it seems like only yesterday

Aang is a menace even in his sleep.

Pierce, as a character, is visually distinctive: he’s not just an older white man, but a very specific genre of older white man. His three-piece suits and tortoiseshell glasses suggest a fondness for the styles, at least, of some happier past: the gentlemen’s era (to me located sort of vaguely pre-Philby) when men like him knew how to be graceful with power, because it was something that came naturally to them, something they would never have to demand. His charm, his generally pleasant demeanor are of a piece with this– after all, as he himself tells Steve, he’s the diplomat: the one who keeps his hands clean while Nick Fury does what needs to be done.

A small story to how I got my Bucky compass

So I was Ace Comic Con last month in Chicago and I stopped by this stall to admire their work when I noticed they were selling Peggy compasses. Naturally, my reaction was to roll my eyes, go on Instagram and put Bucky’s picture in front of it instead (fixing it really) and started chatting up to the creator.

He noticed me looking intently at the compasses and asked if I would’ve liked to purchase one and I decided I wasn’t going to lie. I told him that I would’ve bought it, gladly if it wasn’t Peggy inside of it cause I thought that whole thing became overrated thanks to one film; E*ndga*e.

(If Bucky was there, well we all know I wouldn’t even hesitate.)

He said, “give me a second!”

And proceeded to pull out a Bucky photo from the Winter Soldier book he had on display, removed Peggy and taped on Bucky’s photo in there. I was beyond ecstatic.

Immediately pulled out my cc and said that I would buy it if I could get a proper version of it and we sealed the deal. He told me how he had thought to making a few Bucky compasses for the Houston Con Sebastian was going to be at and now he might do it for real (he did.)

According to said artist, I had just become the first recipient to a Bucky compass made by them and I was on cloud nine.

Yesterday. I received my package and of course I had a mini photoshoot of it because it looks amaZing!

Featuring: the Winter Soldier book, a Bucky Tsum Tsum, and our main star: BUCKY COMPASS!!!

(It’s actually quite weighted and it feels so good to open it and see him in there.)

Anyone else after is irrelevant

And no I will not be taking any criticism at this time

in each movie, we see steve operating under the strength of his convictions, wanting to prove himself, wanting to uphold the ideals and values he believes are most important, wanting to be a soldier.

but in each movie, it’s bucky who acts as the catalyst to steve going rogue. it’s not that he abandons his ideals or his convictions. it’s not that he stops being a soldier. it’s that his mission alters in those crucial moments when he finds out bucky is in trouble. it’s not about duty anymore, not really. it’s about his friend and the very human emotions that churn through him as a result of what’s at stake. 

bucky is the way the audience gets to see the personal cost to steve of being a hero.

in cap 1, it’s not until he hears bucky is in trouble that he is willing to really rise to the mantle of being captain america. even when he thinks bucky is dead, the very notion or hope that he can save him, the need to do something for his friend, is what pushes him to have his real origin story out there in the hydra base.

in cap 2, it’s not until he sees bucky with his mask torn off that he hardens his resolve to fight hydra. he’s been on the run most of the movie, trying to understand what is at work, but when he sees bucky and begins to understand the true nature of what hydra represents–look, he’s already made the decision that hydra has to burn no matter the damage to himself. he’s already willing to die for that conviction. but later, on the helicarrier, the populace saved, he goes rogue again. he stays on that helicarrier to bring bucky back one more time.

and in cap 3, we know that despite the way steve might disagree with the sovakia accords, despite the overarching themes of culpability and freedom, the real driver lies in these words: “im sorry tony, you know i wouldnt do this if i had any other choice, but he’s my friend.” it’s not just that bucky represents the sick and twisted product of deep government corruption. it’s not just that there are two moral sides to this battle and the one captain america is fighting for is personal freedom. it’s that steve is fighting for bucky. he’s making the conscious, human, complex, emotional choice.

