#finnrose for ts

[him-e]

Something tells me “SW isn’t about romance” wouldn’t be as much of a touted point among the anti/fanboy crowd if Rey/Kylo wasn’t the main romantic possibility. There’s a similar “But it isn’t a real romance/Finn didn’t kiss Rose back enthusiastically” attitude around Finnrose: they won’t accept that its canon. But if the main romance was Rey/Poe, for example, I feel like more people would be okay with it, and the same people saying romance isn’t important in SW now would be stanning it.

Being ok with these pairings IS part of the “romance isn’t important” mentality.

Those pairings, even if they include the main heroine (like F/R or P/R), would be cute side plots at best. They can happen easily as a footnote in the context of a larger, non romantic main narrative. They don’t need a lot of character evolution on either side to happen and they’re not remotely as crucial as Reylo is to the destiny of the galaxy, the galactic war or the Force. They’re just like... typical action/adventure blockbuster romances. They’re the icing on the cake, not the cake itself.

The anti-romance crowd is ok with romance as long as it remains an accessory to the plot. They don’t want it to be THE plot, like Reylo is.

There’s a similar “But it isn’t a real romance/Finn didn’t kiss Rose back enthusiastically” attitude around Finnrose

FinnRose is technically in the “romance as a subplot” category and therefore in theory should be more easily accepted than Reylo, but in the eyes of the general fandom it’s linked in a weird way to Reylo “happening” (if Finn ends up with Rose, F/R can’t happen, which is another step in reylo’s direction) and so it’s antagonized just as much as reylo is. 

I think another factor is that neither Reylo nor FinnRose are male-gazey in concept and execution. They’re both very much female driven romances where the female character isn’t sexualized for the audience or treated like a prize. So, naturally, the audience questions that the romance is even real.

[janiedean]

Queer girl here, I'm also kind of sick of tumblr's attitude that every straight ship is the culmination of the devil. Finnrose in itself is progressive, why do people have to completely bash rose for it? If you want to get mad at someone, get mad at the writers. It's not correct but at least you're not giving hate to the character/actress who had nothing to do with it. We should have representation but that shouldn't mean that every straight ship is automatically terrible.

I SWEAR I’m so tired of this perpetual straight ship bashing like guys it’s not progressive and it just makes you look like you only want your chosen character to be in same-sex relationships otherwise they suck and like... ugh. i’m tired. xD also YES EXACTLY? and finnrose has nothing wrong with it in itself ugh I just don’t get it 

[naberiie]

(i love you) i want us all to eat well.

rating: g fandom: star wars: the force awakens; personal headcanons for sequel trilogy focus: finn character study ship: can be read as finn/rey, finn/poe, finn/rose, finn/rey/poe... (everybody loves finn) content warnings: food, eating additional tags: no plot/plotless, fluff, five things/five times, force-sensitive finn 2.4k

summary: Finn’s journey took him from the barren, bleak corridors of the First Order to the colorful, welcoming warmth of the Resistance community; from dense nutrition bricks to home-cooked meals among friends.

A (mostly) fluffy study of his character journey, using colors and foods as motifs.

on ao3.

snippet:

The first thing FN-2187 remembered tasting were the nutrition bricks.

Cold bricks the color of durasteel, with about the same flavor. Two for every meal, more for the heavy gunners. It was all very scientific. Exactly what each class needed, nothing more, nothing excess. It was cheaper this way, easier to serve, easier to prepare, easier to store food items in nutrient-dense, flavorless bars for the troops of the First Order. Each bite held together like wet sand for just a moment on the tongue before dissolving into a dusty cloud of faint metallic taste, like the distance memory of biting one’s tongue.

[emperorren]

(Resistance Reborn excerpt in question here) 

Guys calm down. I understand the anxiety (given the piss poor treatment Rose was given in the marketing for TROS, and her apparently downsized role and not being part of the trio adventures), but, I said on twitter, I think this is just an excuse to put FinnRose on standby until TROS, so the actual romance can develop on screen (as it deserves to), rather than in supplementary material.

