Oh man, wow, okay, I have two answers for you Anon, short and long.
Short: OMG, no, I don’t mind at all if you read me! I don’t like anti-Steve content either!
Also, before we get to the long answer, I need you to understand that everything I’m about to say is yelling at fandom, and not at you. In fact, I am gently hugging you while yelling at fandom over your shoulder. Just hold that in your mind.
Long Answer:
So, what you said crams an incredible amount of information about present-day fandom into two sentences. I’d like to break it down a little because I want to dispel some of the toxic myths that are flying around in fandom culture.
One, it is truly mind-blowing to me that in the span of about five years, fandom has gone from Tony/Steve being the massively dominant ship to a person believing that if they like Steve Rogers they can’t like Tony Stark or vice versa. For decades, they were the best of friends in comics, and fandom loved both their friendship and the super gay subtext it contained. Even after the comic book Civil War, where Steve and Tony basically argued the exact same thing as the movie, they were a heavily dominant ship. I don’t think the movie changed that, necessarily – I think fandom culture did, more on that below.
And I’m okay with the ship losing people. There’s still tons of fanfic out there, it’s not that I’m mad I get less content now, I consume less content now anyway. It’s this bizarre idea that if you like one character you cannot like a character who is in opposition to them, even if those two characters still have a relationship. Or if they don’t!
It is okay for two characters to fight with each other and even spend time hating each other and for them to both be protagonists, and for you to still like them both. This isn’t a dysfunctional divorce, you don’t have to choose, whatever Marvel and the more toxic side of fandom is telling you. One of the reasons my old Stealing Harry fic is so popular (aside from being kidfic) is that I wrote Sirius Black and Severus Snape as two thoroughly damaged war veterans who hated each other not because one was good and one was bad but because they were very different people who had a long history of being assholes. They could both still be likable characters. And because of that, they could both experience growth into Non Assholes in my story.
You can like Steve Rogers and still like Tony Stark. Or like Steve Rogers and just not give a shit about Tony Stark. I love them both deeply, separately and as a partnership. And so I don’t allow haters on my dash. Of either of them.
And that leads us to point two. Not allowing haters on my dash isn’t some kind of purity thing. It’s not a form of CASTING OUT ALL WHO DISAGREE, there’s no ideology behind it. Not that I could stop them reading me anyway – even if you ban someone, they can still read your tumblr unless you password-lock it, and we’ll come back to banning in a minute.
Not allowing haters on my dash is about the active curation of my fandom experience and no one else’s. I like Tony Stark so I don’t want to see people hating on him. I do have friends who don’t care about him one way or the other, and some who don’t like him, but the difference is that when they don’t like something…they ignore it and talk about the stuff they do like. I do the same with them. We aren’t haters. We’re just people with disparate interests.
When there is a culture of hating on any character, which is apparently what the tonky stank thing is about (according to reports; I haven’t seen it for myself), it tends to be less about that character and more about an excuse to indulge in a kind of mob-based negativity. If it’s interesting to examine canon critically, that’s one thing, I could and often do engage in critical discussion of canon. If it’s fun to hate a character so you do a lot of it as a pastime, or all your critical focus is on one specific pinpoint of canon that you just hate so much, then, well, you are enjoying hating something, and that’s…not a great mental place to be, tbh. (We saw this in Torchwood with the antigwenallies, so it’s not new, it’s just in a new fandom.) It’s essentially schoolyard bullying where you feel okay about it because the victim is fictional.
And I’m not here to say “Stop, you are hurting Tony Stark’s feelings.” He doesn’t exist, he has no feelings to hurt. But bullying is like an addiction – it’s an unhealthy outlet for people who haven’t got healthy ones.
So, here’s part three: you can’t stop haters reading what you say, but I don’t even bother trying. I don’t care who reads me because I only care about what I consume and where my work goes, and someone else’s reading involves neither of those. Besides, you can tell people not to read you, but someone who hates something you love is still probably going to do it.
If they make a nasty comment, then you can ban them, but that goes back to curating your own experience. Banning is best when used to shield you from hearing their voice or to stop them putting your work on their blog. Like unfollowing someone, it’s not meant to indicate a difference of opinion, it’s meant to remove that harmful influence from your life. Because even if someone you TRULY HATE is reading your blog passively and not commenting, you pretty much have no way to tell. So why worry? Maybe they’ll learn something.
