⊰ “ I literally read all your discourse stuff in the tags and OMG... I couldn't agree with you more. The making Sasori into an emotionless person is one that particularly gets on my nerves. And when they make him seem worse than he really is. I don't know if there is a term for that. Like doing the opposite of woob. But it's just really nice to see someone else on the same wavelength.” ⊱
I’m gonna put this under a read more bc boy I never shut up !
Thanks anon I’m glad you agree its always nice to open the IB to an anon whos not tying to have beef KGKDKGJdG. I mean yeah Sasori’s totally a stoic but the thing is thats all he is. Its a facade. A very good one which was ingrained into him by the teachings of his village & his own pain but its just an ‘act’ so to speak.
Sasori is VERY capable of emotion & very much experiences emotion. He may not express it openly or even deny it but its absolutely a thing. He is not emotionless. He is not unable to truly feel. ( Hes not even unable to form connections with others. Sasori’s loneliness up to a point was NOT his own doing. Its made clear Sasori wasn’t a ‘loner’ because of being an edgy little prick or anything like that. He was a loner because of his Prodigy status & his reputation. He was not even ten years old & he was already renowned & infamous throughout the war, they were calling him Sasori of the red sand. Suna’s enemies out of fear & suna itself out of lionising his proficiency as their solider & weapon. It was claimed he soaked the desert sands red in blood hence the moniker. Its not that he wanted that. He just did what he was trained to do. Its not that he wanted to be alone. His loneliness & desire for human affection is.... a big part of him. )
Its really sad actually because Sasori himself doesn’t seem to fully understand his own trauma ( I dont expect him to of course, like. . . theres a lot ) & not only that but it was... Idealised to him.
He ‘feels numb”. Its a heavy result of his obvious depression which started when he was only 5 & lost his parents. But he explains it as being like a puppet & embraces it as such because not only is Sasoris literal coping method puppets & this is his way of comforting himself but this “numbness” was taught to him as ideal by his village. So instead of understanding an issue he can work on & improve just thinks its how shinobi are suppose to be.
THOUGH AT THE SAME TIME.... Sasori’s incredibly intelligent ( Scarily so, hes literally a high-level genius ) & I’m pretty sure one of the many key elements of his story was his own realisation that his villages teachings were flawed & they were using him & other shihobi as mere instruments of this flawed idea which was wildly inhumane & unfair, particularly when they came to try & blame him for the death of his only friend ( noted as the only person who treated him as a person ) when he was actually trying to help said friend.
Sasori fashioned himself entirely as a big old fuck you to his village surrounded by & using the only happy place he knew. The only things he found reliable & safe. Relating humans & puppets became so easy for him, idealising puppets in place of people was second nature especially due to his village treating people as puppets.
That said Sasori knows what hes doing. While theres a break in reality there for sure Sasori knows the whole human puppet thing is morbid per se. He knows its going against ‘morality’ & ‘humanity’ & all that kinda thing but thats one of the appeals of it. Hes making a statement in that way. shinobi dont like to admit it but Sasori emphasises that theyre all just puppets. Toy soldiers. However by making them human puppets Sasori in a way thinks hes improved them as well, helped them, preserved them, because now they’re eternal. Like this is definitely not a one dimensional thing. Its extremely compound.
SO YEAH!! Big time agree with you I know people seem to take pointing out the tragic nature of any villain is woobifying but... Its not. Its not when A) its canon facts, its what the character is SUPPOSE to be & B) pointing out these facts are not being used as absolute excuses for the ‘bad things’ the character has done / is doing or being used to demonise any other character to make that character look better.
( Huge example being the Loki vs Thor situation in the marvel fandom back in the day )
The reverse-woobifying thing is definitely something I’ve encountered multiple times & it annoys me too, just as much as woobifing itself does. It seems in general tumblr has an issue with moderation because I guess people hate dimension & also like. Your villain doesn’t need the Most Tragic of backstories to be a good one. I personally believe ALL villains have a reason to be what they are but they don’t have to be particularly traumatic like some people seem to think. Nuance is nice. Its good to have some villains that are relatable but not because their stories are overwhelmingly sad. Because the thing is... Pain & suffering doesnt come in one shade & what someone else might overcome another person might not & so on . .. Plus its also good to have villains who just arent really sympathetic at all. But like like... as a whole tumblrs not as big into diversity as it always claims in ANY way.
I DIGRESS tho. In particular I’ve found characters who are either explicitly LGBT confirmed or HUGELY LGBT coded are a huuuge target for the reverse-woobie & thats a.... massive problem which was largely why I was being feral in my tags gjkdkgkkdg.
The fact that still the only characters who are LGBT & particularly dimensional that we get are typically villains is a problem to start with but thats another topic. Its fine to love & support lgbt villains but... Definitely something wrong with the reverse-woobie being so predominate when it comes to them. The reverse-woobie in this instance is so replusive for me bc it enforces the idea that LGBT people are not sympathetic or relatable & when they ARE then its ok to pretend theyre not LGBT & effectively erase that part of them. Like I have had people in another fandom explain to me that their reason for erasing a characters sexuality as gay was because they found him to be relatable & sympathetic to them & they were not gay so they preferred to see him as bi or het more like themselves all the while trying to claim hetero or biphobia if you attempted to explain how wrong & inherently homophobic that is. ( lol @ “”Heterophobia”” in general tho )
This character was also a HUGE target for reverse woobifying from the fandom despite the fact he was the FURTHEST thing from a candidate for that imaginable. He was in fact canonly more an anti-hero than an outright villain. The fandom also liked to ‘harass’ people who they deemed were ‘woobifying’ him which essentially related to like... Liking the character & defending him from droves of homophobes in any way. Which was major awkward because theyd throw explicit tantrums about people calling him a “gay icon” in any way but weirdly enough this “anti-woobie” thing with him ONLY came into existence when he was confirmed gay. Prior all the straight fangirls making him their extra deluxe perfect lover boy husbando for their reader x him fanfics were never bothered about ‘woobifying’ in any way.
Dont get me wrong I think some people have genuine good intentions in mind for the reverse -woobie in fandom in regard to this, an idea of pointing out that lgbt ppl are capable of being horrendously evil too ect, which is fine & all but it’ll always leave a bad taste in my mouth if the villain in question is literally a canonically tragic one. Especially when the justification is playing on tropes particularly used to demonise lgbt people. Like I mentioned as an example for Sasori treating him as an entirely emotionless monster while simultaneously empathises hes a-spec or whatever given emotionless / unfeeling / inhuman ect are huge tropes used against a-spec people to dehumanise & demonise us.
Its every bit as awkward, & in fact I would argue far more awkward than people trying to woobify villains who lack “proper” motive. I wish people would be more careful about what characters they’re reverse-woobing n why.
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