what i want from the finn/poe, finn/rey and finn/rey/poe side of star wars fandom
less weirdly sugary fluff pieces
more working with the fact that its poe is a mouthy risk taker who will throw himself into danger
that finn is quick and clever and willing to do hard things for the right thing, even when it terrifies him
that rey has eaten a dude. i mean, ok no, but she’s so fucking scrappy and vicious and kind. She’s a lot of things all the time.
I don’t know I just want more variety in the stories told about them
and that, as @sharpestrose said, all three of these people would steal a car with the littlest of provocations. don’t just slot them into ‘innocent fluffy bunnies with sad backstories’
all three of them are scrappy as hell, and its delightful
They pretty much do all steal cars in the course of the film. Finn steals two.
Like they had good cause and all but still.
Finn breaks, as far as he has been taught all his life, a terrorist out of military prison. They steal the fastest car they can find and blow up as much shit as they can on their way out. They total the car immediately. He starts several fights in a local marketplace, meets a girl in those fights and they immediately steal her bosses antique car. They meet a con man while he is stealing what he claims is his antique car from them. They sick killer monsters on his justifiably angry customers and hitch a ride with him. He knows someone who can hook them up with another stolen car. Things don’t quite work out when Finn turns down a job offer and they are only saved from Finns old boss by the old dude’s old lady who seems to be running a chop shop come revolutionary army. Finns first friend is a hoon in his shiny black muscle car. They blow up pretty much everywhere they go after that.
Rebellion, resistance, violent revolution, baby! Bring it on!
I love all of this, but also let me beam with pride and love and say that I am
At first, Finn doesn’t understand what the problem is.
The base on D’Qar moves to a different heartbeat than
Starkiller: more chaotic than ordered, with an inconsistent stream of missions
and refugees and impromptu meetings in the war room early enough for his eyes
to still be tacky and blurred. He tries his best to slide into the place left
behind by the countless bodies left in the wake of the Hosnian system, even
though he swears the General will glance in his direction and just stare
straight through him, as though witnessing a phantom.
Finn isn’t sure he wants to know what she’s actually seeing.
So he works, and he gives quiet advice, trying to keep his
head down, cause yeah, he’d excelled at being a Stormtrooper, at tactics and
standard recon and procedure, even though by the end of it Phasma’s vaguely
proud turn had turned sour when he had refused to leave anyone behind. On some
fundamental level, Finn knew the Resistance didn’t operate that way; General
Organa’s quiet joy when her pilots returned as a whole, with no men lost. When
they find a complete family adrift in the wreckage of the New Republic. When
another soldier stumbles from the medbay with his head still attached to his
body.
Finn likes to think that he’s helping. Poe says it often
enough, but Poe also enjoys protein bars and standard maintenance, so Finn is
starting to think that his advice is a little dubious.
crying males: “disney is destroying star wars with female leads”
“rogue one also has a female lead? ugh”
“great another mary sue”
me:
I don’t mind if Star Wars has a female lead, as the Star Wars franchise has always been home to strong female characters, I do care if she is another giant Mary Sue like Rey was. Rey was so Mary Sue that it became distracting to the movie. A character with no force training takes down a trained Sith Knight, she flies a freighter designed for two pilots with no help despite the fact she had never left the planet before, and she can also repair said ship with no problem because she had spent years salvaging parts off of a broken star destroyer? The only thing she didn’t do was have all of the male characters try to romance her at once and I thank the force for that small concession.
The only good new character in episode 7 was Finn. The rest of the characterization fell flat or was just used to make Rey ascend to Mary Suedom.
anakin built the worlds fastest pod racer and c3po when he was nine
the first time luke flew a spaceship he destroyed the fucking death star.
Kylo Ren: Not a Sith. Not fully trained. Also? Injured by a bowcaster that we’d seen could take out several stormtroopers at a time.
Rey: Literally spent all of her downtime flying a flight simulator to the point that it could no longer throw anything at her she couldn’t handle. For all kinds of ships. Nor did she solely scavenge star destroyers. She spent her entire life scavenging every imaginable wreck on Jakku, and her survival depended on her learning what ships had what parts and what was valuable. This, while competing with other scavengers, most of them working in teams.
Which meant she had to learn how to fight, or else she wouldn’t have gotten out of childhood.
Basically, Rey had way more in-canon reasoning to be as good as she was than Luke Skywalker did–who basically went from never flying much out of atmo to piloting an X-wing under combat conditions and rocking it… apparently just because of genetics and the Force. Who then went on, only half-trained, into a fight that even YODA thought he was going to die in, and survived, against a man literally birthed by the Force, trained as both a Jedi AND a Sith, with about 25 years of combat experience under his belt, whereas Luke had had a lightsaber for about 3 years. What a Mary Sue he was, huh?
Rey had more reason to be what she was than Anakin Skywalker, who accidentally wound up in a fighter and accidentally destroyed a droid ship. Anakin who was such a Mary Sue he was LITERALLY A VIRGIN BIRTH. How Mary Sue is THAT?
The creators, in short, HAD TO GIVE REASONS for every single thing Rey knew how to do, because of assholes like this person, who would take any special skill she had as proof that she was a “Mary Sue” just because she was a female character. No one bothered to give those reasons to Luke or Anakin. Because they’re the hero. OF COURSE they can do the impossible. But Rey? Jesus, what a Mary Sue.
Reblogged for excellent commentary.
(I’d thought the Rey-hating twerp up there was like sixteen, in which case I’d cut them some slack, but nope turns out they’re in their 40s.)
