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#i think he got the ned stark role partly based on how well he dies tbh – @lj-writes on Tumblr
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I love hell I am hell

@lj-writes / lj-writes.tumblr.com

I'm also a 40-year-old Korean mom, she/her, culturally Christian atheist. This is a multifandom and multipurpose blog including Star Trek, Avatar: The Last Airbender, She-Ra, writing stuff, politics, and more. Header by knight-in-dull-tinfoil depicts a secretary bird stomping a rattlesnake above the caption "Tread on them lots, actually."
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lj-writes

If you think a rich white man from a famous family who willingly fought his way to the top of a fascist, enslaving organization should be redeemed & live happily ever after while ignoring the literal legions of Stormtroopers kidnapped and enslaved by the organization he leads, your so-called redemption starts looking a lot more like elitism and infinite get-out-of-jail-free cards for privileged men than anything to do with actual growth or change.

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dylanyonah

Aye. There’s proper redemption and bad redemption. Good redemption example.

Boromir. Aye he was often thinking he knew best, and was the easiest for the ring to corrupt. He literally tried to take the ring from Frodo. Still, I understand where he was coming from. He had a horrible father he wanted to do good by, and, he had good intentions.

Not only that, when he did try to take the ring from Frodo and insulted him, after that? Like RIGHT AFTER? You could see clearly (in part from the brilliant acting from Sean Bean) that he was so sorry, he regretted it so terribly. Not because he was caught, or because he was in danger, none of that, but because he simply knew he did something awful, and felt terrible about it and immediately called out to Frodo he was sorry.

And when the battle came? He did not hesitate to give his life to protect others, not for a second. And even as he died, and right when Aragorn came to him? “They took the little ones!” “Frodo, where is Frodo?”

He wasn’t concerned about himself, he was worried about those most in need of help. Boromir, that guy earned his redemption. Kylo Ren?

He ain’t earned no redemption.

Your comment reminds me that the best redemption arcs are ones where the character stays consistent and the very aspects of them that led to their doing wrong are the ones that bring them around.

Boromir fell briefly for the temptation of the Ring precisely because his love of his family and homeland, and his pride in himself as a hero and warrior, opened him up to the lure of power. Those same qualities led him to sacrifice his life once he realized--almost immediately--that wielding the Enemy's power was only playing into his hands. He died a hero and warrior as he lived, giving his life for his friends and for Gondor.

The most prominent example of "redemption" in this franchise, Darth Vader? His story through SIX MOVIES (even when we--and even Lucas--didn't know it) was about family, fearing losing them, actually losing them, and regaining one of them. The despair of losing his mother opened him up to the terror of losing Padmé, and he fell to Palpatine's temptation. Once he had burned every possible bridge Palpatine was the only one he thought he could turn to. When he realized Luke was his son his yearning for a connection expressed itself in violent control tactics, which Luke rejected in a spectacular fashion. Afterward you can see Vader start to question himself and his methods when he doesn't choke his subordinate at the end of ESB, before he finally realizes he can have a connection with his son only by joining him. The same yearning that propelled him to evil, his love of family, led to his doing one good thing before he croaked as all fascist mass murderers deserve to.

Zuko, often cited as the gold standard of redemption arcs and insultingly compared to Ben Solo (Zuko honey I'm so sorry), was struggling to recover from abuse for years. He thought he could get his honor back by regaining his father's love, only to realize once he was in his father's good graces again that a) there was no honor in his country's war and planned genocide and b) Ozai had never loved him and never would. His motivation to heal stayed constant, he just realized the true path to healing lay in a different path.

Ben? His motivation is not heroism, family or recovery. He is not standing against evil, he IS the evil others stand against. He has a loving family whom he killed and tried to kill. He could give less of a shit about his abuser, Snoke. His one consistent motivation is power, and keeping this motivation is not compatible with redemption. To return to LotR, it would be as though Sauron or Gollum became "good" because they could keep the Ring and use it for good purposes. It destroys all dramatic tension and undercuts the central conflict. If the character's motivation were to change all of a sudden, on the other hand, like if he suddenly decided his family or Rey were more important to him than power after he sacrificed and used them for power, it would be an abrupt turnaround in the character and a thoroughly unsatisfying, contrived kumbaya. So no, barring some late-stage reveal there is no path to a satisfying redemption that keeps the premise and character consistent.

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