While this gif set and this one keep me up at night, I can’t help but thinking – what if part of the reason that they kept showing Steve Rogers surviving falls that should have killed him was to show how the serum would have helped Bucky survive under similar conditions.
How do you people see these connections. I mean honestly. You just made a fantastic point (which also really hurts because it reminds me of Bucky falling and I cried at that part) and it makes so much sense now that I think about it.
Also, back then Steve didn’t know he could survive a fall like that, which is why he didn’t jump right after Bucky. Imagine how much he blames himself for not doing it, now that he knows what happened to his friends, what he could have stopped if he had followed him down that mountainside.
I didn’t even think about that. I like how we all make these connections together and make these twho fimls hurt so much more..
“What would I give for a playboy who couldn’t keep it in his pants, and who runs through women? What I have is a son who shows no interest in them. What you do at night with your boys, after your show of skirt-chasing, is a disgrace.”
Pretty sure it’s not canon, but it’s got quite a bit of fanon support.
I am fully on-board with the MCU Bucky being a Bucky Barnes/Arnie Roth combo character as far as backgrounds go.
Personally, I figured Buck for another primarily Irish-stock kid, albeit better off financially and less fresh from the boat than the Rogers family, but I wouldn’t be in fandom if I didn’t love different character interpretations, and Jewish Bucky is totally valid, especially if you take the Roth influence into account.
One of the most interesting aspects of the Captain America lore, to me, is how often Cap has been mythologized in his own universe. In the earliest comics, Bucky is the child companion to super-soldier Steve Rogers. Which is… kind of bizarre and creepy given the WWII context? It didn’t take long for other writers to realize this, so in later iterations — like the Waid or Brubaker runs, for example — Bucky being a kid is ret-conned, except it’s framed in a way that doesn’t invalidate the earliest Cap stories. Rather, they’re treated as sanitized versions of the “real” story, which is that Bucky was either a war photographer who befriended Steve and/or at least 16 when he was sent out to accompany Captain America as an orphan who was raised on-base to become a specialist in scouting and wet-works, who did things in the dark that an icon like Cap wasn’t allowed to do in the light. SUBTEXT.
The result is a pretty amusing comics meta, where we get to see the “real” Bucky complain about his 40’s GEE WHIZ, CAP portrayal on-screen — or rather, on-panel — and in the MCU, we get to see kids grabbing at Captain America comic books generated while Steve is on his publicity tours, which are in fact reproductions of the actual Captain America Comics #1.
Published in our world in 1941, and yeah, he’s totally punching Hitler. Did I say meta? IT’S ALL VERY META.
Another example of an in-universe non-ret-con is when WWII ended and Steve Rogers was floundering as a character (what to do with a Hitler-puncher when you have no Hitlers to punch?) but the Cold War was gearing up and McCarthyism was hot, so the best (??? lol) way to make him relevant was to go anti-Communism. Cap was even billed as CAPTAIN AMERICA, COMMIE-SMASHER!! before the title was altogether cancelled in the 50’s.
When Stan Lee revived him in the 60’s, he decided that the REAL Steve Rogers had been frozen since WWII, and the Anti-Commie 50’s Cap was an impostor.
But wait, this was about Bucky.
So, in none of the non-MCU iterations was Bucky actually Steve’s BFF from childhood. As of 1982, Steve DID have a childhood bestie, though. Arnold Roth. They met as weakling kids getting their respective asses handed to them in back alleys, then Arnie was like, “Screw this, I’m going to take up boxing.” So he did. And he got buff and used his new buffness to protect the still-sickly Steve Rogers from bullies on the daily. Thus continued their Best Friends Ever relationship, to the point where Steve considered the Roths a second family, and Arnold his biffle big bro. Also, Arnie developed a girl-chasing Romeo persona during their teens. I’m sure you can all see the parallels here.
However. The lady-killer rep was due to Arnold realizing he was gay and trying to over-compensate to hide his real desires, resulting in him eventually drifting apart from the more quiet Steve.
