My opinion? Julia killed her brother not because he was cruel to her but because he was naive, a "dim bulb" and couldn't stand up to bullies, which to me sounds like he was neurodivergent (or as least "coded" as such). So she killed her neurodivergent brother on a whim, which is so particularly heinous to me as an ND person who also knows how often the "mercy kill" trope is brought into discussions about neurodivergent and disabled children. She has none of my sympathy.
The death being an accident is much more palatable.
Creator of Heroes of Thantopolis: http://heroesofthantopolis.com/I think making the brother older may help. The story is set in India and naturally Indian culture is all about masculinity and male power and such. She'd have the expectation that the older brother is supposed to be big & tough, her protector but she would find herself being the protective one instead. There would be an element of resentment there, "this is not how things are supposed to be".
Juliet does experience Karmic punishment though, in the end of the story she's left paralyzed and buried alive at the bottom of an elevator shaft. A personal hell for her and she's left in the darkness unable to even scream for help. Her fate is left ambiguous but I very much want to keep her alive so in the next story she can have a redemption arc.
The scene ins't, "yay! sis is back!" and then Juliet casually snaps his neck. It's more like she's been brainwashed and drugged in a number of ways. She's injured in fact and running on high adrenaline. Suddenly her brother shows up out of nowhere and tries to make her stop. He hugs like while she tries to process what the hell is going on, the merc leader is screaming in her ear to stop Sam but Juliet's in a trance with her emotions all over the place.
She hugs him back but then Sam's weapon goes off electrocuting both Juliet and the brother and she basically applies to much pressure and cracks his spine, killing him. She basically holds him responsible for their parents death and feels like he's too much of a burden (which is portrayed as a bad thing.)
My concern was, if she could supposedly be redeemed after this.
Edited by SmokingBun on Apr 11th 2019 at 6:50:39 AM
One or two twists in a story is fine, Shyamlan-esque even. But please don't turn the poor thing into a Twizzler!I think a common tool that people use in writing a redemption arc is by rationalising the act that they need to be redeemed from, which I think is a mistake and, more often than not, cheapens the "redemption".
Let's say you're trying to redeem a murderer by making the victim an asshole, then you create an impression that the murder is "justified", and—well—the character doesn't really need a redemption if they didn't do anything "wrong" in the first place.
As for whether or not any character is "redeemable" depends on how well-executed the redemption arc is. For me it needs: 1) an acknowledgement of past wrongdoing, 2) logical consequences of said wrongdoing (including legal ramifications if necessary), 3) a conscious attempt to be a better person and/or make-up for the damages done to other people.
Simply giving the character a sob-story to justify their bad decisions/actions, then giving them a Trauma Conga Line doesn't make a good character arc.
I can tell you this: just because your characters are not good guys doesn't mean they can't be protagonists.
I have protagonists who are convicted criminals. As long as your characters are compelling and feasible, good guys and bad guys don't matter. Much. True, my antagonist borders on Satan in his evil, but I can manage.
What I'm questioning is the apparent sequence of events here. Character A activates an unknown power, knocks out some guys and seemingly kills another. Yet it turns out later than Character B had killed him instead, in what had to have been a fairly quick sequence of events. Like, was this just a split second decision that somehow no one else was able to see? Because I feel like there would have been a lot of witnesses to this as opposed to the two of them being alone for at least a few minutes in order for the ambiguity you want about who the guilty party is at first.
I'm not saying don't do it; I'm saying you should probably work out the sequences of events so it actually makes sense that Sam would come off as at fault until the truth is revealed. Also... why? Like, is there supposed to be a lead up to this for the reader? Edit: oh no there isn't. They just... literally meet and recognize each other. Which means you REALLY do need to rework the sequence of events. Going from "oh my god you're alive" to "I must murder this brother I literally just met" seems like very poor pacing.
(Also, with names like Sam Juliet why are you setting this in India, and apparently basing it on Indian culture? If you're going to do that you should probably do some research and give them Indian names. Otherwise, well, it's not like obsession with masculinity doesn't exist in English speaking countries. The way you worded it makes it sound like you're trying to justify the reasoning by the country, which seems like a poor way to make that choice.)
Edited by AceofSpades on Apr 24th 2019 at 1:28:26 PM

This is that cyborg story again and I wanted to discuss a couple of plot points. In short, it's about two teen girls who get trained to become cyborg soldiers. Let's call them Juliet and Sam, they become close friends while at Boot Camp and Juliet talks about how she misses her brother even though he's annoying and a crybaby. Sam & Juliet are protagonist and deuteragonist/antagonist.
It's established that Juliet blames her brother for a car accident that killed their parents and resulted in them ending up in an orphanage where both were subject to bullying. To make matters worse, the brother's naivete and innocence often got both in trouble with the folks running the orphanage who just look for excuses to punish the kids. Essentially Juliet blames her misery on her brother whose biggest crime is being just kind of a dim bulb.
Sam & Juliet get trained, becoming colder in demeanor and getting comfortable with killing (being told they were doing it for their country helped). Sam escapes but Juliet does not, Juliet is told to hunt down her friend.
Sam ends up in the care of a kindly police officer and gets sent to the same orphanage where Juliet and her brother were (there is a plot reason for how this happens). Naturally Juliet tracks her down and a fight ensues.
Here' the interesting bit. The fight is stopped by the brother who recognizes his sister and they have an awkward hug moment with Juliet trying to register what's happening (basically having been in an angry frenzy up to this point). She recalls all the good and bad times she had with her brother and ponders her feelings about him.
Sam by accident activates her secret weapon (think lightning arcs shooting out of her body) and shocks Juliet, her brother and some mercenaries. The mercs don't die but end up unconscious. Juliet's cyborg body on the other seems to malfunction and her arms crush her brother to death. She's left as a crying mess over her brother's dead body.
Later Juliet is captured by Sam and others helping Sam. Juliet blames Sam for her brother's death and while initially Sam is deeply apologetic, she tests an ugly thought she had. She shocks Juliet and discovers her secret lightning weapon doesn't harm Juliet in any way, there was no malfunction and Juliet killed her brother on purpose.
Juliet becomes distraught and deny's her own actions, trying to justify herself by saying he was weak and pathetic, that she lives in the real world and someone like her brother wouldn't survive two minutes. She's upset that she did it but was overcome by all the bad and could barely remember any of the good.
Now my concern is, does all this make the character irredeemable? Would you say Juliet crossed a significant moral horizon from where there was no coming back? Should I make the brother a "worse" person? Should the brother's death be an accident?
Note that when Juliet does it, she's in a very bad place emotionally and mentally, the brutal training she went through screwed her up and she's not a normal kid anymore. There's a contrast where Sam desperately tries to become a normal kid again while Juliet moves further and further away from that.
Juliet isn't supposed to have Superman like morals but I wanted her to be in the ballpark of someone like The Punisher, who does terrible things to terrible people and is considered a hero because the folks he kills are far far worse.
One or two twists in a story is fine, Shyamlan-esque even. But please don't turn the poor thing into a Twizzler!