moon rabbit revolution

A show where the giant robot grows to the size of a galaxy and beats up the laws of thermodynamics

A show where the giant robot confronts mecha-Satan and saves the day by persuading her to reset the universe

A show where the giant robot turns out to be actually, metaphysically evil, goes Akira and devours the Earth, and is defeated by the power of Love

A show where a series of giant robots pop out of an adolescent boy’s forehead, and also the whole story might be a metaphor for his penis

The addamsfamily in kimonos.

(“Ben Solo” in fandom is literally Kylo with Finn’s personality and character arc. His relationship with Rey? Stolen from Finn.)

There’s a bunch of ladies on tumblr who love Kylo who mock people (women of color mostly) who don’t want him to be humanized/redeemed as people who just don’t get that Star Wars is “all about redemption arcs”. But um… It’s not actually. 

Not at all. 

Not even with Lucas.

Star Wars is a political science fantasy drama that tends to focus on a single family. Redemption is incidental to a single plot & character and never drove the actual character arcs of either of the core trios.

(There’s a post in tumblr that’s a screencap of NK Jemisin tweeting critically about Kylo’s redemption arc and the notes are legit full of white fans dismissing her position as a Black female author with complex character arxs and pushing the idea that fandom just likes bad (white) guys because they’re more interesting and because redemption is supposedly part and parcel wit this narrative. 

Anyway. I hadn’t seen this meta around Finn’s reduction by fandom in favor of KR’s redemption arc before those tweets (found this by searching myself here). I’m not much into SW fandom; I was just responding to some article I’d seen. I was simply talking about the fact that I’m bored with certain narratives in American media, and one of those is the white guy who can basically eat babies and be forgiven for his horrible behavior as long as he has a Very Special Moment in the last 5 minutes or so, right before the commercial break. (See also: House and every character Benedict Cumberbatch seems to play.) That’s a reinforcement/symbolization of Privilege, basically – fans assume the best about him from jump, and are willing to empathize with him every step of the way despite behavior that should make us empathize with his targets/victims more, and they don’t require any real demonstration of contrition before offering him their forgiveness. No contrition equivalent to the harm done, certainly. Vader is a perfect example. Dude basically did eat babies, a whole Jedi school/monastery of them, but at the end, he saved Luke. Well, that’s nice. And when I saw RotJ at 11 years old, that was awesome. I’m 44 now. I can see where the ugly creases on this much-folded and -reused concept still haven’t been ironed out. They’re baked into the cloth, really; there’s no saving it.  And folks who love love love that cloth, because tradition or comfort or because they are also 11 years old, or whatever, are welcome to have it. I don’t have a problem with that, as long as they aren’t correspondingly investing themselves in racist reduction of Finn. (But that so often goes hand-in-hand with the baby-eating privileged white guy trope. So often.) Meanwhile I’m going to look for – or make, if I can’t find it – something new.

And I want to make clear that my problem isn’t with redemption narratives in and of themselves.  Those are old stories – the oldest – but still goodies. What irritates me is poor (cliched) execution, because mindless repetition of privilege narratives is shitty writing. I’m also tired of certain narrative focus choices.  Folks responding to that Twitter thread raised the very good suggestion that the story could easily shift here and become centered on Leia, hunting down her son and figuring out how to forgive him (assuming he does some monumental act of contrition), or maybe killing him herself as a mercy once he comes to terms with what he’s done. That is a KR redemption arc I could get behind. I would actually fight somebody in a Sarlaac pit to see that on screen.  Alas, tho, I think that won’t be happening now. :(

A tiny journal-ish gif-comic from a few tweets I made last night!  I believed this kind of stuff until I was 14 or so, which is pretty old in retrospect…