#bc my family kept refusing to take it seriously and still doesn't

[darkphoenix07]

i suffer from panic disorder and usually nothing can calm me down i just have to work through the panic attacks and breathing tricks don’t help. the only thing that’s ever worked is when i was in the middle of one and someone grabbed my face and put our foreheads together and kept saying “i’m here i’m not letting you go and i see you” and had me repeat things like “i’m safe i’m with you”. so i’m thinking say you’re at an ateez concert backstage bc you’re dating a member and for some reason at one point you get overwhelmed and start having an attack. you know the boys will be coming off of stage soon for a quick break so you start walking away so you can panic away from everyone but your boyfriend notices and refuses to get back on stage until he’s helped you thru the attack (like i mentioned above). i’ve been having yunho brainrot recently but also with mingi’s own struggles with anxiety i can see him in this scenario too. one of them would be great!

Yunho prioritizing your mental health over his concert

Mental health request

Masterlist

Paring : Yunho x Reader

Genre : Sweet, Angst, Anxiety attack, Panic disorder

Music : Shout out by Enhypen x Taylor Swift Blank space

7:32 p.m.

The boys have just finished their practice and everyone is getting fresh one by one for getting their makeup done. You are sitting with San as he is talking nonsense about his cat. But your eyes on the way Yunho is going to enter. It has been one year since you guys started dating and your life has become heaven from then.

Yunho is the boy you always thought he was seeing him on screen but other than that, he is so protective and cautious about your needs. He notices the little things you do, he is also good at remembering dates, he is good at calming you down whenever you need to. Even the boys have accepted you like you are their family member and that's why you are always with them in the backstage whenever you can when their concert occurs.

You hype them up on stage and off. Everyone knows about your relationship with him, without the fans. You haven't revealed it officially yet as it can effect on his career. He insisted but didn't because Korean fans can get kinda toxic regarding idol relationship.

"There you are," you look at him all dressed in white, hair still wet and a broad smile beaming on his face.

"San, will you leave my girlfriend alone for God's sake? Wherever I'm not around, you are around her like a lost puppy," he says taking your hand, pulling you towards him and your forehead hit his chest.

"Calm down, big man. Not everyone wants to take your girlfriend away. I was having a cat talk with your girlfriend who happens to be my friend too," he says.

"Whatever, piss off," he says and San leaves rolling his eyes.

He kisses your forehead and stares at you, "If I didn't have to dance now, I would do forbidden things with you right now."

"Seriously? You have a concert to attend and you are talking about sex?" You hit his chest playfully and his smile gets bigger, "I'll miss you."

"I'll be some feet away," You tell him and hug him but the hug doesn't last longer as he gets a call from manager for doing his makeup.

After he leaves, you sit there alone. You are not allowed in the makeup room as Yunho gets distracted a lot. You think of roaming around for a while and have some chips.

As you walk around the corridor, you hear some girl talking about you, "I don't understand how Yunho is so obsessed with her. She isn't even that pretty let alone rich."

Another male voice says, "Even I wouldn't fuck her but Yunho seems like he wants to gift her stars. That's too shitty."

They are the staff, you don't see their face neither recognize them but their small talk was enough to make your heart heavy.

You've always thought about what have you done to have someone like Yunho in your life. He is an international star where you are just a normal college girl. Nowhere you deserved him because you are not as pretty as the girls who would give their life to become his.

But he chose you, wanted you, cared for you. Why? You don't even deserve it, you are not even a good person. You were awful to your friends and family, they all dislike you for your smart mouth as they said. You always talked a lot and they were all shit.

But Yunho always loved how clumsy and talkative you were. How lost you were always in your own world and that's how he became a part of it too.

But your hands start trembling at the thought that you are a burden, a distraction for Yunho. No one is going to accept you as his girlfriend because you are no match compared to him. You are nothing and he is everything. Every staff, every fan, every person he knows and doesn't know love him. On the other hand, people hate you, never loved you as much as he did. Then? How did you become someone worthy of love by him?

You feel so overwhelmed that your mind starts getting filled with toxic conversation of how undeserving you are of love, care and warmth. How you shouldn't live and how you are not good for Yunho. He is going to get rid off you too because you are too much to tolerate. Your head become a mess with thoughts colliding with each other.

