weekly pitch: Joshua Graham as regular companion.
Honest Hearts is basically an essay on one of the oldest hooks in christianity: can even such a wicked sinner be saved? Doctrinally, the answer is yes, and HH works as a commentary on this old theological theme. Joshua is not the only sinner in the story. White legs are guilty, too. For Joshua to be saved, he has to admit that the white legs are also worth salvation, and therefore forgive them. A graceful redemption arc.
What I'd like to discuss here is a what if, based on the premise that the courier takes him to the Mojave Wasteland. Josh as a companion. What would he be like out there, when he is no longer the most important man in the room?
You might think there is no way he would voluntarily follow the courier back to the wastes, considering the lore and the natural human intuition. Everyone would think so, since he is a guy who needs 90 speech to make him listen. And honestly, nobody would willingly get into a dusty shithole, leaving clean water and fresh air behind. But for now, let's just assume that the courier possesses a esoteric protagonist power to overcome the great challenge. The point is, it would be fun to imagine him not being a boss.
*credit: @TheGhoulCity on X
I believe Joshua would not be a easy one to tame, and more than that, he is likely to clash with the courier over the authority to give orders.
A man who's spent his entire adult life with people calling him sir cannot have a small ego. Technically impossible. Even genuinely humble people go rotten once they get a taste of being deferred to, and Joshua has never had a taste. I'm talking not only about legate thing, but also his role as a warchief of the dead horses. He always has occupied a position in somewhere. The man got set on fire, thrown off a cliff, and crawled back to a canyon in a national park to immediately start running a crew again. Real subtle.
Remember him having trouble with Daniel over who decides? If you do not act, he wins.
Now suppose the courier is a young woman. She knows people tend to pay more attention to words of a man than to the words of a woman. He is not even an ordinary man. He is particularly a guy with military charisma. People around her unconsciously starts to treat him as their commander. That is something a protagonist cannot bear. She should be the one in control. Anxiety and rage seethe inside her. Then finally, the old man vs. young woman turf war begins over who's actually in charge of the band.
