Stumbled upon an old post about what awful lines were said about Bucky in TFATWS and holy fuck it is horrific.
"Your overextented life"
"Before you were his pet psychopat"
"Big cyborg brain of yours"
"They cleared the bionic staring machine and he killed almost everybody he's met".
Don't get me started on removing Bucky's arm without his consent. You DON'T take away someone's limb, especially not as a punishment for "bad behavior."
And people honestly wonder why some of us had issues with how Bucky was treated in that show. I remember people accusing us of not liking Bucky's story because "we don't want trauma survivors to find happiness and healing". Like I'm sorry but just because he's smiling at the end of the show doesn't mean his arc was written well. As a trauma survivor myself I don't have high expectations when it comes to Hollywood but Bucky's recovery arc (if you can even call it that) has been among the worst depictions of trauma and healing from it I've seen in recent years.
(I'd appreciate a link to that post so I can reblog it please, Anon! I was wondering the other day how many horrible lines there would be, if you put them all together. 😬 Yikes.)
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*warning: this is gunna be salty af cuz I've been binge-watching House and have his acerbic voice in my head.
You're right not to call it a recovery arc, Anon. Bucky has never had a recovery arc, because that requires acknowledging he has something to recover from.
TPTB refuse to, because they want to paint Bucky as generic Crossbones dudebro villain, who needs to 'do better' after being a mind-controlled slave, and deserves to be verbally and physically abused.
As demonstrated by supposedly 'good' character X treating him like crap (ha! so hilarious! boys will be boys!) and/or not standing up for him when other character Y treats him like crap in front of them. (And yes I have to include Steve in this writing, too.)
Bucky in TFATWS is spoken of literally as Secretary Ross talked about Bruce et al in CACW. Comparing them to weapons. Things... not people. Just how a villain would talk about human beings. (And even badly-written!Steve was appalled by that, remember?) No alarm bells ringing in the TFATWS writer's room, tho? Hmm. Guess they were too lazy to watch the movies.
Although Disney skipped the actual arc towards happiness, to relegate SebStan to cheaper cut scenes, Bucky did have happiness and healing in the movies (thanks to Ryan Coogler, not the Russos. Thanks Ryan.)
But TFATWS had to shit on that, via the VA's Second-Worst Counselor. They wanted to take credit for what Coogler did -- by limp-dickedly retreading the exact same story beats (too lazy to come up with something original? too dumb? too reluctant to include Bucky in the first place?) Only with a different set of black people swapped in to replace T'Challa, Shuri, and the village people kids (because they're interchangeable? or because only black Westerners count, now? Ah but I'm forgetting that Arabic guy who came up to- uhh- thank the American Air Force? 😬 Genuinely jaw dropping. Gotta love those good clean Iron Man values.)
"I remember people accusing us of not liking Bucky's story because "we don't want trauma survivors to find happiness and healing."
I can't stand people who hijack that kind of therapy-speak to bullshit that that's why they like something.
IMO the truth is that fans don't want to admit that the writing sucks, that the writing of Sam has been sucking since CACW, because they like Sam and see TFATWS as his show -- when, jesus, is it really tho? Just because his name's on it?
Zemo and Walker got more attention and arc than Sam. Even Izaiah got the better speech. Steve got to demolish an American alphabet agency, what did Sam get to do in his show? Introduce the Flagsmashers when Sam is reluctant to dress in the flag, and he doesn't even get to lead them He gets stuck protecting the status quo?
That's the danger of 'media consumption' with Disney these days. Woke-washing.
It's... kind of like how fast fashion chains will greenwash their products, to pass off plastic fabric as organic material.
People who think of themselves as X-leaning, (or want to be seen as X), also want to believe they would recognise Y-leaning portrayals... but they lack critical thinking skills when it comes to media analysis.
So corps like Disney know they don't actually have to be left-leaning in their portrayals, because they can pass off any right-wing thing as a genuine progressive doodad just by cloaking it in the correct language or aesthetics.
(Hey, right wing writers! Want to make a dehumanizing ableist gag? Make a black woman do it! Ever wish sexual assault in the office could be shrugged at again? Make a white woman do it! (Make sure she's Upper Class and English, too!) Want to to make sure your protags can't be read as queer? Want to get away with basic locker-room homophobia without being nagged about it? Just play on the nostalgia of interracial 'buddy cop' movies, and - as usual - make a black guy do it! Want to portray the USAF as an heroic force in the Middle East? Make an Arab say thanks to a black American Airman! Wokewashing -- it covers all ills!)
Time was, Disney would only do this with their villains -- and you do get a hint of that Classic Disney long-coated predatory gay villain with Zemo.
Only now, instead of getting away with it because of widespread homophobia, Disney and fans can get away with it by accusing anyone who criticises of it being a homophobe.
But they're still writing the creepy gay scene-stealing villains. 🤔
Same with a shitty victim-blaming portrayal of a therapeutic 'arc'. The people who don't give a shit about that won't criticise it, and those that do- well, they must just hate trauma victims IRL, uwu. 😥
Insidious, isn't it?
Disney may be virulently allergic to giving SebStan anything significant to do these days, for fear of getting more gay cooties on Captain Comphet, or distracting from Captain Coloniser: Creator's Pet... but you cannot deny even those idiots M&M wrote a better arc for Steve and Bucky than the idiots that had a whole show arc to accomplish that for Sam and Bucky.
(Seriously, how do you fuck up in six attempts a thing you've already seen someone else manage in two? Oh- wait. Right. They haven't seen them manage it in two. They didn't watch the movies. 🤦♀️)
As far as friendship goes, I would have preferred Sam and Bucky ended as mutually-respectful frenemies (or even - imagine! both apologising for things they've actually voluntarily done to each other!)
Rather than just slapping some schmaltz onto a turd at the last second and calling it a rose. As you said: one instance of Mackie & Stan breaking character to smile at the end of a lazy montage does not equal a written arc. Let alone a well written one.
I'm tired of pretending that Sam is in any way an interesting character. And I'm not just talking about he consistently spends most of his early pre-CapCrowning appearances in every medium as a mixture of a Magical Negro trope and the wise-crackin' Black BFF trope who says things in a "funny" way at key moments — most of the time the humor is just derived from the Black character suddenly using Ebonics dialects for a white audience and by white writers, which has centuries' of history in racially voyeuristic media tropes, but i digress. — But even Post-CapCrowning, the basis for his character is to bring down existing central characters to make this NPC Sidekick *** seem interesting by comparison like the proverbial Industry Plant, as if that's ever been compelling except to the newcomers who started with the Industry Plant character
And before *** *** savefacers try to insist this isn't true: How come hyping up Sam and his rise to prominence means that Steve gets turned into the backwards fuddy-duddy stuck in his ways old-timer, to the point that they break the rules of time travel to age Steve into a geriatric?
