Can I just step in here for a second and point out that when Steve found Bucky, he was all alone, repeating his name rank and serial number (which is what soldiers are trained to let be the only things they say under torture or interrogation) to an empty room. They’ve clearly broken him to the point where all he can do is just keep saying that over and over again. And what’s the first thing he says when he snaps out of it?
in the first avenger, when steve gets into a fight over a guy complaining about a short reel about the war effort, steve is not standing up for America. he’s not standing up for the “war effort” or propaganda or anything of the sort. that’s not why he gets in that fight.
this woman is opening crying in the middle of the theater, emotionally vulnerable and visibly broken.
when steve tells the man to show some respect, he’s not asking for him to show respect for the flag. he’s asking the man to show respect for the men who carry it, and for the families left behind, to show any semblance of empathy he can muster. it’s always been people that steve’s cared most about.
my turn-ons include back massages, long walks on the beach, and Bucky Barnes straining so hard to project I’m Just Experiencing Normal Feelings While Having A Nice Drink With My Best Pal that his face becomes an agonized rictus
#I FEEL NOT AT ALL DEVASTATED BY ANYTHING I’VE BEEN THROUGH IN THE LAST 24 HOURS!!!!#I’M JUST HAVING A NICE CHAT WITH MY SUDDENLY TALL AND HANDSOME BEST FRIEND WHO IS HERE IN THE SHIT WITH ME INSTEAD OF SAFE AT HOME#AND FEELING REGULAR ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!#DEFINITELY NOT WORKING THRU ABOUT 60 KINDS OF GRIEF/ENVY/LOSS/RELIEF/TERROR/SELF-HATRED ALL AT ONCE#definitely not having a furious inner dialogue that goes “am i jealous of steve? am i second fiddle now?”#“wait does that imply that steve was ever second fiddle?? he wasn’t. i’m a FUCKING ASSHOLE! oh god he’s talking what is he saying”#“LAUGH”#bucky barnes#marvel#“have i been looking at him weird? is my face regular? what face do people make???”
“We were thinking what the reality of a character like this was. He would have every
weapon in the book, he doesn’t lose. When he’s sent to kill you, you’re dead.
And the only one who can barely escape is Captain America. If Captain America
is the world’s greatest soldier, he is the world’s greatest assassin. He’s a
doppelganger. These guys are equally as potent. Cap has a shield, he has a
bionic arm. And they’re equally matched.”
Many people think that Bucky went to the museum to learn about himself. That is wrong. He went there to learn about Cap. That was Captain America museum. Not Bucky’s/winter soldier museum.
he just happened to find out about himself while he was there. he wanted to find out who the man on the bridge was & why he knew him, little did he realize he’d find out he knew him
has gotten a lot of flack, and I don’t disagree that it could and should have been handled a lot better, but even as it is, I really really like what it says, or rather, confirms about
Bucky.
How long do you think it took Steve Rogers to realize that his ‘look, son’ tone of voice was like an instant ticket to getting maybe 70% of people to immediately do whatever he was telling them to?
Because let’s be real here, Steve’s in his twenties. The only people he should be even remotely inclined to address that way are actual kids. But then he does the Captain America thing and is all Public Service Announcement-y and suddenly people have actual stars in their eyes and are just like ‘yes sir Captain America sir’, because for decades after he got frozen, the US government pretty much just used him as a propaganda tool and trained the entire population to see him as a moral compass and embodiment of goodness.
Only now that’s a tool in Steve’s own hands, and wow did that backfire on some of them lmao.
But yeah. Imagine Steve watching some weird video about himself from the 70′s maybe and he’s making fun of it and just trying to joke with some SHIELD secretary or something, going ‘son I’m going to need you to keep this off the books’ but then the next thing he knows this person who’s like, maybe four years younger than him at most is glancing covertly around the room and carefully deleting that day’s surveillance footage of the gym or whatever. Nodding once before going back to the sunny receptionist mannerisms.
Yes! Steve and Peggy knew each other for almost two years before Steve died, which is why it drives me crazy when fans say they barely knew each other. The timeline isn’t well-explained in CATFA, but here’s my rundown of events:
Steve is recruited by Erskine on June 14, 1943. The year is also confirmed by the newspaper in that scene. He meets Peggy a day later, when he arrives at Camp Lehigh for his training. It’s love at first sight for Steve, but it’s not long before Peggy starts noticing him, too:
(I should mention that the flag at Camp Lehigh says it’s 1942, so mistakes in the MCU are entirely possible. Moving on!).
Steve is chosen for the SuperSoldier project within a few days of arriving at camp. Before the operation, he and Peggy have a heartfelt talk about the discrimination they face in the military, and she begins to fall for him (…even though Steve tries to flirt with her but kind of insults her instead. Oh, Steve). But her crush is especially noticeable after the serum, because… well:
Yeah.
According to a newspaper in the film, Captain America is born on June 23, 1943! (Okay, technically it would be June 22 because the paper would be the next day, but semantics). It’s been 9 days since Steve was recruited, and 8 days since Steve and Peggy first met. Mutual crushes have been established.
After Erskine’s death, Steve tours the east coast of the USA and parts of Europe from July – October 1943, selling war bonds. Peggy is sent to London during this time, but it’s possible they kept in touch. Or, alternatively, the Captain America tour poster states he would be in “London, Bristol, Manchester, Allied Bases in Europe, and North Africa”, in that order, so maybe they met up in London before reuniting at the Allied Bases. Regardless, they’re comfortable with each other when we see them again at the base in Azzano.
