Bet.

Bet.

Edward Cullen, in my opinion, ain’t it. The canon version anyway. If you like him, good for you, tell me why bc I genuinely want to know. I have my own reasons for not liking him just as anyone might have their own reasons for disagreeing. And, this might come as a shock, that is okay. It is okay to dislike a fictional character bc tHAT IS WHAT HE IS. I do like a few things about him but the things I do not like simply outnumber those very good traits. I used to worship his character but as I grew and changed I saw things differently and changed my opinion. Like some people do.

Is Rosalie my favorite character. No, I think she has character flaws such as being unnecessarily rude, but I also think she is a bad bitch who deserves a bit of respect. (Come on, she murdered her rapist fiancé and his scumbag friends while wearing the wedding dress she was supposed to be married in! That’s awesome!) Do I think that she should be more respectful towards the wolves, yes. Should she maybe appreciate the good things in her long life, like true love and safety, absolutely.

But the sibling dynamic of hating on the annoying and over-dramatic brother is hilarious and Rosalie clowning Edward is literally one of my favorite parts about the entire franchise

My fellow Jasperella, Bellsper, Jella, Jasper/Bella, Bella/Jasper or whatever-else-you-might-call-them shippers, we need to step up our game. I demand someone write me a fic! I need angst, fluff, smut and a happy ending! And for the love of fuck, do not make Jasper appreciate or fondly remember his Conferderate background, it’s gross 🤢!!!! I demand GROWTH!!!!

I’m currently working on a fic like this but I don’t know how to do anything but write. Wtf is a beta read?

I-yes

Okay, okay, okay. So, Civil War. Yes, the dreaded divorce between Steve and Iron Man. I once theorized (yea, through Tik Tok again) that Bucky was used by Zemo as just a means to an end. Bucky was the catalyst to the destruction of the Avengers, not the cause. Why? Well, look at the most basic terms. Civil War. Every war has its battles, this one had only two. The first and initial battle happened in Germany. Then, it was just two groups with opposing perspectives pulling any allies they could in assistance. Sure, Steve fought only because they threatened Bucky, but they didn’t. No one except T’Challa did. If anything, they were trying to prevent T’Challa from killing Bucky. Tony was there because of the Accords. He didn’t care about Steve’s new pal, yeah, he was accused of killing King T’Chaka, but it was just an apprehension to Tony. He was following orders. He wanted to help Steve, to straighten everything out. The back up and potential arrests were only in a worst case scenario. And even then, once the arrests were made and he realized just how far, too far, the Accords went, Tony tried to make up for it. He realized he was wrong. And that could’ve been the end of it. Steve would’ve gone off radar, so would each of his allies, and Tony and the remaining Avengers would’ve gone on with their lives, half-heartedly chasing after Steve whenever he showed his face. That’s obviously not what happened, but it was so close to being a possibility.

Zemo is a lot like Ultron. They both hate the Avengers and want to destroy them under the guise of vengeance or protecting the people. The biggest mistakes Ultron made, which led to his defeat and death, were posing as a threat to humanity. He could’ve killed off the world’s mightiest heroes and then done away with humanity. They were already partially divided via Wanda’s mental attacks. He had almost won, but rushing it caused his plans to collapse on themselves. He went with the two-birds-one-stone solution and paired with the fact that he aligned himself with two kids with consciences and who were in way over their heads, he was bound to fail at some point. Ultron impatience caused his plan to collapse on itself. He made himself the common goal that united the Avengers and cemented their familial bonds to one another. He both failed and turned his only team members against him. Was killed by one of them. Zemo got lucky. He took advantage of an already precarious situation. The Avengers were facing the repercussions of what had happened in Sokovia. He had a plan. Ultron was technically a baby throwing a tantrum. Yes, a well informed baby that’s tantrum almost wiped out mankind, but a baby nonetheless. Zemo lost his family. He lost everything he cared about to the people sworn to protect and defend them. He was obsessed. He spent weeks, months, researching his enemies and planning for the best course of actions. Made more plans, just in case.

