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on temporary hiatus

2025-06-11T14:15:02Z

(I am having awful computer problems rn don't know how long I'll be away for!)

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META: Some Fun Facts Steve & Bucky's Queer Brooklyn

2025-05-12T19:12:32Z

Sands Street, below the Brooklyn Navy Yard, was Peak Gay Cruising territory.
a more elegant cruising hot spot was the Hotel St. George, the biggest in the country, with an Olympic size Art Deco-decorated saltwater swimming pool, and the Clark Street subway station (also for cruising in the mens room) under it.
At 329 Pacific Street (Fort Greene) there was a gay brothel busted on March 14, 1942 in a scandal called ‘the Swastika Swishery.’
the other Peak Gay Cruising Zone was Coney Island.
which was known for its bathing houses with, eg. nude sunbathing on the roofs
including one with a pink stucco facade called ‘the Pink Palace’
it was so gay that when the swanky Washington Baths held a male beauty contest, in August 1929, with famous judges
all the beauty king entrants were so visibly gay, and many of them in full make-up (that they were asked to take off) that Sobbie Vallee (sister of Rudy Vallee), who was one of the judges, ended up yelling at the crowd: “Ladies, don’t you know those boys are awful floozies?” AND THE LADIES IN THE CROWD DIDN’T CARE. (they picked men with mascara on, even though entreated to go for hairy, tattooed guys who were expected to be not gay, somehow)
Brooklyn was also a place of homage for gay poets because Walt Whitman lived there when he wrote the super-gay Leaves of Grass; also the later poets/writers Hart Crane and Truman Capote.
And there was a house at 7 Middagh Street, BH (aka February House), which was an artist commune that at various times housed or played host to Carson McCullers (probably trans), George Davis, W. H. Auden, Oliver Smith, Benjamin Britten and his lover Peter Pears, burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee, Christopher Isherwood, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and more.

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META: STEVE & BUCKY'S QUEER HISTORY

2025-05-12T16:57:20Z

originally here on tumblr.

inspired by this post, here are some headcanons and meta about Steve & Bucky and queerness pre-war.

Sarah Rogers:

This idea of Sarah's awareness/acceptance of queerness, doesn't necessarily have to be a function of her living in NYC.

If we go with the idea that Steve's parents were Irish immigrants, and Steve was born in 1918... Well that gives Sarah time to have been living in Ireland during the Easter Uprising.

Steve Rogers's mother is obviously going to be involved with that, probably a member of the Irish womens' paramilitary group Cumann na mBan. (Would've also brought her into contact with Suffragists, Socialists, and Trade Unionists to pass that onto Steve, if she wasn't into all that already.)

And y'know who else were involved? A fucktonne of lesbians, that's who (including more than one female doctor and even one butch sniper!)

(My personal headcanon is that she was a nurse on the front lines in 1916, and actually left Ireland because she was in danger of getting arrested if she stayed. She met post-WWI-injury naturalised-American Joseph, either in 1916 while he was visiting Ireland (his home country) and they fought together, or in NYC, after he had been invalided home in 1917, then they married and had Steve in 1918.)

So if Sarah was a part of the Easter Uprising, she could've come into contact with/been accepting of lesbians, at least, long before she set foot in NYC.

You could so easily have her attitude as being like 'ah so there are men like that too, are there??'

Gay-Community Steve:

It is hard for me to reconcile 'bloody-mindedly honest, terrible liar' Steve with being gay and knowing he's gay, and not being open about it, in a self-destructive-for-the-period way.

So either he was so deeply in the closet that he himself didn't know yet, and so hadn't been a part of a gay community with gay friends because he literally didn't know to look for one.

(Like, he and Bucky are a couple and sleeping together for years, but Steve is so naive or in denial he thinks it's just a thing all bachelors do in the absence of a girl they're going to marry.)

OR...

CATFA's view is the propagandised version of events, and Steve actually did know he was gay, and was out to his friends, and the real reason Captain America kept getting rejected for active service is not because of his disabilities but because... he kept admitting to being gay?

And it was only after he got serum (and got in the news), that his public records were expunged to cover up the fact that their darling supersoldier (good and pure and Therefore straight! or perhaps asexual!) ...had broken the law; both by being gay and by falsifying his enlistment forms multiple times.

(Kind of like how how celebrities get a suspect 4F or dodge the draft, and their PR team makes up a more-palatable lie to feed to the public. Like how Frank Sinatra got rejected for active service on psychiatric grounds, but pretended it was because of an inner-ear problem.)

So, if Steve did have rainbow connections, where are they?

