14 minutes ago, GrimmyV said:

So, after the final season wraps, who is excited for Star Wars: Porgs?

I'm excited for Rogue Two: Many Bothans.

2:02 sabine carries a green lightsaber

28 minutes ago, RoockieBoy said:

2:02 sabine carries a green lightsaber

Ezra’s? She steals everything else, why not? Mary Sue Wren might as well be a Jedi Mando Princess Action Grrl plus Starpilot better than any Corellian. Oh and the biggest pain in this game that takes bombing from sorta fun to major OP. Thanks Sabine.

You remember there was an entire episode about Sabine struggling very badly to learn how to use a lightsaber, right?

7 minutes ago, Major Tom said:

You remember there was an entire episode about Sabine struggling very badly to learn how to use a lightsaber, right?

Nope, don’t have cable and Disney doesn’t stream rebels so I haven’t seen much other than what I can see on the YouTubes.

I suspect a lightsaber is harder to use than other melee weapons but no one needs to be extremely Force attuned or sensitive to weild one effectively with enough practice. But I guess that lets Sabine off the hook for being that one character that can do everything.

20 minutes ago, Major Tom said:

You remember there was an entire episode about Sabine struggling very badly to learn how to use a lightsaber, right?

To be fair, it was one episode that had her master a weapon that very few non-Jedi can use, and she did it in a matter of days. Most of which time she spent pouting and not actually wanting to use it. I don't hate Sabine as a Mary Sue as much as another SW character, but it is a valid argument.

Sabine is a ridiculous character, the same episode that showed her "struggle" with a lightsaber also revealed that she was a lead designer of imperial superweapons back in the elementary school.

@trailer

This building is a ship.

4 minutes ago, eMeM said:

Sabine is a ridiculous character, the same episode that showed her "struggle" with a lightsaber also revealed that she was a lead designer of imperial superweapons back in the elementary school.

And was able to completely rewire a rebuilt version of her prototype to affect a completely different type of material in about 2 minutes. I don't think that's how that works...

1 hour ago, Alpha17 said:

And was able to completely rewire a rebuilt version of her prototype to affect a completely different type of material in about 2 minutes. I don't think that's how that works...

A technology the Empire can't figure out in years, BTW.

20 hours ago, Boba Rick said:

I hope so, that would be an honorable death.

What of Ezra?

I have this weird and absolutely unfounded idea that Ezra is going to
(StarCraft 2 Spoiler)

9 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

That is hondo fighting with the rebels on that bridge. And it might be ketsu with the red helmet, not 100% sure. But I think it is her

Hondo and Melch are back, and we will definitely Ketsu Onyo.

4 hours ago, Major Tom said:

You remember there was an entire episode about Sabine struggling very badly to learn how to use a lightsaber, right?

WHAAAAAAT NO WAAAAY THAT WASN'T A KEY CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT ARC OR ANYTHING GEEEEEEEEEEEEEZ MUH MARY SUE ARGUMENT THO.

4 hours ago, GrimmyV said:

Nope, don’t have cable and Disney doesn’t stream rebels so I haven’t seen much other than what I can see on the YouTubes.

I suspect a lightsaber is harder to use than other melee weapons but no one needs to be extremely Force attuned or sensitive to weild one effectively with enough practice. But I guess that lets Sabine off the hook for being that one character that can do everything.

Here's the thing about Lightsabers- the blade effectively has zero mass. This is not me saying Lightsabers are light. But I am saying that, as weapons of contained superheated plasma/energy/what-the-****-ever, they're pretty much weightless to the user. Now the key thing to imagine then, is that you're focusing entirely on the handle's weight. Which brings me to a point of sorts: I have genuinely always wonder what the deal is with the clunky handles? You ever tried to hold a good replica of Anakin/Luke/Rey's Lightsaber? Very difficult stuff there dude, it's weird. Like actually using it is a pain. (Which is why my lightsaber's all simple and stuff.)

4 hours ago, Alpha17 said:

And was able to completely rewire a rebuilt version of her prototype to affect a completely different type of material in about 2 minutes. I don't think that's how that works...

That said.

I really hated these two episodes with a passion. Not only were they boring, but yes, this was definitely the limit breaker for Sabine. Thing is, this has actually been a part of her character for an extremely long time. Which is what bugs me the most.

