![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Aug. 26th, 2022 04:50 pmUser Name/Nick: Jae
User DW: N/A
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: plurk is researchboner, though I'm rarely on it. PMs work!
Other Characters Currently In-Game: N/A
Character Name: Neal Caffrey
Series: White Collar
Age: 36
From When?: S5, ep11. Neal has just discovered the woman he thought he was in love with was using him and has killed multiple people. During a search of her apartment, she shoots him. In canon, it's a warning shot, as she's actually developed feelings for him. In this situation, he started to take a step to one side at just the wrong moment.
Inmate Justification: His redemption arc is... well, a little weird, possibly. What he needs to learn is that he's capable of being something other than a criminal. He needs to accept the idea that he can be "redeemed," and then maybe even go a step further and realize that his mistakes aren't the kind that need redemption from anyone but himself.
Arrival: He agreed to come in.
Abilities/Powers: He's a regular squishy human. That said, he's also a world class thief, forger, and con man. He's able to look at a forged painting and not only tell that it's a fake, but also the kind of light it was painted in and how long it took to do based on the shading that changed with the movement of the sun. Basically, he's Sherlock Holmes if Sherlock Holmes was obsessed with art and history. In canon he's done everything from making fake gemstones to rappelling into the office of a world-class thief to break into his safe and leave a sarcastic message there.
Inmate Information: Neal grew up in witness protection. He learned early on that he needed to be self reliant. His mother shut down after they were put in witness protection, leaving Neal to largely raise himself. He loved her, but considers his father's former detective partner more family than his mother. His mother's neglect also drove him to commit the minor crimes and swindles that helped him live the life he wanted outside of her influence.
He was always a hustler, breaking in to his school during second grade to try and set the clocks so class would start later. By age 11 he was playing pool at a local bar in St. Louis and cleaning marks out of their money, and had already started forging city bus passes so he could move around independently. His mother told him that his father, a cop, went down in a haze of bullets saving someone's life. At age 18 he found out the apparent truth--his father was a crooked cop and killed a fellow officer. Unable to handle the revelation, Neal ran away from home and started pulling minor cons across the country, making his way to NYC and falling in love, both with the city and one of the women in it.
At the time he was working for Vincent Adler. Adler became Neal's mentor early on in his time in NYC. Showing him the finer things in life, shaping Neal into a protege that would do almost anything for him. When Neal tried to con Adler, Adler turned the con back on Neal and disappeared with over a billion dollars. Adler later returned, and was responsible for the death of Neal's lover Kate and the near-death of Neal's best friend.
Kate was Neal's obsession for a long time. In many ways, he considered her his muse, and some of the heists he pulled off were meant to impress her or get her attention to send messages. After his release into FBI custody, Neal went back to looking for her, and was nearly able to start a new life at her side in spite of the fact that Kate admitted to Peter Burke that she never really loved Neal the way he loved her. She was killed in an explosion that nearly killed Neal too, leaving him with PTSD and a desperation to bring her killers to justice.
Neal got on to the FBI's radar not too long after Adler vanished. He cracked a bearer bond that was supposedly impossible to forge, and Peter Burke spent the next three years chasing Neal around the world. When he finally caught Neal, the only crime he could prove was the bond forgery. Rather than leaving Neal in prison, Burke took him on as a confidential informant for the FBI, where Neal has helped the white collar unit close 94% of their cases. He's desperate for connection, for understanding, for kindness--and everything he's ever been given of those things has been conditional or unreliable. There are only two people in his life who have ever been wholeheartedly accepting of him and who he is, and by his canon point, he's pretty sure he's never going to see one of them again.
Neal is suave, handsome, charming, and he knows it. He can be anything to anyone, and adapts to situations with alarming speed, constructing the most useful persona for the moment without hesitation. He smiles when he's upset, lies as fluidly as he tells the truth, and comes across as an open book - a fiction which very quickly falls apart if you try to ask him about his life. He says it's to keep up an air of mystery, but it has a lot more to do with running from past hurts and not being able to deal with some of the things he's been through. His biggest lie is honesty, and he's capable of drawing people in with just enough of the truth to get what he wants and leave them with nothing. He seems like someone you can trust, and trusting him is a very, very big risk.
When it comes to things he's not emotionally involved in, he's shrewd, calculating, and precise. When he's emotionally involved, he reckless, easily angered, and driven to great lengths to get what he wants and damn the consequences. He's incredibly good at adapting to his circumstances, whether it's escaping a gunman during a sting gone wrong or stealing high-tech surveillance equipment with nothing but a floor layout and an unexpected twenty seconds to do it. He's an adrenaline junky, which informs a lot of his choices, but he's not a fighter. He's far more likely to run from violence than engage with it unless someone else is at risk.