Possible reasons (beyond hate crimes, imprisonment or institutionalisation), why it looks like Steve only has the one friend:

Steve could also have had friends in the disabled community and lost them to illness?
Lost friends to the Depression/poverty, or had to move away from NYC for economic reasons?
Lost friends to internment (it wasn't just Japanese-Americans!), deportation, or lavender marriages (felt their new concentration on children and straight-passing made them strangers?)
had friends who were not enlisted, but we didn't see them because when we first meet Steve it's the middle of the day and they were all busy working?
had queer friends but: they were all enlisted by the time CATFA rolls around, and/or already died in the Spanish Civil War?
had queer friends but: they were all in the Navy and kept getting in fights with Steve about the Army being superior.
had queer friends but: they were introduced to Steve by Bucky, and 9/10 were actually friendzoned guys harbouring secret hopes and weren't exactly ecstatic to find out that Bucky was taken -- or, even worse, didn't see Steve as competition at all! -- and therefore never formed a good relationship with Steve.
('Jeez Steve why can't you n' these guys ever seem to get along? He was always so nice to me!' 'I know Buck, it's a mystery.' 😏)
had queer friends but: every time he went to a gay bar the men he could've befriended avoided him to hit on Bucky, or avoided him because he was hitting on Bucky, or avoided him because Bucky was hitting on him (and giving them the stink eye), or both of them were avoided because they were too... distracted to pay attention to anyone else.
(And/or the lesbians that talked to Steve all sidled up thinking he was a beautiful butch woman, then panicked once he opened his mouth, or were only there to ask if that friend of his was 'the double-date guy.')
imagine cops running Steve down outside a gay bar to arrest him for being a woman wearing pants… (Bucky would not let him hear the end of it.) And then being like 'oh! uhh sorry sir…' (two second pause before they suddenly clock that Steve and Bucky are a gay couple) 'Wait a second-' (Steve and Bucky already running.)
Maybe Steve would even become reluctant to go to the clubs, out of a fear of losing Bucky to someone else? Or Bucky reluctant to go for the same reason, and because Steve just attracts bad luck? (See: mob-related stuff below.) Both of them just sick of having run-ins with the cops?
had queer friends but: his views were so ahead of his time that even they found him too much.
(IE. barred from the gay bath house for protesting ableist body standards, the lack of POC, fighting the police too hard during a raid, and/or criticising the mob owners... Maybe Steve eventually couldn't go to any gay club, because he was in shit with the mob? Maybe the police actually thought he was straight, because they'd seen his photo up behind the bar as a persona non grata in gay clubs?! Future idiots will say this is 'proof' he stands for 'Traditional American Values.')
Banned from politics club for criticising Stalin's regime; barred from the jazz club for fighting a white dude there; banned from the radical womens group for bringing a trans friend; banned from the trade union for attacking the mob / wanting to fix union and police corruption. (Has he been excommunicated yet? It's probably only a matter of time.)
Picture hapless social-secretary Bucky helping Steve limp home from yet another Club that Bucky got him into, and having to listen to Steve rant about why 'they're all a bunch of hypocrites, Buck!' Perhaps homebody introvert Steve, secretly wanting to stay in, while extrovert Bucky keeps trying to help him get out more, and every time Bucky thinks he's found Steve the perfect place this time, Steve's all like 'we'll see.'
had queer friends but: he was so open about it that he was alienated by potential friends who wanted to remain on the DL and considered him dangerous.
(Perhaps especially so, if they were / or about to be enlisted and didn't want to risk a blue discharge, and couldn't sanction the way Stevee blatantly proclaimed his orientation at recruitment stations? 🤔 Whereas Bucky was so invested, and had cultivated such a lady killer rep, that he can not-worry about being seen with Steve.)
Or: he was on the DL and was alienated by potential friends who weren't, and looked down on him for passing?
Or: he was estranged from gay friends who did the same thing he did (ie. declared their orientation during recruitment) but because they actually wanted to dodge the draft, etc.
Also consider: gay Steve and gay Bucky, both aware of their sexuality but not out to each other yet... independently going to any of the numerous gay hot spots in Brooklyn, seeing each other there, and fleeing in horror before they can make any friends, thinking 'omg why was he there? did he follow me?? does he know?!' And not figuring it out... because they are just genuinely that dumb.
Likewise, both of them in the pre-out phase, thinking 'well I can't risk having gay friends because they'd have to be a part of my life and then Bucky/Steve will find out!!' ...because they are just genuinely that dumb.

There are actually loads of options!

You could definitely do a have-your-cake-and-eat-it version of events where Steve has been part of a wider queer community, made friends, and yet still wound up having only one who stood by him. (There has to be reason why 'even when I had nothing, I had Bucky' would be true).

