A Certain Slant of Light

11. Ships that you currently like a lot. (They don’t have to be OTPs because not everyone has OTPs.) Friendships, pairings, threesomes, etc. are allowed.

I’m probably going to go down with the good ship Steve/Bucky, which is unfortunate given Marvel’s… everything. It’s like they smashed together everything that I like into one epic ship. World War II! Childhood friends to lovers! The Soviet Union! Fish out of water stories! (They played Steve’s man out of time thing mostly for laughs, but it has great tragic potential.) Characters who were friends ending up on opposite sides of a fight, where one character refuses to fight the other, and their love and self-sacrifice bring the other character back to the light!

My ur-pairing for that particular plotline is Jaina Solo/Zekk from the Young Jedi Knights series. Zekk is Jaina’s street urchin friend, who gets recruited by the Shadow Academy after the regular Jedi Academy inexplicably fails to notice his talent with the Force, and then Zekk leads the Shadow Academy’s attack on the Jedi Academy on Yavin 4, which culminates with Zekk facing Jaina for a one-on-one duel. Jaina apologizes for past mistakes and asks him to stop fighting. When he refuses, she throws aside her lightsaber, and stands there with open hands as Zekk raises his lightsaber so close that she can feel it crackling alongside her neck…

God, that’s the good stuff. Of course he can’t kill her. The power of her love and faith in him draw him back to the light, and then he joins the regular Jedi Academy and they go on adventures together, presumably, it’s been probably twenty years since I read the books and the rest of it didn’t stick with me quite like the crackling of Zekk’s lightsaber beside Jaina’s neck.

(One of the more exasperating features of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was the fact that it had Sam try this sacrifice move on the Flag Smashers’ leader Karli without setting up the necessary groundwork between the characters. This kind of scene only works if the characters have some powerful prior connection. Sam and Karli had a single conversation one time which got cut short in a way that made Karli think Sam was just stalling for time to capture her.)

6. What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom? What fandom was it? Not necessarily your oldest fandom, but a fandom that you started and still continue to read/write/create content for in some way.

I feel that this question is making a lot of assumptions, viz, that the fandom you’ve been in the longest is one that you’re still in today. What if you had ten lovely years with a fandom but ultimately parted ways in an acrimonious divorce? What then??

This is actually a hypothetical what-if, as the longest I’ve ever been in a fandom is Captain America fandom, and although my period of greatest activity ended maybe a few months after I finished writing by Steve/Bucky epic Reciprocity, I still put out a new fic now and again. My latest was a Natasha-centric fic in March 2021. I don’t read much fic anymore but I do remain a sucker for the fanart. (Speaking of: have I linked this fanart of Steve & Bucky in the style of a Leyendecker illustration? Gorgeous. Perfect.)

And of course I keep getting suckered back into new MCU content, most recently Black Widow. So far I’ve resisted Loki, but we’ll see if that lasts. And I’m probably going to end up seeing The Eternals (because it was directed by Chloe Zhao!) and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (because Awkwafina is in it and I am weak).

Admittedly, I often go in kicking and screaming “MCU, why can’t I quit you???” but honestly I think that proves the depth of my attachment rather than otherwise.

I’ve finally finished The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and boy, do I have mixed emotions about it. Some parts of it I loved! Some parts did not come together at all! Really a bit of a mess, but mostly a mess I enjoyed? Although the last episode in particular seemed EXTREMELY rushed and choppy.

( Spoilers ahoy )

The final batch of Whumptober ficlets!

( 26. Abandoned. STRIKE team. )

( Alternate Prompt 1. Wake up! Miraculous Ladybug; Marinette. )

( 28. Beaten. Steve Rogers is having trouble adjusting to the 21st century. )

( Alternative prompt 9. Hiding. American Girl: Samantha. Nellie & her sisters hiding in Samantha's attic. )

( 30. Recovery. Natasha with SHIELD. )

( 31. Embrace. Anne of Green Gables; Katherine’s unrequited love for Anne. )

The third bout of Whumptober fics!

( 11. Stitches. Natasha & Clint. )

( 12. “Don’t move.” Honeytrap; Gennady & Arkady. Sexual harassment in the workplace. )

( Alternative prompt 3. Fever. Peggy & Dottie )

( 14. Tear-stained. Steve & Rumlow. )

( 15. Scars. Steve Rogers. )

I’ve been posting my daily Whumptober fills on Tumblr as I go, but I’ve decided to repost them here every five days, labeled with the prompt & fandom for your reading pleasure.

And there are still MANY prompts to be filled (see the full list here); I’m doing them more or less in order. Request a prompt if you like!

