Someone else already talked about the iv drip in Bucky’s arm in this scene, but can we talk about the medical readouts? Sadly, I couldn’t find a single really clear screenshot – if anyone with the BluRay has better quality pics, I’d love to see them.
Overall, the displays are fairly cryptic, missing a bunch of what I’d consider important medical information, like clear displays for blood pressure and oxygen saturation. I think the big number in the lower left of the screen might be pulse rate – it ticks up fairly rapidly to 130 when the electrodes come down and Bucky panics. God knows why you’d want to display pulse rate to one decimal place, though, so it might be something else entirely. I don’t know what the other big number next to it is supposed to be, either – that one holds mostly steady somewhere around 60.
The screen to the right scrolls through a CAT scan of Bucky’s brain. Unfortunately I can’t get good enough resolution to tell you whether there’s visible brain damage there.
I’m most interested in the labeled markers on the diagram of Bucky’s body in the third pic, though, the ones I circled in red – because WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT SHIT, and what do you want to bet it’s implants? We see Bucky with his shirt off, so we already know there’s no injury there (well, there might be broken ribs, I suppose), and he doesn’t have visible electrodes attached, either. So. Implants. Trackers. Chemical reservoirs. Remotely triggered self-destruct mechanisms.
Because the goddamn metal arm just wasn’t enough of a violation of Bucky’s bodily integrity.
Holy fuck I’ve been waiting for someone to comment on this for an eternity
Tag: meta
Hello. I also agree. I’ve never understood the fanfiction of Bucky being unable to take care of himself. Bucky has always been able to survive. He has the mental and physical wounds to prove it. What he does with this new information is the question. The Theme of The Winter Soldier playing in the background during the end of Captain America 2. This is A man who is going to want revenge for what was done to him.
Bucky doesn’t have a very long turn around time when it comes to adapting. It’s one of his talents. But he’s still Bucky and he’s going to want to dish it out to HYDRA.
The vault scene mashed a lot of hurt-comfort buttons. It was a pivotal moment in the Winter Soldier’s onscreen characterization, and that moment was one of confusion and disorientation, capped with screaming horror.
I’m fully convinced that Bucky was processing his flashbacks and coping (ish) with a PNES conversion disorder. For me, the seemingly childlike psychology was a transient state, not a useful representation of Bucky’s typical state of mind – or his ability to function. I’ve avoided the helpless-kitten fics and posts. I can understand where they come from, but they’re not my headcanon, not my kink, not my Bucky.
The Bucky I know would’ve stolen some nondescript clothing from a shop while everyone else was trying to figure out why the sky was falling into the Potomac. The Bucky I know had a new mission – information. The Bucky I know will have kicked so much ass before we get to Cap 3 that it makes me want to weep with joy.
I also prefer the capable post-WS Bucky. Even during his winter soldier time, I feel like – he commands a strike team, he plans the missions, he executes solo missions. Pierce turns him loose after Natasha and Cap and says he has ten hours. That’s a pretty big window for him to work in – he must have had a snack and a bottle of water. If they had him on such a tight leash that he could not feed himself, he would have had a much shorter window to execute that order, I would think.
I think the @thedevilsbaklava has it right. I think the bankvault scene is a huge anomaly for the character but it is so powerfully acted by Stan, Redford, Grillo, and others that it pushes a lot of buttons for us. I don’t think that child-like desperation, that seeking of answers – is at all typical for the character. But because it is all we the audience see, it colors our perspective a lot.
Yes, they do a job on him, but his subjective time as Winter Soldier is what? Maybe a couple of years. Five years tops. He was a highly capable, functional adult when they got their hands on him. He’s not like comic!Natasha, whose brainwashing and training started when she was a child. He’s not even like comic!Bucky who started black ops as a teen. MCU!Bucky has a lot more to fall back on in terms of life experience outside the military.
Okay so I’m tired and sick, but I keep looking at this panel and at the risk of getting Meta, I want to explain why this panel is so important in terms of Tony Stark’s sexuality.