Other Possibilities:

Steve and Bucky double-dating beards / playing mirkin to lesbian couples? = Hell yes.
(Sidenote: I also headcanon Bucky as having a gay sister, so maybe she could've been Steve's plus one, or they'd take out all Bucky's sisters to act as chaperones?)
Shit, why not turn it into a business? Bucky the Escort who gives his lesbian client a cover date, a great night of dancing, and a second cover-escort guaranteed to not steal her girl!
(Service comes complete with beautiful handwritten love letters (dictated by Bucky, penned by artist!Steve), a personalised sweetheart-style photo of Bucky, and a messy Public Break Up Scene on her stoop.😉)
RE: them moving in together: everyone talks about how queer Brooklyn was, but what if the boys went above and beyond for their own safety -- February House style -- and lived in a building exclusively populated by queer people? Maybe by queer members of the forces, or people who occupied humble positions in creative industries?
If Steve has lesbian friends from BK, and lesbian friends in the chorus line... why not both at the same time? Why not have some of those lesbian friends be Brooklyn girls who signed up to be chorus girls because- y'know -chorus girls, and were then like 'Steve?! Wtf are you doing here?!'
(Why not kill three birds with one stone: one of those chorus girls is Bucky's sister? Cue Spidermenpointing_meme and mutual assured blackmail -- she promises not to tell Bucky what Steve did if Steve promises not to tell Bucky that one of his sisters has run away from home to become a showgirl.)
Bucky as the social butterfly of the two, more likely to be out and about, especially in risky places (ie. he worked on the docks; he could actually get and keep jobs in those places), and/or the safer one, and given their later pattern of Bucky's friends becoming Steve's (ie. the Howlies)... I think Bucky would be more likely to be the one making eye-opening introductions to Steve rather than the other way around. Which could have interesting knock on effects... (see above).
Maybe he got Steve a lucrative job illustrating queer 8-pagers (maybe there's an underground queer magazine out of BK, a la The Circle, and he illustrates for that, using Bucky as a model?
Cue hilarious 'what were you doing at the Devil's Sabbath?' moments when random men come up to Bucky in the street like 'where do I know your face from??' 😱)

Re: Extended Family

I also headcanon that Bucky had a gay Uncle Jim (maybe a tailor?) who was institutionalized for being gay, and received harrowing medical treatments like electroshock therapy that eventually resulted in his death.

So by the time Bucky -- named after his dead uncle -- started showing signs of being bi, Bucky's parents had already had their eyes opened. Or maybe, like Sarah, they had already emigrated from a specific open-minded situation, so queer Brooklyn wasn't such a revelation.

Alternatively: In Stucky fic, people often seem to think as far as 'Brooklyn was queer!' but no farther.

But why not? Why does their queer education have to have started in queer Brooklyn?

Why not have Bucky's or Steve's (or both!) parents be engaged in Lavender Marriages, and open about it? One gay parent, or both?

(This might be another reason why Steve appears to not have friends outside Bucky; he might have got all the queer community he needed from his own family unit. Imagine it! Not just connected to Brooklyn queers but Edwardian queers, darling! The Herstory!!)

What if Steve's mother wasn't single but simply... 'never married?' 👀 Or maybe she was straight, but in love with her late lavender husband?

And during/after the war:

Re: the Howlies.

(Have brought this ficbunny up elsewhere)

The Howlies knew and were fine about it, because... maybe there was an official investigation during the war to establish whether or not any of the Howlies were gay and/or in a relationship with Steve.

So, being a bunch of professional mischief-makers, and acting completely independently, the Howlies all pulled an 'I am Spartacus!' and claimed to be gay and in a relationship with Steve, under interrogation.

Steve also admitted to being gay, because he is terrible at lying and had to stand by them when he was told all his men admitted they were gay.

(Except for Bucky. He kept his head during interrogation -- sadly, not his first rodeo.)

So Bucky went down in hastily-redacted Army Record as somehow the only straight Howling Commando??

(The interrogators couldn't tell if they were being made fun of or not, and in any case the scandal was considered absolutely monstrous and a terrible blow for morale, so it was immediately covered up and no further steps were taken.)

Ironically enough, Steve & Bucky weren't even the only queer Howlies!

The Future:

Seeing gay marriage legalised, the Stonewall riots, openly queer films and celebrities and tv shows, queer pride parades etc. etc. would be heart-breaking for Steve... because of course by this point he has become Captain America, deluded women he barely knows have spent decades claiming to have been his true love, and the people that did know him have been loyally covering up for him claiming he's straight. He'd feel like a hypocrite for not being what they said; or like he's letting them down by unmasking all their hard work.

And of course his real beloved isn't here any more, when he's finding all this out he's totally alone, no one to share it with, (doesn't know if any of his other friends are still alive, yet). And he doesn't want to have to relive that pain over Bucky by being interrogated on his love life...

Plus, after a century of being mythologised, he associates coming out with even wider public furore and a violation of the privacy that Steve Rogers never gets to have.

So all he has is the private escape of the 20th century's queer cinema, literature, tv shows, and porn (which all feel like an embarrassment of riches) ...but without being out to anyone - he feels he has to keep it a secret.

