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vindicatedtruth:3fluffies:feliciates:monardammm:gnefariousgnorc:vindicatedtruth:melrakki:starkarya:“We don’t trade lives”- Captain Steven Grant RogersThat’s the thing about him. After Civil War, a lot of people argued that Steve’s actions were selfish because he acted simply out of love for his best friend rather than doing what’s right and honestly now? When someone says something like this I wonder if they know Steven Grant Rogers at all because let me tell you, he would do the same for a complete stranger who was in a tough spot and needed his help. I mean, Vision even fought against him in Civil War, and look at him.I would actually propose that Steve’s decisions are always based on what he believes is right—even if it means standing up against the very people he loves.I keep seeing people argue that he’s blindingly selfish when it comes to Bucky; people also seem to conveniently forget that he nearly died fighting against Bucky during Winter Soldier, because even his love for Bucky couldn’t stand in the way of saving millions of lives and keeping HYDRA from taking over the world.What’s amazing and admirable about Steve is that he somehow manages to balance his beliefs about what is right with his unconditional loyalty to all of his friends. It’s especially apparent in Civil War:He didn’t shy away from sharing or even completely owning up to the blame for what happened in Lagos, refusing to let Wanda carry that burden on herself.After hearing about the UN bombing, his first instinct was to call Natasha to ask if she’s okay, because he didn’t take it against her that she took Tony’s side.  He respected her decision and just wanted to see if she was okay.He took Bucky’s side this time instead of fighting him not because he was his best friend—although of course that’s part of the consideration—but because Bucky just revealed that there were five more Winter Soldiers just like him, and Steve’s initial understanding of what Zemo meant by toppling an empire was taking control of these Winter Soldiers to take down a country, and that is what he couldn’t allow to happen.  He didn’t even stop to consider what country it was, because his loyalty wasn’t confined to just America; he just knew that he couldn’t let any country fall if he could help it.  He owned up responsibility to what happened to his friends when Secretary Ross incarcerated them, and took the risk of breaking them out, because he could never leave behind his friends, especially not Sam, who had been completely supportive of him despite voicing his own apprehensions; but also Scott, whom he was open to about the risks from the very beginning; Clint, whom he knew had a family to protect; and Wanda.And most of all, he owned up to the blame on the pain he caused Tony, apologised to him while respecting Tony’s anger at him—even giving back his shield when Tony asked him to, despite his shield being such a integral part of who he is, the way Mjolnir was to Thor—and willingly gave Tony the space and time away that he needed; but also—and this is the most important part—promising Tony that no matter what happened between them, no matter what will happen between them, no matter what Tony feels towards him, he will always be there for Tony.  He gave Tony that phone because he wanted to give Tony the choice to contact him, wanted to let Tony have that initiative, and he wouldn’t impose himself on Tony if Tony didn’t want him to.  He respected Tony’s choice to cut him off, but—this should be stressed—he made it clear that he wasn’t cutting Tony off from his life.And on a related matter, it should also be noted that the Steve Rogers of Civil War is also the Steve Rogers who had been betrayed by both SHIELD and HYDRA in Winter Soldier, who found out that the very organization he was working for was in fact using him covertly in their mission to take over the world.  This is why he said:“[The Sokovia Accords] just shifts the blame. [Organizations] are run by people with agendas, and agendas change. If we sign this, we surrender our right to choose. What if this panel sends us somewhere we don’t think we should go? What if there’s somewhere we need to go and they won’t let us?”It’s simply because he doesn’t want any of his friends to be betrayed by the government the way it happened to him; which is exactly what happened by the end of the movie anyway.   The point I’m trying to make is not that he’s right—the politics here is tricky and there’s no one way to do it right—but simply that he didn’t make his point out of selfish reasons and he sure as hell didn’t do it just for Bucky; he did it because he wanted to protect his friends from the agendas of organizations who might end up using them like they did to him.  And most of all, he didn’t want to undermine the safety of anyone or any country just because of the ever-changing politics and agendas of people.Fast forward to Infinity War, and people are criticizing his choice to save Vision instead of destroying the Mind Stone immediately (and killing Vision in the process).  Barring the fact that I find it highly disturbing that people are even suggesting murdering a friend (yes, I consider Vision as someone with life—but that’s a whole other issue that I’m willing to discuss another time), I also want to point out that Vision can also be considered as Tony’s son, in a much truer way than even Peter Parker.  Bruce even said it directly: there is so much of himself and Tony in Vision, making them more like family—especially because there is so much of JARVIS and Ultron in Vision, both of whom are also Tony’s creations. In choosing to protect Vision, Steve in essence did the best he could to protect not only a friend and comrade, not only the person Wanda loves, but also Tony’s son, when Tony couldn’t be there to protect Vision himself, regardless of whether or not Tony has already forgiven Steve.Steve did his very best to do the right thing for Vision, for Wanda, for Tony, because he unconditionally loves them all, regardless of how they felt about him.And that moment in the Avengers compound when Steve was watching Wanda’s face crumple when Vision himself was suggesting that he should sacrifice himself, that moment was incredibly poignant too; because seeing the empathy flicker across Steve’s face, he must have been reminded of his own missed chance of a love and life with Peggy, and he didn’t want Wanda to experience that—precisely because he knew what the heartbreak felt like.