Razorbelle

Score: 8.5/10

Handsome strong big fight. Big boys punch hard, feel hard, get hard. Hold me in your strong arms handsome America man. Hold me to your enormous pecs I want to listen to them whisper to me. I love you.

So many men. I wish I could smell them. Here is what I think they smell like

Before I start this off, I just want to say that these are all just my opinions and observations, and you’re obviously free to disagree with me on any or all of it. 

steve meets sam in a time during his life when trust is the pivotal theme: namely, that he’s finding it hard to have any in the people around him. and yet this man with a friendly smile, the one who runs the same path every morning, disarms steve from their first interaction. maybe it’s the resonance of the shared experience that sam invokes. maybe it’s the easy grin or the undemanding way he asks about steve’s experiences. maybe it’s the fact that he’s even asking. but right from the start, steve seems to trust sam.

in fact, steve trusts sam enough to take sam up on his invitation to visit the VA, after a particularly vulnerable excursion to the smithsonian. there, sam shows he trusts steve, too. they both take turns disclosing painful and intimate truths for only their second interaction. sam talks about someone he has lost. steve talks about the direction he has lost. and neither man has any expectations of the other. just the need to talk, and the willingness to listen.

and then, of course, comes the bigger test: steve, under tremendous duress, trusts sam to seek out his help. with no one else to turn to, it’s sam who becomes steve’s safe haven. and sam trusts steve enough to accept the danger and risks, to believe he’s innocent of whatever he is running from. make no mistake–captain america comes with collateral damage. but the faith and loyalty sam puts in steve is apparent from this moment on: maybe not unconditional, but amazing in its totality.

when steve and nat need help in tws, whose do they accept? sam’s. to the point of trusting this man they’ve essentially just met with other people’s lives, not only their own. the vulnerability of letting someone in a pair of metal wings lift you up when you’re falling—that’s huge. esp since sam has mentioned that he carries guilt for watching his last partner fall out of the sky—like he was just up there to watch. but steve, king control freak, gives up this control with ease, trusting sam to catch him and have his back under a rain of gunfire. the important part of this shared trust is that despite sam’s appreciation of captain america, when it’s steve and sam (and it is mostly always steve and sam) they act together as equals. steve trusts sam’s counsel and support. and sam puts his trust in steve’s mission.

steve trusts sam to be his partner in the most harrowing of fights. he trusts sam to be his friend in the most secret of searches. he trusts sam to join his team and help him bear the burden of saving the world. steve doesn’t trust a lot of people. but when he does—he does. like nat, sam is someone who sees the man behind the mask, and who has chosen to share vulnerable places of himself too. and in doing so, they’ve forged a bond that is really, really crucial.

the fact that steve says, “you don’t have to do this,” and sam’s response is only, “i know. when do we start?” is so telling. same when sam asks steve if he’s thought things through, when he asks steve what they should do. steve’s response is always some variation of fight, and sam knows that means he is going to have to fight too. and he chooses to do so. he chooses to fight with steve. he isn’t being coerced. he’s doing this bc steve is his friend and he has faith that whatever he’s doing, he’s doing bc he needs to and he shouldn’t do it alone. the loyalty, the affection, the sheer strength that comes from their shared convictions and support of one another—their friendship is so real!!!! and so deep!!!!

from hydra to bucky to the accords to bucky again. being captured and put in the raft, beaten because he wouldn’t give up steve’s location…tony sounds apologetic when he mentions that sam doesn’t have to trust him, because he knows sam is steve’s best friend!!! and is looking out for him!!! that smile when he’s rescued in the end because he knew steve would come…sam has shown the crazy levels of trust he has in steve and the crazy levels of trust he has earned from steve in return.

in fact, my favorite moment in the last movie is when steve asks sam, “what should we do?” because they’re outnumbered and sam is sacrificing himself and the rest of the team so steve and bucky can get to the quinjet. he trusts steve will make it. and steve, lost and unsure, asks for sam’s guidance, bc he trusts sam will have a plan.

i just have so many feelings about how much faith and certainty these two men find in one another and how obvious it is without being showy or heavy handed, how pervasive it is in their littlest gestures and the way they interact. 

Joe and Anthony Russo talking about Captain America: Civil War:

steve’s hurting too.

like. guys. we are so ready to give weight to tony’s emotional boiling over point at the end of the film, to say “this is why he tried to kill bucky, and it’s not right but it’s understandable.” we are so ready to acknowledge the fact that bucky was a victim and motivated to run by his fear of further persecution and hurt from nefarious forces. what about steve, though? when do we acknowledge that steve’s not just acting with righteous arrogance, but a deep anger, isolation, fear, loneliness, sadness, and hope?

steve died. like, his last memory before waking up seventy years in the future is a few days after watching his best friend fall from a train and he was unable to stop it he willingly flies a plane into the fucking Arctic, ostensibly to his death.

