"I'm stronger than you know"

samantha • she/her • 25 • bi • aos • atla/tlok • kpdh • daisy johnson • starlightquake on ao3

[starlightquake]

New Username!!!

samanthaswishes —> starlightquake

(changing it on ao3 as well)

[agentsofmarvel]

IT IS JUNE 2026 AND DAMN DO I REALLY REALLY STILL MISS THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS AND HER LITTLE SQUARE BOYFRIEND!!

[allpinkandgoldandglittering]

My girl who can never catch a break <3

[daily-dose-of-dousy]

a lot can change in a year. or a month. or a week. or on a tuesday morning.

[starlightquake]

tw: assault, abuse, trafficking

It’s 2026, and there are still people who think Daisy is in the wrong for the aftermath of 5x14.

Reminder that Fitz, fully in control of himself by that point, violated and assaulted Daisy by drugging her, tying her down, and non-consensually operating on her (and potentially paralyzing her) without any form of pain relief, and he had no remorse for what he had done, and she was gaslit and victim blamed for not being okay with it and being (rightfully) mad at him.

Yes, he was having a mental break, that I don’t disagree on, and he definitely needed help for it, I wish he had gotten it, but it was not Daisy’s responsibility to get or be that help for him. She had EVERY RIGHT to talk to him the way she did. Truthfully, she never had to talk to him again. He doesn’t get a pass for his bad decisions. I feel for him that he had to go through that mentally, but that doesn’t give him the right to do what he did and act like she should be okay with it. Just because he felt it was the right thing to do in his own mind, doesn’t mean he gets to go through with it without consulting anyone, without consulting HER, and making sure it was okay to do so.

Again, at the moment he decided to go through with it, he was no longer the doctor. He was himself. He still didn’t take accountability for what HE DID to her, FULLY IN CONTROL. Not the doctor, HIM. If he was still in the doctor mentality, the conversation might be slightly different, SLIGHTLY. Like if he didn’t have memory of it, if he had absolutely no control over his body, etc, but he came to before cutting into her. He was in full control. And even in those other circumstances, Daisy SHOULD still be able to be upset after being violated.

She did not need to comfort or baby him to make him feel better about it. She did not have to treat him better just because he’s sick. Daisy did not need to feel guilt for the way she spoke to him for what HE did to her.

She did not need to forgive or care for her abuser.

And I’m not about to say every decision Daisy made in season 5 was perfect. She was, understandably and rightfully, emotionally charged, sometimes acted on her feelings instead of logistics, and put into a position she wasn’t quite ready for (yet. She definitely could have and would have succeeded had circumstances been different.) However, that was taken advantage of and instead of being supported and listened to, she was ignored and assaulted after just finding out her father figure was going to die, after having just been human trafficked out in future space (let’s not pretend that’s not what happened because that’s literally what happened.)

I’ve always been mad about the distreatment of Daisy after 5x14, but it’s only grown much more in this day and age. I feel it’s even more important to talk about it now. I’m so over people in this fandom (and other fandom spaces) perpetuating straight up abuse, misogyny, gaslighting, victim blaming, and ableism in today’s world. I get it’s “just a show” at the end of the day, but it’s exhausting, and honestly quite disgusting, to see people who say they’re against these things turn around and push the idea that victims should be okay with what is done to them just cause their “helpless little favorite” was the abuser.

I truly wish the storyline around Daisy’s inhibitor had been about her rediscovering herself and her pride in her inhuman heritage and her confidence by being encouraged as a leader by the team instead of being told she’s going to destroy the world, and ultimately agreeing, and GIVEN THE CHOICE to have the inhibitor removed.

I wish Fitz’s storyline with the doctor and his mental state was more about him willing to talk about it, seek help and guidance from the team, and rising above the guilt he felt from the Framework instead of treating him like he was helpless and needed constant babying and ego boosting from everyone else. Truthfully, I wish he got better writing cause he started out as such a cool character for me when I first watched the show before getting to this point in the series.

The two of them could have had an amazing character arc of understanding each other’s guilt (Daisy’s sway from Hive (in which she was in a position where she had no control over her thoughts and actions) and Fitz’s artificial life as the doctor) and how they can move on by helping, supporting, and understanding each other and themselves, coming to terms that what they went through was not their fault, but instead we got the bullshit story of assault and gaslighting.

There’s also the problematic look of a white man taking advantage of and violating a woman of color, but I hope that is clear enough for people to understand without me having to spell it out but racism has always been a bit of a problem with this fandom as well.

