diversehighfantasy:

becketted:

It wouldn’t be. It would exist, and it would be somewhat popular, because hero-villain ships always exist (if they’re both white, see how little K*ylo/Finn there is -not that I want there to be more), even with het pairings (though hero/villain pairings are more widespread among slash fandoms, in my experience), but it would be a lot less popular, and it would be less popular than both Finnrey and FinnPoe if Finn was white. Finn being a person of color and Finn being specifically a black man is the main factor in the excessive popularity of R/eylo, let’s be honest here. Finn is the male protagonist of the new trilogy, so he should naturally get a lot of fandom attention. “Naturally”, but you know, fandom. Like villains are always going to be popular, even in cases where the hero is a white dude, but what we are seeing with K/ylo is not the usual state of things. Fandom couldn’t accept a black man as the heroic Star Wars, so they scrambled to elevate the Space Facist white Boy to the place of heroic protagonist.

(the way R7eylo would be dramatically less popular then it is now is though, the other way around, if K/ylo was a man of color -and esp a black man-, the pairing would be almost non-existent and there would be very few readings of Rey’s pain at the hands of a Space Nazi as “sexual tension” or “hot” as there are now)

lol A/dam D/river wasn’t really a fandom darling before SW so that’s completely a fabrication to deflect criticisms of racism. Fandom will latch onto the closest mediocre-looking white dude and they will make it a sex symbol as soon as they appear in something big (like seriously, Benedict Cumberbatch wasn’t even considered attractive by any standard before Sherlock). No, i never saw any particular love or even knowledge of Driver before SW, he was the creepy dude from “Girls”. 

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unless they got someone like Tom Holland or Aaron Taylor-Johnson tone play finn” Both actors were unknown to fandom before playing roles in superhero franchises so what the hell is that argument? Are they saying those bland dudes are more attractive than John Boyega? Are they saying John Boyega had less previous fans than Driver and that’s the thing? That’s a very weak argument. Nah, if they had gotten a virtual unknown to play Finn but he was white R/eylo wouldn’t be as insidiously huge as it is.

As long as the actor is white, and young-ish (sometimes not even that) and not fat there will be a huge fandom. If opposite them they happen to have actors/characters of color their popularity will increase above natural levels. No offense to Charlie Day or Burn Gorman, but those are two ugly-looking dudes, yet they singlehandedly became the sex symbols and got-to-ship for a film that included Idris Elba and Rinko Kikuchi. Likewise why are the most popular pairings in the new Star Wars those who involve Space Nazis? Space Nazis who look like Driver and Gleeson (again no offense, I love Glesson)???? (and yeah i went on a tangent with K/ylux here, cause that’s also reflective of the same problem that has pushed R/eylo to such fandom numbers)

If any other random white dude instead of A/dam D/river had played K/ylo then R/eylo would be as big as it is now, because the actor is not the point here. It’s fandom’s racist patterns.

A lot of people have written about this, people more equipped then me for these uqestions. I’d recommend you seek fans of color, and especially black fans to discuss these matters, and check out blogs like @diversehighfantasy or @starwarsfandomh8speopleofcolor etc

I can vouch for the fact that there was no influx of Driver fans in the Star Wars fandom ahead of TFA. Not saying he didn’t have fans before TFA, Girls was popular (just not Tumblr popular). But it was nothing like in the Star Trek movie fandom when Cumberbatch fans flooded in ahead of Into Darkness. 

There was very little hype about Driver being cast in TFA in Star Wars fan spaces and social media. Most had no idea who he was, and the ones who did were basically like “the creepy ex boyfriend on Girls? I could see him as a Star Wars villain.” 90% of the talk about Kylo before TFA was the new lightsaber (which a lot of fans hated, but then fans complained about every single thing in the trailers). 

I remember because I actually thought Driver was good casting and was surprised more people didn’t talk about his (then) mysterious bad guy character.

It was mainly because he did almost no promotional stuff, while we got to see John and Daisy goofing around in the desert between takes and bantering with each other on social media (which I really miss – they were such a fun duo out of character it made me so excited to see them together on screen – and there was zero reylo backlash).

But his lack of promotion and no introduction to the fans via social media doesn’t explain why there were few pre-existing AD fans in the SW fandom at the time.

Kylo/Reylo got popular when the movie came out and Rey and Finn were a pair for almost the whole thing. It wouldn’t have matter what white actor played him. As long was Finn was Black they were going to look to the nearest white guy to take his place. And if Finn was white his story wouldn’t have been downplayed with the most sympathetic parts applied to Kylo. Fandom will deny this until they’re blue in the face, but that’s the recurring pattern across fandoms.