writing advice for characters with a missing eye: dear God does losing an eyes function fuck up your neck. Ever since mine crapped out I've been slowly and unconsciously shifting towards holding my head at an angle to put the good eye closer to the center. and human necks. are not meant to accommodate that sorta thing.
Captain America vol. 6, #19 by Ed Brubaker
I think about these pages a lot, every time I read meta about Steve not being as… expressive or emotive in the MCU as other characters.
Steve is an artist. And a bookworm. Who loves fantasy most of all. This is canon, none of these things are indicators of someone who is stoic and taciturn by nature. So what we can deduce from this is that Steve learned to keep things close to the chest through nurture not nature.
Why?
Three factors, all summed up above.
1) Steve was heavily bullied as a child. Picked on, beat up, tormented. There have been depictions of this in almost every single Cap run I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot of Cap. I could show you panels that would make you cry, where a child!Steve is laid out on the pavement bleeding because his childhood bullies got a hold of him.
This is not solely indigenous to 616!Steve, as in the MCU!Steve also indicated to Peggy that he was beat up a lot as a child.
Someone who is targeted by that kind of physical and mental abuse learns to keep it all in, so as not to show any weakness less his tormentors use that against him.
2) Steve lived through the Great Depression during his most informative years. The small, sickly child of a single mother. The dialogue here breaks my heart:
“And with every broken bone or black eye I knew I was letting my mother down. Sure I was scared of the bullies waiting for me but my REAL fear was that I’d get home and she wouldn’t be there. I knew it was irrational, she was a GREAT mother, but that’s just how life felt back then, like it could all fall apart at any moment.”
Loss. Steve’s greatest fear and the heartbreaking thing is that it’s he’s had to live through again and again and again. And it all started because he was raised during a time when the bulk of America had lost everything and were starving in the streets. If we look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the most basic necessities for survival weren’t being met for a very large population of people: food, water, safety.
Steve’s words here are actually very accurate. I have a 96-year-old grandmother who can personally collaborate the sentiment expressed here. In fact she told me that it was very common for children to be sent away to relatives who could feed them, for families to be split up because the parents could no longer afford to provide basic necessities. And in other families children were actually put to work in factories. In fact, Steve worked. As early as six he was selling newspapers when he wasn’t in school (Remender’s run, Cap vol. 7).
3) War. The most destructive war in recent history no less.
The highest suicide rate in the country goes to veterans. This is fact.
In 2014, an average of 20 Veterans died from suicide each day. 6 of the 20 were users of VA services.
source
Any war related issues such as PTSD and Survivals Guilt would have been even worse during WW2 because no one recognized PTSD as being valid. In fact General Patton once slapped soldiers who were bed ridden due to exhibiting PTSD symptoms. This is also fact.
source
So, as a soldier, your choices were try your hardest to keep a stiff upper lip or exhibit your symptoms and be considered a coward and a traitor.
And yet despite all of this Steve said this…
“And I think THAT was what shaped me. How the whole world felt unfair… unjust. That’s why I tried over and over again to enlist before we were even in the war. Because I wanted to punch Hitler in the jaw.”
This is it, this is the essence of Steve Rogers.
The underdog. The defender of the maligned and the targeted.
Steve Rogers took his pain and rather than letting it make him bitter like others would in his circumstances, he became determined to help others.
….I just think that maybe we, as a fandom, should not assume that the silent type aren’t grappling with unimaginable pain just because they’re silent. I think we should recognize that perhaps the silence, itself, is also a symptom.
I’m doing a Philosophy paper on Asexuality. Please reblog if you think Love without Sex is possible! I really need the data. Like if you think love has to have sex.
happy autism awareness day to all the girls who had “ friends” growing up who were actually bullying them . to the girls who always sat alone in the grass and wondered why nobody wanted to talk . to the girls who spoke to animals like they were listening . to the girls who created a little world in their room . to the girls who always felt ashamed for how deeply they love things and how passionately they enjoyed media . to the girls who covered their ears when they were overwhelmed by everything . to the girls who carrying a special thing around to feel safe . to the girls who never understood what they did wrong to feel so lonely . to the girls who were diagnosed later in life because they weren’t little boys who liked trains. you are so special and beautiful and you’re not worse for it, you love deeply and that is so wonderful please never try to push that down . I LOVE YOU !!!!!
