#Bucky Barnes meta

[myladyship]

I think the biggest and sickest joke in the world is Bucky Barnes having his name engraved in a memorial wall in a Shield building.

The same organisation that employed his captor and torturer.

Who is to say Armin Zola, Alexander Pierce, or other Hydra agents didn't walk in that very same building. Passed that wall, saw the name, and chuckled at their sick inside joke.

[luna-rainbow]

I remember a while ago there were several metas talking about Bucky being right-handed (which he then confirms in TFATWS) while the Winter Soldier is left-handed, usually using this scene as proof:

And maybe even this:

But recently I saw several gif sets of Bucky on the train right before the fall (one of which I’ll reblog after this) and look:

He’s moving the gun between his left hand and right hand interchangeably, even when the right arm is not injured. In a later scene, he takes down the trooper with a single shot with left-handed aim — so he’s no slouch on that side. He then goes back to using his right hand when he picks up the shield.

On the converse, the Winter Soldier also uses his right hand and left hand interchangeably, notably in that scene:

In fact I think if you do an overall tally of how both Bucky and the Winter Soldier reach for their weapons — whether that’s a rocket launcher or a gun or knives — you’ll find that the majority of the time it’s in their right hand (just a quick GIF search would prove this). But the times they do use it in their left hand, they are still dangerously competent with it.

So I think Bucky (and the Winter Soldier) is right-hand dominant as he says, but he’s learned to use his left hand competently as a shooter before became the Winter Soldier. He’s then turned it into a useful skill to throw off his opponents.

Up until this point he’s been trying to stab Steve with his right hand, but Steve keeps blocking it with his shield. When Bucky drops the knife into his left hand, Steve’s attention follows the knife and Bucky instead uses his right hand to punch Steve in the head.

I think another part of the “Winter Soldier is left-handed” thought comes from the fact he often uses the left arm for brute force tasks - like ripping off doors from cars and helicopters, and punching into cement.

For most of us, our dominant hand is both the stronger and more dextrous hand, but for Bucky his right hand is more dextrous while his left arm is stronger (we’ll just accept the science of that for now…). So I feel like this is something that Bucky has learned to adapt — he uses that left arm for tasks that require the mechanical strength or as a metal shield, while the right is still his instinctive go-to for fine coordination tasks.

How, why, and when Bucky learned to be ambidextrous not just for firearms but also for hand to hand combat is a delicious source of angst worth exploring.

[rainbowsuitcase]

Every time I rewatch TFATWS, I can't help but notice - Bucky has the TV on. He's waking up from a nightmare to a turned on TV and since he doesn't have roommates, it's probably safe to assume he left it like that on purpose.

We know why he's sleeping on the floor, Steve had the same problem, the bed is too soft. But there's another reason why he's sleeping in the living room, and why the TV is on, and especially on something as neutral as a sports channel.

I wonder if it's simply because he hates the quiet. If his mind wanders too much when there's nothing for him to focus on, if his thoughts get too dark, if his enhanced senses are reaching for every small sound that a normal person wouldn't catch, every creak of the building, every whistle of the wind, and he can't fall asleep.

Or if it's also because of the nightmares. If when he jerks awake into darkness and silence, he panics. I'm back there, I'm trapped, I'm frozen and tortured and controlled, I'm a machine and a monster.

But when he hears the TV, the muted cheers and the sports comentator, and sees the light reflected over the living room, it ground him back into the present.

[bbyboybucket]

Okay besties, today I’m giving you the run down of Buckys finances and networth. Because as I’ve said multiple times, he’s obscenely wealthy despite the fact you’d never know by looking at him.

Now first off, MatPat (my fav YouTuber who I’m so sad is retiring, literally adore him) did a mini theory a few years ago, calculating Bucky’s compound interest in previously earned money from WWII in his frozen bank account while he was presumed dead. It totaled out to $51,143. This is just the money that he earned in the 30s/40s and has grown interest on. This is assuming the money wasn’t given to his family and for the purpose of this post, we’ll go with that it wasn’t. However, MatPat didn’t account back pay, for disability pay, and other military pay/benefits.

So as a starter point, we’ll use $51,143. Next, I’m going to calculate his back pay from being MIA/POW because he would have been considered active duty. A MIA/POW is given back pay of 50% of the average per diem rate, for each day held in captivity. The 2023 rate is $157 per day, and I assume that would be similar for him because TFATWS takes place in early 2024. So that means Bucky would get $78.50 per day. There is no time limit on how far back pay can date to, so the entire span of Bucky’s capture is accounted for. As per the Smithsonian memorial in CA:TWS, Bucky was captured in 1944, making it exactly 70 years of capture. So, the back pay for those 70 years, is $2,005,675.

Next, we’ll look at the different forms of disability pay he would receive. I’m only going to look at canonical, confirmed disabilities for this. Bucky would be classified under SMC-N 1/2, where one arm was amputated above the elbow and/or was amputated so close to the shoulder that a prosthetic cannot be worn. Now obviously, Bucky does have a prosthetic but it is implanted into his body, as a majority of his left shoulder seems to have been amputated. Since he is single and has no dependents, aka has no children and is not taking care of any family, and he is still able to work, he would be receiving $6,182 a month.

He also has PTSD, which he would most likely get a 70% percent disability rating for, as 100% is very rare to receive for mental and is considered to be extreme impairment in daily functioning. (He could recieve 80 or 90% but I’m being generous here and trying to give the most realistic assessment). All this means, his mental illness pay for PTSD would be $1716 a month.

It’s also canonical that he has brain damage via The Wakanda Files book. We know in that book, he’s described to have pretty severe TBI. However, we don’t know anything of his symptoms and the book only describes of the brain scan looks bad and that the serum is keeping him from being more impaired. The VA uses 10 areas of impairment as criteria to rate the severity of TBI disability. The only canonically confirmed area that we know Bucky deals with is memory. Since we know no other symptoms and we know he’s not extremely impaired, I’m going to estimate he’d be rated at 50%. Which would give him a compensation of $1075 a month.

