There's a huge difference between redemption and humanization. I feel like a lot of "redemption arcs" aren't actually redemption at all, they're just attempts to humanize the villain so that they seem multi-faceted, but people read them as "redemption arcs" and think that that is meant to justify all the evil they've done before and negate whatever made them a villain in the first place. I think true "redemption arcs" are actually kind of rare because true redemption would take making the villain acknowledge their crimes, reevaluate their actions, actively choose to do better, and then proceed to make amends and become a better person, and that would this take more time than most stories are allowed to give their characters.

I've also seen people argue that a character has to be poised for redemption from the jump for it to work because once a character does something "too bad", they can't be redeemed. I completely disagree because redemption isn't justification or forgiveness, so no matter how horrible a character's actions, they could choose to become better, but because a lot of people (including writers) think redemption means "erasing the character's flaws and making it so they did nothing wrong ever", a lot of attempted "redemption arcs" just end up erasing a character's entire history or justifying every evil thing they've ever done. And yeah, in these cases, the only way to make a character go from a villain to a perfect cinnamon roll with no flaws *is* to have been planning it from the beginning and make sure they never do anything that can't be explained away later.

TLDR: real redemption arcs require a lot of self-awareness, patience, and growth, which are things that are rarely actually allocated to villains, and that's why real redemption arcs almost never get executed. The reason people think redemption arcs are overdone is because there are so many attempts to either humanize a villain that get misconstrued as redemption or attempts to blatantly erase who a character was in the name of "redemption", which is really just poor character development.

I don't disagree that it's often the case that the redeemed bad guy dies at the end because, as a society, we have fucked up ideas about justice and rehabilitation, but sometimes it's clear they got killed off less because the writers thought it was warranted and more because they were staring at the prospect of having to wrap up five separate character arcs in the next ten minutes and decided to start pruning.

Look in all seriousness you can't redeem a character without showing them being pathetic, deep loser energy. There are no cool redemption arcs. They have to be in the trenches. They have to hate themselves for the mistakes they made. They have to apologize and take whatever is given be it forgiveness or a punch to the jaw. ONLY then will the redemption arc be actually good because it will be cathartic. And then they get to see the good things, they get to be touched gently and held while they sleep.

These things can overlap, even into a circle but without the pathetic loser boy saga your redemption arc will feel hollow.

I love that star wars tells us time and time and time again that the only thing a person needs in order to make amends is the desire to. And if you want it enough to work for it, then there’s a place for you to bring good back into the world.

Emerie and Rampart in TBB finale both had opportunities to switch sides the only difference between them is that Emerie wanted it and Rampart didn’t. And the narrative treated them accordingly. And rather than treating Emerie like the evils she did were the only thing that would ever define her, Echo said “fine, if you want to help, then help” and those kids got out of there because of her.

The annoying thing about “ugh why can’t we have more irredeemable and unsympathetic villains, all villains get redeemed or are sympathetic these days” discourse is…most stories that have redeemed or sympathetic villains also have at least one irredeemable villain with 0 sympathetic qualities. Name a redeemed villain and I can often also name another villain from the same story as them who doesn’t get redeemed. For every Darth Vader there’s a Palpatine. You say “not all villains can be Zukos some of them should be Ozais” but miss who the obvious Ozais already are in favor of calling for the Zukos to also be Ozais.

a redemption arc is not a sacrifice.

a redemption arc is not some grand act of selflessness.

a redemption arc is not meaningless pain and suffering.

a redemption arc is simply facing the consequences of your actions, fixing your mistakes and doing better, regardless of whether you will be forgiven or accepted. that's it.

It’s telling that if you Google about the best redemption arcs TV characters had, both Zuko and Steve Harrington appear on most of those lists.

Been a couple of years, but I still think fondly of Grace Monroe from Infinity Train for achieving that very rare redemption arc narrative of "the people you hurt are allowed to sever all ties, and you can still become a better, happier person."

Bones I don't have anyone else to turn to, and you're INCREDIBLY informed on the subject. How do you write characters who the audience WANTS to be redeemed? Especially without being able to reliably pull a 'What you are in the dark' trope like how Breezepaw eases up when away from his dad.

Any tips for how to write a good redemption/'recovery', especially one where the character has to unlearn ideas they grew up on?

Advice from me is almost always going to be double, triple, QUADRUPLE underlining; CHARACTERS ARE NOT PEOPLE THEY ARE TOOLS.

Think about WHAT YOU'RE SAYING with this story. What are you trying to accomplish, besides simply having a fun villain join the main cast?

For Breezepelt, I want to dive into him finally recognizing his own flaws. I want him to realize he does have problems he needs to work on, but that he's LOVED, and his life has value! That it's never too late to do the right thing, and that happiness is within reach. A very character-driven arc.

