#the dudebros are just currently in denial

[nerdynikki94]

Honestly? Did I want more from DTAMHD? Yes, I did. I wanted something signifying actual progression for Dennis' character (even just a crumb of genuine growth) , and I sincerely don't think we got that. However... we did get a fascinating insight into the process of his mind. Dennis' level of self-denial is so ironic and profound. He can't acknowledge the inevitability that he's middle-aged.

(I swear this episode honestly has given me an alt hc, that the show is based in his mind; because logistically, a man of his lifestyle and malnourishment could not commit the feats he is constantly sailing through. TGGB & DTAMHD... back-to-back? What happened to his hand? Did he even sprain it? Or is he just the most dramatic brat in the gang - clearly the latter.)

It is important to note that he didn’t fix the actual problem. He momentarily masked the symptoms, but ignore long-term help with blood pressure medicine is not going to fix the issue, nor is it going to protect him from fucking keeling over in a stressful situation (when he's not in a contained and quiet Doctor's exam room) and his blood pressure spikes.

I'm honestly a little jaded at this point (16 Fucking Seasons of crumbs, y'all), but if one were to continue 'trusting the structure' this episode conveyed a lot.

The B Plot: The pressure cooker. The metaphor parallels the building pressure Dennis quick-tempered bouts of rage. So, to toss out a little 'cat-in-the-wall' conjecture here: The pressure cooker is Dennis, but we all saw him eat that bloody diamond in the end and we all heard Mac's speech about coal turning into diamonds under massive pressure. Dennis' experience is a theory of pressure, he daydreams it all in the span of a minute or so. He's roleplaying with hypothetical obstacles. There's no risk. Maybe Dennis, isn't the pressure cooker, but the coal.

If I were to try and take anything hopeful out of this episode, it would be the way the narrative is showing us that this episode acknowledged that Dennis isn't ready yet. It's not his turn to break. It's going to take real, substantial pressure to get that diamond.

It was a hell of a misdirect (and honestly a little bit of a slap in the face), but if these characters live in the real world, where people are bound by the laws of mortality, then Dennis should have his time.

Genuinely, who fucking knows?

I'm not hating on the episode. We all know this is the trashy dick joke sitcom. I just thought that if Mac & Charlie could have moments of genuine heartbreak, culminating in deep catharsis, that maybe Dennis could have that too.... but no.

Can't wait to see the sunny dudebros miss the point & proclaim Dennis Reynolds - SA victim, traumatized individual with an emotionally tumultuous personality disorder - the new Andrew Tate.

I'm sorry, but yeah. I'm a little miffed. It was all a dream, and everything goes Dennis' way. Y'all I'm fucking tired. This was a great episode for Glenn, but a fucking frustrating episode for Dennis. I may have wanted a little macden, but all I cared about was seeing Dennis face the limitations of his mortality, to see that he's failing his body and his brain. He didn't have to actually take the medicine (I wouldn't expect him to), but Goddammit, everything seems to work out in his delusional favor. So, of course he's going to continue being delusional, and probably only change for the worse.

I'll say it: I wanted a broken Dennis, and we did not get that. He didn't even crack, the unbearble and apparently now canonical Golden God. That episode's title was intended to tease sunnyblr.

Excuse the plethora of tags. I just kept getting more irritated.

[darkcircles4lyfe]

Against my better judgement, I am on twitter sometimes. And two things I saw there in the past day or so are really sticking in my head right now. One, some random asshole decided to be blatantly homophobic and even @’d Horikoshi about it—you know the whole “Deku is straight” thing? but in long thread form. It got a lot of attention somehow. Two, I saw people talking about Red Hood, which I have not read, but I guess it’s getting axed and the mangaka went full meta in the story taking his frustration out on his editorial and readers, and rightfully so, it seems. For those who don’t know, that mangaka was an assistant of Horikoshi’s too.

I’ve got this pit in my stomach now. I know that all kinds of creative industries worldwide can be brutally fickle and domineering over their humble visionaries, who lie awake at night wondering if the world will hear them out. They sometimes have to take what they can get, hide in subtext, or face censorship and cancellation.

