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couragemydearheart · 8 months

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𖦹⋆ ༘ ☼ 𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬.

# 01 — steve rogers x fem!reader # 02 — cw: none, only cute tooth-rotting fluff! set after ca:tws, established relationship # 03 — wc: 1.09k # 04 — a/n: *sing-songy voice* i’m backkk *normal voice* so i know i’ve been pretty much mia for the past few months but i think i’m back for good now. which also means, i'm going to be writing and posting whenever i can, so requests are open again, feel free to send them in!

as for this one-shot (which was originally supposed to be a drabble), i chose stevie to break me back into posting because i love him and he’s steve and i just love fluffy and adorable steve so much. this idea just flowed in as i wrote and i sort of love how it turned out, so i really hope you enjoy! feedback of any sort is always appreciated ♡

steve didn’t usually sleep in. never really had the habit of doing so, and his job with s.h.i.e.l.d. never really allowed him the opportunity either. but it had somehow started happening since he started spending the nights with you. maybe it was the fact that he had finally gotten a free day on the weekend or that he was simply too tired from his last mission. nevertheless, mornings with steve were pretty much one of your favourite ways to begin your days.

so it was pretty weird when you woke up and found steve in bed at 9 a.m., curled up into you and still asleep. the sun streamed in from the window behind him, covering him in sunshine and god, was he beautiful. your breath hitched at the sight of his peaceful expression— no furrows between his eyebrows and no frown twisting his lips— and made the decision to let him sleep in for as long as he wanted and whenever he wanted. you were rather well acquainted with steve’s bad habit for not stopping until he’d run himself completely ragged. sometimes not even then. he could use all the sleep he got.

but you just couldn’t resist pressing your hand to his cheek, thumb gently— just barely caressing the dark bags under his eye. steve hummed lowly but did not seem to stir from his sleep and, pulling your hand away before he could wake, you moved to gently untangle yourself from him.

breakfasts with steve were also an uncommon occurrence with the unpredictability of his job, but the both of you cherished and made the most of every time you got to do things together. even the mundane ones like this.

but just as you began to move, a strong hand tightened around your waist, pulling you back into a firm chest. “where do you think you’re going, sweetheart?”

goddamit.

your heart lurched at the sound of his voice— deep and rich, rough and tired from his sleep. you couldn’t stop a smile pulling at your lips as you turned back around to face him. “good morning stevie,” you hummed quietly, hand raising to press against his cheek.

steve tightened his arm around your waist until you were pressed up entirely into him, and then pressed his face into the crook of your neck. “good morning my love,” he mumbled, “care to tell me why you were abandoning me in bed like this?”

you huffed a laugh. it wasn’t a long shot to say steve got a bit dramatic sometimes, usually when it was just the two of you and especially when he was fishing for some love. “hush, you big baby. i just wanted to go get breakfast started.”

“breakfast can wait, i wanna stay in bed with you for a bit longer.” he moved his face and brushed his nose against yours, before pecking your lips softly. “please y/n/n?”

the world could’ve been coming to an end, and with the way steve was looking at you— golden hair mussed from sleep, the prettiest blue eyes still sleepy but soft as they gazed upon you, and his lips pulled into a tiny pout— there was no way in hell you would’ve refused him.

“alright darling, we can stay in for as long as you want.”

his hand squeezed your hips in thanks before he pressed his face into her hair. he inhaled, his strong chest rising and falling under her hands, and then he spoke, “i hate that we don't get more of such mornings. i can’t get enough of you like this. when there’s no hurry for me to rush somewhere, when it’s just the two of us.”

you sighed quietly. you knew how much steve hated not being able to spend enough time with you because of his job. he always beat himself up over missed dates, movie nights and the time lost, despite you knowing steve couldn’t help it and never giving him any grief over it. besides, you knew steve would never be able to rest without having done his best to help in any situation. that was one of the traits that simply made him so special. something that made him him. plus, he never missed any chance to make up for it, and damn did he do a good job at it.

