#shoah tw

[germiyahu]

When you try to make the legacy of the Holocaust a political favor done to Jews, you are paving the road to Holocaust denial. You're even planting nice trees on the boulevard!

To the historically illiterate Westerner, the true sincere belief is that Israel was "gifted" to the Jews as an apology for the Holocaust. This is actually a quite ingenious mental strategy to handle the cognitive dissonance of both wholeheartedly believing the society you live in was the "hero" of the story, but also that Western society is morally bankrupt and worthless.

See the West saved the Jews from the Nazis, but they also severely blundered by rewarding Jewish suffering with the state of Israel. It's clever. You can feel good about being the hero but also curse your own society for turning around and doing something that you'll argue was even worse in the long run (and they have been saying it's worse).

But then, it gets better! Since Israel is seen as an extension of Europe, and arm of European ideology and interest, it can be argued that the West had good intentions when they magnanimously decided to give Jews someone else's homeland. But they could never have predicted how brutal, how violent, how racist, how genocidal, the Israelis would end up being. You can curse the West but acknowledge it's not really their fault, because then it's not really your fault either.

All this context of the Holocaust being a "lesson to learn" or a precursor to some political reward for the Jews, that Jews have always been crafty and Westerners gullible... it's already on the precipice for those with conspiracy oriented minds. And this is already true and we've all seen it on social media. To those who think the Israel was a reward for the Holocaust, they think that the Holocaust warranted a "reward" in the first place. They can switch those around, and start thinking the Holocaust was a pretext to Israel. They can think that the Holocaust was exaggerated to wring more sympathy from the Europeans. They can think that the Holocaust was staged to trick the West into enacting the Jews' grand plan.

All it takes when you're at this point thinking of the Holocaust as transactional, is a genuine Neo Nazi, or perhaps a Hamas simp, to come along and say "Isn't it suspicious though? Don't you think there are inconsistencies? You should really check out..." and due to the coincidences and incorrect narratives that you made up in your brain, that have no basis in reality, you just might consider hearing them out.

So no, the Holocaust is not being weaponized or hijacked, for any reason. It was a historical event that happened. There are no lessons for the victims of all people to learn. There was no divine intervention or grand conspiracy to make the Holocaust about anything, or use it to bring about some political goal. You want there to be one or all of these things, because it justifies your preconceived notions about Jews.

So if a person is at this point, thinking the Holocaust was transactional, thinking that Israel was a reward, they're already on the road to Holocaust denial. And at this time in the Zeitgeist, they are way more likely than normal to go down that road, readily and eagerly. So be careful, be more cognizant if you actually care about the legacy of this genocide, about honoring its victims and its survivors and their descendants.

#shoah tw #holocaust denial #antisemitism #leftist antisemitism

[nonbinary-vents]

Saw a post recently from @jewish-sideblog recently about how people view the scope of the shoah and it kind of solidified something that's been bothering me for a while now. I think one thing that goyim fundamentally don't understand about the shoah is that it had huge effects on Jewish communities in the whole world, not just Europe, and not just during the genocide itself. Like, two of my grandparents were born and grew up in the British mandate. Amin Al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem at the time, literally met up with Hitler to discuss the implementation of the shoah and a possible final solution in the Arab world. He also barred Jews from escaping to the mandate. If the shoah had just gone on a little longer, that part of my family would probably have been murdered

The shoah had gigantic ripples in the Middle East. Without it, the Mirzachi expulsion wouldn’t have been able to happen. And the expulsion still affects Mizrachim today. Most of us have bad family stories, most of us can't even visit the places we spent the diaspora in. The highest number of Jews in Islamic MENA countries is 10,000 in Iran, the place my family is from, where there used to be 100,000. In the Arab states it is so much worse, with the highest being around 1,00, but most countries having less than 50

That’s just one example, but there’s many more. This stuff went so far as to affect Ethiopia, which expelled its ancient community of Jews (or, at the very least, banned them from practicing or teaching Hebrew). Even years after the shoah, it caused so much suffering for Jews everywhere, wether Nazi countries or not. Frankly, it’s kind of baffling to realise that most people think it was a self contained event, when it was literally the climax of thousands upon thousands of years of violent and vitriolic Jew hatred— of course it would ripple. The shoah was an earth shattering event that changed Jews forever, it is something that every Jew, even ones who thankfully had no ancestors murdered because of it, feels so horrible deeply. Everyone, everyone, not just the Nazis, not just the Axis, was a part of it

#Holocaust memorial day #shoah tw #I feel like I could’ve written something way more powerful but it’s such a hard topic for me so here’s a ramble that barely makes sense #Jew hatred #antisemitism #vent ish #Jewish stuff

[all-your-favs-are-jews]

I’m taking a Holocaust and Modern Genocides class and before we get into the the actual genocide my professor has been going into the history of Pre-Holocaust European antisemitism and Jewish life. This is because she said that she wants us to A)Understand the attitudes that built it up and B) So that the class would understand the casualties as real lives lost and not just numbers in a book.

It’s so strange hearing my goyishe classmates like actually audibly have break throughs about the diversity and actual life that existed within the European Jewry. Like it is so clear that none of them have ever thought of us AS anything more than numbers and sad faces to exist in movies. Like some people were legitimately shocked to find out that there are different branches of Judaism or that Ashkenazim and Sephardim have different cultures and traditions.

To make a long story short the guy who sits close me in that class said he didn’t know Jewish people had different political opinions or what Yiddish was but that’s a different story and I feel entitled to compensation because of it

#personal #tw antisemitism #nazi tw #tw nazis #holocaust tw #tw Holocaust #shoah mention #tw shoah #shoah tw #shoah #Holocaust

[hachama]

If you find yourself thinking, "maybe the Nazis had the right idea about-" just stop right there. The Nazis had no good ideas. Not about family planning, not about book clubs, not about vacation destinations or housing.

#shoah tw #genocide tw #transphobia tw #nazis tw

[edenfenixblogs]

"Night" is Free if You're an Audible Subscriber

A lot of people's only experience with learning about the Holocaust is Anne Frank's Diary or works of fiction.

Anyone speaking about i/p right now NEEDS to read this first person account of life in a concentration camp.

There is a right way and a wrong way to read this book.

The right way: Sit with the uncomfortable feeling that non-Jewish people did this to Jews. Not just Germans and not just Nazis. The European leaders who aligned with Hitler and fought with him did this. The Russians who distributed and popularized the antisemitic conspiracy theories which informed much of Europe's Jew hatred at the time did this. The neighbors who sat back and watched as government officials carted off people they knew and saw every day or shot them in the streets and buried them in mass graves. The ones who convinced themselves they were good people simply because they didn't pull the trigger or operate a gas chamber. The citizens of nations of the Allied powers who turned away Jewish refugees from Europe. The Nazi sympathizers in the US. The vast ,expansive hatred against Jews that prevented anyone from intervening on our behalf.

Sit with the fact that nobody intervened to protect Jews, ever. The Allied powers intervened to stop German expansionism, not to protect Jews. They did not fight in WWII to protect Jews. That any Jews survived at all is a miracle. The fact that the camps were liberated at all is a miracle. Because it wasn't a goal. It wasn't something that people were fighting to achieve. That's what people don't seem to understand.

Killing Jews WASN'T the thing that the Allied powers had a problem with.

Plenty of Americans and Europeans from Allied nations thought it sure was a shame that Hitler was so aggressively expansionist, because he had some great ideas about how to kill all those Jews.

And unless you're Jewish, there is the extremely uncomfortable but likely chance that someone you loved was pretty OK with killing my family.

Or, at the very least, that someone killing my family was not something they had the emotional capacity or willingness to engage with. Think about what that does to my trust for YOU. And if you don't think that someone you loved passed on that apathy and antisemitism to you, then you're naive.

The only correct way for a non-Jew to read this book is to sit with who they are as people and think about how they treat Jews and try to empathize with how this indescribable tragedy affected and continues to affect Jews worldwide.

If you have never read this book, I want you to think long and hard about how absolutely terrifying it is for Jewish people that, I, a Jewish woman, have to BEG non-Jews to read it. Because your education system failed you. And because Jews are afraid that YOUR BEHAVIOR WILL DO THIS TO US AGAIN.

The wrong way: Making this true memoir about living through an industrialized genocide about ANYTHING other than antisemitism and antisemitic apathy. You don't get to use it to draw parallels to other atrocities or wars or people. At least not during/while processing your first reading of this book. Why? Because until you sit with your own internalized antisemitism, where and who it came from, and are willing to confront your own hate toward us, then you are missing the point. The point is that people can convince themselves they are good and that they care about their fellow humans and they can have empathy for everyone except Jews. Sure, they might think it's sad that bad things keep happening to Jews. But it never really seems to be the priority, does it? It never seems to be a pressing enough issue to be worth addressing. There's always something more important happening.

