[ SECRET POST #2135 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2135 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 047 secrets from Secret Submission Post #305.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - IC secret? ]
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Just curious, but you say "give me fem!Tony/Steve and I'm all over that shit," why is that? And why would fem!Tony be more interesting to you than Tony/Steve in general?

incoming tl;dr

[vestigialwords]

Oh-ho! This is something I've actually been thinking about for the past few weeks/once I noticed the way I felt. So brace yourself~

First of all, I want to make a few general disclaimers (because I know that these kinds of things can get contentious and I really don't want to get flamed for thinking something that I don't): This is only how I interpret these characters. I don't think it's any more valid than any other view. I do honestly see how people reach other readings of these characters, and I am very much a ship and let ship person. Also, I'm only addressing the MCU here - the comics are a whole 'nother animal and while I have some knowledge of them and am wading into those waters, I am limited somewhat by my wallet.

It's not a lack of interest in their relationship. I find Steve and Tony and the dynamics surrounding them plenty interesting. For me, it comes down to the difference between 'Steve/Tony' and 'Steve & Tony.' Either way, I think there's a lot there to explore, shippy or not. I love reading about the relationship between Steve and Tony, I just don't get excited and squeeful about romantic plots between them to the same level the same way I do Steve/Bucky, Clint/Coulson, Bruce/Natasha, Tony/Pepper, Tony/Pepper/Rhodey, etc.

I understand how liking strictly canon male character/fem!canon male character pairings is problematic. I also realize that there's an argument out there that "if you make one of two men a woman and your first instinct is to put them together, the chemistry was probably there to begin with." And I don't disagree. However, I also think such an interpretation may run the risk of over-simplification of gender dynamics. I think that a good genderswap does two things: (1) It leaves a character completely recognizable despite the gender changes, and (2) addresses the different ways in which gender dynamics would shape the characters' lives. The fact remains that the world reacts to men and women in different ways, and those reactions can change interpersonal dynamics ever-so-slightly, even if everyone stays in-character.

In most cases, neither point has a huge effect either way in a global sense. In going through the fics for all of my pairings, I've come across genderswap, and nine times out of ten (if it's well done), there's no difference in the pairing dynamic. In the way they relate to other characters, sure, but not between the main pairing. But in this case (Steve/Tony), it's those extra relationships that really shape their relationship. With Tony and Steve, we have a parental figure gumming up the works, i.e., the difference for me between Tony and fem!Tony rests with Howard. Specifically, it comes down to the ways that (I think) MCU!Howard (would have) treated Tony - that is, I think Tony and fem!Tony would have been held to much different standards.

Before I got involved in fandom or picked up the comics, I characterized MCU!Steve as an older brother figure to MCU!Tony - not so much as a fault of Tony's due to hero idolization, but Howard's reactions to them. After my first watching of The Avengers I explained the uneasy relationship between Steve and Tony to myself by casting Steve as the first-born son to whom Howard devotes all of his (positive) attention, at the expense of everyone else (See: Howard's "keep looking" at the end of Captain America, despite being told that the odds of finding Steve kind of suck). In my view, he was the idealistic figure to which Tony was constantly measured and found wanting, and that Tony's resentment of Steve grows from there. I have a lot of trouble shaking the incestuous connotations that this whole situation would bring with it. (Again, this is my interpretation, I see how others come to different conclusions.)

Whereas if Tony had been born a girl, I don't think the "older brother" resentment would follow over. Given the time period she was born (when not many women were engineers, let alone CEOs), the odds are fairly good that if Howard were disappointed about anything, it'd be the fact that she was a girl, not the fact that she wasn't Steve.

My guess is that when I read fem!Tony and am finally able to shed the "big-brother-resentment" factor, I'm probably reading Tony the way most MCU!Steve/Tony shippers are when they read MCU!canon!Tony. (I don't know? You tell me!)

While fem!Tony could potentially certainly resent the hell out of Steve, the difference comes in with how Howard would have emphasized Steve as a figure in Tony's life (fem!- or not). Also, fem!Tony fic that isn't PWP tends to make the relationships among Steve, Howard, and Tony much more explicit, which is something that really helps me cast aside my own biases about the Steve/Tony relationship. Whereas with Tony/Steve fic, a lot of times, the author often assumes you have the same view of the relationship they do and it's difficult for me to get into. (This is a fault of mine though, not the author's).

