#why don't I already have a poor bucky tag cuz

[amarriageoftrueminds]

I dispute that it's indisputable! 😁

What we've got here (apart from shoddy retcon writing, typical MCU 🙄) is a problem of synecdoche.*

Shoddy writing/retcons:

Bucky in CATWS:

A) doesn't remember the Winter Soldier's mission earlier on the same week because he has been wiped.

(He goes back to his handlers to ask them where he knows Steve from. Pierce lies and says he's recognising him from earlier on in the week. And Bucky is like 'that sounds wrong but I don't know enough about my own memories to dispute it.')

B) post-wipe, Bucky doesn't remember this or Steve, again.

Bucky in CACW:

A) Wakes up after Zemo trigger-worded him and doesn't remember what the Winter Soldier just did, that same day (has to ask Sam and Steve what he did.)

Even though he hasn't been wiped!

But... he has received a head wound, thanks to accidentally knocking himself out ogling Steve's biceps Bucky you useless bisexual.

So it could be wipe/head-trauma = memory loss of last 'mission.'

B) Tells Tony he remembers 'them all'

but: i) it's Tony, he's trying to kill Bucky at the time, obviously he's not gunna be honest with that guy!  and: ii) we know Bucky is lying. 

(Because of the above 👆 and also because -- as @fearlessinger pointed out -- it's consistent with Bucky's pattern of behaviour of flat-out lying or eliding the truth about his own memories, turning his weakness into a strength, in order to get them to do XYZ.

And there is nothing wrong with him doing this. He doesn't owe anyone the details of his mind, not even Steve.)

Also note: Tony is someone who has already proven he doesn’t give a shit about Bucky’s innocence, he’s going to kill him even though he knows he’s innocent, as he says he doesn’t care. 

There’s no point Bucky wasting his breath telling the truth to this guy!

So whereas Bucky lies to Tony when Tony is trying to kill him, Bucky doesn’t lie to T’Challa when T’Challa is trying to kill him (’I didn’t kill your father’). 

Because, unlike Tony, T’Challa might be honourable enough to stop if he finds out Bucky is innocent, or reasonable enough to believe him. 

(Sadly, it doesn’t work. But the fact that T’Challa didn’t go on to kill Zemo, when he found out he had killed T’Chaka, bears out Bucky’s gut instinct that this is a man who could be reasoned with... Unlike short king.)

C) Bucky has shot Natasha twice, on missions as the Winter Soldier, but shows zero signs of remembering her -- and thus no signs of recognising her (which Nat comments on with exasperation, while the Winter Soldier is strangling her.)

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Bucky didn't give Zemo a mission report on December 1991.

What Zemo asked Bucky about was where Bucky was kept in 1991.

He wanted to know that, because that's where the records of Bucky's missions are kept. On file. Not in Bucky's Swiss cheese head (sorry bb! 😭)

Zemo didn't need a mission report, as he already knew what happened. That's why he knew that that particular mission would be useful in his plot.

With Zemo canon seems to contradicts itself a little, because when Steve asks Bucky about what Zemo wanted, Bucky can't remember what he just did as the Winter Soldier... but with effort he can recall what Zemo was asking him about just prior.

During this sequence, we keep cutting back and fore between Zemo and Steve n' Co. So it's possible that Zemo asked Bucky about where he was kept in Siberia, before he was trigger-worded (ergo: not occluded by the Winter Soldier altered mind state), and this was while we were cutting away to Steve n' Co, and that's why Bucky is able to remember it later on.

The interesting implication is that, on top of erasing his memory of himself, Hydra's mind-wipes ONLY erase memories gained during periods of mind-control (ie. during missions). Not what was happening to Bucky immediately prior to being mind-controlled.

(IE. So after a wipe he might remember ...being taken out of cryo, being thawed, put in the chair, and the handler beginning to read the trigger words, etc... but then his memory is a blank for his whole mission, the period of actual mind-control. 🤔 Hmm... )

The headwound Bucky received probably doesn't block out memories as comprehensively as Hydra's mind-wiping technique.

(Sidenote: I wonder if Zemo ordered the Winter Soldier to take that roof helicopter and fly to Siberia, expecting the Avengers to follow him / not expecting the Avengers to fail to stop him, go there, find the record of the Starks deaths which would eventually cause a schism when they got round to viewing it, etc etc? If so, Steve catching Bucky would've thrown a wrench in those works. Maybe Zemo going to Siberia himself, shooting the other Soldiers and pulling the video out, might've been his Plan B? 🤔 )

Anyway, back on topic:

Bucky giving mission reports immediately post-op doesn't indicate that he is allowed to keep memories of his past missions, because he's delivering those reports before he is mind-wiped.