Tony Just Wants to Finish His Drink: Alcohol in the MCU
thisisevenharderthannamingablog:
I’ve been meaning to write a post on this forever, and the topic recently went around again, so this seems like a good time. As per my usual method, my goal is to lay out what actually is in the source material, from which I will draw some conclusions and you will probably draw others.
Really interesting meta, but I’d like to correct the original meta writer to say that there *is* alcohol in The Incredible Hulk – Betty, Bruce and Leo drink wine at dinner before Bruce has his little wibbly moment, and then later, Bruce and Leo drink while they have their frankly amazing heart-to-heart. In the second scene, the wine is actually drawn attention to deliberately – Leo offers Bruce some wine, and Bruce says,‘if you’re having some’ and Leo says, ‘oh, I’m having a lot’.The sharing of the drink helps put both of them at ease enough to have their discussion about Betty and Bruce’s past, the residue that past has left on their present, and how Leo has learned to live with the shadow of Bruce in his and Betty’s relationship.
why did you deprive all of us of those delicious tags. PHIL HAS A TYPE. YOU ASPIRE TO BE CAPTAIN AMERICA BUT YOU DON’T REALLY WANT TO FUCK HIM. can’t be the first. THAT IS A LOT OF PRESSURE. you don’t want to despoil this paragon of virtue. BUT YOU TOTALLY WANT TO FUCK BUCKY BARNES. Cause it would be that easy. Fast and hard and fun as hell. you got some stuff you want to try? he’s down with it. “ain’t nothing i’m scared of, sweetheart” he’ll say once he’s got your back up the wall.
“YOU ASPIRE TO BE CAPTAIN AMERICA BUT YOU DON’T REALLY WANT TO FUCK HIM.” <=== precious bb queer Phil Coulson in a nutshell, basically.
Like, precious bb queer Phil Coulson’s code for living is What Would Steve Rogers Do?, but his spank-bank is wall-to-wall Bucky Barnes Being A Smirky, Cheeky Little Shit.
which is appropriate because for real the answer to ‘what would steve rogers do’ actually is ‘bucky barnes’.Like, maybe there was some awful cheesy promotional calendar of the Howling Commandos that some well-meaning grandma gave Phil when he’s like 12 years old, and he flipped through it, and February was just Bucky standing there in his dress uniform, with his khaki tie slightly undone and his hat at a rakish angle, giving the viewer the old glad-eye, and well basically that’s the year Phil started locking his door and it was February for months at the Coulson house, because 28 days was not nearly enough time for Phil to spend on that picture.
AND THEN, almost forty years later, ACTUAL BUCKY BARNES shows up on Phil’s doorstep and it’s like, wow, awkward. I mean you’re all messed up mentally and haven’t had a haircut or a hug in literal decades and I feel bad about that, but also I used to masturbate to the idea of you pinning me down and smirking into my neck, so…there is that.
But Phil Coulson is a nice guy who likes projects and hopeless causes, so he takes care of him and cuts his hair and idk, makes him soup and gives him a place to sleep and a couple of Steve-related books to read.
And I’m not saying Bucky, as he starts getting his feet back under him, tries to pay back Phil’s kindness with the sex, leaving Phil to go ‘no, no, we can’t’ to his literally FANTASY BOYFRIEND, because he’s still so messed up and Phil would never take advantage. But I’m not NOT saying that, if you know what I mean.
also like steve/bucky was precious bb queer phil coulson’s OTP, so…he’s not about to get in between them.No, no – but first Clint is all “he’ll never love me, he has a hard-on for Captain America” and then he talks to, like, Maria or Phil’s sister or somebody and they’re like “HaHaHaHA! Nope. Phil has a Type, he always has, and it’s not Steve Rogers, it’s Bucky Barnes.”
And then JUST when Clint thinks maybe he has a chance, THE REAL Bucky Barnes show up, and Clint’s like “JFC, this is just my luck.”