He later joined the Navy during WWII, and a whole bunch of other junk happened, (GAMBLING! ABDUCTION! DEATH! FRIENDSHIP!) but 616 Arnie Roth is canon Jewish and canon Steve’s larger, stronger, brunet age-mate protector. Make of it what you will.
AMC’s John Campea gushes about Sebastian Stan’s face (again)
Everything, all this. It’s my favourite moment in the entire movie, and if you listen to the commentary, you find out it wasn’t just thought up ‘for something to put there’ and casually tacked on, it was ALWAYS how the movie was going to end. It was going to be pre-credits, for a while. Bucky’s face while he’s looking at his own memorial is and always was the final shot of Cap 2.
As the mother of an autistic child, one with an aversion to certain types of clothes, to seams, to matching socks, to materials etc and I loved how this was explored with DJ and I wondered if this was deliberate (A lot of DJ matches things on the spectrum) or just a coincidence
Yes. It’s deliberate.
Many of DJ’s traits are based on those of those on the autism spectrum, including his difficulty with sensory processing, his inability to easily or accurately read facial expressions and his literal reading of many situations, his need for order and control. A lot of things in the stories point to the way he processes his world, and how the people in his family deal with his needs.
I have never explicitly stated that DJ is/would be diagnosed as on the spectrum. That’s because DJ is an AI magically transformed into a child. He’s a unique case, but what I did not want to do was draw a comparison between real life people on the spectrum and robotic AIs.
This is a group that already struggles against a lot of unpleasant stereotypes and misunderstandings. I do my best not to propagate things like this, so what I tried to do is write a sympathetic, well loved character who relates to the world in a way that could best be described as neurologically atypical.
He is presented as a child who handles and processes things in a way that is different from the rest of his ‘family.’ This isn’t unusual in the real world. It’s also not unusual for family members to struggle with the differences that they can’t fully understand. It takes different people differing amounts of time to come to terms with what a child, what another person, needs.
That came up in the socks scene.
Steve has been observing, determining what DJ needs, what makes him comfortable, what small alterations can be made in a daily routine to make DJ happy and productive. Steve gives him time warnings. Provides him with structure, and makes his expectations clear. He communicates in clear language, and checks in repeatedly to make certain that DJ understands and is comfortable with what is happening.
Steve has researched things, and as an adult, he’s adjusted his own expectations and needs to match his child’s. I imagine his own mother did the same, for her sick and stubborn son. I imagine that Sarah Rogers, while not a saint, had done everything she could to make Steve’s life easier, to protect him, to raise him with love and acceptance.
She was a nurse who could not cure her son, but she could make him as comfortable as she could.
Tony struggles a bit more. Tony was raised with expectations. Tony is aware of public scrutiny in a way that Steve isn’t. Tony was raised with constant reminders that he was being judged, at all times, by a lot of different people. Tony looks at the socks, looks at a lot of different things, and doesn’t see a need, he sees something small that DJ could easily do to avoid needless problems.
He does’t understand that just because something is easy for him, doesn’t make it easy for DJ. That DJ has different needs, and different levels of comfort.
Tony fights to understand, and he doesn’t always get it, but he’s trying. Just like a lot of other people’s, Tony’s growth takes effort, and he slips from time to time. Not because he doesn’t love DJ. But because he does not understand, and understanding takes education and effort.
He was raised by people who did value appearances, who expected their son to be part of their perfect family. Tony fights against that, a lot. It’s another thing that has to be unlearned.
DJ is unique. But yes. He is based on various individuals I’ve known on the spectrum. I’ve been helped quite a bit by friends and readers, who have helped me adapt his personality and outlook, and I’ve been gratified by the response of readers, especially by those who identify as being on the spectrum themselves. 8)
even though it’s something they both did, even something as seemingly small as the partying thing reveals a completely different psychological profile from the two characters
like 616 tony partied because he drank. he drank because he’s an alcoholic. he’s an alcoholic (at least in part) because drinking was attempt to self medicate for his MAJOR DEPRESSIVE DISORDER that boils down to tony being pathologically self-loathing
mcu tony partied because he was empty because- despite all his money and power and genius- he couldn’t connect with people which could’ve been a result of shitty parenting but it also seems like it could possibly be narcissistic or possibly borderline personality disorder
As much as I love deaf Clint Barton, I don’t know enough about ASL (grammar in particular) to do it justice just now — it’s one of those things I’d love to research-and-write, but the “research” portion can sometimes take a while.
