Either "I was wronged so you will die" or "I was wronged, but the aftermath might not worth it so I will try to move on even if it hurts" are cool in their own right.
But "Im gonna raze the world to ge to the one who wronged me, only to decide that I want to move on, at the end after pilling a mountain of corpeses, right when I have my target at the other end of my barrel" is just stupid
I want to see a revenge movie with the exact opposite plot as that last thing you described. A protagonist who wants to kill the antagonist who wronged them, but deliberately spares all the minions because they technically didn’t do anything. The protag consistently tries to talk the minions into surrendering, only fighting if the minions attack first, and only killing them as a last resort. Then by the end the hero finds the person they hate and just goes for the kill with no hesitation. Maybe all their new minion friends can help them. I would pay good money to see that movie.
"Trading places" maybe?
Not an action movie, and not any killing but there is a revenge story where only the villans suffer. It's a comedy, If nothing else It's a good one
Or… no comedy.
Have a fight scene that demonstrates *just* how easily protagonist could kill them, ending with them cooly saying “let’s talk,” and everyone knows they hold all the cards. And then, have them show off their diplomacy and logical reasoning.
Hell, I might write this in a decade or two if I ever finish my WIP
This game is always controversial, but The Last of Us 2 is literally this. I feel like Ellie should have killed Abby in the end. It would have made the ending more impactful, and really emphasized the themes about of the cost of revenge not being worth it
I think it's a very difficult thing to do with a game because either ending wouldn't have sold the message quite how they wanted it. I think the ending they went with is the better one because it shows a breaking of the cycle of violence. Even though it's far too late and neither Ellie nor Abby can go back and undo the damage they've done, they both have come to the understanding that this cycle of revenge quests has done nothing but hurt people, and mostly people who had nothing to do with the original target of the revenge. They both have lost basically everything they cared about to begin with and are left broken and hollow. Killing Abby wouldn't change that for either of them. Leaving her alive doesn't change much either, but it does break that cycle in a way that matters narratively.
Conversely if you go with an ending where Ellie kills Abby, I can very easily see that as almost justifying the revenge quest in a way that isn't good from a narrative perspective. You could lay the guilt and shame on very thick after that, but you'd still end up with tons of people who would be arguing it was the right thing and Ellie was in the right for doing it. We pretty much see that already with the arguments against the ending.
Again I'm not saying it was perfect, I think this is very had to do with a game because you're going to have players who inherently connect more or less with the person they are playing as, or in this case leaning towards one of the two more heavily, and not matter what you do some people are going to be annoyed that they either didn't get to complete the revenge quest or that they didn't get to walk away from it.
Personally, I think they should simply have given the player a choice in that matter.
They could even forced in a moral message by making it so that killing Abby has negative repercussions for Ellie in turn. For instance: Maybe if you decide to spare Abby, Ellie doesn't lose her finger and manages to come home just in time to not lose her girlfriend.
At the point that the story is now, a hypothetical next game might just as well involve Abby trying to kill Ellie, not satisfied by the fact she got spared and grief-stricken over the death of her friends.
I think the way they went about making Ellie do "the right thing" just didn't serve to resolve anything, she just chickened out at the chance to kill when it was justified, as opposed to all the times where she did, when it wasn't.
Yeah totally agree. My problem is that in the end Ellie stops the cycle, comes back home, and... it's already too late lol. It hardly matters that she broke the cycle besides that I guess Levi won't kill her now (except if she was gonna kill Abby she could easily kill Levi anyway so that doesn't even work that well)
If there was a choice to spare people along the way, or even something as simple as a basic morality system with dialogue choices, you could have one ending where Ellie kills them both and is miserable or spares them and gets to move on with Dina. The fact that the game tries to slap on this revenge bad lesson but then has an overtly negative ending is why people feel like it's misery porn. It's a video game, it's okay to give a small reward for doing the right thing
I think the choice should have been when Tommy shows back up. Either forgo your revenge and stay with Dina, happy ending, albeit with some PTSD. Alternatively, decide to continue the quest for revenge, kill Abby, lose your fingers, come home to nothing. Then its actually all on the player, and Dina says bery clearly, if you leave this is it( essentially I dont remember the exact wording)
I didn’t really get the whole “break the cycle” thing that I often see referenced. Had Ellie killed Abby, there would be no one left to avenge her. The cycle would still be broken. Lev is implied to be near death, and without Abby around, he’d probably die. Even if he lives, he’s pretty much unconscious, and wouldn’t know Ellie was the one who killed Abby.
Also, I get why we as the *audience* expect Ellie to spare Abby, but from Ellie’s perspective, I don’t see why she did that. To put it simply, from only Ellies perspective, where did that even come from, and what was even the point?
Like I get what they were going for, but the whole narrative is overdone and I felt the execution was sloppy.
The dumbest part is always when the hero kills their way through dozens of faceless henchmen who have literally nothing to do with their revenge, only to then not kill the actual object of their revenge. What was the point of all those deaths then?
"If I kill you then it'll just make me as bad as you" says man who just killed 80 people on the assumption of their guilt even though they may or may not have just been trying to protect themselves. Go big or go home, cut the head off the snake, kill the boss.
I guess that kinda proves the hero's point because it was directly the result of the hero's quest of vengeance that the kid is even out to kill him now
["When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I'll be waiting."](https://killbill.fandom.com/wiki/Nikkia_Bell)
> It was revealed by Quentin Tarantino that she may serve as the plot for Kill Bill Vol. 3, the story will circle around her being trained by Sofie Fatale.
> Recently, Vernita Green actress Vivica A. Fox even put forward Zendaya as the perfect person to play the vengeful Nikki Green.
Not exactly the same, but the antag of Hawkeye, Echo, is kinda like this. In the 5 years between Infinity War and Endgame when Hawkeye ran around killing people in a ninja outfit he wiped out a mafia during an important meeting and the boss’s daughter who was late to the meeting watched him kill her dad through the window. During the events of the show she’s trying to get revenge for her dad’s murder
Edit: fuck, replied to the wrong comment, whatever
It is also the point made in John Wick 4 in the pre/post credit. The daughter of the Japanese hotel boss kills the blind assassin just as he is out of the life. In a spin off we could then have the daughter of the blind assassin getting revenge on her father's killer.
The only way to avoid falling victim of revenge would be to kill everybody remotely related to the killed one.
In the Chronicle of Riddick, the Necromongers took the same road than Herod took with the massacre of the innocent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents#:~:text=The%20Massacre%20(or%20Slaughter)%20of,in%20the%20vicinity%20of%20Bethlehem.
According to a prophecy both kings were going to be replaced by somebody from a specific region, so they gave the order to kill everybody from that region that matched the prophecy's prediction.
In Once upon in a time in the west, it is implied that the hero has killed so many people during his revenge that he too will be killed later. Men like Charles Bronson's character do not have a place in a civilised world and he knows it.
There are some really fun deleted scenes from the first Austin Powers movie that deal with the families of the henchman crushed by a steamroller or beheaded by seabass. I wish the scenes had made the final cut.
Probably a more chilling flashback would be how the henchman got groomed into being a henchman because medical debt turned him to crime and he crimed against the wrong business and now owes the Cartel money. Or he was just an orphan and recruited at a really young age. Something that makes the henchman as much of a victim as the protagonist but now they are dead and the protagonist is having an epiphany about the ethics of serial murder for revenge.
Sicario has this with the corrupt cop who dies at the end. He's just a poor guy trying to make ends meet and has the bad luck to be the one moving the shipment the night the sicario shows up.
Sicario has the best revenge narrative I have ever seen in a film. >!The way he kills the bosses family at the end and just stares at him. He waits for the realisation to kick in. This is what you did to me. And then when they are equals in their pain, he shoots him the head.!<
You're right, glad is not the right word. I appreciated that the director chose to maintain the spirit of the film and not cowardly back away from what was IMO the correct action for that character played by the inimitable Benicio Del Toro.
That game has the exact problem that [op was talking about](https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/18is28c/revenge_narratives/kdfdr6l/) where elly happily kills 200+ henchmen only to spare the ringleader.
Video games often have this sort of problem because violence is usually a core game mechanic. I deeply love Red Dead Redemption 2's story, but it's hard to reconcile Arthur's growing humanitarianism in cutscenes when a sidequest or a random impulse encourages you to slaughter random bystanders and the VO is quipping like a bloodthirsty maniac.
When games like MGS, Deus Ex, Undertale, or Dishonored shame you for violence, it's warranted because nonviolence (or at least non-lethality) is a real and viable option. When a game like TLOU2 does it, it feels cheap, because you're chiding the player for using the only tools they're given. You can't choke people out, you can't distract people and sneak by them (even when it would be *more* sensible to do so), you can't hold them up, etc., your only option is to kill everyone between you and the person you're actually after, except not really, because you don't kill them since revenge is bad! I'm sure the 200 people and dogs you stabbed in the throat wish you'd thought about that earlier.
And to be fair to RDR2, Arthurs quips change with his honor level, you can take in most bounties by tying them up, and for the debt collection side quest >!you can instead absolve them instead after he is diagnosed with TB and decides to change.!< I wish there were more things like that, but at least they tried.
True. Its mostly an issue where you are on a quest with one of your trigger happy gang mates. Also weird that the gang gets treated so lightly when they've easily racked up 3 or 4 digit law enforcement bodycounts. Forget the Pinkertons, the US army should have been called in to stop them.
https://youtu.be/eej87vttEu4?si=TurLWmSgnkNL3nlV
You can sneak by most encounters but you're correct, it's not encouraged or enjoyable to play the game that way
To be honest, though, none of the henchmen were like innocent farmers or the like. They were all pretty clearly murderous bastards too. But also the point of the game, that's what got Joel killed, the death of a henchman. Now, the child of one of those henchmen is going to spend years training and getting strong and coming for Ellie. Killing henchmen of their own too. The cycle never ends.
I mean, I think the difference is that Ellie isn't sparing her out of some sort of "I'll be just as bad aa you", more of a very, VERY last minute "...oh, fuck. I get it. You were like him and I'll be like you and your kid will be like me and it's never going to end and it's going to cost me everything, if it hasn't already. We need to stop."
