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labingiTrivia question: What do Andor S2, Picard S3, and the live action Yamato movie all have in common? See the spoilery answer behind the cut.
Warnings: rant, mentions of sexual assault, written quite fast.
If you said they all feature women having the protagonist’s baby without his knowing, you get a star. If you added, and they all do it in a way that is bullshit, you get a gold star. This trope—as it is usually used—can only exist within a patriarchy that routinely conceptually erases the experience, minds, and lives of women. It is extremely misogynistic, and it needs to change NOW.
Note: I’m going to speak in binary terms of “men” and “women.” I do not mean to erase other genders, but this trope is based on binary gendered symbol sets; that’s what I’m engaging with.
Why This Trope Is Both Bad Science Fiction & Deeply Sexist
All three examples I’ve listed here are science fiction stories in settings with advanced spacefaring technology. Because it’s the most recent example, I’m going to focus on Andor and the Star Wars universe. In this galaxy, humans have had hyperspace travel capabilities for over 10,000 years. They can clone people, track midichlorions, and create sentient AI life (droids). They are a fairly sexually liberal society with no obvious, pervasive injunction against sex outside of marriage or long-term partnerships, as Andor itself clearly shows. Given those factors, there is zero chance that mainstream human society (which includes the base on Yavin IV) doesn’t have effective, cheap contraception for both women and men.
While it is mathematically possible both partners’ contraception could fail, it’s so astronomically unlikely as to be effectively impossible. It is also possible that with a stable couple, only one partner might use contraception, which would increase the chances of failures, but see “technology” above: their technologies would logically have to be close to 100% foolproof for both sexes after tens of thousands of years to perfect them.
I do see a couple of mitigating possibilities. Their society is a (soft) patriarchy, so it might culturally impose the burden of preventing pregnancy mostly on women, even though contraception would be easily available to men. And some women might use something akin to Norplant that just works for several years before needing to be replaced, and if you’re running around in a rebellion, you might be distracted and not notice it needs replacing. I could accept that scenario—but it would need to be discussed. It’s not narratively fair to leave it to the audience to infer the entire above paragraph on the basis of zero textual evidence.
Similarly, it is marginally possible that “the Force did it,” as with Shmi, but if that’s the message, it also needed to be discussed.
Or maybe Yavin is starved for some supplies? 1) With women among them, contraception would be high on the list of supplies to obtain. 2) They have tons of space ships, arms, uniforms, hospital supplies; they’re not that starved. 3) If this were a plot point, it would need to be an explicit plot point, as it would be a topic of discussion and have an effect on Cassian and Bix’s sex life. It’s not discussed, so I have to assume it’s not a problem.
Given that reality, there are only three ways Bix could have gotten pregnant:
1) She and Cassian were both not using contraception through patriarchal norms/negligence. (There’s no sign they come from an anti-contraception culture; in fact, the near equality between men and women in their culture suggests the opposite.)
2) She chose to get pregnant with his child without consulting him.
3) They decided to have a baby.
No. 3 didn’t happen. It’s obvious there was no discussion of having a child and that Cassian, at least, had no such intent. Otherwise, that would have been part of their conversation about whether or not he should leave the rebellion.
That leaves no. 1 or no. 2. No. 1 would require some significant explanation of how in the heck it could plausibly happen (see above).
No. 2 is deeply offensive to Bix, as it comes close to saying she raped Cassian. I would argue that engaging in sex with someone with the intent to create a child with them without their knowledge or consent is a violation of their bodily autonomy on the same level as rape that uses drugs to arouse someone. I mean, imagine your partner stole your genes and created a baby without telling you. Just imagine it for a split second, and then dismiss the thought because it is so repugnant.
Clearly, we are supposed to think that what happened is no. 1, no explanation needed. Sex leads to babies; they had sex. It led to a baby. In low tech cultures, sure. And in cultures like that, yes, there are times when women have to make hard choices about how to deal with the situation and they might plausibly conclude that not telling their partner is the least evil. We might even conclude that it’s noble for them to take on the burden of single-parent pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing, which is plainly what we’re meant to think of Bix.
Note: I’m counting our own culture here as “low tech” because a) it has no convenient male contraception and no interest in developing it; b) contraceptives for women can fail and are often artificially made hard to obtain; c) we have a lot of Gilead-like ideology saying it’s wrong to use contraception and precious little social infrastructure to make it easy and expected. We have a) and c) because we are a sexist patriarchy in which women have only been able to vote (in the US) for a hundred years and marital rape was not universally outlawed till I was in high school! Our tech has improved fast, but we’re still in the mindset of millennia of old patriarchy with ineffective contraception, seeing women primarily as wombs to be used as reproductive assets.
