#her circumstances further down the list have much more positive influences

[virahgo]

Mabel’s personality across her current verses ranked from hardest to get along with (unless equally evil/morally ambiguous or pre-established) to easiest to get along with:

1) Main 2) Weirdmageddon  3) Gravity Falls 4) Monster Falls 5) Apocalypse 6) Actor / Rock Star 7) Marvel / X-Men 8) Doctor Who / Torchwood 9) Stranger Things 10) Harry Potter 11) JJBA 12) No Magic / Crime Family 13) High School / College 14) Younger / Child 15) Star Wars / Star Trek / Sci-Fi

[thekrawratalksbnha]

let’s talk unreliability real quick: bnha 291

so in light of recent bnha events, i wanted to write up a real quick thing on unreliable narrators based on some things i’ve seen going around and some stuff from my own experience based on my work with unreliability. 

just because someone says something in canon story, doesn’t actual mean that’s exactly how things are. there’s some important factors that play into how much you can trust information from a character. 

some of the main ones being:

how old were they?

what circumstances were they in?

could they be reliably asked to remember this event?

how much information were they privy too and how much are they assuming?

do they have a reason to lie?

let’s look at shouto for example:

shouto is the youngest of four. he is probably about 9 or so years younger than his eldest sibling. that means there was a lot of time before him for family relationships to strengthen or in this case deteriorate. 

additionally shouto went through some pretty severe trauma when he was very young. reliably we know he was trained to the point of throwing up at five years old, witnessed his mother’s mental state deteriorate and be abused by his father, walked in on his mother having a severe mental breakdown overhearing her talking about his left side being unsightly and proceeding to pour boiling water on it, and was kept separated from his siblings with little social contact. 

FURTHER, we’ve only ever seen shouto actively place blame on two people. himself and his father. even though it is for very valid reason, we know that at least to start he was more than willing to assume the worst of endeavour. 

we also have canonical proof that shouto had suppressed/forgotten important memories of his childhood. so we know his memory might not be the most reliable. 

what does all this mean?

shouto is in no way the most reliable narrator to discuss about the todoroki family. while he doesn’t really have any reason to lie about what happened, he was in a position to misinterpret or remember things. 

this doesn’t mean he’s wrong. it just means there’s too many blank spots in shouto’s memory and understanding and too much bias for him to be an actively reliable perspective into his family’s situation as a whole. 

he can probably pretty accurately speak about his experience, but anything he’s said about his family before he was born can pretty reasonable be called into question. 

and you can run down the list of todoroki’s and see that well…none of them are necessarily reliable. 

natsuo:

second youngest, most of his memories are from a time that we know was definitively bad

closest with some of the family members who suffered the most

neglected by endeavour, shaping his opinion of endeavour but also not leaving him privy to much info

fuyumi:

her biggest issue is the information she is privy to. 

has expressed a very clear desire to mend the family, and does have reason to downplay certain events or moments

she was still a kid when things happened and most of her memories are probably largely tainted by emotion

in general i’d say fuyumi is probably the one of the most reliable of the todoroki’s though.

rei:

suffered severe mental distress 

we don’t know much about rei and her experience before shouto which makes it hard to judge how reliable of a narrator she is

enji:

went through at least some period of time where he was a shit father

did have strong emotions and ambition that could have blinded him — but since his atonement arc has started, has very little reason to deviate from the truth

in general though, hate me for saying it, at this point in the story he is probably the most reliable narrator in the todoroki family. 

and then of course there’s dabi, which brings us to the whole point of this post. 

dabi is probably the most unreliable of all the todoroki’s as a speaker. not only was he a kid when shit went down, he also is the only todoroki who has motive to lie or over-exaggerate events. 

dabi’s play right now is to ruin endeavour. and yes, most of what he says probably has some truth involved. but keep in mind dabi is a very biased perspective and is gunning for maximum damage. he wants to destroy endeavour’s legacy (and probably shouto’s by extension). he wants to hit them where it hurts. 

which means that any new information dabi gives isn’t automatically what happened. we already know in his grand reveal video he’s willing to bend the truth, remove context and leave out important details (exhibit a — hawks). we should expect that he is doing the same in regards to his story about endeavour. he’s trying to cast endeavour in the worst light possible so he is not revealing anything potentially redeeming about the man.

compare dabi’s story to the flashbacks endeavour has. they are full of contradictions. 

so which one do we trust?

if endeavour says one thing and dabi says another — quite frankly, it’s probably more likely that endeavour is telling the truth. even if its not an intentional lie on dabi’s part. dabi’s experience was when he was younger, very emotional charged and in a very negative place. that has probably coloured his perspective of everything. 

and as mentioned before, he has very clear reason to not tell the whole truth if it might be able to help endeavour’s case. 

on the other hand, especially internally, endeavour has no reason to lie or hide the truth. his whole atonement is about him acknowledging that what he did was wrong. and he has — internally at least. he has acknowledged his faults. and really there’s no motive for him to lie to himself. he was old enough to understand and process his actions. and it wasn’t quite as emotional for him as the kids (who were developing at that time and emotion often would take precedent over fact).

so just keep that in mind as official translations come out and future chapters and more information gets exposed. 

dabi wants to paint endeavour in the worst possible light. some of what we know about the todoroki’s come from shouto, who could very well be a very unreliable narrator in that regard. all of what we know about the todoroki’s could be very biased and influenced by their collective awful experiences. 

(the follow up to this is that when somebody has an interpretation you don’t entirely agree with — they might not be wrong. there is a lot we don’t know. and a lot that we assume to be true but could very easily be proven false. both dabi and endeavour have done wrong and the story we get might not be 100% accurate. so whether you are pro or anti endeavour — keep unreliability in mind. you can’t necessarily take every character at their word)

[precuredaily]

Precure Day 204

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 Go Go! 06 - “King Donuts Awakens!” Date watched: 8 January 2021 Original air date: 9 March 2008 Screenshots Transformation Gallery Project info and master list of posts

mood

The character re-introduction arc reaches its epic conclusion and shows us where Rin has wound up after her moment of self-realization in the Y5 finale. It turns out, she wound up constantly tired. Relatable. Let’s dig in!

The Plot

Nozomi and Rin are on their way to Natts House to prepare for the grand re-opening. Rin is visibly very tired and confesses that she was up late the previous night.

images with sleepy auras

As they arrive at the store, they run into Syrup.... or more accurately, he runs into them, carrying an urgent letter from Milk. (Remember this, because Syrup sure doesn’t) However, just then, a brilliant light erupts from inside of Natts House, so they all rush in to see what’s happening. They find everyone gathered around a table with the Rose Pact in the middle, glowing, and then it opens up and King Donuts emerges, fully awake. Then he yells at everyone to stop staring at him.

blinded by the light...... how does that song go again?

After the opening, the gang tries to introduce themselves to King Donuts, but he assumes it’s another Eternal trap until Coco and Nuts reveal themselves. Instead of being relieved, however, he just pivots his anger onto them for being incompetent and letting him get attacked by Eternal. So yeah, not off to a great start here. While they watch the goings-on, Rin yawns, and this further annoys the already irate king. Growing frustrated, he tries to leave, but finds that there’s a barrier around the Rose Pact that’s trapping him until he fully recovers. As you may imagine, this does wonders for his good mood.

I’m not yawning because I’m bored, I’m yawning because I’m bored AND tired.

Cut to Eternal’s headquarters and a very fatigued Scorp drops a huge report on Anacondy’s desk, mentioning he hasn’t slept for six days while writing it. However, she dings him on numerous minor errors, deeming it unusable, and tells him to combine it with the previous report and redo it. Exhausted and holding a stack of paper half his height, Scorp collapses and the pages fly everywhere. I have to say, Koyasu acting tired is a fun change of pace for him.

these are the eyes of a man who has lost all hope

Back at Natts House, everyone is still trying to appease King Donuts. He insists he’s fine already but in attempting to demonstrate this, he wears himself out quickly. Karen offers him the apple she snapped a few episodes ago, but he refuses to eat it because he doesn’t trust them. The girls give up on him for now, because they need to get to work opening up the store, but they notice Rin has fallen asleep.

Nozomi advises them to just leave her be, trying to get Syrup to help them pass out fliers instead. He refuses and wants to know why they don’t wake Rin. Nozomi explains that Rin was busy all day with sports clubs, tending to the family shop, and watching her siblings, so she stayed up all night designing accessories because it was the only free time she had. (I am very familiar with this concept.) She also admits that Rin didn’t tell her this, she deduced it because she knows Rin and how she works.

With that settled, the remaining girls, as well as Coco and Nuts, get to work handing out fliers. Syrup, however, stays behind to look over Rin, because he refused to help any other way. He muses over his situation.

At that moment, Rin wakes up, and Syrup asks if she really was up all night designing jewelry. She realizes her old friend Nozomi has read her like a book. She admits to feeling guilty that she not only stayed up late working, but she couldn’t come up with any ideas, and now she’s missed out on handing out fliers as well. She feels useless (big oof) and contrasts herself with Syrup, who she says is working hard to get to the Cure Rose Garden. Syrup disagrees and insists she works way harder than him. At this point, King Donuts, who has been listening in, interjects and commends Rin for being critical and analytical of herself, saying it’s the key to self growth. I feel like there’s a missing line in here about not slipping too far into self-doubt, but regardless, Rin remembers she’s supposed to be at futsal practice and runs off before the end of the King’s speech.

“Gah!” - Natsuki Rin, 2008

After she’s gone, the king and Syrup discuss how hardworking she is, along with the other girls. Also there’s a gag where King Donuts didn’t recognize Syrup until he turned back into his fairy form which further establishes that Syrup has a bit of a negative reputation far and wide.

Meanwhile, at the practice field, Rin isn’t doing a whole lot better at futsal than she was at jewelry design. As a result of staying up late, she’s still tired, so she’s missing passes or overshooting goals. She even accidentally kicks the ball over the fence and into the woods, so she goes to retrieve it while yawning some more.

It’s here that she is confronted by an equally sleepy Scorp, who asks her to hand over the Rose Pact so he won’t have to write up his report, and he can sleep. It’s kind of pathetic, kind of comical.

Scorp turns the futsal ball into a hoshiina, so Rin transforms as well. Syrup swoops in to save her from Scorp but drops the Rose Pact, so King Donuts tries to talk down the villain. However, Scorp is undeterred and even sees more value in having one of the monarchs inside the Rose Pact. The other girls show up and transform, temporarily distracting Scorp (as well as the king, who is surprised that they’re the legendary warriors) but he then continues his advance until Rouge punches him away. Then she hears Lemonade screaming as the Hoshiina tries to fling her off, so Rouge rushes in to kick it and rescue her friend. Scorp once again tries to capture the Rose Pact, so Rouge separates from the team again to protect the fairies, but Scorp captures her instead and taunts her about trying too hard to do too much by herself and says she’ll only ever be halfway finished. This hits Rin at her core and she is unable to resist an attack from the Hoshiina, but at the last moment her teammates jump in front of her to defend her. They remind her that she’s not alone, they’re there to help her, and then Dream gives an inspiring speech about how Rin always challenges her situation and works harder than others, so they’ll always support her. Scorp is unimpressed, but Dream rushes him with a Shooting Star. Feeling newly motivated, Rin also performs her new finisher on the Hoshiina: Fire Strike! She summons a fireball at her feet and then kicks it into the monster, which of course dissolves back into a normal futsal ball. Scorp flees, muttering about how he’ll have to include this in his report as well.

As the dust settles, King Donuts admires the Precures, and then has a seemingly random realization about the Rose Pact and the Red and Blue roses, or rather, the lack of blue rose. In case you had forgotten that plot point.

the answer will surprise you

Back at Natts House, King Donuts opens up a bit more to the girls and they chat back. However, he quickly reiterates that he doesn’t acknowledge Coco and Nuts as rulers yet. When they ask Syrup to help them with the shop, he reminds them that he’s only here to deliver a letter from Milk, and he finally hands it over to Coco. (took him long enough) It turns out the letter says there’s an emergency in Palmier Kingdom and everyone needs to come there quickly! They want to go but aren’t certain how.... until they remember Syrup has the convenient ability to travel between worlds. He initially refuses, but King Donuts cleverly appeals to both his pride and his kind-heartedness, causing him to think about the conviction all the girls have shown in their solo outings thus far, and he agrees to take them. So just as quickly as it opened, Natts House is closed again and the gang boards Syrup to fly to the Palmier Kingdom. As they rise into the air, they soar forwards into a watercolor warphole, surrounded by floating  lights. They fade to white and the credits start.

The Analysis

Something I truly appreciate about this episode is that it picks up from the first series finale, and shows that Rin hasn’t magically become a top tier accessory designer, she still has moments of artist’s block, and she really struggles with just finding time to create, which impacts her social responsibilities. (sounds familiar) Rin’s struggle is a recurring theme, and I'm always glad that unlike certain later shows, they don’t glamorize her sacrificing sleep, they just portray it as something people sometimes do even if it’s not in their best interests. Contrast with that episode of Go Princess, you know the one. It’s a straightforward cause and effect: Rin stays up late designing, so she’s tired the next day, and that influences her interactions.

It has some positive responses, such as getting King Donuts to recognize how hardworking she is and swaying his opinion on the girls; and some negative impacts, like kicking the futsal ball too hard and over the fence. With all that said, I must once again remind you all not to sacrifice your well-being for your goals, even if I’m bad at following my own advice.

King Donuts (or Doughnuts if you prefer) is an interesting character. At first he’s paranoid that he’s in another Nightmare trap, but as he grows to accept his circumstances he warms up a bit, especially when he hears about how hard Rin is working. He remains critical of Coco and Nuts, understandably so, since their negligence led to him being attacked previously. However, he doesn’t dislike them, he is sharp-tongued because he wants to make them better kings. Physically he resembles a diminutive dragon. It’s not the most apparent visual but when all four Rulers are together the pattern begins to become obvious. More on that ~eventually~.

although they’re all in the OP so, ya know, clues

A secondary theme throughout this arc has been to show Syrup starting to acclimate to the girls and begin appreciating their hard work and way of doing things. He’s still stubborn and wants to do his own thing, but it takes less arm twisting to get him to go along with the girls’ requests. Usually. As he admits to King Donuts, he respects their work ethic and their devotion to the causes they love. He entered the picture as a loner delivery boy who just wanted to do his job, but getting roped in with the Precures’ misadventures has opened his eyes somewhat. He’s going to be fun to watch as the show continues. However, he has a reputation, as we’ve seen. We don’t know exactly what the details are but several characters seem to have a low opinion of him, and we’ll find out more about that in coming episodes.

The fight in this episode is interesting in how..... not interesting it is. It kind of fools you into thinking more is happening than actually is. There’s a lot of talking and not as much action as you would expect. The Cures and Scorp or the Hoshiina will exchange a few blows and get thrown around, then one of them starts lecturing the other side about their beliefs. Sure, all Precure shows have elements of this, I can remember a few other fights that were more talk than combat, but it seems particularly egregious this episode. I do like how Scorp’s mocking has an effect on Rouge though. She’s already feeling really unaccomplished and then he goes and tells her she’s useless without her friends. It starts to weigh on her heart, but her friends quickly step in and say hey, we love Rin, she has us to support her, it’s okay if she can’t do it all by herself. As a result of this quick pep talk, she unleashes Fire Strike, her new finisher, and boy does THAT shine. It’s the first soccer-themed Precure attack in the series, and more will follow in subsequent years.

Compared to some of the other finishers, Fire Strike is more straightforward. Rouge creates a ball of fire and kicks it directly into the Hoshiina. It’s less over the top than her teammates attacks (flying into the enemy, twin whips, flying discs, or an arrow made of water) but the animators manage to punch it up a bit with some suitably dramatic effects that sell how fast, hard, and powerful this kick is. Also I have to say, the shot of Rouge bringing her leg all the way back to ready the kick is really cool.

Her leg is cocked and extends past her head. If you’ve ever tried this you know it’s hard, so even if you can make a drawing do anything, it still looks impressive, and the next shot where she’s kicked it is gorgeous. The flame walls, the way she’s lifted slightly off the ground, the way the ball is warped, all convey a sense of power and motion. Yeah, she’s just kicking it straight ahead, but you get the sense she could kick it through a brick wall.

I do have to say, on the negative side, the framing device of the episode feels a little forced. If this letter from Milk was so important, Syrup probably should have pushed it on the girls a little sooner. Maybe just dropped it off with Nozomi when he first met her in the morning. They still could have seen King Donuts awakening but they would have made moves to go straight to the Palmier Kingdom instead of doing all that work advertising and opening the shop only to have to close it again right away, and skipping Rin’s moral quandary. Since those are at the root of the episode, it might be hard to cut them, so alternatively, to keep them, the episode could have been written such that Syrup could have received the letter at the end, so he wasn’t holding onto such an important and urgent letter all episode long. It’s the little things. And on that topic, I find the third act (fourth act?) after the fight to be a little too goofy. Syrup finally hands over the letter, then they all hem and haw about how they’re going to get to Palmier Kingdom and they beg and plead Syrup to do it until he finally agrees. The only truly funny part to me is Nuts lamenting that he has to close Natts House after he just opened it.

Also there’s this ending sequence.

This is the single worst thing I have ever made in the name of this project.

It’s overall a well-thought out episode and it smartly moves between story elements, smoothly concluding the character reintroductions and setting up the Blue Rose arc that follows. I appreciate how seemingly unconnected events flow into each other and they lead to the King seeing that the girls are legitimately good people. It’s probably the most cohesive episode of this arc, although I still think the character reintroductions peaked with Urara’s. The others have been good in different ways, but there’s a deeper bit of heartfelt emotion that episodes 2, 3, 5, and 6 just haven’t been able to match.

Next time, Milk’s emergency turns out to be largely imagined, and we meet a new villain. Look forward to it!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 1 kettei!

[imjustthemechanic]

The Price of a Soul

Part 1/? - Agent Russel Part 2/? - The Letter Part 3/? - Miss Lake Part 4/? - The Stewardess Part 5/? - An Assassination Part 6/? - Fallout Part 7/? - Face to Face Part 8/? - Deals, Details, and Other Devils Part 9/? - Baggage Part 10/? - Private Funding Part 11/? - Just Passing Through Part 12/? - Party of Four Part 13/? - Resolute Part 14/? - The Wreck Part 15/? - Body Snatchers Part 16/? - Out of the Frying Pan Part 17/? - A Miracle Part 18/? - A Matter of Circumstance Part 19/? - Nome Part 20/? - The Future Part 21/? - A Hero’s Welcome Part 22/? - Up to Speed Part 23/? - Expect Further Delays Part 24/? - The Welcome Wagon Part 25/? - Fugitives

Alone and on the run from the law, Peggy and Kay have to decide what to do next.

-

ince Kay’s bunker was a no-go, they ended up spending the night in an abandoned farmhouse on the edge of the Pine Barrens.  This was exactly as creepy as it sounded, with no electricity, and rats and raccoons nesting in it.  It started to rain around midnight, drumming on the roof and coming in through the long-broken windows.  Peggy and Kay broke up some pieces of the stair bannister and used them to light a fire in the fireplace, and by that flickering light, they tried to figure out what to do next.

“I don’t suppose you can go back in time again and start over,” Peggy said.

Kay shook her head.  “This was a one-shot thing.”

“I see.”  Peggy thought for a moment.  “When we’re caught, I’m going to tell them you kidnapped me.”

“Cool,” said Kay.  She sighed heavily, hugging her knees to her chest she stared into the flames.  Peggy noticed that her root were growing out, coming in darker than the blonde, although by the firelight it was impossible to say quite what colour they were.

“Everything was supposed to be better,” Kay said.  “Steve was supposed to get the happy ending he wanted, with you and James.  HYDRA would be rooted out once and for all before they could really get their claws into the government.”  She reached up to scrub at her eyes with her fingers.  “The Red Room would be destroyed.  I don’t know if I’d be able to force Howard to hug his son once in a while but I was going to try.  I don’t know if I’d be able to do anything for Clint or for Bruce… I’m not going to live that long.”  She shrugged.  “And after that… I don’t know if we can destroy the Infinity Stones with the technology of this decade, but if anybody could figure it out, it’s Howard Stark.”

She hadn’t been joking when she said she had an extensive to-do list, Peggy thought.  Most of the items on it meant absolutely nothing to Peggy, but she could tell they were things Kay cared about very much.

Which made for one odd omission.  “What about you?”

“The Red Room,” said Kay.  “That’s the code name for the place where they raise girls into spies.  If that doesn’t exist, then I won’t be drafted into it when my parents abandon me.  I don’t know what will happen to me, but even starving on the streets of Volgograd would be better than that.”

Peggy thought of some of the things she’d seen at that facility in Siberia, and shuddered.

“The thing is,” Kay added, “I know I can’t do it alone.  I need you guys.  If you’re in prison and Ste… and Captain America’s off shaking hands with his fans, then I can’t do it.  I might be able to do it myself in the twenty-first century, but not now, I don’t know enough.  Even if I did, it would be so much easier with help.  I had one shot, and I ruined it.”

She fell silent then, and Peggy wondered what it was she wanted.  Reassurance that everything would be okay?  Peggy couldn’t give her that.  “Well, you certainly didn’t improve things by taking us both on the run,” she said.

“Probably not,” Kay agreed.

Peggy wrapped her coat around herself to use as a blanket, and lay down with her own elbow for a pillow.  “In the morning,” she said, “we should head to the nearest town and turn ourselves in.”

“Then what happens to Steve?” asked Kay.  “And to James?”

“At the moment I’m primarily worried about what happens to me,” said Peggy.  Steve was doubtless worried about her, and about Sergeant Barnes, and if Kay said was true, Barnes did need help, but Peggy was not in a position to do anything about that right now.  Her focus had to be on her own survival, both physical and political.  “If I wasn’t going to end up in prison before I certainly am now.”

“I know,” said Kay.  “I’m sorry.”

“Apologies don’t do a lot of good at this point,” Peggy told her.

“Apologies never do a lot of good for me,” said Kay.  “I’ve always been the one who throws the other guy over a cliff.  Looks like nothing’s changed.”

- 

Peggy woke up early, stiff and cold from sleeping on the floor.  The fire had burned itself down to a smolder, and Kay was gone.  For a moment Peggy was furious, thinking the other woman had abandoned her, but then she rolled over and discovered Kay’s red purse, still sitting there on the floor.  Had she simply left that behind, or was it intended to tell Peggy she was coming back?

She got up, stretched the kinks out of her neck as best she could, and went to look out front.  The car was still there, and Kay was sitting in the driver’s seat.  When Peggy came closer, picking her way between the puddles and the rotten boards of the front steps, she found that the radio was on.

“They haven’t said anything about us yet,” said Kay, “but I’ve only been here about ten minutes.  Weather’s supposed to be nice today.”

Peggy climbed in the passenger seat to listen for herself.  There was a weather report, and then it began talking about Captain America.

New York Senator Elect Vernon Masters brought the Captain home to Brooklyn last night to tremendous fanfare, the announcer said.  Captain America will be embarking on a tour of the state capitals, along with the Senator Elect and industrialist Howard Stark, who was instrumental in locating the wreck of the German bomber.

“Of course they don’t mention Jason,” grumbled Peggy.  If anything, he had more trouble getting recognition for his achievements than she did.

“They don’t mention us, either,” Kay mused.  “That means they don’t want people knowing we’ve escaped.”

“Specifically, Thompson doesn’t want people knowing,” said Peggy.  “He must be dreadfully tired of people escaping from him.”

“He ought to take better care of them, then,” snorted Kay.  “You still want to turn yourself in?”

Peggy had to think about it.  “I think we’d better,” she said.  “But not to Thompson.  We need to find a pay telephone, and I’ll speak to Daniel.”

They drove into the nearest town, where they found a little diner to order breakfast.  Kay clearly had no appetite, nibbling at her toast and forcing herself to eat her scrambled eggs.  Peggy didn’t feel very hungry, either, despite some grumbling from her stomach.  She got through about half of it, and then pushed her plate away and checked her watch, which was still on Los Angeles time.

The moment it reached eight-thirty AM, she went outside and picked up the pay telephone.  “Hello,” she said, “I’d like to make a long-distance call.”

She gave the number for the storefront in Los Angeles, and waited while switchboard operators across the country made connections.  Finally, the line picked up, and Rose’s somewhat staticky but familiar voice said, “good morning, Auerbach Theatrical Agency.”

“Good morning,” said Peggy.  “May I speak to Mr. Auerbach, please?”

“Peggy?” Rose asked.  “Where are you?”

“I can’t say,” Peggy replied.  “I just need to speak with Daniel right away.”

Rose lowered her voice.  “You can’t,” she said.  “He was arrested yesterday, just after you left!  What’s going on?”

Peggy’s insides turned to ice.  Daniel had been arrested… because of course, Dottie had told Thompson that Daniel had colluded with Peggy in letting her out of jail.  She’d probably implicated Mr. Jarvis, too.  This wasn’t just about what would happen to Peggy anymore, not at all.  This was about what was going to happen to all of them.

“I… can’t say,” Peggy repeated.  “Listen, please don’t tell anybody I spoke to you.  We’re all in a lot of trouble.”

“All right,” said Rose.  “What are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure yet,” said Peggy.  She hung up the phone and stood there a moment, digesting what she’d just heard.  ‘Borrowing’ Dottie to get the sample of Zero Matter had been Peggy’s idea.  Daniel and Mr. Jarvis had helped, but none of it would have happened without Peggy, and now they were possibly all going to hang for it.  Would pleading that they’d done it to save the world do any good?  Not likely.  Masters’ lawyers would argue that there must have been other options.  It was just that in the hurry of the moment, Peggy hadn’t been able to think of any.

Kay was waiting for her outside the phone booth.  When Peggy opened the door, her eyes went wide.

“Sit down,” she ordered.  “Put your head between your knees.”

“I am not going to faint!” Peggy snapped.  “Daniel has been arrested as well, and Mr. Jarvis.  I don’t know if she’s implicated Howard and Jason or not.”

“Oh.”  Kay covered her mouth.  “This is… this is all my fault…”

“No, it isn’t,” Peggy said.  “It’s mine.”

“If I hadn’t been here…”

“Even with you here, we wouldn’t be in trouble if I hadn’t had the blindingly stupid idea to break Dottie out of jail to begin with!” Peggy informed her.  This sensation of crushing weight on her chest, as her bad decisions rained down like bricks to bruise and bury her… this must be what Kay had felt last night when Thompson had tried to arrest them for treason.  If so, Peggy found herself reacting to it in what had to be a very similar way.

“Bugger it,” she said.  “You are a bad influence.”

“I know,” said Kay.

“Do you have any more change?”

Kay dug into her purse for some coins, and Peggy lifted the receiver again.  “Hello, operator.  I would like to make a long-distance call.  Can you get me the California FBI office in Sacramento?”

She didn’t actually know if the FBI opened as early as the SSR, though it seemed likely, so it was a relief when she heard a receptionist pick up and greet her.  “FBI, can I help you?”

“Good morning,” said Peggy, affecting an American accent.  “May I please speak to Agent Ned Russel?  This is his wife, Alice.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the woman replied.  “He’s still in New York, working on a case.”

“I thought he’d been taken off that case,” Peggy said.

“I don’t know the details,” said the receptionist.  “I think he was reinstated as a favour for somebody from another agency.  Would you like to speak to the chief?”

