SUBJECT SHOULD BE IN "APPLICATION: James Buchanan Barnes (MCU)" FORMAT
OOC
Handle: Jamie
Contact: natalia_vdova#0150 @ discord, jamiewinters @ dw
Over 18? Yepp.
Characters Played: None currently.
THE CHARACTER
Character Name: James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes
Series: MCU
Canon Point: Circa the confrontation in Siberia.
Character Age: 99. Physically late-20s/early-30s.
Background: Wiki LinkPersonality: "Who is Bucky Barnes?" It's a question that Bucky himself seems to struggle with, since ever so aptly asking a similar question of Steve on a road in DC. The Hellicarriers crash, he pulls Steve Rogers out of the water. Then what?
Two years later, Bucky Barnes is a man in recovery. He's trying to figure out who he is: neither the Winter Soldier, nor the man he saw in uniform at the Smithsonian, but something that is both and neither. He's still working through it, but we see him clearly making an effort at recovery even if he's not completely sure what it's supposed to look like. He puts himself into social situations, goes shopping at the market, he's settled down and has an apartment of his own, where he seems to be attempting to build some kind of stability, until Zemo sends everything crashing down around him.
One of the more interesting things is that he both seems to want to avoid conflict if possible, but is also willing to fight for his survival. Not only does he "not do that anymore", but his whole interest when he's being pursued by Black Panther is clearly to get away. Even the bag he grabs from under the floorboards isn't a soldiers' stash of guns and passports, but notebooks he's filled with the things that he remembers, out of a desperate fear that he could lose it all again. His memory isn't perfect, but he does have pieces of it, and those pieces are the most important thing to him. It was pretty clearly the whole reason he went back to his apartment in the first place – the only thing that mattered enough to take with him. However, I do believe that his memory is still painfully fractured- while he tells Tony that he "remembers them all" that seems to be more of a ploy to say whatever it takes to make Tony stop his attack, than any sort of accurate assessment. He clearly remembers enough to be haunted and guilty about what he was, what he's done, but I don't think he is aware of everyone he's ever killed, but those he does are more than enough to haunt his nightmares.
Despite that, he is willing to fight. And that's interesting when taken in contrast to some of Bucky's darker moments, such as when Steve tells him that there are men coming to kill him, Bucky comments that it's "smart", and later expresses doubt about being worth the trouble he's caused. And so I think it is important to note the fact that he is willing to fight for his survival. He might have an occasionally bleak outlook, but he has not given up, and he wants the opportunity to work through things. But, that's also not the only thing he's willing to fight for: he also fights to support Steve.
He is there during the airport fight which isn't just about defending Bucky, but also ties into the guilt, and the trauma of what he was, and the things he was made to do, with the idea of weaponizing the other Winter Soldiers. It also ties into his loyalty to Steve, and his desire to protect his friend. We also see him protect Sam when fighting Spiderman, and the way he seems worried about Natasha when she tells them to leave as she attacks T'Challa. Damaged as he might be, Bucky still very much cares about people. Steve is clearly at the top of that list, but Bucky doesn't seem to be entirely closed off to others, despite the situation he finds himself in. And while Steve might be the person he's closest and most at ease with, that relationship is not the same as it was. There's the playful way they talk about their outing to Coney Island, but the tenor has changed from the easy jerk / punk days from before the war.
In this vein, while he seems to be still processing how to interact with people, resulting in some awkward interactions, it's not the entirety of his range. We see humor as he recounts how Steve used to wear newspapers in his shoes, and he grins as he watches the man that is still in some ways his best-friend kiss the girl he likes. We see his irritation with Sam as the other man refuses to move his seat up, which is nice in part because it is a very humanizing sort of irritation – it makes for stark contrast to the frustration of the Winter Soldier when Natasha shot out his goggles on the bridge in DC.
The theme of recovery also seems to be something that hasn't just been important to Bucky over the last couple years, but was something he tried to chase even when under HYDRA control. Such as how adamant he is about how he knew the man on the bridge. He doesn't remember who Steve is at this point, but he knows that it's important. Even the methods they used to control Bucky speak to a subject that would resist if given the chance. They constantly kept his mind clean of any distractions, including prior missions, and they kept him in cryo except when they needed him. His goggles almost seemed like blinders, and his mask like a muzzle. This was clearly not a man that could be allowed on anything but the shortest of leashes.
