fen

i don't have many new thoughts on andor. go listen to @morecivilized, their conversations have done a lot to shape my opinion and it's four smart people who care more about star wars than i do talking more intelligently than i could hope to. i do have a couple of opinions of my own though.

my major take away is that star wars can be good, i guess? despite having watched almost all the recent star wars shows they've put out, i would not call myself a star wars fan. i watched obi wan and book of boba because a close friend wanted to watch them with me, not because i would have otherwise. and so i can't say that if you just slap the label star wars on a thing i won't watch it, because clearly i will, but i don't have any built in affection for the setting. andor is the perfect show for someone like me.

andor is barely a star wars show. i mean, obviously it is, mon mothma is there and andor is from rogue one. but aside from the relations to star wars it has so it can have the budget it has i don't think it gains anything from not just being a new science fiction property. as much as they can they use the universe it's set in well, but i would have enjoyed andor just as much had it been entirely original.

except that i wouldn't have watched it. i just don't watch much live action tv, so despite a hypothetical non-star wars andor being an as good or even better show i'm glad it was star wars so that i got to see it.

finally working through my backlog of stuff i wanted to say something about and also trying not to force myself to write an essay for each entry. there are also utena spoilers. impossible to not talk about utena in relation to this show.

the setup is a typical girl meets girl story: one day the planet kumalia exploded, sprinkled its debris down on earth, and bears gained sapience. bears and humans fought and so the wall of severance was put up to separate humans and bears, but it doesn't do as well a job as you might want, and so we open on kureha (our protagonist) and sumika (her girlfriend) gaze over a bed of lilies as a bear warning sounds. whatever will happen next!

On the latest episode of Novel Not New, our good friend Kat joined us to discuss Wonder Project J2! It’s a rare, Japan-only Nintendo 64 release presented almost entirely in 2D, where you raise a robot girl and teach her what it means to be human.

Fanon's classic text on colonialism and the fight to decolonize, and what it means to establish a new government out of a colonial revolution. I had read this ten years or so ago and it had been really striking, but coming back to it now older and hopefully wiser I found much I had forgotten or not been ready for.

The first part is explicitly an argument towards the necessity for violence and the ways in which that violence is stigmatized by the colonists to rob it of its power. Stuff I think most people reading this already have worked through, but worth revisiting because Fanon is sharp about breaking it down bit by bit.

The main thing I was struck by was instead the third section, which is about how a country can be ordered after the colonizers are thrown off, and what it looks like to try to forge a new path. It talks about the difference between national character and nationalism, the need for one and the ways to help curtail the other. It perfectly defines the bourgeoisie that had benefitted from colonialism who will try to then rob this new nation and how useless they are and how the population must defeat their poison. It talks about the need for education, the vital place the rural citizens have and how they're so often neglected when the voices of a revolution come from cities, and the uselessness of the middle manager. It's incredible and specific and truly answers many of the hand wringing concerns that people still have when confronted with the idea of throwing off an oppressive government and forging a new path. There is often a limit to the imagination of people especially when they live in the empire (Americans, I’m talking about myself and other Americans), and Fanon offers clear directions and good examples of what works, what doesn't work, and the order of how things can break in a new nation.

Anyway, I don't need to tell people the book is good, I think Fanon is essential reading, and I'm so happy I sat down to actually reread it. If you've never checked out his work before, I think this is the one to pick up for sure.