the thing about fandom’s framing of steve as this rebel without a cause type of reckless idiot who is just incapable of following orders is that, like “angry chihuahua” pre-serum steve, i get where it comes from. it’s funny and meme-able, and, most importantly, it’s a way to distance steve from the boyscout image so many people associate him with, and that so many of his fans hate.
but, just as angry chihuaha steve, reckless idiot steve is also upsetting because it takes the most sincere, earnest, good things steve has done in the mcu and twists them to be not the actions of a noble hero, but the stupidity of a manchild who challenges everything and everyone for no reason. it bastardizes the very core of steve’s character, and, above all, equates making steve more cynic/less idealistic with making steve better and cooler.
and that sucks because, no, he’s not a boyscout, but, guys, the very core of steve’s character is cheesy. steve as a character represents an ideal, and he does so in the most sincere, earnest way possible. steve’s superpower is his heart and his bravery. he’s a hero because he’s a good person, not because he’s snarky, because he’s a genius, because he’s super powerful or because he was chosen by fate or a prophecy. he’s just… the ultimate Good Guy. it doesn’t get much cheesier than that, unless your name is Clark Kent.
and if that isn’t interesting to you, it’s cool. anti-heroes are the norm in the mcu and in most superhero movies for a reason: they’re fun to watch and very relatable. but, i’m sorry, steve is just not one of them. steve is that guy who walks old ladies to cross the street, not the guy who cracks a bunch of jokes while kicking a villain’s ass. and you’re free to find this boring and lame as much as you want to, but that’s IT. that’s the character. and i feel like a lot of people are not comfortable just letting steve be that way - they need to twist his actions to make him seem much more of a rebel badass than he actually is, and since i’m so attached to this stupidly sincere portrayal of sheer goodness and bravery, it becomes upsetting.
like… streve crashed the Valkyrie into the water not because he’s an Extra™, Dramatic Bitch or whatever, but because it was the only chance to land the plane without killing tons of innocent people. TFA is the ONLY origin movie in the mcu that doesn’t end with a triumph, but with a tragedy, and fandom somehow thinks it’s fun to turn steve’s sacrifice into a laughing stock, to act like he did so because he’s stupid or missed bucky’s dick too much or anything of the sort, instead of seeing the fact that steve did what he did because he valued other people’s lives above his own, because he valued doing the right thing over getting what he, personally, wanted.
and i guess to me it’s upsetting because this is something that resonates so deeply with my values and the person i want to be, and so to see fandom turning it into something small and petty just hurts, even if it’s just a joking shitpost. because when you act like steve is just some insolent dude who challenges everything and everyone just because he can, you end up turning his character from a hero to an idiot with poor impulse control. when you make headcanons of his friends being annoyed and bored by his constant idealism and desire to do the right thing, you turn him into a burden to sam or bucky or natasha or whoever, ignoring how he’s actually a leader and an inspiration to the people around him - you ignore how he broke through bucky’s brainwashing through sheer loyalty, how he made sam want to suit up for the first time in years, how he gave natasha trust when no one else would have.
basically, you take away the beautiful things about his character and turn into something that, yeah, might be funnier, but it’s just so cynical it’s almost depressing. it turns something that is genuinely idealistic and optimistic into a pessimistic, shallow thing, and that’s just not what steve rogers is meant to be.
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