DVD commentary meme 4
Apr. 20th, 2015 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynThe second of two for ranalore, about Things We Lost in the War:
I guess for that one I'd love more meta than commentary, really. I'd love to hear what inspired you to write the story, which is one I kind of really, really wanted and never expected because I always want poetry+my OTC fic in all my fandoms and sometimes it fits better than others and in this case I thought it might actually fit but I wasn't sure anybody else saw it that way and so I resigned myself to likely never getting it.
You know, I was trying to remember what started me down this path but I can't for the life of me remember, I started writing it so long ago. A lot of times an idea will just spring fully formed into my mind, and I think at some point the idea of Bucky not being ready to have contact face to face with Steve was there (honestly, it probably came out of writing Dark Approach, I believe), but that he could write, would want to write. We forget these days how important letters were to people back then, how difficult and expensive even phone calls were, and I had been reading some letters from the front of the European theatre during the war as well as my dad's letters home. My dad, genius though he was in the sciences, couldn't string a coherent sentence together half the time in print, but his letters from the war were still really amazing and full of such vivid detail it almost didn't seem like the dad I knew--and I think that's one of the things that wormed its way into Bucky's story, that people can have these different layers to them that come out in different ways depending on the type of communication.
Letters pull forth a different type of thinking, there's a...space, I guess, to process your thoughts, and an intimacy of thought when you're sharing communication with someone. They give you time to sink into your feelings, and you're safe, in a way, to respond to the prompts of someone else's letter to you, there's no one there to talk over you or have a body-language reaction that might overcome what you want to say.
And I know a lot about dead drops, but when I was in Washington DC last October, I went to the Spy Museum, where they had the post box that was used as a dead drop in the famous FBI spy case, and I found where Steve's apartment was, because I'd been thinking about this story and planning the letters and how they'd get delivered. It was a super inspirational fannish trip, and that put a lot of thoughts in my head about how the story itself would develop, how things would proceed and what they'd do along the way--sort of the blocking, as it were.
I've never been the biggest poetry fan, to be honest, but the poets and poems I like, I really really like. Rilke's one of them, and it helped that he was of an era where Bucky could have read his stuff and he would have had that presence and be well known enough. Thinking about Steve being a painter was what inspired me to want to have literary!Bucky--that Bucky could have a gift too that was beyond just being a soldier and a weapon, beyond the typical fanfic tropes of working at the docks or something like that. I've been writing since I was five, and it's just always been this thing in my life, even when I wasn't doing it, so I really liked thinking about Bucky having something like that in his life. That he could have had such a rich interior life.
But of course, that would be something that would come out in his letters home once he was in combat, and in writing to Steve because he didn't know how else to deal with his pain. Some of the WWII letters I've read over the years were just so amazing, so tragic and hopeless and yet beautiful, and I wanted some of that for Bucky, so that Steve could see the parts of Bucky he never did back then. And then they could move forward.
To be honest, I didn't expect people to embrace this aspect. I thought everyone would laugh at it, that the idea of Bucky loving poetry and literature would just be...stupid. Because of circumstances, I wasn't able to get it beta'd as I'd hoped, and that was my biggest fear, posting it without having anyone to tell me that it was a ridiculous idea and a poorly done story. And I still wonder if some people I know think it's a ridiculous idea; I haven't ever been that nervous posting something. But the people who've liked literary!Bucky seem to really like it, so I'm breathing a bit easier now.
I think it's really easy to see guys raised during the Depression, in poverty, in tough old Brooklyn, as only being rough and tumble. With Steve, we have his canon as an artist, but the most we have about Bucky is the tough teen sidekick that Brubaker created and gave more of a background and maturity to. I just didn't think being tough and having that background cancels out an appreciation for art, or a capability. Bucky contains multitudes, you know? I just really wanted to give him that chance at an artistic voice, too, while writing a war story and a recovery story and a love story.
ranalore, about Things We Lost in the War:I guess for that one I'd love more meta than commentary, really. I'd love to hear what inspired you to write the story, which is one I kind of really, really wanted and never expected because I always want poetry+my OTC fic in all my fandoms and sometimes it fits better than others and in this case I thought it might actually fit but I wasn't sure anybody else saw it that way and so I resigned myself to likely never getting it.