That's antisemitic thinking too. You do, actually, need to prioritize dismantling your antisemitism in order to, you know, dismantle it. Just because you don't sit around daydreaming about Hitler doesn't mean you're not antisemitism. Ignoring us is part of your antisemitism--one of the most damaging and intrinsic parts of antisemitism actually. The Holocaust did not happen because most people hated Jew enough to kill us. The Holocaust happened because a bunch of people didn't care enough Jews to stop the people who DID want to harm us.

If you can't think of the last time you tried to unlearn something antisemitic within yourself, then people like you are why the Holocaust happened. If you have had to tune out Jewish pain because it feels like a "distraction," then people like you are why the Holocaust happened. If your reaction to reading this is to feel some kind of righteous anger that I've called you a bad person because you have proof you care about other people, then you are the kind of person who allowed the Holocaust to happen. And you're also wrong.

Because I'm not calling you a bad person. I'm calling you a flawed person who has the ability to fix a flaw that has the potential to harm others. I'm not asking you to care about other, non-Jewish, people. And I'm not asking you to STOP caring about the non-Jewish people you care about.

What I am saying is that claiming that you care about Jewish people is not the same as actually caring about us.

I'm asking you to sit and read this book and to remember that it is about JEWISH PAIN and a JEWISH TRAGEDY that happened to JEWISH PEOPLE. You need to actually devote time to caring about Jewish people, because society never taught you how to do that, and it has no infrastructure built to help you do that. Because antisemitism is baked into the infrastructure itself. Take the time. Read the book. Let Jewish pain be about Jewish people. Let us own our own tragedy. Do not take it from us to apply to other situations. ESPECIALLY not when the actual original situation was something that nobody cared about enough to prevent.

Understand this: If you're not Jewish, there is no way I can explain to you how painful it is to watch people be so invested in likening every terrible thing that happens to any other group of people to the Holocaust, when those same people never actually first tried caring about the Holocaust and the people it actually happened to.

#an eden original #elie wiesel #antisemitism #holocaust inversion #leftist antisemitism #shoah tw #holocaust tw #night

[fdelopera]

Antisemites are going mask-off. And we Jews see you.

So some shit for brains antisemite sent me this message the other day. This is one of several antisemitic Anons I've gotten recently, but this one is the most blatant.

My first response was to taunt them. I thought of writing something like this:

"Hey, you fucking loser, you forgot the part of your Nazi script where you try to deny that the Holocaust happened. Lame ass motherfucker, you can't even get your own lies right. Next time you try harassing a Jew online, at least try to tow the Nazi party line, you white supremacist. Also, you fucking COWARD, how dare you come to my inbox on Anonymous. If you’re going to tell me you wish I would die in a Nazi gas chamber, at least have the common courtesy to tell me your username so I know who I am blocking."

But then, I thought: No. That's not how to respond. Because that's not what this is about.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. Making fun of a stupid a Nazi by telling them that they forgot to deny the Holocaust when they decided to harass me for being a Jew — that is gallows humor of the darkest kind. But a morbidly glib zinger of a reply doesn’t actually address the real issue here.

The real issue is that a lot of you with antisemitic tendencies have been going completely mask-off the last few weeks, and you have been diving headfirst into Jew-hatred.

You are finally feeling liberated to speak the Jew-hating words that you have been dying to say.

You have been practically champing at the bit to tell a Jew that you wished there would be another Holocaust so you could get rid of all those millions of "bad Jews" that you don’t like, and now you feel liberated to scream those words from the rooftops.

Over the last few weeks, we Jews have been watching you, some of you that we considered to be friends, and we’ve seen many of you turn on us and spit out the most vile, hateful things about us.

And we know exactly what you will be doing when the next Nazi craze spreads like wildfire from country to country, throughout cities and towns.

You like to claim that you would have been punching Nazis in the face during World War II. You like to claim that you would have protected us. Some of you even like to claim that you would have sheltered us, like the heroes who hid Anne Frank.

But we know better.

No. That’s all just romantic bullshit that some of you like to tell yourselves to make yourselves feel important.

In reality, you would have been deciding who is a "good Jew" and who is a "bad Jew." You would have been deciding who you should rat out to the police for a reward. You wouldn’t be protecting us! You would be saying, "I really don't like that Jew. I’m going to go tell the Gestapo about them." Or worse, you would be saying, "Oh, that Jew over there, they’re just an animal. They’re barely human. The Nazis can kill them, I don’t care."

Most of the people who turned against their Jewish neighbors in Nazi occupied Europe weren't monstrous, inhuman beasts. Most of them were people, just like you, who had been conditioned to hate Jews by nearly two thousand years of Christian antisemitism coupled with a targeted campaign of white supremacist propaganda. This widespread antisemitism allowed the Nazis to transform an irrational and enculturated feeling of distrust towards Jews into a feeling of intense hatred, where gentiles demonized Jewish people and blamed "those Jews" for all the bad things that were happening in the world.

And the white supremacists are doing it again. And YOU are falling for their trap. Again!

Don't you get it? This is the oldest trick in the book! Periods of antisemitic violence usually erupt every 70-100 years or so, after most of the Jewish elders who hold the living memory of the last genocide have all passed away. And the Holocaust was 80 years ago. And here we are. Again.

And just like the Christians in Europe who turned on their Jewish neighbors, you are starting to turn on us.

You buy into antisemitic conspiracy theories, just like the white supremacists do.

You stand in the streets, screaming "gas the Jews" and "die Jews die."

You sound like the Proud Boys. You sound like Nazis. Do you even hear yourselves???

You pretend that all Jews are all a monolith and a hive mind, and you try to convince yourselves that we are all a proxy for the fucking Israeli government, which the vast majority of Jews fucking despise. If we could, trust me, most of us would strangle Netanyahu with our bare hands.

You celebrate Jewish deaths because you have convinced yourselves that killing a random Jewish civilian is "just the same" as killing Netanyahu, because you have manipulated yourselves into believing that all Jews are the Israeli government.

And you don't see how fucking STUPID that is!!

Jewish people are no more the Israeli government than YOU are YOUR government.

A people are NOT their government.

According to Tumblr statistics, nearly half of you reading this will be from the US. Shall I blame YOU personally for the actions of the US government? Of course fucking not! And you'd better fucking not blame random Jews for Netanyahu!

And some of you Jew-haters, in pretending that Jews are all a monolith and a hive mind, even say vile, antisemitic shit like, "Looks like the Jews are becoming the Nazis."

You choose those words carefully, twisting the Shoah, our greatest tragedy, into a knife. You try to weaponize the slaughter of our people against us. You try to reduce the 6 million of us who were murdered into a white supremacist meme.

YOU SOUND LIKE THE FUCKERS AT A TRUMP RALLY, FOR FUCKS SAKE. DO YOU EVEN HEAR YOURSELVES???

And you do that to dehumanize us. You do that to feel morally superior. You do that to feel less uncomfortable when you laugh at our deaths.

But we know that WE are not becoming Nazis. But YOU are. The reason you say that shit about us is because YOU are projecting YOUR insecurities onto us.

Because you know that you are slowly, insidiously being coopted by the Nazi ideology of David Duke and Richard Spencer.

And perhaps somewhere deep down, you feel uneasy about it. So you accuse Jews of being a monolith, a hive mind, and then you say stupid antisemitic shit like, "Maybe the Jews are the Nazis after all."

And you say that to yourselves so that you can turn off your empathy and celebrate as you watch us die.

What a disgusting way to try to absolve yourselves of YOUR guilt.

And we Jews are watching you. We’re watching you very carefully. And when the dust settles, you will have found that we have vanished from your life.

Very soon, you won’t see us again.

And no, that won't be because we'll be walking into the gas chambers, as much as you'd like us to, like some historical movie about the Holocaust that you watched when you were a child but turned off halfway through because you just didn't care.

NEVER AGAIN MEANS NEVER AGAIN.

As much as we know that you ENJOY watching our deaths (sanitized, of course, with a blur filter over the video so that you don’t have to feel too guilty about watching us being tortured and murdered), that’s not the reason you won’t be seeing us again.

The reason you won’t be seeing us again is because we will be walking out of YOUR life.

You have lost us as friends, and you might not even know it yet.

We are gone from your life, because we know that we can’t trust you.

We know that when the Nazis come to our community and march down the street hoisting their swastikas and doing their Sieg Heils (I've seen it with my own eyes) … when the Nazis harass us Jews in the street (I've seen it with my own eyes) … when the Nazis SHOOT US DEAD (it happened at a synagogue a block away from my synagogue, and many of those who saw it will never open their eyes again) — we know you won’t help us.

