This thread, which included responses from marginalized fans, was locked because people were posting about TLJ’s sexism and racism – banned topics in what many see as a safe place to be openly critical of the film.
FYI, it’s not.
This is not a new thing for the Star Wars fandom. The longtime forum The Jedi Council has a zero tolerance policy against racist posts (good!) which has led to locked threads because someone called out other posts on the forum as racist (not good).
A TLJ critical sub that doesn’t allow discussions about racism and sexism is not one that allows open criticism. It’s their perogative to do that, but I thought yall should know in case you post there.
Anyway, I wrote a response, but it didn’t post because the thread was locked while I was typing it. Here it is:
“I am a Black woman who blogs a lot about representation and race in media. I’ve been called a SJW many times.
I was very disappointed in TLJ. I’ve tried to see the good in how it handled Finn, but it’s like, you have to make an effort to see any positives. That’s not good representation. I think the movie gave the finger to racial diversity by centering Kylo so much and leaving so much of Finn’s arc on the cutting room floor. Don’t even get me started on RJ calling Kylo and Rey co-protagonists after Rey and Finn were the clear co-protagonists in TFA.
Finn had his own arc that had parallel’s to Rey’s arc, but it’s pretty clear RJ only really cared about the Rey/Kylo arc. Unlike most people, I think the Rey/Kylo scenes were the worst part of the film. I don’t care about Kylo’s entitled tears. I don’t think he’s a bad villain in theory – the angry young man from a good family who sees himself as the victim is relevant for our time. RJ seemed more interested in making him “complex,” but there’s nothing complex (or progressive) about making the white villain “the real protagonist” and the Black co-protag secondary.
I also found Rey’s arc, especially making her up like Bugs Bunny in lipstick in an old Looney Toons cartoon to “woo” Kylo to the light, sexist. (I’m very pro makeup BTW, but considering she just came from a cave in the middle of nowhere that was just insulting.)
It blows my mind tbh that people think most fans who didn’t like TLJ are mad because it’s too diverse and feminist.“
(You’ve probably heard me say all if this before if you’re a follower, but damn if I was going to let it go unposted).
Yeah I gradually stopped going there because I could see most of them were very against the sequel trilogy itself and they were just as white prioritizing as the rest of fandom. It used to be better, for instance my posts about TLJ’s racism received generally favorable responses, but It looks like they’ve gone full Reddit since.
You’re one of the many viewers who have gone from trying to find the silver linings in TLJ but liked it less and less the more they thought about it. I’ve actually gone somewhat in the opposite direction, from thinking it has no redeeming qualities to thinking it has some salvageable elements, but I think in general the opinions have evened out to being very, very low.
The thing is, even people who like TLJ are seeing its flaws more as time goes on. People who liked TLJ have responded favorably to my rewrite that simply reframes and refocuses the same plot (link). From what I can see, the people who swear it’s a coherent movie already do a hell lot of headcanoning to make it work anyway (link for examples). If even TLJ fans are acknowledging it is flawed and badly framed, and have been adding in stuff that wasn’t in the actual movie so they can like it–then I don’t see TLJ aging well at all despite its proponents’ claims that it will.
I’m not saying everyone who believes Rey Nobody is terrible, or that it comes from a terrible theme, but in truth Rey Nobody isn’t just confusing and unoriginal, it’s also used to erase Finn’s role in the movies, among other characters from the other trilogies.
The most common argument for Rey Nobody isn’t even about what makes sense, it’s about a theme. The theme that a hero, Rey, can come from nowhere and be the Jedi protagonist. People say it’s great that to have other Jedi than the Skywalkers in the movies as the protagonist, even better that she’s a woman.
Now here’s where the lie comes in.
