My Movie Space

Five Years - (2025)

Today’s my 50th birthday! Hard to believe I’m at the half century mark. I just wanted to say that even though you don’t know me, you are all still a part of my birthday because you’re all such a wonderful part of my life. I’m sitting here thinking of how much I’ve enjoyed fandom, reading, and writing, all while waiting to put my potatoes in the bake for dinner tonight. You have all given me such happiness over the past dozen years of so. Thank you for sticking with me.

Summary: A battle gone wrong leads Tony to the unexpected and pleasant discovery that Steve is much more well-endowed than he could ever have imagined. But when Tony learns that Steve has never actually been able to sleep with anyone because of his size, Tony does what any good friend would do: he offers to relieve Steve of his virginity. Personally. Tony's determined, Tony's methodical, and Tony has a plan. He's going to get Steve laid. Tony just needs to make sure Steve never finds out that Tony's in love with him.

Author: @sineala

2024 sam: “so yeah, we help save the world and overcome many challenges as well as become captain america and go on to inspire millions despite the odds. also steve is lowkey dead and nat sacrificed herself”

2014 sam:

2014 sam: and the guy who ripped out the steering wheel on the highway?

There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

--

"And what is the most surprising thing you've learned about dating Tony Stark?" Christine asks, and Tony can see the way she's seething behind her smile because Steve has expertly twisted out of every trap she's laid.

He hopes she doesn't think that he had the time to teach Steve any of this--Steve was doing interviews and selling war bonds before even he was a glint in Howard's eye, never mind Christine in her father's, and Steve has complained at length about how the media hasn't changed at all in the privacy of the tower. Between his "aw shucks" persona and his steel resolve, she hasn't been able to poke at any vulnerabilities he might have. Tony is actually sort of impressed. If he didn't know Steve squeaked when his feet were tickled, he'd think the man was made of stone.

"Oh," Steve says, shrugging, and leans back on the couch so he can throw his arm over Tony's shoulders. "Just that he hates surprises."

Tony blinks. Christine raises an eyebrow and opens her mouth, but Tony ignores her, turning to look up at Steve in confusion. "I love surprises though?"

"No, you don't," Steve answers flatly, slanting his gaze toward him. "They make you anxious. I was planning a night out on the town for our anniversary, and you noticed a change in how everyone was acting because they were helping to keep it a secret, and you panicked and thought we were all Skrulls."

Tony blinks again, brows furrowing together in confusion. "But I love when you bring me coffee and donuts when I'm not expecting them. Or! Sometimes you bring me souvenirs when you go on away missions without me!"

Steve sighs, that kind of 'I'd rather not do this here but you'll catastrophize if I don't set you straight now' sound he's developed specifically for Tony, and dutifully answers, "Tony, that's just me being a thoughtful and caring boyfriend who is showing that I think about you even when we're not near each other. I would be a bad boyfriend if I didn't do that. You do that kind of stuff for me all the time. It shouldn't be a surprise."

Tony stares at him for a long moment, then remembers exactly where they are--on a couch being interrogated interviewed by Christine Everhart. He darts his gaze back to her, feeling terrified for reasons he can't explain.

She's staring at him as if she's never seen him before. It terrifies him. He wishes Steve would have let him catastrophize just this once.

"Anyway," Steve says after a moment, slapping his hands against his knees and standing up. "The DOD will get back to you about what parts of the interview you're allowed to air."

Christine jerks her gaze to him, aghast. "What?!"

"I'm an icon of the United States military. They get final say about what airs with me in it," Steve answers, turning to help Tony to his feet. "It's in that contract you had to sign to be able to interview me. Well, bye."

"Bye," Tony adds belatedly as Steve casually directs him toward the door. He looks up at Steve once they're out of earshot, frowning. "But I am surprised when you do those things for me. I was surprised when Pepper did them, too."

"That's because we're the only truly good partners you've had, sweetheart," Steve sighs, shaking his head, and then, "I'll let you think on that for a few minutes on the drive home."

