breeding tool, inferior, physical power - as your gender role and distinguished by your warm color skin marked with tattoos, horns and lack of hair. Thus Nightsisters are very proud and strict in their appearance and unaccepting of any form of deviance from the predescribed norm. They are in control of the gender assignment at birth and do so heavily based on visual clues. For example every warm color skinned newborn is prescribed the role of man and destined to be left at the Nightbrothers colonies. The same would apply for any trace of horns or anything beyond having pale skin and smooth head, the visual of the genitalia is a lesser consideration in the process. Although it changes with age and if there's any distortion in upholding the gender role or appearance it's met with a threat of banishing from the clan or death (the choice falls on the birthing mother of the fallen sister). As for the Nightbrothers they strongly resent Nightsisters as their tormentors and in essence every trait aligning with the witches image. Although in contrast to them, Nightbrothers are far more accepting of diversity in the visual expression, but notably more so if it can be molded to their expectation.

Such is the case with Daughters of Dathomir, a Nightbrother born individuals who claim feminine identity later in life. Often they discover themselves because of the stronger connection to force (than the rest of the colonies), or by recognising their place among the other Daughters already present in the colony. Nightbrothers treat them as a force-send revenge on the Nightsisters, a distinct category of women born out of their society. And because of that context they exist in - being a feminine made version of dathomirian zabraks- they physically don't differ much from the rest of the colony. They don't have the resources to undergo any physical transition but also willingly keep their masculine traits to signify their origin and place in the Nightbrothers society. Nightbrothers hold them as sacred and so they are hidden away from the gaze of Nightsisters, especially carefully in time of their visits to the colonies. Some of the Daughters of Dathomir deviate from the path laid for them by the Nightbrothers society. Those are called “Falsouls” (standing for false-souls), “fake souls” (or other similar in meaning names) as in their striving for womanhood they land on wanting to be one of the Nightsisters. This is of course seen as vile and a betrayal of the community that raised them in pursuit of something that will never acknowledge them. If they stand by their view of themselves they are exiled from the colony in the manner of traitors. Roaming abandoned, they search for other rejects of the broader Dathomirian society in hope of accessing the possibility to physically transition through use of magick.

Those are known as Scars - self named as a portrayal of being a stroke and a blemish on the surface of Nightsisters rule. They are Nightsisters born individuals adapting masculine identity later in life. Such behavior is unthinkable among the Nightsisters and is heavily ostracized to the point many of them are killed if they did not escape in time. In their identity they strive to perform the role and appearance of the Nightbrothers. To their detriment they are excluded from both fractions - Nightsisters as stated above, and for Nightbrothers they are still regarded as a fruit of their tormentors and merely a pathetic being which could never be one of them - real men of Dathomir, their struggle considered a greater punishment for the Nightsisters. Scars gave up trying to join Nightbrothers colonies so they form their own small groups and in them embrace their idea of dathomirian zabraks customs. They restrain from using magic for any other purpose than physical transition.

In case of intersex and genderqueer individuals their livelihood depends on their capability and will to fit under one of the sets of standards. They are not recognised as a group with a label of their own and rather a rare occurrence. If they claim a part in one of the groups they do so under the label of the established genders - Nightsister, Nightbrother, the third recognized gender of Daughter of Dathomir or Scar. But if they deviate a bit too much from the norm for the role they ought to perform they are met with disapproval, accusations and threat of banishment from the group which in many cases is inevitable.

i feel like the way fanon tackles it, it doesn't actually acknowledge the horror of displacement and the grief of being ripped from your culture because it seems to assume people will just embrace that being a slave is their new identity and easily give up their places of origin. this is still assimilation, in a way. it ignores that those people have an individuality beyond the traumatic experience that other people have forced on them and they have their own cultural origins. and even then, slavery in geographically separate locations is an entirely different experience. assuming that for example slavery on tatooine is generational, with people living long enough and reproducing often enough that you can have a somewhat stable population without a constant influx of new displaced individuals with their own cultural background, then anakin's experience is going to be very different from idk. a twi'lek on zygerria where people get sold or die too quickly to form communities. they might relate to each other in terms of traumatic experiences but the cultural background is different because shockingly, same trauma doesn't mean same culture. it seems odd to me to equate the two.

I'd argue that problem is also deeply linked to how the whole Tatooine Slave Culture headcanon seems specifically modeled on a superficial understanding of Black American slavery in particular.

Making such a 1:1 comparison feels very gross IMO, but it's also ill-fitted for the way SW depicts slavery, which draws just as much on Ancient Roman and Ottoman versions of enslavement as on American history. American chattel slavery stands out from older forms in how extensively race-based it is, and how enslavement was treated as a permanent condition of a self-perpetuating underclass.

