(Writing Talk is a type of short-for article centered around conversations about various aspects of writing/authorship. These aren’t usually long reads, but I think it’s fun to jot down some of my thoughts about the writing process as someone who loves the art of it all.)
If you consistently write enough stories, there will inevitably come a time wherein you craft a story that doesn’t just have morally black-and-white characters. Or, even if it does, you will eventually find yourself writing a villainous character who comes to realize the folly of their actions, repents and atones, and seeks to find redemption through joining with the protagonists. It’s a tale as old as time.
Little do you realize the veritable Pandora’s Box you’ve just opened in attempting to give a villain a redemption arc.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty (which is where things get exceedingly complicated), I’d like to take a moment to examine the concept of “Redemption” through a more moral lens. Still complicated, I’ll concede, but in a different way.
Redemption, put simply, is the act of someone evil/wrong recognizing the evilness/wrongness in what they’ve done, and moving forward through actions, words, and deeds to become good/right by embracing goodness/rightness. It comes in all shapes and forms, whether it’s a convicted criminal repenting for their crimes, a rude-behaving person getting their act together, or even just a child who lies a lot learning not to do that. Redemption is literally everywhere in our real world, and it’s everywhere in the world of fiction too.
But not everyone likes that.
We’ve talked before on this blog about how there’s a severe lack of critical thinking, reading comprehension, and just general empathy in our society today, especially on the internet. In the realm of literature and entertainment, this is most often reflected in the idea of ‘needing to deserve redemption‘. The idea that there is some sort of invisible threshold a person can pass wherein there is nothing they can ever do to be worthy of redemption, worthy of being a better person, again.
I kinda think this is baloney.
Why does someone need to ‘deserve‘ redemption in order to seek it, or to achieve it? Why is there some arbitrary line that, once crossed, ensures that someone can never be a good person again? Who put you (I’m using the royal ‘you‘ here) in charge of dictating what actions amount of needing to ‘deserve‘ redemption or not. If someone genuinely, truly, wants to atone for something that they’ve done, who are you to say that they can’t, because they’ve crossed your little imaginary line? What a depressingly cynical way to live, if you think like this.
Call me ‘naïve‘ and ‘optimistic‘ if you’d like, but I think everyone has the right to better themselves. It’s a heart matter, not a legalistic ‘yeah, but you did this and this‘ matter. If someone genuinely wants to change themselves for the better, they should be able to without mocking or disrespect. Yeah, that doesn’t mean removing consequences. Saying ‘sorry‘ doesn’t mean you can get out of prison for free if you committed a crime, but if you truly mean it, nor does it mean that the person you wronged is obligated to forgive you. But, it is the first step in growing as a person and bettering yourself.
Of course, with all that being said, there’s still the complicated hiccup that I alluded to earlier. Everything I’ve been saying so far is specifically in how I think redemption works in our real world. I have to concede that, in the realm of fiction, things work a little different. That’s because, in fiction, the world is a work of creation by the author, and then packaged up and given to the reader. The story doesn’t just happen by chance. Everything is deliberate and controlled by the author (aside from, you know, those little times wherein your story, as an author, changes in ways you didn’t expect it to as you write it).
So with that being said…yeah, sometimes it is difficult to accept the idea of a character in a story being ‘worthy of redemption‘, and that issue honestly lies more with the author than the reader.
In real life, if a person decides to punch you in the face, there’s really no one to get angry at except for the person who punched you in the face. Likewise, it’s up to that person to recognize that what they did was wrong, and to apologize to you.
In a story, if Character A punches Character B in the face, that wasn’t Character A’s choice. It was the author’s choice. And if Character A comes to the realization that what they did was wrong and apologizes to Character B, that also wasn’t the choice of Character A. That was, again, the author’s choice. Because, obviously, characters in stories don’t literally exist. They’re just figments of the author’s imagination, brought to life on the page entirely be the writer’s hand.
If the above example involved real people, then I would say that, yes, Character A is allowed to feel bad, ask for forgiveness, and turn their life around and stop punching people. But this isn’t real life, it’s a story, and as a reader, I’m left with a single burning question that’s at the core of this article:
“If the author wanted me to like Character A, then why did they write Character A as someone who punches people?”
This is an extremely important question for a reader to ask, and a really valid one. Unlike in real life where there isn’t a puppetmaster controlling people’s strings, there is in a story, so the reader is understandable in wanting to know why they should like a character who acts terribly. Or, why they should accept an evil character’s forgiveness. Or, why they should be okay with a formerly evil character now being good, when it feels like their evil crimes are piled too high to be ignored.
