Every time a teacher complains about having to go back to work after summer, an angel loses its wings midflight and plummets to the earth to die an agonizing hours-long death.
I keep seeing posts supporting a Rey/Kylo romance because it would be somehow edgy and original and “unexpected.”
Dudes. That is the LEAST ORIGINAL and MOST EXPECTED option currently on the table.
Like, every major action blockbuster features exactly one woman, and she either ends up with the hero, or else there are several eligible dudes and then the question is which dude she will end up with. But she always ends up with someone, it’s always a dude, and he’s always white. (They’re both white. Everyone’s white. And if there does happen to be a black guy, the message is “just ignore him” because he’s implicitly in the “ineligible” category anyway. No romance for POC.)
Star Wars VII did something new and original by giving us Finn and Poe. There is still exactly one woman (who is young and hot enough to be a leading character), and she’s white, but for once, two out of the three main characters are POC. This is amazing. There is not a single eligible young white dude in the hero squad.
So while we’re all still playing the age old game of “who gets The Girl" (or in this case, “whom does The Girl get”), for once, most of the choices are stereotype-breaking. Something we hardly EVER get to see in big movies like Star Wars is stuff like interracial relationships (such as Finn/Rey), LGBTQ relationships (Poe/Finn or Rey/girl), or women without any romantic relationships (Rey/nobody).
Every choice is mold-breaking and new and would be incredibly, incredibly refreshing after years of White Dude gets The Girl.
The only thing the writers could do to careen off this gloriously progressive path and plunge back into We’ve-Seen-This-A-Thousand-Times-ville is to pair Rey off with the only major eligible White Dude in the movie. If he happens to be the villain, so what? There have been dark, edgy white guys and broody, pouty white guys winning the romance jackpot since forever. “Beauty and the Beast” is not a new concept. Girls helping guys transform through the power of love is not original. And even if Kylo’s redemption arc is complicated and well written and DOESN’T involve Rey playing moral nurse-maid to his poor, conflicted soul, this Villain-Turns-Good-And-Gets-The-Girl thing STILL isn’t unique. It’s not original, and it’s not unexpected. People started expecting it from the minute he took off his helmet.
It doesn’t matter how different Kylo is from other guys–he looks exactly like every other TV hero who ends up with The Girl.
This isn’t to say that people shouldn’t be able to ship whomever they want; it’s just that justifying a Reylo pairing by saying it would be original is kind of missing the bigger picture. Having a racially diverse main cast was original. Breaking the racial and sexual stereotypes that define 99.9% of Hollywood movies would be original. Making Kylo Ren the romantic hero is the farthest thing from original I can think of.
In all seriousness, if you ARE looking to bring home a pet, animal shelters are the first place you should look. There are lots of wonderful animals in need of homes! The bunny that inspired my bunny character was adopted from a shelter and he was pure fabulousness (clearly).
Origami doesn’t have to be some fancy-schmancy hobby. You can make origami anything. Take, for instance, this Pokémon Origami Book. It teaches you how to make 10 different origami Pokémon, and even includes the paper you’ll need to bring them to life. However, it does not include patience, so we hope you have some already.
Great idea. Sometimes it's melting so quickly that you have to eat it faster than you'd like.
Two teens are pitching a custom addition to the ice cream cone that’s a beautiful hack, if not necessarily a profitable business. The Drip Drop is simply an edible tray that slides onto a cone and catches any ice cream that melts and drips down the side.
The pair even have an environmental element to their pitch, claiming that the amount of napkins currently provided to customers by ice cream shops to deal with drips is equivalent to a million trees a year.
Visit Coliseum Park in New Orleans and you might just spot a surprising new addition – a statue of Pikachu. What’s even more surprising is that it shouldn’t be there at all. It was erected illegally overnight by a group calling themselves “#Pokemonument”.
The whole piece is designed to look weathered and worn, as though it had been standing there for years. With a wooden base and a wire mesh body covered in fibreglass, the entire thing took seven weeks to complete, and required seven people to surreptitiously assemble it overnight without getting caught. Now that is dedication.
If you’re in the area, it’s well worth checking out. After all, who knows how long it’ll remain standing for (if it hasn’t been taken down already)? Check out another pic and a video below.
