Ben's at-times painful self-awareness...

[agilebrit]

He will show you it. I have a future scene coming up in this story where one of them has to feed themselves to the vampire client (because Reasons), and Ben puts his caveman foot down and absolutely will not let Janni do it.

And she will confront him over this, later. As she would, and as she should. Because "I am not fragile, dammit! I'm a big bad wolf on my own account, and I don't like being treated like I'll break if you look at me wrong!"

"No, honey. You're not fragile." A pause. "But I am."

Aw, look, he's even chopping his sentences. Because if she gets hurt, in any permanent way, that will destroy him. He knows this about himself. It happened to him once with someone he loved, and he won't let it happen again. Thus his uber-protectiveness.

God, I love these characters.

Comments

[litlover12.livejournal.com]

I like!

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Hee, thank you. He has an in-character reason to be a sexist pig!

[litlover12.livejournal.com]

Quite honestly, I don't think there's anything sexist at all about one character not wanting another character to throw herself to the vampires. :-) But maybe I don't know the context . . .

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

He actually is nearly obsessively protective of women, no matter the context. His convoy in Afghanistan got blown up, and one of the women survived--a woman he loved, although he never told her, because Unit Cohesion. And they cut her throat right in front of him, leaving far worse than visible scars. So the boy has a soft spot (in his head) for women. It's gotten him into trouble more than once.

Were it a male character throwing themselves to the vampires, he wouldn't have been nearly so vehement.

[litlover12.livejournal.com]

Okay, got it now!