#Steve meta

[amarriageoftrueminds]

Lotta good points!

1) My issue with 'Bucky does everything' is... why the fuck would he want to be friends with Steve, in that case? And why would Steve go to such lengths for someone he couldn't be bothered to support properly before?

It makes being Steve's friend a quite-literally-thankless job, and Steve's 'friendship' amounts to the chance to serve him in return for nothing - no gratitude, no apology, no happiness to see him, no emotional, financial, physical support in return. It makes Steve selfish and self-absorbed, which are antithetical to his defining traits of selflessness and thinking of the little guy.

He can't vaunt those traits in everyone except Bucky, but then turn around and act as if he valued them all along by, eg. saving Bucky, avenging him, etc!

Plus it makes Steve's claims of independence a joke too, which in turn makes it annoying when he turns up in Basic Training and suddenly is able to do things, so that Token Love Interest can look like the first person to recognise his capabilities, when... no, those traits just weren't there, before, on purpose.

CATFA deliberately avoided showing us anything by the way of Steve's abilities, for Bucky to believe in, just to make it look like Bucky is unfairly undervaluing him (nonsense, since he's known Steve his whole life) and that someone else is a better judge. How the fuck is Bucky supposed to know Steve is capable of throwing himself on a grenade?! It's not like they have those lying around in Brooklyn!

5) Bucky using women to disguise his closet is true to the spirit of Arnie Roth, on whom he was partly based. But I still think it's a step too far to suggest he'd chose strangers over friends and family for his last night; even a lesbian couple.

(Or that Steve wouldn't likewise insist on having Bucky's last night in America for just them, even if they weren't a couple).

Unless Bucky's relationship with his family was bad... But we've never seen/heard any suggestion of that? 🤔

Again my thought process is 'why would A be friends with B if B was like this??' (ie. if A was selfish enough to spend their last night with strangers rather than with B).

8) Re: Steve the incel.

You could also play it as Steve having benevolent misogyny values without realising it, putting women up on a pedestal (explaining why he doesn't clock when he has been molested, or assaulted; is shocked when a woman lies to him; maybe thinks the reason he isn't being sexually attracted to women is because they are Too Perfect to sully with sex, etc.)

The only problem with idealising women is that it surely could not survive contact with a troop of foul-mouthed show girls, unless Steve absolutely went out of his way to avoid them??

But if he did have benevolent misogyny, this could maybe manifest in pre-serum Steve delivering long mopey monologues about how whoever he's been set up with is probably too good for him, probably isn't even interested, he's so poor, and sick all the time *cough cough*, unlike her, she would be embarrassed to be seen with him, probably, he's sorry Bucky set her up with him of all people, etc etc ...delivered during the date.

So that by the time Bucky circles back around to their table, no matter how attracted to Steve the girl was initially, she'd be like '🙂 please get me away from here.'

I could also see a queer Steve self-sabotaging by doing this, as a kind of inverse of ladykiller!Bucky.

Either so deeply in the closet that he doesn't even realise he's doing it, is unaware he's not helping his 'passing for straight' problem, thinks he's just looking out for the poor perfect woman, etc. (perhaps even kinda likes that guilt makes Bucky be extra-nice to him for a while after?)

Or, not closeted Steve having a bloody-minded determination not to date because he thinks it's dishonest to the lady; determined to publically crash and burn, so no one ever questions why he hasn't got married yet. And maybe seething and annoyed about having to do this, because he feels bad for wasting the girl's time.

And, yeah, open-book baby gay Steve absolutely glaring at whoever Bucky's dancing with and his own date either clocking him or being like 'woah he really seems obsessed with his friend's girlfriend?'

(I could also see a closeted himbo Steve being like 'yeah Bucky took me to this secret gay bar he knows about for some reason, but it's just because he knows I always fail with women and wanted to give me a night off from that, that's all!' Poor Bucky dropping absolute anvil hints and Steve's not getting it. 😂)

I ended up doing a long old rant on this other post, about the problems with the Steve/Bucky characterisation in CATFA, how it fails to make them mutual in their support / fails to properly show Steve's struggles and independence, before serum.

And I was thinking...

what would you have to do, if you wanted to write a CATFA or pre-war Stucky fic and wanted to fix all those problems?

So I figured I'd make a list!

Pardon me while I rip CATFA a new one...

.

Problem 1) Pre-serum Steve acts as if he's independent and self-reliant without Bucky... when the opposite is shown.

A) He doesn't have a job.

(He isn't shown working, doesn't mention working, or taking time off to do the things we see him doing etc. Bucky is framed as paying for things.)

If the fic is set during CATFA you could fix that by mentioning Steve does have a job but has been given time off to go enlist. Or has just been fired from his job. Basically anything to show that Steve has had a job, has been working. Perhaps even had multiple simultaneous jobs!

Probably cut out the part where Steve scoffs at working in a factory or collecting scrap metal (more likely he'd admire and/or understand why both of those are viable options; maybe they're jobs he has done in the past and is biased against now, for some experiential-related reason.)

Or, if he still does not want to work in a factory... well, at the time, with most men being overseas, factory work would've been women's work. So perhaps Steve was reluctant because it feels emasculating. Or maybe even dysphoric, to be relegated to otherwise female-only spaces, instead of welcomed into (then) male-only spaces like the Army? 🤔

(This would especially ring true if you were doing a trans!Steve story, or emphasising the disability aspect of his life. And it would cycle back when he gets stuck in the USO, doing women's work again.)

B) It would also be better characterisation if pre-serum Steve was already good at fighting, but just happened to be outclassed by heavier weight opponents, and/or hindered sudden disability flare ups mid-fight. (In the tie-in comic, Bucky taught him how to box. Why not keep this?)

And also if his health was in a lifetime high point, then it would be less nonsensical to be trying to lie his way into the Army. There has to be some actual common sense and logic behind his choice, so that he's not essentially snapping 'Bucky why won't you support me committing suicide, gdi?'

Steve shouldn't be getting his first real win by knocking down a flagpole; he should've been showing this capability in his pre-war / pre-Army time, too.

You could emphasise the idea of Steve entering a fight he knows he's going to lose, in order to accomplish a secondary goal that the enemy doesn't recognise. IE. Steve fighting the bully in the alleyway -- he loses the fight, but succeeds in stopping the bully from making a scene in the cinema, which was his original goal. So mention it!

(Steve could be like 'winning this fight wasn't the point.' And Bucky could be like 'ah, so what were you distracting him from?')

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Problem 2) The support is imbalanced; Bucky's doing all the emotional, financial, and physical labour in the relationship.

You could fix that by showing how pre-serum Steve was not only mutually financially supportive (in the sense of having a job), but was also supporting Bucky emotionally and physically, just as much as Bucky supported him. He could be doing at least 2 of the 3!

Possible Examples:

Bucky going through an emotionally hard time that pre-serum Steve pulls him through (just as Bucky did with Steve's Ma).

Steve treating Bucky's wounds after a fight, just as Bucky treats his. (If Bucky's a boxer, like the tie-in comic, then Steve could be his cut man when he's in the ring!)

Steve paying for some of their expenses, or finding places to take Bucky that are free when it's his turn to plan a day out, etc.

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Problem 3: Sarah & problem 2.

If this is CATFA / post-death setting, show flashbacks or make references to Steve visiting her in hospital, or doing the work of nursing her himself / sitting by her bedside if she died at home, paying for her medicine, etc.

So that it's not just another example of Bucky wholly carrying Steve; show the balance. Maybe Bucky was temporarily footing the bill so that Steve could afford to quit his job and do the nursing at home. Both putting the work in, in different ways.

(This would be a perfect example of one way Bucky's experience of looking after sick Steve would pay off, and make him able to teach Steve how to do it when the roles are reversed.)

Better yet, a show-don't-tell of Sarah instilling Steve's moral compass and tenacity; maybe even some Bucky POV to show her impact isn't just relegated to Steve.

Her absence could also be shown in present day with Steve, eg. packing up his things to go to basic and having to leave behind some keepsake of hers.

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Problem 4: The relationship is framed as transactional.

Less 'I'll do X for Bucky now because he did Y for me back then' and more 'helping Bucky is the right thing to do because he's innocent so I'm going to do it regardless of outside whining, and he would still do the same thing for me, or anyone else, because he's a good person.'

There has to be more to it than just convenience, needing each other around to help; there has to be an actual desire to be together for pure enjoyment, too.

IMO you'd need at least one scene where Steve and Bucky aren't benefiting in some way from spending energy on eachother. They're just... happy being together.

And perhaps Bucky isn't the only friend pre-serum Steve could have had, just the one Steve most wanted to stick with. (His options should amount to more than 'Bucky or no one.') Perhaps Steve's health absences and strong principles drove other friendship prospects away?

.

Problem 5: A's problems are framed as B's.

No more 'Steve getting attacked' being framed as a problem for Bucky.

No more 'Bucky being drafted to die' framed as a problem for Steve.

Better characterisation would show these bad things affect the victim first and foremost, and only/also the other one, secondarily.

Steve shouldn't be seeing Bucky's shipping-out uniform (skipping right over thank yous and congratulations) and talking about how that's sad for... himself.

Steve shouldn't be sabotaging Bucky's last night of freedom in NYC to spend it on... his own goals.

Sidenote: Bucky wanting to spend his last night of freedom with strangers is such idiotic writing anyway, when he has both Steve and a living family with whom he could be spending those last precious moments! And dragging Steve on a double blind date he clearly doesn't want to go on is counter-productive. It undermines the mutually-supportive / mutually communicative relationship Steve and Bucky should logically have, as lifelong inseparable best friends, and shifts the blame for Steve's singlehood off of him and onto Bucky and women generally.

Steve shouldn't be detailing why he's so keen to fight, and focusing on random men he doesn't know, not directly/unequivocally mentioning Bucky at all (indirectly, he wants to be like the men laying down their lives -- so... like Bucky? But this is still nonsense. He should want to be there to support Bucky, not to copy!)

It's likewise nonsense for Bucky, who has known Steve since he was a child, to ask Steve why he's keen to fight. Bucky doesn't need to ask. Bucky already knows. Lazy clumsy exposition.

And the narrative should be showing us why, rather than having Steve infodump it without anything to back it up.

Speaking of which...

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Problem 6: Lack of explicit politics.

Like in the comics, Steve's reasons for fighting Nazis should be explicitly left wing and political, as well as personal.

(Wanting to be like able-bodied men who get girlfriends is complete cringe incel bullshit as a motivation and not true to the comics, or CEvans's performance!)

Proper Steve characterisation should have him behaving in a way that shows he's a man ahead of his time in terms of Antifa politics, and that's why he wants to fight.

IE. happily sharing housing and schooling with people of other races, ethnicities, and religions. (Especially so when he has been in the same SEC as them / been in multiple different schools and lived in various neighbourhoods as a poor kid.)

Not judging and mistreating disabled people the way he is.

Not judging unmarried mothers, belittling working women, expecting his mother to do all the housework, etc.

Not freaking out about the existence of queer people in public (even in an AU where he isn't one) defending gay men from attack as he does in the comics,

protesting and/or sabotaging public Nazi meetings in NYC, fighting with homegrown Nazi bullies especially, ditto corrupt business owners / mafia union-runners as he does in the comics, etc.

The Hydra saboteur should not be the first Nazi Steve ever got his hands on!

And Bucky should be an addendum when it comes to his reasoning. The heart of Steve's motive, where politics are the guts.

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Problem 7: No disability rep.

A) Steve should not be saying that he, a disabled man, shouldn't have the 'right' to do less than able-bodied men, even though it is literally physically impossible...

...UNLESS, this internalized ableism is addressed in-story, rather than treated as if it's normal and even noble.

Other characters can be ableist; Steve should not (not only is he disabled himself, but he's supposed to know better!) unless it's part of an arc that shows that this trait is weird in him, and he learns the error of his ways.

Instead it could be shown that his health has recently become good enough for him to survive and succeed in the Army. Without Steve arguing that he should throw his disabled life away, just because able-bodied men are taking a significantly lesser risk of dying than him.

B) There should be actual details of Steve's disabilities, what they are and how they affect him. (Him - not Bucky.) In a way that has concrete negative consequences, beyond just not getting into the Army.

Possible Examples:

Steve being held back a year at school because of missing days due to sickness. Kids can be cruel and parents can be ignorant; he might've been bullied and ostracised for being sick and believed contagious.

