fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4345 ]

[ SECRET POST #4345 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4345 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Sorry for the exceptionally late, thought I'd already posted this today! At least it'll be here for everybody in the morning.

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 27 secrets from Secret Submission Post #622.
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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Kylo is a genocidal terrorist, no he is not redeemable

As opposed to Vader?

Right, because Darth Vader was a totally nice guy.

Da

I will never understand the level of hate Kylo Ren gets when Darth Vader also exists. I mean, they're both ~Bad Guys~, they do ~Bad Things~, FFS! At this point I'm convinced that much of the Kylo hate is because a lot of people think the actor who plays him is ugly.

I’m the OP of the sentiment if not the secret and I think Kylo Ren is plenty handsome. The difference, for me, between Vader and his grandson is that Kylo Ren knew his family was out in the world and alive and when offered a chance at forgiveness and reconciliation he killed his father. Anakin Skywalker went paranoid-flavor nuts and eventually mortally injured his wife starting with nightmares and suspicion that the wife and unborn children he loved were under threat. The first cracks in Vader’s devotion to the Emperor (which never really looked like heartfelt belief in the Empire, considering his contempt for its military) occurred when he realised he had living children.

What Vader did was horrific. Anakin Skywalker killed children and his fellow Jedi and probably the wife he’d loved, and by the time of his death as Vader, he was a bloated old cripple kept alive by his prosthetic armor prison. But the only time the audience sees him lose control and throw screaming tantrums he’s just lost both legs and his remaining arm and caught fire from molten lava. He could be a whiny creep and even he wasn’t as cringe inducing as his grandson who had two loving, living parents and still grew into a frothing shrieking weirdo. Kylo Ren had a better life up until he was maybe 16-20 and his uncle tried to kill him, and in retaliating he killed a good chunk (all?) of his fellow students.

Also I’ve only watched each of the new movies once, and where the hell did the Knights of Ren shown in the first movie, that were with Kylo while he slaughtered the other Jedi students, come from? Did Rian Johnson just decide they didn’t exist? Idk.

The thing is, though, Kylo didn't actually have a great life. Snoke started talking to him and manipulating him early. And his parents weren't present enough to notice, and Luke somehow managed to not notice either. His sense of reality has been so completely warped and twisted. Luke thought about killing him for a moment because he saw the evil developing in Kylo without seeing the context and seeing what Snoke was doing to him. And that moment of weakness from Luke confirmed for Kylo all that Snoke had been telling him.

Whether or not you find any of this compelling, Kylo still has his own twisted background and reasons for being who he is that aren't just being whiny.

NAYRT

And then Kylo confirmed for Luke that he was in fact evil by murdering the other students. So Luke wasn't even WRONG in his thinking, even if his guilt says otherwise.

We don't know that yet. We have Luke's words, but he was unconscious during the time this went down. It's possible he murdered them and it's also possible Kylo Ren could have killed them protecting himself (like he thought he was doing with Luke). Or the students that became the Knights of Ren killed the other students.

As for your last sentence, I suggest you read the myth of the binding of Fenrir.

AYRT—I guess maybe Snoke wasn’t compelling enough, and the films didn’t go into enough detail, for me to believe that Snoke’s mindfuckery excused or explained everything Kylo did. And I just can’t make the leap from distant parents and a voice in his head telling him shitty things with becoming a shrieking unstable murderer, and certainly not on the scale he managed. Real life parallels to his situation seem like they would involve someone with paranoid schizophrenia falling in with a paramilitary white supremacist cult, or similar, except most schizophrenic people are more dangerous to themselves than others and have nothing like Kylo’s rap sheet.

And I dunno, as someone whose parents were seceral orders of magnitude more fucked up than Leia and Han with a basketful of attendant mental issues, I get mad when I see people woobify and excuse mass murder and a total lack of fellow feeling for everyone but a potential
love interest on the basis that someone had loving but confused and neglectful parents and mental issues oh poor baby. There are lots of people with that backstory or worse who aren’t murder-cult participants.

I'm not saying you have to find the reasons compelling at all. I'm just saying it is disingenuous to say there weren't any reasons. There were. Maybe it doesn't work for you, but it is there.

Also not saying Kylo is justified in what he is doing. He's not. Not woobifying him at all. He's evil. But Anakin wasn't justified either and was totally evil as Vader (I'd argue perhaps even more so than Kylo). And for me at least, both are about at the same level in terms of being evil, having backstories that explain that, and being perhaps capable of redemption. Don't know if they are going to go that way with Kylo or not. But if they do, it will probably work for me personally.

Because Darth Vader was a competent and compelling villain, and his backstory/motivation is a lifetime of slavery and deceit (which does nothing to excuse any of his actions, of course, but does make his "fuck the Jedi" argument pretty understandable). Kylo, by contrast, was /almost/ attacked by his uncle in a moment of terror and weakness about the young Kylo's morals, and proceeds to...prove Luke right immediately by murdering most of the other students and going on to essentially recreate the Empire.

