Memory Option: 1 (Deteriorating AU, with the caveat that I'll probably only use the memory regain option to facilitate easier integration for anyone else apping from from White Collar.)
Established Status: Yep! The whooooole five years. I'd like for his (canon) FBI experience to make it possible for him to test into level 4 of the RAC, but whatever the mods think is appropriate for him is fine! Either way he's spent the last five years pretty comparably to how he does in canon; being totally played by Neal Caffrey, pursuing Neal Caffrey with a vengeance, finally catching the little shit, and forming the Jay's most unlikely partnership.
....so generally, he's spent that time eating, sleeping, and breathing Reclamation Agentness, gaining a reputation for being both very, very good, and very, very boring. As boring as you can possibly be in this universe.
Canon: White Collar (2009-2014 television show)
Canon Point: Immediately following 2x10 "Burke's Seven"; Peter has just been reinstated with the FBI after disproving false allegations of his involvement in like, so much murder.
Citizenship: Authorized non-citizen
Job: RAC Agent
* Level: 4
Abilities: Peter's canon hews as closely to "reality" as possible; he has no superpowers or special abilities beyond those accrued by training and experience. That said an extensive career with the FBI means he is highly proficient in the following areas, which, I am assuming - please correct me if I'm wrong! - all qualify as passive, being practical, possible abilities that don't involve breathing fire and aren't canon specific.
ATHLETICISM | Beyond the specifications he's required to meet to pass his career physical, Peter was at one point skilled enough to be recruited into professional sports; he can manipulate his own body weight, run long distances, leap moderately high walls in a single bound if he, you know, backs up a lot, and for some barely defined reason ride a horse and tango!. (Because Tim DeKay can and when you have that shit available on a show you should use it, that's why.)
ARREST/CONTROL TACTICS: More centered around restraint without injury for either party than combat with the aim to cripple an opponent, but 300% useful for chasing down a fleeing target, especially when the warrant level dictates they be taken alive. He's also trained as a boxer, although most of his experience in unarmed fighting came from experience in the Quad, not his previous life.
FIREARMS | FBI qualifications require an 80% success rate of fire (all draws from concealment) from varying distances, meaning 48 or better out of 60; Peter has given instructional courses, which demands at least 90% (54). In Overjoyed this will be just slightly modified to give him a broad understanding of the Quad's weaponry as is appropriate.
INTERROGATION/INTEL GATHERING | By nature Peter is pretty reserved, but he's skilled in talking to people when it counts: asking the right questions, conveying a sense of trustworthiness, etc. That's the preferential alternative before any actual interrogation is required, but he's had training in that too.
INVESTIGATION | Includes but is not limited to: pattern recognition and tracking, criminal profiling, critical reasoning, and basic forensic science and psychology.
Personality:
"There's a right way to do things and a wrong way. [Justice] is restoring order, not furthering chaos."
Unsurprisingly for someone whose real memories are of the FBI, Peter is primarily motivated by the restoration and maintenance of order in society. He's staunchly selective about the warrants he'll take; if he believes they're for selfish or just, you know, shady purposes, odds are he'll avoid that client. This means he doesn't take many Company jobs, and while that may not make him the belle of the popularity ball, it also means he can sleep at night; it's easy to see which of those are his top priority. The RAC's purpose is, for him, the closest thing to law enforcement the Quad has, and lawfulness should serve the body it governs. Warrants don't always bring justice, but they're a start, and Peter believes internal changes within a corrupt system will only succeed on a long term basis by replacing them with a better alternative.
"Real love is fighting like hell to hold on to every moment you have with her. It’s making a life together and making it work no matter what happens."
When a person's moral code is that important to them, it's also unsurprising they'll cling to it with everything they've got, and by extension Peter approaches his whole life that way. He's tenacious in his personal relationships, won't give up on a case at work long past the point where anyone else would concede defeat, and works at skills until he excels. It makes him a good friend and a good partner, willing to sort through conflict before grievances can build up and make things more difficult to deal with later.
Peter: I'm calling a truce. I may have rushed to judgment. Neal: You had judgment on speed dial.
While that stubbornness brings out some of Peter's best qualities, it can also make him afraid to try new ideas, or give up on tried-and-true strategies that just won't work under the special circumstances his canon often hurls him into without such as a by your leave. He fights Neal's unorthodox methodology until it's clearly successful, and considering how frequently that happens, takes a ridiculously long amount of time to give him slightly more latitude. Working with Neal has made him relax his strictures a little in that capacity, especially when his wife or co-workers support those ideas. Obviously in canon he won't have had that to rely on, but Neal also had much more of a blank slate to prove himself, so it's effectively six of one, half a dozen of the other.
On the other hand, when he's wrong he's willing to admit it! Even if it's hedging like in the above quote, he's self-analytical and reflective enough - and focused on wanting to excel - to examine his mistakes and learn from them. "Amazing what someone will say when they don't think that you speak the language, isn't it? Let's see what they were saying behind the back of the bumbling FBI agent."