He found his champion, the unwilling and unwitting Bucky Barnes, who wanted nothing more than to just leave his past behind him and rediscover himself. Zemo knew that he might’ve had to wait years to reach his goals, he was vengeful not stupid. But he was just impatient enough to use Bucky whenever the opportunity presented itself, regardless of other factors or their consequences. Funnily enough, Wanda’s unfortunate slip that resulted in innocent Wakandan lives taken was the perfect opening for the start of his plan. Kill the king of a third world country and start a global outrage. If Steve Rogers was even a tenth of as loyal to Bucky as Zemo thought he was, he’d fight to the death to protect him. And once Zemo confirmed that Bucky killed the Starks under Hydra’s command and brainwashing, Tony would go into a rage that would cause a permanent rift between the Avengers. Zemo knew that his actions would end in either his arrest or death. He prepared for that, too. He deserved it. No matter how he planned it, people would die, some of them would be innocent. He’d kill himself and really cement his place in Hell. But those monsters who took his family would go down with him.

To be completely honest, Zemo felt bad for Bucky. He felt guilty having to use this struggling man, this innocent man, to achieve his goals. But in his eyes it was the only way. Because the Avengers were terrorists, and Bucky was going to help Zemo save millions of families from those dangerous and out of control people who hold little value for human life. Once again, Bucky was portrayed as a hero for a madman’s devices. It was laughable, how often this man manipulated. He’d been manipulated the majority of his much too long life. But, since he had already handled it once already, for seventy years, he would deal with it one more time for a few days until his death.

Bucky was still alive. He should’ve been killed. He wasn’t. Maybe there was a God. A God who decided that James Buchanan Barnes had had enough. Because Bucky Barnes had been to Hell, and he kept going. He was used as a pawn, twice. He’d had been trapped in his own mind, twice. He’d been turned against his best friend, twice. He’d been granted clemency and forgiveness once and it was plenty for him. He might not have thought he deserved it, but the fact that he had it at all proved that maybe he could. Maybe he could forgive himself. Maybe he could be a hero.

Honestly though, we ought to acknowledge Alice’s love for Bella. Like, even in smeyer’s twisted canon, we see the platonic sisterly love that is shared. In NM, when Alice saw Bella jump from the cliff, she went straight back to Forks without hesitation. She left the man she’s loved and lived with for decades to help and/or mourn the best friend she’s only known for a few months. Ultimate chicks-before-dicks energy right there. If Edward’s dumbass hadn’t gone off to Volterra instead of fucking fact checking like he should have, Alice would have singlehandedly dragged her family by their ears and hair (besides Emmy) back to Forks and their human, clumsy, little sister.

Idk if anyone saw the Tik Tok about this that I commented on (highly doubtful), but I thought I’d elaborate a little on what I said because I feel the need to rant so my comment is more understandable and complex.

(And no, for those of you who didn’t find your way here through my Tik Tok endeavors, my comment wasn’t controversial or offensive to my knowledge. It actually has gotten a bit of traction. It was about Bucky Barnes.)

James Buchanan Barnes is a viciously underrated character within the Marvel universe, in both the comics and the MCU. Mostly, he’s shipped around with Steve or whoever he talks to-and I’m a part of the people that do this, huge Bucky/Natasha shipper. And I’m not an expert on his character, I haven’t read a single comic book in my life. But I do want to and I read a lot of excerpts from the comics and watch the cartoons and binge the movies. So if I give out false information, I am happy to be corrected but just know that I do my best to work with the information I have and most of my rants are theory based whether they make sense or not. If you must correct me at all, please be courteous enough to be polite about it. The majority of this is from the MCU films.

