So much of our lives is just carvin' through the dark.
-Who We Are, Hozier
love that fighting is considered a pokemon type. like Yea I got magical elemental skills it’s called kicking your ass
“You don’t have any idea how to talk to a woman, do you?
“This is the longest conversation I’ve had with one.”
Peggy Carter and Steve Rogers, Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
This is probably the lines I hate the most from this movie, for a bunch of reasons.
- Steve definitely talked for way longer and more coherently with his mother, who was his only parent until she died when he was a late teen. The MCU loves to erase Sarah Rogers, but to do so in the same scene he is explaining to Peggy that he never backs down from a fight (Sarah’s major teaching to his son) it’s egregious.
- There is this belief from the creators that the only reason a man would want to talk to a woman/a woman would want to talk with a man is because they want to sleep with each other, and they want to make abundantly clear that Steve was a loser with no bitches before the serum and that Peggy was the only one to be interested in him, (even if she is dismissive and condescending until he gets serumed, then is condescending but thirsting.) This also erases every opportunity Steve had to establish any platonic relationship with women.
- I also would like to add that the creators bias (they think a skinny disabled man was not attractive, but the serumed, super buff guy was) blinds them from reality. Steve had the whole tortured artist thing going on. He was kind, brave and fought for what he thought was right. Believe me, even in a time when eugenics was rampant, like the 40s, a shit ton of women would have had crushes on him.
- But speaking of platonic relationships with women, Steve lived in Gay Neighbourhood TM, of course he knew how to talk to queer women. He probably is just having whiplash from having to keep it straight and heterosexual with Peggy lmao.
- It’s also hilarious that he does seem to know how to talk to women (“bye bye bikinis” “bet you look terrible in them now) (the whole convo he had with Sharon before he met Fury at his apartment) when he wants to/is actually interested in them.
there was supposed to be a line about his mother in that conversation in the original script and they cut it out (and still didn’t mention that Sarah was the originator of Steve’s always-stand-up attitude!)
One of the beautiful things about Bucky being an observant Jew in the present day is that, even with everything he went through at the hands of Hydra and all they tried to rob him of, his continued dedication to living a Jewish life is a powerful story of Jewish liberation and survival which mirrors the profound stories behind the majority of Jewish holidays.
There should be more fic where Steve actively kills Peggy for what she’s done. That’s what he usually does to Nazis (let alone Nazis who have betrayed him, personally, and facilitated horrific torture of Bucky.)
He doesn’t let other Nazis off the hook. He should, in character, be killing her off himself. He should be going out of his way to make sure she is brought down.
why does a noticeable chunk of this fandom just assume peggy personally hired all the hydra staff. or can someone please explain how we went from “I don’t particularly like the resolution to Steve Rogers’ character arc” to “Peggy Carter is a nazi and should be brutally murdered”
Gunna treat this as a genuine question not hyperbolic sealioning and say:
It’s not an assumption. You don’t have to assume anything when it’s literally been shown to you, multiple times.
(Casual viewers who’ve only seen the films might miss it because they’re not paying attention to the implications of CATWS + plus her show + her Agents of Shield cameo + the Ant Man cameo + and what she does in D+ What If.)
So If you really want to know
1) As well as being the Director of SHIELD when Zola was hired and made immortal, and pictured alongside him multiple times (that’s ‘hiring Hydra staff’ #1, CATWS.)
2) her show explicitly showed her, alone, hiring a Hydra scientist for the SSR even before she’s a SHIELD Director (that’s the first proof of #1 and ‘hiring Hydra staff’ #2, AC.)
3) she then took a job interview with an SS Officer (dingdingding!), ALONE, in which it was made explicit that “no one else” (her words) would be involved in that decision making during her Directorship. (Meaning, she hired Zola). And during that job interview, she literally told the SS Officer to his face that she finds his work as a Nazi scientist “valuable” (her exact words) and would consider employing him. (That’s ‘admitting she would hire Hydra staff’ after she made it explicit she alone is in control of that, and already has done, twice. ^ AOS)
4) And then the circumstances she described, in which she would consider employing that Nazi ^ then happened in D+ What If…? And she made good on her own claim and worked with a Nazi. Making that the third universe in which she has done that, now. (That’s ‘hiring Hydra staff’ #3. D+WI?)