“No, no thank you,” Peggy said.  “I’ll see if I can call him there.  Goodbye.”

She hung up, and turned to Kay again.  “I have an idea.”

The black SSR vehicle they’d been driving so far was far too recognizable to take back into the city, so the women left it behind and stole a green Ford coupe they found parked beside the diner.  Peggy drove this time, as they headed north back towards the city.

“What’s your plan?” asked Kay.

Peggy took a deep breath.  “The easiest, although perhaps not the most legal, way to get everybody I know and love out of trouble is to make sure Dottie cannot testify,” she said.  “Masters and Thompson didn’t make their move until they had her, so she must be the cornerstone of their case.  We remove Dottie again, and they have nothing.”

“Makes sense,” said Kay in a deadpan.  It was impossible to tell what she thought.

“Unfortunately, we cannot get in to see her,” Peggy went on.  “Last time I got her out by wearing a disguise, but that’s not going to work again.  The police guarding her know me now, because I was in there to see you, and there’s the possibility that Dottie herself will raise the alarm.  And you certainly can’t go in because they know you as well.  However, we know somebody who probably has every right to be there, we know that he is slightly terrified of both of us, and we possibly know where he eats lunch.”

It was with that in mind that they parked their stolen car behind the Automat up the street from the telephone company building.  The lunch rush had just ended, and Peggy could see Pearl standing by the back door on a cigarette break.  She approached.

“Hi, Peggy,” said Pearl.  “What are you doing back here?”

“I need to see Angie right away, privately,” said Peggy.  “It’s very important.  Don’t tell anybody else I’m here… and tell her it’s Phone Company Business.”

“Ah… all right,” said Pearl.  She dropped the remains of her cigarette on the pavement and went inside to get her co-worker.  Angie appeared a few minutes later, looking concerned – she knew very well what Peggy meant by Phone Company Business.

“What’s wrong, English?” she asked.

“Angela Martinelli!” Kay exclaimed.

Angie blinked.  “Do we know each other?”

“You’re going to be in Stark Pictures’ Captain America movies,” said Kay, “opposite Burt Lancaster!”

“Ignore her, she thinks she can see the future,” said Peggy.  “Listen to me, Angie… did we frighten Agent Russel away permanently?”

“No, he had his lunch here today,” Angie said.  “He didn’t sit in my section.”

Peggy smiled.  “Excellent,” she said.  “Here’s what we need you to do.”

[manifestationtips4you]

5 Simple Ways to Change Your Life With The Law Of Attraction (Learn This)

Johanna, a college student from Kuala Lumpur, had been struggling to finish her studies.

She was living in a dorm with other students and had trouble making ends meet.

Johanna was on a scholarship which meant she needed to keep her grades high while working part-time to support her living expenses.

Strapped for time and resources, she barely got by and started feeling burnt out. If Johanna wasn't hitting the books, she was working.

Everything started to become a blur and she was losing motivation to keep going.

It got so bad that Johanna even thought about telling her parents she couldn't do it anymore and drop out of college.

But then a classmate from her philosophy class introduced her to the Law of Attraction.

Jacques, a foreign exchange student from Canada, had been reading up on it and applied it in his own life.

According to him, it had helped him manifest a solution to his own problems.

He had lived in an abusive home growing up, and Jacques learned how to shift his thinking and perspective to change his circumstances.

Johanna wasn't sure at first what to make of it, but she took Jacques's word for it and started applying its principles in her own life.

Click Here To Discover the Lazy Person's Secret To Get Everything You've Ever Wished For <= [Link this text via your affiliate link]

After she made a shift in her own mindset and attitude, Johanna started to experience some positive changes.

She eventually quit her part-time job and found another one with better pay and hours which helped with her living expenses.

It also helped free up her time, so she managed to study AND start a side income project selling items online.

Johanna ended up growing her side business so much that she got Jacques to help her manage it.

By the end of the academic year, she had turned into a completely different person.

Johanna was no longer a depressed, burned-out student from before. She had become a self-sufficient student and even made the dean's list!

The Power of Changing Your Focus

Sometimes, we get so discouraged that we feel powerless to change our situation.

Like Johanna, we fall into a FIXED mindset where we think things will stay the same and we can't do anything about it.

But the only way to break out of this negative spiral is by changing your INNER world.

This is the key to influencing your external world so you can move forward in life.

In a nutshell, the Law of Attraction is a way of living that requires you to change your frequency.

When you do this, the Universe will pick up your signal and your life will change for the better.

As for the frequency I mentioned, this is basically the vibration of energy that your mind gives off.

You can either operate at a high or low vibration, and each type will give you a specific result.

Most people don't realize they're giving off low-frequency energy, which is actually making their situation worse. Discover the Lazy Person's Secret To Get Everything You've Ever Wished For - CLICK HERE

The main problem is when you attach your emotions to your external circumstances.

For instance, it's easy to feel bad when you're broke. And naturally, it's just as easy feel the opposite if you had money in the bank.

Similarly, seeing other people in a happy, romantic relationship will make you bitter and angry if you're single.

And so on…

I'm not saying it's wrong to feel bad about things like that. However, you shouldn't use your circumstances (and how you FEEL about them) as an excuse to STOP trying.

People fail to realize that NOT doing anything about their situation will only make them feel WORSE. And this further traps them in a vicious cycle of negativity and inaction.

Thus, the Law of Attraction will help you install a more positive attitude in your consciousness.

This keeps your mind from being overrun by negativity - and more importantly, give you the leverage to BREAK FREE from your situation.

With some practice, your thoughts and actions will effortlessly work together to attract positive circumstances in your life.

But where should you start? Here are some ways to put the Law of Attraction into action and start creating massive changes:

#1: Share Your Gifts to the World

The Bible talks about the power of giving, and how it outweighs the benefits of getting.

But no matter what your faith or beliefs are, it helps to think of generosity on a LARGER SCALE.

Giving is more than just a virtue - it's a type of cosmic currency.

When you perform acts of kindness or share your resources for no other reason than WANTING TO, you're putting this currency into circulation.

And soon enough, this positive energy you send into the world - and the Universe as a whole - will find its way back to you.

You won't get it in the same form, but it will come around, one way or another.

I know that sometimes, giving feels like the LAST thing you want to do - especially when your own life is lacking in some capacity.

Why bother extending yourself when you've got enough to worry about for yourself?

But that's exactly the point.

Giving - even when you THINK you can't - will prove that this is a FALSE perception.

Let your acts of generosity serve as a reminder to everyone that in spite of everything, life IS and will ALWAYS be abundant.

Trust in the infinite energy of the Universe and tune into its unique frequency.

Your selflessness is the key to that. A generous attitude raises the quality of the vibrations you send out into the world.

Escaping the scarcity mindset and the fear of not having enough is one of the most liberating things you can do.

By doing so, you're FREE to improve the lives of others - and yours in the process.

Learn How To Use Destiny Tuning To Manifest The Life You Want - CLICK HERE

#2: Stop hanging out with losers

I don't mean to sound judgmental, but there are people in your life that will try to drag you down, whether they're aware of it or not.

You should avoid them at all costs.

People in a bad situation will try to feel better about themselves by spreading their toxic way of thinking to others.

They pull others down with their hurtful words, or convince them that they're not good enough.

Instead of doing something about their own situation, it's easier to go down this dark path and take everyone else with them.

And the Law of Attraction states that when you focus on something, the Universe will feed you more of the SAME.

So the good news is that you can choose to avoid this downward spiral and get on another path instead.

This is why you need to be careful about the company you keep. Choose the people that can share their constructive energy with you.

If their attitude, mindset and words lift you up, you know you're in the right place.

Their energy is contagious, and you'll naturally raise your own frequency and attract only good things in your life.

As for toxic people, I know there are times when you simply can't avoid them.

They could be family, friends, or co-workers - and you might be even living with some of them.

It's a challenge for sure, but do your best not to let their negative energy get to you.

You don't have to butt heads with them and simply respond with positivity.

If you're in a conversation with them, try to frame it in a healthy, positive way so you don't get sucked into their toxic field of gravity.

You don't have to change their mind; just take the “agree to disagree” route and leave it at that.

Who knows, your own energy might “rub off” on their consciousness. They might even think about what you told them and re-evaluate their own perspective.

#3: Get out from under the grind

We all have our lives to lead, and that means falling into a routine.

Now, don't get me wrong - having structure in your life is important and even necessary.

At a basic level, we need it to function on a daily basis. Incorporating helpful habits into your everyday routine is a GOOD thing.

However, there is a danger in being TOO embedded in it and shutting yourself off to trying NEW things.

Sticking too closely to your routine could make you afraid of the unfamiliar and uncomfortable - and hinder your GROWTH in the process.

So if you want to attract new and exciting things into your life, you should carve out some room for that.

Learn How To Use Destiny Tuning To Manifest The Life You Want - CLICK HERE

Doing things that help you grow ALWAYS has a place in a well-balanced life. A stable, healthy routine is the best way to avoid a soul-crushing existence.

What are the things that inspire you?

Outside of your usual chores and duties, what gives you a sense of fulfillment - even if it doesn't pay the bills?

People usually shoot down any desire for this because they're afraid they “don't have enough time.”

But you'll see just how flimsy that excuse is once you actually take the plunge and spend that time you didn't think you had.

In as little as half an hour, you could engage in a fulfilling pursuit. Find (or rekindle) a hobby, take up an online course or watch free videos.

Let it energize your senses, inspire you to greatness and empower you to create something wonderful in this world.

More than that, you can acquire knowledge to advance you in some way, like learning a skill, for example.

I recently came across a post on Twitter that made me smile.

It said: “There's too much free information online for y'all not be crushin it in whatever field.”

Use your precious time to invest in a better you and express yourself through your passions.

Don't worry about the “if”s and “how”s. Just get started with something now, and the rest of your life will adjust to it.

You won't know what new avenues will open up UNTIL you get the ball rolling,

#4: Quiet your mind

Meditation is one habit that goes very well with practicing the Law of Attraction.

When you learn how to control your thoughts (instead of the other way around), you're in the best position to manifest the things you want.

A lot of people find it challenging to keep their thoughts above water when they're flooded with negative emotions.

With meditation, you can take a step back and remove yourself from a situation in a healthy way.

There are books, free content online and mobile apps that can help you with this.

For instance, I just tried out the Insight app on my phone which is kind of like the YouTube equivalent for meditation.

Learn How To Use Destiny Tuning To Manifest The Life You Want - CLICK HERE

You can search by a specific person or channel, or even topics like easing anxiety, anger management, and so on.

This is a low-maintenance habit which will only take about 10-15 minutes daily. You could even spend five minutes if you're really strapped for time!

This basically works by sitting down on the floor (or a chair) and closing your eyes.

The idea is to take slow, measured breaths and pay attention to the physical sensations you're feeling at the moment.

Are your muscles tense? Is your heart beating quickly from the stress you're currently experiencing?

These are some of the things to be mindful of as you breathe in and out. If any other thoughts enter your mind, don't resist it.

Don't chase after them and just let it pass. Then you can go back to focusing on the rhythm of your breath.

Take this time to focus on the feelings of love, health, success and prosperity.

In other words, the things you want to ATTRACT.

Concentrate your attention on inhaling and exhaling. Once you've calmed your mind enough, you're ready to visualize the things you want to manifest in life.

This will have a powerful effect on your subconscious and put you on the path towards your goals.

And that brings us to the last life-changing habit…

#5: Affirmations

Muhammad Ali, one of the greatest boxers in history, was known for saying, “What you're thinking is what you're becoming.”

Indeed.

That attitude helped him become what he was, and it will serve you well, too.

Most of the time, people don't pay attention to the kind of thoughts they hold in their heads.

Left unchecked, they often feed into a toxic narrative they have about themselves without realizing it.

Like I said earlier, what you put in your subconscious affects you.

The things you tell yourself are like seeds you plant in your mind and they'll grow over time. Those same thoughts will express themselves in your actions and the choices you make.

So, you need to be careful which seeds you plant.

Joseph Murphy, author of the book, “The Power of the Subconscious Mind”, tells us that this part of your mind can't distinguish which thoughts are real or imagined.

As far as it's concerned, your subconscious will treat it as FACT whether it's happening in the physical world or NOT.

Thus, people don't just operate on these subconscious beliefs. Without being aware of it, they're turning their thoughts into reality.

And it WILL happen - one way or another.

The perception you have about yourself is largely influenced by the people you had around while growing up.

Their input - whether good or bad - left a mark on your subconscious that's hard to shake off.

And this programming kicks in whenever you make decisions and it dictates how you respond to tough times.

This inner dialogue can act as your inner voice of confidence and self-assurance…

…or as in most people's cases, it's the voice of fear and self-doubt.

You might think you're not good enough or smart enough because you couldn't stop the bad things from happening.

You curse yourself for messing things up, then blame it on some pre-assigned character defect.

Usually, it's in the form of labels like “Loser”, “Hopeless Case”, “Slacker”, “Weirdo” and so on.

But remember, these labels only have as much power over as you ALLOW it.

You can apply the Law of Attraction to change this inner chatter and rewire your mind for success instead.

It's impossible to attract wealth, abundance and happiness if you're focused on putting yourself down.

Learn How to Force the Universe to Manifest Your Dream Life - CLICK HERE

You can do the opposite by using encouraging statements that will empower you to take action.

Here are some examples to try during your meditation sessions:

Affirmations that span across time: Think about what's already happened, what's happening now, and what's yet to come. Then put it all together like this: “BEFORE, I was broke, miserable and hated the world. But I know better NOW and want to turn it around. Things are about to change, and SOON I'll be prosperous, happy and living my dream life.”

Affirmations that are crystal clear: Saying something like “I am loved” or “I am blessed” is a good start, but they're a bit vague. Try elaborating on these ideas and flesh them out even more. Then you'll end up with a statement like “I'm surrounded by people who love and support me. They help me grow as a person and want to see me succeed.” As for being blessed, you can say “I'm blessed with infinite opportunities and resources, and my life is full and abundant.”

Affirmations with an attitude: Another way to supercharge your subconscious is by being a little cheeky with your statements. When that voice of fear and insecurity kicks in, drown out the noise with, “Whatever, I'm amazing at everything I do. I fight like hell and do my best, and I can't hear what you're saying!” Adding some lighthearted humor amplifies your signal and makes it easier for the Universe to hear your thoughts. Try this the next time you're feeling especially down on yourself.

When you improve the quality of your thoughts, it's as if your circumstances will rearrange itself on their own.

These changes will seem to happen without doing much on your part. But the truth is that you're already doing the heavy lifting by disciplining your mind.

Starting today, you can apply these five tips I've just shared with you to create ripples of change in your life.

The more you practice them, the bigger waves will result from your efforts. I hope you make use of this knowledge and empower yourself for greatness.

Before I go, there's ONE MORE gift I'd like to share with you…

It's called the Manifestation Breakthrough Kit, and for a limited time I'm offering it totally FREE of charge.

You can combine this kit with the five tips you just learned to get even BETTER results.

learn how to FORCE the Universe to give you everything you've ever wanted…and MORE! - CLICK HERE

[madamemayura]

interesting post you've written about Cass/Raps being a tragic romance. maybe you'll be feel better if you write a longer one on your thoughts on that... ;)

Okay this took me WAY longer than I expected but y’all ask for tragic readings and I deliver, so may I present: Rapunzel and Cassandra as a tragic romantic subversion of the Knight in Shining Armor.

Alright, as a disclaimer I will say that the way this reading works is that it’s just that: a reading. Cassandra and Rapunzel as a tragic romance (while simultaneously remaining a fantastic depiction of female friendship) is an interpretation of TTS that I find incredibly valid and, in a storytelling sense, rewarding. This isn’t to say the creators intended it to be that way or that this is the one and only reading of Cassandra and Rapunzel’s dynamic, but it is a reading I subscribe to and believe to hold evidence, support, chemistry, and immense value in a literary and creative sense.

So let’s get into why that is.

Consider Cassandra and Rapunzel, together. Their friendship is well established even as the show starts, and over the course of the series we watch Cass serve as a foil to Raps in a multitude of ways: she’s the experience to her inexperience, the logical to her creative, the knight to her princess. Cass wears dark earth-tones in her preferred clothing while Rapunzel opts for a vibrancy of pinks and purples; Cassandra’s approach to problems is straightforward and direct, while Rapunzel’s involves planning and imaginative thinking (see: Queen for a Day, the use of the Demanitus Device); Cass is private and reserved, Rapunzel open and outgoing. 

The building blocks of their dynamic are prime material for a developing romance, complete with tension, conflict, and positive growth. They’re complementary opposites in most of their mannerisms, yet both are brave, adventurous, intuitive, competitive, and though they show it in different ways, ultimately good and compassionate people.

So why is this a tragedy? Why is it that Rapunzel and Cassandra’s relationship is inherently doomed, shot through with hairline fractures that lead to a temporary yet heartbreaking betrayal in Destinies Collide?

The answer lies not only in context and circumstances, but even deeper, in the very core of their characters; Rapunzel’s driving force is freedom, and Cassandra’s is control.

While the previous description of Cassandra and Rapunzel as foils lists complementary opposites, puzzle pieces that ultimately still fit together, these two forces are repelling magnets, each of them informing many of Cass and Rapunzel’s individual character flaws and virtues.

Perhaps the root of the tragedy that encompasses Cassandra and Rapunzel’s story is that both are justified in being driven by their respective desires. Cassandra, who has spent most of her life striving for a position she can’t reach, trying to prove herself worthy of respect and trust and arguably doing just that, has yet to see the rewards for her hard work. She is never given the position of control and influence she desires, despite having developed both her skills and her instincts.

Rapunzel, similarly, has every right to the freedom she was crucially denied in her past; after enduring emotional manipulation and abuse throughout her childhood, abuse exacted with the intent to keep her isolated and caged, there can be no other resolution than that she fight against any and all restraints.

Yet freedom for Rapunzel is a double-edged sword. Despite her escape from the tower that was her prison, she finds herself in the position of a princess and future queen, a role that comes with rules, regulations, and no shortage of trials. As Rapunzel and the audience discover in Queen for a Day, her royalty can put her in positions where she is anything but free to act, and if she’s to be an effective ruler, she has to learn to compromise. Sometimes, to devastating results.

Cassandra, likewise, is forced to show some of her more fatal flaws when it comes to her desire for control. Her stubbornness and occasional tunnel-vision are a result of that need to be in charge, that need to be heard and listened to oftentimes above anyone else. Being unfairly ignored, combined with her tendency to keep her true feelings bottled up, leads to her putting ambition over her relationships and sometimes lashing out harshly, going further than she previously intended. It happens in Challenge of the Brave when she competes less than ethically against Rapunzel, Great Expotations when she backs out of her agreement with Varian, and most notably in a brilliantly written yet incredibly heartwrenching episode, Rapunzel and the Great Tree:

“Cass, you of all people should know I can handle myself pretty well out here. I don’t need someone to keep me safe.”

It begins here, with Rapunzel’s honest but unintentionally hurtful remark. As the audience already knows, Rapunzel doesn’t need protecting, but in the moment she says it the question must be asked: if Rapunzel needs no protection, no guardian, no knight… what does that make Cassandra?

Cass, who has chased after a position as a guard of Corona, who promises her king that she’ll keep his daughter safe, whose moment of truth in the first season was stepping up as captain and leading the attack in Old Corona. If she’s not the knight in shining armor, who is she?

And of course, we might be able to come up with a plethora of answers. She’s Rapunzel’s best friend, an excellent strategist and fighter, an adventurer, a hardworker, her own individual woman, and much more. Yet, despite her frustration of being put in second place, of literally waiting in the wings, Cassandra insists on existing in Rapunzel’s shadow. She wants recognition, a position that comes with honor and control, but she wants them in close relation to Rapunzel because of the love she holds for her.

There lies Cassandra’s dilemma: she’s afraid of what might happen if she ever breaks out of that shadow, if she ever achieves her goal and comes center stage. If she’s not Rapunzel’s protector, will she have any place in her life? Cassandra, desperate to remain near the woman and friend she’s fallen in love with, has meticulously sculpted her own future around her, and in doing so has forgotten to take into account that Rapunzel might not follow that exact route.

Now, is there anything wrong with Cassandra wanting to serve as Rapunzel’s protector? Not at all. The two of them have proven on multiple occasions that they’re a formidable team, as well as close friends, and Cass is more than up to the task. Yet we-the-audience know that Rapunzel, driven by freedom and currently undergoing an arc that’s whole purpose is reclaiming her agency, deserves the right to make her own choices (a fact driven even further home as we see Zhan Tiri’s disciples, the most significant of villains in the series, try desperately to take away that exact ability).

And those very choices are what cause the rift between herself and Cassandra.

“I can’t do that, Cass.”

“What do you mean you can’t do that? Are you that obliviously naïve that you can’t–”

“Enough, Cassandra!”

It’s in this particular moment where Rapunzel and Cassandra’s staple characteristics flip: Cass, normally able to keep her feelings tightly bound, is emotional and angry, while Rapunzel (in stark contrast to her uncertainty in Queen for a Day) becomes stern and unmoving.

The brilliance and heartbreak bound in this scene is that Cassandra, though ultimately right in her insistence that the group move on from the Tree of Zhan Tiri, has unknowingly echoed rhetoric that Gothel, Rapunzel’s abuser, once used to keep her in line. The tragedy is that Cassandra is right but goes too far, and that Rapunzel has every right to respond harshly.

Because, when it comes down to it, Rapunzel retains her freedom through having the control Cassandra cannot.

And thanks to the particularly tense events of season two, the two of them have not found a compromise that allows them to share it. As Cassandra attempts to exercise the control she’s worked towards for so long, she is unwittingly depriving Rapunzel of the freedom she’s only just recently found. On the other hand, Rapunzel, in exercising her own agency and stepping into the role she has long been training for, deprives Cass of an agency of her own. 

It is important also to remember that, though friends, Rapunzel and Cassandra retain a professional relationship of a royal woman and her subject, a princess/heir to a kingdom and her sworn protector. It’s this relationship that ties control and freedom so closely together for both of them, further complicating their character progression and dynamic.

And truly, why shouldn’t Cass be respected and her advice heeded after all she’s proven her capability? And again, why should Rapunzel have to sacrifice any of her agency or her own sense of capability for the sake of Cassandra? There’s a balance between them, but one that is delicate and often interrupted, eventually to the point where we realize that Rapunzel and Cassandra’s motivations, however justified, are doomed to clash.

A comparison between the dynamics of Rapunzel, Cassandra, and Eugene is vital to this reading, though not in the ways one might think. Both Eugene and Cass legitimately and truly love Rapunzel, and neither of their love is diminished by the other. The main difference is within Cass and Eugene’s individual characters; while Cassandra and Rapunzel are both in the midst of their journeys of self-discovery (the thing that leads Cass to most of her inner and outer-conflict), Eugene was not.

Eugene and Cassandra parallel one another in their roles as Rapunzel’s support, but Cassandra isn’t satisfied or even entirely comfortable in that position. Her desire for control, for her own agency, provides an obstacle that Eugene simply doesn’t have throughout the majority of the series. This, as it happens, is the root of his crisis in Destinies Collide; Eugene’s betrayal to the group is so brief due to the uncertainty of the situation, and ultimately is overcome by him reaffirming the identity he’s always had.

Cassandra, however, has not yet fully discovered her own identity. She has no deep foundation, no certainty to fall back on, only her contrasting desires and an incredible drive to accomplish them.

Unlike Cassandra, Eugene has already lived center-stage as Flynn Rider. We watch him develop past his selfishness and arrogance, watch as Rapunzel becomes his “new dream,” and continue to watch as their relationship is reaffirmed in the series. One of the most refreshing aspects of Eugene and Rapunzel as a couple is the healthiness of the dynamic, the lack of manufactured drama (i.e. drama for drama’s sake), and the genuine love and maturity woven into their relationship. 

None of this is to say that Eugene is at all better or superior to Cassandra, or Cassandra better or superior to Eugene; rather, the parallels and differences between their two characters help illuminate the inner-workings of their respective relationships with Rapunzel. They both love her, but how that love thrives in one dynamic and hurts in the other comes down to this: Eugene is done with center stage, and Cassandra has never even been in it.

The tragedy of Rapunzel and Cassandra’s romance, then, is this: though they deeply love and care for one another (and always will), though they have helped one another grow, have made each other better people in a way no less valuable than Rapunzel and Eugene have, they’ve reached the point where they no longer can. They aren’t toxic to one another, but static; if Cass wants her moment in the sun, a moment she fully deserves, she needs to pursue it on her own.

And Cassandra is afraid to accept that.

This aspect of analysis will try to avoid going into too much speculation, since the whole story behind Cassandra’s betrayal is still a mystery. That aspect aside, this moment is undeniably where Cass’ inner-conflict comes to a head.

How does Cassandra get everything she wants? How does she stay with Rapunzel while also getting the control and agency she craves? Cass won’t accept a world where she has to operate independent of Rapunzel, yet it’s independence that she longs for. This, possibly combined with a desire to protect Rapunzel and save her life (and/or supernatural influence from mysterious room in Rapunzeltopia), moves her to grab the moonstone, to stop “waiting in the wings” and move center stage.

The tragedy isn’t that Cassandra is evil, or that she’s too selfish or arrogant or jealous. No, the tragedy is that Cassandra is a character perfectly tailored to have her own protagonist’s journey, but cannot let go of being her princess’ knight in shining armor. And it’s that very armor she now wears that might well end up corrupting her.

[matildainmotion]

Equality and Diversity: Mothering Difference, Making Art

I have been slow to talk or write about race and diversity because of feeling vastly ill-qualified to do so. I’ve felt I should shut up, listen and let people who do not identify as white, straight and able-bodied do the talking and the writing. But recently I have come to realise that branding myself as ill-qualified feeds into the idea that ‘white’ is all-pervasive, as if white is so much the norm that it isn’t even a race, so what would I know about it? As if I am not part of the problem. I have done enough listening now to understand that structural racism is, in large part, for white people to undo. Just as patriarchy is not only for women to solve, and if you are a wheelchair user then the issue is not your lack of able-bodied legs but the lack of lifts inside the building. As the co-leader, with Lizzy Humber, of a movement called Mothers Who Make, which claims to be for ‘every kind of mother and every kind of maker,’ I think it is probably time I asked whether this is true – are we doing it for everyone, or only a privileged few?

