RSD Finalizer Sitcom

many nights i have scoured the internet for more incorrect quotes that are funny and that i haven't already posted but alas

that doesn't mean i'm gonna Stop posting incorrect quotes (or that people can't still submit them), but they won't be the primary focus of the blog anymore

So. The thing is. In real life, it isn't uncommon for people who've experienced abuse by men to develop an aversion to men.

But the other thing is...people in real life are also existing in a world where violence and abuse are frequently (a) gendered, or at least (b) socially framed as gendered. In a society that is systemically patriarchal and misogynistic, people are taught basically since birth that men have a monopoly on physical strength, authority, violence, and the ability to inflict trauma. People are taught to view "violence" as something distinctly male. This is part of why abuse by women isn't taken as seriously; society doesn't treat women as fundamentally capable of being perpetrators of real, serious abuse or assault.

So, when a person who has been abused by a man develops a fear or distrust of men as a result, it's not just their individual trauma that influences that fear; it's the combination of (a) the fact that they personally experienced violence at the hands of a man, and (b) the fact that they are taught over and over and over again since day one that this is basically normal and inevitable and something any man might do.

(This isn't intended to discredit such trauma responses or deny any gendered violence statistics in real life, for the record; it's intended to illustrate that there is a strong socialization factor in why "I was abused by man/a man" so often translates in victims' minds to "therefore, I cannot trust men in general not to hurt me.")

The reason why I don't believe that Hux would develop a similar fear/distrust of men is because, as he was not raised in a society that treats violence as a Male Thing, he would have no reason to see his father's gender as a significant factor. In his culture, violence is something everybody is expected to be both a victim and a perpetrator of. The notion that "victimhood = feminine & perpetration = masculine" is simply not culturally present.

What is very much culturally present is the idea that violence is tied to hierarchy and rank. In the First Order, there is no societal expectation for women to endure mistreatment by men, but there is a societal expectation that citizens will endure mistreatment by their superiors. That authority gives people the right to treat their subordinates however they like, up to and including physical violence--and, while this one isn't touched on in canon as far as I know, likely sexual violence as well.

Abuse occurs (or rather, is commonly believed and expected to occur) not on a male-female axis, but on a superior-subordinate axis. We also know that most of the high-ranking officer ranks in the First Order are occupied by older officers, especially Civil War veterans who previously served the Empire.

What this means is that in terms of who Hux would have been conditioned to see as "potential abuser" material, it makes very little sense for him to associate his father's gender with that abuse; it makes a lot of sense for him to associate it with his father's age group, though. And with the idea of not being in charge. Any situation where Hux isn't the ranking officer in the room is, in his mind, a situation where somebody could feasibly hurt him, and those situations are likely (until he takes over the army) to involve older staff.

So the thing about this headcanon is that I do see why it's so popular...but I think it relies on a generous interpretation of exactly how much "safety" Hux ever had. Yes, the closest things he has to "positive" relationships are with Sloane and Phasma, but both of these relationships are explicitly transactional and Hux is aware of this. It's nice to think of Sloane as his mother figure and Phasma as his bestie-slash-sister-figure, but canonically speaking, they're coworkers Hux has an agreement with. They're allies, not family.

Additionally, I believe that absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence.

The First Order is quite gender-balanced. We see plenty of women in the ranks, at all levels of the chain of command. Stormtroopers, junior officers, supreme council members, and more importantly, there's nothing on-screen to indicate that this is unusual. The First Order's uniform is unisex, none of the characters ever draw attention to gender as something that matters in the First Order culturally speaking, there's just...no actual evidence of the First Order being a society that observes gender as something important.

Even Brendol Hux himself, as far as I know, never actually expresses any overtly gendered sentiments. His personality definitely aligns with a type of man that tends to be misogynistic and homophobic in real life, but in-universe, it seems like his issue with Armitage is less that "he's weak, and a man should be strong," and more that "he's weak, and a soldier should be strong." His behavior towards Phasma especially suggests to me that he prizes his idea of strength as a gender-neutral trait.

Basically every headcanon on the First Order caring about gender comes from comparing them to real-life political entities and ignoring whether there's any canon evidence for that comparison. Brendol's personality aligns with real-life misogynists, so he must diegetically be a misogynist; the First Order as a country has some parallels with Nazi Germany, which was (among other things) extremely patriarchal, so the First Order must be diegetically patriarchal; but in my opinion, what's actually on-screen and on-page strongly suggests that the First Order is a largely non-gendered society.

So with all that in mind, I don't think it makes sense for Hux, who was raised in the First Order, to view the abuse he's suffered as a gendered ordeal. He hasn't had any genuinely positive experiences with anybody of any gender, and we don't know that he hasn't had any negative experiences with women (although I concede that we don't know that he has, either).

I realised that Starkiller Base/Ilum was maybe the only planet aside from Arkanis that Hux ever really spent time living on. We don’t know how long he spent actually on the base but seeing how he’s credited with the creation of it, I think we can assume he spent some time there.

And then it was destroyed. And not only was it his greatest achievement (one he was convinced would a) secure his place in history and the Order and b) end the war) but also somewhere he had lived. Perhaps the first place he’d lived since Arkanis that wasn’t a ship.