You will shove us into the line of fire.

And we know that you’ll absolve your conscience, so you won’t feel too bad about our deaths. You’ll tell yourselves, “It’s okay. Why should I have protected that one? That one was a bad Jew.”

We Jews see you. We see your hypocrisy on full display.

And we are telling you this:

If you see Jewish civilians being tortured and murdered, no matter what country they are from, and your first response is to CELEBRATE … if your first response is to post memes that say shit like, "The Jews fucked around and found out" … if your first response is to say that mass murdering Jews is "brutal but justified" … if your first response is to behave like a Q-Anon believer or a MAGA-hat wearing Republican and treat all Jews like we're a monolith, a hive mind…

When THAT is your response to seeing a tragedy unfolding, you are a FAILED ally, and a FAILED advocate.

You are an antisemite.

But mostly, you are just a really horrible, shitty person.

And we don’t want you in our life.

#jumblr #judaism #jewish #jewblr #a message to the next person who sends antisemitic bullshit to my inbox - at least don't be a fucking coward about it! #sending anon harassment like this is the most chickenshit thing you can do #and no i won't be turning off anon so that if there are more cowards who want to send anon messages i'll be able to block them #oh and as always i'll be monitoring the comments and if anyone posts antisemitic bullshit here i will be reporting and blocking you #antisemitism tw #holocaust tw #shoah tw #nazi tw

[jaymesdoodles]

I am begging people to care about jews. I am begging people to also care about jews. I am begging people to just recognize jews. I am begging people to include jews in your activism. I am begging goyim to care just an ounce about jews. I am begging people to include jews in the minorities you care about. I am begging people to learn about Judaism and its history. I am begging people to recognize jews as human beings. I am begging goyim to care about jews not only when it's most convenient for you. I am begging for people to care about jews not only when something bad happens to them. I am begging for you to love jews more than you hate and want to punch a nazi. I am begging for goyim to understand that jewish hatred is at the core of nazism and the holocaust. I am begging for goyim to know about jewish atrocities and history that aren't just the holocaust. I am begging for people to learn about jewish history that isn't JUST atrocities. I am begging for people to learn about jewish culture and peoplehood. I am begging for goyim to just at least wish your jewish friends and peers happy holidays. I beg that you learn that not all of our holidays are happy. I am begging you just know jews are people. They are incredibly small minority. One that deserves respect and recognition. One that deserves care. One that deserves that people pay attention to antisemitism and judenhass. But jews also deserve more than just to be the hate that they people give them. They deserve to just be people. Like anyone else. So I will beg. Even if you don't listen.

#jaymes talks #Judaism #jumblr #antisemitism #judenhass #shoah tw #holocaust tw

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

USAmericans are aggressively committed to taking all of the worst lessons from WW2 and misremembering it in all of the most destructive ways, including but not limited to:

-that there's such a thing as a "good war" for the US fight in, which is why every act of post-war conflict and empire-building by the United States is relentlessly compared to WW2 (i.e. "Hussein/Gaddafi/Assad/Putin/Xi is the new Hitler!!

-that the United States has a strong ideological commitment to antifascism (lol) as if Nazi racial theories and strategies of conquest weren't copped straight from the United States' regime of racial apartheid and settler-colonialism, and also that the entire Nazi military and scientific apparatus wasn't immediately folded into the US empire at the end of the war

-related to the above, that Argentina/LatAm became the no. 1 haven for Nazi war criminals to get away scot-free post-war and not NASA and NATO

-that WW2 was a war between "liberal democracy" and "authoritarianism/totalitarianism" and that the Nazis and the Soviet Union were the same thing (e.g. the "double genocide" myth) creating the basis of anticommunist mythology ever since

-that Israel as an apartheid ethnostate needs to be aggressively defended as penance for the Holocaust

-that nuclear bombs save people and it was morally excusable to liquefy a quarter of a million people because Japan was too crazy to surrender or negotiate

#n*zi mention #holocaust tw #shoah tw

[rainbowlack]

Something I see make its way through goyische leftist spaces is the idea that "Israel should know better"/"didn't they learn from the Holocaust?"

And they don't see a problem with that idea. They don't see why that phrasing is actively harmful.

Look closer, though.

Look closer, and you'll see that this idea implies that the Holocaust was a lesson to learn, rather than a travesty and atrocity.

It implies that, in one way or another, we somehow "deserved" the Holocaust.

It harkens back to a very Christian idea of redemption; that redemption is achieved through punishment, thus whatever punishment a sinner receives is warranted.

So, then, we—the Jews—received the ultimate punishment, for we are the ultimate sinners.

And we should be grateful, really, because we got that opportunity to learn.

It demands that Jews should be grateful for the Holocaust, and we're acting ungrateful.

So, the Jew is still treated as the ultimate sinner, deserving of the ultimate punishment.

How else will (((they))) learn?

(Also, it is not your place to declare yourself Zionist or anti-Zionist if you are not Jewish. And this is not the time or place to have that discussion.)

(Also—because I know the reading comprehension on this site is piss-poor, and that this post has a chance of breaching containment, I shall add—I am in no way supporting how Palestinians are treated. Palestinians deserve recognition as a people. Palestinians deserve to live in safety and comfort and joy.

But bringing up centuries-old antisemitic propaganda helps nobody, and it only perpetuates harm.

If you want to support Palestinian people, you will not achieve that by making Holocaust comparisons, and you will not achieve that by blaming Jews for their own oppression.)

#self post #jumblr #judaism #antisemitism tw #nazism tw #holocaust tw #shoah tw

[positivelybeastly]

Do you think you can explain in explicit detail why Percy's version of beast doesn't work?

All right, so, hopefully you can forgive me for taking a bit of time to come to this ask, because it's quite the subject matter, and it's one I take very seriously. I want you to have a good answer or no answer at all.

In order to explain why Percy's Beast doesn't work, we first need to establish a continuity for Beast, and why and how he works.

Which is why it's a good thing I have a 14 page Google Doc that goes into detail about all of this, which I'm going to drag and drop here:

Beast in the Krakoan era is a fascist mutant supremacist, who believes that the ends justify the means; he's cold-hearted, cruel, endlessly self-justifying, unfunny, shortsighted, and overall, a bastard. He is without nuance - and it's not just me saying that, that's both the writer and the characters saying that. He has, apparently, always been evil, and all it took was power for his true self to come out.

This does not jive with any of his characterisation prior to this point. Don't believe me? Let's deep dive.

Hank McCoy was born in Dunfee, Illinois to two very normal human parents. His mutation was apparent from the moment he was born, due to his father taking an enormous dose of radiation after an accident at the nuclear power plant he worked at, and while it would occasionally raise an eyebrow, he was able to hide what he was for the first 15-17 years of his life (Marvel ages are vague, but Hank is usually portrayed as the oldest of the O5, so we'll just say he was 17). He was recruited for the X-Men by Charles Xavier after his parents were taken hostage by a Z-list supervillain called the Conquistador, who wanted Hank to steal components from his father's place of work.

I should note that already, pre-X-Men, Hank did not believe in giving obvious supervillains nuclear power plant components, and gave the Conquistador a box full of flashbangs that disoriented him and his goons before defeating them in a fight. He did the right thing, at potential great personal cost to him and his parents, whom he loves very much.

Xavier then proceeded to step in, and, depending on the continuity, wiped the minds of everyone Hank had ever loved of the memory of him, so as to keep him 'safe,' or wiped the mind of Hank's first love, a girl called Jennifer Nyles, who is consistently depicted as being the woman who encouraged Hank to step out of his shell and do something with his obvious natural physical and intellectual gifts. Either way, this quite irritated Hank, and mere hours after he had put on his X-Men uniform, he was already about to fight the Professor over an egregious breach of mental privacy and security. But because he believed in what the Professor espoused, he let it slide.

It's worth noting that this mindwipe was seemingly undone later, because there are comics released both before and after Mike Carey's Origins issue that depict Hank having a deeply loving relationship with his parents. This will be important for later.

Now, a lot of people love to point to Uncanny X-Men #8 as the first evidence that Hank has always been a supervillain in disguise, and while I think it's a little egregious to point to any issue of any 60s comic book and say that anyone acts in a way that is sensible, moral, or decent, it's worth noting that the act in question, dialling up Unus the Untouchable's powers to a point where he can't control them, is in direct response to Unus attempting to defeat/kill the rest of the X-Men, or at the very least, hand them over to Magneto (who, let's not forget, in the 60s was a homicidal maniac happy to nuke entire countries). Is the response of threatening Unus with a slow death by starvation disproportionate? Yeah, it is.

