On villains
Let’s talk about Bucky Barnes, River Song, their decidedly similar narratives when it comes to bodily autonomy, agency and abuse, and the way fandom reacts to all that!
Both Bucky and River are forced to become ‘a weapon’ in the most horrific ways possible – Bucky is tortured and brainwashed; River was experimented on whilst in the womb and spent her childhood alone and terrified (”The spaceman’s here! It’s going to get
me! It’s going to eat me!”).
Due to the brainwashing/horrible medical abuse both suffered, both became the cold-blooded assassins that they never would have become without interference – Bucky working for HYDRA, River tasked by Madame Kovarian with killing the Doctor. Similar dehumanising language is used on both characters by their abusers –
“I made you what you are” / “[We’re] your owners.” / “We’ve been far
too thorough with your dear little head.” (Kovarian to River)“You
are to be the new face of HYDRA.” “Wipe him and start over.” (Zola and Pierce to Bucky)
When finding themselves tasked with murdering someone they realized loved them (Steve for Bucky, the Doctor for River) it shifted the mindsets of these characters enough to make them flee – Bucky disappeared into the ether; River applied for the Luna University. Slowly they started to regain agency.
Neither character can really be classified as villainous, because of all the things they did they did none of them of their free will. And yet ’Bucky’s not a villain!’ has become a meme, added to gifsets and interviews, reiterated constantly, and River…doesn’t have that. Whenever there’s a ‘Look at Moffat’s villains, all dressed the same!/all older women!/all women!’ post, despite her stint of villainy lasting less than one episode she’s right in there, alongside Kovarian, with zero context given. I’ll grant that the writing may not help at all in that regard (I agree with whoever said ‘can we take the word psychopath away from Steven Moffat’) but basically –
River and Bucky are both characters who were abused and brainwashed and had their agency ripped right from them to make them ‘villains’, but Bucky gets a meme and a hundred gifsets of his broken face and a hundred corrections on any MCU post where he’s lumped in with the likes of Loki or (worse) Pierce, and River gets…well, River usually gets a screenshot taken of the time she was wearing an outfit similar to Kovarian’s for plot reasons, has that placed alongside a screenshot of Kovarian – the woman who abused and experimented on both her and her mother – and a witty caption along the lines of ‘but all of moffat’s villains are different guyz!’ placed over her. And try as I might –
I can’t imagine anyone doing the same thing with Bucky and his abuser.