[ZODION]: INFO POST

[condescendingly]

CHARACTER
NAME: Arthur.
SERIES: Inception.
CANON POINT: The very end of the film; he wakes up from the plane into the Luminar rather than into the real world.
GENDER: Male.
AGE: 29.
BIRTHDATE: 11 November.
SIGN: Scorpio.
TATTOO: About the size of a 50-cent piece, located on his forearm about an inch below his wrist.


POWERS
ONE: Summoning small animals (lol).

KINKS
YES: He would be more than willing to dominate the shit out of you! Not in a ferocious bondage-and-ropes-and-hot-wax way, but in a very leather-gloves-and-a-firm-tone-of-voice way. However, he is also (occasionally, and with the right partner) okay with being dominated himself. Those are the big kinks.

NO: Non-ejaculatory bodily fluids, roleplay.

MORE
PERSONALITY: There are five main points to Arthur's personality. The first is most easily discussed in terms of his role within Cobb's team—Arthur is the 'point man', a military term referring to the person who takes the first and most exposed position within a military operation. Essentially, he spearheads their missions. The point man is responsible for researching the mark (the subject of their jobs), organizing information such as schedules and accessibility (because you can't remotely access someone's dreams, you have to be right there with them), setting up their base of operations and equipment, and synchronizing the 'kick' that will wake the dreamers. It's a lot of responsibility, and Arthur takes it very seriously; he must, considering that 1) Cobb keeps him on for arguably the most complex and difficult job he'll ever do, and 2) that Cobb and Eames both agree that Arthur is the best at what he does. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, on Arthur, says: "Arthur is the organized one, the one making sure everything is in its right place. The way I see it, Cobb is the artist and Arthur is the producer. He’s the one saying, ‘Okay, you have your vision; now I’m going to figure out how to make all the nuts and bolts work so you can do your thing.'"

From this sense of responsibility come two more of Arthur's key personality traits. First of all, his serious nature—Arthur, while not exactly a pessimist, does tend to take things seriously, lending him an attitude that Eames refers to as a "stick-in-the-mud" with "no imagination". This attitude is understandable, considering what's at stake if something goes wrong—when you're mucking about in someone's subconscious, you can't afford not to be fastidious. A part of this serious nature of his is his tendency towards being levelheaded; Arthur very rarely shows outward emotions, and almost never allows his emotions to control him.

The second of the personality traits to stem from Arthur's sense of responsibility is his desire to be fully informed about situations before he enters them. As the point man, Arthur is responsible for researching the mark, and the more they know about the mark, the more smoothly the job will go. Arthur likes his information clear, concise, and comprehensive—as indicated when he replies to one of Cobb's statements with "We'll have to do better than 'might", and, at a jibe from Eames, continues, "Forgive me for wanting a little specificity." Additionally, one of the only times in the film that Arthur gets visibly upset is in Fischer's mind, when he apologizes for holes in his research (he didn't realize that Fischer had subconscious security), only to find out that Cobb had been withholding critical information from the team.

The fourth key element of Arthur's personality actually defies Eames' assessment that Arthur has "no imagination". Arthur is very good in a crisis—he's a quick thinker, which is undoubtedly why he's the point man. For example, while undertaking Saito's inception job, Arthur finds himself facing a serious conundrum: The first kick has failed (in the first dream layer), leaving him and his sleeping team members in zero gravity in the second dream layer. The dilemma here is that without gravity, he can't create the sensation of falling that 'kicks' the dreamer back into waking. However, Arthur doesn't panic—he just calmly assesses the situation and comes up with a solution, all working within the tight constraints of a very tense situation.

The final aspect of Arthur's personality is actually a bit of a mishmash of multiple elements, important enough to warrant mention but not quite enough so to get their own categories. First, from the description I've given, it would be easy to assume that Arthur is a 'nerd' of sorts, an analytical mind that's better in theory than he is in the field. This is not at all true. Arthur is a very capable fighter; he's trained in several types of firearms, as well as being capable of killing someone with his bare hands (in null gravity, no less). More importantly, he has the chutzpah necessary to do what it takes to keep his team safe and get the job done. Second, and again contrary to Eames' jibe about his lack of imagination, Arthur has… a 'thing', shall we say, about paradoxical architecture. It's Arthur who is tasked with teaching Ariadne how to build mazes, and he who teaches her about paradoxes and closed loops in the form of the Penrose Steps. It's not quite enough to extrapolate a more widespread interest in things that defy logic, but it's interesting nonetheless (and in an interview, Joseph Gordon-Levitt did say that "sharing dreams is fascinating" to Arthur, and that "it’s not just a job for him," but rather that "the technology of dream sharing is something that has inspired him since he first heard about it").
OTHER: N/A at present.

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CONTACT
NAME/JOURNAL: Emily/metafictionally
WAYS TO CONTACT:
AIM – ajikkkajido
Plurk – windupboy