I think about Horikoshi (in his notes in the published volumes) talking about feeling grateful and surprised that he’s still making this story, when he wouldn’t have been surprised if it didn’t stay popular. I think about when I was first deciding if I wanted to check out bnha, reading reddit discussions from years ago where people characterized it as “well executed but predictable, nothing you haven’t seen before.” This has always baffled me, because it seems like an assumption made by someone who is taking everything at face value and ignoring a lot of details.

Consider the strategy of criticizing the powers that be by becoming a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Sneaking in by checking all the right trope boxes only to later twist them into subversions. Obtaining enough popularity to ride the wave past the gatekeepers. I want you to remember that behind every story there is a real person channeling their life experience, their dreams, and their convictions.

I don’t know what else to say because honestly I could go on for ages about like 10 different tangents and speculate until the cows come home. Maybe another time. Let’s just say I’m rooting for this to happen to us too, in the end.

[lemonwrld]

Okay, so imagine we get canon macdennis at some stage over the next four seasons... 😬

How do you envision it? Is the first onscreen kiss born of drunken Saturday night shenanigans, or with the sober clarity of a depressing Sunday morning?

Personally, a big part of me wants to see Dennis initiating a drunken blurry makeout with Mac. (He's emboldened by excessive alcohol intake - even more than typical for him - and maybe he's jealous or repenting for an earlier freak out. I don't know. But he's most definitely grossly uncoordinated.) You can tell he's not thinking about what he's doing... until Afterwards. And that's when rcg can run with the dennis is in denial / dennis has a reluctant realisation, etc. etc. whatever way they wanna play it.

But then, another part of me doesn't want to deal with the dudebros wilfully misreading a drunken encounter as noncon / just another of Dennis' "mastermind manipulations" (cos y'know how he's so smart at those.)

I've noticed that lots of people on here are down for subtlety in their canon macdennis. I wish that could be me. Instead I basically just want their reciprocal attraction to punch me in the face with its obviousness. At least once!! If they do something very obvious at least ONE time then I will be fine with canon macdennis fading into the background if that's what rcg prefer, storyline-wise.

I personally just don't see how they can get from the current Intolerably Cranky Dennis to Dennis is Dating Mac :) without something obvious going down.

[roxannepolice]

@nekomajo this is is sort of an answer to your reply about how th can people still believe in Re/sky. And after sleeping through the mind boggling bs I've watched, the essence of people's logic has become clear to me.

I think that this is something similar to what currently is going on in GoT fandom, following the horrible 8x04 episode which destroyed what illusions were left after 8x03 (spoilers ahead). The thing is, conclusion people were hoping for (infertile Dany suddenly gets a baby with resurrected Jon Snow, war with the Night's King has people realise the insignificance of political struggles, Dany is plain happy to finally have family again, Sansa finds comfort in platonic/equal relationships, Arya can fit her Titus Andronicus persona with Kate persona., etc.) was... not a very fitting conclusion to a show which gave us the Red Wedding and Ramsay Bolton but it was what one could expect after consequence free resurrections, turbo ravens, scuba zombies, Flash Gendry, Arya surviving a swim in a canal with open wound in middle ages, the ever present curling iron for the main characters and of course, High Septon Maynard. So the expected conclusion wasn't one of a very well written story, but it was a feel good conclusion of a bad writing which was at least consistent in its feel good bad writing. As such, the supposed subvertions of season 8 is basically worse writing trying to make a reality kick in bad writing.