In November 1943, Steve learns that Bucky has been captured by HYDRA, and he and Peggy plan the illegal rescue mission. This is really the first time Steve and Peggy flirt with each other, not just little glances and smiles (”You’re late!” becomes their Thing). The day Steve brings Bucky home is November 24, 1943, according to Steve’s condolence letter:
Everyone moves to London a few days later. It’s here where things become serious: Peggy flirts with Steve while wearing a gorgeous red dress, and they promise to go dancing after the war (which becomes a euphemism for their future, with ‘the right partner’ line). From the moment she walks into the bar wearing that dress, her eyes only for Steve… they’re going steady, in my mind. Especially because Steve tells Bucky “Maybe she’s got a friend”, as if he and Peggy are already together. It explains why Peggy is so pissed when she sees Steve kissing a woman in the bunker a few days later – she thought they were a done deal. At this point, they’ve known each other for five months (which is around the time you would get serious with someone. Just saying!).
From December 1943 to early 1945, Steve leads the Howling Commandos through all their famous missions. Peggy is part of this Special Ops team, shown in the wartime montage in CATFA. Steve carries a photo of her in his compass, like she’s his Girl, so they’re serious about each other.
Their time together is also mentioned in CATWS, in the video at the Smithsonian; Peggy talks about a mission they did together in the Winter of 1944. Plus she’s still upset talking about Steve, eight years after his death, which speaks volumes about their relationship:
So we can assume that they worked side-by-side for the entirety of 1944. Maybe they were in correspondence throughout each mission and met in London between them (going off the bombed-out pub scene)? Although I’m betting Peggy joined in on a few of those missions, too!
(BTW, by my best guess, Bucky dies around Feb-Mar 1945, but it’s completely up for debate. I know the Smithsonian tribute says he died in 1944, but… it doesn’t really fit with the timeline of CATFA, so I’m electing to ignore it).
Finally – Peggy and Steve share their first (and only) onscreen kiss right before Steve’s last mission, which is in ‘45. We know this mostly from CATWS; Natasha teases Steve with “Was that your first kiss since 1945?”, which suggests it’s a known fact that Steggy macked (maybe Colonel Phillips wrote about it for the history books?!). Most people accept that VE Day in the MCU is the same as real life (May 8, 1945)… which means Steve probably died sometime in April 1945.
So! This means Steve and Peggy knew each other for almost 2 years (June 14, 1943 – April 1945), and were ‘going steady’ (or at least only had eyes for each other) for ~1.5 years. That’s a pretty long time, especially in the 1940s when most people were married within a year of ‘steady’ dating – even less during wartime. And while it was cool to casually date, it wasn’t cool to sleep around or even have makeout sessions, which weren’t popular until Car Culture in the 1950s. Many couples in the 1930-40s wouldn’t have done much with each other before their marriage night, even if they had been Serial Daters before getting together.
So when people say “Steve and Peggy weren’t serious because they only kissed once!” …it’s not a valid argument, in my mind. TWO YEARS, MAN. That’s a longterm relationship!
So, I’m currently watching Captain America: The First Avenger and I paused the screen where Steve is trying to get into the army for the first time. I’ve seen this before but I’ve never read the whole list and I’m very curious what “nervous trouble of any sort” is supposed to mean.
According to the notes/explanation in the US Army manual, it seems to be psychological. The example in the appendix is “nervous trouble due to job pressure, cleared up when quit job”
Granted, this is an obstetric manual, but I imagine the definitions used are the same.
Since sometimes my brain goes “I need to find the source” I did a bit of research and i found this pdf document titled “Report on Preliminary Mental Health Screenings for Individuals Becoming
Members of the Armed Forces” dated 2016 that report nervous trouble of any sort as“(anxiety or panic attacks) including trouble sleeping,
depression or excessive worry, evaluation or treatment for a mental condition, counseling of
any type, suicide attempts, and use of illegal drugs or abuse or prescription drugs.”
So yes, at the very least we have proof that Steve had anxiety
That is the best description of Steve I have ever seen
I was always so confused about if Joss Whedon had seen The First Avenger. Because Steve swears in the movie. Not like hard, its a PG-13 family movie, but he does swear.
I think Joss Whedon falls into the same trap as bad fic writer, where he thinks Steve is a farmer from 1950s Kansas instead of Irish Catholic kid from 1920s Brooklyn.
Steve Rogers is 400 pounds of righteous kickass in a 100 pound body and by using the serum the army found room for only most of it.
he thinks Steve is a farmer from 1950s Kansas instead of Irish Catholic kid from 1920s Brooklyn.
this is it. this is the description for how steve is so often mischaracterized.
My grandpa was born in a Brooklyn tenement in 1917. He was five-foot-nothing, fond of bare-knuckle boxing and once flipped my 6′1″ uncle to make a point. Enlisted in Dec 1941, got shot and blown up and turned down a medical discharge twice, but took the bronze star (which he tossed in the back of his closet). He cursed in two languages and told ribald stories about french prostitutes. He cared deeply about doing what was right even at personal cost, and would give you the shirt off his back. He learned how to use a computer just to spite my father telling him he was too old. He climbed on his roof at 87 to fix the chimney. At 89 he threatened to kick my husband’s ass if he broke my heart, and my husband was like “I genuinely believed him and was kind of scared.” When he died, people filled the largest room in the funeral home, then the line stretched down the hall, out the door, and down the sidewalk. I heard dozens and dozens of stories that could all be summed up as “Here’s how he helped/stood up for me” and/or “I really thought he was going to get himself killed with that”. My last surviving great-uncle said he was best summed up with “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
This is the man I think of when I write Steve.
Plus: Steve was in the US Army. I learned to swear really inventively in US Army basic training, and credit those eight weeks for teaching me that “fuck” can be a noun, a verb, AND an adjective if used correctly. Don’t tell Steve does not swear like the soldier he is.
the1timetraveller 