Now, we can assume Bucky is retired from the military. From being a retired sergeant, we can assume his monthly pension is around $5,482.

Reminder, all VA pay is untaxed. All of these together, his monthly salary is $14,455. However, this is not including disability back pay. The VA sometimes will pay a lump sum from back from when the diagnosis was made. Assuming the Wakandans were involved in Bucky’s trial and pardon, I’d assume some of his medical records were brought in as well. Back dating to when he was being treated in Wakanda, that’s 7 years, however we don’t know if the blip would count so for that reason, I’ll say 2 years. So, his lump sum would be around $215,352.

Now, endgame was in October, six months before TFATWS, meaning it took place around March/April. Within, the span of October to March, Bucky woulda have accumulated $86,730. Because even if his pardon wasn’t official yet in October, he would still receive payment for that month.

Finally, in grand total, all of this is $2,358,900. His networth would be in a similar, slightly lower range. Meaning: yes, Bucky Barnes is a millionaire and nobody would ever guess.

[gay-jewish-bucky]

I have some thoughts relating to how HYDRA fed Bucky during his captivity based on this post by @luna-rainbow.

It's implied that the Winter Soldier was only active for 50 of the 70-or-so years Bucky was held captive.

I think at the beginning he was fed by force, and later through an NG tube, as a way of exerting power over him during training and conditioning as they broke him down and molded him into their weapon.

When the Winter Soldier began operating, I can see them moving over to a TPN-like substance (which began showing promise in the 30s and 40s, with the more modern form of TPN being invented in the late 60s) they'd developed. They'd likely intentionally leave major nutritional gaps where they could, reducing Bucky's neurological capacity in an attempt to increase his complacency.

I think the central line would be replaced every time they woke him up from cryo, because they couldn't be bothered to maintain a clean and functional line.

After he escaped, he struggled heavily with learning to eat again, developing symptoms of ARFID. Eventually he began to handle gradually increase the solid food his body could handle, which is what allowed him to pack on more muscle between TWS and CW.

[sarahowritesostucky]

Jewish Bucky Barnes

I've often headcanoned Bucky as Jewish. And there are several bits I've always thought about putting in fic, including:

Bucky's reaction as he and the Howlies encounter survivors of death camps in Europe/liberate them

Was Bucky treated worse by Hydra after Azzanno because they knew he was Jewish? Was that why he was selected for a likely-deadly experiment in the first place?

Modern!Bucky getting his grandfather's Auschwitz tattoo in remembrance of him

What would Bucky think of the current Israel/Palestine conflict?

Bucky getting together with Ari in the 70's

Bucky celebrating his first Hannukah post-Hydra

Steve stepping into a fight to (try to) defend Bucky from a gang of antisemites in the 30's

Bucky finding a nice Jewish girl to settle down with in modern times or after wwii

Steve in the 1930s, having never heard of circumcision (b/c ya know: Catholic boy in the 30's), absolutely fascinated and flabbergasted when Bucky tells him there are other types of dicks. Then, of course, being curious young boys and all, they gotta whip 'em out and compare. And then of course their gay sexual awakening happens. The end.

[burberrycanary]

From <i>Not Language but a Map (The Grammar of Sensation)</i>:

"In a break between songs, Bucky looks over at him. He’s sprawled out in his seat and mostly in the shadow cast by the edge of the window, but his eyes still reflect the ambient glow of the room: blue light layered over that darker, more complicated shade that’s haunted Steve for so long.

Bucky watches him for a hanging suspended moment. 

Then he says, “A lot of bad things happened to me that I’m never going to talk about.”

With that Bucky knocks back the rest of his whiskey that won’t get him drunk any more than a whole bombed-out bar could touch Steve in the rubble—in all that rubble—and Bucky gets up to buy another round.

What do you do with rage in a world with too many broken things already?

What do you do with all that rage when you’re decades too late?

Drink bland beer and raw-boned whiskey and listen to a good set of stripped-down electrocuted blues that runs way past midnight. Turns out, that’s what you do."

More than a line, I know!! But this moment struck me as perhaps the most like a lobbed grenade of all the many Bucky tosses at Steve, sometimes entirely out of the blue like here (and as your Steve-in-the-bombed-out-bar reference so eloquently mirrors), throughout the series. Nothing Steve doesn't know, but what a moment and what a place for Bucky to acknowledge it, then immediately get up and leave Steve to stew in it. Would love your author's commentary here.

Thanks for the ask! I didn't mean to write quite this much meta, but here we are. 💛

In a break between songs, Bucky looks over at him. He’s sprawled out in his seat and mostly in the shadow cast by the edge of the window, but his eyes still reflect the ambient glow of the room:[1] blue light layered over that darker, more complicated shade that’s haunted[2] Steve for so long.

Bucky watches him for a hanging suspended moment. [3]

Then he says, “A lot of bad things happened to me that I’m never going to talk about.”[4]

With that Bucky knocks back the rest of his whiskey that won’t get him drunk any more than a whole bombed-out bar could touch Steve in the rubble[7]—in all that rubble—and Bucky gets up to buy another round.[8]

What do you do with rage in a world with too many broken things already?

What do you do with all that rage when you’re decades too late?

Drink bland beer and raw-boned whiskey and listen to a good set of stripped-down electrocuted[9] blues that runs way past midnight. Turns out, that’s what you do."

[1] How Bucky is lit here is a reference to the scene from CATWS when the Soldier visits Pierce in his home and puts a gun down on the table between them. A lot of fannish ink has been spilled about that gun with the most popular theory being that the Soldier has been programmed to arm his handler, which is typically horrific for Bucky’s time as the Soldier: the utter abjection of being forced to participate in his own subjugation. This association isn’t meant to be consciously made by the reader, but it’s a striking and memorable image of Bucky as the Winter Soldier that helps set the emotional undercurrent of this scene and subconsciously reminds the reader of how much Bucky has suffered. 

