#but I feel like people mistaking a painting of someone who might have been WS’s lover as his wife might be the universe saying something 👀

[merp-blerp]

Henry Wriothesley’s probably queer ass did not pop off in this painting, literally wearing woman’s clothing, makeup, and jewelry, just for everyone to mistake this painting as Anne Hathaway Shakespeare for some reason.

[tonotbelionized]

Redemption in RWBY

Redemption: the act of atoning for a past fault or mistake. There’ve been numerous redemption arc in media, some very well written and others less so, and RWBY is no different. 

Over the years the FNDM had discussed over which characters should or should not be redeemed, though others agreeing with their choices being very polarizing. Some of the characters I’ve seen people wanted to be redeemed are Adam, Cinder, Hazel, Emerald, Mercury and Ilia. Due to her having the only redemption arc out of the villains so far, I will be mostly talking about Ilia.

A redemption arc can either be done really well or really bad depending on the writers, with one in particular being heralded as one of the best redemption stories in modern media; Zuko’s arc in Avatar the Last Airbender. So, what makes a good arc and where does RWBY’s come into play?

Redemption can work for many characters, but there’s some things that need to be hit in order for the arc overall to work. Mostly they’re:

(1) Make sure the character is willing to work towards atonement.

It’s easy to have other characters try to excuse the villain and do most of the work to redeem them, but it falls flat when the villain is mostly unapologetic until one talk and then they’re all better. A good redemption arc is a long and hard journey, and the villain will have to face opposition despite their desire to atone.

With the one redemption we have in RWBY so far; Ilia, this point is somewhat done right? Ilia does realise ultimately on her own that the White Fang isn’t this revolutionary rights movement anymore now that it’s under Adam and Sienna, but it still happened right at the end when not five minutes earlier, she was willing to join in the attack to kill the Belladonna family and send Blake back to her abuser.

Just because Ilia felt conflicted over doing so does not erase the fact that she willingly went along with it anyway. I would’ve preferred if Ilia had started moving away sooner from the White Fang, but time restraints and the volume itself was already split between multiple story lines that it just wasn’t possible. 

That being said, Ilia turns on Corsac and stops the fight, ultimately helping the Belladonna’s. It might not be as much as I want, but it’s something at least.

(2) Have the character face opposition during their arc.

Redemption falls flat when the character in question is just accepted back with no opposition. Even if they realise that what they did was wrong and wanted to atone for it, that doesn’t mean that the people they’ve wronged should accept them back with no complaint. Sometimes people don’t accept those who’ve hurt them, and that’s acceptable because they’re not obliged to. 

It’s the one problem that I have with Ilia’s arc. I love her, and I love her arc overall, but it was somewhat jarring that everyone accepted her into the fold just because she stopped Corsac at the end of the fight. The theme of forgiveness is nice and I enjoyed listening to Ghira pointing out that Blake could do what he couldn’t at her age, but there was little work that Ilia had to do between her and Blake’s talk in the burning house and her being accepted into Blake and Sun’s friendship group.

It feels like it ignores that before that Ilia was a willing part of the assassination attempt on Ghira and Kali, tried to kidnap Blake to send her back to Adam, constantly tried to undermine their work getting the Faunus to help Haven, and even nearly killed Sun. Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty much in Sun’s character to let bygones be bygones, but it’s jarring that the only person who points out what Ilia did was the guard, who was promptly shut down by Ghira and Blake. 

At least her helping at the battle of Haven improves her case, and makes her redemption more authentic, but it just feels that because she was conflicted before attacking the Belladonna house it means that she can be accepted back with no questions. I’m not a fan.

So what about Adam and Cinder? 

Well, I don’t think they can be redeemed, and in Adam’s case definately not given that he’s dead. Neither of them showed any remorse or even question their actions, they did what they did with the idea that they’re in the right for behaving so or simply didn’t care about the people they’re hurting. 

It also doesn’t help that they’ve killed people that the cast and the audience are close to. Cinder shows no remorse over killing Ozpin or Pyrrha, and was amused by the destruction of Beacon and the deaths of many innocent people. Adam dismembered Yang and tried to kill both her and Blake in Argus, as well as showing that he’s not above using Yang’s PTSD against her. 

Neither are going to be redeemed in my opinion, and they don’t deserve to either. No one deserves redemption and neither of them have put in any work towards it. That doesn’t mean you can’t have AUs where either of these characters do atone for their mistakes, I love them myself, but I wouldn’t expect it to happen in canon to be honest.

There are characters who I believe will be redeemed. Emerald and Mercury.

Both have sympathetic backstories that explain their motives, as well as their dependency on Cinder. Emerald saw Cinder as the maternal figure she never had, and is willing to deal with her abusive nature because she has no one else, and Mercury stays because he’s never known a life outside of killing and hurting people and show hesitation in leaving that behind; something that Tyrian points out in Volume 6.

While these aren’t necessarily the basis for redemption, as evident by Adam’s dark past of being enslaved in the SDC, these pasts do paint these teenagers in a more sympathetic light.

The main positive that points towards their redemption is that Emerald shows remorse and is conflicted over what she’s doing while in Cinder’s group. She’s saddened by the sight of people dying in the Fall of Beacon, she confesses to Mercury that without Cinder, she’s unsure that what she’s doing is right. Similar to Ilia, she’s clearly shown to not be doing this out of a selfish goal of wanting power or wanting to hurt someone close to her, she’s simply a young woman who has nothing else in her life and so attached to the one source of comfort she had found.

It’s just unfortunately for Emerald, that person was Cinder.

The same can be said for Mercury. While he isn’t the type to openly show doubt or emotion like Emerald, the story points out that he’s just as lost and confused as she is, only hiding it under a sense of smugness and lack of care for what’s right. Tyrian telling him the truth in Volume 6 simply points out what everyone ws thinking and gives Mercury just as much chance of leaving Salem and the villains as Emerald.

Hopefully we see more of this in Volume 7, and I hope that the few mistakes that they did make in Ilia’s arc is fixed with Emerald and Mercury. Either way, I am overall happy with the writing with this theme in RWBY, and look forward to what we get next. Thanks for reading!