Rey Nobody is terrible

themandalorianwolf:

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.

longbiteydog:

dianoprince:

Don’t give up hope. They still might show up. Whoever it is you’re waiting for.

i really don’t want to ship them. it was a perfectly good movie without a romantic thread. there’s no reason to do this.

If you don’t like the post you can just, idk, scroll on instead of telling other people what to do.

halfhardtorock:

Fandom left livejournal, a platform that allowed for closed community groups (through friends only sharing) to move to tumblr, a platform that could not provide the same closed community spaces and was already being used by a much younger crowd.

Bitching and complaining about changing fandom demographics is really delusional to me when this change was always inevitable, especially on tumblr. We are not that old school, locked down, adult-oriented community anymore. The culture is changing and growing. And thank god, because that fandom (which all you old timers keep nostalgically recalling) was hyper-racist, hyper-homophobic, hyper-ableist and virulently misogynistic. You can say all you want about how fandom wasn’t ever JUST straight, middle aged white women and was always diverse but the truth is it ALWAYS skewed towards middle aged white women (when there were bnfs, they were almost predominantly middle aged, straight white women) and their needs and their desires.

The people who talk about “purity culture” and the “anti-shipping community” are completely obscuring whats real about fandom now: that changing demographics means changing culture and changing values about what’s socially acceptable to the people here. Like you can all go try to hide in your new throwback lj on pillowfort but you can’t fucking turn back time and force fandom back into the goddamn past where it came from.

Which should be a good thing?? Fandom creative output is so much more interesting now than it has ever ever been. There’s so many more voices and unique narratives and thoughtful ideas and younger ideas. Wanting to go backwards is so weird and embarrassing to me. You all really want old school fandom where people gleefully, openly slutshamed the rl wives of their white slash ship and no one shut it down?? I know shit can be just as toxic now but can’t any of you remember a time when that shit was the norm?? Like go stick your fucking head in that toxic hole again where we all loathed women including ourselves but ill pass.

I think it’s a pretty small thing to have to give up certain kinds of creative works in order to care for the wellbeing of people in fandom social spaces. I am saying this as someone who never thought twice about writing whatever the fuck I wanted back in the day and made the same tired arguments about the difference between fiction and reality/morality, blah blah blah. I’ve come to realize that the things I put out in fandom have the ability to cause harm to people who have just as much right to be here as I do. And that we can’t pretend fanfic is both transformative/an artform but also has no ability to cause harm to readers. We can’t fight to legitimize fandom creative works while at the same time undermining critical engagement with fandom works when we find that engagement unfun or unpleasant.

Anyway I’ve said this all before but there you go again.

We can’t fight to legitimize fandom creative works while at the same time undermining critical engagement with fandom works

themandalorianwolf:

thelastjedicritical:

themandalorianwolf:

thelastjedicritical:

I’m just tired of people who somehow come to the conclusion that John is older than he says. Like honestly, John Boyega doesn’t look older than he is. Not at all. I guess it seems to be some thing to guess ridiculous ages for people who don’t fit to your beauty standards but you are making such complete fools of yourselves.

John looks in his 20′s lol maybe its cause I’m black and don’t understand how some of these racist perceptions are made, but WTF

I’m a white sheet of paper and I don’t know wtf they’re on about, so… ?!?!? 😫😫

I mean I guess it’s people who aren’t use to seeing Blacks and shippers who want to make their ship seem less weird than it actually is

This is really a thing?? What are these people on?

ds9vgrconfessions:

Follow | Confess | Archive

[I know what the writers were going for with Tom-lady killer jokester knows all the 80s/90s references-but I feel like they relied on him way too much to be the “relatable” character for the audience when they could’ve spent more time on any of the other men of color in the main cast]

Looking back, Tom Paris and Holodoc were good cases of fandom fixating on white characters to the exclusion of characters of color.

What are your issues with my fic? (rktho)

There were the parts where the Stormtrooper cadet Ray pushes Finn aside to run ahead, and where she’s said to be better than him in almost every way. Also his feelings are highly one-sided and we see little evidence that Ray has feelings for Finn or has even treated him nicely. You were probably not aware but these are all common tropes about Finn that fans of color have expressed dislike for.

I was also disturbed that Zeroes, who is a Black guy in Before the Awakening, was described as particularly brutal to the point of wasting ammunition on already-downed simulated opponents. Zeroes’ actual character in BtA is much more cerebral, an intelligence operative type who notices everything that goes on around him and never misses an advantage.

I do like the chilling premise that Stormtroopers were being made to kill their parents by proxy through training simulations, and while the relationship between FN-2119 “Ray” and the Rey that Finn eventually meets is not clear to me I’m guessing her father did something to get her away from the FO. It’s an interesting premise and I encourage you to develop it for sharing from your own account or at archives like AO3.

Yeah, I totally imagined all those attacks and dogpiling on me and other Black fans that happened when we spoke out about JJ coming back. Most of them coming from your echo chamber and how everyone who didn’t participate in those attacks was too happy to let them happen and to do nothing. That’s what I meant about silencing.

Anyone knows what anon is talking about? I don’t recall it, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened.

themandalorianwolf:

Imagine being so privileged and out of touch that you think having characters that are of color, that are women, or that have different sexualities equals forced diversity.

Forced Diversity doesn’t exist. It’s a term created by bigots to hide shitty storytelling.

