I feel like I have to specify that when I say I hate Reylo I don’t mean people shouldn’t be able to ship whatever the hell they want, because I honestly could not care less. When I say that I hate Reylo what I mean is that there is an extremely vocal and offputting majority in the Reylo fandom that consistently puts forward meta-analysis of Star Wars–and more succinctly, Kylo Ren–that I find abhorrent, disgusting, delusional, and at worst regressive. I also mean, when I say I hate Reylo, that I hate the idea of Reylo being canon, because it would be shitty, stupid, regressive writing if it does.
Ship whatever you want and anyone who’s on you for it probably needs to get a life. But if you start openly advocating for abusive actions to be considered “romantic,” handwaving real critique of the source material, and posting “meta analysis” that’s deeply problematic you should probably be prepared for some backlash.
I do not care what you ship. Go, be free, write your beautiful fic and draw your beautiful fanart. But you can’t tell me not to care about toxicity in fandom and regressive writing in canon.
It’s also a sector of fandom that mimics one of the worst traits that fandom can have – the “big name” Reylo bloggers are the arbiters of all info that gets through to their followers about Star Wars, to the point where the Reylo fandom en masse believe things are canon that were literally just made-up fanon, but the BNFs who made it up dig in their heels because admitting that they aren’t all-knowing, or that their “analysis” of SW is insanely biased, would give their followers cause to doubt them and start thinking for themselves, looking at and listening to outside sources.
Reylo, like some other toxic ship fandoms – many of which aren’t even about ships that are themselves toxic! Reylo is, but like, there are toxic ship fandoms based on perfectly benign ships, too – is more about the shippers being venerated than the characters they claim to love. (Their complete disregard for Rey as a human person and protagonist is p much proof of that, but that’s not even the point here.) It isn’t a coincidence that almost every Bad Reylo Meta either was OP by, or based on a meta by, a handful of “in crowd” bloggers, and it DEFINITELY is not a coincidence that Reylos are obsessed with the idea of Being Right and the idea of Casting Out the Other, more than they are about actual fucking Star Wars.
There is a huge aspect of Reylo fandom that, like their OTP, is based on manipulation and gaslighting more than anything to do with actual content, and that’s 100% wrong and also deserves to be called out whenever it’s seen.
Like, part of why combating Bad Reylo Meta is a thing that needs to be done is not for the characters’ sake, but for the sake of younger and/or more vulnerable fangirls who worship the Big Reylo Bloggers and think that they’re genuinely smarter/more enlightened/“the only ones who really understand.” It’s absolutely fine to make up fanon about your ship. It’s absolutely normal when ships have cliques. I can even understand the normalcy of ship wars, even if I think they’re dumb as soup. But the way that Big Name Reylos rewrite the entire schema of the franchise and twist both SW canon and actual reality wrt the behavior of Kylo Ren – an INTENTIONALLY WRITTEN NEO-NAZI METAPHOR WHOSE FIRST INTERACTION WITH REY WAS STATED BY THE DIRECTOR TO BE A RAPE METAPHOR – is not normal.
It is not normal to care more about “Proving Antis Wrong” than just liking the thing you like. It’s not normal to be so virulently fearful and aggressive towards people who just don’t agree with your fave blogger’s bad meta made up based on nothing. And it’s not normal for a handful of bloggers to have such a stranglehold on not only their followers, but public discussion of the entire fandom.
Almost none of the SWST has actually unfolded, in canon, the way a handful of Big Name Reylos told their fans it did, but their version has spread like flat earth theory. And that’s not a coincidence, either. Batshit conspiracy theory and charismatic leaders who willfully mislead their followers go hand-in-hand.
Make that your Shitty Snoke Theory™.
