@captainpikeachu / captainpikeachu.tumblr.com
one of these super soldiers isn’t like the others 🤣
look I’m just saying, if the Thunderbolts doesn’t have at least one scene where Alexei and Bucky bully John about wearing a helmet, what is even the point?? 😝
we need the Thunderbolts version of this scene
Every so often I see... interesting takes about Zemo that leave me questioning if we... all saw the same stuff.
Like, you know he commanded a death squad before his fam even died, right? This man is not a good dude. Sure, maybe it was in the name of his country but also... his country was a shit show and he said as much.
So I am absolutely perplexed by the number of "he wouldn't do x" and "why does everyone make him so toxic" kinds of things. He actively waterboarded Vasily Karpov like one of the first times we saw him. He was put in the RAFT because he is a fucking terrorist.
This feels like another one of those things I guess that reminds me of Hannibal. Him being polite doesn't make him any less of a cannibal. You can be both polite and a bad person.
Hayden Christensen and Diego Luna - VARIETY STUDIO: ACTORS ON ACTORS
I've been a Captain before obviously, but this is different. This is... Everybody in the world expects me to be something and I don't want to fail them.
+bonus feral super soldiers:
Wyatt Russell | Lodge 49: s02e02
“everybody in the world expects me to be something and I don’t wanna fail them.”
Sinceeeeee nobody else has posted it (confirmed at Netflix'S Upfront event today. Previously Greg said 2024).
i wanna know who spent a once-in-a-lifetime event to take this horrifying aesthetically-pleasing picture
90% of arguments about media could just be solved by saying “different people like different things in their stories” and leaving it at that
this person probably humanizes cops/racists, rape, child abuse, incest etc as long as its fictional lol
this is a good and normal leap in logic to make from this post!
I certainly hope they do, and not just when it’s fictional. Humanizing them is an important step in stopping the actual real-world harm.
If you recognize that they’re human, then you can understand it’s an issue of rationale and perspective, not Inherent Evil - and you can learn to think like an adversary. This is the first step in developing a good security mindset. That mindset, in turn, is the first tool you need to build functional safety measures and protections for your community.
There’s an added bonus, too - if you recognize that they’re people, you’ll notice that not many people are villains in their own narratives. They aren’t choosing to be evil, they’re rationalizing their harmful choices. And you start asking questions.
If you recognize that cops are people, you learn to ask yourself “Am I being reactionary, authoritarian, and needlessly violent?”
If you recognize that racists are people, you learn to recognize and unpack the racist lessons you were taught.
If you learn that rapists are people, you learn to actively verify consent.
By recognizing that terrible people are not Inherently Bad, but choosing to do terrible things for reasons they think justify them, you get better at protecting yourself from them - and protecting everyone around you from your worst tendencies. It’s a difficult and ongoing process, but it’ll protect you far better than any list of specific Bad Things to watch out for.
There’s a flipside to this, of course, and it’s important:
Anyone who tells you that your enemies are inhuman monsters is using you.
Either they’re trying to convince you that they couldn’t possibly be an Enemy because they’re a normal person… or they’re trying to keep you from noticing the little rationalizations. To convince you that atrocity is okay when you do it.
Don’t fall for either lie.
Recognise that choosing to dehumanise someone is the first step towards becoming an abuser or villain yourself. You can justify doing monstrous things to someone if they’re not truly human in your eyes. A lot of alt-righters genuinely believe they’re protecting the people they care about from people they’ve learned to dehumanise because other alt-righters told them that those people (Jewish people, Muslim people, BIPOC people, gay people, trans people, etc) were predators and monsters, and gave what they believed to be good reasons and evidence to support that worldview. They have decided, “I am a hero, because I am protecting the innocent from these predators. I will do what needs to be done, even if it means torturing and killing them, and I won’t feel bad about it because they’re not really people.” Same thing when cops dehumanise Black folks to justify killing them. Same thing when rapists dehumanise (often in the sense that they objectify) their victims to justify raping them. And the same goes for people who aren’t actual nazis and bigots. Choosing to dehumanize the “correct” people instead of marginalised people doesn’t make you any less of a violent, sadistic abuser when you decide someone isn’t human and go after them. You are still a violent, sadistic abuser even if your victim “deserves” it. To an abuser, the victim always “deserves” it. Like wetwareproblem says above, evil isn’t a natural born trait. It’s a choice, made by humans of all kinds. Am I saying we should never try to resist people who we see as a threat? Absolutely not. But mindlessly sectioning yourself into the role of “Pure and wholesome hero who is completely in the right in all ways” and your adversary as “Irredeemable sub-human scum who deserves suffering” doesn’t actually reduce the number of active abusers and predators in the world. It increases it by adding you to that number. Humanise your adversaries. Recognise them as people. Because that’s how you figure out their motivations, and understand how they operate. Recognise yourself as capable of atrocity, because that helps you notice when you’re beginning the process of being radicalised, and take steps to pull back before you get in too deep. If you truly want the world to be a safer place for the people you care about, then you need to do the work of policing yourself, too. And you need to be able to find the human in every monster. To find yourself in every monster. Because while it’s deeply upsetting to see a monster with your own face (sometimes looking back at you in the mirror), it also makes the monster a lot easier to understand and deal with. (A big part of this is getting away from a ‘punishment’ mindset wherever possible. “This person is bad and inhuman, they deserve punishment” is an abusive mindset. “This person is doing bad things – we should stay away from them, and possibly observe them from a distance in order to learn from their mistakes” is a more protective mindset. Sometimes, yeah, you have to keep people away by force, but that’s about necessity – not about taking satisfaction in causing suffering. Know the difference.)