Immediately, it’s complicated. For a start motherhood is a colossal category, so catering for ‘every kind of mother’ is a fantastic and preposterously ambitious claim. We like to try and list them: biological, adoptive, surrogate, foster, expectant, grand, great grand, single, bereaved…..is just the start of the list. Part of the reason for the movement existing at all is that motherhood itself has an ambivalent status in relationship to privilege. ‘Pregnancy and Maternity’ are ‘protected characteristics’ according to the Equality and Human Rights commission but this only covers a mother until 26 weeks after the birth. The remaining 26 plus years of raising the child do not count. I remember at one of the first Arts Council meetings I had with regards to Mothers Who Make, the ACE officer with whom I met said to me, only half-jokingly, “So are you to blame for all the funding applications I am now receiving that include childcare costs?” Whilst being a primary carer is slowly becoming recognised as an access issue, motherhood, the ACE officer explained to me kindly, is not a disability. Becoming a mother is a chosen privilege, not an inherited challenge. You were not born with it, instead, you were the one that did the birthing. This is true, and also not the whole truth. For me, it is true that being able to care for and raise two human beings feels like a huge honour. It is also true that my experiencing and naming my mothering as such is probably a result of my own white, middle class upbringing. It is a result of my having my children in my late 30s and early 40s. But even whilst owning my middle-class-ness, I object to motherhood being framed as a kind of lifestyle choice, as if children were a nice accessory, to be obtained if you wish. Motherhood is not always chosen. In teenagers and young women motherhood is often associated, not with privilege, but with deprivation. And then there is the fact that if motherhood were a lifestyle choice it would be a fairlly terrible one – hours and hours of unpaid, undervalued labour that does nothing for your cultural capital. Meanwhile, for some, missing out on motherhood can be a source of lifelong grief. Like I said, it’s complicated. And that’s just the mothering. Then there’s the making….

When I started Mothers Who Make I decided on the word ‘make’ not just because of the alliteration with the word ‘mother.’ I decided on it because I hoped it would be more welcoming to more mothers to use an everyday verb like ‘make’, rather than a fancy noun like ‘artist.’ You can make a bed as well as a book. You can make it through the day. Make a mess. Make mistakes. Make a difference. Even so mothers are still all too ready to exclude themselves: “Oh, I don’t feel I can come at the moment, I’m not really making anything,” is something I have heard time and again from potential participants and I have to work hard at convincing them that having made some soup is as valid and valued in a MWM meeting as having put a painting on the wall of Tate Modern. The verb ‘to make’ comes close on the heels of the verb ‘to be’ in defining who we are: we are human makings – creatures that create. I have always said that if you understand the need for a group called Mothers Who Make to exist then you can come – i.e if you want to be there, you are welcome. But is that enough? Is it enough to say that anyone can join in if they like? Based on our limited statistics to date, the answer is definitely no- it’s not enough. At present we are predominantly white (96%), straight (85%) and non-disabled (85%) (Stats from 124 equality and diversity monitoring forms, not from on our online community of nearer 3000). To be in a position to have heard of the group at all, to identify with it, to want to participate, to feel able to go through the door of an arts venue (in a pre-pandemic era), I fear already necessitates a certain level of privilege. So, what to do? There is an overwhelming amount to do, but as a start Lizzy and I have put out a call for feedback and am holding two meetings to focus specifically on how to begin to extend and diversify MWM’s reach (for more details see under this blog), and already I have received some incredibly useful responses. Right now, I want to draw on and explore three strands of feedback.

The first (thanks to Lucy Bell) was that MWM’s vibe – in terms of the images we put out, verbal and visual, and the culture of the group – leans towards what is often referred to as ‘attachment parenting.’ Our intention is to hold spaces that are non-judgemental and that do not condone or condemn any particular style of mothering. There is no right answer as to how to mother, how to make or how to manage the extraordinary challenge of doing both. Everyone has to do what is right for their particular circumstances, and their child/ren, and we recognise that ‘right’ even for an individual is an always changing work-in-progress. Part of the point of the network is to share and make visible to one another the enormous range of the answers that people explore and live out. However, in large part because my own solutions to the conundrums of mothering have been attachment parenting ones, I believe this has impacted the vibe of MWM and agree that, if this is not your style of parenting, it might make you steer clear. 

The second piece of feedback (thanks to Zoe Gardner), was that MWM’s spaces, in person or online, often invite ambiguity, asking people to wear double identities, and therefore to blend or blur them. It implies in its name a relationship between mothering and making, a mucky mixture of selves and practices. I think this links back to the attachment parenting point – again I recognise it in myself. It’s what I do – I breastfeed my children, whilst typing my blogs sitting on their bedroom floor. I co-sleep with them and with my notebooks. I have carried the children in slings into rehearsal rooms and meetings. Both my mothering and making styles have been thoroughly messy, emergent and have involved much merging of spaces, tasks, beds, books and more. I strongly suspect that this tendency in me, which has in turn, to date, influenced the messaging of MWM, is connected to my relative privilege: if the gates are open to you, then you can afford to experiment with taking the walls down, rearranging the boundary lines; if the gates are closed to you, then messing with the walls isn’t necessarily an option, and might well be off-putting.

There is a further twist in this however- whilst many of these practices now seem white and middle class, their recent origins are most definitely non-western. A key text, written in 1975, which fuelled the whole attachment parenting movement, was The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff. Liedloff was inspired by her time spent living with the indigenous Yequana people in Venezuela. The Yequana carried their babies in slings, co-slept with them, breastfed on demand. MWM’s principle of holding spaces that are ‘adult-centred but child-friendly’ is directly linked to one of Liedloff’s key observations of how the Yequana raised their children in the midst of adult activity, as opposed to segregating them off into child-centred environments. I was born when the Continuum Concept first came out, when carrying your baby on your back would have been identified, by most in the UK, as something a woman from Africa might do, not a practice done by a white woman in Oxfordshire (my mother). Jump on forty years and, if you google images of ‘baby on back,’ the first one that comes up is of a white man with an Ergo-baby sling, a white baby inside it, standing smiling in his garden. This feels like dangerous and difficult territory. This shift could be framed as western culture growing more diverse, or as an act of appropriation, or both. Whichever it is, it adds to the complexity of the picture, which brings me to the third piece of feedback.

           It came as a question on Facebook (thanks to Wendy Thomson) “Are we in white knight/ saviour behaviour mode?”- are non-white mothers, for example, doing just fine, thank you very much, with their own groups and support networks? And then there was also a response (thanks to Kit Whitfield Thomas) “I don’t think it is white knight mode, just manners. What is the alternative? – not trying to include us and assuming we should just sort it all out ourselves?” And along with this Kit made a request not to assume anything, a request, as a mother of a SEN child, for an acknowledgement that “no experience of motherhood is universal”. I think these are all vital questions and requests. We must keep inviting but be alert to our manners – the manner and the mode of the invitation, to keep making and holding space for, not the universe, but the countless, complex, diverse versions of experiences within it.

           These three pieces of feedback have helped me to begin to think more deeply about diversity and equality, inclusion and exclusion in relation to MWM and beyond. Mothers Who Make already excludes – it is explicitly not for everyone – the clue is in the name. I have been challenged on this point repeatedly, most often with the question: “What about fathers?”. My response stems from a belief in specificity and difference. Equal does not mean ‘the same as.’ It may mean having the same pay, the same rights, the same access to opportunities, but it does not mean having the same experiences or identity. For now there needs to be a movement called ‘Black Lives Matter’ not ‘All Lives Matter,’ which doesn’t mean white lives don’t matter; and there needs to be a group called ‘Mothers Who Make’ not ‘Parents who Make,’ even though there are many creative fathers who also need support. Some lives that have not been deemed to matter, need to be visibly valued right now. Some experiences that have been marginalised need a special, protected space. Even in a utopian future, I am not sure the aim should be a world where we no longer need these groups and movements that hold space for specific differences, such as the black, the trans, the queer, the disabled, the maternal– and of course within each of these categories are a thousand further differences. My utopian vision would not be of a colour-blind world, in which no one notices race anymore, but rather one involving ever sharper vision. One in which people would see everything, every colour, pattern, nuance, every difference in ever greater detail.

           For the second time this year I find myself reaching for my copy of the parenting classic, ‘Siblings without Rivalry’ by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. One of its chapters is headed “Equal is less:”

“To be loved equally….is somehow to be loved less. To be loved uniquely—for one’s own special self—is to be loved as much as we need to be loved.”

Back in February I quoted this same line within a blog about rivalry. I wrote,

“Yes, this makes sense. Equal is still in the paradigm of quantity. Equal implies that you could have more than me, even if we have the same. It explains my children bickering over identical chocolate bars – they both have exactly the same, and that, in the end, is not enough, not what they want. They want their differences, not their same-ness…as long as we remain in the world of quantities, of equal signs, then there is always an implied risk that one of them could lose - minus, subtraction, less, loss.”

Often ‘equal’ connotes a measure-able amount which results, I believe, in this fear of scarcity. The phrase ‘equal access,’ seems more useful. It is not the gold, but the access to the gold, that needs to be shared. This may seem like a crazy distinction, but I think it is important – it makes equality a dynamic process not an amount, the swaying of the scales, not the stuff weighed out in them. My children are not equal, they are not static, not quantifiable. As a mother, my job is not to treat them the same, but rather to recognise and celebrate their evolving, see-sawing differences. In a way their differences are the gold, and it is plentiful. Diversity involves a generous kind of maths – multiplication – always more. Equality and Diversity monitoring forms, however, involve more difficult calculations- our differences are boxed,tracked and stacked into statistics in pursuit of everyone having equal access. It is hard to keep the sense of equality as a dynamic process when faced with those forms. So, whilst they are a critical tool on a vital quest, I think we also need to keep doing the other sum- the one so long that it never reaches the equals sign but we know the answer to it is infinity – a glorious inventory of our never-ending differences.

As is recognised in the work of Abraham Maslow, in Marshal Rosenburg’s Non-Violent Communication, and in many spiritual traditions, if you go far enough with detailing the differences, patterns begin to emerge – we start to connect up, to equal one another at the deepest level of our needs. “Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing there is a green field,” writes Rumi, the 12th C Sufi poet, and once we meet there, there is another inventory to be found, a list of the fundamentals to which we all require and deserve access: food, shelter, rest, warmth, autonomy, play, love……the complete sum of our same-ness.

           For the last month my daughter has wanted the same bedtime book. Unprompted she has had her four-year-old finger on the pulse of the world’s process, for she has asked me again and again for ‘Mix,’ by Arree Chung. It is a beautiful, witty picture book, that I would recommend to anyone wanting to talk about difference and race with their children. It opens:

“In the beginning there were three colours: Reds, Yellows and Blues. Reds were the loudest, Yellows were the brightest and Blues were the coolest. Everyone lived in colour harmony, until one day when a red said, ‘Reds are the best!’….”

The colours decide to divide – to live in separate parts of the city. But then a Blue and a Yellow fall in love, and, contentiously, the first interracial marriage takes place. A mixed-race child is born - they call her Green. Slowly the other colours are inspired- more and more mixing follows, until at last they give up on segregation. The final line is my favourite one in the book: “The new city was full of colour. It wasn’t perfect, but it was home.” I love that the happy ending is imperfect – it makes equality dynamic again, not a final prize possession but an unfolding multi-coloured process.

Meanwhile, Mothers who Make will continue to hand out equality and diversity monitoring forms. But alongside these, we will also start to interrogate and diversify the kinds of images and words we use, the places we advertise ourselves, the venues with which we work, the range of events we hold, in an effort to make ourselves more genuinely accessible to mothers and makers of every kind. Right now, I have, not so much a question of the month, as a request to put to you: I want to know about how you are different. I want to know about what you need. I want to know how to access you and how you might best access me, us, MWM. This is a fourfold invitation: you can write to me with your feedback via email - matilda@motherswhomake.org . You can come to one of the diversity meetings happening this month (details below). And you can fill in our equality and diversity form so we can gain a more accurate picture of our network: https://forms.gle/wgDm335c1zQbaKer7  

Lastly, you can do this: go beyond the boxes- go as deep as you can into your difference. Whether it is your ethnic identity, your neurodiversity, your sexuality, your gender, your disability, your child’s disability, your mental health challenges. Articulate it however you wish. Maybe it will be a list, an inventory. Maybe a letter. A photo. A drawing. A song. Be as specific as you can. Name all your identities, all your differences. This is a creative injunction - I believe it may in fact be where making begins - tracking your difference, your way of accessing the world, as the origin of art.  

Our diversity-focussed meetings, via Zoom, open to all, are on: Thursday 9th July 1-2.30pm BST and Tuesday 28th July 10-11.30am BST. Children are welcome too. Email matilda@motherswhomake.org if you wish to attend.

[eidolonlathi]

Sokabe’s wider Role in the Story

Taken it’s been many solid chapters since he has disappeared from the manga, I thought it fitting to have a closer look at the role Sokabe used to have in the story.

I miss Sokabe. As long as he was still around in the manga, the dynamics in Team Tosaki (and the fractions bordering next to it) were still uncertain and it was always fun to witness how they would develop next. Since Sokabe is gone this energy has become kind of... stale. If you have a great antagonistic character don't make them leave too early.

What makes a character an antagonist in this manga’s mess of motivations and ambitions set on the grey scale though? I always viewed him to be the different side of the same coin as Tosaki: Just as much driven by ambition, just as ruthless in his approach. All while showing to have enough patience and foresight to plan in a long time manner, thus becoming an element one couldn’t dismiss in its potential to bring in unexpected positive or negative dynamics that carry gravity. And yet: Despite his wish to win over Tosaki’s position of job, Sokabe proved himself to be reliable, the messenger link keeping Tosaki connected to his position once his place on the hit list had forced him into hiding. Gradually Sokabe earned his part in the story and the periphery of Tosaki’s team: For a long time he kept providing support and information despite Tosaki’s fall from favour in the eyes of their superiors.

Proving to stay useful like this might have been fuelled by Sokabe’s own ambition, but Tosaki never made a secret he viewed him with contempt, letting this bias influence his treatment of him. Yet he had no hesitation using him whenever it was convenient – demanding him to participate in risky tasks like digging up information about Sato’s background (that at this late stage of the manga might prove to be crucial). Sokabe openly stated it would bring him into trouble should it be known that he had shared this knowledge. So, motivation aside, Sokabe deserves respect and at least some recognition for remaining this patient when constantly getting confronted with this kind of capricious whims.

I also have the impression he genuinely felt supportive towards Tosaki’s goals up to a certain point. Because that’s it: Sure, he had a rivalry dynamic with Tosaki going on, but once matters got serious and counted, Sokabe always proved to be reliable. Yet Tosaki made the impression he was not only taking Sokabe’s help for granted but at the same time acted dismissive towards him. Everyone would grow tired of that at some point.

Chapter 53 reflections: Tosaki getting a call from his mysterious secretary, speaking with them. Once upon a time, I was hoping for mystery secretary to show up for real in some panels. It felt like they could have been an interesting addition to the plot, bringing all kinds of fresh dynamics into it. Because given the fact Sokabe later explicitly pointed out that he hired one, instead of just getting a nebulous phone call informing him about what Tosaki had done to the secret data, it didn’t seem random. I could only assume their presence had gotten introduced for some kind of reason.

But, with this plot thread leaving left hanging empty and leading to nowhere since many chapters, I guess we won’t hear any more concerning that subject. Which would be a missed chance, really. With Sokabe framed in the position of an antagonist towards side Tosaki, it would have been interesting to see him humanized a bit, by showing that despite his unapologetic approach and motivation he still had people in his life caring about him –like a subordinate he got along well with- instead of going the safe and convenient route and showing the baddie is liked by none. It would also have added an interesting layer on his repeated comparisons with Tosaki (them looking vaguely alike is no coincidence), showing that both men might be able to commit heinous deeds but at the same time are able to care for people in their lives. Proving like this that the capability to commit evil acts wears no easily recognizable face (but that it sometimes may wear glasses).

Sokabe pointing out Tosaki’s inability to let go of the wish to return into the familiarity of his old life despite already having wilfully committed heinous deeds is framed as him being the antagonistic part here. But honestly, keeping in mind the atrocities we already saw Tosaki commit: Sokabe has a point here. With the manga speeding on Tosaki’s redemption in his final chapters, instead of following the more time-intense path of the gradual betterment he already had started walking -even going so far as to retcon his repeated threats towards Izumi as holding no weight- the story also tried to make a point that Tosaki is supposed to be the lesser evil than Sokabe. Which he really isn’t. Both were willing to use the suffering of ajin used for experiment for their personal gain, with the difference that Tosaki tried telling himself he did it for a good reason, using the illness of his fiancée Ai as an excuse, even though she once told him explicitly she didn’t wish for him to go down an questionable path should he ever feel pressured to do so. Sokabe on the other hand uses no such excuse, ironically appearing as the one staying more true to himself here by not explaining away his readiness to go down dark paths for the sake of reaching his own goals.

Soon after the glove panels the action in the main timeline intensified fast and Tosaki suddenly saw the need to kill Sokabe, getting wounded deadly himself in the process. All this for the sake of trying to prove that Tosaki never had been a real threat to Izumi and had been on her side all along. Frankly? It would have been more impactful if Tosaki would have been on Izumi’s side despite him intimidating her in the past, despite him holding data about her able to reveal her status as an ajin should she ever stop standing in his favour. That would have been a meaningful redemption. Tosaki already showed potential for change and even regret – seeing him earn a change would have felt more rewarding than seeing him being forced by canon to backpedal on his past flaws entirely, on top of this being allowed to find a quick solution in death, escaping any incoming conflict caused by his acts for good. Through the story he proved ready to act ruthless for the sake of reaching his own goals many times. On a more complex note, this also made it more meaningful once he lessened his harsh treatment towards Izumi, him starting to treat her more humane: Implying that though he stayed ready to keep using other ajin, interacting on a daily base with her wasn’t letting him stay unaffected. This slow redemption and thus humanization of his was one of the more engaging parts of the manga, and I’m disappointed that after a strong start it got rushed, letting it end in a manner not feeling true to what we encountered at the beginning.

What we got instead was a rushed solution for the sake of redeeming Tosaki quick. During the Iruma base arc, we’ve seen Sokabe imply he knew about Izumi’s status as ajin and that he would have been ready to use this as a threat to keep her in line, once Tosaki would have been out of the way. So, in other words, we’ve seen him do the exact kind of intimidation Tosaki used against Izumi. But instead of acknowledging Tosaki’s past flaws, it was retconned as him never having possessed intentions to reveal information about her at all, his threats supposed having been empty all along. More, Izumi no longer was allowed to hold conflicting feeling towards the man who gave her a second chance at a point life had already robbed her of everything (at that time out of purely self-serving motivations, not because he cared about her personally, make no mistake) but at the same time had the habit to threaten her into compliance: The manga lets her claim she “knew all along” about his threats being empty, letting her thank him instead for everything he “did for her”: Thus reducing her struggle to stay safe in an hostile environment that could turn on her any time as her playing along in a connection of mutual convenience she never had the need to feel in danger. All of this for the sake of rushing the final confrontation between Tosaki and Sokabe into a quick solution: Reducing Sokabe from skilled schemer to moustache twirling cartoon villain who is suddenly wielding a narcotic gun, oh so heroically getting taken out by Tosaki, who went from ruthless opportunist who slowly experienced a change of mind to a player only holding a bluff of cards in his hand, never having needed the redemption he already had started earning. For the sake of protecting sudden damsel in distress Izumi (female characters only allowed to act badass when convenient) who is no longer allowed to hold her own complex motivations and grievances, but now got reduced to another prop supposed to support Tosaki’s softened origins. (Sadly the story isn’t giving us time to dwell on this, as she is already kept busy again with having to cater towards demanding and ungrateful manchildren who are making no secret they’re taking her for granted.)

I can only assume letting the started redemption of Tosaki -his mending of his relationship with Izumi- letting reach its organic end would have taken too much development. Time the manga wasn't willing to give this plotline, so it got speeded along by simplifying and outright retconning already established circumstances. These three characters would have deserved better. But sadly it is unlikely we’re getting much more on that front: Tosaki getting wounded deadly erases the question how his and Izumi’s complicated relationship might develop further. (Him letting his fiancée join in death also erases the question what she would have said finding out her boyfriend went against her wishes to not engage in questionable actions should circumstances ever pressure him. On top of this him justifying his actions by stating he committed them for her sake only.) With Sokabe also dead he no longer poses an uncertain force towards what is left of Team Tosaki – be it as a potential threat or as source of unexpected support, making the final showdown between these manga’s two opposing sides less uncertain and thus sadly much more predictable.

[cosmi-trashbin]

Thoughts on Moon and Eclipsa as Queens

Think of the wand as thematically tied to Star’s role as the princess of Mewni. While the wand transforms into a design that best fits and reflects the personality and aesthetic of the current wielder, it’s also tied to the heavy responsibility, expectations, and history of Mewman royalty. A Mewman queen benefits from being imaginative and creative, but she’s limited by the expectations of her role as queen and the needs of her kingdom. The tie-in book showcased that most queens had difficulty walking on this particularly shaky tightrope: Every one of them was molded by the current status of their kingdom, their perspective on what it took to be a proper queen in some way, shape, or form, and how much they personally cared about/were invested in their role as queen. Some weren’t fit for the crown period because of how flighty or selfish they were. One queen was totalitarian. And some queens did what they felt was absolutely necessary.

Discussing Queen Moon

Queen Moon was an example of the last category: She was thrust into the role at a very young age and molded herself into the idealized picture of what she believed a proper Mewman queen should be. She followed every rule and mandate as closely as she reasonably could. She’s elegant, coiffed, and stern, but fair. She tries to be calm and collected for the sake of her people; to maintain a comfortable, but efficient status quo for her kingdom. But, a problematic part of maintaining this status quo was either burying and/or upholding the previous policies/effects of previous queens in regards to monsters.

Though, as the series has continued, viewers discover that Moon isn’t entirely rigid or unsympathetic. The bumbling, doofy King River is an example of the warmer, more tender side of Moon’s personality. River is a terrible king, but his importance as Moon’s partner shouldn’t be understated. His kind words, goofiness, and warm personality played a big role in helping Moon settle into her role and responsibilities as queen; he’s her ongoing emotional rock and moral support. The reason I bring this up is that it’s an example of Moon trying to balance personal happiness with being queen. She could have picked a king that was beneficial for strictly political relations or even specialized in overseeing a specific part of the kingdom. She even could have chosen to stay an independent, self-sufficient queen (ala Solaria). Instead, she chose to take on River as a figurehead while she runs the kingdom. It’s the one decision that she, arguably, received a lot of criticism for. In short, there’s a breathing, feeling person behind the crown.

When Queen Moon relates to Buff Frog on the common ground that they’re both parents, it shows a shift in her thinking. She’s not an unapproachable, unsympathetic figure. This is further showcased when she tries to reach out to Ludo and even tries to help Eclipsa with Meteora. Moon knows what it takes to be an effective and liked ruler, but apparently, she’s also willing to change and adopt new ideas. Moon was definitely willing to work on means to improve relations between Mewmans and monsters. She might use her reputation/influence as queen to slowly and carefully convince the people this is a very needed, very positive change for the kingdom.

The caveat is the controversy surrounding Moon and her lineage as the “imposters” in the royal bloodline. The first two episodes of season 4 reveal that Moon has become the poster child for the Piefolks’ very open, blatant contempt towards Mewni, if not all Mewmans. They readily hand-wave and mock River and Star for being ‘full-blown’ Mewmans while praising and aggrandizing Moon. Confirming that Moon is Piefolk validates their prejudices in some kind of twisted, backwards way. Of course they want to keep Moon herself around to push and fuel propaganda (which could lead to Piefolk trying to ambush and overthrow Eclipsa).

River’s comments about ‘dirty peasants’ and Piefolk comments about Mewmans bring up questions about what other peoples have race tensions/conflict with Mewni and what kind of impact/fallout Mewni’s class system has had. Mina Loveberry’s introductory episode pokes at some of these ideas, too. Since Mina was a super-soldier during Queen Solaria’s reign, she’s a living relic of previous Mewni sentiments and ideas: She approached Earth with a very imperialist, Manifest Destiny kind of mentality. “Mewmans are superior, so it’s our right to conquer!” Star’s response is indicative of how much Mewni has changed since those times. At the very least, Mewni royalty try to approach most kingdoms and peoples with some measure of decorum, diplomacy, and respect. The sad thing is that this approach was rolled out by the time there was a deeply cut, ingrained series of ideas such as “Monsters are inferior” and “Certain peoples are and always will be lower class by default.” 

In short, Queen Moon’s rule was the textbook definition of what’s expected of a Mewman queen. Without the context of her personal new revelations about Buff Frog or Ludo, her reign was the last example of a classic Butterfly queen.

Discussing Queen Eclipsa

When Eclipsa was next in line to be queen, she was already high-key rebellious by dating monsters in secret and practicing “controversial” magic. In some ways, her role as queen was peripheral to her personal pleasure and hobbies. She had very progressive ideas and the potential to dramatically overhaul then-current kingdom policies, but it feels like she couldn’t or didn’t act on them. It’s a bit ambiguous what her personal take on being queen is, but she seems content with the idea of just being able to live a peaceful, quiet life with her baby and monster husband. When she encountered rampaging and fully realized Meteora, note that she was trying to talk Meteora down and explain the delicate, complicated mess behind why Meteora couldn’t just stomp in and declare herself queen. Eclipsa was willing to help stop Meteora despite the fact that Meteora, technically, was the rightful royal princess. She realized how different current circumstances were in Mewni and what has to happen to keep the peace.

When she was an upcoming queen, Eclipsa was already locked into bureaucratic obligations when she was expected to marry Prince Shastacan. Her chapter in the official spellbook reveals that Globgor gave her an ultimatum: Run away with him or stay in Mewni. She chose to run away with Globgor and, presumably, start a new life among monster society until she was caught by the Magic High Commission. Globgor’s ultimatum shows that Eclipsa was forced to chose sides at the time. Globgor is the unknown variable for what Eclipsa’s reign would have been like. While I don’t have a lot to work with for determining the nature of their relationship, I get the impression that Eclipsa would insist on them being equal in regards to ruling; either that, or Globgor is the more assertive, dominant party in their relationship.

By herself, Eclipsa seems to just be going with the flow. She opened Mewni to monsters and her reign so far has been reshaping Mewni’s culture and encouraging a melting pot between peoples. Though, beyond that, the concern about dissatisfied peoples like the Piefolk or even the continuing tensions between Mewmans and monsters has been brushed under the proverbial rug. Eclipsa isn’t dumb, but she needs some pretty intensive PR to back her up. As far as Mewni is concerned, she’s an unabashed monster lover and would pick monsters over Mewmans in a heartbeat. In short, she’s going to be viewed in pretty black and white terms without the gravity or nuances of her personal story and circumstances. From the episode titles released thus far, Eclipsa’s definitely going to work on just that. But, again, the atmosphere surrounding Eclipsa’s current reign is tied pretty heavily to what Globgor is like. He has enough importance in Eclipsa’s personal life that she’d weigh his opinions and her happiness with him that she might not act as rationally as she would solo.

Ending Thoughts

There’s so much emphasis on the balance between a queen’s personal life and her role as queen. For Moon, there’s glimpses of the role being a mandate or obligation. In the episode where Moon was wandering around the pure magic dimension, viewers see a surprisingly carefree, almost childlike side of her. Moon was allowed to “cut loose” for an episode and it poses the question of what she’d be like if she weren’t bogged down with royal responsibilities.  For Star, there’s been hints at what personal hobbies and freedoms she feels like she’d have to give up as queen. Her mom gave up everything; Star is fighting for a balance between her eccentricities and living up to expectations. For Eclipsa, the biggest issue was her decision between duty and following her heart.

Most of Star Vs. queen characters’ stories study the pressure of being born into a position of power and responsibility. Having a list of previous queens to compare and contrast opens the floor for discussing the importance of having the right person in a prominent political office and how their personal morals affect what they do while in office.

[helshades]

There is a difference between an individual deciding not to have children and someone embracing the view that there is something inherently wrong with motherhood and giving birth to children.

