We’re Right There With You, Scott. Right There With You.

100 DAYS UNTIL ‘AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR’!

I have seen posts on tumblr crowing about how Suicide Squad is a testament to diversity in casting, while Doctor Strange is the most white-washed in Marvel history???

As a Muslim, and an Asian, I feel like I should challenge this notion. I feel like for Suicide Squad to be the standard in diversity, Karen Fukuhara should have been Captain Boomerang, instead of yet another sword wielding martial arts expert; Will Smith should have been Harley Quinn, instead of yet another smart mouth, bad ass, tough guy, weapons expert; and Margot Robbie should have been Deadshot, because we want to be in awe of how deadly she is with that custom AR-15, instead of how she looks in short shorts.

As for Doctor Strange being the most white-washed in Marvel history, Chiwetel Ejiofor is Baron Mordo, Benedict Wong is not playing a man servant, and Tilda Swinton is the Ancient One that nobody expected, because Marvel and long-time comic readers understand that the Ancient One is a title that is earned, and to earn this title one doesn’t have to be an old Asian man spewing words of wisdom. I think we’ve seen enough of that nonsense.

I think diversity should mean more than just casting people of color in movies and TV shows to play stereotypical roles, like the martial arts expert or perky comic relief, or the evil terrorist, or the tough talking gangster. I think it’s demeaning to these beautiful, talented actors, and the audience, that they’re not allowed the space and direction to do more, or show more.

I’m curious: put your zodiac sign and whether you’re team Cap or team Iron Man in the tags

1~000 пометок "Нравится"!

This is so true. I liked cacw but this is what really ruins it for me

but the entire first half of CA: the first avenger was showing steve's childhood and backstory.

(assuming this is a reply to this post)

By the time we see Steve in CATFA, he’s already an adult trying to enlist in the war. CATFA showed us a nice backstory of who Steve was (who he had grown to be at that point) before he had the serum, and who he turned into after it. 

Captain America: Civil War did not show us:

- who Steve’s mother was, what she was like, what she looked like, if she influenced Steve at all, what memories he has of her, how old she was when she died, how she died, how exactly her death affected Steve

- who Steve’s father was, if he was in Steve’s life at all, if he was symbolic in any way, what his name was, how he died, if his death affected Steve at all

- what steve looked like as a little kid (omf baby steve can you imaGINE)

- why Steve believes the things he believes, how he grew to fight prejudice, if prejudice and assumptions were important things in his childhood- if they had any affect on his family or on him- the evolution of his character born both out of himself and out of his environment and the things that must have happened to him

Captain America: Civil War did show us:

- who Tony’s mother was, what she was like, what she looked like, that she influenced Tony, what memories he had of her, how old she was when she died, how she died, and how exactly her death affected Tony

- who Tony’s father was, that he was in Tony’s life, that he was symbolic, what his name was, how he died, and how exactly his death affected Tony

- what Tony looked like as a young adult

- and why he believe the things he believes, how he grew to fear attachment and resent himself, the things he did and saw in his youth that impacted him in his adult life, the evolution of his character born both out of himself and out of his environment and the things that did happen to him

I need to hug this post. Seriously.

1/4 Hello! I'm sorry to bother you with this, but you're a really chill person from what I've seen and you love Steve, you're willing to listen and answer politely, and I don't know who else to turn to with this. I'm just so fucking sick of how Steve is used in fandom even by people who supposedly like him. Spoiler, they don't. They just want him as a trophy for [insert X]. Like, I read this hugely popular fic where Steve is essentially written as a selfish, incompetent idiot

2/4 who harangues Bcky and Sam into joining The Good Fight TM (post-CW) to the point where Bcky (lol) has to ~give him a lecture~ about how to treat Sam properly. It ends as OT3 (where Steve is treated as a sex-cessory, of course, lmao), it has hundreds of kudos, & yet no one seems to give a damn that Steve was basically character assassinated in it. Cherry on the cake is that when Steve mentions he went to Sharon for help getting Sam’s wings back, Sam is offended. Calls her “Carter”. Ok then.

¾ I get that fandom enjoys having Steve be pathetically codependent to their faves, as if he has no other friends who love him. I get that the angry!chihuahua Steve interpretation is popular to the point where that’s ALL he seems to fucking do in fic, as if there’s nothing else important to him. But to disregard his trauma, depression, suicidal tendencies, debilitating survivor’s guilt and the fact that he’s a damn veteran who has given up his life for his country and the rest of the world –

4/4 into “Steve doesn’t know how to live without war or violence! Ofc he’d keep dragging his (Fandom Approved) friends into this! He’s so selfish & boringly depressed, here we go again, Bcky/Nat/Sam/Chewbacca need to clean up his messes ~obvs~ since he’s so incompetent LOL can’t wait for him to die so someone else can be cap” is beyond galling. I’m tired of this. I’m sick of it being lauded. I can barely read halfway through a fic these days without back-buttoning in disgust and disappointment.

