Some People: META ANALYSIS IS BULLSHIT, RIAN DIDNT CITE THESE THINGS HE JUST WROTE A SIMPLE STORY OF

Some people: META ANALYSIS IS BULLSHIT, RIAN DIDN’T CITE THESE THINGS HE JUST WROTE A SIMPLE STORY OF GOOD V. EVIL UWU

Me, quoting Jung:

He sees the tree of life, whose roots reach into Hell and whose top touches Heaven. He also no longer knows differences: who is right? What is holy? What is genuine? What is good? What is correct? He knows only one difference: the difference between above and below. For he sees that the tree of life grows from below to above, and that it has its crown at the top, clearly differentiated from the roots. To him this is unquestionable. Hence he knows the way to salvation.

To unlearn all distinctions save that concerning direction is part of your salvation. Hence you free yourself of the old curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Because you separated good from evil according to your best appraisal and aspired only to the good and denied the evil that you committed nevertheless and failed to accept, your roots no longer suckled the dark nourishment of the depths and your tree became sick and withered.  (The Red Book, p. 359-360)

Rian Johnson’s damn movie:

“And this is the lesson. That Force does not belong to the Jedi. To say that if the Jedi die the Light dies is vanity. Can you feel that?”

“There’s something else. Beneath the island. A place… a dark place.”

“Balance. Powerful light and powerful darkness.”

“It’s cold. It’s calling me.”

Hereafter, we learn that Rey’s pull to the Dark is not inherently bad [she learns the truth of her family, and learns that she can find belonging through Ben by delving into the darkness], and it is Luke’s folly for not acknowledging that this is a part of Rey’s growth and development. That to see with eyes unclouded from the distinction of “good” vs. “evil,” and rather to look between “above” and “below” is the ideal. The cosmos does not distinguish between “good” and “evil”. That distinction is not useful because of its inherently subjective nature. To deny the darkness that nourishes the roots of understanding the cosmos is to deny the tree its life, and thus it will become withered and hollow – just as the uneti tree in The Last Jedi has become, because the Jedi did not nourish the tree by acknowledging the darkness which should have nourished it – the darkness forbidden, lying dormant, and calling, crying out from deep underneath.

“You have no place in this story.”

So am I…like…the only one who sees absolutely nothing wrong with “You have no place in this story. You come from nothing. You’re nothing. But not to me”? Because it’s, like, the truth? And a major point of Rey’s journey, emphasized both in- and out-of-universe, is that she’s discovering and carving out her place in this story despite being a nobody, from nowhere? And as has already been pointed out plenty of times, Ben wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. Or anything she didn’t already think about herself. Hell, even Luke agreed with her that Jakku was a big ol’ ball of nowhere, and he’s from fuckin Tatooine.

Sure, as a proposal, it wasn’t the most romantic thing in the galaxy, but within the context of Ben’s point of view and feelings in that moment, it was probably one of the most straightforward and completely pure things he’s ever done (which I find pretty beautiful in itself). And I don’t see anything in that group of lines as being incorrect or offensive. As for any hurt on Rey’s part, Ben wasn’t the source of that, that’s a deep-seated hurt that goes back 14 years. Ben’s just one of two people who’ve been able to bring those feelings to the surface for her to confront (or avoid). Same as when Maz told her that whoever she was waiting for ain’t coming back and she burst into tears.

“You come from nothing.”

First of all, the parallel to the failed Pride & Prejudice proposal doesn’t even line up exactly. Darcy insulted Elizabeth’s family who she lived with and loved and cared about. Whereas, I really don’t think Rey gave a crap that Ben was implying her parents were “nothing”. You know, the two pieces of actual human garbage who sold their 5-year-old to buy booze, never came back for her, and are dead now. Personally, I think he was being generous referring to them as “nothing”, because they were actually way, way less than even that.

So anyway, Ben based this whole proposal on seeing Rey’s parents and making a deduction based in his own point of view and psychological issues. My parents shipped me off and then my uncle tried to murder me. Her parents threw her away like garbage and never looked back. Of course she’ll want to join me in razing our pasts to the ground! Why wouldn’t she? Obviously his assumptions about Rey were wrong, and expose how tunnel visioned he is to not realize or care that she does have connections and loyalties outside of him (particularly because he himself does not have any such connections or loyalties, especially after killing Snoke. For her), but his plea was very much him standing in his full truth at that moment.

