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luna-rainbow · 2 years

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I've been thinking a lot about this ask and how it pertains to stucky. As I understand, the gist of it is there are certain tropes and storylines that Hollywood has declared to be Romantic (for heterosexual couples only), and even if two same sex characters follow the same tropes and story beats, Hollywood will not recognize them as romantic, because they're blind (willfully or otherwise) to anything other than heterosexual romance. That is, heterosexual romance is always presumed/a given, and people reading queer subtext are looked at with a surprised Pikachu face. (I also liked your analysis of Wuxia platonic same sex soulmate tropes vs heterosexual romance.)

And to an extent I can see that for stucky. Like you pointed out in the tags, they probably wanted to show Steve metamorphizing into a beautiful butterfly to win Peggy's affection and admiration. Bucky in the bar scene was supposed to be the jealous best friend (jealous that Steve was getting the action he always took for granted).

But it... doesn't work? For a steggy romance to work, she shouldn't look at him any differently before or after the serum-- she should value him for what's inside, not what's outside. (Or is this me not understanding heterosexual male writers again? Do guys really want a woman who finds them attractive only after they get swole? Then they're viewing their romantic partners as trophies, and not as real people lol.) And I don't know about you, but I never saw her look at Steve preserum the way she looked at him postserum. For steggy to work romantically, she should have looked at him postserum with concern for his wellbeing (given how much he screamed and the very real risk of his death during the procedure), not with desire.

(Contrast this with Bucky looking at Steve like "wtf" while Steve was helping him off the table-- more bewildered than impressed. And immediately followed up with questions about Steve's well-being. For Hollywood, this is "just" a good platonic friendship, but for me, this is a genuine show of love-- platonic or otherwise 🙄)

And it also doesn't take into account decisions such as having the Howlies sing "There is a Tavern in the Town," which can only apply to Bucky (looking resignedly between Peggy and Steve) in the bar scene, or playing "It's Been a Long Long Time" right before Bucky crashes back into Steve's life, both of which are overtly romantic songs. I understand that for the casual viewer, these songs will fly over their heads and not be thought of again, but I really think that someone somewhere working on these movies had to have chosen these songs knowing how they would come across. They can't be that obtuse! Heck, they reused It's Been a Long Long Time in Endgame for the steggy dance 🙄 and this time, it was blatantly meant to be romantic.

Even Marcus and McFeely acknowledge that stucky has all the hallmarks of a romance. There's a quote that they wrote for the Captain America comics that's been blogged about a lot--

No adventure is complete without a love story. And, yes, these books have one — the longest, most tortured one in Marvel history, in fact. We're talking about Steve and Bucky, without smirking or innuendo or raised eyebrows. Platonic though the relationship may be, from the meet cute to the tragic separation, their bond has all the elements of a classic romance. These two men love each other — as any pair of friends who faced exclusion, combat, inhumanity, and death would. Their bond stretches across half of the twentieth century. [...] Just as Jeph and Tim's earlier Daredevil: Yellow, Spider-Man: Blue, and Hulk: Gray all dealt with the major love interests in the heroes' lives, so too does Captain America: White. Steve and Bucky are each other's soulmate, if you will, because no one on Earth understands what either of them has been through as well as the other does.

They acknowledge it!! Even while beating it over our heads that their bond is platonic, they acknowledge the romantic beats. And call them soulmates. If it's true in the comics, I feel it's doubly true in the MCU.

I guess my point is, I don't think that they were trying to queerbait, because yes I do think there is some Hollywood blindness to queer subtext at play and also blindness to how genuine love between two characters can be read as romantic (as opposed to just love won as a trophy), but I also don't think they're as oblivious and blind as some people say. Or maybe they are!

They certainly weren't blind after #givecaptainamericaaboyfriend or with Civil War and Endgame. I believe that the complete lack of resolution between those two and their final separation was, among other things, meant to prove once and for all that they weren't gay, and it really speaks to the homophobia and conservatism of the people who own their characters.

(I also have thoughts on how the Russos chose to make Bucky Steve's most important relationship in CATWS. As opposed to Steve having the dream sequence where Bucky and the Howlies say we're with you til the end of the line, they chose to have only Bucky say it to Steve on the day of his mother's funeral, when he was feeling his lowest, and offer him a home together. And they chose to have Steve repeat it to Bucky to break through 70 years of brainwashing-- longer than either of them knew each other, three times as long as their lives together before they were brutally separated. Of course this can be read as platonic, but they weren't just acquaintances-- they were family, the only two people in the world that understood what the other went through. They chose to do that! If they had kept Bucky and the Howlies, they could have reduced the intensity of Steve and Bucky's relationship, but they decided that it had to be more intense.

I don't know where I'm going with this, I just felt like venting lol)

OKAY there is WAY too much to unpack in that particular post so I'm just going to rehash their points, which I generally agree with:

There is a particular group of people who either make up MCU's writers or are the audience that the MCU is trying to target

Romance, in the contemporary sense of developing a relationship (often with warmth and wonder) between love interests, is not the intent.

Courtship (as opposed to romance) is a competition, and the object of ardour is a trophy to be won.

Partnership is the space for emotional intimacy, where they are allowed trust, maturation, vulnerability and loyalty.

Courtship does not require emotional poignancy because the goal is to bed someone (look I'm being extremely dudebro about this)

Obtaining the person they desire (i.e. courtship) does not lead them to a partnership with that person; however, a strong partnership may lead them towards obtaining their "professional" goal (i.e. the other goal apart from appeasing their loins).

Writers are aware that romantic tropes are effective narrative tools to build emotional connection and poignancy, and they will employ those tools in their stories.

However, when those tools are employed in building a partnership, the writers either willfully or negligently overlook the unmistakable romantic subtext that is now written into that partnership.

Even with awareness of the tropes, they (the writers and the target audience) default to seeing this partnership as purely professional, utterly familial, completely brotherly, despite its emotional intensity being above every other relationship. Soulmates, but platonic.

