JeffEngel wrote:ChronicRder wrote:I find it convenient how many of the lead players in the Manticore cast are known for either cavalier or hot tempered attitudes. What's even more impressive is that the RMN, despite being lead by a bunch of alleged "hot heads" like Honor and White Haven (who are both known for their apparent hereditary tempers that can rival their Empress); yet, they don't make their military in general doesn't make the mistakes or types of strategies you'd expect for that alpha-type personality. Even in the people they train/raise.
They've also got a lot of professionalism. Most of the notorious hotheads also have a lot of sense to channel it, and chiefs of staff/XO's to make sure they do not go off before thinking.
Where the problems occur, it's less from excess of anger than from absence of professionalism - Elvis Santino (no moral courage, lazy), Frances Yeargin (lazy/sloppy), Pavel Young (no physical courage, among other failings less
tactically critical).
kzt is certain to have things to say about Kuzak's last performance; I'm not sure if hot-headedness is relevant there though.
Don't get me wrong, I root for Manticore practically all the way (except maybe where Lester Tourville is concerned; then I just get the popcorn). That said, I'm surprised by this. Even Tourville is know as a "cowboy" but doesn't really do a whole lot to live up to that aside from being a cigar aficionado--good man, I love my cigars too!
Lester Tourville's a careful, meticulous fleet commander, who works with all the intelligence and resources he has to create thorough plans that cover all foreseeable contingencies - which he then fires off with gusto and flair. The cowboy image is maybe 20% an honest aggressiveness and 80% the theater of command.
Exactly Jeff.
Allow me room to add that they don't just have the sense and professionalism to channel it. I'd have to vote that its much more than that. They have the ability to actually
harness and then
channel it. Yet psychologically, it can still be "freudianized" even further. Honor, probably Hamish too and certainly Elisabeth, happens to have been blessed by fate with the perfect
outlet -- their military uniform. Having the perfect outlet and proper training is instrumental and imperative to harnessing, focusing and discharging anger. My father always taught us to "Use your anger. Don't let it use you."
Wars and battles are the vector to which Honor can focus and unleash that harnessed power that always lurks just beneath the surface. In fact, I've often theorized that had she not have been fortunate enough that the right career had found
her, she'd be in jail for murder. The same goes for Elisabeth. Had it not been for her outlet -- the wars and politics of government and the arseholes and wholearses thereof that demands her focus yet always feeds her anger, she'd have been shot from a lack of success in prying her hands from about someone's neck.
If Honor's path would have crossed Pavel Young's, in the same capacity that it did, in a career
outside of the Navy, say Honor as a manager in some company and Young her boss, Young would have been fed to a cultivator within close of the company's first fiscal year.
All in my wreck-of-an-opinion on shocks.Probably applies to Alfred Harrington as well.
War discharges, by draining a charged battery of anger. That's why no one is ever strangled with one hand. You have to have both the positive and negative cables attached to the neck to complete the circuit.
You're probably right about kzt's likely sentiment regarding Kuzak's performance. Before her demise, he's likely to have suggested she be prescribed something like
GABAPENTIN (Neurontin®).
It would have been the
compensation she needed, since her ship's failed. LOL
