#i always saw people who claim to be heartbroken as weak and pathetic

[denimchicken]

i never knew heartbreak could feel so physical, genuinely feels like my heart has been ripped outta my chest

[dudeandduchess]

Kyōjurō x F!S/O: Dreams and Heartaches (Angst, SFW Scenario)

Summary: Kyōjurō finally gets to say his final words to the love of his life. Warnings: Angst, Implications of Character Death Note: Since the new trailer is going to drop today (already April 10 for me), I figured that this would be fun to write. The song inspirations for this were ‘Til My Heartaches End by KZ Tandingan, and Maybe in Another Lifetime by Keiko Necessario. Enjoy, bbys! 😂🍉 Word Count: 2,095

***

The sound of awed whispers, as well as quiet mutters of jealous words, reached (Y/n)’s ears despite the loud thumping of her heartbeat ringing in them. Her sight, which was once bathed in darkness, suddenly flooded with light— prompting her to blink rapidly as she was thrown in a white-washed world that seemed so familiar yet so foreign to her.

A familiar warmth enveloped her right hand tightly; and when she looked down at the source of the comforting heat, she saw a rough and mildly battle-roughened hand wrapping around hers— as if protecting it from the world.

Tears sprung into her eyes at the very sight of it and, hesitantly, she let her gaze trail up the haori-clad arm that the hand was attached to— taking note of the family emblem that was embroidered into the sleeve.

“Look at me, my sweet flame,” Kyōjurō’s deep voice urged her softly, which had her breath catching in her throat— especially when he reached his right hand out to hold her face by her chin, and tilted her face up to let her take in his smiling face. “You look as beautiful as the first time we met.”

His smile widened into a small grin at that— a breathtaking one that had (Y/n) returning it with a tiny smile of her own.

“There’s that smile I love so much.”

Inevitably, that brought more tears to (Y/n)’s eyes; and slowly, the first tear rolled down her cheek.

“You’re here…” She managed to squeak out— so soft and quiet beneath the din of hushed conversations surrounding them, yet Kyōjurō still managed to pick her words out from the crowd’s.

The Flame Hashira nodded, moving his hand up from her chin to wipe her tears away with the back of his index finger. He could feel his own tears bubbling to the surface, but he pushed them down in favor of keeping the smile on his face. As much as he wanted to cry and beg all of the deities for another chance to live, he knew that it was better to leave her with memories of him smiling.

Even though it hurt him inside to know that where he belonged wasn’t by her side anymore. It killed him inside to know that he would never be the one who was going to make her happy until they were old and gray, nor was he the one whom she was going to build a family with.

Once upon a time it was him— it was supposed to be him— but not anymore.

For the greater good, he had given up their happiness. For the betterment of many people, he had hurt the people he loved the most…

Still, he forced the smile on his face; if only to be sure that (Y/n) could always go back to the memory of him smiling, whenever she needed a something warm and comfortable to keep away the chill of loneliness.

After all, he wasn’t going to be there to hold her anymore.

Kyōjurō wasn’t going to be the one that she wrote to first thing in the morning, and he wasn’t going to be the one that she went to whenever the tiniest of inconveniences happened to her. Gone were the days when he would come home to see her and Senjurō making something in his home’s kitchen; and gone were the days where they spent their nights together, simply holding each other as they slept.

He wasn’t going to be able to tell her stories of his missions, nor was he going to be able to run his fingers through her hair as he kept pressing kisses against the top of her head.

His life with her— their past, present, and future— were no more.

The Hashira’s lips quivered the tiniest bit, and tears inevitably blurred his vision while he took in the sight of (Y/n) in her shiromuku. It was the last time that he was going to see her, so he had to take his fill while he could.

“I love you,” was all he could muster up the courage to say. He should have been telling her how she was always going to be everything to him, and how he would always wait for her… but a part of him told him that it wasn’t the wisest choice to keep her hanging on to him.

It hurt him to accept it, but she needed to find love with another man. Someone who would love her more than he ever could, and someone who would always put her needs above everything else.

But he was taking the coward’s way and working up to it; at least, that’s what he told himself.

Her tears increased even more at his words, practically twisting his heart inside his chest with every quiet sob that had come to pass from her lips. She moved to grip his own hands tightly, almost afraid that he would disappear if she loosened her grip for even a second.

“You don’t play fair, Kyōjurō.” (Y/n)’s words were soft and shaky, so thick with her tears that they were almost unintelligible, yet she kept on speaking— finally finding it inside her to latch on to the anger that she felt simmering down to her bones. “You told me you weren’t going to leave me.”

A stuttering gasp put a hamper on her words, but she pushed past her own unsightly crying and continued, “You said you were going to come back.”

Her eyebrows knitted together in frustration, as she helplessly clicked her tongue in irritation. At that point, she knew that she must have looked so pathetic as her expression scrunched up when she began bawling; sounding so weak and needy even to her own ears. Still, she couldn’t help but hurl the words she wanted to say at Kyōjurō.

“What am I supposed to do now?” She let go of her hold on his hands, in favor of clutching the front of his mon-tsuki haori hakama in tight yet shaky fists. Helplessly, she shook him as best as she could— putting all of her grief and frustration into her movements as best as she could. “Tell me how I’m going to live without you! Tell me, damn it!”

Kyōjurō’s eyes widened at the frantic and utterly heartbroken tone that his lover’s voice had taken and, slowly, he moved to wrap his arms around her shoulder so he could pull her into his chest. Her entire body shook with her sobs, yet her grip on his clothes never faltered— almost as if he was her last lifeline.

