Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

leftboob-enthusiast:

calmthinenipples:

why-not-fabulous:

You know what, I totally love the setup in force awakens for any romantic subplot that could come out of it. The apparent options are:

1. Finn and Rey: an interracial straight couple where the man is black and the woman is white, a setup done almost always the other way around in movies

2. Finn and Poe: an interracial gay couple (with two people of color) that would be the first of its kind in a major motion picture like this

3. Finn and Rey and Poe: a potentially healthy polyamorous, interracial relationship. Unheard of ever.

4. No romantic subplot at all: A sci-fi film without a pointless romance that has no relevance to the plot??? Whaaaaaatttttt?????

I mean whichever way you swing it, it turns out pretty fantastic!

How is Poe a POC???

dude

Oscar Isaac is Latino (specifically Guatemalan/Cuban)

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

Honestly I feel sort of ridiculously lucky re: potential ships in the upcoming Star Wars movies, and I’m realizing that it’s possibly just me?  But LET ME LAY THIS OUT FOR YOU.

MOST LIKELY: Finn/Rey.  These two children are cute as shit.  They’re just so damn excited about the world and the universe and green and the Force and each other.  Finn is all star-eyes and bear hugs, and Rey is all toothy grins and fierce protection.  It’s fucking precious.  Sit with me and think about Rey coming back from Fuckety Nowhere to find Finn recovered from his injuries and learning how to be Resistance, and she bounces off the Falcon and runs up to him and throws her arms around his neck for a hug like they did in Starkiller, and when she pulls away she holds onto one of his hands and they smile at each other like the adorable little fucks they are.  BONUS: interracial relationship between a white woman and a black man, which is still something that’s considered more than a little taboo.  Racism is a thing guys, and it’s SO IMPORTANT that representation of this sort of relationship be in the media, especially in such a big-name franchise as Star Wars.  Finn is affectionate, self-determining, and allowed to show emotions like fear and anxiety without any in-narrative penalties, and that is NOVEL, unfortunately.  And Rey is…well, Rey.  Come on, guys, I want to be Rey when I grow up and I’m sure you do too.  She’s able to be the hero, and not in the sense a lot of us are familiar with: there’s no assault, no rape, nothing like that.  She just finds a droid, and then she finds a lightsaber, and then she has the Force, and then she fights for the people she cares about, which is the same way that Luke became a hero.  No one criticizes her for being female.  THIS WOULD BE A GREAT COUPLE.

SECOND MOST LIKELY: Finn/Poe.  The jaCKET?  That is all?  No, seriously, though, this would be a great ship: the dashing pilot and the rogue Stormtrooper.  The entire base would ship it.  Poe would shout down anyone who talked about Finn being a spy, and Finn would learn Droid to talk to BB-8, Poe’s best friend.  This would be a ship with a lot of teasing smiles and laughing, arms around shoulders and warm support.  It would be about Finn learning to be an independent person and Poe welcoming someone new into his family.  BONUS: interracial gay relationship between a Guatemalan man and a black man, which is a little taboo in a different way.  Homophobia is a thing guys, and it’s SO IMPORTANT that representation of this sort of relationship be in the media, especially in cuh a big-name franchise as Star Wars.  Finn is everything I described above, and Poe is dashing, confident, intelligent, skilled…and caring toward his squadron, kind to a stranger, and respectful toward women, including those who have authority over him like Leia (insert battle hymn about the greatness of General Leia here).  Poe is a whole other thing from the standard cocky bastard of a pilot we know from movies and TV.  And please sign me right on up for this new type of dashing heroic gentleman, I am on this bullet train to a brighter future and you should be too.  THIS WOULD ALSO BE A GREAT COUPLE.

OTHER MORE UNLIKELY COUPLES: The Damerons (Finn/Poe/Rey).  It would be great for all of the reasons above, with the addition of the Poe-Rey dynamic of, I imagine, “Look at how beautiful and powerful and glorious this girl is” from Poe’s angle and “You are nice to me and handsome and I’m not sure what to do with any of that” from Rey’s.  Technically the best of all worlds (interracial! everyone is bi except possibly Rey!), but unlikely because, well, it’s a threesome, and that renders it frankly improbable for Hollywood to make it a thing.