The existence of partnership and courtship is to satisfy the virility quota in this piece of dudebro media.

A different group of audience perceives courtship = emotional intimacy = partnership. For these people, courtship should lead to partnership, and this is the group that will recognise the romantic subtext in the partnership because that's the desirable outcome.

This is all heteronormativity, misogyny and toxic masculinity rolled into one giant ugly ball, but I'm not going to go into it cos I want to focus on Steve-Bucky-Peggy. Feel free to drop me an ask if anyone has thoughts.

I'm going to put this under cut because a) IT'S WAY TOO LONG and b) sometimes I think deconstructing stories take away the magic and it's not for everyone (or every mood).

Steve-Peggy

It consists of an audience surrogate and an object of lust/worship/pursuit. Often, the object is out of reach at the start, and the audience surrogate needs to get stronger/better/hotter/more confident in order to win them. Possibly, the audience surrogate just needs a chance to show off what they were already good at, like being a much better person than the other options. There are typically rivals for the object’s affection whom the hero must beat. The sexy lamp love interest’s feelings may be developed a bit towards the end of the plot, but they’re not usually a major focus.

This is a pretty accurate description of CATFA's plot if you took an extremely dudebro and superficial look at it. Steve is the audience surrogate, Peggy is the object of pursuit, Bucky is the rival. When Steve first meets Peggy, she's beautiful, poised, his superior, and way out of his league. She overlooks the small, awkward, unimpressive him and that is the point. He only catches her attention by dropping out of a vat with steaming abs becoming stronger/better/hotter/more confident. However, she only displays momentary interest, until he impresses her that he is much better than the other options by disobeying direct commands to go single-handedly rescue his Bucky bravely taking down a Nazi compound. There is a rival for Peggy's affection -- the Bucky we had established earlier as handsome, confident and popular with women -- and the new and improved Steve is shown to beat this rival. This is like the glow-up/transformation scene in rom-coms where the love interest can't look away and there is nothing the rival can do to snatch attention back. It's the ugly duckling trope but with a role reversal.

As for the "Tavern in the Town" scene? I know I've done meta on this (because it fits with the Stucky lens) but my non-Stucky (?pre-Stucky) reading was that the song was not reflecting Bucky's jealousy, but foreboding his impending doom.

Fare thee well, for I must leave thee, Do not let the parting grieve thee, And remember that the best of friends must part, must part Adieu, adieu, kind friends adieu, adieu, adieu, I can no longer stay with you, stay with you, I'll hang my harp on a weeping willow tree, And may the world go well with thee. Oh! dig my grave both wide and deep, wide and deep, Put tombstones at my head and feet, head and feet, And on my breast carve a turtle dove To signify I died of love.

He had just committed to following Steve when that song began to play, and this is what puts in motion the chain of events that leads him onto the train. The turtle dove signifies friendship, love and devotion, all of which are part of why he made the choice to follow Steve, and it is this very choice that will lead "the best of friends to part".

Steve-Bucky

The problem is, Steve-Bucky also takes from rom-com tropes -- "from the meet cute to the tragic separation" every friggin movie thanks guys -- but it also has the added weight of emotional connection, narrative significance and moral core. (Okay I know a lot of you guys dislike Peggy but she does have lines that tie in with Steve's narrative and moral direction. Overall, though, the impact of her character on Steve's personal and narrative arc is much less direct.) When you have two competing arcs, and one has more emotional weight, i.e. actually in line with the romantic tropes it draws from, then audiences will respond to that.

Steve-Bucky's relationship is intended to be a partnership, and in the dudebro framework, partnerships are professional-oriented. What this means is that Bucky is the key to Steve achieving his "outward" goals - recognition, fame, rank, respect, proof of righteousness, etc. But when Steve's professional goals are so intimately tied with his moral core (even more than many other heroes) and his identity and his self-belief, this means that it brings in a major emotional component that is separate to the actual emotional connection of the partnership itself. (I don't know if I'm making sense or talking in circles now)

I think the creative choices you've point out about CATWS are deliberate, but only as a way to use romantic tropes to pad out (what they perceive as) a non-romantic relationship. They know the emotional punch of the movie will hinge on how well Steve and Bucky's relationship holds up. CATFA hadn't given Bucky a lot of opportunity to show his significance in Steve's life -- hence the strategically placed "end of the line" and "even when I had nothing I had Bucky" scenes. On the one hand, they are retcons, but on the other...they worked. They worked so well that we see the tragedy of their separation and the strength of their connection. So they've really overcompensated on Steve and Bucky by giving them the fate-defying shared-life-experiences and woken by a true love's vow of commitment, that in a franchise that habitually squeezed out heterosexual relationships out of much less, it's no wonder people read it as romantic.

My guess at the situation, based on various interviews and publicity over those years, is that yes, the intent of Steve and Bucky was that it's a heterosexual friendship, but the creators were cognizant of the romantic subtext. They preferred the platonic reading (as that was their intent), but they were softening to the idea that a sizeable audience was reading it as romantic. And then Disney happened.

#stucky meta #anti peggy carter #not really but just in case #my mind is mush #don't know if i made any sense #writing #asks #tropes #long post #too long #bucky barnes #steve rogers

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wolvesofinnistrad · 3 years

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Using the Stucky scenes for Steggy scenes in what if has major "Let's reuse all the stiles and Derek scenes for Derek and jennifer" in Teen wolf

#stucky #steve rogers #bucky barnes #what if #what if...?#sterek #stiles stilinski #mieczyslaw stilinski #derek hale #jennifer blake

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musette22 · 3 years

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I'm watching the entirety of "what if...?" as an au. to me this is what it is. an alternative universe so I can watch it perfectly fine but I must say, there was a part of this episode which to me it was like if they copied the scene of steve and bucky in tfa when Steve rescued Bucky just that this time it was bucky rescuing tchalla. I loved the way he helped him and protected him, I wish we could've seen that on the big screen :(

Absolutely yes, if that's how you can enjoy the show, then good for you! And yes, someone else also pointed out the TFA parallel with Bucky rescuing T'Challa - it's very interesting they keep reusing Stucky storylines... Anyway, glad you enjoyed, lovely!

