I Like To Imagine Bucky Uses A Lot More Modern Cultural References Than Steve Ever Did, Like Straight

I like to imagine Bucky uses a lot more modern cultural references than Steve ever did, like straight up quotes memes sometimes, and it hits Sam and anyone else he's with like a sledgehammer every time. He'll say it so deadpan that people have trouble figuring out if he really did make an intentional reference or if he's clueless and it's just a coincidence. It's a form of entertainment for him.

He started really diving into it after the Gandalf comment, finding he enjoyed throwing someone off their game in that way.

(He also got roasted by Sam later, after Sam found out the Hobbit was in 1937 a super niche British children's book and Bucky was 20 at the time, and he responded by reminding Sam he's the eldest of four of course he read children's books to the three little punks he called his siblings. Duh.)

This is why writers abandon stories. It’s not that we don’t love them, it’s because we don’t want to love them alone.

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.

I was messing around with photoshop and this was created