Let’s face the facts, these bigots are more upset that they don’t have generic straight white guy #587898 as the lead.

Diversity doesn’t ruin a movie. Bad writing does. Stop throwing representation under the bus to hide the fact that some writers are just trash and lots of people are just bigots.

I think the difference between how the right and left see race is individualist vs collectivist. The right believes only individuals, not demographics, are superior to others, and that privilege is fluid. That’s how the American dream works (even though when the American dream was first envisioned, it did only apply to white people, but aside from that…) In theory, individualism cannot be racist because color is irrelevant, but in practice it doesn’t always work that way.

dutchisall:

lj-writes:

For example, the valid concern that diversity quotas value color
over merit is valid, but can skip into the bias that white people are
the most qualified. And the concern that racism against white people is
culturally acceptable is a rational concern, but then there are white
supremacists who equate it with genocide.

In conclusion, it is my personal conviction that untainted
individualism is they key to being unracist. Everybody respect Muslims
and people of Middle Eastern descent, ship Finnrey, and recognize that
Rogue One is not anti-white because it only has one white male hero
(Galen.)

So there’s a lot to unpack here, but first of all, it’s a false dichotomy that the right believes in individual merit and the left doesn’t. What many on the left do is acknowledge the reality that bigotry against certain groups cuts against the merits and achievements of individuals from these marginalized groups. I’m not sure how that translates into the kind of collectivism that is apparently opposed to individualism. Also if you think the only problem with the American dream lies in the distant past… well. Let’s just say it’s very much an ongoing problem.

At least you recognize the gap between theory and practice when it comes to individualism. In fact, talent and work ethic leading to success is far from the reality for many groups, to the extent that believing that individual merit will prevail in every case has been found to be detrimental to the long-term well-being of marginalized youth (link).

Colorblindness is the ultimate aspiration, yes, but it is not the reality we currently inhabit. We can’t just decide to be colorblind, we have to acknowledge and correct the systemic racism that both leads to large-scale inequalities and infects our own individual perceptions with bias and bigotry. Insisting that you are colorblind without realizing all the ways you are not amounts to self-deception and, in interactions with marginalized people, gaslighting. We don’t get to the mountaintop by pretending we are already there. First we have to realize where we actually are, which is a pretty deep pit in many ways. Only then can we start climbing upward.

Individualism vs collectivism is a very valid aspect of race studies (and it really has little to do with right vs left – white people across the political spectrum are individualists when it comes to things like education).

The main reason the US education system is so segregated is because the vast majority of white people see it as a way to get the most for their children and themselves. The Black community doesn’t see it that way – education is something has the potential to lift the entire community. (For more on this, check out the Speak Out with Tim Wise podcast Episode 48: “Educational Inequality is a Feature not a Glitch: Racism and Schooling in America”). White parents generally aren’t interested in improving the community as a whole through their children’s education, especially when they isolate themselves in “safe” suburbs (but not always – see Brooklyn NY).

Black communities, especially poor communities, know that the better their children do collectively, the better off the community will be. That is not the goal of the school system, which, historically has worked to sustain the inequity. It’s no surprise that white parents don’t want their kids in Black schools. They understand that Black schools aren’t meant for success. The whiter the school, the higher the chance that their kid will get theirs. Even some of the most liberal parents buy into this and are unwilling to challenge the status quo out of fear of disadvantaging their kids by not giving them every advantage.

In fandom, this dichotomy plays out like this:

Someone makes an observation about how measurable fandom patterns show that fans will choose an alternate all white ship if the canon has an interracial pairing.

Immediate reaction: I’m not racist! I love CoC actually! You can’t make assumptions about a person you don’t know just because they ship my OTP!

It wasn’t about individuals, but that will be the reaction every time. Who cares if there’s a cycle of racism? I’M not racist, and a lot of people I know who participate in that thing are nice, so it’s probably not racism at all.

I didn’t realize that collectivist aspect! I’m mostly used to “collectivism” being used as a pejorative by right-leaning people as meaning entitled, expects to free ride on others’ effort etc. I really wish more groups of people would see community improvement as a worthwhile goal because there is only so much individualism can do.

On the other hand, doesn’t white America’s individualism also result in a kind of communal uplifting, albeit at the expense of other groups? It looks like, in seeking individual advantage, white parents as a whole have used segregation as a group strategy.

And YES on this allaboutmeism spilling over into fandom racism defenses, I hadn’t even thought about that! It seems to be mainly a white people thing even among people who deny or minimize the existence of fandom racism, because in my experience fans of color who deny fandom racism at least engage at the same level and try to present community-level arguments, even if they’re wrong. It is by and large white fans who turn discussions about large scale phenomena into a trial of their own individual virtue.

Did you see DHF’s thread on the reylows bashing John and Finn, saying John is untalented, fat, expressing happiness that he’s not getting roles etc. I know you’re a nonblack person who gets it but shit like that is why black Finn fans are ✌🏾 to this fandom. I’m demoralized and hurt. They love shitting on a man who has done nothing to them except playa character who gets close to their precious white girl.

Oh my God, it’s so horrible. I don’t even want to link it because it’s so sickening, though @diversehighfantasy as always has incredible fortitude in wading into these cesspools to get the evidence. I can’t possibly understand in full how hurtful and toxic this shit is to Black fans, but if I feel sick I can only try to extrapolate how it is for you. I’m very sorry fandom is such a terrible environment and I wish things were different.