#acciokenobi

Bad boy -> sad boy trope is at best lazy writing and at worst an implicit affirmation of rape culture (and so I don’t understand why it’s so prevalent in the romance genre which boasts of so many female writers!). The bad boy is a young (usually aged 17-35), very conventionally attractive male who exhibits patterns that range anywhere from socially unacceptable to explicitly abusive. He often receives a half-assed "my mom died" and/or "my dad was an abusive alcoholic” which is meant to explain his behavior. If this were followed by an exploration into consequences and familial patterns, I’d be on board. But usually it only results in his love interest “understanding” him more deeply and writing off his abuse tactics because, in a way, it’s not really his fault. Besides, he’s still young, and wants to do better. It’s rarely addressed again. 

Fact: while everyone needs to feel loved and no true love is truly wasted, your love will never fix the Bad Boy. The only thing that will is years and years of therapy. 

Unfortunately there are too many good examples of the Bad Boy -> Sad Boy trope, but this is a Star Wars blog so I’m gonna talk about Kylo Ren again. Sure, he got a “redemption arc” (which was such bullshit and an insult to all redemption arcs. It’s not even an arc; it’s a fucking U-turn in the middle of the last installment of a trilogy. Make. An. Effort.), but he had his ardent fans and defenders long before TRoS, even after TLJ when he made the choice, of his own free will, to continue his path to the dark side and the legacy of murder. 

(Side note: remember when Snape got a semi-redemption in TDH and people got pissed at Rowling because it seemed like she excused his horrendous behavior? I’ve been saying this for years and I’ll say it again: if Snape were a younger, more attractive man portrayed by Adam Driver, he’d have an army of supporters. I’m not saying Snape was a good person, or even that Rowling pulled off that redemption. But Kylo Ren committed crimes 1000% worse than Snape ever did. Given that they were both in their thirties when they died, you can’t even use age to defend Kylo as a lost, immature young boy and demonize Snape as a grown-ass man who should have known better. The only real difference between them is that Snape struck us as an unattractive, older man whose flaws struck a personal chord in readers (many of whom undoubtedly had a teacher who picked on students out of spite), and Kylo Ren is played by Adam Driver and I guess mass murder is a less personal crime to many audiences? The double standard simply disturbs and distresses me.)

The fact that Rey ends up falling in love with him, too, is perfectly on brand for the Bad Boy -> Sad Boy trope in the worst way possible. The first hints came in TLJ, when Kylo’s tragic backstory based entirely on some of the most blatant character assassination i’ve ever seen in my life holy shit elicited her compassion. This was followed by Kylo choosing the dark side of his own volition (not Snoke’s influence! After that choice, he should not have been redeemable), and then, of course, Rey falling in love with him sometime during TRoS. Given that torture scene in TFA, their “love story” made me (and still makes me) sick to my stomach. That scene screamed rape metaphor: Rey restrained and stripped of her agency, Kylo “You know I can take whatever I want” Ren forcibly penetrating her mind in what we know to be an excruciatingly painful process, obviously without consent. The fact that Rey can use her miraculous Palpatine Force powers to fight back doesn’t mean a damn thing; for all intents and purposes, it was rape, clean and simple. Never, by the way, do we see Kylo having to atone for his actions. Never does Rey hold him accountable for what should have been an extremely traumatic incident (I mean, yeah, she relates to him like you would a villain, but not as if he had targeted her personally and taken advantage of her, which he did, dammit).

I’ve also seen the argument that more or less divides Kylo Ren and Ben Solo into two different people, as if Rey’s love story is with one and not the other. I’m aware that this depends on your interpretation of what the dark side actually does to you. I’m of the opinion that the dark side doesn’t kill you like Yoda and Obi-Wan say; there’s too much evidence, for example, that Darth Vader was still Anakin Skywalker- twisted beyond recognition, perhaps, but still one and the same. A love story with Ben Solo (especially given the timeline of the sequel trilogy) is necessarily a love story with Kylo Ren, a rapist and a mass murderer who happened to be portrayed by Adam Driver.