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.

Is this the whole thing??? It’s the first time I’ve seen this version.

Ye

Yes, that’s the whole image

Fermi is an old man sipping his beer watching TV on the couch

Wonderful news! All the pollinators at my work are very, very happy. Plus special guest the hummingbird moth! It has a lobster tail!!!

My babies, Cinder, Frankie, Skye, and Lindy!

I don’t have any personal stories to tell, but I’ll tell you one of my cousins’ as thanks for those very nice 5.

Our family is from the Southern United States, and as such, I have an uncle or great uncle or uncle-once-removed who owns a pre-civil war plantation house in the hills of Bell Buckle, Tennessee. Like many plantation houses close to much fighting and bloodshed, it became, during the war, a temporary hospital. Confederate forces brought their wounded and dying to the house in hopes of recovery, but naturally, a lot of people died there.

In more modern times, my Uncle kept the old historic layout of the house well up into the 1970s, and did not outfit it with such modernisms as electricity and telephone until sometime during the 80s. Situated in the middle of acres and acres of cow pastures, it was a popular destination for various members of my family to send their kids (presumably, my cousins) for the summer to run around and play with chickens or whatever. As the house did not have any air conditioning, they would all sleep in cots in the main hallway, where there was at least a chance of a breeze to break the humid southern nights. 

According to my cousins who stayed there in this fashion (and mind you, this story is told by more than one of them), every so often, a soft thump… clunk… thump… clunk… thump… clunk could be  heard echoing around the house in the early early morning. And even rarer, but more notably, a pale figure could be seen accompanying these strange sounds. 

As my cousins grew up, they became interested in the history of the house and its relation to the war. Looking into the registry of soldiers who died there, they found one whose records mentioned the amputation of a leg and the use of a makeshift prosthetic. There was an old photograph of the man, and, surprisingly enough, his face matched that of the pale figure they had seen. Thinking over what they had learned and what they remembered, my cousins then realized that the odd sounds were the footsteps of a man with both a real and a wooden leg.