Tag: kylo ren

Just found out you are Star wars fan. I am glad you like Kylo ren. He is one of my favourites. Could you write a meta or just a few thoughts about him?

Ah, I’m glad to hear that! I think he’s a fantastic character and probably the best written of the sequel trilogy characters, even if Finn is actually my favorite. I have written a few metas on Kylo: here, here, and here. My tag has an extensive amount of metas written from other lovely writers as well! I’m hesitant to write a new one on him right now because I feel like all I have to say about him has been said at this point, but if I think of something new I absolutely will say it.

If you want my IX predictions, I think he will absolutely be redeemed, he and Rey will be a Thing, and he is not very likely to die.

Could you summarize why you like Rey from Star Wars? Most people I know dislike her saying she’s a mary sue, I am indifferent towards her, so I am wandering.

Haha okay!

Soooo the Rey=Mary Sue thing really is a… sore spot for me because it is so clearly gendered sexist and baseless criticism. She’s no more overpowered than Luke, and she has an arc. Firstly let me discuss her arc, and then the definition I’m using of a Mary Sue, and how Rey doesn’t come close to fitting that definition. 

Rey has flaws that matter for her and for the story–she’s angry, all the time. She lashes out at Finn, at Kylo (she did not have to scar his face, that’s clear), at Luke. She’s traumatized by her abandonment and the idea that Luke could do something so wrong to his nephew he was supposed to love–it triggers her and she flips out, running away to naively try to save Kylo. Because Rey has always tried to be enough, honing all her skills, doing what she can, but it wasn’t enough for her parents. She’s deeply afraid of worthlessness and a lack of love, specifically. Rey’s unable to let go of the past/of the hope her parents will return and that keeps her in a desert, leads to her being abducted, and she clings to the first people she meets who show her kindness. 

When she goes to meet Kylo, like I said above, she wants to save him. But she can’t. It’s not a lacking quality in her that can’t save him; it’s that at this point he isn’t ready to save himself (and he will in IX, I’m sure, but right now he made the wrong choice). That’s why her moment in the throne room with Kylo was so powerful–she and Kylo love each other, but she refuses to be with him even though all she’s ever wanted is for someone to come for her, because she at this point knows that what he wants to do is wrong, and she can’t do that. Rey at the start of TFA almost certainly would have gone with him. She’s learning to expand her world from Rey living on Jakku waiting for her parents, to the entire galaxy which she might have to play an instrumental role in saving. 

Anyways. All that to say: Rey has an arc. Now let’s talk about the concept of Mary Sues, and I’ll give an example of a character I do think of as a Mary Sue from a manga. 

When I think about “Mary Sues” (a term I inherently don’t like because it’s often used as sexist criticism), I think it’s important to keep in mind that the definition varies widely. Generally it’s seen as a self-insert character, an overpowered character, a perfect flawless character, and a character everyone loves for no discernible reason, but the reality is characters can have one or so of these traits and not necessarily fit what I consider to be a Mary Sue. 

I consider a Mary Sue character not so much something that comes down to character traits, but comes down to their framing and what their role is within the story. Like you can have a character that everyone revolves themselves around, but if it’s framed as a negative thing (think Mikasa with Eren in Attack on Titan, though does anyone think Eren is a Mary Sue? He’s not lol) then it isn’t necessarily what makes a character a Mary Sue. You can have a character who is largely flawless but whom the others don’t revolve around, like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars (Rey has more flaws than he did). You can have an OP character like Junko Enoshima but if they have flaws they aren’t a Mary Sue. Self-insert is hard to prove anyways, and tbh, we all write ourselves into characters, so eff that definition. Kind of the perfect example of someone who is a reader insert though, and also OP, the world revolves around them, and doesn’t really have flaws is Twilight’s Bella Swan.

Actually, Bella is one of three characters ever I’ve called a Mary Sue. I’m hesitant to use it because of it being a somewhat loaded term. That being said if I do feel it applies I will use it, like for Bella. One of the others is James Bond (but he works for the kind of story he’s in), and the other I’ll discuss below.

