#not liking literal genociders despite me saying multiple times they’re good characters in terms of writing

[cosmicheartz]

This is swinging at a hornets nest but my cotl hot take is that the bishops either should have stayed dead or we got a choice to not bring them back to the cult after releasing them from purgatory

[gascon-en-exil]

Why would CF be considered bad? The devs say that it's the route about fighting for what you believe in, even if others get in your way. You may have to take down good people, but in the end her route ends with no more gods', nothing dangerous lurking anymore, etc. It doesn't seem like a bad route other than maybe killing good people.

I take it you mean “morally bad” rather than “badly written,” although the two are not mutually exclusive. I’d say that the CF we have is bad in both senses of the terms, and that a better-written CF would been have even more obviously morally objectionable but would have succeeded on that basis - a proper villain route where you get to enjoy being a genocidal conqueror (possibly with a side of your self-insert getting to sleep with your preferred flavor of villainous archetype between Edelgard, Hubert, and Jeritza).

Now, as for why it is, despite the muddled presentation, a villain route:

There are still dangers lurking in Fòdlan, and they’re called the Agarthans. CF is the only route where Thales survives, and where you make the least progress in dismantling his organization. AM gets him and potentially Myson in addition to Cornelia, while VW and SS leave out Cornelia but take care of Thales and raid Shambhala with VW additionally getting rid of zombie Nemesis and the Elites along with a handful of low-ranking Agarthans. CF kicks the Agarthans back to a postgame war waged entirely in character endings, which is neither satisfying as a player nor likely to remove the threat entirely, based on CF’s parallels with Genealogy of the Holy War (see below).

Fòdlan only has one (mainline) goddess, and she’s still alive at the end of CF. I’m not really sure where people got the impression that Rhea or any of the Nabateans consider themselves gods, but they don’t. Killing Rhea in CF causes Sothis’s Crest stone to disappear for no apparent reason (note that Rhea also dies by default in SS if you don’t raise your support with her, and yet Byleth’s hair does not revert to its original color in that ending), but Sothis herself “lives” because you can still S rank her in CF. This is two logical inconsistencies stacked on one another, the first being the bit about the disappearing Crest stone and the second being that Byleth survived its disappearance even though based on what we know of their birth their heart would not beat without the stone…meaning they should have died in that moment. When it comes to moral arguments however, Fire Emblem does not as a whole posit that the world would be any better or less prone to conflict without its gods. The “gods” of Fates and Echoes are really dragons undergoing mental deterioration in their old age, something Rhea does not show signs of except maybe in SS, and that only because the game realizes it still needs a final boss. In Radiant Dawn meanwhile, the game that evidently inspired Edelgard’s speech in the CF ending cutscene, Ike himself acknowledges the value of gods, and Ashera is not truly killed but is allowed to combine with Yune and become a complete entity again.

“Killing good people” is kind of a big deal. CF has the highest named character body count of any route, and although it lets you spare some of the people on its hit list you have to go out of your way to allow Claude, Seteth, and Flayn to live. You can never spare Dimitri, with the best you can do for him saving him from a humiliating execution at Edelgard’s hands and Dedue from becoming a Demonic Beast at the same time and letting them die together. CF Dimitri also doesn’t undergo the same trauma he experiences during the timeskip of the other routes, leaving him comparatively lucid and composed and thereby making all the route’s attempts to paint him as this violent madman who needs to be put down as little more than propaganda intended to rationalize conquering Faerghus and killing its king. Everything about CF positions it as the route of a conqueror; you invade two sovereign countries, take out their leaders, trample them underfoot (literally represented by the ending tapestry), and absorb them into a continental Empire. The bit about returning Fòdlan to the control of humans - incidentally also the goal of the Agarthans - means in this case dragon genocide, allowing you to participate in an event similar to the Scouring of Elibe’s backstory while also, like the Elibe games, forcing you to consider the ethical ramifications of such an act by giving you multiple examples of dragons who aren’t crazed monsters who need to be killed to ensure humanity’s survival.

The argument from Arvis. I went into it here, but the gist is that Edelgard’s similarities to FE’s original Flame Emperor are too significant to be ignored and notably do not make for a flattering comparison. Arvis also fights for his beliefs, a desire to unify Jugdral and create a better world with himself as emperor. In the process he allies himself with an assortment of unscrupulous backstabbing nobles as well as a shadowy cult that opposes a revered divine being and in the process commits multiple acts of murder up to and including most of the playable cast of the FE4′s first generation. He is no less an antagonist or a villain because he has arguably sympathetic ideals, and it’s only in the second generation when, broken and impotent (on account of the machinations of the aforementioned cult who only grew stronger under his reign - makes you wonder about CF’s postgame war, doesn’t it?) and with a new crop of playable characters coming for his head, he somewhat redeems himself by secretly delivering the divine sword Tyrfing to Seliph - tacitly acknowledging the inevitability of his impending death and that he was wrong in murdering Tyrfing’s previous wielder, Seliph’s father Sigurd, to advance his ambitions. Edelgard frustrates a lot of longtime fans of the series precisely because she never has any moment remotely similar to this, where her beliefs and actions are ever questioned in any meaningful way that forces her to confront what she’s doing. That’s to be expected when Arvis at the same point in his story was riding high off his triumph and couldn’t yet see how it would all unravel, but the constant echo chamber of Edelgard and her yes-men Hubert and Byleth is considerably more grating because it’s always in the player’s face. This brings me to…

CF isn’t about fighting for what you believe in, unless what you believe in is just Edelgard. The developers could make the argument that that’s the driving force behind Edelgard’s actions on any route, but choosing CF is never framed that way for the player via Byleth. It’s a spur-of-the-moment, purely emotional decision that asks you simply whether you should kill Edelgard for invading the Holy Tomb with an army and attempting to steal the Crest stones therein (which are, as a reminder, the remains of Rhea’s slaughtered kin - she’s got a pretty good reason to be as angry as she is). You’re not asked to reckon with the morality of Edelgard’s actions in that moment, and the game does its best to encourage you to forget about everything else she did as the Flame Emperor by simply never bringing up any of it ever again. This is why there are still fans arguing that Edelgard didn’t intend to have Dimitri and Claude assassinated in the Prologue, or that she wasn’t complicit in Flayn’s kidnapping, the experiments on the Remire villagers and students, and Jeralt’s death. The game refuses to let you judge her actions for what they are, even in some dialogue options in non-CF routes where you’re forced to pick one of two options sympathetic to Edelgard. Edelgard herself expresses surprise if you side with her, but there’s no explanation given for Byleth’s choice other than that they believe in her. Fates’s Conquest route has repeated moments where Corrin regrets siding with the family who raised them despite the presence of a more rational alternative (or two), as if they’re only there because they were railroaded into it by the player; Three Houses has the opposite problem, where it’s more prepared to question your decision if you take the less emotionally-driven option and side against Edelgard. To put it bluntly, the only reason from a storytelling/characterization perspective to pick CF is because you like Edelgard - possibly as an object for self-insert romance since the route itself leans hard into that interpretation even if you don’t S rank her.

