yet more CA:TWS fic recs

So I figured I should make another rec post, because I can feel my tolerance for scrolling past a million indistinguishable angst-ridden ship fics on the AO3 RSS feed diminishing rapidly [*], and because this week is going to be overwhelming, meaning I don't know whether I'll keep up with new fic for a while.

Crossposted, in part, to mcugen.

First, the "Sam is the best" set:

On DW, there's how does that make you feel by ignipes. Answering the question: "So what happens when Sam Wilson accidentally becomes therapist to all of the Avengers and their friends?"

Then over at AO3, starting with another one from ignipes:

Run Until the Road Runs Out (5264 words) by ignipes
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Characters: Sam Wilson (Marvel), James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanov
Additional Tags: Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Summary: Sam's along for this ride because he's not about to let Steve Rogers go it alone, but Steve's not the only one who needs a friend.

Sam's POV on Bucky's recovery, during a road trip of the HYDRA-chasing variety; the ship is minimal.

Bring Us Back a Souvenir (1521 words) by newredshoes
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson
Characters: Sam Wilson (Marvel), James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers
Additional Tags: Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Baseball
Summary: Even with all his hair hacked off, he doesn't look like a Bucky, Sam thinks. Maybe as some sort of stupid joke, like naming your most vicious dog Sweetpea. Steve's told him the stories, and he's seen the old newsreels; he knows what this Barnes guy used to be like. But it's not like knowing what to look for is going to magically make some spark rise to the top. This isn't an excavation.

More Sam POV, a short look at him and Bucky and Bucky's baby steps of progress.

Turning a crack prompt into something cute and sweet.

Trust Fall (546 words) by astolat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson
Characters: Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson (Marvel)
Additional Tags: on your left, Tumblr Prompt
Summary: “Okay, man,” Sam said, the day the new wings arrived. “Let’s go.”

Despite what I said coming out of the movie, that this pairing was not my favorite because of the asymmetry of Sam following Steve, I seem to be talking myself into being a fan of it by the reverse process of my reactions to Steve/Bucky, and also because I love Sam. This story is short but intense and quite lovely.

Transitioning out of the "Sam is the best" set into a Bucky-centric set, starting with a Sam POV story about Steve and Bucky bonding over a change in the decades since they were living in the world:

Mistake on the Part of Nature (1274 words) by idiopathicsmile
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson (Marvel)
Summary: Steve takes in Bucky's betrayed look and Sam's confusion, follows Sam's gaze to the pile of mangled fruit in the trash can. Sudden comprehension fills his face. // "Oh," he says. "Bucky found out about bananas." // In which an American icon is mourned. But probably not the one you're thinking of.

Sam is (still) the best, and this is whatever the equivalent of a meet-cute story is for recognizing the existence of romantic feelings.

Retrograde (3779 words) by puella_nerdii
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes
Additional Tags: Character Study, Brainwashing, Mind Games, Backstory, Torture, Bucky needs a hug, (bucky doesn't remember hugs)
Summary: Memory hides in the most unexpected places. Five things that the Winter Soldier shouldn't know, and can't explain.

A rarity, an angsty Winter Soldier POV that works for me.

Bucky And Mister Rogers (5421 words) by impertinence
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes
Additional Tags: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Summary: Bucky accidentally becomes a surrogate brother to half the neighborhood, purely via the power of PBS.

As a chaser, this Bucky-POV story which is definitely on the fluffy side of the plausibility scale, but which is kind of ridiculously adorable (and saved from being tooth-rottingly sweet by Bucky's awareness of the atrophy of his social skills).

Finally, for stories proper, something different:

Men do not live only by fighting evils (1517 words) by acaramelmacchiato
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Agent 13 (Marvel), Sharon Carter (Marvel), wait they're the same person though, Steve Rogers
Additional Tags: agent 13 doesn't get free rent, how sad
Summary: Agent 13's first year with SHIELD involves a lot of laundry and lying.

A character study which I particularly like because it gives me support for reading Sharon at the CIA at the end of the movie as an undercover mission or something else that doesn't involve seeing the CIA as good guys.

And outside the cut, because it seems likely to have broader appeal (but still has movie spoilers): a pastiche, inspired by fanart, of Frozen's "Do You Want to Build A Snowman?", which is absurdly cute.

And now the complaining-about-ships footnotes:

[*] Steve/Bucky, of course. If that's your ship, I'm glad for you, but it's amazing how being in the fandom but not sharing the love for the juggernaut pairing is turning me from less-than-enthused to actively over it, just through its omnipresence; it gets really, hmmm, claustrophobic? Alienating? Especially when, in the aggregate, it's fandom falling all over itself, yet again, for two white dudes—out of a movie that deliberately positions its team of heroes to include just ONE white dude!—and often erasing a canonical female love interest (Peggy) along the way. [**] Plus, the pairing is tailor-made for a particular kind of angst, which is just really not my thing these days.

[**] Things that will make me close any browser tab, no matter how good the summary or the opening paragraphs: any WWII-era Steve/Bucky story which doesn't turn up "Peggy" or "Carter" using ctrl-F. Any present-day Steve/Bucky story that posits Steve's unending love for Bucky since the day they met and which ditto. And any Steve/Bucky story that only mentions Peggy as someone Steve didn't really love (that last one gets extra swearing along with the tab closure, especially post-CA:TWS). I'm great with people loving more than one person, but I am seriously not okay with erasing female characters or canonical relationships with them.

Oh well, it could be worse, the big fannish OTP could involve Loki (I dropped out of the Avengers RSS feed even more quickly, because so many of the fics were about him, and I could not cope with either incest (often with a bonus of additional tags claiming "it's not incest because he's adopted!") or Tony/Loki (I refuse to believe that Tony would have anything but contempt for Loki's way of dealing with his daddy issues). comment(s) | add comment (how-to) | link