You tried breathing, thinking about something else but your heart aches and your knees feel weak. You hold on to a railing as you whimper trying not to cry out loud, you grab your stomach as it hurts too much. Breathing comes hard for you as your body sink on the floor.

There their opening time is up but Yunho wants to say goodbye to you and you haven't even hyped them yet. He asks everyone where you are and starts looking for you. They tell him to start the opening but his heart keeps telling you that you're in need of him. So he follows and finally finds your body curled around a railing of a corridor as you are having hiccups and aches around your body.

"Oh my God, darling," he sits in front of you and tries to make you face him but you keep looking down.

"No... don't "

"Please look at me."

"I... can't," you feel embarrassed and shameful because of the person you are. People will think you want attention, you are ruining his day.

But Yunho picks you up crossing your legs around his waist as you keep your chin inside the crook of his neck.

He keeps his hand on your back patting but you're still trembling as he keeps you on the couch of the resting room telling everyone to leave.

He cups your face wiping as much tears as he can, "You're safe with me. Look at me, it's me. Your Yunpup. Baby."

"Let me go please. Go join them. You're getting late," your words sound so hoarse as they come out barely.

"I'm here, I'm not letting you go. I see you. You are not alright. Please calm down. My heart is aching seeing you like this," he says kissing the tip of your nose.

You look at him seeing his make-up getting smudged on the side you were crying when he picked you up.

"Fuck, I ruined your makeup. I keep ruining everything. I'll ruin your career too. Let me go, please. I-"

"Shhh, you are not going anyway just like I said. You are not ruining anything, Y/n. You are the love of my life and I have vowed to myself to protect you forever. Leaving you here like this, how do you I'm going to dance?"

"But your co-"

"They can wait. I've told them I'll be late for half an hour. So hold my hand and looks at me," he says and you do.

"Say it. That you're safe and you're with me," he says.

"I'm safe. I'm with you."

"Inhale for a long moment. Hold it for 4 3 2 1, now exhale. Yes, that's my girl. See, you are good at that," he says ruffling your hair as you feel calmed down.

He did it again and you are feeling relaxed, "Listen to me."

"Hm."

"Leaving you will be like burning my soul, tearing a limb from my own body. So, don't even think about it. I love you sweetheart and I'm always going to love you like there is no tomorrow. Do you understand me?"

You nod when another roll of emotion washes over you making you cry.

"Promise me one thing."

"Yes?"

"Whenever you feel like this, come running to me wherever I am. Don't you dare break this promise, okay?"

You nod again and he pecks you, "I love you the most and I'm not letting it go for anything else. You have made my life so much easier and happier than anything else. What will I do with reputation and wealth if my loml is not with me?" The way he is holding you in his arms right now, he is making you feel like you are a tiny baby.

You smile hearing him saying those as he pecks you again, "Get ready to stay up all night after I finish my concert. I'm dying to touch you."

"Shut up, pervert," you say standing up making him chuckle.

"You are my nicotine, baby girl," You stand there stunned as he gets ready and leaves for his performances.

As you stand in the crowd, you see him spotting you right away as he sends you a flying kiss mouthing, "Ready for tonight?" Washing over your panic, anxiety and insecurities.

I hope it helped you

[franciskirkland]

so i have finally had it this time. not posting for attention but screaming into the void bc its all i can do. please don't click read more unless you're willing to hear some deeply gnarly/personal stuff. and please don't unfollow just bc you didn't heed my warning. this is a personal blog and there's a real live human woman behind the deranged hetaliaposting.

i now know for sure that i intend on ending my marriage. i can't leave yet, but i need to start planning for it. im done. its not worth it.

our first wedding anniversary is in a few days. i have always had thoughts in the back of my mind about us not lasting, but i didnt think it'd end like this, so soon. im embarrassed frankly.

we have had our share of problems both major and minor. but the final straw is that my husband has more or less assaulted me.

so there are more details below but i've been pretty sex repulsed (by irl sex) for the past... 10 months or so? we are not completely sexless but it's usually coercive, with my husband guilt tripping and pestering me for sex. usually i manage to get out of it, even if i do wake up to him rubbing up against me - that doesn't bother me too much.

