Genre Characters and Emotional Repression
Jun. 18th, 2012 03:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_losTRIGGER WARNING FOR SOME QUASI-ACADEMIC DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT.
WARNING: I finished this at 3am and I'm sure it's rambling and mad, but will edit later. When less... headed to bed.
**EDIT** Cleaned it up a little now, so all shitiness is my own.
On Horatio Hornblower (the Hornblower series), Jean Luc Picard (Star Trek), the Fifth Doctor (Doctor Who) and Kerr Avon (Blakes 7).
Spurred on by my gf Katy's discovery of an AMAZING FACTOID, a friend of Katy's and I had this conversation:
"Me: "Roddenberry sent Stewart C. S. Forrester's Horatio Hornblower novels, saying the Picard character was based on Hornblower,[10] but Stewart was already familiar with Hornblower, having read the books as a child.[6]" Everything about this makes total sense and is great.
RH likes this.
RH: That explains why Picard comes across like an unlikeable ass in the first couple of episodes. Luckly, he grows out of his Hornblowerishness. Or, perhaps, he becomes more like young Hornblower.
Me: Idk he [Picard] seems pretty constantly on the verge of a 'ha, hm' to me.
RH: I always thought that as the episodes wore on, he cared more deeply for the people around him and developed more of a sense of humour, two very un-Hornblowerish things.
Me: I'd say they have a weirdly similar end trajectory from repression and too-acute self-awareness to increasing comfort with themselves with age? Last Episode Special Edition Poker Picard, leading into Dumbledoreish Old Farmer Picard who May or May Not Still Be Canon, and Ancient-Ass Lord Admiral Hornblower both learn to remove their redwood-sized ass-sticks and chillax with friends/trust their skills. And Hornblower does go *ass crazy* with grief when Bush dies and Barbara only *kind* of cares, into some weird stupid fugue state for a book where he sleeps with a French chick from an earlier book and everything's dumb, so if anything he cares *too much* and is a big basket-case of repression, depression and aforementioned over-self-awareness. And the death of that promising young officer in the one with the Russians where he has to negotiate peace precipitates that mental-collapse at the end. Not to mention the 'so ALL my kids are dead? Seriously, all of them?' fallout. Also apparently both men have slept with like, half the rural population of French women? Every episode where Picard recalls his past conquests is like o_O if you say so, Jean Luc, but I'm pretty sure you were just off studying for a history AP test or something."
What I meant to say was obviously 'how can you/dare you read this text so wrong?!' But the other half of the conversation is a Aubreyad/Sharpe fan, i.e. the other big Napoleonic War/Age of Sail series, and insists on seeing the text as inherently in competition. He thus denigrates Hornblower not, I think, out of a well-founded dislike for the text, but out of anxiety for the Aubreyad, which is pretty important to him. This is a pretty boy-fan thing, I think, like the frantic 'Star Trek vs. Star Wars?!' sneering. Dislike something on its own merits, but I fail to see how the Age of Sail Adventure Fiction subgenre is the Higlander. There needn't only be one.
The thing is, I'd thought independently that Picard and Hornblower were similar people in many ways. Both are intelligent, introspective men attached to the organizations they serve for reasons that may not necessarily reflect fellow servicemen's opinions. Hornblower cares about parliamentary democracy and, to a degree, his career, Styles and Matthew (important in the ITV series, if not particularly in the books) and even the many other officers care, presumably, about god and country and beating the Frogs, who are inherently horrible, just because. Picard cares about Starfleet as a humanitarian and 'scientific' (in the broadest sense of the term) endeavor. While I'm not sure I buy entirely into the 'Starfleet is a much darker organization than Picard thinks it is' argument, because Picard is not at all stupid or interested in/capable of deceiving himself with comfortable platitudes, I do think that many of Picard's fellow officers would have joined a more traditional army, were it around to join, and Picard would have felt uncomfortable and less interested in such a service.
Both Hornblower and Picard's humanity is sometimes at odds with their understanding of the pragmatic need for discipline within their organization. This mirrors their own internal emotion vs. control debate. Hornblower hates whippings and is deeply uncomfortable with punishing mutineers, Picard is put in the awkward position of harassing the Maquis against his will, and of enforcing the Prime Directive in complex situations. That said, the show is inconsistent about the application of this principle. Some episodes give us a likable Picard, guided by the spirit of the Prime Directive, and at least one gives us a total fucker dominated by the letter of it.