And without comparing the misery that GoT's writing has been for a couple of season to space fantasy for ten year olds that's Star Wars' writing (or believability of the theories, I'm not comparing Re/sky to boat baby, just analysing the similarities in backlash), I think that many dudebros/sis, backed by some casuals who never cared much for Vader's redemption, are infuriated that after a feel good ANH remake that TFA was, which they criticised but still enjoyed (same as people were rolling their eyes at Jon Snow's supersperm but got along with it, since we should start with the logistics of a fire wight having an erection), on a surface level at least, they're getting what looks like subvertions for subvertions' sake. Now, the SW subvertions aren't a case of worse writing trying to deconstruct bad writing but they do, retrospectively, make some of the things in TFA make less sense than the surface reading allowed: Rey's faith in her parents, which some would say should be rewarded in Star Wars, that apparently we should have divined is denial; why didn't Luke dispose of all maps if he didn't want to be found; are midichlorians still canon if Rey can be superpowerful because; couldn't they have made Luke a badass for 2 hours if they still make him a consequence free badass for 15 minutes; why did Leia hug Rey rather than Chewie if they don't even know each other, etc., etc. So I think that TFA, along with Re/sky hype, created poorly written but feel good expectations that dudebrosis feel are getting subverted in the name of plot holes only different - a good subvertion makes more sense than the expectation, not as much.

So Re/sky looks like a return into that comfortable feel good story where people are simply good or bad (no one would care about implications of Luke leaving his daughter in a desert, the only complain about him in TLJ is that he wasn't kicking ass not contemplating killing his nephew) and the point is for da hero is to overthrow an empire. It's not a case of hoping we can go back to bad writing exactly, but it is the case of... hoping for poor but feel good writing marketing promises to get fulfilled?

[casassin]

I was tagged by the wonderful @woollenpharaohs to list my 10 favorite ships. I still can't belive people actually know I exist on this site. Seriously. Thanks so much for tagging me!

Now this is gonna be quite hard because I just have way too many ships to function, but I'm gonna try anyway. The order won't actually mean anything really since I'm the kind of person to jump from ship to ship.

(this is actually my second try doing this since my computer crashed in the middle of doing this. Thanks a bunch computer)

1.Dean Winchester/Castiel-Supernatural

Do you wanna have your heart broken and ripped to shreds? Then buckle up because I have the right ship for you!

These two have ruined me. Just like the show this ship is of great emotional value to me and I love it dearly. At this point the show is basically the most painful slow burn fic in the disguise of a TV show and I honestly can't complain. Each hug is fuel for my soul and gets me through another day.

2. Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham-Hannibal

Tbh this ship actually shares the first place with Destiel because I discovered them both at the same time where I didn't feel great at all and they both helped me through really tough times.

When it comes to Hannigram I'll always remember that one post that said that Hannibal lives in his own wonderland amongst pigs, who'll never be able to understand him and his wonderland, until he stumbles upon Will who sees and understands.

And in the end we are all just searching for someone who understands us, aren't we?

Beautifully dark relationship that tugs on your heartstrings more than it should.

3. Alana Bloom/Margot Verger-Hannibal

What would the murder husbands be without their counterpart murder wives?

Two beautiful women that kill their abuser via drowning and leave him to be eaten by his giant pet moray eel. Who then get married and have a beautiful son together. Bryan Fuller I truly thank you for this gift, for those beautiful ladies brighten my shadowy days.

4. Sam Winchester/Eileen Leahy-Supernatural

Even though I've always been a huge sucker for Sam/Gabriel, these two took me over by storm. They've had such great chemistry and I instantly fell in love with the idea of them being together since she's been first introduced. Such a shame the writers don't like their own characters to have an ounce of happiness. Hello denial thanks for showing me all those fix it fics.

5.Trevor Philips/Michael De Santa-GTA V

(not really a lot of gifs to use for that one)

Oh boy... Complete dumpster fire of a ship and guilty pleasure. I've actually shipshamed myself so long for this. But after playing the game multiple times, you just can't help but realize, that this ship sails itself.

Sometimes I wonder how I went from shipping girly anime looking guys to ship whatever these men are.

But this ship has some real emotional baggage and when you look behind the kinda disgusting surface, you see a relationship more flawed and real than most fanfiction offers. And oh man has this ship some really great fics!