Why did Bucky have to be labeled as culpable/morally damaged/dangerous due to being tortured by Nazis in order to make Sam seem like a more moral and better character and Bucky evil/duplicitous/disposable in need to be put in check by compariso?
Why does Steve get rewritten as someone who somehow made his allies' lives harder and someone with moral deficiencies and a ghost of an inadequate predecessor to make Sam look better/slighted by the former guy?
Why did Bucky get his portrayal changed from the only other old supersoldier who's not only comparable but even strong than Steve and beat him in a fight twice, to a character who's just regular human-strength so that he could get a bunch scenes of being mogged by characters much weaker than Steve, just so that Sam can get a million more wise-crackin' quips about both of them being logged by the same opponent?
Why did both Buck And Steve have, in the movies, their screentime chopped and their storylines effectively cut short/placed in unresolved limbo after still not getting a sequel to the only, rightfully so, critically successful Cap installment whose story left off with a cliffhanger/promise for future development, only to get backburner-ed by half a decade of intrusive crossovers and a pandemic?
To be fair to Sam I guess...🙄.. a lot of these problems would've happened anyways with the combination of 1 · Marvel's refusal to let the story develop beyond circling around thr same Cap flag-wavin' ad nauseum to let Steve and Bucky move beyond that & 2 · a slew or creators in both mediums that all but admit that they hate Buck & Steve and would've/have watered down their characters to hype up a different proverbial industry plant instead. But still… not once but twice these changes keep happening just to hype up Sam and render the other 2 into unrecognizable Flanderizations at best, McGuffins at worst
Why should I have to like him? Even on his own merits, he's a loser, but also his presence exacerbates the aspects of the franchise that negatively affect characters I do like. And beyond that, his entire character on a larger scale is about the historical settler-colonial process to bring about an image of Patriotism for the settler state whilst donning a colonized face. His whole thing rebranding the USA's genocidal imagery with a Black face, the same reason Hollywood drastically over-represents Black cops & military on-screen to push the colonized subjects to sympathize for organizations that systematically engineer their deaths. The same reason why bringing in Sabra is consistent ideologically with the thematic purpose of Sam's character: to launder empire with a familiar face.
His character's purpose as propaganda is meant to target me, but I'm not swayed just on the mere basis of morals & politics, but also just as a character he pisses me off bc detracting/redirecting focus from storylines I was invested in to try to get me to like the character that stole that focus from my investment... that will never work on me, I will always hate on the industry plant character the writers are trying to force me to like, just like I hate on **** *****, duh, and also *********** from ******* ******
ok it wasn't a short rant, but in my defense it sounded only 3 sentences long when I said this to myself out loud
Posting under cut 👇👇👇
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the wise-crackin' Black BFF trope who says things in a "funny" way at key moments — most of the time the humor is just derived from the Black character suddenly using Ebonics dialects for a white audience and by white writers
There definitely is a recurrent problem of black characters only being allowed to appear as comedic sidekicks in white-lead movies, which is cast into even starker relief by the comic book movies that simply avoid doing that altogether. (Thinking of the animated Spider-Mans). Even when the MC isn't white... but is lighter skinned? (see: Kevin Hart as the Scrappy-doo to The Rock's- err- Scoob??)
I think CATWS did a pretty good job mitigating those issues with Sam's unique-to-him skillset / intelligence and plot-importance, from the off (admittedly I am biased cuz I love the movie).
Though it would've been further mitigated if they hadn't also had the only other black guy in the movie getting yelled at for not doing enough to stop Nazis.
(Victim-blamey, even if he is the only authority figure available to yell at, which Captain America should always be doing IMO. 😌)
Kind of bizarre to have the confluence in CACW where you suddenly have more black characters than white. But only because the main white heroes have brought their black sidekicks along. 😬
Why couldn't their Spidey have been black, too? 🤔
Hell, why stop at that, switch the genders too! They already have Zendaya onboard!
At the same time there is an opposing problem where black characters are presented in a way that is totally divorced from blackness. As if they're just white people who happen to be black. Like the writers wanted the cache of diversity but only, ugh, a very mild hint of chocolate in an otherwise vanilla concoction.
It can be a delicate balancing act, for a white writer to avoid both these pitfalls- PSYCH. No it's not. Just hire someone who can do their fucking job, Disney. Even, god forbid, hire black writers who can do their job!
Let black characters do and say and reference things white viewers won't understand and don't have to because it's not for them!
(Could even provide a nice teachable moment where Steve could ask about it only to be told to mind his business, and take it good-naturedly?)
🌈Imagine! ✨
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I feel like MCU Sam had potential to be a good character, with unique qualities... but we really haven't seen That guy since CATWS, AKA the best Cap movie.
(In fact, it almost feels like they cherry-picked the worst traits of CW Sam, kept only those, and then exaggerated them with each subsequent appearance. It's like they think what made Sam unique was... his wing jetpack.
I was genuinely surprised when TFATWS had Sam go and talk to Karli/Flagsmasher, alone... because up until that point they had done absolutely fuck all to portray him as a man with empathy or counselling skills??)
A whole show of Sam where there's no mention of his pararescue experience, losing Riley, disillusionment with the military-industrial complex, medical training... only 2 weak uses of counselling skills...
(One where he espouses fuckin horeshoe theory, and the other where his advice to Bucky is villainizing / victim-blaming, disastrously dangerous, as seen in CW, and comes immediately on the heels of him saying... Bucky shouldn't be looking to other people for input... and yet he keeps talking??)
...Probably something else I've forgotten?
They stripped away 99% of the things that made him non-basic. 🤦♀️
TBH I think, a lot of the time, the reason we find a character annoying is because they're being written annoyingly.
What we perceive as annoying is actually the weakness of writing working on us. They grate on our nerves without us really being able to put our fingers on why... 🤔
Funnily enough, I was just talking about this re: a female character in my other fandom, Hannibal. Of course, anyone who is conscious of this and actually dares to mention it is labelled a m-🤐-ist by the 'it's not that deep' casuals. Sometimes it feels like people on twitter have an instinctive distrust of cleverness. Very Elon Musk of them…
This can be fixed.