Shrinkyclinks doodle I did for a patron some time ago.

Steve – a spoiled brat of rich parents – and Bucky – who works 3 jobs just to pay the rent – are childhood friends. Bucky refuses to get any help because he’s stubborn as hell and too proud and made a joke about how he ’doesn’t want Steve to be his sugar daddy’ on several occasions.

Steve, on the other hand, would very much like to be just that 😎

Im living for that

i heard someone said do the other one so

SHIELD WAS NEVER THE GOOD GUYS

Shield was always meant to be shady. I understand that they were there to help the people and keep them safe, but it was built during the Cold War. Where spies, undercover agents were the norm for so many people. That’s just how it was! It’s the Cold War guys, you had to do some bad shit to make sure a lot of people stayed safe.

And I know a lot of you guys love Peggy and think she can’t do anything wrong because she’s the queen feminist, but she started up shield knowing they would be doing a lot of shady stuff. That’s what they had to do to protect the world and I’m sure she wasn’t happy with she had to do a lot of the times, but she knew it was necessary. Girl wasn’t scared to get her hands dirty and nothing wrong with that.

But that also means she let Zola join shield and I don’t, for one second believe that she didn’t have a hand in him joining. If she didn’t want him there, she would’ve made sure that happened, everyone listened to Peggy. And everything Steve wouldn’t have stood for, Peggy had to do and did without hesitation.

Let’s not think that Shield were the good guys. That’s a pretty lose term to use with them considering that the reason Hydra was under everyone’s nose for so long and only when Steve started questioning them, is because they did shady and questionable shit all the time.

I MEAN LOOK AT PROJECT INSIGHT FOR FUCKS SAKE! Hydra got away with being in the very visible shadows because shield agreed with everything they presented (but guess who didn’t??? That’s right. Your boy, Steven G Rogers!) and Bucky was just the rotten cherry drowned in chocolate sauce of that plastic sundae that finally gave Steve the clarity that shield shouldn’t be saved. Not that it can’t. That it shouldn’t.

Absolutely!

I think a lot of us have realized that Steve wasn’t the naive and inexperienced farm boy that they tried to make him seem. For one, Steve’s background as a poor son of Irish Catholic immigrants (something the movies don’t ever really talk about) from Brooklyn suggests he might have some life experience. He’s also 25/26 in the film so he’s not exactly someone just opening their eyes to adulthood. So, maybe he totally didn’t misunderstand the whole fondue thing? Maybe he was just casually asking if she and Howard were together using the language he just heard Howard, a notorious womanizer, use.

That sets us up for the bar scene. Up until now, most of the meta and gif sets I’ve seen imply this was Bucky realizing that he had lost Steve to Peggy (the song supports this!), but let’s look at what really happens:

- Steve and Bucky are talking (about the uniform).

- Peggy walks in fully dressed and made up.

- Peggy finds Steve with info about equipment that Howard wants him to try the next morning (an excuse to talk to him).

- Steve looks her up and down, knowing what’s happening, while Bucky looks to Steve (because he knows when a girl is signaling).

- Peggy tries to fill the silence with a comment about the Howling Commandos singing.

- Bucky tries to lead the conversation into the realm Peggy actually getting her dance.

- Bucky implies that there is room to dance and asks her because Steve isn’t.

- Peggy repeats Steve’s words to him implying she’s the right partner.

- Steve does not take the cue and Peggy…just leaves.

- Steve and Bucky sit down to finish their drink while Steve does a callback to their double dates.

Which is also *screams against pillow* why retconning it into something else doesn’t work. “I had a date” is Steve-speak for “what do you fucking think I apparently got yeeted 70 years into the future and you’re asking me what” when Fury asks him if he’ll be okay. Which doesn’t mean he was opposed to going on that date with Peggy! Just, it’s not what Steve is actually talking about. He’s being, maybe sarcastic isn’t the exact word, but something close to that.

