#during catfa

[autumnrory]

i really think stucky fandom is the only one i've been in where making another relationship pretty much just as significant as theirs in fanfiction is the norm and obvs it used to not bother me but now it makes me crazy

like. i'm used to another pairing being together but then they break up and the main one gets together and you're like okay cool but stucky writers just muddy the waters and i'm like you know you can ignore them being with other people right this is fanfic you can do whatever you want you don't have to prop up this relationship to prove you're not misogynistic or whatever you can still write stucky exactly as they are without all this extra nonsense

[emdashbitch]

Bucky's blue color coding is one of my favorite consistencies with him, as well as how consistent red is with negativity for him.

His blue coat during the war always makes me smile?? Every chance Bucky gets he picks blue.

Blue was still a feminine color back then, it only really became considered masculine and pink a feminine color heading into the 50s. It's just interesting to me that Bucky consistently picks blue, his all blue suit to Sarah's funeral is the equivalent of wearing an all pink suit now.

Steve's costume was designed for him based off the flag and aside from one greyish-blue jacket after his mother's funeral, he mostly chooses to wear muted, warm tones like browns, yellows and reds like other men in CATFA, especially Howard who wears a lot of red during CATFA. In the modern era Steve does also wear a lot of blue, but that could just be because of modern influences idk.

Every time we see Bucky dressed in something he would've chosen for himself pre-war it's blue, and even post-Winter Soldier he mostly wears blue with only once wearing a red shirt (when he was in hiding in Romania, when he presumably didn't have the liberty of being picky.) I'd almost say Bucky associates red as a negative color... Arnim Zola's bow tie he would've no doubt been wearing while he experimented on Bucky, Red Skull, blood, the HYDRA symbol, the Red Room, the Winter Soldier notebook, the red star on his arm, the Iron Man suit, the wall in his apartment in Romania (and arguably his red shirt in Romania too, since he was on the run and then mind controlled wearing it.) To a MUCH less severe degree, his and Sam's hostility with each other follows Sam's whole run with the red Falcon suit. Also lmao the suit he asks the Wakandans for for Sam is a lot less red than Sam's comic book CA suit is, the wings for example. This part is a reach but it's still a funny coincidence.

[luna-rainbow]

So I know the event is @catws-anniversary but this is actually one of my favourite Steve-Bucky scenes.

There's been a lot spoken about their seamless teamwork here -- Steve doesn't even look in Bucky's direction when he tosses the shield at Bucky -- but there is just...so much packed into this fluid cooperation?

Bucky as far as we know in CATFA was a sniper (although in the supporting material it does say Bucky learned boxing before he joined the army). It's only when we get to CATWS we see him being a strong melee fighter. A lot of Bucky's new fighting style takes into account his metal arm -- he favours it for blocking and forceful striking to spare his flesh arm. He's also spent most of his recent decades doing mostly solo work. He had backup support during CATWS to get him into position, but actually on task? He's by himself chasing down his targets.

This is the first time Bucky fights on Steve's side after his time as the Winter Soldier. Depending on how you headcanon Bucky receiving his serum, this would also be the first time Steve treats Bucky as an equally strong super soldier. Bucky's experience, fighting style, physical constitution have all significantly changed since the last time they were on the field together, not to mention Steve's own style and experience have evolved.

Yet they slotted straight back into each other's space, like they had never spent a minute apart in the last 70 years. Apart from the "end of the line" spell-break, nothing else speaks such volumes about their bond.

(Also goddamn CEvans with that beautiful pirouette. No wonder the stuntspeople say they can't replicate his footwork)

[amarriageoftrueminds]

inspired by this post, here are some headcanons and meta about Steve & Bucky and queerness pre-war.

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Sarah Rogers:

This idea of Sarah's awareness/acceptance of queerness, doesn't necessarily have to be a function of her living in NYC.

If we go with the idea that Steve's parents were Irish immigrants, and Steve was born in 1918... Well that gives Sarah time to have been living in Ireland during the Easter Uprising.

Steve Rogers's mother is obviously going to be involved with that, probably a member of the Irish womens' paramilitary group Cumann na mBan. (Would've also brought her into contact with Suffragists, Socialists, and Trade Unionists to pass that onto Steve, if she wasn't into all that already.)

And y'know who else were involved? A fucktonne of lesbians, that's who (including more than one female doctor and even one butch sniper!)

(My personal headcanon is that she was a nurse on the front lines in 1916, and actually left Ireland because she was in danger of getting arrested if she stayed. She met post-WWI-injury naturalised-American Joseph, either in 1916 while he was visiting Ireland (his home country) and they fought together, or in NYC, after he had been invalided home in 1917, then they married and had Steve in 1918.)

So if Sarah was a part of the Easter Uprising, she could've come into contact with/been accepting of lesbians, at least, long before she set foot in NYC.

You could so easily have her attitude as being like 'ah so there are men like that too, are there??'

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Gay-Community Steve:

It is hard for me to reconcile 'bloody-mindedly honest, terrible liar' Steve with being gay and knowing he's gay, and not being open about it, in a self-destructive-for-the-period way.

So either he was so deeply in the closet that he himself didn't know yet, and so hadn't been a part of a gay community with gay friends because he literally didn't know to look for one.

(Like, he and Bucky are a couple and sleeping together for years, but Steve is so naive or in denial he thinks it's just a thing all bachelors do in the absence of a girl they're going to marry.)

OR...

CATFA's view is the propagandised version of events, and Steve actually did know he was gay, and was out to his friends, and the real reason Captain America kept getting rejected for active service is not because of his disabilities but because... he kept admitting to being gay?

And it was only after he got serum (and got in the news), that his public records were expunged to cover up the fact that their darling supersoldier (good and pure and Therefore straight! or perhaps asexual!) ...had broken the law; both by being gay and by falsifying his enlistment forms multiple times.

(Kind of like how how celebrities get a suspect 4F or dodge the draft, and their PR team makes up a more-palatable lie to feed to the public. Like how Frank Sinatra got rejected for active service on psychiatric grounds, but pretended it was because of an inner-ear problem.)

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So, if Steve did have rainbow connections, where are they?

Possible reasons (beyond hate crimes, imprisonment or institutionalisation), why it looks like Steve only has the one friend:

Steve could also have had friends in the disabled community and lost them to illness?

Lost friends to the Depression/poverty, or had to move away from NYC for economic reasons?

Lost friends to internment (it wasn't just Japanese-Americans!), deportation, or lavender marriages (felt their new concentration on children and straight-passing made them strangers?)

had friends who were not enlisted, but we didn't see them because when we first meet Steve it's the middle of the day and they were all busy working?

had queer friends but: they were all enlisted by the time CATFA rolls around, and/or already died in the Spanish Civil War?

had queer friends but: they were all in the Navy and kept getting in fights with Steve about the Army being superior.

had queer friends but: they were introduced to Steve by Bucky, and 9/10 were actually friendzoned guys harbouring secret hopes and weren't exactly ecstatic to find out that Bucky was taken -- or, even worse, didn't see Steve as competition at all! -- and therefore never formed a good relationship with Steve. ('Jeez Steve why can't you n' these guys ever seem to get along? He was always so nice to me!' 'I know Buck, it's a mystery.' 😏)

had queer friends but: every time he went to a gay bar the men he could've befriended avoided him to hit on Bucky, or avoided him because he was hitting on Bucky, or avoided him because Bucky was hitting on him (and giving them the stink eye), or both of them were avoided because they were too... distracted to pay attention to anyone else.

