but i did it.

robotmango:

i don’t know why i am still devoting brain space to ca:cw when like… lbr. it ain’t gonna think that hard about me. but i think i’ve figured out another big thing that bothered me: 

zemo doesn’t have a back-up plan.

and i get that like, zemo’s plan doesn’t truly end with tony killing bucky or steve killing tony, it ends with zemo killing himself. sure. you can argue that zemo doesn’t have a backup plan because his backup plan is actually just… dying. but think about that from the writer’s perspective. because for zemo not to need a backup plan– like, say, a set of alive hydra supersoldiers to kill the avengers just in case they choose friendship!– you need to know without a doubt that in the final act tony is going to try his damndest to murder bucky barnes with no hesitation. you need that to happen. 

but thematically, that is fucking impossible! the entire movie is kickstarted by tony’s negative feelings about death. and i don’t mean his parents’ deaths: i mean that in his soul, in his whole being, tony stark is sick to fucking death of death! he is exhausted with death! he no longer trusts himself to make tough calls where killing and violence are concerned. he’s confronted by a grieving mother who says “you murdered him” and tony stands there and takes it, because while there’s a part of him that could say “no i didn’t!! i was trying to help! i didn’t want to kill anyone in sokovia!!” there’s another, bigger, deeply ashamed part of him that thinks….

“but i did it.” but i did it. 

and this even comes after aou, in which he’s confronted by the twins because his weapons killed their parents. (like… how deep a fucking parallel could you want, writers!!!??) tony knows exactly what it’s like to bear shame and grief at things you did– or just allowed to happen– that you would never in a million years repeat, knowing what you know now. being who you are today. if you were in control, if you had a second chance, you’d never pull the trigger, you’d never design that rocket, you’d never let your guns get into the hands of warlords. tony knows what it’s like to want to scream “i never wanted anyone to die!!” and yet also knows how fucking empty that would sound to people who had lost everything, how sick you’d be inside at what you’d done, even unwittingly, even unwillingly. tony knows. he was a goddamn merchant of war. he could have said bucky’s line for him. “but i did it.”

but once that tape starts playing, there is no room anymore for tony’s heartsickness and shame and self-doubt, the exact feelings that defined his support for the accords… and that actually defined his position and parallels in the story! from the start of the movie tony is portrayed as someone whose self-image is actively destabilizing, in contrast to steve, who is regaining a sense of purpose and self to the point that he no longer needs the role of captain america to define his identity. and yet, for that fight to happen–the fight that had to go on all the burger king cups– tony is flatly 180′d into saying “fuck it, i suddenly know exactly who i am and what i’m here to do: i’m here to rip bucky barnes’s head off, even though i am really anxious and sick over being repeatedly called a killer and bearing so much responsibility for violence. let’s fuckin get to it!!!”

and so, zemo had no backup plan.

it bothers me.