The PT had a mess load of other Jedi than Anakin. In fact, Anakin wasn’t even a Jedi till the 2nd movie of the PT, little moptop didn’t even have a lightsaber. The OT had Obi-Wan. In fact most commonly I see people show a picture of the Skywalkers to prove their point, but it’s always misleading since forgetting Han and Padme, weren’t Jedi or Skywalkers, they just married into the family. Leia rejected the name and never became a Jedi in the new canon (Fuck you Disney/Lucasfilm), so that leaves only Luke and Anakin. Also, put into perspective that Rey is pretty much a genderbent Anakin and Luke mashed together, and she even has the same journey as Luke did in the OT, beat for beat. And lets face it, Daisy Ridley also looks just like a young Mark Hamil and
Natalie
Portman. Rey as a nobody, isn’t original or refreshing. It’s just the same thing…but with the last name missing.
We’ve had hero Jedi from nowhere: Luke, Ezra, Ahoksa, Anakin himself. Hell Obi-Wan struggled to even become a Jedi and had to train twice as hard to even become a the Master he became.
The themes of Rey being a nobody who goes on to become a hero always have one recurring similarity, they never see Finn as the other protagonist of the ST and think giving him the force is a bad idea and would “ruin” his story or the movie.
In fact, in the first official trailer for TFA, one of the most racist comments under the video was “Great, they gave the nig** a lightsaber. This movie is ruined”. It was even so hard to believe that there could possibly be a black stormtrooper, that these people actually acknowledged the prequels just to hate on Finn.
People wanted Rey to be a Nobody for the story because they didn’t want to or couldn’t even think that the force wielding hero from nowhere could be Finn, so they latched onto it.
And not only was Rey Nobody used for the racists, it was also used by the sexists who thought that Rey didn’t deserve or earn right to be a Skywalker and so Kylo Ren had to be the Skywalker of the ST. Yeah, there were other people who wanted Rey not to be a Skywalker cause they thought Rey and Kylo should hook up, but those people aren’t valid to begin with.
I understand that Rey Nobody to some people means just that anyone can be special, regardless of where they come from, but that isn’t Rey. TLJ tells us that Rey is a nobody who is special and doesn’t need any training or to earn anything because where there is darkness, there has to be light, so the light made Rey stronger than anyone and she downloaded Kylo’s powers like a torrent. No struggle, no strife, and even after her mentor dies, her comrades are reduced to less than a dozen people, learned that her parents are nobodies, Rey still shows no signs of character growth and is the same as was in her introduction.
People say they want Rey to be a nobody because it makes her relatable…It doesn’t and it didn’t. It just made her an OP character that has no flaws and doesn’t struggle, and gave every sexist and racist argument against Finn and Rey, a louder voice.
A theme shouldn’t trump a well written, with compelling characters and a cohesive plot. Giving Finn the force, wouldn’t have ruined anything, connecting Rey to the Skywalkers, wouldn’t have been bad writing. But ya know what would ruin the story? What would be bad writing that screams a forced agenda? Rey being nobody.
So, no I don’t think Rey Nobody is a good idea, and I will never think it’s a good idea. Regardless of why some people like Rey Nobody, the majority uses it to erase Finn as the protagonist or give the protagonist slot to Kylo, and IMO, fuck that noise.
I hope Rey is a Skywalker in IX. I hope Finn picks up a lightsaber in IX. Why? Cause I’m tired of seeing Rey and Finn get undercut time and time again. The worst part of TFA is the batch switch with Finn and the mystery arc with Rey. The movie would have been ten folds better if they just revealed Rey as a child who was taken from the Skywalker family and just confirmed Finn had the force. And I’m sticking to that. Hopefully IX fixes that.
I’ve compared Rey to Korra from Avatar: The Legend of Korra in that both characters are not allowed to develop their supernatural powers from hard work, but rather because some dude physically and mentally violated her. I saw a post yesterday that I’m kicking myself for not reblogging because I can’t find it now, that one way to fix Rey’s plot is by her realizing that her powers are tainted from the source and she has to start again the right way. It would also tie into my meta about a new order of Force users (link) and all the main crew training in the Force with Rey (link).
Barring a development like the above that shows the Force actually does belong to everyone and not just specially chosen white people, yeah, fuck Rey Random. So far it has been handled terribly in a way that mangles the lore and makes any possible theme incoherent while erasing Finn. If it’s just going to be a validation of the worst of Star Wars fandom, that only certain superhumans with inborn powers matter, then I don’t want it.