[shinneth]

SUF as a whole just left me with an empty feeling.

I feel you there, anon. In Dreams aside, I could take or leave the rest of this series (and in most cases, leaning well towards the latter sentiment). 

But I guess that’s to be expected when 90% of SUF focused squarely on Steven’s PTSD and need for therapy and the many, many red flags shown as early on as the beginning that signaled his eventual breakdown to where he ended up in the climax.

Especially with the fanbase itself constantly screeching that Steven needs therapy, Steven has PTSD, Steven’s gonna corrupt, et cetera… like, it was all laid on far too thick. So when we got to Growing Pains, it really didn’t move me like it did so many others because it came off as such a “No shit, Sherlock” moment for me when Priyanka finally addressed the underlying issues the show itself really didn’t even bother trying to be subtle about.

Don’t get me wrong; a lot of people who have suffered (or are presently suffering) from the same problems as Steven irl have been helped a lot by these kinds of episodes, and I do appreciate that.

But from my personal standpoint, yeah… I knew from the start that Steven’s underlying issues alone were not gonna be enough to sustain a full series, and sure enough, it wasn’t. We got to see some bits here and there with the other characters, but we also had a few choice characters be really shitty people in season 5 that never got properly addressed before it concluded, and with the timeskip in SUF, all of that just got handwaved off as “dealt with offscreen”, which is the laziest BS ever. 

And worst of all, at the end, they really didn’t stick the landing well at all. I’ll at least say SUF’s resolution wasn’t the mega levels of offensively terrible as Change Your Mind - but then again, it’s hard to out-do giving totalitarian space dictators with countless lives lost under their watch a fucking FACE-TURN out of nowhere. 

Like, really, the Diamonds’ presence (White especially) in SUF actively made my viewing experience even worse towards the end. Yes, I should be glad they’re establishing that the Diamonds are at least starting to use their powers for good and rebuild some of the lives they ruined.

But, y’know… doesn’t change the fact that they’re all responsible for multiple counts of global genocide. Like, any living creatures native to their colony planets? They’re still fucking gone. And the Diamonds themselves just come off VERY unnatural as “nice” guys - and in many cases, they’re even creepier now than they were as villains. Good god, White’s blubbering in the climax was fucking insufferable, though. 

Partially I think this comes from SU being a “kids show” so there’s this pressing need to end things as cleanly as possible. I’m more miffed that in the end, Steven still got pretty much everything he wanted.

They had some admittedly good set-ups to Steven’s growth, like having him accept that people grow up, change, and move on with their lives. We see the clear evidence that Steven’s got an unhealthy clinginess towards his human friends - and Connie’s no exception. 

And considering they took the time to establish that:

Connie has friends other than Steven. She gets along with them just fine, so it’s not like she’s totally lonely or isolated without him.

Connie is ambitious with many goals and aspirations when it comes to her education and potential career paths. She’s shown to have put a lot of thought into her options and at no point comes off as feeling pressured by her parents or friends into this.

Connie knows she has to work hard and often to achieve her dreams, and despite that rigid lifestyle, it doesn’t seem to bother her in the least. That would imply she really wants to reach these goals she set for herself, whether or not Steven’s in the picture at all.

Connie and Steven’s dynamic is a far cry from how it was when they started out in the original series. You can tell Steven has no clue what Connie’s talking about when it comes to her goals and just plays along, pretending he understands anything coming out of her mouth.

Connie, despite what her speech would lead you to believe, has been every bit as insufferably dense as the gems in SUF when it comes to Steven’s issues. In Bismuth Casual, Steven’s very specifically-worded concerns were misconstrued as a fear of skating (or his inability to, whatever) - and in the end, they just became Stevonnie rather than properly talked things through. You know, something PERIDOT 100% did in the prior episode.

Connie is very firm about wanting to live her life as herself. She’s not against being Stevonnie from time to time, but like hell does she want to be Stevonnie for the long term. 

Connie knows marrying in general at her age is a stupid-stupid-stupid idea, even if it is Steven. And considering her well-established commitment to her studies and reaching her lofty goals, Connie - at least at the time - seemed to know a relationship with anyone just wasn’t in the cards for her at this point in her life. There’s no need to rush that shit, and she won’t compromise her life just to give her needy friend this thing he wants that he doesn’t even fully understand truly is. 

Or, you know… just have Connie backpedal hard on a good chunk of that and date Steven so that he won’t become a monster again. I’m mostly kidding with that - but by kissing his monstrous self and that triggering his restoration, then soon later we see that even though Steven and Connie can only have a long-distance relationship at best, she’s dating him right now anyway even though this needlessly makes her life way more complicated than it needed to be - like seriously, how can I not take that as Canon Connverse being founded on the condition of “Okay, if it’ll keep you from losing your shit, going pink, and turning into a monster, I’ll date you”?!

And in the end it yet again gives Steven more-or-less exactly what he wants, even if it isn’t something he really needs. 

I’m glad Rebecca clarified that Steven would still visit Beach City often, because I had a very hard time buying him just traveling by himself on the road. And maybe it would have worked better if he was just doing it short-term to “find himself” or something along those lines, but nope! They’re basically saying this is what Steven wants to do.

And honestly, even that is dampened with his clearly-stated intention of visiting Connie way more than he intends to visit the gems. Even though Connie’s gonna be busy. With college.

This just… wasn’t a good ending. It had plenty of good moments - his goodbye to Bismuth, Lapis, and Peridot especially was very well-executed and the closest this finale came to drawing out any real emotion out of me. I loved the scene of Steven giving Greg his room; that was adorable. The last meeting with Tsundere Jasper was amusing.

But everything else… ehhh.

I mean, what can we really take from this season that I haven’t already outlined? The biggest takeaways were the plot points everyone saw coming a mile away that weren’t even executed all that well. 

In Dreams, as great at is was, might as well have not even happened - because what really carried over from that episode through to the end? Even though Peridot was the only one who got through to Steven, legitimately comforted him and addressed his fears, and the episode for once ended with Steven being happy with no underlying concerns about his problems - immediately he’s back to being awkward and depressed and frustrated by Bismuth Casual.

And I get that shit like trauma shouldn’t be resolved so easily, but for what In Dreams accomplished, I expected there to at least be a semblance of progress. Steven’s known since that episode he can hang out with Peridot and talk to her about whatever without needing a reason to do it, but he never ever takes her up on that again. 

So again, what was the point? 

You really get the impression that the quality of writing took a backseat just to emphasize the symbolism of an issue people commonly have, but SUF’s execution stretched my suspension of disbelief far beyond its limits. 

And nothing stretched that farther than Connie’s insufferable fucking speech in I Am My Monster; that pretty much completely made In Dreams feel like it never really happened in SUF’s continuity. 

In some ways, I just prefer to believe In Dreams was just a dream itself. An AU offshoot in SUF itself. Considering it’s so ridiculously good compared to the other nineteen episodes and by far the most pure and wholesome, maybe that’s the best way to see it. 

