Story villains are fictional. Evil is real. Liking a fictional villain makes you a fan. Justifying actual evil makes you an asshole.
If Kylostans want a space Nazi to be the hero so badly I’m not sure why they’re sticking around Star Wars, an explicitly antifascist franchise. There are plenty of stories where Nazis are the heroes, for instance The Iron Dream even if it’s satire (but I don’t think many of them can tell the difference, if the Emo Kylo Ren account debacle is any indication). I’m also pretty sure Stormfart has a recommended reading list.
Bendemptionism BS, or: Nazis aren’t that special
I just roll my eyes at the achy-breaky feels Bendemptionists get about how Han’s sacrifice is WASTED and it would mean love is POINTLESS and there is NO HOPE for the Skywalkers or anywhere in the galaxy unless Ben is redeemed. Because like... Finn and Rey exist, and they represent hope for both the Skywalkers and the universe: The hope that people can make a choice to be good despite abuse and abandonment.
Tbh I find it downright offensive to be told that I have to invest my whole hope for the future in a space neo-Nazi who’s committed nothing but evil since his first appearance while going wank, wank, wank feeling sorry for himself. Prioritizing BS like this plays into his own entitled opinion of himself that he is special and irreplaceable and the very people he destroyed cannot be whole without him, as though the actual heroes aren’t right there. Wasn’t this Rey’s exact error in TLJ, that she thought the men of the ~special anointed~ bloodline had to save the galaxy and it turned out no, she and the Resistance were the true hope for the future that one of these men tried to wipe out and the other died to pretect?
The idea that Han’s sacrifice is wasted unless it saves Ben is also similarly terrible because, even aside from the awfulness of a murderer benefiting from his victim’s death, it’s pretty obvious that Han’s sacrifice was NOT wasted no matter what Ben does because, again, Finn and Rey! Exist! These two young people who grew up without parents watched the depth of a parent’s love and were both changed by it, and were also forever scarred by the way its intended recipient spat on the gift and skewered the giver like a piece of meat.
So yeah, fuck the idea that Ben is the only hope in the universe and without him turning good the Skywalker Saga is a failure. I know people hate to hear this but Nazis aren’t as special as they think they are lmao.
You’re a coward if you can’t bring yourself to admit your evil/abusive fave did anything wrong in their life, ever, and have to make 10,000 excuses about how they’re secretly a misunderstood baby
A Zuko and Kyle comparison, annotated.
I screwed up and posted this twice, so I deleted the earlier post and am porting the comments over here.
“desperate to prove himself”
Yeah, that seems accurate.
“unwavering loyalty to leader of nation”
He just killed the leader and didn’t seem to struggle with it. So I think it’s safe to say that his loyalty is hardly unwavering or even existent.
“has temper tantrums”
That he does, but Kylo’s tantrums have a tendency to turn into violent atrocities, which Zuko’s never did.
“will stop at nothing to find and capture the good guys”
He definitely wants to find them, but at the end of TLJ he made it pretty clear he has no interest in capturing them. He wants to kill and eradicate them.
“whiny teen”
He’s 30. And he is whiny, but like I stated above, calling him just “whiny” is downplaying the awful atrocities and violence he’s committed that Zuko never did.
“slowly realizes he’s wrong and likes the good guys”
He ends TLJ demanding that the good guys be utterly destroyed. If anything, he hates them more now. And he has never admitted or really alluded that he is wrong. Even Driver stated that Kylo believes he is totally in the right. Plus, realizing he’s wrong and liking the good guys was more later Zuko, not early Zuko,
“messed up by his family members betraying him as a kid”
Who exactly betrayed him as a kid? Because it sure wasn’t Han or Leia. The only person I could even think of one saying that about is Luke, but that happened when Kylo was a 23 year old adult, not a kid. And I think it was pretty clear that he was already messed up when that happened, which is what Luke sensed.