It is because we exist in this mindset that almost everyone (including leftwing folks) seem to think this trope makes sense, that it is either a heartwarming epilogue about a noble woman bravely having a child and, thus, letting the memory of her dead hero live on, or, at worst, plausible if annoying.
But this situation would be highly unusual in the Star Wars universe. It is legit high tech, and while it is a patriarchy, it hasn’t had the material conditions to enforce heavy patriarchy like ours for millennia. Bix is not a helpless economic asset at the mercy of whatever happens in her womb regardless of her own plans or desires. That is, she shouldn’t be. But this ending tells us that is exactly what she is, a victim of circumstance, thrust by the ineluctable forces of woman’s biology into the decision of having a baby or an abortion and bravely choosing to have the baby all on her own so her hero can hero.
Am I wrong? Tell me, is that not exactly what we are supposed to think?
Can This Trope Be Done Well in Science Fiction?
Yes. Though it’s funny: the only example I can think of is a story that didn’t actually do it, but could have, and it would have pleased me. Spoilers follow for the 1998 Trigun anime. (Skip this section to skip them.)
In the Trigun anime, Wolfwood and Millie have sex on the eve of his death. There’s no suggestion that they have a child as a result, unless it be a slight inuendo in the Trigun Badlands collection of short stories, which I liked. It could have worked though. Here’s why...
Though Trigun is set in a high tech future, it’s also set on a scrappy planet barely holding its human colony together with a lot of poverty, crime, and disorder. I completely buy that while contraception exists, it’s not universally used or available because the orderly infrastructure to do so isn’t in place. It’s also a somewhat sexist society, where making women’s lives easier is not especially high on the agenda.
I would completely accept that neither Wolfwood nor Millie is using contraception or has immediate access to any in that moment. Wolfwood lives for his work. Though he’s a bit flirtier in the anime than manga (where he’s not at all), he isn’t presented as someone who goes around having dalliances. Millie is a sweet, emotional girl who may well have had boyfriends and had sex with them (or not), but is not a promiscuous type and is also out on this adventure for work-related reasons.
I also buy that they would have sex that night even so. Millie leads with her emotions and is a spontaneous person, not a planner. Wolfwood, I think, actually would consider that she might get pregnant and it would bother him, but in that moment, he is overcome. He’s at his maximum point of emotional vulnerability, and if there’s ever moment when he’d let his commitment to putting responsible, self-controlled action first, it would be that moment. Then, he dies the next day, so obviously Millie could never have told him they had a child.
This works for me. It does what this trope is supposed to do: provide a touching way for a piece of the dead hero to live on. It works because it is plausible for the characters and the worldbuilding. That’s all. It follows the basic rules of all good writing.
How to Do It Well in General
First, some general reminders about human reproduction. Pregnancy is difficult and scary. I remember reading a YouTube comment on a video about abortion rights, where the commenter remarked that they’d known people happy to be pregnant and people not wanting to be pregnant, going through difficult pregnancies or “easy” ones, their first, second, or more, but they’d never met anyone who wasn’t scared. Pregnancy is the most physically intimate relationship one human being will ever have with another. It radically changes the body and, in some ways, permanently. It is physically dangerous.
Childbirth is generally extremely painful, many say the most painful experience they ever have. A midwife I know once said people in childbirth often feel like they’re dying. And in rare cases, she also said, the experience can be orgasmically ecstatic. Childbirth can be extremely dangerous; it can kill you and/or your child.
Now, in keeping with my contraception point, I assume that the Star Wars universe (prequels notwithstanding) has very low maternal and infant mortality, lots of good drugs to help with morning sickness and other symptoms and good anesthetic technologies, so pregnancy and childbirth are probably a lot easier than for us. Still, it would be a huge, risky, scary, emotionally and physically draining undertaking.
And then, as soon as you’ve gone through the significant physical trauma of childbirth, you get to catapult into caring for a tiny, crying baby who doesn’t sleep through the night and is fragile, delicate, and dirty—and basically just go watch Eraserhead (yes, this part can happen to fathers too). Okay, now that you’re back... Then—this is true for all parents, of course—you have twenty years of all the hurdles of parenthood ahead of you (from the terrible two’s to the terrible teens, as Mon Mothma knows) and an obligation to be this person’s parent for literally the rest of your life.
