this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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Star Wars Memes
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Hello there. Somehow, Star Wars memes have returned. It's not a trap, this is where the fun begins.
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Other universes to visit:
Separatist systems:
Oh hey some real SW content for a change (perhaps):
!starwarstelevision@lemmy.world
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IMPORTANT
Please do not post the "good friend" or similar copypasta
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Our galactic citizens have requested more specific rules, so here are a few.
The general idea is, if you're looking here for rules, you're probably someone who doesn't need to have them spelled out. You're fine. But anyway:
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This is a community for Star Wars memes. This means typically screenshots of Star Wars media with some text or context that's meant to be funny and/or thoughtful. All SW media is welcome: movies, games, comic books, fanart... Other kinds of content, like video links or meta memes (about this community, or Lemmy), are fine as well, just keep it on topic.
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We are all friends here, and love (sometimes love to hate) Star Wars. Be nice to each other.
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As fans of fictional media, we can be passionate. If you very strongly disagree with something or someone, take a deep breath before reacting. Anger leads to the dark side!
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Everything in Star Wars has happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far away, and it's a rich universe of millions of words and millions of years of history. So current Earthly matters really shouldn't concern us here. In other words, leave politics, philosophies and convictions behind the door. This applies even if it's about something related to Star Wars.
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Original content is preferred. Reposts are fine, just please limit to a maximum of 3 per day, per citizen. It is recommended, but not required, to mark original memes as (OC) and reposts as (repost).
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Local mods are the Jedi council. They may take actions that are necessary to maintain peace and stability of the Republic, even beyond the rules outlined here. Follow their guidance.
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Regular rules of the Lemmy.world instance apply.
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I'm not sure I fully agree there. I think it's absolutely accurate to say that Andor didn't need to be Star Wars. Like, you absolutely could file all the serial numbers off and get a show that works in more or less exactly the same way.
With that said, I think Andor absolutely benefits from being Star Wars, in a couple of a ways.
The first is that they can skip all the broad strokes world building. We don't need the concept of the galactic empire explained to us, or the general structure of how the senate works, and so on. The big pieces are all in place, so they can get straight to the small scale world building instead. This would be a solvable problem if you were creating something new, but its definitely nice that they get to skip straight to the important bits this way.
The second, bigger benefit (IMO) is the juxtaposition created by the tonal shift. Something that's very notable about Star Wars is that the tone and the content are often rather at odds with each other. George Lucas is on record as saying that in his mind the Rebellion were the Viet-Cong (with the obvious implication that the Empire is the USA). That's some fucking heavy shit. Luke's adoptive parents get brutally murdered by agents of the state, for absolutely no crime at all, and this inspires him to take up with a group of, well, terrorists. I mean, this is literally the same as a young Palestinian joining up with Hamas. Star Wars is about some really, really heavy shit, but it also starts with the line "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." This is a fairy-tale about magic space wizards, but also a story about insurgents blowing up a massive military installation, and eventually performing a coup and assassinating the head of state.
Over the years, the story around Star Wars has leaned increasingly into the "magic space wizards" side of things. It's seen as a family friendly property, something for kids to enjoy at Disneyland. The creators of Andor set out to intentionally shock the audience by creating something that leans hard away from that family friendly image. Andor is a fucking dark story, about desperate people adopting brutal methods in the face of brutal oppression.
And they're not just doing that for shock value. The point of this is to tell a story about the ways in which we idealise "rebels" in one breath and condemn "terrorists" in another. To many people, Luke is a hero, but that young man who joins up with Hamas is a monster. Reality is complicated and messy. Hamas are a real political group, with a real ideology, and despite the monstrous oppression they face, some of that ideology really sucks. Their targets aren't "Storm Troopers", they're often civilians, or conscripts. On the other hand, many of those conscripts behave in ways far more monstrous than anything the empire is ever depicted as doing.
Andor is a story about fascism, about the absolute necessity of resisting it, and about the monstrous personal cost that resistance can demand of us. By setting that story against the backdrop of a "family friendly" property I think it really does a lot to drive home the disconnect between our ideals of resistance and the cold, hard reality.