Individuals have always made choices about whether or not to have kids and about the size of their families. These were personal decisions rather than statements about the moral significance of bringing new children into the world. Yet today, a significant section of society presents the decision not to have children as a political comment. There is now a misanthropic ideology that promotes hostility towards those who choose to have children, alongside a growing tendency to paint motherhood in a negative light.

This anti-natal ideology is promoted in two separate but often interconnected ways. First, it is claimed that childbirth and childrearing are fundamentally negative experiences that ought to come with a health warning. Secondly, it is argued that having children is irresponsible because newborn babies constitute a threat to the environment. And it seems as if this ideology is having an impact: alarming new figures from the UK’s Office for National Statistics show that the birth rate in England and Wales has fallen to its lowest level since 1938. In 2018, there were just 11.1 live births per 1,000 people – a record low.

Is motherhood natural?

One way in which the moral status of motherhood is delegitimised today is through the idea that society’s expectation that women should have children is an artificial and coercive imposition. This narrative calls into question what is sometimes described as ‘maternal inevitability’ and asserts that motherhood is not a natural role for women.

Writing about her film, My So-Called Selfish Life, Therese Shechter says she was interested in chronicling ‘the rise of a growing community of women who don’t want children and who reject the message that a woman’s most important – and most natural – role is to be a mother. Shechter’s ‘taboo-busting film’ is directed against ‘maternal inevitability’:

‘The film gives voice to a community challenging our most fundamental ideas about female identity, including a 19-year-old student determined to get her tubes tied, a woman “coming out” about her regret at becoming a mother, the founders of a childfree LGBT seniors’ community, and a repro-rights activist whose unsuccessful fertility treatments lead to a life transformation.’

Shechter says her aim is to challenge a world ‘where femininity is tied to childbearing’. Her film summarises the key points made by anti-natal activists. It suggests that motherhood has little to do with a woman’s identity, and it supports the claim that regret about becoming a mother is widespread. Finally, it hints at the superiority of childfree communities.

The anti-natality narrative seeks to portray motherhood as an undesirable and unpleasant trap. In recent years, numerous commentators have adopted the term ‘maternal regret’ to highlight the idea that many mothers pretend to be happy with their lives, but secretly they regret having had children. One Canadian article, titled ‘I regret having children’, argues that this sentiment is becoming increasingly common. It draws attention to a 9,000-member Facebook group, also called ‘I regret having children’. The author is delighted that ‘parental regret’ is a taboo that is finally being busted. This taboo has recently been brought to public attention by everyone from the BBC (‘100 Women 2016: Parents who regret having children’) to Marie Claire (‘Inside the growing movement of women who wished they never had kids’) to Today’s Parent (‘Regretting motherhood: What have I done to my life?’).

Some observers insist that maternal regret might be even more widespread than we think. They say that large numbers of women suffer from this condition in silence and feel unable to tell anyone about what a big mistake they made. A recent confessional article in the Daily Telegraph, by an anonymous author, was headlined ‘I secretly wish I’d never had children’. It is typical of the trend. The author writes of her disappointment with her predicament and tells of a time when ‘a little voice in my head whispered if I hadn’t had children I’d be living the life I dreamed of’. She added: ‘I feel so alone living with this secret.’

This word ‘secret’ is frequently deployed, no doubt to suggest that maternal regret is far more common than we suspect. It is also intended as a form of encouragement, to get more women sharing their stories. So at the end of the Daily Telegraph confession, the editors inserted the following: ‘Do you regret having children, and would you ever admit it? Join the conversation on the Telegraph Women Facebook group.’

Yet if maternal regret really is a secret, it has become a very open one. Maternal regret is now widely discussed across the world. In 2009, the French psychoanalyst Corinne Maier published her bestseller No Kids: 40 Good Reasons Not to Be a Mother. In 2016, the BBC included Maier in its list of the 100 most inspirational women in the world. Germany has been particularly hospitable to the issue of maternal regret. Sarah Fischer’s book, The Lie of Maternal Happiness, offers a disturbing account of the supposed horrors of motherhood. Alina Bronsky and Denise Wilk’s The Abolishment of the Mother is directed against the traditional idealisation of motherhood in Germany. That the hashtag #RegrettingMotherhood was trending in Germany in 2017 suggests this concern resonates with certain sections of society.

In some cases, critics of the ‘normalisation’ of motherhood don’t only see themselves as exposing a dirty secret – they go a step further and actively try to help mothers to distance themselves from their decisions. Orna Donath, author of the 2015 book Regretting Motherhood, says the aim of her work was to help mothers who ‘wish to undo motherhood’. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that much of the commentary on maternal regret isn’t only describing this phenomenon – it is also seeking to normalise it. From the perspective of these observers, the new normal is not the association of motherhood with positive feelings but the association of motherhood with regret.

Estrangement from parenthood

The normalisation of maternal regret is connected to a wider trend – one that regards childbirth and the raising of children as an onerous burden, best avoided. The very idea of adults assuming responsibility for younger generations is regarded as an outdated custom, at odds with the lifestyles of busy and successful individuals.

The desire to opt out of parenthood is often blamed on financial difficulties. In Spain and Italy, so-called ‘empty cradle syndrome’ is put down to the financial and time commitments that come with having children. But this doesn’t stack up, because in many parts of the world the contemporary estrangement from natality is as pronounced among financially secure individuals as it is among less well-off people.

South Korea, which has the lowest birth rate of the OECD countries in the Asia-Pacific region, also has a vociferous #NoMarriage movement. A new network called EMIF – Elite Without Marriage, I Am Going Forward – reflects this sentiment. Not surprisingly, this year the number of people dying in South Korea is expected to be greater than the number of those being born.

In China, couples who choose to be childfree are often described as DINKs – ‘double income, no kids’. It is reported that couples who believe children would only cramp their lifestyles are on the rise in China. The term carefree has become synonymous with this childfree outlook.

Historically, women were confronted with the expectation that, when they became adults, they would embrace motherhood and give birth to children. This expectation is still widespread. However, it now competes with a negative vision of motherhood that suggests having babies will thwart a woman’s ambitions and diminish her quality of life.

Twenty-first-century society’s estrangement from having children is often said to be driven by women’s aspiration for greater independence. Sometimes the ascendancy of anti-natalist sentiments is linked with the influence of feminism. These things may have contributed to the crystallisation of the anti-natalist climate, but there are other, more powerful forces at work here.

Numerous aspects of human existence have been pathologised. Young people, in particular, have been subjected to a form of socialisation that encourages them to view the problems of existence – pain, disappointment, pressure, anxiety – through the prism of psychology. They have been brought up and educated in a way that tends to insulate them from pressure and from challenging or unsettling experiences. Instead of cultivating children’s capacity for acquiring independence, the current regime of socialisation encourages the young to be ‘aware of their vulnerability’.

In such circumstances, young people often become distracted from the aspiration to grow up, to take on adult roles, to embrace duty and responsibility.

This is one of the reasons why many young women – and men – in their early twenties claim that they don’t want children. Ever. No doubt many of these young people will change their minds at some point and opt to have children. But the assertive and confident manner with which they declare their anti-natal predilections suggests that right now they believe that avoiding the burden of parenthood makes perfect sense.

The anti-humanist movement against childbirth

The estrangement of sections of Western society from motherhood is underwritten by an anti-humanist doctrine – one that regards humanity not as the solution to the problems of the world, but as the cause of them.

In recent decades, much of the environmentalist movement has adopted a radically misanthropic rhetoric. According to some environmentalists, humans are a kind of cancer on the environment. Deep ecologists claim humanity has degraded the planet via our human-centred ideology that treats nature as a utility for people. The denigration of humanity is often vitriolic. There is a tendency to depict humans as parasites, and this is not confined to extreme and marginal individuals. Michael Meacher, a former minister in the New Labour government, referred to humans as a ‘virus’ infecting the Earth’s body. James Lovelock, the well-known originator of the ‘Gaia hypothesis’, says humans ‘behave in some ways like a pathogenic organism, or like the cells of a tumour or neoplasm’. Consequently, we have grown in numbers and ‘the human species is now so numerous as to constitute a serious planetary malady’, says Lovelock. He concludes that ‘Gaia is suffering from Disseminated Primatemaia, a plague of people’.

In the West, the population-control lobby is busy castigating those who have large families, branding them ‘environmentally irresponsible’. Having children, especially lots of children, is treated as an eco-crime. Prince Harry, via the issue of Vogue edited by his wife Meghan Markle, pushed this idea this week, with his promise only to have two children in the name of eco-sustainability.

From this perspective, another human life is just so many extra carbon emissions. Which is why it is preferable, apparently, that these new human lives simply did not exist.. As the Optimum Population Trust – since rebranded Population Matters – once put it, ‘A non-existent person has no environmental footprint; the emission “saving” is instant and total’.

And now there are the climate-change activists who have formed the ‘BirthStrike’ movement. They have decided ‘not to bear children due to the severity of the ecological crisis and the current inaction of governing forces in the face of this existential threat’. BirthStrike’s website features personal statements from individuals who think it is wrong to give birth. Aletha, aged 39, says:

‘The priority of my husband and I is to avoid bringing another child into intolerable future conditions such as heatwaves and drought, considering children are already dying from heatwaves in India and Pakistan this year.’

The idea that giving birth is some kind of crime against the environment is now even endorsed by celebrities. Miley Cyrus says millennials ‘don’t want to reproduce because we know that the Earth can’t handle it’.

The BirthStrike movement is merely the most extreme and depressing manifestation of an anti-humanist culture of pessimism. It is not simply these activists’ deep attachment to the environment, but also their misanthropy that leads them to the conclusion that the world would be a better place if humans stopped having babies. Their view of babies as polluters of the planet seamlessly meshes with a sentiment that treats parenthood as an undesirable and ‘problematic’ goal.

Until recently, babies were seen as a blessing. Now, far too many people argue that not having a baby is a blessing. Ultimately, the reason for this loss of faith in the human spirit is neither economic nor environmental. Rather, the main driver of this anti-natal movement is the difficulty that sections of society have in giving meaning to life today. Recovering our confidence in the human spirit and in age-old human virtues is the best antidote to the turn against giving birth.

[fencheto]

Forbidden - Part 4 (Dimon Romantic)

The story can also be found on Wattpad You can find the previous chapters here Feedback is greatly appreciated.

[dawnfelagund]

The Inequality Prototype: Gender, Inequality, and the Valar in Tolkien's Silmarillion

It's hard to make the case that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings exhibit anything remotely approximating gender equality, but as a feminist Tolkien fan and scholar, whenever I bring up the sexist leanings of Tolkien's writings, the first rebuttal I usually hear begins with, "But The Silmarillion …"

The Silmarillion is often held up by Tolkien fans as redemptive of the boys-only club he establishes in his better-known books and proof that he really wasn't that sexist. After all, it includes competent, kick-ass female characters like Haleth, Lúthien, and Morwen. And then there are the Valar. The women of the Valar—the Valier, as they are called in the Valaquenta—don't just watch the men do the work, bring them tea, and rub their shoulders at the end of a hard day. Varda and Yavanna are high achievers, creating the stars and the Two Trees, respectively, and of Varda we are told, "Of all the Great Ones who dwell in this world the Elves hold Varda most in reverence and love."1 Nienna, too, is counted among the Aratar, or most powerful of the Valar, and was a mentor to Olórin, who used her teachings to help the people of Middle-earth win the Ring War.2 Surely, these women serve as proof of gender equality in The Silmarillion and Middle-earth in general, don't they?

Yet only about 18% of named characters in The Silmarillion are women.3 The Valar are an interesting case study of the issue, however, since they occupy a prototypical and highly influential role over the other peoples of Arda and present a veneer of equality that becomes much more complex the deeper you dig.

On Prototypes and Cultural Influences: Or Why the Valar Matter So Much

The Valar present a unique case when looking at gender [in]equality in The Silmarillion. The Valar are the greatest of the Ainur, and we are told of Ilúvatar that "he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought, and they were with him before aught else was made."4 The Ainur are the only creations of Ilúvatar that we get to see that have been subject to no subcreative or cultural influences outside of Ilúvatar. (Elves and Mortals are likewise "Children of Ilúvatar" but are culturally influenced after their creation by the Ainur, as I will discuss below.) The Ainur, therefore, are the best example we have of Ilúvatar's pure, unadulterated vision.

Furthermore, the Ainur were participants in the Great Music as described in the Ainulindalë, receiving "themes of music" from Ilúvatar that express his creative vision for the universe. In addition to best exemplifying Ilúvatar's pure vision, therefore, they are also the beings with the most direct access to knowledge of his intentions.

This establishes the Ainur in a prototypical role. It is reasonable to assume that patterns in and observations of their natures and behaviors best represent the order of the universe imposed by Ilúvatar, uncorrupted by mediating subcreative and cultural influences. This makes the Ainur extremely interesting for any study of social and cultural phenomenon among the peoples of Arda.

The Ainur are also of great importance to any study of social and cultural phenomenon because of the breadth of their influence over the other peoples of Arda. There are few people of Arda who have no contact, direct or indirect, with the customs and beliefs of the Ainur. The Dwarves were a creation of Aulë, one of the Valar. The Elves, as soon as they were discovered by the Valar, were meddled with, and many chose to live alongside the Ainur. Mortals are the least directly influenced, but their contact with the Elves and the Elvish tradition nonetheless acquainted them with the Ainur. Furthermore, because the Ainur are usually regarded as exceptionally wise, their customs and beliefs are accorded extra status. Therefore, beliefs and behaviors among the peoples of Arda stand a good chance of having been influenced by the Ainur, i.e., sexist practices might be overtly taught to other peoples by the Ainur or unwittingly mimicked by peoples striving to emulate Ainurin wisdom.

(I have chosen to focus on the Valar specifically for the simple reason that we know relatively little about the Maiar, who constitute the majority of the Ainur. In contrast, we know at least a little something about all sixteen Valar. Please note also that, per the Valaquenta in The Silmarillion, Melkor is not counted among the Valar. Likewise, this essay will not consider Melkor except once, and I'll make it very clear that I'm including him in my analysis.)

On Equal Interest: Or a Promising Start for Equality

For a start, the Valar are evenly split in terms of biological sex: There are eight Valier and eight male Valar.5 This suggests that an even split in biological sex is normal among the Children of Ilúvatar, and this certainly makes sense, considering that Arda is equivalent to our own solar system, and we can observe a nearly even split in biological sex among humans. This observation becomes less simple, though, when considering that the sixteen Valar were merely part of a much larger group of Ainur, some (many? most?) of whom chose not to descend into Arda.6 We know nothing about these Ainur who chose to remain with Ilúvatar. We don't know how many there were and what they would have perceived as their biological sex.

What is interesting about these circumstances, though, is that they show that equal numbers of women and men chose to descend into Arda. This is a rather surprising deviation from traditional gender roles, which would posit that women prefer to stay home while the men roam about and have adventures. Assuming the Valar as illustrative of Ilúvatar's vision and occupying a prototypical role, this suggests that women and men have equal interest in subcreation, power, and governance. One could easily conclude from this that Ilúvatar, when proposing a difficult task, expected equal numbers of women and men to raise their hands and volunteer. This seems a promising start for equality in Arda.

On the Aratar: Or Equality Starts to Go Pear-Shaped

But we don't get to celebrate for long. After an equal number of women and men among the Valar choose to enter Arda and labor hard to see their music come to fruition, we get a classification of some of the Valar into the subgroup of Aratar, the most powerful of the Valar. The Valaquenta identifies them as "Manwë and Varda, Ulmo, Yavanna and Aulë, Mandos, Nienna, and Oromë."7

Equality among the Valar no longer looks so rosy. Three out of eight on that list are women, or 37.5%. And it actually gets worse. While Melkor was removed from the ranks of the Valar8 and so isn't under discussion here, before he was banished from amongst the Valar, he was considered one of the Aratar, making this the one time that I will bring him up in this essay. So among the original Aratar, only one-third (33.3%) were women. Ouch.

How to interpret this? It's nearly impossible��at least from my vantage point, although I will discuss narrative point of view in relation to this issue below—to see this as anything but sexist, a statement that, while both sexes may have equal enthusiasm for creativity and governance, men overwhelmingly possess more actual talent for it. Women, on the other hand, only dabble about in the margins, much as women throughout history have been permitted to take up art or music or even science to keep them occupied and out from underfoot but without the intention that they should employ those skills in any way that would advance achievement or understanding in those disciplines. This was commonplace among middle- and upper-class women in the late Victorian era in which Tolkien was born. We see a similar mindset in his letters, where his sons pursue academic and vocational opportunities while his wife and daughter stay home and where he wrote to his son Michael, "How quickly an intelligent woman can be taught, grasp [a male teacher’s] ideas, see his point – and how (with rare exceptions) they can go no further, when they leave his hand."9 This antiquated view appears to be at work in his writing of the Valar. Perhaps those "rare exceptions" are the few female Aratar he allowed.

On the Roles of the Valar in The Silmarillion: Or *Flush* Equality Officially Goes down the Drain

One could still argue, I suppose, that the imbalance between male and female Aratar is not as awful as it seems. After all, two of the female Aratar are Varda and Yavanna. As noted above, these two women are the high achievers among the Valar, responsible for perhaps the two greatest examples of subcreation in all of Arda: the stars and the Two Trees, respectively. (Tolkien calls the making of the stars by Varda the "greatest of all the woks of the Valar since their coming into Arda."10 He doesn't rank Yavanna's singing the Two Trees into being [with the help of Nienna, the third of the female Aratar] but says of the Trees that "[o]f all the things which Yavanna made they have the most renown."11 However, I can think of no other subcreation by anyone in The Silmarillion—with the exception of the stars—on the order of Yavanna's Two Trees.) Given the achievements by the three women who represent the Valier among the Aratar, perhaps it took five male Valar to manage achievements on the same order.

If it seems like I'm stretching on this one, that's because I am. There are not only more male Aratar, but the male Valar in general play a bigger role in The Silmarillion than the Valier do, even those among the Aratar.

While conducting research for another paper, I noticed that female characters from the family trees in The Silmarillion tend to receive fewer mentions in the text than the male characters from the family trees do, even when the women exist right alongside male characters and perform similar roles. For example, Beren is mentioned 146 times in The Silmarillion, but Lúthien is mentioned only 137, despite being the more operative of the two (and another favored character to trot out when purportedly disproving sexism in The Silmarillion ). I decided to repeat this procedure with the Valar—indeed, the results are what inspired this essay. The procedure was simple: I used my Kindle Silmarillion eBook to count the number of times each character was mentioned in the text. I did not count mentions in the appendix materials. When characters' names are equivalent with place names (Mandos and Lórien), I did not count mention of the places. I did, however, count when the character's name was used in the genitive—eagles of Manwë, for example, or Doom of Mandos—since those instances refer to an object, location, or concept as a possession of the character. Also, naming something after a character is itself indicative of that character's prominence. When characters had multiple names, I searched for all of their names and counted each mention, unless the two names were combined into one. For example, Námo Mandos, although containing both of the character's names, would count only once. The chart to the right shows the raw data, with the women in orange and the men in blue.

The graph below shows the same data, as well as the average (mean and median) number of mentions for male and female Valar in The Silmarillion. It further breaks down the Valar by whether or not they are considered one of the Aratar.

This is pretty bleak. Male Valar dominate The Silmarillion. Even the most-mentioned Valië—Yavanna—receives fewer mentions than the mean average for the men. While status as one of the Aratar strongly predicts the number of mentions a character receives in the text, being an Arata is no guarantee of attention. Varda—Varda!!—receives fewer mentions in the text than all of the male Aratar. Compared with the other Aratar, Nienna is barely mentioned at all, and Tulkas—not an Arata and best known for pummeling things and then laughing at them—is nonetheless mentioned 2.5 times more than she is. But of course Nienna only aided Yavanna in bringing forth the Two Trees and mentored the greatest of Istari. Nothing to see here, folks. Look, I think Tulkas just uploaded his latest fight video to YouTube.

The poor Valar who share the double misfortune of being women and not being Aratar are in a category all to themselves. You can see them there in orange at the far right of the graph, which I have dubbed The Bottom of the Barrel. These women are mentioned, assigned a domain, and given a relationship to a [male] character, and then we never see or hear from them again. They are presumably the women Tolkien mentioned in his letter to his son Michael who are not the "rare exceptions" of Varda, Yavanna, and Nienna but rather possess the "the servient, helpmeet instinct" normal to women and "can go no further, when they leave [their husbands'] hand."12 It is perhaps telling that, despite knowing almost nothing about some of these women in The Bottom of the Barrel, we know which male Vala they are married to.

The number of women who do almost nothing in the story begins to explain why the men dominate the story, but as the graph shows, it is not that simple. Even the female Aratar are neglected. Why? Given the ambitiousness of their accomplishments, one would think that Varda and Yavanna would receive a lot of attention in the texts.

The graphic below shows a rough timeline of the deeds of the Valar during the Years of the Lamps and Years of the Trees. The women are in red/orange and the men are in blue/aqua. Without even reading the graphic, just sit back and look at the [im]balance of colors, which show that the male Valar do a helluva lot more than the women do.

Some more granular observations of the graphic above: Part of the imbalance comes about because Tolkien seemed to have no trouble assigning great deeds to women—to exceptional women, anyway—but seems to have had difficulty imagining them playing a role in the more commonplace activities that might have been required of their role. Again, we see this manifest most strongly in the nonexceptional, non-Aratar bottom-of-the-barrel women. Only one of these women does anything at all: Estë, who prays for a period of darkness in the early, unsettled days of the Sun’s cycle. Notably, she does this in conjunction with her husband Irmo.13 However, we see it overall as well. The men go places and do things that often aren’t terribly noteworthy; they converse and interact with each other and other characters; they debate each other and hold forth on their opinions.

The Valier, on the other hand, are almost silent in

The Silmarillion

. The men speak at counsels and share opinions, but Yavanna is the only Valië who is given dialogue. While it is stated that Varda and Nienna sometimes speak, we never actually hear their voices. In contrast, all the male Valar are given dialogue except for Oromë and Irmo, and the male Valar are given more than four times the dialogue of the Valier … well, Yavanna really, since she is the only woman to actually speak. None of the other Valier are even suggested to have spoken.

The simple act of hearing a character's dialogue fleshes out that character in the story. Námo's voice sounds different from Tulkas's. Silenced, the women lack this element of characterization. Their characters feel flat as a result. Seeing the male Valar in debate or sharing their opinions on various matters also makes them appear more assertive and involved in the story. It is hard to connect to the women who are seemingly without opinion in the important matters debated by their brethren. We are told that Varda, Yavanna, and Nienna all care deeply for the occupants of Middle-earth, but the story does not show this because they remain completely uninvolved in the debates deciding their fates. Not a single woman among the Valar contributes to the debates of her people. (They do, however, ask permission: Yavanna—our Chatty Cathy among the Valier—asks for permission to makes the Ents and then to use Fëanor’s Silmarils. None of the men make requests: They advocate, declare, mentor, urge, and, in Aulë’s case especially, would rather ask for forgiveness than permission.)

The male Valar interact with the Elves, assisting them in coming to Valinor and mentoring them once they arrive. Again, the women are absent from these scenes. While Yavanna, Oromë, and Ulmo all journeyed to Middle-earth before the discovery of the Elves, Oromë and Ulmo are permitted to interact with them once they're found, but Yavanna never does. We receive very specific information about the activities of the men: Oromë riding around Middle-earth, Tulkas chasing things, and Aulë making stuff. Once the women have completed their grand designs, they drop back from the story. If there is something to be done after that, you can be sure a man will be doing it. These actions inflate the men's numbers, but they also give the men a presence in the story and fuller characterization that the women lack.

If we accept the Valar as a prototype of the correct order of the universe as created by Ilúvatar, these revelations are pretty dispiriting. They suggest that women and men have equal willingness to become involved in the world, but women lag significantly behind the men in terms of both skill and actual involvement. Even if we reject that Tolkien was deliberately attempting to represent the inferiority of women to be part of the natural order of his universe, when considering the influence the Valar wield over the other peoples of Arda, we can see how these views spread to other cultures who might otherwise achieve a more egalitarian society.

On Varda: Or a Case Study in Inequality

When I ran the initial data for this research, the character whose depiction struck me as the most unjust was Varda. The Valaquenta tells us that Varda is the Queen of the Valar and the Vala most beloved by the Elves; she and Manwë enjoy a synergistic relationship where they are most powerful in the other's company. We are told that Melkor "hated her, and feared her more than all others whom Eru made."14 As noted above, her creation of the stars is explicitly identified as the greatest act of subcreation by the Valar. Varda is a powerful, kickass woman character.

Varda is also almost wholly absent from the story. She is mentioned only thirty-four times in The Silmarillion; despite the fact that the Valaquenta says Manwë and Varda are almost never apart,15 Manwë receives four times as many mentions as she does. What is Varda doing in the scenes where Manwë is active or outspoken in some way? Why do we never see her in these scenes, even indirectly via her influence over him?

Varda never speaks in The Silmarillion. Not once. In the chapter "Of the Sun and Moon," we are told that she "changed her counsel" and "commanded the Moon," but we never actually hear her speak in those instances. In most of the councils where important decisions are being made, one wouldn't even know that Varda was present. Not only do we not hear her voice, we don't even learn what her opinion is. For a Queen of the Valar, her silence is not only odd but almost unbelievable.

Varda is named in the Valaquenta as the most beloved of the Elves, and we are told that "they call upon her name out of the shadows of Middle-earth, and uplift it in song at the rising of the stars." We are told also that she "hears more clearly than all other ears the sound of voices that cry from east to west, from the hills and the valleys, and from the dark places that Melkor has made upon Earth."16 Yet we don't know why the Elves revere her so—aside from her making of the stars—nor do we see her act in any way upon the cries made to her. Aside from being present at a few rituals, we never see her interact with the Elves. We never even see her advocate for them, even though she is given several chances to do so.

I presented some of this data and some initial thoughts on my blog, The Heretic Loremaster, on July 22, 2015. Lady Brooke took my analysis a step further by investigating how the Valar are discussed in The Lord of the Rings. The names Varda and Elbereth are mentioned twenty-five times in the story itself (again, I am not counting appendix materials). Brooke notes that the only other Vala to be mentioned in the story itself is Oromë, whom I found twice (once under the name Araw), although Aulë and Manwë also appear in appendix materials. Nonetheless, even these three men combined cannot touch Varda's numbers in The Lord of the Rings. Tumblr user Anghraine makes a similar observation, noting that Elbereth appears in three songs and functions as "the elvish expletive of choice" in The Lord of the Rings (the latter is noted in the tags on the post).

If you look at the references to Varda in The Lord of the Rings, they are precisely as Brooke and Anghraine note. They don't show Varda in an active role. Her name is taken in vain a lot and, at most, is invoked in a protective capacity, but we don't know why (or if) this works. Is she truly watching over Middle-earth and intervening when she is called upon? Does invoking her name enhance the speaker's courage and fortitude because she or he believes Varda is going to intervene? Does the name repel enemies, who fear the possibility of her intervention? (Sam specifically notes that Elbereth is a good password because Orcs would never speak her name.17 ) Is it just sheer superstition and actually has no effect at all? As noted above, we see no evidence to suggest that, aside from making the stars, Varda ever actually advocated for much less intervened on behalf of anyone in Middle-earth. The discrepancy between her identified role and what we actually see her doing brings to light another complicating factor in all of Tolkien's texts: how reading the books as historical texts, taking into account narrative point of view, affects the credibility of what we see in the books.

