[ SECRET POST #3104 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3104 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 071 secrets from Secret Submission Post #444.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

But, to be fair, in the MCU (not the comics) she hasn't had much to do yet nor much screentime. I'm not saying what she's done as of yet is dumb (because she hasn't really had enough development to decide on anything) but more making suggestions on directions they could go in with her character that wouldn't be treading old ground and could give us something we haven't had in the MCU yet (a female villain).

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT: I think you're missing some of the impact of the "crypto-neo-Nazi" part.

There are a LOT of ways of treading new ground that don't involve turning people's favourite (who are the people who'd be accusing you of character hate) into a genocidal eugenicist. When you are on the side of the organization that wants to murder 20 million people in order to impose a crushing oligarchy lead by a rich white guy from the most powerful country in the world, there isn't actually that much room for "complexity": many people (this anon among them) don't really give a shit how ~nuanced~ your feelings are about it, that's just evil. Particularly to continue working for/being loyal to those people post-Insight and post the revelation of everything that HYDRA did and wanted to do.

(Cf: genocidal eugenicists performing illegal and torturous medical experimentation on unwilling human beings, borne out of the ideology of the guy for whom the Nazis weren't extreme enough.)

"HYDRA agent" is not where you're going to find your ~complexity~ and ~nuance~. "HYDRA agent" is "I want this female character to be evil because I think literally anything else they could do with her is BORING and STUPID."

[(Anonymous)]

Again, though, you could make it a redemption storyline. I actually think there are some really interesting directions you could go in with Sharon and Bucky in regards to this in particular.

Plus, Hydra's HARDLY neo-Nazi anymore. I mean, Sitwell was in their ranks and he's not white.

And considering Red Skull, canonically, was going to attack Berlin, well, they're fascist but their "superior man" ideology seems to be based on the supersoldier serum rather than any racial or eugenics component.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT: The actual Nazis were allied with the Japanese and they're not white either (and the Japanese were allied with them, and half of Italy - also allied with the Nazis - weren't what Hitler would have considered "white"): pragmatism on all sides, including those of people who wanted to climb the train to power or strategic advantage more than they cared about rhetorical insults, as well as the manipulation of ideology to appear to support particular alliances has always been a factor. Basing your eugenics on the DNA alteration of the serum doesn't make it less eugenicist.

If you're actually comparing the guy who literally had his brain (incredibly painfully) re-wiped for as little a show of non-compliance as continuing to ask a question after being non-consensually modified in the first place to someone who actually chose to follow HYDRA of their own free will, tho, then you live in a moral reality so incredibly different from mine that further discussion is pretty much pointless. My endeavour was to explain to you why people might find what you're saying to be character hate; if you really can't see why someone might feel that way, well, I don't have any further ways to explain.

[(Anonymous)]

That redemption idea is...not at all what I was suggesting

I was thinking more that Sharon could be the one to help Bucky break free from his programming as her redemptive arc -- she had been unaware of him up to that point but following the destruction of SHIELD, Hydra's forces are compromised and so she's brought onto his case (tracking him, trying to get him back under Hydra control).

Seeing firsthand what was done to him could be a potential motivator for her to turn her back on Hydra and help Bucky resist his programming.

I think a case could be made that Sharon, up to that point, saw Hydra in a naive way and that their "Algorithm" for targeting people wasn't AS EVIL precisely because it was done through an unbiased computer (in her view) but seeing Bucky's human suffering, firsthand, could open her eyes. A bit of the difference between drone warfare (killing someone on a screen like a video game thousands of miles away) vs. having to kill someone PRESENT and see, hear, smell them die by your hands.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT: Cool beans. (It IS an argument I've encountered before - a lot - in fandom, so my apologies for jumping there.)

In terms of the rest of it, though: again, for some people, that would be infinitely too little too late. (I'm honestly one of them: again, if you stick with an org through an attempt to kill twenty million people, almost all of them non-combatants, all at once, with the threat of waves and waves of more - making you actually worse than Hitler and the HIGH end of Stalin's body-count COMBINED because it took Stalin his whole reign to manage his death toll - then just . . . *hands* no.)

