*takes deep breath and then a sip of water*
*bangs fists on table to hype myself up*
you know, i really love afterdrop and it’s one of my fave fics on ao3 and the issues i have with hanzo-genji reconciliation don’t necessarily ascribe to it but i really need to discuss my thought i have with the bros in depth
i have two main points about it
1) people tend to assume that genji is completely blameless and innocent in this scenario……like he was going about his business, bothering no one and one day, out of the blue, hanzo comes out of the left field and murders him. that can’t be it. it’s very headcanon-y but he must have known something was up. like he was part of the yakuza (even if he wasn’t participating in it)……what did he think the yakuza *did*????? [genji, part of a gang of criminals murdering people: i never thought that criminals would murder *me*!] he can’t have been completely clueless about that situation and yet he did………nothing in terms of conflict resolution????? what???? like he severely underestimated the clan and the seriousness of the situation???
2) people tend to dismiss and invalidate hanzo’s feelings of the matter. even genji and zenyatta partake in that behavior. i’m not saying that hanzo was justified in doing that but……….what it took genji to enlightment was acceptance of his situation and yet he tells hanzo that what he’s feeling is…..wrong???? that he should get over himself and that’s……….the complete opposite what *he* did. hypocritical much????
addendum) it’s genji’s line of “i have accepted what i am and i have forgiven you” what takes me to this conclusion but it seems to me genji hasn’t *really* forgiven hanzo. he’s come to terms with his trauma and so the crime committed against him doesn’t seems that great anymore and that’s what took him to such conclusion and not that he understood why hanzo did what he did. that he really doesn’t want his brother back, he wants the illusion of hanzo from before…….buddy, that hanzo is dead. he may have never even existed. you’re trying to reconnect with a ghost and that’s not gonna work.
Everything before now is @whyllastorch’s, everything following is mine.
Thank you very much for the submission, and thank you for the compliments, I appreciate them very much!
Afterdrop will be delving into these very subjects! But let me address them here just a little bit!
1) I agree that Genji was by no means innocent or completely blameless. I don’t like Young Genji very much at all, in point of fact--he strikes me as a fratboy on the lower end of the spectrum of likeability. I’m not too impressed with YG in most of fandom, either, even when people sidestep the whole yakuza thing in AUs--he’s usually one of those annoying party boys who expects his family to bail him out of any consequences, and he tends to torment Hanzo and revel in his discomfort, making jokes at his expense and pushing him way, way out of his comfort zone. It’s usually excused as being for Hanzo’s benefit or to take him down a few pegs, but it often comes off as more for Genji’s entertainment than anything else.
And when you don’t ignore the whole yakuza thing, all of it, the partying and the bailouts, is financed with blood with his full knowledge if not at least partial complicity, given his training. So Genji is not a good person, or at least not a moral one. People tend to excuse him with the “boys will be boys” attitude, too, even though he was 25 when Hanzo confronted him.
Now, this isn’t to imply that Genji deserved what happened to him, or to excuse Hanzo at all. Hanzo was not only yakuza, he was the head of the yakuza, so everything the clan was doing was in his name. People tend to excuse him by blaming the elders for it all, but, again, Hanzo was an adult--he was 28 when he murdered Genji, and had been “in charge” when he did it.
I’m relying on this post here when it comes to “assigning blame”. Genji was failing in his familial duty and knew it full well, but relied on passing off the responsibility to his family while taking advantage of their status for his own selfish desires. Hanzo was fulfilling his familial duty, but was executing a man whose “crime” was partying instead of assassinating. In the end, I think Hanzo is still by far the guiltier party, but Genji is not entirely blameless, and I don’t think he was stupid and clueless about the situation, either.
2) Hanzo’s feelings about Genji and the duel are a tricky thing, because the fact that he was 28 when he murdered Genji both absolves and condemns him. He was a fully grown adult in full possession of his faculties, he’s a smart man, and he was the head of the clan. He really should have been able to figure out something other than killing his brother, but he did it anyway.
However, most of us in the English-speaking fandom are judging him by Western standards, and Western standards not only assign far more individualistic responsibility, but also tend to assume far more simplistic power structures. Just because he was the head of the clan doesn’t mean he was in charge--Japanese history and culture especially illustrates this with the Shoguns, who ruled Japan for a full seven centuries even though the Emperor was the “leader”. The Emperor was, in fact, given a carefully controlled ceremonial role as he was shuffled back and forth in the machinations of the shoguns, and this seems to be the role that Blizzard intended Hanzo to be in, more or less.
So what were Hanzo’s feelings in all this? I don’t know if even Hanzo himself would be in a position to know. He was probably carefully prepared for a role that could very well have been ceremonial rather than authoritative. I think Shimada Sojiro (or Hanzo and Genji’s mother in the case of Afterdrop) is meant to have been a particularly skillful and charismatic head of the clan who was able to seize more power from the elders than was usual OR he was old enough to be the head of the clan in both position and seniority. I tend to think the latter is more likely in Overwatch canon (but that’s not how it’s going to go down in Afterdrop). Whatever the case, he apparently did not or could not pass that same level of authority to Hanzo.
So what were Hanzo’s feelings? I don’t think they mattered. To anyone. So I’m not sure if Genji and Zenyatta are invalidating Hanzo’s feelings as much as they’re trying to goad Hanzo into considering his own feelings and motivations rather than the teachings/machinations/slander of the clan. He was under their thumb for 28 years, almost three-quarters of his life, so it wouldn’t surprise me that he’s still at least partially their mouthpiece even after a decade. After all, as previously discussed, it wasn’t as though Genji was innocent, so it’s not a cut-and-dried thing for him to absolve himself or Genji, even after ten years.
Addendum) Genji’s intentions with forgiving Hanzo are not very clear to me. For one thing, it’s only implied, slightly implied that he’s seeking reconciliation at all, with Hanzo as he was or is now. Reconciliation is a theme of the Tale of the Dragon Brothers, not necessarily of Hanzo and Genji’s confrontation in Dragons. The only hint that reconciliation might be a goal initially comes from Hanzo, when he assumes that Genji is referencing the Tale. Genji only soft confirms it. From everything else in Dragons and their in-game dialogue, it seems to me like reconciliation isn’t something that Genji expects from the glib way he interacts with Hanzo. Or Hanzo either, for that matter, since he seems mostly cynical when he’s not outright accusatory. So to assume that reconciliation is a main goal of Genji’s is more an invention of fandom than of canon, I think.
So what are his main goals? I think he may have been showcasing a bit, because as you say, he mentions his self-acceptance, but accepting himself doesn’t mean he has to display himself the way he did, so I think there’s something to your thought that he hasn’t really forgiven Hanzo--he clearly wants to demonstrate something, but I’m not sure I know what it is from what little we have.
But that’s what fanfiction (and Afterdrop) is for.
Thanks so much for your submission! You raised a lot of good points!
