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scarlet--wiccan · 3 years

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Hi I’m sorry to bother you, and I’m sorry if you’ve already answered this before, but I was wondering if people can still somewhat enjoy parts of WandaVision if they acknowledge and don’t excuse the problematic history surrounding the show and the its characters?

Look, I’m not the thought police. I can’t stop you from enjoying a tv show, and I’m not interested in trying to moralize about consuming ‘problematic’ media. I can only really tell you the same thing I’ve already said several times over-- if you understand the problems that the MCU Maximoffs represent, you should be unable to enjoy them or frankly anything about them. It’s not just the casting. It’s the development, the adapted material, and the conversations that have been had both within and without the industry. It’s also about the fact that intentional erasure of Romani history and the false conflation of the Roma population with lower-class white Europeans are real factors of structural racism.

Olsen is fully aware of these issues, as was Joss Whedon during the development of AoU, but she and several of her colleagues nevertheless continue to exploit pejorative language and racist imagery regarding her character. Much of the material that WandaVision draws on is material which references her identity and her family’s history, so the people making WV had to have known about those elements and made a conscious decision about how they wanted to address them-- and make no mistake, they did address them.

These are not actions that I am willing to make concessions for, and I am not willing to hold space for other people to do so, either. I cannot tolerate any form of engagement with the show that does not include a conversation about this, and that’s exactly what you’re doing any time you share fanart or gifs, or put up posters, or praise it uncritically on any platform.

Maybe if the last few months had gone differently for me, I would be taking a gentler stance right now, but they didn’t. Let me tell you what I’ve been going through.

Every industry person I’ve reached out to* during WV’s run has either brushed me aside, or else paid me lip service while refusing to have a public dialogue about the show’s racism or even change their behavior in loudly endorsing it. My LCS has not removed their promotional material for the show, even after I disclosed my identity and had a conversation about it in person. I’ve been sent hate speech and suicide bait on this blog several times in response to my writing. Meanwhile, twitter threads rife with hate speech and misinformation erupted around Roma actress Mihaela Dragan’s statements on the show, and similar responses followed Roma writer Jessica Reidy’s article about Roma women and witchcraft.

I’m taking a hard stance because it’s been made pretty clear that playing nice and making concessions won’t achieve anything. It has been proven to me, time and time again, that people who would otherwise be progressive and anti-racist will avert their eyes and feign ignorance when they hear the words “Roma” or “gypsy.” You are all looking for chances to pretend we don’t exist. You are all looking for chances to ignore and enable antiromanyism, even in such an immaterial arena as Marvel fandom. I’m asking for the bare minimum, and I can’t even get that. So I say, no, sorry to ruin your fun. I'm sick of it.

I wish Teyonah Parris all the best moving forward and I hope she gets the opportunity to play Monica Rambeau in the lead role unburdened by misogynoir that she deserves. I hope that the child actors have safe and enjoyable careers moving forward and that they will be able to cleanly step away from this project, and the MCU's fandom, as they get older.

*This includes primarily fellow LGBT folks and fellow people of color. Since I’m in a bad mood, I’m going to name two people who I had one-on-one conversations with that amounted to nothing: Kevin Wada and Luciano Vecchio. If you’ve spent any time on this page, you’ll know that these are two artists who I admire deeply and have shown tremendous amounts of love and (financial) support in my time as a comics collector. This really stings, and I have had to honestly ask myself if I can continue to support either of them in good faith having been sent such a plain message that neither of them care about me or my community.

#mcu #wandavision #robintext

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afro-elf · 4 years

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Ask from when-did-this-become-difficult:

okay i COULD say so many things about racism in fandom I remember the Sally Donovan days of Sherlock but I feel like a lot of ppl have already gone into that so let me just take this opportunity to say that a large swathe of Peaky Blinders fandom is complete trash. I'm not even gonna go into the misogyny altho it's blatant and pretty violent and disgusting. anyways pb itself has a fuckawful track record with race aka Isaiah Jesus & Jeremiah Jesus functioning only as the black friend and racism against them only existing as a plot device to make Michael and Tommy seem more cool/edgy/progressive. I could write an essay on the disrespect of hiring white actors to play romani characters who are delivering pained monologues about how they've suffered due to antiziganism. I could really fucking get into the treatment of Chinese characters especially before s5 I could also get into how s5 managed to fuck up SO BADLY in their fucking weird borderline thirsty treatment of Oswald Moseley who was a real life REAL LIFE british fascist whose followers IN REAL LIFE did beat up Jewish ppl and try to grow a fascist party inside the UK parliament among other disgusting things...but somehow the fandom manages to get even worse than the canon?

