#antitfatws

maybe it's fans confusing fanon with canon, where steve is often called out and punished by sam & bucky by the endgame critical side of the fandom? idk but none of that happened in canon. quite the opposite. they still call steve their friend by the end of the show.

just to be clear i believe nothing since that godawful movie made sense so this is not me bashing sam and bucky. but i do find it interesting how fandom mostly focuses on the part of steve abandoning his friends and not how endgame's bad writing greatly damaged sam and bucky's characterization too. why are not more people angry about that?

In reference to (x)

Yeah it's really a domino effect. The negative implications of one load-bearing 'good' character demolishes the values of a whole relay of other characters. The proverbial one bad apple that spoils the barrel. (Altho tbh the fact that TFATWS Bucky could be swapped out with Brock Rumlow without it affecting the plot, because of how villainized he is, kinda tells you just how badly they've written him. That guy isn't Bucky. That's just SebStan with a terrible haircut and a poorly-fitted plastic jacket.)

It's such infuriatingly shoddy absence of continuity, that EG makes Steve almost a split-personality too. The way he answers the first question(?) Sam ever asks him in CATWS by criticising how bad things were in the past versus how good they are in the future (and they're all things that aren't undermined by the plot, where bad things are revealed in the future!)

It's annoying in its own right because along with the America patriot propaganda it logically follows ofc for characters like Sabra & her terrorist actor to easily appear in these stories with some Zionist propaganda.

But it's just really annoying to put it lightly how much Marvel - ever since first putting Sam Cap to page in 2014 - worked overtime to undermine Steve's character making CW a de facto IM movie & painting Steve as in the wrong  for being against the US gov authority & overall stripping back & removing Steve's righteous anger at the US State for what they did with Shieldra, or how FATWS compares its enthusiastically patriotic protagonist to make Steve look retroactively worse

& likewise precluded Bucky's post-WS character arc entirely & retroactively demonized his character as the insufficiently patriotic & therefore untrustworthy one. His whole backstory setup in CATWS painted the US gov in a bad light & culpable via Shieldra, so ofc Bucky gets villainized in phase 3 & likewise FATWS paints Buck at fault for being a target of continuous state violence & institutionalization while Sam- an agent of the state, part of the literal USAF -is presented as moral center while telling Buck he deserves to be at the whim of the US state and blamed for WS crimes the gov funded via Shieldra. Bucky gets surveilled & arrested & monitored by the same US State which funded the supersoldier mindcontrolled assassin program they blame him for while Correctly Patriotic Uncle Sam is shown as a Good US Soldier by contrast while Bucky's story gets retconned & swept under the rug for being to inconvenient to the Patriotic direction they went in.

The propaganda really ramped up with the ink and pages of Sam Cap drying off & becoming their new brand, but marvel's audience who tbh enjoy lapping at the Mouse 's propaganda pool refuse to see beyond the superficial aesthetics which is WHY US media frequently & purposefully chooses these aesthetics & act like neoliberal representation in oppressive structures is radical or progressive.

Which makes all the performative shock over Sabra in BNW fall flat since Sam Cap as a Marvel rebrand is defined by doubling down on Cap as a patriotic literal agent & defender of the US government. Sabra's inclusion is entirely ideologically consistent with what Sam Cap is about FFS, in FATWS the only other character besides Bucky who was exploited by the US gov is Isaiah who CORRECTLY outlines the relationship btwn America & Black ppl & Sam wholly dismisses him as crazy! THAT is was SamCap is about: telling Black ppl to STFU & be patriotic Obama style, but ppl are acting like Sabra is "ruining" Sam's otherwise totally not at all propagandistic stint as a now more patriotic 🇺🇸flag laden hero while America funds multiple genocides as the USA has always done since it's inception.

I haven't watched the trailer (and tbh don't intend to... too depressing) so I can't really comment on specifics of this.

But I will say that I was thinking the other day how MCU's complete refusal to do any Cap character properly, but especially Steve, had the knock-on effect of making it impossible to do a SamCap well too.

