Character Information
Season One and Season Two spoilers ahead!
Name: Becky~!
Personal LJ: code_gal
Contact Info: AIM: OnesNZeroes11
Other Characters Played: Edgar Roni Figaro (autocrossbowplz)
Preferred Housing: N/A
Character Name: Neal Caffrey. Known aliases include:
Character Series: White Collar
Character Age: Never explicitly stated, but inferred to be in his late twenties to early thirties.
Background: Here or here, though neither does a really good job of explaining Neal’s backstory, so I’ll do a little bit of that briefly, here.
Not much is known about Neal’s life prior to the series - with the exception of one flashback episode, the viewer doesn’t really get to see any of his life that isn’t happening in the now. What is known - or at least suspected - is that Neal’s father was a dirty cop who died in the line of duty when he was young. His mother lied to him about his father at the time, letting Neal think that his father was a hero who went out in a blaze of glory. Later, Neal learned the truth, though we don’t know exactly how or under what circumstances. And of course, this assumes that Neal was telling the truth when he told Peter all of this.
There isn’t much record for the viewer of Neal’s actions before he arrived in New York, other than he claims to have dropped out of high school, meaning his knowledge of fine art and the like is largely self-taught - or possibly Mozzie-taught. He is known to have pulled some crimes, though, and the FBI White Collar crimes division is already starting to look into him, mainly for forging bonds. Most of what happened in New York is only talked about, but here’s how the story goes, more or less. Eight years prior to the second season of the series (so about 2002-ish) Neal Caffrey moved to New York City. One of the early things Neal found in New York is a street game: Find the Lady. It was an example of a classic street con, run by a no-name thug and Mozzie. Neal managed to out slight-of-hand the thug and thereby conned the con artists. From there, Mozzie followed him in order to talk to Neal. Mozzie recruited Neal as a partner for his big planned heist. The target was Vincent Adler, a wealthy businessman and financier. The game was a long con, wherein they would convince Vincent Adler to give Neal the password to his bank accounts and siphon all of the money out of them, for a total of... well, quite a damn bit.
Over the course of the next six months, Neal managed to insert himself as Vincent Adler’s right-hand man under the guise Nicholas Halden. During this time he also met and eventually entered a relationship with Kate Moreau, Vincent Adler’s assistant, as well as meeting future contact Alex Hunter (and having a brief fling with her). To make a long story short, he managed to get Adler’s password the day the transfer is set to happen, but didn’t actually give it to Mozzie. Instead he resolved to continue living the lie and enjoying his life with Kate. Unfortunately for him, though, Vincent Adler disappeared the next day, taking with him hundreds of millions of dollars - everything that people had invested with him, including everything Kate and Neal had. The password given - ancientlyre - was actually just an anagram for "nice try, Neal". So Neal revealed to Kate who he really is, and they started running all kinds of cons and such, with help from Mozzie.
After a while, Neal got a message from Alex about a rare music box in Copenhagen. He tried to get Kate involved, but when Kate realized that he’d turned up the charm and was trying to trick her into it, she got upset and refused to go. Neal headed off to Copenhagen alone, where he and Alex ended up botching the job. The rumor got out that Neal has the box, and he never bothered to correct anyone on it. Meanwhile, in New York, Kate had pulled a disappearing act, and Neal started pulling bigger and bigger cons in order to get her attention. After three years (since he first came to New York - probably more like one and a half to two years after returning from Copenhagen), he finally got a tip on where Kate was going to be. While she was there, and Neal was able to make amends, the FBI set it up as a trap to catch Neal, and so they arrested him on forging bonds.
Neal spent the next three and two-thirds years in jail, counting the days until he could get out - and it was only a four year prison sentence. Kate visited him every week, like clockwork. Up until one day, when she left for good and didn’t come back - at that point Neal started orchestrating his escape from prison. Over the next month he managed to grow a beard, acquire a credit card to purchase a guard uniform, and create an access card in order to swipe out of the jail. Then one day he went into the staff bathroom, shaved, changed, and literally walked out the front door of the jail. He hot wired a car, used the three bucks in the glove compartment to buy a yellow jacket, used the jacket to pose as a valet at the airport so that he could steal a better car and $100 of tip money.
... of course, he blew it all when he went right back to Kate’s apartment, only to find that she’s moved out. Peter Burke, the case agent that arrested him in the first place, caught him again, but Neal managed to strike a deal. By offering to help on Peter’s current case, Neal convinced Peter to let him out on probation, wearing a GPS tracking anklet. While at first he’s brought to a seedy motel in the middle of downtown New York, Neal managed to talk his way into the guest bedroom of a wealthy widow that lives within the prescribed radius of the original hotel.
