what you think handamaiden sabe was rey's material grandmother?

I did? I don’t remember ever thinking Sabé was related to Rey. To be honest, there are so few women in the PT & OT that I never even considered she was related to any of them--it would have to be explained to the audience (who would need reminding) in the way that "Rey, you're a Skywalker/Kenobi/Binks" just doesn't have to be.

If I'm wrong, please refresh my memory, anon!

I believe that Rei is dad-coded and Kazuki is mom-coded, not because Kazuki cooks and cleans and Rei rests at home, owns the house, and carries the missions, therefore "doing the work" (although that's part of it, too), but because of the difference in how they value each other and Miri.

I don't know how to explain but there's a quote from a book called "a dangerous silence" that i read several years ago, I don't remember the exact words but I never forgot the message. It was said from a brother to a sister in a conversation about their mother who died young and their complicated father, and went something like: "We [the kids] may have been her [the mom's] world, but she was his [the dad's] world."

Miri is Kazuki's world and Rei's world is Kazuki.

Like Kazuki took to Miri immediately while Rei came around to it after battling with his own childhood issues, issues with his father, his separation from whom he was only able to survive for so long because of Kazuki. The journey to Kazuki's healing began with Miri in the first episode, while Rei's journey to healing began with Kazuki, pre-canon.

Not to say that they don't both love Miri and each other fiercely, it's just a different dynamic with them both much like how it is with a mother and father. Also, initially and throughout the series, what gets Rei to come out of his shell is always Kazuki, even in the moments when it's for Miri. Rei notices when Kazuki feels down and tries, in his own way, to cheer him up. In episode 10 when they were on that last outing, Kazuki spends the entire episode on the verge of tears and Rei spent it worrying for him. It's only on the ferris wheel, when Kazuki makes him acknowledge it, that his lips tremble. I feel like there's also a factor of it being like Rei thinking that Kazuki is the better parent for Miri and therefore by prioritizing Kazuki, he is in fact prioritizing Miri.

And there's a thing where mothers can cope with the death of their spouses on their own while fathers cope by repartnering and that's because they need a life partner. That or they end up like most grumpy widowers we see on tv (obvi 100% accuracy guaranteed). And I have actually seen this in real time in both cases. The mother stays strong for the children, the dad is listless. (Of course not every case is the same, just from my experience and what studies show, but there's also Katniss' mom and whatever this isnt about them)

So, I believe that in the event of a death in the anime (extremely unlikely, but whatevs), Kazuki will be devastated, he will grieve, but he'll survive (not taking into consideration that this is the second time a loved one has died) if only for Miri's sake, he can be strong. And even if Miri didn't exist, he has the capability to carry on because even if he'd blame himself, he's good at ignoring his feelings and compartmentalizing. Rei though does not have that talent. He is self destructive and self depreciative. If Kazuki died, i have a feeling he would blame himself, and always think that he shouldve been the one that died, that Miri deserved the better father. Maybe he'd even punish himself by staying away from Miri, not letting himself be happy, etc. I believe that if Kazuki dies, after securing a home for Miri, Rei will actively try to die. That is until Kyu beats some sense into him but yeah.

Kazuki is mom-coded and Rei is dad-coded.

there’s room for a great star wars mamma mia au in there somewhere. before her marriage to finn, rey reads the entirety of jyn’s diary and decides to invite all three guys her mother mentioned in entries from the year she was born to find out who her real dad is. cue the imminent arrival of arrival of cassian, a tightly wrapped leftist attourney, luke, a wandering gay travel writer, and han, a man who has a boat. also enter vel and cinta, jyn’s former band mates and rey’s lesbian aunties. everyone has such a good time with the abba dance numbers for days but at some point jyn has to at some point be like rey you know you’re adopted, right? none of these men is your biological father. but she has three (3) dads anyway 

i really like la'an so far but man im obsessed with how middle school self insert her personal baggage reads. like this is my star trek oc she's like tasha but she's also related to one of the most iconic sci fi villains of all time and her whole family was killed by equally iconic tos (kinda) villains and she was personally rescued by an iconic majel barret character who is now practically her mentor. babygirl i can just tell the reddit threads written about you are rancid i want ten more of you

They have the chance to fix TROS but I'm not holding my breath. Rey will probably be the woman who needs no man again bc she's a girlboss

oh also is that like actually his dad or is it like a drag queen thing?

Rey's definitely his dad.

But also, there is Eddie Guerrero.

Eddie was Rey's best friend in real life, but in the storyline for a while they were enemies.

There was this storyline about how Rey wasn't Dominik's real father, and how Eddie was. This happened way before I got into WWE, so forgive me if I fudge the details a little.

So, basically:

Eddie had a kid outside of his marriage when he and his wife were separated (?) in real life and wrote about it in his book, and in the WWE storyline Dominik was that kid because he was born around that time. There was a big feud that involved Eddie showing up to Dominik's school (he was like eight at the time) and telling him he was his real dad, and it all culminated into a ladder match at SummerSlam 2005, where the winner of the match would have custody of Dominik. Of course, Rey won, because Dom is his son.

Eddie sadly passed away around three months later in November of 2005, but it was a great match and an even better friendship.

This is where the "I'm Your Papi" thing comes from! Eddie said it to Dominik and wore the shirt first.

This is also where the Eddie's Son chant comes from in the betrayal video I linked in the original post.

The Rey documentary talks about the feud and so does their episode of WWE Rivals, but I can't find that on A&E or Peacock yet. If you have cable tv it might rerun on A&E on Sunday?

the absolute rage i feel when i see any other rey parentage hc tags on my posts. no i am not normal about rey sky yes i know it’s unreasonable to get this mad about it no i will not stop love and light <3

What's strange about stuff involving the sequels is you'll read "the idea was to have each director build off what was established by the prior film," implying they didn't have some overarching plan, but then you'll read an interview with Adam Driver saying they knew what Kylo's character arc was from the start

Imagine this about the sequel trilogy for a moment.

Imagine Rey wondering about her parentage, wanting to discover where she came from and why she was abandoned by her parents, and having clear abandonment issues after befriending Finn and Poe. She gets easily over-attached, and often doubts herself and overthinks things. But her heart is in the right place and has a chance to have a better life.

Imagine Finn becoming a hero, escaping from the First Order in which he was raised to serve and kill as a soldier with only a number as a name, and joins the resistance to fight against the very faction he grew up in, if only to rescue fellow soldiers who are still trapped there. He discovers he is force sensitive along the way, and is encouraged by Leia to find and train under the famous Luke Skywalker to become a Jedi.

Imagine Poe standing up for himself and the resistance against a sketchy commander. After Leia's death, he truly takes up command against Holdo and becomes a true leader for the resistance, one his parents and Leia can be proud of.

Imagine Kylo and Rey completely switching sides. Kylo realizes the error of his ways and joins the resistance to make up for all that he has done, to make up the pain he caused to his parents and reclaims his identity as Ben Solo. While Rey grows more angrier and doubt about her parentage and friendships consuming her, which Snoke uses to push her to the dark side.

Imagine Hux staying the terrifying general TFA established him as, showing that he shouldn’t be messed with and staying loyal to the First Order until the very end.

Imagine Phasma being an intimidating soldier who had slaughtered many resistance fighters. She also oversees the troopers in training, and makes sure under brutal measures that the soldiers will never betray The First Order like FN-2187 did.

Imagine Snoke being the next powerful big bad of the series, having manipulated both Kylo and Rey to his side and using them as pawns to get to power.

Imagine Palpatine staying dead.

Imagine Disney had a fucking plan...

I truly believe that what contributed to the lack of a good ending in the Star Wars sequels was the fandom culture.

If those movies had been made before the age of BuzzFeed, amateur youtube critiques, and viral text posts, the loud lore-hounds wouldn't have warped everyone's expectations.

The Force Awakens comes out. Everyone reacts to it. Most people, especially kids, enjoy it and are waiting to see the next movie. But the loud lore-hounds say two things: "1) it's just a copy of a New Hope and 2) I bet Snoke is -fill in the lore here-/I bet Rey's parents are -fill in the lore here-"

Star Wars benefitted from being something the Everyman, the casual observer, could enjoy. Because it was just simple storytelling, back during the original movies. But then, because of the age of internet fandom culture, casual fans got gaslit and overshadowed by Star Wars lore-hounds who totally warped simplistic storylines and ripped the focus off of what the story was supposed to be about.

The Force Awakens Story said: "Pay attention to this lonely girl, Rey's, need to move forward and act for the greater good."

And then the loud lore-hound fans on the internet screamed: "PAY ATTENTION TO THIS NEW FORCE-SENSITIVE MARY-SUE'S PARENTAGE, HEARING A NAME FROM THE PREVIOUS MOVIES IS WHAT'S MOST IMPORTANT."

And then before The Last Jedi comes out, the audience's expectations have changed. They're not where The Forcr Awakens' story left them. Because in the time that passed between movies, the Star Wars fandom lore-hounds got loud and changed the focus of the audience from "good story" to "franchise mystery bingo."

And it's so irritating. And they're not the only fandom that values a name-drop and a bone thrown to the mindset of "I know more about this series than casual viewers" OVER plain good storytelling.

It also, like all of these sharp reversals, fundamentally misunderstands the point of The Last Jedi. The middle film in the trilogy was about many things, mostly the idea of handing Excalibur to a new generation (“we are what they grow beyond”), and the idea that a person’s worth is not measured by their parentage (“Rey from Nowhere”). The Rise of Skywalker erases these decisions in a blind panic but never really thinks about what that erasure means. It becomes a story about angry parents and uncles yanking Excalibur back so that they can ride in the Millennium Falcon one last time, and about how a seemingly unimportant young woman can only matter if she has the right blood in her veins.

The Rise of Skywalker Wants to "Fix" The Last Jedi: The Results Are a Nightmare

the existential dread and fear cassian lives with due to being situationally kidnapped and taken from his home planet, waking up on a closed space craft with two people who speak a language he doesn’t understand here to sever his connection with his past, meet rey’s existential dread about being summarily abandoned on a planet that isn’t hers by her family to fend for herself while the space ship in her head flies away from her forever. They have the potential to be the most fucked up meet loving foster father and feral foster child mental illness dynasty dynamic ever. Cassian keeps emphasizing you can LEAVE at ANY time And i will take you BACK to JAKkU in fact why dont we put some sand in a Jar for you to have Nice grounded memories and rey is like oh my gosh you’re abandoning me you’re going to abandon me and leave me there again. he’s labelled all the exit signs on his ship in four languages

Star Wars female friendships should be more of a thing.

Like, I will forever wish there was more overt Obitine, but I also equally wish that there was more of the Padme/Satine friendship.

There are so many themes connected to parentage and belonging and found families and mentoring but female friendships (DEVELOPED female friendships, not just mentioned or implied like Bo and Koska or Bo and Ahsoka and not just mentor/motherships like Hera and Sabine or Leia and Rey or Ahsoka and Sabine) would really add so much.

And if I'm getting wishes for free here, I'll add one on for more Bo and Satine backstory/sister dynamics.

Rey should be Kenobi

No she shouldn't. Rey Kenobi is just as bad as Rey Skywalker, Rey Palpatine, and every other Rey parentage answer other than Rey Nobody. The entire point of her arc was that she doesn't owe her power to a lineage and doesn't need one to give her permission to be significant. Rey Kenobi undermines the message of "anyone can be a Jedi/anyone can be a hero" just as much as all the other options.

Also, this whole noble lineage bullshit isn't even a thing in Star Wars except for the Skywalker family specifically. EVERY JEDI IS A NOBODY. There is no "Kenobi" family, there is only Obi-Wan. There is no "Jinn" family, only Qui-Gon. Aside from Darth Maul and his brother, who besides the Skywalkers makes a family of Force Sensitives? Jedi aren't even allowed to have families! The only reason people were so obsessed with Rey having a lineage was because people either felt like her power needed an explanation because of misogyny, or they wanted her to be related to one of their favs because having a Cool Girl Main Character for a daughter would be a nice thing for their fav, not because it would serve Rey's own narrative.

The Last Jedi, the Last Good Star Wars Movie

I'm gonna go ahead and preface this by saying, I have no idea how this will play with my social circle here on Tumblr. I know how my Twitter and Bluesky friends feel about SW, but not y'all. I don't think I've ever even seen a post about it here, and I don't care to go look. Bottom line, I have too many opinions and not enough people who agree with me, so now you have to suffer through this essay. You're welcome.

I was a fan of SW at least as early as I have memories. I'm 29 years old, which means I grew up firmly in the prequel era, and watched them young enough that I didn't even realize older people hated them. Obi-wan was my hero, not my mentor, I never really identified with Anakin and always liked Obi the most. But, and this is important, I loved Star Wars and thought all of it was good. I read one EU book set between episodes 1 and 2, I watched as much of the original Clone Wars series as I could, and I played lightsabers during recess in school. I am at least as nostalgic as every gen xer who laments a bygone era when SW was good because they don't understand that they just liked things better as a kid. But, the difference is, that kind of person tends to despise everything about the sequel trilogy, in my experience. Not so for me.

The Force Awakens was a pretty good movie in my eyes, when I first saw it. I did notice the deja vu, I had very little actual interest in Rey as a character, but just having a female force user at the forefront was huge to me, and it was certainly, at least, a solid foundation for the next two movies. My biggest TFA hot take is that Kylo Ren was the perfect antagonist for this movie, as basically a spoiled shithead who is a fanboy of his grandpa and wants so, so badly to be cool like him. I was also the sort of person who got really invested in the ~mystery~ of Rey's origin, and the speculation of her parentage.

Enter TLJ. My first emotion, at several points during this movie, was dismay. I couldn't believe they just made Rey some random person, after setting up that her background was vague and mysterious! I couldn't believe that Luke never fought anybody and then he died! But, very quickly after, I had time to process my emotions, and I realized that this movie was something special. It manages to "yes, and" TFA while also roasting me for investing so much passion into the questions it rose. "You thought she would somehow be Obi-wan's daughter? Are you serious?" And when you get angry at that, you're met with the obvious question, "Why should it matter?" It shouldn't. We want to see the characters we love come back, but when it comes to this girl, this hero, why should she have to be related to some old dead guy in order to be special? The Force is everywhere, it lives in all of us. That is the central point of TLJ. And, arguably on purpose, this film pissed off Star Wars fans more than anything ever could.

TLJ isn't just a movie that taunts the audience for speculating based on its predecessor, it taunts the audience for being overly invested in the entire franchise. TLJ looks at its series, it looks at the people who watch it, and it demands that you question your relationship with the material. It calls you a fool for assuming that an emotionally-stunted young adult like Luke would become a well-rounded mentor, for assuming that he was incapable of being tempted by darkness, for worshipping him as a pure hero. Because, who is Luke? He was a kid who was bored with simple life, got pulled away into a galactic conflict, and pretty much stumbled his way through saving the world. Even at the final moment, he was very close to murdering his father out of rage. Do you think that's just gonna go away after Palpatine died? Just because Luke put his sword away? No. It also mocks you for assuming Snoke is going to be important just because he's a large man in a fancy chair. He's a parallel to the Emperor, so you assume he'll be the same, and the movie roasts you for it by killing him off unceremoniously. And the Poe plot? That is nothing but one giant own on everyone who loved Poe assuming that the cool guy hotshot was the most important and competent person in the fleet.

The intent of all this playful mockery, I believe, was to get viewers to question how they idealize the past of the franchise. That's what it did for me. But, mediocre white dudes don't like being mocked, as we all know. They take it VERY personally, and they blew up the whole thing. They harassed creatives involved, sent death threats to poor Kelly Marie, and all in all went berserk about this movie for children about space wizards. How dare it move on?! How dare it not just be about my nostalgia?! Not just white, not just men, but I don't feel any need to deny that that's the primary demographic. There was already some backlash to TFA, but TLJ pulled no punches, and the most perpetually-offended fandom in the world lived up to its name. It's really that simple. And as a result, the Disney Overlords scrambled to make them calm down. Enter...Rise of Skywalker.

I. Fucking. HATE this movie. Apart from the fact that it tries to undo everything I loved about TLJ, it's poorly made in more conventional ways. Rushed pace, aimless writing, having no idea what to do with the characters, (not to mention giving the black protagonist a black girlfriend who has all the same backstory and traits as him, lest anyone ship him with Poe) it is the epitome of a movie that only exists for nostalgia, but it can't even do that well. If there's one lesson I've learned from the sequel trilogy, it's that JJ Abrams is not only a trashfire of a director, but he is utterly incapable of reacting to what happened in the previous movie, because he spent so much runtime just calling Rian Johnson a liar! "Rey's not no one, instead she has the most asinine backstory in the history of the franchise." To me, it reeks of a man who despised the way Rian responded to him, and is just desperate to overrule it. As a writer myself, I can't even imagine doing something like that instead of doing my best to work with what came before. The definition of hack behavior.

TLJ was a movie that tried to move Star Wars into the future, to divorce it from idolatry of the past, but ROS is a movie designed with intent to reel it back in, to say, "Hold on, art and creativity are great and all, but Disney gotta make them nostalgia bucks." A return to hero worship, to centering the leads of decades ago, to feeding the lore rather than telling a story. And the fact that it followed a film that told the story it wanted to tell and didn't give a shit how you felt about it, it's just insulting.

This is going to sound like cheesy artist babble, but to me, the art of creation is sacred, in a way. Not literally holy, but just beautiful and meaningful. Even if what comes out is bad, it's worth doing if done with sincerity. That's how I see TLJ. But given the way both fans and the rights holders reacted to it, I'm depressed and pessimistic regarding the future of the franchise. The Phantom Menace was the first movie I loved, and I still like it today. I'm sure I'll love TLJ forty years from now, and I'll probably continue to watch new SW movies when they come out. I don't know if I'll ever love a movie in the franchise again, but I can have hope. This is a movie that proved Star Wars was capable of being better, and that doesn't change just because neckbeards hate it more than they've ever hated anything. This is still going to be the franchise that has TLJ in it, and the haters can't take that from me.

actually, speaking of lore consistency, i've been thinking about a lot of the tie-in material for the sequels here lately and i have to say there's a lot less consistency I feel like than there could have been. and i'm not just talking charles soule 'oh fuck what tfa said about the fall of luke's temple actually', but like...generally speaking i feel like so much emphasis being put on, at the time, that everything expanded 'verse worked consistently with the films, actually harmed the perception of the films themselves.

because when you divorce the films from their book/comic tie-ins, they flow very well. better than typical criticism will have you think (and before anyone brings up Rey's parentage, first off I lived through tasm2. that shit WAS nonsensical. second off, traumatized brains genuinely work like that. doylist explanation of the writers waffling - something very common in star wars, unless you've forgotten luke and leia's romance fizzling out because hanleia was more popular and george last second retconning them to be sibs - could be criticized, but the watsonian explanation that Rey's memories are that badly fucked up from trauma fits. source: my memories are that badly fucked up from trauma). the only thing is that the movies don't remain consistent with the tie-in material.

which, duh. they're the source material, not these one-shots. the opening scrawl of tfa says that leia has support of the senate behind her with the resistance, which is why poe introduces himself as commander of the new republic fleet. it's why the resistance is in dire straits in tfa/tlj, they just lost their support system. but tie-in material built off a deleted scene, where the senate largely doesn't take the resistance seriously. so we wind up in this bizarre land of "the senate didn't support the resistance but actually they did". if it had been better fleshed out, it would've worked (my partner came up with a great explanation for how both would work and it's simply not there in the 'canon' text). then you have the poe comics, which decides that despite tfa making it extremely clear that looking for tekka was ren's responsibility (with battlefront ii backing this by having him torture del), we get....random first order intelligence officer being in charge of the hunt, because soule was more interested in doing mission impossible-esque stories than the kinds of stories that would better fit the tekka search. this isn't even counting the back and forth of poe's character development in the comics (listen i love those comics, but there's a LOT of two steps forward, three steps back, especially in regards to Poe handing Tekka over. That arc perfectly set up Poe from BTA growing into the Poe we see in the films, annnnnnnnnnnnnd then Soule like. retracted it in the very next issue. This does not upset me in the slightest, why do you ask [chewing through drywall] and like. poe and leia have no familial dynamic to them in those comics either, to the point that watching tlj for the first time was a tRIP for me because i had a !!! oh!!! they're family!!! moment bc that's not present in the comics, with the exception of maybe l'ulo's funeral)

and of course my favorite example of the source material going "ew wtf" is tros just. point blank. saying "who the fuck is resistance reborn?" specifically through poe. iconic, showstopping, i love it to pieces because that novel deserves a slow death rotting at the bottom of the ocean.

the best tie-in material is often either ones built AFTER the films all released (looking at u free fall) or the rare time you can tell the author genuinely loves the characters/era and writing it isn't just a gig. my point is i think by having authors largely ignoring the canon text, and making this very inconsistent lore built around a deleted scene, etc, very seriously harmed the sequels.