![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/1Slqs3d:
yeah I’m on a roll with these unconsidered thinky text posts, but here– so Hux. All the ships with Hux, who is a one-dimensional minor character we’re supposed to automatically hate, are self-proclaimed trash.
I miss how on LJ you could put in a cut, discuss your wordy aside, then end the cut to continue the main thing. You can’t here. But on a list of things I miss, threaded comments always come first, so. Other aside– I’ve been having a lovely time having discussions with @magickedteacup but I am sure i’m missing the etiquette of when one should reply publicly and when privately. Anyway.
Anyway, the below is tl;dr rambling about General Hux. And so I have this Hux/Poe thing that started as an aside and then @deputychairman was like but they should really hook up and I was like… what if they did, so all credit due there– but I feel weird posting it because mostly I do Sunshine/Light/Socially Awkward OT3, and it’s not that I have shame, it’s that I don’t know how to categorize. Anyway– why is Hux automatically “trash”?? I witter on about that for many many words, below.
I have a lot of feelings about Hux, starting with his actor, actually– Domhnall Gleeson, who is, there’s no other word for it, he’s hella ethnic. He’s super super super ethnic. [deleted 5k-word-rant about Irishness and how it Doesn’t Count etc listen I know okay, my real name is all over this place and it is not exactly of ambiguous ethnicity, come on now] And they’ve used his appearance to shore up the one-dimensional character; he’s a Space Nazi with blond eyebrows and he’s British enough for us to quarrel over whether he’s meant to be effeminate or just upper-class, he evokes Aryanness without being Aryan like, at all, and he manages to perfectly straddle the line between Unnerving and Like Super Hot in his own ineffable attenuated way. It’s not surprising we’ve latched onto him, because they made the calculated mistake of making him young and hot and letting him have facial close-ups where he has expressions. (Bonus: facial expressions at the tortured emo anti-hero come on.) I mean, they’ll still probably keep him one-dimensional and kill him off in some ignominiously off-handed brutal way but–
Anyway. I’m clearly working on an epic that has Finn/Poe and Finn/Poe/Rey in it. Those are like. I mean, literally, they’re the Light Side reps in the movie, p much, and the vast majority of the canon characterizations of them are sunshine and unambiguous moral good and so on. Most of the fanon characterizations are even more cartoonishly sweet. And i’m not saying i don’t enjoy that, I do. But on the side I’ve been reading various Hux ships, mostly Kylux, and that’s– honestly, it’s also kind of sweet, which is a little surprising. There’ve been some kinky Stormpilot/OT3 fics, and there are plenty of filthybadwrong Kylux fics, don’t get me wrong. But there’s just this perception that Kylux of any kind is trashy, and Jedistormpilot of any kind is fluffy-sweet. And I guess that’s an understandable perception, and I certainly have off-handedly reinforced it here and there. But it’s not necessarily the case.
The Sweetness And Light Babies aside (again, much love, and I’ve enjoyed exploring their complexities as well, though you haven’t seen my Rey yet but I promise she’s got her own motivations), I’ve really been enjoying writing Poe with a– not a dark past, but a human one. He’s supposed to be 32, and is supposed to be a legacy kid, with soldier-hero parents. Has he really come up through a military career with nothing but sunshine and Glorious Duty as his defining personality traits? Mm you don’t get suicidally devoted to a canonically-Problematic politician out of pure sweet Intrinsic Sunshineyness.
And Hux, then– there’s actually been some phenomenal meta work done on his past, and some alert sleuths digging up every bit of canon they can– of course I don’t have handy links to sources but really if you haven’t already, you could do worse than to start here. (He has no canonical first name. This is really irritating actually.) And I’m not the first to point out that Hux and Dameron are actually wonderful foils. Hux is supposed to be two years older than Dameron, even if the actors’ ages are somewhat reversed. They’re from similar situations, but mirrored, and they make a good physical mirror as well (thanks to the Ex Machina press tour for giving us hours of fun of the tall ginger and short Latino being filthy sarcastic little boys at each other). Hux is the son of a disgraced Imperial official and spent his entire life living in that shadow and trying to make the best of it, and has done pretty damn well by any metric, rising to an astonishing achievement of– uh well, command and genocide. He shows no ability to reflect on this from an outside perspective, and has probably never really encountered an outside perspective. He may or may not have any notion of what he has done on a human level. And there are some fics exploring that beautifully. (I mean. I don’t have to link you to Children, Wake Up, do I? It’s basically taken over the Internet and nothing I ever say or do will be that important, so– hey, I’m not knocking it, it’s really good.)
