Snowflake 10: love letters

[tielan]

Challenge #10

In your own space, write a love letter to Fandom in general, to a particular fandom, to a trope, a relationship, a character, creator, episode, or it could be your fandom friends. Share your love and squee as loud as you want to. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Dear Maria,

You appeared in the opening scene of a movie whose precedents I hadn’t paid much attention to. Oh, I’d watched them, enjoyed them, but they were popcorn films, full of action and heroics of characters I liked watching but didn’t really hit it off with.

And then there was this woman who, from the start, had the willingness to challenge her boss: asking Fury if this was really necessary, but also being willing to knuckle down when he gave the order. It showed that you had your own set of thoughts, but you knew when you could push it forward and when you had to do what authority said. Most people don't get that - superheroes and their stans surely do not. You realised that something was wrong when Loki escaped the facility, and didn't freeze when Fury told you Barton had been turned.

Did anyone but me realise that you survived a shootout with Clint Barton, a.k.a. Hawkeye, while he was gunning for you? These were not bullets upon which was scribed "to whom it may concern" they were ones which should have had your name on it.

Not one of them hit you. Not. One.

There are not a lot of people who can claim they survived a shootout with Clint Barton, and I'm fairly sure the others either had superpowers (cf. Quicksilver) or he wasn't really trying to kill them (cf. CA: CW). And then on top of all that, you survived a high-speed car chase in a collapsing tunnel, trying to shoot Barton while driving backwards.

All this happens even before the movie title ‘The Avengers’ comes up on the screen in dramatic black and grey, by the way. What an entrance!

I loved your snarkiness (‘he turns’), your roll of the eyes at Tony Stark, the way that none of the Avengers questioned your right to be standing by the table talking with them about how to deal with Loki. I loved your shooting skills, and the way you tensely watched Stark reroute the nuke away from the city.

Through the rest of the movie series, you do amazing things.

Rescuing Captain America, the Black Widow, and the Falcon on a day when they're one television crew in a helicopter away from public execution by infiltrating a team of machismo-hyped thugs with nothing more than a helmet and a stun wand? Preparing for the destruction of a superweapon that you've worked at for two years and going up against your boss, because you've discovered it's been co-opted by enemies within? Making the hard choice of several billion people or shooting down Captain America - a friend that you call by name? Knowing exactly where a handgun is stashed in Stark's lounge and how to get your hands on it when a murderbot attacks? Picking pieces of glass out of your feet while discussing the possibility of having lost the nuclear codes?

So damn good.

And yet I will always mourn that the storyline that introduced you in the comcis left you out entirely. I will always mourn that what should have been a story about the responsibility and accountability of those with power towards those without into a little boy game of "here's my team, there's your team, now they fiiiiiight!"

I loved you as a character and as an archetype. Someone with a sense of duty and a sense of humour, someone who could give orders and take them, someone who could criticise superheroes and still remain friends with them. A bevy of contradictions, and yet quite whole when the pieces were put together.

Four years after the Marvel Cinematic Universe removed all possibility of questioning the role of power's use and power's misuse and the consequences of both, you're still my favourite character throughout all the fandoms I've known.

Sam had the gung-ho girl power with a gun, Faith had the 'fuck you and the authority you rode in on' attitude, Teyla kept her counsel and chose her moments, while Mako fired all cylinders beneath the steel housing of control and discipline and respect.

But you? You're the mature woman making the choices that she doesn't want to make, but which matter. You're the woman who knows she's making the choices that matter, and perhaps terrified beneath an ice-cool exterior, but you're making them anyway. You're the 'weakest' link in a narrative landscape that is littered with the bodies of superheroes, supervillains, and victims - and you were none of them: just a woman in the complicated modern world trying to work out how to take one step forward and make it all work to protect those who needed protecting without wrecking everything in the process.

By the time we met you, you were already the woman you needed to be for all the things that you had to do. And what you didn't know - like how to manage superheroes - you learned.

I loved that you were a fully formed, grown woman; familiar with what she could do, willing to admit to what she couldn't, willing to do what must be done. I still do.

There aren't enough mature women moving forward in our narratives - even Natasha and Carol and Diana's movies were about how they became the women we know, not about who they are in the here and the now and where they're going in the future.

I hope that there’ll be more stories about women like you in the future.

But you’ll always be my first.

Comments

[siberian_skys]

Congratulations on this letter. It's awesome. Maria doesn't get near the attention she should. I'm guilty of this as well. I should write her more. She has some of the best scenes in the MCU. I love the scene where she pulls her helmet off and complains about her head being squished while saving Cap, the Black Widow, and Sam. Not a whole lot of people get by with calling Fury Nick either. I'm going to have to re-watch Avengers this week. I want to see that scene again where Clilnt is going after her on the bridge. That didn't make the impact on me that it should have.

[pensnest]

Excellent love letter! I think it's such a shame—and so strange—that the people who created this character totally failed to notice what they had created and to do something awesome with her. Superheroes who carry no consequences are getting boring, but human beings who do the right thing will never go out of date.

[sjh2009]

What an awesome woman! I never actually watched this but she sounds amazing, it's not very often that women get to have such an impact and have such a prominent and impactful role in a show/movie, etc.

Reading this I now want to meet Maria, I want to see this awesome woman and watch her do this incredible things.

Thank you for sharing Maria and explaining why she had such an impact on you.

And thank you for sharing your passion and your love for Maria in this challenge :)

[velithya]

A beautiful letter!

[spikedluv]

What a great letter! I liked Maria, but this has given me a much deeper appreciation of her. Thank you!

[immortalje]

I already loved her, but this makes me lover her even more!

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Maria is who Lady Sif aspires to be.

I really love the scene where Cap, Falcon and Maria take the lookout (SHIELD agent: "Must be time to stand down, because, look, Maria's with who's been being shot at.") and then she's watching her own back and just calmly takes out the distraction gunning for her.

I don't write her a lot, but I really want The Shirt. Because that helmet removal mirrors Leia doing the same deep in Jabba's lair.