(And/or the lesbians that talked to Steve all sidled up thinking he was a beautiful butch woman, then panicked once he opened his mouth, or were only there to ask if that friend of his was 'the double-date guy.')

imagine cops running Steve down outside a gay bar to arrest him for being a woman wearing pants… (Bucky would not let him hear the end of it.) And then being like 'oh! uhh sorry sir…' (two second pause before they suddenly clock that Steve and Bucky are a gay couple) 'Wait a second-' (Steve and Bucky already running.)

Maybe Steve would even become reluctant to go to the clubs, out of a fear of losing Bucky to someone else? Or Bucky reluctant to go for the same reason, and because Steve just attracts bad luck? (See: mob-related stuff below.) Both of them just sick of having run-ins with the cops?

had queer friends but: his views were so ahead of his time that even they found him too much.

(IE. barred from the gay bath house for protesting ableist body standards, the lack of POC, fighting the police too hard during a raid, and/or criticising the mob owners... Maybe Steve eventually couldn't go to any gay club, because he was in shit with the mob? Maybe the police actually thought he was straight, because they'd seen his photo up behind the bar as a persona non grata in gay clubs?! Future idiots will say this is 'proof' he stands for 'Traditional American Values.')

Banned from politics club for criticising Stalin's regime; barred from the jazz club for fighting a white dude there; banned from the radical womens group for bringing a trans friend; banned from the trade union for attacking the mob / wanting to fix union and police corruption. (Has he been excommunicated yet? It's probably only a matter of time.)

Picture hapless social-secretary Bucky helping Steve limp home from yet another Club that Bucky got him into, and having to listen to Steve rant about why 'they're all a bunch of hypocrites, Buck!' Perhaps homebody introvert Steve, secretly wanting to stay in, while extrovert Bucky keeps trying to help him get out more, and every time Bucky thinks he's found Steve the perfect place this time, Steve's all like 'we'll see.'

had queer friends but: he was so open about it that he was alienated by potential friends who wanted to remain on the DL and considered him dangerous. (Perhaps especially so, if they were / or about to be enlisted and didn't want to risk a blue discharge, and couldn't sanction the way Stevee blatantly proclaimed his orientation at recruitment stations? 🤔 Whereas Bucky was so invested, and had cultivated such a lady killer rep, that he can not-worry about being seen with Steve.)

Or: he was on the DL and was alienated by potential friends who weren't, and looked down on him for passing?

Or: he was estranged from gay friends who did the same thing he did (ie. declared their orientation during recruitment) but because they actually wanted to dodge the draft, etc.

Also consider: gay Steve and gay Bucky, both aware of their sexuality but not out to each other yet... independently going to any of the numerous gay hot spots in Brooklyn, seeing each other there, and fleeing in horror before they can make any friends, thinking 'omg why was he there? did he follow me?? does he know?!' And not figuring it out... because they are just genuinely that dumb.

Likewise, both of them in the pre-out phase, thinking 'well I can't risk having gay friends because they'd have to be a part of my life and then Bucky/Steve will find out!!' ...because they are just genuinely that dumb.

There are actually loads of options!

You could definitely do a have-your-cake-and-eat-it version of events where Steve has been part of a wider queer community, made friends, and yet still wound up having only one who stood by him. (There has to be reason why 'even when I had nothing, I had Bucky' would be true).

.

Other Possibilities:

Steve and Bucky double-dating beards / playing mirkin to lesbian couples? = Hell yes.

(Sidenote: I also headcanon Bucky as having a gay sister, so maybe she could've been Steve's plus one, or they'd take out all Bucky's sisters to act as chaperones?)

Shit, why not turn it into a business? Bucky the Escort who gives his lesbian client a cover date, a great night of dancing, and a second cover-escort guaranteed to not steal her girl!

(Service comes complete with beautiful handwritten love letters (dictated by Bucky, penned by artist!Steve), a personalised sweetheart-style photo of Bucky, and a messy Public Break Up Scene on her stoop.😉)

RE: them moving in together: everyone talks about how queer Brooklyn was, but what if the boys went above and beyond for their own safety -- February House style -- and lived in a building exclusively populated by queer people? Maybe by queer members of the forces, or people who occupied humble positions in creative industries?

If Steve has lesbian friends from BK, and lesbian friends in the chorus line... why not both at the same time? Why not have some of those lesbian friends be Brooklyn girls who signed up to be chorus girls because- y'know -chorus girls, and were then like 'Steve?! Wtf are you doing here?!'

(Why not kill three birds with one stone: one of those chorus girls is Bucky's sister? Cue Spidermenpointing_meme and mutual assured blackmail -- she promises not to tell Bucky what Steve did if Steve promises not to tell Bucky that one of his sisters has run away from home to become a showgirl.)

Bucky as the social butterfly of the two, more likely to be out and about, especially in risky places (ie. he worked on the docks; he could actually get and keep jobs in those places), and/or the safer one, and given their later pattern of Bucky's friends becoming Steve's (ie. the Howlies)... I think Bucky would be more likely to be the one making eye-opening introductions to Steve rather than the other way around. Which could have interesting knock on effects... (see above).

Maybe he got Steve a lucrative job illustrating queer 8-pagers (maybe there's an underground queer magazine out of BK, a la The Circle, and he illustrates for that, using Bucky as a model? Cue hilarious 'what were you doing at the Devil's Sabbath?' moments when random men come up to Bucky in the street like 'where do I know your face from??' 😱)

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Re: Extended Family

I also headcanon that Bucky had a gay Uncle Jim (maybe a tailor?) who was institutionalized for being gay, and received harrowing medical treatments like electroshock therapy that eventually resulted in his death.

So by the time Bucky -- named after his dead uncle -- started showing signs of being bi, Bucky's parents had already had their eyes opened. Or maybe, like Sarah, they had already emigrated from a specific open-minded situation, so queer Brooklyn wasn't such a revelation.

Alternatively: In Stucky fic, people often seem to think as far as 'Brooklyn was queer!' but no farther.

But why not? Why does their queer education have to have started in queer Brooklyn?

Why not have Bucky's or Steve's (or both!) parents be engaged in Lavender Marriages, and open about it? One gay parent, or both?

(This might be another reason why Steve appears to not have friends outside Bucky; he might have got all the queer community he needed from his own family unit. Imagine it! Not just connected to Brooklyn queers but Edwardian queers, darling! The Herstory!!)

What if Steve's mother wasn't single but simply... 'never married?' 👀 Or maybe she was straight, but in love with her late lavender husband?

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And during/after the war:

Re: the Howlies.

(Have brought this ficbunny up elsewhere)

The Howlies knew and were fine about it, because... maybe there was an official investigation during the war to establish whether or not any of the Howlies were gay and/or in a relationship with Steve.

So, being a bunch of professional mischief-makers, and acting completely independently, the Howlies all pulled an 'I am Spartacus!' and claimed to be gay and in a relationship with Steve, under interrogation.

Steve also admitted to being gay, because he is terrible at lying and had to stand by them when he was told all his men admitted they were gay.

(Except for Bucky. He kept his head during interrogation -- sadly, not his first rodeo.)

So Bucky went down in hastily-redacted Army Record as somehow the only straight Howling Commando??

