NOPE!

Actually, I mostly wanted to link to this piece of meta by such_heights that I stumbled across earlier today, presenting (I think) an excellent defense of Natasha/Bruce as a pairing in the movie, and what it means for Natasha specifically.

Of course I just spent oodles of time yesterday typing up everything I dislike about it, and I stand by that. But I also feel that, well first of all, such_heights has some really excellent character meta about Natasha in those scenes (and makes a point I hadn't considered, which is that at least some of what I saw as wtf random character changes between the movies can be considered a result of what she went through in Cap2, and her subsequent desire to reinvent herself).

... I mean, we are all willing to cut huge amounts of slack for - to pick an example - Steve's extremely different personality in Avengers compared to his much more relaxed and playful persona in his own movies; we invent detailed explanations involving depression and grief, and while I think the fanwanky explanations totally work, I doubt if the writers actually put that much thought into it. And even though I STILL hate the infertility/kids discussion in AoU, and the way infertility is prioritized in the Red Room flashbacks, I also think it's worth kind of stopping for a minute to think about how the fandom overall is dealing with that, compared to, say, fandom's ongoing willingness to handwave away three movies' worth of Tony clearly and explicitly putting Pepper at the center of his universe in order to remove her as a romantic rival and put him together with Steve.

We tend to be harder, generally, on female characters, and cut them less slack, and sideline them in fanfic on the slimmest of pretexts. General prevailing sentiment in fandom is to blame it on fannish sexism, and while I think that's GOT to be part of it (I've caught myself doing it too, reacting more negatively to the same behavior from female characters that I'd tolerate in a male character), I don't actually think it's all of it -- because female characters are disproportionately likely to be victims of sloppy writing and a lack of what I guess I'd call narrative empathy in canon: we get the guys' POV, but we don't get the female characters' POV as often, even when they're onscreen as much. And I think we're (mostly on a subconscious level) reacting to that, also.

(I REALLY need to type up this thing that's been circulating around the back of my brain ever since I watched Agent Carter and Engrenages, because both of those shows invite us into the female characters' POV in a way that shows almost never do -- it's sort of like, I don't notice the exclusion of women's POVs in TV and movies as a general rule, but I tend to notice the opposite; it's so ubiquitous that this sidelining of female viewpoints, the way the narration tends to be very subtly slanted towards the male characters in a way I'm pretty sure the writers don't even know they're doing, is something I only notice when a show happens not to do that.)

Anyway, as much as I wasn't happy with Natasha's storyline in AoU, I really think it's sad that the only thing fandom seems to be talking about post-movie regarding Natasha is how she was badly written or she was a damsel in distress or she was reduced to nothing but a "girlfriend" in the movie, because -- where have we all seen this before? OH RIGHT, EVERYWHERE, FOR EVERY FEMALE CHARACTER EVER, INCLUDING NATASHA IN THE FIRST AVENGERS MOVIE! And even though I do think a lot of her storyline was badly written and the characterization was all over the map, I'm glad to have stumbled across some meta that focuses on the stuff she did that was cool, and fun, and good for her as a character. And I hope there will be more of it!

...

On a side note, now that the movie has had time to settle in my brain somewhat, I am amazed that the character relationship I came out with the most ~feelings~ about is, apparently, Clint's with the Maximoff twins. I DIDN'T EVEN LIKE HAWKEYE! (I didn't hate him, but I didn't really have feelings about him as a character one way or another.) And now I really love the snarky little bastard and have massive amounts of feelings about those final scenes with Clint and Wanda, and Clint and Pietro, in particular. (The scene where he lays down beside Pietro's body ... I WILL NEVER STOP HAVING FEELINGS ABOUT THAT.)