Seize the Night!

in which murderbot is a very normal terracotta soldier and ART the dragon spirit of a chinese junk who dwells in the ship's keel. they meet in the ming dynasty perhaps, when ppl are sailing places extra willy-nilly.

*Nüwa is the mother goddess in chinese mythology, known for creating humanity from yellow clay and repairing the sky.

thank you @mutualrapport for hosting the event! original prompt below.

Buck/Tommy | Rated M | 727 words originally written as a five facts au prompt, now polished

Evan, a young fae, receives a very odd sort of visitor to his glen.

hi hi hi!! I hope the pining comes through enough - Buck is oblivious for much of this haha

1. Once he’s dropped Eddie off at home and made sure he’s okay — Chris has the instructions for his meds, that kid is awesome — he gets Evan’s address from Chris. He wants to go and clear the air. It’s pretty obvious that whatever is going on between him and Eddie has at least a little bit to do with him. He drives over there, groaning at the lack of parking options as he has to circle circle the block before he can find a spot. Evan opens the door, and Tommy immediately apologizes for getting between him and Eddie. He didn’t mean to, Eddie and Evan are both great, they hadn’t meant to hang out without him. Evan looks surprised, but invites him in and offers him a beer. Tommy doesn’t work until noon tomorrow, so he says yes to the offer. Evan admits he was jealous, especially of the trivia, which gets them talking about the bar trivia night Tommy goes to and the wildest things Buck knows, and by the time Tommy leaves, Evan has a standing invite to trivia nights. He’d admitted he wasn’t really into fights, but Tommy offered to teach him about the sport if he ever wanted. Tommy leaves feeling lighter and like he hasn’t fucked up a years long friendship accidentally.

2. Evan is intensely competitive at trivia nights. It’s— well, it’s kind of cute, if Tommy is being honest. He gets all flushed and stutters when he’s excited about an answer. He also flirts with every waitress their table has. Tommy had heard a fair bit about Evan’s dating history from Eddie and Chris, and he’s well aware of his own crush on the guy, but he knows better than to ask out a straight guy. Evan makes that a little hard to remember the first time they win when he’s there, as he bumps their arms together and grins at Tommy specifically, leaning in to Tommy while they eat their free nachos and drink their free pitcher. Viv, one of the other pilots from Harbour, is there, and gives him a look. Tommy wishes her wife was there to distract her from Tommy and his problems. He just shakes his head a little at her.

3. Tommy is so cool! So. Cool. He flies helicopters and planes, he knows Muay Thai, he goes to trivia. Buck’s just waiting to find out he scuba dives or climbs mountains or something else equally awesome. Buck helps them win the second time he comes to trivia and he feels like the smile is never going to leave his face. He asks Chimney questions about what Tommy likes, because he’s going to have a Muay Thai lesson with him next week and he feels like he should take something as a thank you. Hen asks what he’s going to do if he doesn’t like it and he just shrugs. Even if he didn’t like it, Tommy still gave up his time, right? He should still get something for it, and he already told Buck he wouldn’t let him pay for the lesson. Then he starts asking Chim and Hen about stories from when they still worked with Tommy.

i am not particularly interested in reading fanfiction generated by an LLM. this is because i am in fandom to read fic that engages interestingly with a canon i love, and an LLM definitionally cannot do this. there are also human-written fic that do not do this! this is not a unique quality of LLM-generated text. "there are fics not to my taste" was a problem long before LLMs entered the picture.

what is new is the scale. the quantity of text an LLM can produce will always outstrip what humans can write by orders of magnitude. maybe this is a problem. readers don't have infinite time -- what's the sustainability of backbuttoning from fics i don't find engaging for one reason or another, if the scale is so dramatically tipped to one side? i genuinely, deeply adore discovering fics with a unique voice or an unexpected perspective, but how much harder is that going to be to find as the volume of fics to sift through grows ever larger?

on the other hand: my preferences are not everyone's preferences. people clearly do read LLM-generated text, and like it.

i've generally found the morality dimension to this discourse somewhat unproductive because my question is always: how does an action materially lead to changes you want to see? and i don't think it's helpful to say, if you use a tool that is widely available then you are a bad person. famously this is not a tactic that makes people eagerly change their ways.

(i am always thinking about daryl davis, a Black man who deradicalized ku klux klan members by actively choosing to have conversations with them. i am thinking about how a child of the founder of stormfront disavowed the movement because of extensive discussion over shabbat dinners. people find it hard to be wrong. to change someone's mind you have to put in the work; you need to approach with empathy.)

i'm equally uninterested in saying that the problem with LLM-generated text is that it is bad. many fics are bad with no LLM involvement whatsover. probably the LLMs will get better, since a lot of money is being invested into the effort. but if you frame the conversation as, LLM-generated text is bad, and therefore liking it means you have bad taste, or you are a fool, or, or. again, what is the end goal here? what happens is that people get defensive. people say, i liked this thing i read, and therefore it is good, and therefore it can't be machine-produced. reading is an active act between the reader and the text -- people aren't wrong for bringing themselves to that conversation, regardless of the source. we can't make not recognizing LLM usage a moral failing.

on a third hand: claude has a voice. gemini has a voice. chatgpt has a voice. much as human writers have tics or an oft-used turn of phrase, these tools do, too. i say this not because i am seeking to identify specific texts as LLM-generated, but because i care about the effects in aggregate.

fandom is not the first space i wrote in, but it's one where i've written consistently, often badly, and over time developed a voice i feel confident about. i really think that's valuable and worth preserving. but the increasing volume of LLM-generated text makes this harder for someone who is just starting to write today. how do you develop your own voice when everything around you sounds the same? the first step to learning something is mimicry, but to build on that you need diversity.

