thenightling:

luanna801:

novangla:

notbecauseofvictories:

hey kids

you know why I like redemption narratives? because a redemption narrative says: no matter how broken or wrong or bad or stupid or ridiculous or harmful or sad or terrible, you can atone.

there is still a road back. it might be rocky and steep, complicated and messy. walking it may take all your life. you may lose your foothold, slip and fall back into the abyss, but the wall is still there. the ascent is still there. hard is not the same as impossible.

you are never too far gone. you are never beyond saving. 

reblogged this before but another thing is that it isn’t just about telling the reader that you can always atone

it also builds empathy in readers for other people that do wrong. other people can change and be forgiven.  and that that means actual change (not like, “oh he’ll change someday!!”) and sometimes relationships can’t go back to what they were, but there is this dangerous attitude here on the tumblr-verse that doing a bad thing means someone should be cut out and exiled forever, and redemption arcs can teach people to see others for who they are and who they have become and not for what they may have done once before

Also: When people believe change isn’t possible, it in a sense lets them off the hook from even trying to do better. You’re already a bad person, you’ll never be anything else, so why even bother to try changing?

And so they’ll just keep doing whatever bad, harmful things they’ve been doing because they don’t believe they have the ability to really change, and most likely they keep hurting both themselves and other people. 

On the other hand: If someone does believe change is possible, they’ll be much more motivated to actually try and be better. And that means there’s a much more real chance that they actually will become a better person, and less people will end up hurt because of them.

There’s a lot of focus on “IF YOU ARE THIS KIND OF BAD PERSON, YOU’RE TRASH AND YOU SHOULD HATE YOURSELF” on this website, but that’s not helpful. Someone wallowing in self-hate doesn’t help anyone, even if it’s deserved. It’s good to take responsibility for the things you’ve done wrong and accept the things you’re guilty for. But the guilt isn’t the end goal here – change is. 

Honestly, there are people who have done things so awful I have a hard time believing they could change, but if they’re willing to try? If they genuinely realize how awful the things they did were and they really want to be better? More power to them. I don’t buy this “beyond redemption” nonsense this site seems so very in love with – I think people always have the power to change. And the more bad people change, the better the world would be, so why would you not hope for that?

THANK YOU!  THIS!  All of this!  This is part of why I hate that it’s become so popular in fiction to make characters irredeemable and be dismissive of the idea of redemption.  The cynicism is killing the potential for good character growth.