Bucky Barnes and dating in the 40's.

So, wow.  Yeah.  Another one of those “I’ve been reading a lot of.. and.. (insert my opinion here).”

So, yes,  I keep reading about Bucky as the ladies man: all sexed up and such.  It’s a bit baffling to me, as this is a very modern way of thinking.  Dating - or courtship - was very different in the 30’s and 40’s than it is today!

For example, take this excerpt from A Brief History of Courtship and Dating in America, (Part 2):

This describes a situation in which dating was more about one’s reputation than any sort of romance.  It was very important not only to be seen with many dates, but with the proper people.  This explains why Steve would have had such a difficult time securing a partner: being seen with someone unpopular was worse than not being seen at all.  However, this gives us a clue as to how popular Bucky must have been!  If he was able to leverage himself in order to get Steve dates, Bucky must have been pretty high-ranking on the dating scale.

For men, desirable dating traits included a good personality and dance skills, as well as being “tactful, amusing, well dressed, prompt, and courteous” (Great Depression and the Middle Class…).  Lasciviousness was not a good quality!  Women communicated with one another concerning a man’s suitability, so for Bucky to have been popular he couldn’t have been the sex-centric playboy that fans like to imagine.  It’s far more likely that he was well-spoken, funny, charming, and a great dancer.  Remember, Bucky was from the lower classes, so he wouldn’t have had the money - despite the Depression, it was expected that men pay for the entire date (barring Sadie Hawkins themed events and once a couple started to go steady) - to impress women with a car and fancy clothes, nor would he have been able to take them out to dinner, so his dance skills would have been pretty important!  

In fact, dancing was such a popular form of entertainment that, in one year, the University of Michigan fraternities held over 300 evening dances!

According to this web page “young people in the 1930s dated and double-dated by going to movies, getting something to eat, going for ice cream, driving around, spending time with friends, going to dances, and even ‘necking.’”  That’s right folks, necking.  Not fucking.  

Women were expected to straddle a fine line between being too forward or too “frigid,” both of which could harm their reputations.  Young people engaged in kissing, necking, and petting (meaning anything short of full intercourse).  Petting was becoming more common - due, in part, to rising automobile-culture - as was sex itself; heavier petting typically came from going-steady, and engagement “came… to mean that partners would at some point 'go all the way’” (Teen Culture in the 1930’s).  Ladies who were known to be free with their sexuality prior to commitment were in danger of being known for exactly that, and could easily become popular merely as a means to an end (the wrong kind of popularity).

So, it likely wouldn’t have been hard for Bucky, as a popular young man, to find a willing partner (and I’m certainly not suggesting that he was virginal).  However, if he were the sort of man to focus on easy women, it’s not likely that he would maintain his own high rating (which, again, we can guess at by the fact that he was able to not only secure himself dates, but Steve as well).  

This is a really quick and dirty run-down of dating and sex during the 30’s into the early 40’s, but there is a lot of information available out there.  Bucky is presented as a stand-up guy, so I don’t really understand why so many people seem to view him as some sort of a man whore.  I sincerely doubt that he was entirely chaste (particularly once he went into the Army, a topic which I avoided on purpose), but I imagine that he was a desirable companion for his charm and dateability far more than for his sexual prowess.

Bucky Barnes and dating in the 40's.

So, wow.  Yeah.  Another one of those “I’ve been reading a lot of.. and.. (insert my opinion here).”

So, yes,  I keep reading about Bucky as the ladies man: all sexed up and such.  It’s a bit baffling to me, as this is a very modern way of thinking.  Dating - or courtship - was very different in the 30’s and 40’s than it is today!

For example, take this excerpt from A Brief History of Courtship and Dating in America, (Part 2):

This describes a situation in which dating was more about one’s reputation than any sort of romance.  It was very important not only to be seen with many dates, but with the proper people.  This explains why Steve would have had such a difficult time securing a partner: being seen with someone unpopular was worse than not being seen at all.  However, this gives us a clue as to how popular Bucky must have been!  If he was able to leverage himself in order to get Steve dates, Bucky must have been pretty high-ranking on the dating scale.

For men, desirable dating traits included a good personality and dance skills, as well as being “tactful, amusing, well dressed, prompt, and courteous” (Great Depression and the Middle Class…).  Lasciviousness was not a good quality!  Women communicated with one another concerning a man’s suitability, so for Bucky to have been popular he couldn’t have been the sex-centric playboy that fans like to imagine.  It’s far more likely that he was well-spoken, funny, charming, and a great dancer.  Remember, Bucky was from the lower classes, so he wouldn’t have had the money - despite the Depression, it was expected that men pay for the entire date (barring Sadie Hawkins themed events and once a couple started to go steady) - to impress women with a car and fancy clothes, nor would he have been able to take them out to dinner, so his dance skills would have been pretty important!  

In fact, dancing was such a popular form of entertainment that, in one year, the University of Michigan fraternities held over 300 evening dances!

According to this web page “young people in the 1930s dated and double-dated by going to movies, getting something to eat, going for ice cream, driving around, spending time with friends, going to dances, and even ‘necking.’”  That’s right folks, necking.  Not fucking.  

Women were expected to straddle a fine line between being too forward or too “frigid,” both of which could harm their reputations.  Young people engaged in kissing, necking, and petting (meaning anything short of full intercourse).  Petting was becoming more common - due, in part, to rising automobile-culture - as was sex itself; heavier petting typically came from going-steady, and engagement “came… to mean that partners would at some point 'go all the way’” (Teen Culture in the 1930’s).  Ladies who were known to be free with their sexuality prior to commitment were in danger of being known for exactly that, and could easily become popular merely as a means to an end (the wrong kind of popularity).

So, it likely wouldn’t have been hard for Bucky, as a popular young man, to find a willing partner (and I’m certainly not suggesting that he was virginal).  However, if he were the sort of man to focus on easy women, it’s not likely that he would maintain his own high rating (which, again, we can guess at by the fact that he was able to not only secure himself dates, but Steve as well).  

This is a really quick and dirty run-down of dating and sex during the 30’s into the early 40’s, but there is a lot of information available out there.  Bucky is presented as a stand-up guy, so I don’t really understand why so many people seem to view him as some sort of a man whore.  I sincerely doubt that he was entirely chaste (particularly once he went into the Army, a topic which I avoided on purpose), but I imagine that he was a desirable companion for his charm and dateability far more than for his sexual prowess.

The Evolution of Bucky’s Hair as Character Development

In which I actually tried to write meta about Bucky’s hair. 

  I love that actors have as much invested in their own headcanon of their characters as the rest of us do. I always get really excited, when in interviews or at cons, actors will share what they think is their backstory, their motivations, their perspective of the life and breadth of their character. The exercise of developing headcanons as a writer or as an actor feels similar and that’s kind of a cool thing without breaking the 4th wall. 

Character appearance definitely makes or breaks the believability of a character. I don’t always notice the subtleties of a character’s look and feel, but I’m sure I would notice something missing. Clothes can be an interesting representation of character and can speak volumes when done correctly; but I really find hair is just as intriguing as a character’s costume.

Hair is controversial.

Keep reading

Fic resources: Undressing Bucky Barnes

Here’s some information and resources you might like to have for when you’re writing about male WWII-era characters undressing each other and engaging in sweet, sweet, pornographic activities:

US military field uniforms in WWII didn’t have zipper flies. Modern ones don’t either, actually, though there were eras (like Vietnam) when they did use zippers. I’m not actually sure why they originally did button flies or why they went back to them… I imagine it’s just because a lost or broken button is easier to repair in the field than a broken or jammed zipper? But that’s just a guess. The point is, embrace the button fly.

US Army characters like Bucky would have several uniforms issued, and would have mostly worn a primarily wool field service uniform while on the front. He seems to be wearing the tattered remains of that uniform when Steve rescues him in Azzano. The uniform Bucky’s wearing at the beginning of The First Avenger, before he ships out, is the Class A dress uniform or garrison uniform. This is also the uniform that would be worn while in the garrison, as the name implies, so it’s normal for soldiers to wear when they aren’t in the field, which is why we see Bucky wearing it in New York, and both Steve and Bucky wearing their respective dress uniforms while in London or otherwise in the office, so to speak.

You can see a list here of everything he’d have been issued upon induction, which idek I just found really interesting. Mmm, sexy Army underwear! Yeah, get it! They could also buy additional gear to supplement what they’ve been given, and they’d buy that stuff from the base PX (that’s the Post Exchange, essentially the base general store). That may have also included items like these leather photo wallets and other stuff to help them remember the folks back home, but more commonly they’d be buying stuff there like soap, candy, gum, and beer. Did you know there’s a whole freaking book about the PX system in WWII? I fucking love history nerds, group hug, get in here.

