I’m gonna do them all, I’m sorry, I am. For this ask meme.
A:
what I think realistically
Natasha didn’t just wake up one day clean and free to wander into the arms of SHIELD. She doesn’t have the scar from it anymore–it was a long time ago, and a woman in her line of work has to get some laser treatments–but Clint shot her through the shoulder when he caught up with her, and it was her response that saved her life.
He couldn’t kill someone who stared him in the eye and said, plain as day, “Go ahead and do it then. Save all those people from me.” Pause. Bitter laugh. “Save me from me.”
Natasha beat him to a bloody pulp the first time they sparred, for disobeying.
B:
what I think is fucking hilarious
Natasha, most of the Avengers believe at first, is effortlessly classy, humorless, and overall terrifying.
They are wildly unprepared for Natasha’s prankster streak–through a combination of dizzying logic and sweet-talking, she gets JARVIS on her side and convinces him to kill all the systems in the Avengers Tower. While Tony is hammering away at his keyboard, trying to find the problem, JARVIS asks, totally deadpan, “Would you like to play a game?” Tony shrieks. Natasha gets it all on camera.
They are likewise unprepared for the first time Natasha and Clint actually stay there for an extended period of time, which includes Natasha, dressed in a shirt she stole from Clint and comfy leggings, sitting crosslegged on the floor and eating cereal at 2 AM while watching old Burn Notice reruns and critiquing the spy shenanigans out loud, regardless of who’s in the room.
It doesn’t come as a shock to them when Natasha goes through an entire week of addressing Clint by increasingly elaborately incorrect codenames. At first it’s “Duck-guy” or “Crow-man” or “Goose-face,” but by day six she’s calling for “Ruby Throated Hummingbird” over the comms. He walks into the debrief and sits down next to her and goes “Hey, Tarantula” and genuinely fears for his life for the next forty-eight hours.
C:
what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends
The Red Room recruiting nine or ten year olds? Nah. Natasha–Natalia–neither of those then, but Natasha-Natalia-Anja-Laurel-Cara-Kristen-Hana-Jessamine and a hundred other bloodstained girls all the same–was four years old when her family’s home burned to the ground. She killed for the first time at five. She was pitted against another child, then, and a knife was put in the room, and whoever lived, left. She went on a mission for the first time at fourteen. Failed. Accidentally killed the target before extracting information. Punished. Another mission a year later. Perfection.
First wiped at sixteen.
Natasha believes she was wiped perhaps twelve times–not after every mission, like the teacher she barely remembers (blue eyes and hard jaw and numbness–Yakov? she doesn’t know), but often enough to keep her controlled. Her last mission, before she was brought into SHIELD, was supposed to be a routine recon to a hospital in Sao Paolo which was thought to be funneling drugs. A children’s hospital. Competition for a major contributor to the Red Room.
It was far worse. Natasha-Natalia-Mila couldn’t leave those children–some of them barely alive anymore, some of them twisted by experiments into…desperate things–to their fate. She knew about desperate things. She made sure they all died cleanly before she burned the building to the ground.
D:
what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway
Natasha is in love with Clint Barton, her hypercompetent loser of a partner who lives in Bed-Stuy with a dog and his…trainee? Sidekick? Mini-me? Don’t bring no AOU nonsense into my house.
In all seriousness, comic ‘canon’ is such a moving target that you can justify almost anything, and I basically abandon MCU canon whenever it suits me. That being said, heADCANON THAT NATASHA BELIEVES SHE’S A MONSTER BECAUSE SHE FUCKING MURDERED A LOT OF PEOPLE AND NOT BECAUSE SHE’S INFERTILE WHAT THE F U C K.
Nope, nope, I swear to Christ, I’m going to come up with something that’s not about AOU, I am, I promise, oh my god, um.
Natasha and Vision are good buddies because Natasha had to fumble her way through how to have Genuine Human Emotions a little bit at first (not how to have them, just how to…deal?) and is happy to explain to Vision when he’s confused.
So I started this the HOUR I got out of X-Men Apocalypse and then I got busy and it sat mostly-finished in my documents for like a month and a half and then I finished it and now it’s sat COMPLETELY finished in my documents for about two and a half weeks. But I finally got around to posting it. Warnings for…standard X-Men-level violence, body horror, social prejudice, and general jackassery, and also for rampant abuse of parentheticals. Crossposted to AO3 here.
So
this is how it starts.
He
comes around and the first thing he realizes is that his head is clear, really
clear, for the first time in…a while. Might be days.
Might be weeks. Good fucking job, he tells himself while
he’s still working up the courage to move.
