I love playing the Steve Rogers culture shock game! I think he'd actually find the technology (hey, he'd already seen flying cars and fought with ray guns and got supersized by science) and people's crazy clothing and so on *easier* to handle than the familiar things, because it's so different that he can separate them from his expectations, and he had the experience of traveling all over the US *and* Europe. It's almost be worse for him in New York, with the city still somewhat recognizable in parts from his day - very uncanny valley, except with architecture. Fandom has pop culture and technology pretty well covered (because write what you know, I guess *g*), but what about how newspaper comics are so tiny now? Plane travel being an everyday thing. Velcro and the noise it makes. Credit cards existing, and hard currency looking different. The completely different set of instruments used in popular music (this changed with the shift of live music to recorded music, and the limits of the tech at the time). Ziploc bags. Automatic transmissions. And that's just off the top of my head. sam_storyteller's fic A Partial Dictionary Of The 21st Century has some great ones, like the changes in the Catholic Church.
And that's not even getting into Depression culture shock, going from that level of scarcity to today's supermarkets and so on. I remember my sister telling me she got back from Ghana after an internship and nearly broke down over the 14 million types of bread at the supermarket. My grandmother grew up in the Depression and *still* shows signs of it, and she's had 70 years to adjust. I bet that the homeless presence in New York is significantly different from his experiences, too.
I do want to take a moment and talk about a pet peeve of mine in Steve characterization, which is that just because something is new to him or different than what he knows does *not* mean that he is uncomfortable or a dick about it. He's not going to react in panic to Jarvis; he's going to ask questions. He might make dated assumptions, but he's going to react positively to progress (there's a great scene in Captain America: Man Out of Time where he assumes a woman is a nurse rather than a doctor, and is all "hey, that's awesome!" when she corrects him. ♥). Steve is a curious guy who loaded his suitcase full of books before he went to basic training, an intelligent fighter who has adapted tactics on the fly for fighting both ray guns *and* aliens. While he can be insanely stubborn and opinionated, he has a flexible mind and a good heart.
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And that's not even getting into Depression culture shock, going from that level of scarcity to today's supermarkets and so on. I remember my sister telling me she got back from Ghana after an internship and nearly broke down over the 14 million types of bread at the supermarket. My grandmother grew up in the Depression and *still* shows signs of it, and she's had 70 years to adjust. I bet that the homeless presence in New York is significantly different from his experiences, too.
I do want to take a moment and talk about a pet peeve of mine in Steve characterization, which is that just because something is new to him or different than what he knows does *not* mean that he is uncomfortable or a dick about it. He's not going to react in panic to Jarvis; he's going to ask questions. He might make dated assumptions, but he's going to react positively to progress (there's a great scene in Captain America: Man Out of Time where he assumes a woman is a nurse rather than a doctor, and is all "hey, that's awesome!" when she corrects him. ♥). Steve is a curious guy who loaded his suitcase full of books before he went to basic training, an intelligent fighter who has adapted tactics on the fly for fighting both ray guns *and* aliens. While he can be insanely stubborn and opinionated, he has a flexible mind and a good heart.
Anyway. /ranting