“It will be difficult,” He began quietly, his throat thickening up with the tears that he had tried so hard to push down earlier. Then, he swallowed past the lump in his throat and continued, “And it will hurt, but you have to let me go, (Y/n). Please.”

The young woman shook her head against his chest, adamant about going against his words in every way possible. “You can’t ask me to do that. I’m not- never- no!”

At that, Kyōjurō put his hands on her shoulders and pulled himself away from her— moving to cup her face in his hands so that she would look at him. When her attention was fully on him, he begged her, “I wanted to be the one to make you the happiest woman in the world, but I’ll still accept your happiness… even if it’s not with me. So please, my love, do it for me.

“Have all those babies that we talked about, the house with the sunflower garden that we wanted, and cook all of those dishes that you wrote so much to me about. Be happy for me.”

“This isn’t fair! Don’t do this to me!” Helplessly, (Y/n) tugged at his clothes in protest, but it didn’t do much aside from hide the fact that her hands had begun to shake badly. “Don’t do this to me!”

She didn’t know how long they simply stood there— with Kyōjurō uncharacteristically silent as he leaned forward to pepper her face with kisses— but when he leaned his forehead against hers, she felt her heart drop to her feet, because something told her that it was time for him to go.

Kyōjurō’s thumbs wiped her tears away as gently as he could, savoring the feel of her warm skin against his as best as he could with her tears marring the memory. And slowly, he leaned forward to close the gap between them— claiming her lips in a gentle kiss that he knew was highly unfair of him to do.

“Tell me you love me… one last time? Please?” He whispered against her lips, feeling her breathy gasps fanning across his lips with every stuttered sob that she tried to hold back.

“I love you,” (Y/n) answered his plea, as her tears doubled in force— bordering on desperation as she uttered the words over and over through her gasping sobs.

“I love you, I love you!” She kept repeating to him, with a tiny part of her hoping that her words would be enough to get him to stay. Still, a bigger— and more rational— side of her knew that it was too late for her words.

They were useless in the face of fate.

Because maybe, she hadn’t meant to be happy at all.

“I love you.”

***

The sound of silence greeted (Y/n)’s ears the moment she woke up; with her inhaling sharply as her eyes flew open.

She tried to make sense of what had happened in her dream, but her tear-stained face, as well as her heavy heart weighed her down further into the futon she had inevitably cried herself to sleep on. Her hands felt so as she tried to unfurl them from the hold she had on the wrinkled mon-tsuki haori hakama that she had seen in her dream.

The very clothes that Kyōjurō had been supposed to wear on their wedding day.

Slowly, she sat upright on the futon and pulled the clothes to her chest— closing her eyes to ignore how pathetic she had been to wear the white kimono that she had been so excited to wear for that special day; a day that would never come.

(Y/n) hugged the cold and almost weightless clothes, all while biting down on her bottom lip to silence the sobs that she knew were coming with her tears. Only, despite her efforts to hold them back, they broke free and echoed within the empty room— bordering on hysteria, as the full force of her grief came down upon her.

“Kyōjurō!” She screamed brokenly, not even caring that she was going against his wishes by still hanging on to him. Clutching his clothes closer to her chest, she buried her face in the material— hoping and praying to even catch the faintest scent of him, despite knowing that it wouldn’t have been possible; as he hadn’t had the chance to even wear it.

Her heart ached so much with every scream that ripped past her throat, yet she kept on doing it; needing an outlet for her anguish, instead of trying to keep it all inside her.

Before she knew it, she had kicked the tray of food that one of the housekeepers had left for her beside her bed— sending bowls filled with her meal scattering all over the tatami.

Seeing the carnage brought out a very slight reprieve inside her so, with hefty breaths, she picked up one bowl that had managed to land close to her— and she threw it against one of the walls; relishing in the loud crash it made when it shattered into pieces, much like the state that her heart was in.

However, instead of making her tears lighten up, it only made them worse as she hugged Kyōjurō’s supposed wedding garments even tighter than before.

Because she knew, that no matter what she did, nothing was going to bring him back. From that moment on, it was just her against the world.

[namjuicyy]

Three’s A Crowd - Chapter Nine

Masterlist | Requests are open.

Genre: Angst, fluff, smut.

Genre of this part: Angst, fluff.

Word Count: 1.3k.

Summary: Your childhood friend shows you a whole new world, but no one expected what came afterwards.

Warnings: Mentions of depression, Yoongi being heartbroken and enlistment. 

"Things were going too well for us. There's almost something in the universe that keeps track of all the good things in your life and presses a button to take it all away from you.

"The public found out We didn't know how or why, we just knew that our faces were splashed everywhere in the media. Newspapers printed about us, social media accounts tweeted about us. Even drama channels on YouTube started to talk about us. There were so many people against us – saying we were immoral, saying that we were disgusting. Yoongi-hyung and I had an onslaught of homophobic abuse spewed at us by people who were supposed to be our fans – and people who weren't. And ___ was getting death threats and everything else that was completely despicable.

"___ took it all on the chin. Like water off a duck's back. She was fine with it – didn't believe a word they were saying or listen to their hate. She wasn't fine with it but she wasn't bothered by it either. And surprisingly, their words didn't affect me. I didn't care. I thought I'd be a wreck, but actually I was just as fine as ___. Hyung, on the other hand, he didn't like us to see that it had all gotten to him. He tried to keep it from us. But we found out eventually."

Yoongi had been out of the room for quite a while. The hustle and bustle of the dressing room had proved too much for him and he quietly escaped, disappearing into the abandoned places of the venue and taking a breather. He only intended to be away from everyone for a few seconds, but he was glued to the screen of his phone, scrolling though social media and reading everything that people had been sending them.

He didn't want to read any of it. He didn't want to see the hate. But he just couldn't help himself. His fingers seemed to move on their own and before long they'd exposed his eyes to a wall of people claiming their disgust for the unusual relationship and threatening all sorts. His lungs didn't seem to work properly, they didn't fill up with the right amount of oxygen. Instead they let everything he was breathing out while he cried on the rooftop of the venue, the fresh air burning his eyes and his throat restricting the sounds that needed to come out.

He was ashamed of himself for letting it get this far. Angry with himself for allowing him to feel the way he did for you both, and livid that he gave into his desires. He was also furious with himself for letting all of this get to him like it did. If Agust D could see him now, crawled up in the corner of the roof top, his stomach would churn. No doubt he'd be throwing fists and telling Yoongi to snap out of it. To grow a pair and protect the ones he loved instead of hiding on the quiet rooftop letting his heart break. Agust D didn't care. He never let anything bother him. He was badass and cruel and people were scared of him. Even Suga to a point wasn't like these. Suga wasn't as confident as Agust D, but he still had an aura of intimidation about him. Yoongi? What did Yoongi have? Yoongi was weak and selfish. Pathetic. Yoongi was ready to give it all up and just end it, because it's what he deserved. Because he had allowed the woman he loved to see him in such a vulnerable state. And he shouldn't have done that. He never did that.

"Yoongi!" Your voice was soft but dripping with worry. "What's wrong?"

What's wrong, you ask. How can you do that? How can you be worried about him when he'd disappeared for so long and held everyone up? You should be scolding him, in his mind. Not wrapping your arms around him and letting him cry into your shoulder.

Yoongi didn't answer you. He didn't need to. His phone hadn't locked and you'd seen what he was looking at. You sighed, holding him tighter to your chest. You let him weep on your clothes, his makeup smudging onto them. That didn't bother you. You just needed to know that he was okay.

Words wouldn't work on Yoongi. Not really. He wasn't like Jimin. He couldn't verbalise what he felt. He never could. Him telling you that he was in love with you was an even bigger deal than what it was made out to be. Especially for him. He always showed you how he felt, never told you.

"When I got to the rooftop, the sight that I saw made me want to collapse." Jimin continued. "I'd never seen Hyung like that before. He'd never let me. But he was curled up in ___'s lap, the smallest he'd ever been, just sobbing uncontrollably while she rocked and shushed him. At first I was worried. I thought maybe my presence would make him feel worse. But when he saw me, and knew I was close to him, he grabbed my hand and refused to let go. He kept mumbling his apologies, blaming himself for this situation. But we knew he was being silly, and he did deep down too."

"Did he ever forgive himself?" The interviewer asked.

"He did. When we figured out what happened, he realised that he was being over emotional and that it wasn't his fault at all."

"What did happen? How did the public find out?"

"Shihyukie-hyung hired the wrong person. He was an intern, learning about music management. And obviously, Shihyukie-hyung wanted this new guy to get the most extreme experience, learning how to manage us. Because at the time we were quite successful and our lives were just one schedule after another. Anyway, he obviously wanted a bit of extra cash and he sold our story to the media. We were furious, of course, but no one more so, surprisingly than Shihyuk. He made sure that the only people who were going to hire the guy was fast food companies. He never had a job in the entertainment industry again."

"Ah, Jiminie." A familiar voice came from the side of the room, drawing eyes to it, including the eye of the camera. Jimin, before he looked to the source, caught the expression of the interviewer, who rolled her eyes at the interruption. This made Jimin laugh. "Stop boring these people with our lives." Yoongi. Yoongi's smile, Jimin noted, hadn't changed in all these years. The cute gummy smile still remained, as did the warmth in his eyes when he smiled. After all these years, Jimin never fell out of love with his husband. Yoongi never allowed it.

"Hyungie, these people haven't said a word since I started." Jimin defended himself. The man slowly wandered over to Jimin, and bent down to place a delicate kiss on Jimin's plump lips. Jimin feigned shock. "PDA, hyung? You never do that."

"He also said he'd never get married, but look at what happened." Your voice travelled across the room, much louder than Yoongi's. "Sorry we've interrupted your interview." You addressed your apology to the interviewer, who's expression had turned soft in the family exchange. "We'll leave now."

"No!" The interviewer protested. "It'll be interesting to hear your sides of the story too. Can someone get them chairs please?"

"They've gate-crashed." Jimin scolded as his spouses sat down either side of him.

"So, Jimin-ssi was just telling us about the public reaction to finding out about you guys. I just want to know what happened afterwards. Did everything settle down?"

"Eventually." Yoongi commented, bitterness in his voice.

"And thankfully before they enlisted too." You added.

"Yeah, Jimin-ssi mentioned that was something you were scared about, ___-ssi. How did you feel when they enlisted?"

"Still terrified. But thankfully they did it together, and no one was alone."

"What was life like after their service was over?"

"Perfect."

[mywinestainedheart]

Depression, Anxiety and … Cigarettes?

I’m not a smoker.

I know this because I take three drags then let it burn to the butt between my fingers. Sometimes it dies before I even take those three drags because I’m not pulling hard enough. Other times I put it out myself and get back to that same stick a week later.