They don’t want to start TROS with Finn and Rose as an already established couple, with all the angst and pining resolved offscreen. And it’s okay; it actually makes for a juicer, more compelling romance. IIRC, didn’t I say Finn and Rose would go through a period where she thinks her feelings are unrequited and pretends she doesn’t remember the kiss, and he has no idea how to feel about the ‘’’’’’Moment’’’’’’, also because he doesn’t know how to process romantic feelings and his (probable) sexual awakening, and it’s really awkward and confusing for both?

ETA: ah yes, I found that post. “I personally think it would be a waste to establish them as a couple off screen”. lol.

[anghraine]

what do you think of rose and finnrose? I'm really excited for her character and her dynamic with finn in TLJ :)

Same! We’ve never really gotten an in-depth look at ordinary people in the wars—they’re all part of top-level command in some way (Leia, Padmé, Obi-Wan) or ranked officers + superstars in whatever their specialty happens to be (Anakin, Luke, Cassian, Poe). I mean, Threepio is probably as close as we’ve gotten to that. So I’m genuinely excited to see one of those people doing the thankless work of the Resistance come front and center. Particularly given that Rose's sister seems to be one of those people in the more glamorous roles while she’s not, which I think could be an interesting aspect of her character/relationship.

And Finn/Rose looks adorable! I always like the “your idol turns out to be different than you expected” trope. And undercover shenanigans! Height difference and grumpy tension! All good.

I also like ... how do I put it? Okay:

The Jedi/Sith/Force/Skywalker A-plot tends to suck up a lot of oxygen from the other characters, except when it’s not actually the A-plot or when the other characters are split off into a separate narrative. It’s difficult to see Finn (who, antis aside, has never been suggested to be Force-sensitive) retaining his stature if he’s attached to the side of the story where Rey, Luke, and Kylo are inevitably going to have primacy. So I’m also really onboard with splitting the narrative between the Force-stuff side and the Resistance-stuff side à la ESB so that Finn and Rose can star in their own plot rather than being adjuncts to the Rey vs Kylo story.

[empiregalaxy]

Reasons why people ship Finn / Rose

As it looks like they’ll get alot of screentime together, it does make sense that people would see romance

Because they trust Rian Johnson to make the chemistry between them interesting and riveting

They know it’ll be good

They think it’ll be one of the central romances in the new film

And other possible reasons

False Reasons why people ship Finn / Rose

Because they are dirty reylos who want Finn out of the way.

Calm down fandom. Not everything is a secret agenda pushed by evil Reylo shippers.

[elvesofnoldor]

not to vague or start drama but speaking of finnr/o/s/e, ever since a finnr/e/y flat out stated that finnr/o/se as a ship is racist simply because rose would keep f/inn away from r/ey and somehow pairing fi/nn with an asian girl is more racist than pairing him with a white woman, i learned to keep the fuck away from hardcore finn/r/ey shippers lmao 

[him-e]

I had the misfortune of talking to someone today who said that Rey must've wanted to tell Finn she loved him and how they were thinking about each other the whole time and how their hug at the end was framed non-platonically and I'm just.....So Tired.......(In the meantime, who is Rose? What is a Rose? R-o-s-e?)

Eh, whatever floats their boat. I mean, if I shipped F/R, I’d probably headcanon it that way too. Part of shipping is rewriting canon narratives when they don’t go your way, filling the blanks with ship-positive stuff, and yes, ignoring canon love interests that got in the way of your otp. It’s not a cardinal sin and we’ve all done it one way or another in our fandom life, unless we ship only canon pairings.

But if I went shrieking in other people’s posts about how it’s Totally Canon and they’re terrible people for shipping an *abusive ship* when it’s such an evident and objective truth that F and R ADORE each other and have declared undying romantic love to each other off screen, that would be a problem.

[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.

