#like... man I've seen genocidal characters in fiction who actually have reasonings that

[be-the-glenn-to-my-maggie]

You know I like to think of myself as a pretty open-minded person. Fanfiction, in my opinion, has always been about exploring whatever you find interesting within your fandom. You're allowed to write about anything that you want and if someone doesn't like it then they don't have to read it. But let me tell you, this mindset has been severely tested by some of the Quaritch content I've seen. I'm totally fine with fics that portray him as a villain and person at the same time because even bad guys brush their teeth and all that, but guys. He is not a good person. I want people exploring him as a villain, not as some redeemable or misunderstood person. That's not what anyone working on the movie intended for him. The way he destroyed Hometree without a second thought? The way he obeys a horrible corporation mindlessly? The way he rubbed Neteyam's death in Jake's face? The way he had literally no problem killing and hurting those around him in order to find Jake and his family? The deaths of hundreds of people both na'vi and human rest on his shoulders! You don't get to justify that with "oh, well he's just misunderstood".

I try and find the good in everyone but I just can't see anything good in this man. Anyone who causes the type of pain he caused and feels no guilt (or even worse: thinks that they're justified in their acts of hatred or that the other party are the people deserving of punishment) has no good in them. And that's okay! People are allowed to acknowledge a good bad guy, and I think Quaritch is pretty interesting as far as bad guys go and there is a lot of fic potential for that very focal point. But that's it. There is no excuse for his actions and no redemption in his future and the day karma finally catches up with him (again) will be the best day in movie history.

I am very curious as to what fandoms you've been a part of before if this is the first time you've seen this phenomenon. By that, I mean the phenomenon of a fandom excusing the actions of a (typically white and male) villain. I find it to be pretty common. To me, it's one of the scariest things in media and fandom today. I've made a ton of posts about it, but I like to call it the Darth Vader trope. The idea that one good act or one scene of past trauma can wipe a slate clean, with no regard for the systematic harm caused, no reparations, and no work done to actually change and evolve as a character. I find it to be a really dangerous thing to show. The idea that so many people can rally around these actions just being swept under the rug, that they will get mad at you for even reminding them they occurred, is really terrifying to me. Media does not exist in a vacuum, and if so many people are that eager to move past genocide in fiction? It is for parallel reasons so many do in real life.

Trauma is not an excuse, it is an explanation. Change is a long process, and with serious, real world issues such as the ones Quaritch represents, time and effort are owed to the marginalized groups affected. If Avatar is really supposed to be a movie inspired by the beauty of indigenous cultures and the horror of what happened and is still happening to them, then I think fans excusing Quaritch are really doing something quite disgusting in ignoring that.

(If you want to spend as much time freaked out by genocide as I do, Genocide Watch is the place for you! They don't have the US on alert rn, but they fucking should! Also they're a lOT Pro-Israel in their alert on that, but there aren't many places to keep up on current genocides sorry).

#sorry this got a little dramatic #not only is this one of my biggest pet peeves #but i've been feeling overwhelmed lately about the us's pretty crazily successful so far genocide against the trans community #we're at stage 8 i believe #miles quaritch #avatar #avatar the way of water #james cameron avatar #melissa's asks #melissa on avatar (cameron)

[seyaryminamoto]

Just saw your “Thanos sucks” post and you couldn’t be more wrong. Thanos was a “hero” despite everyone claiming him to be a villain. If you look at our real world; there is strong evidence that a lot of humans, a LOT of people really should die and we’d be all the better without them. Thanos wanted people to learn how to control overpopulation and be grateful, but because as in our real world people are idiots; no one cared. It’s humans who are the problem; not Thanos. And he was right to be (1)

(2) angry in Endgame; there were still a lot of people still living. Tony Stark was the only sensible character living in a cute home with his wife and daughter, until he decided to join the stupids and reverse the snap. Thor was especially whiny; you’re gonna live a thousand years, find a new brother and just get over it already! And as the Falcon and Winter Soldier showed, society went to hell because the Avengers undid the snap; poverty and all. The Avengers are the real villains not Thanos.

... Thanos, is that you?

Oh. Guess not.

Look, dude. Really, dude. Mr. Anon. Whosoever you may be.

Let me really unpack what's going on here, can I?

You're a fictional-genocide apologist. At the very least, fictional one. I dare not say if you would be an apologist for it IRL, but it's weird enough to hear about anyone who genuinely thinks genocide would be the answer in any setting, fictional or otherwise. This is not a good look in any sensible human being. This already is enough of a bad point that I really could just stop here because you're very happy to share with us how appalling your morals are, but you know what? I'll keep going.