(I do have a bit in my drafts where Bruce finds out Clint is hearing impaired hard of hearing (sorry, my bad!) and asks him out to dinner in basically one fell swoop, but Bruce’s signing, like mine, is restricted to the ASL alphabet.)
The thing about this photoset is that Evans is a passive subject for the camera.
Most photos of a beefy blonde male have him staring aggressively. You know the type I mean – stance wide and shoulders spread, eyes lit with challenge, as if he’s about to punch or fuck the camera man. This set is the exact opposite. Evans glances away from the camera like a Victoria’s Secret model, or else peeks from behind a shirt like he’s asking for approval. The photos where he’s on his knees have his spine curved to show off his slender waist, elbows in to show submission. Heck, in one picture the curve of his torso mirrors the curve of the lady on the poster in the background.
Some photographer, when deciding to work with Evans, decided to shoot him in a way that women are often portrayed, instead of the traditional machismo alpha male bullshit. Thank you, photographer. Tumblr is grateful.
“Yes,” said Eustace, “and whenever you’ve tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says ‘What wonderful memories you have! Fancy you still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.’ ”
“Oh Susan!” said Jill. “She’s interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grow-up.”
“Grown-up, indeed,” said the Lady Polly. “I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she’ll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one’s life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can.”
“Well, let’s not talk about that now,” said Peter.
The one I wanted to throttle was Polly. Lucy is possibly young enough not to really get it yet but Polly was a grown-ass woman and should have known better than to talk that kind of shit about a young woman wanting to stop being a child.
Susan wanted to grow up. She wanted (as mentioned in ‘The Horse And His Boy’) to fall in love and get married. She worried, she protected, she mothered. And she was the only one, the only one out of all of them, who got it right. Aslan told them they had to move on. To grow up. To find him in their own world.
Susan was Aslan’s big fucking success. The others couldn’t do it. They couldn’t take the lessons they’d learned in Narnia into their own world. They couldn’t make a difference there – no, they all spent their time obsessing with getting back. Narnia was heaven for them and they couldn’t function anywhere else, so Aslan took them back one last time to suspend them forever in the only world they wanted.
Narnia was not Susan’s heaven. Narnia was not what Susan wanted. Eternal youth and innocence was not what Susan wanted. Susan wanted to grow. Susan wanted to grow up. Susan wanted love, and family, and her own world. Susan’s heaven was the one drawn from Earth, from a life lived to the full.
Since I was a kid, I have always thought of ‘The Last Battle’ as a very sad story because it is ultimately a story of failure. All the ‘kings and queens of Narnia’ die and are brought back to the dying magical world because they couldn’t accept what Aslan had told them over and over about growing up and moving on. They weren’t supposed to come back. It was a final act of mercy that Aslan allowed them to do so, since they couldn’t bear to live in their own world.
I think Susan would visit them someday, with her queen’s crown and her blazing red lipstick and the lines of growth and character on her face, and very gently explain to the perpetual children in Narnia that she was thankful that Aslan hadn’t taken her with the others. That she was thankful for her children and grandchildren, for boyfriends and husbands, for a life that was full and happy and productive. That she never needed Narnia to be happy. That she missed them, that she’d mourned for them, but she wouldn’t change her own choice for anything.
The other thing is that they had all already grown up once, in Narnia. In Horse and His Boy, there are references to how men try to be Susan’s lovers — and while this may not be intended in a sexual sense, it’s very much a thing that happens to adults, not children.
Whatever childhood she’d managed to cling to after being sent away from the Blitz and having to be mother to her siblings had ended. Puberty doesn’t go two directions, even if they returned to being children physically when they came back through the wardrobe.
The fact that she wanted to move and grow again, that her version of femininity wasn’t Lucy’s or Jill’s or Polly’s, was enough to deny her paradise? Really?
knitting in the dark 