Kid Steve having to move around a lot (which would also affect which school he'd have to attend) because losing money to medicine affects what his mother can afford, affects her work schedule when she has to look after him. Living in a worse place would then exacerbate his pre-existing symptoms, and so on.

Adult!Steve losing a job because of sick days, losing savings to pay for medicine, getting sick again because he either chose heating and groceries over medicine or vice versa, etc.

(This / the moving-around might be mitigated if he and Bucky are living together, meaning Bucky could make up the shortfall.)

Steve could lose friendships or romantic partners due to sickness taking him out of social circulation.

You could also play into the Nazi eugenics then endemic to the USA and have medical professionals telling Steve he shouldn't be alive; 'well-meaning' people offering to pray for him, saying they'd have 'given up' if they were born like him, etc.

And Steve should, maybe, mention once or twice that he feels better after serum and truly couldn't be doing what he's doing in Europe, if superserum hadn't also cured all his ailments?

If he's much more peppy afterwards, it should be because for the first time in his life he can actually breathe and spring out of bed!

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Problem 8) The Incelery.

Pre-serum Steve should not be framed as undateable because he's short and disabled.

If Steve hasn't had a girlfriend, it should be because he didn't want one, not because evil women are repulsed by invisible health issues or Bucky is too dreamy for a disabled man to possibly compete with, be so fr. 🙄

You could fix this by making Steve: gay,

ace,

demi,

coincidentally surrounded by lesbians,

by women who have horrible unattractive politics,

too sick or busy with work to date,

getting attention but it's the wrong kind (ie. women who want to fetishize or nanny him),

and/or being very attractive to women even before serum but oblivious and/or simply not interested. 😂

/more than one of the above.

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[stuckyfingers]

Hear Me out:

Sarah and Joseph Rogers, Played by Saoirse Ronan and Jack Davenport.

Steve Rogers (played by Chris Evans) has got a mix of both their features:

Mother: cheekbones, hair color, eye color, chin, general facial structure- preserum.

Father: eye shape, eyebrows, jawline, nose, lips, general facial structure- post serum

Also,, both Jack and Saoirse are period drama actors.👀

[the-seas-song]

Tumblr is being extremely weird right now and won't let me answer @transexualpirate's ask about why I hate Tony/Pepper. This post is my answer to him:

Hi! Sorry for the late reply, my life got crazy.

The short answer: Pepper emotionally abuses (and slut-shames) Tony from IM2 onward.

The long answer: Pepper's behavior is extremely subtle, and a lot of people miss it. Unfortunately, it's been so normalized (at least here in the US) that a lot of other people will deny – and even defend! it. However, I grew up with family members like her and I have a background in psych.

I have to start this off with a disclaimer: I CAN'T be objective/un-triggered when talking about Pepper Potts or Peggy Carter (we don't shoot at someone just because we have a crush on them and they kissed (got assaulted by) someone else!)

Anyway, back to Pepper. …. I thought I could write out a full analysis without getting too triggered, but I can't. So I've included links to some great articles that cover the nuances of emotional abuse:

https://nycchildtherapy.info/emotional-abuse/ (Pepper checks almost every box on this list)

(scroll down to the 4 horseman) https://www.marriage-family-counseling.com/good-marriage.html

Personally I feel like the term 'gaslighting' gets overused, but it's definitely applicable here:

How do you know that you're being gaslighted? A victim experiences increased self-doubt as the gaslighter insists that what he or she remembers, thinks, and feels is wrong. The manipulative individual will introduce lies in more sensitive arenas, aiming to disrupt and distort foundational aspects of the victim’s being, wearing them down, establishing confusion, and forcing them to rely on the gaslighter’s version of reality.

Passive-aggressiveness is just as insidious as gaslighting:

Passive aggressive people take genuine pleasure in frustrating others. They are masters at getting others to act out their angry feelings--to explode and appear crazy--while the passive aggressive person sits back and watches the emotional outburst with satisfaction, total control, and always with their own poise intact.

Here's the transcript (and my commentary in [brackets]) from IM3 (a transcript can only do so much, because a lot of this is tone of voice as well as word choice):

[later Pepper returns to Tony's home, as she gets out of the car she sees a large stuffed rabbit outside the house that Tony has bought for her as a gift, she walks inside]

Pepper Potts: I'm sorry I'm late. I was... What the...? What is that?!

[she notices Tony sat in his Iron Man suit on the couch]

Pepper Potts: You're wearing this in the house now? What is that, like Mark 15? [criticism and sarcasm]

[Tony looks at the small number marked 42 on the suit]

Tony Stark: Uh...yeah. Something like that. You know everybody needs a hobby.

Pepper Potts: Oh, and you have to wear your hobby in the living room? [passive-aggressiveness]

[Tony rises and walks toward her]

Tony Stark: Just breakin' it in. You know, it's always a little pinchy in the gooey bag at first, so.

[Tony shakes his ass and Pepper laughs]

Tony Stark: Oh hey, did you see your Christmas present?

Pepper Potts: Yes, I did. I...I don't know how I could have missed that Christmas present. Is it gonna fit through the door? [more sarcasm and passive-aggressiveness]

Tony Stark: Well actually, uh...it's a good question. I got a team of guys comin' tomorrow, they're gonna blow out that wall.

Pepper Potts: Okay.

Tony Stark: So, uh...tense? Good day?

[Tony walks up behind her and starts massaging her shoulders]

Tony Stark: Ooh shoulders, a little knotty. Naughty girl. I don't wanna harp on this, but did you like the custom rabbit?

Pepper Potts: Did I like it? Tony Stark: Nailed it, right? Pepper Potts: Wow. I appreciate the thought very much. [even more sarcasm and passive-aggressiveness; withholding the validation Tony's seeking]

[Pepper turns to face Tony, she rises from her seat and stands close to him]

Pepper Potts: So why don't you lift up that face mask and give me a kiss? [not only takes control of/manipulates the situation but makes it physical/sexual]

[Tony knocks the metal helmet on his head]

Tony Stark: Huh. Yup, dammit. No can do. You wanna just kiss it on the...

Pepper Potts: Uh-huh.

Tony Stark: The facial slit?

Pepper Potts: Well, why don't I run down to the garage and see if I can't find a crowbar to shimmy that thing open?

Tony Stark: Crowbar. Yeah.

[Pepper starts walking towards Tony's lab]

Tony Stark: Oh, except there's been a...uh...a radiation leak.

Pepper Potts: I'll take my chances.

Tony Stark: That's risky.

[Pepper walks down the stairs to Tony's lab]

Tony Stark: At least let me get you like a Hazmat suit or a Geiger counter or something like that.

[Pepper sees Tony is in fact not in his Iron Man suit, but in the lab exercising as he remotely controls the suit, which follows Pepper into the lab]

Tony Stark: Busted.

Pepper Potts: This is a new level of lame. [explicit criticism and contempt]

Tony Stark: Sorry.

[Pepper notices the food tray in the corner]

Pepper Potts: You ate without me? Already? On date night? [passive-aggressive criticism, even though she was the one late and didn't call ahead]

Tony Stark: [referring to Mark 42 suit] He was just...

Pepper Potts: You mean you?

Tony Stark: Well, yeah. I just mean we were just...just hosting you -

[Pepper scoffs] [passive-aggressive contempt]

Tony Stark: -while I finished up a little work.

Pepper Potts: Uh-huh.

Tony Stark: And yes, I had a quick bite. I didn't know if you were comin' home or if you were having drinks with Aldrich Killian.

[Mark 42 suit turns its face toward her]

Pepper Potts: What?

Tony Stark: What?

Pepper Potts: Aldrich Killian? What are you checking up on me? [defensive accusation]

Tony Stark: Happy was concerned. [THE TRUTH]

Pepper Potts: No, you're spying on me. [gaslighting]

Tony Stark: I wasn't...

Pepper Potts: I'm going to bed. [Pepper turns and starts walking off] [passive-aggressive power play]

Tony Stark: Hold on. Come on. Pep.

[as Pepper starts walking upstairs]

Tony Stark: Hey, I admit it! My fault. Sorry. [NO ITS NOT]

[Pepper stops and looks at him]

Tony Stark: I'm a piping hot mess. It's been going on for a while, I haven't said anything.

[Pepper walks back down]

Tony Stark: Nothing's been the same since New York.

Pepper Potts: Oh really? Well, I didn't notice that, at all. [sarcasm]

Tony Stark: You experience things and then they're over and you still can't explain 'em. Gods, aliens, other dimensions. I...I'm just a man in a can. The only reason I haven't cracked up is probably because you moved in. Which is great. I love you, I'm lucky. But, honey, I can't sleep. You go to bed, I come down here. I do what I know, I tinker. [he pauses for a moment and sits down]  [lots of healthy I statements!]

Tony Stark: But threat is imminent, and I have to protect the one thing that I can't live without. That's you. My suits, they're uh...

Pepper Potts: Machines. [gaslighting]

Tony Stark: They're part of me.

Pepper Potts: A distraction. [GASLIGHTING]

Tony Stark: Maybe.

[Pepper walks towards Tony and they hold each other. He rests his head against her chest and she removes his headband that controls the Iron Man suits]

Pepper Potts: I'm gonna take a shower. 

Tony Stark: Okay.

[Pepper turns to walk off, then stops and looks at him]

Pepper Potts: And you're gonna join me. [sexual control/manipulation instead of validation and comfort]

Tony Stark: Better.

[later that night, as Tony and Pepper are sleeping, Tony starts having nightmares about when he was in New York with The Avengers and had to get rid of the nuke in space, Pepper wakes and starts to shake Tony awake]

Pepper Potts: Tony! Tony! Tony! Tony...

[suddenly Pepper gets grabbed and shoved off Tony by Mark 42 suit, this wakes Tony who commands the suit]

Tony Stark: Power down!

[the suit shuts down and Tony hits it making its pieces fall apart, he looks over at Pepper who is in shock]

Tony Stark: I must have called it in my sleep. That's not supposed to happen. I'll recalibrate the sensors. Can we just...just let me...just let me catch my breath, okay?

[Pepper rises and starts to leave]

Tony Stark: Don't go, alright? Pepper?

Pepper Potts: I'm going to sleep downstairs. Tinker with that. [verbal attack and gaslighting]

[Pepper leaves the room]

Pepper has every right to be scared and upset here. She does not have the right to take it out on Tony – especially since he is obviously still in the middle of his ptsd episode. Even then, his immediate response is to take responsibility and explain the actions he's going to take to keep it from happening again. This is incredible! Most people aren't able to do this in a normal setting, much less during a ptsd episode.

And we know Tony's still going through it, because he then desperately begs her not to leave. And not only does she leave, she does it while blaming him and Iron Man. But Iron Man didn't create Tony's trauma. The wormhole did. The Iron Man suits are the only security blanket Tony currently has.

Lets contrast this with Steve. MCU!Steve (and Stony) are not nearly as abrasive or antagonistic as people make them out to be. In fact, the reason why Steve's “Oh God, Tony! Every time. Every time I think you're seeing things the right way...” and Tony's “And you’ve been a complete idiot!” hit so hard is because they don't normally talk this way. They don't insult or verbally attack each other (at least, not since the helicarrier)

AOU is a perfect example:

Bruce Banner: This is insane.

Steve Rogers: JARVIS was the first line of defense. He would've shut Ultron down, it makes sense.

Bruce Banner: No, Ultron could've assimilated Jarvis. This isn't strategy, this is...rage.

[Thor barges in and grabs hold of Stark by his throat, holding him up]

Clint Barton: Woah, woah, woah! It's going around.

Tony Stark: [to Thor] Come on. Use your words, buddy.

Thor: I have more than enough words to describe you, Stark.

Steve Rogers: Thor! The Legionnaire.

[Thor lets go of Stark]

Thor: Trail went cold about a hundred miles out but it's headed north, and it has the scepter. Now we have to retrieve it, again.

Natasha Romanoff: The genie's out of that bottle. Clear and present is Ultron.

Dr. Helen Cho: I don't understand. You built this program. Why is it trying to kill us?

[Stark starts laughing, Banner subtly shakes his head at him to get him to stop]

Thor: You think this is funny?

Tony Stark: No. It's probably not, right? Is this very terrible? Is it so... is it so... it is. It's so terrible.

Thor: This could've been avoided if you hadn't played with something you don't understand.

Tony Stark: No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It is funny. It's a hoot that you don't get why we need this.

Bruce Banner: Tony, maybe this might not be the time to--

Tony Stark: Really?! That's it? You just roll over, show your belly, every time somebody snarls.