A further example of self-awareness: Peter is fully cognizant that his simple tastes (he genuinely loves deviled ham and I am sorry), plain way of speaking and straight-forwardness can come off as ~bumbling, but he's made that work for him by playing up the "aw shucks, pardner" presentation of his personality when someone underestimating him is to his advantage. But underneath the folksiness is a dude whose accounting degree earned him offers from several Fortune 500 companies, so he's not exactly a slouch in the brainiac department. You could actually go so far as to say he is, in fact, a giant nerd, considering how much his childhood loves for dinosaurs and space and, you know, stamp collecting, still make him giddy as an adult. He's a big believer in science, wants his explanations rational and backed up with evidence, making him at best an atheist-leaning agnostic; he's too reserved to voice that opinion to anyone he doesn't know well (...also that's just not a very smart idea and we just spent a paragraph talking about how Peter is bright), but when he's comfortable enough he'll demonstrate skepticism on a level that finds the idea of faith in an invisible guy in the sky antiquated and quaint.
Taking this analytical approach into the rest of his life as well, he prefers to problem solve with Reason, often allowing him to deescalate what could be potentially violent situations on the job before they can really start. As mentioned in Abilities he has enough skill with people to appeal to what is important to them and present it as a reason not to, say, shoot the FBI agent they, and by they we mean Neal, have faced down with an ancient pistol that would probably explode if fired.
On the other hand, of course, as is not uncommon with the calm, cool and tightly overwound, when a loved one is threatened that rational approach becomes very difficult to maintain a grip on; Peter's temper very rarely gets the better of him, but when it does there's kind of a terrifying guy under there!
Overall, the Peter most people will interact with is more reserved than engaging, but generally agreeable and sometimes the spouter of truly terrible puns, and all-around everything he presents himself to be: the homegrown American (....if there was an America, canonically) blue collar Joe, who likes baseball and eats cereal for breakfast and is just a little mistrustful of the overly fancy, though uh. Fortunately this version of blue collar does not come with barrels of racism etc, because that would be gross and I would be playing a different character. It's not easy to gain his loyalty, but once a person does they have it for life; he'll go to bat for you and he will swing for the fences.
I'd like to note I am very proud of myself for concluding this with a baseball metaphor.
Peter Burke | White Collar | Reserved
Player
Name: Lynn
Age: 21+
Contact: PM this journal, please!
Preferred Pronouns: She/her etc
Character
Name: Peter Burke
Age: 43
Memory Option: 1 (Deteriorating AU, with the caveat that I'll probably only use the memory regain option to facilitate easier integration for anyone else apping from from White Collar.)
Established Status: Yep! The whooooole five years. I'd like for his (canon) FBI experience to make it possible for him to test into level 4 of the RAC, but whatever the mods think is appropriate for him is fine! Either way he's spent the last five years pretty comparably to how he does in canon; being totally played by Neal Caffrey, pursuing Neal Caffrey with a vengeance, finally catching the little shit, and forming the Jay's most unlikely partnership.
....so generally, he's spent that time eating, sleeping, and breathing Reclamation Agentness, gaining a reputation for being both very, very good, and very, very boring. As boring as you can possibly be in this universe.
Canon: White Collar (2009-2014 television show)
Canon Point: Immediately following 2x10 "Burke's Seven"; Peter has just been reinstated with the FBI after disproving false allegations of his involvement in like, so much murder.
Citizenship: Authorized non-citizen
Job: RAC Agent
Abilities: Peter's canon hews as closely to "reality" as possible; he has no superpowers or special abilities beyond those accrued by training and experience. That said an extensive career with the FBI means he is highly proficient in the following areas, which, I am assuming - please correct me if I'm wrong! - all qualify as passive, being practical, possible abilities that don't involve breathing fire and aren't canon specific.
ATHLETICISM | Beyond the specifications he's required to meet to pass his career physical, Peter was at one point skilled enough to be recruited into professional sports; he can manipulate his own body weight, run long distances, leap moderately high walls in a single bound if he, you know, backs up a lot, and for some barely defined reason ride a horse and tango!. (Because Tim DeKay can and when you have that shit available on a show you should use it, that's why.)
ARREST/CONTROL TACTICS: More centered around restraint without injury for either party than combat with the aim to cripple an opponent, but 300% useful for chasing down a fleeing target, especially when the warrant level dictates they be taken alive. He's also trained as a boxer, although most of his experience in unarmed fighting came from experience in the Quad, not his previous life.
FIREARMS | FBI qualifications require an 80% success rate of fire (all draws from concealment) from varying distances, meaning 48 or better out of 60; Peter has given instructional courses, which demands at least 90% (54). In Overjoyed this will be just slightly modified to give him a broad understanding of the Quad's weaponry as is appropriate.
