nightsgrow
Author is American?
nightsgrow
My 89 year old grandma living in a city of 3000 people speak and understand English fluently, not even the 90 year olds have escaped learning it here.
I have to assume they are, because if they are European, they will be catching These Hands.
3000 people is not quite the asscrack of Sweden yet, so I guess they need to do a little more digging. ;)
But honestly, if you want to have someone with a higher likelihood of not speaking English well, Spain and Italy are the most likely culprits in Western Europe (I love y'all, but your English education objectively sucks ass, I'm sorry). And in Eastern Europe, it might be more spotty, where younger people often speak English very well but older people don't speak English at all, but GOD. The Nordic countries (and the Netherlands) have been dominating the rankings for years, this is just embarrassing.
And well, as a person whose job necessitates regular contact with all kinds of different nationalities, I can only say that these numbers do translate into my real life experience - the number of people from Nordic countries I've had trouble communicating with is very small, as opposed to Spanish and Italian people. My own native country (Switzerland) has a higher number of people who don't have a good handle on English, so it's not like I'm talking from a position of misplaced national pride.
nightsgrow replied to your post “I’m crying I’m crying all over this press junket is going to kill me. ...”
What was wrong with IM2? I thought that was a good intro for her character. Do you mean AoU?
Oh now I saw your other post about her being a sexy secretary. I kind of get that.
Yeah, I have a lot of complicated feelings about IM2.
(Okay, I keep rewriting this post, because I’m worried it comes cross as a defense of Joss Whedon- or of Scarlett Johansson, for that matter. That is NOT MY INTENT WITH THIS POST. I am saying this explicitly so I stop rewriting it. This is me attempting to look at how IM2 did and didn’t work for Natasha as a character, in the context of the later MCU and what it could have been. I’m putting the whole thing under a cut, and please, feel free to skip.)
So the thing is. I legit enjoy IM2. It’s possibly my second-most-rewatched MCU movie and I once got into a 30-minute argument with a dude at a con over its honor. But I only ever saw it after seeing Avengers, and my character love was already established, so I was largely watching for Black Widow and always knew Nat was undercover.
Despite Jon Favreau’s hurt denials at the Endgame press conferences, the MCU braintrusts decided the best way to introduce Nat as an undercover spy was to have her playing a sexy secretary who the audience would think was trying to seduce Tony away from Pepper. Watsonianly, it absolutely works- the movie is designed around it. Doylistically, though, it’s a way for the audience to ogle Scarlett as both under- and over-powered in the same film. Despite IM2 being a movie about a Russian defector, we don’t learn anything about Natasha’s background, and we don’t see any aspect of Nat’s emotional journey through the film. There’s no sense of what she’s going through. I’ve never seen IM2 in a vacuum, so I can’t say this for sure, but while it gives a lot of things I really like and a lot that I play with in meta and milk for headcanons, it doesn’t provide a ton of development for her in the text itself.
That Avengers is a really flawed movie doesn’t change the fact that it’s also outrageously successful in many ways, and one of those successes is giving Natasha enough layers that she comes across as a more fleshed-out character. She of course plays in to so many of Joss’s favorite tropes- she’s a small woman who can take down huge bad guys who has a history of brainwashing and ballet, it’s like he built her in a lab- and of course it’s Joss so everyone’s voice is a little too similar, but Avengers starts giving us Natasha as Natasha, rather than both “Natalie Rushman” and Natasha through the lens of both Tony Stark’s perspective. I know every MCU movie Natasha has appeared in has been directed by white men, and pretty much all of them have grossly objectifying shots, but IM2 does it way more than the others.
IM2 essentially introduces us to Natalie/Natasha as construct, and the successive films are attempting to peel back the layers of artificiality to see her as a person. (Some accomplish that better than others.) I think that for us, watching now, it’s very possible to make the argument that that artifice was necessary, or at least useful, for us to be able to understand what getting underneath it means, but when they made IM2, no one actually knew that the MCU would gain steam the way it did. It’s one thing to sign a multi-movie contract, but like, the cast of the live-action Last Airbender did too; there’s no reason to believe it’s actually going to work.
I also think this ties in to the sense I’m getting from this press junket that Scarlett feels Joss is the one who made Natasha who she is, because he was the one with the cache to decide to give her a bigger role despite Ike Perlmutter, and the one to write/direct the first movie that didn’t have her spend half the time in leopard print being flirtatious just because it was in her cover’s character. And I’m torn, because on the one hand, we can all see how much Joss is very much not a feminist hero, and crediting the guy who wrote THAT Wonder Woman script with helping female representation is nauseating, but on the other, he actually DID move things forward. I am in no way trying to justify the bigotry in his work, but his steps forward moved Marvel’s window enough that they hired progressive filmmakers to make much more forward-thinking films.
Because Natasha’s cover being an underwear model was a plot point, and I sometimes have to remind myself that it would have been so easy for Avengers to not change directions with how they showed her, which would have continued to make that all that Natasha was to the entire moviegoing public- including me.
Hey could you just reassure me that Steve is going to be okay in epistaxis? I know it’s stupid but my brother has been having a lot of nosebleeds lately and he’s on anticoagulants so it never seems to heal, and I’m thinking too much about this fic because obviously I’m not comparing my brother to a fictional superhuman but it’s still making me nervous.
Oh my gosh, yes! He’s going to be absolutely fine. I don’t know if it helps, but Steve’s particular issue is very super-soldier specific. He’s going to be miserable while they sort it out, but 100% fine. My thoughts are with you and your brother!
I really feel like you're an honorary Scandinavian with all the things you reblog! Although Finland isn't part of Scandinavia. But Tove Jansson was a Finnish swede so I guess it kind of counts anyway. Sorry for the weird and rambly message your blog just makes me happy
aw omg never apologize for messaging!
I adore Tove Jansson! The Moomins were an extremely significant part of my childhood and as I grew up and understood Tove better it all just became all the more significant to me as an artist and as a queer woman <3
I don’t think I post many more Scandinavian things other than Moomin/Tove related stuff though, do I?
nightsgrow replied to your post “nightsgrow replied to your post “1, 8, 16, 20!” Nice to see...”
Wearing layers suck because stuff always bunches up and gets stuck and touches part of the body more than other parts
Layering is the WORST (even though I do it every day. I found undershirts that are not only long enough for my tall torso but also provide a bit of pressure stim and the fabric keeps me from feeling too sweaty). I wear flannels all the time not just because I look good in plaid. They are super soft, look more put together than a tshirt, and aren’t as hot/oppressive as a sweater. I hate layering a sweater over a button down. It feels awful. And if my tshirt isn't right under my sweatshirt I want to rage quit. I wear skinny jeans all the time even though I don’t like how tight they are on my calves.
Also socks! I too loved the cool colorful ones but couldn’t ever wear them.
Confession, one reason why I chopped my hair of was because of stimmy stuff. I don’t actually like the feeling of hair on my neck and shoulders and pony tails hurt. I also hate the feeling of wet hair on my back *shudder*. ALSO I have thick hair and shed a lot. Long hairs would get caught in my wool socks in the laundry and putting on a sock and feeling a hair between my toes makes me literally nauseated wtf. (sorry tmi!!!)