(The interrogators couldn't tell if they were being made fun of or not, and in any case the scandal was considered absolutely monstrous and a terrible blow for morale, so it was immediately covered up and no further steps were taken.)

Ironically enough, Steve & Bucky weren't even the only queer Howlies!

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The Future:

Seeing gay marriage legalised, the Stonewall riots, openly queer films and celebrities and tv shows, queer pride parades etc. etc. would be heart-breaking for Steve... because of course by this point he has become Captain America, deluded women he barely knows have spent decades claiming to have been his true love, and the people that did know him have been loyally covering up for him claiming he's straight. He'd feel like a hypocrite for not being what they said; or like he's letting them down by unmasking all their hard work.

And of course his real beloved isn't here any more, when he's finding all this out he's totally alone, no one to share it with, (doesn't know if any of his other friends are still alive, yet). And he doesn't want to have to relive that pain over Bucky by being interrogated on his love life...

Plus, after a century of being mythologised, he associates coming out with even wider public furore and a violation of the privacy that Steve Rogers never gets to have.

So all he has is the private escape of the 20th century's queer cinema, literature, tv shows, and porn (which all feel like an embarrassment of riches) ...but without being out to anyone - he feels he has to keep it a secret.

Until Bucky comes back, and isn't in a prudent enough mental state to realise all this. So for him, finding all this out about queer rights etc. is an untrammelled joy, and that's what finally gets Steve out of his negative headspace and into the light.

(And then, yeah, out and married. Try to stop Bucky getting his citizenship back when he's literally married to Captain America, assholes! Nowadays, the only women that hit on Steve are lunatics who think they can turn him, and Steve's only other problem is all the gay men who either want in on that threesome or think they can steal him away from Bucky!)

[leihaddock]

So the other day @musette22 and I were talking about Peggy Carter (or rather I went on an angry rant about why I don't like her) and that made me think of a Peggy that was very much Steve's friend, beard even, as much as she was a Nazi regardless. And that got stuck in my head so take some extended thoughts:

A Peggy that is outwardly a mirror to Steve; in gender and perhaps sexuality as well as social class and upbringing. But no less "takes no shit" than Steve, no less kind than Bucky, no less of a role model than Sarah. Her morals however are very much a polar opposite to Steve's, but we as the viewer at most get hints of it during CATFA

Steve genuinely considers her a good friend. And she genuinely likes him, for what it's worth. She clocked Steve as queer right away, went "oh I like him" pre serum and offered to be his beard after. Keeps the creeps away, she told him, and gives you a reason to not accept any courting that won't get you kicked out of the army

She does the jealous girlfriend thing we see in canon anyway, despite of course not actually being his girlfriend (and the whole thing being abusive as fuck) to "keep appearances" but ultimately she gains his trust somehow

They enjoy each other's company in how little time they have together

But behind the scenes she's pulling strings

As soon as Steve rescues the 107th, uses that trust to get insider information she's not supposed to have

Why would she know what the Howlies do and where they are? She's intelligence, not a soldier

She deliberately makes them have a couple of close calls with Hydra by passing along that information

And then comes that goddamn train. Of course Peggy knows that Bucky fell. But she also knows that Bucky should have survived, because she knows that Zola had managed to create a stable super soldier serum

She prevents Steve from looking for Bucky and makes sure Hydra finds Bucky instead

The plane wasn't part of the plan on her side, she wasn't informed, and she's not happy about it. It comes to no surprise to her that Steve wouldn't give her approximate coordinates though. Because as she so foolishly said in that bar, Bucky had made his choice and Steve chooses to follow him

Peggy does mourn Steve, she also mourned Bucky, because they were her friends, even if the friendship was a farce, and she's not stone cold despite everything. But she's still very much got her eyes on a bigger thing so

She initially deliberately prevents Howard from tracking the plane by skewing the data

And she goes to talk to Bucky. Who spits at her, realises the betrayal and refuses to give up despite her very clearly telling him Steve was dead

It takes 20 years to break Bucky to a point where they can use him as TWS

During that time, Howard has shifted gears as well. He's quite aware he's working with Nazis, has been for a while, but he doesn't know about TWS's identity (because for as much of an asshole Howard turns into, I don't think he woulda been cool with that) until that fateful day in the 90's

Which was Peggy's call, because he defied her one too many times, and she has too much power to deal with him personally

At some point, Peggy steps down from what is now Shieldra (because there's no way she woulda survived to die of Alzheimers without being a top dog in Hydra), and Fury takes over Shield, builds the Avengers, and the story as we know it unfolds

Steve defrosts just fine because they have a couple of decades worth of experience with Bucky, and suddenly they have two super soldiers at their disposal

Steve goes to visit Peggy who "comforts" him, of course she does, she's still got the awareness regardless of which time she thinks she's in to keep their friendship going. Tells him about her life and the kids she's got, maybe even about queer rights improving

He doesn't know about Hydra. Doesn't know about Bucky. Until that day on the bridge, when they come face to face and TWS breaks. But Hydra, they're so close to winning, it doesn't really matter. But then they lose

Bucky runs, and Steve goes after him

And Steve finds more and more information on TWS. The data dump, of course, but also in old bunkers and labs. And burns the rest of Hydra to the ground in the process

And he recognises the handwriting in some of the older documents. Finds the report on the day they told Bucky he was dead. And exactly who was behind all of it

And now he also mourns a friend, two of them really, but one at least never lied to his face in this time. He's angry, yes, betrayed, yes. But also just disappointed. And Hydra burns

Peggy dies of Alzheimers and Steve still goes to the funeral, to see for his own eyes that the person he thought was his friend can't ever harm anyone again

We as the audience can only connect the dots so much without flashbacks, and we do get those. But only at the very end do we get the whole picture. And we mourn right alongside Steve (and Bucky, once he remembers)

[ace-bucket]

Thunderbolts thoughts (spoilers included)

- like that yelena is the focus

- wish they hadn't spoiled a lot of the bucky clips in trailers and teasers but still enjoyed seeing them on the big screen

- rip antonia :((((

-so so thankful that the yelena bucky romance rumours did not come true (they are siblings to me)

-am annoyed that there is no explanation for why bucky decided to become a congressman or why he just turns up in winter soldier gear

- first time seeing watching ghost and i love her she's great

- love that ghost picks up bucky's arm for him after sentry tears it off and the others carry him out of there

- glad they didn't try and make me like john walker; he's still an asshole, even tho he does ultimately help throughout the movie

- yelena's depressive state and her loneliness and monotony with life did hit a nerve

- doesn't feel like bucky had enough interactions with the others before going into the final fight

- goddd the way valentina manipulated bob, someone with mental health problems or without a support system (he didn't have anyone to worry about him if he went missing, which i'm sure was one of the things they were looking for when finding people to experiment on)

-if i was seeing the scene correctly I’m pretty sure during the part where bucky smashes the van into the building he uses the van door as a shield and i was immediately reminded of steve freshly post serum using the yellow taxi door as a shield in catfa

- the way yelena is so apathetic about her own self preservation (leaning out of the car to shoot the tanks, the thousand yard stare at the top of the building before she jumps off, walking into the void instead of running with the others)

-thinking about the fucked up memories bucky could’ve been taken back to when he went into the void

- did like the scene where john was struggling to lift the slab of concrete and the others came in to help

- power of friendship and togetherness saves the day :)

[tinnuellen]

Me being crazy over small things lets go

So we all know about The Gun

but you know what else is similar?

their hair

Yes, several arguments could be made

that's a common hair style for guys

it looked that way before the war too

it's just hair you're over-analyzing way too much!!!(hey, I need to do something)

I can't think of anything else, it's solid /j

First one: Common hairstyle

Yeah, I can't refute that, it's kinda a fact. But you know what? There are So Many Other Hairstyles too! Maybe it's common, but it doesn't seem that common, especially in the movies(don't quote me on that, it's been a while since I've seen them). If he looked at a book and pointed to something random(like I've seen in a few fics), there's a good chance it wouldn't have been that.

