So if Thanos' motivations are irrelevant, why does everyone insist on bringing them up? Why do people insist on treating "abuse" as an emotion instead of simply going "it doesn't matter whether he loves anyone or not, because his actions are violent, self-centered and abusive." Which they are. Which are recognised in the narrative as what they are. The damage from Thanos' behaviour is the thing that is set out to be fixed in Endgame, regardless of if he meant it, regardless of what he gained from it.
Thanos is an unrepentant abuser who got ahead with that abuse. People like that exist. We live in a culture where people get rewarded for fucked-up actions all the time, because we're not truly incentivised to be kind to each other, but rather construct circles of influence where someone is always suffering the consequences of someone else's actions. If the problem everyone has with this is that they didn't want the MCU to work like that, again -- you can make that point without insisting on getting into Thanos' motivations.
That shorthand is actively damaging and I'm tired of hearing it. It simply acts like this "cannot be" because "abuse isn't love" when even you make the point that people do think exactly like Thanos and they can insist on their own rightness and other people can agree on their rightness and still refuse to accept the consequences of their actions and work to undo them.
People get ahead by doing terrible things all the fucking time and I'm tired of people telling me I cannot find catharsis in that still being wron because the villain doesn't end up undone because "abuse isn't love". Like yeah imagine that, action isn't motivation. None of my abusers were undone by their actions. I wasn't undone by my actions. That doesn't mean the consequences of those actions didn't need repairing.
If you feel like being aware of his motivations downplays the consequences of his actions then more power to you. I literally said in my post that if you feel the writing validates Thanos' actions, then you're free to criticise it. The consequences of his smug self-assurance are left for everyone else to deal with, and if you feel those consequences are downplayed, more power to you. To me, that's the whole goddamn point of his character being understandable.
Yet everyone insists on fucking telling me "no, that's bad writing actually, he should have been portrayed as delusional and even more self-absorbed and utterly, utterly devoid of anything that is relatable or cathartic because abusers are less than human and normal people cannot have even a single point of connection with them". It is to me. It's cathartic and painful and real. That's what someone abusive is like, fully rounded motivations and all. He's the bad guy, he is validated because the consequences shake out the way he was prepared them to, he got what he wanted. Him being the only one who doesn't see what he did as bad is what made him work for me, and being told over and over that I'm wrong about that is getting really fucking tiresome.
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Thanos is an unrepentant abuser who got ahead with that abuse. People like that exist. We live in a culture where people get rewarded for fucked-up actions all the time, because we're not truly incentivised to be kind to each other, but rather construct circles of influence where someone is always suffering the consequences of someone else's actions. If the problem everyone has with this is that they didn't want the MCU to work like that, again -- you can make that point without insisting on getting into Thanos' motivations.
That shorthand is actively damaging and I'm tired of hearing it. It simply acts like this "cannot be" because "abuse isn't love" when even you make the point that people do think exactly like Thanos and they can insist on their own rightness and other people can agree on their rightness and still refuse to accept the consequences of their actions and work to undo them.
People get ahead by doing terrible things all the fucking time and I'm tired of people telling me I cannot find catharsis in that still being wron because the villain doesn't end up undone because "abuse isn't love". Like yeah imagine that, action isn't motivation. None of my abusers were undone by their actions. I wasn't undone by my actions. That doesn't mean the consequences of those actions didn't need repairing.
If you feel like being aware of his motivations downplays the consequences of his actions then more power to you. I literally said in my post that if you feel the writing validates Thanos' actions, then you're free to criticise it. The consequences of his smug self-assurance are left for everyone else to deal with, and if you feel those consequences are downplayed, more power to you. To me, that's the whole goddamn point of his character being understandable.
Yet everyone insists on fucking telling me "no, that's bad writing actually, he should have been portrayed as delusional and even more self-absorbed and utterly, utterly devoid of anything that is relatable or cathartic because abusers are less than human and normal people cannot have even a single point of connection with them". It is to me. It's cathartic and painful and real. That's what someone abusive is like, fully rounded motivations and all. He's the bad guy, he is validated because the consequences shake out the way he was prepared them to, he got what he wanted. Him being the only one who doesn't see what he did as bad is what made him work for me, and being told over and over that I'm wrong about that is getting really fucking tiresome.