posting meme - how I got into Steve/Bucky
90% of my workplace is off and yet I still can't concentrate on anything or get anything done. I am fried. So, meme.
gwyn asked: Initially, you weren't into Steve/Bucky, but later you got interested in the ship. What finally tipped you over?
It isn't really that I wasn't initially into it. There's a sort of overall story to this, I guess, and it all fits together. I don't come from a Marvel comics background, so I wasn't really interested in the original set of movies, except for Iron Man and IM2, which I thought were awesome and accessible to me because 1) RDJ and 2) you didn't need any comics history to love them. I was totally not impressed by any of the other phase 1 MCU movies when I saw them in my living room, on DVD. The first time I saw CA:TFA, I was just bored to tears by the first half of it, because it was slow, and because even though I was already starting to love what Steve Rogers was about, I thought Chris Evans was funny-looking. But I loved Peggy, and I got kind of attached to Bucky, and then - whoops, Bucky fell off the train! I was terribly annoyed at fandom in general for not warning me that he was a goner. (Remember, no comics background.) So as far as I was concerned, in killing off Bucky, they'd pretty much done away with the only thing I cared about in the movie, and I knew we were getting an Agent Carter series, so yay, I dust-binned TFA and moved on.
I saw Avengers because Iron Man was in it, and then I...liked it? Sort of? I still thought all the actors were ugly, but I liked the movie for its own sake, and the interaction between the characters made them, for the first time, much more interesting to me than they were on their own previously. I was feeling tentatively fannish, but lacking an entry point. But then Thor 2 was so BAD, and IM 3 was great, and I still wasn't feeling it.
I knew when I read the spoilers for CA:TWS that if Bucky came back and it became an Epic Quest About Devotion (which it both was and wasn't; that was yet to come...see: Civil War), this movie was going to be like fannish catnip for me. So I avoided seeing it. (I realize this isn't rational.) I held out until after that year's VVC, and until it came out on DVD, and then I saw it, and ugh, I was right. Self-sacrificial brave stealth-suited set-jawed competent asshole risks everything for wartime buddy/lover. Um, I mean childhood friend. INSEPARABLE etc. Also, Chris Evans had gone from funny-looking to kinda hot. And Steve has these two amazing friends who would do anything for him, and they are great characters in their own right.
Like I was going to be able to turn my back on that.
And on top of that, it was just an excellent movie - the first of the stand-alone movies that I thought was actually GOOD, not counting IM movies.
I asked for some story recs on LJ because I found the sheer amount of fanfic totally overwhelming to wade through, and there were some really prevalent tropes I totally didn't want to read (zero interest in those stories where Bucky is being brainwashed, seriously, no), and then I started reading, and I began really enjoying the fanon almost as much as the canon. I mean, for me, the best stories will always be the post-Avengers to pre-Civil War stories, where everybody lives in the tower and it's just fanon all the time, and Bucky is recovering and whatnot. Forever the best.
I never felt like writing the pairing personally, because there was so much excellent stuff out there already. I didn't feel I had anything to add (though before I leave this fandom, I will post that one story that's lingering). I did however feel like vidding it. Twice. They were both terrible, but I had feels, and they had to be released into the wild. I felt better after that. *g* I still enjoy reading it every now and then, but from the Steve/Bucky end of the pool it was a short swim to feeling fannish about the entire MCU, quite honestly. I enjoy all of it as a tapestry now, even though there are pieces I don't like as much. (I'll never be truly fannish about GotG or Ant-Man or Strange, but I enjoy them a lot when they're stitched into the patchwork.) And the individual movies got better - I'm that rare bird who loved Civil War because it's truly an MCU movie and not a Cap movie, and I loved Ragnarok because it ditched all the dead weight of the first two Thor movies (yep, I'm still talking about Jane) and just fucking reinvented Thor and made Loki INTERESTING, and Spider-Man was the only SM movie thus far to capture what I like about the character, and Black Panther was just amazing and yes I do think Oscar-worthy, and so on...the fully realized universe is my jam. The movies are improving exponentially as the MCU unfolds.
And as the MCU unfolds, I get more fannish joy from all its parts connecting, including Steve and Bucky over there in their corner of the Avengers tower circa 2013, decorating a Christmas tree and talking shit about Thor's hair and Sam's sweatpants and rolling their eyes about Tony. *g*
That...probably travels off the point a bit, but it is the best explanation I can give!
gwyn asked: Initially, you weren't into Steve/Bucky, but later you got interested in the ship. What finally tipped you over?
