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One of the many incredible reasons I enjoy watching Captain America: The Winter Soldier repeatedly and placing it as my favorite movie hands down. There’s just so much more to it than it being just a superhero film and I am always interested in learning more about it everyday.

The Compass We Should’ve Gotten in Endgame

A small story to how I got my Bucky compass

So I was Ace Comic Con last month in Chicago and I stopped by this stall to admire their work when I noticed they were selling Peggy compasses. Naturally, my reaction was to roll my eyes, go on Instagram and put Bucky’s picture in front of it instead (fixing it really) and started chatting up to the creator.

He noticed me looking intently at the compasses and asked if I would’ve liked to purchase one and I decided I wasn’t going to lie. I told him that I would’ve bought it, gladly if it wasn’t Peggy inside of it cause I thought that whole thing became overrated thanks to one film; E*ndga*e.

(If Bucky was there, well we all know I wouldn’t even hesitate.)

He said, “give me a second!”

And proceeded to pull out a Bucky photo from the Winter Soldier book he had on display, removed Peggy and taped on Bucky’s photo in there. I was beyond ecstatic.

Immediately pulled out my cc and said that I would buy it if I could get a proper version of it and we sealed the deal. He told me how he had thought to making a few Bucky compasses for the Houston Con Sebastian was going to be at and now he might do it for real (he did.)

According to said artist, I had just become the first recipient to a Bucky compass made by them and I was on cloud nine.

Yesterday. I received my package and of course I had a mini photoshoot of it because it looks amaZing!

Featuring: the Winter Soldier book, a Bucky Tsum Tsum, and our main star: BUCKY COMPASS!!!

(It’s actually quite weighted and it feels so good to open it and see him in there.)

Bucky was the original firecracker brunette in Steve’s life who saw him for who he was before the serum and the world

Anyone else after is irrelevant

And no I will not be taking any criticism at this time

Soulmates in every lifetime, in every timeline.

heartinyourthroat

what i love most about the way bucky is used in conjunction with steve in the movies is this:

in each movie, we see steve operating under the strength of his convictions, wanting to prove himself, wanting to uphold the ideals and values he believes are most important, wanting to be a soldier.

but in each movie, it’s bucky who acts as the catalyst to steve going rogue. it’s not that he abandons his ideals or his convictions. it’s not that he stops being a soldier. it’s that his mission alters in those crucial moments when he finds out bucky is in trouble. it’s not about duty anymore, not really. it’s about his friend and the very human emotions that churn through him as a result of what’s at stake.

bucky is the way the audience gets to see the personal cost to steve of being a hero.

in cap 1, it’s not until he hears bucky is in trouble that he is willing to really rise to the mantle of being captain america. even when he thinks bucky is dead, the very notion or hope that he can save him, the need to do something for his friend, is what pushes him to have his real origin story out there in the hydra base.

in cap 2, it’s not until he sees bucky with his mask torn off that he hardens his resolve to fight hydra. he’s been on the run most of the movie, trying to understand what is at work, but when he sees bucky and begins to understand the true nature of what hydra represents–look, he’s already made the decision that hydra has to burn no matter the damage to himself. he’s already willing to die for that conviction. but later, on the helicarrier, the populace saved, he goes rogue again. he stays on that helicarrier to bring bucky back one more time.

and in cap 3, we know that despite the way steve might disagree with the sovakia accords, despite the overarching themes of culpability and freedom, the real driver lies in these words: “im sorry tony, you know i wouldnt do this if i had any other choice, but he’s my friend.” it’s not just that bucky represents the sick and twisted product of deep government corruption. it’s not just that there are two moral sides to this battle and the one captain america is fighting for is personal freedom. it’s that steve is fighting for bucky. he’s making the conscious, human, complex, emotional choice.

it’s through bucky’s relationship with steve that we see a change in steve’s motivations to fight, to champion, to be the protector he is. it’s through bucky’s relationship with steve that we see steve and i love it.

