worthallthis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
worthallthis) wrote2020-07-20 07:21 pm
worthallthis) wrote2020-07-20 07:21 pm
Entry tags:
The Last Voyages: Application
User Name/Nick: Gail
User DW: cacopheny
E-mail: cacopheny@gmail.com
Other Characters: None
Character Name: James “Bucky” Barnes AKA the Winter Soldier
Series: MCU
Age:Early 30s in appearance/maturity, 98 based on birthdate Late 30s, 106 by birthdate
From When?:Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the fight on the helicarrier, just after Steve’s cheesy "end of the line" thing. Rather than being missed by the falling debris and then being free to dive in after Steve, he instead gets crushed by it...
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode 6, after talking to Yori and before leaving the note for his court-mandated therapist.
Inmate/Warden:Inmate. He needs to learn how to react in healthy ways to anger and fear, to overcome the violent paths in his brain thanks to conditioning and long experience, and basically re-learn being an actual person who deserves good things. Not being in a situation where he's on the run, being instead somewhere where there's structure and the means to literally step into other experiences, and having a patient and understanding warden would absolutely help him in this journey.
Warden. Bucky-- B, now-- has been through the system himself, and while he might not necessarily believe in the Barge as a system, he believes in it as a place full of people who want to help, who can help-- and not just one person, not just a warden. It takes everyone together to help lift people out of whatever hell they're in. The Barge is the first place he felt was "home" after having everything stripped away by HYDRA, and he's going to want to help other hurting people find some sense of "home", too, even if it's not on the barge. He has a wealth of understanding of trauma and recovering from it, and experience in teaching and training others. He's actually pretty patient, and very stubborn. Plus, he has a driving need to do the right thing, even if he doesn't always know what that is.
Arrival: Snatched at the moment of his death.
Item: Steve's notebook, that he turned into his own amends notebook. There are still a lot of blank pages that can show him a map of the Barge to track an inmate on.
Abilities/Powers:
* Super-soldier serum, the evil version: Not quite the kind that was given to Captain America, but rather one that's gone through some variations and remixes due to lack of resources, creative thinking, and indifference to the suffering of the subject. This increases his metabolism to the point where he heals from damage in about 1/3 the time of an unenhanced human; he has increased strength, speed, and stamina; his memory has improved to the point of being nearly edetic; he has slightly enhanced senses of sight and hearing; and he can no longer get drunk. That last one is not necessarily a benefit.
* Advanced training: Bucky Barnes' trained skillset includes basic army training and advanced sniper training, as well as an understanding of guerilla tactics and some mechanical expertise. The Winter Soldier’s skillset is much broader, including advanced hand-to-hand techniques, proficiency with firearms and close-combat weapons of an incredibly wide variety, fluency in multiple languages, enhanced bodily control and flexibility, subterfuge, stealth, and standard mission skills such as looking after the basic necessities, obtaining supplies, and seeking out intel. He has crazy-high pain tolerance, too.
Personality:
James Buchanan Barnes, known around Brooklyn as Bucky, was a friendly young man, ready with a smile and a joke to lighten the mood, good with people to the point of being charming. Of course, the flip side was he was vain, particularly about his hair, and tended towards over-confident when it came to his relationships with other people, particularly ladies. His sense of humor leaned to the sarcastic side, but he was as quick with a compliment as snark, and he had an optimistic view of the future, fascinated with science fiction and new breakthroughs in actual science.
The most important person in his life was Steve Rogers, a boy one year younger with a list of health problems as long as his arm, and a heart and sense of courage far bigger than his small stature. Bucky was protective of Steve, even over-protective, and often wound up rescuing Steve from fights he couldn’t win and then bawling him out after for getting into trouble. They both grew up relatively poor and spent their adolescence and young adulthood in the Great Depression, which certainly left its mark. He hated waste, always needing to mend and re-use and scrounge rather than buy new, and put up with a terrible tenement apartment first with his family and later on with Steve just to save up for things like medicine and the occasional trip to Coney Island. It helped teach him patience. Above all, he was loyal to a fault and felt things deeply, from wonder to anger to love.
Then Bucky was drafted, sent to training, and then into World War II. Sergeant Barnes was a different person than the Bucky from Brooklyn. He was more guarded and less friendly, because everyone in wartime was more guarded and less friendly, but his confidence and patience translated into innate leadership skills and extra training as a designated marksman, which was its own kind of torment as a dedicated killer. After his capture and torture at Azzano, he grew even more withdrawn, using his former cocky, sarcastic demeanor as a shield against anyone seeing just how off he felt. He still felt everything deeply, and after Azzano he was feeling wrong.
