Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Now I'm very interested.Hopefully within the next month we'll see some casting news about who's going to be playing which Secret Warrior-type character.This is great.

They seem to be putting a big emphasis on their Agents of SHIELD Comic Con panel, so I wouldn't be surprised if they announce the casting of at least one of the new Inhumans by having the actor show up at the panel in person.

I'm hoping for Stonewall, and I'm hoping he's openly gay. He was never outed in the Secret Warriors comic, which I thought was bullshit - if you have a gay character, don't end your story with the character still in the closet. The MCU already has a problem with not having had a single openly gay character. So use Stonewall, and have him openly gay.

I think Stonewall is a great candidate for Secret Warriors just on the fact he's the Absorbin Man's son and was on the team in the comics, which actually makes him the perfect candidate for the MCU's first openly gay character since no one could legitimately argue that they included him purely for the sake of having a gay character.

Not to say other options of including gay characters should be off-limits of course, just that if given a choice this is the best option.

But Mack's job is to keep things in the closet.

If they do go that route with Mack, the irony is that he wouldn't technically of been in the closet at all given how casually he talks about his exes. And the only reason people speculate he might be gay is the fact that his dialogue suspiciously omits gender when he is casually discussing the exes that other people on the team are familiar with.

I could see them going either way and would personally be fine with either way (though in general the MCU could use a few openly LGBT characters). They probably just wanted to keep their options open regarding his orientation until they had a more interesting story to go on then a few lines about vaguely defined exes.

I think he only mentioned his exes in one sentence. I doubt the thought ever occurred to them at all. Somehow avoiding genders for one sentence isn't suspicious, it's a random choice.

One of the other characters (Triplett? can't remember who exactly) was clearly familiar with one of the negative aspects of one of Mack's past relationships. So it stands to reason they knew who that ex was.

I suppose I can see an argument that just because one character knew doesn't mean he was out of the closet as a rule, but I believe at the end of the day if there was a point to writing those lines without any reference to gender it was because they didn't have any plans for Mack to have an on-screen romantic relationship and opted to not close any doors (or as few doors as possible) for the sake of a one-off joke.

Psycho meant "they" as in the writers.

A lot of people just refer to "exes." "Me and my ex used to come here a lot." "My ex hated this show." "My ex beat the assassin I hired." That sort of thing.

It isn't just that Mac only refers to his "ex," but also that he develops a deep friendship with Fitz (even saying "I would never hurt you" during the Real SHIELD's invasion) and was shown in flashback to have also cared deeply for another male coworker (who died). Sure, it's not proof of anything, but viewers can definitely read between the lines at times.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but those are the same kind of "read between the lines" points people made about Black Widow and Hawkeye only for that to be thoroughly sunk.

Soooooo... I remain both overall skeptical, and a little bit disdainful of those kinds of "evidence".

And before it was sunk, people were shipping Nat/Clint all over the place. (Heck, even after it was sunk.) And Mack being gay or not hasn't even been addressed anyway, in which case: so what?

"So what?" is the correct answer here.

As long as the writers don't specify anything, it's possible. Though I think the Clint/Natasha example is a bad one, since The Avengers actually straight out said that their relationship was based on him giving her a new life, and not on them having a love affair. It always puzzled me that so many people read it as more than that.

People love reading into that kind of thing, even if everything points the other way. They'll especially do it if the characters have a special bond and they'll really do it if the characters are sexually compatible. It's the nature of it, I guess.

Yeah, but the reverse of that is also true, people love ignoring things even if the creators reinforce it. Dragonball Z and Korra are distant examples.

I think the question that needs to be asked is - will any of Mack's exes come back to kidnap SHIELD agents in the near future? Because so far Ward, Raina, Cal, May, Reyes, and Bobbi have formed a streak.

edited 28th Jun '15 6:31:40 PM by Soble

It's true, the easiest way for a creator to make a ship super popular is to Joss it. The second is to go with a ship that's already super popular with the fans anyway, in which case using it will probably make it double in popularity.

Both happened with ATLA/Korra and Harry Potter (though the Potter's case the latter only happened in the movies).

Only caring about either in order to figure out how to further utterly Joss the "relationship" basically sums up how the writers treat Skye/Ward. Rather than fight against fans still shipping them together, they use their continued shipping to find ways to further estbalish that it's not going to happen.

edited 28th Jun '15 8:04:43 PM by KnownUnknown

I find you funny you mentioned Korra in that post, considering Korrasammi became more popular when it started to get hinted on and then confirmed.

At any rate, overall that haven't been my impression. Fans ship what they ship. I don't remember much, or any, ships that got more popular after being jossed. Many continued poplar despite it, sure, but I don't remember one that wasn't popular before.

I think the problem (yes, problem) with the Harry Potter movies was mostly that the directors liked Emma Watson so much that they wanted to give her more scenes which in turn resulted in destroying both her and Ron's character on screen.

Yes, that is exactly what happened in the Harry Potter films. Poor Ron the Death Eater.

The easiest way to make a ship popular is to show two attractive characters talking about each other. Second-easiest is to have them talk to each other.

Really, it seems like that's about all that's usually needed to get people shipping characters. "Are they both attractive? Yes? They are destined to be together forever!"

Well, I mean, that's entirely the point I was trying to across by bringing it up.

Which is why even after all of Season 2 and it's been sunk by any reasonable definition, the Skye/Ward ship isn't even close to being the least plausible ship I've come across. Because at least with Skye/Ward there was some mutual attraction between them at one point.

What the writers have done with Skyward, especially throughout this last season, is so fantastic. These guys are the masters of toying with shippers (Exhibit B: Fitzsimmons).

But yeah, Skyward is honestly not that absurd, because they had a canon thing going at one point. It's still blind to continue to root for them, though.