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felicitygsThis one has been a very very long time in the old brain pan, and finally has noodled its way out. It is a very long read (~1800 words), and it is also quite personal (particularly towards the end). I don't know if anyone else will want to read it, but it's here if you do.
It's one of those things where I think it was important that I write it for me, because I needed to get it out on paper. If you get anything out of it, then I'm glad.
I don't know how other people who ship Hux and Kylo do it. I scroll through my twitter feed, like a couple posts here and there, but in general I've found that I'm most comfortable not sharing that around. I do the same with tumblr, though occasionally (with extensive tagging) I'll reblog something there I would prefer not to lose. On the one hand, I get the appeal of two awful broken people who manage to find something in the other they couldn't find anywhere else.
On the other hand, they're both fucking fascists.
I have read so much meta and back and forth and circling around this fact, both inside and outside of the ship. There are some very eloquent words trying to justify actually, they are not, and here's why, and I do think I understand why people do that. I also know that it has done nothing to convince me.
In the modern movies, the First Order is very much coded in every way possible as fascists. They're space Nazis.
No one wants to feel bad for a ship they enjoy; no one wants to feel ashamed for their fandom interests. No one (well, no one with good morals) wants to admit they like some Nazis. I get that. I get that on a very personal level--I have been struggling since I first started reading Hux/Kylo fic with the fact they are ultimately two horrible awful people, who even if they are not Fascists are very much aligned with that ideology in the canon text. After all, if it walks and quacks like a fascist, then you might as well treat it like one.
Fascist fascists fascists.
I keep repeating this word. I feel like I need to make it abundantly clear I understand what the canon says about both of these horrible no good people. I feel like that is the absolute bare minimum required--to acknowledge, yes, Armitage Hux of the First Order is a fucking fascist and--
I still love to write his character anyway.
Wait, what?
Armitage Hux is a general of the First Order, a neo-reactionary movement that has been gaining traction in the Outer Rim since the fall of the Empire, who wishes to destroy the Republic through whatever means necessary. He is one of the youngest (the youngest? I can't recall) generals of the First Order ever; driven by a desire to outdo a terrible father (we do not learn about in the movies), he is the one who designs Starkiller, gets a ship under his command--and then has to co-captain it with the thinly-veiled metaphor for well-off white boy entitlement, Kylo Ren.
He is also very clearly high-strung, has a temper that is always two seconds from exploding while at the same time keeping himself under tight control, trusted by his crew, intelligent (no one designs something like Starkiller without intelligence, even if he lacks the wisdom to ask 'but should I?'), a pet cat (a joke by Pablo Hidalgo, but a good one and you may pry it from my cold dead hands), and clearly has no time for personal relationships beyond those that will advance his career. He is a walking human disaster, and you can find a whole backstory that suggests, in part, that he was indoctrinated into this cult of First Order (future) officers from childhood, that paternal abuse drove him to outdo his father at his own game, and you can try to pick apart where and how things might have gone differently. Most important to me, I can't watch him without seeing him as being on the a-spectrum.
And I hate that.
I hate that this deeply flawed human character--and he is a human, as monstrous as his actions are--pings so sympathetic to me. I hate the writers of this goddamn fascist has the gall to (probably accidentally) write him that way. I hate that they've created this entire flawed backstory, so I am constantly trying to pick apart what could be different, trying to pick apart how he relates to an identity he probably has never once thought about--because there is the Work, and there is the First Order, and everything else is secondary.
And, I suppose, I relate in some ways to the fact he was raised in a system that always, always taught him that this is what he was meant to do--to destroy the Republic--and how little information to contrary he could get. The First Order was not, is not, an organization with an open flow of information.
I feel like I can't mention that last aspect of Hux without also mentioning Finn, so let's look at A Really Truly Good Character I Love With All My Heart for a second. Finn is a deeply moving and wonderful character--I love him and I love his journey from troubled about the role he was forced to take to escaping that role. I do not want to diminish him at all; what he did and does throughout the films took so much bravery, so much guts, and I hate when people try to ignore him and his victories.
