#Steve Rogers meta

[rainbowsuitcase]

I know the "I understood that reference" moment is played for laughs and like Steve is being stupid but he just. He looks so fucking proud of himself. He's such a dork and it's so sad.

He's living in a world that feels familiar sometimes, that he recognizes sometimes, but that is also so different. The architecture, the fashion, the technology, the food and the drinks, and the way people talk.

The language must have evolved some, there are words we use that we don't even realize are references, that we think must have always been there but they weren't.

The pop culture is different, the movies and the music and the arts in general.

Maybe Steve feels like he's living in another dimension, in a mere shadow of the world he came from, and here's fucking Wizard of Oz.

That movie came out in 1939, he probably saw it when it was brand new, he might have read the book.

And finally, there's something he recognizes. Something from his world, something he knows and understands.

He's a lost puppy jumping at everything that looks vaguely like home. He's desperate for it. And he's played for laughs for it, by the movie and the characters around him.

[luna-rainbow]

On Steve Rogers, loss, and loneliness

Unlike some of the other characters, Steve's hurt isn't as plain to the eye. His demeanour is usually one of stoicism and optimism, and it is easy to forget that his story is steeped in loss and loneliness.

Steve's introduction highlighted how alone he was - an orphan, armed with a list of ailments, and hiding behind a newspaper to avoid small chat with other recruits. When rejected by the recruitment centre, Steve shrugs and heads to watch a movie - alone.

Steve is a loner, we are shown, and then just as abruptly - perhaps just like the way it had happened many years ago - Bucky crashes into Steve's world and hooks an arm around his shoulders and noisily talks about an expo and dispels all of Steve's melancholic air. Steve is a loner, except for Bucky.

But Bucky is now leaving to go to war.

Steve is used to being stoic, because there were no adults around him to spoil him. He is used to being buoyant, because Sarah taught him how to pick himself up and carry on. Steve is used facing the empty house and lonely silence -- except for Bucky, who filled his room with chatter, "We can put the couch cushions on the floor, like when we were kids."

So when we hear the anxious strain in his voice as he is informed by Bucky that he is leaving -- it also becomes plain that Steve is also used to loss, or the threat of loss shadowing him, everyday.

In his short life, he has already lost so much. He has lost his health (my thought is he was probably healthier in his early childhood until he caught scarlet fever, and then his health got a lot worse after that). He has lost his father, and all the security of having a family breadwinner. He has lost his mother - to long hours of work and eventually to the disease she was battling against.

What he dreads would happen, does happen. Life seems to have a way of chasing him down like that. Sarah gets sick, and his fear of coming home to find her gone...one day inevitably comes true.

At his darkest moment, Bucky squeezes his shoulder and promises, "You don't have to do it (alone). I'm with you to the end of the line."

It's just enough for Steve to square his shoulders and push on, as Sarah had always taught him to do. Deep inside - possibly buried so deep that he can barely put it into words, he knows that he pulled through because "Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky."

I'm going to pause here and emphasise how deeply lonely (and young) Steve was, and how, naturally, the only stable presence — ie Bucky — in his life, through periods of terrible grief and uncertainty, is going to be such a deep-rooted emotional foundation for him (regardless of how you ship).

When the draft does come for Bucky, it's not just Bucky who's unhappy, it's Steve who's also aghast. Suddenly, the possibility of losing his last bastion looms over him, and he remembers the fear and anxiety and the devastating grief of losing Sarah. But it is also a war that needs fighting - so he comes up with a solution: sign himself up. He can't keep Bucky from the war, but he wants to fight alongside him. Besides Bucky, what else does he have to lose?

"Men are laying down their lives, I have no right to do any less. That's what you don't understand, Bucky."

He says this angrily, because the words he can't say aloud are, "You are laying down your life, Bucky, and I might never see you again, and I can't go through all that again, not by myself."

