raylan "the camera went off by itself" givens

Player name: Carley
Player contact: PM this journal!
Player age: 26

Name: Raylan Givens
Journal: this one, putyoudown
Canon: Justified
Canon point: mid-season 6 finale, before the epilogue
Age: early-mid 40s. It's not clear since Justified has some weird timelines, but the series starts in 2010 and covers at least two years. We know that Raylan was born in 1970.
Reference: http://justified.wikia.com/wiki/Raylan_Givens
Personality: Raylan hides it well and doesn't think of himself this way, but he is a very angry man. More than one character comments on this, including his ex-wife (citing that as why she left him) and his boss, making an ironic comment that Raylan's father clearly has anger issues and isn't it fortunate those tendencies were not passed to Raylan. At his canon point, he's ready to let go of some of this and grow past it, but he hasn't quite figured out how yet.

Raylan is driven solely by justice and what he thinks is justified. He's not afraid to lie, cheat, steal, and trick; it's all for the greater good. Raylan was, after all, raised by criminals and those are the methods he knows, only now he feels backed up by the moral superiority of being on the side of the law. As long as he feels it's justified, Raylan will do almost anything, including break the policy of his office by doing outside jobs to provide for Winona and the baby, and walk away not interfering while a bad guy gets executed by other bad guys. Raylan's body count for the few years the series covers is in the thirties, and he only ever seems remotely troubled by it once (and only then because he shot a woman and he never had before).

On the flip side, with bad guys who aren't so much bad to the bone as just stupid or in bad situations, Raylan usually tries to talk them down by pointing out the reasons why shooting anyone would go badly for them (the most salient of these points usually being that Raylan will shoot them first). His upbringing is a mixed blessing, because Raylan has learned from a young age how to be ready and survive when people want to kill him, seeing over the years how many people came for Arlo. This same upbringing is what motivates him not to hurt people who don't deserve it, and not to hurt women or children if he can avoid it -- this is why shooting a woman bothers him. Seeing his mother be abused by his father, Raylan has a tendency to want to "save" any woman who needs him to, as evidenced by the lengths he goes to to protect Winona from consequences after she steals a lot of money from an evidence locker.

Raylan's a pretty taciturn sort of man. He's not exactly the quiet type, but when he speaks, his words are well-chosen and to the point. He adapts well to different situations, speaking differently to Boyd Crowder than to some big-city gangsters than he does in the office or to a girl. This is a skill, among many other useful ones, he mentions having learned from his Aunt Helen, and he's worked in enough different places to understand that people are just people. He shows an easy ability to charm and soothe people into at least cooperating with him, if not outright liking him. It's also a skill he needs as a marshal -- his job is to go into neighborhoods that may have closed ranks around a guy he's pursuing, and find said guy.

Despite his bending and breaking of rules, Raylan does have empathy and, usually, good intentions. At one point his girlfriend, a social worker, is being curt and cold with him after they've had sex. After a little prodding, she reveals that she had a very intense day at work, removing a child from a terrible home, and instead of being freaked out or offended that she took it out on him (which most people would find understandable), he offers emotional support and promises to stay the night. He's also a lot more understanding and kind with Loretta, despite her criminal activities, than he is with most people, because she's a fifteen-year-old girl who's never been taught any better. In general, he shows a tendency to think of teenagers as children who aren't responsible for their actions. When a man is after a pair of teenagers for screwing up after he got into the weed business with them, he compares this reaction to walking under a flock of birds and being surprised to get shit on his face.
CRAU: Raylan spent about nine months in Eudio. This didn't result in any drastic changes (this is not a man who moves quickly), but it gave him some time to work on his anger and get better about expressing his feelings. He's still a pretty angry dude, but he doesn't have to work quite as hard to hide it as he once did, and he's come to the realization that expressing his needs is a better way to get them met, and that's a better way to live than bottling it all up.

He only had a few significant relationships, but one of them was with a version of Boyd Crowder. They had a fistfight and a few amiable conversations, leading to Raylan feeling a good deal less hateful and angry toward the man than he did in canon at this point. More fistfights still aren't out of the question, but he's more likely to open with a peace offering than a fist.
Skills and attributes: Raylan doesn't have any supernatural powers, but he's an excellent marksman, being able to quickdraw faster than many opponents and shoot accurately from the hip. He's also a trained law enforcement officer, with skills in conflict negotiation, criminal procedure, interrogation, and self-defense.
First person sample: http://eudionet.dreamwidth.org/238629.html
Third person sample: http://eudiolog.dreamwidth.org/287262.html