Winter Soldier
Jun. 29th, 2014 06:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI went to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier again (they’re showing it at the Union), and in between this and dipping my toe in the waters of Winter Soldier fic I, like everyone else in the universe, have been having many Bucky thoughts.
1. The general assumption in fic seems to be that as soon as Bucky realized he was actually Bucky, he shucked off years of brainwashing and was left mostly with overwhelming guilt, anger issues, and the instincts of a feral cat.
But it would be really interesting if he doesn't shuck it off that quickly - if, for instance, once he starts working for SHIELD (everyone seems to assume he's going to work for SHIELD) he mostly expects it to work like Hydra, just maybe with less elecroshock memory-destroying chairs. "So when am I going back into cryo?" Bucky asked, after he and Steve completed their first mission. "What do you mean I'm not going back into cryo? That seems awfully wasteful."
And Steve died a little inside as he tried to explain that no, SHIELD doesn't put its agents in cryo between missions, and no really Bucky, it's not because we don't value your skill set properly. We do! Really! Even if we never tell you that your work is a gift to humanity.
It's like people raised in really restrictive environments, religious cults or whatever: even if they leave the fold and consciously reject those believes, that doesn't mean they've rooted all those unconscious assumptions about how the world works out of their heads. Or, actually, I think anyone who has decided to make a conscious effort to fight racism or sexism or so forth has probably experienced this: it's easier to change your conscious beliefs than your underlying assumptions.
2. Speaking of "your work is a gift to humanity" - and I love that scene, by the way, because Pierce gives this spiel about how the asset's work is a gift to humanity and shaped the century and is creating freedom for everyone blah blah blah, and Bucky listens and at the end of it he's like... But this isn't even slightly related to my question about the man on the bridge... Because Bucky is brainwashed, not stupid: he's observant enough to notice that Pierce didn't actually answer his question, just gave him a puff piece to distract him.
Anyway. The common assumption seems to be that once Bucky finds out he was brainwashed, he's going to feel super guilty about all those assassinations. But maybe not. Maybe he thinks some of them were unnecessary but some of those assassinations, goddamnit, really were gifts to humanity, and nothing Steve says is going to take that away from him!
After all, if he decides that all the assassinations were just wrong, that means that all his suffering and pain were pointless. It might be less painful to believe that some good came out of it.
I also think this would set up an interesting conflict, where Steve is inclined to see current Bucky as essentially a broken version of the old Bucky, and Bucky gives him a lot of push-back on that because, well, look at all I've accomplished! Fuck you, Steve, just because I'm not the same person you knew doesn't mean I'm nothing but the empty traumatized hull of your best friend. I've been doing things for the last seventy years! Can't say the same for you, glacier boy.
Not that he's totally ungrateful, mind. Just resentful at the same time. The world was a lot simpler when Pierce assured him that his work was a gift to humanity whenever he got confused.
3. Paranoia! I want so much more paranoia, you guys. Paranoia from all sides!
Sure, Bucky saved Steve's life, but then he just up and disappeared and who knows where he's been for the past few days/weeks/months before he turns himself in or Steve finds him or whatever. Going back to his Hydra handlers? Being recaptured, re-brainwashed, and sent to SHIELD as a Hydra spy? "You have to accept that possibility," Agent Coulson told Steve.
"But - !" Steve protested. "After what they did to him - !"
"If you can't," said Agent Coulson, "you're really too emotionally compromised to look after him. Because you have to keep an eye out for signs that he might be in contact with Hydra. We can't have them infiltrating us again."
And Steve is tormented, TORMENTED by the fact that he has to spy on Bucky, but when Bucky finally finds out he is all, "THANK GOD you guys are actually putting some effort into counterintelligence this time around, I don't want to wake up some day and discover that I am working for Hydra again because you fuckers couldn't be bothered to do your due diligence. Not that I would be waking up. The first thing they would do is stick both of us in cryo. TRUST NO ONE. CONSTANT VIGILANCE."
