#rey discourse

[fluffycakesistainted]

The “Let's Infantalize and Desexualize Rey bc Feminism and For Little Girls” crowd seem to really want her to be, like, some kind of all-encompassing “antidote” to all the Disney princess/heroine movies (and others too, but Disney is the main punching bag for this kinda thing) that revolve around or involve a romantic love story (although the love stories, along with the songs, are what make those movies so iconic, but whatever). And yes, variety in and for heroines and all female characters is good and necessary. But what’s funny to me about this particular brand of wank and hand-wringing is that Disney already has a bunch of female-lead movies, especially recently, that don’t center romance at all. 

There’s Brave, which is super underrated, for being such a beautiful, magical story about mother/daughter relationships. There’s Wreck-It-Ralph and Ralph Breaks The Internet, in which Vanellope is the deuteragonist, a tomboy princess, and a perpetual little girl, with no romance anywhere in her storylines, which are, basically, about self-confidence, and finding her true place, respectively. In Inside Out, the Emotions are probably more “the stars” of the movie than the girl they belong to, but the story is centered on Riley, and although she has a heartthrob crush, that was a small bit played for laughs, while her arc was about dealing with life changes along with her burgeoning adolescence. And Moana, no romance there apart from her parents. So yes, there are other options.

But even then, it’s not like Disney’s ever gonna stop making the fairy tale love stories that have been their signature bread and butter since 1937. Other studios aren’t gonna altogether forego romance for female leads, either. So maybe people should just quit being salty that romance is a thing for lots of fictional heroines and that young girls like watching/reading it, idk. And that just because Star Wars is **STAR WARS**, that doesn't mean it will or has any obligation to conform to whatever form of Representation Deemed Most Good, Correct, and Role Model(TM) Appropriate.

[emperorren]

This is no offense to Rey and to the people who call her Mary Sue BUT her fighting skills in the throne room scene should indicate that she isn’t very well versed in fighting with a saber but she is still very gifted. Like that throne room fight really showed that Ben’s skills are somehow still greater and he is more trained compared to her. So I don’t understand why people think she is better, she just needs more training. If it’s about the snow fight, Ben was gravely injured so...

Indeed. The movies don’t depict her as overpowered in comparison to Kylo. She is extremely gifted and intelligent and very familiar with brawl or melee type of fights, but her technique still leaves something to be desired, and what she can do with a lightsaber is clearly a result of the force bond with Kylo.

Lucasfilm gave this character the perfect background to justify her incredibly fast learning of fighting techniques---she’s had to fight for herself her whole life, didn’t she?---and the psychic connection with Kylo makes up for her lack of proper training. If Rey had grown up in an ivory tower and never touched a weapon in her entire life only to show suddenly incredible skills with a lightsaber, then yes, I’d call bullshit. But that’s not remotely the case.

Also, the movies aren’t pretending that Kylo’s bigger physical size and strength don’t give him any advantage. In the throne room, Kylo is fighting three guards at once, while Rey struggles with one. And people still have the nerve to be offended that Kylo’s superior masculine power isn’t being properly honored, lol.

[fluffycakesistainted]

I didn’t start shipping Reylo out of spite, but some people are really making me want Rey to go temporarily dark as hell, out of spite.

[emperorren]

EKJ talking about that Resistance Reborn excerpt by saying Rey wanted to save Luke and Ben was “the part” she needed to save Luke but growing beyond that??? Like, okay, talk about Rey growing past her scavenger tendencies and learning to be selfish or whatever, but do people who hate Kylo find it absolutely impossible to think Rey and Kylo might have a dynamic that isn’t about the older Skywalkers??? Rey wasn’t trying to save Kylo for Luke, what the fuck is this from an official author

coming from THAT particular author, it doesn’t surprise me.

[emperorren]

for all we know rey having terrible social skills is still potential canon. tlj did nothing to dissuade us of the notion, since she met a bunch of new people on ach-to and every single one of them including luke was like 'go. the fuck. away.' and his trauma aside idk if luke would ever be a touchy-feely mentor guy to her? i feel like their personalities and instincts are so different they would've been bound to clash at some point as mentor and student even if luke had never exiled himself

True, true. I think Rey got lucky with Han and Finn who almost immediately liked her, but that's not necessarily the norm for her, and her experience on Ahch-To showed the other side of the coin. Her first attempts to approach Luke are stilted and rehearsed, and when they fail she fumbles and shows a bit of her abrasive---even rude---side. Luke, on his part, is also absolutely rude, and completely impermeable to whatever Finn and Han found so endearing about her. I think he immediately senses her desperation to claim a heroic role that could provide her an identity and a sense of belonging, and it bugs him, because in the end the whole heroism thing turned sour for him.