In Dreams was too good for its own series. That’s literally the only thing I personally took from SUF as a whole (at least in terms of lasting impact). 

So yeah, I guess for only one episode of twenty to really hit me in the feels, “empty” is an apt way to describe the series, anon. 

Seriously, if I didn’t have my own massive SU-AU to mess around in and do things properly, this probably would have upset me more. 

Instead, I just chuckle at Rebecca’s Monster Steven and raise her to what I’m putting my version of Steven through in my current story. Where I’m pulling all the stops to make other characters matter even though the stars are undoubtedly Peridot and Steven. 

And I’m actually making actions yield serious, lasting consequences.

(yeah, part of me wishes Jasper wasn’t revived - or alternatively, have Steven accidentally shatter White Diamond instead of Jasper since he came awfully close in canon

or even better, shatter Jasper and revive her, then accidentally shatter White and not be able to revive her since Steven used up ALL that diamond essence on Jasper…

yeah I’m kind of a monster)

Your pain is mutually felt, anon. So I’ll prescribe you endless refills of better-written and better-executed SU fanon to heal the emptiness SUF left inside you.

[enigmari]

Oh my GOD Please infodump abt hatoful.... ive repeatedly tried to get into it but have no idea how/how to connect any of the lore. Thanos !

I SAW THE TYPO TOO LATE IT WAS SUPPOSED TO END WITH “THANKS”,

SKDFSKJSLKDFJ no worries anon, it happens to the best of us. Anyways, how should I start this…

So, if you’re totally new here, Hatoful Boyfriend is a visual novel dating sim whose basic premise is “what if cliched boyfriend archetypes… but birds?” And it takes this premise completely wholeheartedly, while still maintaining a comedic tone. You pick classes and club activities each in-game day to increase your skill points, and depending on your levels (and a few dialogue options) you’ll either successfully romance your birdie of choice or get a Bad End. Most of the birds make their interests/level requirements obvious from the start, and you have a bunch of save slots to work with if you wanna go the scum route. Pretty simple and straightforward.

(Actually, that’s a lie, it gets much more complicated later. Don’t worry about that right now.)

Most of HBF is framed through the perspective of the protagonist (I’m gonna use her canon name for convenience) Hiyoko, and she is… not the brightest bulb in the box. Especially in the first game, when events in one character’s route will be foreshadowed in other routes, she will rarely call them out or make note of them. Naturally, this also means some reveals will be spoiled depending on which order you do the routes in. You also unlock documents in the Archive section after completing each route, which adds another level of puzzle piecing to the mix. 

(No, this is not the complicated part I was talking about earlier. Sorry.)

In this next bit, I’m going to briefly run through the routes of the first game from least to most complex in terms of lore, as well as what things are foreshadowed when. I’ll also toss in the archive documents when I feel they’re most relevant to the information you have. We ready?

Okosan’s routes: Mostly joke endings, unless there is some greater plot significance to pudding that I’ve missed for all these years.

Ryouta’s route: Mostly about character building, the only real hint you get is that his mother is sickly and it’s implied he inherited this from her.

Azami’s routes: You could get here with the same stats as Ryouta’s route, but then you fuck it up by taking this job opportunity away from him. How rude, Hiyoko.

Sakuya’s first route: He opens up to you about his abusive and bigoted dad, and with some encouragement you encourage him to run away and become a musician like he always wanted. Mr. Le Bel is very important to multiple other characters in this game.

Sakuya’s second route (needs perfect stats/dialogue choices): Same conversation about his dad, but he chooses to live with you instead. Your big hint is at the end, when Yuuya sends you a letter saying there’s “something he’s wanted to tell [Sakuya] for a long time. Something important.” 

Yuuya’s route: You don’t actually get to find out what the "important thing" is, whoops. You do find out that Yuuya’s a spy for the Dove Party, Shuu is one for the Hawk Party, and the school has been increasingly influenced by the Hawk Party as of late. 

BAD END: You may have gotten it earlier, but now you have context as to who’s killing you when you fail a route- it’s the Hawk Party. The reason why is still unclear.

[CW for gore, child death, medical abuse, suicide, and attempted genocide from here on! This game is a trip!]

Shuu’s first route: Absolutely not a romance route and if you ship Shuu/Hiyoko please block me and tab out immediately thank you very much. You learn that Shuu has been killing students for medical experimentation, confirming Yuuya’s suspicions about the quills in the student store and the food in the cafeteria.

Shuu’s second route (needs perfect stats/dialogue choices): Same ending where Hiyoko dies, but he’s attached enough to her that he takes her head in a jar when he goes on the run. You do learn that Shuu doesn’t care about the Hawk Party’s politics, just that they can enable his personal experiments.

Archive Note 11: Someone (Shuu) knew that Yuuya was a Dove Party agent from the start. He also notes that some of the students are “fascinating”, which you know from his route means they’re good experiment fodder. You learn that he has reason to believe his victims won’t oppose the experimentation, but not the details.

Archive Note 10: Shuu makes notes about human “adaptability measures.” Given that Hiyoko is the only human at the school, you can guess that this will involve her in some way.

Archive Note 06: Notes about the Spanish Flu, how deadly it was to humans, and the connection to an “Avian Influenza.”

Archive Note 04: Notes about a “Goodwill Ambassador” for humanity, who needs a strong natural immunity to Avian Influenza. Hiyoko’s stats show that she has a base level of 800 Vitality, so you can guess that she’s the ambassador. This is why she dies when you fail a route- the Hawk Party saw she didn’t build a good enough connection to the birds, so they take her as a lost cause.

Archive Note 07: Shuu makes notes about “carrier capacity” in the student body, inducing it in some way in a “normal” individual. You can guess this is the details of his medical experimentation, but not who the victim is. You can also guess that the disease to be carried is Avian Influenza.

Anghel’s route: It’s not actually that complicated, but I think you need to complete Shuu’s route before the “mad love of a fallen angel” option is available. (EDIT: you actually just need to complete one playthrough to unlock this option. Even the Azami solo ending will unlock it.)  This ending seemingly undermines all the things we learned about Shuu right before, but this is just Hiyoko’s perspective.

Archive Note 01: A certain student (Anghel) has hallucinogenic properties that can affect bystanders, putting them in a trance-like state. This explains why everything went totally off the rails in his route.

Kazuaki’s route: Again not a romance route (no matter what he says about “waiting”, ew) because the whole point is that Kazuaki is afraid to open himself up to love of any kind. You learn he had someone he cared deeply about in the past but lost, and now he’s been soured from the experience. You also learn that he smells like bleach.

Nageki’s route: You learn that he’s a ghost, that he killed himself in the school some years ago, and that he doesn’t have all his memories. He disappears before you learn anything more, but he’s happy so it’s okay and why am I crying agai-

Archive Note 02: Someone (Nageki) writes about how they are trapped, and can’t remember what happened to them.