I kind of expect that Bucky would be at least as paranoid as Nick Fury. I'm not sure it counts as paranoid once you've realized that, no really, everyone you knew really was lying to you all the time about everything. With the aid of a memory-erasing chair, to boot.
Given that history, I think talking honestly to a therapist would be near the end of a very long process of healing. Because for a long time, being asked to discuss weaknesses, fears, and painful memories is just going to sound like, "Please hand us all your vulnerable points on a silver platter so we can use them again you."
Especially if the therapist is SHIELD connected. Especially given how Hydra-infested SHIELD was in the first place. Oh sure, you think you've caught all the Hydra agents, but... TRUST NO ONE.
***
I actually have some other thoughts, largely of the "Time to get my Soviet history geek on!" variety (I'm sure that if anyone ever acquainted Stalin with the idea of a brainwashed amnesiac super-assassin, Stalin would have responded by demanding a whole battalion of them, and possibly summoning the already existent one to shoot vodka glasses off Politburo members' heads), but this has become mammothly long so I'll stop.
1. The general assumption in fic seems to be that as soon as Bucky realized he was actually Bucky, he shucked off years of brainwashing and was left mostly with overwhelming guilt, anger issues, and the instincts of a feral cat.
But it would be really interesting if he doesn't shuck it off that quickly - if, for instance, once he starts working for SHIELD (everyone seems to assume he's going to work for SHIELD) he mostly expects it to work like Hydra, just maybe with less elecroshock memory-destroying chairs. "So when am I going back into cryo?" Bucky asked, after he and Steve completed their first mission. "What do you mean I'm not going back into cryo? That seems awfully wasteful."
And Steve died a little inside as he tried to explain that no, SHIELD doesn't put its agents in cryo between missions, and no really Bucky, it's not because we don't value your skill set properly. We do! Really! Even if we never tell you that your work is a gift to humanity.
It's like people raised in really restrictive environments, religious cults or whatever: even if they leave the fold and consciously reject those believes, that doesn't mean they've rooted all those unconscious assumptions about how the world works out of their heads. Or, actually, I think anyone who has decided to make a conscious effort to fight racism or sexism or so forth has probably experienced this: it's easier to change your conscious beliefs than your underlying assumptions.
2. Speaking of "your work is a gift to humanity" - and I love that scene, by the way, because Pierce gives this spiel about how the asset's work is a gift to humanity and shaped the century and is creating freedom for everyone blah blah blah, and Bucky listens and at the end of it he's like... But this isn't even slightly related to my question about the man on the bridge... Because Bucky is brainwashed, not stupid: he's observant enough to notice that Pierce didn't actually answer his question, just gave him a puff piece to distract him.
Anyway. The common assumption seems to be that once Bucky finds out he was brainwashed, he's going to feel super guilty about all those assassinations. But maybe not. Maybe he thinks some of them were unnecessary but some of those assassinations, goddamnit, really were gifts to humanity, and nothing Steve says is going to take that away from him!
After all, if he decides that all the assassinations were just wrong, that means that all his suffering and pain were pointless. It might be less painful to believe that some good came out of it.
I also think this would set up an interesting conflict, where Steve is inclined to see current Bucky as essentially a broken version of the old Bucky, and Bucky gives him a lot of push-back on that because, well, look at all I've accomplished! Fuck you, Steve, just because I'm not the same person you knew doesn't mean I'm nothing but the empty traumatized hull of your best friend. I've been doing things for the last seventy years! Can't say the same for you, glacier boy.
Not that he's totally ungrateful, mind. Just resentful at the same time. The world was a lot simpler when Pierce assured him that his work was a gift to humanity whenever he got confused.
3. Paranoia! I want so much more paranoia, you guys. Paranoia from all sides!
Sure, Bucky saved Steve's life, but then he just up and disappeared and who knows where he's been for the past few days/weeks/months before he turns himself in or Steve finds him or whatever. Going back to his Hydra handlers? Being recaptured, re-brainwashed, and sent to SHIELD as a Hydra spy? "You have to accept that possibility," Agent Coulson told Steve.