Taken all together it clearly shows you on screen:
Peggy does BOTH the Nazi scientist job interviews, on her own…
AND the hiring, ON HER OWN…
And it’s her own words proving that she alone is in control of that! ^
No assumptions necessary.
They just. Showed her doing that. And admitting it.
And expressing an admiration of Nazi science, to a Nazi.
No men are involved. Not even a scientist like Stark (whom you’d think would be involved?)
The writers want to show that Peggy is a #Girlboss, so they make sure men aren’t around when she’s doing Important Stuff, because they think that would undermine it. The problem is, they appear to be under the impression that they’re writing a scene which implies Peggy wouldn’t do this ^ – but unfortunately, what they’ve actually done is shown the exact opposite.
But they’re in such a rush to show her Doing Things to make her seem important, that they accidentally give her Bad Things to do, and then have to scramble to fix it / blame it on someone else instead once they realise.
(Hence, where the Whatif show is going, in line with recent attempts to villainize Bucky by denying his tragic backstory and (continuing the) cannibalising of his good backstory to give it to her; to whitewash her own regrettable actions and / or flimsy backstory. (And to wash the gay cooties off Steve by putting Peggy in Bucky’s place too, of course). Watch it; next season WI will be claiming that Bucky founded SHIELD because they’ve realised it makes Peggy a villain. ^)
So are we not supposed to believe what Peggy says about herself, and then repeatedly proves by her own actions?
Just because the writers think she’s making herself look good, it doesn’t actually mean they’re right.
Also: Here’s another meta about the SIX TIMES+ Hydra have ‘infiltrated’ an organisation Peggy claimed to be in charge of, on her watch.
If a male character based on a Nazi (proof of that here)
- had explicitly stated he would consider employing Nazis,
- had in fact employed Nazis, both before and after saying that ^
- across multiple universes!!
- just ‘happened’ to have Nazis in his organisation six times or more??!
It would not be treated as unreasonable to say ‘hey, guys, I think that guy might be a Nazi??’
(And you certainly wouldn’t have casuals coming along going ‘wow, calling that character Hydra, guess anyone you don’t like is a Nazi huh, must be a stucky shipper, guess you just hate all men.’ etc etc.)
But for some reason people have tunnel vision about this character and go all Lucille Bluth about it whenever attention is drawn to the (frankly, alarmingly consistent?) canon. 🤷♀️
Sorry, it was hyperbolic sealioning I wrote late at night 😞. Thank you for the long response with links, and I just wanted to say that I would like to engage with every point you make in every post listed but I simply do not have the energy to write a thesis using my teeny phone keyboard. I don’t expect to change your worldview or anything, but here’s where I’m coming from:
You probably already know this but the whole “hiring nazis” thang was something that did happen in real life, especially pertaining to scientists. There was a general assumption that these people were held at gunpoint to do the war crimes and their talent was worth ignoring the stuff they participated in. The same can probably be applied to Peggy’s thinking. Sorry this wasn’t clear, but when I say “personally hired hydra staff” I mean that she was fully aware they were still actively interested in being Nazis. There is nothing solid in the text(s) to imply this. Remember, Arnim Zola also kind of gave up red skull in CATFA, so it could be pretty easy for him to pull the “I’m just a little guy” shtick and fake repentance. Yes, she does *claim* that SHIELD was under her watch, but that is the whole point of how insidious the Hydra takeover is. Are we supposed to assume that Howard Stark, Nick Fury, and everyone involved in SHIELD’s leadership was a Nazi sympathizer? No, and the text makes that very clear. People who should have known did not know because they were blindsided by their own pride. Hydra took advantage of SHIELD’s comfort and sense of superiority to stay under the radar. Did Peggy normalize authoritarian behavior during her charge of SHIELD that allowed for Hydra to gain power? Yes! That is totally a flaw in her character worth discussing, but assuming this means she was a secret Nazi spy is a vast oversimplification.