I hate the taste. I usually eat something or wash my mouth out with toothpaste to get rid of it. I hate the smell. I wash my hands three times, toss my jerseys into the washing machine and hang my head over the bathtub for a conditioner-rinse to douse all traces of the scent.

I’m not a smoker.

What I am is a heartbroken, social media stalking, recently-diagnosed-with-depression twenty-eight year old woman trying to quell the anxiety she’s, apparently, been living with since her teenage years. Childhood bullying and molestation sob-stories aside, I always knew there was something functionally wrong with me.

Online descriptions of depression will detail a broad list of symptoms that essentially claim everyone in the world to be depressed. Sleep disorderliness, apathy, agitation, lack of concentration, poor appetite etc., etc. By that standard, my whole first year class at uni was depressed, so I never thought much of it. Besides, this would happen in bouts. It was never consistent. I’d experience an odd wave of anxiety that would come out of nowhere, but hang out with my smoker friends and feel fine for the next five to ten minutes. The next day, that anxiety might even be gone. I would have breakdowns and cry about feeling ugly, vapid and worthless, then eventually sober to no sense of feelings at all. I tend to overthink and get angry very easily. Someone cutting me off in traffic can have me ruminating over it for the rest of the day. I prefer to keep to myself, yet I’m constantly seeking distractions. In childhood it was imaginary worlds through Barbie dolls, in adulthood it was sex. Happiness would come and go, but pessimistic thoughts about myself, my life and my chances of finding love in a partner the way it seemed so easy for all my prettier friends were an ever-present influence on my psyche.

People will tell you “just snap out of it”, “think positive”, “thoughts become things” and, my personal favourite, “choose to be happy”. Well, gee! I never thought of that, clueless Life Orientation teacher who has probably never stepped out of her comfort zone within the northern suburbs of Johannesburg. Imma just wake up tomorrow and tell myself to be in a better mood.

I had learned to exist in this way: Feeling empty and, fittingly, not having a name for it. Feeling sad and not having a reason for it. Overthinking and comparing myself to every girl who walked into the room because I believed that everyone else could see how much lesser than I was compared to her too. I would come up after brushing my teeth to stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror and wonder what it would be like to just not exist anymore.

We used to live in an upmarket housing complex in Johannesburg. People who lived in this area are usually well off. They aren’t thought to have problems, and yet, we had a neighbour whose husband shot himself in the complex park. Years later, I heard of a former high school classmate of mine who shot himself in the middle of the street in the same area.

It got me thinking: People who are only occasionally sad, like me, don’t frequently envy people who had the gall to commit suicide, do they?

The first time I went to a psychiatrist was because I broke down in front of my mother the night before. My heart was bleeding from a breakup I hated that I was going through. This man insisted that I “didn’t deserve him”, but the twenty-four-year-old yuppie he used to go to school with, for some reason, did. He picked her over me and he’s happy with his choice. Put that on top of an entire existence of feeling lesser than, and I realised I was a ticking timebomb.

I was toying with the idea of suicide and noticed that the only thing holding me back was a fear of the unknown.

These thoughts are not new, by the way. I’d been having them since childhood. The one I entertained the most was standing behind the kitchen door with a knife to my chest, so that when someone swung the door open, the blade would push through my ribcage. Obviously, this would not be as simple in execution, but I was nine and it was a fantasy. Give me a break.

Upon hearing that I was thinking of killing myself, my mother chortled and told me “you’re behaving like a teenager”. That response would be the number one reason I have never spoken about my deeper feelings with my mom before this. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to love, it was that she didn’t understand that someone like me required a different type of love. A child might not say so because they themselves don’t know what it is, but there will always be subtle signs of a mood disorder. In hindsight, I’d displayed a number of them, but I was dismissed as being anti-social, sullen or attention-seeking.

“I’m just so tired,” I remember saying, choking on my own tears.

“Of what?” My mother demanded. She couldn’t understand what I could possibly be talking about. You’re only twenty-eight, you have a roof over your head and both parents that love you. You have a job. We’ve given you a car. You have freedom. You have friends. What on earth could have you crying like the world was coming to an end?

“Everything,” I said. Because that was the truth. I was tired of everything. I was tired of waking up every morning and remembering that the man I loved had chosen someone else over me. I was tired of driving for an hour every day to get into town, passing everything that reminded me of him and the breakup (including him and his new girlfriend in the middle of traffic). I was tired of going to a job that was adding nothing to my career, tired of budgeting a pathetic salary. Tired of waiting on my father and his promises that he was setting me up on a different career path, tired of eating the same food everyday (if I even remembered to eat). Tired of smoking cigarettes with my cousins cause I felt like if I was failing this badly at life then I may as well smoke up and hope for cancer, and I was absolutely exhausted with the idea that I had lost my twenty-four-year-old niece; a bodacious lover of life who’d existed on a seemingly never-ending vibration of confidence and positivity, to a senseless car accident, but here I was, still breathing.

Someone who deserved life was cemented in the ground. I woke up every morning wishing we could trade places.

The psychiatrist let me talk for a few minutes before diagnosing me as depressed and suicidal. Considering multiple factors and incidences I’d described in session, she said the depression has been there my whole life and that my break up was the lit cigarette that rolled too close to the leaky-gas pipe in my identity, causing this implosion.