You know, I was trying to remember what started me down this path but I can't for the life of me remember, I started writing it so long ago. A lot of times an idea will just spring fully formed into my mind, and I think at some point the idea of Bucky not being ready to have contact face to face with Steve was there (honestly, it probably came out of writing Dark Approach, I believe), but that he could write, would want to write. We forget these days how important letters were to people back then, how difficult and expensive even phone calls were, and I had been reading some letters from the front of the European theatre during the war as well as my dad's letters home. My dad, genius though he was in the sciences, couldn't string a coherent sentence together half the time in print, but his letters from the war were still really amazing and full of such vivid detail it almost didn't seem like the dad I knew--and I think that's one of the things that wormed its way into Bucky's story, that people can have these different layers to them that come out in different ways depending on the type of communication.
Letters pull forth a different type of thinking, there's a...space, I guess, to process your thoughts, and an intimacy of thought when you're sharing communication with someone. They give you time to sink into your feelings, and you're safe, in a way, to respond to the prompts of someone else's letter to you, there's no one there to talk over you or have a body-language reaction that might overcome what you want to say.
And I know a lot about dead drops, but when I was in Washington DC last October, I went to the Spy Museum, where they had the post box that was used as a dead drop in the famous FBI spy case, and I found where Steve's apartment was, because I'd been thinking about this story and planning the letters and how they'd get delivered. It was a super inspirational fannish trip, and that put a lot of thoughts in my head about how the story itself would develop, how things would proceed and what they'd do along the way--sort of the blocking, as it were.
I've never been the biggest poetry fan, to be honest, but the poets and poems I like, I really really like. Rilke's one of them, and it helped that he was of an era where Bucky could have read his stuff and he would have had that presence and be well known enough. Thinking about Steve being a painter was what inspired me to want to have literary!Bucky--that Bucky could have a gift too that was beyond just being a soldier and a weapon, beyond the typical fanfic tropes of working at the docks or something like that. I've been writing since I was five, and it's just always been this thing in my life, even when I wasn't doing it, so I really liked thinking about Bucky having something like that in his life. That he could have had such a rich interior life.
But of course, that would be something that would come out in his letters home once he was in combat, and in writing to Steve because he didn't know how else to deal with his pain. Some of the WWII letters I've read over the years were just so amazing, so tragic and hopeless and yet beautiful, and I wanted some of that for Bucky, so that Steve could see the parts of Bucky he never did back then. And then they could move forward.
To be honest, I didn't expect people to embrace this aspect. I thought everyone would laugh at it, that the idea of Bucky loving poetry and literature would just be...stupid. Because of circumstances, I wasn't able to get it beta'd as I'd hoped, and that was my biggest fear, posting it without having anyone to tell me that it was a ridiculous idea and a poorly done story. And I still wonder if some people I know think it's a ridiculous idea; I haven't ever been that nervous posting something. But the people who've liked literary!Bucky seem to really like it, so I'm breathing a bit easier now.
I think it's really easy to see guys raised during the Depression, in poverty, in tough old Brooklyn, as only being rough and tumble. With Steve, we have his canon as an artist, but the most we have about Bucky is the tough teen sidekick that Brubaker created and gave more of a background and maturity to. I just didn't think being tough and having that background cancels out an appreciation for art, or a capability. Bucky contains multitudes, you know? I just really wanted to give him that chance at an artistic voice, too, while writing a war story and a recovery story and a love story.