[2] The word “haunted” here is deliberate: there are a lot of ghosts in this story.

[3] “hanging suspended moment” is another phrase that’s meant to nudge a subliminal association back to a time between Steve and Bucky that involved hanging over a long bad drop: the moment of suspension when Steve feels that he should have found a way to reach Bucky, and didn’t. Steve’s feelings of guilt and shame, warranted and unwarranted, haunt the language of this story.

[4] This moment is a parallel to earlier in the story when Bucky tells Steve that he doesn’t blame him for anything from the war, and Bucky is being truthful there—he doesn’t blame Steve for his own choice to join the Howling Commandos. And honestly I don’t know where fandom gets the idea that Bucky would have been sent home after Kreischberg since thanks to the serum he would still be physically fit to serve and getting a medical discharge for “battle fatigue”[5] would both carry an enormous cultural stigma and be near impossible to get for someone as functional as we see Bucky be; more realistically Bucky could choose between serving under a person he trusts and respects—even if he’s still a little punk with absolutely no military training and less sense than god gave a gnat who now has a shiny new body that lets him pick insanely dangerous fights but who remains a person Bucky trusts all the way down in his bones to do the right thing when it counts regardless of orders or military discipline. And given that total lack of military training, whether basic combat or as an officer, boy does Steve need the help. So it’s help and protect Steve as part of an elite and structurally unconventional unit under the command of someone he trusts—or he could get processed in London, undergo an intelligence interrogation and then be reassigned to another unit under some other unknown CO. Those are his likely options.[6]

Joining the Howling Commandos and following that little guy from Brooklyn was an easy choice for Bucky to make—and blaming Steve for it would make no sense to Bucky, though Bucky has the empathy and emotional intelligence to understand that Steve could very well blame himself, which is why he wants to set the record straight with Steve about that. Steve and Bucky do have very different views about war and the military, which they discuss over the course of the series, but Bucky respects Steve even when he often disagrees with him.

But the attentive reader may note that Bucky says that he doesn’t blame Steve for anything from the war. 

The bombshell Bucky drops here about never talking about certain parts of his past is driven by a lot of things. As a baseline, Bucky grew up in a very different culture, which is an obvious statement. But I wanted to actually reflect this cultural difference in how Bucky views and performs masculinity, which is going to be less than healthy from a modern point of view. While Steve has been in the modern world for the majority of his adult life, Bucky has only been in the modern world for a handful of years and much of that time in varying degrees of social isolation. So of course Bucky isn’t going to talk about certain things that happened to him: in his mind that’s not what men do. Like Steve, the reader is left to fill in that terrible blank of the unspoken past for themselves.

But Steve “Don’t Bleed on Anyone” Rogers also grew up with and internalized the same cultural ideas around masculinity. So then the question becomes, why does Bucky bring this up at all? Bucky in this series is great at simply never bringing up things he doesn’t want to talk about. 

There isn’t one clear-cut reason but a whole tangled mess. Bucky here is gearing up to take Steve to bed for the first time and whatever each individual reader picks for the imagined specifics, Bucky has undergone a staggering amount of horrific abuse. If things don’t go well later or if Steve were to notice anything off, Bucky is building an escape hatch to avoid any conversations he doesn’t want to have.

Because another touchstone this version of Bucky holds, an important piece of his self-identity, is that he doesn’t lie to Steve (and my headcanon is that this extends to people he loves in general). Throughout this series, every time Steve asks Bucky a serious question, Bucky gives him an honest, good-faith answer even if he has to sit there for a while carefully constructing a response that often contains infuriatingly little specific information. There’s some canon evidence to support reading Bucky as a very private person, which I do, but I headcanon that Bucky also operates under a lot of “fair play” framings, which Steve brings out in him particularly. If Steve has the guts to ask a tough question, then it seems fair to Bucky that he give Steve an honest answer. But for Bucky, “honest” does not mean “fully transparent.”

A whole separate form of traumatization Bucky underwent was an absolutely abject loss of privacy—who knows what records are floating around and who has seen them? Even Steve participated in that by searching for and reading the records about Bucky he could find. Bucky was forcibly stripped of his interiority, which somehow, miraculously, he managed to rebuild on his own. Bucky built himself back up into a person from as close to nothing as exists. This is Bucky at a stage in his recovery where he is actively asserting his privacy and defending his interiority—even from Steve, who is having to earn back Bucky’s trust.

And here is where we get to the bloody pulpy wound that Bucky is trying to both protect and hide. After all, Bucky hiding his hurts, struggles and negative feelings from Steve is the vast majority of their canonical on screen interactions. The natural narrative resolution to this pattern is for Bucky to eventually learn that he can share his struggles and hurts with Steve, and vice versa. Collectively we have told tens of thousands of versions of that story and I hope collectively we tell thousands and thousands more, because I am a fan of that narrative arc. I firmly believe that this built-in hurt/comfort theme is part of the core appeal of bringing these two characters together.

It’s a great story.  

And, in a lot of ways, this is a version of that story, just the version that’s uphill both ways and isn’t trying to reach a form of romanticized codependency.

Because we see in TFATWS Bucky coming to the painful realization he had made Steve’s opinion of him a critical part of the foundation for his rebuilt identity and shaky sense of self-worth. That messy intimate fracturing we see within Bucky during TFATWS is devastating to watch. Bucky isn’t keen to go through that again, thanks. 

Bucky loves Steve and wants him. And Bucky isn’t the sort to cut off his nose to spite his face—from a curious blend of kindness and pragmatism that I see at the heart of the character. He’s happier with Steve than without him, even after everything. He has always wanted good things for Steve and for Steve to let himself reach for a little of the happiness that Bucky believes Steve so richly deserves. And what a marvel for Bucky Barnes, just an ordinary kid from Brooklyn who scraped the bottom of hell and crawled his way back out across a century of horrific violence, to get to be part of Steve Rogers finding some happiness, at last.

