Sometimes I think really intensely about Natasha being trans.
And it’s not that she’s ashamed of being trans, but it’s a conversation she doesn’t really want to have with her new coworkers, so Nick Fury promises to keep it under wraps.
But then when she’s in a meeting JARVIS identifies her as “biologically male” in front of all the others for some reason and she’s like fuuuuuck and prepares herself for a really shitty time but like
Steve’s all, “Well, ma’am, if you identify as a woman that’s all I really need to know.” She keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop there because he’s from the forties for God’s sake, but it never does.
Thor doesn’t understand why this revelation is a big deal, because in Asgard trans people are embraced and accepted, like there are special magic/science reassignment procedures that require no gatekeeping or fuckery, just self-knowledge, and he tells her that she should have been born there, “for not only are you a mighty warrior, but I think my people would have been able to spare you much pain.” She does not cry about that, but she thinks about it for a long time.
Bruce acts awkward but when she calls him out on it he’s like “I just realized that you have more of a right to be afraid of violence than any of us, and I’m so sorry I contributed to that,” and she ends up buying him a latte so he’ll stop looking so damn anguished.
Sam doesn’t say much, but quietly lets her know that he runs a support group for trans folk that meets every Wednesday, and she doesn’t realize what that means until a day or two later and can’t stop smiling.
And Tony? Tony disappears for like a week, and she thinks it’s because he’s finally revealed himself to be a complete asshole, but then he reappears on her doorstep and, without preamble, says, “I’ve recalibrated JARVIS so it’s got a more nuanced understanding of gender identity and biology, I’m so sorry it outed you, also I built you this new gun as an apology gift.”
(Clint already knew, obviously. Because Clint knows pretty much everything about her.)
I will probably need to write this eventually because it is literally my very favourite headcanon.
you honestly expect me to believe that natasha fucking romanoff got thrown into a cell and didn’t find a way to break herself out and she had to wait for a man to rescue her??
Thank you.
But she singlehandedly built herself a morse code system (in a CAVE, from a box of SCRAPS…) and telegraphed for someone to come get her? That is finding a way to break yourself out!
The saddest thing about Age of Ultron is that Wanda spent all that time trying to get the Avengers to see their worst fears and in the end of it all, hers is the one that came true.
Natasha ‘I am a monster because I cannot bear children‘ Romanoff
Jane ‘I get a nobel prize but I am reduced to my boyfriend boosting about me’ Foster
Pepper ‘I run Stark Industries but I am also reduced to my boyfriend using me like a joke line’ Potts
Wanda ‘I get called weird and witch and even though I am technically more powerful than all of them I need Hawkeye to give me a pep talk’ Maximoff
Do not let Whedon touch female character 2kFOREVER
ouch
Wanda ‘I’m Romani and Jewish but Whedon made me white’ Maximoff
Wanda ‘I’m Romani and Jewish but Whedon made me white and a Nazi sympathizer’ Maximoff
I’m pretty sure Nat called herself a monster because she is haunted by what she did while working as an assassin, not because she can’t bear children, you guys will jump on literally fucking anything without giving it any thought. Also the lines about Pepper and Jane were because they couldn’t be in the movie. I agree about the bit about Wanda though, like that wasn’t cool at all. Like I get that the Twins couldn’t be mutants, but doing that to their characters was down right disrespectful. But calling her a witch was fine, because you know, she the mother fucking Scarlet Witch and how the hell is calling her powers weird offensive, and yes she’s powerful but this is her first real fight and being scared is totally okay and it’s actually fucking demonstrating depth. And Whedon can write really good women, like have any of you seen Buffy or Firefly or Atlantis: the Lost Empire?
^ pretty much agree with all of this. Joss is guilty of falling into certain tropes when writing female characters, but I didn’t see that happening in this film and I was actually quite impressed.
concerning the twins, I didn’t get the impression they were Nazi-sympathizers though? I know tumblr has been kind of relentlessly perpetuating this idea and granted, the association with Hydra/Nazism is in poor taste, whatever the circumstances are. but Wanda and Pietro were taken in by Hydra, experimented on (without their actual consent, I assume) and given powers.
then the first chance they get: they escape, track down Strucker and murder him. that doesn’t seem very sympathetic to me? what I gathered is that Hydra was a means to an end for them in their quest for justice and their vengeance on Tony Stark.
it would have been awesome to see her played by a WoC, but I’m still hopeful they’ll establish her as Romani and Jewish in future films (although perhaps I’m just being optimistic on that one, we’ll see)
I’m Jewish, and the majority of my family, who were from Poland, were slaughtered in the holocaust. My great uncle (still alive) was taken to Auschwitz when he was 10 years old. My grandmother was in different concentration camps for basically the entire war. She barely survived.
