heedra:I feel like the problem ppl have when constructing redemption arcs is people make ‘the...

heedra:

I feel like the problem ppl have when constructing redemption arcs is people make ‘the character realizes what they’ve done is wrong’ the end step instead of like…one of the earliest ones. a satisfying redemption arc doesn’t resolve when the character first feels sorry, it resolves when a character has really journeyed towards atonement and made enough change in themselves to achieve some kind of symbolic victory over who they used to be

THIS!! Redemption means having actually done things to redeem the bad behaviour, not just having realized that said behaviour was bad. It means living with the consequences of it, the fallout. It means putting in the time to make things right, not just making a quick apology and everyone calling it good. It means suffering through the realization of what that behaviour has actually done, with taking responsibility for it and owning it, ALL of it, and apologizing and making amends for ALL of it.

This is why Mary Morstan’s two-second “sorry I shot you but we’re good, right?” ‘redemption’ is utter bullshit. It doesn’t stem from a period of remorse of any kind. There was no discernible change of behaviour prior to that. She was still drugging people, abandoning her own the instant the going got rough, still lying and lying and lying (and you note how she never apologized to John for any of that), or for having pursued a career in taking lives for personal profit in the first place! There was no remorse, no scene of Mary deciding that killing people is bad, especially when you’re not doing it for principle or your country (though that’s still a shaky argument) or any “noble” reason beyond making money. No scene of her giving up her assassin outfits and throwing her weapons away, nothing of the sort. She died without having apologized for 99% of what she’d done or the pain she’d caused, without having so much as acknowledged the fact of it at all, much less suffered through any consequences over it, made reparations for it. None whatsoever. That wasn’t a redemption by any definition.