#do straight men just become creepy and/or bigoted as they age?

[black-rose-writings]

What is it with old men and their need to creep on girls young enough to be their granddaughters?

[honeylikewords]

Talk to me about tros!!!! I need to know about Poe!!

Okay, I’m finally sitting down to answer this anon, and a few things before I start!

1. Most of what I’m going to say will really only make sense if you go see The Rise of Skywalker yourself. While it’s far from a perfect movie, it’d take way too long for me to try and transcribe everything that happens in the film, and the context and nuance of certain scenes. So, yeah, while it’s not a good movie, if you’re invested in seeing how the movies have played out, you should probably go see it yourself.

2. I have some... mixed feelings about the movie. I also know that what I don’t like, I can choose to ignore; despite the disappointments of the series, I don’t have to take Rian or JJ’s bullshit as MY canon. I get to decide what I do and don’t adhere to as canon. Everyone else has their own varying scales of how they respond to canon-- some are super adherent to canon, some don’t care about anything at all-- and that’s fine. So although I have beef with how all this unfolded, I also know that I can take my love that I have for the characters (and all the potential that The Force Awakens had) and carry that on through my own interpretations, re-writes, et cetera, and I can choose to ignore the poor decisionmaking on the parts of Disney and Rian/JJ/who-the-fuck-ever. 

3. This ask is very open-ended, so I’m going to have to put some parameters down for myself because otherwise I’d get too overwhelmed with the breadth of information I’d need to present about TRoS. A comprehensive review would be really hard to write out, so I’ll just list some initial impressions (I haven’t been able to see it a second time, but likely will in the near future), and some of the relevant Poe-related issues in the films. If you wanna know more, feel free to send in more specific questions (specificity can help, because with my neurotype, I can easily be overwhelmed by large, “general” questions, and getting more granular can help me rein in and focus on a specific idea)!

4. Also, this post isn’t going to be friendly to R*ylo or people who straightwash Poe/are only interested in him as a straight guy. R*ylo is fucking gross, and I’m gonna rip it apart in this post, and Poe isn’t straight. I try not to be too aggressive on here (I’m generally not very aggressive at all!), but the fandom is just so toxic and vile at times that I feel like I need to put my foot down on these topics and say a firm “no” to R*ylos and Poe straightwashers. Oh, and I’ll be talking about the racism in the movie, as well as in the fandom, so buckle up for that, too. So consider this the “bigots begone!” spell as I wave my wand and attempt to shoo them all away!

Anyway...

From here down are spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. If you’re interested in seeing the movie spoiler-free, please scoot waaaaay past this post! Last warning!

And, with that out of the way, here we go!

Alright, here’s a list of stuff as it occurs to me. I’m almost overwhelmed with information, so it’s hard to condense my thoughts, but I’ll try my best!

1. The whole Zorri thing was a fucking nightmare, but not as bad as it could have been. It was really bad, believe me, but, like, it can be ignored easily (though if you’re anything like me, it’ll still leave a sour taste in your mouth). Like I predicted, Zorri was introduced to straightwash Poe and effectively quash any queer interpretations of his character and relationship with Finn. 

But, like, Poe and Zorri had no chemistry. It was almost embarrassing; they were clearly trying to work the “badass woman” angle, but, eh, she was just, basically, a minor blip on the radar; incredibly boring, incredibly useless, and just, like, a “sexy lamp” that could easily have been replaced. She added literally nothing to the film and was blatantly just an insert to try and prevent people from being able to make the case for a queer Poe. But, too bad, Disney! Poe is pansexual, dumbasses!

Oh, and while I’m on the topic of Poe’s queerness, I should add that I’m not really a big FinnPoe, myself; when it got big after the release of The Force Awakens, if felt like just another creepy Tumblr fetishization of male relationships, so that really set the tone for how I’d see it in the coming years. It’s grievously oversexualized on this site, but I also respect that, for many actually queer fans, the ship represents seeing themselves in Star Wars, and I do totally see their bond as canon. I completely acknowledge that Oscar wanted to represent the queer fans who wanted his character to be queer, and in that way, FinnPoe is definitely canon in some form! 