Until Bucky comes back, and isn't in a prudent enough mental state to realise all this. So for him, finding all this out about queer rights etc. is an untrammelled joy, and that's what finally gets Steve out of his negative headspace and into the light.

(And then, yeah, out and married. Try to stop Bucky getting his citizenship back when he's literally married to Captain America, assholes! Nowadays, the only women that hit on Steve are lunatics who think they can turn him, and Steve's only other problem is all the gay men who either want in on that threesome or think they can steal him away from Bucky!)

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Latest Bucky Manips

2025-05-10T19:10:06Z

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Significant aspect of Steve Rogers being Irish-Catholic:

2025-05-10T18:46:51Z

As well as having branches of the Nazi party (ie. the German-American Bund), the Brooklyn of Steve’s day also had a big problem of antisemitism amongst the local Irish-Catholic population.

Examples:

There was a Canadian-American Catholic priest and demagogue named Charles Coughlin, who received indirect funding from the Nazi party. Up until 1939 'Father Coughlin’ had both a regular right-wing talkradio programme, and a matching newspaper (ironically called Social Justice), broadcasting pro-fascist, anti-communist, virulently antisemitic diatribes. (He was the inspiration for the character Brother Justin Crowe in the show Carnivale.)
In New York, Coughlin’s writings prompted the creation of an antisemitic organisation called the Christian Front, which held public rallies on the intersecting corners of Jewish/Irish neighborhoods in Brooklyn, with the specific intention of drumming up conflict. And just as in Nazi Germany, this indoctrination started young: there were Hitler Youth summer camps in both New York and New Jersey.
In wider pop culture, the most successful broadway play for a long time was Abie’s Irish Rose, a “schmaltzy interfaith romantic comedy" about the conflict between a Jewish family and Irish-Catholic family when a Jewish boy marries an Irish girl (so, that generation’s equivalent of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.) It was so successful that it was mentioned in the lyrics to songs of other broadway shows, spawned a long-running series of tie-in movies, and had its own radio show.
Similarly, the musical West Side Story was originally titled ‘East Side Story’ and was about a star-crossed Jewish/Irish-Catholic couple in the Lower East Side of Manhattan (where Jack Kirby lived, and Cap too, before he was later moved to Brooklyn. Those other kids Jack Kirby grew up fighting? Probably Irish-Catholic.)
This is also why, when Jewish writer Norman Lear came to rip off UK sitcom Till Death Us Do Part to make US sitcom All in the Family, in the 1970s, his choice to play the role of the bigoted father -- even though he was inspired by his own, bigoted Jewish father -- was an Irish actor whose face “screams ‘Irish.’ (Lear kept being encouraged to use that and make the character Irish-Catholic in the show, but he refused.)
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Context:

That rise in Irish-Catholic antisemitism originated with the Fascist conflation of Jews with Bolshevism, and of Communism with the persecution of Christians.
(All this while Russian-Jewish immigrants to NYC were moving into traditionally Irish-Catholic areas, competing for jobs and housing, and their success was resented.)
This also tied into the Spanish Civil War, when Russian and Communist Front groups in America aided the Loyalist forces instead of the Fascists (the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, for example, was made up of American volunteers who fought for the Loyalists, and was 25% Jewish).
In New York, the fact that the Communist party membership was mainly Jewish was treated as proof that all Jews were Communist, (and therefore enemies of Catholics), even though the majority of Jews in New York were not Communists.
In fact, it was more the case that Jews were drawn to what they perceived as progressivism -- grounded in a history of discrimination -- and since they saw Fascism as their chief threat, they were more likely to accept Communists as allies in the fight against it (just as Catholics were more likely to ally with Fascists against Communism).
Amongst American Catholics there was also distrust of FDR's liberal New Deal policies, regarded as a wave of Communism sweeping the country, since the government’s helping of the poor post-Depression was seen as a deliberate infringement upon what was traditionally the territory of the Catholic Church. (I kid you not.)
And then, since Ireland was a neutral country, the Irish-Catholics in New York were able to continue to espouse such views during the war. Unlike them, the Germans and Italians suddenly became more circumspect (as they had during WWI), for fear of appearing to support America’s enemies, and suffering reprisals as a result.
And all this was not helped by the fact that the Pope shared this view of Communism, and collaborated with Hitler on the Reich Concordat, an authoritarian pact wherein the Vatican vowed to forbid Catholics in Fascist Germany from interfering in politics.
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All of which is to say:
It’s a BIG DEAL for Steve’s Jewish creators to make Steve Irish-Catholic.
It means that, on top of being a Nazi’s worst nightmare (disabled, blonde, blue-eyed, turned into a supersoldier and yet still antifa), and fighting Bundists, Silver Shirts and ANP members, as you’d expect, Steve often would've been fighting his own people, as well.
That takes an even greater strength of character and commitment to left wing ideals.
.

tl;dr: in historical context, Steve being Irish-Catholic is hugely significant.

