#bucky's disability meta

[amarriageoftrueminds]

I also think about:

1 . Bucky having a visible disability now (versus Steve once having, perhaps, invisible disabilities) and Steve seeing how people react to that, how they treat a visibly disabled person in the modern era, (that some peoples' attitudes haven't changed), and being the vocal ally to disabled Bucky (that Bucky was to disabled Steve). Noticing how Bucky has changed to accommodate his disability, and is now thinking in a way that is very familiar...

2 . The aspect of disabled experience that is navigating a world not designed to accomodate someone like you, and how -- looked at from that perspective -- Steve's experience as a superhuman actually might continue to feel like being disabled?

I mean... Steve is navigating a world where nothing he can buy/use/wear/eat is designed to accomodate someone with the same same strength, speed, endurance, and (possibly also) sensitivity of sight, smell, taste and hearing, as him. It's a world where he'd have to be on eggshells the whole time, just to exist -- unless he modifies things to suit his needs, like a disabled person would. (And the same would be true for Bucky).

3 . The intersection of war specifically and disability. Think of the disabled people Steve would've grown up around because they were veterans of WWI. (Probably the only glamourized depictions of disability he would see, outside of sideshows on Coney Island?) Then the recently-disabled soldiers Steve would've met in WWII. Finding out his own president was in a wheelchair, and he didn't know. (And then the people disabled by being in concentration camps; inmates of the camp 'hospitals' he would liberate as Cap).

i keep trying to find the words to talk about Captain America as a disabled person

because like. the climax of the first act of his movie is his disabled body getting erased, freeing him to do hero things, and we all know about how problematic that is, and if he was a new superhero and not literally made up in the early 40s it would be offensive. (as it is i'm really glad the movie played up a bunch of serious physical impairments instead of going with the halfhearted 'weak and small' take.)

but the thing is Steve remains a disabled man in an abled body.

in the terms Erskine valued him for--not a perfect soldier but a good man, someone who did not lose sight of the value of his own strength, and the value of other people in spite of their not having it--but in other ways, too.

emotional ways. tactical ways--he adapts instantly to being overpowered and outnumbered and works with and around it, in a way Thor and Tony can't because having had educational field trips into helplessness and relative lack of social privilege doesn't teach you not to be shocked by it the way living with it your whole life does.

steve doesn't stop being the man who spent his whole life fighting against being defined by the things he couldn't do. he doesn't stop being someone who expected to die young and wanted more than anything to make the time he did get worthwhile.

he doesn't stop being the person who needed these things because he lived in a world that told him he was worthless.

eugenics was incredibly normalized in America in Steve's day. Americans developed a lot of the theory the Nazis went on to apply. Steve Rogers is someone who grew up hungry, being told he was one of God's mistakes and should die without further polluting the gene pool.

His life did not stop being a fuck you to that ideology the second he got a non-disabled body and stopped being an obvious target.

because that was where the Nazis started, remember? their first mass cullings. they got the disabled concentrated in big hospital institutions, and then started killing them off. because those were the easiest and most obvious targets of their worldview.

steve was already in one of the groups the Nazis wanted to exterminate. this gets much less attention than queer readings, for plenty of reasons including that disability doesn't come with built-in romance plots and that he got made un-disabled by the story, but within canon it was already personal.

he wasn't motivated by self-preservation because lol it's steve, but he wasn't opposed to Nazi Germany as a simple moral ally of its victims, either. he was one of the people fascists wanted to destroy. he knew their kind from the ground. and i think that matters in a way we as a fandom tend to undervalue.

steve doesn't identify as part of a disabled community cuz that wasn't really a thing, and he has a lot of internalized ableism, and neither of those things stop me from relating to him as a disabled protagonist.

at a fundamental level he's always going to be that furious little gremlin showing the world his teeth and demanding it answer for the fact that it contained so much injustice.

[chaoticamelay]

MCU Bucky Barnes: Migraine. TBI, and Headaches

aka "Of Course His Head Hurts, Did We Not Watch The Same Movies?"

i saw a post where the OP said they headcanon that bucky barnes has chronic migraines due to the head trauma he's experienced. as someone with migraine who LOVES yapping about bucky barnes I have THOUGHTS

-

Basically, i agree with the headcanon that bucky is still dealing with the side effects of all the head trauma he has experienced. Even with the serum, there is no way in hell he doesn't have headaches after *gestures vaguely at his entire life*

Does that mean bucky barnes has migraines? Nope! Allow me to explain why (and also what I think bucky has instead)!

There are two main kinds of headache: primary and secondary (and also a few other exceptions like some neuropathies). Primary headaches are caused by a headache or head pain condition/disorder, with no other known underlying cause. Secondary headaches are a symptom of another underlying condition. There are four categories of primary headache disorders: migraine, tension-type headaches. trigeminal autonomic cephalalgias (TACs), and other kinds of PHDs such as cold-stimulus headache, aka brain freeze. Causes of the secondary headache types include... well. everything else, up to and including trauma. Which Bucky has. Obviously.

The word migraine is often used to mean 'severe headache', but this is inaccurate: migraine is a neurological disorder with unknown cause (although it is believed to be a mix of genetic and environmental factors.) Before i got off twitter I wrote a thread talking about migraine misconceptions, i have it saved in my drafts for migraine awareness month but until then here's some starter info from Migraine Canada.

