First thing is probably that Darcy Lewis isn’t (wasn’t?) just popular being shipped with Bucky Barnes - she’s just popular full stop. Darcy Lewis has been shipped with every character you can think of, and probably a few more you never would. That whole What If? Howard the Duck thing? Normal for Darcy.
The bigger question is why, and you’re hardly the first to ask. It’s even been covered in articles (confession: I am mentioned in this article, but genuinely didn’t know about it until earlier this year).
The answer in my opinion - or at least why I write Darcy - is that she’s a canon character but she’s accessible. She is, broadly speaking, normal - certainly in comparison to the enhanced characters of the MCU, or even the on he es that technically aren’t, like Nat & Barton. Even if you compare to other “normal” characters, she’s the most normal - Jane Foster has a Nobel prize and was still mentally calculating equations as she was actively dying. Great character, not so much of an Everyman.
Darcy on the other hand is pretty average - but we also just have the bare facts of her. As far as writing goes, she’s an open book. And for someone like myself who enjoys writing but simply doesn’t have the time to world build a whole original narrative and characters from the ground up, she’s a bit of gift in that way - she’s canon, but she gives me creative licence to explore and try new things when I’m writing.
Her ship names are epic, by the way. For whatever reason the fandom jumped on the idea of her tasing Thor that one time and absolutely ran with it, so you get things like:
Wintershock (Darcy x Bucky)
Shieldshock (Darcy x Steve)
Taster tricks (Darcy x Loki)
Taser torch (Darcy x Johnny Storm)
And so on - there’s plenty out there, this really doesn’t even scratch the surface, believe me.
If we want to focus specifically in on Wintershock (and why not, it’s mainly what I write after all), Bucky Barnes is also a creative gift for a writer who wants to write but doesn’t have the bandwidth to create a whole original world from the ground up. Aside from Natasha, he’s probably had the most appearances in the main MCU timeline, but with a tiny amount of screen time to match - despite two films ostensibly being about his character and journey.
He’s got backstory, but it’s not really explored - or, in the case of FATWS, questionably explored. If you’re a writer who wants to delve into grief, loss, PTSD, adjustment to modern life, and a whole host of other things - well, there he is. It doesn’t even have to be as dark as all that - the options are pretty open.
So putting the pair of them together again narratively speaking is great because the options are so wide - plus, he’s from a different time, and Darcy is generally written as pretty damn modern. Believe me, there’s a lot of “Darcy helps the 40s boy adjust” 2012 fics out there. She’s as ubiquitous in that tower as Barton’s vents and Thor’s pop tarts.
In 2012 the @fuckyeahdarcylewis blog was born, and this post adds to the commentary above as to why Darcyland was so popular, and why it meant (means, hopefully) so much to the people involved.
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