I definitely get the issues with the Diamonds being redeemed. Personally I don't mind it, I just think White should have taken more time. I'm more bemused by complaints about Spinel being redeemed, honestly, since she seemed to me as almost a Lapis-in-"Ocean Gem" situation, with a similarly sympathetic backstory.
I also get that the idea that anyone can be redeemed is not exactly true, and I see how it can be a harmful message, but I'm not as concerned with that since it's not like this show exists in a vacuum. Plenty of other shows take a more cynical mindset so, to me, anyway, that kinda offsets that problem. Granted, I would like for there to be an episode or two about how, while people can change, it's certainly okay for the people they hurt to never forgive them. That does seem like the sort of thing this show would tackle well.
I liked that too, and also that, while she was redeemed, she still couldn't exactly befriend Steven or the Crystal Gems after all she'd done and instead opted to start over fresh with the Diamonds. Made the ending not overly clean, which I liked.
Edited by DeathsApprentice on Sep 4th 2019 at 10:04:51 AM
When we're done, there won't be anything left.They can't "fix "all the shit they broke, though. Not really. Even if they manage to restructure the entire despotic utilitarian hiararchy they've built over the millenia (and it's very far-fetched in and of itself to imagine that they'd be willing or able to do this without severe internal resistance), they've done a ton of shit that there's no reversing. Nobody's going to bring back the numerous gems they shattered or the planets they ruined. The fact that they're now basically depicted as Steven's annoying, overly coddling aunts and the extent of their reforms is learning to say please and thank you really diminishes their past evil.
I don't really have a rebuttal for that.
The Diamond's redemption kind of hinges on how much you're willing to ignore their past actions. To say nothing of how the Crystal Gems should feel on their former dystopic leaders.
But then someone brought this up; the Diamonds are just too powerful to really suffer any kind of consequences, at least from the protagonists. The best they could do is talk them down and hope they don't decide to eventually turn, because they're literally too powerful otherwise.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Pink Steven didn't even "defeat" her, he just blocked her attacks until she fell over.
This discussion actually reminds me of a comment in the Trope Pantheon thread after the Diamonds ascending came up; they have Crippling Overspecialization. Sure, they're huge, durible, and Yellow has an unknown amount of combat prowess, but all their powers only affect Gems - we don't even know if they can summon weapons! If White or Blue faced off against something their size with like a giant sword or something, they might be able to fight for a bit, but eventually that thing would go through their forms and they'd be screwed, especially if they went into the fight thinking their powers would work.
Jawbreakers on sale for 99¢The thing is, yes, the Diamonds can’t undo all the wrong they did
But by not shattering them, Steven forced them to undo all the wrong they did that could be undone
Especially the inexplicable dismantling of empire. That couldn’t have been done nearly as fast and painlessly without the Diamonds forcing it through
The corrupted Gems would have been shit out of luck
And Rose/Pink’s death shows that someone dying doesn’t erase or make up for the wrongs they did. Actively trying to make up for wrongs is what makes up for wrongs
Is this a situation contrived to allow such an outcome? Yes.
Although they also have their own megazord
Edited by Bocaj on Sep 4th 2019 at 11:10:23 AM
Forever liveblogging the AvengersThe whole Steven redeeming the Diamonds thing is kind of similar to how I feel about Luke redeeming Darth Vader. The redemption works because it's more for Steven's development, not theirs. Like Luke, Steven is the one person that actually could save the galaxy and fix the mistakes of the Diamonds (particularly his mom). It was the main goal of his character for five seasons and he did it in a way that was very true to his character and the themes of the show. Also, it's totally believable that the Diamonds would change for someone like Steven, who is all they have left of their long-dead sister (or whatever PD was to them).
That being said, I don't particularly like that the Diamonds got off easy, but I did enjoy the fact that Steven spends the majority of the film annoyed with them. I would have liked to see Steven deal with the fact that he can't save everyone's soul. It was explored a little bit in the show but not nearly as much as it could have been. Also, when there are too many redemption arcs, the story can become rather trite and redundant. The truth is that everyone can't be saved, no matter how optimistic the story is trying to be.
Still, it's hard to think of a show that does redemption arcs better than Steven Universe. Characters like Peridot, Lapis, Bismuth, and Lars actually did earn their redemption. And, in some ways, I think I wanted a redemption story for Spinel more than any of those characters.
Edited by deuteragonist on Sep 4th 2019 at 8:40:21 AM
Bit of a tangent, but I do wonder why there's a "(3)" in the track name "system/BOOT.Pearl Final(3).Info"... has Pearl been rebooted twice before?
Honestly, SU's redemption arcs I think are actually what got me to start liking redemption arcs. Before, I'd been indifferent to annoyed by them, and the only one I'd ever liked was Zuko's in A:tLA. I think before SU, though, I largely associated "redemption arcs" with "hot villainous dude has sad backstory and is ~redeemed~ through the love of a Good Woman." Perhaps the only redemption arc I'd seen besides Zuko's redemption arc that I'd seen before SU that didn't fall into that category was Discord's redemption in MLP? And even that.... can be argued to fall into that category, maybe. Just minus the sad backstory. And I didn't love the way his redemption went anyway.
Edited by DeathsApprentice on Sep 4th 2019 at 11:36:10 AM
When we're done, there won't be anything left.I would disagree that Lars earned his redeption, to be quite honest. Aside from the diamonds, his is probably the only one I'd take issue with, albeit for slightly different reasons. Namely being that Steven and Sadie tolerate him and continue to be friends with him for a long while before he's made even a token effort to not be a massive douchebag. It comes off as Sadie taking it upon herself to "fix" the guy who's relentlessly taken sexual and financial advantage of her because she just somehow knows without evidence that he's really a good person deep inside.
