Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: White Man’s Redemption at the Woman of Color’s Expense

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s second season wrapped up a couple weeks ago, and despite all its very numerous problems, I am still in love with the show. And it’s thanks to characters like Skye that I can say that. She’s resourceful, smart, and after gaining the ability to control the vibrations in everything around her, she is now both an earthbender and a waterbender.

My little baby is all grown up and mastering the elements. (via x)

And if her character keeps going the way she is, like her comic counterpart, she’ll be the director of S.H.I.E.L.D someday. But while Skye is hardly the only good thing about S.H.I.E.L.D., I feel completely different about her parents. Cal’s and Jiaying’s storylines were interesting and fun to watch at first, but by the time the season ended, S.H.I.E.L.D. did such a poor job with them that I wonder what was going through the writers’ heads.

Spoilers for all of the current S.H.I.E.L.D. episodes after the jump.

Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Mary Sue Spirituality

image via TVTropes

Back in the early 2000s, I, like many of you, spent many hours on role play or “RP” websites. The RP site served as a platform for people to write stories together. More often than not, these were (and are!) different kinds of fanfiction. Sometimes you wrote from the perspective of a canon character, but I’d spend more time crafting my own characters to populate some author’s universe. For example, I’d create my own unique character and send them to Hogwarts, to get into all kinds of shenanigans with unique characters created by other people. Most websites had written (or at least, unwritten) rules about how these co-authoring relationships work. You couldn’t control another author’s original character without their permission, you couldn’t break the rules of the universe, you were encouraged to match your post’s length to your writing partners’, etc. One of the more popular (and nefarious) rules was “No Mary Sues”.

A “Mary Sue” character is more or less a fictional version of the author. She was a way for the author to insert themselves into the story, usually to steal all the attention. It’s hard to have fun writing when your writing partner’s character has the ultimate tragic backstory, special powers, is the constant center of attention, and usually has some out of the ordinary physical features. Mary Sues are the ultimate idealized versions of the author, inserted into the story. There’s a lot of argument of what really counts as a Mary Sue, and whether or not Mary Sue characters are even all that bad. I don’t think Mary Sues are all that bad. In fact, Mary Sues have been encouraged for centuries. I’m talking about a spiritual practice called Ignatian contemplation or, Mary Sue Spirituality.

I Am Disappoint: A Captain America: Peggy Carter, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Review

A few months ago, while I was picking up my weekly batch of comics at my local shop, the guy at the register asked me if I wanted to add any upcoming titles to my subscriptions. I scanned the list of publishers and titles on the counter briefly, and noticed that, under the Marvel heading, was a book called Captain America: Peggy Carter, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.—listed at $7.99. When I asked why that one was so pricey—most comics run $3.99–$4.99—he assured me that it was a lengthy one-shot rather than a super-expensive ongoing series. Intrigued, I decided to request one. With the new Agent Carter TV show only growing in hype, I figured it would be some sort of tie-in or backstory for the Peggy the MCU has led us to love.

If you watch anime, you’re probably familiar with the concept of a recap episode. These are episodes tossed into a show when there isn’t enough production money to make an entirely new episode, and instead tie together footage from earlier episodes under a flimsy frame story, all the while pretending to be something new and worth watching. I was unpleasantly surprised to discover I’d dropped the price of a new manga on the comic book version of a recap episode.

The cumbersomely titled Captain America: Peggy Carter, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., rather than being any sort of tie-in to Hayley Atwell’s Marvel Cinematic Universe character, actually collects several issues of old Captain America comics that featured the Marvel-616 universe iteration of Agent Carter. It clocks in at a little over a hundred pages, so the price is arguably comparable to other books this size, but it’s the content, not the size, that left me frustrated.

Fanfiction Fridays: Whoever You Are, Wherever You’ve Come From (This Is Where You Belong) by scribblybits

“Are you sure you’re trying to help him? Or are you trying to make his situation easier for you guys to deal with?

Skye shot him an offended look.

“Not what I meant,” [Mac] said. “I only mean that what feels like helping to you might feel like babying to him. It’s like, my grandmother was one of the toughest people I ever knew. Woman marched on Washington. Got the hose and the dogs turned on her. Didn’t take shit from anyone, period. But she got too old to walk on her own, so it was the wheelchair for her. And you know what she hated most about that thing?”

Skye shook her head.

“She hated that it was the only thing people saw when they looked at her, and especially that they thought it made her weak. I swear,” he said with a chuckle, “if grandma was trying to get something off the shelf and you gave it to her without being asked, you got a whack from a wooden ruler. Right hand to god, she kept one with her all the damn time.”

“Even if you were just trying to help?”

