Friends
Watching: Jessica Jones S2
Reading: Sabriel
Writing: Cap BigBang 2018
Inktober Day 28: Gift
Helicopter Scene
Captain America: Civil War (2016)
New haircut? I noticed you’ve copied my beard.
Good Morning America!
a weak and tortured bucky making sure steve gets to safety first
It’s because Bucky has a habit of letting Steve go first.
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1) Always let Steve go first up the stairs, so that you can keep an eye on him. It’s easier to count Steve’s breaths and notice when Steve’s heart does that thing that makes him stop and shake. Much easier to stop and pretend to tie your shoes while you wait, worried, than to realize 2 flights too late that Steve’s no longer with you.
Later: Your limbs are sore and numb from being strapped to a table for 2 days and you’re pretty sure you haven’t eaten and the entire base might be exploding, but when Steve says “let’s go up,” you tell him to go first.
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2) Steve’s walk was mostly normal, though he swung his hips in a certain way to compensate for his scoliosis, and that put a special cadence to his stride that you unconsciously match. Even without Steve around you would twist your hip back before swinging your leg forward. Twist, swing, twist, swing.
Later: Steve is leading the way through the forest, and you’re finally used to his height and broad shoulders and that dumb shield, but something still feels wrong. Somehow your pace doesn’t quite match, and you can’t figure out why.
——-
3) Colors don’t work the same with Steve, so always describe unfamiliar objects by their shape and relative location, like that square window past the third door on the left, or the man wearing that unseasonably long coat standing in the corner by the garbage can.
Later: The boys are singing in the other room and you’re at the bar with Steve, trying very hard to get drunk because of course you’ll follow Steve into whatever but that doesn’t mean you have to do it sober. “Steve,” you whisper, “Check out that lady by the door, next to that short thin guy who has his shirt open.“ Steve looks over. “The one in the red dress? That’s Miss Carter.“ You can’t decide what surprises you more – that Steve can see red now, or that he knows her name. So you decide you need another drink.
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4) When walking down a narrow dark alleyway always stay on the right, because Steve’s bad ear makes the right side feel blind to him (though damn if Steve’d ever admit that). On broad open streets, switch to Steve’s left side, so that Steve could hear you better through the noise.
Later: Dum-Dum gives you a weird look as you line up to charge into a Hydra base. “Why won’t you take the left flank for a change?" You start explaining Steve’s bad ear before you remember that he’s not that Steve any more, and that Captain America doesn’t have a bad ear.
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5) Stuff in your left pockets are for Steve: the asthma cigarettes that Steve could never afford, a dime for that popcorn that Steve likes, tickets for whatever shindig you’re trying to drag Steve along to. Sometimes you put things there for Steve and totally forget about it, like extra paper and a spare pencil in case Steve wants to doodle. The left side always belongs to Steve.
Later: Steve is awfully quiet by the campfire. You sit down by his good ear and reach into your left pocket. "Hey,” you say, pulling out a news clipping about the war front that featured a lovely photo of Miss Carter. “You read this yet? They think Morita’s a Japanese defector, but the section on Dernier is priceless.”
—————
Still later:
Report on the Winter Soldier reset procedures
After the latest test run, only the following anomalies remain:
A) The asset tends to hug the right walls and not the left, and hesitates for 30 microseconds before climbing stairs. However, he does not hesitate when scaling walls or ladders.
B) When walking unopposed the asset has a characteristic and identifiable stride, which is dropped when he is making a covered approach.
C) The asset communicates via relative locations, often omitting crucial color information. However, he can be commanded to describe the colors of any object in impressive detail.
D) When dressing himself, the asset keeps his knives exclusively on his right side, and his left pockets are underutilized. This may be an effect of continued unfamiliarity with the new left arm.
After extensive field testing, we have determined that these anomalies do not impede the asset from completing his missions, and declare the reset process complete.
——————
(Some habits linger, even when the person is gone.)
[basically the textual partner to the colorblindness comic] [Steve-angst sequel here, happy resolution pseudo-sequel here]
[The rest of my Captain America stuff]
[and now with colorblindness commentary]
One of the things I love about Steve Rogers is that he goes against the archetype of good/optimistic characters only being – and deriving their goodness/optimism from being – innocent and naïve.
Steve isn’t naïve. Steve grew up in hardship. In the comics, he was abused and watched his mother be beaten by his father. In the movies, he had no father, but was violently bullied and dirt poor. Steve grew up in the school of hard knocks, in the middle of the Depression; any naïveté about how cruel the world could be got beaten out of him as a child.
And then, Steve signed up to go to war. He fought on the front lines of WWII, and witnessed untold violence. Some comics and cartoons show him helping to free concentration camps. And he fought – Steve never had the luxury, as Cap, of having a “no killing” rule like Superman. He’s never relished taking lives, but he’s done it when necessary. Steve is no unsullied innocent.
From all this hardship, all this violence, Steve could easily be a character who has a grim, cynical outlook on the world. He’s seen and experienced the absolute worst of humanity; he’s borne witness to genocide, after all, and horrors of war. And usually, the characters who have endured brutality are the ones who are the bitter anti-heroes, or dark and angsty heroes – the Batmans and Daredevils, the Wolverines and Punishers. Meanwhile the hopeful, optimistic heroes are often the ones who have had warm and loving homes, and who haven’t been broken yet by the world.
But Steve, despite everything, stays hopeful. Steve believes in the best of humanity, in spite of having seen it at its worst. Steve believes in the importance of Good, because he has looked deep into the heart of Evil.
Steve has suffered all his life, but he refuses to let the world break him.
That refusal, that strength of outlook and principle, and that subversion of archetype with a rejection of the increasingly popular grimdark hero narrative, are all reasons I love Captain America, and find Steve Rogers a truly interesting and inspiring hero.
happy pride
Happy Pride to all my LGBTQIA+ followers!
Tony in Avengers 4: Please help me I’m stranded on a planet in space
Steve, petty and gay: Sorry Tony but the entire government turned to ash so I can’t get them to sign my permission slip :/
He wished he could have kissed him—he wished he could have known, for certain, that a kiss would convey the deep stunned emotion he felt for this shaking man. It was a pure, unadulterated feeling, which existed only by and for itself. There was only the immediacy of knowing that Bucky, so unthinkingly generous, so heartbreakingly brave, was absolutely worthy of love—and so Steve loved him almost despite himself, like some kind of physics law, like air rushing in to fill a vacuum.
War, Children by Nonymos. This is one of my all time fave fics! Read it a few times and finally decided i needed to art it
By The Numbers: The Captain America Films
that helicopter scene from civil war with my heart will go on as music
so i saw something like this almost two years ago but i couldn’t find it again when i wanted to show it to a friend so i made it myself.