DAISY WAS THE VICTIM AND I’M SICK AND TIRED OF PEOPLE ACTING LIKE SHE WASN’T!

[puppyboy--butch]

I think a pretty big misunderstanding that a lot of other fic authors have about Daisy is how, exactly, she uses humor to cover up her trauma.

I've noticed that a lot of writers tend to use it as a vehicle to explore her childhood trauma specifically. Except. In the scenes where she does talk about her childhood (very few and far between as they are 🥲) she's always incredibly serious about it, and she moves on pretty quickly, because it's not actually about her childhood. She mostly uses it to make a point or as a means to an end instead, like bonding with Ward in s1, or explaining her understanding of him in s3. The only scene I can think of where she actually talks about it just for the sake of talking about it is the one between her and Jiaying. She canonically does not joke about her childhood trauma, or at the very least we never see or hear her do so.

I think the way she actually uses humor is best exemplified in s2 ep13, during her and Andrew's scenes together: every time she makes a joke in those scenes, it's never once about what she's avoiding talking about. She never jokes about her father, or Trip, or her powers. She never even mentions them. In fact, her joking is entirely about other people/things rather than herself, specifically about Andrew and May, about her present situation she's in at that exact moment, or just straight up sarcasm. The only time she mentions anything even remotely to do with herself is the joke about inkblot tests and her first time. Which, again, has nothing to do with the trauma at hand.

She doesn't use humor to make her trauma look less bad. She uses humor to cover up the fact that she's not talking about her trauma.

Anyways this is all an unnecessarily long way to say that Daisy wouldn't make jokes about the abuse she went through as a child and then be like "Guyysss it wasn't even that bad lol 😜😋" Stop writing her doing that in your fics. For me.

[apocalyptichearts]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

“Daisy lets her eye focus on the ripples in the water, the faint swirl of red that leaks down her arm and disperses into it. It snakes around her legs, slowly, violently. She lifts her chin off her knees, watching the blood spill down her chest and burst beneath the water, small fireworks around her thighs.

It would be poetic if it weren’t so jarring.”

[starlightquake]

Haven’t written a fic for anything in over 2 years (cause life 🫠) and I finally have an idea for a whole (one shot) fic!!😁😁

Don’t have any kind of timeline for posting it but i’m about to feed the Daisy and May fans (aka me)

[puppyboy--butch]

Anyways I think Inhumans should have hints of their powers even before Terrigenesis, but just innocuous enough that it's nothing noticeable as inherently strange.

Lincoln's hair constantly looked like he rubbed a balloon on it, and he static shocked people every time he touched them. Immediately after his first kiss the girl asked him if he had ever licked a nine volt battery.

Skye had nonstop tinnitus, and could always tell you where everyone is in a room, though she always chalked it up to her childhood. She complained about turbulence on the Bus and quinjets so often that everyone assumed it was just a weird bit she was doing.

Andrew had two categories in his head that he subconsciously sorted everyone he ever met into. He never quite realized that he did it, but it was always there in the back of his mind. Skye was the first and only person to go into the third category.

Yo-Yo was always the fastest kid in her grade. At everything. She won every race, finished every assignment first, was always at the front of the line. She got to high school and was immediately scouted for the track team.

Raina always had inescapable deja vu, and frequently recognized people she had never met before. She had really weird dreams for as long as she could remember, but she never quite remembered them when she woke up.

So on and so forth.

[ryder616]

SHIELD IDs for the OG team and MackElena

Among the props currently on auction there are the SHIELD IDs for the entire OG team, complete with DOB and job titles, and also for Mack and YoYo. I'm posting them all under the cut. There are some inconsistencies here and there, which is perhaps the interesting part.

Coulson's is a little weird. This prop is not from S1, because the issue date is 2015, which also would make his job title wrong since he was Director then but April 25 2015 is in between 2x18 and 2x19 and that's when Real SHIELD was throwing its weight around. However, it seems preposterous they bothered to issue him a new ID while they were chasing him and considered him a compromised liability. The other things of note are that his DOB makes him two years younger than Clark Gregg and that he was born in July just like Daisy:

May, also two years younger than Ming-Na Wen. This ID was issued, in-universe, before the start of the show while she was still working in Administration.

Skye's ID is probably the most interesting (well, to me anyway 😁) because her birth year contrasts with the redacted orphanage file that shows up on screen in 1x05. That one was dated 1989, but according to her ID she's supposedly born in 1990. Both dates are ofc wrong as we all know but this is for S1 so that's not a problem. Framework!Skye's Hydra ID also had 1990 as her birth year, which means that whoever was in charge of making these kept it consistent, at least. Finally, the issue date is March 15, 2014, which would place 1x16 - the episode in which she became officially an agent - around that time as well. The episode aired on April 1st, so that tracks pretty well.

