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Sleepy ramblings about the Captain America movie fandom
Me in 2012: Why on earth would people want to watch fan vids made from movie cam footage? How hard is it to wait for nice quality DVD footage?
Me in 2014: *desperately trawls Youtube for every Winter Soldier cam vid in existence*
In other news, I have to say there's something intensely weird about coming into a fandom at the start of the escalation curve of a juggernaut pairing.
When I first jumped on the Captain America bandwagon a couple of weeks ago, the runaway Steve/Bucky train hadn't really taken off yet. The fandom was pretty multishippish and there seemed to be a reasonable variety of art/fic/caps around. Then the fandom latched onto Sebastian Stan like a multi-tentacled love squid and all of a sudden both Tumblr and AO3 drowned in a tidal wave of Bucky and Bucky/Steve.
I've actually had a bit of a thing for Sebastian Stan ever since encountering him as the Mad Hatter/Jefferson in Once Upon a Time. (Which wasn't the first time I'd seen him in anything -- I did watch the first Captain America movie -- but I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention.) Anyway, when I went looking for Mad Hatter gifs/art/whatever, there was very little to be found. Quite a change from a year or so later, innit? That being the case, I was kind of primed to fall for Bucky to begin with, and then his character mashed down EVERY BUTTON I HAVE regarding identity and damage and weaponized people learning how to be just people again. There's something incredibly heady and fun about hitting a popular fandom and having a die-hard love for its trending popular character.
Except .... I love everyone else too -- it's not just Bucky (and Steve) that's making me crush on the movie, it's the whole ensemble and their adorable little faces, and I'm already starting to chafe at the claustrophobic nature of the overwhelming Steve/Buckyness of the fic. I do want fics about Bucky healing and recovering and Steve loving on him, but even more than that, I want fics about the whole ensemble starting to settle into each other's lives. I want Steve's apartment to be a haven for slightly beat-up superheroes wandering in and out at all hours, watching his TV and stealing drinks from his fridge. I want Natasha hanging out with Steve and showing him 101 ways to non-lethally incapacitate people (she'd happily show him how to go ahead and kill them once they're writhing on the ground, but he doesn't want her to); I want Sam sneakily leaving therapy brochures around where Bucky can find them; I want Fury calling up Steve in the middle of the night because there is a Thing that needs to be done in Budapest and the helicopter will be landing on the roof momentarily. I want Tony complaining to Steve about why is there an amnesiac assassin sacked out on the living room couch again, and Sam and Steve organizing neighborhood patrols after someone gets mugged on Steve's street, and Bucky turning up to help Natasha when she's in trouble because now he's watching everyone's back whether they want him to or not (often perched on rooftops or skulking behind them when they go to coffee shops just in case any Hydra agents jump out, because now that he has people again, he's not letting Hydra touch them EVER).
Not that I am terribly hurt over having a dash full of Winter Soldier and several dozen new fics to read each day on the general theme of "Steve finds Bucky and loves on him until he starts to learn how to be a person again", and I TOTALLY get the urge to deal ficcishly with all the brokenness going on at the end of the movie, but I would be much happier with just a handful of those fics scattered among a whole bunch of team, ensemble, and other pairings. Which is really not what's happening at the moment.
It doesn't help that the Steve-Bucky element of the fandom so far is pretty slash-heavy and I don't really ship them as a pairing, as such. I mean, I get where it comes from (especially considering the lack of canonical love interests to deal with) and I can certainly read it (I don't anti-ship it -- I am all for Bucky getting the maximum possible love from any direction), but mostly I just want either ensemble gen or various flavors of queerplatonic/"it may be weird but it works for us and what are you staring at" co-sleeping arrangements. (MORE AVENGERS PUPPYPILES/GROUP SLEEPOVERS PLZ.)
It's the same awkward situation I found myself in when I was in SGA fandom, where Sheppard and McKay were my favorites, but they were 90% of the fic/meta/etc, and I wanted other characters to have more love.