(Which doesn’t necessarily mean he was opposed to the idea of dating her! But the whole context of everything, you know… he’s a soldier on a mission he doesn’t really expect/intend to get out of alive. After Bucky dies his intention is to destroy Hydra, it’s no longer ~hey let’s help out with this war shall we~. The fact that he “invites” her to a dance when he’s going to what is, for all intents and purposes, his death is NOT being ~too late~ or ~waiting too long~, it’s BECAUSE he’s going to die. He had opportunities to dance with her before then! And yet he didn’t pick them. He gives her the closest thing to closure he can give her given the circumstances.)

If he cared about dating Peggy, why didn’t he make a date before he already knew it was going to be impossible to keep? Mr seize-the-moment, jump out of airplanes?? 

Forcing Peggy to listen to him die- (well, kill himself, lesbionest) -seems cruel unless you look at it from the perspective of Steve thinking he is being chivalrous and acknowledging her feelings, as one last kindness before he goes… only in a situation where he won’t be forced to follow through and deliver on his end.

And re: his background. 

I don’t credit the screenwriters with putting in enough effort to know that Brooklyn at the time Steve grew up was actually very down and dirty, openly queer and with a lot of counter-cultural things and prostitution going on (Coney Island was basically Cruising and Vaudeville Central.) 

But if you do factor that in, then there’s no way Steve is totally ignorant unless it’s because he chooses to be; more like, he turns a blind eye, but is aware of it. Like he prefers to be more prim n’ proper, but not because he is judgy or ignorant. 

I do wonder how much sex he’d actually have had the opportunity to engage in, though. I mean, if he’s Catholic, where does the whole ‘no contraception’ thing come in? And if the conversation in the car with Peggy is, in his own words, the longest he’s ever spoken to a woman…? 

Obviously not every scene translates perfectly because some (like Peggy being the prize they won for getting the flag) depend on her being a woman, and the one (1) time they kissed is ? I mean I don’t think marvel would include that, but if they did I think it’d read more as a gay awakening for Steve rather than True Loves First Kiss, yk?

Other scenes, e.g. Peggy SHOOTING HIM (!) and Peggy throwing heraelf at him at the bar and being rebuffed and Peggy being extremely callous about Bucky’s death which benefitted her (doubly so if Bucky is also gender swapped here) for the most part I feel come across more like “sad gay man won’t understand his crush doesn’t like him back/is only being polite and slowly turns evil because of it”, although maybe thats because I’ve been villain-peggy-pilled. At the very least I don’t imagine many people would be insisting that the smattering of scenes in CATFA and CATWS was proof that they were soulmates and the only satisfying ending for Steve would be travelling back in time to be with him. Even if they were read as Steve being mlm I think it’d just lead to more people shipping Stony or Samsteve or whatever.

I think I’ve spoken before about how the bar scene and the scene where Peggy shoots him for rejecting her is basically every woman’s nightmare were they flipped. But it’s also weird how Peggy is basically a male power fantasy in this way, just unthinkingly pulling a gun during scenarios that do not require it. It’s a ‘he has a gun so he may as well use it’ mentality. The scenario where she stands in the middle of the street and shoots at the Hydra guy speeding at her in a car is not a winning scenario and definitely not something someone with their full faculties intact would do, but it’s a shot to show she knows how to use a gun so she’s going to. Same with when she shoots his shield and when she shows up with a flame thrower in the end battle. Why’d she have a flame thrower? Idk, they need to show she’s powerful and can save Steve. This extends to CATWS where she basically uses the connections she’d gained during the war to help found SHIELD. I can see how the power fantasy is appealing when it’s a woman, but flip it and you’ve seen this guy before.

