If I Was 26 And Had Just Woken Up From A 70 Year Suicide-induced Coma With No One In The Present Remembering

Thinking about this panel from Thunderbolts (2023) #2 today.

Bucky tearing down the Outer Circle was known in the supervillain community, and he’s (conveniently, in this case) considered one of them now. What’s really interesting to me is Nefaria’s comment to Natasha, “what a delight to see you back among your proper peers.”

They operate in such morally grey areas that it’s plausible for them to just waltz into the Hellfire Club with an invitation. And even if it’s just making small talk, I like the idea of villains being relieved that Nat and Bucky might finally stop coming after them.

Which they won’t. They’re just going do it in matching evening wear.

Punk besties

★I tried to shout, "I decide", but my voice betrayed me, breaking into a whisper: "Enough"★

Who the hell is Bucky?

Fixed the slight foreshortening error from before and… yeah.

this is all, at the core, @lake-shark ‘s fault and all criticism should be directed at her

we were doing our catws10 rewatch and i said that in the highway scene, I had heard that sebastian’s pronunciation of russian is quite bad and instead of saying “i have her, find him”, he’s saying something about a brick. i am trying to be humorous.

misha shoots back “yeah almost like the language got brute-forced into his head.”

i don’t know why it never occurred to me how stressful bucky learning russian probably was, probably because he already speaks it in the comics, but now i’m running through everything regarding language and it’s through a whole new filter. holy shit. he’s got to learn it from torturers and abusers.

first, how fucking isolating. how embarrassing and degrading in a real way. people talk to him like he’s stupid. he doesn’t fully understand why he has this other language in his head that he wants to use, but is almost certainly not allowed to. his internal language is severed from his external language. the words he does say feel unwieldy in his mouth and harsh to his own ears. he can’t practice it, and no one is gonna sit down and teach him.

second, to quote dialect quoting james baldwin, “people evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, in order to not be submerged by a reality they cannot articulate”. if you don’t have the right language, you cannot describe what is happening to you. you can’t call for help. you can’t beg for mercy. you don’t have the words to picture your future as different from your present.

third, no wonder bucky takes to pierce better than karpov. no wonder karpov needed specific words and pierce has many to control him. much has been said about how pierce tries to manipulate bucky with his words, like what weak points he presses on to try to keep bucky on track, how he uses language as weapon, and to top it all off, pierce literally speaks his language.

i am chewing on glass.

☆ coffee, tea, me?