Steve was supposed to be impoverished / multiply disabled / ideologically Antifa / feminist / pro-union / New Deal Democrat / Irish-Catholic / urban underdog, etc. And it would make perfect sense for a modern black man to accept the legacy of all that, if Steve had been adapted properly.

In deleting all that and assigning to the mantel what America represents instead, they've turned the shield from an honour into an albatross.

But it's still contradicting their own canon to do so.

Because even the de-yassified MCU Steve never embodied America; he merely set an example to America.

Isaiah should not plausibly believe Steve's shield represents something bad -- as someone who knows nothing about Captain America would -- as if MCU canon!Steve never did any of the good things he did with it.

(This could've been a beat addressed in the main Cap movies; eg. someone assumes Steve is a Republican and his baffled response is 'huh??!')

Following canon, Sam's logical response to that should've been 'wtf it doesn't mean any of that where did you get that from??' not 'yeah but I want to represent that anyway.'

Isaiah correctly lampooned what America's legacy is... but no one bothered to point out that's not what Steve and his shield have represented. Not even the landlord-white version of him we have in the MCU.

That failure makes a nonsense of Sam's entire friendship with Steve.

Why would Sam be friends with the willing bearer of America's bad legacy?

Why would a decent Steve be friends with someone who wants to represent a bad legacy (maybe EG Steve would!) and so on and so on.

Though I guess it's no dumber than Steve not killing Peggy on sight for colluding with Nazis for decades, huh? 😕

I'm looking forward to all the jokes Sam is going to make about Isaiah being a brainless killing machine (y'know, to show what bros they are?)

And when he comes out at the end of it and tells Isaiah he needs to "do the work" to apologise properly for what he did while controlled.

Or perhaps he will suddenly magically understand the concept of innocence, now? 🤔

Sam siding with the authorities might be sadly consistent with the spirit they've taken him in (I've pointed it out before, but it is IC for him to be, eg. a dick to Bucky. Yer man's been doing that since day one).

But it at the very least it contradicts Sam's canon to willingly guard Ross, a man who threw him in enhanced-people-Gitmo like a "common criminal," to paraphrase Sam himself.

(Hey, why would the man who threw Sam in prison later trust Sam to guard him? Is it just a set up to screw Sam over again? Okay, but why would Sam fall for something so openly implausible? Are they giving him the idiot ball?)

The MCU are masters of 'we don't understand what this action we've assigned the character actually shows about them.' Or when they are assigning character actions that contradict past actions.

View on Twitter

Since it came up recently, link to that therapist on twitter 👆 who was discussing Bucky's terribile therapist in TFATWS and how they should’ve been. 

Transcript:

"As a therapist myself I've had a lot of feelings about Bucky's therapist on TFatWS, and have decided I need to rant a little to let it all out. I've worked w/active duty, trauma survivors, and court ordered clients, so here's some therapeutic conjecture on Bucky's therapy:

Aesthetically her office and presentation don't fit for someone who has been through the trauma that he’s been through. A client like this would need something non-threatening and safe- the whole vibe is overly formal and official in an office building, not at all therapeutic.

6 months working together she calls him Mr. Barnes and then James-he has identity issues and is struggling with who he is, so I think that one of the 1st things they would have done is figure out what he is comfortable being called, by whom and what that means for him.

He is still full out lying to her about pretty much everything including PTSD sx—I’m not saying clients never lie if they have good therapists, but if after 6 months he still doesn’t feel like he can be truthful at all then they haven’t built any trust/ solid therapeutic rapport

The pen and notebook thing-that’s clearly a trigger for him, there’s no reason to antagonize him and take notes in session like a punishment, it’s a power play on her part and it only emphasizes his lack of control in being forced into therapy (she should know his hx w/notebooks)

The whole little arm motion she made when she said “they need to make sure you don’t…” – that made so much light of what has happened to him, he probably feels like his arm is only good as a weapon and things like that will not help him accept it as part of his body

The rules, UGH the rules—from how they were talking about them clearly not something he actively created for himself, more like directives that he’s been ordered to adhere to—something fed to him and reinforced, feels like a way to sign off on liability only

THE AMENDS—this is probably my biggest issue. Amends are for people who need to take accountability for their actions and the repercussions of those choices. He had NO choice. He was a victim of horrific crimes against him, and framing it in a way that he needs to make up for

the crimes that others used him for is abhorrent. The lack of trauma informed care as astounding in the way it is being framed that he has to atone for sins that weren’t his. Its clearly reinforcing the idea in his head in ep 2 when he says “HYDRA were my people".

