player information
● name: Nekky
● age: 27
● contact: nekky
● other characters: NA

character information
● name: James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes
● canon: Marvel 616
● canon point: Post-"Who Will Wield The Shield?"
● age: Roughly early-30s. He was born in 1925, and "died" in early 1945, was frozen until 1954, and then was periodically frozen and thawed for varying lengths of time, making his physical age hard to pinpoint.

● (canon) background: @ Marvel Wikia

● abilities:
Bionic Arm: His left arm is bionic and fully integrated into his nervous system. It's Stark and SHIELD tech that functions just like a regular arm, with a few additions. It's super-humanly strong, compared to his real arm, and allows him to throw Captain America's shield around with accuracy and force, a difficult feat for most. It also has an EMP to knock out electronic devices, can discharge electricity, and has a sensory array that will let it and other objects through a metal detector undetected. He can also remove the arm, and it will function independently.

Combat and Espionage: Bucky is a highly trained operative with years of experience in warfare, espionage, and assassination. He knows several forms of hand to hand combat and martial arts, and he's a skilled shield-fighter. He's also skilled with many types of weapons, including firearms, explosives, and throwing knives. He's been trained in acrobatics, stealth, quiet kills, tactics, strategy, and infiltration. He can also pilot most human-made aircrafts, and Atlantean aircrafts (thanks Namor).

Peak Human Conditioning: He isn't superhuman, besides his bionic prosthetic, but his level of fitness, strength, speed, and stamina are all at Olympic athlete levels.

Multilingual: Speaks fluent English, German, Russian, and Japanese, along with a rusty smattering of French.

● strengths:
The thing about James Barnes is that he is determined to be better. He knows he isn't a good man, but he works hard to change that, to deserve his second chance in the world and make up for the terrible things he's done in the past. He's a determined man in general, and will power through a situation to do what he needs to, no matter how difficult it is. You could almost call it stubbornness. He also cares about the greater good, and will get his hands dirty so that other people don't have to. Bucky cares enough to want to spare other people the horrors he went through, making him quite altruistic. He's also very loyal to the few friends he has, and he would do anything for them, even getting himself captured by a villain to try and save his best friend's girl, for no other reason than Steve would want him to. At odds with his serious demeanor, Bucky has a soft spot, for strays, and for teenagers who need guidance. He shows this when he sits down to talk with Eli Bradley about the first Patriot, and in later canon when he takes in an alien pet. For everything he has been through and done in his life, he is a resilient man who wants to make the world better, who wants to live up to the expectations of him, who wants to be good.

● weaknesses:
Bucky's weaknesses have to do a lot with his traumas. He is reckless and impulsive, he doesn't always think things through, tactically speaking, especially if his emotions get the best of him. He jumps into traps and puts himself in danger with only half-baked plans, at best. He doesn't care much about his own safety, as long as others are out of the way, and at times will even take the path of more resistance (and more physical pain). This is because he lives with the heavy weight of guilt and self-loathing on his shoulders for the crimes he's been forced to commit as the Winter Soldier. There is a lot of blood on his hands, and Bucky comes off as if he doesn't believe that he deserves to still be alive. He holds himself responsible for all the carnage, and it drives a lot of his self-destructive behavior and general lack of self-worth. When he's feeling low, he'll run right into danger and take more of a beating than he technically has to, because he feels like he deserves the pain. Bucky is also angry, has been angry since he was a child orphaned by the misfortune. He would constantly pick fights with bigger kids, and was honestly a bit of a bully. That anger hasn't really gone away, it's only been redirected and put to use by the Army, distilled into raw combat skill. Nowadays, he's angry about what he's done, what he's been through, the awful things that people still continue to do to innocent civilians. His temper can make him lose his head at times.

● skills (optional): Combat, strategy, tactics, stealth, leadership.
● housing (optional):

● network username: jb.barnes

● network sample:
jb.barnes, text;
Alternate universes aren't a strange concept where I come from, but has anyone else ever dealt with an alternate timeline? Where events happened differently to what you know, or that version of you had a different relationship to someone important than you did?

[He won't admit that this sort of thing is throwing him for a loop. But, there are more important things to discuss. Bucky gets to the point.]

Back to business, the scientists need soil samples from past the fence. I'm signing up, but I need another couple of people to go with to make it a full mission party. At least someone who knows how to take soil samples. Apparently it ain't just coming back with a box of dirt.