“Do you really wanna do this?” Buck asks, eyebrows up and eyes wide.

If Tommy were smart, that might make him rethink things. Instead he twists it and doubles down. “Why? Don't you?”

Buck glances back down the street. “I might pick this just to avoid going to that. Honestly, I'm not really into it.”

“Oh. Shit. Evan. Then why did you say…?”

“No! No, I'm into this! I meant…” He gestures down the street where they're supposed to be right now. “That's not really… I came just to spend time with you. I'm not really into watching MMA stuff.”

“But you are into…?” Tommy points with his eyebrows.

How does he even do that? Buck wonders.

Then he swallows and puts his hand out, lets Tommy place his on top and then threads their fingers together. “I’m into you.”

“There's your first problem,” Tommy answers dryly and Buck squeezes his fingers warningly.

“Hey. Stop that. You're talking about my ten-minutes-from-now husband.”

“Eh. I think I can take that guy.”

“You better not. I'm trying to take him.”

Tommy snorts and squeezes Buck's fingers. His is a fond, reassuring squeeze though, not the borderline threat of Buck's.

This time, he echoes Buck's question without the challenge. When he asks, “You really sure about this?” it's soft and vulnerable.

“Ask me properly,” Buck answers, eyes brighter than all the gleaming neon on the strip.

Tommy swallows. He pulls Buck's hand up to his mouth and brushes kisses over his knuckles.

“Evan Buckley… will you marry me?”

If someone had told him, back at the beginning, that Evan was a quiet guy, he wouldn't have believed it, but once all the nervous chatter was out of the way, Evan was. Looking back, Evan was nervous surprisingly often, filling every lull in conversation with something.

It was a stark contrast to now. Much of the hike, that they didn't call a hike, because it was much too short to count, had been quiet. They both pointed out views and birds and critters, but more than anything, they'd enjoyed the scenary with nothing but smiles on their faces. Even at the summit – with its grand view of the parking lot – they'd just smirked a little and taken a photo together.

Happy black cat day!!

These changes from comics canon contain some of the things about the character that were compelling, and also the things MCU had no idea what to do with in later installments

In the winter soldier comics, (which are themselves a violent re-invention of the character, he was raised on a military base and became Steve's sidekick after Steve had become Captain America, kind of a darker figure willing to do dirty work that Cap couldn't be seen doing

in the movie, he's Steve's closest childhood friend. They only end up paired up and fighting together because Steve goes on a desperate mission to save his life

in the winter soldier comics, he is something like 7 or 8 years younger than Steve and they still have a mentor/sidekick type of relationship

in the movie they are the same age and steve is no longer a "mentor" figure, that dynamic is eliminated

in the winter soldier comics Bucky loses all his prior memories after his apparent death, making him a blank slate to be groomed into a soviet super-assassin. There is no brainwashing.

in the movie they deliberately erase his memories by strapping him into this scary device that fries his brain with electricity. It's clearly torture: he is shown hyperventilating as the restraints close onto his limbs and then screaming in agony as the device activates.

in the winter soldier comics Bucky as the Winter Soldier is capable of independent thought and snark, and is shown questioning and mouthing off at his superiors

in the movie, Bucky is completely passive. He barely speaks at all; when he does, he is almost childlike, meek and quiet in his interactions with the Hydra characters, stubborn and confused in his fight with Steve. The main antagonist slaps him across the face for not answering a question and he doesn't retaliate at all even though he can obviously kill everyone in the room in the blink of an eye. In the same scene he also lets the scientists manhandle him and eagerly opens his mouth for the mouthguard even as his heart rate is spiking on the monitor and he's starting to hyperventilate because he KNOWS the pain is coming.

(side note: he is shirtless in this scene for no reason)

(second side note: the line "who the hell is Bucky?" is in the movie because it's iconic from the comics, but it's arguably super OOC for mcu!bucky)

The long hair and cyborg arm are straight from the comics, but the most striking change to his appearance is his mask: in the comics, he's wearing a domino mask over his eyes, but in the film, he has an opaque black mask covering his nose and mouth that takes away much of his ability to emote and looks strikingly like a muzzle. The comics mask evokes mysterious wiles; the film's mask evokes dehumanization.

basically the films gave him a much deeper and more intimate connection to Steve while putting the two of them on even footing as friends and partners, and changed him from a morally gray character who indifferently kills people and regrets and becomes angsty once his memories are restored, to a tortured and dehumanized human weapon who obeys despite not understanding anything that's going on because he knows nothing but pain and punishment.

