Growing up in an abusive household is a fucking trip dude……If you’ve never had someone angrily wash a dish at you or fold a sock in your direction then how are you gonna understand why I get nervous when you quietly do the laundry, or why I ask “are you mad at me?” when you set the bag of groceries down too hard? It’s a totally different way of living and it impacts you long after you’ve left the situation.
This is so important.
Abused kids speak a language you can’t learn
I think a lot of people misinterpret this post to mean that folding a sock angrily at you is abusive, and that’s not what it means at all. The fear abused kids feel at this kind of behavior is a conditioned response because we know what comes after. Its about sitting there terrified and waiting for when they will snap.
This is actually a symptom of PTSD, which is more common among child abuse victims than modern veterans
I mean what you’re describing is a huge point with Reylows, too. They talk a lot about identifying with Ren as a victim of abuse. When people point out that Finn is right there, they tend to say that they can’t identify with Finn as much because Finn is a “good” abuse victim who had the strength to get away from abuse, while to them Benny is the “bad” abuse victim who did terrible things as a reaction to his abuse but whom they still believe there is hope for.
And that’s honestly terrifying to me on several levels. Good victim/bad victim discourse was never about saying it’s okay to lash out and hurt other people because you’ve been abused yourself, and the “redemption” a lot of people are calling for seems to be basically a get out of jail free card. Yes, bad people could have been abused themselves. They still have to take responsibility for their actions. They can’t just say “I was abused!” and be showered with sympathy and lack of accountability like some of these redemption proponents seem to want. That’s just cheap grace, not true redemption.
The idea that Ren can make choice after choice not just to stay in an abusive situation but to be an abuser himself and still be saved is pretty disturbing, too. It implies that redemption isn’t a choice but rather something he should or could be given. You mentioned these fans wanting to escape the cycle of abuse, but you can’t escape something you actively chose. Nobody chooses to be abused, but every single abuser chooses to be an abuser. Ren did not chose to be abused by Snoke, but he did choose to gaslight and manipulate Rey. That’s not a choice he can escape or be saved from, that’s something he has to turn away from himsef. If TFA and TLJ made anything clear it’s that he can’t be redeemed by others, not Leia, not Rey, not Lando, not Chewie, not Finn. He has to redeem himself by going a different way, and frankly at this point I can’t imagine how it can believably happen.
By the way, I say all this as someone who did in fact lash out in reaction to abuse and hurt others. I was physically abusive to my then-boyfriend, who is now my husband, so in a way I’m living a real-life reylow case on a vastly lesser scale. My history is precisely the reason I want to see full accountability for Ben/Kylo, whatever choice he makes–because accountability tells me that I was a free agent and that I could change. I made the choice, difficult but nevertheless a choice, to face up to my demons and gain control of my emotions and reactions. That’s why I will never accept the argument that abuse or mental illness turns a person evil, because that’s an insult to so many people who chose not to perpetuate the cycle, including by managing their conditions if that was what it took. There is always a choice, and it’s incumbent on all of us to choose better.
I see it, personally, as the continuation of Kylo being a very human villain–and a very human abuser. I’ve often heard of people talking as though abusers are without feelings or vulnerabilities, and that was not my experience with abuse at all. My own abuser constantly made himself out to be the victim, and he had genuine fears, hurts, and yearnings. He just chose to soothe and fulfill them by tearing others down and making them serve him, and that’s what made him abusive.
I see Kylo the same way. I think he is angry, haunted, needy, I think he felt genuine loneliness and fear and threat. What makes him a war criminal and an abuser is that he used others as tools to help himself feel safer and in control, whether as victims of his violence or his manipulation. I believe it was his genuine insecurity and feelings of vulnerability that led him to reach out to Rey, but the abusive part is that he refused to do it as an equal. He had to be the one in control and she had to be the one reliant on him, or he wouldn’t feel safe. His abusiveness came from a very human place, making him understandable in his drive and evil in his choices.
Here’s the relevant part of the novelization, from Chapter 21:
I can see why reylows want to say this is Rey being overwhelmed with attraction at Kylo because of course they would, but it can just as easily be interpreted as discomfort. Taken together with the way Daisy acted Rey’s reaction on screen and the totality of the story, to me it reads clearly as her being thrown off balance and discomfited.
Rey’s discomfort is the point here. Kylo refusing to cover himself despite her request is his way of setting the tone of the conversation, purposefully disregarding her and taking control of the interaction. Even if we say for the sake of argument that she felt attracted at the sight of him, she still requested that he put something on in a situation where she can’t avoid interacting with him and he simply ignored her.
