So this whole Rey Mary Sue thing just keeps twigging me (and not just because the whole bullshit, sexist concept of the Mary Sue knots my knickers like nothing else)
Because while this fuckboy opinion is probably motivated from dudes being, well, fuckboys, it may also be mired in them being MEN.
Because like, I and every single female friend I have walked out of Star Wars with absolutely zero doubts that Rey had earned every inch of her scrappy, badass survivor mantle. It wasn’t until dudes online started whinging about the “believability” of it that I even contemplated the issue.
So now, three viewings in, the second two spent ACTIVELY SEARCHING for signs that Rey may have suffered New Powers as the Plot Demands I have this to say:
The moment the film opened on Rey - a young woman living and operating ALONE on a world in which literal survival depends on who can scavenge AND EXCHANGE the most goods for food rations, I’d wager every single woman in the audience went, “Holy shit, this girl is capable as fuck.”
We didn’t even need to see her owning the thugs trying to steal BB-8 to know she could handle herself physically. We looked at her environment, her position in that environment, and we knew that to be where she was - just to have lived as long as she had - she had to know how to fight like whoa.
Because here’s the thing: woman don’t walk through life the way men do. Just living in our world is dangerous enough for a woman - to grow up young, alone and female on a world that would brawl over scraps and sell anything that wasn’t pinned down? That’s fucking terrifying.
Women look at Rey at the beginning of TFA and see every single hard-won year of survival. Every year of losing to fellow scavengers stealing her take before she could trade it. Every year she had to not become the very thing they were trading. Every year she was an easy target. And we see every year she had to fight to make sure she wasn’t one anymore.
That had to take guts, not to mention a healthy aptitude for combat and weapons training. The ability to pick up languages and social niceties on the fly would have been essential because my enemies enemy and all that.
Every single “unrealistic” ability these dudes are wanking on about was obvious as fuck to me within the first fifteen minutes of the movie.
So welcome to the party, boys - this is what it feels like to have to identify with someone outside of your own experience. And hey, who knows, if you take the time to ask why Rey was so capable instead of whining about it, you may just learn something.
#also not to mention the scene where she saves bb-8 #she wouldn’t have stopped that guy even if she knew him if she didn’t think she could win #it’s this scavenger’s wasteland and she has enough of a reputation to say ‘hey stop that piss off’ and have someone listen to her #star wars #the force awakens (via @imgoingtocrash)
ALL OF THIS AS WELL
I don’t doubt she could fight, speak droid, speak cookie, shoot, or use the force but how the hell does she know how to fix a fucking hyperdrive? I don’t think it makes her a Mary sue or whatever but it is bad writing. when characters have unexplainable abilities for the sake of making the film run more smoothly, it’s bad. I think it’s easy to go in the defensive when men criticise Rey because I do think a lot of it comes from a place of fear and sexism, but taking an unbiased, logical look at her abilities and realizing they may be slightly overblown isn’t sexist. It’s analytical. still, i’d rather see a female character whose overqualified as opposed to a weakling who needs a man to save her every 5 minutes.
How the hell does she know how to fix a fucking hyperdrive?
She… lives on a planet littered with the remains of the galactic war? Remains that include (as shown in the movie) Imperial Star Destroyers and other ships capable of hyperdrive? Remains that she has to scavenge for survival? Remains filled with parts that she’d have to know the function of in order to evaluate their trade worth?? And you don’t think she’s picked up any working knowledge of complex starship engineering in the years she’s done nothing but crawl around inside literal complex starship engineering???
?????????
Even my idiot brother picked up on the fact that Rey could fix ships because she dismantles them for a living. It’s… kind of obvious.
The only thing that gave me pause was how seemingly easy it was for Rey to use the force, having had no prior experience. Especially given that apparently it’s impossible for individuals to uncover latent abilities without training, going by the fact that if there are no active Jedi, everybody thinks the force is some kind of myth.
However, there are two points that can explain this. First, Rey was under extreme duress. Think of it like how mothers get super strength and are able to lift cars if their children are trapped underneath. The rush of adrenaline and self-preservation instincts allowed her to tap into this hidden ability.
Now maybe that alone isn’t enough. Surely Rey has been under extreme duress before, given her back story, and surely other individuals who are force sensitive have been in difficult situations without their powers manifesting. But my second, and most important, point is the fact that Rey had the force being used on her. She was on the receiving end and knew how it felt. From there, she just took what was being used on her, flipped it around and pushed it back.
So, in short, Rey’s prodigy-like manipulation of the force is not some Mary Sue special snowflake situation, it’s merely a demonstration of how humankind’s ability to dig deep and use everything available to them when their life is in danger is how they managed to survive this long in the first place.
Rey had way more training and prep than Luke did in A New Hope. I don’t see people calling him a Mary Sue.
Okay, first off: Anakin winning that race?? no humans ever did it before. He *was* using the force. Just not in a “levitating objects” way. But picking up how to fly complex engines quickly by using battle meditation? Anakin did it at the age of nine. Luke did it when he blew up the death star. It’s like in harry potter, guys. You can use the force subsconciously and not be aware, or rationalise it away. Leia has memories of her mother, even though she was a baby when padme died. In the “Princess Leia” comics, she has a brief force vision of Padme. It’s entirely possible that as a child, Leia had visions of her mother and later interpreted that as memories. Rey having used the force before? To, for exemple, feel opponent’s intentions a second before they hit her? not impossible. A ton of people probably use the force every day in the galaxy, having “bad feelings about this” and stuff.
My pet theory is also this:
Anakin grew up being told that using the force was hard and complex. He picked it up more quickly than other padawans, and even used it unconsciously before being trained, and definitely had to concentrate less than other people to use it, but he still lived in an environment that discouraged using it outside of actual need / battle, so he never developed it as being as much a part of him as, say, his hand. It was still a tool to him. Still something exterior, something hard and complex. Something you achieve, something you “master.”
Luke grew up thinking it was impossible. On Dagobah, Yoda had to show him that it was, indeed, possible to lift his ship before Luke could do it. The restriction on his powers? It was in his mind, people. That’s the key to all this! Luke could do anything that he put his mind to once he realised that it was all possible, and that the only limit was himself and his beliefs! Do or do not, there is no try: it’s literally the most important lesson that Yoda taught him.
Rey? Rey grew up believing it all real. She grew up on crazy stories about jedi doing all sort of cool stuff, probably most of it being grossly exagerated but absolutely awesome. Of course Jedis can mind-trick people into doing stuff! Of course they can call a saber to them and use the force on their ennemies and I don’t know what else! Of course you can just “use the force” to disable a shield, jedis can do anything! Disabling a shield is probably, like, the first thing you learn as a jedi!!!! (that’s not how the force works. But she doesn’t know that! Imagine the stories that get told! Old clone wars propaganda! The negociator and the hero with no fear!!!) so when Rey starts trying to do those things… well it’s like Harry Potter’s patronus in Prisoner of Azkaban. She’s got no mental block, no hesitation. Of course I can do those things, she thinks, I’ve got the force! ergo, it works. The limit is in your mind.
This is exactly what I assumed from minute one and I’m so relieved that it wasn’t just me.
(via bonehandledknife)
