TK-603

Cause I’m getting a lot of asks with the same questions, I’ll keep this short (but knowing me it’ll probably be long anyway):

1. @tk-603​ saw the movie before I did and wrote up a list of similarities that later became the article when they didn’t want me linking it over to them, so I posted it on my friend’s website since I was already a contributor there anyway. People found the post, so they’ve since granted me permission to link them to it. 

2. After I started getting a bunch of asks after the movie came out about the similarities from people who read the story, the article was posted on December 18th to sort of direct people there and be like, “Look how crazy this is!” Then people were like, “Wow, this is super weird!” and I said, “I know!” and that was the end of it - like I had no idea it was going to become this whole big thing. 

3. I’m not claiming to have written TLJ. There are 3 specific points from my fanfiction that’s in it: the whole selling your daughter for beer money thing, Phasma’s staff expanding and contracting, and the Snoke manipulating their minds with Force visions to get her to the Supremacy, which then ends with the lightsaber frozen between them and the stalemate ends when an explosion to the ship knocks them both out. Like it’s really weird to write that a few weeks after TFA came out and then see it suddenly appear in TLJ. That whole Finn/Rose sideplot and whatever was going on with Poe and Holdo didn’t come from me. 

4. A staff writer for The Atlantic wrote an article about how Rian borrowed from a popular Reylo fanfiction, like the whole part about how Rey and Kylo were Force skyping across the galaxy and decided to team up to bring down Snoke. I can’t speak for the similarities because I never read it, but apparently it was big enough that it’s published as an actual article in an actual online magazine, as opposed to just my friend’s website….like I don’t know why more people aren’t talking about that lol 

5. I’m not trying to sue Disney/Lucasfilm/Rian Johnson. Like there are three very specific things in there from my story, but the rest of it? The whole part about Finn and Poe and Rose and Holdo and Luke? Didn’t write it. Don’t take ownership of it. I didn’t create Force bonds, that’s already out there in canon. Never said I did. Like I said, it’s just the 3 specific things that I mentioned above. 

6. I didn’t really like TLJ. I wrote an article about it basically condemning how Poe, Finn, Rose, and Rey were treated. I really didn’t like several parts of the film; it made me really uncomfortable watching it. None of the elements that I criticized were in my story because my story focused mostly around The First Order. 

7. I never actually shared the article comparing the similarities to my story on Tumblr. I sent it to people privately or in response to an ask, but never posted it out right as a “hey everybody, check this out!!” I think someone shared the article with someone much more popular than I and then it spread from there. Or, like a game of telephone, someone made a post about how, “hey did you hear rian johnson copied a one million word kylo ren smut fic to make tlj?” and that’s funny, like of course that would get a lot of notes, because it’s as ridiculous as it sounds, and then that’s how it blew up. 

Like I’m honestly really surprised and impressed with some of the leg work that some people did to see that my story was actually legitimate and written when I said it was, going all the way back through my asks from 2016 - like damn, big kudos to you guys for taking the time, seriously. 

But in all honesty, like, the story was popular back when I first wrote it, people liked it, it had its time in the sun, and I seriously thought I would be writing new material and new stories from TLJ until other people started to notice how super freaky it was and how much stuff it had in common. Like imagine if you wrote a post on Tumblr saying Finn tells Phasma he’s rebel scum before he kills her on Snoke’s ship and suddenly that’s in the movie, like that would be pretty freaky, right? That’s basically where this whole thing came out of.  

Proof? spoilers under cut as per request

Proof? spoilers under cut as per request

Haha so I thought it over and I honestly can’t think of a world where Hux and Kylo would realize they’ve been played and then still have a threesome…or a world where Reader would actually get caught…but that’s not to say I didn’t write a little something. ;) I hope you enjoy it, anon!!

ao3 Link

Luke, Han and Leia had one child between them. ONE. 

He becomes the new Emperor.

And it seems many Star Wars fans, the creative team calling itself “protectors” of the characters, and the media is just fine with that. In fact, they welcome it and praise it to the skies for “subverting” expectations and tell anyone who disagrees that we’re misogynist, sexist, alt R, butthurt, wedded to the past, need to get over it, that it’s okay that these heroes are destroyed because right now, we need to learn not to worship heroes, even new ones.

