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monsterqueersPeople asked for it- so here it is! Cleaned up for easier and more coherent reading!
So Star Wars.
If you have interacted with a wide berth of kinds of fans, you know that people tend to have shall we say, VERY different interpretations of the same text- and a large chunk of those who are not too lost in the nostalgia sauce tend to say that Star Wars sucks in some form/to some degree- even when they are hardcore fans of it.
You ever wonder why?
Well.
Those things are related.
Essay below the cut.
Star Wars is not alone in this polarized interpretations plus 'generally accepted as having haphazard or highly contrasting chunks of storytelling', but its certainly the biggest and clearest example of both and why these things can intersect. Hence why its the example being used.
There are a few moving parts to this, so let us start with the first;
The Jedi Problem
'The Jedi Problem' is what we have named the phenomenon of very contrasting messages, canon elements, and real-world facts in a story that then proceed to cause the audience to take away very different things from the story each based on what parts of the sprawling canon they partook in, their personal knowledge base, and what things in the story stuck out to them for whatever reason- to the point that they cannot agree on basic canon facts that are integral to the plot that would seem simple to answer.
It is named after how many basic facts about the jedi as a group are so genuinely contested in The Discourse, such as 'were the jedi as a religious institution good or bad', 'what does No Attachment mean', and 'what were the philosophical beliefs that jedi had'.
See, within the many many many pieces of canon (both those that are currently canon and those that were retconned or decanonized former canon) -hell, even inside the SAME STANDALONE SECTION OF CANON- these things are not entirely consistent. We are told one thing, shown another, told a different contrasting different thing again, then shown yet another different contrasting thing later.
When this arises, the fandom then has to choose which of all these simultaneously valid interpretations AND simultaneously valid canon facts they wish to keep. Is what we are unintentionally shown with canon facts more valid or what we are plainly told(both by word of gods and by characters in-universe)? Which of the things we are told in the same movie is more true? How dead should the author be in terms of interpretation?
Hence The Jedi Problem.
People want to treat Star Wars as a cohesive story that follows clear internally sourced logic of how the world works where the characters are shown and told to be the same thing and also act consistently.
And well, it simply isn't.
Fans instead cobble together desperate patchwork narratives and argue this is how it really does work, but it doesn't in the canon text itself. This is why there has been no true consensus- there cannot be when the text contradicts itself all over the place and the author's idea of how things work is very different from the current understanding of many fans today.
The reason works with The Jedi Problem are Like That can be many things -lazy writing, inadequate planning and inability to edit causing retcons, executive meddling, too many cooks in the kitchen, implications and understanding of a topic differing over time as media shows its age, a lack of respect for fans to shoehorn in plot twists for drama- but in Star Wars (the main installments of it at least) the big ticket for why its just so incredibly severe of an issue is actually a discrepancy in story structure, plot, and the satellite materials trying to work with it.
Story Structure Shenanigans
Pretty much every piece in the franchise that is not the OT (and arguably only the first movie at that) very much wants to be engaged with like a rich, rationally grounded world with moving parts you can see and follow up on. One things leads to another, there is a consistent through line of characterization and moving background parts of the setting and reasoning of why things happen-
HOWEVER
All of the first six movies -the bible bits everything else of canon is based off of- are written instead with the story structure of a fairy tale.
Here we introduce another concept to explain story structure models; The Grounded to Fairy Tale Spectrum.
The Grounded to Fairytale Spectrum
Like the [hard/soft magic scale], but for story structure instead of worldbuilding elements.
There are 'hard' story structures, and 'soft' story structures.
A fairytale, or 'soft' story structure, is structured in the 'things happen because I the writer says they do to make this story move along' way. Things are often whimsical and dreamlike. The characters are narrative tools to deliver plot events more than they are consistent people. Things happen to get the special boy trucked along from important point to important point- not because it would happen that way if it happened in real life nessesarily.
A good example of this story structure in action would be The Dark Crystal (1982).
In contrast, a grounded story, or 'hard' story has characters that act consistently, plots that have reasons you can trace back, and the rules (if there are any) of how the world works are consistent. The characters are much less apparently narrative tools, and rather more strongly attempt to mimic how they would behave in a given situation if they were a real person. Things happen how the writer wants them- but significant care is taken to making sure things appear to make internal sense.