On the Lost Cult of Varda: Or How Historical Readings Muddle My Conclusions

Potentially rescuing Varda and the other Valier from silence and obscurity is the fact that the legendarium was intended by Tolkien to serve as a historical account told by chroniclers who lived through or received the tradition from others. The latter is especially salient in the case of the Valar, since few of the Children of Ilúvatar would have been privy to the conversations of the Valar reported in The Silmarillion. In short, The Silmarillion accounts of the Valar are largely hearsay and perhaps reflect the cultural and gender biases of the chroniclers and other keepers of the tradition.

Do I think Tolkien deliberately orchestrated a gender-biased narrator and, in fact, imagined the Valier to have fuller roles equal to those of the men? No, I don’t. The equal number of female and male Valar, especially when compared to the gender disparities among other groups of characters, suggests that he may have aspired to equality and maybe would have even asserted, based on the numbers alone and the indispensable roles of the female Aratar, to have achieved it. In the male-dominated academic world of the early twentieth century, it is likely that he didn’t have a full picture of what gender equality looked like, in part because the historical and literary tradition of Western civilization was (and still is) heavily skewed toward men and did not present many options for imagining the role strong women characters might play in a narrative beyond their rare imposition into the roles of men. We can see this even in the present day, where traditional women’s work remains undercompensated (when it is noticed at all), and even in professions that have achieved gender parity, women are called upon less often than men to speak as experts. They are the Vardas: On paper, they are giants of intellect and creativity who nonetheless seem to do or say very little, less a comment on their actual achievements than how our culture perceives those achievements. In Tolkien’s work, it is perhaps telling that the women most often identified as "strong female characters"—Èowyn, Haleth, Galadriel, Lúthien—play a martial or questing role at least part of the time. It is as though Tolkien had a difficult time imagining how characters in a more traditionally feminine role—for example, Varda’s advocacy for the defenseless or Nienna’s emotional nurturance of the suffering—could equal the strength and dignity of male pursuits centered on conquest and power. These are biases Tolkien held—these are biases most of us hold—and likely his fictional chroniclers and narrators as well.

So while I do not believe that Tolkien intended his gender-biased in-universe narrators to deliver a wink and a nudge to readers, who would understand that the Valier only do and say far less than the men, and so appear less interesting and fully realized as characters than the men, because of those narrators’ biases, I do think that this framework upon which he built his story offers potential for redeeming even the Nessas and Vairës of his imagined world (to say nothing of the Vardas and Niennas). Their silence, their lack of achievement are not absolutes; they are only flawed perceptions. In what Tolkien scholar and fanfiction writer Una McCormick called "reparative reading,"18 readers and fanworks creators can look past the biases and imagine fuller roles for these characters without contradicting (and indeed paying a sort of homage to the structure of) the canon. It is not hard to imagine a story where Varda, for example, acts in a way that explains both Melkor’s terror of her and the adoration of her by the peoples of Third Age Middle-earth.

Conclusion: Or the Power of Prototypes

The Valar are not the only Children of Ilúvatar—far from it—but they are the only Children of Ilúvatar to receive guidance and instruction directly from Ilúvatar rather than an intermediary. As such, their society and behaviors can be inferred to most closely reflect Ilúvatar’s intentions in creating the universe. Even before we discuss their own roles lending guidance to other groups in Arda, this prototypical role marks them as important in delineating how Arda is intended to function. If we find sexism there—and I hope I have demonstrated that we do—then this is the way it’s supposed to be. A dispiriting thought, but one that is not strange to actual women, who have been told for millennia (and are still told today, in various ways subtle and overt) that they are not as capable as men.

If you want to start a flamewar in the Tolkien fan community, pose the question, "Was Tolkien sexist?" It doesn’t matter how you answer it, you will upset someone. The Valar, through their status as prototypes, provide compelling evidence that, yes, Tolkien was sexist. He imagined a world with a foundation where women were equally interested in participating in the world but far less capable of doing so in a meaningful way or where their accomplishments weren’t interesting enough to write about. His words to his son Michael that women were equally able to learn as men but far less adept at making something of that learning are worth revisiting. He is describing his prototype of the Valar.

Now is the point where some readers will be only half-listening to what I say because they will already be rehearsing how they will tell me that I am being unfair in holding J.R.R. Tolkien—who began work on The Silmarillion more than a century ago—to modern views on sexism. To these readers: I can feel your hands itching to type, and I ask you to wait for just a moment longer. Do not mistake my intentions in calling Tolkien sexist. He joins the rest of us—including me, although I try not to be—in his sexism. It is not to retroactively condemn his work or to advocate against its importance in twentieth-century literature. In fact, it’s justifiable place in the Western literary canon is precisely why I bring it up.

Because just as the Valar are important for their prototypical status, so is Tolkien. Tolkien’s work is, likewise, a prototype: the model that shaped modern epic fantasy, one of the twentieth century’s most important genres. Countless books, stories, films, and other popular culture media were patterned after Tolkien’s prototype, more often than not unwittingly echoing the same sexist patterns that formed a component of his imagined universe. This doesn’t compel blame and certainly not censorship, but it does encourage awareness, so that we can strive to do better, to break—and eventually, hopefully, remake—the prototype.

Works Cited

The Silmarillion, Valaquenta, "Of the Valar."

The Silmarillion, Valaquenta, "Of the Maiar."

This is equivalent to the legendarium as a whole; see Emil Johansson, "Population by Race and Sex," LotR Project, 2014, accessed July 8, 2018.

The Silmarillion, Ainulindalë.

The Silmarillion, Valaquenta, "Of the Valar."

The Silmarillion, Ainulindalë.

The Silmarillion, Valaquenta, "Of the Valar."

Ibid. "Melkor is no longer counted among the Valar, and his name is not spoken upon Earth."

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, "43 From a letter to Michael Tolkien."

The Silmarillion, "Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor."

The Silmarillion, "Of the Beginning of Days."

The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, "43 From a letter to Michael Tolkien."

The Silmarillion, "Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor."

The Silmarillion, Valaquenta, "Of the Valar."

Ibid.

Ibid.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, "The Tower of Cirith Ungol."

Una McCormick, "Finding Ourselves in the (Un)Mapped Lands: Women’s Reparative Readings of The Lord of the Rings" in Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Janet Brennan Croft and Leslie A. Donovan (Altadena, CA: Mythopoeic Press, 2015), 310.

This essay was also crossposted on the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild and my blog The Heretic Loremaster. Comments and discussion are welcome and appreciated wherever is most convenient!

[getoffthesoapbox]

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions: Kylo’s Trajectory

After much trial and tribulation, we have at last arrived of the moment of destiny: a descent into the depths of what is arguably the most complex character created not only for the Star Wars saga itself, but for the silver screen as a whole in recent memory. Kylo Ren is a bottomless pit of onion layers--the more I peel away, the more I find. I don’t know if I, or any one single person, or even the creators themselves, can truly ever uncover or unpack everything contained within this character. But I certainly want to try my best, and I hope that I can bring some new thoughts to the table, though I admit the prospect is intimidating because this character has been discussed ad nauseum by minds far greater than mine. Still, I can’t move forward in this series without addressing him, so apologies in advance if this covers territory others have previously tread. 

This is the eighth post in my Star Wars The Last Jedi First Impressions series. The list of the topics this series covers, including links to the previous posts, is included below:

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - A Flawed Triumph

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - The Thematic Heart

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Finn & Rose

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Luke & Rey

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Luke & Kylo

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Luke & Leia

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Rey’s Trajectory  

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Kylo’s Trajectory ← we are here

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Rey & Kylo

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - The Romantic Heart

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Misleading Love Polygons

[SW:TLJ] First Impressions - Schrödinger's Futures

This behemoth guards his hidden treasure trove jealously. He’s no easy pickings.

Kylo Ren is my favorite character in the Star Wars saga, replacing my beloved Luke in the span of a single film (The Force Awakens). The Last Jedi only expanded on what I already saw as the most interesting and complex character ever crafted for the Star Wars saga and turns him into something that is truly a masterpiece, and I’m not entirely sure it was all intentional. 

In many ways, on the surface and perhaps on paper, Kylo is a simple character: he is someone who is being crushed under the weight of the previous generations and is trying to strike out on his own to find his own path, but who has been drawn toward the darkness in the process. But I think what we learn in The Last Jedi (and we certainly don’t learn much), points toward something much more intricate, much more human than the paper version of Kylo. How much of this is intentional on the part of the story group and the directors, how much of it is Adam Driver’s meticulous and flawless performance, and how much of it is the channeling of a message greater than any single person could create, I don’t know, but there’s so much inside this character it takes my breath away. 

I’m going to tackle this post a little differently than my previous ones and break it up into sections; the stream-of-conscious approach worked well for the other posts, despite their length, but Kylo’s just such a hugely multi-faceted character that I need a little organization to focus the different aspects into something clear. 

For everyone who’s waited so long for this post, here it is at last. Thank you for sticking it out with me, despite what a sluggish snail I am. ;) I hope it’s worth the wait, but if it isn’t, I’ll do my best to make up for it in the future. ;) So, without further ado, let’s tackle this beast of a man.

The Burden of Legacy

While some hints of Kylo’s real issues surfaced in his scenes from TFA, it isn’t until The Last Jedi that we start to see some of the real motives behind why he’s chosen the path he has. 

Although he himself never states any of his thoughts, we can discern quite a bit about what happened to him in the beginning of his life up until his betrayal by Luke from what the other characters say and from hints from the novels. Now, I consider novels to be “secondary canon,” which means they’re only “canon” until something from future films disproves them (this is why I’ve thrown out the TFA novel entirely as a useful tool; as soon as Rey didn’t meet Poe until TLJ, TFA’s novel now moves into an “alternative universe” as far as I’m concerned, because it contains inconsistencies). However, it’s unlikely the novels surrounding Kylo’s past will have any retcons in the films themselves, so it’s safe to use them for now.

In one of the novels (I think Aftermath), we discover that before Ben is even born, a shadowy force is targeting him. This would have been the fate of any child of the Skywalkers--whether Luke’s or Leia’s--because they are somehow at the heart of the galaxy and are a powerful family. It was always going to be a risk to have a child under such circumstances, but if Leia and her husband were strong enough and savvy enough, it still hypothetically was possible to shield any children from such influences. 

Unfortunately, Leia’s partner is Han, and she herself is a force intuitive rather than someone trained in it. They’re just not equipped--through no fault of their own--to handle what their union creates. Leia is a key political figure in restoring order to the galaxy and can’t give any child the attention needed, and Han is...not exactly the most sensitive or patient man, likely due to his own traumatic past. When Ben is born, he is born into a world that is already hunting him, already expecting much from him, and already discarding him. 

One might say that the fact that Ben takes over 20 years to “turn to the dark” is quite remarkable given the influencing factors of his birth. That is a testament to his natural affinity toward the light as much as it is a testament to his ultimate failure to find enough purpose to withstand the pressure he was under. Unfortunately, we probably will never get to see these years covered in any film, and that’s a real travesty because this is pivotal for understanding the deep well of inner strength that this character has--and that Rey sees so much hope in. 

Still, we have enough clues to extrapolate the likely trajectory of Ben’s early years. At first, he was most likely merely a normal child who maybe did some strange things due to his extraordinary force-sensitivity. What his parents may or may not have known was that the shadowy force was likely always there, in the back of his mind, even during his early years. Yet in the beginning, that probably didn’t matter. Leia and Han, being new parents and still in the first years of the rebuilding of the republic, would likely have been very involved in Ben’s life. It’s clear to see in both films that he loves them both, that they both matter to him, despite the actions he takes against them. He couldn’t have been neglected all his life if he still holds them in such high regard. So at least in his formative years he must have been cherished by them. 

At some point, this changed, and a few things likely happened. First, he encountered “society,” and this could have happened as early as six or seven. This would be the first time he encountered the burden of legacy that would eventually break him--as the child of two war heroes and the nephew of another (and magical war heroes at that), expectations of his future were likely sky-high simply by virtue of his genetics. If this were all Ben had to contend with, he might have been able to bear it, but adding to that pressure was something else his DNA bestowed upon him--a ridiculously out of control force-sensitivity and prodigy-level abilities in the force. When these abilities fully manifested, I can’t say, but something about the way Luke talks about Ben in TLJ makes me think they didn’t fully manifest until puberty, which is likely when most of his problems actually started.

Before puberty, I would posit that Kylo’s problems were mostly localized to his family rather than the exterior world: he missed his mother, who was likely frequently out of the house and busy; he didn’t get along with his father, who by his own admission (and by Luke’s and Leia’s) couldn’t understand the boy very well and who didn’t “get” the whole force “thing” despite his proximity to two powerful wielders of the force; and, worse, a shadowy voice was likely lurking in the back of his mind, whispering things he shouldn’t be hearing. There may have been other factors as well, such as bullying in school or children being intimidated by him in general simply because of who he was. But something tells me that probably wasn’t the case in his early years because despite his rage-outs during TFA, in TLJ he shows some remarkably savvy social skills when he interacts with Rey, and that doesn’t come out of thin air simply because you’re sexually attracted to someone. I’d say that before his turn to the dark side, he was a well-mannered, kind, and pleasant boy to be around, probably a little too quick to display his heart on his sleeve and likely an empath. He probably was, in general, very well liked early on in his life, even by schoolmates. If this is true, then this makes his downfall all the more tragic because he knows what he’s thrown away; if he’d always been mistreated for his entire life, then he’s more pitiable, but for him to have known both good and bad and to be unable to correct course to return to the good is far more classically tragic in my opinion. 

I think puberty (so around 13-14) was when Ben’s force sensitivity probably started going out of control. Likely he was testing the limits of his powers, exploring the boundaries of authority, trolling a bit, and acting out as teenagers are wont to do, and he probably scared the bejeezus out of Han. Han, unable to deal with Ben, shut down on him right at the one moment the boy needed him most--the shadows in his mind were likely growing louder and more insistent and clear, and he needed a strong role model to follow to stay on the straight and narrow. Leia, of course, was torn between her husband, son, and political duties, and so she likely called for Luke’s help because Ben was becoming too much to handle for both of them and they were out of their depth. When Luke saw Ben, he had the same reaction to him Snoke has--he sees all that ability and potential and wants to harness it and be the one who molds it. It’s the natural allure of the mentor, and it’s something mentors have to be very careful about--it’s one thing to want to foster talent, it’s a whole other thing to want to mold talent. 

Luke convinces Leia and Han to release Ben into his custody, which we know from his own testimony in TLJ. Han’s reaction is left up to the viewer, but I expect he was probably in favor of dumping the boy onto Luke simply because Han tends to run from his problems (and we know his own deep guilt is the reason he retreats back into his former scalawag ways, so he fully knows where he went wrong with his son). But Leia probably lets Ben go because she genuinely thinks Luke can help him--and we know from her testimony in TFA that she regrets that decision and thinks it was the wrong one in hindsight. Because what Leia’s choice does, inadvertently, is prove to Ben that the voice in his head might be right after all--maybe his parents don’t love him and wish he were something other than what he’d turned out to be. This is something all kids face in their teens to some degree or other--it’s part of becoming an actualized individual--but given how empathic Ben was, and how deeply rooted the shadows infiltrating his mind were, he had a harder road to walk than the typical teen. 

So Ben is packed off to Uncle Luke’s faraway foreign retreat, away from everything he’s ever known living at the center of civilization, and thrown into a monastic lifestyle he probably never wanted in the first place. The culture shock alone would have been rough even if Ben had wanted to go to training, but likely he was unwilling yet too obedient to his mother’s wishes to make his own wishes heard. Part of Ben’s problem, and part of the eventual problem Kylo Ren demonstrates, is that he’s too obedient. He’s trying so hard to be the good son to Snoke that I can’t imagine he didn’t do the same for Han, Leia, and eventually Luke. Yet another reason why he and Rey resonate so well together--both of them want to be lovely objects worthy of their parents’ love and affection deep in their hearts. 

Ben likely took being sent away to Uncle Luke’s as a punishment from parents the shadowy voice whispered didn’t really love him rather than an attempt to help him, which he may have understood better had there been no shadowy voice. But Ben is a good boy, and we know by how deeply hurt he is by Luke that Luke quickly won him over and gained his trust and affection. Luke becomes the father figure to Ben that Han couldn’t be (and whoa, I just realized how this echoes Rey’s trajectory, like holy crap, Ben wasn’t describing Rey during that force connect moment when he was mocking her searching for her parents--he was describing himself), and Ben manages to make a life for himself.

We know he manages to last about 6 or more years at the jedi academy before Snoke finally gets the upper hand on him. Neither Ben nor Luke give us much information on his life at the academy, but I think we can safely assume a few things:

Ben was highly talented and was the teacher’s pet.

While some of the students became Ben’s friends and bonded closely with him, there were others who envied him and became resentful/bitter. (As I said before in my post on Luke and Kylo, this is likely why not all the padawan were killed when Ben went Kylo-mode; likely there was a fight between Ben’s friends and the kids who didn’t like Ben, and it turned into a slaughter.) 

Snoke is getting a stronger and more insistent hold on Ben the more he trains and the more he connects to the force. Snoke by this point is also probably trying to poison Ben against Luke and may be priming the pump by hinting that Luke is afraid of Ben and will one day “prove” that by striking Ben.

At some point Ben learns about Vader, and the galaxy does as well, giving the padawan who may resent him full leave to increase any bullying tactics they may have been employing (or holding back on employing). 

Possibly Luke, in order to keep the peace, turns a blind eye to any bullying behavior Ben’s receiving, despite knowing he should do something about it. Or, conversely, he’s just never around and is always out searching for new padawan, and so through neglect he, like Leia and Han, abandons Ben. 

Luke at some point realizes that his training isn’t helping Ben and the darkness is becoming greater in him. Luke may or may not know about Snoke (I suspect he doesn’t until he talks to Leia after Ben disappears).

As Rey points out to Luke, Ben’s choice was not made before Luke raised his saber against him. In fact, I would argue (and I think Rey would agree), that by staying by Luke’s side, Ben had chosen Luke. If Luke had kept the faith and believed in the strength of the light in his nephew and the strength of his bond to his nephew, perhaps he might have steered Ben in a more productive direction. But moreover, Luke should have trusted that even if Ben turned, Leia, Han, and Luke were all enough to bring him back, no matter what it took. 

Yet Luke didn’t believe in Ben, he didn’t believe in Ben’s light, and so he lost Ben to the darkness. Likely after the attack, Ben probably ran away scared and began gathering up his things only to be attacked by the padawan from the faction who resented him, and who now had a justification for their resentment (his attack on their master). Ben, being cornered, likely lashed out, was joined by his own friends, and a war began while poor Luke was pulling himself out of the wreckage. By the time Luke was free, Ben was gone and some of the padawan with him, leaving Luke to believe Ben slaughtered everyone, because why the hell wouldn’t he believe that Ben was a murderer?

So we can see from all of this that the “Skywalker legacy” brought Ben a great deal of pain and very little joy: likely he was bullied, pressured, neglected, abandoned, feared, hated, and abused simply because of his DNA and his abilities. For an empath as strong as Ben clearly is, this is an unbearable way to live and would send even the strongest straight down the steep descent into nihilism if there isn’t a very strong and clear purpose for them to latch onto. 

Ben’s DNA and genetic legacy and the legacy of his family itself buried him beneath their weight. At a time in his life where he needed to make a name for himself and strike his own path and test the strength of his fledgling wings, he was being crushed by the weight of both the dark side of his lineage (the Vader side) and the light side of his lineage (the war heroes). His force sensitivity made him a target to enemies and allies alike--he was likely seen as a tool to be used or an object of envy for those less naturally gifted. And because there was not yet a Rey by his side to give him the love and devotion he likely desperately sought from his parents and uncle in lieu of all the pain, he was left with the only other person who had remained by his side through it all: the shadowy presence who had been there from the beginning, the voice of Snoke.

Welcome to the Dark Side

So what about that loyal shadow presence lurking in the corners of Ben’s charmed life? What on earth would make that presence more attractive to Ben than his comfy home and wonderful family? As with the rest of his past, this aspect of Ben’s life is shrouded in mystery. However, we can assume a few things based on Snoke’s gloating:

Snoke can read and has been reading (for how long is unknown) all of Ben’s thoughts. As in, every. single. thought. Kind of hard to grow up if you have no privacy at all. Poor kid probably couldn’t even have any fantasies. No wonder he’s a 30-year-old virgin. ;) Joking aside, this is actually incredibly sinister if Snoke’s been able to do this Ben’s entire life. That means for the entirety of his life his every move has been “observed” by someone. Living under constant surveillance normally would drive anyone mad in general, but this goes even further than mere visual surveillance. The implications here are horrifying for Ben’s ability to actualize himself in a healthy way and also are an enormous testament to the depth and strength of the light within him--he managed to withstand daily torment from this shadow presence for most of his life. He’s only been truly in its grasp for a brief span of time--at most 6 years, virtually the same amount of time he’d been a padawan. 

Before I go into what this means for Kylo Ren in the current timeframe, I’d like to explore what this meant for Ben Solo. I’m not sure how long Snoke was able to communicate with Ben, but given how powerful he is, I’m sure at the very least he was able to send his own thoughts to Ben (perhaps even masking them to sound like Ben’s own thoughts), even if Ben couldn’t respond. When Snoke began speaking with Ben, I can’t say--perhaps he only observed initially and didn’t begin speaking until Ben’s relationship with Han began to fragment and he was shipped off to Uncle Luke’s. 

I think we can say for certain that at least during the 6 or so years of Ben’s padawan training, Snoke was messing with his head and his belief in himself and his family. So even if Snoke had started as an unwanted presence in Ben’s mind, or something Ben fought, by the end of the journey Snoke became the only thing Ben “had” that had never rejected or betrayed him, that “loved” him. This is a classic manipulation tactic--to seduce the victim with the idea that you alone hold them as “special” and then to isolate them from other sources of strength and support. This is one of the reasons I suspect Kylo’s Knights of Ren are dead--if Kylo had friends or supporters, he wouldn’t be as vulnerable to Snoke’s influence as he clearly is during TFA and TLJ. Snoke also makes sure to keep Hux and Kylo at each other’s throats rather than letting them form a friendship (which would be more natural given their similar ages). I can’t see him letting Ben keep his friends--likely he “arranged” for the friends to “tragically die” in battle for the First Order, isolating Ben further. (This, I think, may have been part of the vision Rey saw in TFA.) 

Either way, Ben goes from potentially distrusting and not believing the voice in his head to placing his hope of a future in its hands. This is likely due to the fact that the voice probably “predicts” what will happen (Leia/Han’s abandonment, the other padawan’s resentment and envy, Luke’s “betrayal”), and thus the voice gains credibility over the other people in Ben’s life who have continued to fail him. This credibility leads Ben to go to Snoke’s side.

I’m not sure at what point Ben “meets” Vader. TFA implies Ben has spoken to Vader before, but isn’t speaking to him by TFA. Since we know Vader was redeemed and has shown himself as Anakin as his force ghost, we can assume whatever “Vader” Ben has been talking to isn’t real and likely is a creation of Snoke’s. Snoke’s probably powerful enough for this simply because he’s the one who creates (or at least manipulates) the force connection between Kylo and Rey; if he can do that, he can surely create a vision of Vader to “convince” Ben that the dark side is the only way for Ben. 

But even with all of this, it’s hard I think to see why the dark side would be an attractive option for Ben rather than just striking out on his own and building his own destiny as an unknown person. That honestly would have been the more natural option--most teens in Ben’s situation would simply “run away” (and this would have put him on a trajectory more like Han’s). If he was tired of his force abilities, he could even have cut them off entirely like Luke does in TLJ. 

So I don’t think Ben’s actions can be written off simply as “I had no other choice.” Clearly there are other choices, but for unknown reasons Ben doesn’t take them, which implies they don’t fulfill whatever deeper need is operating underneath his desire to be “free” of his family’s legacy. Especially given that all he does is “trade” one form of “legacy” for another--he discards his family’s light side legacy in order to explore its dark side. 

As a jedi padawan, Ben would have been subjected to what spotty jedi training Luke was able to give him (we know Luke hadn’t read the jedi texts from TLJ, so Luke’s training probably wasn’t the same kind one would have received during Anakin’s time). We see a hint of the kind of teacher Luke was during the small training sequence with Rey in TLJ; he’s clearly a different kind of teacher than Yoda or Obi Wan. He doesn’t believe in separating the dualism of life--he clearly believes in balance, in the interplay between the light and the dark, between chaos and order. However, he likely makes the same mistake with Ben that he makes with Rey--despite his belief that the dark/chaos has a place in the world, he does not encourage exploring it, which is exactly the very thing that led to Anakin’s downfall and to the downfall of the jedi, though Luke probably isn’t aware of that. 

So we come back, again, to Ben’s similarities with Rey--what is it that Snoke (or the womb pit in Rey’s case) has to offer that Luke doesn’t? The knowledge of the shadow side--the full ability to integrate into a whole personality. Snoke can give Ben the other half of the training Ben needs to actualize himself--and I think this is an unconscious desire of Ben’s, not a conscious one, because Ben’s naturally an empath and an intuitive person, not a rationalist. This is the real reason Snoke is attractive for Ben, despite the fact that ordinarily I think Ben would find Snoke repugnant (as he clearly does in TLJ). 

Ben’s journey mirrors Rey’s in a lot of ways, though he’s “further along” than she is up until the mirror scene. Once she accepts her dark sides and her anxieties, she pulls ahead of Ben in development, because he gets “trapped” in the underworld when he ventures in to find himself. This is likely because, unlike Rey, Ben did not willingly enter the underworld. He was driven to it. This is the difference between willingly taking a risk and unwillingly being forced to--Rey retains her agency while Ben cannot; Ben is subsumed by the dark forces of the underworld and dragged deeper to become weakened, while Rey is able to touch it briefly and then escape back into the light stronger for the adventure and with a pearl of wisdom at hand. 

When Luke rejects Ben, this leaves Ben with the only other option that fulfills his deepest desire--go to Snoke and integrate his shadow side by learning from a dark master. This is a very dangerous path and for Ben to take it only as a “last alternative” plays right into Snoke’s hands--Ben now becomes trapped in Snoke’s cage and needs to be rescued or killed in order to be freed from it. It’s a strong prison and one that will take more than what Ben has in him alone to overcome. Had Ben taken the path willingly, he might have overcome Snoke far sooner and with much less torment and destruction. 

This is why Ben can’t abandon his legacy entirely though--if he did, he would be an incomplete person. I think the force knew this, and so that’s why it found an alternative to help him. The force seems to be very active in this sequel series, almost a kind of universal collective that’s trying to guide everyone to a greater path, even if it means taking a detour now and then. So we find that Ben has several reasons why Snoke was the only path he could take, despite having alternatives: 

He still wants to be loved by a father figure because he’s not actualized as a person.

He’s subconsciously seeking integration with his own dark side, something Luke has denied him out of fear. 

Wherever he goes, Snoke will follow anyway. Probably even if he shut off the force.