"But - !" Steve protested. "After what they did to him - !"
"If you can't," said Agent Coulson, "you're really too emotionally compromised to look after him. Because you have to keep an eye out for signs that he might be in contact with Hydra. We can't have them infiltrating us again."
And Steve is tormented, TORMENTED by the fact that he has to spy on Bucky, but when Bucky finally finds out he is all, "THANK GOD you guys are actually putting some effort into counterintelligence this time around, I don't want to wake up some day and discover that I am working for Hydra again because you fuckers couldn't be bothered to do your due diligence. Not that I would be waking up. The first thing they would do is stick both of us in cryo. TRUST NO ONE. CONSTANT VIGILANCE."
I kind of expect that Bucky would be at least as paranoid as Nick Fury. I'm not sure it counts as paranoid once you've realized that, no really, everyone you knew really was lying to you all the time about everything. With the aid of a memory-erasing chair, to boot.
Given that history, I think talking honestly to a therapist would be near the end of a very long process of healing. Because for a long time, being asked to discuss weaknesses, fears, and painful memories is just going to sound like, "Please hand us all your vulnerable points on a silver platter so we can use them again you."
Especially if the therapist is SHIELD connected. Especially given how Hydra-infested SHIELD was in the first place. Oh sure, you think you've caught all the Hydra agents, but... TRUST NO ONE.
***
I actually have some other thoughts, largely of the "Time to get my Soviet history geek on!" variety (I'm sure that if anyone ever acquainted Stalin with the idea of a brainwashed amnesiac super-assassin, Stalin would have responded by demanding a whole battalion of them, and possibly summoning the already existent one to shoot vodka glasses off Politburo members' heads), but this has become mammothly long so I'll stop.
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no subject
Date: 2014-06-29 11:06 pm (UTC)I think anyone who has decided to make a conscious effort to fight racism or sexism or so forth has probably experienced this: it's easier to change your conscious beliefs than your underlying assumptions. --Yep, or any set of received truths that you come to no longer believe.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-29 11:13 pm (UTC)People react to trauma in lots of different ways. Stockholm Syndrome Bucky is plausible, but so is feral cat Bucky.
And sometimes people recover extremely well from those sorts of experiences - see Elizabeth Smart and some other kidnapped girls. I think it helps if one's life was not one long trauma before the Horrible Event occurred. Bucky was well into his non-traumatic (well, I guess other than combat) life before he was brainwashed, so he should have something to fall back on.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-30 10:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-30 06:56 am (UTC)SO TRUE.
no subject
Date: 2014-06-30 10:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-06-30 09:30 am (UTC)(The skipping of point 3 bothered me a lot too, enough that I wrote a fic about it thus setting off my apparently unstoppable slide into MCU. And now I'm stuck here and can't get out. Anyway!)
no subject
Date: 2014-06-30 10:08 am (UTC)Which fic did you write about point 3?
no subject
Date: 2014-06-30 10:29 am (UTC)ANYWAY.
This is my one. And these are some other stories that I thought did interesting/atypical-for-this-fandom things with mindwipes, memory loss and false memories:
World of Our Making
clean up that blood all over your paws
Who You Were Then/Who You Are Now
happy is what happens when your dreams come true
Reflex Memories
Look into my eyes and tell me if I'm real
no subject
Date: 2014-06-30 08:41 pm (UTC)The Soviet Union and China kind of hated each other, so probably not with the outsourcing? But I bet Stalin couldn't resist showing the Winter Soldier off when Mao came to visit. Partly because LOOK AT MY NEW TOY and also as a warning.
Probably he didn't have the Winter Soldier early enough to show him to Churchill and Truman at Yalta, though.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-01 02:29 am (UTC)I really hope you'll write some of these ideas. NO PRESSURE. But it would be cool. :)
no subject
Date: 2014-07-01 04:45 pm (UTC)