However, that is something totally different and canon really doesn't support "cold" or "repressed" for his personality. He is too open with his emotions--he was obviously pissed at Nash for screwing up, clearly upset when Cobb started yelling at him and he definitely showed concern for Ariadne when she had that nasty wake-up early in the movie, and didn't bother to hide or disguise any of these reactions. Also, c'mon, Arthur with Ariadne on that second level? Does not say "repression" to me.
THIS! THIS! This is what I look to for Arthur's personality. I recently saw a prompt on the kink meme that asked for some kind of Wizard of Oz AU and Arthur was "the tin man, obviously" - my eyes just about rolled back into my head. "Cold, repressed Arthur" became accepted in the fandom so quickly. I think it's partly down to binary oppositions being the easy route to characterisation: if Arthur is uptight and prissy then Eames will be easy going and a jokester; if Cobb is losing his grip then Arthur is completely professional; if Ariadne is a free spirit then Arthur is unimaginative and repressed. And sometimes you get really talented writers playing around with these concepts and they still present three-dimensional characters, but when lesser writers start basing their characterisation off what they're reading instead of what they originally watched, they grasp onto these archetypal features and write about them without depth.
Now don't get me wrong, there has been a lot of great fic with varied interpretations of all the characters. The early days of this fandom were a heady experience for me because every time I hit 'refresh' something new and different would pop up, and I think there is still a lot of great stuff being produced. It's just this characterisation of Arthur appears quite frequently and it's not my thing. Obviously :-)
And hey, this isn't spam this awesome. I love having this kind of discussion with people and if you come upon that meta link it to me.
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THIS! THIS! This is what I look to for Arthur's personality. I recently saw a prompt on the kink meme that asked for some kind of Wizard of Oz AU and Arthur was "the tin man, obviously" - my eyes just about rolled back into my head. "Cold, repressed Arthur" became accepted in the fandom so quickly. I think it's partly down to binary oppositions being the easy route to characterisation: if Arthur is uptight and prissy then Eames will be easy going and a jokester; if Cobb is losing his grip then Arthur is completely professional; if Ariadne is a free spirit then Arthur is unimaginative and repressed. And sometimes you get really talented writers playing around with these concepts and they still present three-dimensional characters, but when lesser writers start basing their characterisation off what they're reading instead of what they originally watched, they grasp onto these archetypal features and write about them without depth.
Now don't get me wrong, there has been a lot of great fic with varied interpretations of all the characters. The early days of this fandom were a heady experience for me because every time I hit 'refresh' something new and different would pop up, and I think there is still a lot of great stuff being produced. It's just this characterisation of Arthur appears quite frequently and it's not my thing. Obviously :-)
And hey, this isn't spam this awesome. I love having this kind of discussion with people and if you come upon that meta link it to me.