Some further intertextual echoes between the men: Picard, probably partly due to Stewart's back issues, brought on or exacerbated by the costume uniform, and probably partly due to performance choices, is not a comfortable figure. He adjusts his clothing frequently, he clears his throat before issuing eloquence (similar to Hornblower's exasperating, weird-ass 'ha, hm's), he holds himself stiffly. Hornblower's discomfort in his own skin is made literal with his many years of seasickness. This, like his first name, is a detail taken from the historical Admiral Nelson, but it also serves to demonstrate the degree of Hornblower's perpetual disease in his role, with himself. He only really gets over it on the Hotspur, when he bonds intensely with his ship and the position of command, and becomes a touch comfortable in his 'place'. Perhaps the illness was a touch psychosomatic all along?
The men's bonds with their ships are intense, and their assumption of responsibility for the vessels and their crews is equally through-going. Other people in the service or these roles don't necessarily feel this way. Before the Enterprise, Picard served aboard the Stargazer, which was lost, even as Horatio's Sutherland was. The Hotspur was also destroyed the day after Hornblower relinquished it. Picard dwells on the loss of the Stargazer, and the plot of TNG revisits the issue several times. Hornblower has a passage of thinking about the Hotspur's loss with regret, and I believe he and Bush talk about it later.
Picard and Hornblower are somewhat similar in their dealings with women--the text occasionally tries to tell me that they are or have been Players, but it feels forced and awkward (and occasionally, in the case of drunk Russian rendezvous and flute playing sessions, etc., kind of random and cringy). Hornblower's deepest emotional bond, despite the weirdness occasioned by the order in which the series was written and the effective retconning of their earlier relationship, is probably with Bush (and to a degree Barbara, and on ITV Pellew as World's Best Dad), and Picard's with his core crew as a gestalt whole.
But all of this is secondary to their aforementioned similar emotional makeup--a combination of reticence/reserve, over-weaning analytical self-awareness that can never be turned off, a deep capacity to feel, and a tendency to blooding, self-blame and depression. Remember that Hornblower contemplates killing himself in Midshipman, and later suffers fugue states and mental collapses when he encounters situations outside the scope of his ability to respond, or when danger has passed and his adrenaline gives out. Picard blames himself heavily for the Locutus events, despite logically knowing this is not his fault, and despite the format of the show actively resisting dynamic, lasting emotional reactions to plot events, or really any long story arcs/lasting change.
As a side-note here, I don't like when we reduce all genre body-politics to discussions of rape, because I often feel the metaphor overshadows the textual event and dampens the subtleties of the textual event's resonances with its sheer enormity. For example, people sometimes refer to the Master's possession of Tremas's body in Doctor Who as a rape act in meta/fic. I can see what they're getting at, in terms of power, invasion and possession of a body, violated will, etc. However, I think this reading blocks the murderous (we have no indication that anything of Tremas experiences or survives this) and survivalist/predatory readings of Tremas's possession. The Master was going to suffer and quickly die without a new body, so he seized one near at hand. I think in this case those motivations are more central that the power/humiliation/potentially desire motivations implied by sexual assault. Reading every genre form of imposition on bodies as rape in some ways not only potentially saps the events of a potential richness of meaning, sometimes it's just not a useful way of thinking about the things in question.
That said, in some ways Picard's horror at his body being taken and used, his feeling of responsibility, his shame and his reactions *read* as post-sexual assault to me. Perhaps it's because TNG is relatively willing to encounter rape in-text, as thus that's been admitted into the universe? There's the terrifying episode wherein a woman, quoth Deanna Tori, *believes Riker tried to rape her*, but it's cool because he... doesn't think that? And also people's memories are different. Ummmmm. And Deanna has been sexually assaulted more than once, sometimes with the R-word brought to bear. So that's part of their world: we're not working with the cyborgian fairy-tale palate of Who. Even if you think Peri's implied to have been assaulted in TV-canon and that Emperor Nero wackily chasing Barbara means what it kind of looks like it means, the treatment is less intentional, and there's enough temporal distance between those examples and the beginning of Five-Era (Peri obviously being not yet a glint in JNT's eye) that I feel Tremas's possession sort of has to be viewed separately.
What I think Katy's friend, and a lot of people, would contest is these character's evidenced ability to feel. In this particular case, the friend would probably only insist Hornblower was dead inside. This difference of readings obviously results from such characters' reserve. Neither Hornblower not Picard is precisely shy, and both can even be quite good at understanding people--a skill predicated on their empathy. Both are thought of as excellent diplomats, and polite in social situations (and not in a hideously polite but utterly skeevy and incapable Uriah Heep sort of way). But while some people seem to find it relatively easy to negotiate their role and their social existence, and indeed the social world generally (I guarantee Riker loses no sleep over this), Picard and Horblower's physical awkwardness mirrors their emotional strangeness.
