I've been trying my absolute hardest to say next to nothing about tbb as a series this year for both my own peace of mind and my own (and frankly my friends) safety but what i can't be quiet on is people of all kinds but especially the usual culprits blaming Saw for Techs death when Saw was there for an actual mission for the rebellion and The Bad Batch were there because Crosshair explicitly chose not to leave with them when they gave him the chance.

Because all this blaming shifting just looks racist. Some folks are foaming at the mouth to be able to condemn a Black character for hell for an event that, frankly, had nothing to do with him in the slightest. Seeing people first blame the bad batch for "abandoning" Crosshair as if they didn't try multiple times to save his life in the finale of season 1 only for him to refuse EVERY TIME. He nearly drowned on Kamino and told omega to leave him. They were walking through the tube and he stopped. They were on the platform and he refused to go with them. Omega tried. The marauder was right there. He turned his back on them.

Crosshair made his choice but I'm firmly of the opinion that because he's being largely perceived as an edgy and hurt white man, the audience is denying his culpability and removing his agency as a character in that moment in order to extend a level of forgiveness that they absolutely will not give to any characters of color. They're shifting the blame to every nearby character because of weird racism and colorism that i don't feel like expanding upon here.

And rather than just travel the obvious line the authors have laid out, up to and including the fact that he does not have his chip because Rau and Corbett said so 7 times in one interview, rather than see that actions often have greater consequences than people expect or intend, they want to shift all of the blame to a Black man who were there for all of 30 seconds and who had his own goals he had to take care of because he had his own people to take care of. At no point was Saw obligated to stop his entire mission for the bad batch. He was trying to fight the empire. They were trying to save their brother. It sucks but Saw really didnt need to stop. Why was Saw obligated to change his plans for them? Why couldn't they change their plans for the rebellion?

This fandom is too comfortable with racism and colorism but specifically Anti-Blackness. I was going to try and let this go because often times when I mention Crosshair especially in the past i get levied with false accusations and bad faith reads of what I'm saying but this is anti Blackness. There are people making jokes about hunting down, beating, and shooting a Black male character for something that was a whitewashed man's fault.

And shit like this is why this show either needs to change or go. I and others predicted this kind of thing like two years ago and we've only been proven right time and again. From me being racially harassed to people complaining of Blackwashing because they hate Black people so much that they think a person of color not passing for white makes them Black and therefore bad, to what I'm seeing now: largely white people daydreaming about being violent against a Black man. Because they refuse to see that the character they perceive as white is responsible for his own actions the way every other character in the series is responsible for theirs. It's just racism and anti Blackness all around.