It’s about time I️ change my username as it’s two years old now. Inbox me ideas - I’d probably want something more serious than comical!
Plays on the names Rey, kylo, and Ben might be good! Also plays on the word Reylo or grey! I️ also love Padmé and Leia ofc so anything relating to them might work too! Plus any type of memorable Reylo or Padmé/Leia quotes! (Just check to make sure it’s not taken first! ☺️)
Winning idea gets a free fic??? 💜😉 (you can ofc still message on anon, but I’d prefer if you didn’t bc it might make it easier to distribute the fic!)
I've been going through some stuff and Ara (youknowicantakewhateveriwant) talked with me for HOURS over chat even though I'd never talked to her before in my life. Five hours later, I felt much better and had made an amazing friend who was willing to drop everything and dedicate time to me. What an amazing reylo and all around gal! <3 Love her a lot
@youknowicantakewhateveriwant and I have matching lock screens, halfway across the world from each other 😭 ILY PEANUT! thank you @skysilencer for giving us permission to use your artwork!! It’s beautiful <3
Hi! I'm sorry, you seem like a nice person and all, but don't you see how your URL is a quote of an abusers threat, and how spreading that is entirely a bad example for impressionable kids, abuse survivors, unstable toxic relationships etc? I'd genuinely like to know how you see this/excuse it
This is gonna be loooong, so buckle up kids.
First of all, I️ don’t excuse abuse.
I’ve been through actual abuse, love, and this is NOT abuse. Sure, it’s unhealthy at times, but it’s a FICTIONAL SPACE OPERA, between TWO ENEMIES ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF A WAR.
There’s this kind of relationship dynamic in GOT, in The Tudors, in the fucking telenovelas I️ see on TV. Hell, even the Kardashians.
That being said, where the fuck is Kylo ‘abusing’ Rey? Y’all throw around this word like you know what it means but I️ don’t think you do…
He’s interrogating her, as a prisoner. She is an enemy to the state. And yet, despite Kylo’s reputation, there is no violence or cruelty at all in this scene.
Saying Kylo “abused” Rey in this scene is naive and actually disparages those who have gone through abuse.
According to the dictionary, abuse is defined as: “Treat (a person or an animal) with cruelty or violence, especially regularly or repeatedly.”
Where did Kylo treat her with cruelty? He specifically says it gives him no pleasure to hurt her in canon material! “I would have preferred to avoid this. Despite what you may believe, it gives me no pleasure.” (TFA novelization p.126).
NOW, what fucking enemy says they don’t want to hurt the other, despite it being their JOB to destroy the Light Side/Resistance, and then people STILL label it as ABUSE?!
Now, as for my blog quote, Kylo says “You know I can take whatever I want”…
OFC he’s trying to establish his power here - he’s the enemy and she’s acting instead like he’s a vaguely irritating gnat.
She’s treating him not like he’s Kylo Ren (scared, fearful, etc.) but like he’s Ben Solo (interested, curious, confused).
He is NOT on top in this power play, for the first time in a long time. This girl unsettles him, makes him feel weak and compassionate, and he doesn’t like it because it reminds him of BEN SOLO.
This isn’t ABUSE! This is him trying to grapple for power when she’s not biting - if ANYTHING Rey is ultimately affecting him here, making him feel weak and vulnerable.
It’s an irony that’s not lost on many of us - Kylo Ren having a prisoner tied down in an interrogation, yet the prisoner is the one who is bothering/unsettling him. This is the dynamic that SW comes back to for these two over and over again, a power struggle, light and dark.
So he says “You know I can take whatever I want” to establish that he has the upper hand, that he can take the map from her. It’s a threat, but no more abusive than if I were to say “I’M GONNA TAKE THAT FUCKING MAP!”
But does he actually fulfill his threat? Does he even take the map? NO!
(And don’t start on all the ‘mind rape’ shit because Obi-Wan did the same thing so often in canon, I can’t even. Is it different because Kylo is doing it to a woman???? Is it different because she’s a prisoner???? Because he’s not a LightSider like his namesake???)
According to a good meta by @drth-drcy and a quote by @ms-qualia “When he ‘takes whatever he wants’ and it’s not the map, and it’s not sex…it’s what it’s like to be Rey…..”
What Ren sees in her head is loneliness, her dreams of Ahch-To and her hopes that one day her parents might return.
As if that wasn’t enough, he connects to her, saying she’s not alone in her pain, that he feels it too.
There is none of the screaming, the pain, the terror we see of Poe in the first interrogation sequence.
These two scenes were MEANT to be paralleled - to show the difference in Kylo Ren when fate puts him together with this scavenger. To show the way he changes and responds to her, the way he becomes Ben Solo with her - which is important for TLJ and Episode 9.
There is push and pull.
AND THEN, WHICH MOST OF YA’LL SEEM TO FORGET, SHE TURNS THE TABLES AND FORCES HERSELF INTO HIS MIND AND BRINGS OUT HIS DEEPEST DARKEST FEAR.
