#protag-centered-morality means Sam is the Hero no matter what so Steve Must have been right about him and we cannot question it

[amarriageoftrueminds]

Sadly Steve's characterisation as a good judge of character is often inconsistent and self-contradictory because of shoddy writing.

For example:

Phillips / Stark / Carter hired Nazis (and she personally attacked Steve & tried to talk him out of rescuing POWs) ...all of which Steve categorically condemns at other times.

But Steve is never shown distrusting and condemning those three as he should; boycotting her funeral in protest at what she did, condemning Stark Industries, etc. etc.

(Proper characterisation would've had Steve suspicious of Peggy in CATWS because he is already realising that her legacy is rotten, and had him acknowledging that she endangers him by lying to cover her own ass / to dissuade him from inconveniently looking into SHIELDra's past, etc. Or him being like 'welp Nazis get shot' about Howard.)

Protagonist-centered morality, love-interest centered morality + the narrative's abandonment of Bucky as a victim, has characters doing things and getting away with them which they shouldn't, if Steve is a good judge of character.

EG. Steve shouldn't be calling out Nat/Fury/Tony/Strangers for lying to him, but never call out others who lie, and even endanger him with their lies (see above).

Steve shouldn't be chastising Sam for being rude to T'challa (a stranger) but fine with Sam being cruel to Bucky (post torture too!)

And TFATWS's insistence that Bucky is a reformed villain means that Steve's canon judgement is now not consistently good, (along with T'Challa's!), since he trusted Bucky. (And they retconned Steve's judgement to be poor over totally the wrong person, of course!)

Bad writing also creates impossibile characterisation paradoxes.

Take that Sam being cruel to Bucky thing...

If Steve is a good judge of character, and he judges Bucky to be good, that means he thinks Bucky is innocent. Which means Sam is Therefore being cruel to an innocent. Which in turn means Sam can't be a good person -- and neither can Steve, since he's standing by doing nothing as an innocent person is treated poorly in front of him.

'Good judge of character' Steve could not judge that Sam to be good / and that Sam would not help Steve find Bucky, to whom he is hostile.

That would also mean Steve is Therefore not a good judge of character (since he was wrong about Sam, who is bad, because he's being cruel to an innocent).

...If Steve is a poor judge of character, then he could be wrong about Bucky too. But if Bucky is bad, that means being cruel to him is- well, still not great, but more acceptable?

It means Sam is potentially a good person, anyway. Except he can't be, because Steve is now a poor judge of character, and he thought Sam was good.

You see the paradox?

Sam can't be a good guy and cruel to innocents. Steve can't be a good judge of character, and rate people who are cruel to innocents (or cruel to those whom Steve thinks are innocent). Steve can't be a good judge of character and think someone is innocent when they're not. He can't be a good judge of character and friends with Nazi collaborators. Both things can't be true at the same time.

It would have to mean that Steve's judgement is spotty and poor -- not a compliment to those he trusts -- or that Steve's values simply aren't what they're supposed to be.

(IE. That he didn't judge that Sam, Peggy, etc. was a good person; he judged that they would be loyal to him personally. This turned out to be someone who would also be openly cruel to Bucky -- but Steve thinks that's fine? Well, if those are Steve's values, then he wasn't technically mistaken in their character, or in Bucky's -- who is an innocent that Steve is fine having mistreated in front of him.

But with the way they act, given that Steve's values are in fact not supposed to be that 'cruelty=fine', then Steve can't think both they and Bucky are good people, and be right about both of them.)

CACW defines neutrality and inaction as un-heroic, and has Steve saying he can't just ignore bad things when he sees them. But the writers are inconsistent with showing or enforcing that, because they have creator's pets who cannot be criticised.

They have all this self-contradictory accidental characterisation. Because they're inept.

Why don't we ever talk about how Steve is actually a pretty good judge of character?

He meets Sam, jokes around with him for 5 minutes, and decides he's going to trust the man with his life which turns out to be one of the best decisions he ever made and he entrusts the Captain America title with him.

He meets Natasha in Avengers and doesn't hesitate to take her word for anything during that movie. All it took was one head nod from Natasha vouching for Clint and he's suiting up beside him, ready to go into battle. His trust wavers a bit in The Winter Soldier because, due to her experience as a super spy, Natasha still holds things close to her chest but when it counts, Steve knows who she is and knows he can trust her to have his back. It's why it hurt so much to see her on the opposite side in Civil War, but even then, he never loses trust in her. I could gush about how important those two are to each other all day so we're just going to move on.

It was pretty clear to me that Steve never actually trusted SHIELD that much and went there because of Peggy's legacy and because that's where he felt like he would get the most fulfillment. He always kept people at SHIELD and Nick Fury at arm's length, actively arguing with Fury about Project Insight when he found out about it. He didn't hesitate to knock the whole thing down once he found out about Hydra.

Steve always butts heads with Tony because they're too different, but at the end of the day, Steve knows Tony is going to do what's right, even if he's misguided on the way there.

He took Wanda at her word that Ultron's values were the same as Tony's, even if they were on completely opposite ends of the spectrum and Tony wanted to protect the world while Ultron wanted to destroy it. Wanda goes onto become an Avenger.

While Steve was motivated by his friendship to Bucky in saving Bucky, he was never wrong that the person he knew--the good man--was still there and that Bucky was worth saving. It took just a few moments where Bucky hesitates in killing him to prove that to him, even while everyone else around him was telling him that Bucky was no longer there. Steve wasn't wrong about this one, either.

In summation, if Steve Rogers doesn't trust someone, I'm not either.