Bruce Banner: Only when I've created a murder bot.

Tony Stark: We didn't. We weren't even close. Were we close to an interface?

Steve Rogers: Well, you did something right. And you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be different than SHIELD.

Tony Stark: Anybody remember when I carried a nuke through a wormhole?

James Rhodes: No, it's never come up.

Tony Stark: Saved New York?

James Rhodes: Never heard that.

Tony Stark: Recall that? A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We're standing three hundred feet below it. We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the live long day, but, that up there? That's... that's the end game. How were you guys planning on beating that?

Steve Rogers: Together.

Tony Stark: We'll lose.

Steve Rogers: Then we'll do that together, too.

[Stark looks at him for a moment before turning away] 

Steve Rogers: Thor's right. Ultron's calling us out. And I'd like to find him before he's ready for us. The world's a big place. Let's start making it smaller.

I bolded the verbal attacks, you statements, and sarcasm – all of which come from Thor and Rhodey. Steve's angry and feeling triggered (he is obviously flashing back to SHIELDRA and Howard and Peggy's betrayal), but he's not using abusive speech patterns to express his anger.

[Steve and Tony are chopping wood outside Barton's house]

Tony Stark: Thor didn't say where he was going for answers?

Steve Rogers: Sometimes my teammates don't tell me things. [looks at Barton with his kids] I was kind of hoping Thor would be the exception.

Tony Stark: Yeah, give him time. We don't know what the Maximoff kid showed him.

Steve Rogers: “Earth's Mightiest Heroes.” Pulled us apart like cotton candy.

Tony Stark: Seems like you walked away all right.

Steve Rogers: Is that a problem?

Tony Stark: I don't trust a guy without a dark side. Call me old fashioned.

Steve Rogers: Well let's just say you haven't seen it yet.

Tony Stark: You know Ultron is trying to tear us apart, right?

Steve Rogers: Well I guess you'd know. Whether you tell us is a bit of a question.

Tony Stark: Banner and I were doing research.

Steve Rogers: That would affect the team.

Tony Stark: That would end the team. Isn't that the mission? Isn't that the “why” we fight, so we can end the fight, so we get to go home?

Steve Rogers: [rips log apart] Every time someone tries to win a war before it starts, innocent people die. Every time.

Tony is the one who escalates the conversation here (“Seems like you walked away all right.”) – Steve's angry, but his tone is conversational and he's opening up to Tony. His response to Tony is sarcastic (“Well I guess you'd know. Whether you tell us is a bit of a question.”); but it's still direct, and he still isn't using any insults. He's expressing his anger in a mostly healthy way.

[Steve and the twins turn up at the lab]

Steve Rogers: I'm gonna say this once.

Tony Stark: How about “nonce”?

Steve Rogers: Shut it down!

Tony Stark: Nope, not gonna happen.

Steve Rogers: You don't know what you're doing.

Bruce Banner: And you do? She's not in your head?

Wanda Maximoff: I know you're angry.

Bruce Banner: Oh, we're way past that. I could choke the life out of you and never change a shade.

Steve Rogers: Banner, after everything that's happened--

Tony Stark: That's nothing compared to what's coming!

Wanda Maximoff: You don't know what's in there!

Steve Rogers: This isn't a game--

Wanda Maximoff: The creature--

[Pietro uses his speed to destroy the lab equipment]

Pietro Maximoff: No, no. Go on. You were saying?

[Barton shoots the glass Pietro is standing to stand to destroy it, and Pietro falls through]

Wanda Maximoff: Pietro!

Clint Barton: What? You didn't see that coming?

Tony Stark: I'm rerouting the upload.

Bruce Banner: [to Wanda, as he grabs her] Go ahead, piss me off. [After some fighting, Thor enters and hits the cradle with his hammer, sending a powerful bolt of lightning through it that brings the body to life] Wait! [they all look in shock at the new entity]

[Vision launches himself at Thor, who throws him at a window, but he catches himself right before hitting it.]

Vision: [In JARVIS' voice, as everyone gathers around him] I'm sorry, that was...odd. [to Thor] Thank you.

Steve Rogers: Thor, you helped create this?

Thor: I've had a vision. A whirlpool that sucks in all hope of life and at its center is that. [he points to the gem inside Vision's head]

Bruce Banner: What, the gem?

Thor: It's the Mind Stone. It's one of the six Infinity Stones, the greatest power in the universe, unparalleled in its destructive capabilities.

Steve Rogers: Then why would you bring it to...

Thor: Because Stark is right.

Bruce Banner: Oh, it's definitely the end times.

Thor: The Avengers cannot defeat Ultron.

Vision: Not alone.

Steve Rogers: Why does your “vision” sound like JARVIS?

Tony Stark: We... reconfigured JARVIS' matrix to create something new.

Steve Rogers: I think I've had my fill of new.

Vision: You think I'm a child of Ultron?

Steve Rogers: You're not?

Vision: I'm not Ultron. I'm not JARVIS. I am... I am.

Wanda Maximoff: I looked in your head and saw annihilation.

Vision: Look again.

Clint Barton: Yeah. Her seal of approval means jack to me.

Thor: Their powers, the horrors in our heads, Ultron himself, they all came from the Mind Stone, and they're nothing compared to what it can unleash. But with it on our side...

Steve Rogers: Is it? Are you? On our side?

Bruce is the one who insults Tony here (and poor Steve just wants to understand what the hell is happening).

Back to Pepper. A lot of people forget that Rhodey was the only one who wanted Tony to grow and change:

James Rhodes: You don't respect yourself, so I know you don't respect me.

Tony Stark: I respect you.

[cut]

James Rhodes: You are constitutionally incapable of being responsible.

[cut]

James Rhodes: That's what I'm talking about. When I get up in the morning and I'm putting on my uniform, you know what I recognize? I see in that mirror that every person that's got this uniform on got my back!

Tony Stark: Hey, you know what? I'm not like you. I'm not cut out...

James Rhodes: No, no. You don't have to be like me! But you're more than what you are. And you don't see it.

Tony Stark: Can you excuse me if I'm a bit distracted here?

James Rhodes: No! You can't be distracted right now! Listen to me!

Contrast this with Pepper and Happy:

Tony Stark: Same drill. They've been dealing under the table, and I'm going to stop them. I'm going to find my weapons and destroy them.

Pepper Potts: Tony, you know that I would help you with anything, but I cannot help you if you're going to start all of this again.

Tony Stark: There is nothing except this. There's no art opening. There is no benefit. There is nothing to sign. There is the next mission and nothing else.

Pepper Potts: Is that so? Well, then, I quit. [Pepper throws the lock chip on the table.]

Tony Stark: You stood by my side all these years while I reaped the benefits of destruction. And now that I'm trying to protect the people that I put in harm's way, you're going to walk out?

Pepper Potts: You're going to kill yourself, Tony. I'm not going to be a part of it.

Tony Stark: I shouldn't be alive, unless it was for a reason. I'm not crazy, Pepper. I just finally know what I have to do. And I know in my heart that it's right.

Pepper Potts: [Pepper picks the lock drive back up.] You're all I have, too, you know. 

And:

Happy Hogan: Yeah, I miss you too. But the way it used to be. Now you're off with the 'superfriends', I don't know what's going on with you anymore. The world's getting weird...

When we are in a relationship with someone (it doesn't matter what kind) and they grow and change, we are left with the choice of either growing ourselves, or walking away/growing distant with that person. 

Pepper does neither. She uses emotional abuse to try to control Tony and manipulate him into acting the way she wants him to act – giving up Iron Man and living a selfish civilian life as her kept genius.

This is in direct contrast to Rhodey, Yinsen, and Steve, who see that Tony has had the potential to be “Earth's Best Defender” all along.

[thahiree]

Post CACW Steve has several aliases and personas he can assume for undercover work, it’s good to have a rudimentary backstory for these personas in case he needs to fake his way out. And while all these fictions men have different jobs, abilities, social standings, they all end up with one thing in common, all of them are divorced.

See, much like Nat’s whole “affection makes people awkward” thing, Steve’s found that “people stop wanting to question you if you start talking about your recent divorce”. And like, it’s different divorces for each one, infidelity reasons, finance, substance abuse, etc. and people really, REALLY don’t want to talk to you if you make it clear it was your fault it happened.

Like explicitly: “I cheated and they took the kids”, or subtextually: “APPARENTLY I wasn’t home enough or didn’t help out when I was can you believe that????” And added to the verisimilitude is post CACW Steve’s Big Divorced Energy he exudes, ain’t no one gonna say, hmmm you don’t seem like a man that has been divorced against his will and aren’t ok

Bonus points for Tony and the rest finding out about Steve’s Rolodex of divorced men he can assume at a moment’s notice and are like ??? But Sam and Nat are like, no trust us it works somehow??

(Captain Stevens in 1970 heist was divorced, it was quite the scandal at the time but it’s rude to talk about in polite company (his lavender marriage fell apart when his wife ran away with her girlfriend to France because he was away so often))

Anon I love this so much dggffh. Steve giving off Big Divorced Energy is so real 😵 (right after his Big Slut Energy!!!!! no you cannot change my mind on that!!!)

I uhh might've started writing a drabble inspired by this? 👀

[the-seas-song]

Steve would NEVER ride a Harley:

https://soundrider.com/archive/products/greg_field.aspx

from The First Avenger to Age of Ultron: Steve Rogers + Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

[amarriageoftrueminds]

thing I've realised which alters how I see the howling commandos:

if the actors' ages reflect the characters’ ages, then all of the Howlies are considerably older than Steve.

The youngest Howlie (after Bucky & Steve) would be eight years older than Steve (that's Monty). The oldest is eighteen years older.

So they're a bunch of guys in their 30s and 40s who voluntarily put themselves under the command of a clueless 25 year old whippersnapper who's never even been in the field before. 

Or, another way to put it: 

Bucky was asked to pick a team to put under Steve's command and he chose a bunch of much older, seasoned soldiers, because clearly a bunch of kids in their twenties couldn't be trusted to cope with this idiot.

[stuckyfingers]

"Raise your hand if you're a guy with unshakeable morals, the symbol of an entire country, who has challenged the foundations of their own governments at some point- and also has a childhood best friend you eventually fell in love with, and said friend returns after a long time of being apart and saves you from dying after you fall into a body of water-" Steve and T'Challa: *raises hands* "Did I mention the return of the best friend shortly after the death of the leader of your organization coincides with your disillusionment with your government?" Steve and T'Challa: "...." *looks at each other* "Oh, also,, you freeze up and blank out in the presence or mention of your crush. This is so relevant that people around you either have multiple lines of dialogue telling you to focus, or use this trait against you." Steve and T'Challa: I- "According to many people, you're also an example of healthy masculinity, comparable to Fred Rogers. Thought I'd add that too."

[the-seas-song]

He's a poser 😍

[amarriageoftrueminds]

Peggy is not shown teaching Steve anything in the film.

They were at the same place in basic training for only one week, during which time: 

a) they never spoke (so how exactly did she teach him to fight? telepathically?)

b) she is only shown derogatively comparing Steve and his fellow soldiers to women (”Faster, ladies! Come on. My grandmother has more life in her!”) 

That is the full extent of her impact on Steve’s training (the rest of the time she is performing admin; carrying a clipboard. She doesn’t even speak.) 

Also: she is not a soldier. Women were not allowed in combat roles at the time. 

Hypothetically even if she was a spy (which we’re neither shown nor told in CATFA), that is also not a soldier, and the type of espionage-fronted training she would’ve had is not what an infantryman would be given, especially if they only had one week to learn. 

But there is a Drill-Sergeant soldier assigned to train Steve -- more than one soldier, if you count Col. Phillips. 

Phillips repeatedly told Peggy to shut the fuck up as he didn’t value her opinion. Just because he thought it was funny she punched and humiliated one guy, that doesn’t mean he’s fine with leaving the mens’ combat training in her hands. In fact, he took over control of their training off her, as soon as he was present -- twice! 

The idea that he (and all these other higher-ranked 1940s male soldiers) would even let some non-American nobody who’s also a woman teach men hand-to-hand combat -- to their precious Project Rebirth candidates no less -- is absurd. 

(Why would the drill sergeant character even exist, if that were the case? What reason was he there? Where was all this misogyny and doors-closed-in-her-face she banged on about?)

After Lehigh, Steve was with the USO for four solid months. 