Note, I’m not blaming my ex for my mental instability. How could he have known if I didn’t know? I’d had my suspicions, but, like my mother; telling him would have likely amounted to him (initially) dismissing me as being dramatic. What he saw as a “crazy” display of raw insecurity was probably the starter flames of this inferno. Again, not his fault, but he was certainly a contributor, and I find myself struggling not to resent him for that. But that’s a blog post for another time.

The psychiatrist prescribes me anti-depressants, some other drug that causes drowsiness, and orders to me to eight months of therapy with a nice woman she recommends in the area I live now. All I’m hearing is money, money and more money. I can’t afford any of this on what I make, and my dad is a businessman whose entire income is dependent on deals. Sometimes we have more money than we know what to do with, other times we’re so broke that there’s a negotiation between toilet paper and breakfast cereal. At twenty-eight, I’m officially jaded with the financial instability I grew up in, so I dismiss the idea of therapy entirely. Why start something only to stop because we can’t afford it anymore? Besides, I’d apparently been living with this raging beast my whole life. Surely, we could find a way to co-exist once again? Like Venom and Eddie Brock.

I say thanks but no thanks to the medication and go home with a mother who suddenly has a whole new understanding of me. She’s attentive when she talks now, and says ‘I love you’ before she hangs up the phone. Confessing my diagnosis to my father shouldn’t have felt embarrassing, but it did. I hated that he might now see me as weak. I was the one child he didn’t have to worry about. I had a sassy attitude and a smart mouth. I was assertive in my speech and tolerated no bullshit. I could hold my own against anyone, and I knew he was proud of me for that. How would he perceive me after I admitted that I’m not as strong as I pretend to be?

The truth? No different. I was still his daughter. The only change I noticed is that he looks at me when he talks to me (more attentive, like my mother) and makes a point of using my family nickname when he says good morning, hello or goodbye. He’s also trying harder to make sure his planned career path for me falls into place, but I’m no longer holding my breath.

As for me and my revelation of my diagnosis? Like I said, I always knew that there was something functionally wrong with me. I just have a name for it now. I’m still battling with the ideas of death and how I would do it. The running fantasy now is one I usually entertain before bed about slitting my wrists and sliding into a bathtub. Morbid, I know, but it’s the only way I can seem to find sleep these days: Thinking of no longer existing helps me transition into a state where I no longer exist for a little while. I’m not about to slit my wrists any time soon (besides, my pain threshold has a limit. If I were going to kill myself I wouldn’t pick a method quite so agonising and messy), but I recognise that these are not healthy thought processes. I do think I need therapy. After all, you have to learn how to love yourself before anyone else can love you and all that, right? I want to overcome this. I want to see progression in my life and my career. I don’t want my ex to believe he dodged a stagnant bullet the next time he bumps into me—or give him the satisfaction of knowing he was the catalyst of my failure.

I want to be happy.

So as I take my third drag of my last cigarette of 2019, I pray to a Deity I have a shaky belief in and tell myself that this is my rock bottom. It can’t possibly get any worse from here.

Or can it?

I suppose only my next move, and time, will tell.

[starwarsnonsense]

The Sin of Hubris, and the Dangerous Myth of the Mighty Skywalker Bloodline

For many years, there was balance and then I saw Ben. My nephew with that mighty Skywalker blood. And in my hubris, I thought I could train him, I could pass on my strengths.

The Last Jedi is full of parallels and, in particular, parallel characters. You have Rey and Kylo Ren at the forefront, but you also have the pair of Luke and Snoke looming behind them. And while Luke may merely be bitter and tormented while Snoke is twisted and malevolent, both masters have walked shockingly similar paths with regards to Ben Solo. Luke openly admits to the sin of hubris - excessive pride or self-confidence - and is painfully aware of his failings. Snoke, by contrast, is all-too guilty of hubris but trips up by failing to be mindful of his pride. This lack of self-awareness is what, with delicious inevitability, results in his destruction. Luke is forced to confront his own hubris and pride when Ben Solo turns on him and destroys his temple, whereas Snoke receives no such lesson until it is too late - Kylo’s betrayal ends him definitively, and leaves no room for the reflection that Luke was permitted by his survival.

With regards to Ben Solo, Luke and Snoke both make the same mistake by perceiving the boy primarily in terms of his bloodline. In his nephew, Luke sees “mighty Skywalker blood” that signifies enormous potential in the Force - upon recognising this, Luke resolves that it is his duty to train the boy and allow him to realise his potential. Snoke tells an eerily similar story:

When I found you, I saw what all masters live to see. Raw, untamed power. And beyond that, something truly special. The potential of your bloodline. A new Vader.

Both Luke and Snoke, in this way, seem fixated on Ben’s lineage - they define him primarily in terms of his bloodline, so it should come as no shock that Ben eventually absorbs this in a thoroughly unhealthy way and finds it impossible to escape from the shadow of his monolithic grandfather. He is always told that his blood means he should achieve greatness, whether for the light or the dark, and this ultimately has the effect of robbing him of his agency. He is a figure in a galactic game of chess, being moved across a board by the same forces of destiny that dictated the movements of his grandfather and uncle. This concept of himself breeds many evils in Ben - entitlement, arrogance, pride and, most poignantly, crippling self-doubt. As long as he is being measured against the Skywalker precedent - by his masters and by himself - Ben always finds himself lacking, with this eternal lack breeding feelings of frustration and self-loathing.

