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portraitoftheoddity:
jayleeg:
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.
I love this. I was thinking about this same idea this morning, in regards to MCU Steve and Chris Evans’ wonderfully subtle performance. We see Steve emote when he’s angry, but when he’s sad or shocked or grieving, he is more withdrawn, sometimes almost verging on catatonic. He goes still and blank and quiet when he’s being cuffed after recognizing the Winter Soldier; after he sees the footage of Howard’s death; when Rumlow catches him unaware with information about Bucky; when he’s in the plane in AOU after his vision of the life he can never have back. Steve refuses to ever bleed on anyone else, and because his pain doesn’t demand a spotlight, it’s over overlooked just how much of it there is.
portraitoftheoddity:
jayleeg:
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.
I love this. I was thinking about this same idea this morning, in regards to MCU Steve and Chris Evans’ wonderfully subtle performance. We see Steve emote when he’s angry, but when he’s sad or shocked or grieving, he is more withdrawn, sometimes almost verging on catatonic. He goes still and blank and quiet when he’s being cuffed after recognizing the Winter Soldier; after he sees the footage of Howard’s death; when Rumlow catches him unaware with information about Bucky; when he’s in the plane in AOU after his vision of the life he can never have back. Steve refuses to ever bleed on anyone else, and because his pain doesn’t demand a spotlight, it’s over overlooked just how much of it there is.
