#stucky meta

[amarriageoftrueminds]

Considering just how much Bucky uses his nickname, do you think he ever forgot that his name was James. Like if when he was young someone tried to call him James and he just looked around confused before remembering that his name was James. And maybe Steve would tease him about how he remembered his nickname but not his actual name. And maybe that happened many more times, to the point where in the army they just stop trying to call him James because he kept not responding because he forgot his name wasn’t Bucky. And maybe after reuniting with Steve after being the Winter Soldier, Bucky told Steve that the teasing was correct, because even when he forgot everything else, he never truly forgot the nickname, because Steve was the one who gave him.

I apologise for derailing your sweet bunny with smut and bamfery no I don't but may I also offer:

'Bucky' is such an everyday thing for Steve and Bucky that Bucky actually likes to get Steve to cry his legal name when Bucky makes him cum because it feels ~Spicy coming from Steve.

Or: Super-popular 'constantly beset by ppl wanting to fuck me' prewar Bucky introducing himself as 'James' to people he doesn't intend to see again after that one night, so that if anyone he vaguely recognises calls out to him as 'James!' in the street, he can immediately clock that it's one of Them, and has a chance to wrack his brain to remember which club and which night he knows them from before he greets them back.

And also: Someone personally betraying Bucky and calling out to him by his nickname as he walks away and Bucky stops, lifts them up by the throat, pulls them in close for a murder-glare, and says 'No. Bucky is for friends and family. To you... my name is James.'

[sillybillytime]

I firmly believe that Steve thought the Winter Soldier was Bucky from the first time he laid eyes on him. AND I HAVE PROOF

When Bucky catches the shield we can clearly see Steve making his "what the fuck" face. His brow furrows and he lets out a little breath. He doesn't seem surprised, he looks shocked and confused, as if he's seeing a ghost...

He even takes a beat when the shield is thrown back at him, clearly thinking very hard

In this moment Steve has to make a decision, to either get his head in the game or break down over his (to him) very dead best friend. I can almost see him thinking "get a fucking grip Rogers" It's been only 3 years since Bucky died to him, he probably still forgets that Bucky is dead, probably still looks for him in crowds.

I mean just look at him!! He looks like he's gonna cry

In conclusion Steve Rogers is a miserable, miserable bastard and we do not acknowledge that enough

[buckygender]

steve and bucky being devoted to each other above all else is not mutually exclusive with being intimate (sexually or otherwise) with other people and I think it makes sense for both of them to have (had) meaningful relationships with others that might veer into a not-strictly-platonic dynamic, through all stages of life.

and this kind of dynamic is typically spun as steve being undesirable on account of his disabled-ness, and thus the jilted housewife, while bucky verociously goes through every woman in brooklyn to play straight/temper his libido

or

steve post-serum being so overladen with sex offers or the love interest i dont care about, and realises that hey, I should spring the concept of a throuple on my traumatised boyfriend (worse: bucky graciously offers this instead)

and both of these options suck ass like first of all: it is massively insensitive in a boring way (steve and bucky are both massively insensitive in an interesting way). the first kind of narrative is always more so a reflection of what an able-bodied person would imagine their sexlife to be if they were to be(come) disabled. my opinion: sex and disability by mcruer is mandatory reading for everyone writing pre-serum stucky fic, exhibit a of the kind of sauce we should be giving steve:

as for bucky, who loves to be wined and dined and romanced and loved and fucked and desired and mused about - he unfortunately thinks that steve having sex with other people is a massive Big Deal, and bucky is something the complete fucking opposite of gracious, or forgiving. he's insane and it's not happening unless the other person is a) godtier special (a rarity, but still - there have been a few), b) also tries to get into bucky's pants ofcourse and, c) understands bucky's crazy (atleast a little bit, not asking for miracles). other way though? bucky is a hypocrite, he is (wants to be) very anais nin in delta of venus: "sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine."

he wants to be worldly and have interesting sex and be cool and la vie bohème and get fucked in drag in front a crowd. and it's fantasy, but also not.