Continuing on the topic of defining a Mary Sue, I like this video’s definition of Mary Sue and its role in the story, and agree with it, from about 3:20-6:00. Here’s the best quotes from it (if you watch the full thing, they actually do discuss Star Wars!):

The Mary Sue is the center of attention at the expense of basically everything else… The Mary Sue is the center of everything, and that’s not really going to be a compelling read, no matter how interesting her character is… It takes more than a cartoonishly traumatic backstory and a laundry list of positive traits to make a character compelling. Now to be clear, there are stories with a character at their center where the character isn’t a Mary Sue. The distinction is that a Mary Sue warps the way the world works around them. Glorifying the Sue is prioritized over maintaining the established characterizations or the straight-up rules of reality. A hero might be the center of the story, but they won’t be the only important character.

A Mary Sue isn’t a character; they’re the artifact of an overly-centralized story. … That’s what a Mary Sue is. Not just the center of the universe, but everything in the universe. Everything has to lead back to the Sue. In any situation where that’s not true, you don’t have a Mary Sue… the Sue-ness is built on the fact that the story is sacrificed to make the character look good.

That’s literally not at all what happens with Rey.

Now to discuss an anime/manga character I think exemplifies this almost to a freaky degree of accuracy. I know most people won’t like this but it is something I don’t want to argue about as I firmly believe it.

Kaneki Ken of Tokyo Ghoul, post OEK.

I think Kaneki was an incredibly well-written complex character up until around then, and then basically turned into exactly what you see described above in the video. So many of these excellent, complex characters–Mutsuki’s arc, Hinami’s arc, Touka’s arc, Saiko’s possibility of an arc, Hide’s possibility of an arc, Urie’s arc, Ayato’s arc, Tsukiyama’s arc–all came back to their relationship with Kaneki. Forget them working through their own established in-universe issues: they became defined increasingly only by their relationships with Kaneki. I mean the entire world came together to save Kaneki after a century of conflict but didn’t do that for Rize, whom the narrative endorsed the death of in the exact same circumstance as Kaneki was saved from because… Kaneki felt like he needed to kill her. The themes of “live, even if it’s not stylish,” the complexity of the communication, empathy, building a new world–these were all sacrificed to make Kaneki’s journey work. Touka being someone who confronted Kaneki and called him out on his bullshit–a defining trait of why their ship was so beautiful in part one, even if the way she did it was flawed–was erased. Tsukiyama’s growing resentment with Kaneki pre-Dragon was forgotten. The Q’s struggles with Kaneki as a father figure went nowhere. 

And before people are like “but he’s the main character!” Sure, but this isn’t the case for Luke Skywalker, Monster’s Tenma, HxH’s Gon Freecss, SnK’s Eren Jaeger, Noragami’s Yato or Hiyori, nor even for BNHA’s Deku. So it isn’t a trait typical of MC’s.

Anyways, rant over. But let’s bring it back to Rey. Finn in TLJ does start out orbiting around his desire to be with Rey again. However, what I like about this is that the story shows us that this desire, while we love where it came from and don’t think of it as a terrible thing, is a narrow-minded mindset. Like Rey, Finn’s world is expanding. His worldview via his adventures with Rose and his budding relationship with Rose show him that Rey is a vital, important part of his world, but she is not his sole world. And he has others, too. 

But legitimately no one else orbits around her. Kylo won’t change for her. Luke refuses to train her and when he does he never shows her any kind of affection. Leia treats Rey no differently than she treats the others. Poe like just met her. Rose hasn’t even met her and she wasn’t gushing over this mysterious girl with the force and hero-worshipping her. She was gushing over Finn. Poe, Holdo, Leia, Rose–they all had arcs that had nothing at all to do with Rey. Luke’s didn’t have much to do with her either, to be honest. It was more about him overcoming his own failure not via Rey, as you might have gone into the story expecting, but instead by facing the nephew he hurt and the sister he hurt. 

The story’s themes affect Rey just like everyone else. She fails in TLJ, because everyone fails, but she is able to go on as a part of something greater than herself. 

So yeah hahaha. Sorry, that was very long. But Rey is the epitome of Not a Mary Sue. 

i totally agree with your nora meta! but i gotta say. kylo ren isn’t an abused child?? han and leia were loving parents? i think he’s just an entitled boy who never grew out of his bratty phase

Oh dear, I really don’t want to open the can of worms that is the SW fandom lol! But this isn’t a fair assumption given what the canon tells us.

I will say that Leia felt a dark presence attacking her son in the womb–that’s in a canon novel actually! Snoke had been probing into his mind since before birth, which is
grooming if I ever heard it, and he was then physically and mentally
abused by Snoke as TFA and TLJ both show us. Snoke is the abuser I was talking about, not Han and Leia–child abuse does not have to be from your actual parent. That is abuse.