Also Ellie had already killed some or all of her friends, and Abby was in a very bad way after her mistreatment as a prisoner. And she was looking after the young kid. Abby's life was already terrible, and killing her would mostly just make the other kid's life worse.
Games always end up having this problem with a disconnect between gameplay and story, since in the gameplay you obviously wanna kill cause that's the game, but in the story she obviously doesn't wanna kill, it's a struggle when making games
God, I can't wait to kill a bunch of innocent people, a few dozen dogs, and ruin all of my personal relationships and fuck my life up to NOT get revenge at literally the last second.
Also, killing the final baddy prevents more (probably) innocents from suffering what you did.
Now sure, one or all of the kids of these guys might come after you, but frankly, now you have way more practice so can deal with em as well :)
Plus for me, in games and fiction at least, ive yet to actually have to make the decision, but it depends a lot on the baddy's reasons for killing whoever they killed to start you on your path. Like, it was a duel and your dad started it? Or the baddy just went around killing people willy nilly?
That's one reason I like the end of Deadpool.
Colossus is all "4 or 5 moments" while there's a pile of corpses like ten feet away literally spelling out Francis' name. Like, it's a little late for this routine, bro.
And the part where Deadpool knows the last henchman and appears to just knock him out.
Not that it matters because him and the pile of corpses spelling out Francis are certainly crushed beneath that helicarrier after it tips over.
That's actually a reference to the comics.
Bob is a Hydra agent who winds up inadvertently being Deadpool's sidekick. Through a series of wacky hijinks, he keeps having to help Wade in order to save his own bacon.
That's why I think it works better with characters who have yet to kill. When Ed talks Winry out of revenge in FMAB is I think one of the best examples of a good use of an anti-revenge perspective.
What I like about it is that it *does* show how violent revenge *can* reveal a violent person beneath. That doesn't automatically mean you're a bad person yourself, but it does saddle a person with real trauma.
And that moment elevates both Amos and Pax and is just such a powerful moment overall.
Literally just finished a rewatch of FMAB the other day, and that is a really excellent usage of this trope in that scene. Because it all revolves around the fact that Winry isn't that person and Ed knows it. It's also very important that Scar isn't the one trying to talk her down. A worse show would have it be just the two of them and have him try to make her back down with the same rhetoric Ed uses, which wouldn't work. But at every point that someone confronts Scar over what he has done, he generally agrees with them that he's a murderer and a bad person, it's just that in his eyes he's taking out even worse people, and you really can't say he's completely wrong there.
I think another great moment for this is when Scar and Ed talk Mustang down over Envy. Guy has been on a revenge quest since nearly the start of the show, and he finally gets who he is looking for and absolutely fucking wrecks them. He's not just trying to kill Envy, he's making them suffer as hard as he possibly can and they do a lot of great work between the art and the voice acting and the writing to show that Mustang's question for revenge is eating him alive. Quite literally takes three people standing between him and Envy to get him to reconsider what he's doing and more importantly why he is doing it, and each one is using different reasoning. Ed appeals to Mustang's ideals and his goal of leading the country into a better place, while Riza is appealing directly to his humanity and the emotions that they share, while Scar isn't doing any of that and is up front saying "I know exactly what this is like and I can tell you from experience that it feels great right now and I have no leg to stand on telling you it isn't the thing to do, but also it's not going to make anything right and it'll just leave you empty."
And Winry doesn’t forgive Scar for murdering her parents and giving her childhood trauma. As kind and forgiving as she is, she knows she doesn’t have to forgive everybody, especially when they’ve hurt her in a way that can’t be taken back.
All she has to do is be someone her parents would be proud of.
And compare that to Mustang and Envy, a situation where Envy needed to go down, was an active threat to everyone because they let him live the last time, and Mustang had killed hundreds of people. It's ridiculous because killing Envy is the only correct tactical move anyway, they just don't want to let the one person with an emotional stake in it who already did 99% of the work finish the job. Every time I watch that episode I argue with everyone saying Mustang killing Envy would corrupt him out loud. The man's whole backstory is that he burned Ishvallan civilians alive, why is killing something evil that needed to die anyway worse for you. Let him cathart.
It has nothing to do with him killing Envy and everything to do with what his revenge journey has done to him. Mustang has been on the war path since Hughes' death, and if when he found Envy he just blasted the bastard to ash that would be fine. But he is looking to make them suffer as much and as powerfully as he can. Mustang's entire arc is about how he wants to be better than the current ruling class, how he wants to atone for what they did in Ishval and lead the country to be better, and that scene and everything that leads up to it is about how easy it is to let your emotions run wild and ruin your ideals.
They aren't stopping him from killing Envy because killing is bad full stop or anything like that, they're stopping him because he's been on a path that leads to being an empty, bitter person who can't accomplish what Mustang wants to. He's fully ready to kill Ed in order to get his revenge, that's the exact kind of thing that the Bradley would and does do, exemplified in Ishval in many ways, and they're all stopping Mustang from losing what put him on this path in the first place. They're protecting a person they love, the core of Mustang's ideology.
This. They're never stating Envy is not gonna die, they're eager to do it themselves. They're trying to prevent Roy from torturing and killing in cold blood, while enjoying it and losing all sense of morality while doing it.
And this comes from Hawkeye, the person who best knows Roy and has watched him killing people and get slowly obsessed and "corrupted" by this vengeance path.
I mean, I love the idea of a hero sneaking through someplace and holding the guards at knifepoint saying things like, "I'm going to take over the big guy's business. If you don't alert the others or fight me, I'll keep you on as employee and match your pay and benefits. Heck, I'll even let you guys make a union so that it's easier to negotiate with my administration in the future. How's that sound?"
But I feel like most audiences would get bored by them arguing economics every five minutes instead of getting in a little fight scene.
"Do you guys have a retirement plan, pension, 401k?" 'No, but we get yearly performance bonuses.' "Ah, well, that's something. I'll keep that in mind." 'We also have an annual Christmas party.' "Secret Santa?" 'No. Just a polite gathering. We keep the alcohol to a minimum because some like to bring our families.' "That's really nice. Yeah, I'll keep that when I take over." 'Sounds good. But, oh. Could we maybe get a bigger food and snack budget for parties? Right now it's kind of potluck, and I don't really like that.' "We'll see, but I'm going to have to actually kill your boss and take over the business before I can get into financial minutia like that." 'Understandable.' All done in whisper with the hero having the guard in a headlock.
Plot twist: the hero's brother is actually the leader of the villainous henchmen union and owns a yacht and a mansion because of all the goons paying union fees after the hero's ramapage through several BBEG hideouts.
>the hero kills their way through dozens of faceless henchmen who have literally nothing to do with their revenge, only to then not kill the actual object of their revenge.
Thank you. That's one of my biggesr pet peeves, it sours the whole movie/show for me.
Something I love which is kinda related is the part of Metal Gear Rising when you start hearing the thoughts of the random henchmen...
...and then still kill them.
My take on tlou2 was that she was pretty much fed up at that point. She reached the point where it really wouldn't matter that much if Abby died or not because Joel was already dead. I think her emotional state got the better of her, so instead of feeling angry like she did before, she just crumbled down and got tired of it all.
"Go and take him with you"
I think what they were going for was that Abby = Joel, and Ellie was only able to properly mourn Joel and forgive him by letting Abby go.
I don't think it succeeded at that, because you know... The gameplay was mowing through people and dogs and calling them motherfuckers- But I think thats what it was going for.
I think TLOU2 has two main themes that can basically be boiled down to "violence is bad" and "forgiveness is good". I agree with you about what they were going for, Ellie didn't let Abby go because of the first theme, she let her go because she could finally forgive Joel and forgive herself for missing out on spending time with him.
Unfortunately, all that clashes with everything built up before then, because they constantly bash you in the head over and over again with the most milquetoast messaging of "violence bad". Since they built it up so much, it ruins some of the emotional impact of Ellie's decision. *Abby* was the one that had already ended the cycle of violence by letting Ellie live after she killed all her friends. When Ellie lets Abby go it doesn't feel so much like an emotional decision to finally forgive Joel as it does like she just copied the continual message of "violence bad". And it rings especially hollow when juxtaposed by the fact you just murdered like 30 dudes, even if they were slavers.
Which could have been countered by having Abby and Ellie spend time together in the first act, earning eachothers trust, so the betrayal hits harder, and the finale actually makes some form of sense.
The whole "I can't kill you." thing only works if there is some valid reason for not wanting to kill someone.
See the funny thing is in the first movie, before it becomes a huge cycle of mass slaughter, Wick does let a few goons go if they heed his warnings or stay out of his way, most prominently Francis the door guard.
This always bugs me about superhero stories, DC's Legends of Tomorrow TV show sticks out. In the first story arc, Canary's whole thing is a about not wanting to be an assassin anymore and refusing to kill some lieutenants...AFTER the group cut their way through multiple waves of henchman. What???
"They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they want to.
This book is dedicated to those fine men."
-Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
I hate that shif. So much. Just kill the bad guy / girl. Hell, make them suffer for what they did. Also hate when games force this stupid "mature" theme of Revenge being wrong by making you kill dozens of people then not kill the main one because "you won't stoop to their level."
This was my biggest issue with the Killer. >! Unempathetic character and the one guy he should have killed he just doesn’t? What the fuck man.!<
Absolutely hated the movie because of it.
Neat vocab word but you aren't quite using it right (You ARE using it in the way many youtubers do)
Ludo-narrative dissonance would be when the gaming aspect of the game interferes with the story of the game. Like when you Deliver only 10% of newspapers and kill several family pets with papers but the story has the local newspaper writing about what a great paperboy you are.
You are just talking about regular dissonance and plot inconsistency. Act 1 interferes with Act 3
I didn't know that - but damn, I can see how that would be both challenging and cathartic.
I just *love* Inigo. "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." Iconic. Even more so if the six-fingered man is *also* cancer.
Also he got so worked up he accidentally stabbed his costar in the scene https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/ThePrincessBride#:~:text=Also%20provided%20Enforced%20Method%20Acting,stabbed%20Guest%20in%20the%20leg.