in which I just babble on at you and rana, I'm so sorry
Date: 2015-04-21 05:47 am (UTC)-- Actually, I've seen a lot of fanon that Bucky enjoys reading, which just makes sense to me -- I mean, why not? A lot of fic writers make him a film fan in the present, and movies were big in the Depression too obviously, but there was a shitload of reading material then -- the pulps, slicks, the New Yorker, Life, the Sat Eve Post -- I read a breakdown of the SEP's contents in the 30s once and the sheer content in it was amazing, almost more like a book; I think it was over 100K words! That was a high point in short stories -- Fitzgerald, Wolfe, Hemingway, Maugham, Lawrence, Steinbeck -- and Modernist poetry too....Hart Crane's book-length poem about the Brooklyn Bridge came out in the 30s, didn't it? My dad, who is like six or seven years younger than Steve Rogers (NOW THAT IS A TERRIFYING THOUGHT) has LOVED Hart Crane for forever, and he was a poor kid in 1930s AZ and CA. (He went on to college on the GI Bill and said that changed his life forever -- it did for a lot of poor young smart guys, I think, that was a huge sociological shift, suddenly these kids had access to education, it's kinda heartbreaking Steve and Bucky both so totally missed out on that.)
My own headcanon is that Bucky can be the guy who does the dirty work or whatever, keeping Steve safe via sniping, sure, but he's mainly good at strategy and planning and working things out and keeping things grounded. (We love Steve, but let's face it, he's a hothead. He kind of rushes in with his great big heart leading the way and I think it's even canon that he admits his plans are mostly terrible.) If Steve is less verbal (painting), more emotional, Bucky's a thinker. So it makes perfect sense, to me anyway, he would like to read and be more reflective and it would come out in his letter-writing.
tl;dr you know all this and IMHO literary Bucky is totally appropriate, personality-wise and for his own time, too. I thiiiink Letters to a Young Poet was first published in English in 1929, wasn't it? and you KNOW Bucky would have been all over that. I bet they both had dreams of going to Paris and hanging out in studios and literary cafes, a lot of poor artistic people in NYC did. //WELCOME TO MY HEADCANON, SORRY
Re: in which I just babble on at you and rana, I'm so sorry
Date: 2015-04-21 06:56 pm (UTC)Man, I have read some AUs where one or both of them survive the war in different ways but I don't read a lot of them, so it might have been done, but I'd love to see the GI Bill college AU. The two of them being older already, when they went into the service, Bucky at school with young kids who hadn't seen what he'd seen, meeting up with other GIs, Sgt. Barnes being famous…fuck, like I needed another story idea. Although I've never in my life written a true AU so I don't know. Would Steve want to go back to art school? Would he want to chuck it all so he could hang out with Bucky? Hmmm.
Re: in which I just babble on at you and rana, I'm so sorry
Date: 2015-04-21 07:00 pm (UTC)YES
The two of them being older already, when they went into the service, Bucky at school with young kids who hadn't seen what he'd seen, meeting up with other GIs, Sgt. Barnes being famous…fuck, like I needed another story idea.
omg sorry
not really! It sounds good already!Although I've never in my life written a true AU so I don't know. Would Steve want to go back to art school? Would he want to chuck it all so he could hang out with Bucky? Hmmm.
OH STEVE. Bucky would kick his ass. ("I didn't nurse you through pneumonia and fevers and flu and every God damn thing else and watch your back in Nazi Germany so you could throw this opportunity away" &c &c. And they'd have to deal with the bomb and that aftermath and the increasing conservatism of post-war society!....ack.
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Date: 2015-05-13 07:15 pm (UTC)And yeah, that aching, articulate, tender man of letters--that's a perfect description. Because as much as I think fanon likes to paint him as rough, he's a pretty smart guy, we see that in so many small ways, and he's very perspicacious, especially about Steve. A guy with that much ability to see someone else could be really observant and insightful enough to BE a poet, or write fiction or even good creative nonfiction. And I think coming back to himself, he sees the stories he can tell and how that might help him…sigh.