(So if there were any women who taught Steve how to fight, outside of his mother, it’s the unnamed sneered-at chorus girls. Funny how calling Steve a chorusgirl coincided with him jumping into the fray. 🤔)

After that one week in which they did not communicate, Steve and Peggy were not in the same place for longer than one or two days for the entire rest of the war. They were only physically in the same place on 7 seperate days, after that time -- which were interrupted by Steve fighting professionally, for 15 and a half months, without her ‘help.’ 

Steve was in the company of seasoned professional soldiers (not deskjockey admins), all of whom were older than him. They are more likely candidates for who taught Steve things. (He and Peggy showed no signs of even communicating.) 

However, the film itself does not show anyone teaching Steve how to fight, period. 

The implication is that if Steve was good at fighting suddenly, it was only because of the serum. 

Ergo, he had the same skill level and habits, before Peggy ever knew of him. 

(See: Steve snatching up a dustbin lid, before he knew Peggy, and doing it again with a taxi door after he knew Peggy, and keeping his shield for the same reason. He fights like an underdog already because he has always been an underdog, before he knew her. If there are parallels in their fighting styles it’s because they both learned how to fight bigger targets than themselves, not because she taught him. Steve fought like this, canonically, before he even knew her). 

But the serum gave Steve the dexterity, durability, endurance, speed and strength to carry it out those skills and habits more successfully.

That being the case, the only canon possibility for who could’ve taught him to fight -- if anyone -- is Bucky, because canonically Steve simply did not have anyone else in his life before who could’ve done that. 

(Unless Sarah had fight experience too. 🤔 I mean, nurses do get attacked a lot. Hell maybe she and Steve could’ve learned together? 🥺)

While it’s not impossible that there was, eg. a random gym-goer in BK willing to teach Steve, we can’t claim that is what happened canonically because it’s not what’s shown, and it’s not what canon frames as a physical possibility either. 

Whereas the film does come closer to showing and implying that Bucky taught Steve, than anyone else. 

The narrative makes it clear that only Bucky was there for Steve, before CATFA, and Bucky is shown throwing a decent punch, so we know he knew how to fight. (The film even parallels Steve’s post-serum skill with Bucky’s (...not Peggy’s) by repeating Steve’s opening fight with Bucky now in Steve’s former vulnerable position, and passing off the ‘I had him on the ropes’ line between them. No such implication is made about Peggy.) 

Also: Bucky had a shown vested interest in Steve being protected from harm, which Peggy did not. When a bully hurt Steve, Bucky jumped in to help. Whereas Peggy did nothing -- even though she was willing to punch the same bully on her own behalf -- and she thought it was great when Steve potentially killed himself by throwing himself on the grenade. 

That is not the behaviour of someone who even wants to teach Steve how to fight, never mind whether or not they are qualified or allowed to do so. 

And, sidenote: Steve never did anything Peggy told him to do (the only time he appeared to, he was actually already doing what she said to do -- because he wanted to -- before she butted in, to tell him to do it). Outside of that they constantly butted heads and disagreed about how to act, tactically. So for consistent characterisation, if Peggy ever told Steve how to fight, his fighting style would be the opposite of whatever she said. 

tell me again about how peggy carter never taught steve rogers how to fight?

you

clearly

aren’t

paying

enough

attention

dear

[amarriageoftrueminds]

If The Howlies were real...

I've been thinking about Steve's time during the war, and wondering if anyone has any headcanons about, eg. where he was stationed, how exactly the Howling Commando mission planning went, etc?

In the comics, Steve isn't assigned to the 107 but to the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division (aka the ‘Big Red One’.)

They were part of D-Day landings, on Omaha Beach.

In deleted scenes / clips from the Smithsonian, it’s implied that Steve was also a part of D-Day: 

(That’s General Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander.)

(These landing craft 👆 were only used at D-Day. Although it’s possible this is propaganda footage of a rehearsal.)

If the Howlies had the same set up as the 26th, then Steve and the guys would’ve been stationed in Swanage, Dorset:

(Members of ‘A’ Company 26th Infantry Regiment US Army, billeted at Craigside in the High Street opposite Purbeck House Hotel, Swanage, around 1943 – 44.)

That’s 114 miles south west of Camp Griffiss in Bushy Park, Teddington, where General Eisenhower had his SHAEF HQ, starting from January 1944

(before that his HQ was at No.20 Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, in London -- aka ‘Little America’ or ‘Eisenhower Platz’ -- a couple of miles northwest of Churchill’s War Rooms, which inspired the underground bunker HQ seen in CATFA.)

Thousands of American troops, including the 26th Infantry, started arriving in Dorset in November 1943 -- which is also when Steve arrived in England after rescuing the 107!

While in Dorset, the US troops were largely engaged in rehearsing for Operation Overlord, aka D-Day. 

One such rehearsal was the disastrous Operation Smash, on the 18th April, 1944, which was a live-ammunition practice for beach landings at Normandy. (Disastrous because six men accidentally drowned when their Valentine semi-submersible tank... sank.)

Operation Smash was staged in Studland Bay (that’s 4.5 miles north of Swanage). Present to observe were: Winston Churchill, King George VI, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, and Acting Admiral Louis Mountbatten. They did so from ‘Fort Henry,’ a 90 foot long bunker (built and named by Canadian engineers in 1943 -- so it would’ve been there by the time Steve n’ Co got there -- and it’s still there today!) overlooking the bay. 

The US troops moved on from Swanage in late April 1944, and departed England entirely (from nearby places like Weymouth, Poole Quay, Portland Harbour, etc.) on 5th June 1944. D-Day was on the 6th.

In the deleted scene from Avengers, Steve is clearly shown crossing  the Ludendorff Bridge:

...But this is impossible!

Because that bridge (at Remagen) was only captured on the 7th of March 1945:

(9th Armored Division in Remagen, Germany, recorded 9th March, 1945).

...and Steve had already crashed the Valkyrie 6 days prior!

(So unless that bridge was captured earlier, possibly because of Steve n’ Co., that footage can’t be right! 

CATFA does have a habit of putting the US Army in places they had no business being yet at that time of the war -- i.e. showing the US Army right up at the North of Italy, when in reality the Nazis still held it. 

(In fact, Mussolini’s Nazi puppet republic, the Republic of Salò, was nicknamed after a lake in Brescia... which is 200-ish miles further south than the US Army are shown in November ‘43.)

So I guess it’s possible that Steve & Co really were in Remagen, Germany, and crossing the Ludendorff Bridge before March ‘45! 

Or (perhaps more likely) we’re supposed to read it as some generic bridge in Western Europe, captured on D-Day (a la Pegasus bridge). 

.

Where exactly the Hydra factories were (and thus most Howlie missions) is not categorically stated. However, what Steve says / taking rough guesses from the map we see in Krausberg...

...it looks like the Howlies would’ve had missions in: Italy, France, (then) Czechoslovakia, Poland, and... Greece. 

(The script also mentions Belgium and Russia, which are neither shown on the map nor mentioned. However, there is a shot of them creeping through snowy forests, which looks very much like the Ardennes. That might put them in Belgium as part of the Battle of the Bulge -- which in turn gives us a date that could be the ‘difficult winter’ mentioned in the Smithsonian footage.)

If the Howlies were an active team from say 14th November 1943 -- 1st March 1945 (when Steve went down in the Valkyrie) 

That’s 473 days / or 1 year, 3 months, 15 days / or 15 months, 15 days.

If they had 9 missions total during that time...

6 Hydra factories around Europe

+ 1 winter mission to save over a 1000 men (as mentioned in Smithsonian; could be Battle of the Bulge? 🤔)

+ 1 D-Day mission (possibly including amphibious landings &/or bridge captures)

+ 1 Zola-capture mission, probably somewhere in the Alps. 

+ 1 Valkyrie mission makes 10. 

...That would give them 52.5 days (less than two months) to both plan, travel in and out, and execute each mission. That seems like a pretty tight turnaround, especially if each factory was different enough to warrant a new/fresh plan. 

(One difficulty never mentioned because their raids are relegated to a montage: the fact that Hydra factories appear to be staffed by slave labour. Means the Howlies can’t just bust in guns blazing! Or, at least, I don’t think Steve would stand for it. They’d have to free the workers first, and hopefully they’d be workers both physically capable and willing to join in the fight.)

In the film, they are never shown being back in the UK between these missions,  right up until the last Valkyrie mission in 1945, and dialogue seems to suggest there hasn’t been any personal contact between them and the HQ staff in between. 

(It does seem a bit nuts to be shipping them out and back every time, rather than just keeping them on the continent. Also nuts to be planning their most important Valkyrie mission only the day before. But anyway...) 

In order to take part in D-Day, they had to have been back to England at least once, to receive those highly classified orders and to rehearse (can’t be discussing details of D-Day over radio!) 

Also, they couldn’t have been allowed to go haring off attacking Hydra bases any old where, because it might have been inconvenient for D-Day (ie. if the Nazis increased defenses in certain places just because Captain America had been sighted there recently.)

TPTB could have used the Howlies as a diversion, sending them on dummy missions designed to make the Nazis think D-Day is going to happen somewhere else. I think Greece and Italy would be a great way to convince the Nazis that an invasion will be coming from the south, not the north! They could even have used doubles of the Howlies to throw the Nazis off the scent, as part of the Ghost Army (they did this IRL with Bernard Montgomery!) 

Maybe the SSR would be advised to keep the Howlies’ real missions as far away from Normandy as possible, earlier on, and then the reverse right before D-Day? (ie. damage Hydra’s factories that are nearest to Normandy, close to D-Day, so that they can’t supply weapons and don’t have enough time to rebuild).

Other possibilities: 

If they were not stationed in the UK between missions, and weren’t with the US Army of occupation (because it hadn’t invaded that part of Europe yet) Steve & Co. might have been living undercover in Nazi-occupied territory in the run up to missions against local Hydra bases (in, eg. France and Poland. Chance for Frenchy to get his Maquis on!) Very dangerous, very nerve-wracking, very Inglourious Basterds of them. Also potentially very dangerous for the locals, too, since there would surely be reprisals against them after any successful anti-Hydra attack by Howlies. 

IRL There was a concentration camp called Terezin in Czechoslovakia, near-ish where that one Hydra base is shown. (It’s the one that the Nazis famously filmed a propaganda movie in, after cleaning it up and deporting a bunch of people to Auschwitz to seemingly reduce overcrowded living conditions, to fool the visiting Red Cross.) So Steve and the Howlies might have gone off-mission to go and liberate that; could be that was a source of slave labour for the nearby Hydra factory.  (From a character POV, Terezin was known for having a big artistic culture among the inmates, and surely Steve would feel empathy for those used in propaganda, having been made to do that himself.)

Logically speaking, I would’ve expected that last Hydra base to be in Holland or Denmark -- not Greece -- to complete the ring of bases formed around Germany. 🤔 Maybe even more likely to be Denmark, since the Tesseract (which kicked off the whole Hydra supremacy thing) was discovered in Tønsberg, SE Norway.

[stuckyfingers]

Don't you ever think-

Steve's stiff hand movements in the USO tour and the highschool PSAs were always kinda weird? what if he's overcompensating bc he feels his normal gesturing looks gay?

(many military offices and government organizations used 'feminine body language' as a 'tell' to exclude men from service too)

[the-seas-song]

Steve Rogers and America Chavez

Since today is July 4th, I made this post to celebrate two of my favorite characters - Steve Rogers and America Chavez! They (unfortunately) don't interact often, but when they do, it's epic!

This animated short is set in the Marvel Rising universe, which I'm pretty sure is also the Avengers Assemble universe!

This is a prequel to the Marvel Rising series, and features Steve and America bonding over kicking butt and restoring vintage motorcycles.

Steve and America are also the only two characters who have punched Hitler:

AND America becomes Captain America later in life:

(from All-New Hawkeye #3 (2016))

I want to wish a very happy birthday to Steve and America, and thank them (and their creators) for representing a version of America I'm proud to support.

[amarriageoftrueminds]

Why I agree and think he's more like Carrot than Vimes:

Vimes is such a cynical bastard that he spots when something untoward is going on first, almost always. He doesn't need it spelled out for him, the way MCU Steve and Carrot more commonly do.

examples:

Steve needs Tony to point out the shiftiness of SHIELD in A1 (even though the very first thing SHIELD ever did to Steve was lie to him) before he thinks to go and find those Hydra guns. And Steve keeps working for them, despite both things; because he wants to believe they are good, and is willing to ignore his own instincts. Vimes would never. He would not have needed to be told something was up. He would not have worked for SHIELD, like Steve did, without either acknowledging that it's an imperfect organisation, or with a narratively-acknowledged intention of cleaning it up from the inside like he does with the Night Watch. (They could so easily have written this for Steve... Ugh.)

