Moved in with other people, graduated high school, came up with too many story ideas, practiced flute, practiced drawing, there was a dog who wandered into the yard who we then kept, and had her for a couple years, also adopted Toby, bought Tears of the Kingdom (Zelda) and Wildwood Story (Cattails) when they came out, started dating and then got engaged
Also, trying to decide if I want to go to college or not
Topic: Let’s talk about bully characters (if you have watched Mean Girls, it would help)
If you’ve never watched Mean Girls, can horrible bullies be redeemed? How can they be redeemed? What would be their spinoff story?
What about Mean Girls?
Can the Plastics be forgiven truly? Is Regina George redeemed? She’s said and done horrible and mean things. Can she be forgiven? People just moved on.
What if Mean Girls had a spinoff where the story focuses on Regina George after Mean Girls? Can people find it in themselves to forgive or understand her?
I would say absolutely but, as with all characters, they need to look inward and wish to change.
I think ultimately it depends on the person. I know some former bullies who became absolute sweethearts after someone actually gave them a reality check or started treating them as fellow human beings (I put this second one because some of them became bullies because that’s what everyone expected of them).
But on the other hand, I know a lot of bullies (sadly most of them) who are still bullies. Now, despite what my writing shows, I’m not actually a violent person 
But there are a few who I think I would very much like to whack.
So yeah, depends on the person.
Makes sense. Depends on the person.
I do want to think that Regina George would have turned out okay in the end. She might not have been such a very good person, but she did show a few not so bad moments. Or maybe she would just have mellowed out a little bit.
Everyone in that movie were playing off of each other’s flaws the whole time. Even the teachers.
I think that humans as a whole are mostly shaped by their experiences.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, there is a bit more to it than that. Like, someone can consistently end up suffering loss and still be a force for good (because at the end of the day we have the ability to choose how we react to things). But I would say that our experiences help determine how we react to something.
For example, if you touch a lit stove with your hand and burn yourself, you are very unlikely to do so again because that hurts. You also might develop a phobia of fire from the experience.
I think that someone, like a bully, might need to have an experience that resonates with them on a personal level which causes them to change/find redemption (or look inward as NotARussianBot so well put it).
Not exactly bullying, but an example of an evil character finding redemption would be:
Spoilers for Star Wars: Return of the Jedi - A Forty Year Old Movie:
Darth Vader finding redemption and saving his son. His redemption all hinged on a very specific set of circumstances/experience: Seeing his son being tortured to death. People had tried to help him see the error of his ways but were unable to get through to him. Yet the love for his son and the thought and pain of losing him would have been too much for Darth Vader to bear again (as he had experienced with losing his wife).
His continued experience of loss (often caused by his own hand) also helped spur his decision to save his son. His past experiences, along with his current predicament with his son, helped him overcome his feelings of being trapped along a path of evil and made him decide to react differently (for good and to save his son).
So yeah, I think finding redemption as a bully is something sort of like that. Maybe it requires a wild circumstance that effects them emotionally and causes them to think, “Man, I’ve been a really trash person, haven’t I?”
“Shoutout to my dad but I’m ficking adopted.”
-Tekashi69
Agree.
I think in that sense, Regina George hasn’t had her “oh my gosh, I have been horrible!” moment. She just gets run over by a bus and somehow that’s the end of her story? She’s like a typical villain-being-defeated-question-mark story?
Hmm, that’s making me think maybe I need to have my MC (yes, this question about bullies was about my own character, surprise surprise 
) face a similar situation to her bullying in the fantasy world she gets shoved into. At first, her bullying in the real world doesn’t have too much consequences. In fact, she continues to semi be a bully even though she doesn’t have full power anymore.
I’m thinking she can go into a similar situation with someone in the fantasy world. She believes they follow her, takes advantage of it too much, gets told off about it, but that’s all just like in the real world. Maybe the one she bullied won’t continue to like her, but she thinks everyone else will forgive her for it.
But the consequences are terrible this time. And like you said, some wild circumstance effects her emotionally to such an extent that she realizes what she’s done in the real world as well. She finally sees why she was bad.
In that sense, Cady in Mean Girls went through that “I’ve been a really trash person” arc, didn’t she? But the Plastics didn’t. They just kind of faded away.
You talking about your MC just made me realize something. A bully can bully for lots of different reasons, and not all of them are born of ill intent.
Sometimes it can be someone that thinks they are teasing at an acceptable level (this especially applies to some teenagers with crushes) or they can be doing it knowing that they are being a jerk, but do so to try to get a point across/help someone else improve.
Now I’m thinking it’d be super interesting to have a character that starts out as a bully with malicious intentions, but at the end of the story ends up shifting to where they still bully, but use it with good intent.
IDK, just food for thought!
Back on topic, I want to clarify that I don’t think that everyone ever is redeemable. Some people do bad things knowing they are bad things and enjoy inflicting that suffering onto others.
And from a storytelling perspective, I think that’s A-OK. Not every antagonist needs to have a “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” backstory. Some of the more fun villains are just pure evil and they own it (NotARussianBot can attest to this as a fellow DragonBall fan)!
