#gets a tag

[widowlurker]

rambling about catws!Bucky because time is a flat circle

Lowkey tough being a Bucky stan (hehe) out here bc atp the mcu just doesn’t know what to do with him and it’s absolutely tragic because catws is a great movie and a huge part of that is how beautifully they presented the Winter Soldier. Like he is undeniably (personally don’t @ me) the best part of that whole movie. Last time I went this insane over analyzing actors’ facial expressions was the hunger games and that’s basically the peak of fiction for me. So, here’s me doing exactly that

warning: no beta we die like my vocal chords watching catws for the first time

Something that sits at the forefront in my mind abt Seb’s acting as the Winter Soldier is how good he is at being blank. Normally when I think of blank, no thoughts head empty acting it’s just a completely unmoveable demeanor and from what I see in fics it’s a common interpretation that the Winter Soldier is just an empty husk. And while he’s definitely a lot less sentient than he seems to be in the comics I don’t think he’s as robotic as people like to write about (and how I like to read abt so dw this isn’t me trashing on that).

I read a post on here that was either a meta or rant that I def reblogged but don’t feel like looking for that was either or about or mentioned how the Winter Soldier is def a powerhouse but that’s just a building that was made from the frame of Bucky’s own combat skills from the war.

I think his sentience is somewhat similar to that in how he isn’t so much as an empty bodyguard and more like a tunnel-visioned fighter. His mind isn’t a blank slate in a body that’s blindly committing violence but a constantly calculating fighter (a trait I also think was just built off of Bucky’s own violent skills derived from the war) whose mind is occupied only by whatever violence he’s committing.

Seb’s facial expressions as the winter soldier present this well. Again, when you think of the empty husk the Winter Soldier is you’d expect little personality and emotion to be acted out as that character. The thing is, he’s not an empty husk. Seb does a good job at having existent and moving facial expressions without any real human emotion being shown by them. When the Winter Soldier furrows his brows as he fights or thoughtfully looks offscreen when he pulls off his goggles(?) in the lead up to the reveal he’s only expressing the slightest bit of acknowledgement to whatever is happening. Particularly, usually in fight scenes when people do the former it’s to make the character look mad or determined. When the Winter Soldier does it it’s just there. Sebastian manages to move his face in ways that should indicate fully-felt emotions but still only add up to a blank face.

Perhaps in that way the Winter Soldier is somewhat robotic not in the way of an emotionless android but rather an intelligent algorithm.

so, blah blah blah Sebastian is really good at acting blank. But what about when the Winter Soldier does show emotion. Disclaimer that in my rewatch I only saw the highway fight/reveal and the helicarrier, not when Fury and Steve get attacked in his apartment. With this, the first time I believe we see the Winter Soldier breaking out of the emotionless mask is the cute little bout of panic he has shortly after the mask/muzzle comes off, when his eyes get big and be looks off in a way unlike before where instead of it being the slightest indication of thought and strategy it’s a genuine feeling of panic and confusion. This is very much in contrast to moment before after he asks who the hell Bucky is and shoots at Steve. He says the words, but that’s it. His face doesn’t move to accommodate any sort of emotion any normal person would be feeling when they said that sentence. His mouth simply moves as he asks (though the blankness is still broken by then because I have doubts the 100% Winter Soldier would ever take the time or express the confusion that’d come with asking that question). Immediately after he clicks back into reality and the mission at hand when he shoots at Steve he doesn’t return to his before blankness. His eyebrows furrow and this time it’s not simply an unconscious physical result of being focused or whatever but he’s genuinely confused and desperately trying to follow what he’s being made to do. Up until that point, not once does the Winter Soldier bother to halt anything he’s doing in a fight if not necessary. This is the first time he personally hesitates.

And then the helicarrier scene. Oh lord almighty the blessed helicarrier scene. By here the Winter Soldier is back to Winter Soldier-ing, blank and emotionless no matter what movement his face makes. And he stays like that for the entire pre-fight pleading Steve’s doing in that bridge(?) thing. UNTIL Steve says “please don’t make me do this”

Now I noticed this in my rewatch yesterday and then while I was rewatching the scene on yt to write this I fought for my life trying to figure out which cut to Bucky in that convo in which he does it, so I damn-near thought i hallucinated it. But I swear to god his head tilts down and his eyebrows go up. It’s similar to the facial movements he does before when he’s full Winter Soldier where his face moves but it doesn’t indicate any actual emotion being felt. This time however it just somehow does. He’s pleading, for what I literally cannot think of but his face moves only slightly and it somehow spreads the full feeling throughout his entirety. In the next cut after that he doesn’t have that same emotion, but it was there.

