another thing that really bothers me about the dumbledore-bashing pandemic is how they completely misunderstand his character, and i get that’s the point of bashing but it’s so irritating.
like people will write him as this self-absorbed, dark-arts appreciating madman who’s incapable of admitting his own mistakes because he doesn’t believe he has any, and that’s just untrue.
dumbledore is quite possibly the most self-aware character; he is fully aware that what he is doing is wrong, he hates himself for it, but he goes through with it anyway. it’s not right, it’s not an excuse, in some ways that makes him a worse person--but he’s not excusing the things he’s doing to himself. he’ll do that to other people, sure, tell them it’s necessary and that the ends justify the means, but he knows he’s full of shit and he keeps going.
but people are insistent on portraying him as this idiot who’s incapable of seeing his own wrongdoing and blinded by his own arrogance and he’s just not?? he is so nuanced and there’s so many layers and he’s just boiled down ‘guy who sent harry to the dursleys’ which is important and wrong, but it’s not the full picture.
a part of the reason why he does what he does is trauma, and i think--though i might be off the mark with this one--that after what happened to ariana he thought ‘hey i can’t get any worse than this, i’ve done the worst thing, i killed my sister’ and justified the rest by telling himself that he needs to do good to make up for that and no matter how he gets there, that’s the end goal. he picks a goal and sticks to it. in a way, he never strayed from his mindset with grindelwald--’the greater good,’ and all that. ends justify the means.
and aberforth understands this, and in a way that makes him more resentful of albus--he understands him, knows that albus knows that he’s doing wrong but keeps doing it anyway, knows why he keeps doing it anyway, knows who got him into the mindset of the ends justify the means, and he hates the entire package because who wouldn’t? if albus had stopped drowning in his self-loathing for like three seconds and decided to do the right things, to acknowledge his mistakes and not be a manipulative piece of shit in the process, he would have forgiven him, maybe not entirely but more than in canon.
that’s off topic though, the point was STOP BASHING ALBUS DUMBLEDORE HE DOESN’T NEED IT WRITE HIS CHARACTER ACCURATELY