Steve hemming and hawing about SHIELD not being great for years... and then having Fury both show him and quite literally spell it out for him. Again: Steve isn't working for SHIELD in a Vimes-y 'I know this part of the authorities ain't shit but I'll be the good part of it' way. He is deluding himself about their goodness in a way cynical Vimes never would or could, which is why he is surprised and disappointed when they turn out to be bad. Carrot behaviour. Not Vimes.

Vimes never would've automatically assumed Natasha was trustworthy either, the way Steve does. It takes Steve two years -- albeit while he's going through a very turbulent time -- to realise that spies gunna spy. That's more Carrot than Vimes.

In CACW Steve needs Sharon to spell it out for him that there is something suspicious about Bucky's capture for a crime, even after Bucky has already told Steve that he didn't do it. That's Carrot, not Vimes. Vimes would be the one immediately clocking that something smells fishy, even before they went to get Bucky (he wouldn't just believe it, the way Steve does). He'd be the one telling everyone else, not the one being told.

In CACW Steve doesn't clock that Tony is trying to manipulate him into signing the Accords until Tony slips up mentioning something he shouldn't (Wanda's situation). Again: Vimes would've known Tony was full of shit before he even opened his mouth. Carrot would've given him the benefit of the doubt, like Steve does.

MCU Steve is a man who will do the right thing and combat wrongdoing when he sees it... but who most usually needs to have it pointed out to him first.

Yes, MCU-Steve is smart. He is underestimated and thought to be simple, like Carrot.

But the very reason why this 👆 scene is so satisfying is because Steve never gets to be the guy who clocks the bad guys immediately, outside of this moment.

The MCU prefer to write him as the man who's so good himself that it doesn't occur to him other people are bad until it becomes obvious (both to him and us, the audience).

This elevator scene is a rarity in the MCU.

(Think about it; the only other time Steve clocks a wrong 'un straight off is when he first wakes up and SHIELD try to fake the 1940s. But then the MCU hands him the clueless ball and he has to run with it, right up until this elevator. Sadly there are more examples of Steve failing to use these instincts than the reverse. 😕)

I would disagree with the claim that he's not surprised when people turn out untrustworthy.

He was surprised by Natasha's duplicity, and Fury's, and the revelation of Zola's employment.

The fact that he doesn't look surprised here is partly because he has already been explicitly told that SHIELD is rotten, and these guys are SHIELD.

But his lack of surprise that it's These Specific Guys doing the attacking... makes me wonder if Steve kind of didn't like Strike Team already? 🤔

Ideally, Steve would be written as a blend of both Vimes and Carrot. A Vimes with Carrot aesthetics. But the MCU dismissively skips right over his tough beginnings; far too much so for him to qualify for Vimes comparisons. No mention of his Irishness and almost none of his struggling single mother. His disability ceases to exist outside of one prop piece of paper.

(Canonically, rather than poverty and disability, they frame the source of Steve's pre-serum sadness as being... his lack of a girlfriend. 🙄 FFS. Ugh.)

Like Carrot, there is a certain ruthlessness in MCU!Steve. A core of steel. (The pathological pursuit of Bucky is so Carrot-and-Angua of him.)

Example: despite how much he cares about Bucky, Steve is willing to choke Bucky unconscious, pull his arm out of his socket, and blow up the helicarrier they are both on, (getting Bucky crushed by a steel beam), just to do the Right Thing. I can't picture Vimes doing that. But that move could've come straight out of Carrot's "personal isn't the same as important" playbook. It kinda takes a hard man to be ruthlessly righteous, like this. (Dark!Steve is kinda canon Steve in this sense.)

And he does have that Carrot-like charmed life where his decisions cause massive upheavals or injuries for everyone else around him... but he walks away unscathed.

The writing of MCU Steve is inconsistent when it comes to his Power, though.

One minute he's Captain America but he can't get cops or Fury to listen to him... And the next he's Captain America and people hang on his every word because his speeches are so inspiring. Strangers will go to war just because 'Cap's orders' and 'Captain America needs my help.' That's Carrot, not Vimes.

I've always thought it would be so interesting if Steve could be Carrot-like self-aware of the power he does (now) have over people as Captain America (ie. acknowledging that Captain America (the living legend) is good at being obeyed.) Maybe have a Carrot moment where he expresses the wish that people would do the right thing because it's right, not just because it's Captain America doing the asking.

Steve's willingness to confront authority figures is very Vimesy.... But then, Carrot does that too -- he's just more polite about it than Vimes. Carrot arrests the head of the Thieves Guild, and it's framed as being because he's... simple (which doesn't mean stupid).

Maybe that's Steve's most Vimesy trait; that he blazes in passionately (and, arguably, stupidly). Speechifying, where Carrot would be cool and calm, and probably accomplish more because of it. (More Natasha-style.)

MCU!Steve has Vimes's lack of political instinct. Carrot could criticise an authority figure to their face, and mean it, and get away with it, but... where Vimes would do it noisily, Carrot would be subtle about it. Steve isn't Politely manipulative in the way Carrot can be.

Plus, that one quote about Vimes:

“Any normal person, they crawl off if they get a beating. Or they have the sense to stay down, at least. But sometimes you get one who just won’t let go. Eight-stone weaklings who’ll try to head-butt Detritus. Evil little bantamweight bastards who’ll bust a bottle on the bar and try to attack five watchmen all at once. You know what I mean? Idiots who’ll go on fighting long after they should stop. The only way to put ’em down is to put ’em out.”

This is a picture of an enthusiastic fighter.

That may be Vimes... but it's not entirely Steve.

Steve is a thinking man who becomes, coincidentally, also a fighting man. Pre-serum, he doesn't pick fights; the fights pick him. He doesn't attack groups of people, single handed. When someone bullies him personally he doesn't speak up or fight back; other people are his priority. But he isn't fighting for fighting's sake; violence is not his first resort.

So he fights -- reluctantly -- with brains, not spite. He snatches up a dustbin lid; tips over the flagpole.

His catchphrase is not 'I can do this all day' because Steve thinks he can but because he knows he can't, and intends to defy and annoy his enemy anyway. (And that's also why that phrase is Bucky's bat-signal to swoop in and help him. You know things are dire once Steve breaks out the 'I can do this all day.')

[amarriageoftrueminds]

How long did Steve actually know Peggy?

(with pictures!)

[ post with just the images here ]

Short Answer: 

626 days total / 20 months, 15 days, and only spoke on 8 separate days.

Long Answer:

Steve got his last 4F / first 1A on 14th of June, 1943.

When Steve arrived at Camp Lehigh, Peggy introduced herself and the SSR.

Directly afterwards, Col. Phillips introduced himself and explained that they would be there for a week only before choosing someone to be given serum:

If they had any common sense, they would’ve said Steve was at Basic Training for a while before being drafted into Project Rebirth.

This being Marvel, however... 

[ full meta under cut ] 

What If...?, Marvel’s Instagram, and Marvel Studios' The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline book gave the ‘official’ date of Steve’s serum as June 22, 1943.

.

This means: 

Steve was enlisted June 14th 1943,

shipped out to Camp Lehigh June 15th 1943,

was there for just a week (til June 21st 1943),

Had a conversation with Erskine about why he was chosen on evening of June 21st.

and was back in Brooklyn and receiving serum on June 22nd 1943.

Poor lad barely had any time to pack and unpack! 😲

Sidenote:

The first date shown in the movie is March 1942:

When Red Skull acquired the Tesseract. 

This implies (but does not conclusively prove) that Dr Erskine must have been captured by the Allies before March 1942, because: 

when he has his conversation with Steve, he merely said Red Skull believed “that there is a great power hidden in the earth, left here by the gods.” IE. he wasn’t aware that Red Skull had successfully seized that power (the Tesseract).

Stark is flummoxed by Tesseract-related tech when he sees it, which he  surely wouldn’t be if Erskine had known about Red Skull having the Tesseract because Erskine could’ve just told him.

.

Anyway, back to the present and Steve was already in the local newspapers by Wednesday, 23rd June 1943:

Anyway, he and Peggy only spoke for 1-2 days during that time: June 22nd, the day he received serum, and (what was probably) June 23rd, the day after.

.

IMO it seems like it’s just the day after because: 

everyone who was at the blown-up Brooklyn base is there 👆 (wherever ‘there’ is) as if no time has passed at all...

...but we know that time must have passed, because Senator Brandt shows Steve a paper dated the 23rd [see above.] 👆 So enough time has passed for the newspapers to hear about Steve, for a journalist to write about it, print it, and for the Senator to get a hold of a copy. 

Enough time has passed for the SSR to get the saboteur’s Hydra sub out of the water at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in order for Howard Stark to be flummoxed by it, as he is in this scene. (And he is still in the pit with it; he hasn’t had long enough to look at it already. Ergo, not much time has passed.) 

You could say that it’s a later date, and Brandt just happens to have a newspaper from the 23rd. Except...

...Phillips mentions having talked to the president that morning... which makes more sense as something he would do immediately after the whole Hydra-saboteur bomb kerfuffle, not later. That’s not a phone call he could put off for days. That’s a call you make straight away. 

Although that doesn’t automatically mean that that-morning’s phone call is the first or only phone call Phillips has made to the President, since the Hydra-saboteur-kerfuffle, meaning this could be a date later than June 23rd. 

But the fact that:

everyone who was at the bomb site is still there,

Howard is still in the pit looking at the Hydra sub and admitting he’s clueless about it, as if that is new information he’s announcing,

they’re taking Steve’s blood, also not something to delay on,

and Brandt is asking basic questions about Hydra. If more than a day had passed, he would already know the answers to these questions, even if he had been distracted by the Press.

Suggesting it is very soon after. 

The lack of delay in Phillips’s actions also supports this idea. Earlier on in the movie he moaned to Erskine about having had to talk to senators multiple times before he could get the ball rolling on Project Rebirth. But now he’s cheerful and decisive. Which to me suggests he’s had one decisive phone call with the President, where they exchanged all the information they needed, and that’s it. (He doesn’t say “I spoke to the President again this morning,” for example.) 

Brandt asks Phillips what he’s going to do about Hydra. Phillips smirks and answers that the SSR is being re-tasked to go after them. As if he anticipated the question and got the President to sign off on that just prior; close enough to this moment that Phillips is only acting on those orders just now. 

"This morning" implies that this scene is taking place later on in the day of June 23rd 1943; after the morning, so that Phillips isn’t saying he called the president just now, for example. 

There’s strong sunlight coming in from the window behind Steve 👆, so I’d say we can place this scene at afternoon, June 23rd.

And we can infer that it isn’t evening yet, because Phillips refers to flying out “tonight,” as if if the night of June 23rd has not yet arrived.

.

(Another maddening possibility: it’s all happening on the same day, a day that Phillips just happened to have spoken to the President on the phone in the morning already, but either the prop makers got the date wrong on the newspaper or the official Marvel instagram got the date of Steve’s serum wrong. 🤦‍♀️)

.

So, timeline: 

June 22nd, 1943: serum, bomb/saboteur, Erskine’s death.

(possibly but not definitively) June 23rd, 1943: morning, newspapers reporting on Steve are printed (Senator Brandt sees them), the Hydra sub is shipped to dry dock for Howard to look at, and the President tells Phillips via the phone that the SSR is being retasked “as of today.” 

afternoon, Steve has his blood drawn, Phillips relays the President’s orders to him, Brandt, Peggy and Stark. Steve objects. Brandt recruits Steve for the USO. 

night, Phillips, Peggy and Howard fly out. 

.

Unless it’s all the same day, in which case the events go:

June 22nd or 23rd: 

morning, Phillips talks to the President who officially re-tasks the SSR, Steve gets serum, blown up, Erskine killed.

afternoon, the Hydra sub put in dry dock for Howard to examine, newspapers rushed out an edition about Steve, Brandt recruited Steve for the USO using said paper.

night, Peggy, Phillips and Howard flew out to London.

.

So Peggy was flown out to London that night, being (probably but not conclusively) the night of either June 22nd or June 23rd, 1943.

.

And then Steve was on tour with the USO for 4 months (from July 1943).

