⚅ Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed. ⚃ ⚀
PM or comment as you like, open to plot ideas, the fleshing out of histories in correlation with what I have for him so far, and all manner of things really!
[nick / name]: Haku
[personal LJ name]: whisperedtones
[other characters currently played]: Katniss Everdeen | the hunger games | aimandfire
Lightning Farron | final fantasy xiii | overreached
Peter Pevensie | the chronicles of narnia | oshutup
Sora | kingdom hearts | faroffdream
[e-mail]: loveinmypocket@gmail.com
[AIM / messenger]: wing.stock (Y!M) cartandcwidder (AIM)
[series]: Inception
[character]: Arthur
[character history / background]: The things we know strictly from the movie are minimal at best about the histories of the characters, Dominick Cobb being the one we know the most about but everyone else taking a somewhat painfully shotgun position by comparison. Or the trunk. Yeah it's more like the trunk. Anyways, we'll start with a combination of extrapolation and the-script-says.
Arthur-wise, we know that he has been working with Cobb since the death of Mallorie Cobb (his wife) and that although Arthur evidently goes separate ways from Cobb sometimes, he works closely and definitively with him. The comic The Cobol Job, which happens before the film's events and bleeds into it to a degree, shows more inference toward that history with Cobb - that Cobb thinks Arthur is reliable, and that if Arthur knew Mal was in the dream with them then he would "pull the plug" because "reliable has to go both ways". One gets the feeling of guys who might have been better friends before Mal died and based on a comment Arthur makes later about Mal, concerning how she was when she was alive, we can figure that he was around not only before Mal died but before Mal and Cobb went into limbo, because limbo was the beginning of her illness. Additionally, Arthur says to Cobb, "I know how badly you want to go home..." which implies a degree of having been exposed to Cobb's obvious conflict over the separation from his children (and though Arthur doesn't know it at the time, the weight of Mal's death.) If we needed more proof of a sort, Cobb's projection of Mal says in the first section of the film It looks like Arthur's style, and then later concludes as much before shooting Arthur in the knee. Even Cobb's projection of Mal 'knows' Arthur, recognizes him, and the key thing about Mal's shade is not how much of a spectre she is to everyone else but how real she is to Cobb. He's done a number, and this one on himself, and by association, Arthur too.
Someone else Arthur seems to have known prior to the movie's events is the forger, Eames. The specifics of that prior knowing remain, like most of the stuff-not-related-to-Cobb-himself, on the nebulous side of things.
As the fellow operating the PASIV device 90% of the time from putting people under to just putting the damn thing away, Arthur notes to Ariadne that the reason the military came up with this whole lucid-dreaming program was to familiarize them with the act of killing and, similarly, being killed without actually dying. His habitual handling of the device suggests repetition, which could as soon be attributed to his time in the illegal business but could also come from time spent in said military too. We don't know for sure.
Which naturally should bring us to what we do know for sure, that meaning treating the movie like its own kind of history.
The start of the movie for Arthur happens in a dream, two layers down, in which he and Cobb are trying to acquire information unaccounted for in the Cobol Job - information which they fail to lift because the mark figures them out. Said mark then, obviously, hires them to perform something even more difficult: inception, planting an idea rather than stealing one. It sounds simple, but what this idea means to achieve will, if successful, change the target's (Robert Fischer's) life irreversibly. Arthur counsels against the acceptance of this job based on the fact that it can't be done, but when he and Dom are on the private plane and he asks "who'd you do it to?" Dom just looks away and Arthur looks down. It's impossible to say whether he knows or not just from that at that exact moment, but later when they're in the first layer of the dream and he confronts Cobb about who he did it to first (what, like Mal - cause that worked so good?!) it's clear he connected the dots some time after that conversation on the plane and before the catastrophe of layer one. Anyway, stuff happens, they enlist the help of this bright young thing Ariadne who promptly falls in love with the dream and would appear to be more than a little alarmed with Cobb and Arthur alike as she - initially - storms out. Arthur seems unconcerned, though when Cobb says she'll be back Arthur does seem to just accept it, which is a form of agreeing. When Cobb is off recruiting Eames, Ariadne does in fact return and Arthur shows her the basics of dream tricks, little conundrums she can incorporate where she sees fit, and this is when we get the she was lovely line about Mal, which on the face of it may not seem like a lot, but it should be viewed as distinctly as possible. All we get of Mal is Cobb's confused and violent shade who loves him so selfishly it's dangerous, and this, Arthur's fond sort of wistful look as he says just those three words - a sentiment he expresses without any of his general air of casual presence. It's like he's remembering her or regretting, or more likely both.