So that’s pretty much my ban policy: I don’t ban people unless a) they’re motivated solely by a desire to ruin someone’s fun or b) I don’t like the content of their blog and don’t want my name appearing on it (porn bots, Nazis, misogynists, etc). There’s a significant overlap, for sure.
Anyway, in closing, it is possible to like multiple characters even if fandom is telling you otherwise, your fannish experience is your own to control and not a stick to hit people with, and I don’t care who reads me because they will anyway and also I want to model good, healthy fannish behavior for those who do, especially for those who maybe haven’t learned that healthy behavior yet. I do my best, anyway.
PHEW. We got through it. I’ll stop hugging now.
this is a really good takedown of some toxic aspects of fandom culture, and a building up of some healthy ones. i really feel that people who took ‘civil war’ to mean you had to hate either tony or steve really missed the point of the work. the tragedy and power of that story came from the fact that the heroes were divided and fighting over a real issue, but still loved each other. not just tony and steve, but all the avengers. they’re still family even when they’re fighting.
and whether you ship stony or see them as friends or what, it hurts to see them fighting, and it hurt THEM to be fighting, and that’s what makes it a powerful story.
all the ‘team cap vs team iron man’ merchandizing was playing on that, and simultaneously leaning on the tension and lessening it by treating it kind of like a pickup football game. like, shirts vs skins, kinda thing.
you see it lampshaded a bit in the actual movie when natasha and clint are fighting, because they’re reassuring each other they’re still best friends even while they kick the crap out of each other.
anyhow, i feel like fandom infighting is fading back a little now that there are so many obvious and undeniable enemies in the real world. but i’m hoping maybe we can all remember this perspective and not go back to biting holes in each other over fiction once the nazis are beaten.
if thanos wanted to kill off half of the population because there weren’t enough resources……..but then snapped half of the vegetation and animals (according to the russos)……..then isn’t he back at square one……………and there aren’t enough resources for the population……………
what about……..all of the empty and abandoned planets……..he couldn’t have restributed populations there? or like………..what about endangered species they’re pretty much gone now thanks to T Hanos…………..he really didn’t think this through………….
this is deadass what part 4 is gonna be. like he’s gonna realize “huh…. maybe this wasn’t a good idea” and reverse time.
Or he literally could have just doubled the resources
Maybe I’m wrong but all he would need is the Space Stone to teleport and redistribute resources + life. But I guess killing half of all life made more sense.
Or he could’ve just created more planets and teleported the halfs but a bitch is too dumb
He can throw a moon for a fight but teleporting some resources is too much work?
He can change reality but he uses it to fake his death and do a power point presentation?
He has the time stone, in which he could literally go back in time and save his home planet ….not by killing half of them …but by using these new powers?
I think it’s overlooked sometimes how political Guardians of the Galaxy 2 actually got.
Thor Ragnarok and Black Panther are both about an evil thing, colonization, taking something not yours to take and fashioning it to your own needs. But Guardians 2 forms the first part perhaps of Marvel’s anti-colonization trilogy. Ego is the ultimate colonizer, having no purpose in his life other than taking things and making them into more of himself. To this end he’s become the ultimate eugenicist, too. Every time he creates offspring – potential second versions of him, not even people in his eyes – he tests them and if they’re not what he wants he kills them. He’s a slaver (he owns Mantis in every way that matters) a killer, a manipulator, an absolute monster behind a smiling face.
There’s a running theme in GOTG 2 about the evils of treating people as things.
The Sovereign do this too – they’re gold in colour, but they’re essentially white supremacists. (The slight satire of them also being basically really hardcore video gamers, who sit behind drones and make mass murder into a competition, was not lost on me either.) And Yondu, Rocket, Gamora and Nebula are all where they are because they were treated as things – slaves, experiments, disposables. The movie explores their traumas, and makes it clear that they’re justified in their rages.
GOTG 2 does with Ego what Infinity War somehow didn’t manage to do with Thanos, and completely and utterly kill the monster at the end of its story. Peter is granted by Ego all the power he could possibly want, as well as the promise of the family he’s always craved. But once he discovers that it’s all built on bones, he rejects it utterly, even at what he thinks is the cost of his own life. Ego’s not given an ounce of mercy or sympathy, not even from Peter, his own son.