I am talking about how I have seen with my own two eyes smut written about oswald moseley fucking, i am talking about how I've seen white brits saying peaky blinders is so important because nobody ever talks about how the british (THE ! ! ! BRITSIH!) are underrepresented in media. a fun post about what types of music different characters listen to totally derailed by someone just choosing Bob Marley for Jeremiah Jesus just cause the guy's from Jamaica and has dreadlocks but uh he's lived in Birmingham for a long time and he's a street preacher there's so many other things to draw on but noooooooo. the unselfconscious furthering of the black best friend trope by constantly having Isaiah Jesus used as a plot device to get reader character (or OC) together with Michael with zero interest as Isaiah as a character. and oh lord the number of times ppl use "g*psy" without engaging their brains whatsoever!!! zero attempts at research re: Romani ppl with loads of stereotypes and to cap it all off! one of the cutest most fun girls I know who I met thru PB fandom and who is my friend to this day, who is half Sikh, used to get these anon comments like "your stories are historically inaccurate, you can't write about Indian girls getting together with black boys (Isaiah Jesus) because Indian people are too racist to ever let their daughters date outside their race" im just!!! Kendra!!!!!! there were MULTIPLE of those messages and she would get them at random times!!!!!!!!! and meanwhile my friend was literally the product of an Indian woman marrying outside her race, LITERALLY! never make a peaky blinders centric tumblr that way leads to hell

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DON’T I KNOW IT! DON’T I KNOW IT! in all the years i’ve watched it, i’ve reFUSEd to engage with the fandom of pb because somehow i knew the clown smoke was leading to a clown fire and you’ve just confirmed my suspicions!!! that’s so infuriating ahhhhhh!!!

#when-did-this-become-difficult #long post #submission #the things i do for cillian... the love is immeasurable

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phynali · 5 years

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If given the chance, how would you rewrite the MCU?

Anon. Anon. Anon.

How wouldn’t I?

I mean - okay, there’s a lot you have to keep the same just for the sake of like, continuity, clarity, and keeping the bones there.

I’d probably keep all the original movies in Phase 1 as they are with only minor tweaks. I’d fix the mess that was Iron Man 2. I’d give Black Widow and Hawkeye a movie of their own to establish their characters. Hmm, I can see that coming after the first Avengers, possibly.

The first Avengers film though, that’s where I would make the first major changes.

Loki’s characterization is a mess and not properly explained in canon. I’d put him more obviously under Thanos’s thumb. I’d fix Cap’s messed up characterization. I wouldn’t have Thor show up when he does because, hey - bifrost issues. We’d see him and Heimdall from Asgard trying to work on that problem and let them find a cogent way to get Thor to earth. So, he’d show up for the final battle and to take Loki home. He’d be the ace in the hole that helps allow the Avengers to assemble and overtake Loki.

Okay, so fix Iron Man 2. I can barely remember it but I know it needs fixing.

Cap 2 I’d leave intact. I might give Hulk a follow-up movie tbh, or rather, probably tie him in to the Black Widow and Hawkeye movie that would follow the first Avengers.

Also put more female heroes front and centre earlier on. And especially WoC.

Big issues arise by the time we get to Age of Ultron. Fix that hot mess of a movie.

Hawkeye doesn’t have a family and a farm. That was weird. Erase that shit. Don’t set up a romance between Nat and Bruce. Don’t -

Look, I mean no disrespect to Tony stans -

Don’t make every problem in the MCU something that was inadvertently caused by Tony. Because like every Iron Man movie involves a villain who felt scorned by him, and then AoU was caused by him messing with the Mind Stone (Bruce too, okay, but Bruce isn’t the one with the narrative trend here) and all the villains in the Spider-Man movies, and then there’s how shit played out in Civil War and -

Okay so fix AoU. Have the Mind Stone literally take on a life of it’s own and don’t fucking make it the fault of Tony’s hubris, okay. Make it more accidental and incidental than it was. Don’t make it something that happened overnight from tinkering.

And for the love of god, make it so that Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver did not sign up to be experimented on, but rather keep their comic origins. They’re Jewish Romani PoC. Give them a narrative that’s authentic to those identities.

I also would not fucking kill off Quicksilver, what the honest fuck?

