#ARE WE THE BADDIES??? despite everyone being morally grey

[catacosmo]

Slowly drawing Weltall and Fei!!

[chirpingtiger]

Five reasons why Tony is more of a villain in the MCU than Loki

1.) Kill count.

Pure and simple, Tony has a higher human kill count than Loki does.

Loki is responsible for summoning the Chitauri army to New York, and thus all the deaths caused by that.

We are told in Avengers that “he killed eighty people in two days,” and shown in Civil War that the kill count from the battle for New York is seventy-four, (although some of those deaths were shown to be caused by the Hulk).

This makes Loki’s total 154 people.

In canon, Loki is punished for this by being sent back to Asgard in chains and imprisoned there.

Tony is responsible for creating Ultron and unleashing him on the world, and therefore is responsible for all of the deaths that Ultron caused. Now, we are never given a specific number on the people that Ultron killed while resource gathering for his big hit, but we know that there were at least three significant ones. The civilian death count from Sokovia was shown in Civil War to be one hundred and seventy seven, and we know that Pietro died there as well.

Looking ONLY at the Ultron fallout, Tony’s total is up at 181 people.

27 more than Loki.

Now, I could count all of the people Tony killed in the first Iron Man movie even though a good number of them were terrorists, however that gets into a bit of a moral grey area. For the record, however, there were about forty kills shown on screen for this category.

There were also a number of deaths caused by Tony’s fist-fight with the Hulk in Johannesburg, however I don’t currently have a clear number for that, so we’ll pass on those kills for now.

There are an additional fifty nine kills that Iron Man makes on screen in the other movies, whether it be blowing people up, smashing them through walls, or firing a repulsor into their face at full power.

Additionally, I could go into detail about all the people killed by Tony’s weapons when he was selling them to make his billions, but that would take me far too long to total up, and many of the fans will argue about which ones he did and did not sell himself. (Though in the end he technically signed off on all of them, so really, if he didn’t read the paperwork, it’s still gross negligence, and it’s still on his head...)

Keeping in mind that Tony’s creation of Ultron behind his teammates’ backs was the cause of 181+ deaths...If we then include all of the other human casualties that Tony has caused, his total is 280 people.

126 more murders than Loki.

In canon, Tony is excused for all of these deaths without question.

2.) He ratted out Clint’s secret family

Loki brainwashed Clint in the first Avengers movie, and spent half the film inside his head, poking around through his deepest darkest secrets.

He knows everything about Clint.

And yet, Loki never once uses Clint’s family as a bargaining chip against him. In fact, he never tells a soul about Clint’s family.

It would have been the perfect bargaining chip - the ultimate “do what I say OR ELSE” - and Loki never touches it. He sees that this man has a wife and two kids that he wants to keep safe, and has gone to such extreme lengths to make it happen, and he decides to let Clint’s family stay a secret, even when Clint comes back to himself and is fighting against Loki.

The others find out about Clint’s family in Age of Ultron. Clint brings Tony and the others back to the farm in AoU to get them off the radar, trusting the secret of his family to his teammates so he has somewhere safe for the Avengers to stay for a while as they regroup.

In Civil War, at the Raft, Tony mentions in front of everyone that Clint has “a wife and kids” to berate Clint for showing up to help Steve fight the super soldiers. Tony knows that Scott and Sam weren’t there in AoU and probably don’t know about Clint’s family. Additionally, he reveals this information while knowing that Ross and the UN security guards are actively listening in, looking for something to hold over their prisoner’s heads - he scrambles their sound feed a moment later to convince Sam that it’s safe to tell him where Steve went.

Tony knowingly and intentionally reveals the existence of Clint’s wife and kids - putting them all in grave danger - for the sake of punishing Clint for picking what he feels is the wrong side of an argument.

3.) Daddy Issues Are an Explanation - Not an Excuse

Now, neither of them had stellar fathers.

