DerKomissarsInTown

Oh huh! I hadn't realized I didn't post this one here on Tumblr! I finished this study in early March and have plans to have it be one of 3 pieces to go together 🙂‍↕️

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.

I've never thought of it in this light, though; this is actually a great explanation for why the trigger words were introduced in Civil War and why it feels like a retcon. Audiences didn't respond to Bucky as expected, and they had to change the method of his control/brainwashing to make audiences read him as a threat/antagonist for Civil War

You're also completely correct that the scene where the protagonists throw the Hydra dude off the roof is a torture scene. (I realized this after watching Jacob Geller's video analyzing the torture scenes in Call of Duty. Highly recommend if this topic interests you)

It is absolutely true that torture scenes in fiction often serve to show off the (usually male) character's "toughness" and mental resolve, which is a fantasy, one that comes out of this political context at the time of Guantanamo and the torture memos and the political agenda to make torture more acceptable/palatable to the public.

So in this context, the vault scene (where Bucky is struck across the face and doesn't retaliate, and passively submits to torture without complaint) evokes sympathy for Bucky but it's also supposed to show that Bucky isn't a "hero" in the same way the Heroes are heroes. Heroes don't "break" under torture; Bucky does.

Which means that accidentally, the scene was a little more honest about torture than movies are usually allowed to be.

This is what I meant when I said the Hydra Trash Party-goers knew what they were doing, btw. Real life torture is almost inseparable from sexual violence.

Which MCU movie was it where Thor was suffering from PTSD and the whole film was spent constantly belittling him and mocking his trauma and his body, to the point that another character threatens to slap him (or actually slaps him? I can't remember) to "snap him out of" a panic attack?

I think it was Endgame (gagging) and if I remember right, that movie had the same directors as CA:TWS, right? The Russo brothers?

Okay.

So this feels pretty revealing of what the directors think about a "hero" and what makes one, right? Thor lost his "hero" status because he was traumatized and because he gained weight, and it's framed as a personal failing of his character that he has to overcome/"get over."

This helps contextualize Bucky's portrayal: a character being "heroic" means being untouchable, and being affected by trauma is at least partially Your Fault.

I remember nothing of most of the character portrayals in later Avengers because I threw it in my brain sewer, but I do remember the climactic scene in endgame where Tony Stark sacrifices himself saying "i am Iron Man," and I thought it was stupid at the time (his last words are erecting a monument to his ego? and we're supposed to think this is cool and heroic?) but it's a message about what makes a "heroic" character: a hero is, above all, defiant.

So in light of this, it does seem likely that Bucky's torture scene is supposed to be unflattering to him.

I know the term "male gaze" has been used wildly inappropriately, but I feel like the real actual sense of the term might actually apply here? The viewer of the films is assumed to be a Dude, and not just a dude, but a dude that subscribes to a certain ideal of toxic masculinity.

Men that don't break down or get vulnerable (or who get over it fast when they do), who are defiant and untouchable to the very end, are supposed to be admirable. Bucky is completely broken and compliant and accepts his abuse, so even if the movie portrays him as sympathetic, he's still not heroic; he's not supposed to be a character that audiences admire and project onto.

However, the directors didn't consider as much who a female audience (broadly) would relate to or find admirable. They didn't consider as much how someone (male or female or other) who doesn't subscribe to toxic masculinity and the idea of heroic males as untouchable would perceive Bucky.

It's possible that the directors never really thought about Bucky being viewed from the perspective of a person who has experienced abuse. From the point of view of toxic masculinity, men are never victims and if they are, they aren't real men.

Which means that a lot of people (many of them women) watched The Vault Scene and instead of thinking

"oh, he's letting the bad guys control him, unlike what a Real Hero [read: a real man] would do, so he's sympathetic but still bad"

they thought

You mentioned the scene with Steve and Nat and Sam chucking Sitwell off the roof; I fully admit that it took a friend pointing out to me that this was an instance of torture, and that it's specifically an illustration of torture being an effective method for acquiring intelligence. I had to sit with that for. A very long time. In order to digest it.

Now when I rewatch the movie, I think about that rooftop scene while watching Steve's conversation with Fury in the hanger bay for the Insight carriers after the Lemurian Star incident:

Nick: "You know, I read those SSR files. 'Greatest Generation'? You guys did some nasty stuff."

Steve: "Yeah, we compromised. Sometimes in ways that made us not sleep so well. But we did it so that people could be free."

