Juho Pohjalainen's Blog: Pankarp - Posts Tagged "darth-vader"
Redemption doesn't feel so hot anymore
Used to be I could love it when a bad guy turned good. A long meaningful character arc where they realize what a terrible person they've been, and set forth to turn a new leaf. The worse they'd been before, the better it could be.
Nowadays... I don't really feel it anymore. I can no longer believe in it. Because in the internet, everybody is terrible.
Ideologies worn on their sleeves and taken to the absolute extreme: everyone burying themselves into bunkers covered in spikes, absolutely refusing to budge, yet ready to fling rocks and bombs at other, equally immoveable, bunkers. Even the nominally "good" people - the ones preaching for love and tolerance and progress, loving the tales where evil is peacefully redeemed - frothing at their mouths as they rage at other people, shouting and screaming and wishing for bodily harm... absolutely blind to the irony of it. Even the slightest disagreement can spark a row... or even if the two people actually fully agree, but one of them expresses themselves poorly. People that could otherwise be best of friends, driven at each other's throats. Everyone everywhere is always ready to pick a fight and to have a go at it, never realizing how there's nothing to be won or no one that can be convinced.
And in the off-chance someone does in fact put their past behind them and becomes a better person, someone is always ready to dig up their sordid history and get a good lynch mob going. No redemption is allowed to stand.
No one comes across as any good or pure in this: all faith in humanity, crumbling away like ancient ruins to desert winds. Bloody festering rifts forming between all peoples of mankind, out of nothing and for no reason. I've watched it grow increasingly worse for years now. It's asinine.
Clearly we need to tone down our expectations.
For this year's NaNoWriMo, I will write an Enemy Mine situation where a bunch of Good Guys and Bad Guys, usually at each other's throats, are forced to work together to survive in the face of a far greater foe. They learn to appreciate each other better by the end of it, some of them become friends, and everyone gets a character arc and grows as a person... but no one is redeemed. The bad guys are at the end of it still as bad as at the start - possibly even worse, with their character growth only making them more efficient villains.
The takeaway here will not be a great moral or ideological one, but rather simply learning to coexist. Learning to tolerate people even when you disagree with them on some heavy subjects. Learning to cooperate with them for a common cause. Learning to be polite even when you think someone's a terrible person.
Because you have to share this world with these people whether you like it or not, and nothing you say to them is likely to convince them out of their ideals, especially not if you're being a dick about it. The heroes of this story do the whole internet fight thing at the beginning, and nearly get killed for their efforts. After that they learn better.
Of course, the two or so people likely to read the story will already know this lesson, so it's rather preaching to the choir. But at least I can vent a little.
Nowadays... I don't really feel it anymore. I can no longer believe in it. Because in the internet, everybody is terrible.
Ideologies worn on their sleeves and taken to the absolute extreme: everyone burying themselves into bunkers covered in spikes, absolutely refusing to budge, yet ready to fling rocks and bombs at other, equally immoveable, bunkers. Even the nominally "good" people - the ones preaching for love and tolerance and progress, loving the tales where evil is peacefully redeemed - frothing at their mouths as they rage at other people, shouting and screaming and wishing for bodily harm... absolutely blind to the irony of it. Even the slightest disagreement can spark a row... or even if the two people actually fully agree, but one of them expresses themselves poorly. People that could otherwise be best of friends, driven at each other's throats. Everyone everywhere is always ready to pick a fight and to have a go at it, never realizing how there's nothing to be won or no one that can be convinced.
And in the off-chance someone does in fact put their past behind them and becomes a better person, someone is always ready to dig up their sordid history and get a good lynch mob going. No redemption is allowed to stand.
No one comes across as any good or pure in this: all faith in humanity, crumbling away like ancient ruins to desert winds. Bloody festering rifts forming between all peoples of mankind, out of nothing and for no reason. I've watched it grow increasingly worse for years now. It's asinine.
Clearly we need to tone down our expectations.
For this year's NaNoWriMo, I will write an Enemy Mine situation where a bunch of Good Guys and Bad Guys, usually at each other's throats, are forced to work together to survive in the face of a far greater foe. They learn to appreciate each other better by the end of it, some of them become friends, and everyone gets a character arc and grows as a person... but no one is redeemed. The bad guys are at the end of it still as bad as at the start - possibly even worse, with their character growth only making them more efficient villains.
The takeaway here will not be a great moral or ideological one, but rather simply learning to coexist. Learning to tolerate people even when you disagree with them on some heavy subjects. Learning to cooperate with them for a common cause. Learning to be polite even when you think someone's a terrible person.
Because you have to share this world with these people whether you like it or not, and nothing you say to them is likely to convince them out of their ideals, especially not if you're being a dick about it. The heroes of this story do the whole internet fight thing at the beginning, and nearly get killed for their efforts. After that they learn better.
Of course, the two or so people likely to read the story will already know this lesson, so it's rather preaching to the choir. But at least I can vent a little.
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