Serenity: A Question

[butterfly]

Okay, how is the Operative like Jubal Early? I do not get it. To me, they seemed like completely, utterly different characters.

Jubal was a bounty hunter who was clearly nuts and who liked causing pain and threatening people, the Operative was an assassin who was very rational and straight-forward. And Jubal didn't Believe in much of anything (is it still River's room if River isn't in it?), much less a better world. And the Operative was exceedingly polite and open-minded, even while killing people (Young miss?). I can't picture the Operative threatening to rape Kaylee. And Jubal tried to deny to himself that he was a monster, tried to claim that it was just his job, whereas the Operative was just doing his job and was aware that that choice did make him a monster.

Seriously, I just really want someone to explain to me how they're alike.

Comments

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

They both scared me. Actually, the Operative scared me way more, even though I also liked him better. Jubal was freaky, but petty. I could get a handle on him, 'cause he was broadcasting his desires all over the place. Respect, fear, money, status, pride, justification. Unsavory, but human in scale.

Whereas the Operative scared the piss out of me because he couldn't be angered, couldn't be distracted, couldn't even be made to question by anything short of the most extreme measures -- and even then, if Mal had shown him the tape *without* at the same time broadcasting it, so that the Operative had to choose whether to contain the damage and kill the Tams or switch sides, I'm not at all sure which he'd have chosen.

I thought they were both interesting characters too, and I wasn't sorry to see the Operative's life spared because I was convinced he was broken -- but he had to *be* pretty well completely broken to be safe to leave alive. And in fact, I was convinced he was so broken that unless somebody stepped in stat, I assumed he was gonna go fall on his sword as soon as Serenity broke orbit.

Jubal -- I was satisfied by the ending, but I wasn't particularly invested in it. If they'd had enough cash to buy him off, that would've struck me as just as fine. He's not a good man, but in a world with Niska in it he's a long way from the worst they've encountered. At least he didn't really rape. At least he felt he *needed* justification. I didn't feel like, in the normal way of things, he was much of a threat -- to individuals, until sooner or later some individual brought him down, but the Operative could topple worlds.

I don't believe crazy is something you can't come back from. (Just look at River). Therefore I don't believe coming back is proof that you weren't crazy. And I think stupid things are things that don't work. Things that do work by me aren't stupid, but rather scary-smart in a closed-system logic that doesn't allow for the reality and legitimacy of other people's point of view, and I think that's one of the main definitions of crazy. (Clinical narcissism, solipsism, sociopathy, borderline, all boil down to various forms of "my POV is the only one that matters, or even exists.")

I think the fact that it took the death of millions and his own complete immobility *and* the fact that he was too late to do anything about it to open the Operative's mind to even the possibility that the Alliance might be wrong is pretty extreme -- way past electricity on the scale of shock treatments, and even then, he didn't so much adjust his beliefs as lose them completely, and his very sense of self with them. That, by me, is not so sane. It's only saner than being exposed to the same evidence and not doing it. Which makes him arguably a kind of hero, but not therefore well-balanced.