Actually also don’t just make up a random country and code it a given way and then destroy it. I know it’s an MCU movie and therefore actually needs a giant CGI battle at the end, but okay - Age of Ultron. Stretch that shit out. Make it more clever. Show some more subtle and almost… guerilla tactics from the Avengers, taking down Ultron’s armies? Instead of a single battle in a country we don’t know about and haven’t been told to care about from a narrative standpoint, have Ultron go after their friends and families, have them fight smart and mean but no less visually pleasing to watch. The Avengers don’t have the numbers on Ultron’s army, but they can (and do) recruit Wanda and Maximo and they fight their fight using all their resources - not just their fists.

Okay so let’s move on.

iron Man 3 was great, but the whole bit with Pepper being kidnapped? Not that into it, personally. Also not into her getting powers and then getting them taken away. There was a lot to love about that movie, but so many Iron Man movies tease at this idea of Tony wanting to retire, or getting out, and they need to just back off that and let him own his heroism. That movie navigates so much so well so let it be.

Okay -

Thor 2? Don’t fucking kill Thor’s mom. Friga deserves better. Stop motivating male characters by killing women. Let Loki and Thor come together by Friga being injured, by their dad dying, by a desire to bring their mother joy - whatever. Just - don’t kill her. I’m still pissed about how much they take from Thor over time.

I’d keep Cap 2 the same, and the only changes I’d make to GotG would be -

Okay wait actually. There are huge glaring issues with that movie. Gamora is poised to be the hero of these movies and finds herself as the damsel in distress or incapable whenever the narrative needs her to be. I fucking hate it. Let her shine more. Show instead of tell. Let each character develop in their own right rather than dropping some random backstory notes in expository dialogue. Build up to the notion that it’s super weird Quill can hold the Stone and actually like… acknowledge it in the movie. You can keep the story basically the same but fix things with Gamora’s narrative, please please please.

Okay Ant-Man is great. There’s a huge narrative issue within the entire MCU with how they exclude Janet Van-Dyne though, and how she isn’t introduced until now even though she should be a fundamental member of the Avengers. I would almost like, at some point in Phase 1-3, a movie with Janet at the helm, possibly (to keep their timeline intact), her working with Peggy, working with SHIELD, with a young Fury or something, and laying the groundwork for the Avengers. A lot of what Captain Marvel eventually did, but situated fully on earth, and coming much sooner in the MCU itself.

Civil War was a hot mess. They needed to actually explain and detail both sides and the problems with them. It functioned amazing as an introduction to Black Panther and I love it for that, but it wasn’t a Cap movie, not really, and I’m bitter about it. This movie should have focused around the Black Panther, Cap, Bucky narrative, and dropped the whole Civil War with the other Avengers stuff entirely.

Actually - Civil War needs to be either an entirely separate movie on its own or else… drop it. Deal with it differently. That airport fight was an embarrassment. Let the Avengers break down during Cap 3 if you need do, but make it more interpersonal and tense, and less throwing punches and locking each other up. Make it more human, more relatable, because those were the best parts of that whole divide. Make it real for the viewer, for fuck’s sake. Don’t have Tony (seriously what’s with them making him do villainous things and painting them as heroic) blackmail a literal child into a battlezone????

Okay - and Cap issues, they need to either set up Agent 13 aka Sharon Carter as a proper love interest sooner, or else drop that. They drop breadcrumbs of her in a few movies but that’s it. It feels hollow between them by the time they actually kiss. They should either keep their dynamic as “could have been but whoops, nope” or have done more to set them up together in Cap 2.

(Totally honest, total bias here - take out love interests altogether or let Cap be the bi icon that he should be and let him and Falcon hook up in Cap 2. Let the fact that he was in love with Bucky be canon but you don’t need to set them up as a couple. Let it be recognized that they love each other but god there’s too much there, too much mess, they don’t need to be together in the present to acknowledge that history. Either way keep the Bucky and Sam dynamic because it’s amazing).

Doctor Strange - fix the casting. The racism, appropriation - just - wow. Use this as an opportunity to introduce more Asian and East Asian characters and actors into the MCU rather than it being the appropriative mess that it is. Keep the cool visuals though, and the cape. The narrative itself isn’t bad, but spend less time establishing this asshole character and more time establishing the side characters and the dynamics between them because those are far more interesting.

