Then I wonder what it actually means to talk about wanting a character's 'redemption' if you only mean 'redemption for things that I don't really find that hard to forgive'
One of the reasons why I think Faith wins at redemption arcs in the Jossverse is that what she did is never excused or forgotten, she eventually accepted responsibility and turned herself in (without mystical intervention causing her to do so), and she then kept (successfully) at trying to be a better person. Which is why I find it frustrating when her dark side days are then declared to have been all someone else's (preferably Buffy's) fault to begin with - that sells the redemption arc short.
I had this issue with "District 9" if I recall, where the human protagonist starts out by torching, essentially, alien babies, and my brain basically went, "I don't care WHAT lesson you learn from this point" and checked out; whereas plenty of people found the character arc in that movie compelling, it just pushed one too many buttons for me.
I get that. It didn't with me, but I totally get it. Incidentally, I know someone who had that reaction to Caprica Six in Battlestar Galactica (specifically for the death of the baby in the pilot, not the planet wide deaths), whereas the way Six behaved with that baby (she didn't come across as malicious or doing it for sadistic reasons at all) way back then was the first flicker of complexity to me. But my friend, a mother herself, saw a baby with a snapped neck and saw red (err, not because of Caprica Six' costume).
But to go back to the question of redemption: I think it also shows different meanings of the term. Often in these discussions I wonder whether redemption to fellow fans means either the characters in question being textually forgiven and embraced by one of the hero characters or even told that what they did wasn't really that bad, neither of which is actually what redemption means to me. This is also why I get confused when people talk about Loki being partially redeemed in Thor II. Err, no. He certainly was fleshed out as a character, it was the first time I could believe he didn't just hate Thor but also loved him, and that he did love Frigga... but does any of this have to do anything with his death score so far, or does it even include the acknowledgment anyone outside of his family deserves to live? Nope. And thus I would say what Loki became was a somewhat (to me) more interesting character - not a redeemed one.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2013-11-30 01:18 pm (UTC)Then I wonder what it actually means to talk about wanting a character's 'redemption' if you only mean 'redemption for things that I don't really find that hard to forgive'
One of the reasons why I think Faith wins at redemption arcs in the Jossverse is that what she did is never excused or forgotten, she eventually accepted responsibility and turned herself in (without mystical intervention causing her to do so), and she then kept (successfully) at trying to be a better person. Which is why I find it frustrating when her dark side days are then declared to have been all someone else's (preferably Buffy's) fault to begin with - that sells the redemption arc short.
I had this issue with "District 9" if I recall, where the human protagonist starts out by torching, essentially, alien babies, and my brain basically went, "I don't care WHAT lesson you learn from this point" and checked out; whereas plenty of people found the character arc in that movie compelling, it just pushed one too many buttons for me.
I get that. It didn't with me, but I totally get it. Incidentally, I know someone who had that reaction to Caprica Six in Battlestar Galactica (specifically for the death of the baby in the pilot, not the planet wide deaths), whereas the way Six behaved with that baby (she didn't come across as malicious or doing it for sadistic reasons at all) way back then was the first flicker of complexity to me. But my friend, a mother herself, saw a baby with a snapped neck and saw red (err, not because of Caprica Six' costume).
But to go back to the question of redemption: I think it also shows different meanings of the term. Often in these discussions I wonder whether redemption to fellow fans means either the characters in question being textually forgiven and embraced by one of the hero characters or even told that what they did wasn't really that bad, neither of which is actually what redemption means to me. This is also why I get confused when people talk about Loki being partially redeemed in Thor II. Err, no. He certainly was fleshed out as a character, it was the first time I could believe he didn't just hate Thor but also loved him, and that he did love Frigga... but does any of this have to do anything with his death score so far, or does it even include the acknowledgment anyone outside of his family deserves to live? Nope. And thus I would say what Loki became was a somewhat (to me) more interesting character - not a redeemed one.