But, and this is critical, Finn's escape from the system is from a different position of power than Hux. Finn is arguably in the weakest position in the First Order--he is an ID tag and nothing else, meant to simply go and do what he is told when he is told, and the First Order cares about him about... well, about as much as a lot of America cares about black people, to be frank. It only cares when he escapes; it only cares when he breaks the First Order's rules, and dares to have agency. And that narrative is deeply important, and I feel does--should--speak to many many people. But, and this is critical, Finn's story (as much as I love it), is not my story.
Hux feels, to me (again, for emphasis: to me), like what I could have become if I had not managed to find the internet and new ideas when I did.
That's... fairly personal, isn't it? Probably seems dramatic. But let's keep going.
Hux was born into a system where he was (relatively) privileged for the First Order (bastard birth or not). I was born into a system (Southern whiteness) where I was (relatively) privileged (as a white raised-female girl).
Hux grew up on a diet of military worship and hard-right conservative thoughts. I grew up on a diet of military worship (every single man until my generation has served and worships the military in my family; I wanted to go into the air force much of my youth) and hard-right conservative thoughts (you know, once upon a time I really thought Bill O'Reilly was right???? fuckin wild).
Hux was repeatedly emotionally abused by his father figure; I was by two father figures.
Hux saw that intelligence and ruthlessness would get him to a place in the system where he would be in control, and he is always, always furious. I... well. I understood that too.
(And if I'm honest, I'm still always a low boiling rage; it's just directed at different things now)
Hux reads as aromantic to me; his passion, his work, his drive all come first, before everything else. I'm asexual, question whether I'm some form of aromantic often, and to say I am fucking dying for characters with those attributes would be putting it... mildly.
Even if they are awful. Even if they only get to be the villains.
And so--how the fuck did I manage to swerve away from the very machine that Hux became so integral to? Could, somehow, Hux have managed to do otherwise? How do people born into the privilege that puts them at the top of systems manage to get out of those same systems? How do we learn empathy, compassion, how do we manage to escape everything we are fed a steady diet of by our families and peers and adults that we are incapable of escaping when we are children? Particularly children in an environment where information and exposure to other cultures is severely limited?
I did escape, somehow, and while I am always unlearning, always trying to become better than the ruthless child I was, I can't help but look at someone like Hux and wonder what he would be like if had, somehow, managed to escape.
I can't stop thinking about it.
I look at Hux, and it's like looking in a mirror darkly. An idea of what I could have become--not the general, not the literal nonsense, but the--
Ruthlessness. The hatred of the other, and the desire to claw every last scrap of power to himself (myself) as a defense against a childhood that irreversibly shaped him (me) into a person incapable of seeing that machine he (I) was in was fucking wrong.
But I did get out. I got out because I had access to information, and I had access to new ideas and people and thoughts. I got out because I was meeting people from all over the world, but also just different people from a deeply class and race divided city, from different cultures and backgrounds, and it started me on that slow and painful path of unlearning.
And so, I look at Hux, and I want to pick him apart. I want to write his barely contained violence, because there's is something of a wolf (or wolves)* in him, rotten as it is. I want to write the ways that he (could) care about others, through his own lens. I want to write how he could learn to use that intelligence for something that doesn't destroy billions of lives. I want to write a thousand thousand AUs where he is simply a flawed human, and a thousand other AUs where somehow, someway, he escapes that very same system.
I want Hux to escape, because in some ways it is a wish fulfillment, a promise to my past self that I, too, have escaped, and an offering to others in the position I was (Hux is) in--
You can still get out. We can unlearn, we can learn how to use that thinly veiled fury and violence to do good, to become better than the current power structures ever wanted us to be. We can unlearn, and begin to spend a life repairing and helping those we were taught were less than human.
That was the whole point of the series A Thing With No Name. Escaping, and using that very violence that is fostered as a defense as a way to survive and get out.
And that's why I can't stop writing this stupid fucking fascist.
Because maybe, somehow, even if he's entirely irredeemable in the canon now, maybe in some universe he does get out of that system before that point. Maybe, somehow, others like him do, too.