When he hears about the 107th being captured, he has to go. He is saving Bucky, sure, but he is also saving himself, because the pillar, the lifebuoy, the harness that has kept him afloat all those years is Bucky, and he's terrified of sinking.

The serum makes him taller and more women pause to smile at him, but he is still incredibly alone. He sits alone during break, he draws alone in his book, he runs off alone and none of the USO girls even notices until it's his turn on stage.

But Bucky notices him immediately, and says, "I thought you were smaller," and, "Did it hurt?"

Steve doesn't really believe in miracles. His whole life feels like one bad luck after another, even if he forces one foot in front of another and keeps marching on. But maybe at that moment, he feels like Bucky is his miracle. Bucky, who always seems to notice when he's alone and pulls him into his social circle. Bucky, who had seen him lose his dad and Sarah and promised him the end of the line. Bucky, who he - and all the commanders - thought was dead, pulls through and gives him another promise - that he would follow the little guy back into war.

When Steve is finally thrust into the frontline, the losses keeps mounting, man after man are falling, condolence letter after letter is being written. And then towards the end of 1944, the tides seem to finally turn. German forces are waning, the Allied forces are advancing, and quietly, secretly, Steve dreams of home.

And that dream dies with Bucky.

"Honour the dignity of his choice," he is told, but he can't shake off the guilt.

He pushes himself forward, step by dragging step. Nazi Germany is falling. He is taking down Hydra with his own hands…and at the end, he buries them all in the ocean with himself.

His is sinking, but he isn’t afraid, because he is going where all the people who mattered are waiting.

And he is denied even that.

He opens his eyes to a world he doesn’t recognise. They tell him they had won the war.

But no one wants to speak with him about what was lost.

A folder of old photos, the museum of unmoving murals, the silent movies of a smile he would never see again.

He thought he had lost all there was to lose, but somehow life always seem to find something else to take.

What we see of off-duty Steve in the modern world is once again a figure of loneliness. He goes to the gym alone, he goes for a ride on the train alone, he sits at the cafe alone, he goes for runs alone, he goes to the museum alone.

Only during those solitary moments he could truly be Steve Rogers, instead of trying to meet everyone's expectations of Captain America. He is just shy of 27 years old, but suddenly, he can no longer lay claim to youth. Only a dream ago he was "just a kid from Brooklyn", and now he's an "old-fashioned" (as per Coulson) "older fellow" (as per Tony).

He's in the history books, he's on the television, he's in the classrooms; everyone knows of Captain America, but Steve Rogers is lost.

He had been willing to lose his life on the Valkyrie, but what he lost was every living connection and his own identity.

"Must have freaked you out, coming home after the whole defrosting thing," the friendly man says to him on their first meeting, but Sam only knows half of it.

The too soft bed and the too quiet room is one thing, the unshakeable nightmares another, but the worst of it is -- this isn't home.

He is marooned in a place that bears eerie resemblance to the world he knew, without being familiar.

Until the moment Bucky's mask comes off.

It's like the anchor dropping. He's now got a connection tethering him to this strange place, someone with "shared experience" that means he is no longer alone, and he is no longer a ghost forgotten by the seventy years of lost time.

"He doesn't know you."

"He will."

He has to believe that Bucky will, because Bucky is proof that Steve Rogers exists.

And once again, Bucky is his miracle. On the brink of killing them both, Bucky reels back from his brainwashing and hauls them both to safety.

Even if Bucky leaves after that, he's left behind something Steve hasn't had for a long time -- hope, and belonging.

"Family, stability. The guy who wanted all that went in the ice seventy-five years ago," he says to Tony as he prepares to meet the ragged team of enhanced people that is to become the Avengers. "I'm home."

Stoic and buoyant as he has always been, Steve sets to work building that home for himself. Gradually, we see Steve open up. He forms new connections and new friendships, he talks about his vulnerabilities with people he trusts, and he reclaims his own identity. He looks for Bucky, and waits until Bucky is ready to build that home for himself.

