Inside and Outside Dylan Hunt
When I went to see Kasha, she said something about my Andromeda fic that I've heard before from other readers, that she likes my Dylan better than the one on the show. Which suggests that I'm not writing the character as he really is. Well, I am writing him as he is, but the difference is that the show gives a far more objective viewpoint than my usual tight, third person POV.
First I'll go into what I see of him on the show. A casual viewing of first season usually leads viewers to thinking of him as a standard, generic, uptight hero type. Watching deeper shows that he can be a nice, good, heroic guy, but he's also arrogant, impatient, high-handed, self-deluded, devious, secretive, convinced of his righteousness, megalomaniacal, unstable, reckless, and ruthless. He has the diplomatic gestures and talk down, but if they don't work, out comes the armament and trickery, so under the velvet glove of compromise and talk is the iron fist of firepower and divine right. He can also be a prissy little bitch.
A major problem is that he doesn't admit to the things I've listed after "nice, good, heroic guy," and his negative traits have only strengthened during second season, when he became more certain that he gets this time period now and knows that he has a crew of professionals to cover his ass. After the battle with the Magog Worldship, his bouts of depression and uncertainty rarely recur, because he is now convinced of his righteousness.
He's very invested in his self-image and can be manipulated that way, as everybody close to him knows and has done. Watch him eat up Rev's talk about snatching life out of death and maybe creating innocent Magog as an excuse to let Tiama slowly and agonizingly come to term with a clutch of flesh-eating Magog larvae in "Devil Take the Hindmost." He's also thinking that he can use those Magog against the slavers. (Except that once the spawn kill the slavers they kill the colonists too.) You know that he went out to fight the zombies in "Dance of the Mayflies" because it's something a hero would do. Even though he had no clue how to put the zombies down permanently and was really just putting his life at risk. He's also let his crew talk him into doing the shady things that need to be done, perhaps so he doesn't feel that it's solely his responsibility when he gets his hands dirty. Rev was a gleeful enabler of this in season one, particularly in "Angel Dark, Demon Bright" when he tells Dylan to join the Nietzschean fleet in the battle as the lesser of two evils and then later when he says that the Divine must have meant them to come back in time to slaughter 100,000 Nietzscheans.
I can't help feeling that Dylan's noble decision not to allow the frame-up of Telemachus Rhade in "Home Fires" to continue, even though it would give him Tarazed as a signatory world and add to the fleet he'd need to protect thousands of worlds from the Magog, is actually more about him needing to feel that he was fair to Rhade's descendant. It's also a very inconvenient time and situation for him to be principled in. His heroism and commitment against oppression can be inconsistent, as Harper found out in "Bunker Hill" when the captain who helps every lost soul who crosses his path decided that it wasn't practical to help Earth, even though the humans of Earth were willing to help him against his enemies, which is more than most of the people he aids is willing to do. He then throws Harper a bone of a half-hearted, two-person mission to the planet, promises to bring the big guns later, for the first time in forever breaks that promise, and then shrugs over the maybe thousands of people who were killed because they trusted him to back them up. His impatience tells him to abandon the kids of "To Loose the Fateful Lightning" when they don't set aside the "uncivilized" ways that have kept their society alive for 300 years and immediately follow his ideas, even though they could desperately use aid in the form of education and supplies. He expects his crew to follow his orders without question and without knowing what he intends to do, even if they seem dangerous or stupid, but watch his reaction to Uxulta in the "The Fair Unknown" giving him orders.
He's not entirely sane. We know he's not. He's lost everything he's known and loved and hasn't even allowed himself much time to mourn them. I get the feeling that if the Andromeda had drifted free of the black hole on its own and he hadn't had the stimulus of a salvage crew to battle and then win over, he might have fallen into a pit of despair and insanity. (Actually, I also wonder if eventually he might have decided to pursue justice Balance of Judgment style in a universe and time period he knew nothing about.) Instead, he's been running around with a new goal--restore the Commonwealth--and is Not Thinking about it all.
I wonder if Dylan's going to get crazier in season three now that the foundation of a new Commonwealth is established. Though I hear there are problems with it, which may keep him going for a while longer.
Instead of adapting to fit the universe and era he's in, he's trying to change the universe and era to fit him, as Tyr mentions in "Una Salus Victus." Though he does make some changes to himself, in that he lets the desperate state of society at this time excuse some of the less pleasant things he does. His arrogance looks more and more like it comes from the society he lived in, as every glimpse we get of the Commonwealth and Vedrans show us an arrogant, classist people.