Howard was always distant and busy, and was said to have been too absorbed with his work to take time to “say he loved me to my face” to Tony.

Odin slaughtered Loki’s race, found him abandoned in the rubble, and took him home in disguise as a kind of war prize, letting him believe that he was truly his son until it came down to who would inherit the kingdom, where he chose a (then) inept and bull-headed Thor over a calm and competent Loki for no apparent reason other than favoritism.

Loki blames Odin for his fall from grace, because everything he did was to prove himself to a father that was never even going to consider putting him on the throne. But that’s where it ends.

All of his other mistakes he blames on himself or his nature. He is the monster that parents warn children about, so it makes sense that he would act the part of the monster. (And even then, it’s only for a short while, until he is able to grow past his issues and get his act back together in Thor 2 to help out. He’s still a bit mischievous and a touch backstabbing, but at this point it’s a personality trait, and he always winds up coming around to the side of good in the end.)

Tony blames every mistake he makes on “Howard’s A+ Parenting,” refusing to take responsibility because not getting along with his father while growing up is apparently a valid excuse for the constant bad life choices of a 40-something year old man. He never grows out of this either, and makes no attempts to move on. It is his go-to “get out of jail free” card. “My father never loved me, therefore everything awful I just did is excused.” “Maybe if I’d gotten more attention from my father, I’d be better at dealing with Peter, or being a team player, or not treating Pepper like garbage.”

4.) Knowingly Endangering the Lives of His Allies

In the first Avengers movie, when they’ve all gathered together aboard the hellicarrier for the first time, we find out that Banner is essentially a bomb waiting to go off in the form of the highly-destructive Hulk - a bomb that is triggered by Banner getting mad or startled or threatened.

So naturally, what is the first thing that Tony Stark does, while on an enclosed airborne ship with hundreds of innocent people and his allies?

He purposely tries to set off the Hulk by prodding at Banner with sharp and electrified things, just to see how good a hold Banner has on it.

Tony actively tries to set off the Hulk, knowing full well that it may cause the deaths of many if not all of the people on board the craft, and he doesn’t give a damn.

For another example, Tony gets drunk in the iron man suit and starts shooting things.

At a party.

With hundreds of people packed into a tiny space.

Now it could be argued that he was having an emotional breakdown at the time because he thought he was dying, however that’s like trying to excuse someone bringing a loaded machine gun into a crowd because “they were  under a lot of stress at the time.”

It’s not excusable.

It’s selfish.

It’s saying ‘my method of coping with my problems is more important than the lives of everyone else.’

In the process of this, he nearly winds up killing Rhody.

And, to further prove that he has no regard for his allies:

He invites a man with a known grudge against him to “hit me with your best shot, here’s my address” and almost gets Pepper killed as collateral. He also turns on Steve at the drop of a pin at the end of Civil War, and tries to kill him, and Bucky as well, until Steve is forced to manually power down his suit. Tony is also firing live explosives at Clint and Wanda in the airport battle (of a large enough caliper that Clint stops to shield Wanda from the giant chunks of debris falling around them cause he’s afraid she’s going to get hurt) and has his repulsors at a high enough charge that he puts a giant hole in solid asphalt from 90 yards away while firing at Clint. He also shoots Sam Wilson point blank in the face with his repulsors for failing to take the shot that knocked Rhody from the sky, despite the fact that Sam risked his life nosediving to save Rhody without any armor to protect him at all and has previous trauma from watching a flight partner lose their life from being shot out of the sky.

Tony has no loyalty to his allies, and sees them all as expendable so long as it suits him at the time.

To quote The Avengers: Steve: “You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.” Tony: “I think I would just cut the wire.”

Loki, on the other hand, tends to switch sides a lot, but he always stays true to the side he’s currently on, and never knowingly endangers his allies.

The people he brainwashes in Avengers aren’t used as cannon fodder - they are kept safe and protected while they do his work for him, and he personally sees to it, to the best of his abilities, that they are not harmed or captured by SHIELD or the Avengers.