A good example of a grounded story structure would be Full Metal Alchemist.
On this spectrum, the structure of the piece is graded on how much the story internally 'works' in a consistent manner with a throughline of why things happen and why characters act in certain ways. A grounded story will be more towards the grounded end and a fairy tale to the fairytale end.
To be absolutely clear though- neither of these is an inferior way of telling a story. Like the hard/soft magic scale, its merely describing how it works. Neither is better or worse than the other inherently.
Fairytale stories are not inherently worse written- they are just very different to how most stories that people enjoy as adults are structured nowadays.
However Star Wars Is NOT Well Written
The problem with Star Wars and part of the core of why its such (and I say this with love) a garbagefire of a franchise, is that Star Wars structurally is at its core a fairy tale BUT everyone writing for Star Wars desperately wants/wanted to write it as a grounded story instead. Including George Lucas himself past that beginning bit.
All the plots they write are ones that are more suited to a grounded story structure and writing style and even if the satellite material has the structure compliment the story they want to tell, it still has to build itself on scaffolding simply not meant for more grounded fiction.
The jedi code is so baffling, contradictory, unhealthy sounding, and poorly explained sometimes in part because Anakin needed Special Boy Forbidden Love drama. Same with why Mace Windu (and the rest of the council) effectively bullies a 9 year old boy freshly freed from slavery and brought to a whole other planet who had to leave his mother behind in said slavery for being afraid. This is not because this was the right thing to do somehow as some people insist, or because Mace is an evil asshole and so are all the jedi, or even because this is how George Lucas thinks its ok to treat a child, but because they needed conflict for the story and Mace was the available tool to do it.
From the understanding of its structure you can then understand that the story isn't saying the jedi are evil every time something like this happens, its just using the order as conflict bumps to set Darth Vader in motion and retroactively set up the world of the OT. The code is whatever is convenient for the story. Mandalorians are whatever is convenient for the story at the time because armored guys are cool and useful for space conflicts. Mace's entire character is 'plot device' in the movies first and foremost before getting elaborated on by the Clone Wars tv show and other installments he features in (which sucks considering hes basically the only black guy with lines in the original 6 movies). The allusions to Buddhism (and likely accidentally to Taoism more accurately) are for the window dressing aesthetic of 'space monk'. The Jedi Code is a convenient retroactive flavor for making a fancy wizard monk group that can generate forbidden love conflict and borrows from Buddhism for the matching of the vaguely asian flavor.
'Star Wars Sucks' because Star Wars is written at odds with itself.
Yes its got plenty of other haphazard writing bits- but the core issue that makes those bits far worse is this.
The prequels get hit especially badly with this. Its more hard magic, its more plotty and (attempts to be) more psychological. It so clearly WANTS to be written in a grounded manner to exploit all those moving plot pieces and developing characters and worldbuliding details. But its very much not.
This is, in fact, our theory on why so many people agree the prequels are the worst Star Wars stuff (beyond the Star Wars equivalent to genwunners being mad about things that alter their nostalgic franchise)- people are picking up on the discrepancy between the story structure and the plot itself and seeing that this makes them 'bad', but not usually not understanding why.
They point to 'bad acting', to George Lucas having terrible scriptwriting skills, to Anakin as a character 'being whiny and girly and evil', to Padme as a character, to the concept of hard magic systems as a whole being bad, to a nebulous 'greed', to Jar Jar Binks- but its not really any of those things.
Its the mismatch that then intensifies and blows wide open the suspension of disbelief on every flaw.
Star Wars is Like That(tm) because its structurally a fairy tale thats playing with concepts that want to be taken as a grounded, rational story- which causes a huge discrepancy in how the story lends itself to be analyzed and how its written.
When people then end up with canon facts that cannot be reconciled, but must be- something has to give. And this means people interpret these contracting facts very differently.
It is from here that we can see why the fandom becomes divided into wildly polarizing camps.
Choose your Own Canon Facts Adventure
When the canon plays fast and loose as to the actual dimensions of anything inside of it, and the story all but begs to be analyzed deeper, this makes people then try to fix the problem themselves.
They come up with their own patchwork of headcanons, focused on facts, interpretations, and unique feelings of canon events, and feel that they have finally uncovered the Correct Way Things Work.
The problem is- everyone has a very different one.
