#tfa meta

[cleverthylacine]

TFA AU with Kittylock

In which Ravage and Glit are secret Ratchlock sparklings.

you agree...?

(Also the mini Soundwaves are clones of the high-caste musician who ran away with Ravage, and boy is he pissed when he finds out.)

[juniaships]

The tfa fanbase has an ableism problem so let's start there

First it was Calling Sentinel a sociopath for being an imperfect trauma victim. Now I see a certain user calling Optimus deranged for having understandable fears about letting a human child fight grown ppl matters bc he didn't want to lose her like he lost his previous friend. I have had it with these takes.

The way some folks talk about certain characters here is abysmal. Everyone in the show has trauma but i always see it used as fuel for shipping, or stans throwing words they don't understand all because they don't like a character.

Yes Optimus has flaws as a fangirl I do acknowledge them but I hate hate HATE how he's being called deranged by someone just for expressing a behavior clearly rooting from trauma. Or try to make him out to be as toxic as Blackarachnia and Sentinel even though they're the ones actively hurting people and not really giving a shit. On the flip side I see people rag on Blackarachnia more harsher than they do male villains and ignore her trauma responses; and straight up demonize Sentinel for his.

I see people fight over who had it worse in Autobot boot camp, when Bee and Wasp and Bulkhead didn't deserve to go through that shit. Cuz I tell you right not Bee and Bulk didn't do anything to deserve Sentinel's wrath. Wasp didn't either. I see people downplay Prowl and Ratchet's backgrounds, how they're traumatized. Or the decepticons and how they're nothing but pure evil ignoring how they also may have had traumatic experiences as well. Or mock Perceptor for his funny voice, and Arcee for her amnesia. And what about the Sumdacs? Sari's existential crisis? Isaac's fears? Barely brought up except for tired angst.

By all means criticize a character. Point out their flaws I don't care. But don't go around playing psychiatrist and diagnosing terms you clearly do not understand as a form of critique. It's not funny nor cute.

[supremeprince-bensolo]

This will forever be one of my favourite Reylo shots. The light from Rey shining down onto Ben.

It shows that Rey is his ray of light. Even without him knowing it, her presence was the light he’d always felt. She was the one bright spot in his life, the light that kept shining bright no matter how far he fell into the darkness.

This was right before he hit the lowest point in his life. Rey watched it happen, her light seeping into him as he struggled with what he’d been manipulated into believing he needed to do.

Her light was there when he killed his father.

Her light was there when he immediately regretted it.

Her light stayed with him throughout everything he did, throughout every decision and mistake he made.

Rey never stopped shining bright even when the darkness seemed endless.

[little-bullheaded-shit]

This is a cannon timeline from the allspark almanac and uh..

"Beyond the sky" huh? Well it's not like we were introduced to bad guys who can fly right?

[thecatsaesthetics]

I think people really misunderstand the Rey parentage debate. I’m okay with a storyline that says “anyone can be a hero” but Star Wars has never said that only some mystical royal family can be a hero. 

This makes more sense for something like GOT/ASOIAF which pretty much claims only Vaylrian blooded people can ride dragons. Anakin was not born into a royal family. He was born to a slave woman on a planet that was completely unnoticed by the Republic. Padme came from a well to do family in Naboo. While she became an elected Queen she was not born into a royal family. Luke was raised on Tatooine by his Aunt and Uncle, who were farmers who did decent for themselves. The only person who was “born” into anything special was Leia who was raised in a royal family and had the title of Princess. 

So literally there is no basis for this “Rey being a Skywalker takes anyway from the meaning anyone can be a hero” That was established in the prequels. Anakin a boy born on a desert isolated planet to the life of a slave was the most powerful force user to ever exist. He was born as “the chosen one” and he’s the definition of a nobody. So this whole “Rian Johnson did something revolutionary” is 1000% bullshit. Anakin was the prophecied chosen one and was born a slave boy. Luke was destined to be a farmer and brought down the entire Empire. 

