#*for the record he supposedly wanted to see if chewy was being honest about A LITERAL SA VENT BLOG not harrassing endos

[sick-as-a-dog]

why dont you show the FULL tags from that vent post? because full context would show that it was about me being sick of transpara people harrassing a zoanthrope with z-OCD. a vent that i made because of transpara people harrassing someone talking about how stressful having OCD is, how those sick fucks were telling them how "lucky" they are to be a "zoophile" and didnt understand why their z-OCD causes them distress. of fucking course i want people to not see us (beasts with literal disorders involving unwanted, obssessive, intrusive thoughts) and mixed us up with the people who actually want to abuse another living thing! and we have been harrassed by people immediately assuming the header implies zoophiles and pedophiles (two groups that HAVE groomed and emotionally abused certain members of our system, mind you) when the vent blog says paraphilic disorder/OCD. i dont even specify what anyone has and people STILL jump to conclusions. just like you did when you assumed that a system member called themself a "paraphile" and "zoophile" because theres a single fucking personal vent post talking about being sick and tired of proparas and transparas. so yeah, no shit i want people to seperate people and beasts with (paraphilic subtype) OCD/paraphilic disorders from the sick fucks that want to sexually abuse another and normalize it. they need to leave us the fuck alone, people like YOU also need to leave us the fuck alone.

heres the FULL vent for your followers to read, since you wanted to twist the words of a literal vent post too

and i know i worded things a bit weird (and had many typos) in that vent, but that was because i was having a slurry of negative emotions (and iirc what mightve been the start of a mental breakdown) while trying to calm down another member that was terrified of us being targeted next. just was not really the best state of mind to make much sense in a literal vent post about another beast with ocd being seen as an abuser and told their disorder was a positive thing. and no, that doesnt mean im saying anyone is a zoophile (the opposite in fact), just that i saw a fellow beast be harrassed for having a disorder and was pissed off.

also, your screenshots are already proof of you stalking our vent blogs. we had you blocked shortly after responding yesterday because one of our protectors was worried about our mental health and safety due to us worrying about being stalked and triggered from being compared to people that have harmed a few different members in our system including me. so not only did you find your way onto a blog that had its url censored out and was supposed to be unsearchable (even through search engines), but you also had to go out of your way to find a way around your block on both blogs. i dont know how you did the first one, but im going to guess you bypassed being blocked through a second tumblr account and went through our blogs. therefore it really does seem like youre stalking our vent blogs. why cant you just respect our privacy? why did you post our sexual abuse vent blogs url when its obvious none of us would be comfortable with that? are you trying to send people to come harrass us? all because you refuse to stop with your stupid beef with chewy and me? because chewy dared to point out that endos HAVE threatened and been ableist towards us and gave you proof of such? and because im defending our system from the bs youre spewing about us to who knows how many people? so now youre going out of your way to make a system you dont like look terrible by twisting our words and making up shit, because how dare anyone call you out for your bullshit. stop making up shit about us, stop dragging this bs on, stop stalking literal vent blogs, just leave us the fuck alone already.

Ok, let’s set the record straight, since carrion-cur is straight up lying about me.

Carrion-Cur

I did not call you an abuser. I called one of your headmates, who is a self-admitted paraphile, a zoophile because they admitted to being a paraphile on a zoophilia post and I assumed that meant they were a zoophile.

I’m not endogenic. I told you repeatedly that I am traumagenic. This really just proves that you don’t care about traumatized people.

[him-e]

Ships and “Endgame” in the ST

I’m curious about are how the narrative treats Rey and Kylo’s interactions in TLJ and how Rey interacts with Finn: I just wanted to hear a counter-argument on why F/innRey wouldn’t be endgame and/or Rey/Kylo would be endgame. They’re not connected necessarily: both can’t be endgame at the same time because I don’t expect Lucasfilm to depict a poly relationship any time soon, but arguing against Reylo being endgame doesn’t mean f/nnrey must be canon or vice versa. Please don’t think I’m writing this in bad faith, I’m genuinely curious about these points and I don’t mean to disrespect anyone who ships Reylo. 

Rey and Finn’s interactions in TFA and TLJ are framed very positively. The lines of dialogue between them like “Cute boyfriend?” and “You looked at me like no one ever had,” definitely point to romantic interest to me: I don’t see why the creators would include lines like that without indicating some romantic interest was there. Finn is the first person to ever “come back” for Rey, and their experiences with each other are “firsts” that are incredibly important. They care deeply about each other.