So on that note I wanted to talk about the thematic and allegorical stuff regarding Hydra in SHIELD. The whole thesis of CATWS and season 1 of AOS is that authoritarian police states are bad, actually. Even if you think it’s the only way to bring the world “peace”. I would argue that Hydra in this case serves as more of a metaphor for the fascistic tendencies the US gov took post-WWII and also 9/11; giving military a huge amount of surveillance power in the name of domestic and international peace. Yeah I could dedicate a whole essay to this bc I think it’s worth exploring, but without going on too much of a tangent I just wanted to explain that I see Hydra as more of a heightened allegory for reality. Utilitarianism can be comfortable with fascism, and initially well-meaning people can enable fascism without realizing it because they’re too engrossed with what they think is best.
So for some of your specific meta examples I wanted to go through with them one-by-one but upon reading them more it became apparent that lots of your analysis posts are based on misunderstanding key plot information. Like with Daniel Whitehall, Peggy butters him up to get more information out of him and then once she’s got what she wants she locks him up for life. And it’s not until the 80s when he’s released that he does the organ transplant with with Daisy’s mother. I do not mean to be a pedant, what I really mean to say is that it would be impossible for me to argue with you without re-explaining hours of content at length. I don’t expect you to rewatch anything or read comics btw, trust me if I had that kind of free time then I would have written a longer response.
There’s also the assumption you’re working off of here that Peggy bearing resemblance to Cynthia Glass means that Joe Johnston intended her to be Cynthia Glass. As someone who has read probably hundreds of comics and done lots of reading about the ones I haven’t, I can say with some confidence that making Peggy apparently similar to Glass does not mean she was intended to be her. Steve himself is given some skills and backstory similar to his ultimate universe counterpart but he is nothing like his bigoted ultimate version. What we’re seeing here is that the writers thought the dynamic of the British girl with the scruffy American boy was cute and mapped those elements onto a completely transformed, fleshed out version of Peggy Carter.
Again, I will not change your worldview here. Yes there are some holes in the bloated MCU timeline but I think filling them with “Hydra Peggy” theories is kind of a bad-faith read. Sorry about producing yet another negative fandom interaction. Have a good one, block me if you need
I prolly will block after this thx but:
I know Operation Paperclip was real, it was mentioned by name in the movie.
OK… You realise that you’ve gone from being baffled at the mere suggestion she hired Hydra to not even arguing that she didn’t hire Hydra, just that hiring Hydra wasn’t that bad??
(War flashbacks to the Narcissist’s Prayer).
You’re arguing for a lack of culpability from the Nazi-hirers just because the Nazis pulled the Nuremberg Defense?
(Which there isn’t any evidence for in the films or shows, you’re just saying they coulda. And it still doesn’t excuse hiring them. This would have to fall under the ‘Peggy can’t be blamed for being a soft touch for Nazis’ category. Is she a competent girlboss or not?)
…That hiring Nazis doesn’t mean you are one. But that’s not true. If there are 10 people at the table and 1 Nazi, there are 10 Nazis.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” doesn’t stop applying just because Peggy isn’t [good or] a man.
And hiring Nazis isn’t even doing nothing, it’s actively helping.
Being in charge while a Nazi becomes functionally immortal under your auspices (which Peggy has done three times now, in 3 different universes), is the exact opposite of what actually-Antifa Steve wanted – all Hydra, “dead or captured.”
[under cut for length]
reblogging for @cosmicmechanism’s tags which as usual hit the nail like hawkeye:
#you know what I’m tired of?#people saying that something was too ambiguous to blame their fave
#and then when systematically given reasons for why it wasn’t ambiguous at all #they’re like ‘yeah but it happened irl so it’s fine’ #okay fine from who’s perspective? #from the person making this irl mistake? #from the people who suffered for this mistake?
#in my experience when people just don’t like a character they avoid it #but when a giant media corporation and much of fandom continues to promote a character #that is doing terrible crimy things with the protected veil of white feminism #you’re going to get pushback #you’re going to get lengthy meta posts about how this character is the exact opposite of a good guy #you’re going to see me reach my tag limits ranting about it
#these characters aren’t feminist icons #they’re seriously corrupt people within the story armored by their role as female love interests #so that people who lack critical thinking skills will unthinkingly defend these characters against the antifascist hero #who they’re positioned to be disagreeing with as a refreshing challenge rather than a moral disagreement
#and these people will call themselves a ‘defense squad’ to these female characters that are just mouthpieces for middle aged dudes #to air their shitty opinions #and think they did something
#defending a fictional female character is not feminism #you have to look at who’s mastering the puppet and think farther#+.+
One thing I’m still trying to make peace with is the fact that you’ll never convince a P*ggy stan that she is a Nazi spy expy no matter how many receipts you show them.
