cryogenics | Meta and Info

Meta And Info

Bucky Barnes pre-fall

• His three younger siblings, from oldest to youngest: John, Thomas, Rebecca.

• The slang term punk as it was used in the 1940s. Other slang used in the '40s.

• Bucky Barnes and dating in the 1940s. "It's far more likely that he was well-spoken, funny, charming, and a great dancer. Remember, Bucky was from the lower classes, so he wouldn't have had the money - despite the Depression, it was expected that men pay for the entire date (barring Sadie Hawkins themed events and once a couple started to go steady) - to impress women with a car and fancy clothes, nor would he have been able to take them out to dinner, so his dance skills would have been pretty important!"

• Bucky and being protective of Steve Rogers. "In his mind, Steve’s need was to be protected, and now that need’s been eliminated, but meanwhile there’s nothing that can eliminate Bucky’s need to protect."

• Steve, Bucky, and uniforms, whether they're wearing them right, and what Steve's pins/ribbons/medals mean.

• The lowest rank of Sergeant, which is what he holds, is also known as a 'buck sergeant'.

• Whether Bucky was enlisted versus being drafted. "According to this fabulous WWII serial number generator, an enlisted man from New York should have a serial number starting with the numbers “12.” A New York man with a serial number starting with “32”? Drafted. What we may be dealing with here is a Bucky who didn’t choose to go to war but was instead compelled to do so versus a Steve who is desperate to get in." And here's some more. "Bucky could have - and most likely was - accelerated through the ranks because of his skill as a marksman. The serial number Bucky uses during the scene in Zola’s laboratory in The First Avenger - 32557038 - indicates that he was drafted in New York state after 1942."

• His service number in its entirety; 32557038.

• Bucky's response to super soldier Steve.

• The sniper rifle Bucky uses to save Cap is a modified 1941 Johnson rifle, which was adopted in limited numbers by the US Marine Corps.

• Deleted scene just prior to Bucky's capture by Hydra.

• At war. From the deleted scene above.

• Bucky's mental state when Steve rescues him from the Hydra base. "Zola totally fucked with Bucky’s head in not just a psychological and physical way, but through his memories as well. He looks so damn confused (“Steve?” Oh right that is Steve, thank god I know who that is. “Steve!”) and it really doesn’t help that Steve is so fundamentally different."

• Bucky isn't a quitter. "The only thing that will make Bucky lie down and give up is the threat of Steve Rogers not being in his life."

• The framework for the Winter Soldier. "I just think it’s important to remember that Bucky never had a problem shooting with both hands."

• Why can't Bucky knit. Knitting for WWII soldiers with PTSD.

• The thing Bucky does with his mouth when he's trying to think of the right words to say. "...during the conversation with Pierce in the bank vault. Yeah. That frown he does after he goes 'but, I knew him'."

• Removing his choice/right to die by making him into the Winter Soldier. "His “resurrection” as the Winter Soldier is a denial of his right to die, his right to decide what to do with his life, his body. That type of control is a horror that we tend to think of as a horror above or beyond death; there is something worse than death, and it is losing what we think of as the basic embodied human right of inhabitation of, autonomy over one’s own body."

• The Tragedy of Bucky Barnes. "Compared to the bad-ass but relatively generic hand-to-hand scenes between Steve and the various HYDRA goons, the Winter Soldier is a whirlwind of pure death." ... "Having imprinted onto Pierce like a baby duckling, why not believe him when he says the Winter Soldier "shaped the century"?" ... ""But I knew him," he says in miserable confusion, certain that he recognizes Steve's face from somewhere. But Pierce, the voice of God, refuses to explain any further." ... "Good news, Steve! Your best friend is alive enough to only half beat you to a pulp. And now he's wandering around D.C. trying to get his memory back, looking even less healthy than he did when he was in full brainwashed assassin mode."

The Winter Soldier

• Quotes/notable dialogue from the movie.

• The origin of the name.

• The translation of the cover of his file.