And of course, THE ONE PAIRING I’M NOT EXCITED ABOUT: Kylo/Rey.  Um.  No.  Not least because things are looking like she’s going to be Rey Skywalker and that makes them EITHER first cousins OR siblings, depending on which twin is Rey’s parent, and yes, Luke and Leia were almost a thing, but let’s just take a hard line on No Incest this go-round, shall we?  But also because that would, I think, be wildly unhealthy unless they pulled off some sort of miracle.  And because honestly my main interest in a redemption arc for Kylo is the one that is Entirely For Leia’s Benefit, and I’ve read enough stories about poor damaged boys whose actions weren’t their fault at all being saved from themselves by the purity of love and…like…give the man the dignity of his own choices, okay?  I can feel sorry for Kylo because of the way he’s so clearly been manipulated and groomed by Snoke, but unless there’s evidence of actual legitimate mind control it’s still his choice to side with the Dark.  I have a lot of firm opinions about human dignity and free will and even though he’s currently a spectacular bastard, Kylo Ren still has free will and he has exercised it and as a human being he deserves to have his choices recognized as his own.

ANYWAY.  My point here is that no matter what you ship hardest, it needs to be recognized that either of the two most likely ships to happen will be almost groundbreaking in the representation they’ll offer.  I will make no judgements and fight no wars about what kind of representation is ‘most important’ because, you know what, it’s ALL important.  It matters that kids see interracial relationships on the big screen, presented as grand sweeping romances rather than comedy or tragedy.  It matters that kids see gay relationships that way.  It is important that teenagers and adults and children look at the characters they love and see themselves there, see the people they love there, see their friendships and relationships there.  Duking it out about who is more oppressed and therefore more deserving of that representation lessens us as people.  You, as a person reading this, deserve to see yourself in a character, in a hero, and so do the other people on the street, friends, strangers, enemies.

I want us to have it all, guys.  I want you to have everything: trans characters who are fierce and strong, women who can save galaxies, men who can be gentle and emotional and heroic, gay and lesbian romances full of light and laughter, racial diversity because, hey, when your copilot is covered in ten inches of hair what’s a little melanin between friends.  I want you to have ace characters with adoring husbands and wives, nonbinary characters and genderfluid characters whose friends would die for them no matter what their pronouns are today and vice versa, aro characters with badass spaceships full of loyal crew they love, characters with ADHD and autism and schizophrenia and depression going out to save the world with the people who care about them, physically disabled characters with blasters concealed in their prosthetics or souped up hoverchairs.  ALL OF IT.  And this movie series isn’t going to give us all that, because all of that is…it’s a lot to ask, and I know it, but I want it anyway.  But this movie is virtually guaranteed to give us something, some starting point, and you know what?  I’m ready to take what I can get while I work on finding a way to give you guys everything.

thistlerosie:

hippity-hoppity-brigade:

vrabia:

i love all the ‘poe has a wonderful singing voice’ headcanons for the obvious reason, but you know who else has a wonderful singing voice? rey. except where poe is a connoisseur of mellow space folk and lugs his space guitar from base to base and sings to his fellow pilots, rey has always made up her own songs and her own lyrics and her own stories to sing to herself about.

i’m saying: rey sitting at finn’s bedside, singing to him about the tiny desert critters burrowing in their tiny burrows with their tiny families for the night. it’s a strange combination, part lullaby, part counting song, something she made up when she must’ve been 7 or 8, and she’s never sung it to anyone else. but she’s singing it to finn, who’s unconscious, and it’s soft and sweet and poe walks by med bay one time and catches a glimpse and a couple of verses and he’s like

OH NO

#next morning at breakfast poe sits with her#‘was that a song from jakku?’ he asks; rey looks confused so he hums a couple of bars for her and his voice is low and warm and lovely#rey instantly goes beet red; poe feels kind of like an asshole. ‘sorry’ he says ‘i was passing by yesterday i didn’t mean to listen in’#‘thatsasongimadeup’ rey sputters and then shoves an entire slice of toast in her mouth#‘sorry?’ says poe#rey chews aggressively and then swallows with a little gulp and then looks at him defiantly and still totally red up to her ears#‘that’s a song i made up. when i was little.’#and poe is like ‘oh’#(poe is like OH b/c he’s in love he loves them both it’s been like a week he would literally die for them it’s prEPOSTEROUS)#‘it’s lovely’ he says. ‘could you teach me sometime? if you want? i could teach you some of ours’#rey is not yet comfortable enough around him but she lets poe stay when she’s singing to finn#eventually lets him join in#they’re not perfectly harmonious#rey’s voice breaks a little in some parts and poe takes her hand; and poe’s voice breaks too in others and she squeezes his fingers gently#finn sleeps beside them; his heart rate monitor their only accompaniment#star wars#ah yes the damerons#SOMEBODY TAKE THE INTERNET AWAY FROM ME I SWEAR TO FUCK 

*pushes the internet slightly closer to you* 

Awwwwwwwwwww.

