#ok they all commit warcrimes they are soldiers

[mamuzzy]

Teaching gf the differences between blorbo and precious meowmeow. Both are beloved fictional characters, but not the same.

Tup is a blorbo but Dogma is a precious meowmeow.

Tech is a blorbo but Crosshair is a precious meowmeow.

Niner is a blorbo but Darman is a precious meowmeow.

Scorch is a blorbo but Sev is a precious meowmeow.

The Nulls are precious meowmeows.

A blorbo cannot do wrong, a poor meowmeow is a miserable mental mess who commits warcrimes.

[clonehub]

I feel like aside from not white washing the clones the bad batch might be better if crosshair wasnt redeemed. Like he uses being a good soldier as am excuse for committing atrocities but he actually is just ok with it and he doesnt get a convenient out of it being a chip and he willingly works for the empire would imo work better

Sorry an pt2 to that ask but like I know timblr loves their redemption arcs and calling anyone who dislikes them cops or morally wrong. But I just feel like acting like anyone and everyone can be redeemed is also just a bad lesson to teach and that redemption has to start with the character realizing they're wrong and wanting to do better key word being wanting, and I dont see that in crosshair. He doesnt come off as someone who wants to be redeemed, he seems pretty into the warcrime and evil. I hope I'm making sense.

I also wonder what TBB would be like if they'd gone the much riskier but potentially more fulfilling route of not redeeming Crosshair. They could make him a tragic character at that point, but only if they simultaneously make all of the bad batch at complete moral odds with him, but also still have faith in him.

Crosshair as he stands now has two reasons for why he joined the empire: arrogance/superiority and because he wasn't opposed to the violence. his leaving only addresses the former, and barely. as in, he says he left because the empire wasn't loyal to him. But the violence he committed against innocents, and the violence the Empire committed against entire groups of people, don't mean anything to him. If they did, he would have mentioned them.

Sason 3's emotional arc for him focuses on all the wrong things as they try to force a redemption that, to me, doesn't feel earned. Does crosshair respect the regs? No. I don't see that, at least. He maybe, at the most, tolerates them. But the writers use saving Howzer's life as a stand in for Crosshair actually doing the work of owning up to getting a lot of Howzer's men hurt/killed. Crosshair should have had to own up to the fact that he likely traumatized Omega by a) trying to get her shot, b) trying to set her on fire basically, and c) knowing that the Empire foreced him to do (a) and (b) and still choosing them over her.

I also don't think omega should have been so gungho to forgive him.

If they keep Crosshair evil, this can give the Batch permanent emotional consequences and conflicts to deal with. Maybe they all think differently about how to address the Crosshair Question. Maybe they all beg and plead with him—really plead—to join them, and when he refuses, they leave. And then he hems and haws over maybe being good, but his fatal flaw is that he will always fight to be at the top of a pyramid that was designed to keep him at the bottom. Family be damned. He needs his superiority affirmed.

They also could still redeem him (blegh) but really show us that he respects the regs as much as he respects himself and his brothers. That he values their insights, thoughts, and opinions, and does want to see them saved from Tantiss. He doesn't do any of this, of course, and the writers make no effort to show that side of him. You'll get fans who maybe will say that he does respect regs. It'll be like struggling to plug in a lamp with a short cable into a wall and then insisting the light is on.

I saw someone else say that sometimes the conclusions drawn or themes understood in TBB are all things that could be plausible if you stretched. Like yeah, that's a conclusion you can reach, but the pieces aren't really there, you know?

Crosshair gets forgiveness for the wrong things and doesn't really work for them at any point, in my opinion. I said this on a podcast I guested on about a year ago, but saving someone's life doesn't always mean you actually, really respect them. Many people are simply not comfortable with having someone die in front of them. Crosshair, despite how severe he could be and how space-racist he could be, didn't seem the type (to me) to willingly leave anyone to die. he sucked but he wasn't evil like that, hence why I don't count him saving Mayday on that ice planet as a major leap in morals the way audiences are expected to view it.

because, again, when he says why he left the empire, does he say "Because they mistreated clones like mayday the same way they mistreated me, and i realized that the Empire was only ever going to hurt everyone regardless of how we value ourselves, which made me realize im not better than the regs and also that the Empire, which wiped out the jedi and killed civilians, is actually atrocious"? No. He puts himself first: loyalty, and loyalty to him. Yeah, he's learned to be loyal to his brothers, but their moral differences not playing a part at all in their emotional conflicts is making me believe that if TBB had all decided to join the Empire, Crosshair never would have left for any other reason. Again, the atrocities are a non-issue to him.

(Crosshair and hunter argue, but it's about HUnter's alleged guilt over not rescuing omega but Crosshair being the one to get him out. Not Crosshair's antics being part of the reason why Tech is dead. Not Crosshair repeatedly endangering the squad after his chip's out because he thinks they ow him loyalty before they're required to stick to their morals).

This post has gotten away from me, so I'm going to leave it here. I've been toying around with a rewrite of them for some time, and I might make Crosshair the epitome of lateral oppression and self-loathing in a marginalized person. He needs the oppressor's approval, the oppressor's power, even if it might cost him his life.