#mcu criticsm

[meraki-yao]

The Winter Soldier and What If

God I keep thinking about how "What-if" treated my guy Bucky and I get so mad

It's not just the using stucky plotlines for steggy shit, it's not just keeping Steve's importance for Bucky while erasing Bucky's importance to Steve because God forbid Captain America has a homoerotic Patrochilles type relationship, it's not just the captain carter mess, all of which I can and will probably scream about some day

The one episode where everyone comes together in the 80s to deal with Peter Quill, God, I love me some winter soldier, like full on asset mode (as an audience not as a person God let this poor man be free), but everything with how they treated them drove me insane

Firstly, Carter and Stark immediately recognised the Winter Soldier as Bucky Barnes, despite him having his mask and eye shadow on, which is bullshit. In CATWS, Steve, of all people, only recognised him once his mask and goggles came down and his full face was exposed. Not to mention, neither Carter nor Howard were on the field with the Howlies during WWII, they spend very limited time around Bucky. If Steve didn't recognise him immediately, there's no way those two would have.

Secondly, and this is a mild issue I have, but they call him "Bucky": only Steve ever did, and later with consent, Shuri and Sam (haven't found the time to watch Thunderbolts yet so this might be outdated). This is a childhood nickname; in any other capacity, people called him Barnes, or at most, James. What the hell lady, you have not earned the proximity to call him Bucky.

Thirdly, after Carter says the Winter Soldier looks like Bucky, Stark immediately states that "Even if they're true, the man we knew is long gone". The shock is minimal, there's no confusion, just utilisation. There's no guilt or regret for not looking for him, for failing him. They're using the Winter Soldier to achieve their target, no different from hydra.

And this actually would have been understandable if it weren't for the next point: during the climax of the episode, Winter gets a clear shot of Quill, but his comm is intercepted by Stark, who proceeds to talk him out of it BY TALKING ABOUT STEVE. AND THAT BREAK HIM OUT OF THE COMMAND. This is 1, hypocritical, you say this man is gone but then you use this man's relationship to stop him from your target 2, this doesn't make sense, again as seen in CATWS, it takes a lot to break the winter soldier program: Steve repeatedly called his name, was literally face to face with him, and only after all that, and saving him, and "I'm with you till the end of the line", that led to the tiniest bit of clarity, enough for him to save Steve. You're telling me that the Winter Soldier broke programming just by Stark saying a name he at that point, did not recognise?

And lastly, NONE OF THEM WENT AFTER HIM. They have confirmation that he still has some degree of the consciousness of Bucky Barnes, and his actions during the mission indicates a lack of previous memories, and he still is the world's deadliest assassin, so on multiple levels, both professional and personal, they should have looked for him, but NO ONE WENT AFTER HIM. They're just content with "the winter soldier is out there". WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Seriously, I just... hate what if so much. There are MCU projects that I don't like but this one, I just... despise. They missed the mark so badly. And the biggest blunders happen to be my guys.

[midethefangirl]

in regards to your post about steve's flaws, it's his stans' and the mcu's inability to see steve's flaws as actual flaws and smth valid of criticsm that i can't get out of my head sometimes. like steve is a great guy and a good character on his own, but by god do i hate the whole "character is flawed, therefore they are bad" mindset his stans seem to have when it comes to someone critizising steve for his shit behavior. 1 / ?

hey, anon. i don’t mind the long rant at all, i made that post in question to spark conversation and i am glad to read your feedback.

you really made a great point about fandom erroneously drawing the conclusion that “having flaws = being a bad person” and it is basically a black and white mentality (which their fave, steve, has if we want to be honest). flaws are the things make a character human; it is what makes a character relatable (other than superficial traits like sexuality, gender, race/ethnicity/nationality and economic status). flaws are character traits that make a character more human to the audience, after all, what human being has no flaws?

which is why i disagree with a lot of steve rogers antis, critics and stans when they think steve is flawless. he is not, he clearly has flaws if you keep your eyes wide open. due to the black and white mentality of many stans in the fandom, it is easy to use rose-coloured lenses to ignore those glaring flaws and the way the mcu writers frame it doesn’t help matters either.

steve rogers would have made a great character if his flaws were treated as what they should be treated as - flaws. yesterday, i had to witness steve stans defending his decision to not tell tony the truth about his parents’ deaths and while i agree that tony should not have attacked bucky (although i understood why), one cannot ignore the fact that steve’s lie by omission was what led to that mess in siberia. that was a flaw - being dishonest but that is framed as something good because “steve wanted to protect bucky” by putting him into more danger than he’d have been if tony had known the truth earlier on.

in the mcu, steve crosses international borders (again) to save bucky and ends up injuring task force members who were doing their job to bring in bucky (who people were rightfully afraid of because he was mentally unstable) and destroying properties on a foreign land. it is seen as something good because it is “power of friendship”. never mind the injured soldiers and damage of properties and again, proving the point of 117 countries about the avengers being a menace. i could go on and on about this.

there is the problem of many team cap stans and steve stans bending over to support everything steve does and labelling anyone who calls out those flaws “antis”. i like steve too, i can never find it in my heart to hate him but he is a gary stu because of how he was handled in the mcu.

[stanevansgossip]

Do you agree that the fandom is much more protective and forgiving of Chris than Seb lately? It feels like everyone is looking for and highlighting any little «wrong» thing Seb is doing or has done and there is very little love for him. On the opposite fans go feral when someone dare say anything about Chris (or even people close to Chris). Is it because of Ale and if so do you think it will change if Seb becomes single again?

the only people who seem to be criticising seb are his fans and a few anti's, ive seen so many people defending him and still supporting him. A lot of this unfortunately is directly tied to his girlfriend, and when he is not around her - everyone adores him, and if they break up everyone will go back to completely adoring him.

With chris- a lot of the criticism of him and the people around him aren't actually based on any real facts, they make assumptions of his private family and friends, lots of the hate against chris that we "go feral over" isn't actually true. When chris does something wrong his fans attack him too, they hold him accountable just as much as they do seb.

The difference is the motivation and the tone of the attacks on them, a lot of the criticsm against seb is rooted in his relationship which creates a more vile and brutal form of attacks, people are crueller because i believe it is somewhat rooted in jealousy, however with chris it is always mainly about awareness and education, it is very rarely about a personal relationship. Fans attack them both equally, i think it depends on where you are - on twitter, the hate for chris is astronomical, not just from other mcu fans but non-mcu fans too, people love to hate him, the constantly make sure to spread the hate.

chris' fans have been slowly dwindling, have you been on twitter anon? millions of people hate chris and constantly cancel him everyday.

honestly i think the hate against seb seems to be worse because inside of the chris and seb fandom it seems that way, but if you look at it in the bigger picture- there are definitely thousands of more people who hate chris.