GotG 2 - uhhhh… okay what was this? Peter Quill is Ego’s son, but how does that really advance anything in the MCU or about the character or … ? Just fix the whole goddamn plot, I don’t even know. Tie this shit into Thanos way better. Introduce that better. Make this movie more interesting, make Nebula the Big Bad of it, honestly. Dive into the other members of the Guardians and give them their backstories and plots that they deserve. Is this the Guardians or the Peter Quill show? I don’t know I just - just fix this, okay?

Thor Ragnarok and Black Panther need no fixing. Remember that in this version of the MCU, Thor’s mom is alive, so that’s there. She’s still on Asgard and with Heimdall and being awesome, and we get some awesome interactions between her and Hel because we fucking deserve that, okay? Also Valkyrie’s bi scenes aren’t deleted (fuck you, Marvel execs). I would love love love for Killmonger not to die at the end of Black Panther, personally, but I wouldn’t change much more than that.

Oh wait I forgot - with the whole Bucky in Wakanda thing? Fucking take that out or do something narratively with it. It’s the weirdest brushed-aside thing that serves no genuine narrative purpose. I’d err on the side of taking it out entirely, personally.

Infinity War is fine, leave it as-is more or less, except for -

Okay, so we need textual discussion and canonical pushback against Thanos’s ideals. Because so many people came out of that movie all “oh but he’s got a point - population is expanding blah blah blah” and it was such fucking bullshit. We needed Gamora to point out why Thanos was fucking wrong - why her people were not actually better off after he killed half of them, thank you very much. We needed Tony to point out “population doesn’t work that way, it’ll bounce back in 50 years - do you plan to keep doing this each time? why not double resources?”. We needed people to tell the audience not just that Thanos was bad, but why he was bad, and that there is no ‘random’ and he needed to be a monster and selfish and it needed to be way more clear that his was not a sublime ideal of a detached idol, but rather the ravings of an entitled man whose gone unhinged and hateful.

Okay. So that. And don’t make the final battle just decimate Wakandan soil and its army? Why do they have to fight Earth’s battles for it? Let that be a joint effort and not just a Wakandan one, jfc. I get that you had the set ready and all, but no, don’t treat Wakanda like that, it deserves better. If ever there was a time to blow the budget on a final fight, this would be it, so freaking do it and have that battle be in space and over earth and at many different locations but then zeroing in on where Vision is (which itself can be in Wakanda because it’s safest but yeah).

And honestly I wouldn’t make it so Gamora died, like wtf. I hated that. I hated the whole bit with the Soul Stone. I could swallow it if what they did was have Gamora turn into the Soul Stone - so that she could, as the stone, set up a sabotage to Thanos.

Okay - more on that. Let’s talk about Endgame. Endgame needs so much goddamn fixing. Holy fuck does it need fixing.

Okay - okay where do I even start. I make myself mad whenever I think about it.

Five years? Five fucking years? What the fuck is wrong with you, Russo brothers? Time travel? What - just -

I hated that movie with a passion.

Okay - so the Snap happened. Pick up right after. Give us the fucking shock and horror. Give us the attempt to regroup, just quick, the intense emotions - people punching walls. Show us snippets of the world quickly, news casts etc. This is a horror, let it be one. Own the shit that you did.

Give us a time skip-montage. A month out, the pressure is on to the Avengers to fix this. The Avengers are all traumatized. Clint doesn’t have a family in this version, and doesn’t go all terminator. Thor - he wouldn’t have as much time to spiral but let him get there, let him be unwell, unkempt, let him own his suffering because goddamn he’s lost so much. (oh I forgot, I actually wouldn’t kill Loki and Heimdall because wtf wtf I hate you Infinity War, but let’s move on - )

Five months - people are losing hope. There are therapy sessions. Cap is a mess. Everyone blames themselves. Tony “if I’d only made the call to Cap sooner, we could have worked together” (also he and Nebula make it to earth fast, none of that lost in space and starving stuff), Cap “if only I hadn’t been so arrogant as to not trade lives”, Thor “if only I’d gone for the head”, etc etc. let it be clear that it’s not just Thor’s fault and not just Peter Quill’s fault - that all of those in charge of decision making fucked up.

Ant-Man isn’t freaking saved by a rat, thank you. He comes out of the quantum realm on his own merits, some safeguard, only to realize shit’s messed up. He and Janet work together with the remaining Avengers. maybe Janet saved him from the quantum realm this time? what a nice parallel to him saving her. anyway, they use the quantum realm to find thanos. Or - fuck that, they use Nebula to find Thanos. She knows shit. What they use the quantum realm for is to realize that all the souls that were lost in the snap aren’t ‘dead’ dead, they’re in stasis. They’re in a liminal space - they’re in the Soul Stone. Because Gamora is the stone and she sucked up all those lives and is holding them, holding for dear life but she can’t hold on forever (make sure the stakes are high, they feel real, the clock is ticking). Captain Marvel teams up with them of course. they track down thanos.