NO, HYDRA were your captors. They were not your people. That type of thinking needs to get deconstructed and challenged. He can dedicate himself to bringing good into the world and righting wrongs that happened WITHOUT taking on the responsibility of those actions.

Her whole attitude and demeanor were condescending and demeaning. I know some people have said “I love how she calls him out on his bullshit!” That’s not what I see happening. I call my clients out on their shit all the time—this was not that.

And I can only do that with clients ONCE we’ve built the type of relationship where it’s going to be therapeutic for them to hear it, and it’s done intentionally and with purpose. She just came off shaming and mean because they don’t seem to have any form of therapeutic rapport.

She said “you have no history, no family”- there is no therapeutic reason for that, and she’s wrong. He most likely has family alive (he used current tense when talking about his sister) and he was close to Shuri and TChalla, his history is vital to understanding him

When she said “Look, I know that you have been through a lot, but you’ve got your mind back. You are being pardoned. These are good things. You’re free.”—Yeah this feels really dismissive and like toxic positivity. “I know you’ve been through a lot BUT BE HAPPY!!??”

He certainly doesn’t seem to feel like he’s free (especially having therapy mandated), and you can’t just tell someone they’re free. I felt like she was pretty much just like, “shake it off, look to the future!” which feels really shitty when you’ve experienced excessive trauma.

HELLO breach of confidentiality, just introducing herself to Sam as his therapist and confirming it to Walker and the whole police station, it doesn’t matter if they know he’s in therapy you do not break someone’s privacy like that, he still deserves some control over his tx.

Ordering Sam into a session, NO, he’s not your client and you don’t know him well enough to know if that’s appropriate or if it would be harmful to either, and you haven’t asked your client for his consent to have another person in his session

Forcing a trauma victim who was stripped of his bodily autonomy for 70 years into a physically intimate exercise with a coworker that he’s barely interacted with in the last several months? NOPE, just reinforcing to Bucky she has control over him the way his handlers used to

To me, I think she is more focused on signing off on his psychological eval that he isn't a liability rather than any actual healing or attention to his trauma. This unfortunately isn’t unusual in the military where “mental health treatment” is focused on being mission ready.

They are making sure he’s ready to be an “asset” w/ mandated therapy, which he shouldn’t even be forced to do as part of his pardon because he shouldn’t have needed a pardon at all because he was a victim of horrific war crimes, brainwashing, and dehumanization for 70 years.

I’m just saying, if that was me he would be on my big squishy couch, bright open windows, bowl of Hershey kisses, random fidget toys, and two therapy dogs laying all over him while we work through that trauma and he builds back his identity and finds the calm he wants so badly.

And yes he would probably need someone who would see through his BS, call him out when he needs it, not be overly "touchy feely", but only if he feels safe and there is trust, where he gets to work on what HE wants, not what others think he needs.

Anyway thanks for coming to my TEDTalk, I❤️my work and I think being a therapist on retainer for the Avengers would've been a fucking trip, they all needed a team of mental health professionals at their disposal 24/7 and things would've been so much better🤣

ps. They can be a good therapist and just not be a fit for the client, that happens regularly. We know when to make it part of the conversation and when to refer out. Nothing good is going to come out of a contemptuous therapeutic relationship, mandated or not.

"Your overextented life"

"Before you were his pet psychopat"

"Big cyborg brain of yours"

"They cleared the bionic staring machine and he killed almost everybody he's met".

Don't get me started on removing Bucky's arm without his consent. You DON'T take away someone's limb, especially not as a punishment for "bad behavior."

