If You Can't Kill The Old, Terrify The Young

Kylo: no I’m not!

Hux: he was listening to break up songs and thinking of you

Kylo:…

Rey: …

Rey: .. we never dated…

Like, for example, when at the beggining Kylo kills Lor San Tekka.

LST says to Kylo “You can not deny the truth that is your family!”. 

And Kylo replies “You’re so right!”, pulls out his lightsaber and strikes him down. 

At that point what Kylo did seemed pointless and cruel, but now, knowing what we know about that night Kylo destroyed Luke’s Academy and fled, I’d say this scene changed completely.

In Kylo’s eyes Luke is a murderer - he attempted to kill Kylo while Kylo was asleep and defenseless. And here is LST, protecting Luke (Kylo’s almost killer) and withholding information of his whereabouts. Taunting Kylo about his family in this context wasn’t the cleverest thing to do. 

And just as Luke raised his saber to Kylo (and Kylo believes that if he didn’t wake up Luke would have killed him), Kylo raised his sword to LST who defended the part of Kylo’s family that almost killed him.

I’ve read a lot about what other people make of this scene, from: “Kylo is being super manipulative and trying to bring Rey to the dark side by exploiting her origins” to “Kylo put a foot in his mouth and called Rey a “nobody”, basically made himself into a Space Darcy”. 

And though I do see a certain similarities between Reylo and Jane Austen’s novel (I even made a post about it), I strongly disagree with all those views.

Kylo/Ben is being neither manipulative evil jerk, nor dismissive obtuse jerk. C’mon, give the guy some credit.. Kylo/Ben is neither stupid nor evil:

He doesn’t want to manipulate Rey. Firstly, because I dont think he’s naive enought to think it would work on her. And secondly, he doesn’t have any evil nefarious plans regarding her. He has compassion for her, remember? Even before Kylo knew that Rey was his Force soulmate, he had compassion for her. Just read the novelization and watch again the interogation scene in TFA. The way Kylo treated Rey was anything but deliberately cruel or evil.

And Ben isn’t some stupid or unfeeling idiot who would try to propose to Rey by bringing her down and belittleling her. 

When he says “you are nobody” to Rey, he is simply stating a fact. Rey IS a nobody! She says so herself - “Im no one” to Maz Kanata in TFA trailer: “Im just a scavanger” to Han; “Im from nowhere” to Luke. 

Kylo is not being cruel for the sake of being cruel. 

He wants to help Rey. Just as Rey wants to help Ben by bringing him back to the Light side, Ben wants to help Rey by setting her free! Everything he says to her about her past, her parents - he says it all so that Rey could finally admit it to herself and move on!

How many years she spent on the desolate planet, away from people and civilization, being technically a slave! And she’s talented girl. Even before she starts using the Force we get to see that Rey is a strong woman - she is tough smart and talented. But holed herself up on Jakku, waiting for the people she knew deep inside were never coming back (Maz Kanata says as much to her in TFA, but Rey runs away from her).

Kylo wants Rey to “let the past die” so that she could move forward, become what she was meant to be. 

Now, I think that both Ben and Rey are somewhat wrong in their assuptions as to what is best for the other.

Ben wants to destroy the past (while Rey clings to it) and wants Rey to destory her past as well so that they could be together, embrace their destiny and rule the Galaxy together. Ben doesn’t want to accept his past, though. Because his wanting to destroy it completely is no better than Rey clinging back to Jakku - they are both stuck that way.

And Rey wants Ben to turn his back on the Dark side, embrace the Light and fight the FO together. Neither of them wants to accept that to achieve balance in themselves and in the Force they should embrace both Light AND Dark. 

violets are blue

you’re not alone

Only 3 people have called him Ben, to his face, in two movies and he never gave them shit for that specifically.

Han called him Ben, but he still answered to it and didn’t say anything about being called so.

Rey calls him Ben and he obviously has no issue with that.

Luke calls him Ben, but the only thing Kylo reacts to is his apology.

Kylo’s never had an issue with being called Ben, even though he’s trying to convince them that ‘Ben’ is dead.

Snoke’s the one who forbade his birth name from being spoken. He received the Kylo Ren moniker to distance and disconnect him from his past… But there’s nothing as far as I’ve seen that tells us he hates the name or is disgusted by it. Snoke’s the one who’s been teaching Kylo to basically burn everything from his past, cut himself off from everything, including his name. 

But he still responds to it, no problem.

And he never lashes out at anyone specifically for calling him that.

this comic had some really nice scenes?

also: