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kneecaptain) wrote2012-09-23 01:10 pm
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These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. — Thomas Paine, 1776
1. He's physically and mentally about thirty pending wonkiness of comic book time.
2. This is contrary to the OHTMU, but ask me about that time Brubaker posted on a message board to protest that Bucky is adult size!!1 The robot arm weighs a lot.
James Buchanan Barnes was born in vagueish late winter months of 1925, apparently in Shelbyville, Indiana. (Thanks, Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe.) His father was an Army man and travelled a bunch and his mother has never really been mentioned, probably because she died at some point. Near Christmas of 1937, Bucky's father died in a parachute accident. For some reason they just let the twelve year old boy live on base alone for four years. It was the responsible thing to do.
After the death of his father Bucky became something of a bully, picking fights, stealing cars, running minor cons and black market operations. This made him a prime role model for America's youth. After getting drunk on his sixteenth birthday and spending the night in jail, Bucky basically got sent off to killing school because they had to do something productive with him. Orphans: America's favorite weapons.
Bucky completed his special forces training and was then introduced to Steve Rogers aka Captain America. Steve would become Bucky's best friend, and also provided the moral stability Bucky'd been lacking since his father died. As Captain America's partner, Bucky wore his underwear outside of his pants and served as a popular counter to the Hitler Youth. And he killed a whole bunch of Nazis. Vampire Nazis, giant robot Nazis, flying Nazis, zombie Nazis, a Nazi who was a dominatrix. One time Hitler summoned Thor, but Thor mindwiped everyone into forgetting he was once a Nazi. Bucky's WW2 service was thus varied and ludicrous, as he fought mundane, even quasi-historical, battles while also regularly teaming up with the flying panty-wearing prince of Atlantis.
In April of 1945, Bucky managed to strap himself to a bomb and explode over the English channel.
Then he became a semi-lucid KGB killing machine. No really. This won an Eisner.
After exploding himself Bucky was brain damaged and amnesiac (some would say his decision to explode himself indicates the brain damage was pre-existing) and the Russians, ever a nation of comic book villains, decided it would be a good idea to turn his spare parts into their ultimate weapon. They called him the Winter Soldier, and he was a Mentally (Impaired) Organism Designed Only for Killing. The Russians also stored him naked in the freezer aisle so as to preserve his youth and freshness— he would be awake for a few months, complete his missions, and then go back to his storage tube for a few more years. At no point did it occur to anyone that "Soviet cyborg Bucky" was a profoundly ridiculous idea; in comic books Russians do not have a sense of humor.
Anyway eventually the USSR fell and the Cold War ended and but the communists did not go away and one of them got control of Winter Soldier's storage tube and decided to set him loose on Captain America and also the city of Philadelphia. The cosmic cube was involved and long story summed up Steve used the cube to give Bucky back his memories— "remember who you are." This was a gift and a curse because it made Bucky himself again but didn't the Winter Soldier bits away. Bucky used the cube to angst-teleport away and would spend the next few months glaring moodily at the modern world in seemingly constant need of a shave.
Then Marvel Comics struck and it seemed like Steve Rogers had been murdered!! (Really he was just stuck in the last season of Lost. It was not confusing at all.) The sudden death of his mentor, his only real connection he had to recent continuity, forced him to look at his life, look at his choices.
In the absence of Steve Rogers, Bucky took up the mantle of Captain America, and served as such for several years of comic books, joining the Avengers and appearing in big crossover events. Eventually though it came out that heh heh he used to be a communist assassin and that got him sent to jail and did not make him popular with Fox News. Bucky made a heroic last stand during Fear Itself where he defended Washington D.C. from giant Nazi robots and seemingly died again!! But this is comics so it turned out he survived and just wanted the world to think he was dead, resigning the Captain America codename to Steve and hunting the remnants of Cold War conspiracies as Winter Soldier.
After being sad and lonely for a period of time, Bucky got a new direction as the world's top secret space spy, where he contemplated the legacy of American imperialism while tripped out on space drugs. No one likes to remember this happened. Then he became the leader of the Thunderbolts and got all the terrible art that he missed because he spent the 1990s in cyrogenic storage.
Bucky is a man of average height, broad-shouldered and well built. His left arm is metal but he can mask that if he likes, which he usually does when the fake arm thing'll get noticed. He has military posture and a haircut that remains several decades out of date. Bucky favors simple, casual clothes that might be on-trend if it weren't painfully clear he's wearing that stuff unironically.
Shirts are for wusses.
Abilities▻ FIGHTING AND STUFF. Bucky's been trained to perform non-logical feats of acrobatics and punching since he was a teenager. He is a master of unarmed combat, various weapons, and has previously kicked machine-gun wielding gorillas in the face.
▻ SPYING. Even during WWII, this Bucky was a scout and infiltration specialist. In the modern day he's spent time working as an off-the-books operative for SHIELD and Nick Fury. He can speak at least four languages, and is very good at getting himself captured on purpose.
▻ ROBOARM. The robolimb is on it's fifth or sixth upgrade by now— it's listed as being able to lift two tons. It also carries EMP pulses, some kind of electroshock jolt effect, and he can control it mentally when it is detached from his body. Comics.
▻ INFINITY FORMULA. This is a dangling plotline, hooray! Maybe Bucky doesn't age anymore, maybe he will begin to rapidly age into a husk of himself in a few months time!!
▻ ABILITY TO OPERATE A SMARTPHONE. Aw yeah modern technology.
Miscellany▻ SHIPPING. I like Bucky/Natasha, I'm open to other things with development and chemistry, it is not usually something I look for.
▻ CANONBLEED/AUs. This is comics Bucky, a different creature than MCU Bucky, but I think AU canonmates are great and the discrepencies are interesting. I tend towards the "I can't quite recognize you, but I'm sure I've met you before" approach with regard to castmates he'd know from other universes, I'm willing to follow the other player's lead. If you want to discuss canon discrepancies OOCly to make sure we're on the same page I am more than open to talking about it.