I know, I know .... I am so hard to please. I am getting what I want (I'm sure if there was no fic for Bucky and the fandom hated him, I would be weeping bitter tears of frustrated fangirl rage) but I'm getting too much of it at everyone else's expense. I just want more ensemble to go with my Steve & Bucky. Maybe the fandom will become more multishippish once people get the post-movie h/c tags out of their system? Perhaps ...
While I'm rambling anyway, I wanted to mention how interesting it is that the fic leans in such an overwhelmingly fluffy/warm-fuzzy direction. Not that I am complaining at all. Still, the general Winter Soldier setup could easily have lead to a slew of really terrifying noncon/dark-Bucky post-movie fics, and instead it seems that the entire fandom's reaction to the Winter Soldier is to wrap him up in blankets and give him soup. A++ trend, please may it continue.
ETA: Aaaaaand now I'm rewatching Jefferson's storyline from Once Upon a Time in the form of Youtube clips. Oops.
Me in 2014: *desperately trawls Youtube for every Winter Soldier cam vid in existence*
In other news, I have to say there's something intensely weird about coming into a fandom at the start of the escalation curve of a juggernaut pairing.
When I first jumped on the Captain America bandwagon a couple of weeks ago, the runaway Steve/Bucky train hadn't really taken off yet. The fandom was pretty multishippish and there seemed to be a reasonable variety of art/fic/caps around. Then the fandom latched onto Sebastian Stan like a multi-tentacled love squid and all of a sudden both Tumblr and AO3 drowned in a tidal wave of Bucky and Bucky/Steve.
I've actually had a bit of a thing for Sebastian Stan ever since encountering him as the Mad Hatter/Jefferson in Once Upon a Time. (Which wasn't the first time I'd seen him in anything -- I did watch the first Captain America movie -- but I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention.) Anyway, when I went looking for Mad Hatter gifs/art/whatever, there was very little to be found. Quite a change from a year or so later, innit? That being the case, I was kind of primed to fall for Bucky to begin with, and then his character mashed down EVERY BUTTON I HAVE regarding identity and damage and weaponized people learning how to be just people again. There's something incredibly heady and fun about hitting a popular fandom and having a die-hard love for its trending popular character.
Except .... I love everyone else too -- it's not just Bucky (and Steve) that's making me crush on the movie, it's the whole ensemble and their adorable little faces, and I'm already starting to chafe at the claustrophobic nature of the overwhelming Steve/Buckyness of the fic. I do want fics about Bucky healing and recovering and Steve loving on him, but even more than that, I want fics about the whole ensemble starting to settle into each other's lives. I want Steve's apartment to be a haven for slightly beat-up superheroes wandering in and out at all hours, watching his TV and stealing drinks from his fridge. I want Natasha hanging out with Steve and showing him 101 ways to non-lethally incapacitate people (she'd happily show him how to go ahead and kill them once they're writhing on the ground, but he doesn't want her to); I want Sam sneakily leaving therapy brochures around where Bucky can find them; I want Fury calling up Steve in the middle of the night because there is a Thing that needs to be done in Budapest and the helicopter will be landing on the roof momentarily. I want Tony complaining to Steve about why is there an amnesiac assassin sacked out on the living room couch again, and Sam and Steve organizing neighborhood patrols after someone gets mugged on Steve's street, and Bucky turning up to help Natasha when she's in trouble because now he's watching everyone's back whether they want him to or not (often perched on rooftops or skulking behind them when they go to coffee shops just in case any Hydra agents jump out, because now that he has people again, he's not letting Hydra touch them EVER).
Not that I am terribly hurt over having a dash full of Winter Soldier and several dozen new fics to read each day on the general theme of "Steve finds Bucky and loves on him until he starts to learn how to be a person again", and I TOTALLY get the urge to deal ficcishly with all the brokenness going on at the end of the movie, but I would be much happier with just a handful of those fics scattered among a whole bunch of team, ensemble, and other pairings. Which is really not what's happening at the moment.
