Peggy confronts Howard in “The Blitzkrieg Button“ Sneak Peekx
As destronomics is pointing out in subsequent posts, this is completely setting Howard Stark up as a Jew.
The Lower East Side is probably the most infamous of NYC’s many Jewish enclaves (my parents grew up in ones in the Bronx and Brooklyn). Shirtwaist-making (garment industry anything) was a predominantly Jewish occupation and Jews had a share of the fruit market. There are ways to spin Howard’s history to make him a gentile, but… you’d have to make him a very special boy to grow up in that neighborhood with parents in those trades and have him be a goy.
Representation matters, we constantly say, and so this is me giddy at the possibility of Howard being a landsman. A lot of the Jewish characters we see are coincidentally Jewish, but a chance to see someone whose Jewishness was a defining part of his story… A Jewish Howard didn’t have a choice whether to embrace his Jewishness as either a young boy in a ghetto or a wealthy adult on the Upper East Side; you can be damned sure everyone knows he’s Jewish and quite a few hold it against him. Anti-semitism in the post-war period could exist quite nicely with “Never Again,” same as it does now. A Jewish Howard may live a completely secular life now and hasn’t set foot in a shul since his parents died, but he probably can still speak and read Yiddish. And it makes his actions during the war — being up at the front, being willing to fly behind enemy lines, doing everything he could instead of staying home and sitting in his office profiting — a little more interesting.
(Picture, if you will, Project Rebirth planning arguments taking place entirely in Yiddish and Yinglish.)
I don’t know if they’ll do anything with this or just leave it as a coded statement, but… hey, Howard a Yid? I’m chuffed.
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
During WWII, an unknown soldier (or soldiers) filled 31 rolls of film with pictures of American troops and machinery. The photographer left the film undeveloped and it was forgotten to history for the next 70 years.
The video is 10 minutes and absolutely worth watching.
sooo probably triggering for people with PTSD and self-hate issues
So fucking tired of Winter Soldier meta that’s like “Bucky DEFINITELY WOULD/N’T have PTSD/retain permanent brain damage/recover his full pre-Winter Soldier personality/need HYDRA goons to feed and wash him/be able to look after himself/go back to being a superhero and anyone who disagrees with me is WRONG and DOESN’T TRULY LOVE HIM.”
This is for Gemfyre. I realized that I couldn’t find my original post about Steve’s uniform deficiencies, so I rewrote it.
Looking closely at Cap’s war uniform (the Eisenhower jack dress uniform, not the spangly getup in tights), I would like to do a meta breakdown of his ribbons, and then point out a few deficiencies. Hopefully this will provide context for fan artists and fanfic writers.
To start us off:
Here we see the creature Stevus Adorablus Serious in his natural habitat.
This is his insignia from shoulder to hip, right to left.
His rank he wears on his shoulders. This is typical placement for Officer insignia back in the day. Modern Officer uniforms get an actual shoulder bracket. Steve’s a CPT so he gets railroad tracks. His CPT’s insignia is not centered on the shoulder tab. Tisk tisk. Strike one.
Next you see his U.S. lapel pins that all officers wear. The left one is pinned at the correct angle and distance; the right (not pictured) is a bit off. Oh well, pobody’s nerfect. Also, note how they differ from Bucky’s. Bucky is enlisted, which means he wears the rounded US lapel pin on his right our left, and his MOS branch on his left our right. (Bucky is an 11bang bang, or infantry of course):
You’re a beautiful sub, Buck; now straighten your cover
.
Next up, on the bottom lapel, you see Steve’s branch pins. Only Officers wear these, because we branch a career rather than perform an MOS (military occupation specialty). Steve’s branch pins are the SSR logo, which of course is fictional. Again, the right one is a little off in both distance and angle. The left one is correct.
Here’s where it gets fun! Steve has jump wings. But why you ask? He only had like, a week of basic training before receiving the serum! When did he have the time to go to jump school? Fun fact: back in WW2, the only requirement for a soldier to earn jump wings was to perform a combat jump, which Steve did when he went to rescue Bucky. So he would not have had to attend jump school. The jump wings however are my biggest pet peeve when it comes to his pins. They are way too close to his ribbons. There should be a 4th of an inch away from his ribbons, and centered on his pocket. But they are practically touching the ribbons, and aren’t centered on a damn thing. Strike two.
Steve’s ribbons! Steve has a purple heart for valor. The oak leaf represents being awarded the purple heart twice (if it was silver, it would indicate 5 times btw). The purple heart is awarded for extreme valor that results in injury. In this, I’m going to have to show extreme skepticism. I will award Steve 1 purple heart, maaaaaybe, for the pain associated with the serum transformation. But the second one makes no sense. He does not appear to get injured while liberating the 107th, and then is almost immediately wisked away to London for a briefing. Unless he’s spotting a GSW we the audience don’t see, I can’t imagine a scenario where Brass would give him a second purple heart. There is an argument to be made that it was given for meritorious service, in order to be inducted into the Legion of Merit, but I find that unlikely Strike three, you’re out.