Scott and the rest of the X-Men seem completely fine with it.

So, now you have to ask yourself - do we accept the morality of the time, and assume that Hank was basically justified to do what he did, to save his team and stop a dangerous mutant, or do we judge him for acting like a supervillain would, and thus everyone else on the team is fine with it? Iunno. That's a personal judgement. It's 60s X-Men, it's shit. I basically hardly regard it as canon, and given that any time anyone comes on to the Reddit board looking to start X-Men gets waved away from starting there, it clearly isn't regarded as very well written, is it? Maybe we regard it as a point for him to grow past? After all the very next issue, Cyclops starts a fight with the Avengers over jack fuck nothing, just because Professor Xavier told him to, and he clearly outgrew that.

All right, so let's speed forward a little bit. Hank's been an X-Man for around 3 years when he gets a job with the Brand Corporation, a scientific research company in Long Island. People love to bring up the fact that it's a subsidiary of Roxxon, who are notoriously evil, or that it has its own nefarious plans going on, but we don't judge people who work at Cat Chow for the fact that Nestle is fucking evil, do we? Hank didn't know. He was a 20 year old scientist with budding aspirations of helping the world in ways he couldn't with the X-Men. So, what was he researching?

Now, this is where we get into a bit of a sticky wicket, because this has been retconned to hell, but in the original version of events, set in the early 1970s, Hank is working as a scientist at Brand when he finds out that the Secret Empire want to steal his research into genetic mutation. Understandable thing for him to want to research, given his father's accident and his own obvious mutation, and an understandable thing for the Empire to want to steal, especially given what his research had resulted in.

In the process of Hank's research, he manages to isolate the chemical/hormonal extract that causes mutation - naturally occurring, it's also the basis for MGH, or Mutant Growth Hormone, which later becomes used by humans all around the world to obtain temporary mutant powers. But this can't be attributed to Hank, especially since he goes to great efforts to destroy all of his research, rather than let it fall into the hands of spies.

Now, this is the point that everyone likes to point to as the moment that Hank reveals his true colours, as a true mad scientist, a Jekyll hiding a Hyde - except that even just hours after his mutation, even in the midst of a rage at his own stupidity, Hank attacks Professor Maddicks, one of the Empire spies, and tries to kill him. He has him dead to rights, he's strangling him, it would be easy.

He stops. He can't bring himself to do it.

It's worth noting that Hank already starts to show signs of a marked personality change here. Gone is the long winded, stuffy, Superman curled Beast of the 60s - now we have the grey furred Beast of the 70s, soon to turn blue due to the limitations of comic book printing. He cuts himself off from the X-Men, starts to fall into depressive slumps and fits of mania, which is a personality pattern he falls into regularly, leading to a lot of people, including myself and Grant Morrison, to consider Hank bipolar. Obviously, here, it's exacerbated by his mutation and his extreme circumstances, but it's something he comes back to, again and again. It also explains why he decides to attack Iron Man, also investigating Brand, and nearly kills him.

It's also worth noting that this is the first appearance of the Beast - not just Hank's codename, his mutation has now given him an animal bloodlust that he struggles to keep control of, not unlike Wolverine. This is something to keep in mind because it helps frame Hank's self-hatred, which is often brought up but not really examined as a character trait, and especially later on, it becomes clear that Hank hates himself for a good number of reasons.

For one, he makes dumb, impulsive decisions, usually with the best of intentions, and he chews himself out for one he made already, turning himself into a furry monster. For another, he hates the part of himself that wants to hurt people. To call forward many, many years into the future, Hank doesn't believe in the law of the jungle. He believes in art, and literature, and music. He believes in humanity. He desperately wants to maintain his own, and he hates his mutation because it literally makes him less human every time, it makes his impulses harder to control, it makes him dangerous - and oh, it does make him dangerous.

And here's the thing. Beast nearly kills Iron Man (or at least, he thinks he has, Mastermind is in play), and the moment he realises what he's done, he screams in anguish and runs away, hating himself. "Humans can't catch me there." He believes himself to be less than human - not because he's a mutant, but because he regressed to animal behaviour and thinks he's killed someone. What a monster, right? What a villain!

"During that fight, I saw his face up close - and got a hint of what's behind it. I saw a soul in torment - and I can't play God with that."

All right, so now we have to take a sideways trip, and go to X-Men Unlimited vol 2 #10, which depicts Hank going home to his parents right after he turned grey. It's honestly a kind of hard read, because if the Beast's rampage was his mania ramped up to eleven, this is his depression ramped up to twelve. He staggers through the streets like a ghost, unwilling to let anyone see what he looks like. "I could have been someone, Jennifer. A lonely high school kid with big, big fears and big, big dreams, I could have done something really wonderful. I could have become anyone, done almost anything. But now, Jennifer, now just look at me."

The story is called Ghost in the Graveyard, and it's aptly named because this is the moment Hank grows into who he's truly meant to be. His ego, which drove him to consume his research and nearly kill, is dead. He believes he is worthless, he believes he's fit only to flit between the waking moments of the living when they aren't looking. "What would you think of me if I was to tell you how terrified I am of everything right now, Jennifer?"

He saves his hometown, incidentally. Even while sleeping for days, depressed, barely eating, he still has enough curious spirit and intelligence to work out that the radiation coming from the bodies of people who worked in the same plant as his father has contaminated the water table, the soil, even the townsfolk. Jennifer tells him they should go to the newspapers, and he tells her he can't. He can't bear to. He can't bear to be seen. He reveals his appearance to her, and she tries to kiss him softly on the forehead, but he still can't bear it. He runs.

"Perhaps, then, a ghost is nothing more than a memory. A memory of who we once were, before we become what we must."

And this is the moment that Hank McCoy decides to run back to New York and join the Avengers.

Out of a moment of sheer despair, out of a moment of shame and guilt, out of a moment of self-hatred so deep he can barely get out of bed, he grasps onto hope, and the desire to do good, and he does it. He goes to New York, and he decides he's going to be a good man. And he is. He's a very good man.

He saves the Avengers from the Stranger at his team tryout. He becomes a master of disguise so adept he passes himself off as the President of the United States and gives a speech that makes the Squadron Supreme question their own spurious morality. He saves Henry Pym's life from a super-microbe. He's almost singlehandedly the reason that Patsy Walker becomes Hellcat, a storied superhero in her own right. He's the one who reaches out to Simon Williams, Wonder Man, former villain, and becomes his best friend in the whole world. He becomes the third mutant Avenger (technically first, depending on Wanda and Pietro's current genetic status), and the first X-Man to cross over. He becomes one of the most popular, celebrated, and beloved mutants on the planet.

Yet, he still cares enough for his friends that the moment the X-Men need him, even though they don't think to call him, he puts it all at risk. He catches the Hellfire Club's police call during the middle of the Dark Phoenix Saga, wipes the tapes, and abandons his post as a prestigious Avenger, a position Cyclops says he loves . . . to be with his original team. He's integral to them standing a chance against her, fashioning the diadem that immobilises Jean and gives Cyclops and Xavier the chance to shut away the Dark Phoenix for a short time - enough that Jean, or the Phoenix, or whatever is walking around in that story, can put together a plan to deal with herself.

He gets zapped to an alien spaceship, and the first damn thing he does is make a Wizard of Oz joke, then he calls Lilandra out for lack of due process.

Throughout the 70s and 80s, Hank becomes one of the most popular heroes in-universe, instantly recognisable and on first name terms with almost every hero. He goes through his hardships. His own mother struggles with his mutation, calling him a freak in a moment of despair, only to realise that no matter what he looks like, he's still her boy - still the man who throws himself in the direct path of Professor Power's attack to save a child.

One of my favourites is Avengers 209. Hank's girlfriend is poisoned by a Skrull, and he's forced to go back in time and fetch the two halves of the Resurrection Stone back to save her. One of the pieces is in the hands of a concentration camp prisoner in 1945, who keeps using it to try and hold on to his dead family, and Hank breaks down into sobbing tears as he begs in Yiddish for the man to please let go and be at peace. His heart breaks for a man he's never met because his pain is so mighty and so vast and it's so damned unfair.

But even when he has the Resurrection Stone in his hands, and he can use it to save Vera, he destroys it instead, rather than give it to the Skrull and risk the power being in any one man's hand. He puts his own wants and desires to the side, and hopes that another man smarter than him can save Vera, who's put in suspended animation and later saved by Daimon Hellstrom. Hank joins the Defenders at around this point, and goes through quite a bit, including quite the humbling as he realizes that he may be cock of the walk, but he's not yet a leader - or maybe never a leader.

