“The Avengers and Their Favorite T-Shirts” Series. (Post 1/3)
If you are interested, these t-shirts really exist (except Sam’s, it was a bit modified): Tony- Steve - Bucky- Sam
Next batch - 2016: Thor, Natasha, Clint and Bruce. Then: Wanda, Pietro, Scott and Rhodey. I’ll add The Vision and The Wasp later. Also in 2016: a Supernatural version feat. team Sam-Dean-Cas ♥
its funny how black panther was advertised as team iron man in the promos when t’challa was highkey only there to kick buckys ass he at most knew like two people by name on the entire team
i really enjoyed how at no point in this film, did Tony actually look scared of Steve, at no point did he look worried that he wouldn’t make it out of this fight. Until, Tony blew off Bucky’s arm. And then Steve was gone, he went off, he was erratic, he was full fury and rage, and Tony? Tony looked fucking terrified. Tony looked like he was realising that this is what Steve was talking about when he said Tony hadn’t seen his dark side yet. This was his dark side, and his dark side comes in the form of an unwavering devotion to protecting Bucky Barnes.
Growing up, how many times do you think Bucky took/gave a beating to protect Steve? How many of those fights do you think Steve started? Tony knew Steve was willing to die to protect Bucky, but it never crossed his mind until that moment, Steve might kill for Bucky. Well, Tony should trust Steve now that he’s seen his dark side.
I’ve been thinking about this all day, and like, I don’t think Tony really knew, until this moment, just how much Bucky meant to Steve. Like I think he thought that the way Steve felt for Bucky was in some way comparable to what he’d found with the Avengers. Like when he says “You’re going to turn Barnes over and you’re going to come with us, because it’s us” and the whole “He’s my friend” “So was I” like, Tony really doesn’t seem to fully grasp just how deep the bond between Steve and Bucky is until that moment, there’s no way to compare it to anything Steve has with anyone else. Like it’s literally in that moment where he’s having to analyse Steve’s fight pattern for some way to fight back, that he realises there was no way he was ever going to win this, not when Steve has something to fight for now, something he believes in with everything that he is, something that really means something to him. Steve loves Bucky so completely that it actually terrified Tony the lengths he would go to for him.
“
Tony knew Steve was willing to die to protect Bucky, but it never crossed his mind until that moment, Steve might kill for Bucky.”
Deadpool: brings a teenager with superpowers to help him in a fight
Tumblr: DEADPOOL!!. I love the interactions between negasonic teenage warhead and deadpool. Omg so cute. *billions of fanart*
Tony Stark: Literally does the same thing when his friends abandon him. Sends him home as soon as he sees a probability that he’d get hurt.
Tumblr: tony stark is a villian ™. I can’t believe he used peter as a child soldier :) :)
Look, okay, people giving Tony shit for recruiting Peter to be a “child soldier omg TRAUMA AND DANGER” is dumb, yeah–no one actually WANTED to hurt anyone else in that fight and on top of that the kid literally comes with his own personal panic button AND is strong enough to arm-wrestle the super-soldier with the METAL DEATH-ARM and win–but this is definitely an example of false equivalence, because COLOSSUS EXISTS.
Colossus knows what Negasonic Teenage Warhead is doing. Colossus is doing this WITH Negasonic Teenage Warhead. He’s her trainer and her teacher and he brings her along–he could totally have made the call to leave her at home while he helped Deadpool himself and she would’ve STAYED home and listened to death metal and eaten all his favorite snacks, probably, but she also had zero compunctions about coming along and kicking ass in the name of “yeah this is kinda our bad on the dude getting away, huh”.
May Parker, on the other hand, does not know where Peter is. Tony not only lied to her, he told PETER to lie to her. Like, yes, the peril is much lower in this situation than in Negasonic’s, but Tony still blackmailed and bribed a kid who’d already said “no” to rope him into fighting his fight–a kid whose personal philosophy of “with great power comes great NEED TO NOT JUST FUCKING SIT ON MY ASS AND LET GOOD PEOPLE GET FUCKING MURDERED” does not even SLIGHTLY jive with the Accords. Peter Parker would NEVER willingly sign that thing. Peter Parker knows DAMN WELL what happens when you ignore the problem and pretend it’s not your business.
(Also, like, unless I’m forgetting a throwaway line somewhere, we don’t actually know how old Negasonic Teenage Warhead is–she could easily be eighteen or nineteen and still using that name–but we DEFINITELY know Peter Parker is still a minor and he seems to be intended to be around fifteen or sixteen. So he’s not only less trained, less experienced, and less powerful than her, he’s also less developed and less mature. Seriously, a four-year age difference is a LIFETIME at that age.)
