I agree with you 100%. They say “emotional, vulnerable are so rare in fiction media” but then will use negative, sexist terms to describe a man whenever he’s in pain. I’m guessing the reason they emphasize the prefix “man” in the word “manpain” is because it involves a male character being hurt over a female character and they think she’s only being used as a plot device for his pain, but like, that’s still a crappy word to use??? and you’re still in a way attacking him for being vulnerable? Also, what’s wrong with a man being hurt for a woman he loves (romantically, platonically or family-wise)? Isn’t that what they want? To have the male characters care deeply about the female characters? These people confuse me on a daily basis because I don’t know what they actually want. They constantly contradict themselves with many of their arguments and don’t realize the hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance and contradiction that comes out of their own mouths, or in this case, their typing fingers. The argument about morally grey characters not deserving redemption and even villains themselves is such bullshit. Do they know the background of that character? do they know if the character has actually been manipulated? plenty of reasons for a redemption arc could be listed but that redemption arc has to be earned through the actions of the character themselves, whether it is through atonement or an act of good.
Take Darth Vader for example, for 6 years he was presented as this figure of pure, magnified evil. You didn’t know who was behind that mask, he was tall, scary, brutal and menacing. He spoke in a deep, commanding and quite robotic, monotone voice (@ you haters who shat on Hayden for mimicking James Earl Jones’s Vader enunciation and diction in many scenes) devoid of any emotion other than coldness and anger. He was hid behind an all black suit and was considered to be more machine than man. The audience gets to The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, Luke is now older and a solidified member of the Rebel Alliance but he still has a long way to go in regards to his handling of emotions, impulsive nature, recklessnes, wisdom and Jedi teaching. He disobeys Yoda and abandons his training because he saw a vision of his friends dying, although he is told the future in the visions is always uncertain and can’t come to fruition, he still refuses to listen to both Obi-Wan and Yoda and risks his own safety to save his friends. He fights Vader in a long, testing lightsaber duel, loses his hand and it’s revealed to him by Vader himself (who out of all of the figures in Luke’s life is the only who didn’t lie to him but whatever I’m not going there rn 😶) that he is his son, his flesh and blood. Now, how could Luke Skywalker, the main symbol of hope, the representation of light and goodness in the galaxy, the posterboy of Star Wars, the everyman of the saga, the most important character in all of Star Wars be related to a man as heartless, as cold and as evil as Vader? On top of Leia, another symbol of hope and strength in the saga, being revealed to be his daughter, we would have never thought of neither of these to be Vader’s children, but then we get to Return of the Jedi, a year has passed since the tumultous events of TESB and the uncertain, quite worrying future it left for our two protagonists Luke and Leia after having dealt with and lost a lot in that movie. Now Luke is wiser, more serene and collected that he was in the previous two movies and it really highlighted how much Luke had grown since. He’s put in a difficult position because he is told by his two mentors that he has to kill Vader because they both deemed Anakin to be gone forever and that there was nothing in the galaxy to bring him up, but what they didn’t understand is that Luke was his own son and even with all the evil Vader did, he just couldn’t bring himself to murder his own father in cold blood to save the galaxy. It really deconstructed the theme of revenge shown throughout cinema and how heroes are really just like us, yes they are exceptional, yes they have super powers but when it comes to emotions, when it comes to their desires, to their feelings, to even some of their problems, they are like us, that’s why we relate to so many of them. Luke refused to kill his father because he believed to be goodness somewhere deep inside of his already torn, blackened soul. Nobody could have thought that Vader would have ever done something good in his life, but he did, not even because he regretted what he put the galaxy through for 23 years, but because the love he had for his son was so deep it was enough to bring him back to the light. It took Palpatine electrocuting Luke to make Anakin really embrace the genuine love he had for his son, to make Anakin realize he still had goodness in him, to make him finally betray Palpatine after the years of abuse, gaslighting and manipulation he put him through. It sparked the light inside of him that was already flickering and take over him again. To some, it might have seem like a small, insignificant gesture because it didn’t make up for all the years of torture and destruction he brought to the galaxy, but his love for his son was strong enough to bring him back. I wouldn’t call it a redemption “arc” but it didn’t need to be that way because I think Vader saving his son, thus saving the galaxy from the reign of the Emperor that had finally come to its end was perfect the way it was written and I wouldn’t do anything to change it. I got carried away by my Star Wars so this got so unnecessarily long, but I think I made my point LOL But yeah, if a character earns a redemption arc then why should there be a problem even if they did some bad stuff? Humans are much more complex and layered than people think and characters in most cases reflect that about our nature.
