character hangups meme answers
Sep. 4th, 2013 12:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitHere are my answers for the "tell me a character, I'll tell you one of their hangups" meme.
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graculus and vilakins asked for Mervyn Bunter, from the Lord Peter Wimsey books. Since I got two requests, I've given you two of his hangups.
Bunter is proud of what he does for Lord Peter, both helping him with investigations and serving him in more conventional ways. But sometimes, when he meets men from similar backgrounds who aren't in service, who have what they think of as "proper" jobs, whether it's factory workers or ambitious clerks or schoolmasters who've made their way into the fringes of the middle class, he finds himself reluctant to tell them what he does. And he's ashamed of himself for that.
He doesn't have sex with men he knows. He doesn't have sex often anyway, mostly for lack of opportunity, but although he's had the occasional offer from an acquaintance or friend, he refuses. It would be terribly complicated to go to bed with someone he liked, someone he might like even more afterwards, might long for as he lies in his own bed alone. His life is complicated enough already with longing and impossibility, and he almost literally flinches from the thought of more.
magnetic_pole asked for Sherlock Holmes. No version was specified, so I went for bookverse.
As a boy, Holmes was taught that ejaculation enfeebles the body and mind, and he believed it for thirty years. It was Watson who taught him otherwise, of course--Watson who explained the physiology of sex and then gave Holmes medical books to read until he was convinced. But still, every time he and Watson have sex, he's a little bit afraid that everything Watson told him about brain function, the sex drive, and the male animal's vast supply of semen is wrong, and that this will be the time when sex destroys him.
lilacsigil asked for John Watson. Again, I went for bookverse.
Watson doesn't actually like dealing with sick people. He's interested in medicine in a theoretical sense, but he after he took up his civilian practice he discovered that other people's pain, so often unsolvable, wears at him so that he's always tired and bad-tempered. This is the other reason he's always willing to let someone else take over his practice for a few hours/days/months while he follows Holmes around, and why he sold up without a qualm once Holmes came back after Reichenbach.
st_aurafina asked for Lord John Grey, from Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series and also, later, his own series.
It's been a long time since I've read anything with Lord John Grey, but as I recall, he's a spectacular bundle of hangups and issues. One that I don't think is ever explicitly stated, though (and I'm not sure Diana Gabaldon recognizes it as a problem) is that he has a bad case of internalized homophobia. He does not like other gay men, even when he's sleeping with them--he thinks of them as weak, manipulative, treacherous, "womanly" with the full negative connotations that term carries in a misogynist society. It's the root of his romantic troubles, including his tendency to either not make a move on men he likes who might be receptive or, if he does start something up, to treat them badly, as well as his obsession with a straight man who isn't even nice to him.
graculus and vilakins asked for Mervyn Bunter, from the Lord Peter Wimsey books. Since I got two requests, I've given you two of his hangups.Bunter is proud of what he does for Lord Peter, both helping him with investigations and serving him in more conventional ways. But sometimes, when he meets men from similar backgrounds who aren't in service, who have what they think of as "proper" jobs, whether it's factory workers or ambitious clerks or schoolmasters who've made their way into the fringes of the middle class, he finds himself reluctant to tell them what he does. And he's ashamed of himself for that.
He doesn't have sex with men he knows. He doesn't have sex often anyway, mostly for lack of opportunity, but although he's had the occasional offer from an acquaintance or friend, he refuses. It would be terribly complicated to go to bed with someone he liked, someone he might like even more afterwards, might long for as he lies in his own bed alone. His life is complicated enough already with longing and impossibility, and he almost literally flinches from the thought of more.
magnetic_pole asked for Sherlock Holmes. No version was specified, so I went for bookverse.As a boy, Holmes was taught that ejaculation enfeebles the body and mind, and he believed it for thirty years. It was Watson who taught him otherwise, of course--Watson who explained the physiology of sex and then gave Holmes medical books to read until he was convinced. But still, every time he and Watson have sex, he's a little bit afraid that everything Watson told him about brain function, the sex drive, and the male animal's vast supply of semen is wrong, and that this will be the time when sex destroys him.
lilacsigil asked for John Watson. Again, I went for bookverse.Watson doesn't actually like dealing with sick people. He's interested in medicine in a theoretical sense, but he after he took up his civilian practice he discovered that other people's pain, so often unsolvable, wears at him so that he's always tired and bad-tempered. This is the other reason he's always willing to let someone else take over his practice for a few hours/days/months while he follows Holmes around, and why he sold up without a qualm once Holmes came back after Reichenbach.
st_aurafina asked for Lord John Grey, from Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series and also, later, his own series.It's been a long time since I've read anything with Lord John Grey, but as I recall, he's a spectacular bundle of hangups and issues. One that I don't think is ever explicitly stated, though (and I'm not sure Diana Gabaldon recognizes it as a problem) is that he has a bad case of internalized homophobia. He does not like other gay men, even when he's sleeping with them--he thinks of them as weak, manipulative, treacherous, "womanly" with the full negative connotations that term carries in a misogynist society. It's the root of his romantic troubles, including his tendency to either not make a move on men he likes who might be receptive or, if he does start something up, to treat them badly, as well as his obsession with a straight man who isn't even nice to him.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-05 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-05 06:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-05 10:28 am (UTC)Lord John Grey I don't know.