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deadburiedandgone · 1 month ago

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What’s so weird to me is how everyone one thinks Reylo is still toxic. Hannigram is toxic dude, they bring out the worst in each other and hurt each other. Reylo brings out the best in each other. It’s just hard to notice because 1) Ben is so deep in propaganda from the dark side; he is deep in their cult. 2) they are both so repressed.

Listen, I am friends with someone who is no longer a Nazi. They used to hold that ideology but now they believe in equality and reparations etc. These radical changes are possible, but for some reason I feel like people are acting like Ben never changed. I remember when my friend was starting to understand, but he still had a lot to unlearn, he’d say stupid shit similar to Ben in episode 8. Stuff like “join me because these other guys suck and youre nothing so you have nothing better”. In real life it can sound different obviously but… yall have to understand he is unlearning this shit in like only a couple years… in fact he is literally using a manipulation tactic that was probably used on him by Snoke (calling her nothing so she relied on him is probably a similar tactic the dark side used). He is convinced that the tactic helped himself, so he says it to her to help her. It took my (real life) friend…. 4+ years to unlearn most of Nazi ideology. He still hasn’t unlearned everything, and it’s been 6 years since he started trying to undo it all as best he could. It’s fucking hard because it seeps in everywhere. Frankly, I’m surprised Ben Solo only needed such a small amount of time to unlearn that much. Not that surprised since he probably still remembered all the good things his parents taught him no mater how much he tried to bury it. Point is escaping a hateful cult like that is hard. You aren’t just going to stop killing. Things are gradual. You are going to hesitate more, kill less… and then stop. It is messy as shit.

When it comes to repression, Rey represses her family history and limits herself on what she can do and where she can go (before she gets involved of course). She becomes very deregulated, especially with all the new environments, and can therefore get more impulsive and irritable. She sees everything very black and white in the beginning due to her trauma (refuses to believe she’s related to palpatine and thinks he parents are so amazing they never sold her and will come back). Ben is also similar and we always see him take out his rage and have meltdowns so I don’t feel like I have to explain that. They begin to both accept the idea that grey things exist in episode 2 (episode 8). They finally face the grey areas in their lives in episode 9 (she faces palpatine/the fact her parents had to sell her for her safety/ben himself, he asks his father for forgiveness and helps Rey while knowing all the awful things he did that he can’t undo/rey herself in a way)

So, even though they do start off toxic (I’d simply call it enemies), really the ship is more “right person wrong time” because they didn’t even want to think/they felt guilty for thinking about getting together until they were in agreement. Also it’s enemies to lovers of course. The literally tear each other down emotionally to try and stop the seeds of sympathy for each other growing between them. So please stop with the “Rey deserves a better man; this ship is so shit” discourse that somehow is STILL GOING ON EVEN THOUGH ITS BEEN YEARS. They can find other people technically, but the point is they love each other even knowing their past and how much they had to grow. Rey doesn’t settle for him, she doesn’t even want him until he finally is just Ben. She simply loves him.

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deadburiedandgone · 1 month ago

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that's so funny... I always read Kylo Ren's line as his saying that where Rey comes from doesn't matter to him at all, which is a line that has extra metatextual meaning that to him she doesn't need to be a Skywalker to be important in this story. It's a very on the nose line that way. "They threw you away like garbage" is important and gets left out of this discussion all the time; he doesn't agree with her parents' assessment, and it's really important for her to know, that to him, her parents were wrong about her, the same as his were about him (that there's still light in him), that it was right for him to strike his dad down, so it's doing a lot of important character work; like earlier we already had Rey jealous of Kylo's relationship with Han, now we have Kylo trying to soothe her in the reverse, and also self-soothe by extension.

It also tickles me because Rey is a scavenger, so he's speaking her language. He's found treasure. And she's found a treasure in Kylo that has been abandoned and besmirched. It feels oddly cute to me. And all of this dialogue is special because it is setting up earnest understanding, but also still expounding upon Kylo's self-wounding villainy here, like you point out in the linked post, he still doesn't think that he alone could be worth the commitment. And Rey can't go with him.

The weirdest thing about the Reylo romance is he's bare-faced and honest. There's not any duplicity. We get closest to him as a real character through her and vice versa. They expect it to be a dark villainous liar-liar-pants-on-fire romance with the expectation that the truth-telling only happens later. Personally I think it's far more interesting and exciting for it.

I do get anon was trying to say! But I think the Austenian comedy-of-manners doesn't quite fit here! Mr. Darcy is proposing to her and insulting her rank - how could he (of higher birth) want to marry a woman beneath him? And then Elizabeth rejects him! It's tangled up in Austen's social context, whereas SW has the magic-mythic stuff; Rey's perfectly spiritually equal to Kylo. Actually, Kylo thinks they were in exactly the same situation. He's also rejected Snoke desiring to kill the one who was rising in the light side of the Force. Kylo is practically egalitarian by comparison. Remember, evil space wizards, people.

I actually find 'you have no place in this story' too meta and therefore awkward (said this at the time, but I don't know how to find that post lol), but the idea being expressed is very important. Ben is acknowledging that she is not Destined, not a chosen one, not a legacy, but that that isn't important. Her choices define her, her power is her own, her future is unwritten. He wants her to understand that the infinite value she has doesn't come from anyone else.

He knows what he's talking about because he is the last Skywalker, the scion, the legacy, and he was trapped in a prison of fatalism by everyone around him from the moment he was conceived. His family feared and mistrusted him because of the blood in his veins, they failed to protect him, they abandoned him. He was hounded into an acceptance rooted in despair, that there was no possible escape for him from the shadow of Vader and he could not avoid his destiny. He wants the pain to stop, so he stopped fighting this 'inevitability'.

But Ben is a deeply loving, compassionate person who has no conviction in the dark side, so it is a constant struggle for him. He prays to Vader for help, he needs Han's assistance to severe the lifeline of Han's call to come home. Trying to be something he is not weakens him. We see, when he acts from conviction to save Rey and kill Snoke, how powerful he actually is when he is not conflicted. He is strengthened immeasurably by doing the right thing, as is his natural inclination.

The weirdest thing about the Reylo romance is he's bare-faced and honest. There's not any duplicity.

Yes, exactly! This is absolutely crucial to their dynamic. Ben is never intentionally trying to seduce her and he is never lying to her. There is no manipulation coming from him, ever. He is sincerely and earnestly seeking connection with her, trying to help her. He is her foil and her mirror. He is the only character in the story who is confronting her with the truth about herself, he is the only one challenging her and he is challenging her from a place of empathy. That's why their relationship is the central crux of her arc. He is right about her and wrong about himself.

Ben has the opposite problem that Darcy has. If Ben believed in his own inherent value and had self-worth, he would not be trapped by his maladaptive world-view and would be able to offer Rey strictly himself, which she would have accepted. The entire temptation for Rey in this scene is to be selfish and accept him anyway even though it would hurt him.

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