Second: It looked that way before the war

No it didn't! Bucky's hair in TFATWS is way more similar to Brock Rumlow's hair than it is to his own in CATFA

Captain America: The First Avenger:

Longer on the sides and top, both are swept to the side and back.

Longest front prices are swept up and to the side, making an arch and curve

Softer, lighter brown, and well taken care of

The Falcon And The Winter Soldier:

Shorter all around

Spikier, messier but still nice

hair in front is swept forward and spiky(very similar to someone else...)

Okay, it's similar, why?

I don't know, lets think

During the depression and during the war Bucky seems to take care of his hair, he makes sure it looks nice.

While he was the Winter Soldier, there was a good chance his hair wasn't cut at all, if it only grew when he was out of cryo that could be it. He didn't have a choice and no one did it for him.

Then he was freed. When he was on the run he obviously didn't care, it was unwashed and long and he didn't take care of it.

But in Wakanda. His hair is nice now, it's washed and wavy and looks like he got ready to see Steve.

But He Didn't Cut It.

Why? I don't know. Hair is said to carry memories, was he too afraid of losing his again that he didn't want to cut his hair? Was it because He wasn't ready to let go of a part of himself like that when he just got himself back? Was it because he knew he looked really good with long hair? I don't know. But he didn't cut it.

Now, TFATWS.

He cut it. He decided that he would make a choice to cut his hair, and he chose That.

Did he remember Rumlow fondly? Is that why he carries a part of him in his hair and his gun? Did he have a vague memory that his hair looked close to that and just went with it? What was he thinking? Did he want to look like Rumlow for a reason or just because?

And Thunderbolts*

his hair is long again

we're back to the Winter Soldier y'all

TLDR: Bucky's hair looks very similar to Rumlow's and I don't know why but it seems like it has some sort of significance because of his past hair choices.

[wiyu989]

The Queer Subtext of the CATFA Bar Scene

(Long post, alt text included)

While there are countless examples of evidence to support the idea that Steve & Bucky had romantic tension, none stick out to me quite like the bar scene in catfa

In this post, I will go over the reasons this scene is so important to their relationship

First of all, let’s talk about the heartfelt conversation the two were having prior to Peggy’s arrival. Bucky expressing his admiration for Steve’s bravery, before and after the serum, as he specifies:

This scene displays Bucky’s admiration for Steve, no matter what he looks like. One of my favorite lines.

Not to mention this totally not-subtle remark…

Now let’s talk about the painfully obvious jealousy Bucky showed while Steve and Peggy were flirting. He even started passive-aggressively “flirting” with Peggy while she and Steve were eye-fcking.

Through heteronormative eyes, this may look like Bucky’s jealous of Steve’s new status as “ladies-man”. But if you truly know their characters, you know that’s not true.

As if his jealousy wasn’t already evident enough, look at the death-stare he gives Peggy as she walks away. He is FURIOUS 😭

A new bout of evidence for the queer subtext of this scene was conjured by episode 1 of what if..? when marvel was desperately trying to force feed us steggy, they accidentally confirmed a stucky theory.

In what if, there’s a romantic scene with Steve and Peggy at a bar, and they were interrupted by bucky just before they were going to kiss… sound familiar?

Marvel has been aggressively trying to get us invested in steggy post-endgame, and has done so by attempting to erase Steve and Bucky’s relationship entirely. This is even more evident in the Disneyland adaptation of “Rogers: the musical” adapted from the Hawkeye series.

Now the last topic is, in my opinion, the most evident of Steve and buckys romantic subtext. That is, of course, the song choice of the bar scene.

Throughout the scene, the howling commandos and others can be heard singing “there is a tavern in the town”. How exactly does this confirm stucky? Well let’s look at the lyrics…

Come ON these lyrics perfectly describe buckys POV during this scene. This song choice was no accident in this essay I will 😤

There’s actually a YouTube video that points this “coincidence” out! I recommend you watch so you can see what I mean:

In conclusion? Bucky was undoubtedly in love with Steve and this scene is a certified stevebucky classic

thanks for reading <3

[obinamseok]

Thunderbolts*!Bucky Fic Drabbles

Since Thunderbolts* reawakened my long lost interest in creative writing, here are a few ideas i’ve already conjured up and might turn into full stories if anyone is interested. They’re mostly about Bucky (bc obviously, i have issues), but could be adapted to other characters! (I think a lot of the more f'ed up ones could easily be about Bob, I love him sm.)

Maybe interact with this post so I know if it's worth writing!

Ideas for reader inserts:

Since we didn’t really get to see any of Bucky’s void rooms, there is so much space to play with this idea:

Y/N was Bucky’s girlfriend during CATFA, and witnesses his fall. This could go in the direction of his inner struggle and turmoil as he falls. The moment that replays in the void is him falling, and falling, and falling – each time becoming more numb to the idea of existing in this loop.

This one could also work without the reader insert, as if the whole event isn’t traumatizing enough for him….

On the other hand, this might also work from the reader’s perspective, as they witness him falling to his supposed death. 

Or maybe in TWS, he seriously injures them unknowingly and has since apologized, but when Y/N is pulled into their void, this memory is relived. Bucky would swoop in to try and pull them out of it, but can they forgive him again? 

The same idea but set around The Blip, Y/N is with him on the battlefield and it just keeps replaying the moment he is snapped, or right before as Y/N turns to dust. 

On a lighter note, anything with congressman Bucky, because that whole concept going to sh*t right away is so hilarious to me.

What could be a multiple chapter situation is anything playing out in the AvengerZ tower, nothing original but there’s just so much 2015-style drama up for grabs. If you have ideas, please leave them in my inbox!

That’s just the first few off the top of my head, but I’m very open for requests or any ideas on how to flesh out these drabbles.

[delusional-bat]

Ramble about Steve's sexual assault in CATFA

Ovbiouslly TW about sexual assult

There is a scene in CATFA where one of the ladies at SSR, a blonde woman, Private Lorraine, who obviously thinks Steve is attractive. And she does this by pulling him by the shirt and onto the table with him over her.

I say this is SA because he shows no interest in her or any woman outside of Peggy at all during the movie. And he didn't make the first move, he didn't ask for a kiss, he didn't consent or even looked to enjoy it. (I would like to state that our bodies' natural reaction to things like kisses or other activities does not equal consent. That is a harmful misconception/tool used by some to deny the SA), and when Peggy found him and Lorraine, he was clearly upset at both Lorraine and that he pissed off Peggy. He didn't want to do that at all, let alone piss Peggy off. This was also his first kiss. Which we can assume based on 1940s romance "rules" and how he is, he was most likely waiting for the right woman. Not some lady who forced him into it.

What pisses me off is that Peggy is mad at him and doesn't let him explain himself when he offers it. And using the new shield from Howard to shoot at Steve without hurting him.