Some interesting development on the Episode IX shooting front.
Yesterday John posted this pic on his Instragram of him flying somewhere
and today he posted a video of a prayer call from a mosque, here a screencap of the video.
Now a quick bit of Googlemancy have led me to believe that that is the Abu Dawoud mosque in Aqaba, Jordan.
Why is this at all interesting?
Because Aqaba is the closest large city to the Wadi Rum desert where the IX team started shooting about a week and a half ago as reported by Making Star Wars. The person who initially noticed the IX set being set up in Wadi Rum said he thought he saw Daisy Ridley being given a tour, but he only saw her at a distance and in a brief glimpse, and frankly given the number of youngish, white brunettes in Star Wars there are others it could have been: Daisy’ stunt double or Keri Russle just to name two we know are involved in IX.
But if Daisy it was it is just confirmation of what we already knew, that Finn and Rey will spend a good deal of time together in IX.
What’s interesting to me is where this is supposed to be. Speculation have gone into it as the Making Star Wars page shows, personally I find the most compelling theory to be Jakku if it is a repeat location and not somewhere entirely new.
I could see Rey go back to Jakku to find answers about her family that aren’t told to her by a Dark sider known to be lying through his teeth.
For Finn there’s another thing entirely. For one thing emotional closure over what happened at Tuanul, there was nothing he could have done to prevent what happened but that massacre left a profound impact on him and he might feel a need now that time have passed to face the location again. For another there is on Jakku an old Imperial base, in fact it’s the base where the First Order was born so to speak, when Rae Sloane killed Gallius Rax and took the Imperial remnant with her to the secret location discovered by the late Emperor where the Empire could be reborn. And finally that base is also where Brendol Hux, father of Armitage Hux, first created what later became known as Operation resurrection, the First Order’s code name for the Stormtrooper program.
Yes there is indeed many interesting plots that could be spawned by a revisit to Jakky for Finn and Rey both.
~Mod Mara
A Star Wars sequel movie? Do actual worldbuilding and follow through on its own and EU materials’ plot threads? Dare I hope? Jakku on TFA was filmed at Rub’ al Khali desert, Abu Dhabi, but there’s precedent for location changes on the same planet. The Tatooine scenes in ANH were filmed around Tunisia but the ones in RotJ were filmed in U.S. locations, for instance.
A potential point of interest is that Rub’ al Khali is a sand desert, the largest continuous sand desert (erg) in the world, while Wadi Rum is a valley, the largest in Jordan. Rub’ al Khali was perfect for shooting things like the trackless desert that Finn wandered through, while Wadi Rum would be great for showing dramatic crag formations–like the Jakku Observatory located under the Plaintive Hand Plateau, perhaps, which Rax was originally guarding?
(Wadi Rum, btw, evidently means “the valley of light/airborne sand.” I’m guessing we won’t see Anakin’s Force ghost there.)
Tuanul was also a religious community, and the Church of the Force could tie into a larger plot about the Force. The Lor San Tekka character was set up to be a seeker after the ways of the Force much like Maz and Chirrut. He was a Church member too, since the days of the Empire when it was illegal in fact, so it’s easy to see why he would have been with them when he was on an inhospitable world. But what was he doing there? Was he on a religious retreat, or visiting with his religious brethren? Or was he a guest while on other business? If so, what was he trying to discover?
It would be perfect if Finn and Rey could revisit the sites of their trauma amid all this plot and worldbuilding as well. Finn could go to the ruins of Tuanul, perhaps to look for clues, and Rey could see the devastation for herself and see what Finn was talking about when he said he made a choice. Rey could visit Niima outpost, or its remains if it was destroyed. At minimum I want an answer what the ship she saw flying away was about. Finn and Rey could support each other and talk, something they didn’t get to do in TLJ or even TFA.
Yeah, we need more older fans to speak up against the good-old-days, us-against-the-censors revisionists. I mean strikethrough was far from free of problems, such as the deletion of rape survivor groups and age-restricted adult fic communities, but it’s disingenuous to sanitize the issue and pretend the underage porn didn’t exist.