I get that message every damn day. So does everyone else. In fact, we got that message every damn day in the 70s when original Star Wars came out and was a huge hit and beloved because….

There were clearly defined heroes and villains and the good guys won.

The lesson of new Star Wars is nobody wins, if you live long enough, you’ll sire the villain or train him and it will be your fault when he turns into a bad guy and destroys your life’s work. But hey, it’s all cool, we’ll do the same thing one more time! Plus strip your character from you and run you through the same thing one more time (Han and Finn) or change your character and teach you a lesson (Poe) or change your character completely so we can teach the audience a lesson (Luke). Or make you, against all rational thought, believe the villain who’s tortured you and killed people days ago will turn to good if you just clap hard enough (Rey).

And in the end, everything you did means nothing - again! Because there’s no growth, it’s just the same damn thing again and again because that’s how modern blockbusters work. 

Dear LF and Rian: 

First off, Finn has always been a person to put others before himself, even as a Stormtrooper. In tie-in materials, he was reprimanded for continuously helping a lagging comrade, and then for being unable to kill targets. That’s why he was sent to Jakku–to essentially be blooded and get a real taste of Stormtrooper action. He ended up being unable to kill the unarmed villagers, even though he absolutely would’ve known such actions would result in punishment. For a man that’s been brainwashed his entire conscious life to be a slave to the First Order, risking his neck for unarmed targets he knew nothing about was a incredibly brave act.

Then, he grew to care deeply for the new friends the made–primarily Poe and Rey. Who could blame him for caring about them as much as he did, maybe even loving them? (Yay for shipping both.) Poe and Rey both gave Finn things he’d never had before: one gave him a name, and believed in him, the other didn’t reject him, knowing his past, and fought to defend him. I absolutely do not blame Finn for being attached to this new, immediate circle of friends, knowing his background and what he experienced in life.

Speaking of which, why the fuck is it so bad for Finn to think first about himself and this group of friends? He’s been forced to be nothing but a weapon of the First Order his entire life, not even being allowed a name. He gets to enjoy something as basic as a NAME–along with his new comrades–for what, a week at most? Then, we’re told he has to push past that and become a cog in the wheel of the Resistance. Sure, he might believe in the Resistance, but why must hee be the martyr for their cause so quickly? He never gets a nice 3-year or 8-month timeskip to develop offscreen, like in the original trilogy. He gets a week before we’re told he’s selfish and must move past his attachments.

Finn gets like…one or two moments to think about himself in The Force Awakens. Why are we told it’s best for this former brainwashed soldier to selflessly devote himself to a brand-new cause when he finally got to make a choice for himself and leave the First Order just a week before???

I was hesitant to name this post this title because I know how easily it turns people off to reading the post, but honestly, that is what this is and honestly, this one is really worth the read.

It is The Last Jedi Sin #12.

12. Plot-Driven Characters

Up until yesterday night, I didn’t know how to describe what was bothering me so much about TLJ in the respect I will be talking about in a few. It was just “wrong” and “unconvincing” because honestly, what Rian chose to do to these characters is rarely done.

Why? you ask

because this isn’t how you write, Rian!

When I was a Senior in HS, I had skipped a grade, but was taking college classes nonetheless. One of the classes I was taking was English 101 from a local college for dual high school and college credit. At the same time, I was taking English 102 from another local college. One of the first things I learned in my college classes, after y’know…being told them for years, was that good stories are driven by strong characters. This was reinforced when I elected to take Screenwriting 101 when I was a Sophomore in college. The plot is something that happens as a result of what a character does or fails to do. Of course, sometimes you have to push a character to push forward the plot…that’s a necessity of character development, but it has to feel natural and the plot has to feel like it was meant to happen. It has to make sense. The build-up to the climax has to feel as seamless as possible and plot is really to bend around the characters…

Not the other way around.

Did Rian not get that memo? Did like…no one tell him?

What bothers me so much, and is, in fact, The Last Jedi Sin #12 is that the whole movie of The Last Jedi is the plot driving the characters and not the characters driving the plot. It’s hard to describe, but I’m going to do my very best.