Until it is once again blown apart by the end of Infinity War - he loses not just Bucky, the anchor to his past, but the new family he has made apart from Natasha.

That's why it makes sense that Steve, not Tony, is the one working so hard to reverse the Snap. His family was 5 years ago, Tony's family is now. The people who rallied behind Steve and not Captain America, the people who followed him after he dropped the shield, the people with whom he no longer needed to be endlessly lonely and tirelessly stoic and who loved him for who Steve Rogers was, they all vanished in the Snap.

So even if there was only a small hope, Steve wants them back.

And that's why his decision to leave everything he had built, the sacrifices he had made to bring them back, in order to go into a life of incredibly loneliness and deception is still the dumbest narrative faux pas in the MCU.

[greenblueasu]

One of my head cannons about Steve Rogers is that he hates being seen shirtless by the public. Whenever the Avengers go to an outing at the beach, he won’t take his shirt off. He asks the Avengers to not post shirtless pics of him on social media. He is okay with his trusted friends seeing him shirtless, but with other people it makes him deeply uncomfortable. This has been the case before and after the serum. Before the serum, he hated it because people would immediately start talking or commenting about his bony appearance/ill health. Post serum, he hates the objectification. He doesn’t want people scrutinizing and commenting on his body either way. The Avengers understand and respect his requests, but the public keeps demanding to see him shirtless, and then they probably make up conspiracy theories on why he doesn’t show his shirtless body.

And when the requests get too much, he reminds the public that he is a soldier and avenger, and not a celebrity or model. His friends come to his defense as well, and remind everyone of the fact that he does not owe anyone anything.

[sarahowritesostucky]

Steve is Still 90 lbs in His Head

Modern Steve Rogers Headcanon:

When he's going about his daily life, Steve regularly bumps into things/people and misjudges where he can fit/squeeze through in crowds, because in his mind he's still got this mental map of himself as a 90 lb twig of a shrimpo human being. It leads to him bumping into a lot of people in crowds and tight spaces and a lot of "oops! sorry excuse me's!"

*When he's on a mission as Cap, however, his mindset changes so much that he's able to be very swift and agile.

**He's getting better the longer he spends defrosted, but it's still only been a handful of years post-serum, vs. the 25+ years spent as his pre-serum self.

[gay-jewish-bucky]

Steve not actually being a Captain is a popular headcanon in the fandom, and I get it, it's funny.

I just want to point out that—ignoring all other evidence that he was promoted to the rank of a Commanding Officer; such as leading an elite combat unit, or sitting at the head of the table in the war room and being heavily deferred to for military strategy, etc.—if you take a look at his dress uniform in Captain America: The First Avenger, he wears the official insignia of Captain.

They don't just give that insignia to people symbolically. It's a role that always comes with duties and responsibilities, ones that are far different from that of lower ranking men, including Seargents like Bucky. These are duties and responsibilities we see actually Steve carry out in the film.

[queerextremity]

i think one of the reasons i really like steve is the fact that he contradicts everything that you initially thought should be true about him. I’m not just talking of how i, before watching the cap trilogy, expected him to be some sort of walking toxic masculine propaganda, but he ended up being quite the opposite of that—that's already been discussed many times. i’m talking about all the subtle ways his storyline is written. when you think about it (and that’s probably the reason why steve is a very “safe” male character to me), he kinda goes through a character development that’s archetypically usual for female characters.

trying to fit in within the army, being rejected and mocked because you’re weaker and different, but later proving your strength by staying kind, persistent and clever is a story many old feminist media pieces used. i think of that scene from the first movie when peggy, after steve tells her about his life, says she knows what it’s like to have the doors closed for her. she does point out the reason why so many women are so passionate about steve (and why he’s really popular within the lesbian community, where attraction doesn’t really play a part). and i think it’s just so fundamentally different from the way i expected to read his story—as a typical patriotic male-centered superhero movie—and why it stuck with me when I saw it.