It’s like Lyndon B. Johnson taking a dump with the bathroom door open while members of his staff were outside; a deliberate show of power by violating personal boundaries, intended to humiliate and dominate. I mean I guess we should be happy the Force Bond didn’t catch Kylo on the can, but to me it would have been about as sexual.
This domination move is immediately followed by an even more significant one where he changes the conversation from Rey’s questions about his father to turning it back against her, deliberately upsetting her by invoking her greatest and most central trauma. This threw her off balance and made her easier to manipulate.
So that is how I read the shirtless scene. It’s not presented as sexual or romantic. It’s part and parcel of Kylo Ren’s continuing efforts to control Rey, and it was ugly on every level–intentionally so, I believe.
I got an A+! 😍 Thank you for your kind words. This is why I think Finn and Rey’s is the best male-female fictional relationship in years, possibly ever, because they both have their respective arcs and hurdles they need to overcome. People who think they are boring and conflict-free aren’t paying attention, or don’t care about conflict other than mistreatment between the man and woman. The central conflict in Finn and Rey’s relationship is that they both struggle with intimacy due to their traumas, and both need to grow into the heroes the galaxy needs them to be. That is the kind of relationship conflict loving couples have, not things like torture and manipulation.
Finn and Rey aren’t boring. They’re just really…damaged.
They went from this
To this
That is a giant leap for people as damaged for them.
If anything this is the most original and untraditional romance in decades, especially in Star Wars films or Disney is general.
If you told people in the 70’s that Disney would make a movie about a black elite soldier who had been stolen from his family and raised to kill for a fascist Terrorist group, would would fall in love with an orphaned white scavenger living in the desert and fighting to survive all her life, they would have thought you mad.
And one of the things that abuse does to you is break your capacity for love and make it hard to accept love. That’s a string Kylo Ren constantly pulled on, especially in TLJ, to try and convince Rey she was unloved and unlovable, would only ever find acceptance, meaning, and power with him. It is really remarkable that Rey still rejected him when she grew up so alone and unprotected, and understandably has such a longing for someone bigger and stronger than she is (Luke, then Kylo) to come in and solve her problems.
It is also remarkable that Finn, who was told over and over again that he was only a cog in the machine and that emotions were a weakness, retains such a capacity for feelings and compassion–and that he is able to bare his soul to Rey, to love and accept love in turn. These two absolutely break my heart with their vulnerability and resilience, and their relationship is the beating heart of the sequel trilogy even when they are apart. ❤️
The lyrics are very clearly saying that the person will never be satisfied, that it’s about their insatiable hunger and not about love or the person being sung to.
The lyrics are “’Cause darling without you/All the shine of a thousand spotlights/All the stars we steal from the night sky/Will never be enough/Never be enough.” However, “you” appears only once in the song and the most often repeated & emphasized parts are “Never enough/For me.” It’s about the singer and the fact that she will never be satisfied, with the barest lip service to being a love song in the whispered “without you.” It is an unscrupulous and manipulative narcissist’s song, a foreshadowing and warning for the character of Jenny herself (who is no more the historical Jenny Lind than the song is an opera number, of course.).
I really appreciate that the song is so heartfelt, beautiful, glittering, charismatic–because that’s what manipulation often looks and feels like when you’re being reeled in. You feel special, like you’re privileged, like the two of you exist apart from the world in a golden bubble. That you are safe and loved, that they are the most amazing and at the same time the most vulnerable and relatable person in the world and they need you. This is the magic of the abuser, creating an alternate reality with their charm, their personality, and above all their burning need to hook you in.
Of course it feels real when you’re going through it, in fact it feels hyper-real, better than reality. In a way, that’s because it is real to the person creating the experience, they need it to be real. This is the pull of the void that can never be filled. It is the strongest force in the world. Love is such a basic need, and people who do this kind of thing don’t have it–they seek a substite for it, but of course nothing can take the place of love. So they are always empty, always pulling, always needing. This is understandable, though not defensible, because a part of them is drowning, trying to survive.
The manipulator is, ultimately, as hollow as the lovely bubble they have created. It frays at times, and you can see the real world outside. You are told that’s a trick of the mind, or you being ungrateful and selfish. It stifles you because there is not enough air and the manipulator is sucking in all of it, all the energy, all the life, all your vitality.
And then if you are lucky enough or determined enough it pops, and you are out in the cold and gasping for breath, forced to face how much of yourself you wasted for this person who took and took from you. At least you are free, with all the messes that implies, and you can start healing and rebuilding.