And on Starkiller she bests him, leaves him bleeding in the snow.
I’m not saying that the ‘oh for it to be abuse the abused can’t be as powerful as the abuser’, I’m saying that their entire relationship is this constant power play between light and dark. Between equals. Both unsettled by the other, yet inexplicably connected.
This is the relationship SW itself decided to build. I can’t believe they purposely sat down and said “You know what we’re gonna do today? Write an abusive couple that is supposed to represent yin and yang and the inner light and darkness inside all of us.”
Plus, ya’ll seem to forget that Han and Leia’s relationship wasn’t too good either. Constant fighting, ‘I hate you’, ‘you’re a scoundrel’. Imagine if they were on more polarizing opposite sides now? I️ imagine it would be quite similar to Reylo’s dynamic.
Now, moving on, in TLJ, Ben treats Rey with this type of awe and kindness. He’s soft, gentle with her, never once touches her abusively. Never talks to her abusively.
And if you’re going to say “The ‘you’re nothing but not to me’ is textbook abuse?!?!?!?!”
I’d first ask who the hell experienced everyone’s versions of abuse so much that they can state that they know all forms of it and what ‘textbook’ abuse is.
And then I’d say that, if you pay attention to this scene, there’s so much more going on here. I’ll borrow some quotes from the insanely talented @xoruffitup and her statement on this scene.
“It makes me so frustrated to think people have interpreted Kylo’s words as manipulative/abusive/etc when his face is so raw and desperate and sincere like it is here - A look that I never expected he’d be capable of before this film. There is NO malice there, he’s not relishing saying this at all; On the contrary he’s sharing the same pain she feels and that he’s felt in her. He’s voicing what she hasn’t been able to bring herself to say - The dark source of her own inner turmoil, her feelings of misdirection, the questioning of her self-worth if even her parents - her less-than-nothing-parents - found her so meaningless.
But even the way Kylo shakes his head when he says ‘you’re nothing’ - It’s like he’s simultaneously negating the statement as he speaks it. The sentiment is so repulsive and unthinkable to him, that anyone could view Rey in such a way. Then he says ‘But not to me,’ and his whole face changes, taking on that determination and fervency, and you can literally see his eyes changing with his desperation to make her see what bullshit that sentiment was.
“But not to me” is not a statement that pressures or manipulates. It’s completely devoid of politics and to me does not at all equate to ‘come to the dark side.’ It’s spoken like they’re the only two people in the whole world. Nothing outside of them matters, and there’s not a single other thing on his mind other than the all-consuming need that he feels for her. This was probably the most shocking moment of the entire film to me, because I was NOT a Kylo fan going into it and I didn’t think he’d be capable of emotions this pure. I say ‘pure’ because “but not to me” is - if anything - a statement that reveals HIS OWN weakness more than her own. The balance of vulnerability and resolve when he spoke it betrayed that this was not a moment when he felt in control. Sure, he was trying to make her see that if she joined him, she would never find reason to question her self-worth again… but the way he’s practically TREMBLING when he speaks it belies the fact that he’s probably the more vulnerable of the two of them in this moment.
As we know from how this scene pans out, Rey is not dependent on Kylo’s belief in her worth. Once she comes to terms with her past, she has plenty of strength through her decisions in the present to know her own path. I think it’s incredibly telling that Kylo’s declaration and offer here was not enough to persuade Rey to abandon her convictions; YET, Kylo says all this directly after abandoning his own loyalties and killing Snoke - Most directly because of his need to protect Rey and keep her with him. It meant everything to him that he believed Rey valued him for him, regardless of his past or his power (the aspects of him that seemed to have guided everyone else’s manipulation of him up to this point). Knowing that in one way or another, he mattered to Rey - that she reached her hand out to him of her own volition, and came to his side that day - that alone inspired his most shocking and admirable display of strength to date when he threw off Snoke’s influence. It took her belief in him for him to find that inner resolution he so painfully lacked.
All of this is basically to say I find it ludicrous that people misread the true balance of power in this scene. He says “But not to me,” and he means it so, so honestly - much more than he could ever say in words. She has kindled inner strength in him he didn’t know he possessed. She has changed everything for him. She is literally the most powerful force he has ever known.”
(Source link here.)
Granted, the quote I’ve chosen for my blog is not the best I️ could’ve started my blog off with and I️ have considered changing it recently.
But to say that I️ excuse abuse? That I’m supporting abuse and toxic relationships and hurting (god forbid) the impressionable children?
Over a blog title?!
If they (the abuse victims/toxic relationship people/children) actually came on my blog they would see that I️ don’t condone abuse in any way, shape, or form - that reylo content on my blog is about mutual respect and understanding and love for one another. And they would also see that I offer up only love and friendship to everyone here, that my DMs are always open to talk, that I am constantly trying to be my best self to everyone.
Did you see that before you messaged me? Did you bother to even check?
So there you go, my ‘excuse for abuse’ as you’ll probably call it anyways.
