I should be sleeping

…you guys…

Just read an excerpt from a productivity/goal setting book that concerned Tolkien.

His publisher mentioned that people wanted more about the hobbits after Tolkien published The Hobbit.

So Tolkien started another novel.

And apparently bounced between the depths of despair and the height of confidence for the entire process (he said that: “his ‘labour of delight’ had been ‘transformed into a nightmare.’”)

He gave up multiple times.

That book? Fellowship of the Ring.

You know what kept him going? C.S. Lewis’ support.

First lesson: if you’re stressing over your book, remember that Tolkien did too.

Assuming his two primary sources for Steve Rogers Anecdotes were Howard and Peggy (and I think they were), there’s no way he would have gotten anything approaching an accurate account for who Steve was as a person.

I honestly don’t think Howard knew Steve well.  All his reminiscences are going to be fundamentally colored by the fact that, despite the epiphany he comes to in the S1 finale of Agent Carter (he says something like, ‘he was good before I got my hands on him, wasn’t he?’), Steve’s successes as Captain America are in part his successes because he helped make Captain America.  So all the stories Howard could tell Fury (and, sorry about your horrible childhood, Tony) are going to portray Steve in a very specific way, turning him into the ultimate war hero, the ultimate super solider, the ultimate weapon that Howard helped create.

I doubt Peggy’s telling a lot of truths either but for different reasons.  Or, well.  Peggy doesn’t lie about Steve, but there are certain things she doesn’t say about Steve.  Because everyone knows and mourns Captain America, but she’s one of a small handful of people who actually mourn Steve Rogers.  There are things about him she keeps private and safe for herself.

Like the fondue story?  I am positive that never made it into the global Captain America narrative.  I also don’t think it’s a story Tony or Sharon ever heard.  Howard doesn’t tell it because it’s not a Cap Story, it’s a Steve Story, and Howard’s far more interested in the former than the latter.  Peggy also doesn’t tell it because it’s a Steve Story, and the world isn’t owed any more of Steve Rogers than they already have.  They can keep Captain America, but Steve is hers.

But I honestly believe that if Nick got half a shot of whiskey in Colonel Phillips, he would spend literal hours dragging Steve Rogers through the mud.

“Rogers?  Biggest pain in my ass that ever lived, and that’s before Stark and Erskine got their god damn hands on him.  I’ve had a hemorrhoid or two tried to compete, but nope.  It was Rogers.

“That son of a bitch probably spent six weeks AWOL altogether thinking he knew better than me, the SSR, and all the Allied powers put together.  At the end of it, he’d come into my office, stand at attention, salute.  Then I’d maybe get one ‘yes sir, no sir’ out of him before he started arguing with me about whatever damn fool thing he’d just done.  Which, I shouldn’t have to tell anyone, is not how the god damned United States Army works.  Rogers never did manage to grasp that concept.

“Don’t ask me about vehicle requisitions.  I don’t even know how many cars those idiots wrapped around how many trees.  I finally had to order the motor pool to stop giving him motorcycles at all.  He kept throwing them at the enemy.  That worked for maybe a month.  He started stealing them, and I gave up.

“Once I ran into Barnes just staring at a wall looking whey-faced, terrified, and madder than a hornet.  So I said, “What did that captain of yours do this time?” and he says, “He charged a fucking tank,” and I say, “Of course he did,” and he says, “Dumb bastard wasn’t even wearing his helmet,” and I say, “I don’t understand how you kept that boy alive long enough to con his way into the army in the first place,” and Barnes says, “You’ve got no god-damned idea, sir, you really don’t.”

“You know Carter shot at him once?  I’ve never envied another human being so much in my whole life.

“Steve Rogers gave me most every grey hair on my head, don’t you let her tell you any different.  I had a full head of thick black hair in 1943; by ‘44 I looked like someone dropped a pound of drywall on top of me.  I aged a year for every hour I spent in Rogers’s company.  When I die, if the coroner doesn’t list my cause of death as Steven Grant Rogers, it’ll be god damned perjurous.

“I could have court-martialed that jackass on at least 16 separate occasions, and we wouldn’t have won the war without him.  God rest the son of a bitch.”

….so we have to assume that Fury never talked to Phillips I guess.