A part of you might always miss it, though. It’s very likely no one else will make you feel quite like they did, and other relationships might pale in comparison. You remember how much they need you, how much they “loved” you, and how you left them bleeding and hurting and, most of all, hollow because they needed you to fill them up.
That was always a fiction, of course. They could never be filled, at least not by using you. They had to face their own shaky core first, the need that compelled them to drink people’s souls. Rather than do that, they turned to you.
The lyrics are very clearly saying that the person will never be satisfied, that it’s about their insatiable hunger and not about love or the person being sung to.
The lyrics are “’Cause darling without you/All the shine of a thousand spotlights/All the stars we steal from the night sky/Will never be enough/Never be enough.” However, “you” appears only once in the song and the most often repeated & emphasized parts are “Never enough/For me.” It’s about the singer and the fact that she will never be satisfied, with the barest lip service to being a love song in the whispered “without you.” It is an unscrupulous and manipulative narcissist’s song, a foreshadowing and warning for the character of Jenny herself (who is no more the historical Jenny Lind than the song is an opera number, of course.).
I really appreciate that the song is so heartfelt, beautiful, glittering, charismatic–because that’s what manipulation often looks and feels like when you’re being reeled in. You feel special, like you’re privileged, like the two of you exist apart from the world in a golden bubble. That you are safe and loved, that they are the most amazing and at the same time the most vulnerable and relatable person in the world and they need you. This is the magic of the abuser, creating an alternate reality with their charm, their personality, and above all their burning need to hook you in.
Of course it feels real when you’re going through it, in fact it feels hyper-real, better than reality. In a way, that’s because it is real to the person creating the experience, they need it to be real. This is the pull of the void that can never be filled. It is the strongest force in the world. Love is such a basic need, and people who do this kind of thing don’t have it–they seek a substite for it, but of course nothing can take the place of love. So they are always empty, always pulling, always needing. This is understandable, though not defensible, because a part of them is drowning, trying to survive.
The manipulator is, ultimately, as hollow as the lovely bubble they have created. It frays at times, and you can see the real world outside. You are told that’s a trick of the mind, or you being ungrateful and selfish. It stifles you because there is not enough air and the manipulator is sucking in all of it, all the energy, all the life, all your vitality.
And then if you are lucky enough or determined enough it pops, and you are out in the cold and gasping for breath, forced to face how much of yourself you wasted for this person who took and took from you. At least you are free, with all the messes that implies, and you can start healing and rebuilding.
A part of you might always miss it, though. It’s very likely no one else will make you feel quite like they did, and other relationships might pale in comparison. You remember how much they need you, how much they “loved” you, and how you left them bleeding and hurting and, most of all, hollow because they needed you to fill them up.
That was always a fiction, of course. They could never be filled, at least not by using you. They had to face their own shaky core first, the need that compelled them to drink people’s souls. Rather than do that, they turned to you.
Kylo tried to KILL Finn! Did everyone forget this?!
how about his: if someone you love SO much starts a relationship with a murderer… wouldn’t you try to… stop them??
So first it’s “Finn will sympathize with ‘Ben’ because Finn is an abuse survivor himself”
– The implication: If Finn doesn’t sympathize with “Ben” he didn’t really suffer abuse
Now it’s “Finn loves Rey so much he’ll accept that she loves ‘Ben’“
– The implication: If Finn doesn’t accept Rey’s supposed feelings for a murderer and torturer he doesn’t really love Rey
Can these people make it any clearer that they think Finn’s entire story revolves around Kyle Ron, and they don’t see any worth in Finn unless he props up KR and their ship?
Rey is not nothing # #she was never nothing #and she has so many people #that know and care for her
IS WHAT I AM SAYING
Kylo also hasn’t witnessed these relationships firsthand. All he’s really seen is her and Finn’s friendship.
The relationship between Kylo and Rey was defined in TLJ by Rey expressing her feelings of loneliness and confusion. He’s not really telling her “you’re nothing and no one cares for you” here so much as “I know you feel lonely and that your place in this story is defined by your family, and I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter that you come from nothing. We are kindred spirits.”
He literally told her she was nothing asdjkl if you have to rewrite his line to make it sound better then you’re not working off the canon, just your wishful thinking. RJ himself said he was trying to undermine her confidence and use her humble origins against her.
This is spun off from @jewishcomeradebot‘s post about the parallels and contrasts of Finn and Kylo Ren in TLJ–how they both kill their abusers but, where Finn walks away and is free, Kylo Ren stays despite the death of his abuser.
Finn and Kylo’s paths diverged from the very beginning of TFA, of course, at Tuanul. It was the start of Finn’s escape and Kylo Ren choosing to enmesh himself all the deeper, and it was the trajectory of these choices that led to them to the events of TLJ.