“but Phyn” you say, “thanos still has all the stones? how can they defeat him?” great question! difficult to answer! i’m not sure! with the power of love!

okay but really - they have an awesome team. they need to work smarter than the enemy, not harder. they can take out thanos’s generals. they can use nebula to slip past defenses. if loki were alive, which he should be, they can use his magic. if friga were alive, which she should be, they can use hers. if heimdall were alive, which he should be, they can use his eyes. they can use the magic of all the magicians in the doctor strange films. they have captain marvel.

but they will never win on might alone, or magic alone - not against a full complement of infinity stones. not unless -

have you seen Avatar: The Last Airbender? if so - you know how Azula gets a little unhinged toward the end? she’s just a kid, i feel for her, but the point for here is that she does enough shit and gets what she (thinks she) wants and it takes a devastating toll on her. using the stones, clearing half the life in the universe - that took a toll on thanos. it was a terrible choice. he’s in denial, in self-deception about that. he’s coming apart at the seams. he’s not all chill about it, he’s spiralling hard. he lost half his army too, after all. and life doesn’t seem improved. he can hear the cries of the souls locked in the soul stone (not that he realizes what he’s hearing nor acknowledges it) and it’s like the beating heart under the floorboards. his crimes have left scars. he’s not well. physically, from the toll of the Snap, nor mentally, from everything else it took out of him.

let gamora save the fucking day. let her and Vision and their stones - hell, let Loki (maybe he’s fused with the tesseract and maybe thanos did kill him to acheive that, or maybe something else) - let the stones respond to people. to quill. to freaking Jane Goddamn Foster. let the stones’ connections to life undermine and corrupt thanos and his connection to death.

is it cheesy? maybe. is it better than time travel bullshit? definitely. because it uplifts. because it draws from heroes in all the movies, even unlikely ones. people who’ve touched the stones, held them, melded with them. it assumes that the stones aren’t static entities, that they are just as alive as us, in a way we can’t comprehend, and so much more. they resonate with the universe, and thanos has done something that scarred the universe. let this be rectified, not through the actions of a man’s sacrifice, but through the actions, big and small, of a ton of people, of unlikely heroes, of those who suffered personally at his hand, at the hands of the stones - let it be the will of half the goddamn universe to see thanos fall.

let the snap-back happen when thanos loses control over the stones (he’s been holding on tight this whole time, can’t let it slip, the stones have a ‘mind’ of their onw). let it happen again right before the final battle against his armies. let him not have the power to immediately re-snap, hand burnt by the force of the snap-back, and let thor take off his fucking arm this time. let nebula take off his fucking head. let there be a huge final battle with everyone alive and ready to go down swinging once again.

and okay, i’m okay with tony dying. i’d be game for him to die by destroying the stones, tbh - taking them out of existence henceforth so they can never be used like this again, even though it kills him. i think that would honestly be a really fulfilling conclusion to the narrative set up in the first Iron Man film - the reformed arms dealer destroying the ultimate weapons in the universe.

by this way - there’s been 5-8 months or something like that, not 5 years, but why not have Pepper be pregnant, why not have a little child who’ll get to live on after he’s gone, even if that kid won’t remember him? she’ll get to live in a universe that exists and is safe because of him.

i’d be okay with cap dying in this movie too (much better than him going back and stealing peggy’s life from her by changing her history, wtf wtf wtf). i refuse to accept nat dying in clint’s place, that was bullshit and totally not necessary in this version. gamora is also back, not from the past but from the present, and with her sister again. this time nebula got to save gamora, isn’t there some poetic justice in that?

okay okay that’s all that. whew.

I forgot about Captain Marvel. It was decent, I liked it. It wasn’t my favorite in the sense that it was laid out odd when it came to falling in love with this character. Like I wouldn’t change much of the plot but I’d change the… storytelling? The emotions used to connect us to Carol. Give us more of her past from the start, before you introduce her. Give us her childhood. And let Maria be her girlfriend, fucking please.

