hydratrashmeme | Chatter post

Chatter post

For all your discussion needs.

Ground rules:
- Try to keep it loosely trash party related, or at least Cap fandom related.
- Disagreement is fine, nastiness is not.
- Being offended is not carte blanche for nastiness.
- Trashmeme ground rules apply. Read at your own risk, no romanticizing your noncon garbage, no wank about the moral acceptability of noncon kink.
- Body shots, sniper shots, and tetanus shots are all available at the open bar. Party like it's 2014, kids.

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You seem to have missed that Rumlow was a sympathetic character for a good part of the movie; he was specifically written that way to increase the shock value of the HYDRA revelation. He was introduced as Cap’s ersatz sidekick (especially in the prequel comics where he worked one-on-one with Cap on missions like Bucky used to do in the comics), he ingratiated himself to the audience by making us laugh with his quips on Cap’s style, he was shown to be a professional soldier - all so that when he turned HYDRA, he didn’t just betray Steve, he betrayed us, the audience, after he made us like him, making it personal to us and making us emotionally invested in Steve's struggle. But for this to be possible, Rumlow must have some good qualities or we wouldn’t have liked him enough in the first place for him to betray our trust.

In the movie commentary, the Russo brothers outright state that "we talked at length with Frank [Grillo] about giving him admiration towards Cap at the beginning of the film. He admires him as a soldier and as a bad-ass. Obviously, his HYDRA agenda comes out later in the film, we find out they're on opposite sides of the spectrum, but there is an admiration there." So the fics where Rumlow secretly hates/gaslights Steve while working with him on S.H.I.E.L.D. missions are actually more out of character for him than the ones in which he's portrayed as somewhat sympathetic/"just doing his job."

As for being awful towards the Asset, they don't canonically interact except for when Rumlow looks back at him at the end of the bank vault scene; while Rumlow is the one to make the tactical decision to withdraw his team and call in the Asset, Rumlow wasn't with him on the bridge, and Pierce gives the Winter Soldier his orders in person, so the idea that Rumlow is at all involved in the Winter Soldier's handling (and therefore in a position to abuse and/or be nice to him) is entirely fanonical and subject to our whims and wishes.

Is he "in a bad situation?" Canon-wise, Rumlow is a blank slate; we know nothing about his ideological beliefs except that anyone supporting Cap "picked the wrong side" and "there are no prisoners with HYDRA, just order, and order only comes from pain," and it's debatable whether the latter is part of HYDRA’s ideology or just him playing macho. Personally (knowing he'll be the villain of Cap 3), I believe he was a loyal follower of HYDRA and Alexander Pierce, and despite the points brought up in the redemption!Rumlow discussion (http://hydratrashmeme.dreamwidth.org/1119.html?thread=1307999#cmt1307999) I think he’d refuse the opportunity to redeem himself - redemption presupposes an acknowledgement of having committed wrongs and taking steps to correct them, and I don’t think Rumlow would ever consider his actions in CA:TWS wrong except insofar as they weren’t successful in bringing about HYDRA’s world domination.

So I don't agree with you that he is necessarily an "awful character" or that portraying him as somewhat sympathetic is violating the trash-party rules (I see him as a professional soldier believing himself to be doing his job; he certainly wouldn't consider himself a villain but rather one of the good guys carrying out a difficult but ultimately morally justifiable mission for the purpose of creating a better world - as did German soldiers in 1939, I'm sure. See also this post on the psychology of HYDRA trash parties: http://hydratrashmeme.dreamwidth.org/1119.html?thread=1150303#cmt1150303). However, I do agree that being "in a bad situation" is out of character for him; he's not just obeying orders because he doesn't have other options, he genuinely wants HYDRA to win.

As for "other HYDRA peeps getting their share of the limelight," though, who would you suggest? There aren't really that many HYDRA characters in MCU: Arnim Zola, Alexander Pierce, Brock Rumlow, Jasper Sitwell, and Senator Stern are the only ones with more than one line of dialogue, I believe, unless you include the mess that is AoS? The characterisation of Jack Rollins is entirely the fandom's invention, Johann Schmidt is dead, and comic characters like Synthia Schmidt are not currently canon-compliant. Did I forget anyone?

I haven't read any comics with Crossbones (yet) but from what I hear, he's a pretty all-around awful character in them, so a lot of that probably carries over in fandom. However, I agree that in MCU we really haven't been given enough to say that writing him in a sympathetic way is OOC. A lot of characters from the comics are different in MCU, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if that ends up happening with him as well. ...Although I do want to say that being 'sympathetic' doesn't necessarily mean he's not awful, at least imo.

616!Crossbones first appeared in the comics in 1989, inspired by the action movie genre of the 1980s, and everything about him just screams 1990 in the most ham-fisted way possible - he even came from a background as a New York gang leader like 90% of mid-level baddies in all action movies ever, and like them he also seems to have absolutely no redeeming qualities: he's Nazi sympathiser and a rapist, he tortured Sin to mould her into his perfect love interest, he kills people for fun, etc. Personally, I don't think his 616 characterisation has aged well in the 21st century with its propensity for morally ambiguous antagonists, and it seems that neither did the Russo brothers considering how much they changed his background - apart from working for HYDRA, MCU!Rumlow has nothing in common with 616!Rumlow at this point.