Honestly, Sabine would work so much better if she was in her 20s, not her teens. Granted. She's like, 18-19 now. But still, was 15-16 when Rebels started.

Note: In Canon, old Clone Troopers can’t bluff their way as Stormtroopers.

Words cannot describe how much I hate the term Mary Sue.

There's a solid critique in suggesting that Sabine should be older (I think her and Ezra being a tad older would work quite well, or even just have Sabine be older and drop the weird romance shenanigans they had in the earlier seasons).

But. Like. The hyperbole, man.

Sabine is a Mandalorian, from a culture based around martial arts, was trained at the Imperial Academy and people are somehow flummoxed that she's competent with weaponry like swords? (Various canon sources have established that the blades do have weight and feel like wielding regular swords, this is something clearly mentioned in Trials of the Darksaber).

Lest we forget, Ezra also picks up wielding a lightsaber to DEFLECT BOLTS very quickly and his only experience of combat is being a Plucky Street Urchin. Being a 'Force sensitive' doesn't magically make you good with a lightsaber, otherwise Yoda wouldn't have been training kids at a young age with practise lightsabers in the prequels. And we've seen trained Mandalorians make things pretty difficult for the Jedi too.

People are flummoxed that a key engineer of a specific weapon would be able to rewire said weapon? Given the weapon is almost certainly based off her prototype and we're given no reason to think otherwise? Given she does so by basically selecting a new target? A target whose equipment she has a lot of knowledge about, again, because she was trained at an Imperial academy? (Like, that arc was bad but people are really choosing THAT as the reason to hate the arc? Ah, yes, I see, it's because it's an excuse to call Sabine a Mary Sue).

(Gonna clarify, not so much ragging on you here, Lackwit, I think it's fair to see it as a limit break, but some people are acting like what she does is a feat like Feeding the Five Thousand when it's more like replacing a spark plug)

And, I mean, imagine walking into a thread with a sweeping critique of a character who gets a lot of elaboration through the show and then admitting in the next post that you've not even seen the show in full.

I don't even like Sabine that much but y'all picking the weirdest hills to die on. It's exhausting.

3 minutes ago, Sithborg said:

Words cannot describe how much I hate the term Mary Sue.

I think it's safe to say at this point that the term Mary Sue, much like the term 'plot hole', has become so misused and diluted that there's a solid 90% chance you can ignore any critique that uses it.

4 hours ago, eMeM said:

Sabine is a ridiculous character, the same episode that showed her "struggle" with a lightsaber also revealed that she was a lead designer of imperial superweapons back in the elementary school.

At least they showed her trying to learn it, I am much more willing to accept that she practiced a lot more off screen or the like but the main thing is they showed her learning it. Just imagine how many people would complain about filler if the devoted more than one episode to it. Sure, they could have had her practicing in the background or the like but I'll accept that more than someone who just learned about something and then picked it up at an Olympic level without any real practice.

34 minutes ago, Captain Lackwit said:

I really hated these two episodes with a passion. Not only were they boring, but yes, this was definitely the limit breaker for Sabine. Thing is, this has actually been a part of her character for an extremely long time. Which is what bugs me the most.

Honestly, Sabine would work so much better if she was in her 20s, not her teens. Granted. She's like, 18-19 now. But still, was 15-16 when Rebels started.

Ditto, maybe, just maybe had they given the episode some stakes with her mother or brother, if not both, dying they could have given her character something to play with to grow and change but it was rather meh as it was presented. And there wasn't any real investment in the background manadlorians with no name so the 'shock' was pretty weak. Just imagine how much of a tone setter it would have been for the season if they had it in there.

And yea, Sabine should have been older, more along the lines of say Wedge's age so that she would have spent a good bit of time at the academy to help explain all the imperial secrets and the like she knows. Granted they didn't so they could possibly do some romance with Ezra, but that was a bit weird with how it all played out and came off more like a kid trying to woo someone older and not into them. But now she is sort of in the big sister role I guess, and well isn't it just very Star Wars to have a possible romance become a sibling relationship?

Wren's mum or brother absolutely should have died.

I mean, the weapon was shockingly brutal but we only saw it kill redshirts and I think Sabine's emotional arc would have been much more intense and interesting if it'd have killed someone she (and we) cared about.

