Once when I was in undergrad, someone described something as âproblematicâ in class and our professor was like, âThatâs cool, but âproblematicâ doesnât really mean anything. It means that the thing youâre describing has a problem, and in and of itself thatâs not bad. Art, especially, should always have problems, or else itâs not interesting and not art, either. It sounds like youâre trying to say that this is bad, but you donât want to say âbad.â Is that right?â
So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the âbadâ thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, âIâm uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.â
Once we stopped calling things âproblematicâ and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, âthatâs racistâ or âthatâs misogynisticâ or âew capitalism grossâ out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, âUhhh... Iâm not sure whatâs so bad?â and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.
Anyway. Whenever I see the word problematic, I canât help but think of this professor being like, âGood starting point, now letâs get specific.â I think when we have to commit to saying âthatâs ___â it requires a lot more careful thought about the truth and impact and complexities of whatever weâre claiming. Sometimes there really is some bullshit afoot, and also sometimes itâs art, and it should be full of problems, because thatâs what art is.
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Being critical of your interests is sooooo fun when you have the critic gene & then you sound kind of insane to the average tv watcher when you're like "this is my favorite show, It's Racist" & then you try to clarify what you mean & get that [Speech (legendary) - FAILURE] "the racism is really interesting though"
[Speech (legendary) - SUCCESS] I find the sociopolitical context of pulpy old sci-fi born circa the civil rights movement really fascinating to analyze especially when it was progressive for its time but still reveals the writers' unexamined biases in the subtext
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 iâm 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 âFalsoulsâ (standing for false-souls), âfake soulsâ (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.
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so many. stupid fucking people. smugly wrong. the term . "all art is political". does not mean. every artist puts political intent into their work. no. the guy drawing dicks on the subway did not intend any deep message by it. HOWEVER. all art. IS political. he chose to draw that dick. for a reason. society shaped what he finds funny. what he finds shocking. the fact he chose to draw a dick at all says something about his society. actually, the fact it is a dick and not a pussy is itself political. we are all. ALL. shaped by our environments. in an alternate universe a woman is drawing a vulva on the wall. and shes saying "TCH! this isnt political. stupid liberals". all art. has political CONTEXT. that is a more specific way to phrase it. because we live in a society. who has access to art? where is the art located? who is the artist? why did they draw that in that specific location. what led to them even having the sharpie they used to draw the dick to begin with. their society shaped their tools! their society shaped their choice of subject! their society shaped the location of their art! but these people are too stupid to understand this. so theyll continue pretending that they are not shaped by their political environment. SAD!
out of all the posts ive made that have blown up this has to be the most fascinating Given how i was too drunk to remember how to form full sentences. but was i wrong? no.
i never want to yuck anyone's yum but one issue i have with how star wars fandom tackles slavery is the concept of universal slave culture. a unique culture certainly develops in enslaved populations over time but it's by no means universal. one of the greatest evils of slavery is the mass displacement of people. they're torn from their families, home(worlds), languages and forced to assimilate to the culture of their slavers. in the friction between the cultures of the groups of people that make up an enslaved population of a place and the culture of the slavers, a new sense of identity is eventually created
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.
and then moving backwards, not everyone is going to want to meaningfully relate to their status as a slave either. for some people rebellion might mean reclamation yes but for others it might also mean saying fuck you, i belong in xyz place and nothing you do or say will ever change how i see myself. i understand the appeal of making a powerful message but i feel the poweful message loses its sensitivity when it assumes the only reaction to an involuntary experience is to entirely embrace it to the point where it becomes the primary identity marker. whatever existed before a person was enslaved is erased and in a way slavery is then equated with being a minority group when it's not that, in the same way that prisoners of war and hostages are not a minority group
and to clarify the last bit, what i mean is you don't owe the social class that someone else forced on you a belonging. nobody is naturally a slave, it's something that's a violation of human decency in every manifestation. the same identity based reclamation that is empowering for a minority group might fall shallow here and i think the reason it irks me is that it feels like a very western liberal way of adopting a viewpoint that sounds fairly empathetic on the surface but is clearly not giving any thought to realities that (white) westerners aren't likely to personally encounter. unfortunately for my ever thinning patience with social media sites, i'm a hater and i firmly believe it would do us all some good to think about situations that don't affect us with a little more care
This 1000%. It's looking at slavery through a lens where enslaved people are imagined as a monocultural lump.
