Basically, there's this post that i saw that just made me so annoyed because it was basically saying that Ben's trauma wasn't an excuse for him to turn to the dark side because Obi-Wan also experienced lots of trauma and didn't turn to the dark side and it annoyed me so much because like do they realized that the reason why Ben turned to the dark side was because he felt he had no other choice? Sorry to bother you, I wanted to rant to someone and sorry if this doesn't make sense
This is just someone posting the ‘cool motive, still murder’ gif with extra steps. Or Pablo’s delightful ‘Rey was raised by sand and never murdered anyone’ or whatever he said as an absolutely disgusting justification for how Ben’s parents neglecting and abandoning him was totes fine.
Because remember kids, if you are actually traumatised by the trauma inflicted on you, that’s your fault and you deserve no sympathy. Being psychologically damaged is a personal failing. Only perfect victims are worthy of compassion, people who are harmed by abandonment, neglect, war, betrayal, brainwashing, etc. etc. in ways that show are just bad people. Good children understand that their parents are infallible and no authority figure should ever be challenged as long as they’re on the right team.
(It is funny that Obi-wan is the example they go to considering how much fucked up shit Obi-wan ended up doing. How manipulative and imperious he is. He never stopped being a Jedi, so I guess none of his mistakes count. I think an absolutely staggering number of people watch the OT without ever realising that Yoda and Obi-wan were wrong. That what they tried to do to Luke by setting him up to kill his father without ever knowing the truth was, in fact, Bad. What they said about it being too late to save Anakin was not true. Their whole approach to the war and abdication of responsibility by going into exile was a moral failure. Luke’s rejection of all this is vindicated, forgiveness and unconditional love are what saved the galaxy, not pragmatism or violence.
Literally the point of the story is empathy for the villain. And before the prequels, you weren’t even given trauma and manipulation and victimhood as a reason you should empathise. You just should. Because he’s a human being and anyone can be saved.)
People who bring up this ‘argument’ are either completely oblivious to how offensive it is to claim that being unable to emerge from trauma totally unscathed is an unacceptable weakness in your character and taints you forever, or they are unconscious determinists who think you’re born good or born bad and change is impossible. Circumstances are never extenuating, every choice exists in a vacuum and reflects perfectly on your entire being regardless of context. Ironically, these are always the same people who want villains to be punished and talk about how ‘they chose to do [bad thing]’, despite implicitly denying the existence of free will.
The fact that Ben had to be hounded onto the dark side by a colossal team effort over 23 years and was still totally innocent even when he finally went to Snoke after finally being convinced there was no where else for him to go... I mean, obviously that doesn’t matter. He was, like, moody and stuff. Due to the malignant voice in his head and his entire family being afraid of him for reasons they refuse to explain. You can’t expect his parents or uncle to deal with that. He’s got that dangerous Skywalker blood they gave him and carry themselves.