And people honestly wonder why some of us had issues with how Bucky was treated in that show. I remember people accusing us of not liking Bucky's story because "we don't want trauma survivors to find happiness and healing". Like I'm sorry but just because he's smiling at the end of the show doesn't mean his arc was written well. As a trauma survivor myself I don't have high expectations when it comes to Hollywood but Bucky's recovery arc (if you can even call it that) has been among the worst depictions of trauma and healing from it I've seen in recent years.

(I'd appreciate a link to that post so I can reblog it please, Anon! I was wondering the other day how many horrible lines there would be, if you put them all together. 😬 Yikes.)

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*warning: this is gunna be salty af cuz I've been binge-watching House and have his acerbic voice in my head.

You're right not to call it a recovery arc, Anon. Bucky has never had a recovery arc, because that requires acknowledging he has something to recover from.

TPTB refuse to, because they want to paint Bucky as generic Crossbones dudebro villain, who needs to 'do better' after being a mind-controlled slave, and deserves to be verbally and physically abused.

As demonstrated by supposedly 'good' character X treating him like crap (ha! so hilarious! boys will be boys!) and/or not standing up for him when other character Y treats him like crap in front of them. (And yes I have to include Steve in this writing, too.)

Bucky in TFATWS is spoken of literally as Secretary Ross talked about Bruce et al in CACW. Comparing them to weapons. Things... not people. Just how a villain would talk about human beings. (And even badly-written!Steve was appalled by that, remember?) No alarm bells ringing in the TFATWS writer's room, tho? Hmm. Guess they were too lazy to watch the movies.

Although Disney skipped the actual arc towards happiness, to relegate SebStan to cheaper cut scenes, Bucky did have happiness and healing in the movies (thanks to Ryan Coogler, not the Russos. Thanks Ryan.)

But TFATWS had to shit on that, via the VA's Second-Worst Counselor. They wanted to take credit for what Coogler did -- by limp-dickedly retreading the exact same story beats (too lazy to come up with something original? too dumb? too reluctant to include Bucky in the first place?) Only with a different set of black people swapped in to replace T'Challa, Shuri, and the village people kids (because they're interchangeable? or because only black Westerners count, now? Ah but I'm forgetting that Arabic guy who came up to- uhh- thank the American Air Force? 😬 Genuinely jaw dropping. Gotta love those good clean Iron Man values.)

"I remember people accusing us of not liking Bucky's story because "we don't want trauma survivors to find happiness and healing."

I can't stand people who hijack that kind of therapy-speak to bullshit that that's why they like something.

IMO the truth is that fans don't want to admit that the writing sucks, that the writing of Sam has been sucking since CACW, because they like Sam and see TFATWS as his show -- when, jesus, is it really tho? Just because his name's on it?

Zemo and Walker got more attention and arc than Sam. Even Izaiah got the better speech. Steve got to demolish an American alphabet agency, what did Sam get to do in his show? Introduce the Flagsmashers when Sam is reluctant to dress in the flag, and he doesn't even get to lead them He gets stuck protecting the status quo?

That's the danger of 'media consumption' with Disney these days. Woke-washing.

It's... kind of like how fast fashion chains will greenwash their products, to pass off plastic fabric as organic material.

People who think of themselves as X-leaning, (or want to be seen as X), also want to believe they would recognise Y-leaning portrayals... but they lack critical thinking skills when it comes to media analysis.

So corps like Disney know they don't actually have to be left-leaning in their portrayals, because they can pass off any right-wing thing as a genuine progressive doodad just by cloaking it in the correct language or aesthetics.

(Hey, right wing writers! Want to make a dehumanizing ableist gag? Make a black woman do it! Ever wish sexual assault in the office could be shrugged at again? Make a white woman do it! (Make sure she's Upper Class and English, too!) Want to to make sure your protags can't be read as queer? Want to get away with basic locker-room homophobia without being nagged about it? Just play on the nostalgia of interracial 'buddy cop' movies, and - as usual - make a black guy do it! Want to portray the USAF as an heroic force in the Middle East? Make an Arab say thanks to a black American Airman! Wokewashing -- it covers all ills!)

