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This is why there’s that trope where the bad guy gets killed in the process of, or just after, getting redeemed. So the story can have its cake and not have to deal with any of the icky justice afterwards. How jarring would it be to have the bad guy turn around, save the day, and then the heroes still kill them or drag them off to a trial for their crimes? So justice has to be meted out by fate rather than having to complicate our heroes.
How jarring would it be to have the bad guy turn around, save the day, and then the heroes still kill them or drag them off to a trial for their crimes?
I’d love to see that in a story!
RDR2 in a nutshell
I read that as R2D2 and was just like “…wut”
I read that as R2D2, accepted the crimes, but was trying to figure out when the hell he was put on trial for them
Dude burned battledroids alive.
How many planets did Vegeta destroy that we didn’t see? We saw that one that was such a casual fucking thing for him.
Even after he turned good, he was still willing to kill a stadium full of people to get Kakarot to fight him. He acted like he was under control of the Majin spell but only went along with it until they started acting superior to him, then was just like, “nah, I just want to fight Kakarot because I’ve been training very hard and he’s usually dead these days and I miss fighting with my buddy but don’t tell anyone I called him my buddy, and I thought pretending to be under your control would get him to fight me, but I’m not going to bow to you or any of that shit.”
Though I can’t remember if he actually did kill some of them or if he just did an attack he knew Goku would stop, which would affect how evil the ruse was.
He killed those people. I guess you could argue since he knows about the dragon balls that they could wish them back after, but he still straight up killed them to get goku to fight.
Tbh I don’t think vegeta really was a good guy until he fought kid buu. He was pacified sure and maybe even on the path to being good, but that was because his target was gone and to his knowledge was never coming back. That’s why I love his turn to majin so much. It’s a hardcore backslide because his target came back and if it wasn’t for that he never would have realized how much everything on earth actually meant to him.
I don’t consider him good after going for fat buu because he wasn’t being selfless yet. Him + goku could have taken buu on but he felt like HE needed to be the one to finish the job. His sacrifice was hollow since it (despite what he said) was for him. If it really was for everyone he would have let goku join to guarantee a win.
It wasn’t until he fought kid buu that he was actually being selfless. He let himself get wailed on so goku could charge up knowing he both stood no chance and could potentially be permanently erased since he was already dead. The “you are number one” speech is the conclusion to his story and his redemption.
This became a bit of a ramble but I love Vegeta’s story and could probably keep going if I had the time
Yeah, Vegeta is ambiguously good/evil but makes the story better by being in it regardless.
Kinda like Piccolo, who clearly stated at the start of DBZ that he still intended to take over the world once he was powerful enough to defeat Goku and they were only joining forces because neither wanted the saiyans to destroy the planet, but then somewhere along the way he changed his mind, probably because of his bond with Gohan.
It’s especially interesting in Piccolo’s case IMO because he was basically born evil as a reincarnation of his father, never having a choice in the matter. It wasn’t until Gohan came along and treated him as anything but a monster that he began to realize he had a choice.
Piccolo with baby Pan in super was one of the most wholesome moments in the entire series. Especially when Goku shows up to relieve him from babysitting and he explains a bunch of stuff to a half listening Goku and then ends up just staying because he doesn’t trust Goku to remember any of it.
well hold on now, maybe that was just trauma from being short
And being born with a widow’s peak
hilarious how this guy became a meme. I hope he earns at least $1 every time someone posts a picture of his trying-so-hard-to-stay-awake face on the internet.
Remember kids, it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.
That’s my motto at work
This is why I like the Halo expanded lore. There’s a lot of guilt and grudges when it comes to Thel Vadam in Halo. Dude led fleets that killed millions of humans. He just accepts that he’ll never make up for it, no matter how much good he does for humanity after the war.
It also goes into how, even though he was manipulated by the Covenant, he’ll never stop feeling guilty. But he’s the only Sangheili leader that is 100% devoted to peace with the humans, so most humans aren’t willing to take a shot at revenge.
Reminds me of Sylar from Heros. Man killed a lot of people. Like, a lot. If memory serves, he became a “hero” in the last 10 minutes of the last episode.
Reminds me of Negan.
Redemption arc that knocked it out of the park.
This was where my mind went. Dude killed so many people and ended up getting a spinoff series.
Thank you Fred Johnson!
Fred Johnson immediately got to work investigating the job after it went wrong, and when he was convinced he was working for the wrong side, immediately dedicated himself to working to make amends. He continued to do this for years (decades?) all while making himself a progressively bigger target when just looking the other way from the start would have served him very well. He was never a villain. He just worked with limited information in his backstory. And since then basically everything he does is aimed at the betterment of the belters/humanity. His early victims probably would have forgiven him relatively quickly if they saw what he was doing afterwards and knew the initial setup. They cared about the cause more than their own lives after all.
Accelerator’s redemption arc made him my favorite character and you loser teenagers can get mad at me all you want
Accelerator wasn’t inherently evil though, he was practically cultivated to be a killing machine for the sake of Level 6. Like yeah what he did was absolutely horrible and fucked up, but that’s kinda what happens when you make a child kill more than 10,000 people that were actively attempting to harm him.
I did always like the twist of fate where his life is now dependent on his former to-be victims. I had no qualms with his redemption arc.
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So, from a meta perspective, no real people died or were harmed. And the things real people get from a story are not a direct one to one analog to what goes on in a story.
Stories let people process things without actually having to participate in them. The fictional characters are not real. The person reading is, and generally filters what they read through a lifetime of experiences, picking and choosing what to integrate into themselves. Watching media or reading books and liking things doesn’t turn you into a bad person simply by exposure.
It’s true a story can spread a dialogue, but acting like someone is a terrible sinner guilty of the most horrifying thought crimes because they like the bad guy in a story isn’t really different in my mind that someone religious peddling nonsense like you’ll go to hell if you merely think a thought that isn’t in line with a holy book.
I think sometimes people raised in religious homes with all that guilt about thinking sinful things stop going to church, but sort of copy and paste the moral thought crime bullshit onto random things and pick that up as their replacement zealotry because it feels familiar.
I see it happening a lot in discussions of media with darker content.
Religion isn’t necessary to explain this. I was raised without religion. Most people seem to believe that our actions define who we are. I tend to think that our thoughts are a better indication of our real self, given that our thoughts are less constrained than our actions.
Watching and reading about bad things doesn’t turn you into a bad person by exposure, but if you enjoy torture porn then i’m going to infer that you enjoy thoughts of torture and sought out that which reflects your thoughts and that makes you a bad person in my view.
Feels like there’s a whole other topic you’re trying to get off your chest here.
Magneto was >!right!< a murderer
Cyclops was >!right!< done dirty twice
Quentin was a snarky jerk but technically right?
In Quentin’s defense he just likes feet and is in a position to get people to agree to do feet things for him.
The village of Nameks that Vegeta massacred, including children. And the planet of bug people he killed on his way to Earth with Nappa.
He didn’t even become actually “good” until after he kills himself. Never atoned AFAIK
Besides exhausting the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief if they think about it, it honestly just feels like a waste of potential when shows do this. Redemption arcs go hard.
Vegeta allowing himself to be consumed by Babidi and immediately commiting an act of terrorism:
Vegeta on his way back to Earth from the afterlife flying past the souls of the people he killed 2 hours ago still waiting in line to talk to King Yemma
