Deputy U.S. Marshal Tim Gutterson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
comfortablyerect) wrote2025-04-11 07:00 pm
comfortablyerect) wrote2025-04-11 07:00 pm
Entry tags:
application; singillatim
PLAYER INFO
Player Name: Raye
• Player Contact: raye_nbow @ plurk | falonlea @ discord | 47explodingbees @ gmail
• Player Age: 29
• Permissions: Here.
CHARACTER INFO
• Character Name: Tim Gutterson
• Character Age: 30
• Character Canon: Justified
• Canon Point: End Season 6, before the 4 year time skip
• Character History: Wikia, though for some reason it says he’s from Indiana and the show never specifies where he’s from. Common sense would dictate he’s from Kentucky, because why else would he go there after his stint with the military. The only thing we know about his life before he enlisted at eighteen is that he wishes he got the opportunity to shoot his dad, but Dad died before he got back from basic training. Based on this, and his visceral reaction to Raylan being hit across the face by his own father, I headcanon that he grew up with an alcoholic father that abused both him and his mother.
• Character Personality:
— Loyal: Loyalty does not come easily to Tim, in any direction. But once it’s there, there’s not much that can shake it. He holds a large amount of patriotic loyalty due to the near decade he spent with the Army, and a strong sense of loyalty to the U.S. Marshal’s service. Though these loyalties are broader, less concrete, they give him a strong moral compass and a fairly rigid sense of what’s black and white and right and wrong. However, these loyalties can be overridden by personal ones. On more than one occasion, he covers and runs interference for Raylan when Raylan is making stupid choices, often resulting in Tim getting an earful from related parties himself. One particular instance involves Tim being ordered to take Raylan downstairs to talk to an FBI agent. Tim rides the elevator down with him and turns him loose, having technically followed the order he was given. When he's later accused of playing dumb over Raylan's whereabouts, he simply states, "I'm an idiot. You can ask anyone." He once tells Raylan that he’s not doing him any more favors, but that doesn’t stand to be true. The loyalty he has for his brothers that he served with overseas runs even deeper. When his army buddy Mark has to face his former drug dealers for owing them money, Tim is more than along for the ride to offer muscle. And when Mark is subsequently murdered later on by a fellow veteran, Tim stops at nothing to find his killer and put him down.
— Collected: In the face of an emergency, Tim is the three Cs: cool, calm, and collected. Physical fights in the office? First on the scene to begin pulling people apart. Sudden hostage threat, also in the office? He’s the first with his gun drawn. Fugitive strolls into the office? (A lot of things go down in the office, okay.) He’s the first to notice and address it. These are all high octane situations that he’s handled steadily, without once being rattled, always reacting quickly and calmly. He’s not easily goaded or provoked. He’ll stand perfectly stoic while being quite literally screamed at by the USDA for something that wasn’t his fault. He’ll play dumb in the face of an irate FBI agent to (of course) cover for Raylan going AWOL. Any time he raises his voice, it’s to be heard, not instill fear or display anger. As a soldier, he prefers to follow orders rather than give them, comfortably heeding to whoever’s in charge. However, he recognizes a bad situation when he sees one, and he won’t budge on it until his paranoia is satisfied. Despite his boss initially doubting him, he (correctly) assumes there’s IEDs when approaching three abandoned vehicles on the side of the road. He’s quick to take control of the situation, circling the wagons and composing a plan to set off the explosives without anyone getting hurt.
— Patient: After eight years as a sniper in the army, patience may be the only virtue Tim holds. He can wait however long it takes to find that right moment, whatever it may be for the situation. In the army, it was looking down the scope and waiting for the right time to pull the trigger. Sometimes, this meant waiting days cooped up in some cliff-side perch with only his spotter to keep him company, watching what amounted to a literal hole in the ground for the right terrorist to come out. As a marshal, it’s tailing a fugitive across state lines for days on end, or sitting holed up in cheap hotel rooms with witnesses. The job isn’t all kicking down doors and getting shot at, after all. When he first tracks down Mark’s killer, he has the perfect opportunity to end it then and there. Once he realizes the guy is high, Tim lets him go, later stating, “When I take him down, his eyes will be clear.” He gets his opportunity a couple of days later, remaining patient until the very end for the other guy to raise his weapon first so that it’s justified.
