#again idk if there’s like an official way of categorizing movies

[unearthly-angel]

i don’t know anything about film but google categorizing conclave as “thriller/mystery” is very funny to me. like yeah sure i guess. i would consider it a political/comedy/high school drama but to each their own

[doggo-fiends-on-a-spaceship]

ok so let’s type this whole thing out again because fuc k  me . 

rise of the guardians au! gasp! 

here are some ideas for who would be who but it’s very vague ahaha

jack: ok my first choice is virgil. because isolated, alone, rejected, cares deeply even about people that don’t see him or believe in him, cold but a total softie, brave (although jack and virgil are brave in different ways to be fair). my second choice would be roman--isolation and feeling lonely/not good enough still apply, but roman fits more with the fun/dramatic aspect of it. however, i like the parallel of “kind of resentful of the guardians (sides) after being isolated/rejected for so long, but still lowkey craves their affection/approval and wants desperately for them to not be disappointed in him. eventually becomes integrated into their group after proving he cares just as much about kids (thomas) as they do and has a new perspective that helps them.” too much so virgil is my fave option here. (it’s not perfect, though, as jack is more reckless/impulsive rather than cautious like virgil, and while virgil isn’t necessarily opposed to fun he hardly embodies it?? so... not sure.) also: h o o d i e .

sandy: ok while it would be really funny if remy/sleep was sandy here, i’m going with the main “official” characters for now (the main four, thomas, and deceit) so... i love PATTON for this. soft, kind, great sense of humor, but deceptively strong. virgil-as-jack trusts him more than the others, is kind of the heart of the group, dreams are a specialty of his (i know dreams fit roman best but i think in this context it fits patton as well). underestimated by all but the villain despite being perhaps the most powerful of the group. often talked over or ignored, much to his frustration, but once he’s gone everyone misses him deeply.

bunny: my first choice would be roman. sassy and extra badass, hope, kind of vicious/mean towards virgil-as-jack at first but they end up being close friends, cares deeply about the children they protect and his holiday, protector of hope, gets kind of comical/extra when frightened, always ready to throw down. but i can also see virgil (can be sassy to the point of even being mean, lashing out, pretends to not care by being kinda standoffish but cares very deeply, adorable sometimes but can also be genuinely scary) and for some reason (my brain refuses to give an explanation??) my brain goes “uhhh LOGAN would work here. obviously.” no idea why. 

tooth: okay so patton probably fits her best personality wise? although i can def see thomas as she’s very optimistic, happy, cheerful, kind, and also kind of easily distracted, flitting about from one thing to another. not to mention reminding us why it’s worth it to live at our darkest hours, cheering sad people up... but if we kind of forget about the personality bit and focus more on her job i think logan fits pretty well, too. she’s all about good dental health and memories. light in dark times, yes, but also just remembering what’s important. it’s kind of a loose connection i know but i’m really having a hard time having one guardian that really clicks with logan so i’ll take it.

north: my first instinct is patton because north kind of comes off as the dad of the group. roman also fits, as he’s the guardian of “wonder” and he’s all about whimsy and making toys, but he can also be kind of judgey (naughty or nice) and a little clueless (”of course you want to be a guardian!”). another possibility would be thomas--fun loving, a little clueless, trying his best? yes. i also like logan--clueless, means well, and can be a little harsh without realizing. categorizing things (naughty/nice) and managing a huge business (yetis making all those toys and letting the elves run underfoot) but i’m not sure how well logic interacts with wonder/chaos so... idk.

pitch: i know it’s cliche but DECEIT. yellow eyed “bad guy” who really just wants to believed in?? to be seen and listened to??? like it’s not his fault his core is fear--and by extension, nightmares and darkness. and those things are necessary!! yeah pitch def got overzealous after centuries of isolation/rejection but you gotta admit he kind of had a point. he’s the boogeyman, but he’s necessary. he’s done genuinely bad things, but he’s not really evil. also, points for trying to get virgil-as-jack to join him on the dark side, so to speak. not to mention if patton is sandy, there’s some sort of parallel to him taking patton’s place and/or the whole courtroom thing and pitch temporarily killing sandy in the movie. there are others who might work here but deceit fits so well i’m not gonna bother tbh (and i know fear =/= lies by any means, and virgil probably fits if you just go cores, but like, the way he interacts with the story and his extraness and the drama--tell me you can’t see deceit doing that dramatic shuffle across the globe as he dramatically snuffs out lights by stomping on them and counting down with that dramatic flair. that’s not very virgil but that is VERY deceit.)

and anyway if we went just by the cores (memories, fun, wonder, dreams, hope, and fear) then it would be like... virgil as pitch (fear), roman as sandy (dreams), patton as north (wonder), logan as toothiana (memories), thomas as jack (fun), leaving deceit as bunny with hope??? which kind of makes sense but not really. so idk. 

