A Favourable Misunderstanding 🧣

How to redeem your villain:the Zuko's way applied

ZUKO:

Season 1: have a villain with lot of parallels with the protagonist and make him angsty and likeble. Explain he is torn between good and evil.

Season 2: make the villain make good choices. LOTS of parallels with the protagonist, more more and more. Make the viewers think he'll redeem. Then make him do the BAD DECISION at the end.

Season 3: let him have everything and make him realise it's wrong. Make him have a GOOD DECISION totally by himself. Make him atone with the people he hurted. At the end, make him have a epic battle against the evil he believed before and after a near death experience, make him live with the other protagonists.

KYLO REN:

Movie 1: have a villain with lot of parallels with the protagonist and make him angsty and likeble. Explain he is torn between good and evil.

Movie 2:make the villain make good choices. LOTS of parallels with the protagonist, more more and more. Make the viewers think he'll redeem. Then make him do the BAD DECISION at the end.

Movie 3:let him have everything and make him realise it's wHAt HE REALLY WANTED THEN MAKE HIM INEXPLICABLY TURN GOOD BECAUSE "REASON" MAKE HIM NOT SAY ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING THEN DON'T GIVE HIM ATONEMENT, DON'T MAKE HIM FIGHT AND THEN MAKE HIM HAVE A MOMENT WHERE HE IS LIKE JESUS THEN MAKE HIM DIE. FINALLY EVERYONE CAN FORGET ABOUT HIM.

Congratulations. Now you ruined your character.👏

I just rewatched the prequel trilogy for the first time in YEARS and I have to say, they were nowhere near as bad as I remembered.

I mean, yeah, the direction was shit and made the actors seem like they’re awful (which they aren’t, most of the cast is made of very decent actors) and the writing was kind of ridiculous but the story? The story is amazing.

And it really just reminded me how horribly everyone in Anakin’s life failed him, with the exception of Padmé.

Obi-Wan did love Anakin like family but he should have fought harder to keep Anakin more distanced from the Jedi and from the Senate when it became abdundantly clear that he was too unstable to handle it. But he, and the rest of the Council, just saw this unbelievably powerful young man and they used that power.

Most of all, they (and Padmé) should have opened their eyes and seen that he was being manipulated by Palpatine. But instead, they encouraged him to get closer and closer to Palpatine to spy on him and report back.

And they left him in the clutches of Palpatine who gave him everything he wanted - someone who believed in him, who didn’t exclude him without reason, who didn’t discount his feelings. They failed Anakin in exactly the same ways that Ben was failed so much later.

Watching the prequels again also really cemented why I hated how the sequel trilogy ended. Anakin’s life was nothing but pain, loss, failure, and disappointment. He never had a chance against everything that happened to him.

Anakin’s tragedy continued through the original trilogy where we see him truly stripped of his humanity, always abused by his Sith master.

And despite that, we see Anakin redeemed at the end, but only through death. At the very least though, his death is genuinely mourned. His loss is felt deeply by his son who, despite it all, still loved him. Anakin is forgiven and he is allowed to come back as a Force ghost. And he comes back as Anakin, not Vader. The young, vibrant man he once was who died as soon as Vader was truly born.

And therein lies one of the many ways that the sequel trilogy was so incredibly unjust to Ben Solo. Like Anakin, he was tormented his entire life. He was manipulated and abused. Everyone who should have protected him failed to do so and Ben was lost, giving rise to Kylo Ren.

But, unlike Anakin’s change into Vader caused Anakin to die, Ben was simply lost behind Kylo Ren. He was torn between the two sides rather than entirely lost to the dark side. He was more primed for redemption than Anakin could have been.

Kylo Ren actually tried to shake loose the things that kept him bound to the light, unlike Anakin who had everything ripped away from him. And despite Kylo Ren’s efforts to sever the light that was causing him so much pain, he was NEVER able to succumb completely.

So strong were his innate ties to light and goodness that he could not give in even if he tried. He wore a mask trying to convince the world and himself that he was solidly evil, but it was a facade that no one entirely believed.

Palpatine was able to fairly easily bring Anakin into the darkness. But even with all his efforts, all his desire to possess this last Skywalker, he could never own Ben Solo.

So strong were his ties to the light that he could never bring himself to harm Rey. He didn’t even kill Finn when he easily could have - why? Was it his innate goodness? Was it that he knew killing Finn would hurt Rey deeply?

His lightsaber was the perfect way to express his anguished personality. Unstable, over heated, unusual. Always shimmering with a passion and energy not typical for a lightsaber, whether it was a Sith saber or a Jedi saber.

Like Rey, he was neither a creature purely of light or darkness. Both were perfect mixtures of grey.

And then, we lose Ben Solo.

It is beautiful because he saves the woman he loves so much.

It is also abrupt, unexpected, and unceremonious.

He is not mourned.

He is not remembered.

He is just gone.

He was made to be mourned and remembered less than even the most evil characters we see. His loss is treated with less concern than anyone ever gave to a red shirt in Star Trek.

His life and his death are both devoid of meaning.

The boy, lost and broken, who was failed by everyone who should have protected him. The boy who crawled from the pit of death to answer the call of the light. The boy who so desperately wanted to be free of pain that he was willing to break his own heart.

