James "dumpster fire gijinka" Barnes (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
frostythehitman) wrote2017-02-14 12:57 am
frostythehitman) wrote2017-02-14 12:57 am
APP
PLAYER
YOUR NAME: Lisa
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CaptainPlanette
YOUR NAME: Lisa
18+?: yee!
CONTACT:
CHARACTER: CANON SECTION
NAME: James Buchanan Barnes, alias Bucky
AGE: Oh, god. Between Weird Comics Time (TM) and being cryogenically frozen a dozen times, my best guesstimate is....around 28-30 for physical age? And actual age is ~92 as of 2017.
CANON: Marvel Comics (616)
NAME: James Buchanan Barnes, alias Bucky
AGE: Oh, god. Between Weird Comics Time (TM) and being cryogenically frozen a dozen times, my best guesstimate is....around 28-30 for physical age? And actual age is ~92 as of 2017.
CANON: Marvel Comics (616)
CANON HISTORY: god i am so sorry for this link, it is. SO LONG. that's the comics lyfe.
CANON PERSONALITY:
Bucky is a character who lives in the shadows. I mean that literally, as a spy whose work relies on him being able to obscure himself, but also figuratively, in that he always exists in the shadows of people's legacies and expectations (including his own). Bucky's held many roles in his life, but this seems to be constant. As a child, he wanted to do right by his family--and after he lost that, he at least wanted to live up to the legacy his father left behind on base. As an Invader and Cap's partnerthat's the proper word now, we don't say sidekick anymore, he constantly felt he had to prove his worth on a team of godlike men and looked up to Cap as a moral beacon. As the Winter Soldier, his motivations centered entirely around what the USSR needed of him. As Captain America, he had a legacy to live up to the standards of the uniform set by Steve. Even as a free agent, he holds himself to his own set of expectations and responsibilities.
It's these expectations and responsibilities that help keep Bucky in check. By nature, he has always been impulsive with a bit of a hair trigger temper and a tendency to "shoot first, ask questions never." Throwing a punch is often his first instinct--it's as natural to him as breathing, even long before he ever joined the army. And without a clear goal or any orders, Bucky will always default to impulsively doing the first thing that comes to mind--which usually involves, in the words of Sam Wilson, "rushing in and getting captured". But at heart Bucky is a soldier--he performs better with a structure in place and orders. Sometimes it's as clear as "the target must be captured alive", sometimes it's as abstract as "if Cap sees me pulling stunts like this, he's going to raise hell." It's the respect he has for his friends and their inevitable disappointment that often keeps him from pulling some true Jackass level stunts.
(Within reason, of course. Because when life gives you Nazi tanks, you hijack those tanks, paint them, and bust them through the wall Kool-Aid man style, orders be damned.)
When he's operating on his own, or living life outside of some mission or crisis (rare, I know), well. That's another story. Bucky's emotions and actions are ruled by his guilt over the crimes he committed as the Winter Soldier. And most days now he'll even admit that what happened wasn't his fault--after all, he had no control over himself. But he remembers everything he did under Soviet control, and it's hard to see your own hands doing awful things over and over and remember that it wasn't really you doing them. And even so, the question of 'whose fault is it' doesn't particularly matter to the people who died by his hand. On his good days, he can live with it: it's simply a fact of his life, like any other. On his worse days, he feels like if no one else will accept blame, it might as well be him.
However, he tries not to wallow too long. He's more interested in doing something productive with his emotions, often taking vengeance on those who used him or at least preventing them from causing further harm. (Sometimes this overlaps with his tendency to default to punchy-punchy when lacking guidance--he'll just find some ex KGB scientists and thugs to beat the daylights out of for a while.) Even if what happened was not, strictly speaking, his fault, he still considers it his responsibility, and putting a stop to what he took part in is his way of atonement. In fact, he often seeks his atonement to such extremes that others consider it beyond excessive. Bucky was more than willing to go on trial for his crimes as the Winter Soldier, and just as willing to accept an indefinite prison sentence for it, even when Cap and Black Widow fought to keep Bucky the "American hero" a free man.