This undertaking—classic, biological motherhood—is the most life transforming, awesome responsibility in most women’s lives. As a life choice, it is on the order of entering a priesthood: it is a huge sacrifice and dedication to service to another’s welfare for life. I don’t mean by this that mothers can’t have important lives outside motherhood (again, see Mon Mothma) or that they should put up with abuse from grown children or any such thing; I mean to put into perspective exactly what this is, this indescribable commitment that we daily dismiss as just ordinary life.
We dismiss it because the vast majority of about half of the world’s population commit to it (or are forced into it) at least once. But we also dismiss it because we live in a patriarchy, and to acknowledge the awesomeness of motherhood would be to acknowledge women’s physical power and emotional strength, which a patriarchy cannot do because it would undermine its core contention that men are more powerful, strong, and important.
So patriarchy casts all this as just what women are for, what we naturally do. If we get pregnant, we must surely be happy about it because it’s a woman’s purpose. If we’re not happy, it’s because we’re either bad, cold women who should be punished or scared little girls who just need to be shown it’s okay. If we struggle physically in pregnancy or childbirth, it’s because women are weak and can’t handle pain. If we don’t instantly adore our newborns more than anything, there’s something grossly wrong with us. If we don’t love taking care of babies, we are bad, selfish women. In sum, women are created to have babies, so women who don’t want it or ever struggle with are broken or bad. I cannot imagine a mother who has never struggled with motherhood, so were are, therefore, all broken or bad.
NB: from all this, it follows naturally that there’s no need for legal abortion outside of medical emergencies. Only bad women want it, and we shouldn’t cater to bad people. Welcome to modern America.
In Andor (I’m sad to say, because I love the show), this narrative shows up in its baldest form:
1) Contraception doesn’t matter because women were made to have babies anyway. What’s the big deal if unplanned pregnancies happen? Good women naturally know how to deal with it.
2) Skip the entire pregnancy and childbirth. It is at best irrelevant and at worst distasteful. No one wants to see that.
3) Skip anything ugly or unpleasant about having a baby. Put cute mommy and baby in a golden field, in a golden light, hair flowing. (Mommies don’t need their hair out of the way like working women do.) Mommy and baby in a sweet embrace, Mommy with an angelic look of quiet happiness on her face.
I promised this section would be on how to do it right, didn’t I? Well, if you’re going to do it in a way that is not misogynistic, there are two things you need to do:
1) Make it plausible in universe (see Trigun).
2) Make it a very important plotline with the pregnant character centered as a point-of-view character, and put in the work to showing how she navigates the entire situation: the logistical choices; the physical difficulties; the fears; the pain; the hormones; the sacrifices in other relationships; work, etc.; the sleepless nights; and, yes, the joys and wonders too.
The closest I can think of to having seen this done is with Morgaine in The Mists of Avalon. The purpose there is not to eulogize a dead father, but it’s a good reference point for how to center a woman’s experience in a non-patriarchal way (disturbing though it is for many reasons, including uncomfortable resonance with Bradley’s own abuse of her children).
In conclusion, Andor effed this one up. In fact, they failed with Bix a lot this season. I’m glad they took her PTSD seriously, and I’m glad she got to fight back against the scientist who tortured her. But even that empowerment sequence was rushed and the least prepared and plausible in the season: no planning, no attention to her intelligence or skills, just climax and shooting, and we’re outta there. After that, she’s nothing but a housewife talking about how her man has a destiny she doesn’t want to interfere with—this woman who was a rebel risking her life for the cause before he was. (And her PTSD just vanishes.) As for the final scene in the field... she’s “safe”? Safe? In the same spot where she was almost raped and murdered, while she’s still an undocumented migrant on a planet that is still under Imperial rule during a time of Imperial crackdown?
Finally, remember my mention of Mon Mothma above? The complete jettisoning of her identity as a mother when her daughter might well have been executed or thrown in prison for her mother’s defection tells us exactly how much this season cares about motherhood.
This is what patriarchy looks like.
By the way, my equivalent rant about Picard S3 is here.
Warnings: rant, mentions of sexual assault, written quite fast.
If you said they all feature women having the protagonist’s baby without his knowing, you get a star. If you added, and they all do it in a way that is bullshit, you get a gold star. This trope—as it is usually used—can only exist within a patriarchy that routinely conceptually erases the experience, minds, and lives of women. It is extremely misogynistic, and it needs to change NOW.