6.Geralt of Rivia/Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy- The Witcher 3

I present to you: my current obsession

Even though my only knowledge of their relationship comes from the Blood and Wine DLC (because I've bought the books just now so I haven't read them) I still fell hard for this. Very hard.

A higher vampire killing his own blood brother, a bond much stronger than a human could ever imagine, to save his dudebro and thus becoming hated and hunted amongst his own kind for all eternity. This ship might be the definition of : there is no hetero explanation for this. You can't fool me CD Projekt Red. These two were clearly in love.

7. Mac/Dennis-iasip

What do I love more.

The meme that evolved from this scene or the ship?

Another one of those rough gems and my former obsession . With people so deeply flawed that it's more realistic than the most stuff you see on television these days. There is something about their dynamic that is so interesting to witness. Another one of those ships with some seriously great fanfics just like the one from the lovely person that tagged me.

8.Joseph Oda/Sebastian Castellanos-The Evil Within

Just by looking at this one can imagine that this is anything but a happy ship. Just take all the angst you can imagine and put it in a ship. There we go. Now you've got Joseb.

Another one of those games where you can't help but notice the chemistry and ask yourself if there was something more. I always revisit this one when I feel the urge to get some angst into my system.

9.Johnny Rayflo/Charles J. Chrishunds-Vassalord

My whole life was dedicated to this manga during my teenage years. Just looking at this gif still makes my heart swell in my chest. It's propably the reason why I have such a soft spot for vampires and I still have a special place for these two in my heart. Looks like I've got to reread this soon.

10. Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier-X-Men

I think we all have a special love for that one ship that introduced us to shipping and just fandoms in general. This one is mine.

I still have folders of crappy fanart of them, when I first tried drawing. And one of my first fics was also dedicated to them. I don't know if they either destroyed me or showed me the way into my safe space. And even if my obsession has slowly faded, I still consider this one of my most favorite ships.

That was a ride. My god

Even though I have a lot more I think I'm quite satisfied with how this turned out.

Like always I'm gonna tag (and bother) two of my favorite ladies @kira-hayashi and @natari-55

[mittensmorgul]

My boyfriend admitted yesterday after finally watching 13.1 that Dean and Cas DO love each other. He has no doubt in his mind that if Cas were female, Destiel would have happened. BUT he sees Dean as straight and doesn't believe anything could happen with Cas in Jimmy's body. I told him that this is heteronormative bi erasure and that as a bisexual, I find it offensive that he makes that assumption. What if these sorts of casual viewer opinions keep Destiel from ever happening? I'm losing hope.

Hi there! And congrats to your boyfriend for seeing the love there. :D

First off, no offense to straight dudes, but the straight dude I’ve been married to for 20 years has absolutely no sense of bifi. Or gaydar. I mean, if he sees two dudes kissing at Pride he’d pick up on it (and there are a few famous people who came out that he wasn’t surprised at all about– George Michael, Rob Halford, he was shocked that anyone was shocked…), but when it comes to closeted bisexuals who deliberately do not want to be detected, especially the way Dean performs dudebro heterosexuality as well as Dean does especially in early seasons, he just has no clue.

*insert that gif of Sam telling Dean he’s overcompensating*

The things about Dean that have been screamingly obvious because I relate to them from personal experience just don’t register to a straight dude who has never once questioned his sexuality (like Sam, for instance). To a person who has experienced it first-hand, a lot of Dean’s behavior reads as signal flares as bright as day. If it were only used for the occasional joke, or rare random things that didn’t fit into a much larger pattern, or if it were just enough to make me sit up and notice once or twice a season, I’d assume it was just a coincidence. But… it’s not a rare random occurrence. It’s something we see in nearly every episode, more and more blatantly as the seasons progress.

