Sometimes country girls need to come up with alternate plans
do awesome movement and tricks and stunt on all creatures
C.A.I.N.E.
drew my friends idea with kinger calling caine by his full name
hot take here but the way people talk about “redemption arcs” and how they require that the sinner repent, debase himself, and then atone for his sins in order to be accepted back into the warmth of readers’ love, but there are some unforgivable sins for which no atonement is enough
is INCREDIBLY culturally christian
Can you give some ideas of what a redemption arc rooted in a non-Christian framework might look like?
[I wrote a whole-ass essay with citations here I’m sorry]
[Also, if anyone has better/other examples (or any other input!) I very much welcome discussion and contribution. I’m working from an extremely limited point of view myself, here, and I’m very aware of that.]
There are potentially infinite ways to write a narrative arc that takes a character from antagonist to protagonist, just as there are potentially infinite ways a religion or culture can align its values. And I am way too long-winded to be allowed to just keep talking indefinitely. So I’m going to limit myself to two topics:
Option 1: get rid of “sin is in the heart, not in the deed”
“No matter how clean we are on the outside, if the inside, the nature, the heart, remains unchanged… we will return to what we came from and once more be filthy both inside and out.” - 2 Peter 2:20-22
“I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” - Matthew 5:27-30
This is a general Christian concept: an evil thought is as bad, and as tainting, as an evil action. A Christian-based antagonist-to-protagonist arc, then, will typically focus far less on good actions than on good thoughts. But this isn’t true for all cultures - and is frankly a minority view!
Let’s look at, hmm… Loki. A huge portion of myths with Loki in them follow a very specific arc: Loki does something dodgy; it causes problems; Loki fixes the problems, not only saving the day but leaving everyone far better off than they were at the beginning of the story. Did Loki have a change of heart? Nope! They’ll be the exact same trickster bastard in the next myth. But at the beginning, they were the one causing problems (antagonist/villain). And at the end, they were the one actively improving things and saving the day (hero).
Loki’s a particularly useful example, because a) this is a very standard arc for a trickster deity, which exists in darn near every polytheistic religion and b) we can specifically see what happens when Christians interact with this sort of narrative. They recast Loki - who normally ends up helping people, and in some myths is just straight-up benevolent beginning to end - as their “Satan” equivalent.
For a pop culture example of “was doing bad deeds, now doing good deeds” as an antagonist-to-protagonist arc, I suggest Spike, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. [We’re going to ignore the end of season 6 and all of season 7, because things went off the rails there.] Spike’s arc was: super evil villain; villain who helps the heroes a couple times for selfish reasons; villain? who is physically prevented from villainous actions; villain?? who starts doing heroic actions purely as an outlet for violence; villain??? who protects specific innocents because he cares about them as individuals; villain???? who does heroic things because he doesn’t want people he loves to hate him/ be disappointed; hero who’s willing to sacrifice his own life to save others because, darn it, he’s in the habit now.
He didn’t have a ‘come-to-jesus moment’ where he regretted the centuries of torture and murder and then mope about in self-flagellation and do metaphorical Hail-Marys to pay for his crimes. He did go from the primary villain of the series at his introduction, to a primary hero by the end, over a period of several years with intricate and engaging character development all the way through.
Option 2: Rehabilitation, not Retribution
“Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation.” - 2 Corinthians 7:10
“When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ Peter replied, ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.’ ” - Acts 2:37-38
“If we don’t feel some sort of immediate guilt, then our hearts are not sensitive to what God desires from us. If we just move on with no second thought then it is likely that we are seeing grace as a license to sin.” - pursuegod.org
“I will speak of that second region, where the human spirit is purged, and becomes fit to climb to Heaven.” - Dante’s Purgatorio, Canto I
“The biblical approach of equivalence (lex talionis) and nineteenth-century British theories of intolerable wrongs, deterrence, and retribution (vergeltung) form the dominant theories of punishment in Canadian society. They try to ensure that certain individuals physically suffer for their human weaknesses, conduct, and mistakes… Most Aboriginal peoples have never understood the exotic passion of Eurocentric society for labeling people as criminals and then making them suffer.” - Justice As Healing: Indigenous Ways, which looks like a spectacular book
The character suffering is a primary feature of the “redemption arc” as characterized in my original post. They should be absolutely miserable from the inside out - “cut to the heart;” full of “godly sorrow”. And then they should suffer from the outside in, as payment for their crimes.