For another character, a redemption arc could be a really good opportunity to unpack how the "bad guys" are recruited and indoctrinated. Zuko from Avatar is the best example of that, but you can also look at Peridot from Steven Universe. It's our introduction to how Homeworld Gems talk about planet colonization. Her story up to mouthing off at Yellow Diamond is essentially unpacking and rejecting the Homeworld mindset.

There's a billion ways and reasons to do a redemption arc! Show how an environment can change a person! Talk about how power acted on them! Explore what happens to an empire's underling when they start having doubts about their cause!

Think about what it can do FOR your story, and what juicy ideas you can show during it.

And... a BAD redemption arc, imo, is one that grinds your story to a halt by removing a main driver of conflict (the POINT of an antagonist), and is done for a character who has absolutely no reason to want to change.

What are your antagonist's motivations? WHY do they act the way they do? What would it take for them to willingly give up what they currently have, for something else? If they were forced out of their position and suddenly offered it all back, what would it take for them to accept the deal?

And, most importantly, do you still have a goddamn plot if this character has a turnaround? Or maybe is the story ending with this redemption! What does the redemption say for your characters and themes?

Me when a character who was formerly bad grows and changes for the better and redeems themselves and becomes one of the good guys

Me when a character who was formerly good gets corrupted and worn down and becomes one of the bad guys and every fight between them and the good guys is charged with so much angst and layers because of their shared history

Redemption Arcs my beloved AND Corruption Arcs my beloved <3

Thinking about Dagur’s redemption arc in Httyd Race to the Edge series and how it is done so differently to other arcs from other shows: -Dagur does not require help from the protagonist to start to change in comparison to others of his type. They usually require exposure or some influence from the "nice guys" to change, but this is not the case with him. -He doesn’t exactly have a tragic backstory nor he was controlled/abused since he was younger (unless you count how he was betrayed by the dragon hunters in Season 2) -Meaning that he doesn’t come off as ¨sympathetic¨ unlike other characters you know that they will eventually get redemmed on the long run. -When he appears again after Season 2 finale, the focus is on how he is trying to change and how has he changed. - At least in the Enemy of My Enemy episode, he doesn't ask Hippup to trust him or to give him a new chance, in fact, when Hippup asks him why he should believe him, Dagur tells him that he shouldn't since he "doesn't deserve it" due to his previous actions. -He decided to change for the better because he thought it would be the best for him, regardless of whether Hippup or any of the other dragon riders helped him or not. -There isn’t a moment he asks Hiccup any favor in exchange for saving him in ¨Enemy of my Enemy¨. He, however, does ask for his help to find Heather in a later episode. -Even after the team believes that he is lying about how they are about to fall into a trap and put him behind bars in "Family on the Edge", he still tries to help them and almost loses his life when trying to stop the trap. -While i have some issues regarding how some things seems to get retconned, Dagur tries compensating the pain that he caused to Heather by offering her a place to stay in Berserker Island and teaching about her Berserker culture.

Redemption arcs are great, you love to see one done well. We eat up Mr. Darcy overcoming his pride and Elizabeth learning the truth about her prejudices. But the one thing that rarely comes up narratively is backsliding.

In fact, if someone writes a fan fiction follow-up to Pride & Prejudice with Darcy falling back into his old ways, people get angry. "Where did his character growth go?" they cry. It feels like when Han Solo was back at square one in The Last Jedi, that can't happen, can it?

Except it can! My husband says that when I visit home, I act younger and somehow my 'character development' of the last 20-ish years means very little. And then we have the most common serious cases: addiction and leaving domestic abusers. You can in fact hit "rock bottom" more than once, you can return to a toxic person and then escape multiple times. You can leave one bad relationship and fall into another. I think part of the reason this is so hard to accept is that we are taught that once you mount the top of that redemption arc, it's over, you'll never slide back down. But humans can and do, again and again and again.

I have had trouble with this mysterious concept of "tact" since I was a child. I have grown (I think), but every so often I just say the stupidest, most tactless thing to someone. If I was a book character, someone would scream at the page and ask where my character development went. It's there, I've been working on it, but I still make mistakes. I get tired, I misjudge, I get too comfortable and tell a stupid joke around the wrong people. At this point I've just accepted that it will always be a struggle for me, I will never complete my arc, I have to just keep trying.

So... the point is have a little mercy. We aren't characters in an epic novel, hopefully we learn, hopefully we grow, but we also stumble and backslide and screw up. And we are prone to make the same mistakes over and over again. You just have to decide to keep loving people, flawed as they are.

Level 1: character gets a redemption arc for something that's not really that bad because the writers are cowards and don't want to risk making them truly unsympathetic.

Level 2: character gets a redemption arc and the text just straight up refuses to specify what they actually did, but trust us, it was really bad. (AKA Schrödinger's war crime)

Level 3: character gets a redemption arc for something the writers clearly think is really bad, but it's... kind of not? (Bonus points if it's a weird gender role thing.)

