-1 knot.
Every lieutenant could at least dream, even lieutenants like Bush with no imagination at all.
-Lieutenant Hornblower, CS Forester
Mun
Name: Pel
Livejournal Username: pitselly
E-mail: CapeQuod@Gmail.com
AIM: CapeHoc
Current Characters at Luceti:
Mildmay the Fox • Doctrine of Labyrinths • ohmykethe
Character
Name: William Bush
Fandom: Hornblower (A&E Miniseries with a bit of book canon thrown in to flesh him out, if that's alright.)
Gender: dude
Age: Bush's age is never stated in the movies and in the books, Forrester changes his mind a few times so Bush has several ages that make... very little sense. (Forrester: good at writing. Bad at math.) For the sake of everyone's respective sanity, I'm going to go with the first age Forrester lists, which would make Bush something like three or four years older than Horatio. SO BUSH IS IN HIS EARLY THIRTIES, CURRENTLY sorry for making that so difficult hahahahasob.
Time Period: Post-Miniseries, so post-Duty.
Wing Color: Light brown and not unlike that of a chicken.
History:
Mutiny, Retribution, Loyalty, Duty. If more information is needed, I'd be happy to provide.
The movie canon is incredibly lacking on William's larger background and prehistory, which is where the book canon comes in. Thus, here are the major book canon details that I'm using to flesh William's character out: William is the first and only son of a middle class working family; he has four younger sisters and went to sea when his father died. He is from Chichester originally. He likes putting copious amounts of mustard on his food. He's no good with maths, literature, philosophy or any subject he can't hold in his hands. He went to a rather harsh boy's school in his youth, before eventually going to sea. Little details like that are from the books, and will be used to flesh out William's character, if that's alright with you, modpeople.
Personality:
William Bush is not a particularly complex man. Actually, his lack of complexity is a large part of his character. This doesn't mean that he has little personality or that he's uninteresting, just that internal conflict is not something that comes naturally to Bush, nor does he feel he's missing anything for it. He is a straight-forward thinker, above all else.
Bush lives in the Regency Period, yes, but the complex Austen-esque plots and the deep philosophical arguments of this age fly right past him. Bush is first and foremost a military man, and so he may as well live in a entirely different world than that of Robespierre or Elinor Dashwood. Bush is a navy man, and very likely went to sea when he was eleven or twelve; the sea is all he knows, and he is very good at knowing the sea.
What it means to have a naval background is different for each prospective character, though, and what is means for Bush is not as simple as he himself is. To understand Bush, who is so wholly a product of his environment, one must understand his environment. For the sake of brevity, I'll try to keep it brief.
(Emphasis on try.)
William Bush is from a world before women's liberation, on the cusp of modern medicine and before the harnessing of steam, when slavery was still for all intensive purposes legal. This of course means that Bush has no concept of women's rights, what racism is (though he participates, he has no name for such a nebulous concept), or what a locomotive is. However, his environment has greater ramifications than a simple familiarity or lack thereof with modern concepts and ideals.
One must keep in mind that, for all intents and purposes, Bush was created as a foil to the series' protagonist, Hornblower. In some respects, Hornblower is a modern man trapped in the 1800s. Bush is, to contrast this, a man from the 1800s who is thoroughly and completely thriving within that time period. He is at home in this time, he knows what's right and wrong, the boundaries of his social strata, and he is entirely comfortable within those boundaries. Bush is, more less, a personification of John Bull-- which is to say, he is the quintessential, almost stereotypical lower/middle class Englishman. He is stout and stalwart, easy to please so long as he is well fed, reasonably patriotic without being overly concerned with the deeper workings of his government, and by and large unquestioning of the choices of said government.
(And, due to being so wholly a stereotype, he is a subversion of that stereotype by virtue of existing. Stereotype do not have feelings, after all. They don't have food to put mustard on, shoulders on which to place epaulettes, or ships to sail. While John Bull is a shadow, he is an oversimplified version of William Bush, who in turn casts that shadow.)
(I really suck at being brief.)
On a more personal level, William Bush is a hard-working man accustomed to the traditions of the navy. He is not by any means forward-thinking or quick-witted, though he can occasionally be dryly sarcastic when the mood strikes him (and this mood's strike is largely influenced by the company he keeps-- before Archie dies, he is much more jovial and snarky to match Archie's wit. Afterward, when he is in the company of just dolorous Horatio, he is more of a shoulder to lean on than a witty sidekick).
Bush has honor and a strong sense of duty, but he has none of the classical complications of honor and duty, as his sense of both is fairly uncomplicated. There are precious few situations where, for Bush, his sense of honor would come in conflict with what is right or good, as for Bush, honor is doing what is right and good. This is because Bush exists in no way to subvert or, on a more Watsonian level, question these concepts. He has honor because good men have honor and he wants to be a good man. He has a strong sense of duty because the navy beat it into him at a young age, and he feels listless and useless when he is not accomplishing some task for the greater good of England.
