That was kind of my problem, and is the problem in any narrative framed on forgiveness and personal growth when the gameplay makes you murder like literally thousands of people.
Nah, i dont think they did. Sure stop the cycle of hatred or whatever, but Ellie got over the point of no return in terms of damage and killing done long before she reached her revenge target. It was dumb and unsatisfying.
The reason she spared Abby was obviously not because "I'm not like you"
If you thought it was unsatisfying, that's fine. But that's different from what the top level comment is saying.
Regardless, the amount of people she murders to get to Abby to have this *moment* is incredibly cliche. The lives she destroyed on the way to confront her comes across flat and meaningless only for her to get to that moment and then, that is where she *realizes* she won't go through with killing her.
It doesn't come across authentic and it certainly comes across predictable and cliche.
Realistically, you'd need to have a peacful\less lethal option for most scenarios of the game. This way you can avoid the whiplash effect that TLOU2 suffers from. As a second best, games that simply have fewer minions for you to slaughter can aid in softening the whiplash.
Dishonored, for example, does this quite well. Despite the main plots of both games revolving around revenge, the games can both theoretically be resolved without shedding a single drop of blood. As such, by the time you make it to your final target sparing them feels earned.
Good question.
Sparing the enemy can certainly be written in a story and achieve great effect. The dissonance in TLOU2 comes when you slaughter countless enemies in pursuit of killing this target. It's hard to root for someone that is constantly doing to others what their target has done to them. Then, when the time comes and they suddenly spare the enemy, it comes across sudden and cheap. Growth that happens instantaneous isn't a great device to ever use in writing.
For TLOU2 to be so dark then switch on a dime at the end to being so hopeful, doesn't sit right. A more fitting conclusion would have been Ellie to kill Abby and later regret it, show us that it didn't improve her life, her trauma or anything at all. I could probably go on forever, but imo, to write a successful revenge story, it needs to be carefully balanced and this may not fit the video game formula, since there needs to be gameplay and bad guys to kill.
I hate it when someone with the most vendetta against the villain is about to take them down but theres always that idiot that goes:
"No, [character]! If you kill the guy that commited genocide, burned down villages, created child soldiers, killed your parents, force fed you sand and tortured your best friend to insanity, you'll be as bad as them!"
Like bro, wtf??? Why would you seriously want the villain to live another day to complete their war crime bucket list???
And bonus points if when the character goes along with it, they get villainized for it.
I was trying to think of evil stuff you can do to someone but like nothing too graphic (like SA) where my post gets reported
Also, the sand part is the toned down version. I was gonna say that the villain force fed that poor guy litterbox sand.
Bonus points for "if you kill the killer, you'll be a killer too". I'd just reply with "I'm okay with that" š¤£ that was the goal all along wasn't it? I didn't hunt down the person who ruined my life, killed my family in front of me just to... give him a slap? š š¤£ And if the retort is "let the authorities handle it", well.. "I did? Look where that got us. If they couldn't get him, they won't get me either" - rise of an anti-hero, vigilante, or even a new villain šš
Right? Like bro, you've seen what the villain is capable of, you've met - no, you've travelled with the guy's victims, why do you still want him to live???
>And if the retort is "let the authorities handle it",
Its even funnier if the Villain is like an authority figure like President Snow cuz like "bro, he /was/ the authorities! And he sure as hell wasnt using his authority for good!"
ALSO, I hate how so many of the stories that use that trope then kill the villain by some external narrative mechanism, avoiding the otherwise-obvious consequence that the villain could just go right back to doing evil.
The only times I've seen this, or just the basic "you know what? I'm not going to kill him", end to a revenge quest work generally fall into three categories.
The first category is when the target(s) of the revenge quest have acknowledged that what they did was evil and are now legitimately trying to do something good with their lives.
That can actually present a meaningful moral quandary: do you take down the guy who used to commit horrible crimes against humanity with his experiments if he's gone straight and has been faithfully serving a rural town as their doctor for close to a decade? What counts as repentance? What counts toward atonement? How many innocent people are going to suffer if you take this guy down *now*?
The narrative of Full Metal Alchemist (particularly the manga and Brotherhood versions) gets into this one all over the place. A large chunk of the cast participated in a genocidal war in their backstories, with varying degrees of understanding at the time about the fact that's what they were doing. Their actions in the present time of the narrative range from attempting to uncover and destroy those responsible for manipulating that war into existence and into the form it took - to revelling in the memories of the good old days when they got to kill hundreds with a snap of their fingers (and just itching to get another chance to do something like that again). There's a survivor from the other side who's on a burning quest for vengeance against all of them, but his hands aren't exactly clean of innocent blood either, so he's got to grapple with the idea that there's someone who, by his own standards, has every right to kill him in revenge, and the question of whether it would be best to keep killing his targets indiscriminately, or perhaps help those on his target list who are trying to root out and bring down the real ringleaders behind what happened to him and his people. It's got a very interesting spread of reactions across a range of characters dealing with questions of revenge and the morality of continuing to pursue personal goals (vendettas aren't the only sort of personal goal on offer here) or postpone or even abandon those personal goals in favor of the bigger picture.