• Pain, Personhood, and Parity: The Depiction of Bucky Barnes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

• Bucky is a Greek tragedy. "Bucky is a victim of his circumstances. He’s a hero destroyed by forces he has no control over. The gods were cruel and petty with him and he has no recourse in fighting back." ... "He is the epitome of collateral damage. He was a hero trying to do something good who is punished for it."

• Bucky is a victim. "...but in his interrogation/recovery scene, he’s shown for what he really is—an abused dog. Beaten and tortured, with no agency, no will, and a voice that cracks with disuse—the Winter Soldier is pathetic, almost childlike in the obedience he shows his abusers." More on this matter. "Look at that contemptuous furious mouth movement, the lower jaw thrust forward in a dare and then the little chin tilt to meet the rubber, tiny acts of exercising self-management and attitude. Honestly if I were those medics there I'd be pissing myself if I was met with that blank yet simmering with lethality stare."

• Bucky's memory of Steve saying his name. "Bucky’s taken away some of the shock; he’s focused on the part that’s truly confused him, all soft lights and blurred camera and utter impossibility: he’s focused on affection."

• Timeline for the Winter Soldier.

• Lack of an accent, from all of Hydra's mind wiping.

• "Responding with "Who the hell is Bucky?" implies a level of frustration/confusion/irritation that the Winter Soldier shouldn't even be able to feel. Which suggests that hearing his own name spoken for probably the first time in 70 years produced an instantaneous breakdown in Bucky’s programming.". And Part 2. "Cursing relieves emotion, though. We curse when we’re scared, angry, hurt, frustrated, elated, amazed. When there is an overpowering emotion we need to express in every way possible. That little 'the hell' is the human inside the weapon."

• The Winter Soldier's place in the world. "Now that HYDRA has almost achieved a global surveillance state where everybody has a gun pointed at their head? This isn’t his century anymore. Under that kind of total control, with that kind of technology, what use will there be for him? He is running out of time. He is out of time. But then, he is always out of time.
The Winter Soldier is Bucky Barnes, except that he’s not. A man who is still young in 2014, although he was born in 1917 and shipped out to fight in the second world war. He was out of time from the moment they first froze him, from the moment his physical age didn’t match up to the amount of time passed since his birth."

• The Winter Soldier: weapon not spy. "The winter soldier is an attack dog. with a very, very short leash." ... "tl;dr from what we’ve seen in MCU, Bucky's life as the winter soldier literally consisted of being defrosted, given a gun and told to shoot, then wiped, then frozen again (he seems to have aged ~2-5 years in a 70 yr span, so definitely not kept awake for any length of time). it’s perfectly reasonable to think that he’d be floundering in the 21st century, living off scraps of his memories from the 1940's and pure instinct."

• The Winter Soldier: World's longest serving POW. "...a wonderfully, beautifully tragic figure in the sense of is he the world’s most feared assassin or is he the world’s longest serving POW."

• The Winter Soldier's emotional range. "At first, it just looks like Pierce is trying to smooth things over and get Winter Soldier “back on track”. But that’s when you realize Pierce is oddly… soothing. Calming. Explaining the situation in clear, easily understandable words. Praising the Winter Soldier. Gently guilting him into behaving. Almost as if he was speaking to a child." ... "I am saying that for all intents and purposes, the Winter Soldier is a child with the skill set of a fully-trained assassin."

• Memory loss and fear responses. "So, even though Bucky may not consciously remember punishment after being mindwiped in the chair, his body still reacts as if he does. He recognizes the causal relationship between certain behaviours and pain, certain objects and pain, certain people and pain, without understanding why.

This means that after HYDRA mind-wiped him that final time before sending him to fight Steve on the helicarrier he no longer remembers Steve, but he understands that remembering Steve = pain. When he screams at Steve that he doesn’t know him, it's because, as bagera69 puts it, he knows it’s going to hurt but not why he knows it. He doesn’t know that HYDRA doesn’t want him to remember, that they’ve taken his memories of Steve from him. All he knows is that remembering Steve = pain/helplessness/fear/trauma."

• Bucky Barnes makes weird faces. "So all of the weird, off putting, tongue out, duckface expressions he’s got as the Winter Soldier are ON PURPOSE. Bucky Barnes makes weird faces: it’s canon."

