The number of ‘John Walker’ versus posts or ‘Can John Walker/Bob/Sentry/the Void defeat (insert character)’.

Or the number of ‘Can Sentry defeat Scarlet Witch/Thor etc.,’

Also this fascination over John Walker when Yelena is Right there.

Like I have no beef with the characters themselves but boy is the fandom for Walker getting on my nerves. It’s like the fandom for Howard from Wandavision, except they’re vindicated.

Except canonically what Walker was, was is very much ‘not as terrible as you could have been’.

Admittedly, this irritation is powered my never ending bitterness that the director decided to kill off Antonia after everything Natasha did to save her. Thus cutting more of Ava’s storyline.

in my humble and honest opinion, that transition was a completely disconnect from his previous life. it not only means so much to me, but so much to him as a character and a person too. being able to make such a change and really just progress and move on as a human being is such a powerful and impactful statement that i don't see very often.

some of you may be saying "oh dev, its just a haircut like it isnt that deep" and to that i say that youre wrong! as everyone and their dog knows, bucky was forced into such an awful situation, one that i literally cannot even fathom due to the extremities that he faced. he was brainwashed, tortured, forced to kill and so much more and throughout that he was obviously unable to take care of himself.

getting out of that situation the way he did and then being told he just needed to move on and adjust to human life? honestly shocking. you can see how his character develops from when hes introduced to where he is today and i can say that i think the development of his character is really cool.

to dive into why i think the haircut means a lot to him would take me months to truly explain so at face value here it is. i do believe it changed him. whether that be from being able to take care of himself to having a disconnect from the past, i think it really did help. of course he suffers from nightmares and the permanent memories of his past, being able to control something and try and move on from those horrible times would mean absolutely everything to me and im sure that means a lot to him.

if we look at the first option, it would feel absolutely amazing to be able to take care and manage the way you look after years and years of having no control at all. the fact that he now has the ability to control the majority of his life and especially control how he looks is such a freeing thing that not many people truly understand.

if we look at the second option, it is honestly even better. finally being in control of something would lift such a heavy burden off his chest despite everything else that is weighing him down. while talking from personal experience is usually frowned upon while making statements i think it honestly is fitting. going through something so gruesome can and most likely will change you as a person. i know for a fact that if i were to be put through that, the first thing i would do is make a drastic change. whether that be cutting my hair off or whatever, that change that i'd make would be the most freeing thing in the world at that moment.

Still kind of baffles/enrages/saddens me that we’re at the point where the highest grossing franchise in the world, which prides themselves on being one giant connected universe, isn’t expected to provide character or story continuity, hire competent writers who are experienced and passionate about the characters they’re writing, or really just give a single fuck about maintaining the quality of depth and story telling that was present in the earlier phases.

And when you’re not okay with that, when you’ve watched this slow decent in care and quality eroding your at favorite characters until their unrecognizable, when you’re vocal about the fact that the writer/director of the thing you’re  passionate about seems to actively dislike the source material/character or isn’t qualified to be in charge of it, when you say ‘hey, there’s some really shady messaging in this that implies a really harmful thing, and you guys maybe should have thought about the connotations of it before going through with it’… you’re told to just shut up and stop complaining, that it’s fine for entire character backgrounds to be retconned and to hire writers who don’t invest time and research into their work. That it’s fine that character’s abilities and strengths and entire fucking personalities are scraped and that touching, poignant stories are replaced with soap opera levels of insincere drama and romance. You’re told that these perceived issues and imagined slights (he he) are completely insane and you should just stop drawing attention to the things you’re just expected to ignore for some reason being so negative about.

Marvel’s ability to create meaningful, rich, character driven stories that appeal to multiple groups of people is what made them so unique and popular in the first place. Inconsistency was at least partially explained, or wasn’t detrimental to the plot, production value was priority, and films had a weighty feel that enforced the stakes and could amerce the audience in the story. They cared at one point; maybe they weren’t genius films or the hight of cinema but they were gripping and emotional and decent. But it’s not fans of those films that are Marvel’s target audience anymore, it’s the people who weren’t.

You know, at the end of the day I think if the movies were better, if the writing and production consistency and continuity were better, if they took themselves seriously enough to follow basic logic in storytelling instead of veering off the proverbial cliff and expecting us to pay to watch our favorite characters sink, if they developed concepts and showed us fully realized characters, EVERYONE WHO DOESN’T CARE WOULD/ SHOULD STILL BE ABLE TO ENJOY THEM!!