Been a couple of years, but I still think fondly of Grace Monroe from Infinity Train for achieving that very rare redemption arc narrative of "the people you hurt are allowed to sever all ties, and you can still become a better, happier person."

Prompt 47

Hear me out. Amity Park gets shifted in universes slightly- maybe it’s from Pariah, maybe it was a wish, maybe they did so on purpose to escape something- and they end up in the DC-verse. The thing is, thanks to the media blackout and the shields, no one in the new universe notices. The Amityville Paekers know about outside, can go on the internet and leave whenever they want, but they’ve all become more than a little liminal. More than a little off. Movements too graceful, eyes too sharp, ears too pointed and teeth more akin to predatory fangs. Skin with a soft glow, hair moving as though underwater or being tussled by the wind- bodies seemingly unaging after a certain point. They’re so ecto-contaminated that they’re unsure they can even be counted as human anymore, and it wasn’t like the city wasn’t already practically self sufficient. Add in a portal or two through the Infinite Realms to get supplies to start a few fields or some fish farms and well, they’re pretty good. Sure it’s resulted in them using a mixture of modern and older money and having several extinct plants and animals running around but that’s fine. There’s magic in this world! Actual magic, that they can learn! And use? Oh this makes rebuilding after a sparring incident go so much faster! 

This results in the hero who stumbles across this place to believe they’ve stumbled across some sort of city of fae or elves. 

I’ll bring you flowers when you’re dead and gone

Asleep in the pines in the valley of the mountain

I've been following you for years, and I love your art. Seeing you repost your older art pieces reminded me how much I loved the angry, bitter, miserable Machete art and how it resonated with me... but a part of me is also so happy to see the current art of him being happy. Cute art of him as a unicorn, or chilling in a bathtub with Vasco. Like, we're all growing and healing :')

Full disclosure, I'm still on chapter 6 but I wanted to say a few things:

Arthur isn't a mindless killer. If he is mass murdering civilians, that's your choice.

Arthur knows that pain is not currency that you can exchange, and causing it only builds a debt - the kind he can't pay off.

He says it himself, "Revenge is a fool's game" - He writes constantly about his remorse in the journal.

Led by Dutch, the Van Der Linde gang have been chasing the feeling of living by their own terms so much that it's killing them. Pursuing that high has only left them to run forever, from those who want to clip their wings of freedom for the sake of law.

The O'Driscoll and Cornwall feud is a scapegoat for Dutch to get revenge for himself and his pride, he uses his charismatic rhetoric to sway the gang and justify all his actions. If they don't obey, they get named and shamed. Dutch labeling the gang as a family and treating them as such has conditioned them to know not to disappoint him, especially Arthur.

Arthur was taught not to bite the hand that feeds him, even when he wasn't fed.

The days of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor are long gone. Their way of living is outdated and they're running out of land to run away to.

This pursuit of freedom, once idealised, has become a desperate attempt to survive in a world that doesn't want them.

Their hearts have always been in the right place, but their guns were misguided by Dutch.

That loyalty has killed them.

Me, mostly here for Kenta, Pete, Way and Kim:

anybody else play a cleric durge and felt like they had to come up with some ridiculous reason as to why their pc would wake up believing they worship a god that’s not bhaal? ophelia’s is “i can tell i used to worship a god and can’t remember who, but i have some sick fucking lightning powers and i love carnage destruction and chaos, so that probably means talos is my god. yeah that checks out”

and it’s just. not even fucking true. she was absolutely Not a cleric before the nautiloid, and she definitely didn’t worship talos. he just happened to fit the description

i like to think talos sees her going through this process and just decides to feed into her delusions and grant her cleric powers because he thinks it’s funny

me rn

Episodes come out at 5 am for me so I will be waking up to carnage on the tl/dashboard 😗✌️

"Do not seek forgiveness, for it will not ease the burden. It weighs as it should."

Redemption Arc

Redemption Arc- "Your story had a pretty rough start and you did some things you're not proud of, but you made the choice to change. I won't go through how important it is to accept responsibility and keep striving to improve or whatever because you know that already. What I think you should know is that your fuel does not need to be shame. You don’t need to stand over the bathroom sink with your blood in your hands until you can no longer make out your reflection. You will look at your face and you will see the person you used to be, but that person no longer exists. Today, you are looking, and that makes all the difference."

tagged by @iron-sparrow tyty!! It was fun to try and think of a way for this to fit at least one version of Hazel and I think I got it.

Quiz can be found here

aaaand I will tag: @the-white-snake, @sparrowsong-7, @cindernet-explorer, @selnyam, @hinganskies

Please tell me you still have Fire permanently kill Darkstripe in BC though. That's one of the best parts.

WELL sorta. It's not going to be Firestar-- he's had enough badass cameos and someone else needs a turn.

I'm thinking it's Hawkfrost, actually

I want to turn him into a sort of... half-faded creature. Cheshire Cat of the Dark Forest. In the Great Battle he turned against Tigerstar and was mauled for it, but was able to get dragged back to the DF just in time.

But instead of respawning like the other DF spirits, when he double-died, it was partially permanent.