(via princehal9000)

ok how about this

vrabia:

instead of only meeting when they’re about to lose eachother, rey, finn and poe all meet at the start of the movie when rey goes rummaging through the wreckage of the tie fighter they crash-landed in, and finds two mildly concussed strangers and a bunch of parts that require serious scrubbing but will probably keep her fed for a week. 

points to consider:

• rey already found bb-8 before she finds finn and poe, so: emotional reunion between poe and his droid while rey and finn look on and think, independently of eachother, what a swell guy
  
• rey offers to share her rations for the day, but makes them do the scrubbing while she sits in the shade and relaxes for once
• they end up at rey’s place and by this point rey already knows they’re with the resistance and she’s a little bit flustered because she lives in a literal wreck that she decorated with flowers and dolls and scavenged rebel alliance paraphernalia. she’s kind of glaring and i-dare-you-to-say-something at first, but the boys love it. finn is looking around trying not to be too obviously wide-eyed at all the home-y touches b/c he grew up in such a sterile, uniform environment where they probably didn’t have a lot of personal effects. poe comments that it’s cozy and actually reminds him of the squad dorms on d’qar because pilots always have a mess of parts lying around and little model ships and things, and rey would fit right in; rey is trying to be Very Dignified about everything but inside she’s all !!!!
• because of reasons, poe and finn are stuck on jakku for a couple of days before the resistance can pick them up, so rey takes them scavenging. poe is very bad at climbing things, but finn manages to keep up and he knows a lot about star destroyer junk and he and rey get a little geeky about it and finn starts thinking that if the resistance won’t have him after all, maybe rey will and he can stay on jakku and be a scavenger with rey and live in rey’s lovely home. tl;dr by the end of the day he’s mentally scribbling ‘mr. rey’s husband <3 <3 <3′ in his journal. 
• rey still ends up beating plott’s thugs to defend bb-8 and the boys are like …oh. 
• when they board the falcon during their emergency getaway, both poe and finn assume it’s going to be poe flying it, but he ends up in the co-pilot seat hanging on for dear life and by the time they’re in orbit he’s pretty sure he’s about to do something incredibly inappropriate, like ask rey to marry him
• finn still gets the jacket. idk does he still have that cynical ‘we can’t win’ moment at maz’s place and after he and rey say goodbye poe follows him all hey buddy i’m sad that you’re going but i totally respect your choice so here’s something to remember me by?
• poe introducing finn and rey to leia. they’re all in various states of exhausted dishevelment but poe’s got his arms tight around them and his sweet, crinkly-eyed smile and leia decides on the spot that yes, she will officiate this wedding. 

(via bonehandledknife)

broadlybrazen:

white-throated-packrat:

otherromanticverbs:

broadlybrazen:

trying to find that one post where y’all speculate about Finn realizing he needs to provide a surname, and he just goes with “Dameron” because that’s the first one which comes to mind (none of his old friends had surnames or even names beyond their official designations, and he can’t remember that much of his family)

and Rey is like “yeah solid choice, makes sense, I like the sound of it” because Rey is a feral desert child and doesn’t know any better

and of course Poe is charmed, and is like “sure I am happy to provide jackets, surnames, my elite piloting skills, my hand in marriage: anything for my friends”

and idk at some point, someone is like “okay Rey do you have any other name, what’s with the mononym shit” and she’s like “uhhhhh DAMERON” because really if it works for Finn, it can work for her

and the long and short of it is: they see nothing unusual in this and completely miss any implications, and eventually this nonsense gets back to the Resistance fighters and Poe’s entire squadron smirks at him for days

#bonus points if when rey figures out she’s a skywalker (SURELY SHE IS) #she tells finn and they’re both really into this whole FAMILY AND FRIENDSHIP AND SURNAMES thing #so she’s like ‘you are my people; do you want to be a skywalker too’ #and of course finn says yes!!! #so they are now rey & finn dameron skywalker #extra bonus points if they unilaterally decide to extend this to poe #who only finds out three months later because of some stupid admin thing #that he is now officially Poe Dameron Skywalker #and he can’t look the general in the face #‘welcome to the family’ she tells him; absolutely deadpan. #people are sending PRESENTS.

Are Poe’s parents still alive? Because he’d be getting messages asking for an explanation why they had to find out third hand that he got bonded, at the very least?

