A Rant About Redemption and Bad Guys

Hey! So, the other day I read Aimee Meester's post on her blog about how we need to stop romanticizing the villains and grey morality and it was really thought provoking, especially for someone like me. I love bad guys. I love their backstories and their complex character arcs and I love how their usually super flawed and quirky with dynamic, larger than life personalities. I've always been fascinated by them, even when I was little kid and would sit and watch X-Men Evolution and all the Disney movies and read the Sisters Grimm and Percy Jackson. Maybe it was my inner writer but I loved Gambit and Rogue and Puck and Nico. I loved all the characters with the tortured pasts, the characters with a rough present and a foggy future.


And now that I'm older and watch "big kid" stuff I love my Loki and Damon and Spike (just finished binging Buffy and Angel and am now getting into the graphic novels because I loved those shows so much!) and Captain Cold from the Flash and Bellamy and Murphy from The 100. I love them all. Though, on a side note, now that I think about it I can't come up with a whole lot the big bad, grey area, antihero female characters. I'm sure there are but I'm drawing a giant blank right now. Anyways back on subject. The bad guys. But I think what I'm trying to get at is what do all these "bad guys" have in common? Yes their either the villain, antihero or antagonist in the main character's story. They aren't even the main characters themselves.
But what they all have in common is the character development arc that is Redemption.


I love redemption and forgiveness and can this character come back from all the terrible things they've done? Can they be forgiven and can they change and be good? Can they go from being murderers and horrible people to being heroes? There are a few bad guys that I still love that are bad and will always be bad and they probably will never be heroes or anything like a hero but all the baddies I love are the ones with redemption running through their Journey. I think why I love the redemption story is because it reminds me so much of what I've been promised as a Christian. It doesn't matter the horrible things you've done in your past, God will still forgive you. He changes you from the inside out, transforms you from the Big Bad to the Champion. And that's what love does in most character arcs for those antiheroes and antagonists.


The heroes are the ones who are chosen. They're the champions.

I'm sorry not really this was just too perfect not to use.

Chosen to fight the good fight, to save the girl and stop the Big Bad (after watching Buffy and Angel now I just call my villains the Big Bad). Yes they should be dynamic and real and exciting with flaws and character growth. They may mess up and make bad decisions but in the end they're the good guy and they will always be the good guy. Look at Angel in his show Angel. He's frequently called the Champion. He's the goodie vampire with the soul who saves damsels in distress and stops the world from falling apart. Yeah he's done a lot horrible things in his life time, seemingly irredeemable things but that's the whole point of his journey. His entire show is about him atoning for his sins, changing his ways and righting his past wrongs. He went through a few rough patches but at the end of the day he's still the Champion and he's pretty easily forgiven. The same goes for Stefan in The Vampire Diaries.


Angel needs redemption and so does Stefan, they've both done horrible things, but the point is they were already more or less redeemed from the get-go. Their stories start with them already being the Champion and redeemed and thriving to be better. These other guys? Not so much. Damon, Spike, Murphy, Bellamy, Snart (Captain Cold) and lots of others, they start their stories off as the baddies. Their not nice people. They steal and they kill and they hurt people. Their charming and good looking sure but if you met them in real life you would be running the other way. Bellamy was a jerk in the first season of The 100. Murphy still kind of is even in season 3. Snart was a thief. Damon and Spike are horrible, murderous vampires (which by far outweighs the others). You look at them and think, yeah they're funny and charming and fun bad guys but man are they royal jerks, I do not like them in the slightest.


But then, something happens. The big bad, evil vampire falls for the human girl who may see him as the bad guy but doesn't see him as the monster. Bellamy realizes Clarke's actually pretty smart and that if he wants to survive he'd better listen to her. Murphy... well Murphy only turned semi-nice and not as self-serving as before when he's dragged into the desert and falls for a thief. Snart realizes maybe the Flash isn't such a bad guy after all and gains some mutual respect for one another. Usually the protagonist is the one who at some point brings out the best in these bad "irredeemable" villains. And sometimes things just happens that forces the bad guy to do the right thing even if he doesn't want to which then, with some help, turns them into a better person.


What do all those have in common? Love, respect, support.