So, I do have a complex relationship with FinnPoe, in that it’s not my personal favorite ship (I vastly prefer FinnRey, since I never really felt that Finn and Poe had a romantic tension, but felt that Finn and Rey did), but I do respect the importance of it for queer fans and for trying to push at the limitations a major series like Star Wars has had for so long. Star Wars has been dominated as a straight, cishet, white man’s fandom; it’s time other people got a chance to love it and see themselves in this vast universe, too.

The cast also seems to be leaning into FinnPoe as a form of protest against censorship and homophobia in the fandoms and film world. They’re using their positions as major film stars to push back and say “hey, queer folks belong here, too”, and that’s so great!

But, anyway, the point is, Zorri sucked, and Poe’s not straight. He’s certainly capable of being attracted to women, but he’s not a straight dude, because he’s equally capable of being attracted to men and nonbinary people as well. 

Thankfully, Zorri and Poe never actually form a relationship in TRoS. He jokes about asking for a kiss, she tells him to go, and then he, at the end, sort of motions his head as if to say “wanna go kiss?” and she, again, tells him no, which he shrugs off. It’s pretty shitty, but easy to ignore.

Anyway, Poe is pan, Finn is pan, Lando is pan, Luke Skywalker is gay and nonbinary, Rey is nonbinary and probably ace, maybe interested in girls, I’m still ironing my hcs for her out, and no one can stop me! Go ahead and try to kill me, Disney (and homophobic Star Wars fans); if you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!

2. Poe’s “backstory” is such a fucking trainwreck. They basically tried to nix a bunch of what was already canonically established in order to, get this, make Poe a drug dealer. 

It’s a little more complex-- the idea is that Poe was a pilot for a group of pirates for about six years, from the age of 16 until he was 22-ish, and ran Spice, the drug in Star Wars-- but it’s also not. It’s really bad. 

Way to take a canonically noble, hardworking, Latino character and reduce him to the most shitty, racist stereotype imaginable. I’ve already complained about him not needing a “dark” past, but this? This is somehow worse than him being, like, a bounty hunter, because it carries political implications and is just such a stock, trash stereotype that we don’t need in this world or in our fantasies. It’s ridiculous, and I refuse to acknowledge it.

Worse yet, it’s said that Poe “ran away from home” to join the pirates to “avoid responsibility” at age 16... dude, Poe has been shown in EVERY PRIOR CANONICAL APPEARANCE TO CRAVE NOTHING BUT RESPONSIBILITY. Yes, he’s a hothead, but he’s responsible! He wants to labor and take on caring for others because he’s a hardworking, compassionate, headstrong man! Ugh!

I could go off forever about this, but I’m already feeling myself grinding my teeth, and for the sake of my blood pressure and psychological wellbeing I’m not going to make myself go feral over it right now. Deep breaths, K, deep breaths...

3. In things I did like: Poe got promoted to general, and he made Finn a general alongside him. He really grew into his position, and I’m so proud to see him as General Dameron of the Resistance. He deserves it. 

4. Poe and Finn had SO many good scenes and such great chemistry. I loved seeing them bounce off each other, and their relationship made me laugh and smile and feel warm, even as everything else was falling apart. I love my boys!

5. Poe gets grossed out by bones. Canon. Love a squeamish king.

6. Oh, ugh, I just remembered that they tried to frame Poe and Rey as having an aggressive relationship with each other and I rolled my eyes. How dumb can they be? Ugh. I don’t even have the energy to try and unpack how ridiculous all that is. More deep breaths...

7. In terms of the worst thing to happen in the movie... R*ylo, like, gets shoehorned in. Honestly, looking back at all the predictions I made a few months back, I’m entirely right; everything I predicted came to pass. This included.

It was shitty and bad and nearly all the cast has spoken out against it now that their contracts with Disney aren’t as binding, and seeing it happen on the big screen was just... oh my god, it was horrifying.

It really was.

