It’s been said that everyone is the hero of their own story. I would raise the argument that we are also the villains in others’. None of us is perfect. We are all flawed individuals who make bad decisions and since we don’t live in a bubble, our actions have consequences, for good or bad. Each of us has hurt other people. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes accidentally, and sometimes even unknowingly.
This is why I cringe when I hear people saying things like, “We shouldn’t have to forgive those who hurt us!” You have hurt someone. At some point in your life you have caused someone else pain. Don’t you want that person to forgive you? If everyone had a “forgiveness is bad” attitude, then the world would be a much darker, angrier place. Forgiveness isn’t bad. On the contrary, forgiving someone is one of the greatest acts anyone can do. It’s not only good, but necessary for both human interaction and our own well being.
You’ve probably heard the saying that holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to drop dead. Holding onto anger is not good and it only hurts you in the end. In Star Wars, this is shown to be true, both through Anakin Skywalker and his grandson, Ben Solo. The sequel trilogy may have its flaws, but one of the things I think it did well was to show that holding onto anger and following down a path of darkness hurts you as an individual. Continuing in the Dark Side did Ben absolutely no good. It hurt him, constantly. You could see the pain in his eyes, the hurt in his voice. The poor guy was suffering because he didn’t know how to let go of his anger and forgive.
We all need to learn to forgive. We all need to learn to let go of the anger. Forgiveness is a beautiful thing. And that is what Reylo is all about. Forgiveness.
The antis are not entirely wrong when they accuse Ben of hurting Rey. He kidnapped her, mind probed her, and in TROS even tried to kill her with his tie-fighter. The antis’ problem is that they cannot let go of this. They cannot move past it. They cannot look at Ben as person with a complicated past that has defined who he is as a person. They cannot forgive.
The Rey haters are not entirely wrong when they accuse Rey of hurting Ben. She slashed his face, took the legacy saber from him (presumably to kill him), left him on a sinking ship, and stabbed him in the stomach with his own lightsaber. Their problem is that they cannot let go of this. They cannot move past it. They cannot look at Rey as a person with a complicated past that has defined who she is as a person. They look at Ben as this victim and use his past to defend him but cannot give Rey the same curtesy. They cannot forgive.
Reylo only works as a ship if the audience and the characters themselves can forgive each other. Although the words, “I forgive you” are never spoken by either of them, I think it’s abundantly clear that they do. If Rey held a grudge against Ben, she wouldn’t have kissed him. If Ben held a grudge against Rey, he wouldn’t have gone to Exegol after her and he certainly wouldn’t have been willing to sacrifice his life for Rey’s.
(Side note: I hate that he died. I don’t hate that he was willing to, though).
It’s interesting how many people will accept Luke redeeming and forgiving his father for everything he’s done, but cannot accept Ben and Rey forgiving each other. Why should the case of two lovers forgiving each other be any different than a son forgiving his father? Both are driven by love.
Antis will argue that Ben did too many terrible things to be worthy of redemption and forgiveness. I will remind those people that the things Ben did as Kylo Ren, Anakin also did as Darth Vader. Both of them did terrible things, so why is only one of them worthy of redemption and forgiveness?
I would also argue that the worse acts committed, the more powerful and redemption is. That’s the point that I believe Lucas was trying to make with the OT. Vader’s redemption at the end of ROTJ wouldn’t have felt so powerful if he hadn’t been so bad. Vader’s actions were so terrible for that reason.
Seeing people commit such horrible crimes, do such terrible things to each other, and yet forgive is a powerful lesson. One that I think all of us could learn. We need more stories like this. We need more stories of redemption and forgiveness.
i swore i wasn’t gonna do this but this whole website is full of confused clowns who has never had a grown up relationship in their life so here we go.
the majority of the posts about john mulaney and olivia munn expecting a child fall into a very weird pattern. the tone is basically “oh so your parasocial crush john mulaney disappointed you boohoo what have we learned now?”, the moral of the story being that you shouldn’t idealize famous people. fair enough, that’s a a reasonable point to make on its own. the problem arise when you apply that particular lesson to this particular situation because here’s the kicker: he hasn’t done anything wrong.
“but he left his wife!! he said he was in love with her and then he left and he got a new girlfriend and now they’re having a kid even though he said he didn’t want kids!!”. none of this is morally wrong. if he wasn’t in love with his wife anymore, he did the right thing by divorcing her. if he fell in love with another person and wanted to be with her, he did the right thing by doing so. it’s that easy.
sometimes tumblr seems to operate under the assumption that whenever another person is hurt, it must mean that someone else did something wrong, something vicious and most importantly, with mailce. that’s not how interpersonal relationships work. people fall in love, fall out of love, divorce, want different things in life with different people without ever being morally wrong. that means things can get messy and people can get hurt and hearts can be broken without villains, without ill intent. we are human beings with human feelings and it is impossible to live a life in which you’ll never hurt anyone else.
the problem isn’t (for now) that people put john
mulaney on a pedestal - the problem is that people seem to genuinely think that
getting a divorce is reason enough for someone to fall from said pedestal?? i don’t want to make this about purity culture, but i find it somewhat telling that the same website that was ready to fully cancel jeff goldblum for marrying a very much grown up woman (31) simply because of an age gap also seems to have “trouble” with john’s “choices”. not to be all go out and touch some grass on main, but please believe me when i say that you can fall out of love with someone and feel bad about it and still leave them in the end because that’s simply how life works.