[him-e]

Even in that post you linked you’re saying Finnrey is bound to happen, and that it’s an obstacle in the way of Reylo development. Given how much Rey and Finn think about each other in TLJ and the sheer romantic vibe of their reunion embrace, it’s not any less canon than it was in TFA. So why are you aggressively denying it? Maybe you’re crying platonic about it because you know it’s more canon than Reylo and that threatens you

absolutely. I, a reylo shipper, am feeling absolutely threatened by the fact that finn kissed a girl who isn’t rey, and who appears to be his love interest now

[him-e]

the weirdest thing to me after tlj wasn’t the f/nn/rose hate, sadly i expected that as soon as she started interacting with him. it was the usual ‘beloved male protagonist/new female character’ hate being couched as woke rhetoric protesting rose as a racist and abusive character, and i’m asian so it hit personally. i started avoiding other f/nn ships and stanning rose just out of spite. maybe she wouldn’t have gotten such a raw deal in fandom if she’d been in tfa, but then again maybe not...

Thanks for coming forward as an Asian fan. 

The discourse around Rose is terrible—I literally don’t give a fuck if people don’t ship her with F/nn, but before you accuse the first asian woman in a semi-lead role in Star Wars of being /bad rep/, an abusive and racist caricature, because of actions she did that would have gone under the radar if the canonically beautiful white protagonist had been in her place (like hurting F|nn in their first interaction), maybe think twice and consider: 

am I aligning myself with those racist fanbros who have been hating on Rose and Kelly to the point of driving her away from social media? 

am I giving them ammo by providing “woke” excuses to hate her? 

how does my discourse affect asian fans of her character? 

does the fact that SOME asian fans did not like her (because fans of [x] group aren’t a hivemind) give me carte blanche to keep on slandering the character? 

if my point is “I wish I could like her, and I would if she had been a completely different character”, can I really consider myself a supporter of woc in mainstream media, or do I only support them when they specifically cater to MY interests? 

how about not making any excuses for not liking her?

But you know, they HAVE to make excuses, otherwise the entire basis of their discourse collapses. Two years ago, they were calling people who didn’t ship an interracial ship racist. Now they’re not shipping an interracial ship themselves, so they have no choice but flip the script accordingly and couch their lack of interest as a legitimate reaction against a character who is “objectively” (?) *badly written*. If your logic is that people aren’t allowed to just… not be fans of something for no deep or socially woke reasons but just because it doesn’t click with them, then you have to make up a deep and socially woke reason for hating what you hate.

that’s how a certain fandom attitude works—especially on tumblr, and it’s NOT limited to Star Wars, and I encourage everyone to see through it.

maybe she wouldn’t have gotten such a raw deal in fandom if she’d been in tfa, but then again maybe not…

Yeah, I thought about this too—that MAYBE, if she had been introduced in TFA, some of the people who shipped F/nn with Rey would have shipped him with HER instead—but as for the rest, you would hear the exact same arguments you do now: “she’s boring”, “she’s not a hero”, “she isn’t nice to him”, “she’s not a protagonist like Rey so she’s obviously a downgrade”, “they’re trying to pair F/nn with a minor and funny-looking poc character instead of letting him get the white woman because racism”, “ugh why there has to be a token asian character in the first place and why they’re showing f/rose down my throat” etc.

And also, if the real issue were that she wasn’t introduced earlier, then you would have LESS people blaming the director who DID introduce her, and MORE people criticizing the director who DID NOT think of putting a woc in the first film (not that I necessarily think it would have been a good choice narrative wise, TFA is already clogged enough as it is. Nor I think JJ deserves vitriolic attacks any more than Rian does. But… logic?) 

[him-e]

EXPAND! In which ways was the Poe/Finn friendship good for TFA but not so good for the plot in the long run? I've never seen this brought up before

~don’t shoot the messenger~

Disclaimer: I think TFA is a brilliant movie and i love it so much but it’s also very vanilla. It’s plain obvious that it was made with the very deliberate intent of pacifying the audience and make it happy so it would forget the prequels trauma and start buying tons of Star Wars merchandise again. 