Over time, Neal became an official consultant for the FBI White Collar Crimes Division and helped Peter on a number of cases. He also began tracking Kate, who was being followed and manipulated by someone. Whoever was after Kate wanted the music box that everyone thought Neal has - except that Neal didn’t have it. The person manipulating Kate turned out to be OPR Agent Garrett Fowler (think the FBI version of Internal Affairs). In exchange for the music box, Fowler gave Neal and Kate the opportunity to leave and disappear, not to be bothered by the FBI again. Unfortunately, the plane that they were supposed to escape on was rigged with explosives - intentionally, though; the idea was to jump out over the water, and then the plane would explode, thus faking their deaths. But the explosives were detonated early, before Neal got on the plane - but after Kate did. Thus ended season one.
Season two picked up three months later, with Neal still working with the FBI on a probationary measure. Over the course of the season, they managed to track down Fowler, who pointed them in the direction of Julian Larssen, a former special forces agent that trained with Fowler. Larssen, in turn, pointed them in the direction of the man behind everything - Vincent Adler. Meanwhile, the music box’s secret has been discovered - it contained a musical code that encodes an equation. The equation built a fractal antenna that corresponded to a certain frequency. Adler managed to get his hands on the equation by having Larssen steal it from Mozzie. The antenna frequency picked up a signal from a beacon from an old German sub, packed to the gills with Nazi war treasure from World War II, which is what Adler is after.
Adler managed to find the sub, raise it, and get it stored in a warehouse. However, it was packed with TNT, so he uses Neal and Peter to crack into the sub, and then tried to kill them. They managed to escape, and get back to the warehouse in order to arrest Adler as he was returning to pick up the loot. Much to everyone’s surprise, however, the submarine exploded in the warehouse, destroying all of the Nazi loot inside. Adler blames Neal, and was about to shoot him when Peter shot Adler in the back, killing him. Season two then ended with Neal reading a mysterious note, giving him the address and number for a storage unit... which turned out to have all of the treasure from the submarine inside. It turned out Mozzie went back to the warehouse after the submarine was opened, took all of the loot out of the place, and put in a bunch of Neal’s paintings to make up for the weight.
It’s also worth noting that over the course of late season two, Neal started a relationship with Sara Ellis, an insurance claims investigator that has a history with Neal. Yeah, it was kind of out of the blue in the show, as well.
Season three has him and Mozzie planning how to get their treasures out of the country without the FBI noticing. Neal will be coming from the beginning of the season - after he knows Mozzie is behind the heist, but before they get very far in planning their escape.
... wow, did I say briefly? I meant tl;dr.
Personality: Neal is, first and foremost, charming. He will talk you into just about anything, given an opportunity. In another life he could have easily have been in advertising or politics and made a killing. In this life, however, he uses it in his cons. It makes for a very convincing sell, regardless of what he’s trying to convince you of. He can be a cop, an advertising exec., an FBI agent, or a street-hardened criminal, all at a moment’s notice. This is where his large array of aliases come from; each role has a different name, even if they all have the same face.
He’s clever and resourceful, and capable of thinking very fast on his feet. He’s largely self-taught, and works more on intuition than exact numbers. That said he does prefer to think things out in advance whenever possible. He’s certainly smart, to the point that the creators of the series have gone on record saying that he’s the sort of guy who is frequently the smartest person in the room. His cons are typically a healthy mix of pre-planned schemes and on-the-fly decisions, which is what makes them so effective.
Being primarily an art forger, Neal has a high appreciation for art, and spends a fair amount of his spare time painting or sculpting original pieces. As mentioned in the history, he dropped out of high school, and so much of his art appreciation is self-taught. Under Mozzie’s influence, he also began to read a lot of literature, especially of the more philosophical kind. Working for Adler gave him a taste for the high life, something that he never really managed to rid himself of - the suits, the hats, the wine, etc.
Ultimately, though, even though he is a con artist, he’s not a bad person. For the most part, his crimes don’t really hurt anyone - sure you might lose some cash or an art piece of value, but he only scams people with extra money anyways. He is very non-violent, and always prefers to talk his way out of a situation, rather than fight his way out. He might bluff intimidating, but he doesn’t hurt people. Lie, cheat, and steal, sure, but not physically hurt.
In working with the FBI, he actually does do what he can to help Peter on his cases. It’s worth noting that Neal really respects Peter - after all, he was the only one smart enough to catch him. That said, they only tentatively trust each other. Neal is pretty open with Peter about most things, but hides his past crimes and his current bending of the law - usually used in order to catch the criminal of the week. Peter usually finds out about these things shortly after - but since it leads to arrest, it’s hard to fault Neal.
