sheathandshear:

expartebollmanisirrelevant:

not to post even more Villains Discourse on main but it really bugs me how people read giving villains tragic backstories as inherently excusing their actions and/or demonizing trauma survivors.

the actual message of Tragic Villains is (almost) always “people who are never taught or given any healthy, constructive outlets for their emotions will often find unhealthy, destructive outlets.” it’s that people who are traumatized and never learn how to cope with that trauma can become a danger to themselves and others. the message isn’t “trauma makes you evil!!!!” or “genocide is okay if you’ve been sad before!!!!” it’s “people need compassion and help to recover from trauma instead of becoming increasingly angry and harming themselves and others in the process.”

this site takes an alarmingly behaviorist and punitive approach to everything and it’s literally the most annoying thing. y’all have this concept that “if we just punish people hard enough, if we just scare them enough, if we just make them feel guilty enough.” that people just Do Bad Things Because They Do Bad Things, I Guess, and Because We Didn’t Threaten Them And Shame Them Enough. but humans are an innately social species. at our very core, we need compassion and kindness. we need healthy relationships with other humans.

you can keep looking at traumatized villains and being like “haha this dumb pathetic sadboi thinks murder is okay because his parents died” but as a survivor myself, unaddressed/untreated trauma absolutely can make you ragey and destructive. i was lucky enough to have support and eventually get the treatment i needed. but it’s not hard at all for me to imagine how, if that hadn’t been the case, that could’ve been me. obviously not on a movie-villain scale like murder or war crimes, but it’s so irritating as someone whose trauma has always manifested as anger to watch people on this site be like “this is just bad writing!!! real survivors/good survivors don’t end up like that the writers just hate survivors and want the audience to condone murder!”