[thrudgelmir2333]

"No Saints in Peace Times" - The Continuity of Sanctuary in Masami Kurumada's Writing

When you ask the question "Are there Saints in Sanctuary when there is no Holy War?" are you really asking just that? This is another Reddit-inspired post. I like doing these. Sometimes people actually do ask interesting questions about the Saint Seiya franchise that I like musing on, I just don't put all my thoughts into a response there cause Reddit in general isn't the best platform for essays. I also often get the feeling that this kind of 'overthinking' is frowned upon in that site. Recently someone was very surprised that I made a pot joke in response to a post about a weirdly colored frame of a character, like they expect me to write essays about the most minute things. I can only imagine because, to a lot of people, answering questions online is about posturing and signaling allegiences and not really having human thoughts about something that interests you. Someone asked on R/SaintSeiya if there are Saints operating in Sanctuary between Holy Wars. You know, if they stick around during those 240-year-long periods when Hades is sealed up and the "cameras are off". And I think it is an interesting question because, again, it's one of those lost world-building opportunities that Kurumada just kind of let the other authors who made the spin-off mangas answer for him. At least in story-telling, you know? As opposed to when he has one of those interviews where he thoughtlessly 'expands' on his story's lore, like when he told people that "Cosmos makes you have eternal youth" or that Gold Saint Cosmos had midlochlorians (or maybe that's just some kind of trauma memory from something else just as stupid he has suggested about his own characters)

This post is sort of going to be about all of that. Get ready for it to be long btw. (don't worry, I threw in a couple of images)

Fertility in World-Building

When people have asked me why I chose to write in Saint Seiya when I have such nasty things to say about it, I always say the same thing.

It's because it's a pretty damn fertile world.

Yes, it's fertilisers comes straight out of Masami Kurumada's ass, but hey, produce is produce.

Again, you don't come up with 2.1 million words (so far) to say about it without there being something special about what Kurumada has done. However, I want to draw an important distinction between that being the merit of his work or the merit of his lack of it. It's not so much that this incredible tree of ideas has been planted in it, but more so that it covers so much fucking ground in terms of creative landscapes, that it can't help BUT be fertile.

Think about it for a second; in Saint Seiya, just conceptually, there is Greek mythology, alchemy, weird Muvian people, Shinto and Buddhist influences from Kurumada's martial artist background (one of his few helpful contributions), Japanese corporatism, mistreated orphans, bizarre technology, power suits and an overall fusion of east and west that is found in the best world-built stories like One Piece.

And this without getting to the astrology.

Right! This is so my dad, I swear!

Wait, what? But that's the same as...

I have friends that love astrology. I have friends that call themselves astrologists. Proudly, so. I myself have a bit of a fascination with it.

But holy shit, is there a bigger field for personal speculation than astrology? This topic is so abstract, based on symbolism and subject to cultural backgrounds that it is the backbone of countless conspiracy theories, religions and lores. Not to mention a synonym for that horrible news-channel commentary-segment culture that now plagues everything from sports to politics.

Which is to say you can basically make up shit about any constellation and chances are people will just accept what you say. You can take astrology and pretty much say anything you want about what it means for Mars to be shining brighter and everyone even remotely interested will take you for your word.

In writing, astrology is the perfect vehicle to create a sense of instant spiritual meaning to your characters' designs and actions. It's like salt; you add just enough of it to the pot and even the most horrible cooking will suddenly seem 'ok'.

And this is all because astrology ultimately has a paradox inherent to it; that its simultaneously the most powerful force in the universe, capable of controlling our destinies all across the distant reaches of the universe, while also being the subtlest and most imperceptible one. My chances of winning the lottery are virtually zero, but that's okay, because it's the month of my Zodiac, so my 'luck' is unusually high. I am BOUND to get something. Right? Good luck proving me wrong.

It's religious thinking. It inflames the senses and gives us a sense that there is order to the chaos, all while making itself unfalsifiable. It's no surprise Saint Seiya is especially popular in societies still culturally tied to their religious rituals, even if abstractly, like Brazil and France.

So when you combine it with all those other elements I mentioned, it makes it so that the world of Saint Seiya has this unusually high potential. You can tell stories about technology, society, struggles between genders, the battle of what beauty means and epic accounts of wars against the Gods, all in one setting. So long as you have the right creative person at the helm.

Right.

What all these elements show is that there is no mystery to Saint Seiya's success. It had all the right ingredients after all. It just needed to be stirred right by someone in the position to do so. But once you capture that initial success, then comes the time to invest on it, to see it to term.

Kurumada, the Idea

So, to answer this question, let's talk about the writer for a moment (or two). Masami Kurumada is sort of a fascinating example of a mangaka. I'm a bit obsessed with the guy. He's one of those creatives that have birthed an enrapturing world out of their minds, like Athena sprung out of Zeus' head, and then just catastrophically failed to understand its meaning, implications or potential, like George Lucas or the Wizard Lady. But Kurumada is also one of the most confounding examples of it, because, as is typical of mangakas, not much is known or understood in the West of what kind of guy he is, or even what kind of creative person. This is just a reality about understanding the people who write and draw mangakas because, not only do they live in a pretty quiet society, socially speaking, usually with their own local social medias to boot, but they themselves typically are the quieter type of people. You know, the artists and the nerds.

So on top of the interpretative ambiguity that goofy characters like George Lucas inspire, there is this added layer of fog around Kurumada, especially in the West. You can make up all sorts of shit about what he might have said or done and chances are you will have reasonable plausability to believe it, or find it a positive or negative.

As a result, if you look up Kurumada and his career, at least through English sources, you'll find that a lot of the writing done about it is by fans. And as a result, it looks unprofessional at best and hegiographic at worst. Conversation about his life in social media dedicated to Saint Seiya carries this weird casual fanboy tone to it, describing his art style in an odd, opinionated way that doesn't exactly scream objectivity.

This, I know, is because to the eyes of people unimpressed by Kurumada, he's not worth writing about, which leaves the fans a bit of a monopoly in the practice of documenting the guy.

Why, just relatively recently, someone circulated a story on R/SaintSeiya that Kurumada not only got into a lot of fights, but pretty much badgered his way into Shueisha to get him his job. The post paints it as an act of badassery, like Kurumada was this confident guy who refused to accept that he got the boot from destiny, much like Seiya and many of his other protagonists when they affront their gods with their heroic defiance. The story is based on a blogpost celebrating Kurumada's 50th birthday with a thorough account of his life that is arguably better than anything in wikipedia, but still very flattering (more on that below) Here's the source paragraph for the Reddit thread's statements:

A sober account of events

You could read this very normal account as the story of Kurumada imposing himself into the mangaka industry with his sheer chadness, as the Redditer did.

OR, you could read it more as an editor feeling sorry for a very passionate artist and giving him a starting shot at the studio. Something he didn't even earn, if the aforementioned contest results are to be believed. Which is far more realistic, but less flattering to the 'idea of Kurumada'.

Ah, the ancient times! When animators could just force their way into animation and comic book studios, sleep at their desks and just be allowed to keep working for these companies! Or accost Walt Disney in the street and demand a job after shoving your dossier of animations in their faces. Or in Kurumada's case, 'showing your gumption'.

This is why you should always be very careful reading accounts of people's lives, especially in 'commemorative' pieces, and especially if they're done by fans. These things are usually more akin to publicity stunts than they are to legitimate documentation. More often than not they are vague and inform their tone with their pre-existing intentions.

However, this sort of lame deitification isn't limited to random social media posts. Here's an example talking about the way Kurumada draws from Wikipedia, the wiki everyone can edit. And yes, this was actually written in a site that is supposed to be about objective documentation:

Transcript of Kurumada Fanboying, found in the Wiki everyone can edit.

