Rose Tico

[E.H. Ruddock]

Ok, clearly we can't talk about this because of what she went through. Even if her character sucks and it has nothing to do with her personally. It's bullshit if you ask me, and I'm done with the SW forum for a while, but clearly people are offended so, I'm locking the thread. Sorry B.

[B]

Has anyone in this thread said anything racist, sexist, or body-shaming? Has anyone said anything disparaging about Kelly Marie Tran? I haven't read this thread from top to bottom, but most folks seemed to limit themselves to the character of Rose, her actions, and her arc.

I assume that's fair game.

Change my mind.

[dimejinky99]

You e missed the point. Why is she being singled out? There’s far worse main characters and played worse, than her. Padme and Portmans portrayal is an abominanoton in all three prequels. Where’s her thread? That’s just one

[stip]

any discussion of any character is and should be fair game. make that padme thread, dime. she was a pointless character

[B]

If you think the only reason we're having this discussion is because she's Asian, I'm fine with that argument too. You're probably not wrong.

But I'm not going to condemn someone arguing that her kiss with Finn is stupid by calling them a racist.

[E.H. Ruddock]

You e missed the point. Why is she being singled out? There’s far worse main characters and played worse, than her. Padme and Portmans portrayal is an abominanoton in all three prequels. Where’s her thread? That’s just one

Wth? If the person that created this thread thinks Rose is the worst character, why is it then their responsibility to create the thread about Padme or whoever else? They don't think that so why would they? If someone else thinks that, then start the thread.

[dimejinky99]

I’d rather talk about the good stuff. Why bother wasting the time going on about stuff you hate?
It’s a sore spot right now cos that actress has received such horrific vile abuse. I’m just bummed to see it happen here is all.

[VinylGuy]

Dime the only guy who talked about her race and gender is you.
I only talked about her character and how the movie uses Rose.
And the discussion we had with the other rmers was pretty much about rose and finn´s arc in the movie. What happened with the actress and the fans on the social media was horrible. We can discuss that if you want too.

By the way, i havent created the thread. I just posted this in the last jedi thread.

[dimejinky99]

I think that conversation reached its natural conclusion. Some folks didn’t like her in the film and how it was written. Others did and saw the value of her.
It was already over and somehow it’s split into a separate thread?

[stip]

i am still waiting for VG or Burt to refute my impossibly brilliant insight

[VinylGuy]

i am still waiting for VG or Burt to refute my impossibly brilliant insight

Oh i will my good old Stip. I will.

[epilogue]

It seems like some of the mods are still misunderstanding dime's point. And maybe dime hasn't done enough to articulate what he's feeling. Either way, we should hash it out.

Stip is right, as we've been saying all along, there's no reason why we can't criticize a character in Star Wars (even dime isn't saying otherwise). Padme was mishandled all the way around, and though I think The Clone Wars TV series moved mountains to make her much more the character she needed to be, the films let her down. For sure. There aren't a ton of people who would argue about that. No one's upset. Natalie Portman is still on social media and even embraces Padme in public (see her most recent SNL appearance).

However, to that end, I think what dime is getting at, is that the treatment of that character (Padme) has been dramatically different both by the culture at large and on RM. Though, the latter far, far less so, I would argue. And some of that isn't even conscious or malicious. Like so much of the social behavior we're talking about as a society right now, so much of what we do is automatic. It's learned and we would all do well to do the heavy work of deprogramming, thinking differently, empathizing, and trying to undo the worst of that stuff. It's hard work, for sure. But it's important, too.

Let's address this thread and dime's original point first. Again, I don't want to speak for dime, so I'll just talk about the way I interpreted his original reaction. We were having an on-topic discussion in an appropriate thread. We were talking about a character in the film The Last Jedi in the designated Last Jedi thread.

That discussion was dissected from that thread and made into its own thread. Why? That hasn't, to my knowledge, ever happened in any of these other Star Wars discussions. And the new thread wasn't simply called "Rose Tico" or "Who is the Worst Star Wars Character" or something similar. Focus was given specifically to her and why the character sucks, and it felt really icky. Icky because we didn't do that with Jar Jar or Padme or whomever else. So why Rose? Why now? Any time we've given a character their own thread there's been a spirit of celebration, for the most part. It hasn't felt like we're separating a specific distaste for said character into a thread just so more people can pile on and continue to rip the character apart. This felt like an excuse to attack, I think is dime's point. At least, that's how I took what he said.

Once again, I don't think this was done, consciously, in that spirit. I don't really think it was necessary to give this tangent it's own thread, to give it this kind of attention outside of the context of the TLJ thread, but I don't think there was actual malicious intent in doing so. But given what Kelly Marie Tran has been through -- and, yes, what John Boyega has been through (case in point: many have expressed how "pointless" Fin's character is and yet we don't have a Fin: Best or Worst Character Ever? thread), what Amed Best has been through, what Jake Lloyd has been through -- and how women, especially minorities/women of color are treated/perceived in our culture, I don't think dime's take on this is completely out of bounds either. He has a point.

