Here’s what fanfiction understands that the Puppies don’t: inversion and subversion don’t ruin the story – they just give you new ways to tell it, and new tools to tell it with. Take a platonic relationship and make it romantic; there’s a story in that. Take a romantic relationship and make it platonic; there’s a story in that, too. Take a human and make her a werewolf; take a werewolf and make him human. Don’t try and sidle up on hurt/comfort like it’s something you’re ashamed to be indulging in; embrace the tropes until you have their mastery. Take a gang of broken souls surviving the apocalypse and make them happy in high school; take a bunch of funny, loving high school kids and shove them in the apocalypse. Like Archimedes, fanfic writers find the soul, the essence of what makes the characters real, and use it as a fulcrum on which to pivot entire worlds, with inversion/subversion as their lever of infinite length.
I rewatched The Avengers today and I finally realized why Steve is such an ass. I can’t believe I never understood before.
Steve literally crashed a plane into a glacier over the Tesseract. He lost his best friend and the opportunity to be with the love of his life over the Tesseract. Of course he’s pissed off and unwilling to help when Fury comes to bother him about the fucking Tesseract.
This is the same fight he fought in during WWII. It’s the fight they told him he won when they defrosted him. Of course he’s mad. Probably betrayed and frustrated, too.
I was always disappointed in The Avengers for depicting Steve this way and now I’m embarrassed because I never understood the reasoning behind it. I’ve seen the light.
Not only that, but at the time of The Avengers, Steve has been out of the ice for two weeks. He lost his best friend, the love of his life, everyone and everything he’s ever known two weeks ago. He fought Red Skull and saw the Tesseract vaporise him into thin air two weeks ago.
And then Fury interrupts Steve’s PTSD flashback at the gym to tell him S.H.I.E.L.D. found the Tesseract and promptly lost it to yet another villain bent on world destruction, and Steve is all Jesus F. Christ, I JUST did this!
And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Steve discovers that S.H.I.E.L.D. was using the Tesseract to build HYDRA weapons of mass destruction (because S.H.I.E.L.D. is HYDRA, shhh!).
It hasn’t been two weeks since Steve saw whole army battalions vaporised and smashed a plane into the Arctic Ocean to prevent the exact same weapons of mass destruction from reaching New York! And here they are again! In New York, in the hands of his supposed “allies,” who lied to him about their purpose for wanting the Tesseract back!
Steve doesn’t like bullies, he doesn’t care where they’re from. In The Avengers, he realises he’s working for the new bullies and doesn’t have a choice if he wants to save humanity.
So yeah, Steve is pissed. He f–ing hates that f–ing Tesseract, and he’s 100000% done with it and with S.H.I.E.L.D. making all the same mistakes again.
What would the Winter Soldier do in the next Marvel movies?
Women’s anger isn’t pretty or useful to men. It prevents them from cheering their male superhero on from the peanut gallery; it makes them unattainable in a way that’s not because the hero is being admirably noble. Also, it makes their faces go all scrunchy, and we can’t have that; never forget Jessica Alba being told to “cry pretty” on the set of Rise of the Silver Surfer, or, more recently, Joss Whedon telling Elizabeth Olsen to keep her face calm during Age of Ultron’s fight scenes because an angry, combative face was unattractive.
There’s a reason women love Agent Carter, a show powered by a subtextual engine of Peggy’s grief, frustration, and rage. There’s a reason Laurel Lance never clicked as a character until her largely incoherent but still deeply satisfying Season 2 rage spiral; life has done her wrong, and she’s finally, finally hitting back. There’s a reason so many readers are proudly labeling themselves non-compliant. We so rarely get to see our own anger reflected in mass media, and when we do, it’s deeply cathartic.