In Thor 2 he teams up with his brother and stays loyal to him, helping protect Jane through the length of the film, including two scenes where he shields her with his own body and another where he almost gets himself killed while trying to take out the baddie.

In Thor 3, Loki returns to what he’s pretty sure is going to be a death match with his big sister in order to save the people of Asgard, even though most of them view him with nothing but scorn, and even tries to offer his brother a way out of the arena despite the fact that it will endanger his position with the Grandmaster and potentially put him at risk.

Loki is incredibly loyal to his allies, and wouldn’t ever actively try to harm any of them, regardless of grudges, if they are working on the same team.

5.) Committed Genocide

At the end of The Avengers, the UN sends a nuclear warhead at New York to prevent the spread of the alien attack, and Tony redirects that nuke up through the wormhole as a convenient way to dispose of it.

Once through the wormhole, he aims it at the home ship of the aliens before letting it go and allowing himself to fall back to the safety of earth a few seconds before the Avengers close off the portal.

The nuke hits the ship, and every alien immediately drops dead.

No matter where they are, no matter the fact that they’re galaxies away or possibly in different realms, every single alien drops dead the minute that ship is destroyed.

Their species no longer exists.

Down to the last male, female, and infant on every planet in every galaxy in all of the universe, Tony Stark has effectively wiped them from existence.

His reaction to this? 

The closest counterpoint I have to this is at the end of Thor, when Loki makes a final play to win his father’s favor by trying to finish his brother’s quest to wipe out the Frost Giants - what he mistakenly believes is the final goal for the King of Asgard.

Unlike his brother, however, he plans on doing so by using the Bifrost to tear their world apart.

Thor stops him by shattering the Bifrost, and in the resulting explosion Thor and Loki are both nearly thrown into space, Odin showing up in the nick of time to grab hold of Thor’s foot.

Loki pleads with his father that he was only trying to do what he felt was his job as upcoming King:

To which his father simply responds “No, Loki.”

And at this - realizing that he nearly wiped out a species because of his own mistakes and ambition - he lets himself fall into the depths of space instead of allowing his brother to save him.

And so, given the above points as well as the fact that Tony always seems to weasel out of all of the consequences for his actions whereas Loki has been punished and imprisoned multiple times for his similar transgressions, I believe that Tony Stark is far more of a villain in the MCU than Loki ever was, or will be.

[lucyinbookland]

This image comes from a reddit thread by xXShatter_ForceXx.

Why Does Everyone Like Vegeta?

I’ve run into this question a lot, both in trying to explain my love of DBZ to non-fans, and in commiserating with fellow fans. Vegeta is a very popular character. It’s rare to see promotional material without him, and he’s one of the characters that is most recognized by people who aren’t familiar with the show—even among those who don’t watch anime. And there are good reasons for this.

Of course, he has his haters. There are people who legitimately don’t like the character, and those that have been pushed into hating him by his sheer popularity. And they have their reasons. Despite being one of “the good guys” for most of the show at this point, it wasn’t until the later part of Z that he really showed any regard for human life, or even the life of his family and friends. He can get kind of one-note (“defeat Kakarrot!” “My pride!”). Although he’s softened a bit by Super, many feel like that’s been a bit out-of-character. But his popularity definitely isn’t an accident, and if you’re a Vegeta fan, you’re in good company.

First off, if you’re attracted to men, Vegeta checks a lot of boxes as a male character. He has a dark, tortured past. He’s full of machismo surliness, and gives absolutely no fucks (until he does, when your heart breaks). He definitely fits into a type that I myself am guilty of enjoying: reformed baddy who still walks that grey line between good and evil.

I assume these are also the reasons your “typical” Dragon Ball fan (heterosexual boys/men) like him; he’s badass, gives no fucks, and is just generally pretty cool. He’s also written with a lot of snarky one-liners, which always makes for good tv.

