the starter pack for 'how to deal with villain apologists'

Fanwork
Title:	Untitled
Creator:	tytandys on tumblr
Date(s):	~2016
Medium:	Gifset
Fandom:	Pan-fandom (but featuring characters from B99, Jessica Jones (TV series), and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
External Links:	Original Post, archive.is capture
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A screenshot of the original gifset. The gifset came with no title, but did have some explanatory text in the tags:
#the starter pack for 'how to deal with villain apologists, #edited to say that this isn't about people liking villains, #this is about people needing to justify their faves' actions and woobify them, #their past can explain their actions but they can't justify their actions.

#the starter pack for 'how to deal with villain apologists' is an extremely popular untitled gifset. (The tumblr tag it is referred to here is commentary from the creator and features prominently in most reblogs of the gifset.) As of early August 2020, the original post has approximately 474,400 notes on tumblr. The post was generally well-received but has also been criticized, particularly for encouraging anti culture or a politically conservative mindset.

The post is often reblogged with GIFs from other tumblr users that follow a similar theme.

Responses

This reaction GIF was added by tumblr user laughlikesomethingbroken. It is included in many reblogs of the gifset.

2017 Comments

[tradingjack]
"Just wanna add to this: you can absolutely like a villain’s character and have them be your favorite and everything. But you cross the line when you start saying that their behavior is good or even acceptable. Because it’s still not. They can be a good character and still be wrong in terms of behavior and choices."

[bellatrixship]
"And Harry Potter had his very rough childhood of hunger, being bullied, never loved and close to be killed at age eleven and many times after that. And still saved the f*cking world and become a decent person."

[munchausen33]
"Severus Snape, I am looking at you and the people that excuse your shitty behavior & choices… Ugh!"

[chaucerthesciencegiraffe]
"It’s more complicated than that. There’s a difference between completely isolating someone from blame and recognizing that a cycle of abuse needs to be broken.

If you are taught to hurt others by your parents it is a lesson that needs to be unlearned. And a lot of people would rather just hurt people who hurt others and hope that makes the situation better.

Most of the time it doesn’t"
#redemption

[someone-who-hates-reblogging]
"So are we supposed to believe that bad people are just bad and are born like that? That there’s nothing to do to stop it? And that’s supposed to be a good story? Or even an believable story? The point of giving villans backstory is to make them compelling characters with an understandable motive. It’s good writing. Not being a ‘villian apologist’. With the same logic we can say that the high crime rates of teenagers in poverty is completly their choice and that we don’t have to do anything about it cuz real good people make good decisions nonetheless? I call bullshit. Yes, tragic backstories don’t justify bad actions but it does explain them. Ye, not all who were abused turn out to be abusers but there is a higher chance of it. Which tells us, maybe, not “that person was abused so they’re excused” but “abuse can lead to troubled adults… we as a society should condemn and look out for abuse”."

[arielgryffinpuff]
"I mean it’s a good reason/excuse to become a villain and do villainous things, but they’re still a villain, so, no point denying it really, or trying to justify it. Just accept it. There are lots of different types of murderers, all different reasons and motives, maybe a bad childhood helps get you there. But hey, what’s the point of a bad childhood unless you learn from it and strive to be better and not be as bad as the people who raised you?"
#that's where villain apologists' faults are #you can be better than them #or just murder people and be bad i mean we need villains in our tv shows

2018 Comments

[lenyberry]
"Half the time “villain apologist” just means “person who still likes the villain character even though they did bad stuff” so y’all really need to clarify.

Also acting dismissive and snide toward someone who experienced trauma and picked some really un-ideal coping mechanisms just because YOU were lucky enough to stumble on better ones (or to have better ones pointed out to you by a therapist or support system that the other person didn’t have the benefit of access to) is the opposite of helpful."

[fierceawakening]
"I definitely think there are people who excuse obviously bad behavior from villains to make it fit their headcanon (the example that comes to my mind is “Starscream only beat Predaking because Megatron beat Starscream”) but just as often if not moreso it seems to mean “don’t publicly admit to relating to this character or their bad deeds.”"

2020 Comments

[elleintheskywithdiamonds]
"the best part about this post is people will use these gifs and then suicide bait people and later excuse it with being an abuse survivor"

[zoobus]
"I hate this post so much it’s unreal"
# where's that one comic about making fun of celebrities for their looks #i need to edit it so it reflects this shit.

[discoursedrome]
"I’ve seen the above attitude a lot in the past few years, and it’s fascinating to me because along with several concurrent moves (e.g. tough-on-crime rhetoric) it reflects the growth of a conventional conservative movement within the progressive left – that is, a group of people and school of thought that functions like traditional conservativism but with the cultural elements of leftism. The existence of this sort of thing is one reason I’m not a big fan of tne tendency to present political affiliation as saying a lot about people’s individual character or preferences.

The position upthread is defensible – you need to make some allowances for that stance in your worldview, at least – but it’s also the iconic conservative position: the classic social progressive vs. conservative divide is that progressives tend to focus on systemic causes over individual responsibility, and conservatives do the opposite. The conservative attitude is stuff like “blaming higher crime rates among ghettoized poor on systemic marginalization, and encouraging more lenient treatment or easier forgiveness on those grounds, is an offense to the majority of the ghettoized poor who don’t commit crimes,” which is of course exactly this."