Tag: the force awakens

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 do repent, and yet I do despair”

cobwebbing:

kylo-wouldnt-like-those-chips:

lefirststeps:

rex-luscus:

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I’m being torn apart. I want to be free of this pain. I know what I have to do but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it. Will you help me?

The double meaning in these lines is so obvious nobody even comments on it. It’s what gives the scene tension: if Kylo means one thing, the scene will end happily, but if he means the other thing, the scene will end horribly.

There’s actually three possible meanings, depending on how you think Kylo plans to get free of his pain. “What I have to do” could mean:

1) Rejecting the dark side by surrendering to Han,

2) Rejecting the light side by killing Han, or

3) Refusing either side and killing himself.

I wouldn’t even have thought of option #3 if this scene didn’t remind me so much of Act 5, Scene 1 of Doctor Faustus. It’s as if the filmmakers took that scene from Faustus and put it in a blender. 

In that scene, Faustus, who has sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for magical powers, faces the hour of reckoning when he must pay the Devil what he owes. And of course he’s terrified. On the one hand, he repents, and he’d take it all back if he could. A saintly old man even appears to tell him it’s not too late to ask for God’s mercy. But the Devil’s agent, Mephistophilis, appears and hands Faustus a dagger, which represents despair. The dagger as a conventional sign for despair is both symbolic and literal. Translation: there’s no chance God will forgive you even if you beg, so you may as well kill yourself and embrace damnation.

In TFA, all the same elements are there: the young man torn between good and evil, the old man offering mercy and a reminder that it’s “not too late,” the extended weapon. But in TFA, it’s like Kylo and Han take turns playing Faustus. One moment, it’s Kylo who teeters on the edge of hope and despair. The next moment, he’s holding out the dagger as a Mephistophelean lure and it’s Han who has to choose. 

This actually makes sense, cuz Han isn’t the saintly agent of light who comes to remind Faustus (Kylo) of God’s universal promise. Han never had much faith that Kylo could turn back from the dark side, and when he steps out on that bridge, he still clearly thinks the odds are long. (It’s his lack of faith that makes it such a beautiful character moment for him. Cuz Han started as the reluctant hero who would only back the side with a chance of winning…but he ends attempting something he’s almost certain will kill him, purely motivated by love.)

So it isn’t Kylo but Han who makes the suicidal grab for the dagger. And Han grabbing the lightsaber is an act that expresses hope, not despair. Or maybe it just expresses unconditional love for his kid, whether Kylo is dark or light. See what I mean about the blender? I don’t know where this Faustus stuff gets me, but there you go. I mean, was there ever a chance Kylo might throw himself off that bridge, or was option #3 only ever a faint, spectral idea that nobody but readers of Marlowe would consider? Maybe people smarter than me will be able to make something of all this.

Agree 100% and I’d like to add that this was the only scene in the movie where I was truly surprised by the narrative I legitimately didn’t know how it was going to play out. Kylo was being sincere and his words had 3 different meanings (as mentioned by OP). It was truly unpredictable. 

@emmyjeanb and I were talking about this scene last night, because I had seen a post where someone said Han’s faith in his son was what got him killed and the lesson was no one should believe he is capable of returning. Now, putting aside what a bleak moral that would be, if true, I think it takes away from what a heroic act Han committed. Because he was terrified and unsure but he did it anyway, because he loved his son and his wife too much to not try

And the takeaway may be that Han’s love resulted in his death but I in no way think that the story is indicting that love or Leia’s faith.

OKAY I HAVE TO CONFESS–

THE FIRST TIME I SAW TFA I THOUGHT KYLO WAS GOING TO KILL HIMSELF. i knew that the foreshadowing was beating us over the head that han was going to die, but in the heat of the moment, the way adam delivered those lines, how profoundly sad he looked and the self-loathing kylo ren as a character displayed–i really thought that suicide was an option. so it’s interesting to see this interpretation reinforcing my initial thought of what he could mean

Why Kylo Ren Needs to Be Redeemed (in the context of Star Wars)

There’s been a lot of debate among fans of Star Wars about whether or not Kylo Ren should be getting a redemption arc. (I will note that this debate is mostly among frequent internet-using fans–people I’ve talked to in real life literally all expect, and want, a redemption arc.) Even fans of the character sometimes argue that they want a true villain, and they think Kylo Ren growing darker would make the best possible story. While I agree that Kylo Ren will likely wallow in the darkness, get worse even in episode VIII, I’m going to appeal to the fundamental genre and tone of Star Wars as an argument as to why Kylo Ren needs to be redeemed for the sake of Star Wars as a franchise. 