I tell everyone to read this:

http://destielhiseyesopened.tumblr.com/post/102023741956/slash-and-subtext-series

It’s a lot to read, yes, but it’s incredibly thorough and the sort of thing your neck will be sore from nodding along in agreement the entire time. :P

As for whether or not the show will go there, which NONE of us can say for sure, the one thing I can say for sure is that it will not be casual viewer opinions that will influence Dabb’s storytelling. He’s said it multiple times, that he’s going to tell this story his way, whatever that might mean in the end. Dude’s not telling. I mean, look at him:

So while it’s great to have hope, because we DESERVE representation in blatant and clear terms, there is no guarantee that we will actually GET it. I mean, that is a very real possibility. It’s why I personally don’t watch the show with any expectation for ANYTHING, you know? Then every new hint that they are taking this somewhere is a pleasant surprise. For me, watching from the standpoint that I EXPECT a certain outcome is just not an enjoyable way to live. It’s just too much to stress about.

And as I’ve said over and over again, just like Dabb, I personally couldn’t give a flying fuck with the mysterious “general audience” sees when they watch the show. I watch because of what *I* see in the show, because I like analyzing the story, writing meta (with the friendly reminder that “meta” has exactly zero to do with predicting the future of the story… that’s speculation, and aside from being able to read obvious twists and turns in near-future plot points, or understanding general character development arcs and where they could potentially be headed in vague general ways, I DO NOT ENJOY SPECULATION, especially when it involves the sort of detail that a lot of more casual fans seem to expect of meta writers. I AM TIRED OF FOLKS HAVING THE IMPRESSION THAT SPECULATION AND POSITIVITY FOR THE FUTURE OF THE SERIES AND CHARACTERS IS “”””META”””” BECAUSE IT ABSOLUTELY IS NOT.

Sorry for yelling, I needed to put that out there. Comments of “I love your meta!” when referring to headcanons and speculation about endgame destiel is just… missing the entire point. The meta is the long academic character analysis, the comparisons with the current arc to past canon, the examination of episodes THAT ARE ALREADY PART OF CANON. Looking to the future to make guesses about what COULD happen in the future is SPECULATION. NOT META.

I’m so tired of people who do not understand that giving meta writers hate and dismissing EVERYTHING we’ve written because a “prediction” didn’t come true on the show exactly as someone wrote it… A guess of what will happen in the future that doesn’t quite pan out doesn’t invalidate all the ACTUAL meta we’ve all written over the years. Because just like pr is not showrunning, speculation isn’t meta.

*even when the speculation is attached to the bottom of a really long meta post. The speculation bit isn’t the tl;dr of the post. it’s the interesting and fun little bonus bit after you’ve consumed the factual part of the analysis. It’s the little blop of whipped cream on top of the pie that is the actual important content. It’s mostly decorative and just a bit of fun.*

Thanks, this has been a meta writer PSA.)

The point of all that is that none of us have a crystal ball, none of us have some secret insider information into Andrew Dabb’s brain. Despite the fact that we’ve been watching his storytelling over the last 8+ years (yes, he’s been writing for the show since s4, and has written more episodes of Supernatural than any other writer, so we have A LOT of history to look over, not to mention all of s12 and the back ~third~ at least of s11 after he silently took over the showrunning from Carver to look at when trying to understand his pet themes and how he writes), the best we can do is make educated guesses.

I’m not basing my hope for canon on some ability to read the future, I’m basing it on MY ability to look at the entirety of extant canon and be objectively logical about where the story started, where the story is NOW, and as far as individual character development arcs based on having watched them all evolve over twelve plus seasons already…

Well, let’s just say that for *me,* I can see the characters have been on a logical emotional progression over the course of the entire series (that would be the “meta” part of things). As new canon unfolds, and characters continue to develop and interpersonal storylines continue to evolve… here’s a metaphor. The writers are walking the characters down a long hallway with loads of doorways open to potential future development arcs. As they walk past each doorway and don’t veer off course, it’s like they’re closing off logical possibilities to detour into alternate routes. They’re slamming and locking those doors up forever. The closer we get to the end of canon (in whatever nebulous future that the series will reach its end, and NONE of us know when that will be right now), the fewer doorways are left to walk past, and the less logical any detour from what looks (again, from reading the meta and looking back at the entirety of past canon) like the steady progression of development would be.

