Thought; Is Marvel and Disney trying to buy in Steve Rogers into a valiant service, soldier makes the man, war for justice type?
Like does this have any right place in his roots, which was pro war, pro USA, pro change weakness to become ideal origin.
But it also clashes with out of sync, post-war fallout, serum and war didn’t make the man part.
Which is more popular? Where do we wanna take it?
I keep thinking, it’s soon to be Nov 11, and I see those facebook posts about honor the soldiers and they give you your freedom to live basically, you owe respect. Seriously one about lording it over children that their right to a desk in school is due to the troops wtf! And posts of locals who have served, as if the act itself is valorous, but none of the personal reasons or actions, none of the experience or history or lesson and worldview...and I’m not celebratory.
I don’t wanna celebrate the Jack Nicholson’s of A Few Good Men mindset here. My freedom is maybe naively not given by a defender of my country but of my rights as a person and our communal responsibility to choose defending ourselves and others, which can come for all of us in forms outside war and country.
The idea of owing another or a group or a country based on ideals or location or what have you, owing your life’s worth...it feels wrong. Giving your life, giving service, is a choice and/or need but should not be a requirement to worth?
Okay so I was rewatching Cap 1 & 2 today and I noticed something. In the second one, while threatening Sitwell on the building, Sitwell says something along the lines of Cap not being able to throw someone off a building -- as if he’s one of the those heroes who can’t kill.
We see Steve kill several people in TWS, including throwing one guy off the boat in the mission to save Sitwell. And lord only knows how many he killed in TFA (there were a few fairly gruesome ones!) So that got me thinking, how much of Steve’s actions got whitewashed?
In the museum, it focuses on how he saved people again and again. Do the history book assume the comics are accurate or did they look over his records? Did the Howling Commandos jokingly start a rumor that they were the only unit to never kill anyone and that just happened to go down as the official story? Or are kids shocked to find out in AP US History that Captain America was credited with the most kills in the war?*
Does Steve learn that he’s seen as this hero who cannot kill and then use that to his advantage? All the bad guys assume that it’s the Black Widow who kills everyone and then oops, they die at the hands of the Star-Spangled Man.
Just give me all that’s written about Cap in history books.
you can be guilty and forgiven at the same time, you can be guilty and not in control of the actions which caused it, you can be guilty and not deserve the guilt, but it doesn't mean that guilt is less valid to you yes, this is about bucky barnes
...I’m thinking of an analogy of the mind being like a huge house with lots of rooms, and as you move through the rooms you’re either closing or opening certain doors. I think that’s what these programming / trigger words do to Bucky’s mind; each word closes or alternately opens a door. Each one is significant and the code isn’t complete or effective unless each word is said, and in order...
(full and potentially crack and/or incorrect analysis / meta under the cut)
So i can’t stop thinking about the list of words used to activate Bucky’s winter soldier programming. It does seem at first to be a list of random words, but i guess i just didn’t want to believe that - and after like way too much thought, i don’t believe that. I think each word that isn’t a number signifies a moment, event, or memory in Bucky’s life; the words have to be read in order, and each word either triggers or erases something in his mind/memory .I’m thinking of this analogy of the mind being like a huge house with lots of rooms, and as you move through the rooms you’re either closing or opening certain doors. I think that’s what these programming / trigger words do to Bucky’s mind. Each one is significant and the code isn’t complete or effective unless each word is said, and in order.
For reference, here’s the list of words spoken in order by Zemo (originally in Russian, so these are the english subtitles):
Longing
Rusted
Seventeen
Daybreak (* dawn)
Furnace
Nine
Benign
Homecoming (* return to the homeland)
One
Freightcar
(*there was a post that i can’t find now by someone who speaks/knows Russian who gave these alternate translations. If anyone can find that post so i can link it i’d be much obliged.)
The first thing i noticed are the numbers - seventeen, nine, one - and realized that in reverse order, they appear to reference Bucky’s year of birth: 1917. These seems pretty telling, and could definitely be the only meaning behind those three words in the list. But, then i had to wonder why, instead of just saying nineteen, the programmers who came up with this list would use one and nine separately. And why reference Bucky’s birth year in the first place? And why is it said backwards (17 last, then 9, then 1)?
Taken separately the numbers could mean other things.
Seventeen
- could be a parallel to Steve’s line about being 16 in Brooklyn. Bucky would have been 17 when Steve was 16, so maybe something significant happened to them. (Like falling in love with each other) (i mentioned this in
this post
)
Nine
- this could just reference Hydra itself. The hydra is a 9 headed beast in mythology.
One
- Bucky is the first winter soldier, so maybe that's all this means. Maybe each winter soldier has their number in their activation code.