and i know we’re all joking calling bucky a damsel in distress, but when you think about it, he really does fit into the archetype of a superhero love interest. and steve does spend a lot of time trying to save him. and i, the great hater of this trope, find myself loving them tremendously. the thing is that, outside of their relationship, bucky has his own complicated and deep character conflict, and you would care about him no matter how the story handles him. in a world where such superhero love stories usually require the hero to be strong and powerful, and the love interest to be helpless and bleak, we have the cap trilogy. it plays with so many tropes that are so outdated even for superhero cinema that they should get boring, but it makes them interesting, dynamic and complex and refreshing.

that’s where it becomes impossible to ignore the romantic undertones of their story, because a lot of it is just familiar like that. adding that they are much more emotional in their relationship than the bros can handle. so we’re probably stuck with people trying to prove something to themselves by discussing steve’s sexual life in she-hulk, for example. it’s just that our society isn’t ready to accept male characters who are vulnerable and humane to their very core, and that’s another interesting way to look at these movies.

[pigtailedgirl]

It’s hilarious when someone starts off with the wrong assumption and then tries to warp reality to fit their view. They’ve gotten in their head that Steve = American Imperialism and is unable to interpret things any other way. Never mind that Steve is the only one, at multiple times in CATWS, who questions and argues against and finally tears down Shield — the actual organisation who is enforcing American Imperialism/Interventionism on other countries. How did they miss the point of CATWS so badly — oh it’s a spy thriller therefore it should have been a Black Widow movie — no, the whole point is that Steve is the fish out of water in this world of subterfuge, and instead of bending to them, he sticks to his beliefs. It is about Steve contending with the identity of ‘Captain America’ — and yes, the American Imperialism in what the US had made him out to be -- and him rebelling against that and taking control of the mantle.

This was a perfect response. 100%.

[burberrycanary]

Hi hi! Could I ask for ✅ and ⛔️ for the fic writing game, please? ✨

Hope you’re having a good one!

Thanks for the asks! 🥰

✅ list one or two favorite lines you’ve written and explain why they’re your favorite

From Still Left with the River:

The city glows with yellow lights and thrums with the people down on the street and the fruit stand seller’s music that tonight sounds like jazz but from another country, different rhythms but the same glistening runs. He checks the subtle tap of Bucky’s foot and, yeah, you can dance to this.

I really enjoy writing Steve’s moments of joy because he’s such a stoical character who keeps his feelings so bottled up that they end up half-hidden even from himself: not embraced or luxuriated in but quietly marveled over. Grief for Steve is an old friend while joy is much more of a stranger.

At the same time, I view Steve as a very emotionally driven character who feels things deeply. These traits, all taken together, result in a person who is at once passionate and yet very very quiet and self-contained. We the reader are inside Steve’s head and yet the joy he feels here at simply being with Bucky—Bucky once again coming back to him despite everything—is like the glow of warmth from a fire that’s too bright to stare at directly and that almost hurts after so long in the cold but that Steve leans in toward anyway and gratefully.

There is so much knowing and looking—a whole history of care and attention and longing—wrapped up in Steve observing the small taps of Bucky’s foot and understanding what the gesture means: how the person Bucky is now still somehow contains all the people he’s been, not lost, just changed in the way a light is the same no matter how many screens you put in front of it. There it is, that glimpse of who Bucky is, shining through.

These few small things—getting to treat Bucky to a gift they’ll both enjoy simply because Bucky is here and Steve can and Bucky is letting him; and some quiet companionship in a city Steve loves and grieves over at the same time—just that is enough that, yeah, in his heart, Steve is dancing to this, though of course he remains so still and so quiet.

-

⛔️ whats something you try to avoid in your work?

