I just hope rabid Stormpiloters don't bash her if she does end up with Finn. Because you know how rabid shippers can be, and how often accusations of heteronormativity are used to bash ships simply for existing and being in conflict with a slash OTP, especially when they like to portray the slash OTP as falling into Seme/Uke lines, aka the most heteronormative dynamics of them all.
And I really hope they don't trot out the whole "it's more progressive to have a black-Latino couple than a black-Asian couple because Asian people don't need the representation/are a form of 'white people'/are an oppressor race" argument I've seen way too much elsewhere.
edited 22nd Jul '17 7:08:30 AM by AlleyOop
There will always be those that hate on characters or story decisions for very odd reasons. In the case of that radical fringe of shippers, sometimes these reasons will be filtered through the pretext of being socially progressive, but it's just a pretext and as they would criticize any canon pairing that contradicts their preferred ship just as fiercely.
A Black-Asian pairing is hugely progressive, though. It happens very rarely in popular fiction works and it flies in the face of endemic East Asian racism toward Africans, a significant market for these films.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Never said it wasn't. That fact won't stop the radical fringe of shippers from criticizing it, sometimes for not being socially progressive in the "right" ways, of course.
Personally I pay them little mind. The internet is a big place, so almost all possible opinions are going to have at least a few adherents, and if more than a few dozen people hold an opinion someone is going to be taking it to an unreasonable extreme.
Honestly I don't have a strong opinion either way on Rose/Finn (Finn Rose? that sounds about right). I do recognize the social implications of the pairing, but I'm going to have to see more of their interactions, and know more about Rose, to decide if it tells a good story.
My opinion on the question of whether a pairing is "progressive" enough is that the executives are asking the same thing, looking to commodify that sort of sentiment. They're probably looking for a way to harness the "social justice" demographic in supporting a film for ultimately superficial reasons, and would only ever pair the two for that reason anyway, so making hay over it ultimately plays into their hands.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Honestly it's fine as long as they have genuine chemistry, Rose has major character depth beyond being a love interest, and they don't get Strangled by the Red String for any reason, whether you can chalk it up to the studio intentionally courting the progressive demographic, heteronormativity, rushed pacing, plot contrivance, etc. For all we know they might not get together period.
Regardless my earlier point is that a lot of the most most outspoken fandom "progressives" tend to also behave the most hypocritically when it comes to shipping, especially if it involves issues of Asian representation. Nobody here is "making hay" or expressing any problems with Rose/Finn being bad because it's too early to tell. I was just being paranoid that based on the vocal behavior of other fandoms, that due to the Star Wars ST fandom already being plagued with shipping drama, some of the extremist rival shippers might make up reasons to hate on it for being "inherently racist" in some way, sometimes even preemptively, just so they can feel better about their OTP not "winning" because it matters that much to them.
More on-topic, from my experience even if East Asian people tend not to be that fond of black people they rarely get up in arms over onscreen Asian-black romances that end happilynote , at least compared to homosexuality. Some of them might dismiss it as an unrealistic fantasy, or claim that Finn is an unrealistic portrayal of a black man in extreme cases, but you won't see anyone short of fringe nationalists (the kind who hate on any Asians other than themselves) openly protesting it as Political Correctness Gone Mad. And even then a lot of the younger folks just don't care. And on the case of homosexual romance, even if some of the old fogeys might raise a fit, large segments of the populace would still be down for that kind of thing even if for questionablenote reasons. Asian fandom tends to behave very differently than Western fandom.
edited 22nd Jul '17 11:52:57 AM by AlleyOop
If being progressive was part of their consideration I think it was more for the casting of Rose the individual than specifically who she's in a romance with. It's really great representation for Asian women if she turns out to be a fairly major character, which they seems to be pushing. Especially when you think about the types of Asian women that are cast in big hollywood films. They're almost always stick thin, and waif like giving this is very narrow definition of what Asian femininity is.
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A little off-topic but actually it's a bit debatable just how homogenous China actually is. The Han Chinese no doubt make up a disproportional amount of the national and world population, partly due to cultural assimilation and intermarriage with other ethnicities over the millennia, but there's ~50 distinct officially recognized minority groups as well as large regional differences in culture, language, and phenotype. And of course there's the kerfluffle regarding the people of Hong Kong who view themselves as totally separate from the mainlanders despite being the same "race".
Japan though is definitely homogenous in many, many ways, with the Okinawa and Ainu people being the most notable outliers.
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Maybe not "white" in the most literal sense of being confused for Europeans per se, but being called "white people" as in opposition to "black" or "brown". I've also seen the phrase "white passing" thrown around a lot, as well as "Asians are not people of color", which is true for some very specific definitions of the term, but not for the most popular one, and dismisses the fact that there are a lot of Asians who are naturally dark-skinned such as South/Southeast Asians, or that lighter-skinned East Asians can be targets of discrimination in some countries.
edited 22nd Jul '17 1:18:33 PM by AlleyOop
I once saw someone on Tumblr arguing that Japanese people are white. True story.
As for The Last Jedi, I keep waiting and waiting for the big Lando reveal. Are they keeping him super tight under wraps so we all cheer our heads off when Billy Dee Williams struts onto the scene? Or have they not shown him because he's just plumb not in it? The ambiguity is killing me!
I could have sworn that they confirmed at Celebration that he isn't in it. I could be mistaken, and even if I'm not Lying Creator is a thing, but I honestly just don't think they have plans for Lando in the the Sequel Trilogy. The sequel era almost certainly, but not in the Episodes.
PSN ID: FateSeraph | Switch friendcode: SW-0145-8835-0610 Congratulations! She/They

Rose at least starts off as a mechanic working for the Resistence. That means her costume is basically just a brown jumpsuit with a belt some pouches for holding tools, which is something even an armature cosplayer could mimic very well. That might be what you are seeing.
But for me personally I don't see a such a simple costume as a bad thing, it just means she's the sort of character who would focus entirely on practicality at the expense of anything that even passively resembles style, and is in a position where a jumpsuit w/ tools is practical.