Another Sambucky story I would really want to write when my brain allows me to do it would be the one that really focuses on their loneliness. Because I feel like it’s something very deeply ingrained in both of these characters that’s surprisingly rarely explored in stories - especially when it comes to Sam.

I feel like Sam and Bucky have a natural talent for forming quick bonds with people. Even Bucky, despite... everything... seemed to have an easy time talking to Leah, Ayo, Sam’s family, or Sam himself after knowing them for a relatively short time. Sam, meanwhile, has an important connection with his community, became friends with Steve in an instant, and seemed to be acquainted with most Avengers after knowing them for a rather short time.

It looks like they want to and could potentially have a social life.

But at the same time... they’re so wildly independent and stubborn that they keep putting a barrier between themselves and other people. Bucky, by not responding to messages, going into hiding, or literally putting himself in a freezer. And Sam, by leaving for the military, then living far away from his family in DC, or by going on missions alone, instead of asking for help.

(Not to mention that Sam had dropped his job at the VA and life in DC without a second of regret, so I doubt he had a flourishing social life or a bunch of close friends who’d noticed that he’s gone.)

So, to sum up... Sam and Bucky both want to connect with people, however, these relations seem very surface level and short-lived - even if they’re genuine. Because they often prefer to be alone, but push it a bit too far at times. Or because they’re at a point in their life when they just can’t allow themselves to have friends, let alone a partner - Hydra, military, being a fugitive... or being dead.

And... finally. I’d love to explore how Bucky is the only person who’s truly able to break Sam’s barriers and emotional defenses (and vice versa). How no one else could get so close to them except for the other, because they crave the human contact and closeness, but nobody understood them well enough, until now, to make the relationship actually meaningful.

does your steve have tumblr?

No-thank god.

I was thinking about the whole... what's more progressive debate out of m/m romance representation and actually close and tender (as opposed to buddyish) m&m friendships. And how utterly futile and insulting to the need for more of both a debate it is when we need infinitely more of both and a lot of other things.

Fundamentally, between the lingering after-effects of the Hays Code and the extremist end of Christianity (not that those two are unconnected) and the patriarchy (ditto) and militarism and capitalism... in mainstream Western story media we still struggle to get *any* genuine emotional intimacy that isn't:-

romance between a different-gender couple who are both cishet, and which if it's happy will lead to marriage (but hasn't yet).

marriage between ditto, but only if they haven't been together very long (after they have for a few years they're supposed to bicker all the time).

at an extreme pinch, fond closeness between blood relatives, especially if at least one of them is a woman.

Friendships between men and between women are okay so long as there's a... distancing of rivalry and teasing. If you can imagine one of them tucking the other in or stroking their hair (especially if they're both men) or being utterly and wholly in solidarity with each other (especially if they're both women)... hm, no.

And that's... it. We're still at a point in mainstream western media where anything that deviates from, especially to the extent of serious warmth and trust and confidence and understanding between the characters, that feels at least a little transgressive, especially in e.g. a blockbuster movie. We're still at a point where everything else is under-represented. Less and less so, thank everything, but still.

I'm thinking of some of my favourite relationships in fiction at the moment and how they fuck with those stereotypes and do better things (and always as part of awesome stories, because as always, good rep is important but it should never be treated as everything). :-) This is inevitably a v personal list, I'm not claiming that anything here is The Purest And Least Problematic Thing Ever, and this is very much just a, "this is what's enthusing me right now" thing. :D

yes they're a het couple and both cis, but: Mike and Alison Cooper in Ghosts. They have been married for a few years now, and they actually like each other. They're best friends as well as lovers, and I know that some critics have actually had a problem with this and regard it as unrealistic. [facepalm] I adore so much that they're not a stereotypical sitcom married couple, nothing like. In a quiet way they are utterly defiant and fuck completely with the genre.