( Read more... )

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CATFA META: JIM MORITA

2025-05-10T17:48:01Z

Re: His family.

As a Californian, if Jim’s family were interned their most likely place of internment would be Manzanar concentration camp, as it’s the closest to Fresno.

(124 miles due east, though it takes 4 hours 22 mins to reach it by car nowadays -- presumably much longer, back then -- as you’ve got to go around Sequoia National Park to get there. The only other California camp was Tule Lake, but that is 482 miles due north of Fresno, or 8 hours even by modern car.)

Manzanar opened in March 1942 (coincidentally, the same time Red Skull recovered the Tesseract), housed 11,070 Americans of Japanese ancestry and their immigrant parents, and there’s a book, Farewell to Manzanar, (ebook here), which is a memoir by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston about her time in the camp (as well as her life before and after.)

Even angstier possibility: Some Japanese immigrants were given the opportunity to return to Japan on prisoner exchange ships. If Jim’s family were immigrants and decided to do this, there’s a real possibility that the last time Jim ever saw them was when he shipped off to war!

(Unless... he stayed in the army and somehow got himself attached to the US army of occupation in Japan, from September 2, 1945 to April 28, 1952? Which might be feasible as he could be counted as a useful Japanese-American public figure to have around? Some potential for a really moving post-war family reunion story, there. Hell, there’s no reason why all the Howlies couldn’t have gone with him!)

Sidenote: Though Jim is Japanese-American, Kenneth Choi (the actor who plays him) is actually Korean-American. so maybe you could throw in a ref to that and make Jim Korean on his mother’s side? (ie. suggesting only one half of his family would be interned, which is an unusual viewpoint to have... though would presumably see them experiencing even more prejudice at home when the Korean war started? 🤔)

Re: Jim and the War.

Given CATFA's habit of putting militaries nowhere near where they should be / when they should be, I think you could say that Jim was part of the 442 and they were just deployed much earlier in this 'verse. If they’re letting Steve publically found a desegregated unit in November 1943, it’s not so much of a stretch!

(Or you could go for some off-the-wall backstory where Jim was already in Europe when war broke out, for some reason, and he got stuck, ended up joining up with American forces to fight, and really is the lone Japanese guy in the whole US Army at the time? Again, if there’s a random French Resistance guy in Italy, why not?!)

If he’s in the 442nd, he would’ve trained at Camp Shelby, Hattiesburg, Mississippi (bumping the timeline back a year in April 1943; IRL it was in 1944), and come into conflict not only with white soldiers but also with other Japanese-Americans from Hawaii, (pejoratively called Buddah-heads) who outnumbered the mainland Japanese-Americans (pejoratively called Kotonks) and had a pretty dim view of them. (Although this changed after some of the Hawai'i recruits took to the nearby Japanese incarceration centers at Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas.)

Historically, the 442nd also served alongside the 92nd Infantry Division, (aka the Buffalo soldiers), a segregated African American unit... so maybe that could’ve been Gabe’s unit and how they first met?

(Here’s how both units’ insignia look).

Pre & Post-war:

Judging by his chopsy personality I'd say it's more likely Jim lived/worked in Fresno's Chinatown than on a farm. That man has 'Service Industry / dealing with The Public' all over him.

Given that this grandson lives in NYC / is the head of a prestigious science-based high school, I wonder if Jim moved to the east coast after WWII? That would also put him closer to Dum-dum and Gabe (and Frenchy and Monty if they visited America, of course).

Jim’s ethnicity makes it likely he would've been snubbed of medals he deserves after WWII. (Twenty Japanese WWII personnel didn’t get their Medals of Honour until 1998, and only then after an investigation into anti-Asian bias in the forcesh.)

Unless the remaining white Howlies spoke up for him (same goes for Gabe). So maybe there could be a link there, between Jim moving closer to Dum-dum,, and Dum-dum fighting his cause.

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CATFA: RANDOM HOWLIE HEADCANONS

2025-05-10T17:46:07Z

In response to ASK on tumblr:

Hi! Do you have any headcanons about the Howling Commandos?

.

Okay well sorry in advance 'nonny but it's been that kinda day so this answer might be a bit depressing

(to offset that here's an old ask with Howlie headcanons)

14 Headcanons about the Howling Commandos:

1 - all of the guys in the 107 who were captured by Hydra and put to work in the Krausberg POW-camp/factory later died of radiation-related cancers because of being exposed to Tesseract energy. (This was reported upon in the scientific press, post-war, and is part of the reason why people like Bruce Banner were duped into believing that the Bio-Tech Force Enhancement Project would be interested in a gamma-radiation sickness treatment.)