Note: I’m going to speak in binary terms of “men” and “women.” I do not mean to erase other genders, but this trope is based on binary gendered symbol sets; that’s what I’m engaging with.
Why This Trope Is Both Bad Science Fiction & Deeply Sexist
All three examples I’ve listed here are science fiction stories in settings with advanced spacefaring technology. Because it’s the most recent example, I’m going to focus on Andor and the Star Wars universe. In this galaxy, humans have had hyperspace travel capabilities for over 10,000 years. They can clone people, track midichlorions, and create sentient AI life (droids). They are a fairly sexually liberal society with no obvious, pervasive injunction against sex outside of marriage or long-term partnerships, as Andor itself clearly shows. Given those factors, there is zero chance that mainstream human society (which includes the base on Yavin IV) doesn’t have effective, cheap contraception for both women and men.
While it is mathematically possible both partners’ contraception could fail, it’s so astronomically unlikely as to be effectively impossible. It is also possible that with a stable couple, only one partner might use contraception, which would increase the chances of failures, but see “technology” above: their technologies would logically have to be close to 100% foolproof for both sexes after tens of thousands of years to perfect them.
I do see a couple of mitigating possibilities. Their society is a (soft) patriarchy, so it might culturally impose the burden of preventing pregnancy mostly on women, even though contraception would be easily available to men. And some women might use something akin to Norplant that just works for several years before needing to be replaced, and if you’re running around in a rebellion, you might be distracted and not notice it needs replacing. I could accept that scenario—but it would need to be discussed. It’s not narratively fair to leave it to the audience to infer the entire above paragraph on the basis of zero textual evidence.
Similarly, it is marginally possible that “the Force did it,” as with Shmi, but if that’s the message, it also needed to be discussed.
Or maybe Yavin is starved for some supplies? 1) With women among them, contraception would be high on the list of supplies to obtain. 2) They have tons of space ships, arms, uniforms, hospital supplies; they’re not that starved. 3) If this were a plot point, it would need to be an explicit plot point, as it would be a topic of discussion and have an effect on Cassian and Bix’s sex life. It’s not discussed, so I have to assume it’s not a problem.
Given that reality, there are only three ways Bix could have gotten pregnant:
1) She and Cassian were both not using contraception through patriarchal norms/negligence. (There’s no sign they come from an anti-contraception culture; in fact, the near equality between men and women in their culture suggests the opposite.)
2) She chose to get pregnant with his child without consulting him.
3) They decided to have a baby.
No. 3 didn’t happen. It’s obvious there was no discussion of having a child and that Cassian, at least, had no such intent. Otherwise, that would have been part of their conversation about whether or not he should leave the rebellion.
That leaves no. 1 or no. 2. No. 1 would require some significant explanation of how in the heck it could plausibly happen (see above).
No. 2 is deeply offensive to Bix, as it comes close to saying she raped Cassian. I would argue that engaging in sex with someone with the intent to create a child with them without their knowledge or consent is a violation of their bodily autonomy on the same level as rape that uses drugs to arouse someone. I mean, imagine your partner stole your genes and created a baby without telling you. Just imagine it for a split second, and then dismiss the thought because it is so repugnant.
Clearly, we are supposed to think that what happened is no. 1, no explanation needed. Sex leads to babies; they had sex. It led to a baby. In low tech cultures, sure. And in cultures like that, yes, there are times when women have to make hard choices about how to deal with the situation and they might plausibly conclude that not telling their partner is the least evil. We might even conclude that it’s noble for them to take on the burden of single-parent pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing, which is plainly what we’re meant to think of Bix.
Note: I’m counting our own culture here as “low tech” because a) it has no convenient male contraception and no interest in developing it; b) contraceptives for women can fail and are often artificially made hard to obtain; c) we have a lot of Gilead-like ideology saying it’s wrong to use contraception and precious little social infrastructure to make it easy and expected. We have a) and c) because we are a sexist patriarchy in which women have only been able to vote (in the US) for a hundred years and marital rape was not universally outlawed till I was in high school! Our tech has improved fast, but we’re still in the mindset of millennia of old patriarchy with ineffective contraception, seeing women primarily as wombs to be used as reproductive assets.
It is because we exist in this mindset that almost everyone (including leftwing folks) seem to think this trope makes sense, that it is either a heartwarming epilogue about a noble woman bravely having a child and, thus, letting the memory of her dead hero live on, or, at worst, plausible if annoying.