All of the above breaks down, however, when it comes to Kate. Kate is his Achilles’ heel, so to speak. He was content to serve his four year jail sentence until Kate broke up with him, and it is only then that he orchestrated his escape from prison - in spite of the fact that he only had three months left on his sentence. Every time he’s rebelled from Peter and the FBI, it’s been in order to chase her or (eventually) her killer. In this sense, he is very much a romantic.
That said, part of his natural charm also makes him something of a ladies man, and he’s certainly not above flirting to get his way. He does love Kate completely; everyone else it seems he’s just toying with. Of course, now that Kate is dead, and with some time to recover from that tragedy, he has started a relationship with Sara. The exact nature of the relationship is as of yet unclear, but it seems to be more mutual fun than true love. Of course, with Neal it’s always hard to tell; he doesn’t quite know when or how to turn the con man act off.
His current biggest conflict is what to do about the warehouse of Nazi treasure. Essentially, Mozzie is egging him on to escape with the treasure and retire, but Neal is having doubts about leaving his life in New York behind - a combination of his relationship with Sara and finally getting used to his work with the FBI. He seems to genuinely enjoy working with Peter, and he’s pretty comfy in the guest bedroom at June’s house. Combine that with the fact that Peter is onto him regarding the treasure, and it makes for slow going.
Abilities: Nothing supernatural, but he is a damn good con artist, forger, and occasionally thief. His primary ability is his charm. He’s a people person, and very convincing. The downside is that once you get to know him - the real him, at least - it’s very difficult to trust him, since you never know what’s the con and what’s real. Other abilities include art (painting, sculpting, possibly other art forms), pickpocketing, lockpicking, sleight-of-hand, sneaking, shadowing, and so on - everything you’d expect a con artist to have.
Sample Entry: [Neal starts off muttering under his breath.] Someone in charge here has a strange sense of humor. Me, a lawyer?
Hello, Mayfield. Look, this place brings all kinds of people here, right? And I imagine a lot of you don’t necessarily get along with each other. This is where I come in; Nick Halden, Lawyer. Any problem you’ve got, I can settle it.
[Back to muttering.] Not that there’s any sort of a justice system here. Moz would have a field day...
Name: Becky~!
Personal LJ: code_gal
Contact Info: AIM: OnesNZeroes11
Other Characters Played: Edgar Roni Figaro (autocrossbowplz)
Preferred Housing: N/A
Character Name: Neal Caffrey. Known aliases include:
- Nicholas "Nick" Halden
- Benjamin Cooper
- George Danvary
- George Donnelly
- George Devore
- Steve Tabernackle
- Dr.Leonard Parker
Character Series: White Collar
Character Age: Never explicitly stated, but inferred to be in his late twenties to early thirties.
Background: Here or here, though neither does a really good job of explaining Neal’s backstory, so I’ll do a little bit of that briefly, here.
Not much is known about Neal’s life prior to the series - with the exception of one flashback episode, the viewer doesn’t really get to see any of his life that isn’t happening in the now. What is known - or at least suspected - is that Neal’s father was a dirty cop who died in the line of duty when he was young. His mother lied to him about his father at the time, letting Neal think that his father was a hero who went out in a blaze of glory. Later, Neal learned the truth, though we don’t know exactly how or under what circumstances. And of course, this assumes that Neal was telling the truth when he told Peter all of this.
There isn’t much record for the viewer of Neal’s actions before he arrived in New York, other than he claims to have dropped out of high school, meaning his knowledge of fine art and the like is largely self-taught - or possibly Mozzie-taught. He is known to have pulled some crimes, though, and the FBI White Collar crimes division is already starting to look into him, mainly for forging bonds. Most of what happened in New York is only talked about, but here’s how the story goes, more or less. Eight years prior to the second season of the series (so about 2002-ish) Neal Caffrey moved to New York City. One of the early things Neal found in New York is a street game: Find the Lady. It was an example of a classic street con, run by a no-name thug and Mozzie. Neal managed to out slight-of-hand the thug and thereby conned the con artists. From there, Mozzie followed him in order to talk to Neal. Mozzie recruited Neal as a partner for his big planned heist. The target was Vincent Adler, a wealthy businessman and financier. The game was a long con, wherein they would convince Vincent Adler to give Neal the password to his bank accounts and siphon all of the money out of them, for a total of... well, quite a damn bit.
