Jake Peralta

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Player Information

Name: Zoki
Age: too old (18+)
Contact details: kharamagic
Other characters: Seto Kaiba

Character Information

Name: Jacob 'Jake' Peralta
Canon: Brooklyn Nine Nine
Canon Point: post season 5 episode 3 'Kicks'
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OU
Age: 37

World Information: Jake comes from an Earth virtually identical to our real world in 2017. He lives in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, a bustling United States metropolis, and has a very busy life as a detective in the NYPD. He primarily focuses on murder, theft, and kidnapping cases.

Of note, he's deeply familiar with modern day pop culture, so there will be a fourth wall section of his permissions post. He will quickly accept the multiverse theory and will not be calling anyone fictional, but there may be an extended freakout sesh if he ever encounters a Pikachu.

Personal History: Jake was born in the early 1980s in New York City. He was raised by his mother, Karen Peralta, largely alone because his father Roger Peralta was an airline pilot who was often absent, and fully left them when he was seven. He wasn't particularly popular at school, but bonded closely with a sarcastic and snide young woman, Gina Linetti, who would one day be his coworker.

At some point in his childhood, Jake imprinted on the movie Die Hard, and decided right then that he wanted to be a police officer who says snappy one-liners and saves everyone by himself like John McClane. He entered the academy shortly after graduating high school, where he met a no-nonsense, dedicated woman named Rosa Diaz. They worked their way through the academy and graduated together, both assigned to Brooklyn's 99th precinct and working their way up to detective. Jake's childhood friend Gina joined them as the civilian administrator of the precinct, and there they encountered a few faces who would remain constants:

-Sergeant Terry Jeffords, a physically intimidating but sensitive family man who deeply loves his family, his coworkers, and yogurt. Terry is essentially the nurturing mother figure of the team compared to Holt's stern father vibes.
-Detective Charles Boyle, a rather...unusual man with a passion for well-prepared and unusual foods, though he comes from a family who values beige blandness as a defining trait. Charles is Jake's best friend and won't let you forget it.
-Detectives Hitchcock and Scully, two gentlemen near retirement age who spend their days at the precinct processing paperwork. They both inhale huge amounts of junk food, and their social understanding of the world is outdated, but they do their job. Eventually.

Jake was immature and obnoxious for a detective at the beginning of his career, often neglecting paperwork he found too boring or flaunting the dress code, but his incredible skill in detective work kept him in his spot. He was charismatic and friendly enough to avoid putting off all his coworkers, and eventually he'd meet two people who began to change him for the better.

One of the newer detectives, Amy Santiago, was quite the nerd in Jake's eyes. She respected authority, obsessively followed rules, and maintained binders with instructions for every situation. She was essentially Jake's polar opposite, and she'd one day become his girlfriend. The two of them had equal passion for fighting crime, and their yearly bets on who would make the most arrests pushed the precinct forward.

The next event that changed his life was the appointment of Raymond Holt as his precinct captain. Captain Holt had no interest in allowing Jake to continue to flaunt the rules. He insisted on professional dress, neat paperwork, and order in the precinct, and Jake came to respect him...first as a captain, then as a substitute father figure. Beneath the rough and emotionless exterior (an exterior that Jake once called 'meep morp robot'), Holt was an incredibly caring man with a passion for doing the right thing and pushing the members of the precinct to be their best.

The series began with Captain Holt's appointment to the precinct, and as the time goes by, Jake slowly matured thanks to the positive influence of Amy and Holt. The first two years of Holt's captaincy were largely uneventful, though Jake and Amy went through a few romantic relationships each and the tension between them grew. Jake's absent-minded father Roger reappeared, and after one final crushing disappointment, Jake finally let go of any lingering admiration for the man and decided the squad was his new family.

At the beginning of the third year, Jake and Amy finally became a couple after years of bickering and tension, much to Charles' joy. At the end of the year, Jake and Holt got into major trouble with a crime boss, and ended up in the witness protection program in Florida. Being apart from Amy and his friends took a major psychological toll on Jake, and he and Holt snapped at each other repeatedly until they caught the ringleader with stubborn determination.

The fourth year was again largely uneventful, until Jake and Rosa got tangled up on a case with an officer they admired, Officer Hawkins. They discovered that Hawkins was a jewel thief, but when caught she framed for the robberies and sent them to prison. Being treated as a criminal and experiencing the horrors of prison upended Jake's world view.

He made his first arrest back in Brooklyn in an impulsive hurry to prove that prison hasn't affected him too deeply...but it had. Jake discovered that it was much harder to sentence a person to prison after serving time himself, and he made the decision to step away from the field for a little while to process. And that's his canon point.

Personality:

Jake is the most amazing detective/genius on the planet. Everyone loves him, he always knows the coolest one-liners, and he has the hottest, smartest, most incredible girlfriend on the planet. End section.

...okay, back up. That's just what he wants you to think.