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.
Basically, the Tatooine Slave Culture headcanon tries clumsily to fit the experience of Black American slavery (as seen through a white-liberal lens) directly onto the SW universe, and ignores all the obstacles to doing so, rather than doing the far more interesting thing of looking at the universe itself and asking "what forms of enslavement and resistance are likely to arise in this world?"
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*
Also yeah, treating L3 as a joke, and then only keeping her 'alive' to be trapped in a ship piloted by a person she loathes? Should have just let her die rather than endlessly torture her.
The infuriating part is L3 and that particular version of Lando were clearly "inspired" by the Lando Calrissian Adventures, which was a series written and published in the 80s where Lando met a droid scout from a sentient race of droids from another galaxy that were refugees trying to escape the Yuuzhan Vong. They were very clearly established as a free race and refugees on the run and there were several things introduced along the lines of questions of freedom and what makes someone 'sentient' and therefore deserving of 'freedom'. Their discomfort with the Rebel Alliance was also shown in detail because what do you mean you're "fighting for freedom" and have all these cousins of theirs enslaved? Oh you don't think it's slavery? Okay then. Oh it's fine because you "treat them well"? Beloved what the fuck?
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.
It was pretty clear the relationship with Lando and Vuffi was basically cannibalized by Disney for Solo and turned into a massive, distasteful joke. Vuffi was originally male coded and there was a bit of a homoerotic undertone in that really specific 80s way, which adds a whole other layer to L3 being "female coded" and Lando having a romantic line with her, and watching Solo as someone who read that original trilogy just felt deeply and horribly uncomfortable, like I was getting a slap in the face for knowing and caring about Lando and Vuffi. It was... tbh watching it was beyond uncomfortable, it legitimately just felt really fucking gross. I'd rather they didn't connect to Lando's weird history with droids at all than what they did there. Just felt like a spit in the face.
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.
And Lucas, the corporations owning the property, and sections of the fandom or creators didn't like getting what they always saw as a "for selling toys to eight year olds" comfort franchise getting turned into something so subversive and adult like that, particularly something that suggested they themselves had accidentally done something thoughtless or offensive or reinforcing to questionable social attitudes.
Really the kicker about discussing colonialism intrinsic to certain fictional tropes/archetypes/genres/what-have-you is that white bitches et al get SO mad about it. "Ohh so I'm not allowed to play farming sims? Wearing a silly hat makes me a fascist now?" I was just exercising critical thought but yknow what? Just for you? Yeah it does
& it really speaks for... a certain way of thinking about how racism works, the way they'll jump to this dichotomy of Allowed vs Not Allowed. Cause that's not really how it works. If we actually wanted to simply #cancel everything with any sort of Historical Context or Unsavory Implications it'd never fucking end, due to the world that we live in. Good thing we're just telling you to think even a little bit about the ideas you engage with & this suggestion makes people Really Mad
It's that whole thing of, like, being more afraid of being labelled A Racist than really caring about minimizing harm. "Oohh this thing I like can't be racist because I'm Not Racist" no â¤
Late night musings:Â I think Emperor Palpatine is miserable.
