Overheard At The SSR

superhero movies are about people who have the ability to help people and choose to do so

there is a tavern in the town, in the town and there my true love sits

and now my love who was once true takes this dark damsel on his knee / and now I see him nevermore, nevermore. he never knocks upon my door

oh dig my grave wide and deep, put headstones and my head and feet

And Dottie very obviously does not like that, much more than anything else he tried to dig at her with. She’s clearly angry, and it confused me for a minute. She’s not an idiot, and Peggy isn’t exactly subtle about her feelings toward Dottie, so it didn’t make sense for that to get under Dottie’s skin as much as it did. Of course she has to know Peggy doesn’t like her.

But then it hit me; I don’t think she’s angry that Vernon says Peggy would kill her, I think she’s angry because he said that this fact doesn’t make them friends. And again; why? She can’t actually believe they’re friends.

But that’s just it, I think she does. Because the audience is watching from the perspective of a normal, well-enough-adjusted, not-raised-in-the-red-room person. Whatever homoerotic relationship those to have is clearly not reciprocated friendship.

But to Dottie, the relationship she has with Peggy is friendship—because it is the only type of friendship she’s ever known.

A temporary alliance, all the while the knowing that one could kill the other in a moments notice and sleep perfectly fine at night. That’s Dottie’s friendship—even if she’s seen what “normal” friendship looks like, either on missions or through media, it doesn’t change the fact that this is what she knows to be true.

If Steve had indeed failed in his mission, she would have borne it alone. Howard was responsible too, but only Peggy would be taking the fall for it. Only Peggy would be incriminated and blamed for Steve’s death and all the mess that came with it. She would have been court-martialed, dishonorably discharged, her good standing in the military destroyed forever. But still she risks everything, everything that she has because of her faith in Steve, that when she tells him that he’s meant for more, those aren’t just thin air and pretty words.

And what’s the most often quoted line of the Cap fandom? The dignity of a choice. These are the words that will echo long, long after everything is over. Steve grieves for Bucky, but it’s Peggy who honors him. And in the aftermath of CATWS, nothing is more imperative than Bucky being allowed to find his own way again, to allow him to do right by himself as he chooses to. To just let him know that you won’t be alone. And all that any one of them can really do is our best, and sometimes the best we can do is to start over.

There’s a very Tolkienesque quality to Peggy’s quiet heroism and knightliness, in all the ways she perceives the world and how it anchors and guides the people around her.