i hope you don't mind me adding on a bit because i ran out of room in the tags, whoops, but that last part about the serum irritates me SO MUCH. with every mention of that serum, as of late, it seems like marvel writers either 1. don't know/don't care about what they're doing, or 2. are intentionally trying to retcon bucky's story for whatever reason. i wonder why...
and oh, of course bucky wasn't a hero during ww2, even though he was part of an elite strike team (the howling commandos), because everybody was out there on the front lines, riiiiiight...? they've gotta give him some meaning, so of course they're twisting the narrative.
during that one bar scene from catfa, peggy, though she says it ironically, asks "i see your top squad is prepping for duty?" and according to my research brief googling session because i know next to nothing about special military forces, a top squad/strike team is a highly trained, small unit that takes on missions that normal soldiers wouldn't-- in this case, raiding hydra bases, which means going behind enemy lines and doing, y'know, dangerous things that put you very much at risk on every single mission/raid.
bucky didn't agree to join the army. he had to join the army. and (please correct me if i'm wrong) i believe that after a pow is freed, they're usually given an option of discharge from the military or a temporary medical discharge for either physical or mental trauma (or at least the obvious kind of mental trauma that makes you unstable, in this time period). bucky, though i'm assuming he had the chance to leave because of the first one (?), immediately agrees to join the howlies-- agrees to follow steve into the "jaws of death" --even though it's the last thing he actually wants. and if that's not enough, he also agrees to break into a train occupied by the same scientist who did experiments on him-- i mean, the scientist who sighed and said well, if you really wanna, then i guess you can have it after bucky asked to take the serum!!
and for the record, upon returning to base after the azzano raid, he already had those same marks across his face that the chair's... headpiece, whatever you call it, would've given him. his ear is also bleeding, and during the quite interesting research on the history of torture by electrocution i did a while back it was more than brief google searches there, don't worry, i read that severe charges of electricity can cause ruptured eardrums and therefore bleeding. so bucky's been getting the chair (or some sort of similar thing) right from the beginning. fond memories, huh?
i'm not going to go into the entire electrocution history (i actually got my post flagged when i put it on my blog a while ago...), but as we can all imagine, it ain't pretty. but it's an addition to TAKING the serum!
and yet, and yet, the writers somehow ended up disregarding all that for this:
"I should've taken the serum. Like Steve, like you."
in my humble-ish opinion, comparing steve and bucky's experiences with the serum is just plain ignorant. and saying bucky just took the serum is even more so.
let's start with the beginning: steve has been trying to (illegally) enlist in the army, and he's done it multiple times. he wants to go fight. he takes up dr. erskine's offer because he wants to. he's informed as to what's going on and what the risks are. he still says yes.
and look here: the second they think something is wrong, that steve might be in pain, they rush to shut it down. peggy literally runs to yell at them to stop, dr. erskine immediately gives the order, and howard (the wild card known for crazy experiments and questionable methods) doesn't have to be asked twice. they're all on the same page-- this is important, but steve's their first priority because they're actually treating him as a human being rather than a lab experiment. they don't start again until steve confirms that he can do it, that he still wants to do it.
and bucky's experience with the serum, on the other hand? if someone suggests that he was okay with it, wanted it, or was just indifferent, i'm going to whack them upside the head. even if he did consent, which we have zero proof of besides this terrible writing/attempt to retcon, is it really consent when you're injured, captured, and likely in a drug-induced daze? i believe in the comics he also gotten pneumonia at some point while captured, which can make you disoriented/confused, and fatigued. so this may or may not have happened here, which adds to that point if it did.
unlike steve, he did not want the serum. unlike steve, he was not fully informed. pierce slaps him across the face and then gives him a persuasive talking-to. the only information bucky has about what's going on, about himself, is what they choose to tell him.
and whenever they put him back in the chair and he starts screaming because can you even imagine how painful that must feel??, pierce just turns around and walks out. nobody there bats an eye because this happens all the time. this is not the first time bucky is getting his memories wiped and being tortured (electrocution is a whole genre of torture, i'd say this qualifies) at the same time.
and, because i like parallels, and because it sums up these two different experiences very well:
steve TOOK the serum because he WANTED to. bucky was GIVEN the serum because he was FORCED to.
but... haha... it's not that big of a deal... so let's say it a second time!!