We don't see anything pre-war or during the war before the train that would make me think Bucky has migraine. It's possible, obviously, since it doesn't seem like it was a disqualifying condition for US Army service during WWII, although some types of aura would have been. But it doesn't seem likely to me that he could have had migraine attacks and still gotten promoted to sergeant, particularly if he had migraine with aura and and had to work around that. (Visual or sensory/motor aura symptoms, for example, would make it real hard to shoot a gun, especially at long-range).

On to secondary headaches, then: let's specifically look at headaches caused by trauma, which obviously Bucky has. Beyond what's shown on screen, there is a canon tie-in book called The Wakanda Files which includes some of Zola's diary and Shuri's notes on Bucky when he was there. I don't own this book, but when I went looking I found that a lovely human named @samwontshare has made several posts with its contents, complete with image descriptions! Go check it out, but here's a quote from their Bucky masterpost of Shuri talking about Bucky (cw for torture, obviously):

Hydra’s methods were effective in making Barnes hyperaware and highly suggestible. They caused what I can only describe as noise in the electric activity of his hemispheres. An EEG on Barnes revealed just how murky and extensive his brain damage was. Hydra’s Winter Soldier program subjected Barnes to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) followed by suggestive keywords and phrases to activate a brain soup knot that could take years to unravel. If we’re able to reverse it at all. ECT is extremely painful, and Hydra didn’t administer any dulling agents. (The Wakanda Files)

It is MCU canon that Bucky Barnes has a traumatic brain injury. And it is my opinion that post-HYDRA, Bucky has a neurocognitive disorder as a result of that TBI. I'm not getting into that though, because that could be its own post, and honestly it might be at some point but probably not anytime soon. Back to Bucky and headaches.

The International Headache Society maintains the International Classification of Headache Disorders, which is currently in its third edition (ICHD-3). This framework is used for diagnosis and treatment of headache disorders. There are also headache disorders coded in the WHO's ICD-11 for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics, but this isn't as exhaustive as the ICHD-3 on headaches specifically so I'm using that instead.

We might assume that Bucky's head pain is Post-electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) headache (A7.6.3). Although "clear descriptions of headache associated with electroconvulsive therapy are sparse", which is why it's in the appendix of the ICHD-3 and not the main diagnostic manual, if anyone was going to have it, it'd be Bucky. Even so, one of the diagnostic criteria is that "each headache has resolved within 72 hours after ECT", so this doesn't fit even if the name makes it sound like it does.

I think the better explanation is ICHD-3 5.2.1: Persistent headache attributed to moderate or severe traumatic injury to the head. (In the ICD-11 this would be coded 8A84.1). The diagnostic criteria for that is headache persisting more than 3 months after a head trauma, and the 'moderate to severe' qualifier is added if one of several conditions are met, one of which is "imaging evidence of a traumatic head injury" which hey! we know from Shuri's notes Bucky has!

"But Amelay! Wouldn't the serum have healed the TBI?" I mean, i feel like it did a LOT. With what they did to him, Bucky would be dead multiple times over if it he wasn't enhanced. Wakanda is the most medically advanced place on the planet, and Shuri is a genius, and she's not confident in her notes that she'll be able to even begin to fix what HYDRA did, even with Bucky being enhanced. Bucky gets significantly better by the time he leaves Wakanda, but even the serum has limits, and the brain is so incredibly complex- it's not like fixing a GSW or broken bone. In my opinion he still has a TBI.

"But Amelay! Yes, Bucky has a TBI, but you can't be sure he has headaches!" True. But a) he's fictional, and b) you also can't be sure he doesn't. And I want to believe that the reason he wears sunglasses is not to look cool as hell, but because the light is hurting his head. Let Bucky be disabled, cowards.

And also he looks cool as hell.

(Before anyone asks why he's okay with gunfire if the light hurts his eyes: HYDRA had incentive to train noise sensitivity out of him, if they wanted him to be in a firefight. But they gave the winter soldier dark googles during the bridge fight (during the day), but not when he shot fury or killed the starks (both at night). And then i think when he didn't have them during the helicarriers because it was a punishment. Afterwards, he was really fucked up, and possibly felt like he deserved the pain? idk man alternatively headache disorders are super fucking weird, sometimes stuff just doesn't seem logical.)

[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.

[wewringmagicfromtheordinary]

#simultaneously ignoring his disability unless it's used as a joke#(I should say disabilities since brain-damage and C-PTSD should surely be included in his list of traits)#maybe this is also why sam dislikes bucky so viscerally#and has to make those nasty microaggression jokes that are not just about bucky's mental and physical trauma...#...but also position bucky as agentic (eg. joking 'he' killed everyone he's met; not that he was ~made to etc.)#reconfiguring the thing he finds uncomfortable and frightening (male victim) into something more palatable:#(ie. just another white male villain who couldn't possibly understand suffering such as isaiah has undergone because blablabla)#bucky barnes#bucky meta#meta#mcu#mcu meta#long post#bucky's mind-control meta#bucky's disability meta#damn this got so interesting I wish I'd made it as a unique post instead of hijacking OPs' 😬 via amarriageoftrueminds

🤡 Markus and McFeely 🤡: “Yeah, Bucky’s just a POW who had his entire agency explicitly removed in not one but TWO ways but he’s for sure guilty because we don’t want him to have fruit salads with Steve”

[mj-irl]

[image description: Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes, is stepping out of a Wakandian home. He is wearing a red Wakandian robe and a blue wrap. He is looking to his right and around.]

Autistic Bucky Barnes in Wakanda

When he wakes up there are lots of new things to see, new smells and sounds to get used to. It is overwhelming.

Even when the people around him speak English different accents, sayings and body language than he is familiar with means his auditory processing and his ability to follow a conversation is compromised. Some days are worse than others.

