#because per the logic of hoo. luke is Even More Right

[rynnaaurelius]

Goddammit im so hapoy to have found you, a Luke apologist. I jaut got sucked back into the whole fandom bc of the upcoming series and... i read the original books when i was really young, right, 11,12,13. And yea, Luke was the bad guy!!

But now im actually Luke age. And i know how young everyone actually is. If you put me in charge of a bunch of 12-15 year olds and made me watch them die one after the other; i'd probably side with the side that's AGAINST those making this happen too???

Idk his stance is just so so so understandable. I'm studying to become a teacher rn and being responsible for big groups of young kids - it feels a certain way. It's like... motherly instincts, but not really, but kinda, but definetly extreme protectiveness.

Now did he make some bad choices along the way blablabla, sure yea. But holy hell his position is understandable.

ESPECIALLY! Knowing about New Rome and that alternatives are a possibility, actually, the greeks just aren't getting them??? Nah i'd definetly try and murder all the gods. Viciously.

I don't really know where i'm going with this except that i was scrolling through the Luke tag and one of your posts was like a breath of fresh air in between all the, mostly pretty young, fans that hate on him and everything he every did. So thanks, i guess?

Goddamn, I somehow never got an email for this, so I had no idea this was collecting dust in my inbox. Sorry about that.

Also, you left me rambling, so. . .sorry about that.

And yes. I am more or less the same age Luke was during the series, and I can't imagine the number it would do on you to be responsible for prepping a bunch of preteens and teenagers to face their violent deaths, especially after what he went through with his mother and Thalia.

I left it in the tags of the post that went viral against my will, but Luke's living out a different genre from Percy and company, and I—I would lose my shit, too, if in his position. That's torturous, dystopian shit.

They're kids, damn it.

(And I have. . .many headcanons about Luke Castellan and Camp Jupiter and Greek demigod life expectancies. Most of them not good, all of them trying to square the worldbuilding)

And I find it so difficult to believe that it's a bad person—and not simply a very angry and hurt person—who sets out to do really questionable things to try and keep another kids from suffering and dying, to prevent anyone else from becoming himself.

There's a certain despair through it and Luke's choices; I really, really have my doubts over whether Luke genuinely believed that he would survive the war, either way.

Raging against the dying of the light and all that. He knows he will likely fail, he knows he's propping up a monster, and he's doing it anyway in this desperate attempt to create something different.

This makes Percy so important because he still thinks that as family and as people, the gods can change—just look at his conversation with Hermes at the end of TLO.

There's a faith he very understandably keeps (Poseidon is, by godly standards, a good dad who tries and that's important), a faith that Luke, in turn, has understandably lost and we see Hermes's grief and regret over that loss.

Luke's last change in heart, his choice to believe in Percy, in how to break this cycle of violence and abuse that's been eating demigods alive, is beautiful and kills me every time.

(Requisite note that this final choice takes on a different timbre considering the events of HoO)

He's lost everything—his mother, Thalia, Annabeth, any semblance of a home he ever had. Which is how I think he justifies Kronos, ultimately, I think. He's lost any hope he has, for himself or otherwise, and is intent on making the gods pay for what they've done.

Like every other tragic hero, he penned his own tragedy, knowing what was going to happen the whole time, which kills me.

He walks into his own end and, at the end, finds that last thing at the bottom of Pandora's jar—Hope.

[emperorren]

(6) I guess I'm also not a fan of "Perfect Jedi Goddess Rey for whom Kylo has to crawl on his knees to be worthy of" (I can totally see why ppl like it tho), mainly because at this point, Kylo needs an equal, and not someone he'll always feel inferior too. I think the Throne Room proves that both of them still have some growing up to do in order to not only be together, but also understand each other better, bring out the best in each other, and being able to mature together in a healthy way.

Sorry, forgot to add this last part to the earlier post.

I think nobody wants Kylo to crawl. It was a popular concept like, 2-3 years ago, when Reylo shippers used to self flagellate (and flagellate Kylo) much more than we do now, half to deflect anti discourse and half because we really believed the best we could hope for was Rey not *completely* hating his guts by the end. Those days are gone. We know Kylo has his own reasons, because the narrative is showing them—it’s no longer a stretch or “reading too much into it” on our part. But the fact remains that Kylo is a villain and that, in order for this relationship to work, they’ll need to start being on the same page on something other than their mutual desire to be with each other. And I think it’s clear that, while Rey does have some growing up to do, her ethics are in the right place, while Kylo’s aren’t. It’s kind of unrealistic to expect Rey to move away from her heroic morals in the same way Kylo will have to move away from his villainous morals, so I don’t think it’s worth debating whether she should or not. 

The whole “meeting halfway” thing is still possible, especially if you consider that, so far, they’ve essentially tried to abduct each other into their world, and failed. They both need to acknowledge and accept the fact that they might never “have” the other—not in the terms they currently think would be ideal. But Kylo has objectively more things to make up for. Many of those things have nothing to do with Rey per se, but became Rey’s business the moment she started to care for him.

re: your new round of asks:

(Rey discourse anon here) The problem is that for me, it’s really hard to tell whether Rey pulling the lightsaber away from Ben was her being cornered and knowing that what she’ll do will hurt Ben deeply – and for that, all I’m going to say is that, well, no, she literally did not have to do that. Again, it makes sense that she’d react this way, but the issue is that by reacting on impulse, like Luke did so many years ago, just like he played a part in making Kylo Ren,she played a part in making the Supreme Leader. Yelling at him and making her intentions clear was entirely possible, would have resulted in a similar outcome, and she decided not to. Because reasons. (Seriously, what is Ben going to do if she replies “no” out loud, kill her? *eyeroll*) 

I’m not sure why you think yelling at him would have looked better in Kylo’s eyes, or what else Rey could have done to make her intentions clear, other than beg Kylo to stop firing on the Resistance, which she already had, loud and clear. Kylo perfectly understood what she was asking. He chose not to comply. Had his reasons. But chose to discard her plea.