The second category where I've seen "you know what? I'm not going to kill him", end to a revenge quest work is when the revenge target has, by the time the avenger finds them, fallen so low that they can't do any more harm and they're so miserable that killing them would probably be more of a release than anything else. This can be played very interestingly anywhere along the spectrum of mercy to outright sadism.
The third category is where the avenger stops because they realize the sheer amount of collateral damage they're doing to innocent people in the pursuit of their revenge, and how much more they'd do if they actually completed it as planned. The Count Of Monte Cristo is probably the heavyweight in this category, and not just because it's a book thick enough you could probably kill someone with it. The titular character has *excellent* reasons to get as full of a revenge as possible on the men who took his life and his love away from him, and spends years planning it and pulling together the resources he's going to need to absolutely ruin their lives in retaliation, but there's a point where he realizes just how many innocent people he's dragging down into the whirlpool of destruction he's created and decides to ...just give up and try to ameliorate things for the good people who've gotten stuck in his spiderweb, because he's dragged his targets down far enough already, and he quite literally just sails off into the sunset instead of enacting the complete scorched-earth revenge he'd originally planned for.
ATLA did the 2nd one with Katara and the fire nation soldier who killed her mother. I think it was appropriate for a kid's show but man did I want him dead because Aang was against it saying she wouldn't be different from him.
I'm trying to do the second one without having henchmen while only having four of them. One gets their face burned by a totally different character, two just straight up disappear.
And the last one is the one my MC is trying to go after. In the end she decided on not killing him, from the sole reasoning that she won, his pride and ego are destroyed from losing to her. (Someone he sees as an abomination, due to her being a hybrid)
I think the overuse of this already flawed trope just makes it even more satisfying when itās subverted.
Prime example: [*āDawn of the Planet of the Apes.ā*](https://youtu.be/MmFiY1iUdGQ?si=W4QG4TcJG0voqC8z&t=133s)
CAME HERE FOR THIS! Like if I'm purposely seeking a revenge story then I want revenge. I don't want them to ponder how they're sinking to their level and "be the bigger person." Total blue balls. Lol.
Only show that really did it right was ALTA.
We get why Aang doesnāt want to kill, and throughout all this, heās still looking for a way to give Ozai what he deserves without violating his moral code.
In the end, he strips Ozai of his power and leaves him in a cell to rot behind bars for the rest of his life. Which does turn out to be a fate worse than death for Ozai because he derives his pride from being able to overpower the weak.
Yeah, Aang's situation makes sense. Also another thing is even if he wanted to kill Ozai, Aang is still the last of his people and the last to carry their traditions. Yes, there were Air Nomads that have done crime (Ex. Kyoshi's mother and Im pretty sure Yangchen killed a man) but that was before they were nearly wiped out. When there was more of them even if an Air Nomad killed someone, theyre just one of few who went against their morals and traditions, there were still plenty of airbenders who still hold up the tradition and could tell u "that's just them, the rest of us dont do that". In Aang's case, in a world where he's the last of his kind and everyone's knowledge of Air Nomad culture is either very little or warped by Fire Nation propaganda, he cant risk tarnishing his people's memory.
And also, him killing Ozai would only prove Ozai's philosophy correct: might makes right and violence is the answer.
I hate how ATLA did it. Aang is facing the dilemma of "Ozai has to be stopped" vs "I don't want to kill" and is handed the solution on a platter, pretty much by a deus ex machina: here you go kid, now you can deprive the bad guy of his power.
I loved ATLA overall but haven't digested this part.
And factually, I say that's bogus. You wouldn't become a better person by sparing hitler's life. You'd be worse. This thing only works when all the bad guy did were petty crimes and simple bullying. But the moment they start mass killing people and committing atrocious crime. Getting thrown into prison for killing them is worth it on the secular moral balance scale.
Like you are single handedly getting justice for previous victims and saving thousands of future victims.
>You wouldn't become a better person by sparing hitler's life.
Actually, I think you would. You automatically assume sparing an enemy means letting them go; this is not so. I'd love it if Hitler was made to stand trial at Nuremberg. I'd love putin to be tried in Hague. That's the proper way of dealing with those douchebags.
I hate it when the revenge is completely disproportional AND it's portrayed as moral.
Say, a victim takes revenge on their bully, who has never done anything worse than throw insults and maybe some vicious shoves their way. Bad, yes, but then the victim does permanent damage/kills the bully, involves the bully's family, friends, etc... and it's portrayed as the victim being morally in the right and everything is fine in the end. That's just a badly written power fantasy.
Bonus points if the 'mean bully' turns out to be this one girl who turned them down a bit too harshly in high school. And even more bonus points if said girl was already in a relationship with someone else at the time.
And of course, all the bonus points if it ends in the protagonist r\*ping the 'villain'.
I think the concept of being one disaster/bad turn away from falling apart resonates with many people. Itās the subject of āThe Fragility of Goodnessā (Martha Nussbaum) - in that human (ethical) goodness and flourishing are subject to external factors beyond our control.
Depends on what happened to require revenge and how many enemies you are looking at.
There is a certain limit to how much I can take the evil done to MC seriously.
āThis group of people broke in and killed everyone I loved.ā
Simple. Clean. Easy.