It does help, though, that he's got friends he can rely on for support or encouragement, too. He doesn't like talking feelings, especially not when so much of it is tied up in awful stuff he hates to remember, much less discuss, but knowing that folks like Steve, Sam, and Natasha will always support him gives him some peace. They also serve as a form of motivation, both on missions but also just in general in living life. Left to his own devices, Bucky has been known to squat in abandoned fields and start drunken bar fights in the middle of cornfield country for no damn reason. Having friends who check up on him helps him keep himself accountable for his behavior even outside of a fight.
However, Steve is a bit of an odd case. Bucky believes there's an unbridgable gap between them, in a way: Steve has never been put through the meat grinder quite like he has. Even before his Winter Soldier days, in WW2, Bucky always did the nastier, morally dubious missions on his own without Steve always knowing about them. It's not that he keeps secrets from Steve (although sometimes, he wishes he could), it's that he considers those actions to be an uglier side of him that he doesn't want his partner (and, in many ways, his idol) seeing. In the same way that he looks up to Cap as an unbreakable moral compass, he considers his own bent and easily warped--especially since he's always had a bit of hero worship for the guy. And it's largely for that reason that Bucky never wanted to take on the Cap mantle, and would have immediately relinquished it to Steve had Steve himself not pushed him into continuing.
Now, all that said, Bucky really isn't a leader. Sure, he led the New Avengers for a while, and now he's leading the Thunderbolts(good lord), but leadership is new and frankly uncomfortable territory for him. And even when he's off the grid working on his own, he's usually still usually receiving intel on where to go next. As mentioned, Bucky's a soldier--he's damn good at following orders, not issuing them.
SKILLS/ABILITIES: Also part of the comics lyfe: the skills section being stupid long and also inconsistent. whispers i'm so sorry
Okay but let's start with the skills:
Now let's move on to the arm. Bucky's left arm is mechanical and as such has its own special set of abilities. What those abilities include tends to vary from comic to comic/writer to writer (the arm can emit EMPs, but is also vulnerable to EMPs??? why this) so I'm just picking the following few that have been pretty consistent and sticking with 'em:
CANON PERSONALITY:
Bucky is a character who lives in the shadows. I mean that literally, as a spy whose work relies on him being able to obscure himself, but also figuratively, in that he always exists in the shadows of people's legacies and expectations (including his own). Bucky's held many roles in his life, but this seems to be constant. As a child, he wanted to do right by his family--and after he lost that, he at least wanted to live up to the legacy his father left behind on base. As an Invader and Cap's partner
It's these expectations and responsibilities that help keep Bucky in check. By nature, he has always been impulsive with a bit of a hair trigger temper and a tendency to "shoot first, ask questions never." Throwing a punch is often his first instinct--it's as natural to him as breathing, even long before he ever joined the army. And without a clear goal or any orders, Bucky will always default to impulsively doing the first thing that comes to mind--which usually involves, in the words of Sam Wilson, "rushing in and getting captured". But at heart Bucky is a soldier--he performs better with a structure in place and orders. Sometimes it's as clear as "the target must be captured alive", sometimes it's as abstract as "if Cap sees me pulling stunts like this, he's going to raise hell." It's the respect he has for his friends and their inevitable disappointment that often keeps him from pulling some true Jackass level stunts.
(Within reason, of course. Because when life gives you Nazi tanks, you hijack those tanks, paint them, and bust them through the wall Kool-Aid man style, orders be damned.)
When he's operating on his own, or living life outside of some mission or crisis (rare, I know), well. That's another story. Bucky's emotions and actions are ruled by his guilt over the crimes he committed as the Winter Soldier. And most days now he'll even admit that what happened wasn't his fault--after all, he had no control over himself. But he remembers everything he did under Soviet control, and it's hard to see your own hands doing awful things over and over and remember that it wasn't really you doing them. And even so, the question of 'whose fault is it' doesn't particularly matter to the people who died by his hand. On his good days, he can live with it: it's simply a fact of his life, like any other. On his worse days, he feels like if no one else will accept blame, it might as well be him.
