I am THRILLED to present this AMAZING commission I Just received by the astounding @kevinwada !!
He took the prompt of Steve painting a pinup of Bucky, post Winter Soldier and did AMAZING with it – incorporating some super fun, flirty WW2 pinup vibes and I absolutely ADORE it.
Thank you so much, Kevin, for the commission, for the awesome interpretation, and being so wonderful to work with!
No but, HYDRA, a generally covert operation goes full on overt with the attack on the causeway.
I was thinking about post-recovery Bucky trying to get back into the ‘real world’, but everyone recognises him because he can’t hide that damn arm ALL the time.
But before the causeway incident, hardly anyone would have known about the Winter Soldier. He could have spun some story about his prosthetic and people would have had to have shrugged and accepted it. But the causeway was all over the news – AND they sent him out with that arm in full view, something to remember him by. Every man and his dog has now seen that masked man bristling with knives and guns and a very distinctive metal arm.
So now they all know who he is, and that’s gonna make it so much harder to integrate back into normal society.
And I think HYDRA possibly did that on purpose, their intention was to dispose of the Asset once he’d killed that pesky Captain America and Project Insight was launched, but just in case he went rogue again, here’s something for EVERYBODY to recognise him by.
I think this is a point fanfiction authors should take note of, because this is one major difference between the comics and the movies. In my experience, post-CA:TWS fanfiction tends to fall into one of two categories:
1) The Winter Soldier is a ghost story and civilians don’t know who he is–this is true for the comics but not for MCU.
2) When Natasha leaked S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files in MCU she also leaked HYDRA’s files and somehow this means everybody knows everything the audience does about the Winter Soldier, including that he was brainwashed and/or that he’s Bucky Barnes.
However, #2 fails to take into account that there’s no way HYDRA kept all–or even a significant percentage–of its secret files on S.H.I.E.L.D. servers where anyone could stumble across them. Apart from a few S.H.I.E.L.D. mission reports, S.H.I.E.L.D. probably didn’t have any information on the Winter Soldier–they didn’t even know he was working for HYDRA (otherwise the HYDRA reveal after his first appearance wouldn’t have surprised anyone, they’d just gone “oh, the Winter Soldier is here, must be HYDRA again;” presumably, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who knew he was real believed he was Soviet). All S.H.I.E.L.D. had on the Winter Soldier was an impossibly long casualties list and a big red DO NOT ENGAGE THIS OPERATIVE stamp, and that’s what the public got with the S.H.I.E.L.D. leak.
In MCU, unlike the comics, the Winter Soldier is no longer a ghost story. Everyone has seen him on TV–there were news helicopters hovering over the causeway and people everywhere with smartphones and YouTube accounts, and you can bet that as soon as the media realised Captain America was involved every frame of every video and every pixel of every photo were endlessly scrutinised. They’d have spotted the Winter Soldier’s cybernetic arm and the red star (Fox News: “PUTIN DECLARES WAR ON US,” CNN: “COLD WAR ISN’T OVER”), and post-S.H.I.E.L.D. leak they’d instantly make the connection (Fox News: “SOVIET SUPERSOLDIER CONFIRMED FOR HYDRA TERRORIST,” CBS: “WHERE IS HE NOW? MANHUNT FOR HYDRA’S SUPER ASSASSIN,” PBS: “FBI WARNS PUBLIC: DO NOT APPROACH HYDRA SUSPECT”). Photos and descriptions of the Winter Soldier would be circulated everywhere, everyone would recognise the metal arm, and everyone would be convinced he’s still working for HYDRA and/or the Soviet Union. Cue mass panic every time someone recognises him because TERRORIST.