So, therefore, Negasonic Teenage Warhead’s long-term mentor who she has a stable working relationship with takes her along to clean up a mess they’re partially responsible for and help a dude with whom they had a pre-existing relationship save his innocent and uninvolved ex, a woman who has nothing to do with any of this at all and is gonna maybe die if they fuck this up. Meanwhile, Peter Parker’s random rich-and-powerful stranger lies to his aunt, blackmails him when he tries to say no, and then distracts him with shiny new toys to get him to clean up an in-house mess the AVENGERS are responsible for and help him arrest a guy who literally everyone in actual positions of legal authority in the movie straight-up laughs about the idea of giving a trial to–WHILE ALSO BRINGING ALONG BLACK PANTHER, who, I love you, T’Challa, but you are the only cat in this fight who is trying to actually MURDER someone, at this point in the movie you are still planning to kill a man in cold blood because you THINK he killed your dad. And, again: trial? What trial??
Like–tl;dr, but long story semi-short, Deadpool is trying to save an innocent person and kill literal superhuman SLAVERS with basically zero resources/backup and recruits two people with training and experience and an actual permission slip, and Tony has half the Avengers and all of Stark Enterprises and 117 governments on his side, but threatens a six-months-into-superpowers teenager into working for dudes who have already made it clear they would execute an untried man and want to arrest a bunch of people who have saved the world MULTIPLE times without even hearing them out on why they’re so vehemently against the Accords or even CONSULTING them when first DRAFTING the damn things. Like, that is the thing that is canonically happening here. That is the situation.
Also, Tony Stark is actually styled as a hero who believes he’s doing this for the greater good and is working with legal approval, restraint, and oversight. Deadpool’s goals are all personal and/or selfish and he has already spent his entire R-rated movie murdering people with extreme prejudice and refusing to answer to anyone. They should REALLY be held to different standards there, morally and narratively speaking, and yet Deadpool’s story STILL treats the involved teenager with more respect and agency than Civil War’s does Peter, while also not pretending she is a fully mature adult prepared to take on other super-powered people with zero formal training and about as much prep time as it takes to fabricate a spider costume in a super-scientist’s lab.
SO I CAN SEE WHY PEOPLE GET A LITTLE CHUFFED BY THIS STORY CHOICE, HONESTLY.
I keep seeing a lot of posts about how Steve was in the wrong in CACW because while Tony had a plan, Steve didn’t offer any alternative to it, he was just like NOPE. The thing is though, something that immediately struck me when I watched the movie was the timing of everything. Ross and Tony bring Steve and the others the Accords THREE DAYS before they are to be signed. Those Accords were not drafted, approved and supported by 117 countries in a week. This was 100% intentional. This is also very, very common in American politics. When politicians want to pass a bill they don’t want people to look at closely, they schedule votes at weird times or when a large # of people are away from the Hill (Capital Hill). So you get these 11th hour bills that are hundreds of pages long that no one has had a chance to read, ask questions about, or negotiate on about changes. These bills are stuffed with completely unrelated stuff that gets passed as well because the whole thing has to be signed off on/approved. It’s called “pork barreling.” Those are the questions Steve tries to bring up to the group. When he’s like ‘what happens when…?’ And Tony brushes aside his concerns like ‘oh, I’m sure we’ll get to make changes later when everything dies down.’ But Steve is like what are we agreeing to NOW though? And practically as soon as they are given the “generous” 3 day warning, Peggy dies. Steve flies off to London and everything goes to hell. What time is there to propose or discuss an alternative plan??
The timing was 100% intentional to make sure the Avengers would be subject to the Accords as written–no matter what was lurking on the bottom of page 440 in fine print. Steve is 100% right to be suspicious. This is one of the dirty tricks of American politics that Steve would be totally aware of. And sure, maybe there’s a chance that everything was above board, reasonable, and so on, but you would NEVER sign a thing like that w/o actually checking/reading it. that would be foolish. I mean, did we forget that Project Insight was authorized and approved by The World Council? I guarantee you that Steve hasn’t. I absolutely believe that Steve would have been willing to talk everything out, negotiate, listen to everyone’s pov, and really consider everything carefully…but there’s no time given to do that. It’s all last minute, non-negotiable, and shady. Steve is a master tactician, natural leader, and a reasonable, thoughtful person who is a Big Picture thinker. It’s weird that people just assume he rejects the Accords because he’s being childish or something. That’s not Steve Rogers at all.
THIS. THIS. ALL OF THIS.
