Folktales You Can Read As Queer Without Squinting

Captain America vol. 6, #19 by Ed Brubaker

I think about these pages a lot, every time I read meta about Steve not being as… expressive or emotive in the MCU as other characters. 

Steve is an artist. And a bookworm. Who loves fantasy most of all. This is canon, none of these things are indicators of someone who is stoic and taciturn by nature. So what we can deduce from this is that Steve learned to keep things close to the chest through nurture not nature.

Why?

Three factors, all summed up above.

1) Steve was heavily bullied as a child. Picked on, beat up, tormented. There have been depictions of this in almost every single Cap run I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot of Cap. I could show you panels that would make you cry, where a child!Steve is laid out on the pavement bleeding because his childhood bullies got a hold of him.

This is not solely indigenous to 616!Steve, as in the MCU!Steve also indicated to Peggy that he was beat up a lot as a child.

Someone who is targeted by that kind of physical and mental abuse learns to keep it all in, so as not to show any weakness less his tormentors use that against him.

2) Steve lived through the Great Depression during his most informative years. The small, sickly child of a single mother. The dialogue here breaks my heart:

“And with every broken bone or black eye I knew I was letting my mother down. Sure I was scared of the bullies waiting for me but my REAL fear was that I’d get home and she wouldn’t be there. I knew it was irrational, she was a GREAT mother, but that’s just how life felt back then, like it could all fall apart at any moment.”

Loss. Steve’s greatest fear and the heartbreaking thing is that it’s he’s had to live through again and again and again. And it all started because he was raised during a time when the bulk of America had lost everything and were starving in the streets. If we look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the most basic necessities for survival weren’t being met for a very large population of people: food, water, safety. 

Steve’s words here are actually very accurate. I have a 96-year-old grandmother who can personally collaborate the sentiment expressed here. In fact she told me that it was very common for children to be sent away to relatives who could feed them, for families to be split up because the parents could no longer afford to provide basic necessities. And in other families children were actually put to work in factories. In fact, Steve worked. As early as six he was selling newspapers when he wasn’t in school (Remender’s run, Cap vol. 7).

3) War. The most destructive war in recent history no less.

The highest suicide rate in the country goes to veterans. This is fact. 

In 2014, an average of 20 Veterans died from suicide each day. 6 of the 20 were users of VA services.

source

Any war related issues such as PTSD and Survivals Guilt would have been even worse during WW2 because no one recognized PTSD as being valid. In fact General Patton once slapped soldiers who were bed ridden due to exhibiting PTSD symptoms. This is also fact.

source

So, as a soldier, your choices were try your hardest to keep a stiff upper lip or exhibit your symptoms and be considered a coward and a traitor.

And yet despite all of this Steve said this…

“And I think THAT was what shaped me. How the whole world felt unfair… unjust. That’s why I tried over and over again to enlist before we were even in the war. Because I wanted to punch Hitler in the jaw.”

This is it, this is the essence of Steve Rogers.

The underdog. The defender of the maligned and the targeted.

Steve Rogers took his pain and rather than letting it make him bitter like others would in his circumstances, he became determined to help others.

….I just think that maybe we, as a fandom, should not assume that the silent type aren’t grappling with unimaginable pain just because they’re silent. I think we should recognize that perhaps the silence, itself, is also a symptom.

Timor Python (Malayopython timoriensis), family Pythonidae, Komodo National Park, Indonesia

photograph by James Hunt Photography

I think the thing that I've taken away from this panel is that it's okay if you don't like your work because there are people who will love it.

And I didn't take that away because there was any implication that Hugh or Mads disliked the work they did on Hannibal but because they so obviously loved it but even they couldn't remember all the details of the things they loved. Hugh wouldn't stop talking about S1EP2 Amuse-Bouche but he could not for the life of him remember Eldon Stammets' name, and Mads and Hugh had to be reminded of Donald Sutcliffe's name.

And those details of the panel stood out to me because it's like wow I may forget about something I've written or recorded or drawn, but someone somewhere out there, even if it's just one person, probably loved what I made even more than I did and they might've committed parts of my work to memory that I've completely forgotten about or thought were insignificant.

I guess the panel just reminded me how thankful I am for fandom spaces and the fannibal community and just generally people who are kind and uplifting and share what they love with each other.

I will repeat it until I am one of the most obnoxious presences regarding this: Yue Qingyuan never treated Shen Jiu in the wrong, and Yue Qingyuan doesn't owe an explanation about his own abuse and trauma to satisfy Shen Jiu's feelings, said feelings having no bearing on the way Shen Jiu treated him to begin with as he was constantly dismissive of Yue Qingyuan even when they were "friends". Shen Jiu made his disappointment of this unrealized rescue everyone else's problem including the man that did make up for this perceived failure. The truth of why it failed was never going to solve what was wrong with Shen Jiu.

In case it wasn't clear: DOGE is working with Russia, providing a backdoor for SOMEONE in Russia to login to US systems. PBS Newshour interviewed the whistleblower and yeeeeeah it's pretty damning stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWpqJ8pD2Ng Basically the cybercriminal version of hiding a blood stain on the floor by ripping out the floor and leaving a gaping hole where floor used to be.... But leaving a great big bloodsmear from the hole in the floor all the way to a suspiciously stinky truck in the parking lot, that's owned by the known neighborhood hitman, which also happens to be piled high with blood-stained flooring.

This is fucking hilarious

One very slow news day when they're all bored as hell at work Lois is like. Okay. Fuck marry kill The Big Three. And Clark replies "oh easy fuck batman marry wonder woman kill Superman" and the entire office gets so mad at him like you KILL Superman our collective BEST FRIEND Superman????!?!?!?

To be fair to Wrath, he had refused to ascend the throne until the end of Dark Lover, so he wasn't in position to change it before then. Lover Awakened, when he actually outlawed it, wasn't that long after Dark Lover (from what I can tell of the inconsistent timeline).

But hell, you think you'd have a bucket list of Things I'd Change If I Could after being a Brother for that long in such a shitty society and "stopping the slave system that victimized my brother" would be pretty close to the top...

The only way I will be ever satisfied with the brotherhood and Zsadist relationship is when all of them (specially Wrath) offers a rythe for allowing blood slaving to happen after fighting by his side for almost 144 years and still judge his PTSD

happy autism awareness day to all the girls who had “ friends” growing up who were actually bullying them . to the girls who always sat alone in the grass and wondered why nobody wanted to talk . to the girls who spoke to animals like they were listening . to the girls who created a little world in their room . to the girls who always felt ashamed for how deeply they love things and how passionately they enjoyed media . to the girls who covered their ears when they were overwhelmed by everything . to the girls who carrying a special thing around to feel safe . to the girls who never understood what they did wrong to feel so lonely . to the girls who were diagnosed later in life because they weren’t little boys who liked trains. you are so special and beautiful and you’re not worse for it, you love deeply and that is so wonderful please never try to push that down . I LOVE YOU !!!!!

hey don't cry. one day jk rowling and elon musk will be dead. also donald trump and jd vance. oh and vladimir putin. all dead.

tired: mermaids are all women

wired: much like elves, merfolk are mistaken by sailors for being all women because they have long hair and are very pretty