#this post is specifically focusing on people who like whiny brat anakin but don't like whiny brat kylo

[gffa]

avoid-avoidance replied:

hey, I know you get bothered by random asshats about star wars stuff sometimes so feel free to ignore this question for any reason, but I’m curious: do you have any thoughts you feel like sharing re: what makes Whiny Brat Anakin appeal to many fans when quite a few of the same fans vehemently reject kylo ren? at a glance, it does kind of seem like disney tried to clumsily replicate “all the stuff people liked about anakin/vader”, except they tried to cram the “bratty tantrums” and the “cool evil villainy” into one life stage as opposed to having one follow the other

I’ve been turning this over in my head for a week and have had a bit of a tough time trying to figure out how to approach it, because I feel like any answer I could put forth will have a dozen different answers and/or exceptions from different people. You have those who like Anakin and Kylo, you have those who like Kylo but not Anakin, you have those who like Anakin but not Kylo, you have those who don’t like either Anakin or Kylo, you have those who like one and are indifferent to the other, etc.  Then you have Hayden!Anakin vs Matt!Anakin and people having various levels of affection for either/both, etc. etc.  Any commentary I do is going to miss huge swathes of people who have different viewpoints, motivations, and preferences, so just dump the whole salt shaker over this post rather than just a grain of salt, pretty much. 😂 I think a lot of it comes down to that it took awhile for a lot of fans to warm up to whiny brat Anakin, that there are still huge chunks of fandom who hate the character for being a brat (especially if you go into more traditionally dudebro-dominated spaces), that TCW warmed a lot of people up to the character, made him more likeable and/or sympathetic, that they had hours and hours and hours to spend with the character, instead of just the movies. I think it’s a storm of different things--we never really see Ben Solo much before he becomes Kylo Ren, so there’s not much time to develop investment in his character as a sympathetic one (though, let’s be clear, there’s a huge fandom that finds him sympathetic and is invested in Ben Solo over Kylo Ren, though, I don’t find a lot of it is in the vein of being a fan of Whiny Brat Ben Solo, the way there are Whiny Brat Anakin Skywalker fans, but that might just be my lack of having sequels brain/not being in that part of fandom a ton), but also the way Kylo’s character was presented really pissed off a lot of people.  That the female lead of the story became completely wrapped up in his story, that the other leads of color were pushed aside for another straight white dude character, etc.  For a lot of people, a lot of the potential enjoyment of a character (whether in a more serious way or as a failboat) gets undercut when you look at a story and see characters of color being shoved to the side for him. I feel like there was some enjoyment of Kylo as a tantrum-throwing failboat when TFA was all we had--that one video of all the Skywalker men throwing tantrums and yelling was a fandom classic, for example--but then the movies took him very seriously, contrasted against the way Anakin was portrayed in some pretty hilariously bratty ways (which was deliberate, GL has said more than once that Anakin was a whiny, bratty teenager), and so there’s more fun brattiness to work with. Basically, I think it’s that Anakin did get a similar reaction when he first came out, but then TCW made people like the prequels more, people started focusing on the sympathetic aspects of Anakin’s character (in the movies and TCW), there was more time spent with the character (dozens of hours now instead of just a handful), and some fans started enjoying the hilarity of the character and it caught on with more fans. With Kylo, we don’t have much time with the character comparatively, he doesn’t get nearly as much time on-screen as a brat, he took up the space that other fan-favorite characters (of color, too) could have occupied, he didn’t have as sympathetic a backstory like Anakin’s childhood as a slave, his character arc came out at the same time as a rising wave of fascism in the world and the parallels struck a lot of people really badly, and the sequels get a lot of flak for not having a plan. Will Kylo one day follow a similar path as Anakin’s character did with fandom? It’s not out of the realm of possibility.  But I feel like Disney doesn’t do “I do what I want” as much as Lucas did, when he was like, “I’m going to make an animated show based on the prequels, whether you guys like the prequels or not.”, so I’m not putting money on it.  He was a popular character in parts of fandom, so maybe they’ll have a prequel-to-the-sequels series where we spend time with him and get a more sympathetic look into his character, but it doesn’t feel like that’s going to happen any time soon.  And when you have all of the other stuff added in, I think the people who are interested in the character are interested in him more seriously and the people who hate the character aren’t at all interested in softening him up and the people who are on the fence aren’t touching the character with a ten foot pole.

#meta #this post is specifically focusing on people who like whiny brat anakin but don't like whiny brat kylo #different permutations of liking/not liking the characters (or HOW one likes the characters) are not the focus