maybe im crazy but there's something i've noticed with how like. both zuko atla and hamlet (hamlet) are male characters whose stories heavily center on their struggles with trauma and guilt, who are shown to be emotional, and who i see running jokes about them being whiny bitchboys whose trauma is something to be mocked, who should've just manned up and quit whining etc etc. do you see what i'm getting at here. like. idk i've just never found it comfortable how people will make a big joke out of zuko's "obsession with honor" when it is, textually and explicitly, about him being literally exiled by his abusive father after being violently hurt by him in public and sent on a suicide mission that represents just how much his father hates him and sees him as a failure.
and people are SO eager to blame hamlet for everything in the play (which is a tragedy, thinks are kind of required to go wrong) meanwhile Claudius, the guy who murdered his brother and basically tells his grieving nephewson that its gay and stupid for him to be mourning his dead father a month after he died because its now his unclefather and motheraunt's wedding, somehow gets off scott free despite being the actual reason for the entire play's plot. you see what i'm getting at here?????
i don't want these male characters to be like, woobified and for people to pretend they've done nothing wrong, to be clear. to do that would be a disservice to these stories which put effort into making them nuanced, rich, and flawed people. but like hmmmm why are people so quick to mock traumatized emotional men for being traumatized and emotional, and specifically insinuate that they would be better people if they stopped being so emotional and affected by the objectively insane shit they are going through.
^^^^^
I feel like it has mostly dropped off in recent years, but the Harley Quinn show has continued it, and this is also how I feel about the jokes about Batman having manpain or being emo about his parents dying for forever.
It especially upsets me in the Harley Quinn show because if you know enough about Batman to be writing him professionally, you should know that he watched his son get murdered. Like, there's actually a pretty stark difference where Batman was portrayed as a lot softer and able to allow himself to show happiness in comics written prior to Jason dying than he has been afterwards. And yeah, I do think that part of that was the push of toxic masculinity on the part of writers and editorial to remove his "softer" parental side, but it also strikes me as a realistic depiction of a man who has lost his child very suddenly and very violently.