But onto Han and Leia, who did they best they could, but their best wasn’t enough to protect their kid which is heartbreakingly realistic. Leia herself says in TFA sending him away hurt him. I know she and Han had the best intentions but good intentions don’t erase hurt, and you can love your kid but not know how to best express that love, and if you don’t find it, they’re not wrong for feeling hurt just as their actions in that hurt are certainly not your fault. His uncle, the one they sent him to for safety, then tried to murder him and he was left with no option besides Snoke. Again, Kylo’s actions, like Nora’s, are not excusable, but he is definitely a victim as well as a perpetrator, and that’s why he’ll be redeemed.

Anakin or Kylo Ren, for everything including their character arcs!

This is actually easy for me. Kylo Ren. He’s such a well done and complex character, and Adam Driver is probably the best actor Star Wars has ever had. He’s a victim of his parents’ well intentioned neglect and of Luke and Leia’s projected fears of Vader (which is why it’s so interesting he idolizes Vader so much–because it’s literally the fear of him that led to them treating him how they did). If you treat a child expecting them to turn evil they probably will, and that’s psychologically true in the real world. Leia Luke and Han only ever loved Ben and wanted the best for him, but we know from supplementary novels Han didn’t want him to have the Force and he says in TFA there was too much Vader in him. Leia sent him away to protect him, but sending him away only made him feel rejected. Luke was afraid of his power and afraid he himself would fail and those fears ensured he did fail, and almost tried to kill him.

He tells Rey he feels alone because he knows that she knows what it is like to feel alone. Loneliness is the driving cause behind both of their flaws and they are such great yin yang foils. Kylo’s own fears and desperation to scream I MATTER is destroying him and only isolating him further, like when he thinks ruling the galaxy will suffice and it won’t. Because he wants to matter to people, like Rey.

Snoke is also not even remotely subtly coded as a child abuser of the worst sort, and their whole dynamic is super realistic and creepy and Disney needs to be very careful in how they handle that and so far they have been.

What makes a good villain/antagonist in storytelling? Seeing so many different ones in TG is it the fact that they should serve a specific function in the narrative, be responsible for a tone shift, be a catalyst for growth in plot characters, or all combined, or something else? I’ve been trying to write a compelling one but there just seems to be something missing.

Oooh, good question! So I would say… those things are all great, but they don’t by themselves make for a good villain. 

I don’t know if you watch Marvel movies, but they are generally cited for having a “villain problem” because all their villains are poor with the notable exceptions of Loki and Erik Killmonger. The reason is their villains are generally so bad–even if they have motivations which they sometimes don’t even like “you killed my family”–is because they’re just there to oppose the hero and give them someone to fight. That is of course the purpose of most villains, but if you make their role in the narrative just that, you don’t have a character, you have a plot device.

What makes villains like Loki, Erik Killmonger, Kylo Ren in Star Wars, Shigaraki in BNHA, Furuta in TG, so great, is that they are characters before they are villains. Notably all of these characters flirt with the possibility of redemption though not all will achieve it, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Delores Umbridge from Harry Potter is also a great antagonist and no one wants redemption for her haha. Envy from FMA, Light himself from Death Note, Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones–these are characters who don’t get redeemed and in all of these cases I didn’t even want a redemption for them, but are still very well written. 

Because they are characters. They have something they want, they have struggles to get what they want, just like the heroes do. In other words, they have arcs. Basically the requirement for a good villain/antagonist is no different than for a hero: they gotta be a character who is dynamic, capable of change in other words, and multi-dimensional. 

So when writing one, I’d encourage you to think not so much about their role at first, but begin with them. Ask what they want, how they plan to get it, why they want it (backstory!). Get to know them like you would get to know any character you were writing. They have to seem human (even if they’re an elf or a wizard haha!) so that the audience can see themselves in them, and the protagonist too. Unless you’re writing a villain protagonist haha (Light Yagami for example). 

Anyways, that’s my advice! I’d love to read what you’ve written if you ever feel comfortable! 