Picard wants children desperately, but has forgone the opportunity, perhaps forever, and is capable of being both excellent with and laughably awkward around children. His family is his estranged brother in Paris and his crew, who he loves deeply, but can't just hang out with. Outside of ship social events and scheduled things like Breakfasts with Beverly and Regular Cultural Events with Data, we rarely see him just chilling with Riker, eating dinner, holoprogramming about, taking about a play or some shit. Hornblower cares a *lot* about some of the people he serves with, but willfully misinterprets their affection for him, as with Pellew (when he can't parse the 'and that someone's initials are HH'--he's not that stupid), and will not allow himself to believe that he is liked by or important to people. They strive for distant invulnerability or professionalism at points, but this jars with their capacity and requirement for connection. The tension between extreme, practiced, repressive self-command and intense feeling sometimes boils over and causes massive ruptures in their lives.
Reading things like Hornblower's refusal of Barbara's advances as wholly based on his concern for his career is buying into Hornblower's narrative of himself too willingly. That's certainly a factor in his decision--Hornblower can't just *turn off* his analytical faculty, can't ignore calculation and be a simpler, perhaps better man. Hornblower is also afraid of and feels genuinely threatened by the emotional vulnerability Barbara provokes and represents. His strong relationship with Bush (platonic or non, for the purposes of these considerations) is absent in this novel for Doylist reasons, and even in Watsonian terms it's bound by the rank and structure of the service, providing Hornblower with emotional lines to color within and bolstering his discipline. Let's not also forget that Hornblower loved his two children very much. He's not a character who's often happy. That's not his nature. But he genuinely seemed so with them. Their relatively recent deaths from smallpox have probably made him additionally uneasy with forming new bonds, and have perhaps even reduced his capacity to do so for a time. In a Watsonian patching, you could read some of what seems like his strange coldness to Bush as a result of this trauma rather than Forester changing his mind about whether this is their first meeting.
I think I'm drawn to these sorts of characters because they're clever and emotionally complicated, and their cleverness is thus manifesting itself in ways that seem psychologically real. The insecurity balanced against the competent confidence at points, for Hornblower, versus Picard's more generally centered wisdom (he starts older than Hornblower). You can't just say 'I'm a well-competent, driven genius because the plot needs that!!' if you're trafficking in realism at all and expect that not to have some effect on the sort of person a character is, and the ways they relate to others.
Also perhaps as a person with depression I find characters who've dealt with depression issues kind of relatable? Picard might never have done (it's difficult to tell because we lack clear access to his mental processes, though he IS capable of being broody, shell-shocked, etc.), but Hornblower, whose mind we see working throughout the novels, could definitely tick some DSM-V boxes. Yet that doesn't feel unrealistically presented at all, or prevent him from being awesome. He never really gets to press the easy button and escape the mental consequences of his actions, though he may temporarily side-step them because he has a huge issue to deal with that needs all his spoons and he's lucky enough to be capable of deferring his breakdowns somewhat. I also think part of why Three's dear to me is the Daisiest Daisy speech and the implication that he's come through things that DID touch him in the past, and that he's not entirely okay with his current situation, but is largely coping. Who cares about a character who's incapable of responding emotionally to the shit their adventures put them through? We value characters who've felt the impact and come back up, with some work, more than stock warriors who never felt the blow in the first place.
But the aforementioned complication inherent in these characters does give rise to different readings of them, and sometimes readings I think are just poor. Take the Fifth Doctor and Kerr Avon. While these men initially look nothing alike, I'd put them on the character-type spectrum Picard and Hornblower occupy. Well, that and the incestuous production history of Who and B7 has resulted in Alphas essentially being Time Lords, with B7 as a whole relentlessly positioning itself against the optimism and strategies of Who and Trek. Both men are genius-among-geniuses rebels from BubbleCityTopia running away on ships they don't seem to properly understand and pretending not to feel very much when either the script or the acting choices insist they could not care more and are defined by their caring.
See Avon awkwardly declaring DEEP INTEREST in Blake as early as "Duel".
"Avon: With all what happening? Blake is sitting up in a tree, Travis is sitting up in another tree. Unless they're planning to throw nuts at one another, I don't see much of a fight developing before it gets light.
Gan: You're never involved, are you Avon? You ever cared for anyone?
Vila: Except yourself?
Avon: I have never understood why it should be necessary to become irrational in order to prove that you care, or, indeed, why it should be necessary to prove it at all. [Exits]
Vila: Was that an insult or did I miss something?
Cally: You missed something."
His conflated feelings for Blake and the larger political movement he represents drive Avon and the show's plot as a whole (basically Blakes 7 is Avon One before S3 even starts), yet Avon is constantly protesting-too-much that he gives zero craps about any of it. This is disingenuous, as I'm *pretty* sure that, in addition to the Anna Grant shit, Avon had done some political shit before we hit "Space Fall", if memory serves. He uses Blake, in a way, to outsource an internal conflict between self-preservation and the demands of the other--in fact all these characters' emotional issues arise from attempts to negotiate this, because it's perhaps overly important to them, or they're unduly aware of this tension.
