#corruption arc>redemption arc

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[moosethren]

Ash's Fallout AU, made by @pirate-cashoo! I absolutely love how she turned out, thank you so much!

A bad accident combining the Cloud and radiation in the Sierra Madre made sure to seal Ash's fate as a ghoul. She's not a sniper you want to get on the bad side of.

[canisalbus]

I've been following you for years, and I love your art. Seeing you repost your older art pieces reminded me how much I loved the angry, bitter, miserable Machete art and how it resonated with me... but a part of me is also so happy to see the current art of him being happy. Cute art of him as a unicorn, or chilling in a bathtub with Vasco. Like, we're all growing and healing :')

[whump-in-the-closet]

characters who have to redeem themselves. Except “redemption” isn’t what they expected. They begged for forgiveness and now their every action is monitored. They have to let everyone know that they messed up— they can’t go anywhere without the whispers and dark stares following them.

Once proud, they now walk with head bowed and never never make eye contact. They’ve leaned that much. They have scars where everyone can see, purposefully placed there as a reminder of what happens when they mess up. It doesn’t matter how much they swear they’ve changed, the blows come all the same. Casual now— just backhanded slaps and grabbing and quick orders to shut up—

they’ve learned their lesson. They don’t want redemption.

[bonefall]

Feel free to ignore you've probably got a lot going on right now, but considering you know a lot about DOTC and Clear sky, I had a question...

We know that he's a terrible, misogynistic, woman beating and war mongering lunatic who was excused of all his actions because his equally misogynistic brother said " But-But he's nice! Deep down! This isn't the real him! "

But! In a world where the Hunters could write such a character, what do you think Clear Sky would look like as an actual sympathetic villain?

Idk if that makes sense, but what I've thought of doing is taking purely cannon Clear Sky and attempting to change him enough that he's still an antagonist, but not too far where only Reddit defends him.

I don't think he works as a sympathetic villain, on any level, ever. I think you're making a huge mistake to even try, and I have never seen an AU where it was done well nor am I interested in entertaining the thought.

Characters. Are. Tools. They exist to tell a story. The story that people tell me, by obsessing over some alternate universe where he was "ACTUALLY sympathetic and had a REAL redemption arc," is that they're not fucking interested in his dozens of victims. Nor do they actually care about the abusive impact he had on the minds and feelings of his family. They're JUST interested in Clear Sky himself.

Just like the Erins. Everything that happens in DOTC revolves around him. Everything. All his wives die so he can be sad about it. His brother defends all of his actions and BEGS you to sympathize with his pain so he can be 'redeemable.' One Eye comes out of nowhere so that there can be an example of "real" evil to contrast Clear Sky so he's less bad in hindsight.

The first three books of DOTC are bad, but the last three are fucking insufferable because SUDDENLY all that Gray Wing apologia pays off, and they take their main villain and throw him out a window. You CAN'T have "redeemable" Clear Sky and the plot of DOTC without dragging in someone else to drive the conflict, to BE the bigger threat to "unite" against. Slash and One Eye have to be conjured up out of thin air so Clear Sky can WHINE about how people only suck his toes instead of deepthroat them after he killed all their friends.

And yet, in spite of this absolute failure of an attempt, we continue to see this bullshit "redemption" be a mistake because Clear Sky is a fantastic villain, with major antagonist roles in nearly EVERY bit of follow-up material for DOTC that came after.

He's the most consistent monster in all of Warriors.

He's a fragile, egotistical, self-absorbed megalomaniac who ALWAYS sees himself as the victim, REFUSING to self-reflect and blaming everything else for all of his terrible choices. He will USE your love of him against you like it's a chain through your nose, step out of line and he will yank you into place with guilt trips, manipulation, public shaming, and violence.

He's a child abuser. He's a tyrant. He abandons the sick and disabled as soon as they're of no use to him, with grand speeches about "illness" and "weakness." He's a murderer who stands above the shredded corpse of his victim and bellows, "I'M NOT GREEDY! I'M JUST STRONG!"

And you'd write a "good" redemption arc for this, why?

Why are people so chronically unable to accept that there are LOTS of people like him, and you can't save your abuser? Why don't you ask yourselves why you're not interested in exploring Thunder, or Petal, or Gray Wing, and how his toxic influence impacts them? Why does the sympathy fall on Clear Sky? What about the DOZENS of victims who are dead by Book 3, and how THEY could have been saved?

Why ruin a perfectly good villain?

What's behind this trend where a billion people say to me, "Yes Clear Sky is a walking cavalcade of fucked up abuse apologia, and an incredibly realistic depiction of an abuser, but how would you change this while keeping it all the same?"

I wouldn't. You can't. It wouldn't be the same story, or it wouldn't be the same character. Never seen it done well, and I have seen it a lot. So I don't entertain this deeply frustrating "Well What If Clear Sky But Nice" impulse.

[jackdaw-and-hattrick]

Danny gets bullied into joining the cheer squad sometime during junior year after Star sees him somehow do a backflip out of his locker.

He discovers he legitimately enjoys it and that the acrobatic/gymnastic practice helps with fights. Meanwhile the rest of the squad basically has a social reconning because Weirdo #1 is actually very cool and is practically responsible for them making country-wide finals.