Okay - now we’re at Far From Home. I didn’t mention Homecoming before but the problem with both of these movies is one I mentioned earlier - that the villains are byproducts of choices made by Tony Stark. That’s a problem. There’s just so many goddamn movies in which that’s the ultimate villain and it fucks with Tony’s characterization so much. How am I supposed to love Tony (which I want to?) when he’s got satellites with drones that can attack anyone he names, tech not that unlike the tech Hydra was aiming to make. Sure, he won’t use it the same, but why the fuck does he have it? Giving it to Peter is all well and good, but - they have interacted maybe a grand total of 5 times?

The relationship between Peter and Tony is cute but if you stop for a second, it’s annoying as hell that it’s built up to what it is. Peter gets recruited by Tony, mostly works with Happy and not Tony in Civil War, and then gets ignored by Tony for months and months on end, then Tony shows up and scolds him and takes his suit, and then invites him to be an Avenger when he doesn’t fuck up, and then they go off to space and Peter dies, and then everyone comes back to life and Tony dies. Why the fuck would Tony entrust Peter with this Edith system that allows him to kill anyone on Earth? Actually, fuck that, entrust is the wrong word - why the fuck would Tony put that weight on the shoulders of a child?

Far From Home is great but Tony’s post-mortem role in it makes almost no sense. Let Peter’s movies be about Peter and not about the shadow and then the ghost of Tony Stark. Please. I love Tony, I do, but if you stop and think for one second, you have to jump mental hoops to absolve the shit Tony does in Peter’s movies, and for many of us, it leaves a really awful taste in our mouths.

anyway - i probably missed stuff. that’s just what’s currently top of mind. #whoops

#i spent too many hours of my life on this #marvel #mcu #walrus #you said you wanted to read this when i got around to answering...#here you go #marvel critical #mcu critical #ask to tag #comics etc #Anonymous #long post #long post for ts

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rayshippouuchiha · 5 years

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Jossed Wanda needs to get Tossed out

aiOkay kids, gather around so I can calmly express my deeeeeeep frustrations with Wanda and Pietro Maximoff’s characters in the MCU. Well, I’ll be calm the same way Dumbledore was in the GoF movie. Cool?

So First off:

I’m not writing this as an affront to the character of Wanda Maximoff as she has been written in the comics, as Romani children to a Holocaust survivor.

I’m writing this as a total assault against the MCU Whitewash of the character that full on changed the character to its exact opposite, a vengeful, angry, irrational and out of control Nazi who volunteered to join Hydra of her own accord. Not a child of a Holocaust Survivor. A volunteer who joined Hydra to get her powers and ruin the lives of her perceived enemy. Hydra. HYDRA. Just so we’re clear here, I’m going to say it again for the people in the back: THE MAXIMOFFS IN THE MCU JOINED HYDRA OF THEIR OWN ACCORD. THEY WEREN’T KIDNAPPED, FORCED, COERCED OR TRICKED INTO DOING SO. THEY WERE DOING IT WILLINGLY. THEY JOINED A NAZI ORGANIZATION WILLINGLY.

Next, let’s talk about MCU’s actress of choice before we go any further, because Elizabeth Olsen? wrong choice for the character, through and through. A super-wealthy white woman from a wealthy white family of actors and actresses with influence? Playing the role of a girl who just somehow turns out to be provocatively dangerous, attractive to the male gaze, and innocent all at once? The portrayal is flawed, and her acting - not her fault, this is ALL on Joss Whedon here - feels wrong, forced and mismanaged. It feels like a little girl playing with fire, with magic, instead of a twenty something woman in charge of her emotions, actions and decisions taking charge of her life. She is continuously portrayed as either the bully or the supremely innocent accuser, with no in between. This instability in character has made Wanda Maximoff an often Flat character with predictable actions, if you know these things about her:

1. She hates Tony Stark

2. She is out for herself (and Pietro in AOU) and will make the choice best suited for her survival

3. She’s emotional, stubborn and angry a lot.

That’s it. All her actions in the movies she’s been portrayed in? Go back and watch them again. You’ll see the pattern. There’s no character development where we see her changing and or breaking old patterns. One can argue that her affair with Vision will count as development, but I sincerely believe that is still more about the connection between her powers and the Mind Stone rather than any kind of affectionate and or intimate relationship between Vision and Wanda.

Moving back to the 3 points made above, her excessive outburst and her emotional instability and her inability to control her powers in face of her anger, has made her very volatile in various situations, as we see in CW. However, she is often referred to as “a kid” by a few members of the Avengers, bringing up the issue of her age and her agency. She is obviously in her mid-twenties, and fully able to make her decisions. Why is she excused for her actions and their consequences solely for something that’s not even true?