But if Bucky doesn’t blame Steve for anything from the war, the question becomes: what does he blame Steve for? 

Because as kind as Bucky is and as hard as he tries to be the same good friend throughout all this—to be the bigger person—he blames Steve for leaving, which is another in the long, long list of bad things that have happened to Bucky.

The psychology here gets messy and the analysis rather meta, so bear with me. Because Bucky is and will continue to be trapped in the stories the MCU writes for him. Bucky Barnes is a victim trapped in a story of retraumatization because the narrative and most of the characters he interacts with will continue to deliver the message that he was responsible for what Hydra forced him to do and the way to get better is to accept this message and make amends for things that are, in fact, not his fault. This toxic belief is being constantly shoved at Bucky—even by Sam—and it makes Bucky, who is a kind and ethical person horrified by what he did, feel in turn like he deserved the bad things that happened to him.

Steve leaving is another item on that list and I think a part of Bucky unconsciously applies this same toxic thought pattern: he deserved it. 

In order to forgive Steve, Bucky has to first acknowledge that he was wrongfully harmed. And in the series so far, Bucky hasn’t been willing to do this. 

Because, at the same time, blaming himself is also perversely Bucky trying to establish some feeling of control after all the situations that left him feeling powerless. Bucky is keenly aware of how little control he has over what happens to him: from the government that mandates visits to a military psychologist as a deliberate technique for maintaining a degree of physical and psychological control over him; from the Wakandans who gave him a weaponized prosthetic when they wanted him to fight only to turn around and show that they are willing to forcibly remove a part of his body as a method for controlling his behavior; from all the people who will judge and condemn him for his past; and from Steve who decided he wanted a life that no longer had room for Bucky in it. 

The attentive reader may note that in this sprawling series “the end of the line” is never referenced once, which is deliberate. Because that’s come and gone. 

It’s understandable but sad how easy it is to grasp on tight to the harmful stories we tell ourselves about the bad things that happen to us as an alternative to confronting our own helplessness and the terrifying moral arbitrariness of the universe. Because that helplessness is ongoing. If you were helpless to stop the bad things that have already happened, you are equally helpless to prevent more bad things from happening now, again, at any point, forever. And the human mind is not really designed to be able to confront our own awful vulnerability.

Rebuilding a feeling of safety in the face of this knowledge is a monumental challenge that requires so much resilience and a defiant, stubborn sort of courage. 

Bucky needs to get to a place where he feels safe enough to begin to let go of this indirectly self-protective but ultimately harmful story: it was my fault.

I deserved it.

We want the universe to make sense. We want life to be an ethically satisfying story. How terrible that it’s not. 

And Bucky Barnes can’t catch a fucking break because rather than help and support, he gets abandonment, retraumatization and everyone still left in his life conveying to him, explicitly or implicitly, that he was responsible for what happened. 

Bucky dropping this bomb—“A lot of bad things happened to me that I’m never going to talk about”—is all these various conscious and unconscious forces crystalizing into this self-protective gesture because Bucky here is under an enormous amount of emotional and psychological stress. And this is his attempt to make himself feel a little safer.

[5] “As more American servicemen entered into combat, the number of psychological casualties steadily rose. During the Normandy Campaign, army psychologists noted that the combat effectiveness of troops sharply declined after 30 days of combat. After 45 days, troops were in a near vegetative state. Psychiatrist John Appel, who studied combat exhaustion cases during the Battle of Monte Cassino and Anzio Campaign, came to the sobering conclusion that, ‘Practically all men in rifle battalions who are not otherwise disabled ultimately became psychiatric casualties.’

Military medicine finally conceded that it wasn’t a question of ‘if’ a soldier would break in combat, but a question of when.

With a war to be won and in the face of a manpower crisis, the military’s primary concern was to return men to duty as quickly as possible. This was done by evacuating psychologically traumatized men to aid stations just to the rear of the frontlines. There, casualties received a dose of Sodium Amytal which put them into a deep sleep for a period of up to 48 hours; afterwards they ate a hot meal, showered and put on a clean uniform, then they were evaluated by medical personnel. Most responded positively to the treatment and 50 to 70 percent of combat exhaustion cases were returned to combat within three days. More severe cases were sent to hospitals and never returned to combat.” (x)

[6] “The few Prisoners of War repatriated prior to the end of the war were primarily evaders (those who had been fortunate enough to avoid imprisonment by the enemy –ed) and escapees (those who had successfully escaped, filtering thru belligerent, neutral, and/or occupied countries in an attempt to rejoin their parent organizations –ed) from German prison camps who had managed to find their way out of enemy territory, aided by members of the ‘resistance’ movements in the occupied countries. These individuals (mostly USAAF personnel –ed) were initially evacuated to London and processed in a small hotel situated 63, Brook Street, London, operated by the Theater Provost Marshal, United Kingdom, and later to Paris, France, where from March 9, 1945 onward, the Hotel “Francia”, was the place where they underwent intelligence interrogation by Allied Headquarters. After their intelligence processing, they were reassigned.” (x)

[7] I really do love the visual expression of Steve’s devastation at losing Bucky in CATFA. Grief is a terrible form of knowledge. To borrow a line: “Someone has to leave first. This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story.”

[8] I was interested in the decision to have Bucky drink in TFATWS. There’s no canon evidence to suggest that Bucky’s serum is less effective than Steve’s since they seem about evenly matched in fights, especially the iconic street fight when neither of them is holding back. So alcohol shouldn’t be intoxicating to Bucky. 

