Their characters lean too heavily into villainy for them to want to seek redemption they have so much personal baggage weighing them down that the decency required to desire such a thing tends to elude them, and any good turn they make is unlikely to stick. The Reformation Highly Improbable category is for characters who, if in the right circumstances where they could make the choice to repent, COULD do so, but by far the higher likelihood is that they WON’T. Like, some versions of the characters and their stories might end up one way, but then some other version could end up at the opposite conclusion without feeling any less valid, or a character could end their story one way but things are left open ended enough that imagining them backsliding in the other direction is not a stretch. The 50/50 Chance Of Making It Back Over The Line category is exactly what it sounds like - where it’s a toss up as to whether or not the character will end their stories having moved to the side of the angels or having been condemned along with all the other devils. Basically, I just want to see these antagonists living out their life stories and being people, regardless of whether they come to a Good End or a Bad End, and regardless of my personal hopes for their futures or how I feel about them on a personal level. The I Wish You The Best Of Luck Out There category is the most neutral in that it doesn’t pass judgment on a character based on how redeemable or not they are, since they could plausibly go either way in the long run. The Deserves To Find Happiness category is one that overlaps with the first one but with the distinction that the character doesn’t necessarily have to undergo a redemption arc - they could get to the “repent wicked ways and cease doing evil things” part and retire at that, they could surrender their own life in a self sacrificial and redemptive way as penance for all the time wasted on sin, vice and villainy, or they could even just pull a Karma Houdini if they’re cool, pragmatic and not-too-malicious enough to get away with it.
The Redemption Well Earned category is for characters who have undisputedly earned and attained atonement, exoneration, and even forgiveness for their past wrongdoings via a legit turnaround or redemption arc, and thus have the right to a happily ever after ending should they make it through the story with their lives still in tact. And when doing that, I’ve found that I can divide them into six categories on a sort of sliding scale. So for me, I feel compelled to try and look at such characters from as objective a lens as possible, in terms of the character as a story piece and as the sort of person they’ve been constructed and depicted as being. A lot of this will come from personal attachment to the character by the fans (and sometimes even by creators!), particularly if they identify with them or project their own selves and experiences onto them. And that sort of creates a storytelling conundrum because no writer is obligated to take their antagonist down that road if they believe it feels more right for the story and character for them to go the other way. Now with some of these characters, being deeply layered, complex, humanized and in many cases tragic, can easily be overlapped and conflated with being sympathetic, which itself can then be overlapped and conflated with rooting for the character to find redemption and get a happy ending.
The tiniest bit of depth and nuance goes a long way. Or even if not particularly complex or developed per say, I like villains that are humanized just enough to be plausible and credible as characters. When it comes to stories, I love me a good, complex, well developed villain or antagonist, as I’m sure I’ve made clear before.
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