Natasha says in CA:TWS that The Winter Soldier was responsible for a multitude of assassinations over the past five decades. Bucky was taken in by Hydra during the Second World War, which goes into the assumption that he’d either just been frozen for twenty years or that he fought off the brainwashing in that time frame. The romanticized version would be the latter. And it’s pretty and sweet and not to far out of the range of possibility. But it’s just not that realistic or believable. They most likely kept him cryogenically frozen and rigorously trained him. The goal would’ve been to keep him under cryo long enough for him to be disoriented when he came out of it before wiping his memory. The first twenty years under Hydra would have been exclusively dedicated to building up the trigger words and their fallbacks. It would’ve been dedicated to making him forget the war, his sisters, his best friend; making him forget Bucky and replacing those memories with every language known to man, every hand-to-hand combat routine practiced on this planet, how to handle any weapon and incapacitate any enemy. He wasn’t a person, not the perfect soldier, not a warrior. Because even the most ruthless warriors were human, they all fought for something. But the Winter Soldier wasn’t human, he was a weapon, he was the Asset. If they treated his wounds, broken bones and ruptured organs, it was to placate him. You had to clean your weapons to use them properly.

And through it all, there was still a little bit of a Brooklyn man named James Buchanan Barnes within the Soldier. They saw it in the way he silently cried after killing a simple witness and their family. In the way he unconsciously shuffled around awkwardly, his prior confidence depleted severely, as if his purpose and poise left him after each completed mission. Knowing that they wouldn’t have him so tightly within their grasp for much longer, they reassured him. And it had been so long since anyone had cared for him properly, had given him advice, guided him, he fed right into it. Maybe he wasn’t so bad, maybe their was some good in his horrifying actions. They said so, and they said it so nicely, they’d never been nice before. At the back of his mind, there was a small voice that told him they were wrong, that told him to fight, dammit! He heard it often, screaming unintelligibly at him during missions, taunting him at night when he tried to sleep, calling him weak and begging him to prove the voice wrong. He never did. He didn’t even know what the voice was saying, it meant something once, but it didn’t anymore. And he was helping, giving the world its freedom and saving everyone. A few lives prevented that and a few hundred made up for the billions, right? He didn’t think it did, but they knew better, they told him so. And if listening, if obeying meant not getting beaten, slapped around, and electrocuted then maybe they were right.

They put him under again in January of 1992. He completed a mission and didn’t return to his handlers. He hoped that them finding him meant that they were worried about him, cared for him even. They didn’t, and told him so as they yelled at him and degraded him. He scolded himself at the same time, he was being stupid and he shouldn’t have hoped for anything. Why did he? He should have gone back to base. Why didn’t he? It was because of that man, that man and his wife that caused this. He was being hurt again and that man and his oddly familiar face were to blame. He sounded so desperate when he begged him to spare his wife. He called him something, what was it? It started with a ‘B’? Where had he seen that man? Why did his chest feel heavy and limbs feel weighed down? Did he know that man? Why did he assume that Hydra would take of him, at least ask him if he was okay? They never had before and yet the answer was obvious. It was because of...of...who? Who did he feel this feeling of kinship for? He didn’t trust or like anyone he knew. The two year hibernation fuzzied him up again. He’d think about it later.

Zola called him ‘Sergeant Barnes’ when he first woke from a coma. It was his first memory and the only one not completely obscured. He hated Zola. He knew that. He was glad he was gone and he never had to see him again. But who was Sergeant Barnes? Was it him? Was he in the military? He looked into the mirrors once and imagined himself cleaner, upright, with a smooth haircut and a light stubble, with a crisp uniform that he wore proudly. He smashed the glass with his flesh hand and his handler backhanded him across the face before wrapping his hand with a piece of yellowed cloth. He hid behind his hair for the next three weeks. He hated his hair almost as much as his hands. He was weak, needing to hide behind his hair the way a young child clung to his mother’s legs. Luckily, they never saw it that way. They thought he was showing off his devil-may-care attitude. Like it was a way to prove that he was just a weapon, objects didn’t care about how they looked. But he needed it. He hated his hair, but he needed it. The unkempt tresses protected him and were the only defiance he allowed himself. They could take away his free will. They could take away his memory. They could take away his youth and soul, but he kept his hair. Even to him the concept was ridiculous if not downright stupid. But he afforded it and took away with it his pride.