To think what we would’ve gotten if Cap3 was Serpeant Society like it was meant to be

The overall arch of Steve/Bucky would’ve been forever changed and different from what we got and so much better too, don’t you think?

thestovetops

Beautiful

blushnik

Shrinkyclinks doodle I did for a patron some time ago.

Steve – a spoiled brat of rich parents – and Bucky – who works 3 jobs just to pay the rent – are childhood friends. Bucky refuses to get any help because he’s stubborn as hell and too proud and made a joke about how he ’doesn’t want Steve to be his sugar daddy’ on several occasions.

Steve, on the other hand, would very much like to be just that 😎

You can support me on patreon, link is in the bio and any help is appreciated ♥

Omg tiny Steve as a sugar daddy!!!!

Im living for that

Give me more.

darlingbenny

i heard someone said do the other one so

accompaniment to this also based on this

It’s absolutely my favorite thing in the world now for Steve Rogers to say “GET FUCKED!” At any given moment.

min1919

sorry for not been around much lately, because of life shit, art block, blah, blah….banging my head against the desk.

I can’t not reblog this every time I see it

Bucky hitting Steve is the funniest shit

teamstevebucky

“Phase 2 is SHIELD uses the Cube to make weapons.”

asometimeslife-blog

#mcu#avengers#steve rogers#bucky barnes#no but really though#the gun he puts down on the table#is the exact one that killed bucky#less than two weeks ago#as far as he’s concerned#he watched the person he loves most in the world plummet to his death#shot by one of these things#an now the ‘good guys’#the people he’s being told are here to prevent what bucky (and so many others) died for#are the ones with their hand quite literally on the gun#seventy years#his entire life lost#and the only thing that’s really changed is who’s behind the trigger#(and oh steve you have no idea)#(no idea how much worse it will get from here)

(via)

keeploveflowing

Because this post is not horrible enough I felt obliged to leave these here

moonstarphoenix

#an now the ‘good guys’#the people he’s being told are here to prevent what bucky (and so many others) died for#are the ones with their hand quite literally on the gun#seventy years#his entire life lost#and the only thing that’s really changed is who’s behind the trigger

This is highly important. The very people who Steve thought were the good guys including the supposed love of his life literally hired a Nazi scientist for their own benefit after the war. Everything Steve and Bucky wanted and died for was for nothing.

Okay, so I’m gonna say some things that are gonna hurt a lot of people’s feelings but it’s what I think.

SHIELD WAS NEVER THE GOOD GUYS

Shield was always meant to be shady. I understand that they were there to help the people and keep them safe, but it was built during the Cold War. Where spies, undercover agents were the norm for so many people. That’s just how it was! It’s the Cold War guys, you had to do some bad shit to make sure a lot of people stayed safe.

And I know a lot of you guys love Peggy and think she can’t do anything wrong because she’s the queen feminist, but she started up shield knowing they would be doing a lot of shady stuff. That’s what they had to do to protect the world and I’m sure she wasn’t happy with she had to do a lot of the times, but she knew it was necessary. Girl wasn’t scared to get her hands dirty and nothing wrong with that.

But that also means she let Zola join shield and I don’t, for one second believe that she didn’t have a hand in him joining. If she didn’t want him there, she would’ve made sure that happened, everyone listened to Peggy. And everything Steve wouldn’t have stood for, Peggy had to do and did without hesitation.

Let’s not think that Shield were the good guys. That’s a pretty lose term to use with them considering that the reason Hydra was under everyone’s nose for so long and only when Steve started questioning them, is because they did shady and questionable shit all the time.

I MEAN LOOK AT PROJECT INSIGHT FOR FUCKS SAKE! Hydra got away with being in the very visible shadows because shield agreed with everything they presented (but guess who didn’t??? That’s right. Your boy, Steven G Rogers!) and Bucky was just the rotten cherry drowned in chocolate sauce of that plastic sundae that finally gave Steve the clarity that shield shouldn’t be saved. Not that it can’t. That it shouldn’t.