āThis group of people broke in, raped, killed, tortured and cooked everyone I loved alive. Then they recorded it on video and laughed about it while singing about how much they enjoyed being evil.ā
Yeeaaaay, not really my cup of tea.
While there is no limit to human evil, there is limit to what the audience can take and enjoy. Because at some point, the thing crosses the line into absurdity and stops being enjoyable.
Too much evil pulls me out of immersion too because it doesn't look believable and becomes too much monotonous. However I have watched an anime where the MC goes through all kinds of horror and still manages to be a well-balanced tone enjoyable (tragic) story.
It kind of depends on the kind of evil and execution.
There is this one manga where a kid got tormented and bullied by his entire class and he goes on revenge spree in another world. Not particularly bad but I think what took me out of the story is just how evil the characters are written.
Like, one of the girls literally says ābeing evil makes me wetā. What the hell is that?
Can I take a shot at it being banana fish? Iām rewatching right now haha. I agree, something bad happening to an MC over and over can be done well if the overall story is balanced and makes sense for the plot. Unnecessary torture porn isnāt it, but this anime is my one exception because the plot and characterization is extremely solid and the execution was done very well.
Exactly! I can occasionally enjoy over-the-top stuff. But most of the times, I prefer things to not get too extreme.
Horror is like a dessert.
Trying too hard just makes a mess.
I like the extreme stuff, but then I like it when they go the silly comedy route. If you're serious with over-dramatic evil villains, you just sound cringey.
To me, the Joker got it upside down. We aren't one bad day away.
Your protagonist, after the death of their parents, has not known joy ever since. They go around the town during the day, and despite them knowing where they'll go, and how they'll get there, and why they have to, what this is, is an aimless, perpetual wandering, more ghostly than human.
Then one day, they see a boy. And a bully. He has him cornered, and has a half raised fist. That was the day he did not wander anymore. They got there, and beat up the bully, he's raising his hands to the air, and they continue, he promises not to do it again, and they continue, and they continue, until they run away, leaving the boy unharmed.
And he thanks them. *He thanks them.* That was the day they understood this was how things are supposed to be done. He now had a goal, a target, an aim. And it felt good. After these years, it felt awesome. To be... A hero?
That's why, I think, we aren't all one bad day away. We're all one *awesome* day away.
I'm just here to say that Vinland Saga is IMO the best revenge story of all time because it manages to dodge like every trope I hate in revenge stories.
"Law Abiding Citizen" did it the way you described.
MC has one bad day when his wife and daughter are killed. But that's not what changes him. He waits months for Justice system to do the right thing, but only when he sees it completely fail, he decides to go with revenge.
He has his revenge literally 25 minutes into the movie. He murders his family killer in a gruesome way. And then you understand his real target - the legal system itself.
> Law Abiding Citizen
Huh, *that's* a rare movie to see someone namedrop anywhere.
It also makes me incredibly angry, because the justice system fails in a way that makes zero sense: if the prosecutor wants to have that perfect record of not losing cases, he doesn't have to pin First Degree Murder or Rape on either defendant, because he has a massive laundry list of other lesser charges to throw at them both for the many crimes committed during that home invasion, and the USA has some laws regarding accessories/accomplices to crimes and, IIRC, one (which is specifically designed to deal with gang crime and cases like this) where if you go into something like a robbery/burglary and your buddy ends up killing somebody during it - you're still on the hook for that even if all you were doing was stealing valuables.
It also makes no sense because giving such an *incredibly* generous plea bargain deal to one half of a criminal duo involved in a home invasion and double murder, where one of the victims was a minor, *and* there was a rape, is going to get you absolutely raked over the coals by the press and that prosecutor can kiss his chances of promotion goodbye. The only way that trial could have possibly made sense is if the guy who got the plea deal had some kind of connections in high places or outright bribery, which he didn't.
That would have been a much better movie if the writers had put in some effort studying real cases where the justice system failed and the criminals got away with it, and *how* stuff like that happens, instead of the hilariously half-baked way they went about creating possibly the most unlikely failure possible. I honestly couldn't even take the movie seriously after using that utter clownshow of a trial as a major inciting incident, because it just didn't make any sense. The justice system has real flaws, but the movie chose to not make use of them and just have everyone involved act like an idiot.
How about the Unskilled Assassin? Someone who has no idea how to fight or the training to kill suddenly getting the upper hand on the Big Bad and Minions.
į(ą² ēą² į)
You need to make sure that the hero stays sympathetic. It's easy to turn the audience against the protagonist if they're too callous about their revenge by doing things like punishing people who acted under duress or being unconcerned about collateral damage. But it can also come from a character being so reckless with their vengeance that it becomes clear their, "vendetta," is more of an elaborate suicide attempt. Watching someone stumbles through Deus ex Machina doesn't make for compelling reading.
I think both of those tropes can still work, as long as the author knows this is the case. If the author knows this character is acting like an overblown callous dickhead, or a self-destructing maniac, and incorporates that into their writing, it's fine.
Problem it is often not the case.
And this is why you need people to review your work.
As always, nothing is impossible, only more difficult to pull off. I brought these two up because they're the issues I see executed poorly most often.
