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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/1SY0Aqa:
galadhir:
bomberqueen17:
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.
Keep reading
I’m English, so for me Hux looks like what power looks like, in terms of upper-class-Britishness. He’s built along the same model of privileged, well spoken, well turned out, apparently unthreatening upper-class old-school-tie Oxbridge Englishness as Tom Hiddleston, which we’re kind of conditioned to think of as cultured, civilized and charming. And then he also looks like a Nazi.
So that’s a slightly disturbing combination of influences already. And it both rubs my face in my country’s imperial past, and makes it hard for me to look at him and see a person who is ‘not one of us’. Given that Domhnall said he pretty much modelled Hux on Oswald Moseley, there’s a kind of gut punch of ‘there, but by the grace of God, might have been us.’
(I think it’s kind of amusing, how Hollywood continually decides that the villains have got to be un-American, so US viewers are protected from having to look at themselves on screen and wonder ‘could this be me? Could my country ever do something like this?’ But that’s a different, though related rant.)
So yes, I know I’m supposed to look at Hux and see someone who doesn’t deserve any sympathy or any interest in his depth or motives. I believe I’m supposed to see a disposable villain, but actually I can’t help thinking ‘This is a beautiful, clever, well disciplined, excellent man. How could he have been allowed to come to this? What went wrong? And can it be fixed?’
It would be nice to think there could be something that could be done to fix it without having to destroy the whole society that made him, because you could certainly argue that the children of the First Order, whether they’re officers or stormtroopers, probably had very little choice in becoming what they are. Canonically, though, I think the most we can hope for them is that they don’t get killed gleefully, but I honestly don’t hold out a lot of hope for that.
YAAAAAASSSSSSSSSS why couldn’t he be turned out like a West Pointer? why couldn’t he sound like an American? because we have this national fiction that our fascists are lower-class, and that’s absolutely not true. But we are literally never forced to confront that, in fiction or in the news. Our Elite Ruling Class puts on the trappings of being Just Folks all the time– compare George W. Bush’s real-life Connecticut accent from his early life with the Texas accent he adopted for literally every public utterance as President. That was a fake accent. He was from the Northeast.
It amuses me, sort of, to see how resigned most of the Hux fans are to him getting killed somehow. it would be fascinating to see him reform, or defect, or in some way redeem himself. It would be so interesting to see some internal conflict. We don’t expect it, though.
Where I first started writing the two of them is now the sequel to the one I just published– it’s set after the events of the movie and features Poe and Hux stuck in a situation where there’s time to talk.
“The point of the Starkiller,” Hux said, “as a weapon, was to reduce suffering, you know.”
“Pull the other one,” Dameron said, not opening his eyes.
“I mean it,” Hux said. “What is this? War by inches is bullshit, and wasteful, and random, and lets the scum weasel through and profiteer off it. Have a war at a stroke, and use your threat of massive force to deter resistance, and you can bring peace. Nothing else works.”
“Pretty sure that didn’t work either,” Dameron said, opening one eye.
“If the best you can hope for is a clean death,” Hux said, “then you can’t deny that the Starkiller was the most efficient positive thing that could have happened.”
But that’s as far as I’ve gotten and I have to pull the thing apart now. So. Y’know.
galadhir:
bomberqueen17:
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.
Keep reading
I’m English, so for me Hux looks like what power looks like, in terms of upper-class-Britishness. He’s built along the same model of privileged, well spoken, well turned out, apparently unthreatening upper-class old-school-tie Oxbridge Englishness as Tom Hiddleston, which we’re kind of conditioned to think of as cultured, civilized and charming. And then he also looks like a Nazi.
So that’s a slightly disturbing combination of influences already. And it both rubs my face in my country’s imperial past, and makes it hard for me to look at him and see a person who is ‘not one of us’. Given that Domhnall said he pretty much modelled Hux on Oswald Moseley, there’s a kind of gut punch of ‘there, but by the grace of God, might have been us.’
(I think it’s kind of amusing, how Hollywood continually decides that the villains have got to be un-American, so US viewers are protected from having to look at themselves on screen and wonder ‘could this be me? Could my country ever do something like this?’ But that’s a different, though related rant.)
So yes, I know I’m supposed to look at Hux and see someone who doesn’t deserve any sympathy or any interest in his depth or motives. I believe I’m supposed to see a disposable villain, but actually I can’t help thinking ‘This is a beautiful, clever, well disciplined, excellent man. How could he have been allowed to come to this? What went wrong? And can it be fixed?’
It would be nice to think there could be something that could be done to fix it without having to destroy the whole society that made him, because you could certainly argue that the children of the First Order, whether they’re officers or stormtroopers, probably had very little choice in becoming what they are. Canonically, though, I think the most we can hope for them is that they don’t get killed gleefully, but I honestly don’t hold out a lot of hope for that.
YAAAAAASSSSSSSSSS why couldn’t he be turned out like a West Pointer? why couldn’t he sound like an American? because we have this national fiction that our fascists are lower-class, and that’s absolutely not true. But we are literally never forced to confront that, in fiction or in the news. Our Elite Ruling Class puts on the trappings of being Just Folks all the time– compare George W. Bush’s real-life Connecticut accent from his early life with the Texas accent he adopted for literally every public utterance as President. That was a fake accent. He was from the Northeast.
It amuses me, sort of, to see how resigned most of the Hux fans are to him getting killed somehow. it would be fascinating to see him reform, or defect, or in some way redeem himself. It would be so interesting to see some internal conflict. We don’t expect it, though.
Where I first started writing the two of them is now the sequel to the one I just published– it’s set after the events of the movie and features Poe and Hux stuck in a situation where there’s time to talk.
“The point of the Starkiller,” Hux said, “as a weapon, was to reduce suffering, you know.”
“Pull the other one,” Dameron said, not opening his eyes.
“I mean it,” Hux said. “What is this? War by inches is bullshit, and wasteful, and random, and lets the scum weasel through and profiteer off it. Have a war at a stroke, and use your threat of massive force to deter resistance, and you can bring peace. Nothing else works.”
“Pretty sure that didn’t work either,” Dameron said, opening one eye.
“If the best you can hope for is a clean death,” Hux said, “then you can’t deny that the Starkiller was the most efficient positive thing that could have happened.”
But that’s as far as I’ve gotten and I have to pull the thing apart now. So. Y’know.