“i know, my love.” you moved so you could look him in the eyes, rubbing his hands over his shoulders and biceps. “someday, we will get all the time we want for ourselves. but until then, i don’t mind sharing you with the world a bit longer.”

he smiled softly. “i love you, y'know that?”

you hummed your reply and pressed closer before putting your lips to his in a soft kiss. steve made a soft sound in his chest that had your heart lurching in your chest. his hand skimmed up and down your back, fingers spreading wide over the fabric of the t-shirt you’d stolen from him, before they finally settled on your waist again. his fingers scrunched your t-shirt, pulling you impossibly closer as the kiss grew heated; another sound leaving him, this one louder, as your fingers found his hair, nails scratching gently at his scalp. the sound jolted you out of the trance steve’s touch never failed to put you in. you gasped as you pulled your lips from his and ignoring steve’s unhappy whine, you settled back into the mattress after putting some distance between your faces.

“is this why you’ve been trying to keep me in your bed, captain?” you murmured, swiping your thumb on steve’s lower lip as you looked up at him coyly. if staying in bed is what he wanted, you could at least tease him a bit first.

he groaned quietly, squeezing his eyes shut tightly after eyeing the smirk pulling at your lips. what was he doing playing a game he knew he’d never win?

“i was only hopin’ for some snuggles from my best girl,” he murmured, tucking some hair out of your eyes. “but you know i’d be the last person to say no to more, sweetheart.”

“mhm, i see that with your eagerness.” you laughed finally, leaning up to press kisses across his cheeks. hearing a big, burly man like steve ask for snuggles was just enough to crack your resolve. "you can have your snuggles, stevie."

steve chuckled as he pulled you closer and on top of him, and the sound filled your heart with so much love you could feel it vibrating throughout your entire body.

yeah, mornings with steve were definitely your favourite way to start your days.

taglist @demigoddess-of-ghosts (you filled out my taglist form for steve like months ago, so i have no idea if you still wanna be tagged, but i hope this is fine bae <3)

feel free to comment if anyone else would like to be added!

— © property of couragemydearheart. do not copy or post on any other site without permission.

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artist-issues · 7 days

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you're fun to talk to about media so I've got something to ask.

what do you think of this trope where a lie or misconception becomes commonly accepted as truth by the characters in story? especially as a resolution.

example: in the finale of "Kubo and the two strings", the Moon King(main villain) loses his memory, so when he asks who he is, the townspeople lie to him and say he was a kind member of the community, rather than the dictator he really was.

I don't like it. I see a falsehood being widely accepted as a tragedy, and I'm just left imagining what happens if/when the characters find out the truth. I can't really take something as a happy ending when it's.. y'know, fake. I imagine you feel similarly.

but hey, I could have totally missed the point of the ending of KATTS, if you watched it, you might have seen something I didn't.

I haven’t seen Kubo in a really long time; I don’t think I was thinking critically about it the first time I watched it, so my opinion now is an afterthought. I’d have to see it again to be fair!

…But I do seem to remember that the villain is defeated with some importance placed on memory. And the identity of the monkey and that beetle warrior also have to do with the sacredness of memories. So, if that’s the case, then yeah, taking his memory away as a “good resolution” can kind of hamstring the whole theme of the movie. Unless you tilt your head and squint and go, “no, see, if all you have is bad memories, then it’s just as powerful to take those away—the point is, memories have power either way!” But even that feels a little half-baked, gymnastics-brainy.

Basically, I agree with you. A story that resolves with a character, or characters, accepting a lie as truth is always going to be a fumble of the whole story…unless it’s intended to be a tragedy, a cautionary tale. I can think of three where that’s super evident.

