#i REALLY need to make like a playlist or something for my favourite map parts/animations i love so fucking many of them

[kagender]

youtube animators stop being so fucking good challenge

[fuckyeahwintershock]

Author Spotlight: AnnieMar

Hello again! This week our nomination comes from previous spotlightee (it’s a word, go with it) @leftylain​. She nominated @anniemar​ who’s well known for cooking up a batch of hot stuff for us to devour.

Here’s what she had to say:

01. What about Wintershock as a pairing appeals to you?  

The muse is strong with them. Many of us identify with Darcy for a whole host of reasons. I certainly do. For me, it’s because she’s snarky. She’s got a quick wit. She makes fun of people to their faces in both covert and overt ways. She’s sarcastic as hell, and I identify with that. If sarcasm flies over your head, you probably won’t like me very much in real life. Either that, or I will just confuse the hell out of you. I just can’t help it. I didn’t start writing Darcy until I’d seen Thor: The Dark World and that was the movie where I really fell in love with her, because they gave her a bit more story to work with. I’d always loved Kat Dennings, since she was in 40 Year Old Virgin and that scene where she’s screaming at her mom about wanting to have sex with her boyfriend. Not many young actresses could have pulled that off. She’s very memorable and interesting. Doesn’t look like every other actress out there, and she’s hilarious. She made Darcy totally outshine Jane, for me anyway, and that fascinated me. Here was this brilliant and gorgeous main character, Jane Foster, and all I wanted was to know more about her best friend.

And then you have Bucky. You could say that I definitely have a type. The misunderstood bad boy. Some of my dudes are more misunderstood and more bad than others, but there’s just something compelling about them, especially (and perhaps only) when they are played by brilliant actors. There’s Bucky of course, there’s Loki, Daryl from the Walking Dead, Eric from True Blood, Rollo and Ivar from Vikings, etc … and for me it goes back all the way to Han Solo. The Rogue. The guy who shoots first but underneath it all, he just needs a hug.

I don’t know what that says about me. Probably nothing good ;-)

And so you have these two characters, Darcy and Bucky, who’s differences can be explored in a meaningful way and how those differences can make them grow. There’s the potential for so much. For serious feels, for growth and discovery, for humor, for AMAZING sex. You know, the whole enchilada.

02. How did you first encounter the pairing?

It was a few years ago and I was an exclusive Tasertricks girl, but I felt like I had read every single Loki/Darcy fic out there, and some of them several times, so I was thinking that I needed some new blood. I asked my Tumblr fam if they had any good Wintershock or Shieldshock recs, and so then I spent the next few weeks mesmerized with all these new stories. I realized that I’d put myself into this hole, limited myself, by only reading Loki. It opened up so many more possibilities. I still didn’t write my own Wintershock for quite awhile, mainly because I felt guilty for cheating on my OG Marvel ship, but I got over it pretty quickly once I actually started writing Bucky Barnes. And now I feel like if you want to write more than one ship, that’s totally cool, it just opens up new and interesting challenges and makes you a better writer.

03. Do you have any specific Wintershock headcanons?

For me, Darcy gives Bucky the room he needs to deal, but on the other hand, she doesn’t let him mope around. She’s not afraid of him. She calls him out. She makes fun of him, doesn’t pity him, treats him normally, like she would anyone else, and he loves her for that. He never thought a girl like her would be in the cards for him at this point.

And then Bucky is one of the only people that can match Darcy’s wit, and so they battle. They love to battle. They also both love and enjoy the little things. I feel like Darcy is someone that’s usually up for anything, I mean, she followed Jane around in the desert and then hung out with her in London, she’s cool. She’s smart and resourceful. She can hang anywhere. Adapt anywhere. She’s definitely a cynic but she also loves experiencing the world. She has passion. And then Bucky has learned to find passion in the tiny details of life. I keep thinking about his room in Bucharest and how he loved his plums at the market. He was so excited about those damn things. And he doesn’t have much, but he’s got it all perfectly placed around him in a little haven, and you can tell he cherishes it all. And so because of those traits, they really enjoy spending time together and discovering the world through each other’s eyes. They balance each other. Bucky has a way of breaking through Darcy’s cynicism and then she has a way of inspiring Bucky to be present. They have the ability to open the world up for each other.

I also feel like Bucky’s old-fashioned sensibilities secretly make Darcy melt. He opens doors, insists on paying the bill, etc., and on the outside Darcy is all “It’s 2017, man, women’s lib happened and you must have been asleep”, but on the inside it makes her feel cherished. She probably wouldn’t admit to that though. And when he does stuff like wins her the biggest stuffed animal she’s ever seen at a carnival they happen upon, she can’t stop smiling, even though it’s a totally cheesy scenario. Bucky just does that to her. Makes her reevaluate romance, as she was pretty sure it was actually a myth before meeting him.