But for all its flaws, TFATWS shows Bucky trying to get back into the world and figure out how to connect with people again. I like the way Bucky’s social skills are depicted as uneven and how Bucky turns on and off caring about the social aspects of situations: sweet-talking a prickly old man into getting lunch or being a slightly shy and flirty sort of friendly to Sarah, but at other points just walking away from conversations he is done with without giving a single solitary fuck. 

But my take is that Bucky likes alcohol as something that’s social—drinking sake with Yori or having beers with Sam on the boat. It makes him feel normal, connected once again to human life and to his past self. (Prohibition was repealed when Bucky was 16.) And there may be some small unconscious placebo effects—I’m thinking particularly in TFATWS when Bucky comes back to the apartment in Riga and takes a drink with such a “fuck it, I need a drink” energy: the gesture itself may be soothing.

Here Bucky is absolutely going: fuck it, I need a drink.

[9] The correct word here would be “electric.” Steve slips to “electrocuted” because he’s got electrocution—and the other glimpsed and imagined horrors Bucky went through—on his mind.

Steve faces a curious sort of agony. Because, for all that Steve has fought and suffered, he’s aware that he can’t even imagine so much of what Bucky has gone through because he lacks the shared life experience. 

Because he couldn’t stop Bucky from falling. And he’s got to keep on finding a way to live with that. 

[stevebuckytimeline]

hello! you may have already answered this, but i just now found the steve and bucky timeline you have made (you've done a wonderful job and its very helpful. if only someone would do that with the entire mcu :/). Anyways, after bucky fell off the train and was captured by hydra, do we know if he was kept on ice until the brainwashing began or if he was just kept imprisoned? I had always assumed that the brainwashing began immediately after he was found post train fall?

Thank you so much! I'm sorry it took me so long to reply! I've been working on that part of the timeline (it is so confusing), but hopefully, I've managed to explain the order of events. Please check out the updated page! In short, Bucky fell from the train on February 1, 1945. He was then found by Soviet soldiers who were sympathetic to Hydra and taken captive not long after that. It is unclear what they did with Bucky until he met Zola again. They probably put him on ice. We know from Agent Carter and other references that Zola didn't get out of prison until August 13, 1949. He wasn't picking Bucky up right away, either. First, he got an official pardon and integrated himself into SHIELD. In August 1950, he finally traveled to the Soviet facility where Bucky was held. Zola operated on Bucky sometime between August 1950 and 1951. You can see Bucky's stump on the operation table; the wound looks relatively fresh, which would fit the theory that he had been cryogenically frozen since his fall. In the CATWS flashback, Zola still calls Bucky "Sergeant Barnes." Bucky also tries to fight back, which tells us that his mind and spirit are not fully broken yet, even after the operation. Zola had learned mind control in prison from one Dr. Johann Fennhoff, whom he met there in May 1946. Fenhoff had previously established the so-called Faustus method which includes the victim being asked if they are ready to comply, to which they respond with "happy to comply." It is possible that some of the Soviets he worked with knew about the method or had independently tried to brainwash Bucky before 1950 because his trigger words are in Russian, but I wouldn't count on it. Between August 1950 and June 1951, at the latest, Bucky gets brainwashed by Zola into becoming the Winter Soldier. We know this because TFATWS references a fight with Isiah Bradley in South Korea during the Korean War where Bucky already had the metal arm. The US Army sends Isiah over there specifically to deal with the Winter Soldier for killing their men. Considering that, June could already be a bit late for our brainwashing timeframe. Bucky keeps getting frozen and brainwashed over the years, first by Zola and the Soviets / the Red Room (Leviathan, which was led by Fennhoff before he was apprehended, was a Red Room predecessor) and then later exclusively by Hydra and their Americans.

[bucky-boychik-barnes]

Random bucky question timeeee

Do you think Bucky would have tattoos? Like maybe something small or just one or two? Or lots. Or do you think it depends on whether its canon or an AU?

I LOVE THIS ASK

Let's say in this one instance that Bucky is not acting as a good Jewish boy, as the Torah forbids voluntary tattoos. (Anything needed for a medical procedure, or done by force, doesn't count from my reading.)

So we know Bucky shipped to England before going to Italy, and probably was in England a few times to touch base with SSR as. Howlie. Let's say he was able to stop off in London to go visit Harry Burchett, who was the 'king of tattooists' at the time.

Edith in the poster in the background is his wife, I love her.

Anyway, back to our boy. He wouldn't get anything too big, even though Burchett's designs could run that way - there's a large chance his ma and rabbis are gonna kill him over a small one as it is. I also don't think he would get a militaristic or nationalist tattoo - he didn't enlist for a reason, and he's a member of the ACP for a reason.

I think he would get a sweet heart tattoo.

This is a Lyle Tuttle design instead of a Burchett, but it was a popular choice for soldiers at the time. I am sure Burchett had one in his own style.

The swallow represents a journey across the ocean because it is a bird that can go long distances and return home. So soldiers would get swallow and ribbon tattoos to serve as a companionship symbol to keep their sweethearts close to them while away at war.

Unfortunately, he can't get Steve's name, as much as he would like some way to feel closer to him at that moment. If he got blue carded, it would shame his whole family and community back home.

And he can't put 'Mom' there, Winifred Barnes is gonna be so disappointed as it is.

So I think he goes with 'Becca' for his youngest sister. It's somewhere conspicuous, like maybe his chest near his ribcage, to keep it close but out of sight.

By the time Rebekah gets to see it, she's an old woman but Bucky has barely changed

[myladyship]

They never wanted to give Bucky a trial when they captured him in Romania. The goal was to send him to jail, probably the raft. Not just because of the UN bombing but because Bucky knows a lot.

Hydra was infiltrated in the world government, the US especially. Evidenced by the Senator arrested in CATWS and another one, Bucky helped arrest in TFATWS.

Imagine the cans of worms that could open if Bucky told who he was ordered to kill and who ordered the hit. Who worked for Hydra.

