Cassandra wrote: ↑Sat Nov 10, 2018 7:53 am
I'm probably a minority in this but I hold Sheridan in about the same regard as I hold Wesley Crusher--and for largely the same reasons.
If I
wanted a disguised author insert Mary Sue who became a messiah/god as part of a writer's complement to himself I'd read bad fanfic.
The issue is all characters come from their creators. No one can produce a truly original thing given our nature. That doesn't mean originality doesn't exist, but it's not an either-or matter.
I'm sure as main characters there's much of JMS in both Sinclair and Sheridan. What is important is how much thought went into afterwards differentiating the characters from himself and giving them their own take on things.
I don't know how similar JMS is to either, but they're different enough (as is the rest of the rest) for me to see no problems.
TBH though given the time B5 came out, I always felt Sheridan had more taken from Bill Clinton and his bonhomme charm than anyone else. Sinclair was always an Americanized Brit - stoic, upright, guarded and a tad stuffy, but not full of himself to not be humble and have an honest moment with those he looks on as comrades.
Given my recent love of Westerns, he's very much like Gil Favor in Rawhide.
(Actually, thinking about it, it was a bit like the British Army attitude to colonial warfare in the 19th/early 20th century, where they (the upper-class officiers at least) believed that all the savages they were civilising should all run at the British guns and be shot down in neat order and that things like the other side not dying was Not Playing The Game... Though as least they didn't quite call it "honourable." I think. Probably. Some of 'em anyway.)
That's a mangled analogy, especially given the fact that British officer culture believed more in themselves doing just that rather than hiding from danger, or God forbid,
ducking!
WWI is noted for its unusually high officer causality count in the British Army for that very reason.
The closest historical example I can think of would be the Japanese victimized reaction to Hiroshima and Nagasaki after everything they'd done to the people of the Western Pacific, but even that doesn't come that close.
Thinking about it more, all the more so the Japanese given their historical tendency towards sneak attacks and wiliness in war that wasn't in keeping with their adored honourable Samurai self-perception of their military.
cdrood wrote: ↑Sat Nov 10, 2018 6:03 pm
It's kind of hard to analyze this in retrospect given what we later learn, but I think it's a good showing of who Sheridan is. He has this reputation from the war, something he doesn't apologize for, but doesn't see as a badge of honor either. We learn he's the son of a diplomat. It seems clear he's place there because the new administration is looking to piss off Minbari, which tracks with a lot of what we saw in season 1 with Home Guard, investigations into Sinclair, etc. However, Sheridan quickly shows that he's not a shoot first kind of guy. He sees the setup and doesn't take the bait and allows it to be an entirely internal Minbari affair.
Sheridan's reaction to it is very much in keeping with a lot of serviceman who became famous for their actions in war - they didn't do shit out of some grand act of heroism, but out of desperation, scared out of their mind trying to survive. It's for that reason a lot are uncomfortable with their reputation.
Aotrs Commander wrote: ↑Sat Nov 10, 2018 6:20 pm
Though one might debate whether what is worse between the Minbari fanatacism or the colonial British attitude[1] (again, for the officers, anyway) to war and colonialism as a sport and a bit of lark.
That attitude, at least with regard to war, came from the Napoleonic War and was out of sync with the changes in warfare during the 19th Century. Deaths in combat during the musket age were relatively uncommon compared to the age of repeating rifles and modern artillery, armies were smaller, battles less frequent and action in general too while there was more moving between fighting.
The lasting effect was to give an impression of war as more of an adventure that British pop culture back then loved to write about. The Crimean War was a bump on the road to WWI and was dismissed as an aberration, especially given how restricted the war was in scope. All of that ran face first into the realities of modern warfare on a scale inconceivable before.
What I find depressing today is that people have gone into the other extreme. That war is such an evil it should never ever be fought, even for the right reasons and a fully just cause. Something I find has more to do with apathy and cowardice than it does with principles.