Avon can thus enjoy the apparently rational, self-serving opinion, while assigning the position he'll actually follow, the logic of which he's sympathetic to, to Blake. Perhaps part of his attraction to Blake, sexual or otherwise, is an attraction to these elements in himself. For all Avon's bitching and moaning and pointing out that Blake's put him in a position where he can't escape and live as a private citizen--it's kind of bullshit, isn't it? There's a ton of planets. There are decadent pleasure worlds and 'Commander Sleer' style decently-successful fake identities. Avon's clever and a specialist in information systems. The Federation is in disarray after the alien attack. If he *properly* wanted to, he could leave, and I don't think the text asks us to believe that he *couldn't* quite hard enough to be convincing.
Also, has any one ever talked about the dynamic similarities between Shalka and B7 before? 'Cause I kind of see influence there. Obviously outside the purview of this discussion Avon is generally more like the Master and Blake is more like the Doctor.
Anyway, the thing about Five, Avon and misreading is, a fair amount of fanfic with these characters sometimes feels like it's been written by people who watched a different show. This encompasses Uke Versions of these characters, Secret Airhead Slut, and Evil Leatherpants Heartless Dom!incarnations. Avon gets one and three (though B7 is largely an old zine/archive slash fandom, and those characterization stylistics tend to come over all hearts, flowers and magical love destinies), and Five gets one and two. All of these sort of do violence to the 'reserve/feeling juxtaposition' character phenotype. Leatherpants allows the character's fantasy, ego-driven (in the Freudian terminology sense--sort of tempted to say 'superego' here, but I think ego's more correct) image of themselves to become the text, when that's always been a part of who they are rather that the whole of it. Perfectly Correct Martinet and/or Dashing Sexy Adventurer versions of either Picard or Hornblower would similarly buy into their stories of themselves more than is critically responsible. This is, I think, a version of Katy's friend's mistaken apprehension.
Uke/Secret Airhead Slut often has creepy undertones of not really caring about people, the reserve collapsing into a total boredom or disgust with everything but a designated love object. This is strange because, excepting Avon, these are deeply moral people, driven to act upon their morals as a lifestyle choice because these issues are so important to them (Hornblower slightly less than the Doctor and Picard). They often have some moral reasons/pressing business preventing them from jumping into bed with just anyone, and the balance between repression/emotion IS the balance between their sense of duty/their personal desires, expressed differently. Uke/Secret Airhead Slut collapses these characters' nuanced balances between their own interests and their investment in others, and also presumes that, idk, with enough cuddles or whatever, their weirdness will melt away, and they'll be easygoing lovebunnies forever. These are the fundamental and defining predicaments of these characters we're talking about. This difficult shit is the core stuff of their personhood, and to melt it away or reduce it to an impediment admitted to the bonking of true dudes, to be wholly overcome and destroyed, is to sacrifice the character to the sex act. Then you're writing about a time two random penises met, and who cares. Also, these are four characters who'd freak the fuck out at huge losses of dignity (the Doctor somewhat less than the others). Sex is one thing, but twee?!
Bearing in mind of course that sometimes altered characterization is there for reasons, to accomplish something in a fic, as an experiment, etc. But generally, when I no longer recognize these tensions in a portrayal of such characters, I no longer think of what I'm looking at as a strong depiction of those characters, because this is so central to their personhood.
Also it's more difficult than 'apply sex daily' to change the landscape of someone's insecurities and ways of thinking about the world, and perhaps even more difficult to do so in a way that still recognizably feels like the characters. Five dies smothered by choking self-control and caring too much--'there should have been another way', failure to prevent a slew of deaths, Tegan leaves, he does things he's not proud of re: Davros, things are kind of grim and awful, he doesn't save the Master, doesn't talk to anyone about any of it, and is dutiful, and is dead. Avon similarly offs someone he cares too much about after a long chain of desperate, bad days leading to this point, with too many people he cared too much about dead behind him, and, we presume, dies. Like Five in a way it seems to have an element of suicide in it.
Such characters get better shrift on team Order Alignment (I think by coincidence). Picard eases somewhat by the finale, growing more comfortable with himself. I think the "All Good Things" future Picard seems a likable, logical progression: like a full realization of this character in old-age, his potential met, and a measure of contentment and peace finally resting easily with him. Hornblower has a similar trajectory, but I feel his is less-well realized, perhaps because I stopped properly reading when I knew Bush was for the chop and began to rely on short stories, wikipedia, and things Katy told me. Maybe if I read through West Indies it'd seem totally natural, but as is, with the Napoleon II short story, this older, wiser, groovier Hornblower never quite resonates and makes me think 'yes, this is you, Horatio, but fully realized and older'.