In The Original Trilogy, the protagonists and antagonists have a certain dynamic. Vader and Sidious have a master-apprentice relationship, but almost like equals. Luke, Han, and Leia have the friendship dynamic. Luke and Vader, however, have a very different dynamic because they are father and son and are the “Functional Skywalkers” of the Trilogy. (This is not meant to sideline Leia…it’s just that her dynamic with her father was not established until late into VI so the dynamic was overshadowed by Luke and Vader’s that was established as early as the end of IV, but formally established in the middle of V.) 

Vader and Sidious wanted to control the whole galaxy and worked their asses off to destroy the Resistance. Luke, Leia, and Han were members of the Resistance and Resistance heroes; Luke was a Jedi and was bestowed a legacy upon him. The dynamic that really pushed forward the entire saga was the relationship of Luke Skywalker to Darth Vader. 

The plot of the entire Star Wars OT was to redeem Anakin Skywalker, establish Luke Skywalker as a hero, and bring balance to the galaxy, all of which was accomplished, but could only have been accomplished through the dynamic that was Luke being the son of Darth Vader, taking the legacy of his father upon himself, believing in the goodness of his father, and being the strong, emotional, loving, faithful character he was. It could only have been accomplished because Darth Vader still had a heart and cared for his son more than he ever could care about power. 

The entirety of the Prequels was the fall of Anakin Skywalker. The PT was, truthfully, so character-driven, it may have been character-driven to a fault because they were so focused on getting Anakin’s descent to the Dark Side satisfying and “right” that other things seemed to be pushed to the background. The main villains in the PT weren’t the most intimidating, except for Palpatine/Sidious, dialogue was clunky and awkward, but for the most part, the Prequels did a decent job at clearly displaying the internal struggle of Anakin Skywalker to remain good in the face of his dark tendencies, intense emotions he couldn’t control, and disdain for the Jedi Council. 

Even TFA was a pretty character-driven story. JJ knew what to do, as much as few have faith in him. 

The Force really Awakened when Finn saved Poe from the clutches of Kylo Ren and chose to finish Poe’s mission by bringing BB-8 back to the Resistance. Along the way, he met Rey, a girl whose emotions were very strong, had a very hard life, and wanted nothing more than a family. TFA repeatedly reminded the audience that Rey needed to return to Jakku because of her family, but because she found a family in the Resistance, she went full speed ahead into helping them and finding the belonging she sought ahead of her. Kylo Ren’s intentions in the movie were clear: to find Luke Skywalker and presumably to kill him. Why? We allegedly find out why in TLJ, but it’s unbelievable at best. He also desired to “finish what his grandfather started”, which was always a very confusing motivation because we all know Anakin Skywalker defected and murdered the Emperor as his last act in his life.

I digress.

How does TLJ differ from the OT, PT, and TFA?

Aside from the fact nothing in the movie should have logically happened, which I keep saying again and again…things just inexplicably happen to these characters and they just respond to it. 

Like, the Resistance is suddenly on its last legs, so now Poe is a trigger-happy fly-boy and causes the death of lots of people.

Rose Tico sees Finn leaving the Resistance cruiser, so she tases him with no questions asked, thus resulting in this stupid side-quest on Canto Bight.

Rey hands Luke his lightsaber and he rejects it (which he never would have done), so she follows him around for days with literally nothing happening for the most part.

Kylo Ren and Rey have an inexplicable Force-Bond.

Like absolutely, a lot of those things happened because of what a character did, but these things just happen to these people. They react to it and we move on from it. It kinda dies as a concept as soon as someone reacts and by the end of the movie, the characterizations of all of the characters are basically unrecognizable, there was no plot, and we’re right back where we started…a return to normalcy.

Like Finn is exactly where he would have been without the trip to Canto Bight. Poe is exactly the same character. Rose Tico had little to no characterization in the first place. Kylo Ren is just as dark, if not a little darker. Luke’s character was assassinated. And Rey’s character regressed. Like…there was no point to this movie. 

I said at the beginning that “strong characters drive a plot”. With what was just said and is true, none of those characters are strong, especially the one that so desperately needs to be- Rey. Rian Johnson altered their characters from TFA and changed them so that it would fit his narrative. That is an astoundingly stupid move. Because not only are these characters now weak, but they are not even themselves anymore! So these characters, who we didn’t come to see, are not experiencing any character development, in a movie with no plot, are doing nothing. I’m literally watching a movie about nothing with nothing happening!