but yesterday he was being particularly forceful and threatening me if i didn't start having sex with him again whenever he wanted. so he initiated the act. i kept saying no. no i cant. please stop. i dont want this. im gay. and he said no you're not. and he forced me to give him head while also grabbing my breasts and making me undress. i hate being naked. i nearly vomited. i feel disgusting and violated.

the thing is, that part about me being gay wasn't a joke or an excuse/defense. that was me refusing him. i have told him that i am attracted to women so many times and he doesnt even believe that's possible. like, that bisexuality is real. yeah. that hardly scratches the surface of his terrible beliefs and opinions. but i digress.

i don't know if i'm only sex-repulsed due to him getting me pregnant and the subsequent loss, (ruptured ectopic, almost died) which affected me permanently in a physical way and im undeniably also psychologically but i have yet to process that in its entirity.

i am definitely at least bisexual, if not gay. and possibly asexual/gray-ace or whatever. the only men i really feel attraction towards are fictional/purely ideas. seriously. i'm deeply affected by comphet. growing up i knew i was queer but i was also abused by many men as a teen so i guess i internalized it. somewhere down the road i also became really attracted to the idea of settling down and having a family. (i still am, but my priorities have changed the more i see older moms. im only 24, my friend didn't have her first until 34.)

anyway, regardless of my sexuality or lack thereof, aside from our numerous other problems (incompatible personalities, different ambitions, lack of common interests, him being an abusive controlling manbaby, overbearing MIL, living situation, etc.) i am repulsed by him and i cant be around him anymore. i hate him.

the mistakes i have made for/because of this relationship are of a devastating magnitude. i've burned a lotttt of bridges (not my mom, thank god) but with other family, friends and previous employers.

i'm a dummy. yeah. i'm not going to lie. i have invested almost 3 years and over $10k of hard-earned wages into moving to australia for a man who doesn't respect me. i have no income, no privacy, little irl support, because he's isolated me to the point where i'm not me anymore. the most i can hope for is to get a full time job, and/or write some more original stories and possibly get a book deal or self publish. it'll all go into a divorce fund. it'll likely take over a year before the prospect of leaving is financially viable. but i'm not even sure where to go from there. the economy is a disaster in america too.

i would really appreciate some company, i don't necessarily want to discuss what happened but it'd be nice to have someone to talk to as i navigate this. i love you all my friends and followers and readers <3

[hukkelberg]

came back to add that debling is so confusing to me. they kept mentioning things about him not getting along w his family so i thought it would matter but then it just didn't. cressida was so focused on him and they kind of alluded to a connection based on the shared family difficulties but that also didn't matter. he immediately dropped his proposal bc... he'll be gone sm he can't marry someone who has feelings for someone else?? when he doesn't know that he'll ever develop romantic feelings??? it's so confusing like why do you even care then? it's not even like he ever talks about needing an heir who's def his son lol. it also just doesn't make sense - he'll be gone for 3 fucking yrs. whether or not his wife already has feelings for someone else isn't going to be the deciding factor in whether or not he ends up cuckolded imo. i don't understand why they didn't just have him be upset bc he has feelings for pen lol. everything about the way they approached colin's makeover, the weird brothel scenes, making debling incomprehensible cardboard, etc. makes me feel like they were v worried about colin's appeal as a male lead.

they WERE my god this one came in while i was writing the other one and i didn't see until it refreshed or i might've put it here, but you've essentially hit the nail in the head. they had such little confidence in them that clearly there could be nothing that might threaten his position at all. (genuinely. genuinely. i think that's why luke t and nic have no scenes at all. they have such easy chemistry, it'd smoke polin soo fast and it's ridiculous because it's! so! easy! to immediately usher them into a friendship/siblingship and be done with it, if only these people were not so fearful.)

