#it’s okay yall he told me that this is the story about redemption. about villains and heroes not being so different.

[doctorweebmd]

it’s okay guys I talked to Horikoshi and he said he’d never do this to me so we good

[satanfemme]

first of all, yall were, literally, asking for this essay. second of all I’m aware that it’s wordy, my brain has adhd in it :pensive: so for those reasons I apologize for nothing *hands u this* *hands u this* *hands u th-

Okay so I’ve been thinking about val velocity’s “redemption arc”. 

everyone kinda universally hates it a lot and nearly every time I see val velocity hate, right before I unfollow I notice that it (almost always) involves criticism irt his “redemption”, calling it rushed and not thought through and etc etc etc. 

and then that writing criticism is almost always pushed onto his character, saying that since his redemption was shitty, that’s just reflecting how shitty val is himself. 

I’ve also seen some (v interesting) posts comparing his “redemption” to korse’s redemption, with the conclusion always being drawn that korse was ultimately a better person at the end of the story than val was, specifically because korse’s redemption was handled much better. idc about korse tho, this post isn’t bout him.

So Ok, I’ve Just Been Thinking About It, thinking it over, and all the discussion surrounding it has been rubbing me the wrong way for a long time now, not because I think it’s wrong to say that it’s a shitty redemption arc, but because I Think y’all are approaching it the wrong way entirely. I don’t think it’s a redemption arc at all to begin with. And idk (and tbh idc) what gerard’s true intent was, but imo the impression I get reading the comic is that I don’t think a “redemption” was ever really the intent.

I Think, imo, yall get caught up too much in the redemption arc trope. I’m constantly seeing people shit on the trope and compare less successful iterations to the successful ones (ie: zuko, lmao), but I think yall need to take a step back out of the trope for a bit cause, in this case at least, the reason you think the redemption is so shitty is cause it’s not a redemption to begin with!!! like of course it’s a shitty redemption! cause it’s not a redemption! fkdhghdfj 

I think val’s apology at the end is supposed to make him more sympathetic, that much I think is accurate, but I don’t think he was intended to be hated so intensely to begin with. he was, imo, always meant to be a more complicated and complex character who represents what war/tragedy can do to a person. kinda the “bad end” option for a killjoy rather than a true villain 

(you know, the usual shit I’m always  constantly  saying: he wasn’t an irredeemably evil person, he was just trying to save the desert/was suffering from paranoia and illness/genuinely thought he was in the right, etc, if u follow me u know the drill)

and I think when you approach his “redemption” through that lens and mindset, it begins to make a whole lot more sense. val thought that everything he was doing was “right”, not even in a selfish villainy way, he was convinced that he was going to save the desert and everyone in it through his actions. those actions being, obviously, storming the city and killing everyone inside. all the way up until the end, he not only thought that this was the correct and heroic thing to do, but he thought that it was the only way. he was so caught up in his own vision that he refused to acknowledge that there could’ve been a nonviolent solution to defeating bl/i. literally as the girl was getting drac’ed, with a scarecrow pointing a gun to his head val told her “you led us in here thinking we were going to finally put a stop to bl/i, but you gave up without even trying. not even one gun was fired” 

literally even with the girl telling him that she had a plan, because that plan didn’t involve violence he didn’t think there actually was one (and to be fair! it didn’t really look that hopeful either jhflkjghfdj)

so the way that I interpret him watching the girl do her magical exploding bit, and then him saying to her “I’m sorry... for everything I’ve done.” is less so “oh he’s a good person now, congrats on being a new good guy 🎉” and more so.... “oh he’s finally just realizing that he was wrong to begin with”, because that hadn’t occurred to him before. 

Building Off Of That, my point: it’s not a redemption arc, because it’s not a redemption. It’s literally just an apology. whether the girl (or the audience for that matter) chooses to forgive him or not is left up in the air. in a true redemption arc it would not be so unclear. a real redemption arc would’ve have him and the girl being best friends as if nothing happened because he’s a Good Guy(tm) now. but we don’t get that, we just get an apology, an acknowledgment that he now knows he fucked up, and then a panel or two of him doing puppy dog eyes presumably because he’s now feeling guilty about fucking up so bad. sure, that could lead into a future redemption arc, but as it stands rn at the end of the comic, it’s a kicking-off-point for a redemption at most.

tldr: val velocity doesn’t have a redemption arc. he only has an apology. and  my #HotTake is: I don’t think it’s bad writing Nor something that inherently proves val was the Worst all along, as long as you let yourself view it through that lens and just take it for what it’s meant to be. fjhgkdjfh