2 - Because Steve made the 107 famous, post-war there was a controversy of unscrupulous members of the 107 who hadn't been captured (ie. the guys who threw rotten food and homophobic jeers at Steve) claiming to have been in Krausberg. But the fact that those guys didn't develop the same health problems as real 107 rescue-ees unmasked them as valour thieves. (Especially galling for the Howlies, since Dum-Dum had had to fight for the government to officially recognise Gabe and Morita's valour in medals, as they deserved.)

3 - one of the Howlies' acquaintance Steve never got to meet was Izzy Cohen, a kid Bucky took under his wing from basic training onwards, who had lied about being underage in order to get into the Army. The same guns which Bucky and the guys were later forced to make for the Nazis turned him into a blue mist at Azzano.

4 - Gabe and Morita came from all-POC squads who were killed off completely because the Nazi guards at Krausberg were hardest on them and because they were the first Zola picked off to experiment on. (This presaged later torture by Zola of Isaiah's men, and of Asian civilians by Werner Reinhardt; both men hired by Peggy's SHIELDra).

5 - During the war Gabe once sat next to Bucky at a campfire, watching Steve perform some feat of extraordinary strength across the way, and -- thinking of his friends he had lost -- asked Bucky what Zola did to them all in the lab. Bucky couldn't talk about it...

6 - over Christmas 1943, before being deployed back to the continent, the Howlies were sent on intense specialised training in the coastal village of Aberdyfi in North Wales, under the auspices of a secretly all Jewish troop of Continental-European Commandos, called X Troop.

7 - because Monty was in with all the right chaps in the Old Boys network, he was able to give Steve et al insight into a lot of the political goings on behind the scenes in the British forces, give him a hint on which of the English intelligence-officers to dismiss due to incompetence, nepotism hiring, etc. Monty once took Steve and Bucky to the London Ritz, where the basement bar was a gay club. 👀

8 - during missions in France the Howlies met Virginia Hall, Noor Inayat Khan (Morita proposed to her while drunk), Logan Howlett (an old war buddy of Dum-Dum's), and Ernest Hemingway (whom they did not think much of: despite being just a journalist, he was waving a handgun around trying to 'liberate' the Paris Ritz... which had been long abandoned by the Nazis by the time he got there.)

9 - while filming movies as part of his USO tour, Steve was biletted at a place called Fort Roach, California, where the US Army Air Force's First Motion Picture Unit was making animated war-propaganda short movies for cinemas. While there, he got Bucky a signed animation-cell of 'Trigger Joe' and met (and punched) some actor guy called Donald Reagan??

10 - During the Allied Invasion of Sicily, the Howlies met three Brits who were introduced to Steve later on, in London. In the modern-day, Steve was delighted to discover that two of them had gone on to become famous actors after the war: one of them starred in Star Wars and another -- still alive -- in Lord of the Rings. He and Christopher Lee kept in touch (Bucky and CL agree that it's great they got the stabbing-noises right in the movies). It blew Tony's mind when he found Steve listening to an advance copy of a heavy metal album, that his 'buddy Chris' had sent him from England. Bucky kind of had a crush on him back in the day... (The third Brit the Howlies met in Sicily was 'Mad Jack' Churchill, of broadsword, longbow and bagpipe fame; Bucky wrote his Scottish dad a delighted letter about it).

11 - Steve and the guys once had to physically restrain Bucky from punching General Patton, during one of their morale-boosting visits to a Field Hospital. (One of the guys at this particular hospital had just had his leg blown off. And Bucky made sure Steve visited in his dirtied combat gear, and not looking immaculate, because he remembered how demoralising it was for bedridden pre-serum Steve if Bucky waltzed in looking all dapper, while Steve was feeling his worst.) The punishment for this incident was the Howlies having to let news crews follow them around for a week, filming propaganda newsreels.

12 - they also repeatedly got in trouble for damaging historic churches in Germany ('accidentally' blowing off the antisemitic Judensau carvings) and loitering in Nazi-occupied areas to put up anti-Nazi graffiti on public buildings (Steve loved exercising the old artistic muscles again.)

13 - after the war, Gabe became a leading light of the Civil Rights Movement in the South. He was once present for one of the Winter Soldier's assassinations in Manhattan, but didn't see who was responsible. (In another universe, where Isaiah Bradley escaped a lot sooner and managed to get to Macon, GA, he and Gabe teamed up to become a sort of Holmes-and-Watson vigilante duo.)

14 - Steve's tactical innovation for the D-Day Landings was to imitate the testudo or shield-wall formation of Roman legions. By standing at the front of one of the LCVPs as it hit the beach, holding a massive piece of steel as a shield, he was able to lead Bucky and the boys (plus 30 others, carrying a second giant shield) safely up the beach, plant the steel-shield, and then retreat to repeat this with each incoming landing craft. This was bastardised in a famous war movie, where Steve McQueen's Captain America simply did an Evel Knievel motorcycle jump over the fortifications to land on the German guns. Everyone is disappointed when Steve has to tell them he never did this. (Bucky keeps telling everyone he did... 🤦‍♀️🙄)

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RANDOM HOWLIE META

2025-05-10T17:42:23Z

things I have thought about it:

after Krausberg the Howlies would’ve been together for 15 months and 15 days, from mid-November 1943 to March 1945.