For deehellcat on the Stony Discord: based on the idea of the zoo's Valentine's fundraiser where you can name a bug after your ex and watch it get eaten. This somehow leads to declarations of true love.

Hello! In the near future, Marvel tag wranglers will be updating fandom tags on AO3 to separate the upcoming Captain America movies featuring Sam Wilson as Captain America from the trilogy of films with Steve Rogers as Captain America.

To do this, we will be renaming the fandom Captain America (Movies) to Captain America (Chris Evans Movies) and creating a new fandom named Captain America (Anthony Mackie Movies). Both will be made subtags of Marvel Cinematic Universe and Captain America - All Media Types.

In summary:

Captain America (Chris Evans Movies) will refer to the 2011, 2014, and 2016 movies featuring Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter, and Bucky Barnes. 

Captain America (Anthony Mackie Movies) will refer to the 2025 movie Brave New World featuring Sam Wilson and Joaquín Torres. This fandom tag will also refer to any sequel Captain America movies starring Sam Wilson in the title role.

Fans interested in reading about both movie series can include both Marvel Cinematic Universe and Captain America - All Media Types in tag filtering. The current fandom tag for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV), which is a subtag of Marvel Cinematic Universe but not Captain America - All Media Types, will also be unaffected by these changes. We’ve included more details of our reasoning below, which better explains why we’re making this change.

Regardless of intention, this change implies that the first three CA movies are a separate fandom from CA:BNW. That isn't the case, at all. CA:BNW is Captain America 4. It's not a reboot and it's not like James Bond, where there's historically been relatively little continuity among films. It's a Captain America movie, full stop. There are other cases where fandoms with multiple entries aren't broken out into such granular detail, so this wasn't an inevitable choice.

There are a couple of implications to build on with this. First, users have always been able to filter for specific movies, using their titles in the "Additional Tags" sections. As this post mentions, that would still be the case here. There are also additional tags to specify who's Captain America, plus, obviously, character tags. There really wasn't any need to change the fandom tag.

This is also going to result in a lot of fics being mistagged, since everyone who's been writing CA fics set after Endgame, with Sam as Captain America, are now going to have to manually go in and change the fandom. Like, I think it's important to emphasize that this will disproportionately affect Sam!Cap fics, making them harder to find.

Next, a lot of people in the notes are claiming that this makes filtering easier. As someone who's actually in the CA fandom, I disagree. This is worse for fics that span from CA:CW to CA:BNW, for AUs that are in conversation with the CA movies, but which don't have a specific Captain America, and for AUs where Sam becomes Captain America prior to CA:BNW. Yeah, all of those fics could just be tagged MCU or tagged with both CA tags, but that's a vaguer solution than just having a CA (Movies) tag.

There's also the fact that like... CA:TWS and CA:CW are both Cap movies with both Mackie and Evans! I think a lot of people are just going to end up tagging their fics with both fandoms, which renders this kind of pointless.

And then saying that you can tag both "Marvel Cinematic Universe" and "Captain America: All Media Types" just... doesn't really make sense? Again, that's a tagging structure that's much less specific than just having a tag for the CA movies.

Finally: I know talking about racism in fandom is fraught, I know people are just going to be like "it's not that deep," whatever. "many Steve Rogers fans will likely want to filter out movies where he doesn’t appear" is a statement that would be perfectly neutral and fine if we lived in a perfectly neutral world, but we don't.

The phrasing here is both inaccurate and deliberately dancing around the point -- you know there are going to be plenty of CA:BNW fics where Steve appears. The actual impact of the tag split is that people can (theoretically) filter out fics where Steve isn't Captain America. Choosing to make that distinction against a backdrop where people have continuously posted shit about Sam not really being Captain America, where there has been an immense amount of resistance to having a Black Captain America, is not a choice that exists in a bubble.

And I'm going to assume best intentions and believe that wasn't the goal here. But also, yeah, I think you have the critical thinking skills to recognize that this does more for the "not my Cap" crowd than for the people who have been writing about Sam as Captain America since Endgame, and even before.