We know little of Ben’s time under Luke, but we do know that he was already under Snoke’s influence and had had the seeds of darkness sown in his mind. When Luke looked into Ben’s mind he was filled with fear over his nephew’s potential for evil, and contemplated murdering the boy in his sleep - Ben waking to witness his uncle’s green lightsaber ignited above him is the precipitating event in his downfall. In relation to hubris, we must look at this event as Luke’s turning point - the moment he considered murdering the boy he had placed such hope in and devoted so much energy to training was the moment when his own self-belief and confidence were shattered. In this moment, Luke believed his nephew to be capable of tremendous harm and his faith in the Skywalker bloodline’s potential for good was shattered. Luke’s realisation of Ben’s potential for evil and the terrible aftermath of his moment of weakness do away with his pride and send him into exile.

Instead of guiding a beloved nephew to use his powers for good, Snoke seized upon the lost Ben Solo and exploited him as a weapon. He craved the “mighty Skywalker blood”, attracted to its potential just as Luke once was, and took the newly renamed Kylo Ren under his wing as his apprentice. Snoke picked up the dropped threads of Luke’s training by continuing to tell Kylo that he was special and worthy by dint of his blood, but he also used this knowledge as an instrument of cruelty and punishment. In The Last Jedi, we see Snoke humiliate Kylo, telling him:

Yes, there it is. You have too much of your father's heart in you, Young Solo.

Han Solo represents the complicated and messy elements of Ben Solo that neither Luke nor Snoke wished to confront. Han Solo was the antithesis to Anakin Skywalker, being resoundingly normal. Han was as mundane and ordinary as Anakin was unique and gifted. While invoking the name of Anakin Skywalker calls to mind high-flung concepts like destiny and fate, the name of Han Solo suggests fast ships and gambling tables. Conditioned to buy into the story of his own special destiny by both his masters, Ben has come to share in this distaste, even as a part of him continues to love his father and bitterly regrets killing him. For Ben, his father was emblematic of the human fragility and weakness that was keeping him from fulfilling his long-promised destiny as the last Skywalker. 

Snoke’s hubris meets a deliciously satisfying end when he pays the price for it with his murder. Snoke considers Kylo Ren his instrument, and his close control of his mind means he is arrogant enough to believe in his apprentice’s total loyalty. He considers Rey and Kylo his playthings, claiming authorship of the Force connection between Rey and Kylo in a move that clearly shocks and angers them both. The Force bond had facilitated intensely private and intimate moments between them, resulting in blossoming feelings of tenderness and trust, and to be told that it was merely an instrument of Snoke’s is clearly a violation that Rey and Kylo both reject. Regardless of how the bond came about, the feelings that emerged through it were palpably genuine. 

Snoke’s vanity means he cannot conceive of the possibility that Kylo may have surpassed him, and he seems to enter into a state of near-sexual ecstasy as he dives into Kylo’s mind and experiences his murderous mental calculations. Snoke takes pleasure in the prospect of Rey’s murder at Kylo’s hand, considering the annihilation of the light counterpart to his dark apprentice the ultimate display of loyalty. The great and glorious irony, of course, is that the murder he is taking such delight in is actually his own:

You think you can turn him? Pathetic child. I cannot be betrayed, I cannot be beaten. I see his mind, I see his every intent. Yes. I see him turning the lightsaber to strike true. And now, foolish child, he ignites it, and kills his true enemy!

Snoke pays the ultimate price for his hubris with his death, but Kylo Ren cannot escape from the vision of himself he has had built up in his mind for decades. He continues to envisage himself as a subject of fate and destiny - he may have been cut loose from Snoke, but he has not cut himself loose from the chains of his own past. One of Kylo’s many tragedies is that he urges Rey to “let the past die” without achieving this himself - he continues to believe in the myth of the “mighty Skywalker blood”, and this arrogance means it feels natural to him to claim his place as the ruler of the galaxy. The only real complication to his destiny is his intense feelings for Rey - a “nothing” child born to wastrel parents who abandoned her. She had no legends or prophecies preceding her, and has no pre-ordained place in the story as Kylo Ren does. Kylo’s passion for her, his overwhelming feelings of love and tenderness, means he likely perceives her as the Padme to his Anakin - the love that he has always lacked and has only just realised how much he longed for. In his hubris and short-sightedness, Kylo cannot recognise that this vision of the Skywalker destiny ended in tragedy before and will surely end in tragedy again. Padme was heartbroken and appalled by Anakin’s ambition, and Rey is similarly repelled by Kylo’s choice. Only at the very end of the film, when he has to look up upon Rey as she closes the door of his father’s beloved ship in his face, does the emptiness of the Skywalker myth truly strike him. Kylo fulfilled Anakin Skywalker’s dream of ruling the galaxy, finishing what he started, but is crippled by the knowledge that he will do so alone. At the end of the film, he is finally left to carve his own path for the first time with no scripted destiny to guide him - but what should have been a triumph is yet another tragedy.

