Who deserves to be redeemed? When is someone irredeemable? Is redemption just a literary fetish people can’t stop busting a nut over every time a story that contains a villain with a fully fleshed out backstory and good characterization gets an emotional scene at the end of it after which they metaphorically walk into the sunset hand in hand with the hero of said story?
I’ve been thinking about redemption in real life and in fictional works of art for a little while. My interest about the topic was sparked when a well known (can I say famous?) youtube media critique, Lily Orchard, wrote about this on her tumblr blog and talked about it in some of her videos. A key takeaway from her analysis is that any fictional character that is redeemable cannot go beyond what is known as the “Moral Event Horizon”, lest they be too far gone for absolution. If anyone wants to see the full nuance behind miss Orchard’s work in regards to this topic I’d recommend checking out her youtube channel and/or tumblr blog.
Another reason the topic has been on my mind lately is because I’m developing a villainous character for an rpg game that I will be playing after the pandemic is over (assuming I survive it). There will come a point when the other players of this game will find out the heinous shit my character (Let’s call her, ‘Dove’) has done. Upon explaining Dove and what she had done in her backstory to a friend of mine, they asked me “So what do you want to happen to her when everyone around her in the story finds out?”
I genuinely wasn’t quite sure. On one hand my lizard brain was telling me to try and make Dove more sympathetic so that she could be absolved of her crimes and finally commit to being a good person. On the other hand reasoning and lived experiences tells me that most people don’t actually change like that nor is it anyone’s place but the people Dove harmed to truly give her absolution. And even if that were to happen, that doesn’t necessarily mean everything in her life and in the lives of those she’s left an impression upon can return to normal.
Accountability that is meaningful and profound is a lifelong process of self-work that cannot be neatly packaged into a fictional page of dialogue, a real life conversation, or even a prison sentence. Redemption is not always the best thing that can happen to a villainous character or real life person when the absolution of these entities is entirely based on our repulsion towards sad endings. I don’t mean that in the sense that a villain or real life “evil” person must be met with a violent and dark ending. I suppose what I am trying to communicate is: if you are someone who believes a person is not the worst thing that they have done, you should be more committed to preventing them from being able to contribute to more harm and hold them accountable for their actions every step of the way until they reach a point where they can be trusted to function amongst common society without the constant pressure from people who know better to keep them from doing worse again (if they can ever be introduced into society without constant supervision) RATHER than attempting to forgive someone for malice or harmful actions done out of apathy who hasn’t really done anything to earn forgiveness because you would sooner not have to sit with the discomfort of fully holding someone accountable.