Nobody in the Jedi order’s families has ever been important. We don’t know anything about Yoda’s, Obi Wan’s, Qui-Gon’s, etc family. Luke’s parentage only mattered because it gave him a conflict, to kill his own father or to let the Empire continue. It wasn’t about Luke being some secret Skywalker. This isn’t GOT/ASOIAF, this was about a moral dilemma. It’s not about crowning Luke King of the Galaxy. 

Rey’s parentage theories have never been about her being some “royal Skywalker”. It’s been about JJ setting up Rey having a connection to all three members of the previous generation, of her getting parallels to Luke and Anakin. Rey literally was able to grab Anakin Skywalkers lightsaber from Kylo. She was able to fight with a lightsaber and win without any training. Rey having no family and waiting for someone to come back for her was set up. Daisy Ridley was seated between Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford during the cast reading.  JJ set people up to believe she had some connection to the Skywalker family. It wasn’t to make Rey somebody, it was a logical conclusion to what JJ had set up. Rian Johnson went rogue and decided he wasn’t going to follow through. It wasn’t revolutionary, it wasn’t “genius” it was throwing the baby out with the bathwater stupid. He tried to create an argument that Skywalkers were some royal family and you all fell for it. Rey being either a Solo or Skywalker had nothing to do with her being “somebody”, it was about following up on the logical conclusions JJ set up in TFA. Rian shifted the entire conversation about her parentage to make us all seem like we wanted her to be “somebody”. 

[save-ben-swolo]

I don't know about you, but what's wrong with a guy, being a big softie when it comes to the girl he loves? Even when Kylo Ren interrogated Rey he was SOFT and I promise, after TROS we will finally see J.J. talk how he intended to fucking show this to us, because look at how he interrogated Poe! But okay, Kylo is white, so he never had a chance with antis to begin with, even when he would've offered Rey tea and cookies and sang to her or something...

While I personally don’t think it’s necessary for him to come out and say that soft!Kylo was his intention in TFA post TROS, because it’s not his fault some people are obtuse (or just stubbornly anti Reylo), I wouldn’t mind the vindication either.

It’s actually almost comical the lengths J.J. went to to show how differently Kylo treats Rey in comparison to his other “victims” in TFA. He LITERALLY shows a more brutal example for EVERY interaction that Kylo has with Rey not just the interrogation (no seriously I’m not even kidding.) There are three “Reylo” scenes in TFA the abduction, the interrogation, and the snow fight. Each of these interactions with Rey has a, let’s call it, “companion interaction” with either Poe or Finn where Kylo is shown to be much less kind.

First the two abductions: Poe gets force frozen in place JUST like Rey but Kylo sends stormtroopers to retrieve Poe who go the extra mile in brutality and gut punch him before dragging him over to face their commander on his knees. After some witty banter Kylo orders him to be put on the ship and the troopers handle it. The audience is meant to see this as an example of how Kylo generally operates while taking prisoners so we’re lead to think “huh something is up here” or “not normal” once we get to Rey’s abduction (same can be said of the other two “companion interactions”).

They actually start her capture almost identically to Poe’s where she is shooting at him and he freezes her in place. It’s not subtle in reminding us we are watching the same type of event occur differently. The scene continues and despite having two troopers available to drag the prisoner off to the ship (as he instructed them to do with Poe) our soft boy puts her to sleep so she doesn’t struggle and have to be manhandled. Then this inexcusablely romantic shit happens:

I know this isn’t a screen grab but it’s DLF official and expertly conveys what’s up in that scene.

The two interrogation scenes are arguably the LOUDEST example and I think the most discussed, so I won’t delve into them TOO deeply here. Besides the fact that Kylo doesn’t even let anyone else attempt to interrogate Rey, where Poe had already been brutalized by a prior attempt before he got involved at all, his approach with her is obviously more gentle and, let’s say, up close and personal both physically AND in terms of the topics he’s interested in since he completely forgets about the map for part of the interrogation while he...umm...gets to know her better:

Boy we KNOW you don’t need to be that close to do that. We SAW! O_O

Now the final scene they share, the snow fight. There is a REASON why we get to see Finn and Kylo ACTUALLY fight with sabers instead of having him be easily knocked out against a tree like Rey was and going right into the Reylo fight. Beyond the narrative of Finn and Kylo’s mini arc being resolved and the bonus drama of wondering, “is Finn dead?!?” it CLEARLY shows Kylo’s normal fighting style which is brutal and no holds barred. Seriously... he straight up punches Finn in the face after he disarms him. It is not nice. (But it is kind of hot, sorry Finn.)