To be honest, it irks me when fans carry too much of the comics over into the MCU universe, especially in CA:TWS - it disrupts the movie's surprisingly apt commentary on contemporary American politics. Who is more relevant to current events: the stereotypically evil comic-book villain or the secret agent (blindly or willingly) following orders from a utilitarian politician with extreme Neoconservative views? As a non-American, I see a bit of Pierce in the Republican Party and a lot of Rumlow in American drone pilots, Gitmo interrogators, Abu Ghraib guards, etc. I'm all for writing awful!Rumlow trash-party fics to satisfy our personal perversities but I don't think we should allow ourselves to lose sight of what Rumlow really represents in CA:TWS - it's a cop-out to characterise him as completely devoid of sympathetic traits and unrelatable to the audience, allowing us to deny our own culpability in atrocities which are, if not on the same scale as Project Insight, at least as morally indefensible and, most importantly, happening in real life. If portraying Rumlow as a somewhat sympathetic character is uncomfortable, we ought to examine why, instead of taking refuge in a fanonical retconning of him (and MCU HYDRA) as purely, unabashedly evil and therefore nothing to do with us or our political systems.

Anyway, I digress; this is not a discussion for the trash party! Suffice to say that I'm 100% okay with awful!Rumlow fics, but there should still be room here for a more nuanced characterisation of him as well - "not as much of a bastard as he could have been (but still not a good guy!)" is my personal interpretation of Rumlow, and I'm relieved to know Trashmod and the community rules support this version as well.

Okay, but like... that's you, bro. I don't even disagree with the points you're making, but the framework from which you approach Rumlow's character, CA:TWS, the Hydra trash party, and the Marvel universe in general is not going to be the one everyone else uses, and you not seeing any point to importing elements of 616!Crossbones doesn't mean no one else will.

And as recently demonstrated by the Senate torture report (which is clearly only the tip of the iceberg), doing what you believe to be necessary to fight bad guys is not incompatible with being a gratuitously sadistic fuck who orders or participates in rape and torture. If anything, the CIA makes the Hydra trash party look restrained and unimaginative. And those are also people who, in all likelihood, will go home, kiss their wives, attend their kid's baseball games, admire the competence of people like Cap, leave a swathe of devastating abuse in their wake behind closed doors, never be held accountable for their actions, and never believe they did a damn thing wrong, no matter how cartoon-villainesque the things they "had to do for the safety of their country" might have been.

>>Suffice to say that I'm 100% okay with awful!Rumlow fics

???

Also, your second paragraph was exactly my point, word for word. I don't understand why you seem to think you're disagreeing with me?

NA

Some people like having an OTT bad guy to play with, and Crossbones is one of the best villains that Marvel has. He may not fit into your personal political agenda, but he's a hell of a lot of fun. I think there's room for both interpretations.

Most of us are already well aware of the RL things you're talking about, and you yourself have acknowledged that the trash meme isn't the place for a political discussion. Although you do have some good points, it's still coming across to me as a backhanded way of trying to shame others into catering to your preferences.

>>Suffice to say that I'm 100% okay with awful!Rumlow fics, but there should still be room here for a more nuanced characterisation of him as well

Um, I did actually say that I wanted room for both interpretations? My interpretation of "canon" Rumlow is not the only version, or even the only version I'm writing/reading myself - there's the academical approach to canon analysis and then there's what we do here, and those are two completely different things. My beef was with the OP being "uncomfortable" with Rumlow being portrayed as even the least bit sympathetic and claiming it violated the forum rules. I'm not the one wanting to limit Rumlow's characterisation!

NA

On the question of whether sympathetic!Rumlow pushes the boundaries of what's allowed in this dumpster: I don't believe it does. To me the crucial distinction is that making bad guys sympathetic or understandable is not remotely the same thing as forgiving or condoning their actions. As long as we're not straying into the territory of the latter, I think we're all good here.

As for the rest of this discussion, I think there are two issues at play.

First there's the issue of personal preference in fiction, and I think that in this of all places we can all agree that whatever floats your boat is totally fine. I prefer a Rumlow who is nuanced and sympathetic - not because I think that makes his actions forgivable, but because that is far, far more interesting to me than an unapologetically evil comic book villain. On the other hand I know plenty of people who love unapologetically evil comic book villains and want to read and write about those.

Like the anon above I'm 100% okay with people creating and enjoying awful!Rumlow fics, even if they're not my personal preference. So to get back to the OP of this thread: If sympathetic Rumlow makes you uncomfortable then yes, I do think this is a don't-like-don't-read situation.

But the second issue is how this all sits in the framework of our real world experiences. And the fact is that in the real world, horrendously cruel and evil things are done by people we may well genuinely feel sympathy for. Also like the anon above, I think that for this reason it's important to examine why the idea of sympathetic!Rumlow is uncomfortable. If it's just not your cup of tea that's one thing, but if people are uncomfortable with the idea that people who do evil things are not necessarily rotten to the core... I do think that's a concern.

Because in my view, just as trying to pass off your trash as romantic dinners for two is a problematic attitude that has real world implications, so too does othering all evil actions as being solely the purview of sadists and monsters. The latter has the potential to blind us to an awful lot of evil that goes on in the real world.

DA

I'm not at all sure Schmidt is dead; the Tesseract is the space gem, after all. It opens doorways to other parts of the universe, so it's entirely possible that he just got sent somewhere else.

Personally, I'd love it if the Red Skull showed up more on the meme. There's so much that could be done with him and Steve being two sides of the same serum. And Zola! So much that can be done with him being connected to the Internet!

Also, someone asked trashmod about bringing in Cap/Winter Soldier comics villains, and mod said that comics characters were fine to include as long as the prompt focused on at least one character that appeared in TWS.

http://hydratrashmeme.dreamwidth.org/427.html?thread=1430443#cmt1430443

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