INTERROGATION/INTEL GATHERING | By nature Peter is pretty reserved, but he's skilled in talking to people when it counts: asking the right questions, conveying a sense of trustworthiness, etc. That's the preferential alternative before any actual interrogation is required, but he's had training in that too.
INVESTIGATION | Includes but is not limited to: pattern recognition and tracking, criminal profiling, critical reasoning, and basic forensic science and psychology.
Personality:
"There's a right way to do things and a wrong way. [Justice] is restoring order, not furthering chaos."
Unsurprisingly for someone whose real memories are of the FBI, Peter is primarily motivated by the restoration and maintenance of order in society. He's staunchly selective about the warrants he'll take; if he believes they're for selfish or just, you know, shady purposes, odds are he'll avoid that client. This means he doesn't take many Company jobs, and while that may not make him the belle of the popularity ball, it also means he can sleep at night; it's easy to see which of those are his top priority. The RAC's purpose is, for him, the closest thing to law enforcement the Quad has, and lawfulness should serve the body it governs. Warrants don't always bring justice, but they're a start, and Peter believes internal changes within a corrupt system will only succeed on a long term basis by replacing them with a better alternative.
"Real love is fighting like hell to hold on to every moment you have with her. It’s making a life together and making it work no matter what happens."
When a person's moral code is that important to them, it's also unsurprising they'll cling to it with everything they've got, and by extension Peter approaches his whole life that way. He's tenacious in his personal relationships, won't give up on a case at work long past the point where anyone else would concede defeat, and works at skills until he excels. It makes him a good friend and a good partner, willing to sort through conflict before grievances can build up and make things more difficult to deal with later.
Peter: I'm calling a truce. I may have rushed to judgment.
Neal: You had judgment on speed dial.
While that stubbornness brings out some of Peter's best qualities, it can also make him afraid to try new ideas, or give up on tried-and-true strategies that just won't work under the special circumstances his canon often hurls him into without such as a by your leave. He fights Neal's unorthodox methodology until it's clearly successful, and considering how frequently that happens, takes a ridiculously long amount of time to give him slightly more latitude. Working with Neal has made him relax his strictures a little in that capacity, especially when his wife or co-workers support those ideas. Obviously in canon he won't have had that to rely on, but Neal also had much more of a blank slate to prove himself, so it's effectively six of one, half a dozen of the other.
On the other hand, when he's wrong he's willing to admit it! Even if it's hedging like in the above quote, he's self-analytical and reflective enough - and focused on wanting to excel - to examine his mistakes and learn from them.
"Amazing what someone will say when they don't think that you speak the language, isn't it? Let's see what they were saying behind the back of the bumbling FBI agent."
A further example of self-awareness: Peter is fully cognizant that his simple tastes (he genuinely loves deviled ham and I am sorry), plain way of speaking and straight-forwardness can come off as ~bumbling, but he's made that work for him by playing up the "aw shucks, pardner" presentation of his personality when someone underestimating him is to his advantage. But underneath the folksiness is a dude whose accounting degree earned him offers from several Fortune 500 companies, so he's not exactly a slouch in the brainiac department. You could actually go so far as to say he is, in fact, a giant nerd, considering how much his childhood loves for dinosaurs and space and, you know, stamp collecting, still make him giddy as an adult. He's a big believer in science, wants his explanations rational and backed up with evidence, making him at best an atheist-leaning agnostic; he's too reserved to voice that opinion to anyone he doesn't know well (...also that's just not a very smart idea and we just spent a paragraph talking about how Peter is bright), but when he's comfortable enough he'll demonstrate skepticism on a level that finds the idea of faith in an invisible guy in the sky antiquated and quaint.
Taking this analytical approach into the rest of his life as well, he prefers to problem solve with Reason, often allowing him to deescalate what could be potentially violent situations on the job before they can really start. As mentioned in Abilities he has enough skill with people to appeal to what is important to them and present it as a reason not to, say, shoot the FBI agent they, and by they we mean Neal, have faced down with an ancient pistol that would probably explode if fired.
On the other hand, of course, as is not uncommon with the calm, cool and tightly overwound, when a loved one is threatened that rational approach becomes very difficult to maintain a grip on; Peter's temper very rarely gets the better of him, but when it does there's kind of a terrifying guy under there!
Overall, the Peter most people will interact with is more reserved than engaging, but generally agreeable and sometimes the spouter of truly terrible puns, and all-around everything he presents himself to be: the homegrown American (....if there was an America, canonically) blue collar Joe, who likes baseball and eats cereal for breakfast and is just a little mistrustful of the overly fancy, though uh. Fortunately this version of blue collar does not come with barrels of racism etc, because that would be gross and I would be playing a different character. It's not easy to gain his loyalty, but once a person does they have it for life; he'll go to bat for you and he will swing for the fences.
I'd like to note I am very proud of myself for concluding this with a baseball metaphor.