6I Application

[womanofvalue]

 

BASICS

 

Character name: Peggy Carter

Character type: Fandom Character

Fandom/Canon: Agent Carter (Television)

Character DW journal: womanofvalue.dreamwidth.org

Does this character have previous CR?: n/a

 

BACKGROUND

Peggy’s childhood was better than many of her peers, having grown up in the upper middle class during a difficult period in history. She grew up with a steadfast playmate and friend in her brother. Their yard turned into endless worlds in their imaginations and fostered a sense of adventure in both of them. Peggy’s teenaged years saw rationing and a nation on the brink of war. Her brother enlisted and Peggy donated her services to codebreaking at Bletchley, where she met her fiance and it was there that they offered her a chance to go into the field. Presented with two roads, she initially took the safe path until her brother convinced her that her potential shouldn’t be squandered playing housewife. Peggy chose adventure rather than the known path, joining the SSR where she began to learn new skills that bolstered her confidence.

She was placed on Project Rebirth and this was where she first encountered Steve Rogers, a young man that she saw promise in -- an echo of herself in someone whose merit and skills had been overlooked. She watched Steve grow into a soldier and fought at his side tenaciously by offering assistance and resources, helping to take down Red Skull and stopping his plans. Unfortunately, in the process of saving the world, Peggy lost Steve and the promise of a future with him. Pushing her heartbreak down, she continued to fight along the Howling Commandos through the Western Front and Russia, uncovering stolen artifacts and foiling plans. When peace time came about, it also brought an end to some of Peggy’s purpose. Her skills were no longer required and her place at the SSR now became that of a lunch order taker and phone answerer. She was working amidst men who didn’t see the real her and didn’t respect her talents and accomplishments.

It was a national scandal that gave Peggy opportunity when Howard Stark was accused of treason and he called on his old friend, Peggy, to help clear his name. Working counter to the very agency she had sworn her loyalty to, she managed to clear his name, though it wasn’t without consequences. Her team found out what she was doing, what she was capable of, and who their real enemies were. The end of the investigation brought the Black Widow program to the SSR’s attention, but at the cost of their Chief’s life. With the restructure that came after, Peggy was sent to Los Angeles where she was presented with two new conflicts -- the first being Daniel Sousa, a man she was accepting her feelings for and the second being dark matter, a strange new substance with the power to damage by tearing rifts in the universe. With allies at her side in the form of old friends and new ones, Peggy was able to take down a power-hungry actress who used dark matter as a way to gain clout and at the end of the day, she even got her man.

PERSONALITY

Peggy’s a woman living in a world that doesn’t see her true worth, but isn’t shy about punching her way through the world to make space for herself and her contributions. Despite the culture of the period telling her to be demure and obedient, Peggy’s had several influences in her life dating back to her childhood that taught her to challenge expectations and rise above the bare minimum expected of a woman in her time. She’s learned ambition from her brother’s encouragement, but once she acquired a taste for it, it never left her. Self-confident, Peggy knows her own value and isn’t swayed by the belittlement of others. She doesn’t allow it to impact her self-worth or dent her self-esteem, though she is often frustrated with an inability of her peers to listen to her. She’s an extremely intelligent woman and uses that cleverness to make the best of whatever situation she might find herself in.

Peggy is straightforward and tenacious when a goal is in sight. She’ll use whatever tactics are required, of which she possesses many including charm, blunt force, surveillance, and undercover work. Incredibly stubborn, Peggy can often overrule the opinions of others for her own belief that she’s in the right and her methods are best, but whether they listen to her is another matter. Her morals can be shifted as she believes that the end justifies the means and knows the world isn’t painted in black and white. It takes a great deal to shock her, as she’s been put through the crucible of the second world war and has seen all manner of destruction, chaos, and pain.

Though she might seem to be impervious to any weakness, Peggy still has issues with truly letting someone in her heart again after losing Steve. Her priorities place her career first, which settles love onto the backburner. She possesses a great sense of adventure that has led her to career highs that many other women (and men) could never even hope to dream of. She’s resilient and tough, with a no-nonsense attitude much of the time, but does know how to have a good time. Her humour leans towards the sarcastic and though it takes some cajoling to let her hair down, her close friendships have been formed with extroverted types who can do that for her. Peggy’s loyalty to these friends is paramount and she puts them before herself, even when the risk to her own safety may be high.

PERSONALITY QUESTIONS

What skills does your character bring to the situation?: Peggy is a resourceful woman with an extremely devoted work ethic that endures without having praise lavished on her. It means that she’s ready to devote herself to hard work even if she’s not recognized for it. Peggy makes hard choices and is pragmatic, which tends to make people follow her orders even when she’s not in an official position of authority. She bears a kindness that comes from seeing what good people like Steve Rogers can do when given the chance and knows that to harden her heart completely will only lead to more pain down the road. She’s quite skilled in cryptography and detection, using whatever methods necessary in order to get her information and has come around to being an excellent spy after years of soldiering.