#I got quite a few more what if asks #but a lot of them are along the same lines so it wouldn't add much if I answered them all!#but as always thank you to everyone who sent in an ask <3 #what if #what if spoilers #minnie answers

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chaossmagic · 3 years

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me watching what if...? purely for the fact that in pushing steve/peggy and reusing iconic stucky scenes that fans have said are romantically-coded for YEARS as steve/peggy scenes, thus clarifying that bucky was in fact steve’s love interest in tfa and in both other cap movies, they inadvertently played themselves in basically confirming stucky is canon?

more likely than you think

#personal #i don't really care about captain carter i just want my stevebucky crumbs #if that makes me a bad fan I DO NOT CARE

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voxofthevoid · 4 years

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Huh okay so I figured the reason I can’t actually find the motivation for the vampire!stucky AU is that I’m trying to write it as a multichapter when I should be writing a series of connected oneshots. Until today, I just mehhhhed on rewriting because I have like 30k written and didn’t want that to go to waste - but the plot needs some major revamping (HAH) so I gotta do what I gotta do.

Still think I can reuse some scenes tho.

Anyway, hail to sleep!time!epiphanies.

#my fic #stucky #vampires #fic: crimson thief

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adventures-in-a-world-of-fiction · 4 years

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YouTube video views

I've been thinking about my YouTube videos. I actually have two YouTube channels which I've been keeping very separate. One of them is for videos about books and writing, which includes serious writing advice, interviews with other authors, and things like that. I've only had this channel for about a year and it’s still small, with only a handful of videos and subscribers. The other is a channel I've had for years where I post fan videos of stuff. I used to post loads more videos but my creations have become a lot more sporadic over recent years because Real Life.

On that fan video channel, I've been trying to work out a pattern for the videos that do best, because the videos with the most views are not my best videos. So here is me taking a critical look at my videos to try and get to the bottom of why some YouTube videos are more successful than others.

1st Place: Once a Ranger, Always a Ranger, 378,002

The video that has the most views at 378,002 last time I checked is a Power Rangers video called Once a Ranger, Always a Ranger. The song is When Your A Jet from the musical West Side Story, which is a little... odd as a choice. As videos go, it's okay. The video clips fit the lyrics and there are no obvious slip ups like stray frames being left in. There's a slightly clunky bit of dialogue in the middle that doesn't transition well to the rest of the video and the title at the end is a touch crude, but I can look back at this and smile instead of cringe. It doesn't do anything particularly clever but it's fine. I made it in 2007 so it's had 13 years to gain viewers, which would make sense, and at the time I posted it I was very active on a Power Rangers forum so I probably posted links on there and got some viewers that way.

I think the main reason this video has done so well though is because a Power Rangers anniversary episode came out later with the same name, so I suspect a lot of the views are people who were looking for that episode and clicked my silly, little video instead. I expect the 23 dislikes were a result of this. The average view time according to the analytics is 35 seconds, which combined with the general lack of interaction suggests that people click on it, realise it isn't what they want, and click away.

2nd Place: Trailer: Am I Perfect Yet? 211,239

My next highest view count video is Trailer: Am I Perfect Yet? This is a trailer I made for an original story I was working on. I took clips from a bunch of different films and TV shows and stuck them together in a way that formed a trailer for my own story. In terms of quality, the biggest thing I notice rewatching it is that it jumps between different aspect ratios. Some of the film clips are generally in widescreen, but the made from TV films and TV show clips aren't, so it jumps constantly between them. There are also cuts between scenes from different things that are supposed to be in the same place, but the lighting is so clearly different. But on the other hand, it does what I intended it to do. It gets across the points for the story the way a trailer should. Looking at this, it makes me want to dig out the half-written first draft of the novel and see if it's worth continuing to write the thing.

In terms of why this video has so many views, I think it's because this was the pinned video on my channel for a long time. I pinned it while I was actively working on the story and then I just didn't change it for ages, probably years. So anyone going to my channel would have seen this video first.

3rd Place: Trailer: The Forgotten Power, 165,144

The next videos are a bit more of a mystery. Coming in third is a trailer for a Power Rangers fanfic I wrote. The fanfic is probably still up on fanfiction.net if anyone cares enough to hunt for it and I did include links to the trailer videos when I posted the fic, so I guess that would have brought people to it.

As far as videos go, it's not good. Some of the clips are badly cut out so there's a random frame from another scene that sneaks in. I put audio clips over video clips in a way that's really obvious and bad. The audio is jumpy.

I'm ashamed that this is my third most viewed video because it is definitely not a great example of my video editing skill. I know that it's over 13 years old, so I should cut myself some slack, but if someone sorts my videos by views to look for the best ones they'll find this instead of any of the much, much better ones I made later.

4th Place: Blood on my Hands - Jayden/Deker 150,740

Another Power Rangers video, this one a little bit more recent. This one I published in June 2011. My skills obviously came a long way in those 4 years. It's just a lot less clunky. The clips flow together a bit more smoothly. I have included some dialogue but these sections are during instrumental-only parts of the song and I've layered the audio a lot better than in the previous video. It gets a little bit repetitive because there were only a limited amount of scenes with these two characters together but I don't think I reused any exact shots.

Overall, it's a decent little video but I'm not sure why it's so high on the list. I don't have any explanation for why this one has done so much better than other videos I've made.

5th Place: Teaser Trailer: The Deal, 115,548

This was another fanfic trailer but for a fanfic I never actually posted anywhere. It's a short video, only a minute and a half long, teasing a story I never got far enough into to start putting online. I posted this video near the end of 2011 and like the one above, the years between it and some of the earlier ones of this list were clearly filled with a lot of improvement, but the success of this little video is baffling to me. It's fine as a piece of video editing but it's not great as a trailer because it doesn't give much of an indication about the fic. It's clearly meant to tease people and get them excited about the story I was working on... and never did anything with.