Stranger danger, dumbass. Especially when the strangers in question are
blue and pop out of mysterious purple bubbles, apparently. To give himself due credit, he’s pretty sure
he tried to leave the blue stranger in the dust—the guy’s name is elusive,
something ancient, something translated roughly as ‘Apocalypse,’ and isn’t that
just menacing as hell.
Let’s talk about the battle in the Department of Mysteries for a sec. So after the group gets split up, Harry, Hermione and Neville go one way and Ron, Ginny and Luna the other. The next time we see the latter group Ginny’s ankle is busted and Ron’s brain is addled. Luna says that the Death Eaters blew up a planet in the planetarium and hit Ron with some sort of hex.
Let’s take a moment to examine that. If the curse that hit the planet had hit any of the kids, they’d be dead. So the Death Eater probably missed, hit the planet ahead of them, injuring Ginny. But here’s the important part: the one who actually gets hit by the hex? Ron.
Why is this important? Because Ron is consistently described throughout the series as tall. Like, every time Harry sees him after the beginning of summer he’s described as having shot up. Again. On the other hand Ginny is described as “the small one” by Bellatrix Lestrange. But Ron is behind her. I don’t know if you know this but tall people can run really fast. I am not particularly fit but I am tall. And I can pour on the speed when my adrenaline’s up, which I have no doubt was the case for everyone in the Department of Mysteries. But he’s behind her.
Because he did that deliberately. He kept his body between the Death Eaters and the girls. He shielded them from their spells. Because those he cares about are more important to him than his own life.
I don’t know, I just think about this a lot.
Ron is a strategist, and has already shown a willingness to take the hit for the team and be left behind. In any group, I think that’s just his default position; take the hit, buy more time for others to escape. He’s well aware that realistically, someone is going to be hurt. In this case, Luna is creative and smart enough to come up with something out of left field to throw the enemy off. Ginny is small, but she’s an athletic powerhouse who can throw strong hexes. If it comes down to a crunch, Ron knows that the two of them can fight their way out, and he can increase their odds by at least holding off the wave behind them.
Honestly, this is such an important point.
Consistently throughout the series, Ron can be seen being taken out of the action somehow. AND IT IS NEVER BECAUSE HE IS WEAK.
Rather, it’s because Ron is a STRATEGIST, who CARES.
In Philosopher’s Stone, for example. Ron allows himself to be “taken” by the queen, because he knows that he is standing with the Boy-Who-Lived and the Brightest-Witch-Of-Her-Age and Voldy must be stopped and it’s SIMPLE to him. Ron is a strategist, like has been said. It’s a strategic decision - who cares if it puts himself in harm’s way?
In Prisoner of Azkaban, Ron and Harry are faced with the Grim, and what does Ron do? He pushes Harry out of Sirius’ path, in the process allowing the dog to latch onto his outstretched arm and pull him away, breaking his leg as they enter the Willow. This decision is simple too - it’s because Harry Potter means the world to Ron Weasley, and Ron would not hesitate for a moment in putting himself between Harry and danger.
RON IS A STRATEGIST, AND RON CARES.
And when it comes down to it, he never hesitates.
And don’t forget DH:
“Wait,” said Bellatrix sharply. "All except… except for the Mudblood.“
Greyback gave a grunt of pleasure. “No!” shouted Ron. “You can have me, keep me!”
“Right,” said Ron, squaring his shoulders. “So you can’t go, that’s what he wants, what he’s expecting. You stay here and look after Hermione, and I’ll go and get it —”
Where do people who claim Ron is a coward who hides behind his friends get their bullshit from?
