#revenge stories

[lyledebeast]

Here is my Vengeance Criteria Based Review of Sweetwater (2013). Ok, before I get into these criteria, it has to be said that this is basically the plot of The Patriot stripped of all the fat and it is approximately 50% of the total run-time (Are you listening, Roland Emmerich?)

The avenger cannot be culpable in the grievance being avenged. Nope, she absolutely is not.

The vengeance has to solve an ongoing problem. Prophet Josiah is the cause of innumerable ongoing problems.

Vengeance should be proportional to the grievance. This one is a little trickier because Sarah kills a lot of men. There are varying degrees of guilt among them, and they are all meted out the same punishment. Also, she doesn't actually kill Josiah. Apparently, he and Ed Harris take each other out (which is how The Patriot should have ended, but I digress). She is obviously disappointed by this. I share her disappointment. Josiah is arguably the worst Jason Isaacs villain ideologically, and he deserved a worse fate than being shot in the head posthumously.

One thing I did like and think worth of note, because I have seen other revenge stories like this, is that Sarah burns her own house down and goes to say goodbye to her mother before carrying out her plans. She does not expect to survive this quest for vengeance. Which is, you know, just reasonable. If you are trying to take out a dozen armed men, there is a very good chance that you aren't making it out alive! But she doesn't care; she can't see a life for herself that doesn't include the man she obviously loved and the baby she was (or thought she was) carrying. Revenge born of abject despair is always easier to sympathize with than revenge for personal closure or, God forbid. so everything can go back the way it was before the act the avengee committed.

[mzannthropy]

Taking a storyline you hated and writing it your way is also an act of revenge. It doesn't necessarily have to be fanfic, you can do it as an original fiction, as long as you make it your own enough to avoid plagiarism. (Unless it's a public domain work, ofc.)

[cleopatrachampagne]

“take a good look at my face. look at my eyes. look at my mouth. do i look like somebody…you murdered?” — o-ren ishii, kill bill vol. one (2003, dir. quentin tarantino)

[newscope]

Is Oshi no Ko any good?

Before reading "Oshi no Ko" written by Aka Akasaka and illustrated by Mengo Yokoyari I truly thought it was over-hyped. However, after reading around 10 chapters I realized that I was wrong.

I caught up to the manga in a day and I have to admit that not many newer manga I've read can match the very unique story that's being told in Oshi no Ko. Albeit, I am a fan of revenge stories and if i were judging a book by it's cover, I would've never believed that this story has so many dark elements or that it is basically a revenge story.

Nonetheless, I can approve most of the hype. This story is so unique and isn't completely filled with tropes. Give it a read someday.

At the time of this writing the manga is on chapter 125.

[ragsweas]

As a society, we do not talk enough about reincarnation.

I was raised a Hindu, so from an early age I understood that I had a previous life and will have a life after this. As a child I had dreams I could not explain. I joked and played with this idea well into my teens, because it was so cool.

When my Grandfather and Aunt died, I was sure they were going to be born somewhere else and would be fine.

My 10th grade English teacher said she has never bene to a nearby major city because she too has had dreams as a child and a student of hers saw someone looking remarkably like her somewhere there and she is afraid to confront this.

As a writer and a reader, the ideas around reincarnation are so amazing. One of the main epics I grew up hearing, the Mahabharata has multiple reincrantaion plots, filled with punishment and revenge.

While different strands of philosophy and existentialism question everything, there is something so beaitiful about the idea of reincarnation. The idea that there won't be a you, but there would be a party of something. That you have been arpund forever, and will be forever and its okay.

We do not have enough stories and songs about reincarantion and honestly, we need it.

Guys, Reincarantion!!!!

[hamliet]

Ohmygod about The Glory? I couldn't even finish it because I felt like it was so missing the point. My favourite story ever is Wuthering Heights (Song Hye Kyo in her black suit approaching the bully's daughter was very much reminding me of Heathcliff and Hareton) so it's not that I don't like revenge stories or that I'm not comfortable with portrayal of violence but like it has to be for a reason? In the glory it felt like the violence was just there for the sake of being there and like for shock value. The story didn't seem to be getting deeper and just like you said, it felt like irresponsible storytelling. The question seemed to be how much is too much while I thought it should be is this actually okay? Like you know, The Count Of Monte Cristo, where the point is, what happened to you was wrong but it's not your job to play God and deliver justice. I absolutely love revenge stories but I also think they're very tricky because if not handled properly, they might end up sending a wrong and very dangerous message.

