#i also like the hc that poe is pan and rey is ace | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

honeylikewords · 4 years

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Talk to me about tros!!!! I need to know about Poe!!

Okay, I’m finally sitting down to answer this anon, and a few things before I start!

1. Most of what I’m going to say will really only make sense if you go see The Rise of Skywalker yourself. While it’s far from a perfect movie, it’d take way too long for me to try and transcribe everything that happens in the film, and the context and nuance of certain scenes. So, yeah, while it’s not a good movie, if you’re invested in seeing how the movies have played out, you should probably go see it yourself.

2. I have some... mixed feelings about the movie. I also know that what I don’t like, I can choose to ignore; despite the disappointments of the series, I don’t have to take Rian or JJ’s bullshit as MY canon. I get to decide what I do and don’t adhere to as canon. Everyone else has their own varying scales of how they respond to canon-- some are super adherent to canon, some don’t care about anything at all-- and that’s fine. So although I have beef with how all this unfolded, I also know that I can take my love that I have for the characters (and all the potential that The Force Awakens had) and carry that on through my own interpretations, re-writes, et cetera, and I can choose to ignore the poor decisionmaking on the parts of Disney and Rian/JJ/who-the-fuck-ever.

3. This ask is very open-ended, so I’m going to have to put some parameters down for myself because otherwise I’d get too overwhelmed with the breadth of information I’d need to present about TRoS. A comprehensive review would be really hard to write out, so I’ll just list some initial impressions (I haven’t been able to see it a second time, but likely will in the near future), and some of the relevant Poe-related issues in the films. If you wanna know more, feel free to send in more specific questions (specificity can help, because with my neurotype, I can easily be overwhelmed by large, “general” questions, and getting more granular can help me rein in and focus on a specific idea)!

4. Also, this post isn’t going to be friendly to R*ylo or people who straightwash Poe/are only interested in him as a straight guy. R*ylo is fucking gross, and I’m gonna rip it apart in this post, and Poe isn’t straight. I try not to be too aggressive on here (I’m generally not very aggressive at all!), but the fandom is just so toxic and vile at times that I feel like I need to put my foot down on these topics and say a firm “no” to R*ylos and Poe straightwashers. Oh, and I’ll be talking about the racism in the movie, as well as in the fandom, so buckle up for that, too. So consider this the “bigots begone!” spell as I wave my wand and attempt to shoo them all away!

Anyway...

From here down are spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. If you’re interested in seeing the movie spoiler-free, please scoot waaaaay past this post! Last warning!

And, with that out of the way, here we go!

Alright, here’s a list of stuff as it occurs to me. I’m almost overwhelmed with information, so it’s hard to condense my thoughts, but I’ll try my best!

1. The whole Zorri thing was a fucking nightmare, but not as bad as it could have been. It was really bad, believe me, but, like, it can be ignored easily (though if you’re anything like me, it’ll still leave a sour taste in your mouth). Like I predicted, Zorri was introduced to straightwash Poe and effectively quash any queer interpretations of his character and relationship with Finn.

But, like, Poe and Zorri had no chemistry. It was almost embarrassing; they were clearly trying to work the “badass woman” angle, but, eh, she was just, basically, a minor blip on the radar; incredibly boring, incredibly useless, and just, like, a “sexy lamp” that could easily have been replaced. She added literally nothing to the film and was blatantly just an insert to try and prevent people from being able to make the case for a queer Poe. But, too bad, Disney! Poe is pansexual, dumbasses!

Oh, and while I’m on the topic of Poe’s queerness, I should add that I’m not really a big FinnPoe, myself; when it got big after the release of The Force Awakens, if felt like just another creepy Tumblr fetishization of male relationships, so that really set the tone for how I’d see it in the coming years. It’s grievously oversexualized on this site, but I also respect that, for many actually queer fans, the ship represents seeing themselves in Star Wars, and I do totally see their bond as canon. I completely acknowledge that Oscar wanted to represent the queer fans who wanted his character to be queer, and in that way, FinnPoe is definitely canon in some form!

So, I do have a complex relationship with FinnPoe, in that it’s not my personal favorite ship (I vastly prefer FinnRey, since I never really felt that Finn and Poe had a romantic tension, but felt that Finn and Rey did), but I do respect the importance of it for queer fans and for trying to push at the limitations a major series like Star Wars has had for so long. Star Wars has been dominated as a straight, cishet, white man’s fandom; it’s time other people got a chance to love it and see themselves in this vast universe, too.

The cast also seems to be leaning into FinnPoe as a form of protest against censorship and homophobia in the fandoms and film world. They’re using their positions as major film stars to push back and say “hey, queer folks belong here, too”, and that’s so great!

But, anyway, the point is, Zorri sucked, and Poe’s not straight. He’s certainly capable of being attracted to women, but he’s not a straight dude, because he’s equally capable of being attracted to men and nonbinary people as well.

