Oh man. Civil War trailer. Linked to everywhere. (I try not to reblog stuff on this tumblr much but.

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Oh man. Civil War trailer. Linked to everywhere. (I try not to reblog stuff on this tumblr much but I do have one at thefortressofblankets where I do. Ostensibly, I maintain that blog for one of my sisters to look at on her lunch breaks at work to raise her spirits, so it’s not all fannish, it’s mostly attractive shirtless men and some cat .gifs. If you think Bucky’s thighs as he leaps off a building in slow-mo aren’t on there, you don’t know me at all.)

The first post I saw on it was someone being excited that both it and a particular famous Stucky fic had updated on the same day, and I was jealous (I’ll admit it, I’m a petty person), but then I saw another post where someone squeed over it, that other fic, AND my current fic updating, so then I felt better, so I can be a nice person about this now. Look I’m important. *preens*

Of course, the epic I’m working on will not in any way be compatible with that movie. I knew that, though. (I did hammer in nods to AOU compliance in it. I won’t manage Civil War compliance.) I mean, duh, there’s BuckyNat in the epic, and nobody in the MCU has any interest in that pairing getting any nods. Too bad; they’re kind of great. (She understates.)

Last night I reread the first story in my series and kind of grimaced my way through it. It’s been a while, it’s old, I’ve changed my views on some things. I like the story but I’ve kind of… changed direction a little? I have so much jealousy for the epic writers who can keep their shit together and actually know how a story’s going to end when they start it. I don’t know. I really don’t. And I’ve dropped too many crumbs and have cut myself off from the short ending. 

One thing the CW trailer has done, though, is deepen my resolve not to lazily make Tony a halfassed villain in this epic. I can’t do that, it wouldn’t really work, and the draft scraps that are all I have of that scene aren’t holding together. (I never intended that, I’d just sort of absently said “antagonist” for him and left it at that.) Ironically it was my throwaway line about Tony having a bounty on Bucky’s head that made me get my shit together; a few people have picked up on that in this chapter update, and it’s made me pay more attention to where I was going with that. 

I’ll put this out there right now though– why do you think Tony would have a bounty on Bucky’s head? 

Because HYDRA does, and if he can use money to do some of his legwork, he’s going to. Bounty hunters who might have a chance to scoop Bucky up have an incentive, now, to come to Stark instead of HYDRA. There’s a bidding war, now, maybe, and maybe that means more bounty hunters are trying to pick Bucky up, but the odds are good anyone neutral is going to choose Stark, and Stark doesn’t mind if he’s caused an uptick in intensity because he honestly doesn’t think Barnes should be out there in the wind anyway.

– I’m not trying to spoil my own story, I’m just putting that out there, because I think I’m making Tony stans nervous– Tony knows what he’s doing with that and isn’t just twirling his Snidely Whiplash moustache. 

So anyway.

I am suuuuuper incoherent lately! I try to send messages to people, try to leave comments, try to answer emails, and I don’t make any fucking sense! I am even word salading in person. It’s bad– I usually get this as a PMS symptom but it started hardcore immediately *after* my last period, and I think it’s actually that seasonal depression is reducing my brain to fucking Swiss Cheese and it’s actually terrifying. The only thing that’s okayish about it is that I think I’m so tired of depression that I’m mostly not getting the sads at all. I’m mostly just annoyed, irritable, frazzled, unable to concentrate, and incredibly incoherent. (I mean, to the point of actual aphasia.) 

But I’m not a sad lump! I’m just, well, I’m having a tough time. I’m just not sad. And that’s great.

What’s super ironic is that I’m actually undergoing a pretty damn impressive phase in terms of wordcount output for fiction. I can write like a motherfucker, if it’s fiction. Ask me to talk to someone in real life, though? Blargh argle zarg! Ngah! I’m making social-awkward gaffes like crazy, saying things I don’t quite mean super-inappropriately-emphatically– it’s a shitshow, and I’m glad I’m not crucially trying to impress anybody currently.

Thanksgiving is going to be a mess. I’m going to try not to speak much. I’m not with my family, I’m with his, and I never know how to talk around them. 