I haven’t seen Mean Girls (I really should) but that’s the vibe I’m getting with Regina George But yeah, I guess redemption really involves getting in the character’s head and understanding if it is a possibility for them based on the things they do and why they do them!
I just saw a post on this on FB while scrolling. Something along the lines of: a villain is made. And with pictures of the Queen of Hearts as a child from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, live-action Maleficent, and there was one more, I can’t remember.
But it’s so true. Some might be just purely power-hungry and evil, but many in fiction have had some kind of tragic backstory or some reason they turned into the villain.
Hmm, interesting. You could probably create a story with a bully that goes from being mean to pushy and doesn’t really have an arc. I think it could lead to an interesting discussion about pride. Pride can come from having some insecurities.
And it’s soooo satisfying when they’re finally defeated, isn’t it? 
Feel free to tag, btw 
@NotARussianBot You’ve been summoned
It’s iconic, cringy, terrible, a fun time, stereotyped, and memed to the moon and back XD Watch it once, and watch it again to catch the memes. It screams romcom teen fic. Truly has everything in it.
There’s also a Halloween party scene, so in terms of season, now is about the time
The most interesting thing about Dragon Ball is that Goku wished for Kid Buu to come back in the next life as a good guy and that lead to the creation of Uub. I haven’t seen that anywhere else.
Bullies with a sad back story are always good, but I also like villains who are simply born that way, like Rhoda in The Bad Seed. (უ‸ლ)
Can we stop asking if bullies can be redeemed or need to be redeemed? Some of them won’t be. It’s not a requirement. Society seems to think that every character needs a redemption arc. They don’t.
I want to see more “good” characters get morally corrupted. I want to see them go down dark paths, and reveal their real selves, like Walter White did. I find heroism and hero worship to be overplayed.
I find the concepts of “good” and “evil” in media to be skewed and very black and white. We all need more variety than the usual arcs. We need something interesting, and relatable.
I have studied various cases of killer kids, most of their victims are children younger and weaker than they are but adult family members are also common targets. Just recently in the US, there is a high-profile case of a 13 year old girl shooting her grandma with a gun.
So, yeah, I believe it when you say some people are just born evil.
I find this slightly horrifying.
I think it’s believable that it could be a genetic thing where someone is born with criminal tendencies, and I also think it could be maybe some kind of minor injury where the brain just doesn’t produce enough of whatever chemical is responsible for empathy. Why aren’t more fictional villains born with brain damage or something to explain their wickedness? We need more books like this! ☜(ˆ▿ˆc)
How about enhancing humans to the point they become a (super)human / alien sub-species?
…and a somewhat more uplifting / lighthearted video on this subject.
From what I remember of the Neon Genesis Evangelion lore, the EVAs are based on roughly 95% human DNA, and the Angels have similar genetics.
Maybe aliens are just altered humans on a bad day.
100% makes sense to me!
I’m 99% sure that is the reason for Ryouma in Getter Robo being himself.
There is a threshold of no return.
Probably one of the biggest ways it’s set in cultural history is Biblical. Pharaoh vs God & the plagues. The background is Pharaoh is a self-proclaimed God, and his people are able to mimic the plagues for the first half of them. Each iteration of Gods playing chicken with each other it had “Pharaoh hardened his heart”, and he chose to take back his loss from the other God and go right back into “I’m God and you bow to my will, now go torment this other’s God’s people”.
But the last plague, where it was playing chicken with the lives of an enslaved people’s firstborns vs Pharaoh’s, it’s not Pharaoh who hardens his heart. It’s God.
And people who aren’t thinking this was a battle of Gods get so upset at the “story of the true Deity” that they talk about how it’s a game of unequals and gloss over what Pharaoh was: deity, owner, ruler, and a many headed hydra: cut him down and the next one takes his place as a God and surpreme lord of his domain. Both in reality and in stories, this is the type of character that can’t be redeemed and has to be crushed.
We had a monster just like that in WWII.
During this summer, a writer of dark romances attached her ML to a known killer, and all hell had broken loose in the writing community because this was too close to redeeming a genuine monster for a fetish.
So, there are irredeemable people, often icons.
The problem then comes in at less standard evils and motivations. For example, any ideology that is touted as a victim by a large swathe of people, hiding predators behind it. Generally, its good to assume that 5% of any population is dangerously abusive, and if laws aren’t in place to net those people and cull them from the population, we’re allowing predators to run rampant in that ideology. You’re going to get this easier in ideas you find to be “your enemy” than the ones you support. The problem is that it’s your job to police your side and not allow ideology to hide the monsters. If you’ve never outed one on your own side but always play the underdog going after the oppositions’ glaring issue…well, your underdog crusade is bullying. Are YOU redeemable? Did YOU come from a place of good intent? Didn’t you think YOU weren’t the bully?
At that point, if you can place yourself right there and face what you’re hiding from theoretically (even if you never meet a real problem), then the plea for saving a bully from themselves is actually a plea to save yourself from your own failures.
At that point, you’re ready to tackle saving a bully. You’re saving someone who thought they were justified, but aren’t. Totally different from a true monster.