And she stays mad at him till he's already deployed, and she sees a footage of him using his compass that has a photo of her. And never has him explain himself.

Steve was sexually assaulted on camera and we just don't go over it.

Which i think would fit well if he character focused more on helping the helpless. And the people who were harmed but unable to, fear, power, or some other way, to fight and get revenge. Fight for those who can not fight themselves. But they didn't in the MCU!!!!

[nerdforxmen]

BUCKY'S HAIR CHANGING THROUGHOUT HIS TIMELINE IS VERY LORE IMPORTANT AND NO ONE SEEMS TO NOTICE.

Okay so imma break down how his hair has changed and how it shows his growth.

( shortened the titles of the movies... CATFA- captain america the first avenger... CAATWS- captain america and the winter soldier... CACW- Captain America civil war... BPWF- black panther: wakanda forever... TFATWS- the falcon and the winter soldier. CABNW- captain america: brave new world... TB- thunderbolts) (TWS- the winter soldier)

CATFA: when we first see Bucky in 1941 he has short and styled hair (as a sergeant in WW2) but after he got rescued his hair becomes a little unkempt, but that's fine you're not expected to have perfect hair in the middle of war. We can take away from this that his hair in this movie doesn't symbolize HIM like people think his short hair does, but it's nothing more than a regulation by the government during the war.

CAATWS: wowzers the first time we get to see the winter soldier after we all thought bucky died. And boy oh boy get this man some shampoo. So his hair is really long now and still unkempt but let's think about it, when we make the connection between bucky and the winter soldier it all comes back to the hair, as TWS he had long hair every other time he had short hair. So his long hair in this movie symbolizes the lack of control he has over his own body and his own choices that he can make about his appearance. It's honestly really sad because he knew he had no control over something so simple like his hair, but it's all a part of the picture.

CACW. you see that in the timeline this is alter his WS phase his hair was slightly shorter but still his unkempt and seriously GIVE THIS MAN SOME SHAMPOO. CACW was a time where we truly got to see bucky going through his identity crisis which is like sodoo sad LIKE MY SWEET BABY BOY NOOO. he still isn't sure what part of him is TWS and what part of him is bucky, so we still see him rocking the long GREASY hair eugh. Butttt he also wore a hat in this movie. Now some can argue this is just him trying to keep everything on the down low and not give away who he is to everyone. But I think on a deeper level so what I think this was, was his attempt to add onto his appearance without the input of others or it being forced by HYDRA or in the case of CATFA the government. I think in this movie specifically we see a lot of character development with Bucky that us as a fandom really wanted.

BPWF: oh my gosh for the very few screen time minutes he had. THIS WAS THE HAPPIEST WE'VE EVER SEEN THIS MAN. and I'm so here for it too. His hair is not oly brushed BUT IT'S WASHED! They gave my man some shampoo! I was honestly so happy to see him well, but there was also a bt of grief and self hatred towards himself in this movie because of things he did as TWS, this is like a weight on him keeping him from moving forward so his hair is still long RIP.

Infinity war and end game: he doesnt play a big role in these movies so there wasn't any change in his hair and he's basically in the same stage as he was in BPWF i also cried watching him fade away in intinity war MY POOR BABY LEAVE HIM ALONE TFATWS: oh my gosh where do i even start on his development in this show. it goes further than just his hair although that's what i'm focusing on in this. So we get a short hair comeback and immediately everyone freaks out "he took control of his life again" "he's tree from the forcing of his hair style" "he took back his life" but if we zoom in on one specific scene in season 1 episode 2- bucky says that he works for the government. If we look back to CATFA the reason Bucky had that short hair was because it was enforced by the government for his position in the army (sergeant). So the real question is, was this because of the government or is this also him showing that he's taking back controlin his life alter all the crap he went through in HYDRA? I think it's a mix of both. I think because he works for the government he doesn't want to be remembered by TWS therefore he cut his hair. I think he was worried about his public image even though he's been pardoned of all the things he did as TWS he still cares how people see him. So. unfortunately even this late in his timeline you can still see how HYDRA and his time as TWS sull dictates his decisions. But the amount of character development we got in this show can not be ignored so real quick imma just not talk about his hair- it was amazing seeing him finally being able to fight the trigger words and not relapse back into TWS. (not to mention the short hair looked great on him!) and this was again one the happiest we've ever seen bucky. I also think there was a lot going on between bucky and john walker, it was obvious he wasn't fond of the idea of someone replacing steve that wasn't chosen BY steve like sam was. But that's a different thing.

CABNW: So this (at the time of writing) is the newest movie we see bucky in for a whopping 5 minutes. And yet there's A LOT to unpack... so boom his long hair is back, well it's actually just a little longer and slicked back. which by now we've all kinda seen coming it you've kept up with teasers and trailers for thunderbolts. But we weren't even exactly expecting Bucky to show up in Brave New World. So we now know bucky is a congressman which is a very slippery slope in the fandem right now so i won't share my full opinion on that. All that matters is that we know he works for the government again (specifically in politics) and if we make the connection between him working for the government and his short hair, then why is his hair long again? And I'm going to be very honest here, I'm not fully sure. We didn't get a lot of screen time with bucky let alone dialogue to truly unpack that. But I think it's a sate assumption that he's finally free from the reign HYDRA has had on his life. Considering he's working for the government again, looked genuinely happy, and seemed overall better off than we've ever seen him (or at least since he was the white wolf.) i think for now until thunderbolts comes out, its safe to say Bucky has come further than we could've asked for. Very pleased with his short but sweet cameo!

TB: So this one is going to be short and sweet because at the time of writing this thunderbolts isn't even out yet. But he does have a very important role in TB so we got to see a lot of him in the trailers and teasers so that's what I'm working off of. His hair is now medium length which is best compared to the same length it was in the civil war. All though it's a lot more free because in the civil war it looked like it was poorly straightened by a middle school girl. Here I think his hair perfectly fits the role he's playing in this movie. They need to make him look standoffish like someone to take one good look at him and think "yeah maybe I won't second guess this guy" or "if I value my life i'l keep my mouth shut around him.." which if you ask me is perfect. Because he literally kidnaps 2 super soldiers, 1 ex widow and hawkeye (kate bishop) and somehow convinces them to work with him. (sounds like a new avengers team that was teased in BNW but i won't get into that just yet.) so he has to look gruff and mean. And what better way to look gruff and mean then going back to the same style you were when you were an assassin? But how does this show his growth and decision making?? Well he knows what image he gave off with his long har and the connection that others make with his long hair and him being TWS. so he took what he knew and used it to his advantage to make himself look scarier. Could I be wrong about this 100% and after thunderbolts comes out i'll most definitely update this with an actual thing and not just a theory. But that's it for my yapping for now. :3

[wewringmagicfromtheordinary]