One of the accusations I've seen aimed at Hank is that he resents Cyclops for being made leader of the X-Men, and I honestly don't see where this comes from, but it's not something I think has any truth to it. Hank almost actively avoids leadership where he can, because he knows he can't make hard decisions like who to leave behind, who to let die, who to hurt. Indeed, the one time we see him lead the X-Men, it's in Grant Morrison's New X-Men, where the strain of it causes him to break down and turn to Kick just to keep going. X-Club, a team of his creation, is barely in its infancy before he leaves, and it's pretty clear that Beast just . . . doesn't, care, about being a leader. He knows he's not good at it. He knows he can't inspire like Captain America. He knows he can't strategise like Cyclops. He knows that.

It's also at this point that Hank is called out in public for not doing enough for mutants, coasting on his celebrity and acting the clown - and he takes on the criticism. He becomes more politically active, forming an advocacy group. As we learn later on in Secret Avengers, he also becomes fast friends with a secret mutant politician by the name of Leonard Gary, and he's present at multiple meetings of Congress where Lenny blocks Senator Kelly's anti-mutant legislation. Way later on, he helps Lenny push through workers rights laws during Fear Itself, and makes sure that he can give a speech inspiring the nation at a time when they needed it most.

Now we move on to X-Factor, where Hank has his ups and downs, but it's significant that it starts with him being publicly discriminated against by no less than 15 universities for his visible mutation. His response? To call them a bunch of racists, strip off his clothes, and tell them to go hang. He doesn't descend into self-pity, he gets angry and embarrasses them the only way he knows how. But it's interesting, because Hank starts the series wanting to teach, and in a way, he gets to do precisely that. Enter young mutants Fire Fist, Boom Boom, Skids, Wiz Kid, Artie Maddicks, Leech, and Rictor.

Rictor is the kid that Hank becomes closest to. He teaches him to read, encourages him in learning how to use his powers, plays with him - when his intelligence is reduced by a quirk of mutation, he's still aware and good enough that he attacks someone scaring Julio. He fucks up a ton in this series, especially with Boom Boom, with him and Iceman being downright dicks to her, and there's no real excuse for it - but it's kind of important that Hank wants to learn to teach, and he has to learn. He's not immediately good at it. He softens. He gets better. In fact, in an alternate universe not dissimilar to 616, Forge remarks that no-one was quite as patient and as good a teacher as Hank.

Then we come to the 90s, where Hank is faced with his biggest challenge yet - the Legacy Virus - and his biggest moral failing yet - Threnody. Now, this is where I kinda have to call out the Cerebrocast, because there's this narrative that Hank is an Avenger narc who will sell mutants down the river at the drop of a hat, and I'm fairly certain it stems from the moment when Hank surrenders Threnody over to Sinister.

It's not a great look, tbh. I wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't touch Sinister with a thirty foot barge pole. I certainly wouldn't leave a vulnerable woman with him. But Sinister is an excellent manipulator, and he plays Hank like a fiddle here. He points out that Hank won't cross certain moral and ethical boundaries. "Admitting it, and despising the choice are the first steps toward changing the indecision that has ruled Xavier's roost of late." Sinister is very canny about playing Hank's fear of inferiority, of not being good enough to save everyone, of not living up to his potential, against him. It's also worth noting that Rogue and Iceman don't seem to disagree with Hank's decision, and while I believe he's acting as field leader here, these are not people who would let something like an 'order' stop them from doing what they feel is right.

It kills Hank to do this. He feels dirty, unwashed, like a piece of shit on humanity's shoe, for doing this. He risks Infectia's - or rather, Josephine's - powers infecting all of them with the Legacy Virus she's dying of, because he needs to do something human, something good, something compassionate, or else all he's left with is the bad. "Henry McCoy holds her, tears flowing freely, not just for the loss of another life, but for what Infectia's death has meant to him. For in granting her last wish, Hank contradicted the scientist in himself for the sake of the man."

What a villain, right?

It's also worth noting that we see Threnody again, in X-Men #34. She's lucid, in control of her powers, vibrant. "Threnody, dear lass! I am both pleased, relieved, and - I must confess - a bit surprised to see you so lucid? No offence meant, of course." "And none taken, Dr. McCoy. When we first met, I was rather a headcase, wasn't it? I want you to know, Doctor, that going with Sinister was the best thing that could have happened to me."

Hmmmmm.

"I've thought about you and worried quite a bit over the decision we made to allow Sinister to take you with him. Seeing you here and doing so well, rather uplifts my spirits - but it beggars the question, why do you stay?" "Dr. McCoy. You're sweet. But isn't this a better life than the one I had?"

HMMMMMMMM.

"Thren, I'm concerned about you. You seem to be playing a very dangerous game here. I cannot in good conscience allow you to stay here and play in this danger zone any longer." "You have no choice, Hank. There's knowledge and glory [here] . . . and I want that, too."

HMMMMM???

All right, whatever, let's keep it moving, on to the point where Hank undergoes his most drastic change yet.

It's the year 2001. Hank is on the X-Treme X-Men team, and they're searching for Destiny's diaries foretelling the future. Putting himself in harm's way to try and save Psylocke's life, telling her to go on and leave him, he's forced to watch as Vargas kills her - and poses her on top of his own fatally wounded body for the rest of the team to find. Barely hanging on to life, he sits in a Spanish hospital room, until Sage decides to take matters into her own hands.

"But despite your appearance and the name they call you I will assume you are a man and not a beast . . . and that you have a soul - !"

"He has a soul, padre. Bright and shining as the stars."

She jumpstarts the next evolution of Hank McCoy, and he becomes feline. He loses a finger on each hand. His animal instincts explode into the forefront of his brain. His hormones are blazing. His brain is on fire. He's doing the best he can to cope, but it's - hard. Yet he still finds it within himself to be there for others first of all. He mentors Beak, serving as an example of a physical mutant who's made something of himself. He tries to counsel Scott and Jean through their ailing marriage. He reaches out to Emma, and they become fast friends. Meanwhile, Genosha burns, students are killed, and Cassandra Nova rips him to pieces and picks on those fears of devolution that have been skirting in the back of his mind for decades, bringing them right back to the front of his mind.

"Remember when you looked almost human in the mirror? Then it started. The fall from man to ape, from ape to feline. Poor ugly Henry McCoy. There's no place for you in ANY mutant future. You're a devolver! Zoo animal. Stumbling backwards down the tree of life."

This, coupled with Trish Tilby's decision to break up with him over allegations of bestiality from her coworkers, shatters his psyche, and he arguably never recovers until his body changes again in All-New X-Men. He covers up his body almost all of the time, he overdresses in human clothes and uniforms that are a stark contrast to his old X-shorts, he becomes more verbose, more mature, more bipolar, more depressed, more lonely. And yet, even through all of this, with the help of his friends, especially Jean Grey, he starts to recover. He starts to become more like his old self.

In Astonishing X-Men, he even starts to show a bit more skin and fur as time goes on and he gets further away from Cassandra Nova's attack. And then it gets worse. The mutant cure. "I used to have fingers, a mouth you could kiss." Cassandra Nova, living on in his friend Emma Frost's guilt, attacks him again, and pushes him further, causing him to feast on human flesh and nearly kill students. Pushing him further down the tree of life. And not only that, but he has to come face to face with the ghost of one of his greatest failures, that should have been his greatest success.

Roll it back to 2001. Just before the whole X-Treme X-Men thing, Hank manages to piece together a Legacy Virus cure, using fragments of his own research and Moira MacTaggert's - but he immediately regards it as a failure, not because it doesn't work, but because it would require a mutant to metabolise it and kill themselves in order for it to be released into the atmosphere. Hank regards the cost of one life to be too high, and locks the cure away - but not securely enough that Colossus can't get at it and use it anyway.

Colossus dies because of Hank, and it kills him inside. When he matches the mutant cure sample to Piotr's DNA sample, it mortifies him. It shames him. It deadens him. No good deed ever goes unpunished. Even while Scott and Emma are faffing around with relationship problems, Hank is quietly wallowing because this is his fault. He killed Piotr.

Well, he didn't. But he might as well have, right? He put the 'gun' in his hand.

But then we get to Abigail Brand, and man is this dynamic just Hank as hell. She's a government fist in green haired body suited form that doesn't care about your feelings, he's a blue furred idealist who constantly blames himself for everything and can do nothing but feel. They connect. Not because they're both awful people . . . but because they see in each other something that they like. For Hank, it's something base - she finds him sexually attractive, not in spite of but because of his mutation, and honestly, at this point? Being fetishised sounds kind of nice to Hank. For her?

She wants someone to keep her honest. Someone who will question her decisions. Someone who does nothing but question her decisions, in fact, because she fucked up, and she needs someone to call her out on her bullshit. Hm. Almost sounds like there's a human being behind those green shades.

