Just Watched A Video That Showed Up On My Youtube Recommendations Of A Couple Who Vlogged Their Experience

Does anyone else think about how Daisy said that Adam had some really comedic moments in this film?

...and how JJ said that Kylo does some really cool things??

...and also how John Williams likened the film, in particular Kylo and Rey's relationship, to a comedy???

Because I think about those things a lot. If you're not, please do.

This is how this movie end for me.

But in the Saga of Larten Crepsley, he and Wester looked at each other confused. “They had never seen a deep gaze in any man’s eyes” roughly translated, but still there

*walks in*

*walks onto stage*

*grabs microphone*

*breathes in to prepare*

*looking down at the confused audience*

“Larten is bi”

*The crowd cheers as I drop my mic and enter the shadows of where I once came*

Blame this guy named tony for this ok😭

But not resolving a romance with a Big Damn Kiss isn’t a non-ending, not necessarily. Ben and Rey’s relationship could have a resolution that isn’t explicitly romantic, and it would still be a resolution. It’s possible to redeem Kylo, bring closure to his relationship to his family, give Rey fulfillment of her heroic arc, give her a happy ending where she’s gotten rid of her bad blood with Kylo, has her friends and has completed her coming-of-age, but not have a kiss or w/e be part of it.

Not when their relationship is the main thrust of the conflict, not when their arcs are married. The romantic tension is already there, their relationship cannot be resolved without addressing it. This is the ‘business partners’ take on TLJ and it is, imo, nonsense.

What is a happy ending for Rey? Belonging, family, open-eyed unconditional love. Can’t it be with friends and the Resistance? No, she was given that instantly without effort and it gave her no clarity or fulfilment. What pushed her to growth and acceptance? Ben. What does she want? Ben.

It isn’t a ship thing, okay, this is a plot thing. A really big, huge plot thing. It’s not on a ‘will Our Hero and the Tough Spunky Gal kiss at the end or nah?’ level. The relationship between Rey and Kylo Ren is formative to the fabric of the story regardless of what kind of relationship it is and the filmmakers had to decide what it was going to be before moving forward. On the brainstorming whiteboard you’d have: ‘what is the story about (hope, compassion)’, ‘who is the protagonist, why her’, ‘what does she want’, and ‘how does she relate to the Skywalker saga’, ‘what are the stakes’? The answers are all closely related. If the answer to ‘what does our protagonist have at stake with the villain/legacy/thematic lynchpin?’ wasn’t ‘she falls in love with him’, it would have to be something equally melodramatic.

As for Ben, his purpose as a character is to ‘finish what [Anakin] started’. He is the Skywalker so he is there to raise questions about identity and destiny, but as the Skywalker he is also the personification of the moral conflict at issue in the story and has a Fisherking relationship to the entire galaxy. To break the cycle of generational tragedy and to vindicate the faith and hope of all the heroic characters that healing is possible and the galaxy can be renewed, Ben has to be in a position to have children and be equipped to raise them. The implication of children to carry on and renew is necessary for a happy ending.

@benperorsolo has a great post on this and @fluffycakesistainted has some good ones on the Skywalkers. My tag ‘the legacy’ has an extensive, if disorganised, catalogue of how I think this stuff works and why I think that.

But the place of the romance is pivotal. This is the salvific, unconditional love of this trilogy. This is why our protagonist is not a Skywalker, because it’s not platonic. Rey Nobody only makes sense because platonic love has failed and an outsider was needed to get the galactic royal family back on track. Anyone can be a hero in SW, but the divine mandate to balance the Force is a burden still attached to Anakin Skywalker and will be accomplished by healing his legacy. If the generational trauma is healed, the mythic purpose of the Skywalkers is fulfilled and we can move on to other stories.

Fair warning

I’m going to be salty as fuck about TROS for the foreseeable future (ever? Probably forever.) while still celebrating the beauty (and unnecessary painful tragedy) of Ben Solo A FUCKING LEGEND along with the beautiful love story about healing that Reylo COULD HAVE EASILY been.

I will cherry pick the shit out of the FEW “good” scenes in TROS but otherwise completely reject the narrative. I will NOT apologize for this offensive nightmare ending that destroyed the franchise.

If salt isn’t your brand of coping I can respect that and I’ll attempt to tag those posts “TROS salt”.

A rant about Rey.

I'm so sick of the entire Mary Sue debate. It's ridiculous! And this bullshit right here is the straw that broke the camel's back!

Here was my response to that dudebro-

Aside from pissing me off, this interaction also got me thinking...

What I told him about her life was absolutely true and it only takes 1/2 a working brain cell to realize that... Rey grew up in hell.

Niima outpost is a bona fide shit hole. It's the kind of place where the most famous ship in the galaxy can be hidden in plain sight... for years! The kind of place where people sell children. Where people ignore a teenage girl being attack in the middle of the city market... or worse, find it entertaining.

Rey is rather plain looking and shapeless when we meet her... and that was not by accident. Daisy is a beautiful young woman who can turn heads walking down any street in the world... but the difference of appearance between her and Rey are as marked as those between a peacock and a peahen.

The heartbreaking truth is, this is as much a defense tactic as it is a statement of Rey's poverty. She's 19... even if she was a late bloomer she's spent, at least, the last few years having to worry about being seen as a desirable woman... because if someone stronger, more clever, or sufficiently devious enough took an interest in her she could and likely would have been sexually assaulted, raped and/or murdered... the chances of her having never been AT LEAST sexually assaulted are very slim...

