How long do you think it took Steve Rogers to realize that his ‘look, son’ tone of voice was like an instant ticket to getting maybe 70% of people to immediately do whatever he was telling them to?
Because let’s be real here, Steve’s in his twenties. The only people he should be even remotely inclined to address that way are actual kids. But then he does the Captain America thing and is all Public Service Announcement-y and suddenly people have actual stars in their eyes and are just like ‘yes sir Captain America sir’, because for decades after he got frozen, the US government pretty much just used him as a propaganda tool and trained the entire population to see him as a moral compass and embodiment of goodness.
Only now that’s a tool in Steve’s own hands, and wow did that backfire on some of them lmao.
But yeah. Imagine Steve watching some weird video about himself from the 70′s maybe and he’s making fun of it and just trying to joke with some SHIELD secretary or something, going ‘son I’m going to need you to keep this off the books’ but then the next thing he knows this person who’s like, maybe four years younger than him at most is glancing covertly around the room and carefully deleting that day’s surveillance footage of the gym or whatever. Nodding once before going back to the sunny receptionist mannerisms.
And Steve’s just like ‘…huh’.
i need you all to take a moment to imagine my glee when i discovered it worked in real life. i was not even yet thirty, but i had a couple dozen gutterpunks calling me ‘professor’ and hanging on my every word. it was goddamn exhilarating.
Steve Rogers uses voice to text to send texts and formats them like a telegram
HEY BUCK STOP SAM AND I ARE OUT SHOPPING STOP WANT US TO PICK UP SOME TAKEOUT STOP
Steve rogers fully understands that this is not the correct way to text. He just likes the absolute outrage it causes every time someone receives a text from him and wants to see how many times he can make the same people explain texting to him until they realize. Sam is currently at 14 times, beating out tony who’s at nine. Twice now shuri has facetimed him after reading bucky’s texts. He’s also managed to convince thor that this is the Earth Way to text and it’s great
I love this HOWEVER steve does it to sam like twice before sam is like, “you’re just being an asshole aren’t you. captain america is a fucking troll. do you know how much of middle america you’re disappointing right now, steve.” steve gives him a giant shit-eating grin before asking if he’s gonna tell the others and sam just says, “are you kidding this is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen; the other day tony almost threw his phone out a window.”
when the mcu tries to gently Just Good Pals steve and bucky i want to laugh at them because, like. they were the ones who structured their arc, from the very beginning, as a story about leaving a plucky sweetheart behind in the states when you ship out. it could have been lifted wholesale from practically any wartime romance filmed between 1940 and 1950. “i just wish they’d take me into the army too– i’d go with you, show that fuhrer a thing or two– just promise me you’ll take care!” “darling, don’t worry, you can do your part right here at home– it’s ever so important to the war effort!” it’s the theme of fucking “tender comrade” and “since you went away” and “mrs. miniver” and i could go on and on
the part where steve gets turned into a tall dangerous hillshire farms beef log is the surprising science fiction twist; but the part where he grumps about being Left Behind by a uniformed hottie is 1000% period-accurate romantic dramedy that could have been screenwritten by david o. selznick. i’m sorry mcu i don’t make the fucking rules. this is just how it is. give them their v-e day kiss already and let me rest
also THEY are the ones who put a searching-for-romance subplot in Winter Soldier where Steve says he just can’t find anyone with “shared life experience” 30 minutes before his lifelong best friend who is also a super soldier and was also frozen and also missed the last 70 years comes back from the dead
like what the fuck did they think they were trying to convey there
In December of 1940, America still hadn’t entered the war.
There were a lot of Americans – such as the 800,000 paying members of the America First Committee – who looked at fascists massacring their way through Europe and declared “that’s not our problem.”
Captain America was created by two poor Jewish Americans, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, with the specific intent of trying to convince Americans that entering the war was the right thing to do. It wasn’t easy – Kirby went far beyond what was expected of artists at the time, penciling the entire issue with a deadline that would have been difficult for a two-man crew to pull off.
Captain America punched Hitler right on the cover, at a time when a majority of Americans just didn’t feel like doing anything decisive against the Nazis.
Kirby and Simon faced considerable resistance for their creation, including steady hate mail and outright death threats.
Once, while Jack was in the Timely office, a call came from someone in the lobby. When Kirby answered, the caller threatened Jack with bodily harm if he showed his face. Kirby told the caller he would be right down, but by the time Jack reached street level, there was no one to be found.
Both creators enlisted after America entered the war. Kirby, as an artist, was called upon to do the extremely dangerous work of scouting ahead to draw maps. He also went on to co-create Black Panther in 1966.
They didn’t create Captain America to be an accurate depiction of America-As-It-Is. The character was meant to inspire and embolden, to show America-As-It-Should-Be.
The subject of where the Vibranium for the shield came from actually never came up for decades of comics, until it was finally addressed by Black Panther’s writer, Christopher Priest, in 2001. Priest never shied away from acknowledging America’s racism, but he also understood that Captain America represented an ideal, intended to inspire Americans to be better.
