#endgame steggy didn't

[pigtailedgirl]

I’d like to talk about this article.

https://mashable.com/article/avengers-endgame-romance

God, I’ve become a rant blog about Steve and Endgame. Oh well, least I know it. 

But NO... a very important thing that gets glossed over when you try to justify Steve’s ending and characterization in Endgame, and how the MCU is selling Steggy, is that this idea

Endgame does a good job of reminding the audience that losing a chance at happiness with Peggy is Steve’s greatest regret in his life

of the romance or lack of with Steve and Peggy Carter are the greatest parts of their character and its’ conclusive take that

And an opportunity perhaps, to be satisfied with their lives.

AKA the deus ex writing to reunite them or give them this ending chance of getting together sums their lives’ satisfaction.

This is or should be absolutely anathema to anyone who looks at them as characters first. At two characters, not a ship, who were expressly not about romance equaling their character definition. It is not good writing or a good conclusion to either to then force the narrative that this was the important point to their stories.

To Steve, the character who faced ablism, loss of parents, loss of friends, war, loss of time and country and identity, who was the moral conviction and heart of surviving and overcoming and inspiring...you really think his summation of greatest regret or thing to overcome is he lost a chance of romance? That his story is defined and measured in the success of getting it with Peggy?

To Peggy, the woman who is defined as a loved character, special female character or romantic lead, no less than by Steve himself per canon as a woman above and beloved for her desire and striving to make meaningful choices and actions in her life outside the boundary of a man’s desired partner, in that she is seeking equal representation, value, and recognition of... you think her summation is she’d be satisfied to be driven solely by her romantic outcome lived potential? That a summary of her life’s contribution is boiled down to only satisfactory if she reunited or got a second chance with Steve?

Is this a parody article?!

Or I don’t get shippers. 

Because ships should have character foundations to support them, unless they crack or AU. And the problem I have with Steggy per Endgame’s example is it’s built on a shaky foundation. 

The premise that them being together justifies the character dissolving, the time and the logic and moral implications... Ship gotta answer to that. Story gotta answer to it.

And it’s not a bias. I’m equal here in that I would make the same arguments if for wild example Endgame had a conclusion where Steve murdered Thanos or went back to be with a 40s Bucky or there was an example of the ship and character being concluded that the narrative told me was supposed to make sense or be defining and supportive of, that was just as the opposite of what seemed to matter before.

That’s honestly what Steggy Endgame is to me. So, this article and shipper perspective like it, the people who say the narrative built to this...I’m baffled. Because beyond Endgame retcon saying it, NO, the narrative for Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter was not a 22 film summation about if they would end up together.  

Like maybe if you squint CATFA was selling let’s explore if maybe they could have. In just that movie. As a side plot. The rest was like a story of too bad, it sad, so anyways here’s how we did and who we were and are.

[amarriageoftrueminds]

Can't stop thinking about the idea of CATFA as a propagandised version of the Captain America story which exists in-universe and Steve seeing it and being absolutely livid about how 90% of it represents him.

.

Examples: being furious that it doesn’t mention his mother (his moral compass) anywhere, or his socialist politics pre-war, implies he only wants to fight to be like one of the guys and get a girlfriend?! (barely mentions Nazis),

implies he simply cannot have had any romantic attachments before serum, yet skims right over his disabilities as if his only problem was just being short, posits that Bucky would’ve spent his last night in Brooklyn off on a double date with two total strangers rather than with his own friends and family, (no mention of the Barneses anywhere?), 

has Steve scoffing at the idea of working in a factory (when he’d consider himself lucky to get a job in the times he grew up in), almost his whole relationship with the Howlies relegated to a single silent montage, none of the details of their missions shown except one, not a single girl in his USO tour gets a mention or name, ditto none of the women of the SSR/Army/that the Howlies met in the field, and wastes most of the screen time on that creepy violent nepotism-hire who was convinced Steve had given her some kind of secret signal he wanted to date her (at the time he just thought she’d taken the hint and was trying to beard him??), 

also puts her, Stark and Phillips in places they never went (why would a scientist, an old CO and an intelligence analyst be in Italy, or in the middle of a battle?? that’s not their job!), 

says Steve would waste his last precious moments of contact talking to a woman he’s not dating rather than saying goodbye to the men who’ve been fighting beside him for over a year?? 

And that he wouldn’t even bother to look for Bucky’s body?? (Only thing it got right was how much Bucky mattered to him / being a big part of why he wanted to fight!)

[autumnrory]

really and truly unless it's a discussion about why peggy/steggy fans shouldn't like endgame, at this point idk why people feel the need to continually make the argument about her having a family as if that's the biggest problem about the ending especially when i figure most people are of the belief that it was another timeline or whatever idk what the current consensus on that is in the mcu and i don't care

but what about the fact that it destroyed steve's family? does that not matter because it's not the standard spouse and children but is instead a family he built for himself with sam and nat and bucky? because it's easier to decide steve is a selfish asshole and always has been instead of acknowledging that that storyline did more of a disservice to him than to anyone else? like oh maybe peggy's family was erased and that's horrible but it doesn't matter that steve's family was abandoned in the midst of the kind of trauma he knows very well?

i've said it before but it makes me so sad that so many people just turned on steve and decided a decade of movies don't matter in the face of one shitty desperate attempt of a movie to make him look like a pathetic creep just so they could justify their heterosexual nonsense ending

[meraki-yao]

Okay I haven't watched the MCU in a while and honestly at this point all I care about is Bucky, Wanda, Loki and maybe Shangchi but I watched a summary of the baby Starlord episode and the Captain Carter episode of the new What-if (not really interested in watching the whole thing but Bucky's in it so yeah) and as a Cap girl who loves CATWS so much that it's one of my all-time favourite movie, what Marvel's doing to the whole Steve-Bucky-Peggy (that I've been having issues with since Endgame) is driving me insanely frustrated.

I fucking HATE it when people more or less lessen or ruin what was originally so well-written and performed in the original that serves to drive the character that led to them being so well loved

Like, stucky doesn't need to be queer romantic to be significant. (And I'm saying this as a Stucky shipper whose whole exposure to AO3 and Tumblr started with Stucky) It is a significant, important and heavy relationship REGARDLESS if it's platonic or romantic. Erasing that and forcefully making it Steggy doesn't work, drives the og audience away from Steggy and frankly, it's kind of homophobic

Also it's incredibly unfair that Steve's significance to Bucky remains while vice versa isn't, even though THAT'S ONE OF THE TWO DRIVING MOTIVATIONS OF ALL OF STEVE'S ACTIONS IN CACW. Are you really trying to convince me that a bond so deep that they've been inseparable all their lives since they were kids and well into their adulthood, is less significant, or is effective as a memory trigger (and I fucking studied the basic of memory recall) than the significant shorter Steggy romance? What the fuck????

I almost want to write a whole essay on the Steve-Bucky-Peggy relationship, but I currently have enough writing tasks (fics, emails, letters, essays) on my plate. I'll see if I wanna come back to it later.

[lnsfawwi]

Bucky was second in command for the Commandos therefore should've planned strategy with SSR as much as Steve. yet there's zero indication that the SSR personales knew Bucky well enough to even call him by his name??

Peggy has never addressed Bucky directly, even after his death Peggy used 'your friend' in her conversation with Steve. that's, if not avoidance out of jealousy of his relationship with Steve, detachment. there's no personal relationship between Bucky and her. plus Howard Stark calling him 'sergeant Barnes' which literally couldn't have been more impersonal.

the only logical conclusion is that the Commandos never spent time socializing with Peggy and Stark, they probably didn't even meet all that often cuz they were going around Europe fighting Hydra while SSR stayed behind doing their own stuff. Then how can Peggy possibly be the person Steve couldn't get over with, let along have any long lasting impact on him when they've barely spent time together?

popcorn movies are thoughtless and get criticized for this precise reason. the plot doesn't have to be properly developed bc audiences are conditioned to think certain ways and they complete the story in their head for the movie. 'oh that's a classic setup for romance, of course the hero falls in love with her.'

the thing is, it doesn't make sense, and when it doesn't, it shouldn't.

steggy is what happens when you let this thoughtlessness dictates how you percee a trope in a movie.

she never should've been the 'love of my life' for Steve. she simply couldn't have been. THEY BARELY KNEW EACH OTHER ffs.

[rainbowsuitcase]

You know what? I've decided. I don't see Steve's ending as canon.

And no, I'm not just being stubborn and in denial about my favorite character acting in a way I don't like.

Until someone gives me an explanation of Steve's ending that doesn't break Endgame's time travel rules, I refuse to see it as anything but the creators being stupid and lazy and not knowing what to do with Steve's character and wanting to separate him from Bucky.

[crazyaboutto]

They could have started the relationship with AoU but Whedon gave us whatever that was then the rest continued. We could have had the power couple but nope.

Imo they’re a bit obsessed with Steggy. In What If series for instance, Nat and Peggy have more chemistry and in common with Steggy in present time but still it’s shoehorned to our faces

me and bestie at the function when we know we're gonna debrief this later

chris evans and scarlett johansson in captain america: civil war (2016) and avengers: endgame (2019)

[thatscarletflycatcher]

There's something that has been gnawing at me since I saw some comments on the look-how-they-massacred-them poll for Daniel Sousa -with which I didn't want to engage then and there because I really didn't want to pick up a fight with another Daniel fan, there's few enough of us, but also because the argument was very difficult to articulate.

It is difficult to explain how Daniel Sousa is screwed over by Endgame without making it look like either "he deserved Peggy as a prize" or "he was the perfect prize for Peggy", because it all begins by understanding the experience of WWII and the building of the morale of WWII. Something that Markus and McFeely seemed to perfectly understand in Agent Carter, which inclines me to believe it was specific insistence of the Russos, whose concept of narrative and storytelling is at the level of a belligerent and not very bright 4 year old, that gave us that mindblowingly stupid "happy ending" for Cap and Peggy. Or maybe Markus and McFeely are just arcane creatures, at times intelligent and at times really dumb. Anyways.

Point is that both CATFA and Agent Carter understand that for these characters, fighting WWII is a matter of "each doing their bit", of, as Steve put it in The Avengers, to lay on the barbed wire so the one that comes after you can pass on. And in the process of doing that, you have great loses and suffer great grief. The price of war is immense, and for these people the price of war is the price of freedom (yes, that celebrated Steve speech from CATWS is also sharing in that same spirit. It's kind of impressive how until that awful mess of Endgame, the perspective of Steve as a character from movie to movie is one that addresses how some 1940s things are outdated, but how many others are still relevant and inspiring. It is a surprisingly nuanced take on History, that of course the Russo "Cap is an outdated relic that belongs in the past and should stay there" brothers don't seem to have what's needed to grasp).

In that context, the most coherent tone for Steggy is tragedy. Because that is what happened to many, many, many people during the war. You meet, you fall in love fast, because there is no time. And then suddenly the other is gone, never to come back. And all the promises of youth and life and future the other person represented, are gone with them. People who lived through 2020-2022 have some idea of what it is like for projects, opportunities, and years of your life to just vanish. Now you make that five years, eight months, and to mention "just" the British, 1 out every 100 people live in 1939, dead, and over 350.000 permanently disabled. If you were 20 in 1939, your life would be practically on hold till you were 26. It's a whole lot of grief, and an intense grief, that you don't solve the way you solve a random missing connection in a romcom like Serendipity or The Lake House. Doing so is cheapening and bastardizing the grief and trauma of a whole generation of people in different countries.

So, Agent Carter. Here we have a story focused on a group of people, spies, who, in different fronts and with different outcomes, made it through the war and are now facing this new world they are living in, and all the grief of their respective losses. The focus of the story is Peggy, a woman who, like many others, was allowed a wide range of action during the war, and is now subconsiously perceived as a threat by many of her male coworkers. It's a desperate bid to "go back to the way things were before", and her presence is a constant reminder that they can't.

Sousa occupies a very similar position to Peggy's: he's also a reminder that the war happened and that there is no way back, no magic solution, no pretending. And that's why both are ignored, and displaced, and why both struggle to prove themselves in a subconscious way while living by the continued principle that they are doing their bit. That is their lifeline that keeps them sane and working all throughout s1 of Agent Carter.

That's what we mean when we say Peggy and Sousa are equals, and that Sousa is contented with letting her have the spot; not because he's her inferior or her dependant, but because he's her equal -in intelligence, in ideals, in resourcefulness, in loyalty, but also in their relative positions in the power ladder- and does not feel threatened by her because of it.

(It is in this context, btw, that Peggy's rebuke of Daniel's "rescue" of her in the first episode must be understood. Because she was once treated like any other officer/agent of her same rank, she has knee jerk reactions to both being demeaned and being protected. It's also an important theme of that beginning of the series that Peggy needs to learn to let her friends in, and that she needs their help, and that that doesn't make her too weak to protect and defend them.)

But also, in another way, when we talk about Sousa becoming Peggy's husband, it has to do with the sentiment Krezminsky expresses in the series:

The ship of Steggy had sailed and was gone forever since the moment Steve became the legend in the ice and Peggy "Cap's Girl", this embodiment of the ridiculous damsel in distress we hear in the radio drama that plays on one of the episodes: Peggy fell in love with Steve when he was a scrawny, sickly lad, because she loved the man he was inside, but now forever for the world she is just another superficial, weak girl lusting after the handsome godlike rescuer, the picture of the eugenic dream of the übermensch. In Daniel Peggy loves and finds all the same things she found and loved in Steve, but in a different light, because Sousa is a different person, with a different life story, plus something else: they have both gone through war and its loss and grief, and come to the other side in need of rebuilding and finding new meaning in life and hope for the future.

In a world where the Dark, Tall and Handsome Hero of the Six Pack, Alpha Dominance and Endless Stamina reigns supreme, Sousa as a love interest is a remarkable and -sadly- bold statement about the things that truly matter in finding one's life partner.

So I think here is a reasonable point to start talking about Sousa in Agents of SHIELD. Because here's where someone would rationally say "well, but you see, there he's also chosen as a love interest!", and the reasons why context in AoS changes everything are multiple, so let's go there.

But before that, let me make clear that I do wholeheartedly believe the writers of AoS meant to honor Sousa, and sincerely tried to do their best with what they were given. That doesn't change what the end product ended up doing and saying about him.

Like Peggy is the main character of Agent Carter, so Daisy is the main character of Agents of SHIELD. As much as you can say all the team characters are important and get the focus, Daisy is the one which the narrative insists on making the focal point, as the arcs of several seasons hinge on her, and we are expected to sympathize with her first and foremost in any situation in which she is personally involved. But unlike Peggy, Daisy is a superpowered individual. She's more like Steve than Peggy; she's practically a demigod. She is capable of ripping Earth apart with just her hands. Where Peggy and Sousa were equals in the power ladder in-universe, in AoS the distance between Daisy and Sousa is abysmal. That imbalance is the first thing that leads to Sousa being put in the position of Daisy's Boy. The fact that he ends up in space with Daisy's last minute sister who is ALSO an inhuman does not help things.

As a side note, there's something to be said about futuristic prosthetics in AoS and how they interesect with disability. But I'd rather not get into it because it is a thorny subject and I don't feel qualified to speak of it.

In a different way, Daniel being Peggy's love interest in Agent Carter is balanced out by his having a life of his own and many interactions with other characters throughout the series. He pursues his own lines of investigation, he conducts interrogations of his own, he comes up with plans, he teams up with Krezminsky and with Thompson and in s2 he has downright made a life for himself as chief in California with a fiancé and all. There is a clear sense that he exists as a character outside of pining for Peggy.

In AoS, the opposite happens. Part of it is owed to the writers writing themselves into a corner: to take Sousa out of his timeline, they have to do it in such a way that his disappearance is inconspicuous, which means killing him. They do it the best way they can think of, honoring his alertness and intelligence, by making him realize HYDRA is infiltrated in SHIELD decades before anyone else does. But as a consequence, Sousa becomes the man out of time: there's no future for him, because he has died, and unlike Steve, he's not being brought back because he himself is required. They just save him because they take pity on him and the tragedy of his life. So he has no mission and no significant previous connection with anyone on the team. One of the concrete things in which this is evidenced the most is with the switch from being addressed as chief Sousa to Agent Sousa. He was chief, but between that SHIELD and this SHIELD there's not such a connection by which he can claim that title. There's no subordinates to manage. So he's sort of default-called agent without really being a proper agent.

So the writers choose the fish-out-of-water concept for him. Which is far fetched. This guy lived through wwii in a high spy setting where intelligence has knowledge of powerful interstellar aliens. He's most definitely not bewildered by phone cameras, guys. He would quickly adapt... if, again, you know, he was brought back for a mission. But the reality is that from a Doylist POV, he was brought in to be Daisy's love interest, and the only thing he can offer to her, in this huge power imbalance I have pointed out, is chivalrous manners and quaint WWII style references like when he tells her "Agent Johnson, we are going home"; both can be very charming to a modern woman, but they are things that highlight the cultural and psychological distances that separate them, and make it glaringly obvious that they have barely anything in common.

The series tries desperately to give them common ground in the time-loop episode, with this idea that Daisy is like Peggy because she sacrifices herself for others and to protect others all the time. Which is laughable because, again, in Daisy's condition of beloved main character that embodies the tortured, quasi byronic heroine that we understand to be the hallmark of about one half of the contemporary superhero type, the narrative and the characters in it bend all sorts of ways to accommodate her, not the other way around. Peggy's type is different because it is rooted in that WWII morale/frame I was talking about at the beginning of the post.

As a consequence of all of this, Sousa barely interacts with anyone that isn't Daisy (he has of personal scenes, what? one or two with Coulson, the scene where Jemma gives him a new prosthetic, and then he's given an idea to give to Mac in the finale. I don't remember any other non-Daisy ones), has no unique role to fulfill in the mission (specially because so much of the plan is entwined in Fitz and Jemma's rescue plan that was NOT counting with Sousa) and no personal goal to achieve, which weakens his standing as a character outside the romance plot, and when it comes to the romance plot, he has nothing in common with Daisy, and he brings nothing to the partnership other than... narratively forced love, and chivalrousness.

In the end, Daniel, who was a character and a person of relevance in Agent Carter, is nerfed and turned into a prop for the rushed happily ever after of the main character of AoS. And that, in my books, is being screwed over. That's what makes his becoming Peggy's husband and building a life and a future with her a much better and more preferable outcome for Daniel; he gets to build a life of meaning by his own significant work and significant connections, in his own time and place, with a wife who is his equal and with other people that have lived through the same collective experiences of trauma and grief he did.

[r4inyclouds]

You can take Steve Rogers out of the fight, but you can't take the fight out of Steve Rogers.

I heavily recommend putting ya glasses on for this ride of a rant. A... practically an essay on how Steve was out of character in Endgame:

Look, I still wholeheartedly believe that Sam deserves the title of Captain America, but even before that Steve dropped that shield, that title in the Civil War movie, for Bucky, in respect for Tony. Captain America wasn't even his label for years after that. Surprising how many didn't realise Steve in the endgame movie was Nomad, not Captain America.

But, he still fought, didn't he?

So people who say "Steve will always be THE Captain America!!" can go cry about it for all I care. Sam is the hero that he deserves to be. Yet, I suppose we're all entitled to our own opinions.

I don't even think the producers at the time even read the comics they were basing their large franchise on. That Steve in Infinity War wasn't Steve.

He was born a stubborn fighter, he was meant to end as that stubborn fighter we knew from 'The First Avenger'. It's in his nature how he was meant to be articulated as a person. It's in the comics, that hell- I haven't even exactly read most nor possess many of them! It's a joke, a jest; it's funny but not funny 'haha hilarious', but funny, odd, peculiar and perplexing. But from what I've seen from the fans on this side of the debate who have read the comics thoroughly, they all explicitly state that Steve would never do this or abandon anyone. I could, respectively, not care that the MCU was never, and never will be, canon to the comics, but they couldn't even keep one thing, an aspect that's similar or alike in any particular way to the comics, and that's the whole nature and personality of one of their most main focused characters, diverging from the whole point, centre, heart of Steve.

Steve never needed a label that told him he was a hero even when he was some twink before the serum, his whole arch, his whole goal was to become someone who helped, it wasn't from the start to settle down with a woman he was at a high school situation ship with, maybe, just maybe it could've worked if they attempted to even build and develop their relationship for it to make that little sense. Steven Grant Rogers admitted to being that stubborn little thing, and in a sense, he was like that, someone who determined to not be a coward and went against his non-spoken word.

And no, this has nothing to do with the fact I'm a HUGE Stucky shipper, I exclusively tried to avoid talking about Bucky in this half of the rant for a reason. I love Peggy, she's in my top 5, and I love domestic Steggy. It's just it was never right for Steve.

Steve will never, ever be able to run away from what he is. He is THE fight, with or without a useless hero label.

Now since I'm a bucky glazer, and he's my favourite character (I'm putting him in a jar once I get my first-ever Funko pop) I will go on to talk about Steve and Bucky, now, I'd understand if someone would not want to read this part because I'm 'just a wild Stucky shipper!' Who's own priority is trying to keep the ship afloat (I'm also occasionally a Sam x Steve x Bucky shipper but that's besides the point) But in this segment, I will be talking about them in an otherwise platonic sense; it doesn't even need to be romantic for me to say this. And, honestly, if the character of Bucky never existed in this universe, I would've still had this rant on my Tumblr about why Steve leaving is just... odd.

Okay, Steve spent THREE, THREE, I REPEAT THREE, HIS WHOLE DAMN TRILOGY, having at least one huge plot point just purely based on Bucky in each of his movies.

1. He went against whole military orders to get Bucky back, had a whole depression episode thinking he was dead, and then had another depression episode when he died, and then kind of just offed himself after that (Now, am I saying he offed himself for no reason for other than his friend?... yeah, so, there's a deleted scene where Rhodey asks Steve about how he practically died, and why he didn't just jump out into the water before he crashed, I'm tellin' you if you search it up it's there, now, people suspected that the reason it's a deleted scene is that it, well, opens a plot hole, and it just kind of seems like... he killed himself because bucky's dead? Like, ya know, there's no other reason to why he did this. But I might just be reaching there) God. So that point just says a lot about how the producers didn't even think for one second about him going back in time.

2. Nearly got killed by him, but when he figured out it was Bucky he went a berserk kind of insanity and risked his life as he put his trust in a man who was about to knock the shit out of him. Then, like- went for months on end to get Bucky back just because he left him on the side of the beach to not let him drown. Yeah, okay, sir. Also, does everyone just... Like, all silently agree not to talk about how they casually just drop platonic wedding vows to each other in every movie? Like, what do you exactly mean by "I'm with you 'till the end of the line", every time I hear that quote I go "WRITE THIS DOWN, WRITE THIS DOWN!" (not like I'll be getting married though)

3. How am I meant to summarise this with detail without just saying the few words in my mind that would just tell you the whole plot? [Squints eyes, checks notes]... Guess I gotta. 'Bro split Avenger for bro, Avenger no longer, Captain America? No longer for bro, bro picks bro up, bro says wedding vow, bro sad Wakanda.'

Then, now, I apologise sincerely for using this analogy, but he kinda, just, ya know, abruptly left to get the milk. He dropped everything once he got the chance to go back and left poor Bucky wide-eyed like some traumatised puppy with attachment issues they newly developed after shown that much devotion and affection from an owner who'd treat them right, and then was suddenly dropped into a random field of an environment, unfamiliar, they don't recognise it, as they then watch the rustic car they were once rescued from becoming a blur, speeding off into a distance he couldn't possibly ever trace back to. What in the holy fuck was that waste of three movies then.

(DEEP FUCKING BREATHS, RAIN, HOLY SHIT DEEP FUCKING BREATHS)

I hope people can't tell I'm a fanfic writer; this is the shittiest thing I've ever written, I swear my fanfics are more descriptive and crap, but I'm foaming from the mouth right now; I think I permanently disrupted my breathing pattern, well done me.

Sigh, okay, well.

He's a defender for his friends; his bonds double-tied with the strength that could be held within the core of the earth, yet that somehow immediately loosened, cracking the surface, crevice by crevice of that earth with one scene, one moment. His mantle of the goal, his word that he once held dear to his child heart, became not even an earth-shattering break.

Now, here we are.

So, I shall, if you don't mind, end this with my small conclusion of how it's was out of character for Steve to leave.

You can take Steve Rogers out of the fight, but you can't take the fight out of Steve Rogers.

[luna-rainbow]

Why are there so many diehard fans of endgame? I mean, even sebastian stan disliked the movie

Honestly the people who are diehard fans of EG are not people that I mingle with much on the regular. In general they are:

Reddit dudebros who loved EG because there was a lot of explosions, a time travel plot line that made "fanservice" and Easter egg moments possible (e.g. the Heil Hydra scene or Tony seeing daddy Howard scene), the same plot line being too convoluted to make sense of and full of unexpected character assassinations twists. It feeds this particular audience who thrives on grand spectacle and who frequently confuses "this plot doesn't follow logic" with "wow I did not expect that I am so clever and it surprised even me so it must be good". This crowd also doesn't care about characterisation cos that's for girls, obviously.

Steggies. Need I say more.

Tony Stans: he got the heroic death and the heroic send-off like the darling of the universe that he was.

Canon purists. Although this type of "fans" don't necessarily love Endgame. They are just incapable of seeing canon as flawed. They will staunchly defend it with the lines of "that's the way things are in canon so we just have to accept it and stop insulting it". One day they will realise that canon is sometimes written by shit writers who don't know (or care) a thing about continuity. Hence we should afford said canon the same amount of care (aka none).

In general from what I've seen of fans of every franchise, people who are genuinely invested in the characters have complaints. People didn't like what EG did to Thor because while grief is understandable, it made his grief experience a thing of comedy. People who liked GotG weren't a fan of apologism in the way it handled the extremely abusive relationship Thanos had with both Gamora and Nebula. People who liked Nat were peeved she was killed off and had no memorial. And the rest of the characters didn't feature enough for their fans to "like" Endgame.

And of course the Cap guys. Sigh.

[amarriageoftrueminds]

So were the official MCU writers (of What If and Hawkeye) being deluded stucky shippers when they took Bucky's story with Steve and put Peggy in Bucky's place and called Steve and Bucky's story a Romance? Not just once but three times?

👏🏼 STOP 👏🏼 BEING 👏🏼 DICKS 👏🏼 OVER 👏🏼 ENDGAME 👏🏼 NOT 👏🏼 LINING 👏🏼 UP 👏🏼 WITH 👏🏼 YOUR 👏🏼 THEORIES 👏🏼

It was a good movie you’re all just salty that your pairings didn’t become canon or a character stayed dead for once.

[florida3exclamationpoints]

Steggy Week Day 1 - Meta

@steggyfanevents and everyone else pls accept my late offering of brainrot ranting into the void

Peggy's face says so much during the Endgame dance it's insane. It's such a contrast to Steve, who is very expressive yeah but he's really just showing one thing - that he's peaceful (if anything his eyesbrows are drawn in a little but it's just concentration, not any uncertainty like Peggy has). There's not as much going through his head because he's dealt with all of this already. He already wrapped his mind around every factor of what got him to this point, he's just savoring the moment now that he finally can. Peggy's only had the last few minutes. Of course whatever happened when she opened the door is up to everyone's headcanons, but he had to give her something good enough to convince her. Personally I think when they were dancing, he hadn't explained much yet. He just convinced her it was him by telling her something only he would know. He'll get to the 70 year nap and aliens and time traveling later lol I think he wanted to ease her into it as much as possible. Because the door is still open I really think it was just "Oh my god what the hell -> wait I can prove it (with something only Steve would know 100%) -> we've waited long enough for our dance -> ok but actually what the hell??" which leads to the entire explanation after they dance

Regardless of what Peggy knew while they danced, she hadn't had long to process it at ALL. And you can see that. She's not simply happy and peaceful. She's soooooo timidly happy. Her eyebrows are furrowed a little and you can tell she's trying to slow her thoughts down and enjoy the moment. Her smile isn't completely ear to ear uncontrollable. You can actually see her try to contain it a few times - it starts to get a little bigger and she stops herself. She's so used to not being able to feel this kind of pure unadulterated happiness. You can also see her keeping her chin and bottom lip stiff, like if she let go she'd break down crying. At first her eyes are open and it feels like she's looking into the corner at nothing to keep herself grounded. When she closes her eyes, her eyebrows relax a little. I think she was able to let go a little bit with her eyes closed. That's when you see her smile start to get a little wider, then she stops herself, then she opens her eyes again. Then she looks up at Steve. Like the grounding herself by looking at something or not looking at anything didn't work so she had to look at Steve.

Anyway back to her being timidly happy bc I think that's the best way to describe it. Look at this frame

(Sorry idk why the quality is so bad on youtube lol) she doesn't just look happy and teary. And I wouldn't say she looks confused either. If she were confused she wouldn't be dancing with him. I think it's just an instinct for her to limit her happiness. She looks like she absolutely can't believe this is happening but she knows she can't argue (again, or else she wouldn't be dancing with him), and like her mind is racing but she wants it to stop. This restrained happiness reminded me of something else and at first I couldn't figure out what it was but I did. Look

She's making the exact same face here except there's no genuine happiness in this one. Her smile is a little tighter because there's nothing behind it. But otherwise. It's the exact same expression. In both she's thinking of "another chance" with Steve, but when they're dancing it's real. In the AC scene it's just his blood that she felt like she had to defend. But when they're dancing ITS REAL!!! look again side by side sorry I'm going insane

Main point - there's just so much trepidation in her face while they dance. Timidly happy restrained joy etc etc. When she looks at Steve is when it starts to fade. Her eyes scan his face I think bc she's really trying to allow herself to feel happy and she's like look it's him you know it's him calm down it's him. Steve's smile just get bigger when he looks at her but he knows everything!! This frame shows her starting to relax

But when he smiles at her and she smiles back she's still biting it back a little and pulling her bottom lip in to control herself

That face is just. There's so much I feel that I should say but words can wait. Do you see the difference in how Steve is just so openly radiating joy but she's not there yet.

This is the most relaxed she gets the whole scene. She has to shut her mind off and remove herself from the situation and just feel to get to that point. She can do that when she kisses him. And that's where the scene cuts, when she is finally able to just feel and relax and live in the moment with him.

[doctorhelena]

Hi @theawkwardterrier!

I’m your @steggyfanevents Steggy Secret Santa this year, and in true Steggy fashion (and in my own personal tradition for the past few years), I'm late. 😂😩

The good news is that I have a fully completed draft of a story I think you'll enjoy, and editing is progressing well! The bad news is that it's quite a bit longer than I'd intended (I really thought I’d come up with a short, self-contained idea this year! 😭) so editing is taking a little longer than I’d hoped, and even with the extension I'm not quite going to make it. But I really, really hope I’ll have it for you very soon!

In the meantime, please accept this short preview excerpt.

Context: Post-Endgame Steve has received a short and uninformative "I need an emergency lift ASAP" phone call from Peggy (who didn't kiss him hello when she got in the car because the lipstick she's wearing would make that a bad idea.)

-------

The lipstick was another thing he wasn’t exactly jealous about. Peggy had been a spy long before Steve had met her, and he’d always known that, thanks to the Sweet Dreams knockout lipstick Howard had made for her, kissing unsavory individuals was sometimes the most efficient way to do her job. And he understood that there was a difference, for her, between kissing for personal and professional reasons. Still, he didn’t particularly like to think about it actually happening, and Peggy always looked a little guilty, and then annoyed at herself for feeling guilty, whenever the topic came up. 

To top it all off, Howard, unprompted, had recently developed two further prototypes: Forget Me Not, making the recipient of a kiss forget everything that had happened in the past half day, and Always Be True, containing a truth serum that lasted for about five to six hours, at Howard’s best guess.

“At your best guess?” Steve had asked him when he’d brought it over. Howard had shrugged unrepentantly. “I’ll have a better idea after Peg gathers some data from the field.” He’d proceeded to cheerfully ignore Steve’s patented Captain America look of reproach, while Mr. Jarvis had simply shaken his head wearily in the background.

Peggy, too, had regarded the new lipsticks with a healthy dose of suspicion - and Steve, having heard the story of her adventures with Howard’s ‘Bad Babies’, understood why. But the fact was that Howard was generally pretty reliable once he’d declared an invention ready for action, and Steve knew that Peggy now kept all three in her bag along with her regular lipstick, having had Howard mark the different tubes with a series of notches and grooves so that she could easily tell them apart by feel. 

“What happened?” he asked her now, as he slowed the car to a stop and waited for a truck to pass on the cross street. It was snowing a bit harder now, and he could afford to drive more cautiously now that he knew Peggy was safe.

“Howard Stark,” Peggy said with great exasperation. “I’ve ruined my chances at getting vital information from the arrogant ass I’ve been unpleasantly cultivating for weeks now, because Howard Stark is a bloody idiot.”

[autumnrory]

i love when people defend endgame saying steve got the life he always wanted because i'm just like and is the life he always wanted in the room while he dances with a woman who chose to work with nazis?

[really-steve-rogers]

Rules and Background OOC

Rules:

most are under my blog @my-rp-blog-command-center

No racism, sexism, homophobia, pedophelia etc.

no 18+ content, however there will be cursing and occasionally dirty jokes (very mild)

The only romantic plot I am willing to go with is stucky

OOC will be marked by // at the beginning and end

Background:

Civil War kinda happened, but Steve and Tony made up quickly and that 'final battle' went a lot more calmly

This Steve is not attached to any universe (yet) so post types will vary

I do ship Stucky so any shipping involving Steve will be that or past Steggy

Peggy Carter is a goddess and they did her dirty

Endgame didn't happen but 'America's Ass' did (shut up I know that doesn't make sense)

Sam is Cap in this universe and Bucky works with him

This Steve is retired but never went back in time

Character Overview (please keep in mind that this is just how I want to play him, and you don't have to agree with what I do; just don't bother me about it):

Pronouns: he/him

Age: 105 chronologically but 39-ish physically

Sexuality: Bisexual and Biromantic

Residence: Has a Brooklyn apartment but also a floor at Avengers Tower

Relationship Status: Single

This ^ is the Steve I'm picturing

Posting will be irregular, but please interact

Also: I am willing to adopt, but I don't want a ton of mayhem.

[meidui]

i'm answering all 30 fic writer asks as seen on kelly@fohatic's blog 😽 HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

1. What’s something new that you tried in a fic this year? How did it turn out and would you do it again? fool's gold was a 1872 fic and it was one-sided dialogue but with no quotation marks, so it was supposed to read like somebody from timely was telling you about what happened! i liked it but i don't know if i would do it again because it's just stylistic, i think it worked for 1872 because it suited the small town setting

2. How many fics did you work on this year? (They don’t have to be finished or published!) i have too many wips but i posted 56 fics on ao3 this year!

3. What’s something you learned about yourself as a writer? that i dilly dally a lot to avoid writing smut scenes and that the discord sprinting bot is my best friend

4. What piece of media inspired you the most? probably endgame because we had the @stevetonyisendgame exchange and prompt fest this year, so i rewatched it a lot and ended up writing lots of endgame-adjacent/post-endgame!! they're so soft in that movie i can't help myself

5. What fandom(s) did you write for this year? all marvel except for one fic for game changers! i foresee house md fic in 2024

6. What ship(s) captured your heart? stevetony has always had my heart does that count

7. What character(s) captured your heart? i love steve rogers even more than i did last year

8. Did you write for a new fandom or ship this year? new ships!! i wrote steve/thor and steve/natasha for the first time for captain bottom bingo and steve/peggy for the first time for steggy secret santa

9. What fic meant the most to you to write? nobody saves me, baby (the way you do) because kristina@samcky had an unposted draft of it that she let me rewrite 🥺 so it meant a lot to me because she's all over that fic and i just love her with all my heart

10. What fic made you feel the happiest to work on? i think it's a tie between winged and how porcupines kiss because they're so fluffy! although this might a little biased because @capnstars drew the cutest winghead!steve art you've ever seen in your entire life for winged and @itsmaybitheway drew THIS PRECIOUS PORCUPINE!STEVE AND ARMADILLO!TONY for how porcupines kiss 🥺

11. What fic was the most satisfying to finish writing? probably hell and high water because i worked on it slowly for months which usually doesn't happen, and it might even be one of my favourite fics that i've ever written so i was really proud

12. What fic was the most difficult to write? Did you finish it? i don't think anything was difficult to write but new york is a hell of a town (and i'm brooklyn down) was so silly of me because it's set in august, but i wrote the first part in april and the second part in october and didn't really work on it during the actual summer 😶 like what was that?? why did i do that?? i'm so sorry

13. What fic was the easiest to write? into the forever and beautiful sky! it's a rocket-centric fic with rocket & steve friendship, i wrote it right after watching gotg vol 3 and it's just feelings vomit ahahah

14. What were your shortest and longest fics this year? my shortest fic was fool's gold which was 546 words and the longest fic that i wrote by myself (not just this year but also ever in all my life) was a rose by any other name which was 11.6k words! without caveats the longest fic is heartbreak prince, which i wrote with @areiton and it was 12k words!!

15. Rec a fic you wrote or posted in 2023 a beast of a burden is really special to me so i want to rec that one! because i wrote it for the endgame exchange that i loved so much and it was for mrsgingles, who is my favourite stevetony artist, and it reminds me of this summer, and it also feels like the truest love letter to endgame that i've ever written

16. What were you go-to writing songs? i don't have any! usually it's whatever i'm already listening to or a movie or show that i'm watching, but i listened to exo's lotto on repeat when i wrote hit the lotto because that's what the fic sounds like in my head and taylor swift's timeless when i wrote once in a lifetime because it was based on that song

17. What were your go-to writing snacks? NO TIME FOR SNACKS WHEN THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO NEED TO KISS

18. What was the hardest fic to title? maybe lovelorn and nobody knows? i started working on it before 1989 tv came out and it didn't have a title for way too long, the google doc was literally just called "there are still beautiful things steve pov" and then it took me like 20 minutes of comparing 1989 vault lyrics to pick one 😭

19. Share your favourite opening line from the ice is getting thinner under me and you (a hockey au)

Steve is supposed to be at a bar downtown with the rest of his team. Steve is not supposed to be back in the emptied out stadium, his back slammed against the lockers with Tony's tongue in his mouth.

20. Share your favourite ending line i added the second last line for context but this ending line is my favourite because time has always been against steve and peggy, so i feel like the best show of how happy and safe they feel together is that they finally don't have to watch the clock or worry about time slipping through their fingers anymore 🥺 this is from from we were born to be national treasures

When she laughs, eyes glittering, he has the most peculiar feeling that he was always meant to end up right here, kissing the maroon lipstick off Peggy’s mouth, swaying under the sprig of mistletoe they never took down from Christmas as someone starts to shout a countdown to New Year’s. She cups his face and he smiles into the kiss, and neither of them bother watching the clock.

21. Share your favorite piece of dialogue from if my wishes came true (buckynat)

“You got that written down in your notebook?” “I don’t need to write you down to remember you, Natasha Romanoff.”

22. Share an excerpt from your favorite scene there were so many close contenders aahh but my favourite scene has to be the one from catastrophic blues when tony finally catches steve!!

“Then don’t make me hurt you,” Tony says, raising his palm and lighting up his repulsor. “I know you know what this does. You’re unarmed and backed into a dead-end alley. You’re not winning this one, kid, I can tell you that for free. Take off your mask.” The Vigilante glowers and stands his ground. “My whole life is dead-end alleys. I’m not taking off my mask.”

23. Share the final version of a sentence or paragraph you struggled with. What about it was challenging? Are you happy with how it turned out? the whole end part of near-death cliché took some wrangling just because i was trying to make it sound like something kang the conqueror would say haha

“I’ve killed a lot of Avengers and it all starts to blend together,” Kang says, “but I remember you because you always end up fighting for him. I admire the consistency. It’s rare.” “Him?” “You could be with Steve Rogers,” Kang says almost empathetically, and it’s like he has gently wrenched Tony’s heart out of his chest. When the repulsors on his palms falter, Kang continues in the same disarming tone. “I could send you back to the battlefield. You’d open your eyes and he'd be there.”

24. What's something that surprised you while you were working on a fic? Did it change the story? this is hilarious to me because the recurring motif in but saving what we love was supposed to be steve and tony calling each other's bullshit over the years but it ended up being overshadowed by star wars. so much star wars, in fact, that it warranted a "star wars references" tag

25. What did you use to write? (e.g. writing programs, paper & pen, etc.) google docs

26. If you had to choose one, what was THE most satisfying writing moment of your year? all of i thought the plane was going down (how'd you turn it right around) for two reasons! one is that i feel like maleness informs a lot of their lives and experiences and for a while i didn't really get the appeal of genderbending them, but then i read all of isozyme's lesbian stevetony fics and i had an epiphany about genderbending being an opportunity for character and relationship study, and two is that once i had said epiphany i realised i actually had a lot to say so i wrote captain eve rogers in one go and now i love her so much

27. Did you do anything special to celebrate finishing a fic? hmm i don't think so!

28. How did you recharge between fics? i don't think i really do that either

29. If this were an awards show, who would you thank? oh my gosh. with all the sincerity in my heart, every person who gave me a kudo or a comment or is subscribed to my ao3, recommended my fics or my blog, said in a reblog/tweet/discord message/dm that they liked one of my fics or it made them happy or they were excited about reading one, follows me on tumblr or looks at my gifs or likes/reblogs my posts, runs fandom events, shares their beautiful fics or art or edits with us, all the members of the steve rogers defense squad, truly everyone who i've had an interaction with (except the steve antis and bots in my block list 😠) because i'm so grateful to have this community and that we met because we love the same thing and we can make each other's days better. deactivating for 10 months was the right thing to do but i'm so happy to be back this time because of you

30. What’s something that you want to write in 2024? some of these have been cooking in my head for so long that they have TITLES

that famous happy ending (enchanted au)

play house (wandavision au)

plausible deniability (rival lawyers au)

wild and beautiful (feral/tarzan steve au)

yoga instructor steve and discharged air force pilot tony

prequel to kristina's beautiful ocean's 11 au, Give me a kiss before you tell me goodbye