#I freaking loved superior ironman so much

[oifaaa]

I feel like while we've had a bunch of villains become heroes in recent years but we've not had nearly enough heroes becoming villains which equivalent exchange I think for every villain that goes hero permanently there should be one hero that goes villain permanently

[ad1thi]

captain america vs steve rogers

this is written on mobile so im sorry for any typos

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i feel like i will always be writing analysis on this character and find it lacking, and i should point out that i do love steve rogers; which is why i have so much analysis on him- because i feel like the mcu did him dirty

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okay so this is something that ive been thinking about for a while

and

Captain America: The First Avenger did this brilliant job of introducing "Steve" and "Cap" as two seperate people. Steve Rogers was the 2 bit nothing that got into fights in alleys and jumped on a live grenade to save people's lives, Cap was the guy who paraded around in tights

i feel like this distinction is really important because Cap is a figurehead, he's an ideal- but Steve was the guy behind the mask

And CA:TFA did a really good job of addressing that and establishing two seperate, personalities almost; which is why i initially fell in love with the chatacter (because you can draw many parallels between cep v steve and tony v ironman)

and its brilliant set up that ends with Steve winning as the dominant personality and displaying his unflinching loyalty to people but penultimately dying when he pilots the plane into the oceans, and simultaneously immortalising Cap

there's a lot of ways to look at the ending of TFA, but thats my take on it

and its a really brilliant set up that just abruptly hits a wall

because its one thing for the mcu verse to immortalise Cap and not look beyond the cowl, but its another thing entirely for writers in our very real world to do the same

every single arc after ca: tfa follows the overture and overeaching idea of challenging ideals that belong to Captain America, not Steve Rogers

unflinching loyalty to the "system", to superiors, to SHIELD: im sorry but WHAT THE FUCK. Steve Rogers spent most of his adult life faking enlistment forms and getting into fights in back alleys and memorably, signing himself up for a freak experiment that he didnt even know was legal. There is literally no scene in TFA where Steve blindly follows rules and listens to his superiors his fucking origin story is running away from his responsibilities and getting on a plane to storm a HYDRA base and save his bestfriend. Captain America on the other hand played a dancing monkey on the word of his superiors for years. Loyalty and belief in the system was never a Steve chatacteristic- yet most of his character arc in CA:TWS and CA:CW is about his realisation that the system isn't always right and "the safest hands are our own" like bitch steve already knew that, thats why he got on a plane with howard and took matters into his own hands this ain't new

his love for peggy: now im not saying that steve didn't love Peggy, because he did. but the idea of immortalising this love affair between him and peggy, is another Captain America thing. I stg every kid in mcu! america was raised on the love story of agent carter and captain america who broke barriers and defied all odds to be together, while all steve rogers did was kiss her once and flirt a lil (badly). the idea that peggy was the only one for steve- to the extent that the only other woman he tried with was her niece, is another cap trait

persistence: this i think, is one of the biggest ones. one of his most famous lines in endgame is "some people move on, but not us". which is absolute bullSHIT because thats such a cap line. In CA:TFA after Bucky's death, Steve is ready to throw in the towel because he's so sure that his foolhardiness got Bucky killed and he's not able to live with the loss of his bestfriend. He recklessly takes on a HYDRA base with little to no backup, lets himself get kidnapped and is ready to die. But Captain America ™ saves the day by valiantly fighting on despite the loss of his bestfriend because he knows his patriotic duty is towards the american people and he can't sit still when HYDRA is still out there. Idc what you say that final mission was nothing but revenge for Steve, and a slim chance that maybe HYDRA will kill him too and he won't have to live in a world without Bucky. Steve Rogers doesnt cope well with loss, but Captain America shoulders through it and keeps fighting the good fight

its one thing for people in the mcu to not differentiate between steve and cap. its another thing entirely for the writers to completely forgo the person for the persona and refuse to develop both simultaneously and i will never shut up about this because the mcu did steve so fkn dirty

anyway

90% of all steve fics i read have some version of a scene where steve tells the avengers to stop calling him Cap because he isn't fucking Captain America thats just his day job he's so much more he's Steve mf Rogers from Brooklyn fucking recognise that

honestly, after tfa- the only scene that perfectly captures the constant inner struggle between his cap person and his actual personality is the endgame scene where he literally fights his past self and his past self says " i can do this all day" and he goes "yeah i know" in really really exasperated voice

like

same

we're really tired and annoyed with cap too steve dw we get it