I really think a lot of people are in denial about Mutsuki’s redemption, and I have no idea why. They point fingers at him but, there’s various other characters in recent arcs who have made far more selfish decisions at the cost of thousands of lives. Pointing at you Kanou, Furuta, Kaneki, Kimi, Juuzou, and Ui, but yet I don’t see anyone questioning them to as heavy an extent as Mutsuki.. and he’s hardly did shit. It’s like you just want to hold up a sign that says “Fuck off naysayers”, sigh.

Yeah I’m tempted to stop answering asks on it because it’s obvious at this point, and people who refuse to see it are like Rey Skywalker/Solo theorists in Star Wars: they’re clearly wrong and being incapable of admitting it doesn’t make them less wrong. But I love Mutsuki and talking about my child.

Mutsuki’s actions despite being awful genuinely have no long-lasting story consequences whereas the actions of others… do.

I wrote a few theories here and here about why people don’t want to accept his redemption. In short, he has a traditionally female body (and a lot of haters use female pronouns & consider him a woman, and fandom misogyny is a thing), fandom transphobia is a thing, and ableism is a thing. Oh, and also something I haven’t mentioned before: people who hate characters like Mutsuki or Kylo Ren really seem to be about trying to control the narrative around abuse survivors. Guess what, not all abuse survivors magically rise above it. It’s not an excuse, but it is understandable and relatable, and guess what, those stories should be told too so that real life survivors who flounder and lash out can take hope from them.

(Spoiler “The Las Jedi”) What is the problem with Kylo dying in his possible redemption for you? I mean, the impression that some people are taking because of the events of the new films and some interviews is that they are wanting to end with the Skywalkers in this trilogy to explore other stories with more movies. Luke is dead, Kylo and Leia are the last members of the family who are still alive, so I think that Leia will die and Kylo, independently to achieve his redemption or not, too.

Well, considering episode IX is not yet written and numerous interviews have shown that Disney does not have a plan for IX, people should be wary of interpreting interviews as saying something like that. But yes, I agree the new films look like they could be heading that way. 

The short version is that it’s personal preference. Anything I say below is my opinion, not objective fact, so please take it with a grain of salt. It’s fine if you like the trope of redemptive death! 

I said in my reactions post that I would rather a story “give me them antagonists who have to suffer to earn redemption and live knowing that many will never forgive them, but have to earn it every day, prove that they’re really repentant.” I think redemptive death is a cheap cop-out a lot of the time–but to be clear, this is only my opinion and is in no way an objective fact! It’s fine if people like that trope. I just don’t–or, at least, I think it’s overused. 

See, Star Wars is about hope at its core. That’s why I love it so much. It’s a fairytale about hope. And so people who have done terrible things in life–what hope can they take from the message in every fictional media that the only option is for them to sacrifice their lives for redemption? (To be clear, I infinitely prefer redemptive death over no redemption; that’s not even a question.) Is the message that by doing bad things, your life becomes not worth living? Having worked with kids and with people who have done some very bad things, like prison-worthy things, I don’t like that message–or at least, I’m tired of it.

There’s also the fact that killing off the Skywalkers forever isn’t a great marketing move, so that does give me hope. But either way, TLJ was so good that I’m optimistic for a great story in IX, even if I may not like all of it. 

Hamliet’s The Last Jedi Reactions

Featuring Things I Was a Fan Of,  Predictions for IX, My Schadenfreude Salt, and Things I Was Not a Fan Of.

Under the cut for spoilers!!

Things I was a fan of:

  • Rose. Just. Rose. I loved her character and her arc. Her pain over Paige and her fangirling over Finn, and how she learns heroes aren’t perfect. In the end she’s the one who delivers the story’s moral: they win by saving each other, not by stopping then. (Can you say: foreshadowing. They’re going to defeat the First Order in the end by saving Ben Solo, not by stopping Hux.) Also I really don’t think she is going to die.
  • Finnrose. The moment she crashed her ship into his to save him I was like AND THAT’S MY SHIP.
  • Leia using the Force. FINALLY. 
  • REY AND KYLO’s interactions. All that angst. That fight where they team up. Goddamn. That scene was everything I wanted and more. 
  • Speaking of Rey and Kylo, that was like Pride and Prejudice in Space.
  • Snoke is an abusive creep and that coding was not subtle. 
  • The
    characters were very complex and I loved that gray morality’s been
    introduced in Star Wars. Good and bad isn’t clear, and I appreciate
    that.
  • The backstory for Kylo was so sad and it isn’t completely told yet. Luke, what have you done?
  • Luke’s death was beautifully done. He wasn’t killed. He was at peace. 
  • The film was genuinely surprising in its twists and turns. 
  • The ACTING was INCREDIBLE.
  • The Finn stan within me is appeased with his arc. He starts the movie wanting desperately to reunite with Rey, and he does and it’s beautiful (THAT HUG YO), but whereas Rey was his only tie to the resistance, at the end that’s expanded, and he’s finding that the cause matters to him, and Rose matters to him, and all those people. Seeing a character who was denied that growing up find love and belonging and hope with Rose and Rey and Poe cements Finn as my favorite character in this trilogy. 
  • Poe went from being a minor supporting character without an arc in TFA to having possibly one of my favorite arcs in TLJ.
  • Admiral Holdo is a Boss Ass Queen. 

