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@lifeofkj / lifeofkj.tumblr.com

Hello! I am KJ, and this is my Tumblr. You may also know me as Owlmoose. Here you will find cute animals, fandomy things (mostly Critical Role, Dragon Age, and Marvel these days, but some Final Fantasy as well, plus other things that catch my fancy), and political stuff. Unrepentant liberal and feminist.
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One complaint I’ve often heard about Agents of SHIELD, especially its first season, was its focus on Phil Coulson as its main character. I had my own reservations about whether the character could or should anchor the show, and during the original broadcast airing I felt that at least some of my fears were realized. As a secondary character, I enjoyed Coulson very much -- he would walk on from offstage, be competent, and walk off again. It hurt when he died, but it was only a twinge, not a mortal wound. When word came down that he would not only come back to life but be the lead character on AoS, I was actively annoyed. For one thing, I'm not a fan of the "death is never forever" meme that permeates comic book stories, because death has no meaning when we know that it can be reversed with the stroke of a pen, and I was disappointed to see the MCU play this card so early in its run. But I was also frustrated because, in an extended Marvel universe with so many opportunities for diversity, they were chosing to make yet another media property centering around a middle-aged white guy. It wasn't surprising, I suppose, but it still disappointed me.

Except not really, because on rewatch, it becomes clear that Coulson wasn't the true focus of the show after all. The first two seasons of AoS tell the superhero origin story of Daisy Johnson (aka Skye aka Quake), and almost everything that happens to Coulson in Season 1, and many other major plot points along the way, are in service of her story.

Read the rest over on my DW: “Agents of Skye”

(Spoilers for the entire series as of the first episode of S3.)

#mcu#agents of shield#skye#daisy johnson#phil coulson
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siawrites
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jaimelannisther

You haven’t made a call like this since Bahrain. Yeah. Well, that means that’s not good. Wanna tell me what’s going on? There’s no way it will end well. Andrew, there’s a lot I didn’t say that I wished I did. Me too.

#ugh i love this so much  #i love them so much  #i love that careful quiet understanding and the subtle way their relationship has shifted  #i love that as bahrain goes down he tells her to do good BUT to come home  #with the emphasis on come home  #he loves her so damn much  #he has so much faith in her ability to do good  #as he says those words he doesn’t realize that in this instance doing good and coming home safe again were incompatible  #and i love that in the second one he tells her he still thinks she does good. that she will DO good  #bc that’s where they broke after bahrain isn’t it?  #melinda telling andrew - andrew  #the guy who had infinite faith in her ability to do good - what happened  #and in some ways not wanting or being able to live with him knowing her capability for the other thing  #except he never saw it as the other thing. as the evil she herself saw it.  #and after all these years he tells her that.  #and this time he tells her AND get home safe  #i believe in you and your goodness and i want you to find your way home this time  #even if it’s not with me  #he’s seen melinda build teams - build families - before  #he wants her to get home to them  #and i love that you can see the absence of the ‘i love you’ and both of them realizing that absence. that things have changed.  #and most of all i love that this shifts them from what we were to what we could still be  #ugh my precious darlings i want nothing but happiness for you both (via regionsofkindness​)

I normally don’t put any commentary on these kinds of posts, but I want to this time because this relationship is so important on so many levels.

It’s not just the way that Andrew understands and loves Melinda for exactly who she is, even when he finds out the things she is capable of, the thing she can never forgive herself for choosing to do. It’s not just that he tells her that she is still capable of good, that she is still good and worth having faith in.

It’s also that Melinda May gets so many of the Hero tropes that usually go to white men, and it’s absolutely important that this is canonically happening to a middle-aged Chinese-American woman. The Bahrain story is such an interesting take on the I Should Have Been Better trope because a) it was handled with such amazing nuance that I can’t believe it happened on a Marvel show, and b) it happened to Melinda May, and not Phil Coulson, who would have traditionally embodied that trope because that’s how it goes in pop culture.

But no, it was Melinda May who got the tragic backstory, it was Melinda May who got the ‘name spoken in hushed awe by everyone’ treatment, it was Melinda May who got the ‘I don’t want to care for anyone because of my past, except that I love all of you and you’re my family now’ characterization over the course of two seasons. That is legitimately amazing because I have rarely ever seen chromatic female characters get that kind of complex emotional characterization. Always white men and sometimes white women, but not Chinese-American women, and definitely not middle-aged Chinese American women.

It’s also important that Andrew, a brilliant, empathetic black man, embodies the Loving, Understanding Spouse. It’s important that he tells her that he has faith in her intrinsic goodness, that he trusts she will do the right thing, that his faith in her never wavers, even when she believes in the worst of herself. It is so important that Andrew is a black man who is explicitly compassionate and caring, explicitly loving and kind, while still being a full person with his own thoughts and desires and opinions. 

He isn’t a saint, he isn’t just there to be a therapist to everyone; he has his own story, he has his own tragic past in his divorce from Melinda, he has his own motivations, and it’s legitimately important to see that portrayed onscreen. The media is not kind to black men, in real life and in entertainment, so to see Andrew get to exist and to be Melinda’s rock, to see him occupy the role that is traditionally assigned to female characters while still getting to keep his humanity in the larger context of a white supremacist society is so incredibly important. 

To see this interracial relationship being portrayed as loving and kind and nuanced, even when it’s over between them, is so necessary, and I get so choked up over them because I cannot believe I got this kind of complexity and tenderness from a Marvel superhero show.

#agents of shield#melinda may#andrew#queue me
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doctorscienceknowsfandom
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agents-of-frickle-frackle
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lifeofkj

myimpretentious:

agents-of-frickle-frackle:

submission: BLESS WHOEVER WROTE THIS UP ON TV TROPES. THERE IS HOPE YET.

#TRIPLIVES

Can we also remember this? LOOKIT THAT INHUMAN TAG OKAY 

Normally I would say this is a lot of wishful thinking -- perhaps also on the part of the actors. But this is a comic book universe, where this kind of thing happens all the time, and also, I want to believe. So, here’s hoping!

I found the text on the image above a little hard to read, so here’s a transcript:

#agents of shield#agent triplett#inhumans#agents of shield spoilers#overly elaborate theories that might actually be true
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barbeauxbot

but you know what the best part of all this is??

peggy can’t die. no matter how much marvel may toy with the idea of killing her off, they can’t. we know she founds shield. the one-shot occurs after this series. we’ve seen her work for shield on aos. she’s still alive in cap 2.

no matter how you look at it, peggy carter is untouchable in this series. she’s like a white male us senator.

or phil coulson.

#and aos actually has killed a white male us senator#so you know#agent carter#agents of shield#queue me
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