so he is always a bit on the verge of letting people compliment him too much. so he flirts a lot and not always harmless, is always inviting. but not sex. not without steve or his presence (steve only gives in those very few times so he can observe it with an artist's eye, so he can appreciate an extra set of hands, so he can inevitably fuck bucky better, so he can teach bucky a lesson and make him cry, so they can fight about it afterwards in their bed, cozied up).

but for steve, there's just some things he won't do with anyone that's not bucky. it's cause steve has only said "i love you" like three times his whole life. he says "youre great buck" "sweet baby" "thank you doll" and "end of the line" and he fucks bucky, that's how steve communicates love. sex doesn't have to mean love, but for steve it does. if steve is fucking you he loves you like crazy cause you're immensely, incredibly, insanely special and you understand bucky's crazy, and steve's weirdness, and you also want to get into bucky's pants and you're also just a good person and you should just be captain america. you'd be great at it, sam.

[gloromeien]

Friends, friends, friends, I've found it. The most Steve Rogers quote *ever*. I'm reading Kristophine's Love Stories for Tedious People--which is excellent, BTW.

Steve is trying to convince a reluctant Bucky to go out with him and he says, “And what if I’m just out there being wrong about things when you’re not around to correct me? Isn’t that going to drive you nuts?”

So true. So perfect. It's writing like this that keeps me enthralled by this fandom even in the year 2025.

Happy New Year! Here's to more Stucky adventures, Chris/Seb collabs, and all the lovely people in the fandom with no quit.

[burberrycanary]

Happy New Year, y'all

Guy Lombardo recorded a version of Auld Lang Syne that was released as a V-disc in January 1945.[1] You can decide if you want to think of this as being maybe one of the last things Steve and Bucky listened to together or if Steve heard this after he thought Bucky was gone.

[1] Catalog of V-DISCS in The Glenn Miller Collections housed within the American Music Research Center at the University of Colorado Boulder—useful for what music Steve and Bucky might have been able to actually listen to during the Howling Commandos period.[2]

[2] “Saturday night I asked my two tent mates if they would like to hear some good music.  Yes.  We brought down the machine and some of the wonderful records which you sent along.  Lowbrowly, we first put on Dinah Shore singing that tantalizing Mood Indigo.  It wasn’t on three minutes before a Major came tumbling in from a nearby tent demanding to know what kilocycles we were on; he had been frantically trying to get the music on his radio.  We laughingly explained what it was all about.  Off he rushed to turn off his machine and back he came to stay all evening.  A helter-skelter programme proceeded. While Finlandia (cracked but acceptable) was playing, a Lieutenant wandered in. . . . .  Soon the tent was crowded.”

(Letter from Marine officer “Ray” to Harold Spivacke, chief of the Music Division of the Library of Congress and leader of the Subcommittee on Music for the Joint Army and Navy Committee on Welfare and Recreation, March 20, 1944.)

[buckrogers]

thinking about the way steve and bucky mirror one another again (always) today and in particular the maudlin poetry of steve's weapon being the shield (something designed to absorb a blow) and bucky's being his arm (something that delivers a blow) but also just the heartbreaking way that also reflects the emotional scars they carry, too.

steve wears a lot of his inside (absorbed) and bucky, through no fault of his own has to wear his biggest visibly (the arm). these are not original thoughts I'm sure it's been discussed a lot, but they're with me today as I muse on writing about the boys.

[zenaidamacrouras1]

i think pre-war!bucky would also have a steve-clinginess anxiety scale, if he didn't have to constantly be aware of steve's prickliness. a modern pre-serum!steve would be significantly less prickly about everything, as he would encounter significantly less overt eugenics. more ability to be openly queer and having more ability to define his own masculinity would help too

post-serum doesn't have to be so guarded or guard his independence, and he's not constantly on the verge of being labelled queer, so he would have more leeway with initiating physical contant. and the buckies you write with a post-serum steve don't have anxiety disorders, lol. so i believe they would be a cuddly couple, and bucky's anxiety wouldn't express itself so clearly in steve-clinging

Hi friend! 👋 Interesting! You know what, I actually read pre-war Canon Steve as less prickly than many fans seem to.