But this situation would be highly unusual in the Star Wars universe. It is legit high tech, and while it is a patriarchy, it hasn’t had the material conditions to enforce heavy patriarchy like ours for millennia. Bix is not a helpless economic asset at the mercy of whatever happens in her womb regardless of her own plans or desires. That is, she shouldn’t be. But this ending tells us that is exactly what she is, a victim of circumstance, thrust by the ineluctable forces of woman’s biology into the decision of having a baby or an abortion and bravely choosing to have the baby all on her own so her hero can hero.
Am I wrong? Tell me, is that not exactly what we are supposed to think?
Can This Trope Be Done Well in Science Fiction?
Yes. Though it’s funny: the only example I can think of is a story that didn’t actually do it, but could have, and it would have pleased me. Spoilers follow for the 1998 Trigun anime. (Skip this section to skip them.)
In the Trigun anime, Wolfwood and Millie have sex on the eve of his death. There’s no suggestion that they have a child as a result, unless it be a slight inuendo in the Trigun Badlands collection of short stories, which I liked. It could have worked though. Here’s why...
Though Trigun is set in a high tech future, it’s also set on a scrappy planet barely holding its human colony together with a lot of poverty, crime, and disorder. I completely buy that while contraception exists, it’s not universally used or available because the orderly infrastructure to do so isn’t in place. It’s also a somewhat sexist society, where making women’s lives easier is not especially high on the agenda.
I would completely accept that neither Wolfwood nor Millie is using contraception or has immediate access to any in that moment. Wolfwood lives for his work. Though he’s a bit flirtier in the anime than manga (where he’s not at all), he isn’t presented as someone who goes around having dalliances. Millie is a sweet, emotional girl who may well have had boyfriends and had sex with them (or not), but is not a promiscuous type and is also out on this adventure for work-related reasons.
I also buy that they would have sex that night even so. Millie leads with her emotions and is a spontaneous person, not a planner. Wolfwood, I think, actually would consider that she might get pregnant and it would bother him, but in that moment, he is overcome. He’s at his maximum point of emotional vulnerability, and if there’s ever moment when he’d let his commitment to putting responsible, self-controlled action first, it would be that moment. Then, he dies the next day, so obviously Millie could never have told him they had a child.
This works for me. It does what this trope is supposed to do: provide a touching way for a piece of the dead hero to live on. It works because it is plausible for the characters and the worldbuilding. That’s all. It follows the basic rules of all good writing.
How to Do It Well in General
First, some general reminders about human reproduction. Pregnancy is difficult and scary. I remember reading a YouTube comment on a video about abortion rights, where the commenter remarked that they’d known people happy to be pregnant and people not wanting to be pregnant, going through difficult pregnancies or “easy” ones, their first, second, or more, but they’d never met anyone who wasn’t scared. Pregnancy is the most physically intimate relationship one human being will ever have with another. It radically changes the body and, in some ways, permanently. It is physically dangerous.
Childbirth is generally extremely painful, many say the most painful experience they ever have. A midwife I know once said people in childbirth often feel like they’re dying. And in rare cases, she also said, the experience can be orgasmically ecstatic. Childbirth can be extremely dangerous; it can kill you and/or your child.
Now, in keeping with my contraception point, I assume that the Star Wars universe (prequels notwithstanding) has very low maternal and infant mortality, lots of good drugs to help with morning sickness and other symptoms and good anesthetic technologies, so pregnancy and childbirth are probably a lot easier than for us. Still, it would be a huge, risky, scary, emotionally and physically draining undertaking.
And then, as soon as you’ve gone through the significant physical trauma of childbirth, you get to catapult into caring for a tiny, crying baby who doesn’t sleep through the night and is fragile, delicate, and dirty—and basically just go watch Eraserhead (yes, this part can happen to fathers too). Okay, now that you’re back... Then—this is true for all parents, of course—you have twenty years of all the hurdles of parenthood ahead of you (from the terrible two’s to the terrible teens, as Mon Mothma knows) and an obligation to be this person’s parent for literally the rest of your life.
This undertaking—classic, biological motherhood—is the most life transforming, awesome responsibility in most women’s lives. As a life choice, it is on the order of entering a priesthood: it is a huge sacrifice and dedication to service to another’s welfare for life. I don’t mean by this that mothers can’t have important lives outside motherhood (again, see Mon Mothma) or that they should put up with abuse from grown children or any such thing; I mean to put into perspective exactly what this is, this indescribable commitment that we daily dismiss as just ordinary life.