People he Interacted with were very understanding, knowing that he was recovering from being brainwashed, so they gave him a lot of leeway when talking with him. He didn’t have to work so hard to keep up the appearance of being neurotypical, no one expected that from him

He gradually got acclimated to the new place and people and languages and really grew to love it in Wakanda

[image description: Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes in the MCU stands with his back to the camera, he wears Wakandian clothing. He looks over a peaceful lake and trees in the sunlight.]

He found the technology exciting and wanted to learn as much as he could as fast as he could

He was allowed time and space to be alone when he was overwhelmed

He found sitting at a fire is a good multiple sensory experience.

[Image description: Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes in the MCU is in the center of the picture. We see him through the flames in the foreground as he stares at a fire.]

People, including Shuri, Ayo, and T’Challa gave him a lot of space when he needed it and help when he needed it.

He really liked the sound of the languages people spoke, he listen to people talking and would repeat sounds, the words felt good to form with his mouth parts

He appreciated when people were patient with him while he was learning to speak some Xhosa, this was a new experience because when he was growing up he was expected to just spit out what he was trying to say or be quiet because ‘children are seen and not heard’ and then as the Winter Soldier he was expected mostly to not speak.

[Image description: Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes in the MCU dressed in Wakandian clothing walks from left to right. We see him from a distance in what looks like a Wakandian village.]

Being out in nature like he never was before, not growing up in the city, not during the war, was very grounding for him, there wasn’t constant anxiety or an assault on his senses

caring for animals and doing farm work had a routine that was satisfying

[Image description: Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes in the MCU is wearing tan work clothing and a Wakandian wrap over his shoulder. We see him from a distance as he does farm work in a field with some cows, goats and two Wakanians looking on.]

A lot about being in Wakanda was good for Bucky

[Image Description: Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes in the MCU stands in a field with trees in the distance. He wears tan work clothes and a Wakandian wrap around his shoulder. He looks down and the camera pans down at his new Wakandian Arm laid in front of him in a case.]

Autistic Bucky posts [1] [2] [3] [4]

For @marveldisabilitycelebration

[cblgblog]

I’m not gonna lie the major thing that bothered me was when they took Bucky’s arm. Bucky was 100% an asshole don’t get me wrong but that scene read to me as though they were stripping him of his autonomy. At the end of the day Bucky is disabled and his arm is a prosthetic, a powerful one? Yes, but still a prosthetic. If they were so worried why wouldn’t they give him a regular prosthetic? It also rubs me the wrong way that they’re so willingly and accepting taking someone’s prosthetic away from someone they gave it to and betraying them and showing that they have control over his body and prosthetic. I’m not gonna lie, I stopped watching after that. I kept up online about what Sam was up to because I love him, but the fandoms willingness to think it’s ok to take a person with a disabilities arm away was alarming. Especially, the memes of people joking about Bucky not having an arm. I may be more sensitive to this as someone who has studied about people with disabilities but it’s still something that bothers me about the series. I feel like taking away a prosthetic from someone is just downright horrible even if they’re being an asshole. It made me wonder if Bucky after that actually trusts his arm and his autonomy. I’m not sure if people will agree with me but idk taking someone’s prosthetic away rubs me the wrong way, mistake or not, that’s Bucky’s arm. I mean is he going’s to have to constantly earn the right to his prosthetic with the thought of it being taken away?

Tbh, the fandom at that particular moment is what pushed me to get out of the MCU. The people were showing that they didn’t actually care about disability rights and it’s just a joke to them. I mean it’s obviously different circumstances but what if a kid with a prosthetic watched that scene is now terrified that someone is going to take it away from them? Let alone see that people think it’s funny not to have an arm and for someone to take it away.

Like I said Bucky was an asshole and was super shitty, but I hated how they wrote that. They could have done so many other things that take his arm.

Sorry for the rant!! I was kinda curious as to what you thought.

Yeah, I'm not gonna lie, I didn't view it the same exact way you did, but I do see your points and think they're valid.

So, here's the thing. I'm disabled, but not in a way that requires a prosthetic. Most I ever had to use was a walker when I was little, and then leg braces until I was like 14. So, I'm in a kind of weird place where I can look at it from a certain kind of disabled perspective, but I'm in no way counting my experience as being the same as someone who has a prosthetic, or a disability that's vastly different from mine.

Not gonna lie here either, I've laughed at those arm memes. I also get why people would be offended by them. I say that I laughed at them because if I don't admit that, someone is going to scroll through my entire trash fire of a Tumblr to find proof that I'm a hypocrite. So yeah, straight up, I've laughed at those jokes, I still would probably laugh if I saw them again, but I recognize that it's iffy at best, problematic at worst. I did not catch the full implications previously.

I think that it bothered me less at the time because they didn't "really" take it. Quotation marks because yes, they did remove it, but they didn't take it with them before they left and leave him armless the rest of the ep. Distinction without a difference? Probably, I'm just explaining why my brain didn't ping on it so much at the time. They didn't take back the thing they gave him out of spite, they temporarily removed it. Was it a dickish way to make a point, on giving it a second look? Absolutely. It was an absolutely dickish way to assert control.

I don't, however, think it explains Bucky's behavior towards Ayo, at least not entirely. He was a dick to her before that. He was dismissive of her concerns before that, which I still cannot find a reasonable, canonical explanation for. So it can't just be the arm, because he was all, I need Zemo, get of my back about it before the arm was removed.

That said, given Bucky's history of having his autonomy removed, I could definitely see why the arm thing would've made things worse, not better, which is an angle I hadn't considered before, so thank you for that.