But then Clint walks in on Steve and Bucky and he’s like “oh my god, Phil, I’m so sorry”
And Phil is “*blink blink* What? No, Bucky and Steve belong together, I know that.”
And Clint is like “Oh, but I thought you had a crush on him. For ages.”
Phil: “(embarrassed) I did, but then I met another hot, smart, snarky marksman who captured my heart, so…”
Clint: “Oh. (Is sad). Is it someone I know?”
Phil: “… Well, it’s you.”
Clint: *blinks*. “What? Really?”
Phil: “I know, I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was -“
Clint: (interrupting) “Shit up. No. Answer the question – REALLY?”
Phil: (glaring) “Yes, really.”
Clint: “REALLY???”
Phil: “JFC, I’m leaving.”
Clint: (grabs him by his lapels and starts kissing him)
Phil: (totally into it. Then blinks and pulls away) “No, wait, but, you – ?”
Clint: “YES! JFC, get the fuck over here.”
Phil: (blinks) “Yes. Yes, of course”
(Back to snogging)
Untangling Bucky Barnes
I don’t think it’s exactly a spoiler to say that Bucky will probably have a significant presence in Captain America 2, given that the subhead name of that film is The Winter Soldier. So I thought I would take a minute to talk about how Bucky has interacted with the Captain America narrative since the forties. Partly because the comics tell a significantly different story from the film, which affects the balance of power between the two men, but also because it’s kind of hilarious.
There are significant spoilers for the Winter Soldier comic book arc behind the jump, so if you want to go in as unspoiled as possible by comics, you know what to do.
Written pre-Cap 2, but still very interesting and worth reading for a basic primer on Bucky through the ages in the comics.
The Super Soldier and the German Psyche
Hoo boy, we’re going deep down the rabbit hole with this one. I hope you’ll bear with me, as this
might bewill be a disturbing post. Here, have some shirtless!Seb as a precautionary measure:
(source)
He’s laughing at me because I’m kind of a masochist. Anyway, check back with him if you need to.
I have German heritage on both sides of my family – my paternal great-great grandparents came over sometime in the early 20th century (don’t know much about them) and my maternal grandmother grew up in Nazi Germany. Plus I was a history major specializing in European history from 1871 to the Cold War. So…I know some things. You could chalk up all that to another reason this movie was like catnip to me. That said, it will take a bit to unpack all of this, so bear with me.
The idea of there being a superior race was pretty much unheard of before European imperialism and the Atlantic slave trade. Before then, Europeans didn’t have much cause to compare themselves to the rest of the world. But over the course of the 17th-19th centuries, that small part of the globe came to control the remaining 85% of the world. Suddenly, they were faced with millions upon millions of “savages,” and had to justify their superiority. Their right to subjugate the rest of humanity.
Eugenics started [in America], Germans just ran with it.
THANK YOU FOR SAYING THIS. This is something that we do NOT get taught (or that we didn’t get taught when I was taking community college history classes, let alone high school), and I know it’s just an aside, but THANK YOU.
Nazi Germany based all its initial forays into eugenics on programs in America that were active in over 20 states. That may not really be the topic of this post (which is a good one), but it is very very important to make sure people know.
There’s a post going around critiquing the idea that Natasha had any kind of control over her causeway fight with Bucky, that it “dehumanizes” her by not letting her have faults/get into trouble. Except it doesn’t, because she was not “terrified out of her mind.”
We’ve seen what she looks like when she is that scared when she was up against the Hulk. Natasha facing the Hulk looks nothing like Natasha tangling with Bucky. You didn’t see her smiling at the Hulk when she was running from him, even those few times she managed to slip out of his reach successfully before he caught up with her. Furthermore, that was a very deliberately filmed reaction shot. The directors wanted that smile in there, to show her state of mind, and they made sure Scarlett would be able to concentrate on the perfect smile – she was literally given running shoes to wear for that one shot so she could focus on her acting and not worry about tripping in her high heeled boots.
