postedbygaslight

[postedbygaslight]

Photography by Gina Iacob.

[postedbygaslight]

Oh, so this is why we had the ox rib scene...

[postedbygaslight]

What are the best AO3 Reylo fanfictions?

[postedbygaslight]

Dk how this thread remained completely unnoticed for 2 years, but it’s a perfectly insightful yet simple explanation of the psychological and thematic symbolism going on in Loki s1, especially regarding the various “Lokis”.

[postedbygaslight]

Depicted: us, three and a half years later, touring the aftermath of the Great Rise of Skywalker Riots. 😒

Killing the Past: The Dark Side and Kylo Ren

TL;DR: Kylo, as a true Dark Side apprentice, sees attachment as weakness and an impediment to power, and this explains a lot of what he does and why.

[Note: I’m aware that this has been circulating on Tumblr. I’m the original author, and posted this to the Facebook group Reylo Trash on February 24. User @empressrey13 put it up here to save it for posterity and told me about it, making sure to credit me, but didn’t know my Tumblr— honestly, I just reactivated it.]

Something that’s been rattling about in my head the last few days is putting together a coherent answer to Rey’s question to Kylo in the third Force Bond scene: “Why did you kill [your father]?” It’s easy enough to say, “Well, Snoke, duh,” but that answer diminishes both Kylo Ren and Ben Solo to the role of a mere pawn, easily manipulated and controlled, and I think that’s a terrible read on a very nuanced set of circumstances leading up to Han’s murder.

To look at this properly, we have to look at Kylo’s direct answer to Rey’s question, which at first seems like a deflection:

“Your parents threw you away like garbage. [REY: They didn’t.] Yes, they did, and yet you still keep needing them. It’s your greatest weakness. You’re still looking for them everywhere, first in Han Solo, and now with Skywalker … Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. It’s the only way to become what you’re meant to be.”

When I first saw TLJ, I thought Kylo was evading Rey’s question because it was too painful to answer, or because there was no logical way to explain something as arcane as a Dark Side rite of passage. Now, having reflected on it a lot, the answer seems clear. He IS directly answering her, but not in an obvious way.

One of the major themes of this trilogy has been to address the main failing of the Jedi (and the Sith, for that matter): the rejection of attachment. The Jedi forbade romantic love and attachment because, in their estimation, the passions stirred up by love can confuse a Jedi’s sense of what is morally right, and therefore is an obvious path to the Dark Side. But what is commonly ignored is how vehemently the Sith also rejected romantic love and attachment.

As Palpatine says to Anakin, “The Jedi and the Sith are similar in almost every regard.” What Palpatine declines to tell Anakin is that the goal of the Dark Side is the accumulation of power for power’s sake (“POWER! UNLIMITED POWER!”), and that romantic love, familial attachment, and compassion for others will always present barriers to that power, and limitations on personal ambition. It is perhaps the cruelest trick Palpatine employs against Anakin, baiting him into the Dark Side by promising him the freedom to love, and omitting that being a Sith Lord (at least under the Rule of Two era) would by definition preclude such attachment.

Snoke reminds Kylo that his training is not complete, and that he knows his apprentice is not nearly as committed to the Darkness as he would like to project. And the reason for this is apparent: Ben Solo still loves his parents, despite their failings. Snoke makes sure to position killing Han as a test of Kylo’s commitment to the Dark path, but the real goal here is to eliminate Ben Solo’s attachments, clearing the barriers to unchecked nihilism. But killing Han doesn’t bring the clarity Kylo was expecting, only more conflict and pain.

What he’s doing is telling Rey that it’s *because* he didn’t hate his father that he had to kill him, it’s a chilling view into the moral vacancy of the Dark Side. When Kylo says to Rey that her attachment to the myth of her parents is her greatest weakness, he means that it’s her desire for belonging that is her greatest weakness. He recognizes the same yearning in himself, and also identifies it as weakness, as he has been trained. And yet, he can’t resist the growing urgency of their bond, and the hold it has on him.

I think this is why he reacts to his feelings about Rey, particularly after the Force Touch scene, with such confused resolve. He knows what he saw in the vision, and in order to square that with his worldview, he has to invent a scenario in which being with Rey conforms to his overall goal to eliminate his attachments to the past. Of course, this desire is paradoxical, since he craves belonging with her, and eventually would be unable to reconcile his feelings for her with what he perceives as weakness in them both. It would have brought them both to ruin if she had taken his hand there.

This is the one thing that has worried me about Kylo’s arc. His reaction to waking up in the throne room and finding her gone is to double down on eliminating attachments and embracing raw power for its own sake. It’s a moment of dark catharsis, in which he decides to destroy everything, including Rey (notice that he wanted to do this indirectly, sending troops, or trying to shoot down the Falcon), in an effort to rid himself of this flaw he believes he has identified. That’s what makes Luke’s sacrifice so important: he gives Kylo the invaluable opportunity to kill another loved one without actually doing it. When Kylo strikes what he believes has been the killing blow against Luke, the look on his face is one of pained realization: there still isn’t any more clarity, and he is even more riven than before.

And now we come to the final Force Bond scene, in which the two of them are reminded that they are still uniquely joined by the Force. It’s a potent reminder to Kylo that destroying his attachments won’t free him from pain; that yearning for belonging and love persists, and the echoes of those you’ve loved linger on forever in your heart. Luke says this twice, basically: “No one’s ever really gone,” and “Strike me down in anger and I’ll always be with you; just like your father.”