I want to make clear that despite my cynicism, whoever edited this page obviously had good intentions in mind. I'm sure they are wonderful people. It takes gumption to volunteer to do this sort of stuff, to borrow a term.

But this is just shit wiki work. I don't need to tell you that describing someone's artstyle as "sometimes can seem rough, but his improvement can be seen when comparing old works to new" isn't so much an objective description of the facts, but more so a subjective, insecure evaluation from someone clearly acting as a lawyer to Kurumada's work. On what's supposed to be the world's biggest online reference book. Hence the "citation needed". And some wonder why the franchise's wikis are equally filled with personal commentary on the show and its characters. People don't just put those up to annoy rival wikipedia editors, it's to point out they've done a shit research compilation in what's supposed to be a reliable source of information about someone. And discussion about Kurumada, not just his wikipedia page, is usually riddled with hegiographic tones, where he's described as someone "who has influenced the greatest names in manga today" or "once competed with the greatest". But it doesn't end there.

Seen above; paragraph of barely-conceiled speculation in Wikipedia, the wiki anyone can edit

I don't know about you, but half this stuff feels like a loose collection of 'impressions' of what's going on, based on uncited sources and a wonky timeline of events. It sounds less like a careful description of events, and more of an opinionated online article about the rise and fall of an industry artist's works.

This is, again, because a lot of the talking about Kurumada in the West is done by the fans of the height of his career. You're not going to find the name of a man born in the 50s who drew cartoons in the 70s and 80s in the mouths of people who acquired their taste in media in the 2000s. And that's okay. But if you care so much about it, you know, do a bit of a better job filtering what's factual from what isn't. It's not that hard!

Cause otherwise you get weirdos on Reddit who legitimately think that the only reason Saint Seiya isn't more successful is because 'It got screwed by the network' or that Kurumada is some kind of chad for basically pulling ahead of a bunch of other artists that did better work than he did. And then whine about why he can't compete in people's minds with Dragon Ball.

Usually, if you want accurate, unbiased information on what kind of guy Kurumada is, you need to go straight to the source; the man himself. Funnily enough, the only stuff you can find cited in Wikipedia about Kurumada is stuff describing things he's said in interviews or statements about organisations he's worked under, etc

Now, Kurumada is an award-winning mangaka. There's no doubt about his success and impact. Most of us will never seen even one percent of the triumph in life he has acquired, and that means something. The guy is referenced throughout anime, his characters have been used as templates for other great mangakas works (see my post about how Ikki may have influenced characters like Byakuya in Bleach) and many have cited him as an inspiration for their own careers in art, from mangas to cinema.

Poster Kurumada has made for the 2010 Movie "Clash of the Titans". Kurumada was contacted by Warner Brothers at the time to collaborate with Louis Leterrier's movie remake. Louis himself has stated Kurumada was an influence in his work

I mean, you don't get at least 4 other mangakas to write stories set in your world if you don't have some kind of talent, right? Look at all the people whose minds Kurumada has impacted! Perhaps the hegiographic descriptions are a bit much, but there's a root to why they are written?

This world that Kurumada has conceived must be wonderful to delve into, if it has seen so much success and praise. Surely when we dive into the matter, we will find depthful characters, a personal story of a hero Kurumada wanted to talk about and a setting where characters have multiple dimensions to them? We will surely find an answer to "Are there Saints in Sanctuary when there's no Holy War?"

Yeah...

Well, it's complicated.

The Writing of Kurumada

For those of you who don't know me very well, I write.

I'm not saying that as some kind of statement as to why my opinion is more valid, just to explain why this topic might be important to me.

I'm also not saying that I love writing. As someone once said:

So wise. Someone should put this in hyeroglyphs or something, seriously.

So what do I care about writing if I hate it? Well, this is because there is a difference between you loving something, and something being important to you. You can revolve your life about something that is important to you and still... ----ing... hate doing it. And how limited it is to conveying your thoughts and feelings.

That being said, it does put me in the weird position where I don't really respect any kind of laziness in writing and world-building, because if I was able to spend the last decade of my life writing 2.1 Million words for a franchise I don't even respect,... then someone else not even bothering to do proper world-building and yet being in some kind of position of authority over commenting on it does drive me a bit up the wall.

And, twist, Kurumada's 'world building' drives me up the fucking Wailing Wall. I can see Elysium from how high he drives me.

And no, I don't mean just the recent stuff.

On that topic, for those of you who don't know, Masami Kurumada, in the style of such respectable peers as George Lucas and the Wizard Lady, has spent the last 20-30 years of his life simultaneously not giving a shit about their Magnum Opus and interfering with it in the dumbest ways possible. From revealing that Saga has always just secretly been a "Force Baby" in the same manner as Anakin Skywalker, to stating that the reason Shion lives so long is because "Cosmos is just that convenient that it gives you a long life", Kuru seems to be on a mission to ruin the depth of his world with these milktoast, pandering concepts.

In my opinion, however, the problem stems from much further back, right to the early days of Saint Seiya. Could the signs of his lack-of-shit-given be there from the start? Let's investigate.

And what better place to start than the 50th anniversary account that the earlier Reddit post mentioned? It was so thorough, after all. And it's bound to portray him in a positive light.

Oh.

So the whole thing was an act of spite?

Don't worry, it gets worse.

Uh-uh... okay...

Wait, lol, what?

So... he just recycled a bunch of his own old ideas together?

It shouldn't? Why not?! lol

OH, so it's not laziness, because the people he's selling these old ideas to haven't read them in his other works??? W O W

So, what you could conclude from this, and allow me to influence your conclusion with my own (just like the commemorative piece above tried to), is that Saint Seiya wasn't conceived because Kurumada wanted to tell a story with rich characters that evolve in a dephful world.

It's because he was MAD his previous ideas didn't work with the public and so he manufactured them all into a friendlier, lazier package. One that he could sell to this dumb-fuck public that didn't like his stories.

And he made his whole success out of it.

Yes, this is the origin of Saint Seiya and its writing. The foundational spirit of the story millions of people love to this day (and that I spent half my life obsessing over). A guy sitting at his desk, conceiving characters for a mangaka he didn't want to make, all to chase an idea of success after basically giving up on his personal projects.

If you're the type, like me, that occasionaly peruses the fandom for stuff to talk about, do me a favor; from now on, if you ever see someone whine on the internet about why Saint Seiya can't compete with modern storytelling, just show them these wonderful nuggets. Show them how petty and selfish the foundational spirit of this tale was, how Kurumada didn't even make personal decisions on who should win the galaxian tournament rounds. How he left it to reader surveys, because to him, it didn't matter who won, so long as it was the most popular choice.

There was never any message, any curiosity about this world he was creating, any interest in exploring or discovering things in it. It was just a sad, spiteful, last-ditch attempt at success by a mangaka that didnt even earn his spot at Shueisha being gradually pushed out of the market to make it big during an era of relatively low creative competition.

Kurumada: "Oh, they want trash?! I'll give them trash!! I'll give them all the trash they wa- Oh, it's selling how much? I mean, this is a rich world, filled with wonderful characters! Like Saga! Btw, did you know Saga came from space?"

If you're wondering why this franchise has landed in the hands of people who don't care about anything but selling merch, this is it. It's because even the supposed guardian of the story's integrity didn't give a damn. And the worst part of it is that most of the sources detailing all of this treat it like an inspiring story. Because to them, it doesn't mean anything, because Saint Seiya's narrative value, it's depth in writing, is already decided upon by a combination of its success, nostalgia and how shiny the armors look.