Steve is interesting because he’s supposed to be the male power fantasy, but flipped, almost nothing changes, but it’s slightly more infuriating. He has no power and no ambition for power, but he gains it through proving himself repeatedly. When Steve is seen through the female perspective, the struggle to get an opportunity despite his competence and the pure tenacity that keeps him going despite everything is resonant as well as frustrating. Then of course, there’s the fact that he thinks he’s finally got his big opportunity to prove himself only to be relegated to a performative version of what he wants while wearing tights which is also relatable.

All this said, the triangle that’s created when we gender swap Steve and Peggy is familiar to everyone. It’s a story we’ve seen a thousand times. Steve is the girl caught in the middle of two guys: the shiny new person who’s showering him with attention now that he’s proven himself to everyone, and the guy that’s known him and liked him all along, way before he had anything (“even when I had nothing, I had Bucky”). Which guy do we root for? Who have we always rooted for in this scenario? New guy who shot him out of jealousy or the one who likes the real him? We’re not out of order to see the relationship where it is. This is how the story plays out when you don’t have a heteronormative filter.

Where the Fancy Rich Guy (Peggy) takes on a scrawny, laughably-pitiful loser of an Art Girl with a social conscience (Steve), whom he finds amusing. 

But she isn’t fit for purpose as-is so he arranges for someone else to give her a makeover, whereupon, suddenly he realises that not only is Loser Girl hot but– wouldn’t you know it! what a coincidence! –he has developed Feelings for her, now, and credits himself for spotting her inner potential. 

It’s never mentioned that, if he had truly valued her for herself, he would’ve asked her out before the make-over. (And no one else should be allowed to date this new hot version of her because he got there first.)

(But imagine if Scrawny Loser Art Girl had also a best friend, Average Guy, who had been at her side for years, through thick and thin, expecting nothing in return. Who was also fancy like Rich Guy, but not as fancy, and obviously thought Loser Girl was the bees knees just the way she was. And imagine if, despite AverageGuy’s fears of being replaced, Loser Girl kept blowing off Rich Guy to go out with him instead, even when Rich Guy gets dressed up to impress her, etc. etc… I mean, it’s just so damn obvious!)  

I’m leery of bashing on Peggy because of how often this happens to female characters “in the way” of a m/m pairing, and because a lot of the “evil Peggy” discourse has some intentional misreads of lines, but the idea of the gender-swap makes things a lot murkier. there’s some really interesting points in here

Personally, I’d be willing to discount the ‘Peggy shoots at Steve’ scene as CMW (Clueless Mens’ Writing); and, hypothetically, say the hiring of Zola is treated as a character assassination (unaware-that-they’re-casually-pro-nazi Mens’ Writing). But even then, with Peggy’s positive character in tact…

It doesn’t alter the fact that, if you switched the genders, Steve pulls a full-on Mulan act for Bucky, multiple times, even with zero potential return (because Bucky might be dead, or incurably evil). And Bucky likewise puts himself on the line for Steve (wading into alleyway brawls is the least of it). 

But Steve never makes any grand romantic overt gestures to prove his feelings for Peggy; and, frankly, neither does she. 

(Getting someone a lift behind enemy lines is not an impressive undertaking when you’re the head of a spy organisation, and also happen to be friends with Howard Stark; and believing in the odds of a super soldier not dying is not a grand leap of faith, it’s just common sense. Are we supposed to believe that everyone else who thinks supersoldier Steve can handle himself in a fight is, therefore, the One for him?) 

I’ve spoken about this ad nauseam, but Peggy is the founder of a corrupt intelligence agency. The first time we meet her she’s taking part in a secret human experiment. It’s not a far stretch that she and her partners recruited the guy who had experience with the same experiment. She’s not an innocent person. It’s actually pretty wild to treat her like she is. And I find it quite weird to ignore this for fear of looking like you’re bashing her for shipping reasons seeing as nothing I have said above has anything to do with a ship and everything to do with Peggy’s individual actions within the canon. If you want to ignore this for shipping reasons, you are absolutely free to.