In TLJ, they are separated for the majority of it, but you could say that separation is always part of the romantic arc, and Rey is constantly thinking about him, while Finn is constantly thinking about her. Before she heads off to save Kylo, she gives Chewie an important message to Finn. (Which could have been something like “I love you” but I don’t want to assume.) When they see each other and embrace at the end of the movie, it’s the first time Rey looks *happy* in TLJ. She looks so happy when they hug, and there’s a long hold both on their embrace and at Rey’s heartbroken expression as Finn tucks  in Rose.

In contrast, the Rey and Kylo scenes could be interpreted as Rey learning her lesson about how important Kylo is to saving the galaxy: not a “Don’t Trust Your Sexuality” lesson, which I do find a misogynistic angle to take on this particular issue, but a lesson about thinking she needs Ben Solo to save the galaxy, a lesson that she doesn’t need him. Additionally, although most of their Force bonds are weighed with attraction, she never seems to be very happy with him, and at the end, he says deeply cruel things to her (The Throne Room scene) and attempts to have her killed on Crait. 

The last Force bond tells me Rey is not budging, and, per the novelization, has no compassion for him: it would be a long, long road to have her forgive him at all, let alone build some sort of romantic dynamic even though they will probably be enemies for a significant portion of IX. (Noting here that yes, they were enemies in TLJ too, but IX can’t spend a large portion of its running time devoted to intimate conversations like TLJ did: it’s the final act of this Trilogy and the Skywalker Saga, things need to start wrapping up.)

I do think that Kylo Ren’s redemption is somewhat necessary to keep the story of the Skywalker family from seeming like a complete tragedy: it would be a pessimistic ending, in my view, if the takeaway from the ST was “Sometimes, your loved one can’t be saved, and so other people must rise to the occasion,” for the Skywalker family. But, even if I think redemption is incoming, I’m still not convinced that Kylo could be with Rey. There’s audience reaction to consider (cue the cries of people asking just how this villain is worthy of the hero), but also the narrative beforehand: although Rey seemed willing to forgive Kylo completely for a part of TLJ, the audience still remembers scenes like the interrogation (a violation of Rey and something that robs her of agency, even though she does defeat Kylo), the Snow Fight, the Throne Room, and Crait. They did tone down some of his actions in the interrogation, like touching her, supposedly, but I still feel like Kylo is an unambiguous villain in those scenes, his treatment of Rey is awful (and this is just about his behavior, not whether Rey fights him off) and then, after showing us some of his humanity in TLJ, he snaps back to being a villain, and hurting Rey, intentional or not.

In TFA, Kylo is very much an aggressor/pursuer of Rey and her triumph is in fighting him off; in TLJ, he seems like more of a tempter figure, and Rey’s triumph is not giving into his offer and finding value in herself. She doesn’t ever seem happy with him, and the narrative never shows us a scene of complete fulfillment when she’s with Kylo: he never gives her anything she didn’t have, where Finn does in TFA by going back for her. (The scene where they touch hands, especially considering the music and the fact that Luke Skywalker is the one walking in on them, could also be read as an ominous one where Rey is getting too close to the dark.)

I don’t deny that Reylo was extremely “shippy” in TLJ. But Rian Johnson, in the same interview when he said that Kylo’s perspective in the throne room was a “naked, emotional appeal” also said: “It was important to me that it wasn’t a chess game, it wasn’t just a manipulation. It’s unhealthy, and there’s much that is awful about the way that he is manipulative. From his point of view, it’s a very naked, open, emotional appeal.” So he does acknowledge that Kylo is being unhealthy and manipulative, and that’s the writer’s intent. Rey’s arc in TLJ is very much fit to a naive hero’s arc, where she trusts the wrong person and sees the error of her ways. It doesn’t mean that Kylo is irredeemable and can never be trusted again, but TLJ also doesn’t mean that Kylo and Rey should be together, and includes quite a few scenes that could be read as red flags on his end, signals to the audience that this is a bad man who doesn’t have Rey’s best interests at heart.

And then there’s the next film, which is more opinion/conjecture on my part, but I don’t think JJ Abrams is the kind of storyteller who’s interested in depicting a big epic romance as the finale of the Skywalker Trilogy, or interested in involving Rey in the Skywalker Redemption question. Han and Leia care about Ben in TFA, Rey only views him as an enemy; and when she does try redeeming him in TLJ, the answer to her attempt is a solid “No.” JJ is a Better Trevorrow to me, in some ways, where he’s good at spectacle and big, bombastic movies, and although he isn’t openly misogynistic, his movies do have some sexist pitfalls. The “Reylo” arc is on a knife’s edge as it is, and already perceived as abusive and glorifying of a villain who hurts the heroine by many people: how would he be able to execute it in such a way that the audience wouldn’t be outraged at the injustice of Kylo Ren not only getting redeemed, but “getting the girl” so to speak? (I totally think the idea of Rey as a prize is repulsive, but unfortunately the majority of people do still perceive heroines or love interests who are female this way.)

