#Clear can never be held accountable for his actions. If you're ever mad at him you will get dogpiled or shamed for it

[bonebabbles]

Bones... help me. I just read a fanfic where the author said that they find it very weird that so many people villainize Clear Sky. They deadass said "sure he's done a lot of bad things but he's always had good intentions,"

...

I don't think I need to explain why this frustrates me so much.

I could just say, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" but that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of how fucked up Clear Sky is. He really doesn't even have those lmao

In spite of how you can make a DOTC drinking game out of him bellowing "Im Just Trying To (insert relevant good thing here)," he only ever does this when someone is challenging him or offending him in some way. He's not doing anything out of benevolence, this character is obsessed with controlling other people.

Remove Gray Wing sniffing his armpit for the entire arc and you can see Clear Sky's "good intentions" for what they are; manipulation tactics. He only says "Im Just Trying" when he's defending his evil, fucked up choices to someone trying to challenge him.

"You exiled your disabled brother, you're a piece of shit!" "I'm just trying to be fair uwu"

"You slaughtered a random woman and want to kill her babies too?!" "I'm just trying to spare them from suffering"

"YOU BEAT A SECOND RANDOM WOMAN TO DEATH?!" "I was just trying to give her a warning, not my fault she was too weak to stay conscious"

"There's big piles of rotting meat in camp and we have a hostage who you promised to treat well" "I'm just trying to not let these dumb moor cats think that they can have more than they deserve"

It wasn't ever "good intentions." He's NOT afraid of anyone starving. It's a justification that he tells to his cats to justify his cruelty, weaponizing his sad backstory. He has an entire inner monologue in Book 3 about how they can always hunt more food, so it's fine they're killing more than they can eat, and that it takes people "months to starve" anyway because he saw it in the mountains.

Can't stand that line. "Sure he's done bad things BUT." The bad things were really fucking bad, and no, they didn't effectively write a character who legitimately tried to do the right thing. Everything he does just ends up being related to a grab at power or control.

They just wrote a child abuser who likes to hit women and start wars and decided Tall Shadow is also at fault here, somehow. lmao.

[scoobydoodean]

I see this held up as major proof of Dean's badness, but couldn't it also be proof of Cas having faith Dean can get past anything without Cas having to change his behavior? The way it's structured the onus is on DEAN to work through it, not others to change or make amends. ---- CASTIEL: You know, Dean, he – he feels things more acutely than any human I've ever known. So it's possible he could work through this. One day, he may explode and let it all out and breathe deeply and move on.

I see what you mean in a general sense, and it's extremely possible that Cas is thinking about his own past fights with Dean and Dean forgiving him, and from the perspective of the critique you have in mind that you're refuting, I agree. But of course deancrit casgirls will forever insist that Cas has never in his life done anything harmful to Dean either accidentally or on purpose, so any time Dean might dare try to hold him accountable for anything, he's actually just making shit up and being toxic and controlling, so here Cas is just apologizing for his own abusive relationship. You can only get their take by being deliberately obtuse/disingenuous.

That said, the context of that line (from 15.13 "Destinty's Child") is Cas answering soulless Jack's question about whether Dean will eventually forgive him for murdering Mary.

CASTIEL: Hey, Jack. JACK: Cas, you know what's good about being dead? CASTIEL: Uh, as I recall, very little. JACK: Well, when you come back, you – you really get into all that life is. Hot, cold, sweet, spicy, funny, scary. CASTIEL: And are you? "Into it"? JACK: I want to be. But I don't... feel things the way I used to. Before I lost my... CASTIEL: Your soul. JACK: I used to feel things. In my bones. It was glorious, and sometimes unbearable. But I felt them. Now, I understand joy or sadness, but... I know those things aren't in me. I understand why Sam and Dean were angered by what happened to Mary... CASTIEL: By what you did to Mary. JACK: Yes. I see that I've caused them pain. And it's clear that things have changed. Especially with – with Dean. Will he ever forgive me? CASTIEL: You know, Dean, he – he feels things more acutely than any human I've ever known. So it's possible he could work through this. One day, he may explode and let it all out and breathe deeply and move on. JACK: How long will that take? CASTIEL: I don't know.

