#rwby fandom rly trying my patience in this regard

[bestworstcase]

you've mentioned that you're anti-redemption arc? i think? so i kind of wanted to ask what you meant by that? are you against redemption arcs as a concept (like you think they shouldn't be used in writing) or is it more like you're against like the expectation a lot of people have for every character reformation to be a redemption? or is it something else?

when i say redemption arc what i’m referring to specifically is villain-to-hero arcs that are structured around absolution through suffering and forgiveness—the, not to put too fine a point on it lmao, Christian Model.

cassandra’s arc is a perfect example.

1. she sins—stealing the moonstone, usurping rapunzel’s rightful destiny

2. she suffers—spending more than a year beholden to a cruel demon who uses her as an unwitting pawn and then brutally stabs her in the back when her usefulness ends

3. she repents—sobbing and castigating herself to rapunzel, who embraces, forgives, and comforts her

4. & she’s absolved by that grace, literally paying the debt of her wrongdoing with her life and then being resurrected through rapunzel’s love for her—after which everything is gravy and she gets to skip off happily into the sunset without a care.

notably absent here is any narrative engagement or reckoning with:

1. the actual wrong things cassandra did

2. the wrongs done to cassandra

3. her reasons for acting this way

4. the systemic injustices that created her

5. genuine healing or atonement

and then the fandom collapsed into the same tired argument that always happens when a villain is given a redemption arc without undergoing the optional step of atonement, which boils down to one side going “she didn’t deserve forgiveness! she should have been punished!” while the other goes “she literally died! of course she deserves to be forgiven! hasn’t already suffered enough?” or sometimes trotting out the ol’ “the point of forgiveness is that it isn’t something you can earn” bit.

and

like

i adore villain-to-hero arcs. i also love hero-to-villain arcs. i am ALL ABOUT characters undergoing huge realignments of perspective or morality or motive that wrench them from one side of their narrative to the other. but i like to, you know, see it

( and also im an evangelical apostate )

and the thing is, the classic redemption arc—those narrative beats of temptation, fall to sin, suffering, repentance, absolution—it’s not really about character growth, good or bad: it’s a christian moral fantasy that arose from the narrative structure of 15-16thc european morality plays and metastasized into the western storytelling tradition, fantasy and science fiction in particular. it is inseparable from christianity and the profoundly christian idea that choice and deeds are irrelevant to moral goodness because salvation is given by grace to those who humble themselves to ask for it.

I DETEST THIS.

not to be like, anti-christian on main but when i was eight or so, someone broke into our church and robbed the offering box; that weekend in sunday school the pastor’s wife got up in front of her little gaggle of children to tell us this—describing to us, with palpable indignation, how she and her husband discovered the theft, how upsetting and violating it felt, and what kind of person steals from a church?—and then she asked us how we felt about that. we were all furious, of course, in the way all eight-year-old children will be furious if you sit them down and tell them a bad person did a terrible thing to you. and then she tsked at us and primly informed us that that was the wrong answer, because jesus would say to forgive and pray for the thief, and our anger is rooted in sinful human nature and the temptations of satan. all my little—again—EIGHT YEAR OLD sunday school classmates just sort of wilted, and i very distinctly remember thinking but that’s not fair—you tricked us!

it’s been twenty years and i still get mad when i think about it. this is one of my clearest childhood memories. i didn’t have the emotional vocabulary to articulate or understand this at the time, but recognizing that the pastor’s wife had purposefully manipulated our sunday school class to make us ‘sin’ so that she could teach us a lesson about how we were bad and needed god to save us from ourselves completely obliterated my trust in the underlying moral framework of christianity.

like. hating the moral logic redemption arcs are built on top of is literally one of my key formative childhood experiences, is what i’m getting at—

and to be clear, i’m in no way opposed to heroic characters forgiving reformed villains for past misdeeds (or villains forgiving corrupted heroes lmao). the act of forgiveness in and of itself is not the bone i have to pick with redemption arcs. nor do i care if the villain switches sides without first suffering punishment or retribution or even properly apologizing: cass knocked a kingdom down and got off scot free, and i say good for her!

what i take issue with is repentance-and-forgiveness being the fulcrum of moral change—the thing that actively transforms the villain into a hero. i want character arcs that are interesting and dynamic and driven by intrinsic motivation and choices! i want characters with agency who react to things like real people instead of roles in a morality play! i want to be able to read or watch a fantasy story without getting sucker punched by bland repetitions of a moral perspective i categorically reject, especially by narratives that do not otherwise align with that moral perspective!!

i would also very much like it if fandom at large would stop calling every. single. villain-to-hero arc ever written a ���redemption arc’ and i would LOVE it if people would stop mindlessly applying the structure and moral logic of redemption arcs to villain-to-hero arcs that aren’t that, because oh my GOD i’m tired of the endless discourse about whether the character du jour was sufficiently punished for their wrongdoing to deserve ✨forgiveness✨

if you ever want to break yourself start mentally substituting “deserves to try to be a better person” every time you read the phrase “[character] deserves a redemption arc” and then you, too, can look upon christian moral hegemony and despair