WAIT I JUST THOUGHT OF SOMETHING. 

WHO ARE JAMIE AND THE OTHERS. OH AND BABY TOOTH? 

THOMAS WOULD OBVIOUSLY BE JAMIE RIGHT BUT THEN

dlfkgjdlgkhjfglkh this is so not well thought out. and like, it’s super vague. but i love it so much ldkfhjfgh

might add more we’ll see

[roxannepolice]

Yeah, I see what you mean. On PR classes we were discussing archetypal branding as a marketing strategy (like sport brands framing themselves as Heroes, skincare brands as Caring Mothers, etc.) and Disney (along with Coca-Cola, teehee) was categorized as a Virgin/Innocent. And Virgin's agenda is to oppose evil with love. Now, in archetypal storytelling this may be a good/interesting thing with development potential (Harry Potter is a case of this archetype) and I'd say that Disney (meaning Walt Disney as a visionary cinema personality not Disney(TM)) used it almost all the time (Disney Priness(TM) is a staple Virgin) and I'm generally happy that popculture opens itself to differentiated heroes, but in marketing... let's face it, the idea is that because we love all of you, all of you should love us back. And indeed it sounds almost inhuman to dislike something so inherently undislikeable. But the problem is that trying to satisfy everyone usually results in no one having an orgasm, so to speak.

I think another problem is that age restrictions have become more severe since Lucas made the OT, while he himself is also a bit more sensitive to what can and shouldn't be seen. Again, Larses' bodies, destruction of Alderaan or youngling massacre are terrible moments but a part of this terrribility lies in not showing. DLF seem to go wow yeah let's show how everything burns because we can, it looks good and a (female) titty is still less for children than genocide. I'll put it this way: I feel like if DLF were doing the OT they would show Larses getting killed and then let them have surprisingly good looking corpses.

Y'know, it's like The Jaws's shark. The less you see it, the more terrifying it is.

And yes, I definitely see what you mean about Captain Marvel. I generally liked the movie but Carol herself didn't blow me away and indeed there were moments when I couldn't help thinking oh great Mouse please tell me that's not your agenda for Rey as well. Idk, maybe my problem is that I'm a bit tired of pursuining the same idea of a female protagonist, which, frankly, I call Disney anti-princess, like women are some solid entity. Personally I just feel more affinity with Tony or Stephen on account of being an understandably (though not justifiably) intellectually arrogant jerk who learns to be a better person than with Carol over having a period and I would like to point out that her Kree blood transfusion officially solves all of hygienic products commercials starring blue fluid. And I feel like this is what is expected of me. Idk, it's like the idea was less to create a female protagonist of a superhero movie and more about extending the masculine species of superhero to female specimen.

Also, @ainomica (yes, I again checked the tags), what you suggested is generally one of the possible versions of my "this time she'll be overthrowing the old gods". Though, again, considering her apparent takeaway from the truth about the dolorous night isn't really utter disgrace of Luke's legend only adding a human error element to his legend...

