I meant it about wanting to hear from people who liked the suffering, so thank you.
We're clearly in agreement on the suffering delivered by the universe. Even where it serves some purpose in the story, it risks looking like lazy storytelling. As for revenge, I too have mixed feelings. On the one hand, wanting revenge is, as you say, quite reasonable. On the other, I don't tend to feel increasing the amount of suffering in the world is a good thing (which is also relevant to my views on guilt, below). Of course, the situation is complicated by so much of the right to vengeance and the governance of interpersonal relationships having been devolved on society. (Is it still proper to take revenge yourself if there is a judicial system to do it for you? Can the personal right to vengeance be ceded to the community at large, or must the judicial system justify its powers in some other way? etc.) At any rate I don't have any objection to characters within a story seeking vengeance: I mean, I might on a case by case basis, but no in principle objection.
The third option is clearly the one we come at from different angles. There have certainly been occasions where I have approved of someone's remorse, or felt people should feel bad about they way they behaved. On the other hand, as I said about revenge, increasing the amount of suffering in the world is not a good thing and I don't see why it becomes one just because you're inflicting it on yourself. So I am never sure which way to go on this one. Apparently I manage to believe simultaneously that remorse is both a good and a bad thing. There is, however, a particular problem with fictional villains: their crimes are often so extensive I don't think it would be possible for them to feel a commensurate degree of remorseful guilt without it being so all consuming as to leave them pretty much unable to function, which rather gets in the way of the good works aspect. I suspect this is why they tend to be killed off; there is just no realistic way of showing them suffering enough.
Which is fine as a narrative trope and plot point, it's just not redemption
Perhaps this is the crux of the matter. I am not sure I truly believe in redemption, or at any rate I don't understand how it works. I can see how you make up for something against a given measure, e.g. you redeem yourself in your own eyes, in the eyes of the person you wronged, in my eyes, and in each case you would have to meet a different standard. I just don't really see redemption as a binary state - redeemed or not redeemed - with an objective standard that allows you to say if you do this and that you will switch states absolutely, without needing to define who is being the judge.
a redeemed villain who decided that guilt was worthless, she'd done what she'd done, and the only thing worth doing was making things better
While I would very much like to read (well written) examples of this, I certainly don't feel that's the only way for the story to go. I think what I want most is to feel that this approach would be possible. That makes feeling remorse or trying to make amends or however the story actually goes a deliberate choice, rather than it just being that anything else was unthinkable.
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Re: Here via metafandom
Date: 2008-04-21 08:31 pm (UTC)We're clearly in agreement on the suffering delivered by the universe. Even where it serves some purpose in the story, it risks looking like lazy storytelling. As for revenge, I too have mixed feelings. On the one hand, wanting revenge is, as you say, quite reasonable. On the other, I don't tend to feel increasing the amount of suffering in the world is a good thing (which is also relevant to my views on guilt, below). Of course, the situation is complicated by so much of the right to vengeance and the governance of interpersonal relationships having been devolved on society. (Is it still proper to take revenge yourself if there is a judicial system to do it for you? Can the personal right to vengeance be ceded to the community at large, or must the judicial system justify its powers in some other way? etc.) At any rate I don't have any objection to characters within a story seeking vengeance: I mean, I might on a case by case basis, but no in principle objection.
The third option is clearly the one we come at from different angles. There have certainly been occasions where I have approved of someone's remorse, or felt people should feel bad about they way they behaved. On the other hand, as I said about revenge, increasing the amount of suffering in the world is not a good thing and I don't see why it becomes one just because you're inflicting it on yourself. So I am never sure which way to go on this one. Apparently I manage to believe simultaneously that remorse is both a good and a bad thing. There is, however, a particular problem with fictional villains: their crimes are often so extensive I don't think it would be possible for them to feel a commensurate degree of remorseful guilt without it being so all consuming as to leave them pretty much unable to function, which rather gets in the way of the good works aspect. I suspect this is why they tend to be killed off; there is just no realistic way of showing them suffering enough.
Which is fine as a narrative trope and plot point, it's just not redemption
Perhaps this is the crux of the matter. I am not sure I truly believe in redemption, or at any rate I don't understand how it works. I can see how you make up for something against a given measure, e.g. you redeem yourself in your own eyes, in the eyes of the person you wronged, in my eyes, and in each case you would have to meet a different standard. I just don't really see redemption as a binary state - redeemed or not redeemed - with an objective standard that allows you to say if you do this and that you will switch states absolutely, without needing to define who is being the judge.
a redeemed villain who decided that guilt was worthless, she'd done what she'd done, and the only thing worth doing was making things better
While I would very much like to read (well written) examples of this, I certainly don't feel that's the only way for the story to go. I think what I want most is to feel that this approach would be possible. That makes feeling remorse or trying to make amends or however the story actually goes a deliberate choice, rather than it just being that anything else was unthinkable.