72 of them

The artistic ecosystem of Bucky Fanfiction is an intricate, fascinating, gorgeous landscape of entwined artistic works that deserves analysis and recognition

most contemporary storytelling considers "originality" as an inherently good quality. Creators are encouraged to conceal their influences as much as possible, so it should be difficult to trace directly where ideas descended from. It's not spoken out loud but once you see it, you can't stop realizing how weird it is.

An artistic ecosystem that rejects that premise can do some BONKERS stuff.

It's intoxicating to see stories interacting on an ecosystem level so closely, exchanging and circulating ideas, refining and clarifying

And with early Stucky fandom, it's driven by this frenetic sense of passion. I don't think everyone believed that the ship would become canon, but in a way that's hard to describe, you can tell they believed it was real.

Once you get the beginnings of one of the Great Stories together, it just won't stop. Creativity will come to people like possession.

If you really believe harm is bad, and eliminating harm is a worthy goal, you have to start with small steps: eliminate a small harm, not all harms all at once. Reduce a great harm a little, perhaps by helping one individual impacted by that harm, and then another individual, and another... You cannot tackle all harm at once; you must take smaller bites. Set this reality against your need to feel right & correct & pure & perfect. Reducing some harm instead of all harm is not failure! You are not a failure! You may fail now and again, but failing once or twice or ten thousand times doesn't change the fact that you can still try again and succeed! You are not a failure even when you fail to reach your impossible goal of perfection.

You can criticize hypocrisy without making homophobic jokes or using homophobic nicknames.

And if YOU feel YOU can't, that's just a fucking skill issue.

You can talk about the fact that it's really fucked up that his frequenting of gay sex workers was an "open secret," as was his sexuality full stop, without making jokes that boil down to "hahaha look at the faggot."

in 1999, an italian named giancarlo pasquini released a europop song under the alias dave rogers called Deja Vu. this song was picked up as the theme song for the above anime. it in turn became a meme, a shorthand for drifting and Cool Moves as a concept.

in 1983, air canada flight 143, a full sized 767, ran out of fuel halfway to edmonton, alberta. this is not something you want to have happen to a huge airplane. the flight chose to try and make an emergency landing at a nearby decomissioned airforce base (as they were falling fast and could not make it to a proper airport), where they ran into a second problem: they were falling out of the sky at 500 feet per mile, but reached gimli (the base in question) while still too high to safely land. normally a plane would just do a big loop-de-loop to lose altitude, but they had maybe three minutes of airtime left before they hit the ground: not enough time to make any kind of circle. the pilot, therefore, decided to execute a side slip to lose speed and altitude. this is Not a move you want to do with a massive 767, because airplanes are not built for that and if you screw it up that plane is hitting the ground at a high speed at a weird angle and breaking into a million pieces. nevertheless, the captain tried it... and succeeded. the plane landed perfectly, and there were no major injuries! (a couple of people did get minor injuries when evacuating the plane after.) he did it so well, in fact, that the plane was refueled, flown out of gimli a couple days later, and continued to fly for another 20 years with the nickname "Gimli Glider."

what is a side-slip, you ask?

it's drifting.

the guy goddamn drifted his 767.

in 2008, the tv show Mayday: Air Disaster featured the gimli glider with full reenactments as an episode on season five of their show.

and so, in conclusion, the thing i have been giggling to myself about all weekend:

- it’s fun to be awake & in an upright position

- consciousness is a gift