Marvel Rants

9

Okay. So. (yes I'm about to rant can you tell?) Something that really, really kills me is when people say that a really close friendship (aka Steve & Bucky's) isn't a sibling relationship and that Bucky & Sam or Thor & Loki have the only kind a realistic sibling relationship. I am speaking specifically about Steve and Bucky's friendship right now and OH. MY. GOSH. Let me tell you something.

The Loki & Thor dynamic is absolutely a super realistic sibling relationship. I'm not denying that. It is so real and relatable it's not even funny. HOWEVER, that is not the only kind of relationship siblings can have... Particularly siblings who are technically just friends but have claimed each other as siblings.

Let me explain this. So, I technically by birth have two siblings... An older brother and a younger sister. However, when I'm asked how many siblings I have the answer is four older brothers, one older sister, one younger brother, and one younger sister. Because those extras are my family in everything except blood.

Let's start with my birth siblings. My older brother and I have such a Thor & Loki relationship it's not even funny. He's basically perfect and I am the rebel, the black sheep of the family. We hardcore struggle to get along, but at the end of the day, we really, really care about each other and would die for each other. And it goes on. So like I said, that relationship is absolutely SUPER realistic.

My younger sister and I are best friends, and we always will be. She is the most important thing in my world... The mere fact that she is there and counting on me has sometimes been the only reason I haven't given up. I will protect her with my life, we call her my "side-kick", she's this mix of sister, best friend, and daughter to me, despite the fact that I'm only a few years older than her. We rarely fight, but we love to banter. If she is upset, it is literally impossible for me to be anything except as upset or probably more. There's another real-world sibling dynamic.

Now how about my friends who I claim as my siblings? That starts with my childhood best friends, both older than me, Rachel and Eric. Rachel has been my best friend since I was five years old, despite a five-year age-gap. She'll always be my "BFF", even if she's not my current "best friend", you feel me? We've never had a fight... When we have issues we kinda just keep a bit of distance and get over it. There's been tension, at least from my end of things, but at the end of the day we will always be sisters and we can talk for forever and have so much in common and laugh whenever we're together.

Her younger brother Eric has three years on me and joined the Army after high school. You bet I've got all the "my brother is in the Army" stuff. We've got a lots-of-banter, lots-of-trust, lots-in-common relationship, not to mention that he's another one of my long term best friends, as well as one of my heroes.

How about my "younger brother", Asher? He comes from a tough family situation, and my fam has accepted him as our own for years. His mom's a total loser, and he's admitted he thinks if my mom as more of his mother than he does his own. He and do the banter-to-the-max thing. He's a classic little brother in that he loves to drive me crazy, I get back at him in well-played hands. Siblings.

Then there's Davy. We met when he became a youth leader at my youth group, and by now we've claimed each other as siblings and are not afraid to say that. He's that protective older brother... You know, no boys, don't walk home alone, ext.? He's also seen me through a lot as my youth leader so there's that. We may not banter as much, but we are certainly not afraid to go at it, and "Shut up, Davy," comes out of my mouth so much it's not even funny. He's always loved my snarkiness, mouthiness, and sarcasm where a lot of people hate it, and he's never tried to change me.

And then there's Caleb. Like Davy, he started out as my youth leader. And Caleb? He's the best person... The best youth leader... He's incredible. He comes from a rough background and a horrible family but he's come out of it with a huge heart for the hurting and knowledge of how to meet them where they're at that's really hard to find.

Because his family sucks, after he adopted me as a little sister, my parents adopted him into the family and now he literally calls them "Mom" and "Dad". It's the cutest thing. He chose me, a little freshman at the time who had no clue how to deal with everything she was going through, as his "favorite" from the beginning, and he saw through me like no one else, was there for me like no one else. He was and still is my ultimate hero.

He's protective like Davy is and even more so... My battles are his battles, he once told off a boy creeping me out, ext... And he is the only person on earth who will look me in the face and ask me if I'm okay and call me a liar... And a bad liar at that... when I tell him I'm fine. He gave me that deep support like no one ever had and it got me through that time of youth and immaturity until he had to step back from ministry for a while because of his own personal life and I grew to the place I am now where I can honestly get by on my own. But I really don't think I would have made it this far without him.

So there's that deep side to our relationship, and then there's also the fact that we can shamelessly (jokingly, of course) yell at each other all night. He's incredible because he can know you deeper than anyone else and yet he never looks at you differently over it, and he'll be joking with you fifteen minutes later like he didn't just catch you crying. He takes jokes, even if he knows there may be grains of truth to them, like a lot of people won't.

For example, when he, my two birth siblings, Rachel, and I were all sitting around shooting each other with Nerf guns while watching Star Wars and I decided it was more fun to shoot myself in the head than it was to shoot them, he alternated from taking it away from me repeatedly with the same exclamation of, "No!" each time, to being like, "If you're gonna do it, do it right... Going through the teeth goes straight to the brain." Or how about when my best friend Preeya asked him to tell me I didn't look like a raccoon, and he's like, "You're getting it wrong... She looks like a trash panda."

Um yeah anyway that was a lot and I'm sorry. I haven't seen him in a long time and I really miss him so I'm kinda going down memory lane right now. But my point is that's a sibling relationship that's kinda a bunch of them rolled together.

And my main point is that sibling relationships can look like so many different things, and Steve and Bucky's relationship? It is so best-friends-who've-adopted-each-other-as-brothers that it's not even funny. So you know what ship who you wanna ship (unless it's Starker then we got issues) in your free time, but the fact is STUCKY IS NOT CANON.

I do not care how bad you want it to be, it's still not. Because their brotherhood yeah I said it is so important to me and I see it as corrupting that beautiful relationship with the classic problem of being unable to read anything but romance into close relationships, I hate the Stucky ship. But I could not care less who goes and writes their fanfics about it and whatever else... do what you wanna do just don't make me read it.

My problem is when people preach it like it's canon and laugh in my face for calling them brothers when it ain't canon and those people have obviously only ever had one kind of relationship with their siblings and have obviously never adopted their friends as siblings or else they would know how much of brothers they are.

So again, I'm not trying to hate on anyone. I just cannot stand being talked down to for interpreting a relationship as it is canonly meant to be interpreted.

Anyway sorry that was a lot but I had to get it out because that makes me so mad every single time.