real question time
what do y’all mean when you say “sharon carter deserves better”?
bc i see that thrown around a lot but with no actual meat behind it. she deserves better than what? how have her two appearances so far not lived up to the expectations and how have other secondary characters’ development and story been better than what she got?
im legit looking for replies here so i can understand where y’all are coming from
hit me up, for real. help me see what you see
I’ve been thinking about this a bit recently and I think –
(bear with)
– like, certain characters are thought of as real people, but other characters are thought of as just a collection of the writer’s whims. AMAZINGLY dudes (especially white dudes) tend to form most of the first aforementioned group, and women (especially WOC) most of the second as far as I can see. And sometimes a ___ deserved better tag is really legit (Poussey Washington from OITNB, for example, I bet we can all agree she deserved better) and sometimes it’s like…well… if Steve Rogers (for example) does something, Steve did it. If Sharon or whoever does something, the writers did it. Hence ‘Sharon Carter deserves better [writers]’, is what I imagine that’s all about.
BUT on the other hand when Male Characters are treated like people with agency (e.g. omg I can’t believe Steve did that for Bucky! What a stand-up guy! etc etc etc) and Female Characters are…not (e.g. omg I can’t believe the writers made Sharon do that! It’s like they were trying to make her a s**t!) it….does not exactly make for productive discussion I suppose. Probably because “Sharon(/whoever) is a terrible person” / “Sharon(/whoever) is a terrible character” and “Sharon(/whoever) is a great female character who the writers underwrote*” are three separate arguments (of many), which usually just get squashed together in a endless loop of what constitutes writing and what constitutes A Person and what constitutes sexism and so on and so on.
(* = Sharon is, at least, no less underwritten than Bucky is. And I love Bucky as a person! I just think as a character he’s a little lacking. He….um…god, he deserves better, you could almost say.)