Normally, of course, a villain should end the story “in hell”. (Dead, imprisoned, fate-worse-than-death - somehow punished.) So in order for that to not happen, our aspiring ex-villain must go instead through Purgatory. I’ll use the visual from Dante: his Purgatory is an near-infinitely-tall mountain up which a sinner must climb. The sinner’s labor and suffering as he climbs cleanse his soul, leaving him worthy to enter heaven.
Likewise, in the Christian-based “redemption arc”, the ex-villain needs to not only want to do good things now, and not only regret having done bad things in the past, but to pay for having done bad things in the past. The priority is not so much that there are good people doing good things; it is that people who have done bad things get punished. (This is of course manifested in many ways IRL. For example, the most statistically-proven-effective way to reduce the number of drug-related offenses isn’t to put addicts in prison, it’s to put them in rehab; but that’s not a punishment. The most statistically-proven-effective way to reduce the number of abortions isn’t outlawing abortion, it’s comprehensive sex ed; but that doesn’t punish the sin of promiscuity.)
The point being, if you take out the need for Godly Sorrow followed by Purgatory in order to achieve Salvation from your narrative: you open the option for narrative arcs where the focus isn’t on people being punished for the bad they did before, but the good they do now.
Let’s say we bring back the “change of heart” that we largely dropped in the previous option. Now we have space for an arc that is about why they choose to change. What causes them to realize what they did before was wrong? What causes them to want to do something different? And then what keeps them compassionate, when not caring hurts so much less? What keeps them from lashing out again, when lashing out relieves their anger and hurt?
Or - what if we made our arc about healing? Remember that bit about putting addicts in rehab - focusing not on punishing them, but on helping them recover from the pain and illness that caused them to do illegal things? What if we do that? Fictional villainy tends to come from pain; so what if, instead of causing them more pain, we help them heal from it?
The majority of indigenous cultures take this approach IRL: justice is focused around healing. The goal is to heal both the person who acted out of pain or foolishness or simple human frailty, and the society or victim which that person has harmed.
Honestly, in terms of accessible Western media? A lot of the best examples of this are in fanfic. In terms of published media, though - with less of a focus on healing, superhero media do get a lot of “villain changes heart and becomes hero, focus is that they are now doing good things and another person doing good things is good, not that they should be hurt for having been bad” storylines. It’s most common with team-based stories. The X-Men, for instance, swap sides pretty regularly, but the important thing when they’re saving the world is that they’re saving the world now. Not what role they played in last year’s crossover event.
For a movie example, though not a great one, see Magneto at the end of X-Men Apocalypse. He realizes that continuing to do evil will result in the deaths of the only two people he still loves; has a change of heart; assists in saving the world; and then is brought home to help rebuild. No retribution necessary. His former partner/recent enemy is mostly just really delighted that Erik’s back, and that he’s happier now. In Dark Phoenix, we learn Magneto’s spent the intervening time building a safe haven for persecuted mutants, complete with recycled building materials and community gardens.
In Conclusion
It may sound like what I’m doing here is just a lot of “take that out”. If you just take out half the elements of a “redemption arc”, doesn’t that automatically make it less complex and interesting and, y’know, good?
But what I’m saying is not to take out elements. It’s to ponder the necessity of requirements. Give yourself - and others - more room for narrative freedom. If you don’t have to fit the extremely restrictive godly sorrow-repentance-purgatory-salvation formula, imagine what other aspects of the character and the narrative you can get a chance to explore!
Also known as the squeeze zone
The brothers, Second and chosen