So, the other night I shared the picture of Steve where he not only put his bandages over his uniform, he poked holes in them for his wings to stick out:
[From Avengers #45, 2001, try to ignore that he’s also riding a hovering wheelchair.]
And someone remarked that maybe they were actually attached to his skull, which given this x-ray image of him talking on the phone, would not actually be that implausible:
[From Captain America #308, 1985.]
I remarked that they could be like Namor’s ankle wings. I don’t think Namor’s ankle wings actually give him enough lift to fly, but they’re more like, semiotic indicators that he CAN fly, or little steering wings, or something.
Anyway the upshot was that if the wings on Steve’s Captain America uniform were actually wings that he had growing out of his skull, and he just kept them folded up under his ‘do most of the time, maybe it was because some of Namor’s blood instead of Wolverine’s was used in making the Serum. Which would mean Steve could theoretically fly.
I like the idea that Steve could fly but didn’t tell anyone, because when he does his little headwings flap frantically and it just looks silly.
Sam it’s a little early in the day for you to be this drunk.
A LITTLE EARLY FOR DRUNKEN RAMBLINGS. 8)
Tag: meta
#ugh fuck #fuck fuck fuck #steve didnt even fucking use the shield he had in his hand #he just puched zola in the face #and it’s not a face #it’s a fucking screen #and it just keeps turning on#mocking him #natasha calls him ‘chipper’ later #for a guy who found out he died for nothing#dont be fooled #steve is anything but chipper #steve is angry and in pain and distraught #but this is steve rogers #and he’s been a variation of the three of them for years #and he knows by know he’s got to fight #he’s used to it #resigned to it #and he’ll do it with a smile #until bucky#that’s what breaks him #that’s the one thing that can completely undo him #and he doesn’t know yet #oh god he doesn’t know #steve rogers #walking wounded steve rogers #this movie fucked me up #tws (X)
What is Steve’s face in these gifs?
In the first one he seems to be looking to Natasha for confirmation
“Natasha do we eat that sort of thing? Gosh darn with everyone trying to kill us I can’t remember if I need to eat. What is breakfast anyway, Natasha?”
And then in the second one he seems to be saying
“Hey, Natasha, how do you like my new boyfriend? See, I totally didn’t need your help hooking up with a hottie. He’s made us breakfast. Look, Natasha, I did good. Are you proud of me?”
Hey, Sam, what did they have for breakfast?
#THIS IS HIS FIRST FIGHT POST-SERUM#THIS IS TOTALLY STILL SKINNY LITTLE SHIT!STEVE#FIGHTING EVIL SQUID NAZIS
omg I didn’t realize that, I love this scene 100x more now
I think his fight against evil Richard Armitage is actually his first, but I still like the idea about body image, and it still applies.
So yesterday I posted a meta on how the Winter Soldier essentially is the world’s deadliest child and how he threw tantrums over Steve treating him like a friend, and I’d like to expand on that today. Because I honestly believe that it was Steve’s kindness that managed to crack the Winter Soldier’s programming and send it crumbling.
(I’m going to differate between Bucky and the Winter Soldier, because I believe the Winter Soldier is a semi-personality of his own, built upon Bucky’s original personality like a Medieval church built upon a Greek temple. If that makes sense.)
Neither Steve nor Bucky recognize each other at first, for understandable reasons. The Winter Soldier is active and thus Bucky is completely dormant, so he has no possible way to remember Steve. Steve is faced with a masked assassin who has even got Natasha unnerved; he has no reason to suspect it might be his not-quite-as-dead-as-previously-suspected childhood friend.
And their fight is vicious. Since neither recognize each other, neither pull their punches and it’s the closest we get to see someone wiping the floor with Captain America. A lift filled with SHIELD elite? No sweat. The Winter Soldier one-on-one? Steve fights defensively and only gets a few hits in because the Winter Soldier is that effective a murder weapon.
But then, then, we get to the iconic scene where Steve recognizes the Winter Soldier as Bucky. The Winter Soldier, still in control, doesn’t react to it other than in a what the hell are you on about way.
This changes when Steve doesn’t act.
It wouldn’t surprise me if “targets” has tried to fib the Winter Soldier in the past, to stall for time or prepare for a counter-attack. But it’s painfully obvious that Steve has no cards up his sleeves. He is genuinely stunned and probably couldn’t tell you his own name at that moment.
Lots of people have commented on how the Winter Soldier hesitates for a moment before throwing himself back into his mission. This is the first crack in the programming, and I think that hesitation we see is the ghost of Bucky. HYDRA managed to program the Winter Soldier to not recognize Steve’s face, but they couldn’t bury Bucky so deep that he wouldn’t react to Steve calling out to him.
The Winter Soldier has never known kindness or friendship or love – he’s a tool, what point is there in wasting such attention on a weapon? So when faced with Steve not defending himself, the Winter Soldier does not know what to do, it’s not part of his programming, and deep down within him Bucky starts to throw himself at the walls. I think that is what makes the Winter Soldier aim at Steve again; the world is shattering around him, inside him, but his mision is always his mission.