He still had Steve-- albeit a Steve who didn’t seem to need him like he used to-- and he was still steadfastly loyal even to this new Steve, turning down an honorable medical discharge in order to watch his friend’s back. His over-protective streak grew from just Steve to include the entirety of the Howling Commandos, as Steve’s second in command and the sharpshooter watching above them all.
Then Bucky fell from the train and was captured by HYDRA yet again. The Winter Soldier, also called the Asset, came from what they did to him, and he was again a different person. Implacable, ruthless, calculating, endlessly patient, highly skilled... and literally stripped of the ability to choose beyond the parameters of his mission. He no longer thought of himself as a person, just a pair of hands attached to triggers, knives, and a set of orders. If left out of cryo too long, or left too long between personality wipes, he was susceptible to flashes of memory, spurts of defiance, and moments of compassion, but even those were severely punished. He learned how to anticipate the moods of his handlers and avoid punishment as much as possible, but he still never entirely believed the lies they fed him about how what HYDRA was doing was right. He was just too afraid, confused, and alone to ever do much about it-- he didn’t remember anything else.
There will be a fourth person, starting to emerge now that the Soldier has escaped captivity and the constant threat of getting his brains scrambled, with memories slowly starting to come back, but just what that person will be like is hard to say.
Barge Reactions:
Honestly? The Barge is going to freak him out. He has had a very narrow experience of life for the past seventy years or so, and while it definitely included constant supervision and captivity in bases that looked like certain pieces of the Barge itself, it did not include non-humans of any kind, actually eating, or being out of cryofreeze for longer than a few days at a time. The first few weeks or even months of adjustment will probably be one long anxiety attack.
He has, however, been forced to learn how to stay functional, quiet, and focused during sustained anxiety attacks, so it will not significantly affect his ability to get through daily life. It will help eventually to discover that non-humans don’t actually elicit the same ingrained responses as humans, so I expect him to make friends more easily with aliens or fantasy races. Also, there's a sci fi nerd buried under the Soldier mess, still, who will want to learn about this stuff.
Floods and breaches will be both normal-- things are happening that are outside of his control, he's suddenly become a different person, he no longer remembers anything; totally normal for the Winter Soldier-- and very not normal because wow, what is magic and getting dumped on other worlds and food doing strange things to him? He will likely spend the aftermath of the first few hiding in his bunk, but in the end I actually think they'll be something of a relief. They're a means of being punished for whatever he thinks he did wrong today, but they also affect everyone equally so he’s not being singled out. It will take him a while to see them as anything but punishments, though.
The fact that "he" has been on the Barge before will probably come up, and that is definitely going to weird him out. His reactions will probably be on a case by case basis, there, but in the end it might actually help to have people who recognize him and don't automatically think he's a monster. (But who aren't clearly deluded, like Steve.)
Path to Redemption:
The big hurdles to graduation here will be: learning how to react to the world without violence or fear; learning to think of himself as a person; and then to consider himself as a person who deserves good things rather than punishment.
The first step will be learning to make choices that aren’t strictly tactical or self-preservation. He’s had most of his choices taken away from him for a very long time, and something as simple as what to get for dinner is going to be an Ordeal. The next step will getting him to trust someone, anyone, whether a warden or a fellow inmate or even the goddamn Stupid Target (i.e. Steve) who is somehow inexplicably here, too. From there he can start dealing with his various unhealthy coping mechanisms for handling his trauma, such as shutting down in response to authority figures, violently lashing out whenever he’s afraid, and considering himself not a person (because clearly if he’s a weapon and not a person, then it was all maintenance, not trauma). Then it’s time to tackle his guilt for killing scores of people!
As a note, coming into the game, he has no memories but a few fractured images of skinny Steve and the last few scenes from CA: TWS. He will be slowly regaining them as his brain heals, things remind him of things he’s been through, and people help him learn things about himself. This will both help and hinder his inmate arc, as remembering that he did in fact used to have parents is a good thing, but remembering that he once smashed an old friend’s face in on orders won’t help much at all.
Deal:
That the serum never works on him. He doesn't particularly care whether this means he dies on the experiment table in 1943 or if it just means he dies when he falls from the train in 1945, though he leans towards the latter. So long as there's no Winter Soldier, then the Winter Soldier not only can't kill people, but his reappearance and problems can't fuck up Steve’s recovery when he's just starting to get used to the modern world again.
History:
MCU wiki
Sample Journal Entry:
[Written in short bursts over the course of an hour, with much pacing around the cabin and growling under the breath:]
warden said to write shit down so here I am writing shit down
in a shiny new paper journal that had better not get published to the network or read by anyone but me
shit I do not know what to write
it looks like I can write with both hands that is good to know though it is harder to hold a pen with metal fingers
does writing help with wanting to hit things? I don’t think it is going to help with wanting to hit things
warden said I am supposed write about my memories butI don’t want they’re hard to
what is the fucking point of this
what is the point of any of it they should just
[After that, the page is just nothing but dark, angry scribbles.]