More on this later.

Because we've started to reach the point where I'm told Hank's descent into villainy has started, and quite frankly, I'm not seeing it. He got sadder? He got more lonely (yes, the cat story happened, it's tragic and embarrassing, move on)? But villainous? "I always saw him as vulnerable," said Grant Morrison. "The thing about Hank McCoy is that he was always presented as the loquacious, happy-go-lucky character and then he became a little darker when [he turned into] the furry Beast, but then he became happy again in Avengers. Basically, I'm looking at this bipolar kid. It's not so much that he's a villain; he just falls into bad situations and that makes him more human."

If people mean Here Comes Tomorrow, then I invite you to read that story again and remember that Hank is only really present in maybe eight panels of that story. The rest of the time it's Sublime piloting his body, and Hank has nothing to do with it. You might as well blame anyone ever possessed by Malice for what they did while under her influence.

But anyway.

The Decimation.

What a time for mutant kind. 198 mutants left, and falling. And everyone is looking to Hank McCoy for answers. He'll do almost anything to get them . . . right? In comes Endangered Species by Mike Carey, wherein Hank scours the corners of the Earth and gets his hands dirty trying to find a way to kickstart the mutant race again. He consorts with villains, he exhumed corpses, he nearly kills a drug dealer who wants fresh MGH from him and Bishop's bodies. He's on very thin ice, and in danger of cracking. He is, quite literally, facing his darkest impulses.

Enter Dark Beast.

Now, Dark Beast has been a thing since the mid-90s, and honestly, I kind of love the guy because he's so incredibly and over the top evil - but I also kind of hate him because his very existence seems to make people think that Hank always had evil inside of him, that he was just born that way. How very Graydon Creed, to believe that evil is something people are born to be rather than something that people do or become. The truth is that Dark Beast was born into a world completely different from Hank's, and while we don't know the exact divergence point for him, X-Men Unlimited vol. 1 #10 provides us with some clues - namely, that he never knew his parents.

Hank's incredibly loving, incredibly guilty, incredibly proud parents.

The parents that Dark Beast, violent psychopath, mutant supremacist, literal killer of children and Age of Apocalypse's own Dr. Mengele . . . couldn't bring himself to kill, because they loved Hank McCoy so much, and on some level, Dark Beast recognised that. Felt afraid of it. Felt weakened by it. Felt infuriated by it. Had to kill a random passerby just to feel more like himself. Because they were just so damned good, and maybe if he'd had parents like that, maybe?

It's also worth noting that Dark Beast, both here in the 90s, and later in Endangered Species (2008), points out that Hank isn't him. "I told you when we started on this that we'd have to think the unthinkable, Henry. I knew you'd let me down. But I didn't think you'd reach your limits this quickly. [...] You're fighting for the future of your species. Did that slip your mind? It's the only fight that matters, Henry. It's the war in which nature enlists every last one of us. And you're a deserter."

Hmmm.

Where have I heard that before.

So, Hank gives up. He stops searching for a cure, because one doesn't exist - or if it does, it requires a moral sacrifice that he isn't capable of. He disappoints mutant kind, and it won't be the last time. He fails to find answers in 1906 San Francisco, he fails to keep the faith at Utopia, he fails to stop things from escalating at a demonstration and ends up captured by Osborn - and Dark Beast. What a pathetic sack of crap, right? How dare he fail. He should be more like Cyclops.

"We make the choice for ourselves. And we have to live with the consequences afterwards."

"I'll live with it."

"I said we. I need to live with it."

Hmm.

"Sometimes in war you have to do things that you hate. Things you can't even bear to think about. This is one of those times. [...] I'm not making that choice for any of you. If you have any doubts about what we're about to do, stand out of the line. No one will blame you or question you. Ever."

Hmmmmm.

"All's well that ends well, Scott?"

"Looks that way from here. Why? Something on your mind?"

"Something, yes. The fact that you decided to use the Legacy Virus before you asked me if I had a working antidote."

"Your conscience is one of the things I value about you, Hank. Really. Never stop challenging me on that."

HMMMMMMMM.

#CyclopsWasRight?

But whatever, let's keep moving on. Utopia's X-Force happens. It's bloody. It's messy. It's grim. Hank doesn't approve. Scott tries to keep him on side, but it's not easy. Eventually, it reaches a boiling point. Hank decides he can't stay anymore, because he's not effective in his current capacity. Scott doesn't need him anymore, he needs more guns and soldiers and mutants, and Hank can't make those anymore. He deserts. What a piece of shit, caring about morals at a time like this. What a traitor. Oh, it's also worth noting that before he died, Kurt found out about X-Force, and was on the verge of quitting the X-Men, just like Hank. Just a sidenote, by the way.

Now, I believe in fairness, and I don't believe in whitewashing Hank's actions, especially when he wouldn't want me to, so it's only fair to bring up the Ghost Box laser strike and the Secret Avenger nuclear bomb that Hank constructs. Clear examples of the slow erosion of his moral fibre on his way to becoming a villain.

Or he feels massively guilty, sickened, and disgusted about what he had to do, while both times, the leader that he tries his best to believe in and follow tells him not to lose sleep over it. Except, Hank does. Because that is the kind of character Hank is.

Hank McCoy is a "superheroic overcompensating altruist [...] perfectly nice people who think the universe is full of perfectly nice people." Hank McCoy is Scott Summers' "biggest brain and [his] oldest friend. Moment comes you have to take action, I'll never question it." Hank McCoy is "the most hard working, brilliant and heroic [person] I know." Hank McCoy is "a name well known in the great game of worlds. Others yous have done this before [...] simply evacuate this world, and then destroy it completely," rather than risk the destruction of two. Hank McCoy is "no killer [...] and no force, however great, could make you kill."

Hank is the man who reaches out to villains, and tries to help them. He did it with Wonder Man. He did it with Emma Frost. He did it with Infectia. Hank is the bleeding, dying heart of the X-Men. He believes in second chances. He believes in art, and literature, and music.

He doesn't believe in the law of the jungle.

I'd also like to point out, that even though he was called a traitor, and met with a frosty reception by the other X-Men when he asked for their help, he still came when they called for medical aid. He still held out hope that he and Scott would reconcile. He was one of the few people to look at the Phoenix Five and remember who they were before they got power, and believe that they could possibly control it. Even after Scott kills the Professor, even though Hank is furious with Scott, even though Scott literally says, "I've done abominable things. I don't ask for forgiveness. I don't deserve it. [...] But I'd do it all again"?

I guess you could read this a few different ways. Is Hank just pushing Scott out forcefully? Is he gentle? Is he squeezing his shoulder in a moment of what could almost be comfort? I don't know. I kinda think it's the latter. I think the best of Hank where I can.

"Thank god, Hank. You're alive. I was lost. I thought I killed y - "

Hank is still a man that Scott Summers wants to be alive, because Hank is good. Yeah, he can be FUCKING ANNOYING, and he can be hypocritical, and he can be an asshole, and he can be flawed, and he can be a nuisance, and he can be insufferable, but he is good.

Enter Brian Michael Bendis.

This is the point where Hank's character wrecks and arguably never recovers, to be honest. It's not just the small details. It's not just stupid things, like 17 year old Hank apparently being a medical doctor, or modern day super genius ultra mechanic Hank being incapable of putting a motorcycle back together for the sake of a joke. It's not even the egregious things, like Uncanny X-Men #600 and All-New X-Men #25 being a double header of literally everyone in the universe kicking Beast in the shins because Bendis wanted to write teenage Jean Grey as just the worst. It's just a fundamental misunderstanding of the character.

"Somewhere along the way you convinced yourself that your brilliance allows you the right to do whatever you want whenever you want to do it."

I'm sorry, fucking what?

If you're this far deep in this thesis - and it is a thesis, and I don't apologize for that - do you think this is the same character? This man who is obsessed with consequences, obsessed with guilt, obsessed with being perfect, obsessed with controlling himself, obsessed with morality . . . is convinced that he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants to do it? He learned this lesson 40 years ago! Beast is not like this!

Now, Bendis' Beast might be like this. But I have to ask you, reader, who presumably frequents comic book boards, or Reddit, or Tumblr tags, or Twitter . . . is Bendis the guy you go to for thoughtful, evocative, well considered characterisation? Is he on the level of Mark Waid, or Al Ewing, or Jonathan Hickman, or Grant Morrison, or Louise Simonson, or Marjorie Liu, or Rainbow Rowell, or Kelly Sue DeConnick? Is he known for respecting what came before and creating a throughline of character and continuity?

No, he fuckin' aint.

