FANCAST: Bae Doona as Janet Van Dyne (Wasp)
mcu
i can tell the difference (a laura barton story)
Laura hadn’t fallen for Clint first; she had been struck first, though. And, yes, she had heard all the possible jokes about Cupid and his arrows, thank you very much for your contribution.
But it was still true: she hadn’t fallen first. Clint had, all stumbles and stutters. Laura had been struck, first, curious about this boy—distracted, rumpled, so very human—and his perfect, perfect aim. You don’t get perfect marksmanship by being born with it.
Gods are born, maybe, but Steve Rogers went to army drafting station after station, said “yes” when Erskine asked him. Tony woke up in a cave with a box of scraps and didn’t just roll over and die; when he got home, back to safety and riches, he took everything he had learned in that darkness and built himself a new skin, new life, new name. Sam pushed himself through basic, through pararescue training, and taught himself to fly.
Laura liked to pay attention to how people got to who they were.
Natasha had spent a childhood without choices—she was lethal and slippery because she had been manufactured that way. But when Clint didn’t pull the trigger, she could have killed him—even after that, she could have vanished to Brussels or New Zealand or Laos. Once back in the States, she could have signed a non-disclosure agreement and gotten assimilated, somewhere normal, with an admittedly heavy watch.
But little Natalia Romanova had taken SHIELD’s offered employment papers and signed them Natasha. She saved Clint’s life three times on three different missions, that first year they worked together, and she still seemed to think she had red in her ledger there.
And Clint—Laura sat forward the first time she saw him, this circus kid who gulped from a stained coffee cup before stumbling onstage and proceeding to take eighteen perfect shots, with three different bows, four of them without even looking.
Laura leaned forward. These things were not gifts.
sarah531, someone wrote Laura fic
OH WOW IT’S REALLY GOOD
The Avengers AU: Natasha, Jane, Pepper, Mary Jane and Betty get together for girls’ nights. Things are always a little slow until the pizza gets ordered and the alcohol comes out.
Natasha: Jane, are you ever going to get off that thing?
Jane: Ten more seconds.
Pepper: This is going really well. Five extremely talented, capable women and we’re sitting around doing nothing.
Jane: Technically, I’m working.
Natasha: Jane.
Jane: Almost finished.
Mary Jane: Wasn’t there supposed to be booze?
Betty: Yes. Yes there was.
The Avengers AU: Mary Jane Watson and Sam Wilson are best friends.
Well if it isn’t the incomparable Mary Jane Watson.
Hey, Sam. I don’t know why I called. It’s silly. I’ve just… been feeling down lately. I wanted to hear a friendly voice.
Well, we can’t have that. I’m taking you out tonight. Anywhere you want. I know how to treat my girl.
You don’t have to.
I want to.
HELL YES
On villains
Let’s talk about Bucky Barnes, River Song, their decidedly similar narratives when it comes to bodily autonomy, agency and abuse, and the way fandom reacts to all that!
Both Bucky and River are forced to become ‘a weapon’ in the most horrific ways possible – Bucky is tortured and brainwashed; River was experimented on whilst in the womb and spent her childhood alone and terrified (”The spaceman’s here! It’s going to get
me! It’s going to eat me!”).
Due to the brainwashing/horrible medical abuse both suffered, both became the cold-blooded assassins that they never would have become without interference – Bucky working for HYDRA, River tasked by Madame Kovarian with killing the Doctor. Similar dehumanising language is used on both characters by their abusers –
“I made you what you are” / “[We’re] your owners.” / “We’ve been far
too thorough with your dear little head.” (Kovarian to River)“You
are to be the new face of HYDRA.” “Wipe him and start over.” (Zola and Pierce to Bucky)
When finding themselves tasked with murdering someone they realized loved them (Steve for Bucky, the Doctor for River) it shifted the mindsets of these characters enough to make them flee – Bucky disappeared into the ether; River applied for the Luna University. Slowly they started to regain agency.
Neither character can really be classified as villainous, because of all the things they did they did none of them of their free will. And yet ’Bucky’s not a villain!’ has become a meme, added to gifsets and interviews, reiterated constantly, and River…doesn’t have that. Whenever there’s a ‘Look at Moffat’s villains, all dressed the same!/all older women!/all women!’ post, despite her stint of villainy lasting less than one episode she’s right in there, alongside Kovarian, with zero context given. I’ll grant that the writing may not help at all in that regard (I agree with whoever said ‘can we take the word psychopath away from Steven Moffat’) but basically –
River and Bucky are both characters who were abused and brainwashed and had their agency ripped right from them to make them ‘villains’, but Bucky gets a meme and a hundred gifsets of his broken face and a hundred corrections on any MCU post where he’s lumped in with the likes of Loki or (worse) Pierce, and River gets…well, River usually gets a screenshot taken of the time she was wearing an outfit similar to Kovarian’s for plot reasons, has that placed alongside a screenshot of Kovarian – the woman who abused and experimented on both her and her mother – and a witty caption along the lines of ‘but all of moffat’s villains are different guyz!’ placed over her. And try as I might –
I can’t imagine anyone doing the same thing with Bucky and his abuser.
marvel: steve can break through seventy years of bucky’s intense brainwashing by saying his name and later a single sentence from a past conversation they had
marvel: but like
marvel: not in a gay way
[via goddessofidiocy-deactivated2019]
#This is why ‘Stucky is canon!’ being added onto posts everywhere weirds me out #it’s…not? #I’m not entirely sure it doesn’t count as queerbaiting by now #the MCU really doesn’t seem to have the balls to present a non-straight superhero