There are some… disturbances in the Force in TFA, the major of which is Kylo Ren (small wonder that after 2 years critics are hailing him as the most interesting character in the new trilogy). Despite superficially being the expected Vader stand-in, everything about Kylo, from Adam Driver’s casting to the weirdly sexual interrogation scene to the creepy “call to the light” to Han Solo’s murder, is meant to upset, disquiet, disorient and at some points even nauseate/horrify the audience… in direct contrast to how comfortable and reassuring and conflictless everything else is. The main characters are all lighthearted and funny, and it doesn’t take a lot of looking into it to fall in love with them (which doesn’t mean they aren’t complex, just that they’re very cleverly written to be immediately likable). Everything falls into place smoothly, effortlessly. Even the scenery is vanilla: there are no strange planets with grotesque or harsh or genuinely alien environments. just the classic sand/forest/snow triad.

This is also reflected in the main heroes. Finn, Rey and Poe are individually really strong characters who, on paper, should be electric together. Finn is a fugitive stormtrooper, groomed to be a brain-dead killing machine, who rebelled against his role and just wants to gtfo and never see the First Order again. Rey is an orphan who grew up alone on a desert planet, probably making all sorts of deals and moral compromises to survive, and has no affiliation with either the FO or the Resistance. Poe is a resistance soldier, son of resistance soldiers, hotheaded and snarky but fully devoted to the cause. it’s an excellent recipe for character conflict.

But JJ does his best to smooth out and neutralize all the potential conflict in the first 5 minutes of interactions between these people (which is why the whole concept of them as a trio makes me want to take a long nap). Finn and Poe trust each other almost immediately despite being actually on opposite sides of the war, and when they see each other again it’s like they’ve known each other for years. Finn and Rey bond almost immediately despite the horribly violent and deeply traumatizing, emotional development-arresting backgrounds they grew up in, and if there was a spark of conflict with Finn lying about being a Resistance fighter, JJ proceeds to resolve it quickly and 100% harmlessly and has Rey just… be okay with it. I remember Tumblr loving the shit out of this, and I definitely can see why—back then, seeing two characters who are able to look past a mutual misunderstanding instead of succumbing to the almighty narrative need for artificial tension looked very refreshing. 

And it was! It worked perfectly in TFA. F|nnpoe in particular did its job, bringing these two people to work together as requested by the plot, making their escape together emotionally engaging without dragging the narrative with unnecessary interpersonal drama. Then Poe (initially meant to die in the crash) came back alive, and the narrative focuses on that just the right amount of time to give us a happy, heartfelt reunion between two people we already see as our heroes. But the fact that these characters have already sorted out their differences in the first movie isn’t necessarily a good thing for the whole trilogy in the long run. Especially since the non Force-related plot inherently needs something strong to compete with the Force-related one. (think of why HanLeia worked SO well in Empire despite them being separated from the “main” Force plot. They were the two people in the trio who kind of hated each other, so their interactions are full of spark, and they both develop because they change each other).

According to Rian, Poe and Finn weren’t workingin the same storyline, because Finn needed someone to challenge him and that someone couldn’t be Poe. Imho, it totally could have been Poe—like I said, there is an intrinsic potential for conflict between Poe and Finn, but for Poe to work in Rose’s place, Rian should have undone the state of blissful agreement Poe and Finn reached by the second half of TFA, which the audience would 100% interpret as a regression. (seriously, imagine how that would be received by tumblr, considering all the bitching and moaning re: Poe’s supposed misogyny/oocness/unlikeability and Finn’s supposed reverting to his pre tfa *selfishness*)

(it’s also because the tension Rian wanted to create for Finn needed to be also romantic, and Poe can’t be used in that sense because, well, Disney)

so I definitely can see why Rian decided that, in order to have these characters be challenged and grow without having to deconstruct and redefine their already established mutual bonds, they had to be separated and go on individual journeys that could leave them exposed, utterly out of their depth and unable to rely on the feedback loop that their friendship is, while also being forced to deal with not necessarily pleasant people (Kylo and Luke for Rey, Rose and DJ for Finn, Holdo for Poe). This worked exceptionally well for Rey (unsurprisingly, because as the main Force User she has to have a separate journey, and also because her dynamic with Kylo was brilliantly set up by TFA so we were already invested) and Poe (who got to develop beyond being just Finn’s sidekick, and actually grew a personality, lo and behold). 

