http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ReformedButRejected

Tear, Tales of the Abyss "It's not easy to regain trust once you've lost it."

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Turning over a new leaf is hard. Especially when no one believes that you're sincere about it, and/or won't forgive willingly.

This is the companion trope to the Falsely Reformed Villain, who pretends to have reformed, but in reality is only biding his time while he plots his latest nefarious scheme. The hero, however, is not fooled. By contrast, the desire of the Reformed, But Rejected character to leave his evil ways in the past is completely genuine — but the hero still refuses to be "fooled."

Unlike The Atoner, this character is not necessarily overwhelmingly evil, and it is easier if he hasn't gone completely overboard. His sins could be more along the lines of "stole some bread" or "robbed a bank", than "destroyed ten inhabited planets and built pyramids of skulls while laughing wildly." Whatever the case, he is generally not of the opinion that he needs to spend the rest of his life and possibly his afterlife as well trying to make up for his misdeeds, and is in fact due some good karma. All he wants is a chance at a normal honest life. It's getting people to give him that chance that presents a problem.

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Often the disinclination to believe that a character has truly become good is not limited to just the hero or heroes, but is the reaction of society in general. The reformed character can find this a bitter pill to swallow, particularly if they have "done their time" in prison or paid their debt to society in some other way, yet find that society is not prepared to let bygones be bygones.

On the other hand, there are times where this reaction may be totally reasonable. A long history of being a complete jerk and general thorn in the side of the heroes does not really do much to engender popularity with them. The villain may really want to reform and may have taken honest steps to do so, but the heroes may simply just be so sick of dealing with them and the messes that they cause (especially if they already have multiple failed attempts on their record) that they frankly just don't care. Like Then Let Me Be Evil, it runs the gamut from a cheap excuse to avoid taking responsibility, to an explanation that has some truth but still doesn't cut it, and all the way to a perfectly valid reason where the heroes are completely in the wrong and really have no one but themselves to blame.

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In the best case, the reformed character finds the strength of will to withstand the scorn and derision of the heroes and/or society at large, and is eventually able to prove themselves truly changed despite the enormous pressure. They succeed in making a place for themselves in honest society, however humble that place may be. (They may even realize that their previous attempts were Buy Them Off and, if not spending the rest of their lives atoning, do more to make up for what they did.)

In the worst case, the pressure is too much and the reformed character's resolve falters and fails. He returns to his old bad ways, often ending up in jail again. He may even become so despairing that he takes his own life rather than live with non-stop contempt and derision. To rub salt in it, the heroes might take this as proof that he really had never changed at all, and in the case of bad writing, this will be how the story interprets it.

This character is prone to attracting the attention of an Inspector Javert, who is convinced that "men like you can never change." Javert is likely to hound the character non-stop, hoping to catch him in a criminal act, or possibly in the most extreme cases even goad him into committing one.

The greatest danger for a Reformed But Rejected character, however, is not Inspector Javert, but bad karma. It might be safer to just stay bad, though the opposite may happen too.

A character who reforms in a particularly unsubtle way and does not face rejection and scorn afterward, but instead finds the heroes welcoming him with open arms and perhaps a nice cake, has undergone Badass Decay.

A subtrope to Rejected Apology. Compare Accuser of the Brethren. Contrast The Farmer and the Viper, where someone given the opportunity this reformer seeks turns it against his benefactors or Redemption Rejection where a villain is offered a chance to reform only for the villain to refuse. Also contrast with Easily Forgiven where a formerly villainous character is quickly forgiven for any crimes they may have committed as soon as they start helping the good guys, no matter how serious they were. Compare HeelFace Door-Slam, where the villain never even gets to start their journey to redemption (or attempts to but is rebuffed because their old actions really were too far beyond the pale for anything resembling a convincing redemption in the authors eyes at least); Redemption Failure, where they embark on said journey but are turned around by external forces half-way through; and finally, Forgiveness Requires Death, where the price to earn the forgiveness of the wronged person is one's own life. See also Villain Ball Magnet and Trapped in Villainy. May result from a Third-Act Misunderstanding. If the heroes did forgive him, but still give him this sort of treatment, then it's Forgiven, but Not Forgotten. A Regretful Traitor may be a victim of this, since they genuinely regret having betrayed their friends, but the betrayal may have cut too deep for their friends to forgive them.