Archive Note 05: Nageki remembers he made a promise to someone very important, but he can’t remember who or what it was.

Archive Note 03: Nageki once woke up in a place that wasn’t the library- somewhere with bright lights and a white ceiling. He’s not as trapped as he first thought.

Archive Note 14: Nageki notes that he can move between floors, going from the library to the chemistry lab below. You can guess that the place with the bright lights is somewhere below these two rooms. This also reveals that Nageki knew the layout of the school when he was alive.

Archive Note 12: Nageki notes that after meeting Hiyoko, he feels fulfilled “just as he did back then.” He still can’t remember everything, though.

Archive Note 08: Notes about an underground facility, a fire, and a Subject 00 whose remains are in storage. You can guess that the facility is the place with the bright lights, and Nageki is Subject 00. You can also guess that Nageki set the fire, since he said that he killed himself.

Archive Note 09: Notes about Subject 00′s relative, whose remains are also in storage. You can guess that this is the “important person” that Nageki made a promise to a long time ago.

At this point, the only documents left are Note 13, which is about a terrorist incident at the Heartful House orphanage in which only two birds survived, and Note 15, which is about another terrorist incident some years ago in which the Ave’s High City building was bombed. Nothing in the main routes hints at these notes, so it’s a good time to move to…

Bad Boys Love route: This route is literally the length of the rest of the routes combined, so we’re doin’ more sections, baby!

Kazuaki’s lost loved one and Nageki’s important person turn out to be each other. They were the survivors of the Heartful House incident, and Kazuaki (real name Hitori) took care of his little brother by himself. Nageki was sickly, so he volunteered himself for a medical experiment at the school that could potentially cure him to take the burden off of Hitori. 

Unbeknownst to them, the Hawk Party was already in control of the school and their real motive was to investigate the disease Nageki was carrying- Avian Influenza. Shuu was specifically the lead for this project, and he also witnessed the Heartful House incident when it happened. At the time, he went by the name Isa Souma and was a medical researcher. He worked with Ryuuji Kawara, Ryouta’s dad, until Ryuuji’s death from disease.

Ryouta and Hiyoko were also there, because her parents were former human ambassadors too. Unfortunately, they became some of the casualties, which left the two kids heartbroken. Shuu, seeing them and recognizing Ryouta, offered to grant them a wish. They both wished for a world where humans and birds would never fight anymore, which Shuu took to mean “kill all the remaining humans so they can’t fight the birds” because… he’s like that. 

Shuu decided that the easiest way to kill all the humans would be to spread the Avian Influenza, and this is why he sought out Nageki. Nageki was forced to kill humans as part of the experiments, and this traumatized him so much that he set the lab on fire to stop it, trapping himself inside. Hitori witnessed this too, and swore to get revenge despite Nageki asking him to destroy his remains and live a happy life. He bleached his feathers and swapped identities with another bird to fake his death, and applied to the school as a teacher under his new name. 

Nageki’s plan didn’t entirely work, and the Hawk Party was able to store some of his remains for future experiments with Avian Influenza. This brings us to the timeline of the main routes, where Shuu took advantage of Ryouta’s sickly constitution to make him a new carrier for Avian Influenza. Yuuya tried to interfere on behalf of the Dove Party, but Shuu blackmailed him with the knowledge that he killed his real half-brother because he hated Mr. Le Bel and wanted Sakuya to live instead. 

The new strain of Avian Influenza that Ryouta carried was enough to make Hiyoko sick and kill her. The death of the Human Ambassador kickstarts the beginning of this route, and Shuu planned for the humans who would retaliate to also be infected. It doesn’t go as he planned, of course, but that’s laid out pretty well in the rest of the route so I won’t re-summarize it here. 

Aaaand that’s about everything for the first Hatoful Boyfriend game! I’ll gladly do infodumps/lore summaries for Holiday Star or the other side materials if anyone wants, but this took almost three hours to write as is so I’m going to give myself a break.

[writingwithcolor]

I’m writing a story in which a nation of nonhumans, having been trapped in a pocket dimension for two millenia, integrates into human society. Would it be insensitive to have them successfully argue that, as they were indigenous peoples of the Americas, they should be legally recognized as a Native American tribe with tribal sovereignty? Native Americans (specifically of the Ojibwe tribe) magically trapped them in the first place, but I’m hoping that’s ok because all humans have magic, not just

“Native American mystics” or w/e, and the character designs aren’t based off any NA myths. But they’re VERY inhuman, resembling animals, and a subplot is that they’re called “monsters” so often they begin to embrace/reclaim the term. It’s mainly just a device to deal with the logistics of integrating thousands of new people (with their own established government) into the American political system at once, so I can scrap it if needed.

Ancient Monsters Indigenous to America; Should They be Called Native?

So. There are four parts to this question, based off how you’ve worded the question. 

1- Native Americans Shunning An “Okay” Group

2- Native American Monsters

3- Imposing Monsters Where None Exist

4- What Makes Someone Native

One at a time:

Native Americans Shunning an Okay Group

If these inhuman people are a genuine threat or were a genuine threat, then this is less relevant. But even if some of them were a threat, and the whole group was shunned, you end up recreating a big piece of racism in modern day:

Natives hate outsiders “needlessly.” If only they gave this group a chance, they’d find out they weren’t that bad. But they’re too mean to do that.

The modern caution around Native and colonizer culture mixing is, as the term implies, modern. Natives didn’t necessarily shun outsiders, and as evident by how colonizers needed us to survive for awhile, they were relatively welcoming early on. In Canada, we even have a whole group of people who were born out of intermarriage between traders and Native people: the Metis.

But non-Natives tend to take this caution as an insult, because they assume they should be welcomed with open arms despite the atrocities committed. Colonizers have far, far, far exceeded the threshold for “general mistrust”, but they don’t realize it. They think everything should be fine, because schools teach only that Natives used to be welcoming, but then turned mean and jealous without saying why.

For example, when I was in my teens, my grandma went on a probably 15-30 minute rant about how my (white) cousin wasn’t allowed to work horticulture on the local reserve because it was taking jobs away from Native people. My whole family spent the next hour agreeing with her, how they really were just so closed off and mean, he was just trying to help.

Now factor in how the largest group of unemployed people in Canada is Native people, because they lack job skills from a lack of opportunity. Now consider how horticulture was actually one of our specialties and there’s still a lot of tradition around how to take care of the land. And how a white person fresh out of college with a degree was being brought in as the “expert.” And how he was doing the work, instead of helping people on the reserve do the work (which would allow them to put landscaping skills on their resume, giving them a foot in the door)

Suddenly that “unnecessary shunning” makes a whole lot more sense, doesn’t it?

I want to know why the Ojibwe sealed them off. Because I highly doubt such a drastic action would’ve been taken if they were truly a benevolent group. 

Native American Monsters

And this is where things get touchier.

I want to ask all writers who want Indigenous monsters to ask themselves one question: why do you want to tie Indigenous identity to “monster” so strongly?