But thankfully, Kylo died, so the ship can’t really continue! Yeehaw!

8. I actually did like parts of the ending. I’ll talk about that more if anyone asks more specific questions, but right now, I’m kinda burning out because of the wide net this ask casts, so I’ll have to defer for the moment.

At any rate, it all happened exactly the way I thought it would, bleh. Like, so much shit in the movie went down exactly the way my TRoS predictions post said, it’s almost scary. 

Honestly, though, just running through all this is exhausting me; I really can’t make myself go through it all in this particular format. So, I’ll just leave this here as it is, and if anyone has any specific questions-- what I thought of specific moments, characters, scenes, etc-- send an ask! But this is all just really wide and general and burning my brain out to try and process it all again, so more specificity in future asks might help me stay more on track and not get overwhelmed trying to explain every single thing all at once. 

I have tons and tons of thoughts about it, ranging from what I loved to what I’d have done different about the whole series, but I just don’t have the psychological wherewithal to make myself write everything out in one giant, dense, indecipherable post: it’s just all too much, so I’d need to break it down into smaller, more specific questions.

This probably isn’t a super-satisfying answer, but feel free to just send specific asks and I’ll answer them, no matter how many! It just helps to have a specific line of thought to follow, so feel free to ask about each individual thing and I’ll try to answer!

Thanks!

[tumblunni]

Man, god, im just suddenly thinking about "ak/ur/oku" and like.. How the fuck did that even become such a huge thing in early 2000s fandom? Dear god so much early gay shipping in fandom was super unhealthy "sinful" bullshit made by straight people for fetishy purposes rather than genuine representation. But a/kurok/u was such a weird one because it was like.. Just globally accepted and never aknowledged to be problematic?? Man i still remember how lil 13 year old me didnt know there was anything wrong with it, like seriously when stuff like this becomes popularized it ends up sending bad messages to actual queer youth. Learning about your sexuality via the internet cos there's no sex ed irl for you, abd you end up stumbling into toxic fandoms before you have the critical thinking skills necessary to know that this stuff is bad and shouldnt be imitated. Like seriously one of the things i worry about EVERY NIGHT AT 2AM THAT KEEPS ME FROM SLEEPING is that stupid lil 15 year old me made a post on deviantart going like "are pedophiles really all bad? I mean it sounds like an illness. I mean maybe theyre just scared and they want help." Like im terrified constantly that someone will find that old thing and judge me as if i still believe that apologist crap, or as if it was actually an opinion i formed from a fully developed mind, rather than from a kid who (as far as i knew) had never met a pedophile, thinking about pedophiles in the abstract, while being influenced by fuckin pedophile-dominated fandoms and having NO IDEA. and of cooooourse i wanted to believe that i was mature for my age, i thought that was a compliment.. Uuuuugh...

Sorry, going a little offtopic there.

But anyway isnt it kinda weird how akur/oku was just.. Not even regarded as pedophilia? And when i was a kid it wasnt just me not understanding the gross parts of the fandom, i legit never thought axel was that much older than roxas. And it was one of the more popular gay ships cos at that point as far as we knew it was the only person axel had any sort of backstory with, and he cared so much about this guy that he was willing to sacrifice his life to help sora even when he knew roxas would never come back. At the time without further context it seemed like a reasonable assumption to make? And it wasnt until Days that i realized axel was intended to be an adult rather than a teenager, and even worse A LOT OF PEOPLE WHO MADE THAT SHIPPING ART KNEW THAT. Uuugh it was so gross in retrospect to go back and see all the clues i missed that these people were fetishizing roxas's inexperience and veey much writing him as underage. AAAAAAA!