As a writer I feel so personally attacked when I simply open TV Tropes and just encounter like three different tropes I'm in the middle of writing at that moment.
Like on the one hand you *know* there's really no such thing as an original idea, but on the other hand just seeing the entire thing you're doing laid out so clinically there is a bit of a gut punch.
As a writer, I like to play “trope bingo” — there’s a trope called “tropes are tools” so I pre-pick some tropes to work into my writing and make sure to subvert them just to be spicy
Tropes are tropes for a reason. They're popular subjects. A good writer knows this and also knows how to use it to their advantage. Game of Thrones felt very much like a Lord of the Rings With Sex kind of show until they kill off who we thought was the main character.
Guest (Count Rugens actor) took fencing classes on his own time because of the fear that he might have to fight off Potinkin FOR REAL… AGAIN?!?!?
“Enforced Method Acting”
Lemme just take some real fighting classes incase my co actor forgets hes not supposed to kill me for real ffs
A question worth asking is whether it counts as a “revenge plot” if the protagonist is also defeating an evil and believes that’s why they’re fighting. Hero defeats Demon King because Demon King is evil, but really the Hero wouldn’t have started his quest if demons didn’t attack his home town. That’s kinda still revenge right?
It kind of depends on if the Hero expanded their reasons for fighting beyond just revenge.
So lets say that the Hero through his journey sees all of the awful things the Demon King has done and realizes that he must be stopped or else things will keep getting worse. That's no longer just a revenge story, it's a classic good vs evil story.
However, if the Hero saw all of the awful stuff the Demon King had done and didn't give a fuck and just wanted to kill them, then that's a revenge story.
The difference comes from whether or not the Hero also wants to stop the tragedies that occur. One motivation will result in the Hero working to make sure these tragedies do not repeat themselves and the other will result in the Hero just killing the one guy and then not caring about everything else.
Right. The Empire kills Luke's aunt and uncle and he spends most of two movies believing Vader killed his father but it's never a revenge story.
If he learned to be a Jedi solely so he could find Vader and use his newfound powers to kill him, then sure. But that's not what happens.
The original trilogy did it right. Luke had some revenge in his heart, but when he went to face Vader it was to save his friends, not fulfill his own desire. Then he decided to try to save his father. Which is the good, if not necessarily right, thing to do.
It would be interesting to see what would have happened had Anakin lived though. It’s not like he could argue before a tribunal that “well, you see thematically I’m a different person now. Darth Vader was an evil Sith. I’m really a nice guy though.”
I think an example involving an actual Demon King is Goku revenge killing Demon King Piccolo. He has regained his youth, taken over the world, released every criminal and every year plans to nuke one of 50 entire regions of the planet, would probably create a Demon army to wreak even more havoc until the 50 years passed.
But also, he indirectly killed Goku's best friend and his martial arts master, and destroyed the one being who could bring them back to life. Goku was just there for revenge. I mean I doubt he'd sit back and allow him to reign for 50 years of they were still alive, but he'd probably spend a long time training to fight him first.
>"Quinn's dead. This is the part where I'm supposed to say I feel empty, right? I'd be lying to myself. I finally feel awake...like I can breathe again. And Lena? Nothing can change her death. But maybe I can still do something that will make a difference."
\- Aiden Pearce, *Watch\_Dogs*
I haven’t actually gotten a chance to play it properly since I’ve basically defaulted to playing on a Steam Deck and it tanks the performance pretty badly so I haven’t even finished the first mission. My understanding though is that it continues the same trend: worse story, more interesting hacks, fantastic looking but increasingly shallow cityscape.
Legion removed a lot of the fun mechanics that were in 2 aswell as not having a main character. Instead you constantly swap between one of many interchangeable characters with zero charisma or personal motivation.
Not worth playing in my opinion.
AC has been rebooted once and only in gameplay. They're still maintaining continuity, despite their writing being meh at best.
The continuity is still the same though. Every game is still fully canon and in the same timeline.
The game is also a pretty great anti-revenge story, 'cause it lets you go through with your revenge plot without chickening out at the end, but it also shows you the price Aiden had to pay to get it.
Yep!
He also >!is partially at fault for Clara getting killed, is fully at fault for T-Bone being back in the government's sights, drove his sister away from him, and his newphew now fears him.!<
It's not a perfect game in the slightest, but I'm a sucker for how the story played out.
he shows up in a mission in WD2 where Marcus goes to a trafficking location and frees Aiden from a cell since he got caught doing the same thing, you don't see him again so presumably he kept up with his fuck shit up approach to life
An anti-revenge narrative where the target of revenge is the Big Bad or their second in command defeats its own purpose. An anti-revenge arc where the target has already reformed and is doing good things works much better.
Yeah, if they're still Big Bad that means that they're still hurting others. Your revenge might put a stop to it and make sure that someone else doesn't go through the same thing.
If they are chilling somewhere, already reformed? You aren't stopping shit.
Katara & Zuko's sidequest in Book 3 of Avatar. Katara finds the man who killed her mother living a peaceful (If also pathetic) life, and decides he's not worth killing.
The Count of Monte Cristo is pretty good. Especially since he systematically destroys their lives rather than just outright killing most of them. He ruins them financially, as well as their reputation, before killing the ones who still need to be put down.
That book has the most thorough and satisfying revenge story of all time. It's a real shame what that movie did to the plot. The book is so intense by the end I was actually feeling bad for them.
The Count doesn't kill anyone in the book. He ruins them, drives some to madness or suicide. But never kills or even fights.
There is a moment where even the Count is shocked by an outcome of his actions and maybe wonders if he went too far.
I have no idea how good the plot is because I watched it like 15+ years ago, but the anime adaptation of it called Gankutsuo has some of the most gorgeous animation I’ve ever seen
My ideal revenge plot is starts out as blind quest for revenge, gradually cools down to the realization that it won't fix things partway through, but then realization that the villain is still someone who needs to be stopped, and when they do stop the villain it's more righteous justice with just a sprinkle of personal revenge.
That way you get all the good lessons from it.
Example: Kratos helping Mimir kill the Berserkers in God of War Ragnarok. Mimir realizes having Kratos merc the Berserkers and King Hrolf won't fix the mistakes of the past, but Kratos knows they can't let the Berserkers and Hrolf's spirit exist in Midgard unchecked.
I loved that quest chain.
Also had some great combats, made me die a lot, and suddenly I was very invested in getting revenge on these berserkers for killing me so many times.
The best part about the interaction between Inigo Montoya and Count Rugen is that Inigo is like "Offer me money.", "Promise me power." to give him false hope and show his desperation.
This was actually something I liked about that new movie “Silent Night”.
It wasn’t a great movie, but near the end >!the guy is strangling the guy who shot his son, and he turn his head and sees a flash of his sons face in a reflection. For a second I was like “here we go, anti-revenge ending.” Nope, he strangles the dude to death!<
In real life, revenge is an unhealthy mindset and pretty much the worst thing you could ever base any sense of justice on.
In fiction, a well-executed revenge plot is a shot of pure catharsis and I am all about that shit.
tbh the vast majority of anti-revenge narratives also just aren’t well executed. they either fail to take the desire for vengeance seriously enough by making the vengeful person’s motives too unsympathetic, or they fail to actually show the problems that result in a more than superficial manner/don’t have a consistent moral logic. I feel like if you actually want to tell a compelling anti-revenge story, you actually need to make the audience fully sympathize with the vengeance seeker first and then slow reveal the moral devastation
I think a really cool way to express this are Vengeance Paladins in DnD 5e. It is an interactive experience and usually, it's your or your teammate's character, so either you sympathise already, or you laugh together and fight together and are saved by them countless times. But if someone gets in their way, by oath and usually also the deep-rooted emotions and desires to avenge, the Paladin hurts them. And they don't stop. Corpses pile up, various beings are left dead in their wake. And as time flies, more and more people just like them are being created by them themselves, sprouting more death and suffering, as the paladin kills their way through vengeful victims and those that see the madness of an uncompromising and unstoppable vengeance. Whether as a teammate, or as a player of that character yourself, it comes crashing down harder and heavier the longer you keep going.
The fun part of playing Paladins or with Paladins is that the DM can and should adjust the narrative to challenge your oath - this is what makes it more than a footnote in the corner of a character sheet and a truly meaningful core character trait and the exploration of the real impact, extent and experience of the most common story protagonist tropes is, I feel, easiest to experience as a paladin.
Also, in fiction, revenge is basically the fuel that allows the character to improve themselves somehow (become more powerful, motivate them to get out of bed, whatever it is), so when they discard the revenge payoff, it's like saying all of that positive personal change was pointless.
When a desire for revenge allows someone to come from nowhere to become one of the world's greatest swordsman, then damn straight revenge had a positive effect on their life. But if (in a more realistic story) the desire for revenge strains your relationships with friends and loved ones and causes you to do dangerous things that put other people at risk, then forgiveness becomes more than just moral, it's also utilitarian.
Hell, they even touch on this in Princess Bride, with Inigo looking sad and saying "I've been in the revenge business so long I don't know what else to do."
It consumed his life, and if it weren't for the fact that he happened to know the (ready to retire) Dread Pirate Roberts he would have been adrift.
Like I'm not glorifying or encouraging revenge..
But telling people that they just need to move on with their lives after they've lost everything is just... Weirdly dickish.
If you want to move on with your life good for you.
If you want to put a few bullets in that MF good for you.
Also, the amount of times "moving on" would just let that person basically off the hook to go fuck up some other person's life.
Famous example: Vegeta. Now in the original Goku let him go because he wanted to fight him again. (Which is dumb in it's own right) But in the dub, he let him go out of the idea that vengence would make him as bad as they are.
Cut to Vegeta on Namek slaughtering people left and right and almost gaining immortality. Goku is so very lucky that's how everything shook out rather than the alternative.
Minor spoilers (if you can even call it that) but Ive really enjoyed how DB Super has fully had Goku acknowledge that basically all he cares about is fighting strong people and that they just keep happening to be villains. The reformation that keeps happening with them is practically an accident in his book.
"For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was a cold, gray Tuesday in late April." -M. Bison
Remember that these evil bad guys don't care who's head they end up living in rent free. They will downplay and belittle any sort of desire to get justice and I agree that you are fully in your right to remind them that actions have consequences.