You're a Thanos fanboy. I get that. Clear as day that you are one. But you know what? You're probably a more disturbing one than expected for reasons that I really want to illustrate to my audience, however large it may be: you're in my inbox with two fictional-genocide apologist asks over an ask I answered... on August 10th, 2019. Your asks turned up in my inbox on November 30th, 2021. This offers two possible explanations as to how you came across that post: first, you somehow dug this post out from the mcu or thanos tags which I used carelessly because I assumed there was so much content posted to those that my little ask wouldn't even feature there, and that means you went back two years and about three months in those tags AT LEAST, looking for any criticism and anti-Thanos takes so you could barge into inboxes with an unwanted and unfounded opinion, trying to justify an intergalactic mass murderer. Second possibility: you singled me out in particular, hell knows why because I've deliberately NOT talked about the MCU in ages, especially in my blog, because a certain movie I hate and its influence in later content has almost killed every shred of love I had for the MCU altogether. Thus, you... somehow came for me, hell knows why, specifically hung up on finding one Thanos post buried in the depths of my archives, to defend, again, an intergalactic mass murderer. Again: this is not a good look. It's actually kind of worrisome. I have a hard time believing my Thanos post is the only one that offended you to this degree... so you probably went to every inbox you could find to defend this fictional character with your edgy explanations as to why mass murder/genocide is completely justifiable. Uh-huh. Okay. Sure. Your morals are worrisome, but you do you as long as you don't actually start enacting this insane set of beliefs in real life.

You are here giving me Kira-like justifications for Thanos's choices. I, actually, brought up Kira from Death Note in my original post to say that, had Thanos done THAT, maybe his crusade would make more sense as a morally-driven one, but I still argued that he has no way of truly being a jury, judge and executioner when it comes to who's a good or a bad person. How the hell does he know? Especially when he targeted such a large group of people. It defies reason, logic and sense. You can't seriously believe that he looked into the hearts of every being in the universe and cherrypicked who was good and who was bad... because hey, if he'd done that, your argument falls and crumbles upon itself, doesn't it? You said the Avengers are the bad guys: why didn't Thanos kill all of THEM? :'D had the snap been easily controlled and targeting the tRuE bAd GuYs™, why the hell didn't Thanos kill all of the Avengers and everyone who could have posed a threat to him, and then left nothing but powerless farmfolk in every planet he wrecked across the universe, for instance? I mean, seriously, what's your reasoning for this? You don't have one, do you? Yep, you don't. Moral superiority argument: denied. Thanos didn't select people because they were good or bad, the snap is 100% random and a bunch of good people died and a bunch of bad ones did too. It's plain stupid. It doesn't resolve shit. And THAT is what I was calling him a dumbass for :') it's not that I don't want villains to be villains, my dude... is that I want my villains to MAKE SENSE. And Thanos does NOT make any sense. That's what my post was about. But apparently you only read the bold lines going "THANOS IS A DUMBASS!" and ignored everything else I talked about, huh?

You have zero arguments regarding what I was REALLY arguing about in the post. I don't even remember if Thanos explicitly says that he's trying to "teach" people "population control", because man, I only watched Infinity War and Endgame once and I honestly don't care to revisit them. But, again, you're talking about apples and oranges while I was discussing whether I liked a mountain or beach vacation better: it has no relation with my actual grievances. What did I bring up? That Thanos's plans make no sense. And that's not Infinity War's plan, which is utterly idiotic, whether you ate it up or not, it's THE LONG GAME. We're supposed to think this guy was plotting for the events from Infinity War since, at least, the first Avengers film: look at every single one of Thanos's appearances in every movie between that Avengers and Infinity War and tell me at which point in time did he do ANYTHING that benefited his cause up until Infinity War itself? Hahahahaha never. He TRIED? Yes, and failed every time. Hence, I insulted him because his plans were actually utterly stupid. Giving the only Infinity Stone in his possession to a Loki who got his mind twisted into wanting revenge on Thor was such a stupid concept I can't even wrap my head around who'd ever DO that. Asking a crazed fanatic like Ronan to get one Infinity Stone for him instead of picking it up himself (or sending his genuinely loyal minions like the ones from Infinity War who died in 10 seconds :'D) is so ridiculous I, once again, can't even wrap my head around it. Everything he did failed because none of his plans MADE SENSE. It's stupid. He could've achieved the goddamn snap offscreen for all we know: he could've just taken advantage of the Tesseract's portal opening himself to take the damn thing during Avengers! He could have used the Tesseract to reach every other Infinity Stone's location and take them from whoever held them (not sure if Strange had the time one yet but who the fuck cares, if Thanos had enough stones when he went for the Time one, he totally would've taken it). He could have sacrificed Gamora since before we even KNEW her, well before she could even join the GoTG, because that would've gotten him his damn stone, apparently. Please, enligthen me as to WHY none of this happened? Oh, because Marvel needed to make more movies? Hahaha, that's not a narrative argument. That's external and unrelated to the subject at hand. That's not a way to explain a character's behavior. This is not consistent with the concept of a guy who somehow is "englightened" the way you see him and a genius who found the perfect solution for the universe's problems: this guy is a six-time-sanctioned DUMBASS and I stand by this belief, not because his ultimate goal was stupid, which it is... but because he took like 10 years to achieve said ultimate goal when he could have, arguably, reached that goal in 2 months if he had just bothered to TRY. So, using your words, which I ironically never used in my post, Thanos SUCKS! :'D