I have usually thought of Darth Sidious as kinda the one âhappyâ sith, the only one who isnât just digging himself deeper and deeper into misery. That he truly enjoys his life, because he is just that evil.Â
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:
âThe dark side is pleasure, biological and temporary and easy to achieve. The light side is joy, everlasting and difficult to achieve.â
âPleasure is short lived. It lasts an hour, it lasts a minute, it lasts a month. It peaks and then it goes downâit peaks very high, but the next time you want to get that same peak you have to do it twice as much. Itâs like drugs, you have to keep doing it because it insulates itself. No matter what it is, whether youâre shopping or youâre engaged in any other kind of pleasure. It all has the same quality about it.Â
(âŚ)
âPeople who get the pleasure they keep saying, âWell, if I can just get richer and get more carsâ!â Youâll never relive the moment you got your first car, thatâs it, thatâs the highest peak. Yes, you could get three Ferraris and a new gulf stream jet and maybe youâll get close. But you have to keep going and eventually youâll run out. Â You just canât do it, it doesnât work.â
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 wouldnât give the same satisfaction anymore). He canât 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. Itâs 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).Â
All Sith are miserable, and even Sheev Palpatine was no different. Itâs just what the dark side of the force does to you.Â
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I know that people often characterize Obi-Wan as a Stewjoni name which is great!
It's just that, personally, I've more inclined to think it is as a name given to him by the Jedi. I just don't think that it's a coincidence that two of the most prominent Jedi whom we see are named 'Qui-Gon Jinn' and 'Obi-Wan Kenobi'.
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'?
I just think that it would be neat to see it more.
"Satine should have been a villain" is just. I've seen it a few times and. Ffffff please tell me more about why you think a woman doing "my community should do less colonialism/imperialism/child abuse" is the bad guy, without revising what she, her people, or the Traditionalists whose culture (of imperialism, child soldiers, and freaking devĹirme, depending on the sect) is being "ruined" by her saying "yeah, you don't get to kill people for money anymore."
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.'
Just. Why is "the pacifist activist who is on decade number three of changing her own culture from the inside to be less British/Danish/Ottoman/Mongolian/Japanese/Roman Empire-esque should be the bad guy" your go-to?
It's people bringing the metatextual into the text. All of the above is what Satine is, according to the text. But metatextually, she's a white woman, most of whose government is white, coming in to replace a people who up to that point have been largely depicted as poc. Or if not most Mandalorians, then definitely the clones. Adding insult to injury, now the mandos of color aren't even recognized as True Mandalorians anymore. So yeah. People are upset about that, and it makes a ton of sense to me why someone might portray Satine not as the text does, but what her metatextual function has been.
OKAY gonna kick this off by saying I wrote up an entire thing and have scrapped most of it because wow do I not have a coherent train of thought when trying to debate while emotional. @atagotiak helped me turn it into something that doesn't go in circles and backtrack across itself. And this does get me emotional. Because... reasons.
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.
(He's also very white-washed, so maybe some of these characters were meant to be men of color? But the clones were white-washed in TCW, so if that's our point of argument, we need to extend benefit of the doubt to either both, or neither.)
The diversity of Mandalore pre-Satine is a fanon creation. It's a good fanon, but it's not a reason to decide she's evil. It's a reason to yell at the creators for doing racial homogeneity on Mandalore.
Death Watch is also really, really white. Every existing Mandalorian since KOTOR, as of TCW, was really, really white. I'm going to include a list of every Mandalorian I found that wasn't a white human at the end, but if we don't include the video games set in the old republic (some 4000 years pre-canon), then these are the Mandalorian humans of color:
Jango Fett, his family, and any clones of his
Clan Wren - Asian, from Star Wars: Rebels (released after public negativity to Filoni's animation choices in TCW)
Ketsu Onyo - black, from Rebels (released after public negativity to Filoni's animation choices in TCW)
Janard - profile says "Skin tone: Tan," (race ambiguous) from a comic based on Star Wars: Rebels (released after public negativity to Filoni's animation choices in TCW)
Novoc Vevut - black, from the comics "Legacy of the Force," takes place several decades post-OT in Legends
OId Teroch - ambiguous race, from the X-Wings miniatures game, profile says "Skin tone: Dark"
Shyla Varad - ambiguous race, from Imperial Assault card game (released 2014), profile says "Skin tone: Tan"
Mandalore the Lesser - ambiguous race, from codex entries and Legends timeline, profile says "Skin tone: Tan", almost 4000 years pre-canon
Jango and his people. Characters introduced after Filoni got backlash for white Mandalore. Novoc. Two characters from a card game, one of whom is racially ambiguous enough that she might be white anyway. A character from the KOTOR period.