Does that make sense? I mean, they’re writing themselves into a corner (or into the end of the hallway where there’s only going to be one last exit door to walk through). But again, as long as there’s still hallway ahead of us, they could take an “easier” route or just decide to stop walking altogether and just sort of set up camp at their current point in character development. It wouldn’t really be sensible for the STORY as it stands right now for them to do either of these things, because if they start backtracking looking for a different door the entire narrative falls apart. Whatever they do, they must keep writing forward.

*stops and scrolls up and cries a lil bit at how much I wrote*

Point is, we just don’t know. I’m hopeful, I feel like we DESERVE to be seen and this love story absolutely DESERVES canon acknowledgement for what it is, and that every sign in past canon and every sign the writers are continuing to carry on down this hallway is pointing to it happening at some distant point in the future… but as of right now none of us have any idea what that eventual resolution will look like. What even is canon?

I mean, your boyfriend said he sees that Dean and Cas love each other. Is that canon? What would “qualify” as being legitimately canon? I love @bluestar86′s spec post about how easy it would be to make Dean’s bisexuality textually canon, but I have no idea if we’d ever get an episode stating it so blatantly. We might, though. We did have Dean asking a gay married couple what it was like settling down with another hunter…

The point is, even trying to speculate on what will happen in the future– especially something so unknowable and distant as “endgame,” is honestly impossible. We have no idea what will happen in canon between now and then in specific terms. In the meantime, I’m perfectly content to point and flail at what is actually happening in canon right now and paying exactly zero attention to what “casual viewers” think they’re watching.

I know exactly what I’m watching, and I love it.

Will they ever make it undeniably obvious and clear in canon? I mean, it is undeniably obvious and clear to *me* but everyone has their own personal biases and wishes and checklists of things they feel must happen, and no matter if the series ends with Dean and Cas getting married there will still always be people who deny it was “enough” to make their relationship obvious, you know? I just… don’t have the energy to deal with that level of denialism. It just stresses me out to worry about what “endgame” might look like specifically when as far as we know, “endgame” isn’t even on the table yet.

So by all means, if you can, take that small step back and try and enjoy the continuing story, and don’t put too much stock in anyone’s opinion of what may or may not happen in the future. But most of all, don’t put much much stock in what random straight dudes in the general audience think. Because Andrew Dabb doesn’t. :P

Wow okay that turned into a treatise…

[roxannepolice]

Rey of Jakku – The Heroine of Our Time

I have a confession to make. Back in the pre-TLJ times I was a very naive Star Wars viewer. I was so blind I can’t believe I’m writing a Baudrillard-inspired meta on it now. And yes, that means I thought Rey will have a celibate hero’s journey. Partly because as a 5 year old I had a platonic crush on Luke and wanted to be like him, so Rey seemed like an excellent self-insert for that girl. I’ll say more, I believed in ReySky. I was even pointing out that Daisy Ridley has a similar face shape as Natalie Portman. But please don’t be harsh with me, I rooted for bendemption from day one. Anyway, foolish me...

Because it should have been obvious that Rey has a heroine’s journey from TFA, even if it was a good simulacrum of Luke’s hero’s journey at first. From the first, she’s running around doing the equivalent of slaying monsters in hero’s journey – breathing life back into everything, from the Millenium Falcon, through HanLeia’s marriage, Luke’s legend, to decimated Resistance and Kylo Ben’s pectorals in the future. I could talk for hours about Rey, the heroine for the third wave of feminism, one giving value to traditionally feminine traits rather than letting women be men and the very fact that hers is a heroine’s journey shows collective unconscious is far from being infertile.

But it was Rey Nobody that truly had my cultural sociologist’s heart. Because this here, this person who comes from nothing, is nothing, has no place in the history – that’s the heroine of our postmodernist times.