The Skywalkers - all of them - deserved better. But especially Ben Solo. His life was reduced to nothing. His death was reduced to nothing. His redemption was reduced to nothing.

And that is my biggest beef with the end of the sequel trilogy. I loved the prequel trilogy because it humanized Anakin in preparation for his redemption. The sequel trilogy humanized Ben Solo in preparation for ... nothing. Just an unceremonious death and to be forgotten by everyone.

He deserved better.

TROS / REYLO DUMP 3

If you didn’t see this coming, did we even watch the same trilogy? 🤷🏻‍♀️

I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

I just noticed from this screencap that Jeremiah literally had an empty picture frame on his desk, like how sad is that :(

But it’s okay I fixed it.

Better right?

Dream revealed his identity to Hob at the New Inn, as well as where he had been for the last 100+ years. Still he felt he needed to say something to Hob, but eventually Hob has to work it out himself.

10 pages under the cut:

Notes:

I rushed this thing in a week so I apologize if there are some mistakes…. The first pages have a weird layout because I thought I'd figure it out later and then I didn't. OTL

TV Dream spent over a century naked an humiliated in a snow globe so I imagine maybe now he's like "clothes? Very nice, so comfy. I love clothes. I shall be wrapped in the darkness of the soft 100% dream cotton for the unforseeable future."

Don't be an ass face and repost this elsewhere. If you do you have a literal ass where your face should be. Ew.

If you would like, feel free to translate this comic in the replies/reblog. It's a lot, sorry.

I probably forgot something… it's 4 am.

On twitter!

Katniss is like Lucy Gray this, Katniss is like Sejanus that, and yes fine that's all good and true and lovely but Katniss Everdeen is also a direct parallel to Coriolanus Snow and people NEED to start talking about this because it's driving me crazy.

Think about it: they both grew up poor and deeply vulnerable, losing parents at a very young age, with a matriarchal adult (Katniss' mother and Coriolanus' Grandma'am) who fails to provide for them emotionally and physically. They intimately understand the threat of starvation, even developing with stunted growth because of it, and their narrations in the books share a fixation on food. Throughout their childhoods, both experienced constant fear and suffered a fundamental lack of control over their circumstances. Because of this, they're inherently suspicious of the people around them. They resent feeling indebted to others, especially those who have saved their lives. They're motivated almost entirely by family and deeply connected to their communities. Both are used and manipulated by the Capitol, both are forced to perform to survive and despise every inch of it, both are thrown into the Arena and made to kill. Both have a self-sacrificial, genuinely sweet sister figure acting as their conscience. Peeta and Lucy Gray - performers and love interests with a fundamental kindness and sense of hope about them - fulfill markedly similar roles in their narrative. Both contribute to the development of the future Hunger Games, Snow throughout tbosas and Katniss towards the end of Mockingjay.

It's easy to ignore these similarities because, as mirrors of each other, they are exact opposites. Katniss is from District 12, viewed and treated as less than human; Snow is the cream of the Capitol crop, given the privilege of a name with social weight, an ancestral home, and the opportunity of the Academy despite having no more money than a miner from 12. Katniss has no agency over her life, and responds by being kind whenever she's able, while Snow justifies horrendous evils in order to continue his quest for complete control. Katniss does everything she can to protect her family; Snow does everything he can to protect his family's image as an extension of his own ego. Katniss loves her District and connects with its inhabitants on a meaningful level, but Snow is indifferent at best to his peers - the apparent "superior people" - and only engages with his community for personal gain. Katniss emerges from the Arena horrified at herself and the system, but Snow takes his trauma and turns it into an excuse to perpetuate the violence with himself at the top. Katniss cares for Prim until her death and then snaps at the loss of her little sister, while Snow survives on Tigris' blood, sweat, and tears and then torments and abandons her, presumably because she calls him out on his insanity. Snow actively adds to and popularizes the Hunger Games because of his vendetta against the Districts following his childhood wartime trauma - Katniss briefly agrees to a new Hunger Games (which is arguably a facade to trick Coin), but later definitively stops them from happening by killing Coin and choosing a life of peace and privacy. Snow is obsessed with revenge, but Katniss empathizes with the Capitolites and does what she can to keep them from suffering. He exists in a cruel system and selfishly upholds it; she exists in a cruel system and works to dismantle it for the good of her family and community, at great personal cost. And Peeta and Lucy Gray are incredibly similar, but Katniss and Peeta forge a relationship of genuine love and understanding that shines in comparison to Coriolanus' obsessive projection onto Lucy Gray.

So, yeah, Katniss is Lucy Gray haunting Coriolanus. But I bet you anything that eighty-something year old President Snow looks at her, the girl on fire, and thinks that he sees the ghost of his own past: bright and young and brilliant, emerging from a childhood of starvation with a relentless hunger for success, a talented and charming performer helping her win the Games. And that's why he's so afraid of her! Because if he sees himself in her, then he's up against his own cunning, his own talent for manipulation, his own charisma, his own genius. He reads her wrong, obviously, but it means that in his mind he's up against the version of himself that he could have been, with the nightmare army of his childhood at her back and her star-crossed lover at her side, spewing Sejanus' truths in his own voice. This isn't to say that Katniss ever achieved the level of power and agency that Coriolanus did during her time with the rebellion, but it is to say that Snow was taken down by what truly terrified him - his own morality, come to finish the job.