I was looking for a new snippet or excerpt I could put

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I was looking for a new snippet or excerpt I could put up because I’m so excited about Bucky’s thighs in the CA:CW trailer. And I found one, sort of. (Criteria: doesn’t spoil anything, stands alone, is short. That last one rules out nearly everything I write.)

This is from a nebulous future chapter of Full of Grace and features two OCs. I think it stands alone, it just might not be immediately obvious. 

Because one of the things I’ve always been most interested in about Bucky is that while Steve Rogers was alone in the world– even when I had nothing– except for Bucky, Bucky was not, he was from a community he was very much a part of, he was a big brother and had parents and a family who loved him. Steve had nothing to lose once Bucky was gone, but Bucky left a lot behind. And when he came back, some of it might still have been there. (I have a big Irish NYC family okay, I have a lot of feels.)

“Grandpa!” Maria said, crossing the room to latch the window, which had come loose and was flapping in the breeze. “Why did you open the window? It’s too cold for that!”

“I didn’t,” her grandfather said, looking over at it in bemusement. He was in his chair, wrapped in a blanket. Clearly he hadn’t considered himself too warm. “It just blew open.”

“It should have been latched,” Maria said. She was sure it had been latched, she checked the windows herself pretty often. She tried to remember back when it had been open last. They hadn’t had any really warm days in a while. She opened it to air the room out once a week when she changed the sheets, because she didn’t want it to get to smelling too much like old man, but that had been on Thursday and she knew she’d latched it again after.

“Oh,” Grandpa said, “I know. It was Bucky.”

Maria turned to look at him. “It was what?”

“Bucky,” Grandpa said. “He came by to visit, night before last, didn’t I tell you?”

“Bucky,” she repeated flatly.

“Oh,” he said, “it was your mother I told. I’m sorry, I forgot. He came in at night, through the window, so he wouldn’t scare anybody else. I was sure your mother would pass it on, I was so happy to see him!”

Maria shook her head. “Bucky,” she said again, frowning. “Is this— what is a bucky?”

“My cousin Bucky,” Grandpa said, affronted. “You know. Bucky Barnes!”

“Oh,” Maria said. “What? Grandpa, the one you were on TV saying was dead and this crazy assassin guy was an impostor?”

Grandpa drew himself up with dignity. “I was wrong,” he said. “It happens to the best of us. His story is pretty out there. But it’s true, it’s really him. And he stopped by to see little Johnny, and see if I really meant it, that it wasn’t him. Because he has memory problems sometimes, and he was worried that maybe I was right, and he wasn’t really him.”

“But he is,” Maria said, blinking in disbelief.

“Yes,” Grandpa said. “It is him, and I was wrong, but in my defense I couldn’t have understood what they did to him to make him do those things.”

“And Bucky came in the window,” Maria said. She knew it was true, that Grandpa’s cousin had really been the real Bucky Barnes, and that he’d been babysat by Bucky back in the day. They’d met Steve Rogers, she’d been there; Captain America himself had hugged her grandpa and cried and called him little Johnny. It had really been something.

But Grandpa had been a little more confused lately. The news crews had caught him on one of his mean days, and Maria was still mad at them; Grandpa had looked kooky and old and had said viciously that his cousin Bucky hadn’t been any assassin and this guy out there couldn’t be him. He’d come across as really mean and old. But…

He was old, he was really old. And he was more and more confused lately, and less lucid, and his kidney disease wasn’t improving things at all.

“He did,” Grandpa said, waving. “About scared the pants off me, I know, when I woke up and saw him sitting there. He hadn’t really meant to wake me up, he said, but he just wanted to see me, because he couldn’t really understand how many years it had been, he didn’t really understand what happened to him either…”

“So he came in the window,” Maria said, “and he didn’t shut it behind himself when he left.”

“He must not have latched it,” Grandpa said. “But I don’t know that he’d be able to, from the outside.”

“Mm-hmm,” Maria said, inspecting the latch. “Well, as long as he didn’t scare you too much.”

“He was so sad,” Grandpa said. “He was so tired and sad, Maria. It’s not right, what happened, and I’m sorry for what I said on the TV. Do you think they’d let me take it back?”

“I don’t think they really care about the truth, Grandpa,” Maria said.