helshades:

I adore Thanos! By which I trust you won’t interpret it as a declaration of unconditional affection for a supervillain who finger-snapped half of the universe. I aim not particularly at being problematic™, naturally.

So perhaps I shouldn’t admit to the fact that I’m not excessively fond of the concept of ‘toxic masculinity’ in and of itself. Although, anyhow, I don’t see where Thanos would be an embodiment of it. Abusive? Evidently. But what does that have to do with Thanos’ sex, specifically? We were never given insight into Thanos’ culture, we have no idea how his people are educated and how they handle the rapports between men and women. As for his relationship with Gamora, we only know he singled her out because of her bravery, not because of her sex; and we know he fostered children of (the) other sex(es), too. What did we see onscreen to prove that Thanos was an abusive ‘parent’ to Gamora because she was a girl, or because he is a man?

On a side note, love and abuse are not incompatible. People can love other people and still mistreat them horribly and constantly. Love is affection, it is attachment, it is dependency; it has no inherently positive connotation, as a matter of fact, and it doesn’t automatically prevent any human being from adding to that connection many other types, even contradictory ones, even ones that will damage the connection. The fact that we deem a form of love either morally laudable or reprehensible is tied to society’s sense of morality, of what is ‘good’ or ‘wrong’, based on criteria meant to preserve its integrity.

So, yes, Thanos loved Gamora. Love doesn’t magically redeem a madman with delusions of grandeur, however, and even though she always was his favourite, it didn’t save her from being harmed, traumatised, utilised and ultimately, sacrificed for her captor’s greater purpose—as Thanos certainly loved the idea of himself as a universal saviour more than he loved the girl he had made into his daughter.

He robbed her of her home, of her relatives, of her childhood, and forced her to survive by following his rules; by going against her thirst for love and belonging, failing to find solace in the one sibling who was the most like her. The tragedy of Gamora is that she waged all her chances of survival on the fact that she was convinced someone who did all those atrocities couldn’t possibly love anyone; but he truly did. Somehow, it makes his actions even more terrible. We rather want monsters to be incapable of being sentimental and forming meaningful connections with others because we always have to wonder eventually whether or not we could become monstrous, even though we are capable of forming meaningful relationships…