But Disney seems to actively seek out writers who don't understand very basic tenets of writing, and have no familiarity with the characters (and don't intend to acquire any). Since they have no skin in the game, they won't have inconvenient Opinions about how said characters should be properly written, or any power to enforce them.
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There's a definite correlation between what you're saying and the way Peggy is written, too, where the writers don't seem to be aware that you can't make a character look competent just by making everyone else around them incompetent.
Or: you can't make a character look like the best person for a job if they are literally the only option in a pool of one (1).
Having Steve only hand over the shield once he's too old to physically carry it himself... is not a compliment.
In the comics, Steve handed it over while still young himself, because Sam was the best guy for the job (not just the only guy), even when Steve himself was still around.
He would even correct people who called him Cap, to point out that Sam is Cap, and he's just Steve Rogers.
Now that's a compliment!
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Sidenote: I must point out, Steve definitely wasn't character-assassinated into an old guy (who abandons his entire characterisation), for the purpose of making Sam look good.
It was definitely for the purposes of force-feeding us a comphet ending / burying the gayness of Steve and Bucky.
But, it definitely feels like they saw Steve's physical incapacity to continue to be Cap as a perk, rather than a problem, when it came to him passing on the shield. (They are bad at their jobs.)
The fact that the writers chose not to have young!Steve be the one to hand over the shield. That definitely was a deliberate ignorant snub to Sam.
Sadly, Bucky being villainized and treated like shit (by Sam and others) predates tfatws, and was definitely more about making Steve look straight, making the 'has Bucky blown up the Accords??' subplot seem feasible, and making Spider-Man and T'Challa look good. Not about making Sam look better than him.
(Which it didn't, anyway, since him being a dick just makes Bucky more sympathetic).
Only the nerfing of Bucky in tfatws was about making Sam look good, IMO.
And probably about setting Bucky up for whatever rancid clusterfuck of a characterisation they have in store for Thunderbolts. 😖
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Villainizing and nerfing Bucky doesn't actually make Sam look better than him (as any halfway competent writer would know.) 'Better than a weakass villain' does not equal 'good.' It just equals 'average'. (Also why bringing Batroc back was pointless.) It's like the anti-Worf Effect.
(So you're saying Sam would only look cool relative to Bucky if Bucky was made drastically worse?? Wow. Okay...)
In fact, if they had portrayed Bucky (and/or Agent Whatsisname) as a person who also has the qualities that could make a good Cap... That, would've made Sam look great; since he was chosen not only over one great guy, but over multiple great guys!
(Ditto with Peggy: introducing multiple great potential female love interests for Steve would make her look good for being chosen. But having no other female characters allowed near Steve when she's around. In fact, not allowing Steve to even mention his own mother as an important figure in his life?? That. Does not.)
Perception is relative, but if you have someone who's a 5 out of 10, you can't make them an 8 just by making someone else a 4.
All that accomplishes is making a 5 who's still a 5 but who now looks very slightly better if the 4 is standing next to them. Which is just pathetic.
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Including Isaiah in the way they did also does a massive disservice to both him and Sam.
Firstly, because they erased crucial aspects from Isaiah's story in the comics.
Those weren't just done for no reason -- those were important. (Of course, inept writers wouldn't recognise that!)
It actually was necessary, for example, that comics!Isaiah have mental disability. Because it explained why he wasn't just turned into another Winter Soldier like Bucky, why Hydra didn't re-develop serum decades ago, why Isaiah didn't appear in the public eye post-escape and seek vengeance for himself, etc etc.
It was important!
And, ironically, the very criticisms that the comics came under fire for, which were proven unfounded when the comics did the job properly... have now been proven correct of this version of Isaiah, because the writers erased all the fixes.
(They're like untrained construction workers, ignorantly knocking down internal structures without understanding what the term 'load-bearing' means. 🤦♀️)
Secondly... Isaiah's inclusion is a problem because they didn't even adapt that comics run (Truth) properly, but half-assed it in a way that
A) makes Isaiah (a main-character) now subordinate in his own story,
B) makes Sam subordinate in Isaiah's story, and
C) makes Sam look less righteous than comics Steve.
Comics!Steve found out about Isaiah and waged absolute warfare on the people responsible.
But TFATWS Sam didn't get to do that.
(Instead he just. Arranged a statue and got to save a bunch of status-quo-protecting politicians in suits. Oyvey.)
Maybe that will be the plot of the next Cap movie...
But if so, they ought to have introduced Isaiah in Cap 4, and not in TFATWS, because the net result is Sam just Not getting to do the cool and righteous thing that comics!Steve got to do immediately.
Thirdly, how could any other black character compete with Isaiah's story?? It kicks the leg out of any other story that isn't as powerful.
It feels like the writers just wanted to give Isaiah a cool speech. and were so wrapped up in the idea that they could they never stopped to wonder whether they should.
In practise, all they've done is written a Sam-as-Cap show where Sam's first Cap speech isn't even the third best speech of the show. (Isaiah's preemptively blew it out of the water.) And where they've introduced a black Cap, only to immediately introduce a second, much more compelling black Cap.
Way to undermine, guys!
Fourth, they completely erased Faith; a cool black 'hijab-wearing-cuz-fuck-you-post-9/11-America' Muslim character from the comics. She was a professor and the wife of Isaiah, responsible for getting Isaiah free after campaigning for it for decades.
What even was the point of this erasure??
And they replaced her with... nothing. Just a reference to a character type lazily ripped off from the Luke Cage show. 🤦♀️
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Sidenote:
It was also poor writing to reduce Sam and Isaiah's connection to one, singular, similar dimension of life experience, rather than many.
Eg. they were both voluntary soldiers, from the south, both defined by rescuing other soldiers (Sam was pararescue, the-show's version of Isaiah risked it all to rescue soldiers) and protecting others at personal cost as civilians / outside of a warzone (both forced to become fugitives).
They have much more to connect on, and that should be recognised, AS WELL AS (not 'instead of') how important being black also is to their experience. That is deeper, intersectional characterisation.
Meanwhile, Bucky, literally the only person on earth of the same-ish generation as Isaiah, who was also forcibly injected with superserum by Hydra, and then tortured, by the very same people as Isaiah, and they're both punished / demonized by the state and get no credit for doing the right thing.
But none of that connecting trauma is allowed to be acknowledged because Bucky is... white? Victim-blamed?
Huh??
On the surface, Isaiah hating Bucky on sight, as a kind of PTSD surrounding whiteness, is a plausible characterisation choice. A prejudice based on conflation of Bucky with his abusers, (both inside and outside of Hydra, personal and institutional) albeit incorrectly, since Hydra are not Bucky's people.
