Who wants to bet Steve shows up at Sam’s house halfway through Age of Ultron like “I’m SO sorry for doing this to you again” while the whole Avengers team stands behind him, shuffling their feet and looking liked kicked puppies.
And Sam just goes, “I don’t have enough OJ for you all,” as he sighs and lets them file into his house.
marvel
Most men simply hate men like me… yet you always treated me with respect, compassion. Why? Is it because… you’re one of us? Is it because, deep inside, under all that macho bravado you’re really a sorry excuse for a man… like me?
This is honestly one of the darkest moments in a Captain America comic book, to me. Mother Superior is controlling Arnie and making him sing this degrading, terrible song. And if you missed it, in the midst of it, she has him accuse Steve of being gay himself. The message is clear: How could you accept someone like him, someone abnormal and disgusting, unless you were one of them?
Now, here’s the thing, the fact that she accuses Steve of being gay means NOTHING to him because HE DOESN’T CARE. He says it right there, Arnie’s love with Michael is 100% equal to Steve’s love with Bernie. He doesn’t need to defend himself. “They’re the disease.” Hatred is the disease. The thing that spreads and infects and degrades is hatred.
The Red Skull cannot FATHOM that a man like Steve, blond, blue-eyed, Anglo-Saxon Steve, would willingly spend time with POC, and Jews, and gay people. (He is referencing specific people here, in order: Bernie, Arnie, Sam, Jack.) Because the Red Skull is infected with hate. It’s also in this issue that the Skull reveals that he had a childhood similar in some ways to Steve: lost both his parents, lived his life poor, beat up by those around him because he was small. The difference, though, is that the Skull chose hate. He chose hate, and anger, and evil. Steve chose love, and goodness, and compassion.
But here’s another thing: Ok, so Steve isn’t racist or homophobic or full of hatred, what does he want, a cookie? No, he doesn’t. Steve is angered by the suggestion that he does any of this for praise, or worship. Steve does the right thing because it is the right thing. And in fact, his friends do not exist in this arc just to be tokenized. While Steve is having this discussion with the Skull, Bernie, Sam, and Jack (and Arnie, but his mind has been tortured by Mother Superior’s tricks at this point) are finding a way out. They DON’T need Steve to come save them. Because unlike what the Skull thinks, they are, of course, their own people. They have autonomy and free will and the capability to work their way through situations. The Skull doesn’t see that, because to him, they are not human beings, they are not people. But the Captain America comic book is showing us that they are. They do not exist just in this white man’s world. They are free-thinking and capable individuals.
Captain America, at the end of the day, is about goodness and equality, justice and freedom, compassion and understanding. And Steve is a good person, but he doesn’t deserve extra for being a decent human being. He’s just doing what’s right.
Man, I am exhausted and sick right now, so I’m not sure I’m doing this justice, but you should totally read Cap v1 #295-300. Great issues. Not saying they’re problem-free, at the end of the day this is a comic book about a white man written by white men, but overall it’s a fantastic arc.
From Captain America #296 and 298
Wut
nobody disillusion me by telling me this is photoshopped. I want to believe.
It’s times like these when you realize just how long Marvel’s been around and how long their main titles have been running.
tldr version: ‘solid dick’ used to be slang for straight-forward advice. So, no, that wasn’t a shop.
Now I want a fic in which Steve occasionally forgets that slang has changed and offers Sam “some solid dick” about a problem he’s having before immediately remembering what that means in 2014.
And then maybe realising some solid dick might also be a modern-day solution to said problem.
The Mary Jane Watson of the original Spider-Man films gets a hell of a lot of flak. She’s usually labelled a ‘no-personality damsel in distress’, before then being called some variation of ‘a clingy, whiny, self-centered two-timer’. Quite aside from the fact that her detractors accuse her of having no personality before immediately going on to describe her personality (well, a small part of it), they’ve somehow managed to miss why she’s ‘clingy, whiny and self-centered’:
Because she was abused!
This isn’t a minor detail, either: it’s very clearly shown that MJ’s abusive father affected her self-esteem massively. In a scene between Peter and MJ in Spider-Man 3, she’s upset – really upset – because of a mildly critical review. Like, really mildly critical. Peter can’t understand why. “That’s a critic, that’s just something you’ll have to get used to.” But MJ can’t understand why he can’t understand. “I look at these words and it’s like my father wrote them.” She’s been told her whole life she’s worthless, why should it stop now? It’s an overreaction, but it makes perfect sense.
