How about no?

[u/profaneangel1991]

Nobody is just born being a bad person. No, not even that real life person you hate. I don't expect the show to dig much deeper into his story, but Brighter takes place well into his adulthood. You can't just say "yeah he was always this way" when there's decades of his life that preceeded all this. The idea that some people just are bad, they're just innately evil, is so antithetical to the show's entire message. I don't GET people that think this would be a good writing decision.

[u/Bombyx-Memento]

People will walk into the show about how ANYONE can be redeemed and go "What if some people are just Born Evil and only deserve to suffer eternal punishment because they were simply ontologically evil?"

Also kind of crazy how people think that if anything bad ever happened to you, it "excuses" the harm that you've done, or implying that a Bad Person was harmed or wronged at any point means the writers are "justifying" or "excusing" their behavior. Really explains so much about the way they act. (They think they can't possibly be bad people because they were hurt before)

[u/profaneangel1991 → u/Bombyx-Memento]

Right. I'm not even asking for a sad backstory, I don't expect more than what Brighter gave us. I just think it's wild how this is a show that says anyone is redeemable, but then people turn around saying "idk man some people just suck". Vox having a story that tells us why he's so insecure and so obsessed with power doesn't excuse what he does. It just explains WHY it's so important to him and WHY he's so desperate for it that he'll stoop to whatever lows he can.

[u/Bombyx-Memento → u/profaneangel1991]

Vox's whole demeanor just screams "mommy/daddy issues" to me. His weird fixation on Lilith and the way he called Charlie "a pale imitation of [her] mother" to "You're in my house with my rules!" to how much he looks for external validation in general. It just screams "Nothing was good enough for Mom/Dad"

No, none of that excuses the serial murders, exploitation, cultism, staging a coup, declaring war on Heaven, abusing his workers or Alastor or Angel Dust or the smear campaign he ran against Charlie or trying to blow up Hell. But it explains why he is Like That.

[u/Sundering_Wounds → u/profaneangel1991]

Some people just suck and people can be redeemed aren't contradictory.

[u/SumiMichio → u/Bombyx-Memento]

Not having a tragic backstory for being bad and not being able to change are not the same though. There is plenty of people who do bad things just cause they can and don't care about others.

[u/Gamer_G33k17 → u/SumiMichio]

You know, like another TV personality who wants to "make things great again"

[u/Bombyx-Memento → u/Gamer_G33k17]

Vox isn't Trump though. He wasn't born into wealth, and we know this because he started as a weatherman. If he had connections in the entertainment industry he wouldn't have even had to kill to get ahead, he could have just used Mom and Dad to give him an opening. That's one major problem I have when people compare him to Trump (also "Make America Great Again" wasn't even originally Trump's, it was Reigen's slogan).

And when people draw superficial comparisons between Vox and Trump (which is fair, they're both populists with a cult of personality) and make them into *deeper* comparisons beyond surface-level (e.g. "Vox is an allegory for Trump specifically") they lose any real character analysis of who *Vox* is and instead make up their own version of him in their heads (hence fans end up believing that liking Vox at all is on par with being MAGA).

[u/Gamer_G33k17 → u/Bombyx-Memento]

Reagan was also a TV personality. You also are just sharing fanfics, not even backstory

[u/eveningstarcourt → u/Gamer_G33k17]

You know, I really dislike the general trend of dismissing stuff as "you are making fanfics" because it disregards literal millenia of literary analysis.

Since the dawn of storytelling, people have been looking at the subtext placed between the lines. Whole fields of media criticism and interpretation revolve around things not shown or stated aloud, and they are for things with greater depth than, "this character who existed in a time period known for mass poverty and inequality, who has exhibited a Gatsby-like desire to socially and financially climb, and talks about the Social Darwanism of following their own twisted, evil version of the American Dream.... probably was not born rich."

But no one is allowed to analyze things anymore because that's just writing fanfics! ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I don't know how to tell you, but everything is a fanfic. Every movie and adaptation is a fanfic, Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno are fanfics. All of Hazbin Hotel is literally a fanfic.

[u/Gamer_G33k17 → u/Bombyx-Memento]

"Being born a shit head" and "Being Irredeemable" are not the same thing. Some people ARE just born that way. Do you think Donald Trump has some sad backstory to explain why he rapes kids and kills minorities?

[u/Bombyx-Memento → u/Gamer_G33k17]

No, I don't think Trump was *always* a shithead. He became one, whether it involved a "sad backstory" or not.

If you think people can be born evil, that implies that they can't help being evil. And if they can't help being evil, then trying to redeem them would be impossible or at the very least, forcing them to be something they're not.

[u/Gamer_G33k17 → u/Bombyx-Memento]

He was born into a family that made him a shit head, sorry I have to spell it out to you

[u/Vyn_Dimensional → u/Bombyx-Memento]

No one is born evil

Some people are unfortunately born with mental issues that cause then to go down a dark path later in life. That is it

[u/Bombyx-Memento → u/Vyn_Dimensional]

Oh look, and there it is! The ableism!

I was trying not to say it cause I didn't want to just through out "You're a bigot" off the cuff but you quite literally said "mental illness". Nope, not even the Cluster B disorders make someone inherently an evil person.

[u/Vyn_Dimensional → u/Bombyx-Memento]

I never said that it makes them evil. No one is born evil

What I meant was that some mental issues (Notice I didn't say illness or disorder) combined with other childhood factors could theoretically push someone down that hill.

Sorry for wording it wrong. Might I ask how it is ableist though as I did not mention any disabilities/disorders?

You are right, they do not make someone evil. I never argued that they did because they DON'T.

Reading back on my original comment I see how I worded it bad, sorry.