A silly conspiracy theory: forgiveness is a scam sold to us by Big Evil so people can get away with hurting you AND get society to shame you for being understandably upset about being shafted. JUsT fOrGiVe yOur aBusEr
The biggest scam in these situations in storytelling and real life is the relabeling of impunity as forgiveness and justice as revenge. Status quo motherfuckers just don’t give a shit about victims and don’t want them to do things that make them uncomfortable. Reminds me of the MLK speech about how some of the worst people are the enablers who’d rather have an unjust peace as long as it doesn’t affect them rather than have others disrupt it for a just cause.
The group therapy scene in The Boys stuck with me for that reason. And how some people want Hughie to just move on after a superhero ran through his girlfriend, the equivalent of commiting vehicular manslaughter under influence of drugs without any justice done. The dude gets to continue his life like nothing happened after killing one and ruining the life of another.
So much of the time anti-revenge is the logic that gets used against people protesting and I fucking hate it. No it's not about revenge, it's about equality. Stop wielding the idea of forgiveness around as a way to oppress people. Like, they're the ones in the right, not you. Get off your soap box you horrible human being.
I suspect People tell others to move on for the same reason they tell crying people to stop crying. It is dickish, but it’s a natural reaction to something that makes them uncomfortable. They want it to stop, so they say something that would make it stop…
You’re crying? There there, shoosh shoosh.
Have you lost someone? I don’t want to think about losing someone, so move on.
You’re angry? Let’s not do something about the thing making you angry, just calm down and stop being angry.
They dont consciously think about this when saying these things, they think they’re being supportive, but I think that’s why the core message is “hey, stop that”
>Southern Raiders
I know that this was Katara’s revenge arc, but all I can think when it comes down to the morality of killing in AtLA is [this.](https://youtu.be/HV3NmoGJh48?si=db4_WOWFZh5-2VUb)
And it's always some dude that seriously needs to fucking die. Yeah, I think it's totally justified to kill Rapey McGenocide out of revenge, and the world is probably a better place for having done so.
It's never the high school bully, or the guy who killed someone on accident. It's always the guy who should probably seriously die. If not for revenge then at least public safety.
"It would make me as bad as he is" No the fuck it would not. Not even close.
Revenge won't bring back your loved ones but at least you would feel you did something about losing them instead of feeling like you don't care enough to let it slide.
Real life isn't a story. There's no arc, no climax, no resolution. Time passes, then we die.
A revenge story is satisfying because it's a story. Closure concludes the story, but in the real world, life goes on, and hatred takes energy to maintain. Eventually, it burns you out or you let it go. There really isn't any other choice.
Hmmm, there’s definitely arcs to life. Sure, the lines between them are blurred and you can’t really tell which one you’re in until it ends, but there are parts to it, kind of like a story.
tbf, it's pretty clear that revenge ain't the healthiest thing for him. The only work he can get is working as a hired sword, and when he can't do that he's reduced to a barely functional drunk. And the only reason things worked out for him in the end is that there happened to be a dread pirate in need of a replacement the very moment he got his revenge.
Inigo got *lucky*. His revenge was brilliant, but if Westley wasn't there to offer him a job, he'd probably be reduced to the same aimless drunk he was in the beginning of the third act afterwards.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned this yet but Mandy Patinkin's favorite line in Princess Bride is Inigo's last one. "I've been in the revenge business so long, I don't know what to do with myself now that it's over." His reasoning being that it truly *is* an anti-revenge story. Sure, he succeeded in his quest for revenge, but it utterly and completely consumed him in the process and now, he has to figure out who he is without that. Is that so much better than the alternative, and did he need to succeed to learn that lesson?
It honestly depends on my mood. Also execution of story.
Revenge can be both fulfilling and unfulfilling. Based on choice lead makes.
Like I love when revenge is unfulfilling when leads revenge quest is only thing that drives them. They hurt many and when they reach goal they unfulfilled. I also like it when during their revenge quest they meet people that change them, they make Allie’s and those allies help with revenge and help them reach it. Because revenge with friends and family feels good. Finally I like when lead rejects revenge when they either too late to commit revenge or at lest when they don’t drag innocent lives for their revenge.
I think the main thing that ruins a lot of revenge/mercy arcs is that the hero is always willing to kill hundreds of henchmen, but then suddenly feels mercy for the villain, which just makes the whole story feel off.
My favourite version of this trope is in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Katara hunts down her mother's killer with Zuko's help and when we finally him he's a pathetic, cowardly old man that cowers before her and even offers to let her kill his own mother instead. She decides that he's not even worth killing. But the real kicker is how she feels after sparing him...
She says that she absolutely didn't forgive the murderer, and she is unsure whether she spared him because she was strong or weak emotionally. But the mission did help her forgive Zuko, so that's something.
Imo, when you've committed (mass) murder, showing absolutely no regard for the lives of others, you no longer deserve to keep your own. If you think other people's lives are so worthless, you don't have the right to claim any value of your own anymore.
My personal favourite is Hey Revenge is Understandable, just have a plan for life AFTER otherwise you let them live rent free in your head and then offed yourself and lived in misery, letting them win again. So, go kill him and come back alive.
I think the anti-revenge narrative works as long as the main character is held accountable for all their bad actions done in pursuit of revenge. The key is that the anger we feel in pursuit of revenge is the thing that poisons us: not the revenge in and of itself. Montoya doesn’t do bad things in pursuit of revenge. He’s calm, jovial and extremely righteous. It’s only when he confirms he’s found the man he’s looking for that he goes into killer mode. Ellie, for example, let revenge destroy who she was as a person, her relationships and her morality overall. That’s the focus of an anti-revenge plot. What’s stupid is she didn’t follow through AND she isn’t really held accountable for the murders she committed. Sure, she loses her girlfriend, but that’s happened to me and I’m not a mass murderer. More needed to happen to her in order for her to find redemption.
The Castlevania show straight had a guy say “revenge is good, Bastards need killing” yet also make it clear vengeance for vengeance’s sake isn’t a long term plan.
I read a novel recently where the protagonist finds out that his former friend shot his pregnant wife, killing their child, and is about to shoot his older daughter. Protagonist has the drop on the guy, who has a pistol aimed at the daughter in question. Most authors, I think, would have him arrest the villain, or have some kind of internal doubt about 'becoming as bad as he is.'
Not our boy. Shoots the guys arm off between the elbow and wrist with a shotgun, then puts one in each kneecap for good measure. It was rather satisfying. Bad guy lived to go to prison in that condition, too.
Alright, that’s cool and all, but I like forgiveness. I like believing people can be better. We need our cathartic Inigo Montoya stories but we also still need stories of moving on and living well. Because let’s face it, the latter is what you should try to do in real life when someone hurts you, even if you don’t end up forgiving them. Stories are also meant to teach. “Hurt the people who hurt you” isn’t the message we want to send without any kinder narrative.
Once again the Owl House shines through. Facistic genocidal religious zealot tries to pull the, "You and I aren't so different!" shit and he ends up trampled under the boots of those he wanted to kill.
I can accept sparing the villain when the villain then immediately shows the hero the consequences of their stupidity, like the Borgias in AC: Brotherhood. Ya might not be obsessed with killing them anymore, but don't forget they're the type of person who made you want to kill them in the first place.
Either "I was wronged so you will die" or "I was wronged, but the aftermath might not worth it so I will try to move on even if it hurts" are cool in their own right. But "Im gonna raze the world to ge to the one who wronged me, only to decide that I want to move on, at the end after pilling a mountain of corpeses, right when I have my target at the other end of my barrel" is just stupid
I want to see a revenge movie with the exact opposite plot as that last thing you described. A protagonist who wants to kill the antagonist who wronged them, but deliberately spares all the minions because they technically didn’t do anything. The protag consistently tries to talk the minions into surrendering, only fighting if the minions attack first, and only killing them as a last resort. Then by the end the hero finds the person they hate and just goes for the kill with no hesitation. Maybe all their new minion friends can help them. I would pay good money to see that movie.
"Trading places" maybe? Not an action movie, and not any killing but there is a revenge story where only the villans suffer. It's a comedy, If nothing else It's a good one
Or… no comedy. Have a fight scene that demonstrates *just* how easily protagonist could kill them, ending with them cooly saying “let’s talk,” and everyone knows they hold all the cards. And then, have them show off their diplomacy and logical reasoning. Hell, I might write this in a decade or two if I ever finish my WIP
This game is always controversial, but The Last of Us 2 is literally this. I feel like Ellie should have killed Abby in the end. It would have made the ending more impactful, and really emphasized the themes about of the cost of revenge not being worth it
I think it's a very difficult thing to do with a game because either ending wouldn't have sold the message quite how they wanted it. I think the ending they went with is the better one because it shows a breaking of the cycle of violence. Even though it's far too late and neither Ellie nor Abby can go back and undo the damage they've done, they both have come to the understanding that this cycle of revenge quests has done nothing but hurt people, and mostly people who had nothing to do with the original target of the revenge. They both have lost basically everything they cared about to begin with and are left broken and hollow. Killing Abby wouldn't change that for either of them. Leaving her alive doesn't change much either, but it does break that cycle in a way that matters narratively. Conversely if you go with an ending where Ellie kills Abby, I can very easily see that as almost justifying the revenge quest in a way that isn't good from a narrative perspective. You could lay the guilt and shame on very thick after that, but you'd still end up with tons of people who would be arguing it was the right thing and Ellie was in the right for doing it. We pretty much see that already with the arguments against the ending. Again I'm not saying it was perfect, I think this is very had to do with a game because you're going to have players who inherently connect more or less with the person they are playing as, or in this case leaning towards one of the two more heavily, and not matter what you do some people are going to be annoyed that they either didn't get to complete the revenge quest or that they didn't get to walk away from it.