But yah rey as a character is just so frustrating you know? Cause like, yeah sure she could be complex with a powerful arc where shes forced to come to terms with the fact she wasted years of her life on self-imposed delusions in a cathartic way, or she could be a flat piece of marketing cardboard which Disney is banking on vagina+superpowers=profit without having to go through that persnicty character flaw overcoming or the like. Because like you said, hearing shes a nobody (which ngl, her assuming she was a somebody wasn’t really ever supported in tfa, just that her family was coming back and she desperately wanted them to) is apparently the worst thing but it changes absolutely nothing, not her approach, not her demeanor , if vaguely sad is the absolute worse a character is gonna experience in a goddamn space opera then yeah, full offense ill take the l on Mary sue discourse but her character will definitely be a boring ass wash. We all make fun of whiny new hope Luke but him being a kinda nuisance to both the audience and those around him is what made is transformation into full blown Jedi knight so powerful. With Rey so far what weve got is badass perfect cinnamon roll finally get her due as such, which is clearly working for some people, but I fail to see how that isn’t spectacularly tone deaf to make a protag in this genre such. Operas about drama, not patting you on the back. Rey (assuming she remains as is) would’ve been fine as a protag s the only piece of Star Wars media we ever got was a new hope. But rn she a chosen one architype (and I know that bunch of ppl are gonna go but the series ‘but shes not the chosen one, Anakin still is, the new series isn’t trying to make her one!’ but lets not beat around the burning bush, if u got a character that walks on water and the reason why is because god said so, ur dealing with a chosen one trope and if a character is star wars is made ultrapowerful in lore breaking ways because force said so? Yeah were dealing with a chosen one.) when we had both the deconstruction and the reconstruction done. Shes a straight hero when the success of the ot rest on hitting the formula near perfect the first time. What exactly is Rey, the individual character, bringing to the table? What makes her story supposedly so important the a perfectly good ending had to be made invalid to tell it? A bunch of ppl will say heroines’ journey! But if that’s the case I gotta say, wheres all the feminine shit? Im serious, if the heroines journey is reintegrating the feminine and realizing ‘oh shit mom had a point’ there where is both the feminine skills/coping mechanism and the mom? I mean I saw some ppl arguing for leia in a ‘reys Persephone!’ meta (she isn’t, you can make a much better case for ben himself as Persephone to be quite frank, yall are focusing so much on the trees ((girl gets abducted by guy)) that u forgot the forest existed, the actually story ((girl winds up queen on the underworld, well gee whiz which character just took control of that after leaving the world of living and a grieving divine mother behind, it’s a mystery apparently) behind, it’s a mystery apparently) ((but seriously though even if we hope for dark rey does anyone assume its gonna be taking control of a dark/dead coded org at least partially at this point, do you, do you really??). but given the fact she had what, one line of screen dialogue that’s breaking ur arm with that stretch. As far as skills go I guess you could make an argument for scavenging, but if that’s the case dlf did a shit job of conveying that as female-coded. Everything about rey in tfa seems deliberately androgynous, and yeah, she had her hair let down/mascara moment, but that’s tied to her ‘failure’ on the supremacy thus something nw.SPEAKIGN OF FAILURES ON THE SUPERAMCY AND LACK THERE OF. I find it kind funny that bunch of reylo bnfs (you know who they are) are all ‘hur dur fanboys/antis are dumb and don’t get story structure.’ And then going, ‘why are yall asking how/assuming rey fucked up in throne room/climax of her story in the second portion/darkest point of her character arc? Why do you hate women/ur own ovaries so much?’ because it like walking into a prefurnished house and being told by the relator ‘HERES THE LIVING ROOM’ and having no damn couch. It’s a living room, I expect a couch here. And in a movie where it’s the low point of a character arc and they drag puppet yoda out to tell me the movie is about failure, I expect a damn failure in whats clearly the climax of the characters arc for this movie. As it stands now there are three possibilities imo. 1st, rey had no failure, she is the pure badass maid o light ppl want and every inch the boring cardboard she is accused of by fanbros, remains static, and is relegated to an also ran to benlo taking the most compelling character trophy this trilogy in 10 yrs2nd possibility and the one im hoping for, failure speech wasn’t just thematic explanation but also foreshadowing, rey fucks up big and dramatic in a way that makes her manage to stand out as unique with both her contemporaries and her predecessors(last part, if its ever to much lemme know pls im sorry i just gotta get it out) 3rd and most likely possibility, rey isn’t the main character, benlo is and that’s why his failure both moral in the throne room and logistic on criat take center stage for the last third or so of the movie. Rey is merely a pov character to tell the dramatic villain protag story they wanted and have their very marketable unproblematic Disney heroine cake too.

Ok, so this discourse kinda died down by now, but thanks to that it’s possible to maybe have a calmer look at it I’m totally not trying to justify my late response.

Anyway, the good result is that quite recently my brother, who’s not overly taken with Rey - or the sequels in general, for that matter - said something which really stuck with me as a possible crux of the problem: 

She’s neither comical nor tragical. Just bland. 

This neither comical nor tragical really struck me. And the more I though about it, the more it was appearing to me that this qualm really applies to the sequels as a whole. The thing is that DLF are essentially telling a straightforward story that they’re trying to make captivatingly convoluted. And not just make, but keep this appearance over four years. And this is… a narrative teeth crasher. Like, when you’re honest about the endgame (in the context of the most structural meanings of comedy and tragedy), you can maintain a decorum, though you can also play with it, of course, whereas when you don’t want to be honest about the endgame, you end up mixing the styles somewhat messily. You can’t break or discuss with the rules without acknowledging them, so to speak. Because the originals were honest about the happy/hopeful endgame (the first episode is title A New Hope ffs), they could allow themselves deeply tragic moments like Larses’ deaths, Han getting frozen, destruction of Alderaan, etc. Because the prequels were open about being a tragedy, they could allow themselves lighthearted comic relief for the sake of lighthearted comic relief. 