1 ) A Streetcar Named Desire

In this movie the main character, Blanche, is lying about who she is, for the whole story. She even has this great symbolism thing with light—she hates bright light, on the surface because she’s vain and doesn’t want anyone to see signs that she’s aging. But under the surface, the character is really an immoral, lust-filled, broken person who knows she can be cruel and isn’t deserving of love. She doesn’t want anyone to know that side of her. She hides it all under vainglory and pride. So she pretends to her sister, Stella, that she’s upright and moral and has simply fallen on hard times. But her sister’s brute of an abusive husband, Stanley, who is always 100% his authentic, awful self, sees through Blanche when she comes to stay with them. In the end, Stanley rapes Blanche and then carelessly shrugs her accusations off.

The main point of this example is that Stella, the wife of the rapist Stanley, has been portrayed the whole movie as sometimes-leaving her abusive husband…but only as far as the apartment above their own, literally right above him, so that she can easily go back to him. And at the end of the movie, when Blanche is being taken to a mental institution because she’s broken-down after being found-out as a fraud, then raped, Stella lets them take her away. And then Stella goes up to the apartment above, where she always “pretends” to leave Stanley. It’s such a halfhearted, lazy way to end a movie that’s all about desire-versus-truth. Because what it implies is that Stella is leaving Stanley for now, like she might believe that he raped her sister…but she’ll eventually go back to him. And in the meantime, Blanche goes off to the mental hospital, with this iconic line “I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers.” By which she means, “strangers don’t know what a two-faced monster I really am, so I can con them into thinking I’m a morally-upright woman fallen on hard times, and they’ll take pity on me—so sure, I’ll go with you, strange doctor I’ve never met.”

The central point of the movie is “as long as nobody looks the truth in the face, everyone can go on getting what they desire.”

Of course, that’s true. But the other truth is that, if Stella accepted what her sister and her husband really are—her sister is broken and her husband is a monster—then she could choose to rise above “animal desire.” She could choose to take care of Blanche, and Blanche would see that “someone seeing who I really am” doesn’t always have to lead to ruin and damnation. Stella could then, also, choose to really leave Stanley, for good, and be at peace, while Stanley’s “desire” would be rewarded with ruin.

But instead the opposite is what happens. Blanche goes away believing, in her broken mind, that her womanly wiles and faking will protect her from further injury, even though they never have—Stanley ends the movie exactly where he began it, screaming for Stella to come back and knowing that she will—and Stella, too, ends the movie going away from Stanley…just for a little while, until animal desire convinces her to just pretend Stanley isn’t really a monster, Blanche must be crazy, except this time, when she goes back, she’ll be carrying a child into that abusive lie.

All characters wholeheartedly embracing hurtful lies so they can keep riding their desires. I hate that movie. You could see it as a cautionary tale. Most don’t. Most see it as a movie with “hot Marlon Brando” who “really loves Stella—all the characters ‘really love each other,’ they just don’t know how to express it healthily!” 🙄

I think the worst part is that the movie behaves as if it is true that every time Blanche reveals her own brokenness or is vulnerable, the world STOMPS on her for it, nobody loves her despite her brokenness. That’s the real mistake this movie makes. It has an opportunity to show unconditional love and it leaves the audience thinking Blanche was right, and there’s no such THING as “unconditional” love, instead.

Anyway.

2) X-Men Origins: The Wolverine

This one is less thematic. But it’s just dumb because the whole movie the main character, Logan, Wolverine, is being taught that “Giving in to Bloodlust Makes You an Animal—Compassion For Those Weaker Than Yourself Makes You Human.”

So in that context, the whole narrative is centered around the exploration of “Who is Logan/Wolverine?”

…Which makes it really stupid that the movie ends with him losing his memory. So…the movie asks “Who Are You?” and right after the character figures it out, he forgets and ends it with the answer: “I don’t know who I am.”

That’s just a waste. That’s silly. It allows you to take the character to real, hearty, coming-of-age, hero-forged-in-fire, a man-born-of-tragedy places…and then just shrug all that stuff off at the end. “Never mind. But it was a fun ride, wasn’t it?”

Especially because they built it all around the dichotomy between Logan and his brother, who’s little more than an animal—and Logan and his wife, who could be an animal, but chooses compassion instead, and reminds him of his choice, too. —and then she dies, and it’s implied that maybe his brother does too, but who cares, cuz he forgets. Who cares? Not Logan. So why should the audience?