The second ribbon is simply a campaign ribbon. Fairly standard. Bucky would have one too. I’ve got one for the global war on terrorism. Any soldier who serves during wartime gets one. However, the campaign ribbon Steve wears is wrong for him. It’s the American Defense Service Medal and they stopped giving them out in ‘41. Steve enlisted in ‘45. Strike…wait, you’re all out of strikes. For shame.
Both ribbons are not well spaced between his jump wings and his CIB btw.
His CIB, combat infantry badge. Standard badge given to an infantryman for taking hostile fire (or going through infantry AIT or IBOLC.) Bucky would have one too.
His gig line isn’t straight! (Belt should be aligned to the edge of the jacket, flush)
Steve has a Presidential Citation Badge that he wears on his right, over his pocket. It’s centered. The PCB is given to a unit that serves under difficult situations. My unit has one for time in Iraq. Fun facts: you are forever authorized to wear the PCB if you serve in the unit at the time it is issued. You are also authorized to wear it if you serve in the unit at any time afterwards, even if you weren’t present at the time it was given, but you must take it off if you change units.
So there you have it. Steve’s uniform in a nutshell. It’s something to note, that pins and insignia are extremely hard to get right, and cause no undue frustration on the part of the soldier. I have a melt down every time I have to pin my uniform, and cry for hours until reaching a point where I use up all my fucks and resign myself to looking like the shitbag I am. It’s also a point of note that most new Officers look completely dicked up in their formal uniforms. It’s just paying your dues, I suppose. And make no bones about it—at this point in his military career, Steve is very much a new Officer. Bucky would have no doubt straightened him out though, the second he got a chance, as is his role in life as Steve’s NCO component. Because while Bucky cares not for decorum, he does care for Steve, and he wouldn’t tolerate him looking dicked up in uniform. And I wrote a fic about that exact thing, go read it.
So: in summary
Steve: -1 point
Costuming: -10 points
Bucky: -2 for cocked cover and sloppy salute, +1 for correct insignia placement.
I leave you with a softly smiling golden retriever
Can we talk about Steve here? The way he’s looking at the Tesseract. He must be thinking “how could something this small cause so much pain?” The war it started, the years it cost him… the friends he lost…
can I just-
this is the only closure Steve gets for the war. That the weapon that fueled Schmidt’s maniacal search for power beyond what the Reich could give him, the weapon that created the backbone of Hydra’s weaponry, the weapon that contributed to Bucky’s fall, to the bombs on the plane, to Steve’s decision to down the plane {ten days} and then everything he lost because of that-
this is the only closure Steve gets for losing everything.
Look at him. Steve Rogers is not the kind of guy who experiences hatred, but he fucking hates that thing.
Not just that but it nearly cost him his home, again. The Avengers movie for Steve is that the war is now at home. He went to Europe and fought there. This is now on his turf. In the aqueduct sequence he didn’t even need to think about where the battle lines needed to be drawn. He knew the way a native New Yorker knows where to hold fast.
The movie isn’t clear how long Steve has been awake from the ice for, but it clearly hasn’t been really long. He sees the war reduced down to this one object – something that is rarely true of a war.
I’ve said this before, but if Earth 19999 (i.e., MCU) Montgomery Clift didn’t spend some time and energy trying to play Bucky Barnes in a movie, he was doing it wrong.
You can click through and then blow up the image for a good reference for what was available and how much it cost back then. The Bowery was not, to put it gently, high end, so it’s suitable for your pre-movie needs…
Everyone who has headcanons about Steve and/or Bucky being awkward with babies and/or small children,
I understand the impulse I truly do I get it, however have you instead considered them growing up poor in the Great Depression and thus in a crappy apartment complex where every adult is working their fingers to the bones when they can find work
and thus a young Steve caring for many an infant when he was well enough to be responsible for anything other than lying in bed and breathing?
and thus a young Bucky watching over dozens of under five year olds at all ages over ten?
And later, Steve taking care of neighbors’ kids when the parents were sick because that’s what had happened for him when Sarah was sick and dying and dead?
And Bucky being a huge hit not just with the ladies he took out but also their little siblings who he’d play with when he arrived to pick her up early and she wasn’t finished getting ready?
Steve and Bucky accepting child-wrangling as a totally normal life skill, just like shining shoes and darning socks, makes 1000% sense to me.
Steve tries to be slightly too Cheery at them a lot of the time, so he’s better with younger kids; meanwhile Bucky is mildly unsettled by this becoming a rarified skill.
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