Predictions for IX that may change:

  • Hux
    will be the final villain and it will come down to conflict between him
    and Kylo Ren, which is fitting on a symbolic level because the sequel
    trilogy is all about the children, and Hux and Kylo are not subtly coded as the dueling children of Snoke. Hux and Kylo are now forced to be
    “adults” thanks to Kylo killing his father figure in Snoke and his
    literal father in Han, but they hate each other, and that conflict is
    not over.
  • Luke Force Ghost will take on the role Leia would have had in saving Ben Solo.
  • If Rey ends up with anyone, it will be Ben Solo. However I don’t think
    the odds look great for him surviving the series (though it’s not completely off the table) so… sigh. I’m really tired of the redemptive death trope. Give me
    them
    antagonists who have to suffer to earn redemption and live knowing that
    many will never forgive them, but have to earn it every day, prove that
    they’re really repentant. The one thing that does give me hope is that
    if Disney ends the Skywalker line like this I think that’s a dumb
    marketing move, so Rey and Ben may get together midway through IX and,
    well, yeah. Or maybe he won’t die; see below.
  • Kylo will be redeemed. The vision Rey had and him
    finding the dice, plus Luke telling Leia that no one is truly gone,
    basically seal it. I’m not worried about his redemption.
  • Leia will presumably have… died off screen or be MIA (like if Ben does live, maybe the end will be him visiting her… wherever she is or something in IX? Idk).

Now time for my schadenfreude salt:

  • I’m
    really glad the Rey’s parentage brouhaha has ended. 
  • I’m really glad the Reylo theory and the Force
    Bond idea panned out. I remember being skeptical myself of the Force
    Bond because I thought it was too “out there” but I’m glad I was wrong.
    The Reylo community has been trashed by other fans and called “snobby”
    and “delusional” for predicting how the story would go in terms of Rey’s
    parentage, Rey and Kylo’s relationship, etc, banned from Jedi Council Forums, I got death and rape threats,
    and whoops, we were right. I feel I’m allowed a bit of satisfaction over
    this. Suck it antis.

Things I was not a fan of:

  • I wanted more from Snoke and feel he was kind of wasted as a character.
  • The pacing was kind of jarring. On one hand it felt long and on the other it felt rushed at the same time. 

reylorobyn2011:

the-reylo-void:

the-reylo-void:

Lesson that I had to have repeatedly hammered into me years ago when I was in the hospital stabilizing from an overdose and told the mental health coordinator that I’m not an only child so my life didn’t matter:

There is no “replacing” a child that you’ve had ripped away from you.

Gentle reminder to people either despairing or crowing that Leia has replaced Ben with Poe.

I have several anons in my inbox feeling very hurt over this particular plot element due to issues they’ve had with their own families, and as someone who’s very much been there, it’s breaking my heart.

No one can replace you. Your families would not be better off without you. You matter, and you are loved.

Remember what Leia said about Ben? “You think I want to forget him? I want him BACK.” She may be mentoring Poe, they may be important together both personally and in the fight against the First Order, but there is no one in the galaxy who can replace the son she carried and loved and lost. That’s a void that NO ONE will be able to fill.

So take heart. Leia is still Leia. She’s a general, a former senator, a tough-as-nails princess who can keep her eye on the big picture and fight the hardest battles, and she undoubtedly has a fondness for the impetuous pilot who helps her keep the Resistance together.

But he’s not her son. He’s not Ben. And I don’t think she can ever forget that, the depth of that loss, and I can’t imagine there is a single atom of her that doesn’t still, even now, regret losing her son, or want him back.

Thank you @the-reylo-void for saying this