Maybe, there's is still hope.
____
*yes, that wolf (or wolves)
It's one of those things where I think it was important that I write it for me, because I needed to get it out on paper. If you get anything out of it, then I'm glad.
I don't know how other people who ship Hux and Kylo do it. I scroll through my twitter feed, like a couple posts here and there, but in general I've found that I'm most comfortable not sharing that around. I do the same with tumblr, though occasionally (with extensive tagging) I'll reblog something there I would prefer not to lose. On the one hand, I get the appeal of two awful broken people who manage to find something in the other they couldn't find anywhere else.
On the other hand, they're both fucking fascists.
I have read so much meta and back and forth and circling around this fact, both inside and outside of the ship. There are some very eloquent words trying to justify actually, they are not, and here's why, and I do think I understand why people do that. I also know that it has done nothing to convince me.
In the modern movies, the First Order is very much coded in every way possible as fascists. They're space Nazis.
No one wants to feel bad for a ship they enjoy; no one wants to feel ashamed for their fandom interests. No one (well, no one with good morals) wants to admit they like some Nazis. I get that. I get that on a very personal level--I have been struggling since I first started reading Hux/Kylo fic with the fact they are ultimately two horrible awful people, who even if they are not Fascists are very much aligned with that ideology in the canon text. After all, if it walks and quacks like a fascist, then you might as well treat it like one.
Fascist fascists fascists.
I keep repeating this word. I feel like I need to make it abundantly clear I understand what the canon says about both of these horrible no good people. I feel like that is the absolute bare minimum required--to acknowledge, yes, Armitage Hux of the First Order is a fucking fascist and--
I still love to write his character anyway.
Wait, what?
Armitage Hux is a general of the First Order, a neo-reactionary movement that has been gaining traction in the Outer Rim since the fall of the Empire, who wishes to destroy the Republic through whatever means necessary. He is one of the youngest (the youngest? I can't recall) generals of the First Order ever; driven by a desire to outdo a terrible father (we do not learn about in the movies), he is the one who designs Starkiller, gets a ship under his command--and then has to co-captain it with the thinly-veiled metaphor for well-off white boy entitlement, Kylo Ren.
He is also very clearly high-strung, has a temper that is always two seconds from exploding while at the same time keeping himself under tight control, trusted by his crew, intelligent (no one designs something like Starkiller without intelligence, even if he lacks the wisdom to ask 'but should I?'), a pet cat (a joke by Pablo Hidalgo, but a good one and you may pry it from my cold dead hands), and clearly has no time for personal relationships beyond those that will advance his career. He is a walking human disaster, and you can find a whole backstory that suggests, in part, that he was indoctrinated into this cult of First Order (future) officers from childhood, that paternal abuse drove him to outdo his father at his own game, and you can try to pick apart where and how things might have gone differently. Most important to me, I can't watch him without seeing him as being on the a-spectrum.
And I hate that.
I hate that this deeply flawed human character--and he is a human, as monstrous as his actions are--pings so sympathetic to me. I hate the writers of this goddamn fascist has the gall to (probably accidentally) write him that way. I hate that they've created this entire flawed backstory, so I am constantly trying to pick apart what could be different, trying to pick apart how he relates to an identity he probably has never once thought about--because there is the Work, and there is the First Order, and everything else is secondary.
And, I suppose, I relate in some ways to the fact he was raised in a system that always, always taught him that this is what he was meant to do--to destroy the Republic--and how little information to contrary he could get. The First Order was not, is not, an organization with an open flow of information.
I feel like I can't mention that last aspect of Hux without also mentioning Finn, so let's look at A Really Truly Good Character I Love With All My Heart for a second. Finn is a deeply moving and wonderful character--I love him and I love his journey from troubled about the role he was forced to take to escaping that role. I do not want to diminish him at all; what he did and does throughout the films took so much bravery, so much guts, and I hate when people try to ignore him and his victories.
