Tag: shipping

diversehighfantasy:

Ok, I was trying to ignore the anti-dhf (ie anti-me) shit in they reylo tag (and, for the last time, I read the reylo tag because I was repeated told by reylos that I needed receipts to prove what I was saying. I have a folder full of them now, thanks to the insistence of reylos themselves that I keep records on them). But I’m sick of reylos lying. I know damn well the reylo fandom isn’t all white, and I’ve addressed that fact many, many times. Reylos just don’t like that I don’t give out POC passes, so they claim I’m calling them all white. It’s never been about individual shippers, but patterns of white prioritization across fandoms. Anyone can prioritize whiteness.

The only reason they can possibly think of for why I’m critical of racist patterns in fandom is preferring a ship. And I’m the one who is lacking critical thinking skills.

We know damned well the Reylo fandom is not all white. Hell, you talked on many occasions to a biracial Reylo shipper and probably a bunch of other Reylo fans of color, as have I. You’d have to be an amnesiac not to know there are Reylo shippers who are POCs. This is just a patently ridiculous lie on shippers’ part.

Discussion of explicit racism below

And you know what? Speaking just about my own community, Koreans are POCs in the American context but we can be unbelievably racist, sometimes more outright racist than white people. We’re colorist as hell, too, believing our lighter complexions give us some kind of partial claim to whiteness. I have had Koreans outright tell me awful things like Black people are ugly and criminal, Latinxs and Southeast Asians are lazy, Japanese people are ugly, Chinese people are thieves… the list goes on. We’re just starting to face these issues and it’s going to be a long process.

So fuck out of here with the noise about POCs being magically immune from being racist. We’re not, we are so not, and it’s something we need to talk about and not ignore. Fans of color are no one’s shield against charges of fandom racism.

Ok, but Finn and Rey are not lovers or are not even boyfriend girlfriend, they are just friends sort of in TFA. That’s it. Romantic relationships are different from friendship. So her relationships with Finn are different from relationships with Kylo. But even if they were in love in TFA (and they were not) you do know that you can fall out of love with your previous partner and fall in love with somebody else? That’s life.

thecatsaesthetics:

“so her relationship with Finn are different from her relationship with Kylo” 

WHAT RELATIONSHIP WITH KYLO??????? You mean Rey’s desire to kill Kylo? Or her hatred of him? Or her thinking he’s a monster? 

Apparently, that’s closer to romance for you guys then already strong friendship with deep hints of romantic tension. 

One of the things I find really disturbing about Reylos is that many sincerely believe friendship and romantic feelings are mutually exclusive. When Finn and Rey made that list of SW BFFs and Finnreys were celebrating, there was genuine incomprehension in reylos’ comments about how the 2 could coexist. Shipping aside I find that to be… really unhealthy? How can liking someone, respecting them, and wanting to spend time with them be a disqualifier for romance?

lanever:

kingofjakku:

her-father-he-is:

lanever:

diversehighfantasy:

aimmyarrowshigh:

diversehighfantasy:

rose-griffes:

her-father-he-is:

diversehighfantasy:

rose-griffes:

her-father-he-is:

diversehighfantasy:

Anyone remember the time The Doctor bridal carried Martha Jones to save her life? And how fans were like, it’s not romantic, he’s just helping her, nothing more?

And yet Kylo Ren force knocks out Rey, picks her up and kidnaps her and it 100% must be romantic foreshadowing.

Fandom, man.

The Doctor ‘*bridal carrying’ Martha was the first thing I thought of when I saw a rey/l0 arguing that if a man ‘bridal carries’ a women they are 100% guaranteed to be in a romantic relationship down the line.

*was the term ‘bridal carry’ a thing before rey/l0?? I mean I know that ‘carry a bride over the threshold’ is a an age old tradition but I’d never seen the term ‘bridal carry’ used to describe anytime a man carries a women in his arms until rey/l0.

As long as we’re talking Doctor Who, the Doctor once carried Amy Pond the same way.

Bridal carry as a term has existed as a term for a good long time, yup. Reylo hasn’t made a long-term impact in its frequency. It looks like the infamous too-long-to-read reylo meta that appears to have started the use of the term in reylo fandom caused a temporary spike in the term being used, though. 

