Bucky Barnes ☆ adorable trainwreck manpain (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
soldieronwards) wrote2015-04-11 10:40 pm
soldieronwards) wrote2015-04-11 10:40 pm
HOME TREE -- application.
| mun |
| name | Eastling
| age | 29
| e-mail | annwydcc at gmail
| aim/msn/other | eastling burning red on AIM and Skype;![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
hrairoo
| location/time zone | East Coast of the US. EST.
| current character(s) | Not applicable, but also applying for Archer from Fate/stay night this round.
| character |
| canon | Marvel Comics (Marvel Earth-616)
| character name | James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes
| character age | Chronologically, he's pushing ninety, but he was kept in stasis for the majority of that time. Subjectively, he's in his early thirties, and physically, though his aging has been temporarily drastically slowed, he looks about that age.
| gem | Day
| reason | This was kind of a tough call; Bucky can really be either gem (and OOCly I was motivated largely by the fact that I'm applying another character to the night gem). He does have a dark past and a willingness to fight dirty. On the other hand, he fights under the aegis of one of the most idealistic superheroes out there, and he sincerely believes in and does his best to uphold those ideals. More than that, while he may fall short sometimes and he may struggle, he's very much drawn to the light and not the dark.
| wings | They're tripartite dragonfly-like wings: the top and longest pair are translucent blue, the middle transparent white-gold, and the bottom and smallest pair deep translucent red. Despite being the smallest of the three pairs, the bottom wings are more brightly colored than the other two, and they end in star-like points rather than simple curves.
| personality |
At a glance, James Buchanan Barnes is a pretty wholesome-looking, all-American kind of guy. He should be, as someone who's always found his place under the shadow of Captain America. He does his best to uphold a solid moral code; he's also fairly friendly and inclined to help people out. He tries to do what's right without crossing too many lines. He cares for his friends. He banters when he fights, but rarely too cruelly or with extreme sarcasm. If he acts a bit put-upon sometimes, it's all in good fun. In short, he's about what you can expect from one of the more idealistic superheroes out there.
On the other hand, he doesn't wear the aegis of Captain America anymore. These day when he's in superhero get-up, it's the black and metal shine of the Winter Soldier, a reminder of a dark past he seems to feel he can never shake. As such, it's not surprising that he often fights a bit dirtier than you'd expect from a man who was Captain America for a time. It's certainly not surprising that he seems perpetually laden with old guilt and hesitant to accept reassurances that he's actually a good person.
It may, however, be a bit more surprising that he has some real anger management issues. He's not always the most together guy, and sometimes he uses bad words you wouldn't expect from a wholesome 1940s sidekick. Anger and bad decisions burst forth from him like a sticky mess from a shaken soda bottle. Despite his attempts to rise above it, he's very hotheaded and emotional, and it shows.
In fact, from the very beginning, Bucky has been a person split between what he should be and what he can't allow himself to be. He can't give in to his bursts of anger; he can't show weakness. He should be someone who's strong for others, who makes them proud of him, who lives up to their expectations. In other words, he never found a center for himself in his own heart, only in the examples set for him by heroes and authority figures. He was remarkably comfortable being the sidekick of Captain America--it fulfilled his every emotional need by giving him a wonderful hero to look up to and a noble use for his violent skillset.
But there's a reason he was the sidekick and his attempts to pick up the shield himself were marred with troubles. Bucky is a deeply unstable person. At heart, he's still a kid who grew up full of anger and grief, found his place in the world amidst superheroes on a battlefield, and was remade as a human weapon before he could sort all of that out. With the help of his friends, he's gotten back to the point where he can put on a brave face, joke around, or even remind himself and others of the principles of Captain America that he follows. Scratch that surface, though, and you'll still find someone who has very little in the way of actual coping skills; who sometimes struggles to believe he can be more than a weapon; who knows that he's most at home fighting dirty and deeply doubts himself because of it. He knows now, logically, that he's not the person responsible for the things he did while brainwashed and amnesiac as the Winter Soldier, but that doesn't make the memory of them much easier to bear, and as someone without the greatest coping skills to begin with, he easily falls into self-destructive habits when futilely seeking redemption for what he's done.
The key is this: Bucky Barnes has no calm center, no eye in his inner storm. He only has a constant whirling maelstrom of guilt and anger that he struggles to hide beneath a mask that convinces the people around him that he's okay. His success is highly variable. Most of the time, he can pull off the front well enough. On top of that, his time as Captain America gave him some small chance to work through his issues enough to ground himself. Still, once you actually know him, it's easy enough to see when he's in the process of self-destructing from guilt or lashing out from rage.
