mllelaurel:

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Honestly, when it comes to my own personal views? I believe that no one is beyond redemption (though whether or not the people said individual wronged are willing to forgive is wholly up to the people in question). For me, the belief that anyone can claw their way out of iniquity is not only a central tenet of my faith but also the knowledge that keeps me emotionally balanced and stops me from wallowing in bleak cynicism. I have to believe that redemption is possible for all, even if some choose not to take that road.

It always grinds my gears when people talk about redemption as if it’s something to be ‘deserved’, rather than an active choice, a verb, something a person does, with more or less variable degree of success. To redeem oneself is to take the necessary steps toward uplifting one’s soul from moral degradation. In essence, they keep equating redemption with something like forgiveness, when the two are entirely different matters and don’t have a 1:1 correlation at all. Some of my favourite redemption narratives (Anakin Skywalker lives AUs, for example) don’t really contain all that much in the way of forgiveness, because some acts simply can’t be forgiven by their victims. For me, the enjoyment of such stories comes from seeing the central character’s physical and emotional struggles with everything redemption entails, until they can achieve a weary, wizened peace with the world and with themselves. There’s an almost poetic beauty, I’ve always thought, to the words of a person who has walked in both the brightest light and the darkest shadow and it’s a real pleasure to put those sorts of words down on paper.

And yes, as I said before, I suspect that at least some of this nonsense comes from people having a visceral reaction to their own flaws being reflected back at them. For others, it’s your run-of-the-mill purity culture wankery.

I really like this for making a distinction between redemption and forgiveness. I am well on record as hating most forgiveness arcs. A lot of time, it feels like the character hasn’t earned it, but the narrative requires that their victims forgive, and I vomit inside my mouth a little. A redemption arc is just the opposite. By god, the character puts in the work. And at the end of the day, they may not be forgiven, but they do what they have to do, because they have to do it, because it’s the right thing to do. And that? That matters.