(no subject)

We got Age of Ultron yesterday and re-watched it almost immediately because Richie and I share this fandom, albeit from totally different angles. (”In the comics Steve is an artist!” “I know, because gay porn fanfiction.”) We watched the deleted scenes with glee and I was pleased to see that my headcanon about why Asgard didn't get involved became proper canon - finally, my fanfiction is validated!

There was also the much longer scene between Natasha and Bruce, the infamous 'monster' scene where many an angry fangirl has shouted in rage that Natasha is being portrayed as a monster because she has been sterilised. I always felt this was a simplistic reading of the scene and the extended scene makes it much clearer.

Maybe I am a little oversensitive about this sort of thing, but I don't think that Natasha is saying she's a monster because she can't have children or that Bruce thinks the same either. It's just a sign of how the Red Room breaks down the girls it trains. They turn them into monsters. We know from Agent Carter that the girls kill each other when instructed. They sleep chained to their beds. They are made to perform atrocities, not to feel anything, to become the perfect killing machine. And they're made to consider themselves as such. Dottie enjoys it. Natasha doesn't, though. She knows he has red in her ledger. She changed sides. And linked to all of this is the graduation ceremony. They're told these girls from day 1 that the sterilisation process is designed to make them the perfect killing machine, right? So that's what it comes to symbolise, and it all gets wrapped up into a horrific moment for Natasha. Of course it's at the top of her mind because that is the moment she is turned into the perfect killer in the rooms of the Red Room; when she was the perfect killer, she was the perfect monster. Doesn't matter that she uses those skills for good now, she's still what they made her. She has a physical reminder of that.

So although in the theatrical edit it's clumsily handled, that's pretty obviously the point of the scene, not Joss Wheden thinking that women aren't worth it if they can't have kids.

I don't think he thinks Natasha the Perfect Killing Machine is a monster either; I think that he thinks she thinks that.

(Although, this one is a bit of a sore point for me, so if there was a nastier undertone to the scene, believe me, I would have picked up on it.)

(no subject)

We got Age of Ultron yesterday and re-watched it almost immediately because Richie and I share this fandom, albeit from totally different angles. (”In the comics Steve is an artist!” “I know, because gay porn fanfiction.”) We watched the deleted scenes with glee and I was pleased to see that my headcanon about why Asgard didn't get involved became proper canon - finally, my fanfiction is validated!

There was also the much longer scene between Natasha and Bruce, the infamous 'monster' scene where many an angry fangirl has shouted in rage that Natasha is being portrayed as a monster because she has been sterilised. I always felt this was a simplistic reading of the scene and the extended scene makes it much clearer.

Maybe I am a little oversensitive about this sort of thing, but I don't think that Natasha is saying she's a monster because she can't have children or that Bruce thinks the same either. It's just a sign of how the Red Room breaks down the girls it trains. They turn them into monsters. We know from Agent Carter that the girls kill each other when instructed. They sleep chained to their beds. They are made to perform atrocities, not to feel anything, to become the perfect killing machine. And they're made to consider themselves as such. Dottie enjoys it. Natasha doesn't, though. She knows he has red in her ledger. She changed sides. And linked to all of this is the graduation ceremony. They're told these girls from day 1 that the sterilisation process is designed to make them the perfect killing machine, right? So that's what it comes to symbolise, and it all gets wrapped up into a horrific moment for Natasha. Of course it's at the top of her mind because that is the moment she is turned into the perfect killer in the rooms of the Red Room; when she was the perfect killer, she was the perfect monster. Doesn't matter that she uses those skills for good now, she's still what they made her. She has a physical reminder of that.

So although in the theatrical edit it's clumsily handled, that's pretty obviously the point of the scene, not Joss Wheden thinking that women aren't worth it if they can't have kids.

I don't think he thinks Natasha the Perfect Killing Machine is a monster either; I think that he thinks she thinks that.

(Although, this one is a bit of a sore point for me, so if there was a nastier undertone to the scene, believe me, I would have picked up on it.)