Sample RP:
Test drive thread
Special Notes: I’m aware that there have been previous Bucky players here, and I am happy to have people recognize him and try to pick up CR because of it. I’ve already spoken with the Steve Rogers player, and got the okay to app in from them.
User DW: cacopheny
E-mail: cacopheny@gmail.com
Other Characters: None
Character Name: James “Bucky” Barnes AKA the Winter Soldier
Series: MCU
Age:
From When?:
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode 6, after talking to Yori and before leaving the note for his court-mandated therapist.
Inmate/Warden:
Warden. Bucky-- B, now-- has been through the system himself, and while he might not necessarily believe in the Barge as a system, he believes in it as a place full of people who want to help, who can help-- and not just one person, not just a warden. It takes everyone together to help lift people out of whatever hell they're in. The Barge is the first place he felt was "home" after having everything stripped away by HYDRA, and he's going to want to help other hurting people find some sense of "home", too, even if it's not on the barge. He has a wealth of understanding of trauma and recovering from it, and experience in teaching and training others. He's actually pretty patient, and very stubborn. Plus, he has a driving need to do the right thing, even if he doesn't always know what that is.
Item: Steve's notebook, that he turned into his own amends notebook. There are still a lot of blank pages that can show him a map of the Barge to track an inmate on.
Abilities/Powers:
* Super-soldier serum, the evil version: Not quite the kind that was given to Captain America, but rather one that's gone through some variations and remixes due to lack of resources, creative thinking, and indifference to the suffering of the subject. This increases his metabolism to the point where he heals from damage in about 1/3 the time of an unenhanced human; he has increased strength, speed, and stamina; his memory has improved to the point of being nearly edetic; he has slightly enhanced senses of sight and hearing; and he can no longer get drunk. That last one is not necessarily a benefit.
* Advanced training: Bucky Barnes' trained skillset includes basic army training and advanced sniper training, as well as an understanding of guerilla tactics and some mechanical expertise. The Winter Soldier’s skillset is much broader, including advanced hand-to-hand techniques, proficiency with firearms and close-combat weapons of an incredibly wide variety, fluency in multiple languages, enhanced bodily control and flexibility, subterfuge, stealth, and standard mission skills such as looking after the basic necessities, obtaining supplies, and seeking out intel. He has crazy-high pain tolerance, too.
Personality:
James Buchanan Barnes, known around Brooklyn as Bucky, was a friendly young man, ready with a smile and a joke to lighten the mood, good with people to the point of being charming. Of course, the flip side was he was vain, particularly about his hair, and tended towards over-confident when it came to his relationships with other people, particularly ladies. His sense of humor leaned to the sarcastic side, but he was as quick with a compliment as snark, and he had an optimistic view of the future, fascinated with science fiction and new breakthroughs in actual science.
The most important person in his life was Steve Rogers, a boy one year younger with a list of health problems as long as his arm, and a heart and sense of courage far bigger than his small stature. Bucky was protective of Steve, even over-protective, and often wound up rescuing Steve from fights he couldn’t win and then bawling him out after for getting into trouble. They both grew up relatively poor and spent their adolescence and young adulthood in the Great Depression, which certainly left its mark. He hated waste, always needing to mend and re-use and scrounge rather than buy new, and put up with a terrible tenement apartment first with his family and later on with Steve just to save up for things like medicine and the occasional trip to Coney Island. It helped teach him patience. Above all, he was loyal to a fault and felt things deeply, from wonder to anger to love.
Then Bucky was drafted, sent to training, and then into World War II. Sergeant Barnes was a different person than the Bucky from Brooklyn. He was more guarded and less friendly, because everyone in wartime was more guarded and less friendly, but his confidence and patience translated into innate leadership skills and extra training as a designated marksman, which was its own kind of torment as a dedicated killer. After his capture and torture at Azzano, he grew even more withdrawn, using his former cocky, sarcastic demeanor as a shield against anyone seeing just how off he felt. He still felt everything deeply, and after Azzano he was feeling wrong.
He still had Steve-- albeit a Steve who didn’t seem to need him like he used to-- and he was still steadfastly loyal even to this new Steve, turning down an honorable medical discharge in order to watch his friend’s back. His over-protective streak grew from just Steve to include the entirety of the Howling Commandos, as Steve’s second in command and the sharpshooter watching above them all.
