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Honey, you should see me in a crown

@merlinist / merlinist.tumblr.com

Just a nerdy, geeky fanboi who reblogs stuff.
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magnolia822

Oscar Isaac, John Boyega and Gwendoline Christie attend the Premiere of Walt Disney Pictures and Lucasfilm’s ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ on December 14, 2015 in Hollywood, California.

#Star Wars: The Force Awakens
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ffshiphop asked:

DO YOU LIKE STAR WARS??

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maggie-stiefvater-deactivated20 answered:

Dear ffseminem,

I DO LIKE STAR WARS.

I was a tremendous fan of the original trilogy (I’ve written before about how I try in my own novels to capture the feeling of this one scene), completely disinterested in the newer three (they did not do any of the things that I liked about the original trilogy), and was passively interested in the existence of The Force Awakens. 

I saw TFA on opening day, and it rewarded my optimism by giving me nearly everything I loved about the original trilogy, plus some things I loved that the first three lacked. I left the theater quite happy. To my jaded and cynical amazement, I found myself actually dreaming of tie-fighters two days later.

Once I climbed onto the internet, however, that happiness turned to sand in my bra. In a fit of frustration I unfollowed 42 accounts on Twitter and 11 on Tumblr. Their crime: excessive posting of Poe gifs. No. That was not really their crime. Their crime was: excessive posting of Finn gifs. No. That was not really the reason, either.

The reason why I’m frustrated with much of the dialog I’ve seen about TFA online is because we have, for the first time, been given a really incredible heroine who does not fall into the Tomb Raider-leather-pants-wearing-mentor-to-the-ordinary-dude mold, and yet, all of these folks I followed were posting 90% Poe/Finn gifs and fanart and screenshots, 10% links to academic articles about how great it was that Rey existed. These were feminists I really looked up to, critical thinkers and savage speakers of a better world. And yet: I had just seen a movie that was overwhelmingly focused on a woman, and I was once again looking at a feed full of men whose arcs were vastly less emphasized by the actual movie. The conversation was not about Rey. The conversation was about whether or not Poe and Finn would hook up in some distant future, and even if they didn’t, talking about how hot it was to imagine anyway.

These accounts twisted themselves in circles to defend why it was fine to talk about and post about the men more. Acrobatics like that normally place you as an Olympic hopeful.

Here’s what I wanted, really. I wanted just one of them to say it out loud:

“Academically, I’m really pleased that we got a character like Rey, because I’ve been demanding characters like her in movies like this for years. But I have to admit that because of the cultural cess that I grew up in, a cultural snotpocket that shits on the accomplishments and values of women in all sorts of subtle ways, I find myself more emotionally invested and excited by the men in this movie despite myself. I’m noting this bias now and remaining optimistic that more movies like this will mean that this bias of mine becomes less true each year.”

But none of them did. So I set fire to my follow list and moved on. 

Which is to say, I really liked TFA and I think everyone who likes any of the Star Wars movies should go see it and continue to show with our almighty buck that movies like this are what we want to see. I’m now more than passively interested in the next movie. I just simply can’t read anything about it online, or I want to throw a droid through a wall. Now that I know these things about myself, I am fine.

urs,

Stiefvater

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heartbranches

Look, it’s my feelings

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merlinist

What I get from this though, is that I shouldn’t ship Finn/Poe because it takes away from Rey’s attention. Tumblr isn’t a zero-sum game though. There can be plenty of posts about both, and more. The OP also glosses over how revolutionary it would be – if indeed it becomes canon, which we can’t know  – for a franchise like Star Wars to end up featuring a gay coupling. I haven’t felt this excited about such a possibility since Korrasami. 

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heartbranches

It’s less that, and more finally we get the female protagonist that I’ve been dying for! How long have I wanted a lady Luke Skywalker? And here she is! Literally! Annnnd most of the fandom is excited for shipping Finn and Poe. Which is great, if you’re into that. But it’s a deluge of shipping excite and a trickle of Rey, and it’s like, for fucks sake, can’t I get my cake too????

To the point I’ve just tumblr savior’d all of the Finn/Poe stuff. Have all the squee you want, no one is saying you can’t have it. But it just makes me sad and frustrated that our big takeaway from a movie where a girl gets to have a compelling story where she is not the focal point of a romance, is these two dudes doing each other, which seems to be our takeaway for any of the media I’ve liked in the last 5 years.

And you know, again, hooray if you like that. But to me, friends and family trump romance and sex, and I’m tired of every relationship being pushed in that direction because the only way for a relationship to have any real meaning is to make it romanic/sexual.

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merlinist

I guess what got me prickly was an impression that one can’t simultaneously be into the sex/shiny and also the friends/family stuff--that a fan is either shallow or serious, and evidence of one means the absence of the other. I’m actually extremely stoked for Rey being the main character (and I do think she’s the main character, not Finn and definitely not Poe) but I don’t see how all the Finn/Poe diminishes that. That the shipping exists doesn’t mean people think it is the main takeaway. I'm not sure I agree that there’s only been a trickle of Rey stuff, but I think most of the Rey stuff has been more cerebral and word-based (e.g. the whole debate about Mary Sue-ism) and less of the shipping variety and picture-based (therefore a lot of what I see is off Tumblr). Although I am seeing tons of cutesy/chibi type gifs for Rey and crew. An analogy (for my personal case) is Sherlock BBC. I reveled in the shipping in that notorious fandom but honestly, I also enjoyed the show for its writing, the mysteries, and I continued to enjoy it even with Watson’s marriage to a person who is not Sherlock. I genuinely enjoyed playing with them in my head on both sexual and platonic levels. But I probably reblogged more shipping because that’s what was available. :) Which I think is your point, but I guess I’ve gotten used to Tumblr being shipping-land and other websites being the domain of other forms of excitement.

#Star Wars: The Force Awakens
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