Okay, Thrud, what does this have to do with anything? "Are there Saints in Sanctuary when there's no Holy War?" or not?

Don't rush me! I'm getting to it!

The Price for lack of vision

Hopefully now you understand why I started this post with two sections basically dumping on Kurumada's whole career. It's to make the point that he's far, far, far from being the right person to fully capitalise on these successful elements Saint Seiya has in its soup in the long term. Kurumada is a jock that happens to know how to draw, and the anime injected enough catholic fantasy into their adaptation to ensure Latin America would always be a viable market. Masami didn't even have enough confidence in Saint Seiya to pick by his own vision which characters should advance in the story during the first arc of his epic tale!

So imagine trusting someone like that to write compelling, rich story arcs.

Or understand the differences between Dante's Inferno and the Greek myths of hell, or how they collide in storytelling.

Or taking a comment about how Shun is an LGBT symbol without doing something spiteful in return, like giving him a two-chapter girlfriend named after the interviewer's magazine?

Or imagining what Sanctuary is like for its characters when there isn't a Holy War going on?

And speaking of characters, to pull another Reddit post that annoyed me (mostly from how utterly dumb and caveman-spirited it is), some meme-manufacturing dummy only interested in farming karma made the shallow comparison that Shiori's Lost Canvas Gold Saint characters would be a good replacement for Kurumada's characters in his story.

Moments like this make me wish I was Palpatine falling down the well.

There's a lot wrong with this suggestion of swapping the Sanctuary Arc's characters with Lost Canvas, the worst being that Deathmask, of all the characters in Sanctuary Arc, should be replaced by Manigoldo. I'm not going to go in-depth about how terribly that would work, but I just want to show how the person who made the meme is signalling to a culture of people who thinks the quality of characters is measured not by their utility and effectiveness to story arcs, but by weather or not they are 'badass'. In their minds, all Manigoldo really has over Deathmask is that A) he was an antagonist instead of a villain and B) he briefly fought Thanatos, the Death God (and lost). And that's enough for them to be a 'better character'.

But while the post is just something the author thoughtlessly created for the purpose of making a number of community approval go up, it also points towards the fact that there is a generalised insatisfaction in a lot of Saint Seiya fans about its characters. I would posit that a lot of the reason so many gravitate to Lost Canvas (even though Saintia Sho is better imo) as a comparison of "Saint Seiya being done well" is because it was the first to show that Saint Seiya could be capitalised on to create a story a bit more character-driven.

Which is to say Lost Canvas isn't great, just that it's better than what we had at that point.

The truth is, people are passionate about Saint Seiya and they want to see its potential realised, even if for silly, Dragon-Ball-fans-dunked-on-me ways. They want to see their enjoyment of it validated, elevated to cultural relevance. Some of my most popular posts online about Saint Seiya are posts that... accidentally make Saint Seiya seem smarter than it is.

So, when you ask the question "Are there Saints in Sanctuary when there's no Holy War?" are you really asking just that?

Writing-in-Depth

That's a warfare pun.

See, defense-in-depth was a style of battle ordering where you deliberately arranged the outer layers of your army to be weak, so as to lure your enemy to attack deeply into your center, allowing you to surround them from your stronger positions and....

Oh, whatever. You don't care about that.

When people talk about 'hidden depths' in a character, usually they refer to discovering that a seemingly superficial character actually has a compelling motive for their seemingly superficial actions. You observe a character, see them doing something strange routinely, don't pay any attention to it, and then you discover its because someone once told them it made their spouse smile, or something. My favorite example is Senor Pink, from One Piece.

Senor Pink in his natural state, surrounded by fangirls

Senor Pink is a wild character. He dresses like a baby, has a baby suckler, wears sunglasses, works for one of the most ruthless villains in all of One Piece and has a Devil Fruit that lets him swim through land. And he's 100% serious about all of those things. This is not a gag he's pulling. This dude is dedicated to this shtick and god help you if you laugh at it.

He's also one of the most surprising and beloved side characters in all of One Piece, a story celebrated for its character twists and turns.

I'd advise you to read up on him, but not only is the picture above worth a thousand words, but you'd risk spoiling yourself a pretty neat surprise about why Senor Pink is the way he is. I will offer a hint in the image below, though.

One of the few female characters in One Piece that doesn't totally look like either Nami or Robin

The Senor Pink backstory was a pleasant surprise to a lot of people. Many already liked him for his outrageous design and attitude to his job, but it was also unexpected that such a touching story would be told about a guy inserted into one of the most villainous crews in One Piece. All his coworkers and friends are sadists, liars, manipulators, murderers, torturers, bullies and tyrants, but Senor Pink transcended his context as a character and showed a depth no one expected in him, to the point it was almost surprising a guy like him still worked for Donquixote Doflamingo.

This doesn't mean that in order to have depth in your characters you need to trick your audience. It just means that you have to show they are about something a little bit more than just their names and their jobs. We, the audience, assumed limitations on Senor Pink based on superficial context, and then discovered he had the depths of a human being worried about daily life, loved ones and loved things.

That, in turn, helps paint a grander picture that we could potentially expect that out of any character in One Piece, even the most unassuming ones. Eichiro Oda demonstrated that there is no reason to think there haven't been 1000 Senor Pinks throughout the story. Through the depth of its characters, the world building is given depth. Meanwhile;

Saint Seiya characters in the wild, doing their mating call

You wanna know what they're weeping so hard about? You really wanna know? They're crying that they have to go kill Athena during the Hades Arc. See, Hades ressurrected them and... it's a long story okay? What matters is that they are invading Sanctuary as Specters, hereby becoming traitors to their honor as Gold Saints. The honor of their jobs.

They don't even know Saori that well, btw. That guy on the right? His name is Camus. He's never even MET Saori. He doesn't know what she's like, or the speeches of motivation she's given or even who her favorite boy to whip is (Saint Seiya joke, Im sorry if you don't get it).

He just knows she is Athena. So he cries. Which is to say Camus cries because he's a Gold Saint and so he's supposed to. Not because Saori means something special to him personally. Camus has never stated anything about himself that indicates he gives two shits about anything other than moralising Hyoga for...

...for crying about his mom? Wait, what? Isn't that sort of what he's doing here?

Wait, what's going on here?! Why is Kurumada's writing like this?!

This, my friends, is where we get to the point of this Thrumblr post.

Are there Saints in Sanctuary during Peace?

So, "are there Saints in Sanctuary outside of Holy Wars?"

What I believe the reddit poster was asking, in a small way, was if there is a world beyond what we are shown in the cartoon that Kurumada has envisioned? Does the writing of Saint Seiya, or even of its spin offs, thread towards an unseen dimension, a hidden world-building depth, that we can all be confident in?

Does the story of these characters continue once the curtain closes on Saga's reign, or Julian Solo's rampage? Or does it all blink into the next conflict?

This question speaks to matters of temporal permanence of ideas in a story, of course, of consistency. In a way it's a test to wether or not its worth looking into the story a bit deeper for greater meaning, or a personal message from the author. Is the story smarter than it looks? Does this imaginary world keep on spinning after the camera cuts to black? I'm afraid to say, no. It doesn't.

Not in the minds of its writers anyway.

Obviously there is continuity the technical way, because it makes sense to be, but it doesn't exist in any imagined or thought-out sense, which is the most important. It all just passes by like Harry Potter's summers at the Dursleys.

This is because the world of Saint Seiya doesn't know what its characters are other than action pieces IN holy wars. They are power rangers, going from episode to episode, battle to battle, uninterrupted. While the occasional moment of break exists, there is no 'living' in piece. We aren't shown what these characters are or what lives they've lived when they're not, because they were imagined by someone who never intended to 'create a world'.