Time was, Disney would only do this with their villains -- and you do get a hint of that Classic Disney long-coated predatory gay villain with Zemo.

Only now, instead of getting away with it because of widespread homophobia, Disney and fans can get away with it by accusing anyone who criticises of it being a homophobe.

But they're still writing the creepy gay scene-stealing villains. 🤔

Same with a shitty victim-blaming portrayal of a therapeutic 'arc'. The people who don't give a shit about that won't criticise it, and those that do- well, they must just hate trauma victims IRL, uwu. 😥

Insidious, isn't it?

Disney may be virulently allergic to giving SebStan anything significant to do these days, for fear of getting more gay cooties on Captain Comphet, or distracting from Captain Coloniser: Creator's Pet... but you cannot deny even those idiots M&M wrote a better arc for Steve and Bucky than the idiots that had a whole show arc to accomplish that for Sam and Bucky.

(Seriously, how do you fuck up in six attempts a thing you've already seen someone else manage in two? Oh- wait. Right. They haven't seen them manage it in two. They didn't watch the movies. 🤦‍♀️)

As far as friendship goes, I would have preferred Sam and Bucky ended as mutually-respectful frenemies (or even - imagine! both apologising for things they've actually voluntarily done to each other!)

I'm tired of pretending that Sam is in any way an interesting character. And I'm not just talking about he consistently spends most of his early pre-CapCrowning appearances in every medium as a mixture of a Magical Negro trope and the wise-crackin' Black BFF trope who says things in a "funny" way at key moments — most of the time the humor is just derived from the Black character suddenly using Ebonics dialects for a white audience and by white writers, which has centuries' of history in racially voyeuristic media tropes, but i digress. — But even Post-CapCrowning, the basis for his character is to bring down existing central characters to make this NPC Sidekick *** seem interesting by comparison like the proverbial Industry Plant, as if that's ever been compelling except to the newcomers who started with the Industry Plant character

And before *** *** savefacers try to insist this isn't true: How come hyping up Sam and his rise to prominence means that Steve gets turned into the backwards fuddy-duddy stuck in his ways old-timer, to the point that they break the rules of time travel to age Steve into a geriatric?

Why did Bucky have to be labeled as culpable/morally damaged/dangerous due to being tortured by Nazis in order to make Sam seem like a more moral and better character and Bucky evil/duplicitous/disposable in need to be put in check by compariso?

Why does Steve get rewritten as someone who somehow made his allies' lives harder and someone with moral deficiencies and a ghost of an inadequate predecessor to make Sam look better/slighted by the former guy?

Why did Bucky get his portrayal changed from the only other old supersoldier who's not only comparable but even strong than Steve and beat him in a fight twice, to a character who's just regular human-strength so that he could get a bunch scenes of being mogged by characters much weaker than Steve, just so that Sam can get a million more wise-crackin' quips about both of them being logged by the same opponent?

Why did both Buck And Steve have, in the movies, their screentime chopped and their storylines effectively cut short/placed in unresolved limbo after still not getting a sequel to the only, rightfully so, critically successful Cap installment whose story left off with a cliffhanger/promise for future development, only to get backburner-ed by half a decade of intrusive crossovers and a pandemic?

To be fair to Sam I guess...🙄.. a lot of these problems would've happened anyways with the combination of 1 · Marvel's refusal to let the story develop beyond circling around thr same Cap flag-wavin' ad nauseum to let Steve and Bucky move beyond that & 2 · a slew or creators in both mediums that all but admit that they hate Buck & Steve and would've/have watered down their characters to hype up a different proverbial industry plant instead. But still… not once but twice these changes keep happening just to hype up Sam and render the other 2 into unrecognizable Flanderizations at best, McGuffins at worst

Why should I have to like him? Even on his own merits, he's a loser, but also his presence exacerbates the aspects of the franchise that negatively affect characters I do like. And beyond that, his entire character on a larger scale is about the historical settler-colonial process to bring about an image of Patriotism for the settler state whilst donning a colonized face. His whole thing rebranding the USA's genocidal imagery with a Black face, the same reason Hollywood drastically over-represents Black cops & military on-screen to push the colonized subjects to sympathize for organizations that systematically engineer their deaths. The same reason why bringing in Sabra is consistent ideologically with the thematic purpose of Sam's character: to launder empire with a familiar face.