FACTS.
Okay. I was typing a reblog and it somehow became a rant/spiel, so I’m making a whole post about it.
“The Crocodile” Episode? I know a this isn’t exactly an unpopular opinion, but I’mma say it anyway.
Granted - Hook became cool eventually. But I hated him for a LOT of the series on the grounds of his first impression alone.
Like it’s one thing to run off with a man’s wife. Rumple and Milah weren’t in love and the marriage wasn’t a good one. She put zero effort into their family and taking her off their hands may arguably have been better for everyone.
Spinner Rumple tried so hard to be a good husband and father, or at least to make their family work in a loveless marriage, and he deserved better.
But in spite of that, what Hook did to him on the ship crossed so many lines and he totally deserved to get owned for it.
Concerned husband boards a pirate ship to beg for his wife back, thinking she’s been abducted. Right off the bat: That right there took courage. It always pisses me off when OUAT characters call Spinner Rumple a coward, because he really wasn’t. The world put him through it and he was doing his damn best. Just showing up to the ship of bloodthirsty pirates, knowing that literally all he could do was beg and hope for the best, took guts.
Back to Hook. So this poor guy shows up to ask for his wife back unharmed. And shy of actually hurting Rumple, Hook decides to do quite possibly the cruelest thing he could have done:
Keep letting the spinner think that his wife had been taken against her will and that she was being raped by the whole crew.
If Milah was in on the lie, then in my opinion SHE was the cowardly one here. Not Rumple. You want to abandon your disabled husband and son to run off and live the high life with a pirate? Own your shit.
Yeah - Rumple didn’t pick up the sword when Hook challenged him to a duel over Milah. But let’s think about that for a sec shall we?
We have Rumplestiltskin: An older wool spinner with a disability. Who can’t walk all that well WITH his walking stick - much less without it, on a boat, and during a fight with a sword. Which he’s barely held in his life unless you count the crash-course he got as fodder- I mean a new recruit, when he was drafted into the Ogres War.
Versus Captain Jones: A younger, taller, stronger pirate. An experienced swordsman, comfortable on a ship, and with two good legs. AND with a loyal crew of OTHER strapping pirates who would probably kill Rumple even if by some miracle he DID take Hook by surprise or something.
Option A: Refuse to fight the bloodthirsty pirate, leave with your life but without your wife, and return home to your now motherless son.
Option B: Fight the bloodthirsty pirate, probably die or at least get badly injured (which could be death within a few days-weeks anyway given his financial situation and living conditions), the pirate takes your wife anyway, and your son is left an orphan who may or may not ever know what happened to you.
So there was no realistic scenario here where he fights off the pirates like a dashing hero and carries his wife home.
Rumplestiltskin is extremely smart. He always was. He knows when to pick his battles and he would have known all of that at a glance.
And yet Hook, this mothafucka, who must have realized all of this too and put Rumple in this situation in the first place, had the gall to act disgusted about it when Rumple refused to “fight like a man.” And then gaslit him into thinking that he was a coward and a fool for making what was obviously the more rational decision.
Now Hook is a pirate. I never would have expected much from him. But that’s no excuse. What he did was fucked. And karma is a bitch.
And yes I know this is a pretty commonly held opinion so it shouldn’t be new to anyone but I rewatched that episode recently and needed to get this off my chest. 😤
This is fucking hilarious
One very slow news day when they're all bored as hell at work Lois is like. Okay. Fuck marry kill The Big Three. And Clark replies "oh easy fuck batman marry wonder woman kill Superman" and the entire office gets so mad at him like you KILL Superman our collective BEST FRIEND Superman????!?!?!?