I have a real aversion to just coming out and saying the thing, directly. My work tends to be implicit rather than explicit. This is a marmite quality, I know, that demands more from the reader and can be hard to pull off in a way that delivers a commensurate satisfaction in return for that effort. But what interests me is for the most essential parts of a story to appear as a conclusion the reader arrives at for themselves or as a sympathetic feeling they’re left with—in the text somehow but not anywhere you can point to, spelled out directly. 

I’m fascinated by how great actors can perform the smallest shifts in expression or how they hold their body or by making a seemingly simple gesture—and somehow just from that you understand what they are thinking or feeling in all the wordless and layered complexity of an individual’s ultimately inaccessible inner life. It’s like magic to me. I love how actors can bring characters to life through these moments they carefully create for us, the audience, to observe—and similarly how directors tell stories fundamentally with a sequence of images. So translating that from visuals into words—how you get the effects of the absence of language from language—is one of the maddening problems that inspires me to keep writing. 

Ask me a writing question :)

[musette22]

I thought you'd like this post.

www()tumblr()com/heartinyourthroat/144207221693/steverogersorbust-steve-cares-about-collateral?source=share

Ooohhh I DO, I do like this post, thank you very much 💙

I was a little bit confused at first about the tone and intention of this post, until I looked at the timestamp and realised it was made at the height of the Civil War discourse, which makes it make a lot more sense! It's a really well-articulated and well-argued post and I vehemently agree with almost all of it (there were a few things that didn't ring quite true to me - for one thing, he wasn't on his own since he was 18; he had Bucky, until he lost him too - but overall this is a really excellent take on Steve Rogers!)

I genuinely can't even imagine watching CW and thinking that Steve is arrogant or cold-hearted or that he doesn't care about lives lost. That blows my mind. Like, I'm sorry, but did we watch the same movies?? I'll never understand how some people came away with such a different (and incorrect) perception of Steve and his motivations and actions from seeing the movies, but I guess it's a very good thing I wasn't in the fandom yet at that point and I missed pretty much all of that discourse 😅 But it is really good and heartwarming to know that there were people out there who DID get Steve, and who did take the time to defend his honour ❤️ Just for that, it was really good to read this post, so thank you very much for thinking of me and sending it my way, lovely! 😘

[firestar11025]

So. I went to an antique mall the other day, and while I was there, one of the things I found was a bottle of coke, with the coke still inside. I wonder if Steve, in that time between 2012 and 2014, when he discovered Bucky was alive, would, in desperation for something, anything familiar, go to antique malls and buy full bottles of coke if he could find them, because they would use the old recipe. The one he knew.

[16woodsequ]

Sometimes in fics, Steve is shown to be really struggling with Bucky's memory loss and pushing him to remember things, or just being visibly sad and disappointed when he doesn't.

But I was just thinking that we have seen Steve react to someone who doesn't remember him. When Peggy, at the time the only person who know him in the past, forgets he had survived and she knew him in modern day, he reacts really well.

Of course, you can tell his heart is breaking. But to Peggy he is kind, gentle, and reassuring. He doesn't try to drag her into memories she doesn't have. He doesn't say he's been alive for two years. He just sits with her and comforts her as she grieves what to her is a heartbreaking reunion.

(X)

Anyway, I think Steve would be understanding and move at Bucky’s pace. Of course there would be grief on both sides, amd Bucky might feel bad about that. But Steve would never want him to feel bad about it, and he would be doing his best to manage that for Bucky's benefit.

[rainbowsuitcase]

I have a headcanon that, what with growing up poor and disabled and then being in the war and all of that, most of the skills Steve picks up during that time are very survival level (probably not an actual term but that's what I'm calling it).

Like, he can cook. He can make a meal from all kinds of scraps and leftovers and it will be filling, and usually even taste good if that's an option, but put him in front of a fridge stocked full of quality ingredients and he might have trouble even figuring out what to cook.

He can drive. Military cars, trucks, probably even tanks. Maybe he's a little reckless about it, preferring speed over caution, and maybe the Commandos didn't let him drive all that often once they realized (Bucky told them) that Steve never sat behind the wheel before. He drives like it - like he never got much proper training, but he's reckless and smart enough to get the car over rought terrain like no one. But put him on the busy streets of New York and he's one turn away from a car accident.