#well I can’t not see a post like this and comment can I?#yes exactly#and then the further you explore the more you discover that her presence in the story is only relevant once this reveal happens#she serves no purpose in his story in CATFA#every conversation she has with him is disguised as something important but it’s never anything that truly motivates Steve or the story#and all of her lines are more meaningful coming from other characters#like the scene where she tells Steve about the 107th being captured means more coming from Erskine or Howard#the scene in the pub after Bucky dies would be more meaning if it was Phillips#and honestly you won’t like me saying this but same goes for Sharon#everything she does in CATWS and CACW is working against him#she even excuses the work she did for hydra against him by saying it was her job#and it should tip off alarm bells that she’s the only postered character who is not in the bunker planning to take down SHIELD#she doesn’t suspect them because her morals are aligned with theirs just like Peggy’s are#in CACW she’s working for the people who put Bucky in an electrified cage without a trial#that’s a human rights violation and in war times would be considered a war crime#and it’s implied that they do this often because they just have one ready for Zemo after Bucky breaks his#idk why they have the right to put people in cages but she voluntarily worked there for years doing that job#and apparently instead of quitting she became a war criminal because she unlocked a closet and gave Steve his shield back#how lame honestly#she wasn’t against them because she had morals but because she liked a guy#and she didn’t even go on the run with him#I know there’s all this concept art of her in the airport fight but tell me why she’d be team cap when she’s working on Tony’s side?#what moral conviction did she have after all the things she did up to then made her change her mind?#there was nothing because she’s a Carter and they serve a purpose#the Carters and the Starks are the establishment that Steve is fighting in CATWS and CACW#but the narrative will try to focus away from that under the guise of ‘badass female character’ and we fall for it#because we’re so hungry for any female representation that we don’t even care what the purpose of those characters symbolize#pay attention to what they do in the story and not the few bits of dialogue that contradict what they do#anyway you’ve all heard me say it repeatedly but there you go#+.+ via cosmicmechanism

it really is wild bc pre endgame i never really saw anti steggy or anti peggy commentary and i didn't have any negative feelings towards either, in fact i loved both, i still like peggy, just moreso in the context of agent carter than anything else

like i never really had given any thought to the bit in catws about zola being recruited by shield and pretty much every fic i read framed hydra's infiltration as something terrible that happened to what peggy created and then once i started seeing some posts that got into the issues with peggy's character post endgame, that was mentioned and it's like oh yeah that really was on her, she was in charge, she made that choice even if it's not explicitly said

and how insane that she invited zola into her organization, the man who experimented on the supposed "love of her life's" best friend??? where is the fucking morality there like. y'all really think it would've been a good thing for steve to abandon his whole ass life for someone who would do that? i sure don't

[thatscarletflycatcher]

There's something that has been gnawing at me since I saw some comments on the look-how-they-massacred-them poll for Daniel Sousa -with which I didn't want to engage then and there because I really didn't want to pick up a fight with another Daniel fan, there's few enough of us, but also because the argument was very difficult to articulate.

It is difficult to explain how Daniel Sousa is screwed over by Endgame without making it look like either "he deserved Peggy as a prize" or "he was the perfect prize for Peggy", because it all begins by understanding the experience of WWII and the building of the morale of WWII. Something that Markus and McFeely seemed to perfectly understand in Agent Carter, which inclines me to believe it was specific insistence of the Russos, whose concept of narrative and storytelling is at the level of a belligerent and not very bright 4 year old, that gave us that mindblowingly stupid "happy ending" for Cap and Peggy. Or maybe Markus and McFeely are just arcane creatures, at times intelligent and at times really dumb. Anyways.

Point is that both CATFA and Agent Carter understand that for these characters, fighting WWII is a matter of "each doing their bit", of, as Steve put it in The Avengers, to lay on the barbed wire so the one that comes after you can pass on. And in the process of doing that, you have great loses and suffer great grief. The price of war is immense, and for these people the price of war is the price of freedom (yes, that celebrated Steve speech from CATWS is also sharing in that same spirit. It's kind of impressive how until that awful mess of Endgame, the perspective of Steve as a character from movie to movie is one that addresses how some 1940s things are outdated, but how many others are still relevant and inspiring. It is a surprisingly nuanced take on History, that of course the Russo "Cap is an outdated relic that belongs in the past and should stay there" brothers don't seem to have what's needed to grasp).

In that context, the most coherent tone for Steggy is tragedy. Because that is what happened to many, many, many people during the war. You meet, you fall in love fast, because there is no time. And then suddenly the other is gone, never to come back. And all the promises of youth and life and future the other person represented, are gone with them. People who lived through 2020-2022 have some idea of what it is like for projects, opportunities, and years of your life to just vanish. Now you make that five years, eight months, and to mention "just" the British, 1 out every 100 people live in 1939, dead, and over 350.000 permanently disabled. If you were 20 in 1939, your life would be practically on hold till you were 26. It's a whole lot of grief, and an intense grief, that you don't solve the way you solve a random missing connection in a romcom like Serendipity or The Lake House. Doing so is cheapening and bastardizing the grief and trauma of a whole generation of people in different countries.

So, Agent Carter. Here we have a story focused on a group of people, spies, who, in different fronts and with different outcomes, made it through the war and are now facing this new world they are living in, and all the grief of their respective losses. The focus of the story is Peggy, a woman who, like many others, was allowed a wide range of action during the war, and is now subconsiously perceived as a threat by many of her male coworkers. It's a desperate bid to "go back to the way things were before", and her presence is a constant reminder that they can't.

Sousa occupies a very similar position to Peggy's: he's also a reminder that the war happened and that there is no way back, no magic solution, no pretending. And that's why both are ignored, and displaced, and why both struggle to prove themselves in a subconscious way while living by the continued principle that they are doing their bit. That is their lifeline that keeps them sane and working all throughout s1 of Agent Carter.

That's what we mean when we say Peggy and Sousa are equals, and that Sousa is contented with letting her have the spot; not because he's her inferior or her dependant, but because he's her equal -in intelligence, in ideals, in resourcefulness, in loyalty, but also in their relative positions in the power ladder- and does not feel threatened by her because of it.

(It is in this context, btw, that Peggy's rebuke of Daniel's "rescue" of her in the first episode must be understood. Because she was once treated like any other officer/agent of her same rank, she has knee jerk reactions to both being demeaned and being protected. It's also an important theme of that beginning of the series that Peggy needs to learn to let her friends in, and that she needs their help, and that that doesn't make her too weak to protect and defend them.)

But also, in another way, when we talk about Sousa becoming Peggy's husband, it has to do with the sentiment Krezminsky expresses in the series:

The ship of Steggy had sailed and was gone forever since the moment Steve became the legend in the ice and Peggy "Cap's Girl", this embodiment of the ridiculous damsel in distress we hear in the radio drama that plays on one of the episodes: Peggy fell in love with Steve when he was a scrawny, sickly lad, because she loved the man he was inside, but now forever for the world she is just another superficial, weak girl lusting after the handsome godlike rescuer, the picture of the eugenic dream of the übermensch. In Daniel Peggy loves and finds all the same things she found and loved in Steve, but in a different light, because Sousa is a different person, with a different life story, plus something else: they have both gone through war and its loss and grief, and come to the other side in need of rebuilding and finding new meaning in life and hope for the future.

In a world where the Dark, Tall and Handsome Hero of the Six Pack, Alpha Dominance and Endless Stamina reigns supreme, Sousa as a love interest is a remarkable and -sadly- bold statement about the things that truly matter in finding one's life partner.

So I think here is a reasonable point to start talking about Sousa in Agents of SHIELD. Because here's where someone would rationally say "well, but you see, there he's also chosen as a love interest!", and the reasons why context in AoS changes everything are multiple, so let's go there.

But before that, let me make clear that I do wholeheartedly believe the writers of AoS meant to honor Sousa, and sincerely tried to do their best with what they were given. That doesn't change what the end product ended up doing and saying about him.

