Unless you’re deliberately trying to follow a specific style of art like going for a Dadist work that’s meant to be about basically nothing at all, or trying to do “classical realism” art showing somebody on a horse or the like, well…then saying someone’s preferences for redemption arcs or saying someone prefers more outright villainous characters because they’re more engaging would be like saying somebody’s preference for a type of ICE CREAM or CANDY or FOOD ITSELF is wrong. There’s no such thing as totally objective art standards. When it comes to art…in general, everything is subjective, not objective. And I’m putting this at the end so in case Lily Orchard deliberately cuts me off again, it’ll look super awkward and hopefully SOMEBODY reading her reblog or the like will go “Wait, that’s shown awkwardly, it looks like he said a lot more” and they’ll seek out my post. Maybe I’m letting my own desire for specific story tropes cloud my judgment. Just…gross!” But perhaps, maybe, I’m just approaching this from a biased perspective. Trying to give any kind of real sort of redemption arc to a lot of Naruto villains has come off like “Seriously, you’re trying to make us feel sympathy for them NOW”? He’s eaten people alive. There CAN be exceptions, and examples where redemption arcs were rather pathetic, and it might have been better to just never use the character again, or to leave them as a recurring, big antagonist. At least the trainwreck could be incredible to watch, and you’d feel more emotionally invested in what happens. And I, personally, would rather have a spectacular failure of a redemption arc that ends up a trainwreck than just a static jerk character popping up once or twice whom we never really see again. Because any other stories you could tell with them will just basically come off as repeating the same thing over and over. Whereas, if you just leave somebody as a jerk, well…unless they’re going to be a big recurring antagonist, there’s no point in having them around. I’m doing it from the perspective of “what could lead to more stories, more interesting tales”, and a redemption arc is a whole lot better than just leaving somebody as a jerk, because you can flesh out a character, give them dimension, explore their backstory, how they think, feel, their hopes and dreams and if you make them a good guy, they can come back and be of use in a future story in a meaningful way. I’m not trying to approach this from a moral perspective even though, morally, I’d prefer redemption arcs. Linkara of AT4W fame has made this point well, that he wants to see more stories told, that just killing off supporting characters is wasteful and often senseless, like how Lian Harper’s death robbed Roy Harper of his unique character status as a single father and rid the DC comics universe of future stories with her until they decided to bring her back in a rather miraculous way. So again, in general, keeping a character alive means you can do more with them. It’s the same sort of principle behind “Does this character die at the end of this or not”? Killing off a character will essentially, unless you do something like time travel or magic or the like, end the stories you can tell with them unless you do a sequel, or an imagine spot where a character’s talking to them or maybe to their ghost. No, I’m addressing it in purely practical terms of “what lets you tell more stories”. I know perfectly well some might argue “But you’re assuming that a redemption arc is an inherently good thing”. But instead of showing everything I said in response to her point, instead of showing my full clarification of my stance, that redeeming the Diamonds would, in GENERAL, allow for many more stories to be told than if a rando jerk like Kevin got a redemption arc, and thus a writer would prefer to give one to them over Kevin, instead of showing that, she just insults me. I even pointed out how she had some good points.
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