fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4069 ]

[ SECRET POST #4069 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4069 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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09. [SPOILERS for Stargate Origins]

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10. [WARNING for possible discussion of nazis/genocide/etc]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #582.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Villains being nuanced and complicated does not mean that they stop being villains. Kylo Ren has interesting elements of nuance but is also the literal evil space overlord of a literal evil empire that slaughters massive numbers of people, and who actively has chosen to continue doing so when given the opportunity to stop on several different occasions.

I don't want to have flat villains with no humanizing or relatable qualities. But neither do I want to pretend that villains aren't villains. And what Kylo has done is some seriously bad shit. I'm personally uninterested in overlooking that and making him exclusively sympathetic, or making him more relatable than he is. I don't think it's a good interpretation of the series to ignore any of that, and I'll be extremely disappointed if the character is redeemed or forgiven in a way that doesn't bear with the weight of what he's done.

Obviously, you know, write whatever fic you want, I don't give a shit. That's up to you. But I don't agree with it and I'm not ever going to agree with it, and if you're going to talk about it like it's canon, I'm not going to agree with it.

This. Exactly.

I don't have a problem of establishing some sympathetic points to understand where a villain is coming from, but woobifying him in redemption will make me puke.

Plus, it's dishonest.

Dishonest? LOL

Dishonest in that it would ignores the evil he's done? Is this humorous somehow?

Yes!

Are you the sort of person who expects people to slap "I know this character is bad and I should feel bad for writing this" on every fic they write or woobification-flavored post they make?

nayrt

Clearly, or they’re big, fat liars!

Are you the sort of person who is so invested in this character that you take it all so damn serious? Write any sort of fic you want, I'll just see it as grossly OOC if you strictly woobify the guy who has very little to redeem himself. SMH.

I think the person handwringing over how woobie fic is "dishonest" is taking things a lot more seriously than the people who think that it's shitty to pick on woobie fic authors.

Dishonest and also boring. Redemption that doesn’t take time to address the nasty shit a villain pulled, and show them doing their damndest to undo and mitigate as much of the harm they did as possible, and show how they deal with characters who don’t (and have a right not to) forgive them is boring, lazy, and dishonest. Why the fuck would I want to read about woobie characters getting easily redeemed?

Also, I could do with some reasons to sympathize with Kylo Ren. Right now, only his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it refusal to atomize Leia makes him anything but a one-note villain.

Look, he's already a dick with no redeeming qualities. You don't have to pretend that the Leia scene was a throwaway scene when it was awkwardly drawn out and featured in the trailers.

AYRT—I don’t think it was a throwaway scene. But I find it frustrating that so many Kylo Ren fans are, I guess, seeing more in the films that made him sympathetic than just that one moment. His reluctance to kill Leia was the only thing in either film I didn’t loathe him for. What are his fans seeing that I’m not? I’m not mocking his fans or hating them. I just don’t get why anyone would rush to defend him. Maybe if I understood, I could get back to enjoying Star Wars, and not cringe at his every scene.

Same here. I don't see much to redeem him. Hell, even Luke said he was too far gone, Luke, who got Vader to turn back from the Dark Side. Yeah, there's conflict in Kylo, sometimes he has to force himself to commit shitty deeds. And he gives in every single time, except for Leia, and he came very close to killing her, too. They claim that he killed Snoke to save Rey, but that's tainted as hell, too.

Kylo is a scared, insecure kid (manchild?) pretending to be Vader to make himself feel more intimidating and powerful. He was likely an angsty and depressed kid with abandonment issues after being dumped on Luke by his parents and Snoke exploited that. From his very first scene Kylo Ren's will is constantly being eroded as other people talk down to him and he questions his devotion to his cause. He kills his father to go all-in with the dark side to try to prove that he's the bad guy he wants to be, but he fails at it. He realizes almost immediately that killing Han was a bad choice and he's having a breakdown in the climax

If you seriously believe he's a one-note villain, you missed the point of that story, hard. I don't understand how people don't get this character. He's well written but he's not extremely complex.

I guess I have problems empathizing with that because I and a lot of people I know were depressed kids with abandonment issues who had way worse childhoods than Kylo Ren, and yet none of us grew up to be murderers or work for fascist organizations. I get that Star Wars is melodrama and everybody’s reactions are extreme, but your description of his background and motivation really does make him sound like a school shooter who threw himself into neo-Nazi ideology because it gave him an excuse to feel powerful. And I can’t sympathize or empathize with that, or its space-opera equivalent.

DA

Those real world comparisons are tasteless on their own, but they're especially tasteless at this point in history. :/

NAYRT

It's kind of a tricky situation? It does seem fairly tasteless. But then at the same time, Kylo is a character who literally actually does murder a significant number of his fellow students at the Jedi school. That's what he canonically does. It's a tricky line to walk.

I would have chosen not to bring up the comparison myself but at the same time, it's not like this is something that AYRT has invented out of thin air either. I'm not sure how I feel about it, honestly.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-02-24 15:07 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-02-24 15:32 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-02-24 15:47 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-02-24 18:29 (UTC) - Expand

I can’t even see the nuance there, for me it’s so overshadowed by the “evil space overlord” part. To counteract that much evil, he’d have to be so blantantly conflicted the narrative could drive it home with a mallet. He doesn’t seem to have any good qualities, not only is he never shown to be honorable or loyal or kind, he doesn’t even have any self-control.

You don't have to perfectly counteract the evil to create a nuanced character. You can even have a nuanced, interesting character who has no redeeming qualities at all.

NAYRT

But the thing about OP's secret is, it's not defending having nuanced interesting characters. No one is against having nuanced interesting characters. The part that's controversial is not about whether the characters are nuanced; the question is whether they're ultimately relatable and sympathetic.

I totally agree that Kylo Ren is an interesting villain and an interesting character, but I don't think that he's relatable or particularly sympathetic.

Over-privileged white boy from respected family is sent to prestigious school where he completely fails to make good on his potential despite having obvious advantages, gets ahead by slaughtering the competition, never learns any self-control or respect for other people, keeps being offered second chances because of it, spits at said offers and still whines about how everyone is out to get him as he tries to take over the galaxy... he's Donald Trump except he inherited superpowers instead of multi-millions.

So, obviously some people find that relatable. Or they hate rebels enough to ignore the murder and whining bits.

Oh, please. Was the subject not wanky enough for you already?

IKR?

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-02-24 20:26 (UTC) - Expand

To be fair, he’s more intelligent, has a slightly better brain-to-mouth filter, is more talented, and better-looking than Trump. But as far as core values or lack thereof go... yeah, basically. And yet, for all he’s a sith, he doesn’t seem to be much good at telling people what they want to hear.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2018-02-24 03:44 (UTC) - Expand

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