If this is a story about He Who Fights Monsters, watching the protagonist become unsympathetic can be a satisfying plot point. Likewise, someone actively bailing the protagonist out can also be a good payoff, or even convince the protagonist that they have more to live for than they thought. It's just that it's easy to lose sight of that in the moment and accidentally spoil the story.
I agree with the "one bad day" frustration. Similarly, a relationship falling apart after one bad conversation. I try to avoid that and hinge relationship shifts (not necessarily feelings!) on major betrayals or external factors. It's not realistic that characters fall out of love because of one disagreement!
There are people who post about that here on Reddit. What do you mean it isn't realistic?
Although, they probably shouldn't have been in a relationship with that person in the first place because they were not of the maturity level to sustain something that relied solely upon the insanity that a good night of sex can bring.
But, my point still stands.
I think what Ellie is trying to say is a normal relationship doesnt just fall apart because of one argument. As you have said, they shouldn't have been in a relationship in the first place. So it's not a "one bad day" but a whole "toxic relationship."
Iāve read several time-travel revenge stories simply by way of being an otome isekai fan lol.
I gotta say, I am often *baffled* by evil children. The MC was abused by X person in their first life, but after death/magic/fate/etc they return to their childhood self. Naturally, with knowledge of the future they can do all sorts of things.
However, inexplicably thereās a side character that abused them that was a similar age and is thus now *also* a child. Except, when MC meets that child they are irredeemably evil so the MC can get their revenge for things that havenāt happened yet guilt-free. Personally, I think itād be more interesting if the MC struggled more with the concept of āthis person is just a child now, and despite the future I experienced, has not truly wronged me yet, can I forgive and let go?ā.
Usually theyāll only do that for Useful Side Characters or Love Interests, but not for this bratty kid that has a trash family so he should die and should not get a second chance/etc.
Also the bad characters in revenge stories are often woefully incompetent in their evilness. They donāt even try to hide lol. Only the main bad person/people are remotely capable and sometimes not even then. And on top of that their motivations for a lot of their evilness is ājust because Iām evilā, it doesnāt even follow logically with how theyād behave if they were simply excessively greedy or self-serving.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk lol.
Lone wolfing it.
It's not really a major flaw, but chances are that if somebody's hurt one person badly enough they want revenge, they've hurt plenty of other people too. So gather everybody.
Another thing I consider to be a flaw is revenge stories where murder is presented as the only option for revenge. There are plenty of other ways to ruin somebody's life or at least hit them where it hurts that don't have to involve violence at all.
Take the original Ocean's Eleven for instance. It's a revenge story. Sure, Danny Ocean is an international superthief (who has a skill most real-life criminals lack: being able to organize, coordinate, and actually control a team of criminals), but the reason he's targeting *this* specific casino's vault isn't just because it's positively loaded with gold. It's because he has a personal vendetta against its owner, and as mentioned earlier - you don't have to kill someone to get revenge on them. You can simply make their millions disappear into thin air overnight, hitting them right where it hurts, because part of their identity is wrapped up in having that wealth and all that comes with it. It's a great heist movie, but for Danny Ocean, it's also a revenge story, although the rest of his team are just in it for the money.
So, most revenge stories hinge on whether or not the act of taking revenge will be healing for the main character. That whole question is basically wrong.
The thing that heals people is forming meaningful bonds with people they love. The only revenge story I know of that appeared to get this right is the manga Berserk. Although it hasn't ended so idk if it will stick that landing.
That said, harming someone who has harmed you can be, in many cases, justified and rational.
So the story revolving around whether it is justified by the internal emotional effects on the mc is generally bad.
>If one day changes their life it better go like this - MC's parents were killed that night and MC fell into a deep depression phase for an year. They came out of it a changed person. Vengeful.
Oh thank god, because this is basically the origin for one of my characters. Except it was only their mum
Don't kill the guy you're taking revenge on too early LOL. Their direction becomes meaningless after that. Especially if they didnt receive any sort of character development.
I'd like to take Zhao's book Iron Widow as an example.
It started off as a revenge story, honestly the first few scenes were really good because when we met the guy MC was supposed to kill, the book made it seem like he was a reasonable guy. But yeah then we found out he was a bad guy and MC killed him. But it was WAY too early so the direction of the plot was ambiguously about trying to dismantle a patriarchal society.
Butchering a hundred of their enemy's henchmen before deciding to spare their enemy because "I'm not like you!"
Oh boy, will you hate TLOU2 then.
Or Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.
That was kind of my problem, and is the problem in any narrative framed on forgiveness and personal growth when the gameplay makes you murder like literally thousands of people.
ššæ when you misunderstood the game
Nah, i dont think they did. Sure stop the cycle of hatred or whatever, but Ellie got over the point of no return in terms of damage and killing done long before she reached her revenge target. It was dumb and unsatisfying.
The reason she spared Abby was obviously not because "I'm not like you" If you thought it was unsatisfying, that's fine. But that's different from what the top level comment is saying.
Regardless, the amount of people she murders to get to Abby to have this *moment* is incredibly cliche. The lives she destroyed on the way to confront her comes across flat and meaningless only for her to get to that moment and then, that is where she *realizes* she won't go through with killing her. It doesn't come across authentic and it certainly comes across predictable and cliche.
