august

Original post by @morallygrayautisticscientist here, this post was so funny I decided to draw it lol.

Panel by panel below:

Stratt: I don’t have the time or emotional capacity to be sad or stressed about this.

Stratt: GRACE!

Grace: On it!

i feel like a lot of fic writers misunderstand bob’s character a lot and i’ve noticed there’s a lot of misinformation and infantilisation of his character.

firstly, bob is a grown man, not a baby. i think people seem to baby him due to his mental state but in reality he isn’t that at all. he isn’t an “uwu baby who can’t do anything”, he’s a man with mental health issues and a history of addiction trying to get control over his life and it feels very counterproductive to infantilise him because of this. (plus we’ve seen him call out john walker for being an asshole and he’s had moments where he can be sarcastic, #sassybobtruther).

secondly, when it comes to his powers, people definitely misinterpret what they actually are. his powers can’t just happen out of nowhere from what i know. it’s very implied that bob is bipolar and the sentry and void are manifestations of different states in bipolar. the sentry is meant to represent the mania whereas the void is meant to represent the depression. bob himself is just the middle ground between the two. the sentry doesn’t just appear, from what the film portrayed, his ego and delusions of grandeur have to be fed to put his mental state into that position (for example, val feeding into his god complex by saying he was better than all the avengers rolled into one), when he was the sentry, he had a moment of insecurity after ava questioned his hair and told val about it but switched up once he started to challenge why he needed to listen to val if he was so powerful and mighty.

now, iirc, the void is what follows after the sentry. it’s the crash after his mania (bob himself says he has extreme highs followed by extreme lows). from what it looks like, the void comes out after bob experiences the sentry. like a hangover after getting drunk, you’re really happy and wild while drunk but absolutely depressed and tired once the hangover kicks in. it seems to be the same kind of concept. and then, as we know, once the void is “gone” he doesn’t remember anything.

in conclusion, the thunderbolts* wouldn’t walk on eggshells because “the void” will appear randomly whenever bob feels any negative emotion because that doesn’t seem to be the case at all. bob even says in the post credits he can’t be the sentry without “the other guy” showing up. meaning that the void only happens after the sentry.

i also believe how people treat bob is very indicative of how people view those with mental health problems, especially problems that are harder to romanticise such as bipolar.

along with wanting him contained because of how dangerous he is, they’d practically be salivating over him science-wise. so much about his powers and how he even survived is unknown, and his durability alone is invaluable. there’s no way they wouldn’t be interested in replicating some of his powers or at the very least seeing how his body works. it would be really difficult to subdue him, but not impossible since we know that oxe was able to knock him unconscious and get him in that containment crate somehow. so if the government got their hands on him, the best possible outcome would be him in an indefinite coma, while the worst is probably years of inhumane treatment and excruciating medical torture…

"Can I help you find something?"

"Yeah, a car with a goddamn working radiator?"