Once the job is underway with all team members accounted for, Arthur spends his time attempting to poke holes in the strategies, point out things that might seem nitpicky on the surface but in truth are best to suss out in the 'here and now' rather than 'down and under' where there are, basically, no take-backs. During the perfecting of the Somnacin and the proper sedative, Arthur is apparently the crash-test dummy, literally. We don't get an exact count but suffice to say during one round it's just Eames in the background being a classless cad, laughing it up. In the next cut you can spot Cobb has joined in on it. In the script, cut out, there's a scene of Arthur absently rubbing the side of his jaw, which originally was to be cut from Yusuf slapping him to prove he was asleep, obviously. Arthur is lucky he doesn't bruise easily, apparently.
An important thing to note is that even though Arthur has clearly run into Mal's shade before in the dream, he does not know the full extent of Cobb's deterioration. When Cobb and Ariadne wake up from Ariadne barging in on Cobb's dream where she phrases he has built a 'prison' for Mal's memories - yet another thing Cobb says don't do and, uh, does - she basically gives him the option of letting her go in with them or him showing Arthur what she just saw. Cobb has them book another seat. This is significant, not only in the hints it sparks about history, but depending on how one chooses to read Cobb, particularly the still somewhat sane and not horrendously selfish part of him (granted, the severe minority) then it could be argued he's as much protecting Arthur as himself from the abomination his own guilt has made of a woman who, in life, they both had a fondness for, if in expansively different ways.
The plane takes off, the crew goes under, shit happens. Herein we have, layer one: gunfire, car-locks, and the discovery that Fischer Jr's subconscious is militarized - meaning he's been trained that in the event something like this happens to him, his subconscious is prepared and by prepared apparently we mean armed to the teeth and hostile with it. Research/intel gathering having been Arthur's department, Cobb is quick to lay blame on him, and it's an interesting moment, in which Arthur literally averts his eyes, shields his face and seems particularly young in the face of an angry Dominick Cobb. It's like he's not only aware he screwed up, but distinctly ashamed of it too. When he says they've dealt with this before, his voice cracks. For Arthur, who has been sort of this unflappable kind of persona - save for getting shot in the knee - this sticks out, as it should. It's a sort of power-play while Cobb shifts everything so that it's all on Arthur, this no doubt to distract from the next revelation. Eames goes to shoot Saito in order to 'kill' him in the dream and wake him up, because in layer one he's got a shot to the lung, is in great pain, etc, etc, etc. Cobb stops him because if they die in this dream, on any layer, what happens isn't waking up. The sedative is too powerful to allow for the usual, so what will happen instead is this: they will fall into limbo - unstructured dream space, remnants of stuff there only from someone who has been there before, Cobb.
Notably once Cobb makes it clear they don't have a choice but to continue down, Arthur looks like he's ready for a fight but, inevitably actions speak louder than facial expressions and he follows Cobb's lead to go try and shake down Fischer with Eames masquerading as Fischer's uncle - Peter Browning. Number acquired, they proceed as planned, more or less, reloading into the rather suspicious white van. Before joining them, Arthur heads off to clear the path, which means getting rid of two roof snipers - or it seems like two. He gets one and keeps missing the other. Eames shows up, tells him Mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling and fires a grenade launcher, effectively too. Arthur looks impressed, give or take, if after Eames has already gone.
In the van Cobb brings up the gambit of Mr. Charles - in which they tip off the dreamer that he's dreaming - something Arthur vehemently votes against (hi running theme) and which doesn't matter because they really don't seem to have a lot of other options at this point. Yusuf left to fend for them on layer one as likely licenseless chauffeur, it's onto layer two, Mr. Charles, and a surprising amount of paisley.
Layer two: a fancy schmancy business hotel, the likes of which Fischer has no doubt stayed in for the 95% portion of his life. Arthur spends the first portion of this run in a lobby setting with Ariadne, explaining the stratagem to Ariadne and commenting ruefully on how often Cobb does the things he tells other people not to (apparently, all of the time...right.) Also here, happens the kiss to distract the projections, and when it's clear they are still getting attention, Arthur simply says that it was worth a shot and gets up and leaves, casually as anything. They move to the room which is half the number Fischer rattled off to them on layer one, and Arthur sets up explosives, again providing explanation about the kick and how he can't drop them without gravity (ha...ha....), until the others show up. Then it's time to go under again. Arthur and Eames strap Browning in while Cobb sees to Fischer. Then Arthur helps Eames with the PASIV lead - which doesn't make any particular sense since Eames is a veteran user and know how to do it himself but whatever - and cracks a joke before double checking with Cobb.