Jake presents to the world a glorified self-image of a super-genius detective on the level of Sherlock Holmes. When he's in the midst of believing his own hype, he'll insist that he can solve any crime with just a quick glance around the scene and a few pointed questions, and he has a competitive streak a mile wide when it comes to solving cases. Especially when he's competing for arrests with his rival turned girlfriend, Amy Santiago. He's often arrogant about his abilities, dismissive of methods he deems 'old-school', and quick to point out to his colleagues that he was totally right about the case.

So yes, Jake prides himself on his street smarts. His other fictional idol is John McClane, the protagonist of the movie Die Hard, and his greatest dream is to pull off a rescue as heroic as John's actions in the movie. While doing undercover work, he tends to give himself the coolest name and most badass or tragic backstory he can think of. In tense situations, he has a tendency to go for the flashiest kill, or the method of defusing the situation that makes him look the coolest. Why coordinate a hostage rescue with closer officers when you can crawl through the vents and get the drop on them yourself? He's also a huge pop culture nerd in general, frequently comparing himself to superhero comics and gushing about the latest video games.

Jake isn't the most mature or professional of officers. He struggles with keeping organized, getting to work on time, and acknowledging when he's wrong. But he genuinely respects his colleagues (except Hitchcock and Scully), and that tends to keep him from going too far off the rails. His attachment to his captain and father figure, Raymond Holt, generally keeps him in line. He respects and trusts the man more than anyone else.

But there's more to Jake than the surface arrogance and immaturity. It's all a front he's learned to project from an early age. After his father abandoned the family, Jake toughened up and aimed for the police academy, believing people like Sherlock and McClane from his stories were the real-world superheroes who could best protect the innocent. After what his mother went through, and what he went through...he became deeply concerned with justice, with punishing cheats who hurt people.

It pains Jake to see people he cares for suffering. He's always willing to set his more immature idol worship and posturing aside to protect someone he cares for: for example, when an old-school cop he once admired insults his captain for being gay, Jake breaks his nose. When his colleague Rosa struggles with her sexuality, he helps her come out to her parents and tells them off for rejecting her.

Jake falters the most when he fails to live up to his own hype: if a case leads to dead end after dead end, he tends to despair for a little while. And when situations are more morally gray than he expects, he often falls into indecision. After he's framed for jewel theft and serves a few months in prison, he definitely hesitates more to cuff a person.

Overall he tries to project the image of a charismatic and suave detective, but while he's quite good at the job, he's not perfect, and there's a part of him that will always be desperate for approval from parental figures.

CRAU developments: N/A

Key themes: Maturing as a person, learning to see the world in shades of gray, finding family

Main Motivation: Do a good job and keep people safe. Also, if he can look cool while doing it, hey, bonus!

Skills: Jake is a gifted detective who likes to think of himself as the next Sherlock Holmes, though he doesn't quite reach that level. He has a gift of gab that tends to get people talking, and that tends to lead him to clues. He also has a keen eye for noticing suspicious details in an environment, and has the imagination to piece a scene together.

Like all NYPD detectives he's a decent marksman with reflexes honed from too many video games. He is not, however, gifted in athletics at all. That's Terry's department.

Item: His phone, containing a few sentimental pictures of his girlfriend and colleagues.

Sample: Jake at Denny's

If that's not long enough, here's another sample: train diary entry!

How does this work? Okay, press this...here we go...

Detective's log, stardate Nacho 3. Or however these things go.

You know how I used to think living out Die Hard would be the absolute pinnacle of my life? Or wait, guess you don't know, you're a video diary. All you need to know is that that Christmas was the most awesome one ever, even though Charles got to do all the coolest stuff. Love ya, Charles. Can't wait to tell you about this.

Well, throw all that out the window, 'cause I think I found something way weirder! I'm in Trek across the Stars! You know, that one show where everybody wears colorful costumes and they're crammed on a small ship that looks like a weird teacup, beaming down to planets and fighting aliens in rubber suits? I didn't watch much, too brainy for me, but Amy says it's fun when she can get drunk enough to ignore the scientific inaccuracies. Maybe I should send her to watch that with Holt sometime.

So my life's kinda like that now! I'm wearing a totally dorkish uniform and serving on teams, but instead of a ship I'm on a train that shoots through the stars. And there's no beaming, but apparently there are warp gates. Wild, right? And the train's full of superheroes! There are a few who are just like the Revengers, it's amazing. No sign of John McClane yet, but I'll keep you posted. I'm sure it's only a matter of time. But until then, I've got a lot of case-cracking to do. I've heard bits about who we're running from and what's supposedly happening to the universe, and who better to solve the greatest mystery in all of creation than yours truly?

This is Agent Rusty Bullet, signing off.

...wait, guess I can't call myself that if everyone can see my name on the roster. Damn. Back to the drawing board.



Notes: As mentioned, his fourth wall permissions post is here