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.
I never realized before that Steve also falls. When he reaches out to Bucky he’s almost taken down with him. For some reason, no matter how many times I have seen it, I always thought of Steve as a rock, an anchor in the scene. Because that’s who Steve Rogers is as a character, and who he is up until this moment as Captain America. But in reaching out to Bucky he loses his footing and needs to grab on to save himself. And his resentment is immediate. Between the rush of almost being pulled down and the realization Bucky is gone, it’s the moment Captain America stops being Steve Rogers.
WHEDON HOW CAN YOU SAY HE HAS AN EGO DO YOU NOT SEE THIS SHIT. DO YOU NOT SEE HIM LOOKING PHYSICALLY UNCOMFORTABLE BECAUSE OF THE CAMERA DO YOU NOT SEE THE REST OF THE COMMANDOS NOT GIVING TWO SHITS ABOUT THE CAMERA BECAUSE THEY HAVE BIGGER THINGS TO THINK ABOUT AND STEVE IS THERE THINKING “SHIT SHIT DON’T LOOK AT ME DON’T TRACK ME I DON’T WANT TO BE THE ARMY’S DANCING MONKEY I WANT TO DO SOME GOOD, QUIT FOLLOWING ME”
“A MATCH OF EGOS” WITH TONY STARK WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL
Headcanon where Bucky used to “accidentally” damage newsreel cameras to make Steve feel better.
I love you all and I love this analysis but i think y’all are mistaking two different kind of ego. This is a hot take that will probably get me in trouble, but
Tony’s got a very performative kind of ego. A kind of “Oh look at me look how amazing I am” ego.
You know, the kind that often goes hand in hand with those pesky self-esteem issues that Tony has in spades. Genius Billionaire Playboy Attention-Seeker. If you scratch that shiny surface, he’s a hot mess, always second-guessing himself.
Oh but Steve (god love him) Steve’s just so sure, you know? This is Right and that is Wrong and yeah, he’s a smart guy and understands the complexity in a situation but Red Skull wasn’t all that far off the mark when he said that Steve-o does arrogance better than anyone. It just looks different when he does it.
Put it this way: can you imagine Tony delivering a line like this:
… with that level of confidence? No. Tony would be all tortured and angsty about it, but not Steve. And that’s its own kind of confidence, it’s own kind of ego.
Steve might not be comfortable in front of a camera (sing me the song of Steve Rogers’ body dysmorphia I am here for that shit) but Steven “tree by the river of truth” Rogers consults his own moral compass (aka his opinion of what is right and what is wrong) first and last and always. Yeah, it’s admirable. It’s also egotistical as fuck. Who died and made him king of right and wrong, huh?
In Sum: If ego is “a sense of self-esteem or self-importance” Steve got all the self-esteem (at least in terms of morality) and Tony got all the self-importance (at least in terms of who should be the center of attention At All Times) but they’re both egotistical af.
Tony’s ego is about being seen, Steve’s ego is about being right. They’re both struggling against their own egos, with varying levels of success.
the1timetraveller 