Can you spare a minute to listen to me talk about my favorite Eternal, Thena? Great, thanks.
Why Thena? You ask me. Well it's not just because she's portrayed by Angelina Jolie (admittedly it does help, because let's face it, that woman is beautiful). And it's also not just because she's basically Athena, who's my favorite Greek Goddess. (I mean, Goddess of Wisdom and War. What's more badass than that? Don't stomp your prada shoes at me, Aphrodite, you're just not as cool). No, what I really love about Thena is that she is both strong and weak without it being contradicting. She's a warrior with a mental illness, which is something we don't see all that often in movies, let alone movies like the MCU. (I mean, sure, there was Tony in Iron Man 3 but that was like 1 scene and it was never brought up again). This is a form of representation too, you know and I think (despite not having experience with PTSD, which she seems to suffer from as well as Mhad Wy'ry) it is quite an accurate representation. It's in the little details that you can see this. The fear and panic her face after she lost herself. The shaking of her hands (pretty sure I saw that) after waking up from the Mhad Wy'ry. It's just... phenomenal acting if you ask me. (Not that I expected anything else after seeing Angelina in Maleficent. I still find it hard to watch the scene where Maleficent wakes up after Stefan drugged her and cut her wings off. You can just see the pain on her face, hear it in her screams... and as an empath that just hits me, hard.) I guess, what I mean to say is, that as a young woman who suffers from mental illnesses herself (depression, anxiety and trauma suck, my peeps) I am happy that mental illnesses are now accurately portrayed in movies, which makes it more easily talked about. If you get me. Besides that, Thena is obviously just a badass fighter, and I just fucking love that. (And I also just admire Angelina Jolie, but that's a conversation for later).
(I honestly doubted if I should post this or not, but I figured, what the hell, nobody here actually knows who I am anyway.)
Another reason, that I forgot to add, as to why this is so important to me (and people like me) is that seeing a fictional character struggle makes me feel seen. It helps us explain ourselves to other people.
And maybe I'm thinking all this because recently I have been thinking about my trauma more often than usual l, because of some conversations I had recently (obviously with people that I trust, because duh). And I haven't been doing all that well because of that. (I mean, I am relatively fine, there's no reason to worry about me, I just have been struggling a little bit.) But I think I would have picked up on it nevertheless.
Anyway, struggling or not, I am happy to see this in movies, because it makes me feel that I too can be strong despite what I have gone through. And I hope others might feel this as well.