And yeah—I have seen people refer to Cas's little speech here as "condoning child abuse" and other bullshit. Because how DARE Dean not forgive soulless Jack for murdering his mother (something soulless Jack is unable to actually really acknowledge he did). I mean clearly any time someone murders your mom because she made them mad and threatened their sense of security by asking if they're okay and saying their concerning actions can’t stay a secret… That’s just natural understandable stuff! You need to forgive the person who murdered her instantly and if you don’t idk you’re kinda overreacting don’t you think? :/ I mean your mom probably deserved it kind of anyway for reading the room so wrong and talking about getting a person help. And I mean if you don't forgive the person who killed your mom or do anything trying to stop them from hurting more people you're really a child abuser... toward an adult... who murdered your mother in cold blood and is unable to even understand why it was wrong in any sense other than an intellectual one like he read it from a book... preferring to refer to it as "What happened to Mary" instead of acknowledge it as something he himself did because he was mad and felt threatened—which is what he circled back to in "Jack In The Box" too. It's only when Jack gets his soul back that he's able to actually feel true empathy, acknowledge his real actions and the gravity of them, and give an actual sincere apology. Because his soul is actually important—something this fandom refuses, by and large, to notice.

Anyway, this fandom's take on Mary's murder and soulless Jack vs. regular Jack is overwhelmingly a bag of wet third grader vomit and feces so what can one expect?

[crossguild]

genuinely can't imagine what difference knowing lovelace is an alien would've made to the outcome of the mutiny on mw and jacobi's part. like, presumably at that point that still wasn't anything that would've been shared with minkowski, and jacobi was definitely not going to NOT blow up hilbert, and maxwell would still be convinced that minkowski wouldn't shoot, and would have given jacobi the go-ahead, and mk was not gonna back down on... anything...

then jacobi being like 'the WORST i have EVER been betrayed is when my boss didn't share this one piece of information that would totally have made a difference even though i don't know what difference that would have been, that he was very explicitly told not to share with me by our sadistic boss who throws people out windows. that is the worst thing that anyone has ever done to another person. finding out kepler is not 100% in control all the time is the worst betrayal i have ever exerienced' which, that and also the episode no complaints and also his 'i trust kepler with my life moment' all implies that he's actually very content with his job the other 99% of the time that he's spent in it considering he expected a workiversary celebration which no normal human in a horrible corporate job does

and it's pretty clear from the canon that jacobi knows exactly what corporate espionage entails, given that he was a-okay with doing it for six years and also had no problem with having information withheld from him as long as things work out in his favor, and he had no problem at all with mind control or stripping people of their autonomy as long as it wasn't happening to him...

and minkowski was like hey you know how in the riddle of the orion the lesson is that you always have a choice to make, and you're accountable for that choice? you could also have decided not to blow up hilbert. that wasn't even like, an explicit order or anything? it was just an option you had that you as an individual decided to take because kepler left that decision to you? that you're responsible for?

and the narrative was like yah kepler is a dick who is a corporate spy/fixer and by dint of his job he is a Bad Guy in our narrative, but jacobi COULD have been portrayed as a genuine victim of all of that but he very much was not, and was instead an active and enthusiastic participant who enjoyed being enabled by his job as a corporate espionage guy

yet i have to read multiple essays about what a poor abused victim jacobi is because he got real mad about (checks notes) his corporate spy/fixer boss doing exactly what a spy/fixer boss always does and what he has always done and which has only suddenly become a problem for jacobi because jacobi feels guilty for what happened but he refuses to acknowledge or own up to it so he blames the only other person he has a modicum of influence over while they're being held as prisoners of war.

and even in blaming kepler he didn't say 'we' could have used that information, he says well maxwell would've been able to do something with it, which is not necessarily true (they'll never know cause she's dead! so he tells himself that and can use it as fuel in his 'mad at kepler') but which is kinda sweet that he has that much faith in his team, except when that faith becomes 'they can literally do the impossible and any failure to do so is someone's fault but it sure isn't mine, when bad things happen as a result of my actions it's no one's fault but i might get unfairly blamed for it'

i like the characters of w359 because none of them are strictly good or bad and they all make bad calls and fuck up and hurt others, and that complexity makes them very nuanced and realistic. i like jacobi a lot! I'm just also aware that he's The Worst. and erasure of him being the worst makes him a MUCH less interesting character