Monster carry would be a better phrase for reylo; bridal carry implies consciousness and willingness to be carried. Relatedly, here’s @monsterscarry for all your “pictures of movie monsters carrying women” needs! (Occasionally nsfw-ish.)

The visual references for having Kylo Ren pick up Rey were connected to the “terrible monster carries away fainting woman” idea. This is reinforced when we see Finn reacting so strongly to it. That was the point: to have Finn see Rey carried off in the arms of a monster.

I’ve never seen that monstercarry blog before, thanks for the link!

Yes, it’s a classic monstercarry. A bridal carry, of course, is consentual and the person being carried is conscious and, you know, wants to be carried.

With Doctor Who, they’re not really bridal carries either, since the women are unconscious, but he’s saving them. Not sure what the term for that is, but it’s not a monstercarry.

Seriously, this is a great observation. It was so obvious once I read it, but somehow I hadn’t connected it to the classic movie monster trope.

Monster carry, omg that is perfect for reylo. Perfect. 

When I first read that meta (yup I read it, ugh, back when I was trying to figure out how the hell reylo had become such a thing) I can remember being confused by a the pictures of happy (and conscious) brides being carried by their grooms right above a gif of Kylo knocking Rey unconscious and picking her up and the argument that that was clearly meant to reference a ‘bridal carry’. I’m not an expert on tropes, clearly, and I don’t have a degree in English lit but I’ve got damn EYES and could plainly SEE that its not the same thing at all. And no we aren’t meant to think its the same thing just because Rey is dressed in light colours not even white ffs, find me a bride who would be okay with a dress in the colour of Rey’s costume and Kylo is in black. 

And yes the Doctor carrying his companions (I’d completely forgotten about Amy and he carried Clara too) is another thing altogether. 

All of this is exactly why I’ve been so confused by the term bridal carry being used any time a man carries a women in his arms. Yes sometimes its meant to foreshadow romance but not always. 

I think I’ll go with bridal carry for this:

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That’s one of the final scenes (I believe) in An Officer and a Gentleman, and the romance is meant to be there. 

Damsel carry for this kind of scene (”in distress” is implied, yeah?):

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At this point in their storyline, anyone who chooses to read this as sexual or romantic is definitely fooling themselves. (Amy is, well, his mother-in-law… which sounds weird now that I’ve typed it. Nonetheless, that does put a bit of a damper on that whole sex & romance thing.)

And here’s our monster carry: 

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The classic monster carry doesn’t foreshadow mutual love with a happy ending, but it does often come with the implication (or direct message) of one-sided attraction and romantic feeling. Poor sad monster just wants to rape love the human woman. 

Using the monster carry in TFA is almost certainly one reason some people think of reylo in sexual terms. I didn’t see any sexual or romantic chemistry between Kylo and Rey in the film, and I do think that some people are casting about for an appropriate white guy to pair her with (fandom is utterly predictable in that way), but having Kylo carry her like that? It sends a message, whether intended or not.

(Which might have been part of what the-meta-that-just-goes-on-and-on was saying, but they also said that Rey “friend-zoned” Finn, which is plenty of reason to side-eye the whole thing.)

Yeah, An Officer and a Gentleman is what I think of when I think of the “bridal carry” in film.

An ironic thing about the monstercarry is that the monster carrying off the white woman is a stand-in for a “threatening” minority (think King Kong with its racist Black Brute coding or Dracula who is heavily coded as an Eastern European Jewish man). The monstercarry is not meant to be something desirable. Sure, The Blonde in the various King Kong movies has empathy for him, but she’s never going to be his love. She watches him die and is sad about it, but her endgame is never to be with him.

In that context, it’s fair to say that Kylo monstercarrying Rey is an inversion of a trope, because he’s white and (based on fandom reaction to him) desirable. But he’s never going to be Rey’s love any more than Kong is going to be The Blonde’s love. Even if she finds empathy for him (and I don’t doubt she will). The man she loves is a Black man. And, in that context, with the racist overtones of many past monstercarrys, that’s actually pretty cool, IMO.

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Spot the difference! (Hint: there isn’t one.)

