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motivation) wrote2018-10-25 08:23 am
motivation) wrote2018-10-25 08:23 am
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Dutch
I'm the best, period.
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personality
The official blurb on Dutch describes her as “complicated” and “a deadly flirt”, as well as “bold” and “fun loving on the surface”. All these descriptors fit Dutch, but they’re far from all that she is. To be fair, the official blurb goes on to say that “there is pain, maturity, and deep solemnity” under her banter and flirtation. Dutch combines a number of traits, so “complicated” really isn’t the worst descriptor. Underlying it all is a struggle for agency and making her own choices rather than letting other people control her.
Dutch flirts, Dutch enjoys banter, Dutch likes a challenge and Dutch is confident. All these are characteristics Dutch portrays naturally and in most situations. That they’re what she shows the world, a sort of armour, doesn’t mean that these are not genuine parts of Dutch’s personality. When viewers meet her, Dutch is a Killjoy, having chosen a life as a bounty hunter for herself. She claims neutrality in the conflict between the exploitative Company and the people of the Quad, giving the impression that she’s after fun and after money (which is called “joy” hence “killjoy” being someone who kills for money. She is, in her own words, not just the best female killjoy but “the best, period”. Nothing really seems to faze her, and she’s always got a quip at the ready, often sarcastic.
However, we soon learn that there’s more to her than the badass warrior princess (having married into royalty, Dutch is an actual warrior princess, something D’avin finds out when he asks if he bedded one and she confirms his suspicion) persona. Dutch is deeply damaged by her childhood and the years she was trained to kill and not ask questions. The first time she killed a man, she was eight years old, and Khlyen has been training her from that age, never sparing her any hardship and putting her into situations where she herself might be killed, too. At times, it leaves her struggling to connect to people because she’s hiding this part of her, but as the series progresses, we see her using it as a point of connection instead, at least with a few select individuals with whom she shares at least aspects of her past, such as D’avin or Alvis. In these situations, the connection usually comes from Dutch allowing them to see the vulnerability she hides from the rest of the world.
Dutch is not particularly judgmental when it comes to the people she cares about. When Alvis almost kills several people, including (but not knowing that it included) Pawter, driven by hatred and desperation rather than by faith, Dutch later comments that she’d be a hypocrite if she didn’t know what it feels like to get lost like that. She in no way blames D’avin for having killed his squad, either, telling him that if they compare sins, she’ll win. When it comes to individuals she isn’t close with, however, Dutch can be quicker to judge someone’s actions and label someone a villain - which is fair, there’s plenty of those in the Quad, but it shows how her perspective can be skewed. She doesn’t necessarily go out of her way to understand the actions and motivations of people not in her inner circle, so to speak. When it comes to executing warrants, Dutch has shown the capacity for great indifference, sometimes deliberately setting sympathy aside in order to get the job done. However, there are equally situations in which sympathy, empathy and a growing connection make her execute the warrant in a different way than specified (such as when she forces Delle Seyah’s hand by landing on Qresh despite not having permission to in episode 1x04, making Delle Seyah the guardian of the newborn heir of one of the nine families). Dutch has the capacity to be both merciful, warm and sympathetic, as well as cold, cruel and uncaring. It depends very much on the situation which way she’ll go. She’s been trained not to care for people, to see it as weakness; these days, going either way is a choice for Dutch, a means to exercise her own agency.
For Dutch, agency is incredibly important. She’s been running from Khlyen for years by the time the show starts, hiding much of her past even from Johnny, who is her best friend and brother, for all that they’re not related by blood at all. However, she grows quite a lot throughout the series in this respect, partially by choice and partially simply because Khlyen finds her again, serving as a trigger for her development. She tells Johnny that she’s tired of playing defence, that she wants to go after Khlyen instead of having him come after her. She certainly isn’t free from him, despite having run all those years ago: he still has the ability to make her lose her cool almost immediately, be it in anger or in fear - and Dutch, who seems so unfazed by so many things, is clearly scared of him. What’s more, she’s clearly not forgiven herself for the things she’s done while under Khlyen’s thumb. As she and her team learn more about what goes on in the Quad and within the RAC, they also learn that somehow, Khlyen and Dutch are connected to it all, as when D’avin sees a memory of Dutch on Arkyn, while Dutch herself has no memories of ever having been on Arkyn. This adds a layer of motivation to Dutch’s actions, namely that she wants to know the truth about who she is, what is going on and what it all means. At times, her history with Khlyen and her quest to know what his plans are for her leave her short-sighted and likely to run into danger or even endanger people she cares about. There are times, such as when she leaves Arkyn with D’avin despite knowing that he’s lying about Khlyen no longer being on the moon, that she seems to realise this tendency of hers and actively works against it, but equally there are times when it overwhelms her, such as when she hallucinates Khlyen in the mine in 2x03. She eventually stops hating Khlyen as she is forced to understand more about his reasons for acting the way he did, for raising her and training her the way he did, and it leaves her adrift. Hating him was easy, understanding him while still knowing just how much damage he’s done to her by acting like he did is complicated. When Khlyen dies, Dutch grieves despite her complicated feelings. No matter how lost Dutch may feel, however, her reaction is always more likely to be offence rather than running away.
Ultimately, the official blurb isn’t inaccurate at all in that it describes the part of Dutch’s personality that she portrays to the outside world (confident, a flirt, competent, deadly) and the depths of pain, vulnerability, past abuse and sins that she hasn’t been able to forgive herself for, all of which she hides from everyone but a select few individuals.
abilities
FIGHTER: ex-assassin, skilled in close-range hand to hand combat and with a wide range of weapons, including knives, guns and rifles.
ROYALTY: trained to entice a prince and marry into royalty (which she did), extensive knowledge of statecraft, trained singer and dancer, knows how to play at least one instrument
RAC AGENT: skilled in covert operations and intelligence, good tactician, decent pilot of smaller spacecrafts
permissions
out of character