So Bucky’s got his standard issue gear when he’s out with the 107th in the deleted scene from TFA. Obviously by the time they become the Howling Commandos, Bucky is sick of Army issue and they become customized as shit. (Most of the other Howlies are still wearing fairly recognizable kit from their respective countries.) They’re probably also not regular Army anymore at all and are totally under the umbrella of the SSR, considering they also wear SSR insignia, so maybe it was the SSR (or Howard, he’s got some style) who hooked Bucky up with his sweet new duds.

Here’s Bucky in his Howlies uniform, which just personally speaking is my favorite uniform for Bucky because he looks hot as helllllll. I can’t find a single piece of standard issue in this (maybe his underwear, only Steve would know for sure).

He’s gotten himself some trousers with additional pockets and they don’t really look like the standard wool to me, either. Maybe they’ve got some slightly futuristic Stark-style waterproofing, I don’t even know. (Regular field trousers would only have side and back pockets, plus a watch pocket; I know there are trousers from the period that do have cargo pockets, but they were for paratroopers and possibly tankers had them too, not infantry.) Just bear in mind that he’s probably still got a button fly. And I’m not at all reminding you of that because I have yet to read a single WWII-era story that describes Steve slowly unbuttoning Bucky’s fly (maybe with his teeth? go wild!), and I’m dying with the lack of it. It’s not that REALLY I PROMISE.

He’s also wearing leather leggings/gaiters, which is interesting because by this point the US Army has abandoned the leggings used in WWI/early WWII and have switched over to a double-buckle combat boot, which was probably what Bucky was wearing in Azzano. These gaiters have buckles instead of the bajillionty hooks of canvas leggings, though, so they’re probably not too laborious to take off. Just if you’re having Steve undress him don’t forget that he’ll need to remove the leggings as part of that process, is all. (God please somebody write me like at least 5K of beautiful hurt/comfort with Steve tenderly undressing Bucky post-mission PLEASE SOMEBODY PLEASE.)

This video is from a reenactor, but it’s helpful because it shows you close-ups of some stuff like the fastenings on the field jacket (zipper and buttons) and the lining inside and whatnot. It’s these little details that really help when you’re writing me that fic I requested above oh god please somebody anybody. It also shows some cool stuff like shaving kit and some toiletry items. Look at the tiny handy roll of toilet paper! The tiny box of cigarettes and the match case! It shows some cool paperwork and books and things a soldier might carry, too. This reenactor video also shows the person opening the pants and you can see how the button fly looks, though the uniform shown is airborne, not regular Army.

Anyway I can’t believe I just wrote this long a post when really my point is please write less zippers and more button flies, kthxbai.

(Disclaimer: I am not in the Army and am not from the 40s. Hopefully most of this is correct anyway.)

I HAVE HIS FUKCING ADDRESS THANK YOU GOOGLE NOW I JUST NEED TO DO A FEASIBILITY CHECK

IT DOESN’T EXIST 

ALSO WTF IS UP WITH THE MOVIE @hansbekhart is having your front door opening to a vacant? lot? a normal thing? because there’s not much street going on during the “end of the line” scene. 

What, in this scene?

Not normal, but good history on the part of whoever set the shot that way.  It looks like Steve lives in a rear tenement, the shittiest of the shitty options of tenement living.  Tenements sometimes had a few buildings built onto a lot, and the ones in the back were the older, cheaper, shittier, smaller, less ventilated, more fatally hazard to your health ones.  

You might pass through a courtyard or through the front tenement in order to get to your building. 

Cute, right?  

In each of these buildings there would’ve been literally a hundred or more people living there at any given time, often with more than ten people to each apartment.  People didn’t live in these places long; Steve probably would’ve passed through a lot of these shitty places, growing up.

By the time Steve was born there’d been massive reforms to tenement living, mostly because of OG social justice warrior Jacob Riis, which did help put a halt to the crazy death rate and also gave us some oddities like windows that look into the other room.  

BUT still a good chance Mrs Rogers might’ve contracted TB just from, like, the privies that still might’ve been hanging out in the yard or something.

So yeah, good history, showing that Steve definitely lived in a total shithole and is a crazy person for storing his house key where his literally hundreds of neighbors could totally break in and relieve him of whatever shitty belongings he had.  Consistent characterization for the numbnuts who stored Fury’s flash drive in the super secret location of a vending machine, I guess.

Also yeah if you’re talking about Steve’s address from his cheating the draft file or whatever, that’s a total bullshit address.  It’s like seven digits long, we don’t tend to do that.

i’m gonna give you a big fucking kiss one day.

i’m going with alameda avenue because it seems to also be fictional? this appeals to me.

This is 100% Steve Rogers, crazy person.

Actually, this is 100% sane-person behaviour (well, not the flashdrive thing, that is pretty baffling, just the key thing).