But why does this one have more than a hundred thousand views? It's not that it was linked to a fic because the fic was never posted anywhere to link back to it. I do not understand why this video has done so much better than others.

Videos 6 - 10

That was the last video with more than a hundred thousand views. The next view range between 60k and 90k. Two more general Power Rangers videos, one more Power Rangers fanfic trailer, A Perfect Body fan video, and a Firefly/Serenity fan video. The most recent of these was the Firefly video posted in 2009.

Is there a pattern?

It's obvious that most of my highest viewed videos are older ones. I can only assume that this is because the older videos have had more time to build up views. If I look for videos I've posted in the last five years, the first one I find is I Choose You a Class fanvid featuring the Charlie and Matteusz ship published in 2017. This has a respectable 39k views putting it in 17th place on my list but it's surrounded in the list by videos posted between 2007 and 2011.

The next one published in the last 5 years is a Teen Wolf video Heroes published in May 2015, with 19k views, in 25th place.

If I sort by date, most of the videos at the top of the list have a few hundred views, but there's an interesting pattern here. Videos for White Collar, Class, and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency do better than my Marvel videos. A lot better. Is it to do with the size of the fandom? There are loads of people making videos for Marvel movies so my poor Stucky video is down at 157 views unable to get noticed while not many people are making Dirk Gently videos so my Panto/Silas one has 3055.

But that can't be the only thing. I published a bunch of Voltron videos within a few weeks of each other in October 2016. The Shiro video I Will Remain has 847 views while Make a Man Out of You has 17k, and the Pidge video Robbed of Her Innocence that I was really proud of only has 953 views. So published time and fandom can't be the answers to the mystery because these are all the same fandom published within weeks of each other.

Conclusion

I have no friggin' clue why some of my videos do so much better than others. This makes no sense whatsoever. I give up. I'm just going to post whatever random stuff I come up with and some will magically do better than others with no pattern or logic.

And if you’re going to look at my fan videos, don’t sort by views because the most viewed videos are far from my best work.

#videos #youtube #I don't understand youtube #fan videos

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girlbookwrm · 6 years

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i DO recommend these fics, but this ISN’T actually a rec list

a while ago i did a meta about Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier and Hydra and the headcanons I put in The Terror of Knowing, and I mentioned that I wanted to compile a long-ass list of fics that inspired The Hundred Year Playlist and ppl (hi @conlatio and @marveluc) asked about it SO HERE, AT LONG FUCKING LAST, IT IS.

Fanfiction, like every other art form that has ever existed in the history of ever, is all about synthesis: combining pre-existing elements to make something new. It’s the making something new thing that’s exciting. (If you’re not making something new with your found material, that’s called plaigiarism and it’s distinctly uncool.)

When I was in college and grad school, if we used material from other scholars to make a new idea, we made sure to include a bibliography.

Now this is fic, so like. Everyone knows that we’re using found material. We put the fandom in the tags and everything. But there’s a lot of unseen inspiration, because it’s harder to tag all the fics and metas you read that gave you ideas and inspiration along the way.

I’m... making an attempt.

These are some, SOME of the fics that inspired the headcanons and characterizations and whatnot that then got incorporated into THYP. I’ve been reading MCU fic since 2014 (possibly earlier) and I didn’t even start thinking about THYP until 2017, so there’s probably a lot of stuff that went into my subconscious that I’ve forgotten about. I’m @ing the authors and sources when I know them, but if any of yall want me to like, un-@you (is that a thing??) or if any of you know of authors who have tumblrs that I DIDN’T @ but should have, pls let me knoooowwww

A (Probably Incomplete, but at least Attempted) Fanfic Bibliography for The Hundred Year Playlist

by Seriously I Don’t Have More Important Things To Do? Astonishing.

PLEASE HEED THE WARNINGS IN THE FICS THEMSELVES. THYP may be rated T for Teen (and even that I debate about tbh, given all the swears and violence) but most of these fics are very emphatically not. some of them will probably squick you out, some of them might be triggering, so take care of yourselves.

I’ve divided the list into sections by the story they inspired, but all of these stories inspired all the parts of THYP, this is a very very very rough categorization. Think of it as my fanfic n headcanon spice rack. some stories are going to have more or less of one spice or another.

Dreamers With Empty Hands

All the Angels and the Saints by @cesperanza

"You're a brutal person, you know that? You're always rummaging through my guts with your bare hands!" and then Bucky turned away, his long, muscled back curving as he sat on the edge of the bed, hunched and struggling for breath. Steve wanted to draw him, and he also wanted to blot the image from his memory: this picture of Bucky in despair.

Speranza’s Socialist Steve is deeply flawed in a way that people don’t usually write him and i love it so much??? He’s angry, and egotistical, and righteous in a way that’s hard on the people around him and I was like YESGOOD MORE PLS. It’s also a masterful example of how to write a story that’s ostensibly Steve-POV but still manages to make Bucky not only a main player, but a driving force. It’s about Steve, on the surface, sure. But it’s also about Bucky, because Steve is about Bucky and I just *clenches fist* love it.

cascades.

This fic. THIS FIC. Hngh. Okay so this fic is good on so many levels, but for THYP, the takeaway was me very gently lifting the Bucky-Steve-Barnes Family dynamic and then adding more swears to get to my take on the Bucky-Steve-Barnes Family Dynamic. Namely:

“Steve was a bit of a Barnes, too, wasn’t he,” she says.

“He was ours,” says Rebecca, shrugging. “We were his.”

i crie???

More Man Than You

“You’re very pretty,” she said, and Steve tensed up.

“I’m not a fairy.”