His dignity, however, was lacking. He threw it away within the first year of his initial training. The ugly scarring around his shoulder was a physical reminder of it. It was hard to tell what exactly caused the scars, if you didn’t know what he’d done. Sometimes, on his better days, he’d pretend that he’d gotten them in an accident. Maybe the accident that cost him his arm in the first place. On his worst days, he’d remind himself that he didn’t have any scars that he didn’t give himself. Bullet wounds, knife grazes, and gashes all stitched themselves back together eventually, and he wouldn’t be able to tell he had them in the first place. He had two sets of scars that he’d given himself. The aforementioned shoulder scarring, when he first realized just how badly he’d been damaged, when he still thought he could fix himself and be good again. Had he been good at all? He’d hoped so when he tried to pry off the offending metal limb with his bare fingers. After he’d given up on his attempts, he wondered where the most blood was coming from, his flesh hand or the remainder of his shoulder. He passed out before he could decide. The second set of scars was just under his right hip. Hidden by the fabric of his pants and invisible to eyes, the area where he’d stabbed himself with a dagger then ripped the torn skin further with his vibranium hand was now a knarly mess of pale blemishes. He’d done it twenty-three years after being captured, as he then realized, and was given his first witness elimination mission. A widowed mechanic and his three daughters and infant son. He couldn’t do it so he faked an accident so they sent someone else in his place. He was proud of it. His shoulder and arm may have caused humiliation and suffering, but he felt as if their was still some good, some humanity, left in him, even if it was the smallest amount.

That small action led him to believe the lies. If he could be a hero, it would all be worth it. If he did heroic things, he wouldn’t be a bad guy. But he was one. He was a murderer. A villain. A puppet. A weapon. A monster. Shameful and hideous, it didn’t matter what they told him. Because the small voice, which had grown clearer over the years, always told him the truth. He was covered in oceans of blood. He caused lifetimes of misery. He ruined and destroyed whatever he touched. The voice didn’t sound malicious or sinister or taunting. He’d exhausted it enough that the voice knew that taunts didn’t work and never had. It was mournful, sad. It threw these awful and mean names at him, repeated the names of all his victims, replayed all of his punishments. It did it robotically. It wanted something from him. And every time Rumlow or Pierce or Zola’s AI personality spoke, the mental voice was in his head, saying the exact opposite. Rumlow called him a machine. The voice told him he was once human. Pierce told him he was a savior. The voice called him a killer. Zola’s computer filtered mind told him that he was a success. The voice called him a victim. When he first heard the echoing words, they sounded hopeful, rascally, and youthful. Now they sounded tired, old, and resigned. The voice had a Brooklyn accent.

Why did this happen? He was so close! They were so close. Why did that terribly familiar man have to speak to him? Who was Bucky? Was Bucky even a person? What if it was just a curse? Or a sound that the man made? God, why the hell did he respond? Hydra was finally revealing its infiltration into SHIELD and he was finally about to complete the cause of his creation. They were gonna put him under again. Wipe him. It hurt so much. Why couldn’t they just kill him? He deserved it. He wanted it. He should’ve kept his damn mouth shut! But he knew him, and Pierce always had answers. Always. Pierce was many things, Pierce had done many things, but Pierce never lied to him. He was helping. He was a hero. He assisted in the goal to achieve world-wide freedom. He was a machine. He was a victim. He was a monster. He should’ve died.

