#mcu rant

Arnie Roth - Captain America's childhood best friend who joined the army and became a ladies' man, hiding his queerness...Sounds familiar? Yeah

He protected him before the serum, just like Bucky did...

They even share some dialogue...

They basically took Arnie's personality and mixed it with Bucky's character, creating the guy we know and love today.

This, of course, doesn't confirm anything, but combined with literally everything else...You get what I mean, right?

A noteworthy bonus below; it's more spoiler-y than anything else here, so this is your cue to back off if you'd like to read the comic yourself, which I heavily recommend!

[ Avengers Academy: Marvel's Voices Infinity Comic | Issues #21 - #23 ]

The way that it completely ignores what Natasha did. How crucial her actions were to the ultimate victory. Instead they tried to make Endgame into Iron Man 4, and pretend Tony saved everyone singlehandedly. Yet the truth is the plan to reverse the snap would *never have worked* without Natasha's sacrifice.

They had to have all of the stones to snap everybody back- and they also had to have all the Stones to snap Thanos away. Even one missing, and not only would the Snapped have stayed dead, but Thanos would have won a second time.

In truth, it was Natasha who saved the universe and Natasha who ensured ultimate victory against Thanos. Anybody could have snapped Thanos away (it didn't have to be Tony), but few could have paid the ultimate price for the Soul Stone.

In fact: let's talk about the Soul Stone. It was the most difficult and costly of all the Stones to obtain. I read that some theories that the souls of the Snapped were contained in the Stone, and so it was the key to bringing everyne back.

Meaning that Stone was also the one which allowed Thanos and his army to be Snapped away.

So again, it all comes back to Natasha, and her choice on Vormir.

Yet she didn't even get a funeral. The movie just completely ignores her to give Tony all the credit and all the fuss when he actually did very little.

Something about the Red Room just feels hauntingly realistic. Like obviously training girls to be child assassins and spies isn’t necessarily a common thing, but Human Trafficking? Exploiting young girls? Taking away their bodily autonomy?

If you’re a woman or afab or even if you’ve just spent enough time around us you know that the fear of those things live bone deep inside us. Girls literally have stories of being kidnapped, trafficked, and exploited being fed to them as ‘cautionary tales’. Horror stories of girls just like us ‘disappearing’ are carved into our bones before most of us can even fully grasp what they mean. And a lot of the time it doesn’t fully protect us anyways.

Not just that but Human Trafficking is a real thing that happens, and is essentially what the Red Room was doing. And the mind control, manipulation, and erasing of someone’s own personal identity is exactly what traffickers do to their victims.

Natasha, Yelena, and all the other widows plus the ones that didn’t survive were literally living the real life nightmares of many girls and young women, and those fears aren’t even unrealistic.

It’s about little girls who should’ve been protected, who were instead left to fend for themselves in a program so brutal most of the girls didn’t survive, and the ones who did only did so because it was either become as brutal as the ones who are doing this to you, or die.

Like I don't even need to explain all of the messed up shit he did to Loki and just thinking about him just makes my blood boil.

Remember when Loki said that he's going to burn the TVA to the ground? (But sadly it never actually happened)

Well in my personal fantasies I imagine Thor finding out about everything they did to his brother and just straight up obliterates the fuck out of them from sheer rage that is well deserved since in the end they are just fascists whom committed genocide.

Bonus, I just couldn't help myself

And yeah, it’s good Steve apologised in general, but the way he did it? Not so much. Passing the responsibility for their relationship onto Tony (here’s the phone for YOU, call me if YOU need), subtly implying that he, Steve, probably won’t need Tony, but he’ll be gracious enough to be there if Tony feels like reaching out. Well, fuck you, Steve, and your hypocritical, self-righteous nobility. If you really wanted to fix things between you two, you’d go to Tony and talk face to face like adults do — not send a fucking note admitting you screwed up, hoping it somehow will take all the guilt off of you and fix things. Like it doesn’t just leave Tony to deal with the fact that Steve acknowledges what happened but has no interest in doing anything about it.

(for the record: I’m speaking from a place of emotion here, because objectively, I love Steve’s hypocrisy. It makes him such a compelling, layered character by highlighting his struggle to handle personal conflicts (as opposed to physical battles), and I absolutely love how CW pushes him into that moral grey area)

If you are not interested/a Ragnarok fan please skip, or just don't leave negative comments, thank you.

Ok, here we go.

I personally hate how overrated Thor: Ragnarok is.

People only started criticising Waititi's direction after the Love and Thunder flop, and I was honestly flabbergasted, because... They were criticising the exact same things they loved so much in Ragnarok.

For example, they criticised Thor being too stupid and unserious but... He was already an idiot in Ragnarok? Which, by the way, even as a Loki stan, was the thing I hated the most about the movie (I guess the Odinsons just have a tendency of becoming idiotic scapegoats in every modern piece of media that depicts them. Yes, I'm also referencing the Loki series here.)

But moving on.

