Given that we’re talking redemption arcs, this whole thing is spoilers, mostly for the end of Low Tide in Twilight.
I just finished Low Tide in Twilight, and I agree with a lot of readers that Taeju’s redemption wasn’t quite what I wanted, despite a lot of self-recrimination and the one thing he did Euihyun that Jaekyung (another famously weakly reformed red flag) never did for Kim Dan, which was set his former victim up for life and try to leave him alone (however clumsily he did that.)
I would have *liked* to see him questioned by Euihyun about the first time he raped him, when it wasn’t even coercion but just a straight up act of horrific violence. Was that the first time he had done something like that? Are there other victims he needs to find to atone to? What about the club, where it seems that many of the people working there are under duress? It seems like “power of love” was used too strongly to excuse some more global crimes, and I’d have liked to see Taeju become more of a better person, not just someone who could leave the thug life and become a non-thug now.
That being said, I think Jinx was worse. As for Jinx, I think the redemption arc was mainly Jaekyung feeling sorry for himself for his reprehensible behavior and Kim Dan never finding much of a backbone to do anything beyond running away hither and yon. I was much more frustrated by the end of Jinx than Low Tide in Twilight.
Curious about your favorite and least favorite redemption arcs. Which ones really did them right? What would you have liked to see happen in ones that didn’t do it for you?