WARNING: I finished this at 3am and I'm sure it's rambling and mad, but will edit later. When less... headed to bed.
**EDIT** Cleaned it up a little now, so all shitiness is my own.
On Horatio Hornblower (the Hornblower series), Jean Luc Picard (Star Trek), the Fifth Doctor (Doctor Who) and Kerr Avon (Blakes 7).
Spurred on by my gf Katy's discovery of an AMAZING FACTOID, a friend of Katy's and I had this conversation:
"Me: "Roddenberry sent Stewart C. S. Forrester's Horatio Hornblower novels, saying the Picard character was based on Hornblower,[10] but Stewart was already familiar with Hornblower, having read the books as a child.[6]" Everything about this makes total sense and is great.
RH likes this.
RH: That explains why Picard comes across like an unlikeable ass in the first couple of episodes. Luckly, he grows out of his Hornblowerishness. Or, perhaps, he becomes more like young Hornblower.
Me: Idk he [Picard] seems pretty constantly on the verge of a 'ha, hm' to me.
RH: I always thought that as the episodes wore on, he cared more deeply for the people around him and developed more of a sense of humour, two very un-Hornblowerish things.
Me: I'd say they have a weirdly similar end trajectory from repression and too-acute self-awareness to increasing comfort with themselves with age? Last Episode Special Edition Poker Picard, leading into Dumbledoreish Old Farmer Picard who May or May Not Still Be Canon, and Ancient-Ass Lord Admiral Hornblower both learn to remove their redwood-sized ass-sticks and chillax with friends/trust their skills. And Hornblower does go *ass crazy* with grief when Bush dies and Barbara only *kind* of cares, into some weird stupid fugue state for a book where he sleeps with a French chick from an earlier book and everything's dumb, so if anything he cares *too much* and is a big basket-case of repression, depression and aforementioned over-self-awareness. And the death of that promising young officer in the one with the Russians where he has to negotiate peace precipitates that mental-collapse at the end. Not to mention the 'so ALL my kids are dead? Seriously, all of them?' fallout. Also apparently both men have slept with like, half the rural population of French women? Every episode where Picard recalls his past conquests is like o_O if you say so, Jean Luc, but I'm pretty sure you were just off studying for a history AP test or something."
What I meant to say was obviously 'how can you/dare you read this text so wrong?!' But the other half of the conversation is a Aubreyad/Sharpe fan, i.e. the other big Napoleonic War/Age of Sail series, and insists on seeing the text as inherently in competition. He thus denigrates Hornblower not, I think, out of a well-founded dislike for the text, but out of anxiety for the Aubreyad, which is pretty important to him. This is a pretty boy-fan thing, I think, like the frantic 'Star Trek vs. Star Wars?!' sneering. Dislike something on its own merits, but I fail to see how the Age of Sail Adventure Fiction subgenre is the Higlander. There needn't only be one.
The thing is, I'd thought independently that Picard and Hornblower were similar people in many ways. Both are intelligent, introspective men attached to the organizations they serve for reasons that may not necessarily reflect fellow servicemen's opinions. Hornblower cares about parliamentary democracy and, to a degree, his career, Styles and Matthew (important in the ITV series, if not particularly in the books) and even the many other officers care, presumably, about god and country and beating the Frogs, who are inherently horrible, just because. Picard cares about Starfleet as a humanitarian and 'scientific' (in the broadest sense of the term) endeavor. While I'm not sure I buy entirely into the 'Starfleet is a much darker organization than Picard thinks it is' argument, because Picard is not at all stupid or interested in/capable of deceiving himself with comfortable platitudes, I do think that many of Picard's fellow officers would have joined a more traditional army, were it around to join, and Picard would have felt uncomfortable and less interested in such a service.
Both Hornblower and Picard's humanity is sometimes at odds with their understanding of the pragmatic need for discipline within their organization. This mirrors their own internal emotion vs. control debate. Hornblower hates whippings and is deeply uncomfortable with punishing mutineers, Picard is put in the awkward position of harassing the Maquis against his will, and of enforcing the Prime Directive in complex situations. That said, the show is inconsistent about the application of this principle. Some episodes give us a likable Picard, guided by the spirit of the Prime Directive, and at least one gives us a total fucker dominated by the letter of it.
Some further intertextual echoes between the men: Picard, probably partly due to Stewart's back issues, brought on or exacerbated by the costume uniform, and probably partly due to performance choices, is not a comfortable figure. He adjusts his clothing frequently, he clears his throat before issuing eloquence (similar to Hornblower's exasperating, weird-ass 'ha, hm's), he holds himself stiffly. Hornblower's discomfort in his own skin is made literal with his many years of seasickness. This, like his first name, is a detail taken from the historical Admiral Nelson, but it also serves to demonstrate the degree of Hornblower's perpetual disease in his role, with himself. He only really gets over it on the Hotspur, when he bonds intensely with his ship and the position of command, and becomes a touch comfortable in his 'place'. Perhaps the illness was a touch psychosomatic all along?