They will literally say “SHIELD wouldn’t exist without her”, and in the same breath assert that she had no hiring power or that she blindly believed a Nazi had reformed and couldn’t have worked out the Nazis she worked with are, surprise surprise, still Nazis.
But… but wasn’t she a genius spy who is smarter and better than all of her sleazy male coworkers and could do anything Steve could backwards and in high heels? 🥺
I’ve never seen a fanbase so dense.
Also, the cognitive dissonance in “are we supposed to assume Howard Stark or Nick Fury were Nazi sympathizers too?” is staggering. They really thought they made a point lmao. Stark was murdered by HYDRA and Fury had to fake his death to escape the same fate, whereas Agent Brexit lived a long happy life and died of natural causes. The text makes that, very clear.
And finally my favorite logical fallacy, the “If you don’t agree with me, you misunderstand the plot and I can’t argue/explain but you’re wrong and I’m right (somehow)”
I know the sweet summer child that stirred up this discussion will never see this, but I want to repeat this: Defending a fictional female character is not feminism
[to the tune of YMCA] mothman, there’s no need to feel down I said mothman,
lift that man off the ground
CUZ ITS FUN! TO! SWING! A! HU-MAN!
Not true!
Wake up babe new tag yourself dropped
Really lucky a mongermonger turned up to help with this post.
Scandalmonger pls. More realistically, wordmonger.
This is exactly the kind of stuff I’m here for
Hold up now i need the full photo RN📸
I think people on EBT should be allowed to eat at a five star restaurant for completely free once a month minimum and I'm not joking. It should be a human right to have the roses not just the bread.
"It should be a human right to have the roses not just the bread"
Etch this in marble and put it on my grave
"If you have two loaves of bread, sell one and buy a hyacinth." -Iranian proverb, I think, maybe
ALT
As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread;
Small art and love and beauty their trudging spirits knew—
Yes, it is Bread we fight for—but we fight for Roses, too.
no but seriously I still get chills thinking about turning off my headlamp in the cave and The Hand That I Did Not Actually See, and it’s been twelve years since it happened
it’s such an unreal experience
like
you turn off your light in a cave and wave your hand in front of your face
and
you can see this shadowy thing moving in the black space where your hand is
it looks like the same shadowy thing you would see in your room at night if you waved your hand in front of your face, it’s there and vaguely hand-shaped, and your brain recognizes it as your hand because your brain is aware of where your hand is and what it is doing
But You Are Not Seeing Anything
Inside a cave, there is No Light. No matter how far your pupils spread, there is no light for them to draw in, no light to put an image on your retina.
But your brain just Fucking Assumes that because it knows where your hand is and what it is doing, clearly it can see it.
So it creates a shadowy thing for your eyes to be seeing.
Brain is like “there’s a hand there”
Eyes are like “yup sure thing brain I can totally see it”
Brain is like “nice”
but there is no hand, you cannot see the hand, you are seeing a literal actual hallucination in the cave because your brain thinks it knows best
Caves are awesome, but also terrifying. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
we once went spelunking, and a our guide said that once he was in a cave with a stream, so he could hear running water, and his brain was like ‘oh, running water? that means there must be Ducks out there’. and he saw like…low light shadows of ducks. that his brain just Put There.
As a cave guide: we call that ‘cave blindness’! True darkness absolutely wigs your brain out - we’re such visual creatures that after a while our brain throws a hissy after not seeing anything. Sensory deprivation is a very real kind of torture. We have a huge, deep cave system at work and there are a lot of places where you’re hundreds of meters in solid rock in this tiny, dark, still space.
I like to turn my torch off, sit down with my back against the wall, and wait to see how long it takes before I start seeing things or feeling like the ground is moving, or hearing things. Because I know I’m not - I’m in complete darkness, utter silence, sitting in rock that hasn’t moved in hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Proof that brains are Ridiculous and over-react to a lot of stuff!
I want to add to this that people who lose their hearing as adults have reported hearing music “being played loudly from somewhere”, and other auditory hallucinations, bc the brain will just panic and put your brain’s ipod on *fucking shuffle* if it’s not getting any input
gay-jewish-bucky