Some rando: This character should not have the chance to become a better person
Me: Why
Same person: Because they are a bad person!
Me: But what if that character was allowed to become a better person so that they are no longer a bad person?
Same person: You’re an abuse apologist
I would love for every bad person to become a good person. I’d think most humans think that it’d be a cool and great thing if all bad people became good.
A cool and great thing, which we can play pretend with in fiction, knowing it’s not realistic, just to feel a little better about the shitty real world we live in.
tbh, I think the problem is that people confuse “getting a redemption arc” with “being rewarded with what comes after a redemption arc”
like, redeemed villains are generally friends with the heroes. they get to experience love and The Power of Friendship for the first time, if they haven’t already. they generally get to experience forgiveness. if their motives are based off of some kind of trauma or pain (like a lot of redeemed villains) then they will probably have that resolved and get some sense of closure or inner peace from whatever is hurting them.
so when they say that “this character doesn’t deserve a redemption arc” what they mean is “this character doesn’t deserve to be loved. they don’t deserve happiness, peace, or companionship”. the alternatives I have seen are:
“I hope that this character realizes how awful they are and they kill themselves”
“I hope this character is redeemed by a heroic sacrifice” (meaning they would be redeemed but wouldn’t be alive to experience the “reward” afterwards)
“I hope this character begs and pleads for forgiveness over and over again, but is never forgiven”
it’s pretty disturbing tbh, to treat basic things that every human needs (like being loved) as a “reward” that you get for good behavior. or more accurately: never being bad in the first place. that once you fall from grace you’re damned for eternity.
I think this post exposes a really gross underbelly to purity culture bullshit that I don’t think I examined quite this way before.
If redemption is unacceptable, if bad behavior can never be forgiven, what is the alternative?
Because it sure seems like the alternative is “Indefinate suffering = justice.”
my biology professor has such a chaotic energy about him, last week i went to his office hours and somehow we ended up on the topic of gay marriage:
he said that when he lived in texas they changed the law to define marriage as “between a man and a woman in a house of religious worship with the intention to have children” so he filed his taxes as single and when they called him up like “you filed married last year” he was like “you changed the law, i was married by a judge in a courthouse and i have no intention of having kids” and they told him “you know who that law was for” and i guess he hung up on them and did not, in fact, pay taxes as a married man that year
Chaotic good
NO! This is Lawful Good! He is following the LAW! Chaotic doesn’t just mean cheeky!
this is like how Sweden stopped classifying homosexuality as an illness because people started a campaign of calling in gay to work
malicious compliance is one of the best tools in the arsenal of civil rights activism
With all this Bert+Ernie debating, now seems like a very good time for me to point out the REAL iconic gay couple of the Muppetverse we’ve all been ignoring for YEARS
Shit guys I always thought Statler and Waldorf were brothers but I just went online and no they aren’t but Waldorf is married to this muppet Astoria and guys you’ll never believe this
Astoria is Statler in a fucking dress…
I think we’ve stumbled onto a real conspiracy here folks.
As this just came back up on my dash, I just want to remind everyone there “older gentlemen who have reserved seats at the theatre they go to every week just to be catty bitches” doesn’t have a heterosexual explanation.