At least Darth Vader lacked loving parents and a full grasp of consequences. Kylo looked at the history of his family and the galaxy as a whole and went "yeah let's do all of that horrible stuff AGAIN"

Kylo was so completely manipulated and abused by Snoke from such a young age without anyone being aware of it and able to counteract it that he has no sense of reality whatsoever. He may have had great parents, but they weren't really there and thus weren't able to eee in time what was happening to him. It is a bit disingenuous to say that "kylo looked at the history of this family and the galaxy as a whole" when Kylo has no idea the real history. He thinks Vader died for the Empire. He thinks the Empire was a good thing (and not just in a sense that his morals are twisted, though they are, but in the sense that he has no idea the real history at all).

Where was all of this stated? (It wasn't in the movies, was it?) How do we know Leia and Han weren't there for him? Why wouldn't he have known the history of the Empire? He was being trained as a Jedi with Luke--I'd think "where did all the other Jedi go" would be Jedi Training 101 in that era.

It was pretty obvious to me in TFA that Han and Leia had been rather absentee parents. Not saying they were bad. Just, they were both focused on other things and kind of left it to Luke to take care of Kylo. Admittedly, the books make it more explicit, but I think it is still there in the movies. Same with Snoke's manipulation. Made much more explicit in the books, but still there in the movies. Leia even says in TFA that it is Snoke who made Kylo what he is.

I think he would have gotten both versions of the history. But Snoke was clearly good at lying and making his version more appealing. And Luke's near attempt at killing Kylo, even though it was only a momentary thought, confirmed for Kylo that Snoke was right. And therefore would have made him believe, if he didn't already before, that Snoke must be right about everything.

OP of the sentiment behind the secret here and THANK YOU JFC. Where is the “Snoke mind controlled baby Ben and Leia and Han were shit parents” coming from, because ffs it’s not the films. You can infer that backstory but that’s like starting with two stick figures and ending with the Sistine Chapel. I feel like 80% of Kylo’s sympathetic backstory is coming from people who saw the films and thought Kylo was hot (raises hand) and wanted to know more about him as a result and read the film novelizations/hunted through creative team interviews for evidence that he wasn’t a total whiny pissbaby murdering wankstain (chops hands off.)

AYRT Right???

Personally I don't think it's that hard to find someone hot AND still think they're a whiny pissbaby murderer with no particular reason for their evil but apparently that's really hard for some people.

Since I don't find him particularly attractive, that's not true for me. I read the novels because I always read the Star Wars novels. In this case, they are canon, and they do in fact expand on what I think is already in the movies a little bit.

Also, I don't think Han and Leia were completely shit parents. I just think that in Han's case he had no idea what he was doing and in Leia's case she was very focused on everything going on with creating the New Republic and then being at odds with the people who she used to work with. She's just a very focused and passionate person, and it makes total sense to me that Ben/Kylo might not have gotten as much of her time as he should have. Which makes her a totally normal parent in fact, and it wouldn't have done any damage to him if not for Snoke whispering in his mind, which no one was expecting or knew about.

yeah it's so confusing seeing people argue this point like it's in the movies, when it's not???

there's a one-off line about 'snoke getting to him' and THAT'S IT, and even that's not expanded upon at all. in the movies he's just some petulant child who's trying to eke the glory-days of evil-grandfather and i'm supposed to care? nah, he can diaf.

Personally I'm convinced that much of the Kylo-defending is because people think he's hot so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nope. And I'm not actually defending him. He's an evil person. I'm just saying he's equally evil as Vader was. None of Vader's background justified anything he did either. But I believe in redemption and I think that Kylo can be redeemed. Doesn't mean that anything he's done is okay. And personally, rather than going for a redemption equals death story again, I hope he lives and has to actually atone for what he's done and stand trial and everything.

Vader was absolutely an evil sadistic fucko but when offered the chance for redemption by a family member he just met, with his lifelong master standing mere feet away, he took it.

Kylo was offered the chance for redemption in a one-on-one faceoff by a loving (if flawed) father and stabbed him through the heart. You have to actually TRY to be redeemed, imo.

Yes, you do have to try. But one rejection of a redemption opportunity doesn't mean you are forever barred from redemption for the rest of your life. I genuinely believe anyone can redeemed. Okay, not Palpatine or Snoke, because they are the devil figures, and you can't redeem the devil. But anyone else, sure. Heck, if the story was right, I could even buy Hux being redeemed.

I'm not saying he's barred forever--I'm saying it's basically impossible to redeem someone who doesn't /want/ to be redeemed. As of now, he's on a track to become the next "devil figure", and I'll believe a redemption arc when I actually see evidence of one existing.

Anyone can be redeemed, sure, but it's not a given thing just because a character has a sad backstory.

Never said it was. I don't know what direction they are going to go with for Episode VIX. Maybe they'll redeem him, maybe they won't. As long as it is a compelling story, I don't care either way. All I'm saying is that it isn't impossible.

I just wanted to thank you for all your reasoned and nuanced comments in this thread. (Honestly, the more I poke at Skywalker family dynamics, the more I think that all Snoke had to do with Ben was sit back and flavor his popcorn with everyone's tears. And I say this as someone who loves the Skywalker family. ALL OF THEM.)

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philstar22 - 2018-11-27 21:20 (UTC) - Expand

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