#if your character driven show has boring or bland characters im going to be mean about it!! im sorry!!!

[sludgekludge]

what even was the point of wanting to make helluva about 'messy romance and complex characters' if they can't commit to that at even the most basic level. the narrative will just decide that a character has done wrong without explaining what or how, it'll completely ignore or justify legitimately dubious things, it's so desperate to tell you exactly how to feel about certain characters...

stella's dialogue is so cartoonishly on-the-nose evil and she has no actual motivations. none of stolas' mistakes are acknowledged until now, 2 seasons in (and even then, they're trying to justify them), half the stolitz-related conflicts are almost comically childish. blitz yelled at stolas, which is mean. instead of looking at this with nuance, blitz is in the wrong, and stolas is not. there is a wrong party and a right party, every time. there are no shades of grey.

where's the complexity? these characters range from cardboard to slightly thicker cardboard with maybe a drawing of a frowny face on it, except the frowny face changes colours every time you look at it because the writers worship inconsistencies.

[crimsonsalutations]

What don't you like about fandom hanzo? :o just asking because I'm really picky about it myself personally

oh anon youve asked the Wrong question bc i have A Lot of thoughts on my boy hanzo

BUT before i say anything i just want 2 say that Despite the fact that i bitch a lot abt characterization on this blog, i dont intend hate or disrespect @ anyone who portrays characters in the way i bitch about. fandom is about making yourself happy & if a characterization makes you happy then you should pursue it despite what my dumb bitch ass has to say about it. ok.

ive mentioned this a few times before but i 

A. love redemption arcs and 

B. dont like... victimization. whether its canon or not-- like a character whose whole thing revolves around them being a victim of everything in their life? eh. boring. like widowmaker: she was a happy ballerina... she got brainwashed... it’s like... now what. she was happy, now she’s a victim, there’s nothing cool in there to explore.

i dislike characterizations of hanzo where people try to explain away the fratricide with ‘he was abused by sojiro’ or ‘he was brainwashed by the clan of elders’ partially because of what i just said and partially because it just seems unlikely in canon bc

1.chu... a while ago, said genji was part of overwatch when he was human, which we took as a slip-up but i dont think(?) that he ever took that back. 

2.genji says something in retribution like ‘no matter what i do... i cannot escape my fate’ when mccree says they’ve become assassins, implying he’s tried to escape becoming an assassin.  

3. overwatch was conveniently close enough to genji & the shimadas that they could swoop in and save him before he actually died

4. genji wasnt murdered. he was brutalized. he has scars up and down his arms, he’s got burn scars on his face, and when hanzo was done with him he couldnt walk anymore. plus there’s a post somewhere on here that theorizes due to the nature of blackwatch genji’s prosthesis +  the blood spatter in hanamura, it seems that hanzo attacked him from behind

hanzo’s bio says

Upon the death of his father, the clan elders instructed Hanzo to straighten out his wayward younger brother so that he, too, might help rule the Shimada empire. When his brother refused, Hanzo was forced to kill him. This act broke Hanzo's heart and drove him to reject blah blah 

but genji’s death doesnt seem like some kind of duty driven, single-manly-tear-slipping-down-the-cheek, hold-him-in-your-arms-as-he-goes death. he was brutalized. hanzo was angry.

while hanzo’s bio talks about hanzo’s broken heart, genji’s bio says this

Hanzo demanded that Genji take a more active role in their late father's empire. Genji refused, enraging Hanzo. The tension between the brothers built to a violent confrontation that left Genji on the verge of dying. 

and i mean ok. im not here to judge hanzo or condemn him (personally i think ppl who try to assert their moral superiority over fictional characters are.. a little pathetic) & there’s a lot that goes into this, pressure from the elders, japanese culture, unhealthy environments. but hanzo had a choice.

all this stuff seems to imply to me that genji betrayed the shimadas for overwatch. maybe he caught on that he was in danger without sojiro around to protect him. maybe he just wanted out. i dont know. does it matter? 

but hanzo couldve spared him. couldve cast him out. couldve done a bunch of things, but he didnt. 

the fact is. that hanzo killed his brother. (brutalized his brother).

 and thats why i find him interesting. how do you deal with that?

like, okay. you’re standing there, and you’ve got your little brother’s blood on your hands. and you’re looking down at him (at his corpse) and the adrenaline high is leaving and it’s beginning to sink in that you’ve murdered your little brother. in cold blood. what do you do? what’s next?

i mean, you punch someone in the face and you feel bad about it, you go ‘oh shit im so sorry’ and you grab them an ice pack. but genji’s dead. there’s no one to apologize to. there’s no way to fix it. you’ve done a terrible thing. an evil thing. an abusive, awful, terrible thing. and you cant take it back. and there’s no one or nothing to blame it on: you did it and there’s nothing you can do to change that. 

what’s next? where do you go from there?

that’s what i find interesting about hanzo. because thats the thing about overwatch. anyone can be a hero. even if youve killed your brother. even if you’re the worst person on the planet. all you have to do is try.

and. in this context it makes more sense that hanzo rejects genji at first. the cycle he mustve been going down those ten years.

i killed my brother --> im a terrible person because ive killed my brother --> i killed my brother because im a terrible person

his whole concept of himself has devolved into this brother-killer who can never redeem himself, and then genji pops up one day like ‘hey whats up’ and this isnt just forcing hanzo to re-evaluate his relationship with genji, but also himself. it’s a bit self-centered, yeah, but he rejects genji in part because He Is A Brother Killer, that’s just how he sees himself. genji shows up and hanzo’s like, ‘you cant be alive because im a filthy bastard that killed my brother’

its obvious he still regrets it though. he says it was duty (i cant even get into that w/o more context abt what he means by ‘duty’ + the whole situation beyond vague descriptions in bios) and he also stopped using a sword after that. which is interesting either way. was that out of respect? did he just feel sick using one? idk. 

the whole idea of blaming what he did on abuse or brainwashing is just so meh :/ to me because i just dont like those kind of stories. partially because a lot of the time they just feel like the author is trying to garner sympathy for an unlikable character, and partially because oftentimes abuse is passed off as a motivation when it’s not. 

lots of people are abused. there is no one reaction or outcome of abuse. someone lashes out at their abuser and kills them, that’s because they were angry or scared, not because they were abused. the anger was created bc of the abuse but the anger is what led them to act, not the abuse. 

hearing about the abuse just makes me sad, and to be completely honest it doesnt make me sympathize with a character any more or less. it’s just like adding really bland cheese to a sandwich. i can tell the cheese is there, but i cant taste it and it doesnt really affect the sandwich. all it does is give me more to chew.

hanzo didnt kill genji because he was abused or brainwashed, or else all abused/brainwashed children would kill their siblings. hanzo killed genji because he was angry (maybe that anger as born of abuse. frankly i dont think it matters much). what i want to see less of with hanzo is ‘fucked up bastard kills his brother’ and less of ‘poor abused baby accidentally tripped and stabbed genji with his sword :(’ and more ‘confused man tries to figure out how to live with himself after realizing he is kind of an awful person’

plus i feel like hanzo is a very specific balance between a broken man and a complete jackass and no one seems to combine those 2 traits in a way that satisfies me