So he exists in this bizarre half-alive half-gone demon form, only existing for short periods of time. Enough to come save his apprentice Ivypool's daughter's mate, but not long enough to mount a resistance to the impostor.

And, importantly, enough to still enjoy the Dark Forest he had come to truly love, with its evil horses and blood-sap. A ghost among ghosts.

im curious, do you think there is any good way to portray a redemption by death? like, can a character truly be made a better person by dying? or is it just an all-around bad trope? i vaguely saw what the authors were trying to do with tom and sandgorse's situations, but they just sucked too bad and gave it the absolute wrong effect imo

I think there's a way to make anything work! So I won't say "NO NEVER." But personally, I have a big bone to pick with it so I avoid it

A redemption death doesn't give the character time to meaningfully change, imo, or truly make up for their actions. That all has to come before the death itself. And even the very idea of giving your life up to "redeem yourself" just... sits uncomfortably with me.

Dying never makes a person better. It just kills them. A person who's dead is not changing nor growing.

So Tom and Sandgorse... what their deaths are supposed to do is re-frame everything they did before that point. With no apology on Sandgorse's end for how badly he hurt his son or wasn't there for his mate, he was a good enough person to die for someone else and thus must be forgiven. Tom thrashes two women and they both die because of him, but he was still willing to heroically throw his life down for his child, and so he is 'worthy' of being avenged and honored.

No growth. No change. No acknowledgement. The death is supposed to add sympathy to them, while there's no actual reckoning of how they hurt their victims. Not even a real consequence. "Their intentions were good, and this is proven through the ultimate sacrifice." As if that changes anything. It doesn't.

I think if there's an decent example of a redemption death in warriors, it's Bluestar's. I still have problems with how it believes Stone and Misty have to "forgive her" for some reason, REALLY don't like the fact that this series has always equated redemption and forgiveness... but that aside? Just focusing on Firestar, ThunderClan, and Bluestar?

I think what makes the moment so strong is that it is a moment of clarity through her cruelty arc. We saw the heroic person she was at the start of TPB. We know that her actions are coming from anger, spite, and paranoia. That is never shown as a thing to be excused. But while she's wrapped up in her own misery, Fireheart is being the leader she isn't.

And her last life is a return to form, spending it the way she is supposed to, as a leader, and as his mentor.

Her arc could never be about 'growth' because... she WAS a great leader. She WAS selfless, long ago. Her redemption death is a return to that, and a plot necessity. Bluestar and Firestar cannot both exist.

But, anyway, it's generally a trope I'm not fond of. I think that nearly anything can work in the right context, but I think it's so situational that I personally avoid it when possible.

hitler may have died but nazism lives on through israel and america

Thinking about a fic I'll probably never write where Steve angrily tells Eddie that cycling into the Bat Tornado wasn't heroic, it was just fucking stupid.

They're stuck in hospital together and Steve is just swimming in his own anger. He doesn't want to be that guy, he doesn't want to be like his father but he's pissed and has nowhere to direct it but towards Eddie.

What if the bats didn't go after him? What if they got inside the trailer when he left? What then? What if he died for nothing? Risking his and Dustin's lives because of some misguided attempt at redeeming himself, at being brave, at being a hero, was stupid. He trusted him to protect Dustin. But instead he pulled some stunt and Dustin got hurt.

Bravery is being scared but doing the thing anyway. Bravery was Eddie jumping into the lake after everyone when he didn't have to. Running away from something you can't explain, something dangerous, something you can't stop isn't cowardice. It's the smart move. Looking after yourself isn't cowardice, and risking your life isn't bravery.

Does he think that Steve wasn't scared shitless the first time? Does he think Steve wasn't scared shitless this time?

Did he even bother to think about the consequences? About what his death would have done to Dustin?

The yelling doesn't help, of course. Steve is even angrier, and Eddie is feeling even guiltier and neither can do anything about it. They can't even leave, being stuck in a hospital room together.

Okay, conspiracy theory time: if Blitzwing being an Autobot experiment was indeed the original backstory planned for him, it ended up being revised into Malware’s backstory

I mean, a specimen with unique abilities amongst their species associated with machinery created by supposed good guy scientist(s) who “came out wrong” in a sense and was driven mad by the mental strain of it, turned rogue as a result of being mistreated by their creators, became a homicidal maniac hellbent on revenge, AND the same guy worked as a character designer on their respective shows? It just makes too much sense.

I mean with how much canon that Derrick J. Wyatt had creative input on, it would certainly not be too farfetched for some older unexplored ideas to be actually put into practice haha. I do love me some morally grey (and like, genuinely grey regardless of how bright or dark the shade) allies and protagonists, even if it has to come at the cost of the mental and physical health of certain antagonists /hj-

Blitzwing may not have had that much focus as a 'character plagued by the narrative' to have explored the implied trauma beyond him serving as one of the main villains with a unique triple changer feature, Malware being rather explicitly that 'someone you should care about' mixed in with the whole 'irredeemable asshole' schtick was very much a little dicey yeet- he deserved a redemption arc if he was to be written as much of a victim of circumstance and ensuing abandonment as he was 😔