He's known for Bendis-speak. He's known for ignoring continuity. He's known for big shake-ups of established status quos that often leave characters in the doghouse for decades. Yeah, he can write some good comics, but I just - why is this man's characterisation of Beast considered the definitive one? Is the voice that shouts the loudest really the most articulate? Go ask a fan of the Scarlet Witch, or X-23, or Jon Kent, or GOTG fans about his entire run on that comic.

Beast wrecks here, and he never recovers. He loses his entire character development track about his mutation because it got changed. He loses his entire dynamic with Abigail. Everything good about 00s Beast is just gone, and there's nothing left to replace it but failure. Not really. Every now and then, someone tried to steer him back on the right path, get back to a more thoughtful, less dipshit Hank McCoy. A+X #12 by Christos Gage, and Uncanny Avengers by Jim Zub, both try the same trick, 4 years apart, having Hank reunite with his best friend Simon Williams and drink, and reflect on what's happened.

Each time, there's another crossover event that Hank has to answer for, because now Beast is the designated load. It happened in All-New X-Men, it happened in Black Vortex, it happened in IvX. It was just easy. He was never a guy with a massive fanbase, and all the casual fans filtered away as domino after domino falls. Every time, HOW DID I BECOME THIS?

Iunno. No-one seems to give enough of a fuck to answer the question. The real answer is that the writers need plot to happen, and, well.

Who cares if Beast is ruined? Well, I think Matthew Rosenberg cared a fair bit. I think Max Bemis cared quite a lot. I care, probably too much.

There are tons of little fun appearances here and there, mostly scattered across other books, that are more reminiscent of the Hank that used to be. Mariko Tamaki, in her last X-23 run, used him really nicely, having him take pictures of Laura and Gabby bonding, helping Laura run down immoral scientists (HA!), being a big man with a bigger bow tie. Being "the nerd I trust, so I like having him around," says Laura.

Hmm.

Well.

I have two points left to make. One? It is a stone cold, actual fact that we go from warm, intelligent, thoughtful, loved Beast, to Percy's narcissistic, cold, and genocidal war criminal in the space of maybe ten issues. The change was not gradual, it was abrupt. Read almost any comic prior to Krakoa featuring Beast in it, and he does not sound or act the same. Read the dialogue for X-Force #1 through 9, and tell me you can really tell that that's Beast.

Tell me that's the Hank McCoy that loves his human parents.

There's a reason everyone was speculating for the longest time that it was Dark Beast, or something else was afoot, because he sounds wrong. There's no jokes, no warmth, no charm, no energy. He's a slow, lifeless cadaver of a character, plodding along his course to become a Bond villain.

Two? There was a story to be told here. Hank has definitely toed the line a good few times before. Crossed it less times, but he did. Each time, it cost him. Each time, it hurt him. Each time, it left a scar upon his soul. Each time, maybe it got a little easier, but I don't genuinely think that's the case. I think that Hank McCoy is the kind of guy for whom it never gets easier to hurt people. The building blocks were there for a story where that man has to keep doing it, again and again, cutting away pieces of himself, because it's what Krakoa needs.

But that story would require sympathy, and I don't think that Ben Percy, "People who think that Beast is loveable have only read a small selection of comics," really has any sympathy for Beast. I think he finds him annoying. I think he finds him contemptible, and up himself. I think that Ben Percy believes that Beast is cold-hearted, cruel, endlessly self-justifying, unfunny, shortsighted, and overall, a bastard. I don't believe that was ever the case.

It makes me sad that the fandom believes that was ever the case.

His character was assassinated. It was assassinated back in 2013, and it's been being assassinated every month since 2019. The version of Beast that existed from 1981 to 2012 will be gone, dead - literally killed - when the classic version of him comes back at the end of X-Force. I liked the 1981-2012 version a lot. The version from 2012 to 2018, I liked a lot less. The version from 2019 onwards?

Don't go off vibes. Read the panels. Tell me what you think. Is that the same character?

Now we come to the end of my thesis. I feel like I've covered most of the main points here, but TL;DR?

Ben Percy's Beast doesn't work as a continuation of Hank's character, because his version of the character is an idiot. He is cruel, unfunny, lacking in any humanity, inherently evil, moustache twirling, disrespectful. He is without nuance. He is Mister Sinister in a blue fur coat without any of the camp.

The fact that people will go on Twitter or Reddit and say that they prefer this Beast over the old one makes me want to fucking spit because fuck you. Fuck you that you think that this travesty, this half-formed mish mash of Bond villain tropes and fat shaming stereotypes, is in any way better than what we had. Grow up. Read better comics. I hope to god you mature, because fuck, man.

Ben Percy's Beast doesn't work as a villain, either, because he's simultaneously incompetent, and yet constantly given karma houdinis that have no basis in his ability, only in the plot. Any semblance of grounding in the idea of 'necessary evils' is so fucking amateurish and put to paper with no real belief in it. Percy just thinks Beast is an asshole, it's as simple as that.

And you know what makes me feel vindicated? You know what makes me laugh?

Marvel really don't give a fuck about this version of Beast. They really just do not care and I get the distinct impression people can't wait for it to roll back. Don't believe me?

How come Nightcrawler is apparently gossiping with Hank in issues of She-Hulk that take place in the Krakoan era?

How come Hank is still appearing in Avengers and X-Men variant covers as his traditional, heroic self?

How come Marvel Age #1000, a self-styled "CELEBRATION OF THE MARVEL AGE OF COMICS," had an X-Men story that was about the O5 - and yet, really, it was about Jean and Scott falling in love, with Hank on the sidelines, gently nudging Jean in the right direction?

How come no-one appears to give a fuck that Beast, one of the pillars of the superhero community, killed a small country?

In-universe, there is no explanation. This is 'Blade begging Captain America and the Avengers to help kill all the vampires' level of disconnect. It makes everyone involved look like a goddamn psychopath.

Out of universe, it's because no-one is interested in this story. If writers other than Ben Percy wanted a villainous Hank McCoy, they would just use Dark Beast, because he's substantially more entertaining and charismatic and enjoyable as a villain than Percy's edgelord Beast.

Ben Percy is 44 years old, allegedly. I wouldn't know that, judging by the level of maturity with which he handles his villains. If he intended to write a mutant Henry Kissinger, then he failed, because Kissinger was pure evil, but he also, you know, made sense.

Percy's Beast is trash.

I write him on this blog with substantially more care and thought put into his character than Ben Percy ever could. Because even though I'm not the one getting paid to do so, I'm the one putting in the work to make it make emotional sense. There's a story there. There's a compelling character there. If only Ben would have put the fucking work in.

Thank you for your question. :)

#outofmuffins #ask #hank mccoy #henry mccoy #x-force #ben percy #genocide tw #body horror tw #holocaust tw #shoah tw #If you can think of other tags I should apply please lmk. #Sometimes I just get so angry. #Writers have a responsibility towards these characters. #They have a responsibility to respect them and treat them well. #No I don't ascribe to the idea that you should always put the toys back in the box. You can absolutely change them. #Just idk do it good?? #I get paid peanuts for electronic retail work and I put more effort into that than Ben Percy did this. #BECAUSE THIS COULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD. #IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO TRAGIC. #IT COULD HAVE BEEN TITANIC AND THE BEST HANK MCCOY STORY. #Instead it's the worst one by a country mile. #vinial453

[the-catboy-minyan]

I can’t even right now. I was watching this video about a woman who helped save Jewish children from the Nazis…and let’s look at some of the most recent comments.

“I wish she hadn’t saved them. Then now millions of Muslims in Gaza wouldn’t be bombed and killed right now.”

“I am sure if she was still alive, she would be standing with the Palestinians.”

These people are sick, and this shows that it isn’t about helping Palestinians for them. It’s just a mask to hide their antisemitism.

I'm assuming it's a YouTube video. report the comments, or if you have a twitter account, screenshot them and @ YouTube's account.

these comments are horrific, I'm at a loss for words, I just can't imagine seeing a video about a person who risked their life helping children escape the most vile genocide in history and say "she shouldn't have done that."