Tragically, even Shiryu, the best character in the franchise, only has a simple farmer life with Shunrei in rural china to look forward to. Not that we're shown a whole lot of it, of course. This, obviously, before he gets called back to do his duty.

Go to her, Shiryu! Go to "Sunrei", whoever she is! Leave this shit-show behind!

In One Piece, we can imagine what happens in the entire world while Luffy and his crew battle Kaido in Wano for a year. We picture gears turning and characters moving because, countless times, Oda, who is passionate about his world, has shown us in side stories and catch-up chapters what they have been up to, and the impact it all had in the main characters without them even realising it. Meanwhile, Kurumada had an entire storyline of Shun being Hades' vessel and ikki failing to rescue him, and neither character got to exchange a serious conversation of confrontation later when met with Hades personally. It's like it didn't even matter to them, or that it didn't happen, because the whole thing was just a temporary fancy in the author's head.

There's no continuity to things, no permanence of objects. Things happen, but they then don't continue or matter. Characters rise and fall like the passing of the tides, barely making a dent in our memory.

At the end of every arc, when Saori and her Saints pose to the camera and it all fades to black, the world ceases to, indeed, exist. Sanctuary dies. It disappears from the imagination and lives no life until the curtains reopen. An absent of war in the characters lives means an absence of meaning, of pertinence, of life and character and depth.

There are no Saints in peace times.

Thrudgelmir2333

Post Scriptum

Now, there could come the day that someone could pose this question to Kurumada. "Kurumada-sensei, are there Saints in Sanctuary between Holy Wars?"

You can already imagine what the answer might be. "Why, yes, of course, and they also hold wrestling tournaments in the style of the greco-romans. Also, have I mentioned that Gold Saints are pre-destined to become so and Aiolia was struck by a Thunderbolt of Zeus when he was a child? What? No, I don't remember who June is."

[class1akids]

I'm sorry if I'm showing my age, but do people not recommend fanfics in fandoms anymore? I was looking for Todoroki/Bakugou recs but it's mostly the fics itself. How do you find content? I tried going to the tags on Ao3 but it was overwhelming.

I think it has to do with how little attention a fic-rec post gets in general compared to the work it takes to put it together... 

I don’t really know of a TDBK rec blog as such (shout if someone has one!!!), but I personally do fanfic rec posts fairly often. 

I have Weekly Fic Rec lists, with lots of TDBK in it, which I make once I have enough stuff bookmarked to post it.

I also have a Master List, with some of my all-time faves.

The AO3 tags can indeed be overwhelming. Personally when I find a writer I like, I subscribe to them, go through their other fics and then also their bookmarks to find other content I might like. This has always been the most productive way to find things I like. 

AO3 has a pretty good filtering system - so you can try to focus your search within the tag (find sub-tags you like like domestic fluff or soulmates or whatever, narrow the time period you search in, set the word count, etc.) 

You can also try to check out the different AO3 collections, especially for TDBK events, like these ones: Todobaku Month, TDBK Big Bang. 

If anyone has any other tips, please chip in!!! I’m also happy to spread the word about any tdbk ficrec blogs or collections. 

[purusintellectus]

Koreatown: a comedy about serious things

a feature length movie where some acidheads accidentally dose a cop with LSD | Check out 'Koreatown: a comedy about serious things' on Indiegogo.

Dear friends, please consider supporting this fundraising campaign. This is an inclusive comedy about Koreatown, a neighbourhood in LA that’s changing too quickly. Any share or donation, no matter how small, helps.

[purusintellectus]

Ok, let’s forget about the “treading wheat” bit for a minute and focus on Heero’s and Duo’s matching bracelets, shall we? XD

[incorrectgundamwingquotes]

Child Soldiers in Gundam Wing

So everyone knows the young age of the Gundam Pilots across…. pretty much all series in the Gundam franchise… but I’m gonna focus on Gundam Wing for this; namely, on the use of child soldiers in Gundam Wing.

I was wondering about the average age of a soldier in the GW series. It seems the age of some of the highest ranks (Treize, Une, Zechs, Noin) were incredibly young. Treize was only 24, and the others 19. I know the Gundam Pilots were not considered traditional soldiers, so it’s possible 15 year old’s were still considered too young for actual warfare – but then you have volunteer soldiers like Hilde, and she was only 15 too.  The young age of the soldiers seems to be consistent, because you have both Zechs and Noin, who were involved in combat operations – when they were only 13/14 years old.

I think the prevalent use of child soldiers in the AC era shows just how awful things were in the series proper.

Word vomit under the cut:

Keep reading

[arbutus-blossoms]

Hey guys, sign my guestbook. // Please do not repost nor remove captions.

[nos-ag-blog]

Animedia 7/2018 Gundam wing ‘s boys Summer time!

[incorrectgundamwingquotes]

I help with WHAT

[purusintellectus]

I think this might be based on a mistranslation (?) of and a reference to an idiomatic expression in poetic Japanese: 麦踏み (treading on wheat, i.e. the practice of stepping on wheat buds in early spring), in the haiku tradition, means ‘spring’. An oxymoron, for the Grim Reaper – but a very appropriate one for Duo. 

[purusintellectus]

Truth in Legends: Jacen S. – Some Quick Speculations about Rebels, TLJ Novelisation, and the Knights of Ren

Spoilers for the Rebels finale and the TLJ novelisation the ahead. 

This has been a busy busy fortnight towards the end of a busy busy term; long story short, I managed to catch up with Rebels only last night – and I am still reading TLJ. 

I am still high on my Kalluzeb feels – I called it years ago, as most people at the Ice Moon episode (I have a feeling that from now on it's going to be known as "The Honey (Ice) Moon Episode"). But something stood up to me while I was watching that heart warming happy ending for all: Hera's and Kanan's son, Jacen Syndulla. Jacen S. 

Those of you familiar with the Old Legends know well of another Jacen S.: Jacen's Solo, aka Darth Caedus, aka The Jedi Killer, i.e. Han's and Leia's son who falls to the Dark Side – basically the Legends version of Ben Solo/Kylo Ren. Is their homonymy merely a coincidence or is this a case of nomen omen?

 Well, since the ability to wield the Force is connected with the midichlorians and hence can be inherited by blood, Jacen Syndulla is likely to be Force-sensitive just like his father. He is also exactly Armitage Hux's age, and therefore, if he has any formal training, he is very likely to be at Luke's Jedi Academy in the same years when Ben is there. Do you see where I am going?

Assuming that the Padawans who defected with Bed are the Knights of Ren, it quite possible for Jacen to have been among their numbers. 

 Whatever happened to the Knights of Ren is still unknown, but we do know from the TLJ novelisation that they are not part of the equation anymore – Hux seems to think that the last of the Force users in the Galaxy, besides Luke and Rey, are Snoke and Kylo. 

 Now, whatever happened to Ezra and Thrawn, we know that they are alive after the finale and presumably by the time Ashoka and Sabine begin their search for Ezra at some point after the battle of Endor. 

 This is wild speculation, but we know that Ezra, Ashoka and the Knights of Ren are not around by the time of TFA and TLJ. Where are they? What happened to them? 

I don't know, but it would make for a really good story if Ezra were to come back and had to face Jacen, his master's son and the closest thing to a younger brother that Ezra is going to get. That would be top shelf drama, with good conflict, family bonds beyond blood (and beyond the Skywalker soap opera) and a good explanation about what became of everybody.

What do you folks think?