Finn, however, got the shortest end of the stick, because unlike Poe and Rey he was set on a seemingly extraneous journey with no legacy characters, no pre established TFA characters, in places that we didn’t already know from the previous films, in short: he interacted with nothing and no one the audience was already invested in. As much as I loved Rose, it was definitely something that made Finn’s storyline less engaging and effective.

[him-e]

Coupled with force sensitive finn, this paints an ugly picture...I Don't understand what you mean? Can you please elaborate? What do you mean about finn? Is it bad in your opinion that he is force sensitive?

To expand on it further: force sensitive Finn isn’t bad per se, and I’m sure it works (and was probably intended) as a launching pad for future SWCU stories in which Finn trains in the Force etc. Which is great, okay. Not sure if we needed it, but if the plan is produce more Finn-centric material, then it’s probably a good idea.

But, as far as the movie trilogy canon is concerned, the way it was done is basically a half assed eleventh hour retcon that serves no purpose in the story or in Finn’s arc other than retroactively explaining his decision to defect. It answers a question that didn’t need answering in the first place. There’s no need to explain a moral choice that stems out of humanity, empathy and compassion with Force shenanigans, and it actually undercuts the meaning of Finn’s defection. Force sensitivity in canon is a more or less innate trait that only certain people have. So basically if you reduce Finn’s (and Jannah’s entire squad’s) rejection of the First Order ideology to their Force sensitivity, you’re saying there are essentially two types of stormtroopers—the ones who are innately Force sensitive and thus are innately inclined to be *human* and *moral*, and those who are not Force sensitive and will never feel any sort of compassion or moral conflict over obeying to the First Order; and for the latter there’s no hope or possible redemption.

It’s predestination, y’all. It denies individual freedom of choice and it draws a line between good and bad people that can’t be smudged or crossed easily. 

It would have been much more compelling, imo, if Jannah and the other ex-stormtroopers had defected because they were simply inspired by Finn’s story, which has now started to circulate among stormtroopers and fuel defections and rebellions everywhere, Force sensitivity or not. We don’t need to use a greater, “divine” power to tell the story of how regular people can inspire each other to make moral choices and stand against evil, even when evil is all they’ve ever known.

Retconning Finn as Force sensitive also feels like a smokescreen to distract the audience from the fact that he has no recognizable individual arc in this movie, and is barely an independent character on his own. He virtually doesn’t exist outside of trio scenes, with the only minor exception of his bonding with Jannah, which is shallow and rushed like everything else in the movie. JJ completely erased Rose—a character that was created and developed (with depth and nuance: she didn’t just exist, she was given a backstory, a personality and an individual conflict) to be specifically Finn’s foil and love interest—and almost surgically avoided any reference to Finn’s arc in TLJ, so he could be safely put again in Rey’s orbit as the quintessential Nice Guy who exists only to scream her name protectively when she’s in danger. But hey, at least he’s Force sensitive and is in the same plot of the protagonist, so he Matters. Yay.

[emperorren]

To your anon who said that LF dangled the F/P carrot and yanked it away, they didn't. Oscar and John are the ones who baited the shippers, not LF. In addition to the queerbaiting, John and Oscar also basically ignored Rose's importance to Finn's (and the Resistance's) arc. So yeah, if you'll blame someone, blame Oscar and John too, not just LF. The only thing that LF did wrong is they didn't stop Oscar and John (and also the Rose erasure).