It doesn't have to be changed or fixed. Characters don't have to be nice to each other to be good characters. 🙄
But: 1) don't pretend it isn't incorrect, in Bucky's case.
2) It's still ill-conceived. Because it's a very basic, first-step level interpretation of how Isaiah would think.
Yes, of course, 'A' black guy of Isaiah's generation could have this kind of whiteness-triggered PTSD response...
But Isaiah isn't supposed to be just any old black guy.
He's supposed to be Different. Made of Special Stuff. It's the difference between characterising him as being a generic black guy for his generation... or a T'Challa. So he shouldn't act the way just any old black guy would react.
Just as Sam, of all people, as a counselor of vets, should be the most likely to empathise with Bucky, not mock or demonize him.
So should Isaiah, of all people, be the last to judge a person by their race, because of the horrifying effect that that very thinking has had on him, personally, as an individual, arguably even more than on an ordinary black man of his time.
(Here they fall into the plothole of MCU's refusal to overtly portray Hydra as fascistic. Can't acknowledge that that was why they didn't make Isaiah a WS, to 'represent' them... which then opens up the further plot hole of 'so... why didn't they make this non-disabled spare supersoldier a WS??')
So IMO Isaiah should've felt connected to both Sam and Bucky (the only other man on earth to survive the exact same thing as him!) because he has so much in common with both of them.
It shouldn't have been treated as only an either/or.
(And if you meant Isaiah's stance on Bucky as a white-and-therefore-white-privileged man to be seen as based, don't have Bucky pulled off the street by the comically 'harmless' police, ffs.
It undermines the assertion that his circumstances are different/better than the black man's, because he's white, if Bucky is immediately experiencing the classic black man's treatment in America. Your obvious 'switching the oppressors around' power fantasy has got you acting stupid, screenwriters... 🤦♀️)
Btw, what would the writers have done if it was Gabe Jones all this had happened to, instead of Bucky? What would be the basis of Isaiah's hostility, then? 🤔
(Oh, yeah, that's another thing: how are you going to do a story about black Captains America and not even mention Gabriel Jones??)
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There is another glaring issue with the way they write Isaiah which is, funnily enough, echoed in how the MCU has written Sam and Steve.
Isaiah said he didn't want to be brought out (i.e. made public) because he'd be dead in a day if Sam did that.
And then Sam just. Ignored that. And did it anyway.
And Isaiah for some reason acted as if he was happy about that, when he specifically warned Sam he didn't want it because it was dangerous to him.
Now he's a footnote in Steve's Captain America exhibit and doesn't even get to be mad about his own story any more cuz Happymontage Ending! ✨🌈🙂
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The parallel?
Well, in AOU, Steve specifically said he didn't want the white picket fence life that hetero-conformist Tony (mouthpiece of the writers??) assumes he must want.
(Steve, in fact, never expressed any interest in that life at all in the first place, which makes it absurd that he had to claim to've moved on from wanting it.
It's so heteronormative, that it's just treated as a foregone conclusion that Steve must have wanted a suburban apple pie life with 2.5 kids and a dog, when he never said anything about that, anywhere.
Instead, his canonical longing has always been for home -- which he always defined as Bucky and New York.
Just because Steve belongs to the same Generation that white-fled to the burbs, that doesn't mean Steve is like Them?? (Echoing my thoughts on Isaiah again.)
He's not like anyone typical from his own time!
That was kinda like... the Point? 🤦♀️)
But Endgame just... Ignored that. And did it anyway.
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In AOU, Sam specifically told Steve that he wasn't interested in Avenging because that was Steve's world.
And then at the end of the same movie. They just. Ignored that.
And had Sam as an Avenger anyway.
(Why did he change his mind?
Did he, in fact, change his mind?
Was he happy to be there, or was he a reluctant convert?
If he was reluctant, why did he stick with it?
How can he take on this new job when he was supposed to be the one chasing up Bucky leads?
Does this mean Steve just gave up on that, or took it on himself??)
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(Hey writers! There appear to be several fucking scenes missing?)
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To me, it feels like they were never really committed to the idea of SamCap and so didn't do their basic due diligence in showing the progression from 'I don't want to be an Avenger' to 'I want to be an Avenger' to 'I would pick up the shield.'
Sam's characterisation on this issue is so inconsistent it makes him look fickle -- first no (AOU), then yes (AOU), then yes (EG), then no (TFATWS).
Which is fine, if they actually fucking address his zig-zagging instead of ignoring it.
(Or, what's worse, simply not knowing about it, since that would require actual familiarity with canon outside of some shitty scenes in CACW.)
Even in TFATWS it seems more like Sam is only picking up the shield to stop a worse person having it, and not because he's enthusiastic about doing the right thing himself, or temperamentally incapable of not doing the right thing (like Steve until EG.)
It echoes CATFA's inept attempts to give Steve a motive that the male writers think makes him more relatable.
(ie. not fighting Fascism because he's enthusiastic about it, but because being 'one of the guys' will finally bag him a girlfriend.
Which he must want, right guys?? with a white picket fence?? RIGHT??)
fellas is it gay to want to punch Nazis??
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"he pisses me off bc detracting/redirecting focus from storylines I was invested in to try to get me to like the character that stole that focus from my investment..."
That is certainly annoying.
It definitely did feel like CACW was trying to make sure Steve and Bucky were never truly alone together.
(Their reunion is rushed, with no great emotion as it warrants given its importance in the 2nd film, and Sam's voice is constantly intruding over Comms so they have no privacy.
Scenes where they are in the same place, Sam (or someone else) is always there too.
They're kept physically far apart in the same room (or even in car parks ffs!) while Bucky is excluded from conversation.
Sam and Bucky rush off in the same direction during the airport fight, when that makes no sense cuz Bucky is supposed to be trying to flee with Steve, and Sam has already been a dick to him.
The only protracted period where Steve and Bucky were alone together ..... they just cut the entire fucking scene out, etc.)
But outside of those instances👆
I don't think it's accurate to describe Sam as stealing a disproportionate focus, from Bucky in particular because:
The same people who brought you Steve's amazing homophobic vomitorium of an ending were never going to let Steve and Bucky be alone together for any length of time, anyway. There was always going to be someone intruding to make sure that never happened.
Sam as Cap was always going to happen. It was always going to be the natural progression of the story as soon as he was introduced in the MCU. WBK.
he's supposed to be the co-lead of TFATWS.