The sequels… badly want us to consider the possibility of FO winning and Ben dying unredeemed while simultaneously insisting we root for those things not happening, while appearing conscious we’re definitely not buying the former and the latter only somewhat. And it’s tiresome. Dishonest. And indeed, bland. If the story is a tragedy it will be a bloodcurdlingly real one, if it’s a comedy it will be a borderline grotesque one. 

But yeah, returning to Rey, I guess as the main character she’s a lens which focuses the above problems. A very bitter tragedy of what her parents did t her prevents her from being comfortably comical whereas whoohooos I like thats and prancing like a husky on red bull over idols and visions because it’s for children so it must be hopeful prevents her from being intriguingly tragical. So I guess the intentioned effect was tragicomism but, from pov of an engaged casual fan that is my bro, it’s neither. 

As far as Rey’s heroine’s journey lacking some of the usual elements, I blame it on Disney being… a bit too ambitious, maybe. I think they tried to make a heroine’s journey that isn’t ostentaciously seeped in traditional feminine/masculine traits, maintains the structure without what could be called accidentals. On the one hand, I would point out that hero’s journey has pretty much desexualised itself over time, we are rather accustomed to “shero’s” journeys, but on the other… maybe Disney set out on a too novel a territory and may crack their teeth on it, alongside trying to out-Vader Vader at redemption. To elucidate, “toxic femininity” in which a heroine is supposed to find herself in the beginning of her journey, in Rey’s case is uprooted from any of our usual concepts of feminine-masculine social roles (it’s space, duh). My interpretation is that Rey’s version of toxic femininity kind of exists in contrast with Kylo Ben’s version of toxic masculinity - and since the apparent focus of the story is the attitude towards the past/parent figures, toxic femininity would mean her clutching onto the past. Which is why I predict that some act of IX will find Rey inebriated with apparent success in masculine world, meaning she’ll be the one rejecting the old gods this time - and I would point out that panel in Poe comic where she shows herself more sceptical towards idolisation of past don’t mind me, I’m just expressingmy trash dreams for a proper sith lady Rey.

Then again, Rian Johnson said she already found perfect balance between Luke’s clinginess and Kylo’s rejection of the past, so… idk, maybe I’m giving DLF too much credit again.

As for the Persephone thing, I guess the rub is that this reylo reading focuses less on the traditional reading of the myth (where Demeter is the actual main character and Kore is a Princess Peach MacGuffin) and more of an interpretation of it as one of the eldest (at least in Europe) versions of story depicting a transition of a girl into a woman, making Persephone more of a protagonist. 

Like, y’know, this Persephone (D. G. Rosetti, source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proserpine_(Rossetti_painting))

I’m no expert, but myths can lose their original meanings because of power relations (anyone still remember about Dionysus, the god associated with excessive drinking, going through a very Christ-like death and resurrection?) and I think it’s possible that this is the case with the story of Persephone becoming a pre-scientific explanation of seasons changing over the year. So teah, that’s how I always understood the Persephone theme regarding Rey.

But yes, I must agree that I’m confused about Disney’s handling of the mother figure, which… Look, SW became a legend of a modern myth because of how epically Lucas handled the hero dealing with his very explicit father. So yes, I don’t understand what exactly is their game with Rey Nobody from Nowhere in this regard. It’s one thing that they had a cool idea with giving her no lineage, another that parent figures are an essential element of archetypal journeys and from symbolic viewpoint the case of a female character the biological relationship is even more crucial than in male’s. And I swear to all the ewoks and porgs in the galaxy, I do hope Disney’s idea of Rey healing the mother/daughter divide isn’t through her healing the divide between Leia and Ben. Again, this isn’t the idealistic sphere. Just… no. 

Anyway, I still maintain hope (this whole meta blog is built on hope) that Rey will indeed turn out to have a proper personal mistake which will make her stand out in the saga. I do have to admit, though, that I find your last theory very likely. I mean, even when I read all the reylo metas going oh, Rey is going to have such an exciting arc in IX, she has so much to deal with though of course it’s not going to compromise her morally, it will be sooo exciting, I just… f*ck’s sake, what you’re describing isn’t a dramatic character only a dramatised role model. It’s great if that’s your thing, but don’t claim it is space opera-worthy, in operas people drown themselves because of cursed sailors, kill over a break up, decapitate over a bad dream and get dragged to hell over a dinner, not persuade their fallen lovers to change their ways, let alone patienly wait for them the understand the error of their ways (and if they do it’s doomed to end in someone dying).