Probably starting mid/late July / early August, to give them enough time to find 20+ chorus girls, create and fit costumes, build sets, book venues, choreograph and plan a show, and do some rehearsals... though apparently not enough for Steve to have learned his lines. 🤦‍♀️ 

During this period, as the USO shows grow ever more elaborate (up to 40 showgirls, bigger sets, a fake Hitler, a military band, and harley davidson motorcycles) Steve also films multiple propaganda reels, signs autographs, takes photos with the public (and Senator Brandt), appears in his own comics, sneaks into the cinema to watch himself on screen, and travels to Buffalo, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York! 😵

Senator Brandt’s smooth patter in recruiting Steve for the USO, how he acts during it, and the fact that there was a cameraman there to take photos of Steve just before he got serum, to me suggests that Brandt was planning to do this USO show with whoever the serum worked on. 

So it’s possible a lot of the show logistics and planning were already underway before Steve was even chosen for serum. That would mean the USO show kicked off much sooner after Steve got serum (which might account for why he’s so nervous on stage...)

And it would explain how they were able to cram so much activity into four short months.

.

Meanwhile, in October 1943, in Azzano, Italy...

And then Steve goes to Italy, five miles from the front

on the 3rd of November, 1943:

We can see that Steve and Peggy were not in contact in between these times / while he was on USO Tour, because: 

no reference to any such contact is ever shown or implied (and Kevin Feige said Steve was sleeping with someone else while on tour).

Steve looks surprised to see her when she shows up. He hasn’t invited her to come -- which he could, by letter -- and asks her what she’s doing there. 

She’s cagey about why she’s there/what she’s been up to; so she’s not someone who even can carry on a correspondence, given the classified nature of her work. 

If they had somehow been corresponding anyway, she would already have told Steve by now that she can’t talk about her being there/why. So he wouldn’t need to ask.

As well as Steve not knowing basic things about her, she also still doesn’t know basic things about Steve, that a casual correspondent of four months would know by now [see below].

.

We know the rescue of the 107 was on the night of November 3rd, 1943. 

Because Phillips cites that date when he’s typing up Steve’s official KIA letter:

The sequence before Steve’s rescue of the 107 also implies that Bucky et al were only captured very recently at Azzano, because:

the rest of the 107 are still there (haven’t been deployed elsewhere),

wounded are still being brought in, 

Col. Phillips is still engaged in writing up condolence letters about the lost soldiers when Steve barges into his tent.

(Why is the head of the SSR in Italy, writing condolence letters about the 107 when he specifically said he and his agents were flying out to London, where his HQ is? Here’s a clue from wikipedia: “Alsos personnel followed close behind the front lines in Italy, France, and Germany, occasionally crossing into enemy-held territory to secure valuable resources before they could be destroyed or scientists escape or fall into rival hands.”

However, those personnel would not include the head honcho (Phillips), the entire Army’s number one weapons contractor (Stark), or a desk jockey whose opinion is neither sought nor valued (Peggy). 

And the rest of the movie shows them back in London (and therefore not featuring in field footage of the Commandos), while Steve & Co. destroy Hydra weapons factories (not sweep them for intell.) 

And they stay in London, until the entire army hits a very important base at the very end of the movie. And even then, Stark isn’t shown attending!

So maybe he was just in Italy for the chorus girls...? 🤷‍♀️

.

Steve and the Howlies had to have to covered 35 miles as the crow flies (30 miles behind enemy lines + 5 miles to the Army base), with wounded soldiers, and through what Phillips describes as “some of the most heavily fortified territory in Europe” which was also mountainous. They would’ve had to seek a flat route to get the jeeps through. And this with no resources -- like food, medicine, specialised clothing, etc. 

Covering 5 miles a day under those extremely difficult and dangerous circumstances, it takes them a week to get back to Camp. 

(Sidenote, I looked up a modern estimate of hikers on the Swiss Alps, and it said they’d traverse a 105 mile trail over 7-10 days. Viz. potentially 10.5 miles a day!)

Making the day of Steve’s return 👆 at least, November 10th, 1943.

Marvel Studios' The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline confirms this:

.

Afterwards, it seems they went straight to London. 

(No contact with Peggy in transit is shown or implied).

.

Sidenote: although no other locations and no other interaction is shown in November, between the 107 returning and Steve being in London, it seems as if some time has passed. 

And once again, we can tell that because of Senator Brandt and newspapers.

There has been enough time for more than one newspaper (The Daily Mail, and Stars and Stripes), to publish stories about Steve. 👆

For Senator Brandt to announce that he’ll be giving Steve a medal for valour, and for that news to have travelled back to the UK.

And, at the very least, enough time has elapsed since the 10th of November for the Senator to believe that Steve could feasibly travel back to America in time to receive his medal in person. 

(Which he declines to do. LOLOL.)

So, say: 

11th: newspapers report (Steve & Co travelling back to London). 

12th: news reaches America / Brandt decides / announces the medal.

13th: Brandt expecting Steve to fly from Europe to America (which would’ve taken over 17 hours, then.) Doesn’t necessarily have to be the very next day, but based on past behaviour Brandt expects action to be taken the very same day as the press reporting on Steve! So...

14th: for the actual medal ceremony? (so that Steve isn’t travelling for 17 hours and then immediately appearing in public) Which seems like it’s happening simultaneously with Steve being in London; I don’t think he’d delay on relating his intell about Hydra.

(And that last day would also account for how the news has travelled back to the UK from the US in order to appear in The Daily Mail.)

We know that this day Steve is in London is supposed to be the day he’s receiving his medal, in person, because of this CATFA deleted scene: 

So IMO we’re looking at this date being 14th November, 1943 at a very strict minimum. 

NB: All this pre-supposes that it takes 4 days to move the Howlies from the Continent back to London, which it feasibly might if they had Stark and his plane, still in Italy. Stark’s deleted-scene surprise at seeing Steve in London suggests either he was not the pilot / his was not the plane responsible for flying Steve to London, or that he was / his was the plane but he expected Steve to move straight on back to the US. We know the SSR had at least one plane in the US Army base in Italy, because someone was flying multiple reconnaissance flights, trying to spot the 107 -- the last of which returned Nov 10th.

.

In London, Steve and Peggy are shown talking on 2 separate days, total:

1) In the London HQ, relaying the intell about Hydra weapons-parts factories, gathered from the Krausberg weapons-parts factory and from Bucky, when Steve tells Phillips he has got his own team together. 

And in the pub, on the evening of that same night, when Steve goes to Assemble the Howling Commandos for the first time. 

(I’m saying it’s the same night as that day^ because no time passing between these conversations is implied or stated, not via montage or any other means. It’s a straight cut, and Steve is wearing the same clothes. Also: assembling his team is not something Steve could delay on, after already telling his CO he  had one. In fact it’s kinda nuts Steve didn’t think to do this before telling Phillips he had a team already. What would he have done if they’d said no?? 😂)

2) in the London HQ, the morning of the day after (8am) when Peggy shoots at him.

(Won’t dignify either of those scenes with triggery screencaps!)

.

So Steve and the Howlies are officially a team from let’s say 14th November, 1943. 

(We know there must’ve been a bit of a time delay before the Howlies were deployed, to give Stark time to build Steve the version of the Cap suit he requested as well as supplying him with those Harley Davidsons WLA ‘Liberators.’ That Cap suit is the only thing Steve is shown fighting Hydra in, thereafter, meaning the Howlies did in fact wait until it was ready before deploying (they didn’t, for example, send Steve out in something else at first and then  get the suit shipped out later on. That isn’t shown.) 

Since Bucky was the one who suggested him keeping ‘the outfit’ I’ll bet he had some input on that suit. 🤔

So depending on how long you think that would take, could be the Howlies weren’t out on the Continent kickin’ ass ‘til December ‘43 or January '44. 

But despite this delay, no contact with Peggy is shown or implied in the interim.)

.

For the next 15 months & 15 days there is also no direct contact shown between Steve and Peggy, while Steve is on the continent and she is in London.

.

At first glance it looks like we can deduce roughly the dates of when Bucky died and Steve returned to London.

Because after capturing him Phillips tells Zola he sent a telegram about him*

*a prop which is not shown directly on screen

...a prop dated (the morning of) February 3rd, 1945: 

Soon followed by a tight 24-hour turnaround for the Howlies to go and attack the Valkyrie base in Austria, which we know from this 👇  piece of dialogue between Col. Phillips and Gabe Jones: 

But.

We don’t know: 

1) that the date on the telegram is accurate. This prop is not directly shown in the movie. And, in the scene, Phillips hints at this telegram being intercepted by Hydra and this being bad news for Zola (because it says he is working for SSR. The Foreshadowing is INSANE!)

So Phillips might have lied on that telegram -- backdated it to make it look to Schmidt like Zola had betrayed him and been working for the SSR since before the Howlies ‘captured’ him. Making the day of his interrogation... later than the Feb 3rd on the telegram.

2) that Zola Therefore told Phillips ‘you have 24 hours’ on February 3rd.  Since the telegram date could be false. 

Even if it wasn’t, Zola could’ve said this to Phillips on a subsequent day. He could’ve just told Phillips when the date Red Skull was planning to do something was, and not necessarily 24 hours before that date.

Meaning we can’t tell by the telegram what date the HQ briefing about the Valkyrie mission, and therefore what date the Valkyrie mission. 

However, Agents of Shield 2.01: Shadows...

and Marvel Studios' The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline tie in book, put Steve’s only possible death date as: 

Thursday, the 1st of March, 1945. 

(AOS’s Morita and Dum-dum capture Werner Reinhardt on 2nd of March, 1945, and Reinhardt remarks that Red Skull is dead. 

Given that Steve ‘died’ on the same day in March, and it’s already known about by the 2nd, that leaves the 1st of March as physically the only March date, before that point, at which the Valkyrie mission could possibly have taken place.)

.

And we know (from CATWS canon) that Steve’s death was reported (as a disappearance) on 

Monday, 5th March, 1945: 

So I think we can definitively state that MCU intends for Steve to have ‘died’ on Thursday, 1st March, 1945. 😥

.

And the KGB opened a file on Bucky on Friday the 23rd of March, 1945.

.

It is not categorically stated that the mission where Bucky ‘died’ happened immediately before these late-February scenes in London.👆 

He could, theoretically, have died in late 1944, as his exhibit in the Smithsonian in CATWS claims:

However, that exhibit makes multiple other errors... 

(Such as: listing two different dates of birth on the same display, saying Bucky enlisted shortly after Pearl Harbour (nothing in CATFA shows this and his dog-tag number suggests he was drafted), saying he shipped out to Italy and was captured ‘that fall’ of 1942, when that year was definitely shown as 1943, and the Marvel Timeline tie-in book also shows Azzano as happening in October ‘43, etc.) 

...So I think we can safely rule this out 👆 as a prop-maker’s mistake! 

Plus, Steve’s grief in the pub feels very raw, very immediate, which to me suggest a very-recent bereavement, not something he’s had a couple weeks or months to weep over already. Steve’s a pretty stoic guy. So we know Bucky ‘died’ near to March 1st/end of February 1945. 

The only canon suggestion of time passing between Bucky’s ‘death’ and the pub scene is Steve having already had a chance to get back to London and write a report about it, in order to mention said report to Peggy and feasibly expect her to have read it. 

If we follow the previous observations / logic in this meta, then Steve reports things ASAP and actions are expected to be taken ASAP.  

As a soldier with a CO to answer to, that report about Bucky/Zola is not something Steve could delay on delivering. If Steve drinking in the pub is afternoon/evening, say this was the day he delivered his report (probably in the morning). 

Well that’s enough time to reasonably expect Peggy to have read the report, and for Steve to be drinking after delivering it, but still be neatly groomed in his immaculate on-duty uniform, having just gone off-duty (not, eg. dressed down as if this is another, later day, a day off). 

On the surface of it, it looks like we can’t say for certain that Steve’s drinking day is the day before Phillips interrogates Zola. Even if it’s framed as if the stoicism he exhibits at the end of that sequence is the signal that he is now galvanised to act ASAP, ie. the very next day, with one scene leading to / causing another...

Bucky’s ‘death’ date might have been any number of days before.  

Except: Zola is a hugely valuable acquisition. 

I don’t think Steve et al would’ve captured and brought Zola back to London, at extraordinary personal cost, only for Phillips to waste days before interrogating Zola. 

I think Phillips would’ve been in to interrogate Zola immediately. 

That to me is the closest to ‘proof’ that Steve is back in London, delivering his report and then drinking in the pub, either on or as close to the day of Zola’s interrogation as physically possible. 

