Yelena, In A High Voice, Holding Barbie: Hey, Ken! I Was Thinking About Going Back To School And Starting

yeah i'll post it, why not. bucky is a former human weapon literally programmed to obey, john is a former human weapon covertly brainwashed throughout his entire life to obey. it makes for good, tragic cinema to watch a good man be tortured into becoming someone else entirely, but there's something a lot more strikingly, quietly visceral about a little boy being raised on carefully crafted propaganda until he's willing to lay his life down for a death machine that he idolizes as the greatest nation on earth.

and then to have bucky assume a position of authority over john....that's just such a delicious concept to me. because at this point, bucky has regained autonomy over his life, but john has not, because his brainwashing runs deeper. because he was born into it. i just want bucky to see that, and both acknowledge it for the tragedy it is, while also taking advantage of that forced submission instinct to follow orders from the sergeant. i just want bucky to see that there's nothing he can do for john, other than reinforce that false idol, pet his head and say good soldier, good soldier, all the while disgusted with himself for feeding that cult programming.

Pepper Potts in Iron Man 2 (2010) — directed by Jon Favreau

Tony: Who told Steve that kms means keep myself safe?

Peter: Listen, I panicked and accidentally said the wrong thing.

Steve, texting in the avengers group: I don't need backup for the mission! I'll kms.

Steve: I think Bucky is in love with Tony..

Clint: who isn’t ?

Steve: what-

Tony: :)

Okay but concept based on john being kinda the new tony stark (shipped with everyone and their mother)

john "living PR crisis" walker constantly convincing the public that he is dating each of his teammates:

It starts when the New Avengerz have like a really bad mission. A publicly bad mission. And they are trying to do damage control at a press conference. One of the more conservative-leaning reporters (who all only address their questions to John and maybe sometimes Bucky) starts asking questions like, "what has it been like going from being led by very decorated men in the military to being an Avenger under the leadership of Ms. Belova?" (basically implying Yelena is a bad leader because she is a woman). And John is. Just so tired and his body hurts and he is tired of being some weird pedestal for these annoying misogynistic racist people. So he just loses it. Starts ranting about how Yelena is the best leader he has ever had and that he would "follow her to hell and back without question you fucking losers."

And the press doesn't understand that John at his core really is that loyal when he trusts someone (and he has trusted Yelena since they got out of the vault together). So OF COURSE the press assumes that they are sleeping together.

None of the thunderbolts take it seriously--it's just some stupid gossip that will eventually pass on. (But Yelena does give John a hug when no one is around to thank him for supporting her).

Except.

It keeps happening.

Ava has a bad day spiraling about her childhood growing up in labs and John invites her to come with him during his visitation with his son. They all spend the day under the sun running around playing games before getting ice cream. The next day, the headlines read, "Current Avengers, John Walker and Ava Starr: Relationship Timeline (co-parenting?)."

And then, Bucky gets thrown into a wall during a mission, and John just freaks out, eyes glassy, and starts frantically petting him, making sure that he was okay. Someone takes a photo of John holding Bucky's face in his hands, looking terrified.

After that, during one of those PR "friendship test videos" (that all of them hate but Val forces them to do) Alexei and John are paired together and one of the questions is what is the other person's favorite food. And John's answer is not only right, but like insanely specific, i.e., the borscht from this shop in this random street in St. Petersburg, outside of which Alexei had his first kiss. Alexei talks alot, okay-and John had unfortunately asked what everyone's favorite food was as the resident cook and was plagued with a good enough memory even without the serum to remember every. single. word. Alexei said. (When this inevitably blows up, Yelena immediately makes fun of John for being such a whore that he goes for two generations in the same family).

Eventually, the press also start asking questions about who this random dude living with the team in the Avengerz tower is and John just immediately panics and say "he's my....guy?" (he had a blond moment and couldn't think of anything fast enough).

Bonus: John's old tweets resurface and it's just. Him fighting people on main during the height of civil war on how Sam Wilson is a great Avenger (He can fucking fly??) and just generally being kind of lowkey obsessed with Falcon (like c'mon Sam did some crazy missions for the military as Falcon, there were probably tons of military people who were kind of obsessed with him). And the public are just like...oop Captain America totally rejected Walker's ass lmao

Anyone else freaking out over the Hannibal reunion happening in Chicago this April ಠ_ಠ

yelena: sam kissed you????

bucky: *stares woefully out the window*

yelena: and you said "THANK YOU"?????

bucky: *sighs*

PRIDEEE MONTHHH

Just found out Yelena is canonically aroace. Got a little carried away

A little bit of sambucky doodles I drew probably a month ago but didn't post for some reason