#I can't read fic i. which she's the unrepentant villian 10 years after canon

[seawitchkaraoke]

Your idea of who a character is is always going to be influenced by who you want or need them to be. You rarely get all of a character's motivations and reasons for doing things presented on a silver platter, unless they're the pov character (and even then you don't get everything). There's always things there for you to fill in and well, especially in the case of morally grey characters the things you fill in can be very charitable towards the character or they can be always assuming the worst possible option.

If a character gets a good redemption arc, usually enough of their reasons are explored and they properly apologize and are shown to regret their actions and genuinely change and that usually gets most of the fandom around to also seeing them in a charitable light.

When a redemption arc is pulled off badly or there isn't even one but the character is in some other way grey or can be argued to have good excuses.... That's when you split a fandom.

Snape, Kylo Ren and Azula are all examples of this. Idk about Kylo, I didn't see the last movie but neither Snape nor Azula get redemption arcs. Snape bc he dies before he could get a proper one, what passes for a redemption arc here is more a haha he was good the whole time, he loved lily anyway he's dead now so he's not gonna apologize to anyone and you're not gonna get an explanation for why he bullied kids, Azula bc the show ended before they could give her one, her main defense is that she's 14 when she does all that fucked uo shit and has the worlds worst dad for a father.

Now if you resonate with these characters (bc azula was 14 and abused and alone and snape was an abused bullied poor kid who only ever had one friend he lost bc of his own mistakes and kylo woke up to see hos own uncle stand over him with a lightsaber) you're gonna want to fill in those holes with good things - snape actually just bullied kids to keep his cover or dumbledore made him or harry is an unreliable narrator and it wasn't that bad fir example.

You're also gonna write or read fic that gives them the redemption arc they didn't get - azula gets to bond with zzko and learns how to be a person and interact with people without setting them on fire, snape apologizes about all the stuff and maybe actually makes a friend apart from lily for once and learns to be a person without constantly getting torn between two masters.

But if you don't resonate with them? If snape reminds you of thst horrible teacher you had who bullied you relentlessly or azula of your terrible toxic abusive sister or kylo of your creepy stalker ex boyfriend.... Well then seeing people like those characters, actively come up with reasons why their behaviour wasn't so bad or they didn't mean it or writing about other characters forgiving them... It's gonna feel like a blow. Like they're excusing your abusers. And you're gonna be angry which is fair.

But at the same time if you identify with these characters for whatever reason hearing people condemn them and say they don't deserve redemption is also gonna hurt! If you've made mistakes and redemption arcs give you hope bc it means maybe you can grow from your mistakes and be forgiven too, then hearing that "they're evil and unredeemable!" hurts.

The important thing is that no one is really wrong here. The version of the character you have in your head is probably evil and unforgivable. But the version the other person is thinking of, maybe has the same name and technically the same canon background but they're still completely different.

So I guess the main takeaway is don't harass people over which fictional characters they love or hate. Don't go into each other's spaces to yell about hiw great/horrible this character is. We all need different things from fiction and that's okay as long as we respect each other