#but now that I've seen ben mentioning him specifically I will go on believing that there's an influence there (if only a subconscious one)

[pepimeinrad]

I absolutely adore this panel Larry and Ben did with Lolly about 'We Are Not Alone'

some favourite bits:

(6:25) Lolly completely forgetting about Bill and asking them if WANA is their first 90-minute-feature

(16:20) "it's all story and structure" - them talking about getting that on t-shirts (or just one shirt that says "I'm with structure") - does anybody want to draw or photoshop them into those shirts (please)?

(18:15-18:55) how Ben is especially good at getting emotional beats in and how Larry has to be dissuaded from putting one more laugh in there... "and then we have a fight. and then we have a kiss."...

(from 34:00) about their comedy influences, Larry mentioning Life of Brian and Ben going for Sellers and Clouseau (among others, like Douglas Adams for Larry and Ealing Comedies for Ben)

[shenanigans-and-imagines]

So I've seen some reylos defend Kylo Ren's redemption arc because they say that we should be more open to characters getting redeemed in stories. It made me wonder, what do you think defines a good redemption arc and which characters are allowed to be redeemed?

That is a really complicated question.

Redemption arcs are always personalize to the character.  A childhood bully is going to have a very different kind of redemption arc to a war criminal.

I do think there is a way to reform most characters, but in order to make it satisfying the character themselves has to be interesting.  Reforming a Saturday morning, purely evil villain doesn’t work unless you put in the leg work to make them more nuanced.

I think when people say they’re tired of reforming villains, it all comes down to the writers not putting the leg work to make the villains nuanced characters.  They just slapped on a tragic backstory and called it a day, not taking into account how their actions have effected the world and other characters.  It sends a message to the audience that no matter how much a person has hurt you, so long as they say they’re sorry, you should forgive them, which is a dangerous lesson.  You’re not required to forgive people.  And you’re especially not required to forgive people if they don’t make any real effort to make up for the pain they’ve caused you.

As for Kylo Ren specifically, his redemption was doomed to fail from the word go.

It is very obvious from the first moment that he takes off his helmet, that Abrams is going for a Zuko style redemption arc.  He’s a character who we see making bad decisions and are supposed to be rooting for him to wake up and realize he’s going down a dark path. 

But, here’s the problem.

We don’t know who Ben Solo is.  With Darth Vader, we are told that Anakin Skywalker was once a kind and powerful Jedi.  We then get the Prequels and The Clone Wars to expand on who he was before.  In Avatar: The Last Airbender, we get “The Storm” which shows Zuko being a wide-eyed child who is willing to stand up for others.

We never get to meet Ben Solo.  We don’t know who he was as a Jedi.  We’re never told what kind of student he was.  We don’t meet any former friends.  We have nothing.  The only reason we’re rooting for Ben to come back to the light is because we don’t want Kylo Ren ruining the happy ending of the characters we do care about, namely Luke, Leia, and Han.  And that’s not enough reason to care.

We also never see why he went to the dark side.  We are told Luke felt darkness rising in him, but we’re never shown what exactly that darkness was.  All we know is that there was some darkness in Ben, Luke tried to kill him, and then Ben was like “well, guess I’m evil now”.  And I don’t want to hear any of you say, “well in the novelization” or “in the comic” or “if you listen to the commentary” or any of that bullshit.  We are looking at the movies and movies alone.  And in the movies, we don’t get any motivation as to why Ben fell to the dark side and without the insight into why he’s evil, there is no solid foundation on which to reverse it. 

With Darth Vader, he turned to the darkside in a last ditch attempt to save his wife.  And when everyone he had known was dead, all he had was Palpatine.  So, his redemption comes with saving his son’s life.

With Zuko, we see how messed up his childhood is.  His father burned his face off and banished him on a fool’s errand.  We see that the Firelord has no love for Zuko, so his redemption comes only after Zuko realizes this and knows he has to make it right. 

Ben doesn’t get anything, which leads me to a key point in what redemption arcs always need; suffering.

We need to see these characters atone for their actions.

For Zuko, it’s renouncing his throne and going to help the Avatar, which include a number of episodes with individual characters of the squad allowing time for him to bond with each of them.  Not to mention his years of exile, face burning, and just getting his ass kicked by the world in general.

Darth Vader’s redemption comes at the cost of his life.  There was no other way he could be redeemed after killing so many.

Now some of you may be saying, “but Ben died to save Rey doesn’t that mean he suffered?” To which I say; no.

Zuko had to go through seasons of suffering before realizing the error of his ways and then fighting to change it.  Darth Vader was turned into a monster before finding his humanity again and coming back to the light.

Ben has been large and in charge of the First Order.  We never see him really suffer at the hands of Snoke or anyone else.  And he changes his mind after one two sentence conversation with his ghost dad.  Again, since we don’t know what turned him to the darkside in the first place, his moment of revelation of the evil that he’s done never hits home.

His dying and apparent love for Rey comes out of fucking no where, with no tie to his redemption or anything else. 

His redemption arc is completely empty, void of any meaning. It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

And if you don’t believe me Reylo shippers who I am sure have read every word of this post, I leave you with this little test. 

Picture, in your mind, Danny DeVito. 

Now, picture Danny DeVito, playing Kylo Ren, including that final kiss at the end of The Rise of Skywalker.

Does Kylo Ren’s redemption arc feel narratively satisfying now?