Also, yes, she *literally* had to pull the saber. It’s her only weapon, and the girl needed one if she wanted to get the fuck out of the Supremacy alive. I think y’all forget she was in enemy territory, alone, unarmed, and in desperate need to get to Crait where there would probably be a huge battle within minutes. Yeah, she has the Force… but a lightsaber could help. 

And frankly, no, I don’t think being morally right gives you a right or even merely an excuse to strike right into someone’s trauma.

Rey really did not do that—not on purpose (unlike Kylo, who totally used the parents card i.e. Rey’s own trauma and repressed painful memories to convince her to accept his offer). Note that Rey never actually got to wield the saber against Kylo—all she did was try to snatch it away from him. They could have gone for a clear cut Luke/Rey parallel by having Kylo regain consciousness to see an armed Rey looming over him, conflicted on whether to kill him or not. But they didn’t. This is absolutely important—Rey could have killed Kylo as he was unconscious, but chose not to. And Kylo never got to see her seriously considering to kill him.

Her face could frankly also be interpreted as “you’re not doing as I say, so screw you!”, and since the next scene we see her in is her woo-hoo-ing on the Falcon and then getting reunited with her buddies, there’s no indication she’s really all that heart-broken. Her closing the door on Ben could be seen that way as well (although I obviously think their story isn’t over, of course). Like… I dunno, it’s hard for me to feel sorry for her.

Her face when she’s slowly lifting her hand in the throne room scene doesn’t scream of “screw you!” to me. Neither does the little gasp in the last force bond. But YMMV.

The story could have been set up as “Rey did nothing wrong and Ben better beg on his knees in IX”, but it wasn’t. Because in the end, both Rey and Ben made their own bed, which leads me to be more “GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER YOU IDIOTS”. But this said, I do believe Rey’s heart was at the right place. She was indeed the catalyst that pushed Ben to finally get rid of his abuser. But realistically speaking, what she pulled off could have gone horribly wrong as well.My point is not that following your heart is always bad – but doing that all the time isn’t exactly a good idea either. Heck, Luke’s heart was at the right place when he went to save his friends in ESB, and he got beat up and lost his hand.

It might be not “exactly a good idea” but it’s still better than the alternative. (in Luke’s case, that would have been leaving his friends to die; in Rey’s case, not attempting to do anything for Kylo at all). These heroes tend to have their heroism challenged at the end of the second movie: they learn that sometimes having the best intentions isn’t enough. It’s an important lesson in humility. But not one that teaches them to follow their hearts a little less. See: Luke in RotJ, doubling down on compassion and being ready to risk his life not only to save his friends, but to redeem his father too.

And for Rey, it’s more than being an outsider: she’s the only person who had, like, an actual human reaction to Ben’s situation and actually did something to help.(Well, so did Han, but it was indeed a case of “too little, too late”, even if it definitely had a huge effect on Ben and made him start to realize Snoke was a PoS) But where she also failed is that just like everyone else, she came to Ben with a clear agenda in mind (or you know, an agenda to convince herself she’s totally doing this for the great cause, not because she wants The Beefcake), and with wanting to be the hero so bad she lost sight of what Ben really needs – a friend.I guess one thing that kind of annoys me at this point is that, honestly, who the heck knows what Ben’s motivations are, at this point, because his speech in the Throne Room could be interpreted in many ways. But I won’t lie by saying about it that if it just boils up to “Ra-Ra-First-Order”, I’ll be bored to tears. It’s not even a matter of saying “Ben was right all along” (because he obviously isn’t), you know, just something like“Ben is right when it comes to the endgame, or the intentions, or whatever, but his methods of getting to that are terrible”. What Rey has in mind is “we’ll help the Resistance together and build a new Jedi Order”, while having no clue whether Ben really wants that or not. I mean, he’s probably already not big on the idea because Rey might think the Resistance is great and all, but he knows they won’t be so nice to him, for obvious reasons.And it’s not even a matter of ideological differences or not – heck, maybe even in the old days with Luke, he flat out didn’t want to be a Jedi. Both of them need to find an outcome that they both want – and they’re obviously not at that point yet. 

I don’t disagree with you on this last part, especially on the bolded. (See what I said earlier about meeting halfway.)  But I do have a couple objections:

I don’t think Rey was at all trying to play the hero by coming to the Supremacy. If anything, she hoped Ben could be, so she could be relieved from the burden of being the galaxy’s last hope. And yeah, Ben might be in desperate need of a friend… but so is she, and it’s not exactly easy to be the perfect friend when a war is raging and you’re on opposite sides of the conflict, ykwim? This isn’t a normal situation.

I wouldn’t really count on Kylo’s endgame being shown in a sympathetic or redeeming light. Politically, his ideas (judging from the little we know of them) are a mess. But most importantly, in politics, the “means” count just as much as the “end” does. If your plan to reduce poverty includes, say, mass incarceration and operates on a racist logic, then your plan is bad, no matter how noble your goal is. If Kylo thought the best way to create his “new order” was using a militaristic, despotic war machine whose goal is forcing the galaxy to yield to their dictatorship and raze to the ground any dissenter, then either his idea of a new order isn’t ESPECIALLY democratic in the first place, or he just doesn’t understand politics at all. He can’t simply give up on his means. He needs to give up on his intended endgame as well.