Tag: good points!

Reasoned debate vs blind panic

I’m as Finnrey as they come. No other romantic pairing for either of them will work for me. Any short search of my blog will feature love of Finnrey and hatred of reylow, doomrey, finnlow, etc.

That said, I do think it’s fair, and probably necessary, to discuss the optics of Finnrey and why so much was changed in the movies.

I wrote a post a long time back asking how Finnrey fandom could be more welcoming and supportive, particularly to black fans who at that time were getting inundated with racist messages from reylows. I received a lot of good feedback. Well that post seems to be making the rounds again because a couple of black fans reached out and we’ve been conversing. Neither of these fans likes Finnrey. Both of them feel it follows the shopworn “black man lusts after white woman because white” trope and that Rey’s feelings really aren’t comparable. I understood in part, but as I’m not black I couldn’t understand completely. To me, it seemed obvious that both of them cared deeply for one another, and I really understand what “not comparable” meant.

Then one of these fans said to me that if the Finnrey dynamic was more like in the TFA novel they might have shipped it. That confused me more, since this was a novelization of the movie they said they did not like the Finnrey dynamic in. I was told to read it and I would understand better. I borrowed it and finally got a chance to read it.

They were right. I now understand.

As Finnrey fans, I do think there is a place for debate about why the novelization made it so much more explicit that Rey found Finn attractive and was falling in love with him. I think it is fair to ask why the clunky “my friend” was added when “We’ll see each other again, I believe that, Finn” or even just “We’ll see each other again” would have sufficed. The bedside scene in the novelization was much more that of a woman leaving her love to go off on an adventure. It was a subversion of the Odysseus trope and worked well. “My friend” seemed tacked on, 19 year olds don’t talk that way, and when I first heard it I did think it odd. Having now read the novelization, I think it’s more than odd, and it seems like something JJ was told to insert.

I’m writing all this to you because one of the takeaways from my original post to the fandom was that black fans said they often felt marginalized and that their concerns are not taken seriously in the fandom, particularly about race and racism. Obviously since the person was anon, who knows who it was, but that doomrey anon you just answered? That person said almost exactly what one of the black fans I recently spoke to said, that it was possible Rey will be made to realize her feelings for Finn were not love, and that Poe makes her “tingle” in a way that Finn didn’t. That the “my friend” business was an out LF gave itself to extricate itself from having to follow through with Finnrey, they can always say Rey only felt friendship for him.

I was told that several black fans left Finnrey fandom after TLJ because of Finn’s overall treatment and because it seemed to them that the Poe and Rey meeting was meant to be significant in more ways than just, they’re meeting finally. I respectfully disagreed, feeling that 10 seconds and smiles didn’t negate all that Finn had gone through with her. The response to that was that LF had decided to make Finn a joke in TLJ so why would it be so far fetched to use him as a starter boyfriend of sorts for Rey that she could measure her feelings for in comparison to Poe and realize she liked Poe “that way” more.

You said to that anon that doomrey would be shitty storytelling. I agree 100%. I also know Daisy herself has said she does not want doomrey at all. But Finn stumbling around leaking bacta was also shitty storytelling, so was him getting tased and the suicide run that wasn’t. Yet we got all of those and much more shit in TLJ.

I think there can be reasoned debate and discussion about LF’s racism making them not care that they derail the story – and doomrey would definitely be derailing it – just so long as they appease their racist fan base who don’t want to see a black man and a white woman romantically involved, and hysterical anons declaring that the first scene of IX will be of Poe zipping up and Rey rising from off screen wiping her mouth. Several black fans feel as that anon does, that Finn might be used by LF as Rey’s romance barometer and she decided that Finn was cool but Poe really makes her knickers wet. These are not “secret doomreys” these are black fans who are angry that Finn might be discarded because of racism. So yes, while doomrey would be an awful follow to the story being told, when has that stopped LF before, is their point. It’s a good one.

It’s fine if you don’t want that discourse on your blog. But I wanted to write because I’ve been trying to be more mindful of not dismissing ideas contrary to mine, particularly on regards to racism. That doomrey anon could have, and possibly was, been written by any of the black Finnrey and former Finnrey fans who expressed the same sentiment to me privately and I think that instead of dismissing it, the fears of some black fans should be recognized, even if you don’t agree with the substance.