Thankfully, Zorri and Poe never actually form a relationship in TRoS. He jokes about asking for a kiss, she tells him to go, and then he, at the end, sort of motions his head as if to say “wanna go kiss?” and she, again, tells him no, which he shrugs off. It’s pretty shitty, but easy to ignore.

Anyway, Poe is pan, Finn is pan, Lando is pan, Luke Skywalker is gay and nonbinary, Rey is nonbinary and probably ace, maybe interested in girls, I’m still ironing my hcs for her out, and no one can stop me! Go ahead and try to kill me, Disney (and homophobic Star Wars fans); if you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!

2. Poe’s “backstory” is such a fucking trainwreck. They basically tried to nix a bunch of what was already canonically established in order to, get this, make Poe a drug dealer.

It’s a little more complex-- the idea is that Poe was a pilot for a group of pirates for about six years, from the age of 16 until he was 22-ish, and ran Spice, the drug in Star Wars-- but it’s also not. It’s really bad.

Way to take a canonically noble, hardworking, Latino character and reduce him to the most shitty, racist stereotype imaginable. I’ve already complained about him not needing a “dark” past, but this? This is somehow worse than him being, like, a bounty hunter, because it carries political implications and is just such a stock, trash stereotype that we don’t need in this world or in our fantasies. It’s ridiculous, and I refuse to acknowledge it.

Worse yet, it’s said that Poe “ran away from home” to join the pirates to “avoid responsibility” at age 16... dude, Poe has been shown in EVERY PRIOR CANONICAL APPEARANCE TO CRAVE NOTHING BUT RESPONSIBILITY. Yes, he’s a hothead, but he’s responsible! He wants to labor and take on caring for others because he’s a hardworking, compassionate, headstrong man! Ugh!

I could go off forever about this, but I’m already feeling myself grinding my teeth, and for the sake of my blood pressure and psychological wellbeing I’m not going to make myself go feral over it right now. Deep breaths, K, deep breaths...

3. In things I did like: Poe got promoted to general, and he made Finn a general alongside him. He really grew into his position, and I’m so proud to see him as General Dameron of the Resistance. He deserves it.

4. Poe and Finn had SO many good scenes and such great chemistry. I loved seeing them bounce off each other, and their relationship made me laugh and smile and feel warm, even as everything else was falling apart. I love my boys!

5. Poe gets grossed out by bones. Canon. Love a squeamish king.

6. Oh, ugh, I just remembered that they tried to frame Poe and Rey as having an aggressive relationship with each other and I rolled my eyes. How dumb can they be? Ugh. I don’t even have the energy to try and unpack how ridiculous all that is. More deep breaths...

7. In terms of the worst thing to happen in the movie... R*ylo, like, gets shoehorned in. Honestly, looking back at all the predictions I made a few months back, I’m entirely right; everything I predicted came to pass. This included.

It was shitty and bad and nearly all the cast has spoken out against it now that their contracts with Disney aren’t as binding, and seeing it happen on the big screen was just... oh my god, it was horrifying.

It really was.

But thankfully, Kylo died, so the ship can’t really continue! Yeehaw!

8. I actually did like parts of the ending. I’ll talk about that more if anyone asks more specific questions, but right now, I’m kinda burning out because of the wide net this ask casts, so I’ll have to defer for the moment.

At any rate, it all happened exactly the way I thought it would, bleh. Like, so much shit in the movie went down exactly the way my TRoS predictions post said, it’s almost scary.

Honestly, though, just running through all this is exhausting me; I really can’t make myself go through it all in this particular format. So, I’ll just leave this here as it is, and if anyone has any specific questions-- what I thought of specific moments, characters, scenes, etc-- send an ask! But this is all just really wide and general and burning my brain out to try and process it all again, so more specificity in future asks might help me stay more on track and not get overwhelmed trying to explain every single thing all at once.

I have tons and tons of thoughts about it, ranging from what I loved to what I’d have done different about the whole series, but I just don’t have the psychological wherewithal to make myself write everything out in one giant, dense, indecipherable post: it’s just all too much, so I’d need to break it down into smaller, more specific questions.

This probably isn’t a super-satisfying answer, but feel free to just send specific asks and I’ll answer them, no matter how many! It just helps to have a specific line of thought to follow, so feel free to ask about each individual thing and I’ll try to answer!

Thanks!

#messages #anonymous #gif warning #rise of skywalker spoilers #star wars spoilers #the rise of skywalker spoilers #ros spoilers #tros spoilers #spoilers #sorry i kinda burned out midway through this but i could feel myself getting a tension headache just listing off all the shit i hated and li #like there IS stuff i liked about the movie there's also just so much nonsense garbage that happened and i just. im just #i need more specific questions to help me limit myself from ranting about EVERYTHING and going nowhere #so if you want to know more PLEASE send some asks about specific things #(it's just for the sake of my brain health and helping me stay focused aaa)

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