#the people who had no fucking clue what Luke's victory actually was have won

[frumfrumfroo]

Why do you think so few people will notice or care about a “SWCU”? Was the review you listened to positive about it all?

No, anyone who has one slightest quantum of a standard knows the film is terrible, but they don’t see that the most insulting thing about it isn’t how awful it is in execution but how it remakes Rey as a fucking blank slate perfect superhero for men to project onto, turns the Force into a video game magic system, and killing Ben makes all of Star Wars a nihilistic shaggy dog story about a family of Born Doomed assholes who have failed in everything they ever attempted. All of which would be just as bad if the film had been better written and better edited.

Too many people are okay with the predestination, with the moral logic that any character and the story itself can treat Ben any way and it’s fine because he doesn’t deserve better, people are okay with a totally different standard being applied to Rey because she’s the protagonist, with violence being the answer, with the total absence of character development or internal struggle. The lack of agency for literally anyone in this retcon. They’re fine with being told the LAST SHOT of a film doesn’t have significance and that this is totally a happy ending despite even THEIR OWN FILM going out of its way to illustrate that Rey is isolated and her belonging is dead. She’s primed to have ADVENTURES as my self insert and that’s what I, Tim who hates Ewoks and thinks ‘nothing happened’ in TLJ, want, so what the character wanted and what the story was about is totally irrelevant.

Huge swaths of people are super cool with love and forgiveness being empty words and the shining idealism of sw being utterly snuffed out. The American cultural nightmarescape of utilitarianism and retribution, of dehumanising all whose humanity is inconvenient, their delusion of being a meritocracy, and treating being a victim who is so gauche as to be traumatised as an unforgivable crime is all hunky dory with this bleak, depressing indictment of vulnerability and compassion. People hate Ben because he’s a male victim and he’s vulnerable, because he has all the human emotions American men aren’t supposed to have and he failed to pull himself up by his bootstraps until after he’d lashed out in pain, they’re relieved to never have to think about him again.

Do I think the GA is happy about this? No. But that’s not going to dominate the fucking discourse, is it? Even in this fandom very few people are going to take this proof that nothing matters and DLF feels zero obligation to their own canon as a reason to just stop investing and stop rewarding this absolutely crass product and its giant ‘fuck you’ to storytelling. We know now who gets to be heard and listened to and it isn’t people who care about themes and about what George Lucas was trying to accomplish in creating a new myth.

[rahabs]

but like realtalk a large part of why I dislike Rey so much and why I’m so vocal about it is I’m just so disappointed. there was potential in Rey as a character.  there was potential for her to have a good arc and be complex and nuanced and what have you.  it was there.  but instead we just got “Strong Wahman Kicks Everyone’s Asses” and oof my god do I hate this “how make strong woman????  she beats all the men!!!  automatically interesting!” thing that people do like no.  the fact that no one can ever challenge or beat Rey makes her boring, not interesting.  Rey faces no real adversity.  she continuously bests people who have way more experience and traininng than she does with no given explanation.  she’s never flown a ship like the Falcon before, or anything remotely even approaching a starfighter, yet oh, look, suddenly she’s an expert pilot flying as skillfully (or more) than Han Solo, who has been doing this for decades, never mind the FO fighters, who have also been trained.

(”but child Anakin in TPM”--no, and you know why?  because it wasn’t actually a reach for him to have that skill.  we’ve been shown that he is a talented pilot before that.  we saw him win that podrace.  we saw his skill.  we were given an explanation for his skill that wasn’t just “lol he stronk woman idk”.  and even then, he wasn’t an expert behind the controls of that fighter.  he was very much a child behind the wheel, and I thought the actor did a great job of portraying how an actual kid would probably react in that situation.   he fucked around, he didn’t know what everything was, he made mistakes--the whole thing was played as one big accident.  yeah, he blew up the station, but he didn’t even really do it deliberately--he was just trying to get out of the situation.)

