Ex Astris Scientia

Hey. This is the beginning of the DVD where it says the opinions expressed in the commentary (submission) do not reflect those of the distributer (Space Mom).

I cannot stress enough how little of a reylo shipper or a keylo stan I am, but for G-d’s sake some of you people need to learn how to consume media critically. Like, actually critically, not “if this character was real and did the things they did in real life he would be an irredeemable bastard and so he shouldn’t get a redemption arc.” What the fuck, guys? Yes, the motherfucker tortured people and killed his dad and was complicit in literal genocide, but that’s just bad writing. We’re meant to consider him a villain in the same way we considered Vader a villain, but one of the ways they tried to convince us was destroying planets. But no one in the entire series ever actually ACTS like a planet has been destroyed, least of all Leia, who in IV seems super cool about the whole thing immediately. It’s a characterizing flourish that is as clumsy and as miscalculated as it is common to the series. If you read this and think I’m saying anything close to “genocide and depictions of genocide are okay,” that’s exactly the problem I’m talking about. The sequel trilogy mirrored (and magnified) the original trilogy not just because they learned after the prequels that audiences wanted less new stuff, but because the sequels leaned heavily on the idea of inheritance. Kylo Ren tortured Rey and blew up planets because Vader tortured Leia and blew up planet(s?). What we want for villains in fiction should not necessarily be what we want for villains in reality and the fact that this distinction is so rarely made is deeply troubling to me. If Avatar: The Last Airbender wasn’t a show for kids (or, at least, on a network for kids), Zuko probably would’ve killed people and you guys would say he shouldn’t have a redemption arc. Let me be clear: the bad writing is not that a villain gets redeemed, but that a villain meant for redemption is characterized poorly. Make the distinction, please, I’m begging you. All the discourse typed about characters not meeting the standards of perfect moral rectitude necessary to be liked creates genuine moral failure when people who like the story are forced to defend evil actions as if they were committed in reality. It would be, without hyperbole, exhausting to bridge over from the previous point to this next and perfectly expand on it, so let me just briefly say: in the same way that characterization descends into caricature because broad narrative strokes are often necessary to illustrate fine points (he’s a villain, so he must act cruelly even if he is to be redeemed, so let’s have him DESTROY PLANETS), it is often necessary for writers of fiction to use tropes to convey something fresh. The redemption arc of a mildly sympathetic villain is a trope, a narrative caricature, used as a vehicle for the author’s unique story. To simply say that villain redemption is old and overdone is to fundamentally misunderstand how fiction is created and structured.

submission unpopular opinion