#while bucky has been experimented on with a hydra copycat of Steve's serum

[allthislove]

Hi, yes, I like the Bucky/Elektra parallel.

But you will never convince me to romantically ship Steve and Bucky.

Hell yeah platonic love between men. 

I mean, I’m super happy with gay superheroes, I read & write their fic and I crackship ridiculous ones, and serious ship others. And I get WHY y’all ship Steve and Bucky. I just... don’t think they’re romantic. Steve has 2 people from his past still alive (One now, but at the time he sees Bucky again in TWS.) Peggy, who is incredibly old, and Bucky Barnes, who is brainwashed and doesn’t remember him. 

At that moment in his life, all he can think is “I can maybe save my friend. Maybe he’s still in there.” And I don’t see why that NEEDS to be for romantic/sexual reasons. First of all, maybe it’s because I’m demisexual and don’t always GET it, but if I was like... a supersoldier frozen in time and thawed out decades later and saw my best friend being used as a crazy ass assassin by like the one Evil Organization I knew about, one I was even fighting before I was frozen... I’d probably react exactly like Steve Rogers. Not because I’m in love with my best friend, but because all of that shit? Heinous. IDK, I know y’all like to see it as romantic, but I can’t find, in my mind, a reason for a straight man to abandon his brainwashed best friend after being frozen for, what, 70+ years. Like, if you saw your bestie from your 20s, and it’s 70 years later, and y’all both look the same, you wouldn’t be like “WTF? How? Why?” And if that bestie didn’t know who you were and also was actively trying to kill you, you wouldn’t be like “WTF???? I NEED TO FIX HIM/HER!!” IDK why that’s inherently gay. (And my ass is gay af, sometimes.) And similarly, for Buck Buck, if you were like, brainwashed, and some random person called you by some random name, but then it sort of felt right and familiar, and also maybe you knew him??? Wouldn’t you also react the same way Bucky did, whether you were In Love!!! or not? Like, IDK why that’s gay, either. That’s just... IDK. Like, sometimes I think we’re so used to seeing men avoid intimacy and emotions that seeing any of it at all between two male characters makes you read platonic shit as romantic.

And the difference between Elektra/Matt and Steve/Bucky is that we KNOW FOR A FACT that Elektra and Matt were a couple and in love with each other before she died. The information we’re given about Steve and Bucky is that they’re best friends. We see them go on a double date with two girls who are far more interested in Bucky than Steve. We see Steve dreaming of getting into the Army. We don’t see them being romantic or even seemingly interested. We even get Bucky surprised that Peggy pays him no mind when Steve’s supersoldier serum has him beefed up. 

Anyway, I’m glad people ship shit, and I’m glad y’all like Bucky/Steve, but please stop trying to make it canon. It’s not. It’s just a ship. The Elektra/Bucky parallels are awesome and valid, but not because Steve is in love with Bucky. Because Elektra and Bucky have very similar things happen to them. And I’m sure the parallel was not lost on the show creators.