I'm not crying, you're crying!

[orangerful]

Just wanted to link these two blog posts about Rey because they made me both cry tears of rage and joy at the same time.

Rey is not a role model for little girls (spoilers ahead) EDIT: this article title is misleading, click through and read it, it's not what you think)

Rey from 'Force Awakens' is NOT a Mary Sue!

I have some other thoughts to post as well, mostly reflections on my reaction to Rey and Finn, both things that I wish I didn't have to react to. But I should probably not type those up while on the desk at work because it will require me to think a lot LOL.

On the lighter side of things, I typed up an incredibly long post about standing in line for 'Star Wars', how this was the last time I would probably do that just because the "art" of waiting in line has gone away.

Comments

[penderies.livejournal.com]

Rey is my new darling so I don't think I can read the rage one ... do I even want to know?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_profiterole_/]

I was intrigued by the title, but it's actually not what you think, it's about the fact that she's a role model for everybody. That said, I disagree with the title. Representation has 2 distinct roles: for minorities to see themselves and for majorities to see minorities and understand them better.

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

I think the title was meant to be kind of "click baity" in the hopes of luring those people who keep denouncing her into reading why she is important. (though I doubt they would get very far before realizing they had been tricked)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_profiterole_/]

Yes, it's a controversial title on purpose. Still, the text repeats it several times and definitely focuses on one aspect rather than the other. But apart from that, it makes a lot of good points.

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

Yeah, he seemed very passionate while writing it so he might not have gone back to look over what he wrote. I also feel like since he was writing from a male POV and father POV, his focus was on those aspects of life. :) I can't fault him for that.

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

It made me rage because of the people he talks about as denouncing Rey as any kind of hero. He actually points out that she is a hero for EVERYONE. Sorta like that Sarah Silverman quote about telling girls they can be whatever they want to be - the little girls never thought they couldn't be everything until you TOLD them that.

[ragnarok-08.livejournal.com]

Rey is just amazing and it's such a double standard that any female character that's capable of a lot of things is called a Mary Sue.

[midnightwhisper.livejournal.com]

I love Rey! I'm glad that there are people out there among the haters who see her for how awesome she is. I mean, I wish Rey was real. I'd totally want to be her friend!

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

Now that I've actually seen the movie...

She's not really a Mary Sue. She does seem to acquire Jedi skills really fast, but the more I think about it, the more I think there's reasons we'll learn about in the next few films. I'm thinking she's Luke's daughter. (Maybe Han or Leia's, but... I find that less likely, because if they gave her away for protection when her much older brother turned, why not somewhere a little more secure? She was clearly all on her own, unless that wasn't supposed to be the case.* It also doesn't explain the Jedi stuff.) Even if it does just turn out that Rey is an uber Jedi... who cares? By the looks of it, the galaxy desperately needs an uber Jedi, so literally more power to her.

*The abandonment she recalls may be of her adoptive parents, even, rather than her biological. It seemed to me like she was being forced away from them, which is way different than being given away for safety purposes.