I don’t know how anyone could miss the symbolism of Nat cracking his goggles and forcing him to remove them, giving us the first glimpse of the man behind the mask? She opened his eyes. Not only that, but she’d made him angry, the first sign of human emotion he displays in the movie – a rather emotional outburst of rage as he shoots down at her.
(under a cut because this got a bit longer)
Winter Soldier Weapons
Colt M4A1 Rifle M203 Grenade Launcher ＆ EOtech XPS
Vz.61 Skorpion
Mk13 Grenade Launcher (not exist in RL)
COP.357 Derringer
Intratec TEC-38
SIG-Sauer P226R
40mm Grenade
Milkor MGL Mk 1L
Gerber Yari ll Tanto
Benchmade SOCP 176BK
Gerber Mark ll (Sheath:G.I. TANTO W/SECURE-EX SHEATH)
Barrett M82M1
How fandom reinterpreted Captain America’s politics for the 21st century.
In the 2011 Captain America movie, Steve Rogers’ first mission after getting his supersoldier powers is to go on a propaganda tour.
Rather than saving kittens from trees or battling supervillains (or fighting the Nazis, which is what he actually signed up to do), Steve ends up as a USO performer, touring with a team of chorus girls.
Each night, they perform a song called “Star Spangled Man,” during which Captain America punches a Hitler lookalike on the nose and implores the audience to buy war bonds. The whole thing is a perfect parody of 1940s sepia-toned Norman Rockwell patriotism, and Captain America—or rather Steve Rogers, behind the mask—grows to hate it. He wanted to do his duty back when he was an undernourished, asthmatic artist, but now he’s a muscle-bound Adonis, it turns out his main job is to sell comics and appear in propaganda movies.
Captain America: The First Avenger follows a pretty typical superhero storyline: an underdog character gains superpowers, battles adversity while trying to do the right thing, suffers a loss, and finally defeats the bad guy. Of course, the movie ends with Cap crashing his plane into the ocean and waking up in 21st-century New York , but the lack of a happy ending is the only major departure from the traditional superhero narrative.
The interesting part is how Captain America’s fandom chooses to interpret him not just as a character, but as a symbol.
“Star Spangled Man” is a perfect example. In the movie, it’s a cheesy musical number that’s used to illustrate Steve Rogers’ growing frustration with being a “performing monkey” rather than a real soldier, but fans remixed it to have a more nuanced meaning. Ryan Sanura recorded a haunting acoustic cover of the song, inspired by a fanfic by author and Marvel fan Sam Starbuck, in which Steve Rogers comes across a modern-day interpretation of the song. “It’s not an anthem to raise money for a war or get enlistment numbers up,” Steve realizes. “It’s a cry out for help. Who’ll rise and fall, give their all for America?” In the 21st century, the answer is no longer clear.
An article on Steve Rogers as Marvel’s most politically engaged superhero, written pre-CA:TWS; it’s fascinating to consider those of the article’s predictions which came true in the movie (and the aspects of the movie which the article didn’t manage to predict), the speculations on the fandom’s interactions with and influence on the source material, and the description of the fandom’s ongoing mission to redeem Marvel’s villains.
I was also happy to see a reference to copperbadge, whose works in the Captain America fandom I’ve come to greatly appreciate (and whose original fiction novel Trace I enjoyed reading recently – go check it out, guys, it’s free!).
Oh, and do yourselves a favour – don’t forget to check out the music tracks embedded in the article for ultimate feels.
I thought I had reblogged this but according to my drafts NOT SO MUCH.
D:
Oh, hey look, it’s a fandom-positive article about how fans and their transformative works can expand and enhance themes in a canon and give them broader, greater meaning to their audience. Also namedrops Sam, so it’s pretty much awesome.
How fandom reinterpreted Captain America’s politics for the 21st century.
knitting in the dark 