“No, you’re not, are you?”

this fic has a study guide. and that’s literally all I feel I need to say about it. It’s an exploration of queer culture and masculinity in the 30s and 40s, thinly veiled as stucky fanfiction. (It’s also pretty brutal so I’ll reiterate that you need to heed the goddamn warnings)

Also, lest yall think I came up with Billy Thompson in a vacuum, I didn’t. In this fic, there’s a violent mob runner called Duke, and Steve comes up with a plan to take him down, and Bucky makes sure that there’s a Different plan that Steve doesn’t know about. It’s all executed a little differently in this fic, but the idea lodged in my brain and got reused in THYP, and kind of became a central theme.

Good Morning Heartache, What’s New?

The Night War by @praximeter

IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THIS WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE. This is... honestly, just one of the finest pieces of fiction i just

HNNNNGH

I don’t know that I can point to any specific part of this fic and say “this gave me that idea” it was more the... the feel of it. The way the Normandy invasion is written and the way the trauma is handled and the way Steve is just slightly to the left of being a real soldier and especially this:

He asked me with a smile on his face what goes through my mind when I line up my shot—God and country? Pearl Harbor? Uncle Sam? —and I stared at him struck dumb from the question so long that I think he thought I was just plain stupid. The fact is that it is none of those things—not even close. It is sick, numb fear and careful, barely breathing so that I don’t miss. I must never miss. And then when I shoot, an awful thought curls up from my trigger finger to my heart “how many mothers must be praying I will miss?”

The Thirteen Letters

oh you didn’t really think that Not Easily Conquered wasn’t going to be on this list, didja? OF COURSE IT’S ON THE LIST. But possibly not for the reason you might think. That fic is legen-fucking-dary of course, and the scene where Steve gets stabbed was obviously very inspirational for that bit in GMHWN where Steve gets shot in the thigh, but the scene that really got teeth into my brain and Would Not Let Go was the one where the Howlies meet the Winged Victory of Samothrace and

Bucky knows the truth now. It is a deep and insurmountable truth. She has no face. Like the operative whose head he beat in, like the boy who he killed one month into active duty, even like Bucky himself, Nike is faceless. Bucky feels unprepared, or like he should have brought an offering.

Beside him Steve quakes before the oldest and the only god.

look my fixation with statues didn’t come from nowhere is what i’m saying ok

Sincerely, Your Pal

This fic haunts me because i hate the ending. not because it’s not good (It IS good) or because it’s not the right ending for the story (it IS the right ending for the story) but just because i h a t e i t. I just like happy endings is all, and resolutions, and this fic is why THYP will have a happy ending.

But also, I really liked the way this fic dealt with Bucky in Basic and lines like this really caught in my brain:

And of course I want to kill some Nazis I guess but not because they’re people. Not because I actually want people to die because I don’t.

And that sentiment definitely fed into how I write Bucky especially.

The Terror of Knowing

there must have been a moment by @redstarwhitestar (magdaliny’s marvel sideblog)

Listen, I’ve been trying to make sure that there’s a good spread of writers on this list but magdaliny is the exception. Magdaliny is the exception for a lot of things and there must have been a moment when we could have said no is always the first fic I think of when I think of a fic about Bucky’s time as the Soldier. Which is ironic, because it’s very much about his time after that, but that first chapter made uhhhhhhhhhhh an impression.

The fractured nature of the narrative, the way that the reader can piece together a coherent timeline but the main character can’t... that was very influential on TTOK. example:

“Kill him,” the officer says.

The subject says: “Why?”

☙

“Kill him,” the officer says.

The subject makes a mess.

☙

“Kill him cleanly,” the officer says. “Good! Good lad.”

I’ll build a house inside of you

Another magdaliny G I F T, an AU where Nat is much younger and Bucky is her dad, and if you think that didn’t affect the way I write Bucky and Nat’s relationship in THYP, then you are dreaming.

Past the praises of the handlers, above the hot wet smell of cordite and blood, Natalia can hear crashing and shouting down the hall.

“—goddamn animals, they're little girls, they're just kids, you fucking—”

Her father screams in English, in Mandarin, in Russian, and then he just screams.

I know that’s a super sad excerpt but listen and hear me when I say this fic is actually really good and wholesome and it’s got A+++ OCs and All The Widows and it’s just really good ok

Memory

Bucky is hard AF to write and very few people write him half so well as magdaliny but one of those people is emilyenrose and this fic is M A S T E R F U L. Bittersweet and achingly perfect. It contains this beautiful moment that really stuck with me, where Steve is comparing the post WS “James” to the Pre War “Bucky” and realizes...

He truly hadn't known James all that well. James hadn't let him. Hadn't wanted him to. Hadn't wanted anyone near him, ever—

—the way Bucky went, when he was miserable, when he was angry...

and that, to me, was kind of key when I went on to write the Soldier, because the Soldier IS Bucky, even when he isn’t.

Fool For Sacrifice

Dona Nobis Pacem

THIS GODDAMN FIC came to me outta FUCKING NOWHERE, I’d already written the first draft for FFS, I’d already started posting it, for crying out loud. And then all of a sudden I stumble upon THIS and i just

It’s already fading, just hours after the skirmish. And the wounds Sam stitched will heal without a mark. And the welts on Steve’s chest will disappear. Like all of it never happened.

Fuck the serum. He keeps thinking it, saying it. Maybe if there were some goddamn scars, it’d be easier to process the damage.

This fic is heavy af, it’s like the 65k word version of That Chapter in FFS Where Steve Hits Rock Bottom. This was the fic I read when I was ramping myself up to tackle That Moment

three white horses

This is the other fic I read to ramp up for That Scene, and I think that probably shows in the way I wrote it. It is also is a Strong Contender for the title of Heavyweight Fic That Convinced Me Buck Is Jewish. Honestly I cannot praise this fic enough.

I think the thing that stuck hardest about the Steve in three white horses is the way he feels ghostly himself, like he’s only drifting through the present, and somehow most of his living happens in the past. It’s very beautifully done, and very subtly done, and it’s my go to fic if I am in Dire Need of a Good Clean Crie.