Rey not needing Kylo, and being able to ascend to heroism without him, was the end point of TLJ, and I think it would undermine that ending if in IX she did turn out to need him after all and they had to work together or she had to forgive him. The movies so far have explicitly showed that while they’re attracted to each other, he’s a toxic person who isn’t good for her. And if it is going to be romantic going forward, why would it have an “endgame” type ending? And then there’s the option of Rey being alone romantically, but still surrounded by friends, allies, and people who care about her.

And on a separate note, I just feel like there are far too many “romance” cues for F/innRey for that to not have been planned from the beginning. In TFA, those “boyfriend” lines weren’t essential, they could have been taken out without affecting the friendly-rapport feeling in their relationship. In TLJ, they didn’t have to juxtapose Rey being in tears facing Kylo to happily embracing Finn upon being reunited with him. And while there is the factor of Rose kissing Finn, they never entered into a deliberate romantic relationship or showed that the feelings were mutual: I feel like FinnRose isn’t essential to the next movie if they dismissed it, since so much of Finn and Rose’s arc could be read as them being friends or compatriots. There’s really no cues of romance until she kisses him.

I’m sorry this is much longer than I anticipated, but these are the things that have been nagging me for the past few months. I did really enjoy TLJ, and I do like Reylo and apologize if my comments came off like I was trashing the ship for no reason, but this is my honest reading of the text. I have a lot of respect for your meta and wanted to bring up these points: if you don’t want to respond to this, I’m sorry for depicting a negative opinion and wasting your time.

Don’t worry, I don’t think you wrote this in bad faith! That’s one hell of an essay, and I want to thank you for taking the time to write it and submit it to my blog. The two main arguments you’re making are a) that reylo is real but is depicted negatively and so it’s unlikely to be endgame, and b) that f/nnrey can still happen and be endgame because the romantic hints dropped in TFA must go somewhere and it makes Rey happy (forgive me for the simplification). I’ll try to address some key points.

The movies so far have explicitly showed that while they’re attracted to each other, he’s a toxic person who isn’t good for her

I don’t think that’s what the movies showed. He’s not a toxic person to Rey (Daisy Ridley has gone on record saying Kylo “nurtured” Rey in a way that even Luke couldn’t do)—he’s someone whose political affiliation and morals and ideologies can’t be reconciled with Rey’s, and THAT’S why Rey dumps him. Because he doesn’t stop firing on the Resistance fleet and instead asks her to essentially become a villainess at his side, because he’s still hellbent on being the leader of a despotic military organization, that’s why the narrative separated them at the end of TLJ, not because he’s “toxic” or “abusive”.

even if I think redemption is incoming, I’m still not convinced that Kylo could be with Rey. There’s audience reaction to consider (cue the cries of people asking just how this villain is worthy of the hero), but also the narrative beforehand: although Rey seemed willing to forgive Kylo completely for a part of TLJ, the audience still remembers scenes like the interrogation (a violation of Rey and something that robs her of agency, even though she does defeat Kylo), the Snow Fight, the Throne Room, and Crait. They did tone down some of his actions in the interrogation, like touching her, supposedly, but I still feel like Kylo is an unambiguous villain in those scenes, his treatment of Rey is awful (and this is just about his behavior, not whether Rey fights him off) and then, after showing us some of his humanity in TLJ, he snaps back to being a villain, and hurting Rey, intentional or not. 

So it actually all boils down to the audience’s reaction, doesn’t it? He’s too much of a villain so let’s not make reylo happen or the audience won’t accept it. But what the narrative is depicting—intentionally—is a hero/villain romance. The villain being a villain and yes, doing villain things including trying to hurt the hero (and viceversa, the hero doing hero things and trying to stop, violently, the villain) is exactly what defines this sort of pairings. Part of the audience will love it, part won’t, but a narrative that is afraid of pissing off a part of the audience isn’t a strong narrative.

I’m also not sure what would be the point of redeeming Kylo but still having him portrayed as a toxic individual whom the heroine should stay the fuck away from. Does this sound like an epic closure to a trilogy of trilogies whose thematic pillars have always been hope and redemption? To me it just sounds like a moralistic tale trying to half assedly appeal to tumblr discourse.