He should’ve trusted his gut instincts right around the time he found the same suit that caused Bucky to “die”. (But of course why would he? It would be too much of who he is to call Shield out for their shadiness)

cosmicmechanism

Would you be willing to share the CATFA Twitter bar scene analysis here? I, for one, am VERY interested.

Absolutely!

I think a lot of us have realized that Steve wasn’t the naive and inexperienced farm boy that they tried to make him seem. For one, Steve’s background as a poor son of Irish Catholic immigrants (something the movies don’t ever really talk about) from Brooklyn suggests he might have some life experience. He’s also 25/26 in the film so he’s not exactly someone just opening their eyes to adulthood. So, maybe he totally didn’t misunderstand the whole fondue thing? Maybe he was just casually asking if she and Howard were together using the language he just heard Howard, a notorious womanizer, use.

That sets us up for the bar scene. Up until now, most of the meta and gif sets I’ve seen imply this was Bucky realizing that he had lost Steve to Peggy (the song supports this!), but let’s look at what really happens:

- Steve and Bucky are talking (about the uniform).

- Peggy walks in fully dressed and made up.

- Peggy finds Steve with info about equipment that Howard wants him to try the next morning (an excuse to talk to him).

- Steve looks her up and down, knowing what’s happening, while Bucky looks to Steve (because he knows when a girl is signaling).

- Peggy tries to fill the silence with a comment about the Howling Commandos singing.

- Bucky tries to lead the conversation into the realm Peggy actually getting her dance.

- Bucky implies that there is room to dance and asks her because Steve isn’t.

- Peggy repeats Steve’s words to him implying she’s the right partner.

- Steve does not take the cue and Peggy…just leaves.

- Steve and Bucky sit down to finish their drink while Steve does a callback to their double dates.

Peggy came to find Steve, all dressed up with a flimsy excuse of telling him about a work, so he’d ask her out. Apparently, there was a dance floor right there. Bucky actually tries to do the gentlemanly thing and asks her for a dance. Steve, on the other hand, does not. Steve’s comment about the double dates shows he understood that she was there for that reason. He still chose to hang out with Bucky instead, something he didn’t do the last time they saw each other. So does the song support this as well or does this interpretation kind of subvert the meaning of the song? I think it still works only the guy stays in this case.

postmodernmulticoloredcloak

Interesting take. I dig it

I don’t think we really talk about how Steve a) essentially only makes a move on Peggy when Bucky is, for all intents and purposes, dead, and in fact Steve is going to do a potentially (? not clear if he intended or expected to survive the final clash with Hydra) deadly thing; never really asks her out - it’s not a date, it’s a goodbye. That was the point of the scene.

Which is also *screams against pillow* why retconning it into something else doesn’t work. “I had a date” is Steve-speak for “what do you fucking think I apparently got yeeted 70 years into the future and you’re asking me what” when Fury asks him if he’ll be okay. Which doesn’t mean he was opposed to going on that date with Peggy! Just, it’s not what Steve is actually talking about. He’s being, maybe sarcastic isn’t the exact word, but something close to that.

(Which doesn’t necessarily mean he was opposed to the idea of dating her! But the whole context of everything, you know… he’s a soldier on a mission he doesn’t really expect/intend to get out of alive. After Bucky dies his intention is to destroy Hydra, it’s no longer ~hey let’s help out with this war shall we~. The fact that he “invites” her to a dance when he’s going to what is, for all intents and purposes, his death is NOT being ~too late~ or ~waiting too long~, it’s BECAUSE he’s going to die. He had opportunities to dance with her before then! And yet he didn’t pick them. He gives her the closest thing to closure he can give her given the circumstances.)

This said, Bucky still would have thought that he had lost/was losing Steve, because in his eyes - given the period and circumstances and all - there wasn’t even a choice! Steve had found his dame and that was it. He wouldn’t think he was even an option there.

OR!!!!