This carries over in his next scene, with Pierce. He’s unsure, questioning, a little bit violent. When ordered to have his mind wiped, he doesn’t fight it. Maybe he thinks things will return to normal, that he will be rid of the voice screaming inside of him to save his target protect him save him.
Of course, that doesn’t work. Not at all in fact. Because on the helicarrier we get this:
The Winter Soldier doesn’t attack Steve. He is an assassin, a sniper, his advantage is in his unexpected first attack. But here he just stands before Steve, acting the part of a mountain, firm between Steve and Steve’s target.
And Steve? Steve talks. He tells Bucky he needs to get past him, please remember we’re friends, I really don’t want to this, I’m sorry.
marlowe-tops has an excellent meta on this fight which I highly recommend, and the gist of it is that while the Winter Soldier has his Mission, he can’t remember it because Bucky is screaming at him to not fight Steve. This time both of them are pulling punches, not wanting to hurt each other; before things escalate, they are almost having a shoving match.
Of course, things do escalate, and the Winter Soldier shoots Steve three times. (But deliberately avoids the head). Then Steve, because there is no Rogers without Barnes, runs down to save the Winter Soldier from being crushed to death, and the Winter Soldier snaps.
His mission saved his life. His mission, whom he can’t bring himself to kill, saved him and now calls him friend. His missionfriendmissionfriendmission says he won’t fight him. Calls him James Buchanan Barnes and the voice inside him screams louder and everything comes shattering down.
The following fight isn’t as much a fight as it is a physical scream of anguish. The Winter Soldier is crumbling, Bucky is fighting to get out, and Steve takes the punches and won’t fight back. He only pleads for Bucky, it’s me, Steve, remember me, please, remember me, I’m your friend.
Just look at the Winter Soldier’s face here.
Look at the last one. Look at it real closely. Do you see how it goes from fear/confusion/anger/shock to… something softer? As he subtly turns to Steve and tilts his head down, Bucky recognizes Steve.
Steve. What have I done?
I’m not saying that Bucky returned to stay and that the Winter Soldier is gone; quite the opposite, I think Bucky only managed to break out at that exact moment. But he’s awake, no longer dormant, and could make the Winter Soldier dive into the river to save Steve and make sure he was breathing before leaving him.
There’s a long journey ahead and it will be filled with pain and heartbreak, but the cracks have been formed and will spread. The Winter Soldier’s programming is breaking down, and I cannot see any other cause for it than the combined force of Steve’s undying loyalty and love for Bucky, and Bucky’s bone-deep one for Steve – and how Steve proved that devotion all over again.
(gif sources: rebloggy.com & glassconduit & fluffalos & kirknspock)
This final moment, this moment where the man who had always protected little Steve Roger has him on the ropes is the moment where Bucky can’t and won’t be contained anymore. He always, always protected Steve. Always. In the back alleys of Brooklyn, on the front lines in Germany. It didn’t matter. No matter how big and powerful Steve got, Bucky would always protect him.
And now, Steve is on his back, bleeding, helpless, vulnerable, and for the first time since Bucky can remember, Steve isn’t fighting back. He isn’t running either, but Steve always fought back. Steve never lay down and let someone hurt him. No matter how big. No matter how strong. He would always fight.
And Bucky, somewhere under the armour of the Winter Soldier, knows that and knows that he can’t and won’t let this be the first time he isn’t there to save his friend. Bucky may hate what he has become and know all the things he has been used for and to kill, but the one person he can’t and won’t kill is Steve. Not now. Not ever.
There’s a line from the first film which sums up their whole relationship: not without you. And that is the essence of who these two men are. They are two halves of a whole. Not without you. And Bucky, under all the drugs and pain and torture and conditioning, will never let Steve down.
That is so beautifully put and exactly, exactly.
oh right, i rambled about it on twitter but i forgot to post it here: it’s official, aos is a fandom, which means SORTING HEADCANONS!
skye is definitely a slytherin, with some secondary ravenclaw traits (more reasons to love skye to pieces,…
I think you mistake wanting to be strong, which could be equally Gryffindor or Slytherin, with wanting to be brave, which is what really defines Gryffindor house. Pettigrew, despite his later choices, really and truly desired to live up to the Gryffindor ideal of courage and nobility. He wanted to do the right thing, but ended up failing out of cowardice. Ward never once envisioned himself as brave or noble, probably not even at age eleven. He did what he had to in order to survive, which is an incredibly Slytherin trait. He wanted to be strong, yes, but not because he wanted to be able to live up to his own morals (of which he apparently has none). The only reason he wanted to be strong was to either defeat his enemies (i.e. burning his house down) or to keep surviving under the direction of those stronger and smarter than he is. So yeah, he’s basically Crabbe and Goyle type Slytherin.
I’d also note that while the Sorting hat does take personal choice into account, it does occasionally decide that it knows better. Neville Longbottom asked to be in Hufflepuff because he was intimidated by Gryffindor’s reputation, but was overruled. If Ward asked to be in Gryffindor, I’m guessing the same sort of thing would happen.