[emperorren]

I have a lot of frustrations with "Rey should be single" discourse. A while back I remember someone said "TLJ did a lot of damage with the Kylo scenes" regarding the possibility that Rey might end up single, and I just exhaled at the phrasing. "did a lot of damage". By giving her a LI. The stripe of discourse that seems to think female heroes' stories should be told without love interests as Extra Empowering exhausts me. I think Patty Jenkins said it best: "No person is an island like that."

The “Rey should be single” squad is actually the pokemon evolution of the “Rey and Finn are soulmates, they’re gonna kiss and Learn Sexy Times Together and have three or ten force sensitive children who will continue the Skywalker legacy because Rey is Luke’s daughter and repopulate the entire Jedi Academy” crowd. You know the story of the fox and the grapes? 

So, boo hoo at that. I can’t even be properly annoyed at this discourse because it’s SO transparent that there’s an ulterior motive behind it.

[emperorren]

I feel like Rey, despite her moral decisions in TLJ, would feel that she’s a selfish person after TLJ, Not because she left Ben (although that probably that adds to her thoughts) but because she went to the supremacy for Ben. The resistance wasn’t in her mind when she went to him and talked to him so closely in the elevator. She doesn’t think she’s a good person but a selfish one because the ultimate reason why she went him was because SHE WANTED HIM and him helping them is just an added bonus.

I really hope the narrative doesn’t frame this as something she should feel guilty over, but I can definitely see her struggling with, and finally admitting to herself, the fact that she had personal, intimate reasons for wanting to have Ben at her side that had nothing to do with the Resistance or the fate of the galaxy at large. I’d love it if at some point in IX they have a conversation about how to win the war and there’s someone who is like “who cares if Kylo Ren lives or dies, who cares if he remains Supreme Leader or defects, we can win this war anyway, we have YOU!”, and she’s like, “yeah, you have me and that might be enough for you, but it isn’t enough for ME”

I think nailing this subtle nuance is crucial for Rey’s arc and the whole message of /unconditional love/ that we’ve discussed a bit before. If Rey’s love has to be unconditional, she must realize that she doesn’t *need* Ben’s redemption for practical reasons. That she can be the hero of this story, and save the galaxy on her own. That’s why Crait was important. That was the lesson she needed to learn: no, you don’t have to redeem him to save the galaxy or because it’s the “right” thing to do. You will STILL want to redeem him, but that’s not because you need him---it’s because you LOVE him.

[emperorren]

After watching TLJ again, I realize that Rey’s character development and failure is so dependent on Ben. Her failures in TLJ mainly revolves around him. This is probably why I’m kinda disappointed on how her character is written because it seems that she doesn’t have personal failures of her own, she doesn’t suffer much on her failures. I mean, I get that she is emotionally suffering but that also revolves around Ben. I hope that in IX, she has her own conflicts and questioning her own morals.

she doesn’t have personal failures of her own, she doesn’t suffer much on her failures

I think maybe we need to redefine “failure” because babygirl has been keeping herself hostage on a shitty desert planet for all her life so she could wait for people who were 

already

dead.

Let that sink in.

Think of devoting your entire life to meet again someone who was never coming back. Think of knowing deep down the truth all along but being too afraid to accept it and break out of your toxic coping mechanisms. If the Force hadn’t set its wheels in motion via Finn, Rey would have likely stayed on that planet forever. All her talents wasted, her entire existence forgotten. This isn’t just tragic, this is some fine psychological horror, existential void shit, and I can’t stop thinking about it---it’s where Rey’s writing made a real leap forward in quality imo (and dear god I hope JJ doesn’t retcon it because it’s the most interesting thing about Rey from a psychological perspective imo). And yes, it happened because of a misjudgment on her part. It wasn’t her fault in a moral sense (because she was a child at the beginning) but it’s still something she brought on herself, a cage of her own making.

Rey’s flaws and conflicts are, in true Heroine’s Journey fashion, internal. They don’t need to have to do with morality---female narratives don’t typically grapple with Big Moral Issues the way male heroic arcs do, but more with emotional issues like loyalty to family vs loyalty to a lover, accepting adulthood and womanhood, learning to trust themselves, their powers and instincts, embracing their desires and emotions, etc.