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kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2021
'People say hatred is a bad thing' because it is. I suspect Lily is trying to conflate the ideas of anger and hatred but they aren't the same thing; anger can absolutely be justified and can absolutely be necessary. Hatred is not. Hatred is a fixation on misery. As said, just imagine living a life where you wake up every day hoping your ex died.
Also I think there's a bio-chemical release associated with keeping yourself angry that causes deleterious effects on the body. So, you know. Literally damaging.
Her going off about 'forgiveness plots' and equating vengeance with justice obviously put me in the mind of TSR, but to talk about forgiveness I actually got to thinking about her treatment of Luke Skywalker and how badly people reacted when Luke sacrificed himself to save Aliana and she never found out about it. This is a bit tangential to her point, but it just got me thinking.
Lily's made up a lot of bullshit about why Rey doesn't tell Aliana in universe, but out of universe I expect it's because Lily thought it was some kind of powerplay. Luke will never be forgiven by Aliana for what he put her through. She'll never even know what he did so that, posthumously, he will never be recognized as having tried to redeem himself and therefore Aliana will always hold that hate in her heart against him, and be righteous for it. But even Lily's readers found this distasteful (hence why she had to justify it so hard) and I think it's because it's another instance of Lily's bias clouding her to the fact that Aliana is a terrible person and Luke was a hero.
Because he was. He didn't sacrifice himself because he thought Aliana would forgive him or it would somehow redeem him. Luke sacrificed for Aliana probably fully aware that she would never do so. He did so because he felt it was the right thing to do, and willingly allowed himself to pass into obscurity, probably with his name being cursed. He didn't care what or whether Aliana would ever think of his sacrifice. We're familiar with the phrase 'ethics is what you do when nobody else is watching'; a good person will still do good (or will not indulge in evil) even if nobody else will ever know.
Forgive my pretension, but it speaks to some aspect of human behavior that Lily tried to write a situation where Luke 'got what he deserved' (dying unmourned to save her OC's life) but the audience's gut reaction was that what he deserved was something better and that Rey hiding what happened from Aliana (and Lily confirming that Aliana wouldn't even care) felt deeply wrong. Aliana not having the grace to forgive him and move on while Luke had the grace to give himself for her leaves a bad taste in the audience's mouth because most people understand on that gut level that one of them was a good person (no matter how Lily tried to twist his character otherwise) and the other is an unpleasant, petty snit.
i sincerely dont understand why rey didnt tell aliana. if hatred was that important, surely she would like being a bitter vengeful asshole and be like "well his sacrifice was meaningless, i dont care"