• "Unlikely headcanon: super soldiers have excellent night vision, to the point of not needing equipment during low-light missions. Because of this, in some rare situations, supersoldiers may also exhibit eye shine...". (mostly funny and not for serious.)

• The Winter Soldier's mental state. "Watching someone go through Alzheimer's you see them struggle to understand why they're feeling what they're feeling. They have glimpses of things they don’t completely get, so they’re very confused. They’re also extremely violent, they can be very violent. They can go from 'You're familiar' to 'You're a threat to me' - immediately. It's hard."

• Meta re: the Winter Soldier and the world. "While everyone’s attention was on the Winter Soldier, HYDRA could quietly continue working towards launching the helicarriers. And once the helicarriers were in the air, HYDRA would have no further need for secrecy (killing 20 million people is about as unsubtle as you can get). HYDRA sacrificed Zola to distract Steve, and they sacrificed the Winter Soldier to distract everyone else."

• The Winter Soldier's mask is a muzzle. "Bucky doesn’t have that kind of autonomy. His muzzle mask remains firmly in place until Steve physically removes it. Bucky never does. He has nothing to remind anyone that he IS. He’s the Winter Soldier, not Bucky. He’s bled so much into that persona that he doesn’t know Bucky even exists. He’s no longer wearing the mask, the mask is wearing him. It isn’t until Steve rips the mask off that you suddenly see Bucky start to get some of his own personality back."

• Multi-tasking. Holstering his gun while sliding along the pavement, after being flung from the car.

• Body language and scared eyes. "The wide eyes look scary when framed by the mask, they look manic in a violent way and that's by design."

• The scared animal look. "This trapped animal look kills me every time. It's not the winter soldier, just a scared little kid, because he's confused and in pain."

• Meta re: Bucky shooting Steve on the helicarrier. "We see this again, not long after, when he breaks down farther, is left backhanding Steve, repeated, distressed and sloppy hits that don't mange to kill him, despite the fact that earlier we saw a single punch destroy concrete. In those final blows we can hear his arm squeaking, plates grinding against each other - we get a real sense of how damaged he is. But he's fighting, not on the orders of others, but because the things Steve is saying are terrifying and he wants them to stop, no matter the cost." ... "For seventy years, Bucky's entire existence has been a backdrop of pain that he's learned to wear like a skin. But that moment marks the first time he's used his resilience against it for his own ends, against those who have made him into a weapon of destruction."

• More helicarrier meta. "...because he said that. He said 'I knew him,' and he was hurt for it. He said, 'I knew him,' and they put him through hell. And it was his fault because he opened his mouth and he told him—"

• Two targets. Level six. "Watch the Winter Soldier. He comes in for the attack, and the first person he takes out of the equation is Jasper Sitwell. AKA the man who let the Lumerian Star get captured by pirates. AKA the reason Fury got the intel and had his suspicions raised. AKA the reason that the timetable was moved. AKA the reason they lost Zola. I always assumed it was Steve and Natasha he was coming after, but no. Steve is Level 8."

His treatment/enhancement by Hydra
tw: medical horror/body horror/abuse

• The Winter Soldier's serum. "Bucky's not just knocking someone down, he’s getting them airborne. With a kick. We know the cyborg arm is really strong, but BUCKY is insanely strong. Reminds me of the comic where he throws an arrow through someone's face with his good arm, not even the cyborg one. Bucky is scary ramped up in the strength department."

• The Care and Feeding of your Winter Soldier. "Over the decades I’m sure he had a lot of different people who dictated what he would be doing when, where, what he ate, etc. While one might have insisted that he eat no less than 14 eggs, x amount of liver, this vegetable that fruit these vitamin pills etc, another might only go by the barest requirements of the weight of the food/caloric intake."

• Training Exercises with Hydra. "I imagine that when they were sawing off his arm while still conscious-they DID give him anesthetic/paralytics but his super soldier body couldn’t be influenced by a normal dosage. So he was stuck in a half-there state of consciousness but immobility. In further operations they figured out the dose-you don't want to operate on a weapon and have it throttle you in the middle of it or lash out in pain and plaster you on the opposite wall. (though sometimes, just for punishment, they jacked him on paralytics but left him conscious.)" ... "Introduction to all kinds of weapons-both close and long range (he's equally good of a sniper and hand-to-hand combatant)."