● prose/action sample: TDM with 616 Steve Rogers, TDM with MCU Bucky Barnes, TDM with Yuri Plisetsky

Player Information
Player name: Nekky
Contact: nekky, AIM @ xnecronomical
Are you over 18: Yes
Characters in The Box Already: N/A

Character Information
Character Name: James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes
Canon: Marvel 616 (comics)
Canon Point: Mid-Gulag, some time after his gladiator-style fight with Ursa Major the Man-Bear but before he breaks out.
History: The Unabridged Life of James Buchanan Barnes
Personality:
Either you die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Except for Bucky Barnes, who died a hero and was still twisted into the exact thing he had died to fight - a monster.

Bucky's upbringing contributed a lot to his personality before his 'death'. He was raised within the little microculture of Camp Lehigh, amongst a thousand older 'brothers', appeasing his superior officers like a normal boy would try to appease his parents. He was brash, charming, and beneath it all, angry - having lost his parents young, and having watched them send his sister (his only other family) away to a proper boarding school, he was always full of a rage he couldn't quite quell. It egged him into fighting with the other kids around the base, with other soldiers, usually people much bigger than him, and he nearly always got in trouble for it. The superiors directed this anger by training him, starting at age 16, to join his fellow soldiers in the field, and he took to it like a fish to water. Finally he had direction, and that was important to him, just like being Captain America's partner was important. He wanted to prove his worth, wanted to fit in, wanted to be a part of something. And he did become that hero he wanted to be, to make his father proud. He gave his life in service.

The Russians twisted that when they recovered his broken, frozen body off the bottom of the English Channel. They turned him against his country, made him into nothing. Where Bucky Barnes was a fiercely shining star trying to find his place in the sky, the Winter Soldier was nothing, a ghost, a legend and a killer.

James Buchanan Barnes these days is a mixture of everything he used to be and the weight of the world's expectations for him. At the very heart of it is the man he used to be when he liked himself, the man he used to be that he hates surrounding that, the man he is now and the man he wants to become on top of that. At his core is a genuinely good person - or at least, a person who tries very hard to be good, though he isn't the ideal hero and he knows it. He's still picking up the pieces of himself, finding his footing and learning to live with himself and everything he's done. It isn't easy, but he isn't wholly broken - he's picking himself up and putting himself back together and coming to grips with the world, trying to find his place and who he is now, since he can't be little Bucky Barnes or The Winter Soldier anymore. Steve saved him in a way, but he's also saving himself every day that he keeps moving on, showing a resilience and a strength.

On the surface, Bucky is a gruff, hard sort of man, and can come off as distant or coolly detached at times. He finds it difficult to show affection except with the people he's close to, and he gets right down to business instead of making small talk about the situation. He can be quite sullen, actually, and brooding, with a sort of sadness about him that tends to linger. He isn't exactly knowingly malicious to other people, he just... tends to come off as brusque, clipped, and it's easy to mistake his self-hatred for hatred of other people. But those who know him better, who get in underneath that facade he puts on to conceal his own perceived weaknesses, he's a little awkward, a little quiet. He makes morbid jokes about killing Hitler that other people don't seem to find funny. He tries to do good for the world and for his team to make up for everything he's done in the past. He's awkward around babies and girls.

On the field, he hasn't lost the confidence he had as a teenager, though - he's well trained and he knows it, so he tends to be reckless and do whatever he thinks best at the time instead of waiting for orders. Despite being Captain America for a time, Bucky was never really the perfect, ideal hero like Steve was; he's more ruthless, more willing to get the job done even if it means getting his hands dirty. That's what he trained for since he was sixteen, and he slips into the role easily, though he shows more restraint in modern times when it comes to killing, likely because of his guilt issues.

It's hard to guess from how Bucky goes on with his life, from how he presents himself to other people, that he actually hates himself more than anyone. He has a lot of self worth issues and guilt issues that come from decades of being a brainwashed KGB killing machine who took a lot of innocent lives at his handlers' behest. He remembers everything, thanks to the Cosmic Cube, for better or worse - this means he remembers most of the war, which were his happy years despite the horrors of WWII raging around him, and he remembers all the things he did as the Winter Soldier, horrors that meld with the rest of his memories and give him horrible nightmares. This, though, doesn't mean that he can always remember everything at every one moment. The Cube never healed his brain damage from his death and resuscitation, and so his memory can be spotty sometimes, with things fading in his mind until they're brought up.