This was not universal. Roman slavery, for instance, was based around the practice of taking war captives from defeated peoples, and manumission was frequent enough that freedmen were a substantial part of Roman society. Enslavement was perpetuated via ongoing warfare and the taking of new captives, not via having a large enough class of permanently enslaved people to replace the generational cohort.

Of course, there was definitely a racial/cultural component to varying degrees in many cultures' practice of slavery, but Western slavery took it to an unusual extreme.

There's definitely evidence of racially-based slavery in SW with the Wookiees, but that aspect wouldn't seem to apply very well to the enslavement of humans. People like Shmi Skywalker seem to fit more with the Ancient Roman or medieval models of captives taken in slaving raids, rather than a self-perpetuating cultural group of "the enslaved". Likewise, Jabba the Hutt's dancers seem to be sex slaves taken on an individual basis, rather than being born into a distinct culture of enslaved people with a shared folklore.

Unless a bunch of slaves on Tatooine were all taken from the same pre-existing culture somewhere, you wouldn't have anything comparable to the sort of shared diaspora culture created when early modern Western slavers operated a massive human trafficking network centered on west Africa.

The way droids are treated in SW makes me want to scream. Not only is it shitty but it's completely inconsistent. Because either droids like R2 really aren't sentient at all, or the good guys are actually all slave owners. *eye twitch*

The relationship between Vuffi (the scout) and Lando was very detailed and intimate and written to show them as partners and a deep connection. Lando I believe (it's been a while since I read it) didn't like owning droids because he found it distasteful and deeply uncomfortable and did consider it slavery. So when Vuffi sort of fell into his lap he treated him more as a partner and less as a subordinate. They used Lando's "ownership" as a means of ensuring Vuffi continued to be able to access things that were only available to owned droids, but Lando and Vuffi both found it gross that they had to.

Echoing something from the comments, the original usage of Tatooine Slave Culture by the person who made it and the way many fans do use it is NOT as a "universal slave culture" but more sensibly as just something unique to Tatooine that arose among it's large population of people descended from slaves or otherwise born into slavery. The problem, as highlighted here, comes from less thoughtful writers using as... well, a universal slave culture.

The Lando/Vuffi/L3 thing especially twigs me and always has because it's yet another of countless instances of how Disney's canon is so often just Legends But Worse. Taking broad ideas and concepts from Legends and stripping them of all that setting's incredible depth, history and soul in favor of something that's much more sanitized and marketable and non-challenging. Solo in general is a prime example of this phenomena since it's literally just the old Han Solo and Lando books in Legends condensed and watered down into a single movie. And while it's not a BAD movie on it's own, divorced of everything else, it's position once put into Star Wars' history - both out-of-universe as a franchise and in-universe as a collaborative worldbuilding setting - makes it into something very ugly.

I wanted to add my own piece, but it'd very quickly turn into it's own huge essay that goes a bit from this post's core. And it devolves into explaining why I'm the sort of Star Wars fan who actually largely dislikes the movies themselves (with the exception of Empire Strikes Back and Rogue One) and is more a fan of the expanded universe (primarily Legends), as well as what I believe is the source of a lot of the SW fandom's internal strife. So the short version is:

I feel that there's the spectre of a bigger issue looming behind the whole discussion of slavery in Star Wars. Namely that, is it really any surprise that many SW fanworks and even EU works handle slavery poorly when they're building off a core source material - George Lucas' films - that handles it incredibly badly most of the time?

Because slavery in SW is just one of the bigger examples George Lucas' tendency to thoughtlessly throw in all sorts of stuff with insane or horrifying implications in these clumsy, mechanical, sideways-glanced ways. Because he just didn't think that hard about it and didn't care for especially deep worldbuilding or the work of other people in the franchise he made or really anything past making a summer blockbuster spectacle that homaged his childhood favorite movies.

And a lot of the EU is the result of other writers and fanfic authors filling in the gaps Lucas left behind with logical conclusions about the bizarre implications and questions he created. And those logical conclusions tended to turn Lucas' fanciful heroes and Hollywood fairy tale morality into something much darker, more mature, more challenging, more complex, and above all else less marketable.

I have usually thought of Darth Sidious as kinda the one “happy” sith, the only one who isn’t just digging himself deeper and deeper into misery. That he truly enjoys his life, because he is just that evil. 

But yesterday it struck me that I while I think Palpatine had his own wicked version of fun during the clone wars, pulling off this entire centuries-in-the-making-plot to overthrow the Republic, he is bored as the emperor.

There are some good Lucas quotes on how the dark side of the force is very focused on transient pleasure, contrasted by the joy of the light side:

“The dark side is pleasure, biological and temporary and easy to achieve. The light side is joy, everlasting and difficult to achieve.”

