Before the dark times. Before the Disney Wars...

along with dying of a Broken Heart 

LOL. Well...

I don't see what would have been so bad about including some AOTC arena action!

And that line of Padme's in TPM when they're bustin' into the hangar: 

"Get to your ships!"

Or, for a more pensive angle, they could have included this beautiful close-up on Coruscant:




Or what about Padme just relaxing and being a young woman in AOTC with Anakin?




I just don't buy the idea they were keener to emphasise newer Star Wars material. You can do that and still find space for the main attraction: the saga films and the first three that are the backstory to everything. The reel is a bunch of bullshit where Padme and the prequels go, and this (sadly) is "business as usual" for a company that has gone out of its way to avoid promoting them and associating its other products with them. 

lmao This place cracks me up. Seriously.

😆 Now that's funny.

AND SHE'S THE FREAKING MOTHER OF LUKE AND LEIA!

Hardly a fact that can be avoided...

Unless you're Disney/Lucasfilm, that is.



I don't know. Threads are like nodes. They allow for more ordered thinking and provide sparking-off points. I don't think it hurts to have a decent number of them, even if it kinda sucks that a lot haven't made it past the first page.

The forum itself is a sort of half-way house between a chatroom and a message board. Arch Duke and I have tried to entice a few people and make it a bit more lively. But it's not our fault if people don't want to join or participate. We like to think of this place as being like Naboo, but it's more like Tatooine: sparsely populated.

You can't get everything you want in life. Unless, perhaps, you're prepared to wait a long time. Dealing with people is difficult. People are flighty and averse to putting much effort into most things. They have to have a strong inner compulsion; or you have to feed the latent fire within them. 

I'm sure, in the back of your mind, you're probably comparing this place to TFN, or maybe IMDb. Unfortunately, those sites were better promoted to begin with, and they had a huge head-start over this little board, which is relatively remote and humble. Of course, being small and out of the way also has its advantages. 

There's no need to constantly divide threads and slice them up like watermelons, but this thread is already of a decent size. In fact, it's by far the lengthiest thread on the board right now. Separating out the discussion pertaining to Padme and the "International Women's Day" video makes perfect sense to me.  

You're annoyed that this place isn't doing better. So am I. But as long as some people are posting, I can kinda ride it out, for now. I'll admit, I do feel the pull to the light dark of TFN, because Naberrie Fields is boring and the lack of activity and rambunctious dialectic is cheesing me off. I share your basic feeling. However, I try to remember that it was created as a retreat -- a hidden city/sacred place -- and was never meant to be a replacement for a busy discussion space. Perhaps now you understand, when people are starting out with something, they often complain that it's hard, toiling away in obscurity for any number of years, barely getting noticed. Getting a boulder moving is really hard. As long as you keep your expectations in check, you can never really be disappointed in life. That's how I try to see it, anyway.

Cute. But your metaphor doesn't hold up too well. Here's why:

i) Prequel fans were censored and some -- including myself -- were banned from TFN: for the simple crime of refusing to surrender their free thought and bow to the whims of nakedly autocratic, duplicitous (and, in some cases, pathological) moderators, who consciously imposed rules discouraging/forbidding certain lines of discussion, which was functionally equivalent to their silencing criticism against Disney. This also happened at a very specific time: In 2017, the year of Star Wars' 40th anniversary, after the combined and apparently unquestionable success of TFA and "Rogue One" at the box-office, with "The Last Jedi" in its final stages of post-production. There was an implicit distaste of "minority" backlash against Disney at this time, and a focused attempt at stamping it out (no pun intended). Order 66 would be a more apt analogy here. Sadly, it tends to be the way humans behave, when they believe they are in the right and have the backing of a (false) consensus. Very little tolerance is usually extended to minority viewpoints; even when -- of all things -- "diversity" is supposedly the sacred value here in need of protecting/respecting/enlarging.