Patching up wounds, fixing up clothes, Steve can do everything that's needed in the worst conditions and with very little to work with. But give him proper, good quality materials and tools and he won't know what to do with half of it.

And maybe that's because it's not only his skills that are in survival mode, but he himself is too.

[luna-rainbow]

The shield-bearer vs the gun-wielder

(Unmarked GIFs are credited to @lost-shoe - miss you 😭)

One frequent interpretation of the Steve-Bucky dichotomy sees Steve as the protector and defender with the shield, while Bucky is the aggressor and assailant wielding a gun or knife or even his metal arm. It's hard to shake that impression when we remember just how savage Bucky can be as the Winter Soldier, whereas Steve notably did not carry a weapon after CATFA. Promotional stills where they appear together reinforce that image, with Bucky often appearing with an offensive weapon (or holding his arm up offensively) while Steve holds his shield defensively.

But the picture of Bucky stepping in front of Karpov made me rethink. Despite Bucky's loss at the new super soldiers' hands a moment before, he is remarkably restrained in what he does as he leads Karpov out of the cage. I am not against the meta that suggested he gained some satisfaction at striking back at the new super soldiers, but he stuck to his goal of guarding Karpov instead of getting swept up in the adrenaline and joining the brawl - as other guards in the background did.

Bucky is a protector. I know there are already lots of meta about this: from the moment we meet him in the back alley, Bucky is using himself as a human shield between Steve and the bully. He puts himself at Steve's back when he's rescued from the Hydra facility and he picks up the shield to protect Steve on the train. Even that one scene of Bucky being a sniper in CATFA, he shot the enemy to protect Steve. As Bucky, his acts of aggression happens when he's protecting someone (usually Steve).

So it's interesting to re-examine the violence in CATWS. Yes, Bucky/Winter Soldier is capable of extraordinary ferocity in taking down Fury and Steve and Nat, but he's also someone who sits there placidly when Pierce's maid startles them. Proactive attack isn't his instinctual state - and that becomes clearer when we see more of Bucky in CACW. He waits until violence is upon him before he retaliates: whether in Bucharest, or in the German airport, or finally in Siberia with Tony.

And on reflection, even in this climactic CATWS scene, the visuals are consistent with Bucky’s modus operandi — he is placing himself as a human shield between his enemy (Steve) and what he needs to guard (the Helicarrier behind him). The trail of destruction he leaves behind on his way onto the Helicarrier is frank reminder of how capable of violence he is, but this moment on the bridge holds a curious stillness. He is waiting, but not as a predator waiting for his prey, but rather like a lone guard’s final stand against inevitable doom. And perhaps — his aim was never on taking the most number of lives on the airfield, it was to disperse and disable anyone who might interfere with the Helicarrier’s launch.

Bucky's focus during the first part of the fight with Steve seems to be more on the drive Steve is carrying rather than on killing Steve. Killing Steve only comes after the Helicarriers fail (which begs the question: was Bucky specifically instructed to stop Steve without killing him and then kill him afterwards, or did Bucky have enough presence of mind to hold back for as long as he could?) Even as the Winter Soldier, Bucky seems most in his element when protecting something behind him.

On the converse, we have Steve, whose symbol is the shield, and I think it misleads (maybe even intentionally on Steve's part) the audience and his enemies into thinking that Steve's strong point is defence.

But it's not. I wouldn't call Steve an aggressor (and I'm not a huge fan of the angry chihuahua fanon), but he is far more proactive in his actions and a lot more aggressive in his attacks than the shield might suggest.

Even this memorable image, which seems to suggest Steve is on the defense against Bucky's raging attack is actually the opposite -- Steve is rushing Bucky from the side, and Bucky's punch serves to stop Steve in his tracks (i.e. it’s Bucky's self-defense against Steve's attack).