In practise, he didn't actually get much focus?
(And neither did Bucky).
Because other characters did.
Ones the writers transparently wanted to write more than him and Bucky.
Characters they could be given free reign to write, since Madam Hydra, WalmartCap, and Zemo are new-ish, and/or not particularly precious.
So the Execs Upstairs have no reason to interfere about them / and we don't care (much) if Zemo is suddenly a comic relief white supremacist mansplainer.
The problem is, they fucked with Sam and Bucky's characterisation as if they, too, were not beloved characters and put them through this creepy 1980s toxic-masculinity locker room homophobia filter. 😬 (Based on said shitty scenes in CACW.)
It's been well-documented that ingrained unconscious prejudice means people will perceive certain groups as taking up more space than they actually do, just because they're present.
(IE. 40% women in a crowd is perceived as 75% or sth like that; women are judged to be talking too much because they have spoken at all (measured against silence), whereas men are only deemed to have spoken too much if they've spoken more than other men.)
Dislike of any character just Because is valid.
But it's also possible that you / we / I / anyone might perceive Sam as taking up more space than he actually does, just because he's taking up... any space at all. 🤔
I guess it wouldn't be possible for me to know...
Really, when it comes to tfatws, it's squabbling over crumbs because neither Sam nor Bucky really got to eat.
Which in turn makes every tiny speck of screen time seem even more precious, and worth jealously guarding. 🤷♀️
Ingrained bias aside, Anon, I bet you wouldn't perceive Sam as taking up too much focus if Bucky got a load of focus too.
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"Why should I have to like him? "
You shouldn't. You shouldn't have to like any character.
Nothing kills character quicker than a sense of obligation; when you feel as if 'liking X' is a compulsory rule you must obey, enforced by a rabid fandom police. Just because they are, for example, female, when female characters are under-represented and poorly written.
coughPeggycough
Ends up making you feel like you've the lone person in a fandom who must have taken crazy pills not to like X character.
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"Even on his own merits, he's a loser."
Okay, that is not canon.
When we meet him he's a good guy: smart, good-natured, empathetic (albeit not to Bucky but logically there are reasons for caution, at least in CATWS.) He has his shit together. Has his own house, has accomplished things in life (see meta here), he has a steady job, helping people, etc., even if he does ditch it pretty quick.
And becoming an Avenger, helping to bring down Hydra, and taking up the mantle of Cap aren't the acts of a loser.
It would be wildly hypocritical of me to like Steve (who did a lot of that) and Bucky (who, also did a lot of similar things to Sam) as much as I do and call Sam a 'loser.'
If you are going to dislike Sam (which is allowed!!) it should be on the basis of what he actually is, and what he actually has done. Not on the basis of headcanons.
(For me, if I'm going to dislike him it'll be for his double standard in how he treats blorbo 99% of his screen time. Not some imaginary traits.)
I do think it would be very easy to write Sam out of this unfortunate rut. *fingers crossed for Cap 4?
Like, one scene (lampshading previous writers' ineptitude) of Sam, eg. recognising the fucked up-ness of past behaviour -- even if he didn't apologise for it -- would be so much more complex characterisation. Giving him x negative trait for an actual character-arc reason in order to show him outgrowing it, etc.
Better than just keeping him as the 'person who quips about Bucky being a braindead murderer' guy. 😬
As a stucky mono-shipper(?) I usually avoid fics where Sam is a part of the romance. But one of the most impressive fics I can recall re: Sam was one where he was Steve's ex before Bucky. And it actually addressed the fact (!!) that part of Sam's resentment of Bucky was based on jealousy / hurt over being passed over by Steve. 😱
Brilliant! A black sidekick who isn't happy about it??
Immediately fixes some of the problems of that trope!
Much more interesting than flat two-dimensional persistent unprovoked dickheaded-ness. When it's Steve who should be apologising for -- perhaps -- unwittingly giving Sam false hope?
(Not to mention abandoning him to handle everything, which is so exactly and precisely OOC for Steve that it's hard to believe these writers have seen a single fucking Steve film.🙄)
The way Bucky was made to apologise for Steve's behaviour in tfatws... That is a nonsensical, blood-boiling writing choice. The sheer lack of self-awareness in the writers. It was so cringey. Like something Generic White Guy would do in a Key and Peele sketch.
(Hmm... Perhaps it was self-aware??)
Also: a character being a loser doesn't mean they're unlikeable.
Look at Luis in Ant-Man. Ex-con with nothing to his name but a van, when we first meet him. Or Ant-Man himself. Ex-con who can't keep a job at Baskin Robbins (those bastards.) Or, shit, even in Cap movies you've got Aaron the Apple Guy! Or Thor in EG! You can't any of those guys of being unlikeable!
And being-likeable does not equal you having to like them.
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"His whole thing rebranding the USA's genocidal imagery with a black face, the same reason Hollywood drastically over-represents Black cops & military on-screen to push the colonized subjects to."
I can't speak to the veracity of this in the comics because I haven't read them.
The only thing I can say is that... tfatws does have Sam fighting against the black-run ethically-based Flagmashers (yet another black-progressive villain for Disney) to shield status-quo-protecting white politicians in suits.
Which is antithetical to what Steve's Cap got to be about, even in the MCU, where Steve goes against the authorities in every movie (broke the law in like his third scene, even!)
Outside of one scene in CACW, where Sam correctly deduces that the State will abuse the Accords to lock them up like criminals without trial, he doesn't get to proverbially yell ACAB the way Steve did. 😟
It feels like Disney is too scared of BLM to let him do that, as a black man. That's something only the Killmongers get to do.
In a similar vein, the Sam who grimaced when he asked if Steve misses the 'good' old days... didn't get to be like 'dude, seriously??' when Steve contradicted himself to go and live in the past.
Instead he endorsed it.
So, yeah, you could say that is Disney 'using' a black character to paint a stamp of approval onto, for example, a rigidly comphet / amatonormative conformist ending that annihilates Steve's characterisation by pretending the 1950s (of all times!?) was some kind of Eden.
Pretty insidious... 😬
It reminds me of the way Fury is used as the front-facing black face of SHIELD, and the only authority figure who gets called out for its infiltration by Nazis, despite him immediately taking steps to fix that when he found out.
And when Peggy is right fucking there??
(This interpretation of mine is not canon, but: Fury coming from Huntsville, Alabama -- AKA, Nazi rocket scientist central -- smacks of him being groomed (without his knowledge) to one day take over SHIELD, and be the assumed-trustworthy face of a Fascist organisation. Alongside totally-lesbian second in command Maria Hill.)