I’ll blame all of them thank you very much. Oscar and John queerbaited carelessly and fooled a lot of people around (although in good faith, I believe), and should be criticized for it, but remember that nothing these actors say happens in a void or isn’t greenlit by Lucasfilm/Disney. 

Rose and Finnrose’s erasure---in merch AND in official interviews and conversations about TROS---is very much Lucasfilm’s responsibility first and foremost. I still haven’t decided if it’s a cause or a consequence (or both, somehow?) of the Finnpoe hype, but the two things are certainly connected. And I hope they chose to harp on Finnpoe over Finnrose because the former isn’t happening and isn’t spoilery as the latter, however stupid it may be (what the fuck is spoilery about Finnrose WHEN THEY ALREADY KISSED ON SCREEN?), rather than because they think Finnpoe just sells better and pisses off fewer people, but it’s hard to give them the benefit of the doubt.

[emperorren]

I think LF are continuing to pull the lowkey "double bait and switch with plausible deniability" tactic to keep the interest alive for IX. They avoided a kiss between Reylo and had Rey's parentage be revealed in such a way that the viewers could still think "Oh Kylo was totally lying / Rey went there to save him for the Resistance / Rey ultimately returned back to her true love / the F*nnR*se kiss was one sided / Rose is in a coma anyway so maybe F/R and R*ySky could happen."

Nah, I think that ambiguity about Reylo aside (are they in love or just pulled towards each other by the Force for “destiny” reasons? is their break up definitive and irreconcilable? Is the force bond closed for good? Is Kylo truly evil now? etc.), F/rey and Rey/Sky are no longer meant to be perceived as viable. Don’t confuse intentional bait n’ switches with people doggedly sticking to their long-dead headcanons against all logic and narrative evidence.

Re: Rey’s parentage in particular, there’s simply no reason to still intentionally keep a margin of ambiguity after the "switch” happened, because there would be no payoff for that ambiguity in the third act, and it would be simply anticlimatic. Think of Vader’s reveal in ESB that he’s Luke’s father: a lot of people insisted that he was lying, but the narrative never acknowledged the possibility that it wasn’t true, and in fact in ROTJ Luke’s parentage was treated as a matter of fact since the beginning.

Re: Finnrose, I just don’t think the narrative is treating Rose as an interloper or temporary obstacle or “other girl”. Rose was pushed in the foreground since the beginning of the movie, and spent more quality time with Finn than Rey did (unpopular opinion?). At this point the major dynamics are supposed to be settled and things are headed towards a conclusion, rather than building up more “shocking” plot twists.

[him-e]

See also: Shippers who used “it’s an interracial ship thus it’s better than the alternative ships because it’s progressive and you’re implicitly racist if you don’t ship it” as their primary advocacy tactic for F*nnrey, but then had to scramble to vilify Finnrose as bigoted or regressive because otherwise they couldn’t play the “progressive” trump card anymore. Just admitting they liked F*nnrey better would’ve been so much easier and respectable, instead of the bizarre anti-Rose campaign.

Just admitting that you like x better than y isn’t very useful when your main goal is to make other people think the same way as you do. It’s subjective. And you would certainly look like an asshole if you tried to force your subjective tastes on other people. Nah, you have to have a Superior Reason. Except the wheel turns - it always does - and you’re suddenly in the strange position of having to defend your personal disinterest in something despite its theoretically ticking all the Progressive Boxes. What do? You move the goalposts, that’s what you do. You twist your own arguments into pretzels so that they can apply to Pairing A but not to Pairing B. You find increasingly absurd excuses to withhold your support from Character B even though you would have lynched people for doing the same with Character A two years ago (and lbr you still do). You make double standards until your original arguments lose all meaning. In the end, the only thing you achieved is making people inherently suspicious of the Discourse since it can be easily and conveniently twisted into everything and its contrary depending on the circumstances.

Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if we could just… like things without trying to make them universally and categorically likeable.