epiphanyx7:

ifeelbetterer:

miwrighting:

kototyph:

leupagus:

killerville:

#i never noticed mackie’s little head gesture in the first one #CHOOSING TO INTERPRET IT AS SAM BRACING FOR A ‘YES’ #BRACING FOR THE POSSIBILITY OF BEING TOTALLY DISAPPOINTED BY CAPTAIN AMERICA #and then being pleasantly surprised charmed seduced etc

WOOED THE WORD YOU’RE LOOKING FOR IS WOOED

GUESS WHOSE TAGS ARE TOTALLY GETTING REBLOGGED

#but yeah can you imagine being a black soldier in a world where Captain America and the Howling Commandos existed #b/c I can guarantee that the myth that grew up around that team was used by the right wing #to stifle things like the Civil Rights movement and race discussions in general #holding them up as a La La La Everything’s Always Been Fine Why Are You Making Race An Issue #while at the same fucking time holding Rogers up as this white man ideal #and burying his identity as a rebellious punk who basically lived with the phrase ‘fuck the system’ carved on his heart #I bet that Smithsonian exhibit had to go through a hell of a revision once Steve actually saw it and was like EXCUSE ME WHAT #I bet it didn’t have a fucking thing about Gabriel Jones or Jim Morita #so here Sam is confronted by this man who is everything white America thinks men should be #and everything he has been explicitly and implicitly told his entire life that he *couldn’t* be #and can you imagine hearing from this guy that he has just as much contempt for the good old days as you do #even if Steve’s reply doesn’t address the things you want him to #the relief of that must be like pulling a bad tooth #to know that Fox News was wrong about Steve Rogers #(and on another note to know that Steve Rogers thinks you’re cute) #Sam’s morning is going pretty good (via leupagus)

Star-struck Interviewer: “You must miss the good old days.”

Steve Rogers: “I grew up in a tenement slum. Rats, lice, bedbugs, one shared bathroom per floor with a bucket of water to flush, cast iron coal-burning stove for cooking and heat. Oh, and coal deliveries – and milk deliveries, if you could get it – were by horse-drawn cart. One summer I saw a workhorse collapse in the heat, and the driver started beating it with a stick to make it get up. We threw bricks at the guy until he ran away. Me and Bucky and our friends used to steal potatoes or apples from the shops. We’d stick them in tin cans with some hot ashes, tie the cans to some twine, and then swing ‘em around as long as we could to get the ashes really hot. Then we’d eat the potato. And there were the block fights. You don’t know what a block fight was? That’s when the Irish or German kids who lived on one block and the Jewish or Russian kids who lived on the next block would all get together into one big mob of ethnic violence and beat the crap out of each other. One time I tore a post out of a fence and used it on a Dutch kid who’d called Bucky a Mick. Smacked him in the head with the nails.”

Interviewer: “LET’S TALK ABOUT THE INTERNET.”

Steve Rogers: “I love cat pictures.”

(Many biographical details are taken from Streetwise, either from Jack Kirby’s autobiographical story or Nick Cardy’s contribution: http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=52&products_id=513 )

it got better

Oh man, that scene was sooooo good and the commentary is on point. I do this myself, a LOT, when I meet new people, because sometimes a pleasant smile and, “Oh, what do you wish was different?” neutral comment or question can get some (white people, straight people, men, neurotypical people, etc.) to say some truly awful fucking shit, to my FACE.

I mean. Obvs nobody wants to have bigots telling you their opinions, but it’s nice to know that these people aren’t “safe” for me to be around.

You wouldn’t believe the shit people say to me—- and I usually encourage them to keep speaking, because at the end of the conversation, I can say “You just said that you wished I were dead.” and when they look appalled, like “But I didn’t mean YOU!” I can tell them they’re wrong. When you mean immigrants, you mean me. When you mean non-christians, you mean me. When you mean non-heterosexuals, or the mentally ill, you’re talking about me.

And sometimes they feel bad afterwards, sometimes it takes me saying, “Yeah all that shit you JUST said applies to me, you wish I weren’t here, you wish my parents were dead, the things you said were just PERSONAL attacks against ME, and you can now either furiously backtrack to pretend you didn’t mean any of it, or you can fucking learn a thing.”

Sam Wilson is probably so used to people using Cap as an example of times when things were ‘better’— you know, when black men weren’t allowed to serve with whites, when women weren’t allowed in the army, when schools were segregated, when america was a “proud nation” or whatever bullshit propaganda they’re pumping into schools these days. I mean, Sam Wilson is probably one of the kids who dug through libraries and the internet for every scrap of information on Gabe Jones, who never gave a fuck about Steve Rogers or Captain America, until the man approaches Sam on the street.

And Steve Rogers looks him in the eye, and doesn’t talk down to him (despite being an officer, and a national icon, and a white man in America) and Steve Rogers might miss his family and his friends but he isn’t about to say that the world was better when men like Sam were treated like shit.

So yeah. That expression on Sam’s face when he realizes that he’s not going to be treated like trash? That moment where Steve Rogers starts listing the ways the world has changed for the better?

❤