I wasn't aware that the creator themselves turned out to be a bully so now it makes sense to me. I didn't express my views openly because I thought I didn't have the right because I haven't experienced bullying myself and I know it's based on some true events so I didn't want to invalidate their sufferings. So I thought I'd just keep my mouth shut.

I'm not alone! I'm not alone! Lol.

Oh yeah, I think you're right about the trickiness of handling them. Count of Monte Cristo and Wuthering Heights are fabulous. I also think The Princess Bride has a good one because it doesn't frame it as something super deep; it's just a fun movie that wants to entertain.

It doesn't have to be deep! Fun revenge stories are fine the same way as fun wild romance stories or punch em up action films can be. Entertainment alone is a good enough reason to tell a story; just... it's hard with some premises, particularly those that attempt to be "issues" stories, to do both at the same time and this wasn't a success.

Yeah, he was. Note I don't think he should have his life destroyed or anything, but hypocrisy isn't cool. Self-awareness is good.

[transgavin]

Death of a Good Man

[gobbogoo]

The Last of Us Part 2 and Shadow of Mordor: Two Parallel Takes on The Revenge Fantasy

Shadow of Mordor is not a perfect game, but is absolutely NAILS the feeling of a dark revenge-fuelled power fantasy. It expertly introduces you to the protagonist's loss/hatred through a brief-but-powerful opening, sets up antagonists you want to despise, then sets you loose to enact delightfully satisfying carnage against them.

Your experience of chopping up baddies is actively enhanced by that context of righteous wrath reflected in the player character's over-the-top methods of dispatching foes. It also maintains a cast of memorable-yet-disposable enemies to direct your violence towards with its patented Nemesis System, which adds satisfying, personal context to combat by generating rivals for the player to build an antagonistic relationship with. While narratively the game's revenge theme struggles due to mediocre writing/plot, the gameplay never fails to make you feel for all the world like some dark angel of vengeance. It accomplishes all this while maintaining a degree of grittiness that enhances the weightiness of the revenge theme. You fight in the mud and rain, bidding tragedy twist you into something monstrous and frightening to be unleashed on the deserving.

Compare all this to The Last of Us Part 2, and you'll see it follows similar steps to start, seemingly with intention to set itself up as the ultimate gritty revenge fantasy:

Instead of villains you love to hate, it opens by offering you an antagonist you genuinely despise with all your heart. Instead of simply expressing the weight of the protagonist's loss with an opening scene, the game takes drastic measures to ensure the player actively feels the loss themselves. Its confrontations are grounded in their violence compared to SoM's more impersonal and over-the-top slaughterfests, enhancing that impact of the player's righteous-but-brutal deeds. Its gameplay is both more challenging and more engaging, forcing the player to earn the vengeance they seek through hate-fuelled struggle, all while growing further resentful of the huge and faceless evil they're pitched against.

For a lot of players, that was enough. While I'd argue such moral simplicity goes against what The Last of Us is all about, there were many who played the first game without engaging in its grey shades, ignoring them to experience a simple Protective Dad power fantasy.

But in TLoU2, the game FORCES you to engage with these grey shades by halfway through placing you in the shoes of the people you've been taking "vengeance" upon. By removing them from the antagonistic context they've only been presented in so far, it slams the player in the face with the ugly reality of the revenge fantasy, re-contextualizes their own willful actions, and leaves them questioning their own perspective and judgments. This is a frankly brilliant way to deliver the game's core messages and themes; it communicates the folly of violence and revenge better than any other piece of media I've ever encountered... BUT it comes with a huge downside: It puts the player's motives at odds with the character(s) they're controlling.

You go from personally driving the game's narrative to its reluctant chauffeur, and while the car remains satisfying to drive, you're given no choice but to keep heading towards a distressing destination.

The decision to do this is brilliant from the standpoint of games as art, but it's also terrible from the standpoint of games as entertainment. While I would argue what it accomplished was something no other AAA game had attempted, thus greatly elevating the works' cultural value as a lasting work instead of a disposable distraction, I will admit it runs counter to consumer expectation and in-the-moment enjoyment.

Video games are still too young to have escaped their reputation as a hobby to unwind as opposed to art-form to enrich (especially in the AAA world), and therefore TLoU2 suffered criticism from those that had been seeking the prior, not the latter. Indeed, if its moment-to-moment gameplay wasn't so well-polished and engaging, the game would have been absolutely despised by general audiences. It is only because entertainment can still be gleaned from the fundamentally satisfying gameplay that the player carries on without growing too frustrated or disheartened by being forced to act in ways they disapprove of without any choice in the matter.