As other meta writers have already discussed, Star Wars is a coming of age, epic fairytale. The original trilogy (OT) is beloved for its epic tropes, for its take on the hero’s journey, and for its optimistic and hopeful tone (yes, even the admittedly darker tone of The Empire Strikes Back is, at its core, fundamentally hopeful). If Kylo Ren is not to get a redemption arc, that irrevocably alters the tone of Star Wars as a story and as a franchise. Essentially, it would even color the OT by making a character who is literally the result of Han and Leia’s epic romance–their only child, whom they both dearly love–irredeemable. It would twist Han’s death, making it an empty sacrifice. It would do a disservice to Leia, a character who’s frankly the Sansa Stark of Star Wars, in terms of how much crap the woman has to go through for the sake of other characters’ development. Even if Rey is Leia’s niece (and I lean towards thinking she isn’t), that doesn’t change the fact that she’s lost her home planet, her adoptive parents, her real parents, her husband, and then presumably her son, in whom her husband’s blood still flows. Making Rey her niece wouldn’t be any sort of consolation for Leia’s character. (Seriously, every parent who has lost a child wants that child back, no matter how many other kids/nieces/nephews they might have). 

Narratively speaking, downward spirals are a fascinating trope. Actually, they’re one of my favorite tropes, and you can read them in Shakespearean dramas such as Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, numerous characters in Game of Thrones, etc. Such a spiral might even be relevant in Star Wars for certain characters–namely, Hux (if he develops as a character at all, I suspect it will be in a darker direction), Snoke possibly, and going back to the prequels and OT, Palpatine and Anakin/Vader (although I would argue the latter only works because the viewer already knows Anakin will return to the light.) But it would not work for a character like Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. He is the only child of a beloved couple, he is the man his father gave his life to try and teach, and he is possibly our only legacy character of the new generation (jury’s still out on Rey). Even if Rey does turn out to be Luke’s daughter (which I have my doubts about), there’s still the fact that Kylo Ren/Ben Solo is a boy who has been canonically manipulated from childhood and “targeted” (to quote JJ Abrams in the Secrets of the Force Awakens documentary) by Snoke. To have that character choose to stay on the path of evil–that is literally everything Star Wars is not in terms of tone. The downward tragic spiral of a character like Kylo Ren/Ben Solo has no place whatsoever in a coming of age fairytale. It does not work with the genre, or without fundamentally altering the tone of Star Wars any more than providing redemption arcs for characters like Cersei, Ramsay Bolton, or Littlefinger would work in Game of Thrones, given GOT’s genre of gritty, realistic and pessimistic fantasy. Such alterations would create tonal dissonance, and tonal dissonance makes for a bad story. 

Leaving Kylo Ren/Ben Solo unredeemed makes for a horrific cautionary tale, rather than a hopeful one. That is also not the kind of message Disney should want to send children who have been groomed and manipulated as Kylo canonically has been, who might see themselves in Kylo (because, even as an adult, I do see myself in Kylo/Ben Solo’s childhood.) That is a terribly dark and disturbing story to tell–even sickening, on some level. Gritty and realistic, yes, but gritty realism and despair has no place in a coming of age epic fairytale. 

There are plenty of other reasons why I think narratively Kylo needs to be redeemed (for example, character-development-wise, if he was going to stay dark, killing Han in episode VIII would make a lot more sense, because there is literally nothing else he can do to shock/horrify viewers). But fundamentally, it’s because I love Star Wars, and I don’t want to see a story that gives its viewers hope crash and burn and leave viewers with a sense of empty despair. I’ll leave you with these lines of dialogue, one from Revenge of the Sith, and one from The Force Awakens–and the latter line is clearly meant to parallel the first line and foreshadow a redemption (interestingly, both lines are spoken before the death of the person you would think would have the best chance to bring the respective “him[s]” back to the light).

Padme: Obi-Wan… there… is good in him. I know there is… Still…. (she dies)

Leia: There’s still light in him. I know it.

And to quote Han Solo: women always figure out the truth. Always.

*I’ve seen conversation on tumblr about using “Ben Solo” vs. “Kylo Ren” to refer to the character. I refer to him as both, but in terms of Star Wars, I think he will go back to using Ben after his redemption. According to the visual dictionary (which was authored by our Lord and Savior of Canon, Pablo Hidalgo), Snoke forbids the name of Ben Solo from being spoken. That doesn’t read like a choice to me. Also, as someone who had their identity reshaped by someone else at a young age, I don’t think calling him Kylo Ren necessarily allows him agency. And canonically, Kylo Ren/Ben Solo parallels Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker (wouldn’t Kylo/Ben be pleased to know that). Given the genre of a coming of age epic fairytale, I don’t see Kylo refusing to go by Ben after he’s redeemed. But let’s let the redeemed Kylo/Ben decide. 

in-the-land-of-gods-and-monsters:

They (Han and Leia) had this kid who was born equal parts good and evil. He is someone who is broken….But it’s more than just having a bad seed as a kid. Snoke had targeted this kid, knew that this kid was gonna be incredibly powerful in the force and wanted him as an ally. So this mother and father had a target for a son. Someone was watching their boy. And these parents aren’t there enough to guide him.~JJ Abrams, The Secrets of The Force Awakens.

Redemption arc, please.