Okay so today will be a rambling essay about grace, redemption arcs, and portraying abuse stories well. So get ready for that. But seriously, if you've been abused, consider thinking before reading so as not to bring back triggers.

To understand why I like redemption arcs, you have to take a trip back in time to my younger life, from around age 4-14. I have symptoms of Type 2 bipolar (most likely caused by Lyme disease) that I am now medicated for, but for many years I wasn't. Bipolar is a mental illness that basically causes you to be extremely (and I mean EXTREMELY) moody. Your mood rotates on a vicious cycle mostly between depression and terrible rage most of the time, with short periods of euphoria here and there. The rage can be so intense that many unmedicated/untreated bipolar patients end up being abusive to their families in a verbal, emotional, and sometimes physical way.

I was one of those people. Now I know you might be saying that kids can't be abusive. That's false. My behavior was the textbook image of what an abuser looks like. I beat up my siblings often for no good reason, and I called them and my dad horrible names, and this behavior all continued throughout most of my life up until only about two years ago. The worst part was that I was never sorry for any of it. I thought I was totally justified. Sure, I said the words "I'm sorry", but I never meant them. I would always say them to avoid getting in bigger trouble or because I was lonely and wanted the people I thought I loved to treat me like I hadn't done anything wrong.

(I started reading the Bible seriously and praying in 9th grade and I swear, it felt like a switch turned on in my head, and I was stricken with a crazy grief over what I'd done. I've begun mending my relationship with my family, but it's been a long road, and I still have miles to walk. But God is so good and He will get me there.)

I have always loved two things: complex villains and redemption arcs. But most of the redemption arcs I've seen are for people who mess up in little ways. People who thieved lunch money, people who were forced to do bad things, people who were minions or underlings. I always related to the worst of the worst, but those people never got redeemed in anything I read or watched. This impacted me very negatively, to the point where I just decided not to change because "if they died a bitter person, I probably will too". I wanted redemption arcs for terrible people. Truly terrible people, like Shadow Weaver, Apostle Paul, Tom Stranger, David Wood, those sorts. I wanted to see more of these redemption arcs in media. But they never came. And why is that?

I think that our issue is that as a society, we really aren't as gracious as we claim. Sure, we might spout platitudes like "Be nice because you never know what someone's going through", but that only applies to the ones who aren't that bad. Most people would be appalled at the idea that, for example, a rapist is actually a person with his own story. But sometimes rapists were raped themselves and they become their abusers because of the trauma. Other times, people become emotionally abusive because of a mental illness, like I was. But society never looks at those people. Those people are too messed up to have their own stories, to be people. There's no way they are capable of anything besides evil if we show them grace. That is why we don't get more redemption arcs for truly awful people. That is why they are portrayed as 2D mustache-twirlers or outright evil.

I think that we need to have a real revolution of grace in society, where we recognize the above. Not everyone deserves redemption, but everyone deserves the chance to realize what they've done wrong and fix it - whether that be through just stopping, getting therapy, reversing a dark spell-- *puts away my She-Ra notes*. With that in mind, we can accurately portray more round villains who do the unforgivable and learn to grow from it and be redeemed. I'm going to leave the story of Tom Stranger down here, because it's a super powerful testimony of grace that we need to see more of in fiction.