It Wasnt - Tumblr Posts
Me: Okay my essay is due tomorrow morning so I should just start it now to make my life easier.
Me: Alright just gotta put on some music on my phone *see my Ao3 tab* well I’ll just finish this fic and then start
5 hours later
Me: Oh shit
why did I, someone who is very busy, think it was a good idea to check ao3
I promise I am not sending this in bad faith but it kind of surprises me that so many intelligent and well-read people in the Reylo fandom did not see Ben’s death coming in a mainstream American piece of media aimed family audiences. Unfortunately, a (redeemed) murderous villain settling down with the heroine was never a realistic expectation to have from such a massive franchise. Especially not on screen. But I can see them bringing him back in a book with a niche readership.
Not meaning to be rude, but it 100% was a reasonable expectation to have. Star Wars is (was) very unique among American franchises. It already eschews many models of American storytelling.
The entire Force in the OT is based on your "feelings", a concept ridiculed by modern unsentimental storytelling and culture. Luke is told to "trust his feelings." Luke wins not because he physically overpowers Vader or Palpatine but because he throws away his weapon because violence will only turn him to darkness, declares that he won't fight Vader because he "is a Jedi, like his father before him", and is saved by Anakin coming to his senses and redeeming himself by protecting Luke after Luke shows true love and compassion for his father. The day is not won by punching a guy, as it usually is in American storytelling. The day is won because a son refused to fight and instead merely reminded his father that he loved him.
Star Wars is explicitly based on mythic storytelling as interpreted and given lens by Joseph Campbell. As in, Lucas was friends with Campbell and literally told Campbell so. Lucas intended, very clearly, to make a story in the fashion of old myth. And in the fashion of old myth, old men may die, but youth must live. Lucas even is quoted as saying, "I believe you are redeemed through your children." Ben, being young, being the child in this scenario and not the father, 110% should have lived under SW's original mythic logic.
I have explained why Ben needed to live here in this pre TROS post and I stand by the logic which TROS abandoned and which therefore breaks the integrity of the story. Anakin did not die as Vader because it was punishment. It was framed as a release for an old man who had suffered for twenty years in a broken body. Obi Wan, Luke, and Han dying also do not die to be punished because they are old men who lived their lives fully and now die with purpose. Ben is none of these things and his death is a cynical exception.
It is pandering to the lowest common denominator to act like SW was always this way. Original Star Wars was created explicitly to counter the cynical American storytelling you are talking about.
"Rather than do some angry, socially relevant film…I realized there was another relevance that is even more important — dreams and fantasies, getting children to believe there is more to life than garbage and killing…Once I got into STAR WARS, it struck me that we had lost all that — a whole generation was growing up without fairy tales. You just don’t get them anymore, and that’s the best stuff in the world — adventures in far-off lands. It’s fun.” (x)
"You can’t, and how do you explain a Wookiee to an audience, and how do you get the tone of the film right, so it’s not a silly child’s film, so it’s not playing down to people, but it is still an entertaining movie and doesn’t have a lot of violence and sex and hip new stuff? So it still has a vision to it, a sort of wholesome, honest vision about the way you want the world to be.” (x)
Anyway. I am trying not to be aggressive but I have answered so many asks on this topic in the past. Those of us who insisted that Ben needed to live did not do so with some blind spot in our literary vision. Star Wars, until TROS, was not a Marvel movie, was not an "American story", was very explicitly textually by its creator built on ancient myth and non-cynicism. Ben dying breaks the integrity of this ancient myth logic and it therefore breaks star wars. SW wasn't about, in George's words, "garbage and killing." That it has now betrayed itself isn't my problem or our fault for believing in the shape of George's vision, not sorry.
[ID: Digital drawing of Gerry and Gertrude from The Magnus Protocol. Gerry is a thin white man with grown-out dyed black hair and blonde roots. His hair is in a bun with a pencil and stained paintbrush stuck in it. He wears an open red overshirt, grey jeans, and a black t-shirt with bleach painting on it that reads “Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Keay”. He is holding a mug and biting his lip, looking slyly to one side. Gertrude is an old white woman with silver hair. She wears a red cardigan, blue shirt, and grey skirt, with spectacles on a chain perched on her nose. She looks in the same direction as Gerry, frowning disapprovingly. End ID.]
“my grandson” 10 hour compilation tbh
I read my first dead dove do not eat fic 3 months ago and I've finally recovered and finally looked up what dead dove do not eat means after reading fanfics for 9 years. My life has changed forever
ok! So for some reason I can't post photos on tumblr! Hopefully will get this resolved soon :)))))))
love it here. for real
after a long day of doing whatever the fuck for who ever the fuck its time to head home. when you get home you know your hungry but you also know you don't have enough money to order anything from anywhere in this god forsaken city so instead you chose to make a grilled cheese and tomato soup from shit you got from the convenience store. as you sit down with your meal instead of turning on the news to hear about another nobody just like you doing something unlike you, you instead turn on an old episode of some TV show you used to watch as a kid and for just a moment you feel the safety of childhood invelope you the feeling of the warm safe environment you once had. But the moment was ethereal just as fast as it came it was gone and there you were a grown adult watching a kid show in a dark bleak flat all alone so you turn it off put the rest of your food in the fridge to rot and head to bed.
THATS WHAT ITS LIKE TO EAT A PLAIN BAGEL AT THREE AM