However, he tries not to wallow too long. He's more interested in doing something productive with his emotions, often taking vengeance on those who used him or at least preventing them from causing further harm. (Sometimes this overlaps with his tendency to default to punchy-punchy when lacking guidance--he'll just find some ex KGB scientists and thugs to beat the daylights out of for a while.) Even if what happened was not, strictly speaking, his fault, he still considers it his responsibility, and putting a stop to what he took part in is his way of atonement. In fact, he often seeks his atonement to such extremes that others consider it beyond excessive. Bucky was more than willing to go on trial for his crimes as the Winter Soldier, and just as willing to accept an indefinite prison sentence for it, even when Cap and Black Widow fought to keep Bucky the "American hero" a free man.
It does help, though, that he's got friends he can rely on for support or encouragement, too. He doesn't like talking feelings, especially not when so much of it is tied up in awful stuff he hates to remember, much less discuss, but knowing that folks like Steve, Sam, and Natasha will always support him gives him some peace. They also serve as a form of motivation, both on missions but also just in general in living life. Left to his own devices, Bucky has been known to squat in abandoned fields and start drunken bar fights in the middle of cornfield country for no damn reason. Having friends who check up on him helps him keep himself accountable for his behavior even outside of a fight.
However, Steve is a bit of an odd case. Bucky believes there's an unbridgable gap between them, in a way: Steve has never been put through the meat grinder quite like he has. Even before his Winter Soldier days, in WW2, Bucky always did the nastier, morally dubious missions on his own without Steve always knowing about them. It's not that he keeps secrets from Steve (although sometimes, he wishes he could), it's that he considers those actions to be an uglier side of him that he doesn't want his partner (and, in many ways, his idol) seeing. In the same way that he looks up to Cap as an unbreakable moral compass, he considers his own bent and easily warped--especially since he's always had a bit of hero worship for the guy. And it's largely for that reason that Bucky never wanted to take on the Cap mantle, and would have immediately relinquished it to Steve had Steve himself not pushed him into continuing.
Now, all that said, Bucky really isn't a leader. Sure, he led the New Avengers for a while, and now he's leading the Thunderbolts
SKILLS/ABILITIES: Also part of the comics lyfe: the skills section being stupid long and also inconsistent. whispers i'm so sorry
Okay but let's start with the skills:
- expert marksman - he was a notorious Soviet assassin for a good 60 years, and many of those assassinations were long distance sniper shots. However, he's also skilled with handguns and basically any other type of gun you can think of, from any time period between WW2 and now.
- stealth and espionage - between the US Army and the Red Room, he's gotten considerable training in spy tactics. He's capable of sneaking into and out of areas undetected, either through sheer skill of sneaking or by going undercover and infiltrating. However, his espionage skills are generally used for assassinations and missions that require less human contact. He's not really experienced with long-term undercover missions that require skilled extraction of information from people (and I suspect he'd be pretty awful at it tbh).
- knives - he is also considerably skilled in fighting with knives in hand to hand combat as well as at a distance. He's damn accurate throwing a blade.
- overall strength and acrobatics - dude can do flips like a mofo. Okay but no seriously, he's slightly below supersoldier levels of physical performance--which is pretty good, for someone who's got no supersoldier serum in him--but is also very acrobatic when he wants to be and can pull off Olympic-level gymnastics feats as needed.
- languages - in addition to his native English, he also speaks German, French, and Russian fluently. He probably also knows Japanese and a few others maybe? The comics keep giving different numbers for how many languages he actually knows and what they are, so it's Really Unclear. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Now let's move on to the arm. Bucky's left arm is mechanical and as such has its own special set of abilities. What those abilities include tends to vary from comic to comic/writer to writer (the arm can emit EMPs, but is also vulnerable to EMPs??? why this) so I'm just picking the following few that have been pretty consistent and sticking with 'em:
- increased strength and durability - if he wasn't at supersoldier strength levels before, this arm certainly brings him up to par. If he ever needs to do any serious, lethal damage with a fist, this is the arm he'll do it with. It's strong enough that he can basically one-handed tear apart Iron Man armor if he wanted to. It also helps that the arm is made entirely out of durable metal, so it doesn't take a lot of damage.
