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Re: Karen, S2?

[(Anonymous)]

While I do think Karen's choices in the show have been brave, they've also been stupid just like Matt's. He calls himself out for walking into the Russian's trap as 'careless, stupid' and he's right, he says they almost caught him. He gets emotional and he loses focus. Karen, otoh, isn't losing focus because she gets emotional, she doesn't have that type of focus to begin with; she's not been trained for this, she's not considering physical 'enemies' or how to judge when she's going to be attacked or how those kind of consequences come into play. She's got Big Ideas (and a lot of neediness to see them fulfilled) but she doesn't plan for anything, and she admits she's 'a big fan of the not thinking' thing. I like Karen, but she's way out of her element and she has a skewed idea of what she can accomplish in this reality. I love her scrappiness, but I love Matt's scrapiness too, and his abilities barely see him out of the situations he puts himself into. I don't see how Karen will survive that world for much longer if she keeps playing her angles the same way.

As for the porn thing, I thought that was what her and Ben were discussing twice? He made it sound like he did some digging on her and found it right away, and it's the reason she won't post the Fisk story to the internet herself, because she said 'who will believe me once they find... what you found' to Ben. IOW Ben's credible, she's not, and she didn't want all that surfacing anyway.

Oh my dear, you are young and so SO fortunate to live in a time where you are blessed with this kind of media and support. You make me feel like reciting the tears in rain monologue from Blade Runner. I'm an older fan and I've seen fandoms come and go, fandoms with homophobic showrunners and shows with homophobic actors and I've seen slash fandoms exist before social media was a thing. What I've learned in my time? To listen to the quiet empty spaces between words, and allow my fannishness to exist there. I think of characterisations and relationships in these shows like the night sky. The bright shining specks of light equate to what's seen/said on the screen, and the dark matter of space is everything else that isn't implicitly stated. WRT sexuality, Marvel has given us the very subtle gift of options on the screen for almost every character, and coming from a place where we used to have showrunners and writing rooms straight up saying NO HOMOS, I'll take it, this is an improvement, and unless/until they ever have a character say outright, 'I'm not gay/bi/straight/X' then there's wiggle room in the sandbox for me to fictionalise whatever I want. Hallelujah. :)

Re: Karen, S2?

[(Anonymous)]

Seconded regarding Marvel giving fans room to play with slash without having to come out and state anything. In the older comics, I notice so much unsubtle homoeroticism that was clearly unintended. These days, it really reads like they know what they're doing and the fans they're baiting.

The relationship between Cap and Bucky is a great example. An even better one is the science bros tag at the end of Iron Man 3.

I mean, even the AV Club review of Nelson v. Murdock makes a point of saying that a line like "Was anything between us even real?" is there for a reason.

Oh, and re: the moratorium on Spider-Man being straight? The article I read indicated that that was on Sony's no-no list as part of the agreement to lend out the rights, not Marvel's.

Marvel has plenty of great LGBT characters (even though I admit that it'll probably be a while until any of them reach the MCU in an outright stated way) including basically the entire Young Avengers team. (Which has Loki who is also extremely gender fluid as a shapeshifter. And so far the MCU has not gone out of its way to contradict this characterization at all).