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But here we bump against the problem of tfatws -- the same problem you often see when people discuss Steve Rogers, without knowing anything about him other than what he looks like.
They see the stars-and-stripes suit, and assume that Steve Therefore must be the physical embodiment of American Imperialism.
But that isn't the case, and never has been.
(It annoyed me beyond belief that the show writers make this same basic casual-fan's comprehension error, banging on about what the shield represents as if it has a problematic history when, no, bitch, AMERICA has a problematic history, that shield's history is that Steve Rogers used it for twatting Nazis on the head.)
In Steve's case, Cap is the representation of what America should be, not what it is. (As I'm forever pointing out: the 'Captain' in 'Captain America' is a verb, not a noun. A doing word.)
Or, as another famous immigrant to America put it:
"America is what you do [ ... ] America is what we choose to make it."
Sam may have been given a speech where he says he believes 'America' can do better... but so far he hasn't actually got to 'do' yet.
But he has been used as a public face for something he shouldn't be seen as representing -- in a way that Steve wasn't made to, and Nick Fury was.
(Because Steve is white, and Nick is black? 🤔 And anything a black characters say is treated as disproportionately more 'political' than when a white character says it.
In fact, a white character would be practically Canonized for doing the same basic good thing, and not called out at all for doing a Much Worse bad thing. Again: Peggy.
And this is something they could have lampshaded and addressed in the show: by eg. possibly acknowledging that Sam isn't being as leftwing as Steve, because he feels as a black man he cannot afford to / Steve's white privilege let him get away with being radical but being perceived as merely moderate, whereas Sam doesn't have that luxury, etc? 🤔
If they wanted to keep Sam more milquetoast - which, egh, whatever - this is one way they could've done it, better?)
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Hopefully all this will change in Cap4, but the inclusion of Sabra doesn't exactly inspire confidence. 😬
(Again: they erased the Muslim wife from Isaiah's story but inserted Sabra for Cap4. Fuck me. Read the room guys??)
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Based on what has gone already, I don't think we're ever going to get to see a Hobie Brown-esque 'fuck the police' style Sam-Cap that he ought to have been. 😥
*points originally in a tag-dump under another post about* Bucky's goodness + Steve's belief in him
+ the fact that the superserum worked on Bucky is empirical proof of his goodness:
+ this is also why the serum worked on Isaiah Bradley.
+ imagine if Isaiah had been made the Winter Soldier instead
Seriously it's a pretty eye-opening thought exercise to put any other character in Bucky's place and see just how poorly he's treated.
Do people really think Steve would hear about a man who had the same magic ‘only works on good people’ juice as him, tortured and enslaved by Hydra for decades… and then just NOT help him?
imagine if you had Sam saying 'Steve this 'Isaiah' guy he's not someone you save he's someone you stop.'
Nat saying 'Steve I know this matters to you but let the police handle Isaiah someone will arrest you if you interfere, it will inconvenience us all.' (LOL Nat have you met Steve who wrote this)
Sam agreeing, 'maybe Nat's right maybe we shouldn't bother helping Isaiah against the police in case they shoot at us,' and dismissing the fact that Isaiah could do good: ‘1945, maybe.’
When Isaiah was the guy that pulled Steve out of the river?
(And meanwhile the CIA have given police, that Nat and Sam are telling Steve not to interfere with, orders to shoot Isaiah dead on sight? quelle surprise)
Steve would still be arguing that it should be him to bring Isaiah in, since he's least likely to die trying.
He would still have put taking down the Insight helicarriers first, and been reluctant (but willing) to dislocate his arm for that very important reason.
He would still have lifted up the steel beam pinning Isaiah down
(and probably still tried to talk him out of his mind-control, even if he failed.)
imagine if everyone (Sam, Nat, Steve, Sharon, etc.) saw Isaiah -- when mind-controlled -- suddenly demonstrating a drastically different personality
and imagine if Steve and Sam saw Isaiah waking up with amnesia.. then proving his memory of his good, non-WS personality... but Sam was still rude/hostile to Isaiah anyway, insisting he and Steve should not be ‘cool' with him (then telling Isaiah he hates him).
Tony saying 'I don’t care that Isaiah was mind-controlled he killed my mom imma murder him just to spite you for not trusting me not to murder people.'
imagine if you had the therapist telling Isaiah he needs to be monitored by the state to prove he’s not giving into his innate violence, giving him rules to follow like a child, (and he’s pardoned, not exonerated, meaning he had to admit to crimes he wasn’t responsible for in order to get a modicum of freedom) and that it’s bullshit to suggest Isaiah just wants some peace
Ayo telling Isaiah 'you are free' 😌 as he finally escapes his bondage, watching him cry with relief, then: ‘SIKE! we put a booby-trap in ur limb the trust was a lie.’
Sam cracking jokes about Isaiah's trauma, dehumanizing him as a killing machine
taking part in a plot where Isaiah has to pretend to be WS, be sold to another human being, and have rape jokes cracked about him,
but then still being like 'listen Isaiah if you really want to apologise f̶o̶r̶ ̶b̶e̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶l̶a̶v̶e̶ you should just do the work.' 😔
i don't get how some ppl have such short memories for the creative decisions marvel makes
people saying that james gunn(??) should write Bucky bc of rocket's arc in gotg3... did they forget that we already know what gunn's thoughts on Bucky and his autonomy are? none of them were remotely good, and it also involved rocket and his ableist running joke of wanting to dismember amputees replacement limbs off. marvel would rather humanize a raccoon than a human who was tortured and enslaved by nazis.
or how people will rightfully criticize all the available info feige puts out re: Thunderbolts for calling Bucky a villain... but then turn around and preeptively praise that he might have "long" hair (the WS cut) so out wondering why marvel keeps putting Bucky in winter soldier style designs whenever they villainize him again. it happens in both comics and mcu consistently. obviously those in charge want to keep him as the WS villain role and not progress his character and don't care why people liked the WS story (the development it set up)
or how some complain that Sam was unkind and victimblamey towards Bucky in tfatws, I feel like those got too into fanon!Sam that made him a therapist bc of his veteran work, but Sam re: Bucky started out wanting him to be put down like a dog, and consistently complained about Steve treating Bucky with kindness and empathy. fatws Sam wasn't OOC, he was always a military man whose empathy never extended towards the POW captured by Nazis and always regarded him as a potential threat that he has to tolerate, that was in character. the actual fault is the mcu not exploring the dynamic a super patriotic US military man not extending empathy towards a a ww2 vet for fought nazis only for said nazis to be hired by the US a lá Project Paperclip, but LBR the disney-owned and USDoD-funded marvel studios is not financially incentivized to delve into those topics in any way that doesn't ultimately end with "woo, Captain Amurrica, red white and blue stars and stripes, stand for the flag wooo! ignore anything close to critical in this project and embrace patriotic centrism!"