He was talking about his date with Bucky in the afterlife and how he missed it (because I’m in my Stucky feels right now)

Yeah I agree I always took Steve’s ‘I had a date’ as him being his usual dry stoic self, like ‘duh’, rather than implying his anguish is only over missing out on a date with Peggy (especially when you consider the unfilmed dream scene in I think TWS where he flashed back to Bucky and the Howling Commandos, and was sad that he had to leave them…)

If he cared about dating Peggy, why didn’t he make a date before he already knew it was going to be impossible to keep? Mr seize-the-moment, jump out of airplanes??

Forcing Peggy to listen to him die- (well, kill himself, lesbionest) -seems cruel unless you look at it from the perspective of Steve thinking he is being chivalrous and acknowledging her feelings, as one last kindness before he goes… only in a situation where he won’t be forced to follow through and deliver on his end.

And re: his background.

I don’t credit the screenwriters with putting in enough effort to know that Brooklyn at the time Steve grew up was actually very down and dirty, openly queer and with a lot of counter-cultural things and prostitution going on (Coney Island was basically Cruising and Vaudeville Central.)

But if you do factor that in, then there’s no way Steve is totally ignorant unless it’s because he chooses to be; more like, he turns a blind eye, but is aware of it. Like he prefers to be more prim n’ proper, but not because he is judgy or ignorant.

I do wonder how much sex he’d actually have had the opportunity to engage in, though. I mean, if he’s Catholic, where does the whole ‘no contraception’ thing come in? And if the conversation in the car with Peggy is, in his own words, the longest he’s ever spoken to a woman…?

The implication seems to be, either Steve hasn’t been with a woman, hasn’t spoken to a woman he’s been with (a sex worker? plenty of them around in Brooklyn! seems un-Steveishly rude and shy not to talk to them, though…) OR… his experiences have not included women?

Reblogging for the tags. Huh, I never thought of it that way

seven-elephants

Been thinking a bit about how long we’ve been saying that if either Bucky or Steve was a woman, stucky would be considered the most epic romance in the entire MCU by far by the mainstream. One too many “Steve got to be with his True Love” comnents by st3ggy fans got me wondering – how would it have played out if Peggy was a dude? Would ANYONE ship that outside of a small community of primed slash fans?

Obviously not every scene translates perfectly because some (like Peggy being the prize they won for getting the flag) depend on her being a woman, and the one (1) time they kissed is ? I mean I don’t think marvel would include that, but if they did I think it’d read more as a gay awakening for Steve rather than True Loves First Kiss, yk?

Other scenes, e.g. Peggy SHOOTING HIM (!) and Peggy throwing heraelf at him at the bar and being rebuffed and Peggy being extremely callous about Bucky’s death which benefitted her (doubly so if Bucky is also gender swapped here) for the most part I feel come across more like “sad gay man won’t understand his crush doesn’t like him back/is only being polite and slowly turns evil because of it”, although maybe thats because I’ve been villain-peggy-pilled. At the very least I don’t imagine many people would be insisting that the smattering of scenes in CATFA and CATWS was proof that they were soulmates and the only satisfying ending for Steve would be travelling back in time to be with him. Even if they were read as Steve being mlm I think it’d just lead to more people shipping Stony or Samsteve or whatever.

IDK. I know this would be partly/largely because society is primed to see Dudes Being Pals, but. I don’t even think they’d really be seen as pals? Or as soulmates even by the majority of people who do accept and look out for m/m ships?

tastelessnostalgia

I think an interesting thought experiment is to gender swap both Steve and Peggy but keep Bucky as he is and see how all the scenes in CATFA and CATWS play out.