Also, I think a Ezra and Sabine dynamic with Sabine as a big sister would have been way more interesting too. Just, you know, without the Lannister Dimension.

I think Filoni is a great comprehender of the force and the overall lore, and he's a decent storyteller, however he's overly sentimental and attached to his characters.

One of the first things I learned in scriptwriting it that audiences hate Deus ex Machina. They want their characters to earn their victories but more so they want to see them overcome challenges. When we see characters overcome great challenges its satisfying because one way or another it makes us feel that we too can overcome great obstacles in our lives. So in that sense the higher the stakes the better.

~

I get not wanting to kill off main characters, that's not the kind of show Rebels is, however then you have to demonstrate your characters working through real problems and to a degree suffering.

Avatar the Last Airbender is a very similar minded show with a core group of protagonists. Important characters rarely die but that show puts its characters through all the works that it doesn't matter because life and death of our protagonists is'nt what's at stake, the fate of the world and other people are. And our characters significantly develop from the beginning of the series to the end.

I think what Rebels lacks is any framing of what's at stake because we never see either our protagonists suffering at the hands of the Empire or anybody else. Yes we see bullying by soldiers and officers and occasional conscription but nothing more then generic vignettes that is unfortunately universally true of most occupying armies historically.

There is no world building, there is no frame of reference to what is so unique about the Empire's evil. Rogue One on the other hand perfectly sets up why we should dislike and even hate the imperials.

Absolutely agree with you about sentimentality being Filoni's weakness.

There's a quote (falsely attributed to Nabakov now I look it up but apparently it's from an anonymous source) which is along the lines of “In the first act you get [the protagonist] up a tree, in the second act you throw rocks at [the protagonist] and in the third act you get [the protagonist] down from the tree.”

Filoni does sometimes pick the rock up but then clearly feel bad about actually throwing it and gently puts it down. That time where they decide to really throw rocks is what worked well in Zero Hour at the end of season 3 and especially in the Malachor arc at the end of season 2. Ahsoka was lost in a way that satisfyingly brought her arc to a conclusion, Kanan was grievously wounded and Ezra lost a lot of his innocence and naivety. they won through, but by the skin of their teeth, and their personal losses led to some interesting narrative possibilities.

2 hours ago, Forresto said:

I think Filoni is a great comprehender of the force and the overall lore, and he's a decent storyteller, however he's overly sentimental and attached to his characters.

One of the first things I learned in scriptwriting it that audiences hate Deus ex Machina. They want their characters to earn their victories but more so they want to see them overcome challenges. When we see characters overcome great challenges its satisfying because one way or another it makes us feel that we too can overcome great obstacles in our lives. So in that sense the higher the stakes the better.

I know he mentioned at one point that Sabine is partially based on his wife, or at least how she changes her hair every so often so that might play into it too.

From the trailer, I'm guessing that Thrawn's attack is going to be the benchmark of what an ISD can do in the Disney canon. 'Full scale bombardment of the city' doesn't exactly leave a lot of room for pulling any punches. So either we're going to witness a BDZ event or the whole concept of an ISD being able to glass a planet is now shelved permanently.

As for an age difference, I think the quirky romance of the start of the series actually would have fit a lot better if there had been a significant age difference between Ezra and Sabine. Get the quirky hormonal teen who thinks he has a chance with the woman in her early-mid 20's and let the lady give him the gentle brushoff. You'd still have the ability to eventually develop the 'big sis' relationship later after the infatuation wore off but the friendship was still there.

I have to agree with the assessments of Filoni and his characters (heck, half of my posts on this thread are griping about it). I just hope he has the strength as a writer to give his characters an endpoint. If you're not willing to sacrifice a character for the sake of the quality of the story, then you're pretty much just playing with dolls in an animated format.

I agree on all fronts. Filoni has to end these characters' arcs.

Because somebody else will down the line, and he won't be satisfied it. End your characters before somebody does it for you.

On 1/20/2018 at 2:12 PM, Sithborg said:

Words cannot describe how much I hate the term Mary Sue.

What about Gary Stu?

On 1/20/2018 at 6:28 AM, eMeM said:

Sabine is a ridiculous character, the same episode that showed her "struggle" with a lightsaber also revealed that she was a lead designer of imperial superweapons back in the elementary school.

@trailer

This building is a ship.

Didn't I see that in Gurren Lagann ?