kerravonsen | (Reply)

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I guess I thought by not telling you about your parents I was sparing you, but I can see now that I was really sparing myself, and I'm sorry is pretty umambigous, I'd say, in taking responsibility for this particular part of the disaster - i.e. the not telling Tony about what he had found out post "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" - and saying unambigiously that he has now realised he wasn't doing it for Tony, he did it for himself.

Now, what he doesn't apologize for is the stand he took re: the Accords - but nor does he see it as something Tony should apologize for. He says he believes that they both acted according to their conviction about what the right thing to do was, and that this is all anyone should do. (As opposed to act against their conscience.) This is neither an apology nor is it blame throwing; one reason why I brought up the letter in the first place was because you thought Steve was blaming Tony for destroying the unity of the Avengers and I said in canon, he never does (as opposed to some fanfiction).

Again: it's important to separate the two issues addressed in the letter here - one was the "truth about Bucky" issue, which Steve apologizes for, and another the "splitting because of the Accords", which he doesn't. I happen to think he was wrong about the Accords, but I also don't think he should apologize for it considering this is not what he believes. Not because he never admits fault - he does - but because he truly believes he was doing the right thing here. Which doesn't exclude him accepting that Tony believes this with the same conviction. And as I said in an earlier comment - he does not blame Tony in conversation with other characters, either. I've yet to see the "Steve trashes Tony behind his back and blames him for "Civil War" scene outside of fanfiction.

One reason why I rarely read MCU fanfiction is because it tends to demonize either Steve or Tony - either Tony is the true villain of the MCU who is at fault for near everything that happened (I've seen this argued a lot), or Steve is. Mr. Monstrous Ego and sender of child soldiers vs Mr. Monstrous Self Righteousness, if you will, and I think both are grotesque caricatures. The MCU writing varies wildly in quality, but still the characters are presented on screen are more interesting and layered than that.

What I do think is the case is that people tend to pick their characterisation from the parts of canon they like best and ignore the rest, which is only human - I'm certainly not immune to the temptation - but that this does mean, for example, that the go-to Steve characterisation for the Steve-centric part of fandom is the one from Captain America 1 and "Winter Soldier" and the go-to Tony characterisation is a mixture of "Iron Man 1" and "Avengers" (I'm exaggarating in both cases, but you know what I mean), and never the two shall meet.

A