But, and this is critical, Finn's escape from the system is from a different position of power than Hux. Finn is arguably in the weakest position in the First Order--he is an ID tag and nothing else, meant to simply go and do what he is told when he is told, and the First Order cares about him about... well, about as much as a lot of America cares about black people, to be frank. It only cares when he escapes; it only cares when he breaks the First Order's rules, and dares to have agency. And that narrative is deeply important, and I feel does--should--speak to many many people. But, and this is critical, Finn's story (as much as I love it), is not my story.
Hux feels, to me (again, for emphasis: to me), like what I could have become if I had not managed to find the internet and new ideas when I did.
That's... fairly personal, isn't it? Probably seems dramatic. But let's keep going.
Hux was born into a system where he was (relatively) privileged for the First Order (bastard birth or not). I was born into a system (Southern whiteness) where I was (relatively) privileged (as a white raised-female girl).
Hux grew up on a diet of military worship and hard-right conservative thoughts. I grew up on a diet of military worship (every single man until my generation has served and worships the military in my family; I wanted to go into the air force much of my youth) and hard-right conservative thoughts (you know, once upon a time I really thought Bill O'Reilly was right???? fuckin wild).
Hux was repeatedly emotionally abused by his father figure; I was by two father figures.
Hux saw that intelligence and ruthlessness would get him to a place in the system where he would be in control, and he is always, always furious. I... well. I understood that too.
(And if I'm honest, I'm still always a low boiling rage; it's just directed at different things now)
Hux reads as aromantic to me; his passion, his work, his drive all come first, before everything else. I'm asexual, question whether I'm some form of aromantic often, and to say I am fucking dying for characters with those attributes would be putting it... mildly.
Even if they are awful. Even if they only get to be the villains.
And so--how the fuck did I manage to swerve away from the very machine that Hux became so integral to? Could, somehow, Hux have managed to do otherwise? How do people born into the privilege that puts them at the top of systems manage to get out of those same systems? How do we learn empathy, compassion, how do we manage to escape everything we are fed a steady diet of by our families and peers and adults that we are incapable of escaping when we are children? Particularly children in an environment where information and exposure to other cultures is severely limited?
I did escape, somehow, and while I am always unlearning, always trying to become better than the ruthless child I was, I can't help but look at someone like Hux and wonder what he would be like if had, somehow, managed to escape.
I can't stop thinking about it.
I look at Hux, and it's like looking in a mirror darkly. An idea of what I could have become--not the general, not the literal nonsense, but the--
Ruthlessness. The hatred of the other, and the desire to claw every last scrap of power to himself (myself) as a defense against a childhood that irreversibly shaped him (me) into a person incapable of seeing that machine he (I) was in was fucking wrong.
But I did get out. I got out because I had access to information, and I had access to new ideas and people and thoughts. I got out because I was meeting people from all over the world, but also just different people from a deeply class and race divided city, from different cultures and backgrounds, and it started me on that slow and painful path of unlearning.
And so, I look at Hux, and I want to pick him apart. I want to write his barely contained violence, because there's is something of a wolf (or wolves)* in him, rotten as it is. I want to write the ways that he (could) care about others, through his own lens. I want to write how he could learn to use that intelligence for something that doesn't destroy billions of lives. I want to write a thousand thousand AUs where he is simply a flawed human, and a thousand other AUs where somehow, someway, he escapes that very same system.
I want Hux to escape, because in some ways it is a wish fulfillment, a promise to my past self that I, too, have escaped, and an offering to others in the position I was (Hux is) in--
You can still get out. We can unlearn, we can learn how to use that thinly veiled fury and violence to do good, to become better than the current power structures ever wanted us to be. We can unlearn, and begin to spend a life repairing and helping those we were taught were less than human.
That was the whole point of the series A Thing With No Name. Escaping, and using that very violence that is fostered as a defense as a way to survive and get out.
And that's why I can't stop writing this stupid fucking fascist.
Because maybe, somehow, even if he's entirely irredeemable in the canon now, maybe in some universe he does get out of that system before that point. Maybe, somehow, others like him do, too.
Maybe, there's is still hope.