Bucky in the Army, part I

When a draftee got his notice to report, he was expected to show up at his local draft board on a specified date. http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/pages/exhibits/ww2/services/pdf/induct5.pdf (This links to a .pdf of a helpful pamphlet designed by Oregon officials for potential draftees, and outlines the induction process, as well as covering common questions.) Once there, he would receive a physical examination and fill out some paperwork. If he passed the physical, and couldn’t (or didn’t) claim a deferral on the basis of one of the few exempt categories, he was sent home with a grace period of about 21 days to set his personal affairs in order—arrange for payments of personal financial obligations, set up a power of attorney, and similar tasks. At the end of those 21 days (it might be a little longer, depending on delays in the training system, but that was the standard), he was expected to report to his assigned Army Reception Center (or Naval Training Station, but Bucky is not a Navy man, so we’ll ignore the Navy from now on out). At the Army Reception Station, draftees spent up to 7 days undergoing testing, were issued uniforms, were barbered to suit the army’s standards, started the necessary vaccinations, and were assigned to the army posts where they would undergo their basic training. At this point I’m going to break into the schedule to talk about how the US Army was organized in World War II. A numbering system was set up for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divisions_of_the_United_States_Army army divisions (the typical US Army division now averages 17,000-21,00 soldiers, and is commanded by a major general, for those not experienced military details) in 1917, during World War I. Numbers 1-25 were Regular Army divisions—the Regular Amy was the US peacetime army, which was quite small at that time. Numbers 26 through 45 were for National Guard units; and Numbers 46 through 106 were the Army of the United States (with some exceptions, like the 82nd and 101st Airborne, which became Regular Army divisions when they switched from straight infantry to airborne infantry.) The National Guard units already had the necessary organizational system in place (although many officers weren’t up to their wartime jobs and were replaced later), but to staff all those new divisions, the army took a cadre from an existing division—usually around 1300 men and officers. This core group would start training as the recruits were collected and began basic training. The Army also started pulling the necessary officers from officers in the existing Reserves (my father was one of these, as he did 4 years of ROTC to get through college in the Great Depression), ROTC programs, the Army’s own Officer Training Corps, and officers awaiting reassignment for one reason or another. At this point, the division would be formally activated, so it could receive its new recruits, and this expansion would continue until the division reached full strength. The entire time the US was fighting in World War II, it was also continuously training new soldiers, and for much of the time it was forming new divisions. http://www.historyshotsinfoart.com/USArmy/backstory.cfm This is what training involved for these new soldiers: 17 weeks of basic and advanced training (Basic is where they learn to be soldiers; Advanced training is where they learn their particular specialty—artillery, infantry, armored, or the support units and special skills.) 13 weeks of unit training (This is where they learn to work as a group.) 14 weeks of combined arms training and large-scale exercises (These would be division level exercises.) 8 weeks of final training (They have now been training 52 weeks—after the first 17 weeks all of it has been in the same unit, with the same people; they will have become very attached to each other, which is important in keeping an army working well.) At this point, they’d do some more training—multi-division exercises. The Army’s first big operation outside of the Pacific Theater was Operation Torch—in invasion of North Africa. Not all the troops involved had gone through this full regime of training, and the lack showed. The troops that invaded Sicily and Italy had the chance for more training. After this, the division traveled to a Port of Embarkation, and went overseas. If it was possible, they trained some more, usually for the specific mission they would undertake. So how long has Bucky been in the Army? If he was called up in early 1942, possibly while waiting for his enlistment paperwork to be finalized, he probably went into training in late February or March—which would mean embarkation leave (this would be about 10-15 days, depending on the travel involved—no flying, so they went everywhere by train, pretty much) in May or a little later would not be unreasonable. This fits pretty well with CA:TFA. So how did Bucky get to be a sergeant? Nowadays, the army has training programs for its noncommissioned officers, and a soldier has to have a certain amount of time in the service, and a good record to get into these programs. In World War II, they were still operating on the old-school principle of promoting sergeants from inside a unit, and they used a variety of ways to select them. One would be pre-enlistment skills and training—if a man was able to type, handle bookkeeping and other clerical tasks, he would be in a position to help handle the amazing amount of paperwork running an army unit requires. Another important factor might be how well he’d absorbed basic military skills, and how well he did in helping his fellow-soldiers along. Those who were natural leaders, as the phrase goes, might also be promising candidates. Ideally, you wanted someone who combined all of these to some degree, and who was comfortable with military discipline and methods. We don’t know a whole lot about what Bucky did between the time he finished school and went to war, but in those 6 or 7 years he may well have acquired skills the Army saw as useful in an NCO. So at some point between starting his unit training and going on his embarkation leave, the US Army saw they had a useful man in James Buchanan Barnes, and made him a sergeant, responsible for the training and lives of his fellow-soldiers, and for making sure the officers over him have the help they need to get things done.

(Need I say that, like everyone else, I have headcanon ideas about what Bucky did between the time he left school and joining the army? For later posts…)

Next post I’ll give some details about what Bucky would have gotten into once he got on board ship to head out to the shooting part of the war. Books and such may be recommended. *Link goes to a .pdf file

Also, I really hate Tumblr’s insistence on saving me from the burden of hand-inserting a link. Especially since their system works so well on a tablet.

The difference between Steve and Tony in CA:CW will always boil down to this:

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).

So in a way, they were both right about the accords. Tony was just also infinitely more wrong.

How the Winter Soldier shot Nick Fury

I’ve been wanting to make a post about this for a while, even though I might be the only person invested in this, but anyway, here we go. I’ve seen mentioned several times, in posts about the movie and in fics that the Winter Soldier shot Nick Fury through the window of Steve’s apartment, and every time it makes me groan in frustration because no.

The Winter Soldier didn’t shoot Fury through a window, he shot him through a wall, and I don’t know about you, but it seems like a pretty big difference to me.

(bullet hole in the wall!!)

When I saw the scene the first time, I remember thinking holy shit??? that’s crazy, and for me that’s when the Winter Soldier really became a real, terrifyingly good assassin, that’s when his image as a serious threat solidified.

Read about the blogger getting carried away under the read more.

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