agentxthirteen:

soliloquy-of-nemo:

Uh…

I don’t get Steve/Sharon.

Like left field? They talked for like two minutes in Winter Soldier and then she helped him out with escaping and finding Bucky in Civil War and they shared the loss of Peggy.

But… I was confused about the kiss. Maybe a hug but… a kiss? And like a serious French Kiss to boot?

First Steve was the biggest dork and now he’s snogging anyone?

I think the writers and directors depended on people catching on to subtext, and they whittled down Sharon’s role to make room for other things (the directors said they cut an entire storyline of Sharon’s in TWS without even filming it because there wouldn’t be time for any of it, and she also was touted as a lead in the film before they brought on some other people they’d said they wanted to work with, we have some leaked storyboards of her in CW, and the writers talked about how they wrote her out of Infinity War after several drafts because they didn’t have time to focus on a B story). This ended up creating more and more subtext.

But it’s important enough that Steve felt comfortable asking Sharon out when he lived across the hall from her. By the end of TWS, Steve asks Natasha about her, and it’s implied he’s still interested in her even after knowing she was spying on him (similar to how Nat spied on Tony).

There was a Civil War tie-in book where it turns out that Sharon wasn’t spying on him to protect him solely from external forces, too. SHIELD was concerned about his PTSD and worried that he might self-harm or try to kill himself. Sharon was stationed across the hall as a familiar figure so that she would be in a position and have a reason to suddenly appear whenever she was worried he might be on the verge of doing something. That makes FAR more sense than her hanging around on the opposite side of the hall in case he was attacked – after all, the Winter Soldier shot through a wall to get to Fury in the apartment. And that would explain why there were no visuals in the apartment – she was trying to give him as much protection as possible while still trying to monitor his well-being. But that line got cut, so… subtext.

In Civil War, it’s SAM who recognizes her at the funeral. You could argue that Steve’s crush has remained in place enough that Sam has seen sketches of her. @notallthosewho-wanderarelost wrote a meta on how it’s implied that Steve, Sam, and Sharon spent time together after TWS and got to know each other better. The deleted scene at the wake backs this up.

Even without that, we see in CW that Sharon and Steve work together to figure out Zemo’s plan in Berlin. We also see that Sharon wants to help Steve and Bucky (one of the scenes giving some of her motivation – and making clear it wasn’t about getting into Steve’s pants – was storyboarded and leaked but never made it to the movie). We also see that Steve knows he can trust her and rely on her.

Could the relationship have been done better? YES. They gave Sharon 7 ½ minutes total in two 2 ½-hour-long movies two years apart, and in that time they wanted to set her up as her own character AND set up the relationship with Steve. But they never have Steve or Sam say, “It’s good to see you again, how’s the apartment-search going?” or anything suggesting a familiarity with her life (or her with theirs outside of that deleted scene). I think they wanted each film to feel like a self-contained story, even though they were building on previous films, and they did it… poorly. They literally put more work into Peter Parker walking down the hallway. They put more work into decorating his apartment and choosing a song for him.

But this is also the fandom that wrote reams of fanfic for Coulson and Hawkeye, that wrote essay’s on Tom Hiddleston’s blinking choices, that wrote scores of fanfic for Bucky and Rumlow and Pierce based on the one brainwashing scene and turned it into a romance between Brock and Rumlow. Don’t even get me started on how this fandom treats Steve and Bucky or Steve and Tony, even though those two pairings are not canon and based on interpretations of (wait for it) subtext. This is a fandom that can explore subtext when it wants to. But weirdly, when it comes to women, minorities, and minority women, it’s much more difficult for fandom to do. In Sharon’s case in particular, her lack of screentime and her treatment by some of the other actors, directors, and even writers, seems to have reinforced the idea that fandom can, on a whole, dismiss her contributions to the story, her character and actions, and subtext to justify hating her.