#radialarch

this was hard!!! but these are the ones i think about most/keep going back to/stuck with me all these years. apparently I like it to hurt

1. i like my body when it is with your - e.e. cummings

2. conversation with mary - gabrielle bates

3. pomegranate - sol rios

4. leda and the swan - william butler yeats

WOW going straight for the throat I see I see!!!!

I'm excluding plays & poetry from this, because I will actually cry if I have to weigh pratchett against shakespeare. THEREFORE: novels only, in no actual order:

sarah waters' Fingersmith. blew me up, cut me down, ate my heart whole & spat it out remade. obviously I cannot Say A Word about the plot, because that would spoil too much to unwary tumblrers, but this is a book about hatred and desperation and grief and horror & also a book about fascination and attraction and seeing true for the first time. and sex. maud & sue are each other's foils, shadows, personas, and ghosts, each other's assured ruin and fragile rebirth. I adore it.

terry pratchett's Going Postal. honestly, this could have been night watch, or monstrous regiment, or hogfather, or small gods — but I'm listening to the going postal audiobook as i type this (the moist audiobook, if you will), and so much of it is truly, deeply heart-shattering. a story about a con man forced into public service, a harangue against capitalism, a plea for humanism, often hilarious, sometimes beautiful in meaning & form, and sometimes so dry the plaster starts to peel. and moist is, in every way, the Perfect Protagonist, bless his deceitful little socks.

shirley jackson's We Have Always Lived In The Castle. I don't think I can speak about this book without stumbling on clumsiness. I will say that the prose is phenomenal — vivid, intense, constant, rich with color & horror both — the characters' vicious cycle drawn fantastically, the setting claustrophobic but enormous, & the ending... spatial. everything is wrong, but everything is so so right.

connie willis' To Say Nothing Of The Dog. listen, this is not a quality contest; willis' prose is a little repetitive & her plot nonsensical, but I love this book from the depths of my teenage heart. it taught me english. it comforted me at the bottom of the hole. it gave me so many other writers (sayers, wodehouse, even shakespeare himself). it is a warm bath of a book, and I return to it whenever I need to feel that I am loved.

I think I'm going to have to go with austen for the last one, though it breaks me to push others away. Pride & Prejudice, though, or Emma? p&p is luminous & joyful & caustic & young; emma is masterfully written in every way. I don't think I can choose, so I will smush them together & call it done — some books live in your heart forever.

There are over 50,000 Stucky fics on AO3. If you’re new, it’s easy to get overwhelmed when there is so much to read. All this talent; where to begin? Below are 5 stories to get you started:

by fallingvoices and radialarch

T, 20k, Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes, Complete

Summary:  The Associated Press @AP Winter Soldier set to stand trial for Washington D.C. massacre and treason apne.ws/1og6SWE

My comments: This story is an absolute classic in the fandom, or at the very least it should be. Written back in the era fresh off the release of the Winter Soldier, it contains a lot of the tropes I think the fandom has come to associate with that time period of fanon: fake-though-oddly-realistic social media posts, snippets and pieces of full-on academic papers on the morality of punishing a man who was brainwashed into being an assassin, and all of the painful ambiguity that would and should be present in a story where the Winter Soldier is brought to trial for crimes he never would have committed if he’d had the choice. Steve and Bucky are reunited amidst the courtroom drama, and America is torn on what to think of it’s national hero being in love with such a dangerous “villain”. This story has been in my Fic Recs list for literal years. Well worth the read!

media fic, Courtroom Drama, mentions of torture, mentions of Natasha Romanov/Sam Wilson, Social Media

Hello! <3 Thank you for your ask! I’m happy my rambling didn’t scare you off..

Yes me too! Semi canon compliance is what always gets me because I usually look for fanfiction after finishing a movie or a book, simply because I wanna stay in that “world” a little longer and see what else these characters can do and feel and how relationships can evolve.

And I’m totally with you, these quotes feel like a stab every time I read them, but in a good way (is that weird?) They just make me feel so many things.

And thank you so much for your kind words! <3 It really helped a lot and definitely is a big reason for why I’m addicted to these earth-shattering kind of love stories, especially with their whole beautiful poetry.

I was so happy when I saw you asking me about my recommendations because I know I fell in love with so many Stucky fics and talking about them again makes me happy! :D

Ain’t No Grave by spitandvinegar

The first one I have to mention after n.e.c. is “Ain’t No Grave”, because that story buried me in feelings. I have to give a warning (just like the author, so please mind the tags and author’s note), that this story deals with a lot of heavy topics. I have to admit that I don’t recall all the details anymore, but it deals heavily with Drug Abuse, Past Rape and especially PTSD. Bucky deals with what happened to him and it’s also abstract from time to time but absolutely worth the read. 