One person's 'Anakin Skywalker is an unrepentant selfish genocidal fascist who chose at every turn to side with fascists and everyone else did their best and gave him therapy and he chose to do evil anyway- the council was right to try to turn him away at first because he WAS dangerous and WAS inherently evil actually he was always going to choose evil'
is another's 'Anakin Skywalker came from severe abuse in childhood to a order that actively shamed him for having Feelings due to said trauma and ended up with what is clearly BPD that the jedi mismanaged because mindfulness is not helpful for BPD and their teachings are actively harmful for everyone because having connections to others is what makes life have meaning and then allowed him to be groomed by an evil man since childhood to mold him into Darth Vader'
is yet another's 'Anakin Skywalker is a fantastically tragic example of how the altright recruits vulnerable young men. The jedi did their best but the cards were stacked against them and the perfect storm was set up. Everything would have been fine if Palpatine was not whispering in his ear.'
There are a hundred paths for any one thing to have a stance on- and there are many things to have a stance on.
To continue the previous example, someone who is sensitive to depictions of genocide is less likely to be sympathetic to Anakin. In turn, someone who struggles with certain mental health conditions that tend to find mindfulness techniques detrimental such as C-PTSD or BPD is much more likely to give Anakin more leeway in how and why he Fell and find him much more sympathetic. Someone who understands how the altright and other radical groups predate on people is more likely to understand the mechanics of how and why Anakin ended up at genocide and also why the jedi had limited capacity to stop Anakin's Fall in comparison to someone who thinks people simply Choose to join cults and be evil without outside stimulus indicating its the correct choice. Someone with religious trauma is also far more likely to think poorly of the jedi as a whole than someone who has a positive relationship with organized religion and this can also effect how someone views Anakin's character arc.
As all these people who are far too lost in the discourse sauce often have polar opposite views surrounding delicate topics they have horses in the race about- they fucking hate each other and are 100% convinced their vision is the most correct one and everyone else is doing bad praxis and is probably an evil bigot or something.
This gets particularly intense because this discourse on what the 'correct' reading of star wars is usually completely ignores a very basic and very huge chunk of media analysis.
Watsonian vs Doyalist Interpretation
If you are not familiar with these terms, these are terms to describe how one analyzes a bit of media and understands why and how things happen in it.
It is named after the Sherlock book series- with Watson being a character inside the book, and Doyle being the author.
Watsonian refers to analyzing the story from within the story. The in-universe explanation for why something happens inside of it. It is engaging with the story as though it is real.
Doyalist in turn, refers to analyzing the story from the out of universe perspective. It is engaging with the story as a product of the work and worldview and restrictions the creator is under.
A Watsonian explanation for why a given character wears exclusively blue t shirts is that the character likes the color blue and wearing t-shirts. A Doyalist explanation is that that a t shirt is easy to draw and blue was the color marker that was on hand when the creator first was designing the character.
See, fandom has a habit of only analyzing things through the Watsonian perspective, rather than recognizing that sometimes there are out-of universe influences to keep in mind.
This is no different in Star Wars- where the discoursed topics are usually only engaged with from a Watsonian perspective (or Watsonian with Word of God statements peppered in).
However, in order to get a complete picture of a story and really understand it- one has to come at things from both.
One CANNOT fully understand why certain things happen in a story by only looking at the Watsonian explanation- ESPECIALLY in stories that use the fairy tale perspective and you can see the wizard behind the curtain more clearly if you choose to look.
You miss a large part of why things happen- and understand less what the 'true vision' of a given thing is. The Jedi Code is not inherently bad/good/flawed/whatever; its a narrative tool for drama and conflict first and foremost and is those things situationally for the given story someone is trying to tell or is shown that way unintentionally.
Anakin's story is not intentionally saying ANYTHING about mental health or the trauma of slavery or a criticism on Buddhism- its setting up the special boy from humble beginnings who becomes the main villain in the OT so he HAS to Do Evil at some point. Narratively, he is doomed because the OT was made first. We are seeing smoke signals. There is no canon interpretation there because out of universe half the things touched on are basically window dressing. Half the things we see and analyze here are written by accident!
So Basically
TLDR- 'Star Wars Sucks' not for all the other reasons people will bring up, but because the story structure wildly conflicts with how it 'wants' to be told and read. Its not meant to be read like how people tend to read it, but it really really wants to be and this causes wild conflict.