The snap is plainly the most ridiculous concept for "population control" that could have been proposed. I'm reading some articles about how this is based on some edgelord philosopher who believed that the food production in the world would always be too little compared to the constant growth of a population, a belief that now seems completely out of place because, while yes, global hunger is still very much real, there's certain places in the world where food waste is ASTRONOMICAL, the problem is in distribution rather than lack of resources in many cases, you could even argue corruption. But it's not impossible to do the opposite damn thing Thanos did, which I'm not even the first person to bring up: MAKE MORE RESOURCES. This guy has the power of the universe at his disposal: he can outright create galaxies, planets, EVERYTHING he wants... and yet he made the harebrained decision to ax everything by half instead. And yes, it's EVERYTHING. Come here with whatever nonsensical argument you want, but here's Marvel proving you wrong: he cut all resources by half too. This is the word of Feige, a guy for whom I don't have a ton of respect due to how he's handled a lot of things in the MCU, but in general, if he approves? It's canon. And so, this is canon: Thanos resolved NOTHING. He killed plants and animals just as much as he killed humans and higher lifeforms of which we're not even aware of. It's plain idiotic to think that this could be a solid solution when the ratio of population and resources is effectively THE SAME after the snap. This is really the brilliant plan you're trying to defend? Because it's honestly laughable. I repeat: this guy has the power of the universe in his hands. He can do ANYTHING with those stones. He could probably even rewrite reality so that populations are somehow self-sustainable and no longer need to eat! No more resources needed whatsoever! :'D He could have rewritten people's MINDS into not being the monsters you gladly accuse everyone of being so that they'd all be nice and share resources properly and devise better systems of resource production! This guy literally can do WHATEVER HE WANTS... And this is it? This is his brilliant choice? This is what he was going for since day one? Congratulations: you're stanning a dumbass.

Anon... this is possibly the most ridiculous argument anyone has tried to have with me. I am partially hoping/believing that you were just trolling around and wanted to rile up people who don't like Thanos. If that's how it is, consider me trolled and consider my time wasted, go cackle like a Disney villain because you achieved your wicked goal... but if that's not how it is, and you SERIOUSLY believe everything you said up there, I'm gonna be pretty harsh and say... stay out of my inbox. Quit embarrassing yourself. Go support fictional genocide elsewhere. I'm not here for this. I'm really not here for this. I'm here to love the things I love, to create content I care about, and occasionally to throw shade at badly written characterss, and your so-called hero, like it or not, is one of the most cringeworthy characters in the entire MCU. And, again: I don't even CARE about the MCU anymore. Practically every new thing I see of it makes me want less and less to do with it. Find someone who actually wants to argue with you endlessly about Thanos because man, I've got plenty of better things to do but roasting you one time honestly sounded like a good time. Doing it again would lose all the novelty, so stay in your fictional-genocide-apologism club and hang out with the reduced population of nasty human beings who believe everyone should get wiped out because they're morally heinous, without realizing how morally heinous you sound by spouting that kind of drivel :'D I mean, let's be real: if the snap was indeed codified for bad people alone, can you be 100% sure you WOULDN'T make the cut? :')

#anon #thanos #mcu #:') #deliberately tagging those again because #haha #maybe that's really how you found me #my god this is surreal #I've had ridiculous asks to deal with in my time here but this one... #it really wants to take the cake #I am still reeling #from the day you sent it #yes I am judging you very hard #I'm not even going to pretend otherwise anon #like... man I've seen genocidal characters in fiction who actually have reasonings that #while I disagree with them #make sense for who they are and what they represent and where they're standing #Thanos sure as fuck ain't one of them #so if you REALLY want to stan a genocidal maniac? #at least try to find one that's a tad bit more interesting than the boring titan #and yes I used that What If gif despite I don't love What If either #but it's the best gif to shoot down a Thanos apologist so eh...

