Unnecessary Redemption Arcs and the Rise of Character Laundering

I can happily say that this video is sponsored by Bing nebula when does a villain deserve a Redemption arc when do we deserve Redemption does aula deserve Redemption tell me your thoughts down below but the latest Avatar comic aula in the spirit Temple says maybe well deserve is a funny word isn't it a person might do something wrong and face up to it and deserve Redemption they might earn forgiveness but hear me out hottest take ever I know this is going to hurt but car are not people they are tools they are narrative representations of people we can use them to say other things characters can exist as foils to others as symbolic representations of other ideas their failures as morality Tales their actions and Fates as important pieces of a Greatest Story being told that can be the point they serve unlike us they don't exist in isolation free of an overarching narrative following the bits and Bobs of free will they are not individuals but pieces of a tapestry carefully woven together by the author to explore something else aula story isn't just about a 14-year-old girl defeated by her brother Zuko for the throne that's the plot aula is Zuko's character foil where she is ruthless and practical Zuko is empathetic and emotional where aula is a prodigy Zuko has to work painstakingly hard to achieve a fraction of her power and her flaws highlight Zuko's new strengths he discovers throughout the series and vice versa a zula's fall is a reflection of how different parenting Styles can affect a child ozai's affection was something exchanged for being useful something aula will go on to do to her friends whereas io's affection came as something freely given with patience for imperfection and failure traits which Zuko adopts and crucially where azula's ultimate fall comes from her cruelty and pride and rejection of friends and allies it is Zuko's humility and kindness and friendship that ultimately wins the day him sacrificing his life for qara qara bringing aula down and then her healing him aoua ending up alone imprisoned isn't something happening to a real person it's a deliberate narrative Choice by the author to say something about how people like this isolate themselves and end up alone and aula in the spirit Temple the comic does seem to acknowledge that as kind of a meta decision basically in the comic aoua is on the run after the series she's kind of well let's be honest let's just call it what it is she's a terrorist full arm political assassination bombing the consulate terrorist but she bumps into a spirit here who takes on the varying forms of those she has wronged especially zugo Ty and may the spirit prompts her to reflect on her past and her actions specifically speaking to how she quote surrounds herself with people she can control and manipulate because she can't stand the idea of being alone that importantly isula constantly paints others around her as nothing as worthless without her that they only have value in her Shadow she tells Tye in the comic that she was a quote nobody circus freak before aula found her and made her into something bit that she gave her and may a chance to quote do something important but that something important is purely centered around her around Zula that they had the air of Fire Nation royalty that they could be part of her pursuit of the throne and now that they're not part of that they are less than nothing they're worthless this is a typical abusive or bullying tactic that you bring down others around you and make them feel dependent on you so that your approval is the ultimate validation I'm hesitant to call it abusive because she's a 14-year-old kid this is a tactic she definitely would have gotten from oai who is abusive he's a fully mature adult bullying can lead into abusive tactics but there's an issue of scale and maturity and age there because as with oai his children were only valuable to him in so far as they pursued his goals in a sense they only existed with any real value because they could be part of his legacy as the leader of the Fire Nation when he goes on in the finale to go and destroy the Earth Kingdom he tells aula to stay behind she wants to be with him but he doesn't want her there because he wants the glory for himself she is not useful to bring along the comic basically has aula going back and forth with the spirit for a long while unpacking her past unpacking her trauma and what she needs and wants till she attacks it says you can't make me learn things and runs away into the forest there's also this subplot where she has a sort of Robin Hood group of terrorists with her but after she abandons one of them to be captured they abandon her and she insists well I never wanted you anyway you were never worthy of me so the story explores the opportunity for Redemption but she resoundingly rejects it which if they're going to do a Redemption it needs to be slow she does need to reject it asula's ultimate collapse alone crying breathing wild Flames into the air is a stunning visual reflection of all of these ideas the writers purposefully incorporated into the series not only a condemnation of zula's actions throughout the series but an elevation of what Zuko has learned across it in this way the last egik Kai isn't just Zuko and Katara proving they are more powerful but an expression of the ideas underpinning their ARs and the themes of the series and sometimes those are more important than how we might realistically treat a kid like a Zula because the story works when you leave it like that a character does not necessarily need a Redemption AR just because they're mildly sympathetic and a character might deserve a second chance but the story does not necessarily need to explore that we like Redemption arcs because they are some of the most dramatic arcs that a character can go through you're completely reorienting their values from one thing to another it's also an Underdog Story right someone trying to be better with in the world and often their own instincts their Social Circles are against them it can work well for enemies to lovers or at least enemies to friends and there's a real catharus in that if an evil character is sympathetic or likable or God forbid hot people kind of want them to be B we want to see them healthy and good but let's be honest I think we also want anti-heroes or antagonists to be redeemed because we often like them in a weird way they're the bad boy more than the the heroes often perhaps boring and Redemption feels kind of of like validation of that desire of that feeling that they are the interesting hero anyway and seeing good in others and wanting to facilitate that is a kind of virtue in a way right there's also been this rejection