Onion Watch: Done; The Boot, Day 12

[pameladean]

The Onion Watch is over. Both Cassie and Saffron are fine.

I am very tired of this boot, and yet two weeks is really a very short time to be wearing one of these. It's better since I got the shoe balancer. But that can't be worn outside at this time of year. I ventured out yesterday sans shoe balancer, but with a lot of help from Eric. Fortunately, my winter boots have slightly thicker soles than my regular walking shoes, so the imbalance was less. But my hips, back, and knees set up a huge complaint all the same.

We saw "The Last Jedi" so we could stop avoiding spoilers all over; went grocery shopping; had a late dinner at Pizza Luce, splitting an order of roasted Brussels sprouts and a small spinach salad and then going our own way for the entrees; and went back to his house and conversed and cuddled the cat.

We enjoyed the movie a lot, though the sound balance was such that we missed some dialogue, including, almost certainly, some punch lines. It is thoroughly and unabashedly a "Star Wars" movie; not one of the prequels, but harking back in ways great and small to the first trilogy only with a lot more different kinds of people in it. Of course we had a lot of quibbles. I am gobsmacked, however, at the reactions of a certain group who hated the movie. What they are objecting to is so mild, so nearly anodyne, and yet they can't stand it.  If anybody is moved to discuss any aspect of the movie in the comments, please clearly mark any spoilers. And I'm very short on patience with certain lines of argument.

Being outside was fine while the temperature was above freezing, but when things started to ice up I became a paranoid mass of apprehension.

On Wednesday morning, I will get up, and I will not have to put on the boot. The clinic says that if I have no residual swelling or pain, I'm good to go; otherwise they will refer me to physical therapy.  I am hoping very hard for the former outcome. The swelling is almost gone now, but there is still some twinginess right around the ankle bone.

I'm still reading Anthony Price, and wanted to note down one place where history caught him up, through no fault of his own. In an earlier book, Our Man in Camelot, a bunch of younger agents in Price's imaginary intelligence department, Research and Development, are arguing with David Audley about, well, everything; but Frances Fitzgibbon, my single favorite character in the entire series, refers to "the rot at the top" of the Nixon Administration. Audley shuts her down by saying that it was the rot at the top that brought the boys home from Viet Nam.

This line never did sit well with me, but this time, I thought, "Wait, wait, wait, didn't Nixon act to delay the negotiations that would end the war so that his anti-war presidential campaign would not have the wind taken out of its sails, and so that he could get the credit?"  Yes. Yes he did. The tapes were released in 2013. Lyndon Johnson knew what Nixon was doing, but he figured that Hubert Humphrey would win the election, so he didn't do anything. STOP WITH THAT NONSENSE YOU SELF-SATISFIED BLUNDERING POLITICIANS; IT NEVER WORKS OUT THE WAY YOU THINK.

I want to grab David Audley through the page of the book and give him this information. More than that, I want to give it to Frances.

Pamela

Edited to make an errant sentence have some sense in it.

Comments

[rj_anderson]

A lot of the bitter anti-TLJ people I know of don't like Kylo at all because he's too emotional (read: "feminine") and still visibly torn between the Dark and the Light, instead of being Vader Mark 2 like they were hoping he'd be. I haven't heard any of them complaining that

[SPOILERS HO]
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Luke didn't rescue Kylo, because they didn't want him to be rescued in the first place -- they wanted to see him completely engulfed by the Dark and taking his place at Snoke's side as the Big Scary Bad of the trilogy. Or, as you said, becoming Renperor (which he... technically is, but I give it about five minutes before Hux double-crosses him and takes over. Like, the minute Kylo decides to take a nap).

Anyway Ben's had a few kick-starts now, between Han and Rey and Luke; I look forward to him waking up and smelling the redemption coffee in Ep. 9. (Also to Luke's Force Ghost haunting the crap out of him, because he pretty much promised he would.) Rian Johnson says that Ben and Rey are "like two halves of our protagonist", and I don't think he was only referring to TLJ when he said it.

You're right that it's Rey's story, though -- we're seeing the majority of it from her perspective and her coming into her own as the Last Jedi is absolutely crucial to the resolution of the trilogy. I love that she's a nobody. I hope the last film doesn't go back on that, because the idea that the Force is tied to the Skywalker legacy is, as we've already seen with Ben, a Serious Problem.

And my husband thought Luke's characterization in TLJ was very much in line with the original trilogy too. It was the first thing he brought up when we talked about it on the way home.