He's primarily serious and subdued, though he still has a sense of humor, if a dry, sarcastic sort of one. Bucky can be a bit snide depending on the situation and who he's talking to, but he can also manage to be polite if necessary. He was raised with good old '30s manners, after all, his father trying to instill in him a good work ethic and politeness. Granted, it didn't always work out - Bucky was a headstrong, angry kid who got in a lot of fights, but he was always respectful of his superiors at Camp Lehigh. Still, nowadays, he's kind of bitter and jaded from his experiences.

Another thing he deals with constantly is his anger issues. When he was a child, after his mother died, he was angry at the world and took it out on other kids at the base, beating up anybody bigger than him just to prove he could. It disappointed his father, who used to be a roughneck himself and wanted something better for his son, but that anger in Bucky never really went away. The Army channeled it into punching Nazis instead, and it actually worked pretty well. The discipline and the training the Army gave him helped to mellow him out a little, to give him a focus and something to do with his restless self. Being Cap's partner meant the world to him, and he took his job very seriously, even though he knew what he was doing was dirty work (but he did the dirty work so that Steve wouldn't have to). He's clever and quick-minded even still, and he trusts his instincts on the field. He might not be book smart, having dropped out of school to join the Army, but he's very well trained and being on a battlefield is second nature to him. Of course, this means he won't always wait for instruction or take the cautious route, he has no problems barreling into things head-first and without thinking. The anger still remains even lately; when he first got his memories back, he went after Lukin, his former handler, with the intent of killing him for what he'd done to Bucky. When Steve "dies", he goes after Tony, who he blames for Steve's death. Blind, overwhelming anger and rash, poor decisions.

Speaking of rash, poor decisions... He also tends to be a bit of an alcoholic when he's thrown into a depressive swing by a traumatic event. When Steve dies, for example, he drinks heavily in a bar, takes his anger out on a bunch of rednecks, and then decides it'd be a great idea to go kill Tony Stark. He's not exactly the best at handling his own emotions; he's a product of the 40s and macho army culture, where men were not supposed to show weakness or feelings. He grew up surrounded by this sort of attitude, learning it from his soldier father and all the soldiers at Camp Lehigh, and so he resorts to handling his feelings the only few ways he knows how. Which tends to be self-destructive behavior. It ties in again to the self-loathing, he cares a lot less if his decisions negatively affect him than he cares if they affect other people.

Extremely important to him are the few people he's close to and trusts. He isn't an easy man to get to know, primarily because he distances himself from people to protect them (and because he sees himself as someone unworthy of their friendship), but Tom Raymond, Steve Rogers, the rest of the Invaders, Natasha Romanoff, Sam Wilson, and some of the New Avengers did manage it, and he thinks highly of them. He's extremely loyal to the people he cares about, going to great lengths for them just because they care about him, like the time he fought to save Sharon Carter even though he didn't know her and, in truth, she had actually wanted to kill him at one point, just because she's Steve's girl and he would do anything for Steve. The New Avengers were the closest thing he had to a family after coming back to the world, and Sam Wilson the closest thing to a best friend who wasn't his best friend before the war. Steve brought him back to the world and tried to give him a place in it, and he's grateful for that, even if he doesn't feel like he deserves it, or much of anything.

Bucky primarily chases redemption for the things he'd been made to do in the past. He wants to be deserving of the love he gets from the people who care about him, he wants to be a good person who feels like he deserves to be part of the world, but at the same time, he isn't sure he can ever make up for the weight of his guilt. This is why he tends to be so rash and reckless, some part of him feels like he should be punished with pain while he tries to make up for his sins on the field, making the world safer. The weight of the world's expectations for him as the new Captain America also tend to weigh very heavily on him, and he probably needs therapy but good luck getting through his constant fog of manpain to convince him of that. Despite the fog of negative emotions, he doesn't let them stop him from doing what he thinks is right, what he thinks Steve would do, or what needs to be done. He isn't broken