I don't mind him being characterized as prickly and sometimes I absolutely adore it, but I don't necessarily see it as accurate in my little brain.

In CATFA we are seeing him on one of the worst weeks of his life. His best friend and maybe only friend and likely sole source of economic stability is about to go get maybe killed in war. So. Woof. I think he is absolutely at his worst. I can imagine him actually being pretty cuddly on a regular sort of day before Bucky got drafted.

Steve is not prickly, per se, post serum. He's tough. He's sarcastic. He doesn't like to be underestimated, but he's usually correct when he assumes people are underestimating him. He frequently forgets to value his own life. He's also very, very kind and very polite to people who aren't unmitigated dicks. I feel like these character traits would be consistent pre/post serum.

And the other thing we forget is that men used to be allowed to hug and even kiss tenderly (esp in some cultures). In Lord of the Rings which was written around WWII the men were allowed to be affectionate in a way that people today joke "ended toxic masculinity" but it's decades old. The toxic masculinity that the affection and devotion in LOTR "ended" didn't precisely exist when the LOTR was written.

Which is not to say things weren't bad. Just that men were allowed to be more affectionate with each other and have it be read as platonic (in part because women were seen as less then men).(Look I'm not an actual historian so this probably is not 100% accurate but I do touch on some of these themes in my Shakespeare fic -- it talks about historic concepts of marriage and same-sex affection that I researched extensively)

That being said, yes agreed, Steve would have had many awful pressures due to eugenics and anti-queer bias, but my thought is, he might have been comfortable cuddling up to Bucky platonically or otherwise...

Anyway, re my own writing, my earlier stuff has less consistent characterization. Don't trust anything I said back then. Just kidding. Mostly :)

Finally, in summary, hell yes cuddly couple. I'm all in on the Stucky cuddling head canon.

[zenaidamacrouras1]

bucky anxiety scale based on how clingy to steve he is (specifically in hot neighbor and backhoe)

Um yes I adore this! It's not something I have thought about concretely but it makes perfect sense to me and is definitely how I have written them.

What's so beautiful about it is that Steve (and the reader) (okay and also Becca in whatever universe I haven't murdered her in, obviously) are often the only ones that know about the secret Bucky anxiety scale because he's so good at hiding it with most people.

And Steve being somewhat bad at feelings, which is not an insult, I think Steve cares about feelings and wants to be useful re: feelings but that does not mean he's all that good at them which I think is very charming actually.

I digress (who me, digress?) but my dearest friend in the world who I would die for and has my kids in her will and I just spent like 20 hours landscaping the yard in her new house in extreme heat because giving people berry plants in aesthetic arrangements and researching soil amendments is how I show affection. Anyway this dear human is so good at feelings that I sometimes don't want to tell her things because she is so perceptive and empathetic and lovely that I can't handle it when I'm already on the edge. I have learned to text her and say, "this terrible thing happened please don't respond I'm in my masculine stare at the wall in a manful fashion stage of grief and I can't handle kind words" and she always gets it ( because she is so fucking good at feelings)(i love her).

BUT ANYWAY I think Bucky is a person who wants to have control over how he is perceived (more so than most) and Steve is one of the few people that is not the case for.

I think one reason that Bucky can trust Steve with his messiest messy parts is that sometimes Steve is a little oblivious and doesn't even notice exactly how messy Bucky is being.

Or Bucky can pretend Steve doesn't notice. Steve sometimes does notice, he's not that bad, and as they know each other better over time, he can see right through the old Bucky Barnes razzle dazzle. (he loves and respects the razzle dazzle. Seeing through it only makes it more charming to Steve). And he has learned Bucky likes him to pretend he doesn't notice when Bucky is a 10 on the old Cling to Steve-o-meter.

Which is fine by Steve as he just wants to be helpful. So Bucky can cling away and Steve will be like, "hey feel like having tacos tonight, Buck? How about I cook and you sit on the counter next to me, if you don't mind."