I think I’ve spoken before about how the bar scene and the scene where Peggy shoots him for rejecting her is basically every woman’s nightmare were they flipped. But it’s also weird how Peggy is basically a male power fantasy in this way, just unthinkingly pulling a gun during scenarios that do not require it. It’s a ‘he has a gun so he may as well use it’ mentality. The scenario where she stands in the middle of the street and shoots at the Hydra guy speeding at her in a car is not a winning scenario and definitely not something someone with their full faculties intact would do, but it’s a shot to show she knows how to use a gun so she’s going to. Same with when she shoots his shield and when she shows up with a flame thrower in the end battle. Why’d she have a flame thrower? Idk, they need to show she’s powerful and can save Steve. This extends to CATWS where she basically uses the connections she’d gained during the war to help found SHIELD. I can see how the power fantasy is appealing when it’s a woman, but flip it and you’ve seen this guy before.

Steve is interesting because he’s supposed to be the male power fantasy, but flipped, almost nothing changes, but it’s slightly more infuriating. He has no power and no ambition for power, but he gains it through proving himself repeatedly. When Steve is seen through the female perspective, the struggle to get an opportunity despite his competence and the pure tenacity that keeps him going despite everything is resonant as well as frustrating. Then of course, there’s the fact that he thinks he’s finally got his big opportunity to prove himself only to be relegated to a performative version of what he wants while wearing tights which is also relatable.

All this said, the triangle that’s created when we gender swap Steve and Peggy is familiar to everyone. It’s a story we’ve seen a thousand times. Steve is the girl caught in the middle of two guys: the shiny new person who’s showering him with attention now that he’s proven himself to everyone, and the guy that’s known him and liked him all along, way before he had anything (“even when I had nothing, I had Bucky”). Which guy do we root for? Who have we always rooted for in this scenario? New guy who shot him out of jealousy or the one who likes the real him? We’re not out of order to see the relationship where it is. This is how the story plays out when you don’t have a heteronormative filter.

You don’t have to believe Peggy is a villain to see that this is the story that they set up, but if you gender swap a character and they become problematic, maybe there’s an issue there. It is interesting to see how making Peggy the girl and Steve the guy distorts the age old story in her favor, though. I don’t think most people do thought experiments where they gender swap characters to make an argument about a ship or characters, but I think it was a useful way to explore how social conditioning affects how we perceive the story.

Imagining Steve as a woman and seeing how little it alters his arc really is mind-blowing, cuz, see, now you’ve got me thinking about that teen movie - She’s All That?

Where the Fancy Rich Guy (Peggy) takes on a scrawny, laughably-pitiful loser of an Art Girl with a social conscience (Steve), whom he finds amusing.

But she isn’t fit for purpose as-is so he arranges for someone else to give her a makeover, whereupon, suddenly he realises that not only is Loser Girl hot but– wouldn’t you know it! what a coincidence! –he has developed Feelings for her, now, and credits himself for spotting her inner potential.

It’s never mentioned that, if he had truly valued her for herself, he would’ve asked her out before the make-over. (And no one else should be allowed to date this new hot version of her because he got there first.)

(But imagine if Scrawny Loser Art Girl had also a best friend, Average Guy, who had been at her side for years, through thick and thin, expecting nothing in return. Who was also fancy like Rich Guy, but not as fancy, and obviously thought Loser Girl was the bees knees just the way she was. And imagine if, despite AverageGuy’s fears of being replaced, Loser Girl kept blowing off Rich Guy to go out with him instead, even when Rich Guy gets dressed up to impress her, etc. etc… I mean, it’s just so damn obvious!)

It’s… It’s flippin’ Pygmalion.

cacopheny

good meta, indeed

I’m leery of bashing on Peggy because of how often this happens to female characters “in the way” of a m/m pairing, and because a lot of the “evil Peggy” discourse has some intentional misreads of lines, but the idea of the gender-swap makes things a lot murkier. there’s some really interesting points in here

(look, I’ll admit it, my pref for this whole mess is OT3)

That’s the nice thing about this gender-bent thought exercise, it doesn’t really require criticising of Peggy at all - the story-beats are so rote they speak for themselves.

