Just a few observations, in the spirit of discussion.
Re: Thor: he does come across as feeling guilt in the first movie of his own trilogy to me. In the last two Avenger movies, it’s his main motivator, along with the desire for vengeance, of course. As for scapegoating, surely that’s Loki’s speciality? Loki’s utter refusal to accept responsibility for just about anything he ever does strikes me as a key character trait which doesn’t change -with the arguable exception of the later part of Dark World as well as the end of Ragnarök. It’s always someone else’s fault. (A minor but typical example is their dialogue in Avengers when Loki rewrites the ending of Thor - where he let go - into Thor throwing him from the bridge.)
Only honourable brute force and frontal assaults. Stealth is for cowards
? The entire plan against EcclestonElf in Dark World is based on Loki pretending to change sides (which Thor did know about). For that matter, the entire escape from Asgard with Jane and Loki involved deception (since Odin at this point wouldn’t listen to anyone). And both Dark World and Ragnarök showcase that Thor by now can anticipate when Loki will try to backstab or deceive him and when not (with two obvious exceptions, not realising Loki faked his death in “Dark World” and assuming Loki wasn’t really there at the end of “Ragnarök”.). Outguessing Loki on a regular basis doesn’t happen without wrapping your mind around stealth, either.
As for brute force and frontal assault being the only honorable thing, that’s not even true for the first movie, the big action climax of which involved Thor - aware that he’s not superpowered at this point whereas his friends are - first taking the unglorious but direly needed role of trying to get the towns people out of harm’s way while Sif & Co. take on the Destroyer, and then, once he figured out what the robot is about, offering his own life so no one else is harmed. Which brings me to:
Right and wrong: prioritizing saving people over victory, pride or glory is a red thread through all three movies. In the first, it’s part of the ethical lesson he learns. In the second, he applies it. God knows these movies aren’t masterpieces of writing, but the “saving your people takes priority over heroic last stands” message is pretty solid in all three. Along with “take responsibility for your actions” (not just re: Thor himself - Hela revealing Asgard’s backstory by destroying the paint over is less than subtle in this regard) and “change if you ever want to get out of vicious circles”. (Which Loki finally manages in “Ragnarök”; Thor got there a few movies earlier.)
Combining Steve's tendency to blame other people with Tony's tendency to blame himself, and you can see why Tony is sucked into the role of the scapegoat so often.
I think that’s fanon, honestly. Tony is my favourite among the original MCU line up, and Steve I can take or leave, but one reason why I’ve stopped reading MCU fiction is that I find the constantly self flagelating version of Tony nearly unrecognizable. It reminds me of the general tendency to woobify morally ambigous characters and take all the ambiguity out of them which I first saw when I was in Highlander fandom, and it’s never stopped bewildering me since, because part of what makes the characters so interesting to me is that yes, they do screw up, they are at fault (not for everything, but definitely for some things), they have something to make up for.
As for “Steve’s tendency to blame other people” - whom, specifically, does he blame for something he himself is responsible for? BTW: I was on Tony’s side in “Civil War”, not least because being your own sole oversight is really a terrible idea for people in their position. But I don’t recall Steve blaming “other people” for his own deeds. The quote you give is I think something he says to Wanda. Now one of my pet peeves with the MCU writing is that Wanda keeps getting blamed for something that hadn’t been her intention - Lagos - instead for something that absolutely was her intention and fault - Johannesburg, one movie earlier. (In my ideal MCU world, Wanda would have gotten a scene with Bruce dealing with this.) Steve giving her that speech being a case in point. This said, Steve’s attitude towards both Maximoff twins in “Ultron” (from his comments to Maria Hill after she described them onwards to trying to win them over, eventually successfully) and his friendship with Natasha (whose past he’s aware of) throughout rather belies the idea of him seeing good and evil as absolutes with no room for compromise. A man with the black and white world view that fanon Steve has would have seen both the Maximoffs and Natasha as monsters from the get go.
Methods: HULK SMASH
Yes, but far from exclusively. During his time on the run pre “Avengers”, Bruce evidently keeps trying to do altruistic jobs, to help people small-scale scientically. (I.e. medically, because in movie and tv world, all science is the same science, sigh.) Then after befriending Tony he goes back into large scale scientific research, up to and including Tony’s “let’s be mad scientists” Ultron idea, which he signs on to, twice. (Proving the Bruce Banner who experimented on gamma radiation to begin with isn’t dead.). And after the two years of being solely the Hulk and being legitimately terrified about this once he’s back to being Bruce, he eventually ends up finding a way to do both, be a scientist and the Hulk. Where I’m going with this: he clearly is a bundle of motivations and impulses as well as methods.
no subject
Re: Thor: he does come across as feeling guilt in the first movie of his own trilogy to me. In the last two Avenger movies, it’s his main motivator, along with the desire for vengeance, of course. As for scapegoating, surely that’s Loki’s speciality? Loki’s utter refusal to accept responsibility for just about anything he ever does strikes me as a key character trait which doesn’t change -with the arguable exception of the later part of Dark World as well as the end of Ragnarök. It’s always someone else’s fault. (A minor but typical example is their dialogue in Avengers when Loki rewrites the ending of Thor - where he let go - into Thor throwing him from the bridge.)