The men's bonds with their ships are intense, and their assumption of responsibility for the vessels and their crews is equally through-going. Other people in the service or these roles don't necessarily feel this way. Before the Enterprise, Picard served aboard the Stargazer, which was lost, even as Horatio's Sutherland was. The Hotspur was also destroyed the day after Hornblower relinquished it. Picard dwells on the loss of the Stargazer, and the plot of TNG revisits the issue several times. Hornblower has a passage of thinking about the Hotspur's loss with regret, and I believe he and Bush talk about it later.
Picard and Hornblower are somewhat similar in their dealings with women--the text occasionally tries to tell me that they are or have been Players, but it feels forced and awkward (and occasionally, in the case of drunk Russian rendezvous and flute playing sessions, etc., kind of random and cringy). Hornblower's deepest emotional bond, despite the weirdness occasioned by the order in which the series was written and the effective retconning of their earlier relationship, is probably with Bush (and to a degree Barbara, and on ITV Pellew as World's Best Dad), and Picard's with his core crew as a gestalt whole.
But all of this is secondary to their aforementioned similar emotional makeup--a combination of reticence/reserve, over-weaning analytical self-awareness that can never be turned off, a deep capacity to feel, and a tendency to blooding, self-blame and depression. Remember that Hornblower contemplates killing himself in Midshipman, and later suffers fugue states and mental collapses when he encounters situations outside the scope of his ability to respond, or when danger has passed and his adrenaline gives out. Picard blames himself heavily for the Locutus events, despite logically knowing this is not his fault, and despite the format of the show actively resisting dynamic, lasting emotional reactions to plot events, or really any long story arcs/lasting change.
As a side-note here, I don't like when we reduce all genre body-politics to discussions of rape, because I often feel the metaphor overshadows the textual event and dampens the subtleties of the textual event's resonances with its sheer enormity. For example, people sometimes refer to the Master's possession of Tremas's body in Doctor Who as a rape act in meta/fic. I can see what they're getting at, in terms of power, invasion and possession of a body, violated will, etc. However, I think this reading blocks the murderous (we have no indication that anything of Tremas experiences or survives this) and survivalist/predatory readings of Tremas's possession. The Master was going to suffer and quickly die without a new body, so he seized one near at hand. I think in this case those motivations are more central that the power/humiliation/potentially desire motivations implied by sexual assault. Reading every genre form of imposition on bodies as rape in some ways not only potentially saps the events of a potential richness of meaning, sometimes it's just not a useful way of thinking about the things in question.
That said, in some ways Picard's horror at his body being taken and used, his feeling of responsibility, his shame and his reactions *read* as post-sexual assault to me. Perhaps it's because TNG is relatively willing to encounter rape in-text, as thus that's been admitted into the universe? There's the terrifying episode wherein a woman, quoth Deanna Tori, *believes Riker tried to rape her*, but it's cool because he... doesn't think that? And also people's memories are different. Ummmmm. And Deanna has been sexually assaulted more than once, sometimes with the R-word brought to bear. So that's part of their world: we're not working with the cyborgian fairy-tale palate of Who. Even if you think Peri's implied to have been assaulted in TV-canon and that Emperor Nero wackily chasing Barbara means what it kind of looks like it means, the treatment is less intentional, and there's enough temporal distance between those examples and the beginning of Five-Era (Peri obviously being not yet a glint in JNT's eye) that I feel Tremas's possession sort of has to be viewed separately.
What I think Katy's friend, and a lot of people, would contest is these character's evidenced ability to feel. In this particular case, the friend would probably only insist Hornblower was dead inside. This difference of readings obviously results from such characters' reserve. Neither Hornblower not Picard is precisely shy, and both can even be quite good at understanding people--a skill predicated on their empathy. Both are thought of as excellent diplomats, and polite in social situations (and not in a hideously polite but utterly skeevy and incapable Uriah Heep sort of way). But while some people seem to find it relatively easy to negotiate their role and their social existence, and indeed the social world generally (I guarantee Riker loses no sleep over this), Picard and Horblower's physical awkwardness mirrors their emotional strangeness.