(The one time this was not the case-- when Bush's orders and the honorable choice came in conflict-- he faltered, because he had never noticed a distinction between the two before. Horatio ordered him to shoot a man in cold blood. If he did not, he would disobey Horatio and risk his life-- honor sullied-- and if he did, his honor would be damaged in any case. So he dithered until inaction took the choice away from him. The second time this happened, he was faced with a similar scenario, and without hesitation, shot the man who threatened his captain. He had decided, in the downtime, that his captain's -- his friend's-- life was more important than his honor, and that his honor was protecting and serving his captain. It is highly unlikely that such a conflict shall ever arise in William's mind again, for as far as he can see it, he has risen to the challenge and come out a better man for the exchange.)
He fights wars because it is his job, not because he has any particular investment in the cause for which the war was being fought. (Though he is against the idea of the lower classes being able to rise against royalty, this is not for any abstract moral, fundamental or philosophical reason. Simply, it goes against his worldview; he cannot imagine a world where a royal family does not preside with the prestige due to them by their blood, and nor does he want to.) His reaction to new things and things he doesn't understand is to be suspicious of them indefinitely. He has a definite bias against whoever the government tells him to be at war with, and furthermore anyone and everyone of less-than-English ancestry (though his racism is less foaming-at-the-mouth-hate and more casual and dismissive).
He is a simple man.
Strengths:
Almost all of Bush's strengths are physical. He is an immensely strong and resilient man in peak physical condition. While he is nimble enough to scale the rigging with ease, in general he is very stocky. He knows how to use a sword, but not for dueling, and most of his swordsmanship relies on the ancient and most honored principle of 'chop him up before he chops me up' (him, because women would never ever use swords, that is preposterous).
Likewise with guns, his aim isn't great, but he is by no means limp-wristed. (Uhh, not that kind of limp-wristed. This kind.) This can mostly be inferred by the history of the 1800s; if Bush is aristocracy, I'll eat my hat, which means that he has very likely never been classically trained with sword or pistol, and so he knows only the most basic point/shoot/stab mechanics of each instrument. To ensure victory, Bush generally depends on putting his considerable strength behind each weapon, instead of any application of skill or finesse. Which is also a reflection of his attitude towards most problems in general, but I'm digressing. (Again.)
Mentally, he has a huge strength for attention to detail. He will get shit done, and he will get it done as well as it can be done. He is an effective leader, if not the stalwart tin soldier Horatio is, nor the likable everyman Archie is. He is very, very hard on his men, but a good enough leader for them to follow him despite that. This is seen in Styles' continued support of him, even after he has berated the man several times for slipping up while he was working. But each time Styles slips up and Bush catches and berates him for it, Styles knows that he was wrong and Bush was right to correct him, and continues to work under him.
He is very good at carrying on, and not letting worry or nervousness wear him down. This has a lot to do with having no genetic predisposition towards depression or melancholy, of course, and because in the navy, there's no time for soul-searching! Get to work! Stop dawdling!
He tends to throw himself into his work whenever there's a threat of sadness pulling him down, and for the most part, this tactic is successful, so long as there's work to be done. (Which can easily turn into a weakness whenever there isn't work to be done-- like in the Peace of Amiens, where he had nothing to do but walk down to the admiralty to collect his half-pay every month, and was thus very surly and generally downtrodden until he got himself on a ship once more. Once he's back on the ship, he's his old cheery self. By which we mean shouting at everyone below his rank and making sure the ship runs like the well-oiled machine it was meant to, God help him he will throw you overboard if you make things difficult ...You know, 'cheery' is different for everybody.)
Possibly Bush's greatest strength is being a very, very good friend. He will be whatever a friend needs him to be, to the best of his ability. Need someone to trade jokes with, like Archie and Horatio did in most of Retribution? He'll try his best, though his sense of humor is more sardonic than witty or dark or lyrical. Need a shoulder to lean on, like Horatio did in most of Duty and Loyalty so the pressures of command didn't crush him? He can do that, too. If he likes you, he'll do his best to be what you need in a friend. Mind, this isn't something he does for everyone, just very, very good friends, people who need his support so that his ship can continue to run like the best ship in the navy so help him the deck had better be clean enough to eat off of by the time he gets back here or the sharks will be eating you, see if they don't.
He can also, you know, run a wooden ship in the 1800s (when it's fully-manned) with reasonable proficiency, and has a working knowledge of the intricacies of the navy and how the navy works. Or, worked, in the 1800s.
Weaknesses:
The most notable of all William's weaknesses is probably his inability to comprehend mathematics (at one point in the books, since this character trait is entirely book-based, it's noted that: Bush mentally classed together French, whist, and spherical trigonometry as subjects in which he was too old ever to make any further progress, and which he would be content, if he were allowed, to leave entirely to his admired captain.), literature, or the finer points of the English language (another time, the doctor points out that Bush's torso is injured. In prose, Bush wonders what an torso is. To be fair, torso was a very new word at the time, and not terribly common outside of academic contexts, but the point remains. William Bush's English is largely vernacular and naval, not formal or academic. He is more likely to say ain't rather than shan't. And in 1800s England? This is very much a weakness).