But the backwards reading of 1917 in the list got me wondering… am i meant to try to decipher the entire list backwards, starting with freight car? If we're meant to read 1917 backwards, then maybe the numbers and their order are the code telling us how to decipher the code. :) Once i started looking at it that way, i felt like i was on to something.
Freightcar - This is kind of obvious? Bucky fell from a freightcar on the train in ca:tfa, effectively ending his life as James Barnes and, arguably, beginning his life as the winter soldier.
He was then found and captured by Russians / Zola / Hydra (all the super bad guys in one place) - Homecoming, return to the homeland (Russia).
Some words are easier to ‘decipher’ using this (potentially crack) method than others. Benign has a specific definition but what role could it play in Bucky’s memory or in his programming? Maybe a reference to the fact that he was relatively benign prior to being made into the winter soldier? Does it refer to Zola cryofreezing him right after the metal arm was surgically attached, rendering Bucky temporarily benign (not able to cause harm)? Certainly Bucky was a benign - warmhearted, kind, good natured person - but why would the winter soldier programming bring that up? If each word in the list really does references an event or memory, benign is one of the hardest ones to crack (for me anyway - i’m open to any ideas!). Saying this word to Bucky might turn off anything in him that is still benign.
The next word is Furnace, and i’m of two minds about this. Anyone who’s ever lived somewhere with cold winters can attest to the feeling of skin warming up after being exposed to low temperatures - it literally feels like you’re burning. I can imagine that if my entire body was frozen in, say, a cryotank, coming out of that would feel like being put into a furnace.
(Alternate stucky interpretation - did steve and bucky live in a shitty apartment with a broken furnace in Brooklyn? I mean… probably.)
My other strong thought is that Furnace references the machine used to wipe Bucky’s mind. He’s literally being electrocuted which, for the record, would be hot and would burn a whole fckton… like being put in a furnace, maybe?
Next up is Daybreak (dawn). At this point i’m starting to see a pattern that takes the shape of Bucky’s story after falling from the Freightcar, experiencing a Homecoming to mother Russia, being rendered Benign via cryofreeze, experiencing being in a Furnace after being removed from cryofreeze (alternately, the mind wipe machine burns like a furnace), and then waking up to Daybreak of a whole new day as less than Bucky Barnes, on the road to being the Winter Soldier now. The trigger words are like a reverse-chrono retelling of the events leading to him being 100% winter soldier.
Then there’s Rusted, and honestly your guess is as good as mine. (lol rusted fvck you, messing up my theory) I have a few ideas, none of which seem terribly plausible to me but here goes anyway. First, Bucky has a hunk of metal attached to his body so maybe literal rust is an actual concern in his life. Or maybe the term is meant figuratively, as in his skills are rusty until he is fully activated; he’s rusty since his last mission (out of practice ((kind of like i am right now with critical analysis))) requiring Hydra/his handlers to increase or correct his training. (Also, on a sadder note, his humanity is rusted, tarnished, blemished, etc.) Still, i’m not too sure why this word in particular would be in the code, if my theory that each word is associated specifically to Bucky’s experience/becoming the winter soldier has any foundation to stand on. Hmmm. I’d be interested in watching the scene again where Zemo activates Bucky’s programming to see if his metal arm reacts when Zemo says ‘rusted’.
Moving on to Longing - the saddest word in the set, and the first trigger word spoken to begin the process of activating Bucky’s programming. Specifically, longing means to have a yearning desire, and is so often used in conjunction with feelings of loss and/or nostalgia. Longing = yearning, pining. (i’m so sad lol kill me). Since this is the first word stated (and the last in our chronological journey through Bucky being made into WS) i think it’s one of the most important ones. It starts the process, so it’s got to be powerful. If we go along with my ‘the mind = a mansion with lots of rooms’ analogy, then the word Longing when spoken in Russian might just slam shut the doors to all of who Bucky was before falling from the train (the Freight car) - in other words, all his memories before the war, so many of which would involve Steve Rogers - in other /other/ words, all the things Bucky would and does long, yearn for.
Welp, i made myself sad… listen i don’t know how accurate or even plausible any of this is, but it was certainly fun to think about and i hope you enjoyed reading it. i could also have titled this post ‘when i’m sad i look for puzzles in potentially random shit and try to solve them :)))’
so i was thinking about steve’s line “rumlow said ‘bucky’ and suddenly i was a sixteen year old kid again in brooklyn” and then i thought about the fact that “seventeen” is one of the trigger words that activates the winter soldier programming in bucky
steve and bucky were born a year apart in the mcu, and steve would have been 16 when bucky was 17.
i wonder if something significant happened between them at that age
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Captain America (Movies)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Characters: Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes, Howling Commandos, Peggy Carter
Additional Tags: Humor, Skippy's List
Summary:
The Captain America: The First America version of Skippy's list - Things the men of the Howling Commandos are no longer allowed to do in the SSR.