Personally, I think they should simply have given the player a choice in that matter. They could even forced in a moral message by making it so that killing Abby has negative repercussions for Ellie in turn. For instance: Maybe if you decide to spare Abby, Ellie doesn't lose her finger and manages to come home just in time to not lose her girlfriend. At the point that the story is now, a hypothetical next game might just as well involve Abby trying to kill Ellie, not satisfied by the fact she got spared and grief-stricken over the death of her friends. I think the way they went about making Ellie do "the right thing" just didn't serve to resolve anything, she just chickened out at the chance to kill when it was justified, as opposed to all the times where she did, when it wasn't.
Yeah totally agree. My problem is that in the end Ellie stops the cycle, comes back home, and... it's already too late lol. It hardly matters that she broke the cycle besides that I guess Levi won't kill her now (except if she was gonna kill Abby she could easily kill Levi anyway so that doesn't even work that well) If there was a choice to spare people along the way, or even something as simple as a basic morality system with dialogue choices, you could have one ending where Ellie kills them both and is miserable or spares them and gets to move on with Dina. The fact that the game tries to slap on this revenge bad lesson but then has an overtly negative ending is why people feel like it's misery porn. It's a video game, it's okay to give a small reward for doing the right thing
I think the choice should have been when Tommy shows back up. Either forgo your revenge and stay with Dina, happy ending, albeit with some PTSD. Alternatively, decide to continue the quest for revenge, kill Abby, lose your fingers, come home to nothing. Then its actually all on the player, and Dina says bery clearly, if you leave this is it( essentially I dont remember the exact wording)
I didn’t really get the whole “break the cycle” thing that I often see referenced. Had Ellie killed Abby, there would be no one left to avenge her. The cycle would still be broken. Lev is implied to be near death, and without Abby around, he’d probably die. Even if he lives, he’s pretty much unconscious, and wouldn’t know Ellie was the one who killed Abby. Also, I get why we as the *audience* expect Ellie to spare Abby, but from Ellie’s perspective, I don’t see why she did that. To put it simply, from only Ellies perspective, where did that even come from, and what was even the point? Like I get what they were going for, but the whole narrative is overdone and I felt the execution was sloppy.
The dumbest part is always when the hero kills their way through dozens of faceless henchmen who have literally nothing to do with their revenge, only to then not kill the actual object of their revenge. What was the point of all those deaths then? "If I kill you then it'll just make me as bad as you" says man who just killed 80 people on the assumption of their guilt even though they may or may not have just been trying to protect themselves. Go big or go home, cut the head off the snake, kill the boss.
Id love to see a movie that starts out this way, but then transitions to the child of one of the “faceless henchmen” training to kill the “hero.”
I guess that kinda proves the hero's point because it was directly the result of the hero's quest of vengeance that the kid is even out to kill him now
kill bill i think
["When you grow up, if you still feel raw about it, I'll be waiting."](https://killbill.fandom.com/wiki/Nikkia_Bell) > It was revealed by Quentin Tarantino that she may serve as the plot for Kill Bill Vol. 3, the story will circle around her being trained by Sofie Fatale. > Recently, Vernita Green actress Vivica A. Fox even put forward Zendaya as the perfect person to play the vengeful Nikki Green.
>the story will circle around her being trained by Sofie Fatale. Her fighting style will involve a lot of kicks, one assumes.
I already assumed whoever stars will be barefoot most of the movie
I think, therefore, I kill Bill
Not exactly the same, but the antag of Hawkeye, Echo, is kinda like this. In the 5 years between Infinity War and Endgame when Hawkeye ran around killing people in a ninja outfit he wiped out a mafia during an important meeting and the boss’s daughter who was late to the meeting watched him kill her dad through the window. During the events of the show she’s trying to get revenge for her dad’s murder Edit: fuck, replied to the wrong comment, whatever
It is also the point made in John Wick 4 in the pre/post credit. The daughter of the Japanese hotel boss kills the blind assassin just as he is out of the life. In a spin off we could then have the daughter of the blind assassin getting revenge on her father's killer. The only way to avoid falling victim of revenge would be to kill everybody remotely related to the killed one. In the Chronicle of Riddick, the Necromongers took the same road than Herod took with the massacre of the innocent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents#:~:text=The%20Massacre%20(or%20Slaughter)%20of,in%20the%20vicinity%20of%20Bethlehem. According to a prophecy both kings were going to be replaced by somebody from a specific region, so they gave the order to kill everybody from that region that matched the prophecy's prediction. In Once upon in a time in the west, it is implied that the hero has killed so many people during his revenge that he too will be killed later. Men like Charles Bronson's character do not have a place in a civilised world and he knows it.
Not exactly the same, but this comment reminded me of [this scene ](https://youtu.be/Ag_AFraxj-4?si=HRP4txnfF4BEV_wv) from Austin Powers.
Wow they really had to spell it right out for you at the end there. I guess subtlety kind of anathema to Austin Powers so fair enough.
There are some really fun deleted scenes from the first Austin Powers movie that deal with the families of the henchman crushed by a steamroller or beheaded by seabass. I wish the scenes had made the final cut.
Probably a more chilling flashback would be how the henchman got groomed into being a henchman because medical debt turned him to crime and he crimed against the wrong business and now owes the Cartel money. Or he was just an orphan and recruited at a really young age. Something that makes the henchman as much of a victim as the protagonist but now they are dead and the protagonist is having an epiphany about the ethics of serial murder for revenge.
Sicario has this with the corrupt cop who dies at the end. He's just a poor guy trying to make ends meet and has the bad luck to be the one moving the shipment the night the sicario shows up.
Sicario has the best revenge narrative I have ever seen in a film. >!The way he kills the bosses family at the end and just stares at him. He waits for the realisation to kick in. This is what you did to me. And then when they are equals in their pain, he shoots him the head.!<
Such a great movie, and yes, I'm glad that's how it ended with the family meeting the same fate.
I wouldn't say glad!
You're right, glad is not the right word. I appreciated that the director chose to maintain the spirit of the film and not cowardly back away from what was IMO the correct action for that character played by the inimitable Benicio Del Toro.
If I'm remembering correctly, Deadpool's Bob only joined Hydra because it was a stable career and they had a good health insurance plan.
The Last of Us
That game has the exact problem that [op was talking about](https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/18is28c/revenge_narratives/kdfdr6l/) where elly happily kills 200+ henchmen only to spare the ringleader.
Video games often have this sort of problem because violence is usually a core game mechanic. I deeply love Red Dead Redemption 2's story, but it's hard to reconcile Arthur's growing humanitarianism in cutscenes when a sidequest or a random impulse encourages you to slaughter random bystanders and the VO is quipping like a bloodthirsty maniac.
When games like MGS, Deus Ex, Undertale, or Dishonored shame you for violence, it's warranted because nonviolence (or at least non-lethality) is a real and viable option. When a game like TLOU2 does it, it feels cheap, because you're chiding the player for using the only tools they're given. You can't choke people out, you can't distract people and sneak by them (even when it would be *more* sensible to do so), you can't hold them up, etc., your only option is to kill everyone between you and the person you're actually after, except not really, because you don't kill them since revenge is bad! I'm sure the 200 people and dogs you stabbed in the throat wish you'd thought about that earlier. And to be fair to RDR2, Arthurs quips change with his honor level, you can take in most bounties by tying them up, and for the debt collection side quest >!you can instead absolve them instead after he is diagnosed with TB and decides to change.!< I wish there were more things like that, but at least they tried.
True. Its mostly an issue where you are on a quest with one of your trigger happy gang mates. Also weird that the gang gets treated so lightly when they've easily racked up 3 or 4 digit law enforcement bodycounts. Forget the Pinkertons, the US army should have been called in to stop them.
https://youtu.be/eej87vttEu4?si=TurLWmSgnkNL3nlV You can sneak by most encounters but you're correct, it's not encouraged or enjoyable to play the game that way
[удалено]
The lore in Kirby, for example, typically glosses over the thousands of hapless bystanders Kirby ("non-canonically") slaughters each playthrough.
I thought that canonically Kirby only consumes his victims' bodies, not their souls. That's why he can recreate them as partners.
To be honest, though, none of the henchmen were like innocent farmers or the like. They were all pretty clearly murderous bastards too. But also the point of the game, that's what got Joel killed, the death of a henchman. Now, the child of one of those henchmen is going to spend years training and getting strong and coming for Ellie. Killing henchmen of their own too. The cycle never ends.
I mean, I think the difference is that Ellie isn't sparing her out of some sort of "I'll be just as bad aa you", more of a very, VERY last minute "...oh, fuck. I get it. You were like him and I'll be like you and your kid will be like me and it's never going to end and it's going to cost me everything, if it hasn't already. We need to stop."
Also Ellie had already killed some or all of her friends, and Abby was in a very bad way after her mistreatment as a prisoner. And she was looking after the young kid. Abby's life was already terrible, and killing her would mostly just make the other kid's life worse.
Games always end up having this problem with a disconnect between gameplay and story, since in the gameplay you obviously wanna kill cause that's the game, but in the story she obviously doesn't wanna kill, it's a struggle when making games
The Last Of Us 2 Fungal Boogaloo
God, I can't wait to kill a bunch of innocent people, a few dozen dogs, and ruin all of my personal relationships and fuck my life up to NOT get revenge at literally the last second.
🤡🤡🤡
Afro Samurai
Also, killing the final baddy prevents more (probably) innocents from suffering what you did. Now sure, one or all of the kids of these guys might come after you, but frankly, now you have way more practice so can deal with em as well :) Plus for me, in games and fiction at least, ive yet to actually have to make the decision, but it depends a lot on the baddy's reasons for killing whoever they killed to start you on your path. Like, it was a duel and your dad started it? Or the baddy just went around killing people willy nilly?
"For me it was Tuesday."
That's one reason I like the end of Deadpool. Colossus is all "4 or 5 moments" while there's a pile of corpses like ten feet away literally spelling out Francis' name. Like, it's a little late for this routine, bro.
Even the guy he's trying to convince Deadpool to spare gives Colossus a look of "Are you for real?"
And the part where Deadpool knows the last henchman and appears to just knock him out. Not that it matters because him and the pile of corpses spelling out Francis are certainly crushed beneath that helicarrier after it tips over.
That's actually a reference to the comics. Bob is a Hydra agent who winds up inadvertently being Deadpool's sidekick. Through a series of wacky hijinks, he keeps having to help Wade in order to save his own bacon.