In the end, what makes him so unstable is that he doesn't do things because he thinks they're right in and of themselves. He doesn't act for his own benefit. Instead, what motivates him above all is the deep desire to be someone who makes his heroes proud of him. And every time he imagines that he falls short of that mark, he struggles to even consider forgiving himself. He's always been seized by the notion that he has deficient, terrible parts of himself that he must work hard to redeem, even before he had any real reason to think so. For that same reason, despite the fact that everything he did as the Winter Soldier was a result of programming and brainwashing, he is incapable of letting go of his guilt for it. As someone who's always sought the approval and validation of authority figures, Bucky craves redemption for things that weren't his fault in the first place. Since ultimately what he really needs is his own forgiveness, and he's not in the business of giving that to himself, he'll probably never get it. But that won't stop him from constantly trying new bad ideas in perpetual attempts to atone.
He gets deeply angry. He has a mean streak. He fights dirty. He gets carried away with reckless ideas. At the same time, he's also a caring person who wants to live up to what Captain America expects of him. And even now, Bucky isn't very good at reconciling those sides of himself. To be honest, taking care of himself just isn't his forte. He needs other people to remind him that he's worth it, and he needs the examples of superheroes to give him something to aspire to. Some superheroes don the mask because the world needs them. Bucky is the opposite: he needs that clear reminder that even in the face of all the ugly things that he's seen and done, there's still a good fight worth fighting out there, and he has a part in it.
| background | Link. It's kind of a mess, because comics.
| timeline | Bucky comes from after Fear Itself #7.1, after barely surviving the event and deciding to let the world think he's dead so he and Natasha can operate in the shadows.
| abilities | Link.
Canon repeatedly stresses that Bucky has preternatural combat abilities; that he was the equivalent of a child prodigy in fighting to start with and then was very well trained. His skills in this area are world-class, both when it comes to hand-to-hand combat and marksmanship. However, none of this is supernatural. He's just really, really good at fighting, within human capacity.
As far as actual superpowers go, his are fairly scarce considering he spent time being Captain America. He's not himself superhuman, but his left arm, although it can disguise itself as flesh and blood, is actually metal and capable of superhuman strength and reaction times. It can also generate electrical shocks (of the kind that can damage a living being's heart rhythms or mess up machinery; they're not full-on bolts that could set wood on fire) or electromagnetic pulses and shield itself (and other metal on his person) from sensors.
| inventory | His Winter Soldier getup has a practically '90s level of pouches containing various fighting and general superhero gear: handguns and the ammunition for them, knives, rope/cable, a phone that will be useless here...that should about cover it.
| samples |
| amber entry |
| prose sample |
| name | Eastling
| age | 29
| e-mail | annwydcc at gmail
| aim/msn/other | eastling burning red on AIM and Skype;
| location/time zone | East Coast of the US. EST.
| current character(s) | Not applicable, but also applying for Archer from Fate/stay night this round.
| character |
| canon | Marvel Comics (Marvel Earth-616)
| character name | James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes
| character age | Chronologically, he's pushing ninety, but he was kept in stasis for the majority of that time. Subjectively, he's in his early thirties, and physically, though his aging has been temporarily drastically slowed, he looks about that age.
| gem | Day
| reason | This was kind of a tough call; Bucky can really be either gem (and OOCly I was motivated largely by the fact that I'm applying another character to the night gem). He does have a dark past and a willingness to fight dirty. On the other hand, he fights under the aegis of one of the most idealistic superheroes out there, and he sincerely believes in and does his best to uphold those ideals. More than that, while he may fall short sometimes and he may struggle, he's very much drawn to the light and not the dark.
| wings | They're tripartite dragonfly-like wings: the top and longest pair are translucent blue, the middle transparent white-gold, and the bottom and smallest pair deep translucent red. Despite being the smallest of the three pairs, the bottom wings are more brightly colored than the other two, and they end in star-like points rather than simple curves.
| personality |
At a glance, James Buchanan Barnes is a pretty wholesome-looking, all-American kind of guy. He should be, as someone who's always found his place under the shadow of Captain America. He does his best to uphold a solid moral code; he's also fairly friendly and inclined to help people out. He tries to do what's right without crossing too many lines. He cares for his friends. He banters when he fights, but rarely too cruelly or with extreme sarcasm. If he acts a bit put-upon sometimes, it's all in good fun. In short, he's about what you can expect from one of the more idealistic superheroes out there.
On the other hand, he doesn't wear the aegis of Captain America anymore. These day when he's in superhero get-up, it's the black and metal shine of the Winter Soldier, a reminder of a dark past he seems to feel he can never shake. As such, it's not surprising that he often fights a bit dirtier than you'd expect from a man who was Captain America for a time. It's certainly not surprising that he seems perpetually laden with old guilt and hesitant to accept reassurances that he's actually a good person.
