So, someone on my dash wondered why the arsehole!Arthur characterisation is so prevalent in Inception fanfic, when they thought Arthur seemed quite even-tempered throughout the movie (he was patient with Ariadne, he said Mal was “lovely” etc.).
And I nodded thoughtfully, wrote up a reply, hit re-blog, then walked off to make some tea. But when I came back, tumblr had frozen. But the post was still open. ‘Goddamn it,’ I thought. ‘I spent quite a bit of time thinking on this trope and writing about it, so I will bloody well see that it’s posted.’ So here it is.
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Arthur is definitely even-tempered. He’s the point man - the details man, the reliable one.
As the point man, he’s probably the one who has to deal with the most people. He may not necessarily deal with the client the most - that seems to be the extractor - or deal with people for the longest periods of time, but, as point man, he needs to know everything that’s going on. To do that, he needs to stay in constant communication with people. He needs to have good people skills.
And we see that - he’s patient when teaching Ariadne; he’s professional and courteous with Saito; he compliments people when they do well (and I do believe he was being genuine with his “Eames, I’m impressed,” even though Eames slapped it back down with a smirk); he tries to calm Cobb down, and he doesn’t get defensive at all when Cobb tears him a new one for not discovering Fischer’s militarisation.
However, as point man, Arthur also has to be exacting. He has high standards because it’s his job to make sure things go smoothly for his team. And, as such, he’ll brook no excuses if people fuck up. He calls Nash an arsehole (all right, asshole) for fucking up the carpet. He pokes holes in everyone’s ideas because this inception job needs to be watertight to be successful. And he gets the shits with Eames because Eames plays around during the planning stages.
In my opinion (stressing that it’s only my opinion, doesn’t have to be everyone else’s), that’s all it is. Eames is being playful, teasing (tipping Arthur’s chair, laughing at him when he’s getting the kick whilst Somnacin testing) and Arthur wants people to be serious at this stage in planning. It doesn’t mean he never has sense of humour. I think it’s quite in-character if he jokes back with Eames (“And I will lead them on a merry chase,” and “Go to sleep, Mr. Eames”, anyone?).
He just won’t do it at that point in the job. Maybe even just that point in that particular job (there were, after all, quite high stakes).
I also think it’d still be in-character for Arthur to have a dickish sense of humour (and maybe that’s just because that’s how I like to write him, because I like writing characters with dickish senses of humour ;D).
But Arthur’s got good people skills, like we established before. So he’ll only express that dickish sort of humour if the person he’s joking with is comfortable with it. If Eames was upset by Arthur snapping at him, or acting like a sarcastic motherfucker, I think Arthur would tone it down, or simply not do it.
Except Eames isn’t upset by it. He pushes back. He pushes Arthur’s buttons just as hard.
So Arthur smirks, or laughs outright, and devotes thirty minutes each day to coming up with new ways to insult Eames’ attire, secure in the knowledge that Eames is spending thirty minutes thinking up new ways to call him an anal-retentive bastard.
(Okay, that last bit is just my head canon)