After he is wiped, canon shows (never mind tells!) he doesn't remember the mission.

(If TFATWS is allowed to ignore canon, frankly so are we!)

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It's self-contradictory to posit that Bucky is somehow both a living database of past Hydra missions and cannot trust if his memories are real or reliable.

It's either one or the other; it can't be both. Hydra can't be relying on Bucky for accurate mission reports if he can't say whether or not what he remembers is accurate.

While it's a common headcanon, nothing in canon (tie-in books don't count) suggests that Bucky is unsure of the reality of the memories he has, post escape from Hydra.

Bucky knows what he remembers is real; it's the not-remembering that's the problem. The absence of memories, not the quality of memories.

(Frankly, they haven't given him enough screen time to establish something as complex as extant-but-unreliable memories!)

The idea he has no emotional attachment to his memories is, likewise, directly contradicted by canon where it's this very emotional attachment to his returning memories that breaks Bucky out of mind-control in CATWS.

In CACW, it's been two years since Bucky was last mind-controlled and brain-damaged, and has been free to heal his mind and write down everything he recalls.

He knows he didn't plant that bomb, he knows that he doesn't do things like that any more, and he doesn't hesitate to protest his innocence to Steve, or even to strangers.

This is not the behaviour of a man who is unsure about who he is or what he has done. 

This is the behaviour of a man who is certain of the content of his memories. He knows who he is.

Look at him talking to the fruit stall holder, too. That's Bucky. That's not someone confused about who they are or lacking an identity.

So Bucky's personality is not absent before he gets a headwound...

(Neither was Clint's under Loki's control -- deleted scenes prove this -- Clint and Erik Selvig were themselves under Loki's control, they were just.... controlled. The Mind Stone’s subtle mind-control is not comparable to Hydra’s blunt ‘erase his entire personality’ mind-control; and in any case, Bucky is not under the influence of that erasing mind-control, while recovering his personality. Also, Bruce; waking up after Hulk gets a head wound doesn't mean Bruce's personality didn't exist properly until Hulk got a head wound.)

...It's just that, coincidentally prior to the head wound, Bucky was surrounded by people he couldn't trust so much. 

(Because they were, variously, trying to kill him, Warmachine, CIA agents, a creepy shrink, Captain America who was there to arrest him, etc.) 

IMO, Bucky loosened up after the headwound because it coincided with him finding out he really could trust Steve (see below 👇), and because of relief that he still had his memories when he awoke -- that the headwound hadn't taken them.

Thinking about it... this must be Bucky's first ever experience of waking up after mind-control and brain-damage to discover that he is still himself, he still has his memories, even the ones from long before! 🤔

Compared to everything else he suffered in the movie thus far, no wonder he was cheerful!

He didn't suddenly develop his personality again. He already had it, he was just Going Through It, before. 😤

.

Prior to that...

He is not tense because he's still the Winter Soldier. He is tense because he is Bucky Barnes (as he tells Zemo), and Bucky Barnes has PTSD, of which hypervigilance is a symptom. 

And when Steve shows up in full Captain America regalia and says 'do you know me?'

...Well, who is he asking about?

Captain America, or Steve?

Bucky's answer is ambiguous because the question itself is ambiguous, not because the content of his memories is ambiguous, or his sense of self.

He is only nervous (as Steve notes) because he doesn't know whether he is facing his friend Steve or Captain America, Here In his Official Capacity.

(And he's right to be nervous because, technically, it's the latter -- good instincts, Buck!)

So Bucky is facing what looks like Captain America, and nervously disclaiming. Calling him Steve to try and switch Cap from Official Mode back into safe mode (his friend, Steve). Kind of like the inversion of Steve asking ‘which Bucky am I talking to?’ (Nonsense question, writers, there’s only one!) 

But Steve -- perhaps flustered by Sam's voice in his ear -- doesn't realise this.

He thinks what Bucky is seeing is plain old Steve Rogers, standing in front of him, asking 'do you know who I am?' (Just a boy, standing in front of another boy, asking him to love him)

Whereas in fact he is dressed in full Cap gear, complete with shield and cowl, and asking in a grim voice. So it's actually Captain America standing in front of The Winter Soldier, asking The Winter Soldier in a grim a voice if he knows who Captain America is.

So that's the question Bucky answers. 

He's not lying, precisely. He's just... not answering the question Steve thinks he's asking. 

He's not confused.

On that note:

"It always ends in a fight."

This is a statement from a man who knows something from experience. Not a man who is unsure of what his experience actually is.

(If Seb had delivered this line nervously, as if he was unsure? That would be different. But he didn't...)

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*Synecdoche: (ie. in this case, one dream being taken as a flashback and one flashback being taken as evidence of the existence of multiple flashbacks, multiple memories.)