While Kylo absorbs and is further wounded by his masters’ hubris, Luke ultimately learns from his own mistakes. I would argue that a key aspect of his redemption arc is that he learns from his hubris and moves forward with a new perspective founded on hope and openness. Luke condemns the Jedi for restricting ownership of the Force, and clearly considers the Skywalkers themselves a great evil - he includes himself in this estimation, having exiled himself to Ahch-To to die. Luke performs a sharp turn away from hubris by losing confidence and exhibiting no pride in his bloodline at all, which makes his journey throughout the film - which sees him recover hope for the future of the Jedi through his interactions with Rey - remarkably powerful. At first he’s frightened by Rey’s connection with Kylo, entering into an explosive rage in an attempt to drive the two young people apart. He pleads with Rey not to give into her visions of Ben Solo returning to the light, and briefly feels helpless upon witnessing her departure in the Falcon. But Yoda reminds Luke of the importance of allowing failure, and gives Luke the resolve he needs to trust that Rey will make the right choice when the moment comes. Rey’s faith and goodness must remind Luke of his own actions - rushing off to save his friends despite his master’s warning, insisting on the possibility of bringing his father back despite everyone else’s lack of faith - as a young man, and he clearly sees in her the hope that he once embodied. He is inspired by this and is given a new sense of inner peace and comfort. Rey’s hope gives him hope in turn, and allows him to achieve the peace and calm that we can presume had eluded him since Ben Solo’s turn. When Luke appears on Crait, he is a finely tooled instrument of the Light side, with his resolve and determination showing up Kylo’s chaotic and unfinished state. He has regained hope and confidence, telling his sister that “no one is ever truly lost” even as he admits that neither of them will be able to bring Ben Solo back. 

Hope for the future no longer lies in the older generation or the mythic blood that runs through their veins - it is instead embodied by Rey, and all the others like her who continue to struggle for what is right in the face of darkness and adversity. If Kylo is to escape his own past and break free from the poisonous Skywalker destiny, then he will have to learn the hardest lesson of them all for a man who was raised on the myth of his own inevitable greatness - humility.

[evilgrrl]

The Sin of Hubris, and the Dangerous Myth of the Mighty Skywalker Bloodline

Posted on December 21, 2017 by Rachael

From the Journal of Star Wars

I really like this analysis, even if it isn’t “perfect.” 

The Last Jedi is full of parallels and, in particular, parallel characters. You have Rey and Kylo Ren at the forefront, but you also have the pair of Luke and Snoke looming behind them. 

And while Luke may merely be bitter and tormented while Snoke is twisted and malevolent, both masters have walked shockingly similar paths with regards to Ben Solo. Luke openly admits to the sin of hubris – excessive pride or self-confidence – and is painfully aware of his failings. Snoke, by contrast, is all-too guilty of hubris but trips up by failing to be mindful of his pride. This lack of self-awareness is what, with delicious inevitability, results in his destruction. 

Luke is forced to confront his own hubris and pride when Ben Solo turns on him and destroys his temple, whereas Snoke receives no such lesson until it is too late – Kylo’s betrayal ends him definitively, and leaves no room for the reflection that Luke was permitted by his survival.

With regards to Ben Solo, Luke and Snoke both make the same mistake by perceiving the boy primarily in terms of his bloodline. In his nephew, Luke sees “mighty Skywalker blood” that signifies enormous potential in the Force – upon recognising this, Luke resolves that it is his duty to train the boy and allow him to realise his potential. Snoke tells an eerily similar story:

When I found you, I saw what all masters live to see. Raw, untamed power. And beyond that, something truly special. The potential of your bloodline. A new Vader.

Both Luke and Snoke, in this way, seem fixated on Ben’s lineage – they define him primarily in terms of his bloodline, so it should come as no shock that Ben eventually absorbs this in a thoroughly unhealthy way and finds it impossible to escape from the shadow of his monolithic grandfather. 

He is always told that his blood means he should achieve greatness, whether for the light or the dark, and this ultimately has the effect of robbing him of his agency. He is a figure in a galactic game of chess, being moved across a board by the same forces of destiny that dictated the movements of his grandfather and uncle. 

This concept of himself breeds many evils in Ben – entitlement, arrogance, pride and, most poignantly, crippling self-doubt. As long as he is being measured against the Skywalker precedent – by his masters and by himself – Ben always finds himself lacking, with this eternal lack breeding feelings of frustration and self-loathing.

We know little of Ben’s time under Luke, but we do know that he was already under Snoke’s influence and had had the seeds of darkness sown in his mind. When Luke looked into Ben’s mind he was filled with fear over his nephew’s potential for evil, and contemplated murdering the boy in his sleep – Ben waking to witness his uncle’s green lightsaber ignited above him is the precipitating event in his downfall. 

In relation to hubris, we must look at this event as Luke’s turning point – the moment he considered murdering the boy he had placed such hope in and devoted so much energy to training was the moment when his own self-belief and confidence were shattered. 

In this moment, Luke believed his nephew to be capable of tremendous harm and his faith in the Skywalker bloodline’s potential for good was shattered. Luke’s realisation of Ben’s potential for evil and the terrible aftermath of his moment of weakness do away with his pride and send him into exile.

Instead of guiding a beloved nephew to use his powers for good, Snoke seized upon the lost Ben Solo and exploited him as a weapon. He craved the “mighty Skywalker blood”, attracted to its potential just as Luke once was, and took the newly renamed Kylo Ren under his wing as his apprentice. 

Snoke picked up the dropped threads of Luke’s training by continuing to tell Kylo that he was special and worthy by dint of his blood, but he also used this knowledge as an instrument of cruelty and punishment. In The Last Jedi, we see Snoke humiliate Kylo, telling him:

Yes, there it is. You have too much of your father’s heart in you, Young Solo.

Han Solo represents the complicated and messy elements of Ben Solo that neither Luke nor Snoke wished to confront. Han Solo was the antithesis to Anakin Skywalker, being resoundingly normal. Han was as mundane and ordinary as Anakin was unique and gifted. While invoking the name of Anakin Skywalker calls to mind high-flung concepts like destiny and fate, the name of Han Solo suggests fast ships and gambling tables. 