over the last decade and a half or so of like purely evil villains people want complex characters complex villains and what's more complex what's more extreme than redemption or there's the sense that characters can't be fully complex unless we fully explore their capacity for good and if you take that to its logical end it often ends up in a kind of redemption or at least middling heroism even when it's not necessary or true or because it's somehow bad to empathize with someone who is just too far gone even if they have somewhat sympathetic traits like some people might say about aula but all too often Redemption ARS feel like the writers don't really know what to do with a villain once they're defeated or they've reached the end of their story they can end up as these unneeded sequels muddying the point that their character originally served in the story or just dragging out the plot unnecessarily and Redemption ARS which start like this are just not great I mean look at kylo Ren and Kua you might remember Kua from her famous heads like giant Evangelion space make a death star powered by Spirit [Music] juice or Earth Kingdom fascism yeah well in the comics they're kind of giving Kua a bit of a Redemption Arc but they're doing it by one minimizing her responsibility for the bad stuff that happened they make it so that the lower level officers would doing things without her knowledge or approval that she would never have allowed to have happened to they're trying to paint her or her axe in as sympathetical light as possible overemphasizing a traumatic backstory that we never really got before and three she's immediately contrasted against someone who is supposedly much worse than her and that she basically helps take out this often happens when a character is so bad that they can't really redeem themselves on their own when I talk about Redemption AR sometimes muddying the point a character originally served in the story this is kind of what I mean what does ku's story say about a charismatic leader who draws people together and for whose ends always justify the means when they're not necessarily aware of either the means or the ends anymore these stories often feel less like Redemption and much more like what I'm going to call character laundering where you're sort of washing over the story again and changing what it means in a weird way especially when the character no longer quite acts the way that they used to they're suddenly exhibiting more empathy or remorse than they ever did before and it feels to me like the writers want kavira to be likable because she is likable in like a weird way that's kind of the point of her she's quite compelling but that's only okay if she's good or they start to turn bad characters doing bad things for bad reasons into kind of okay characters doing bad things for maybe okay sometimes good reasons the thing is sometimes having a character's life destroyed and that being the end of it is a more meaningful exploration of their character and their flaws than giving them a Redemption Arc ever could be and that's okay the permanence the finality that being the last beat your story ends on for that character can be a really powerful message the way you hit your readers as hard as possible K is one of those H probably doesn't deserve it and the story definitely doesn't need a Redemption ARS like it would have been fine if K was just someone that Kora brought down Zahir on the other hand right he's got a lot more interesting a story after he's defeated he's imprisoned but he becomes this sort of weird Mentor character for Kora that she has to face up to and yet he's also completely free right because he's enlightened he can travel to the spirit world at will he doesn't need a Redemption Arc and he remains interesting the story not only found a more interesting place for him to go but I think that there's still a lot of room for like oh this is a complex character who has some good in him in a Way isula ending up alone and that basically being the final notice story ends on is a really powerful striking image something that will resonate with a lot of people and that gives room for us to imagine what happens after that people often justify Redemption ANS by saying it's realistic that someone would get a second chance and have the ability to change uh and that's a good message to send right that anyone can change no matter how far you're gone and some stories will write characters whose entire purpose is exploring that concept and that's why the Redemption Arc is there and it works or in the case of aoua that it's wrong to leave her story in a place where a kid is left broken and alone and not explored that someone like her could change and I do think there's a space for those kind of stories sometimes realism really does matter with how you depict certain issues and problems but it's also important to remember that fiction often deals with extreme versions of reality it plays with exaggerated dimensions for a point and that's a strength of what it can do a character being imprisoned forever as their fate in a fantasy novel is not all that different to saying and they lived happily ever after it's done to make the story satisfying to make it hit harder not because it's saying people like this could never change in the real world we empathize with people who do horrific things that we never would even if in the real world we would not normally give a crap about the genocidal addictor who had a change of heart at the last moment he's Darth Vader or we fall for the obsessive overprotective lover in a romance story even if we know that would be unhealthy in real life we allow ourselves to feel things we might not normally but healthily engaging with Fiction with all of these stories means knowing where fantasy and reality have to diverge Zuko ining up as fire lord is Vindication for him and a symbolic validation of his growth not an endorsement of monarchy as a political system with all of issues we explore real feelings and real things in often more extreme scenarios and in that light maybe it's okay if azula's story ends where it does in the series that we would separate how we would treat a real 14-year-old girl from a villain in a series and that's why any Redemption Arc any further story isn't needed after all a character needs or deserves a Redemption arc when it becomes the most meaningful way to explore their character and place in the story but a character deserving Redemption usually comes before the story really needing it and I I don't think aul's done anything to deserve it yet they've got to exhibit some willingness and action to change and the comic does acknowledge that that isula hasn't I think there's also this kind of underlying assumption some