[ SECRET POST #4019 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4019 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.



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03.
[Love Actually]


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06.
[Brooklyn 99]


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #575.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: here be spoiler territory

[(Anonymous)]

But my whole point here is that no one could have reasonably predicted that any of Poe's decisions could have led to those deaths, given the information that Poe had at that time. The deaths were tragic and fucked-up, but I don't think you can even say that they were his fault. The bodycount is high, yeah. It's not his fault. It's, like, fog of war stuff.

(and I don't think there's any particular reason to think that the fighters would have been able to defend the transports effectively, and I certainly don't think that has anything to do with why the command didn't want to attack the dreadnought, unless the command knew that the First Order would be able to track them through hyperspace and just didn't tell anyone)

If the storyline is supposed to be about chastising Poe - and I'm not sure it is - then the things that happen are so detached from Poe's choices that I just don't think it carries through. To me, it's more about the tragedy of war and coming to terms with the idea that it's not a joyride, rather than about Poe fucking up. That's how I read it. And personally, I thought that the film gave sufficient weight to the death and the grieving, but that's just my opinion.

But regardless of that, I definitely don't think you can read it as being Poe's fault. Because it really just isn't.

Re: here be spoiler territory

[(Anonymous)]

I'm pretty sure you can read it that way, actually.

1. Poe was the squadron leader. That makes him responsible for the squadron. If he orders them to do something that gets them all killed, that's his fault.

2. He was ordered to retreat and ignored it. By ignoring orders that would have saved multiple lives if followed, he becomes responsible for those deaths. And while taking down a dreadnaught was good optics, in the long run, it didn't accomplish anything useful, so you can't even fall back on the "all those lives were sacrificed for the greater good" argument. Essentially, it was nothing but showboating.

3. Instead of taking some time to reflect on the fact that his plan was bad and disobeying orders got all his people killed, he immediately does the same thing again and gets more people killed. His failure to learn from his mistakes is his fault.

Honestly, I think it takes more mental gymnastics to decide that Poe's not responsible for the direct outcome of his actions than it does to say that Poe got a bunch of people killed by being a dumbass.

Re: here be spoiler territory

[(Anonymous)]

I agree that he is responsible for the deaths of the squadron, yes. I don't think that's him being a dumbass. Those deaths weren't senseless. Those people died in a successful attack on a massive capital ship. And I don't think that's meaningless in the long run. It's an important part of, you know, fighting a war. It wasn't showboating. It was wrong to disobey orders, and it's generally a flaw of Poe's that he thinks he has to try to win the war by himself. But it's not an intrinsically wrong or reckless decision taken on its own merits. It's not the case that he's senselessly throwing the lives of his squadron away.

I don't think that he's responsible for the deaths of the people on the transports (which was the direct context of the conversation). Because, first of all, those deaths are not really the direct result of his choices. They're the result of a bunch of other shit that happened after he made his choices and had nothing to do with them. Again, it's wrong for him to disobey orders, and it's wrong for him to think that he needs to win the whole war himself. but he is appropriately punished for those things in a way that narratively makes sense. I don't think it's accurate to characterize him as senselessly wasting lives, or getting people killed, because he doesn't do those things in this instance. You can't even say that his plan was bad, because the things that actually go wrong with his plan are totally unrelated to anything that he could conceivably have known or been expected to know when he made his plan, on multiple different levels.

The deaths of his squadron were tragic, and they are his responsibility, but they weren't senseless - they were part of fighting a war, and leading people to their death is part of what he does as a commander. And the deaths of the people on the transports weren't his fault or his responsibility.