(And then this beautiful movie spends the rest of its runtime [among other things] asking the question: "What does it mean, to be Free? What is Freedom?" Honest to god it's been 12 years and we can't answer that question today the way we might have answered it when this film was released.)

But to get back to the question of Torture at hand: I think about this conversation between Fury and Steve, and about whether torturing Sitwell counts as "a compromise" to Steve. (I would argue the movie makes no effort to show that he feels particularly conflicted about the sequence of events that transpires on that rooftop. I ALSO recognize that, tonally, the Point of that scene as far as the filmmakers seem to be concerned is "LOOK HOW COOL THE FALCON IS" and. He is. I love Sam. Sam is Amazing. But Sam did help torture someone in that scene.)

I think about how many times I watched and rewatched the movie without even recognizing when torture was taking place. I think about what happened in USAmerican popular culture after 2001, and I think about not being immune to propaganda.

As is the case around MANY points in Marvel Studios' Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), this movie makes SO MANY incredible points almost CERTAINLY by accident.

@thebeethatkilledyourdad

Okay now I'm thinking about the parallels between Bucky and Natasha (apart from horribly incompetent writing and directing)

Natasha's torture scene sexualizes her partially because she is so sexualized across the board, but you're right about the parallels; both are showing a character in a state of partial undress being tortured and manhandled by multiple older men. We can even draw a parallel between Natasha being leaned backward over the multi-story drop to the floor of the warehouse and Bucky being pushed backward into the chair (a metaphorical void; a fall it's impossible to come back from). Also with Natasha's face being grabbed vs. Bucky being slapped and having the mouthguard placed into his mouth.

The main difference is of course that Natasha's scene leads the viewer on into thinking that she's in real danger, then reveals that she was in control of the situation the entire time; Bucky's scene is a revelation that he's NOT in control at all.

As far as I can recall, when I first watched the film, I knew that what Steve and Nat were doing to Sitwell was not a good act. I don't know if I would have used the word "torture," but I knew it was a bad thing that they were justifying as necessary. I didn't like that Steve was pushing off his responsibility for the act onto Natasha: 'I wouldn't do that -- but she would' -- I think I did laugh at that moment, because of the contrast between what he's saying and what he means, but it also felt like a betrayal. Something like -- 'Steve. You know that counts. You don't get to act like what happens to him isn't on you.' Maybe he justified it because he knew Sam was going to catch Sitwell -- 'He's not actually going to die -- he's just going to know we're serious.' But that didn't actually make it a good act.

Thinking about it now, I think deus2xmachinablog's connection of that scene to the scene with Fury -- "sometimes in ways that made us not sleep so well at night" -- is exactly right. Steve did these things in the war too -- this isn't just him letting the modern 21st century approach have its way. Maybe he did it the same way -- stepped back and let the other Howling Commandos take action -- but he still did it.

Maybe that adds an extra level to Steve's reaction to Bucky in CA: Civil War -- you didn't choose it. "No," Bucky says, "but I still did it." The movie itself shows Bucky as helpless in Hydra's hands -- but it also shows Bucky, as the Winter Soldier, doing things that require autonomy. Planning how he would attack Nick Fury's car; tracking him to Steve's apartment -- shooting him through the wall. He's not an automaton. He's free to act so long as he acts in obedience to Hydra's command. (Of course, the electric memory chair sort of distorts it -- in that fancy superpowered way -- but if a cult leader, instead of having to explain with a lot of tedious words that a paradigm shift is totally unnecessary, and that the cult member should stick with the cult, could just directly cut access to the memories and de-incentivize reaching out to non-cult-members, wouldn't that be very convenient for the cult leader?)

And similarly, while I can see how the trigger words in CA: Civil War could feel like a retcon, to me it seems a logical extension of what they were already doing with his character. Yes, it gives a very convenient ending -- the man himself asks to be locked away, taken out of the story, because he's too dangerous to be free.

But the whole point of MCU Bucky, it seems to me, is to ask what happens if your enemies don't even think of you as a person they can trick into working for them, just an object that they can use to achieve their goals? They could have argued him around into agreeing that Steve was just trying to manipulate him, I think. Bucky wanted them to explain what Steve had said to him, why he found Steve so familar. But instead Alexander Pierce tells the Hydra crew to use the torture-device memory-wiping machine, the way you might factory-reset your device if it gets malware.