( 1. Shaky Hands. Origfic; the revolution failed. )

( Alt. Prompt 14. Touch-starved. Captain America; Steve/Buckyish although part of the whump is the fact that it’s no more than -ish. )

( 3. Delirium. Agent Carter. Peggy & Dottie. They’ve been forced to team up, and now Dottie is badly injured. )

( 4. Human shield. Captain America. Steve and the STRIKE team. )

This next ficlet, for skygiants, requires a brief introduction. The Talk of the Town is a 1942 movie starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, and Ronald Colman. Leopold Dilg (Grant) is a union organizer framed for arson who decides to hide out in the house of his old school crush, Nora Shelley (Arther)... only to discover that Nora has just rented the house to a judge, Michael Lightcap. Of course they all end up becoming dear friends and the fandom (all three members of it) OT3 them.

( 5. Gunpoint. The Talk of the Town; Leopold Dilg has fallen afoul of anti-union forces again. )

The Great Tumblrpocalypse of 2018 did prompt me to finally finish up a couple of nearly-finished Captain America fics that had been sitting around my hard drive, on the grounds that I'd better get them out there before Captain America fandom scattered to the four winds; and then it occurred to me that some of Captain American fandom has in fact scattered here, at least for the moment, so maybe I should post links here too.

Haircut. In which Bucky asks Steve to cut Bucky's hair so Bucky will look more like his old self when they go to visit Bucky's sister. This was originally meant to be a Reciprocity extra and then it got abandoned and I tried to make it less blatantly Reciprocity when I was polishing it up but apparently the serial numbers are engraved on.

Angels with Dirty Faces. A pre-war fic in which Steve and Bucky go see the movie Angels with Dirty Faces (yes, I know, I was very creative with the title here). Thirties details! Hanging out with the Barnes' family! Steve being his prickly self.

And also a Tumblr ficlet about Bucky & Natasha bonding over their shared Russian pasts, here, which I feel is too short to move to AO3 as it is but I can't decide if it's worth expanding/possible to expand without turning into an epic... so I guess I'll just leave it for now.

For evelyn_b: the MCU. Which is awfully broad! There’s a lot of MCU out there and I have seen quite a bit of it (although I never did finish any of the Netflix shows). But even without them, there are still all those movies, and Agents of SHIELD, and Agent Carter (RIP! I wasn’t as fond of the second season as the first, but I still would have liked a third.)

the character I least understand

Oh, man. I love Skye a lot (have I mentioned that she and I have the exact same birthday? Not just the day but the year. WE ARE SPIRIT TWINS) but I still don’t get her swift switcheroo from “Rising Tide hacktivist” to “loyal SHIELD agent” in season one. It’s just so fast! And so completely devoid of guilt or regret! She meets up with one of her former friends one time, and then Coulson cuts off her computer access and all contact with the outside world (brainwashing 101! I’m just saying!) and she never tries again or worries about betraying them or anything. It’s like she’s forgotten her Rising Tide friends ever existed.

...and we know that SHIELD totally has the tech to make that happen. Fury used it on Coulson to make him forget the process by which they brought him back to life. I’M JUST SAYING.

interactions I enjoyed the most

Peggy Carter and Dottie Underwood’s interactions were all A++ and I will be forever sad that we won’t get to see them team up against a greater threat - not in the “You have to work with us or this exploding necklace will explode” way they worked together in season 2, but genuinely working together to fight, like, aliens.

I also loved Natasha & Steve’s friendship in Winter Soldier. And of course Steve vs. the Winter Soldier on the helicarrier is absolute gold, the fight that launched a thousand ships.

the character who scares me the most

Honestly I find the Hulk pretty terrifying and I don’t think it’s responsible of SHIELD or the Avengers to send him out on missions in anything less than a Chitauri-invasion type situation, because the threat he poses is just too great. Just look what he did in Age of Ultron: he loses control and wrecks great swathes of a city. (With Tony’s help in the Hulkbuster, of course, but that honestly only strengthens my point.)

the character who is mostly like me

Probably none of them; I am just not that badass. Even Darcy is way quicker with quips and cooler under pressure than I would be.

hottest looks character

You realize this is an impossible question in the MCU. There are so many of them and they are all so pretty, it’s completely impossible. Even just going with the movies - even limiting it to just the Cap films - how are you going to choose between Steve and Peggy and Natasha and Winter Soldier Bucky (I think he’s so much more attractive with the long hair and stubble)? You can’t do it! They’re all too gorgeous!

