GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #510: REDEMPTION

The true hero of The Walking Dead

 

I'm a sucker for a great redemption story. The farther a villain goes, the better before they try to bring themselves back to humanity. The purest form of it that we're going through right now is Negan on The Walking Dead. He brutally and graphically murdered the second most beloved character on the show, and now that he's seen the error of his ways, he's trying to be a good man. To say nothing of poor Abraham. No one remembers that part. Everyone cares about their sacred baby Glenn.

So I've adopted the same stance through much of my writing. I'm bringing Dong of Frankenstein back into print, hopefully before the year is done, and it will be accompanied by other out of print stories. One of them is "Zero Recall," in which I detail the crimes of a horrible rapist/murderer, and yet I somehow bring him back from the brink to the point where people who have read the story feel bad for him. I'm doing this on a much grander scale with my forthcoming SF novel, Eye Cutter. You'll see what I mean when it's released.

So I found myself wondering a while back why that kind of story is so interesting to me, and when I was preparing my piece on why people hate the Star Wars prequels, I figured it out.

Darth Vader has done a lot of horrible things, up to and including the murder of children. Does he deserve redemption? Maybe. Just maybe. Because he fell under the sway of someone far more evil than he. Many of the things he did were done because he truly didn't understand the situation. It was easy for Palpatine to manipulate him into becoming the ghastly thing known as Darth Vader.

Who sees this possibility of redemption? His son. Luke tries to save his father, and holy shit, it actually works. (Spoiler.) It works to the point where Vader saves his son's life at the cost of his own and kills Palpatine. Yes. Kills Palpatine. Because that guy never comes back. Ever. If they made a ninth Star War, he absolutely, most certainly wouldn't come back as the villain because Vader definitively kills him in Return of the Jedi. Permanently.

The end of Return of the Jedi infected me with a joy in this kind of redemption arc. I can safely say that it changed my life. Because I've done some pretty bad things over the course of my life. I've said vile shit that I shouldn't have. And I'm trying to be a better person every day. If someone like Darth Vader can come back from the evil he committed, then my own redemption should be a breeze.

Taking it like a champ!

OK, some of you think Rick should have let Negan die when he slit his throat. And yeah, Negan did some bad shit, too. But think about why you like Rick and hate Negan. I call Negan the hero of the show because at least he has no illusions about himself. Rick and friends are absolutely delusional in thinking they're the good guys. If you hadn't spent so many seasons with Rick and Daryl and Glenn and T-Dog (RIP, you sweet bastard) and the rest, and the characters you followed for all those seasons instead ran into Rick and Co., you would recognize them as the morally bankrupt pieces of shit they really are. Negan said that his only regret, when he killed Glenn AND ABRAHAM, is that he didn't just kill all of them. I was kinda hoping he would. Hence the reason I call TWD Negan and Friends.

Also, when Negan comes to realize what a bad guy he really is, he genuinely feels bad about the horrible things he'd done. Can you imagine, even on Rick's most optimistic day, that Rick would ever even think about doubting himself?