Now the background/history/summary gets decidedly more skewed, since on layer two it's Arthur who is the last man standing, guardsman, what-have-you. Noting the instability caused by the impromptu road race going on a layer above, he clicks the PASIV shut, sheds that jacket and heads out into the hall. Fights happen. Hallways go crooked. It's a little like what one imagines it would be to have oneself turned around in a kaleidoscope, if decidedly more taupe, brown, and including random men trying to hunt you. After winning the skirmishes, he heads back only for the timing for the kick to be signaled by the warbling of Edith Piaf. Except it's kind of really too soon. He grabs the attention of more of Fischer's militarization and dodges gunfire before tossing one off a set of stairs. That done, he continues on his way back to the team only to have gravity take a total leave (because fate decided Arthur's luck should suck just a little bit more) and then, of course, he has to figure out that thing he said he couldn't do before: how to drop the rest of the team without gravity. Whoo.
The kick: Arthur (give or take a fight scene in which he vaguely resembles a boy who must have seen the old Spider-Man cartoon more than once...or Nickelodeon's Guts, whichever) wires the team together, brings them to the elevator, rigs said lift with the explosives as a propelling force so that when the next indicator for the kick comes, the explosion will send the shaft crashing down and provide the reactionary force needed for said kick to be effectual.
This is the last we see of Arthur until everyone except Cobb and Saito wakes up on layer one again, you know, crawling out of the river, though not before Arthur lingers underwater, focused on Cobb until he has to go and surface. When Ariadne tells Arthur where Cobb has gone, Arthur looks stricken, says he'll be lost but Ariadne refutes this and Arthur is silent. Next, we see Arthur in the plane, first wearing a smile that seems sad or tired or some hybridization, which he then turns into an odd kind of you did it smile which feels forced - though it's again notable that the first person Cobb looks for/to is Arthur. They are by extrapolation the oldest pair as far as people still alive are concerned.
[character abilities]: Nothing supernatural, but he's adaptable despite the jokes about his lack of imagination. The man owns a fight in zero-g and, yet more improvisational than that? He pulls off a kick. Familiar with firearms as well as explosives, Arthur excels in the gathering of intel, dressing sharp, PASIV device operation, paradoxical architecture - loops especially, and hand-to-hand combat.
[character personality]: Arthur is a colloquial person. He talks in a laid back articulation even when his tone can be quite professional/serious/etc. A lot of the time it's typically noted that he bears a kind of composed and even retained exterior, and this is true, but it's also important to remember his sly smile about paradoxical architecture and the way he can't even look at anyone - least of all Cobb - in layer one when the militarization is uncovered. That said, Arthur's particular emotions or reactions seem incited by specific people. Cobb elicits a kind of old friend turned responsibility role, while Eames seems to bring out the impatient and pricklier side. Saito, Arthur in the first dream is cordial with and then in the helicopter is borderline informal with, undoubtedly because he doesn't want Cobb to take the job. We see him be casual and often explanatory with Ariadne, very much occupying the this-is-how position to provide jumping points for Ariadne to go off of with her building of the dream.
Going back to Cobb, since it all goes back to Cobb, Arthur has a kind of loyalty death grip. It becomes clear quickly that Arthur is not stupid, so reason leads a logical audience to decide that he has his own support for staying on with Cobb, be those reasons tied up with their history before everything went to hell in a plane ticket, or something else. That said, like most loyalty death grips, this one is basically more damning than it is complimentary. Arthur looks, surely, a bit crazy himself to nice sane people like Ariadne who at least has the good sense to storm out even if she does not have the good sense to stay away. Point being, anyone who stays by Dominick Cobb in his increasingly disintegrating state of all that is stable, is asking to be judged on a similar level.
Arthur's controlled expression doesn't seem as completely boarded off as it does visibly invisible - which is to say it's the kind of thing that it would take a person who knows him to spot something biding its existence under the casual veneer. So it's not that he's an automaton. It's just that he's a person who, like plenty of people really, keeps his private things private - private, in this case, extending to much it seems as far as feeling is concerned though not necessarily what he thinks (as he openly calls Cobb out in the dream about Mal at the beginning of the movie, then in the train when they wake up - though equally as worth noting is that when he shows up at the hotel to pick Cobb up he's concerned more than anything. And then he gets brushed off but you know, short straw.)
Um also he's a criminal. Corporate espionage is just one of a multitude of things that the dream tech has allowed for and Arthur appears well versed in the world, its operations, and how to clean up in it. That said, it's not quite right to paint him as a mustache-twirling evil doer because that's really not accurate. He seems like the kind of person who would, you know, help an old lady with her groceries but also probably cut you off on the highway - so some give and take there?