Simmons' card is a bit different from the rest since it shows her clearance level, unlike all the previous ones. Her DOB coincides with Elizabeth Henstridge's. The issue date is pre-series, March 2013.

Fitz's ID also shows his level like Simmons, and his DOB coincides with Iain De Caesteker's, which probably means that this was made before they established he was only a month younger than Simmons (or was it the other way around? I can't remember). However, their birth year (1987) is consistent with dialogue references to their ages. Interestingly, his title is technician and not scientist like Simmons. The issue date is also, like Simmons, pre-series by a few months, February 2013 in his case. Out of universe, that's around the time they were shooting the pilot:

And here is Ward, to complete the OG team. Once again, they chose the actor's real DOB for the character. The issue date of September works well with the fact that he was probably issued a new card once he was promoted to Level 7, which happens in the pilot that aired in September:

There's also one for Mack, made either for S6 or S7 given his title is Director. His DOB, you guessed it, is the same as Henry Simmons. The issue date coincides with the airdate for 5x22, the episode in which he becomes director.

and here's a four different ones for Elena, including her lanyard from her old job in Colombia and an undercover ID (made for 4x11, I *think*). Her DOB is Aug 17, 1984, two years younger than Natalia Cordova Buckley. The issue date of her SHIELD ID is May 17, 2016, which happens to be the original airdate of 3x21.

Finally, this an ID for Daisy's with her real name and DOB (the best day ever 😁). The card's serial number is also updated but the photo is the same as the S1's card. The issue date is about 2 months and a half after the air date for 2x22:

[mercyandmountainwater]

one thing you gotta remember about season one Skye is that she’s so good with people it’s nearly preternatural. She’s teetering on Will Graham levels of relating to people. She manages to convince Mike to be a hero with a single conversation. She notices Coulsons use of Tahiti as a thought terminating cliche in the first five minutes of episode two. She hears the word immature and figures out the entire motivation of someone she’s never talked to. For what little she knows about Ward she gets a really close reading and is able to suss out his major flaws and insecurities. Her social IQ basically outpaces everyone else on the team and Coulson seems to be the only person capable of keeping up.

[crunchyspaghetti]

So I let myself take a little break from s5 to watch a few eps from s1 (in honor of the series finale anniversary)

It’s sort of ironic to go from Daisy telling Coulson that he is the symbol, the shield, back to the eps where Quinn shoots her. Cuz honestly I really don’t think the team would have stayed together, had she died.

Obviously it’s easy for me to say that, since she’s a central character of the show and I know what happens next, but still. I don’t think that it’s for a lack of the caring about each other, but Daisy/Skye is really the glue of the group in a way I’m not sure she ever realized. I just don’t think they could’ve come back from that.

Heck, S.H.I.E.L.D. probably wouldn’t exist at all, had she died and the team disbanded. Maybe Gonzalez’s “Real S.H.I.E.L.D” faction, but not the real, real S.H.I.E.L.D., since the team is pretty much single-handedly responsible for saving it from the wreckage.

Idk, interesting to think about.

[starlightquake]

I think I’ve made a post about this before, but it’s something that’s on my mind right now:

Daisy’s ending should have had something to do with the inhumans.

They literally set her up in season 2 to be their next leader, and the rights and protections for inhumans was something that she fought for and believed in so much in seasons 3 and 4.

And then by season 5 they just… had her stop?

Season 5, the show only treated inhumans and Daisy as tools. As a means to an end instead of actual people with emotions regarding the use of their powers and their heritage.

I feel like Daisy could have either rebuilt something like Afterlife or created some sort of program to keep inhumans safe. Not some sort of list like The Index or the Sokovia Accords (cause as we see in seasons 3 and 4, that made things so much worse) but something or someplace where Daisy knows she can keep her people safe.

Plus, to be honest, if I was Daisy, I wouldn’t want to go back to space after having been sold to slavery and tortured in space and then later traveling space for a year to find the man who essentially assaulted her and have to pretend that never happened. Yes I’m very still pretty about all of that. No I will never shut up about this because what do you mean they let him get away with it?