The most important scene though is where he has Finn against a tree sabers crossed because it is almost exactly how Kylo has Rey against the cliff sabers crossed a few minutes later. This scene is meant to hit you over the head with the difference between Kylo fighting Finn and Kylo fighting Rey because it’s a nearly identical situation. Let’s compare what he does with Finn while their sabers are crossed and he has the upper hand with what he does in the same position with Rey:

(BRUTAL)

(What you thinkin’ about...? Join me maybe?)

O_O I mean... that’s that right?

J.J. was NOT SUBTLE showing our boy is soft for Rey in TFA and you’re right, even if they had shown him “offering Rey tea and cookies and singing to her” (LOL) some people would STILL refuse to see the clear subtext and I frankly don’t have time for those people.

[amyltia]

Rey in TROS : weakest at her strongest

Might seem paradoxal at first. Only thoughts so far

I read that Rey might be hard to relate to because she is too strong and has no flaw. I disagree with that, but I don’t deny that she is strong. But she does have one essential, characteristic flaw : she is constantly in denial, that’s one strong flaw and very interesting one.

In TFA she keeps making herself believe her parents will return, in TLJ this illusion is broken and i does get emphasis, in TROS she denies all that is darkness in her to a point that it makes her isolate, exile, act violently because she doesn’t want the truth (hence the major point of her fights with Kylo, especialy the one one Pasaana/Kijimi : “I don’t want this”, “Stop talking”, etc. + and on Kef Bir the refusal to even talk because she’s restraining herself from this darkness and doesn’t want to doubt anymore “Give it to me” repeated endlessly, that’s not a discussion, that’s being closed and refusing to open to the other).

So she might be exceedingly strong but she does have flaws, weaknesses that the movie does exploit too. I don’t read it often so I’ll say it, but in TROS, at this culmination of power she also is at her mentally weakest point, on the verge of breaking down, and that during the whole movie : in that I like TROS’s Rey, because as a character it’s a weakness not so often exploited to this extent. 

[heliotrope-r]

Rey’s awakening - when and why

I am late to this particular party, or so it seems by the “We all know this, of course” way people are talking about it on Reddit. But until tonight I had never really thought about exactly when Rey’s awakening in the Force occurred. 

I had a vague notion that it had something to do with the excitement and tension of her escape from Jakku with Finn, that the desperate need to shoot down the TIE fighters that were chasing them and later to save Finn from being eaten by a Rathtar caused Rey to start tapping into Force powers she didn’t even know she had. And then, of course, her strength in the Force became obvious during Kylo’s interrogation -- but Snoke’s line about “There has been an awakening” is spoken well before Rey and Kylo actually meet, let alone see into each other’s minds. It’s during that first meeting that Rey consciously starts cherrypicking Jedi knowledge out of Kylo’s memories, which enables her to influence Stormtrooper Daniel Craig into releasing her -- but that isn’t the moment of awakening for her, because she was already awakened. So how and when did it happen? Why just then suddenly, after all the years she spent (no doubt in any number of harrowing and life-threatening situations) on Jakku?

Then I came across this comment in a thread about the subject, from a user called -The Kingslayer- (although I saw later upthread that s/he wasn’t the first to make the suggestion):

Psst. It’s when Kylo arrives on Jakku.

and my jaw just

dropped. 

Because I’d never thought about that possibility before, but it makes perfect sense. Especially if Rey and Kylo are “two halves of our protagonist” as Rian has stated -- they didn’t meet or even cross paths at that point, yet just being within a day’s journey (as BB-8 rolls, anyway) of each other on the same planet was enough to awaken Rey’s latent Force abilities and make Kylo feel a sudden, agonizing pull to the Light. 

I wonder if we’ll see this explicitly spelled out in The Last Jedi. I won’t be surprised if we do.