It’s a fixation I see time and again: the concept of Indigenous people as inhuman, as having ties to the inhuman, as having ties to creatures who could be feared. 

If these monsters are a complex society, are intelligent, are generally… people, then you’ve fallen more heavily into the first point I mentioned (which I’m uncomfortable with) but mitigate this part. They’re shown as people-like and worthy of respect, then it might work as showing Indigenous people aren’t inhuman.

Or it might further reinforce the concept that all Indigenous people are monsters.

Which one it does depends on the writing. Either way, it’s something I’m deeply uncomfortable with, just from sheer exposure. A lot of the questions I receive are about dark, twisted, criminal, or otherwise monstrous Indigenous people. Like, about half the questions. It’s a lot.

Why are we tied so strongly to monsters? What about Native identity makes this such an easy connection? Why just the monsters and none of our healing from them?

Why?

Imposing Monsters Where None Exist

Further, it’s honestly a bit weird to me that they don’t come Ojibwe/Great Lakes legends. Because I’d assume sealing away a whole population of monsters would merit some oral legends and teachings for how to seal them back away should they return. And these monsters would bleed into other peoples’ legends, with how each creature as a concept spread across such a wide landmass and across so many peoples. So everywhere these monsters touched, there’d be some version of the story.

It’s a little too close to playing god with real religions for me. Indigenous oral legends around the globe are meticulous, and when analyzed are as solid as written history. Creating a group of monsters that are not based in our stories, that have no oral histories and legends, just has me wondering how this impacted society. 

Monsters have a place in Indigenous society. They are cautions, they are warnings, they are sickness, they teach lessons about how to care for the earth and/or yourself to starve off the monster’s approach. 

(And no, this doesn’t contradict the fixation on Monstrous Natives. Why do you fixate on the monsters and not how we heal from them? I specify “we” because there’s a tendency to make the antithesis of Native monsters Christian, which further colonizers the narrative. We had our own ways of healing)

Indigenous people, in general, have history from around the Ice Age (Australian Aboriginals have from during if not before). Two millennia is nothing for the oral history, even if you brought in the angle that the stories were genocided out in the residential school system (Which would be a very touchy subject as well). Because something that big would be spread among a dozen tribes, and would have threads that survived in whispers.

Indigenous religions aren’t a mythology playground where you can free-reign insert or remove whole concepts like sealing away monsters willy-nilly. 

I’d run this concept by somebody Ojibwe before proceeding. They might find a way to make it work, or they might tell you that there’d be a much deeper cultural impact than can be handled by an outsider.

What Makes Someone Native

Here’s the thing: being Native isn’t just about how we were here first.

There’s taking care of the land. There’s our language. There’s our unity to each other. There’s our religion. There’s so much nuance to what makes somebody Native that goes beyond just time spent on the continent. 

Each tribe has its own definition of what it means to be part of the tribe. The government doesn’t always line up with who we are, but we have our own definition. A lot of basic principles are similar (sustainability, for one), but the nuance for each people will be different.

And the government still doesn’t recognize all the tribes that were self-governing peoples before colonizers got here. That fact alone makes it a stretch to believe these monsters could successfully argue to the government they belong as Native. The only reason I could see it as successful is the government rather overtly assuming Native people are monsters, which codifies the above.

You’ve got to keep in mind that the government wants as few Natives to exist as possible. Because the more Natives exist, the more political power we have, the more resources the government has to allocate towards us, and we are seen as an inconvenience. 

Getting off the registry of Native people is laughably easy. Getting back on is notoriously hard. This isn’t a case of “have a hearing and the government gives you full status rights.” It’s “we have petitioned the government to have our claim to this land recognized for literally hundreds of years and now they’re about to bulldoze our sacred land so we have to protest to put a stop to it and suffer the arrests and deaths required to keep our land safe and hope that this protest gets enough pressure on the government to have them back off.”

(True story. The latter describes the Oka Crisis, which thankfully did have the land restored, but not until 1 death on each side, and 75 Mohawk and allies injured. And it was a long, long, long drawn out process).

Natives are, technically, wards of the state. The more Natives exist, the more people the state has to take care of. And history proves the state absolutely hates taking care of Native people.

Overall

This feels off in multiple ways, for me. It’s treating our legends as if they’re just frilly decorations that don’t deeply inform our culture, for starters, then there’s how no matter which way it’s sliced it’s reinforcing some sort of racist idea about Natives: either we shun “good” groups for no reason, or we’re tied to monsters. Then there’s the assumption our identity can be easily expanded to include a nonhuman group when it’s more complicated than that. There’s also the assumption the government would actually work to add more people it has to take care of.

You’re going to need to do a lot more research and reach out to a lot more sensitivity readers. It’s so far removed from who we are and our cultural identity I’d take a good hard look at the concept before continuing.

~ Mod Lesya

COMMENTARY:

@octopodesinmybutt

So the concept of "indigenous monsters sealed away" would actually work really well with Irish mythology about the Fae/Tuatha de Danon. They're considered the real indigenous ppl of Ireland. It's a bit more complex than that, but you could look into it.

[theinquisitivej]

‘Avengers: Endgame’ – A Movie Review, and a Reflection on Endings

Endings are rarely the definitive final word.

A person’s story can come to an end, but the stories of the people around them and the world they live in carry on, even if that one person isn’t there anymore. That realisation conjures up a whole tangled mess of emotions, but it is the natural way of things. It’s not right to want everything to end with you. In life, we make the most of the time and energy we’re given, and if you make enough right decisions, get lucky, and dedicate enough of yourself, you’ll hopefully get to go with the sense that you did okay, and that those you leave behind are going to be alright. Endings in fiction are as infinitely variable as any other feature of artistic expression, but in narratives with expansive casts or fleshed out worlds, they often leave us with the feeling that we’d only have to stay a little longer and there would be more stories to explore. Just as the real world is bigger than any one lifetime, successfully-established fictional worlds feel much larger than any one set of characters and their narrative.

         For the last eleven years, audiences have enjoyed a series of blockbusters featuring an impressively varied range of stylistic approaches. At their best, these films are deeply satisfying and affecting, delivering poignant moments about characters coming to terms with their own flaws and trying their best to do the right thing. But when considered together, these films have never entirely felt resolved, with each one going out on a lingering note of “just wait for what comes next”. The story was never over for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, because another film was never far away. And now that the grand conclusion has finally come and $2.5 billion worth of us have watched and re-watched it, things are just the same as ever, and yet we’re at a moment that we’ve never seen before and are unlikely to see again for a long time. We’ve reached an ending of the story that begun with Tony Stark and his box of scraps in that cave in 2008. The story is over. But there are more stories to come.

Yes, there will be spoilers ahead. But I say again: this film has crossed over the two and a half billion dollar mark. I’m pretty sure if you’re reading this, you’ll have contributed your drop or two to Marvel’s bucket. So let’s talk about the movie.