As for why HYDRA dispelled with the secrecy, though, I think the Winter Soldier was meant to be a distraction. First HYDRA needed to convince the World Security Council to resume the launch of Project Insight postponed by Fury, and they did this by framing Fury’s death as a shady deal gone wrong–meaning they couldn’t make his death look like an accident or natural causes, they needed to make a public display of it. Secondly, HYDRA didn’t know who Fury might have told about their impending takeover. Sending the Winter Soldier to very publicly execute the two main candidates meant 1) Steve and Natasha weren’t working 24/7 to unlock the USB drive because they were too busy not dying, and 2) anyone else Fury might’ve given the information would assume they were next and hide from the Winter Soldier rather than interfere with HYDRA’s plans. While everyone’s attention was on the Winter Soldier, HYDRA could quietly continue working towards launching the helicarriers. And once the helicarriers were in the air, HYDRA would have no further need for secrecy (killing 20 million people is about as unsubtle as you can get). HYDRA sacrificed Zola to distract Steve, and they sacrificed the Winter Soldier to distract everyone else.
lemme talk about how much i love the Winter Soldier theme again.
first: i think its basically what Buckys head sounds like. screaming, metallic sounds. that bit in the beginning – ever been somewhere dead silent and get that loud hum in your ears? it sounds like that to me. its a great way to represent how completely alone and isolated he is. the radio-static with the distorted talking, maybe its memories being completely distorted to the point he cant tell what they’re saying.
BUT this is the gorgeous part of it:
so, its been theorized that the metallic sounding scream is actually Bucky screaming as he falls from the train, but slowed down and stretched out with heavy filtering.
lemme tell you why thats got to be true. first, how beyond perfect?? its taking something thats *Bucky*, something he did while he was still himself. a very human sound, full of fear and shit. its taking that -just like Bucky- and turning it into something inhuman and metallic.
also, that even though he’s been turned into a cold, calculating killing machine, the machine is still screaming.
when you get your first look at Bucky, when he pulls the goggles off, what do you hear? the scream. you see his face a bit on the rooftop scene, but good enough as to tell its Bucky. but there we get a closeup of his eyes, and its sort of like the last time we saw him and the first since then are being tied together.
and ok, holy shit, i tried listening to it on my headphones, closed my eyes to focus…and had to open them because its just such a fucking terrifying song i got freaked xD
but think about that. you’re not suppose to know its Bucky yet. you’re suppose to be afraid of this dude, and the music seriously adds to that. but, in reality, its not the Winter Soldier thats scary, its what was done to him. the thing thats freaking you out is his terrified screams
now, ok, maybe its not that i could be wrong.
…except im not.
listen, listen! play the song. listen very carefully at the tail end of the first scream. you can hear Steve yell “Bucky!”.
and what is so bleeding brilliant is that, even though its heavily filtered too, its much less filtered than the rest. its the only thing that sounds remotely organic and human in the whole thing. basically, the one thing still human in Buckys mind is Steve.
on that note: does anyone think they know what the static/radio sounding voices are saying? i need fresh ears
anyways here the song xD (the thing im sure is Steve is about 0:25 seconds in. verrry faint gotta turn that bitch up)
Update
oh my god.
all this time, i never thought of the most obvious thing: the most distorted, unrecognizable words in Buckys mind…would be his.
@kaleenjackson figured it out. the first bit of speech around 1:20, listen a few times, and im pretty sure the words will click too “im with you till the end of the line”
of course thats in his head, if this is Bucky’s mind, and we know he recognizes it when Steve says it….what if he’s spent years trying to figure out what its saying, and then Steve says it and it clicks. The Russo’s said in the beginning of CW he doesn’t remember much, what if he doesn’t remember saying it, he realizes thats what the words he’d been trying to figure out have been.
look at his reaction with this in mind: distorted words in his head that are messed up and he cant understand what therye saying, probably getting more distorted as time went on, but always there. he knows its this on, huge important thing that he’s been trying to figure out for decades…and Steve just says it, and he’s realizing thats what the words in his head have been
this guy knows what they mean. Bucky might not remember saying them, but its this one, deep personal thing he’s been able to hold onto but never understand. if this guy knows them, he has to be telling the truth.
ily @kaleenjackson, i honestly do. this is just fantastic. i need to lay down ive worn myself out. and should go explain to my roommate why she just heard robot screaming and a bunch other terrifying shit and then ‘HOLY FUCK!!!! HO. LY. FUCK”
also on that note, i think the second bit of speech is “Sargent James Barnes”
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