The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2018-03-05 05:20pm
CaoCao wrote: ↑2018-03-04 11:04am
You have been, almost from the onset.
Actually, I have pointedly not made such accusations against Fax_Modem1, or Galvatron, for example, despite their disagreeing with me on this topic.
So let's see... if I acknowledge that sexism is a factor in the overall controversy without accusing anyone specifically, I'm passive aggressive, dishonest, and accuse everyone who disagrees with me of being a bigot. If I do call out a specific person on a specific point, then I'm accusing everyone who disagrees with me of being a bigot.
Why not call it what it
really is? A dishonest deflection tactic to try to discredit my arguments and silence any discussion of the role prejudice plays by ad hominem.
If you were actually reading what I'm typing, instead of blindingly attacking, you would realize I meant "Holdo, at that point, had no blame about people trying to escape".
If I misread you, my apologies.
Although this would seem to perhaps contradict the points elsewhere where you use the desertions as an argument against Holdo's leadership.
They are being chased, and attritioned, with low fuel. It's her job to be aware of that. The movie tells us everything happens in the span of around 18 hours, with morale dropping right at the beginning.
I believe this is the second time that you've claimed the entire film happened over 18 hours. I asked you before to cite evidence for that, since I don't recall a specific span of time being stated. Will you do so?
Though frankly, events happening over such a short time frame might actually be a point in Holdo's favor, as it suggests that she simply didn't have time to deal with every problem on board, given the situation and the limited resources she was working with (especially since moral collapsing to the point of mutiny that quickly would seem to strain credulity).
As to the overall situation faced by the Resistance, I don't disagree with anything that you just said. What I do question is weather there was anything more Holdo could reasonably have done under the circumstances that would have made a damn bit of difference to the moral situation, and weather the film shows the morale situation to be sufficiently bad that one would reasonably expect a mutiny to be imminent.
Remember, we don't see Holdo's interactions with everyone on board- mostly just Poe (and Leia, after Leia wakes up and the mutiny issue has been resolved). We don't know what percentage of the crew were demoralized or dissatisfied to the point of being inclined to desert or mutiny. We
do know that Holdo was busy trying to survive the battle and organize an evacuation of a force she'd just taken command of after the leadership was decapitated, and that Poe finding out about what the plan was is what actually triggered the mutiny- not because there was no plan, but because Poe (a subordinate officer) decided unilaterally that
his long shot plan was better than Holdo's, and that that made her a traitor.
As an aside, I suppose its only natural that sexists would take Poe's side, since not only is he a man trying to remove a female authority figure, but his whole attitude reeks of a profound sense of entitlement.
And? The bombers, the way they made them, were useless against the Resurgents or the Supremacy. I understand Leia's concern was the loss of life.
Then why did you claim that Poe was demoted simply for insubordination, and not for incompetence (ie getting people needlessly killed)?
And you are probably correct that the bombers would have been useless in that battle. But that's with the benefit of hindsight, which the characters in the film would not have had at the time Poe lost the bombers.
No we can't, that's the crux of the problem. Poe is the one that took out the dreadnought and Starkiller base (that is, he saved the whole Resistance twice).
He wouldn't have needed to save the Resistance from the dreadnought if they'd simply retreated when Leia ordered him to.
And being a war hero does not give you right to know every detail of your superior's plans, or to public confront them and question their leadership during a crisis. At least, I don't think it does. I'm not a soldier, but I'm pretty sure that's not how the chain of command works.
If you really think a just-demoted captain is entitled to demand details of battle plans from an admiral, and to publicly undermine her authority in a crisis, then I'm not sure why I or anyone else should take your arguments seriously.
About Admirals, no they don't need to reveal the plans to everyone. They need to let on enough so that commanders know there is one. She didn't need to explain everything to Poe. And that's in a democratic state's military. In a voluntary resistance / rebellion, the chain of command is made out of trust, rather than rank. The type of military that works as you say is that of a totalitarian regime, like the FO (which is why Hux doesn't have to deal with mutinies).