I’m so ready for Jessica Jones to be furious for a whole 13 episodes of her first season. I’m hoping Karen Page gets to be as livid as Foggy was when she finds out that Matt is Daredevil. I want Sara Lance to come back from the grave as spitting mad as she was when she went in, and I want Laurel and Thea and especially poor Felicity, sadly defanged by her romantic entanglement with Oliver in Season 3, to get and stay angry with Oliver when he inevitably does something dishonest or ethically dubious. Even Supergirl – as sunshiney as Kara seems, and as I want her to be, I also want her to be allowed to get pissed when the situation warrants it. Girl’s got laser-eyes for a reason.
I’m so excited for this coming year of superhero TV to bring me Supergirl, and Jessica Jones, and Peggy Carter, and Speedy and Hawkgirl and two different Canaries. And I’m excited for the supporting stories of Iris West and Karen Page and Felicity Smoak and Caitlin Snow and Alex Danvers and Angie Martinelli.
But God, I hope they get to be angry this year. Because these women have been through enough to make them mad as hell. And I don’t want them to have to take it anymore.
It’s rather chilling to consider that one of the most indelible images in the Star Wars saga is its heroine silenced, stripped down, and in chains. I know a lot of men have positive feelings about this particular costume — in fact there’s an entire episode of the popular sitcom Friends that’s devoted to it — which is why it’s kind of hilariously ironic that Han Solo was blind during these scenes. That is, the one man who is romantically attached to Leia is the one man who never saw her in the golden bikini. Which means Han Solo is more attracted to a mouthy space age shield maiden than he is to a tight female body on display. In fact, if I could be so bold, I would suggest that Han Solo would be more turned on hearing about how Leia strangled Jabba the Hutt to death — using nothing but the chain that enslaved her — than he would be hearing about how his sworn enemy turned the woman he loved into a tawdry plaything.
Much like many other Hawkeye fans, with each and every new Marvel movie that is released, we hold our breath and hope that our favourite bandaged, broken badass will actually be allowed to come out of his shell and be, well, HAWKEYE.
He’s gotten a lot of flack as a character, usually due to his stiff, stoic, far-too-serious portrayal in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But I came up with ten reasons why Marvel and Disney REALLY missed the boat when it came to marketing Hawkeye, and why he could’ve been just as popular and well-loved a character as Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and all of the other characters that are branded as the “real Avengers”, whilst poor Hawkeye and Black Widow are typically removed from merch and ignored by the marketing department.
01: HE’S A DISABLED SUPERHERO. The first thing that really interested me about Hawkeye, and the thing which upset me the MOST when it wasn’t included in the MCU, is the fact that Clint Barton is almost COMPLETELY DEAF in both ears. In Earth-616, he’s been deafened several times over, having it surgically fixed on one occasion and having special hearing aids constructed by Tony Stark on another. It baffles me why Marvel and Disney wouldn’t want to promote a deaf superhero to children who may also share the same disability and would take great solace and comfort in seeing a badass superhero with the same affliction as them. Here’s to hoping Clint comes too close to a violent explosion in Civil War…
02: HE’S HUMAN. My second favourite thing about Clint Barton as a character in a setting such as the Avengers team is the fact that he is absolutely, unapologetically, unashamedly, 100% HUMAN. There is nothing enhanced or supernatural or magical about him, he doesn’t rely on a high-tech exoskeleton or technologically advanced suit – he’s just a normal dude who happens to be able to keep pace with superhumans, legends, and gods due to his incredible archery ability. And not just keep pace – unlike in the movies, in the comics Clint is an essential and critical member of the team, despite the fact that he’s not in any way special. If that’s not inspiring to the everyday person who feels like they can’t accomplish anything compared to their friends, I don’t know what is.
03: ARCHERY IS REALLY, REALLY HOT RIGHT NOW. The Hunger Games, Arrow, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Tomb Raider – archers are sexy, and pop culture is LOVING them. I never really understood why Marvel chose not to push their own badass bow-slinger given the reception received by DC Comics’ Oliver Queen and District 12’s Katniss Everdeen.