Like any trope dealing with Heel-Face Turn's, this page is likely to contain spoilers. Tread carefully.

Examples:

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Possible example, as the plot hasn't finished: Luann has Dirk, a Jerkass Jerk Jock Testosterone-poisoned Domestic Abuser who was arrested after beating his girlfriend Toni and now works as a garbage man, coincidentally on the same block as his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend Brad (the title character's older brother). He claims he's found Jesus in jail and he'll be leaving, never to return (Brad thinks he's dying; readers think he might be joining the priesthood or simply changing shifts or moving). Toni's response is to threaten him with a creepy phone call he made and Brad has Luanne's classmate pretend Toni moved. Dirk is not convinced but doesn't retaliate; he even rescues Brad's mom after a bookshelf falls on her, causing Brad's parents to refer to him as a "creepy, evil superhero".

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In Days of Wine and Roses, after Joe Clay joins Alcoholics Anonymous, becomes sober and tries to make amends to his father-in-law by offering to pay for the damage he did to his greenhouse. His father-in-law, however, is still very angry with him, not over the greenhouse, but because he was the one that introduced his daugher to alcohol (she never drank until she met Joe), and doesn't seem to want to reform. In his mind, Joe may have been willing to pay for the damages he caused, but the real damage couldn't be fixed.

Norman Bates. Easily Forgiven by his town, but not by the family of Marion Crane in Psycho II. Lila Crane and her daughter eventually play a huge part in driving him back to mania.

The plot of The Woodsman is focused on Walter, a convicted child molester trying to make a fresh start and live a reformed life after serving out his prison sentence. Almost all of his friends and family have abandoned him, and his past crimes make him the subject of a great deal of suspicion and hostility from the people around him. The frustration and despair nearly drives him to give in to temptation, but he manages to refrain.

In You Again, The Bride with a Past Joanna is trying to start a clean slate with future sister-in-law Marni, whom she ruthlessly bullied in high school. Unfortunately, she attempts to do this by refusing to acknowledge their past relationship and pretending that she never met Marni before (instead of, you know, apologizing). Marni's brother (Joanna's fiance) doesn't know that Joanna was a bully, despite them having gone to the same high school, and the rest of Marni's equally oblivious family adores her. Marni, still emotionally damaged from Joanna's abuse, is determined to protect her brother by exposing Joanna as a fraud through any means necessary.

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Shania Twain's Is There Life After Love takes the standpoint of a lover who cheated and is asking for their original love's forgiveness.

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Better Days: Some time after Rachel had gotten dumped by Tommy for cheating on him, she decided to meet Tommy at his parents house to try to convince him that she had changed. However, Tommy couldn't trust her, and so he left the house telling her that he was now happy with 'someone else' (Lucy) .

Bittersweet Candy Bowl has Tess, who all the upperclassmen hate thanks to events that the main cast of the comic didn't witness.

General Protection Fault: Trudy , who planned on a form of Redemption Equals Death by staying behind in a war-torn dimension under alien attack to allow her counterpart to live in the primary dimension, only for her counterpart to switch places with her and send her home instead after fooling the rest of the cast about her identity . She reluctantly accepts this, and Fooker, one of the few people who knows the truth, is highly suspicious of her, reminding her that he knows her identity and he will take action against her if he feels the need to do so. Averted with Fooker. He suspects that his being (falsely) convicted of the shooting that the "Fookinator" performed will make things more difficult in civilian life despite having the charges cleared, because "exonerations make fewer headlines than convictions." While one of his employers at Regional Telecom (one of Dwayne's friends) briefly questions him about it, no one so far has viewed him as a murderer, and three systems administrators don't believe it, instead suggesting that while he was away, his programming skills deteriorated.

In the Paradox Space story Summerteen Romance Eridan tries to redeem himself in the eyes of his fellow trolls by kicking away a bomb... directly into Gamzee's sandcastle . It doesn't work.

tries to redeem himself in the eyes of his fellow trolls by . It doesn't work. Zebra Girl: After Sandra returns, the others naturally don't seriously consider the idea that she could have changed. Sandra was already aware that it wouldn't be easy, but poor communication, misunderstandings and overeager minions constantly conspire to make it even worse between then. As you might think, this leads to a lot of Dramatic Irony - like Sam's unwitting inversion of Oblivious Mockery: Sam (sarcastically): "Unless she had a profoundly enlightening experience she'll probably be even worse than we remember."

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