My Opinion on Avengers: Age of Ultron

I'd give it a 6/10. Maaaaybe a 6.5. It wasn’t as good as I’ve been hoping for since the summer of 2012, but it was okay. Here’s why that 6.5 isn’t a 10:

Age of Ultron was written by Joss Whedon, whom I used to really like (most notably for Dr. Horrible, Firefly, and The Avengers), but I recently found out that he was being a whiny man-baby and left Marvel studios after getting bitter about pieces in the MCU that other people wrote and criticisms that people have given him (please correct me if I’m wrong; I may not know the whole story). Anyway, I’d read up a few things on Tumblr about it before I went to see it today, so I was expecting to be a little disappointed. What I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t read anything on Tumblr was that the characters of the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are supposed to be Romani Jews but were whitewashed by Joss Whedon and written to be affiliated with HYDRA, which is a Nazi organization. Now that doesn’t make very much sense to me. Minus 2 points right there.

wanda and pietro in the comic books
image courtesy newsarama

i don't see a resemblance
image courtesy kdramastars

   

Now I watched the movie, and I was thoroughly entertained by it. There was action (of course) and some really great character development for Hawkeye. This made me really happy because I often feel like he’s an under-appreciated avenger and that he didn’t get enough screen time in the last movie. I was also really happy with the addition of Wanda, Sam, and Rhodey into the Avengers team at the end of the movie. It made me super excited for the next movie to come out. These are the components that made me give it those 6-6.5 points. 

The main thing that caused me to take away those 1.5-2 points is the way that Joss Whedon handled the characters of Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff. Steve wasn’t written very well in the first Avengers movie, so I wasn’t really surprised, but Joss Whedon’s writing really diminished since then if you’re looking at the way he wrote Nat. Neither of these characters got nearly enough screen time in AOU, and in both of the movies, it seems like Steve has only been used as joke material. Many of the jokes that he made in The Avengers were out of character, and in Age of Ultron, it seems that he was only used as the running “language!” joke throughout the film.

Natasha Romanoff is one of my favorite characters ever, and I’m really sad about how she was portrayed in this film. She didn’t have much screen time, either, and the time that she did get was either engaging in a really stupid and forced relationship between her and Bruce, or fighting in a way that was probably just there so the straight males in the audience could see how sexy her body is. The small bit of character development we did get regarding Natasha was in her backstory in the Red Room, and I guess that was pretty cool, but I feel like most of that was shown just so she could connect more with Bruce, and it still seemed pretty forced. 

Overall, I’d say that Age of Ultron was entertaining but disappointing. And frankly, I’m kind of glad that Joss Whedon left Marvel. 

Sexism in SuperWhoLock-- Sherlock

Time for the final part of my Sexism in SuperWhoLock series!! Who else is dying for Sherlock season 4 to start filming?? I know I am, but today we're gonna take a look at the female characters in the show and how they're treated. Molly, Mrs. Hudson, Sally, and Irene are all the four main ones so far (there's also Mary, but I didn't get to talking about her because her main issue is the way the fans treat her). That's about the same amount as the male characters, but for some reason the only episode that passes the Bechdel test is A Scandal in Belgravia (at least I think), and that episode has issues of its own, but I'll get to that later. Probably because of Steven Moffat's attitude towards women.

Molly is so cute. I love her so much I can't even stand it. But she's constantly treated horribly by Sherlock and the writing in general. She is portrayed as weak just because she has feelings for Sherlock, but she continues to have a crush on him and do things for him and be submissive, even though he's pretty gross to her. Look, a harmful stereotype. A sweet, innocent, "weak" woman whose sole purpose in life is serve the man WHO IS ABUSIVE TO HER!! Sigh. The only time we were ever told of any part of her life outside of Sherlock was when she dated Jim, and we can only imagine how that went.

look at this beautiful loser <33
image courtesy Spylight

The best-treated female character on the show is probably Mrs. Hudson, but the problem with her is that her character isn't very well-developed. Yeah, we know she used to run a drug cartel with her husband and work as an exotic dancer, but her part is pretty small and most of what she does is just to enhance Sherlock's character development. The boys are pretty disrespectful of her, too, and she doesn't seem to enforce the fact that she doesn't like that. We almost got a little depth from her when she was keeping the information hidden from the guys who beat her up, but that ended up just being a scene to show that Sherlock actually can have empathy and a soft spot for a mother figure.

a small flicker of character development
image courtesy of Modify Lifestyle

Why does the entire Sherlock fanbase hate Sally Donovan? The world may never know. She honestly didn't do anything wrong, besides not liking Sherlock, which, in my opinion, is completely understandable. He's a jerk and he slut-shamed her within the first 20 minutes of the first episode. She also happens to be the only recurring character who's a person of color. Pretty much the only other one ever who wasn't written in a super racist way was Bainbridge in the Sign of Three (played by my bABY ALFIE ENOCH).