Anyway im glad that shit is now recognized as shit and now we have canon evidence of this dude being old as balls. And honestly i love the relationship of him as a big brother/dad to roxas and xion a lot more, even though as a kid i was desperate for any kind of queer representation in kh. Like.. I never really actually liked the ship that much or felt any chemistry? I just latched onto a few bad writing flubs that could potentially be interpreted as Gay Evidence because i was SO damn desperate! Like i felt like i had to support all these gross abusive ships in fandom cos if i wasnt then i was being 'homophobic', i mean they were THE ONLY AVAILABLE OPTIONS, right? :( Its only now ive grown up i can see how wrong that was, and how people just used it as an excuse to make gross shit and get away with it. Like how in Black Butler all these 'yaoi fangirls' kept erasing the rarest of rare things, a canon trans woman, because 'its sexier if its gay'. Ughhhh. And seriously that discourse still exists for poor Grell, and there's still a lot of these shitty bigoted people pretending to be allies, but like seriously this was EVERYWHERE in 2005! And lgbt rights and even lgbt communities at all were way smaller and less available to the poor teenagers who really needed that positive influence while they were figuring out who they are. So man the abusive side of yaoi fandom was WAY more powerful, and wya more.mainstream, with barely any criticism. And the whole content of this fandom was creepy fuckin adults making pedo porn, and kids who just discovered they were queer and tried to headcanon their favourote characters as being like them. Fucking predator heaven! So yeh that ruined KH for me and definately made me scared of returning to Black Butler for almost a decade. And then i found out that the manga itself has none of that pedo shit and that one of the fandom's biggest abusive gay man archetypes was actually a trans woman this entire time, and just gahhhhh....

Also like seriously this is a tad offtopic but can we kill the anime trope of either everyone looking young or everyone looking old? Or creepy things where just one character looks the wrong age in order to fetishize pedophilia? I dont think kingdom hearts was one of those intentional ones, like i mean there's super bad shit where its like 'this 5 year old looking person is really 9000 years old/actually 18 and just hasnt had their growth spurt yet' (somehow its even more insulting when theres not even a magical excuse) Or the other way around and we have a character thats canonically underage but drawn looking sexually mature with big ol knockers so its somehow okay. The existence of those horrible things is why i end up feeling uncomfortable even seeing ambiguous ages as just a trope in completely innocent anime, yknow? Like in pokemon and digimon all the 10 year old protagonists are exactly the same height as all the adults, and all the female love interests for ash have to be early bloomers in terms of chest and hips, while notably Iris is the only one who actually looks her age and also the first non love interest. Its another reason why i prefer the new art style for the latest season, they make everyone look like kids and Lillie continues to look like a kid even though she's the main girl and has all the cute scenes with Ash. The girls even got very normal looking kiddy swimsuits in the beach episode! Why is that so uncommon, to find the bare minimum thing of underage kids not being sexualized at the beach??

Soooooo yeah, thats at least part of why kid me thought axel and roxas were within a similar age range. Like i thought roxas was maybe 16 and axel was 18?? Somehow?? I dont even know, kingdom hearts isnt even SUPER bad with the 'kids look like older teens,all adults look like age 20 at the most' anime syndrome. Its probably more because id been raised on games and anime that followed that trope, before i played kh. And as a kid you just dont really know the exact differences between 'old', like i mean i knew teenagers were tall and boys get a growth spurt, so somehow it made sense to me that axel could be the same age as roxas?? And man even if i knew he wasnt, i was barely educated at all about pedophilia and i didnt know the nuances of it. I just knew 'its bad for adults to marry kids' like man i was really behind the curve in general learning due to my undiagnosed autism and abusive parenting so like HERE'S 12 YEAR OLD ME NOT EVEN THINKING ABOUT THE SEX ASPECT. And i didnt know that adults in relationships with teenagers was bad too, or like 16/17 year old teens dating kids... I was so fuckin dumb... I really cant believe that not only did i believe stupid adults saying 'pedophilia isnt bad if you're non offending, its okay to make cartoon child porn as long as you dont physically abuse real kids' but also i somehow just DID NOT EVER REALIZE that axel was an adult and roxas wasnt even a goddamn older teen...

