The volcanic winters in the Broken Earth setting are the “irregular winters that can lead to mass starvation and the end of civilization” trope done in an actually interesting and plausible way.
I haven’t personally seen it either. The Finn fans I interact with were excited about Rose prior to TLJ and disappointed with her portrayal after TLJ hit. I think at least some of the assertion that Finn fans are being anti-Asian is due to the latter part, with the criticism of Rose’s character being interpreted as racism. I know I got my share of shit for saying Rose’s treatment of Finn was wrong. Similarly, a number of Asian fans including @leg-grestrade, @xingli, and @to-break-the-stalemate (who is Vietnamese) were outspoken about how horrible RJ’s writing of Rose was.
I don’t rule out Finn fans being racist against Rose, of course, and I know at least one reylow shipper received an anon saying Rose is a downgrade from Rey and isn’t even a good-looking Asian. (Like come fucking come say that to my face, anon.) And of course, Loan Tran quit social media over the racist and misogynistic harassment she received. Anti-Asian racism is a definite problem across fandoms. What I find suspect is the claim that this vitriol is confined to one section of the fandom. That smacks of both minimization and an attempt to use Loan’s actual suffering for an agenda.
A few days back I read this science fiction story by a famous author where
the time-traveling protagonist, who must have been at least forty at the
time (it’s mentioned he was married to his wife for 23 years), married a
sixteen year old girl in third-century Eastern Europe who later died in
childbirth. When a 24th-century female doctor called the girl a child and said he should have left her alone,
he made excuses that the girl was a woman by the standards of her time
and most of history, like NICE TO KNOW YOU USED THE HISTORY LOOPHOLE TO
FUCK A TEENAGER DUDE.
Oh, and he cites his and his wife’s
liberal late-twentieth-century sexual mores as a reason why his wife is
totally cool with it. (It looked to me and my husband like the protagonist’s wife was totally cool
with having a husband who was away most of the time, leaving her free to
pursue her own passions without worrying about a living. Who cares if
he’s fucking girls on the side who were initially too young to even get
pregnant.) Like?? Being sexually liberal means condoning pedophilia?? I
wanted to punch him through the page.
Did I mention the
abovementioned doctor totally lets it slide and everyone else at his
work bends over backward to coddle the pedophile’s hurt fee-fees? My
eyes were rolling out of my head. Like, when he mentioned later that his
third-century granddaughter with the girl–or was it great-granddaughter–looked just like her, I was so fucking scared for a moment that he
was going to fuck the granddaughter too. The so-called canons of science fiction fucking suck, man.
The fact that I, you, or people you know have a good marriage doesn’t change the fact that heterosexual marriage as an institution has been hugely destructive to women and has been used to undermine our personhood.
I think you’re misunderstanding the phrase “Good women have been lost to marriage” as meaning “marriage makes women less worthy/good.” Why do you think the comparison is to war, famine, disease, and disaster? None of those misfortunes make a woman less worthy, but they do harm, traumatize, and kill her as though she is worth nothing. Marriage does the same for far too many women. I’d eat my keyboard before I deny the experiences of those women just because they don’t match my own.
Besides, my own marriage very much goes against patriarchal norms and that’s a big reason it works for us (link). Marriage can be improved and made more humane, but that won’t happen by denying its problems.
Obviously if the teenager sees the relationship as a source of love, acceptance, and power, she’s going to be “into” it. And it leaves her messed up later on, because she’s been encouraged to think it was consensual. That’s the whole point of grooming. Everyone please, please, PLEASE read the essay Fiction, Reality, Fandom and Adulthood: a media academic and CSA/incest victim’s account (link, thanks @theautisticjedi for bringing it to my attention) to see what fandom’s rampant excuses for child sexual abuse do to kids trapped in or recovering from that situation.
Remember “reylophobia?” And how they compare criticizing their ship to homophobia, ableism, and a bunch of other stuff? Remember how a number of them actually cry about reverse racism? Yeah.
Idk if the reylow anon and the “how dare you want racists to die” anon were the same person, but the timing and tone certainly suggest that conclusion.
I can understand why you would feel that way, though I would not have cared so much about SW in the first place if not for Finn, Rey, and Poe. Unless Episode IX is at least decent, though, I don’t see the point anymore.
L.J.'s Obsessions 