The “Reylo” arc is on a knife’s edge as it is, and already perceived as abusive and glorifying of a villain who hurts the heroine by many people: how would he be able to execute it in such a way that the audience wouldn’t be outraged at the injustice of Kylo Ren not only getting redeemed, but “getting the girl” so to speak? (I totally think the idea of Rey as a prize is repulsive, but unfortunately the majority of people do still perceive heroines or love interests who are female this way.)

You’re talking as if the audience is a hivemind and universally agrees with the intra-fandom, white-feminist, tumblr-specific “Reylo is abusive” wank. But the majority of the audience is actually moderately fine with Reylo, and most of them will be overwhelmingly okay with it if IX has something that tops the praetorian guard fight in terms of iconic jedi/sith marriage alliance. A good 80% of the general target audience for SW is people who don’t engage with fandom the way we do, they couldn’t care less about reylo or f/nnrey or any other ships for that matter, they just want to see a good story and be entertained for three hours and pew pew space battles. The people who will be “outraged” if Kylo “gets the girl” are only a tiny niche if you consider the star wars audience as a whole.

Also, it isn’t Kylo getting the girl. It’s Rey getting the boy. TLJ made sure to put her perspective front and center—it’s she who pursues Kylo, she who catches him in a state of undress, she who gets the eye candy, she who ruminates on his backstory while also delving deep into her own. It’s her point of view, her feelings, her attraction, her choices, while Kylo remains relatively passive for most of the time, waiting for her (to show up in a force connection, to come to the Supremacy, to take his hand). 

The scene where they touch hands, especially considering the music and the fact that Luke Skywalker is the one walking in on them, could also be read as an ominous one where Rey is getting too close to the dark

oh, no. No, no, no. :)) The Force theme plays during the hand touch. (the /ominous/ music you hear before is actually some notes from Kylo’s theme, iirc). And the point of Luke’s arc in TLJ was that he was wrong about Ben, wrong about trying to murder him, and especially wrong about going into exile for years, and after this scene he finally decides to face his demons. He’s not the wise mentor whose perspective can be trusted. His perspective is as flawed as everyone else’s. And he is actually the one who is depicted in an ominous way in that scene (barging in, hand raised to destroy the hut in a gesture that reminds intentionally of what Ben did the night he destroyed the jedi academy).

And at no point Rey got too close to the dark. She only got close to Kylo. She was never tempted by power, or knowledge, or violence, or any of the traditional pitfalls of the dark side. Her only instinct was to help, and save someone from himself. If compassion and love are a path to the dark side, then we should rewrite the Sith code, lol. No, Luke was wrong, he learned his lesson, and by the end of the movie he went to face Kylo Ren fully knowing that he wouldn’t be the one who’d turn the monster back into a man this time, but that someone else could.

Rey not needing Kylo, and being able to ascend to heroism without him, was the end point of TLJ, and I think it would undermine that ending if in IX she did turn out to need him after all and they had to work together or she had to forgive him.

It’s not about “needing”, or “having to”. It’s about wanting. Rey not needing Kylo (and likewise Kylo not needing Rey) is something I’m thankful TLJ established, because it actually lays the basis for the healthiest kind of relationship, the one where you love someone without depending (materially or emotionally) on them. This puts all the emphasis on personal choice, rather than necessity, and I think fits extremely well with the main themes of this trilogy. Rey realizing that she doesn’t need Kylo was beautiful and I’m sure the narrative won’t backtrack on it, but I still think she’s going to be with him in the end, not because she “has to”, or “can’t live without him”, but because she wants to.

And I think this doesn’t undermine Rey’s agency at all, on the contrary, it elevates it.

Re: the proposal speech being manipulative but also genuine according to Rian, please refer to this and this. 

Re: Rey being “unhappy” with him, uhm. I see this argument tossed around all the time and it annoys me big time. Right, she was SO unhappy that she ditched Luke to run to Kylo and try to save him as soon as she got a Force flashforward of his being at her side. What an ugly vision she must have seen, right? Careful not to confuse “raw emotions for an enemy whose pain resonates deeply with mine, as I’m also fighting a war” with “unhappiness”. Rey wasn’t unhappy in TLJ anymore than she was in TFA—she just stopped pretending to be fine, as she met someone who made her dig under the surface of her plucky heroine facade and confront her own demons and feelings of abandonment, and who brought his own demons and feelings of abandonment to the table, which Rey felt intensely for.