Knowing how to kill a guy - there doesn't have to be a class in this obviously, usually there isn't but it seems reasonable to say Arthur has used his offensive measures enough to clearly be in control of his body, to know how to take adversaries twice his size down whether by shooting them or choking them. Just because it's a dream doesn't mean the effort fails to be real, after all - the point of the dream being to be as accurate as possible and in this case the militarization's security being built to incapacitate threats like Arthur and the rest of the team. What I'm working up to is that Arthur gives the impression of a person who will do what needs to be done, or what he perceives as such. When Saito offers Cobb the gun to finish Nash (the sell-out), Cobb says that's not how I handle things but for a person who so often works in tandem with another guy, the same guy, Arthur - that I sticks out. Where Cobb obviously has no problem threatening people in a dream - Saito, Fischer, etc - it appears he would have issues doing that and certainly killing someone in reality. Not saying it would be easy for Arthur but Arthur looks like the guy who picks up the pieces - Cobb's in specific - whatever they end up being, however they end up needing to be swept. He's efficient, which sometimes gets overdrawn into that robot joke but he's not a robot.
As illustrated in the scene where he notes just one thing about Mal when she was alive, he can be almost uncomfortably transparent, especially when - it seems at the time - caught off guard by what's being asked of him. Or in the scene where Cobb yells Forever at him, caught off guard by the particularity of the wrath and from Cobb of all people, it's obvious that when Arthur screws up he takes it personally even when part of him knows what Cobb is doing/was doing once the limbo fine print is uncovered. His attempt to challenge Cobb about how he performed inception on Mal is brief but pointed, ultimately Arthur's effort undermined by how he just follows through with the plan Cobb gives him rather than standing his ground. This arguably is because they're on a clock and have to get shit done, but it echoes previous instances of Arthur letting Cobb brush him off and that's important too - just like working with Cobb, sticking around, is a choice, so too is allowing himself to have the other cheek turned on him. This dynamic is unseen as far as Arthur is concerned with anyone else, his interaction with Ariadne allowing us to see him teacher-like and affable, his kindergarten back-and-forth with Eames providing a sense of humor or lack thereof which makes the situation humorous depending, and with Saito it's the business side of things. We unfortunately don't see much of Arthur and, say, Yusuf except for the sedative testing (in which Arthur is, duh, asleep) and when Arthur correctly concludes that Yusuf out of all of them knew what Cobb was up to with this potent of a compound.
Described first as reliable, that's true, and Arthur takes pride in what he does because he's good (or the best) at it, though that pride of course hinges on his performance and when he falls short it's upsetting. He is not per se a good person but can he be a nice guy? Yeah, sure, obviously - see Ariadne, see even his exchange with Eames before putting him under and through to layer three. Arthur's inner workings are, simply put, just as well vested as he is - sort of strapped in and in what he perceives as a matter of practicality - shown not in his lack of display but in how he'll constantly back off (with Cobb EVERY TIME...) or somewhat private (go to sleep Mr. Eames rather than 'don't worry' or something ridiculous like that) or when he's afraid - yeah, afraid. That scene as he sets the explosives off, it's anticipatory of pain sure but what normal person wouldn't be afraid and nothing particular in the movie leads us to believe Arthur is a sociopath or something so we're going to go with just-this-side of normal. Still, obviously he does it. And that goes back to the reliable thing - reliable being constant and going both ways.
[point in timeline you're picking your character from]: END OF MOVIE MISSION ACCOMPLISHED WE WILL NOT BE HERE ALL WEEK ETC ....no seriously....poor Fischer...
[journal post]:
[ Arthur does not remember how he got here and he suspects if someone wanted to kill him and dispose of him in a river, well, first he'd need to be dead, and secondly, this fountain is definitely not a river...
...he gets out of the fountain.
Running fingers through his hair, he looks around and recognizes it as a city but not any city he knows, which is striking if mostly because Arthur is thoroughly traveled. When he reaches for his phone, he grimaces, expecting all kinds of scrambling. Interestingly it appears to be picking up some kind of signal but it still won't put through the calls; that's not exactly unexpected. When he turns back toward the fountain, his foot hits something, sends it skidding on the ground and the only thing it's missing is an actual voice saying notice me, I might be important.
It's a small, black box, decidedly nondescript with several buttons and a receiver/speaker.
Again, he looks around, like he's going to be figure this all out, dripping in what is definitely not summer weather.
Right.
He flicks what looks like the knob for POWER and when it prompts him to enter a message he keeps it simple. ]
][ T E X T ][
Does this place come with a map?