• How Hydra cleans the Winter Soldier. "It's actually even creepier, if you think about it, if there's a cycle of abuse followed by care, because (especially combined with his amnesia) it becomes increasingly difficult for the Winter Soldier to predict how his handlers will react to him."

• Unhealthy. "Every so often I get hit really hard by how unhealthy Bucky looks. Pale clammy skin, lifeless hair, those bags under his eyes...this is a man who is not getting a single one of his basic needs met."

• Hydra's ridiculous shackles for the Winter Soldier. "But they have seen Bucky. They know what it takes to take him down and it's terrifying. It was probably developed specifically to control him when he was "unstable". So yeah, I doubt this was created to contain STEVE so much as it was created to contain BUCKY."

• A bit of Pierce meta, ie, how much young Pierce looked like Steve. ""You look like him. So did Pierce." His voice is soft, gravelly from disuse. "Is that why they picked you?""

• Down with the milk joke and meta re: abusers, aka, Pierce. "...because that's how abusers work that is what they do that is how it is. You saw a blatant display of power by an abuser over his victim but you didn't know that yet. You didn't know that till he gave him the order to find Steve and Natasha. Till he killed Renata."

• Meta on Bucky and Pierce/Zola/Hydra. "We joke about Bucky and Steve being old men, but Bucky is LITERALLY in his late twenties. That's it. He's not some evil super genius like Zola who has a life of using and abusing and manipulating in his twisted name of science. He doesn't have the life experience and age of Pierce who has back-stabbed and clawed his way to power. These are both two powerful men in different ways and Bucky is SO out of his depth when it came to them. He's alone, he's young, he's wounded, and he doesn't have the knowledge or life experience of either of these men." .. "Bucky IS a survivor. He doesn't whine about it. He doesn't curl up and get all wooby. We talk about Steve not knowing when to stop when he's beaten. Well, neither does Bucky."

• A bit of Zola meta. "He's looking directly at Zola and his face looks like a mixture of fear, anger and like he's gonna puke. All of which would make sense after you imagine the shit Zola put him through on that table before Steve showed up. Just try to imagine one scenario that could be happening in his head here. Like reliving the parts where they tortured him and experimented on him, slowly took away the control of his own mind, tried to take his memories so he had to keep reminding himself who he was and began the process of turning him into god only knew what."

• Meta on Stockholm Syndrome and Bucky. "Pierce shows up demanding for a mission report, and Bucky just sits there with an empty stare. At this point, he is completely hollow. You can see the deadness in his eyes just like someone who has been stripped of his humanity. Pierce gets more aggressive, and there is still no response so Pierce ends up needing to physically assault him in order to get Bucky out of his zombie-like state. So, Pierce slaps him and instead of becoming agitated or questioning why he is getting slapped, Bucky asks about Steve. Why? Because underneath all the implants, Bucky is still a human being."

The vault scene
tw: more medical horror

• The procedure has already started, aka, bruises on his face from the first time he was captured in 1943.

• Analysis of read outs in the vault scene. "Note that Bucky doesn’t have a blood pressure cuff attached, which means they’re measuring blood pressure internally - which means that Bucky has at least one sensor in one of his arteries that’s capable of transmitting information to Hydra. Yeah, that sounds safe."

• Speculation on his IV drip. "Most likely glucose, essentially because long intervals of cryostasis would render the Winter Soldier most likely unable to physically handle/digest solid food, plus of course, psychologically speaking, the best slave is a hungry one, so the promise of nourishment after the completion of a mission would be a HUGE Pavlovian motivator." ... "However, it's posited in the comics that the Winter Soldier's handlers used hypnotics/psychotropics to enhance the effects of their brainwashing techniques, so I'd go for some sort of barbiturate. An intravenous barbiturate would explain the flat affect/quiet speech, as well as the fact that it seems to take a lot for the Winter Soldier to react to the fear of the brainwash mechanisms - his chest doesn't really start heaving until he's already strapped in and the machine has begun descending."