His character's purpose as propaganda is meant to target me, but I'm not swayed just on the mere basis of morals & politics, but also just as a character he pisses me off bc detracting/redirecting focus from storylines I was invested in to try to get me to like the character that stole that focus from my investment... that will never work on me, I will always hate on the industry plant character the writers are trying to force me to like, just like I hate on **** *****, duh, and also *********** from ******* ******

ok it wasn't a short rant, but in my defense it sounded only 3 sentences long when I said this to myself out loud

Posting under cut 👇👇👇

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the wise-crackin' Black BFF trope who says things in a "funny" way at key moments — most of the time the humor is just derived from the Black character suddenly using Ebonics dialects for a white audience and by white writers

There definitely is a recurrent problem of black characters only being allowed to appear as comedic sidekicks in white-lead movies, which is cast into even starker relief by the comic book movies that simply avoid doing that altogether. (Thinking of the animated Spider-Mans). Even when the MC isn't white... but is lighter skinned? (see: Kevin Hart as the Scrappy-doo to The Rock's- err- Scoob??)

I think CATWS did a pretty good job mitigating those issues with Sam's unique-to-him skillset / intelligence and plot-importance, from the off (admittedly I am biased cuz I love the movie).

Though it would've been further mitigated if they hadn't also had the only other black guy in the movie getting yelled at for not doing enough to stop Nazis.

(Victim-blamey, even if he is the only authority figure available to yell at, which Captain America should always be doing IMO. 😌)

Kind of bizarre to have the confluence in CACW where you suddenly have more black characters than white. But only because the main white heroes have brought their black sidekicks along. 😬

Why couldn't their Spidey have been black, too? 🤔

Hell, why stop at that, switch the genders too! They already have Zendaya onboard!

At the same time there is an opposing problem where black characters are presented in a way that is totally divorced from blackness. As if they're just white people who happen to be black. Like the writers wanted the cache of diversity but only, ugh, a very mild hint of chocolate in an otherwise vanilla concoction.

It can be a delicate balancing act, for a white writer to avoid both these pitfalls- PSYCH. No it's not. Just hire someone who can do their fucking job, Disney. Even, god forbid, hire black writers who can do their job!

Let black characters do and say and reference things white viewers won't understand and don't have to because it's not for them!

(Could even provide a nice teachable moment where Steve could ask about it only to be told to mind his business, and take it good-naturedly?)

🌈Imagine! ✨

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I feel like MCU Sam had potential to be a good character, with unique qualities... but we really haven't seen That guy since CATWS, AKA the best Cap movie.

(In fact, it almost feels like they cherry-picked the worst traits of CW Sam, kept only those, and then exaggerated them with each subsequent appearance. It's like they think what made Sam unique was... his wing jetpack. I was genuinely surprised when TFATWS had Sam go and talk to Karli/Flagsmasher, alone... because up until that point they had done absolutely fuck all to portray him as a man with empathy or counselling skills??)

A whole show of Sam where there's no mention of his pararescue experience, losing Riley, disillusionment with the military-industrial complex, medical training... only 2 weak uses of counselling skills...

(One where he espouses fuckin horeshoe theory, and the other where his advice to Bucky is villainizing / victim-blaming, disastrously dangerous, as seen in CW, and comes immediately on the heels of him saying... Bucky shouldn't be looking to other people for input... and yet he keeps talking??)

...Probably something else I've forgotten?

