Margaret "Peggy" Carter (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
betheshield) wrote2015-11-08 03:50 pm
betheshield) wrote2015-11-08 03:50 pm
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OOC INFORMATION
Name: Smurf
Contact: PM this journal
Other Characters: None.
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Peggy Carter
Age: 25
Canon: Marvel Cinematic Universe / Agent Carter
Canon Point: Post-Season 1 of Agent Carter
Character Information: Wiki
Personality: To understand Peggy Carter, you need to understand the circumstances she lives in. She was born in 1921, three years after World War I. Britain had 19 times the casualties of the United States. Its debts were equivalent of 136% of its gross national product. Unemployment at the year of her birth was at 11.3%. Despite having won the war, Britain was not in good shape.
When Peggy was born, times were tough. Markets crashed and times got tougher. Eventually, after attempts to appease an angry and downtrodden Germany didn’t stop German aggression, Britain was forced to declare war all over again and things went downhill from there.
These tough times made a tough Peggy. It’s possible she enlisted when she was 17, but she was definitely in the military by 18. Despite her sex, which was a major sticking point she had to overcome, she became an advisor to the Strategic Scientific Reserve of America. After the war, she barreled past pressure to stick to womanly jobs or give up work entirely and became a federal agent of the SSR.
All of this speaks to the one trait of Peggy’s that can sum her up: her incredible force of will.
That force of will does both good and bad things to Peggy. It makes her strong, thick-skinned, and determined. She can endure insult and setbacks and tragedy because that is her life as a woman fighting to make a name for herself in this time, and she can keep fighting to move forward with all the vigor she had when she started. Her willfulness also makes her stubborn, arrogant, dismissive, and even cold at times. Because she so often has to be stubborn to feed her ambition, it permeates the rest of her life and she can get very stubborn in bad situations, such as when she refuses to accept help she needs. She can also (justifiably) get caught up in her own skill and get in over her head when she encounters an enemy that she can’t take on alone; this also hurts her when she dismisses people who don’t seem to have any training out of hand and thus underestimates them (which she does with Dottie, Jarvis, Ivchenko, and possibly Zola later on), though this is a trait that she shares with most of her colleagues.
Her years of battling for every ounce of respect, her profession in espionage, and the tragedies she has suffered have made her difficult to get close to. She is always polite, but she has put herself in a situation where real emotional intimacy is elusive. Colleagues can hear all about her missions, but in order to maintain their respect and avoid being treated as ‘The Woman’ more than she already is, she can’t share details about her personal life or express certain emotions. Civilians can hear about her mundane frustrations, but she has to lie to them about what she does for a living and what she used to do during the war. Thus, most friends she makes have to be shut out of a large part of her life. She has trained herself to deal with this and she takes what friendship she can have for what it’s worth. With these friendships, she usually is polite and shares small pieces of herself, but they remain small pieces and she ducks away from too much intimacy. She can handle this because she is fiercely independent and has trained herself to work with minimal emotional support, but when she can find someone she can share all parts of her life with (such as the Howling Commandos), her demeanor will change immediately and she will smile, laugh, and play more.
Another fundamental part of Peggy Carter is that she needs control. She can’t have complete control of any given situation, so she takes it in any way she can, from investigating what she’s dealing with to as little as making sure her clothes are perfectly professional. She’s a woman who likes having her orders followed, and she becomes frustrated when she’s disobeyed or her decisions are wrested from her somehow. Instead of spiraling when things go wrong, though, she doggedly finds some way to turn the situation into her favor somehow, and thus regains control. This makes her an excellent strategist and a natural leader.
Because she is so good at what she does and likes being in charge, she is eager to climb in ranks, though she doesn’t allow her ambition to get in the way of doing a good job and being fair to her colleagues. She also understands that she needs to work twice as hard and will be given half the credit as her male colleagues because she is a woman. It would be easy to descend into bitterness and self-pity because, as things stand now, she knows she will probably never be able to climb half as high as she would have were she a man, but her drive causes her instead to work tirelessly to prove everyone wrong. This drive and ambition eventually leads her to co-found SHIELD, a massive spy organization.