The idea that TFATWS proves Bucky remembers them all...

...does it tho??

IIRC, in canon we only see one dream Bucky has about a mission.

But that doesn't prove:

a) that he remembers all of them,

b) that that dream is a memory.

The show doesn't explicitly say that that nightmare is a memory. Even in therapy, when his 'therapist' discusses his nightmares, neither she nor Bucky describes them as memories or flashbacks.

Plus, we know that Bucky must have looked up the details of 'his' crimes in an external source.

Nothing in the nightmare we saw would explain how Bucky knows who that kid he shot was, who the kid's dad was, where his dad (Yori) currently lives, etc etc.

Bucky could not have plucked any of that information out of the nightmare we saw. And the kid wasn't important, he was just a bystander / collateral damage, so his name wouldn't have been part of an original mission Hydra briefing, for example. 

So we know Bucky got intel on these missions from somewhere else.

To this end... Bucky having a List of all the 'Winter Soldier's victims' doesn't prove he remembers them. It only proves he has a List. 

But because we don't know where the names on the List came from, we can't say they came from his memories. 

We do know that it's part of the conditions imposed upon Bucky in order for him to receive a pardon.

(Rule Number 3: he has to 'Make Amends' to those on the List. He even has to do it in a particular way (Rules 1 & 2), trot out an Official Catchphrase while doing so, and give them a customer service smile. 😬 Poor guy!)

The whole thing is officially sanctioned.

So if anything it looks like the government has said to Bucky 'in order to get a pardon you need to make a List of who your victims were, and who benefited from your missions, and then make amends to/about everybody on that List -- without doing anything illegal or hurting anyone, which we won't really bother to supervise, if y’know what I mean -- and keep us up to date until it's done.'

It could be that he has been getting case files (he must have, to know what he knows), to decide who should go on the List, and find their deets, and that revisiting these case files has been giving Bucky nightmares. 😥

But that doesn't prove the List came from Bucky's memories! 

The nightmares only get mentioned in therapy because they're talking about the Amends, which are apparently not helping with the nightmares. This seems like a weak attempt to imply a connection -- as if the List was established from/for the nightmares (which may or may not be memories), and the Amends are meant to make Bucky feel better about them to reduce his nightmares (bullshit!).

But that can't be... because the pardon (of which the List/Amends are a condition) predates the nightmares. It’s a bit of a chicken/egg scenario.

We never saw Bucky having nightmares, in canon, prior to the existence of this Pardon/List -- even though we saw him sleep (also note no sign of nightmares when he’s in Louisiana, not thinking about the List!) 

To me it seems like cause and effect: that researching for the pardon/List is exposing Bucky to new explicit details of the Winter Soldier’s missions, which is giving Bucky nightmares and making him feel worse. 😕

“That line was an interesting moment. At the time, the choice I was making is that [Bucky] had realized there was no way he was getting out of there, and someone was gonna die, whether it was gonna be him, Steve or Tony. When he says that line, to me, it was a turning point — he was, like, ‘Okay, I know what you want me to say, and I’m just gonna say it.’ When someone comes at you over and over again, and they can’t hear you, they can’t see you’re pleading with them, you’re trying to figure out how to get through to them and they just won’t accept it, at some point you just give in, and you go, ‘that’s right, that’s what you want.’ Of course [Bucky] didn’t remember them all.” —  Sebastian Stan

[wewringmagicfromtheordinary]

#yet again the mcu stumbles upon a 'this would make so much sense if this character was actually just hydra' plot 🙄#why don't I already have a poor bucky tag cuz#POOR BUCKY#amnesia#ptsd mention#me seeing the word 'indisputable' going into full phoenix wright mode#RED FLAG TO A BULL#me realising I called it bucky's swiss cheese head and zola is swiss#despicable.#jail for me#also: someone who did have an unreliable memory CANNOT BE TAKEN AT FACE VALUE when they say they remember everything#because how would they know?#it's funny to see ppl shocked by seb's take cuz it just seemed like such an obvious lie to me#it just seemed such an obvious 'fuck it idc just tell him what he wants get it over with' line delivery via amarriageoftrueminds

“That line was an interesting moment. At the time, the choice I was making is that [Bucky] had realized there was no way he was getting out of there, and someone was gonna die, whether it was gonna be him, Steve or Tony. When he says that line, to me, it was a turning point — he was, like, ‘Okay, I know what you want me to say, and I’m just gonna say it.’ When someone comes at you over and over again, and they can’t hear you, they can’t see you’re pleading with them, you’re trying to figure out how to get through to them and they just won’t accept it, at some point you just give in, and you go, ‘that’s right, that’s what you want.’ Of course [Bucky] didn’t remember them all.” —  Sebastian Stan