It also seems like TFA based a lot of the Rey and Kylo interaction imagery before she successfully rejects his mental penetration on Christopher Lee as Dracula, which makes sense since he also played a Sith of royal lineage (Count Dooku). If they were going to reference any one specific classic movie monster’s monstercarry and intentionally rapist-coded demeanor, I could absolutely see Abrams putting in a nod to Lee as a Super Nerdy Easter Egg (like his Beastie Boys references or the masked celebrity cameos. TFA, thy middle name is Super Nerdy Easter Eggs).

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I can’t believe I didn’t know there was a term for the monstercarry before now!

WHY WOULD ANYONE THINK THAT THE INTENTION OF SHOWING A BLACK-CAPED MURDERER (“A CREATURE IN A MASK,” NATCH) CARRYING AN UNCONSCIOUS WOMAN IN DRAPING WHITE (ok beige) HARKENS TO ANYTHING ELSE?

I hadn’t thought of it as a Christopher Lee homage, but it makes sense. Lee died in 2015, too.

something to note is that the artist who drew the kylo and rey celebration piece that @aimmyarrowshigh referenced said himself that it WAS meant to be a parallel to those old 50’s/60’s monster movie posters with the monster carrying the unconscious heroine (“monster carry” as other people in the thread have called it). if he (and the folks at LF he said he worked with) drew that comparison, i don’t think it’s a stretch to say that was the original intention in the film

Well isn’t that an interesting detail the reyl0s choose to ignore. I’ve seen so many of them claim that there is NO WAY Disney would have approved that celebration piece unless the ‘bridal carry’ was meant to foreshadow romance.

They know. I remember an argument I had on Reddit with them. They insulted the original intentions by the artist, and even went to the point of questioning him all the way on Instagram. The author was flabbergasted about their interpretation and specified that was never the intention. No official employees from LucasFilm communicated to him a “secret agenda”, not even a romantic or sexual connection between these characters. He said that he was trying to interpret the monster carry in a different angle of the scene.

Here is the aftermath of the drama.

Give it a read. I don’t think you will regret it.

Unfortunately, some antis were disrespectful towards the artist as well because they thought he was favoring Reylo when he specified the opposite. It was a gigantic mess.

here’s (part of, unfortunately this is the only screen cap i have) the actual apology since unfortunately he’s deleted it so the link on that reddit post doesn’t work

reylofandom:

lj-writes:

You know, when you think about it Finn/Kylo Ren should be the most popular ship in the new Star Wars. I don’t ship it myself since I’m not into enemy ships and messed-up things in general, but given the patterns in fandom and precedents like Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter it’s clear that Finnlo is the kind of hero/villain ship that fans usually go gaga over. They are a study in contrasts, mirror each other’s arcs, and have history together. The tension is baked into the canon–Ren is so obsessed with Finn he has a rage-on every time he hears Finn’s name, and was fixating on the dude literally seconds after killing his own dad. 

Instead what does the fandom do? Ship Kylo Ren with a white dude who had three minutes of screen time and a white girl who hates his guts. In a world without racism Finnlo would have been the megaship, Finnrey the #1 het ship, and Kylux and Reylo the rarepairs, and yet here we are. Fandom is so predictable it hurts.

Well…I am bi so….I only ship women with women, and women with guys….I dont care about Hux, but I ship Rey with Kylo because I am attracted to both Kylo and Rey and wanna see them together in a ship. Im attracted to Kylo because he is an interesting exploration of the dark side, and Rey is awesome and like, the only female I can latch onto.

I follow plenty of PoC Reylo shippers so…u calling them racist would be kinda funny if not so offensive. People have actually attacked them for “being anti black white shippers” when in fact…they are black.

Also nothing is stopping u and anyone else from shipping Finnlo.

Go for it. Have fun. Why does someone else having fun in their own way suddenly stop YOU from having fun?

And….really people dont need to justify why they ship what they like. We shouldnt have to give a powerpoint presentation on personal tastes because some jerks on tumblr are getting into a weird mob mentality over shipping….SHIPPING OF ALL INCONSEQUENTIAL THINGS

You obviously cant shine a flashlight into our heads to make sure our reasons for shipping are “wholesome”….so maybe…step off a bit? This crap is really becoming a bit of the “thought police”.