- sensors - while he can't shield the appearance of the arm, it does have sensors in it to mask the fact that it's metal and fool any metal detectors he may come across.
- stabilization and reaction time - he's got inhumanly fast reaction time in his left arm as well as improved stabilization and aim. It makes him one of the few people on earth who can properly wield Cap's shield.
- remote control/autonomy - he can literally DETACH HIS ARM FROM ITS ARM SOCKET, and control it from a distance. It might even be acting on its own, to a limited degree. I'm serious here. This arm can scurry across a room on its five fingers, crawl up into air vents, and can even fly/propel itself to punch people from like half a military base away. This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen done with this arm and I love it. God bless Ed Brubaker for writing this in. Best power, 10/10.
CHARACTER: AU SECTION
AU NAME: James Buchanan Barnes, but known as Bucky to family friends
AU AGE: 16
PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES: He looks a hell of a lot younger, for one. For another, he's got both flesh arms. For a third, this version looks way more Hot Topic.
AU NAME: James Buchanan Barnes, but known as Bucky to family friends
AU AGE: 16
PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES: He looks a hell of a lot younger, for one. For another, he's got both flesh arms. For a third, this version looks way more Hot Topic.
AU HISTORY:(If this looks like a stupidly detailed amount of military detail to you, that's because I need it all documented here in one place or else I'm definitely gonna forget and get something wrong at some point. I don't know jack about the military and I'm trying to piece together enough knowledge here that I can scrape by something vaguely feasible.)
AU PERSONALITY: So, let's do this comparison apples to apples. While James will be receiving regains from all of the near century of his life, as outlined above, right now he's 16, so this is mostly gonna be comparing James's personality to 616 Bucky at 16.
A lot of the personality differences stem from the fact that James's dad is still around to slap him on the wrist. James is by his very nature a fighter, even in this AU that doesn't change. But where in canon his father died early on and his unchecked brawling led him straight to the front lines of WW2, James still has his dad to reel him back in. Because his dad intervenes and forces James into a more rigid structure on the football team, he's now a lot less likely to pick fights and get physical. He still WANTS to (boy does he ever), but having football as a compartmentalized outlet and his dad's disappointment as a motivator, he's gotten much more skilled at pulling back and keeping his temper in check. (It doesn't always work, of course, but it's an improvement.)
Most of the personality changes can also be attributed to a lack needing a mask. Since his father's death, Bucky very quickly had to put on a brave face and an air of nonchalant cockiness--hell, the name 'Bucky' itself is a mask. It was his way of coping with loss and, later on, the fear and insecurity that came with being a "normal kid" on a team full of literal superhumans in the middle of a battlefield. However, James has never needed to develop a mask like that and, as a result, has way less of a poker face. He's much more genuine in his expressions and actions. He feels every bit like the cocky teen on top of the world that he believes himself to be. Where Bucky used witticisms and sarcasm as a coping mechanism, James uses them genuinely.
Between his dad and the lack of any sort of 'mask', this also means he feels less shame about how emotionally open he is. That emotion used to be mostly anger, let's be real here, but he's gotten better at articulating it since getting into music, so now it's "mostly anger but also sometimes sad". He's proud to promote his band and publicly sing about the emotions in his songs (even if they are lyrically on par with songs like I'm So Sad, So Very Very Sad). And, let's be honest, he's a 16 year old in his edgelord phase, he doesn't really have any self awareness. While Bucky doesn't like to wallow in emotions, James tends to wallow much more, usually through his music. (That said, though, James is still very eager to take action on his emotion too.)
Also, James, much like teen Bucky, has a lot to prove to the world about himself. He doesn't always know what he's proving but by god, he's going to prove it. It gives James quite a bit of a competitive streak--something that really helps on the football field but in pretty much all other aspects of life makes him all the more likely to get into a fight.
James does have one thing in common with post-Winter Soldier Bucky specifically, though, and it's the angst and jaded cynicism. Of course, his angst is really more part of his edgelord phase and a sheltered notion that at his wise old ripened age of 16, he knows what the world is really like. It's nowhere near the same scale as what he's going to be slowly remembering.