Happiness, conversely, isn’t always a sign and guarantee of romantic love, and the idea that love always makes you feel happy is generalizing and shallow, especially when it’s more about looking happy than anything. “She looks so happy when they hug”. Uh. So? I have a best friend who is truly the only person in the world who can put a smile on my face when I’m feeling down and who I can be completely myself with, and I would even say she’s the MOST important person in my world aside from my own family, and YET, I’m not in love with her. Nor should I try to be in order to stop suffering or be generically “happy”. Friendship is friendship, and love is love: both are equally important but they’re not the same, and they fulfill different needs. (mind, this is not me dissing friends-to-lovers tropes, which I like a lot, or saying that friendship can never evolve into romantic love, just that the kind of comfort and happiness true friendship offers isn’t necessarily the best basis for a romance, especially when there aren’t any obvious signs of romantic/sexual attraction.)

Speaking of which, and moving to the pro-f/rey part of your submission… I think most of the confusion re: f/nnrey being “obviously” romantic in TFA comes from the assumption that an “endgame” relationship needs to be portrayed as unambiguously positive since the start. Yes, Finn and Rey’s interactions in TFA were overwhelmingly positive—almost too positive, which in mainstream fiction doesn’t bode well for romance. Central romances, especially of the “epic” kind, are generally bumpy (or downright antagonistic) at first. And by “at first” I don’t mean the first five minutes of interactions, as in f/nnrey’s case: I mean at least the first act of the story. Translated into the context of a movie trilogy—it amounts to the first movie, give or take.

I just feel like there are far too many “romance” cues for F/innRey for that to not have been planned from the beginning. In TFA, those “boyfriend” lines weren’t essential, they could have been taken out without affecting the friendly-rapport feeling in their relationship. In TLJ, they didn’t have to juxtapose Rey being in tears facing Kylo to happily embracing Finn upon being reunited with him. And while there is the factor of Rose kissing Finn, they never entered into a deliberate romantic relationship or showed that the feelings were mutual: I feel like FinnRose isn’t essential to the next movie if they dismissed it, since so much of Finn and Rose’s arc could be read as them being friends or compatriots. There’s really no cues of romance until she kisses him.

funny how you’re saying that f/nnrey had “too many” romance cues not to have been planned from the get go in the same breath as you also argue that finnrose isn’t irrevocably romantic and could be easily dismissed in IX. Finn and Rose have a complete romantic arc in TLJ. Complete with a kiss. Whereas Finn and Rey only have a “boyfriend” line (which could be very well foreshadowing of Rey getting a “boyfriend” in TLJ, which she did, lol) and everything else is about deeply caring for each other and being each other’s first real friend (she looked at him like no one ever had, he came back for her when nobody would). Friendship tropes, I’ll concede, can sometimes be confused with romantic tropes, but why do the tropes used in TFA f/nnrey speak of romance more clearly than what Finn and Rose had in TLJ?

My opinion: they don’t. And if it seems to you like they do, it’s probably because you want them to see that way. Which is okay, as long as you’re aware of your bias. What really tips the scale from “could be romantic” to “oh no it’s definitely romantic” is the usage of textual, unequivocal romantic tropes and situations like Rose kissing Finn on the lips against a beautiful beaming ray of light or, well, Rey accidentally walking on a half naked Kylo and being very confused. 

Those are facts, not hints.

And this isn’t Game of Thrones with its three hundred parallel storylines and red herrings or a 14 seasons-long CW teen drama, it’s a three-movie space opera that needs to be as closely knit and narratively solid as possible, it can’t afford doing a back and forth between romantic storylines, which at this point (following your logic) would be THREE, and two of them should be dismissed or ended badly in the last movie for the third to be endgame.

The main couples of this trilogy as established by TLJ are Finnrose and Reylo. F/nnrey having any sort of romantic development at this point would only confuse the audience and unnecessarily complicate the narrative, which is already complex enough as it is. 

In TLJ, [Finn and Rey] are separated for the majority of it, but you could say that separation is always part of the romantic arc

Not for the entire second act of a trilogy, the one where (statistically in the SW movies) the pairing makes the leap from platonic (or antagonistic) to romantic. 

and Rey is constantly thinking about him, while Finn is constantly thinking about her. 

