#dehumanizing your enemy doesnt make things better. it just makes you worse.

[bananonbinary]

i dont have the brainpower to articulate it correctly but something about the procession of villains in tma and how it reflects dehumanizing the Enemy.

we start out with jane prentiss, who is stated to HAVE BEEN a Person, but its fine she’s not really anymore she’s just a hive its fine. then we get not!sasha, who never was a person. then nikola, who kinda vaguely is person-adjacent, but still is firmly a Monster.

in late season 3, we also get the hunters, who use this sort of logic to go after jon and mike crew and other people we KNOW are People. but it’s still okay, because our heroes Would Never, and anyway there’s an obvious line between someOne like jon and someThing like mustermann. the hunters are just blinded to this difference, but it’s still there. probably. maybe.

then season 4 hits. all our villains are just Some Guys. they can do some pretty evil things, but so can jon. they have houses, and bank accounts, and live real lives. and when jon kills Peter Lukas, there’s no getting around the fact that it was a murder.

season 5 is practically all about this, with martin realizing that “avatar” is meaningless and these people are just the same as them. the enemy was never some nightmarish monster, it was just awful people who were willing to hurt others. and when it all comes down to it, when jon kills the Main Antagonist of the entire show, there’s no powers, no epic fantasy battle, no romantic heroic moment. just one man murdering another with brute force.