#a diehard stucky fan followed me

[florida3exclamationpoints]

UH OH 🫣

[thehollowprince]

Okay. Another Endgame semi rant: You've sorta talked about this on your blog, but those Steve fans who like Steve's ending ( or least their trying to make the best out of it god bless 'em) and chastise other who didn't like Steve's for being salty shippers ( and that's a legitimate gripe- like no-one thought Stucky was going to be A THING, but we all hoped that their deep bond, which goes all the way to when they were like SIX- okay fine *9* would be honoured and respected) are clinging so 1/?

so hard to the idea that Steve created an alternate timeline, where he can do *anything*. Like rescuing Bucky and that timeline's Steve, and stopping Hydra from infiltrating SHIELD. When the intention of the Russos and the writers was quite clearly for him to retire and have life and not be a soldier anymore. (I swear the Russos said that before the backlash became overwhelming ) Like they put him back in the fight when the intention was for Steve to stop fighting, so they'll write passive 2/?

Passive aggressive asides - (sorry lost my train of thought) about how if we don't understand that it's a different timeline, and of course he's not just going to sit back or whatever- and it's like "GUYS. You ALMOST GET IT it's because the idea of Steve sitting back and doing nothing in the main timeline- and almost certainly not getting back in the fight in the alt timeline- because again, The Russos were like "LOL He & Peggy are going to make baby," before Joe was like "He can do anything" 3/

(Okay tumblr conked out so I don't know if you got my last ask) so as I was saying: "We just didn't want our favouite character to be destroyed?" (Well he was in my eyes at least) Anyway sorry for filling up you inbox with asks, I just, had enough of reading those posts and needed to vent you know?

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Okay... sorry it took me so long to get to this but I wanted to make sure I was awake and ready to tackle the whole thing. These caught me at a bad time but now I'm all rested and ready to dig into the meat of it.

To start off with, I have never had an issue with people who liked (or tried to see the silver lining) in Steve's ending. We live in a very big world and it would be rather dull if everyone shared the same opinion on everything, but I wasn't aware of how big the divide was growing until almost a month after I saw the movie. I was upset at Steve's ending and I made a joke about it, and before you know it I have people that are making passive-aggressive posts or even calling you out for not being "a true Steve fan."

And I gotta say, seeing that made me immediately take a step back from the fandom. Like, woah! When did the pro-Steve side become the new Tony stans? Because that's exactly the mentality we were mocking and pointing out for years now, how Tony stans didn't care about anything else except their favorite character's happiness, even of it completely contradicted all of the canon that came before it.

But once I started seeing it, I started seeing it everywhere. Blogs that had been inactive for months started waking up and spreading this idea that you weren't a real fan if you didn't love the ending that Steve got. And while they've changed the way they phrase it, the idea persists. Now it's usually just something along the lines of "wow, look at the character they really like", which is usually pulled out if you try and mention Steve's relationship to Sam or Bucky or Wanda or whomever. And I k ow I've said this before, but that's part of the reason I loved the MCU version of Steve so much. He was more than just him. Steve was Steve because of those around him, how he related to them, how he helped them and how they believed in and followed him despite overwhelming odds. So to just cut all that off, despite that being one of the cornerstones of Steve's fandom and claim that people don't really like Steve unless it involves X character is super disingenuous.

To make matters worse is the actuality of Steve's ending. If you've accepted that Steve did that at the end of ENDGAME, then you have to try and wrap your head around the actuality of what happened. Did he open a new timeline or was he always Peggy's husband in this timeline? If he did open a new timeline, did he prevent a whole bunch of horrible things from happening or did he just sit back and relax and ignore it all? Did he awaken frozen Steve and have him do all the fighting or did he just let everything play out the way it did originally? No one knows because even the writers and directors, the idiots who came up with this idea, can't agree on what happened! It's a clusterfuck of a situation that only gets worse when you apply it to fandom.

I shouldn't have to dig into the whole Steve/Peggy situation, because I've done it before, but just for the sake of completion I'll mention again how nothing ever actually happened between Steve and Peggy aside from that one kiss. They could have been something epic but they missed their window and the fact that the four morons behind Steve's journey couldn't remember that is infuriating. The new thing now, of course, is to mock people who point that out by saying that "Steve and Peggy knew each other for years during the war and just because it's not shown doesn't mean it didn't happen", but them completely miss the irony in stating that something that we have no concrete proof of is canon. It's a godamn unsatisfactory bitch of a situation.

There was even one blog who came out of hibernation that accused me of being "fake woke" for mentioning the negative impact of having arguably the MCU's most political character played by one of their more vocal actors go back to the "good ol' days".

At the end of the day, would I have loved for Stucky to happen? Of course I would have! As has been stated multiple times now, I am severely underrepresented in the MCU and I latched onto anything that could be construed as representation in any capacity, but I also never expected it to happen. This is Disney! I just find it disheartening that our concerns and opinions are considered less then because we turn to these friendships and so on as to why Steve should have stayed, especially because he's one of the few male protagonists that is more than just his physicality but also his emotional connection to people.

I maintain, to this day, that Steve should have just retired in the modern world (or as he called it - Home), because not only would it have made sense for his character arc, but it would have opened up the doorway for a potential return for the next big Team-up movie. Just imagine Steve swooping in and saving Sam with a "Captain America needed my help" line.

