squeeful:

benadrylthegoodstuff:

I did. When I first saw Thor, I loved the movie. It was great. Except Jane. I couldn’t stand Jane. She was too much of what I thought of as a ‘damsel in distress’, even though, thinking back on it now, I don’t think she was ever actually in distress in the first movie (at least, no more than any other mere mortal in that little New Mexico town was).

Jane just wasn’t what I thought of as a ‘strong’ female character. She was no Peggy or Sharon Carter or Maria Hill. She didn’t defeat the villain like Pepper Potts did in IM3. And she certainly wasn’t Natasha Romanov (no one is like Natasha Romanov). She was like Betty Ross; there only to be a love interest for the main character.

And then I was watching Thor: The Dark World, and I was hit with a realization.

Of course she’s not a ‘strong’ character like Peggy Carter or Natasha Romanov.

She’s a scientist.

Before Thor came along and disrupted her life, she was a scientist studying out space and wormholes and whatever else (i’m not a scientist i have no idea). Natasha was made and bred into this world of spy and intrigue. Peggy Carter, Sharon Carter and Maria Hill are all women in military positions–Peggy with the Army (I think?) and Sharon and Maria with SHIELD. And Pepper, as amazing as she is, really only defeated Aldrich Killian because she was injected with Extremis. Jane Foster wasn’t made for this world of aliens and gods and superheroes. Jane doesn’t have what any of the other female Marvel characters have, which is the skills necessary to keep up with these types of characters.

You know what she does have? She has her science, and she has a neverending scientific curiosity.

When Jane is zapped into an alternate space, the first thing she does is investigate the weird cube thing there. She goes and sticks her finger in it, and she doesn’t start freaking out until the Aether sinks into her skin.

When she’s traveling the Bifrost, she looks about her in wonder and awe, because yes, she’s traveling in space, but this is also the culmination of her life’s work, absolutely proof that she was right, and you can just bet her brain was whirring as she added all that into place.

When she’s on the healing table in Asgard, she knows exactly what it is. You can hear the sneer in the Asgardian healer’s voice, can almost hear her thinking Oh this puny mortal thinks she’s so smart, but what does she know?, but Jane knows exactly what this device is. Asgardian science is so advanced it looks like magic to Midgardians but Jane still knows what it is.

She slaps Loki. This is a being who invaded her world twice, who helped wipe a New Mexico town off the map and brought an army into New York. This is an alien on par with Thor, who could probably break her neck with a flick of his wrist. And she storms up and slaps him. That’s brave. A little reckless and foolhardy, for the above-mentioned reasons, but brave. She’s not a cowering damsel by any means.

The only real time she’s anywhere close to being a damsel is when Loki hands her over to Malakith, which was actually just part of the plan, so it hardly even counts.

Even during the final battle, Jane isn’t a damsel or sitting helpless. She’s an asset. She’s the one who manages to reconfigure Erik’s devices to induce the anomalies caused by the Convergence. She’s the one who stands in a bell tower as aliens fight outside and causes things to disappear to help Thor stall Malakith so he can’t destroy the world.

Jane Foster isn’t strong, not in the way Maria or Natasha or Peggy or Sharon are, because she wasn’t made for that. But that doesn’t make her weak. She is a scientist, and she uses her brains to help out in the ways she can. She isn’t physically strong, but she’s well-rounded in the ways that truly strong characters are.

I’ve been brainwashed into thinking the only strong female characters are the ones with sharp edges who can kill you just by looking at you. That’s not what a strong female character is. Jane Foster is strong, in her own way, and I’m done hating her. We need more female characters like her, not the type to save the day with her brawn, but with her brain.

I used to hate Jane Foster. I don’t any more.

This is what we mean when we say “strong female character means strong characterization, not a handful of masculine-coded traits”

Jane Foster is the best thing about Thor and that’s at least partly down to because Kenneth Branagh actually likes and respects women as people.  She has, arguably, the fullest characterization of any of Marvel’s on-screen women.