Another thing that was funny to me was people (rightfully) criticising the lack of seriousness and conflict with such a great villain. And, once again, I was there standing like... It's the SAME THING that happened in Ragnarok?? Like, the movie that's supposed to be about Ragnarok literally only had like 20 minutes of apocalypse/main conflict with Hela/Surtr in it! Most of the goddamn movie takes place on a dumb garbage planet with the Grandmaster (another wasted character) just fucking around. Little side note here, the Grandmaster is supposed to be the Collector's brother (in the comics and cartoon they both collect rare things and people and compete over it, yadda yadda) and yet this isn't referenced in any way? His powers are never shown. Like what? The potential? Wasted like that? UGH.

Also, this movie adds shallow characters. First of all, obviously, the Grandmaster, who I already covered. Then, and here I'm taking a deep breath waiting to get crucified, Valkyrie.

Ok, I'm going to try and explain this one easily. Valkyrie isn't a bad character, ok? I'm already going to say this since I want to clarify it as soon as possible. I don't think she's bad and I don't dislike her. The problem is, she is given a shallow personality and shallow purpose, at least when I look at her. For instance, I appreciated the way her trauma was portrayed, with her drinking and all, but they do joke about it sometimes (too many) and that I do not appreciate. But then. Her personality just... Ends there. And again, this is comprehensible in a way, but what I do not understand is her just switching sides randomly, like she didn't capture and shock Thor just hours before in the movie. That, plus her serving little purpose to the plot is what irks me the most. Like, the main things she does in the movie are:

1. Capturing Thor and bringing him to the GM.

2. Telling them about the only way out of the planet.

3. Being there in the final battle.

And if this was a better written movie, this would make her a necessary character. But in Ragnarok... She isn't.

She catches Thor, then dips. Ok, just have him randomly land in the GM's throne room, or have him getting caught by another rando who then dips.

The escape? Loki has lived with the GM (and his most trusted court members/whatever they are supposed to be) for two weeks. Do you really think that someone like him couldn't gather such a massive piece of info in this time? Or even better, do you think he hasn't noticed the GIANT EINSTEIN-ROSEN BRIDGE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SKY? He is intelligent. That's the point of his character. He would- SHOULD- have figured it out in a matter of days, the only thing stopping him was getting to a decent ship to cross said bridge, and that's what he actually needed his brother (and maybe Hulk, even if his presence was pretty random) for.

The final battle was disappointing, so I'm not even going to comment this one.

All of this to say that, with the way the character/movie was written, Valkyrie could have been removed, a few changes could have been made and the movie would have been the same. Yeah, she's friends with Hulk, which, cool, but once again this bond isn't used in any way besides her joking with him and Bruce. Her character was treated way better in the What If episodes she appeared in.

[Edit: someone reblogged and thought I was implying that her character should be thrown away. To be clear, I wasn't, I actually like her and do acknowledge that Jane, too, was shallow as a character, I just didn't mention her because she doesn't appear in this movie. All I was saying is that the writing makes her just be there, which is something that pisses me off, too. This was just to point out that Ragnarok just added so many characters with potential that was never used, and Valkyrie is one of them. Hell, you could take away half of the secondary characters, if not (almost) all of them, and the movie would stay the same.]

Then we have Korg. Yeah, I got nothing to say, he's an idiot that used to be a serious/half-important character in comics/series and got severely distorted in this movie like most other characters starring in it. Funnily enough, just like Valkyrie, his character is treated better and is way more useful in What If, which is honestly ironic.

Then, I could talk about the mistreatment of both Thor and Loki's characters but that would take a post the length of the Divine Comedy, so I'll just cut it short and cover the most important points.

Thor and Loki are obviously not appreciated (Loki is disliked more, of course he is), and therefore are written in a very OOC way. Thor turns into a full blabbering idiot and Loki is interpreted as someone whose only purpose is to betray, stab and rule. And that's all I'm going to say for now, even though I might extend the discourse in a future post.

And now, oooh boy, Hela. I loved Hela, I was excited as soon as she appeared on screen. And what happened next? Her brothers got lost in space and we didn't see them interact with her in any way besides her introduction and the short ahh dialogue with Thor in the final battle. I hate this so much. Once again, the movie that's supposed to talk about Ragnarok only shows the conflict in the last 20 minutes of the movie. And we barely see Hela, or at least we don't get to see her as much as we should, given that she's supposed to be the main antagonist of the damn movie. Her character was great, for all that we could see, but she is a walking definition of wasted potential and I despise it.

Now, there is something I do appreciate about the movie, and it's the characterization of Hulk. He finally isn't reduced to a stupid destroyer or dumb beast, and as a huge Hulk fan and Agents of S.M.A.S.H. watcher I liked this. This, and Heimdall being given some scenes and characterization, too. That's it. That's what I liked about the movie.

Now, short list of things I hated to finish the post: Fandral and Volstagg being killed like flies, Hogun meeting a similar fate right after, Sif not even appearing (so much for Sif and the Three Warriors); the constant jokes that were obviously made for an audience of four years olds; Skurge (or whatever his name was) just... Being there? Another useless/misused/mischaracterised character I didn't mention before, because DAMN is this character STUPID; STRANGE just appearing at some point and dipping (like he couldn't help them?? WHY EVEN MAKE HIM SHOW UP AT ALL UGHHH).