• More meta on the IV. "The infusion bags appear to be one 1,000 mL isotonic saline or D5W/D5NS (dextrose/glucose in a saline solution) for tissue re-hydration, and one 500 mL isotonic saline, most likely a diluent for inject-able/parenteral drug administration." ... "...but I’d put my money on the tried-and-true fallback of some benzodiazepine. BZDs/derivatives are anxiolytic (anxiety-reducing), hypnotic (sedative/sleep-inducing), anticonvulsant (good for when you’re electrocuting someone's brain), amnestic (affecting memory), and myorelaxant (muscle-relaxing), a nice cocktail for working with the Winter Soldier - and hey! paradoxical BZD reactions include aggression and violence (such as attacking attending medical staff), and it may also cause anterograde amnesia as well as internalized feelings of turmoil, anxiety, depression, and loss of the ability to experience and/or express feelings."

• But I knew him. "...not the childlike repetition of 'I knew him' and the confusion on his face, because if the Winter Soldier's tunnel focus translate to carrying out his orders it also translate to his thoughts, because in that moment the single strain 'I knew him' is strong and strong enough to counter the programmed kill order..."

Fighting styles/skills and weapons

• List of all weapons seen in the movie.

• The Winter Soldier's weapons. And part 2. And part 3.

• The Winter Soldier's 'cyanide capsule'. "That 2-shot pistol, that's the Winter Soldier's cyanide capsule. That's his way out - one .38 to the hollow of his jaw is his nuclear option, the one that he probably doesn't even know is there, the one that's simmering just below the surface of the mission that's forced into his mind. The Winter Soldier doesn't lose; but if he did, if he could, if he was - all assets are disposable."

• Bucky Barnes and knives. "Also he LOOKS like he's pulling it out normally, then flips it around—if you don't have the advantage of a specific close-up you'd easily miss the little flip and think his blade was pointing toward his thumb. Then when he pulls his arm back across his body you think he's pointing the knife over to his left, when in reality it is pointing straight at you and he's about to slam it in your face. The arm movement to pull it out of the sheath that other way is super awkward and telegraphs the fact that your blade's going to be reversed from the very beginning. But the Winter Soldier is a tricksy bastard."

• The Winter Soldier's trigger discipline. "Bucky Barnes knows the importance of trigger safety. Bucky Barnes was trained by the US Army to never put his finger on the trigger unless he was going to absolutely shoot something. The Winter Soldier is a weapon. The only time the Soldier is ever given a weapon, he is absolutely going to shoot something. It's his mission. It's all he does. Thaw, wipe, point, shoot, kill, freeze, repeat. It's as natural to him as anything can be—a finger on the trigger and intent to kill on his mind." More on Trigger discipline and muscle memory (also contains some meta for Steve and the shield).

• The Winter Soldier don't need no tripod. "...his fucking cybernetic arm is what acts as his tripod to steady his aim. Like, Bucky was an extremely good shot before his cybernetic arm, but after, there's no stopping him."

• Ballet moves.

• Light on his feet. "Yeah, they actually land pretty similarly here if you look at the way they move? The Winter Soldier also lands on the balls of his feet, bending his knees to absorb the force of impact — there's just only so much force a car roof can absorb before it buckles." Rolling as opposed to Steve's move. "But that life-tangent taught me that I would never, not in a thousand years, want to shoulder roll backward on asphalt, so I just keep watching Sebastian Stan and thinking "nope.""

• Fighting strategy. "The Winter Soldier uses one gun to aim at Steve's head and force him to guard that area, consequently exposing his midsection and allowing Bucky to wound him. And this was after he went for both Steve's head and his knee and had both attempts foiled by Steve's quick reflexes. The Winter Soldier probably thought, one gun isn't going to cut it so pulled out the other and specifically thought to use the dual-pronged attack in order to damage his opponent."

