I don't see Damien as forgivable any time soon. If he goes off to another school and turns his life around, does some good work for one of Rachael or Willabelle's associates then after a few years they could make up with him, but anything short of that would feel very wrong. He went too far for forgiveness to come easy.
That is your decision, but I would like to offer a counterpoint, respectfully.
Forgiveness is not a metric that one can measure out imperically, its based point to point based on how one feels the actions taken have negatively affected people at large. So saying that Damien went too far for forgiveness to come easily, did he really?
He did bad, yes, but in desperation and a time of confusion and uncertainty. Not an excuse for the actions, but rather a lens by which to see why they occurred. He didn't cause us direct harm, he was just a leg man for something worse, and trying to scale down what Ryker was doing. If put in the same shoes, I'm sure many good people can and will take up some less than moral stances if it means getting their loved one the support they need-just because you are out of options.
Emotionally speaking, Damien was manipulated and coerced into aiding Ryker's ambitions, objectively speaking I think in so far as what he perpetrated against us-he is merely an unfortunate soul who really got the short end of plenty of sticks. Humans are fragile, and at the same time, willing to go through a lot of lengths to protect the people they care about. This includes our MC, who got the shit kicked out of him in an effort to ensure everyone else stayed safe. Foolish? Yes, the both of them are. Damien isn't evil, he was just scared and needed help-help that was given to him at a price and that ultimately cost him everything.
Now as for Jasmine, yeah there's no excusing that behavior, and really that isn't a player forgiving Damien moment-that is between Jasmine and Damien and us being there for our big booty lovely lady
. She seems to have written him off, so we should do the same in that avenue, we can be disgusted by how he did this to her but in the end I don't think that falls under the purview of forgiveness that we can be giving out. It's a stance we can take on him personally, but should not affect how we approach how he can begin the process of redemption and moving forwards.
All in all, I think Damien has done far less than any other antagonist of this story so far, being more or less an anti-villain that was set up specifically as a fall guy, for when shit got bad. Did he do wrong? Yes. Should he be punished? Yes. Should that punishment be excessive or extreme to the point of disregarding his motives? No, not really. Leniency I feel, should be granted in this situation, and we should think about what kind of shit we would do if Azel were put in that same instance. As well as if it was just her and us with nobody to help back us up in that moment.
In the end I feel like redemption should come much more impactfully, and sooner, than many people are feeling. Not in so far as all is forgiven and all is forgotten-but that in that same way all of it came crashing down around us. In that we lost what we felt was a good teammate, that so to can a meteoric rise be made back up to show that when not being manipulated and twisted around a person's finger, Damien can do some incredible things in the background that ultimately, at the very least, shows that he was simply dealt a bad hand, and acted poorly with it.
The Jasmine stuff notwithstanding, as I feel that once Jasmine defines she is over it, we should be over it as well. Especially if he is a lot more honest with himself, and doesn't pull this again in future relationships that might be inferred, if he is brought up at all in the future.
so yeah, that's my feels on it, I just kinda picked you cause I'd been seeing those kinds of messages for a while and finally just decided to have my own rebuttal.. No malice is intended, just an academic retort to your stance with my own observations and meditations
