Cat Lady in Training

Hey fellow Bucky/Sam shippers, I’ve created a Bucky/Sam comm at Imzy: www.imzy.com/buckysam. There’s a monthly rec post, regular fic round-ups, comics posts, and discussion posts, so if you’re on Imzy or are interested in joining (account creation is free) and are looking for a Bucky/Sam comm to join over there, please feel free to check it out! Anyone with an interest in Bucky/Sam (whether it’s in the MCU, the comics, or in any other universe) is welcome to join and post, and all types of content are welcome, whether you’re cross-posting your fic or fanart, want to start a discussion, or just want to share some prompts or Bucky/Sam-related ideas. There’s a lot of great Bucky/Sam content on Tumblr, and I’m hoping to also provide a space for great Bucky/Sam content on Imzy too until we eventually take over the world.

Speaking of which, I also run the Bucky/Sam comm at Imzy: www.imzy.com/buckysam. I’ll make a separate post promoting that in a bit, but anyway everybody’s welcome to check it out and/or join!

My big, big problem is a) that’s absolutely not what I got or will get and b) the appalling framing. Rhodey doesn’t get paralysed because they wanted to have a paralysed character, he gets paralysed because otherwise he would logically have gone with Tony to Siberia and the Russos and M&M needed a way to push him out of the narrative, and what better way to bench a character than giving them a disability? He gets paralysed to give another character angst (note that we don’t even see Rhodey realising he’s paralysed, or learn this information along with him, there’s not even a cliched “I can’t feel my legs” bit when he’s lying on the ground, he’s in a Convenient Coma and the information has to be relayed to us by Tony), and even Rhodey’s last scene in the movie is from Tony’s PoV and about Tony.

Likewise, with Bucky, I don’t have a problem with him blaming himself, wanting to punish himself, wanting to do the PG-13 equivalent of killing himself, etc. Trauma almost always comes with some very ugly and dark places (that have nothing to do with any Trauma Makes You Evil nonsense cliches) and I do want fiction to show that. What I have a big problem with is everybody around him going along with it with the excuse of the poorly thought-out trigger words nonsense so we can have the PG-13 superhero popcorn flick equivalent of an euthanasia scene, complete with white clothing and soft lighting, ~he’s better off like this~, ~sacrificing himself for others~ and whatnot.

Nor do I think for one second that if we ever see these characters again (lol, I’ll believe it when I see it) we’ll have anything other than off-screen backstory magical cures. (Again, I’m not saying I want to see something didactic or issueifc-y. An equivalent of the way Charles Xavier’s disability is handled in X:A would be fine and genre-appropriate, and that’s hardly a high bar. Still I’m sure they’ll manage to slide right under it.)

Marvel comics: What if we took this character who was created by two working-class Jews as a deliberate stand against Nazism and fascism (something that resulted in Simon & Kirby and Timely Comics getting so many death threats that Fiorello La Guardia had to personally intervene) and we made him into a Nazi all along? Wouldn't that be rad? :)))

Ta-Nehisi Coates (x)

(spoilers)

I’ve seen stuff going around saying that at least the decision to basically kill himself in a PG-13 way go back into cryo-sleep is Bucky’s choice, rather than being something forced on him as before, and… Look, if someone is affected by this kind of trope and seeing things from that perspective makes them feel better about the scene, I am all for that, I certainly don’t want to take that away from anyone. But for me, the sticking point is that Bucky don’t real, like all those female characters in skimpy, sexualised outfits, he’s not a real person making actual decisions, he’s a fictional character written by people who are as steeped as anyone else in social and cultural tropes about how 1) death is preferable to life with a disability (something that shows up in enough stories that even TvTropes has figured it out) and 2) people who have gone through abuse and trauma are both unstable, dangerous, ticking time bombs, incapable of self-control, etc and objects of pity whose relationships with others are intrinsically burdensome and predatory.

And, again for me, another sticking point is that even if he were a real person… I am going to make this personal because, well, it is personal, so here goes: a lot of the time I have what you may call passive suicidal ideation, in that I’m not making any effort whatsoever to off myself, but I’m thinking things like “hey, wouldn’t it be awesome if that bus were to climb the pavement and hit me dead on? Right now? Wouldn’t it be freaking awesome?”. If it were a possibility, you bet that during those times I’d totally sign up for eternal dreamless sleep on ice. And a lot of abuse survivors miss our abusers and our time with them a lot, for all kinds of reasons, even though it was a place of abject terror and dehumanisation. (Incidentally, note that Bucky at the end of CA:CW—in other words, at the end of his story*—is essentially replicating his position at the start of his captivity, stuck in a freezer with a newly missing arm. Again, the film isn’t a documentary. Did the script write itself? Did the camera direct itself?) That’s not a reason to send us back for seconds, and if someone were with me during the times when my brain is doing the self-punishing, self-hating routine, I would hope they would manage to respond in ways that are neither sticking me in a straitjacket for my own good or pushing me into traffic because they ~respect my choices~.