Headcanons and shipping are NOT canon. We in geek fandoms always should respect PoC actors, push for more diversity, treat our PoC fellow fans with respect….In real life, diversity is much needed and we need to combat the racism that keeps most of our heroes majority white.

…..BUT….maybe we shouldnt demonize other fans so much, who just happen to not celebrate our hobbies the way you would? You kinda have no idea why they like what they like.

Did I ask you to stop shipping Reylo.

Did I tell you what your personal motivations are for your ship.

Did I tell you to ship Finnlo.

In fact I start out by saying I don’t ship it so…

Did you read the post? Like, actually read it past your defensiveness and fragility?

I’m not asking for shit from you, including your opinion.

Like, am I supposed to ignore the fact that Black characters are disproportionately unpopular across fandoms for their place in their franchises?

Am I supposed to shut up and not vent about it on MY blog for YOUR comfort?

That’s what I was talking about, patterns, not individuals.

Have a good day.

Why the fuck people think Kylo is in love with Rey? Are they sure they watched The Force Awakens?

I blame the heteronormative idea that any significant interaction between a man and a woman, particularly young and conventionally attractive ones (thin, able-bodied, white etc.), must necessarily be romantic/sexual in nature. Meanwhile if one of the people involved falls outside of that constructed circle of desirability the relationship, no matter how epic and romantic, Just Doesn’t Feel Right and Is Brotp Forever and Unnecessary and Heteronormative because a Strong Woman Don’t Need No Man.

Reyyyyaighno also ties into a toxic idea that mistreatment, in this case by a man against a woman, is romantic. Seriously, not only does Kylo assault, abduct, and torture the woman he’s supposedly in love with, he tries to use her deepest, most painful vulnerabilities against her and shippers are calling it romantic. The whole thing is so uncomfortable because it reminds me of my own verbal and emotional abuse. What anyone ships is their own business but it’s shitty when they go out of their way to make harmful abuse apologist arguments. If it’s “just fiction,” why make arguments that harm actual abuse survivors?

Oh right, because to the worst shippers their ship has to be canon and the relationship between Rey and the man who actually cares about her, a guy who just happens to be Black, is somehow Lacking and Terrible and Cannot Be Endgame FOR SOME MYSTERIOUS REASON. Fuck that.

My biggest concern for rey solo is that i don’t want it to be canon AT THE SAME TIME AS FINN SKYWALKER, even if i like both theories bc I’m very emotionally invested in finnrey. :/// but yeah rey and kylo are related and it grosses me people ships reylo with incest in their mind.

There are a lot of possible objections to canon Rails Off, but in my mind the cousin angle isn’t one of them, or at least nowhere near a leading reason. I mean would it spell the death of the ship as a canon possibility? Absolutely, since Star Wars is an American production and the taboo against cousin marriage in the States is… frankly a lot stronger than I thought it would be, and a lot stronger than I believe is reasonable.

I mean let’s get this straight, cousin marriage is absolutely forbidden in my culture going back about 5-600 years. Prior to that there are records of marrige between first cousins, aunts and nephews and so on, but the custom disappeared and is now culturally taboo. Koreans consider cousin marriage to be equivalent to sibling marriage and I have internalized that prohibition. The thought of being attracted to any of my cousins makes me ill, personally.

That said, my own feelings about cousin marriage and my culture’s prohibition against it don’t mean the custom is objectively wrong. If there are close family relations and power dynamics involved it can definitely be harmful, but so can relationships between unrelated people. There could be an elevated risk for genetic disorders in offspring, but this is heavily dependent on the population involved. Repeated first-cousin marriage in a small gene pool that carries known genetic disorders is likely to be a bad idea. However, the occasional pair of first cousins, or more distantly related individuals, having children in a reasonably genetically diverse population is unlikely to significantly raise the risk of harm. (I actually first learned this in junior high when I set out to find proof that cousin marriage is disgusting and terrible. Damn you, facts, not confirming my biases and changing my opinion.)

So I absolutely support the rights and validity of first-cousin relationships between consenting adults. I would not do it myself, such a marriage is legally invalid in my country, and the thought is unpleasant to me, but all of that is on me and not on anyone who is in a first-cousin romantic relationship or whose culture allows it.