From then on the curtain is ripped. Now Bucky fights and he scrunches up his face and all of the sort and he’s not only expressing emotion but he’s doing it so blatantly. So blatantly in fact that I can tell he seems to feel almost desperate.

Remember earlier when I mentioned that not once does the Winter Soldier bother to halt himself unless necessary to survey the situation or something the sort. Yeah, none of that is here. He’s unbelievably sloppy, not as fast and hit-for-hit with Steve as he was during the highway/reveal. And throughout the fight he only gets slower and slower, his face scrunches and moves more and more., and he wastes more and more time talking and trying to make Steve suffer and feel how he’s getting hit as if to prove to something or someone that he’s not succumbing to the memories bubbling up inside him and straying from his mission.

Until finally Steve says “I’m with you til the end of the line” and fandom was never the same

and neither was Bucky, because despite the fact that his luscious locks are blowing all over the damn place, all over his face, we see down to the atom what he’s feeling. It’s the Winter Soldier’s end of the line, and now Bucky is here to get fucked over by the mcu’s writing.

Again, catws is my favorite mcu movie in terms of acting and writing and the reason why is because they did so well at writing such a horribly tragic victim. I stay saying that Seb is one of the best actors in the mcu and the reason why is because of how agonizing his performance of the winter soldier’s mental turmoil is. So why on God’s green Earth is the mcu so intent on making some bullshit atonement plotline (or a poor attempt at showcasing Bucky’s internal guilt that comes off as an atonement plotline, depends on who you ask) and throwing him in with anti-heroes/villains when it really doesn’t fit what his arc should be AT ALL???

anyway god bless Sebastian for being damn-good at acting out agony

[mroddmod]

the queen of the disco or whatever

[daisyofwaterdeep]

had a dream I went to a hozier concert and mr. hozier stopped singing and pointed to me in the crowd and asked me to go get him some extra crispy tofu and a blueberry shake for after the show and then the crowd passed his debit card to me and when I got it I could see his real legal name was Horace Bob-omb

[chiimeramanticore]

compilation of this type of post

edit: idk how much this is gonna do but since making this post i got covid and need some help, please consider it

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[beebfreeb]

Messaging people for the first time is so hard. What am I supposed to say? Like, "You seem really odd and your blog intrigues me. Do you want to have philosophical conversations or perhaps talk about fictional characters?" What! Whatever. I will just follow you back and stare at your blog with my big beautiful brown eyes.

[irate-iguana]

For those who don’t know, Elon Musk has recently been directing his assholery towards Wikipedia — calling them ‘Wokepedia’ due to the amount they spend on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and calling for people to stop giving them money “until they restore balance to their editing authority” —, now is a great time to consider donating to Wikipedia!

[cubistemoji]

[cloud-ya]

outcast of the village

[proletariat-of-sex]

How I found out about trump getting shot

[lgbtlunaverse]

The world exists in such a baffling state of simultaneous sex-aversion and sex-hegemony. Every social platform on the internet is trying to banish sex workers to the shadow realm but I can't post a tweet without at least two bots replying P U S S Y I N B I O. People are self-censoring sex to seggs and $3× but every other ad you see is still filled with half-naked women. Rightwingers want queer people arrested for so much as existing in the same postal code as a child and are also drumming up a moral panic about how teenage boys aren't getting laid enough. I feel like I'm losing my mind.

[vulpinesaint]

quiz enjoyers! i am now inviting you to come create something in my workshop❕

[maureen-corpse]

One thing they don’t tell you about sewing is that it is actually ironing

[bl00dline]

the whole tiktok situation is EXACTLY why media literacy and education on propaganda is so important. the notifications about tiktok going down and then coming back use VERY propagandistic language, and with a literal fascist coming into power in the us tomorrow we need to be even more critical of the information we’re consuming and stay on the lookout for political stunts like this

[the-autism-album]

[ilexdiapason]

hey don't know if you knew this but op of that post you just reblogged is actually an ouppy dog :/ yeah with paws. and floppy ears yeah