Character type: Healer
Rank: Junior Journeyman
Age: 30
Gender: Male
Sexual Preference: Heterosexual
Appearance
Bucnar isn’t ashamed of his distinctly northern looks, though he does look at himself in the mirror occasionally with horror as he realizes that he looks more and more like his father with each passing turn. Like most of his family he’s a big man, a trifle taller than Braughan but also a trifle less broad, with the same blunt hands. He’s fair-skinned and red-haired, with just a hint of curl inherited from his mother, though he keeps it worn short enough that it’s often hard to tell. He does have a hint of freckling, but it’s far more sparse and lighter than that of many of his siblings, and they show most keenly on his arms rather than his face. His facial hair grows in thick if he allows it to, but he doesn't, preferring the clean-shaven look and feel for himself. His body hair is wiry and relatively thick, too, but thankfully doesn't sprout anywhere unusual. At least not at this point in his life.
Personality
Bucnar is one of those people who has been defined more sharply by what he’s striving not to be than by what he actually is — or what he actually might have been, if left to his own devices. It may be all but impossible at this point for a casual acquaintance to see which traits come naturally to him because he spends so much time and energy suppressing a lot of them, but those who get to know him, and get him to open up to them — or those who catch him in the heat of anger or passion — can get a glimpse of the many layers that make Bucnar who he is.
To the casual observer, and to his patients, he seems a decent sort, if not particularly exciting. He’s a competent healer, keen on the details, though he often seems a bit uptight. He’s very much a dominant sort, but it comes across in a far more understated way than the way his father expresses it. Bucnar doesn’t yell or rage or openly judge his patients; he does, however, tell them exactly what to do and what not to do in the stern, matter-of-fact way of a man who naturally expects to be obeyed. He doesn’t quite manage cold — there’s too much below the surface for that, too much tightness in his words and mannerisms, clearly stretched too thin around a roiling, burning core — but he can certainly pull off clinical, painfully polite, distant by choice for the sake of keeping that core from getting too close to someone and burning them.
Occasionally, when a patient gets belligerent or obstinate, the core starts to show through. He isn’t a particularly patient man no matter how much he tries to be — how much he believes it should be necessary for healing — and when that patience is tested, he gets blunt and snappish. He finds himself wanting to threaten, to raise his voice, to force the response he wants. Occasionally, when in the company of those he trusts, he may show that anger, may go on a rant about whatever has him upset. In true Braughan fashion he’ll pace, wave his arms around, his voice getting louder with each word.
And then, once he realizes what he’s doing, he’ll be horrified, because if there’s one thing Bucnar has spent his entire life doing, it’s trying not to be his father.
A strong-willed, stubborn man by nature, Bucnar had the misfortune to be raised by another strong-willed, stubborn man who was in a position of power over him. Living under the roof of a domineering father meant a lifetime of suppressing his own natural tendencies so as not to challenge him, and what was once merely being “a good boy” — that is, playing quietly so as not to disturb his father, being quick to obey — eventually turned into an outlet for trying to become something other than Braughan. He hated how loud and demanding his father was, and so he tries to control his own voice, tries to learn to keep it even and steady even when he’s upset. He hated his father’s heavy hands, so he tries to be conscious of his own, tries to always touch with deliberate care. He hated the way his father used his belligerence as a weapon, driving people away or forcing them to cave to him out of fear of his reaction or simple fear of having to confront him, and so he tries to suppress himself, tries to be quiet and undemanding. He tries to be calm and logical, where his father is passionate and irrational and bllindly stubborn. He often errs on the side of overly-cautious when he deals with women, because he hates the way his father seems to take his hard-working mother for granted.
The problem is, Bucnar is naturally a great deal like his father in a lot of ways, and he’s spent so long trying so desperately to be something else that the result is a man who doesn’t quite seem settled or comfortable in his own skin. The truth is, he is a good deal more reasonable than Braughan is. He’s smarter, he’s more thoughtful, he’s less conservative (somewhat) and has a lot more tact and care in dealing with others. But in trying so desperately to escape the traits he shares with Braughan, he often takes it a bit too far, and ends up losing the advantage of what could be his best traits: namely, his decisiveness and confident demeanor. His strengths really come out in the middle of ‘Fall, when he’s giving emergency care and doesn’t have the time to second-guess himself: he can quickly survey the scene, make those split-second decisions without hesitation or regret, order the apprentices in three different directions, and do it all flawlessly.
