>> Yay, progress! Obviously, it's going to take time and effort (and figuring out the problem with the arm's power source) to get things completely back to normal, but at least Tony and Bucky are both aware of the issues they need to work on now. <<
Yes. More of this will unfold throughout this story. Some of it extends later in the series.
>> Hey, us clumsy people are talented like that! A few years ago, I broke my ankle by...walking. On smooth, dry pavement. Wearing sneakers. <<
Wow. That's impressive.
>> I'm sure glad Phil wasn't around to write me up for it! <<
My suspicion is that it wasn't a purely blameless accident -- that she was either ignoring a warning, or horsing around in some fashion, which people sometimes do while gossiping around a water cooler.
As opposed to Clint balancing a bucket of water over a door or shooting people with rubber bands from the air vents.
>> How sick was your kid!Steve? <<
Moderately. Canon establishes that he has asthma and some unspecified bunch of other problems enough to disqualify him from the military. It's fairly common for allergies and asthma to be worse in childhood and get somewhat better with age. So I figure that Steve was more delicate the younger he was, and gained a modest amount of toughness growing up. He would also have learned how to avoid triggering some problems.
>> 'Cause he survived bullying (as you noted), and also U.S. Army bootcamp. (I know bootcamp was later, of course; I'm just noting another physically-dificult thing Steve overcame despite his illnesses.) <<
Steve had Bucky to run off the bullies, not every time, but often enough to piss him off and help keep him alive. He had about two weeks of boot camp, not the whole training he was owed; and he barely made it even that far. We can count those points as his maximum adult capacity pre-Serum. As a child his tolerances would necessarily have been lower, although people vary as to how much lower they estimate that to be.
>> It'd take one hell of a beating to kill a kid who wasn't at Death's door to start out, <<
Not really. You can kill an infant or toddler just by shaking him, not even all that hard. Older children also die from abuse. Head injuries very easily get out of hand, although that's not the sort of thing I'm positing as the problem here.
Furthermore, consider that Steve was never healthy. He got by. He did that by using most of his physical energy and his incredible will just to stay alive. That doesn't leave much for fault tolerance in the face of additional illness or injury. He survived by luck, stubbornness, and what help people could give him; that doesn't mean he never came close to dying anyhow.
>> and since you've established that Steve had a pretty decent parent/caregiver experience, I assume that kind of outright abuse is off the table. <<
There's a lot that was considered discipline then, that would be considered outright abuse now. Hence the problem Bucky is having as he tries to bridge that 70-year gap.
>> I'm just having trouble imagining the kinda-weak-and-prone-to-illness-but-still-scrappy-and-not-letting-anything-slow-him-down kid I pictured actually dying from a "typical" spanking/paddling/switching/whatever. <<
In this case it depends on what and where, more than the force alone. I go into some detail on this in a later chapter when Phil and Steve are talking about discipline vs. abuse.
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dancing_serpent
Thoughts
Date: 2013-10-14 06:36 am (UTC)Yes. More of this will unfold throughout this story. Some of it extends later in the series.
>> Hey, us clumsy people are talented like that! A few years ago, I broke my ankle by...walking. On smooth, dry pavement. Wearing sneakers. <<
Wow. That's impressive.
>> I'm sure glad Phil wasn't around to write me up for it! <<
My suspicion is that it wasn't a purely blameless accident -- that she was either ignoring a warning, or horsing around in some fashion, which people sometimes do while gossiping around a water cooler.
As opposed to Clint balancing a bucket of water over a door or shooting people with rubber bands from the air vents.
>> How sick was your kid!Steve? <<
Moderately. Canon establishes that he has asthma and some unspecified bunch of other problems enough to disqualify him from the military. It's fairly common for allergies and asthma to be worse in childhood and get somewhat better with age. So I figure that Steve was more delicate the younger he was, and gained a modest amount of toughness growing up. He would also have learned how to avoid triggering some problems.
>> 'Cause he survived bullying (as you noted), and also U.S. Army bootcamp. (I know bootcamp was later, of course; I'm just noting another physically-dificult thing Steve overcame despite his illnesses.) <<
Steve had Bucky to run off the bullies, not every time, but often enough to piss him off and help keep him alive. He had about two weeks of boot camp, not the whole training he was owed; and he barely made it even that far. We can count those points as his maximum adult capacity pre-Serum. As a child his tolerances would necessarily have been lower, although people vary as to how much lower they estimate that to be.
>> It'd take one hell of a beating to kill a kid who wasn't at Death's door to start out, <<
Not really. You can kill an infant or toddler just by shaking him, not even all that hard. Older children also die from abuse. Head injuries very easily get out of hand, although that's not the sort of thing I'm positing as the problem here.
Furthermore, consider that Steve was never healthy. He got by. He did that by using most of his physical energy and his incredible will just to stay alive. That doesn't leave much for fault tolerance in the face of additional illness or injury. He survived by luck, stubbornness, and what help people could give him; that doesn't mean he never came close to dying anyhow.
>> and since you've established that Steve had a pretty decent parent/caregiver experience, I assume that kind of outright abuse is off the table. <<
There's a lot that was considered discipline then, that would be considered outright abuse now. Hence the problem Bucky is having as he tries to bridge that 70-year gap.
>> I'm just having trouble imagining the kinda-weak-and-prone-to-illness-but-still-scrappy-and-not-letting-anything-slow-him-down kid I pictured actually dying from a "typical" spanking/paddling/switching/whatever. <<
In this case it depends on what and where, more than the force alone. I go into some detail on this in a later chapter when Phil and Steve are talking about discipline vs. abuse.