04. Do you associate any particular songs with Wintershock? If so, which one? 

Oh man, I have whole Spotify playlists dedicated to Wintershock. Let’s see … it’s hard to choose. More melancholy ones are “Lucky” by Radiohead and “Coney Island Baby” by Lou Reed. A more upbeat song, and one that’s inspired by Sebastian Stan’s love of 80’s music is “The Promise” by When in Rome … and then I can’t not mention “I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)” by Stevie Wonder, it’s the one I’ve been listening to while trying to finish my next Classic Combo chapter. For reasons.

There’s also music from soundtracks I listen to while writing, because sometimes people singing can distract me, but music definitely helps me focus. The soundtrack to Inception, Oblivion (M83) and then the tv show The Leftovers have this sort of beautiful continuous theme that’s very meditative and sort of repetitive and helps me focus. I will put a few songs in a loop, zone out, and then somehow I have several thousand words in a doc.

This is a really long answer to a simple question, sorry. Get me talking about music and I won’t stop.

05. What Wintershock fic by someone else would you recommend to others to read? What about this fic appeals to you?

When I first started reading Wintershock there wasn’t a huge amount of it, so I read ALL OF IT. You know how it is, in the beginning of a ship, or when people are starting to fall down the rabbit hole of love for a certain character. Like … even the fic that some might normally skip over because they involve things you’re not that into, could be a/b/o, AU, or soul-fic or high school fic or some specific kink (these are just examples), but I didn’t care. I devoured it all. And the one that really stood out for me was The Importance of Pop Culture Awareness by Bionically Ironic. She is amazing and very witty in her writing and I love her. The fic was just so different from anything else at the time. For me, it was innovative. I was laughing out loud, which is rare for me. Darcy was hilarious. Bucky was funny. He laughed. He smiled. He was already a part of the Avengers fam. He’d been deprogrammed and was in recovery, and while I seriously enjoyed reading author’s interpretations of his journey through HYDRA’s mind control and coming back to “Bucky Barnes”, it was amazing to read about him being happy again. It warmed my cold black heart, and was definitely an inspiration for how I interpreted Bucky’s character in my own fic. Her work gets the highest of recommendations from me.

06. What kind of Wintershock story would you love to read that hasn’t been written yet by you or others?  

I’d like to read some future “fix-it” fic inspired by the comics. I’d like to read about “Bucky Cap” and Darcy together, perhaps trying to figure out a way to save Steve (who could be “dead” or in a coma, or lost his serum somehow, or trapped in an alternate dimension, etc.), because in my mind, Steve Rogers will always be Captain America. And so then on their journey to discovery THEY FALL IN LURVE. There’s just so many interesting possibilities to explore. What does Bucky’s new Cap suit look like? His new arm? Does Darcy have input on the design? Is there sex happening with the new suit on? Does she cry for a million years because he cut his hair? Is Sam Wilson around? Can we have a Bucky/Sam snarkfest and Darcy just loves to watch them together while eating popcorn because they’re so damn entertaining?

Hmmm. Giving me ideas. NOT GOOD. I have too many WIPs to finish.

07. Out of the Wintershock stories you’ve written, which is your favourite, and why?  

All of my fics feel like my children in some way and it’s hard to pick a fave kid. I also don’t have a ton of Wintershock fics, or really a ton of fic, period, compared to a lot of authors. I can be a pretty slow writer at times, or write things over a million times, or just get stuck on something and let it sit for weeks at a time while my brain mellows out.

Classic Combination is dear to me because it was my first exploration of Bucky. I already had lots of time with Darcy with Tasertricks, but getting inside Bucky���s head was a lot of fun and also frustrating at times just because of how complex he really is. There’s a point when you write a character and they just somehow come to life for you, and he did that pretty quickly for me while writing Classic Combo. And I love writing Darcy as a Sydney Bristow-type. I have the whole thing mapped out and I’m pretty excited about where it’s going and how it will end. And the sex. All that’s mapped out too. I practically have diagrams for it ;-) I still can’t believe I haven’t had them totally do it yet. I really need to rectify that. And soon.

And then there’s Easy Chair, which was meant to be a one-shot, but turned into a longer thing, as shit tends to do with me. It was just fun. Totally fun. No pressure. And in that respect it’s my favorite.

08. Quote a favourite extract from one of your stories. What is it that you like about it?

From Classic Combination:

"We should be best friends, James Buchanan ... because that's what we are. In the story of Captain America, greatest hero of our times, and Jane Foster, famous Nobel Prize-winning scientist, and a god's one true love … that's what we are. We're the classic best friends. We're the sidekicks. We should be the main characters in our own story."

That pretty much sums Wintershock up for me. Two sidekicks who deserve better, deserve so much more tender loving care, getting their very own story. And we, the Wintershock fam, tell that story over and over again in so many amazing ways. And I feel so lucky and blessed to be a part of it.

Mod note: still wanting nominations, please and thank you.