the one true queen
image courtesy Sherlock Wikia

Oh, Irene. How you fit perfectly with the male gaze. I'm sorry, but the Irene in Elementary is so much better, not to mention the fact that she's played by goddess Natalie Dormer. There are so many problems with Sherlock's rendition, the first being that she was canonically a LESBIAN until they HAD to throw in her falling in love with Sherlock, because, you know, every gay woman is just waiting for the right man to come along and straighten her out, right? Wrong. That's gross. She's also dressed in skimpy outfits the whole time probably just to appeal to the straight male viewers of the show. Thanks a lot for only thinking of your own kind, Moffat.

this is one of the few pictures I could find where she was actually wearing clothes
image courtesy KristinKoga

And that concludes the series!! I hope you enjoyed it. If you'd like me to do anything else like this, tell me in the comments and I'll get right on it. 

Sexism in SuperWhoLock-- Supernatural

Before I get into anything, I'd just like to add a disclaimer: 

I love all three of these shows. In fact, they're three of my all-time favorites. However, sometimes when I'm watching them I notice that there are lots of things about them that I don't agree with. I feel like in order to be a good fan of something you have to be able to criticize it and accept that it has flaws. 

Also, please note that this series isn't only about sexism. It's about many forms of prejudice-- I only named it "Sexism in SuperWhoLock" because that title is hella catchy.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, it's time for the real juicy part. I'll be making three posts on this topic, one for each show. Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock are super rad shows, but none of them are very inclusive or positive when it comes to anyone who isn't an abled, cisgendered, heterosexual, white man. 

Let's start with Supernatural:
Okay. Let's be honest here. Is there really any way you can argue that this show ISN'T sexist?? I mean, one of Dean's main character traits is the fact that he objectifies women so much. There are countless female characters who have only shown up for a few seconds just to be a distraction to Dean, and most of the bigger parts women that appear in the show are just there to be another love interest for him or Sam. There are only four episodes so far this season out of thirteen (that I can think of) that have passed the Bechdel Test, there are ZERO female main characters, and only like four female recurring characters (Charlie, Jodie, and Rowena--I'm not including Hannah or Donna because I'm assuming that we probably won't be seeing any more of them). How many main characters are there? Four: Dean, Sam, Cas, and Crowley. And they're all white men. All of the women who aren't evil are stereotypical "tomboys," which is a problem because that perpetuates the idea that feminine qualities can't go with heroism. All of the more feminine characters are either love interests for the boys or villains. Does anyone remember Ellen and Jo? Because I sure do, and I miss them like heck. They were strong, female characters with big parts in the show and Jo was always calling Dean out on his sexist crap. But of course, they got killed off, and that was partly the fault of the fanbase. The majority of the fans hated Ellen and Jo, so the writers decided to make their fans happy and kill them off. Thanks a lot, guys.

jo is judging all the misogynists in the world
image courtesy of fun_like_that

Supernatural is also a major culprit of queerbaiting, usually done with Dean and Castiel. Some examples of this are Balthazar saying to Dean, "where's the angel in a trenchcoat who's in love with you?" (or something like that), Dean telling Cas how to fix his clothes for his date in that one car scene, and many more "gay jokes" that have come up. I find this disgusting, not because the writers are hinting at the characters being gay, but because they're not CANONICALLY gay or bisexual. There have been a total of eight gay characters in 209 episodes of the show, and five of them have only showed up for one. Charlie is the only one who's been in more than one, and she's totally rad, but she's kind of a lesbian stereotype and one of the only women who hasn't been a love interest for the boys ("Oh, I know! Let's make her gay so she can't fall in love with Dean!!" -Robert Singer probably). There were also the two girls in the 200th episode "Fan Fiction" (which, btw, is like my favorite episode because it passed the Bechdel test pretty well and Dean quOTED RENT), there were two girls who were said to be dating, but they weren't in it for very long. There were also those dudes in the episode "Slash Fiction" who came out as gay at the end, which was cool, but they quite obviously made Dean uncomfortable. One really good character was the gay woman in "All Hell Breaks loose-- Part 1!!" She had a developed story and a pretty big part And then there was the intern in the Ghostfacers episode, whose character was nothing but a disappointing joke ("You gotta go be gay for that poor dead intern!") and a fail at representation.

There have never been any canonically transgender or disabled characters in Supernatural. Ever. And Sam and Dean make fun of mentally disabled people all the freakin time. The extremely low number of non-white characters (who are almost all African-American besides Kevin and his mom) are almost all dead. In multiple episodes of the show, Sam and Dean kill gods and beings from other cultures, despite it being a very Christian-centric show.

I'm sure there are lots of other things that can be pointed out about this show, but that's all I'll talk about now. Just make sure that when talking about Supernatural you don't defend it mercilessly, because it, like everything else, has flaws.

I hope you all have a lovely day!! <3