perhaps unkindly, i read debling's refusal to marry penelope as an expression of male pride. she is not so much spoiled goods, but he is going to be away so long, and knowing she is in love and this other dude is down pretty fucking bad for her nearly guarantees having to take care of a bastard. which would be an indignity. and perhaps more pressingly, a hassle. the decision makes sense to me if you view debling as misogynistic lmao in that obviously his wife ought to stay at home devoted to him. she must have her own diversions, of course! he is not a beast. but she is his property, you know? it would hurt his pride, his honor, his standing. it does not much matter that he doesn't care for society as an aristocrat, but he may still care for his pride as a man. this could have been illustrated if only bridgerton could have it in themselves to question the systems in which these characters operate past zesty one liners.

that was the issue with whistledown as well, in my opinion, that they could not figure out where she fit at all without addressing the ton as a place where people might not want to be. not seriously. someone else said that romance is a conservative genre (i think it might've been avocado-moon, though i can't say. this post of hers is really good btw though more on characterization) and thus its function is to uphold the heteronormative, the patriarchal and bridgerton fits the bill. i do not expect the show to give me a deeply nuanced exploration of real historical regency england and its issues. really, i don't. but to not even acknowledge their befuddled post racial uber classist system exists past eloise's lukewarm feminism? it casts everything nonsensical. i look forward to seeing how sophie and michaela throw everything askew.

[c4ndyf4gg0t]

I think I'm gonna end up completely ghosting everyone. My mind can't do this. I've tried to work hard and move past everything bc I know I will always be seen as the bad person in a situation even when I know I'm not, just bc of my past. Sometimes it makes me seriously consider 💀⚰️🥀 bc of how much I hate myself and how easily I can fall back into a trap. I know I'm not a good person but I'm trying.

I need to post this before I don't, just to say the truth about 2 people who I don't like who have said horrible shit to me but who can easily turn around and let everyone else see the good in them while I only got to see the bad.

———————

a) [redacted] told me once that my gender and sexuality was annoying and confusing and that no one would believe me if I said I was gay bc of how "often" my gender and sexuality changed, as if it really was a big deal. Just bc when I was 18 and had a huge crush on her, I didn't have a consistent way to contact her enough and I didn't and don't drive so I couldn't just go see her whenever I wanted; and bc I was still closeted irl around my family, I wasn't able to say that I was gay and that I had a crush on her. She had a huge problem with me being trans and told me that I would be an ugly guy. And yet now she's married to a guy and has a kid, after all this shit she'd put me through with telling me no one would care or believe me if I said I was lesbian or trans and yet there she went ending up with a guy after years of saying she would never and that she was 100% lesbian.

—

b) [redacted] had been in a group chat with me last year. The group chat had other people as well, but she was the "medical professional" in there. I never felt comfortable with her bc she acted like anything anyone said that was different than what she specifically said or wanted done was Wrong ™. So when I talked one time about how metformin wasn't doing me any good, she got pissed when I showed her where I would log my blood sugar in a Notes section with the dates and times. Apparently my sugar wasn't doing whatever she wanted. When I told her that I couldn't take the metformin for my sugar bc the only thing the metformin would do is cause my pancreas trouble, she wouldn't listen to me and she wouldn't let me try to tell explain how my sugar was acting. I told her I had no choice but to stop taking the metformin bc after going to the hospital for my pancreas and the problem being the metformin, I was finally completely taken off of it and told it was better to not risk my pancreas acting up again. She didn't believe me. She got so pissed at me once bc I refused to call an ambulance bc I knew how to take care of my body and how to get my sugar up when it dropped the way it did. She got pissed bc I went against whatever she wanted. She kept acting like she knew me and my body better than I did. I have no idea how she even got the idea she's a medical professional. So bc I commented something on a fb post of hers, she got mad and claimed I was being hostile when all I said was that the "Spirit Halloween" trend forgot to add “-‘medical professional’ but gives unsolicited medical advice and gets pissed when someone doesn't take the unsolicited advice” to her fb automatic version of the meme trend. Maybe that was bad or mean of me but I don't like people acting like they haven't done or said harmful things to people; I don't like the ones who act like they're so innocent and good, perfect people. This isn't the first time and it won't be the last time someone treats me like these 2 did and gets away with it so only I suffer and get to know the real ugly version of them while everyone else only gets the good, but hopefully I'll not fall for this so quick. I honestly hope it gets back to them, to both of them, to these 2 and to my exes.