In addition to these, there’s one more thing that Ben probably would never want to acknowledge that is driving him: in truth, he has no desire to run from the legacy he was born under (he’s actually quite proud of it)--he wants to make his own mark on his legacy. But in a dichotomous worldview (and before Rey), he only has two options for making his mark upon his family’s history: be “good” like his family and probably be forgotten due to there being no great war to fight, or become “bad” and surpass the only member of the family to ever have “gone bad.” 

If we assume that Ben didn’t learn about Vader until he was in his late teens/early twenties, it may be that this suddenly opened up a temptation for him that coincided with his own subconscious desire to explore his dark side: he found out his legacy was “bigger” than just heroes--there were “villains” as well, specifically only one villain. While he could never be greater than Han, or Leia, or Luke, maybe he could be greater than Vader--and being greater Vader, as a larger presence than all three of his close kin, would make Ben himself greater than his own family. If he could surpass Vader, he’d be the greatest Skywalker of all--a ruler of galaxies feared and never forgotten.

It’s likely this fantasy (which probably was a fantasy exacerbated by his teenage anger at his family for discarding him and at his fellow padawans for being resentful and his own hubris over how great his abilities were) that Snoke stoked and encouraged. This is the fantasy we see being played out between them, the carrot Snoke continues to dangle before Ben in TFA and which he removes in TLJ: the idea of surpassing Vader, and by extension surpassing the burden of his legacy entirely to mold it into a new legacy, a legacy entirely of his own.

This is why, I think, Ben becomes Kylo Ren--he wants to redefine and reshape his legacy into something he is master of, rather than something he’s crushed under or manipulated by. He wants to devour his legacy and rise above it, rather than being devoured by it. Snoke and his own ambitions seduce him into thinking that this is the only way to truly make his mark on the world, and this is the reason why I don’t think his motive (before Rey and TLJ) is to discard his legacy, despite the burdens it’s placed on him. Kylo can bear his legacy and wants to bear his legacy. It’s all he has. It’s all he’s ever had. He was born with it. It’s the only thing that’s never left him. But at the same time, he doesn’t want to be its pawn. He wants to be in charge of it. To do this, he has to transform himself and join the dark side. 

Of course, the problem with this is...unlike Anakin, who truly did fall to the dark, Kylo is playing. It’s a fantasy he’s acting out, and not his true desire, which is simply to actualize himself and find his place in the world. (A positive place, not a negative one.) Kylo doesn’t want to be evil, and this is why he has such a hard time playing the part. We see this in TFA; while he’s good at pretending he’s tough in front of soldiers who he orders to do the actual killing (rather than killing himself) and while he’s snarky and quippy and capable of force-extracting info from resistance members, he’s still an empath who is deeply troubled and deeply sympathetic. We see this when he lets Finn go despite knowing what he’s going to do, we see this when he admits his doubts to the Vader mask, we see this when he takes his temper tantrums out on objects rather than people, we see this when he forgets his goals to try to understand Rey, we even see it when he is moved by his father’s love. 

Likely what happens between Ben’s initial choice to “become” Kylo Ren and the events of TFA is that he slowly becomes demoralized and disillusioned about what Snoke has to offer him. He switches from playing the “good son” in order to genuinely please Snoke to playing the part simply to stay alive. Snoke is all he has, but Snoke is abusive, cruel, manipulative, and downright nasty. Kylo isn’t a child--he knows exactly what kind of person Snoke is. And likely as the years pass and he continues to be unable to free himself from Snoke, he begins to lose the last remnants of faith in himself and to crumble under the pressure. This is why we see him plaintively begging Vader for help in TFA--he’s lost and can’t escape. Some dead guy he never met is his only hope. That’s pretty sad. 

Fortunately, the force hears him (maybe even with Anakin’s help), and brings him his salvation, though he won’t know she is until the third film I think. For the first time in a long time, Ben receives some of the validation he’s been seeking--in the form of Rey taking him seriously as a threat, but also overcoming him as an equal. The interrogation scene both puffs up his ego and tears it down simultaneously, and, as we see from his reaction when he races to Snoke, it’s an exhilarating experience for him. Snoke, stupidly, doesn’t see the danger of the fox who’s entered the henhouse, and he instead sees Rey as a new way to twist Kylo further. 

Then Kylo proves himself by performing the ultimate act--he’s not yet taken by the alternative Rey’s existence provides, and so he continues to pursue his fantasy of becoming greater than Vader by doing what Vader couldn’t--sacrificing a parent. It’s probably easiest to sacrifice Han in some ways because Han was the first to abandon Kylo and the last to understand him. Yet at the same time, which we learn from TLJ, Han’s murder destroyed Kylo and left him unable to continue the path he’d set out to conquer. Rather than making him stronger and firmly setting his dark side as his prominent alignment, Kylo disintegrates and breaks down. All that’s left to him in this moment is the faint thread connecting him to Rey, and this leads to his violent anger at Finn as well as his offer to Rey of training. She’s the last thing he has; all his fantasies and illusions have begun breaking down due to his own actions. But the force separates him from Rey, and he is returned to Snoke because it’s not time yet for her to reach him. 

His meltdown continues in TLJ; his loss to Rey shatters the remainder of his pride and his murder of his father and the loss of Rey sunder his foundations, but the encounter with Rey (and how deeply he affected her) has birthed something new within him that’s only fledgling in form at the beginning of the film: a new desire, a new wish, even if he can’t verbalize it or even acknowledge it because of Snoke’s mental spying. Rey’s existence brings hope back into his life--hope of finding a path that allows him to achieve his dream (which is to make his mark on his own legacy) while escaping the clutches of the dark side he’s become trapped and mired in. 

We see this begin to play out in his first scene in the film, when he appears before Snoke. There is so much undercurrent in this scene it’s quite a revelation in and of itself. His rivalry with Hux continues, and Snoke stokes it, but it’s not nearly as strong as it was in TFA. Something has changed inside Kylo, and Snoke initially assumes (mistakenly) that it’s a weakening. Snoke taunts Kylo about his failures and rubs salt in the clear wound. He commands Kylo to remove his mask, exposing his vulnerability. Kylo, who in TFA was firmly on the path of playing the “good son” to Snoke, despite knowing the truth of the words his father said to him in TFA long before his father uttered them, now in TLJ has transformed--for the first time in his life, he has taken on the mantle of the rebellious son, and it’s an uncomfortable and unfamiliar role for him. 

Gone is the reverence for Snoke, gone is the obedience. Snoke mocks Kylo, throwing his resemblance to his father in his face. Rather than beg for mercy or agree, Kylo snaps back that he killed his father and he didn’t hesitate when the time came. He for the first time defends himself, and this is probably the first time he’s ever done this in his life. It is the mark of something new that has awakened in him, something that his own actions and the small thread of connection to Rey have sparked. Having destroyed his own father, he has toppled the paradigm of fatherhood itself and has opened the door to rebellion against authority for the first time in his life. 

Unfortunately, this role isn’t one Kylo’s comfortable with, so Snoke quickly shuts him down by pointing out that he’s a hot mess, which Kylo is forced to acknowledge even though he tries to stick his nose in the air and maintain his pride--Snoke’s words are true, as they often are. And then Snoke makes his first mistake of the film--he tries to diminish Kylo’s achievement by pointing out his lack of balance and, of course, his failure to defeat Rey. 

What I find interesting at this moment in the scene between them, and what will reverberate later in the final red room sequence, is that Kylo has probably never actually attempted to fight Snoke before in his life. Yet the minute Snoke tries to diminish Rey and use her as a weapon against Kylo, Kylo moves. Now, a casual viewer might say that the reason Kylo attacks Snoke is because Snoke poked his pride. The problem I have with this interpretation is that Kylo would have needed to move after Snoke said he failed. But Kylo is already in motion while Snoke is speaking the failure line, meaning the point Snoke made that pissed Kylo off to the point of wanting to fight was the comment about Rey. 

Now, we know Kylo doesn’t feel ashamed of himself for being bested by her. (Mostly because I don’t think he was, and I think he knows he wasn’t--not that he let her win, but that he didn’t want to best her, and honestly I’ve always believed that he was okay with her killing him in that moment simply because of how much he likely hated himself. I think he kind of saw her as an avenging angel in a way, and would have been all right being defeated by her.) The reason we know he wasn’t ashamed of being bested by her is because his first reaction upon seeing her again is to light up like it’s Christmas. That’s...not a normal reaction for seeing someone who’s caused you to feel ashamed of yourself. =P (More on that later of course.)

So this leaves me with only one conclusion for why he stands against Snoke for probably the first time in his life in that first scene--Snoke insulted the bae, and you don’t insult the bae and escape. This scene is foreshadowing for his choice later in the film. It’s also foreshadowing for the manner in which he kills Snoke--we see here that a full frontal assault against Snoke is useless, and thus cunning has to be employed instead. For the first time in his life, Kylo will have to use his own strength and knowledge to outwit a being far stronger than he is. 

In this moment, Kylo takes the first step toward what is a journey, at last, into manhood--his stunted and frozen growth is at last thawing into spring. It’ll be incomplete in TLJ, of course, because this is the midpoint of the story. But the key points of the first Snoke scene are three-fold: foreshadow Kylo’s ultimate alignment and choice in the red room sequence, establish his switch from “good son” to “rebellious son,” and to demonstrate that Kylo, in the murdering of his father, has torn down the mystique of the “father figure” and so father figures no longer hold any power over him. 

This is further emphasized by Snoke calling Kylo a child at the end of the sequence, and Kylo storming off in anger to the elevator. The first thing he does is destroy his mask. What does the mask symbolize to him in that moment? Likely it’s the obedience to the father. And so he, like any good prodigal son, heads out to go destroy some people and prove his worth in his own way. But for the first time he’s begun to contemplate rebellion and what rebellion means. He’s picking up on the lessons he’d left off on in his teenage years, when Uncle Luke betrayed him and helped push him down the path of exploring the underworld alone. Now he’s more conflicted and lost than ever, as the remainder of his choices will demonstrate. He’s been unmoored by his actions in TFA, and although he never speaks a word about them, they seep out of everything he does.

Love for Mother

My brother said to me that he doesn’t believe Kylo has any special feelings for his mother over his father, and that if Leia had gone to Kylo first, Kylo would have killed her. I thought about this for a while, but I still don’t buy it. Kylo’s very focused on authority/order/father figures. He has virtually no animosity toward the feminine in any way--he’s open with his emotions, he’s sensitive, he’s compassionate under the right circumstances. All of this implies, to me, that he’s a mama’s boy who was abandoned by mama, not a sociopath who doesn’t care about either of his parents and could have easily killed both of them. The reason I think Han was arguably the “easiest” simply is because Han was the one he was the furthest from emotionally--even fighting Luke was harder for him than killing Han. 

The scene with Kylo coming to attack Leia is so subtle but it breaks my heart to pieces. This boy knows the inside and outside of her ship; he’s the first to get into her hanger and blow up her ace’s vehicles. Yet even though he knows every inch of the resistance ships, he still hesitates when the moment comes to take his mommy down (and seriously that face could not kill mommy--Adam Driver does such a phenomenal job at breaking down like a child in that scene--that’s clearly a boy who wants to come home but who knows he can’t). And when two other First Order pilots do the favor for him, he clearly is distraught by the choice being taken from him. 

I’m pretty sure his first instinct was to go after her when he saw she was blown out of the command center. That’s why we get that bizarre sequence where Hux tells him to pull back because he’s too far out--what other reason would he have to do that other than to search for Leia? Of course, once Hux shines a spotlight on him, he has to pull out or risk whatever punishment Snoke’ll be sending his way, which is why he gets snarly about complying. While he was willing to rebel a bit, he’s fresh off his failure to actually achieve anything in that scene. There’s no way he could rebel against Snoke for Leia in this instance. 

Still, it’s telling that he wanted to try. This is more evidence of how torn up he is--on the one hand, he’s destroying his mother’s allies and helping bring her down, but on the other his impulse is to go save her the minute she’s in danger. Snoke as usual has it right: his light and dark sides are out of balance. 

The reason I don’t think Kylo is willing to betray Snoke for Leia, but he will for Rey, is for the same reasons why he won’t join Rey to fight the First Order, which I’ll get into more later. But in short, Leia (and Han before her) can only offer him the same thing he left Luke over--more neglect and a return to the status quo, where he’s buried under their legacy and unable to distinguish himself and--worse--due to his own actions, now unable to avoid the vitriol of those he fought against. He can’t return to Leia yet. There’s no place for him in her world yet. This was the same problem he had with Han’s offer--Han could only give him a return to the place he (rightfully) no longer believes he can return to because of how much damage he’s caused. He’s gone too far down Snoke’s path, he’s lived too long in the underworld, to come back to the light on his own. Like Eurydice, he’s going to need someone to bargain with Hades and lead him out into the light. 

Anther factor in why Leia can’t save Kylo, I think, is because in all those years she never tried. She never dropped her duties and obligations to the resistance and the republic to chase down Snoke and get her son back. It’s the same reason why Luke can’t save him--Kylo spent nearly 6 years under Snoke’s thumb and his family never came for him. They’re only trying to “save” him now because he “happened” to be in their vicinity--he had to come to them, not vice versa. And this is another reason why Rey will ultimately be the only one who can reach him--just as he will tear the galaxy apart for her, she will fly to wherever he is no matter the risk or the cost. Both of them will place the other above their duties and obligations, and that’s what each of them is seeking. 

Speaking of, I guess it’s now time to dig into Kylo’s side of the Reylo in this film. ;)

First Love, True Love

It’s hard to fathom how much development happens across four short scenes between Kylo and Rey in the middle of TLJ, and even more astounding is how much depth those scenes contain. For easy reference, just note that I’ll be referring to the force connection scenes as FC1 (the first scene where Rey shoots Kylo), FC2 (the rain sequence), FC3 (the shirtless sequence), and FC4 (the hand touch sequence). Shorthand helps in long posts like this. ;)

Before I go into the sequences themselves, I want to talk about what is--and is not--revealed by Kylo about himself in these scenes. For a film whose deepest purpose was to explore Kylo Ren himself and help us answer questions as to why he ended up where he was, we get remarkably little information from the man himself. 

I think the reason for this is actually two-fold: 

As I said earlier in the “Welcome to the Dark Side” section, Snoke has access to Kylo’s mind at any time and can be reading it at any moment (how often he actually does this is anyone’s guess--but the mere threat of it is enough to affect how Kylo reacts). That raises the likelihood that Kylo is constantly filtering what he says and even what he thinks. It’s honestly a travesty Rey isn’t allowed to see glimpses of how Snoke infiltrated Kylo’s mind and broke him down, but even worse is the effect this has on the viewer--how much of what Kylo is saying a trustworthy and honest representation of his viewpoint? How much of it, much like Rey, is thinly veiled behind “appropriate” (but this time for Dark Side users rather than Light Side) thoughts for a First Order man to have? The threat of Snoke’s presence makes it virtually impossible for us to know the “real” Kylo because Kylo is likely censoring or veiling his words and his thoughts--he speaks cryptically to Rey in regard to anything about his family or his real reasons for doing things (such as the murder of Han Solo, which, I might add, we still have no idea why he actually went through with it). 

The other reason I think is that Kylo himself views his actions and motivations as reprehensible but due to reason 1 above and due to how far he’s gone into darkside territory, he doesn’t see any hope for himself other than to keep treading the path he’s on. He isn’t nihilistic enough to contemplate suicide, but he’s not finding any meaning in the dark side either. To explore any third option, he needs to break completely from the dark side.

Honestly, Kylo’s character leaves me completely flummoxed. Ordinarily a villain would try to justify his actions to the hero, but despite having the opportunity, Kylo never does that. When Rey throws barbs at him about being a monster and a murderer, he never once tries to help her see his point of view or justify his actions to her. For a man who killed his father to clear his head (supposedly), this is just ridiculously bizarre behavior. He’s obviously hurt on a personal level by her judgment of him, but he never once says it’s unreasonable of her or disagrees with her (he even acknowledges she’s right). For him to accept that he’s a monster is an odd thing to do for someone who thinks their actions are heroic or justified.

Given that, as I established earlier, Kylo is becoming disillusioned with what Snoke has to offer him and what the dark side itself has to offer him, it does make sense that he wouldn’t view his actions from TFA and before in a favorable light. Given that he comes from the dichotomous world of light/dark of Luke’s jedi training, he should have at least something of a moral compass, even if it’s been deconstructed due to misuse. It reminds me a bit of how the idea of an “ideal” is two-sided: on the one hand, it’s a North Star and a goal to chase and pursue, on the other hand it is a judge, flooding a spotlight on all your imperfections and inabilities to live up to the ideal. There is some ideal in Kylo’s head, I think, that he’s failing to live up to and he’s lashing out against it--perhaps this is part of the light side legacy he’s running from. But it seems to me the reason he so desperately wants to cut all his ties to the past and bring the whole house down on his own family is that they remind him of what he should have been but is not because of his own choices. 

He’s a remarkable character who actually takes responsibility for his evil, but doesn’t seem to know what to do to rectify the wrong he’s done, so he continues to commit wrongs in order to try to reach an equilibrium in his own tortured mind. Maybe he’s even hoping to a degree that if he keeps it up, if he keeps doing further into the dark, one day the light will cease to torment him and he’ll be free of it. This to me is more reminiscent of a terrorist or a war criminal than a sociopathic mass murderer, despite the egregious nature of his crimes. Hux seems to be more in line with a genuine monster--a man who has thrown away his humanity in order to pursue an inverted goal of meaningless nihilism; Kylo, on the other hand, just seems to be unable to find a way to extricate him from the prison he’s constructed around himself. Yet he’s still self-centered and childish enough to want to try to save himself from the consequences of his actions; he’s not yet ready to legitimately take on the burden of the mantle of what he himself has contributed to the misery of the world. We all have the ability to tune the world slightly more toward heaven or hell, and Kylo has tuned the world toward hell. He’ll need to pay for that at some point, and to bear those consequences with a willing and humble heart. 

So given all of this, we begin this sequence of force connection scenes with a Kylo who is cagey and unable to fully express himself--yet is desperately seeking to explore this new connection with Rey. Because of this, what I think he does (and we can see evidence for this in the way he talks to her) is attempt to help her both understand him and warn her against making his mistakes by using her own history and actions as dual-layered metaphors for himself. And for some reason, I think Rey understands this weird way of speaking, probably because their minds are bridged and she can see “what he means” in a way most people wouldn’t be able to.

In FC1, their first force connection moment, we establish a couple interesting things about Kylo. First is that he’s not unhappy or displeased to see Rey--rather, the minute their minds connect, his eyes and face light up. Her presence is welcome to him, almost a gift he hadn’t been expecting. This tells us immediately that he holds no grudge against her for what she did to him in TFA, nor does he feel diminished by her (after all, he still bears her scar, and though he’s healing it up so that it’s not a gaping wound, he’s not removing it entirely and he’s not ashamed to bear her mark at any point in TLJ)--instead, he still holds all the admiration, respect, and adoration he held for her ever since he first saw into her mind in the forest. Even more interesting, her first response is to attack him, and rather than attempt to deflect (as he did in TFA), he flinches, fully believing he’s been shot. So right away we can see this man leaves himself deliberately vulnerable to this young woman, even though he fully knows she has a penchant for “shoot first, talk later.” So for the second time it’s confirmed that he is okay with whatever “justice” this young woman wants to enact upon him--she, and only she, may take him to account for his wrongdoing. This probably will be significant in the future for Episode IX.

After the shooting sequence, he goes racing into the hallway, skidding like an eager schoolboy, searching for her. When he turns back to see her, he tries one last time to bring her to him (in an acceptable way of course; with Luke in tow lol). She’s too strong for any mind games now, and he gives up the minute he realizes it. It’s like he just doesn’t even care anymore; it was just a test. There’s a wonderful scientific bent to his personality that implies he was probably a huge nerd when he was Ben Solo--he’s testing the limits of this new connection, what it can do, why it works the way it does. Rey’s busy fuming, and he’s like a kid in a candy store babbling about the limits of space and time. 

We not only see his experimenter’s mentality, we see his intuitive perception as well. He should by rights have no idea where Rey even is--as he says himself, he can’t see her surroundings, he can only see her. Yet the minute she turns her head upon Luke’s arrival, he knows who has arrived. What’s weird in this moment, at least to me, is that there’s virtually none of the vitriol toward Luke that he shows toward the end of the film. He doesn’t spit Luke’s name like it’s venomous or snarl or show anything other than curiosity. It’s something I’m not sure what to make of yet, other than perhaps it has something to do with how his world crashes down around him when Rey rejects his proposal. More on that later. 

The one last thing we see in FC1 which is just mind boggling given by this point in the story they’ve had only a whopping three small scenes together is how he looks at her when he says he can only see her--it’s like he’s seeing this vision of angelic beauty and is experiencing some transcendent idea of grace in that moment. Again, props to Adam Driver for his amazing performance (I have no idea why he wasn’t nominated for the Oscars seriously it’s a shame), but I think given his expression it’s very clear that the boy is mad about this girl and it has nothing to do with her abilities or power. I think if she were just a normal girl with no ability at all, he’d probably still be this wild about her. Her ability may have been the first thing that interested him, but at this point he’s gone beyond that, and in such a short time on top of it. 

We don’t get to see him again until FC2, and unfortunately unlike Rey we don’t get to see how he feels about FC1. When we pick up with him again, he’s standing alone, quietly contemplating something as he observes the First Order hangar bay. Honestly, from his body language and the way his head gently curves down upon their next connection, I’d say he was waiting for them to connect again. He’s highly intuitive as a character, and I can’t imagine he thought it wouldn’t happen again. 

In all their scenes there is a deep sexual undercurrent between them, and this is the first scene where it’s palpable not just in the subtext but also in the visual metaphors. He gets to have a bit of the voyeur’s experience while he watches her revel in the rain. The rain’s a powerful symbol of the feminine, as rain heals and brings new life. This is the scene of their mutual sexual awakening, and it culminates in the rain itself appearing on his cheek. This is simultaneously a metaphor for a wet dream in his case and also foreshadowing for his ability to force project into her space the way he will by FC4. In essence, as far as I can tell, this is the mutual “hitting puberty full speed” scene for both of them, which makes sense, given both of them have been “frozen” up until this point. After this scene, the sexual undercurrent between them changes form and becomes more akin to that between teenagers in teen flicks. We’re still not yet at the adult range these two should actually be interacting within (they’re both actually adults), but I’m sure that will happen in the third film, when they’re both ready to take on the responsibilities of adult partnership. 

Beyond the sexual subtext, Kylo is a gabby gus while Rey is still unable to move on from her own anger and rage that she’s projecting onto him (not without good reason of course). Poor Kylo is still trying to figure out why this cool thing is happening to them and Rey just does not give any shits, haha. This shows they’re on different pages still, and what I love about how Kylo handles her is that he gently backs off and follows whatever direction she wants to take the conversation in. If Kylo had a zodiac sign, he’s probably a cancer or a scorpio haha. He just screams water. Rey’s more fire/earth (I’m not sure which yet since she seems to have elements from both--maybe she’s got one as a moon and one as a sun). Though it’d make sense if Kylo was a cancer (the deepest/furthest point in the zodiac) and Rey a capricorn (the highest/loftiest point in the zodiac). Anyway, that’s neither here nor there.

In this scene though, Rey hurts Kylo the most. When she calls him a murderous snake, his face becomes immediately crestfallen and his early cheerful questions fall away. He then asks her if she knows what happened between him and Luke. She then hurts him again, but he’s ready for it this time. What I love about how he handles his hurt though, is that he never attacks her or defends against her; he accepts her spears in his heart and lets her stab him over and over again. Rather than attacking back, he plays up the rising sexual tension between them (another reason I think he’s better socialized than TFA lets on, because this is not something a man as stunted as he is should be able to do with this level of dexterity) to seduce her instead. Rather than reading her mind, he looks deeply into her eyes and croons agreement with her, which immediately throws into doubt how much truth is in her barbs. He then reminds her of their encounter at the end of TFA, which shows how deeply that scene affected him. 

Then Rey does something for him which I think is very important, though I’m not sure she knows it--she validates him by asserting he is a monster. Remember, this guy just went through a scene with Snoke where Snoke told him he’s still a child in a mask. Rey acknowledges Kylo’s destructive power as a man, which reaffirms him right after Snoke has torn him down. Obviously this isn’t a healthy affirmation, but the point here is that Rey rebuilds what Snoke has torn apart. Kylo’s pride is beginning to heal because she sees and accepts the existence of the very real and powerful darkness within him here. And he, fully knowing himself and knowing how far gone he is, affirms her assertion. What I think is interesting here is that despite it seeming clear he’s hurt that she sees him as a monster, he doesn’t disagree with her assessment. It’s just that he seems to wish she’d see he’s more than “just” a monster--that rather than being a bogeyman, he’s a man--capable of both the monstrous and the altruistic. I think this is a sign that he wants her--and only her--to see him as “more” than he himself sees himself, which is a sign he’s beginning to realign with the “ideal” again because of her. Yet he can’t refute her assertion, because he’s not a dishonest person and that’s his own assessment of himself. It’ll take something more to pull him out of this. 

So yet again, between FC2 and FC3 we don’t get to see Kylo’s thoughts, but given how...deliberately...he’s staged himself in FC3, and how bizarre it is for him to be removing his shirt in the middle of the damn day, I’d say chances are higher on the “waiting around for the next connection to show off his assets to the bae” side of things than “just happened to be working out when Rey force skyped him” side of things. =P Plus the way he says “yeah, me too” to her before she sees the state he’s in just screams “liar.” He was waiting for her and hoping to connect again. =P

What I love about his reaction to Rey in FC3 is that he just doesn’t make anything easy on her--this boy has decided to seduce the pants off her and by golly he’s not giving her an inch. But what’s really cool about this is that he leaves it as subtext; he’s offering himself to her as feast for her eyes to devour, but he doesn’t try to make her uncomfortable, nor does he actively provoke her. FC3 is actually one of the deepest connections they make in the film, despite its silly beginning. She gets worked up and upset that he killed his father and begs him for an answer--he’s clearly moved to compassion by her pain, but given the restrictions on his ability to speak about his true motives, he can only offer her an insubstantial “I didn’t hate him.” This is the closest he’s come to being able to admit there was more going on with the Han scene than even we the viewers may know--I still lean toward the interpretation that he never wanted to kill Han, but that Snoke had made it clear that in order to “stay” with Snoke, if he and Han ever crossed paths, Kylo had to kill Han or he would lose his place. Of course, this doesn’t absolve Kylo of the consequences of his choice, but it does make the whole thing more nuanced than merely “Kylo is an evil villain who kills his dad for ‘reasons’.” Unfortunately, I’m not sure we’ll ever get to find out what was really going on because...Rey honestly doesn’t give two figs for why Kylo really killed Han, which...we’ll get into that more in the future Reylo post, lol. For now it’s enough to say that we can now reinterpret TFA through this new lens--Kylo’s anger and hurt with his father did not mean he hated him, and his desire to go home with his dad now that his dad had finally come for him was likely very real. If Han had come with Leia, I do wonder if Snoke would have had a chance and it just breaks my damn heart over and over again that they both ran away from their son and left him in Snoke’s hands rather than uniting their strengths and tearing the galaxy apart to get him back. 