It may, however, be a bit more surprising that he has some real anger management issues. He's not always the most together guy, and sometimes he uses bad words you wouldn't expect from a wholesome 1940s sidekick. Anger and bad decisions burst forth from him like a sticky mess from a shaken soda bottle. Despite his attempts to rise above it, he's very hotheaded and emotional, and it shows.
In fact, from the very beginning, Bucky has been a person split between what he should be and what he can't allow himself to be. He can't give in to his bursts of anger; he can't show weakness. He should be someone who's strong for others, who makes them proud of him, who lives up to their expectations. In other words, he never found a center for himself in his own heart, only in the examples set for him by heroes and authority figures. He was remarkably comfortable being the sidekick of Captain America--it fulfilled his every emotional need by giving him a wonderful hero to look up to and a noble use for his violent skillset.
But there's a reason he was the sidekick and his attempts to pick up the shield himself were marred with troubles. Bucky is a deeply unstable person. At heart, he's still a kid who grew up full of anger and grief, found his place in the world amidst superheroes on a battlefield, and was remade as a human weapon before he could sort all of that out. With the help of his friends, he's gotten back to the point where he can put on a brave face, joke around, or even remind himself and others of the principles of Captain America that he follows. Scratch that surface, though, and you'll still find someone who has very little in the way of actual coping skills; who sometimes struggles to believe he can be more than a weapon; who knows that he's most at home fighting dirty and deeply doubts himself because of it. He knows now, logically, that he's not the person responsible for the things he did while brainwashed and amnesiac as the Winter Soldier, but that doesn't make the memory of them much easier to bear, and as someone without the greatest coping skills to begin with, he easily falls into self-destructive habits when futilely seeking redemption for what he's done.
The key is this: Bucky Barnes has no calm center, no eye in his inner storm. He only has a constant whirling maelstrom of guilt and anger that he struggles to hide beneath a mask that convinces the people around him that he's okay. His success is highly variable. Most of the time, he can pull off the front well enough. On top of that, his time as Captain America gave him some small chance to work through his issues enough to ground himself. Still, once you actually know him, it's easy enough to see when he's in the process of self-destructing from guilt or lashing out from rage.
In the end, what makes him so unstable is that he doesn't do things because he thinks they're right in and of themselves. He doesn't act for his own benefit. Instead, what motivates him above all is the deep desire to be someone who makes his heroes proud of him. And every time he imagines that he falls short of that mark, he struggles to even consider forgiving himself. He's always been seized by the notion that he has deficient, terrible parts of himself that he must work hard to redeem, even before he had any real reason to think so. For that same reason, despite the fact that everything he did as the Winter Soldier was a result of programming and brainwashing, he is incapable of letting go of his guilt for it. As someone who's always sought the approval and validation of authority figures, Bucky craves redemption for things that weren't his fault in the first place. Since ultimately what he really needs is his own forgiveness, and he's not in the business of giving that to himself, he'll probably never get it. But that won't stop him from constantly trying new bad ideas in perpetual attempts to atone.
He gets deeply angry. He has a mean streak. He fights dirty. He gets carried away with reckless ideas. At the same time, he's also a caring person who wants to live up to what Captain America expects of him. And even now, Bucky isn't very good at reconciling those sides of himself. To be honest, taking care of himself just isn't his forte. He needs other people to remind him that he's worth it, and he needs the examples of superheroes to give him something to aspire to. Some superheroes don the mask because the world needs them. Bucky is the opposite: he needs that clear reminder that even in the face of all the ugly things that he's seen and done, there's still a good fight worth fighting out there, and he has a part in it.
| background | Link. It's kind of a mess, because comics.
| timeline | Bucky comes from after Fear Itself #7.1, after barely surviving the event and deciding to let the world think he's dead so he and Natasha can operate in the shadows.
| abilities | Link.
Canon repeatedly stresses that Bucky has preternatural combat abilities; that he was the equivalent of a child prodigy in fighting to start with and then was very well trained. His skills in this area are world-class, both when it comes to hand-to-hand combat and marksmanship. However, none of this is supernatural. He's just really, really good at fighting, within human capacity.