Personally, I’d be willing to discount the ‘Peggy shoots at Steve’ scene as CMW (Clueless Mens’ Writing); and, hypothetically, say the hiring of Zola is treated as a character assassination (unaware-that-they’re-casually-pro-nazi Mens’ Writing). But even then, with Peggy’s positive character in tact…

It doesn’t alter the fact that, if you switched the genders, Steve pulls a full-on Mulan act for Bucky, multiple times, even with zero potential return (because Bucky might be dead, or incurably evil). And Bucky likewise puts himself on the line for Steve (wading into alleyway brawls is the least of it).

But Steve never makes any grand romantic overt gestures to prove his feelings for Peggy; and, frankly, neither does she.

(Getting someone a lift behind enemy lines is not an impressive undertaking when you’re the head of a spy organisation, and also happen to be friends with Howard Stark; and believing in the odds of a super soldier not dying is not a grand leap of faith, it’s just common sense. Are we supposed to believe that everyone else who thinks supersoldier Steve can handle himself in a fight is, therefore, the One for him?)

You can’t even argue that Steve went back in time for her, because he was already going back in time anyway – whereas you can argue that he went back in time for Bucky since the retrieval of the stones was a necessary component of returning Bucky to life.

tastelessnostalgia

Tbh, I don’t think holding a character accountable for their actions within the story is bashing them. This idea that Peggy can’t be criticized because it’ll just look like we’re criticizing her because of a ship has prevented us from talking about the things she actually did for years. Not everything is about shipping. Sometimes female characters do fucked up shit. Sometimes female characters are bad guys. Not recognizing that actually does a huge disservice to the story and to the character. Also, I question people who have a problem with recognizing women being villains in the story and honestly, it seems pretty sexist to have different standards for female characters.

I’ve spoken about this ad nauseam, but Peggy is the founder of a corrupt intelligence agency. The first time we meet her she’s taking part in a secret human experiment. It’s not a far stretch that she and her partners recruited the guy who had experience with the same experiment. She’s not an innocent person. It’s actually pretty wild to treat her like she is. And I find it quite weird to ignore this for fear of looking like you’re bashing her for shipping reasons seeing as nothing I have said above has anything to do with a ship and everything to do with Peggy’s individual actions within the canon. If you want to ignore this for shipping reasons, you are absolutely free to.

Besides, shipping doesn’t have to do anything with canon. Endgame hasn’t stopped the Stucky fics on ao3.

I find it sexist that Peggy’s moral greyness wasn’t properly acknowledged in-universe, or better planned out, because she would’ve made an absolutely astonishing Villain for CATWS.

If they had really played into the ‘even Steve thought she was good but she was bad the whole time and even she believed she was morally defensible’ thing.

The contrast between her – a villain who did everything knowingly, and Bucky, a villain who did everything unknowingly, under duress (but everyone thinks he’s the monster).

What a parallel!

Imagine if Pierce had been visiting her in hospital. She could even have had a last minute come-to-Jesus moment and admitted she was on the wrong side, tried to warn Steve at al and been killed for it…

tastelessnostalgia

I wish it was acknowledged, but I think it was done for a purpose. I think Steve is definitely used as a shield (hehe) for his spy girlfriends to evade scrutiny. Because of course, Captain America wouldn’t be interested in someone who’s questionable. It also helps that Steve, as our POV character in CATWS, deflects the blame for Hydra onto Fury. Fury, the guy who discovered the corruption 70 years after Hydra were recruited, is allowed to be grey, but Peggy, the one who is the establishment, basically from the beginning, can’t be. There are some other questionable aspects of that deflection that make me raise my eyebrow.

There is an interesting parallel that someone pointed out a long time ago, that both Peggy and Bucky have memory issues, but while Bucky is on the way to gaining it back, Peggy is on the way to losing it. This could also reflect their agency or power. While Bucky is gaining his back, Peggy, (or SHIELD, really. It’s her life’s work) is losing hers. I imagine Peggy is self aware in the nursing home. She does admit that she “mucked it up,” but I feel like she’d still have defended what she did.