For those who don't share the big brother model of Steve and Tony's relationship though, I completely understand how this wouldn't hold up in the slightest. But that's the way it all rearranged itself in my head. *shrug* It's not absolute though, and it can bend for the sake of a good fic/an author that I like. But for the most part I can't help but see an older brother and a younger brother slowly coming to terms with each other, whereas when Tony's been genderswapped, I don't.

To say that "I'm all over that" perhaps wasn't the best way of putting it. I'm no more "all over that" than I am for any of my other pairings that interest me (perhaps less, actually), I was just expressing hyperbolic solidarity with the hwc's crossed out text.

Re: incoming tl;dr

[(Anonymous)]

This was fantastic, and I agree completely. Good genderswap writers will acknowledge and write in the gender discrepancies, but they're so hard to find.
Especially if you ship Steve/Fem!Bucky

Re: incoming tl;dr

[vestigialwords]

Thank you! I'm glad I was making sense, then. :)

Oh man, a few months ago I actually got really curious what Steve/Fem!Bucky would look like (because there is pretty much none of it that I've seen). I sat down at my computer and accidentally wrote, like, ~13,000 words of Steve/Fem!Bucky (with some Fem!Bucky/Natasha thrown in). Problem is that it's mostly vignettes with no steady POV, some world-building, and no connecting thread whatsoever.

Keeping the Steve/Bucky dynamic stable while addressing the world around them is really difficult. Making Bucky a woman turns so many things upside down with respect to expected gender roles, and what would have been considered socially appropriate. As children, I made it work by having girl!Bucky pretend to be a little boy for the beginning of their friendship, but once they grow up... a fem!Bucky would not have been as happily received by society (a woman who "doesn't know her place") as Bucky proper (who more or less conforms to the "ideal young man," at least, from what we saw in the MCU). A scrawny young man (Steve) who is frequently saved by a woman wouldn't be too well-received by anyone either. It changes so much, and it's really intimidating to write/a hard line to walk. At least, it was for me when I tried.

Re: incoming tl;dr

[(Anonymous)]

I've run into that problem, too.

Lately though I've been thinking that maybe Fem!Bucky would just pull a Mulan, and pretend to be male so as to serve her country but still identify as female and Steve is one of the few who knows she's a lady (and maybe some others like Dum Dum Dugan)

but

my brain has almost permanently retconned Bucky into being female, just passing as male.

Re: incoming tl;dr

[vestigialwords]

I considered doing that, and I know women have been sneaking into the military probably for as long as there has been a military to sneak onto. But getting her into the military actually wasn't the part that I struggled with. (Although I went a different direction and made an AU where the US Army, struggling to maintain its numbers, started taking women into active combat on a volunteer-basis, if they could pass a barrage of physical tests. Tests which I think Bucky could have passed easily, having been a fighter her whole life for Steve).

Having Bucky hide her identity from everyone except Steve is a much simpler solution to these problems, to be sure. It probably makes more sense for a fic that stands a chance of being published, to be honest. I was just having fun exploring what it might look like if she didn't hide anything. Because I wanted fem!Bucky to be completely unapologetic about the way she is, just like Steve. From there it ended up becoming very much pre-War-Steve-and-Bucky-against-the-world, which is different relationship than they have in the MCU (where Steve fights the world and Bucky tries to pull him into it). And then when things got too different, I started to doubt myself and gave up. :\

But it's funny you should mention Dum-Dum, because I absolutely love the idea of Dum-Dum and (Fem!)Bucky broing it up, and have quite a bit written of them doing just that.

Re: incoming tl;dr

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I'm also a lot more shallow than you are (I don't write, either) so I justify it in my mind with vague "well Peggy was in the military and stuff" but it's still not even close to the same thing.

Dum-Dum is fantastic, and he and any incarnation of Bucky are required to be bros in my head-canon.

Re: incoming tl;dr

[vestigialwords]

hahaha, to be honest, I just spend way too much time thinking about Bucky/Steve in any incarnation, and LOL, when I say "I write," I mean that I have an overflowing WIP folder on my hard drive and I publish something like, once a year. Maybe. It feels fake.

Dum Dum love, yes! I'm not even sure where my enthusiasm for his character comes from, but it's there.