(IMO this can’t all be happening on the same day. I don’t think Steve is the kind of guy to deliver a report in the morning, go off and try to get shit-faced while still on duty / in uniform, and then go back to HQ after drinking for a mission-briefing.  Not under normal circumstances, let alone when the mission (to avenge Bucky! and stop Red Skull!) is so important!  Steve appears to know already that he can’t get drunk... but that doesn’t stop him from trying. I don’t think he’d do that if he knew he was expected back to plan the very-important Bucky-Avenging Mission on the same day. CATFA writers may disagree and say this all happened on the same day, but that idea’s kinda wild to me!)

So when was that interrogation date? 

I think we can deduce that it also must’ve been as-close-as-possible to the Valkyrie mission briefing date. 

The fact that Gabe is asking how long they have means that that intell was fresh information to the Howlies on the HQ mission briefing date (which was 28th of February = 24 hours before 1st March.) 

Now, if Phillips knew about 1st March being significant in advance of 28th February:

it would be incredibly stupid of him to not tell anyone until only 24 hours before.

he would’ve told the Howlies already / Gabe wouldn’t need to ask.

But if Zola only revealed the date of the Valkyrie Mission Day very close to the mission briefing date... that would explain why Phillips didn’t mention it sooner. Another point: A lot of what Phillips says in the mission briefing sounds like a summary and continuation of what we see Zola telling him in the interrogation scene. As if there has been no further interrogation / no more intell to relate since that interrogation, a point in favour of it being the only time he has interrogated Zola (meaning it must be happening on 27th of February).

As in: Phillips went into see Zola as soon as they got him (27th of February) and Zola told him the Valkyrie mission was happening March 1st, and that was their only interaction.

This interrogation scene comes before Steve is shown drinking, alone. (Implying Steve is drinking in the later pm, since it’s ‘dinner’ time for Zola, just before.)

Assuming Phillips’ telegram about Zola is false (which is neater, and it being a lie is mentioned in the scene, and although we have the prop the prop is not directly shown on-screen in the movie).

Sunday, 25th February. Bucky probably 'died?’

Monday, 26th February. Howlies flying back to London, with Zola?? And since Phillips wouldn’t wait days to deal with Zola:

Tuesday, 27th of February. Morning, Steve delivers his report.  Phillips reads the report, and sends a falsely-dated telegram about Zola to Washington via SHAEF HQ. Dinner time, Phillips interrogates Zola, tells him about the telegram, and Zola tells him about 1st March / Valkyrie Day. Steve goes drinking, alone.

Wednesday, 28th February 1945, Valkyrie Mission briefing.

Thursday, 1st March 1945, Valkyrie Mission day.

NB: This pre-supposes that it only takes a day to move from the Continent back to London, which it would if they had a plane like Stark’s ready to pick them up any time. 

They well might, given how important it is to get Zola back to London, and get the Howlies out to take down the Valkyrie base.

If they didn’t have such a plane, of course, it would take them longer. However, nothing in the movie (such as, eg. a travel-montage) does show it taking longer. It seems to imply a very short turnaround.

.

Sidenote: 

Steve never does anything Peggy says or does, always does the exact opposite -- which is the moral, heroic, selfless thing -- and also never asks what she thinks he should do. (They also try to create the illusion of Steve following Peggy’s orders, in the denouement, by having her irrelevantly interrupt to remind Steve to do what he was already doing anyway.*)

This is a symptom of poor / misogynist writing, whereby Token ‘Strong Female Character’ Love Interest is relegated to a Sexy Lamp with post-it note stuck to it* + behaving like a generic male bully in a female skin + idiot hetero-norms in writing that make any straight couple automatic foils, who must bicker miserably and be on the opposite sides of every argument in order to generate ‘Chemistry.’ 🙄 

Ergo, Steve never does what Peggy says, because as his foil what she says it always the opposite of what he says. Making what she says, defacto, the [unethical, cowardly, self-serving, tactically unsound] thing to Steve’s [moral, heroic, selfless, also tactically correct] thing.

. (disclaimer: any other aspects of Peggy being unpleasant must be put down to Atwell’s performance choices.) .

Her show erroneously claims that Steve relied heavily upon her for “courage, strategy, and moral guidance." 

Passing over the insulting and demonstrably-untrue suggestion that Steve needed external courage or ethical guidance...

(Metas on why this is untrue, and would actually make the plot impossible if it were true! HERE, HERE, and HERE .👈)

...If what Peggy is saying were true, this would mean Steve is somehow relying upon a person whom he doesn’t even speak to for 467 of the 473 days when strategic input was even relevant to his life. So he must have been clueless the vast majority of his life. 🤦‍♀️

The numbers don’t lie. Steve physically cannot have been relying upon Peggy for anything when they weren’t even in contact. That’s quite literally not physically possible. 🤷‍♀️

This simultaneously puts the lie to the idea of Peggy following the Howlies around Europe to collate intell in the places they hit.

A) because the Howlies aren’t shown sweeping these factories for information. They’re shown reducing them to fiery rubble, which you don’t do if you’re looking for documents. They’re not looking for documents; they’re looking for Zola.

B) even if the Howlies weren’t destroying the factories and were sweeping them for ABC (atomic, biological, chemical) Peggy isn’t the kind of specialist who would even know what to look for.  

She’s an intelligence liaison, not a scientist. Not even a linguist. That’s not her area of expertise at all.

Whereas the Howlies themselves by contrast are surprisingly well-qualified. They’ve worked in a Hydra weapons factory, so they know what’s important. Gabe is a fluent German-speaker. Frenchie knows ordinance. Morita looks like a radio expert / is shown operating captured Hydra tech more than once. Bucky as a sniper can do distance recon. And Steve has a photographic memory. 

So they really don’t need an eighth wheel telling them how to recognise or blow up Hydra factories (how would she even know?) 

That’s already their forte. 

C) even if Peggy was a technical expert somehow better qualified than them (which she isn’t), her opinion is repeatedly denigrated by Phillips who says she was a chancey (ie. ill-qualified) hire. 

He wouldn’t send someone to judge important documents who is ill-qualified to do so and whose opinion doesn’t carry any weight with him. He comes with an inch of firing her in this movie for this very reason. 

D) The only time she’s shown taking part in a mission, it’s actually more of a full blown Army Operation, where even the old man Phillips goes along in person. This is an unusual occurrence, i.e. not something she normally does.

AOS ineptly tries to retcon that she was with the Howlies more often.

(The Agent Carter show undermines this intent, because Dum-Dum is discombobulated by Peggy’s presence on a mission and doesn’t know how to act around her. 

This is showing that it’s not a familiar sensation for him, which it would be if she was an honorary Howlie. Ergo, even when they think they’re showing she was a Howlie, they’re actually showing she wasn’t. 

And this is why she didn’t join Steve on the mission to rescue the 107 -- that’s just not her job.)

But just like I can’t claim that Howard Stark fought alongside the Howlies in person throughout the war, if that is not what is shown, they cannot claim that Peggy did so either. 

Because that is not shown. 

*As mentioned: in the middle of the denouement, when Peggy asks Steve if he was about to do X important thing, and he goes ‘right!’ and carries on...

And later, her interrupting at a crucial point to make it about herself (to make Steve kiss her the same way Lorraine sexually assaulted him earlier on) and then telling him to carry on... 

Peggy telling him to do it is both the classic conditioning behaviour of someone who wants to control another person (by creating a mental association between their commands and the victim’s actions) and/or the behaviour of someone with a delusion of importance. 

They are ineptly trying to create the appearance of Steve doing what Peggy says, because she says so. But Steve is doing what he was already going to do anyway, before she spoke.

Her input is not a deciding factor in what Steve does, nor on the plot. Her net moral/strategic impact on Steve is still zero; and she’s still replaceable with a Sexy Lamp.

So that aforementioned claim that Steve relied on her, listened to her, would do what she says, etc. is false.

And they can’t claim he listened to her at any other point, because that is not shown; they weren’t in contact.

.

Conclusion...

Steve and Peggy knew OF each other for 626 days 

or 20 months & 15 days.

(From mid-June 1943 to the beginning of March, 1945.)

They spoke on 2 days max in June, 1943 (the 22nd and probably 23rd, the day of his serum and day after) despite being in the same place for a week prior and sharing a prior car ride!

They spoke on 4 days max in November 1943.

3rd day-- Nov 3rd, in Italy, pre-107 rescue,  4th day-- Nov 10th, in Italy, post-107 rescue,  5th day-- Nov 14th(?) In London, the day Steve relayed Hydra intell and told Col. Phillips he was assembling his own team, while Brandt was expecting him to be in America receiving his medal for valour; probably the same day the Howlies were founded. 6th day-- Nov 15th(?) 8am, in London, when Peggy shot him.

They spoke on 2 days in February & March, 1945: 

7th day-- in the pub in London (Tuesday, 27th February?) 8th day-- the day of the Valkyrie raid (Thursday, 1st March.)

(While they are shown in the same place on another intervening day, February 28th, when they are both at London HQ during planning for the Valkyrie Mission, and it’s possible or even plausible that they did interact at that point... they are not actually shown speaking to each other on that day.) 

Totalling: a maximum of 8 days.

(could be as low as 6.)

.

And 6 months later, Peggy, Stark and Phillips founded SHIELD and had already recruited Zola into it in order for it to be front page news by 

Tuesday, 14th August, 1945:

(Thus putting the lie to the ridiculous idea that they didn’t know they’d recruited Nazis or what they were up to, btw. 👆)

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So of the 20 months & 15 days total they knew of each other, Steve and Peggy were only shown being in the same place and in contact during (but not for the entirety of) 4 months -- Jun and Nov ‘43, and Feb and March ‘45. 

For 19 months & 15 days of the 20 months & 15 days they knew of each other, they were not even in the same place: 

4 months while Steve was on one side of the Atlantic, during the late June-October USO Tour, she was in Europe. 

And 15 months & 15 days / 473 days when he was on the continent doing Hydra weapons-parts factory raids (from probably mid-Nov 1943 - Mar 1945) and she was in London. 

And this is deliberate by the film-makers, to depict theirs as a thwarted relationship-that-never-was, a Casablanca style ‘we never dated’ situation. Not a romance, but what could’ve been a romance, had circumstances been different. Them not being together is literally the point. 

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They show zero direct or indirect contact between the two during those 15 months & 15 days, and multiple things imply that there was none. 

For example: 

She doesn’t know that Steve has a friend in the 107 (which a correspondent would). 

Steve is surprised to see her (a correspondent wouldn’t be). 

Steve tells her about what he’s been up to, as if it’ll be new information to her. (It wouldn’t be, to a correspondent.) Sidenote: as per She Hulk, Bruce Banner is under the impression Steve slept with some woman during this time. SIGH.

Despite Agent Carter show’s attempts to retcon her history with Bucky’s  stolen valour / war record (nonsensically, since he is a soldier and she’s supposed to be a spy), the film and script are clear that she isn’t in Europe with the Howlies. 

She complains about having every door shut in her face, professionally, and Phillips says she was only at a desk job because he “took a chance with” hiring her. Ergo she’s complaining about not being in the field. 

Steve wouldn’t be carrying a photo of someone he sees in person for work all the time. The compass is physical evidence that she wasn’t there.  Sidenote: Steve wouldn’t be dating anyone Period, since he specifically said he didn’t want to do that. And Peggy also said she wouldn’t date until after the war is over. But anyway!

And, logically, if she's supposed to be a spy she also wouldn’t have her face broadcast in cinemas, making any cover she had useless, as Steve would know. But anyway!  It just highlights how they’re not really doing their jobs of writing her as a spy properly.

Steve wouldn’t need to take a photo out of a paper or SSR personnel file (which is what it looks like) if he saw Peggy regularly in person for work, or if they had been corresponding by letter, because she could’ve given him a proper photo personally. 

(This simultaneously rules out the possibility that she went out with the Howlies, and then went back to London; because if she had, she still could’ve given Steve a proper photo of herself, either via letter or in person.)

Likewise, Peggy wouldn’t need to steal a photo of Steve out of a personnel file if they had been in regular contact, either in person or by letter. (Because he could’ve given her a proper photo if they had been in contact.)

Steve and the Howlies are shown in direct contact with... each other, easily implying a long-standing relationship without having to go to a lot of film-making effort, via montage... but she is not. 

Whereas she is shown in the montage, but not being in direct contact. If the film-makers had wanted to show direct contact between them during this montage, they very easily could have. But they didn’t. If she had been there with the Howlies, and it was the film-makers intention to imply that, she would be in the footage with the Howlies, not sitting in a cinema in London watching footage of a mere photo of herself in the newsreels. Whatever your headcanon, you cannot retcon/change what canon is; the canon is that she wasn’t there in person. 

By February 1945 she still isn’t on first-name terms with Bucky, Steve’s second in command. That would be odd, if she was there in person.

As mentioned earlier, in her own show Dum-dum Dugan is disquieted by Peggy’s presence and reacts to her being in the field with the men as if it’s a fresh, disorientating experience for him, and he doesn’t know how to act. If she had actually been in the field with the Howlies in WWII, this could not be the case. He couldn’t be disorientated by something he was already used to. 

Steve’s time in London in WWII was so minimal that when he goes drinking to grieve Bucky, he goes drinking in the Whip & Fiddle even though it’s in ruins. That pub is chosen for its emotionally significant connection to Bucky... but if Bucky (Steve & the Howlies) had been in London a lot, they could’ve gone to other places, too, and there would be no reason to attach any particular significance to that one pub. But Steve does. And no other footage of the Howlies in London is shown. Ergo, the Howlies were in London for such a short period that the pool of places Steve could be is so small there’s only one (1) option. The alternative is that they were in London for ages and drinking in loads of places (and they never showed it for some reason) and that Peggy had to go around loads of pubs until she found the one Steve was in. But that would be daft. 

We are never shown the Howlies returning to that pub or London at all until after Steve is also ‘dead’ (ie. no proof of them going there multiple times. They easily could have shown that, in montage, if the Howlies had been back in London. But they didn’t.) They treat it as a special, 'one-off Solemn Event’ type of place. Not a regular haunt. 

And Steve is still surprised to see Peggy there, meaning he doesn’t think she knows him well enough to guess where he would go / that he didn’t tell her he was going there (possibly one of the Howlies did). So the reason she finds him can’t be because they interacted prior. 

She still has to ask Steve whether he respected “your friend” Bucky (when even Col. Phillips knows to refer to Bucky as Steve’s oldest friend, by this point). 

Steve tells her he can’t get drunk and has to ask whether she knows that already or not. This is yet another example of something a close confidante or correspondent of 15+ months would know, and that Steve wouldn’t ask because he would know/assume she already knew, if they had been in continuing contact.  (It’s unlikely that Steve himself didn’t know, before this moment. Soldiers who founded their unit in a pub? haven’t done any drinking for 15 months and 15 days? Not likely!) 

CEvans’s acting lends an air of despair and futility to the scene, too -- Steve trying to drink away his sorrows, even though he knows it won’t work. Had his tone been different, it would’ve connoted something else, eg. ‘hey, I’ve just found this new thing about my metabolism, did you know?’

Not being able to get drunk is canonically the very kind of thing Steve would complain about to her (and canonically also the very kind of thing she would tell him more about). If Steve was in contact with Peggy then he would’ve complained about it before, eg. via letter, too. But he didn’t, because he doesn’t know whether or not she knows. So they weren’t in contact.

The Howlies are only shown being in Phillips’s War Rooms / in the bunker in London once.  But Peggy is shown being there through the war.  If the Howlies (including Steve) were there on a regular basis, the film makers could’ve shown that in the montage. Instead the Howlies were shown on the Continent. viz. they never went back to London, and Peggy never went out to the Continent, until the very last mission.

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It is shown that the updated intelligence of what Steve and the Howlies are accomplishing in Europe during 1944 is being relayed back to HQ in London, because Peggy and other personnel are shown taking Hydra base flags off their maps, as Steve and the Howlies take them out. 

(As a consequence of Steve et al taking them out, it’s implied.)

However... it is not shown that Steve directly relayed that information to Peggy or that it’s Peggy’s job to gather that intell from them directly.

Peggy herself says that Phillips is in charge of devising strategy, not herself, and Steve soon disregards any strategy suggestions she makes anyway -- in fact, he gives her orders, not the other way around.

So if Steve was telling anyone what the Howlies are up to in Europe, it would be his superior officer Phillips. 

Not an agent like Peggy, of no military rank. 

(This is supported by the scene where Steve, having returned from rescuing the 107, goes straight to Phillips to report his successful mission. Not to Peggy, who is right there.) 

Plus, the Howlie shown handling communications isn’t Steve... 

...it’s Morita. 👆 (And guess who interrupts him and shoves him out of his seat?) 

So while the Howlies were in contact during the 15 months & 15 days of Howling Commando Hydra weapons-factory raids:

it would’ve been very difficult / limited / all shop talk. 

it must’ve been so insignificant that we don’t hear what was said, or see who said it, in the film.

(Given that they insist on showing us every possible plot-irrelevant* sexy lamp heterosexual interaction, the fact that they don’t show Steve talking to Peggy on the radio all year is the biggest proof that it didn’t happen. IMO we would’ve seen it.)

so either it’s considered grunt work and would’ve been done by eg. Morita(?) to a similarly lower-ranked person at HQ (maybe even Lorraine!), who at best would’ve relayed it to Peggy who then relayed it to Phillips. But that’s still no contact between Steve and Peggy.

or it’s so important that only someone as important as Steve would report it directly to someone as important (viz. Phillips) as Steve does when coming back from rescuing the 107 (still wasn’t significant enough to be seen in the film.)

While I can see Peggy kicking a lower-ranked person off their chair, to butt in on the call, if Steve was on the line -- as she later does to Morita -- the fact that we didn’t see that happen. Again, basic writing rules apply: if it isn’t shown it didn’t happen. 

there were only six prospective Hydra weapons factories mentioned as targets for Steve and the Howlies, so only six more occasions when they even might’ve officially interacted from the Continent: 

Roughly: 

And while there are more Hydra bases indicated as existing on the maps/via flags removed from the maps... 

...None of these 👆 are explicitly linked to Steve and the Howlies, there’s no indication that the existence of these was discovered or relayed (or that they specifically were destroyed) by Steve and Co. 

And it’s made out to be a Big Deal that they find out where the Seventh base is, (the base Bucky told Steve they were shipping weapons parts to). Because that’s where Red Skull is. 

In total the Howlies would’ve had 9 missions during this time:

6 Hydra factories

1 mission to capture Zola

1 mission in winter to save 1000 men  (if the Smithsonian footage is true)

1 mission on D-Day (if the Smithsonian footage is true)

the Valkyrie mission would be the 10th mission.

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T I M E L I N E :

1943

JUNE: Mon 14th, Bucky gets his orders, Steve gets a 4F, visits the Stark Expo, meets Erskine, enlists and gets a 1A. Tues 15th, Bucky ships out, Steve arrives at Camp Lehigh. Mon 21st, Steve is chosen for serum. He and Erskine discuss it in the evening. Tues 22nd, Steve receives serum, Erskine is killed, Steve stops the Hydra saboteur, and is photographed by a NYE journalist. Wed 23rd morning, Phillips speaks to the President and the SSR is immediately re-tasked,  Steve appears on the front page of The New York Examiner, the Hydra sub is moved to dry dock. afternoon, Steve has his blood drawn, Stark examines the Hydra sub, Phillips relays the President’s orders, Brandt recruits Steve into the USO when he objects to Phillips's orders. night, Phillips, Stark, and Peggy, fly out to London.

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JULY-OCT: Steve in the USO, travelling across America.

OCT/NOV: Bucky and the Howlies are captured by Hydra at Azzano.

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NOVEMBER: 3rd, afternoon, Steve does USO show in Italy, 5 miles behind enemy lines. evening, Steve rescues 107.

10th, Steve returns to base with 400 soldiers of the 107, having safely travelled 35 miles including 30 miles of mountainous heavily fortified enemy terrain, with wounded in tow.

? 11th-14th, Steve's rescue is reported in Stars and Stripes, Senator Brandt decides to give him a medal for valour, news gets back to UK and appears in The Daily Mail. Brandt expects Steve to come back to the US to receive his medal in person. Steve declines. 

? 14th, London, HQ, Steve relays Hydra intell to Phillips and Peggy, night, Steve recruits Bucky & the Howlies, takes Bucky's input on the suit.

? 15th, London, HQ, 8am, Steve gets sexually assaulted, Steve gets physically assaulted (Peggy shoots at him), Steve picks the shield, Steve relays Cap uniform ideas to Stark. .

1944

Howlies deployed in Europe for 15 months and 15 days, taking out 6 Hydra weapons factories shown in Italy, Greece, France, Czechslovakia. and Poland. 

(The original CATFA script also mentions factories in Belgium and Russia, but these aren’t referenced in the canon movie. 

Avengers 1 deleted scene shows Steve taking part in the planning of D-Day, which would’ve put him and the Howlies in France, from 6 June 1944 - August. Probably means they would’ve had to be back in England in the run up to D-Day, to take part in rehearsals. 

If the Smithsonian mention of a winter blockade-breaking mission also happened, that might be part of the Battle of the Bulge, so that would be Dec-Jan ‘44-45. In total it would be 9 missions, and the Valkyrie mission makes 10.)

.

1945

FEBRUARY: (possible) Sun 25th, Bucky ‘KIA.’  (possible)��Mon 26th, Howlies & Zola travelling back to London.

(possible) Tues 27th, London am, Steve writes/delivers a report about Bucky. Phillips (reads Steve’s report? knows about Bucky) sends a misleading telegram about Zola, back-dated February 3rd, to Washington via SHAEF. pm, Phillips interrogates Zola and finds out 1st March is Valkyrie Day. Steve goes drinking to grieve Bucky.

Wed 28th, London, HQ, Valkyrie Mission briefing.

MARCH:  Thurs 1st, Atlantic. Steve and Red Skull 'KIA.' Last contact with Peggy. Fri 2nd, Moria and Dum-dum capture Werner Reinhardt. Mon 5th, Steve reported "disappeared" in newspaper. Fri 23rd, KGB opens file on Bucky.

APRIL: Surviving Howlies are mopping up remaining Hydra personnel in Europe? MAY. Tues 8th, V-E Day. London. The Howlies reunite at the Whip & Fiddle, for the first time since they were founded there, to drink a toast in remembrance of Steve.

AUGUST: Tues 14th, Stark, Phillips and Carter have founded SHIELD and recruited Zola and more, which is reported on front page news.

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the number of individual occasions he spoke to her would be: 13

pre serum (22nd June, 1943)

post serum (23rd June, 1943)

pre rescue (day; 3rd November, 1943)

during rescue (night; 3rd November, 1943) 

post rescue (10th November, 1943) 

at HQ (day; 14th? November 1943)

in the pub (night; 14th? November 1943) 

at HQ (morning; 15th? November 1943)

at HQ (morning; 15th? November 1943)

in the pub (night; 27th? February, 1945)

pre Valkyrie (1st March, 1945)

pre Valkyrie (1st March, 1945)

during Valkyrie (1st March, 1945).

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TL;DR: They knew of each other for 626 days total, (from 15th June 1943 - 1st March 1945), aka: 20 months 14 days; 19 months & 15 days of which they weren’t in the same place, and only spoke on 13 occasions over 8 separate days.

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[stuckyfingers]

Remind you of anyone?

"She had a talent for drawing and painting and for the first time, came into contact with a few so-called "degenerate" artists. An avid reader, she developed a growing interest in philosophy and theology."

WHAT'S BETTER IS HER BROTHER HANS SCHOLL

During the trial, Scholl was also charged under Paragraph 175, the paragraph in the German Criminal Code that criminalized homosexual behavior. Under questioning, he admitted to having had two separate sexual relationships, one with Rolf Futterknecht, and one with Ernest Reden, who had also made advances on his brother Werner.[6] Futterknecht had been the one to inform on Hans.

Steve Rogers was either lowkey based on or was paralleling a real antifa youth from Germany??

ANFD IT GETS BETTER??

THIS IS ERNST REDEN'S FACE?

He was close to the Scholl family and wrote letters to Hans' mom???

[amarriageoftrueminds]

I found an old meta post of @hansbekhart 's where they were talking about what public transport would've been like in Brooklyn in Steve and Bucky's day, suggesting someone might like to have a try and combining two maps to show both the subway and tramway / trolley system.

And as a meta nerd I thought I'd have a crack at i!

So here is Steve and Bucky's Brooklyn

just-subway, just-trolleys, and both subway + trolleys:

*edit* of course as soon as I try it, I find someone else has done a proper one already!

(other detailed source)