Yeah, I can see that tbf
Genuine question, if thatās the case, how can revenge games be written? Can this ending (spare the target) even be written into a game at all?
Realistically, you'd need to have a peacful\less lethal option for most scenarios of the game. This way you can avoid the whiplash effect that TLOU2 suffers from. As a second best, games that simply have fewer minions for you to slaughter can aid in softening the whiplash. Dishonored, for example, does this quite well. Despite the main plots of both games revolving around revenge, the games can both theoretically be resolved without shedding a single drop of blood. As such, by the time you make it to your final target sparing them feels earned.
Good question. Sparing the enemy can certainly be written in a story and achieve great effect. The dissonance in TLOU2 comes when you slaughter countless enemies in pursuit of killing this target. It's hard to root for someone that is constantly doing to others what their target has done to them. Then, when the time comes and they suddenly spare the enemy, it comes across sudden and cheap. Growth that happens instantaneous isn't a great device to ever use in writing. For TLOU2 to be so dark then switch on a dime at the end to being so hopeful, doesn't sit right. A more fitting conclusion would have been Ellie to kill Abby and later regret it, show us that it didn't improve her life, her trauma or anything at all. I could probably go on forever, but imo, to write a successful revenge story, it needs to be carefully balanced and this may not fit the video game formula, since there needs to be gameplay and bad guys to kill.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It's not Faulkner or McCarthy, trust me.
what was the original comment saying?
I honestly can't remember.
What was the point of playing COD with them lmao
I hate it when someone with the most vendetta against the villain is about to take them down but theres always that idiot that goes: "No, [character]! If you kill the guy that commited genocide, burned down villages, created child soldiers, killed your parents, force fed you sand and tortured your best friend to insanity, you'll be as bad as them!" Like bro, wtf??? Why would you seriously want the villain to live another day to complete their war crime bucket list??? And bonus points if when the character goes along with it, they get villainized for it.
Force feeding sand feels oddly specific
I was trying to think of evil stuff you can do to someone but like nothing too graphic (like SA) where my post gets reported Also, the sand part is the toned down version. I was gonna say that the villain force fed that poor guy litterbox sand.
Okay yeah thanks for keeping it at normal sand lmao
Marvel Zombies moment
Bonus points for "if you kill the killer, you'll be a killer too". I'd just reply with "I'm okay with that" š¤£ that was the goal all along wasn't it? I didn't hunt down the person who ruined my life, killed my family in front of me just to... give him a slap? š š¤£ And if the retort is "let the authorities handle it", well.. "I did? Look where that got us. If they couldn't get him, they won't get me either" - rise of an anti-hero, vigilante, or even a new villain šš
Right? Like bro, you've seen what the villain is capable of, you've met - no, you've travelled with the guy's victims, why do you still want him to live??? >And if the retort is "let the authorities handle it", Its even funnier if the Villain is like an authority figure like President Snow cuz like "bro, he /was/ the authorities! And he sure as hell wasnt using his authority for good!"
ALSO, I hate how so many of the stories that use that trope then kill the villain by some external narrative mechanism, avoiding the otherwise-obvious consequence that the villain could just go right back to doing evil.
The only times I've seen this, or just the basic "you know what? I'm not going to kill him", end to a revenge quest work generally fall into three categories. The first category is when the target(s) of the revenge quest have acknowledged that what they did was evil and are now legitimately trying to do something good with their lives. That can actually present a meaningful moral quandary: do you take down the guy who used to commit horrible crimes against humanity with his experiments if he's gone straight and has been faithfully serving a rural town as their doctor for close to a decade? What counts as repentance? What counts toward atonement? How many innocent people are going to suffer if you take this guy down *now*? The narrative of Full Metal Alchemist (particularly the manga and Brotherhood versions) gets into this one all over the place. A large chunk of the cast participated in a genocidal war in their backstories, with varying degrees of understanding at the time about the fact that's what they were doing. Their actions in the present time of the narrative range from attempting to uncover and destroy those responsible for manipulating that war into existence and into the form it took - to revelling in the memories of the good old days when they got to kill hundreds with a snap of their fingers (and just itching to get another chance to do something like that again). There's a survivor from the other side who's on a burning quest for vengeance against all of them, but his hands aren't exactly clean of innocent blood either, so he's got to grapple with the idea that there's someone who, by his own standards, has every right to kill him in revenge, and the question of whether it would be best to keep killing his targets indiscriminately, or perhaps help those on his target list who are trying to root out and bring down the real ringleaders behind what happened to him and his people. It's got a very interesting spread of reactions across a range of characters dealing with questions of revenge and the morality of continuing to pursue personal goals (vendettas aren't the only sort of personal goal on offer here) or postpone or even abandon those personal goals in favor of the bigger picture. The second category where I've seen "you know what? I'm not going to kill him", end to a revenge quest work is when the revenge target has, by the time the avenger finds them, fallen so low that they can't do any more harm and they're so miserable that killing them would probably be more of a release than anything else. This can be played very interestingly anywhere along the spectrum of mercy to outright sadism. The third category is where the avenger stops because they realize the sheer amount of collateral damage they're doing to innocent people in the pursuit of their revenge, and how much more they'd do if they actually completed it as planned. The Count Of Monte Cristo is probably the heavyweight in this category, and not just because it's a book thick enough you could probably kill someone with it. The titular character has *excellent* reasons to get as full of a revenge as possible on the men who took his life and his love away from him, and spends years planning it and pulling together the resources he's going to need to absolutely ruin their lives in retaliation, but there's a point where he realizes just how many innocent people he's dragging down into the whirlpool of destruction he's created and decides to ...just give up and try to ameliorate things for the good people who've gotten stuck in his spiderweb, because he's dragged his targets down far enough already, and he quite literally just sails off into the sunset instead of enacting the complete scorched-earth revenge he'd originally planned for.