Wait I remembered another good ship dynamic
Whenever I see comments talking about how Steve jumping on the grenade shows that he’s a good person and the right choice for the serum and how John would never jump on the grenade and would cower like the bully guy Hodge and that’s why Erskine would never pick someone like John, I always feel like these comments reflect how much some people fundamentally misunderstand John’s character. Because John actually would have jumped on that grenade if he had been in that training scene.
John’s problem wasn’t that he lacked bravery or the protective instincts of a self sacrifice. His problem was that he lacked Steve’s temperance and confident self assurance of identity and moral center.
He’s not Steve’s “dark mirror” because he’s some polar opposite person, that’s not how mirrors work anyways. He’s a dark mirror because he is all of Steve’s qualities (good and bad) but to the extreme and without restraint. If Steve is at a 100, then John is running at a 200. He is the bravery that can be reckless, the love that can be obsessive, the righteous that can be self righteous, the persistent that can be stubborn, the protective that can be aggressive, and the loyal that can be unquestioning.
He isn’t suited to the role of Captain America not because he doesn’t have Steve’s qualities, but rather he has too much of them without the temperance and confident self identity to balance them out.
Steve and Sam are both better suited to the role of Captain America because they both have that similar temperance and self confident identity. It’s also why Lemar would have been better suited for the role as well. John would be much happier and effective in a different role.
My heart breaks for Eddie so much, you can see how much he’s trying to be okay, to do the right thing, how he doesn’t want to hurt anyone but he’s also so confused and hurt and alone and scared and in pain and the negative speed force is twisting his love into something negative and evil
This man just woke up from a fake life and basically only found out he died and his life isn’t his own and everyone and everything is coming at him at 200x speed and he’s just desperately trying to hold on
I need him to be okay, he doesn’t deserve all of this pain. He doesn’t deserve to be used and abused by the negative speed force. He deserves to be safe and happy 🥲
Team Flash better save him, they better not give up on him, please show him through actions that he’s not a forgotten nobody, please remind him of all the good that he is and have done and how much he is loved
I don’t want to see Eddie remain evil or dead in the end, he has earned the right to live and make a happy and good life of his own
Barry or Iris needs to play him that video he made for Iris’ birthday, there is goodness in him that can still be reached, please don’t give up on him
This show better not keep him a villain, ruin the core of his character, and fall into that silly banal trope of “the other guy is the bad person” — they did so good originally by not having him be that trope, please don’t fuck it up
I feel like there’s a perception that Shaw’s final scene of that officer review recording recommending promotion to Seven contradicts his previous scenes with her throughout the season, but I really don’t think it does, these two things aren’t actually opposites or mutually exclusive.
Firstly, both Todd Stashwick and Terry Matalas have stated that Shaw picked Seven as his first officer. Now obviously we don’t have this stated in canon onscreen but that’s what the actor and writers were working from in terms of character backstory and motivation. So if we take that as truth, then Shaw clearly has always respected and known her skills, or else he wouldn’t have picked her as his second in command to watch his back, especially when he’s got Borg related trauma. And if he’s always been clear on her skills, then this doesn’t contradict what he states in the recording.
Secondly, just because he’s always known or trusted her skills, doesn’t mean he’s worked through how he feels about the Borg aspects of her identity. Todd Stashwick has stated before in interviews that him calling her by her human name is how he compartmentalizes, it’s how he can make sense to himself of having her on his ship. Is that a nice thing to do? No, of course not. But people can be flawed and have conflicting feelings. We can recognize someone’s skills while also disliking or even disrespecting aspects of that other person. It is a very human thing to do.
