charspurpletooran:

afeatherlessarcher:

people don’t really get that in japanese culture, respecting your elders is an astronomically bigger deal. like, hanzo was literally pressured from birth to fit into this role for him, and the entire perspective is so drastically different than western standpoint allows that i don’t even know if it’s even POSSIBLE for non asian people to understand. 

here’s the fact: hanzo has PTSD, he was psychologically scarred from what happened, and his stifled, fluctuating anger comes from the fact that in japanese culture, there just isn’t a way that you’re meant to express that. the weight of his emotions is something that he is not emotionally or psychologically equipped to handle in the context of his culture. until you understand this, no, you cannot judge him.

hanzo gets so much unnecessary shit from the fandom when he and genji were both complete victims of circumstance. there’s no other way to frame it. people just don’t get that psychological tangles and concepts of that nature are just, viewed so differently in japan. hanzo didn’t get to feel conflict, that’s not how it fucking works. he doesn’t get to yell at the elders and rebel like some happy fairy tale, when you have a position, you’re supposed to do it, and if you’re conflicted, you keep it inside. this is a culture where suicide is often favorable to allowing yourself to have a full on breakdown. there is little to no argument that hanzo absolutely contemplated (and may still be contemplating) killing himself. in some cases, SUICIDE IS SEEN AS MORE RESPONSIBLE. 

hanzo literally couldn’t bear the weight of what he did and abandoned everything trying to redeem himself instead of just killing himself to stop the pain (this is, again, the much more common option). this is combined with the stigma against mental illness (especially those like depression, anxiety, and ptsd) and the pressure to just keep it underneath, and the fact that suicide is also a common response to something that you are deeply ashamed of (sound familiar??). YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND THE GRAVITY OF HIS CHARACTER UNLESS YOU UNDERSTAND THE MOTHERFUCKING CULTURE. hanzo is so much more complex and tragic than the fandom has ever portrayed him to be and i’m so sick of his portrayal. 

edit: this isn’t saying you can’t dislike the character, there’s plenty of reasons why, and hell, you don’t even need a reason to dislike certain characters. this is telling people that he’s exponentially more complex than the fandom gives him credit for (and very important to me as a mentally ill japanese person), and making or seeing him as a flat asshole/stereotype is really ignorant at best, fucking hurtful at worst.

@sasoriko