This is going to be in the Hour of Our Death series at some point, or is in that continuity, anyway, but I just can’t figure out where or when. It came to me kind of entire a little while ago, and I wrote it, and I’ve been sitting on it, and I just– it wants out, so I’m posting it here, at least temporarily. (For anyone not reading that series, Full of Grace has as one of its major plot points that Bucky’s trying to avoid disappearing into a basement after his inevitable recapture by making a series of videos that go viral on the Internet, so– there’s none of his POV in the story, except the videos, which he mostly narrates.)
It’s A Funny Story, 2400ish words, tw for descriptions of gore and depersonalization: The Winter Soldier tells the viewer all about cryostasis.
“I got a story,” the Soldier said without preamble, sitting back from the camera. He was shirtless, illuminated by silvery natural light from an offscreen window to his left. “I got a story I gotta tell. I don’t got names or dates or nothin’, I just, I gotta tell it. I was thinkin’ about this and I just– I don’t know if there’s a point, lemme tell it and I’ll figure it out.”
He sat back in the rickety wooden chair he was in, which creaked in protest at his weight, and crossed his arms across his chest, metal over flesh. “So here’s the thing with– I was readin’ documentation on this, I know now I’m the only one ever to survive cryo, and I know people been, like, debating it. Like, it could help real people or something, and I gotta tell you, no. Just– no. It’s– no.” He sat forward. “In the docs it talks about some stuff that sounds all medical and sterile and boring and whatever.” He gestured with the metal hand, a flyaway gesture. His hair was loose and fell in his face, and he shook it back absently, a practiced gesture. “Subject experienced tissue damage, organ function compromised, acclimatization period blah blah. Skin sensitivity, I remember that phrase. So like– the only reason I survived thawing was that I got amped tissue regeneration. I got a healing factor. And it’s like– it’s a doozy. Okay? I know they tried to duplicate it, it gave all the subjects like–” He closed his eyes, shook his head quickly, “fast-acting face cancer or some shit. Don’t fuck with it.” He grimaced. “It’s not– actually a picnic. Is the thing. Anyway.”
He sat back a little, shoving his hair back more with his skin hand. “I could try to tell you how fuckin’ nasty it was, but I’m gonna tell you a story instead. So imagine– I don’t know what year it was. I don’t know how long I’d been in cryo. I know it was some kind of party. Whoever had me in his department, he was having some kind of shindig, showing off for other people, right? So you know how sometimes nowadays– well, everybody’s got a freezer. And you see it on sitcoms and memes and things.” He glanced up. “You see like, Mom asks the kids to take the chicken out of the freezer to defrost it so she can make dinner when she gets home, right?” His eyes were very blue in the indirect light, a cloudy hazeled blue, and he cocked an eyebrow. “And the punchline is, the kid forgets to take the chicken out and then the mom is super mad.”
He gestured. “Whoever was in charge of getting me out of cryo didn’t leave enough time.
Ficlet series: outtakes from before I fell down the rabbit hole and wrote an epic. (This is how I write epics, btw, I open a document and start writing things that amuse me until I suddenly get sucked into A PIT OF FEELS and that’s where the plot comes from.)
Bucky Barnes makes hilarious, sometimes-serious videos as part of his recovery.
The text appeared, bright yellow, on a blank black screen. Bucky Barnes’ Children’s Funtime Corner.
The Benny Hill theme started playing over a montage of images. Steve ran by, in workout gear, obviously just jogging for fitness, and suddenly Bucky dropped from above the frame, wrapped his thighs around his neck, and took him to the floor. “Ow,” Steve said, off-camera, weakly.
Sam came down a hallway in his underpants (exceedingly flattering boxer briefs), looking morning-sleepy and half-conscious (and fucking glorious), shuffling stiffly and yawning. Bucky jumped out at him and Sam screamed and reflexively punched Bucky so hard they both fell over.
Okay guys in light of recent events I wanted to do a rec list of my fave Jewish!Bucky fics! Most of these (all of them?) are Steve/Bucky because, well, that’s the corner of the fandom I’m in. I also limited it to works where Bucky’s religion wasn’t just a passing mention but was explored in some depth. If you have some faves I didn’t put on here, toss ‘em my way!
myownremedy. This is the first fic I thought of when I thought about this rec list. It is amazing. It’s Bucky recovering and coming to terms with what happened to him and what he was forced to do and reconciling that with his faith and it is beautiful. I read it over a year ago and I still think about it. Also features Jewish!Bruce and Muslim!Natasha!
Ain’t No Grave by @spitandvinegar. You knew it was going to be on here. Don’t even try to act surprised. If someday I may a rec list that this fic isn’t on, it’s either a really niche rec list or I’m trying to send out some kind of distress signal.
