every day i am more and more in awe of the raw number of people wanting captain america to schtup a seal. you stick your dick in whatever you want steve an army is cheering you on
See, I thought Steve only said he wouldn’t do the do with bucky in seal form because Sam was watching and didn’t want to hear about it from him for the rest of Sam’s days on earth (because face it, Sam would bring that shit up Constantly).
My friendo’s got a pretty sick kitty on his hands. He’s already taken a lot of hits in life, and to lose his friend now would be way too much for him to bear, so if you have anything you can spare, please give this a look. :<
Giving another little signal boost for Pumpkin. He’s over half-way to his goal and holy crap you guys, I’m so grateful for how people have pulled together to help my friend out. You’re all amazing! 💜
one of the most insidious things about depression is it doesn’t ‘feel’ like depression. even when you have it, you know you have it, you’ve been diagnosed—you still find yourself thinking, no, nope, this isn’t it, can’t be. it’s like the mental illness equivalent of that knight in monty python that keeps going ‘it’s a flesh wound! i’m fine, really! this is just a scratch, i’ll be up in a moment!’ even after all his limbs have been hacked off and he’s lying there helpless.
one of the most common narratives around it is that no one realizes they have depression until they start checking off what they consider to be normal aspects of their lives—and personal character flaws— against the checklist for depression symptoms. really key symptoms include:
lack of motivation
constant tiredness, even exhaustion
finding no pleasure or satisfaction in activities they used to like, or that they know should feel good
not seeing the point of doing anything
increased and even unmanageable anxiety and fearfulness
any one of these symptoms drains away your ability to do work, cope with setbacks, overcome difficulties, or stop procrastinating. multiple symptoms create a pretty perfect storm of intertia and anxious self-loathing. you stop doing anything because it’s hard to get going, unpleasant while you’re at it, and afterwards there’s no reward. why bother, right? and when you’re always tired you get conservative of what little energy you can manage, and when you only feel emotions on the ‘empty to miserable’ spectrum you get really aversive to making mistakes. the whole mess very quickly and very insidiously loads every single thing in your life with toxic emotional baggage.
and then someone says to you— or you say to yourself, ‘stop being lazy’. and that haunts you forever. because you’re lazy! the work is so easy. everyone else does it. everyone but you, you lazy asshole, lying around all day not doing this totally easy thing that you should be able to but aren’t. you don’t have depression! of course not. mental illness is for victims, is for blameless innocent people who can’t be blamed for being so understandably sick. but you can be blamed. you have a character flaw, and it’s getting worse by the minute.
and that is how people who have been diagnosed, who have been medicated, who have been through therapy, can still spend all day hiding in bed and chewing themselves up over their failure to just somehow magically be a good, healthy, useful person, instead of treating themselves to a sick day and saying ‘yup! it’s depression. i need to be kind to myself.’
Fuck this is so important and relevant
Nope reblogging twice in a row because u want to scream this from the roof and plaster it over the walls and never shut up about it
Yeah, it’s weird how a thing which is often characterized by feeling worthless or useless results in people thinking they don’t have it and are just worthless or useless.
What I’m seeing from being very deep into tumblr is that the gaze has become so academic and hypercritical that everyone’s afraid to do anything. The only way to never be “problematic” is effectively to be silent. Added to that, there’s a lot of radical feminism (not “extreme feminism” but a specific ideology separate from mainstream/liberal feminism) which is more Victorian and focuses on blaming women for the patriarchy because they weren’t perfect moral guardians. This means that all fiction is expected to serve an aspirational/inspirational function, rather than other functions stories could have, like excitement, catharsis, exploring darker parts of the psyche, etc. This means that we’re seeing a resurgence of the Utopian genre of fiction which was popular with women writers in the Victorian era, which basically exists to posit an ideal society, and equal parts inspire you to aspire towards it, and shame you for not being that perfect yet. Utopian/aspirational fiction isn’t all bad–that’s what Star Trek was, after all. But as the sole form of acceptable writing, I find that incredibly limiting.
I feel like the result of this is also the woobifying of all characters (especially men), no matter what they have done – rather than fic acknowledging their flaws and crimes, they are justified in the name of abstract concepts of goodness.
Here’s some information and resources you might like to have for when you’re writing about male WWII-era characters undressing each other and engaging in sweet, sweet, pornographic activities:
US military field uniforms in WWII didn’t have zipper flies. Modern ones don’t either, actually, though there were eras (like Vietnam) when they did use zippers. I’m not actually sure why they originally did button flies or why they went back to them… I imagine it’s just because a lost or broken button is easier to repair in the field than a broken or jammed zipper? But that’s just a guess. The point is, embrace the button fly.
US Army characters like Bucky would have several uniforms issued, and would have mostly worn a primarily wool field service uniform while on the front. He seems to be wearing the tattered remains of that uniform when Steve rescues him in Azzano. The uniform Bucky’s wearing at the beginning of The First Avenger, before he ships out, is the Class A dress uniform or garrison uniform. This is also the uniform that would be worn while in the garrison, as the name implies, so it’s normal for soldiers to wear when they aren’t in the field, which is why we see Bucky wearing it in New York, and both Steve and Bucky wearing their respective dress uniforms while in London or otherwise in the office, so to speak.