[purusintellectus]

What’s in a Name? – “Armitage”

As promised, here's my "Armitage" ramble. I know I am so late to the party that it's not even fashionable anymore, but better late than never, no?

Some TLJ spoilers ahead.

  Short (sort of personal) premise. While I didn't mind Hux in TFA, my fascination with this character began with the TFA novelisation – there, he is intelligent, competent and sensible – and it only grew stronger and deeper with his other appearances throughout the canon novels. I started reading about Fandom!Hux and Kylux much, much later; therefore –  long story short – when Aftermath: Life Debt came out, I didn't have any particular commitment to the "Brendol II" theory and I was immediately on board with "Armitage". I am aware that many other fans had an entirely different experience and that the "Armitage" reveal was disappointing for them; they have my sympathy and my understanding – were my circumstances different, who knows where I would stand now.

Yet, I happen to like "Armitage" quite a lot, for the following reason: notoriously, Star Wars' names are descriptive names – i.e. they are somewhat connotative and immediately bring to mind what the character is all about – and "Armitage" is both as descriptive as a three hours documentary and still ambiguous.

At least to my deranged mind, "Armitage" suggests three main ideas: (1) "Army"; (2) "Hermitage"; (3) "Amrita".

    (1) Army

Is this on the nose? Undoubtedly. But we are talking about a franchise in which: Skywalkers were supposed to be called "Starkillers" (yes, the naming of Starkiller Base is an homage to that first concept); the Dark Side is called the Dark Side, just in case you were tempted to embrace any morally ambiguous reading about Force users' factions; and people call "Death Star" their super-weapons of planetary destruction – ok, imperial PR person who okayed that name, you did a great job: that doesn't sound ominous, scary and just plainly evil at all... Overall, names in Star Wars are not exactly subtle.

On the one hand, Armitage has been raised to be an officer – in a way, he is the ultimate experiment in Brendol's training programme. On the other hand, he is the de facto leader of the FO's military forces. The TLJ Visual Dictionary has confirmed what was already evident, i.e. that for all intents and purposes General Hux should be Grand Marshal Hux, but Snoke refuses to give him his rightful title. Besides, as I have been writing elsewhere (here and here), the fact that the FO's army answers primarily to Hux is likely going to be the basis for a new interesting dynamic between Hux and Kylo – not to mention that it's probably the main reason Hux's still alive... Nomen omen.

    (2) "Hermitage"

While Armitage Hux is a masterpiece (definitely in more than one sense), I am not referring to the St Petersburg museum, but to the main acceptation of the term, i.e. the dwelling of a hermit or an remote and isolated place, or a retreat. What does this reading tell us about General Hux?

(2.1) First, Armitage Hux grew up in exile and on the run, in the Unknown Regions, on ships in remote sectors of uncharted space far away from the rest of the Galaxy and what used to be home. 

(2.2) Furthermore, Armitage Hux is somewhat removed from his fellow human beings, beginning with his family (it's canon that Brendol hates him). In other words, Hux – just like Kylo, just like Rey, just like Finn – is incredibly alone.  (Basically, this new trilogy is about very lonely people with lots of issues). Hux is a General above the generals, he is only equal being – until very recently – Kylo Ren. While Phasma has been an ally in recent years, she doesn't seem to have been a friend, not really. As far as we know, the only meaningful relationship that Hux seems to have in canon is with Rae Sloane, the mother and protector he had never had before her – and as far as we know, whatever happened there still stings (see the infamous "robe conversation" between Cardinal and Armitage in the Phasma novel ). Hux seems to want attention, love or at least appreciation – from his father, from Snoke, from Kylo, from the entire bloody Galaxy if that could help – but he never seems to fit in, not really.

(2.3) Or, for the sake of completeness, Armitage Hux could end up being a retreat (other meaning of "hermitage"), the secret refuge, for someone else. (Go ahead, shippers! Have fun!)

    (3) "Amrita"

The following section is more speculative than the previous two. And it is mostly for those of you who enjoy the idea of Hux being somehow connected to Palpatine. While I am not a devoted supporter of Palpatine!Hux theories, I like to toy with the idea for the sake of argument  – and this is an argument surprisingly easy to support: half jokingly, I have done so here and I am definitely going to post more on the subject.

On top of Armitage's operatic conception ("a kitchen lady" sounds incredibly unlikely and melodramatic), of Brendol's hate for his son (why?), and of the fact that Brendol was running Project Harvester (training Force sensitive children) on Arkanis (dedicated post coming soon), you can add Armitage's name to the repertoire of reasons you might have to cheer for Palpatine!Hux.

Naboo names tend to be Sanskrit based: Padmé Amidala, Sheev (!), etc.

Amrita ( अमृत) is the Sanskrit word for ambrosia, the nectar of immortality, and hence for immortality itself. The metathesis of position, in this instance between "m" and "r" (Amrita >> Armita[ge]..), is one of the most common phonetic phenomena in Indo-European languages.

If you want to believe that General Hux is somehow connected to the old Emperor (a clone, a relative, etc.) and he is destined to rule over the Galaxy even by Palpatine's plan... well, he has the right name for that.

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[purusintellectus]

your dumb kylux is dumb huxs a nazi ur meta suks

Hello Anonymous,

Capital letters, punctuation, and a little bit of grammar would have been appreciated.

I have two bachelor’s degrees, two master’s degrees and a PhD; I might still be dumb, but a bunch of very prestigious universities beg to disagree.

Kylux is a very interesting pairing and an incredibly creative, intelligent, and meditative fandom, full of brilliant and talented artists, writers and fans who care deeply and intelligently about Star Wars; in other words, it doesn’t strike me as dumb at all. In this case, I do beg to disagree.

Hux is a fictional military leader with a very complicated background and a difficult upbringing. While he is responsible for an abominable fictional war crime, there are not the social, historical or political condition to call him a Nazi in any meaningful acceptance of the term. Besides, the First Order doesn’t seem to show, as far as I know, any of the speciesists proclivities of the old Empire.

[purusintellectus]

On Ben’s Calligraphy Kit and the Ancient Jedi Texts in TLJ: an educated guess

Or a fan-theory, if you prefer. Obviously, spoilers ahead.

Keep reading

[purusintellectus]

Upon further consideration...

... if those manuscripts actually were Ben Solo’s schoolwork, they might have already been on the Millenium Falcon for a long time. 

We know that the Millenium Falcon was no longer in Han’s possession by 28 ABY, i.e. by the time Ben was 24-ish, but those books might have been there for years before then, the long forgotten homework of young Ben going home for a break. 

[purusintellectus]

Hi! I love your meta. Your post on Hux in TLJ really helped me enjoy the movie and the one on Ben's calligraphy is very insightful, I hadn't thought of the implications. You are a gift to this fandom! Any more content coming up?

Hello, Anon! 

Thank you for your message: I am glad to be of help and sincerely flattered!

I have never been very active on tumblr, but I am still riding the TLJ hype, I guess – I really need to go watch it again asap!

As of late, I have been incredibly busy with work and research, but the holidays are usually the time to catch up… with my papers! Nevertheless, I do plan to post more meta soonish. On top of my to do list, I have a post about Hux’ mother and one about Armitage’s name (yes, I know I am late to the party, but still…), hopefully before the new year. Fingers crossed.

[purusintellectus]

On Ben’s Calligraphy Kit and the Ancient Jedi Texts in TLJ: an educated guess

Or a fan-theory, if you prefer. Obviously, spoilers ahead.

We caught a glimpse of Ben’s calligraphy kit and the Visual Dictionary brought it to our attention. Why?, I asked myself. It is true that the entire point of the Visual Dictionary is to focus on the little and apparently insignificant details, but what if this detail is not irrelevant at all?