If it hasn’t been made clear by her job choice, Peggy is also very adventurous. She would be very unhappy constrained to being a housewife like many women of her era, so she instead embraces life as a single woman so she can travel the world during the war and fight on missions and save the world as an agent. She needs action in her life, and it’s up to everyone else to keep up.
While Peggy can be withholding and fierce, she also has a kind streak and a deep need to protect those who can’t protect themselves. She will chase a bad guy to the ends of the earth, but if she sees someone being mistreated along the way, she’ll stop for a moment and fix it. She is not the sort of person to publicly call out poor behavior, but she is the sort of person to privately approach someone and threaten them into behaving better. Her methods are usually blunt and pretty violent, but it’s because she has no patience for bullies, and a part of her likely revels in an ability to scare cruel people.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
Stubborn
Independent
Arrogant / Proud
Strong
Withholding
Intelligent
Driven
Ambitious
Adventurous
Compassionate
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Either fits or conflicts. Surprise me!
Opt-Outs:
Arachne
Shade
Werewolf
Werebear
Kelpie
Roleplay Sample: From the testdrive.
Name: Smurf
Contact: PM this journal
Other Characters: None.
CHARACTER INFORMATION
Character Name: Peggy Carter
Age: 25
Canon: Marvel Cinematic Universe / Agent Carter
Canon Point: Post-Season 1 of Agent Carter
Character Information: Wiki
Personality: To understand Peggy Carter, you need to understand the circumstances she lives in. She was born in 1921, three years after World War I. Britain had 19 times the casualties of the United States. Its debts were equivalent of 136% of its gross national product. Unemployment at the year of her birth was at 11.3%. Despite having won the war, Britain was not in good shape.
When Peggy was born, times were tough. Markets crashed and times got tougher. Eventually, after attempts to appease an angry and downtrodden Germany didn’t stop German aggression, Britain was forced to declare war all over again and things went downhill from there.
These tough times made a tough Peggy. It’s possible she enlisted when she was 17, but she was definitely in the military by 18. Despite her sex, which was a major sticking point she had to overcome, she became an advisor to the Strategic Scientific Reserve of America. After the war, she barreled past pressure to stick to womanly jobs or give up work entirely and became a federal agent of the SSR.
All of this speaks to the one trait of Peggy’s that can sum her up: her incredible force of will.
That force of will does both good and bad things to Peggy. It makes her strong, thick-skinned, and determined. She can endure insult and setbacks and tragedy because that is her life as a woman fighting to make a name for herself in this time, and she can keep fighting to move forward with all the vigor she had when she started. Her willfulness also makes her stubborn, arrogant, dismissive, and even cold at times. Because she so often has to be stubborn to feed her ambition, it permeates the rest of her life and she can get very stubborn in bad situations, such as when she refuses to accept help she needs. She can also (justifiably) get caught up in her own skill and get in over her head when she encounters an enemy that she can’t take on alone; this also hurts her when she dismisses people who don’t seem to have any training out of hand and thus underestimates them (which she does with Dottie, Jarvis, Ivchenko, and possibly Zola later on), though this is a trait that she shares with most of her colleagues.
Her years of battling for every ounce of respect, her profession in espionage, and the tragedies she has suffered have made her difficult to get close to. She is always polite, but she has put herself in a situation where real emotional intimacy is elusive. Colleagues can hear all about her missions, but in order to maintain their respect and avoid being treated as ‘The Woman’ more than she already is, she can’t share details about her personal life or express certain emotions. Civilians can hear about her mundane frustrations, but she has to lie to them about what she does for a living and what she used to do during the war. Thus, most friends she makes have to be shut out of a large part of her life. She has trained herself to deal with this and she takes what friendship she can have for what it’s worth. With these friendships, she usually is polite and shares small pieces of herself, but they remain small pieces and she ducks away from too much intimacy. She can handle this because she is fiercely independent and has trained herself to work with minimal emotional support, but when she can find someone she can share all parts of her life with (such as the Howling Commandos), her demeanor will change immediately and she will smile, laugh, and play more.