Level 4: character gets a redemption arc for something that genuinely warrants it, but the writers seem to have very strange ideas about why it was bad.

@muggle-born-princess @immaturityofthomasastruc @anxresi

What are the best stories you've seen that have a theme of forgiveness? If not strictly about forgiveness, then any themes along the lines of retribution, redemption arcs, or even "seeing through another's eyes" (I may or may not have rewatched Brother Bear recently lol)

Well, we’ve got all my old standbys. Cinderella, of course, is a story that really has forgiveness in it, because Cinderella wholeheartedly forgives her stepfamily for mistreating her. (Actually, she might be “forbearance,” not forgiveness.) But they’re completely off her hook. I think there’s a really great moment of forgiveness between Nick and Judy in Zootopia that gets overlooked. Frozen, with Anna and Elsa. Brother Bear is a really great example, truly! I love that movie.

I think some of my other favorites include the original A Star is Born, or even the Judy Garland remake. (Those also might be more “forbearance.”) I think one of the best examples I ever saw of forgiveness was in Avatar: the Last Airbender, which everybody knows:

And of course, ‘Til We Have Faces and The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis have some of the best-distilled forgiveness moments in any stories, ever. There are sweet ones in The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, too, though they’re not as dramatic. In Anne’s House of Dreams, by L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s repeated forgiveness of Leslie’s coldheartedness or rudeness is a really simple but awesome example of day-to-day forgiveness.

I don’t easily think of a lot of good examples of it in stories. Brother Bear definitely has it, because without it, the story doesn’t work—Sitka wouldn’t help Kenai to learn from his wrongs, Kenai would’ve been killed by Denahi, Koda would’ve been left alone—but I don’t think forgiveness is the main focus of the movie. I think it’s a load-bearing component, but not the focus.

You’re making me want to see a movie that really homes in on that!

The thing is, I guess, for forgiveness to be the focus of a movie, there has to be a character that 100% definitely does the complete wrong, inexcusable thing to another character. Something that he deserves to be on the hook for. Then he has to acknowledge that he did the wrong thing and want forgiveness. And then the other character, the one who was wronged, has to willingly acknowledge that wrong and then let the offender off the hook. It’s not just “we’ll pretend this didn’t happen.” It’s both parties acknowledging that wrong was done, and having an exchange that ends in reconciliation. It’s got grace and mercy wrapped up in it.

Not many movies have true moments like this. Usually, one character is super sorry and the other character just seems to brush off whatever they did with like, a callback to an inside joke or something. (I’m thinking if Treasure Planet, to be honest.) Or, the situation necessitates that they put their conflict aside and work together, and then after the day is saved they sort of “get over” all that and swagger off into the sunset together.

As far as “redemption” goes—gee, all the old standbys! All the ones I mentioned above, plus Star Wars, plus East of Eden (the movie, not the book) plus, of course, my all-time favorite movie, Lilo & Stitch.

In Lilo & Stitch, you have the ugly little creature who belongs absolutely nowhere, is by definition a blight on nature and an abomination of existence, who was actively created to ruin everything. And he does it, and he takes delight in it. But there’s this little girl who gets pushed down, gets her doll chewed on, gets rejected when she’s most in need of his companionship—and she just keeps on loving him anyway. Because she’s chosen to, not because he did anything to deserve it. And then that infects him. That idea of family—of someone choosing to love you, no matter how ugly you are inside and out, and by choosing to love you, they create a place where you belong. No matter what. And that changes him. A germ from outside of him changes him from a literal world-destroying, home-shattering selfish monster into something new, something adopted, something loved.

I’d call it a story about committed love and grace, not necessarily redemption—because the focus of the story isn’t really “Stitch does something wrong but then through a process of pain and transformative struggle, redeems that wrong.” That’s not the focus of the story. But it’s still “bad character becomes good.” And I can’t help but talk about Lilo & Stitch once you get me started on it, sorry!

I think the best redemption stories are some of the ones I’ve listed above, plus East of Eden, Beauty & the Beast, and really, truly Sydney Carton from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

And I think Kylo Ren was well on his way to being one of the best redemption stories of all time, if TROS hadn’t fumbled the ending so clumsily—but that’s another post for another time! I don’t know if this satisfactorily answered your question, but it was fun to ramble about and I’ll tag you if I make another post as more come to mind.

“Not every villain needs a redemption arc!”

Correct. However, who on earth is calling for ALL villains to be redeemed? Even the most pro-redemption folks can name villains they don’t think should be redeemed. Just because someone wants a redemption arc for a villain you don’t think needs it doesn’t mean they apply that to ALL villains. This argument is nothing but a disingenuous strawman.