Ultimately guilt and redemption are the main themes of his character, and he's been subdued and matured by his years, from a cocky, brash teenager to a determined, deeply traumatized man who just wants to do some good and feel like he belongs in the world. He has a tendency to rely on one or two highly important people in his life for comfort and keeping himself grounded. Usually this is Steve, and/or Natasha, sometimes Sam. Mostly Natasha. Despite his upbringing and his inability to deal very well with feelings, he's actually a very sentimental man, who places a lot of emotional importance on certain people and things and feels for those very deeply. Natasha is an obvious example, in Winter Soldier he thinks naively that his love for her can help to break her brainwashing even though he knows better, he knows intellectually and deep in his soul how deep the programming can go, and yet he wants to believe that love will conquer anyway. He also idolizes Steve, putting him on a pedestal. The shield got similar treatment - he went to a lot of trouble to steal it from Tony and SHIELD, because after Steve "died", he didn't want anyone else touching the shield. He didn't think he deserved it, but he knew no one else did because in his mind no one else knew what Steve had meant to the world.

At his canon point, Bucky is a bit more subdued, coming off being Captain America and having been put through a difficult trial for his past actions as the Winter Soldier. All he wants is to be redeemed, to make up for his past sins as a brainwashed assassin, and so he's calmly accepted his fate and agreed to serve his time for his crimes - being whisked away to a Russian gulag filled with other ex-KGB superheroes and villains.
Items on your character at canon point: A prison jumpsuit and a split lip. Also at this point his bionic arm has been modified to only match the human strength in his right arm, but that could be fixed by someone with the know-how most likely.
Abilities, Strengths and Weaknesses:
Strengths and Abilities:
Bucky is a regular human being, and therefore has no special innate abilities. He's at Olympic levels of fitness though, due to heavy training, and he has several useful skills in his repertoire from his upbringing.

Bucky Barnes is a master combatant who knows quite a bit of martial arts and hand to hand fighting techniques, armed and unarmed. He was trained by WWII greats including Rex Applegate, William Fairbairn, and Captain America (Steve Rogers). He learned a lot in months of training with the SAS in Britain when the SAS was still in its infancy, and later in his life, he was extensively trained and trained others in the Russian Red Room. He also knows how to fight with a shield, having needed to to carry on Steve's legacy as Captain America. He is an expert marksman and prefers the weight of a gun in his hands than a knife or a shield, though. He is intensely fit and flexible, having been trained in some acrobatics to make maneuvering easier. Stealth and quiet killing are both things he's famous for.

To back it all up, he's pretty gifted when it comes to tracking, battle strategy, and planning missions, no matter the objective. He's pretty much been a soldier his entire life, it's what he knows, it's what he's good at, and it's what he loves, for the most part. He's probably one of the most dangerous men in the Marvel Universe despite his lack of powers.

Some other skills he has: bomb defusing and explosives knowledge, he speaks four languages fluently (English, Russian, German, and Japanese) and knows a little French, he has a lot of SHIELD intel and works closely with master spies like Nick Fury Sr. and Black Widow, advance scouting, stealth, breaking and entering, assassination with a multitude of weaponry, and general ass-kicking. He knows a lot about firearms, motorcycles, and the aforementioned demolitions.

He is an amputee, though, and his missing left arm was replaced with a bionic one wired into his nervous system and brain. The bionic arm has super-human strength levels, better reaction time, sensors to get it and other weapons through metal detectors, electrical discharges from the palm, EMPs, and it can be remote controlled when removed. Yes, it's exactly as creepy-hilarious as it sounds.

Weaknesses:
Himself. No really. Mental instability and self-hatred and guilt issues are all things with Bucky and it causes him to do stupid things. There's a reason his friends will decline plans, citing that they sound like 'Bucky plans'. He sometimes tends to rush into things without thinking about his own personal safety, which can go disastrously, of course, and he ends up getting hurt because deep down he thinks he deserves it. His biggest weaknesses really are psychological. It isn't super hard to manipulate him if you know what minefields to set off in his head. He has a history of brainwashing and memory loss, and probably some lingering brain damage, has a lot of nightmares, etc. He's also only human, despite the arm, and he's died or nearly died a couple times. Obviously he is also not immune to limb loss, being shot, being knifed, falling off of things, falling onto cars, or bears. He's really not immune to bears. Also while he might be smart, and a quick study when it comes to new weapons and technology that will help with his missions, he also isn't some kind of genius. Nat probably set up all his computer equipment.