It’s getting an extra long excerpt because This Is My List And Neither God Nor Man Can Stop Me.

Steve's fingers touch metal when he reaches into the second-to-last box, and he feels the blood drain out of his face even before he's looked down. He knows the feel of it too well. He'd know it blind, a hundred years from now. It's Bucky's not-a-medal.

It'd been Bucky's grandfather's, or maybe his great-grandfather's, made of the kind of sterling silver that tarnishes if you look at it funny, so Bucky had always been polishing it; he'd traded cigarettes to the mess staff for baking soda and vinegar, during the war, but the thing was still soot-black half the time, like it is now. It'd been a fool's errand, wearing a thing like that in Axis territory, but Bucky'd worn it on his chain like the rest of the guys wore their Christophers and Michaels, and HYDRA'd ignored it. It was a subtle thing, though: nothing like wearing a Magen David, or the implacable H on Bucky's tags, just a thin slice of metal with a stylized branch and an oblique squiggle Steve only knows is the Hebrew word for life because Bucky told him so.

Bucky'd had a curious mix of reverence and irreverence about it, the same mixture that seemed to colour the whole of his religious life. He'd teased Steve sometimes, saying, “No, wait, you gotta kiss it before you enter the building, you schmuck, what are you, some kinda heathen?” with his legs around Steve's waist. Bucky hadn't complained when Steve had carried on with an inch of silver between his teeth, but Steve had offhandedly called it Bucky's good luck charm once, and Bucky'd blown up; it's not a superstition, he said, it's not a fucking amulet. He'd apologized later, and he'd explained, and said it was a touchy subject, just ingrained. Jews weren't supposed to believe in luck. Bucky'd thought maybe it was the opposite: maybe luck didn't believe in Jews.

Sparked Up Like a Book of Matches

AH YES, THE FIC THAT TAUGHT ME ABOUT LIL AUDREY JOKES. SIPPY CUPS OF SUPERBOOZE! A ROBOT CALLED SHITCAN!! WHAT MORE COULD YOU NEED IN A FIC??? I really like the way it addresses Steve being in the future is all

This one could probably also fall into the list of fics that inspired DWEH, in part because of This, which stuck with me Hard and heavily influenced the opening:

“...You ever have scarlet fever?"

Sam shakes his head.

"It starts in your throat, like an itch, and as your fever starts to climb, your tongue swells up and turns white and that's when they know, really, even before the rash, that it's scarlet fever. You can't swallow, it hurts so much. You're freezing and your joints ache and your fever keeps spiking and you start to hallucinate. I, uh, I thought things were crawling on me and there were voices that I didn't recognize whispering things that didn't make any sense. My mom had to fight me just to get me to drink broth, but I threw it up most of the time, anyway. Then I got pneumonia from being so worn down from the scarlet fever and I was so lucky, Sam. Nobody seems to understand how I lucky I was to make it through. Talking to people today, to make them understand I'd have to tell them I survived bird flu only to fall sick with Ebola."

listen. For reasons I can’t fully explain, I really wanted to read that happening so i wrote it, and this is what being a writer is All About.

Actually, on a second thought, I might be able to explain it: it’s because an experience like that is Capital F Formative, and I really wanted to explore how there’s a tiny sick kid rattling around inside Captain Beefcake’s souped up bod.

(And an additional shoutout to Steve Rogers’ American Captain, a webcomic that now exists only in the Wayback Machine, but which was L O V E L Y and I sincerely hope that the artist knows that)

No Hope for the Weary

Strays

This fic? is so fluffy?? Like literally so fluffy. But this fic (and, obviously, Infinite Coffee) were very much behind the inclusion of the God Damn Starbucks, and also the source of a lot of my headcanons about Barnes & Rogers: Secret Millennials. For Example: Bucky’s Notes on How To Be A Millennial:

- Lots of coffee. Travel mugs or paper cups from Starbucks place. Often looks guilty for drinking, obv derive pleasure from doing so. Unknown as to why. Investigate further? Why is there one every two blocks if no one wants it there?

Infinite Coffee and Protection Detail

This is another fandom classic that needs very little introduction. A+ characterization, A+ OCs, Utterly Charming from start to finish, and the originator of a very distinct way of talking that got very strongly coded in my brain as Winter Soldier Bucky.

He passes within 4 m of Barnes on his way back to his building. The mission imperative achieves a Doppler effect.

contactContactCONTACTContactcontact

Aw.

If They Haven’t Learned Your Name by @silentwalrus1

If I had to point to one (1) fic and say “Blame This Fic for THYP” it would be this one: the Fic that my roommate and The Gal Pal know as “The One With the USS Motherfucker.” This might seem like an odd statement, because if you’ve read them both, I don’t think you’d necessarily put them in the same class. silentwalrus is a genius of hilarity and THYP is a big pile of The Sads. ITHLYN is delightfully unassuming and I’m sometimes embarrassed by how pretentious THYP ended up being.

I would technically put this under the list of fics that heavily influenced NHFTW on account of the way it portrays Bucky going by gradual degrees from murderbot to mostly human person, but listen I could never write Cryptid!Bucky the way Silentwalrus has. It’s magnificent. And TBH the level of Intensity in ITHLYN’s Steve has is something I aspire to, and the Sam Characterization is On Point, and both those things influenced FFS, 112%. Nat’s Chaotic Slav Energy in this fic is OFF THE GODDAMN CHARTS and I LOVE IT. Every single side character, down to the spaceship is given the kind of care, attention, and characterization that just... it cannot be beat, my dudes.

16/10 highest recommendation. I could not possibly pick a single paragraph from this behemoth but uhhhhh

Two minutes in there’s a grunt and a slippery, gritty noise somewhere to her left, and then the Soldier barrels past at breakneck speed, vanishing down another tunnel. A second later Steve careens around the corner, bounces off the opposite wall and crashes away after him, so fast he’s nearly a blur. Natasha’s brain, entirely of its own accord, provides her with the utterly unhelpful accompaniment of a Yakety Sax soundtrack.

that’s it. that’s the fic.