And the trigger words work on the same principle -- a password that puts the device into safe dangerous mode. In this interpretation, the whole argument in CA: Civil War is do we treat the being in front of us as a series of programs or a person? and ultimately the answer is we treat him as a series of programs, as an object. After all, if Bucky was a person, Steve and T'Challa would have a responsibility to help him heal. But if he's an object, then of course they can power him off and put him away until they have a way to reprogram him so their enemies can't hack him anymore.

(obviously this lens leaves out large swathes of story -- Steve does see Bucky as his friend; Tony clearly sees Bucky as someone with autonomy, or he wouldn't bother trying to kill Bucky for being the weapon used to murder Howard and Maria Stark. But then, people are often inconsistent in the stories they tell themselves)

(and it's interesting to see the parallels between Wanda casting Vision (an android) down to the foundations of the Upper New York Avengers facility to get him out of her way, and Steve and T'Challa putting Bucky on ice)

Specifically, The Arm: It is a disability aid and also literally a part of his body. The fact that other characters treat a literal part of his body as something they can give and take away from him on their own terms (wasn't there a running joke about Rocket taking away his arm in one of the films?) just hammers in over and over that Bucky's body doesn't belong to him.

Why I find TFATWS so distressing to even read about, probably, is that it goes beyond not acknowledging that Bucky needs to heal from trauma; it sounds like he's experiencing ongoing trauma, some of it inflicted by the very people that are supposed to "heal" him.

Specifically, I feel that one of the out-of-universe functions of the trigger words is to avoid awkward implications about when it's acceptable to restrict autonomy: it creates a bullshit MKUltra scifi magic reason why, in-universe, it's Okay Actually to stick Bucky in the freezer, and actually, he would agree to that himself!!

Love of the Half-Eaten Peach

Lee Wind (Author), Jieting Chen (Illustrated by)

Love of the Half-Eaten Peach presents an enchanting retelling of a timeless tale from ancient China.

Yuan is destined to rule a region of ancient China called Wei, circa 500 BCE.

When told by wise elders that to be an effective ruler, he must understand and strive for perfection, Yuan is baffled.

After all, nothing is perfect.

Yuan's friend Mi Zi Xia tries to help by finding something in the world that is truly perfect.

He eventually finds a peach that, upon eating some of it, he believes fits the bill.

Mi Zi Xia delivers the peach to Yuan, who does indeed find perfection - in the love he feels for the person who brought him the half-eaten fruit.

Yuan and Mi Zi Xia's story gained such fame that over the centuries, it inspired generations of people to use the expression "love of the half-eaten peach" in Chinese to describe romantic love between two men.

Love of the Half-Eaten Peach is an acclaimed, heartwarming picture book that reimagines an ancient folktale based on a true story.

The book emphasizes: History and Culture: Travel more than 2,500 years back in time to ancient China and learn about some of the people and customs of that era.

Duty and Responsibility: Watch lead character Yuan struggle with the expectations placed upon him as the future ruler of the region called Wei.

Friendship and Love: Follow Mi Zi Xia on his quest to support Yuan and watch the two friends discover how much they truly care about each other.

Folktales: See how an ancient tale inspired by actual historical events is reinterpreted for modern audiences with respect, care, and celebration.

This Gog and Magog nonsense is exactly what a very large contingent of American evangelicals think. It is part of a larger narrative about "the end times" with Jesus coming back. Among the elements of this narrative? Global war. Mass death.

One of the open members of this cult? Pete Hegseth. You know, the guy in charge of America's military.

"Why are all crops Brassica?" is like asking "Why are all dogs wolves?": Because we found ONE very genetically manipulable species and pushed it into as many fun and exciting shapes as possible.

HOWEVER, Like how we also have Cats, Chickens, Horses, goats and Pigeons, we also have:

Nightshdes: Tomatoes, Potatoes, and every kind of pepper except black pepper. Like Brassicas, they need a lot of calcium, so you shouldn't put them in the same bed, and supplemmenting both beds with finely crushed eggshells will help.

Cucurbits: Summer and Winter Squashes, melons, cucumbers, Chayote, Pumpkins. Not as demanding about the calcium, do need the kind of sun that will literally Sunburn brassicas and nightshades to death.

Alliums: Garlic, Leek, Onion, Scallion. What are you doing if you don't have these???

Special shouthout here to CEREALS like Corn, Sogrhum, Wheat, oats and Barely, which *can* be grown in a backyard garden if you are insane.

BEANS: Look. There is some bean somewhere your family will like. Black beans, pinto beans, peas, lentils, chickpeas, and PEANUTS. There's also Carrots and parsnips, but they have weird sandy soil requirements so they require a similar level of dedication and research as cereals do.