He figures that handing Molly a commission in "Lava and Rockets" completely makes up for destroying her ship and her career. That he hands it to her immediately after they have sex, making it look like he's paying off a whore, is tasteless, but I doubt he thinks of it that way. Besides, she's getting a three-week cruise on her way to the academy, and that should make up for everything. That she'll be putting out throughout those three weeks is just a nice side effect for him. You notice that he never asks his crew or sentient ship if they want to ferry the captain's woman around the universe for three weeks, but why should it concern them, since it's kind of a vacation for them too? Besides, he's the captain and it's his ship, so it's his decision to make, not theirs.
He has blind spots the size of Kansas.
If he becomes a chick machine in third season, he'll probably feel that he has a right to a social life and that his ship's wandering ways makes it impossible to have a committed relationship, since it would be awkward for him to play such favorites amongst his crew and he can't expect the women he comes across to give up their lives to go away with him. Not that he'd want them staying with his ship unless they could be useful.
He can be a nice, good, heroic guy. When it suits him and his self-image. When it's practical for him.
What this is heading to is that the Dylan of my fic comes off better because we see him only through his eyes and Harper's eyes. The important thing about writing him from the inside is that he thinks he's a great guy, noble and true and right. The bad things he does are either unavoidable or necessary. When his crew disagrees with him, they're wrong or short-sighted. He has reasons (and excuses) for the things he does, and when you write from his POV they color the narrative.
We can see the complimentary things he thinks about the crew that he never actually tells them.
Dylan doesn't look quite as good from Harper's POV, but Harper has come to realize that he can't expect consistency from people--see "Bunker Hill" above--and he doesn't see Dylan as a hero. He bitches about things Dylan does a lot but he follows orders anyway because Dylan is one of his two bosses, and the boss must be obeyed. (I've wondered if total obedience was the price for Beka keeping him on the Maru. If so, it looks like he's transferred that with her to the Andromeda.) Dylan has become one of His Own, and he forgives His Own for things he'd never in a million years accept from other people. His life has accustomed him to the idea that he should take what he can get and be happy with it, though he still has some romantic, idealistic thoughts that he's gotten stomped on for. In my fic, he thinks that Dylan can be a good sex partner and good company sometimes.
Thus, the Dylan in my fic is usually being depicted through the golden haze of his own mind or through the affectionate, ultimately forgiving filter of Harper's. Dylan comes off the worst in my stories in "Raveling," when I showed some of the skanky events of season two only through Harper's POV.
Hey, I rarely go for the simple One True Pairings....
First I'll go into what I see of him on the show. A casual viewing of first season usually leads viewers to thinking of him as a standard, generic, uptight hero type. Watching deeper shows that he can be a nice, good, heroic guy, but he's also arrogant, impatient, high-handed, self-deluded, devious, secretive, convinced of his righteousness, megalomaniacal, unstable, reckless, and ruthless. He has the diplomatic gestures and talk down, but if they don't work, out comes the armament and trickery, so under the velvet glove of compromise and talk is the iron fist of firepower and divine right. He can also be a prissy little bitch.
A major problem is that he doesn't admit to the things I've listed after "nice, good, heroic guy," and his negative traits have only strengthened during second season, when he became more certain that he gets this time period now and knows that he has a crew of professionals to cover his ass. After the battle with the Magog Worldship, his bouts of depression and uncertainty rarely recur, because he is now convinced of his righteousness.
He's very invested in his self-image and can be manipulated that way, as everybody close to him knows and has done. Watch him eat up Rev's talk about snatching life out of death and maybe creating innocent Magog as an excuse to let Tiama slowly and agonizingly come to term with a clutch of flesh-eating Magog larvae in "Devil Take the Hindmost." He's also thinking that he can use those Magog against the slavers. (Except that once the spawn kill the slavers they kill the colonists too.) You know that he went out to fight the zombies in "Dance of the Mayflies" because it's something a hero would do. Even though he had no clue how to put the zombies down permanently and was really just putting his life at risk. He's also let his crew talk him into doing the shady things that need to be done, perhaps so he doesn't feel that it's solely his responsibility when he gets his hands dirty. Rev was a gleeful enabler of this in season one, particularly in "Angel Dark, Demon Bright" when he tells Dylan to join the Nietzschean fleet in the battle as the lesser of two evils and then later when he says that the Divine must have meant them to come back in time to slaughter 100,000 Nietzscheans.