Also, this fic is Stoutly To Blame for the playlist aspect of the hundred year playlist? Silentwalrus really got me good with Grounds for Divorce by Elbow, one of my all time favorite songs, which was then paired with one of my all time favorite chapters. By the time Caravan Palace’s Lone Digger made an appearance, I was sunk. This fic introduced me to Lyube, and gave me a new appreciation(?) for dubstep. So many of the songs ITHLYN used ended up in my Very Long Stucky Playlist, though I think the only one that then went on to become part of the Hundred Year Playlist: Upside Down and Inside Out by OK GO.

And Finally, the Coup De What The Fuck Ever:

Ain’t No Grave by @spitandvinegar

yet another fandom classic... I wasn’t sure where to put this fic, but I couldn’t NOT include it in the list. Spitandvinegar’s Steve is charming and so? Sweet? and the ANG Bucky is a delightful foulmouthed mess of a person, and the Sam/Claire pairing is something I DIDN’T KNOW I NEEDED, BUT I VERY MUCH NEEDED IT and I don’t know that I can point to a single thing and be like: Ah Yes, This Bit, but this is definitely one of my faves:

Imagine you live in this country, right? And there's a brutal war, and you witness and maybe participate in a horrific amount of violence, and you lose absolutely everyone you care about. Then you end up in this other country, where the culture and ways of doing things are completely foreign to you, and random assholes make fun of you for how you dress and act and talk while you're still coming to grips with the fact that everyone you love is gone and you can never go home again. Meanwhile, everyone around you is like "smile, motherfucker, you're in the Land of Plenty now, where there's a Starbucks on every corner and 500 channels on TV. You should be grateful! Why aren't you acting more grateful?" So you have to pretend to be grateful while you're dying inside. Sound like an traumatized, orphaned refugee? Also sounds like Steve fucking Rogers, Captain Goddamn America. Except that most refugees were part of a community of other people who were going through the same thing. Steve is all alone, the last damn unicorn, if the last unicorn had horrible screaming nightmares about the time when it helped to liberate Buchenwald.

Usually this explanation yields a "huh." People don't want Sad Refugee Steve: they want Captain America, Indestructible Defender of Freedom. But that doesn't mean that Sam isn't right, because he is right, goddamnit. So yeah, Sam's a little protective of Steve. And if the last unicorn finds out that its best damn unicorn friend in the whole world is actually alive, then damn straight, Sam's heading out with a tranq gun and bringing that damn unicorn in and starting a goddamn unicorn wildlife refuge in his backyard. Or something like that: at a certain point the metaphor kind of gets away from him.

Til The End of the Timeline

I’ve recced this so many times you’ve probably all gotten sick of hearing about it, but it’s an invaluable goddamn resource and you should all check it out.

A Shit Ton of Metas and Blogs, some of which are tagged with THYP Research but especially @steve-rogers-new-york and @hansbekhart‘s How To Brooklyn and @historicallyaccuratesteve

and last but certainly not least

LITERALLY EVERYTHING @quietnighty READS HOLY SHIT

If you’re looking for a common thread through all the above recs, it’s that almost all of them have podfics, and the vast majority of those podfics are by Quietnight. I am, and always have been, an audio learner. I read my writing aloud when I’m editing, I listen to audiobooks when I’m commuting, and when I’m cleaning, and when I’m playing computer games, because I like stories, and I especially like listening to stories. Quietnight’s podfics are Of The Highest Quality, and her taste in fic is Impeccable.

hooooly shit this post is long wow okay. I can’t promise I won’t add more to this later, but I’m leaving it for now because goddamn. it’s as complete as I can make it at this time. I’ve added a “THYP Fanfic Bibliography” tag in my bookmarks, and incidentally I really need to make sure I’ve gone through and kudosed all of these because goddamn.

#i don't know how to tag this #thyp research #?#fic rec #??#stucky fic rec #???

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creideamhgradochas · 6 years

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Thanks to the lovely @youngmoneymilla for taking the time to answer these! Get to know more about lovely Eliza, go give her a follow and then show her some love!

These questions are from this list. You should check it out, there’s 50 questions all together and they’d be great to ask your favorite fic writer!

1) How old were you when you first starting writing fan-fiction?

2) Do you prefer writing OC’s or reader inserts? Explain your answer.

I did love writing OC’s because I have a lot of fun with physical description. However, that was when I wasn’t aware of Reader Inserts since I just recently came back into the fanfic world. Reader Inserts are great because I have to work that much harder on giving them a backstory/personality and not focus at all on physical description. Plus, everyone gets to read the work and hopefully find themselves in it. The only thing I hate is being unable to use a name. I can’t write “Y/N” bc it bugs me haha.

3) What is your favorite genre to write for?

Ummm Angst probably? I’m a huge horror fan so, I’m trying to incorporate that into more work.

4) If you had to delete one of your stories and never speak of it again, which would it be and why?

“It Would Have Made it True” just because I didn’t really connect with it that much and the ending was rushed.

5) When is your preferred time to write?

11 am to 10 pm haha. I’m an asshole and write a lot during my job.

6) Where do you take your inspiration from?

I have about a million fics bookmarked from over the years, literally fics from when I was in high school to now. They’re so gorgeously written and they inspire me to write. I pretty much only read non-fiction outside of fanfic so, that doesn’t really work.

7) What’s your favorite scene that you’ve written?

Bathtub/Bedroom scene in the second part of “Bungalows and Baths”

8) Have you ever amended a story due to criticisms you’ve received after posting it?

Yep. In one fic, I included a descriptive characteristic for the reader that implied she was white. It hadn’t even occurred to me but, I immediately fixed it when someone pointed it out.

9) Who is your favorite character to write for? Why?

Tossup between Bucky and Steve. Bucky has the very obvious trauma and grief that’s interesting to write about but, Steve has a lot of buried darkness that’s subtle and extremely intriguing.