Over the course of the next six months, Neal managed to insert himself as Vincent Adler’s right-hand man under the guise Nicholas Halden. During this time he also met and eventually entered a relationship with Kate Moreau, Vincent Adler’s assistant, as well as meeting future contact Alex Hunter (and having a brief fling with her). To make a long story short, he managed to get Adler’s password the day the transfer is set to happen, but didn’t actually give it to Mozzie. Instead he resolved to continue living the lie and enjoying his life with Kate. Unfortunately for him, though, Vincent Adler disappeared the next day, taking with him hundreds of millions of dollars - everything that people had invested with him, including everything Kate and Neal had. The password given - ancientlyre - was actually just an anagram for "nice try, Neal". So Neal revealed to Kate who he really is, and they started running all kinds of cons and such, with help from Mozzie.
After a while, Neal got a message from Alex about a rare music box in Copenhagen. He tried to get Kate involved, but when Kate realized that he’d turned up the charm and was trying to trick her into it, she got upset and refused to go. Neal headed off to Copenhagen alone, where he and Alex ended up botching the job. The rumor got out that Neal has the box, and he never bothered to correct anyone on it. Meanwhile, in New York, Kate had pulled a disappearing act, and Neal started pulling bigger and bigger cons in order to get her attention. After three years (since he first came to New York - probably more like one and a half to two years after returning from Copenhagen), he finally got a tip on where Kate was going to be. While she was there, and Neal was able to make amends, the FBI set it up as a trap to catch Neal, and so they arrested him on forging bonds.
Neal spent the next three and two-thirds years in jail, counting the days until he could get out - and it was only a four year prison sentence. Kate visited him every week, like clockwork. Up until one day, when she left for good and didn’t come back - at that point Neal started orchestrating his escape from prison. Over the next month he managed to grow a beard, acquire a credit card to purchase a guard uniform, and create an access card in order to swipe out of the jail. Then one day he went into the staff bathroom, shaved, changed, and literally walked out the front door of the jail. He hot wired a car, used the three bucks in the glove compartment to buy a yellow jacket, used the jacket to pose as a valet at the airport so that he could steal a better car and $100 of tip money.
... of course, he blew it all when he went right back to Kate’s apartment, only to find that she’s moved out. Peter Burke, the case agent that arrested him in the first place, caught him again, but Neal managed to strike a deal. By offering to help on Peter’s current case, Neal convinced Peter to let him out on probation, wearing a GPS tracking anklet. While at first he’s brought to a seedy motel in the middle of downtown New York, Neal managed to talk his way into the guest bedroom of a wealthy widow that lives within the prescribed radius of the original hotel.
Over time, Neal became an official consultant for the FBI White Collar Crimes Division and helped Peter on a number of cases. He also began tracking Kate, who was being followed and manipulated by someone. Whoever was after Kate wanted the music box that everyone thought Neal has - except that Neal didn’t have it. The person manipulating Kate turned out to be OPR Agent Garrett Fowler (think the FBI version of Internal Affairs). In exchange for the music box, Fowler gave Neal and Kate the opportunity to leave and disappear, not to be bothered by the FBI again. Unfortunately, the plane that they were supposed to escape on was rigged with explosives - intentionally, though; the idea was to jump out over the water, and then the plane would explode, thus faking their deaths. But the explosives were detonated early, before Neal got on the plane - but after Kate did. Thus ended season one.
Season two picked up three months later, with Neal still working with the FBI on a probationary measure. Over the course of the season, they managed to track down Fowler, who pointed them in the direction of Julian Larssen, a former special forces agent that trained with Fowler. Larssen, in turn, pointed them in the direction of the man behind everything - Vincent Adler. Meanwhile, the music box’s secret has been discovered - it contained a musical code that encodes an equation. The equation built a fractal antenna that corresponded to a certain frequency. Adler managed to get his hands on the equation by having Larssen steal it from Mozzie. The antenna frequency picked up a signal from a beacon from an old German sub, packed to the gills with Nazi war treasure from World War II, which is what Adler is after.
Adler managed to find the sub, raise it, and get it stored in a warehouse. However, it was packed with TNT, so he uses Neal and Peter to crack into the sub, and then tried to kill them. They managed to escape, and get back to the warehouse in order to arrest Adler as he was returning to pick up the loot. Much to everyone’s surprise, however, the submarine exploded in the warehouse, destroying all of the Nazi loot inside. Adler blames Neal, and was about to shoot him when Peter shot Adler in the back, killing him. Season two then ended with Neal reading a mysterious note, giving him the address and number for a storage unit... which turned out to have all of the treasure from the submarine inside. It turned out Mozzie went back to the warehouse after the submarine was opened, took all of the loot out of the place, and put in a bunch of Neal’s paintings to make up for the weight.