Shadow of Mordor provides an excellent parallel here, because both games use methods to build a personal relationship between the player and its antagonists, yet the outcome, methods, and intent are all completely different: SoM uses personal connection to empower the game's delicious brutality by offering rivals you love to hate. Well after the gameplay has grown stale due to lack of difficulty, the player will STILL be having fun violently clashing with and brutally disposing of foes they've built personal connections with.

TLoU2 meanwhile intentionally makes these exact same acts of violence highly unsatisfying by intentionally acquainting you with (or reminding you of) your enemies' existence as more then a vessel of antagonism. This extends even to basic enemies, who all are written and programmed to behave so much like real people with real lives that, despite the game's outstanding combat, the player has to actively repress sensations of guilt and internally justify increasingly unjustifiable actions with the old (and incredibly theme-relevant) "it was them or me" fallacy.

To summarize:

Shadow or Mordor achieves its personalizations almost entirely through mechanical systems that enhance and contextualize gameplay. It uses expertly constructed game mechanics and gameplay experiences to project depth and personality onto enemies and interactions that on their own would feel shallow and limited in personality and design. Sadly this makes its actual written narrative fall flat because it both fails to account for these self-made stories, and fails to build the same sense of connection between the player and the narrative's central antagonists, leaving them instead as unestablished entities that all die anticlimactically upon first confrontation.

The Last of Us Part 2 achieves its personalizations almost entirely through written narrative that directly manipulates and subverts the player's relationship with the gameplay. It uses fantastic writing and narrative context to project meaning and importance onto enemies that on their own would quickly feel like a parade of identical and impersonal goon squads with guns fought forty times over. Sadly this makes its actual gameplay increasingly distressing to engage with, discouraging players from engaging with the most satisfying aspects of the game, and causing them to almost dread completing each objective, as they know they will likely be rewarded only with more distressing developments.

[librarianorder]

𝔸 ℙ𝕣𝕚𝕔𝕖 𝕥𝕠 ℙ𝕒𝕪

𝔸 ℙ𝕣𝕚𝕔𝕖 𝕥𝕠 ℙ𝕒𝕪

A young girl who is hellbent on revenge summons a powerful demon for the void... But is she ready for what she has to sacrifice…

Written and voiced by @simpleabsconder

WARNING - This episodes contains graphic violence and traumatic, sexual abuse.

For more cool stuff check out our website at abscondermedia.com!

Sub to our Patreon @ https://www.patreon.com/orderofthelibrary

[lyledebeast]

I say that I hate revenge stories, and yet when Lord Bullington puts a ball in his stepfather's knee at the end of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, I am delighted every single time. It's the moment I watch the previous three hours in anticipation of. So, what makes this vengeance acceptable when, for me, it so often isn't? Three things.

The avenger cannot be culpable in the grievance being avenged. Vengeance is not a substitute for reckoning with one's own responsibility. Lord Bullingdon is a child when Redmond Barry marries his mother, and he watches his exploitation of her for years while also suffering abuse at his hands (quite literally) himself.

The vengeance has to solve an ongoing problem. Harming an avengee who has not themselves harmed anyone for years, or is no longer capable of causing harm, always makes the avenger look at least a little shitty in my opinion. Barry may be a shell of his former self owing to his grief over the death of his young son, but his and his mother's exploitation of Lady Lyndon has not only continued but gotten worse. Bullingdon is seeking to free her as much as to avenge himself.

Vengeance should be proportional to the grievance. Shooting Barry in the knee is serious enough to require hospitalization--during which time Bullingdon restores order to his mother's household--but not enough to kill him. The narration tells us that Barry takes up his former profession as a gambler without his former success, which may have been his lot had he never met Lady Lyndon. Bullingdon essentially leaves him where he found him.

[mzannthropy]

Googling revenge stories and realising that, as it features on many lists, Murder on the Orient Express qualifies!

[chiquitacreates]

This song fits this book so well 😭😭

Wattpad story

Book name : Karma

Genre: Murder Mystery/ Detective Thriller/ whodunit

PoV: Karma, Omnipotent being, 3rd person.

[mysticdragon3md3]

"Why Revenge Stories Aren't About Revenge | On Writing" by Hello Future Me

[randomwritings29]

Queen

Silence. No sound penetrated the air. Not the squawking of the birds in the gloomy hazelwood forest, not the barking of the dogs in the stable, not a creak from the old, rusty furniture, not even a whisper. They all seemed to stop when she looked at him.  

Sitting in a gaudy golden frame, almost taking up the entire wall, he stared at her. Broad shoulders standing upright, a black beard covered with spots of grey, a suit with not a single wrinkle that was more expensive that a house and eyes the color of the glimmering ocean on a sunny day that mirrored her own, he looked as though he was alive.  