I'm not fond of the apparent message that if you have a crush on a guy who is consistently a horrible asshole to you, you just have to be patient, continually give him the benefit of a doubt, and eventually this'll result in him getting better. It does not have a great track record of working in real life.
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In hindsight, I feel that Vader's famous redemption only really works because he dies immediately afterwards, morbid as that sounds. The movie sets it up so that Luke can believably forgive his father, but it doesn't try to convince us that Vader would or should be viewed as anything other than a mass murdering war criminal by the rest of the galaxy. In a hypothetical version of the story where he survives, it would only make sense for him to be at minimum be given a life sentence for his crimes.
Edited by DrDougsh on Sep 4th 2019 at 8:48:05 AM
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Buffy: The Vampire Slayer/Angel has some interesting redemption arcs while also falling into that category as well. And not gonna lie, I feel like MLP has too many redemption arcs. Steven Universe has moments like Jasper getting corrupted, Eyeball, Navy, and the slow-burn/setback redemptions with Lapis and Lars to make them more believable and complex. The only MLP redemption arc I actually like is Sunset Shimmer's. I preferred Discord as a villain honestly.
Still, Zuko still remains the king of the redemption arc to me.
Nope you are absolutely right about Vader. He was a monster and his immediate death via saving his son basically acts as a bit of karma for his crimes, even though in some ways it's not enough.
Edited by deuteragonist on Sep 4th 2019 at 8:52:06 AM
I don't mind the Diamonds realizing they were wrong and changing, what bothers me a little though is the lack of acknowledgment of how just awful what they were doing was, and how that might have left consequences on other people to the point that they won't be forgiven. What about all the worlds and other civilizations they presumably torched?
Also yeah White's face-turn felt pretty rushed, that should have taken more time.
Edited by Draghinazzo on Sep 4th 2019 at 11:52:09 AM
Vader’s redemption stopped working on any conceivable level for me once we learned his backstory and once it became clear that Force ghost heaven is for a special few and not everyone
Anakin appearing as a Force ghost is the movie going “YUP HES WELL AND TRULY REDEEMED OF ANY AND ALL WRONG DOINGS”
Forever liveblogging the AvengersTo me the problem with the Darth Vader situation is the framing.
With the context from the prequels, we know his primary motivations have alway been his family and loved ones, it's a key component of his character. So it makes sense that he would turn on the Emperor to protect Luke, and it was for the greater good in the end, but it doesn't necessarily imply that he stopped believing in space fascism, and he still did what he did entirely for personal reasons. I don't know if I can really call that "redemption".
He went evil to protect a loved one and then went ‘good’ to protect a loved one
Forever liveblogging the Avengers
x6: I don't love MLP's redemption arcs either, though that's less because of how many of them there are and more because I just don't think they're executed well or in a very believable way. At least SU and ATLA let their redemption arcs take multiple episodes. Zuko's took about a full season and a half, at least, and Lapis's and Lars's redemptions, like you said, had setbacks and stuff. All of MLP's redemptions take an episode. And it doesn't help that the backstories for the redeemed villains don't actually show why they did what they did, if they even have a backstory. (I mean, I've certainly lost best friends before. I never ended up starting a cult because of it.) With SU and ATLA, you mostly get where the redeemed villains were coming from. I also prefer Discord as a villain, mostly cuz it feels like he gets to get away with still being a raging dick without ever actually having to change for anyone other than Fluttershy. That's not a redemption, that's trying to impress the girl you have a crush on.
x3: I do wonder how Spinel's redemption arc would have gone if it were in the series proper over multiple episodes, as opposed to a 90 minute movie.
Edited by DeathsApprentice on Sep 4th 2019 at 12:06:46 PM
When we're done, there won't be anything left.It's for these kinds of reasons that I'm very hesitant about the idea of Kylo Ren being redeemed. Like, yeah, you can probably contrive a reason for him to stop what he's doing and for Rey and the others to forgive him. But you can't write a satisfying situation where most other people wouldn't still demand his execution or at minimum for him to be locked up for a very long time over his many crimes. Because those wouldn't be unfair demands.
That's the problem with writing redemption arcs; if your character has crossed certain thresholds of objectively monstrous actions, you can't expect him/her to be forgiven in-universe just because you've placed a sympathetic lense for the viewer to look at them.
Its funny, because everyone is capable of change (barring stuff like mental illnesses, but even with the right elp you can usually pull through), but not everyone 'will change. thats an important distinction. Just this morning I found out that one of the founders of the biggest conversion therapy camps in the US came out and is now denouncing the whole practice, so life works in mysterious ways. Its also a completely different matter on whether people forgive them or not, or how they can fix the shit they harmed.
I do think it's kind of funny how MLP has, for the most part, stopped redeeming its big villains while SU hasn't despite them both getting criticism.
Given their respective audiences, I would have expected the opposite.
This song needs more love.Yeah, but if we're meant to infer that this kind of behaviour is total folly, then that message is muddled. The story doesn't really support such an aesop when it depicts the strategy of simply continuing to tolerate Lars until he stops being a jerk as actually working in the end.
Like, there's no moment when either Sadie or Steven tell Lars in unambiguous terms that if he doesn't change his ways, he can't expect their continued friendship. Both of them have brief blow-ups at him, but no permanent rifts, or even threats to that effect. Ultimately, the way it comes off is that they simply give him unlimited chances to better himself without him doing a goddamn thing to deserve it, and eventually having it work due to his, er, forced sabbatical.

I personally liked Spinel's redemption, mostly because she acknowledged all the things she's done and even questions why she should be redeemed after waht she did.