Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S01E10 ‣ A Quality of Mercy ↳ Let’s just say I think the universe is telling me that some fates are inescapable. And even if I could get out of mine it might just fall to someone else. Someone you know? Yes. Is that why you are very glad to see me?
YOUNG AVENGERS & CHAMPIONS ↪ marvel cinematic universe
I can’t believe it took me over two years to realize this???
The only two times that we ever see John Walker willingly tossing away and letting go of the shield in TFATWS is to save someone else’s life
He tosses away the shield and leaves himself defenseless and vulnerable in order save Lemar’s life in Episode 2
And then he tosses away the DIY shield and again leaves himself defenseless and vulnerable in order to save the hostages in Episode 6
They bookended his first and last fight with him giving up the shield to save people 🥲 I can’t with the parallel and the meaning
Sooooo……since Thunderbolts has been moved to a December release date, it’s a Christmas movie now!!
I really want the plot of the movie to just be the Thunderbolts team’s plans to celebrate Christmas keep getting derailed by all the superhero nonsense lol 😂
Forget saving the world or galaxy or whatever else, their goal is to save their Christmas plans! 🤣
Team bonding through the spirit of Christmas! 🥳
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.
#the man did a funky dance and played a somewhat protagonist role and suddenly everyone forgot what he did#it is always amazing how easily folks can be swayed and persuaded into forgetting things they saw with their own eyes#just because zemo was helpful or did something good doesn’t mean he’s some nice guy#folks are always in a rush to put characters into neat little boxes#it isn’t some mutually exclusive thing#characters can be complex and contradicting just like real people#and god forbid folks also need to understand that you can like and love characters who are bad#your faves don’t have to align with your own moral compass#helmut zemo#mcu
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).
meow-the-betelgeusian
i wanna know who spent a once-in-a-lifetime event to take this horrifying aesthetically-pleasing picture
Source: instagram.com
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
williamfbuckley
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