My final caveat would be that I don't give the writers enough credit to have seen that either. I think your explanation fits partly, like I said, but I don't think that team were smart or sensitive enough to have factored it in themselves. Could be wrong, I have no evidence one way or another, it's just my guess based on how they wrote the rest of the show.

Regardless, thank you again, I had not considered that angle, I appreciate you bringing it up.

[angelictroublemaker]

Please read my thoughts about Bucky, Disability, and ethics in episode 4 of the Falcon and the Winter Soldier!

https://sasha-feather.dreamwidth.org/1254507.html

[captainwidowspring]

First of all, I do not think that comparing the Siberia scene to Nico's death scene is a fair comparison. The two situations are not really comparable, for they are significantly different, and Steve was dealing with much less challenging circumstances than John was. The most obvious example of this is the fact that Bucky was only injured, whereas Lemar was dead, but there are plenty of others. In fact, I just wrote a meta that went into detail on how the situations are different, as well as what some more comparable examples would be, so to try to keep this from getting super long, I'll just link that: here.

With that there, I'll just address a few specific statements that I took issue with.

"He's no hero he's out for glory. He's all the ego of Stark wrapped in false humility."

This is demonstrably not true. For example, John said to Lemar before his interview, "Don’t get me wrong, this has been great, it’s been great, but it’s been a lot of handshakes, a lot of suits, a lot of speeches, and senator meetings, and I just wanna do the job." This shows that he specifically dislikes all the publicity he's been forced to do. Just like Steve, he resents being forced to be a dancing monkey, he just wants to get out and help people. Also, John consistently tried to work with Sam and Bucky, and even helped them several times, without requiring anything in return. If his only focus was getting glory, he would most likely be trying to do things by himself. And he would probably try to undermine Sam and Bucky instead of helping them, never mind helping them unconditionally. In addition, at the end when Sam was getting all the attention (and was publicly defending the person who killed his best friend), John showed no resentment, nor did he try to attract any attention to himself. Instead, he just let Sam have the Captain America mantle and then quietly walked away, going past all the reporters and government officials. Again, if he was just out for glory, it is quite unlikely that he would leave so discreetly. So there are no indications that John was out for glory, nor is there any evidence that any of the humility he displayed was not genuine.

"Nico was not a significant threat to John Walker at any point."

This is very much not true. Literally just the scene before, Nico had been holding John helpless so that Karli could stab him. Indeed, the only reason Karli wasn't successful was because Lemar intervened. So yes, Nico was very much a significant threat. In fact, the only reason John was able to put up a fight against Nico in the first place was because he had enhanced himself (which he did after Lemar reminded him that they would have been able to save more people in Afghanistan with the serum). Otherwise, Nico probably would have just been able to kill John himself; he wouldn't even have needed Karli's help.

Also, while Nico was not armed, he is a supersoldier. That is a major difference between Siberia and this. In Siberia, since Tony wasn't a supersoldier, all Steve had to do to was disable the suit and Tony was no longer dangerous. But that is not the case for Nico, as being a supersoldier he has enhanced strength and durability and all that. He is just as strong as as John, as we saw in the last scene, so even though he wasn't armed, he was by no means defenseless. And Nico was completely uninjured at the time John knocked him down, so the threat he posed had not decreased at all.

Also, there was no way for John to quickly and easily subdue Nico; even if John managed to knock him out, The Winter Soldier showed that supersoldiers don't remain unconscious for very long. So yes, Nico was still very much a threat, and was hard for John to safely render harmless. And it's worth noting that Siberia would have been a lot different if Tony's enhancements were a part of him, and not an external thing that could be disabled.

"Nico doesn’t do anything aggressive once they are out of the building."

This is also not true. While John is pursuing him, Nico picks up a concrete trash can and hurls it at John. John manages to hit it hard enough with the shield that it disintegrates, but this was not the guaranteed outcome. It would have seriously hurt him if he had not reacted in time, or even if he had just not been strong enough to break it apart. It could also have hurt innocent bystanders if John had been forced to dodge.

Also, you failed to mention that Nico doesn't simply fall down at the base of the statue; he tries to get back up multiple times. The second time John hits him with the shield, he falls over. He then tries to get back up, so John hits him with the shield again. Nico tries to get back up yet again, so finally John puts his foot on Nico's chest to keep him down. It is only then that Nico yells, "It wasn't me!" This is not the behavior of someone who is interested in surrendering, this is the behavior of someone who is terrified that they don't have the upper hand anymore. If Nico had wanted to surrender, he would have stayed down the first time.

"Nico isn’t the one who killed Walker’s friend Lemar, Karli is. . .Walker, like Stark, is after an innocent person who is only associated with the murderer."

Here's the thing though: Nico isn't innocent. While Nico wasn't the one who struck the killing blow against Lemar, he was actively involved in the murder. He is the reason Lemar needed to rescue John in the first place, and he is also the reason that John was unable to defend Lemar from Karli. If Nico hadn't been holding John, none of the subsequent events would have transpired. Nico does therefore hold a measure of responsibility for what happened.

Honestly, saying that Nico isn't responsible for Lemar's death because he didn't personally end Lemar's life, is like saying that the Hydra agent on the train from The First Avenger isn't responsible for Bucky's death because he wasn't the reason that the handlebar Bucky grabbed when he was knocked from the train gave out before Steve could grab him. Even though both people didn't personally kill their respective victim, both were nonetheless instrumental in their deaths.

