I’m sorry did you order feels?
BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT’S ON THE MENU

I was feeling super sad yesterday… so here’s some vent art. I think about Hanzo crying like once a day…

This post on Tumblr - http://hot-gothics.tumblr.com/post/160001995958/

Okay, so feel free to not read more of this post, but I wanted to get a little personal here. Below is my take on Hanzo and Genji’s fight that resulted in Genji’s “death” as well as why I ended up taking a personal liking to Hanzo. Again, it’s all my speculation and theorizing - feel free to ignore.

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Part of this is analyzing the whole dynamic that Hanzo and Genji had in the family. We know that Hanzo was raised to be the ‘perfect heir’ and Genji ended up becoming the ‘party child’. This is not only because Hanzo was first born and therefore heir, it was also because of the relationships they had with each other and their father.

It’s sort of theorized that their mother died and that’s why we don’t hear anything about her. I include this in my theorizing as it just plain FITS with the dynamic that Genji has. He was the last born. Sojiro, their father, must have spoiled him BIG TIME because he was his wife’s ‘baby’. Sojiro gave him the nickname of ‘Sparrow’ as well, which to me feels like a pretty endearing nickname. Genji is the energetic child that everyone wants to let have fun.

While Hanzo is the older brother, the heir, the pristine package weighed down with responsibilities. He couldn’t sneak out like his brother to go play or make friends, he had to study and practice. He couldn’t relax, he had to attend lessons.

But with being the older brother, and knowing the responsibilities he had and what the clan expected of him and his brother, he wanted to protect Genji. He may have been jealous of his frivolous lifestyle, sure, but he was still his big brother. He must have shielded Genji from the elders and their rules a lot. Both him and his father spoiled Genji and tried to let him do things that Hanzo could never get away with.

And the elders ignored it for the most part because Genji wasn’t the one being groomed into the next leader. It was Hanzo. Hanzo had all the focus. And Genji didn’t become a problem until Sojiro died.

Genji probably acted out in his sorrow over their father’s death, being an outspoken person, which made the elders step up to Hanzo and give him the ultimatum of “make Genji behave or kill him”. Hanzo, on the other hand, internalizes his emotions. He’s had to perfect that steely facade over the many years he’s been trained and primed as the future leader of the clan. He CAN’T act out. And when he’s given that ultimatum… he probably doesn’t know what to do with it at first.

But when he finally confronts Genji and tries to suggest he change his ways (as he’s certain that if he doesn’t convince him the elders will kill Genji anyway) Genji gets ANGRY and feels BETRAYED. His brother who always stuck up for him and was always supported him was telling him to change for THEM. He was so spoiled he didn’t see the confrontation for what it really was and started instigating, eventually becoming a “let’s see how angry I can make Hanzo” instead.

And Hanzo is just trying to make Genji understand and he can’t get why Genji isn’t listening to him, why isn’t he trusting him, because what he’s saying is perfectly logical to him. But neither of them are able to see each other’s view and Genji is continuously trying to get more and more of a reaction out of Hanzo and he doesn’t realize he’s taken it too far until Hanzo ends up coming after him with all he’s got.

Hanzo strikes me as very emotional, though he’s never able to freely express himself like Genji could, and since he’d not had the chance to even mourn their father’s passing properly he was already teetering towards an emotional wreck when the fight breaks out. And of course they draw their weapons, because that’s just how they’d always fought, and Hanzo finally snapped. Everything just overflows all at once; the pressure of being the heir, their father dying, the elders pressuring him, and now his brother not trusting his judgement. It hurt.

Both of them felt betrayed and Hanzo finally snapped, drawing upon his dragons, and Genji realizes too late how far he pushed him. When Genji’s body collapses Hanzo is so shocked and disgusted with himself that he doesn’t even stick around to see if Genji survived - taking the elder’s words of congratulations that his brother was dead and feeling entirely broken.

Then he leaves.

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It’s kind of weird to say but I feel way too emotionally connected to Hanzo because I know exactly what it’s like to lose both a brother and a father and I can only imagine what he must be going through with suddenly having his brother back. I remember imagining my brother just walking back home over the hill so many times and Hanzo… Hanzo wasn’t a child, like I was, when it happened but he still mourned his brother for a whole decade. It’s fairly normal for children to ruminate over the death of a loved one for YEARS, but for an adult to do it - it means that it had SIGNIFICANT traumatic effect on them.

About six or seven years after my brother died I got caught up with life and stopped visiting my brother’s grave so frequently. Hanzo makes a specific POINT to go back to the place where Genji ‘died’ to pay his respects and honor him every year on that day. And when my dad died when I was twenty I didn’t continuously visit his grave either (though I keep certain tokens of the both of them near me all the time now).

Anyone that’s lost a loved one (a sibling or a parent) would understand the feeling I’m trying to say here. It’s difficult to accept they’re gone.

Now imagine if they came back.