So Star Wars.
If you have interacted with a wide berth of kinds of fans, you know that people tend to have shall we say, VERY different interpretations of the same text- and a large chunk of those who are not too lost in the nostalgia sauce tend to say that Star Wars sucks in some form/to some degree- even when they are hardcore fans of it.
You ever wonder why?
Well.
Those things are related.
Essay below the cut.
Star Wars is not alone in this polarized interpretations plus 'generally accepted as having haphazard or highly contrasting chunks of storytelling', but its certainly the biggest and clearest example of both and why these things can intersect. Hence why its the example being used.
There are a few moving parts to this, so let us start with the first;
The Jedi Problem
'The Jedi Problem' is what we have named the phenomenon of very contrasting messages, canon elements, and real-world facts in a story that then proceed to cause the audience to take away very different things from the story each based on what parts of the sprawling canon they partook in, their personal knowledge base, and what things in the story stuck out to them for whatever reason- to the point that they cannot agree on basic canon facts that are integral to the plot that would seem simple to answer.
It is named after how many basic facts about the jedi as a group are so genuinely contested in The Discourse, such as 'were the jedi as a religious institution good or bad', 'what does No Attachment mean', and 'what were the philosophical beliefs that jedi had'.
See, within the many many many pieces of canon (both those that are currently canon and those that were retconned or decanonized former canon) -hell, even inside the SAME STANDALONE SECTION OF CANON- these things are not entirely consistent. We are told one thing, shown another, told a different contrasting different thing again, then shown yet another different contrasting thing later.
When this arises, the fandom then has to choose which of all these simultaneously valid interpretations AND simultaneously valid canon facts they wish to keep. Is what we are unintentionally shown with canon facts more valid or what we are plainly told(both by word of gods and by characters in-universe)? Which of the things we are told in the same movie is more true? How dead should the author be in terms of interpretation?
Hence The Jedi Problem.
People want to treat Star Wars as a cohesive story that follows clear internally sourced logic of how the world works where the characters are shown and told to be the same thing and also act consistently.
And well, it simply isn't.
Fans instead cobble together desperate patchwork narratives and argue this is how it really does work, but it doesn't in the canon text itself. This is why there has been no true consensus- there cannot be when the text contradicts itself all over the place and the author's idea of how things work is very different from the current understanding of many fans today.
The reason works with The Jedi Problem are Like That can be many things -lazy writing, inadequate planning and inability to edit causing retcons, executive meddling, too many cooks in the kitchen, implications and understanding of a topic differing over time as media shows its age, a lack of respect for fans to shoehorn in plot twists for drama- but in Star Wars (the main installments of it at least) the big ticket for why its just so incredibly severe of an issue is actually a discrepancy in story structure, plot, and the satellite materials trying to work with it.
Story Structure Shenanigans
Pretty much every piece in the franchise that is not the OT (and arguably only the first movie at that) very much wants to be engaged with like a rich, rationally grounded world with moving parts you can see and follow up on. One things leads to another, there is a consistent through line of characterization and moving background parts of the setting and reasoning of why things happen-
HOWEVER
All of the first six movies -the bible bits everything else of canon is based off of- are written instead with the story structure of a fairy tale.
Here we introduce another concept to explain story structure models; The Grounded to Fairy Tale Spectrum.
The Grounded to Fairytale Spectrum
Like the [hard/soft magic scale], but for story structure instead of worldbuilding elements.
There are 'hard' story structures, and 'soft' story structures.
A fairytale, or 'soft' story structure, is structured in the 'things happen because I the writer says they do to make this story move along' way. Things are often whimsical and dreamlike. The characters are narrative tools to deliver plot events more than they are consistent people. Things happen to get the special boy trucked along from important point to important point- not because it would happen that way if it happened in real life nessesarily.
A good example of this story structure in action would be The Dark Crystal (1982).
In contrast, a grounded story, or 'hard' story has characters that act consistently, plots that have reasons you can trace back, and the rules (if there are any) of how the world works are consistent. The characters are much less apparently narrative tools, and rather more strongly attempt to mimic how they would behave in a given situation if they were a real person. Things happen how the writer wants them- but significant care is taken to making sure things appear to make internal sense.
A good example of a grounded story structure would be Full Metal Alchemist.