The author describes his feelings and his struggles so well and so painfully, and then there’s Steve who’s trying his best to help.

United States v. Barnes, 617 F. Supp. 2d 143 (D.D.C. 2015) by fallingvoices and radialarch

One thing I loved about “Not easily conquered” was the way the authors embedded not only writing but Twitter posts and different forms of media.

This story does that but in an even grander scheme: Bucky’s trial for everything he did as The Winter Soldier is portrayed through interviews, articles, twitter posts, transcripts etc. It makes the whole story feel alive and also devastatingly real - I wanted to be there the entire time to just yell at them all to shut up and protect Bucky already. It makes you feel like you’re in the middle of all the mess, watching along in horror with Steve and the others. Please mind the tags!

This, You Protect by owlet

One of, if not the most heart-warming Stucky fic I’ve ever read. Bucky deals with what happened in The Winter Soldier, when suddenly his mission protocol fails him and he’s left with a more or less free will. The author did a great way of having the mission there as basically a second protagonist that Bucky talks to, feels betrayed by and always looks to for agreement or disapproval. It’s sad sometimes but mostly it’s adorable and funny, especially with Steve and an adorable group of older people in the mix, who always look out for Bucky.

Those are the stories I remember off of the top of my head! I hope you’ll like them and I would be super happy to read some of your recommendations as well! <3

About endgame… 

Honestly, I really, really liked it. I liked what they did, I liked the way they put in references and humour and absolute heartbreak, but the ending is what still makes me question and rethink it all again and again. I loved Steve in the whole movie but his relationship with Bucky, which they build and build from the beginning until Civil War, kept fading and left me a little disappointed in Endgame. I also, as many others, can’t imagine Steve going back and basically leaving Bucky alone (when he eventually dies)… (which is why I kinda rewrote my own ending). 

I actually agree with the people that say that Tony’s heroic death perfectly fit with his character and I really liked how they did it, but I also wish he could have had a happier ending… 

What do you think? 

(hope this wasn’t too much oops)

WELL, first of all, here is the inception au. jon’s an architect in it, which was mostly influenced by these excerpts from david litt’s book about being an obama speechwriter. jon’s mostly the eyebrow waggling close friend of tommy in this story, but i remember really wanting him and lovett to click well while tommy is naturally the more guarded and suspicious one - this was before “sold! never regretted it for a day!” but i’ve always seen jon as someone who is a pretty good judge of character, and more specifically a very good judge of who is or isn’t going to get along with him, a thought probably influenced in large part by this other excerpt from david litt’s book. thanks for all the canon accoutrements, david, you’ve helped more than you’ll ever know.

one of my favorite things to write about and allude to across fandoms and aus is the “how these people got here” training piece (i.e. starfleet in the star trek universe), so i loved sprinkling in little details about how jon and tommy met while they were training for dreamshare espionage together; it’s definitely a callback to the rl canon of them all coming up through the obama campaign. i don’t go into jon’s totem in the story but now that i’m thinking about it, i like if it’s something to do with his oft-mentioned contacts (”twenty twenty babyyy,” tommy says helpfully) - like, in dreams he has perfect vision and doesn’t need corrective lenses at all. something very subtle yet practical that also kind of plays to his vanity seems very jon favreau. and he could still wear those damn aviators all the time.

Oh no. Let’s start by saying that all the magic in the witches fic is a hodgepodge of many, many myths and beliefs that have been percolating in my brain for YEARS. I won’t copy in the whole chunk you’re referencing, but here’s the ~~emotional bit: 

“Hey,” Tommy says, carefully running his hand behind Jon’s ear, “I’m sorry. I never meant—we never meant to use it that… liberally with you.“ “We just wanted to…” Lovett trails off. Jon blinks his eyes open. Lovett looks uncomfortable.“We wanted to take care of you,” Tommy says, squeezing the base of Jon’s neck.“Yeah,” Lovett says, voice hoarse. “That.”

The magic in this fic is incredibly personal and inherent to the witch. It boils down to: either you have it, or you don’t, and you have natural aptitudes. You can get better through practice, but you can’t wholly learn it from scratch. It’s kind of like an innate talent. It’s an intrinsic part of a witch, which is why Tommy and Lovett have different gifts, and I think it’s a lot of gut instinct.