Samples
Network/Action Spam Sample:
[He keeps the device he's lifted off someone to audio. It's not that he can't figure it out, it's more that he doesn't really want to show his face right now, especially looking like he is. Which is to say, a little like death warmed over, dirty and covered in bruises.]

Not exactly what I had in mind when I thought I wanted out. I'd do some really awful things for an aspirin right about now. [Short and simple, get his voice out there. If anyone he knows is here, they'll recognize his voice, they'll come and find him or make themselves obvious so that he can come to them. He doesn't have high hopes of finding someone familiar, but at this point, he's completely at a loss for what to do.

He has to keep moving. It isn't safe. He has no idea how he got out of the gulag but this is most likely another downswing in his life that will just lead to more trouble. If they know he's gone, Russia's going to start an international incident, and boy, won't that be a headache for Steve?] Who's in charge? Don't evil masterminds usually wanna gloat? Well, pal, I'm listenin'.

Prose Log Sample:
He wakes up feeling like he went three rounds with the Hulk.

In reality, it was one round, and it was with Ursa Major instead of the Jolly Green Giant, but still, the aches and pains in his body feel similar enough to make the comparison. His right arm is fucked up, is the first thing he notices when he sits up in the tiny, hard bed of his cell, and his fingers are unsteady as he fashions a crude sling from a dingy towel to rest it in for as long as he can. He has no doubt he'll be needing his arm when the guards come to fetch him again tonight.

Today as he's let out for breakfast in the mess, he can feel the other prisoners' eyes on him again, just as before, but this time, there is fear, respect, cautious loathing in their gazes. They're not so eager to go a round with him now that he's put Ursa Major in the infirmary. He keeps his head down, considers this a blessing in disguise - he doesn't trust himself not to lose it if they push him around too much. He never could back down from a fight, not since he was a scrappy kid on Army bases beating up kids bigger than him, and the guard said it best. What would Iron Man or Ms. Marvel think if they came and found him in solitary confinement? And these people would do whatever they could to put him there.

This is the trajectory of his life, and he just doesn't want this to become his new normal. Not this, not the chill of Siberia, the falling snow, the too-thin jumpsuit and ratty coat and hard leather shoes he wears, the sheer isolation and the cacophony of muttering Russian voices. He's barely slept since he got here, the remainder of the Winter Soldier's world bringing back memories like sharp glass, cutting through his waking and sleeping mind.

Just a few more days, Buck, he tells himself. You just have to hold on for a few more days, and then a rep from the Avengers will be here. You can tell them all about the illegal after-hours prisoner fights. Bucky knows they'll believe him, the proof is all over his skin painted blues and blacks and purples with bruising, inflamed red with improperly treated cuts and scrapes, his swollen split lip and the awkward sprain in his right arm.

He gets through 'breakfast', he gets through work assignment. Breaking rocks in the hot sun, he thinks that's a song, can't help but let out a short, quiet laugh as he brings the hammer down. What he wouldn't give for that hot sun, breaking rocks in the frigid snow doesn't have the same ring to it. A prisoner shoulders him roughly as he moves by with an armful of stone, jarring Bucky's right arm as he barks in broken English, "Why you laugh?"

He wants to deck the sneer right off the man's face. Bucky turns back to his work instead. "No reason."

Just a few more days and then maybe he can do his time somewhere else. Back home, maybe, in the States. Prison isn't glamorous but American prisons are not this hellhole.

But with his luck, things will just get worse from here. They always do, because that's the trajectory of his life.

Later that night, before the guards will come to fetch him, Bucky scrubs a chill metal hand over his eyes in the dim light of his dirty, cold cell, right arm cradled to his chest protectively. Some part of him has given up already, has accepted that he'll die alone for the things he's done in the past, and the rest of him is holding on to just a few more days like a lifeline. He's accepted his responsibility, accepted his punishment, but as the day goes on, as he finds out more and more about why he's here, what they want with him...

Is his acceptance doing anyone any good, or will things just get worse from here?

Somehow he knows the answer.

Comments, criticism, and canon fail are all welcome. While I have read most of his appearances, this is comics and I seriously doubt I've read it all. If I'm doing something wrong, please let me know.

ANON: ON
IP LOGGING: OFF
SCREENING: Screened on request