#fine ok

[stinastar]

Godsdammit this stupid show is giving me fic thoughts again. Who knew.

[officialmiraclebug]

It's just magic

From: @thechillturtlekwami

But internet is not magic!

[aesthetiicly]

“I leaned heavily on the balustrade, trembling under the weight of the parallel truths that I had, until then, been able to ignore: James was in love with Wren, and I was blindly, savagely jealous”

OLIVER I AM SCREAMING

[glompcat]

TROS thoughts - you thought I was done talking about this movie? Really? REALLY?

Something I really really appreciated was how the overarching thread of Ben’s arc was that it all came down to his own choices. That he was responsible for his own actions.

By having that second scene with Han (which we all know would have in a better timeline have been with his mother, but they took what they were given by the universe at large and made it work) so totally echo their scene together in TFA, we are immediately reminded in full that Ben’s pain and suffering could have ended in his very first film. That the only reason it didn’t, that all the pain he caused for both others and himself ever happened, was his own choice.

We are expressly immediately reminded throughout the film that when Sheev comes a’calling, you don’t have to listen. That you can say no, turn away and either stay in/return to the light.

I am reminded of how a few months ago MSNBC ran a limited documentary series that aired on Sunday evenings called “Breaking Hate,” named after a book with the same name. I watched the series but have never read the book, so I can comment on one and not the other.

Breaking Hate followed a man named Christian Picciolini, who is also the author of the book.

Rather than describe him and what he does myself, here is the description of the book and its author: 

Today's extremist violence surges into our lives from what seems like every direction -- vehicles hurtling down city sidewalks; cyber-threats levied against political leaders and backed up with violence; automatic weapons unleashed on mall shoppers, students, and the faithful in houses of worship. As varied as the violent acts are the attackers themselves -- neo-Nazis, white nationalists, the alt-right, InCels, and Islamist jihadists, to name just a few. In a world where hate has united communities that traffic in radical doctrines and rationalize their use of violence to rally the disaffected, the fear of losing a loved one to extremism or falling victim to terrorism has become almost universal. Told with startling honesty and intimacy, Breaking Hate is both the inside story of how extremists lure the unwitting to their causes and a guide for how everyday Americans can win them-and our civil democracy-back. Former extremist Christian Picciolini unravels this sobering narrative from the frontlines, where he has worked for two decades as a peace advocate and "hate breaker." He draws from the firsthand experiences of extremists he has helped to disengage, revealing how violent movements target the vulnerable and exploit their essential human desires, and how the right interventions can save lives. Along the way, Picciolini solves the puzzle of why extremism has come to define our era, laying bare the ways in which modern society-from "fake news" and social media propaganda to coded language and a White House that inflames rather than heals-has polarized and radicalized an entire generation. Piercing, empathetic, and unrestrained, Breaking Hate tells the sweeping story of the challenge of our time and provides a roadmap to overcoming it.

Essentially this man has devoted his life to helping violent White Supremacists find a way home. 

He opened most every episode of his show explaining that he gets a lot of messages from family members and former friends and loved ones, begging him to reach the people they lost to these movements. To find them, the real them, the them they still love, and bring them back. He also would explain, over and over, how he really can only reach those who want to be found, but there are ways to look for those openings, make the needed connections and in the end help someone recover their humanity. 

He even worked with people who had contacted him for disingenuous reasons. He didn’t turn them away even when he knew the only reason he was there was to make them look better for an upcoming trial. After all, if he had a chance, even the slightest chance, of getting through to them, of actively reducing the number of White Supremacists in this world, he wanted to take it.

In each episode he’d interweave a story about someone other than his current active case. Often about a young man whose involvement in these movements resulted in his death or a lifetime in prison. He’d study what led that man there, and interview their family and former friends. Try to figure out what led them to where they wound up.

Picciolini never makes any secret of the fact that he himself used to be a White Supremacist. He used that as a tool to reach these lost people, the fact he had read and understood all the same propaganda bullshit arguments they were mired in, and more importantly that he was a living example that there was indeed a path out and a life possible after.

I bring this up because we live in a very particular moment right now, and one of the things the men he worked with often spoke about on the show was that one of the motivating factors that drew them deeper and deeper into that hate filled world was a sense that once you’ve done or committed to certain things, there is no going back. 

They often would not realize just how evil they had become until they hit some sort of tipping point, and once they were at that point they would either double down due to a fear there was no recovering once you are at that place, or they would wake up and do the very very hard work needed to claw their way out of the hate. 

Not all of them recovered. 

Not all of the people who managed to leave White Supremacy had people who still loved them waiting for them on the other side, and not all of the people whose stories ended in death or conviction were without loving people waiting for them to wake up and return home one day.

I was reminded of that in Ben’s story.

His choices were framed as his own. 

The bridge scene could have gone a different way. 

