“Two Things Only The Greatest Fools Do: Throw Stones At Hornets’ Nests And Threaten A Witcher.”

“You’re keeping the outfit, right?”

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exactly

Fans: We didn’t like X-Men The Last Stand because it didn’t focus on Jean Grey or the Phoenix force and just made it about Xavier’s guilt and her love interests’ grief, there was no need for Jean to join Magneto, and the movies didn’t set up a team dynamic with any history that was sad to watch be tested.

Fox Executives:

The thing about "Steve stuck in the past re: Bucky/Peggy/life in general" is that, by itself, I think it's a valid writing choice. There are scenes that could support that interpretation, and it's a plausible way to add depth to Steve's character and create some conflict. But it's so often done in a "Steve should just get over himself" kind of way, rather than a "Steve is understandably struggling here" kind of way, which sucks.

Point. It’s presented as this unhealthy thing…almost a character flaw that Steve is ‘stuck in the past’. As if he’s an old man whining about the good old days and not someone who is grieving the destruction of his entire world. And it’s not just done in a way where “Steve should just get over himself” but also in a way that Steve being stuck in the past makes him toxic to Bucky/Tony/the team/ and he needs to get over himself because he’s hurting someone else. It’s never about what that grief is doing to him.

Sometimes I think the magnitude of Steve’s loss is what makes his trauma so completely incomprehensible to fandom while they sit and churn out overused childhood abuse tropes for Tony or Loki. Or it could just be the fact that Steve is a stoic character because Bucky’s trauma should also be absolutely incomprehensible but fandom sure manages to give a tonne of shits about it. 

This is so funny

THIS IS THE BEST!

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.

I don’t think I’ve seen an answer to the question of how close or far apart the things happening today (”send her back”, detention centers etc) are to the nazis quite as good or thorough as this answer on quora

True Blood (2008–2014) by Alan Ball

i love how bucky is like “i know two things about you: ur mom existed and ur shoes were always garbage” and that’s it, that’s all it takes, steve is ready to fistfight the fucking moon