And it just gets worse when you bring Thor and Bobbi Morse and everyone else from every MCU thing into the mix. Too much pretty. Too much. Too much!

one thing I dislike about my fave character

Most of Bucky’s everything in Civil War, honestly. I dislike the fact that the writers went with trigger word brainwashing instead of something closer to real-world brainwashing (I realize that this is a silly complaint about a superhero sci-fi movie but I can’t help it), and the ending where he chooses to go into cryo. I realize he has every reason in the world to give up but I still don’t want him to.

one thing I like about my hated character

I ACTUALLY DO HAVE A MOST HATED MARVEL CHARACTER. I DESPITE DR. HOLDEN RADCLIFFE (the scientist who first shows up in season 3 of Agents of SHIELD) WITH THE FIERY PASSION OF A THOUSAND SUNS. He is trying to hide the fact that he is evil behind an eccentric yet harmless mad scientist veneer but I am NOT HAVING ANY OF IT ANY MORE, he is just straight up evil and views humans as chess pieces - not even chess pieces! Chess pieces have some individuality! - as checkers, flat little checkers to be moved around the board at his whim.

I will not list all the terrible things he does, because there are simply too many, but the scene that really snapped me is the one where he’s trying to manipulate Fitz by telling Fitz that Fitz is like a son to him - and then it turns out that Radcliffe isn’t even the one talking; he’s sent in a decoy robot to say all this while he scurries away out the back door. FUCK YOU RADCLIFFE.

Um. I’m supposed to be thinking of something I like about him. He’s always got a contingency plan, which is admirable in a way, or at least it would be if each contingency plan wasn’t more evil than the next.

a quote or scene that haunts me

Does “the entirety of Winter Soldier” count? I’m not sure I can narrow it down more than that. Although the helicarrier scene and “I’m with you to the end of the line” and Bucky jumping into the Potomac to fish Steve out and then leaving him on the riverbank - all of that got me in the feels.

Or the bank vault scene where Pierce is trying to explain to the asset about the importance of his world-saving mission and the asset is just “....but I knew him,” like, he doesn’t know what’s going on but he knows Pierce is not answering his question - and then Pierce just has him wiped...

a death that left me indifferent

Pietro. Honestly, I just don’t really believe that he’s dead: his power is literally being faster than bullets and then he dies in a hail of machine gun fire. And it’s so abrupt and weirdly quippy, I can’t take it seriously.

a character I wish died but didn’t

I haven’t finished season 4 of Agents of SHIELD so it is ENTIRELY POSSIBLE that Dr. Radcliffe will, in fact, die by the end. I CAN ONLY HOPE. But as of episode 12 he is still alive and I want him dead, as dead as a doornail.

my ship that never sailed

Still in mourning for the Bobbi/Simmons that never was. They had such a glorious beginning! Bobbi undercover as a Hydra agent! Threatening Simmons and then saving her life! And Simmons getting all giggly and “She’s amazing” about it!

And then nothing. They barely even get a friendship. WHYYYYYYYYY.

I wrote a couple very short stories for trickortreatex! Both MCU, because that's just how I roll right now, I guess.

First, A Worthy Foe, about Natasha and Pepper: Pepper confronts Natalie Rushman about her true identity, and the two of them come to a tentative alliance.

Second, Nightmare, which is about post-TWS Bucky watching Steve through his bedroom window like a creeper. Steve has a nightmare. Bucky is concerned.

Look look! Someone posted a comic inspired by Reciprocity! Natasha gives Pepper disguise tips. (I particularly like the part where Natasha is like "Tap into your inner sloth." Pepper probably has not had tapped into her inner sloth since she was about eight.)

(I should probably warn you, there are like...three sentences in Reciprocity that allude to Natasha and Pepper's espionage lessons, so if you read the fic for that it's going to be beyond disappointing. There are some fun Natasha scenes, though.)

And this reminds me, I haven't crossed-posted the two most recent fics yet.

Fic: Interrogation Techniques
Fandom: Captain America
Rating: PG-13
Beta: littlerhymes
Part 11 of Reciprocity
Summary: Bucky kidnaps a Hydra agent for interrogation. (Very little of the fic is actually spent interrogating anyone.)

Fic: Self-Possession
Fandom: Captain America
Rating: PG-13
Beta: littlerhymes
Part 12 of Reciprocity
Summary: “I’ve been meaning to fix out one of the rooms for Russki Business, too, but I haven’t gotten around to it. Is he with you?” The StarkPhone turned from side to side, scanning the car, then hovered over to peer at Bucky. “Hello, murdroyshka doll.”

Bucky scowled. “Little Orphant Anthony.”

Steve and Bucky visit New York.