The Last Jedi was boring in every single way but visually because there was no plot. There was no character development. There was no point except super cool visuals. 

What drives a story is character development and a convincing plot based off of the characters, neither of which The Last Jedi had. 

It has tHiNgS happen, but nothing that actually pushed the trilogy-long plot. 

A lot of stuff happened in the Empire Strikes Back, like Lando in Cloud City with Darth Vader, Luke continues to train with Yoda and learn the ways of the Force, Han and Leia’s relationship happens, Han gets frozen in carbonite and given to Jabba, and whatnot. But what pushes the plot forward was the reveal that the Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker’s father, is still alive as Darth Vader. But had Lando not kinda “sold out” his friends to Vader, which led to Han being frozen in carbonite, Luke would have never left Jedi training to save his friends and fight his father, which led to the reveal that he was his father. Most of things that happen in this movie support the advancement of the trilogy-plot.

BUT NOTHING HAPPENED IN THE LAST JEDI. 

The reveal, which could have been the turning point in the movie, making Rey a Skywalker or even a Kenobi, was shot to shit and actually regressed the plot because just when we thought we were getting somewhere, after the shitty central conflict of the Resistance running out of fuel and the slow-motion cat and mouse chase, Finn, Rose, and DJ’s failure and sell-out, we got literally nothing. Nothing supported any kind of plot because there was no plot to begin with. Rian was- objectively- trying to rip off ESB, but failed because he so desperately wanted to subvert fan expectations that he actually sacrificed his plot and characters so that he could be “edgy” and “different”. 

Just when the Kylo-Rey dynamic was beginning to really be grounded and justified, Rian decided “hell fucking no” so whatever plot he was trying to go for, whatever character development he was trying to push forward, whatever he was trying to have happen, literally crumbled in front of the audience’s eyes. 

The whole reason ESB was so good and the dynamic going into ROTJ was high-octane was because of the dynamic between father-son Vader-Luke. There were high stakes in place, there were risks involved, there was faith being tested with the legitimate possibility for validation, and Vader’s possibility of redemption. Luke and Vader’s lives were in jeopardy because of their relationship.

There is no dynamic between Rey and Kylo because they, yeah maybe sorta understand each other a little better, but they still hate each other. They allegedly have no relationship with one another whatsoever, so where are the stakes?!  Kylo betrayed Rey after getting her hopes up. Like I honestly don’t know what to say about this. 

I fear for the franchise because I don’t know how it can be saved at this point.

Rian Johnson wrote not only himself, but JJ Abrams into a corner.  

You can’t write a compelling narrative where nothing happens and the characters simply respond to what happens to them. You can’t write a compelling narrative based on no stakes and no character development. People get bored when nothing happens and nothing progresses. I’ve had children tell me that TLJ “finished the same way the last movie did”. If children, Disney’s target market, can see it, that’s catastrophic. 

You could have made Luke’s character grief-stricken and dark without making him a leering, bitter creep

You could have made Kylo’s character relatable without the shirtless force-skyping and “intimate” gaslighting

You could have made Finn’s character conflicted without using insulting slapstick comedy and violence

You could have made Poe’s character clash with female leaders without shoving him into a “hotheaded spicy Latinx” male role

You could have made Rey’s journey about finding her own inner strength without having her literally tag after after not one, but two other men

You could have shown us the world through Rose’s eyes without having her talk down to and tase Finn

Setting aside the issue of whether your narrative goals were bad or good - you could have done this with a lot more goodwill and grace.

lothalsector:

I think a lot of the mistakes in TLJ come from a fundamental misunderstanding of what audiences want versus what critics want; and a complete misreading of the strengths of the Star Wars saga. 

Star Wars has never been about “subverting your expectations” or “destroying your preconceived notions” or any of that tripe reviewers are trotting out to defend the latest movie. Even at its most subversive (ESB) Star Wars was still about building things, loving your friends, and having hope for a better future. The cultural context was different as well. Coming off of the seventies, when sci-fi was still nascent; that sort of borderline downer ending was genuinely revolutionary. It really did “subvert expectations”. Now every other reboot is about making things darker and less fun, and sci-fi has become a grit fest. There is no destroying preconceived notions. We’ve seen it all before and we’re tired. 