Picard wants children desperately, but has forgone the opportunity, perhaps forever, and is capable of being both excellent with and laughably awkward around children. His family is his estranged brother in Paris and his crew, who he loves deeply, but can't just hang out with. Outside of ship social events and scheduled things like Breakfasts with Beverly and Regular Cultural Events with Data, we rarely see him just chilling with Riker, eating dinner, holoprogramming about, taking about a play or some shit. Hornblower cares a *lot* about some of the people he serves with, but willfully misinterprets their affection for him, as with Pellew (when he can't parse the 'and that someone's initials are HH'--he's not that stupid), and will not allow himself to believe that he is liked by or important to people. They strive for distant invulnerability or professionalism at points, but this jars with their capacity and requirement for connection. The tension between extreme, practiced, repressive self-command and intense feeling sometimes boils over and causes massive ruptures in their lives.
Reading things like Hornblower's refusal of Barbara's advances as wholly based on his concern for his career is buying into Hornblower's narrative of himself too willingly. That's certainly a factor in his decision--Hornblower can't just *turn off* his analytical faculty, can't ignore calculation and be a simpler, perhaps better man. Hornblower is also afraid of and feels genuinely threatened by the emotional vulnerability Barbara provokes and represents. His strong relationship with Bush (platonic or non, for the purposes of these considerations) is absent in this novel for Doylist reasons, and even in Watsonian terms it's bound by the rank and structure of the service, providing Hornblower with emotional lines to color within and bolstering his discipline. Let's not also forget that Hornblower loved his two children very much. He's not a character who's often happy. That's not his nature. But he genuinely seemed so with them. Their relatively recent deaths from smallpox have probably made him additionally uneasy with forming new bonds, and have perhaps even reduced his capacity to do so for a time. In a Watsonian patching, you could read some of what seems like his strange coldness to Bush as a result of this trauma rather than Forester changing his mind about whether this is their first meeting.
I think I'm drawn to these sorts of characters because they're clever and emotionally complicated, and their cleverness is thus manifesting itself in ways that seem psychologically real. The insecurity balanced against the competent confidence at points, for Hornblower, versus Picard's more generally centered wisdom (he starts older than Hornblower). You can't just say 'I'm a well-competent, driven genius because the plot needs that!!' if you're trafficking in realism at all and expect that not to have some effect on the sort of person a character is, and the ways they relate to others.
Also perhaps as a person with depression I find characters who've dealt with depression issues kind of relatable? Picard might never have done (it's difficult to tell because we lack clear access to his mental processes, though he IS capable of being broody, shell-shocked, etc.), but Hornblower, whose mind we see working throughout the novels, could definitely tick some DSM-V boxes. Yet that doesn't feel unrealistically presented at all, or prevent him from being awesome. He never really gets to press the easy button and escape the mental consequences of his actions, though he may temporarily side-step them because he has a huge issue to deal with that needs all his spoons and he's lucky enough to be capable of deferring his breakdowns somewhat. I also think part of why Three's dear to me is the Daisiest Daisy speech and the implication that he's come through things that DID touch him in the past, and that he's not entirely okay with his current situation, but is largely coping. Who cares about a character who's incapable of responding emotionally to the shit their adventures put them through? We value characters who've felt the impact and come back up, with some work, more than stock warriors who never felt the blow in the first place.
But the aforementioned complication inherent in these characters does give rise to different readings of them, and sometimes readings I think are just poor. Take the Fifth Doctor and Kerr Avon. While these men initially look nothing alike, I'd put them on the character-type spectrum Picard and Hornblower occupy. Well, that and the incestuous production history of Who and B7 has resulted in Alphas essentially being Time Lords, with B7 as a whole relentlessly positioning itself against the optimism and strategies of Who and Trek. Both men are genius-among-geniuses rebels from BubbleCityTopia running away on ships they don't seem to properly understand and pretending not to feel very much when either the script or the acting choices insist they could not care more and are defined by their caring.
See Avon awkwardly declaring DEEP INTEREST in Blake as early as "Duel".
"Avon: With all what happening? Blake is sitting up in a tree, Travis is sitting up in another tree. Unless they're planning to throw nuts at one another, I don't see much of a fight developing before it gets light.
Gan: You're never involved, are you Avon? You ever cared for anyone?
Vila: Except yourself?
Avon: I have never understood why it should be necessary to become irrational in order to prove that you care, or, indeed, why it should be necessary to prove it at all. [Exits]
Vila: Was that an insult or did I miss something?
Cally: You missed something."
His conflated feelings for Blake and the larger political movement he represents drive Avon and the show's plot as a whole (basically Blakes 7 is Avon One before S3 even starts), yet Avon is constantly protesting-too-much that he gives zero craps about any of it. This is disingenuous, as I'm *pretty* sure that, in addition to the Anna Grant shit, Avon had done some political shit before we hit "Space Fall", if memory serves. He uses Blake, in a way, to outsource an internal conflict between self-preservation and the demands of the other--in fact all these characters' emotional issues arise from attempts to negotiate this, because it's perhaps overly important to them, or they're unduly aware of this tension.