It has already been noted by several critics and fans how practicing calligraphy could either have been something that Ben Solo enjoyed or an exercise in patience and control assigned to him by Luke. Unless Ben Solo had an entirely different temperament from Kylo Ren’s, I find the second hypothesis more likely. 

Bear with me.

On the one hand, practicing penmanship is usually done by copying something and, if the entire point of the exercise is to help a problematic student, that something often is an edifying text: by copying it, the student is expected to meditate on it. Very old school, yes. But, hey, Luke’s Jedi education was a condensed crash course with a 900 year old teacher who had a tenuous grasp of Basic syntax and really liked piggyback rides: you can’t expect Luke Skywalker to be the finest pedagogue in the Galaxy.

On the other hand, TLJ holds some manuscripts in a place of honour, namely the ancient Jedi texts.

Now, those manuscripts were supposed to have been destroyed by Luke and Yoda with lightening, fire and all – in a very nice scene that leaves us with the feeling that there should have been marshmallows involved here. Yet, later on, we see a stack of manuscripts, looking very much like those ancient Jedi texts, in a drawer on the Millenium Falcon, and we assume that either Rey had grabbed them before Luke and Yoda decided to improvise a bonfire party or that they are there because of some Force-magic/Jedi devilry (this morning I am channelling my internal Thrawn more than usual).

But. But. But. What if those are not the exact same books, but another copy  that Rey found (possibly stored somewhere in the room assigned to her) and grabbed, knowing that she was not stealing the only and original manuscripts? Then, the fact that young Ben had to practice calligraphy might be very very relevant indeed: he could be the copyist of those manuscripts currently in Rey’s possession. 

That could be interesting and, overall, this might not be the last we hear about Ben’s calligraphy.

[purusintellectus]

Apology of Armitage Hux, or: Why TLJ Hux is not as bad as it might seem

Obviously, spoilers ahead. Some quick notes about our favourite general.

Keep reading

[theghostupstairs]

@krispyscreams @permian-tropos @mint-and-parsley discuss gang

[permian-tropos]

My opinion: I didn’t think TLJ “seemed bad” when it came to its portrayal of Hux. I don’t think it was obliged to make him look cool or powerful or special. I quite enjoyed watching him have a bad time. Maybe I’m just really into watching villains be stressed out or humiliated. They can still be intimidating in their ability to cause harm to the heroes and to innocent people, but the only reason I liked Hux to begin with was because he spends so much of TFA looking stressed.

The Hux from TFA isn’t as cool and collected and cunning as people remember. He provokes the ire of both Kylo and Snoke and the end result is him looking mad and bitter and petty over and over. He never has the upper hand. He is always being disrespected. His only triumphant moment is Starkiller, which is artificial and staged. 

I saw some post that was like “Rian should have read fanfics to see how you could portray Hux humorously without making him the butt of every joke.” To which I respond. God no. Canon Hux shouldn’t be written with the favoritism and adoration that people write fanfic Hux. 

Disrespect that boy. He killed like a gazillion people.

This is probably an unpopular opinion among Hux fans but @kylorendeer did ask for it.

[purusintellectus]

Occasionally, there is a deep satisfaction in watching villains getting humiliated and ridiculed: it is entertaining in its own right and it relieves us of most of the guilt that normally comes with rejoicing of someone else's suffering or laughing at their expenses. For me at least, this works extremely well for a certain type of antagonist, namely the slimy, crawling and petty kind, and not so well for the antihero or greater-than-life-but-hideously-evil kind of bad guy. Yet it comes with a cost, a late fine of sorts: delayed empathy. Delayed empathy is a high price to pay and a double-edged sword to wield, because it makes your readers or your audience change their perspective along the way: even when the bad guys completely deserve being ridiculed, sometimes the prolonged humiliation kicks a reaction within the reader or watcher, a little resurgence of empathy for them or of pride in their stead. Take Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, for example: at some point down the road, I start feeling sorry for him; a few miles on, and I realise that Antonio (I really, really love that character: he is in the top ten on my "characters I want to play at least once before I die" list) is actually a terrible person who sort of deserves all of the melancholy and heartbreak he gets; and by the end, not only can't I blame old Shylock for wanting the pound of flesh he is entitled to, but I almost cheer for him (I am a pretty horrible person too). Sure, there is the humiliating and ridiculing of some villain done only for laughs and levity, but the real mastery – like the Bard's – lies in making it into something more too, something that either makes us relate more to that character or that tells us something else about them – in the way they endure it, react to it, and get transformed by it. The audience gets to laugh, but on stage there is a rite of passage going on. And as all rites of passage, sometimes the initiate gets through it changed, renewed, and stronger; some other times, they are broken. Shylock is broken. What will Armitage be?

I think that most of us would like to imagine Hux as a Jago, an Edmund, or a Richard III: the kind of antagonist greater than life. I like Armitage Hux because, in him, there is a little bit of Shylock too, and that makes him more human, relatable and interesting as a character. However, personally – and this is just my opinion: I respect and have a great interest in any different point of view – I don't think that Hux (both in TFA and TLJ) is all or even mostly a Shylock, so to speak.

[Cards on the table: I think that TFA is a mediocre movie at best and I consider the novelization to be infinitely better and more entertaining. I fell in love with the SW universe as a kid, when TPM came out. Yes, I am a prequels girl. What can I say? I was the right age. I am an old Legends nerd and my passion was rekindled by the new books, rather than TFA – I was quite nonplussed by that movie. Therefore I will be referring mostly to the TFA novel.]

In TFA Hux is tense, of course he is: this is the first open attack on such scale carried out by the First Order and, even if he has been trained and has been a ranking officer for most of his life (since he was about four, for Force's sake!), he is untested on this kind of battle ground and with this kind of stakes. I would be falling apart with stress too. Moreover, we know – from the visual dictionary, from the novel, and from Before the Awakening – that Starkiller was Hux' pet project. He came up with it for the most interesting of reasons: it's not that we get to be super extra evil by wiping out an entire star system; no, his reasoning is that we get to end a war with a single shot, before that war can even begin. That's cold, calculating, and quite elegant – if you can turn a blind eye on multiple-planet size mass murder, that is. Someone coming up with such an idea for such reasons is not a snivelling villain practicing the evil laugh in the dark for evil sake, rather they are cold, calculating and efficient. And quite a bit disturbed and sociopathic too. But hey, being a mildly genocidal war-criminal doesn't imply that you are incompetent or bad at your job. And I say "mildly" because it looks like in Hux' deranged brilliant mind that's a reasonable price to pay, the one that would spare more lives in the long run. There is nothing petty or crawling there, quite the opposite: it has its own kind of sick nobility. Certainly, it shows at least a tactical mind. There is a dry pragmatism in the few snippets we se of Hux' military tactics that makes him more nuanced and interesting – character wise and from an ethical point of view. During the Starkiller ordeal, in several occasions we can see that Hux is neither a sycophant nor scared, but he tries to be reasonable and strategic, even in the face of Snokes' orders. For example, when Snoke orders Hux to fire Starkiller again Ileenium system, Hux tells him outright that it is a terrible waste and that the could just target the base with a couple of stardestroyers. That doesn't look particularly scared of Snoke to me, nor does he seem especially unreasonable and committed to bring forth destruction for destruction's sake. Overall Hux doesn't seem to be particularly unreasonable, incompetent or unwarrantedly arrogant – Kylo definitely outshines him on that front. Hux' orders, especially in the book version, are sensible, sound, and complete: calculate the trajectory of the wreckage; bring biological proof that the fugitives are dead, a couple of skulls would be ideal; the Ileenium system, etc. ...