ii) I petitioned for an explanation regarding my ban, on three separate occasions, and none was ever supplied to me. I was also completely locked out of the "unban request forum" -- a sort of message board purgatory that moderators constantly threaten members with (another pathetic tactic) -- so I had to resort to alternate means of sending my three aforementioned requests. Again, I never heard back from anyone. Much later, PT moderator Seagoat contacted me on Facebook. I forgot that he was in my friends list on there. He saw some comments I made on my wall and piped up out of nowhere. Note that I am speaking in the past tense. We had a collegial conversation, and Seagoat, though denying there was anything authoritarian about TFN, promised he would help get my account restored if that was my wish. Though, he told me, it would require me making a case that I'm not a "problem". While I felt he probably meant well, I found this notion rather offensive; not least because I never received an official explanation for my ban in the first place. Later, I was alerted by a Naberrie Fields member that Seagoat publicly lied when asked about several suspicious disappearances of prominent members (he claimed no bans had taken place and reassured the person asking that the disappearances could be chalked up to people moving on). I decided to terminate my association with him after that.  

iii) I still visit TFN for the quality fan insight offered in the ST forum(s), just as it used to be offered in the PT forum(s). The conduct of various members of the Star Wars/TFN community should, as best as possible, be kept separate from the Stalinist repression of the thought police that watch over the forums there at all times. What makes TFN what it is is, and such a boon to read (and add to -- assuming you haven't been banned or personally left in disgust), are the deep and fine-grained insights that sometimes fall out of a particular thread or mini-exchange within a thread. It's still a delight to see fans engaging with these films and having such insights. Of course, the territory has shifted. By and large, it's no longer prequel fans having these insights. A lot of them seem to dislike the ST and some manifest a passive-aggressive bitterness toward it. So it's other members I'm reading today. But I still treasure those earlier discussions on the prequels -- many of which occurred before I joined. In fact, like many who later began posting there, I was a lurker before I made an account. TFN has always excelled when it comes to fan discussion, and I'm happy to see that continuing with the ST films. Even though, boy, there are a lot of unhappy bunnies there.

If I were to return, I'd want some guarantee that the existing mods involved in my banning do one of two things:

a) Catch the coronavirus.
b) Throw themselves off a cliff.

I'm generous, see. I believe in freedom of choice.

And there, I guess, is your "Ahch-To" metaphor, right where it should be.

You're going to the wrong trilogy, in this case, for the metaphor. Us prequel fans are more like Obi-Wan and Yoda. Luke chooses to go the island. His Jedi forebears are more or less cast out of the society by the machinations of evil. 

There's quite a rabble on TFN, and that's draining, in and of itself. However, said rabble wouldn't necessarily hold me back, if I felt I could speak at will. But that's not the case, as very recent evidence shows where other prequel fans are concerned. Even ST fans.

I'm loving HevyDevy's posts and his earnest enthusiasm for the new films. He is definitely one of those exceptions to the rule. We need more of those people in life. Good on him. 

On this same topic, I have lately avoided talking about the ST or my views on it at TFN. I occasionally do, but only when I know it is safe.


Not because of mod censorship, but because I have made friends there with people who like the ST. It's all too easy to be labeled a "hater" or "part of the problem". I like to keep peace with fellow users.

I don't like the idea of "fan wars" or "trilogy wars". We all like which movies we like. The marketing by Disney doesn't help extinguish the flames. They seem to be as engaged in the trilogy wars as the Reddit meme subreddits

(tangent- I don't like the argument that memeability makes a movie or movie trilogy good. It can stand on it's own without memes)

I hate the Padme thing too. I've lately come to realize the truth about Disney's snubs of the PT, and by extension, all of Lucas's saga and the precedent he built.

I've voiced opinions before about Padme's arc, but I do not think she is a weak woman, or became weak as a result of marriage. Another Star Wars love story has also put that one in perspective, as I've explained before. Even the closest behavior Padme demonstrates to fitting that category pales compared to another Star Wars female lead bending over backwards for a stranger who showed nothing to say he deserved it.

This would lose me some credibility elsewhere, but I'm honestly not interested in more of The Mandalorian, or anything else. It will all tie into a canon that disrespects what it has built off of. The only thing I'm at all excited for is Kenobi because of Ewan.

TROS sealed that for me. I tried. Sorry to vent.



And yes, it does seem as though the same parts of Star Wars are still the "punching bag".