Agents of SHIELD 1.15 Yes Men
Apr. 16th, 2014 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI wanted to like it. Sif is awesome. Coulson clearly thinking Sif is awesome is awesome. Fanboy. One of us. Yaays.
But why did they need to have an enemy only women can fight to justify bringing Sif in? She kicks all the arse. Bloke arse too. Big burly bloke. And yes, there was the biker fight, but seriously, there shouldn't need to be a super special gendered reason, she's Sif, she is a reason.
Also aside from that it was boring. Like, she wasn't clever at it, I could see she would end up in Vegas the minute they said Nevada, they did nothing with Vegas, I've used Vegas in fic before and there's such shiny metaphorical layered goodness available that just using it because there's a Palace is rather rubbish, and I got bored.
No, I got creeped out. The sex with Lorelai? Was as much rape as what Hathor did to Daniel. But it's never named properly. It's always women bewitching men, and it's never named sexual assault, even though they have no capacity to say no. So it's creepy to watch it happen. And then I couldn't figure out properly if May was mad at him for what the creepy woman said or for him having been raped. I mean, that shouldn't be confusing, neither should be an option. Though since I couldn't precisely figure out if May was mad at him at all there was a lot of lack of clarity to go around.
I am epic tired and creeped out by the way TV treats consent. I was just at a Torchwood convention and the actors were asked at several panels what gadget they'd want, and they said the sex gas or the sex spray Owen used. Which is a rape spray. It turns no into yes with no capacity to say no, that's rape. When I was watching Torchwood I thought I saw a thematic through line which acknowledged that and gave Owen karma until he understood it too, but the writers have squished that line of thinking, they don't call it by its right name at all. And it's far from the only F&SF TV that does that. So why? Why the hell have these stories? Do they honestly not understand? Consent is sexy, lack of capacity to consent is bad, making it the villain that does it is marginally better than Torchwood (where in the first season I was pretty sure they were the bad guys, all things considered, but that too went away) but going there in the first place is just epic messed up.
There is capacity to connect it with Loki, with Winter Soldier, potentially with TAHITI, with the way their organisation uses them. There was some of that with Sif following orders she didn't want. Coercive control vs control by oath and code, and how fine the line is if the boss is a dick. Which, we have watched Thor 2, that is an issue. Ways the boss makes you want to serve, makes you care, takes your heart. Takes you away from your loved ones, see Cellist. So there's potential for layers. Just very creepy layers.
And what was up with using it to bomb relationships? Bad things happened to him, why is that not acknowledged, why is he having relationship troubles where he expects letting himself get hit will sort things out?
(And I hate it when people in sexual relationships end up beating each other up. Just, no.)
I can't even tell if they're still doing whatever they're doing by the end.
I'm pretty sure Melinda May is a liar about her own feelings though. So her telling Ward he's not honest with himself is way pot kettle. Which is a bit interesting.
I like that Sif and Melinda May got along, I dislike that their conversation turned into talking about mens.
Sif is awesome. She should get more chances to be awesome.
Coulson... Okay, so he got a list of blue aliens. Someone spoilered me for which of those names is relevant, but it's also the only one I recognised from the comics I haven't read, so, interesting. And whoever it is, Asgard don't think they've been visiting. So our protectors have blind spots; if protector is the right word for Asgard. Something is up, and it could be interesting.
I like that he keeps digging, I don't like that he can't get answers. This seems stupid. I also don't like that he seems personally offended that it's his turn to be lied to. Like, this is what his organisation does, at what point did it become a problem? Skye is rolling with it because she understands this is the world, much weirdness and many lies, but Coulson is all upset because... he thought he was the boss of the lies? Maybe? It seems like because it's personal he's getting upset and deciding the rules are wrong. Rather than accepting that maybe there's reasons, and waiting. But then Fury should be giving him some sort of sign. But if this arc is taking place over a few days, and the spoilers of other source are taking place over the same few days... but but but. I just got cranky today because it's like, he's annoyed now, because it's his turn to get screwed over. He's surprised because it's aimed at him. That doesn't seem like the right reason.
Eh. Maybe I'm super cranky today.
