Folkmore App

[silent_butdeadly]

❥ Character Information

Character Name: James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes
Character Age: 101 years old (looks about mid-30’s)
Character Species: Human; Super Soldier; Cybernetically Enhanced (vibranium left arm)
Current Health: Healthy
Outfit: Animated series version, real life/movie version

Character Canon: Marvel What If...?
Link to History: Same history up to two weeks before the Avengers: Infinity Wars movie. His history continues in his timeline with a zombie outbreak (see Canon Iteration explanation point for clarifications)
Canon Point: Season 1, Episode 5 (Stand-Alone episode)
Canon Iteration: Original to his universe, timeline variant of MCU (AKA Sacred Timeline)
Canon Iteration Explanation: The premise of the 'Marvel: What If...?" animated series is to explore scenarios and situations that deviate from the Sacred Timeline (in this case, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is considered as the true timeline). In Bucky's case, he shares a similar background with the MCU one, up until Hope van Dyne brings back a Quantum realm virus that turns humans into zombies while trying to bring back her mother (about 2 weeks before the events of Infinity Wars in the MCU).

❥ Folkmore Roles & Attributes

Skills:

Master Assassin

Master Martial Artist

Knife Mastery

Master Marksman

Expert Tactician

Pilot

Multilingualism

Patented Death Stare(TM)

Canon Abilities: Enhanced abilities
Role: Familiar
Role Qualities/Attributes: Blue-eyed artic wolf that has black and gold fur spots on his left forward leg. Attributes will slowly come to him as he becomes more comfortable with his role, starting with the ears and tails until he can shift between forms at will.
Role Reasoning: While Bucky is closer to being a ‘Legend’, his perception of his own morals is heavily tainted by his past actions as the Winter Soldier. Even if he wasn’t in control of his mind, he still carries the weight of his guilt from having killed and caused pain to others, which keeps him from seeing how he is a good man at heart. Not only that, but he believes that sometimes the end justifies the means, as shown when he cut in half a zombified version of Captain America to protect the outbreak survivors. Therefore, he aligns more with a familiar than a Legend in Folkmore.

❥ Personality

(TW: discussion of torture, brainwashing and violence throughout the 'personality' section)

Option 2. Choose FOUR-FIVE of the following questions to answer and expand upon. You may choose a fifth question if you feel it is integral to your character's personality. Each answer has a 100-300 word requirement.

What was the most traumatic experience your character endured? How did this change them?

Two moments define Bucky’s life. The first one is his capture, brainwashing and use as the Winter Soldier, a deadly assassin, by HYDRA. To keep him compliant, HYDRA physically and psychologically tortured him, erasing his memories using electroconvulsive shock therapy and extensively training him to make him the perfect killing machine. While Bucky’s memories can be spotty because of the brainwashing, he remembers all of his victims, making him feel guilty for pulling the trigger even if he didn’t have a choice. This traumatic experience profoundly changed Bucky: he went from a charming happy man to being grumpy and guarded, as well as skewing his self-value negatively, as shown when he tells Steve he doesn’t think he’s worth all the effort and danger Steve's allies have put into defending him. He's developed trust issues from being used against his will, as well as fearing being a threat to those he cares for, even after being deprogrammed in Wakanda. That makes him keep people at bay, preferring to live a solitary life over hurting people again.

The second experience is the zombie outbreak he survived alongside a few other humans. Having to watch most of humanity turn into mindless monsters has caused him to retreat further behind psychological walls to keep himself from facing the loss of even more friends, as shown when he tells Okoye that he isn't sad about Sam’s death. His determination to protect the survivors left has pushed him to tap into his Winter Soldier training and conditioning so that he can detach himself from any feelings about killing humans again (even if they are not humans anymore). That determination to save people is what causes him to sacrifice himself to buy the survivors more time so that they can get the cure to Wakanda.

What is the most important and defining relationship(s) in your character's life and why?

Bucky’s most important relationship is undeniably his friendship with Steve Rogers. They have been inseparable from a young age, and from the get-go, Bucky cared for Steve as if he were a brother to him. He defended him against bullies (even as Steve seemed to like picking up fights with them) and tried to set him up with girls as he was back then the most popular of the two. Bucky cared enough about Steve to try to dissuade him from joining the army, citing his bad health, as well as reminding him not to do anything stupid while he was overseas. Bucky is saved by Steve after being captured during the war, and when Steve asks him if he would follow Captain America into battle, Bucky makes it clear that he would follow his friend more than the icon he became, showing that Bucky admires Steve's will to stand up to bullies and bad people

Steve was also the only person who could get through Bucky's brainwashing when he was the Winter Soldier, making him hesitate when they first met after his capture by HYDRA, and later saved Steve from drowning even if he can't remember him properly. When they reconnect two years later while Bucky is on the run, Bucky lies to Steve about not remembering him, yet again trying to protect him from being associated with a mass murderer. He also chooses to stay behind and help Steve fight Stark instead of saving his own skin, showing that his friendship with Steve is more important than his life.

