Guest Post by Debaparna Das, INFJ

Life on Mars / Ashes to Ashes

Dominant Extraverted Sensing (Se): Gene’s flamboyance marks him out more than anything else. He is committed to an aesthetic based on spaghetti westerns and film noir, made of fast cars, anti-heroic trench coats, bombastic statements, and gun-wielding antics––all the way down to queerphobia, racism, and misogyny. He is given to aggressive behaviour––smashing doors and furniture, beating the living daylights out of suspects (Gene with a forklift crane vs. Trevor Riley in a car being slowly turned to scrap metal, for instance), shouting down disobedient officers, drunkenly attacking a former convict, etc. He is agile despite his obese frame, is good at subterfuge as long as he can keep his temper in check, and can be oddly charming when necessary. He is aware of his team members’ and his own need for a sense of unity and fellowship and consistently promotes that through activities ranging from drinking and revelling on nights at the pub to chasing down criminals together. Although he’s observant in general, he tends to skate over detail and doesn’t have much patience for long-winded procedures. He hates thinking about his past so much that he forgets it almost completely, including the most important part of his duty.

Auxiliary Introverted Feeling (Fi): Gene is big on individual loyalty, and demands unquestioning love and obedience from his team. He dislikes criticism of himself or his idols and feels personally attacked when his role models turn out to be fallible and corrupt. He follows his own moral code, and his attitude towards external bodies of authority ranges from indifference to outright contempt. His team, particularly Sam and Alex, are the only people whose opinion he takes seriously. He is deeply hurt when they doubt him for a short while, and twice suspends Alex from service when he thinks she suspects him of being involved in murder and corruption. He dislikes overt displays of sentiment and keeps his emotions to himself. He is protective of his team and likes to have them all working together with him as a way of bonding with them. However, he can be completely oblivious to the fact that, by using them to boost his own ego, he’s actually suffocating them and preventing them from reaching emotional closure.

Tertiary Extraverted Thinking (Te): Gene insists that the public wants results – suspects identified and convicted at the end of each investigation––and doesn’t care about how they get those results. To that end, he and his team follow ludicrously messed up methods––over-reliance on brutality and intimidation, fabrication of evidence, etc., ending frequently in botched investigations. He hates losing control over situations and wants to take back the lead as soon as he can. This goes to the point that he seems unwilling to promote anyone in his team unless he’s forced to. He doesn’t like divulging his resources to others – to protect them, but also to preserve his own control over the information flow – and fiercely resents it when those working under him question or oppose his methods or logic.

Inferior Introverted Feeling (Fi): Gene trusts his gut feelings a lot, but can be blind to how false hunches can trip him up. His hunches are often the result of prejudices and inflated ego, and he has difficulty coping when they’re proved to be wrong. He can become unnecessarily pessimistic and even uncooperative at times when he thinks he has failed in some way. He can be very secretive but isn’t always good at protecting those secrets (especially when it’s Alex Drake trying to unearth them). However, occasionally, his instincts turn out to be correct. He can plot out and set traps with reasonable efficiency. He is very idealistic, dreaming of being an incorruptible hero accompanied by his band of merry men, fighting evil and righting injustices.