I already hate how long the last one got but another thing:
the way that Steve's mother and his Irish heritage (during the early 1900s which makes it more significant in that point in history) are given to shine, we don't even know her maiden name, even the story of Steve's father and how it's supposed to parallel Steve going to fight European fascism in both world wars, none of that gets any attention bc marvel as a franchise cares more abt the generic patriotism to dive into the characters
There's never enough talk about how post-CATWS mcu demoted Bucky from titular character and arguable secondary protagonist as a foil and parallel for Steve, be his alternate supersoldier/superhero journey based on who the world chose to lionized and who to exploit in the seedy underbelly and shady deals w nazis, but post-CATWS mcu (specifically CACW) robbed Steve of the chance to have Steve's (not Cap's, Steve's) character be explored.
Becayse why tf does that terrorizing billionaire have more screentime on what is (nominally) a sequel to Steve and Bucky's movie? We learn more about tony's annoying ass billionaire parents in a desperate attempt for pity than we do about either Bucky or Steve's families… the most we get is a name drop of Steve and Bucky reunion scenes that were clearly cut short if you compare them to the trailers of the movie.
the russos are branded as hacks (and maybe this is me still being bitter as an OG cacw-hater) but after they revealed in interviews that they kept re-editing and re-shooting civil war until half of test audiences sided with tony, that should've been where they were forever banned from filmmaking. that's not making a movie, that's making a product to sell action figures (unfortunately true for most of marvel if we're honest)
"Captain America: the Winter Soldier" nay have listed them by their titles, but that movie is pretty much the only time we see Bucky and Steve as characters most of the time, it's literally the only own with flashbacks to their relationship before the war, before "Captain America" even existed, to where it was just Bucky and Steve.
the vast majority of the marvel franchise treats them as only "Cap" and "Winter Soldier" their actual characters get lost by "creatives" who only have a superficial understanding of them as just two types of action figures to collect, they don't know Steve or Bucky, so we get sequels constantly about "Bucky's a killer robot who must be browbeat at every turn" and "Steve's most important thing in his life is the cap shield and legacy" as if their stories weren't centered around how Bucky was NOT the killer robot and in fact Steve's damn-near guardian angel character before the war and even during (literally killing nazis before they could touch Steve) and as if Steve didn't throw away the shield and Captain America title in each of his movies in favor of what's actually important to him: his oldest protector and the one he wants to protect in return, Bucky.
marvel doesn't even understand Bucky and Steve, they treat them as WS & CA, even though their core canon never showed them caring about the "legacy" and patriotism, it was always incidental at best or an obstacle that gets in the way. the most patriotism was in catfa, but it was always a mantle forced into Steve and his hero team (Howling Commandos) were purposefully diverse and non-American majority recommended by Bucky when Steve joined Bucky in the war to fight nazis. But now marvel wants to retcon in this stuff with lines like Bucky calling Hydra "my people" instead of his oppressors and torturers like they actually were, and storylines about how the patriotic legacy and shield are Steve's whole identity instead of Bucky speaking up and pointing out that none of the other characters actually knew Steve, they only knew "Cap" and "Mr. America" and that Steve literally abandoned the shield as his last public choice with it, so none of it even is his legacy at all.
the sheer gall of (in defense of infinitywar/endgame's BS) people claimed that Bucky would finally get focus again in tfatws, but in the end, only catws gave us flashback scenes of Bucky (and Steve!) before the war before the superhero stuff, meanwhile the d+ show didn't even acknowledge that Bucky's direct family's kids are 1000% alive (he had a big family!) and heard of the real uncle Bucky, and instead the show claimed that Bucky is closest to HYDRA… the ones who tortured him into a mindslave… and he said it to a government mandated therapist (institutionalization by the state) who works for the same government who had the hydra-nazis on payroll and funded Bucky's torture…
no one at marvel even gave a thought about Bucky's family or the direct fault the gov has in his abuse.. no one on screen points out that the state that's institutionalizing him as a felon literally owes him reparations. they could've done a storyline relating to other IRL groups and family descendants who are owed reparations for the USA's domestic and international crimes and how Bucky is a similar case, but instead it's about how Bucky has no family that he was violently imprisoned from and how he's the one at fault and how the government mandated oversight says Bucky should be apologizing for what they funded
Bucky has so many blatant similarities with victims and descendants of IRL state human rights abuses that those states refuse to recognize, but marvel isn't willing to frame in a way that makes the US look bad because they're too busy being patriotic and "respecting the shield" and flag symbols and "legacy" and pretending like the shield is so so so important to Bucky or Steve and retcon out the parts where the shield and the captain america stuff was discarded easily at the emotional climax of each of the first 3 movies in favor of protecting what actually mattered more: each other….
but patriotism tho, the new Cap & WS who replaced Bucky & Steve are too patriotic to point out that the government literally owes their (cuz both ssr/shield & hydra were agencies by them) their two most famous supersoldier experimental test subjects a lot of money and apologies for a long laundry list of reasons
hawkeye isn't even out yet to judge how bad the writing will be, but i wish bucky hadn't been in tfatws and they'd given sam his own show, and then bucky showed up in hawkeye. (and then maybe a white wolf series where he gets to stand on his own and be no one's sidekick) i mean bucky going to see rogers the musical? bucky getting kisses from lucky the dog and remembering what being loved feels like? bucky rolling his eyes every time clint shamelessly flirts with him? we could have had it all. but no seriously the bucky & clint dynamic in the comics is so fun, even if mcu!clint kinda sucks it would've been nice to see that friendship happen.. and maybe they could have alluded to bucky knowing natasha in the past! not that i didn't want a bucky & sam friendship, but they didn't give us a bucky & sam friendship, did they? they gave us victim blaming and antagonistic bantering and then tried to make us believe they were bffs at the end so... no thanks? i just think hawkeye looks more fun and maybe bucky wouldn't have gotten victim blamed if he was next to clint "i went off and murdered ppl when my family got dusted but no consequences for me!" barton.. you know??