Thus, saying that Nico occupies Bucky's role is completely inaccurate. Bucky was forced by his Hydra captors to kill the Starks while he was brainwashed, and he couldn't say no even if he wanted to. This is why, despite the fact that he killed them, it actually wasn't his fault. Nico, on the other hand, willingly restrained John with the knowledge that Karli was going to kill him, and he did not release John until after Lemar had been killed. That is why Nico is not innocent, for he did everything he did knowing full well what he was doing, without coercion. And while he didn't strike the killing blow, Lemar's murder was could not have happened without his contributions, so he is not just an associate of the murder, he is an accomplice. Bucky is innocent, while Nico is not.

"While Tony is only pushed to such irrational anger out of (plot contrivance) extreme grief over something that he is blindsided by (because this movie has tenuous continuity with previous films), Walker is shown in many scenes to be this way all the time."

I definitely agree with you that Tony should have already known by that point what had happened to his parents. However, I disagree with the assertion that John was that way all the time. There were a few times that he did get frustrated, but all of those times were completely understandable, like when he yelled at the person who literally spit in his face. Otherwise, he was extremely patient, such as when he tried several times to peacefully talk to the Dora Milaje while they were being nothing but hostile. Indeed, he was probably way more patient than he should have been.

Thus, while for pretty much the whole show the framing did its best to paint John as a terrible person who did not deserve to be Captain America, what was shown was an amazing person who actually earned the Captain America mantle, and did the best he could in the situations he was thrust into.

(And just in case you were not aware, I also wrote a response to the original post you reblogged: here)

Good is not a thing you are. It's a thing you do.

Credit to the original Ms. Marvel comics for that quote

A sentiment that is sadly lost on the current MCU

That quote is perfect 👌

I'm afraid Phase 4's core message is the exact opposite of that. You're good if we frame you as good regardless of your actions. And if we frame you as bad no matter what you do, you will be considered a villain.

Loki is the only one in the series who doesn't do anything wrong, who doesn't commit any crime or who doesn't abuse his power. Mobius and Sylvie murder people and commit awful crimes, but those are swept under the rug while Loki is condemned.

John Walker abuses his power, he murders a surrendering and unarmed man in plain daylight, he's willing to risk the lives of many to get Karli.... but he saves a van. He was "good" all along.

Ikaris betrays his team and kills Ajak but he goes on a tirade about how hard it was for him to know the truth as if Ajak hadn't known it for longer than him and carried the weight with her for years. But hey, he gets a lot of compassion while she gets none. Poor thing, he wasn't all bad.

And sometimes the movies handle things right, like what Wakanda Forever did with Namor, but the fanon misses the point completely and justifies his every action.... surely influenced by the way Marvel is treating a lot of their characters lately.

Dunno, I'd rather have movies that judge actions regardless of 'who is doing what' because that's how you make stories interesting. In the past, Marvel would write imperfect heroes and relatable villains who had a point.... but now the heroes act like villains and the bad guys have more morals than them.... but they're still framed as evil 🤷‍♀️

[urcadelimabean]

Disability in the MCU, when it is portrayed often falls into the trope of "this character totally "overcame" their disability!" Or their disability is portrayed in such a way that it completely undermines any effect it actually has on their life. I feel like that says a lot about how we view superheroes as ideal physical bodies without disability or where the lived experience of disability is erased.

Bucky: his prosthetic arm gives him super strength, it takes a while for the MCU to even show him without the prosthetic and doesn't explore what his lived experience is at all. in fact at the beginning it plays into him being a villain.

Thor: his prosthetic eye is treated as a joke

Steve Rogers: all disabilities are promptly erased for him to become a superhero and not mentioned again

Natasha: disability erased from the comics, inability to have children directly used to set up why she should sacrifice her life since she can't have a biological family

Clint: disability erased from the comics

Rhodey: barely any screentime given to hearing his experience

Tony Stark fares a bit better considering we actually see the negative effects the arc reactor has on his life (as well as the ptsd) but only slightly.

Tldr: marvel could do a lot better to explore characters' disabilities and stop erasing existing ones. The message that you have to be able bodied, or have superhuman prostethics that make disability all but invisible in the storyline, is pretty damn strong. Don't even get me started on scars and disfigurement being used to denote evil, create shock value, or being quickly covered up as much as possible.

It's ironic because superhero films as a genre really should be able to successfully address disability given how injured characters' bodies are likely to become, given how superpowers are usually given through some insane physical trauma.

Any I'm forgetting?

[buckyistired]

This gif contradicts a lot of fics I’ve read where Bucky considers his arm a deadly weapon, what makes him monstrous, etc etc. Look at the very human, nervous, exasperated gesture of him twiddling his thumbs. This is muscle memory, comfort, a completely natural and biological human response. This scene and the plum/market scene really showed the softer, more elusive side of Bucky’s physical presence. Bucky’s arm is part of him, as it should be. He is a disabled character with an advanced cybernetic prosthetic. Which, you know, makes the ending of civil war and the fact that he was farming one-armed even harder to watch. It must have hurt like hell to lose his arm…twice.

[luna-rainbow]

CATWS and its building of stakes

Part of the reason why CATWS was so memorable in its appeal was the way it built the stakes throughout the story. Each of the major characters had something(s) at stake by the final act, and that was pivotal for the plot to sustain its tension and for the satisfaction in its final payoff.

The overarching conflict was the global, existential threat of Hydra getting their mass murder machine up in the air, and the ideological question of what the middle ground between freedom and security should be. But what made the final act so moving was the intimately personal stakes for many of our characters.

