bittersweet_ache
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Bucky is a cat. Steve is a cow.
I am amused I was able to write this so easily.- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 1,209
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Collections:
- 1
- Comments:
- 7
- Kudos:
- 130
- Bookmarks:
- 7
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- 1,704
Bookmarked by bittersweet_ache
09 Mar 2021
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dream of the fisherman's wife by Anonymous for sallysparrow017
Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe
12 Nov 2019
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Summary
The team, accompanied by a recently recalibrated Bucky Barnes, go investigate an abandoned Hydra base. Steve gets separated from the rest of the group, and discovers something horrifying lurking in the underground base. Or, rather, it discovers him.
(Or: the Lovecraftian tentacle fic that no one asked for.)
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Steve Rogers: khaki pants and ugly tweed wearing art history professor specializing in historical queer art (by day). Is actually Captain America, vigilante and the bane of Detective Barnes’s existence (by night).
Detective Bucky Barnes: A very clever cop who suspects something is up with Steve. Is frustrated that Captain America exists and is dedicated to finding him because he loves a good puzzle.
So, how does Steve convince Bucky that he's too boring to be Captain America? Go on a date with him.
(Steve is kind of really, really bad at this secret identity thing)
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Special Agent Bucky Barnes doesn't think of himself as a hero. He's dedicated to his career, and if that keeps him far away from home, all the better. His parents think that he should get a less dangerous job and meet a nice Brooklyn girl (or boy) to settle down with. In Brooklyn.
That sounds like Bucky's definition of a living hell. He's been running from it for years.
Enter Steve Rogers. Brooklyn boy. Not always nice. Hot as hell.
And a temptation Bucky can't resist, even after their initial failure of a meeting.
This is an AU of the Steve Rogers problem but stands alone - you don't have to read that part to understand this.
Series
- Part 4 of THE Steve Rogers PROBLEM
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 41,476
- Chapters:
- 8/8
- Collections:
- 3
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- 1,008
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- 5,696
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Bookmarked by bittersweet_ache
25 Jul 2020
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Bookmarker's Notes
fbi agent bucky barnes, workaholic, emotionally stunted fuckboy, terrified of commitment. actor steve rogers, overshadowed by his goodie-two-shoes captain america role, sharp and sarcastic, has a crush on his childhood classmate who barely remembers him. both trying and failing to not catch feelings for one another while being fuckbuddies.
one of those fics in which bucky's family is so realistically pushy and obnoxious that it's painful to read sometimes. becca and their mom are just...argh! i want to shake them and yell at them to give bucky some space. which speaks volumes for their identities as independent minor characters that i reacted so much to them.
fics that made me cry. worth rereading. bucky's and steve's emotional development in and between the lines is handeled so well.
rare modern bucky fic that isn't "winter soldier aesthetic minus the disability". bucky here takes more after his ww2 pre-hydra character.
recommend reading independently of the earlier parts in the series.
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Summary
Bucky doesn't consider his Steve Rogers problem as a problem so much as the solution he hadn't realized he was hoping for to help him through the transition from the Bucky Barnes he'd been before his accident to the new, shiny version of himself.
No, the problem isn't with Captain America and The Howling Commandos fandom.
The problem is the amount of porn Bucky managed to write and draw about Captain America before finding out that he's less than one degree of separation away from Steve Rogers. 'Less than' as in he's sitting across the table from him.
Series
- Part 1 of THE Steve Rogers PROBLEM
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 36,996
- Chapters:
- 4/4
- Collections:
- 2
- Comments:
- 804
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- 7,330
- Bookmarks:
- 1,649
- Hits:
- 113,308
Bookmarked by bittersweet_ache
20 Jul 2020
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tl;dr this fic exists to absolve fandom of any guilt they may feel about their role in the sexual harassment of celebrities
i want to like this fic. it's a solidly written rom com fantasy at its foundation, but i'm having a very hard time getting into the romance when the moral of this story is, "actually, celebrities who have sexually explicit and violent porn made in their likeness without their consent aren't victims; the real victims are the fandom members who sometimes get pushback from meanie critics".
this is the first fanfic-about-fandom i've read that gets close to acknowledging the messy issue issue of celebrities and fanmade porn. but instead of addressing the at-best weirdness (and, at baseline, sexual harassment) of being forced to deal with strangers telling you they masturbate to unauthorized porn of your and your coworkers doin' it, the author goes all-in on fandom being innocent of misconduct...because "art"...or rather, "art i can get off to".
1.) when bucky realizes he personally knows the actor he's been making porn of and masturbating to, he has a crisis in conscious, but then the fic redirects to the conclusion that bucky is unjustly giving himself too hard a time. steve's feelings are irrelevant; it's all about bucky's termporary, internal mortification.
2.) steve (who functions as a chris evans surrogate, whose words the author has complete control over) fully endorses sexualizing fanworks and fandom's behavior with them. he apologizes to bucky for not immediately coming to the defense of porographic fan art when tentacle porn of him was brought up at a family gathering. he directly addresses the issue of fans at conventions cornering celebrities into signing porn of their likeness, and steve assures the audience that the practice is okay actually. by all accounts, steve should be the victim here, but the author uses him as their puppet to absolve fandom. the author's version of chris-evans-by-another-name isn't given room to express discomfort about how fandom treats the real person behind the role, and this fictional version of evans fully supports fandom's behavior regardless of the real-life consequence of fans sexually harassing celebrities.
3.) the story's first villain is a family member of the chris evans surrogate, who committed the unforgivable sin of...saying something mean about the subgenre of tentacle porn when she was blindsided by a drawing of her cousin being raped by an animal.
i want to like this fic. outside of the issue of celebrities being forced to interact with fanmade porn, it fundamentally has all the elements of a cute, hilarious, sexy, well-written meet-ugly of smart characters who float somewhere between "idyllic" and "believable". but i'm having a very hard time enjoying it when it's so far up fandom's own ass that it can't even acknowledge that celebrities are real people who are affected by this shit.
all of this is particularly frustrating because the author is clearly aware of other issues in fandom (intra-fandom harassment, fans who are so married to fanon that they're shattered when it's debunked by new canon, cis women in fandom assuming it's populated by only cis women, fans who demand that suspected queer celebrities come out, fans who harass celebrities' new SOs). the author knows things aren't all roses in fandom, but when it comes to the issue of sexual harassment, the conclusion is "fandom did nothing wrong".
there's a sole critical comment on chapter 3 that went the other way as my criticisms, which i found very interesting. they remarked on the issue of steve, the celebrity, having all the power in the relationship in which he knows about bucky's fanworks, and how steve manipulates bucky like a rockstar would a groupie. which is an interesting take within the context of the fic. but i was more concerned about what the fic is saying about fandom's responsibility outside the context fic.