BC CULTURE
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I'm gonna do my other star wars thread tomorrow, which will primarily be me yelling at a @RowanKaiser-shaped strawman for calling the First Order and The Resistance "cosplayers who the rest of the galaxy has to deal with"

 the deal w/the New Republic, the First Order, and the Resistance is very weird and complex and I actually take issue with how Story Group frames the actual conflict.
pre-TFA stuff is presented as a "cold war" between the New Republic and the remnants of the Empire that form the First Order, which 100% makes sense.
But they frame the First Order's attack on the Hosnian system and the subsequent battle that takes place across TFA and TLJ as a full on war when it's very clearly a coup. A war implies at least equal standing, but the First Order completely wrecks shop and takes over the galaxy.
ok never mind I'm fucking doing this now.

The First Order fleet we see in TLJ is *not* the entire fleet of the First Order (I don't even think Starkiller Base was their main base of operations honestly, it couldn't have been considering they were operating out of Wild Space)
What we see of the First Order in TFA/TLJ is essentially a landing party establishing a beach head in the Known Regions so that the rest of the First Order could strike from the Unknown Regions and take the galaxy.
I'm not going to get into the split of the New Republic, the secret funding of the First Order, and why the NR demilitarizes because I haven't read BLOODLINES in a while and it's getting late. But the Resistance (in TFA) is more than just "rebels", they're the Republic military.
the only reason they aren't called that is because the Republic demilitarized, and the First Order (rightly if hypocritically) calls them out on demilitarizing but maintaining an unofficial military force.
So the thing that complicates the whole fucking deal is the First Order destroying the Hosnian system and essentially destroying the government of the New Republic, which would/should be the first act of war, right?
The First Order had a pretty significant amount of senators in their pocket, though. There were a lot of Imperial loyalists in the Senate (for some fucking reason) who fought for a return to a centralized form of government with a leader. Basically Empire 2.0.
(or at least that was the concern Mon Mothma, Leia, and part of the new senate had, that it was immediately going to lead to fascism and that each planet should be allowed to govern itself to an extent)
SO: destroy the Hosnian system and the Republic senate, which is largely symbolic thanks to division, seize control of any planet unwilling to submit to the First Order, and install your new senate in a new system or a new planet and use that to rule from.
I guaren-fucking-tee that the First Order will have established their new government on Coruscant, in-universe b/c it's the center of the galaxy and because JJ is a fucking mark for Star Wars so this should end where it began (rhymes, poetry, etc).
SO: destroy the old senate, destroy the Republic's only functioning military, establish new center of power, establish your military junta (since a lot of the big wigs in the FO are ex-Imperial admirals, hey there Rae Sloane) and you've done a coup in like, 3 days max.
Things get fucked for the FO b/c Snoke is dead and Starkiller Base is destroyed, *but* I don't think the FO was going to make the same mistake that the Empire did and only have one guy holding everything together and they've got a massive military.
in conclusion: the star war in the sequel trilogy is a coup not a war, the sequel trilogy is good and fun even if/especially because it mirrors the OT, and I've never been wrong ever (that's the important take away from tonight)
@threadreaderapp unroll thread plz

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