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Sometimes (most of the time, even) Winter Soldier is just a happy fluffy fandom thing that I can enjoy and like the characters a great deal and tolerate other people's *feels* on tumblr with a sort of fond indulgence, but then I'll actually rewatch the damn movie or even just remember a certain scene or go over the implications of something (usually pertaining to Bucky because that is where all of the Fridge Horror comes from) and then I'll end up literally shaking under a blanket, unable to process past the bank vault scene, and all that it implies.
Imagine that fandom, or fiction really (fandom just acts as a sort of additive that stretches the recipe out longer) is sort of like a wood varnish for the brain. It keeps me sane by painting layer after layer of beautiful unreality over me, and gives me filters for dealing with the constant, unending slow apocalypse that is living as a sentient creature on this planet, in this universe. And most of the time, ninety-nine percent of the time, it does its job magnificently.
But that one percent of the time, fiction stops being wood varnish and is instead fucking turpentine.
Sometimes a story short-circuits the wrong wire in my head, creates a reaction when up against a certain song or something else, and flays me alive.
In this case, because a war that was already hell without the help of comic book melodramatics was made into a hell unimaginable times worse, (and that had the benefit of writing and acting decent enough to make it riveting and not a terrible cheap fake) and because James Barnes was that dedicated, that suicidally (perhaps intentionally) loyal to Steve Rogers, he went from all charm confident ladies' man, beater of bullies and excited for the future, to cut down and ground up and exhausted by war and experimentation, to functionally dead or much worse off.
And outside of the exact details of method, that is not at all out of the realm of possibility.
Humans are shit. We are awful to each other without cause but our own amusement, and we as a species have been actively or inactively been trying to destroy every other human who isn't Me/Us throughout the history of our existence. We are, in fact, capable of all kinds of violence and horror and we as a species don't care. We can't. It takes a hell of a lot to break through the necessary callousness to make people feel for other people at all, and then we find that actually? trying to feel for all of the people in the world and all the horror everyone else faces and process all of that will. drive. us. mad. So we have to put the barriers up.
Thus fiction, until one piece of fiction or another happens to be too honest with its subject matter and the whole agonizing ritual starts over again.
I adore this movie. It doesn't make me happy.
I am also up at stupid 'o clock again, so this is what I write.
Imagine that fandom, or fiction really (fandom just acts as a sort of additive that stretches the recipe out longer) is sort of like a wood varnish for the brain. It keeps me sane by painting layer after layer of beautiful unreality over me, and gives me filters for dealing with the constant, unending slow apocalypse that is living as a sentient creature on this planet, in this universe. And most of the time, ninety-nine percent of the time, it does its job magnificently.
But that one percent of the time, fiction stops being wood varnish and is instead fucking turpentine.
Sometimes a story short-circuits the wrong wire in my head, creates a reaction when up against a certain song or something else, and flays me alive.
In this case, because a war that was already hell without the help of comic book melodramatics was made into a hell unimaginable times worse, (and that had the benefit of writing and acting decent enough to make it riveting and not a terrible cheap fake) and because James Barnes was that dedicated, that suicidally (perhaps intentionally) loyal to Steve Rogers, he went from all charm confident ladies' man, beater of bullies and excited for the future, to cut down and ground up and exhausted by war and experimentation, to functionally dead or much worse off.
And outside of the exact details of method, that is not at all out of the realm of possibility.
Humans are shit. We are awful to each other without cause but our own amusement, and we as a species have been actively or inactively been trying to destroy every other human who isn't Me/Us throughout the history of our existence. We are, in fact, capable of all kinds of violence and horror and we as a species don't care. We can't. It takes a hell of a lot to break through the necessary callousness to make people feel for other people at all, and then we find that actually? trying to feel for all of the people in the world and all the horror everyone else faces and process all of that will. drive. us. mad. So we have to put the barriers up.
Thus fiction, until one piece of fiction or another happens to be too honest with its subject matter and the whole agonizing ritual starts over again.
I adore this movie. It doesn't make me happy.
I am also up at stupid 'o clock again, so this is what I write.
