The Best Thing Depression Ever Gave Me Was A Resting Bitch Face

Ok but...

Bellatrix Lestrange is so adorable in that insane murderess kinda way

Meta: Phantom Pain

I've had some requests about phantom pain and also whether Bucky would have felt it when Tony blew his arm off.

I'm...going to try and do this in as succinct and understandable way as possible, because firstly no one really understands how pain works, and secondly the biological side of it is...very dense and boring. The current consensus is that it is the intersection between biological, psychological and cognitive factors - meaning that while nerves are an important component, what goes on in your brain also makes up a huge part of it.

Starting with the biology: boiled down to the essentials, there are 3 parts to the pathway to body pain - (1) the peripheral nerve that runs from the limb to the spinal cord, (2) the cells within the spinal cord that run up to the brain, and (3) the brain itself.

Another important concept to be aware of is the "sensory homunculus" which is basically a map in the brain that corresponds to specific parts of the body.

See how huge the area for hand and arm is? This is thought to be one of the reasons why arm amputations cause more phantom pain than leg amputations. (Image from Google)

What happens after amputation, put in the most basic terms, is that suddenly there is a part of the body that the brain is no longer receiving signals from and all the nerve cells along the pathway collectively go, "WhAt hAPpenED" and try to adjust. Changes happen along all three parts of the pathway:

1) In the periphery, the nerve ends are cut during amputation, but they continue to grow abnormally, and because they're not getting normal input they start interpreting random signals as pain (e.g. light pressure, temperature).

2) Similarly, in the spinal cord (will skip the details), the net effect is that the entire pain pathway becomes more sensitive to pain.

3) In the brain, it now has an area that no longer receives input, so it tries to reuse that area for other parts of the body, except it doesn't rewire properly and makes pain worse (e.g. by confusing input to a different part of the body as painful input).

This is how things go wrong in a normal human to cause neuropathic pain, but there are 2 things that makes Bucky’s situation special.

1) Bucky being a super soldier may mean he's less likely to develop these abnormal pathways because of superior healing

2) Bucky having a high tech prosthetic arm because we know from studies: - Having meaningful sensory input reduces abnormal rewiring - Actively using a prosthesis reduces pain

Specifically, Bucky’s extraordinarily realistic arm being able to perceive at least proprioception and pressure (see my previous meta) is more likely to fool his brain into perceiving it like a real arm, hence the brain and spinal cord rewiring is less likely to become abnormal.

On the flip side, phantom pain is more common in those who have arm amputations (as opposed to leg) or those who have ongoing pain input from the limb (i.e. ongoing issues with fractures, bone healing, scarring etc). As with most types of pain, stress, anxiety, fatigue and depression exacerbate phantom pain. There's also some evidence that traumatic amputations (Bucky's case) is associated with phantom pain.

So in summary, there are good justifications for both Bucky having phantom pain and not having phantom pain. I’m leaning towards not because of him being a super soldier and the amazing bionic arm - but you would not be wrong if you wrote phantom pain into his character.

Can we just take a moment to appreciate Sebastian’s acting here? When shooting this scene he obviously has his own arm wrapped up in green tape. But see how he overbalances onto his right side because his right side is now a lot heavier than his left, and his right knee collapsing under him because he didn’t expect the sudden change in weight distribution…it’s a nice detail.

Before I launch into Bucky's sensation after Tony blasted his arm off, I want you guys to watch this:

There's a lot of similar experiments (the rubber hand illusion is the other very common one) - basically the brain is able to fool itself into thinking something else is your hand if you get a strong enough input.

Now remember again Bucky's very realistic arm - which not only visually looks like a real arm but also has sensory input with proprioception and pressure - and remember also we said the arm probably can't sense pain by itself.

So can the brain fool itself into sensing pain when it isn't getting pain input?

Turns out, yes you probably can. In this study they fooled the subjects into thinking a rubber hand was their real hand, and when a rubber finger was bent into a funny angle (as though it was broken), most people reacted with shock/withdrawal and a very small number (2 out of 120) reported feeling pain. These are very small numbers and it's obviously a very subjective experiment.

But the other thing we have to remember is that these experiments are very short, i.e. these sensations happen even after a very temporary association by the brain with a fake arm.

What happens if you've lived with the arm for decades and it feels so realistic and well-incorporated into your body, in movement, look and feel? No one knows the answer to this - but I suspect Bucky's brain would have rewired itself to include the arm in its map. I think there is a strong possibility that seeing the arm blasted off and burning would create a perception in the brain that is very similar to physical pain, even if there are no pain input from the arm.

The other thing someone previously pointed out is that Bucky's remaining metal stump is melting from the heat and metal conducts heat.

When I first read this theory I thought that was a bit of a stretch, but...there's probably a good point to it.

According to Google, titanium glows at 1200°C. It melts at 1670°C. Steel melts at a similar temperature but glows at 460°C. I'm not sure what Tony's blast actually consist of, but at minimum Bucky's arm reached about 460°C if we're talking steel, but quite possibly 1600-1700°C.

Physics is not my strong point so I'll let someone else work out exactly how much of that heat would conduct upstream into his bone implants. It looks like titanium does not conduct heat very well, but what does that mean when the temperature is in the thousands?

In summary, I think there is a strong possibility that Bucky felt pain when his arm blew off - both caused by the shock to his brain that has perceived it as his real arm for decades, and the likely conduction of heat into his body. This would explain why Bucky was completely knocked down by that blast and his only contribution after that was to get kicked in the face.

(GIF by @lost-shoe)

Love can only be found in two places: in a second hand bookstore on a rainy Sunday afternoon in fall or in the middle of summer in a cute Starbucks barista 5 minutes before they close for the night.

Poem I wrote about eating fundip like two years ago

Oh, don’t mind me, just practicing my accidental over sharing

Being a dark academic be loving learning and studying but also not studying and hyperfixating on one wikipedia page at the same time

Tbt the time I told myself I wasn’t gonna simp for men more than twice my age and then immediately fell in love with Bucky Barnes

Nothing is more in character than the fact that I’m currently drinking mountain dew out of a wine glass

So do you ever zone out so hard you question everything but know you need to be paying attention so you’re like “hey bro, now is not the time to be questioning the sanctity of humanity” or like “dude, can we not focus on how we wouldn’t be here if not for some random walking fish?”

Simple reminder that Ahsoka Tano in the Star Wars: Clone wars animated movie is the most sassy, sarcastic little shit in the entire universe and is the absolute best because of it