steve rogers said “I can do this all day” bc as a 105 pound chronically ill man he would get into fights w men twice his size daily and get knocked down time after time after time. his whole mo was stand up for the little guy & for people who couldn’t stand up for themselves, despite the fact that he was the little guy. it is a phrase that was born in the back alleys of brooklyn, and belonged to a man that always stood up (as long as his body allowed him), and peggy carter should not have been given that line under and circumstance
these tags are fantastic @anniethelen and completely on point
What Marvel is doing with Captain Carter is really bad. They’re making some shithouse choices with her.
It’s clear the purpose is a female badass super hero on the same level as Cap, the problem is Peggy is not Steve Rogers no matter how much the writers of What If and MOM pretend.
What makes Cap great, both Steve and hopefully Sam depending on what Spellman does with him, is that they’re people of conviction, morality and courage. They have high ideals and live up to them. Steve’s Cap is the idealised version of Steve Rogers, but Steve is still the basis for those ideals and behaviours. He is “not a perfect soldier, but a good man” and someone that has spent his life disadvantaged, and pushed aside for everything but his gender. And remember, 1940’s America at the height of Eugenics and Masculine Manly Ideals and Steve was a scrawny, disabled, Irish Catholic lad that was poor, and probably written off as a ‘fairy’. So being male wasn’t much of a privilege in that context.
Mean while Peggy Carter is a spy. Not a soldier. And not a great person really, I’m sure others can and will elaborate but… I mean holy hell, losing your tempter and SHOOTING at someone in an enclosed space all because someone kissed them? Ain’t good.
And furthermore she does not share the same history of hardships and oppression Steve does. Aside from her gender, Peggy Carter is an incredibly privileged woman, and even then, feminism and equality was making some serious strides, even if it was set back after the war.
So taking Peggy, giving her the serum (after stepping over Steve’s bleeding body), and then slapping on all these elements form HIS story? Does not a compelling character or story make. You’re just slapping on red white and blue paint and calling it good and it loses ALL the depth and meaning it had in the original context.
And the line “I can do this all day” is a perfect example of this.
We first get that line from Steve when he’s the little guy, bleeding in a back alley, after getting up from a punch. After standing up to a guy being an asshole during pre-movie newsreels. And you get the feeling that he’s said this *a lot*. And he’s had to say it, each and every time he gets up after being knocked down, despite burning lungs, despite broken noses, bleeding lips, black eyes forming and whatever else he’s faced. “I’m not tired, I’m not broken, I can and will keep going, fuck you.” Because a disabled sickly little guy isn’t supposed to be able to keep going. It’s defiance. It’s will.
But what does it mean when Peggy says it? A healthy, athletic, woman, well off, well educated, now super enhanced. There’s no question she’s faced pushed back her entire life because woman with ambition wasn’t accepted really… But lacks the layers of Steve’s struggles. And more it lacks precise context. We’re never given a moment of her own when she’s had to 'go all day’. Where she’s had to get up again and again and again. We are not shown. It isn’t earned.
Which is why it feels half-assed, slapped on. It doesn’t have the meaning it does when it comes from Steve (that ridiculous moment in Endgame aside).
And that’s really the problem with Captain Carter. Narratively speaking, nothing’s earned with her and all the moments she has been given aren’t even hers. And thus they’re shallow, flimsy, and so is she.
It’s bad writing. As usual.
If she’d been given the time and good writing instead of being placed on a pedestal and covered in Steve’s schtick, this wouldn’t be a problem. If she had been given her own moments, her own lines instead of piggybacking of the male base model, the whole Captain Carter thing would not feel so forced and shallow. They could have riffed on her whole playing knight story as a kid, made references to her brother, shown us her doubts, her fears, her weaknesses and humanity. A great writer can do a lot with a few lines at the right moment. They had the Agent Carter series to build off.
But they didn’t. They just stole stuff from Steve and called it a day.
This is the face of a man who fell in love at first sight, prove me wrong.
I’ll tell you something that bugs me about the ending of MoM and the Clea intro - why have the reveal of his 3rd eye look the same as his meeting Clea? We’ve just watched him saunter down the street and collapse as the eye emerges and then boom! same set up, he’s walking down the street and Clea appears.
Surely it would have made more sense for Stephen to tell Wong “I’m fine”, walk through the Portal back to the NY sanctum and then collapse / have the 3rd eye appear?
And I’ll say it again - his hair looks weird. Really fake. In a way that it didn’t in the first film and his other appearances.
Allow me to write more meta about Stephen being a softie. This is about his and Wanda’s first encounter in the garden. I love how soft he is throughout the whole thing and the fact that he only raises his voice once. But, step by step.
Wanda: “I knew you’d show up sooner or later wanting to discuss what happened at Westview. I made mistakes and people were hurt”
Stephen: “But you put things right in the end and that was never in doubt”
This right there is one of the reasons I love Stephen. He knows what she did and he knows it was wrong, but he doesn’t judge her for her terrible mistake, he waits until she starts explaining herself and while he doesn’t excuse her actions, he puts the focus on her decision in the end, which defines her just as much as her mistakes.
He sees the whole and not just her flaws, and I think that’s beautiful. And so after that he calls her both “an avenger” and “one of the most powerful magic wielders in the planet”.
But of course, she’s lying. The very first thing Stephen says upon seeing the Darkhold is:
“I know the Darkhold corrupts everything and everyone that it touches. I wonder what it’s done to you”.
Still keeping his faith in her. He’s giving her a chance to either explain herself or give enough information so he can make a judgement of the situation. But it’s his reluctance to come to conclusions that I find so alluring. It reminds me of how intently he listened to The Ancient One in DS1 whereas Mordo turned against her pretty much immediately. There’s that side in Stephen where he doesn’t condemn people, not even when they make bad mistakes. He gives them room to talk, explain themselves, and then he acts accordingly.
Wanda: “I’m going to leave this reality and go to one where I can be with my children”
Stephen: “Wanda, your children weren’t real, you created them using magic”.
He says that almost in a whisper, head tilt + looking her straight in the eye. He’s so careful when saying that just so he won’t hurt her. It’s his compassion shining through that I love about that.
But he doesn’t forget that there’s a kid in danger because Wanda is hellbent on killing her, this is the only time during their conversation that Stephen raises his voice at her:
Stephen: “What you’re doing is a flagrant violation of every natural law. If you take that child’s power, she won’t survive”
Wanda: “Her sacrifice would be for the greater good”
Stephen: “Well you can kiss the lunchbox goodbye because that’s the kind of justification our enemies use”.
I like that he says “our” there. It’s clear he still sees her as one of them, one of the good guys, despite her mistakes at Westview, despite her sending a demon after America. He still sees Wanda when he looks at her, even with the suit and the tiara and all that devastation around them.
After the garden he returns to Kamar-Taj and tells the other sorcerers: “Wanda is gone, she has the Darkhold and the Darkhold has her”, but once she reaches the compound he still tries to reason with her: “Wanda you’re justified to be angry, you had to make tough sacrifices”. (It is quite something that this is Stephen saying that, he knows what making sacrifices really means, how much it hurts… and he knows better than anyone else that most of the time no one notices nor acknowledges the sacrifices you make).
The easiest thing would have been to disregard her as being no more than a villain now but he tries again and again and again to reach out to her, he shows kindness and compassion, he tries to be understanding and break through the delusion. It doesn’t work out but he tries… and I love that about him.
welp, I used Wanda to try some different approaches to lineart and colouring, which required a lot of trusting the process, but I think I really like it! + I’ve also been having a lot of emotions after MOM, help!
on the one hand, if nat didn’t die, she definitely would’ve made sure wanda was ok before she went bat shit crazy, but on the other hand, i also believe she’d support women’s wrongs and help wanda burn it down