Like Peggy is the main character of Agent Carter, so Daisy is the main character of Agents of SHIELD. As much as you can say all the team characters are important and get the focus, Daisy is the one which the narrative insists on making the focal point, as the arcs of several seasons hinge on her, and we are expected to sympathize with her first and foremost in any situation in which she is personally involved. But unlike Peggy, Daisy is a superpowered individual. She's more like Steve than Peggy; she's practically a demigod. She is capable of ripping Earth apart with just her hands. Where Peggy and Sousa were equals in the power ladder in-universe, in AoS the distance between Daisy and Sousa is abysmal. That imbalance is the first thing that leads to Sousa being put in the position of Daisy's Boy. The fact that he ends up in space with Daisy's last minute sister who is ALSO an inhuman does not help things.

As a side note, there's something to be said about futuristic prosthetics in AoS and how they interesect with disability. But I'd rather not get into it because it is a thorny subject and I don't feel qualified to speak of it.

In a different way, Daniel being Peggy's love interest in Agent Carter is balanced out by his having a life of his own and many interactions with other characters throughout the series. He pursues his own lines of investigation, he conducts interrogations of his own, he comes up with plans, he teams up with Krezminsky and with Thompson and in s2 he has downright made a life for himself as chief in California with a fiancé and all. There is a clear sense that he exists as a character outside of pining for Peggy.

In AoS, the opposite happens. Part of it is owed to the writers writing themselves into a corner: to take Sousa out of his timeline, they have to do it in such a way that his disappearance is inconspicuous, which means killing him. They do it the best way they can think of, honoring his alertness and intelligence, by making him realize HYDRA is infiltrated in SHIELD decades before anyone else does. But as a consequence, Sousa becomes the man out of time: there's no future for him, because he has died, and unlike Steve, he's not being brought back because he himself is required. They just save him because they take pity on him and the tragedy of his life. So he has no mission and no significant previous connection with anyone on the team. One of the concrete things in which this is evidenced the most is with the switch from being addressed as chief Sousa to Agent Sousa. He was chief, but between that SHIELD and this SHIELD there's not such a connection by which he can claim that title. There's no subordinates to manage. So he's sort of default-called agent without really being a proper agent.

So the writers choose the fish-out-of-water concept for him. Which is far fetched. This guy lived through wwii in a high spy setting where intelligence has knowledge of powerful interstellar aliens. He's most definitely not bewildered by phone cameras, guys. He would quickly adapt... if, again, you know, he was brought back for a mission. But the reality is that from a Doylist POV, he was brought in to be Daisy's love interest, and the only thing he can offer to her, in this huge power imbalance I have pointed out, is chivalrous manners and quaint WWII style references like when he tells her "Agent Johnson, we are going home"; both can be very charming to a modern woman, but they are things that highlight the cultural and psychological distances that separate them, and make it glaringly obvious that they have barely anything in common.

The series tries desperately to give them common ground in the time-loop episode, with this idea that Daisy is like Peggy because she sacrifices herself for others and to protect others all the time. Which is laughable because, again, in Daisy's condition of beloved main character that embodies the tortured, quasi byronic heroine that we understand to be the hallmark of about one half of the contemporary superhero type, the narrative and the characters in it bend all sorts of ways to accommodate her, not the other way around. Peggy's type is different because it is rooted in that WWII morale/frame I was talking about at the beginning of the post.

As a consequence of all of this, Sousa barely interacts with anyone that isn't Daisy (he has of personal scenes, what? one or two with Coulson, the scene where Jemma gives him a new prosthetic, and then he's given an idea to give to Mac in the finale. I don't remember any other non-Daisy ones), has no unique role to fulfill in the mission (specially because so much of the plan is entwined in Fitz and Jemma's rescue plan that was NOT counting with Sousa) and no personal goal to achieve, which weakens his standing as a character outside the romance plot, and when it comes to the romance plot, he has nothing in common with Daisy, and he brings nothing to the partnership other than... narratively forced love, and chivalrousness.

In the end, Daniel, who was a character and a person of relevance in Agent Carter, is nerfed and turned into a prop for the rushed happily ever after of the main character of AoS. And that, in my books, is being screwed over. That's what makes his becoming Peggy's husband and building a life and a future with her a much better and more preferable outcome for Daniel; he gets to build a life of meaning by his own significant work and significant connections, in his own time and place, with a wife who is his equal and with other people that have lived through the same collective experiences of trauma and grief he did.

[luna-rainbow]

The shield-bearer vs the gun-wielder

(Unmarked GIFs are credited to @lost-shoe - miss you 😭)

One frequent interpretation of the Steve-Bucky dichotomy sees Steve as the protector and defender with the shield, while Bucky is the aggressor and assailant wielding a gun or knife or even his metal arm. It's hard to shake that impression when we remember just how savage Bucky can be as the Winter Soldier, whereas Steve notably did not carry a weapon after CATFA. Promotional stills where they appear together reinforce that image, with Bucky often appearing with an offensive weapon (or holding his arm up offensively) while Steve holds his shield defensively.

But the picture of Bucky stepping in front of Karpov made me rethink. Despite Bucky's loss at the new super soldiers' hands a moment before, he is remarkably restrained in what he does as he leads Karpov out of the cage. I am not against the meta that suggested he gained some satisfaction at striking back at the new super soldiers, but he stuck to his goal of guarding Karpov instead of getting swept up in the adrenaline and joining the brawl - as other guards in the background did.

Bucky is a protector. I know there are already lots of meta about this: from the moment we meet him in the back alley, Bucky is using himself as a human shield between Steve and the bully. He puts himself at Steve's back when he's rescued from the Hydra facility and he picks up the shield to protect Steve on the train. Even that one scene of Bucky being a sniper in CATFA, he shot the enemy to protect Steve. As Bucky, his acts of aggression happens when he's protecting someone (usually Steve).

So it's interesting to re-examine the violence in CATWS. Yes, Bucky/Winter Soldier is capable of extraordinary ferocity in taking down Fury and Steve and Nat, but he's also someone who sits there placidly when Pierce's maid startles them. Proactive attack isn't his instinctual state - and that becomes clearer when we see more of Bucky in CACW. He waits until violence is upon him before he retaliates: whether in Bucharest, or in the German airport, or finally in Siberia with Tony.

And on reflection, even in this climactic CATWS scene, the visuals are consistent with Bucky’s modus operandi — he is placing himself as a human shield between his enemy (Steve) and what he needs to guard (the Helicarrier behind him). The trail of destruction he leaves behind on his way onto the Helicarrier is frank reminder of how capable of violence he is, but this moment on the bridge holds a curious stillness. He is waiting, but not as a predator waiting for his prey, but rather like a lone guard’s final stand against inevitable doom. And perhaps — his aim was never on taking the most number of lives on the airfield, it was to disperse and disable anyone who might interfere with the Helicarrier’s launch.

Bucky's focus during the first part of the fight with Steve seems to be more on the drive Steve is carrying rather than on killing Steve. Killing Steve only comes after the Helicarriers fail (which begs the question: was Bucky specifically instructed to stop Steve without killing him and then kill him afterwards, or did Bucky have enough presence of mind to hold back for as long as he could?) Even as the Winter Soldier, Bucky seems most in his element when protecting something behind him.

On the converse, we have Steve, whose symbol is the shield, and I think it misleads (maybe even intentionally on Steve's part) the audience and his enemies into thinking that Steve's strong point is defence.