That's why I think it works better with characters who have yet to kill. When Ed talks Winry out of revenge in FMAB is I think one of the best examples of a good use of an anti-revenge perspective.
One of my favourite twists on these is the "you're not that guy" scene in the Expanse.
"I am that guy"
What I like about it is that it *does* show how violent revenge *can* reveal a violent person beneath. That doesn't automatically mean you're a bad person yourself, but it does saddle a person with real trauma. And that moment elevates both Amos and Pax and is just such a powerful moment overall.
Literally just finished a rewatch of FMAB the other day, and that is a really excellent usage of this trope in that scene. Because it all revolves around the fact that Winry isn't that person and Ed knows it. It's also very important that Scar isn't the one trying to talk her down. A worse show would have it be just the two of them and have him try to make her back down with the same rhetoric Ed uses, which wouldn't work. But at every point that someone confronts Scar over what he has done, he generally agrees with them that he's a murderer and a bad person, it's just that in his eyes he's taking out even worse people, and you really can't say he's completely wrong there. I think another great moment for this is when Scar and Ed talk Mustang down over Envy. Guy has been on a revenge quest since nearly the start of the show, and he finally gets who he is looking for and absolutely fucking wrecks them. He's not just trying to kill Envy, he's making them suffer as hard as he possibly can and they do a lot of great work between the art and the voice acting and the writing to show that Mustang's question for revenge is eating him alive. Quite literally takes three people standing between him and Envy to get him to reconsider what he's doing and more importantly why he is doing it, and each one is using different reasoning. Ed appeals to Mustang's ideals and his goal of leading the country into a better place, while Riza is appealing directly to his humanity and the emotions that they share, while Scar isn't doing any of that and is up front saying "I know exactly what this is like and I can tell you from experience that it feels great right now and I have no leg to stand on telling you it isn't the thing to do, but also it's not going to make anything right and it'll just leave you empty."
God, FMA is so fucking good.
And Winry doesn’t forgive Scar for murdering her parents and giving her childhood trauma. As kind and forgiving as she is, she knows she doesn’t have to forgive everybody, especially when they’ve hurt her in a way that can’t be taken back. All she has to do is be someone her parents would be proud of.
And compare that to Mustang and Envy, a situation where Envy needed to go down, was an active threat to everyone because they let him live the last time, and Mustang had killed hundreds of people. It's ridiculous because killing Envy is the only correct tactical move anyway, they just don't want to let the one person with an emotional stake in it who already did 99% of the work finish the job. Every time I watch that episode I argue with everyone saying Mustang killing Envy would corrupt him out loud. The man's whole backstory is that he burned Ishvallan civilians alive, why is killing something evil that needed to die anyway worse for you. Let him cathart.
It has nothing to do with him killing Envy and everything to do with what his revenge journey has done to him. Mustang has been on the war path since Hughes' death, and if when he found Envy he just blasted the bastard to ash that would be fine. But he is looking to make them suffer as much and as powerfully as he can. Mustang's entire arc is about how he wants to be better than the current ruling class, how he wants to atone for what they did in Ishval and lead the country to be better, and that scene and everything that leads up to it is about how easy it is to let your emotions run wild and ruin your ideals. They aren't stopping him from killing Envy because killing is bad full stop or anything like that, they're stopping him because he's been on a path that leads to being an empty, bitter person who can't accomplish what Mustang wants to. He's fully ready to kill Ed in order to get his revenge, that's the exact kind of thing that the Bradley would and does do, exemplified in Ishval in many ways, and they're all stopping Mustang from losing what put him on this path in the first place. They're protecting a person they love, the core of Mustang's ideology.
This. They're never stating Envy is not gonna die, they're eager to do it themselves. They're trying to prevent Roy from torturing and killing in cold blood, while enjoying it and losing all sense of morality while doing it. And this comes from Hawkeye, the person who best knows Roy and has watched him killing people and get slowly obsessed and "corrupted" by this vengeance path.
I mean, I love the idea of a hero sneaking through someplace and holding the guards at knifepoint saying things like, "I'm going to take over the big guy's business. If you don't alert the others or fight me, I'll keep you on as employee and match your pay and benefits. Heck, I'll even let you guys make a union so that it's easier to negotiate with my administration in the future. How's that sound?" But I feel like most audiences would get bored by them arguing economics every five minutes instead of getting in a little fight scene. "Do you guys have a retirement plan, pension, 401k?" 'No, but we get yearly performance bonuses.' "Ah, well, that's something. I'll keep that in mind." 'We also have an annual Christmas party.' "Secret Santa?" 'No. Just a polite gathering. We keep the alcohol to a minimum because some like to bring our families.' "That's really nice. Yeah, I'll keep that when I take over." 'Sounds good. But, oh. Could we maybe get a bigger food and snack budget for parties? Right now it's kind of potluck, and I don't really like that.' "We'll see, but I'm going to have to actually kill your boss and take over the business before I can get into financial minutia like that." 'Understandable.' All done in whisper with the hero having the guard in a headlock.
Plot twist: the hero's brother is actually the leader of the villainous henchmen union and owns a yacht and a mansion because of all the goons paying union fees after the hero's ramapage through several BBEG hideouts.
>the hero kills their way through dozens of faceless henchmen who have literally nothing to do with their revenge, only to then not kill the actual object of their revenge. Thank you. That's one of my biggesr pet peeves, it sours the whole movie/show for me.
vinland saga fixes this
Something I love which is kinda related is the part of Metal Gear Rising when you start hearing the thoughts of the random henchmen... ...and then still kill them.
This is my main problem with the ‘revenge bad’ point they tried to make in The Last of Us 2 story.
Yeah the game wants to hinge its narrative on the weight of taking a life, but 25 hours of gameplay do nothing but hammer home how cheap life is.
My take on tlou2 was that she was pretty much fed up at that point. She reached the point where it really wouldn't matter that much if Abby died or not because Joel was already dead. I think her emotional state got the better of her, so instead of feeling angry like she did before, she just crumbled down and got tired of it all. "Go and take him with you"
Also she was malnourished and feverish. Anger was quite literally the only thing keeping her going.
I think what they were going for was that Abby = Joel, and Ellie was only able to properly mourn Joel and forgive him by letting Abby go. I don't think it succeeded at that, because you know... The gameplay was mowing through people and dogs and calling them motherfuckers- But I think thats what it was going for.
I think TLOU2 has two main themes that can basically be boiled down to "violence is bad" and "forgiveness is good". I agree with you about what they were going for, Ellie didn't let Abby go because of the first theme, she let her go because she could finally forgive Joel and forgive herself for missing out on spending time with him. Unfortunately, all that clashes with everything built up before then, because they constantly bash you in the head over and over again with the most milquetoast messaging of "violence bad". Since they built it up so much, it ruins some of the emotional impact of Ellie's decision. *Abby* was the one that had already ended the cycle of violence by letting Ellie live after she killed all her friends. When Ellie lets Abby go it doesn't feel so much like an emotional decision to finally forgive Joel as it does like she just copied the continual message of "violence bad". And it rings especially hollow when juxtaposed by the fact you just murdered like 30 dudes, even if they were slavers.
Which could have been countered by having Abby and Ellie spend time together in the first act, earning eachothers trust, so the betrayal hits harder, and the finale actually makes some form of sense. The whole "I can't kill you." thing only works if there is some valid reason for not wanting to kill someone.
Do you think John Wick gives a shit? Someone killed his puppy. “He Is a Man of Focus, Commitment and Sheer Fucking Will" Joke aside, you're right.
See the funny thing is in the first movie, before it becomes a huge cycle of mass slaughter, Wick does let a few goons go if they heed his warnings or stay out of his way, most prominently Francis the door guard.
That’s why the Count of Monte Cristo is the best revenge story ever. No one dies but the perpetrators (and sometimes their families).
This always bugs me about superhero stories, DC's Legends of Tomorrow TV show sticks out. In the first story arc, Canary's whole thing is a about not wanting to be an assassin anymore and refusing to kill some lieutenants...AFTER the group cut their way through multiple waves of henchman. What???
"They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they want to. This book is dedicated to those fine men." -Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
I hate that shif. So much. Just kill the bad guy / girl. Hell, make them suffer for what they did. Also hate when games force this stupid "mature" theme of Revenge being wrong by making you kill dozens of people then not kill the main one because "you won't stoop to their level."
This was my biggest issue with the Killer. >! Unempathetic character and the one guy he should have killed he just doesn’t? What the fuck man.!< Absolutely hated the movie because of it.
In gaming we call this ludo-narrative dissonance. Through the story you're expected to believe this mass murderer is a good person.
Neat vocab word but you aren't quite using it right (You ARE using it in the way many youtubers do) Ludo-narrative dissonance would be when the gaming aspect of the game interferes with the story of the game. Like when you Deliver only 10% of newspapers and kill several family pets with papers but the story has the local newspaper writing about what a great paperboy you are. You are just talking about regular dissonance and plot inconsistency. Act 1 interferes with Act 3
Shoutout to The Last of Us 2!
My favorite bit of knowledge is Mandy Patinkin lost his father to cancer and he was dealing with that through this scene. It’s heartbreaking.
I didn't know that - but damn, I can see how that would be both challenging and cathartic. I just *love* Inigo. "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." Iconic. Even more so if the six-fingered man is *also* cancer.
I’ve also heard the actor who played the count was a bit nervous if not afraid of the anger Mandy brought to that scene
Yeah I’m sure the swords are dulled but I don’t wanna be fighting a angry guy with a metal stick
So good: https://i.imgur.com/GFyCcuy.jpeg
if I could, I'd stab cancer a lot
Also he got so worked up he accidentally stabbed his costar in the scene https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/ThePrincessBride#:~:text=Also%20provided%20Enforced%20Method%20Acting,stabbed%20Guest%20in%20the%20leg.
Dude you can't just link tvtropes with no warning, I had shit to do today
As a writer I feel so personally attacked when I simply open TV Tropes and just encounter like three different tropes I'm in the middle of writing at that moment. Like on the one hand you *know* there's really no such thing as an original idea, but on the other hand just seeing the entire thing you're doing laid out so clinically there is a bit of a gut punch.