- Details purely for my own backstory purposes: George Barnes enlisted in the US Army shortly after graduating high school as a private, E-1. He rose through the ranks and within two years he was an 89B ammunition specialist, E-4. He and Freddie were high school friends who later decided to get married when George got out of basic. By the time he was 23 (roughly 5 years into his 6 year enlistment), he and Freddie decided to have kids. George decided he needed a more stable career and ought to move to officer ranks.
- James was born in Louisville, Kentucky to his father George Barnes and his mother Freddie Barnes. Together, they all lived together in Kentucky while James's dad, an ammunition specialist in the army, completed a college degree at the University of Louisville through the Green to Gold Active Duty program at Fort Knox. Once he completed his degree, he became an officer, switching to a 35 military intelligence officer (second lieutenant). Once George became an officer, the family moved from Kentucky to his new post at Fort Huachuca, AZ when James was 2. A year later, James's sister Rebecca was born.
- Shortly after Rebecca turned 2, James's mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was in and out of treatment often, doing several rounds of chemo and going into remission perodically. There were periods where she was too sick to do much more than lay in bed, which is when James's dad took over the tedium of childcare between his work and did his best to keep the kids upbeat when they could clearly see their mother was sick.
- When James was eight (and Rebecca was five), the family moved to Fort Belvoir, VA for his dad's new post. A few months later, his mother died of breast cancer, despite treatment. For James, this was all a major whirlwind--he had just moved across the country for what felt like the first time, his mother had just died, and now his dad was telling him he might need to go stay with some relatives he's barely even met for a long time (as part of the family care plan he had to set up with the army following his new status as a single parent). On top of that, James's dad was trying to keep things stable at home. James was old enough to know that things were being thrown into chaos, but Rebecca was largely oblivious.
- It didn't go great. James himself was a stressed kid, with all the changes he was suddenly dealing with. While he never copped an attitude at home, he frequently talked back at school and regularly received detention for it. James's dad hoped it would wear off with time, but it did not. James's school behavior continued to land him in trouble. When he was 10, for the first time James's dad received a call from school--James had punched another student. On the tense drive home that day, James said he'd been provoked by a classmate's nasty comment.
- In March of 4th grade, the Barnes family relocated again--this time to Camp Humphreys in South Korea. The international move was stressful, especially for Rebecca, who was old enough now to feel anxious about it. James and his dad did their best to keep her cheerful there, going sightseeing and attending amusement parks when they could. But still, James continued to act out. Never at home--he was raised strict military, he could never talk back to his father like that, and he'd never do anything mean to his sister. But on base and at school, he was prone to explosive fits. The pattern of backtalk, threats, and playground fistfights continued, with James usually throwing the first hit. He began to gain a reputation amongst his dad's battalion, sometimes placing bets on What Did The Major's Son Do Now. When James broke another classmate's nose and started picking fights with soldiers who joked about his reputation, the brass began putting pressure on George Barnes to discipline his son properly. They started getting into fights at home, as James's dad began to confront more seriously what his son had been doing and how it was affecting his standing at work. At a loss, he enrolled James in counseling, hoping that it would be a more productive outlet for him. James, meanwhile, failed to see the meaning in such an exercise.
- The summer between his 6th and 7th grade years, James moved to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. He spent that summer in a boot camp, his father hoping that maybe the discipline would knock some sense into him. Thankfully, he came out of boot camp without having punched anyone (although not without incident--he did a fair amount of trash talk and nearly started a canteen incident, had it not been for a fellow camper who talked him down.) After the summer, James's dad made him promise this time that he was going to stay out of trouble, even going so far as to offer him a high end bike if he could stay out of detention or suspension for a full six months. James did try, in all honesty, but predictably, it didn't work--some Air Force kid made a snide comment about his family being Army and he decked the kid a week into the school year. James was placed back into counseling, even if it didn't do much--at least it kept him out of trouble when the school had eyes on him and when he was in the counselor's office. And even with a strict curfew, James always found a way to come home late with a fresh bruise or split lip.