[lananiscorner]

If you had to guess, why are Edelstans so desperate in trying to defend their waifu's honor despite her being a fictional character and therefore won't respond let alone appreciate their defense? I know parasocial relationships are one hell of a drug but you'd think they would stop trying to double down and fulfill a self fulfilling prophecy of thinking they are racists who justify imperialism and genocide.

Thanks for your ask, anon. Please keep in mind that everything below the cut is just my own personal interpretation of what's happening here, based on my time in this fandom. There's a fair chance I might be wrong about the conclusions I'm drawing, but anyway, here's my 2 cents:

I think the parasocial relationship aspect is definitely a big part of it, but at least as far as the western parts of her stan base are concerned, it also feels a lot like there's a lot of personal baggage attached. I mean, from what I have seen in my year in this fandom so far:

Most Edel/Byleth art/fic involves female Byleth. Male Byleth might as well not exist, even though picking male Byleth rather than female Byleth changes absolutely nothing about their support line or ending and I'm not even sure if it changes any of their explore/event dialogue, but I don't recall any instance where it did during my playthroughs.

Her other supports and paired endings with male characters exist in-game only, apparently. I've seen maybe like... 5 pieces of Edel/Hubert art in the fe3h tag over the course of this year and that's it.

Stanning for Edel usually is accompanied by relentless bashing of Rhea and the church.

"She's sapphic and cute and she wants to hold your hand while obliterating the oppressive church--what's not to love?" is how I've seen multiple of her stans describe their reasons for liking her in a nutshell.

One of the common claims from Edel stans against her critics is that we are homophobic, hating on her for being wlw... which... the only time I ever see Edel's sexuality brought up in Edel critic circles, is annoyance at stans trying to erase her canonical bisexuality.

Some of the animosity against the church is definitely a problem of the localization (which actively made Rhea and the church look more sus in several instances), but a lot of it to me reads like it was written by people who were hurt in RL by assholes who wield religion as an oppressive tool (which it doesn't have to be--affirming churches do exist!), and for whom Edel with all her church smashing and queerness is just the ultimate, cathartic, projecting power fantasy.

And here's the problem with projecting: when you project onto another person or a character, any attack on them feels like an attack on you, personally. It's the fallacy of "they called Edel a racist imperialist + I stan Edel for being an anti-religion queer queen = they called me a racist imperialist = they called me a sinner = they are just like the people who hate me for being queer and having beef with religion", which... is not a great feeling. I've been there myself (not with Edel, but with other characters in other franchises) and learning how to take a step back from that line of thinking and looking at what people are actually saying rather than what you are hearing is one of the most important life skills you can learn in any context. I don't think I've ever seen any Edel critic call her stans racist/imperialist for liking her, but rather for trying to justify her actions, which... yeah, if you're trying to justify racism/imperialism, that is bound to happen. You can like (even love) a character without trying to rationalize away their flaws.

Two examples: Hubert is the best character on CF imo, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna go around saying "well actually he had no choice but to kill and bribe people behind Edelgard's back and they were trying to uphold an abusive system so they probably deserved it anyway". Man straight up bribed and murdered people so his queen could succeed--cool motive, flawless execution, still murder. Likewise, Felix is my second-favorite character in all of Azure Moon, but there'll be a cold day in Aillel before you see me trying to excuse his misoginy or his dehumanizing language towards Dimitri and Dedue. I understand and sympathize with the cause for his behavior, but I do not condone it or try to justify it away as something necessary or good.

And sadly, I don't think this fallacy thinking of some (most?) of Edel's stans will change, unless:

the RL people making the arguments change, and/or

their RL experiences change, and/or

IntSys gives us some unproblematic, unapologetically gay/lesbian representation.

It is hard to self-reflect when you are hurting and clinging to what litle representation you can find. In an ideal world, the next original FE game release would include unmistakably queer characters of multiple orientations, who are not also racist imperialists, so every Edel stan who gets really reactionary about criticism of her can look and those and go "oh hey, people don't hate on me for stanning Sappho FE--maybe the beef they had with me really wasn't about me being a sinner, but Edel being someone who invaded and forcibly annexed two sovereign nations and did her best to eradicate an entire race of sentient beings".

Maybe that day will come. Maybe it won't. In the meantime, I will happily keep blocking those of her stans, who try to justify racism, imperialism, and ableism, so that I can have a pleasant fandom experience that won't leave me bitter and exhausted every time I check the tags.

#asks #anon #Edelstans #not putting any franchise/character tags on this one lol #I cannot emphasize enough how much all of this is my own personal subjective interpretation of what's happening #based on my own experiences in this fandom over the last year #I may be wrong about some or all of this #and if this was work I might even be willing to engage #but I don't come to tumblr for work #I come here for entertainment and relaxation #so block block block it is