hot take here but the way people talk about âredemption arcsâ and how they require that the sinner repent, debase himself, and then atone for his sins in order to be accepted back into the warmth of readersâ love, but there are some unforgivable sins for which no atonement is enough
is INCREDIBLY culturally christian
Another fascinating thing about responses to this post: whether theyâre agreeing with me or disagreeing, whether they think peopleâs insistence on this arc is good or bad, a huge portion of people use the word âforgivenessâ and center their entire response to this post around it.
Please observe that I never once used the word âforgivenessâ - although I should have, because the idea that forgiveness is a necessity for ceasing-to-be-a-sinner, and indeed that forgiveness is the primary goal, is itself christian.
I have at no point in the original post or in any of my further discussion of it said that the end goal, or even a significant feature of, a villain-to-hero arc was forgiveness.
Yet everyone who thinks this arc is indeed the only valid option phrases their arguments in terms like âWould you forgive someone who didnâtâŚâ
Maybe I would - maybe I wouldnât! But I never said anything about forgiveness being a requirement!
And everyone who wants to tell me that Christians Donât Think Like This, Actually, says it in terms of âBut Jesus forgives everyone, all you have to do is repent and you will be forgiven.â âŚokay great who says the characters need to be forgiven, why is it RELEVANT whether Jesus would forgive them or not - unless youâre operating in a Christian framework where Godâs Forgiveness is a central feature of your belief system.
People who agree that yes, this is a culturally christian thing, and further believe that another form of arc would be superior, are saying âyou should be able to just stop doing bad things and only do good things, and that should be enough for you to be forgivenâ - okay you got the spirit but why do we have to be forgiven.
Forgiveness - as least as it is being used in this context - is someone else granting salvation to you. It is someone else absolving you of your guilt. It is you having shown someone else that you are worthy now, and them casting judgement upon you, and then agreeing that you are enough better than you were before.
Why does someone else get to sit in judgement and decide if youâre a good person now? Who besides a god stands in that position of omniscience and moral superiority and moral infallibility?
What if a character chooses to end his life of villainy, anonymously transfer all his ill-gotten gains to those he harmed, and devote the rest of his life to curing cancer alone in a lab on a deserted island, finally releasing his cure anonymously on his deathbed. No other character even has any idea this has happened; they all figure he just died or went into hiding. No one has forgiven him. Does that mean heâs still a villain?
What if all the other characters have hardened hearts for whatever reason, and no matter how much penance the ex-villain does, even if he only did one tiny bad act and then spent years in pain in punishment and then spent decades saving the world over and over at great personal cost, they will never, ever forgive him? Does that mean heâs still a villain?
What if everyone he personally wronged died in an accident, he was the only survivor, it was that shock that caused his change of heart, so everybody he knows now loves him and knows him only as a hero, but the people he hurt can never forgive him? Is he still a villain?
On the other side, if, say, a child continuously forgives their abusive parent, does that mean the parent isnât a villain?
Forgiveness does not have a one to one correlation with goodness. In either direction.
I am concerned that what people are doing is translating ââŚin order to be accepted back into the warmth of readersâ loveâ as âbe forgiven by the readersâ (which is not inaccurate, in terms of the christian framework) and then all agreeing that yes, that should indeed be the central goal of every villain-to-hero arc. Which opens a WILD can of worms.
Because that means - We, as the readers, are in the position of gods to the characters, casting judgement upon them, looking into their hearts and deciding whether We will grant forgiveness to the characters for the wrongs they have done to others.
Like. Aside from all the other implications. At the point where you are granting someone forgiveness for something they did to someone else, somethingâs gone very wrong. Assuming youâre not, in fact, actually yourself a deity.
But also for people to make translation of ââŚwarmth of readersâ loveâ to âreadersâ forgivenessâ you have to already be assuming that we canât love a character if we havenât forgiven them for every wrong theyâve done. And that wouldnât even be true if they were a real person, and super duper isnât true if theyâre fictional. I love my mother with all my heart. Iâll also never forgive her for what she did to me and my brother. Forgiveness and love are two separate emotional axes and one does not imply anything about the other.
Look. Hereâs some advice for actual real life. You donât need to forgive someone to let them participate in society. You donât need to forgive someone to love them. And you DEFINITELY donât need to forgive them for them to be a good person. Whether theyâre a good person is in their heart - not yours.