I can't help feeling that Dylan's noble decision not to allow the frame-up of Telemachus Rhade in "Home Fires" to continue, even though it would give him Tarazed as a signatory world and add to the fleet he'd need to protect thousands of worlds from the Magog, is actually more about him needing to feel that he was fair to Rhade's descendant. It's also a very inconvenient time and situation for him to be principled in. His heroism and commitment against oppression can be inconsistent, as Harper found out in "Bunker Hill" when the captain who helps every lost soul who crosses his path decided that it wasn't practical to help Earth, even though the humans of Earth were willing to help him against his enemies, which is more than most of the people he aids is willing to do. He then throws Harper a bone of a half-hearted, two-person mission to the planet, promises to bring the big guns later, for the first time in forever breaks that promise, and then shrugs over the maybe thousands of people who were killed because they trusted him to back them up. His impatience tells him to abandon the kids of "To Loose the Fateful Lightning" when they don't set aside the "uncivilized" ways that have kept their society alive for 300 years and immediately follow his ideas, even though they could desperately use aid in the form of education and supplies. He expects his crew to follow his orders without question and without knowing what he intends to do, even if they seem dangerous or stupid, but watch his reaction to Uxulta in the "The Fair Unknown" giving him orders.
He's not entirely sane. We know he's not. He's lost everything he's known and loved and hasn't even allowed himself much time to mourn them. I get the feeling that if the Andromeda had drifted free of the black hole on its own and he hadn't had the stimulus of a salvage crew to battle and then win over, he might have fallen into a pit of despair and insanity. (Actually, I also wonder if eventually he might have decided to pursue justice Balance of Judgment style in a universe and time period he knew nothing about.) Instead, he's been running around with a new goal--restore the Commonwealth--and is Not Thinking about it all.
I wonder if Dylan's going to get crazier in season three now that the foundation of a new Commonwealth is established. Though I hear there are problems with it, which may keep him going for a while longer.
Instead of adapting to fit the universe and era he's in, he's trying to change the universe and era to fit him, as Tyr mentions in "Una Salus Victus." Though he does make some changes to himself, in that he lets the desperate state of society at this time excuse some of the less pleasant things he does. His arrogance looks more and more like it comes from the society he lived in, as every glimpse we get of the Commonwealth and Vedrans show us an arrogant, classist people.
He figures that handing Molly a commission in "Lava and Rockets" completely makes up for destroying her ship and her career. That he hands it to her immediately after they have sex, making it look like he's paying off a whore, is tasteless, but I doubt he thinks of it that way. Besides, she's getting a three-week cruise on her way to the academy, and that should make up for everything. That she'll be putting out throughout those three weeks is just a nice side effect for him. You notice that he never asks his crew or sentient ship if they want to ferry the captain's woman around the universe for three weeks, but why should it concern them, since it's kind of a vacation for them too? Besides, he's the captain and it's his ship, so it's his decision to make, not theirs.
He has blind spots the size of Kansas.
If he becomes a chick machine in third season, he'll probably feel that he has a right to a social life and that his ship's wandering ways makes it impossible to have a committed relationship, since it would be awkward for him to play such favorites amongst his crew and he can't expect the women he comes across to give up their lives to go away with him. Not that he'd want them staying with his ship unless they could be useful.
He can be a nice, good, heroic guy. When it suits him and his self-image. When it's practical for him.
What this is heading to is that the Dylan of my fic comes off better because we see him only through his eyes and Harper's eyes. The important thing about writing him from the inside is that he thinks he's a great guy, noble and true and right. The bad things he does are either unavoidable or necessary. When his crew disagrees with him, they're wrong or short-sighted. He has reasons (and excuses) for the things he does, and when you write from his POV they color the narrative.
We can see the complimentary things he thinks about the crew that he never actually tells them.
Dylan doesn't look quite as good from Harper's POV, but Harper has come to realize that he can't expect consistency from people--see "Bunker Hill" above--and he doesn't see Dylan as a hero. He bitches about things Dylan does a lot but he follows orders anyway because Dylan is one of his two bosses, and the boss must be obeyed. (I've wondered if total obedience was the price for Beka keeping him on the Maru. If so, it looks like he's transferred that with her to the Andromeda.) Dylan has become one of His Own, and he forgives His Own for things he'd never in a million years accept from other people. His life has accustomed him to the idea that he should take what he can get and be happy with it, though he still has some romantic, idealistic thoughts that he's gotten stomped on for. In my fic, he thinks that Dylan can be a good sex partner and good company sometimes.
Thus, the Dylan in my fic is usually being depicted through the golden haze of his own mind or through the affectionate, ultimately forgiving filter of Harper's. Dylan comes off the worst in my stories in "Raveling," when I showed some of the skanky events of season two only through Harper's POV.
Hey, I rarely go for the simple One True Pairings....