Do white men mature at different rates than the rest of us? Zuko was 13 when his asshole dad burnt off half his face and 16 when he was having tantrums. Karlo is somehow a kid at 23 when his uncle reacted to the growing darkness within him, and mysteriously a “teen” at almost 30. What’s going on here? Am I fixating too hard on things like “math” and “facts?”
themandarinorange
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I love how The Essence Festival has a display of TROS costumes only featuring Jannah, Finn, Lando, Poe and Rey. Every time someone complains that Kylo is excluded from a display highlighting inclusion, drink!
Do you mean to tell me my darling teenager Ben, tHe LAst sKYwaLkER, ISN’T the hero and protagonist of the SkYwaNker tRiLooGiE?! This is bigotry against me personally as a female/queer/nonwhite/neurodiverse person and I’m calling 911 😤
Also how DARE they ERASE Ben from a celebration of Black people in SW?! Don’t they know he is CP5-coded
lj-writes reblogged
I love how The Essence Festival has a display of TROS costumes only featuring Jannah, Finn, Lando, Poe and Rey. Every time someone complains that Kylo is excluded from a display highlighting inclusion, drink!
Do you mean to tell me my darling teenager Ben, tHe LAst sKYwaLkER, ISN’T the hero and protagonist of the SkYwaNker tRiLooGiE?! This is bigotry against me personally as a female/queer/nonwhite/neurodiverse person and I’m calling 911 😤
#i mean those constumes are for three black people and one latino#definitely a group some white woman would call the cops on#(this is why they brought along their white friend rey)#anti reylo#anti kylostans#racism#fandom racism#antiblackness#representation matters#space fights#the rise of skywalker#and furthermore
Deliberately hurting people while feeling sorry for yourself is not a sign of morality, it is a revolting level of narcissism. It's a self-aggrandizing wank that gives yourself a pat on the back that you're not REALLY as bad as your actions, while at the same time making yourself the suffering hero of the tragedy you have inflicted on others. What's terrifying is not so much that BS sees himself this way, but rather that legions of stans fall over themselves affirming his false sense of morality.
I think kylo fans justify his atrocities with the "they are all enemy combatants" excuse imperialists use. which is just expanding the "why are you making me hurt you" lie all bullies and abusers use. like, they really think his victims deserve what they get for defying their hero.
They’re openly calling him “prince” and “king.” It’s not even subtle.
One of the foreign titles for IX translates to "The Resurrection of Skywalker" which I think means either Luke or Anakin (or both?) will return, or else Rey will take the Skywalker name after the remaining Skywalkers die. Or both.
You know the Kylostans are going to say Ben Solo is going to resurrect the Skywalker name with ~Bendemption~, right? XD They’re probably saying it right now.
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Every time Daisy Ridley says anything about not being the lead of the ST or it being an ensemble everyone decides it's about Kylo. Either, "See, Daisy feels sidelined by Kylo" or "well of course -- Kylo and Rey are equal leads."
It's not about Kylo. She's made similar statements from the start as a way of stressing that Finn is equally important to Rey.
Their dual importance was clear in TFA, but she stressed it with TFA as well:
"No, it's not Rey's story. I think everyone in this film is important to everyone else and it's an amazing sort of combination of everyone meeting and...yeah." -- Daisy Ridley about TLJ, Dec. 2017
First of all, "everyone" goes against the entire idea that it's all about Rey and Kylo. Kylo served Rey's story in TLJ, but Rey's story was one of two main arcs (the other being Finn's, regardless of its issues) connected by a third arc (The Resistance/Poe/Leia/Holdo).
Kylo served these arcs, but does not lead any of them.
"I always thought like it’s never one person. Every single person…like Rey without Finn, Finn without Poe, Poe without Rey, Jannah, like everyone is so important…Lando, like people from 40 years ago are still as important and people that have arrived they still are as important. Nothing would be what it is without everybody else.” - Daisy Ridley, April 2019.
So I don't agree that what she's saying is that Kylo is more important than Rey. She's saying the core found family of the ST (which doesn't include Kylo and likely never will) -- Finn, Poe, Jannah, Rose, Leia, Lando -- are lead characters. Not just Rey. Not Kylo.
