(Archived from a Tumblr post at http://shinelikethunder.tumblr.com/post/102251767226/dialogue-pet-peeves-i-didnt-even-realize-i-had)
- The Winter Soldier gets like half a dozen very short lines in the entire movie that’s named after him, and even that is enough to tell that he doesn’t talk like a robot. Or a small child. JFC.
- Sam Wilson doesn’t speak fluent DSM-IV when he’s bonding with Steve over their Shared Life Experiences, no matter how traumatic those experiences might’ve been. He speaks plain old everyday English. He talks about beds that are too soft and being stuck there just to watch your wingman go down in flames and figuring out how to carry the stuff you’ve brought back with you. He talks about the shit that terms like ‘traumatic’ were coined to describe. This is probably why Steve bonds so easily with Sam. It’s definitely why turning Sam into the Designated Avengers Therapist robs him of a lot of his charm: once he’s tossing around terms like trauma and triggers and ~boundaries~ and giving everyone glib advice on how to proceed, he loses the show-don’t-tell angle that made him so approachable in the first place.
- On a related note, if you’re looking for a way to avoid the “making Sam’s existence all about Steve and Steve’s problems” pitfall, canon actually hands you a pretty good one. Sam doesn’t get Steve to open up by poking and prodding at him. He offers up bits of his own life that he thinks Steve might be able to relate to. He’s not even really trying to get anyone to open up, at least not for its own sake–what he’s doing is seeking out common ground, and he does it by opening up about some of his own problems and experiences when he suspects the response might be “holy shit, me too.”
#the more i run into it and the more i think about it #the more i want to dig my heels in and just say it: #psych terminology porn IS YOUR ENEMY AS A WRITER #IT IS THE ULTIMATE IN TELLING NOT SHOWING #write about the messy individual human experiences those terms were coined to describe
- The Winter Soldier gets like half a dozen very short lines in the entire movie that’s named after him, and even that is enough to tell that he doesn’t talk like a robot. Or a small child. JFC.
- Sam Wilson doesn’t speak fluent DSM-IV when he’s bonding with Steve over their Shared Life Experiences, no matter how traumatic those experiences might’ve been. He speaks plain old everyday English. He talks about beds that are too soft and being stuck there just to watch your wingman go down in flames and figuring out how to carry the stuff you’ve brought back with you. He talks about the shit that terms like ‘traumatic’ were coined to describe. This is probably why Steve bonds so easily with Sam. It’s definitely why turning Sam into the Designated Avengers Therapist robs him of a lot of his charm: once he’s tossing around terms like trauma and triggers and ~boundaries~ and giving everyone glib advice on how to proceed, he loses the show-don’t-tell angle that made him so approachable in the first place.
- On a related note, if you’re looking for a way to avoid the “making Sam’s existence all about Steve and Steve’s problems” pitfall, canon actually hands you a pretty good one. Sam doesn’t get Steve to open up by poking and prodding at him. He offers up bits of his own life that he thinks Steve might be able to relate to. He’s not even really trying to get anyone to open up, at least not for its own sake–what he’s doing is seeking out common ground, and he does it by opening up about some of his own problems and experiences when he suspects the response might be “holy shit, me too.”
#the more i run into it and the more i think about it #the more i want to dig my heels in and just say it: #psych terminology porn IS YOUR ENEMY AS A WRITER #IT IS THE ULTIMATE IN TELLING NOT SHOWING #write about the messy individual human experiences those terms were coined to describe
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