I'm fairly sure that its not just authoritarian regimes that expect officers not to be blatantly insubordinate. This is simply absurd.
And yes, a commander should share their plans
with the officers who need to know those plans. We don't know what Holdo told everyone on board, though she clearly told the transport crews something at some point, and she told Poe eventually as well (more on that shortly). Poe didn't
need to know. Moreover, you are again ignoring that when Poe found out some of the plan,
that was what pushed him to mutiny. Meaning that we have every reason to believe that revealing the plan to Poe would have accomplished jack shit, except maybe to make the mutiny happen sooner.
Also- I don't think anyone would whine about how, say, Ackbar or Thrawn needed to explain that he had a plan because otherwise his crew would assume that he had none. It comes off as sexist (weather it is or not) because of the history of female leaders having a higher burden to "prove" their fitness than their male counterparts. Though there may be other reasons for such favoritism, of course.
Holdo didn't retake the ship, Leia did. We only see her assistant helping her. Clearly, for someone with the highest ranking, she had 0 support.
Leia and Holdo both had a hand in it.
And we also don't see everyone in the hanger joining in against Holdo when she breaks free. Just a handful of people. That does not indicate that the crew was united against her.
Yeap, it's a nitpick. The movie never stopped to give us the org. chart of the Resistance. By choosing him as her successor, Leia shows his the second in command.
She "chooses him as her successor", if you mean handing off leadership to him on Crait, at the end of the film, after he's shown that he's learned from his mistakes, and when all the other higher-ups and indeed all but about a dozen people are dead. That does not prove that he was her chosen successor earlier in the film (when she demoted him), nor that he was second after Holdo in the overall chain of command.
Pointing out when you are making false or unproven claims that have a bearing on the topic being discussed is not nitpicking.
About the brig, she could of have and I wouldn't complain.
Well, then we agree on something.
But she should ultimately reveal there is a plan in the face of the morale drop that was happening.
She did, eventually, and it did worse than zero good.
We also have no way of knowing (unless its in EU material) what she told people other than Poe.
If she had told anyone aside from her assistant, Poe would have never been able to mutiny.
That is an absurd assumption. Especially considering that
Poe knew the plan when he decided to mutiny.
The transport bit is explained in the movie. It's explained it was a bad move to use unshielded transports (don't throw technobabble about stealth).
Its not a "bad move' if its all they had, and Poe's ranting is not an objective explanation.
Also, the transports were sufficiently concealed that the First Order missed them until tipped off to look for them by a turncoat, and trying to hand wave canon evidence as "technobabble" because it doesn't support your position is dishonest debating.
Prove what?
That Holdo told no one about the plan.
That they were common transports with engine baffling made by Rose? That is the canon explanation. Do you know what stealth is?
Now you're the one nitpicking. I am using "stealth", obviously, as a short-hand way of saying "effectively concealed from detection." Which they were. That is what is materially significant to the argument. Quibbling about how you define the word "stealth" is just muddying the waters.
He mutinied beacuse he thought the transports were visible to the FO and they were going to be sitting ducks. Which they were once another technobabble magic uncloacked them.
Which would have been no problem at all if not for DJ being a turncoat, which wouldn't have been an issue if not for Poe running his own risky side plan without consulting Holdo.
The planet and base were only known by Holdo (and, maybe her assistant) and Leia. Do you read what you type?
The
base was secret. The notion that the crew cannot look at the scanners (or out the fucking window) and see that there is a planet in the system, and would therefore naturally assume that Holdo is just leading them to die, is what I am questioning.
Oh stop the act.
Right, because you are so obviously correct that if anyone calls you out, it must just be an "act".
And don't dodge the fact that Hux is being called bumbling fool by the most charitable (which is far worst than Pinky).
This is a false equivalency. No one is questioning Hux being called incompetent, because the film
shows him to be incompetent, and acknowledges him as such, in a way that it does not Holdo.