Dameron, though. He grew up the child of war heroes who were on the winning side. And then what? The Republic they fought for was a toothless creature of half-measures; victory was never truly achieved, and all the New Republic ever did was compromise. The presumably-patriotic Poe joined the Navy out of– duty? to continue his mother’s legacy?– but the Navy he joined was hamstrung, heavily bound by non-proliferation and non-engagement measures everyone knew were completely ineffective compromises. He’s not stupid, he must have realized that pretty early on in his career. And so he eventually defected to the Resistance. Like, you can’t tell me there was no conflict there.
But anyway! I have had too much coffee and am not drawing the conclusions I meant to draw, except that I wrote this Hoe thing that’s now in three parts and I don’t know what to do with it. Maybe I’ll just post the – oh god, almost 9k– pure porn interlude with a young new-commissioned lieutenant Poe and a somewhat-sheltered but quick-thinking young Hux and a really seedy hourly-rate motel on some backwater.
It’s just porn and I don’t know how to interface it into the rest of anything. And I don’t have a title. Or anything really. But it’s porn.
yeah I’m on a roll with these unconsidered thinky text posts, but here– so Hux. All the ships with Hux, who is a one-dimensional minor character we’re supposed to automatically hate, are self-proclaimed trash.
I miss how on LJ you could put in a cut, discuss your wordy aside, then end the cut to continue the main thing. You can’t here. But on a list of things I miss, threaded comments always come first, so. Other aside– I’ve been having a lovely time having discussions with @magickedteacup but I am sure i’m missing the etiquette of when one should reply publicly and when privately. Anyway.
Anyway, the below is tl;dr rambling about General Hux. And so I have this Hux/Poe thing that started as an aside and then @deputychairman was like but they should really hook up and I was like… what if they did, so all credit due there– but I feel weird posting it because mostly I do Sunshine/Light/Socially Awkward OT3, and it’s not that I have shame, it’s that I don’t know how to categorize. Anyway– why is Hux automatically “trash”?? I witter on about that for many many words, below.
I have a lot of feelings about Hux, starting with his actor, actually– Domhnall Gleeson, who is, there’s no other word for it, he’s hella ethnic. He’s super super super ethnic. [deleted 5k-word-rant about Irishness and how it Doesn’t Count etc listen I know okay, my real name is all over this place and it is not exactly of ambiguous ethnicity, come on now] And they’ve used his appearance to shore up the one-dimensional character; he’s a Space Nazi with blond eyebrows and he’s British enough for us to quarrel over whether he’s meant to be effeminate or just upper-class, he evokes Aryanness without being Aryan like, at all, and he manages to perfectly straddle the line between Unnerving and Like Super Hot in his own ineffable attenuated way. It’s not surprising we’ve latched onto him, because they made the calculated mistake of making him young and hot and letting him have facial close-ups where he has expressions. (Bonus: facial expressions at the tortured emo anti-hero come on.) I mean, they’ll still probably keep him one-dimensional and kill him off in some ignominiously off-handed brutal way but–
Anyway. I’m clearly working on an epic that has Finn/Poe and Finn/Poe/Rey in it. Those are like. I mean, literally, they’re the Light Side reps in the movie, p much, and the vast majority of the canon characterizations of them are sunshine and unambiguous moral good and so on. Most of the fanon characterizations are even more cartoonishly sweet. And i’m not saying i don’t enjoy that, I do. But on the side I’ve been reading various Hux ships, mostly Kylux, and that’s– honestly, it’s also kind of sweet, which is a little surprising. There’ve been some kinky Stormpilot/OT3 fics, and there are plenty of filthybadwrong Kylux fics, don’t get me wrong. But there’s just this perception that Kylux of any kind is trashy, and Jedistormpilot of any kind is fluffy-sweet. And I guess that’s an understandable perception, and I certainly have off-handedly reinforced it here and there. But it’s not necessarily the case.