i am literally 100% sure that ultimately it was lily who asked james out like
james is matured and he’s like “okay you’re gonna ruin it all if you ask her out”
because they’re friends
honest to god friends
who actually talk and laugh and have meaningful conversations and honestly james doesn’t think he could handle it if he messed everything up
so he just kinda sits there in love with her
so in love
and lily’s over here like “i so do not love him”
“no really marlene we’re friends i don’t love him”
“okay yeah he smells really nice and i really love that thing he does with his hands when he’s thinking and it’s really really cute when he runs his fingers through his hair and have you seen the way his ass looks in those quidditch robes”
“but i do not love him”
and marlene’s like “you’re a fucking idiot”
and james decides that he has to at least try to move on so he starts dating amelia boot
and lily can’t figure out why it bothers her so much but she avoids them at literally all costs and she just can’t see them together and she sort of feels like she’s going to throw up and god fucking damn it she loves him
“don’t say i told you so marlene, you bitch”
“i soooo told you so”
but now james is with amelia and it’s too late and lily doesn’t know what to do
so she just kind of sucks it up and tries to hang out with him except it’s so hard because she really really wants to kiss him
(his lips look really soft)
but she can’t and it’s killing her and she kind of thinks amelia hates her?? or, at least, she sends her dirty looks from across the table
and james can’t figure out why amelia doesn’t like lily because everyone likes lily until one day amelia sits him down and asks him to stop talking to her
“you’re still in love with her, james, and you’ll only get over it if you stop talking to her”
james doesn’t think that’s physically possible
so they break up and sirius gives him a knowing look but james keeps quiet about the reason because the last thing he needs is for lily to find out that he still loves her
lily is ecstatic
“i think it’s kind of awful that you’re this happy about your friend breaking up with his girfriend”
“shut up mary”
but they’re at the three broomsticks a month later and it’s just the two of them and they’re waiting for the usual bunch and lily decides she’s going to do it
she has to because she can’t live like this for the rest of her life. she can’t let james potter slip away
“do you love me?”
and oh shit it comes out so wrong that was not what she wanted to say not at all she was going to invite him to get butterbeer later and oh god her cheeks are turning the color of her hair and she thinks she’s going to sink into the chair
james thinks he might be dying
“do i what?”
lily’s already fucked it up this much, she might as well keep going
“do you love me? because i do. love you, i mean.”
and then she stares at her hands and waits
and waits
and waits
and then she looks up because what is taking the asshole so long to reply?
he’s just grinning at her. smiling, as if she’s just told him he’s won a million galleons or signed to play with the chudley cannons
“yeah, yeah i reckon i’ve loved you this whole time”
“pay up, moony. i told you she’d be the one to confess first”
“My body, my choice” only makes sense when someone else’s life isn’t at stake.
Fun fact: If my younger sister was in a car accident and desperately needed a blood transfusion to live, and I was the only person on Earth who could donate blood to save her, and even though donating blood is a relatively easy, safe, and quick procedure no one can force me to give blood. Yes, even to save the life of a fully grown person, it would be ILLEGAL to FORCE me to donate blood if I didn’t want to.
See, we have this concept called “bodily autonomy.” It’s this….cultural notion that a person’s control over their own body is above all important and must not be infringed upon.
Like, we can’t even take LIFE SAVING organs from CORPSES unless the person whose corpse it is gave consent before their death. Even corpses get bodily autonomy.
To tell people that they MUST sacrifice their bodily autonomy for 9 months against their will in an incredibly expensive, invasive, difficult process to save what YOU view as another human life (a debatable claim in the early stages of pregnancy when the VAST majority of abortions are performed) is desperately unethical. You can’t even ask people to sacrifice bodily autonomy to give up organs they aren’t using anymore after they have died.
You’re asking people who can become pregnant to accept less bodily autonomy than we grant to dead bodies.
reblogging for commentary
But, assuming the mother wasn’t raped, the choice to HAVE a baby and risk sacrificing their “bodily autonomy” is a choice that the mother made. YOu don’t have to have sex with someone. Cases of rape aside, it isn’t ethical to say abortion is justified. The unborn baby has rights, too.
First point: Bodily autonomy can be preserved, even if another life is dependent on it. See again the example about the blood donation.
And here’s another point: When you say that “rape is the exception” you betray something FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN about your own argument.
Because a fetus produced from sexual assault is biologically NO DIFFERENT than a fetus produced from consensual sex. No difference at all.
If one is alive, so is the other. If one is a person, so is the other. If one has a soul, then so does the other. If one is a little blessing that happened for a reason and must be protected, then so is the other.
When you say that “Rape is the exception” what you betray is this: It isn’t about a life. This isn’t about the little soul sitting inside some person’s womb, because if it was you wouldn’t care about HOW it got there, only that it is a little life that needs protecting.
When you say “rape is the exception” what you say is this: You are treating pregnancy as a punishment. You are PUNISHING people who have had CONSENSUAL SEX but don’t want to go through a pregnancy. People who DARED to have consensual sex without the goal of procreation in mind, and this is their “consequence.”
And that is gross.
This has been added to since I last saw it, so reblogging again.
Busted wide open.
Mic dropped.
Also, let’s talk consent 101: consenting to one thing does not mean I am automatically consenting to something else.
If I consent to kiss someone, I am not automatically consenting to having sex with them. Hell, if I consented to have sex with someone one way, it doesn’t mean I am automatically consenting to doing it in a different. If I consent to having intercourse, I am not by default consenting to getting pregnant and giving birth.
