#mainly because i am generally sick of your red herring arguments

[thecleverqueer]

I’m getting on the bus way late, but I feel compelled to defend the Wolfwren ship.

To preface, if it was made to be canon, it would be hugely impactful for the LGBTQ community as a whole for so many reason. In the same breath, however, I don’t see it ever becoming canon. Maybe I’m just jaded by the sheer number of queer-coded people in media with literally zero payoff. Never mind the fact that Lucasfilm is owned by Disney, who despite ring-wing criticisms, are by far the most vanilla, lukewarm media creator who shows literally zero inclination or willingness to “rock the boat” in any capacity. Truly, I would be shocked and nothing they have ever done has shocked me. And, honestly, it doesn’t truly matter either way. People should be allowed to enjoy what they enjoy without people judging or constantly attacking people over it. It’s all fiction regardless. The Wolf and the Wren don’t even exist in reality, so…

Still, the actors involved have obviously embraced it, fed into it, appreciate it, and I think that’s adorable and commendable. I find it incredibly interesting, yet not shocking that Natasha Liu Bordizzo picked up on Sabine’s clear queer-coding (whether purposefully done or not) and ran with it. This isn’t wholly relevant in and of itself, but I’m building to my point.

My point is that I have seen some arguments against Wolfwren that come from very homophobic, comphet places. Gayness still makes many people uncomfortable, and I’ll be honest, that’s on the person that’s being made uncomfortable by it and not the gay in question. Particularly, and since it is now sort of socially unacceptable to outright bash the LGBTQ community, I see A LOT of red herring arguments being made to try and divert attention to the real reasons that they hate it. And, I’m going to discuss one of those arguments that feels like is being made in bad faith.

The argument in question is the comparison to Wolfwren and Reylo. Many anti-wolfwrenners argue that they hate the ship because it reminds them of Reylo, a problematic ship between two people with a borderline abusive power dynamic that weirdly fall in love after a series of very questionable interactions.

And first, let’s be honest, some of these people probably do, at some levels, like and appreciate Reylo and that’s fine. To each their own. But, Wolfwren isn’t anything like Reylo at all. And comparisons truly cannot be made like that here.

Is Wolfwren problematic on the surface based on the happenings of Ahsoka season one alone? Yes. Absolutely. It’s not a washed and folded LGBTQ pairing. It’s not supposed to be. Their relationship has started out in kind of an ugly place. They’ve been gritty and violent. They’ve attempted to kill each other multiple times. That’s madness.

Still, there is no lop-sided power dynamic here though. Kylo Ren was obviously more powerful than Rey, both in the force and by societal position. He was a right hand man to the leader of the First Order. Rey was just a scavenger, rummaging for parts on a backwater planet. He’d studied the force since he was a tot. Rey didn’t even realize she had it. They were not equals. Sabine and Shin are, in every aspect of the word, equals in the story. Shin ultimately gay panics and stabs Sabine in the torso, but Sabine struck first in that skirmish. In fact, Sabine struck first in every battle that she and Shin had. And while Shin did have force powers where Sabine had yet to unlock her own potential, Sabine’s a bad ass. She’s not tradwife material (despite a lot of preconceived notions). She’s a warrior, someone that likely had blasters in her hands before she could write. That is something in and of itself. Sabine is equally capable, if not more so than Shin. Sabine is not a helpless victim just because she got stabbed, she has been an equal participant in every interaction that she and Shin have had.

Another difference is that Shin and Sabine have not lobbed words of hate, disdain or abuse at one another. Shin tells Sabine, “you have no power” then Sabine straight up shoots her with an arm cannon as if to say, “bet”. Other than that, there has been no hateful banter between them. At no point have either of them uttered the words “you’re nothing” while the other stood by in tears. It’s basically been well-matched sword duels where neither has truly gotten the upper hand outside of one lucky strike at the beginning. Sabine was unbalanced.

What truly makes this a decent ship is the “enemies to lovers” dynamic, a plot device that has been used time and time again in media (albeit mostly in cishet connotation where it doesn’t seem to bother other cishets). Shin is not beyond redemption. She isn’t inherently evil. She hasn’t truly abused Sabine outside of fighting back after Sabine went after her. Shin has done nothing other than sword fight with an equal, and follow around a master with questionable values. She is still perfectly capable of a redemptive arc, something that I feel was teased in episode 7 when Ahsoka reached out calmly to Shin saying, “I can help you.” It will not shock me when Shin does turn to the Jedi in the story, where she could and likely will find belonging. With that, she and Sabine could find happiness in a more homo-friendly, less heteronormative society. And if either of them were male and the other female, it would totally be embraced by the larger viewing audience as totally normal and okay.

So yeah… there it is.