Likewise, it’s also a question that authors need to ask themselves. Everyone is deserving of redemption, and I stand by that, but if you as an author want your readers to approve of a character’s redemption, why did you make them do that extremely evil thing? You really need to take caution in carefully measuring out the actions of an evil character you plan to redeem, because if you pile up their misdeeds too high, your readers simply will not accept that character’s redemption. It just won’t sit right with them, which can pretty horribly derail your story’s plot or themes.
For an example, let’s look at Malos from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 video game.
Malos is the big-bad of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and he spends basically the entire game trying to reach a secret facility so he can use a big robot to destroy the world. Why? I don’t really want to get into it, I have a lot of problems with his character. The point is, he spends the entire game either killing people, blowing stuff up, or just generally trying to further his goals of, effectively, ending all life. You also hear a lot about his past actions, which include (surprise surprise) killing people, blowing stuff up, and trying to end all life.
The issue is, at the end of the game during the final boss, the game tries to make you feel sympathetic for Malos. They try to make you feel bad for him, try to make you relate to his backstory. He even, to an extent, gives up after the final boss and lets you all escape instead of taking you with him in the subsequent giant explosion.
But, like…hold on. Where did any of this come from? We’ve never once seen him as anything other than evil, and almost comedically unrepentant at that. Why should we possibly sympathize or relate to him at this stage of the game, and why should we buy that his slightly-less-evil actions here are genuine? There’s nowhere near enough time to flesh any of this out, and as Malos dies immediately after, it really just leaves this limp, unsatisfied feeling in the player.
Actually, my usage of the word ‘time‘ there is pretty apt, because there’s another angle to this whole issue that needs to be considered, which is the trope of redemption-through-death.
If there’s any true way to bypass the emotional barrier challenge of redemption, it’s through the utilization of a redemption-through-death scenario. Most people either want to see a not-too-bad villain be redeemed, or a really bad villain have to work long, hard, and genuinely to reach their redemption. But a redemption-through-death? Just the mere act of a character having their realization moment, turning from evil, and doing a good deed that results in their death is usually enough to garner the sympathy you need as an author from your audience for the moment to land the way you intend.
Let’s look at one of the most famous redemption-through-death examples in cinema, Darth Vader.
Vader’s crimes are basically uncountable. He’s killed hundreds of Jedi of all ages, killed thousands more innocent people on top of that, destroyed Rebel bases, hunted down people who dared to stand against the Empire, slaughtered his own subordinates over trivial things, and tortured information out of prisoners. I could go on and on. He’s a super bad dude.
But, then he realizes he has a son. And then he realizes he feels a connection to his son, a spark of humanity he thought had been burned away decades ago. And then he sees his son being electrocuted to death by the Emperor…and he just can’t stand by anymore. Taking the lethal dose of lightning onto himself, Vader tosses the Emperor down the Death Star shaft to his demise, then soon succumbs to his own wounds after an all-too-brief tender moment with his son.
Does this make up for every terrible thing Vader has ever done? Absolutely not, are you kidding me? But if you went out and asked people if they liked this scene and the direction it took Vader’s character in, I’m confident that over 90% of people would say that they love it. And why? Because that’s just the inherent power of the redemption-through-death trope. The idea of a character, no matter how evil, showing their true colors and their earnest desire to atone by sacrificing their life, usually for someone else? It’s timelessly moving.
So what’s my point in bringing all of this up? Well, to be fair, a part of me writing this article is as a reaction to the endless posts I see online about ‘so and so character didn’t deserve a redemption‘, or how ‘so and so character got off too easy and should have suffered‘. Which, by the way, have you noticed how many spiteful, vengeful people there are online? It’s both wild and a bit perturbing. But I never agreed with these ideologies, and wanted to share my own take here.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with me about redemption, I do think that everyone can agree about how tricky the subject is as an author. If you’re planning to write a villainous redemption story, it’s something that needs to be at the forefront of your mind in every step of your writing journey. Every action that villain takes, every word that they say, needs to be carefully measured, as does the time you commit to showing their journey of redemption afterwards. If you stumble at any point, the entire story risks falling apart in the face of your reader simply shrugging and saying ‘no, I don’t think they deserved that‘.
It’s a bit of a raw deal, as a writer, but hey! I feel like I speak for most authors when I say that we’re always up for a challenge!
Keep on writing, friends!
The Contrarian Corner 