people have that like Redemption arcs are the best kind of arcs I mean they're they're dramatic and when they're done well they're really compelling and I think this is kind of what happened with kylo Ren in Rise of Skywalker I mean something went wrong with that film a lot of things went wrong with that film but one of the things was that suddenly he's on this Redemption Arc for some reason after clearly being positioned to be more like the big bad in The Last Jedi and they're just basically retconning that whatever it's part of why they brought back Palpatine it feels so that someone else could be the bad guy it becomes a kind of character laundering again rise of Skywalker like Kua repositions him against someone worse minimizes kylo's responsibility and just kind of ignores the past story but the real crime is that it's just much less interesting than having him go full-on villain which Adam Driver has said was the original plan I haven't seen it but I've also heard that from The Walking Dead suffers from a lot of character laundering issues as well isa's redemption in the comics is not nearly as messy as Kua or kylo Ren even if the story doesn't need this it doesn't need her Redemption I don't think her healing and changing is an unnatural extension of the story one of the head writers Aaron aaz even spoke about how if there ever was a fourth season he thought it would be about aula and her changing and the last ay Kai is also a sad reminder that she is a kid like Zuko she's just as damaged as him this is not a glorious moment of victory of taking down someone who's purely evil it's two siblings pitted against each other by a cruel parent and maybe isula deserves exploring that a little bit too she needs her iro and isula in the spirit Temple kind of does this a bit she admits that she became what oai wanted after Ursa left because that was the only way to protect herself and she became a weapon if this is a sad ending if how parents can screw up their kids as part of the narrative purpose it serves then this kind of follows on from that in ways that you know kylo and Kua don't from their narrative purposes unlike Kua or kylo Ren the comics also AR interested in glamorizing or minimizing auda's responsibility or agency here there's not really that character laundering the comic pretty honestly says hey you rejected every offer of redemption and forgiveness that's on you you being alone that's on you all right because good healing or Redemption stories don't have to bend over backwards and warp things to make the Redemption more palatable for us you certainly can't deserve Redemption till you work for it and the same sense we saw with Zuko I think it's fine to reflect on how she ended up the way she did that's always the first step I asked you guys whether she deserved or needed a Redemption Arc and most of you said no but I think a healing Arc is on the cards aulu in the SP Temple is not the worst Avatar comic released since the show that would be the search it's an interesting look into her mind Tye lays out how it's unhealthy for her to be so obsessed with someone else's relationships which she is and it goes out of its way to be like hey I want to help you but you are stuck in this pathological way of looking at yourself and others I will say it's very on the nose it lays out very explicitly a lot of stuff which was mostly left a subtext in the series where I think I preferred it for the most part if I was doing this I would probably be fine with ending her story where it was and having a footnote later on in a chora book or something saying that eventually isula and Zuko sort of bonded again and she found a kind of healing but unlike What was seen with Kua and kylo ren I don't think exploring aula this way rively makes the point she served in the original story worse that are like destroys that undermines it in fact there's even a nice kind of symmetry to zugo helping her after iro helped him and healing from family trauma in the same way that exploring how Ang is reestablishing the air nation is a natural extension of the story I think this is mostly fine even if I wouldn't have written it this way myself I think it is a little too on the nose and a little too fast Redemption arcs are themselves tools tools authors use to explore bigger ideas but that also means that they're not always going to fit Neil giman uses a lot of healing arcs in his story where people process things from their past in new ways jingoo often has the opposite of redemption arcs characters on these spiraling obsessive negative arcs full of dissonance for a point and I want to point you to two different videos by my friend bji you probably know him bit as the taale fandry where he talks about jingoo as a dissonance artist and Neil Gaiman as a truth artist capturing the different ways these two use their different tools to communicate their ideas or if that doesn't interest you if you prefer crazy real life stories then Neo has put out a video on the bizarre escape two families attempted from East Germany to the West in I kid you not a hot air balloon it's an absolutely remarkable story in every way it's an incredible little documentary and you can watch all of these videos gingo Neil gaming the balloon so many more over on nebula but even more than those even better and I'm adding this in later because it's super amazing important I can't believe I didn't talk about it when I was recording go listen to the sojourn over on nebula seriously it is a Sci-Fi audio Series in the vein of like the expanse if you love that you will love this it's amazing I love it it's the sort of story that I like to talk about whether I'm being sponsored or okay this is me telling you about a story I genuinely unabashedly love nebula is expanding into storytelling which is a great direction for them to go this is the sort of thing that I want to see more of everywhere here's the pitch an expedition is sent out to the tanist cluster where they come across more than they bargained new enemies New Opportunities new Mysteries it's amazingly voice acted incredible production great writing exciting fast-paced brilliant World building all the sort of stuff that I know you if you're watching this channel love I want to share this with you and the entire series is available on nebula right now nothing hold back every single episode right if you 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Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 192,455

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, azula, comic, anime, avatar, tla, tlab, last airbender, zuko, aang, katara, iroh, bending, firebending, lightning, kuvira, korra, airbender, firelord

Id: QbnzXPDCJ3w

Length: 20min 43sec (1243 seconds)

Published: Sat May 18 2024