I get that they “needed” to do this so that the end of this movie sets up the beginning of the X-Men Movies, which already established that Logan can’t remember “his past.” But like…then don’t make the point of the movie “Who Am I?” just to end on “…Okay, So WHO AM I?”

It’s a fine movie up until that point.

They should’ve made the movie center around “Can’t Change What You’ve Done; But You Can Be Redeemed.” And then show his memory loss around a moment of self-sacrifice. So that it’s still tragic, but at least when he wakes up from the self-sacrificial act, he’s “a new man.” Then later, in the third X-Men movie, when Logan chooses that mutant kid over “learning the secrets of his past,” it all comes full circle, because his “self-sacrifice moment” can stay where the Old Logan died.

Anyway. You didn’t ask me to re-tell X-Men Origins: The Wolverine. But it’s the same basic premise—a movie ends with a character losing their memory, or believing a lie—whatever.

You know, actually, this one isn’t so much “believing a lie” as it is “going back to considering the lie (that he’s an animal) because all the work done to convince him of the truth has been stupidly erased”

3) The Dark Knight

Saved this for last because nobody would read all that if they saw me scratching up the beloved Christopher Nolan Masterpiece.

But The Dark Knight is a perfect example of what you’re actually talking about.

The movie is awesome until the end.

It’s not hard to guess what I’m going to say. Harvey Dent is supposed to be a shining example of a good guy, and the goodness, that Gotham is capable of. The Goodness that will ultimately defeat Evil. And Evil is represented as Chaos.

Bruce sees that and that’s why he’s willing to give everything to make Harvey succeed as the hero Gotham needs. Because if Gotham sees that evil can be conquered by doing things the right way, the orderly way, that will get Gotham out of it’s “Justice is Broken, Vengeance is The Only Form of Justice” cycle.

Then there’s the Joker. He doesn’t believe there’s any such thing as Good—it’s all just Chaos (which is evil.) And his big mission is to prove it. It’s ironic that he twists Harvey’s sense of “justice” around to this viewpoint—where Harvey uses “chance” as just another form of “retribution.”

Anyway. All of that’s interesting.

But the movie both perpetuates a lie and does so by having the characters end believing a lie.

The lie it perpetuates is “The Joker is right, there’s no such thing as Justice or Good—it’s all just chaos, but pretending it’s not can get you through the day.”

That’s the lie it perpetuates!

And how does it do that?

By having the “city of Gotham,” and Bruce himself, believe a lie.

They believe Harvey Dent really was a good guy who died a hero. Bruce believes Rachel died still waiting for him, which symbolized her supposed belief in the good of Bruce and capability of Bruce to let it all go.

And why was it important that they believe those lies? Because the supposed truth is too harsh—that there’s no Good, it’s all Chaos. And if they believe that supposed truth, they’ll all turn out like Harvey or Joker. If Bruce believes Rachel chose Harvey, he’ll supposedly give up on something important in himself.

Okay but the problem with that is you have characters believing a lie because of a truth—that isn’t the truth. It’s the same problem with Streetcar.

The people of Gotham, the worst people of Gotham, aren’t always going to choose evil. There is such a thing as justice and good. And Harvey turning into Two-Face doesn’t change that. The movie could’ve shown that. It started to, with the prisoners on the second boat choosing not to kill the civilians to save themselves.

But it chose not to make that the point of the movie. It chose to make “The Joker was Right, Good is a Comforting Lie, & the Closest You’ll Ever Get to Justice is Vengeance & Chaos” the point of the movie. By having Batman convince the whole city to believe the comforting lie, what you’re saying is, Bruce believes that the truth won’t set Gotham free, only wrap it in chains.

That’s the problem with these movies.

And that’s why I think Captain America: The Winter Soldier licks The Dark Knight hollow every time, and is all-in-all a better movie, hands down. In this continued essay—

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