Only honourable brute force and frontal assaults. Stealth is for cowards
? The entire plan against EcclestonElf in Dark World is based on Loki pretending to change sides (which Thor did know about). For that matter, the entire escape from Asgard with Jane and Loki involved deception (since Odin at this point wouldn’t listen to anyone). And both Dark World and Ragnarök showcase that Thor by now can anticipate when Loki will try to backstab or deceive him and when not (with two obvious exceptions, not realising Loki faked his death in “Dark World” and assuming Loki wasn’t really there at the end of “Ragnarök”.). Outguessing Loki on a regular basis doesn’t happen without wrapping your mind around stealth, either.
As for brute force and frontal assault being the only honorable thing, that’s not even true for the first movie, the big action climax of which involved Thor - aware that he’s not superpowered at this point whereas his friends are - first taking the unglorious but direly needed role of trying to get the towns people out of harm’s way while Sif & Co. take on the Destroyer, and then, once he figured out what the robot is about, offering his own life so no one else is harmed. Which brings me to:
Right and wrong: prioritizing saving people over victory, pride or glory is a red thread through all three movies. In the first, it’s part of the ethical lesson he learns. In the second, he applies it. God knows these movies aren’t masterpieces of writing, but the “saving your people takes priority over heroic last stands” message is pretty solid in all three. Along with “take responsibility for your actions” (not just re: Thor himself - Hela revealing Asgard’s backstory by destroying the paint over is less than subtle in this regard) and “change if you ever want to get out of vicious circles”. (Which Loki finally manages in “Ragnarök”; Thor got there a few movies earlier.)
Combining Steve's tendency to blame other people with Tony's tendency to blame himself, and you can see why Tony is sucked into the role of the scapegoat so often.
I think that’s fanon, honestly. Tony is my favourite among the original MCU line up, and Steve I can take or leave, but one reason why I’ve stopped reading MCU fiction is that I find the constantly self flagelating version of Tony nearly unrecognizable. It reminds me of the general tendency to woobify morally ambigous characters and take all the ambiguity out of them which I first saw when I was in Highlander fandom, and it’s never stopped bewildering me since, because part of what makes the characters so interesting to me is that yes, they do screw up, they are at fault (not for everything, but definitely for some things), they have something to make up for.
As for “Steve’s tendency to blame other people” - whom, specifically, does he blame for something he himself is responsible for? BTW: I was on Tony’s side in “Civil War”, not least because being your own sole oversight is really a terrible idea for people in their position. But I don’t recall Steve blaming “other people” for his own deeds. The quote you give is I think something he says to Wanda. Now one of my pet peeves with the MCU writing is that Wanda keeps getting blamed for something that hadn’t been her intention - Lagos - instead for something that absolutely was her intention and fault - Johannesburg, one movie earlier. (In my ideal MCU world, Wanda would have gotten a scene with Bruce dealing with this.) Steve giving her that speech being a case in point. This said, Steve’s attitude towards both Maximoff twins in “Ultron” (from his comments to Maria Hill after she described them onwards to trying to win them over, eventually successfully) and his friendship with Natasha (whose past he’s aware of) throughout rather belies the idea of him seeing good and evil as absolutes with no room for compromise. A man with the black and white world view that fanon Steve has would have seen both the Maximoffs and Natasha as monsters from the get go.
Methods: HULK SMASH
Yes, but far from exclusively. During his time on the run pre “Avengers”, Bruce evidently keeps trying to do altruistic jobs, to help people small-scale scientically. (I.e. medically, because in movie and tv world, all science is the same science, sigh.) Then after befriending Tony he goes back into large scale scientific research, up to and including Tony’s “let’s be mad scientists” Ultron idea, which he signs on to, twice. (Proving the Bruce Banner who experimented on gamma radiation to begin with isn’t dead.). And after the two years of being solely the Hulk and being legitimately terrified about this once he’s back to being Bruce, he eventually ends up finding a way to do both, be a scientist and the Hulk. Where I’m going with this: he clearly is a bundle of motivations and impulses as well as methods.