"I should've just taken the serum, Bucky was full of shit."
i... okay. okay. yeah, that makes complete sense. it's not like any of the above applies!! it's not like bucky was trying to be encouraging by having faith in his friend and not wishing the same experience on him!! and it's CERTAINLY not like bucky actually remembers/cares about being tortured and manhandled and brainwashed and experimented on!!
so... if sam wants to take the serum like bucky did (the writers could've just given him the line "taken the serum," or "taken the serum like steve did," but nope), then he's in for a real treat!! how about we start with getting captured by nazis, having your memories scrambled in a very painful way, and all along slowly having your humanity stripped away until you're a living weapon who operates on orders, not personal choices? but yeah, i'm sure the end result for bucky was sooo worth it. he gets cool stuff he never even asked for, like super strength!!...
and while we're at it, there's this other bit in thunderbolts, where alexei asks bucky what kind of serum he got:
"What kind of serum did you get?"
"I don't know. Regular. Hydra."
i think we should really be putting emphasis on the i don't know when we're talking about bucky "taking" the serum
"Oh, Hydra. Fancy. Mine was Soviet Recreation, but it's still good."
he says it's good... but he doesn't stop there.
"You and me, we are the same." -- bucky attempts to cut in with "Well" -- "I mean, we are different, but we are the same." i'd like to know what bucky was going to say to that, and i'd also like alexei to elaborate on that.
okay, i don't know much about alexei, but i'm assuming that since he calls the serum good (and regards the hydra serum as something that could be valued), he volunteered for the serum like steve did. he wanted to take it. so no, they're not the same, if that's what alexei means by that. that part irks me, because surely he realizes who he's talking to...? that serum didn't lead to anything even remotely good for bucky, so for alexei to call it something good while having a conversation with bucky just... irks me. are people really that unaware of bucky's past, or is that just what alexei personally thinks of it? how much of that information-- not the assassinations, but the work hydra put into turning bucky into that assassin --does the public have? that's another question marvel hasn't really answered (unless i'm forgetting something, which is pretty likely, because my brain is always in 25 different places at once). but i'm guessing hydra wouldn't have a ton of that info in their files, especially since they kept the book with the soldier's trigger words locked up in a bunker in siberia, so shieldra's data dump probably didn't reveal much. but then again, natasha did hand over that physical file to steve at the end of catws, so hydra did have some things documented. i wonder if the experimentation notes/results were included in either of those.
and i love character studies by canon, sure, but at the end of the day i'm willing to break the fourth wall and blame the writers rather than the characters. well, except for maybe alexei, since he seems to be pretty into it... it's interesting that he still calls bucky the winter soldier. if the writers bothered to acknowledge that he's actually no longer the winter soldier, that could lead to some interesting clashes between bucky and alexei, especially while they're working on the same team.
but now that we're talking about the writers... man. they're either just really, really ignorant, or they just don't care. or they're making a really bad attempt at trying to retcon bucky's past. but why? like i said earlier oh my goodness, i didn't mean for this to get so long, bucky definitely wasn't a hero when he fought in a world war on a strike team... or against thanos and his army... or with the thunderbolts... so i guess that means, since finally having a hero arc by saving people from a burning van wasn't enough, that his death has to have at least a little meaning when he proves himself a real hero by sacrificing himself in doomsday for some other character who was a hero all along. because apparently, all of the above does not matter.
okay... sorry, that got way longer than i meant, and hopefully i'm not missing the point with what i tried to say. uh, so yeah...!! 😬✌️