I'm not saying this to be a cheerleader or a defender or whatever. I'm saying it because she's being twisted and once again Finn's importance is erased.
(Source)
Example 30,471 of someone who claims Finn’s character “doesn’t make sense” being a terrifying mass murder apologist.
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Best of JCF, 6/12/19:
JCF: release the saaaaaalt
Seriously it’s so good to see, like, actual normal person opinions outside of fandom hot takes like “war crimes are fine, fighting back against genocidaires makes you just as bad as them, anything can be forgiven if you’re a white man from a famous family who says sorry, and this entire trilogy is building up to an accountability-free happy ending for the leader of a space fascist organization while the heroine of the trilogy is destined to be the broodmare for his superior genes.” It’s refreshing to be reminded that people who have any idea of good story or like, basic morality, recoil from any one of these premises. Not to mention people pointing out the blatant (racist) double standard with Finn’s Force sensitivity.
lj-writes reblogged
honestly the whole bendemption thing pisses me off especially bc
(and we put aside the fact that kylo doesn’t seem to want one or believe he needs to redeem himself, and we put aside all the shipping garbage, and even when we put aside how the ST went out of its way to establish co-leads with a woman and MOC only for idiots to decide these three films revolve around the most attractive white dude in the cast and who he might bone, actually,)
it’s like never actually a redemption that they want
what people seem to want when they say bendemption is “kylo turns to the light and everyone basically accepts him as a good guy, and he lives a happily ever after without any consequences bc he did one non evil thing”
but everything he’s done is cheapened if that’s all there is to it. we watched him torture poe and rey on screen without remorse, kill his father and try to kill a ton of other people, stand back and watch hosnian prime happen without even speaking up against it.
and the lesson if people get the ending they seem to feel entitled to is “well it’s okay bc he sad or whatever, just ol ben sitting at the resistance family bbq haha” like. no. in-universe, kylo ren should not in any capacity be allowed to sail off into the sunset happy and free.
he’s made his choices. he has to live with the consequences of those choices, and there should be consequences for those choices, because they’ve been frankly very shitty choices ranging from murder to torture to more murder. there’s no excusing or wiping away his actions. i don’t believe for a moment that, even if he does turn to the light somehow, he’s getting off scott-free. there’s genuinely no way.
This this this!!! I love a good redemption story, but redemption involves, among other things, admitting you were wrong and making amends. Adam Driver has said that Kylo has absolute certainty that he is in the right, which by itself is a huge count against the possibility of redemption. That belief in his own righteousness is so absolute that it allowed him to dismiss considerable pangs of conscience and personal pain. If multiple massacres of civilians, the obliteration of an entire system, the torture of prisoners, murdering his own father, forgiveness by one of his victims, and attempts to murder his mother along with all her associates won’t convince him of his wrongness, I have a hard time seeing what will at this point.
I have also said before that true redemption precludes a happy ending for Ben. If you can be happy after causing that kind of devastation then you’re not redeemed, you’re remorseless. I see Bendemptionists talk about how Ben and his friends Rey, Finn, and Poe will laugh about his crazy antics back when he was Kylo Ren and I feel sick. Everyone around Ben is evidently supposed to make light of their own trauma and laugh about it so he doesn’t feel bad about his actions. The extent to which they think war crimes are nbd and that the universe revolves around Ben’s cock is absolutely gag-inducing.
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someone: Kylo Ren is a villain, murderer, space fascist and a terrible person in general
90% Kylo Ren fans: the nerve. the AUDACITY. how dare you, how could you say that. don’t you know that he is mentally ill? don’t you know that his mother was neglectful and distant? don’t you know that his father disappointed him? that his uncle was too hard on him and then pushed him into the darkness?? I bet Chewie didn’t hug him enough too. the things you said, that’s just disgusting and heartless, blocked, reported, i’m going to physically manifest in ur house op
someone: Darth Vader is a villain, murderer, space fascist and a terrible person in general
90% Darth Vader fans: yea lol. tho, did you see how he killed a guy and then immediately gave his job to the guy right next to him? and how he Force Choked another guy thru Skype?? iconic™