10) Who is your least favorite character to write for? Why?

Maybe Bruce? I don’t care that much for his character (despite the fact I love Hulk)

11) How do you come up with the titles for your stories?

A lot of the time, it’s a line that’s said throughout the narrative. However, I have a word doc filled with random quotes I like and I usually throw something together. I always think up the title at the end and it’s always an afterthought. Titles blow.

12) What do you think is the best idea you’ve had for a story so far?

I am currently writing a Bucky x Reader fic (TRYING TO AT LEAST) that is going to take the team to New Orleans. It’s going to involve vampires since I wrote a novella about vampires back in high school and want to re-explore that mythology. However, there is going to be a lot of twists and it won’t be an AU, it’s just introducing the possibility of vampires in the MC universe. The reader and Bucky will both be struggling with the idea of themselves as monsters and trying to help themselves through that. It’s going to be a lot of voodoo and magic and angsty “will they, won’t they”. I’m going off on a tangent now but, that’s the gist. I have not written an actual series in a long time so, this would be my first one.

13) Do you have any abandoned WIP’s? What made you abandon them?

There are many half-filled one- page word docs on my desktop that are rotting away as we speak. I just get bored or think of something else.

14) Are there any stories that you’ve written that you’d really love to do a sequel to?

I’d love to do more fics with the same reader from Bungalows and Baths.

15) Are there any stories that you wished you’d ended differently?

Lol I’m actually annoyed with how I ended 6 Times right now. Not sure why.

16) Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? What is it about them that you admire?

Omg I admire so many but, here are a few.

@bitsandbobsandstuff – obviously for her “Safe with Me” piece which is fantastic, emotional and well-paced. Pacing/keeping the reader on their toes is the hardest thing for me in a series and so, I really admire her ability to do that. I also LOVED her “A Million Invisible Threads” piece because it’s such a gorgeous character study on the Winter Soldier

@a-splash-of-stucky – She’s the Queen of Angst duh and a GORGEOUS writer. I love her stuff. A Messed Up Place left me weak.

@imhereforbvcky – Her “Mirror for the Sun” fic inspired me to start writing from Bucky’s POV actually. She’s just a beautiful writer.

@tilltheendwilliwrite – I love everything she writes. I love all the mythology she brings to her fics while still staying within the Avengers universe. Her smut is on another level, too. I find myself rereading her stuff again and again.

17) Do you have a story that you look back on and cringe when you reread it?

Here and there. There are definitely moments in a fic where I think why did I keep that. It’s usually because I ended it too quickly or just wanted it over.

18) Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence?

I love music when I write fics. It’s all movie scores. I have a spotify playlist for it.

19) Have you ever cried whilst writing a story?

I’ve cried (ish) when writing anything that has to do with alcohol/substance abuse. I’ve been in and out of AA for the past two years and have finally started recovery again. I also have depression so, writing about that can leave me raw. Writing truly always helps though.

20) Which part of your fics have been the hardest to write?

SMUT. Jesus Christ. I struggle so hard with making smut sound hot, as well as lyrical so, it can fit with the narrative. I don’t want to reuse anything I’ve used in other fics before or repeat words but, it’s SO hard (pardon the pun). I always forget what position they’re in and where the body parts need to go. It’s legitimately why I have yet to write a Stucky x Reader fic. I can’t introduce another person into my difficult SMUT journey.

21) Do you make a general outline for your stories or do you just go with the flow?

I usually have a general idea and I’ll have a very vague outline going. I just write everything out like word vomit and go back and edit.

22) What is something you wished you’d known before you started posting fan-fiction?

That some of the best stories I’ve read aren’t necessarily the ones with the most likes or comments. I stumble upon stuff and wonder “HOW DOES THIS NOT HAVE 2K LIKES”.

23) Do you have a story that you feel doesn’t get as much love as you’d like?

That’s tough. Maybe the stuff I wrote in the beginning where I didn’t have many followers. I loved the concept of “You Don’t Mean for it to Happen” but, sometimes I want to rewrite the whole thing. I put a lot of myself into “I Think of You All the Time” but, I feel like that got some good traction. IDK. Bungalows and Baths got a crazy amount of love. Did not expect that but, v grateful.

24) In contrast to 23 is there a story which gets lots of love which you kinda eye roll at?

Nope. I appreciate any love haha.

25) Are any of your characters based on real people?

Well, I think it goes without saying that every reader character has a little bit of the author in there. I think I pull from some of my friends but, not really.

26) What’s the biggest compliment you’ve gotten?

Someone once said that their soul was marked by “Bungalows and Baths” which was amazing haha.

27) What’s the harshest criticism you’ve gotten?

I haven’t really gotten criticism other than that time I screwed up on including a feature for a white reader. I felt terrible about that.

28) Do you share your story ideas with anyone else or do you keep them close to your chest?

Not really. I don’t have people to share them with haha.

29) Do people know you write fan-fiction?

My best friend knows but, she doesn’t read fanfic. Shockingly, my mom and sister know but, I told them that they could never read them. I just share reviews with them. My mom likes to know that I’m staying creative.

30) What’s you favorite minor character you’ve written?

Oh jeez idk if I have one. Natasha isn’t considered a minor character but, she usually plays a side character in my stories and she’s fun to write for.

31) What spurs you on during the writing process?

Once I get started, I’m usually good at keeping it going. Music helps.

32) What’s your favorite trope to write?

Probably slow burn romance or one of the lovers is injured/captured. I also am a huge sucker for love triangles because I’m greedy AF.

33) Can you remember the first fic you read? What was it about?

Lawl this might not have been the first one but, I read a Lizzie Mcguire SMUT piece when I was maybe in 6th grade and was severely chilled to the bone. I was trash even at 12.

34) If you could write only angst, fluff or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why?

Angst. I always write better when I’m emotionally distraught and tortured. Although as I get older, I realize this isn’t fabulous for my own mental health.

#milestone celebration #ask the author #youngmoneymilla

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