Essentially GOTG2 follows almost an identical path to Thor: Ragnarok – a god (alright, demigod in Peter’s case) discovers that the powers granted to him came from a place of evil, and rejects them in favour of something better. Those two films and Black Panther form an epic “dismantle oppressive systems, even if they benefit you” triple-bill.
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
y’all notice how black panther quietly but fervently rejects western assumptions about women in non-western countries by not only displaying Wakandan women in a variety of influential positions but by making clear that only outsiders question them
women are shown in all levels of Wakandan society – Ramonda as a trusted advisor for her son, Shuri as the country’s leading innovator, Okoye and the Dora as respected warriors, Nakia as a spy and philosophical compass, unnamed women who serve as tribal representatives and spiritual leaders. it is not at any point suggested that their gender is a barrier to achieving anything in Wakanda.
there’s a moment during T’Challa’s crowning that’s small but very good, when M’baku questions letting a child handle the country’s technological advancement. he specifically calls her a child, not a girl, questioning her youth and perceived lack of respect for tradition but not her gender, which flies in direct defiance of many western assumptions about how masculine non-western men like M’baku treat women and girls.
that moment, as far as I recall, the most any Wakandan man ever directly disrespects a woman. a lot has been made of how much faith T’challa places in his female relatives and warriors, so I won’t rehash that, but it’s Good.
Ross briefly insults Okoye with his assumption that she doesn’t speak English, but 1.) the narrative and the audience both understand this to be an ignorant statement on Ross’ part for which he is promptly put in his place by Okoye herself and 2.) Ross immediately learns and does better. when he wakes up in Wakanda his disbelief is only for the level of the technology, not that a teenage girl is the mastermind behind it, and during the final fight he defers to Shuri’s guidance despite his piloting expertise.
a lot of words have already been written about Killmonger’s treatment of black women: the casual murder of his partner, his disregard and abuse of a spiritual leader, the slaughter of a Dora. it’s just one of many parts of his ideology that mark him as fundamentally misunderstanding Wakanda and being an Other in the kingdom.
Wakanda is a futuristic fantasyland that makes absolutely no narrative room for men who don’t respect the authority of women.
In addition to the Killmonger point –
I love how it circles back to the cultural disparity between Wakanda and the Western world. It demonstrates how similar ideologies – the drive for resource sharing and international responsibly – can appear so vastly different (ie Killmonger and Nakia). It speaks to the cultural environment in which they existed. I believe Killmonger to be a reflection of the internalised toxic values Western society presents poor Black boys – essentially following the well trodden path from vulnerability to violence.
After three (3) years since the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) dir. Anthony and Joe Russo, I still don’t understand why the Captain America exhibit was held in the Air and Space Museum. Steve Rogers is not even a pilot. The only time he ever manned a plane, and he nosedived it straight into the Arctic.
I have definitive, rational answers from both filmmaking and museum-curating perspectives. Y’all ready? Buckle up; try not to crash the plane into the water before we reach our destination.
Here’s the short version if you don’t want to read below the cut:
1) Filmmaking reason: using visual metaphor to remind the audience of the previous Captain America film’s events and Steve’s identity through the lens of history, science, and the military.
2) Filmmaking reason: using visual allegory to echo The First Avenger and foreshadow events of The Winter Soldier, specifically the theme of “Steve Rogers Versus Planes of Doom: Bad Things Happen (The Sequel).”
3) Museums curation reason: museums move exhibits as needed according to renovation schedules and capitalizing on popularity for visitation numbers.
4) Museums curation reason: museums try to stick to their themes, but they don’t have to adhere to them entirely. They can have the occasional exhibit “for fun.”
5) Steve Rogers did have relevancy to Air & Space because he prevented it from going down the Darkest Timeline path when he took out one of those Planes of Doom.
6) Filmmaking reason: Aesthetic and emotional buildup.
7) Parallels reason: Captain America fits into the Air & Space museum’s themes of “ingenuity and courage, war and peace, politics and power, as well as society and culture.”
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.
just moving along like everyone else 