(Din counts as 'characters introduced after Filoni got backlash,' but even then it's a borderline case since Pedro Pascal refers to himself as a Hispanic white man, so I'm not including him.)
That's it. The 'Diverse Mandalore' that people say Satine got rid of hadn't existed in over three thousand years, because the Star Wars writers have always been racist.
If we criticize Satine for not having a Mandalore that looks like KOTOR because her creators were bad at their jobs, then we criticize Jaster for the same thing. If we retcon the True Mandalorians to be more diverse, then we do the same to the New Mandalorians.
My issue with the 'the visuals are questionable' is based on a lot of things, but a big one is the double standard I outline above. Every faction of Mandalore is uncomfortably white in anything set in the decades leading up to the empire, because creators are racist. If we talk about New Mandalore being a problem because of those visuals, then we need to do the same for True Mandalorians.
Sundari being mostly white has been retconned by canon. The True Mandalorians being mostly white has not... mostly because they aren't canon anymore at all, but we'll see if that changes, now that Jaster's been name-dropped in the live-action.
I'm starting with this to make it clear that I am more than aware of what the major criticism is, because that's where I started and was my first instinct as well. As I've just explained, though, it's irrelevant, because it was done to every other faction as well.
Whether canon demographics or retconned, Satine's people are no whiter than any other Mandalorian group of that century. That's where we start.
We then get into policy and behavior.
Satine's policies are explicitly anti-war and, with how this plays into her people's history, staunchly anti-imperialist. She is shown eating minimally when her people are running low on food, indicating that she refuses to distribute wealth with the inequality we see from leaders like Orn Free Taa. Her only explicit weaponry ban is for outsiders, unlike fanon claims, and the armor ban is also fanon.
(Also pretty much every faction has some No True Scotsman going on, and since Almec's already a dick, I don't feel bad about dismissing his commentary as a panicked rejection of attempts to tie Mandalore to the war, a war they cannot afford to get dragged into.)
There are some questionable things she does, to be sure, but...
Do you know the backstory for Kal Skirata?
He was born Falin Mattran. His parents died due to a war, and he was found and adopted a year later by Munin Skirata, a rather traditional Mandalorian, who wasn't affiliated with either Jaster or Tor's factions.
Falin was not allowed to keep his name. He wanted to. He was not allowed. He was raised to be Mandalorian, to be Kal, by the Skirata Clan. His adoptive father trained him to the point of abuse, where even other traditional Mandalorians called it a bit much. They did not interfere.
This is textbook forced assimilation.
Death Watch also takes children, likely not limiting themselves to orphans, and brainwashes them. They claim they are traditional. (Remember when I mentioned devĹirme?)
Jaster Mereel was known as the Reformer because he tried to make Mandalorians better, more honorable, while retaining tradition.
He once said "the natives are poorly armed and have no standing army. [...] This should be easy credits." Even if it was unintentional, the imperialist influence on his phrasing is ten times more apparent than Satine's.
All of Jaster's soldiers appear to be men. Jaster sent an eight-year-old into battle. It could be argued that it was the only choice in the situation, maybe, but he still did it.
Jango, prior to Galidraan, took jobs to kill political activists, for money. Not slavers, not drug lords, not CEOs. Political activists. Later, he knowingly participated in a genocide.
Do you know how many genocides, both full and cultural, are present in Mandalorian history? How many they enslaved? Mandalore's cultural legacy is hell for the people they conquered, no matter how cool they looked in armor and jetpacks.
I will take the argument that Satine's visuals are sketchy and so she's better as a villain when people do the same for Jaster's just-as-sketchy visuals and his even sketchier language and behavior.
-----------------
Mandalorians of color, or racially ambiguous, via me going through every profile on this page and checking the character design/description. I may have missed a few, but I was as thorough as I could manage.