Moreover, let’s begin examining how she even got to join the Avengers in the first place. How did she manage to go from being a member of a known terrorist organization, one of the most well-known ones - HYDRA -, having just joined forced with a murderous genocidal bot to gain access to material and data he shouldn’t have had access to, to being a new member of the avengers just because she had a Moment with Clint Barton (a retired member of the Avengers team, previously mind-controlled, easily manipulated) and decided to save the city she was actually standing on instead of letting everyone on it - including herself - die a fiery end?

Legally, she shouldn’t have even been allowed to leave the helicarriers in the first place. She should have been arrested immediately under international law, to be tried by an international court for crimes against humanity, either by the ICC or ICJ or CVRIA (since Sokovia is implied to be a European country) or even the UN Security Council. She shouldn’t have been a problem for the United States. She shouldn’t have gone anywhere near the continent at all. As a European citizen, she should have been tried, judged and sentenced for her actions and faced the consequences.

She didn’t.

Instead, she somehow bypasses all immigration laws and manages to gain entry to the U.S despite being a known terrorist, who just helped a murder bot, killed a lot of people, messed with the minds of a lot of American citizens, endangered their lives on multiple occasions, volunteered to join a known enemy combatant terrorist organization and acted against the US in various operations, and was actively hostile in combat situations. She has uncontrollable powers that can be used to manipulate the mind, memories, thoughts, actions, and can move things around of her accord. She just lost her twin brother, hates a well-known American celebrity and war hero/ex-weapons manufacturer/superhero she just fought against, and blames him for her parents’ death. She’s vengeful. Doesn’t have her passport with her. Doesn’t have identification. IS A MEMBER OF AN ENEMY SPY ORGANIZATION.

And yet, somehow, she doesn’t have to go through any of the required asylum seeking processes, doesn’t have to wait at a port of entry for a background check, medical check or family history, and doesn’t have to prove her allegiance to the U.S., or her reasons for seeking asylum, or why she hasn’t sought asylum in Europe instead? Why is she in the U.S in the first place? And if so, why isn’t she imprisoned and to be tried as an enemy of the State? That’s what she is. She is a known enemy of the state, a terrorist, an agent of Hydra, a Powered-hydra agent. That’s bad. That’s enemy. That’s a no-go.

But somehow, Captain America, Hydra’s number one Enemy since WWI is excited for her to join the Avengers as A MEMBER, even though she was their enemy just a second ago, and accepts her change of allegiance without her ever apologizing, mentioning the change in perspective, worldview and saying that she has changed sides for x y reason other than saving her behind.

Somehow, Wanda Maximoff, a foreign citizen, known enemy and member of a dangerous terrorist organization she joined of her own accord, who joined the side of a murderous bot and then changed sides because it suited her better becomes an agent representing the Avengers, representing the force of the United States as a whole, enforcing Worldwide security on a global level? Wanda Maximoff, who basically caused the entire disaster of AoU?

This is why Wanda’s anger over Tony’s request for her house arrest is unjustified. This is why her anger over Vision’s caution, and her totalling the Compound in retaliation is severely unjustified. This is why I say her characterization is flat, because she is always portrayed as an angry, irrational, emotional and stubborn child lashing out at whoever wronged her. Go back to the 3 points I mentioned above again. You see?

If we look at AOU from a sociopolitical and legal POV, the whole thing is a disaster. It doesn’t hold water at all. It falls apart at first glance. There is no explanation, no build-up to CW and no explanation for Wanda’s presence, much less why she somehow ends up an Avenger at the end of the movie.

Becoming an Avenger used to be an exclusive right, a process that was used to assess Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and fit with the entire team. AOU makes the process seem as easy of slapping a scrap piece of paper to a desk and calling it decoration. It’s not a fit, it’s not thought through, and it stick out like a sore thumb. It’s something other directors have had to deal with ever since.

So in conclusion, Joss basically ruined everything that made Wanda Maximoff who she was, the so called Scarlet Witch, and instead turned her into a caricature of who she should have been. She’s not even a reimagination of the Comic!Wanda. She may carry the name, but that’s about it.

That’s why I don’t like Wanda Maximoff in the MCU. This is why I am so passionate about why she shouldn’t be idealized as an inspiring character, as a role model, or as someone little girls should look up to. Because she’s not. She’s not a hero. She’s not. She got Jossed through and through.