One of the most frequently pointed out differences between postmodernity and modernity is freedom from social structures the former gives. We are no longer predetermined by our birth, gender, skin colour, religion, nation, we can chose whatever we want to be (that is, this here is an “ideal state” of postmodernity, obviously things aren’t so rosy and there’s a strong pull against that freedom now... that I’m about to touch upon). Now, that freedom is a great thing. But it didn’t come without a price. That freedom is a responsibility. We are fully responsible for of our lives, there is no given answer to our questions, we must determine who we are. There are so many options available, we can’t even decide where to start trying them.

We’re nothing. We have no place in the story predetermined by our parents. There is no axis mundi, nothing we can take for granted about our lives, no elders to arrange our marriage, no family business to inherit, no culture to be proud of, no religion to tell us right from wrong. Now, as I said, this is the “ideal” postmodernity, or I would even say “radical” postmodernity, not necessarily visible yet. This leads to the order of simulacra, which deny the existence of meaning. Marriage is just a business arrangement (something something patriarchalism something something), religion is just fairy tales (opium something something masses), culture just an illusion. All that matters is the tangible here and now. Try to make it fun.

Simulacra are tempting. They give you all the wisdom of nonexistence of answers. They’re an empty throne waiting for you to kill your meaning and grasp it. Or impressively pectoraled galactic emperor stretching his hand out to you asking you to abandon your fake hopes and accept him for a person you fell in love with. That’s all there is to love, you know.

But the meaning rebels. People do fall in love (in all gender combinations) and if there’s an institution making life of people who want to live together easier, what’s wrong with it? People need moral guidance, and if there are thought systems providing it, what’s wrong with them provided they do actually provide moral guidance? Yes, a painting is an illusion created by colour patches – an esthetical experience is not.

Just as Rey isn’t nobody. She has her moral sense, people and ideals she cares about, her abilities (force related and other) – and that’s what will define her place in the story. Just as there is an answer to “who am I” more and more people ask themselves in a world undefined by birth.

Post-TFA expectations regarding Rey are excellent cases for the study of postmodernist collective unconscious. There is of course the one saying she can’t fall in love because she’s a strong female character in a saga about family. Now, this does make sense if you believe marriage is an instrument of patriarchal domination over women – which it undeniably has been used as – and not a bond between people allowing them to form, you know, families. On the other hand, compulsive clinging to ReySky, Kenobi or whatever – and I say compulsive clinging, because that’s what it is for many people – well, that’s the expression of ontological insecurity postmodernity gives people. In so many uncertainties it’s difficult to find or create some stable island on which to build our microcosms. Simulacra and fundamentalisms offer the simplest answers in this dire situation.

Simulacra are temptingly easy, but so is curling up in misunderstood structures to be defended at all costs. That’s the jedi tree if you like. There was nothing wrong with that tree, but Luke cared more about the tree than actually reading and thinking about the sacred texts. And so the tree had to burn to reveal its own emptiness. That’s Luke lying about the dolorous night, because how could Rey (and more importantly he) possibly reconcile the truth with the ideal? Rey didn’t seem to have a problem with reconciling them, Luke eventually did so too, but dudebros seem to have a hard time six months later.

The most difficult questions (ones concerning identity and morality) aren’t simply called difficult only are difficult because the answer is neither set in stone nor nonexistent.

Now, it is important to note that Rey herself build her world on a lie. Worse, she built her world on denial, which is a difference between her and Luke in ot, who was told a lie about his father and had no reason to believe otherwise. Making compulsive denial an axis mundi isn’t a good idea, it’s not finding a meaning, it’s taking a symbol and projecting upon it your desired meaning. Many people think, more, the junior novelization says (I’d argue the junior novelization has a habit of jumping between objective all knowing and subjective unreliable narrators), that Rey kept up hope for her parents, but I’d say it wasn’t hope. It was fear. Hope would be if she sought every way to get out of Jakku and search for informations about them. Fear was staying on Jakku knowing the informations are nothing she wants to hear. And axis mundi of denial can be easily destroyed, taking the whole world along with it. I know it could be argued that all that matters are the results, but that’s denial of importance of ideals, whose influence on our lives isn’t only on the practical level. Rey is truly an unbelievably strong person to not  crumble down immediately, but she also had no time to reflect over the situation. The audience had. And judging by their reactions I make a prediction that....