In understanding Finn’s leaving and Kylo’s staying, not to mention the nature of abuse in general, I don’t think I can emphasize enough that leaving an abusive situation is unbelievably hard.
Isolation is a big part of abuse, and leaving often means
you have little to no support or resources outside that relationship. Leaving itself may be punished by violence, which was very much true in Finn’s case. Finn had to risk his
life and fight through a space fortress just to physically leave. Once
he had escaped he had absolutely nothing and could have died in the
desert but the Force wouldn’t let him, of course. At
the end of TLJ he’s one of about 20 survivors on a space weed van (I will
never not be amused by that expression), marked and
hunted, his future uncertain.
By contrast Kylo stayed, and he
has all the comfort and resources of the First Order at his disposal.
He is powerful and important, heck, he played his cards right and he’s
effing Supreme Leader now. By all external measures Kylo is way ahead in the game.
Then there is the relational
aspect. Finn not only had to brave significant dangers just to leave, he
had to figure out an entire new way of living and relating to people.
You see him doing that even before his escape was assured, when he built
trust with Poe who was a complete stranger to him at the time. Later he became
friends with Rey and BB-8 despite a rocky beginning, even earned Han’s
trust and respect. When Rey asked him not to go on Takodana, he didn’t
tell her she’d be alone without him or she was a bad friend for not
understanding his fear. He bared his soul to her but respected her
decision completely, something no one had modeled for him in the First
Order. He had to start from scratch in so many ways, much like he had to find his way in a trackless desert to survive.
Kylo? He’s clearly
had many models of non-abusive relationships growing up in a loving
home, but he chose to discard them in favor of Snoke’s way of
manipulation and dominance. TLJ’s Kylo and Rey plot was a long exercise
in Kylo roping Rey in with superficial charm and shallow appeals to
sympathy for his own advantage. I believe he was recreating both the way
Snoke manipulated him and the dynamic he had with Snoke, undermining Rey’s self-worth so that she would easier to control, trying to get her to destroy her friends in the ultimate act of isolation like Snoke did with him. This model of relationships was easy for him, intimately familiar through Snoke’s manipulation and abuse. He chose not to explore the possibility of a relationship that did not depend on subjugation and violence, with Rey or anyone else. Despite killing his abuser he chose to continue the same destructive pattern, this time with himself in Snoke’s place.
In a way I can understand Kylo here, because again, leaving often demands a high, seemingly impossible price. I’m pretty sure nothing about Finn’s defection from the First Order inspired Kylo to follow suit, because externally speaking Finn’s life went to absolute shit from leaving and opposing the First Order. Aside from the abovementioned near-death at his former comrades’ hands and wandering in the desert with nothing, Finn was cut off from a once-absolute sense of purpose and became a wanted man. His allegiance went from an absolute power that seems poised to swallow the galaxy to a pack of pitiable losers whose lives could be–and will be, if Kylo has his way–snuffed out at any moment. What could be more foolish? In fact I would not be surprised if Kylo, in his wavering moments, used Finn’s fate as a way to harden his resolve to stay.
Unlike Finn, Kylo also has the additional prospects of prosecution for various war crimes including mass murder, torture, and complicity with genocide to look forward to, not to mention the patricide of one of the galaxy’s beloved heroes. He, like his idol Vader, has earned the kind of hatred and infamy that would outlive him. In addition, were he truly to admit to wrongdoing, the guilt and regret would and should tear his soul apart for the rest of his days. It’s like the line from Macbeth, “I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.” He could, if he chose, brave the consequences and return to the light. But he chooses to believe he has come too far, and rather than throw away his comforts, his power, his conviction, his purpose, his sense of self-righteousness, and his ability to dominate and control, he chose to continue on his path.
This is why Finn’s and Kylo’s fates still diverge despite killing their respective abusers. For Finn it was a continuation of his journey away from abuse, not only his abusers themselves but the abusive dynamic itself. For Kylo it was a logical culmination of his journey into abuse, to continue the dynamic but with himself as the abuser rather than the victim. Finn chose to break the cycle while Kylo chose to continue it. Rey, who Kylo wanted to take his own place as the victim-apprentice, chose to break out as well and join Finn. She chose to live and fight by his and the Resistance’s side in the uncertainty of freedom, not the glittering cage of absolute power. Snoke may be dead, but as of the end of TLJ he has the last laugh because his legacy lives on through his apprentice, now become the master.
The Supreme Leader is dead. Long live the Supreme Leader.
L.J.'s Obsessions 