— Guarded: Tim doesn’t like anybody to know anything about him that he didn’t choose to tell them. He’ll happily tell badass war stories, but his childhood? How he feels about either? It’s all kept very close to the chest, often deflecting more personal questions with a topic change or crude sarcasm. There’s a lot of baggage to be had from him – a rough childhood, war-time PTSD, and the related alcoholism – and it’s easier to remain unattached rather than deal with unwanted concern. He’s more than comfortable explaining to Raylan: In the army, they used to teach their snipers to tell stories about their targets. Made-up scenarios to remain focused, alert. They stopped doing this when soldiers started accidentally forming personal connections, making it difficult to pull the trigger when the time comes. However, the second Raylan asks if it ever happened to him, Tim very pointedly changes the subject. He leans into an off-putting humor that often does well to keep people at arms-length. Such classics include, “I love this shit, this shit makes me hard.”, “Just kidding, I want Sigourney Weaver to choke me out with her thighs.”, and “This here may as well be a slow night in the champagne room for how comfortably erect I’m gonna be watching your bitch ass squirm about.”
— Unstable: Despite Tim’s outward calm and collected demeanor, he’s actually really, very unstable. It’s best summed up by his boss: "I gotta young kid here, decorated sniper in Iraq war. Army ranger. I dunno how many kills he had, always looking to kill somebody else. Probably got PTSD. Probably an alcoholic. Not a matter of if that powder keg is gonna blow, but when.” They could just be the words of a man who doesn’t know his employee very well (because his employee does not allow himself to be known very well), but it’s actually displayed several times throughout the show. He’s drunk when he shows up to the VFW to grant Art and Raylan entry, claiming he’s been off the clock since five. The thing is, he’s a very well-functioning alcoholic. Never drunk at work, never showing up late or missing shifts. He’s sharp, alert, and punctual. But once he’s off the clock, he’s drinking until he passes out to help stave off the nightmares. He’s basically a broken shoe string away from a full-blown PTSD episode (“You get those a lot?” “Only when I’m handling firearms in public.”). We know that he experiences some form of regression due to his trauma from the war, manifesting in the desire to escape reality by reading fantasy books, often ones geared toward younger age groups (“Ain’t you too old for those?” “I dunno, I was probably too young to be blowin’ the head off the Taliban. Guess it all evens out.”). If there’s any amount of guilt or reservations for the number of people he’s killed, or the number of people he's going to kill, he never shows a single ounce of it. Quite the opposite, in fact: “If he does anything out of line, I get to shoot him.”
— An asshole: In general, Tim is kind of an asshole. Not like a capital A Asshole. He’s not going around kicking puppies or making babies cry. Though he likes neither dogs nor children. But maybe the kind of asshole you don’t share that embarrassing secret from 8th grade with because he will find a way to make fun of you for it for the rest of forever. He can be fairly blunt and to the point, not believing in sugar coating anything for anyone, and will nope his way out of any conversation that gets too feelsy. But mostly, he just likes giving people a little bit of a hard time, with varying degrees of assholery. Like when he lets Raylan believe that Gary (his ex-wife’s recently ex-husband) is dead for weeks, even going as far as to make more than one snarky comment about Raylan teaming up with notorious criminal Wynn Duffy to commit the murder. When Tim eventually reveals that Gary has been living in a different state under a different name, his response to Raylan asking why Tim didn’t tell him this sooner is, “It was fun.” Which is also the reason he majes jokes about Raylan letting a one-legged fugitive get away. And why he pretends to believe that Raylan made off with the 10 million dollars involved in a case, much to Raylan’s visible annoyance. Truthfully, Raylan seems to get the brunt of it, which is why he puts it best: “... he is not a nurturing, caring human being. He’s kind of an asshole.”
• Character Skills:
• Expert marksman
• Firearms expert
• Hunting/Fishing (though not since he was a teenager)
• Basic first aid
• Basic sewing
• Rusty foraging knowledge that’s useless here because it’s for Kentucky
• Multilingual (English, Pashto, Spanish)
• Character Inventory:
— ITEM ONE: Standard issue Glock 17 with an additional clip of ammo, sans holster
— ITEM TWO: A battered copy of Non-Descript Classic Fantasy Book (to avoid any 4th wall issues)
— ITEM THREE: Military dog tags (he doesn’t wear them often so they wouldn’t be on his person)
• Important Notes: None!
• Writing Samples:
— SAMPLE ONE: TDM 1
— SAMPLE TWO: TDM 2
(They both are from his TDM thread as they’re the most recent examples but I’m more than happy to provide an additional one if needed!)
Player Name: Raye
• Player Contact: raye_nbow @ plurk | falonlea @ discord | 47explodingbees @ gmail
• Player Age: 29
• Permissions: Here.
CHARACTER INFO
• Character Name: Tim Gutterson
• Character Age: 30
• Character Canon: Justified
• Canon Point: End Season 6, before the 4 year time skip
• Character History: Wikia, though for some reason it says he’s from Indiana and the show never specifies where he’s from. Common sense would dictate he’s from Kentucky, because why else would he go there after his stint with the military. The only thing we know about his life before he enlisted at eighteen is that he wishes he got the opportunity to shoot his dad, but Dad died before he got back from basic training. Based on this, and his visceral reaction to Raylan being hit across the face by his own father, I headcanon that he grew up with an alcoholic father that abused both him and his mother.
• Character Personality:
— Loyal: Loyalty does not come easily to Tim, in any direction. But once it’s there, there’s not much that can shake it. He holds a large amount of patriotic loyalty due to the near decade he spent with the Army, and a strong sense of loyalty to the U.S. Marshal’s service. Though these loyalties are broader, less concrete, they give him a strong moral compass and a fairly rigid sense of what’s black and white and right and wrong. However, these loyalties can be overridden by personal ones. On more than one occasion, he covers and runs interference for Raylan when Raylan is making stupid choices, often resulting in Tim getting an earful from related parties himself. One particular instance involves Tim being ordered to take Raylan downstairs to talk to an FBI agent. Tim rides the elevator down with him and turns him loose, having technically followed the order he was given. When he's later accused of playing dumb over Raylan's whereabouts, he simply states, "I'm an idiot. You can ask anyone." He once tells Raylan that he’s not doing him any more favors, but that doesn’t stand to be true. The loyalty he has for his brothers that he served with overseas runs even deeper. When his army buddy Mark has to face his former drug dealers for owing them money, Tim is more than along for the ride to offer muscle. And when Mark is subsequently murdered later on by a fellow veteran, Tim stops at nothing to find his killer and put him down.
— Collected: In the face of an emergency, Tim is the three Cs: cool, calm, and collected. Physical fights in the office? First on the scene to begin pulling people apart. Sudden hostage threat, also in the office? He’s the first with his gun drawn. Fugitive strolls into the office? (A lot of things go down in the office, okay.) He’s the first to notice and address it. These are all high octane situations that he’s handled steadily, without once being rattled, always reacting quickly and calmly. He’s not easily goaded or provoked. He’ll stand perfectly stoic while being quite literally screamed at by the USDA for something that wasn’t his fault. He’ll play dumb in the face of an irate FBI agent to (of course) cover for Raylan going AWOL. Any time he raises his voice, it’s to be heard, not instill fear or display anger. As a soldier, he prefers to follow orders rather than give them, comfortably heeding to whoever’s in charge. However, he recognizes a bad situation when he sees one, and he won’t budge on it until his paranoia is satisfied. Despite his boss initially doubting him, he (correctly) assumes there’s IEDs when approaching three abandoned vehicles on the side of the road. He’s quick to take control of the situation, circling the wagons and composing a plan to set off the explosives without anyone getting hurt.
— Patient: After eight years as a sniper in the army, patience may be the only virtue Tim holds. He can wait however long it takes to find that right moment, whatever it may be for the situation. In the army, it was looking down the scope and waiting for the right time to pull the trigger. Sometimes, this meant waiting days cooped up in some cliff-side perch with only his spotter to keep him company, watching what amounted to a literal hole in the ground for the right terrorist to come out. As a marshal, it’s tailing a fugitive across state lines for days on end, or sitting holed up in cheap hotel rooms with witnesses. The job isn’t all kicking down doors and getting shot at, after all. When he first tracks down Mark’s killer, he has the perfect opportunity to end it then and there. Once he realizes the guy is high, Tim lets him go, later stating, “When I take him down, his eyes will be clear.” He gets his opportunity a couple of days later, remaining patient until the very end for the other guy to raise his weapon first so that it’s justified.
— Guarded: Tim doesn’t like anybody to know anything about him that he didn’t choose to tell them. He’ll happily tell badass war stories, but his childhood? How he feels about either? It’s all kept very close to the chest, often deflecting more personal questions with a topic change or crude sarcasm. There’s a lot of baggage to be had from him – a rough childhood, war-time PTSD, and the related alcoholism – and it’s easier to remain unattached rather than deal with unwanted concern. He’s more than comfortable explaining to Raylan: In the army, they used to teach their snipers to tell stories about their targets. Made-up scenarios to remain focused, alert. They stopped doing this when soldiers started accidentally forming personal connections, making it difficult to pull the trigger when the time comes. However, the second Raylan asks if it ever happened to him, Tim very pointedly changes the subject. He leans into an off-putting humor that often does well to keep people at arms-length. Such classics include, “I love this shit, this shit makes me hard.”, “Just kidding, I want Sigourney Weaver to choke me out with her thighs.”, and “This here may as well be a slow night in the champagne room for how comfortably erect I’m gonna be watching your bitch ass squirm about.”
— Unstable: Despite Tim’s outward calm and collected demeanor, he’s actually really, very unstable. It’s best summed up by his boss: "I gotta young kid here, decorated sniper in Iraq war. Army ranger. I dunno how many kills he had, always looking to kill somebody else. Probably got PTSD. Probably an alcoholic. Not a matter of if that powder keg is gonna blow, but when.” They could just be the words of a man who doesn’t know his employee very well (because his employee does not allow himself to be known very well), but it’s actually displayed several times throughout the show. He’s drunk when he shows up to the VFW to grant Art and Raylan entry, claiming he’s been off the clock since five. The thing is, he’s a very well-functioning alcoholic. Never drunk at work, never showing up late or missing shifts. He’s sharp, alert, and punctual. But once he’s off the clock, he’s drinking until he passes out to help stave off the nightmares. He’s basically a broken shoe string away from a full-blown PTSD episode (“You get those a lot?” “Only when I’m handling firearms in public.”). We know that he experiences some form of regression due to his trauma from the war, manifesting in the desire to escape reality by reading fantasy books, often ones geared toward younger age groups (“Ain’t you too old for those?” “I dunno, I was probably too young to be blowin’ the head off the Taliban. Guess it all evens out.”). If there’s any amount of guilt or reservations for the number of people he’s killed, or the number of people he's going to kill, he never shows a single ounce of it. Quite the opposite, in fact: “If he does anything out of line, I get to shoot him.”
— An asshole: In general, Tim is kind of an asshole. Not like a capital A Asshole. He’s not going around kicking puppies or making babies cry. Though he likes neither dogs nor children. But maybe the kind of asshole you don’t share that embarrassing secret from 8th grade with because he will find a way to make fun of you for it for the rest of forever. He can be fairly blunt and to the point, not believing in sugar coating anything for anyone, and will nope his way out of any conversation that gets too feelsy. But mostly, he just likes giving people a little bit of a hard time, with varying degrees of assholery. Like when he lets Raylan believe that Gary (his ex-wife’s recently ex-husband) is dead for weeks, even going as far as to make more than one snarky comment about Raylan teaming up with notorious criminal Wynn Duffy to commit the murder. When Tim eventually reveals that Gary has been living in a different state under a different name, his response to Raylan asking why Tim didn’t tell him this sooner is, “It was fun.” Which is also the reason he majes jokes about Raylan letting a one-legged fugitive get away. And why he pretends to believe that Raylan made off with the 10 million dollars involved in a case, much to Raylan’s visible annoyance. Truthfully, Raylan seems to get the brunt of it, which is why he puts it best: “... he is not a nurturing, caring human being. He’s kind of an asshole.”
• Character Skills:
• Expert marksman
• Firearms expert
• Hunting/Fishing (though not since he was a teenager)
• Basic first aid
• Basic sewing
• Rusty foraging knowledge that’s useless here because it’s for Kentucky
• Multilingual (English, Pashto, Spanish)
• Character Inventory:
— ITEM ONE: Standard issue Glock 17 with an additional clip of ammo, sans holster
— ITEM TWO: A battered copy of Non-Descript Classic Fantasy Book (to avoid any 4th wall issues)
— ITEM THREE: Military dog tags (he doesn’t wear them often so they wouldn’t be on his person)
• Important Notes: None!
• Writing Samples:
— SAMPLE ONE: TDM 1
— SAMPLE TWO: TDM 2
(They both are from his TDM thread as they’re the most recent examples but I’m more than happy to provide an additional one if needed!)