#maskfic meta

[praximeter]

Not sure of you're planning to go into this at all in Maskfic, but I'm really intrigued by the reasoning behind the different drugs Hydra gave to Bucky. What was the anti psychotic for? And why would they want to castrate him?

Hey nonnie! Actually just chatted with somebody about the haloperidol/Haldol right here.

I won’t probably go into all the headcanon I’ve got on tap regarding HYDRA’s wide and varied drug regimens for the Soldier – that’ll have to wait for the next few fics in my TNW series. That said, my headcanon for him -- alluded to in the description of his escape attempt as well as all the guns pointed on him when he was removed from cryo -- is that the Winter Soldier is more akin to a barely controlled attack dog than a mindless automaton.

He’s a guy who has only been able to express himself through violence, anger, fear, and pain for decades at a time. He’s treated horribly (by the Americans at least) and no matter how he behaves, he gets wiped. So I view him as a highly violent and aggressive dude. The chemical castration, the benzos, etc. -- it’s all meant to try and make him easier to handle, and less prone to violent outbursts. 

[praximeter]

I'm guessing Hydra gave Bucky haloperidol because it's used to reduce aggression/desire to hurt themselves/others. Silly Steve, thinking it's for clarity of thought.

Basically, yes! I headcanon pretty hard that HYDRA threw mud at the wall to see what sticks when it comes to controlling/managing the Winter Soldier. It’s very possible that maskfic!Bucky – who is unable to express himself – might have had some kind of fit or violent outburst at some point that might have appeared to be some sort of psychotic episode. Maybe he experienced a traumatic flashback and it appeared like he was experiencing a hallucination. Maybe the technicians tried a couple of drugs on him, and maybe for one reason or another Haldol seemed to work in combination with the rest of the pharmacy they were pumping into him. Boom, now it’s a part of the regimen.

OR, possibly – knowing how many subcutaneous drug delivery devices were implanted into him – there’s also the chance that the haloperidol in his system was just a leftover experiment somebody tried and didn’t bother stopping. There are a lot of sad ways to play it, frankly, and I don’t think it’s going to come up again in maskfic but I like noodling about it! 

Thanks for writing in, nonnie! 

[praximeter]

So. Your maskfic. I've been working up to what I've wanted to say for a couple of chapters now - you write like you really respect Bruce as a character, and I really appreciate that because many authors only cast him to fit their plot or use him as a passive bystander. You treat him as more than just a host for Hulk, and I adore that. However. That being said. You smacked me over the head with these last two chapters back-to-back and I'm almost ready to take it all back. So, thanks. I hate it.

Bahaha – thank you very much for your comments on Bruce. I actually find him the most difficult character to nail down, as I feel like what we’ve seen of him in the films is very reductive in one direction or the other. In the case of maskfic, it was important to me to involve Bruce because of the dynamic in play between the world’s three super soldiers: Steve, the Soldier, and Bruce. I found that to be a very interesting dynamic, and of course this little nugget as well:

[content warning: references to torture]

“He looked at ‘em, the films I mean, for about two seconds.” Tony lifted his shoulder in a half-hearted shrug, and gave Steve a smile that was all teeth and utterly humorless. “Almost a full Code Green.”

Steve closed his eyes. “The evidence of torture…?” JARVIS had walked them through it, later, shown them the areas of accelerated bone growth, the odd precision of those healed over breaks—

“No. He’d seen them before.”

Steve blinked. Before he could open his mouth, Tony bowled him over with a torrent of words. “Not all of them. Not the arm, not the—implants. Nothing identifiable, like the replaced ribs. None of that. But photographs of cell regrowth over time, after—injuries, films showing bone density, that kind of thing, yes. He’d seen it before. Old scans, data, research notes, all of it was part of a docket of research materials he got access to when he won the grant from the MRMC. The, uh, the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.”

It took Steve a second before the pieces clicked. He chest went cold. “The serum. His research on the serum.”

“Bingo.” Tony over-enunciated and drew out the word, and then hesitated briefly. “They told him—they told him the materials were from the 40s. They told him it was you.”

So yeah, I am way more interested in Bruce than I am the Hulk, because I think his perspective on somebody in the Soldier’s situation is going to be unique.

As for the last two chapters – 😈😈😈 – glad you “hate” it. Things are really ramping up!

Thank you for writing in!!! ❤️

[praximeter]

Stated that there won't be a sequel, do you think Bucky went under trial (for his "crimes" - mind the quotes) in the maskfic universe? And what about the TNW universe?

Not answering anything about TNW -- I still gotta write the sequel!!! -- but I will answer for maskfic. The answer is no! The reality is that they have a great deal of proof and documentary evidence of facts which would halt a trial from moving forward: the obvious false imprisonment, the video evidence of electroshock lobotomy, bloodwork showing involuntary intoxication, plus the visceral reality that a person with a mask nailed to his face and deliberately brain damaged so as to prevent him from communicating is not especially likely to meet the minimum threshold for mens rea or compos mentis. No prosecutor would dare to bring that case to trial.

There’s also the fact that nobody knows the identity of the Winter Soldier outside of a very select few: the Avengers, of course, and Bucky’s medical staff. So long as the arm is hidden from view, there’s really nothing to connect Bucky’s face with the actions of the Winter Soldier. So I think one of the decisions that would need to be made is -- does Bucky ever come forward? Does he decide to go, ‘hey I’m alive?’ or does he live in hiding? Personally I think he deserves a nice long quiet life on the #gayfarm2k18″ before going through the rigamarole of public scrutiny and the media circus sure to follow.

[praximeter]

Are any of Bucky's siblings or their descendants still around in the Mask Fic 'Verse? Asking for a friend who would *definitely* cry at the prospect of that. A friend. A very weak friend.

Hmmmmmmmmm.

Bucky has two surviving younger sisters: Eugenia (92), whom he (and everyone else) calls Jeanie; and Beatrice (85), naturally called Trixie. Buck’s survival / existence as the Winter Soldier is a very closely guarded secret -- by the time the epilogue takes place, they have not been told about him. 😱

[praximeter]

i'm assuming that hydra mainly chucked a ton of medication at bucky blindly. anti-psychotic? yes. castrate him? uuuuhhhhhhh why not. posion apple? yes this will Do

Honestly, that’s my thought. I figure: they throw enough mud at the wall, eventually some of it will stick! I think of them as pragmatic and goal-oriented combined with the fact that the Winter Soldier program has been operating continuously for decades. The techs, staff, physicians, scientists -- you know many have moved on to other jobs? Retired? Gotten promoted? The number of people involved in managing the program has to have been astronomical. I view Bucky’s body as like, a building built in the 50s that has been added on to and remodeled a dozen times -- nobody has the plans for every room or stairwell or mechanical room. They’re just going along making it work.