Rules within the SW universe.

It comes down to this.

Party A does not need, or does not want an explanation to Rey's powers. They seem offended that anyone should feel they need one. They think one isn't necessary, writers can do what they want.

Party B needs an explanation to Rey's power, skill and or technique. Whether bloodline (which now seems ruled out) or by an other means (previous training, unmentioned mentor, her being an experiment, or a clone, something... anything). Forty years of canon should be respected.

Episode 9 might provide something, I don't think we're done with Rey's parents yet, but I can't say exactly what they intend either.

So now all we have is "light meets dark". An ambiguous statement that can cover a whole lot of ground. I do feel there's some grey area in between both Party A and B that by the end of 9 we can all be satisfied.

 

I agree with the portion regarding your reply to my post. It's the old adage, that if you have faith (in this case in the writing team, creative minds) you don't need proof, but you don't, no proof will do (unless you see something so good or real you can't deny it, like Thomas upon Jesus's return... since Biblical references have been often made here lol).

As for BobRoss, I'll try to explain in my way what I think and what I gather his meaning is.

Rey with a backstory to why she can do the things she is doing could go a long way to having some fans get back on board. From the exposition we have of Rey so far, she's a nobody. Which is fine. The Force, although this isn't fact yet but somewhere between a loose suggestion by a villain and extrapolated fan theory, has chosen her as a conduit which makes her more powerful than the average Jedi. I think most of us could get on board with that too. The degree of that power is still somewhat in question, but lets just say the top 1% of Jedi's, top 10% at absolute worse based on what we've seen.

So the issue tends to always go back to how does she know to do what she is doing? Some of the explanations are very creative and could work, but as of now are fan theory. As fans, some of us need to hear it within the context of the movie. The issue is not just levitating rocks, but that's the most easily comparable one from the previous trilogies, which is why it is being used the most.

Put in another way, if her power is on par with Anakin's, then with training she could do what she is doing. If she is taught how. Because even Anakin needed training. If the Force is somehow telling her how to do it, then that should have been demonstrated in the movie somehow (a Force voice instructing her or something). She has visions with the lightsaber and stuff, but it seemed to be telling her of events, I don't recall anything referring to techniques. I mean, even a flashback showing the Jedi of past doing a bunch of Force powers could be argued as the Force essentially downloading information into its vessel. But we're not getting that.

So what we have is Rey, a powerful force user for reasons ambiguous (light meets dark). If fan theories are correct, I can accept that (even if it makes events in the OT and PT kind of odd, we're not privy to every force user or the Force's method of scaling dark and light). I just feel I need to know where she's getting her information. Maybe they aren't breaking or bending any canon rules, but without exposition, I think it's fair game to question if they are. Force Users need to train, if there's canon being broken it's that. Though SW never implicitly says you HAVE to train, it is heavily implied by both Yoda and Vader that training is needed to focus raw power. Raw power alone isn't enough.

Vader to Luke. "The force is with you young Skywalker, but you are not a Jedi yet." implying that training to become a Jedi is what makes a force user more effective, until then it's just a bunch of raw power, but without a method to focus that power. In other words she's a powerful engine without a vehicle. The vehicle is her training, which allows her to do stuff, until then she can make some loud noise, generate some heat, but she isn't moving much other than her inner components until she's received some training.

Had she used Mind trick in TLJ after meeting Luke, I could have accepted that. It's quite possible that mind trick is a very easy skill to master. Knitting isn't very difficult, or weaving, but until you are taught how, it'll likely elude you until you get some instruction. Her power isn't the biggest question (though throwing a line or two to fans could help), it's her ability to use that power in intricate and insightful ways. Yes, someone had to invent weaving and knitting, but somehow I don't think it was done within 30 seconds.

All of this can be easily remedied in Ep9. Maybe the 70% don't need it (I think a portion would appreciate it, a portion would be annoyed it had to be included, but to most it would just be affirmation of something they already took for granted, which is fine), but considering it wouldn't take a minute to explain things to satisfy the other 30% (or a huge chunk of it) I think it's something they should consider doing. It would certainly be a better use of time that Finn's side mission.

So in short, affirmation of the source or reason for her power (from a source other than Snoke, who obviously didn't have the best insightful force skills), and where she's getting her knowledge of skills or techniques.

If not for the 6 movies in the PT and OT, plus books, cartoons and games, it wouldn't be needed, but that isn't the reality in which these movies are being written. Fans want a LOTR and the writers to do their due diligence, not take the quick in easy path that creates fear and anger.

 

SW has never been big on explaining sciency stuff, unlike Star Trek. Space travel has always just been a means to tell a fantasy that happens to take place in space. Because of the lack of hard rules, we have what we have in TLJ. There's nothing wrong with that, essentially, since the writers take for granted that the readers just understand that it works. Though many of us know very well how our cars work, many don't, but you don't see writers go into the complexity of how a car functions to explain how one character from a soap opera goes to another home. It's taken for granted.

The problem with what RJ did by putting space travel into the spotlight is that it now created a question as to why. It was easy before to just ignore it because it was rarely a major plot point, but in TLJ it became a major plot point of one of the story lines it expected the fan base to believe. TLJ begs us to ask why and how and I'm not sure but I don't think RJ is ready to answer those questions, he wants us to just accept the highly unlikely event that these space ships, just like cars, just stop after running out of fuel.

Any explanation on here will be fan head canon. It's possible it's a safety feature on space ships that once they are about to run out of fuel they reverse thrust at the end to stop them, since otherwise they could eventually collide into a star, a super nova and that would end their trip real quick. Otherwise the physics works differently, which I hope that's not what they go on as an official explanation in some book.

As for different ships having different speeds, maybe fleets operate differently travelling through space, using tractor beams to keep everyone together, although that's implying that ships will not lose momentum and just keep drifting at the speed the faster ship with the tractor beam is pulling them. At some point it's anyones guess. Someone will tackle it in a book down the line, but for now we're expected to suspend our disbelief for this too.

As for them both travelling at the same speed, maybe one is slightly faster than the other, but we are talking astronomical numbers here, so maybe they drift apart in say a few months or years or decades, but those time lines are so irrelevant to the story that it isn't bothered to come up inside the discussion of TLJ.