Cyan's Winter Soldier blog

But as a fight nerd, there’s one other thing I want to point out about this fight, and it goes back to @mikkeneko’s point about the knife:

This isn’t a magic fight.

Yes, they’re both super soldiers. Yes, WS has a vibranium arm. Yes, Steve has a vibranium shield. But there are no magic blasts going on here. There’s no wuxia and minimal wire-work (mostly protective for the actors).

WS shoots at Steve until he runs out of bullets because that’s the most efficient way to murder him. Steve either dodges or hides his whole body behind his shield because that’s the most efficient way to not get murdered. The shield gets thrown, caught, thrown back, wedged in a car. Then it’s a knife fight. Throughout, it’s really obvious that neither of them are fucking around. WS is trying to just straight-up kill Steve, Steve is trying to not die. No banter. No dick-measuring. No quips.

This fight is brutal, efficient, and not flashy. Steve’s knife defense is textbook, and aside from that cool little flip that was almost too fast to clock, WS’s attacks are textbook. He’s doing his best to control Steve’s defense and open a hole to wedge that knife in. Steve’s doing his best to control that knife hand and keep just enough space between them that he can close those holes before WS can get to them. It’s telling that he’s paying so much attention to the knife that when WS finally gets through his guard, it’s with his empty, vibranium hand. (Still no idea why he tosses him instead of crushing his windpipe though, that was 100% movie logic.)

When Steve does that flying knee at WS, that’s not about flashy martial arts moves, that’s about brutal efficiency. Your knees and elbows are the hardest points on your body. Steve can engage in fisticuffs with normal people; he can knock out hitler over 200 times. He could also break his knuckles on WS’s face before doing any appreciable damage, and we watch him figure that out. So it’s not kung fu, it’s muay thai. It’s krav maga. Those flips aren’t for show - that’s pure Jiujitsu, the ruthless throws that are supposed to segue into joint locks and dislocations. That is the way to take your opponent apart, literally. He was trying to rip WS’s non-vibranium arm out of its socket.

That pile-driver? That was meant to break WS’s neck. A normal person would die instantly if Captain America pulled that WWE shit on them. We are into the gritty shit now. We have two extremely strong, extremely skilled men who are just trying to kill each other because the only way to win this fight is to die last, and it shows.

They scramble for position through the fight. When one move fails, they don’t bother breaking apart before finding the next-most-efficient killing move and trying that. This is what two people who are actually trying to murder each other look like - most street scuffles stay on the ground once they get there and don’t involve this much skill, but we can excuse that because it’s Captain America and the Winter Fucking Soldier. I still recognize the blocking of this fight as a real fight, not a spar. The urgency, breathlessness, the pragmatism, the messy transitions between moves as you just keep trying to improvise faster than the other guy… that’s all correct.

There’s no magic. There are fists, feet, elbows. There’s a shield and there’s a knife - the first and oldest human-made tools of war. There are chokes. There are joint locks. Not a word spoken. And it helps that they are really there - landing on cars, landing on asphalt.

Tony stands up to authority because he was born into immense wealth and privilege and has never had to answer to anyone. He defies authority because he knows he'll never have to face actual consequences for doing so.

Steve stands up to authority because he was born into poverty and grew up a poor, disabled Irish-American during the Great Depression. He defies authority because he knows what it's like to be dismissed, undervalued, and disenfranchised and never wants anyone to face that.

Tony pushed for the accords because he knew he could just break them and nothing would happen to him (which is exactly how it went down).

Steve refused to sign the accords because he would never sign away his human rights and the rights of other people to an authority he knew would abuse them (which, again, is exactly what happened).

Rumlow & Bucky threatening people with a custom SIG Sauer P226 SCT

At first glance Bucky’s gun in TFATWS may not look particularly special or appear to have any narrative significance, but I’m here to tell you that’s almost certainly not the case, whether intentional or not.

I already thought the parallel was fascinating when I first noticed these guns looked similar, but the deeper I dug the more compelling the story got. They aren’t just similar, they’re the exact same gun. Which ordinarily wouldn’t be that all that special either, since many people use the same type of gun, but this isn’t some generic off-the-shelf model. In fact, I now think this custom P226 SCT is so unique as to be intrinsically linked to Rumlow, and I’m going to make the case that its reappearance in TFATWS is so remarkable that the gun (and therefore likely Rumlow himself) must hold some sort of significance for Bucky.