Since Frenchy and Monty aren’t US Army, and Gabe and Morita are probably from segregated units, the Howlie Bucky could’ve known longest – after Steve – would’ve been Dum-dum.

If so (taking it from when Bucky was deployed) they would’ve spent a solid 20 months and 15 days in each other’s company.

if Morita was from the all-Nisei 442nd infantry Regiment, that means a) that’s the most decorated in US military history, and he’s a Ranger to boot! b) composed completely of Japanese-American volunteers who would otherwise have been in internment camps alongside their families.

a lot of black American servicemen were– well first of all not even allowed to serve initially, that had to be brought in– second of all were relegated to service roles at first and were the ones responsible for building a lot of the US Army infrastructure (like airfields) in the UK. If Gabe was among them there’s a chance he would be the guy who’s spent the longest time in England (after Monty of course).

Also: there were a couple occasions of black US troops clashing with white US troops in England, because of, eg. whites (especially from the South) expecting US segregation laws to be applied while they were in the UK.

(This also happened on the continent and in the Pacific. In 1945 the singer Tony Bennett was serving in the US Army of occupation in Germany and was demoted by a bigoted sergeant just for dining with a black high school buddy.)

After August 1944 the ‘Red Ball Express’ truck convoy system (keeping US soldiers supplied on the continent after D-Day), was driven by black soldiers. So having Gabe on the squad might’ve proven mighty handy for getting first dibs on supplies.

both Gabe and Morita would’ve had to fight to actually receive any of the medals they earned during the war, even decades later.

all the Howlies are considerably older than Steve and Bucky – maybe Bucky picked them specifically with experience in mind, thinking they’d have more to teach Steve.

(Dum-dum and Morita are comfortably above the draft age; maybe they’re career soldiers from before the war? or they both enlisted despite being too old? That would suit their fighty personalities.)

If Bucky and Dum-Dum’s first experience together was the Allied invasion of Sicily (aka Operation Husky) then there’s a chance they could’ve met Christopher Lee and Alec Guinness there.

If the Howlies were trained in how to handle SSR escapology gadgets while in England then the man who could’ve been teaching them that is… Naval Intelligence officer John Pertwee (who, as a teenager, was a circus 'wall of death’ rider who rode with a live lion in his sidecar. Bucky would have an aneurysm if Steve heard about this.)

other random Howlie headcanons here (they could’ve been in Paris at the same time as Ernest Hemingway, for example!)

also a lil meta here about some other real-world WWII details that might apply to them (like where might they have been stationed in the UK, where their Hydra missions actually were, etc.)

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CATFA META: STEVE & BUCKY'S MEDALS

2025-05-10T17:24:27Z

Steve

looks like he's got:

US pins (upper collar)
DUI pins (distinctive unit insignia, lapels)
Parachute badge (the little oval one)
Purple Heart (with gold oak leaf cluster)
American Defense Service (for chasing down the saboteur in Brooklyn?) *this one is a mistake!
Combat Infantryman badge (that’s the big blue one, but that's supposed to be on top! not bottom, as it’s considered the first and most prestigious!)
Distinguished/Presidential Unit Citation badge (R breast)

Bucky

should have:

US disc pin (R upper collar)
Infantry disc collar pin (L upper collar, crossed muskets)
DUI pins (distinctive unit insignia, lapels)
107th Regimental insignia badge (L bicep)
Combat Infantryman badge
if Steve's got a purple heart he'd probably have one too (minus oak leaf?)
maybe a red/white good-conduct ribbon
a Mediterranean theater ribbon (with a bronze battle star per campaign, and bronze arrowhead for amphibious assault landings at Sicily, etc.)
the same parachute badge
definitely some kind of marksmanship badge (below ribbon rack)
Distinguished/Presidential UC on R

Steve would also have a Medal of Honour or two somewhere; possibly only post-Valkyrie.