Jango Fett, his family, and any clones of his
Janard - profile says "Skin tone: Tan," (race ambiguous) from a comic based on Star Wars: Rebels (released after public negativity to Filoni's animation choices in TCW)
Clan Wren - Asian, from Rebels (released after public negativity to Filoni's animation choices in TCW)
Ketsu Onyo - black, from Rebels (released after public negativity to Filoni's animation choices in TCW)
Novoc Vevut - black, from the comics "Legacy of the Force," takes place several decades post-OT in Legends
OId Teroch - ambiguous race, from the X-Wings miniatures game, profile says "Skin tone: Dark"
Shyla Varad - ambiguous race, from Imperial Assault card game (released 2014), profile says "Skin tone: Tan"
Mandalore the Lesser - ambiguous race, from codex entries and Legends timeline, profile says "Skin tone: Tan", almost 4000 years pre-canon
From the video games:
(VGOR - Video Game, Old Republic - several separate games all set some 3600-4000 years pre-canon)
Tarro Blood - VGOR, formerly of Alderaan, became a Mandalorian later in life
Tyrus Brokenblade - VGOR, ambiguously Asian (has green eyes, likely mixed race)
Randun Ard - VGOR, profile says "Skin tone: Dark"
Amzartho - VGOR, profile says "Skin tone: Dark"
Roggar Den - VGOR, profile says "Skin tone: Dark"
Karin Dochek - VGOR, profile says "Skin tone: Tan"
Dorrick - VGOR, black
Duran Gorr - VGOR, profile says "Skin tone: Tan"
Heta Kol - VGOR, profile says "Skin tone: Tan"
Deth Kregg - VGOR, black
Lem-Ofars - VGOR, black
Njanner-Pok - VGOR, profile says "Skin tone: Tan"
Ohta - VGOR, profile says "Skin tone: Tan"
Pit Rauhut - VGOR, profile says "Skin tone: Tan"
Rellu - VGOR, profile says "Skin tone: Tan"
Reedendu - VGOR, ambiguous due to lighting, but I think black
Bask Sunn- VGOR, profile says "Skin tone: Tan"
Tanik - VGOR, black
Zenzo - VGOR, black
Artus Lok - VGOR, black
Jagi - VGOR, black
Black UnNamed - customizable player character from Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed
Hetl Darkrunner - customizable player character from Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided
Not Human:
Jaing - comics, survivor of the Old Republic
Dagg - VGOR
"Mad Akk" Geden - VGOR
Zakxon Gewchi - VGOR
Grut - VGOR
Huntmaster - VGOR
Johun - VGOR
Vol Kolla - VGOR
Vort Norman - VGOR
Kassor Quade - VGOR
Renegin - VGOR
Dao Stryver - VGOR
Tosk - VGOR
Xev - VGOR
Xor - VGOR
Beld Yulan - comic "Knight Errant," set approx. one millennium pre-canon
Mandalore The First - "The Old Republic: Revan", Taung Mand'alor, at least 7000 years pre-canon
Mandalore the Indomitable - several Legends comics, Taung Mand'alor, almost 4000 years pre-canon
Mandalore the Ultimate - several Legends comics, Taung Mand'alor, almost 4000 years pre-canon
Demagol - KOTOR Legends comics (also set almost 4000 years pre-canon)
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reading this fic where the new mando schools don't teach classical mando art anymore, and. idk. it's kinda fucked up and it kinda got me thinking. maybe it's because i'm an american who leans pacifist and strongly supports gun regulations, but the whole fanon where the new mandos can't possibly be real mandos simply because they're pacifists bothers me. because i think that's part of why satine exists in the first place--to draw attention to the fact that in a lot of the canon, Mando and Pacifist are contradictions. she exists to deconstruct some realistic implications of a "warrior culture," such as, well. sometimes people get tired of fighting.