Donna Noble & the Doctor in Doctor Who. I mean, do I need to say much more? :D Close, glorious platonic friendship between a woman and... the Doctor. Some of the most beautiful platonic love in any fiction ever and it's so tender and gorgeous and fun. Adore it. <3

Red, White, and Royal Blue is a silly film but omg I adore it and part of it is seeing all of those standard romance beats between two men. And with a lot more true closeness than a lot of het romcoms manage. We're getting more and more of this (we need more between women too, and indeed other queer romances of many and various kinds!!!). <3 <3 <3

yes, they're shit at expressing their love for each other most of the time, but I still stubbornly add: E Morse & Fred Thursday in Endeavour. The fact that they're inhabiting the 1960s-70s and there is no framework for their mutual affection and devotion is of course part of why things get so hard for them both. They don't know what to do with it or where to place each other in their priorities, but the loyalty and the tenderness is there, and some remarkable emotional intimacy at times considering who they both are. We watch and interpret it as father-son or as romantic or as fraternal or as an intense and wonderful (and complicated and difficult) friendship. But it defies easy definition and... and oh goodness well anyone who's been following me for any length of time knows how I can go on about them, apologies. ;-)

the entire Fellowship of the Ring, but especially Frodo and Sam. And whatever my mixed feelings on the PJ films of The Lord of the Rings, my Gods am I endlessly glad and grateful that they retained warmth and intensity and devotion and intimacy. I worry that it wouldn't have been if made now, with a more stereotypical masculinity so much in the ascendant in mainstream film-making (we really are in the midst of a patriarchal/homophobic/transphobic reaction :( ). As with Morse and Thursday, you can absolutely interpret some of the connections there as romantic (and we know that Tolkien was remarkably non-homophobic for a man of his generation and religion), or as platonic. Either way, what matters is that there's serious love there between male characters and that goes right back to the books. Tolkien could be problematic af, but I love him so much for how he writes masculinity and love between men. <3

Heartstopper, not just for Nick/Charlie and Tara/Darcy, but also because of Charlie's friendships with Elle, Isaac, and (especially, actually) Tau.

everything with Found Family, and especially everything with Found Family where there is no easy equivalence to a "nuclear" family to map the characters on to.

Honestly I could go on. Hooray for all of these! But also: we are still in a position where these all feel subversive and make a lot of the more bigoted critics spectacularly uncomfortable (even when there is no actual queer rep). We're still in a position where mainstream film series and some tv shows struggles with anything like this, and/or will sabotage a friendship between men and even an entire character arc because it's got too close and intimate and there's a desperate need to "no homo" everything (*coughs* Steve Rogers *coughs*). We're still in a position where romance between women and any romance involving trans people of any gender is dramatically under-everythinged (but that between cis men is also still not exactly even a fraction of where it should be). We're still in a position where honestly even the representation of romance between cishet characters is most often weirdly distant and lacks real closeness or mutual liking between them (often, let's face it, because the writers struggle to write women as people). I snarked a bit at first about the debate as to which is more important and under-represented between m/m romance and really open and loving m&m friendship, but honestly the main problem with that debate is that dividing up the exact same problem: we aren't going to get more open and loving representations of m&m friendship until the media get less afraid of the relationship being interpreted as romantic whether or not it is, by both fans and haters. (I.e. don't blame the shippers when a production company loses their nerve and trashes a friendship between men so that it's not seen as romantic! Blame homophobia. I mean, to put it on its simplest real-life terms, it's consistently my experience in the UK at least that het male allies are in general vastly more comfortable hugging each other than homophobes are.)

me seeing any white man with long brown hair and a beard: bucky barnes?!!??!??!?

"Barry Keoghn was a standout in Eternals" Pls stop making me dislike the man when you ignore the other talented actors of color in that movie 🙄

i have truly not known peace since i saw someone on twitter suggest that namor/k'uk'ulkan's father might have been a spanish conquistador whom fen fell in love with, and that this discovery regarding his parentage would be what leads k'uk'ulkan to renounce his "i want to burn the surface world" ways 🫠

like. if he ever were to reform, it better be because he actually engages with and hears the perspectives of the maya in central america or other colonized indigenous peoples elsewhere in the world. (this would probably still end with someone somewhere getting set on fire though. it is what it is.)

my guy will never have a "favorite colonizer" or go hashtag not all colonizers, let's be real 😭😭 that trauma is deep-seated!

(and also, were we not meant to understand that the man fen buries at the beginning of the flashback is her husband?? like he's just some guy and that's okay!!!)

I set out to develop an oc trying to figure out how to make a green color palette interesting when I don't vibe with how it'd look on armor (im sorry boba fett...) & messing with character creator picrews suddenly lead to a gold and white palette and now she's a yellow character instead of green. The pipeline

sam: heads up!