Explain how your character would react to the following:

- Discovering that their memories may have been tampered with: Peggy likes to have a handle on her situation and to know all the facts, so being without them in the form of not knowing whether her mind has been tampered with will be like an itch she can’t quite scratch that drives her mad at all times. It will manifest in things like not being to sleep properly, a drive and an obsession, and eventually fruitless missions to find answers. She’ll never really come to terms with it, having this knowledge as an elephant in the room she’ll have to learn to live with, but will never quite accept.

- Having to do physical labor to survive: While she’s not accustomed to doing labour on a daily basis to survive, she also comes from wartime England in which people were expected to pitch in, in whatever ways they could. She’s used to rationing and fighting in a unit. Being expected to perform physical labour may make her muscles ache on a daily basis and make her long for an industrial revolution, but she won’t complain out loud because she knows that there’s a necessity for it and it will be evident in the lives of herself and others around her when quality of life moves above just plain survival into something rewarding due to that effort.

- Having to share resources with others: Her first thought will be pragmatic as to how best to share resources without running out of them. While she's very much a team player and willing to share, she may display some bossiness/control of the situation in that she'll want to devise a strategy to ensure that despite their sharing, they also won't run out of anything, anytime soon. Once she has that in place, she will be willing to give anything to the people who need it the most.

- Being unable to leave the area: Peggy will struggle with being stuck. More than that, she will have issues being unable to leave the area because some unseeing, unknown thing has prevented her from going. She will never stop investigating and searching for reasons, being used to strange things happening in her life. The difference is that in those cases, there had always been a cause behind them, even if it doesn’t make much scientific sense (science fiction is something she’s quickly learning is just science they don’t understand). She’ll still try to make the most of her entrapment, knowing that if she doesn’t, she’ll drive herself crazy with the failure to leave.

- Doing without modern conveniences and technology and/or being around tech more advanced than they're used to: Though Peggy won’t be leaping quite as far back as most, she’s still losing a hundred years of progress. The thing she’ll miss the most will be medical advancements, given that her line of work has often run her into situations that come with injury. The prospect of being without supplies and medicine is what will scare her most, knowing from the war how easily infection and death can set in when you don’t have the right tools.

- Being separated, possibly permanently, from loved ones and their previous life, including loss of powers, if applicable: While Peggy will be upset to lose her connection to those she cares the most about, she’s been raised during a war in which she learned that loss is inevitable. She lost her brother during the war, who was her grounding element. While she will never be inured to loss, she’s learned how to cope with it. Her separation from her loved ones and her previous occupation will leave her feeling disconnected and struggling for an anchor, but it will also act as a drive to push her to find people to connect with (at least in tasks) and giving herself means to distract herself from what she’s lost.

WRITING SAMPLE

Angie/Peggy fic: http://archiveofourown.org/works/4567830

Sample Post: The trains are coming into the station again, washing Peggy in the white noise of conversation, signal noises, whistles, and chaos. She closes her eyes and lets it wash over her, as if she can convince herself that she’s back in New York City if she tries hard enough. The trouble is that it’s like looking at something through slightly distorted glass. Everything is familiar and looks like the New York she’s used to, but then there are little things that sets it apart -- the modernity, for one.

She’s seen people speaking in devices the likes of which she’s only seen in Howard’s lab, but commonplace here. The cars are sleek and ridiculous with their shape, and the fashion of the day seems sloppy and careless. People keep whispering about her as they pass, as if she’s some bloody exhibit in a museum. She’s caught several whispers about <i>vintage</i> and people commenting that she must be some sort of advertisement for a new clothing line or maybe hair stylist.

Keeping her chin held high, she reminds herself that this is hardly the strangest situation she’s found herself in. She tells herself to collect the facts and begin to form a plan. Clearly, something temporal is at play and she has the feeling that she’s the odd one out. Given her proximity to dark matter recently and what happened last time, there’s the chance that her sudden arrival into a strange station has something to do with closing off the rift. That means she needs to find herself a reputable scientist in order to answer...

In the distance, she sees dark hair and a familiar halting gait. “Daniel,” she says to herself, allowing her hopes to soar for a moment as she pushes to her feet to charge after him, determination washing everything else away. “Daniel!” she calls a little louder, forcing the crowd to part unless they want to have Peggy barrel right into them. They part for her, but it only leads to disappointment as she finds a young man on crutches who is most decidedly <i>not</i> Daniel Sousa.

Her thoughts corralled once more, she tries to swallow back the disappointment of not having an ally (not to mention that her brain is still a touch overheated by that <i>kiss</i>) and steadies herself back to the task at hand.

“Excuse me,” she politely interrupts a passing person as she forces herself to be open and gregarious. She’ll have time later to allow herself a moment to break. “Where’s the nearest research facility and how do I get there?”

.