“Pleasure is short lived. It lasts an hour, it lasts a minute, it lasts a month. It peaks and then it goes down–it peaks very high, but the next time you want to get that same peak you have to do it twice as much. It’s like drugs, you have to keep doing it because it insulates itself. No matter what it is, whether you’re shopping or you’re engaged in any other kind of pleasure. It all has the same quality about it.  (…) “People who get the pleasure they keep saying, ‘Well, if I can just get richer and get more cars–!’ You’ll never relive the moment you got your first car, that’s it, that’s the highest peak. Yes, you could get three Ferraris and a new gulf stream jet and maybe you’ll get close. But you have to keep going and eventually you’ll run out.  You just can’t do it, it doesn’t work.”

Palpatine hit peak pleasure in establishing his empire and murdering the Jedi. There is just no way to top that. He is bored out of his mind during his time as empreror. Oh, he gets a few more glimpses of amusement out of messing with Vader but that must have grown old quickly, as would inflicting systematic and personal pain on the galaxy (not that he would stop doing either, but that it just wouldn’t give the same satisfaction anymore). He can’t reach those same heights again. I also think Palpatine enjoyed the entire game of pre-empire, but now that he has won there is no need or space for that.

Luke showing up is probably the best thing to have happened for him in up to a decade. It’s a new way of causing Vader pain and he has one last Jedi to pull down into the dark (attempting to re-live his old victory). 

These are two characters who've had somewhat murky beginnings within both canon and legends. I think it's very notable that Obi-Wan was only given a home planet in 2010 (over 33 years later from when he was first introduced) and Qui-Gon was only given the home world of Coruscant in 2022!

There are very few main other characters like this. Luke Skywalker is from Tatooine, Leia Organa is from Aldeeran, and Han Solo is from Corellia. (This was established in 1976 in the novelization of a New Hope!)

Anakin Skywalker is from Tatooine, Padme Amidala is from Naboo. Both of these places featured predominantly in The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.

Why? Because to understand Anakin Skywalker and to understand Padme Amidala, you have to understand where they came from. You do not need to visit Stewjon to understand Obi-Wan Kenobi. You just need to see the Jedi Temple and meet other Jedi. You do not need to all of Corcuscant to understand Qui-Gon Jinn. You just need to see the Jedi Temple and meet other Jedi.

Culturally, they are Jedi. They are Jedi at the beginning, the middle, and the end of their lives. What if that were the origins of their names? What if Obi-Wan Kenobi means 'Child of the Light' or 'Beloved'? What if Qui-Gon Jinn means 'Protector' or 'Balanced'?

Mandalorian history is filled with Mandalorian armies committing genocide, both full and cultural. Why, for the love of all that is good and holy, why would you accuse Satine of doing exactly the thing she is canonically an activist against?

People just. Take Satine's best traits. And transplant them onto Jaster Mereel.

Then they say she'd be better as a villain because she's erasing a culture whose best traits (egalitarianism, diversity, compassion, a desire to help the weak and abused) are either informed traits, wholesale fanon, OR STOLEN FROM NEW MANDALORE.

Revising canon so that the True Mandalorians aren't uncomfortably racist and killing political activists for money (see: Open Seasons) so that their portrayals match up to their stated values is fine, but... claiming the pacifist is a more interesting villain because the culture she erased is diverse and progressive in fanon is... why. Why is it more interesting to write a pacifist, progressive character as the bad guy than to explore her in the context of the deeply messed up culture she was raised in.

I just. This is a woman who is shown displaying compassion at every turn and explicitly stated to have gone through hell for her beliefs, who rations when her people do, who said "no more war" because her people killed so many and then each other.

It's so much more interesting to investigate what she went through. It's so much less pro-imperialist to just RETCON THE DEMOGRAPHICS (the way canon did) and reimagine Satine as a woman of color to ditch the White Blonde Politician weirdness than to say "actually, the gun-toting mercenaries who said things like 'the natives are poorly armed' (thanks, Jaster) are the morally best option for this culture."

Hell, there's room to go 'oh hey, Kalevala was likely a planet that was colonized, since it's not Manda'yaim, which means Satine is possibly descended from people who, like Kal Skirata, were forcibly assimilated into Mandalorian culture way back.'

So, I do actually recognize that New Mandalore has some deeply questionable visuals. I've touched on them a few times, including in this post. With the first and foremost Mandalorian being Jango Fett, and the show already being on shaky footing with regards to race, the visuals being entirely white and blonde is sketchy as hell. It's uncomfortable to see and uncomfortable to think about, because we've seen in the Senate and on other planets that they can animate diversity, even if their budget may have been low for this episode (see: one of the more infamous screenshots used to talk about the homogeneity has three women with the exact same haircut).

We can all agree (or at least, all of us with sense) that Filoni fucked up here. The creative team made everyone on Mandalore white. This is a bad thing, because space should really not have that kind of homogeneity unless the planet/culture is incredibly insular or incompatible with other species.