I am not saying that Hux is actually the perfectly collected, controlled and cunning fanfiction version of himself: while we know from the books (take Phasma, for example) that he is undoubtedly very cunning, he is just as collected and controlled as an ambitious, rational young man can be in the face of two megalomaniac Force users. Armitage Hux has a bunch of personal issues (with his father, with the Force, and with his mother – I should definitely write something about Hux mother – and with a life of abuse) to deal with, and it is interesting that we can catch a glimpse of those issues even in the movies, through Hux' interactions with Snoke an Kylo. Armitage Hux is the guy who destroys the Hosnian system without remorse, because that is the efficient thing to do; and who squabbles with Kylo for the scraps of Snoke's attention and praise. He is also the guy who forces even the stormtroopers who work in sanitation to listen to his monologues explaining the structure and the workings of Starkiller (see Before the Awakening), because it's safer for all hands on deck to know what to do in case of an emergency and because he is a huge nerd. Armitage Hux is a layered character, just as anyone of us: it's the fact that he is neither perfect nor the all-knowing and almighty puppet master that makes him a well written, interesting and somewhat relatable character – even if he is absolutely a terrible, terrible human being.

That's the kind of villain I like: someone who is smart, who has potential, and who believes he/she is right, but who is not perfect, invincible, untouchable or in absolute control. That's human, that's relatable, and that makes for a good antagonist. That is the kind of villain – the relatable one – that TFA tries to incarnate in Kylo. IMHO, in the movie, despite Diver's stellar performance, the result is very forced and irritating, for me at least. After TFA, leaving the cinema, my first complaint was about Kylo. I had to read the novelisation and start considering Ben Solo's background before I could find Kylo Ren interesting. On the other hand, they didn't try at all with Hux, not in the movie, and yet despite his yelled, over the top, and veeeery stagy speech, he resonated much more with my sensibility: he was interesting exactly because he showed some depth despite being portrayed in the flat light of the prissy two dimensional villain. Hux' Starkiller speech is indeed incredibly theatrical and artificial. But there are two buts. On the one hand, the extended version of the speech, in the novelisation of TFA, sounds way less crazy than the movie one, and it presents surprisingly sound socio-political arguments – maybe it is because the General is not yelling them like a possessed man, though – that make the FO's politics look more like space Socialism/Communism (of the Stalinist kind, sure, but still...) rather than space Nazism. On the other hand, the theatre and the opera in particular have been a huge element of the imperial narrative since Palpatine's days. IMHO, the scene with Sheev and Anakin at the Opera ("Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?") is one of the highest moments of the entire SW franchise – and Ian McDiarmid is absolutely sublime. As we have seen in the Aftermath trilogy, Sheev thinks of himself as an opera director and is a chess player. Rationality, calculation, and melodrama. There might be something more going on year, with the next generation. On a final note, the whole kitchen-lady story for Armitage's mother sounds extremely operatic too. But this is a post for another time, i.e. after I am done grading all the finals I need to go through asap.

The main point I tried to argue with these unstructured and rambling notes is that, at the end of the day, Hux is a complex and interesting character in canon. It's not that we should have expected TLJ to make him look cool or an almost invincible super-villain, because he is not. The only reasonable expectation any audience can and should have of any narrative is for it to develop its characters consistently and coherently, to show them growing and evolving, and to treat them and the audience with the due narrative respect – which, among other things, implies not reducing some character, who previously was not particularly comedic, to a mere comic relief. I think that TLJ, as far as Hux is concerned, delivers on this front. Hux was stressed in TFA; that's Act I, the starting situation. Now, in Act II, we see him crumbling and partially failing, while trying to keep it together; but, hey, we see everybody crumbling and failing in this movie: the main themes in TLJ are hubris and failure (in this sense, TLJ is authentically tragic, as any second act should be). Act III should be about getting up and moving past that failure, reacting. Even if in Episode IX we should expect the FO to fail in the end, I have hope for a good reaction from General Hux.

[purusintellectus]

Hey! I really liked your meta on Hux, it's helping me get past my hatred of Rian for making him comedic relief. Do you think Hux and Kylo will end up exactly where they were in TFA because Ren knows he needs Hux? I firmly believe Supreme Leadership was a snap decision for control when he felt betrayed and like he lost everything, and he's gonna regret it real fast. I'm just having a hard time on the Kylux front with him throwing Hux around twice. He's textbook abusive to those close and weaker.

Hello, Anon!

Thank you for your message: I am glad to be of service! 

(Some quick and unchecked notes, because I am doing this while attempting to grade a pile of finals… I hope this is readable if not coherent)

[20/12/ 2017: In the end, I am double-checking this, because I am that kind of obsessive-compulsive personality and this has been bugging me for days]

Honestly, Thursday night I was extremely conflicted because, despite Hux being used as comedic relief  (and in a way he is), I actually enjoyed the movie. Cinematically speaking, I found it to be a way better movie than TFA. Therefore, I was being thorn apart, which I really, really didn’t like. I was trying to find balance within myself, so to speak, and reflecting a bit on the way Hux was actually portrayed in TLJ, beyond first impressions, seemed to be a better way to achieve that than to go out and stab people. (I am sure my father appreciates it. Upon further consideration, Rian should appreciate it too. And I should drop the Kylo-like talk here, because I already have to live with a face that looks a lot like Adam’s –these have been difficult days: I keep being stopped by random people on the street reminding me of my cross to bear – I fancy myself to be a well adjusted individual. More than Kylo Ren, at least. I keep the bar low.) 

I don’t think they will end exactly where they were in TFA, because something deep has shifted in their relationship. It’s not simply that, at least formally speaking, there is an imbalance in rank now: rather, with Snoke gone, they have no-one whose approval to fight over because of their respective daddy issues. In a way, they are going to be forced to grow up – at least from squabbling children to mildly murderous teenagers. If I were to write Episode 9, because of that shift, I wouldn’t go back to a TFA-like dynamic but I would try to explore the new tenuous balance between them. There are so many ways this could develop! I do believe that Kylo needs Hux to keep the Order together. Snoke told him as much. It is also clear that the troops take orders primarily from Hux – and even with all the Force in the universe, it’s hard to imagine Kylo wiping out an entire army.

I agree with you: Kylo is textbook abusive to those closer to him, in whichever way we want to take that “close”;  and he definitely seems to be emotionally, intellectually, and strategically weaker than Hux. He is bigger, he is probably physically stringer, and he has the Force. I don’t think he needs a redemption arc: he needs a good shrink. His behaviour is inexcusable, but this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t attempt to understand it and explain it, which doesn’t equate justifying it. 

 Ben Solo was not physically abused, but the book canon has (almost) established that he was emotionally neglected by his parents. 

In the Aftermath Trilogy, we see Leia basically ignoring a newborn crying his soul out, because “that’s what babies do”. True. But Cold. In Bloodline, she is so taken up with her political engagements that she hasn’t talked to her son in a long time – which seems to be the norm. And Han is going all over the Galaxy training random young pilots, who are not his son. I would be bitter. Add that they lied to him about his bloodline and he probably finds out that he is Darth Vader’s grandson from the holonet… well that’s more than enough to create issues within most people. Yet it doesn’t end here: now it’s canon that Snoke was messing with young Ben’s head and that Luke basically tried to murder him. Kylo Ren is a murder attempt survivor. I can immagine few traumatic events harder to live with than that. 

The gist of it is that, with absent parents who really had no business having a child and another authoritative familial figure who actually tries to kill you in your sleep, you are probably going to have issues in understanding how healthy relationships work and how to deal with any kind of closeness with other people. 