My great aunts were actually twins who actually had horrible experiments done on them by Nazis. (By Mengele, specifically.) One of them is still alive, and she is EXTREMELY fucked up. Like, you don’t even know.
So I’m gonna tap in here.
To show the The Twins as, basically, slaves forced into that camp, experimented on by Hydra, forced to work for Hydra, them ultimately breaking away and FUCKING UP THE SHIT of all the people who were metaphorical Nazis, everyone who was using and manipulating them (from Hydra to Ultron) was pretty great. I wasn’t offended at ALL and I actually quite liked it.
Like, my whole family has never been offended by the Hydra stuff. It feels cathartic, honestly, to see the likes of Cap and the Avengers kicking their asses. For me, it’s ESPECIALLY cathartic to see a female twin who was a victim of their horrifying bullshit use WHAT THEY DID TO HER and turn it around on them to free herself and to stop them from hurting anyone else.
My dad, who was raised by a holocaust survivor and a survivor of a Russian Prison Camp (my grandfather), and who has been a comic book nerd since the first issue of X-Men and Spiderman and basically the beginning of Marvel, eats that shit up with a spoon.
for this last comment ^^^^ (note i have not seen the film)
I hate The Ultimates, guys. I hate it even more because this was my first introduction to these characters, and so for ages I actually thought that Steve Rogers was a xenophobic jerk, Black Widow a murdering traitor and so on. But I think I can pinpoint the moment (beyond ‘you think this letter on my head is for France?’) when I started hating it:
Laura Barton and her three children are killed in the Ultimates not long after they’re introduced. Laura’s shot in the head, one of the children is shot in Hawkeye’s arms, the baby is killed in its crib, and you see one of the children later lying dead in a puddle of blood because of course you do. Their deaths are later used for Hawkeye’s enemies to taunt him with. “The children swallowed bullets, and that fat wife of yours.” It’s a really gruesome, over-the-top fridging. Oh, and it was Black Widow who ordered the hit, by the way.
So even though I doubt the Barton family’s inclusion in Age of Ultron was a deliberate fuck-you to all that, I’m still really glad it stands the way it does. Laura’s alive and fine, her children are alive and fine (though they appear to have had their names and ages switched), Laura is close enough friends with Proper Not-A-Murderous-Traitor Black Widow to name a child after her (hooray! lady friendships!), the kids call Black Widow Aunt Natasha and adore her and she them (aww), and everyone seems happy and well-adjusted etc.
Basically I always thought ‘Laura Barton and her kids deserved better’ and I’m really glad they did eventually get Better. (Of course, if any of them die in a future movie, this is all moot.)
What if the reason Natasha isn’t wearing the arrow necklace in AoU is because she only wears it when clint is gone? I mean, he’s obviously with her in this movie.
clint shows up unexpectedly and she just rips it off and throws it out a window
okokok so i know there was some really shitty decisions made with aou (see: whedon directing) but…. i dont know where people are getting the “natasha said she’s a monster cause she cant have babies” from????
bruce brought up the whole “this relationship would be unfair to you – if nothing else i cant give you children” because he is a self deprecating idiot and he thinks that tash wouldnt want a relationship if she cant have babies and that he cant have babies because hes a monster right
so tash explains that she cant have babies, and explains why – because she was raised to be a killing machine, babies would be a distraction – the “whos the monster” line is referring to the fact that her ability to have kids was removed so she could kill people without distraction not ‘i cant have kids so im a monster’ srsly where did you guys get that
tl;dr: tash thinks she is a monster cause she was raised to kill, she doesnt think she is a monster because she cant have kids
Total agreement, just wanted to add one bit:
I think she partially views it as, she is a monster because they created her to be one. And as she said, “they took away the one thing that could be more important than a mission.” They took away her ability to be anything other than a monster. I think that’s why it’s so important to her.