Our first meeting with Steve establishes him as a challenger - he challenges the recruitment rules, he challenges the disrespectful guy in the cinema, he challenges Colonel Philips and Hydra and the Red Skull - and eventually, he goes on to challenge Loki and Tony and Fury and Pierce and SHIELD in the modern world.

We don't see Steve carrying a weapon in the modern era (except for maybe brief moments of him using a weapon in Avengers) and it's easy, for the audience but also for Steve’s enemies, to forget that Steve uses the shield as an offensive weapon. Sure, it serves its function as an actual shield, but Steve hurls it as a projectile weapon intended to incapacitate so many times I won't be able to list them all so I'll just let this picture speak for itself.

Even at their first reunion, Bucky is running away to avoid a confrontation with the witness (Steve) while Steve is chasing after him to confront the sniper.

And I think this describes their different traits to a tee - Steve is like the bloodhound with a keen nose for trouble and doesn’t rest until he’s chased it down, while Bucky is like the guard dog who patiently sits by his family until commanded to fight or provoked. That's not to say Steve is always picking fights, but rather he's got an intuitive awareness of where the source of the conflict is and has no qualms putting himself into the fray. It’s also not to say that Bucky is always avoidant or apathetic, but rather he tends to watch and wait unless it threatens those he cares about...and that is probably deserving of its own meta to discuss how their separate upbringings make Steve and Bucky different in their confrontation readiness.

"I thought you were more than just a shield," Batroc says, so Steve clips his shield back on his harness and dukes it out with his fists.

Of course Steve is more than his shield, because the shield is just a piece of disguise for who Steve Rogers really is - someone who's always assessing the world around him (rather than hiding behind the shield) and ready to challenge the injustices (rather than waiting for the fight to come to him).

The real dichotomy between Steve and Bucky is that Steve is a natural challenger, who first picks up the shield to help him undertake a single-man offence on a Hydra base. When he wakes up in the modern world and sees that the imagery of the shield is entrenched with his identity, he uses that symbol to mask his fiery defiance while turning the shield itself into a weapon that works both in offense and defence. Bucky is a natural protector, who had picked up fighting and later weapons for defence and self-defence. Hydra then turned his loyal temperament and his skill set into “the fist of Hydra” - capable of both protection and targeted destruction.

They seem to have chosen (or been assigned) a weapon that is opposite to their instincts, but it’s also why they work so well together as a unit. Steve's convictions and idealism give Bucky the impetus to take up arms, and Bucky's constancy and protection give Steve the confidence to forge ahead.

The man who attacks injustices with a shield, and at his back, the man who defends him with a gun.

[captain-america-tho]

Hello, sorry i don't know how to use this app xd I want to ask about ur reply, " he became cap for bucky" It's been awhile since i seen the movie last time, can u please explain to me where and how ? 🥺 thanx!

Hi!!

Ok, so this is only my interpretation and it has been a while since I saw the movies myself so I hope this makes sense <3 

– – – 

Obviously “became cap for bucky” is a bit of a shortcut. Steve’s decision to join the army, his personality (his heroic qualities), his decision to undergo the supersoldier experiment - all the things one could argue made Steve into Captain America - had nothing to do with Bucky. 

I meant that thanks to Bucky Steve had the push to become Cap rather than play the role of Cap. 

Since becoming a supersoldier Steve performs on various events helping the government raise money for the army and boosting morale (or trying to). At this point he is physically a super soldier, and he is referred to as Captain America. But it's just that - a title. A role he is playing. He feels like a circus monkey, performing for somebody’s entertainment, no more useful than a prop to take photos with. He is called Captain America, he is playing Captain America, but he is not Captain America.

Learning from Peggy what happened to the 107th - and that Bucky is presumed dead - pushes him on a solo suicide rescue mission. And I think that this is the point at which he becomes Captain America, the hero. He makes the decision, he takes the risk and he saves not only Bucky but the whole division, and thus proves himself in the eyes of the colonel. 