When Bucky finally faces a zombified Captain America on the train to Camp Lehigh, he clearly chooses to incapacitate Steve instead of killing him, cutting him in half at the waist instead of the head.

What is a headcanon (or two) you feel strongly about and that you prefer playing your character with? How is this supported in canon and why do you think it benefits the character's story?

During the early 2000's, the Winter Soldier was lent by HYDRA to the Red Room to help train the Widows. This headcanon is based on Bucky's background in the comics, where the Winter Soldier actually belonged to the Red Room instead of HYDRA, and would train the Widows (including Natasha Romanoff) in between assassinations. In canon, this is supported by a throwaway line from Natasha in Civil War, commenting on how Bucky could at least recognize her after being activated into his Winter Soldier mode with his code words (he would have trained her if he had been with the Red Room during the early 2000s). Bucky is also seen training the new, but unstable Winter Soldiers during the 90's, before they rebelled and had to be put on ice until they were ready to be controlled by HYDRA like he was.

I think this headcanon benefits Bucky because it means that even as the Winter Soldier, he could do more than just kill people. It shows that he could compartmentalize the violence he was forced into well enough not to kill his trainees. It also means that his skills were great enough that it made other morally bankrupt organizations interested in him.
(Headcanon pending as game canon for the moment)

What is your character's moral code? Do they have one? Why or why not?

Bucky's moral code is far stronger than he let himself imagine. His grasp on 'right' and 'wrong' is pretty well defined despite the fact that he tends to think he falls on the 'wrong' side more often because of his past actions as the Winter Soldier. As a young soldier in WW2, he was ready to fight against Nazis even if he had been drafted instead of enlisted, knowing that the fight was bigger than him and needed to be fought either way. When he broke out of HYDRA's mind control, he chose to go into hiding, knowing that the control of his mind wasn't yet his own and he still could be a danger to others if he was ever caught by the authorities (and was proven right when Zemo infiltered the UN to activate him again). Even as he fought the German special forces to try and escape, Bucky tried not to kill anyone, showing that he wasn't an inherently killer. He was also quick to help Steve get the Siberian base to make sure the other Winter Soldiers wouldn't be activated under Zemo's control.

However, even if his morals are strong, he's shown that he's willing to justify the means to his ends. He doesn't hesitate to kill zombies to keep the rest of the survivors safe, even after they learn that there might be a cure for everyone. He even chooses to stay behind to distract Wanda while the rest of them try to get to a Quinjet to get to Wakanda, showing that he is willing to die for his principles.

Is your character capable of forgiveness or will they hold a grudge until they die? Would anything ever make them change their mind?

It truly depends on what's to be forgiven and whose transgressions he should be forgiving. As mentioned before, Bucky doesn't trust a lot of people in his life, and struggles with letting new people in it, which makes him less likely to forgive strangers off the bat. Any actions done against those who do have his trust and friendship are likely to never be forgiven and Bucky is likely to hold a lifetime grudge against that person, not out of pettiness, but simply out of distrust. You don't get to hurt his friends and get away with it, though he would be unlikely to seek revenge unless provoked into it.

His friends, however, are likely to be easily forgiven. Bucky clearly never held a grudge against Steve for not trying to find him at the bottom of the ravine when he fell during WW2. He was also quick to forgive T'Challa for trying to kill him when the Black Panther thought he had killed King T'Chaka, even forging a friendship with the new king of Wakanda. But even if his friends get passes for slights against him, Bucky holds them to the same account as the rest of humanity when it comes to their actions against the world. He was quick to point his gun at Vision when he learned that the android had been feeding innocent people to a zombie Wanda, even if Vision justified his actions with logic. He was ready to fight Wanda herself too, even if she had been allied in the past.

❥ Player Information

Player Name: Nueva
Pronouns: She/her
Are you over 18?: Yup, '80s baby here!
Contact(s): PM this account or nuevayuimaxwell
Who Invited You?: Schist
Current Characters: N/A
Permissions: Here
Writing Samples: TDM