There was, obviously, the very personal stake Steve had to surmount in having to physically get through Bucky in order to protect the freedom he was advocating for. But apart from Steve, every other major character was challenged with a personal sacrifice in the final showdown. Nat was faced with having all her covers blown and her past - that she had tried so hard to hide - revealed to the world. Sam was confronted with going back into the field after losing his partner so traumatically that he changed careers. Fury was grappling with dismantling the organisation that he had devoted his life to build. And on the other side, Pierce and Rumlow had invested decades of their lives in an ideology which if successful would install them at the top of the food chain.

There was a great meta from years back talking about how well the movie established the competencies of the characters before introducing threats -- and how we were then able to quickly understand the threat because of how competent we have seen our protagonists be. Every action sequence served a purpose and built upon the previous one.

The Lumerian Star sequence was fantastic in how effectively it established the competence of not just Steve and Nat, but the entire Strike team. Rumlow and Rollins were good at their job; they're not super soldiers or super spies, sure, but they were skilled enough to keep pace with Steve and Nat.

This was an important foreword for the elevator fight, which itself was a pre-requisite for the Causeway fight. We have seen both Steve and the Strike team capable of taking down multiple pirates swiftly, so when the elevator fight started, there was a genuine sense of threat to Steve, even if he would make a quick job of disabling them. Then, after seeing Steve's skills against a very capable Strike team, it became all the more terrifying when the Winter Soldier almost nailed him to a van about 2 minutes into their fight.

On the other side, the Winter Soldier's introduction was an assemblage of horror story tropes -- of unexpected manifestations and impossible disappearances, and urban myths stretching back through half a century. The two characters used to introduce him were extremely competent from what we had seen of them. There's Fury, normally prescient and wily, scraping by a very determined assassination attempt, only to be stopped by the Winter Soldier materialising in the middle of the road...which he escaped, only to be later shot through the wall. There's Nat, normally cunning and cautious, telling Steve of how the Winter Soldier successfully ambushed her, of how his kills spanned 50 years, a logical improbability.

Not only was Steve about to meet the Winter Soldier with the weight of these legends behind him, from the vantage point of Hydra, they were sending out the Asset to meet Captain America with his historical legends behind him (oh look, another narrative parallel). All of this build-up culminated in the Causeway fight. The technical impressiveness of the stunts aside, part of why that fight worked so well was because we have had all these story beats that showed us how capable Steve and the Winter Soldier were, then we see them both genuinely struggle to overcome the other.

We can't talk about the final fight without talking about the emotional stakes, and we can't talk about the emotional stakes without discussing what Bucky means to Steve. We already had the "not without you" and the "I'm following the little guy from Brooklyn"; we've also had the "I don't want to kill anyone" turn into "I'm not going to stop until all of Hydra is dead" and the "I'm just a kid from Brooklyn" callback. This movie added the "even when I had nothing I had Bucky" and the "I knew him" and the "he will (know me)" and of course the "end of the line" exchanges.

But there were also more subtle cues -- that came from Steve's frequent rebuff of Nat's suggestions for companionship, the string of betrayals Steve had to grapple with, and Steve's lamentations of guilt and regret and uncertainty. Steve could not deny that he was lonely, but he had 101 excuses for why he could not make new connections. Steve did not know what he's looking for or why he's fighting or how long he wanted to continue, until he found out what was behind SHIELD and, specifically, what Hydra had done with Bucky.

Even removing the shipping angle, the final showdown between Steve and Bucky was unique in superhero movies, even for a friend-turned-enemy battle. It was not like the fight between Tony Stark and Obadiah Stane, or Peter Parker and Harry Osborne, or even Thor and Loki or Charles and Erik -- because there was no ideological divide between Steve and Bucky. Bucky did not and could not believe in the cause he's fighting for - he simply did not have that capacity for choice. The ideological battle was carried by the other characters - between Fury and Nat vs Pierce, between Sam vs Rumlow, and between the rest of SHIELD vs Hydra.

For Steve, his fight was much purer, dearer, and more heart-rending. The final battle held such emotional significance, not just because he's fighting his best friend, but also because his best friend was an unwilling participant in the circumstances. Bucky was Steve's physical equal, but he's also Steve's shared life experience, his tragically failed mission, his unfulfilled childhood promise, his betrayed faith in SHIELD, and the price that was paid for Hydra to grow under SHIELD's nose. This fight offered closure for all of these narrative and emotional threads.

He was also, once again, Hydra's asking price in exchange for the freedom Steve wanted for the world...and Steve so desperately wanted, this time, for that world to include Bucky.

[ifandomus]

I think you have entirely missed the point @tllgrrl. And your arguments (especially in the second comment) really aren't the arguments you think they are.

1.

It's not about the amount of content; it's the quality of it. And Bucky’s content is filled with victim-blaming and ableism. His entire character in tfatws was just victim-blaming + ableism + out of character. And the writers and directors of the second and third Captain America movies and the third and fourth Avengers movies (Christopher Markus, Stephen Mcfeely, and the Russo brothers) + the director and head writer of tfatws (Kari Skogland and Malcolm Spellman) have all made clear that they blatantly victim-blame Bucky in several disgusting comments.

Let's use another form of bigotry than ableism to check if we would all be ok with his treatment. If Bucky was canonically gay, would it be ok to treat him with homophobia? To take it a step further, would it be ok to frame treating him with homophobia as justified? I don't know about you, but that sounds horrible to me. So why is it for Bucky to be treated with ableism and victim-blaming? And for them to frame that treatment as the way, he should be treated? Because that is what the MCU is doing.