• How the Winter Soldier shot Nick Fury. "The Winter Soldier didn't shoot Fury through a window, he shot him through a wall, and I don't know about you, but it seems like a pretty big difference to me." ... "The Winter Soldier quickly moves so that he's in line with Steve’s line of sight; he doesn't know exactly where Fury is, but he knows he's somewhere on that line. The Winter Soldier shoots along said line, hitting Fury, then runs back to his initial position to see how Steve reacts and possibly confirm the kill. Then Steve spots him through the window. Based on this, Bucky must have really good spatial reasoning and very precise estimation of distances and angles. Also he can possibly do trig in his head."

• Fighting Natasha. "First off, if he hadn't managed to throw his hand up quickly, she would have garroted him. She's literally half his size (he throws her like a rag doll when he finally is able to get a hold of her) and she has him more at a disadvantage than Steve does, who is bigger than him."

• Shooting skills. Would have been perfect head-shots on Sam and Steve through the car roof.

His metal arm

• The Winter Soldier's swagger. "I don't know why I never realized before that his swagger is because his left side is heavier than his right."

• The Winter Soldier's arm, some meta. "As for Natasha's taser disks, the electromagnetic charge temporarily disrupts the electronics of Bucky's arm, but the effect appears to be caused by short-circuiting it rather than by magnetic interference."

• An in-depth meta on the metal arm. "In order for the arm to work so seamlessly, they'd have to attach it to (or replace) the trapezius, the pectorals major, the coracobrachialis, the subclavius, the pectorals minor, and the teres major in the front. In the back it'd be the trapezius, rhombi major, infraspinatus, and the teres major and minor. With as low as the metal bits are positioned, you're looking at something that's been locked in at the ribs, clavicle, and the scapula - unless they've completely replaced them, of course. Which is quite possible, considering how much abuse the Winter Soldier puts his body through."

• The Winter Soldier's metal armpit, a reference.

• Metal hand references.

• The Winter Soldier's first act with his metal arm. "The times I've watched this scene, I’ve gotten that Bucky is confused and afraid. Fighting for clarity. There is no way that he can fully comprehend what has happened, what has been done to him, and what they are planning to use him for. If he did understand, I have a feeling he'd be trying to kill himself, not the nearest HYDRA scientist.

Bucky has been hurt badly, operated on for God knows how long, and is pumped full of who knows what (some kind of narcotic cocktail)… Yes, he's fighting it. Yes, he knows that these are not his friends or his allies. He is struggling for some form of control, even when he ostensibly has no chance, and he lashes out at the closest person."

• A bit more about setting off metal detectors/using doors. "Maybe it's made from a non-ferrous metal like titanium (or vibranium)? Non-ferrous metals are not always picked up by metal detectors, depending on the sensitivity of the scanner in question."

• Metal arm sounds.

Post-Winter Soldier

• Choice Paralysis. "...during Bucky’s rehabilitation out of being a mindless weapon, he finds it really hard to make choices. Very very hard. Stare into your soul until you choose for him hard."

• Five things about PTSD, from the wife of a war vet.

• Five ways emotionally abused people love differently.

Civil War

http://sabacc.tumblr.com/post/143738730132/hydras-activation-words-for-the-winter-soldier
http://thestuckylibrary.tumblr.com/post/144143540333/the-bar-scene
http://luckyraeve.tumblr.com/post/144176694987
http://stevebucky.com/post/144149656425
http://fuckyeahbuckynatasha.tumblr.com/post/144150173917/hyu-ari-they-think-we-didnt-see-it-credit
http://youneedtostrut.tumblr.com/post/144206248880/a-big-scary-bat-thehockeyviper-buckys
http://dreamthief13.tumblr.com/post/144275313444/ok-so-not-a-fic-question-but-has-anyone-on-the
http://dreamthief13.tumblr.com/post/144337543749/koubashii-this-fan-identified-the-food-bucky
http://dreamthief13.tumblr.com/post/144337376824/since-bucky-has-different-builds-in-catws-and-in
http://love-buckybarnes.tumblr.com/post/144408942146/kittyseb-sebastian-pls-youre-breaking-my
http://dreamthief13.tumblr.com/post/145494873159/nerdofjustice-so-i-recall-steve-saying-that

Unorganized Stuff