Then Bucky fell from the train and was captured by HYDRA yet again. The Winter Soldier, also called the Asset, came from what they did to him, and he was again a different person. Implacable, ruthless, calculating, endlessly patient, highly skilled... and literally stripped of the ability to choose beyond the parameters of his mission. He no longer thought of himself as a person, just a pair of hands attached to triggers, knives, and a set of orders. If left out of cryo too long, or left too long between personality wipes, he was susceptible to flashes of memory, spurts of defiance, and moments of compassion, but even those were severely punished. He learned how to anticipate the moods of his handlers and avoid punishment as much as possible, but he still never entirely believed the lies they fed him about how what HYDRA was doing was right. He was just too afraid, confused, and alone to ever do much about it-- he didn’t remember anything else.
There will be a fourth person, starting to emerge now that the Soldier has escaped captivity and the constant threat of getting his brains scrambled, with memories slowly starting to come back, but just what that person will be like is hard to say.
Barge Reactions:
Honestly? The Barge is going to freak him out. He has had a very narrow experience of life for the past seventy years or so, and while it definitely included constant supervision and captivity in bases that looked like certain pieces of the Barge itself, it did not include non-humans of any kind, actually eating, or being out of cryofreeze for longer than a few days at a time. The first few weeks or even months of adjustment will probably be one long anxiety attack.
He has, however, been forced to learn how to stay functional, quiet, and focused during sustained anxiety attacks, so it will not significantly affect his ability to get through daily life. It will help eventually to discover that non-humans don’t actually elicit the same ingrained responses as humans, so I expect him to make friends more easily with aliens or fantasy races. Also, there's a sci fi nerd buried under the Soldier mess, still, who will want to learn about this stuff.
Floods and breaches will be both normal-- things are happening that are outside of his control, he's suddenly become a different person, he no longer remembers anything; totally normal for the Winter Soldier-- and very not normal because wow, what is magic and getting dumped on other worlds and food doing strange things to him? He will likely spend the aftermath of the first few hiding in his bunk, but in the end I actually think they'll be something of a relief. They're a means of being punished for whatever he thinks he did wrong today, but they also affect everyone equally so he’s not being singled out. It will take him a while to see them as anything but punishments, though.
The fact that "he" has been on the Barge before will probably come up, and that is definitely going to weird him out. His reactions will probably be on a case by case basis, there, but in the end it might actually help to have people who recognize him and don't automatically think he's a monster. (But who aren't clearly deluded, like Steve.)
The big hurdles to graduation here will be: learning how to react to the world without violence or fear; learning to think of himself as a person; and then to consider himself as a person who deserves good things rather than punishment.
The first step will be learning to make choices that aren’t strictly tactical or self-preservation. He’s had most of his choices taken away from him for a very long time, and something as simple as what to get for dinner is going to be an Ordeal. The next step will getting him to trust someone, anyone, whether a warden or a fellow inmate or even the goddamn Stupid Target (i.e. Steve) who is somehow inexplicably here, too. From there he can start dealing with his various unhealthy coping mechanisms for handling his trauma, such as shutting down in response to authority figures, violently lashing out whenever he’s afraid, and considering himself not a person (because clearly if he’s a weapon and not a person, then it was all maintenance, not trauma). Then it’s time to tackle his guilt for killing scores of people!
As a note, coming into the game, he has no memories but a few fractured images of skinny Steve and the last few scenes from CA: TWS. He will be slowly regaining them as his brain heals, things remind him of things he’s been through, and people help him learn things about himself. This will both help and hinder his inmate arc, as remembering that he did in fact used to have parents is a good thing, but remembering that he once smashed an old friend’s face in on orders won’t help much at all.
Deal:
That the serum never works on him. He doesn't particularly care whether this means he dies on the experiment table in 1943 or if it just means he dies when he falls from the train in 1945, though he leans towards the latter. So long as there's no Winter Soldier, then the Winter Soldier not only can't kill people, but his reappearance and problems can't fuck up Steve’s recovery when he's just starting to get used to the modern world again.
History:
MCU wiki
Sample Journal Entry:
[Written in short bursts over the course of an hour, with much pacing around the cabin and growling under the breath:]
warden said to write shit down so here I am writing shit down
in a shiny new paper journal that had better not get published to the network or read by anyone but me
shit I do not know what to write
it looks like I can write with both hands that is good to know though it is harder to hold a pen with metal fingers
does writing help with wanting to hit things? I don’t think it is going to help with wanting to hit things
warden said I am supposed write about my memories but
what is the fucking point of this
[After that, the page is just nothing but dark, angry scribbles.]
Sample RP:
Test drive thread
Special Notes: I’m aware that there have been previous Bucky players here, and I am happy to have people recognize him and try to pick up CR because of it. I’ve already spoken with the Steve Rogers player, and got the okay to app in from them.