But it's not. I wouldn't call Steve an aggressor (and I'm not a huge fan of the angry chihuahua fanon), but he is far more proactive in his actions and a lot more aggressive in his attacks than the shield might suggest.

Even this memorable image, which seems to suggest Steve is on the defense against Bucky's raging attack is actually the opposite -- Steve is rushing Bucky from the side, and Bucky's punch serves to stop Steve in his tracks (i.e. it’s Bucky's self-defense against Steve's attack).

Our first meeting with Steve establishes him as a challenger - he challenges the recruitment rules, he challenges the disrespectful guy in the cinema, he challenges Colonel Philips and Hydra and the Red Skull - and eventually, he goes on to challenge Loki and Tony and Fury and Pierce and SHIELD in the modern world.

We don't see Steve carrying a weapon in the modern era (except for maybe brief moments of him using a weapon in Avengers) and it's easy, for the audience but also for Steve’s enemies, to forget that Steve uses the shield as an offensive weapon. Sure, it serves its function as an actual shield, but Steve hurls it as a projectile weapon intended to incapacitate so many times I won't be able to list them all so I'll just let this picture speak for itself.

Even at their first reunion, Bucky is running away to avoid a confrontation with the witness (Steve) while Steve is chasing after him to confront the sniper.

And I think this describes their different traits to a tee - Steve is like the bloodhound with a keen nose for trouble and doesn’t rest until he’s chased it down, while Bucky is like the guard dog who patiently sits by his family until commanded to fight or provoked. That's not to say Steve is always picking fights, but rather he's got an intuitive awareness of where the source of the conflict is and has no qualms putting himself into the fray. It’s also not to say that Bucky is always avoidant or apathetic, but rather he tends to watch and wait unless it threatens those he cares about...and that is probably deserving of its own meta to discuss how their separate upbringings make Steve and Bucky different in their confrontation readiness.

"I thought you were more than just a shield," Batroc says, so Steve clips his shield back on his harness and dukes it out with his fists.

Of course Steve is more than his shield, because the shield is just a piece of disguise for who Steve Rogers really is - someone who's always assessing the world around him (rather than hiding behind the shield) and ready to challenge the injustices (rather than waiting for the fight to come to him).

The real dichotomy between Steve and Bucky is that Steve is a natural challenger, who first picks up the shield to help him undertake a single-man offence on a Hydra base. When he wakes up in the modern world and sees that the imagery of the shield is entrenched with his identity, he uses that symbol to mask his fiery defiance while turning the shield itself into a weapon that works both in offense and defence. Bucky is a natural protector, who had picked up fighting and later weapons for defence and self-defence. Hydra then turned his loyal temperament and his skill set into “the fist of Hydra” - capable of both protection and targeted destruction.

They seem to have chosen (or been assigned) a weapon that is opposite to their instincts, but it’s also why they work so well together as a unit. Steve's convictions and idealism give Bucky the impetus to take up arms, and Bucky's constancy and protection give Steve the confidence to forge ahead.

The man who attacks injustices with a shield, and at his back, the man who defends him with a gun.

[emdashbitch]

In light of the fact that Bucky (Loki and Thor too for that matter, since the Chrises, Tom and Seb have all aged past their characters) should pretty much still look like he did in CATFA in-universe, it's hilarious to imagine Sam slipping up one day and calling Bucky "kid" without thinking and it's mortifying for them both. Sam has a whole list of old man jokes from his time with Steve that he now gets to reuse on Bucky, except goddamnit Bucky pretty much rebuilt his personality after a factory reset from breaking conditioning so the illusion of being old breaks down easier than it did with Steve, his sense of humor is eerily close to genz/clearly influenced by Princess Shuri, and sometimes when Sam is distracted by something else, he does let "kid" drop like he does with Joaquín.

Bucky looks disturbed because Steve probably keeps accidentally calling him "son" and "kid" during their meet ups too, since there's a strong chance he has grandkids that look Bucky's age, and now Sam's doing it as well, he's in his 100s what the hell is going on? Meanwhile this is, based on a calculated estimate on the serums aging rate, what he looks like in-universe:

[musette22]

oooh Minnie....you know those fics out here that have the characters watching the future and things like that (where they watch their own movies or read the books and react? ) I was wondering if ever Steve and Bucky were to watch their movies (maybe an avengers watch the movies type situation) and they get progressively more confused as Endgame goes on because why would Steve ever leave Bucky? Or maybe they're watching CATFA and during the bar scene Steve watches the scene and realises that Bucky might have been in love with him. And the avengers pause the movie for Steve and Bucky to have a conversation because Steve sees the look on Bucky's face when Peggy arrives.

Oh and Steve reacting to the bank vault torture scene in WS as well as the in CW ....ooh the possibilities.

I'm sorry if I didn't explain myself very well.

Hello my darling! I'm sorry it's taken me a while to reply to this lovely message, it's been a very busy few days! But aaahhh, this is such a beautiful idea, especially the second one you mentioned 🥺 I can just imagine the Avengers, post-TWS, watching the new Captain America movie that's been made about Steve's life (featuring a pair of certain very handsome Hollywood heartthrobs...). And Steve is ready to hate it, as he's hated all the other movies about him he's seen, but he finds that he actually quite enjoys it, more than he thought he would - until they get to the scene in the bar you describe, and Steve huffs out an awkward laugh and says, "Okay, I'll admit this one is pretty good so far, but come on... I don't understand why they've made it look like Buck was jealous or something. Why would they do that? That's not how it was at all, right Buck?"

But Bucky doesn't say anything, eyes remaining glued to the screen and refusing to meet Steve's gaze. The rest of the Avengers are pretending not to be watching what's unfolding between them (except for Clint, who's openly staring at them while munching on popcorn), but the room is collectively holding its breath.

"Bucky?" Steve repeats, willing Bucky to look at him. "You were just teasing, right? You weren't actually jealous." He pauses, feeling wrongfooted somehow. "Were you?"

Bucky swallows audibly, meeting Steve's eyes for a fleeting moment before looking away again. "'Course not."

"You liked Peggy," Steve insists. "You- you were happy for me. Right? Buck?"

Bucky gives a jerky nod. "Sure, Steve."

Steve feels suddenly like he's missed a step on the stairs. "Bucky, what's- I don't understand, why-?"

With a deep, heartfelt sigh, Bucky's shoulders sag, and he finally looks up - and the look on his face makes Steve’s heart go into freefall.

"Steve..." Bucky shakes his head slowly. "Of course I was happy for you. Doesn't mean I didn't also want to yell and rage at her, for coming between us the way she did. For being what you wanted, what you deserved. For taking you from me. Even if you were never really mine."

And once Steve has recovered from the shock, once his heart has started beating and he's found his voice again, he finally, finally finds the courage to admit what he's been keeping a secret for all those years - that he's loved Bucky from the moment he met him and wanted him from the minute he was old enough to know what wanting someone meant, and that if he'd only known, there wouldn't have have been any question about it: he’d have chosen Bucky over Peggy in a heartbeat, in every single way, over and over again.

And as they fall into each other's arms, teary-eyed but happier than they've ever been, the other Avengers wipe away stray tears, sneakily hand each other cash.

Aaahhh I love this, nonnie 🥹🥹 And you're right, the possibilities *are* endless!! So many other amazing scenarios to think about with this particular trope! Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us, honey! ❤️😘