These are all perfectly good reasons to like him, whether or not you consider yourself a “fan.” But I don’t think they’re the most interesting reasons, so lets dive right in.

1. American Release

Dragon Ball is one of those series that had an odd release in America, but it weirdly worked. Instead of starting from the beginning with Goku’s childhood adventures, they went straight to Dragon Ball Z, beginning with the appearance of Raditz and the kidnapping of Gohan. Why this worked is a conversation for another time, but basically it got us very quickly to Vegeta as a compelling villain–small of stature, and yet stronger than anything previously seen on the show, including Goku at his strongest yet. He also represented this fascinating new, alien culture.

This way of presenting the show also kept the focus off of Goku. He was around, training in Other World, but mostly the show followed Gohan. When the focus shifted to Namek and the search for the other Dragon Balls–and, subsequently, Frieza–this distance grew and grew. Through most of the time on Namek, you don’t follow Goku; you follow Gohan, Krillin, and Vegeta (incidentally, I realized as I typed this that those three happen to be my favorite characters…hmmmm…). The pattern continues through most of Z; Goku is less of a POV character as he is a trump card, and that leaves a bulk of the narrative following Gohan or Vegeta.

(To be clear though, he’s also very popular in Japan…but I can only really speak to my own experiences with the American version of the franchise)

2. The Underdog

Everyone loves to root for the underdog. It’s hard to think of Vegeta as an underdog when you know he’s one of the strongest characters in the series, but for the arcs on Namek, that’s exactly what he was. Once Frieza enters the scene, all of our heroes–which, thanks to a tentative truce, includes Vegeta–are horribly outclassed. Vegeta is fighting for what is essentially the losing side, and since it also happens to be the righteous one, he gets bundled up as a sympathetic character pretty quickly. He is also one of the few characters who has any idea of what’s going on. There’s a good part of those early episodes on Namek where Krillan, Gohan, and Bulma are just wandering around with no real sense of the danger they face, while you see Vegeta getting increasingly desperate about the approach of Frieza and the Ginyu Force.

By the way, this is also one of the reasons Goku works as a main character; despite being ridiculously powerful, he’s often pitted against villains that are even stronger. So his wins usually come after a great deal of trial, injury, and near-defeats, and they end up feeling like they are not only hard-earned, but partially tied into his righteousness and purity of heart (this is played up in the dub, since Goku is much less righteous and pure of heart in the Japanese version).

3. Sheer Character Development

Despite having a large cast of characters, many of which are very recognizable and memorable, Dragon Ball isn’t so great on the character development. Goku himself has had very little development over the coarse of the show. It has happened, but mostly the show focuses on the development of his power level rather than his personality.

Vegeta, however, get globs and globs of character development. He begins as a pretty standard villain–incredibly powerful, and heartless enough to kill his own underling once he is no longer of use. We get to see him feel real fear and remorse through the events on Namek, culminating in his death at the hands of the very person responsible for the death of his father and the annihilation of his entire race. Through the Android and Cell sagas, we see him go from blatant disregard for his son, to actual sadness and anger over his death. And in the Buu saga we see him willingly give himself over to his evil side, sacrifice himself to atone for his ego and hubris, and ultimately work with his rival to save the universe. We get silly moments with him, and serious moments of sadness and regret.

Vegeta also carries the weight of the whole Saiyan culture, which is fascinating and mysterious even hundreds of episodes later. We only ever get glimpses into his early life, when Planet Vegeta was still around and kicking, and that keeps this level of fascination among fans high.

No, You’re Not Crazy

Vegeta’s character has been built up gradually from the first moment he appeared on screen, and his shades-of-grey morals and obsession with power make him a perfect foil for Goku, who has both those tendencies in a different flavor. His development has been slow and rewarding, and even when he’s more of a background character, he’s hard to overlook. His popularity isn’t an accident, and it doesn’t mean his fans are overlooking his murderous past—far from it, in fact. Good for good’s sake is kind of boring, but good that started bad and passed through various stages and hundreds of episodes to come out on the other side? That makes for a compelling character.*

*also why Piccolo and Tien are interesting, though they don’t get as much love or screen time.