(Who, by the fucking by, DID NOT BRAINWASH KYLE FROM THE WOMB. THAT’S FANON.)Yup. All it took was a couple BNF reylos to say that TLJ made the ship canon (contradicting the movie and everyone else who had seen the movie, even those who thought the force skype stuff was “sexy”), and a disturbingly large number of fans carved it into stone. There are fan spaces not meant to be dedicated reylo shippers spaces where you can not even have a conversation about Star Wars that isn’t centered on Reylo, because so many fans are 100% convinced that the entire trilogy is Kylo’s story and Kylo’s story ONLY, with Rey as an object belonging to him, whose purpose is to redeem him and fuck him. They 100% believe this is how it’s written, and any conversation about the ST that isn’t about Kylo/reylo or anything that can be used to prop it up is irrelevant and off-topic. Which is why talking about Rey’s relationship with Finn is seen as irrelevant to the story (contradicting the canon), but so is talking about Finn as an individual, developed character or speculating about his story independent of Rey.
More to the point, the fandom hyperfocuses on Kylo because he’s the one they can empathize with, even though he’s awful and has done shitty thing after shitty thing to Rey. The intensity of that empathy only spotlights their blatant lack of empathy for Finn, who the fandom by and large aggressively believes is only in the series as a comic relief (not true, even in TLJ, where the clear comic relief was Hux) and general buffoon. That empathy gap is a facet of systemic racism, so I don’t know why fans often hesitate to criticize Kylo Ren’s disproportionate popularity, not as a villain, but as the “real protagonist.”
It’s not only harmful, it drains a lot of the fun of the SW movie fandom, which was never about one character. Fans used to talk about every creature in the Cantina and Jabba’s Palace, every member of the Jedi Council. You could go on about Kit Fisto (a personal favorite from the prequels), and no one would get pissed that you weren’t paying attention to Anakin and Obi-Wan. This isn’t nostalgia, it’s noting the difference in the fandom’s behavior when the films were predominantly white and there was no need to aggressively insist that a white guy was at the center.
Honestly? i’m pretty sure nazis have infiltrated this fandom. Just straight up.
given all the behaviours and the way they line up I feel this goes way, WAY beyond white prioritization, as disgusting as that behaviour alone is.Nazis haven’t infiltrated the fandom. These are very mainstream attitudes that can be found in every fandom, as well as in irl communities, businesses and schools. It lets too many people off the hook to imply otherwise.
I can see why that’d wind up letting ppl off the hook -about the implications, cause then people would do the whole distancing thing and then shit wouldn’t get addressed at the root.. and yeah, these are sadly common behaviours across a lot of contexts -it’s just the way it’s so intensified in the sw fandom makes me highly–
Wait the thought just hit me. Yeah this is more a reflection of the rising trend of lashing out against the increase in and focus on Marginalized Characters in starring, non-sterotypical roles in media. Though I do still think it’s driven by general white supremacy/narcopathy.
The reason it feels so unusually intense is because it hasn’t been until recently that movies on the scale of Star Wars have centered on non-white-male characters. Like, Martha Jones in 2008 resulted in a big increase in visible fandom racism, but the 10th Doctor was still the main character. The same can be said for shows/films like Merlin, Being Human, Sleepy Hollow, Misfits, Start Trek, The Flash, Teen Wolf (maybe?), The Walking Dead (and I know I’m forgetting some)… there was still at least one white guy who was for real centered in the media.
Even with the Black Panther, being part of the MCU, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes (not to mention Everett Ross) are some of the most popular in its transformative fandom.
Star Wars came back and there is not a single young white male in the protagonist circle. There’s a precedent to fans glorifying villains like Loki (who, unlike Kylo Ren, was at least a fun and charismatic villain), but there isn’t a lot of precedent for a dominant contingent of a fandom to insist that water isn’t wet and the sky isn’t blue in order to not just woobify, but claim a villain is the hero.
Since so much of what they do involves re-framing the reality (ie the canon) to make Kylo, not Rey and certainly not Finn, the true hero and protagonist, most other fandoms would have them labeled tinhats or conspiracy theorists, but they’ve managed to become entirely mainstream. How? Like you said, they’re “lashing out against the increase in and focus on Marginalized Characters in starring, non-sterotypical roles in media.” It is white supremacy. The only difference between white supremacy and white prioritization is that the former is associated with the white white hoods and extremism people use to distance themselves from the issue.
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L.J.'s Obsessions 