[overdrivels]

The Hanzo-disliking anon here. I would have actually preferred discussing this w/ you privately but I prefer to be on anon for the whole "doesn't like a beloved popular character" thing. The reason I don't like Hanzo is how he seems to have the audacity to act like the offended party with Genji when he's the one who did wrong. It's not even that he doesn't realize he did wrong. He abandoned his clan due to guilt. I can't for the life of me understand what appears to be his victim complex. (1/2)

(2/2) He goes around calling Genji “trash” to his face in the Japanese version of OW for goodness’ sake. That Genji is dead to him and stuff. It could be that he feels Genji betrayed him by refusing to join the Shimada business or that he feels like his redemption quest has been for nothing, but those are terrible reasons and don’t excuse his shitty behavior. I’ve been trying to think of what the writers are trying to go for with him, but I just can’t imagine anything that justifies his attitude

(3/2 I miscalculated 2 asks aren’t enough) I hope I didn’t come off as a jerk. I have no issue with people who like Hanzo and I don’t want to disrespect or undermine them. I’m just irritated at how self-entitled the character seems to be. The reason I actually brought this up with you is bc I was hoping you’d have some insights on this that will help me understand why he’s the way he is.

You’ve been very respectful in the way you express your opinions and well articulated in your reasons, so I’m actually extremely happy that you’ve presented this to me and feel comfortable enough to share. (You have no fucking clue how pleased I am to have a discussion like this, really.)

This is rather long (very long), so I’m placing this under a cut. To everyone else, please be mindful of each other’s opinions, especially when it’s being conveyed so civilly. Understandably, if you are of the opposite opinion, you may feel angered, but I ask that you refrain from attacking anyone and if need be, present your opinion and thoughts in the same manner as this anon.

(I also ask that this doesn’t get reblogged because I don’t think I can handle my inbox getting wrecked by people who weren’t initially a part of the conversation or know the context of the entire discussion leading up to this.)

I’d be happy to discuss it with you on chat or something, but as it is, this’ll have to work. I’m going to preface this by saying that Hanzo doesn’t need to be (shouldn’t need to be?) justified as a character because sometimes, a character does shitty things and that shittiness (shittyness?) needs to be acknowledged and not justified for any reason because there’s no good enough explanation.

(I’m sure we’ve all experienced or done something like that in real life–did something so inexcusable without proper explanation, but there really isn’t one, and we have to accept it as is.)

I think it’s easy to look at the singular action of Hanzo killing Genji in a vacuum. Based on that singular event alone, and seeing how Hanzo acts afterward, it’s very easy to paint him as an asshole whose actions are inexcusable and he doesn’t deserve to claim that he’s the one who is hurt. In which case, absolutely. He should not act like he’s been wronged when he’s the one who started it.

But what if we start further?  

I want to look at the cause and what could’ve led up to it. Not to justify it, but to see where this could’ve come from. It’s my own opinion, but I think that people are very used to writers having their characters as is–no background unless it’s relevant to the plot, no thought of what sort of life they’ve lead up to this point, and is presented as a given. However, I see that the Overwatch team has put some effort into characters (the level of effort can be debatable, but I’m not interested in debating that), so I want to show some level of respect to the writers by trying to dig a little deeper into where, why, how–who is this character?

And I think a lot of it may have come from Hanzo’s circumstance, his relations with his brother, and his past. To understand it, we have to take a deeper look into Japanese culture (or Asian culture, in general). Now, I can’t claim that I have a complete understanding of anything, so a lot of this is just what I know (and perhaps experiences) and some speculation and logical deductions.

In life, Genji was given a freedom that Hanzo, as the eldest and the heir to a criminal syndicate, never truly enjoyed. That isn’t to say, however, that Genji didn’t have his own fair share of troubles. 「一族の恥」(ichizoku no haji)、the clan’s shame/the embarrassment of the clan is what they called him. We can leave the discussion about Genji for another day, but let’s look at how this affects Hanzo.

So from birth and even after his father’s death, he was held to a strict standard. Everyone was watching him. He was chosen by the dragons. He must not make a mistake lest he bring shame to his entire family.