[chloefraazers]

don’t know why i did this to myself but i did rewatch game of thrones and still find it hard to believe that these two showrunners had the series of the decade in the palms of their hands — professional writers!!! — and fumbled the bag so hard by deliberately missing and ignoring and misrepresenting themes and character arcs altogether in favour of “shock value.”

[miniagula]

they make me ILL and SICK IN THE HEAD

[americankimchi]

some days i think to myself about the wasted potential that was essek criticalrole and feel a headache form behind my eyes.

[urproblematicfav-arsonk]

Me: my fav hazbin character is the one who drugs people into a fabricated "happiness" to better manipulate them into doing what they want and also openly sexually assaults people

Them: oh so u mean valentino-

Me:

[incorrectsmashbrosquotes]

You know what slaps? Every fucking time?

When the villain becomes the hero and the hero becomes the villain.

And not in that bullshit “oh, the good guys were really the bad guys the whole time uwu”. I mean when a real villain, a dark and cruel monster genuinely sees the error of their ways and strives to be better in tandem with a real and true hero sliding down the path of hate and evil and then, one day, they look at each other and realize they’ve swapped places.

Like, it’s the symmetry. The monster becoming human and the human becoming a monster. The villain starting to see clearly, understanding that even if there’s no forgiveness for them they have to rise above what they were and try to be better. Meanwhile the hero deludes themself further and further, isolating and growing bitter with every step until they finally snap and become the very thing they fought against.

It doesn’t get any better than that.

[the-cosmos-withinus]

Shadow Puppets au - Charlatans

This is actually planned to be part of a larger sequence involving a third character who calls Belos out as not talking to the Titan, but we haven't gotten to this part in the RP yet so said character's dialogue isn't set in stone, but this exchange is

For anyone seeing this au for the first time

Philip and the Collector "Astrophel" are genuine friends in this au, and have been since Philip was eight years old

No one can see or hear Astrophel unless they have touched the Collector's tablet or the Stella-Luna Amulet that Belos wears around his neck

Astrophel is an active and equal part of Belos's scheme to deceive and destroy the isles, consulting with him and using his limited power to affect the outside world to cause natural disasters on command in order to make it look like Belos is communicating with the Titan

Philip is also actually cursed in this au, and I don't think I've mentioned this before, but his eyes glow when the curse is acting up

[romeowho]

Look, I was shocked by the big reveal, but it wasn't as shocking as the end of the episode because we'd all already been talking about how porter might be evil, but none of us suspected oisin was only flirting with adaine as a means to an end

[abitnotgoodiebag]

make him worse challenge

[eggsaladed]

My main BG3 Tav, Gavriel mega-post!!

The embodiment of "fuck it! why not!"

Nowadays he has a very uncaring take on life, usually just looking for a good time or something to distract him

He sees himself as a bad person, so he tries very hard to fit into that persona. Despite this, his first knee jerk reaction is to always be compassionate and helpful whenever he sees someone in need.

In short, he's very empathetic which he finds annoying.

Full backstory under the cut!!

--------------------------------------------------------------

Gavriel was raised believing he was an orphan. Taken in as a little child by a travelling circus, the ringmaster alongside his wife when raising him, besides shaving his whole head, made him train to be a fire performer from a very young age.

Because of Gavriel's tiefling heritage, the ringmaster burnt him during one of their very first training sessions to prove to his wife that he could withstand it, leaving him with horrifying scars on his hands and forearms that he was told to bandage and hide. Little Gavriel repressed memories of that accident.

But sometime in his teenage years those scattered memories started surfacing again. When accidentally overhearing the ringmaster arranging a way of getting rid of him, supposedly because the boy started being paranoid around the fire that he was supposed to perform with and was no use to the show, Gav decided to confront him in his private tent.

Their meeting grew sour, turning into a fight. The ringmaster lunged at him with a knife. Gavriel ended up having to defend himself, killing the ringmaster in the process.

In that skirmish, a candle sitting on a desk got knocked over and started a fire, quickly spreading through the whole camp. With said fire being so big and ferocious it looked as if noone could possibly survive it. Convinced that he had murdered innocents, the last thing he saw before running away, and eventually becoming a rouge, was his best friend and her expression of utter horror who was convinced all this destruction was deliberate.

His best friend growing up was a half Drow girl, a fellow performer. She was a dancer, but her biggest passion were fantastical stories, which she used to share with him every night. The love for stories stayed with Gavriel to adulthood.

[thunderandsage]

thoughts on azula redemption

as interesting as azula getting a redemption arc is from a speculative position, something that I always thought while watching the series is how the whole point of her character is that she… doesn’t?

the thing is this: azula and zuko are characters that, while good on their own, especially shine when placed next to each others: emotionless and emotional, the favorite and the failure, blue and red etc.

their journeys’ emotional beats often drop at the same time—we can especially see this around the boiling rock arc. zuko is working together with sokka, suki and the prisoners, strengthening his connections to other people in direct contrast to azula, who loses mai and ty lee. the former informs zuko’s redemption arc and the latter contributes to azula’s downward spiral

so at the end, when azula breaks down, it is all the more heartbreaking how she fails to escape her flaws and her trauma when we see how zuko conquered his, just as it was all the more rewarding seeing zuko’s growing empathy and compassion next to someone who never escaped ozai’s mentality. as stated before, both archetypes are good on their own, but the dialogue between them is what makes this aspect of atla so impactful and memorable

(no hate to azula-redemption supporters at all btw, just thinking about her character from a narrative standpoint)