The text of the film expressly tells us that no one, absolutely no one at all, was to blame for every single bit of pain and suffering we saw him both incur and feel - at the very least from the moment of that bridge scene onwards. A viewer can extrapolate and apply that out as they see fit (and I would argue that the Dark Side is ALWAYS framed as a CHOICE and that this movie is very clear there is never ever any blaming others for those actions), but the film expressly told us that at least for that span of time - almost the entirety of of his existence as a character - his choice was his own.

What reached him, really reached him, was Compassion.

Both his mother’s and Rey’s.

More than that, it was being shown that another choice was possible. That you can always truly find a path out of the Dark and into the Light, simply by making the right choices.  

Rey couldn’t, absolutely couldn’t, kill him in the moment of his mother’s death. Striking a killing blow at that time simply was not right, was not fair, and so she could not do it. It was terribly kind, and showed him the incredible power that exists in compassion as opposed to hate. He had already seen her struggle, already knew her blood was Sith tainted, far more than his own, that she heard the same siren call to the Dark he did and had to fight against it all the time. And yet she still chose compassion. 

In Attack of the Clones, Ben Solo’s grandfather told us that Compassion is central to a Jedi’s life.

There is nothing more defining of the Light than compassion.

Ben had lied to himself, convinced himself that he had made his bed and had to lie in it.

Yet here was a Jedi, descended from Darth Sidious himself, someone he had seen shoot lightning out of her hands in a moment of passion so recently... choosing to so firmly stay in the Light.

Ultimately it is up to you if you forgive Ben. By having him sacrifice himself the way he did (in the end he was a support in Rey’s story more than anything else. His own story culminating in him simply being part of Rey’s story - literally fading out of existence once that role was fulfilled) he, like his grandfather, became a figure others would have to reckon with in his absence.

Personally I think it is telling his ghost was not seen with his mother’s and his uncle’s at the end.

Luke saw his father standing with Obi-Wan and Yoda, yet Rey did not see Ben with her two Jedi Masters. 

That to me suggests that she never did truly forgive him in full. The kiss, no more than a thank you and goodbye, gave the closure they both needed at the end. It was not an absolution.

In the end Ben managed to finish what his grandfather started. He got what he most wanted - to build upon his legacy and do what he did just in his own way.

He gave up his life so that the actual hero of the piece, the Seed of the Jedi Order, could live.

Did she forgive him for everything he had done?

I think the fact his ghost wasn’t in the final scene very loudly suggests that she didn’t.

Did the movie expect you to forgive him for everything?

No more than you were expected to forgive Vader, and goodness knows grappling with who he was and his legacy is the pillar upon which this entire franchise is built.

Was this a “redemption” arc?

I don’t know. I don’t think so, not in full. It wasn’t that simple or easy, really. He died so soon after his turn back to the light, so just like it was for his grandfather the real hard work needed for a true redemption was still unfilled.

Ultimately I don’t think the way his story was executed empowers glorifies or forgives fascism, in fact I think just the opposite. It shows how weak it is. It reminds those who need to hear it that there is a pathway home. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be simple, but there is a life possible after Hate.

I don’t think it was perfectly executed and am sure there are ways of reading and framing it that argue the exact opposite of my own take away.

But I also feel, in truth, that it is silly to imagine there are people who are ok with the way Vader was handled in ROTJ and not Kylo in TROS. Their arcs are too similar, and to claim their stories carry two entirely different messages seems strange to me.

***before anyone discourses on this post I want to point out that I the OP am among many other things the child of a Holocaust Survivor. Any sort of suggestion that I in any way support fascism will result in you being blocked and your comment deleted. Don’t you dare act as if I haven’t had the pain of what these movements do mapped onto my life in the most intimate ways possible. Do not twist my words to pretend I expressed anything above that in any way endorses those mindsets or movements. I know how discourse on this site works, and I want no part of it. So just... no.

[corvyd]

what is style consistency

[ok-ak]

fine i miss 1d squished on little couches what do you want me to say

[moonexile]

HOW DO YOU BEST LIKE TO BE LOVED?

DRIVE ME TO DARING DESTINATIONS.  ╱  you want to be chosen and for it to be on purpose and to last a while. at least the length of a good long car ride. and then another one back to where you came from. it is the contained intimacy of sharing music and sharing food and sharing time while the world flies by, while the world isn't inside along with you. car rides exist outside of time, they are a pocket of memory we build ourselves into. they linger afterwards. you want that. you want the screaming music and the weird conversation by the beach at 3 am. you want to be wanted and for the world to stop for a while. you want to not be alone. i hope you cross the continent with a friend or lover that you can share silences with. i hope you end up in places you never thought to drive to. i hope you finish one trip and start planning out the next.

[t-ki]

i want to make my desktop theme Presentable...................