The story mixed together a “present day” discussion between Cap and T’Challa with flashbacks to when Cap met the Black Panther ruling Wakanda during World War II.
FLASHBACK:
PRESENT:
PRESENT -> FLASHBACK
PRESENT:
The Vibranium was given, freely, by one good man to another good man.
It is right to rage against the injustices done by our governments. We must call them out, and we must fight for what’s right.
But if you can’t even stand to see the symbols created to inspire people to be better, and rail against those,then you’re just confusing cynicism for realism.
This was a masterful callout that deserves a place in the callout hall of fame, which I just realized needs to exist. It strikes the perfect tone of, “I’m not criticizing where you’re at on this, I’m holding my hand out and inviting you to step up to the next level in your thinking about it.”
That’s the kind of callout that people can sometimes actually hear, not just for entertaining the bystanders. Truly, we need more of this.
So Civil War takes place over like one weekend and then Black Panther takes place over the following 5 days or so which means all in all it was a hell of a fucking week for T’Challa
Prince T’Challa and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Week
Steve Rogers did, in fact, realize that something was off when he saw the outline of the woman’s odd bra (a push-up bra, he would later learn), but being an officer and a gentleman, he said that it was the game that gave the future away.
No, see, this scene is just amazing. The costume department deserves so many kudos for this, it’s unreal, especially given the fact that they pulled off Peggy pretty much flawlessly.
1) Her hair is completely wrong for the 40’s. No professional/working woman would have her hair loose like that. Since they’re trying to pass this off as a military hospital, Steve would know that she would at least have her hair carefully pulled back, if maybe not in the elaborate coiffures that would have been popular.
2) Her tie? Too wide, too long. That’s a man’s tie, not a woman’s. They did, however, get the knot correct as far as I can see – that looks like a Windsor.
3) That. Bra. There is so much clashing between that bra and what Steve would expect (remember, he worked with a bunch of women for a long time) that it has to be intentional. She’s wearing a foam cup, which would have been unheard of back then. It’s also an exceptionally old or ill-fitting bra – why else can you see the tops of the cups? No woman would have been caught dead with misbehaving lingerie like that back then, and the soft satin cups of 40’s lingerie made it nearly impossible anyway. Her breasts are also sitting at a much lower angle than would be acceptable in the 40’s.
Look at his eyes. He knows by the time he gets to her hair that something is very, very wrong.
so what you are saying is S.H.E.I.L.D. has a super shitty costume division….
Nope, Nick Fury totally did this on purpose.
There’s no knowing what kind of condition Steve’s in, or what kind of person he really is, after decades of nostalgia blur the reality and the long years in the ice (after a plane crash and a shitload of radiation) do their work. (Pre-crash Steve is in lots of files, I’m sure. Nick Fury does not trust files.) So Fury instructs his people to build a stage, and makes sure that the right people put up some of the wrong cues.
Maybe the real Steve’s a dick, or just an above-average jock; maybe he had a knack for hanging out with real talent. Maybe he hit his head too hard on the landing and he’s not gonna be Captain anymore. On the flipside, if he really is smart, then putting him in a standard, modern hospital room and telling him the truth is going to have him clamming up and refusing to believe a goddamn thing he hears for a really long time.
The real question here is, how long it does it take for the man, the myth, the legend to notice? What does he do about it? How long does he wait to get his bearings, confirm his suspicions, and gather information before attempting busting out?
Turns out the answer’s about forty-five seconds.
Sometimes clever posts die a quiet death in the abyss of the unreblogged. Some clever posts get attention, get comments, get better. Then there’s this one which I’ve watched evolve into a thing of brilliance.
you should totally rewatch the first movie and pay close attention to what Steve’s face does. Or doesn’t do. Because Steve is not a puppy dog, Steve does not wear his heart on his sleeve, Steve is still and steady and tries so very hard not to be easy to read because Steve’s life is pain he cannot share for fear of having his personhood literally revoked. Steve is stand-offish. Steve sees that you’re angry with him and flatly makes light of what he’s doing that’s pissing you off. Steve will give one-word answers to shut you down. Steve doesn’t meet your eyes until he’s finished speaking. Steve rarely smiles and when he does, they’re rarely bright–they’re small and mostly in the crinkle of his eyes and god forbid you make him smile when you’re arguing with him because then they’re sharp and bitter just like his laughter.
Steve Rogers starts fights. Steve Rogers lies to your face. Steve Rogers stands as straight as he can with his crooked spine because he refuses to let you assume he can’t. Steve Rogers is not a golden retriever, he is a sickly, pissy little cat who will bite the shit out of you for trying to pet him.
area blogger arrives in local fandom ten years late, with shitposts
Steve Rogers: So I fell to what I thought was my death, only to get frozen in an iceberg for the better part of a century–and when I thawed back out, just about everyone I’d ever known was dead, I’d managed to sleep through a bunch of wars, and the jerks I’d been up against in the first place were about six inches away from world domination.
just moving along like everyone else 