Do you think it’s rude to assume John/Finn will be sidelined again in the next movie like he was in TLJ? Someone said it’s weird that people are already writing off JJ Abrams and that we should wait and see?

ori-ebon:

lj-writes:

ori-ebon:

lj-writes:

I completely understand people’s need not to get their hopes up. As long as people aren’t derailing other people’s positive speculations about the movie I think everyone is entitled to their pessimism/caution. In general I hate it when people police others’ reactions. As long as things are tagged properly and people stay in their lanes, let people deal with their hopes, fears, and whatever other anticipations in peace.

Still, the fear is understandable at this point. JJ is the one who made Finn into a red herring for Rey in the first place and downplayed his competence to boost her up by comparison. It’s entirely possible that that was just the first stage of a what was to be a phenomenal arc for the character that got derailed when it was determined that fumbling, bumbling Rian Johnson would helm Ep VIII, but we’ll never know now. All we have to go on for certain is what JJ’s done with Finn so far, and it doesn’t inspire a lot of hope, at least not in me personally.

Yeah, JJ just looks so much better than RJ by comparison which… talk about low bars. I put more trust in John here: he has talked before about Finn being more of a growing hero than one who gets everything right from the start, and though a lot of his best qualities were artificially curtailed and downplayed in TFA they were still there. So I’m cautiously optimistic.

This may sound silly, but it’s hair of all things that’s giving me a sense that things may be different this time. John is the only cast member so far to have announced a change in appearance, and hair often has quite a lot of visual and story significance. This was thought out and planned ahead of time, since JJ would have had to let John know to grow his hair out through the spring and summer. It also had enough story meaning and prominence that John teased it well ahead of the first teaser, saying we would see what it was for when we saw the trailer. As I jokingly pointed out, a certain section of the fandom would have gone batshit if this had been for one of their white faves. Though a small detail, this points to more care and thought being put into the character, and excitement on John’s part if he’s discussing it already.

It also gives me hope that JJ has evidently been talking to Ava DuVernay and accepted her recommendation of Victoria Mahoney as second unit director. Obviously neither Ava nor Vic can influence Finn’s story in any final manner, but it’s a reminder that JJ respects Ava and is receptive to her views–if not specifically about Finn, at least about the importance of representation and diversity. That is my hope anyway.

All this is just me, of course, and I agree JJ deserves no passes at all for how he’s treated Finn. He could have done a growing hero without using Finn as bait or turning him into the butt of the joke in so many scenes. I hope he’ll be better than RJ but that is, again, a massively low bar.

What you’ve told me does sound like it could turn out okay after all, but all the same, I’m going in with the cynical outlook on this one. What made TLJ so tragic was that, as the middle film of the trilogy, that was the point where all of the main characters should have experienced crucial development in accordance with that stage of the overall narrative. The last movie is where things are supposed to come full circle and be wrapped up. But TLJ wasted all of the time it had to do that. Finn repeated his arc from the first movie, and Rey sped through her development and didn’t earn it. Poe’s character is in shambles after what Rian did to it, and Kylo doubled down on his assholery when he was poised to end the First Order and instead chose to take the reins and…..keep going in the same direction. There’s arguably just as much narrative ground to cover as there was at the end of TFA, if not more, only with half the time left to do it. I don’t see all that being accomplished within the span of one more movie, not effectively, at least.

And then there’s the fact that another bait-and-switch really can’t be ruled out. Cosmetic updates to Finn’s appearance may sound nice, but not as nice as trailer shots of him using the lightsaber, like the ones for the promo for TFA – and we saw that turned out. I really don’t trust anything now. At this point, I don’t even need Finn to be an actual jedi; it’s overrated anyway, and even if it wasn’t the writers have demonstrated they clearly don’t understand the original material they’re building off of. I just would like to see Finn be a badass with a lightsaber. That’s what they advertised, that’s what I want. That doesn’t seem to far out of the realm of possibility, but again, there was no groundwork laid in TLJ to build that up, so I don’t see it happening in Ep 9. Well, I guess the least they may be able to accomplish is to actually write Rose well this time.

I admire your patience and your ability to still be optimistic this late in the game, but I’m not getting burned a third time.