If they had really played into the ‘even Steve thought she was good but she was bad the whole time and even she believed she was morally defensible’ thing. 

The contrast between her – a villain who did everything knowingly, and Bucky,  a villain who did everything unknowingly, under duress (but everyone thinks he’s the monster). 

What a parallel! 

There is an interesting parallel that someone pointed out a long time ago, that both Peggy and Bucky have memory issues, but while Bucky is on the way to gaining it back, Peggy is on the way to losing it. This could also reflect their agency or power. While Bucky is gaining his back, Peggy, (or SHIELD, really. It’s her life’s work) is losing hers. I imagine Peggy is self aware in the nursing home. She does admit that she “mucked it up,” but I feel like she’d still have defended what she did.

I wonder if this is part of why so many (myself included!) didn’t particularly pay attention to what you zeroed in on in CATWS, that Peggy was clearly deeply involved with recruiting and working with Zola. Because even though her whole character is framed as Singular Woman Who Gets To Be In Charge, its easy not to think about her being in charge in this situation, especially since she hardly has any screen time in CATWS and things move along from the zola reveal quite quickly. A couple of friends I’ve mentioned this to have even uneasily said she didn’t have a choice or she didn’t know, both of which are demonstrably untrue but would fit if you were going on a very instinctive, implicit, woman = less/no agency stereotype. Nazis happened to Peggy! Even if she recruited them, she didn’t choose to do that!

ofc the only scenes in the avengers are the deleted scenes where he’s wandering around and just looking so lost and out of place (but let’s remember he was out of place in the 40s too, and he gets used to the present and lived in it for twelve years!!!! no one would wanna go back after all that time)

in catws, we see his conversations with sam, how he doesn’t know what to do with himself besides superhero-ing (but finding out bucky is alive gives him a newfound purpose here, his friendships with sam and nat and others very much give him reason to be happy in this new life), we see him sad at the museum, missing bucky and peggy and the howlies, but immediately after that is the scene with peggy where she tells him she wants him to live his life! which, following that scene……he does in fact start to, with his friends AND with the hint that he and sharon would get together (it didn’t interest me, but if we’re talking canon here, then sharon IS part of it, which only made endgame’s ending more insane). most of his pain later in catws is his guilt over what happened to bucky, about not saving him, the pain he feels over bucky not being able to remember him……none of that is about missing the past. even the flashback scene, it’s purpose is to show the devotion between steve and bucky and so later steve can say “i’m with you till the end of the line” as bucky said to him, not to show that steve still wishes he lived in the previous century

most of aou kinda just……..ignores catws, but if we have to accept it as canon, then sure we see some of steve’s nostalgia, he seems sad not having that married with kids life or whatever i hate joss whedon his version of steve is Weird (but again…….we’re already set up for steve/sharon in cacw, so like there is potential for him to have that life later on with her or someone else). sure, there’s the dance scene but somehow people never remember that’s a NIGHTMARE, not steve wishing he could go back and dance with peggy. and at the end of the movie, he says “i’m home” (and he again refers to the avengers compound as home in iw!!)

cacw and iw don’t even show ANY indications of him missing the past. in cacw he’s leading the avengers, he’s still close with nat and sam, he’s become close with wanda, he’s still searching for bucky, and the whole movie is in fact about protecting bucky and how the two of them reconnect in this different time they’ve both ended up in. again, his grief is there though, over peggy’s death, but it’s not a thing of wishing he had his chance with her, since ya know, the canon love interest of that movie is sharon. he even tells tony in his letter at the end that he never fit in anywhere, so why would the 40s be a better place for him than the present, where nearly all the people he cares for are?

again in iw, he’s still got his closest friends, he’s still on good terms with the other avengers even after the events of civil war. his screen time is very limited of course, so the only grief we see is at the very end when the snap happens. how do you reconcile the horror on steve’s face, touching the ground where bucky just turned to dust, with the movie following, where bucky isn’t mentioned at all