dragonlady7

irredeemable villains are the ones nobody redeems, that's the point of the redemption arc, it shows the change, if the villain doesn't change, it's not a redemption arc now is it, you have to change to have an arc

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i know this is a difficult concept for a lot of tumblr to grasp but villains can have Reasons for becoming villains (trauma, abuse, etc) and can still be irredeemable for the things they have done because of it lol like….simply not every villain needs to be redeemed just because you like them. you are allowed to just like villains even if they are bad people. having Trauma ™ is not an excuse, it’s just a contextualization.

my exceedingly hot take is that discourse surrounding a few well-known properties (off the top of my head, Steven Universe, She-Ra and Star Wars) as well as the fanfic instinct to turn your favorite bad guy into an uwu smol bean cinnamon roll seems to have poisoned the well on how a lot of people in fandom think about villains.

like you guys know that redemption arcs are the exception and not the rule, right? Like the vast, vast, vast, VAST majority of villains are created with no intention of being redeemed. The key element in writing villains is that even if you think they’re making bad decisions, you have to understand why they’re making them, and this is the purpose that a tragic backstory usually serves. It’s supposed to give the villain a motivation that can make you go “ok, they’re clearly off the rails but I understand why they’re off the rails.”

I mean don’t get me wrong, Zuko is a great character and his arc is super compelling and amazing, and I’m not saying redemption arcs are a bad thing, but I am saying that people need to stop shouting “REDEMPTION ARC?” whenever we see a villain that was an abuse victim or has a soft spot for the hero or whatever other plot elements are supposed to make them three-dimensional and human. This is not a useful lens to view 95% of villains through and if you apply it outside that rare 5% you’re going to dig yourself into some truly stupid posts.

There is no official metric for whether a character is “irredeemable.” It’s all subjective, and all very contingent on the scope and tone and genre of the media in question. And stories sit inherently outside the realm of realism, if some more so than others, so it makes little sense to claim a redemption isn’t possible because such a process, with fictional pacing and parameters, is impossible simply because it can’t be mapped neatly onto the real world.

I’m not surprised that many fans start clamoring for a redemption upon a reveal that a villain has been abused in the past. It’s natural for people to want to see characters who have been through significant harm to work to better themselves, and villains are much more likely to respond to trauma in messy and unethical ways, an experience that rings true for many people who have been through trauma. We are sorely lacking in stories that show self-betterment from truly ugly responses to trauma, so it makes sense to petition for more.

The reason we are so lacking in these kinds of stories, and why redemption arcs - true arcs, rather than a character doing a heel-face turn and then dying - is because we live in a culture with a very black and white sense of morality, and a very punitive impulse towards wrongdoers. The fact that these ingrained beliefs exist doesn’t make them right, and the fact that there are few redemption stories doesn’t demonstrate that it is inherently, or that it should be, a limited resource.

In published media, a redemption is “useful” if it strengthens the story, if it fits within the scope and general thrust of the narrative and contributes to the themes. That is, again, subjective and up-for-debate, and it could easily be argued that there a plenty of stories out there that are weaker for not featuring a villain redemption. And in transformative fandom, “use” has very little to do with it - the “use” of a transformative work lies in the enjoyment or catharsis it serves in its creator. Fandom activity in general is not beholden to the same parameters as canon, and invoking the limits of canon to deter transformative reworking or expansion of a work is fallacious. (Your picture was not posted)