Conditioned to buy into the story of his own special destiny by both his masters, Ben has come to share in this distaste, even as a part of him continues to love his father and bitterly regrets killing him. For Ben, his father was emblematic of the human fragility and weakness that was keeping him from fulfilling his long-promised destiny as the last Skywalker.

Snoke’s hubris meets a deliciously satisfying end when he pays the price for it with his murder. Snoke considers Kylo Ren his instrument, and his close control of his mind means he is arrogant enough to believe in his apprentice’s total loyalty. 

He considers Rey and Kylo his playthings, claiming authorship of the Force connection between Rey and Kylo in a move that clearly shocks and angers them both. The Force bond had facilitated intensely private and intimate moments between them, resulting in blossoming feelings of tenderness and trust, and to be told that it was merely an instrument of Snoke’s is clearly a violation that Rey and Kylo both reject. Regardless of how the bond came about, the feelings that emerged through it were palpably genuine.

Snoke’s vanity means he cannot conceive of the possibility that Kylo may have surpassed him, and he seems to enter into a state of near-sexual ecstasy as he dives into Kylo’s mind and experiences his murderous mental calculations. Snoke takes pleasure in the prospect of Rey’s murder at Kylo’s hand, considering the annihilation of the light counterpart to his dark apprentice the ultimate display of loyalty. The great and glorious irony, of course, is that the murder he is taking such delight in is actually his own:

You think you can turn him? Pathetic child. I cannot be betrayed, I cannot be beaten. I see his mind, I see his every intent. Yes. I see him turning the lightsaber to strike true. And now, foolish child, he ignites it, and kills his true enemy!

Snoke pays the ultimate price for his hubris with his death, but Kylo Ren cannot escape from the vision of himself he has had built up in his mind for decades. He continues to envisage himself as a subject of fate and destiny – he may have been cut loose from Snoke, but he has not cut himself loose from the chains of his own past. 

One of Kylo’s many tragedies is that he urges Rey to “let the past die” without achieving this himself – he continues to believe in the myth of the “mighty Skywalker blood”, and this arrogance means it feels natural to him to claim his place as the ruler of the galaxy. 

The only real complication to his destiny is his intense feelings for Rey – a “nothing” child born to wastrel parents who abandoned her. She had no legends or prophecies preceding her, and has no pre-ordained place in the story as Kylo Ren does. Kylo’s passion for her, his overwhelming feelings of love and tenderness, means he likely perceives her as the Padme to his Anakin – the love that he has always lacked and has only just realised how much he longed for. In his hubris and short-sightedness, Kylo cannot recognise that this vision of the Skywalker destiny ended in tragedy before and will surely end in tragedy again. 

Padme was heartbroken and appalled by Anakin’s ambition, and Rey is similarly repelled by Kylo’s choice. Only at the very end of the film, when he has to look up upon Rey as she closes the door of his father’s beloved ship in his face, does the emptiness of the Skywalker myth truly strike him. Kylo fulfilled Anakin Skywalker’s dream of ruling the galaxy, finishing what he started, but is crippled by the knowledge that he will do so alone. 

At the end of the film, he is finally left to carve his own path for the first time with no scripted destiny to guide him – but what should have been a triumph is yet another tragedy.

While Kylo absorbs and is further wounded by his masters’ hubris, Luke ultimately learns from his own mistakes. I would argue that a key aspect of his redemption arc is that he learns from his hubris and moves forward with a new perspective founded on hope and openness. 

Luke condemns the Jedi for restricting ownership of the Force, and clearly considers the Skywalkers themselves a great evil – he includes himself in this estimation, having exiled himself to Ahch-To to die. Luke performs a sharp turn away from hubris by losing confidence and exhibiting no pride in his bloodline at all, which makes his journey throughout the film – which sees him recover hope for the future of the Jedi through his interactions with Rey – remarkably powerful. 

At first he’s frightened by Rey’s connection with Kylo, entering into an explosive rage in an attempt to drive the two young people apart. He pleads with Rey not to give into her visions of Ben Solo returning to the light, and briefly feels helpless upon witnessing her departure in the Falcon. But Yoda reminds Luke of the importance of allowing failure, and gives Luke the resolve he needs to trust that Rey will make the right choice when the moment comes. 

Rey’s faith and goodness must remind Luke of his own actions – rushing off to save his friends despite his master’s warning, insisting on the possibility of bringing his father back despite everyone else’s lack of faith – as a young man, and he clearly sees in her the hope that he once embodied. He is inspired by this and is given a new sense of inner peace and comfort. Rey’s hope gives him hope in turn, and allows him to achieve the peace and calm that we can presume had eluded him since Ben Solo’s turn. 

When Luke appears on Crait, he is a finely tooled instrument of the Light side, with his resolve and determination showing up Kylo’s chaotic and unfinished state. He has regained hope and confidence, telling his sister that “no one is ever truly lost” even as he admits that neither of them will be able to bring Ben Solo back.

Hope for the future no longer lies in the older generation or the mythic blood that runs through their veins – it is instead embodied by Rey, and all the others like her who continue to struggle for what is right in the face of darkness and adversity. If Kylo is to escape his own past and break free from the poisonous Skywalker destiny, then he will have to learn the hardest lesson of them all for a man who was raised on the myth of his own inevitable greatness – humility.

https://journalofthestarwars.wordpress.com/2017/12/21/the-sin-of-hubris-and-the-dangerous-myth-of-the-mighty-skywalker-bloodline/