Know what else makes perfect sense? MJ’s tangled relationships with men, especially Peter and Harry. She dates Harry straight out of high school, and hey, I love Harry, I really do – but he wants a say in how she dresses, for God’s sake. He loves her but (probably due to coming from a loveless household himself) he’s a terrible boyfriend. And MJ’s doesn’t even quite trust him to accept her- she’s sensitive about the social divide between them, between ‘trash’ and people like the Osborns, but she sticks around anyway, because, like I said, Harry loves her, he thinks she’s beautiful, and he’s rich and good-looking and if someone like that (or John Jameson, another rich and successful young man) wants her how worthless can she be? MJ wants a man in her life, she wants to prove her father wrong, prove she is loveable – if one man lets her down, maybe another one won’t. As soon as Harry fails her she turns to Peter; as soon as Peter fails her a movie or two later she turns back to the now more grown-up Harry. And before you ask, yes, I’ve lost count of the amount of times she’s called ‘slut’ or ‘skank’ for this by fandom, whereas the boys get away with virtually every instance of unpleasant behaviour towards her.
I’m not saying MJ is a saint, mind. Actually, that’s pretty much the point: she isn’t. Leaving John Jameson at the altar with a note was really quite cruel; when she lost her job she should have told Peter about it; she should also have had a proper conversation with him about the Gwen situation; and she shouldn’t have prejudged Gwen herself (a totally innocent party throughout all of Spider-Man 3) so harshly. MJ fucks up, you know, she really does – but that’s okay. The movies don’t judge her for her sex life, her rough patches, her frequent need for reassurance, or her ambition. When Norman behaves in a downright misogynist way to her (remember him leering at her chest mere minutes before he calls her a gold-digger? She’s nineteen at most at that point. I think he deserved that stab in the dick) we aren’t meant to think he’s right, we’re meant to think he’s horrible. Yet I’ve seen an unnerving amount of people agree with him. Which is absolutely endemic of a wider problem, but anyway – back to MJ as a person –
There’s more than one kind of female character, and I am absolutely, absolutely here for the flawed, messed up, not-really-all-that-kickass ones. MJ’s clingy because she wants to be loved, she’s ‘whiny’ (sigh) because people treat or have treated her actually really badly, and she’s self-centered because you know what abusers try to do? Deny their victims a sense of self. Almost every part of MJ’s life is trying to prove her father wrong, trying to fight back against her abuser by succeeding in life and loving others (and herself) the best that she can, and I think that makes her easily as good a role model as Spider-Man. The movies themselves seem to agree with me. How about you?
HELP IS ON THE WAY – a Sam Wilson fanmix
Help Is On The Way – Rise Against
Vibrations In Air – Josh Peck
Elevation – U2
Sit Down – James
I’ll Never Walk Alone – Huey Lewis and the News
Hey Brother – Avicii
Titanium – Migz Halecon
This Is War – 30 Seconds To Mars
The Man – Aloe Blacc
I Won’t Back Down – Tom Petty
I keep thinking about Sam Wilson
Sam Wilson, who has wings made of metal and human imagination.
He was a paramedic. The maneuverability of his wings, the speed of his flight are all so he would be able to bring help to places no ordinary man could reach.
Imagine a soldier, stuck somewhere in the Alborz mountains, injured and dying, knowing that no helicopter can reach them, that no one would dare. Imagine looking up in your fever and seeing a pair of wings silhouetted against the sky.
Except, it’s not an angel coming to ease your way. It’s a black man, voice calm and reassuring, bandages and shots of antibiotic in his gear. He says his name is Sam and he asks you for yours. He asks you about your lover, about your kids, about the places you grew up in. Then he flies you off the mountain, trying to be gentle, but it’s jarring, because you’re alive.
You wake up in the hospital on your army base and you recover. You meet the man again and learn that there are more people with wings, a whole team and that when they take those wings off, they show you pictures of their dogs and buy you a beer.
Sam Wilson is a paramedic with wings. A healer and a savior.
Now, imagine Sam losing those wings. No, first, imagine him losing a soldier.
‘Is this the first time you lost a soldier?’ No, there were many, when the wings weren’t fast enough or when the blood flowed too freely. There were plenty of times you’ve sat down with someone who was saved by a different type of angel.
But losing someone who shares your sky? That’s different. That’s the sunshine melting the wax on your wings until they turn to feathers and you’re in freefall.
So you go back to Washington. It’s not the City of Angels, but it’s your city.
After a month spent sleepless, watching the skyline for some hint of a star, you walk into a Veteran’s center and you sit in a room full of people whose wings are clipped like yours.
You’re grounded now, but you can still heal, so you use your voice and try not to think of screams and broken metal feathers.
You take up running, because when you go really fast, it reminds you of the wind rushing against your face in freefall.
There, you meet a man that shines like the sun, blindingly enough to cover up his cracks. But you’re used to being closer to the sun than most. You see.
So you do what you were meant to: you heal and offer solace. First, with your words and then, when words aren’t enough, with your wings.
You take them out of storage and they call you Falcon.
Many of you were Falcons in the dry heat of the desert. Now, in a familiar skyline, you are alone.
You defend and you fight, because there can be no healing if there’s no one left to heal.
You are Sam Wilson and you have wings.