So what do we want? That is simple; we just want Bucky to be treated decently, especially is canonically a representation for 2 groups of marginalized people, so the way they treat him is based on bigotry (ableism and victim-blaming).

Now about the quantity of the content. The MCU didn't come up with the Winter Soldier plotline. That plotline was inspired by comics that were published 6 years before the first Cap movie premiered. And the MCU wanted to adapt this plotline before they even cast the role, and it was one of the main reasons why they cast Sebastian. They always intended to bring Bucky back for more movies.

Also, Sebastian Stan was becoming more and more known before tfatws. So I'm not sure what this point is about.

2.

This whole argument reminds me of the ‘you're just defending him because you want to sleep with him’ argument, which is never a good look.

@dreamykitten20 was clearly not referring to anything remotely related to sex appeal; it was about an emotional connection. Bucky is a character that very clearly goes against typical masculine ideas for what a male protagonist should be, and the reasons why tends to make women connect to him, and it also makes toxic masculine men feel very uncomfortable. And unfortunately, most of the male writers and creators in the MCU have a lot of toxic masculinity, which always bleeds into their work.

Here is a meta about why women tend to like characters like Loki and Bucky more. The tags on this reblog (by @anniethelen) are also amazing:

why does marvel hate bucky barnes. hes literally done nothing wrong

confused as to why marvel went from treating him as a pow who was tortured, manipulated, and brainwashed for 70 years who should not be held accountable for actions his body was forced to make……….to a villain constantly having to “redeem” himself and alleviate his guilt (not to mention the way they’ve slowly deconstructed/ruined his friendship w steve)

[aimmyarrowshigh]

you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but i've seen you post and reblog some Peggy Carter-critical meta before, all of which makes sense and is super intriguing! I was wondering if you knew of any fic that addresses those issues of her character (ie working with n*zis, maybe knowing about winter soldier program, etc) instead of treating her as the Perfect Woman?

Ooh, good question! And sorry this took me a few days to answer.

In terms of actual fic and not meta, I really haven't seen any that deals with Peggy as a collaborator! I tend to read either older fics (CATWS-era) that have Peggy as the Unassailable Femme Force Of Nature In Steve's Memory And An Elderly Dementia Patient Now, or I read stuff that doesn't have her as a character. I really only see her as a young character in stuff that is WWII-era, and people don't tend to write about how Project Rebirth was straight-up eugenics because that makes being a Captain America fan sort of dicey when you think about it too much. (Myself included.) I've never read anything that took place while she was the active director of SHIELD.

I've written a few drabbles myself that deal with Peggy's role as a eugenicist with the SSR or as fully knowing about the Winter Soldier Project/HYDRA-in-SHIELD, but those are just drabbles. Even *IF* she didn't know about Bucky, she sure as shit knew about the North Institute experiments (Black Widow movie) and she sure as shit knew about Ava Starr, so... ::shruggie::

I would love -- LOVE -- to read someone take on Steve, with his eidetic memory and speedreading capability, read the full Hydra-in-Shield file dump that Natasha did and have to fully reckon with how culpable Peggy was in her collaboration with Nazis/Hydra/the Red Room/the KGB AND have to finally reckon with his own origin as the subject of a eugenics experiment, chosen less because he was a good man and more because no one would miss him if he died like all of the other test subjects.

I believe that Erskine saw Steve as a good man. I don't believe that Peggy or Phillips or Stark cared whether he was a good man or not. But I believe that STEVE has always cared about that being why he was chosen, although I don't think Steve was naive -- he grew up disabled during the height of the American eugenics movement, he would have known a eugenics experiment when it was explained to him. And he chose to be the guinea pig anyway. And I would love to see that explored more.

Also: what the fuck were Eugenics Project Coordinator Peggy's thoughts on Morita and Gabe and (Jewish) Bucky being part of the Howling Commandos? Because I can't imagine she was HAPPY about it. Like, I think there are some pretty good reasons we never see her interact with them. (IIRC in Agent Carter, she interacts with Dum-Dum, but Dum-Dum is very much not Japanese, Black, or Jewish, so.)

(ALSO WHERE THE FUCK WAS HOWARD GOING WITH ALL THAT SUPER SERUM WHEN HE AND MARIA WERE KILLED. WHERE.)

[mj-irl]

Bucky Barnes from the MCU is Autistic

His Stims

[Image Description: Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier catches Captain America’s shield. He is outside in front of trees.]

He likes to flip, throw and catch things.

He can turn anything into a stim toy.

[image description: Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes in the Falcon and the Winter Soldier sits on the side of a boat. He’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt and playing with a pant scraper like it’s a knife he’s fight with.]

Likes optically stimming by staring and let his eyes unfocus to see the changes in the light.

[Image Description: Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes in the Falcon and the Winter Soldier stares to the right. The gif shifts and shows Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson staring back at Bucky.]

Likes pressure Stims, weighted blankets and tight hugs.

[Image Description: Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes in the Falcon and the Winter Soldier stands with his metal arm out stretched. At least three children hang on his arm. He is talking with Sara Wilson who is sitting at the table on the left.]

Focusing on and the detailed up keep on his metal arm can be stimmy

[image description: Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes in the Falcon and the Winter Soldier sits in a private airplane with fancy tan seats. He is using a cloth to clean his metal hand.]

Tries to keep his stimming to himself but Sam is the one person he’s getting comfortable enough to do more noticeable stimming around like: rocking, toe walking, tongue clicking, vocal stims/echolalia

[Image Description: Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson and Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes in the Falcon and the Winter Soldier clasp hands and look at one another. They are in casual clothing standing in front of a tree wrapped in padding that they’ve been throwing the shield at.]

