hansbekhart:

finnnorgana:

lunaaltare replied to your post: y’all now every time I see the words ‘sam is an…

that tag literally gives me diarrhea

real quick let’s get into why this tag is so fuckin’ hated by me

like I saw a post earlier this afternoon with st*cky shippers getting all up in their feelings about how people criticized how sam was treated in st*cky fics (hint: most of the time it’s damn racist). and they were like ‘OH I GUESS SAM JUST CAN’T BE FRIENDS WITH STEVE HUH. I GUESS STEVE JUST CAN’T HAVE OTHER FRIENDS’

and that’s not the fuckin’ problem here. words mean things, and the meaning flew right over these motherfuckers’ heads. either that or they were getting their mariah carey on and were like ‘I can’t read suddenly, I don’t know’

the problem is how when the fic as the tag ‘sam is a good bro’ then he’s not really treated as a friend at all. he’s treated as steve’s free therapist. a nanny that always has his home open for all wayward avengers and brainwashed assassins. a wingman that always has a ‘silly white boys’ quip in usually badly done aave.

y’all if I had twenty bucks for every time a writer brought up sam using his ‘Therapist Voice’ I’d have so much money.

like, when the tag ‘sam is a good bro’ is on a fic, he’s never really written as a friend. he’s usually written as a servant, or cheerleader for the white ship, like he’s really gonna give that much of a fuck about it. and when it’s not that he’s outta sight, outta mind in a badly written side pairing. or it’s some horrible mix of both. and then I get the worst case of heartburn.

if you use that tag on your fic at this point I’m just gonna assume it’s bad.

You can write minor characters who help move the plot along, and yet are fully formed characters who have motivations and desires that are separate from the main character.

Every person is the hero of their own story; if you’re only writing characters as vacuous assists to the main hero’s quest, you’re missing a lot of opportunities to build complexity and depth into your story.