But yes, due to the taboo in modern America, if FinnSky and ReySol are both canon then Finnrey as a canon romance is as dead as canon Rello. I think Finn and Rey’s relationship would work just as well as a close cousin relationship, and if fans choose to ship them they can be my guest. It would be an unworthy bait-and-switch in my opinion after the romantic subtext in TFA, but that’s this franchise for you.

I just hate the fact that Finnrey shippers in a FinnSky/ReySol universe would get racist shit thrown at them under cover of anti-incest concern, which actually closely parallels the way other cultures are stigmatized by the anti-cousin marriage taboo.

rey-of-skywalker:

@iamreysolo why did you tag me in a post before deleting it and why the fuck is your blog so full of reylo if you think rey is han and leia’s daughter? please stop interacting with antis and abuse survivors if you ship kylo and rey as brother and sister, or even just at all thanks

Oh my God I remember backing away slowly from this blog because they say they’re a Rey Solo theorist on a blog filled with Reylo porn and it’s all just really, really weird. IIRC just about all the Reylo content should be tagged #nsfw too because a lot of it features nudity and explicit sex. It has a feel of a phishing account designed to hit people with very in-your-face Reylo content in a space that people expect would be free from it.

diversehighfantasy:

lj-writes:

diversehighfantasy:

lj-writes:

I am still amazed that someone actually typed out and sent the sentence, “I refuse to be accused of being racist when when there are actual awful people in the world who ARE racist. that is my human right.“

And a few lines down in the same message: “

I’m very hurt by the racism displayed by you, though.“ Ummmmm because the recipient evidently doesn’t enjoy this purported human right not to be called a racist…?

Bonus points because the whole boring-ass spiel was about freedom of speech. Freedom of speech, of course, is about the HUMAN RIGHT to silence people who call you racist.

Extra bonus points: A white woman sent the above to a Black woman. Because of course.

Oh man, I’ve been following that whole garbage fire. It started (for those not following along) because the “My Human Right” one jumped into a post tagged anti reylo to agree with a different reylo who said antis get pissy if Finn isn’t on every piece of merchandise. When a couple Black fans responded to that, they said something along the lines of “I forgot these people are incapable of reason and being civil.” And when the can opened, they played victim.

And now if you go to the fandom racism tag, you see shit like this:

Reylos are becoming increasingly open about their perception of being victims of “reverse” racism. Remember a Kylostan who was on your post a while back insisting we hate Kylo because he’s white? This coopting of racist narratives for white people is the actual fuel behind white supremacist and white nationalist ideology (see: white genocide) and it’s worrying. You know and I know that if/when Finnrey becomes canon and all hopes of canon Reylo are gone it’s going to be cited as more evidence of so called white genocide. And JJ Abrams, obviously, is going to be the bogeyman who pushed miscegenation on Star Wars in a Jewish plot to destroy the white race.

By this I don’t mean shipping Reylo directly equals conscious support of white supremacy or that all Reylos are white nationalists, obviously. Rather I mean this isn’t just a fandom problem. The claiming of white victimhood by a few vocal shippers is part of a wider backlash to culture becoming just marginally more diverse than before, and people of color becoming a little more assertive. A lot of white fans aren’t used to that and to them it feels threatening.

If and when Finnrey happens or romantic Reylo is otherwise not made canon, I expect reylos will accuse Star Wars of ableism – as in, they’re saying someone with mental illness and scars is unworthy of love. Mark my words. They for the most part won’t mention race, they’ll come up with a reason why it’s prejudiced to not make reylo canon.

Reylos are becoming the fandom of “reverse racism” more every day. And yes, whether they like it or not, the concept of reverse racism in general fuels white supremacy.

I should have made my subjects clearer and also can someone take the passive voice away from me please. I meant that neo-Nazis will claim Finnrey as another example of white genocide and Jewish connivance, and so will the few (but possibly growing, according to @finnisthebalance‘s terrifying observation) Reylo shippers who are also Nazis. The larger shipper community will no doubt make other excuses to be salty about canon Reylo going kaput, and accusations of ableism is a likely candidate as you point out.  Grumblings about reverse racism will continue to leak out at the edges too, no doubt. It’s how white supremacy has always worked, with the many who talk respectably–if with flimsy nonsense logic–giving cover to the openly hateful radicals.