In Japanese culture (and Asian culture), losing face is probably one of the worst things that could happen to you. In Western culture, it’s not that big of a deal if you embarrass yourself a little or you’re not as successful or you don’t have the respect of your subordinates. People will tease you about it, and move on.

In Asian culture, you’re pretty much fucked. No one will let you forget it, it becomes a part of you now. You will lose the respect of everyone around you, and depending on the level of face you lose, every piece of success you’ve built up can be lost in a second. It is an integral part of your identity and society. Losing face could make you a nobody, scorned, and an outcast. It can affect your job, your family, relations with neighbors, cost you that raise or promotion–it’s a big deal that cannot be contained to the words, ‘embarrassment’ or ‘shame’.

(For example: you’re at someone’s house and you’ve finished off your glass of juice, but you’re still thirsty, so you reach for more from the fridge. You’ve now made the host lose face because, by getting your own drink, you’ve shown your host that they suck at what they do and should be more attentive to you, their guest. You’ve made your host lose face. Now your host is embarrassed and that’s going to be a mark on them for a long, long time. If there were other people there, they would notice this, too, and give that person shit. This sounds absolutely silly because it’s a glass of juice, but it’s a big deal.)

Hanzo was losing face. He couldn’t control his brother. That’s a deep scar on his image, on everything he’s built up in his life. For Sojiro, his father, it was less of a deal–he let Genji do it and probably made it openly known that this was acceptable. And no one will go against Sojiro, the master of the clan and who could have them all killed in an instant.

But Hanzo?

He doesn’t have that rapport yet, so he’s subject to the scorn and nasty comments of his elders and the like. (I’m assuming there are elders and those in the clan who are of a high power that Hanzo cannot take action without consulting. It’s kind of like a Japanese company. While a President delivers the decision, the decision isn’t made it without consulting those who are affected and knowledgeable.) He can’t defend himself against them. 

Why? 

Because of the hierarchy. There’s a very specific type of hierarchy in Japan that’s difficult to explain because to understand it, you have to understand the intricacies of the culture and the dynamic of the clan, which we don’t particularly have.

(There’s a very good post about it by someone about Hanzo losing face on tumblr, but I can’t seem to find it at the moment.)

Regardless, that must’ve built up a lot of tension and repressed anger that he wasn’t allowed to express. Expressing your anger is not taken the same way as in the Western world. It’s…well, not to say it’s not acceptable, but it’s not taken the same way as it would be outside of Japan.

So, Hanzo has quite a bit on his plate. Why can’t Genji just do what he’s told? Why does he have to stand out? (As a side note, standing out in Japanese culture or disrupting the status quo is not looked kindly upon.There’s even a saying in Japanese: a nail that stands out gets hammered ( 出る杭は打たれる ).) So Genji’s defiance is another point of contention. Why does he have to keep disobeying his elders? Hanzo is Genji’s older brother. It’s his absolute responsibility to make sure his brother is kept in line. That’s the burden of being the eldest. If Genji isn’t in line, Hanzo has failed in his basic duties in being an older brother. (The implications are much more serious, and I’m not quite sure how to express it.)

He may be acing his studies, and listening to his father, but he can’t seem to exert the right amount of authority over those who should be listening to him. And his father isn’t helping by letting Genji do what he wants. He also has this constant pressure to do better because his best isn’t enough from both his family and the clan. Logically, they wouldn’t follow someone who is weak or doesn’t have his shit in order. But he doesn’t. There’s always something tripping him up, and that’s his brother. Not to blame Genji, because again, he has his own share of troubles, but from Hanzo’s point of view, he was likely the source of a lot of his resentment.

In short, Hanzo is a failure. His accomplishments, his perfectionism, none of it means anything if he’s constantly getting shit thrown back at his face.

I seriously believe that all the lines he says in-game to himself such as, “Never second best,” or “Unworthy,” or “You will never amount to anything!” were all just Hanzo projecting.

In the Japanese version, he refers to Genji as 「くず」 (trash). I don’t know what to make of this. I could take the angle that it’s Hanzo projecting onto Genji still, or I could speculate that he truly believes he’s superior, or take it a little more neutrally, he’s repeating what everyone else calls Genji. But if I had to guess, it’s a mixture of everything. This is something that stumps me a little bit, but the above is the best explanation I have for it.