Avon can thus enjoy the apparently rational, self-serving opinion, while assigning the position he'll actually follow, the logic of which he's sympathetic to, to Blake. Perhaps part of his attraction to Blake, sexual or otherwise, is an attraction to these elements in himself. For all Avon's bitching and moaning and pointing out that Blake's put him in a position where he can't escape and live as a private citizen--it's kind of bullshit, isn't it? There's a ton of planets. There are decadent pleasure worlds and 'Commander Sleer' style decently-successful fake identities. Avon's clever and a specialist in information systems. The Federation is in disarray after the alien attack. If he *properly* wanted to, he could leave, and I don't think the text asks us to believe that he *couldn't* quite hard enough to be convincing.
Also, has any one ever talked about the dynamic similarities between Shalka and B7 before? 'Cause I kind of see influence there. Obviously outside the purview of this discussion Avon is generally more like the Master and Blake is more like the Doctor.
Anyway, the thing about Five, Avon and misreading is, a fair amount of fanfic with these characters sometimes feels like it's been written by people who watched a different show. This encompasses Uke Versions of these characters, Secret Airhead Slut, and Evil Leatherpants Heartless Dom!incarnations. Avon gets one and three (though B7 is largely an old zine/archive slash fandom, and those characterization stylistics tend to come over all hearts, flowers and magical love destinies), and Five gets one and two. All of these sort of do violence to the 'reserve/feeling juxtaposition' character phenotype. Leatherpants allows the character's fantasy, ego-driven (in the Freudian terminology sense--sort of tempted to say 'superego' here, but I think ego's more correct) image of themselves to become the text, when that's always been a part of who they are rather that the whole of it. Perfectly Correct Martinet and/or Dashing Sexy Adventurer versions of either Picard or Hornblower would similarly buy into their stories of themselves more than is critically responsible. This is, I think, a version of Katy's friend's mistaken apprehension.
Uke/Secret Airhead Slut often has creepy undertones of not really caring about people, the reserve collapsing into a total boredom or disgust with everything but a designated love object. This is strange because, excepting Avon, these are deeply moral people, driven to act upon their morals as a lifestyle choice because these issues are so important to them (Hornblower slightly less than the Doctor and Picard). They often have some moral reasons/pressing business preventing them from jumping into bed with just anyone, and the balance between repression/emotion IS the balance between their sense of duty/their personal desires, expressed differently. Uke/Secret Airhead Slut collapses these characters' nuanced balances between their own interests and their investment in others, and also presumes that, idk, with enough cuddles or whatever, their weirdness will melt away, and they'll be easygoing lovebunnies forever. These are the fundamental and defining predicaments of these characters we're talking about. This difficult shit is the core stuff of their personhood, and to melt it away or reduce it to an impediment admitted to the bonking of true dudes, to be wholly overcome and destroyed, is to sacrifice the character to the sex act. Then you're writing about a time two random penises met, and who cares. Also, these are four characters who'd freak the fuck out at huge losses of dignity (the Doctor somewhat less than the others). Sex is one thing, but twee?!
Bearing in mind of course that sometimes altered characterization is there for reasons, to accomplish something in a fic, as an experiment, etc. But generally, when I no longer recognize these tensions in a portrayal of such characters, I no longer think of what I'm looking at as a strong depiction of those characters, because this is so central to their personhood.
Also it's more difficult than 'apply sex daily' to change the landscape of someone's insecurities and ways of thinking about the world, and perhaps even more difficult to do so in a way that still recognizably feels like the characters. Five dies smothered by choking self-control and caring too much--'there should have been another way', failure to prevent a slew of deaths, Tegan leaves, he does things he's not proud of re: Davros, things are kind of grim and awful, he doesn't save the Master, doesn't talk to anyone about any of it, and is dutiful, and is dead. Avon similarly offs someone he cares too much about after a long chain of desperate, bad days leading to this point, with too many people he cared too much about dead behind him, and, we presume, dies. Like Five in a way it seems to have an element of suicide in it.
Such characters get better shrift on team Order Alignment (I think by coincidence). Picard eases somewhat by the finale, growing more comfortable with himself. I think the "All Good Things" future Picard seems a likable, logical progression: like a full realization of this character in old-age, his potential met, and a measure of contentment and peace finally resting easily with him. Hornblower has a similar trajectory, but I feel his is less-well realized, perhaps because I stopped properly reading when I knew Bush was for the chop and began to rely on short stories, wikipedia, and things Katy told me. Maybe if I read through West Indies it'd seem totally natural, but as is, with the Napoleon II short story, this older, wiser, groovier Hornblower never quite resonates and makes me think 'yes, this is you, Horatio, but fully realized and older'.
