Logansgaar - Em

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.

MCU FACT #180:

Bucky Barnes is Gay & Jewish

(Since He's Mostly Based on Arnie Roth)

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.

I was actually referring to the "for thine is the kingdom..." and so on as opposed to ending on the word evil, not trespasses but regardless it would depend on denomination and era specifics.

Okay but what if Bucky gets found out by HYDRA and Zola after capture because Dugan and Gabe are always ushering him to the back away from possible notice, to the point it backfires and draws suspicion. When they pick him out HYDRA orders him to recite the Lord's Prayer and Bucky recites what he always remembers Steve saying. The Prayer he made sure to remember before he was shipped out just in case something like this happened.

Only... Steve is Catholic. The Prayer that Bucky's heard Steve and some of his fellow soldiers recite is different from the one a Protestant would recite and his dog tags say he's a Protestant. He didn't even know they said the Prayer differently.

I know there's a lot about Sebastian Stan that hasn't been great and I firmly believe his fans get way too parasocial, none of us actually know this man, but I do appreciate him saying he sees fans as being free to interpret Bucky's relationships with other men any way they like and just likes that fans are interested and invested in them