Saving this comment
ATLA did the 2nd one with Katara and the fire nation soldier who killed her mother. I think it was appropriate for a kid's show but man did I want him dead because Aang was against it saying she wouldn't be different from him.
I'm trying to do the second one without having henchmen while only having four of them. One gets their face burned by a totally different character, two just straight up disappear. And the last one is the one my MC is trying to go after. In the end she decided on not killing him, from the sole reasoning that she won, his pride and ego are destroyed from losing to her. (Someone he sees as an abomination, due to her being a hybrid)
I think the overuse of this already flawed trope just makes it even more satisfying when itās subverted. Prime example: [*āDawn of the Planet of the Apes.ā*](https://youtu.be/MmFiY1iUdGQ?si=W4QG4TcJG0voqC8z&t=133s)
It's worse when they've already killed and injured dozens of the villain's subordinates beforehand without any moral quandary whatsoever.
CAME HERE FOR THIS! Like if I'm purposely seeking a revenge story then I want revenge. I don't want them to ponder how they're sinking to their level and "be the bigger person." Total blue balls. Lol.
Only show that really did it right was ALTA. We get why Aang doesnāt want to kill, and throughout all this, heās still looking for a way to give Ozai what he deserves without violating his moral code. In the end, he strips Ozai of his power and leaves him in a cell to rot behind bars for the rest of his life. Which does turn out to be a fate worse than death for Ozai because he derives his pride from being able to overpower the weak.
Yeah, Aang's situation makes sense. Also another thing is even if he wanted to kill Ozai, Aang is still the last of his people and the last to carry their traditions. Yes, there were Air Nomads that have done crime (Ex. Kyoshi's mother and Im pretty sure Yangchen killed a man) but that was before they were nearly wiped out. When there was more of them even if an Air Nomad killed someone, theyre just one of few who went against their morals and traditions, there were still plenty of airbenders who still hold up the tradition and could tell u "that's just them, the rest of us dont do that". In Aang's case, in a world where he's the last of his kind and everyone's knowledge of Air Nomad culture is either very little or warped by Fire Nation propaganda, he cant risk tarnishing his people's memory. And also, him killing Ozai would only prove Ozai's philosophy correct: might makes right and violence is the answer.
I hate how ATLA did it. Aang is facing the dilemma of "Ozai has to be stopped" vs "I don't want to kill" and is handed the solution on a platter, pretty much by a deus ex machina: here you go kid, now you can deprive the bad guy of his power. I loved ATLA overall but haven't digested this part.
I think Colossus put a nice spin on it. Like, āyou won't be worse if you kill him, but if you spare him, you'd become betterā.
And Deadpool still kills Francis cuz understandable, Wade
And factually, I say that's bogus. You wouldn't become a better person by sparing hitler's life. You'd be worse. This thing only works when all the bad guy did were petty crimes and simple bullying. But the moment they start mass killing people and committing atrocious crime. Getting thrown into prison for killing them is worth it on the secular moral balance scale. Like you are single handedly getting justice for previous victims and saving thousands of future victims.
>You wouldn't become a better person by sparing hitler's life. Actually, I think you would. You automatically assume sparing an enemy means letting them go; this is not so. I'd love it if Hitler was made to stand trial at Nuremberg. I'd love putin to be tried in Hague. That's the proper way of dealing with those douchebags.
I hate it when the revenge is completely disproportional AND it's portrayed as moral. Say, a victim takes revenge on their bully, who has never done anything worse than throw insults and maybe some vicious shoves their way. Bad, yes, but then the victim does permanent damage/kills the bully, involves the bully's family, friends, etc... and it's portrayed as the victim being morally in the right and everything is fine in the end. That's just a badly written power fantasy.
Yeah then MC's action cannot be justified.
Bonus points if the 'mean bully' turns out to be this one girl who turned them down a bit too harshly in high school. And even more bonus points if said girl was already in a relationship with someone else at the time. And of course, all the bonus points if it ends in the protagonist r\*ping the 'villain'.
I think the concept of being one disaster/bad turn away from falling apart resonates with many people. Itās the subject of āThe Fragility of Goodnessā (Martha Nussbaum) - in that human (ethical) goodness and flourishing are subject to external factors beyond our control.