I have been thinking about this and I have decided that I was completely wrong: this entire mess is Poe’s fault, he totally started it.

accidentally! and with the best of intentions! he woke up in the desert with the ship and Finn both missing, and while he feared the worst, he still had hope. when he made contact with the Resistance, he tells them about Finn and has him listed as MIA; he felt responsible for the kid, he felt awful that this boy took a courageous leap with a total stranger & got smashed to bits in the desert for his trouble.

Poe has some vague notion that if Finn was ever found, he’d ask him to join the Resistance, or help him get settled in a new quiet life somewhere safe. He knows Finn doesn’t have anyone else, so he writes “Finn Dameron” and lists himself as next of kin.

when they reconnect, he’s so happy that Finn is okay (a bit distracted by how gorgeous the kid is, he hadn’t had time to notice before), and genuinely touched that Finn kept his jacket, that Finn was equally worried and upset over him. it occurs to him that the name thing could be awkward, so he explains his concerns, he explains next-of-kin notifications, and “you didn’t have anyone else that I knew of, so I wanted to make sure you’d at least have me.”

after that, Poe doesn’t think anything of it.

…but Finn! Finn is like, COMPLETELY VERKLEMPT, that this cool dashing hero person was looking out for him!  Finn has people now - he has Rey and Poe, and the entire rest of the Resistance have embraced him wholeheartedly. also!!! next-of-kin, that’s SO NICE, he has kin now, he’s not just cannon fodder whose passing won’t matter to anyone but his squadmates. he’s a person, he has kin, he has people, he belongs. it’s so great.

he tells Rey all about it and she gets why he’s excited; it IS awesome. he signs everything “Finn Dameron” and she addresses her messages to “Finn Dameron,” it’s all very exciting. and she thinks about it, too, she thinks about next-of-kin, about Finn coming back for her, Finn choosing her.

when she rejoins the Resistance, she asks Finn if she can be “Rey Dameron” so that they can have next-of-kin too. (it simply doesn’t occur to either of them that they can get next-of-kin notifications without exchanging surnames; Poe did it that way, and it made sense to them, and they never thought about it beyond that.) and of course Finn agrees!

he forgets to tell Poe for another five weeks, and then mentions it in passing. Poe is like, professionally unfazed, so he just finds the whole thing charming. they are so cute and he can’t stop smiling over them; they are the best. and again, Poe moves on & doesn’t think anything of it.

…..and then. AND THEN, eventually, Rey finds out that she’s a Skywalker. [This was foreshadowed so heavily in the movie, I’m 99.999% certain they’re gonna go there.] and obviously there’s a lot of feelings and drama, but when it dies down a bit, she’s hanging out with Finn and they’re drowsily curled up together on his bunk because they want to talk FOREVER but they’re so tired but the have SO MUCH TO SAY.

Rey doesn’t totally understand what all of this means for her, what it means to have that family and their legacy. but she does know what it means to have THIS family, the one she has with Finn. so it makes perfect sense to make him part of her new family, to mesh the identity she’s inherited with the identity she’s made, so she asks him, “you are my people, you are my next-of-kin. do you want to be a Skywalker too?” and of course he’s like “YEAH!”

and like. throughout all of this, Poe is their buddy and means a lot to them, and they think of him as their people. (the entire Resistance has noticed how much the kids adore him & hero worship him, it’s hard to miss; they would tease Poe more about it, but he clings grimly to his virtue and hisses “CRADLE ROBBING” every time it comes up, so they mostly let it go.)

so when there’s some Big Dramatic Space Mission, and his squadron goes missing briefly, Finn & Rey are both really messed up about it. and then one of them is like, “…you know what we forgot to do?” and the other one is like “OH OF COURSE.” as his next-of-kin, they have the right to get his records updated, so that’s what happens while Poe spends several miserable weeks fleeing across the muddiest, swampiest continent in the galaxy. when he finally makes contact with the Resistance, he has acquired (1) space cholera, (2) space ticks, and (3) a new surname, though he doesn’t learn about that last one for a while.

His mothers find out around the same time he does, and they are Not Amused. “Why wouldn’t you TELL US,” they ask, and “it’s hardly classified, apparently your whole base knows,” and “we had to hear about it from your commanding officer, young man,” and “were you ever planning to introduce us, what do you have to say for yourself”

and like, there’s a totally reasonable and rational explanation for all of this - “it’s not what you think,” he says feebly, and his moms huff, unimpressed - but he’s still shaken up from the influx of engagement/wedding presents and General Princess Leia herself visiting his bedside to fix him with a gimlet stare and a completely deadpan, “Welcome to the family.” He’s had a long day, he might be married, and he’s not sure how but it’s at least 30% his own fault.

OKAY I LIKE THIS ONE

(via bronzedragon)