In this inhuman venture, I still believe Daniel and Kora would be by her side through all of it. Daniel, of course, being the guy who would support her through anything and was the only person to not invalidate her feelings and actually show genuine care for her. Kora, I have mixed feelings about her as a character overall, but as Daisy’s sister, she’s the last familial connection Daisy has, especially when it comes to their inhuman heritage, so I feel like they’d be able to take this on together.

Overall, I just wish season 7 gave Daisy the ending the show seemed to have been heading towards before turning her whole story around to being a soldier who uses her powers as a weapon more than a person celebrating and protecting her heritage and her people.

[starlightquake]

ALSO when Daisy gets her powers basically drained by Nathaniel, no one actually asks if she okay (except for Daniel who insists she keeps resting to get better).

All anyone really says in regard to Daisy being involuntary operated on while awake (for the second time mind you) and on the brink of death is, “We’re down our best fighter.”

So, to tell you how the team views Daisy in regard to her powers in that moment🙃

[starlightquake]

I think I’ve made a post about this before, but it’s something that’s on my mind right now:

Daisy’s ending should have had something to do with the inhumans.

They literally set her up in season 2 to be their next leader, and the rights and protections for inhumans was something that she fought for and believed in so much in seasons 3 and 4.

And then by season 5 they just… had her stop?

Season 5, the show only treated inhumans and Daisy as tools. As a means to an end instead of actual people with emotions regarding the use of their powers and their heritage.

I feel like Daisy could have either rebuilt something like Afterlife or created some sort of program to keep inhumans safe. Not some sort of list like The Index or the Sokovia Accords (cause as we see in seasons 3 and 4, that made things so much worse) but something or someplace where Daisy knows she can keep her people safe.

Plus, to be honest, if I was Daisy, I wouldn’t want to go back to space after having been sold to slavery and tortured in space and then later traveling space for a year to find the man who essentially assaulted her and have to pretend that never happened. Yes I’m very still pretty about all of that. No I will never shut up about this because what do you mean they let him get away with it?

In this inhuman venture, I still believe Daniel and Kora would be by her side through all of it. Daniel, of course, being the guy who would support her through anything and was the only person to not invalidate her feelings and actually show genuine care for her. Kora, I have mixed feelings about her as a character overall, but as Daisy’s sister, she’s the last familial connection Daisy has, especially when it comes to their inhuman heritage, so I feel like they’d be able to take this on together.

Overall, I just wish season 7 gave Daisy the ending the show seemed to have been heading towards before turning her whole story around to being a soldier who uses her powers as a weapon more than a person celebrating and protecting her heritage and her people.

[moonlayl]

Jiaying: we're not going to turn on you or abandon you

Except they do, and very quickly.

We're fast approaching one of the worst things the writers did, which is make Jiaying the bad guy here.

Shield differed greatly from Hydra, and was built on the idea of protection. That everyone was worth saving.

Except powered people in the world of Marvel were dehumanized at every turn by Shield. They were only ever treated as valuable tools (no autonomy, no choice but to take very order), lab rats to be experimented on, or threats to be put down.

Afterlife was created to keep inhumans safe, only for it to be invaded by Shield, who would've placed everyone on the index and monitored them constantly everyday for the rest of their lives. They would've been forced to accept that, accept daily intrusions, accept shield's idea of what constitutes a "stable mind", and would've forever been at shields mercy.

And even after most of shield was revealed to be secretly hydra, people like inhumans would have had no rights to question shield and be wary of divulging private, costly information, and would've been seen as threats for doing so.

Gonzales, who sent armed agents to hunt down Skye and kill her if she expressed any natural feelings of suspicion/wariness, was the one sent to speak to Jiaying.

Jiaying who was cut into pieces by "Hydra" who'd infiltrated shield.

Inhumans had every right to view shield's actions as an attack and to be wary. Even Jiaying killing Gonzales, while not right, isn't as bad as the show likes to paint it as , because he's literally one of the heads of a dangerous global organization planning on treating everyone Jiaying is meant to protect like animals.

But of course, we couldn't have shield be the bad guys (even though technically speaking, the show could've painted it as just a 'real shield' problem, making Gonzales be the ultimate villain of the season, and giving Coulson and his team an out, if they really wanted shield to be looked at favourably) so the inhumans--who are a metaphor for oppressed minorities on the show--had to start planning for mass genocide for us to root against them because they were making too much sense otherwise. Of course they had to make Jiaying aim to kill every non inhuman, so that "shield" would be right.