Hux is not any better off. He was outright abused for most of his life. Nonetheless, he is dealing with his trauma by taking it as training, which it was only partially meant to be. There is something feral, something untamed in Armitage – we learned as much from the Phasma novel – and that something allows him to brush off being debased and to just keep going, stronger because of it. In this sense, Hux is truly of the Dark Side, in a way that Kylo cannot hope to be: he knows that there is a price to pay and he pays it, no matter how painful for him or for his pride that price turns out to be.

However, Armitage is not a good person and in this sense he is a good match for Kylo. They are true believers in the cause – the Order for Hux; the Order, as we see from the TFA novelization, and the Darkness for Kylo. They think they are right, but they also believe that the ends justify the means – which makes them villains (apparently). Armitage has strategised, fought and killed his way to the top. He is not a good man, but he is smart, he is ruthless and he has the potential of being a great one. 

One of the most interesting elements we have noticed in TLJ is how grounding Hux is for Kylo, at various stages: during the first space battle, it’s Hux who brings Kylo back from his reverie and reminds him that he is actually supposed to be doing stuff and not simply floating there; and, later on, during the ground assault, it’s Hux who tells him, with unexpected gentleness, “that’s enough”. Kylo stops. He doesn’t retaliate, he doesn’t try to re-establish his authority. He just stops. 

Overall, Kylo and Hux are deeply damaged and problematic individuals, but despite being abusive to each other (Kylo with the Force, Hux with words and smirks and all of his passive-aggressive ways) they might actually end up being good for each-other, in some sick and distressing way. 

I will keep my fingers crossed and my expectations low (I am not overly fond of JJ Abrams), but I am fairly optimistic: if treated properly and carefully, the relationship between Kylo and Hux might develop in some interesting and entertaining ways. 

[purusintellectus]

Apology of Armitage Hux, or: Why TLJ Hux is not as bad as it might seem

Obviously, spoilers ahead. Some quick notes about our favourite general.

What I took home from The Last Jedi is mostly that General Armitage Hux gets shit done, despite the circumstances, despite being ridiculed, despite being thrown around a lot. And IMHO that doesn’t reflect poorly on his character, quite the opposite. 

In the beginning of the movie,  all I could think about was: please, please, don’t make him into a Jar Jar 0.2 with a British accent. But then a little part of me remembered a brilliant fan-theory: allegedly, in Lucas’ intentions, Jar Jar was supposed to be revealed as a Big Bad in Episode II, but because of the extremely negative fan reaction we got Count Dooku instead. It was not much, but it helped me to calm down, watch the rest of the movie, really really enjoy it, and realise that Hux’ treatment was not as bad as it might seem.

 In the first five minutes, Hux: gets taunted by Poe; looks like a fool; gets insulted (and it is a personal, painful, mother insult, that really really hurts); and gets reprimanded by Snoke – violently and for laughs. Yet, we soon find out that he was only playing the fool: he was not being stalled by Poe, he was ensuring that they could track the Resistance’s main ship through hyper-space. Do you want to make sure to get as many rebels as you can, without letting many slip through your fingers? Wait till they regroup and they are out of fuel. Well done, General.

[You may object that Hux’ tactics were not spotless in this movie, and I would have to agree with you on that; but: 

(1) when he basically doesn’t do anything to stop the Resistance from taking down that dreadnought, he might actually be cleaning house, so to speak, by letting others do all the work (which is his style, apparently); 

(2) TLJ seems to begin almost immediately after TFA, a few hours later: the bloke just got his pet project destroyed, probably didn’t get any sleep, and is running on fumes... Despite him being canonically established as a master strategist, we can’t expect him to “pull a Thrawn”.]

Snoke humiliates Hux, throws him around, and makes him bleed in front of his subordinates. Hux gets up and lets him know that no, we haven’t lost the battle, I am just thinking ten moves ahead of you, old man. 

Snoke knows that Hux is dangerous, but useful. He tells Kylo as much. At that point I was pretty much reassured that Hux was going to survive this movie. Side note: while Snoke was able to emotionally manipulate Hux (we know that he has been doing that for at least ten years and that Armie has serious daddy issues), I am very curious to see what Kylo is going to do to keep him under control.

Speaking of Kylo. Long live the supreme leader. Well, what did you expect Hux to do? Armitage is a survivor and a strategist, he knows when you have to surrender to live and fight another day. He still gets to tell Kylo “that’s enough” (oh, so softly!) and to be cheeky and sharp with him (”do you think you got him?). He is basically co-commander or a very close second in command. The Army responds to Hux; Kylo is not qualified to lead: Hux knows it and even Kylo seems to be realising this by the end. Their dynamic in Episode IX is going to be interesting.

[P.S. Hux cold have taken that shot at Kylo’s head: he had the time and he had the opportunity. But he does not take it. He doesn’t even draw his bloody blaster.  Besides, he also has the good taste of covering said blaster before Kylo sees it, which is more than we can say about Luke.]

Honestly, I knew that we wouldn’t get Supreme Leader!Hux in this movie, even after Snoke’s demise. Why? Because this is Star Wars and the “good guys” need to win in the end. (I am an old Imperial at heart and I strongly support the First Order, but it would be naive of me to expect otherwise.) There is barely a handful of rebels left, so few that you can fit them all on the Falcon. They wouldn’t have a chance against Hux’ Order, but they might against Kylo’s. 

Overall, even under the direst circumstances, Hux swallows his pride, pulls through, and gets shit done. He is that kind of man. And that kind of man is dangerous.

From that, along with Snoke’s remarks and that shot lingering on Hux when they storm the Resistance’s ground base, I feel tempted to believe that, despite having been so ridiculed in TLJ, Armitage might have been set up to become the main antagonist – the evilest of them all – in Episode IX. 

I still have hope to see him being treated fairly – and isn’t Star Wars all about hope?

[purusintellectus]

More about The Robe i.e. What if Armitage Hux is a Palpatine fanboy

By now the infamous black robe Hux wears in Phasma is its own character, and we all have a precise image in mind. Needless to say, that’s a sexy, silky and half-naked image. But. There is a but. Indulge me for a second.

In SW not only are robes common articles of outdoor clothing, but they are also charged with meaning: they are what Jedi and Sith wear. A black robe is a Sith robe. Emperor Palpatine used to wear a simple black robe. Robes are uniforms. And Hux wears his robe like a uniform. 

I like the idea of Armitage getting ready for Kylo, in his wanton, silky and sexy robe, as much as any other girl does; but I am becoming more and more convinced that, in his downtime, General Hux dresses up like the old Emperor. Besides, we know from Before the Awakening that Hux is one of the hugest nerds the Galaxy has ever seen: he takes the time to explain how Starkiller works to the stormtroopers – even to those working in sanitation! Him cosplaying Palpatine is just the next little (oh, so little!) step. 

[OR. Or. If Hux’s robe is actually intentionally reminiscent of a Sith robe, there might be some plottier implications. But that is a topic for another post]

[phasma-first-order]

From the Phasma novel we also learned that Brendol Hux enjoyed travelling in the shiny Naboo spacecraft that formerly belonged to Palpatine. And Brendol put his personal guard, Cardinal, in red armor, which seems kinda like it was inspired by Palpatine’s Imperial Guards. Maybe both Huxes have wanted to be Emperor and have interesting ways of showing it.

[purusintellectus]

@phasma-first-order, this is very good insight! I hadn’t considered that!

Moreover, I have been thinking about Armitage’s extremely over-the-top Starkiller speech. As @uncle-jesse underlined, in tone and delivery it reminds quite a bit of Palpatine’s declaration of the Empire: