#fandom thinkpiece

they tend to take Finn’s existing personality traits and plot arcs and give them to Kylo Ren; sometimes erasing Finn as a character entirely, which is rather racist, even if they claim to have no ill intent (you can be unintentionally racist yknow that’s what most racism is). I suspect it’s because Finn has real tangible chemistry with Rey but I’ll avoid getting into that.

romanticizing abuse & non consensual actions. Saying him invading her mind was romantic, or the bridal carry when he abducted her, for example; did y’all ever think it was romantic when Voldemort got inside Harry Potter’s mind? No, because they weren’t a woman and a man you could project heterosexual fantasies on to.

crying that they’re being harassed by people who were mostly just making jokes about not liking the ship and specifically tagging them with the anti tag and censoring the ship and/or character names so they could be easily filtered or wouldn’t show up in the tags at all. Yea harassing people for ships isn’t good, but maybe in general we should act less like we’re more righteous solely because people are angry at us. That’s not how it works. Especially when some people use it as a defense to creating harmful content (like romanticized rape fiction).

that our first Star Wars female Main Jedi protagonist would end up with a character who is both a murderer and an active player in a fascist government. Important to note that he is also a grown man, who is very capable of making informed decisions, and therefore entirely culpable for all of his actions. That she would choose someone like that, who hurt her friends, herself, killed people she cared for, has used textbook abusive manipulative tactics to get her on his side, is scary and not a good romantic story. One movie does not give enough time for him to legitimately redeem himself enough for a romance between them to be appropriate. (I’d say maybe enough for him to be awkwardly on the good side a la the Malfoys at the end of Harry Potter or like a criminal who names names for a more lenient sentence but that’s it).

“reverse anidala” drives me crazy as someone who really enjoys the anidala tragic love story (it’s a little Romeo & Juliet Shakespearean tragedy where you’re inevitably heading towards a bad ending and there’s nothing you can do to escape it, really). When Anakin and Padmé are together, it’s specifically the parts of the saga where Anakin is a hero; where he is trying his best to be a good person and do the right thing. Padmé falls in love with him because he’s genuine, heroic, and a little bit reckless. Once he goes off the deepend; killing children & his friends, actually actively supporting fascism; she’s 100% not on board, quote “you’re breaking my heart”. She was in love with someone & had to leave when they started to hurt others and herself. Even maybe she shouldn’t have gotten on board with it when he killed an entire village of sand people, (but granted, they abducted his mother & he was obviously remorseful immediately afterwards + he’s basically a teenage soldier at this point; not saying it’s not bad, just that this is markedly different from all the times Kylo Ren has committed murder) but I also think the way the anidala love story concludes drives home that their relationship probably wasn’t the best idea anyways. Another popular comparison is Pride & Prejudice. Mr. Darcy may have been rude to Elizabeth and may have made mistakes that affected her family, but none of the things he did were as serious as Literal Murder or Abduction. Once he realized how he had misjudged the situation he immediately apologized and made big strides to make up for his mistakes. Elizabeth comes to realize she also misjudged him, that he was only trying to look out for those he loved just as she was looking out for the people she cared about. I have no idea how in the world that is anything like the relationship Kylo Ren and Rey have except for that it’s two people who are at odds with each other, at least in the beginning. And Mr. Darcy is kind of broody I guess and usually has long dark hair. The thing with Kylo Ren is that he has already treated Rey and her friends poorly and that’s not something that can be forgiven easily, or someone a person should be in a relationship with. He’s also not a character who has friends or loved ones that he cares for that would make him sympathetic, unlike Mr. Darcy or Anakin. Anakin killed for the people he loved, it was terrible and bad! But we understood what got him there. We understand those intentions and how they can go awry if you choose to believe the end justifies the means. Darcy is a similar reflection of those intentions, except that his mistakes aren’t near as monstrous & easily forgiven. Kylo Ren is motivated by what? Entitlement? A slightly unstable family dynamic? I know Luke ‘almost killed him’ but he had already begun exploring the dark side at that point so what got him there? Not a desire to protect his loved ones that’s for sure. I’m just very personally bothered by these parallels, as they are unequal, and they undermine what I think is good about these other stories.

that they so actively push for it to be canon. You do realize you can have just as much fun with a non canon ship as a canon one. You don’t need to see it realized on screen to have fun with your villain and hero fall in love stories. We all know Rey is just your self insert so you can have romantic trysts with Kylo Ren because you think Adam Driver or sith dudes are hot or w/e; it might be better to just accept and acknowledge that, rather than stand on your soap box telling everyone it’s the best.

Anyways, in conclusion, I don’t like this ship. I’d say it’s fine for you to indulge in it as a guilty pleasure (like I’m a sucker for vaderdala, it’s not like that’s “morally superior”). But I think the entirety of that group of people who ship it really need to consider the ramifications of what they write and what they romanticize and who they’re erasing from the narrative (coughFinncough) and what kind of message it would actually send if it was truly canon.

I also apologize for mentioning Harry Potter so much I have no idea what that was the material I drew parallels to; there are so many other books and shows and movies I’ve interacted with far more recently than Harry Potter. Maybe it’s because it’s a widely known piece of literature so it’s easier for others to see the comparisons I’m making? Hopefully.