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.
satine exists to ask the question: is violence a necessary component of this culture? does being a mandalorian mean being a killer? and the fans by and large answered, yes.
i donât think itâs possible to consider satine and new mandalorians in general from watsonian perspective only because of how big a role the doylist point of view plays in it.
the mandalorian culture as a whole was influenced by mÄori culture with heavy input from temuera morrison. pretty much the only poc mandalorians we see on screen are jango and boba. theyâre bounty hunters, theyâre 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 itâs a Problem. itâs 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 peopleâs points of view.
can pacifist mandalorians exist? of course, skyâs the limit. theyâre a culture, theyâre a people, not a monolith. but i donât think itâs possible to discuss that without overhauling how new mandalorians are portrayed and addressing the very real problem of just blatant racism.
my issues with this line of thinking are many and complex.
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 lucasâ 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.
it's like... nobody has to like satine as a character. that's not what i'm saying. i am saying that satine is a mandalorian. trying to say that she is not, trying to say that she is erasing her own culture because she thinks violence and war are bad actually, and because she is enacting policies you personally may or may not agree with in an effort to stop the violence and war, is not a good take. it's just not.
It's especially egregious in the context of art when prior to Rebels and Sabine, the only examples of Mandalorian art that we saw in canon came from⌠Satine's Mandalore. Her palace and capital are FILLED with engravings, murals, gorgeous geometric patterns that reuse armor design, floral arrangements and ornamental trees and even paintings. There is every indication that Mandalorian art is flourishing under her, and it retains very brutal, symmetric, sharp edged military aspects so it doesn't even look like a reinvention of the culture, just a continuation. Meanwhile the traditionalists we see (still in TCW) have cookie cutter armor designs and no art. So it's not even that Satine's nuance is not acknowledged. It's acknowledged, and then stripped from her and given to the militaristic culture she supposedly destroyed.
#the whole thing about satine was about how being defined by violence was not a way to live#a way to define your culture and your identity#and how that will eventually will lead to their destruction#AND SHE IS PROVEN RIGHT#also on the racism point that wasnât brought up in the original post and wasnât what was being discussed originally
#Sabine is right there#she is the bridge of this discussion#the middle between pacifism and violence as culture#she doesnât 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 isnât as a piece of weapon but a heirloom#how the way itâs 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
tags via @/swonkohwenoeht and THANK YOU FOR BRINGING SABINE INTO THIS!!!
actually i do have more to say about this because it's not even my issue with how satine is mischaracterized but my issue with how pacifism itself is mischaracterized. it's just so obvious the people writing these stories think that pacifism is stupid. like. can you not just say that in your notes instead of writing this kind of nonsensical depiction of pacifism that is just--authoritarian rule but substituting in fear of social rejection/exile for fear of violence as the means of population control?
in the fic that started this whole thing, the weird art curriculum? basically the new mandos banned any art that depicted violence. which is such nonsense because pacifism is a byproduct of violence. a pro pacifism art curriculum would not be âno depictions of violence ever, all that punching is gonna corrupt the childrenâ because nobody thinks like that except fundamentalist christians and tumblr antis. a pro pacifism art curriculum would be âlook at all this violence. isnât it horrible? isnât awful? isnât the suffering immense? can you imagine inflicting this pain on another living being?â
reading this fic where the new mando schools don't teach classical mando art anymore, and. idk. it's kinda fucked up and it kinda got me thinking. maybe it's because i'm an american who leans pacifist and strongly supports gun regulations, but the whole fanon where the new mandos can't possibly be real mandos simply because they're pacifists bothers me. because i think that's part of why satine exists in the first place--to draw attention to the fact that in a lot of the canon, Mando and Pacifist are contradictions. she exists to deconstruct some realistic implications of a "warrior culture," such as, well. sometimes people get tired of fighting.
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.
satine exists to ask the question: is violence a necessary component of this culture? does being a mandalorian mean being a killer? and the fans by and large answered, yes.
Pulling the tags from @rochenn because I think it's worth saying:
#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?
If you had no other values than militarism, what did you have at all?
People keep going for the completely baseless "cultural genocide" angle while missing Satine and the new mandos as comparable to Japanese and German demilitarization reforms post wwii