[tumblunni]

Ok just... just... GIVE ME A SECOND to talk about the spoilery monster rancher stuffs, okay? Why THAT ENDING hurt so much but also fit so well with the rest of it, and why the third season kinda sucked so much despite being the continuation we all desperately craved. And why its still gonna have a place in everyone’s hearts, even the haters, JUST because it gave a conclusion to THAT FUCKING ENDING! I dont care if people say it would be more deep or whatever to leave on the downer cliffhanger, I still think it SHOULD have had a third season, just that it should have been better. Or I mean... maybe it would have worked better as a movie or a short ten episode season or something. Just there should have been SOME sequel to that ending, but a very very lighthearted season about a goofy tournement kinda wasnt what it should have been.

OKAY THE ENDING THE SEASON 2 ENDING the giant and damn awesome subversion of everything about the genre, which fit so well with everything else the show ever did, GAHHH Like.. there were SO MANY subversions and just interesting detailed twists on common ‘mon show’ tropes. One of the earliest episodes begins with an asshole trainer treating his Worm monster the same way a lot of people honestly might do while min-maxing in one of these videogames. He’s disgustingly abusive and feels like he’s justified because he’s making his monster stronger, and that’s all that it’s good for. And the show establishes its tearjerker tone early on by having this guy only repent after his horribly abused monster sacrifices itself to save him from the baddies, even after how badly he’d treated it. And he’s begging apologies to its dead disc stone, while it’s too late to do anything about it. But the show STILL gives him a chance at redemption, because our heroes trust him to raise a new newborn Worm, and to do it right. That’s just... what the show is. It went really REALLY dark, but it did this with this kind of determined optimism! And even the funnier episodes could have high stakes, and there was always the reminder that we were living in this dystopia and just trying to keep our smiles during it, because otherwise how can we change it?

And thats why season 3 fumbled by like.. not introducing its stakes early enough. Or.. at all. it was good that they finally introduced some good comic relief villains and generally villains with more motivations and backstory, but it combined badly with the no-intial-high-stakes thing to give a season that just felt way too happy. In a show that certainly had happiness in it before, but I mean it never felt hollow?? It kinda felt disrespectful to follow up a super depressing cliffhanger with such a badly explained and rushed flip back to the status quo, and then such a sparse plot with so few incentives to keep watching. Its only initial good point was that it resolved the cliffhanger AT ALL, but it could have done it WELL, and also established a new reason to wanna watch the show now the one big huge main plot has been resolved. Following up after the bad guy is defeated is always a hard thing, you cant just put no effort into it... Tho I feel bad even saying that, cos seriously season 3′s villains were the best part. They just might have fit better in season 1, or just if the plot kept up the slack surrounding them...

BUT YEAH JUST THE SUBVERSIONS!! I could fuckin ramble forever about how great they were! Seriously it was just THE BEST ‘ending’ to a ‘stuck in another world’ story, ever! Having the main kid finally get back home, but at the ABSOLUTE WORST MOMENT, after all his friends have sacrificed themself to save that world and he’s the only one left alive. And he doesnt even get enough time to process the shock, he barely even sees the rescued world before he just wakes up home as if nothing happened. And he’s stuck feeling like he can’t adjust to being part of this world anymore, and he’s mourning people he can’t even talk to anyone about. Imagine how worried his parents must have been when he became depressed seemingly overnight and refuses to tell them why! And then it just ends on him crying in the rain and the ghosts of his friends trying to motivate him to get back up and find a reason to live again. That was ONE HELL of a cliffhanger, yo! So yeah OF COURSE people were cheering for a new season, but also OF COURSE that new season would fail if it insufficiently followed up on the emotional impact of the cliffhanger and then had a bazillion episodes of barely anything emotional ever happening again, when the first series had you crying your eyes out as early as episode 4...