But here's the thing:

The creative team for Open Seasons did the same thing. Not one of the depicted True Mandalorians is a person of color, except for Jango himself.

the fact that mando fans make satine out to be an enemy of her culture--write her as someone leading what is essentially a cultural genocide--is very... meta, to me. satine represents an opportunity for nuance in a fictional culture that is primarily known for the cool armor and the badass fight scenes, but the fans like the armor and the fighting. and satine does not. so satine as a character/what she represents in-universe has become an enemy of what makes mandos interesting to the fans. and she is an enemy they can punish by stripping her culture from her, by taking away her history and her art and her context and making her out as a wannabe republic senator with fascist leanings.

the mandalorian culture as a whole was influenced by māori culture with heavy input from temuera morrison. pretty much the only poc mandalorians we see on screen are jango and boba. they’re bounty hunters, they’re violent and dangerous, as opposed to later introduced pacifist new mandalorians, who are Decidedly White. the clones are mercilessly washed out too, peaking at tbb, in which "the smart one" is the lightest and "the brute force one" is the darkest. and it’s a Problem. it’s a problem in the real world, with how haka is still too often perceived as frightening and uncivilised, with how the notion that poc in general are more prone to violence is still ingrained in a lot of people’s points of view.

1: the character of boba fett--the OG mando--was originally played by a white actor. there are about 20 years of EU mando lore before temuera morrison was even considering auditioning for lucas’ new movies, and honestly my assessment of that casting choice is that lucas wanted an indigenous man to be the face of the mandalorians because their culture was established in the lore as violent and warmongering.

2: boba and jango are not the only poc mandos we see on screen. and they are all very different from each other. din djarin is not the same kind of mando as jango was. sabine wren is not the same kind of mando as either of them. which leads me to--

3: which mando culture are you talking about when you say "mando culture" ? because it's pretty firmly established in canon that mando culture is very splintered.

4: i personally think it's just a bad literary analyst practice to equate a fictional culture with a real world culture, even if that inspiration/intention exists, because of exactly this situation. mando culture is not maaori culture. it's mando culture. it's fictional. there is no such thing as a "warrior culture" hence the quote marks, because, as you acknowledged yourself, real world cultures do not operate on planet of hats rules.

i think there can be value in exploring a fictional culture through the lens of it's real world inspirations, but... temuera morrison did not have complete creative control over how mandalorian culture was depicted even in the movies and shows he was in, let alone the rest of the massive world of mando media that exists before and after and apart from him. maaori culture was an inspiration, yes, but not the only inspiration. and i take issue with the suggestion that martial traditions are essential to any culture, real or fictional, and i'm not saying that's what you suggested but that's kinda what you suggested. and i take issue with the real world atrocities committed against maaori people being equated to the policies of a fictional pacifist who again, as was my point, is a member of the same people group. is it racist that the violent mandos are usually poc and the pacifist is white? yeah, yeah it is. i'm not saying it's not. but that leads me to--

5: death watch is also white. like. in TCW it's not satine vs. jango fett + the true mandalorian movement started by jaster mereel (and only ever depicted in the comics/books). it's sative vs. her own sister, who funny enough happens to be white, and also happens to be a member of a majority white and "traditionally mandalorian" terrorist organization, whose goal is to make mandalore great again via galactic conquest, ala mandalorian empires of old. i personally would hesitate to suggest that imperialism and colonialism and cultural supremacy and domestic terrorism are cornerstones of maaori culture, accurately represented and due our respect.

literally this.

#Sabine is right there#she is the bridge of this discussion#the middle between pacifism and violence as culture#she doesn’t define her culture by violence but by art and creativity#she fights not because she is mandalorian but because the empire is Bad and she can do something about it#when she talks about her armor isn’t as a piece of weapon but a heirloom#how the way it’s painted means something#the only point she associates her culture with violence (that I recall)#is when she points out that mandalorians were at war with the jedi as she trains with Kanan#and Kanan puts a stop to that pretty quick#anyways Satine is cool and her episodes are insane#how did they put that#did they know how impactful it was

the fact that mando fans make satine out to be an enemy of her culture--write her as someone leading what is essentially a cultural genocide--is very... meta, to me. satine represents an opportunity for nuance in a fictional culture that is primarily known for the cool armor and the badass fight scenes, but the fans like the armor and the fighting. and satine does not. so satine as a character/what she represents in-universe has become an enemy of what makes mandos interesting to the fans. and she is an enemy they can punish by stripping her culture from her, by taking away her history and her art and her context and making her out as a wannabe republic senator with fascist leanings.

#taking the aggressive militarism out of a culture isn't cultural genocide #if your culture can't survive demilitarization/pacifism maybe it wasn't much of a culture to begin with. but i think mandos have so much #more going for them than martial tradition

Cultural change happens. Sometimes that change comes from within, by choice, and willingly and yeah it's usually just a change in emphasis: what values are most important to you?