Autistic Bucky Posts [1] [2] [4] [5]

For @marveldisabilitycelebration

[merrysithmas]

The good thing abt Steve and smth ppl are missing in the current discourse is he really did say Fuck America literally every chance he got and criticized the US govt every second he wore the suit and the govt absolutely hated him for it.

Even in the 40s he didnt want to kill anyone "for America", but as a disabled man couldn't fathom not standing up to the eugenicist Nazis. He wasn't politically motivated by nationalism but instead by human compassion. In fact, it is extremely likely he was highly critical of the US govt as a young man preserum given his impoverished life circumstances and constantly failing health. Living in NYC, seeing the shanty towns in Central Park, unable to afford life-saving medicine, watching Bucky and his mother kill themselves to make a nickle, surrounded by the radical leftist art scene in NY as an art student - Steve saw and lived injustice every day. And empathized with people who suffered different social misfortunes than he did (the woman crying in the movie theatre, "I don't like bullies", Peggy suffering sexism) although his personal list was extensive itself.

To him, the shield was always more of a philosophy and never attached to a specific country, which is what made it so easy for him to blow off 117 countries for Bucky, or tear the star from his chest yet defend the world in the vestiges of his armor against Thanos - he was fighting for what was right and not what was dictated by any country or political ideology (which is the main issue in Civil War with him being against the Accords, and one he was extremely well-positioned to understand having been used as a symbol and propaganda against his will many times, and having witnessed the dangers of state-sanctioned violence in WWII and CATWS. Even if Steve's argument was also faulty to an extent, you can absolutely see why he would argue for that perspective).

Steve was as FDR leftist artist in the Great Depression post Crash 1930s, disabled and chronically ill, diminutive and likely targeted by US eugenicits in NYC who vocally campaigned against disabled people being alive in the 30s (saying they should be sterilized or killed), son of an Irish immigrant single mother, lived in historically queer neighborhood of Brooklyn, an artist, and in the MCU coded as bi. He fights for whoever needs him, not for whoever tells him to. He was always highly critical and tongue-in-cheek/tired of the costume, drawing himself as the dancing monkey in CATFA ("Ready to follow 'Captain America' into the jaws of death?" he confides his mockery in Bucky, who heartwarmingly assures him that no, he is following Steve.) Steve continued to question, dog, and make trouble for the US continually after that until he wholeheartedly said Fuck You in CATWS and just dropped the shield (and never picked it up again until he handed it off to Sam, who he was confident could do something meaningful with it that he was not positioned to as a white man).

Steve visibly appears as a bygone era's "perfect man" and outright REJECTS both this supremacist definition and the shield's gatekeeping/the shield itself. Sam visibly appears as an "outsider" to exclusivist and systemically racist systems and yet EMBRACES the shield's potential. They are both radically standing up for the same cause in different ways and this comparison depicts why they are so closely aligned and best friends.

The irony of Steve Rogers as Captain America is hugely important to his character. In many ways, Steve is depicted as a reluctant hero who struggles with the strength of his own moral ideals versus the highly imperfect symbol he dons. This is different from other superheroes who usually self-create their alter egos as symbols of their more perfect, empowered selves.

In contrast, it is Steve's natural hardiness, independence, and righteous outrage in the face of wrongdoing which represents America's best ideals, but distinctly is opposed to its government which directs that he act as its image. As Steve holds the shield we see the image of a person who is critical of the govt for falling short of its principles and simultaneously embodies the ideal qualities that a equitable and free US is supposed to hold. Importantly, and definitively for his character, Steve as Cap shows how wanting the US really is for the goodness it robotically claims to have. And that is why he is important and impactful as Cap, essentially because he is uncomfortable with and critical of the costume.

The status of the suit often does not coincide with his personal beliefs. Yet he wears it to attempt to level up the system he is, for a while, mired in. Steve is not a patriot, not in the common sense of the world, he is instead a patriot of the humanist cause. This puts him on-site for many enemies, including those domestic to him and thus defines him as a hero.

Though his physical appearance suggests that he might wear the suit with a blind nationalist fervor a la John Walker (depicted as a perfect automaton soldier), Steve could not be further from that mindset (a good individualist man). As a now "perfect specimen" poised to be accepted and revered, Steve has the ability to choose an easy life where he is free of the hardships and ostracization he endured preserum. Yet instead, post CACW, Steve chose to continue to stand on the side of progress, the "little guy", to abandon the shield and now finally proudly embrace his pariah status and fight for those pushed aside or deemed unsalvagable or scapegoated (symbolized by Bucky) as he recognizes that while America's rule may benefit some, it still causes other to suffer and struggle (as he once did).

Not to mention, as a meta point, he was crafted as the "perfect man" from a sick, disenfranchised disabled boy who absolutely loathed Nazis by Jewish comic artists to mock the Nazi Aryan ideal - inverting their eugenicist visual image of perfection by empowering someone Nazis would view as worthless to burn their entire evil regime to ash.

He still, today, stands staunchly at odds with far right extremists and fascists in the US today and worldwide. He's the furthest thing from them and he'd have no problem in showing it. Choosing Sam as his successor, proudly, confidently, lovingly, and as a brother in arms who steps back so others can speak for themselves and tell their own stories, Steve shows his cultural and political understanding and his good heart once again - this time as an ally, friend, and a champion of the heroics of others.

[ifandomus]

And yet some people actually claim that he is responsible

Bucky Barnes: World’s longest serving POW