         I appreciate the efforts of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely as screenwriters, Joe and Anthony Russo as directors, and the input of every person involved in deciding the final shape of Endgame’s story to make its structure noticeably different to that of Infinity War. The previous Avengers film is a constant juggling act, relying on the viewer taking to Thanos as a central thread around which the rest of the film is hung. We’re either seeing the various steps Thanos is taking along his journey, hearing about what kind of man he is and what he intends to do, or seeing characters who are consistently on the back foot as they frantically scramble to strategically and mentally prepare for an opponent they’re not ready for. By this point in the series, we’ve been conditioned to expect to see things primarily from the point of view of the dozens of characters aligned with the Avengers, but Infinity War is messy and fractured when you look at it from the perspective of the heroes. And that’s the point – our heroes are fractured, and so there’s no unified effort against the villain as he single-mindedly pursues his goal with continuous success. The Avengers are a mess, and they lose. Thanos is the one who seizes control of the narrative, undoing the decisions and sacrifices made by the heroes as he dictates what his ambitions are and why they are so noble… and because viewers are susceptible to sympathising with the person who names themselves the hero and takes the reins of the narrative, far too many people bought Thanos’ rhetoric. For a year there, we really were seeing think-pieces that said “maybe the genocidal zealot who emotionally manipulates people is right”!

         But Endgame’s structure deliberately contrasts against Infinity War’s. Whereas Infinity War is about heroes being separated and the catastrophe that follows in the wake of this disunity, Endgame presents its heroes as a group of grieving people who are unified through their shared regrets and resolve to overcome their despair together and work towards a singular objective to try and fix everything. The Avengers are disassembled in Infinity War and reassembled in Endgame. As a result, the structure is comparatively more uniform. You can clearly differentiate the film into three distinct thirds – the five-year time skip that shows life on a mournful Earth still coming to terms with half of life being eradicated, the Back to the Future Part II time-travel mission as characters revisit scenarios from previous films, and the big blowout battle where every surviving main superpowered character in the entire franchise is dumped into one battle for your viewing pleasure. Each third offers something different, meaning you cover all of the ground that you’d want to in a dramatic, energetic, and emotional close to a blockbuster saga with literally dozens of characters who are all key players. Each third is impressively balanced, and they all act as strong supporting columns for the film as a result.

         However, because these thirds are as distinct as they are, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll come away saying “I preferred these two parts over that third part, which felt okay but a little unnecessary”. Personally, I think there are plenty of themes (grief and a desire to revisit the past, putting guilt and trauma to rest, and of course, the strength of unity) and character arcs (Nebula finally choosing to integrate herself into a group of people who value her and literally killing the old version of herself who wanted only to please her abusive father-figure being the stand-out one) which help gel each of the film’s three segments together without much resistance. But I have encountered multiple people who have expressed the sentiment that they really liked two thirds but they could take or leave another third – inevitably, which third is which always varies. I can imagine that, if you’re not getting a lot out of one of the segments, Endgame will certainly make you antsy for the film to return to what you felt it was pulling off more successfully. The three distinct thirds can result in a fragmented viewing experience for some audience members. On the other hand, I felt that the clearer, more focused structure not only made the film seem less jumbled than its predecessor, but also made it a suitable companion-piece to Infinity War and its Thanos-centric structure.

         The emotional response I have to Endgame is not the same electric glee I had from seeing the first Avengers, though moments like Cap picking up the hammer, the cinematic equivalent of a double-page spread of every single MCU hero charging towards Thanos’ army in one image, and “she’s got help” all sparked that feeling off inside me with more intensity than I’ve felt for a long time. No, what I feel more than anything about the MCU right now is a paradoxical sense of melancholic yet nevertheless delighted satisfaction. A part of that comes from the strengths of that first third, which, despite my sincere claims that all three sections gel together successfully, is nevertheless my favourite segment of the film (with the possible exception of the epilogue, but we’ll get to that). In this review’s opening paragraphs, I talked about endings not being the definitive final word as life and the world must always carry on. My reflection on that was primarily positive, but in this opening hour, we see the sad alternative form that this concept can take. Thanos killed half the universe and was killed in retaliation – the conflict ends, as does the hope of repairing the damage done by this tragedy. But the universe doesn’t end even with half of its inhabitants being gone. As Steve succinctly says, the survivors have to keep moving forward, “otherwise Thanos should have killed all of us”. It’s an outlook that Steve encourages, even if he can’t fully believe it himself, because he thinks it’s the best way for people to regain control over their unthinkable circumstances. The setup for Endgame presents us with a universe that died a half-death – everything ended for half its population five years ago, while life for the other half of the population persists, and they are trying their best to make sense of that.

         That struggle with grief, both on a colossal and a personal scale, is what unifies every single character, but the difference lies in how they respond to that grief. Black Widow throws herself into her work to try and keep the good that superheroes can do going, but her efforts feel as if they aren’t enough, being told by Okoye that the natural tectonic shifts she’s reporting on aren’t something you actively address with a strike squad and that you have to “handle it by not handling it”. Hawkeye was always the simple guy involved in the Avengers who was kept grounded by his family. Without them, he has nothing to keep him rooted, no home to return to, so he goes in the complete opposite direction and becomes a dedicated avenger in a literal sense, dolling out punishment fuelled by his frustration without any of the purpose and direction that he gained from his connections to friends and family. Hulk / Banner actually come out of this having made some progress, deciding to meditate on what they learned from their losses and literally come together in their grief to become one being, Professor Hulk. Tony and Pepper make the most of the luck they managed to find together, but are both keenly aware of all those who weren’t so lucky, wanting to get back what they lost but keep what they’ve found, which is remarkably human and understandable. Thor… hm. Okay, yes, Thor is a mixed bag. In all honesty, I loved Thor in this film and was empathetic towards his depression and anxiety attacks. I also love that Thor gets to stay as he is and still be shown that he is indeed worthy to wield Mjolnir and fight in the battle alongside all these other heroes without having to change who he is. But I do acknowledge the issues that numerous viewers have raised about some of the jokes made by the other characters being at the expense of Thor’s weight, and how they found it uncomfortable, and, in instances, meanspirited and harmful. I love the current version of Thor and feel Chris Hemsworth injected even more bubbly charm and infectious spirit to his character while blending it with the genuine pathos Thor was going through with remarkable talent. But the film’s tendency to use the character’s weight as an opportunity to make jokes about him being fat is not ideal. I’m glad to see Thor continue as he is into further movies (though it is possible that they’ll say he lost weight between Endgame and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3), but I sincerely hope we DON’T see the fat-jokes continue as they are. The lighting, music, and performances of everyone in the cast all contribute to this palpable sensation of immense loss, which communicates not only what’s at stake in this epic conclusion, but also how each character involved has been changed by what they’ve had to go through since Infinity War.