I wonder if we could extend that thought exercise to this movie because I have always wondered how Peggy would be seen in CATWS if she was a man. Would her actions seem more obviously sinister? Would her motivation in naming the organization SHIELD seem more audacious? I always felt that CATWS showed that Steve and Peggy’s morals were diametrically opposed to each other and the scene where Bucky pulls Steve out of the water and walks away with SHIELD burning in the background was symbolic. Is it more obvious when they’re gender swapped? In the context of our conversation earlier in this post, this is also a weird flip of the Evil Former Friend trope. Instead of Bucky, the evil friend is Peggy and Steve chooses Bucky after he’s defeated her.

seven-elephants

I realize that its been ages since you wrote this but the last point got me thinking. Basically the predominate overarching gender stereotype in our society is that men are agentic and women are communal. Men do things, women react to them, etc. Even as lots of other stereotypes (especially about women) change, those ones are more static, especially the agentic=male one, and on top of that even very feminist women often believe women in the past had less agency than they do currently. We also tend to rely on stereotypes much more heavily if we don’t have much other information or don’t have a lot of time/motivation to think about a person more individually. (Not citing my sources because its my day off, but this is part of what my PhD is in, and I promise if you plug “gender stereotypes agency” into google scholar you will get an abundance of results).

I wonder if this is part of why so many (myself included!) didn’t particularly pay attention to what you zeroed in on in CATWS, that Peggy was clearly deeply involved with recruiting and working with Zola. Because even though her whole character is framed as Singular Woman Who Gets To Be In Charge, its easy not to think about her being in charge in this situation, especially since she hardly has any screen time in CATWS and things move along from the zola reveal quite quickly. A couple of friends I’ve mentioned this to have even uneasily said she didn’t have a choice or she didn’t know, both of which are demonstrably untrue but would fit if you were going on a very instinctive, implicit, woman = less/no agency stereotype. Nazis happened to Peggy! Even if she recruited them, she didn’t choose to do that!

All of which is to say that I think you’re right. If Peggy was a man in CATWS – even if Steve was still male himself – I think people would have connected the dots like you did. Because given little processing time, if an average viewer saw man!peggy standing there with Zola and man!peggy saying we rather mucked it up and man!peggys organization being indistinguishable from fascism, I think that viewer would instinctively conclude that man!peggy chose to do that and that this was a fundemental part of the story in contrast with Bucky not getting a choice and Sam choosing to stand up against it. I think because she’s female, the connection doesn’t get made, and her scenes are seen as an isolated continuation of a love interest B plot from CATFA, irrelevent to the rest of the movie (and apparently franchise).

saying steve has been quietly suffering to justify endgame is so funny like SURE his trauma is not waved in front of your face and the mcu doesn’t delve into it as much as they could but it IS there

ofc the only scenes in the avengers are the deleted scenes where he’s wandering around and just looking so lost and out of place (but let’s remember he was out of place in the 40s too, and he gets used to the present and lived in it for twelve years!!!! no one would wanna go back after all that time)

in catws, we see his conversations with sam, how he doesn’t know what to do with himself besides superhero-ing (but finding out bucky is alive gives him a newfound purpose here, his friendships with sam and nat and others very much give him reason to be happy in this new life), we see him sad at the museum, missing bucky and peggy and the howlies, but immediately after that is the scene with peggy where she tells him she wants him to live his life! which, following that scene……he does in fact start to, with his friends AND with the hint that he and sharon would get together (it didn’t interest me, but if we’re talking canon here, then sharon IS part of it, which only made endgame’s ending more insane). most of his pain later in catws is his guilt over what happened to bucky, about not saving him, the pain he feels over bucky not being able to remember him……none of that is about missing the past. even the flashback scene, it’s purpose is to show the devotion between steve and bucky and so later steve can say “i’m with you till the end of the line” as bucky said to him, not to show that steve still wishes he lived in the previous century

most of aou kinda just……..ignores catws, but if we have to accept it as canon, then sure we see some of steve’s nostalgia, he seems sad not having that married with kids life or whatever i hate joss whedon his version of steve is Weird (but again…….we’re already set up for steve/sharon in cacw, so like there is potential for him to have that life later on with her or someone else). sure, there’s the dance scene but somehow people never remember that’s a NIGHTMARE, not steve wishing he could go back and dance with peggy. and at the end of the movie, he says “i’m home” (and he again refers to the avengers compound as home in iw!!)