But this small comment is as much as Kylo can give us; when Rey demands further explanation, he redirects the focus back to her. As I said before, he speaks to her in a sort of mirrored way--what he says about her is equally true about himself. He reminds her that her parents threw her away like garbage but she’s still unable to free herself from him. Now at this point, this guy knows nothing about her parents--he himself doesn’t find out the truth until he receives whatever is in his vision when they touch hands. All he knows is what he gleaned from her mind in TFA, which is her own loneliness from all the years of waiting. Of course, he’s intuitive, so his words hit the mark because in the end he’s right. But his words are still about himself as well. He tells her that she’s looking for her parents inside these alternative father figures (Han, Luke). The funny thing is...I don’t really think she sees a father figure in Luke. Han, for sure, she did. But Luke is more like...a legend to her, an unreal being. So what Kylo’s doing here is actually revealing his own actions--he is the one who was looking for Han inside Luke, and then Snoke. And of course you can’t replace the father with other father figures very easily, especially not when your own father is still alive and a very real presence in your life. 

He then asks her again if Luke told her want happened the night he burned the temple. What’s so weird here is the way Adam delivers the line. It’s not at all accusatory or angry--it’s tender and gentle. He’s trying to help Rey see something here, and this is why I think he’s trying to help her avoid the mistakes he himself made. He gives her his alternative version and warns her that there are men out there who will be afraid of her power and seek to destroy her. This is as much about Snoke as it is about Luke, but he hides it behind Luke. And then he gives her the most helpful advice he could have at the moment--he encourages her to get stronger by letting the past die. Now, he of course adds “kill it if you have to,” which most people I think would assume he’s talking about his own father. But I don’t think he is. I think this is yet another mirror into his own psyche--he intends to kill his own past by taking down Snoke. I’d read somewhere that Rian said Kylo was planning to kill Snoke by the time we reach the elevator scene before the red room sequence, and if that’s true, then it’s something he’s been considering for longer than the elevator scene. Snoke is his past, like Han and Luke, and the one who will be taking the full variant of his own advice is Kylo himself. However, his advice also gives Rey the push she needs to face her own dark side, and ironically he becomes what he wanted to be in TFA--her teacher and her guide to the “ways of the force,” or full integration, if you will.

What I love about this is that unlike Snoke (who wanted to control and direct Kylo as a tool), when Kylo sees Rey’s potential he wants to help her integrate and actualize herself to her full potential. His true motives are freaking altruistic and in her best interest. In a true sense he frees her from herself and her own prison by encouraging her to face the test head on. It’s just brilliant that Rian had him do this. Kylo does for Rey what Snoke would not do for him, and thus he helps transform her into the very thing that can save him in the end, and that can restore order and true balance to the galaxy. Simply by encouraging her to become a fully formed human being, simply by giving her the freedom to find what that means for herself, he opens the door at last to the light he’s been desperately seeking beneath his pretenses of darkness.

This leads us to FC4, which reiterates Kylo’s role as Rey’s mentor in the dark side--he listens patiently as she pours her heart out, and all he offers her is a gentle reminder that he’s here by her side and she’s not alone. He never once diminishes her achievement, and he’s completely supportive of her discovery, yet at the same time he doesn’t attempt to “preach” to her what her experience meant or lord his superior wisdom over her--at all times, he is just a supportive presence allowing her to interpret the experience for herself. And because he has freed her, she sees him in a whole new light--she sees that there is “more” to the monster than she she knew. To his compassion and support, she at last offers him the only thing that could ever have moved him--her affection and loyalty. You can see how much this moves him playing out on his face the minute she extends her hand to him. 

When she extends her hand, Kylo at last makes his choice. And this time he truly doesn’t hesitate--the minute her hand is offered, he whips that glove off and reaches for her. What’s remarkable about this moment, and what completely underscores it, is that we actually see him literally force project himself into the room with her; Luke actually sees him when he bursts in on them. Kylo clearly chooses his “side” and it’s to be with her, and that brings him to her. 

What happens next for him, sadly, we don’t get to see. But given how unsurprised he is to see her ship herself to him in her little coffin, I’d say he intuitively knew she’d come for him. Being the troll he is, and wanting to fool Snoke, he still has to give her a bit of trouble before they enter the throne room. But his expression when he sees her again is a bouncy, cocky one--he’s got his spunk back, and while he’s delighted that she came for him, he’s also leaning a bit toward the “why are you doing this to yourself you dummy” side of things. But I think we can assume at this point that whatever he saw in his own vision when their hands touched, it gave him just as much confidence as it gave her that things would work out if they were together. 

Before I leave the force connection section and head into the meat of their story in this film, I want to point out how important it is that Kylo believes their connection is natural and unconnected to Snoke. Kylo is as genuine as he can be under the circumstances, and he allowed himself to be more vulnerable than perhaps was wise. Rey rewarded his vulnerability with acceptance, and the sincerity between them is hugely important to Kylo. To have it tarnished by Snoke’s interference is a huge blow to what the force connection means to Kylo, and it has some seriously detrimental effects on how he handles Rey after the red room scene. But, hey, why not just get to the fun part and cease stalling?

Decision Point

So the elevator scene is mostly remarkable from a combined Reylo perspective, but I’ll briefly touch on it from Kylo’s end because there’s a few nuggets to enjoy here. Kylo’s body language is very self-contained and controlled, but his face is a different story. Clearly he’s trying to maintain his composure because he’s preparing for what he knows he has to do in the next sequence (take down the man who, only a few hours before, bested him handily the minute he even tried to rebel). He’s not nearly as gabby with Rey anymore--he’s now the more stoic character while she’s the talker. It’s super cute how they switch roles in this scene--she can’t resist talking away while he just listens. Still, his body language alone speaks volumes--he’s chosen her and now he’s openly adoring everything about her. She came for him, she dressed up for him, she’s looking at him like that--all of this serves to strengthen his resolve to be by her side at all costs. How warm and wonderful she is, how openly seductive, how natural--all of it is what he knows he wants for himself, more than any crusty old mentor. ;) He does offer her an alternative to her own naive vision of them, but honestly...I’m not so sure his vision is wrong. I’ll talk more about the visions in the future Reylo post, but I suspect their visions weren’t from the same time period. Even hers might not be. i think they both may have just assumed the visions were about the near future, when really they’re about Episode IX’s events. Or hers were of the near future while his weren’t. But more on that in a future post. For now it’s sufficient to say that her response to him in the elevator sequence is more than enough to bolster his courage for the next trial.

There is a lot going on subtextually in the red room sequence, but before it even starts there’s this wonderful little moment where Kylo gently guides Rey forward with his hand on her elbow. This is traditionally a reassuring position, and this is reiterated when he releases her--he doesn’t shove her or push her forward, merely allows his hand to fall and hover in the air slightly before he kneels before Snoke. Kylo’s body language is really important throughout this scene, and the interplay between him and Snoke is actually the crux of the scene, though the strength of his bond with Rey is also important. I’ll be dealing with his bond with Rey in the Reylo post; for now I want to focus on the Kylo vs. Snoke dynamic, and how that will influence the proposal sequence.

The first thing Snoke does here is restore Kylo’s “place” as the “good son.” Remember, Snoke had stripped Kylo of this previously. But this restoration is actually meant to tear apart Kylo’s bond with Rey--Snoke knows Kylo thought his connection with Rey was genuine, and he’s making it clear that even in this Kylo was merely Snoke’s pawn. It’s a reminder to Kylo that he has no agency and no way out. He’s a bird in Snoke’s cage, and anything that happens to him is at Snoke’s pleasure. 

As I mentioned in the earlier “Welcome to the Dark Side” section, Snoke stupidly sees Rey as yet another means to twist the knife in Kylo’s side. Like any manipulator, he’s trying to use Kylo’s attachments against him to further Snoke’s own goals. This is where he underestimates Kylo, because he’s looking down on him and on the power a connection--a real connection--with Rey means to him. 

Throughout the conversation with Rey, Snoke is using his words to actually needle Kylo. Snoke has no interest in Rey other than as a tool to tear Kylo apart. He knows Kylo is affected by Rey (how could he not when he reads Kylo’s mind), and so he purposely twists the knife, pulls it out, and stabs it back in to twist it again as much as he can in this scene. I know Snoke comes across as a bit over the top and cartoony in this scene, but I think some of that is because he’s really playing it over the top in order to make a point to Kylo. 

Sweet Rey of course defends Kylo, because she truly does believe in him, but Snoke makes light of her assertions. Here is where he cuts Kylo to the point where doubt begins to form again in Kylo’s mind--he asserts that he is the one who bridged them together (which honestly I still call BS on--I firmly believe the force connected them during the interrogation scene and again during the snow fight, but I’ll explore that in the Reylo post). Regardless, what this does is place a kernel of doubt inside Kylo about the legitimacy of his connection to Rey (Snoke is really good at this crap; this is probably how he got Kylo to doubt his family too, with these tiiiiiny little “truth” bombs). On the surface it looks like Snoke is trying to deflate Rey’s belief in Kylo, but in reality he’s cutting down Kylo’s belief in Rey. The reason we know this is because when Snoke speaks of their minds being bridged by him, we don’t cut to Rey--we cut to Kylo. It is Kylo’s reaction to this that matters, not Rey’s (mostly because I think Rey, like me, knows this is BS and knows “where” their connection came from--it’s the very connection that she, as I mentioned in my Rey post, fled to Luke to figure out in the first place--a connection forged by their encounters in TFA). But Kylo has had to deal with so much betrayal in his life that this (as Snoke surely knows) is a blow to his faith in Rey. Rey hasn’t had as many betrayals as Kylo (and I’m really not sure she considers her parents’ situation a betrayal per se, honestly), so she’s hardier in this sense than he is and more resilient to Snoke’s little truth bombs. 

Snoke then twists the knife further by saying Kylo’s vulnerability and offer of connection to Rey was merely a honey trap to lure Rey to Snoke. This hurts Kylo on a completely different level (as Snoke surely knows)--that his very desire to connect with Rey has brought her into danger and potentially this revelation by Snoke will destroy Rey’s faith in Kylo. In this moment, Kylo could potentially lose Rey simply because he doesn’t know for sure if she has faith in him that’s stronger than Snoke’s barbs. (Of course she’ll prove she does later in this very scene when she continues to call him by name.)

We’re only allowed one small glimpse at Kylo’s reaction when Rey’s mind is probed by Snoke, and it’s the one you’d expect--he doesn’t want the bae to be hurt like this, but he knows he can’t do anything yet (Snoke will just destroy him if he tries). He’s forced to endure her torment while doing everything he can to remain a blank slate. The only way he can do this is by turning his eyes away from her pain, but his resolve is hardened.

We don’t get to see much of his reaction to Rey trying to fight Snoke until Rey takes his saber and Snoke sends it back to him. When the saber lands at Kylo’s feet, I’m fairly sure that’s when the idea at last comes to him on how he’s going to take Snoke down. He just has to wait for the right opportunity now. We get a very deliberate shot of his face looking from the saber to Snoke with determination. But we get a hint as to his plan during the Snoke diatribe as he places Rey before Kylo as a sacrificial lamb--Kylo’s eyes shift from Snoke to her face, and the expression within them is even in this moment revealing of his true feelings for her. He will not betray her. 

Snoke tells him here to complete his training and fulfill his destiny. Kylo takes him at his word. To fully actualize himself and escape the underworld, a sacrifice must be made--and Kylo intends to make it. What I love about this part of the scene is that when Kylo at last stands, he looks at Rey and tells her softly that he knows what he has to do. Rey’s fear probably breaks his heart, but his words were all he could offer her in that moment in order to reassure her and still keep Snoke in the dark. Yet again, his soul is in his eyes--he never looks at Snoke even once; he locks his eyes on her face, and his expression is still gentle and determined. As Snoke’s continuing his diatribe, Kylo’s eyes remain steady on Rey’s face, and I’m sure in that moment she understood that he was going to stand at her side. 

And here is where Kylo at last fulfills his destiny, foreshadowed at the very beginning of TLJ when he stood against Snoke--he not only “completes his training and fulfills his destiny” but he also takes his own advice to “let the past die and kill it if he has to.” Snoke is his past, Rey is his future, and it is here that he makes the choice to reach for freedom. He at last steps outside of the box of “son” to enter the beginning of the journey into manhood. This rebellion is the last rebellion.

Kylo’s choice is rewarded by Rey’s beaming “you’re getting laid tonight” face, which is a perfect segue into their absolutely impeccable synchronicity when they turn to fight the remaining Praetorian guards. There’s not much in the fight that’s particularly remarkable as far as Kylo’s individual psychology other than his desire to protect Rey and his faith in her abilities. (Though it’s funny that she’s like this little feisty terrier dodging around and stabbing anything that might hurt him lol.)

What I think this sequence establishes is that Rey is the first thing Kylo has ever truly wanted for himself. She is not a legacy imposed upon him, or some other mentor’s wishes or desires being forced on him. All she really has to offer is herself and a connection--and this is something Kylo has been hungry for all his life. Because she is offering him the deepest, truest thing he’s ever wanted, by pursuing and accepting her offer he is at last able to begin the path to actualizing himself. This desire for someone who loves him completely is something that’s reflected in Rey’s own desires for herself, and something that makes them deeply compatible as future romantic partners. They both are looking for someone who will tear the galaxy apart for them, who will come for them no matter the cost, and who will not place other priorities above them. This, they find in each other, and for the briefest instant they both get to taste how good the world would be if they could remain at each other’s sides. 

But all good things must come to an end in the second film in a trilogy, and things break down when the fight comes to its conclusion, despite the wonderful teamwork between Rey and Kylo and the hint of possibility their partnership offers the future of this world.

The Botched Proposal

Before we dive into the botched marriage proposal (and yes, I interpreted it as a marriage proposal because...that’s what it was--Kylo’s a “go big or go home” type lol; all or nothing if you will), let’s reiterate a few things going into it:

Kylo just took the biggest gamble he’s ever taken in his life for a girl he barely knows. If what he’s done gets out to the First Order, he could be killed as a traitor. 

The seed of doubt as to the strength of Kylo’s connection to Rey has been sown by Snoke’s pronouncements in the red room sequence.

Han already failed to bring Kylo back by using the “just come home” method. Kylo knows he can’t return to either the light side or the dark--with his actions in the red room sequence, he has rejected both sides of his legacy and must find a third option in order to survive.

The proposal sequence is the first time Kylo has ever tried to make a decision for himself in his life. Because he’s a n00b at this, what he does is try to merge his old fantasy (surpassing Vader and ruling the galaxy) with his new desire (have a life with Rey). It’s not that his old fantasy is particularly attractive to him, I think; it’s just that Kylo literally has no clue what else he can do because of how much damage he’s done. On top of this, I don’t think he’s confident in Rey’s feelings for him--Rey only recently shifted from calling him a monster. He’s likely a bit insecure about what it is about him that Rey suddenly finds attractive and doesn’t have the confidence to just offer himself to her and let her decide; instead he tries to offer something greater than just himself to her--the greatest thing he can think of, which is power.

I think of it this way: Kylo probably knows what Rey really wants (for him to just drop everything and come home with him). But he also knows a few things Rey doesn’t: 

For one, it’s going to be tough for them to escape the First Order together.

For another, he’d have to basically kill all of the First Order high command in order to get control of the troops. After all, as we’ll learn later, Hux is actually the head of the military, not Kylo. 

If they manage to save the fleet, Kylo is going to be put in irons and likely tried for war crimes. The punishment for that is either death or long-term imprisonment. Kylo wants to live with Rey, not live the rest of his life in a tiny prison. 

Given these factors, it’s pretty obvious why Kylo wouldn’t be keen to join the resistance and help Rey’s friends. With this all in mind, I think it’s easier to understand why Kylo botches the proposal the way he does. 

After having killed both his light side father (Han) and his dark side father (Snoke), Kylo is now ready to forge his own path. This is where he finally completes the idea he began with his advice to Rey in FC3--rather than just letting his personal past die, he broadens the philosophy to include the political and societal as well. It’s time to let everything from the past die and completely start over from scratch. This includes the sith, the jedi, Snoke, Luke, the resistance, etc. Kylo doesn’t say the First Order, but likely that’s because he intends to take over the First Order and use it to accomplish his goal.  

Now, this is a horrible idea. Because the past never truly dies; it’s a burden that is carried forward thanks to the survival of our DNA and the cultural legacies and tragedies brought forward and passed down from our ancestors. Our ultimate job isn’t to burn it all to the ground and start over, but rather to integrate and revive the past so that it can be useful to the present and future. But Kylo doesn’t know this because he’s a n00b at self-actualization. Unfortunately, Rey only managed to get herself started on the path to integration hours previously, and thus she has literally nothing to offer him to counter this idea. 

After espousing this new ideology, he tells Rey that he wants her to join him. This is his clumsy admission that everything he’s done and everything he’s thrown away was for her, in order to find a way to be by her side. The only thing he can offer is this path, because right now he can’t see any alternative. Notice, he doesn’t tell her to join the First Order--his goal is to create something “new” with her, a new order for the galaxy unstained by the legacy and burden of the past.

Of course, Rey, being further integrated than Kylo, knows something is very wrong about this offer, but she’s not yet able to articulate why it’s wrong or offer an alternative solution for him. Now his reaction to her reluctance here is rather interesting. He becomes agitated with her for the first and only time in the two films. On first viewing I think it’s hard to understand why he’s raising his voice to her here, but when I keep in mind where his mindset is (he’s just sacrificed his entire life for her, and her body language and words are implying that she’s about to reject him), it’s pretty clear that his agitation is fear-based. He’s afraid that their connection means less to her than it does to him, and that he’s about to lose her (which he is). But because he’s kind of stupid, he tries to pressure her rather than backing off and saying “well, what should we do next, my dear?”

Rey herself doesn’t seem to be offended or afraid of his outburst, which reiterates to me that she understands his fear and that he’s not trying to hurt her. He then tries to convince her that she’s alone by reminding her about her parents. This is a fairly manipulative tactic, but it’s not done out of malice--it’s done because he’s desperate to keep her by his side. Again, he just sacrificed everything for her sake. Literally everything he’d worked for in the past 6 or so years. To lose her now, after he was finally able to accomplish this for her, is likely a horrifying prospect to him. 

After pressuring her into admitting the truth about her parents, he places his final card: her parents may have been shit (and I just love the way Adam delivers this line; it gives me the chills how much disdain and disgust he has for what her parents did to her), and she’s nothing in the grand scheme of things (I don’t think he means she’s nothing to the resistance or her friends, but rather that there’s no “grand legacy of destiny” for her to uncover for herself), but she is not small to him. In fact, she is so large a presence in his life that he literally threw away everything he’d ever wanted for her sake. Now, of course, this is a rather self-centered perspective (like, really Kylo, you’re not that great a catch right now, sexy 8-pack or not =P) and he’s still being manipulative here because he’s trying to keep her at all costs, but there is truth in his words here: this story isn’t her story (at least not yet). 

Consider this: not a single thing in this story has actually been related to her own quest or her own desires. She just gets caught up inside other people’s stories (really the larger meta-story of Kylo, Snoke, Luke, Leia, and Han). Even Finn for the most part is “caught up” in this larger meta-story. And yet Rey (like Finn, and like Rose) is the key element to revitalizing this dead story--she must make the story her own and forge a new chapter in it. This is exactly what she has done by drawing Kylo to her--now she, not a Skywalker, not a Solo, is the centerpiece of the story, simply because she has connected herself with the Skywalkers and decided to draw one of them to her. But this isn’t something that’s fully evident yet to Kylo, and certainly not to her, and thus despite the manipulative nature of the words he stabs her with, there is still truth in them to cut her. 

When this tactic fails as well, he has nothing left to offer her, and his pride and hubris won’t let him back down. All he can do is extend his hand again and reiterate his request. When she still hesitates, he gives her the most plaintive, desperate “please” I have ever heard in my life and probably shatters her heart into a million pieces. The remainder of his existence depends on her answer, and she has to say no. 

But rather than talk to him about this, Rey makes a huge mistake. She holds her hand out in a feint to make him think she’ll take his hand when in reality she’s calling her saber to herself. This was probably the worst choice she could have made, though it’s understandable why she did so (Kylo’s a freaking powder keg, who knows how he’d have handled a full Elizabeth Bennett-style rejection lol), but this does to Kylo exactly what so many of Snoke’s truth bombs had done to him in the past--it confirms that Snoke was right. Their connection was a false creation crafted by Snoke, it wasn’t real, she would never stand at his side, she would never choose him as he would choose her. 

This sends Kylo spiraling back down into the underworld. He tries to stop her from taking the saber, and it’s a testament to how balanced he now is (and how much darker she herself is) that the saber is torn between them and splits. They are now equals in ever sense of the word, and that is important for the future. 

Sadly, when Rey rejects him, she leaves him nothing but the position he’s been groomed to take by others. He now has no choice but to return to the dark side and try to pursue the now dismally inadequate fantasy of “surpassing Vader and ruling the galaxy alone.” Kylo’s true desire was to break free of this dichotomy with Rey, but her rejection leaves him with nothing but his legacy or despair. Although he wanted to form a new place for himself, he just ends up falling back into the tangled web of the “story” of the other side of his family. Rather than standing on his own, he’ll now become part of that “dark side” story. How much further he’ll fall now is anyone’s guess, but he’ll be falling fully aware of everything he’s lost until Rey can stop his descent with a proper third path that gives him what he truly desires--freedom from the burden of his legacy and a place by Rey’s side. This time, the offer will have to come from her. 

Despair on the Heels of Resignation

We don’t get to see Kylo again until Hux finds him sprawled on the ground in the throne room. There are two possible variants of this scenario, and I’m not sure we’ll ever know which was true:

Rey is the only one who awakened before Hux’s arrival, and thus she’s the one who returned his saber to him. 

Kylo awakens before Hux’s arrival, and decides to “stage the scene of his defeat at Rey’s hands” in order to keep his place in the First Order.

I lean toward #2 myself, given how prepared Kylo seems to be with excuses and reasons for Hux. So likely he waited until Hux checked to see if he was dead, then he magically awakened in perfect time to give Hux the “story” of how “the girl” (love that she’s back to being “the girl”) managed to “magically” best himself and Snoke and all the Praetorian guard by herself. =P Hux, predictably, smells a rat, but Kylo shuts his immediate questions down by threatening Hux’s life and taking something more important from Hux--his army. Hux now has bigger things to worry about than how the hell an upstart kid managed to best two powerful force users and their guards. 

Still, I think it’s clear that Rey’s rejection cut Kylo to the core and he’s now completely unhinged and unmoored. He has no idea what he wants to do or accomplish; he’s just a burning ball of rage, and he regresses quickly into a childlike fanaticism. His decision-making becomes impaired to the point where Hux has to course correct for him. He becomes myopically focused on his own past and destroying every last remnant of it. Yet all of this is really just a cover up for how hurt and betrayed he feels by Rey’s rejection, which is of course no excuse for his actions. =P One shouldn’t go around blowing people up because the girl you like wouldn’t go to the dance with you. =P

I do think this this is why he suddenly becomes insanely angry at Luke to the point of irrationality; he was much more collected about Luke prior to losing Rey. But, having lost the only thing he ever wanted for himself outside of his family’s love and approval, he now turns his venom toward the last person standing that he feels justified to hate: Luke. Luke reminds him that hope isn’t lost and that he’s not the end of the line.

Kylo knows exactly who Luke’s referencing, and he foolishly asserts that he’ll destroy “her” and Luke himself and “all of it.” This is quite an interesting line because it implies he’s fallen into despair and nihilism for the first time in his life. This is genuine nihilism talking. Because when he destroys “all of it,” he’ll have no reason to live. Fortunately trolly Luke doesn’t intend to let him end up that way, and so he makes a sacrifice in order to be part of what will save and restore Kylo in the end, placing the remainder of his faith in Rey to do the rest.

Kylo ultimately fails to destroy Luke himself, robbing him of that sin as well as the sin of killing his mother. Luke protected him from that at least, and paved the way for Kylo to return in time. The resistance manages to escape, and Kylo is left to infiltrate an abandoned base. There he finds his father’s dice, falling to his knees to pick them up. It is here that the last spark of hope reaches him--a force connection! With Rey! While Snoke is dead! He looks up, and his face is so full of hope that maybe, just maybe, she’s changed her mind.

Yet her impassive expression says otherwise, and then she shuts the door. It’s telling that Kylo flinches here: her second, final rejection drives the nail into the coffin of his dream and it shatters completely, represented by the dice disappearing in his hands. All hope is lost, and he sinks down further in resignation that will inevitably lead to despair.

And here is where we leave our fearless Supreme Leader--on his knees, having lost everything. It’s actually a place where you leave heroes normally, in the second film of a trilogy. =P The second film is always the “all hope is lost” moment--yet it is Kylo who carries this narrative beat, not Rey. It is not her pain we focus on; it is his. This says to me that despite his “narrative position” as Rey’s antagonist, he is probably the protagonist of the story--whether he can transform it into a comedy or is unable to overcome his flaws and it remains a tragedy is up for Episode IX to determine. For now, he has sunk to the bottom, and it’s going to take one heck of a reckoning to get him a third chance. He’d better be willing to take it this time. There won’t be a fourth.

What’s in a Name?

Just a quick little side note, but honestly I’m pretty torn about how I feel about Rey trying to push Kylo back into “Ben” as a name. I get the sentiment--in a way it’s revitalizing his name and restoring it to him, but at the same time, I feel like it’s just Rey being in denial about his dark side and trying to “separate” him from it. So I’m kind of torn about how I want his name situation to unfold in Episode IX. 

Personally, my preference is a renaming ceremony where she gives him a fresh first name and restores either the Solo/Skywalkers/or Skywalker-Solo name to him. That would be a proper marriage of the “old” and the “new,” which would encompass all that he is. But honestly I don’t know what way Rian and JJ intended for us to take Rey’s resurrection of Kylo’s old name, so who knows how it’ll unfold. A renaming ceremony at the end of Episode IX would just be my preference, but I’ll dive into this more in my conclusion post to this First Impressions series. For now, I think this post has gone on for long enough. =P

To everyone who made it this far, congratulations: you’ve read a fifth of a novel (17k words!) attempting to dissect a fictional character. ;) You get a virtual cookie. For everyone who waited so patiently for this post, I’m sorry I took so long, and I hope my turtle self will be able to scuttle over the finish line for the remainder of the posts sooner rather than later. =)

Until next time!

[jpaulfontan]

Preaching in All Circumstances

Preach the word, preach the cross, preach redemption to a lost and dying world. Lift your voice, unashamed, of the Gospel of His name! Hello, You’ve found the senior adult Sunday school class of Corinth Baptist Church in Singleton, Ms. The title of today’s lesson is….

Preaching in All Circumstances

This will be our 1stin a 4-lesson series under the general heading of: Facing Adversity

We’ll be drawing Scripture from the 24th, 25th, & 26th chapters of the Book of Acts.

Now, I don't know about you all,

but for me, when several names at

a time start getting thrown around

together in Scripture, it gets hard

for me to keep them all straight;

especially when I'm not real

familiar with all of them.

So I want to begin today's lesson

with a sort of Who's Who.

I want to try to keep them in the

order they're mentioned in the

Scripture we'll be covering today.

1st, then, is Ananias ben Nebedeus.

He was the high priest in Jerusalem

who was intent on having Paul killed.

By the way, "ben" means "son of" so

Ananias was the son of Nebedeus.

