Bucky Has To Be Under Some Kind Of Blackmail From Val Or Whoever Because There's No Way You Can Look

Bucky has to be under some kind of blackmail from Val or whoever because there's no way you can look me in the eye and say honestly that Bucky would choose to work for the government that screwed over Sam (and Steve's wishes along the way), and did to Isaiah and his troop what Hydra did to him by experimenting on them; dehumanizing them, unknowingly and unwillingly turning them into super powered weapons of war, then punished and imprisoned Isaiah for doing the same shit they made Steve a hero for.

Bucky is one universe-hopping visit from Hobie away from becoming a punk rock anarchist, come on now.

Bucky Barnes and Kaine Parker in the MCU would be such a based, rat bastard combo and I'm already mad we don't have it

Tom Holland looking like he hasn't slept in six weeks with blood on his teeth as Kaine, and Bucky trying real hard to be as patient as Steve was with him but goddamnit this spider punk makes it difficult and oh now he has a twin (? because who thinks of clone first!?) who's oddly sunshine, like the complete opposite of the homicidal one, and definitely seems to know Bucky even though he's no idea who Peter is

every day I whisper "make Bucky gay and Jewish you cowards, go full Arnie Roth or go home" and maybe one day it'll happen. introduce him to a cute teacher called Michael. do it.

I'm gonna hyperventilate that's fucking hilarious, diolch yn fawr iawn my friend

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.

if Bucky does fully become the Winter Soldier again in Thunderbolts* I don't see it as "undoing" anything and I'm getting annoyed with all these articles and posts about that "ruining" or "undoing his character arc". People in recovery do relapse, relapses happen, and demonizing them doesn't help. We haven't failed because a relapse is not a failure and it's not undoing anything: it's a natural part of recovering. No one is a robot that magically bounces back and never falters again.

If done right it's important to show a character getting back up from a relapse. I've had a couple relapses over the last ten years and it hurts to see people act like that's some kind of character failure or bad narrative/writing choice, when it's sadly just realistic. Relapses can be devastating and it's vital to depict a character pulling through one and finding that consistency towards recovery again.

Granted I don't think Marvel will do it any justice at all if that is the case since they've glossed over pretty much all of his recovery already, but I can dream

the next installment of my winterspider series has taken such a meta turn thanks to those good old fourth wall breakers Walters and Wilson 👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼

Peter and Bucky are each friends with the only genre aware beings in the MCU hell yeah