And that's just vegetables! You also have "fruits" which for purposes of this post are "assorted sweet-tasting plant parts", including but not limited to:

Strawberries, blueberries, Raspberries, apples, pears, peaches, plums, currants, cranberries, and cherries all of which I've grown in my yard before.

You've also go HERBS, which are generally not related, but you can interweave them between larger crop plants to keep your biodiversity up and help prevent disease outbreaks by acting as physical barries between plants: Rosemary, Thyme, Dill, Sage, Parsley, BASIL, Savory, lemongrass, and Mint if you're nasty.

sure, but i've spent more on fucking knitting needles than i have on my entire soldering station and it's not even close

> a fair bit of practice

a dyspraxic seven-year-old can do it. do you have better hand-eye coordination than a dyspraxic seven-year-old?

> replacing the battery requires soldering

i'm struggling to think of a single electronic device currently in my house where 1) replacing the battery requires soldering and 2) soldering is the hardest part of replacing the battery. it's all either laptops and larger items with battery connectors, or phones and wireless earbuds and bluetooth speakers and shit where the battery is really solidly In There and either requires gingerly prying out 18 other components to get at, or is just straight up potted in gunk and can't be removed without destroying the whole device.

That said, okay, hobbies are just kind of like that. Knitting is a good analogy in the sense that there's, like, a tacit social contract that it's is either a hobby or a job, and you will never find yourself in a situation where you need to knit unexpectedly -- contrast with sewing which everyone needs a little of from time to time, but it's low-stakes if you screw up and you can muddle through the urgent parts with a garbage sewing kit you bought in a convenience store. I'd be even unhappier if people changed how they designed appliances such that routine maintenance required me to knit!

a dyspraxic seven-year-old can do it. do you have better hand-eye coordination than a dyspraxic seven-year-old?

I mean I have no doubt that I can do it (though I will not presume to judge what percentile of seven-year-olds I beat), but I doubt I could do it well on a blind first try. Again in the relatively short bit of research I did, I found plenty of failure stories from adults, some of which were expensive! It sounded though like the complexity was less in putting things in the right place and more in the mechanics and chemistry of the process and the behaviour of the ingredients.

None of this is really that bad in an objective sense -- I've done lots of things more difficult and expensive -- but it's that tacit social contract thing. Society tricked me into thinking I would't need to solder unless I wanted to go into EE, then changed the rules! If I learn to solder under these conditions, I'm letting the terrorists win.

"impression I got"

"first try"

Bruv, why y'all out here wringing hands & writing essays about something that appears to be entirely hypothetical to you?

This soldering iron is $10 and is on Tom's Hardware's list of top soldering irons.

This beginner soldering project is $13.

I guarantee you that actually trying and practicing is going to be a million times more productive (and fun) than writing OpEds about the philosophical implications soldering could hypothetically have on Right to Repair.

You seem to be under the misconception that you're agreeing with gender-trash, but as a more attentive reading will reveal to you, they rejected the claim that soldering needed to be approached as a learning activity involving appreciable practice, whereas you're taking that for granted and simply insisting that people should pursue that opportunity eagerly, driven by the love of soldering rather than the immediate need to solder something. Imagine talking about plumbing this way!

When I first tried soldering, it was long before one could just look up shit on one's computer in 16 seconds. I did not understand about heat sinks or speed, and then I wondered why half my circuits didn't work. (Because I'd overheated a component through my lack of understanding.) I also did not know that one should Absolutely Not Inhale Solder Fumes. Eventually I got good advice from an adult, who, instead of telling me I was wrong, wanted to help me. For a while afterwards I soldered anything that seemed like it needed it, often unnecessarily. 🤓

My reading of what OP started out with: "the way things are designed today requires a skill that I and most people don't possess and which from the outside seems non-trivial to acquire and this strikes me as a regrettable state of affairs"

…and the first response is "you ignorant fool, you coward, you imbecile, you incompetent."

The response could have been "I see why you feel that way and it's hardly surprising. If I could share some experience I have, it's achievable and here are some tips for getting started; good luck and let me know if I can be of help."

But gender-trash is more intent on making themselves sound tough and OP look bad. Yeah, that was the obvious intent, it's right there, no wiggling out of it and they should reflect on why they enjoy writing strangers like an insecure reply guy.

gossip isn't doing much better: they provided some links but the tone is still superior instead of truly supportive.