It’s telling how they’re trying to introduce all this other bait into the HG show -- amazing charismatic character actresses! a Christmas setting! a cute dog! (how dare u hollywood-cast a golden retriever instead of a yellow lab tho).
You’d think the star himself would be the draw, wouldn’t you? 😬
It was in Mackie’s case!
Seems they’re aware they fucked up the casting and writing straight off and now they just have to surround Renner with good stuff in the hope we won’t notice.
(I can’t get over how the fandom, no matter the ship or whatever, has just uniformly ignored MCU Clint in fanfiction, and put Comics Clint in his place?? Like... you could say the sky is blue and get people flaming you in this fandom, and yet everyone agreed to delete him without debate!)
AND BUCKY WOULD 100% FIT BETTER IN HAWKEYE!
Two disabled, formerly mind-controlled snipers!
In BROOKLYN!
A musical about Bucky’s life!
Both lovers of animals! (Bucky’s the only canon person with animal connections it should’ve been him!)
With little-sister stuff goin’ on!
And Red Room characters?!
It ain’t rocket science, is it?
And, yeah, they couldn’t be victim-blaming Bucky for coerced/brain-damaged acts when the next guy is Clint. They should’ve been in VA meetings together!
What would be nice is a Defenders-style thing of 3 separate series, where all 3 characters are in the finale together but it’s a single episode.
(Maybe throw Wanda and all those WV characters in there too? I haven’t watched that show so idk if it would make sense.)
And running gags about the events of whatever that Spiderman movie was which had Mysterio in it, happening simultaneously? Like the very last event of the joined season finale should be Sam, Clint, Bucky, et al. sitting down like ‘finally, now that [finalething] is done, we can relax!’ turning on the news to hear that dumbass kid Parker being outed on national TV.
(CUT TO BLACK.)
ITA about FATWS.
Actor!friendship ≠ character friendship, and both Sam and Bucky were character assassinated, directly contradictory to canon (and since good characterisation is about consistency, this was straight up bad writing).
Besides, that was too important a story to force it to share breathing space with silly leftwingvillain Flagsmashers and Walker and Val and Sharon and Zemo and Bucky.
(Whose story is, also, too serious to relegate it to a scanty subplot.... or it would be, if they had shown his real story, but because they can’t identify with the uncomfortably female/queer-coded canon victim character, they gave him a dudebro lobotomy instead. Great.)
They wedged crashy punchy action sequences into a series that shouldn't have had any, gave us more copaganda and US-military-porn, and fixated on the legacy of 'Murica without ever even once mentioning the real legacy of Cap and the shield, which was to fight Fascism, in America and abroad.
(You’d think that would be a big point in the shield’s favour in Sam’s eyes? And no mention of Gabe Jones?! You’d think if there was any show in a position to go into the real history, not the Disneyneutered WASP version, it would be this one!)
I wanted Logan from that show and what I got was X-Men: The Last Stand.
you added your tags after i wrote the ask. i agree with the fact that sam's writing is inconsistent at times (although you could also say that about many characters), but what i mean is that sam is under no obligation to be a shoulder for bucky to cry on or to give him advice or anything of the sort. he is/was a counsellor, but thats not all there is to him. in civil war tony came to him "as a friend" and sam trusted him because tony had admitted he was wrong about zemo and said he wanted to help steve. sam maybe feels guilty about leading tony to siberia, but its not his fault in any way. if we consider fatws, we could also say that bucky has been rude af to sam about the whole shield thing, had been ignoring sam's attempts at communicating with him, and has been a real bad friend during those 6 months. so why should sam be the "bigger person" and extend that empathy towards bucky? sam's hurting too and has his own trauma and his own problems to deal with. this isnt to start a fight or anything and i know most of this can be attributed to bad writing, but i still think that that "criticism on bad writing" can just be unfair interpretation. anyway take care have a good night.
Yeah I guess the tags were prophetic huh. 😅
Those points about Bucky's standoffishness are sound, and certainly more ticks to put in the 'why these guys aren't actually friends, as they've been written' column.
(Except the points about resisting communication; I haven't rewatched the show but if that's based on the phone thing then Bucky's flip phone, he showed the therapist, with unanswered texts from Sam, was a fake, because he had another smartphone he didn't show her. I can't remember where any other mentions of communication came up.🤔 Ugh. It’s too late at night for me to think.)
It's bad writing of Bucky, too; to have him be hostile, do a random volte-face as soon as Sam has a mission, and then that makes his (let's be honest, Seb Stan's breaking-character) heart-eyes look even more out of left field at the end.
And the bad writing angle on Sam, then (Sam as a counselor of vets, I mean, someone with a natural inclination to help people heal; because why else did he become a medic?) Becomes: 'we've got this character with a really specific skill set, volunteering to help find a character, who really needs someone with that specific skill set in their life, but then we're not going to do anything with that.'
It's Chekhov's Gun never being fired. Like putting an artist character together with a character who models for artists and then never having either of them paint or model.
Yeah, of course, there's more to the artist than just painting models, and they’re not obligated to paint them just because they’re a model, but then why put them with a model at all? What was the point?
Just for them to be like ‘oh, I need X?’ ‘I do X...’ and then stare at the camera like they’re on the office.
If they'd just said Sam was an airman, or a test pilot alone; not a counsellor of vets of any kind (and especially not that he had lost a friend in a fall, the way Bucky was lost) they wouldn't be setting up that expectation of one leading naturally onto the other; and he and Bucky could be as horrible to each other as they liked without it making one look like they’re not good at what we’re told is their job!
(It’s like if Wanda said ‘I can tell people are good with my mind-reading power’ but then was immediately irrationally unfriendly to someone we knew was good. We’d be like ‘but wait, didn’t she say telling people are good is her specific power??’)
Saw this take once, about how s4mbucky can be joked about because it’s not real, while stevebucky can’t even stand near each other for more than 1 second because it’s too real. Needless to say, I haven’t stopped thinking about that ever since
I haven't read that take before, but it scans!
You could read Bucky and Sam (because of Mackie and Seabass) as almost like fratbro friends who make jokes about being gay all the time and act like bickering straight marrieds just because there's nothing behind it, whereas Steve can barely maintain eye contact whenever Bucky turns the smoulder on him.
And that's only Sambuca in gen kinda fanon!
Sam and Bucky in the show are barely mutual friends-of-a-friend, suddenly pretending they're not; with the result that SebStan's 😍 motherfucker for Sam Mackie end up looking unwarranted and therefore kinda... pathetic? 😬
(Now, if they'd written them properly, since CATWS...)