Unfortunately, as part of his bid to become someone who isn’t Braughan, he chose not to specialize in trauma, to which he’s well-suited, and instead spends his time as a general practitioner. He also might have benefited mightily from getting an assignment outside the Weyr, somewhere his father’s shadow doesn’t loom so darkly, but he can’t quite bring himself to request that, either. At his heart, Bucnar is a family man, too, and he can’t bring himself to abandon his mother (whom he feels suffers under his father’s thumb) or his many remaining siblings, some of whom still live with their parents. He is very protective of those he loves, and hopes to have a family of his own someday — where he’ll be a much better father than his own father, he vows.
If only he could let the real Bucnar out long enough to impress Sarada into marrying him and having his babies.
History
Birthdate: 423.04.28
Birthplace: Nabol Hold
When Bucnar was born, the first of what would eventually be twelve children, his young family was still very new to Nabol. Braughan and Sooty had originally come from a small minehold, Kolden, and Braughan had come to Nabol to get further training as a healer. Braughan was a very junior journeyman then, and the memories that Bucnar has of his early childhood are filled with two very distinct periods: the times when Braughan was journeying, gone for sevendays at a time making his circuits around the territory… and the times when Braughan was home, an enormous presence in the house that suddenly took precedence over everything else. While Braughan was away, little Bucnar was the man of the house, looking after his mother and the three baby sisters who came after him, encouraged by Sooty’s delighted reactions whenever he puffed himself up and offered to help or got protective. (It was adorable after all.) When Braughan was home, though, it was suddenly his domain again, and Bucnar and the girls were expected to be quiet and respectful. “Don’t bother your father, he’s had a long day and he’s tired.” “Don’t sass him — good boys respect their fathers!”
Sooty was a practical woman, grateful for what she had — being hitched to Kolden’s future healer was a good match, after all, a better one than most girls at the mine could ever wish for — and she had accepted her lot in life, but she was young then, still adjusting to her role in Braughan’s life, and she hadn’t yet mastered the art of navigating her husband’s often fickle moods, or understanding the various ways he expressed himself without actually saying what he meant. She spent a lot of those early turns feeling anxious, worrying about this or that, trying to get everything just right for him — and though she and Braughan would eventually settle into a comfortable relationship with clearly-defined roles, one in which they understood one another without having to speak, really, it was these early turns that would stand out in Bucnar’s mind forever, when he decided that his mother feared his father (and perhaps projected a bit of his own childish fear onto her and his siblings).
And so he grew up torn between respect for his father — because a good boy respected his father, after all, and Bucnar very much wanted to be a good boy — and resentment of him. He understood, on some level, that Braughan was a good man to have as a father, a successful man with a solid career who worked hard and enabled his family to live in relative comfort compared to the way their cousins back at Kolden lived. He also understood that Braughan was a man with all the traits a man should have — or so his mother reinforced in him — because shouldn’t a man, a husband and father, be the king of his castle, the absolute ruler of all he surveyed? But he also struggled with having to suppress himself, to be obedient when it was in his own nature to be just as loud and demanding and in-charge as his father was. Did his father see him as a rival to be beat down? Of course not — Braughan barely registered him at all most of the time, unless Bucnar was misbehaving or (on rare occasions) managed to do something that impressed him enough for him to say so out loud. Those moments — when he earned a grunt of approval from his father — were moments that Bucnar lived for, and yet also came to resent because he hated that he craved them so much. He hated feeling helpless, he hated feeling like every single damn thing his family did hinged on whether or not his father would be upset by it, and most of all, he hated how much of his father he saw in himself with each passing turn. And so, the self-suppression that had already become a habit evolved into more of a conscious choice (or so he tells himself — it’s easier to take than admitting that he can’t really stop now), a deliberate attempt to be a better man than he perceived his father to be.
Braughan’s talents had developed in the way of surgery and trauma care and so, when Bucnar was not quite apprentice aged, the growing family’s plans changed: instead of posting back to Kolden, as planned, Braughan’s younger brother would handle things there, and Braughan would instead be posted to Ista Weyr, which would need healers of his unique talents in the coming turns as the Pass approached. Bucnar left his young friends at Nabol behind and, because of his father, was dropped instead into a world unlike any he had ever known, full of strangers who looked and dressed differently, and who laughed at his sunburn and at the stuffy holdbred ways that his parents had always taught him to hold proudly. At least he still have the company of the crafters, who weren’t all weyrbred and who tended to stick to their own and sympathize more, at least. And, better yet, Bucnar was soon presented with the opportunity to move out of his parents’ quarters and in with the healer apprentices. Braughan was visibly proud that day, boasting to his new colleagues about the boy who would follow in his footsteps. It dimmed Bucnar’s own pride a little to realize that he wasn’t really accomplishing anything for himself — no, it still came down to growing up to be like that man, and that man was only proud because Bucnar was imitating him, and worse, Bucnar still felt a thrill of happiness that his father was proud at all, even knowing all of that. But this was what he knew, what he wanted to do, and he was determined not to let Braughan ruin it for him.