As far as actual superpowers go, his are fairly scarce considering he spent time being Captain America. He's not himself superhuman, but his left arm, although it can disguise itself as flesh and blood, is actually metal and capable of superhuman strength and reaction times. It can also generate electrical shocks (of the kind that can damage a living being's heart rhythms or mess up machinery; they're not full-on bolts that could set wood on fire) or electromagnetic pulses and shield itself (and other metal on his person) from sensors.
| inventory | His Winter Soldier getup has a practically '90s level of pouches containing various fighting and general superhero gear: handguns and the ammunition for them, knives, rope/cable, a phone that will be useless here...that should about cover it.
| samples |
| amber entry |
[ The amber shows half a face--one annoyed eye, half a stubborn smirk. That face's owner is holding it to avoid giving a very clear view of himself, which could be deliberate, or it could just be laziness. It's hard to tell. ]
"Reporting for duty..." I mean, I could say something like that. It wouldn't be a lie, not really. I'll help figure out what's going on around here if I can.
But before I say a thing like that, tell me something. Who exactly is in charge around here? Is there anyone at all? Or are we all a disorganized pack of kidnapping victims here?
[ He hesitates a second before adding something else. ]
I ought to say what you can call me. It's Bucky. And, uh...one more thing.
Has anyone just straight-up punched the quest mirror? Does it break? You think that'd be a bad idea? It's kind of getting on my nerves.
| prose sample |
It only takes a flash of light for everything to change.
There's something different about his body, to start with. He can't pin down just what it is, but he knows something's changed. Bucky is a man in touch with his physical form--he has to be, to fight as well as he does. He can't say that he's in touch with his emotions, but his body and his remaining limbs? Sure. He knows that. And right now, something's off.
He lifts his head and looks around.
Nothing--nothing is what he expects. Oh, being whisked away from his life and his plans, he can handle that. He was on the run to start with, in a way, undercover and in the shadows. He expects people to come after him. It's not even that surprising that one of them should succeed in kidnapping him. But if that's the case, shouldn't he be in some sinister warehouse or surrounded by ominous machines? But he's not. He's in a giant tree. A giant tree.
"Where the hell am I?" he says aloud, expecting some dramatic echo to his voice. But he doesn't get it. Instead, he just sounds small and confused. He winces at that and quickly looks down. That's when he sees the rune stone.
Bucky crouches by it, running metal fingers over the glowing letters. No matter what he does, they don't make sense. Oh, he can understand the words themselves, somehow. But he's not sure of their significance. He's been taken, he's been kidnapped, and they're welcoming him? That doesn't make any sense. Is it a taunt? This place seems too peaceful for that, and yet...
He straightens up, pausing only to take the pack up off the stone. "Well, if they're gonna give me free stuff, I might as well take it." That's what he says, anyway--he knows perfectly well it could be a trap. But if that's the case, he can learn from it as well. He'll go over the items in the pack when he gets the chance, trying to take them apart to figure out any clues to his location. For now--for now, he needs to look around.
He makes it a few steps towards the strange glow in the center of the room before the glittering rocks distract him. All it takes is one look, and he knows he has to touch the lighter-colored one. He knows it in his bones and his guts, and that--
That worries him. He tends to trust his instincts, and that's how he's survived this long despite several extremely narrow escapes, but this is too strong and sudden to really be "his instincts." It's something else, some outside force acting on his mind--and he's had enough experience with those for many lifetimes. He doesn't want to give another one a way into his head.
His jaw sets; his teeth grit in his mouth. He finds himself starting to glare at the rock. "Forget about it," he tells the shiny stone. "I'm not gonna do what you tell me to. Never been good at just following orders, anyway." That's a lie. He's great at following orders and he knows it, but right now he wants to talk up his own disobedience. Maybe if he bluffs, he can break whatever spell this is. "Who listens when they get a strange urge to touch shiny rocks, anyway? You'd have to be an idiot. I know I've done some stupid crap in my time, but even I've got limits--"
He cuts off, finally, and before he can think any further (does he ever think further?), he stalks over to the gently glowing stone and kicks it, hard. Maybe he bruises his foot, he doesn't notice, but he does notice a small piece of the stone falling off. Without thinking about it, he reaches down and snatches it out of midair.
Something happens, then. Something flutters against his back. Slowly, Bucky turns to glance over his shoulder. There are wings on his back. Red, white, and blue wings.
"Seriously?" There's no answer, only his own small indignant voice. "What, do you think I'm going to start swooping around now that you've given me wings? Whoever you are. I can--" He almost says Get by just fine without them, but then he reconsiders. "Actually, I probably have to use 'em, don't I?" He hesitates a second, then experimentally flutters those wings. They look too small to be of any use, and yet still he lifts off the ground. He can't quite stop himself from laughing in disbelief and--maybe just a little actual amusement.
"All right," he says, "all right, I'll go up and see what the rest of this place is like. Maybe then I'll get some answers."