The film's version is really much more interesting. Snarky antiheroes who kill indifferently are a dime a dozen; a character who is palpably, terrifyingly dominating and powerful yet completely powerless in the hands of those who control him, who is hollowed out of all personal identity and who has no agency or control over his own body as it is mutilated, reconstructed and wielded as a weapon, is something much more delicious and fascinating.

We watch this guy slaughter people effortlessly with an apex predator swagger that projects pure dominance and prowess, then we watch him meekly accept abuse and torture with soft, confused eyes.

The rest of the MCU portrayal of Bucky though after that? Clearly no idea what they fuck they had on their hands or what the fuck they were doing with it.

Flattening his character out into "morally gray depression man and he has Gun." And essentially making his story about shouldering responsibility for what he did as the Winter Soldier. A very flat, "guy did bad thing and now he's angsty and guilty about it and trying to redeem himself" (boring) instead of like. the gut wrenching horror of having your memories burned away and your name taken from you and your body reconstructed without your consent and used against your will.

We could be telling the most brilliant stories about The Bucky, if we all understood the essential principles (that stories are not Owned by anyone, but become Alive when they are told, in the hearts of the teller and the listener, and to listen to a story gives the gift of the power to tell it again)

And if we could all defeat our enemy, the Cringe (which is to say, that which cringes at sincerity)

God, the writers you put on this earth to write Buckyfic are trying to create something "Original" instead

The broad consensus in modern western media seems to be that Torture Is Basically Fine. It works. Torture is an effective way of extracting accurate information. And because that alone isn't enough to make it seem legitimate, there's another failsafe: Torture works only on bad people. Villains crack under torture, and heroes don't.

This is how media creates a culture that finds torture justifiable. Especially media that is largely sponsored by the US military, of course, who in a post-Abu Ghraib, post-Guantanamo, post-CIA papers world has an interest in creating public indifference (or straight up support) for torture, but there's torture in animated movies for children, too. It's ubiquitous.

In real life, torture is horrific violence inflicted on our fellow human beings, that traumatizes both the victim and the torturer, creates heaps of false information, and has no discernible benefits. It doesn't work.

But in fiction, it must work, every time, because if it doesn't, then that collapses the entire structure, doesn't it?

In comes Bucky in TWS.

He's a character who is tortured into complete submission. Who is given electric shocks to the brain to erase his memory, but he still holds onto his own humanity. He is tortured into doing horrible things - the torture works - but it doesn't work completely. He breaks through it. He's beaten, abused, violated on screen, but - and this is important! - because he overcomes in the end, he's not the villain. His story evokes pity and sympathy, not suspicion.

With hindsight, it is clear to me that the mind wipe scene was meant to inspire disgust in the audience. Bucky's terror without fighting back, his defeated acceptance of the inevitable, the slow, lingering pan up his unclothed body. This is emasculating; at the time a lot of meta has been written about how Bucky is shot like a woman in a rape scene.

He submits. This is meant to be suspicious.

But it completely backfires, because what is shown and what follows is the story of a victim of unspeakable abuse finally breaking free from his abuser in a show of awe-inspiring mental strength.

(and also through the power of gay love but let's not get into that)

That's a problem. By complete accident, the film ends up saying Hey, torture is maybe sometimes bad? And that cannot be allowed. There is a more conventional torture scene in the film, where Steve and Sam throw a guy off a roof to get information out of him, but that almost doesn't matter. This is the one instance that makes the whole house of cards come crumbling down. If Bucky is a victim, then torture is both bad and does not work.

It is obvious to me that what followed TWS didn't know how to reconcile that. CA:CW felt extremely jarring because it treats Bucky with so much suspicion; it even retcons in the trigger word nonsense to justify that suspicion. Bucky has to earn trust. He has to redeem himself. From what? Not being able to withstand seven decades of torture?

Well, yes, the film says. Torture only works on bad guys. Bucky allowed the torture to work on him, and so, has proven himself to be untrustworthy. The abuse he suffered sullied him. He has to earn back his moral righteousness.

I want to stress that I do not think any of this is intentional. I don't think there was a meeting in the writer's room where they talked about how they accidentally made it seem like Torture Is Bad Maybe, and how they could reconcile that. If that had been the case, CW would have been a more honest movie. But looking back, it is clear in how the directors talked about the characters after CW came out, and in the baffling writing choices they made, that they were trying to breach this disconnect, without being aware that this is what they were doing.

For the fan spaces I hung around in at the time, where cis men were a minority, this was baffling. There's a reason post-TWS fic almost exclusively talked about Bucky's recovery, not his redemption. There simply was, in fandom's eyes, nothing to redeem him from. CW made clear that w completely misinterpreted TWS.

I'd love to go back in time to observe what the fallout from TWS and CW was in male-dominated fan spaces; how they talked about Bucky in 2015 and 2017.

Anyhow. With the benefit of hindsight, it is obvious to me that no one involved in the writing of CW and what came after took a moment to actually think about the themes and motives of the movies beyond the shallowest surface, and not just with regards to Bucky.