Saying "There's no double standard in calling Holdo incompetent if you also call Hux incompetent, because Holdo is just as incompetent" is circular argument. You're basically trying to use your assertion to validate itself.
No one made a case of him being talk down for being a male.
Because there is not the same history of men having their leadership skills questioned for being men. And because the film clearly portrays Hux as inept, and clearly intended for him to be perceived as such.
She never did, Leia did.
Again, they did so jointly.
And could Leia have done so solo if the crew overwhelmingly favored the mutiny? I honestly don't know.
And yes, she was on her side. But we are talking about the beginning of the mutiny, when Leia was still unconcious.
Very few people joined in on either side. At most, that shows that most of the crew wasn't willing to risk their lives at that point for either Holdo or Poe. Or possibly that they were more concerned with just doing their jobs and trying to stay alive.
I also think its telling that the most experienced and respected person in the fleet (Leia), one who later chooses Poe to take charge, backs Holdo up here.
She lost 2/3 of the fleet and they were running on fumes. Solid enough.
Saying she had lost two thirds of the fleet at that point is misleading, as it both ignores the fact that most of the crew was evacuated from at least one of those ships, and the relative value and size of the command ship compared to the two escorts.
And again, those ships were sacrificed to buy time for an evacuation.
I your own post, to which I replied that, you said:
The Romulan Republic wrote: ↑2018-03-03 03:34pm
In no reasonable person's mind was Holdo "a probable traitor". But good for you for letting the entire point of the subplot fly over your miniscule head.
Guess you only said that to throw an insult. Your concession is accepted.
As I said, I thought that they were setting Holdo up to be either a traitor
or incompetent, not because it made sense, but because I'm used to the genre clichés. They were playing with audience expectations (and showing things predominantly from Poe's point of view), but that in no way proves that "Holdo is likely a traitor" was a reasonable conclusion in-universe.
On a side note, the subversion could have worked, if they gave a really strong reason why she couldn't even say she had a plan. That way, both Holdo and Poe would have been right. But they didn't and the subversion's result is this.
There is an obvious reason (the possibility of spies on board), in addition to the obvious "Poe was a demoted subordinate who was being insubordinate and had no need to know the plan".
That that reason was never stated in the film is a flaw in the script, in my opinion, but it does not prove that Holdo is incompetent in-universe.
But in neither circumstance would Poe have been "right" in any way, shape, or form. And again, it is an assumption that Holdo told no one that she had a plan. Just as you are still ignoring that
when she told Poe her plan, that is when he responded by calling her a traitor and mutinying.
Huh? Blindly following people is not a good thing. Example: Waco.
Did I say that I support blind obedience under all circumstances? No. That's your straw man. I am a strong supporter of conscientious objection. I just don't think that it was warranted in this case, and that you are incorrect in claiming that the film is pushing a message of blind obedience to the hierarchy.
Also, of all the possible examples of the folly of blind obedience you could have picked, did you
have to pick one that is a notorious trigger/talking point for the Right-wing militia crowd? And people criticize my politicization of the topic...
You don't understand what a stong female character is. In fact, what a strong character is. Disney's Lucasfilm group doesn't too, mind you. Leia, Padme, Ahsoka, Mara Jade, even Vestara (and all of them from SW universe) are strong female characters. Of them, only Ahsoka took more episodes to grow, but that's because of the format. The rest worked on their first movie/book and for a reason: there were good writers behind them.
There are many ways to write a strong female character, or a strong character in general, but they all share the same basic foundation: avoidance of stereotypes and other clichés, a focus on strength of character/personality over physical prowess/feats, and attention to continuity and detail.
That said, I don't think that Holdo is a particularly good example of a strong female character. I just don't think she's as incompetent as the bashers make her out to be.
If you asked me who the strongest female character of the new films is in terms of character development, I'd actually say Rose, at this point.