On this spectrum, the structure of the piece is graded on how much the story internally 'works' in a consistent manner with a throughline of why things happen and why characters act in certain ways. A grounded story will be more towards the grounded end and a fairy tale to the fairytale end.
To be absolutely clear though- neither of these is an inferior way of telling a story. Like the hard/soft magic scale, its merely describing how it works. Neither is better or worse than the other inherently.
Fairytale stories are not inherently worse written- they are just very different to how most stories that people enjoy as adults are structured nowadays.
However Star Wars Is NOT Well Written
The problem with Star Wars and part of the core of why its such (and I say this with love) a garbagefire of a franchise, is that Star Wars structurally is at its core a fairy tale BUT everyone writing for Star Wars desperately wants/wanted to write it as a grounded story instead. Including George Lucas himself past that beginning bit.
All the plots they write are ones that are more suited to a grounded story structure and writing style and even if the satellite material has the structure compliment the story they want to tell, it still has to build itself on scaffolding simply not meant for more grounded fiction.
The jedi code is so baffling, contradictory, unhealthy sounding, and poorly explained sometimes in part because Anakin needed Special Boy Forbidden Love drama. Same with why Mace Windu (and the rest of the council) effectively bullies a 9 year old boy freshly freed from slavery and brought to a whole other planet who had to leave his mother behind in said slavery for being afraid. This is not because this was the right thing to do somehow as some people insist, or because Mace is an evil asshole and so are all the jedi, or even because this is how George Lucas thinks its ok to treat a child, but because they needed conflict for the story and Mace was the available tool to do it.
From the understanding of its structure you can then understand that the story isn't saying the jedi are evil every time something like this happens, its just using the order as conflict bumps to set Darth Vader in motion and retroactively set up the world of the OT. The code is whatever is convenient for the story. Mandalorians are whatever is convenient for the story at the time because armored guys are cool and useful for space conflicts. Mace's entire character is 'plot device' in the movies first and foremost before getting elaborated on by the Clone Wars tv show and other installments he features in (which sucks considering hes basically the only black guy with lines in the original 6 movies). The allusions to Buddhism (and likely accidentally to Taoism more accurately) are for the window dressing aesthetic of 'space monk'. The Jedi Code is a convenient retroactive flavor for making a fancy wizard monk group that can generate forbidden love conflict and borrows from Buddhism for the matching of the vaguely asian flavor.
'Star Wars Sucks' because Star Wars is written at odds with itself.
Yes its got plenty of other haphazard writing bits- but the core issue that makes those bits far worse is this.
The prequels get hit especially badly with this. Its more hard magic, its more plotty and (attempts to be) more psychological. It so clearly WANTS to be written in a grounded manner to exploit all those moving plot pieces and developing characters and worldbuliding details. But its very much not.
This is, in fact, our theory on why so many people agree the prequels are the worst Star Wars stuff (beyond the Star Wars equivalent to genwunners being mad about things that alter their nostalgic franchise)- people are picking up on the discrepancy between the story structure and the plot itself and seeing that this makes them 'bad', but not usually not understanding why.
They point to 'bad acting', to George Lucas having terrible scriptwriting skills, to Anakin as a character 'being whiny and girly and evil', to Padme as a character, to the concept of hard magic systems as a whole being bad, to a nebulous 'greed', to Jar Jar Binks- but its not really any of those things.
Its the mismatch that then intensifies and blows wide open the suspension of disbelief on every flaw.
Star Wars is Like That(tm) because its structurally a fairy tale thats playing with concepts that want to be taken as a grounded, rational story- which causes a huge discrepancy in how the story lends itself to be analyzed and how its written.
When people then end up with canon facts that cannot be reconciled, but must be- something has to give. And this means people interpret these contracting facts very differently.
It is from here that we can see why the fandom becomes divided into wildly polarizing camps.
Choose your Own Canon Facts Adventure
When the canon plays fast and loose as to the actual dimensions of anything inside of it, and the story all but begs to be analyzed deeper, this makes people then try to fix the problem themselves.
They come up with their own patchwork of headcanons, focused on facts, interpretations, and unique feelings of canon events, and feel that they have finally uncovered the Correct Way Things Work.
The problem is- everyone has a very different one.