It doesn't help that the Steve-Bucky element of the fandom so far is pretty slash-heavy and I don't really ship them as a pairing, as such. I mean, I get where it comes from (especially considering the lack of canonical love interests to deal with) and I can certainly read it (I don't anti-ship it -- I am all for Bucky getting the maximum possible love from any direction), but mostly I just want either ensemble gen or various flavors of queerplatonic/"it may be weird but it works for us and what are you staring at" co-sleeping arrangements. (MORE AVENGERS PUPPYPILES/GROUP SLEEPOVERS PLZ.)
It's the same awkward situation I found myself in when I was in SGA fandom, where Sheppard and McKay were my favorites, but they were 90% of the fic/meta/etc, and I wanted other characters to have more love.
I know, I know .... I am so hard to please. I am getting what I want (I'm sure if there was no fic for Bucky and the fandom hated him, I would be weeping bitter tears of frustrated fangirl rage) but I'm getting too much of it at everyone else's expense. I just want more ensemble to go with my Steve & Bucky. Maybe the fandom will become more multishippish once people get the post-movie h/c tags out of their system? Perhaps ...
While I'm rambling anyway, I wanted to mention how interesting it is that the fic leans in such an overwhelmingly fluffy/warm-fuzzy direction. Not that I am complaining at all. Still, the general Winter Soldier setup could easily have lead to a slew of really terrifying noncon/dark-Bucky post-movie fics, and instead it seems that the entire fandom's reaction to the Winter Soldier is to wrap him up in blankets and give him soup. A++ trend, please may it continue.
ETA: Aaaaaand now I'm rewatching Jefferson's storyline from Once Upon a Time in the form of Youtube clips. Oops.
no subject
I have an Avengers tag and it's got a little of everything.
The other juggernaut pairing is Steve/Tony, which I don't really read. But there's lots of stuff. I think it's definitely more balanced than McShep/Everything Else was in SGA.
There's a ton of great Natasha/Clint Barton, if you know who he is yet. It's wonderful. There's a comm on LJ for that called be_compromised. You may not be into them, though. And there is teamy gen fic too.
I much prefer Steve/Bucky to Steve/Tony, though I love Iron Man. But I think you'll be able to find plenty to read.
no subject
Oh yeah, ditto for me too. I can and do read Steve/Bucky, Steve/Tony is an anti-ship for me (as are the majority of pairings involving Clint; I like him as part of the ensemble, but I'm not really interested in him as a romantic lead ...).
I think the big problem here is, I don't really want teamy gen involving the Avengers, which is why I haven't poked around under the Avengers tag. Although maybe that is where people are putting stuff about Natasha and Steve now? I want fic that's mainly focused on the Captain America movie characters, I just want more than JUST Steve/Bucky (adorable as they are).
That's a good point about looking for Natasha fic under Avengers, though - I will check that out! And Astrid's recs as well.
no subject
It doesn't help that clicking on the Natasha or Fury tags on Ao3 brings up a ton of fics in which they have bit parts. And since MCU is such a big fandom, it's possible that what I want to read is there, but keeps getting lost. I would love for Ao3 to implement a primary character/secondary character distinction.
Sigh, I need my dream fic in which pre-Avengers, Natasha is triggered or taken by Red Room bad guys during a mission, and Clint is prepared to rescue her at any cost, even if it means going rogue, and he goes to Fury fully expecting Fury to assume the worst of Natasha, and instead Fury is of the opinion that while they need to be prepared for anything, including Natasha turning, he's assuming that's not the case and that she needs help, so is Clint going to get out of his office and go do that, or is Fury going to have do it himself? (And of course Natasha is active in her own rescue and totally awesome.)
(I also have no fuzzy feelings about Jefferson, and Sebastian Stan does zilch for me visually, so clearly I am fundamentally defective.)
no subject
no subject
(I opened my trunks of hardcopy '70s-'90s comics to reread instead of facing the fanfic. Cowardice, or comics canon loyalty, or both? ~grin~)
no subject
No, that makes total sense to me! :D I started out by reading a whole slew of comics before branching out into fanfic; now I'm reading fic because I'm out of comics with *cough* Bucky in them, but my usual go-to for comic-book movies is the comics rather than the fanfic in most cases anyway.