Hear Me Out... An AU Where Tony Was Dusted In The Blip Rather Than Peter, And Peter Kept On Growing Up.

Hear me out... an AU where Tony was dusted in the Blip rather than Peter, and Peter kept on growing up. Fast forward to post-No Way Home and he meets Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, again. 10 years since they very briefly met in Germany.

Bucky of course doesn't remember him and honestly there wasn't much history there to begin with, and Peter is just so desperate to connect to anything from his old life and a relative stranger like the Winter Soldier isn't as painful as someone he once knew better and was friends with. Fast forward a few months and Peter finding himself doing some intense math figuring out that because of HYDRA freezings, Wakanda recovery freezes and the Blip, the total time Bucky's actually aged physically and mentally since he was first frozen by HYDRA to modern day is only a few years. By 2026 there's not even a 7 year gap between them anymore.

Why did Peter do this math? No reason 👀 He just really doesn't want to dwell on the moral nightmare he's made for himself.

Bucky Barnes who knows what it feels like to have empty space where memories should be.

Bucky Barnes who has had his mind wiped clean so many times his brain has practically developed an immune system against it. Who's possibly the only person whose brain has any hope of even knowing there's something missing in order to then realize he needs to start questioning reality.

Bucky Barnes who remembered Steve even after being wiped, who's determined not to let anymore of his memories go.

Bucky Barnes who maybe doesn't remember Peter but he does know he knew him, he knows there's supposed to be something there and feels this profound absence so he picks at that as obsessively as he did with his lost memories of himself, his life, of Steve and everything that made him him. Just in case there's something huge he's missing about Peter. Even though the two of them barely knew each other, they'd only met twice before, he doesn't know that yet and he's not prepared to take the chance that there isn't something deeper that's been stolen from him again.

Bucky Barnes who also knows what it is to have an earnest, dorky labrador of a man gawp at him in alarmed recognition even though he's sure he's never laid eyes on him before in his life.

Bucky Barnes who looks at himself in the bathroom mirror and whispers "I knew him...". Then deciding to head right back to that stupid cheap pizza place where the strange not-stranger worked and demand to know how the fuck they know each other and work on not to getting too annoyed when he tries (badly) to lie to Bucky through stutters and fumbling.

Post-No Way Home Peter Parker and Bucky Barnes ending up as closer than they ever were before Peter was erased, because Bucky just so happens to know a thing or two about your identity disappearing too.

"he will be seen" please please please let Bucky use Arnie as an alias PLEASE

some confirmation now that sharon and arnie will be in straczynski's cap run, for everyone that was worried about a ton of mcu synergy 😁 it's honestly the best comic news i've gotten in forever

"Bucky Barnes isn't gay, he's bisexual/straight" okay, you're welcome to your headcanons, but coming from a bisexual here, he's based heavily on Arnie Roth like it's uncanny, their backstories are identical. For whatever reason Marvel fused three characters into one (equal parts comic Bucky and Arnie, with a tiny slither of Hunter aka White Wolf), and literally every argument about Bucky Barnes being interested in women so he can't possibly be gay can relate right back to both movie canon and the comics his backstory is based on.

Bucky circulated through a lot of dates and girls, but never has any significant relationships or deeper feelings for them depicted, unlike pretty much every single other man in Marvel. They also completely glazed over comic book Bucky Barnes' most notable relationship with Natasha (I know there's talk of it being with Yelena instead, which is even worse if they do because she's aroace, there's so little representation for aroace people) which is very interesting to me. Bucky's relationship with women mirrors Arnie Roth's exactly. Not to mention how lack lustre Bucky acts with the old playboy act now, as if he's stepped back into that role because he doesn't know how else to behave so falls back on what he knew from before but really isn't feeling it.

I'm not stupid, I know Marvel is never going to go there because of politics with less LGBT+ friendly areas of the world, but I do hope they at least keep Bucky single and ambiguous. It would also be incredible if Bucky were to at some point use the name Arnie Roth as an alias and nod to the character who combined with Bucky and Hunter. Or even Bucky meeting a teacher called Michael, even if it's left open ended.

Arnie Roth was the first ever openly gay character in any mainstream superhero comic, that's not nothing. That's so tremendously significant, along with the fact he was Jewish too (which fits with the movies too, since Jewish soldiers were eventually given the option to have P for Protestant stamped on their dog tags instead of H for Hebrew/Jewish for their own protection) and I respect people's headcanons but there's something so important about Arnie Roth being respected... Even though I'm bisexual myself, to ME Bucky Barnes is gay.

(also Sebastian Stan has gone on record to say that he's chill with any interpretation and likes that Bucky's dynamics with other men are appreciated. He's also played gay and bisexual men in the past, so he's very comfortable with the idea himself even if Marvel would never go there and would probably snipe him if he pulled an Andrew Garfield.)

JUSTIN H. MIN in TURN ME ON (2024) dir. Michael Tyburski

I've always had strong feelings about Bucky being both Jewish and gay in honor to Arnie Roth and it makes me smile every time I see stuff from other people about it. Bucky's family changed their name from Barnowitz to Barnes and I'll die on this hill.

I'm a firm believer that Zola and HYDRA picked their test subjects from the captured soldiers very specifically and Bucky didn't opt to have being Jewish omitted from his dog tags as some decided to, given the dangers; I'm also a firm believer that Bucky is gay, not even slightly interested in women, but is still stuck in the trap of forced/assumed heterosexuality so he goes through the expected notions, of both the 20s-40s and the modern era's assumptions about him. I usually love bisexual headcanons, being bisexual myself, but with Bucky... nah he's gay. Firing through dates with many different girls without actually doing anything with them is so???

I frequently talk about Arnie Roth here, Steve Roger's childhood best friend in the comics, and how he was taken and heavily incorporated into MCU Bucky, but with the very important context of his identity as gay and Jewish, which deeply impacts his story and without it that very important narrative loses all its meaning and impact, intentionally left out (along with many other marginalized characters).

I also talk about how his creator J.M. DeMatteis has spoken about how they took Arnie and the total lack of compensation or credit he has received.

Since the MCU is determined to erase Arnie Roth's identity, despite greatly benefiting from their use of his character in MCU Bucky, a great way to fight back against that erasure it is to include his ethnoreligious Jewish identity and his gay identity, both of which are integral to every aspect of his story, in your interpretation of him.

It's also important to learn about Arnie Roth engage with his story in its own right, as well as making it more widely known he's the basis of MCU Bucky.