Afterlife should've never been destroyed, especially when no alternative was created. Daisy was prophesied to lead inhumans, just for that to never happen. Inhumans become public, hunted everywhere, and yes it was addressed in the third season (by having shield working with the people hunting down inhumans, having Coulson get into a relationship with th person leading those people, and having everyone act like Daisy was irrational for having problems with Rosalind) but things start to look up slightly in s4, just for it to never get anywhere afterwards.

Season 5 has inhumans in the future become subjects to even worse oppression but after the team arrives back in their time, inhumans are ignored. s6 doesn't get into that at all, and in s7 we get afterlife again, only for the people there to be hunted and killed, and for Jiaying to die again after a "redemption arc" with it leading nowhere on the inhumans part of the storyline.

Even Kora's existence was something I hated while watching s7, and now rewatching s2 and seeing Jiaying all over again makes me hate the Kora introduction even more. They had limited episodes yes, but still. Rushed and badly executed.

They fumbled this storyline so badly, and it's around here that you can tell the careful planning on the show runner's part from s1 had ended.

Plot holes, ignored storylines, etc... s6/7 could've cycled back to this, and to Yoyo and Daisy building a safe space for inhumans to live and prosper (not to be indoctrinated into shield, which is what s3 was all about) with Mack making that part of shield's mission (what s4 was about, only for it to fail miserably too. fake inhuman director). Instead we got more space....yay.

S2 could've ended with Skye choosing to go back to shield in order to keep Afterlife's secret, with her sending powered people to jiaying in later seasons to receive help, Jiaying could've become a secret ally to shield (where only a few trusted shield agents would even know about her) and the writers could've used a secret safe location full of powered people to their advantage.

Ultimately, the writers, despite introducing all of these complex ideas and storylines, wanted to circle back to the status quo, and the only way to do that was to get rid of Daisy's parents and remove destroy afterlife entirely, since any other conclusion would've taken too long to get to.

Just like in s6 when they wanted the whole team together so they had a loophole to bring Fitz back, conveniently not having to address Fitz' mess from the previous season

Just like in s7 when they wanted Coulson back so we got an LMD Coulson even though that would've been the most horrific thing for the real Coulson to go through, and this version conveniently has all the memories so no need to deal with the fall out, even though he's basically going through s1 again with the horrors of being brought back to life.

I know the constant state of not knowing whether they'll be renewed or not played a role in the decisions made but avoiding storylines you can't properly follow through would've been preferable tbh.

[moonlayl]

Gonzales calling Skye a "thing"

and that's the freak they're going to send to meet with Jiaying in a few episodes.

[moonlayl]

Coulson saying he's not a bad guy and trying to see things from their perspective

Hunter: good guys don't usually stab you in the back

[photos-or-inkblots]

their justification to letting Gonzales meet Jiaying is 'we needed somebody objective'

how is he objective in the slightest when all he – and the rest of the Iliad – had ever been in the past episodes, especially towards Inhumans, is anything but?

[moonlayl]

It was so stupid, like wouldn't a friendly face, someone who actually cared for Skye, be ten times better to convince them shield meant no harm?

These are supposed to be the intelligent people behind a global intelligence organization ?

[moonlayl]

Raina telling them the vision of shield firing on Afterlife

only for it to end up being Gordon and another inhuman hijacking the quinjet to fire on afterlife...

Again, the show managed to turn a situation of a marginalized group on the brink of being profiled into the villains in a fantastic and twisted way.

Even if you raise the point that "Shield wanting to place every inhuman on the index is bad" it's very easy to take these events and be like "yeah not a good look, but it's actually the inhumans who orchestrated and escalated the problem whereas Shield was only trying to profile them for the greater good."

The writers knew what they were doing and knew the audience would sympathize with inhumans or at least understand both sides so by making every "bad shield act" secretly done by inhumans, and adding the "inhumans want every non inhuman dead" aspect, there's no way anyone could possibly see shield as the bad guys.

They could've made it so that rogue shield agents loyal to Gonzales fired on inhumans after Gonzales' death so that both sides would have committed horrible mistakes (instead of inhumans framing shield). They could've had Gonzales be working on his own for his own agenda which would blow up in the shape of a war with inhumans, making shield technically bad guys while we, the audience, know Coulson and Coulson's shield were actually innocent and that way the marginalized group isn't cartoonishly evil and the conflict could be resolved without the total suffering of every inhuman for seasons to come.

They could've avoided this entire problematic storyline in the first place.

This is your classic propaganda being spread in fictional media, especially superhero media. "Look guys, the armed specialized agents in tactical gear on their way to profile a group of marginalized people are actually the good guys, and the terrorist people of colour evil inhumans set out a trap to kill the poor agents :("