food for thought (or maybe fic): where are Bucky’s war medals now, and did ever a mistaken official demand them revoked?

laporcupina:

Oh, this one burns my
toast. Because Marvel Movies Division did not think this one through. On
a few fronts.

Bucky’s identity as the
Winter Soldier is canonically public knowledge as of CA:CW, seemingly
entirely so they can run that tiny bit of news footage where they drop his name
and then move on like it’s nothing.

It’s not nothing and
spending that coin – the coin of Bucky’s identity becoming public – is all the
more frustrating because it’s completely unnecessary. There were so many
ways of acknowledging that everyone knows that a Winter Soldier exists and even
what he might look like without revealing that he’s actually Bucky Barnes. And
the cost of that reveal is far, far higher than they realized if they, you
know, actually did world building in the MCU.

It’s not hard to keep
Winter Soldier as Winter Soldier, Real Identity Unknown. We have Actual Real Life major international mass murders who go by
other names and are part of pop culture. Carlos the Jackal’s actually a
really good template they could have used – he had a ‘cause,’ he was infamous
to the point of legendary, he even had Soviet connections.

But before I get to that
ramble, I will give you the short answer: which is that all of Bucky’s things
are still with the Barnes family, who have been assured that their
uncle/great-uncle is not a monster, is still a hero, and Steve won’t rest until
everyone else accepts it, too. There might be an item or two at the World War
II museum in New Orleans, Steve might have something, but as with most mementos
of that time, they are with the descendants of the men who fought.

And now on to the
griping about why Marvel Movies screwed the pooch in making Bucky’s identity
public knowledge:

Keep reading