she’s never fought anyone like Kylo Ren before, a man who has had literal years of training in lightsaber, hand-to-hand, and Force-based combat.  this man has been shaped all his life to be a weapon, a killing machine.  yes, he was heavily wounded in TFA which is why I could have let it slide... if the same thing hadn’t happened in TLJ, but worse.  she has had zero training.  she had, like, one whole quicky lesson with Luke and suddenly could command the Force like an expert, could suddenly fight with a goddamn lightsaber like someone who’s trained her whole life both against the Praetorian Guard and then against Kylo himself.  we are given no explanation for this sudden skill.  there is nothing we are told that would explain why she can suddenly do these things.  “she had to pick up survival skills on Jakku” yeah no, nothing that would have prepared her for this.  Kylo should have reasonably wiped the floor with her, but he didn’t because, idk, Stronk Woman.  fuck knows.  and that’s the problem!  fuck knows!  we have no idea why she can do these things, we’re just expected to swallow it.  we’re expected to just accept that she can do these things for no reason.  she’s a better pilot than everyone despite never piloting anything beyond a fecking landspeeder.  she’s a better fighter with a lightsaber despite fighting with a staff her whole life and yes it’s canon that fighting with a lightsaber is different than fighting with even something like a vibroblade--it’s a whole other skillset that has to be learned; you can’t just fucking pick up a lightsaber and be an expert except oh, apparently she can.  for Reasons.  what are they?  no clue.

it’s why ultimately I still like Finn more than Rey, because Finn, who was also a trained soldier, and who conceivably should have been better at fighting than her, still got his ass kicked by Kylo eventually, which just makes Rey’s win seem even more ridiculous.

(”but Luke”--nope, Luke was trained, sorry, and before he was trained Darth Vader kicked his ass, and after he was trained Darth Vader and the Emperor kicked his ass.  he still faltered, he still failed, he didn’t just walk in with zero training and instantly best them both.  honestly, Rey’s victory over Kylo Ren both in TFA and TLJ but especially in TLJ is like if Luke had won the battle against Vader on Bespin after Yoda trained him like once.  how utterly silly would that have been?

“but Anakin”--also nope, sorry.  Anakin underwent years of training as a Jedi between TPM and AotC and while he is very skilled and does win some fights he still isn’t perfect and we see that.  he loses to Dooku!  he loses his temper!  the man is a giant walking flaw! he’s the goddamn Chosen One, if any character were to come in and beat everyone effortlessly it should be him, but he doesn’t, he fails, and he fails in places where it makes sense for him to fail, which again just makes Rey look more ridiculous by comparison.  I hate these “but you don’t get mad at Anakin for the same things as Rey!!!” because they don’t hold up.  Anakin had flaws.  Anakin failed, repeatedly, all the time.  he was an amazingly talented swordsman, stronger in the Force than almost anyone else alive, and he still failed--there were still times where people with more training/etc than him prevailed!  which is another reason why “well Rey’s just strong in the Force” is a terrible argument, because it’s been established that all the power in the world is useless if you have no idea how to use it (and don’t even bother bringing up the whole “well Kylo doesn’t know how to use it either” because yes, he does, he’s been trained his entire life, he falters sometimes yes but on the whole he does have the training even if his emotions get the better of him which is what makes him an interesting character, like Anakin, because he fails where it reasonably makes sense for him to, except for the times where it doesn’t, aka all his losses to Rey), and she doesn’t, until suddenly she does after one lesson for no reason, which brings us to:

”but the books”--no, the books don’t really, and even if they did, the books are supplementary materials that I should not have to read to understand the source material, which is what the movies are.  sorry.  I don’t care if the books imply she’s siphoning off of Kylo’s Force powers/abilities, as my friend has reliably informed me--she still shouldn’t suddenly be an expert at using it, even if she’s tapping into his powers.)

so just.  on the whole, I’m disappointed, and I’m frustrated, and I hate that people are telling me to just accept it because she’s a strong woman and we need “strong women” bexause honestly from where I’m standing?  Rey isn’t even a strong character, let alone a strong woman.  she isn’t even an interesting character, which to me is the most important thing.  you can’t be a strong character without flaws, or without any real adversity, because without flaws, without that adversity, there’s no room for growth as a character.  if your test of strength is benchpressing a feather, that’s not really showing strength, because there’s no challenge in benchpressing a feather.  and to me, that’s the main problem with Rey.