I just had feelings about this and decided to inflict them on you 😂

I love feelings I love when characters suffer (insert fire emoji here)

I'll do you one better...this is admittedly a headcanon and not necessarily based on anything, but I like to headcanon that having a planet or system was sort of a national dream for the First Order.

After all, its citizens fit into the category of either (a) having left whatever planet they came from at an age where they were too young to even remember what it's like to live on a planet, or (b) they were old enough to remember and would very much like to return to normalcy. Despite all the other age-related divides, they can all agree: it would be nice if they weren't indefinitely space-bound.

Hux belongs to the "has basically spent his entire life in space" group; he was born on a planet, but like, how many people remember the first five years of their life? It's possible, but I personally like to think he barely even remembers Arkanis. He knows more than he remembers. To him, the idea of getting to live on a planet permanently is part of how he envisions "victory." The First Order reigns and their hegemony is so unchallenged the fleet has become basically the same as what it was under the Empire; a workplace.

Starkiller Base was supposed to be that planet. A superweapon, yes, a military base, obviously, but also, ideally, home. Someday. The beginning of the First Order transitioning from a space nation with ships for cities to a "normal" civilization with their own planet. They'd complete the superweapon part first, because that was higher-priority, but the vision was of the base as a real proper national capital.

Starkiller Base was Hux's magnum opus as a weapons engineer and a symbol of the First Order's collective goals. It was the first planet he ever lived on while being old enough to really appreciate the privilege of living on a planet.

100%, this is part of why it always raises my eyebrows when I'm reading a fic with Armitage in it where he gets unironically depicted as straight up Having Grown Up Rich. I'm always like "literally how? He's lived in space his entire life? Every adult he grew up around either actively hated him or saw him as a tool or political weapon? How is it even possible for him to have had access to material wealth as we would think of it? What even counts as privilege by the standards of a space-bound nation under austerity measures??" like obviously I would never like, go on somebody's fic and comment this, I don't want to be mean, but I'm just like...even if Brendol came from serious money, there's lowkey no canon-compliant way for the same to go for Armitage.

Hux's class background is something that is easy to miss because at least one official source described him as coming from a "privileged" background early on in the sequel era. I believe it was before Hux's backstory was as well-established, so there's an element of just straight up retconning to it. It's possible that Hux was originally intended to be a legitimately posh character and the various writers that gave him a backstory and lore over the years just...didn't realize.

After the end of the Galactic Civil War forced him to flee his home planet at an early age (5 or 6), Hux then spent "months" drifting through the Unknown Regions on a tiny ship meant to carry only a few people, packed to much higher than its capacity. After this, he spent the rest of his childhood in military training. As the First Order was completely space-bound and stuck in the Unknown Regions, even if Brendol came from a more posh background, there is basically no way Armitage could have enjoyed a similar upbringing as he was stuck in space full-time his entire life.

Hux resents the galactic upper crust because he sees them as (a) decadent and excessive, lacking restraint and hindering productivity in society, and (b) responsible for the political and economic issues plaguing the Outer Rim. Since he was born on an Outer Rim planet and raised in space, he also has a personal reason to feel this way, having experienced those issues firsthand.

Chapters: 7/? Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence 

A big part of the heart of why they hate each other comes down to ideological differences. Namely, Kylo doesn't really have an ideology, beyond "I can do whatever I want whenever I want no matter what and anything/anyone that gets in my way is an enemy to be cut down," whereas Hux swings the exact opposite way ("Everyone and everything in the galaxy including me must Serve A Purpose and Do A Job and anyone/anything that isn't productive should be fixed or disposed of"). Kylo's individualistic approach vs. Hux's extreme collectivism.

Both desire power, but they desire it for very different reasons. Hux is more able to work with the other power-seekers and ladder-climbers in the FO because at least they share some political goals in common; so long as Hux can keep them from succeeding at grabbing power at his expense, they can remain allies. Allies who don't like each other, but still productive. Somebody like Kylo, who desires power for its own sake and sees "getting stronger" as its own reward, is less cooperation-worthy.

Additionally, Hux carries a lot of personal resentment towards the Force. He doesn't do well with vague, cryptic, mystical stuff that deals in abstract concepts and grandiose "dark" and "light" spiels; he likes things to be tangibly explainable. He's an engineer and a naval architect, and also a massive control freak, so the Force is beyond his area of expertise, which he hates. The Force also gives Kylo telepathic abilities, which Hux hates because Hux's entire modus operandi throughout his career has relied on people not being able to read his mind. Kylo's Force powers are basically the Kryptonite to Hux's biggest political advantage.

Hux also really hates the galactic upper class, and Kylo is very blue-blooded and grew up wealthy on a Core planet, so I don't doubt that plays into Hux hating his guts too.

Another point is that they're both top-ranking "officers" who report to the same guy (Snoke). Since Kylo belongs to his own separate organization (the Knights of Ren) that works with the First Order but isn't under the Order's jurisdiction (they're under Snoke's personal jurisdiction), that means Hux has to put up with his antics and can't do anything about it, because Kylo is outside his chain of command.