At his current canon point, he's at his lowest. After a period of near-happiness, he was forced to run from the FBI or be transferred to Washington DC to face permanent indentured servitude under the supervision of someone he hated. After being brought back into custody and being "graciously" given his old work-release deal again in return for helping apprehend one of the FBI's top ten most wanted, he struggles to figure out who he is and in the process reconnected with his adoptive aunt. She was murdered shortly thereafter, and Neal's father walked back into his life after 34 years, pretending to be someone else.
When Neal found out the man pretending to be his aunt's undercover partner was really his father, a man accused of killing his SO, Neal plunged into internal turmoil over the desire to know and be loved by the father he doesn't remember and the suspicion that his father is exactly the man the accusations portray.
When his father reveals his true colors and frames Neal's most trusted friend for murder, Neal takes steps to clear his friend's name before the man can be formally tried and lose his place at the FBI. Neal is, at his canonpoint, neck-deep in lies to everyone he cares about, being blackmailed into crimes that would get him locked up for a lot longer than four years, all to protect a friend who will arrest him if he finds out what Neal's done.
Also, the girl he fell in love with in the middle of it all turned out to be the one pulling the strings, and she shot him.
Path to Redemption:
One of my big beefs with White Collar as a canon is the insistence, from start to finish, from just about everyone, that Neal is just naturally a criminal and can't help his criminal behavior. By season five, even though he's starting to buck against the idea that his behavior is inherently wrong/that crime itself is never a moral response to a situation, he's definitely internalized the idea that he's not good enough to be good and never will be.
Ultimately, I want his trigger for graduation to be his getting genuinely angry at being an Inmate not because it traps him but because he's come to really believe he doesn't deserve it. It'll be a process.
When he first gets to the Barge, there's going to be a period of bitterness and anger that his so-called second chance came with strings he doesn't remember being described, and he's going to be a contrary, emotionally aggressive brat with anyone who exercises power over him. He'll be disruptive, probably try to jump ship at his first port, and buck hard against the whole prospect of indefinite confinement without clear parameters for release.
The best warden for him would be someone patient, someone kind, someone who supports his frankly very fragile sense of self and helps him establish some kind of personal value. He wouldn't do well with someone rough, someone dismissive, someone who doesn't listen to his opinions, or someone violent. He's a lot more likely to listen to someone who (at least acts like) he has some kind of value to them.
Being brought to Barge is going to reinforce for him on a subconscious level the idea that the things he's done are bad, full stop. Since he associates his entire sense of self with what he's accomplished or failed to accomplish, having this cosmic "evidence" that his choices are corrupt will be kinda crushing. He's going to be pushed to square one, in terms of his opinion of himself, which is just 'I'm a criminal so I'm going to act like a criminal.' Opportunities to prove that he's more than that, having people consistently tell him he's more than that, being rewarded for criminal-but-moral choices--those are the things that will push him toward the internalization of the possibility that he deserves better than the world has given him.
EDITS FOR REVISIONS: Y'all hit the nail on the head when you said "realizing he isn't inherently Bad is an important step for him in breaking out of various harmful habits." My personal beefs with White Collar's treatment of him aside, Neal is absolutely a shortsighted liar who causes harm to others simply because he doesn't think before he acts a lot of the time and doesn't trust anyone for either help or (most of the time) advice. He's the smartest one in the room 90% of the time (or at least thinks he is), and his assumption that he knows best gets him in trouble. He doesn't trust people, and his unwillingness to do that, to share information, to rely on others, often balloons problems from something small and potentially manageable into a disaster that takes great lengths to resolve. Similarly, he needs to stop trying to please everyone, because in trying to do so he often causes similar issues. Working to please people with opposing agendas has led to direct harm to innocent third parties on more than one occasion. Ultimately, in addition to realizing that he himself isn't inherently bad--more than that, even--he needs to learn to trust. To truly rely on others and look for help when he needs it instead of either trying to resolve the issue himself or just straight up hide that there's a problem until it blows up in his face and the faces of everyone around him. For real redemption, real graduation, he needs to internalize his own value to the degree where he doesn't consider trust and reliance on others to be a personal failing or profound weakness.
History: https://whitecollar.fandom.com/wiki/Neal_Caffrey
Sample Network Entry:
To Whom It May Concern,
This is specifically directed at whoever thought it would be hilarious to take my towel in the time it took for me to turn off the water in one of the shower stalls and turn back to where I'd placed it out of the way.
Joke's on you. I've been stuck naked in worse places.
That said, I will find you, and you will regret the day you were hijacked onto this little space camp minimum-security nightmare.
Have a nice day.
--N. Caffrey
Sample RP: TDM Sample
Special Notes: Nope!
