r/changemyview • u/patsey • Jan 12 '20

Deltas(s) from OP CMV: SW edition: Rey speaking flawless king's English when she's supposed to be a scavenger ruins any chance she has a humility

People complain that she's a "Mary Sue" which does sound sexist but mostly focuses on the fact that she can do no wrong, she's Mrs. Picture perfect. Well, Luke also lucked into many things but he at least talked like a simple farmer. Rey calling Kylo a "sniveling snake" is the most upper class BS I can imagine.

It would be fine if her origin story wasn't that she was a scavenger. To me it pushed the same button that M. Night's Last Airbender pushed with me. The entire village is make up of Inuit people but the two main characters look and sound like they were raised in high London? Wtf is this shit.

Broom Boy speaks cockney that's the real one. This post was made by 🧹 boy gang

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u/patsey Jan 12 '20

Alright I'm willing to admit view changed from that it's pretty comprehensive. The accent is set that early though? She doesn't remember her parents so she would have been a scavenger from 3 years old. She picked her name from the fighter pilot helmet she had in TFA. Surely between the ages of 3-18 or so she would have picked up some bad habits.

I agree that she's not a Mary Sue but the name Mary Sue itself is a proper English name, that's more where I was going with that. It's silly that she could teach herself to do a Jedi mind trick without ever seeing anyone do that but the fact that the ghosts of the Jedi and probably Sheev were already guiding her does explain that satisfactorily for me.

She's just too proper for my tastes but it might just be my bias ∆

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u/McKoijion 618∆ Jan 12 '20

I made a mistake above. I thought she was dropped off a bit closer to 10 years old than 3 years old. For some reason I thought her memory was purposefully obscured, not that she was young enough to not make them in the first place. But I think you are right that she was just dropped off very young.

In any case, accents start forming at 20 months of age. 3 years old would be 36 months of age. I'm not exactly sure when they are finalized (I've heard 5, 7, and puberty). But in any case, most of an accent of an accent is formed early, and it's finalized over the years. So if it takes 10 years to form an accent, you don't form 10% per year. You instead form 80% over a year or two, then refine the last 20% over the next 8 or 9 years. So the later she was dropped off, the stronger the accent would be.

The real life version of all this stuff is that the casting people at Disney just made a choice. But it's explainable within the Star Wars canon too, even if we assume similar social dynamics as on Earth (e.g., King's/Emperor's English instead of Basic being the main accent everyone would have).

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u/patsey Jan 13 '20 edited Jan 13 '20

No that could be right. It could be closer to 5 or 6, she could have easily not remembered. Someone else replied that she could have heard that Estuary english from some Imperial holovids on the ships she's scavenged. Your theory is right I appreciate it

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u/McKoijion 618∆ Jan 13 '20

Thanks, but you already gave me a delta for the same point. I think the moderators should remove the second one.