When Hanzo becomes the master of the clan, he was probably told to put Genji in line. And Genji didn’t want anything to do with the clan. He wanted to live his life, enjoy it. But that sort of enjoyment came with certain responsibilities that he has shirked since the time of their father. But with Hanzo as the new leader of the clan, he had to put Genji in line or…do something about it.

It’s very likely that the rest of the clan saw this as an opportunity to make their name good, to get rid of those who stood out, to right everything. Their new leader is young and inexperienced without his father to protect him. So, Hanzo was presented with those two choices: straighten Genji out or kill him lest you bring more shame to the clan.

Now, Hanzo is given an opportunity to redeem himself and his image and the clan’s image. This goes beyond the redemption quest he set out for after Genji’s death. I think he was on one even before then. He can save face and fix everything if he listens to his elders (his betters in the hierarchy). He can fix everything if he can get rid of the problem–Genji.

He did it. He did not take an insult to his power passively, he rectified it by putting an end to it. He restored confidence in his clan as an assassin, as master of the clan, as his brother.

…but it wasn’t so.

After killing his brother, we all know he left the Shimada clan. We’re not sure if it was immediately after or some time after. The timing may be very significant, but as we do not readily know, we’ll skip over it for now. We can easily call his leaving an act of cowardice, or the result of his guilt, or that he wanted to do something he always wanted to do but never found an opportunity to do so. He wanted to leave. He wanted the freedom that Genji had, but couldn’t have because his immediate family still existed.

By leaving, he thought for himself for once.

Ah, not to mean that he was blindly following anyone’s orders or anything, but for once, he thought of himself. He was selfish. In Japanese culture, the collective comes first. The clan, the whole of Hanamura, the whole of society comes first.

But for once, Hanzo became selfish, and so, left everything behind. Here’s the funny thing though, by killing Genji, he found a way out for his freedom, but by killing Genji, he also managed to never fully express the envy and hate he may have had for his brother.

In many or most cultures, you’re supposed to revere the dead. It’s pretty much the same in Japanese culture.

Now he’s been mourning for ten years, still unable to express that hate that he has supposed buried when he killed his brother. And guess who shows up? Genji. Back to sling shit into his face again. Not only is he a failure as a brother for being unable to keep his brother in line, as the master of the clan by leaving, but also as a killer by having one of his most life-altering kills come back from the grave.

So, under such circumstances, I would absolutely be pissed beyond hell and vent in almost any way I can because pride is a fragile thing. Or at least, it is for Hanzo.

But here’s an interesting thought: I also wonder if he knew, deep down, that it would come to this. He didn’t seem entirely too surprised beyond the first few seconds. As a matter of fact, he seemed to have gone back to something more childish, acting almost immediately like a big brother–scolding his younger brother for something and telling him to get his life together. He slips into the role almost too easily.

We can chalk it up to shock, but couldn’t it be that he also knew he never actually dealt the finishing blow and that’s been nagging at him this whole time? Not that he gave his brother a chance to live, but that he let his brother suffer. If you’re going to kill someone you love, you’d make it quick and painless, right? We can argue that he never loved his brother, but we can also argue that he was warring with himself and couldn’t bring himself to do it.

I must sound like a broken record, but to me, it’s very interesting to speculate and think about. There are so many angles we can take on this and the possibilities are endless. But it could also be that his character could also be very simple broken down as an man who mistakenly thinks he is being wronged all the time.

But yes, your thoughts are valid and meaningful to me in a way that I can’t explain. They also gave me some perspective on why some people might not like him, and I really want to thank you for helping me expand my horizons. In light of that, I hope I’ve been able to articulate why he may be the way he is, whether he is justified in his behavior or not is a completely different story. I’m just interested in why.

(There was a lot more I would’ve love to elaborate on, but I think this would’ve actually turned into a research paper. I hope this has been helpful and sufficient in answering your questions even though it’s a little disorganized in its presentation. Again, it’s perfectly fine to dislike a character–not all characters are made to be liked, and not all people are expected to like all characters.)