We dismiss it because the vast majority of about half of the world’s population commit to it (or are forced into it) at least once. But we also dismiss it because we live in a patriarchy, and to acknowledge the awesomeness of motherhood would be to acknowledge women’s physical power and emotional strength, which a patriarchy cannot do because it would undermine its core contention that men are more powerful, strong, and important.
So patriarchy casts all this as just what women are for, what we naturally do. If we get pregnant, we must surely be happy about it because it’s a woman’s purpose. If we’re not happy, it’s because we’re either bad, cold women who should be punished or scared little girls who just need to be shown it’s okay. If we struggle physically in pregnancy or childbirth, it’s because women are weak and can’t handle pain. If we don’t instantly adore our newborns more than anything, there’s something grossly wrong with us. If we don’t love taking care of babies, we are bad, selfish women. In sum, women are created to have babies, so women who don’t want it or ever struggle with are broken or bad. I cannot imagine a mother who has never struggled with motherhood, so were are, therefore, all broken or bad.
NB: from all this, it follows naturally that there’s no need for legal abortion outside of medical emergencies. Only bad women want it, and we shouldn’t cater to bad people. Welcome to modern America.
In Andor (I’m sad to say, because I love the show), this narrative shows up in its baldest form:
1) Contraception doesn’t matter because women were made to have babies anyway. What’s the big deal if unplanned pregnancies happen? Good women naturally know how to deal with it.
2) Skip the entire pregnancy and childbirth. It is at best irrelevant and at worst distasteful. No one wants to see that.
3) Skip anything ugly or unpleasant about having a baby. Put cute mommy and baby in a golden field, in a golden light, hair flowing. (Mommies don’t need their hair out of the way like working women do.) Mommy and baby in a sweet embrace, Mommy with an angelic look of quiet happiness on her face.
I promised this section would be on how to do it right, didn’t I? Well, if you’re going to do it in a way that is not misogynistic, there are two things you need to do:
1) Make it plausible in universe (see Trigun).
2) Make it a very important plotline with the pregnant character centered as a point-of-view character, and put in the work to showing how she navigates the entire situation: the logistical choices; the physical difficulties; the fears; the pain; the hormones; the sacrifices in other relationships; work, etc.; the sleepless nights; and, yes, the joys and wonders too.
The closest I can think of to having seen this done is with Morgaine in The Mists of Avalon. The purpose there is not to eulogize a dead father, but it’s a good reference point for how to center a woman’s experience in a non-patriarchal way (disturbing though it is for many reasons, including uncomfortable resonance with Bradley’s own abuse of her children).
In conclusion, Andor effed this one up. In fact, they failed with Bix a lot this season. I’m glad they took her PTSD seriously, and I’m glad she got to fight back against the scientist who tortured her. But even that empowerment sequence was rushed and the least prepared and plausible in the season: no planning, no attention to her intelligence or skills, just climax and shooting, and we’re outta there. After that, she’s nothing but a housewife talking about how her man has a destiny she doesn’t want to interfere with—this woman who was a rebel risking her life for the cause before he was. (And her PTSD just vanishes.) As for the final scene in the field... she’s “safe”? Safe? In the same spot where she was almost raped and murdered, while she’s still an undocumented migrant on a planet that is still under Imperial rule during a time of Imperial crackdown?
Finally, remember my mention of Mon Mothma above? The complete jettisoning of her identity as a mother when her daughter might well have been executed or thrown in prison for her mother’s defection tells us exactly how much this season cares about motherhood.
This is what patriarchy looks like.
By the way, my equivalent rant about Picard S3 is here.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-19 12:15 am (UTC)APPLAUDS this post. Well said.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-19 02:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-19 05:56 am (UTC)I haven't finished Andor yet, but if there's a birth scene, I'm so fast-forwarding. I'm glad though that they didn't kill Bix, which I was expecting, to get her out of the way for Rogue One.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-19 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-19 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-19 10:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-05-19 03:00 pm (UTC)But overall, yes. It's bizarre.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-19 01:19 pm (UTC)Haven't seen Andor S2 yet, but -- glowy decharacterised mother in a field with an angel baby? -- I won't be able to reach the vomit bag fast enough.
no subject
Date: 2025-05-19 03:02 pm (UTC)Aw, I consider that a very high compliment. Thanks!
The good thing about this scene is that it is literally the last in the show, so you can turn it off after Cassian's heroic march off to the find Jyn and pretend it didn't happen, which what I'm going to do henceforth. It's still a very good season overall.