Rey’s parents will return

I hope that had the trolling impact I intended.

What I mean is that their subject will return. To drop it now would be to deny the harm they did to Rey’s psyche, even if she patched the wound up. More exactly, the subject of her belonging will return. Rey’s current stance was built on a lie and so far nothing good resulted out of building worlds on lies in the GFFA: all the far reaching consequences of denying that Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader were one person are the best example. The destruction of Rey’s axis mundi may have, I think, three resolutions:

a symbolic one. Ritualistic if you like. She can simply return to Jakku, find their graves and yell at them, even if ending on a forgiving note. Influence of symbols and rituals is not to be denied. She admits she lied to herself, they were garbage and wasted 19 years of her life. But admits it out loud. That could be it. In fact, that would be the healthiest thing to do, just as a projection to fight was the healthiest thing Luke could offer Ben. But t’is a space drama, healthy things are rarely the most exciting ones to happen. So

she rejects all belonging, particularly the familial one with Ben. That’s what I think the more “feminist” viewers believe she did at the end of TLJ. She held out fake hope twice, once towards her parents and a second time towards Ben, she got burnt both times, now she’ll know better. The rub in this take is of course thinking what Rey held out towards her parents was hope – as I pointed out, it was fear. One could argue she went to Ben out of fear, too – because she was afraid of being the protagonist of her own story. And it’s true, but it’s also a rethorical manoeuvre because fear of being a protagonist and hope for him are two separate things and she felt them both. And remember what I said about simulacra being as tempting as an empty throne? Because doing so she would act exactly like Kylo Ben, run away from her problems rather than face them (TBH, this is what I think she wants to do right now, judging by aggressively wanting to be alone with the jedi texts in the Poe comics. And it’s understandable, but she can’t keep on doing so for two years with no consequences.) A more extreme parallel to his mistake would be that

she is offered a fake belonging. And accepts it. Trauma is severe, she’ll accept anything to be free of the pain. That’s frankly speaking what I consider the likeliest scenario or at least the most dramatic. Twice had she resisted a temptation and chosen hope (not selling BB-8, yes it was a decision of hope what other reason did she have to believe BB-8’s owner will appear?, and not accepting Kylo Ben as he is now), third time she’ll fall. This would be especially poetic if paired with Kylo Ben who twice gave in to the temptation and chosen despair (assuming Luke would actually kill him and grasping power to destroy his past; I wouldn’t include killing Han here because then he was tempted but by hope), choosing hope the third time, probably after coup. That’s where I see dark!Rey happening. I can’t shake this feeling that with all the prime jedi and yin yang symbolisms happening in this trilogy Rey and Ben as avatars of light and dark side are heading for something like two massive powers gravitating towards each other at speed so great that upon collision they first exchange places on a small amplitude before coalescing *cough* in the middle. And what would that fake belonging be? Well, Resistance. This is what so much of audience believes right now, that she has found her belonging there, more, that she should accept that as her right belonging, that it seems possible to me that with pushing the simulacra until meaning rebels going on in this trilogy, this is what Rey will try to do. But the Resistance are now just simulacrum of the good guys, and should they not live up to the symbol, they will take her along with them.

I probably shouldn’t enjoy the angst so much

I would argue that most viewers get an intuitive understanding that something is yet to emerge regarding Rey’s parents, because something in us rebels at the thought that Disney-LF would basically say “when in doubt, kids – lie to yourselves! just remember to make it a pleasant lie and you’re all gonna end up just fine”. So the first inclination is to believe Rey’s fears will turn out to be wrong hopes will turn out to be right – her parents were in fact awesome people and Kylo Ben is either lying or misunderstood what he saw in her memories. The former makes little sense because takes away from Rey her narrative power of a postmodern heroine with no preestablished position. The former – because it takes away the terrible disambiguation of truth embodied by Kylo Ben.