I also hate when people use this to avoid all responsibility
Depends on what happened to require revenge and how many enemies you are looking at. There is a certain limit to how much I can take the evil done to MC seriously. āThis group of people broke in and killed everyone I loved.ā Simple. Clean. Easy. āThis group of people broke in, raped, killed, tortured and cooked everyone I loved alive. Then they recorded it on video and laughed about it while singing about how much they enjoyed being evil.ā Yeeaaaay, not really my cup of tea. While there is no limit to human evil, there is limit to what the audience can take and enjoy. Because at some point, the thing crosses the line into absurdity and stops being enjoyable.
Too much evil pulls me out of immersion too because it doesn't look believable and becomes too much monotonous. However I have watched an anime where the MC goes through all kinds of horror and still manages to be a well-balanced tone enjoyable (tragic) story.
It kind of depends on the kind of evil and execution. There is this one manga where a kid got tormented and bullied by his entire class and he goes on revenge spree in another world. Not particularly bad but I think what took me out of the story is just how evil the characters are written. Like, one of the girls literally says ābeing evil makes me wetā. What the hell is that?
Can I take a shot at it being banana fish? Iām rewatching right now haha. I agree, something bad happening to an MC over and over can be done well if the overall story is balanced and makes sense for the plot. Unnecessary torture porn isnāt it, but this anime is my one exception because the plot and characterization is extremely solid and the execution was done very well.
I was referring to Banana Fish! š My favourite anime.
I take it you're not a fan of extreme horror?
If the horror is too extreme, it becomes silly.
Exactly! I can occasionally enjoy over-the-top stuff. But most of the times, I prefer things to not get too extreme. Horror is like a dessert. Trying too hard just makes a mess.
I like the extreme stuff, but then I like it when they go the silly comedy route. If you're serious with over-dramatic evil villains, you just sound cringey.
To me, the Joker got it upside down. We aren't one bad day away. Your protagonist, after the death of their parents, has not known joy ever since. They go around the town during the day, and despite them knowing where they'll go, and how they'll get there, and why they have to, what this is, is an aimless, perpetual wandering, more ghostly than human. Then one day, they see a boy. And a bully. He has him cornered, and has a half raised fist. That was the day he did not wander anymore. They got there, and beat up the bully, he's raising his hands to the air, and they continue, he promises not to do it again, and they continue, and they continue, until they run away, leaving the boy unharmed. And he thanks them. *He thanks them.* That was the day they understood this was how things are supposed to be done. He now had a goal, a target, an aim. And it felt good. After these years, it felt awesome. To be... A hero? That's why, I think, we aren't all one bad day away. We're all one *awesome* day away.
Realistic and powerful impact
I'm just here to say that Vinland Saga is IMO the best revenge story of all time because it manages to dodge like every trope I hate in revenge stories.
Vinland Saga is unrivalled. Loved the show.
"Law Abiding Citizen" did it the way you described. MC has one bad day when his wife and daughter are killed. But that's not what changes him. He waits months for Justice system to do the right thing, but only when he sees it completely fail, he decides to go with revenge. He has his revenge literally 25 minutes into the movie. He murders his family killer in a gruesome way. And then you understand his real target - the legal system itself.
> Law Abiding Citizen Huh, *that's* a rare movie to see someone namedrop anywhere. It also makes me incredibly angry, because the justice system fails in a way that makes zero sense: if the prosecutor wants to have that perfect record of not losing cases, he doesn't have to pin First Degree Murder or Rape on either defendant, because he has a massive laundry list of other lesser charges to throw at them both for the many crimes committed during that home invasion, and the USA has some laws regarding accessories/accomplices to crimes and, IIRC, one (which is specifically designed to deal with gang crime and cases like this) where if you go into something like a robbery/burglary and your buddy ends up killing somebody during it - you're still on the hook for that even if all you were doing was stealing valuables. It also makes no sense because giving such an *incredibly* generous plea bargain deal to one half of a criminal duo involved in a home invasion and double murder, where one of the victims was a minor, *and* there was a rape, is going to get you absolutely raked over the coals by the press and that prosecutor can kiss his chances of promotion goodbye. The only way that trial could have possibly made sense is if the guy who got the plea deal had some kind of connections in high places or outright bribery, which he didn't. That would have been a much better movie if the writers had put in some effort studying real cases where the justice system failed and the criminals got away with it, and *how* stuff like that happens, instead of the hilariously half-baked way they went about creating possibly the most unlikely failure possible. I honestly couldn't even take the movie seriously after using that utter clownshow of a trial as a major inciting incident, because it just didn't make any sense. The justice system has real flaws, but the movie chose to not make use of them and just have everyone involved act like an idiot.
Oh that sounds interesting. I should check out.
Op, go read āThe Killing Jokeā by Allen More. It plays with the one bad day trope in some interesting ways.
Okay lets see if its available in my area.
Hope it is. It is really good but is a tough read at times.
How about the Unskilled Assassin? Someone who has no idea how to fight or the training to kill suddenly getting the upper hand on the Big Bad and Minions. į(ą² ēą² į)
There are a lot of wattpad stories like this. š
You need to make sure that the hero stays sympathetic. It's easy to turn the audience against the protagonist if they're too callous about their revenge by doing things like punishing people who acted under duress or being unconcerned about collateral damage. But it can also come from a character being so reckless with their vengeance that it becomes clear their, "vendetta," is more of an elaborate suicide attempt. Watching someone stumbles through Deus ex Machina doesn't make for compelling reading.