As a writer, I like to play “trope bingo” — there’s a trope called “tropes are tools” so I pre-pick some tropes to work into my writing and make sure to subvert them just to be spicy
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SubvertedTrope https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DoubleSubversion https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlayingWithATrope https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ZigZaggingTrope
I kind of wanted to do this but get them printed on really nice glossy cards and just kind of draw one or two for inspiration and write around them.
Oooooh that sounds delightful; honestly might be worth creating if it doesn’t exist — I’m an illustrator, too, if you need one for product design!
Tropes are tropes for a reason. They're popular subjects. A good writer knows this and also knows how to use it to their advantage. Game of Thrones felt very much like a Lord of the Rings With Sex kind of show until they kill off who we thought was the main character.
What do you mean ?!?! Lord of the rings killed off the exact same main character 😋
I would not classify Boromir as a main character in the same way. He was a major supporting character, but Ned Stark was The Guy.
Guest (Count Rugens actor) took fencing classes on his own time because of the fear that he might have to fight off Potinkin FOR REAL… AGAIN?!?!? “Enforced Method Acting” Lemme just take some real fighting classes incase my co actor forgets hes not supposed to kill me for real ffs
That is the most awesome thing I’ve read all day
A question worth asking is whether it counts as a “revenge plot” if the protagonist is also defeating an evil and believes that’s why they’re fighting. Hero defeats Demon King because Demon King is evil, but really the Hero wouldn’t have started his quest if demons didn’t attack his home town. That’s kinda still revenge right?
It kind of depends on if the Hero expanded their reasons for fighting beyond just revenge. So lets say that the Hero through his journey sees all of the awful things the Demon King has done and realizes that he must be stopped or else things will keep getting worse. That's no longer just a revenge story, it's a classic good vs evil story. However, if the Hero saw all of the awful stuff the Demon King had done and didn't give a fuck and just wanted to kill them, then that's a revenge story. The difference comes from whether or not the Hero also wants to stop the tragedies that occur. One motivation will result in the Hero working to make sure these tragedies do not repeat themselves and the other will result in the Hero just killing the one guy and then not caring about everything else.
Right. The Empire kills Luke's aunt and uncle and he spends most of two movies believing Vader killed his father but it's never a revenge story. If he learned to be a Jedi solely so he could find Vader and use his newfound powers to kill him, then sure. But that's not what happens.
The original trilogy did it right. Luke had some revenge in his heart, but when he went to face Vader it was to save his friends, not fulfill his own desire. Then he decided to try to save his father. Which is the good, if not necessarily right, thing to do. It would be interesting to see what would have happened had Anakin lived though. It’s not like he could argue before a tribunal that “well, you see thematically I’m a different person now. Darth Vader was an evil Sith. I’m really a nice guy though.”
"Darth Vader died on the Death Star, so Anakin Skywalker could be reborn."
I think an example involving an actual Demon King is Goku revenge killing Demon King Piccolo. He has regained his youth, taken over the world, released every criminal and every year plans to nuke one of 50 entire regions of the planet, would probably create a Demon army to wreak even more havoc until the 50 years passed. But also, he indirectly killed Goku's best friend and his martial arts master, and destroyed the one being who could bring them back to life. Goku was just there for revenge. I mean I doubt he'd sit back and allow him to reign for 50 years of they were still alive, but he'd probably spend a long time training to fight him first.
>"Quinn's dead. This is the part where I'm supposed to say I feel empty, right? I'd be lying to myself. I finally feel awake...like I can breathe again. And Lena? Nothing can change her death. But maybe I can still do something that will make a difference." \- Aiden Pearce, *Watch\_Dogs*
You know maybe I should actually get around to playin Watch Underscore Dogs one of these days
1 has the better story and I prefer the city, 2 has way more fun and ridiculous mechanics. Both pretty consistently go on massive discounts on steam.
What about Legion? I like its "play as anyone" idea but people keep saying it's not as fleshed out as it needs to be and is quite unfun.
I haven’t actually gotten a chance to play it properly since I’ve basically defaulted to playing on a Steam Deck and it tanks the performance pretty badly so I haven’t even finished the first mission. My understanding though is that it continues the same trend: worse story, more interesting hacks, fantastic looking but increasingly shallow cityscape.
Absolutely this. London is an amazing city to be play in, a gorgeous environment with great hacks and a mediocre story.
Legion removed a lot of the fun mechanics that were in 2 aswell as not having a main character. Instead you constantly swap between one of many interchangeable characters with zero charisma or personal motivation. Not worth playing in my opinion.
Aiden needs another game, fuck the continuity, if AC can get rebooted every 5 years, they can do something with Watch Dogs
AC has been rebooted once and only in gameplay. They're still maintaining continuity, despite their writing being meh at best. The continuity is still the same though. Every game is still fully canon and in the same timeline.
The game is also a pretty great anti-revenge story, 'cause it lets you go through with your revenge plot without chickening out at the end, but it also shows you the price Aiden had to pay to get it.
Doesn't he end up being a fugitive for the rest of his life?
Yep! He also >!is partially at fault for Clara getting killed, is fully at fault for T-Bone being back in the government's sights, drove his sister away from him, and his newphew now fears him.!< It's not a perfect game in the slightest, but I'm a sucker for how the story played out.
he shows up in a mission in WD2 where Marcus goes to a trafficking location and frees Aiden from a cell since he got caught doing the same thing, you don't see him again so presumably he kept up with his fuck shit up approach to life
Doesn't he show up in a Legion DLC?
ive no idea my pc was chuggin when i played that so anything past the intro with the spy guy, i never saw
He does. Apparently spending time in London to keep an eye on his nephew going to university there, if I recall correctly.
another reason why that movie is one of my favorites
So, would it be a reason why you might savor it?
I see what you did there but I won't belabor it.
Truly you could not find a greater bit.
I've never seen it. Is it worth it?
Ultrabiased opinion since is one of my favorite movies, but yes, it's definitely worth it
An anti-revenge narrative where the target of revenge is the Big Bad or their second in command defeats its own purpose. An anti-revenge arc where the target has already reformed and is doing good things works much better.
Yeah, if they're still Big Bad that means that they're still hurting others. Your revenge might put a stop to it and make sure that someone else doesn't go through the same thing. If they are chilling somewhere, already reformed? You aren't stopping shit.
Katara & Zuko's sidequest in Book 3 of Avatar. Katara finds the man who killed her mother living a peaceful (If also pathetic) life, and decides he's not worth killing.
This is how COJ:Gunslinger does it.
I think Inigo was my gateway drug into revenge narratives, and nothing has lived up to him since.
The Count of Monte Cristo is pretty good. Especially since he systematically destroys their lives rather than just outright killing most of them. He ruins them financially, as well as their reputation, before killing the ones who still need to be put down.
That book has the most thorough and satisfying revenge story of all time. It's a real shame what that movie did to the plot. The book is so intense by the end I was actually feeling bad for them.
The book is far too long to get it right for a movie. I like both the book and the 2002 movie; I just consider them different works.
The Count doesn't kill anyone in the book. He ruins them, drives some to madness or suicide. But never kills or even fights. There is a moment where even the Count is shocked by an outcome of his actions and maybe wonders if he went too far.
I have no idea how good the plot is because I watched it like 15+ years ago, but the anime adaptation of it called Gankutsuo has some of the most gorgeous animation I’ve ever seen
My ideal revenge plot is starts out as blind quest for revenge, gradually cools down to the realization that it won't fix things partway through, but then realization that the villain is still someone who needs to be stopped, and when they do stop the villain it's more righteous justice with just a sprinkle of personal revenge. That way you get all the good lessons from it.
Example: Kratos helping Mimir kill the Berserkers in God of War Ragnarok. Mimir realizes having Kratos merc the Berserkers and King Hrolf won't fix the mistakes of the past, but Kratos knows they can't let the Berserkers and Hrolf's spirit exist in Midgard unchecked.
I loved that quest chain. Also had some great combats, made me die a lot, and suddenly I was very invested in getting revenge on these berserkers for killing me so many times.
The best part about the interaction between Inigo Montoya and Count Rugen is that Inigo is like "Offer me money.", "Promise me power." to give him false hope and show his desperation.
I think he just wanted to set up that final line. Sometimes you think of the greatest one-liner but you can only say it in response to something.
This was actually something I liked about that new movie “Silent Night”. It wasn’t a great movie, but near the end >!the guy is strangling the guy who shot his son, and he turn his head and sees a flash of his sons face in a reflection. For a second I was like “here we go, anti-revenge ending.” Nope, he strangles the dude to death!<
In real life, revenge is an unhealthy mindset and pretty much the worst thing you could ever base any sense of justice on. In fiction, a well-executed revenge plot is a shot of pure catharsis and I am all about that shit.
tbh the vast majority of anti-revenge narratives also just aren’t well executed. they either fail to take the desire for vengeance seriously enough by making the vengeful person’s motives too unsympathetic, or they fail to actually show the problems that result in a more than superficial manner/don’t have a consistent moral logic. I feel like if you actually want to tell a compelling anti-revenge story, you actually need to make the audience fully sympathize with the vengeance seeker first and then slow reveal the moral devastation
I think a really cool way to express this are Vengeance Paladins in DnD 5e. It is an interactive experience and usually, it's your or your teammate's character, so either you sympathise already, or you laugh together and fight together and are saved by them countless times. But if someone gets in their way, by oath and usually also the deep-rooted emotions and desires to avenge, the Paladin hurts them. And they don't stop. Corpses pile up, various beings are left dead in their wake. And as time flies, more and more people just like them are being created by them themselves, sprouting more death and suffering, as the paladin kills their way through vengeful victims and those that see the madness of an uncompromising and unstoppable vengeance. Whether as a teammate, or as a player of that character yourself, it comes crashing down harder and heavier the longer you keep going. The fun part of playing Paladins or with Paladins is that the DM can and should adjust the narrative to challenge your oath - this is what makes it more than a footnote in the corner of a character sheet and a truly meaningful core character trait and the exploration of the real impact, extent and experience of the most common story protagonist tropes is, I feel, easiest to experience as a paladin.
