I miiiight be projecting.

[raisedbymoogles]

Hey, who's up for another round of Moogle's Headcanon Theater? :D

Headcanon: MCU!Natasha is asexual-maybe-shading-toward-demisexual. I know she apparently hooks up with Bruce in AoU, but that doesn’t necessarily Joss me. A lot of aces do have sex with their partners for various reasons, and Natasha’s been using sex for her own purposes probably since her boobs developed - to manipulate people, one way or the other, though in some cases at least they were probably willing to be manipulated.

A lot of it is tied into her upbringing. Natasha was raised and trained by people who literally saw her as a commodity - so of course they saw her developing ‘feminine wiles’ (*gag*) the same way and taught her to use it the way she does. …that kind of makes it sound like I’m saying she’s broken and that’s why she’s ace, but that’s not how I see it. My thinking is she would’ve been somewhere on the ace/demi/low sex drive spectrum if she’d been allowed to grow up the ordinary way, but the way she actually did grow up kind of shaped how her ace-ness shook out in the end. If that makes any sense. She flirts with everyone as a kind of cover/social lubricant, experiences few to no ladyboners, and can count on one hand the number of people she feels close enough/comfortable enough with to even think about taking her pants off when it’s not part of an op. (That Bruce has apparently made the short list kind of makes me go ‘whut?’ a little, but I reserve judgement until I actually see the thing and see how it actually comes about.)

I think most of this comes from how Nat acts toward Steve in TWS. Especially towards the beginning, she’s blatantly trying to manipulate him with flirting, and when it falls flat with him she’s almost left floundering. Then when she realizes that Steve doesn’t need to want to bang her to have her back and all she needs to do is be herself at him, she relaxes and drops the act. Well - maybe not ‘relaxes’. Leaping off a metaphorical bridge and trusting your Steve-shaped parachute to catch you is never relaxing. ;) It was kind of a profound development for me-in-the-audience, is all.

Comments

[megpie71]

I agree it's a feasible reading, particularly since there's a lot of work done in her appearances in the MCU to keep her from actually having more than platonic relationships. When she's displaying sexual behaviour (acting flirtatious, being sexual at people) she's generally working. I suspect for Natasha, even if she isn't actually ace/demi, sex is a tool in her toolkit for getting the desired result.

Mind you, I tend to see her behaviour at the beginning of TWS as less flirty and more teasing - with the obvious provisos that 1) Steve isn't all that good about being teased these days; and 2) Natasha isn't that good at actually teasing people - it's not a mode of interaction she's all that comfortable with, because it assumes friendship as the default, and my head-canon is that Natasha has a lot of trouble recognising who her friends and allies actually are.

(There's a missing scene or three in Iron Man 2 where presumably Natasha makes the call to Fury in the aftermath of Stark's party, and points out that Stark has really gone off the rails, and they need to change tack and bring Pepper in on the op. It's the only thing I can think of to explain why Pepper Potts, who was busy blaming Natasha's manipulation for the disaster of the party and who is ostensibly her boss, would keep "Natalie" on as a PA after that whole mess. Which is a pity, since if Pepper had been brought in on the whole thing a lot earlier, things would have probably shaken out rather differently.)

[raisedbymoogles]

I didn't see IM2, but I'd like to have seen that. XD

[krait]

My immediate thought, after "I see Natasha as ace", was essentially, That might suit the Red Room very well! Enough that they might even try to create or select for ace girls in the program.

Because having agents who can use sex without wanting sex would be practically ideal, from an ops standpoint. No need to worry that your agent will be distracted or influenced by a liaison, that she'll forget the research in the heat of the moment and do something the target doesn't like. No need to worry that your agent could be seduced away from you by someone throwing attractive bait at her. No need even to guard against her trainers becoming attached (because they know she can't reciprocate) or corrupted (because she can't fake wanting them when they know she's not made that way) and fomenting rebellion from within.

It makes a whole lot of sense, in light of Natasha's "love is for children" comment, that the Red Room would very much want to instill the corollary 'sex is for manipulation' as well.

[raisedbymoogles]

I can see how that would be ideal for them, but how would you select for asexuality in six-year-olds? Or create it without causing so much psychological damage in the process that they're useless as agents.

[krait]

Well, the universe seems to have rather greater understanding of the brain than ours (witness Steve Rogers' serum, the memory implantation used by the Red Room, and the mindwipe tech used on the Winter Soldier - we have nothing like those), so it doesn't seem beyond belief that they could implement something that would give the end result of asexuality. Perhaps memories could be stripped/analysed from an asexual subject, and identical memories implanted in the Widow girls? Or, perhaps, they might have developed a medical test for the gene/brain configuration/whatever that would let them test their potential candidates; even if it wasn't foolproof, being able to raise the chances of a candidate being asexual could be useful to them.

[fluffymormegil]

Once you admit the validity of a supergenius billionaire playboy walking around with a small power station embedded in his chest, the prospect of an equivalent genius in psychology coming up with a way to non-destructively detect whether a six-year-old is likely to be asexual as an adult seems entirely plausible.

[wallwalker]

Yes, I very much agree on all counts, especially given her behavior in TWS. I love the idea.

[raisedbymoogles]

Thanks. :D

[playswithworms]

I can totally buy it! *subscribes to headcanon*