I feel like Dark!Avenger prompt already get a ton of airtime in other kinkmemes and I got sick of seeing them there; in a place where we're already playing around in each other's minds it seems a little too tangentially related to the source material. With respect to and much love for the team, this isn't an Avengers meme. Anyway, there's a difference between out of character and OPPOSITE of character. Rapists and abusers hide in plain sight in the real world, and they look like Steves, so that's valid, but they also act like Pierces, so let's not forget that he had everyone charmed, too. Rumlow seemed decent and had Steve fooled; all of the Strike guys did. All of these guys have their Good Guy faces that they use when necessary: the point is stripping them off to what COULD lay underneath because we already know their moral alignment has allowed them to see the world in a fucked up way.
Steve, on the other hand, actually IS a good guy, and not just because he considers himself one (since we all know people who think they're "good guys" often aren't and use it as justification). We know this because we've seen things from his perspective. The reason that we can't know this in the real world and have to remain suspicious is because, sure, you LOOK nice, you maybe know how to ACT nice, but I can't police your brain. We know it's not an act with Steve because we've been allowed that opportunity in the same way that, living in our own heads, we know that WE would never do those things. The fictional world only shows us what they choose to show us, so when they say "Steve's a good guy and that's the point of his character," I believe it, because at the end of the day, he's not off doing things when the curtain closes. To me it would negate anything we'd ever learned about him from HIS perspective, while with the other guys it might change your understanding of them but it wouldn't negate their goals. Steve "I went to war to stop the bullies" Rogers is not a rapist to me, period, because he really believed those thing, he didn't just talk about it. Without it his character is completely divorced from his driving motivations and backstory, and becomes an In Name Only character. (Not a bad thing, just not of interest to me.)
So it's completely distracting to me to see the dark takes. Prompts/stories that don't seem aware of their inherent issues make me so wildly uncomfortable and if I get that vibe from something I leave quickly and unhappily. It's why ravishment scenarios give me hives, even though to a lot of people that's a valid thing that does it for them, so YKINMK and I can totally respect that and scroll on. I think we can agree that part of the interest in beating the hell out of the good guys with conventional bad guys is just the simple defiance/resilience that happens or the comfort afterward. Not in every case, but a lot of cases. We heap misfortune on the characters we love, and we all obviously love these characters. Watching Steve get back up is satistfying and so is Bucky learning how to be a person again with all of these complications. Prompts that are in the middle of things and nowhere near the recovery stage still have that same "how will he come back from this one day" vibe to me. Even the Hydra-goon specific ones with Rumlow seem more about explaining just how fucked up this organization is and why these guys would have to be bad guys to support it than they do outright "this turns me on watching this happen," even though that would be a valid kink that I'm not going to shame. "This turns me on" is all the reason I need since I respect that we're all adults here. I just think that the ideas we're discussing would be off-topic. The prompts where good guys are MADE to do bad things or unknowingly do them are in-bounds because they're in some way victims as well, not entirely perpetrators, and they'll reflect on that. Good guys become perpetrators feels too much like reality to me to enjoy in my free time.
So those are all just my opinions, but on a more policy-oriented level, I really appreciate the narrow focus of this kinkmeme and the rules make perfect sense to me. I'm really grateful for the excellent and fair work of the trashmod, so thank you. That said, I think an AU crossover where we meet a new Steve who is dark as fuck but masquerades well would be interesting, but only in the way that he contrasts to real Steve and how that affects the characters. I just don't want to be baited-and-switched with a character I know and love if he's not going to show up sometime.
Let's be real, at its heart we're talking about a kinkmeme based on superheroes (and a pretty sparkly-clean superhero at that, not a gray antihero one, so that probably says something about us all having this urge to dirty up him and his associates), and it's valid to want these guys to STAY superheroes.
Re: Good Guys Do Badwrong Things: The Thread
Steve, on the other hand, actually IS a good guy, and not just because he considers himself one (since we all know people who think they're "good guys" often aren't and use it as justification). We know this because we've seen things from his perspective. The reason that we can't know this in the real world and have to remain suspicious is because, sure, you LOOK nice, you maybe know how to ACT nice, but I can't police your brain. We know it's not an act with Steve because we've been allowed that opportunity in the same way that, living in our own heads, we know that WE would never do those things. The fictional world only shows us what they choose to show us, so when they say "Steve's a good guy and that's the point of his character," I believe it, because at the end of the day, he's not off doing things when the curtain closes. To me it would negate anything we'd ever learned about him from HIS perspective, while with the other guys it might change your understanding of them but it wouldn't negate their goals. Steve "I went to war to stop the bullies" Rogers is not a rapist to me, period, because he really believed those thing, he didn't just talk about it. Without it his character is completely divorced from his driving motivations and backstory, and becomes an In Name Only character. (Not a bad thing, just not of interest to me.)
So it's completely distracting to me to see the dark takes. Prompts/stories that don't seem aware of their inherent issues make me so wildly uncomfortable and if I get that vibe from something I leave quickly and unhappily. It's why ravishment scenarios give me hives, even though to a lot of people that's a valid thing that does it for them, so YKINMK and I can totally respect that and scroll on. I think we can agree that part of the interest in beating the hell out of the good guys with conventional bad guys is just the simple defiance/resilience that happens or the comfort afterward. Not in every case, but a lot of cases. We heap misfortune on the characters we love, and we all obviously love these characters. Watching Steve get back up is satistfying and so is Bucky learning how to be a person again with all of these complications. Prompts that are in the middle of things and nowhere near the recovery stage still have that same "how will he come back from this one day" vibe to me. Even the Hydra-goon specific ones with Rumlow seem more about explaining just how fucked up this organization is and why these guys would have to be bad guys to support it than they do outright "this turns me on watching this happen," even though that would be a valid kink that I'm not going to shame. "This turns me on" is all the reason I need since I respect that we're all adults here. I just think that the ideas we're discussing would be off-topic. The prompts where good guys are MADE to do bad things or unknowingly do them are in-bounds because they're in some way victims as well, not entirely perpetrators, and they'll reflect on that. Good guys become perpetrators feels too much like reality to me to enjoy in my free time.
So those are all just my opinions, but on a more policy-oriented level, I really appreciate the narrow focus of this kinkmeme and the rules make perfect sense to me. I'm really grateful for the excellent and fair work of the trashmod, so thank you. That said, I think an AU crossover where we meet a new Steve who is dark as fuck but masquerades well would be interesting, but only in the way that he contrasts to real Steve and how that affects the characters. I just don't want to be baited-and-switched with a character I know and love if he's not going to show up sometime.
Let's be real, at its heart we're talking about a kinkmeme based on superheroes (and a pretty sparkly-clean superhero at that, not a gray antihero one, so that probably says something about us all having this urge to dirty up him and his associates), and it's valid to want these guys to STAY superheroes.