She fights every fight like her life depends on it. Even when it's a simple robbery... of something worth zero money to her... did you notice how fast she went from "stop that" to complete savage beast mode on the thugs Unkar sent? It was instantaneous the moment that thug grabbed her. That's panic fighting, pure survival instinct. She's been grabbed before... and it's apparently left her with the effects of lingering trauma.

Did you see how she didn't hesitate to attack, with intent to kill, Kylo the first three times that met? She's had to fight for her life before. Enough to have conquered the panic to the point she can fight effectively. That means she's done it A LOT.

Rey is no sweet cinnamon roll, nor some overpowered bimbo... she's a survivor living in one of the foulest pits of hell that the GFFA has to offer.

Sure, she's a decent person... but make no mistake, she is absolutely willing to cut a bitch. She is a stone cold killer. We don"t know her body count, but anyone with eyes can see that she didn't hesitate and she didn't bat an eyelash at killing that first stormtrooper in the forest before Kylo found her. She'd have done the same to him if not for the fact that he was a Jedi.

Which brings me to the point where they actually do meet...

When he took off that helmet and introduced his real PERSON to her you can't help but wonder why the fuck the big bad guy would do such a thing.

But, if you watch the scene that follows you can see him become more and more fascinated by her with every passing second.

I didn't watch him when I saw this movie at the theater, I watched her. She was emoting beautifuly... terror, panic, revulsion... I can see why someone could see this scene as akin to rape... they'd be wrong, but I CAN see how they've come up with that.

Guess who else wasn't looking at him during this scene? Rey wasn't either.

You know when else she wasn't looking at that incredibly expressive face of his?

When he first got a load of her.

The novel states and it's actually pretty easy to see if you look for it, that Kylo Ren was surprised by and impressed with her from the moment she opened fire on him in the forest.

Yup. He was a goner from the word go. He didn't take her because it would be just as easy to get the map from her as it would be to get it from the droid... frankly the data chip would have been infinitely more useful than a 30 second, unfocused memory... no he took her because he felt incredibly drawn to her. He took her because she intrigued him. He could feel there was something different and special about her. He was so distracted by her and elated to have gotten her under his control that he didn't give even a fraction of a shit about finding the droid or Luke anymore... he actively didn't want the droid anymore because that would have robbed him of his excuse to keep her around and investigate her mind... the perfect cover for his sudden, urgent, NEED to learn everything about her and figure out why he felt so "inexorably drawn" to her.

Watch his face after she says the bit about Vader... he's scared shitless... but he's not afraid for his life... he's scared because he didn't find out why he was drawn to her, and now it was a way more powerful draw... and it felt incredible... like nothing he's ever felt or seen or heard or read about...

That my friends, with a shiver down his spine to mark the occasion, was the moment he realized that she was his ONLY equal in the entire galaxy... and he wanted her. Like a trophy, yes, on the surface, where he could acknowledge and accept it - but also on a deeper level... on the level of a unique being who had found the only other of it's type in existence... on the level where Adam wanted Eve.

Rey missed 100% of that... just like a lot of the fandom... just like I did upon first viewing.

In fact she missed every bit of him falling in love with her... allllllllll the way up to this moment

Yep... even says so in the book... she had no inkling that he had actual, real, deep feelings for her.

Not even when this happened-

She was clueless.

And guess what else she didn't know? She didn't know he was physically attracted to her until this moment-

It never occurred to her that he might want ALL OF HER... because she only found out 10 minutes ago (a LONG ten minutes!) that he felt ANYTHING towards her besides a desire to shape and control her Force training and abilities.

It was a lot to take in all at once... especially considering that she was still so terrified of him that she tried to kill him 18 hrs ago!

She had hoped she could convince him to go home to his mother and his family... to return to the light... to fight the good fight... she never even suspected that he had fallen in love with HER... the lonely, scrappy, unwanted, abandoned, flawed, unlovable dessert rat... not her powers.

I think she misjudged him terribly from start to finish.

She has no idea when she closes that door in his face that his feelings were hurt but not changed... that they were real and not some fucked up manipulation tactic.

That naked vulnerability is why they chose Adam Driver... Kylo's feelings for Rey are alive and well... that's why the last time we see him he is bowing under the weight of massive amounts of grief.

Okay, putting a flower crown on serial killers harms absolutely nobody. When was the last time someone was actually injured by a serial killer, the 50s? Sorry if you think this is a trend, but putting a circlet of flowers on top of a real human being that drove a 5 inch steel knife into an innocent persons beating heart can be qualified as self expression. Learn it. PS. I play reaper in overwatch and talk like solid snake when Im on the phone. I could hack the stock market if I needed to. Bye

i cant decide what my favorite line of this is

Prince Ben 💙

A good reminder of why we keep getting Reylo Fighting scenes:

Every single TV spot/trailer being shown literally doesn’t say a thing about where any of the characters are ending up in the film. We have nothing on Poe, Finn, Rose, Rey, Ben, Leia, etc. because it’s what we call a spoiler.

So it’s a good thing we’re getting Reylo fighting, because it means it’s not a big spoiler.

It means we’re not gonna sit in the theater and go, “wow so the movie ended with Rey and Ben fighting! Totally didn’t see that coming.”

It means we’re blatantly being told this is not something worth hiding from the public before the movie premieres.

The character development for every single character in tros will not be revealed in TV spots or trailers. Reylo on opposite sides isn’t worth hiding.

Reylo together is.