As someone who's been watching the MCU since 2011 and just very recently fell HARD in love with Stucky and Steve Rogers via fan works, I think I've reached Nirvana because I feel like nothing that happens in "canon" can ruin my love for these characters.
After Endgame and even now, Steve is hated. Being a Steve fan in 2026 is not an easy task 😮💨 I thought that what happened in Endgame was a disservice to the character, but I also think that there could be ways to dissect Steve's decision in a more nuanced and meaningful sense (that ngl, probably only fan works can achieve), like maybe as a culmination of trauma, survivor's guilt, a romanticised longing for the past, a rash decision from PTSD that ultimately led to the horrors of finally realising what you've done and there was no turning back and you had to live with it yada yada. Or! I could choose to ignore that happened altogether because I have a not-faultless-but-genuinely-solid Steve's Captain America movie trilogy and more than 72,000 (SEVENTY TWO THOUSAND!) fanfics on AO3 ALONE! I'm the luckiest son of a bitch alive!
One thing I find so beautiful about loving comic characters is that essentially, a lot of them have existed for almost 100 years. They have been through countless iterations, various resurrections, been crafted by so many writers and artists to the point that a streamlined, absolute canon doesn't really exist. That's the thing that made me feel like wow, they are truly mine, they belong to me, to us, to the people and the fandom (not legally, but still). I can literally pick and choose what I like from official publications, refine it, make something new with it, and tuck it away in my little corner.
Anyway all that to say I'm just excited to see them again in Doomsday! I grew up with these characters, they still mean so much to me! Whatever horrible things may happen, I know that I will always have fan works, I know that these characters will outlive me, and I know there will be SO MANY good fics after this movie!!!
P/S: Steve being hated by the masses was a detail in Not Easily Conquered too like damn that's a canon event to me (NEC is kinda like my canon).
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