Tumblr: No she isn’t! There is a perfectly logical explanation as to why she mastered everything she touched perfectly on the first try.
Star Wars fans: ….how then?
Tumblr: She used the Force.
Star Wars fans:
that is literally how the force works if you can use it have you never seen a star wars movie before or
anakin never finished a race, then wins one first time out
anakin never flew a starship before and manages to do what the other pilots couldn’t: blow up a droid control ship
let’s not forget luke
luke never used a lightsaber or piloted an x-wing before, then the second he uses the force, bam, perfect first time out
lmao look at this person tryin’ to call rey a mary sue like it’s 2004
[ Image in the OP is Han saying “That’s not how the force works!” in The Force Awakens; images in reply are of the parts of previous movies being discussed. ]
That and like. She has better reasons for knowing this stuff than the above dudes do.
Like, of COURSE she knows all about mechanics- she’s been scavenging starships for parts most of her life, so knowing what’s what and how it works is a crucial life skill.
When she handles a lightsaber, she’s very obviously using it like she would a staff (and spends most of the fight running away from Kylo anyway). You know, like the staff she carries with her all the time for self-defense in the desert hellhole she grew up in.
Everything we see her do with the Force is stuff Kylo did in front of her- he invades her mind, and she invades his and then mind-tricks a Stormtrooper (which still takes her three tries). He Force-holds her and later tries to Force-pull a lightsaber, and she Force-pulls it to her instead.
Practically everyone in the Star Wars universe is casually multilingual, and the only character in TFA who’s shown to be unable to understand at least one of Chewie or BB-8 is Finn, who was raised and brainwashed as a Stormtrooper (and neither the Empire nor the First Order seems to be much of an equal opportunity employer when it comes to species). Given her scavenger history, Rey having met astromech droids before isn’t just possible, but likely.
Her skills are better-established than either Luke’s or Anakin’s before they matter, but nope, she’s the Mary Sue, apparently.
For god’s sake, if you take Episode 1 at its word, Anakin was a goddamn virgin birth caused by the will of the force, and has an extensive prophecy about him being the Chosen One.
>strong female >appears to be damsel in distress >is actually part of a well calculated plot to rescue boyfriend >single-handedly kills the most powerful gangster on the planet, by choking him to death. >somehow is
problematic.
#FakeGeekSJWs
For the most part, what people actually find problematic about “Slave Leia” is less how that part of the movie played out, and more how the metal bikini has been used both in merchandising/marketing and in fandom. The image of “Slave Leia” has been consistently used in both official and fan art to pander to male sexual fantasies, and the fact that generations of fanboys have been taught to find Leia most appealing when she is literally held in chains as a sex slave is indeed problematic.
I’m all for reminding people how much Leia still kicks ass, even when put in that awful, degrading situation, but let’s not pretend there was nothing awful or degrading about it.
Carrie Fisher has spoken out numerous times about how the use of her likeness in the slave bikini for merchandising has made her uncomfortable and contributed to the harassment she’s experienced from male “fans.” Leia kicks ass, sure, but she’s still just a fictional character. The real woman behind her feels degraded by the slave bikini, and I think that’s something important to keep in mind.
The merchandising and harassment aren’t Carrie Fisher’s only problems with it, either. She felt uncomfortable and diminished acting it in the first place for various reasons:
– She had to lose even more weight so that she didn’t show any trace of unsexy body fat or folds
– She had to suck in her stomach for the same reason and could hardly breathe
– Wearing the bikini was deeply uncomfortable, and the people around her could see every part of her body
–
“In Return of the Jedi, she gets to be more feminine, more supportive, more affectionate. But let’s not forget that these movies are basically boys’ fantasies. So the other way they made her more female in this one was to have her take off her clothes.”
–
“The thing that killed me about this setup was, okay, you put me in this bathing suit – but then I have to stop talking from here on? Strip me, and I’m silent! I am defiant with everyone else – Tarkin, Darth Vader – but this slug really shuts me up. Any defiance I had in the other movies, all gone.”
–
“When Princess Leia loses her clothes, she loses her ability to speak.”
–
I was crazed that day! I came in and looked at the script pages and George was off ill. I said, “Excuse me, but you guys take my clothes off then chain me up. After two films where I’m not afraid of Vader or Tarkin, why should I be afraid of a slug? …At that point I was amazed that Leia would just sit there, in those skimpy clothes, saying practically nothing. The only way they could justify that, I told them, was if Jabba pulled my chains real tight so I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t see my character not talking.”
That’s not even getting into how the objection to slave Leia is largely Doylist, not Watsonian. Nobody thinks that, in-story, Leia is showing herself to be anything but a badass. But on the meta-level, it’s perfectly legit to ask why the story was constructed in such a way as to render her silent (but sexy~) for a substantial chunk of the movie, why it’s so very important that Leia be degraded, humiliated, and subjected to thinly veiled rape threats to show that she’s a badass, when that’s been persistently shown without any of those things. It tells us nothing new about Leia. It has no effect on her character, or any one else’s. Nobody mentions it again, and the rest of the movie so divorced from it in tone and plot that it might as well have not happened for all the difference it makes.
Moreover, her enslavement was not part of the plan. She showed up in a bounty hunter disguise that in fact concealed every inch of her. There’s no reason she couldn’t have stayed in that disguise, waiting to act until Luke showed up and the plan kicked into gear–what Lando did. If she’d actually succeeded in getting Han out, she wouldn’t have even been there when hell broke loose. It’s sheer chance that Jabba, a giant amorphous slug, inexplicably has a sordid interest in attractive humanoid women and happens to keep her chained at his side.
EY FATTY BOOM BOOM 