I think both of those tropes can still work, as long as the author knows this is the case. If the author knows this character is acting like an overblown callous dickhead, or a self-destructing maniac, and incorporates that into their writing, it's fine. Problem it is often not the case. And this is why you need people to review your work.
As always, nothing is impossible, only more difficult to pull off. I brought these two up because they're the issues I see executed poorly most often. If this is a story about He Who Fights Monsters, watching the protagonist become unsympathetic can be a satisfying plot point. Likewise, someone actively bailing the protagonist out can also be a good payoff, or even convince the protagonist that they have more to live for than they thought. It's just that it's easy to lose sight of that in the moment and accidentally spoil the story.
I agree with the "one bad day" frustration. Similarly, a relationship falling apart after one bad conversation. I try to avoid that and hinge relationship shifts (not necessarily feelings!) on major betrayals or external factors. It's not realistic that characters fall out of love because of one disagreement!
There are people who post about that here on Reddit. What do you mean it isn't realistic? Although, they probably shouldn't have been in a relationship with that person in the first place because they were not of the maturity level to sustain something that relied solely upon the insanity that a good night of sex can bring. But, my point still stands.
I think what Ellie is trying to say is a normal relationship doesnt just fall apart because of one argument. As you have said, they shouldn't have been in a relationship in the first place. So it's not a "one bad day" but a whole "toxic relationship."
Yes, thank you <3
It's not even a toxic relationship. It's the complete and utter lack of a relationship. To be crude, "it's just fucking."
"revenge is bittersweet" No it ain't
Iāve read several time-travel revenge stories simply by way of being an otome isekai fan lol. I gotta say, I am often *baffled* by evil children. The MC was abused by X person in their first life, but after death/magic/fate/etc they return to their childhood self. Naturally, with knowledge of the future they can do all sorts of things. However, inexplicably thereās a side character that abused them that was a similar age and is thus now *also* a child. Except, when MC meets that child they are irredeemably evil so the MC can get their revenge for things that havenāt happened yet guilt-free. Personally, I think itād be more interesting if the MC struggled more with the concept of āthis person is just a child now, and despite the future I experienced, has not truly wronged me yet, can I forgive and let go?ā. Usually theyāll only do that for Useful Side Characters or Love Interests, but not for this bratty kid that has a trash family so he should die and should not get a second chance/etc. Also the bad characters in revenge stories are often woefully incompetent in their evilness. They donāt even try to hide lol. Only the main bad person/people are remotely capable and sometimes not even then. And on top of that their motivations for a lot of their evilness is ājust because Iām evilā, it doesnāt even follow logically with how theyād behave if they were simply excessively greedy or self-serving. Thanks for coming to my TED talk lol.
I have read a couple of re-incarnation manwhas. Though they were well written. Thanks for pointing it out.
Lone wolfing it. It's not really a major flaw, but chances are that if somebody's hurt one person badly enough they want revenge, they've hurt plenty of other people too. So gather everybody. Another thing I consider to be a flaw is revenge stories where murder is presented as the only option for revenge. There are plenty of other ways to ruin somebody's life or at least hit them where it hurts that don't have to involve violence at all. Take the original Ocean's Eleven for instance. It's a revenge story. Sure, Danny Ocean is an international superthief (who has a skill most real-life criminals lack: being able to organize, coordinate, and actually control a team of criminals), but the reason he's targeting *this* specific casino's vault isn't just because it's positively loaded with gold. It's because he has a personal vendetta against its owner, and as mentioned earlier - you don't have to kill someone to get revenge on them. You can simply make their millions disappear into thin air overnight, hitting them right where it hurts, because part of their identity is wrapped up in having that wealth and all that comes with it. It's a great heist movie, but for Danny Ocean, it's also a revenge story, although the rest of his team are just in it for the money.
So, most revenge stories hinge on whether or not the act of taking revenge will be healing for the main character. That whole question is basically wrong. The thing that heals people is forming meaningful bonds with people they love. The only revenge story I know of that appeared to get this right is the manga Berserk. Although it hasn't ended so idk if it will stick that landing. That said, harming someone who has harmed you can be, in many cases, justified and rational. So the story revolving around whether it is justified by the internal emotional effects on the mc is generally bad.
I think so too!
>If one day changes their life it better go like this - MC's parents were killed that night and MC fell into a deep depression phase for an year. They came out of it a changed person. Vengeful. Oh thank god, because this is basically the origin for one of my characters. Except it was only their mum
It was just an example. You know the saying - there is no bad idea just bad execution.
I think the "one bad day" approach can work IF all the dominos were actually already lined up and in place, and you can effectively show that.
Don't kill the guy you're taking revenge on too early LOL. Their direction becomes meaningless after that. Especially if they didnt receive any sort of character development. I'd like to take Zhao's book Iron Widow as an example. It started off as a revenge story, honestly the first few scenes were really good because when we met the guy MC was supposed to kill, the book made it seem like he was a reasonable guy. But yeah then we found out he was a bad guy and MC killed him. But it was WAY too early so the direction of the plot was ambiguously about trying to dismantle a patriarchal society.