cacw and iw don’t even show ANY indications of him missing the past. in cacw he’s leading the avengers, he’s still close with nat and sam, he’s become close with wanda, he’s still searching for bucky, and the whole movie is in fact about protecting bucky and how the two of them reconnect in this different time they’ve both ended up in. again, his grief is there though, over peggy’s death, but it’s not a thing of wishing he had his chance with her, since ya know, the canon love interest of that movie is sharon. he even tells tony in his letter at the end that he never fit in anywhere, so why would the 40s be a better place for him than the present, where nearly all the people he cares for are?

again in iw, he’s still got his closest friends, he’s still on good terms with the other avengers even after the events of civil war. his screen time is very limited of course, so the only grief we see is at the very end when the snap happens. how do you reconcile the horror on steve’s face, touching the ground where bucky just turned to dust, with the movie following, where bucky isn’t mentioned at all

steve’s grief is RIGHT THERE, time and time again, we see his pain in every single movie over his losses, his guilt, his displacement. he didn’t push it all down and hide how much he missed peggy, where he would decide he couldn’t live without her and take the opportunity to go back in time, leaving everyone else in his life behind. that was never there in canon, even when we saw bits of his sadness over her and their relationship. if he truly wanted to go back, we would’ve seen it before endgame. and because that wasn’t the case, that’s the exact reason they couldn’t get into his grief over the snap, and had to pretend peggy is the only thing he’s cared about this whole time, even though it’s not the least bit true

#i think many people often forget that teh biggest victim of the way endgame treated steve rogers’ character is in fact steve rogers himself#because that ending and the morally dubious choice is complete ooc writing doesn’t fit in with any of the movies in his trilogy#and that is the end all be all of that character in canon#THAT’S HOW THEY DECIDED TO PUT A FULL STOP ON HIS STORY AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT#i’ll forever be salty about this because#steve rogers deserved better (k347)

#how do you reconcile the horror on steve’s face touching the ground where bucky just turned to dust#with the movie following where bucky isn’t mentioned at all#oof that part is-#i’m so disproportionately angry at this#and i will forever mourn how they ruined my favorite character#steve is the biggest victim of this because they took a character that had eveything#so human and flawed yet never not willing to do the right thing#and they fucked it up thoroughly#fucked *him* up#grieving seems like too big of a word but that’s what i’ve been feeling for two years (for-bucks-sake)

latxcvi

Just want to add to this that there was also, in Endgame, a perfectly believable and in-character way to have Steve step away from being Captain America full-time or entirely, because there were millions of people suddenly displaced from time as a result of the way the Avengers chose to use the gauntlet once they got all the stones. Millions of people now experiencing a trauma with which Steve is intimately familiar. And the movie starts out showing us Steve running a support group. It’s just not that difficult to imagine Steve finding his purpose in helping the people who came back and found out five years had passed. It was right there, but the Russos lacked even the mid-level imagination to make it work. I’ll also be salty about it forever.

#long post#mcu#this right there is the reason I was absolutely enraged with the ending#how can you write something that shitty and ooc and pretend it is good#not to mention the movie itself was absolutely horrible#it wasn’t even bad in a good way but just absolutely bad#I was bored the entire time#and then the ending came up#and it absolutely enraged me#they destroyed a character in what; ten minutes?#he finally has all of his close friends back amd then decides to be like ‘nope I’m gonna live in the past now sorry guys’#like what the fuck#shitty writing#god this still makes mad#only because he was a character I really liked since the beginning#and I liked his story#and they go and do that#that’s why I chose to forget Endgame exists (pinkandgreenroom)