oh and like DEAR GOD all the OTHER really good subversiony episode plots aaaaa like even down to little stuff like how genki actually fights alongside his monster pals. And he’s a total badass who does succeed in doing more than most humans could do, but still he’s just a human going against monsters. he knows what he’s doing is rash, but he does it anyway because he cares about his monsters and couldnt just let them die without throwing himself in front of the bullet. And every battle in this show is life or death rebellion against an oppressive regime like that! Random low risk tournement episodes used to be.. like.. FILLER in this series. It was a terrible idea for the entire third season’s plot... And I also loved how the team actually did help people along the way as they journeyed to defeat the baddies, and it wasn’t JUST fighting. They had a whole tearful episode about everyone struggling to hold back a dam that the baddies had sabotaged to wipe a village off the map, and it was INFINATELY MORE INTENSE than half of the things Pokemon has ever done, lol! (not that I dislike pokemon, just the anime in particular is a bit naff) God, how they were all strangers to this village and how they actually had bickering between the team members on whether they should really do this, and all the different ways they tried to save the dam and how they made it way too clear that they were gonna die from friggin holding this thing back with their bare hands. And how they organized the whole town to work themselves to the bone trying to divert the dam, and how a bunch of their attempts failed and they came so close to not having enough time! You had me weeping for the potential deaths of a hundred nameless faceless npcs just from putting me in the shoes of our heroes reacting to it! You made a little kid understand the complexity of civilian casualties in war! And OH MAN, Golem’s backstory! How he was a former war soldier who just shattered mentally after being forced to kill so many other monsters. And he was so gentle at heart, and he sat there guarding this church full of disc stones for god knows how many decades, blaming himself for what happened. Like.. it showed that even when you’re fighting villains, killing still breaks you. Dear GOD, his face when he came back down from his friggin ptsd flashback anger episode saving the heroes from the baddies, and he saw all the dead baddies, and just... you could not talk to that man and tell him that killing was justified just because they were BADDIES. Even if its in self defense, he still has to look at his hands that just murdered people. I’m so damn glad the heroes managed to befriend him and take him away from that place, cos that moment came so close to sending him back to his guilt spiral! If anything, I think that the dub calling them ‘baddies’ actually made all these moments way more effective. The childish terminology makes you think this is gonna be a paint by numbers story, so it hurts more when its anything but! Even in a world with a concept like ‘the bad guy magically turns people into his bad minions’, they still managed to deal with complex grey morality, and that’s one hell of a crowning achievement!

...plus it allowed for a happy ending after all. God, i cried for all those poor minor mooks getting brought back to normal in the end. Honestly, even though it hurt, I would have accepted it ending on all of the hero monsters being dead forever for the sake of bringing back all the dead civilians and brainwashed baddies. Sacrificing yourselves to save so many others! God, this show’s characters are too goddamn pure. AND COMPLEX TOO! man I loved how grumpy and selfish half of the hero cast is, yet they’re still heroes despite it, and god just HOW THEY ALL DIED TOGETHER AND OUR PROTAGONIST IS THE ONLY ONE FORCED TO KEEP ON LIVING that was such a fucking cliffhanger thank you terrible season 3 for fixing it man i can forgive anything you do because you did that baby mocchi lived and ate some mochi cakes and tiger and hare lived to bicker with each other once more and golem could find some peace knowing all the people he saved, even if he might never be free of the guilt of those he failed to save and suezo and holly didnt have to be apart again, he didnt have to end his life finally proving his ‘usefulness’ at the cost of everything else (SERIOUSLY SUEZO LOW SELF CONFIDENCE EPISODES KILL MY HEART) and genki didnt have to have his childhood completely destroyed by his ‘magical adventure’ plot ending on so much of a trope subversion even if still it was good that it happened it was a really fuckin good plot all that suffering just made the happy ending that much happier! GOD I miss this show very much...