[third person / log sample]:
Working with Dominick Cobb has not always been as difficult as it is these days. There were good times, as there tend to be before the bad ones - if just to let you know which are which. Arthur remembers when Dom smiled and it didn't look painful, remembers Mal as Mal and not the sickness that destroyed her or the shade that yet threatens to destroy the husband left behind. Yet Arthur wouldn't paint himself as particularly sentimental. This feels more like duty to him, though when he thinks of it like that he realizes how closely that runs near to obligation and that's not what he means either.
The word loyalty seems a bit dramatic, anachronistic for the time and out of place for their line of work to be sure, but in a way that's what Arthur's reliability can be boiled down to. He decided - some time ago - to commit. So he did. So here they are. So.
Well actually that's not quite right.
Here, they were.
Collecting his luggage from the conveyor, Arthur goes - as they all do - on his own path of exit. They don't know each other after all. He tells himself not to look back, that it's not like he can't call Dom in a week and ask him how things are (if it's real to him yet, like it hasn't been in a very long time) but maybe calling would be bad. Part of him thinks plunging into the domestic life completely is the only way it will work for Dom - because he's an all-in or all-out kind of guy, and that at least hasn't changed, not since Arthur met him; it seems very far away though, that first meeting. Sometimes, on the run and dodging bullets - some more metaphorical than others and still others shaped more like knives or old-fashioned fists - he felt like he was working with a stranger, but that wasn't so bad compared to working with a friend who he knew had become estranged to him. One would have simply been the threat of not knowing, but the other was a distinctive loss. Arthur supposes in the greater scheme of things, Dom has still lost more, if mainly because Mal was close to everything to him. For Mal, Arthur thinks, there were times when the world was everything for Mal and the world included Arthur himself as well as Philippa and James. But there were other times when something sparked, selfish and narrow and secret, and then Mal's everything would be Dom, only Dom.
Knowing now what he does of that story, Arthur figures it's still not enough and he has long passed the time where he might cast judgment on the situation in a deciding manner, in a fashion that would lead him not back to Dom and his problems but away. Except now he is walking away, to a strange kind of reality where he isn't working on his own until the next time he and Dom reconvene. He's working on his own, period.
And it's fine, really.
It is.
It's just that Arthur, standing on the curb of the concrete loop, supposes part of him couldn't imagine succeeding with this job even while simultaneously the rest of him refused to think they would be let fail. He doesn't, in short, have a plan for this. There isn't a particular plan for when life goes tectonic on you, just when you're starting to get the hang of the geography you started with. In the back of the cab, he squints out at the sun bending through the glass, tells the driver which hotel, and almost absently rests his fingertips against the top line of the briefcase at his knee. There will be work. He's not worried about that, and the funny thing or the sad thing or just the honest thing?
Arthur could do a lot of things that are considered far more legal and acceptable ways of making a living.
He has options.
Somehow, the end of this chapter still feels a little hedged in, a little trapped and it doesn't make sense, which has more weight here than most because Arthur is nothing if not sensible, practical, reliable, and who's going to rely on him now?
Right.
Well, whatever team he signs on with - soon, since he hates being idle only second to losing - should be enough. A job is a job, people say but Arthur likes what he does. When he told Ariadne there's nothing quite like it, he meant it, wasn't trying to persuade her. She had done that for herself, something he could see a mile away, starting when she stormed out and coming full circle when she returned - like Dom knew she would, even as the point man looked up alternatives just in case he was wrong. Being in this isn't just about the dream for Arthur, though the dream is where it started; it's a longer story. It almost always is.
At the hotel he checks in with one of his lesser used aliases, smiles and makes conversation with the attendant because it's slow right now and she's strangely genuine with her kindness, doesn't feel like she's just continuing the sell. The hotel room is perfunctory, clean to the naked eye, and when Arthur turns the lights on he goes into auto-pilot: setting down luggage, removing the jacket, hanging the jacket, locking away the PASIV, checking his phone, setting up the laptop, until this and all the rest of the list is done.
Then he rubs the back of his neck and opens his phone again, scrolls to Dom's number.
It's barely been an hour, so it's not that he's got any real intent to hit CALL.
But shedding the habit is going to take some time.
[second sample | journal post]:
][ audio ][ (strikes are thoughts)
So that's one of the infamous curses I heard about. Guess I was expecting something worse after all the horror stories.
Didn't seem that bad but records show that's not always the case.
Tell me something. Do you think getting back to normal's more like coming out of a trance, or more like waking up from a dream?
Residual memories? Nothing? What are the mechanics?
...
--I mean, there's no way it's real. It can't be. It's like something out of a Sci-fi flick for fuck's sake.
But if the totems aren't a hundred percent reliable...
Or is it different from curse to curse?