When I was a kid and we were dirt-poor, living in a shitty tenement house (sure, not 1930s shitty, but still pretty awful), my mom (and a lot of other people we knew) kept a key under the doormat whenever no one was home. Literally the first place anyone would look.

The reasoning behind this? Simple: we had practically nothing to steal, and figured anyone desperate enough to sneak into someone’s flat to grab three-day old bread and half a glass of mayonnaise was welcome to it. This way, potential burglars would find the key, go in, see there was nothing that could be turned into drug money (because it was the 80s and the height of the heroin crisis and ‘thief’ and ‘junkie’ were basically synonyms) and hopefully walk back out without doing any frustration-induced damage.

The alternative would have been those same burglars kicking the door in (a matter of five seconds and any neighbours within hearing would have just turned their stereo up), which would have left us with a broken door that would have taken months and a lot of begging to the landlord to get fixed and left us sitting in the cold (and the cabbage-soup reek from next door) in the meantime.

And well, I’m guessing Steve’s reasoning would have been something along those lines. *shrugs*

Why Bucky Barnes is the best Sniper Ever to Ever

My coworker is gun obsessed and she was telling me about snipers and how exceedingly rare it is for someone to be a successful sniper. Of course my mind immediately applied these random tid bits to Bucky Barnes.

As most of you may have already known there’s this thing called the coriolis effect. Basically, a long distance target, even if completely still, is technically a ‘moving target’ because the earth is rotating while the bullet is maintaining a relatively straight path. Thus, when shooting over 1000 yards (.56 miles) this needs to be factored in. (I’m not even going to go into spin drift: the rotating motion of the barrel of the gun).

Out to 1000 yards you could have nearly a full minute of correction because of coriolis effect depending on which direction you are shooting. Ie if you are shooting East your target is going to be dropping. If you are shooting towards the West your target is going to rotate up.

So, now-a-days we have automatic calculators for figuring out the coriolis effect quickly and accurately. Long distance shooters use daily updated data to build a drop chart or ballistic compensations. But, back when Bucky was a sniper they still used the mathematical formula for the coriolis effect to position their shots accurately. Bucky would have needed to know the relative motion of the object, the motion of the earth, and the latitude he was shooting from (as well as wind speeds etc) and then he would have had to compensate each shot almost to the tee in order to hit his targets.

Here’s the vector formula for the impact of the coriolis effect:

Bucky had to calculate this every time he positioned himself from his sniping position. In our fictitious MCU there is probably a tiny notebook floating around with Bucky’s scribbled equations. 

If this doesn’t prove Bucky’s a fucking brainiac I don’t know what does.

And the fact that, of all place, Bucky took Steve and his dates to a SCIENCE FAIR. 

Conclusion: Bucky Barnes was not just a smartass, he was fucking SMART.

All of this is true; however, we can factor in history as well as science: most sniper shots made by Americans during WWII were not past the 1000-yard range, meaning the coriolis effect was negligible. American WWII snipers were only tested to be able to make a head shot at 200 yards and a body shot at 400 yards. As such, Bucky probably would not have been expected to make shots even close to the 1000 yard range very frequently, if ever. In fact, one of the longest confirmed kills of WWII was around 1200 yards, made by a German sniper, with both the German and Russian sniper programs thought to be far superior to that of the U.S.  

The adjustment needed due to the coriolis effect even at 1000 yards would be 3-4 inches. For the lower distances Bucky would have been expected to cover, the coriolis effect would have been minimal unless he was attempting to make a headshot, so he wouldn’t have needed to do this particular calculation with any sort of frequency. He’d have factored in plenty of other variables - wind, angle, movement, etc. - though, all of which would have required him to be pretty freakin’ smart. 

Interestingly, when I discussed Bucky with a friend who is, in fact, a trained sniper (oh, the conversations I’ve had for fanfic writing purposes), his admiration came from the fact that in the WWII era, American snipers had no spotters. At that point, only the Russians had really begun using teams that allowed the sniper to have a second person watching the target, running those variables, and calling out corrections as needed. 

Of course, by the time the shot pictured above was taken, Bucky already had some modifications from Zola running through his veins…

With Valentine’s day fast approaching, I thought maybe you and I could, you know, *beep* - Happy Valentine’s from Deadpool.

The modern adventures of Han and Ben Kylo (Manip AU)

The one where Kylo tries to (unsuccessfully) force-wave his father and Han tries to work out where his life went wrong.

The rest of the series is here

Submitted by crystalssummer. Not my gif but my text.

Submitted by anonymous.