As important as the question of who Bucky is, there also exists the opposite question of what is the Winter Soldier, now that Bucky has started to break free of what he was made into? Pieces of him likely persist, but we really only see the Soldier when the trigger words are used. Outside of that, the persona seems to exist more in broad strokes than in specifics, such as that despite telling Steve he wasn't going to kill anyone, his attacks against the German special forces are still devastating and there are points where Steve has to pointedly save the lives of people Bucky was too careless with. He even moves differently; he's light on his feet, seeming to have a care for his body, whereas the Winter Soldier moved as if his body was just another tool.
But those trigger words still exist. Bucky can recognize them, but he can't stop the way he reacts to them, even as he very clearly tries to fight them. The fact that he does try to fight them is worth noting because of the contrast it creates to the Winter Soldier. When we see HYDRA wipe the Soldier, he is passive, even putting the bit between his own teeth despite how much he's clearly trying to hold on to what pieces of memory are resurfacing. He's been conditioned so well that he doesn't fight the tortures they visit upon him. But at the embassy, when Zemo starts reading the words, we hear Bucky's protests, we see him fighting his way out of the containment they've put him in, trying to stop what he knows is coming. Bucky might be a man caught in transition between the Winter Soldier and Sargent James Barnes of the Smithsonian exhibit, but it's made very clear what he aspires toward. Even though he is clearly aware that he can never again entirely be that man.
That idea of being unable to go back to who he was before ties into a lot of the trauma and guilt that he carries. While he clearly is aware that he wasn't in control of his actions, this doesn't seem to lessen the responsibility that he feels, such as his quiet insistence that he did those things, even if it wasn't 'him'. So Bucky is very much a man aware that there isn't a path backwards, and that the only path forward involves adaptation and trying to adjust to the world around him.
Admittedly, at the end of the film he does choose to remove himself from the world by going back into cryo, but that is a choice motivated by a refusal to hurt more people. Knowing that he can still be used by others as a weapon, that he can still have his choice and his free will taken away by a series of words coded in his head, makes it so not only can he not trust himself, but it's been proven that he can't trust the world around him.
Powers/Abilities:*
Enhanced physiology - Bucky was experimented on by Zola when he was taken as a POW. There are not immediately obvious effects to this, but whatever was done to him is enough to allow him to survive the fall from the train in the Alps. Later, after being subjected to further experimentation in his conversion to the Winter Soldier, his enhancements improve dramatically. He's strong enough to be comparable to Captain America, can outrun cars, and overall seems to have been enhanced to superhuman levels. Whether this is specifically a result of the super soldier serum is unknown, but whatever experiments were done to him were clearly modeled on attempts to replicate it.
*
Metal Arm - His metal arm is even stronger than his flesh arm, and at points we see Steve struggling to match its strength. It enables him to pull doors off cars, block bullets, and at points he literally drags his fingers against the ground to decelerate with no ill effects to the arm itself, suggesting its construction to be *very* durable. It does at a moment seem to have a strange interaction with T'Challa's ring, positing that there may be some vibranium components.
*
Combat Knowledge - As The Winter Soldier, Bucky was considered one of the best assassins in the world, a myth of the intelligence community. (His actor even claims that he was the one to kill JFK.) He has in depth familiarity with hand-to-hand combat, as well as a wide range of guns and vehicles, such as his ability to pilot a jet to get to the Insight Carrier that Steve is attempting to disarm. Combined with his physical enhancements, he is exceptionally deadly in combat. He's also highly adaptable, willing and able to use anything that happens to be in the area, whether that's tables or cinder blocks.
*
Survival/Espionage Knowledge - He was considered a ghost story, shows great ability to both blend into crowds, and to slip out of sight, was clearly known for his stealth and his ability to evade detection. He speaks multiple languages (at least English, Russian and Romanian fluently, and likely others). He was HYDRA's secret weapon as the Winter Soldier, used to guide history to their design. He doesn't seem to be a spy in the sense of long-term infiltration and information gathering, but he seems to be very familiar with the tactics, even if he was most commonly used to put a bullet where HYDRA needed it. He was also involved in training the second group of Winter Soldiers, who he describes as being capable of taking down a whole country in one night. He's also clearly accustomed to surviving in difficult situations and climates.
Power Nerfs (if applicable): None.
Inventory: The clothes he was wearing and his combat knife.
Incentives: Removing the trigger words from his head!! Also possibly making it so that he can't be mind controlled?
SAMPLES
TDM Toplevel![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
natalia_vdova / natalia_vdova#0150 @ Discord / PM
