An Apprentice

After 3 painful years of so much drama, sweat, anxiety attacks and stress, I finally finished the major arcana and felt it was fitting to share this on the release of the final trilogy teaser! Yes this tarot will be a full 78 physical deck and will be avail on my etsy later in the year. You can follow this shop (PS: it’s only the user profile atm!) and get notified once it’s released :) Thank you for being part of the ride! Individual Major Arcana Tarots:

After the Throne Room, Rey and Ben pretend nothing happened. If only their dreams would leave them be.

All the things that never happened in the year between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. An interlude to my upcoming post-TRoS comic.

Uh, no, because Ben was already established as a character who gaslights himself. The only person Ben lies to is himself. He lies because he is trying to convince himself that he is the monster that his true nature is not. 

This is also the guy who said “I killed Han Solo. When the moment came, I didn’t hesitate” and we know that was a total lie. Ben says that because it’s what he is telling himself he wants to hear. He’s trying to speak into existence what he failed to do in reality.

This is the exact same thing that happened with the temple incident. And moreover, in the comic, it’s left ambiguous what happened. Yes, a lightning strike hit the temple, but was this just a random lightning strike? Was it Palpatine? Was it Ben? Was it Palpatine acting through Ben? We aren’t told that information. The ambiguity is intentional because I 110% guarantee that Ben does blame himself for the destruction of the temple and moreover as part of his Kylo Ren persona has moved on to saying “he destroyed it” because whatever happened, he caused it, either because of his inherent monstrousness or his inherent cursed nature. This is the sort of self victim blaming that is textbook Ben and you see elements of this all throughout the canon. 

This is a character who has internalized every bad thing that ever happened to him and in a desperate attempt at agency says that those terrible things must have happened because he deserved it, which means he functionally caused them. We have a guy canonically abused and mentally manipulated since birth by a dark Force entity who never once blames Snoke for any of this. He blames himself. He says that he is the monster; he is the person who is so terrible and inherently unloveable that everyone betrays him when his only crime was to exist.

This is an element that a lot of people get wrong about Ben’s characterization in the fandom because it’s a subtle point, but it drives me nuts. Just because Ben says something, and in fact might “believe” it, doesn’t mean it’s the canonical truth and it’s probably not even something Ben believes deep deep down, in the places he doesn’t allow himself to go because it would rip his entire justification for the Kylo Ren persona apart. Ben’s statement is an interpretation of an event and is colored by his personal experience and bias. Rey’s statement was a statement of a fact, not an event. There’s nothing to interpret here unless you are being an extremely disingenuous writer, which JJ is.

What baffles me the most is people that accuse enemies-to-lovers of being inherently abusive or abusive when there’s any actual conflict (like, you know, stories have) beyond something boring that no one would write like they stepped on each other’s toes in a movie theater. This extreme purity police attitude shows a lack of any understanding about storytelling and what like...fiction is. But diving even deeper into this claim, enemies-to-lovers is in dynamically the exact opposite of an abusive relationship, and that in of itself is a large part of its appeal for a lot of people. No intimate abuser will announce themselves as your sworn enemy, they will present themselves as everything you have ever wanted and the most perfect partner you could imagine. Instalove, the exact opposite of enemies-to-lovers, is actually the trope that resembles love bombing aka how most abusive relationships start. One of the reasons enemies-to-lovers can be so appealing, especially to women and people who have been in toxic relationships, is because when the enemy becomes your lover - you know they mean it. You know how they behave with their enemies, you know the darkest part of them and you don’t need to worry about what is lurking beneath the surface because you’ve already seen it and battled it and gotten past it.

As far as being misogynistic, enemies-to-lovers is literally a power fantasy for the female gaze. It’s the idea of someone who once opposed you being so enamored by you in your most unfiltered, non-seductive form that they listen to you, see things from your perspective, and ultimately align their strength with yours. Women are told that we need to make ourselves small and inoffensive and perfect to attract men or anyone or anything positive, so of course the idea that someone could become deeply enamored, almost against their will, with you when you are actively fighting them, arguing with them, challenging them etc. that those qualities, that being opinionated and angry and passionate and strong, could be the very thing that attracts them to you is a subversion of that idea. And enemies are equals, for a woman to be considered a worthy adversary to a man (and not by becoming a man to him or a sexual “temptress”) means the woman is being respected as his equal. This is a dynamic entirely based on equality, it relies on both characters being of equal strength, much more so than most romance tropes.