The thing is, he knows there's an alien in a tube pouring out chemical, and it's super extra secret. This to me provides many explanations that are sufficient to the secrecy. Like, okay, I was thinking about whether the thing in the tube could be dead or alive, and I reckon on the timescales, it has to be some kind of alive to still have stuff being extracted from it. If it were dead then it couldn't take the whole time between Coulson's injury and Skye's just to turn it into chemicals. You could drain and separate every part of it much quicker than that. So, creepily, it must still be producing those chemicals. On some level, still alive. In a tube.
Whoever it belongs to, they could be pissed about that.
But then there's the very basic: we've just discovered this other species can provide chemistry that can make us, if not immortal, damn close to it. It's like Babylon 5 and the anti agathic: suddenly there's very compelling reasons to kill a whole ton of these neighbours. It could be Torchwood's 456 all over again, only this time we'll be the drug dependent creeps turning up looking for bodies to stick tubes in. Given what we know about humans and how much we can suck, if word of this gets out, we are going to become very dangerous neighbours indeed, for very high stakes. And we don't know enough about the blue guys yet, but if they can get to this planet already then we probably don't want to piss them off, even by some criminal gang deciding nobody will miss just these few of them over here. So those are extremely incredibly good reasons to keep the thing so secret its secrets have secrets. If this secret gets out, we will have such incentive to be monsters. Like Coulson and his team, killing two to save one. Multiplied up by every single person who ever lost someone to violence or accident.
This secret should definitely stay in the bag.
But Coulson isn't thinking about that. He's thinking about side effects, about how it could mess him personally up. I'm unimpressed. He seems to be being very stupid. Or at least not very genre aware.
And then right at the end with Melinda May reporting in... who to? And whose side is she on now? Mostly though, that undermines the hell out of her reassurance that Coulson hasn't changed, that only TAHITI was an implant. If she's got the secrets already, if she's keeping him on the leash somehow, then that has incentive to be a flat out lie.
I'd like to like May though, so hopefully she's lying on behalf of the slightly less creepy people.
... yeah, got to love it that it's down to that as options...
I want to see what happens next, now. The character stuff is super twisty and hopefully the plots get better than this.
But why did they need to have an enemy only women can fight to justify bringing Sif in? She kicks all the arse. Bloke arse too. Big burly bloke. And yes, there was the biker fight, but seriously, there shouldn't need to be a super special gendered reason, she's Sif, she is a reason.
Also aside from that it was boring. Like, she wasn't clever at it, I could see she would end up in Vegas the minute they said Nevada, they did nothing with Vegas, I've used Vegas in fic before and there's such shiny metaphorical layered goodness available that just using it because there's a Palace is rather rubbish, and I got bored.
No, I got creeped out. The sex with Lorelai? Was as much rape as what Hathor did to Daniel. But it's never named properly. It's always women bewitching men, and it's never named sexual assault, even though they have no capacity to say no. So it's creepy to watch it happen. And then I couldn't figure out properly if May was mad at him for what the creepy woman said or for him having been raped. I mean, that shouldn't be confusing, neither should be an option. Though since I couldn't precisely figure out if May was mad at him at all there was a lot of lack of clarity to go around.
I am epic tired and creeped out by the way TV treats consent. I was just at a Torchwood convention and the actors were asked at several panels what gadget they'd want, and they said the sex gas or the sex spray Owen used. Which is a rape spray. It turns no into yes with no capacity to say no, that's rape. When I was watching Torchwood I thought I saw a thematic through line which acknowledged that and gave Owen karma until he understood it too, but the writers have squished that line of thinking, they don't call it by its right name at all. And it's far from the only F&SF TV that does that. So why? Why the hell have these stories? Do they honestly not understand? Consent is sexy, lack of capacity to consent is bad, making it the villain that does it is marginally better than Torchwood (where in the first season I was pretty sure they were the bad guys, all things considered, but that too went away) but going there in the first place is just epic messed up.