It isn't really that I wasn't initially into it. There's a sort of overall story to this, I guess, and it all fits together. I don't come from a Marvel comics background, so I wasn't really interested in the original set of movies, except for Iron Man and IM2, which I thought were awesome and accessible to me because 1) RDJ and 2) you didn't need any comics history to love them. I was totally not impressed by any of the other phase 1 MCU movies when I saw them in my living room, on DVD. The first time I saw CA:TFA, I was just bored to tears by the first half of it, because it was slow, and because even though I was already starting to love what Steve Rogers was about, I thought Chris Evans was funny-looking. But I loved Peggy, and I got kind of attached to Bucky, and then - whoops, Bucky fell off the train! I was terribly annoyed at fandom in general for not warning me that he was a goner. (Remember, no comics background.) So as far as I was concerned, in killing off Bucky, they'd pretty much done away with the only thing I cared about in the movie, and I knew we were getting an Agent Carter series, so yay, I dust-binned TFA and moved on.
I saw Avengers because Iron Man was in it, and then I...liked it? Sort of? I still thought all the actors were ugly, but I liked the movie for its own sake, and the interaction between the characters made them, for the first time, much more interesting to me than they were on their own previously. I was feeling tentatively fannish, but lacking an entry point. But then Thor 2 was so BAD, and IM 3 was great, and I still wasn't feeling it.
I knew when I read the spoilers for CA:TWS that if Bucky came back and it became an Epic Quest About Devotion (which it both was and wasn't; that was yet to come...see: Civil War), this movie was going to be like fannish catnip for me. So I avoided seeing it. (I realize this isn't rational.) I held out until after that year's VVC, and until it came out on DVD, and then I saw it, and ugh, I was right. Self-sacrificial brave stealth-suited set-jawed competent asshole risks everything for wartime buddy/lover. Um, I mean childhood friend. INSEPARABLE etc. Also, Chris Evans had gone from funny-looking to kinda hot. And Steve has these two amazing friends who would do anything for him, and they are great characters in their own right.
Like I was going to be able to turn my back on that.
And on top of that, it was just an excellent movie - the first of the stand-alone movies that I thought was actually GOOD, not counting IM movies.
I asked for some story recs on LJ because I found the sheer amount of fanfic totally overwhelming to wade through, and there were some really prevalent tropes I totally didn't want to read (zero interest in those stories where Bucky is being brainwashed, seriously, no), and then I started reading, and I began really enjoying the fanon almost as much as the canon. I mean, for me, the best stories will always be the post-Avengers to pre-Civil War stories, where everybody lives in the tower and it's just fanon all the time, and Bucky is recovering and whatnot. Forever the best.
I never felt like writing the pairing personally, because there was so much excellent stuff out there already. I didn't feel I had anything to add (though before I leave this fandom, I will post that one story that's lingering). I did however feel like vidding it. Twice. They were both terrible, but I had feels, and they had to be released into the wild. I felt better after that. *g* I still enjoy reading it every now and then, but from the Steve/Bucky end of the pool it was a short swim to feeling fannish about the entire MCU, quite honestly. I enjoy all of it as a tapestry now, even though there are pieces I don't like as much. (I'll never be truly fannish about GotG or Ant-Man or Strange, but I enjoy them a lot when they're stitched into the patchwork.) And the individual movies got better - I'm that rare bird who loved Civil War because it's truly an MCU movie and not a Cap movie, and I loved Ragnarok because it ditched all the dead weight of the first two Thor movies (yep, I'm still talking about Jane) and just fucking reinvented Thor and made Loki INTERESTING, and Spider-Man was the only SM movie thus far to capture what I like about the character, and Black Panther was just amazing and yes I do think Oscar-worthy, and so on...the fully realized universe is my jam. The movies are improving exponentially as the MCU unfolds.
And as the MCU unfolds, I get more fannish joy from all its parts connecting, including Steve and Bucky over there in their corner of the Avengers tower circa 2013, decorating a Christmas tree and talking shit about Thor's hair and Sam's sweatpants and rolling their eyes about Tony. *g*
That...probably travels off the point a bit, but it is the best explanation I can give!