They stripped away 99% of the things that made him non-basic. 🤦‍♀️

TBH I think, a lot of the time, the reason we find a character annoying is because they're being written annoyingly. What we perceive as annoying is actually the weakness of writing working on us. They grate on our nerves without us really being able to put our fingers on why... 🤔 Funnily enough, I was just talking about this re: a female character in my other fandom, Hannibal. Of course, anyone who is conscious of this and actually dares to mention it is labelled a m-🤐-ist by the 'it's not that deep' casuals. Sometimes it feels like people on twitter have an instinctive distrust of cleverness. Very Elon Musk of them…

This can be fixed.

But Disney seems to actively seek out writers who don't understand very basic tenets of writing, and have no familiarity with the characters (and don't intend to acquire any). Since they have no skin in the game, they won't have inconvenient Opinions about how said characters should be properly written, or any power to enforce them.

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There's a definite correlation between what you're saying and the way Peggy is written, too, where the writers don't seem to be aware that you can't make a character look competent just by making everyone else around them incompetent.

Or: you can't make a character look like the best person for a job if they are literally the only option in a pool of one (1).

Having Steve only hand over the shield once he's too old to physically carry it himself... is not a compliment.

In the comics, Steve handed it over while still young himself, because Sam was the best guy for the job (not just the only guy), even when Steve himself was still around.

He would even correct people who called him Cap, to point out that Sam is Cap, and he's just Steve Rogers.

Now that's a compliment!

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Sidenote: I must point out, Steve definitely wasn't character-assassinated into an old guy (who abandons his entire characterisation), for the purpose of making Sam look good. It was definitely for the purposes of force-feeding us a comphet ending / burying the gayness of Steve and Bucky. But, it definitely feels like they saw Steve's physical incapacity to continue to be Cap as a perk, rather than a problem, when it came to him passing on the shield. (They are bad at their jobs.) The fact that the writers chose not to have young!Steve be the one to hand over the shield. That definitely was a deliberate ignorant snub to Sam. Sadly, Bucky being villainized and treated like shit (by Sam and others) predates tfatws, and was definitely more about making Steve look straight, making the 'has Bucky blown up the Accords??' subplot seem feasible, and making Spider-Man and T'Challa look good. Not about making Sam look better than him. (Which it didn't, anyway, since him being a dick just makes Bucky more sympathetic). Only the nerfing of Bucky in tfatws was about making Sam look good, IMO. And probably about setting Bucky up for whatever rancid clusterfuck of a characterisation they have in store for Thunderbolts. 😖

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Villainizing and nerfing Bucky doesn't actually make Sam look better than him (as any halfway competent writer would know.) 'Better than a weakass villain' does not equal 'good.' It just equals 'average'. (Also why bringing Batroc back was pointless.) It's like the anti-Worf Effect.

(So you're saying Sam would only look cool relative to Bucky if Bucky was made drastically worse?? Wow. Okay...)

In fact, if they had portrayed Bucky (and/or Agent Whatsisname) as a person who also has the qualities that could make a good Cap... That, would've made Sam look great; since he was chosen not only over one great guy, but over multiple great guys!

(Ditto with Peggy: introducing multiple great potential female love interests for Steve would make her look good for being chosen. But having no other female characters allowed near Steve when she's around. In fact, not allowing Steve to even mention his own mother as an important figure in his life?? That. Does not.)

Perception is relative, but if you have someone who's a 5 out of 10, you can't make them an 8 just by making someone else a 4.

All that accomplishes is making a 5 who's still a 5 but who now looks very slightly better if the 4 is standing next to them. Which is just pathetic.

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Including Isaiah in the way they did also does a massive disservice to both him and Sam.

Firstly, because they erased crucial aspects from Isaiah's story in the comics.

Those weren't just done for no reason -- those were important. (Of course, inept writers wouldn't recognise that!)

It actually was necessary, for example, that comics!Isaiah have mental disability. Because it explained why he wasn't just turned into another Winter Soldier like Bucky, why Hydra didn't re-develop serum decades ago, why Isaiah didn't appear in the public eye post-escape and seek vengeance for himself, etc etc.

It was important!

And, ironically, the very criticisms that the comics came under fire for, which were proven unfounded when the comics did the job properly... have now been proven correct of this version of Isaiah, because the writers erased all the fixes.