Engraved at the bottom in large, bold letters was: ‘HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS, KING HENRY II’, followed by the various titles that had been bestowed upon him, not by arduous work, but by lineage and the blood flowing through his veins. 

She could almost hear his complaint at her standing so disrespectfully in front of him. As though looking in someone’s eyes as they talked was disrespectful. There was little that she, or anyone really, could do that would please him. He looked for faults like a lion looking for deer. There was only one person who he could not find any faults with: himself.  

She scoffed. That man had more faults than the whole country combined. Short-tempered, stubborn, grumpy, pessimistic, the list was endless. But to himself? He was the epitome of perfection.  

Would he have been different if he had not been born as the only prince to two desperate parents? If he had not had nannies and butlers and servants telling him he was destined for greatness? If he had been forced to struggle to win the attention and appreciation of those around him? 

Perhaps. But it was not to be. He had grown up into a narcissistic tyrant who cared more if his supper had seven courses than if his people had enough bread to last through the month.  

Sighing, she closed her eyes. He had not always been this bad. She remembered him playing with her dolls so she would feel less lonely, him offering her his cheesecake because he knew she loved them, him grabbing and yanking her hair when they got into a petty squabble, him ordering her around like an older sibling would. Those memories had been buried an ocean away, in a distant land, forgotten and uncared for.  

As time passed on and leaves turned from green to yellow to orange to green, he had forgotten who she was. They all had. To him, his friends, their parents, the nobles, she was nothing. A blot of ink to be erased that had existed for no useful purpose.

They had looked at her but never seen her. Never seen the fire that burned in her eyes. If they had, maybe things would have turned out differently. Now, she was everything and they, they were nothing.  

She moved to the table where he had sat and made his preposterous demands. Once littered with papers, now all that remained was his quill. His favorite quill. She had given it to him for his 10th birthday, but he remembered it as a gift from some pretty princess from a faraway nation. The nib had drops of red falling down from it. Droplets that also scattered over the center of the table, right in front of his large, royal chair.  

Collapsing into the chair that she had never even been allowed to hover near, she glanced at the circular mirror hanging on the opposite wall. Had he been so obsessed with himself that he needed to see himself relaxing in his precious chair? She would not be surprised if he had.  

Staring at her from the mirror was a face of joy. A face that had once been pale and eyes that had once filled with sadness. The same eyes stared back at her now, as she tilted her head, except with happiness and elation. She smiled. He was gone. They were gone. There was no point in wasting precious seconds of her life on those fools. They had gotten what was coming to them. And she had too.  

Sounds of movement, of laughter, of speech reached her ear from the corridor, returning after having disappeared during his reign.  

Appearing at the door, a young man said ‘How are you feeling, your highness? Everyone in the castle is celebrating. They are asking for you. A speech and toast, I believe is to be expected.’ 

‘Is it? How nice. Keep the entertainment high tonight. You can raid that man’s private dispensary for the drinks. No need to settle for anything cheap’ she replied.  

‘Of course, your highness. This is a night of celebration. Do you need anything before I leave?’ 

Getting up, she asked ‘Do you see that painting on the wall of the former king?’ 

‘Yes, your highness’ 

‘Burn it.’ 

‘Of course, your highness. I’ll call Brutus and Carles’ 

‘Thank you, Stefan.’ 

The door shut behind him. 

She laughed. And laughed. And laughed.  

They had all ignored her. Treated her like garbage. But they had all begged like the beggars they had compared her to, when she came for them. And none more strongly than that man in that ridiculous painting. 

How things change! 

They had tried to erase her, so she erased them instead. And now, she would rule. As Queen. She would expand this empire, making it the most powerful ever to be seen.  

They would remember her name for eons to come: ATHENA.  

[shhhhimwatchingthis]

You want to know why Inigo Montoya remains such an iconic and beloved character even 35 years after the Princess Bride came out?

It's because he's one of the few characters in fiction who has a story where he has dedicated his life to revenge, his whole motivation is about getting revenge....and he gets it! and then he isn't empty or despairing! he doesn't regret it! he's totally satisfied!

because so many stories about revenge or rage are about characters "seeing the futility of their actions" or learning "their desire for revenge has only made them the monsters they hated" FUCK THAT.

Inigo Montoya kills the man who kills his father, is allowed to live in the narrative after and be happy about it and it is so satisfying. it's fantastic. it's iconic.

let more characters rage against the world, bring it down with bloodied hands, and let them be FUCKING RIGHT about it. Let them celebrate their success with sharp grins, and let them live happy, full lives where they always remain proud/fulfilled for what they've done