one last meme response

[kindkit]

halotolerant asked me to talk about Captain Owen Triggers from the show Wings.

Since most of you are now saying "Who?" allow me to introduce him. Captain Triggers is a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps, the First World War ancestor of the RAF, whom we first meet as a flight instructor to the show's nominal protagonists (Triggers interests me so much that I keep forgetting he's not the hero) and later as the commanding officer of their unit, C Flight. Have a little picspam:

This is Captain Awesome Triggers (on the right) wearing his awesome coat and his awesome scarf. His boots are out of shot, but trust me, they're awesome.




Triggers in a mischievous mood.




Triggers when he thinks his pet newbie pilot has just died in an awful crash (actually he's going to be all right).




The awkward caress of "Well, it seems you're not going to be shot at dawn for cowardice. I find I'm jolly pleased about that."




Triggers in a state of undress. (He was playing table tennis in the mess with his pet pilot Alan Farmer, the one he's awkwardly stroking in the previous cap. Naturally this required the removal of some clothing. He looks dismayed because a general has just walked in unexpectedly.) (Also, the Captcha for this one was "tastes good." Never doubt the wisdom of Captcha.)




Okay, on to the meme.

Why I love them or why I wish they'd go die in a fire.

Given the canon, it's not unlikely that he will die in a fire. *sobs* In the mean time, I adore him. He's brave and smart and dashing and a good leader and secretly OMG SO VULNERABLE AND SAD underneath. He could be killed any day, and so could any of the men he's trained and looked after and come to care for and has to send out on dangerous missions, and it's obvious that he can barely stand it but he keeps on, because he must. He gets twitchier and more temperamental by the minute, and he was highly strung to begin with; he seems by the series end to have a death wish only just held in check by a sense of duty. But there's a gaiety in him too, and a sense of humor that's not always bleak.

It says a lot about how much I love him that I have even come to like his moustache, and I am a card-carrying moustache hater.

My OTP for the character

On the show, he's got subtext with the protagonist, Alan Farmer; the trouble is, I don't like Alan Farmer very much. I tend to either want to ship Triggers with another character, a sweet, scholarly man called Starling, or else cross him over and pair him with Biggles. The early Biggles, the one with the compulsive nervous giggle and the twitch, the nineteen-year-old boy who's on the verge of cracking up, not the later invulnerable!Biggles. They might be a train wreck or they might be perfect for each other. Who else could understand them?

My favorite gen relationship with this character.

His relationship with former trainee and current member of C Flight Charles Gaylion (pronounced GAY-lee-un except by Triggers, who amuses himself by calling him "Gay Lion") is interesting and has potential for a lot more than was done with it on the show. They have daddy issues in common, and I'd love to know more about what Triggers, in his loneliness and perhaps his love for Alan Farmer, makes of Gaylion's own rather fraught friendship/rivalry with Farmer.

An unpopular opinion about this character.

It's a fandom of two, so there are no popular or unpopular opinions. Halo sees more potential in the Triggers/Farmer pairing than I do.

One thing I wish would [have] happen[ed] with this character in canon.

I'd have loved to see him with his mother, who is clearly a big influence and a major emotional tie for him.

An idea I have for the character that I haven't written yet/won't ever write for whatever reason.

Triggers cracks up, is sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital or some similar estabishment, meets Biggles who has also cracked up. Rivalry and lust and love and angst and PTSD and a gradual emergence from lonely despair into hope ensue.

Comments

Captain Triggers

[(Anonymous)]

I am fascinated by this man too. If only he could be around today. I love to see how he fitted back into civilian life after the war. Did he ever walk again, did he find a woman to love? I have an idea that perhaps he cracked up, like you suggested, got carted off to hospital to recover, then fell in love with somebody much much younger ( remember how he was attracted to the young girl Marie-Helene at the farmhouse in Veuve sur Meuse. He would be a nurturing father figure in the relationship and she would allow him to be gruff and angry. His Mother would very much feature in his post war life I think.
I love the photograph of Triggers being mischievous - yes he was often like this. He always found something to amuse himself.