(They're like untrained construction workers, ignorantly knocking down internal structures without understanding what the term 'load-bearing' means. 🤦‍♀️)

Secondly... Isaiah's inclusion is a problem because they didn't even adapt that comics run (Truth) properly, but half-assed it in a way that A) makes Isaiah (a main-character) now subordinate in his own story, B) makes Sam subordinate in Isaiah's story, and C) makes Sam look less righteous than comics Steve.

Comics!Steve found out about Isaiah and waged absolute warfare on the people responsible.

But TFATWS Sam didn't get to do that.

(Instead he just. Arranged a statue and got to save a bunch of status-quo-protecting politicians in suits. Oyvey.)

Maybe that will be the plot of the next Cap movie...

But if so, they ought to have introduced Isaiah in Cap 4, and not in TFATWS, because the net result is Sam just Not getting to do the cool and righteous thing that comics!Steve got to do immediately.

Thirdly, how could any other black character compete with Isaiah's story?? It kicks the leg out of any other story that isn't as powerful.

+ the fact that the superserum worked on Bucky is empirical proof of his goodness:

+ this is also why the serum worked on Isaiah Bradley. + imagine if Isaiah had been made the Winter Soldier instead

Seriously it's a pretty eye-opening thought exercise to put any other character in Bucky's place and see just how poorly he's treated.

Do people really think Steve would hear about a man who had the same magic ‘only works on good people’ juice as him, tortured and enslaved by Hydra for decades… and then just NOT help him?

imagine if you had Sam saying 'Steve this 'Isaiah' guy he's not someone you save he's someone you stop.'

Nat saying 'Steve I know this matters to you but let the police handle Isaiah someone will arrest you if you interfere, it will inconvenience us all.' (LOL Nat have you met Steve who wrote this)

Sam agreeing, 'maybe Nat's right maybe we shouldn't bother helping Isaiah against the police in case they shoot at us,' and dismissing the fact that Isaiah could do good: ‘1945, maybe.’ 

When Isaiah was the guy that pulled Steve out of the river?

(And meanwhile the CIA have given police, that Nat and Sam are telling Steve not to interfere with, orders to shoot Isaiah dead on sight? quelle surprise)

Steve would still be arguing that it should be him to bring Isaiah in, since he's least likely to die trying. 

He would still have put taking down the Insight helicarriers first, and been reluctant (but willing) to dislocate his arm for that very important reason. 

He would still have lifted up the steel beam pinning Isaiah down

(and probably still tried to talk him out of his mind-control, even if he failed.)

imagine if everyone (Sam, Nat, Steve, Sharon, etc.) saw Isaiah -- when mind-controlled -- suddenly demonstrating a drastically different personality

and imagine if Steve and Sam saw Isaiah waking up with amnesia.. then proving his memory of his good, non-WS personality... but Sam was still rude/hostile to Isaiah anyway, insisting he and Steve should not be ‘cool' with him (then telling Isaiah he hates him). 

Tony saying 'I don’t care that Isaiah was mind-controlled he killed my mom imma murder him just to spite you for not trusting me not to murder people.'

imagine if you had the therapist telling Isaiah he needs to be monitored by the state to prove he’s not giving into his innate violence, giving him rules to follow like a child, (and he’s pardoned, not exonerated, meaning he had to admit to crimes he wasn’t responsible for in order to get a modicum of freedom) and that it’s bullshit to suggest Isaiah just wants some peace

Ayo telling Isaiah 'you are free' 😌 as he finally escapes his bondage, watching him cry with relief, then: ‘SIKE! we put a booby-trap in ur limb the trust was a lie.’

Sam cracking jokes about Isaiah's trauma, dehumanizing him as a killing machine 

taking part in a plot where Isaiah has to pretend to be WS, be sold to another human being, and have rape jokes cracked about him, 

but then still being like 'listen Isaiah if you really want to apologise f̶o̶r̶ ̶b̶e̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶l̶a̶v̶e̶  you should just do the work.' 😔