So let’s toss her out.

----Via @lilliananil

#anti wanda maximoff #mcu wank #MCU critical #Wanda Critical #submission

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cometomecosette · 7 years

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Advocating for an all-POC “Les Misérables”

The more I think about it, the more I think the ideal modern retelling or modern dress musical production of Les Misérables would be an all-black or at least all-POC version, with only some of the minor-role oppressors (e.g. Bamatabois, the innkeepers who turn Valjean away, and any National Guardsmen we might see) portrayed as white. The relevance of highlighting modern racial issues goes without saying. But I’d like some new version to go even further than most modern AUs do or than the 2014 Dallas production did.

Everyone talks about how wonderful and relevant it was for the Dallas production to cast a POC actor as Valjean and a white Javert. True enough. But I’d like to see a version where they’re both POC. After all, Javert isn’t just a privileged oppressor. He’s “from the gutter too.” The novel specifically tells us that he sees himself as an outsider who can never belong to society, and that he chooses to defend society because his only other survival choice would be to prey on it. If we take the reference to “the race of bohemians from which he had sprung” literally, he might even be Romani in the novel. A POC Javert with internalized bigotry, who tries to protect himself from oppression by serving the system that oppresses him, feels truer to Hugo’s vision than a racist white Javert, even if he is less of a “ripped from the headlines” figure.

Then there’s Thénardier. Of course since he’s the story’s most evil character, the obvious temptation in a race-centric retelling is to make him white, like in the Dallas production did. But if he were a POC like our hypothetical Valjean and Javert, it would reinforce the idea that he’s (a) the perfect example of a miserable corrupted beyond redemption by his hard life, as Valjean could have been, and/or (b) a stereotypically dangerous lower-class criminal, showing that if a criminal like that were to really exist, the law would be no match for his ruthless opportunism, and that the system meant to punish “his kind” can only punish the Valjeans and Fantines of the world instead.

Then we have Enjolras. I remember how the Dallas production was praised for casting a white actor in the role, because it highlighted Enjolras’s status as a privileged person who could have lived a safe, comfortable life, but who chooses to fight and die for the sake of the less fortunate. There’s some truth in that, of course. But as this post reminds us, his status isn’t entirely that simple. Nearly everyone in 1830s France faced some degree oppression, not just the poor, and the Amis were fighting for their own freedom and rights as well as for others – which makes their courage and self-sacrifice no less heroic. So I’m all in favor of a POC Enjolras, especially a black one. His revolutionary spirit would feel especially valid, far removed from “pie-in-the-sky idealism,” and his death at the hands of authorities would gain even more biting socio-political relevance.

Last but not least, let’s discuss Marius and Cosette. Yes, we’ve all seen (or drawn) the modern AU fan art showing a WOC Éponine pining for a white Marius who only has eyes for an equally white, blonde Cosette. Yes, that imagery makes a relevant statement about race relations and beauty standards. But if we go beyond fan drawings and gifsets, that interpretation of the love triangle really does reduce Cosette! As I wrote in this surprisingly popular post, Cosette is much, much, much more than just “the privileged bourgeois girl who gets the boy at the poor outsider girl’s expense,” and to portray her as such would completely derail the story! Besides, portraying Cosette as a WOC takes us beyond “reflecting real-world racial struggles” and provides some happy representation too, showing dark-skinned girls that yes, they can also be the beautiful, sweet, beloved ingenue who embodies hope for the future! As for Marius... I understand the popular trend in AU fic of making him the token white guy in a sea of ethnic diversity; I see the appeal and relevance of making him a clueless, subconsciously bigoted white boy who needs to learn to check his white privilege. But I don’t think that’s absolutely necessary. I liked the fact that even though the Dallas production highlighted Marius’s privileged upbringing and classist streak more than the musical usually does, he was played by a black actor. It gave nuance to his situation, and more importantly, by not opting to make his dismissal of Éponine or his prejudice against Valjean about race as well as class, it didn’t ask us to forgive racism in the end. I know what a raw nerve redemption arcs for racist characters can touch, so I’m glad they avoided that, and I would too.

Casting directors of new musical productions, writers of new TV-movie versions (if the Andrew Davies miniseries is a success), and plain old fic writers, take note! An all-black, or at least all-POC modern Les Mis just might be the most powerful new Les Mis yet!

#les miserables #les mis #meta #race and representation #tw: racism #tw: police brutality

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