         But that only touches on the melancholic side of things; why do I also feel delighted and satisfied as I take in these sombre themes? Well, to put it simply, this one sticks the landing by closing the right doors in the most appropriate way while keeping other doors open in a balanced approach that seems so right. Tony Stark sacrifices his life after declaring “I am Iron Man” one last time, putting everything of himself into doing the right thing when so long ago he enjoyed a life of zero-accountability and kept his work on weapons technology at a safe distance. The image of his first arc-reactor in its memento case reading “Proof that Tony Stark has a heart” floating on the water at his funeral destroyed me at both viewings, because not only have his actions proved this fact as well, but we see numerous people all around this site as they pay their respects, showing the hearts of so many characters we care about who were connected to his. And Steve Rogers, the soldier who could never sit down if he saw a situation pointed south, after standing up against a galactic tyrant and his army, first alone and then with the support of countless men and women rallying to him, finally lets himself rest. Not many people have talked about the new horizons Steve takes in in this film; when the surviving heroes take Rocket’s ship to the Garden Planet, the camera makes a point of focusing on an extreme close-up of Steve’s eye as they travel through hyperspace. Even after nearly a decade of familiarity with this new era, the man out of time, a kid from 1940s Brooklyn, is seeing things that he could’ve never imagined. He’s come so, so far. I can think of no better conclusion than for him to return back home.

          But the film’s epilogue isn’t just concerned with closing the curtain on these heroes as they sit down to rest. Just as these stories end, we see hints of what stories are yet to come for other heroes. In the sequence where the camera pans over the countless faces attending Tony’s funeral, it’s fitting that the last hero we see (before Nick Fury steps into frame under the veranda, concealed in the shadows at the very end, much like his very first entrance as a post-credits tease at the end of Iron Man) is Carol Danvers. Having made her debut just months ago, she is the most recent addition to this universe, so her position at the back of the line reflects that. Her placement halfway up the steps she’s standing on suggests that she’s acting as an embodiment for the road to the future – she is literally on the next step for the series of films Marvel will make as they move forward. And she’s not alone, because other heroes will continue to thrive and flourish as their stories continue. Sam is handed the mantle of Captain America, and what’s achingly beautiful about this exchange is the attitude of the two men involved. Sam views Steve as his friend first and foremost, so he is sincere when he says he’s happy for him. But Sam also respects Steve so much as the man who deserves to be Captain America. Much like how Mjolnir can only be wielded by those who are worthy, Cap’s shield becomes a sacred relic that should only be worn by the right man for the job. And when Steve gently encourages Sam to try the shield on, knowing full well what it means to the world and to both of them, he does so as both Captain America finding the right man to fill his position, and as Sam’s friend Steve, telling him with assurance that he really is one of the best people he knows. When Sam confesses that he feels like the shield belongs to someone else, Steve responds with elegant purity “it doesn’t”. Everything at the core of Captain America, the bravery, the conviction to always stand back up and fight no matter how much it pains them to do so, and the responsibility to always look out for the little guy, are all qualities which never belonged to Steve and Steve alone; those virtues can belong to anyone, and Steve tells his friend that he recognises them in Sam. I cannot wait to see the good that Sam will do as he follows his promise to do his best.  

         Tom Holland’s Spider-Man has been developing a mentee / mentor relationship with Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man since Civil War, and here it culminates in a bittersweet arc that lays the groundwork for what I expect will be some fascinating and impactful characterisation in Far From Home in a few months’ time. Tony mourns for Peter most of all, viewing him as a surrogate son who has much of the same inventive genius and drive that he has, with the addition of some compassionate heart and level of responsibility that is far beyond his years. Peter has it in him to be better than Tony, and Tony knows this. So it’s understandable why the loss of that kind, youthful spirit and his limitless potential would hurt Tony so much. In Tony’s dying moments, we share Peter’s tears as we see how much this connection means to them both and realise what is being lost. But we know this is exactly what Tony fought for – the chance for the next generation to live and grow. Holland’s performance when we see Peter return to school hints at his sense of disconnection, as his expression creates the impression that he feels like a stranger in a place with which he once felt so familiar. With the support of his friends, especially Ned, he will find his way in the next step of his journey.

          Endgame provides definitive endings for the journeys of characters we’ve been following for more films than we see most actors get to play Bond, but it also manages to cast a hopeful eye towards the future without compromising its position as a neat conclusion to everything up to this point. In fact, its simultaneous handling of reflective closure and moving forward with renewed purpose makes for a remarkably poignant milestone. Stories rarely strike such a balance between meaningful finality and the uplifting excitement of wanting more stories and knowing you’re going to get them. And that probably sounds shallow and frivolous because, at the end of the day, we’re talking about a successful studio delivering a hyped-up film that promises to be a finale but also serves the financially driven purpose of pitching you a dozen other films and TV series. But through the efforts of over a decade’s worth of dedicated storytellers and creative artists, this series has come to mean more than just another substantial drop in Disney’s bucket. It’s become a fictional world that a massive audience has fallen in love with in the same way that people did with Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia, Mass Effect, and a hundred other worlds. We’ve rooted for these characters and cried at some of their most emotional moments, and we’ve grown to care so much about the MCU that it represents a living, breathing world for us. And this kind of ending just makes that proximity to reality that much closer. Stories end and lives come to a close, but they often do so in the middle of other people’s lives and stories. After all, Yinsen’s sacrifice in the MCU’s first film, Iron Man is the end of his story, but his death acts as a foundational moment for the man that Tony would grow to be – his ending is a part of Iron Man’s beginning. In Endgame, heroes pass away, lay down arms, or choose to step down from a position they no longer feel a need to hold onto. At the same time, other heroes move onto the next step of their journey, accept new responsibilities, and accept the titles passed onto them from those who know they will do a fine job. It’s a beautiful encapsulation of the natural balance between life and death, between the end of the old and the beginning of something new. It’s the balance that Thanos strived for but never fully understood, as he wanted to cultivate life but in his obsessive crusade ended up sewing nothing but death. It is only right that the heroes are the ones to achieve that balance through their actions and connections with one another.

Final Score: Gold.

Avengers: Endgame is overflowing and self-indulgent, but it has every right to be and more than earned it. There are missteps, and there’s room for disappointment over the direction that certain characters are taken in, most notably the original version of Gamora ultimately staying dead and staying the victim of an abusive father-figure who seizes all agency away from her, or Thor arguably continuing to veer away from where he was at the end of Thor: Ragnarok and his new weight being an excuse to make cheap jokes that feel uncomfortable. But it is also a well-structured film that offers three distinct tones that are all equally engaging, and its delightful moments of humour and momentous action strikes a grand and immensely satisfying chord with its examination of grief and the natural interrelationship of the closing of one chapter and the beginning of another. It is as significant a landmark for this fictional series as any invested viewer could hope for. It’s a hell of a thing to have come this far, and I can’t wait for whatever comes next.

[tuess]

Infinity War - Story Issues

So I ran across this post on Pinterest the other day claiming the story writing of Infinity War was bad (I couldn’t find the original source on tumblr, so this is a second-order link, but credit for op goes to sneakyfeets). And...

I respectfully would like to disagree. 