You can see a list here of everything he’d have been issued upon induction, which idek I just found really interesting. Mmm, sexy Army underwear! Yeah, get it! They could also buy additional gear to supplement what they’ve been given, and they’d buy that stuff from the base PX (that’s the Post Exchange, essentially the base general store). That may have also included items like these leather photo wallets and other stuff to help them remember the folks back home, but more commonly they’d be buying stuff there like soap, candy, gum, and beer. Did you know there’s a whole freaking book about the PX system in WWII? I fucking love history nerds, group hug, get in here.
So Bucky’s got his standard issue gear when he’s out with the 107th in the deleted scene from TFA. Obviously by the time they become the Howling Commandos, Bucky is sick of Army issue and they become customized as shit. (Most of the other Howlies are still wearing fairly recognizable kit from their respective countries.) They’re probably also not regular Army anymore at all and are totally under the umbrella of the SSR, considering they also wear SSR insignia, so maybe it was the SSR (or Howard, he’s got some style) who hooked Bucky up with his sweet new duds.
Here’s Bucky in his Howlies uniform, which just personally speaking is my favorite uniform for Bucky because he looks hot as helllllll. I can’t find a single piece of standard issue in this (maybe his underwear, only Steve would know for sure).
He’s gotten himself some trousers with additional pockets and they don’t really look like the standard wool to me, either. Maybe they’ve got some slightly futuristic Stark-style waterproofing, I don’t even know. (Regular field trousers would only have side and back pockets, plus a watch pocket; I know there are trousers from the period that do have cargo pockets, but they were for paratroopers and possibly tankers had them too, not infantry.) Just bear in mind that he’s probably still got a button fly. And I’m not at all reminding you of that because I have yet to read a single WWII-era story that describes Steve slowly unbuttoning Bucky’s fly (maybe with his teeth? go wild!), and I’m dying with the lack of it. It’s not that REALLY I PROMISE.
He’s also wearing leather leggings/gaiters, which is interesting because by this point the US Army has abandoned the leggings used in WWI/early WWII and have switched over to a double-buckle combat boot, which was probably what Bucky was wearing in Azzano. These gaiters have buckles instead of the bajillionty hooks of canvas leggings, though, so they’re probably not too laborious to take off. Just if you’re having Steve undress him don’t forget that he’ll need to remove the leggings as part of that process, is all. (God please somebody write me like at least 5K of beautiful hurt/comfort with Steve tenderly undressing Bucky post-mission PLEASE SOMEBODY PLEASE.)
This video is from a reenactor, but it’s helpful because it shows you close-ups of some stuff like the fastenings on the field jacket (zipper and buttons) and the lining inside and whatnot. It’s these little details that really help when you’re writing me that fic I requested above oh god please somebody anybody. It also shows some cool stuff like shaving kit and some toiletry items. Look at the tiny handy roll of toilet paper! The tiny box of cigarettes and the match case! It shows some cool paperwork and books and things a soldier might carry, too. This reenactor video also shows the person opening the pants and you can see how the button fly looks, though the uniform shown is airborne, not regular Army.
Anyway I can’t believe I just wrote this long a post when really my point is please write less zippers and more button flies, kthxbai.
(Disclaimer: I am not in the Army and am not from the 40s. Hopefully most of this is correct anyway.)
A comment mentioned Bucky’s pants thinking I’d talked about his uniform. I haven’t, but I know I’ve reblogged a Tumblr post about Bucky’s uniform. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your opinion of time management skills??) I can expound on the information that’s already out there. I also cannot for the life of me FIND that Tumblr post to link it, but I’ll keep working on that.HA Fuck you, I found the post!
I’m not going to get into Army issue. That information is, frankly, kind of easy to find if you need it and Bucky spent none of his post-WTFSteve?? period wearing Army issue. I’m going to try to parse his Howling Commando uniform.
Posting the Winter Soldier Arsenal made me realize I’ve never made a rebloggable version of the other posts. You can find this (and all the other crap, JFC) on AO3. But here it is.
This is an M1 Garand rifle. And a Steve. Hi Steve.
It’s the rifle all US Infantry were issued, because it was sturdy and dependable. It’s the gun Steve went through his training with before he was turned into Captain America. They would have been issued to everyone and also all over the place to scavenge. It is not, however, the kind of rifle Bucky is ever shown shooting in The First Avenger.
Oh boy. I’ve been saving this one because the sheer number of things Bucky has used to kill people overwhelmed me, tbh. It’s going to be … a ride. Here we go.
Yeah. So first of all, The Winter Soldier undoubtedly comes prepared to kick your ass. He’s not going to find himself without a weapon. The thing is, even if he does somehow blaze through the frankly astonishing amount of accoutrements he arrays on his person, he’s still not going to find himself without something that will kill you. Even if his arm is put out of service (or blown off, RIGHT TONY) he’s not going to be without something that will kill you.
Tumblr Exodus 