When all's said and done, we all have our own opinions on that ending, and the MCU in general, and I've found that it's only a few that are diehard about supporting Steve's ending. I have several mutuals that liked Steve's ending even though I and others didn't, and I wouldn't get rid of them for anything.

[thesharondefenseleague]

but why does it bother you that some of us relate to the ones in the mcu and would like to see them in same sex relationships? the mcu is one of the biggest franchises in the world and portraying a loving mlm/wlw relationship between two superheroes would mean so much to so many people. on the other hand, comic books aren’t available to everyone and lgbt characters are always pushed to the side or marvel just fucking cancels their titles 6 issues in pt2

we’re not stupid. we know marvel is homophobic and our chances of at least one lgbt character making it to the mcu are slim but you rubbing it in while defending a m/f relationship is.... not a good look to say the least. it always so incredibly condescending. and there are always two sides to everything. i’ve had buckynat shippers in the past send me hate messages when all i said was that i think bucky is gay. i think both sides should take a good hard look at themselves pt3

including you. take a look at your blog and see how much of your content is dedicated to creating/supporting wlw content for sharon and then see how much of it is just about you guys defending two white m/f ships from the mean gays. i know so many amazing wlw in this fandom who love and relate to sharon and headcanon her as a lesbian/bi (myself included). women who are eager to create more content for sharon that always gets miraculously ignored by big sharon blogs like yours pt4

and then your side of the fandom has the audacity to say that people only ship sharon with women because they don’t want her to be in the way. all this fandom discourse is making it seem like people are only allowed to love sharon if they’re diehard stevesharon shippers but in my experience it’s incredibly alienating to a lot of wlw sharon fans who project onto sharon and prefer to see her with women pt5

To personally answer your question- when I see somebody who ships a gay pairing (specifically male pairing) one of my first thoughts is “they most likely care more for lgbt rep at the expense of another female character who is also or is likely to be as prominent in male’s life as his other male friend” (and I only think this way given what I’ve seen in the last two years) and then you have those who make it into a weird fetish like I specially remember a time where somebody somewhere made a gay porn parody of Steve and Bucky and stucky shippers (who I know are mostly women who i don’t believe are lgbt) got too excited over it. Like I think most ship stucky for the aesthetic of two attractive white men, but I see less of those people ship Steve with Sam who’s easily become Steve’s right-hand man and loyal partner. They say it’s representation but it’s still targeted for the white crowd and white gay men which for some reason people believe are the only kind of gay people in the world.

I can speak on this gay man, that stuckies don’t leave good impressions on me and I don’t believe they want stucky for representation but just to fullfill their fangirl fantasy because if it DID happen would they stop there or will they advocate for more male slash pairings?

And also I’ve given this a bit of though lately, but personally it could be because I don’t really care to have gay Me represented in film which is why I don’t really speak for wanting more gay rep but I appreciate we’re getting more and that it means a lot for those who have wanted it and are finally getting it.

I personally don’t hc straight characters as gay and don’t like to, I KNOW other people like to but I’m also (unpopular opinion coming) agree with not making established straight characters gay. I liked and appreciated staron more for the fact they wanted to pay some respects to the source material because why SHOULDN’T Steve be paired with his comic significant other and why should the relationship Steve has with Bucky in the MCU change because all of a sudden some people don’t want two men with close bonds be more than established friends (as Steve even puts it). Or more simply put it’s because most my life I grew up knowing I liked men and women but was more used seeing het pairings and as a result I may favor het pairings more over gay ones, but I didn’t think lesser of gay pairings either. It just so happens I’ve been exposed to stucky more than any other slash pairing (being only devoted to the Marvel fandom since 2014 ofc, other being Disney) and like I’ve said I’ve seen that fandom at it’s best and worst and it has and is getting progressively worse.

I use to behind stucky a little but then it* happened and after all I’ve seen from them I personally (as a gay guy) don’t want to associate myself with them unless they just act better. SO basically it’s my reception of them that makes me think bad of them, the ship is a okay ship- but like I’ve said not realistic and nonsense enough for me not to back it 110 percent

NOW

as far as Sharon and wlw pairings...that’s mainly because I don’t see a lot of it in the tags. I know natsharon is popular amoung sharon fans and I can get behind it but tumblr in general doesn’t seem to favor wlw pairings and still believe the only good lgbt rep they can get is from gay male pairings. We don’t mean to ignore female pairings especially if they involve sharon and I’m sorry but again, it’s because I don’t see (or we) don’t see a lot of it and I’m under the impression most sharon fans are still mainly interested in steve/sharon.

You’re right, since we do have a big following now we could start doing a little better. And we could stop neglecting the even smaller parts of the sharon fanbase because I admit we get carried away with steve/sharon a lot.

I can begin to understand why what we’ve been saying comes off as distasteful to other lgbt shippers, and I (or anybody) do not want to make it seem like we back Marvel for not making lgbt canon pairings.

If we’re making a point it’s Marvel chooses not to make lgbt pairings because of homopobia AND because they fear of losing a lot audiences. It’s the reality that big movie studios don’t want to take that huge chance because we still live in a close-minded society and people still aren’t willing to accept lgbt people as a whole. And I and (most sharon fans) don’t see it starting with Steve and Bucky because they’re the flagship characters who I believe attract a more conservative audience. Or simply because some of us just prefer steve/sharon.

-T