Idk, you could ask her under your own url since she no longer allows anons, for good reason. Why would she even have an opinion on a random American commentator? Ohhhh, because she’s Jewish and they all meet regularly worldwide? Interesting how you call her by her old url even though she’s changed it since. (Seriously, why do y’all change your urls so much…)
Do I ever! Well, not right now because I don’t have a group, but yes.
I pretty much learned to read from those Sword & Sorcery – Choose Your Own Adventure books that came out back in the 80s and I learned English before I ever had it in school from a combination of AD&D manuals, two fantasy D&Dish pc games and my parent’s huge dictionary.
I was a geek from a young age.
I think I’ve tried nearly every table top RPG published from the late 80s and up till today. I keep going back to D&D though, it’s a nostalgia thing, though the West End Games’ Star Wars rules (made for the early era old EU) are my favorites.
What about you? What’s you’re favorites and do you play currently?
Lmao I met my husband through roleplaying games! (I am far from the only one–the roleplaying community I’m part of has produced at least six couples and four children that I know of.) My gateway drug was D&D Classic, the red book with the dragon, and then AD&D, 7th Sea, GURPS, Savage Worlds, and a bunch of indie titles–My Life with Master, FATE, Risus, Primetime Adventures, Trollbabes, The Shadow of Yesterday, Dresden Files, Polaris, In a Wicked Age… I haven’t been keeping up with new rules for the last few years, but this shit was my lifeblood back in the day.
My longest complete campaign was actually Star Wars, where I slightly modified Dogs in the Vineyard to play a group of Jedi in the Old Republic–and I do mean old, post-Exar Kun. I even ran a fleet battle with those rules and had a few spinoff sessions with a different group, too. That campaign went on for a year and a half before reaching a pretty epic ending, so I still remember it fondly. I’ve been reminiscing about it recently and kinda been jonesing to get another game going.
@hauntedfalcon I have played regrettably few complete seasons of PtA, generally one-offs for conventions, but there are few things as satisfying when a season does finish. And it takes less effort than most rules, too, since a season is generally five sessions. I became nostalgic for the old, more leisurely Star Trek seasons after watching Discovery, though, so a nine-session season may be in the cards (literally, for those of you who know PtA) the next time I organize a game.
I’ve played Star Wars with DitV for so long I think of it as a SW game now 😂 I also modified it for a convention one-off as a “choose your path” game where six players start off together and then turn to the Republic or the Sith a third to halfway into the game, then square off against each other as part of a large-scale batle. A friend who played also used that setup too and also had a ball.
Do I ever! Well, not right now because I don’t have a group, but yes.
I pretty much learned to read from those Sword & Sorcery – Choose Your Own Adventure books that came out back in the 80s and I learned English before I ever had it in school from a combination of AD&D manuals, two fantasy D&Dish pc games and my parent’s huge dictionary.
I was a geek from a young age.
I think I’ve tried nearly every table top RPG published from the late 80s and up till today. I keep going back to D&D though, it’s a nostalgia thing, though the West End Games’ Star Wars rules (made for the early era old EU) are my favorites.
What about you? What’s you’re favorites and do you play currently?
Lmao I met my husband through roleplaying games! (I am far from the only one–the roleplaying community I’m part of has produced at least six couples and four children that I know of.) My gateway drug was D&D Classic, the red book with the dragon, and then AD&D, 7th Sea, GURPS, Savage Worlds, and a bunch of indie titles–My Life with Master, FATE, Risus, Primetime Adventures, Trollbabes, The Shadow of Yesterday, Dresden Files, Polaris, In a Wicked Age… I haven’t been keeping up with new rules for the last few years, but this shit was my lifeblood back in the day.
My longest complete campaign was actually Star Wars, where I slightly modified Dogs in the Vineyard to play a group of Jedi in the Old Republic–and I do mean old, post-Exar Kun. I even ran a fleet battle with those rules and had a few spinoff sessions with a different group, too. That campaign went on for a year and a half before reaching a pretty epic ending, so I still remember it fondly. I’ve been reminiscing about it recently and kinda been jonesing to get another game going.
L.J.'s Obsessions 