Bucnar proved to be a good, dutiful apprentice with a fair amount of talent. More focused and intelligent than his father, he learned quickly, and he even made friends among the other apprentices. The senior healers learned early on that it was best to keep Bucnar out of Braughan’s rotation as much as possible — Braughan was unfairly hard on the boy, overly-critical and unable to view his work with proper academic detachment, and Bucnar’s performance and esteem plummeted whenever he was kept under Braughan’s thumb for too long — and so, in the interest of preserving a promising young healer, they contrived to keep the two as separate as possible. When Master Paskam arrived to take over the infirmary, he took by-then-senior apprentice Bucnar on as his own apprentice — much to the consternation of Braughan, who was livid when his son, growing in confidence as he grew to manhood, made it clear that he wasn’t interested in becoming a trauma surgeon under Braughan’s direct tutelage. It was a shame, perhaps, as Bucnar had the aptitude for it (a rarity among Pern’s surgery-avoidant populace), but everyone but Braughan himself could see what was going on there, and could mostly agree that it couldn’t be helped.
Bucnar will probably never know how proud his father was when he walked the tables. Not only did Braughan never say so out loud, he actually advised Paskam against it, citing a dozen picky and overly-critical details, but in the end the choice wasn’t his anyway and Bucnar walked. Bucnar, now a professional in his own right, was forced into more frequent contact with his father as a colleague, but he also had his own rank and responsibilities to grant him more confidence in their interaction, and they fell into a generally professional working relationship — agreeing to disagree, as it were.
The only particularly notable development in his life since earning his journeyman’s knots has been the arrival of Senior Journeyman Sarada. He had always pictured himself being attracted to women who were more like his mother, but Sarada was nothing like Sooty at all. Professional, intelligent in the educated sort of way, and, more importantly, independent and opinionated, Sarada was exactly the opposite of his “type”, and yet he found himself hopelessly attracted to her anyway. He struggled with how to approach her at first — torn as he was between his desire to just bluntly indicate his interest, and his desire to be a more thoughtful, romantic sort of man than that — but eventually he managed to convey his intentions and, surprisingly to him, she responded favorably. He’s still not sure why she still lets him come around now, after several turns of keeping their dalliance off of his parents’ radar — he’s not sure that she loves him really, and sometimes he’s not even entirely sure that she likes him, and honestly he’s not sure why he’s still pursuing her when he’s nearing his thirtieth turn and it’s high time he settled down and raised a family of his own. He’s fairly certain she’s not interested in cooking and cleaning for him, and she has to know by now that he’s a family man at heart, but here they are just the same.
Relationships
Family
Father: Braughan, Senior Journeyman Healer
Mother: Sooty, wife/mother/biscuitmaker
Brothers:
Broan, Journeyman Smith, Telgar (-8 turns)
K’vrett, weyrling to blue Nezenth (-12 turns)
“Guts”, apprentice healer (-16 turns)
“Dusty”, brat under the furniture (-24 turns)
Sisters:
Birka, tanner’s wife (-1 turn)
"Fussy", Kolden Minehold (-4 turns)
Samma, Nabol Hold (-5 turns)
Bertaula, weyrling to green Rekkith (-12 turns)
Ellou, healer’s aide (-14 turns)
Unnamed sister, weyrbrat (-19 turns)
Beuzila, weyrsuperbrat (-22 turns)
Friends
Lovers
Sarada, Senior Journeyman Healer
Enemies
His Father
Himself
Daigrien, Senior Apprentice Healer, Professional Cockblock
BUCNAR'S CRAFT: HEALER
Rank: Junior Journeyman
Specialty: General Practice
Experience: 18 turns
Timeline
Title | Date | Characters | Summary |
---|---|---|---|
Hatching 1: Leave Your Fears Behind | 03.03 | Bucnar, Bertaula, Braughan, K'vrett, many others | Bertaula is mauled while Impressing green Rekkith. With Braughan too stubborn and angry to assist, Bucnar rushes to treat his little sister's wounds instead. |
Peace | 03.03 | Bucnar, Sarada | Instead of attending the Hatching Feast, Bucnar goes to Sarada for comfort. |