The Sweetness And Light Babies aside (again, much love, and I’ve enjoyed exploring their complexities as well, though you haven’t seen my Rey yet but I promise she’s got her own motivations), I’ve really been enjoying writing Poe with a– not a dark past, but a human one. He’s supposed to be 32, and is supposed to be a legacy kid, with soldier-hero parents. Has he really come up through a military career with nothing but sunshine and Glorious Duty as his defining personality traits? Mm you don’t get suicidally devoted to a canonically-Problematic politician out of pure sweet Intrinsic Sunshineyness.
And Hux, then– there’s actually been some phenomenal meta work done on his past, and some alert sleuths digging up every bit of canon they can– of course I don’t have handy links to sources but really if you haven’t already, you could do worse than to start here. (He has no canonical first name. This is really irritating actually.) And I’m not the first to point out that Hux and Dameron are actually wonderful foils. Hux is supposed to be two years older than Dameron, even if the actors’ ages are somewhat reversed. They’re from similar situations, but mirrored, and they make a good physical mirror as well (thanks to the Ex Machina press tour for giving us hours of fun of the tall ginger and short Latino being filthy sarcastic little boys at each other). Hux is the son of a disgraced Imperial official and spent his entire life living in that shadow and trying to make the best of it, and has done pretty damn well by any metric, rising to an astonishing achievement of– uh well, command and genocide. He shows no ability to reflect on this from an outside perspective, and has probably never really encountered an outside perspective. He may or may not have any notion of what he has done on a human level. And there are some fics exploring that beautifully. (I mean. I don’t have to link you to Children, Wake Up, do I? It’s basically taken over the Internet and nothing I ever say or do will be that important, so– hey, I’m not knocking it, it’s really good.)
Dameron, though. He grew up the child of war heroes who were on the winning side. And then what? The Republic they fought for was a toothless creature of half-measures; victory was never truly achieved, and all the New Republic ever did was compromise. The presumably-patriotic Poe joined the Navy out of– duty? to continue his mother’s legacy?– but the Navy he joined was hamstrung, heavily bound by non-proliferation and non-engagement measures everyone knew were completely ineffective compromises. He’s not stupid, he must have realized that pretty early on in his career. And so he eventually defected to the Resistance. Like, you can’t tell me there was no conflict there.
But anyway! I have had too much coffee and am not drawing the conclusions I meant to draw, except that I wrote this Hoe thing that’s now in three parts and I don’t know what to do with it. Maybe I’ll just post the – oh god, almost 9k– pure porn interlude with a young new-commissioned lieutenant Poe and a somewhat-sheltered but quick-thinking young Hux and a really seedy hourly-rate motel on some backwater.
It’s just porn and I don’t know how to interface it into the rest of anything. And I don’t have a title. Or anything really. But it’s porn.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-24 11:20 pm (UTC)I actually finally saw the movie a couple of weeks ago, and I was nodding along like "Oh yes, this is where that part of the fic comes from."
Like, at the very beginning, when Poe gives the map thing to BB-8? Poe gets out of the X-wing, goes around to the back of it, looks at the engine which has been shot and is on fire, and then he's just like "Ok, buddy, hold on to this for me, you have a better chance of hiding it" even though what he has to be thinking is that he has zero chance of getting out of there at all, with the map or without it.
But he shows Absolutely No Sign of that.
So yeah. Poe the great actor who chooses to look happy and approachable all the time because that's how he wants people to see him.
no subject
Date: 2016-05-09 07:31 pm (UTC)I'm so not used to threaded comments. It's funny.
Ha the best is seeing a movie after reading the fic. That's how I do like. 90% of my movie-watching. Ohhhh that's where that comes from!
But yeah-- that's what I was thinking too, Poe is absolutely a facile liar about terrible situations. He's the kind of guy that would get fatally shot and stay happy on the mic until he passed out, if he knew nobody could get to him in time.