On top of all that, with a single exception, all of Rey’s extraordinary feats are stuff we explicitly see folks with no Force training do in the original trilogy.
Pulling a lightsabre to her hand? Luke did it before he ever met Yoda. Granted, Luke had a visibly harder time of it, but as he was concussed and suffering from mild hypothermia at the time, he jolly well should have.
Firing ranged weapons with uncanny accuracy? Luke again, in his famous trench run - and again, he was untrained at the time.
Resisting mental manipulation? Freaking Jabba the Hutt pulled that one off, and not only is he not trained as a Force-user, as far as we know he’s not even Force sensitive.
(Yes, the EU tries to wave that last one away by asserting that all members of Jabba’s species are naturally immune to mind control, but come on - that’s the same EU lore that insists that Rodians are literally a culture of bounty hunters because the single Rodian we see on-screen is a bounty hunter.)
Of course, there is one exception - one feat of Force manipulation that we’ve never seen an untrained wielder pull off before: Jedi mind tricking the First Order storm trooper. You know, a brainwashed child soldier conditioned nearly from birth to display reflexive and unthinking obedience to authority - the writers could scarcely have given her an easier target.
In sum, the stunts Rey pulls off are entirely within the demonstrable capabilities of an untrained Force user. You’d think these jokers had never seen the original films!
Exhibit 948374858383 demonstrating that a woman has to work twice as hard for half the credit. Even fictional women.
I love how that dudebro said “sith knight” also
Random Dude Bro No.9828718738371: Rey is a Mary Su-
I just remembered that everyone in Pacific Rim would’ve seen The Force Awakens and I just
> Newt lets Hermann borrow his jacket one time because it’s cold and Hermann forgot his. Hermann goes to give it back later. Newt looks him dead in the eyes. “Keep it. It suits you.” Silence follows. Newt can’t keep a straight face. Hermann walks away with the look of a man who has suffered through fifty Star Wars references this week already, and will likely suffer through fifty more before it’s over.
> Tendo opening awkward conversations with “So, who talks first? Do you talk first? I talk first?”
> Back when he was working the Wall, Raleigh sometimes muttered “one quarter portion” when he got his ration card at the end of the day.
> “The garbage will do” becomes a running gag among the Jaeger program has they have to resort to jury-rigging shit and settling for things that better fit their increasingly diminishing budget.
> Mako has all the blueprints to make a fully functioning BB-8 replica. She just never got around to building it. She was totally going to enlist Hermann to help with the programming, too.
> Newt referring to the increasing size and power of the Kaiju as “some Starkiller Base overkill bullshit.”
> “THAT’S NOT HOW THE DRIFT WORKS.”
I still haven’t seen it and I need to jump on the pacrim/force awakens bandwagon fast.
Anonymous asked: picture this: an underestimated finn rescuing rey and poe. people in the resistance would focus more on how nice and helpful and head over heels for rey and poe he is, not on how deadly he actually this. so when the last jedi and the commander of black squadron are kidnapped, no one thinks about finn until he's vanished. and he returns a few days later going "yeah i saved them. btw, here's all the data on their networks. i killed all the soldiers, so i hope this is enough."
Leia is so proud. Everyone else in the Resistance is half-terrified and half in shock (aside from Rey and Poe who are both just like “yup this is pretty SOP for being in enemy hands when Finn does not want us in enemy hands, not new territory here”), but Leia is just SO PROUD.
Somewhere Phasma is surveying the carnage and is S U F F E R I N G. She could’ve had that soldier. Did she really just have to keep that idiot Slip alive and encourage Nines and Zeroes to fraternize a bit and she could’ve kept that soldier? REALLY, WAS THAT ALL IT WOULD’VE TAKEN TO GET RESULTS LIKE THESE ON THEIR SIDE?? BECAUSE SHE WOULD’VE DONE THAT, FOR RESULTS LIKE THESE.
Hux shows up all baffled and pissed off like “wtf happened HERE” and Phasma is just like “I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT”.
Okay, so we all know that Poe went around the Resistance base telling everyone about the Handsome Stormtrooper that saved his life – but what about BB-8? Imagine BB-8 coming back to base and promptly telling everyone about the good brave human who saved his Poe. This is Finn he is so lovely, he is the best of all humans, look at him, be nice to him – he’s a little bit slow – doesn’t understand droid at all but he’s a quick learner.
And imagine ALL THE DROIDS falling into line, looking after Finn, and Finn is just so nice to them because he remembers what it’s like to be treated like you’re nothing, like you don’t have a personality. And they just adopt him: Finn the best human, they designate him, and R2-D2 – battle-hardened war vet that he is – teaches him binary but teaches him the bastardised sweary binary that all the older droids speak and BB-8 is innocent and oblivious and C3-PO is scandalised because Finn is going round saying things like fuck me this is hot in this little whistle-beep.
And whenever Finn sits down he’s surrounded by happy young droids who absolutely adore him, and he is just so nice and all the droids go out of their way to do things for him.
And yes. Give me sweet lovely Finn with his droid ducklings.
And when the base is attacked, it’s the droids who turn the base into a deathtrap for the invaders - doors that trap or crush, sanitation systems that break explosively, power that reroutes itself on the fly to keep one squad in the dark while on the other side of the base another entire squad is electrocuted courtesy of a misfiring sprinkler system - and at the helm coordinating everything is Finn, knee-deep in young droids chanting reports from every part of the base in between best human, best human, BEST HUMAN.