[luna-rainbow]

The shield-bearer vs the gun-wielder

(Unmarked GIFs are credited to @lost-shoe - miss you 😭)

One frequent interpretation of the Steve-Bucky dichotomy sees Steve as the protector and defender with the shield, while Bucky is the aggressor and assailant wielding a gun or knife or even his metal arm. It's hard to shake that impression when we remember just how savage Bucky can be as the Winter Soldier, whereas Steve notably did not carry a weapon after CATFA. Promotional stills where they appear together reinforce that image, with Bucky often appearing with an offensive weapon (or holding his arm up offensively) while Steve holds his shield defensively.

But the picture of Bucky stepping in front of Karpov made me rethink. Despite Bucky's loss at the new super soldiers' hands a moment before, he is remarkably restrained in what he does as he leads Karpov out of the cage. I am not against the meta that suggested he gained some satisfaction at striking back at the new super soldiers, but he stuck to his goal of guarding Karpov instead of getting swept up in the adrenaline and joining the brawl - as other guards in the background did.

Bucky is a protector. I know there are already lots of meta about this: from the moment we meet him in the back alley, Bucky is using himself as a human shield between Steve and the bully. He puts himself at Steve's back when he's rescued from the Hydra facility and he picks up the shield to protect Steve on the train. Even that one scene of Bucky being a sniper in CATFA, he shot the enemy to protect Steve. As Bucky, his acts of aggression happens when he's protecting someone (usually Steve).

So it's interesting to re-examine the violence in CATWS. Yes, Bucky/Winter Soldier is capable of extraordinary ferocity in taking down Fury and Steve and Nat, but he's also someone who sits there placidly when Pierce's maid startles them. Proactive attack isn't his instinctual state - and that becomes clearer when we see more of Bucky in CACW. He waits until violence is upon him before he retaliates: whether in Bucharest, or in the German airport, or finally in Siberia with Tony.

And on reflection, even in this climactic CATWS scene, the visuals are consistent with Bucky’s modus operandi — he is placing himself as a human shield between his enemy (Steve) and what he needs to guard (the Helicarrier behind him). The trail of destruction he leaves behind on his way onto the Helicarrier is frank reminder of how capable of violence he is, but this moment on the bridge holds a curious stillness. He is waiting, but not as a predator waiting for his prey, but rather like a lone guard’s final stand against inevitable doom. And perhaps — his aim was never on taking the most number of lives on the airfield, it was to disperse and disable anyone who might interfere with the Helicarrier’s launch.

Bucky's focus during the first part of the fight with Steve seems to be more on the drive Steve is carrying rather than on killing Steve. Killing Steve only comes after the Helicarriers fail (which begs the question: was Bucky specifically instructed to stop Steve without killing him and then kill him afterwards, or did Bucky have enough presence of mind to hold back for as long as he could?) Even as the Winter Soldier, Bucky seems most in his element when protecting something behind him.

On the converse, we have Steve, whose symbol is the shield, and I think it misleads (maybe even intentionally on Steve's part) the audience and his enemies into thinking that Steve's strong point is defence.

But it's not. I wouldn't call Steve an aggressor (and I'm not a huge fan of the angry chihuahua fanon), but he is far more proactive in his actions and a lot more aggressive in his attacks than the shield might suggest.

Even this memorable image, which seems to suggest Steve is on the defense against Bucky's raging attack is actually the opposite -- Steve is rushing Bucky from the side, and Bucky's punch serves to stop Steve in his tracks (i.e. it’s Bucky's self-defense against Steve's attack).

Our first meeting with Steve establishes him as a challenger - he challenges the recruitment rules, he challenges the disrespectful guy in the cinema, he challenges Colonel Philips and Hydra and the Red Skull - and eventually, he goes on to challenge Loki and Tony and Fury and Pierce and SHIELD in the modern world.

We don't see Steve carrying a weapon in the modern era (except for maybe brief moments of him using a weapon in Avengers) and it's easy, for the audience but also for Steve’s enemies, to forget that Steve uses the shield as an offensive weapon. Sure, it serves its function as an actual shield, but Steve hurls it as a projectile weapon intended to incapacitate so many times I won't be able to list them all so I'll just let this picture speak for itself.

Even at their first reunion, Bucky is running away to avoid a confrontation with the witness (Steve) while Steve is chasing after him to confront the sniper.

And I think this describes their different traits to a tee - Steve is like the bloodhound with a keen nose for trouble and doesn’t rest until he’s chased it down, while Bucky is like the guard dog who patiently sits by his family until commanded to fight or provoked. That's not to say Steve is always picking fights, but rather he's got an intuitive awareness of where the source of the conflict is and has no qualms putting himself into the fray. It’s also not to say that Bucky is always avoidant or apathetic, but rather he tends to watch and wait unless it threatens those he cares about...and that is probably deserving of its own meta to discuss how their separate upbringings make Steve and Bucky different in their confrontation readiness.

"I thought you were more than just a shield," Batroc says, so Steve clips his shield back on his harness and dukes it out with his fists.

Of course Steve is more than his shield, because the shield is just a piece of disguise for who Steve Rogers really is - someone who's always assessing the world around him (rather than hiding behind the shield) and ready to challenge the injustices (rather than waiting for the fight to come to him).

The real dichotomy between Steve and Bucky is that Steve is a natural challenger, who first picks up the shield to help him undertake a single-man offence on a Hydra base. When he wakes up in the modern world and sees that the imagery of the shield is entrenched with his identity, he uses that symbol to mask his fiery defiance while turning the shield itself into a weapon that works both in offense and defence. Bucky is a natural protector, who had picked up fighting and later weapons for defence and self-defence. Hydra then turned his loyal temperament and his skill set into “the fist of Hydra” - capable of both protection and targeted destruction.