Steve was not being unreasonable or being “I DO WHAT I WANT BECAUSE CAPTAIN AMERICA FUCK YEAH” or incidentally “selfish.”
a. All of the points that op makes above - YES. ABSOLUTELY. There was no attempt at a “can we review this and think this over?” and “can we reach a reasonable compromise?” Because nope, the Avengers are presented with a “hey 117 countries ‘agreed’ to this and we better sign because we kinda fucked up in Lagos and this comes on the heels of fucking up in Sokovia (even if Sokovia is technically on the heads of Tony Stark with Bruce Banner and Wanda Maximoff in supporting roles).”
b. Friendly reminder - Steve is pushed to make those drastic choices because Sharon Carter warns him that the order for Bucky Barnes is shoot to kill. Not capture, not question, no further trial or investigation - even in a world where there is available technology to mimic a person’s appearance or with the knowledge that Bucky was savagely tortured and brainwashed and robbed of choice and agency.
And as long as we’re on the subject: Steve is clearly right to be paranoid about what might have been in the Accords. We see that he’s possibly the only person actively trying to read through them, in the initial scene where the Avengers are arguing about them, but he’s obviously not making very good progress because the Accords are like an inch and a half of what I expect is very small print. And once the Accords are signed off on by half the Avengers, we see:
a. The ‘shoot to kill’ order on Bucky Barnes, a prisoner of war who has been tortured and brainwashed for 70 years. They are aware of this, okay, because they know who the Winter Soldier is, which means that a large portion of his files were part of the SHIELDRA dump that Natasha executes. They’re not hunting down a dude who’s been intentionally committing assassinations and terrorist acts, they’re after a guy in need of medical treatment and more therapy than he could possibly ever receive, even in a super soldier’s lifetime. They know his situation, and, honestly, if I were Steve, I’d be feeling pretty goddamn immovable on the subject of Bucky’s execution too. I’m not a lawyer or shit, but I’m actually not even sure Bucky’s legally done anything wrong–I think there are caveats for ‘post-brainwashing and torture’ events. I mean, if you do a terrible thing at gunpoint, that’s considered a mitigating circumstance, surely 70 years of mad scientists tinkering with your brain qualifies. Shit, even if he had blown up the consulate, you would need to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’d been acting under his own will, not under HYDRA’s forced compliance, in order to justify a ‘shoot on sight’ command.
b. Total rejection of the right to trial. Steve even explicitly asks for a lawyer for Bucky, and is shot down out of hand. Now, like I said, I’m not a lawyer, but I can tell you that the Geneva convention guarantees the right to a fair trial, with a defense lawyer and everything, to everyone. The fucking Nazi Party got trials, okay, and that means that something in the Accords allowed the UN to bypass that requirement, not only for Bucky (who is, yes, the Winter Soldier), but also for the entirety of Team Cap, which included a war veteran (Sam), a loyal SHIELD agent (Clint), and a girl barely out of her teens (Wanda). They do not get trials before getting sent to the Raft, they just get locked up, and there’s every indication that no one outside the Avengers and the UN even knows what happened to them. Y’know what total loss of right to trial prior to imprisonment probably looks like to a dude who survived World War II? Nothing nice, I’ll tell you that.
c. As long as we’re on the subject, the Accords clearly gave the UN the right to treat any enhanced person they deemed as ‘exceptionally dangerous’ terribly. Wanda is placed under comprehensive house arrest, and then she’s tossed in a prison and a straitjacket. When we see her in the Raft, she barely looks cogent, might’ve been drugged, etc. I mean, if I was trying to subdue a vastly powerful telekinetic and psychic, I might go for heavy sedatives as my solution of choice. They don’t even look like they’ve gotten medical treatment for their injuries–Clint’s face is still a mess. That’s not approved treatment of prisoners, ever.
d. Disregard for the need to investigate a terrorist act resulting in the death of a ruler on foreign soil. I don’t care if you have a picture of the ‘perpetrator,’ you should still be doing an investigation.
I’m sure I could think of other stuff.
TL;DR: Steve’s concerns about the Accords pan out, probably in exactly the ways he was most afraid of. Being able to amend a document later doesn’t mean that you’re not subject to it now, and being subject to the Accords is clearly a problem.
you know. sometimes i think. in the face of tony’s obvious trauma and ptsd. in the face of the more obvious pain that bucky has suffered. we forget that steve’s motivation in the film isn’t just his tendency to hold stubbornly fast to his ideals, to do what he feels is right and damn the rest.
steve’s hurting too.
like. guys. we are so ready to give weight to tony’s emotional boiling over point at the end of the film, to say “this is why he tried to kill bucky, and it’s not right but it’s understandable.” we are so ready to acknowledge the fact that bucky was a victim and motivated to run by his fear of further persecution and hurt from nefarious forces. what about steve, though? when do we acknowledge that steve’s not just acting with righteous arrogance, but a deep anger, isolation, fear, loneliness, sadness, and hope?