And ok... I'm sorry... I tried to stop myself but I just can't. This post is officially going to turn into me using Angel and Spike and some Faith to tell the redemption story because let's face it: Joss Whedon is a genius and knows how to write a good redemption story. I already got my Angel stuff out (I could write for hours about him though) but Spike and Faith? Those were some wicked good characters. *spoiler alerts ahead if you haven't seen these shows and you haven't go watch it right now!* Faith starts out as the second Slayer (long story). She's edgy and was not my favorite person at all. She had this weird, psycho thing about her and turns out I was right. She ended up going a little crazy and killing and torturing and being a horrible person. Buffy wants her put down or at least locked away and for real, you think this girl can not be redeemed. She's done horrible things and is a twisted person. But then she comes across Angel and he breaks her... in a good way. He convinces her to change and because of his friendly love and support and respect Faith wants to change. She doesn't want to be a killer and horrible person anymore. At the end she actually ends up turning herself in and is willing to take her punishment because she knows she deserves it and that she's done bad things. By the end of her story Faith actually ends up being a Champion just like Angel and Buffy and all the other good guys on the show. She helps save the world! And all because someone believed she was worth saving.

From Fred to Spike

Spike... now he's a fun one. I loved him from the moment I met him, when he was seriously so mean and awful and wanted to kill Buffy. I don't think he had a single redeemable quality, except for his love for Drusilla. I just liked him cuz he was funny and a good bad guy. I had hoped Joss Whedon would do something with him and I was not disappointed. Unlike Faith who saw the error in her ways Spike did not... Even when he had a chip put in his head that stopped him from killing people he still wanted it out and he still wanted to be bad. That was until he fell in love with Buffy. Love is very powerful and very important, especially in a redemption story. And ok, he was still weird and kind of disturbing when he obsessed over Buffy but by the end he got over that and just loved her. He fought at her side, helped her out, sat with her when she didn't want to talk. Even when she wasn't around something had changed inside him and he just did the right thing because it was the right thing. And then, he did the ultimate thing that turned him into a Champion. Of his own free will he sought out and got a soul for himself. He willingly got a soul so he could be a better person for Buffy. And by the end of the show he's barely recognizable from the Spike in season 2. He sacrifices his to save the world, not for Buffy, not for himself, but for the sake of being good. Not to mention in Angel he ended up truly declaring himself a Champion because he wants to be one, not just to spite Angel but because he wants to be a Champion, a hero for himself.

Awww!

I guess what I'm trying to say is what does Spike and Damon and Bellamy and Faith and even Murphy have in common? Love and support. All of their stories showcase the power of love and support in it's purest form. Whether is love between friends or romantic love, it doesn't matter. Either way love wins and that is why I love the bad guys so much. Because usually the bad guys I love reveal themselves as Champions by the end. They reveal the power of love (as cheesy as that sounds) and they reveal the power of someone believing in them and supporting them. Without love and support and belief a person is nothing and can accomplish nothing.

So writers, and fangirls in general, no we shouldn't glorify the bad guys who like killing and torturing and hurting. We should write those characters and make sure their well done because without a good villain there can be no good Champion. But instead of writing so many irredeemable, unsaved characters why don't we write redeemable characters? The ones who have made awful decisions and have done bad things and yet the protagonist forgives, supports or even cares about. The ones who the protagonist saves by accident, just because they respected them and showed them some common decency. The ones who the protagonist saves through friendship. Write messy characters who don't get it right all the time but thrive to be better, want to atone for their bad mistakes and want to be saved.


I could go on and on with this post but I don't want to make this super long and exhaust the topic because I might just have to come  back to this. The truth is, the first couple of seasons of Buffy may have been cheesy and the whole thing was whack but I learned a lot from it as a writer because Joss Whedon is a Champion in the storyteller universe. So I may just come back to those characters and I may come back to this whole redemption thing because the story I'm working on right now is about an immortal gypsy girl without a soul who is thriving for redemption and a vampire who needs saving. A bit darker than Weapon Icean, so I'm learning some new things about my writing and about myself through Phoebe (the FMC) and Jasper (the MMC).


I'm going to end this rant with a bit of a challenge, not only to myself but to the writers reading this: Write those Big Bads and then be creative and find a non-cheesy, new and exciting way to turn them into Champions. Sounds like a lot of work to me, but it also sounds like a lot of fun.

What do you think of my rant? Do you agree or disagree about Champions and the Big Bads?