You are not required to see it the same way, but the point is: taking someone's character, who they like, and like what has been (openly) done with as Good Guy so far, and possibly even coming from comics/awareness of comics and liking THAT too, and then going "all of that is totally boring and pointless, make her HYDRA!" is something that feels an awful lot like hate, especially when you're in the context of massive amounts of ACTUAL hate that exist.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess I'm just more open to the idea of redemption in this case. Heck, I liked Darth Vader's redemption even though he participated in the destruction of Alderaan (billions of people there - all of them civilians almost).

I actually got the idea a bit from seeing Sharon with Pierce -- and it got me thinking how he's probably known her since she was REALLY little (given how old Pierce is and Peggy's role in SHIELD it wouldn't surprise me) and he would have been positively GLEEFUL at the idea of turning Peggy's starry-eyed niece against her.

I think that the idea of the algorithm works because, since it's a computer, Pierce can argue that they're unbiased and letting cold hard FACTS dictate who the most dangerous are (I also think it's possible that Sharon would not have been told about how high the body count would be). He could point at the fact that Sitwell (non-white) being a Hydra agent and that it was a computer making the decision to kill rather than biased, prejudiced human beings as a reason Hydra's modern approach is superior to SHIELD's.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT: I'm fine with Vader's redemption, mostly because there is never any indication (to me) that it makes up for or erases the shit he did. He literally pays with his life, willingly; fair enough.

And thus I would also be fine with an ex-HYDRA agent saving people and then giving themselves up and spending their time in prison, which would almost certainly be the rest of their lives. I agree that it would even be a super interesting storyline, although I think they'd have to be an idiot to believe that line about the algorithm (it identifies enemies of HYDRA, not "bad people").

Taking a character who already exists and saying "the only way she's not going to be boring/just more of the same/of any value/a Peggy clone is if she's secretly evil", however, is still gonna feel really damn insulting and hateful to the people who already love the character. Even if there's a redemption arc out of it.

Which is the point.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I don't necessarily think that Sharon would have to DIE to make up for it. But atonement could mean spending the rest of her life fighting Hydra, right?

I think that "enemies of HYDRA" could very easily be considered equivalent to "bad people" or "people it's necessary to kill" if one believes HYDRA is a force for good in this world. I mean, look at the CIA -- I'm sure a lot of agents there would justify the killing (even torture) of others who oppose the CIA/USA as right or necessary. I don't think they're idiots. Note that I'm not saying USA =HYDRA, just that when you believe something to be a force for good overall, you do have a tendency to believe its enemies are bad.

I don't think it's the ONLY way she wouldn't be boring -- but I do think it would be ONE way to avoid treading old ground. If she stays good, does that mean she will automatically be treading old ground? Nope. But I think you'd agree that it makes it more likely it could happen and given how time-limited these movies are, I thought it would be a good way of using what time we have develop a completely new storyline a introduce a novel element (a female villain).

That and I think seeing a redemption quest for Sharon would be a really good way to tie Bucky into the mix while allowing for Sharon's transformation. Because we already have a bajillion storylines going on in Civil War (New Avengers, Registration, Spiderman, Bucky, Sharon) so tying them together would, I think, be optimal so no one gets shortchanged.

[(Anonymous)]

SA

Okay, and I'll totally confess that the possibility of Sharon being a villain was also tinged a bit by this:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CIAEvilFBIGood

I know that it's not a hard and fast rule or anything but it got the wheels in my head spinning.

Although one could, of course, argue that Sharon being discovered as being/having been a Hydra agent while she's working for the CIA (thus being an "evil CIA agent") would be quite cliché as well.

[(Anonymous)]

She doesn't have to be a HYDRA agent.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT: Er, op literally says "HYDRA agent" in zir secret.

Ze is literally expressing confusion as to what about making Sharon explicitly a HYDRA agent sounds like character hate.

Thus, that is the idea I am addressing. Because it's what's in the secret.

Have a nice day.