They seem to have chosen (or been assigned) a weapon that is opposite to their instincts, but it’s also why they work so well together as a unit. Steve's convictions and idealism give Bucky the impetus to take up arms, and Bucky's constancy and protection give Steve the confidence to forge ahead.

The man who attacks injustices with a shield, and at his back, the man who defends him with a gun.

[rainbowsuitcase]

This came to my mind thanks to a joke but. Of course my brain made it sad.

The expression on Bucky's face.

The realization that for someone who knows what they're doing, removing his arm is really easy.

The realization that not even the people who helped fix him, the people who made sure he was safe, don't fully trust him.

AND THEY DIDN'T EVEN TELL HIM THEY COULD DO THAT

[bbyboybucket]

So I wrote up all this stuff weeks ago and drafted it and forgot about it until I seen these tags from @kahuna-burger

And they are absolutely right. And I’m so glad someone agrees with me on this analogy, because this is EXACTLY how I see him, and exactly what I get into below. This is the whole thing I was writing up previously:

“The winter soldier was treated like a living weapon.”

Mmm, yes. The whole living weapon thing is not a wrong metaphor. But I’d argue that there’s something else far more accurate (aka what the now added tags say).

He wasn’t their weapon. He was their dog. In such an uncanny way, almost literal sense. I wouldn’t even say a guard dog, I’d actually say he was Hydra’s hunting dog.

I mean think about it. Really. They actually treated him like a dog.

He wears a harness. He wears a fucking muzzle for gods sake.

But that’s just the bare minimum of similarities.

What do they do when he gets out of line? To punish him, to put make him obey and learn to fall back into good behavior? They shock him. Just like how people have always used shock collars and electric fences for dogs. When he’s been “bad”, when he does something he’s not supposed to, he gets shocked to correct that behavior.

They also smack him and get physical. People don’t do that with weapons. There’s no point in that. And you wouldn’t wanna damage or harm a weapon. But people do smack dogs. They hit their dogs when they don’t behave or do something wrong because harm, pain, and damage will teach it. Just like it teaches him. And they’ll heal so it’s not a concern.

He was trained to obey commands. Just like dogs. He does any little thing he’s told because he’s conditioned with a rewards system. He even has specific command words that trigger compliance. Just like you teach a dog to sit or roll over with trigger words, he has em too. I mean literally, he has a Pavlovian response to said words. And what was the original Pavlov experiment done on? A dog. The only difference is he doesn’t get physical treats. His treat is praise, which they manipulated him into being desperate for. They even go as far to incentivize him with this praise (think about the bank scene, where Pierce praises him), just like you would present a dog with a treat when you want it to do a trick. Hell, actually praise is a way you reward dogs too, because they listen and learn when you tell them they’re a “good boy, good dog”.

Hydra asserts their dominance over him just in case he turns on them, just to remind of who’s the “alpha”. Because they know (just like big dog owners) that he can tear them up, he can attack and shred them to pieces, but if he thinks he’s not the “alpha” then he’ll back down.

And yeah, he’s protective and reliant on his “owners” like most dogs would be. But like I said, not just a guard dog. A hunting dog. Because just like people teach their dogs to track down and go after bears, squirrels, dear, etc. he was also taught how to track down stuff to kill. Stuff that his owner wanted dead. That’s his whole purpose, to hunt for them.

Also, think about how Hydra obtained him. It’s like if a person saw an injured dog in a ditch, brought it to a vet to heal up, then took it home to have as their own pet. Because that’s exactly what they did with him. It’s just the owner was an abusive one.

He wasn’t treated like some expensive tank or powerful arsenal of guns. He was treated like well trained hunting dog.

[sarahowritesostucky]

I like the idea of that material at the seam being a different substance than the rest of the arm. Since this is the mcu, we can postulate that it is some sort of nifty, biometallic alloy material (made-up whackado science thingy) that has properties of both metal and flesh, and can thus bond to his actual muscles, tendons, bones, and nerves. This seam material can explain how they're able to fuse metal with flesh (they don't: they fuse biometallic matter with flesh, and that bridges the gap between metal and flesh).

I also wonder, with the technology of Helen Cho's cradle, could Bucky feasibly have his metal arm completely excavated, then climb in that thing and have it print him a whole new arm, much like Clint's repaired abdomen after his gunshot wound in AoU?

MCU Winter Soldier’s Arm

So, it’s at three in the morning that, after seeing a gif, I begin having revelations/disturbing thoughts/deep contemplations about the bionics and biology of the Winter Soldier’s arm. And, of course, at three in the morning, that’s when I start assembling pictures and diagrams. 

Here’s a normal shoulder, and then the Winter Soldier’s. What gets me is that it’s not just a plug-in prosthesis that joins neatly up with his shoulder joint and the bone structures there. 

As seen here, all of these muscles: 

are what you need to actually move an arm and shoulder. With structures even as far down and centralized as the pecs, the muscles there bunch up in the shoulder region. As seen on the Winter Soldier, all of the places where his upper chest/pectoral, and shoulder muscles should be bunched up are (whether partially grafted with or entirely) metal. 

Here, (on my phone) I drew out how more natural muscle patterns would be going without the interruption of the prosthetic. And here’s what looks to be going on: 

At the seam of the prosthetic, we can see a glimpse of material that seems to extend down, following the basic lines of where musculature would need to be to support movement- which leads me to believe that at least in the front, that metal had to be extended (or at least extended by way of more flexible wiring to at least graft and connect to existing muscles and nerves) down through his entire pectoral muscles. Sure, his entire pec might not have to have been recreated/replaced by metal and wiring, but I’m getting the feeling that the lighter colored metallic structure at the seam continues farther down into his chest in order to connect to existing muscles and nerves. Depending on how far down they had to take things, they may or may not have had to anchor the pec and under arm metal structures to his ribcage. 

Now, onto the back. 

