Tag: bucky barnes

So in the comics Bucky was an advance scout and did all the dirty stuff Captain America couldn’t or wouldn’t be seen doing, including sometimes wetwork operations, partly because everyone always underestimated Captain America’s sidekick. How do you think it translated to the MCU?

boopboopbi:

ink-phoenix:

I think it’s most evident in CA: TFA when we get the 2 minutes of Howling Commandos montage (and can I reiterate what a travesty it is that we’re not getting 3 hours of the HC on various missions, seriously, I couldn’t give a fuck, just, give it to me, marvel, make my HC mini series, good GOD).

Now bear with me here: I work in film, and I used to be an editor. There is nothing that makes it into a final cut of anything that is left to chance. Everything you show/not show is a constant uphill battle —with the director, with the producers, with the studio execs, with the stupid MPAA— in Avengers, they had to take out Loki’s spear going through Phil’s chest (it cuts away to his face) to keep the PG13 rating. So. Everything in that montage is there for a reason and the ~violence we see is very stylized. Yeah, they go in guns-a-blazing but you don’t actually see who they’re shooting at. Steve knocks people over with his shield, but you don’t see their skulls crack, you don’t see the whites of their eyes as they fall; they blow people up, but you don’t actually see body parts flying, blood and carnage strewn across the snow.

The only thing you actually do see? It’s when Bucky takes out the Hydra agent. You see it through Bucky’s POV — which is the only time we have a personal POV in the montage, as he looks through his rifle’s crosshair. He shoots the Hydra agent aiming for Steve, and we see the shot connect and the guy die. There’s no cutting away, there’s no ~~shoot to injure which is so typical in PG 13 movies. No. Bucky shoots that fucker in the head and he kills him specifically because he was aiming for Steve. 

That isn’t random. That is the only time we see any of the commandos actually hit a target and kill them dead. And it’s Bucky who does it. 

It’s not much, but it’s a clear choice and it’s there to tell us this is not the first time he does it, it won’t be the last time he does it, and we’re showing this to you because it’s Bucky, and that’s what he does. 

Bucky’s in the Howling Commandos because he’s following Steve. Bucky chooses to do the things he does —all of it, the bad and the worse— because he’s following Steve, not Captain America. There’s an unstable edge, there, I believe, the edge of ‘I’m doing this so you don’t have to’ because Bucky never wanted Steve in this war in the first place; he always wanted to spare Steve the horrors of war, and now that Steve’s here, the least Bucky can do is to take on the darkest side of it. He doesn’t see himself worth preserving. He’s lost his innocence a long time ago, but he’s going to fight for Steve to hold on to his as long as he lives.

This is exactly why it upsets me when Bucky and the Winter Soldier are presented as two completely separate entities when the only thing that actually separates the two (aside from a few decades of torture I mean) is the empathy Bucky shows and the motivations behind his actions.

Bucky killing for Steve and TWS killing for HYDRA are essentially the same thing but for the fact that Bucky’s motivations are powered by love and anger and a million and one other emotions, while TWS is powered by entirely the opposite.

TWS is powered by other people’s emotions.  There are definitely emotions involved, he’s just the wind-up toy weapon.

Stop taking Bucky’s arm: Bodily autonomy and re-traumatizing events in MCU fandom

chaoticallyclev:

Dear MCU fandom,

Captain America: The Winter Soldier brought all sorts of fun stuff into fandom recently, Sam Wilson for one, Natasha awkwardly explaining her own jokes, Cap continuing to show no love to windows, and the emotional wallop of the Winter Soldier arc. There’s also been a massive influx of fic and that’s great, I love it. But we need to talk about something and furthermore, I need people to stop doing something:

Stop taking Bucky’s arm.

This keeps popping up in fic after fic and there are some really damaging elements at play here that are building a toxic narrative. This is not to say that if you’ve incorporated this into one of your fics that you are bad you should feel bad, but I think a lot people don’t really know how problematic this set-up is and why it is so problematic. This is me trying to explain.

By taking his arm, there is an immediate violation of his bodily autonomy and a reasonably high risk of a re-traumatizing event.

Bodily autonomy is crucial to the narrative of CA:TWS since stripping Bucky of his autonomy, deconstructing his entire sense of self, was exactly how HYDRA created the Winter Soldier.

Warning: the post will discuss disregard of bodily autonomy, disabilities, and trauma in accordance with these same elements as seen in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Please keep your own self-care in mind.

Disclaimer: This touches on some really complicated stuff in regards to disability identities and I know I am absolutely not the best situated to talk about a lot of this just because I have taken some course dealing with it. I am not trying to talk over or define anyone’s personal experience with this and please drop me a line if I have put my foot in it. The goal of this is to try and confront some problematic trends in this fandom, not to further propagate damaging narratives so please do correct me if I’m doing that anywhere.

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who of the howling commandos do you think was the closest to bucky (as in friendship)? do you think any of the howling commandos were protective of bucky especially after what he did for them when they were captured and knowing the torture bucky went through at the hands of HYDRA? or is it more of just respect for him? maybe a little of both?

ink-phoenix:

[clutches heart] HOWLING COMMANDOS! You don’t know what you’ve unleashed asking me this, my god.

Okay first of all — if you have never read the comics prequel tie-in for CA: TFA, “The First Vengeance”, you’re missing out. They are a delight. In those comics, you see that Bucky had contracted pneumonia at the HYDRA factory and was beaten within half an inch of his life by one of his captors, Lohmer, because he was too weak to work. Before then, Falsworth, Dernier, Jones and Dugan didn’t get along at all. Different nationalities, rivalries, nobody likes the French, etc etc. When Bucky gets beaten with a fucking missile shell, it’s pretty apparent that he’s not going to be able to make another shift — Dugan says so, and even if another one of their guards might let Bucky off the hook for the first shift, Lohmer certainly won’t. SO WHAT DO THE COMMANDOS DO? (Note: they had been punching each other like, 5 panels before that) — They come up with a plan to kill Lohmer. So that it won’t give Bucky — or anyone else— anymore trouble. 

THERE IS THIS GLORIOUS PANEL WHICH MAKES MY HEART SING: 

“DUGAN, YOU DUM DUM.” I JUST. BUCKY. YOU ARE PRACTICALLY DEAD you were going to die three pages ago. Just. Please. 

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wintersoldierfell:

It’s hot on the bus, and Bucky’s trying hard to keep away from the people next to him. People are full of strange smells and textures, perfumed with chemicals he doesn’t recognize. They smell like sweat and food, and none of it is like he remembers. He pulls his hat down and watches people board.

A girl gets on the bus and pauses at the front to rummage in her purse for a token. She’s got brightly colored clips in her hair, a denim vest studded with shining buttons, and short shorts that reveal a muscular brown thigh and calf. But that’s not why Bucky suddenly finds himself staring.

He’s looking at the other leg.

The bottom section looks like a piston, one thin metal bar sliding into a mechanism whose workings seem to be mostly hidden where the prosthetic disappears into the girl’s boot. The top is larger, and above the knee joint, there’s a large cylindrical casing almost the volume of the girl’s other thigh. The casing is painted, covered entirely with an astonishingly vivid range of blues, violets, turquoises, sea-greens, creams, and golds. Somewhere in the back of his mind, his memory spits out the name Claude Monet, and water lilies, and an image of a blond-haired boy standing beside him, mouth open in wonder.

Bucky’s heart thumps hard in his chest, and when the girl sits down across from him and pulls out a book, all he can do is stare, because abruptly she’s the most amazing thing in the world: a person who’s made herself whole.

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