__________

Oh my dearest Anon, you have vented to exactly the rightplace. I know! I share your pain. Trust me on this. I am very, very picky aboutwhat fanfic I read all the way through. Part of that is not just that I’m ahuge Steve Rogers fan, which I am. He’s my main guy. I love him. But I also work full-time,I’m a wife and a mother. My spare time is precious. I have so, so many tabsopen for stories from authors that I trust that I have yet to read just becausemy reading time is so sparse. If a writer wants to catch my attention, to beplaced in front of the queue above the writers I already know are balanced andfair in their characterization, they had better be good about characterization,because characterization is the one aspect of writing I am most picky about. Itis the writers responsibility to build a trust in their reader, and to buildthat trust they need to follow the basic rules for character construct infiction writing, if the writers cannot follow those basic tenants, something justone creative writing class would show them in a heartbeat, or hell, even just alittle research into the craft, then I’m out. And I’m not likely to return toread anything else they produce. Basically it’s a writers job to sell thecharacters, even the characters who aren’t their favorite, especially thecharacters who aren’t their favorite. If their biases manage to leak throughtheir writing they are not doing it right.

Part of this might be the age of fandom. While there arethose of us, like myself, who are over 30, who have schooling and/or experience,a large section of fandom is very young. Some still in high school. Some incollege but they haven’t really learned yet or fine-tuned their craft. It is myhope that the more they write the better they’ll be at it. That one day they’llrealize that a) when you make one character the all-knowing, ‘right’ one, let’suse Bucky since that’s the example you gave me, you are actually not doingBucky’s character any favors, it’s not just Steve’s characterization who suffersin this. Gone are the Ian Flemming days when readers gave a pass to a lack ofrealism when it comes to building a protagonist. Were Ian Flemming try to sellJames Bond today - ingenious, undefeatable, sexually flawless James Bond - hewould be turned down. As a society we’ve evolved past that. We look forrealism. Identifiable characteristics. The biggest mistake a writer could makeis to make their character, any character, a stereotype.

As for how the fandom treats Steve in particular?  Using him as a whipping boy to prop up theirfavorite? Also, again, that’s immaturity. And also an act driven entirely byemotion with total absence of logic. Let’s say you, as a writer, or just areally big fan of a character, want to sell your favorite character so thatothers may come to appreciate him. Or, in the very least feel empathy towardsthis character and their situation. Let’s again use Bucky in this (just as anexample, I’m not trying to pick on Bucky). But here is the thing, you don’tneed to convince fellow Bucky fans. They are already convinced. They are onboard. They get it. What you need to do is appeal to the people who don’t giveBucky a thought. And how do you convince them? It sure as hell isn’t byattacking another character, that’s for sure! If I, as a Steve fan, see a Buckyfan attack Steve to prop up Bucky, I am going to be closed off to anything thatBucky fan has to say. It’s a defensive mechanism. i.e. ‘You’re attacking myguy, you’ve just made yourself and your character the enemy, I’m not givingyour words any credence’. Thus this person has not achieved their goal of convincinganyone of anything. In fact they made the situation worse because now the onlything I’m convinced of is that this characters’ fans are rabid.

With age comes wisdom and hopefully fandom will get pastthis. But yeah, they do it, and it’s awful and it makes no sense and uses nologic but we learn and grow and hopefully one day the people doing this willrealize that they’re creating this either/or situation, creating sides, whenthere doesn’t have to be any. That Marvel fandom is actually big enough foreverybody. And none of the leads are going anywhere. Disney owns these guys,they are going to milk them for every marketing and merchandizing penny theyare worth, so if anyone honestly believes they are going to kill off a popularcharacter whose likeness is sold on everything from lunchboxes to Kleenix theway Steve Rogers’ is, and this while they can have a Captain America, a Falconand a Winter Soldier all at the same time thus three times the amount of potentialproduct, a reality check is long past due. The people believing that need toget a clue. Disney is not the comics and they are not going to do anything thatwill affect the bottom line. Fandom needs to get over the mantel passing thing becauseit’s not going to happen in the MCU unless the actor requests it because they’redone. The only reason they killed HanSolo is because Harrison Ford asked them to, if he hand’t? They would havemilked him, too. Also, another thing to remember, online fandom only makes uproughly 1% of a movie’s viewing audience, so even if a fic like this seemspopular? It’s only popular amongst percentage of a percentage of 1%.

Until then I read pretty much every Steve-centric pairingthere is and I have a list of really talented authors I trust with Steve, andtrust me, I’m very picky about that, so if you’d like Anon, I can make a reclist for you. Just let me know. Also, you are most welcome to come vent to meabout this at any time. I feel you. As a Steve fan who genuinely cares andidentifies with the character I get exactly what you are saying. We can bepained by this together.

A brilliant explanation of consent for anyone who STILL doesn’t get it. 

dogs and snapchat

Reblog this post with the third gif in the gif search of your favorite movie

a completely accurate summary of avengers assemble 4.14 ‘new year’s eve’