Hey You Guys, This Isn't Like My Usual Posts,bear With Me:)

Hey you guys, this isn't like my usual posts,bear with me:)

I kinda want to talk about redemption arcs and bad boys/characters. More specifically- what makes us like dark romantic interests, and what makes us hate certain other dark, mean, manipulative characters? I promise this isn't cringy (for the most part)

Pretty much every fandom has conflicting opinions on it's bad boy characters- be it Edward Cullen, The Darkling, Rhysand, Cardan Greenbriar, Rowan or Jace Herondale- people either say "this ship's so toxic I love it" or "yikes y'all stop simping over abusers" or "respect their trauma". The line between a dark character that makes everyone's heart melt, and just dark character is usually a redemption arc. The problem here? Most of them don't have one. The actions we think of as 'redemption arcs' are 90% of the time them being warm and cuddly and possessive towards the protagonist. This is tricky because when we read a book from the protagonist's perspective, we feel everything they feel. So if the bad boy is rude and cold to them, we feel the same bitterness that they do. And when the character shows them the slightest bit of affection after all that mean-ness, we go "oh well I knew they were gonna be love interests so this is amazing awwww". For example "your hair is clean" Is creepy and NOT a cute compliment. But when Tamlin said it, we thought of it as romantic because We Knew that Feyre would at some point be with him. Most of us ignored him being abusive towards Feyre till Rhys came around and went "he locked you up" and THEN WE REALISED omg Tamlin you manipulative freak😤 and then we were the "I can't see" meme when Rhysand repeatedly abused Feyre under the mountain, with the bright side being "the tattoos are for me to make sure no one touched you!! I never touched you below your waist!!"

See the pattern?!!?! We see what we want to through the protagonist's eyes (and usually this is a CONTRAST between a DEVILISH guy and a bad guy); and ignore the horrible actions of the bad boy love interests as long as they flirt with the mc.

Similarly with the Darkling, most of us ship Darklina and wanted Alina to become bad and for them to be on the same side. As long as he was good to Alina, we were fine with him killing everyone else. That's cute. But then he hurt Genya and killed Ana Kuya and ALINA WAS HEARTBROKEN. and then some of us went😐. Because as long as the protagonist is okay, we're okay with anything the bad boy does.

Another interesting thing is how when an author wants us to like one love interest, they immediately start making the other one do shitty stuff,, so remember the Darklina after-ball scene??? Remember how before that we were told that Mal wasn't writing to Alina??? And so our minds went "Damn girl dump him!! The Darkling is way hotter anyways🙄" but then but then... In the end, when it was obvious that Mal was gonna be the UlTiMaTe lover, all of a sudden the Darkling kills everyone Alina ever loved???

Kaz Brekker, however, is an amazingly written bad boy- because he's got the tragic past, the cold hearted murderer, the sly thief, the guy who seems too have no connections- but he actually cares about Inej, Jesper and the other crows. He's not an abuser, not manipulative, not possessive-

"Our hopes rest with you, Mister Brekker. If you fail, all the world will suffer for it." "Oh, it's worse than that, Van Eck. If I fail, I don't get paid." But also- "She belongs to know one". That's the perfect contrast that we all love.

Cardan however, is a different character.. Because he quite literally is the 'cruel' prince that turns out to be an emo kid with a crush. My point is redemption arcs don't usually work with COMPETELY bad characters who turn COMPLETELY perfect. There has to be some back story, some good parts that are revealed later for us to sympathise with them. Like how we learnt how Cardan was basically hated by his entire family, and then he turned cruel because that's the only way that he felt anything like a prince at all, and how Nicasia betrayed him and how he saved mortal servants from Balekin. It's easy to sympathise with characters who're struggling with their morality, who've been through shit. That's a good redemption arc. Again, it depends on how forgiving the reader is, but certain abusive and manipulative actions of characters cannot be overlooked.

Sooo, let's not be those annoying&stubborn fans. Accept the problems that these books( and many many others) have- be it lack of representation or presenting abuse an an okay thing. It's okay to like these books and comfort characters. These are after all, fantasies. But let's not let these problems become 'normal' in our minds, coz that's when we start extending the same mentality towards society and REAL issues.