04: HE’S AN ABSOLUTE SCREW-UP. The hardest thing to get through to people who have no idea who Clint Barton is beyond Renner’s reluctant, rigid acting is that Hawkeye is NOT a character who stands on a rooftop as a silent, deadly badass, shooting off arrow after arrow with a stoic face behind his sunglasses. Hawkeye is the most self-sabotaging, hapless, ridiculous, damaged, broken fuck-up, who spouts cocky one-liners and does his best to make it through life in one piece. Who can’t relate to a character like that?
05: HIS NEWEST COMICS HAVE GARNERED A LOT OF ATTENTION. Matt Fraction’s work writing for Hawkeye, particularly in alliance with David Aja’s artwork (which captured and reflected Clint’s personality PERFECTLY), has really put the kooky superhero on the map as one of Marvel’s best. Don’t believe me? Go buy Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon, read it, and get back to me!
06: HE RESPECTS HIS TEAMMATES, REGARDLESS OF GENDER. In the world of Marvel comics, Hawkeye rises to the task of training, coaching, and sometimes even acting as a personal therapist towards many of the new recruits to the Avengers. He’s a staunch supporter of Captain America, and would follow him to the ends of the earth. But one of the best relationships Clint has is with his sidekick Kate Bishop, whom he worships and respects for her skill despite the fact that she’s much younger and much less experienced than he is. I am praying that the Russo Brothers give Clint a bit of a mentor role with the newbies in Civil War and touch more on what we saw between him and Wanda Maximoff at the climax of Age of Ultron.
07: HE’S BEEN INVOLVED IN ACTIVISM FOR WOMEN’S RIGHTS… KINDA! If you’re a comic book fan who believes in equality between the sexes, and you’ve never heard of The Hawkeye Initiative, you need to check this shit out RIGHT NOW! In order to combat sexism in the way female superheroes are drawn and portrayed, artists across the Internet have been redrawing the ridiculous poses women are often drawn in (usually a butt-shot), but replacing the heroine with Hawkeye instead. This has given Hawkeye more of a reach than people think, as most Internet-goers who know their memes will have heard of him before even if they aren’t an Avengers fan.
08: HIS MOUTH. Hawkeye is one of the mouthiest Marvel characters (Deadpool aside, obviously), but I suppose it’s hard to find time for the side characters to act as they normally would when all of the funny moments, comic relief, and good witty one-liners are given to The Only Four Avengers Disney’s Marketing Department Thinks People Are Capable Of Caring About. Blah.
09: HE HAS THE BEST SIDEKICK EVER. If you don’t know who Kate Bishop is and you like strong, independent, badass female superheroes, you’ve been missing out and a Google search or a trip to the comic book store is very much in order. Kate spends most of her time (when she’s not helping run the Young Avengers) running after Clint, telling him to stop being a screw up, saving him from various bad guys, and assisting him more like a PARTNER than a sidekick. He even let her keep his name, figuring she was badass enough that she’d earned it – you gotta love a guy without an ego complex! I’m still hoping Kate Bishop will eventually show up in the MCU… and that she isn’t destroyed in the same way Clint was.
10: WE’VE ALL BEEN CLINT BARTON BEFORE. While a lot of us can empathize with Tony Stark’s self-destructive tendencies, or Bruce Banner’s anxiety and rage issues, I firmly believe that Hawkeye is the type of character who, if given a proper and equal shot at the silver screen, could capture the hearts of children and adults everywhere for one simple reason: we’ve all been Clint Barton before. We’ve all been a self-sabotaging, hapless, ridiculous, damaged, broken fuck-up at some point in our lives, and this charming, sweet, cinnamon roll of a character is exactly what we need to remind ourselves that while we aren’t in any way perfect, while we are flawed and broken and are struggling to get through life, that’s okay. Because even without superpowers, you still matter. You’re still important. You’re still a superhero!
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