guys. guys. tony was fucked up for years because of untreated ptsd after falling from space and thinking he was dead. why is it so hard to remember that steve probably is fucked up, too? 

this dude, he wakes up seventy years in the future and he has to make his way without really anyone or anything familiar, and the only person who is familiar is suffering from memory loss, and he’s now operating under the thumb of shadowy organization that he’s not 100 percent does good things and that continuously lies to him. there’s no war to fight, but that’s all this body is good for. it’s all he knows. 

he doesn’t know what makes him happy. guys.

and so he goes through another trauma when he discovers this villain who is trying to kill him is in fact the dead best friend who—surprise!—was actually captured after falling and losing an arm and his brains were scrambled to turn him into a murder assassin. we know for a fact steve feels tremendous guilt over this. but imagine beyond guilt, the sorrow, the nightmarish possibilities, that are turning over in steve’s head. the idea of what his friend suffered. remember when rhodey fell from the sky and tony blasted sam in the chest? imagine the anger in steve’s heart at the idea of what bucky’s suffered and the unwillingness to let that go unchecked and unsaved.

oh, plus. that shadowy organization he’s been fighting for? the people he’s been taking orders from? the top dog in the neat little hierarchy that’s arranged his world? yeah. hydra. everything steve has known turns upside down. he can’t trust anything. imagine the paranoia. the suspicion. imagine the fear that must take seed at that betrayal.

and then! of course, then he begins fighting these battles with the avengers where the collateral damage is on such a bigger scale than it was at war. where there are aliens. aliens, you guys. and he’s tasked with leading this motley crew of superheroes in a world he’s still getting used to and people die, lots of people die, and we know that even if it doesnt visibly affect him like it affects tony (who always seems shocked when he’s confronted with loss, because it’s presented to him on a personal, individual level) it does affect him. that steve feels the guilt of lives lost. imagine that burden. imagine the weight of the shield, the mask, the responsibility. imagine the loneliness. the fear.

so then. then. in the space of a few days. steve deals with more guilt from the deaths in lagos. he shoulders that burden. then he deals with the moral quandary of signing the accords. he wrestles with that decision. peggy dies. he grieves, oh goodness does he grieve. vienna fuckin blows up and that elusive best friend is now the suspect. so steve is grieving, he is confused and conflicted, and now he feels doubly guilty—that’s the person he has been looking for, should he have already caught him? did he do it? he couldn’t have. does he bring him in? does he shoulder this responsibility too? what will they make him do when he catches up to bucky? what should he do? steve might act like he always knows what’s right, but a decision like this isn’t easy. it messes with a person. and when you’re dealing with all that mess in your head, sometimes you don’t think. sometimes…you act.

like when bucky is triggered, when steve stops a helicopter with his bare fucking hands, you can feel the desperation. that’s not ordinary heroics. that’s not steve just trying to stop bucky from escaping and possibly hurting others. it’s steve fighting for bucky. for this piece of his past. for the possibility of an end to loneliness. for the possibility of redemption for letting him fall. 

and when they go on the run, when they know they have to stop the supersoldiers, when they clash with tony’s team, can you imagine steve’s sheer frustration that no one gets what is at stake? that no one is willing to listen? and yes, he didn’t even try—but why is that, you think? is it possibly because steve is used to institutions and those in power ignoring what he thinks is right and causing disaster anyway?

when steve says, “pal, so are we.” when steve acknowledges to natasha that he’s 90 not dead, when he openly references the fact that he and bucky are 100, can you imagine knowing that? adjusting to that? being 20-something in body and memory but 100 in actuality? living in a body that people perceive as a weapon so strongly that you’ve become a weapon when you are still longing to rediscover the man you were? steve’s not just cap. steve’s steve, and he doesn’t know what makes him happy you guys. he’s a guy, he’s a human, and he’s dealing with A Lot.

i get that he makes some bad calls in the movie. so does tony. my beef is that while tony’s decisions are often supported by his very obvious trauma and emotional burden, we rarely seem to give enough weight to the very real and very similar turmoil that is going on inside of steve.

when tony is fighting him in siberia. when steve says, “he’s my friend,” so simply, so sadly, without any righteousness, just clean tired truth, that’s steve as steve. when he hid the truth from tony, that’s steve as steve. when he drops the shield, that’s steve reclaiming himself as steve. we expect cap all the time, because often, steve is cap. it’s easy to see him as the moral police that way, if reductionist.

What the fuck is a kid doing in war? Sure, he’s enhanced in ways most of them are, but still doesn’t exactly excuse age, does it? The ugliness of war is not something anyone should wish even on their enemies and Bucky remembers the horrors of war himself, back in the 1940′s. The way he turned out is the product of war. What Hydra did to him was a product of war. Losing the life he could’ve had in Brooklyn in warm comfort next to Steve is a product of war. It makes sense now why his face is that of absolute fucking shock and horror; they started a war and dragged a kid right into it. Ring any bells?