It’s also worth noting that over the course of late season two, Neal started a relationship with Sara Ellis, an insurance claims investigator that has a history with Neal. Yeah, it was kind of out of the blue in the show, as well.
Season three has him and Mozzie planning how to get their treasures out of the country without the FBI noticing. Neal will be coming from the beginning of the season - after he knows Mozzie is behind the heist, but before they get very far in planning their escape.
... wow, did I say briefly? I meant tl;dr.
Personality: Neal is, first and foremost, charming. He will talk you into just about anything, given an opportunity. In another life he could have easily have been in advertising or politics and made a killing. In this life, however, he uses it in his cons. It makes for a very convincing sell, regardless of what he’s trying to convince you of. He can be a cop, an advertising exec., an FBI agent, or a street-hardened criminal, all at a moment’s notice. This is where his large array of aliases come from; each role has a different name, even if they all have the same face.
He’s clever and resourceful, and capable of thinking very fast on his feet. He’s largely self-taught, and works more on intuition than exact numbers. That said he does prefer to think things out in advance whenever possible. He’s certainly smart, to the point that the creators of the series have gone on record saying that he’s the sort of guy who is frequently the smartest person in the room. His cons are typically a healthy mix of pre-planned schemes and on-the-fly decisions, which is what makes them so effective.
Being primarily an art forger, Neal has a high appreciation for art, and spends a fair amount of his spare time painting or sculpting original pieces. As mentioned in the history, he dropped out of high school, and so much of his art appreciation is self-taught. Under Mozzie’s influence, he also began to read a lot of literature, especially of the more philosophical kind. Working for Adler gave him a taste for the high life, something that he never really managed to rid himself of - the suits, the hats, the wine, etc.
Ultimately, though, even though he is a con artist, he’s not a bad person. For the most part, his crimes don’t really hurt anyone - sure you might lose some cash or an art piece of value, but he only scams people with extra money anyways. He is very non-violent, and always prefers to talk his way out of a situation, rather than fight his way out. He might bluff intimidating, but he doesn’t hurt people. Lie, cheat, and steal, sure, but not physically hurt.
In working with the FBI, he actually does do what he can to help Peter on his cases. It’s worth noting that Neal really respects Peter - after all, he was the only one smart enough to catch him. That said, they only tentatively trust each other. Neal is pretty open with Peter about most things, but hides his past crimes and his current bending of the law - usually used in order to catch the criminal of the week. Peter usually finds out about these things shortly after - but since it leads to arrest, it’s hard to fault Neal.
All of the above breaks down, however, when it comes to Kate. Kate is his Achilles’ heel, so to speak. He was content to serve his four year jail sentence until Kate broke up with him, and it is only then that he orchestrated his escape from prison - in spite of the fact that he only had three months left on his sentence. Every time he’s rebelled from Peter and the FBI, it’s been in order to chase her or (eventually) her killer. In this sense, he is very much a romantic.
That said, part of his natural charm also makes him something of a ladies man, and he’s certainly not above flirting to get his way. He does love Kate completely; everyone else it seems he’s just toying with. Of course, now that Kate is dead, and with some time to recover from that tragedy, he has started a relationship with Sara. The exact nature of the relationship is as of yet unclear, but it seems to be more mutual fun than true love. Of course, with Neal it’s always hard to tell; he doesn’t quite know when or how to turn the con man act off.
His current biggest conflict is what to do about the warehouse of Nazi treasure. Essentially, Mozzie is egging him on to escape with the treasure and retire, but Neal is having doubts about leaving his life in New York behind - a combination of his relationship with Sara and finally getting used to his work with the FBI. He seems to genuinely enjoy working with Peter, and he’s pretty comfy in the guest bedroom at June’s house. Combine that with the fact that Peter is onto him regarding the treasure, and it makes for slow going.
Abilities: Nothing supernatural, but he is a damn good con artist, forger, and occasionally thief. His primary ability is his charm. He’s a people person, and very convincing. The downside is that once you get to know him - the real him, at least - it’s very difficult to trust him, since you never know what’s the con and what’s real. Other abilities include art (painting, sculpting, possibly other art forms), pickpocketing, lockpicking, sleight-of-hand, sneaking, shadowing, and so on - everything you’d expect a con artist to have.
Sample Entry: [Neal starts off muttering under his breath.] Someone in charge here has a strange sense of humor. Me, a lawyer?
Hello, Mayfield. Look, this place brings all kinds of people here, right? And I imagine a lot of you don’t necessarily get along with each other. This is where I come in; Nick Halden, Lawyer. Any problem you’ve got, I can settle it.
[Back to muttering.] Not that there’s any sort of a justice system here. Moz would have a field day...