This is not exclusive to the female gaze though, in general it’s a fantasy that many can appreciate. Everyone has insecurities and bad moods, and intimacy is difficult for everyone (to varying degrees). In an enemies-to-lovers ship, the lovers have already seen each other in their most unromantic state. They have seen each other screaming with the rage of battle, have seen each other’s scorn and sneer, have seen each other so intimately that once they enter “lovers” and even “to”, there is nothing new to discover except the good parts. Imagine if you could get into a relationship where you don’t have to worry about what your partner’s hiding or if they will reject you because you always know the worst of each other, have already accepted it, and now get to fall in love discovering only the good parts. It creates a very intimate and intense dynamic.

On the other hand, there’s the appeal from the perceptive of the antagonist. Some people prefer to identify their trauma or pain or insecurities with antagonists rather than protagonists because they don’t see that part of themselves as the hero and/or they don’t want to have to hold that part of themselves up to some pristine standard. Some people want to see the dark part of themselves go full dark and then be loved anyways. The idea that you can always change for the better, that you are always worthy of love no matter how damaged you think you are. The idea that someone bright and good could see the most angry, hurt, ugly part of you and still love you. That is a very hopeful and positive message to a lot of people. I will never understand these types of people’s hateful opposition to redemption and healing, because I truly think that’s one of the most beautiful and powerful messages a story can have when it’s done right. The obsession some people have with punishment and condemnation simply is not healthy or productive.

Already gone

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make me love you.

blooming in your bones

matching reylo wallpapers! (open in new tabs for bigger sizes)

One Day

available on society6 & redbubble

Another daydream I hope to see in IX! Inspired by Hans Zimmer’s “One Day” in POTC at world’s end. That soundtrack was really moving and feels so reylo!

Don’t leave like the rain.

1. Ben is cut out of his own family’s story and then literally erased. He is never mentioned again and no one mourns him, his entire life and death means nothing to the film’s narrative. Rey is depicted as fine and content without him, lacking nothing, having learned nothing from him or their relationship.

2. Rey replaces him in his family, she doesn’t join him and become part of it through her connection to him. She’s the ‘perfect heir’ they all ‘should’ have had. Everyone loves her because she is inherently better and more deserving and they all just ~knew~ that instantly. Ben wasn’t worth raising or training in the Force or trying to save or give a pep talk or listen to, every one of his caregivers gave up on him before he’d ever done anything wrong. This is the unavoidable subtext of the film and Terrio has only doubled down on it.

3. Rey regresses to childhood with a new set of deified dead parents, Luke and Leia, and now they’re looking on approvingly to show this is supposed to be a good thing. This is about a restitution ‘adoption’ of a worthy child, not about her moving into the fullest adulthood possible as a widow, living up to the person Ben could taught her she could be. He isn’t fucking there even symbolically, everything he tried to teach her about herself and her power and how worthwhile she was has been undermined into a lie because no, your power is from your lineage and you were born special and you should worship the past and wait in blissful, dysfunctional denial until some new mummy and daddy arrive to tell you what to do. Her parents were good heroes and she was completely right not to ever grow up or accept her abandonment.

4. How dare anyone compare this to Titanic. Titanic is not broken and it’s not pointless, it is a functional story and Rose’s decision to take Jack’s name was actual culmination of her character arc, it made thematic sense, it served the significance of their relationship, and it was earned. Rose is embracing a true self which was always there that Jack helped her discover and define by pushing her to face the truth, forging a new free life in adulthood and self-knowledge with the gift he gave her. Their love was consummated and productive, she doesn’t go back into denial and childhood. He MEETS HER in the AFTERLIFE because it was about them and his positive impact on her. Ben has no Force ghost and no token in the final scene because as far as this movie is concerned he is completely irrelevant.

They released the comics right before the premiere which made it clear that Ben Solo did not destroyed the Jedi Temple and did not kill any jedi student. He just wanted to get home. And that certain night when Luke tried to hurt his nephew, Luke Skywalker was indeed under the influence of Palpatine.

All of these meant to prepare the audience for the “ Redemption  ” and Ben Solo’s happy life…

It was established that Sidious had a thing for collecting force sensitive children (both during the clone wars era and during Rebels) and experimenting on them to turn them to the dark side. Then he used them as spies.

He targeted children…and after the Skywalkers defeated him he targeted, groomed, manipulated, abused and essentially collected Ben from inside the womb to the point if betrayal by Luke. It was revenge and tatical.