*throws cupcake, hits bucky in the face*

bucky: what the hell??

sam: i said heads up.

*moments later*

bucky: hey, catch this!

*throws knife at sam*

was just thinking about how when mad max: fury road, popularly known as 'the first feminist action film', was released in 2015 and tom hardy, one of the only leading male in an otherwise all-female cast, was getting all sorts of sexist questions like 'isn't it disturbing to have all this estrogen around you? as you were reading the script didn't you think why are all these women here? isnt this supposed to be a man's movie?' and the guy was apalled and had to angrily reply to these reporters to shut them down

and now you have winston and tenoch openly praising their all-female cast, talking about how compassionate and kind they've been, how they've helped them deal with their insecurities and how they don't know who to thank to have put these ladies in front of them. and you have interviewers asking these women more than just their training routines to get into their suits, and these women can get to talk about their larger roles in developing the story and their characters

the day Vision gets his own nendoroid is the day I’d go broke ‘cuz you have no idea how much I’d spend for a nendoroid of him

hate how many fanfics that focus on The Smart Character boil down to “he is correct about everything and everyone who ever made a move against him is Wrong and the entire rest of the world agrees once they see sense so they rise up to punish the Wrong in defense of the special boy while showering him in all the praise and apologies he deserves but never got”

like damn dude maybe i just wanna read abt the smartass being a flawed but lovable idiot just like he and the rest of the cast always are, or perhaps an interesting and nuanced plot that doesn’t blatantly favor the author’s blorbos and reduce the characters they don’t like to convenient caricatures/punching bags

I know that it’s not the most common interpretation, because a lot of fans find the actor handsome, but I honestly like the idea of Bucky being... not that attractive. At least when he’s after his Hydra treatment.

Most people see his flirtatious behaviour and good looks as a big part of his characterization, but I prefer to think about those things as something he has also lost over time. It just makes more sense to me that he would look less presentable in the 21st century, considering his experiences.

And it also makes Sam’s affection for him even more special, because it’s not just: “Sam is reckless and does anything for a pretty boy” (which is also a fun plot at times), but more of a: “it never mattered to Sam if Bucky looked good, because he cares about him so much that it’s irrelevant”.

Idk... maybe I’m just not a big fan of a “tragically beautiful” trope. But also the idea of Bucky re-learning how to take care of himself and look better while he heals is more appealing to me that him just being freed from years of torture and looking like a model with no effort. And... It’s also a cute idea for a fic where Bucky would not care about his looks at all, but the moment he meets Sam, he suddenly wants to comb his hair, or shave, or find clean clothes. (Even though Sam had liked him even when he had dark under eyes, uneven beard, or greasy hair.)

As I’ve said before so many times I don’t even like MCU D/ruig and I’m sick of his face in the tags BUT I also hate seeing people stick their OC with him because how Dare you shove M/akkari out of the picture!

It’s like how I saw a Dune fic where it’s you\Leto and his love for you is why he never married Lady J.essica like IDGAF ABOUT LETO BUT DONT YOU DARE BESMIRCH MY LADY J

I honestly feel bad for riri. The US government took her class project in a selfish attempt to covet vibranium for themselves and further agitate Wakanda and the domino effect led to the queen herself protecting riri with her life. That's going to stick on her for a long while

The craziest part of being in the Eternals fandom is seeing pple thirsting after Barry Keoghn and Richard Madden, and meanwhile Im just sitting here by my lonesome thinking about Kumail Nanjiani's dance scene, Brian Tyree Henry's quiet domesticity with Haaz Sleiman, and Ma Dong Seok's beautiful arms

i'm not going to lie i do think it's unrealistic to believe people are going to completely excise harry potter from their lives even if it's the morally responsible thing to do. people who fell in love with those books are going to pass them on to their children and have them watch the movies and talk about their hogwarts houses forever. and honestly even though the books are flawed and not very well written i don't think the people who continue to read and enjoy them because of what they meant to them when they were young are evil. ALL THAT BEING SAID if you continue to monetarily support harry potter through official merch, universal studios, and playing this video game you are supporting an actively hateful person who has had legitimate sway in the disenfranchisement of trans people in the uk and it is very very easy now given everything we know to reject any new media she has a hand in/stands to earn money from.