King’s County by @hansbekhart. It’s a series! Two completed works so far, both beautiful and long and exploring Bucky’s relationship with his faith and his family and Steve and the war plus what his family goes through during the war. (Actually I’m pretty sure hansbekhart writes Jewish!Bucky in all fic, and trust me when I say it’s not exactly going to be a hardship if you read all of them.)
Scappodaqui, @samtalksfunny on tumblr. Beautiful and heartbreaking look at Bucky’s family, especially his mother, grieving after his “death”. Packs such a big emotional punch.
Lasgalendil. This one’s a wip, Falsworth POV! It’s while the Commandos + 107th are being held in the HYDRA factory. Bucky does what he has to so he can keep the men safe, even when it’s awful and unsavory. It’s also one of those cool fics where half the story is in the reviews and discussion about a book Monty wrote about the war after it was over.
conjurewithrisk. Really haunting look at Bucky trying to remember who he is and what he believes in. Now with a bonus Jewish!Steve companion!
I’m gonna go ahead and reblog this again. I haven’t been reading a ton of fic as of late, otherwise I would update this list with new additions, but if anyone else has any add them on!
has gotten a lot of flack, and I don’t disagree that it could and should have been handled a lot better, but even as it is, I really really like what it says, or rather, confirms about
Bucky.
So this response to the post I did on the physical issues that Bucky Barnes probably has as a result from his time with HYDRA (strictly from a massage therapist’s POV) got me wondering: how much WOULD the metal arm weigh?
But that’s comic books. What about in the movie perspective? Well, let’s look at it.
In CA: TWS, the arm is shown to deflect bullets from a handgun fired at close range with no apparent damage and when Bucky punches Steve’s shield neither is damaged. From this I think it’s safe to say that at least the outer surface of Bucky’s arm is made of vibranium.
From that we can also extrapolate that the outer vibranium plates, which were shown shifting around a lot in TWS, must be about the same thickness as Steve’s shield.
There aren’t any measurements or calculators for the weight of imaginary vibranium, but in CA: TFA, Howard Stark mentions that vibranium is one-third the weight of steel. That means that, if the shield were made out of carbon steel, it’d be 36lbs (12 x 3 = 36).
A circle of steel that’s 30" across and 36lbs would be about .18" in thickness.
Thus, Steve’s shield is .18" in thickness.
And so are the outer vibranium plates of Bucky’s arm.
That steel weight calculator doesn’t have a cylindrical option, but this one does.
Circumference of a human arm is a little difficult to figure–obviously personal fitness causes the size of one’s arm muscles to vary quite a bit. Various sites that I’ve looked at indicate that a highly-fit man could expect his biceps to be 17" in circumference at their widest and his forearms to be about 13" at their widest. (For reference, I’m a not-fit woman and my biceps are 13.5" and my forearms are 11".) Obviously that’s at their widest points, so I’m going to knock 2" off both of these measurements to make it more equal across the length of the limb.
Varioussites helped me figure out that for a 5’11" man, a normal forearm length would be about 10" and upper-arm length would be about 15". (My forearm is 9" and my upper arm is 12".)
Thus: assuming that Bucky’s forearm is 11" around (which is a conservative estimate) and 10" long, the metal plating covering that area, at a .18" thickness, would weigh in steel about 9lbs. Divide by 3 and in vibranium that’d be 3lbs.
Assuming that Bucky’s upper arm is 15" around (again, conservative) and 15" long, the metal plating covering that area, at a .18" thickness, would weigh in steel about 18lbs. Divide by 3 and in vibranium that’d be 6 lbs.
6 + 3 = 9lbs. The outer vibranium plating on Bucky’s forearm and upper arm weighs about 9lbs. (Based on conservative estimates of arm circumference.)
That’s just the outer plating on his forearm and upper arm. That doesn’t count his hand.
Looking at body segment percentage weights, we see that in terms of typical body percentages, a hand usually weighs .65% of the total body weight compared to 1.87% for the forearm. Thus, the hand usually weighs about 1/3rd of the forearm.
Assuming that holds true for the metal hand, then the vibranium plating on the hand would be about 1lb.
6 + 3 + 1 = 10lbs. The outer vibranium plating on Bucky’s whole arm weighs 10lbs.
If we bump Bucky’s height up to 5’11" (actor Sebastian Stan’s height), the ideal body weight for a 5’11" man with a large build tops out at 184lbs. Looking at the body percentage index again, we see that typically, a whole human arm is about 5.7% of a person’s bodyweight. So for a 5’11" guy with a large build at 184lbs, that’s about 10.5lbs.
The outer plating on Bucky’s whole arm already weighs about as much as his regular flesh-and-bone arm, assuming that a) it’s made of vibranium, a very light metal, b) the plating is the narrowest possible width that can deflect bullets, and c) the circumference of the arm isn’t very big. All of which would make the plating a lot heavier than what I’ve calculated.
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