User DW: N/A
E-mail/Plurk/Discord/PM to a character journal/alternate method of contact: plurk is researchboner, though I'm rarely on it. PMs work!
Other Characters Currently In-Game: N/A
Character Name: Neal Caffrey
Series: White Collar
Age: 36
From When?: S5, ep11. Neal has just discovered the woman he thought he was in love with was using him and has killed multiple people. During a search of her apartment, she shoots him. In canon, it's a warning shot, as she's actually developed feelings for him. In this situation, he started to take a step to one side at just the wrong moment.
Inmate Justification: His redemption arc is... well, a little weird, possibly. What he needs to learn is that he's capable of being something other than a criminal. He needs to accept the idea that he can be "redeemed," and then maybe even go a step further and realize that his mistakes aren't the kind that need redemption from anyone but himself.
Arrival: He agreed to come in.
Abilities/Powers: He's a regular squishy human. That said, he's also a world class thief, forger, and con man. He's able to look at a forged painting and not only tell that it's a fake, but also the kind of light it was painted in and how long it took to do based on the shading that changed with the movement of the sun. Basically, he's Sherlock Holmes if Sherlock Holmes was obsessed with art and history. In canon he's done everything from making fake gemstones to rappelling into the office of a world-class thief to break into his safe and leave a sarcastic message there.
Inmate Information: Neal grew up in witness protection. He learned early on that he needed to be self reliant. His mother shut down after they were put in witness protection, leaving Neal to largely raise himself. He loved her, but considers his father's former detective partner more family than his mother. His mother's neglect also drove him to commit the minor crimes and swindles that helped him live the life he wanted outside of her influence.
He was always a hustler, breaking in to his school during second grade to try and set the clocks so class would start later. By age 11 he was playing pool at a local bar in St. Louis and cleaning marks out of their money, and had already started forging city bus passes so he could move around independently. His mother told him that his father, a cop, went down in a haze of bullets saving someone's life. At age 18 he found out the apparent truth--his father was a crooked cop and killed a fellow officer. Unable to handle the revelation, Neal ran away from home and started pulling minor cons across the country, making his way to NYC and falling in love, both with the city and one of the women in it.
At the time he was working for Vincent Adler. Adler became Neal's mentor early on in his time in NYC. Showing him the finer things in life, shaping Neal into a protege that would do almost anything for him. When Neal tried to con Adler, Adler turned the con back on Neal and disappeared with over a billion dollars. Adler later returned, and was responsible for the death of Neal's lover Kate and the near-death of Neal's best friend.
Kate was Neal's obsession for a long time. In many ways, he considered her his muse, and some of the heists he pulled off were meant to impress her or get her attention to send messages. After his release into FBI custody, Neal went back to looking for her, and was nearly able to start a new life at her side in spite of the fact that Kate admitted to Peter Burke that she never really loved Neal the way he loved her. She was killed in an explosion that nearly killed Neal too, leaving him with PTSD and a desperation to bring her killers to justice.
Neal got on to the FBI's radar not too long after Adler vanished. He cracked a bearer bond that was supposedly impossible to forge, and Peter Burke spent the next three years chasing Neal around the world. When he finally caught Neal, the only crime he could prove was the bond forgery. Rather than leaving Neal in prison, Burke took him on as a confidential informant for the FBI, where Neal has helped the white collar unit close 94% of their cases. He's desperate for connection, for understanding, for kindness--and everything he's ever been given of those things has been conditional or unreliable. There are only two people in his life who have ever been wholeheartedly accepting of him and who he is, and by his canon point, he's pretty sure he's never going to see one of them again.
Neal is suave, handsome, charming, and he knows it. He can be anything to anyone, and adapts to situations with alarming speed, constructing the most useful persona for the moment without hesitation. He smiles when he's upset, lies as fluidly as he tells the truth, and comes across as an open book - a fiction which very quickly falls apart if you try to ask him about his life. He says it's to keep up an air of mystery, but it has a lot more to do with running from past hurts and not being able to deal with some of the things he's been through. His biggest lie is honesty, and he's capable of drawing people in with just enough of the truth to get what he wants and leave them with nothing. He seems like someone you can trust, and trusting him is a very, very big risk.
When it comes to things he's not emotionally involved in, he's shrewd, calculating, and precise. When he's emotionally involved, he reckless, easily angered, and driven to great lengths to get what he wants and damn the consequences. He's incredibly good at adapting to his circumstances, whether it's escaping a gunman during a sting gone wrong or stealing high-tech surveillance equipment with nothing but a floor layout and an unexpected twenty seconds to do it. He's an adrenaline junky, which informs a lot of his choices, but he's not a fighter. He's far more likely to run from violence than engage with it unless someone else is at risk.