[kore]

A lot of the bitter anti-TLJ people I know of don't like Kylo at all because he's too emotional (read: "feminine") and still visibly torn between the Dark and the Light, instead of being Vader Mark 2

//face in hands

Of course, they wanted Anakin Junior or something. And everyone in the ENTIRE movie is like, "You are not your grandfather! You are not Vader! TAKE OFF THE STUPID MASK" -- Driver really does play Ren as very vulnerable and easily wounded, too. He has no resilience, he's written himself off a long time ago, and after everyone from his parents to his mentor/uncle to the Snokester telling him how BAD he is, I wasn't at all surprised his major motivation was to burn everything completely to the ground. Why save any of it if he thinks he's unsavable himself?

they wanted to see him completely engulfed by the Dark and taking his place at Snoke's side as the Big Scary Bad of the trilogy.

So, yeah, like Vader and Palpatine. (The amount of EXTREME RAGE I have seen over Snoke's lack of backstory is just kinda hilarious. I'm like, dudes, I was THERE, when dinos walked the earth and we saw the OT in theatres! The Emperor didn't have a name! He just SHOWED UP. We rolled with it.)

(The whole "but he's not VADER" thing is also very funny to me because, as an Old who was There, I remember people violently rejecting that Vader was Luke's father. He was lying! It was a trick! His dad was Ben somehow! I think Lucas had to actually come out and say "No, it's true," and then people were even more pissed. How could LUKE, the pure-hearted farmboy Galahad in white, have anything to do with Vader.)

Renperor (which he... technically is, but I give it about five minutes before Hux double-crosses him and takes over. Like, the minute Kylo decides to take a nap).

RENPEROR....I gotta admit, the constant Odd Couple-with-Chokehold bickering between Hux and Ren was amazing. I constantly picture them fleeing on like this little banged-up Imperial freighter nearly killing each other two dozen times a day. And yeah, anyone who turns their back on Hux is a moron.

(Also to Luke's Force Ghost haunting the crap out of him, because he pretty much promised he would.)

LOL, YES, and maybe Yoda can join in too. "Failure you are, like your young Uncle here, heh heh."

Rian Johnson says that Ben and Rey are "like two halves of our protagonist", and I don't think he was only referring to TLJ when he said it.

Yeah, and he made that REALLY evident with Rey's mirror sequence, and then how Rey and Kylo are basically each other's mirrors in the Force Time bits. (I'm sad he's not going to be doing the last film. I loved TFA but JJA is canonically not good at sticking landings.)

And my husband thought Luke's characterization in TLJ was very much in line with the original trilogy too. It was the first thing he brought up when we talked about it on the way home.

I really think it is -- I didn't think he was mean or even horribly cynical at all, Hamill does an amazing job of acting when Rey first holds out that lightsabre to him. He's depressed -- he thought everything he was, his whole identity, is not just a failure but a terrible mistake, he thinks Ren is his fault, he's cut himself off from the Force, he's gone into hiding back where it all started in the hopes it'll all end with him. A lot of people seemed to be saying that Just Wasn't Luke, like Luke couldn't be a hero, or even truly himself, if he was depressed. (Which, as someone with depression, I found....well, depressing.)


(omg sorry for taking over your post with TLJ talk, Pamela)

[pameladean]

No, that's totally fine, go for it, I am with you and Rebecca all the way.

P.

[rj_anderson]

Are you sure? Because I have written approximately eleventy billion words of meta since I saw TLJ and I could do this forever. :D But we are all on the same page, which is excellent and quite gratifying, so perhaps there isn't that much more to say.

[pameladean]

Did you write your meta in DW entries? I was strenuously avoiding anything that might be a spoiler, but now I could Read All the Meta. It is indeed very gratifying to be in such enthusiastic agreement.

P.

[kore]

Yes, your TLJ meta is great! Where is there more?

[rj_anderson]

I dump most of my ideas and feelings on Tumblr these days: it's a terrible interface for in-depth discussion and debate compared to LJ/DW, but it's a great place to pontificate and be cheered on by like-minded people, who often have insightful things to add to the conversation if you remember to look for them. I just have to make sure to follow sensible people and stay out of tags that I know are going to annoy me.

Anyway, my TLJ meta (and a bunch of other people's as well) is at heliotrope-r.tumblr.com. I hope you enjoy! There is, er, a lot.

[kore]

....oh man, I hate Tumblr. But I will look.

[pameladean]

Oh gosh, so that's another Tolkienesque thing, Rey and Ben being two parts of their protagonist; there's a very interesting argument that Sam and Frodo are two parts of a single protagonist.

And I too really look forward to Luke's ghost haunting Kylo Ren. Oh, so very much.

P.