“We don’t trade lives,” Steve declared. And to the very best of his ability, he would always, always mean all of them.I hear you, I do, and from a thematic standpoint it’s true and it’s beautiful. This is an incredibly appropriate way to view the text. This addendum, therefore, is not a rebuttal against you: it’s a giant helping of blame for TPTB for fucking up Steve’s in-universe arc.I submit to you the random Wakandan soldier.The Avengers did not fight in that final battle alone. T’Challa brought his guard. M’Baku brought his warriors. The cape guy whose name I can’t tease out of my memories right now brought his warriors.A lot of those warriors died. Because they got mauled by weird alien dog-things.We don’t trade lives, Steve says as he forms up battle lines full of lives. We don’t trade lives, he says as he spends them to buy his friend a chance at life, in response to said friend’s complete willingness to spend his own in return for the universe. We don’t trade lives, he says, not knowing that a reset in coming down the narrative pipeline, fervently hoping that the plan he’s buying with Wakandan lives succeeds and sticks.Look, PTB, all I’m asking for is consistency. Either Steve Rogers is an Irish Catholic kid who grew up disabled in Brooklyn in the 1920s, was 100% friends with bootleggers, and literally fought to save the greatest amount of life in the trenches of WW2, or he’s a wide-smiling Kansas farmboy purer than a flag snapping crisp in the cool, clean, spring air, whose only problems are the occasional sniffle of seasonal allergies.Either Steve Rogers considers in-universe lives with the same amount of weight and he trusts his friends to make their own choices, or he doesn’t.You’re erasing T'Challa in your willingness to blame Steve for endangering Wakandan lives. He is Wakanda’s king, and ultimately, it was his choice that brought Thanos and his forces to Wakanda, not Steve’s. And hey, maybe it was even the wrong one. I dislike the very existence of Vision as a character, so I probably wouldn’t even argue that vehemently that it was the right thing to do, though the fact that Vision couldn’t sacrifice himself without also making Wanda a murderer is an added moral complication. And yet, given everything we learned about about T'Challa in BP, any other choice would have been a egregious violation of his character. You can do the right thing for the right reasons and horrible shit still happens. That’s just the nature of the universe, both in fiction and especially in real life.I love the way people remove the agency of King T'Challa, General Okoye, and every Wakandan soldier in order to blame Steve Rogers for the Battle of Wakanda.  WOW, Steve’s mind control powers are impressive!  He hypnotized everyone into fighting a battle against their collective wills.Wow, to say nothing of the racism inherent in the idea that T’Challa and the Wakandan forces were under Steve’s command rather than Steve and the other Avengers being unmistakably under T’Challa’s as they lined up for that battle!  Okay, I just saw this post on my dash again and I was surprised because I had no idea my addendum to this post got reblogged so many times, and I just want to sincerely apologise because I didn’t mean for my original post to evolve into an issue of the Wakandans’ agency being undermined, and I own up to the responsibility of clearing things up—especially because, even as I acknowledge and accept T’Challa’s faults and flaws as a character too, he’s also the one I absolutely respect the most, even above Steve.I think it should be pointed out here that T’Challa is the King and sovereign ruler of Wakanda, and nothing is done in his country without his express approval. Steve didn’t just bring Vision to Wakanda unprompted or without permission; it was clear when they stepped off the Quinjet that he and the Avengers were welcomed by the King, with the King’s Guard and the Dora Milaje all standing together with him in solidarity. It’s implied that Steve asked T’Challa for permission, and he was not only granted it, he was welcomed.The actions and decisions of all the Wakandans’ in Infinity War should be analysed in the context of the aftermath of Black Panther, in which the arrival of N’Jadaka (aka Erik Killmonger) shook all of their preconceived beliefs that maintaining a closed-door policy and looking the other way when other people are suffering is wrong. It’s especially shattering considering that N’Jadaka is their own flesh and blood—a royal descendant with a rightful claim to the throne—and that the reason why he turned out the way he was, was because of the grave mistakes of their own King T’Chaka.T’Challa himself screamed this to his own father through his tears: “You are wrong! All of you were wrong to turn your backs to the rest of the world! We let the fear of our discovery stop us from doing what is right. No more! I must right these wrongs. I must!”It should also be pointed out that Nakia had been advocating this exact same view all along since the start, insisting that Wakanda is strong enough to protect itself and help others, because in being immersed in the world outside of Wakanda, she saw firsthand how people were suffering at the hands of their white colonisers and she finds it absolutely appalling that Wakanda is doing nothing to help.(On a related note, Peter Parker said it himself too, in simplified but no less profound words: “When you can do the things I can, but you don’t, and then the bad things happen… they happen because of you.”)Okoye knew this. M’Baku knew this. It’s why they chose to lead the Dora Milaje and the Jabari tribe respectively to stand with T’Challa in his decision to let Vision in their country, because that’s exactly what T’Challa meant when they’re going to open up Wakanda to the rest of the world, because as he said in the UN:“In times of crisis, the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.”T’Challa, as the King and sovereign ruler and warrior and protector of Wakanda, made the choice to help Vision because he’s not about to repeat the same mistakes of his father, and his ancestors before him. Because he knew, whether or not he chooses to help Vision, that the fate of the entire universe was at stake, and if everyone (or, you know, half of everyone) is going to die anyway, then they’re not going to twiddle their thumbs and stand idly by and look away when they have an opportunity to help.As M’Baku and Okoye themselves said:“This will be the end of Wakanda.”“Then it will be the most glorious ending in history.”And it’s this, more than anything, that makes the foundation of Steve’s and T’Challa’s friendship / brotherhood so strong and enduring: they are the two people who will never, ever turn their back from a chance to save anyone, no matter who it is.It’s why when they charged into battle, it’s the two of them who were racing out front, leading the way.This isn’t just for Vision. This isn’t just for Wakanda.They both chose, willingly, to fight for the universe.I don’t think it was your addendum that prompted those of us who discussed the Wakanda’s agency - that was just a sentiment we’d seen throughout the anti-Steve Rogers contingent:  that somehow Steve had forced the Wakandans into the fight in Infinity War and “gotten all the Wakandans killed” or similar nonsense.  Your assessment of the choices T’Challa AND his people made is very accurate. -- source link

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