I think the novelization will go a long way to resolving the questions around this, but it does illustrate how goddamn hard it’s going to be for him to let go of his hate, and accept that caring for others is not weakness, as he wants to believe, but instead strength, as he’s seen demonstrated by Rey. I still think Anakin’s going to have to sort things out with him, and set him straight about the price of the power he seeks.

#fuck I miss these metas #who’s paying for our therapy

[postedbygaslight]

We were so hopeful and innocent then.

The Prince and the Dragon: Dracula, Kylo Ren, and the Fate of Monsters (and their Brides)

The main reason for writing this meta is to provide context for the use of monsters as heroic love interests in fiction, with a particular focus on certain monstrous archetypes. This examination will be used to juxtapose and distinguish the tropes and symbols on display in the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy with classic heroic/fantastic narratives, particularly the dynamic presented in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 tour de force, Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Prior to diving in, I’d like to acknowledge the brilliant work of @ashesforfoxes, and here is a link to her indispensable pre-TLJ meta, “Bride of the Monstrous.” I’ll also include a link to her companion meta, “The Descent.”

Before discussing the themes at play here or the film and its story beats and major symbolic elements, I’d like to establish some basic terms I’ll be tossing around. These are labels of my own making for this purpose, and tailored to this meta. I don’t claim these labels to be widely accepted as representative of the tropes discussed herein, but for the purposes of my own organization here, they’ll be used for the duration.

Continuar lendo

#damn I really wrote this 5 years ago #it’s like finding an old term paper and reading it as if someone else wrote it

[postedbygaslight]

Me trying to figure out if I can remember how to tumblr

#seriously Twitter is collapsing #but I literally haven’t been active here since 2018

[postedbygaslight]

Rating: Mature

Summary: Ben Solo returns to his childhood hometown of Tofino, BC, Canada after being away for many years. His arrival happens to coincide with the biggest party of the year.

Rey has been left behind more than once, left to put herself back together and to keep going. She strives to stay positive by being self-reliant, looking forward and not dwelling on the past.

Past and present collide when they see each other for the first time since a fateful night tore them apart and broke both their hearts.

Chapters: One, Two, Three, Four, Five

Now Complete!

[postedbygaslight]

Reylo Tarot Series - Five of Wands

Previous tarot cards:

Major Arcana: VI-The Lovers

Minor Arcana: Ace of Wands | Two of Wands | Three of Wands | Four of Wands

[postedbygaslight]

Hey,

Do you have any recommendations for TROS rewrites/fix-its?

My favorites are You'll Be The One To Turn by @postedbygaslight (Complete) and The Tether by @classeyspanks (In-progress). Technically they were both written before TROS, so not sure if they count as fix-its as much as post-TLJ canon-divergent. There are others but IMO these are the best-written and most in-character, so easy for me to imagine them as the real ending! Planning on getting bound copies of both some day!

[postedbygaslight]

I’m in my “imprisoned in the Tower” era.

[postedbygaslight]

This is the greatest thread of all time

which one of u was going to tell me that tea tastes different if u put it in hot water?

[postedbygaslight]

writer’s block (dry) = no desire to write, no ability to write (bearable)

writer’s block (wet) = HUGE desire to write, no ability to write (very evil)

[postedbygaslight]

Since I just gained a bunch of followers and I'm going to hazard a guess that some of you are new here (or returning after a long time away), want to talk about some Tumblr basics? First up, tagging.

You can put spaces in your tags on Tumblr! This is very exciting and often why you'll see people putting commentary in tags—because they can.

It's usually considered more polite to put commentary in tags, so as to leave the original post relatively uncluttered. I find this to be especially true of visual posts like fanart and GIFs. The best time to reblog with a comment is when you're actively looking to engage in some kind of dialogue with the post you're reblogging.

Tag commentary is kind of like a whispered aside. On my own posts, I often use that space for post-scripts of a sort. I have done this at the bottom of this post, for science.

On posts that you create, tags help other people find your post through their searches. It used to be that only the first five tags on a post showed up in a search, and now it's the first twenty.

If you are interested in a topic, you can follow its tag. So, for example, if I'm interested in [throws a dart at a board] seeing Daemyra content, I can follow that tag and posts from the tag will show up on my dashboard from time to time. Here is how to follow a tag and manage followed tags.

(It's worth noting that Tumblr uses ship portmanteaus but also sometimes longform ship names, so if you're posting your original Daemyra content it's often wise to also tag it "rhaenyra x daemon," "daemon x rhaenyra," and other variants as well. Remember, up to twenty of them count!)

Tags—of both your original posts and of your reblogs—also help organize your blog. I create specific tags for posts and answered questions about my fics that I try to use every time they're relevant to make it easy for readers (or, you know, me with my goldfish memory) to find them. Here's the tag for Out of Time.

You can organize your blog, or not, however you want. I also choose to tag characters prominently featured in a post, the media property shown, and so on, mostly just for my benefit. Here are most of my original and reblogged posts featuring Daemon Targaryen. Some people get very, very granular with their tagging, but some don't tag at all. Dealer's choice!

Lastly, Tumblr has pretty robust content filtering, so don't censor yourself in tags or in the body of your post. If you post, say, #p*neapple and someone is trying to avoid posts tagged #pineapple, you might accidentally ruin their day.

[postedbygaslight]

Jean-Paul Sartre said "hell is other people".

Shane Madej said "hell is when the puppet you m*rdered comes back from the dead and acts like everything is fine."

[postedbygaslight]

If I started posting here again, would anyone notice?

[postedbygaslight]

Me coming back to Tumblr after months of not checking my notifications: