#how would grief taint the way they see howard and the way the see each other?

[persephonesfill]

steve meeting a young tony rotten with grief after december 16, 1991 and thinking "oh. he's like me."

[adamwatchesmovies]

The Village (2004)

It’s been seventeen years since I saw The Village. As I pressed “play” on my DVD player, I wondered how knowing the ending would affect my experience. The good news is the film is memorable, well-acted and well-shot, with an excellent score by James Newton Howard. Unfortunately, none of it feels like it matters. This movie completely falls apart under any kind of scrutiny, almost like it was built backward to support its own shocking ending - an ending that essentially gives the film zero re-watch value.

In the small, isolated Pennsylvania village of Covington, everyone fears “Those We Don’t Speak Of”: creatures in red cloaks who live outside the perimeter of torches surrounding the village. These monsters are drawn to the colour red and fiercely guard their territory.

Though the premise would lead you to think The Village is a horror film, it isn’t. Not really. Most of the picture deals with the villagers living typical 19th-century lives. The only abnormal thing is the prevalent fear of real monsters at night. Ivy Elizabeth Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard) pines for the meek and gentle Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix). He shows his affection by avoiding her as much as possible. This makes Ivy’s sister Tabitha (Jayne Atkinson) think he might accept her advances. So far, nothing scary. The young men have fun daring each other to taunt “Those We Don’t Speak Of”, except Noah Percy (Adrien Brody), whose developmental disability means he still acts like a child. None of it seems like anything more than superstition, even with (or perhaps because) Noah Percy can enter the surrounding woods without any apparent fear of reprisal from the monsters. Meanwhile, the village elders all appear to harbor secrets about the past, all hidden inside large black boxes. Now we're talking about something a little creepy, but still not terrifying.

The plot begins when the balance between the village and the woods is disturbed. This is where writer/director M. Night Shyamalan shows off his filmmaking skills. There’s a scene where Lucius steps into the surrounding woods and sees one of “Those We Don’t Speak Of”. The camera doesn’t quite follow his field of vision - it moves a fraction of a second slower than it should. We get a fleeting glimpse of the red-cloaked creature. In that moment, Shymalan transports us into that forest. The terror we feel seeps deep inside our bones - all without really showing you anything. Still, it doesn’t quite turn into a horror film. It’s difficult to pinpoint what sort of mood this picture is going for, and I mean that in a good way. It makes you wonder what’s coming next.

It’s impossible to discuss a second viewing of “The Village” without examining the multiple twists in the second half. First, we learn “Those We Don’t Speak Of” are fabrications by the elders, that the one that’s to be feared is actually Noah - he discovered one of the elder’s costumes - and, most shocking of all, that the whole film takes place in modern day. The village was founded as a way for the elders to start their lives over, away from the evils of the present. There is a nugget of an idea there. There's something to be said about the extremes grief will push us towards (all of the elders suffered hideous tragedies in their past lives) but it’s tainted by a cheap twist. If none of the elder’s children know the outside world, why mark the tombstones with old-timey dates except to fool the audience? It gets extra contrived when Ivy - who is blind - is sent into the woods to fetch medicine. It's so she can travel outside without learning the village's secret. Come on. I know the elders have sworn never to venture outside (I guess no one misses toilet paper) but if they’re making up their own world, why not make one up that includes modern medicine and other comforts? Oh wait, I know. It’s so the movie can have a twist ending, so it can fool those watching.

I can understand someone focusing on the themes of grief in The Village and calling it a good film. There is something here about how determined people can be to run away from their lives and prevent themselves from moving on in the process. I just don't know if you can call a film successful when your positive review requires you to ignore its preposterous ending and all of the contrivances inserted only to trick the audience. It’s a well-made film; moody & tense, with good performances, a terrific score and excellent camerawork. Unfortunately, they all sit upon a foundation of saltine crackers. (On DVD, August 7, 2021)

[carol-effing-danvers]

Steve Rogers is a Monster

Yeah, that’s a hell of a title, isn’t it? Strap in, it only gets worse from here. 

(click here if you’d prefer to read this on AO3)

Forewarning, if you enjoyed the epilogue for Endgame, this particular essay is not for you - and no, I am not bashing the Steve/Peggy shippers, you are beautiful human beings who make the fandom brighter and I’m happy that at least someone in this fandom got the ending they wanted.

Additional warning: if you expect this to be another Civil War debate, you will also be disappointed. There has never been a measurement invented that can adequately describe how much I loathe the verbal dick measuring contest that seems to pass for human interaction between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in this franchise. It’s not funny or entertaining - it’s exhausting, uncomfortable, and frankly it’s rather lazy writing.

This is about the very specific way that the epilogue in Endgame completely changed the way the character of Steve Rogers can be interpreted, and I don’t just mean the very illogical and contradictory way that time travel is explained, both in the movie itself and the fact that the writers and directors have two completely different views on how that worked out. 

I mean that the choice made by Steve Rogers in the very last minutes of that movie alters the way I view each and every one of his actions starting from The First Avenger and that alteration is exactly what I want to talk about, because whether you view it as deserving or not, what Steve does at the conclusion of Endgame was the most selfish thing humanly possible. Time is a thief, but somehow Steve managed to steal even more than Time.

Side note here: I understand that I am a completely biased Stucky shipper, a friend to Barnes and Noble, a Starbucks aficionado - sorry. Anyway, I’ve always believed that Steve and Bucky were destined blah blah blah, but I was never expecting a Stucky ending. Disney wasn’t going to do that, and I knew that, I wasn’t bothered that Steve and Bucky weren’t doing the smoochies by the end. But Bucky’s facial expression during those last minutes was gut-wrenching. Like...I have no idea what kind of cues the script and directors gave him, but in the future, please don’t ask Sebastian Stan to look sad unless you want soul-crushing devastation. It’s not Seb’s fault, his features are just arranged that way - but the fact that the editing staff allowed Sam to be sad though elated to be entrusted with the Shield and Bucky looked like his soul was being physically torn out of his body was an… interesting choice. 

Other side note: if you’re writing about time travel, I’m begging y’all to get your facts straight. Or just don’t write about time travel. It almost always sounds better on paper than it does on screen and it means that you’ve opened doors to more questions than you’ve probably got the answers for. I know this was about trying to set up the idea of the multiverse, I get that, but there were better and less messy ways to do that, and I know that because I’ve done it before. @Marvel: Let me write you a six-way orgy you fucking cowards~

By going back in time, Steve robbed Peggy of the future that would have been hers - not only that, he’s robbed her of even the chance of making the choice between those futures, because you honestly could not tell me with a straight face that Steve told her the complete truth of what he had done and she would be okay with him alternating the very course of the future. It doesn’t help his case that he has a history of not disclosing truths that he knows will be painful or inconvenient for other people in his life.

He robbed his loved ones - Sam, Bucky, Wanda - of the years they would have spent with him. Sure, he ‘came back’ after Peggy passed away, but they are adults in the prime of youth who knew him sixty years ago in his own time and he is an old, old man who has lived an entire life completely separated from them. He is practically a stranger with a name they know, but a history that no longer belongs to any of them - not even his oldest friend. They have him back, but judging from his age, they’ll be lucky to get even ten more years with him. Assuming of course, that any of them can stand to speak to him - I certainly couldn’t blame them if they tell him to go to hell and take his dad jokes with him. 

Steve has stolen away their friend and dropped off an elderly and dying near-stranger in his place, and this is treated by the writing (and the majority of the acting) as a wild and unexpected but not tragic event. 

Is it really that unexpected, though?

I recall seeing a Game of Thrones essay on Daenerys across my dash (I’m sorry, love, I don’t recall who you are since it’s not a fandom I’m in, but if someone knows who wrote that, please post the link!) which detailed how her ending in the series was foreshadowed many times by her penchant for bloody killings and her habit of surrounding herself with her own fawning friends.

Months after reading that, I had the thought: though Steve is never really shown thinking about Peggy after Civil War, except in a few scattered scenes in Endgame, was this foreshadowed? Whether you believe that his actions are justified or not, what Steve does is still, in the end, selfish at its very heart, and Steve Rogers is not a selfish person. 

Oh no, my dear friends and readers. Because taking this action has solidified and clarified Steve Rogers as the biggest and most selfish asshole in this whole universe.

Steve does not do the right thing, Steve does the thing that will most make him feel better. The fact that this often happens to be the right thing in the end is more the result of happy coincidence than any special sort of moral authority that the man holds. 

Rescuing Bucky Barnes and his fellow captives in a prisoner of war camp from being experimented on by an insane Nazi eugenicist? That was not a moral stand, that was endangering himself, Peggy Carter, and Howard Stark because he couldn’t handle the reality of his best friend being killed in war.

Sacrificing himself by putting the Valkyrie down in the Arctic Circle? That was not about sparing human lives, that was about Steve seeing his friend die right in front of him and not being able to deal with the grief. There were ways he could’ve prevented the plane from killing people without killing himself.

Trying to make Bucky remember who he was? And later on, saving him from the government agencies who wanted to hunt him down? Although, arguably, that last one is also just good common sense - Steve was already shown that government agencies could and were corrupted by HYDRA and he’d also seen how dangerous the Winter Soldier could be when unleashed. 

Steve did, I think, truly believe that this was the right thing to do, but it was also about keeping his connection - his very last, since Peggy had descended into dementia caused by Alzheimer’s before she ultimately died - to a past that for him, was only months or years ago, rather than decades. In some ways, this is completely understandable - Bucky might be the very last person left alive who truly knows who the real Steve Rogers is, because the rest of these people only know Captain America and we are consistently shown through multiple movies how uncomfortable this makes him.

This gets...considerably less and less understandable as we are shown Steve’s growing relationships with Natasha, Sam, Wanda - even Sharon, though she barely gets any screen time and they share the most awkward kiss I’ve ever seen - and indeed, what might be the most uncomfortable kiss in cinema history.

Side Note 3: This is made even more awkward by the director’s choice to have two of Steve’s friends watching them the whole time - seriously, who even does that? Why would you make them do that? Only sociopaths make out with their friends staring at them like that. It’s so fucking creepy - and don’t even get me fucking started on the fact that she’s also apparently his own niece. AHHHHH!

But we are shown, over and over again, that Steve is capable of building close meaningful relationships with people in the present. They don’t know his whole history, but they do know Steve Rogers rather than Captain America and they care about him deeply. 

Side Note 4: Notice that I don’t count Tony Stark among those people - despite this strangely persistent narrative that the various writers and directors tried to sell to the audience, Tony and Steve were not friends. They were never friends. They were colleagues at best, but these were two men who neither liked nor understood each other very well, but had to work together. And sometimes that’s okay, too. (Oh dear, I just gave the Stony fans a fit too, didn’t I? Sorry, guys. Enemies to Lovers is a great trope, I support you!)

But let’s set aside Steve’s gross betrayal of the people who loved him. We’ll also ignore the question of whether the motive for these good actions has tainted the actions themselves. Because even without questioning these, the conclusion of this story arc still transforms Steve into the biggest monster this franchise has. 

The very fundamental way that the writers and directors can’t agree on how the time travel mechanics in their own story work mean that Steve has just done one of two things and they range from shady and very questionable to absolutely fucking horrific. 

The first, that he’s created his own alternate universe to exist in, is morally dubious at best. Even the people who support this theory and liked the ending seem to feel that it wasn’t necessarily a ten out of ten on the moral goodness spectrum. They’ll say things like ‘he deserved to have his happy ending’. Even that phrasing seems to acknowledge that doing this was the opposite of the right thing. It just considers doing the wrong thing as being justified rather than horrifying. 

But let’s examine this first idea for a minute - even this, the more innocent of the two implications, means that rather than really processing his grief or dealing with the repeated tragedies and losses that have occured in his life, even as he was running group therapy sessions and grief counseling, Steve Rogers chose to escape his current life by creating an alternate universe that specifically allows he himself to live out his own fucking fantasies of the way his life should have turned out. 

That, in case you are not aware, is wildly fucked up. I thought I was playing pretty fast and loose with Steve’s characterization when I turned him into an extremely polite serial killer but as it turns out, I clearly just wasn’t setting the bar high enough, because that’s somehow even more fucked up than being an undercover child soldier with a small sadistic streak. 

Hm, and now I feel I should have been more creative there...

The second, and even more horrifying option, is that this older Steve Rogers has been in this world the whole time, watching as things unfolded just as we’ve seen over the past decade, taking ‘the slow way’ through time. 

Side Note 5: I do kind of understand why you would do it this way, because that’s really cool and shocking when you say that! Until you think about it for longer than three seconds and suddenly you realize…

Everything that has happened here, every tragedy and downfall these people experienced, happened because Steve Rogers lived his happily ever after with his beautiful wife and did absolutely nothing to stop it. He got to fuck Peggy Carter and watched as his wife built an empire of intelligence networks, knowing that her efforts were completely in vain because her agency was rotten to the core and he never told her.

Every horrifying act committed by HYDRA under the guise of SHIELD was permitted through Steve Rogers’ negligence. And that’s just the wider big-picture worldview, large and shocking, but not personal. 

What about the people that Steve claims to actually care about? 

This means that Steve lived his whole life in contentment with his wife and children while his best friend was physically and psychologically tortured for over seventy years and just...let that go. 

He allowed one friend to murder another in the nineties, when the Winter Soldier was sent after Howard and Maria Stark. Then their child was being advised by a greedy self-interested warmonger who paid terrorists to drag him off to be tortured and slaughtered, and Steve did nothing about that, either. 

Bruce Banner was exploited, experimented on, and made into a monster against his will in the failed pursuit of recreating what was done to Steve, resulting in billions of dollars in damage and dozens or even hundreds of lives lost, and Steve allowed that to happen, too. 

Like Bucky Barnes, Natasha Romanov was physically and psychologically tortured for others to use her as a living weapon - except that this was probably happening to her since early childhood, and a man her future self loved and trusted implicitly did nothing to save her from this upbringing. 

The Maximoff twins are shown to have not wealthy but loving parents who are murdered in front of them and they both endure days of laying in the rubble of their ruined apartment, wondering if the bomb in their living room would go off and kill them. Later, they are taken in by HYDRA, experimented on, and recruited as child soldiers to the cause when they show signs of having supernatural powers. They start a series of events that result in the destruction of a major city and the loss of what is probably thousands of lives. Pietro is murdered while trying to help the Avengers to stop this, and Wanda suffers the loss of the very last living person she loved. None of these things seem to have bothered Future Steve. 

Steve “I can’t sit on the sidelines when I see a situation go sideways” Rogers, planted himself on that fucking sideline and observed for nearly eighty years as friends, colleagues, and his own wife were lied to, brainwashed, tortured, vilified, and hunted down like animals.

And then there Steve Rogers himself - not the Endgame Steve Rogers, the Steve Rogers who brought down a Nazi plane and will lie beneath the ice for seventy years while everything he knows disappear (mostly) innocent of these horrors, the life he would’ve lived stolen from him by a stranger with his name and his face from another universe.

What I’m saying here is that if you consider this idea for any amount of time, it took Steve Rogers less than ten minutes to become the most evil and disturbing figure in the entire MCU, only (not really tho) contested by Thanos himself. 

Gross and poorly reasoned libertarian ethics aside, Thanos genuinely believes that he did what he did for the sake of the entire population. It’s made fairly explicitly clear that Steve didn’t do this for anyone but himself. 

Call me crazy, but if everyone you know needs to suffer and multiple planet-wide devestations have to happen in order for you to get your happy ending, you might be the bad guy. 

Maybe I’m just old-fashioned?

[roaminginspiration]

Home to You

Part III

(part I), (part II), (final part)

Howard took him to an immense guest room and pointed at the en-suite bathroom for him to use before stepping out.

Jarvis followed soon after gently carrying an elegant wooden chest he put it on the end of the bed.

"Miss Carter took care of collecting all your clothes and belongings but after some the sight of them became too difficult so she entrusted them to Mr Stark to donate or make good use of, but he never brought himself to separate himself from it," Jarvis said quietly, gazing down at the chest. He opened it, took a pair of brown trousers and a light beige  shirt and put them on the bed next to it.

Steve remained, wistful, as he silently began to perceive the depth of his friends' grief. Howard hurried back into the room.

"Thank you, Jarvis." He casually nodded at his butler as an invitation to leave the room.

He then turned to Steve. "I'll just be down the hall," he said with unsettling seriousness. "If you need anything just let me know."

He patted Steve's arm and his eyes seemed to cloak with concern at the prospect of leaving him like he was taking the risk of never seeing him again. Howard brushed off the feeling with a feigned casual smile.

"Thank you, Howard."

He smiled again. A satisfied smile subtly tainted by culpability. "Of course," he mustered the words quietly, then headed towards the door. He paused and turned with a genuine content expression. "You're home now." Then he walked out.

And those three simple words left Steve standing dazed and disoriented in the middle of the room. He had spent so long away from home he was no longer where to find it, or if he would even recognize it.

After coming out of the shower, Steve walked to the chest and put on his old clothes. He looked himself in mirror with a puzzled expression. It as almost like he belonged to this time again. He stood in front of the case again and ran one hand over the smooth wood. As he put a hand on each side of the lid, he paused, staring down at it, anxious. He took a deep breath and lifted the chest. A pair of brown trousers and a beige shirt was lying on the top. He put them on the bed and looked into the box again. Coins, the novel he recalled he was reading the last few weeks before his last mission, a shiny decoration he had received post-mortem he had read in his file after waking up but that he had never wished to retrieve, a few black and white photographs of him and Bucky, his mother's watch. He picked up the latter and grazed it with his fingers as his eyes began to tingle as they cloaked with tears. The watch was just the way he remembered it the last time he had seen it. He brought it up to his chin and closed his eyes.

He then nodded silently to himself and put it down again. Next, he picked up the photographs. He and Bucky as civilians at Coney Island — he chuckled quietly at the memory; he and Bucky as soldiers, surrounded by the Howling Commando, cheering. He looked at the genuine smile on his own face and was struck by the sheer joy oozing from him. He realized he hadn't smiled this way in a very long time.

Glancing down, he noticed the brown leather book lying at the bottom of the chest. He reached for it with eagerness and flipped through the pages as he looked at all his old drawings and sketches. Some he recalled; some he had completely forgotten about. He remembered the feel of the lead pencil in his hand as he drew across the page, sitting quietly under the tent during the quiet days at the camp.

He realized how much time had passed when he felt like an old man going through the memories of a past life. Memories that brought a smile to his face, and yet remote memories he could never fully grasp again no matter how hard he would try.

This moment, although otherworldly precious, resonated very much an out of boy experience. He couldn't help feeling like he was flicking through the souvenirs and their intrisinc memories of a stranger he once used to know. And as content as he was in this moment, part of him senselessly felt uncomfortable and guilty relishing mementos that no longer really belonged to him.

He put everything back into the chest and went back to the bathroom to have a shave. That's when loud voices coming from the hall caught his attention.

"I am serious, Howard!" a female voice called out. "If you made me come all the way here for some fashion advice for your next tryst, I swear I will tear that mustache off your face without any shaving equipment."

His body tensed as he immediately recognized the owner of that voice. He walked over to the door and gently opened it. He peeked through and only caught three shadows reflecting at the end of the wall.

"That is not. I swear," Howard retorted. "And besides, I only called you once for that. You an't blame for it for the rest of my life!"

"Err, sir, I think we're steering away from the important topic," Jarvis babbled between them.

"Twice, Howard. You're forgetting that evening from last June."

"That was for the Promising  Enterprisers  banquet at the White House! You can't count it as a tryst when I was meeting with the President!"

"Except you ended up spending the night with his cute blonde counsellor," Peggy answered matter-of-factly.

"Sir, please." Jarvis pleaded desperately. "Miss Carter, you might want to give this clearly sensitive matter some rest."

"Right. Peggy — Peg," Howard started again with a much calmer voice. "I need you to listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you."

There was silence.

"Fine. I'm listening," she answered with a reluctant, heavy sigh.

"You might want to sit down."

"Whatever it is you have to tell me Howard, I can take it standing in my tights and heels."

"Mr Stark is right," Jarvis intervened. "It would be wiser to sit."

Peggy was struggling disapproving in loud protest when she suddenly froze and turned pale as Steve stood a few feet behind them. Her purse slipped out of her grasp and felt to the marble with a clatter.

Jarvis and Howard both turned to look at Steve, then cautiously steered their gazes back on Peggy's pale expression.

His heart was beating faster than he ever remembered it had before, and mustered a little composure to voice his next words gently.

"Peggy," he murmured. And that all he needed and wanted to say this moment.

She looked stunning — more beautiful than he recalled. Young and strong like he had once known her. The sight of her being so vigorous and youthful eclipsed the memory of all those frequent visits at the hospital in the future.

He couldn't help but smile at the miracle time reversing had just brought upon him.

"It's really him, Pegg" Howard murmured.

All the features on her face sprang into a a quiet gasp.

"Steve?" she eventually uttered.

He nodded calmly.

"Jarvis, I think we should go make some tea," Howard said but neither Steve or Peggy heard it.

The two men were off the second after.

Her two hands went to her mouth and her face suddenly twitched into a whimper. Her eyes filled up with tears and, like they both knew it was the right time, ran to each other.

She clasped her around his neck and squeezed anxious he would magically slip out like a vivid hallucination, until her arms went numb.

He heard her sobbing into his neck.

"It's been so long — so long," she cried, echoing her own words at the hospital decades from now. "I thought I would never see you again."

Holding her in his arms, smelling the familiar scent of lavender coming off her hair, and his mind and heart processing that the young Peggy we knew, and the Peggy whose coffin he had carried down the aisle, was in the flesh into his embrace, he arched over and held her tight against him, as tears rolled down his face.

"My Peggy," he whispered into her neck, grateful for the unexpected turn of events that had brought him back, as his finger slid down her silky dark hair. "It's so good to have you back."

He silently thanked the Universe and fate for that exquisite piece of unadulterated bliss.

And the moment seemed to go on for a heavenly eternity.

Later on that evening, after Howard had returned Peggy heard the story behind his return, standing next to him, holding tightly to his arm. She listened both content and troubled at the realization that the Steve by her side came from another time. Every time she locked eyes with him, she watched him with immeasurable admiration and affection, and he understood that the feelings she had once for him had never really died; if anything, they had grown in his absence, cherished like valuable relics.

Long after the clock had struck midnight, Peggy suggested that Steve should get some rest. But what was Peggy's suggestion was taken like an indisputable command by the males in the room. Jarvis wholeheartedly agreed — Howard did so too, but a bit more reluctantly. And soon all parted to different rooms, ,and Stark to his lab for research on time travel one could only assume.

Peggy was athirst for more and more details, even the most insignificant ones. She didn't talk much, simply listened. And then he came to understand she was simply insatiable of the sound of his voice.

Lying on the bed next time, she lost her feud against the night and fell into a deep slumber. Holding her dearly and taking on this peaceful, he watched her.

She slept in his arms that night for the first time.

* * *

Lying with her day clothes over  the untouched bed, Natasha was silently gazing at the white ceiling above her, unable to find sleep. Incapable of finding rest and a peace of mind.

When the first rays of sunshine broke through  the window, she finally got her excuse to get out of bed and wander about the building.

She didn't stop at the kitchen for her stomach did not yearn neither food  or liquid. She was on her way to the computers for some research when a familiar silhouette standing outside caught her attention. She hesitantly glanced around her then walked out to him.

Bucky was quietly staring at the sun rising.

"Couldn't sleep?" he asked blankly without detaching his gaze from the horizon.

She remained silent and that was all he needed as an answer. Both he and Sam had been filled in with the news.

Natasha looked up at him, and for the first time, she saw how Bucky could look confused and disoriented, like a little child, without his best friend around. He never looked so defenseless.

"Why don't you tell me preoccupies you?" he asked. "You don't believe this Dr Strange can figure out a way to bring him Steve?"

She glanced down and folded her arms. "That's not what troubles me."

"So what troubles you?" he inquired calmly, but stern.

"I'm afraid...," she blurted, taken aback by her revealing choice of words. "I'm afraid that even if we find a way to bring him back he will choose to stay."

He turned his head to look at her. He watched her closely. "Why would he?"

She tried to gather and summarize the thousands thoughts she had been running over and over since the evening before. It was impossible for her to list them or even tell apart neutral from selfish ones.

"Why wouldn't he?" she answered. "He has every reason not to want to leave it all behind once again." She looked at Bucky again and realized it was the longest and most real  conversation they had ever had. "If you were sent back home, would you really choose to give it up?"

Bucky stared at the horizon again, and several seconds went by during which nothing but the sound of birds chirping.

"I don't know," he said musingly.

And she both appreciated and detested the dreaded, honest answer.