Maybe the best course, rather than deleting or locking the thread, is just to change the thread title to "Rose Tico" and leave it at that. I don't know. Maybe that's not meaningful or helpful or whatever. Butmaybe people wouldn't feel the need to discuss the character in the context of how bad she is, they would just want to discuss all aspects of the character. Having the thread title as is encourages a specific kind of conversation that doesn't pervasive (or outright encouraged) in the other character threads. On the other hand, maybe this is all too PC for RM's general tastes and we can leave it all as it is and those of us who don't like the discussion within the thread can either ignore the thread or endeavor to change the discussion by talking about the character positively.

But to bring it back to Padme.... here's a character that should have a far greater impact on Star Wars than Rose. She's Luke and Leia's mother. She's the love of Anakin's life. She's a queen and a senator. But her portrayal is abysmal. She's terribly written. Lucas seemed to treat her as an unfortunate afterthought, something he HAD to deal with. Even Portman's acting feels wooden and disconnected (when we've seen time and time again that she's a credible and talented performer). There are plenty of arguments to be made about her being a worse character than Rose, especially given how much depends on her in the overall Saga. Padme is heavier, there is more at stake with her (so far) and thus should be the bigger disappointment and a far bigger point of contention for the fan base at large. Yet... where's the Padme Sucks! thread? Where's the internet outcry? Was Natalie Portman driven from Instagram?

Now, you might be thinking "um, but, you're contradicting yourself, asshat, Padme is a girl, too!" Yep. A white girl who conforms to more stereotypical (and yes misogynistic) societal standards of beauty. I'm not saying anyone on RM is attacking Kelly for being "chubby" or "ugly" or whatever, but it is happening elsewhere, all over the internet. By singling out Rose/Kelly like this, it feels like, even if it isn't conscious, RM is playing into and validating that kind of ugly discourse, even if only on some small level. Do we really want to give credence and validity to that shit? Even tangentially? These things don't exist in a vacuum. There is always a context. Any maybe dime is being hyper-sensitive or maybe he's just calling it like he sees it. But given everything that has gone on, I don't think he's out of line for being bothered by it.

None of that means this thread needs to be locked or deleted. Let's just try to be civil -- and I'm including myself and dime here -- and try to avoid playing into the worst instincts of the internet and the toxic culture we're all being over exposed to on a daily basis.

[epilogue]

And the discussion we had with the other rmers was pretty much about rose and finn´s arc in the movie. What happened with the actress and the fans on the social media was horrible. We can discuss that if you want too.

Exactly. There was no need to remove this from the original thread and highlight it this way. That's dime's point. This feels a bit icky, even if there was no malice in the move, it feels weird.

[dimejinky99]

Perfectly put Joseph. Better than I could have.

On a side note, Portman hated the role and became impossible on set to deal with so Lucas drastically cut Padme as they were filming in some cases. In particular She made Keira Knightlys life on set, unbearable. So there are real world reasons and without that knowledge it just looks like Lucas mishandled the character but he didn’t. He was pretty much forced to almost write her out.

[dimejinky99]

ON a complete tangent but you’ll see those most vocal TLJ haters saying it’s a sjw wankfest and forcing modern agendas is just box ticking, and has no place in Star Wars

Yet they miss the whole thing in Solo about L3 and her whole droids rights crusade and how that’s a subtle dig at sjw crusaders and how overbearing they can be.

Then again they didn’t see the film cos they boycotted it so..

[B]

That discussion was dissected from that thread and made into its own thread. Why? That hasn't, to my knowledge, ever happened in any of these other Star Wars discussions. And the new thread wasn't simply called "Rose Tico" or "Who is the Worst Star Wars Character" or something similar. Focus was given specifically to her and why the character sucks, and it felt really icky.

I split off the conversation because there was 2 pages of complaining about the character. I figured the debate could continue on it's own outside of the The Last Jedi thread. God knows it gets a lot of discussion on the Internet in general.

I named it with a tongue-in-cheek reference to Vinyl's post that started the discussion. I don't care what it's named.

Also, splitting threads is hardly new to RM. Hell, most of my splits are in the Star Wars forum b/c dime can't hold a thought in his head while posting about The Star Wars.

[dimejinky99]

Well if you want to make it personal

[B]

Well if you want to make it personal

Truth is truth, dime.

[epilogue]

That discussion was dissected from that thread and made into its own thread. Why? That hasn't, to my knowledge, ever happened in any of these other Star Wars discussions. And the new thread wasn't simply called "Rose Tico" or "Who is the Worst Star Wars Character" or something similar. Focus was given specifically to her and why the character sucks, and it felt really icky.

I split off the conversation because there was 2 pages of complaining about the character. I figured the debate could continue on it's own outside of the The Last Jedi thread. God knows it gets a lot of discussion on the Internet in general.

I named it with a tongue-in-cheek reference to Vinyl's post that started the discussion. I don't care what it's named.

Also, splitting threads is hardly new to RM. Hell, most of my splits are in the Star Wars forum b/c dime can't hold a thought in his head while posting about The Star Wars.

Oh, I know. We (you guys) split stuff off all the time. 9 times out of 10 it makes perfect sense to me.

Honestly, I think you guys do a fantastic job keeping this place inhabitable. Like I said, I didn't think it was done with malicious intent. Just sometimes actions have consequences beyond what we think about at the time. It happens.

[dimejinky99]

Well if you want to make it personal

Truth is truth, dime.

You’re a slow reader. I’ll try simplify for you In Future.