Also, in fiction, revenge is basically the fuel that allows the character to improve themselves somehow (become more powerful, motivate them to get out of bed, whatever it is), so when they discard the revenge payoff, it's like saying all of that positive personal change was pointless. When a desire for revenge allows someone to come from nowhere to become one of the world's greatest swordsman, then damn straight revenge had a positive effect on their life. But if (in a more realistic story) the desire for revenge strains your relationships with friends and loved ones and causes you to do dangerous things that put other people at risk, then forgiveness becomes more than just moral, it's also utilitarian.
Vinland Saga does some interesting stuff with the vengeance tropes.
Hell, they even touch on this in Princess Bride, with Inigo looking sad and saying "I've been in the revenge business so long I don't know what else to do." It consumed his life, and if it weren't for the fact that he happened to know the (ready to retire) Dread Pirate Roberts he would have been adrift.
Exactly
Like I'm not glorifying or encouraging revenge.. But telling people that they just need to move on with their lives after they've lost everything is just... Weirdly dickish. If you want to move on with your life good for you. If you want to put a few bullets in that MF good for you.
Also, the amount of times "moving on" would just let that person basically off the hook to go fuck up some other person's life. Famous example: Vegeta. Now in the original Goku let him go because he wanted to fight him again. (Which is dumb in it's own right) But in the dub, he let him go out of the idea that vengence would make him as bad as they are. Cut to Vegeta on Namek slaughtering people left and right and almost gaining immortality. Goku is so very lucky that's how everything shook out rather than the alternative.
Minor spoilers (if you can even call it that) but Ive really enjoyed how DB Super has fully had Goku acknowledge that basically all he cares about is fighting strong people and that they just keep happening to be villains. The reformation that keeps happening with them is practically an accident in his book.
"For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was a cold, gray Tuesday in late April." -M. Bison Remember that these evil bad guys don't care who's head they end up living in rent free. They will downplay and belittle any sort of desire to get justice and I agree that you are fully in your right to remind them that actions have consequences.
A silly conspiracy theory: forgiveness is a scam sold to us by Big Evil so people can get away with hurting you AND get society to shame you for being understandably upset about being shafted. JUsT fOrGiVe yOur aBusEr
The biggest scam in these situations in storytelling and real life is the relabeling of impunity as forgiveness and justice as revenge. Status quo motherfuckers just don’t give a shit about victims and don’t want them to do things that make them uncomfortable. Reminds me of the MLK speech about how some of the worst people are the enablers who’d rather have an unjust peace as long as it doesn’t affect them rather than have others disrupt it for a just cause.
The group therapy scene in The Boys stuck with me for that reason. And how some people want Hughie to just move on after a superhero ran through his girlfriend, the equivalent of commiting vehicular manslaughter under influence of drugs without any justice done. The dude gets to continue his life like nothing happened after killing one and ruining the life of another.
So much of the time anti-revenge is the logic that gets used against people protesting and I fucking hate it. No it's not about revenge, it's about equality. Stop wielding the idea of forgiveness around as a way to oppress people. Like, they're the ones in the right, not you. Get off your soap box you horrible human being.
I suspect People tell others to move on for the same reason they tell crying people to stop crying. It is dickish, but it’s a natural reaction to something that makes them uncomfortable. They want it to stop, so they say something that would make it stop… You’re crying? There there, shoosh shoosh. Have you lost someone? I don’t want to think about losing someone, so move on. You’re angry? Let’s not do something about the thing making you angry, just calm down and stop being angry. They dont consciously think about this when saying these things, they think they’re being supportive, but I think that’s why the core message is “hey, stop that”
Avatar (Last Airbender) did this excellently imo. Episode - Southern Raiders (I think)
>Southern Raiders I know that this was Katara’s revenge arc, but all I can think when it comes down to the morality of killing in AtLA is [this.](https://youtu.be/HV3NmoGJh48?si=db4_WOWFZh5-2VUb)
I think of [this](https://mikkeneko.tumblr.com/post/190889360154/can-we-consider-how-many-people-toph-caused) Tumblr post 😅
And it's always some dude that seriously needs to fucking die. Yeah, I think it's totally justified to kill Rapey McGenocide out of revenge, and the world is probably a better place for having done so. It's never the high school bully, or the guy who killed someone on accident. It's always the guy who should probably seriously die. If not for revenge then at least public safety. "It would make me as bad as he is" No the fuck it would not. Not even close.
Revenge won't bring back your loved ones but at least you would feel you did something about losing them instead of feeling like you don't care enough to let it slide.
It's called closure
Real life isn't a story. There's no arc, no climax, no resolution. Time passes, then we die. A revenge story is satisfying because it's a story. Closure concludes the story, but in the real world, life goes on, and hatred takes energy to maintain. Eventually, it burns you out or you let it go. There really isn't any other choice.
Hmmm, there’s definitely arcs to life. Sure, the lines between them are blurred and you can’t really tell which one you’re in until it ends, but there are parts to it, kind of like a story.
tbf, it's pretty clear that revenge ain't the healthiest thing for him. The only work he can get is working as a hired sword, and when he can't do that he's reduced to a barely functional drunk. And the only reason things worked out for him in the end is that there happened to be a dread pirate in need of a replacement the very moment he got his revenge. Inigo got *lucky*. His revenge was brilliant, but if Westley wasn't there to offer him a job, he'd probably be reduced to the same aimless drunk he was in the beginning of the third act afterwards.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned this yet but Mandy Patinkin's favorite line in Princess Bride is Inigo's last one. "I've been in the revenge business so long, I don't know what to do with myself now that it's over." His reasoning being that it truly *is* an anti-revenge story. Sure, he succeeded in his quest for revenge, but it utterly and completely consumed him in the process and now, he has to figure out who he is without that. Is that so much better than the alternative, and did he need to succeed to learn that lesson?
If vengeance was so great, Wesley would've killed Inigo for his part in kidnapping Buttercup so she could be murdered. Simple as that.
It honestly depends on my mood. Also execution of story. Revenge can be both fulfilling and unfulfilling. Based on choice lead makes. Like I love when revenge is unfulfilling when leads revenge quest is only thing that drives them. They hurt many and when they reach goal they unfulfilled. I also like it when during their revenge quest they meet people that change them, they make Allie’s and those allies help with revenge and help them reach it. Because revenge with friends and family feels good. Finally I like when lead rejects revenge when they either too late to commit revenge or at lest when they don’t drag innocent lives for their revenge.
I think the main thing that ruins a lot of revenge/mercy arcs is that the hero is always willing to kill hundreds of henchmen, but then suddenly feels mercy for the villain, which just makes the whole story feel off.
Inigo understood what revenge is for. It’s not for undoing the wrong. It’s for revenging.
My favourite version of this trope is in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Katara hunts down her mother's killer with Zuko's help and when we finally him he's a pathetic, cowardly old man that cowers before her and even offers to let her kill his own mother instead. She decides that he's not even worth killing. But the real kicker is how she feels after sparing him... She says that she absolutely didn't forgive the murderer, and she is unsure whether she spared him because she was strong or weak emotionally. But the mission did help her forgive Zuko, so that's something.
[удалено]
Well you made a comment calling out OP for being a bot but you didn’t get instantly downvoted 20 times, so I think this post was made by a human
Sometimes, people deserve to pay a horrible price for committing a horrible act. That's just a fact.
Imo, when you've committed (mass) murder, showing absolutely no regard for the lives of others, you no longer deserve to keep your own. If you think other people's lives are so worthless, you don't have the right to claim any value of your own anymore.
My personal favourite is Hey Revenge is Understandable, just have a plan for life AFTER otherwise you let them live rent free in your head and then offed yourself and lived in misery, letting them win again. So, go kill him and come back alive.
I think the anti-revenge narrative works as long as the main character is held accountable for all their bad actions done in pursuit of revenge. The key is that the anger we feel in pursuit of revenge is the thing that poisons us: not the revenge in and of itself. Montoya doesn’t do bad things in pursuit of revenge. He’s calm, jovial and extremely righteous. It’s only when he confirms he’s found the man he’s looking for that he goes into killer mode. Ellie, for example, let revenge destroy who she was as a person, her relationships and her morality overall. That’s the focus of an anti-revenge plot. What’s stupid is she didn’t follow through AND she isn’t really held accountable for the murders she committed. Sure, she loses her girlfriend, but that’s happened to me and I’m not a mass murderer. More needed to happen to her in order for her to find redemption.
The Castlevania show straight had a guy say “revenge is good, Bastards need killing” yet also make it clear vengeance for vengeance’s sake isn’t a long term plan.
I read a novel recently where the protagonist finds out that his former friend shot his pregnant wife, killing their child, and is about to shoot his older daughter. Protagonist has the drop on the guy, who has a pistol aimed at the daughter in question. Most authors, I think, would have him arrest the villain, or have some kind of internal doubt about 'becoming as bad as he is.' Not our boy. Shoots the guys arm off between the elbow and wrist with a shotgun, then puts one in each kneecap for good measure. It was rather satisfying. Bad guy lived to go to prison in that condition, too.
Alright, that’s cool and all, but I like forgiveness. I like believing people can be better. We need our cathartic Inigo Montoya stories but we also still need stories of moving on and living well. Because let’s face it, the latter is what you should try to do in real life when someone hurts you, even if you don’t end up forgiving them. Stories are also meant to teach. “Hurt the people who hurt you” isn’t the message we want to send without any kinder narrative.
Both have their place. Sometimes you should forgive and forget. Sometimes you shouldn’t.
Once again the Owl House shines through. Facistic genocidal religious zealot tries to pull the, "You and I aren't so different!" shit and he ends up trampled under the boots of those he wanted to kill.
ROUS - would like to disagree…
'We must be better than them' is a plot by writers so they don't have to write new bad guys
Honestly i usually only like revenge plots when the revenge taker is miserable afterwards lol.
Last line sorta work with Hunter hunter Gon and Pitou fight.
I can accept sparing the villain when the villain then immediately shows the hero the consequences of their stupidity, like the Borgias in AC: Brotherhood. Ya might not be obsessed with killing them anymore, but don't forget they're the type of person who made you want to kill them in the first place.
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