New fic: Tonight, I Dream in Technicolor

[gwyn]

Ugh, this thing has eaten my life and posting it's been a nightmare with AO3 all fucked up. But yay, done finally. Now I can move on to torturing myself with other things.

Tonight, I Dream in Technicolor (35339 words) by gwyneth rhys
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Characters: Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes, Peggy Carter, Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan, Jim Morita, Gabe Jones, James Montgomery Falsworth, Jacques Dernier, Abraham Erskine, Chester Phillips, Howard Stark, Pepper Potts, Clint Barton, Sam Wilson, Thor (Marvel), Maria Hill, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Natasha Romanov
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Captain America: The First Avenger, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, World War II, Trapped in a Movie, Captain America Movie Serials, Pining, Period Typical Attitudes, Tiny Steve Goes to War, and that's the true story of how I really became Captain America
Summary:

Steve had concocted numerous highly imaginative scenarios for how he would reunite with Bucky once he finally made it into the army. There was: Bucky’s in a firefight, pinned down by German artillery, when Steve’s unit swoops in to save them, and Steve drops down next to him in the foxhole to ask nonchalantly, “What have you gotten yourself into this time, Barnes?”

or

Steve slides in next to Bucky in the mess, where he’s regaling his buddies with stories over chow, and says, “Is this seat taken?”

It was never: Steve’s leading a ragtag squad of international war-hero rejects, wearing a dead man’s jacket and helmet, accompanied by a paunchy actor in a Captain America costume with droopy tights and a goofy mask, and together they’re rescuing Bucky from the stronghold of a comic-book villain come to life.

Comments

[nagasvoice]

I gotta say, I love this story really a lot and a lot. *happy sigh*

[gwyn]

Thank you very much--this means a lot to me, since I think not a lot of people are liking it, but I felt really happy with it when I finished.

[ratcreature]

I enjoyed this a lot. A cool take on the tesseract and its powers and I really liked seeing skinny!Steve rescue Bucky.

[gwyn]

Thanks! I think Tiny Steve should get to have more adventures. :-D

[talitha78]

I loved this! The setup was great, and the period details created an immersive experience. All of your research definitely paid off. :) I particularly like the way you managed to pull more women into the narrative: Peggy and her friends, as well as the other women who served in the war.

[gwyn]

I'm glad you liked it! Yeah, a lot of people today aren't aware of how many women actually served in various capacities in the war, and we make it so hard to find out about them. But they were there, and I think Steve especially would have appreciated seeing them around him, not just Peggy. She might have opened his eyes to it, but once they were opened, I bet he'd be a huge proponent of women not just serving, but in combat. (I can totally see him embarrassing the shit out of people back then with comments about how menstruating does not make you less capable of fighting.)

[ranalore]

I forgot to say in my comment on AO3, but as someone who really relates to tiny!Steve for various, health-related reasons: thank you for giving him the chance to demonstrate that you don't have to be healthy to be a worthwhile human being, and a useful member of a team, and that small can actually be an advantage. But also thank you for not having the team accept him right away without some demonstration that his ideas have merit, because that always reads like the character is just being humored, and that's no better than the Social Darwinists.

[gwyn]

I'm really glad you enjoyed that--I looooove tiny Steve so much, and as much as the army would have been right to reject him for service given the circumstances back then, if put in the right situation, he could be such a great leader! Not to mention fit into transoms and between bent cell bars! I mean, Steve basically could be Audie Murphy if he had just a few less problems, and that's the chance I wanted to give to him.

[kore]

Did I never comment on this? ARGH

I loved all the magical realism and the combination of period detail, but, well, basically my reaction was Pepper's at the end. Not that coherent, but *SO ROMANTIC* //TEARS. I also wish I could brain a little better, because there's so much interesting stuff going on with Depression movies and wartime movies and Cap's legend and movie conventions and even cinematic techniques, so it's very meta but in a subtle way.

[gwyn]

Thank you. Yeah, it was fun to play around with the meta concepts underneath it. And I am a sucker for tales of destiny/fate (which I guess is why I fell for this so hard in the first place, because I always go to the place of "what would have happened if Steve hadn't been in DC running ops for SHIELD" when this thing started--what would have happened if he never saw Bucky that day?").

[mackiemesser.livejournal.com]

I dig the Purple Rose of Cairo aspect, and did imagine someone vaguely Jeff Daniels-ish as Gardner...

An interesting and fun AU!

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I was happy when I finished it.