Further Info:

The fact that Steve has outlined letter US pins on his collar (as opposed to discs, like Bucky) shows he's an officer. (The What If animators stupidly gave Steve the same pins/uniform even though he’s just a private.)
The 2 gold bars on his epaulettes show that Steve is a Captain.
Bucky’s got his sergeant chevrons on his biceps.👆
(IIRC a deleted scene showed Dum-Dum with chevrons on his sweater sleeve, too? was he a sergeant?)
The long jacket seen in the pub is the dress uniform (a long cavalry-style jacket).
They’re supposed to have gold bars on the sleeve cuff, one for every 6 months spent deployed, and a diagonal below that, sloping the other way, for 3 years (but a lot of guys left these off because- well, they just did. Probably for practical reasons.)
Steve’s jacket is also darker because he’s an officer; in contrast, the standard issue pants for officers were lighter (a combination called the ‘pinks and greens’) but apparently they could wear matching pants if they wanted.
NCOs and enlisted men had matching lighter colour jacket/pants.
The short jacket Steve is also shown in (see above) is from later on in the war; it’s an ‘Ike’ jacket (after General Eisenhower), modelled on British service ‘battle dress’ uniforms, after the Americans realised the long cavalry-style jackets weren’t so practical in combat.
From wikipedia:
“However, development and approval by the Army was slow. Except for small runs of jackets made for soldiers in England, the U.S. Army did not provide the jacket as an issue item to enlisted soldiers until the war in Europe was almost over.”
So Steve probably has that jacket because he’s in England in Nov 1943.

( Read more... )

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CATFA META: Where were the Hydra bases?

2025-04-29T11:21:02Z

Today’s pointless and yet strangely therapeutic meta exercise:

Trying to work out:

A) where were the Hydra bases Steve and the Howlies attacked in WWII,

B) what order could they have attacked them in?

🤔
( Read more... )

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CATFA META: If The Howlies were real...

2025-04-29T11:13:30Z

I've been thinking about Steve's time during the war, and wondering if anyone has any headcanons about, eg. where he was stationed, how exactly the Howling Commando mission planning went, etc?
In the comics, Steve isn't assigned to the 107 but to the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division (aka the ‘Big Red One’.)
They were part of D-Day landings, on Omaha Beach.

In deleted scenes / clips from the Smithsonian, it’s implied that Steve was also a part of D-Day:

( Read more... )

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CATFA META:

2025-04-29T11:06:08Z

How long did Steve actually know Peggy?

Short Answer:

626 days total / 20 months, 15 days, and only spoke on 8 separate days.

Long Answer:

Steve got his last 4F / first 1A on 14th of June, 1943.

When Steve arrived at Camp Lehigh, Peggy introduced herself and the SSR.

Directly afterwards, Col. Phillips introduced himself and explained that they would be there for a week only before choosing someone to be given serum:

If they had any common sense, they would’ve said Steve was at Basic Training for a while before being drafted into Project Rebirth.

This being Marvel, however...

( full meta under cut )

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where to find me if tumblr dies:

2025-04-22T06:59:30Z

twitter

bluesky

pillowfort

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amarriageoftrueminds @ 2024-03-10T14:44:00

2024-03-10T14:45:05Z

Happy Birthday Bucky!

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copied from tumblr:

2024-03-05T15:00:25Z

.A TIMELINE OF CATFA IN IMAGES.

Full meta here.

Sources:
CATFA
CATFA Deleted Scene
CATWS
CATWS Deleted Scene
Avengers Deleted Scene
Marvel Instagram
Marvel Studios’ The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline

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Manips of Cevans as Nomad Steve

2023-07-24T13:00:09Z

[originally posted to my tumblr here]

( SEE THE REST UNDER THE CUT )

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NSFW Stucky Manips

2020-11-14T06:17:25Z

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON TUMBLR

( NSFW IMAGES UNDER CUT )

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#Bucky with the good hair

2020-08-16T06:02:46Z

originally posted to my tumblr

( SEE MANIPS UNDER THE CUT )

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omega!steve in lingerie

2020-05-11T03:47:49Z

X POSTED TO TUMBLR

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couple of posters/covers for fic

2020-05-03T23:41:15Z

X POSTED TO TUMBLR

Kalends

by thatwasamazing

Draco’s whole life he has been a fighter and has never wanted more…until he meets the new emperor and then everything changes.

(A Draco/Char Omegaverse Gladiator AU)

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Will Cameo Manip

2020-05-03T23:38:06Z

X POSTED TO TWITTER AND TUMBLR

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Hannigram Manip - Fallen Angel Ballet AU

2020-05-03T23:33:45Z

X POSTED TO TUMBLR

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Today

2020-04-27T18:29:30Z

making a dark/dusky edit of an old fave

(x posted to tumblr)

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Blood & Fucking Chocolate + Fic Rec

2019-01-30T02:12:00Z

Five years after their divorce, Nigel receives a drunken message from the once love of his life throwing everything into turmoil.

x posted to my tumblr x

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Fic Rec + Manip

2019-01-29T05:41:41Z

Draco with a Medusa Tatt!
for a Draco/Lee Fallon AU.

After taking the plunge at the last minute and undergoing a specialist medical trial, Lee has pulled back his life from the brink and is in remission for the first time in nearly half his life. Settling back into normality proves to be tricky, until he joins the local gym and is sucker-punched by his attraction to retired boxer, and gym owner Draco. Thankfully, Draco has strength enough to carry both their baggage - but does Lee?

x posted to my tumblr X X

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