Thirdly, we might be forgetting here that right after he made that nice recording for Seven, she turned around and basically mutinied to help Picard. So yeah, he might be a little mad that the person he just gave a glowing recommendation to usurped his authority behind his back, pulled his ship into life or death drama, and helped a person that Shaw clearly was still blaming for ruining his life. All of that contributes to him externally exhibiting his anger and defensiveness and general passive aggressive attitude at Seven. Again, I’m not saying he’s right to do it, but there is a reason, it’s understandable why he does it, AND it explains why he can make a nice recording for her in one moment and be back to being angry the next. And it takes him the events of the whole season to get back to that mindset he had when he made that recording.
So really, that recording being done before the events of the season doesn’t actually contradict Shaw’s journey. If anything, it highlights that our journey to heal and recover from trauma can often be two steps forward, one step back. And that human emotions can be complex and conflicting and full of multitudes.
tbh hatewatching is such an alien concept to me, i can barely be bothered to watch the things i do want to watch why would i bother looking at something i know i won't like
you just hate the cis because of the things that they did
I hate the cis because it is led by the treacherous count dooku
Having just rewatched TFATWS for the millionth time, I am now entirely convinced that the government wanted John Walker to be nothing more than really just a poster boy/mascot, a placebo to calm the people and make it seem like they have a plan, he was never supposed to actually do anything more than wave and smile like Steve was doing in the old days on that USO tour. John was never supposed to truly fix this Flag Smasher problem, he was never supposed to seriously be a hero, because if he was, then why the fuck didn’t they give him a super soldier serum before sending him out into a battlefield that they knew full well would be dangerous as hell and would leave him physically outmatched and unable to do his job??
Because you can’t tell me that the government don’t have access to some knock off super soldier serum they could use. You can’t tell me that if they seriously wanted a real Captain America to solve their problems, they wouldn’t have juiced up John and Lemar from the get go and gave them all the weapons and field support to take out the enemy. And you can’t tell me that they wouldn’t have given John and Lemar some experimental drug because they’re concerned about their health, come on, none of us are that naive as to think they give a shit about some random soldier’s health and well being.
They sent two guys with no powers and armed with nothing more than two handguns and a metal frisbee between them to face off a larger group with super powers and a global support system. You can’t convince me that the government thought this was ever gonna end up turning out well. At best, John and Lemar was supposed to just appear like they’re doing the job and really just killing time on wild goose chases. At worst, John and Lemar were lambs to the slaughter, they’re supposed to die in the fight to turn the public tide against the Flag Smashers and bring good PR and support for the government to be able to then use to silence their enemies.
You really can’t convince me that the government genuinely thought sending a regular guy in a costume out into battle was a great plan. You just can’t. It makes no sense to this government who’s always been shady and planning stuff behind the scenes and always quick to take advantage of everything and certainly had no qualms about risking people’s health with juicing them up on experimental drugs, just one day decided to do things “the right way” and wasn’t plotting some trick to get ahead.
Hell, there’s no way they didn’t consider making the new Cap also a super soldier just like the old Cap, which means the fact that they didn’t do it is incredibly suspicious, and don’t say they don’t have the serum, the government has plenty of back up serums they could have used or tested. John and Lemar not having the serum, when even in the comics they had the serum first before the government considered them, makes no sense unless you consider that they were never meant to actually do anything more than present a public distraction/placebo.
What the government didn’t intend on is John and Lemar taking that job actually seriously. What they didn’t intend on is Lemar dying and John surviving and giving them bad PR. What they didn’t intend on is John actually getting his hands on the serum and using it. But hey, the moment that happened, they had someone ready to pick John up even as they hang him out to dry publicly. And they knew he had the serum even though John didn’t tell anyone and only Sam and Bucky would have known and they certainly didn’t tell anyone either. So yeah, a government that seems to know everything yet somehow not knowing John’s tenure as Cap was gonna end up as anything other than a complete mess is just not realistic to me.
They set him up to fail, to not be effective at doing much anything other than wave and smile. He was supposed to just cosplay a hero, not actually try to go out and be one. He was supposed to be a brand™️, not an actual soldier.
If I was writing MCU, I would confirm this in John’s future stories and play out the consequences of John finding out about the manipulations behind his Cap role, after all it’s not as if the government in the comics didn’t also spend plenty of times trying to manipulate John, even straight up just wiping his memories and lying to him about doing it. Besides, not only does this give the fans a sympathetic lens with which to view John as a character and actually support him on (something Marvel seems to want with him now being a protagonist of an upcoming film), it also organically fits into the story of the shady government arc that the MCU has clearly been building up.