The scapula and other skeletal structures in the shoulder area are all pretty necessary for movement, and although Bucky only seemed to lose below the upper bicep after the fall, the scapula alone couldn’t support the weight and power of his new arm. So, I’m guessing that they left both the scapula and collarbone, but would have needed to reinforce both bone structures with metal (this includes shoulder joint and socket, if they were still intact enough); and all of that, they’d need to anchor to his spine/rib cage to keep the weight balanced and make sure the muscles and cartilage didn’t rip and tear with the weight of the arm during standing and fighting and such. 

As for what they’d do about the muscles needed for arm movement in the back, I don’t have a clue- for weight and efficiency’s sake, they probably would have done their best to preserve and connect existing nerves and musculature on his back to the arm, after reinforcing bone structures. Given that the muscles in the back and shoulder connect to the spine and neck, that would be a whole lot of metal to try and anchor down if they replaced everything back there with straight up metal (as opposed to connecting wiring and such to the muscles already there). 

So, whether or not this taught anyone new, I feel it’s certainly an interesting line of thinking, to consider just how far and how deep the socket, reinforcement, and overall prosthetic goes into the musculoskeletal structures of his chest, torso, and back. As for the wiring required to get the level of responsiveness and finesse that his arm has, I can’t begin to imagine how they had to integrate their technology into his nervous system- that might be a post for another day, and possibly by someone who has more than a basic understanding of anatomy (that’s what degrees are for!). Are there any more lessons to this? Well, I’m a biology geek and a Marvel geek, for one, and once more, we can reinforce that Hydra is fucking terrifying and horrible organization- albeit, one with surgeons that had remarkably, ridiculously, spectacularly advanced technology and understandings of bionics even in the 40s. 

[burberrycanary]

What's your sticky spot for the old Hollywood fic? It's so interesting to me where things get stuck.

Thanks for the ask! And also for the incomparable @booksandabeer, who asked after this as well 😘

I can’t let this Stucky Old Hollywood idea go—the aesthetic alone! 

I’m not an AU writer so the only way I could do this concept is as canon divergence where the Barnes family moves to Los Angeles rather than Brooklyn when Bucky is a kid—and Bucky becomes a child star. So Steve and Bucky don't meet.

I’ve been slowly working out the concept and completing the foundational research, but lately I’ve fallen into a really meta place around the question: would Bucky still have been drafted? 

The quick version of the historical context is that, unlike later drafts and most iconically the Vietnam draft, WWII-era conscription was conducted by local boards that assigned each registered man a lottery serial number (not the same as an army serial number) after all the completed registration cards were shuffled.[1] Bucky would have registered in October 1940 under the Selective Training and Service Act[2] and could have been called up in any of the three drafts: 29 October 1940, 17 July 1941, 17 March 1942.[3] If Bucky was in a different part of the country—and in consequence subject to a different local board’s instance of this random number assignment process—odds are he would have been assigned a different random lottery serial number, which means he could have been selected in an earlier draft, the same draft or not at all. And there’s no logic for how he would have ended up with the 107th.

And here’s where it gets meta. Because narratively Bucky is drafted to be a foil for Steve, who can’t join the military despite desperately wanting to. And Bucky becomes a POW to motivate Steve into the action that transforms him from a performer to a combatant, thereby achieving Steve’s—and the narrative’s—vision of idealized masculinity. And Bucky falls off the train to push Steve into more radical action against Hydra, which culminates with him putting the plane into the water. Bucky isn’t doomed by the narrative. He’s doomed by Steve’s narrative. In the original work, the pre-TFATWS MCU, Bucky’s suffering only has narrative meaning because of its effect on Steve. And you can argue that things only occur in a story if they have narrative meaning. 

Without having to be a plot device and motivator for Steve, Bucky is theoretically relieved of the narrative requirement of being a POW. He wouldn’t have to fall off that train.

But, at heart, fanfiction is a rejection of this model of narrative meaning. As soon as you create a Bucky-centric reading or write a Bucky-centric version of canon, then his suffering has the potential for intrinsic narrative meaning. And Bucky’s story of victimization and heroic resilience speaks deeply to a lot of people, myself included. Bucky lacks the protagonist’s halo of always beating the odds, of the doors always closing just after safely jumping through, of being able to close that gap and grab the hand reaching out for him, and of being looked for by friendlies and discovered as still alive in the cold. Of course, if Bucky was a protagonist, the serum would have kicked in faster; he would have broken his own restraints; he would have rescued himself and the remnants of the 107th. 

But that’s not Bucky’s narrative function. 

Bucky is so fascinating to me because his story doesn’t follow the pattern of male-hero-protagonist. He has a sympathetic villain’s narrative arc but then refuses to become a villain. So, in this revisionist analysis, Bucky is doomed and saved by his own narrative. And this is why I’m leaning toward Bucky still being drafted, even if his experience of the war plays out differently, but not making him a POW so long as the part of Bucky’s story that's about being controlled and dehumanized by larger forces can be transferred to a different part of the narrative. 

I’ll sign off with this piece of inspiration about Mickey Rooney, an iconic child star of the era:

Mayer naturally tried to keep all his child actors in line, like any father figure. After one such episode, Mickey Rooney replied, "I won't do it. You're asking the impossible." Mayer then grabbed young Rooney by his lapels and said, "Listen to me! I don't care what you do in private. Just don't do it in public. In public, behave. Your fans expect it. You're Andy Hardy! You're the United States! You're the Stars and Stripes. Behave yourself! You're a symbol!”[4]

Sources:

1. World War II Selective Service Draft Registrations

2. The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940

3. Wood, Richard G., comp., Records of the Selective Service System, 1940-47 (PI 27); National Archives (NARA), 1951.

4. Wayne, Jane Ellen (2005). The Leading Men of MGM. Carroll & Graf Publishers. p. 246

[myladyship]

Whoever said: "Bucky is not mad at Steve for remaining in the past, but he also wanted to go home." I hope both sides of your pillow are warm!