____
*yes, that wolf (or wolves)
(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-28 05:38 am (UTC)I don't really know much about Star Wars. (This is sacrilege to some ppl, lol) I won't get into the reasons why rn, but that's how it is. I have a very surface-level knowledge of Star Wars.
Okay, disclaimers over.
I can't help but thinking about purity culture in fandom. There are people who just don't want to get this: being fascinated by a character that is a fascist does not automatically make someone a fascist. And, in fact, writing about a dark character can be, dare I say it, good for you. I think that may be why people dance around the subject.
I also can't help thinking: you have a type. You probably know this. I mean, shitty father figure? a privileged upbringing? a stifling environment? exploring what it means to be an asshole? hatred of the Other?
You know what name I'm going to say: Loki. Granted, there's that interesting twist of the fact that Loki is Jotun. But the key details are the same.
Anyway, interesting post. I like posts like this, even if it's not about a fandom I'm super knowledgeable of.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-31 04:04 am (UTC)Thanks for reading through this even though you aren't really in the Star Wars fandom; to be honest, I'm only barely in it, and I personally still can't stand the original trilogy.
I do think the rise of purity culture has definitely complicated some of the ability to (freely) enjoy our villains; at the same time, especially with the current political climate, I think it's important people question what is drawing them to fascist coded characters. I also don't necessarily think it's wrong for people to want to know why the heck someone is into a fascist character, though I take a lot of issues with how anti-culture does that (namely, trying to bully and run out anyone who doesn't have their opinion).
Idk it's a hard question; like I said, I never had the moral quandaries with Loki I have with Hux, largely because they are both rooted in different contexts, and I came to both characters for pretty different reasons.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-28 02:13 pm (UTC)I think it's hard to reconcile the need to look into what makes a villain a villain and the idea that people with villains' ideologies should be deplatformed. It's hard to figure out where the deconstruction stops and the glorification starts sometimes, not because people don't care about that line but because a lot of it is so subjective and subconscious, there's no manual to say 'okay this is fine but this isn't' and so when you get caught between these two valid impulses I think it's normal to have that sort of conflict.
I think, in the particular case of Kylux, the complexities of it are also amplified by the rise of far-right ideologies which prompt an equal hardening of anti-fascits factions (in ways that I can understand but aren't always productive, honestly) which makes it harder to have nuanced conversations about the way we react to fictional characters who are nazis or nazis-adjacent and...yeah. It's a bit of a mess.
That being said, ultimately, I think it's great that writing about this character is helpful to you, even if it comes with a lot of complications and questions. I don't know that this comment is going to be helpful at all (or heck, understandable, even) but I get what you're saying, if nothing else, and I'm sending hugs :)
(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-31 04:11 am (UTC)And then you have the rise of purity culture, where people assume who/what you ship decides who/what you are as a person without stopping to get the reasoning, and it's like y i k e s, I'm just not gonna mention this anywhere. There's a reason I published this here, on dreamwidth, and not over on my AO3 or tumblr, where I'd be more likely to get engagement from parts of the fandom I don't want to deal with.
And you are absolutely right about the lack of a manual and subjectivity making that balancing act even harder. IDK. I was talking about this with another Kylux friend and they totally get the cognitive dissonance caused by being deeply anti-fascist and also seeing themselves in a fascist character. It's tough!
(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-31 08:57 am (UTC)I mean, I feel like it started out of good intentions but there are excessive reactions (I think we talked about it elsewhere re: reylo?) and while on average it's not enough to hinder social progress (I saw a twitter thread about this a couple days go, no idea if I shared it or not) it's still a problem for more nuanced conversation, especially on sites like tumblr that arefertile grounds for dogpiling :/
(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-29 10:24 pm (UTC)I've found it much more interesting to read well-developed villains, more so than straight-up sadistic, cruel villains, and I think it is important that there ARE complex, well-developed villainous characters out there. I think it's more realistic than Just Pure Evil, and I think those overly simplistic Good vs Evil tropes have done us/society a real disservice when it comes to identifying, and discussing, when real (complex) people are doing awful fascistic things.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-12-31 04:05 am (UTC)