So yeh im making a lot of excuses for why my stupid younger self was blindly parroting bullshit, but im not trying to excuse how goddamn wrong and bad it was. I still wake up ashamed in the middle of the night for crapoy decisions i made as a dumb kid, and in terrified that some shreds of it might still exist out there on the internet and maybe someone else could read it?! Gahhhh! Seriously could i have accidentally helped spread that bullshit brainwashing to other kids? And seriously when people say this shit is harmless they just need to look at this, look at how being into problematic yaoi is such a common 'phase' for ACTUAL CHILDREN. Like its not fuckin NATURAL for kids to fall into this stuff, they do it because they dont know any better but the people making the goddamn founding blocks of the fandom are fuckin grown women fetishizing gay men or grown men fetishing lesbians. There's people who do know better who actually conciously decide that a/kurok/u is a good ship while knowing all the goddamn details of what it actually is and exactly what theyre supporting by shipping it. Ughhhhh!

So yeh fuckin Please Stay Safe In Fandom, Kids

And pedophiles have absolutely none of my sympathy, please ignore that goddamn shit i wrote as a little kid being fuckin groomed by a fandom without even knowing it.

This also applies a lot to the rest of LGBT+ aside from just gay shipping, like seriously it took me til age 18 to find any positive representation of trans people or even a proper explanation of what being trans is, yet before i was even 8 years old i'd seen a million 'lol gross man in a dress who gets sexual gratification from wearing women's underwear' jokes in kids shows. And when i was 12 i'd already been exposed to the fuckin hell of m/pre/g thanks to its prevelance of untagged n/sf/w shit in the kh fandom. And by age 15 i'd been exposed to pedophile apologists arguing whether child porn was okay if they only got off to that and didnt personally abuse that kid with their own hands. All of that shit but actually learning about homosexuality and gender in sex ed would have been 'too much' for someone my age...

God what a fuckin mess. Fuck im really really fuckin worried that any of my ignorant comments at those ages could have been read by other ignorant kids and contributed to that disgusting fandom atmosphere. Fuck i think about this so damn often im so damn ashamed of how ignorant i used to be yet i know the adult fuckfaces making pedo shit never reel one lick of shame any damn day of their life. I used to excuse their shit as an actual kid cos i just ASSUMED they would be ashamed and want to seek help! Gahhhh..

[black-rose-writings]

I just remembered the weirdest shit.

When I was 14, I was on a skiing course to the Alps with my high school. It was pretty fun, overall, even though I usually hate sports.

There is this instructor/doctor guy, that always comes on the school’s sports courses as a medic. He’s probably in his 50s and, well, he’s a conspiracy nut. Nothing dangerous, as far as I know, more along the lines of “the big brother is watching”/tin foil hat type, and most of the other students found him to be really funny. (He apparently belives there are microphones in the trees, that record what we’re saying?)

He was the instructor of my group on that course. One day, when we were returning to the bus, I ended up alone with him in the cable car (I think that’s what it’s called).

I was trying to be polite and talked to him (big mistake).

I don’t remember much of how the conversation went, but he started talking about breast cancer. I’ve repressed a lot of that conversation, but now that I’m remembering it, I’m getting really uncomfortable.

What he said was, in essence, that women get breast cancer, because they have periods instead of babies (something about breast tissue growing every month, when the period happens, instead of just once during pregnancy? I’m trying to not remember the details, because it didn’t make sense, anyway, and it was gross).

And I’m just thinking... how the fuck did he think that was appropriate? Like, it’s been four years and I still get creeped out thinking about it. LIke, that shit would be weird to tell to anyone, but it seems really bad to tell that to a 14 year old girl. Why the fuck the he feel the need to say that in the first place?

And to make the situation even more awkward and uncomfortable for me:

a) I was on my period at that time.

b) I haven’t ever been in a relationship, not even held hands in a romantic context with anyone at that point (still haven’t, but that’s not important)

c) I am not straight (pan, but leaning closer to the gay side), and at the time, I was figuring it out and thought I might be a full-blown lesbian.

d) I was going through the “I’m never having kids” phase.

So, I was just creeped out and uncomfortable and repressed the fact that the conversation ever took place and now I remembered it and feel the need to share it with people.