One person's 'Anakin Skywalker is an unrepentant selfish genocidal fascist who chose at every turn to side with fascists and everyone else did their best and gave him therapy and he chose to do evil anyway- the council was right to try to turn him away at first because he WAS dangerous and WAS inherently evil actually he was always going to choose evil'
is another's 'Anakin Skywalker came from severe abuse in childhood to a order that actively shamed him for having Feelings due to said trauma and ended up with what is clearly BPD that the jedi mismanaged because mindfulness is not helpful for BPD and their teachings are actively harmful for everyone because having connections to others is what makes life have meaning and then allowed him to be groomed by an evil man since childhood to mold him into Darth Vader'
is yet another's 'Anakin Skywalker is a fantastically tragic example of how the altright recruits vulnerable young men. The jedi did their best but the cards were stacked against them and the perfect storm was set up. Everything would have been fine if Palpatine was not whispering in his ear.'
There are a hundred paths for any one thing to have a stance on- and there are many things to have a stance on.
To continue the previous example, someone who is sensitive to depictions of genocide is less likely to be sympathetic to Anakin. In turn, someone who struggles with certain mental health conditions that tend to find mindfulness techniques detrimental such as C-PTSD or BPD is much more likely to give Anakin more leeway in how and why he Fell and find him much more sympathetic. Someone who understands how the altright and other radical groups predate on people is more likely to understand the mechanics of how and why Anakin ended up at genocide and also why the jedi had limited capacity to stop Anakin's Fall in comparison to someone who thinks people simply Choose to join cults and be evil without outside stimulus indicating its the correct choice. Someone with religious trauma is also far more likely to think poorly of the jedi as a whole than someone who has a positive relationship with organized religion and this can also effect how someone views Anakin's character arc.
As all these people who are far too lost in the discourse sauce often have polar opposite views surrounding delicate topics they have horses in the race about- they fucking hate each other and are 100% convinced their vision is the most correct one and everyone else is doing bad praxis and is probably an evil bigot or something.
This gets particularly intense because this discourse on what the 'correct' reading of star wars is usually completely ignores a very basic and very huge chunk of media analysis.
Watsonian vs Doyalist Interpretation
If you are not familiar with these terms, these are terms to describe how one analyzes a bit of media and understands why and how things happen in it.
It is named after the Sherlock book series- with Watson being a character inside the book, and Doyle being the author.
Watsonian refers to analyzing the story from within the story. The in-universe explanation for why something happens inside of it. It is engaging with the story as though it is real.
Doyalist in turn, refers to analyzing the story from the out of universe perspective. It is engaging with the story as a product of the work and worldview and restrictions the creator is under.
A Watsonian explanation for why a given character wears exclusively blue t shirts is that the character likes the color blue and wearing t-shirts. A Doyalist explanation is that that a t shirt is easy to draw and blue was the color marker that was on hand when the creator first was designing the character.
See, fandom has a habit of only analyzing things through the Watsonian perspective, rather than recognizing that sometimes there are out-of universe influences to keep in mind.
This is no different in Star Wars- where the discoursed topics are usually only engaged with from a Watsonian perspective (or Watsonian with Word of God statements peppered in).
However, in order to get a complete picture of a story and really understand it- one has to come at things from both.
One CANNOT fully understand why certain things happen in a story by only looking at the Watsonian explanation- ESPECIALLY in stories that use the fairy tale perspective and you can see the wizard behind the curtain more clearly if you choose to look.
You miss a large part of why things happen- and understand less what the 'true vision' of a given thing is. The Jedi Code is not inherently bad/good/flawed/whatever; its a narrative tool for drama and conflict first and foremost and is those things situationally for the given story someone is trying to tell or is shown that way unintentionally.
Anakin's story is not intentionally saying ANYTHING about mental health or the trauma of slavery or a criticism on Buddhism- its setting up the special boy from humble beginnings who becomes the main villain in the OT so he HAS to Do Evil at some point. Narratively, he is doomed because the OT was made first. We are seeing smoke signals. There is no canon interpretation there because out of universe half the things touched on are basically window dressing. Half the things we see and analyze here are written by accident!
So Basically
TLDR- 'Star Wars Sucks' not for all the other reasons people will bring up, but because the story structure wildly conflicts with how it 'wants' to be told and read. Its not meant to be read like how people tend to read it, but it really really wants to be and this causes wild conflict.