…were they? I mean, they probably were and it’s fine to headcanon it that way, but we weren’t actually shown any of it on screen (it was just handwaved at, with Rey trying to make contact with Finn, and Finn trying to leave to find Rey in the beginning) and this is important, storywise. It means that their dynamic is already established; the narrative trusts the audience to remember that they’re friends, they care about each other, they have an unbreakable sibling-like bond à la Luke and Leia, and there’s no need to remind us that they care about each other or introduce new developments in their relationship, which was fully formed by the end of TFA already.

Before she heads off to save Kylo, she gives Chewie an important message to Finn. (Which could have been something like “I love you” but I don’t want to assume.)

Again, it’s fine if you want to headcanon it that way, but one half of the pairing having the revelation that she loves the other offscreen (and no payoff for that at the end of the movie) is a really bizarre way to establish an endgame romantic pairing, if you ask me.

Re: the residual “romantic” cues in finn/rey—I think, if there were any (which in itself is debatable, but still), it’s probably because the finnreylo dynamic was originally conceived (by JJ) as some sort of lowkey love triangle, and then scrapped (still by JJ) in favor of a completely platonic bond on the f/nnrey side. Thankfully, Rian threw any possibility of a wacky love triangle out of the window by introducing Rose and letting Finn have his OWN romantic storyline rather than being reduced to a third wheel or cannon fodder to some stupid romantic conflict for reylo (which has no shortage of conflict on its own anyway, lol).

You also make it sound it deceptively easy to dismiss Finnrose as some sort of failed experiment or brief but ultimately irrelevant digression in the path that leads to the f/rey romance. It’s not. Rose is an important character, whose feelings matter, and she’s EXPLICITLY, textually in love with Finn. There’s no way to work around this fact or pretend it didn’t happen or argue that they’ll magically turn into platonic coworkers or *compatriots* (?). Finn’s feelings might be less clear but that’s why we still have a whole movie to go. But they already kissed, which as I said is far more definitive storywise than a line about a cute boyfriend or a kiss on the forehead.

Finally,

it would be a long, long road to have [Rey] forgive [Kylo] at all, let alone build some sort of romantic dynamic even though they will probably be enemies for a significant portion of IX. 

It wouldn’t be a long, long road to have her forgive him, it would be a very short and simple road, because TLJ already did the bulk of the work in this sense, and made Rey deeply care for Kylo and, even more importantly, understand where his rage and hurt come from. The romantic dynamic is already established, it only needs to come to fruition, which is incredibly easy to make it happen since (to your admission too) they’re doing Bendeption anyway. To be frank, Kylo only needs to choose to ditch the First Order and maybe make ONE selfless act to redeem himself, even in Rey’s eyes, especially in Rey’s eyes. Nothing he did on Crait was worse than what he did on Starkiller (his body count is even shorter!), and it took Rey approximately 5 days to believe in his inherent goodness. I don’t think she’s changed her mind on that. I think she knows he isn’t in the right place to change his views yet, and is fully ready to fight him if need come, but she also doesn’t hate him, as the novelization also confirms (whereas, post tfa, she thought she did).

yes, they were enemies in TLJ too, but IX can’t spend a large portion of its running time devoted to intimate conversations like TLJ did: it’s the final act of this Trilogy and the Skywalker Saga, things need to start wrapping up.

Actually, it can. TLJ did it and managed to have TWO other full fledged storylines (including another romantic arc) running parallel to the reylo one, an identity/redemption arc for Luke AND an epic climatic battle in the end. 2 hours and 45 minutes are a LONG time to develop a dynamic to its fulfillment. And what other loose ends or main conflicts does this trilogy have to resolve yet, other than Ben’s relationship with Rey (and reconciliation with Leia, hopefully)? The only reason you think IX can’t spend time on reylo is because you don’t see it as a crucial part of this trilogy. But it is.

TL;DR; in my opinion f/rey doesn’t have enough set up to be the endgame romance (not even considering TFA alone), and with Rose’s introduction they kind of sealed the deal. Having Finn and Rey be involved in romantic threads with two other main characters only to undo those threads and put them together in the end actually requires more work (narrative-wise) than letting their respective romantic storylines evolve to their natural conclusion in IX. Pre-TLJ I said that both f/rey and reylo can be “canon”, and both are, the former as a friendship (the most important one in this trilogy) and the latter as a romance. I just don’t think they’ll be both romantic in the end. There’s potential in that to explore in fanfiction (just like there was potential in, say, Luke/Leia or Obi Wan/Padmé or even O/bikin), but it’s an extremely unlikely (and messy) direction to go for the canon story.

Hope this clarifies my opinion on the issues you raised, and that I didn’t sound too dismissive of your points. If so I apologize in advance.