Buckle up, I’m about to overanalyze the shit out of this gun.

here is a semi-detailed walkthrough of new york city in terms of the MCU and all it’s characters residing there!

let’s start with the 5 boroughs: mahattan, queens, brooklyn, the bronx, and staten island. here’s a map!

Sam Wilson

Sharon Carter

The guy running and screaming “close the bay doors!”

The air control techs who let Steve, Maria, and Sam in with a simple, yes, sure, please do come in, sir

The guy who wouldn’t launch the helicarriers

The members of the world security council who stood up to Pierce (not if it was your switch)

All the people who were trying to be “the only air support captain Rogers has”

This movie was about every person having the same energy as Steve Rogers; every person can be a hero if they choose to.

A seven nation army couldn’t hold me back.

there’s a section in this old paper that goes “As the drug raises the level of physical performance in the course of prolonged effort by lessening the appreciation of fatigue, it was considered wiser, when the emergency was acute, to resort to the use of a drug which makes men temporarily immune to fatigue than to abandon the exhausted (Fetterman).On many a dangerous mission benzedrine helped tired men to win the battle against sleep, when they could not be replaced by rested reserves.” 

if regular infantry kept popping energy pills to keep going, what about the theoretical drug usage of the howling commandos? From that same paper: “The responsibility for the tactical use of benzedrine rests with the commanding officer, who must decide when the situation demands it. Distribution and administration, however, is the responsibility of the medical officer. When it should be used, how much is needed, and what the effects will be are matters of interest to every member of a tactical organisation.” did all of them, including bucky, have to take above-average doses to keep pace with actual-superhuman captain america? did steve himself take benzedrine to stave off sleep when the mission stakes were too high to take an hour off to rest? would it be ineffective for him because of his metabolism? 

what about the postwar consequences of prolonged drug use in returning servicemen? how did that affect the howlies when they went home, since they might have taken way, way more than was standard issue? was howard also on benzedrine to keep up his rapid R&D during the war? did that contribute to his postwar instability? did bucky go through a serious crash withdrawal with the russians during the early days of his confinement after his recovery, because they didn’t have supplies of benzedrine? what kind of supplementary dosing did HYDRA give him during the torture and reeducation? is modern-day bucky at a high risk for relapsing to amphetamines or other substances due to decades of drug dependency and experimentation? is he currently a drug addict? if he’s been ‘clean’ for at least a year, is he still suffering from various addiction-related psychological and health issues on top of his traumas and preexisting conditions? 

“Until the end of the line”

To see how far the line goes, we have to start at the beginning.

DAMSEL IN DISTRESS

(Interesting to note that when he takes on the role as Steve’s protector, the actual aggression involved is minimal: one punch and one kick in the alleway; one clean shot to the head during the CATFA montage.)

…and he puts up with Steve’s cock-eyed enthusiasm against his better judgment and against his own best interests. From letting Steve ditch him at the Expo on a night that should’ve been about Bucky making good memories to take overseas, to agreeing when Steve asks him to join a crack squad going after the same people responsible for a pretty damn significant trauma to him—and hell, skipping ahead to CW when he instantly joins up with Steve to go to Siberia despite the events of the first half of the film—Bucky constantly sublimates himself to serve the causes of other people.

And it’s not just Steve! Pierce orders and abuses and guilts Bucky into compliance even when he has misgivings. Bucky is undeniably reluctant to be dragged into the Infinity War, but he follows when T’Challa beckons, and he even plasters a big smile onto his face for when Steve shows up (to say nothing of the appearance change/personal grooming he put on in the meantime, which a - was so goddamn gay, and b - is a ploy to make him look more ready to be here, since Bucky’s appearance/state of dress is linked to his mental state, as evidenced by every single scene Bucky is ever in, ever).

Also, I think Bucky is the only MCU man we ever see shopping? (I’m not counting Peter Parker because he is a minor.) Actually shopping, not just walking through a marketplace or townsquare (or covertly using a computer). Chatting with the vendor and smiling and generally putting on social niceties that are often assigned to women irl and on-screen (without the manly posturing that even Peter engages in).

There was an article awhile back hypothesizing that Nonbinary Bucky took off as a popular fandom interpretation precisely because he’s been assigned the Woman’s Role so thoroughly. I can totally see why.

tagging @beautifulwhensarcastic and @koreanrage so they can read my tags

|

In 2016, Steve Rogers rubs his face and drags himself into the kitchen before heading out to search the city — the cooling trail — again. He drops his plate into the sink. There’s already some other things in there. He’ll get to them later, probably. When he has time. It doesn’t really matter.

He turns to go.