Another fundamental part of Peggy Carter is that she needs control. She can’t have complete control of any given situation, so she takes it in any way she can, from investigating what she’s dealing with to as little as making sure her clothes are perfectly professional. She’s a woman who likes having her orders followed, and she becomes frustrated when she’s disobeyed or her decisions are wrested from her somehow. Instead of spiraling when things go wrong, though, she doggedly finds some way to turn the situation into her favor somehow, and thus regains control. This makes her an excellent strategist and a natural leader.
Because she is so good at what she does and likes being in charge, she is eager to climb in ranks, though she doesn’t allow her ambition to get in the way of doing a good job and being fair to her colleagues. She also understands that she needs to work twice as hard and will be given half the credit as her male colleagues because she is a woman. It would be easy to descend into bitterness and self-pity because, as things stand now, she knows she will probably never be able to climb half as high as she would have were she a man, but her drive causes her instead to work tirelessly to prove everyone wrong. This drive and ambition eventually leads her to co-found SHIELD, a massive spy organization.
If it hasn’t been made clear by her job choice, Peggy is also very adventurous. She would be very unhappy constrained to being a housewife like many women of her era, so she instead embraces life as a single woman so she can travel the world during the war and fight on missions and save the world as an agent. She needs action in her life, and it’s up to everyone else to keep up.
While Peggy can be withholding and fierce, she also has a kind streak and a deep need to protect those who can’t protect themselves. She will chase a bad guy to the ends of the earth, but if she sees someone being mistreated along the way, she’ll stop for a moment and fix it. She is not the sort of person to publicly call out poor behavior, but she is the sort of person to privately approach someone and threaten them into behaving better. Her methods are usually blunt and pretty violent, but it’s because she has no patience for bullies, and a part of her likely revels in an ability to scare cruel people.
5-10 Key Character Traits:
Stubborn
Independent
Arrogant / Proud
Strong
Withholding
Intelligent
Driven
Ambitious
Adventurous
Compassionate
Would you prefer a monster that FITS your character’s personality, CONFLICTS with it, EITHER, or opt for 100% RANDOMIZATION? Either fits or conflicts. Surprise me!
Opt-Outs:
Arachne
Shade
Werewolf
Werebear
Kelpie
Roleplay Sample: From the testdrive.
Revisions
After Steve, the people who influence Peggy most tend to be the people who believe in her, because despite her independence, she needs at least a little outside support to follow her dreams and maintain her humanity at the same time. Howard Stark and Chester Phillips are both men that decided she was worth giving a chance and encouraged her to reach her potential, which is ultimately invaluable to her ability to not get discouraged in life. Where they differ is that Phillips was always upfront with her while Stark is more ready to manipulate her to get what he wants; the latter (combined with the reveal of Dottie, her neighbor, as a Russian assassin) has hurt her ability to trust people, which wasn't all that great to begin with. Edwin Jarvis and Angie Martinelli both remind her not only of the people she wants to protect, but of the fact that no one is an island and it's okay to accept help, which is one of the hardest things for her to do. The remaining Howling Commandos do a mix of both for her, since they automatically defer to her judgment and leadership in Steve's absence but still keep her feet on the ground by treating her as a friend and like any other soldier when they're not in the middle of a mission. All of these people make her a stronger and more compassionate person.
After them, there are the people who dismiss or actively oppose her, which is most of her office. Sousa is the only agent who doesn't treat her badly, but she still holds him at arm's length because the atmosphere of the office makes her feel like the slightest sign of weakness would be used as an excuse to keep her down. The constant dismissal and lack of faith hardens her with a need to prove herself, and that need can blind her. If it weren't for Jarvis, she would have revealed that she had found missing weapons to her office, and instead of getting the recognition she craved, she would have likely been arrested and executed for treason. Her opponents encourage the anger and ambition that Steve's moral compass tempers, and it's only because of the support of her friends that it doesn't get her in much worse trouble than it did.