i wanna preface this by saying im a fan of bucky but christ bucky is the manic pixie dream 2015 wattpad self insert protagonist type character of the mcu cap fandom and i 100% think its bc hes a hot white cis man who's enough of a blank slate for ppl to both obsessively over analyze every little moment he's in and to fill in all the blanks with whatever they want. im not bashing anyone or saying its necessarily wrong to have a blank slate but i wish ppl would just. calm down abt him a bit lmao

(also as a continuation of the bucky anon i just wanna say that this is like something ive noticed over years of being in the stevebucky fandom with how many ppl esp in fic and stuff just make steve play second fiddle in his own relationship and either dumb him down and mischaracterize him so bucky can be the Smartest Best Special Boy or make him an all forgiving saint with no needs or desires so he can be bucky's crutch)

oh my god that last bit about mischaracterizing steve and bucky being a saint sdfks YEAH it happens a lot, i think especially when there's some sort of steve/bucky/peggy love triangle in the mix

but yeah it did get frustrating at a point bc it was understandable post catws when ppl were writing fics and all they really had to draw from was catfa and the flashback in catws to draw from, and post catws bucky wasn't gonna be exactly like that version of himself, even if he was getting his memories back. but post cacw it's like, okay bucky HAS a personality - and fandom has been saying for years that he doesn't, like you are right that he's just enough of a blank slate to take some liberties, but he DOES have a personality in cw, the problem is more that bc it wasn't actually a captain america movie, steve himself didn't get as much focus so bucky especially didn't get as much as he might have if we'd gotten an ACTUAL cap 3 - so it's like. come on y'all can write him as a real person, you don't have to write him as being more in love with steve, you don't have to write him as a perfect angel who's So Good for loving steve despite whenever steve fucks up, which like, again, in fic are often kinda like, would steve be dumb in that way bc i don't think he would! obvs there are different ways to be smart but steve IS smart

i think part of it also has to do with sebastian and that's another thing that does kinda bug me. like let me be clear i do like sebastian and he is a fantastic actor, but he's one of those ones where ppl just yell about how he's the best actor and i don't think it's actually that he's performing better than most of the actors around him in the mcu, it's just that the character he's playing has all the trauma - as if the other characters don't, we just don't see much of it onscreen lmao - so ppl think that makes him more talented than everyone else (kinda think it was the same thing with dylan o'brien on teen wolf he'd shed a tear and ppl would yell about how he's the best actor in the world and fandom used that to push the main character of color to the side and forget about him in favor of the white sidekick ANYWAY that's bugged me forever though i can acknowledge my fave teen wolf ship is half dylan o'brien's character)

but yeah i think it's gotten somewhat worse since endgame bc fandom really loves the narrative that steve is terrible and selfish and bucky is an angel now, even though......y'all like bucky bc you were fans of the captain america trilogy so how can you buy into the idea that steve would do anything he did endgame. but like so many of those supposed fix it fics? would have steve going back to peggy for a WHILE and coming back to be with bucky - i skimmed one bc i was wary of the summary or tags or both and it was like steve came back as an old man and was like "yeah i spent my life with peggy and now i wanna start over and do it with you, you guys can just de-age me like you did with scott in the time machine :)" (as if that wasn't an accident would they even have been able to figure out how to do it on purpose??) that one was horrible - it's like, at that point, if you think steve sucks and bucky is a baby angel with no spine, why do you even want them to end up together? why on earth WOULD bucky be with steve after these kinds of actions? i don't get it

another thing, like i know sebastian outright said he played it like steve and bucky had had a conversation about going back in time - i think he said the directors told him they did like it's not onscreen! come on! i know you don't have to see everything onscreen but...actors/directors saying it doesn't make it canon - so like yeah obvs watching it, it looks like bucky knows about steve's plan before it's revealed to the audience - and hello, endgame steve straight up lied to everyone else about coming back after he returns the stones like how do y'all think it would be okay for him to ONLY tell bucky and not sam, his other best friend - but like idk, my thing is, just bc they said steve and bucky had a conversation, does not mean it's true, you could just make the argument that bucky knew what steve wanted enough to know what he would do - though let's be clear, the endgame ending is NOT what steve ever wanted in mcu canon lmao - it doesn't mean this conversation actually happened because why else would they re-exchange the "don't do anything stupid till i get back" thing if they both knew steve wasn't going to come back unless it was just for show, which still, like, they're the only ones who knew what they said to each other before bucky shipped out in catfa? anyway this bit probs wasn't relevant to anything you said but it BUGS me

anyway yeah i love bucky but you're exactly right about how fandom interprets him and his relationship with steve it's all just Annoying