Question for you guys about the Lewis brothers. What kind of home environment could produce two radically different personalities?
The elder Shawn is abusive and manipulative of women, seeing them as sex servants and conquests, and the stronger their will, the more he would desire them to grovel at his feet. In Kendra however, he finds her particularly useful because of her intelligence and inner connivance, but he controls her through a mixture of suppressing her self-esteem and forcing a level of dependence on him. This isn't done very well, because he's arrogant enough in his own abilities, but his sheer tenacity can keep her in lock-step. His own control on himself is tenuous as well, and he can lash out, sometimes violently. The scenes of duskford, Patzo, Cretan Bull, and hentrytemp are my main sources for this, particularly duskford and Patzo's scenes with Shawn/Taylor, Cretan Bull's alternate orgy thread, and henrytemp's take on Kendra.
The younger Dustin is self-effacing, courteous, and devoted. Taking gentlemanly behavior to its logical extreme, he and Victoria broke up to spare her feelings when the Lewis family moved, but always held a candle for her. Seeing her again after that time was a complete surprise, and obviously he's been silently wrestling with himself about it. Still, she is paramount in his mind, and he would gladly let her fly to someone else if it meant her happiness. He is in total command of his demeanor and his actions and word are chosen with careful deliberation. I assume the same thoughts lead him to leave religion and declare his atheism, to which the logical reverend's daughter Victoria responded quite well. Much of this can be found in both orgy threads and duskford's main thread.
It's like they're polar opposites, literally a devil and an angel. Although I'd want to hang out with one over the other, I couldn't deny the other's brutal honesty about his twisted outlook on life. Shawn is reprehensible, but he's still human, and Dustin is understanding, but he can't deny how he feels about, say, Victoria. In the original draft of my latest contribution to the collaborative orgy thread, I had a scene that focused on Shawn's childhood before Dustin's birth that revolved around their father being abusive toward their mother, but I feel that may be too simplistic of an explanation in the short-term. Not to say that such a home life didn't exist, but their reactions to it are obviously different. If we want to go with that, then what could be the split? What did Dustin experience that Shawn didn't, or even vice versa? If the abusive dynamic didn't exist, then how did they grow up?