This isn't to say he lacks formal education or that he is impossibly compromised by higher concepts. Just that he is more inclined to understand that which he can hold in his hand, build and work, rather than that which he can theorize or memorize, as evidenced with his mastery of running and commanding the ship (things consisting largely of physical tasks), contrasted with his inability to grasp the finer points of algebra.
Another weakness is just how long it takes him to process information. He needs a lot of time to just sit and work through new concepts mentally. This of course means he isn't very adaptable, prone to change, nor comfortable with fluxuation in his routine. He is set in his ways and loves tradition. Thus far in his life, that has not caused him many problems, since that is more of a strength than a weakness in the time period and setting that he's from. However, in Luceti, it'd be more of a problem.
In the books, he's noted as scoffing at the idea of meditation, but doing something not unlike meditation on the quarterdeck while he oversees the officers at work. This dichotomy is very likely from the fact a) that he's probably not entirely clear on what the word 'meditation' means, and b) that furthermore, were he perfectly aware, he'd probably dismiss it out of hand as an unmanly affectation. Regardless of his nebulous personal feelings on the subject, this meditation is something he still needs to do to in order to process information. This means he is very slow to pass judgments, accept new ideas, or even process new information. Mercury he ain't. Rumination is his very best friend (besides Horatio, booze, and prostitutes, of course).
William is also not that great of a swordsman. He's not awful by any means, he's just not one full of skill or particular finesse. He is just an intensely strong fighter who relies on strength at the expense of all other techniques. If someone has better form than him-- like they obviously did in Retribution-- he'll wind up seriously wounded (again). In his case, smarts beats strength if they're smart enough and fast enough to avoid William's heavy jabs.
William probably isn't the best long-range shot in the navy, either.He relies more on trying to fire close-range, since aiming practice probably wasn't a huge part of the training he received, if he received any gun training at all, which is highly unlikely. Which is all to say that basically, on a one to ten with ten being the BEST FIGHTER EVAR, Bush is like a 4.5 at best. He is easily defeated by someone using tactical knowledge to their advantage. Or, you know, if they're a girl, because then Bush will be incapable of taking them seriously. Oh, how your environment effects you.
Samples
First Person:
Don't mean to trouble anyone, so I'll make this quick. Not entirely sure I've the working of these things right, anyways. Journals, you called 'em? I've never seen a journal do what you're saying this-- recording? How can it, no one's writ-- Oh.
...'Scuse me, could any of you folk point me in the direction of home? Don't know how I managed to wind up in Italy... And, ah, if anyone were to know how I got here... or even if they don't, just point me in the direction of the nearest dock and I'll be out've your hair in no time. I know my way around.
While I've you here, I figure I'd best ask... Does anybody round here know how to get these bloody wings off? I figure I can do it myself, but I can guess it isn't the best idea to go swinging an ax round where you can't see it.
...Anybody have an axe handy? Just in case.
Third Person:
Lieutenant William Bush, RN, isn't the type of man for introspection, true, but there are reasons for that. He's faced positively few situations for which he has no prior frame of reference. No need to think deep about your feelings when you're more less prepared for everything on the level that counts. True, true, he's gone into battles with less sword fighting experience than's strictly safe, gone fighting when he's had less food in his belly than he would've liked, gone on ships with less knowledge of how to bloody swim then'd be considered proper.
But on that deeper level, the level that really counts the most, William Bush always knows what's coming. He knows the ins and outs of social niceties, how to respond, how to react. True, true, were he ever to have to speak with a lord's son outside the navy, he'd have no inkling what to say to keep things right and proper. But on the projection of William's life thus far and into the future, that'll never happen.
"Excuse me, Miss?" William calls, but the woman only looks offended, and stalks away. "Ma'am?" He imagines, though, were he a lady likened to she, he'd run the other way to see a man ill-dressed as he, with freakish wings to his back. (Though as she turns, William sees she has them too.)
William Bush knows how to talk when it's needed and necessary, and how to keep his trap shut when it ain't welcome. He knows how to man a ship, how to row, how to eat and sleep and drink and whore. He knows what matters, and what counts.
Within England, anyway. Within friend and enemy shores. But this don't look like any sort of thing William's ever seen before. And he's damn sure there's nothing in the books (the ones he's read and the one's he ain't) about having wings on your back. Chicken wings, by the look of it. William'd try to pull 'em off if moving his back at all didn't hurt so bloody much.
William'd also like to know why he's gone from sleeping sound and warm and well bloody dressed in a berth he knows well enough to navigate in the dark (which he has, he'll have you know), to walking the streets in nothing but long trousers, embarrassingly indecent. William Bush would like to know a lot of things, like why he's here, and how to get out, but for right now he'll suffice for just knowing a way to deal with all this. It's shaky ground he's on, none of which is the like to what he's used. For once in his life, none of his knowledge is useful, none of it's needed.
And that is by far the most frightening thing of all.