I think you've hit the nail on the head there. I guess my problem is that I don't care enough whether they've been redeemed to feel I need proof; I am quite happy for characters to do sometimes this, sometimes that, so long as it seems in character. I don't worry that they may switch sides again later because I wouldn't mind if they did. I don't have any problem empathising with someone who may end up overall a bud guy; quite the contrary, I am always pleased when a story can make me see things from a point of view quite different from my own.
But it's a point in most modern fiction that the ends don't justify the means. Our heroes won't stoop to the level of their enemies.
Perhaps you have a higher opinion of heroes than I do :) I see being good as difficult, not just in sticking to what you know to be good, but also in identifying it at all. Any moral position comprehensive enough to guide our actions is hard won, provisional and always subject to challenge, which doesn't necessarily put the heroes much above the villains. The difference between a terrorist and freedom fighter may be where you're standing (or when - the winners always turn out to have been freedom fighters). As for ends and means, they are a false dichotomy: we are quite clearly responsible for both, and no more get to dismiss a horrible long term outcome because of our immediate niceness than we do horrible means because we have an admirable long term goal.
no subject
I think you've hit the nail on the head there. I guess my problem is that I don't care enough whether they've been redeemed to feel I need proof; I am quite happy for characters to do sometimes this, sometimes that, so long as it seems in character. I don't worry that they may switch sides again later because I wouldn't mind if they did. I don't have any problem empathising with someone who may end up overall a bud guy; quite the contrary, I am always pleased when a story can make me see things from a point of view quite different from my own.
But it's a point in most modern fiction that the ends don't justify the means. Our heroes won't stoop to the level of their enemies.
Perhaps you have a higher opinion of heroes than I do :) I see being good as difficult, not just in sticking to what you know to be good, but also in identifying it at all. Any moral position comprehensive enough to guide our actions is hard won, provisional and always subject to challenge, which doesn't necessarily put the heroes much above the villains. The difference between a terrorist and freedom fighter may be where you're standing (or when - the winners always turn out to have been freedom fighters). As for ends and means, they are a false dichotomy: we are quite clearly responsible for both, and no more get to dismiss a horrible long term outcome because of our immediate niceness than we do horrible means because we have an admirable long term goal.