This is an inherently a constructive series full of destructive occasions. The Death Star may get blown up and planets may get destroyed, but there is an honorable rebellion and real hope for the future. Now it has become a destructive franchise, and the deaths feel cheaper because there is no promise that the Rebellion is still fighting, that hope is just around the corner. Without those “tired” fantasy cliches or actual plot pacing, it’s hard to feel like the story is building up to anything. New directors take glee in tearing down mainstays for the sake of it, killing off characters, and throwing in gratuitous subplots. While this sort of edge might still delight critics, a lot of audience members have gotten tired of it. 

We don’t necessarily want old Star Wars back, we recognize that things change, but we do want the same foundational ethos. We want storytelling beats out of fairytales, wrapped in good special effects and cheesy deliveries, touched by a genuine desire to make something good and exciting that people will enjoy. We want childlike enthusiasm, and genuine care, and a storytelling vision that reaches more than one weird episode. You don’t need to be upending what it means to be a Star Wars story, in fact, that’s the opposite of the solution. This is a children’s story (for all ages), and not a gritty reboot. Learn how to tell it like one, or don’t get upset when people complain. 

It’s also a failure to connect with the current climate. There were fairytale endings in the 30s because it was the Depression and noir in the fifties when it was a change of pace. In our time, do you really think the message this generation wants or needs is “the nazis win and any previous victories against them are made moot and except for a very small, constantly shrinking resistance with no real victories (I am enraged that starkiller base meant nothing in the end) the world is under their heel”? Do you think that people want to see a female hero being made to redeem a violent white twentysomething man in the era of mass shooters and white supremacists, when he’s done nothing worthy of redemption?

In short, it’s a movie that tells you that even when things are dark, everything is going to be alright. It literally ends with Luke and Leia standing together, planning to make everything right.

Remove one of them and the plot of the movie would have gone very differently than it did. And yes a lot of those actions and choices leads to failure in greater or lesser degree, that’s not the important thing here. It is that their actions affects outcome.

Not so in TLJ. As most people have noticed nothing the heroes do changes one damn thing. Everyone could have been sitting with their hands in their laps for the entire movie and we would have had the exact same outcome, the only one who differs here is Kylo who manages to kill off Snoke and become Supreme leader instead of the Supreme Leader. But he’s the antagonist and we don’t really care.

(And yeah, I’m not even counting Luke’s death here because he - or rather Rian’s writing - had taken himself so thoroughly out of the plot that him being dead makes for no noticeable difference.)

So you end up with a feeling of “what exactly was the point of all this?”. 

The issue isn’t that we see the heroes fail. Seeing that would be hard, but it could also, like i ESB, be deeply emotionally satisfying too despite the sadness. It’s that nothing they do changes anything at all.

Top 5 Worst Things in Media in 2017: Reylo - Star Wars

Daisy has said playing Rey in TLJ wasn’t so much getting back in character, it was playing something else and that there were just some elements she could connect to Rey from the last movie. 

Not just the characters.

From the opening crawl onwards the idea is sold to us that the First Order have taken over the New Republic.

Maybe I’m alone in this but I did NOT get that impression coming off of The Force Awakens.

In the Force Awakens there was the New Republic who were being threatened by this powerful encroaching force that was the First Order and were funding the Resistance to fight them.

The First Order used Starkiller Base to decimate several planets under the New Republic but then the Resistance took out Starkiller base which was where what seemed like MOST of their forces were gathered, arguably it was even their HQ.

Either way the First Order lost a lot of resources that day along with their biggest weapon.

But now…of screen…with maybe a MONTH tops in between films they’ve taken over the New Republic wholesale?

How?

Was the New Republic JUST those 10 planets or whatever blown up in TFA?

This really smacked of Johnson wanting the old status quo back so hard that he didn’t care and just made the First Order the Empire instead of the rebuilt remnants of it and the Resistance the Rebellion.

TLJ starts in the same split second TFA ends: with Rey handing Luke the lightsaber.

Yet in that split second, the First Order manages to recoup, find the Resistance base, force an evacuation, etc? 🙄🙄🙄