Tag: submission

I felt we got cheated with DJ, who could’ve been really interesting but became a one-note character really quickly. My version would be the last of the scoundrels Han hires to help Finn and Rey. In this version, he’s a doctor instead of a slicer, since Rose gets that role. He’s a heavy drinker and highly pessimistic, but content to stay in the cargo hold of the Falcon. But when Finn expresses uncertainty over abandoning the Galactic Union, we get his story.

DJ was an Imperial cadet serving in the Mid-Rim. He didn’t agree with all of the politics of the empire, but, like Finn, thought by enforcing order, he was doing his best to protect people, especially his loved ones. However, his family was from Alderaan. He had seen the Empire kill people before, but this was the first public demonstration of condoned slaughter of civilian innocents. He deserted and drank himself into a hole, blaming himself for being a cog in the machine that killed everyone he cared about.

Years later, he found enough resolve to join the Rebellion. The nearest cell was on Jedha: the Partisans. On DJ’s first mission, he was ordered to bomb an Imperial parade. His mission was successful, but landed three civilians in a hospital. DJ invested himself in caring for them, learning the trade of medicine and surgery. He realized any position in the war would be one of killing. This lead to his final desertion.

He doesn’t encourage Finn to join the New Republic, but he gives him a poignant line of advice. “If your only justification for staying with the Union is it’s better than the other guys, you’ve fooled yourself into a role you don’t want.” This version is admittedly more pacifist non-combatant than spineless centrist, but I personally find that more interesting. (Moth)

TLJ made the SW universe feel so small it made my brain hurt. So the FO is chasing the Resistance and they’re always right on their tail. Finn and Rose leave their slow ship and travel across the galaxy to another planet so they can find a way to get onto the slow enemy ship that is literally right behind them and stop the bad guys from following them? And somehow a random slicer is familiar with Snoke and talks about the FO-R chase that’s going on RIGHT NOW like everybody knows about it? And SKB blew up yesterday but the First Order now controls EVERYTHING, just because the Republic’s not around anymore? I don’t get it, unless I do, in which case it’s stupid

Vice Admiral Holdo of the cruiser Ninka. This is mostly a joke, but I couldn’t help myself. Emmy Award winner Laura Dern as a Selonian warmonger. This Holdo would be less of a lesson for teaching Poe and more of a facet of the New Republic’s military. I’m thinking she would be the leader of the forces that are squared off against the Mandalorians. (Moth)

it’s sweet that carrie got an in memoriam in the credits of the last jedi but what she deserved was for those credits to say ‘we’re sorry this was the last movie you were in before you died, please forgive us, signed the producers’. and in addition to that have rian write ‘i will not waste iconic characters or their actors or their legacies’ 100 times, have mark staple it to his face, and stick himself in a refrigerator until jj decides to let him out and give him a pink slip. 

Here is the revised Teros. Same stuff applies. Powered-up gloves for combat and utility. Collar based on Mandalore the Vindicated. Mythosaur skull on his breastplate (a wedding gift from Boba). Also, a utility belt. Most often the muscular guys in action movies aren’t the gadget experts, so that goes against that. P.S., I don’t have a last name for him, but if he were from Clan Kryze like Satine and Bo-Katan, his name would be unbearably close to Terry Crews. (Moth)

Okay, I reread the Episode VII pitch you wrote after drawing this, and realized by debris field you probably meant in space, but I thought of a planet. Thus, not wanting to recreate Tatooine like Abrams did, my “junkyard planet” is based off from the plastic garbage patches polluting Earth’s oceans. In this picture we see Poe, BB-8, and Ben crashing into a separate island, as Rey watches the plummet. (Moth)

@ Moth, I really appreciate your submission but I won’t be posting the submission of Teros art because the history of nonwhite and especially Black actors disproportionately playing non-human roles (or half-human, in this case) wearing prosthetics and body paint gives the art Unfortunate Implications. Besides, Terry Crews is too handsome to wear facial prosthetics ;_; I’m all for alien Mandalorians but I’d rather they not be portrayed by Black actors. If you make revised art of Teros I would be happy to publish it!

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.

Irene Bedard is a fantastic actor and deserves a much better Disney movie than Pocahontas. Here is Rey’s mother. I thought it would be a little convenient to have Rey’s style look too similar to a woman she only has her earliest memories of, so the design is mostly new, without too many ties to previous elements. It admittedly went more hip-hop than I was hoping for, but I kind of like it. Touches include a streak of red hair, something her culture does when going on expeditions. A medallion from her time as a Rebellion pilot, which Idrian mistakes for a Republic badge. And a hat, a little bit like Embo, but mostly original. Representative for Native Americans in Star Wars has been pretty much questionable coding and a few voices done by the amazing Cree Summer. I wanted to have an original, non-stereotypical design, while still making the drawing look “Star Wars,” but more from the uncharted territories. (Moth)