steve died. like, his last memory before waking up seventy years in the future is a few days after watching his best friend fall from a train and he was unable to stop it he willingly flies a plane into the fucking Arctic, ostensibly to his death.
guys. guys. tony was fucked up for years because of untreated ptsd after falling from space and thinking he was dead. why is it so hard to remember that steve probably is fucked up, too?
this dude, he wakes up seventy years in the future and he has to make his way without really anyone or anything familiar, and the only person who is familiar is suffering from memory loss, and he’s now operating under the thumb of shadowy organization that he’s not 100 percent does good things and that continuously lies to him. there’s no war to fight, but that’s all this body is good for. it’s all he knows.
he doesn’t know what makes him happy. guys.
and so he goes through another trauma when he discovers this villain who is trying to kill him is in fact the dead best friend who—surprise!—was actually captured after falling and losing an arm and his brains were scrambled to turn him into a murder assassin. we know for a fact steve feels tremendous guilt over this. but imagine beyond guilt, the sorrow, the nightmarish possibilities, that are turning over in steve’s head. the idea of what his friend suffered. remember when rhodey fell from the sky and tony blasted sam in the chest? imagine the anger in steve’s heart at the idea of what bucky’s suffered and the unwillingness to let that go unchecked and unsaved.
oh, plus. that shadowy organization he’s been fighting for? the people he’s been taking orders from? the top dog in the neat little hierarchy that’s arranged his world? yeah. hydra. everything steve has known turns upside down. he can’t trust anything. imagine the paranoia. the suspicion. imagine the fear that must take seed at that betrayal.
and then! of course, then he begins fighting these battles with the avengers where the collateral damage is on such a bigger scale than it was at war. where there are aliens. aliens, you guys. and he’s tasked with leading this motley crew of superheroes in a world he’s still getting used to and people die, lots of people die, and we know that even if it doesnt visibly affect him like it affects tony (who always seems shocked when he’s confronted with loss, because it’s presented to him on a personal, individual level) it does affect him. that steve feels the guilt of lives lost. imagine that burden. imagine the weight of the shield, the mask, the responsibility. imagine the loneliness. the fear.
so then. then. in the space of a few days. steve deals with more guilt from the deaths in lagos. he shoulders that burden. then he deals with the moral quandary of signing the accords. he wrestles with that decision. peggy dies. he grieves, oh goodness does he grieve. vienna fuckin blows up and that elusive best friend is now the suspect. so steve is grieving, he is confused and conflicted, and now he feels doubly guilty—that’s the person he has been looking for, should he have already caught him? did he do it? he couldn’t have. does he bring him in? does he shoulder this responsibility too? what will they make him do when he catches up to bucky? what should he do? steve might act like he always knows what’s right, but a decision like this isn’t easy. it messes with a person. and when you’re dealing with all that mess in your head, sometimes you don’t think. sometimes…you act.
like when bucky is triggered, when steve stops a helicopter with his bare fucking hands, you can feel the desperation. that’s not ordinary heroics. that’s not steve just trying to stop bucky from escaping and possibly hurting others. it’s steve fighting for bucky. for this piece of his past. for the possibility of an end to loneliness. for the possibility of redemption for letting him fall.
and when they go on the run, when they know they have to stop the supersoldiers, when they clash with tony’s team, can you imagine steve’s sheer frustration that no one gets what is at stake? that no one is willing to listen? and yes, he didn’t even try—but why is that, you think? is it possibly because steve is used to institutions and those in power ignoring what he thinks is right and causing disaster anyway?
when steve says, “pal, so are we.” when steve acknowledges to natasha that he’s 90 not dead, when he openly references the fact that he and bucky are 100, can you imagine knowing that? adjusting to that? being 20-something in body and memory but 100 in actuality? living in a body that people perceive as a weapon so strongly that you’ve become a weapon when you are still longing to rediscover the man you were? steve’s not just cap. steve’s steve, and he doesn’t know what makes him happy you guys. he’s a guy, he’s a human, and he’s dealing with A Lot.
i get that he makes some bad calls in the movie. so does tony. my beef is that while tony’s decisions are often supported by his very obvious trauma and emotional burden, we rarely seem to give enough weight to the very real and very similar turmoil that is going on inside of steve.
when tony is fighting him in siberia. when steve says, “he’s my friend,” so simply, so sadly, without any righteousness, just clean tired truth, that’s steve as steve. when he hid the truth from tony, that’s steve as steve. when he drops the shield, that’s steve reclaiming himself as steve. we expect cap all the time, because often, steve is cap. it’s easy to see him as the moral police that way, if reductionist.
but we forget to see steve as steve. that he is a kid, in some ways. and a grieving, lost, lonely kid with a lot of anger, sadness, confusion, and power boiling under the placid-seeming surface.