It was Ananias who hired and

accompanied Tertullus to Caesarea

hoping to have Paul convicted and

put to death.

This Tertullus character is described

by historians as a sort of forensic

lawyer who was familiar with the

various Roman legal procedures.

He was known as an articulate orator.

It's generally accepted that he

himself was a Hellenistic Jew,

(a person born Jewish and very much

influenced by the Greek culture).

He was probably from the North

African city of Alexandria.

Next to appear in our lesson is

a man simply addressed as Felix.

At the time that Ananias and Tertullus

made the journey to Caesarea, Felix

was the Roman governor over Judea

and Samaria.

Felix was formerly a slave but was

promoted by Claudius Caesar to the

office of governor.

Felix's wife, Drusilla is mentioned

in these verses, and I have learned

to never ignore seemingly

unimportant passages.

Felix was attracted to Drusilla,

a daughter of Herod Agrippa I.

The fact that Drusilla was already

married made no difference to Felix.

He enticed her away from her husband,

Azizus, and they later married.

She and their son, Marcus Antonius

Agrippa, died in the eruption of

Mount Vesuvius....Pompeii...

I hope y'all find this stuff as

interesting as I do; it gets better.

Then comes Festus.

Porcius Festus is the Roman governor

who succeeded Felix.

This is the man who tried to persuade

Paul to return to Jerusalem for trial

by the Sanhedrin.

This was Paul's ticket to Rome because

it was in answer to Festus' suggestion

that Paul appealed to be judged by the

Emperor.

And, it was Festus who had the very

difficult task of detailing the

charges against him that would be

read to Agustus Caesar.

Next comes King Agrippa II and Bernice.

King Agrippa II was a puppet king who

ruled under the Roman supervision of Israel.

Now, King Agrippa I had 5 children.

One of Agrippa II's sisters was Bernice.

These two were in an open incestuous

relationship.

Care to guess who another of their

sisters was?

If you haven't already guessed it, it

was none other than Drusilla; the wife

of Felix.....remember Felix?

(I told you keeping all these folks

straight wasn't so easy!)

Yep, Agrippa Jr., Drusilla, and Bernice

were brothers and sisters.

And that brings me to the last of the

characters I wanted to showcase for

you.

Augustus Caesar.

Oh, sure, he was the Roman Emperor.

But, very often, names and titles get

all jumbled up in the reading of

history.

The word, "agustus" is a word that, in

Latin, means;

"what is venerable, or worthy of

honor and reverence."

That sounds to me like a description

of God.

It's how most of the Roman Emperors

preferred to be thought of by their

subjects; as gods.

So, as it turns out, Agustus was a title bestowed to reigning emperors

by their Senate.

That all began during the days Jesus

still walked as a man on this earth.

It was 1st given to Caesar Octavianus.

So, who was Agustus Caesar?

It was Nero, the guy who burned most

of Rome and blamed it on the Christians.

It was Nero who ordered the Christians

be put to death; and regardless of

whether Paul's murder was ordered

directly or indirectly by Nero is

irrelevant.

I haven't been able to find out if

Paul ever actually got the opportunity

to appeal to Caesar, but in light of

what I've learned, I doubt it. One thing’s for sure, God ordered Paul’s steps even when he was in Roman custody. God’s plan and God’s truth, the gospel, cannot be thwarted by Satan or the schemes of man. What I hope to do in this lesson is to reveal for us how God’s providence was at work in both the life of Paul as well as in ours. That providence is to be revealed in our lives both before and after we embraced Jesus as Savior. It’s just good for us to remember this as we walk through our lives. God will never lead us where He can’t keep us!

And with that, let's get into the 1st

section of our lesson.

Section 1 God Guides His Servant to Preach to Others

Acts 24:1-10

(This is The Accusation against Paul)

1. After five days Ananias

the high priest came down

with some elders and a lawyer

named Tertullus.

These men presented their case

against Paul to the governor.

2. When he was called in,

Tertullus began to accuse

him and said:

“Since we enjoy great peace

because of you,

and reforms are taking place

for the benefit of this nation

by your foresight,

3. we acknowledge this in

every way and everywhere,

most excellent Felix,

with utmost gratitude.

4. However, so that I will

not burden you any further,

I beg you in your graciousness

to give us a brief hearing.

5. For we have found this man

to be a plague,

an agitator among all the Jews

throughout the Roman world,

and a ringleader of the sect

of the Nazarenes!

6. He even tried to desecrate

the temple,

so we apprehended him and

wanted to judge him according

to our law.

7. But Lysias the commander

came and took him from our hands

with great force,

8. commanding his accusers to

come to you.

By examining him yourself you

will be able to discern all

these things we are accusing

him of.”

9. The Jews also joined in

the attack,

alleging that these things were so.

(And, this is the beginning of

Paul’s Defense before Felix)

10. When the governor motioned

to him to speak, Paul replied:

“Because I know you have been

a judge of this nation for many

years,

I am glad to offer my defense

in what concerns me. There's no doubt

in my mind

that God

had His hand on Paul

from a very young

age; as he himself implies in the 1st chapter of his letter to the Galatians.

Every aspect

of his life

had led him to his

Damascus moment.

The Lord had brought him

to a realization of truth,

groomed him for ministry,

instilled in him

complete trust,

courage,

and an assurance

that everything

he would encounter

was in accord with

God's plan.

God's providence can

easily be seen

working in Paul's life

before and long after

he embraced Jesus

as his Savior.

Ananias,

along with his high-

powered lawyer

may have thought

they were going to

go before Felix,

the governor and

make short work of Paul,

but God had not yet

completed the work

to be done through Paul.

As this chapter

in the Book of Acts

continues to unfold,

Felix deferred the matter

claiming there was

more evidence to be

heard.

But, there was something

that caught my attention

down in verse 26.

It says, more or less,

that Felix was greedy

and hoped a

large bribe would

come from Paul to be

set free.

Apparently he hoped for

the bribe for two years.

I just have to believe

God put this in Felix's

heart.

(And, if y'all didn't

know it already,

one of my favorite

verses of Scripture comes

from Proverbs 21;

"A king’s heart

is like

streams of water

in the Lord’s hand:

He directs it

wherever He chooses.") Make no mistake, God IS in control!

Our Bibles tell us

that Felix often

called for Paul over

those two years,

and you can bet

they weren't

talking about the weather.

You know,

in Luke 21:14-15,

Jesus said to

His disciples;

"14. Settle it therefore

in your hearts,

not to meditate before

what ye shall answer:

15. for I will give you

a mouth and wisdom,

which all your adversaries

shall not be able

to gainsay nor resist."

….I will give you a

Mouth ANDWisdom…..

My Lord!

Earlier, while still

in the city of Corinth,

Paul had written a letter

that we now call the

Book of Romans.

In it he had penned;

"If God be for us,

who can be against us?"

He knew perfectly well

that the things that

came to mind while he

witnessed or while he

defended himself could

be spoken because Jesus

had already promised that

He would give him the

wisdom and the words

he needed at the time

he needed them.

Let’s move on to the next section of our lesson.

Section 2

God Sends His Servant Where He Wishes

Acts 25:9-12;

9. Then Festus,

wanting to do a favor

for the Jews,

replied to Paul,

“Are you willing

to go up to Jerusalem,

there to be tried

before me on these charges? ”

10. But Paul said:

“I am standing

at Caesar’s tribunal,

where I ought to be tried.

I have done no wrong

to the Jews,

as even you

can see very well.

11. If then

I am doing wrong,

or have done anything

deserving of death,

I do not refuse to die,

but if there is nothing

to what these men

accuse me of,

no one can give me up to them.

I appeal to Caesar! ”

12. After Festus conferred

with his council,

he replied,

“You have appealed to Caesar;

to Caesar you will go! ”

If you'll remember

from my introduction

for this lesson,

I gave you a

"Who's Who" list of

the various people

who would be involved

in the Scriptures

we're covering today.

Festus was the

Roman governor that

replaced Felix.

This was two years

after Lysias had

rescued Paul from

the Jews just outside

the gates of the

Temple in Jerusalem.

So, in deciding what

to do about Paul,

this new governor,

Festus,

being a politician,

was obviously trying to

do what would be to

his own best advantage.

The phrase in verse 9,

"...wanting to do a favor

for the Jews...",

shows us that he was

wrangling for an

advantageous position

with the people that he

had been appointed to

govern.

Festus knew perfectly well

that the Jews had every

intention of assassinating

Paul on the journey

to Jerusalem.

And, whether they killed

Paul on the journey

to Jerusalem,

or the Sanhedrin

had him stoned

once they got him

there,

either way,

it was a win-win

for Festus.

The Temple priests

would see to it that

Festus was looked on

favorably by the

Jewish nation.

But, given the

wisdom of God,

Paul answered Festus

by declaring that

he was currently

being tried in a

Roman court

for charges that

he was innocent of.

He told Festus

to his face

that he knew

perfectly well

that he was

innocent of the

charges the Jews

had brought

against him.

He said that

he was right

where he should be,

given the fact that

he was a Roman citizen.

He told Festus that

he wasn't afraid to

die, but if there

was no proof of any

wrongdoing on his part,

there was no Roman

official that could

hand him over to the

the authorities of a

foreign court.

Then he boldly demanded

his right to appeal his

case to Caesar himself.

Obviously,

Festus had

at his disposal,

lawyers who he

depended on

to ensure he didn't

step out of line

with Roman law.

This governor was

weighing his options

looking for a way to

gain favorable advantage

with the Jewish People.

Nevertheless,

he had to be careful

not to violate the

laws pertaining to

Roman citizens.

Recorded in the

New Testament,

Roman officials

cringed

at the thought of

violating the rights

of fellow citizens;

probably because the

consequences would

be too severe......

their own deaths!

After conferencing

with his advisors,

Felix was left with

no other option

than to grant Paul's

demand to be sent to

Rome where he could

take his case to

Caesars' court.

God meant Paul was

going to Rome and

no one was going to

prevent that from

happening.

You know,

God was protecting

Paul from his enemies

by having him in the

custody of the Romans.

If the Jews, bent on

killing him, had gotten

to Paul, it would have

probably been the ax

for the soldiers who

were assigned to guard

him. And later, when he finally did get to Rome, he was protected by Roman guards while he lived under house arrest there too. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s get into the final section of our lesson for today.

Section 3

God Controls His

Servant’s Circumstances

Acts 26:27-32;

27. King Agrippa,

do you believe the prophets?

I know you believe.”

28. Then Agrippa

said to Paul,

“Are you going to

persuade me

to become a Christian

so easily? ”

29. “I wish before God,”

replied Paul,

“that whether easily

or with difficulty,

not only you

but all who

listen to me today

might become as I am...

except for these chains.”

30. So the king, the governor,

Bernice, and those

sitting with them got up,

31. and when they had left

they talked with each other

and said,

“This man is doing nothing

that deserves death or chains.”

32. Then Agrippa

said to Festus,

“This man could

have been released

if he had not

appealed to Caesar.”

I want to stop right here and have you compare verse 28 between this translation and that of the King James. I just read to you the rendering; … “Are you going to

persuade me

to become a Christian

so easily? ”… In the King James it says; …”Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.”…. To me, these two

quotes from King Agrippa

mean entirely different

things.

They seem to portray

entirely different

attitudes from the

King.

The 1st one seems

to suggest that

Agrippa was saying

he would not be so

easily convinced

where the 2nd

gives the hope

that he doesn't

completely disregard

what Paul is saying

to him.

But to be fair to

King Agrippa,

both of these verses

could also indicate that

he was being the

consummate politician

here.

Could his statement in

either verse possibly be

considered a side-step?

Perhaps a way of avoiding

giving a straight answer?

I mean,

on the one hand,

to declare an unbelief

in the prophets

would have probably

caused an uprising

from the Jews

under his leadership.

On the other,

if he had affirmed

his belief in the prophets,

right then and there,

he may have seemed to

have been

just as

out of his mind

as Paul

to this

Gentile Governor,

Felix.

I would like to believe,

that when we get to heaven,

we'll discover there,

Agrippa & Bernice,

Festus,

Felix,

and all of the

others who heard

the gospel from Paul

during his

two year stay

there in

Caesarea.

The Bible doesn't

tell us that they

died lost.

Anyway, I just felt

like God would have wanted me to point

out this difference

to y'all.

Perhaps it'll give

you something in His

Word to ponder and

meditate on.

One thing's for sure,

just witnessing to

people can't persuade

them to become

Christians;

it takes a

work of God

in their hearts.

But God

does that work

through the

proclamation

of the gospel

of Christ.

Paul had written

in his letter

to the Romans,

"And how shall they

believe in him

of whom they have

not heard!

and how shall they

hear without a preacher!

and how shall they preach,

except they be sent?"

God has a plan, people!

The part of His plan

that we are

living in right now

is called,

among other things,

the time of the Gentiles.

The Jews have been

and

always will be

God's chosen people.

But, right now,

He's building

His church.

It's made up of

Jews and Gentiles

alike.

And He's doing that

in partnership with

His saints; we

carry out His

Great Commission by

being His witnesses,

and He brings the

increase by touching

the hearts of those who

hear the gospel.

Moving on....

It was God's providence

that Paul would be

given the opportunity

to share the gospel

with kings.

As Festus,

the Roman Governor,

sat with King Agrippa

and Bernice,

listening to Paul,

he dismissed him as

a nutcase.

But it wasn't that

easy for Agrippa.

Paul had pointedly

asked the King if

he believed the prophets

of old.

He even declared to

the king that he knew

he did.

He boldly declared

that the king knew

the truth of what Paul

was telling him

about Jesus.

The prophets,

as Agrippa well knew,

had

foretold everything

Paul was now declaring

about the life,

the death,

and the resurrection of

the Lord Jesus Christ.

Look, Paul had a

crystal clear

understanding of the

difficulties and the challenges

of presenting

the gospel

to both the Jews

and to the Gentiles.

The Gentiles prided

themselves on wisdom;

and the Jews, well,

they placed their hopes

in supernatural power.

On the face of it,

the idea of the cross

of Jesus as Messiah,

to them,

seemed like foolishness

and weakness.

(?) And, the very idea

of Jesus somehow being

brought back to life

after His brutal scourging

and crucifixion

three days later?

Well, that was just as

unbelievable and

equally as foolish.

Yet, that's exactly

what the Gospel is;

it's God's wisdom and

strength on display

for the whole world

to see.

Paul never backed down

from its fundamental

truth.

He gave everything

he had

for this message

to go forward.

He stood before

Kings, High Priests,

and Governors in chains,

enduring their criticism

in the hope that

everyone who heard

the gospel through him

would believe

just as he had.

That's a great goal

for us to set in our

own lives;

for everyone that we share

a meaningful conversation

with to be supernaturally

compelled to embrace

Jesus as Lord!

As we go through our lives following Jesus, we may be ridiculed, mocked, falsely accused, and, perhaps, even jailed. The times for us in this country are definitely changing. But whatever comes, we just have to hold on to the same truths that Paul did.

I believe with all my heart that God guides our steps so we can preach this gospel of Jesus Christ to others. I believe God plants us where He wants us to be. And, I believe He is absolutely in control over all of our circumstances. Let me end with this statement of faith: God continuously guides His people, both collectivly and individually where He has called them to carry out the mission He has given them. God carved out Paul’s path and protected him amidst false accusations, being unjustly detained, and the constant threat of being killed by his accusers. God also sent His Son, Jesus, who humbled Himself by enduring false accusations and an undeserved death sentence so that we might be saved. Knowing this should compel us to be concerned for the salvation of others. God providentially connects

us with people who don’t know Jesus so we can share Jesus’ story with them and they might believe and be saved. Let’s pray….

[xtruss]

WITH QUEEN ELIZABETH'S ROYAL FAMILY ROCKED BY SCANDAL, PRINCE CHARLES BECOMES THE POWER BEHIND THE THRONE

By Diane Clehane, December 21, 2019

The latest British royal drama has more plot twists than the juiciest episode of The Crown, the hit Netflix series chronicling the life of Queen Elizabeth II. Only this real-life saga might more aptly be called As the Crown Turns, with a cast of characters and story developments to rival the most compelling soap opera.

There's Andrew, the queen's second son, embroiled in a sex scandal involving underage girls and an accused human trafficker who died in prison—you know, the prince who recently gave an interview on British television trying, and spectacularly failing, to repair his damaged reputation. There's his older brother, Charles, heir to the throne, reportedly wielding his influence behind the scenes to oust his disgraced sibling from royal duties and consolidate power for himself and his sons. Also in the cast: the Duke of Sussex, aka Harry, who has been bickering with his older brother, William. With his American bride, Meghan, Harry has also publicly railed against the emotional hardship of royal life while traveling by private jet and running up big home renovation bills.

Then there's the queen herself, Britain's longest-serving monarch, an aging matriarch whose grasp on the reins of her family appear to be slipping amid questions about how much longer she'll reign after more than 65 years on the throne.

With the family rocked by scandal and feuds, the 93-year-old queen is finally starting to cede power to the next generation. Is it time for Prince Charles & Co. to take charge at last?

With the family rocked by scandal and feuds, the 93-year-old queen is finally starting to cede power to the next generation. Is it time for Prince Charles & Co. to take charge at last?

For the royal family and the British people, the coming of a new year and new decade are coinciding with what's shaping up as a new era for the House of Windsor. The mounting tensions within the family and ongoing scandals have raised questions about whether the queen is, in fact, still the head of "the firm," as the royals refer to the family business in private. The big question: Has the time finally come for Prince Charles, at age 71, to stop waiting in the wings and take charge?

"There is a sense that she's lost control within the family, between Andrew's disastrous interview and the ongoing drama with Harry and Meghan," one palace insider told Newsweek. "The queen has been deeply disappointed by their behavior. As future king, it's been up to Charles to put a stop to the chaos."

This is certainly not the first time the question of Elizabeth, who is 93, giving up the throne has come up. Ever since 2017, when her husband, Prince Philip, retired from public life at age 95, there have been rumors that she would step down when she reached the same age. She has already been delegating some high-level decision-making to Charles, scaling back her public appearances and passing on her patronages of various charities to other members of the royal family for several years.

Still, while the role is largely ceremonial, the queen retains a full schedule—she had 238 engagements last year and served as a patron to hundreds of charities: not too shabby for a nonagenarian. And, despite the rumors, it is unlikely she will step down anytime soon. British historian and author Robert Lacey, who serves as a consultant to Netflix's The Crown, told Newsweek, "I don't believe the queen has any wish to retire, nor to appoint anyone who might infringe on her powers, if she can avoid it."

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II (L) sits with Britain's Prince Charles, Prince of Wales (R) on the Sovereign's throne to deliver the Queen's Speech at the State Opening of Parliament in the Houses of Parliament in London on October 14, 2019.

But the controversy swirling around Andrew in particular has renewed speculation about a changing of the guard, giving Charles a more prominent role and seeming to accelerate a shift in power. What does the future hold for the British monarchy? The queen's adherence to a "never complain, never explain" royal code makes it impossible to know her plans with certainty, but her responses to the latest family drama provide some telling clues.

The Royal Fallout

It was clear that swift action was needed in the wake of Andrew's BBC interview, in which he fumbled through an explanation of his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, denied having sex with then-17-year-old Virginia Roberts (now Giuffre) at Epstein's London home and expressed no sympathy for Epstein's alleged victims. A YouGov poll taken after the program aired in November found that 51 percent of the British public did not believe his explanations and that another 43 percent weren't sure. Even worse, nearly half felt that the way Andrew responded to the allegations had damaged the monarchy.

It didn't help Andrew's cause within the family that negotiations for the interview went on for over a year, reportedly without consulting the queen's senior advisers. Although Elizabeth gave her permission for the interview, she reportedly wasn't informed that it would focus solely on the prince's ties to Epstein or that it would be filmed at Buckingham Palace. "It gave the appearance that the entire thing had been sanctioned by the queen, but that was not the case," a palace source told Newsweek. "The optics said one thing, but the truth was something else entirely."

It wasn't the first time that Andrew had negotiated his own TV deal. When his youngest daughter, Eugenie, got married in 2018, the same year as Harry and Meghan, the prince reportedly wanted her wedding to be treated with equal pomp and circumstance. That included having the nuptials televised. When the BBC declined, Andrew arranged for limited coverage by ITV instead. Security for the wedding, which included about 850 guests, cost British taxpayers over £2 million, or roughly $2.5 million.

Maternal feelings for Andrew (who is believed to be the queen's favorite son) did not prevent her from acting decisively after the interview about Epstein aired—reportedly on the recommendation of Charles, with input from his son Prince William. The upshot: Andrew "stepped down" from his official duties (not his decision, insiders say), losing the taxpayer-funded £250,000 (about $325,000) he made as a working royal. His office at Buckingham Palace was shuttered.

Prince Andrew, The Duke of York, pictured in London on March 7, 2011. He dismissed all allegations of wrongdoing in connection with links to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in a Saturday-night interview with BBC News.

He won't have to worry about making a living, though. According to CNN, most of his income was funded by the queen's Duchy of Lancaster, a private estate of commercial, agricultural and residential properties that last year brought in $28 million.

Likely of greater concern to Andrew: the scandal's impact on Eugenie, 29, and her sister Beatrice, 31. The prince has long felt his daughters, who are "blood princesses," were overlooked within the royal family and has lobbied to get them higher-profile roles. Now, the opposite is likely to happen. Particularly problematic for Eugenie is her role as co-founder of the Anti-Slavery Collective, a charity that works to eradicate—oh, the irony—sex trafficking, as well as slavery, around the globe. As royal biographer Ingrid Seward said recently on Good Morning Britain, "We all feel very sorry for Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie." Beatrice recently became engaged, and her 2020 wedding will likely be a smaller affair than her sister's extravaganza and private—which won't require massive security, making it cheaper for taxpayers.

A Changing of the Guard?

Deciding on the best course of action for his scandal-ridden brother has not been the only topic of discussion for Charles and his parents lately. When he recently met with Prince Philip at the family's estate at Sandringham, father and son were reported to have talked about the queen's "retirement" in the next 18 months. In this scenario, Charles would assume a prince regent role, which would allow him to officially take over family affairs and day-to-day royal business. "This is something Charles has been wanting for some time, but the queen has resisted," explained a royal insider.

"If Charles had been regent in November," explained Lacey, "it would have been his job to check out the interview plans, and he would almost certainly have blocked them."

It's Reigning Men

The appointment of a regent, though, happens only under very specific circumstances—say, when a monarch becomes incapacitated—and is not something the queen is legally empowered to do but instead falls to Parliament. Still, even without a formal transfer of power, there is little doubt that there's been a changing of the guard. Speaking to CTV News, royal expert Richard Berthelsen said the response to the crisis surrounding Andrew "has exposed the reality many of us have been saying for some time, that [Charles], the Prince of Wales, is fundamentally running the family now."

The role that Charles played in effectively ending his brother's royal career has strengthened his public position as chief decision-maker. It also raises questions about his plans for when he officially becomes king. Among his top priorities, experts say, will be to cut the list of working royals to a core group consisting of his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, and his sons, William and Harry, and their families.

The streamlining has already begun. "Many of Prince Charles' paring-downs have come to pass, most notably with the disappearance of all the cousins and aunts from the balcony [of Buckingham Palace during official engagements]," said Lacey. "It's difficult to see how the current working family can be pared down any further with [Charles' other siblings] Princess Anne and Prince Edward carrying out a full roster of duties."

Challenges for the Monarchy

But the monarchy's survival, should Charles become king, will take more than removing superfluous relatives from the taxpayers' tab. The British public's enduring admiration for Elizabeth, the most popular royal, has been the most critical factor in the current support for the monarchy—72 percent view her favorably, according to a YouGov poll this summer. Only 48 percent feel the same way about Charles.

She has been considered a fairly inscrutable public figure for much of her reign, yet those closest to the queen say privately she has a good sense of humor and dotes on her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who call her Gan Gan. She eats cereal out of a Tupperware container every morning and enjoys her cocktails—up to four a day, reportedly, including a gin and Dubonnet on the rocks with a slice of lemon before lunch and a glass of champagne before bed.

The official christening photo of young Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, a.k.a. Harry and Meghan’s son.

Humanizing details, for sure. But despite the public's affection for the reigning royal, the monarchy as a British institution also represents privilege and inherited wealth at a time of financial uncertainty and jitters over Brexit, and a growing segment of the population believes those things are out of step with the ideals of meritocracy and equality. Should Charles take the crown, he will have to prove the monarchy is still relevant at a time of tremendous upheaval, without the queen's same reservoir of goodwill. Still, his reputation has come a long way from the days when his imploding marriage to Diana played out in the British tabloids' daily headlines.

Charles's sons, William, 37, and Harry, 35, have a critical role to play as well. The once-close siblings are estranged these days, a rift that supposedly started a couple of years ago when William questioned whether Harry was moving too quickly in his relationship with Meghan and if she could adjust to royal life. Harry reportedly considered that attitude "unsupportive." But recent developments suggest that, perhaps, William's concern was not entirely unfounded.

Once viewed favorably as a modernizing and positive force for change, Harry and Meghan now seem to be a lightning rod for controversy, with rising disapproval among the British over the couple's perceived spendthrift ways and their complaints about the fishbowl life of a royal. Renovations on Frogmore Cottage, their 10-bedroom home near Windsor Castle, cost taxpayers about $3 million and included construction of a yoga studio for Meghan, a devotee of the practice.

Meanwhile, in an ITV documentary in October, Harry noted the toll that royal life has taken on his emotional health, revealing that he relives the tragic circumstances of his mother's death every time he is faced with a wall of flashbulbs. "With the role, with the job and pressures that come with that—I get reminded of the bad stuff," he said. Meghan, for her part, decried the family's "stiff upper lip" ethos as "destructive."

The queen has reportedly charged Charles with brokering a peace between the brothers. "The queen knows that both William and Harry represent the modernization of the family which ensures its survival," said an insider. "The estrangement between the brothers has to end because a united front is critical for the future."

While Harry and Meghan have gone off the grid for "much-needed family time" during the holidays, William and his wife, Kate, have taken responsibility for shoring up the family brand with a highly successful tour of Pakistan and a recent joint television appearance on a Christmas special hosted by British television personality Mary Berry. "William and Kate along with their adorable children are the greatest assets the monarchy has right now," another palace insider told Newsweek. "There's no drama, they're both charming, and their children are darling and well behaved. That's what the public wants from the royals—a happy family scenario that makes people feel good about the future."

Perhaps that's why the queen decided it was time for the couple's two oldest children, Prince George, 6, and Princess Charlotte, 4, to make their first public appearance with the family on the traditional and much-photographed walk from the family estate at Sandringham to St. Mary Magdalene Church on Christmas morning this year. "The queen wanted the emphasis to be on the next generation of royals this Christmas and remind people that through it all, the monarchy will survive," the insider said.

Lacey believes it will. "I am quite sure that prince George will become king one day," he said. "The 'de-royaling' of Andrew was a tragedy, but it is a reminder of how the survival of a constitutional monarchy depends on its respect and compliance with the values of the society it seeks to represent."

Diane Clehane, who has been covering royalty for more than 20 years, is a best-selling author of five books including Diana: The Secrets of Her Style and Imagining Diana, a novel that envisions what would have happened if the princess had survived the 1997 crash in Paris.

— Newsweek