- At 14, before the start of 9th grade, the Barnes family picked up and moved to Fort McCoy in Recolle. James, yet again, had to start over from scratch with a new school and a whole new set of kids he'd never met before. At this point he'd more or less resigned himself to being doomed to a fight at some point or another but was genuinely trying to stay out of it.
- At some point this year, a classmate introduced him to emo music. James fell headfirst into it and experienced An Awakening. He grew his hair out, started wearing a lot of black and band shirts, and gained an interest in playing guitar.
- His fights, as always, stayed as brief skirmishes that were more damaging to the Barnes reputation than anything else. Except for this one fight in his freshman year at a local rock show that he snuck into. He wasn't the cause of it this time, but once the first punch got thrown, all chaos broke loose and he couldn't exactly not fight back to defend himself... all in all, he got out with a fractured hand and a broken nose, after doling out a few broken noses, black eyes, and concussions himself.
- The rock show fight was the final straw. At wit's end, James's dad and a few of his friends staged an intervention. (You have not known true fear until you've been cornered by an entire squadron of army majors and their captains.) The verdict was that James would be placed on the school football team--and that they'd be keeping an eye on his attendance record to make sure he didn't skip. The team, they had reasoned, would serve as an outlet to keep him out of trouble.
- Sure enough, football worked. The brusque action of being a linebacker gave James (relative) freedom to get rough without getting in trouble. James finished out his freshman year and started on his sophomore year with minimal incidents since.
AU PERSONALITY: So, let's do this comparison apples to apples. While James will be receiving regains from all of the near century of his life, as outlined above, right now he's 16, so this is mostly gonna be comparing James's personality to 616 Bucky at 16.
A lot of the personality differences stem from the fact that James's dad is still around to slap him on the wrist. James is by his very nature a fighter, even in this AU that doesn't change. But where in canon his father died early on and his unchecked brawling led him straight to the front lines of WW2, James still has his dad to reel him back in. Because his dad intervenes and forces James into a more rigid structure on the football team, he's now a lot less likely to pick fights and get physical. He still WANTS to (boy does he ever), but having football as a compartmentalized outlet and his dad's disappointment as a motivator, he's gotten much more skilled at pulling back and keeping his temper in check. (It doesn't always work, of course, but it's an improvement.)
Most of the personality changes can also be attributed to a lack needing a mask. Since his father's death, Bucky very quickly had to put on a brave face and an air of nonchalant cockiness--hell, the name 'Bucky' itself is a mask. It was his way of coping with loss and, later on, the fear and insecurity that came with being a "normal kid" on a team full of literal superhumans in the middle of a battlefield. However, James has never needed to develop a mask like that and, as a result, has way less of a poker face. He's much more genuine in his expressions and actions. He feels every bit like the cocky teen on top of the world that he believes himself to be. Where Bucky used witticisms and sarcasm as a coping mechanism, James uses them genuinely.
Between his dad and the lack of any sort of 'mask', this also means he feels less shame about how emotionally open he is. That emotion used to be mostly anger, let's be real here, but he's gotten better at articulating it since getting into music, so now it's "mostly anger but also sometimes sad". He's proud to promote his band and publicly sing about the emotions in his songs (even if they are lyrically on par with songs like I'm So Sad, So Very Very Sad). And, let's be honest, he's a 16 year old in his edgelord phase, he doesn't really have any self awareness. While Bucky doesn't like to wallow in emotions, James tends to wallow much more, usually through his music. (That said, though, James is still very eager to take action on his emotion too.)
Also, James, much like teen Bucky, has a lot to prove to the world about himself. He doesn't always know what he's proving but by god, he's going to prove it. It gives James quite a bit of a competitive streak--something that really helps on the football field but in pretty much all other aspects of life makes him all the more likely to get into a fight.
James does have one thing in common with post-Winter Soldier Bucky specifically, though, and it's the angst and jaded cynicism. Of course, his angst is really more part of his edgelord phase and a sheltered notion that at his wise old ripened age of 16, he knows what the world is really like. It's nowhere near the same scale as what he's going to be slowly remembering.