Infinity War most definitely had issues, both plot, morality, and character-wise. But I don’t think it’s fair to call it structurally bad, and, while most of the concerns raised in the original post are valid, I don’t think all of them are necessarily problems with the story. 

Recall first of all that most Marvel movies are somewhere between “loveable hot mess” and “brilliantly chaotic wonder”. Partially that’s probably a genre thing - superhero movies are necessarily based on the comics, and in comics A LOT of weird stuff happens that doesn’t necessarily translate well to film. It is not surprising that most superhero movies are questionable on the details. So Loki walking up to Thanos with one dagger and three sass is idiotic, but not unforgivable in terms of story. Not more so than Steve’s habit of jumping off things without a parachute. Also, it does provide a somewhat reasonable continuation of his character arc, and is important for Thor’s. 

What I’m trying to get at is that, while Loki the character may be doing a stupid thing, it makes narrative sense. Characters can do idiotic stuff without undermining the overall story. Quite the opposite, in fact, as for many types of story characters doing stupid things is integral to the plot (I refer here to absolutely every Shakespeare comedy and like half of the tragedies). And I think Infinity War is one of these stories.

First of all, Infinity War is a tragedy, and that in itself is worth talking about. I know that some of the DC movies have experimented with the whole tragedy thing, but I’m not super familiar with that fandom. Also, to my (limited) knowledge they weren’t super successful. Marvel’s first tragedy-like film was Captain America: Civil War, not because it ended badly, but because a significant part of the reason as to why it ended badly was the character’s own flaws. We can have Team Cap/Team Iron Man debates ‘till kingdom come, but both sides were not acting reasonably.

The tragedy aspect is one of the reasons as to why I consider Infinity War quite good, story wise. One of the basic aspects of a (classical Greek) tragedy is that the hero have some sort of fatal flaw that ultimately causes his own downfall. Contrast this with your garden-variety superhero, who can have flaws, but none that can cause his downfall. Especially classical comics, and the early superhero movies, do not allow it [1]. Infinity War plays with the tragic hero element in a way that’s really quite nice.

The original post mentions the actions of Wanda and Peter Q. specifically, but it’s actually a wider theme in the movie that all the heroes do stupid shit because of love. Every time there’s a conflict over an infinity stone, the heroes are forced to choose between their loved ones and doing “what is right/what is sensible”. They always choose love. And, in the movie, it’s what frames them as heroes. Thanos throws away love (literally - I’ll return to this later) for power, while the heroes throw away power for love. 

This is different from the usual tragic flaw, where it is some kind of bad quality that makes the heroes lose (Macbeth - the power thing; Creon - not being able to let it go). In Infinity War, it is the heroic qualities of the heroes that cause the heroes to fail. And that is interesting, and fun to watch. I consider it good writing. So seeing our characters do stupid things? Seeing them make the wrong choices for all the wrong reasons? Seeing them lose control and be illogical and selfish? Good stuff. 

Having said that,

Yeah. The abuse thing. It’s hugely problematic, and one of the more glaring flaws in Infinity War as a whole. I don’t feel qualified to comment on the details of it, but I recognise that the entire Thanos’ Children and/or Gamora-Nebula plotline is fraught with issues, to say the least, and I do wish that they’d found a better way to deal with it in Infinity War. I think that Thanos is clearly cast as an abuser, and Gamora and Nebula as abuse survivors, but I agree that the framing of Gamora’s death was bad. I have to state here that I went into Infinity War not having seen either GOTG movie, so I wasn’t paying huge amounts of attention to the subplot at first, and I don’t really know how to deal with it in this essay either [2]. I don’t think it’s a narrative issue as much as a discursive issue, in that both Gamora and Thanos’ actions make sense in the story, but the framing of it can be seen to perpetuate an unhealthy discourse about abuse survivors and abusers. 

We can only hope that Nebula will get to kick Thanos’ ass in Endgame.

What remains now is the motivation behind Thanos’ actions, and the problems with it. As has been frequently remarked, they do not make sense. This is not a problem. Narrative-wise, Thanos cannot make sense. He is the villain of the movie. If he were to have a perfectly sensible plan [3], that would improve the lives of everyone on in the universe, and have no obvious drawbacks, he could no longer be a villain as the definition classically applies to the comics/action/epics genres. Infinity War would go from an action movie to one on moral philosophy. An excellent example of a movie with no clear villain, only people being assholes to various degree, would be something like Mean Girls. Infinity War, to adhere to its genre conventions and satisfy the expectations of the audience, needed a villain. Thanos is this villain, and his villainous plan needed to affect the entire universe in order for it to be threatening enough to bring three disparate sets of heroes together to fight him. From this point of view, Thanos’ plan and motivations make complete narrative sense, despite not making any actual sense. 

Thanos is, I’m pretty sure, modelled after the idea of an enlightened despot gone wrong. The idea of enlightened despotism is basically that you pick one guy to be in charge of a country, but, wait for it, you pick a smart guy who knows how to solve problems. This was popular especially in 18th/19th century Europe [4], when monarchies were falling like mayflies and people started thinking about what to do next. The advantages of an enlightened despot would be that there would be none of this silly democratic arguing and influence of, shudder, the working classes [5]. The disadvantages, I believe, are really fucking obvious, and the reason why nobody installed this as a form of government. Both Robespierre and Napoleon are examples of people who briefly tried, only for everyone to see why this is a really really fucking bad idea. So I can see how casting Thanos as a failed enlightened despot, with a shitty plan and some elements of genocide thrown in for good measure, would sound like a surefire way to make sure your audience really really hates your villain. 

I therefore really don’t know what to say about the goddamn neonazis and eugenicists, except good goddamn, please read any actual science ever. 

Ok, this essay got away from me. But the main points were that, narrative wise, Infinity War is quite good because it allows its characters to be idiots. The framing is problematic at times, especially in the Gamora-Nebula-Thanos relationship, and this detracts from the movie as a whole. It’s not, however, fair to call the entire story bad. Plenty of movies have framing issues that don’t automatically mean they’re terrible (see: Out of Africa, Pocahontas, etc). Thanos’ villainous motivations are narratively sensible, but perhaps not well-received in the current political climate. I don’t see an intrinsic issue with them, however, as they’re supposed to not make sense - that’s what makes him a villain, and not a hero.

Also, yeah, where did Valkyrie go? That’s just stupid and I can’t talk it away. 

[1]: More modern runs do allow heroes do have significant, palpable flaws, (Daredevil, and also Iron Man) but the original medium... not so much. 

[2]:... so if I said something hugely harmful or downright stupid without realising it, please please please call me out on it. Also, my first essay on Infinity War, which is linked somewhere in the body, did not at all acknowledge this problematic and actually applauded the scene without looking into some of the issues around it. My apologies. 

[3]: Like, for example using the infinity stones to generate resources, as has been pointed out multiple times. 

[4]: Arguably also the Roman Emperors. Correct me if any of this is wrong, I’m not actually a historian. 

[5]: This is meant ironically.