There is capacity to connect it with Loki, with Winter Soldier, potentially with TAHITI, with the way their organisation uses them. There was some of that with Sif following orders she didn't want. Coercive control vs control by oath and code, and how fine the line is if the boss is a dick. Which, we have watched Thor 2, that is an issue. Ways the boss makes you want to serve, makes you care, takes your heart. Takes you away from your loved ones, see Cellist. So there's potential for layers. Just very creepy layers.
And what was up with using it to bomb relationships? Bad things happened to him, why is that not acknowledged, why is he having relationship troubles where he expects letting himself get hit will sort things out?
(And I hate it when people in sexual relationships end up beating each other up. Just, no.)
I can't even tell if they're still doing whatever they're doing by the end.
I'm pretty sure Melinda May is a liar about her own feelings though. So her telling Ward he's not honest with himself is way pot kettle. Which is a bit interesting.
I like that Sif and Melinda May got along, I dislike that their conversation turned into talking about mens.
Sif is awesome. She should get more chances to be awesome.
Coulson... Okay, so he got a list of blue aliens. Someone spoilered me for which of those names is relevant, but it's also the only one I recognised from the comics I haven't read, so, interesting. And whoever it is, Asgard don't think they've been visiting. So our protectors have blind spots; if protector is the right word for Asgard. Something is up, and it could be interesting.
I like that he keeps digging, I don't like that he can't get answers. This seems stupid. I also don't like that he seems personally offended that it's his turn to be lied to. Like, this is what his organisation does, at what point did it become a problem? Skye is rolling with it because she understands this is the world, much weirdness and many lies, but Coulson is all upset because... he thought he was the boss of the lies? Maybe? It seems like because it's personal he's getting upset and deciding the rules are wrong. Rather than accepting that maybe there's reasons, and waiting. But then Fury should be giving him some sort of sign. But if this arc is taking place over a few days, and the spoilers of other source are taking place over the same few days... but but but. I just got cranky today because it's like, he's annoyed now, because it's his turn to get screwed over. He's surprised because it's aimed at him. That doesn't seem like the right reason.
Eh. Maybe I'm super cranky today.
The thing is, he knows there's an alien in a tube pouring out chemical, and it's super extra secret. This to me provides many explanations that are sufficient to the secrecy. Like, okay, I was thinking about whether the thing in the tube could be dead or alive, and I reckon on the timescales, it has to be some kind of alive to still have stuff being extracted from it. If it were dead then it couldn't take the whole time between Coulson's injury and Skye's just to turn it into chemicals. You could drain and separate every part of it much quicker than that. So, creepily, it must still be producing those chemicals. On some level, still alive. In a tube.
Whoever it belongs to, they could be pissed about that.
But then there's the very basic: we've just discovered this other species can provide chemistry that can make us, if not immortal, damn close to it. It's like Babylon 5 and the anti agathic: suddenly there's very compelling reasons to kill a whole ton of these neighbours. It could be Torchwood's 456 all over again, only this time we'll be the drug dependent creeps turning up looking for bodies to stick tubes in. Given what we know about humans and how much we can suck, if word of this gets out, we are going to become very dangerous neighbours indeed, for very high stakes. And we don't know enough about the blue guys yet, but if they can get to this planet already then we probably don't want to piss them off, even by some criminal gang deciding nobody will miss just these few of them over here. So those are extremely incredibly good reasons to keep the thing so secret its secrets have secrets. If this secret gets out, we will have such incentive to be monsters. Like Coulson and his team, killing two to save one. Multiplied up by every single person who ever lost someone to violence or accident.
This secret should definitely stay in the bag.
But Coulson isn't thinking about that. He's thinking about side effects, about how it could mess him personally up. I'm unimpressed. He seems to be being very stupid. Or at least not very genre aware.
And then right at the end with Melinda May reporting in... who to? And whose side is she on now? Mostly though, that undermines the hell out of her reassurance that Coulson hasn't changed, that only TAHITI was an implant. If she's got the secrets already, if she's keeping him on the leash somehow, then that has incentive to be a flat out lie.
I'd like to like May though, so hopefully she's lying on behalf of the slightly less creepy people.
... yeah, got to love it that it's down to that as options...
I want to see what happens next, now. The character stuff is super twisty and hopefully the plots get better than this.