Rey may come from nothing, but Ben probably feels like he comes from too damn much. Descended from two lines of planetary royalty (and that’s just on his mother’s side). Son of an infamous smuggler slash famous war hero. Grandson of the Chosen One and The Hero With No Fear and Darth Vader, the last Sith Lord - all the same person. Nephew of a living legend, the “last Jedi”, who “single-handedly” defeated the Emperor and ended a war. Named for The Negotiator, one of the few survivors of Order 66, his mother’s “only hope”. One of the defining traits of Ben’s upbringing is that both his family and his abuser have continually defined him by his lineage, his family’s history, and the legacy he was born into. And what has it all done for him, exactly? Absolutely nothing. In fact, it’s just given him a severe complex and caused more problems more than anything else. For one thing, if it wasn’t for his “mighty Skywalker blood”, Snoke wouldn’t have targeted him since before he was born, his parents wouldn’t have sent him away, and his uncle wouldn’t have tried to kill him, after having the idea to train him in the first place. No wonder he just wants to burn it all down.

He might even feel that Rey is better off to not be burdened with the kind of family tree he has. She’s free in a way he never was (the dark side cave told her as much). Which could be a reason he’d been harping on her to let go of the way she’d been mentally chaining herself - yearning for and needing a family that never wanted her to begin with. Why would you limit yourself like that when you have so many more choices than I did, no exalted bloodline or suffocating legacy to be beholden to? 

“You’re nothing.”

Ben is descended from royalty and aristocracy, war heroes, politicians, and extremely note-worthy Jedi. All of his family names - Skywalker, Naberrie, Organa, Solo - are galaxy-famous and revered. This is what he grew up in and around, this is what he knows, and this is the point of reference he was coming from when pleading to Rey. She was a scavenger for most of her life, whose parents traded junk for a living, and were so poor and so degenerate they sold her. According to constructs like dynasty or societal class structure, of which Ben is basically at the height of, being a technical prince and all, she is indeed a nobody from nowhere birthed from nothing, no question.  

But Ben, especially considering the antipathy he currently feels for his own lineage (or at least parts of it), doesn’t give a shit. That’s the point being made here. He doesn’t judge her, or consider her worth as a person, ally, or potential life partner to be contingent upon those constructs. He knows the Force itself has connected them. And if there’s one thing in this world Ben Solo still respects and believes in, it’s the Force (it, unlike everyone in his life, has never let him down or fucked him over). He knows she’s his counterpart, his equal, his future, and his kindred in every way that actually matters. Basically, The galaxy at large considers you worthless, and your existence futile, but I don’t, because I know better, and they don’t matter. We’re amazing and powerful enough to rule them all, anyway. :) Of course, there’s Ben’s aforementioned tunnel vision and personal issues he still has to work out, but the sentiment itself is really sweet and well-intentioned.  

“But not to me.”

And I believe Rey felt this, and understood exactly what he meant. If one thing tells me so, it’s the visible response she has to Ben saying “But not to me”. Before this, she started looking down as he went on about her not having a place in the story and being nothing from dead nobodies. That was her biggest insecurity, her biggest shame, her biggest fear, that she had always known, but had always repressed. And there was Ben dragging it to the surface, again. But then he flipped the script with “But not to me”, and she did that hard blink, kind of snapped out of the shame and hurt, and looked up at him like, “Really?” That genuinely meant something to her, and moved her emotionally. In fact, I think you could say she was quite touched. So she was really feelin the proposal (especially the “Please”), and was legitimately enticed for a while to take his hand. His wording wasn’t the problem, it was the “just let everybody die” thing that Rey took issue with.

And so, that’s how I feel about those now infamous four lines, that I think the audience took way more umbrage at than Rey ever did. And I will continue to be over here on my probably one-woman “You’re Nothing” Defense Squad, because I think Ben’s monologue was absolutely perfect in every way and he shouldn’t have changed it for anything, and even on my first viewing I internally swooned at “But not to me” because I could not believe he said something so blatantly romantically coded to her like that, basically telling her how much she means to him, and this is such a flipping beautiful, heartfelt, yet heartbreaking scene, it’s perfect.

Bernie Wrightson

Sympathy, 1955, Remedios Varo

Size: 83.5x95 cm Medium: oil, masonite

[insp]

#reylo goals

You’ve been the only thing that’s right in all I’ve done…

reylo manip series 7/ ∞