At his current canon point, he's at his lowest. After a period of near-happiness, he was forced to run from the FBI or be transferred to Washington DC to face permanent indentured servitude under the supervision of someone he hated. After being brought back into custody and being "graciously" given his old work-release deal again in return for helping apprehend one of the FBI's top ten most wanted, he struggles to figure out who he is and in the process reconnected with his adoptive aunt. She was murdered shortly thereafter, and Neal's father walked back into his life after 34 years, pretending to be someone else.
When Neal found out the man pretending to be his aunt's undercover partner was really his father, a man accused of killing his SO, Neal plunged into internal turmoil over the desire to know and be loved by the father he doesn't remember and the suspicion that his father is exactly the man the accusations portray.
When his father reveals his true colors and frames Neal's most trusted friend for murder, Neal takes steps to clear his friend's name before the man can be formally tried and lose his place at the FBI. Neal is, at his canonpoint, neck-deep in lies to everyone he cares about, being blackmailed into crimes that would get him locked up for a lot longer than four years, all to protect a friend who will arrest him if he finds out what Neal's done.
Also, the girl he fell in love with in the middle of it all turned out to be the one pulling the strings, and she shot him.
Path to Redemption:
One of my big beefs with White Collar as a canon is the insistence, from start to finish, from just about everyone, that Neal is just naturally a criminal and can't help his criminal behavior. By season five, even though he's starting to buck against the idea that his behavior is inherently wrong/that crime itself is never a moral response to a situation, he's definitely internalized the idea that he's not good enough to be good and never will be.
Ultimately, I want his trigger for graduation to be his getting genuinely angry at being an Inmate not because it traps him but because he's come to really believe he doesn't deserve it. It'll be a process.
When he first gets to the Barge, there's going to be a period of bitterness and anger that his so-called second chance came with strings he doesn't remember being described, and he's going to be a contrary, emotionally aggressive brat with anyone who exercises power over him. He'll be disruptive, probably try to jump ship at his first port, and buck hard against the whole prospect of indefinite confinement without clear parameters for release.
The best warden for him would be someone patient, someone kind, someone who supports his frankly very fragile sense of self and helps him establish some kind of personal value. He wouldn't do well with someone rough, someone dismissive, someone who doesn't listen to his opinions, or someone violent. He's a lot more likely to listen to someone who (at least acts like) he has some kind of value to them.
Being brought to Barge is going to reinforce for him on a subconscious level the idea that the things he's done are bad, full stop. Since he associates his entire sense of self with what he's accomplished or failed to accomplish, having this cosmic "evidence" that his choices are corrupt will be kinda crushing. He's going to be pushed to square one, in terms of his opinion of himself, which is just 'I'm a criminal so I'm going to act like a criminal.' Opportunities to prove that he's more than that, having people consistently tell him he's more than that, being rewarded for criminal-but-moral choices--those are the things that will push him toward the internalization of the possibility that he deserves better than the world has given him.
EDITS FOR REVISIONS: Y'all hit the nail on the head when you said "realizing he isn't inherently Bad is an important step for him in breaking out of various harmful habits." My personal beefs with White Collar's treatment of him aside, Neal is absolutely a shortsighted liar who causes harm to others simply because he doesn't think before he acts a lot of the time and doesn't trust anyone for either help or (most of the time) advice. He's the smartest one in the room 90% of the time (or at least thinks he is), and his assumption that he knows best gets him in trouble. He doesn't trust people, and his unwillingness to do that, to share information, to rely on others, often balloons problems from something small and potentially manageable into a disaster that takes great lengths to resolve. Similarly, he needs to stop trying to please everyone, because in trying to do so he often causes similar issues. Working to please people with opposing agendas has led to direct harm to innocent third parties on more than one occasion. Ultimately, in addition to realizing that he himself isn't inherently bad--more than that, even--he needs to learn to trust. To truly rely on others and look for help when he needs it instead of either trying to resolve the issue himself or just straight up hide that there's a problem until it blows up in his face and the faces of everyone around him. For real redemption, real graduation, he needs to internalize his own value to the degree where he doesn't consider trust and reliance on others to be a personal failing or profound weakness.
History: https://whitecollar.fandom.com/wiki/Neal_Caffrey
Sample Network Entry:
To Whom It May Concern,
This is specifically directed at whoever thought it would be hilarious to take my towel in the time it took for me to turn off the water in one of the shower stalls and turn back to where I'd placed it out of the way.
Joke's on you. I've been stuck naked in worse places.
That said, I will find you, and you will regret the day you were hijacked onto this little space camp minimum-security nightmare.
Have a nice day.
--N. Caffrey
Sample RP: TDM Sample
Special Notes: Nope!
