the funniest part of this tweet is obviously “the avengers is the real world” but I can’t stress enough there is very much also a fucking guy in a devil costume. like. there’s a whole show,
my thoughts on the Red Room in Thunderbolts (and Yelena in Thunderbolts more broadly) for @house--harkonnen
Disclaimer: I REALLY did not like this movie. I know a lot of people loved it, I know it's being hailed as the second coming of the 2012 Avengers Tower era, I know it really resonated with a lot of the fandom, BUT while there are pieces of it that I should've enjoyed it ended up annoying me greatly
Thunderbolts runs a problem where they want to Say Something about trauma and healing and community, but I don't think they stuck the landing. Or the takeoff. Or the flight.
Because Thunderbolts wants to Say Something about trauma while pulling their punches about the reality of that trauma. Because going deeper would mean it stops being a comedy.
(See also the way the "And when your father-" "Shut up!" scene between Val and Bob dances around what can only be implied CSA. As a survivor that really frustrated me.)
Because Thunderbolts is going to introduce it's leads as the New Avengers in the end, the narrative needs to portray them as explicitly heroic figures even while characters are saying they've done bad thing/being called bad guys.
See, the way John Walker was softened from a guy who extrajudicially beat a man to death with the shield in a mirror of police killings in tfatws to your more standard "asshole with a heart of gold" type and the way the fandom responded by babygirlifying him.
I went into this movie only caring about the women and Bucky. I dislike Walker and any attempts at making him a hero; I feel the same way about Alexei. I am not touching the Taskmaster Thing bc it made me incandescently angry. I also am not going to be talking about the lack of continuity re: Bucky in tfatws to Bucky in Thunderbolts* after this except to say that the haphazard don't worry about it way his shift from *on a plea deal* to *elected Congressman* is handled is kinda emblematic of the way a lotttt of things in this movie are handled.
My issue is with the way Yelena's past trauma and current characterization are bent in order to present her as more heroic and also as comedic at the same time, as well as with the people who are looking at her design in this movie (which is one of the few things I did like) and claiming it as evidence that the MCU has gotten less misogynistic/that Yelena's being given less misogynistic narratives than Natasha.
I rewatched Avengers on a whim recently so let's review. Natasha is introduced on-mission, she makes quick work of the job, and from that point on she's moving the plot forward. She's the one who gets information out of Loki about his plan; she's the one who figures out how to close the portal. When she discusses her past, it's evident that she carries guilt over it, that she did very bad things, and that she's moving forward. Yes, she's *sexy* in her introduction scene; yes, her uniform is frequently unzipped; yes, Loki is misogynistic to her. But those things don't define her narrative role - which is to end the alien invasion and save her friend.
Yelena is introduced on mission and makes quick work of the job. But she is incompetent in her work and makes a mess of it, having to blow up a whole lab because she kills the only person capable of letting her into the vault. and Val's reaction suggests this isn't the first time that's happened. Because it's comedic.
Yelena is infodumping about her feelings constantly in this movie, that's actually why the job goes badly - she gets distracted using a tied up target as a therapist. Because this movie doesn't understand how to do emotional characterization without telling instead of showing.
We see two Red Room flashbacks, one of them twice. One is small girls assembling guns while an instructor barks orders (fine). One is described as Yelena's first test. She looks about 10 in that scene. She's out in the woods with the other trainees and she has to use her existing dynamic with another girl to lure her out...so that an adult man trainer can execute her. Yelena feels a lot of shame about this, but she's not the one carrying out the kill and in addition we never see any of her dynamic with the other girl so we have no understanding of why the other girl would've trusted Yelena enough to come out of hiding.
Compare with the Red Room as depicted in Agent Carter: https://youtu.be/1Npx6gReF1Y?si=s18iXG-lDeSK1CkE
The girls are about ten, they're depicted as sharing food in secret, then they're put up against each other in training and Dottie kills her friend herself. The blood is directly on her hands.
By comparison, Yelena's first test feels defanged. I fully believed watching it the first time that the guard was going to have Yelena kill Anya (iirc the name), but no. Yelena is feeling guilty over *someone else's* actions.
I'm fine with Yelena being suicidal and guilt-ridden. I'm fine with her having emotions. But I think that the Yelena we see in Black Widow and Hawkeye comes across as emotionally stunted from trauma and very much still figuring her feelings out. I don't think she would be exposition dumping about them to anyone who would listen.
But she has to in Thunderbolts because the climax is her acting as Bob's therapist and getting him to calm down and stop the attacks and the rest of team joining her in that effort.
I think the narrative puts her in the role of Bob's therapy friend/emotional regulation for the start, which does her journey a disservice. Like yes, she gets the scene where she forgives her past selves, but...idk. Maybe I'm being overly critical/disnissive of the narrative and her role in it by putting it in these terms, but I still feel weird about it.
And the fandom running with the Bob-and-Yelena dynamic ("he said no pickles") and shipping Boblena really frustrates me.
It feels like Yelena's aesthetics are less sexist than Natasha's but her narrative is more so. Because this movie at the end of the day is about aesthetics and slapstick and therapy speak monologues over genuine substance.
In conclusion watch the sequence where Yelena throws herself off a building on YouTube, don't watch the film.
warren worthington iii / angel, x-factor #1 (1986)
warren worthington is a good friend stuck in a really awful position. he knows what he's about to do is gonna fuck over multiple people, he has a stray thought of being with jean (which sir lol you have candy but i understand it's stray wish and he ultimately really is not in scott's corner for what he's about to do to maddy + nate), that this is going to break a marriage. ultimately he does the right thing and is a good friend and person but it's an awful, unenviable position to occupy.
Careers headcanon of the night is they are extremely good at anatomy specifically vascular anatomy because not only do they know how to kill but they use that information to draw out a kill, too