#asks #shoah tw #holocaust tw #holocaust inversion #I'm sorry anon

[quantumshade]

the fact that so many of you gentiles cum your pants over dhawan!master in a nazi uniform is frankly disgusting. i've gone over and over and over how bad that scene/sequence in the episode is and none of you seem to care

#every time i see a multi episode gifset of dhawan master there's always AT LEAST one of him as a fucking nazi. #what the fuck is wrong with you people #sigh. i'm in class rn but i might elaborate later i'm just so tired #doctor who #dhawan!master #antisemitism #shoah tw #nazi mention #delia.txt

[earlymodernlesbian]

i just can't get over how surreal it is to be teaching the holocaust right now to my 4th grade classes who by and large are learning about this for the first time. (i have four jewish kids across three classes, they all have known for years.) for the non-jewish kids, even the ones who already knew a little bit did not know much until we started this unit. and just like every year i teach this, the question that comes up over and over again, the one that is SO triggering for me and so difficult to keep my teacher cool during, is "why didn't they just...?" and they are young, very privileged kids and they are asking it innocently and they ask it when we study slavery and they ask it when they study the trail of tears and they ask it when we study the dust bowl. why didn't the jews just take off their jackets that had the yellow stars on them. why didn't the dust bowl farmers just buy new houses in a different state and move. why didn't the enslaved people just say no. and worse is the kid i got today, the "well, if *I* were a jew during world war two, here's what *I* would have done."

and today i just got really serious with them and said, "i know that you do not mean it in a disrespectful way, but when you say that you could have done something differently that would have led to you surviving when so many others did not, it is offensive to the memory of the millions of people who were killed when they were doing everything they could to survive. i promise you that there is not a single strategy imaginable that was not tried by someone at some point. some of them worked and some people escaped, because they got lucky. other people did the exact same thing and were caught and killed. we also have the benefit today of knowing what was going to happen. they didn't have that. some people did not want to take actions that today we look back on as heroic because they did not want to break the law. they were law-abiding citizens, even when those laws discriminated against them. some people did take actions and escaped when it was still early enough to do so, and others at the time thought they were overreacting and that it wasn't that bad."

every single day i wonder if i'm the one is staying until it's too late to get out. every single day i look around and wonder if i'm only still here because i think others are overreacting. every single day i worry i'm not learning enough from the past.

#i hope if nothing else i can get 65 nine year olds who see jews as humans???? #when they asked me why jews didn't go to america i got to tell them about immigration quotas though so that was good #and then one of my jewish kids asked me why they didn't go to israel #shoah tw #antisemitism tw #jewish #i/p tw

[edenfenixblogs]

Hey, I came from your post about Night. I’ve been wanting to read it for a while now, but I’ve heard that the English version is very watered down and stripped of the original emotions that are in the Yiddish version. Do you know if there are any more accurate English translations, or if the Hebrew one is more like the original? Sorry if you’re not the right person to ask about this, you just seem quite knowledgeable

(also coming from my vent account so I don’t get any hate on main for being a Jew lol)

No worries at all, @nonbinary-vents:

I want to be clear about something: My post was aimed at goyim.

You are a Jewish person, and reading this book (especially if you haven't read any other accounts of experiences in concentration camps) may be an important thing for you to do. And I'd cautiously encourage you to do so if you feel emotionally stable. But you do not need to worry about the experience of this book feeling watered down.

If you are Jewish and not in a very stable emotional state, do not read this book. Do not cause yourself harm.

(If you are goyiscshe, you should challenge yourself and force yourself to read this book. Obviously if you are in an actual emotional/psychological crisis or dealing with the death or illness of a loved one, then you are the only goyim who has an excuse not to read this book. No matter who you are, do not read this book if it will cause you actual mental harm or drive you to somehow cause yourself physical harm. But if it will make you upset, depressed, panicked at your own failings, or other extremely unpleasant but ultimately human discomfort, then you should read this book. Jews don't get a choice about knowing this shit, because knowing this shit is how we survive. And you NOT knowing this shit is what makes it so easy for you to dismiss and target us over and over and over again. You should be uncomfortable. You should feel guilty. Because unless you're actively learning how to disentangle yourself from the antisemitism that led to The Holocaust, then you are actively participating in thee fomentation of another. And that should horrify you.)

Sure, I bet this book is even more haunting and visceral in the original Yiddish. I've spoken recently about how hard Jewish language is to translate to English.

But there is no world in which this book will feel watered down to you.

@nonbinary-vents This book will haunt you. This book will change you. This book will challenge your faith and your ability to trust people.

Remember going in that Judaism asks us not to separate ourselves from our community--not just our Jewish community, but any community in which we find ourselves. Resist the urge this book may stir within you to become insular and fearful of goyim. That is not our way. We are a part of the communities and cultures and nations in which we find ourselves. And we must do good for those communities, because that is what we are called to do. The lesson of this book for Jews is different than the lesson of this book for goyim.

The lesson of this book for Jews -- in fact, the lesson of "Never Again" for Jews -- is that we cannot ever allow this to happen to ourselves again. No, of course, I am not blaming Jews for the Holocaust and if anyone thinks that's what I'm arguing here, then they can fuck off.

The lesson of this book for Jews is that we must never again let fear hold us back from fighting for ourselves. If he world calls upon us to die, we must refuse. Refuse to put ourselves on a list. Refuse to follow our oppressors' directions to the ghetto. Refusal to get on the train or to enter the gas chamber. And we must refuse to be silent for other people's comfort. While it is a Jewish imperative to believe that every human being is capable of kindness and has inherent goodness within them, we can never again trust that the kindness and goodness they possess will ever be directed at us. There was the very understandable thought back when this all started that if we just complied--if we were just willing to suffer a little bit by moving to the ghettos or registering on the lists of Jews the Nazis demanded or carried our papers with us at all time and wore our stars just as they said --then they would eventually realize we were good citizens. They would eventually realize we were just people like them doing their best to live quiet lives and follow the rules. People believed that, if we just complied, they'd remember their humanity and our own. If we just complied and let ourselves suffer, hen maybe our friends and loved one would be safe.

But that was a lie we told ourselves.

No amount of compliance or agree-ability or self-sacrifice will ever make someone who sees Jews as evil and subhuman realize that Jews are actually just human beings like everyone else. Compliance will never ensure our safety; it will just make us easier to kill. Compliance won't make antisemites see us as human; it will only ever make them see us -- at best -- as agreeable livestock.

(although I doubt any farmer would treat their animals as cruelly as Nazis and their supporters treated us).

I am not advocating for violence. But I advocating for discomfort and defense. That is why I am on here every day writing the things I write. I will not shut up for the comfort of people who don't care about my life or my safety. And neither should you. Neither should any of us. I will not allow antisemites to co-opt our own tragedies to demonize us further while casting themselves as warriors for justice.

No, we should not take to the streets and start harming goyim. But if the day comes that they once again start to round us up, I for one will tear those Nazis a-fucking-part with my bare hands. And if they live to have children and grandchildren of their own, they will have to explain to their children and grandchildren that they got the scars on their face and the missing eyeball because the Jew they were trying to murder wouldn't submit quietly.

And if this seems like a hyperbolic and absurd hypothetical to anyone reading this? Well, yeah. It seemed like one back then, too.

(And if any goyim chose to read "Night" by Elie Wiesel because of my post, please tell me. Please engage. I cannot be emphatic enough about this. If you are willing to read night in the way I asked of you in my post, then please do reach out to me with your experience and thoughts. Because that's the whole point. Jews need you to listen and engage with us about our own suffering. We need you to consider your impact on us and to not run away from that guilt or from us. If any of you are willing to read this book in the way that I have asked of you, please please please don't keep your experience to yourself. A lot of Jews desperately need to see goysiche growth in understanding antisemitism and its affects. I don't think you can even imagine how scared and lonely we are right now)

#ask me stuff #nonbinary-vents #antisemitism #leftist antisemitism #deconstruction #Shoah TW #Holocaust TW #Genocide TW #I don't care about my oppressors' discomfort #Or their opinions about my own morals #If you don't care about Jewish suffering then I don't value your opinion #I live in fear of your opinion #Your opinion makes me actively endangered #your apathy makes me actively endangered #But your opinion's value is worth rat's diarrhea to me #it is nothing

[daughter-of-sapph0]

terfs use the term "lesbian holocaust" to describe what they think is a horrible case of millions of poor innocent butch lesbians transitioning to be trans men.

first off, fucking shut up. stop comparing a non issue to the death of millions of people you fucking racist antisemitic bitch

second off, what's the big deal? are you saying that people shouldn't do what they want? that queer people should only be queer in the ways you accept and do absolutely nothing else that you don't approve of? that's literally exactly what conservative far right evangelicals think about queer people

third off, calling the act of trans people merely existing a "holocaust" when trans people were targeted and killed in the holocaust and the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was burned and its research destroyed by nazis?

I'm done being nice. if you use the term "lesbian holocaust", just fucking kill yourself at this point

#dostxt #antisemitism #transphobia #holocaust tw #shoah tw #suicide tw

[moonlightandmarble]

Adding my post here too. And here is the book link so you can read it for free'

https://archive.org/details/IWasADoctorInAuschwitz

#Judaism #doctor perl #shoah tw #Holocaust #holocaust tw #abortion #fuck Christofascists #pro choice