“Especially if you were just trying to help. ‘If I needed you to get that for me,’ she’d say, ‘I’d have asked you for it.’ Things like that, or opening doors, or even just going down the sidewalk, they didn’t come as easy to her. That didn’t bother her nearly as much as people assuming she couldn’t still do them on her own.”

“So you’re comparing Fitz to Grandma Mackenzie?”

“I’m saying people don’t break. They change, but they don’t break. You’ve just gotta know how to tell when they’re asking you for help, and to not step all over them when they’re not.”

After quite some time, I’ve finally become invested in the goings-on of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show. It’s been rough going at times, but I think it’s finally hit its stride, and it’s doing some interesting things with the characters. Out of the whole cast, it’s Leo Fitz with whom I’m most fascinated. The oxygen deprivation he endured during last season’s finale has left him with brain damage, which manifests itself in shaky hands and a speech impediment, and he’s been hallucinating a Jemma that helps him cope. While he always knows what he means to say, he can’t express himself as clearly or work as quickly as he used to, and his original team members have, to varying extents, written him off.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Better This Season or Just Bad in a New Way?

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is finally back, and I was surprised to find myself eager to tune in. Would the series take a step forward from its jumpy and awkward first season and reach its potential? I very much hoped so. Unfortunately, while we have made some progress, the show still seems to be stuck in a rut.

Spoilers below the jump.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 1 Review

Well, this was going to be a Once Upon A Time review, but I’m still not caught up in that, so I’m turning my tender attentions to the polarizing first season of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first foray into television: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was so hyped by fans and Marvel alike that, in retrospect, I’m not surprised we were initially disappointed. Coming off the success of both The Avengers and Iron Man 3, I suppose we were in a place where the MCU delivering a terrible story seemed even less likely than DC casting a Wonder Woman. Oh, how times have changed.

Now that I’ve watched the whole season, I wouldn’t consider it irredeemably bad, although I was certainly tempted to drop it several times midseason. I just wish it had been shorter and tighter, and had gotten more interesting more quickly.

Basically, I’m not mad, S.H.I.E.L.D. I’m just disappointed.

Spoilers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier and AoS’s Season 1 below the jump.

Sexualized Saturdays: Sirens and the Men Who (Are Forced To) Love Them

The trope of the siren seductress is probably one of my least favorite things. A story involving this trope usually goes something like this: evil woman with otherworldly powers seduces good man (or men); man does her evil bidding against his will; good women are betrayed and jealous but have to save the day anyway. It’s sexist: it promotes the idea that female sexuality is an evil thing; it’s heteronormative: it assumes that men are only attracted to women, and women are only attracted to men; and it’s insulting to both men and women: it boils them down to base sexual interactions and stupidity.

Imagine my chagrin when I tuned in to watch Lady Sif guest star on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and discovered that the plot was the most boring and predictable iteration of this trope.

“I’m here to fuck up the patriarchy. Why aren’t we fucking up the patriarchy?!”

Trigger warning for discussion of rape beneath the cut.

It’s Asian-American Heritage Month! So how is TV looking?

It’s May again! That means it’s Asian-American Heritage Month, and like last year, I want to take a look at how Asians and Asian-Americans are doing in my favorite medium of TV. Some of the following are from last year’s list because their shows have advanced and they are still on said shows; it’s always good to catch up with old friends!

In Defense of Skye from Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been getting a lot of mixed reviews. There are people who love it, but there are also plenty of people out there who find that the show is not up to their standards, including people on this blog. Despite Stinekey’s very well-articulated opinion on the matter, I am actually in love with the show and the characters. That said, I’m not going to delude myself into thinking Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is perfect. It has numerous problems; for one thing, just about all of its antagonists are people of color.

However, this post is not about whether or not it is a good show. But there is one argument against Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that always crops up, and I do take issue with that. It didn’t take long after the show first aired for the hatred and bashing of the character Skye to commence, and though I don’t mind that some people find her character bland and unrelatable, I feel as if some of this dislike for her is based on her gender.

Why Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Isn’t That Great… When It Should Be

Like loads of other fans of Marvel superheroes, I was initially pretty excited when they announced the Cinematic Universe’s spin-off TV show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Even the pilot looked pretty promising—you’ve got Agent Coulson, a fan-favorite character, putting together a crack team of misfits with a particular set of skills to save the world. It felt very Avengers-y, at least in theory. S.H.I.E.L.D. has all the elements of what makes a great geek-friendly show. It should be a runaway success, with a huge, ready-made fandom. True, it’s the number one show on ABC for the male 18–49 demographic on ABC and pulling in around 7 million viewers a week (about average). But it seems like there are just as many people watching because they think it’s good as there are people who wish it were good. Average viewers seem to like it well enough, but geeky viewers aren’t as impressed. Why?

Spoilers abound below the cut.