The blond man was calling him Bucky again. He figured out that Bucky was a name. The blond man, who’d he since found out was named Steve, thought it was his name. He didn’t have a name. Not a real one. He had aliases and identifiers. But no name. They took him out earlier than usual. According to the date, less than a week than when he’d been put under. He’d forgotten the blond man until he was given a picture and an order. He kept his mouth shut this time and the voice in his head became louder. His name is Steve and you know him, it cried. He ignored it as always. If he did this, then they’d have no reason to put him under anymore. No reasons for missions or stakeouts or killings. A large part of him, the logical part, told him that they’d kill him the moment they reached their goal, but a smaller part secretly hoped that they’d just let him leave. Standing in front of the blond man now, he realized that he should’ve thought of an escape plan long ago. It was Steve’s fault. Steve made him realize that he didn’t want to die. How long had he wished that he could’ve been killed? All for it to be ruined by this stupid patriotic asshole to ruin it. His self-loathing was replaced by rage. He’d comply, he’d complete this final mission and then leave. He’d kill Steve Rogers and, for once, he’d actually enjoy it.

‘Til the end of the line’, the voice hollared, so loud that it sounded like his own thoughts, instead of like a background reporter. After saying it’s piece, it left. The presence in the back of his mind was gone and everything became so clear. He hesitated. Flashes of his life raced across his vision. Mom. Rebecca. Stevie. Miss Sarah. Brownies. Dot. Samantha. Carol. June. Maria. Pizza. Army. Sarah died. She smelled like cherry blossoms. Stevie is so small. I dated too many girls. Rebecca hit me in the head for it a lot. She and Ma thought I was a scoundrel. My name. My name. My name. My name is James Buchanan Barnes. My mom. My mom mommy mom. Her name is Winifred. I joined the military. Steve joined. He’s Captain America. California rolls. The helicarrier is collapsing.

The cold water cleared his head. It was like one of Rebecca’s wacks except it was colder, harder and bigger. He preferred Rebecca’s. Stevie is drowning. He’s unconscious. Bucky pulls him out of the water and onto the riverbed. He’s confused and doesn’t know what’s happening. He wants to be alone. He doesn’t know where he’s going just that it’s somewhere and nowhere at the same time and that’s where wants to be. He’s Bucky. Bucky. Bucky. Bucky. Buckybuckybucky. James. Someone called him Jimmy once and he socked him. He hates that nickname. Bucky. Yeah, that’s him. He sees his reflection in the glass and the days events crash over him. That’s not Bucky. That’s him and he’s a monster. A puppet. A weapon. He doesn’t want to be. He won’t be. They can’t control him anymore. He won’t let them. Steve can’t help, Steve can’t understand. Steve will be ashamed of him. Steve doesn’t know what he’s done. He’s all alone. He’s lost. His knees buckle and he crashes to the floor. For the next few hours, he can’t tell if he’s screaming or not. His face is red and hot and wet. Is his voice raw from screaming or is he just dehydrated? Probably not the latter cuz’ the river would’ve done a good job of that. It didn’t clean his cuts that well. They sting. Bucky wonders why his wounds healing themselves hurts more than receiving them in the first place. He deserves it.

Bucky starts at the museum. He stole a bunch of journals out of a craft store. One of them was a dark fushia and he didn’t notice due to the lack of light and time to pick his preference. It’s his favorite color now. He writes down everything in his journals. From his memories to his thoughts to the things he wants to try and why he wants to try them. He wanted to alphabetize the entries, but decided it would be best to write whatever came to mind. Most of it was written in a flurry of different languages, some sentences repeating themselves in Russian, German, Spanish and Chinese. He never learned how to speak French though he understood it quite well. His mother and sister were the first people Bucky wrote about. His friendship with Steve was another. His list of junk food that he hadn’t tried took up a good few pages. He wanted a McFlurry but something about a broken machine prevented him from getting one. When he arrived at the World War II portion of the museum tour and came upon his own section, Bucky was overwhelmed by his feelings of shame. He shouldn’t have been. Staring at the determined but friendly look in his former self’s eyes, he thought about how far he’d fallen. He carefully and meticulously wrote down the entirety of the portion of the exhibit, even writing down every word spoken through the recorded story speech. He avoided Steve’s exhibit.