And he went there because of Bucky. Because the colonel thought he was dead, and Steve believed he was wrong - that Bucky was alive (he told the rescued prisoners that he was looking for Sergeant Barnes).

Now, obviously Steve has always been heroic ie he possessed the heroic qualities. He is brave, loyal, has a strong moral compass etc. His mom raised him right. So I'm not saying he wasn’t heroic/a hero before the rescue mission. I’m saying he wasn’t Captain-America-the-Hero (as opposed to Captain-America-the-Girls-Choir-Prop) until the rescue mission. 

Then in Civil War Steve leaves behind the shield and thus rejects the title/role of Captain America (the Hero). In Infinity War we see him as Nomad - he is still a hero and he does what is right  because he will always be a hero.

But he became Captain America and he stopped being Captain America for Bucky. Thanks to Bucky. Because of Bucky. 

also side note: the movie is titled Captain America: The First Avenger and there is exactly one point at which Steves wants to avenge someone - Bucky, precisely his death. Narratively speaking Steve (the character) didn’t need to undergo an internal change (like for example Tony had to in IM1) to become a hero - he already is heroic. But there is a point at which Steve (the character) does change internally: he changes his stance from “I don't want to kill anyone; I don't like bullies, I don't care where they're from” to “I'm not gonna stop until all of Hydra is dead or captured.” And that is also because of Bucky.

God I love them. 

[sarahowritesostucky]

Why Didn't Steve Just Jump Out?

You guys! I've figured out why Steve had to crash the Valkyrie and couldn't just jump out of it:

It had an autopilot function that Red skull turned on during the nose dive, remember? Steve didn't see him do this--he didn't know that button was there. He just knew that every time he tried to aim the plane down and then let go of the controls, it self-righted again. So he had to stay at the controls for the crash, if he wanted it to go down.

The end.

😭😭😭😭

[atlantablack]

Just had a thought about Steve Rogers after reading this post and how everything he does is really thought out. He doesn’t really do impulsiveness, even if it comes off as impulsive to people who aren’t present for his thought process and I’m just realizing I kind of briefly touched on this in a WIP I have hiding on my computer somewhere but I don’t necessarily think the thought process at the end of endgame was about leaving Bucky or about Peggy being the love of his life. And maybe that’s how he justified it to himself sure, but I think it was simply about where he’d be happiest.

Because I do genuinely think that if he had come back and lived his life out in the present with Bucky, despite Bucky being there, he’d have never been really happy. Too much had changed. Even when Bucky was back he wasn’t the Bucky Steve lost and the mantle of Captain America was never one he was going to be able to put down and I think he wanted to put it down.

I think he NEEDED to put it down for a very long time but I think he started to think about how he wanted to put it down after that conversation with Tony and then people started dying. He loses Natasha, who was arguably (and I will argue this), his best friend. She was there from catws onwards. There for the majority of being on the run. There for the five years after the snap. Was maybe the only one he still talked to for the five years after the snap. Everyone else was gone. Five years is a long fucking time.

And even before the snap, Bucky was in Wakanda and Nat was with Steve. And that’s not casting blame, Wakanda was the best place for Bucky to be, but no matter how much you love someone it doesn’t mean they’re your best friend or the love of your life. You can still grow apart and love someone so much and still not make decisions revolving around them.

I think he went back because he wanted to put the mantle down and maybe if Nat hadn’t died, if Tony hadn’t died right when he and Steve reached a point where maybe they could have been friends again, if Bucky and Sam had no hope of understanding who he was after five years - maybe he would have stayed if one of those hadn’t been true.

But I think people are allowed to be selfish about their own happiness sometimes and Steve had never done that. Even when he should have, he never did. And he finally was selfish. And I don’t like that ending but I can see why he would make that decision and how it can be in character for him.

thanks for coming to my ted talk