Less mistake, more I think that Ward, at age eleven, might mistake one for the other. I think Ward at age eleven is a different prospect to Ward as an adult, too, and I was thinking more about what he would have been like at that age, before The Well, before that ‘defining moment’, where cruelty and abuse has already happened, but he hasn’t embraced his hate in the way he describes, the defining moment that led to the arson, that led him to Hydra.
Also, digging deeper (probably too deep for a casual Sorting, oh well) there’s a lot of influence of culture and family in what happens in Sorting. If we’re working on the premise that Ward is Wizardborn, there would be pressure to be where his family was, and if his family were traditionally Slytherin, then that’s where he’d be likely to be placed. However, if his elder brother was already at Hogwarts and already in Slytherin, I can see Ward pushing with all his might to be Sorted into the House diametrically opposite it. If he’s Muggleborn, and the first of his family to go to Hogwarts, I think the waters are a bit more murky, even though Slytherin isn’t traditionally a House inclined to Muggleborns. (Incidentally, my first ever Potter fic was about the fate of a Muggleborn Slytherin during the Books Six and Seven.)
Chronically ill Steve Rogers
(The images in this should be collapsed to begin with because, well, one of them is a plate of raw meat that Steve is presumably eating for breakfast. The last image is a gif. Contains discussion of illness, treatments, ableism and eugenics. I should point out…
The one thing I think I would argue differently would be to view a lot of those things as connected rather than separate. E.g, scarlet fever that developed into rheumatic fever, which then caused the heart problems (rather than heart problems PLUS scarlet fever and rheumatic fever separately). My grandfather was kept out of WWII for just that reason (heart problems resulting from scarlet fever/rheumatic fever) and it definitely contributed to his early death at the age of 62.
The other thing is that I don’t know about the expanded list- the only thing I ever paid close attention to was the doctor’s form in CA1, because I was writing a fic about it. Wherever it came from, I am side-eying the prop department because they’re kind of gilding the lily. Probably a product of not being used to how incredibly fragile life prior to antibiotics was (and so many of the other things they enable, like modern surgery).
Reblogging with this comment, because while the original meta is very good this comment is important because it highlights what tends to get overlooked about complex multiple medical conditions – they interact, they cascade, they cause other problems. So you have Steve taking asprin for one condition which causes/exacerbates ulcers, which then leads to the aenemia. You have the asthma leaving him open for respiratory infections. You have immune and vitamin deficiencies leaving him vulnerable to everything going around, and you have his body working double time trying to fix all the leaks. He’d be sick, and sicker than most, all the time. He’d be tired all the time. He’d be in pain, all the time. He’d have a poor appetite, and a temperamental gut as for what foods he could tolerate when he could eat. And that’s not even touching on the half of it.
oh right, i rambled about it on twitter but i forgot to post it here: it’s official, aos is a fandom, which means SORTING HEADCANONS!
skye is definitely a slytherin, with some secondary ravenclaw traits (more reasons to love skye to pieces, she’s ME)
coulson is probably a gryffindor? though i’d probably accept hufflepuff if only because i don’t care all that much whoops
fitzsimmons are ravenclaws, i spent a good while thinking around it to make sure i wasn’t biased because science but no they’re definitely ravenclaws
may is probably also a slytherin, i think, but if i had to pick another house for her, it’d be hufflepuff
trip is absolutely a gryffindor, there’s no doubt in my mind
and uuuuugggghhh only because i have to, ward is a slytherin
IN THE MOST BORING WAY POSSIBLE#ward is a slytherin the way crabbe and goyle are slytherins
I’m gonna throw out the wildly controversial Sorting of Ward as a Gryffindor. I’m doing that for a number of reasons. Not because I’m holding up his life choices as anything noble but because a) Ward survived, against all odds, his childhood, and b) the Hat takes into consideration a person’s wishes. I think, above anything, Ward wants to be strong, and while Slytherins are resilient and resourceful, I think Ward himself, at age eleven, would see the Gryffindors as the embodiment of strength and want to be a part of that strength, both as wanting to be a strong person himself but also because in the company of strong people he would be safe. I think he’d see Slytherins as too close to his home life, too close to his brother – a lot of individuals taking power and using it for their own ends, both good and ill.
And finally, I Sort him as Gryffindor because what people tend to forget is that Peter Pettigrew was a Gryffindor, and also the Dark Lord’s right hand. Peter Pettigrew was a Gryffindor for the reasons I have listed – because he wanted to be strong, and wanted to be protected – and Grant Ward reminds me of no other character in the Harry Potter canon so much as he does Peter Pettigrew.
[casual reminder that bucky’s lack of self care started way before winter soldier—at the bar with steve he had no sense of coordination, he was not clean shaven, mildly unacceptable given the time period, his hair was unkempt, and his uniform was not on properly, which was a BIG no, wherever you went. he was most likely suffering from severe depression and the beginnings of PTSD, sparking his sudden lack in self-care and subtle negative undertones of himself (‘I’m invisible’; ‘a nightmare’), and while this can be attributed to the joke he made, depression first manifests itself in minuscule phrases in every day speech]
knitting in the dark 