Brendol's Sons
Dec. 5th, 2018 09:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
As an addendum to my last meta (and because I cannot will myself to grade one more essay right now) isn’t it interesting that the one character–besides Finn–who manages to get out of the First Order is also the the character who actually is treated like a son by Armitage Hux’s dad?In spite of the fact that Brendol was a terrible person, in spite of the fact that his motives were probably bad, the attention and affection he showed Cardinal mean something, to Cardinal at the very least. Even at the end of the Phasma novel when he realizes how much he has been duped by the titular character, he is still defending Brendol. Armitage, despite his twisted views of human relationships, knows that his father mistreated him and hates him for it. Even with all the manipulation and brainwashing, Cardinal and Armitage feel the way they do about Brendol for legitimate reasons.
Caring for and emotionally supporting someone with bad intentions is still better for them than treating them with overt cruelty. I have to wonder if bonding with the person responsible for his welfare didn’t help Cardinal become sane and personable enough to be of interest to Vi Morandi and led to her rescuing him.I suppose you could say that maybe Cardinal already had redeeming qualities and Armitage didn’t, and maybe that’s why Brendol decided to nurture him and freeze Armitage out. That seems to be what Cardinal thinks. But it’s abuse apologism, and I’m not here for it. And of course, there are other factors to consider–like the feasibility of Cardinal being a torturer and a nice guy at the same time, for one. But it is pretty clear we are meant to see him as redeemable, but not Armitage. That he’s a nicer person than Armitage in spite of their shared past is also obvious. While it would be reductive to say that Brendol’s treatment of them is the only factor to play a role in that, that it plays a role at all is sad enough.
At the same time, I wonder what Brendol would think if he knew treating Cardinal like a son would contribute to his being Resistance pilot ex machina-ed out of the FO and treating Armitage like garbage would contribute to his being one blaster bolt away from the top position. Would he be dismayed? Impressed? Was this his intent all along? I don’t mean he intended for Cardinal to defect, obviously, but maybe he didn’t care what happened to Cardinal as long as Armitage grew up to be as vicious and power-hungry as possible.
Caring for and emotionally supporting someone with bad intentions is still better for them than treating them with overt cruelty. I have to wonder if bonding with the person responsible for his welfare didn’t help Cardinal become sane and personable enough to be of interest to Vi Morandi and led to her rescuing him.I suppose you could say that maybe Cardinal already had redeeming qualities and Armitage didn’t, and maybe that’s why Brendol decided to nurture him and freeze Armitage out. That seems to be what Cardinal thinks. But it’s abuse apologism, and I’m not here for it. And of course, there are other factors to consider–like the feasibility of Cardinal being a torturer and a nice guy at the same time, for one. But it is pretty clear we are meant to see him as redeemable, but not Armitage. That he’s a nicer person than Armitage in spite of their shared past is also obvious. While it would be reductive to say that Brendol’s treatment of them is the only factor to play a role in that, that it plays a role at all is sad enough.
At the same time, I wonder what Brendol would think if he knew treating Cardinal like a son would contribute to his being Resistance pilot ex machina-ed out of the FO and treating Armitage like garbage would contribute to his being one blaster bolt away from the top position. Would he be dismayed? Impressed? Was this his intent all along? I don’t mean he intended for Cardinal to defect, obviously, but maybe he didn’t care what happened to Cardinal as long as Armitage grew up to be as vicious and power-hungry as possible.
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Date: 2018-12-05 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-05 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 11:46 pm (UTC)Sorry I've not been terribly active today. One more day to go until I've finished my book, and then I'll be much more involved.
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Date: 2018-12-06 11:51 pm (UTC)Yay for finishing! That's so exciting!
I only have about three more Hux metas to repost here. There are also a couple of things from other fandoms that I just want to back up.
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Date: 2018-12-07 10:43 am (UTC)I look forward to the rest of the meta!
Would you mind if I reposted some of the long ones where we're in discussion with Filigranka and other people on Ao3? I think it would be easier than doing it here, and it would be easier to credit everyone as co-authors. (Stuff like the one I crossposted from Tumblr today, which didn't come through with any of the nested replies.)
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Date: 2018-12-08 06:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-08 07:30 pm (UTC)I've unfortunately only tagged the discussions you and I had as 'Hux meta' on my Tumblr, so they were the ones I could find. I found one with Filigranka, so that's in Chapter 4, but now I've got to go through the slog of examining my entire archive to try to find the rest!
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Date: 2018-12-08 08:45 pm (UTC)Lol, I think I was pretty much the same. Did I tell them it was okay? Of course I did; I'd never forget anything during finals grading week! I just forgot my SSN.
It's kind of weird seeing my Hux meta in the same location as my Hux fic. I wonder if the people who have read our stories will read our meta too. In my case, they'll be in for some surprises!
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Date: 2018-12-08 09:54 pm (UTC)It's a bit less weird for me because I posted two meta essays in my very first fandom, and then again in the one immediately before this. Sometimes there are things you can say bests by just going ahead and saying it :) Also I love reading a good bit of meta, so I hope people will be entertained anyway.
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Date: 2018-12-05 06:21 pm (UTC)Whatever Brendol is putting into the water with those kids is really working, long after the point where they become adults.
Maybe treating his favoured cadets well was intended to create cadets who could pass as normal, well-balanced people? Didn’t he develop the program originally so that they could go out into Imperial posts and advance his interests by stealth? They would have had to pass as relatively likable, competent people if they were to advance to high enough positions to benefit him in the future.
Meanwhile the non-favoured cadets were probably not meant to survive anyway, since he encouraged his favourites to kill the unpromising students as a way of improving the herd.
By which I mean that maybe Armitage’s long-term survival continued to be a frustrating anomaly in his system.
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Date: 2018-12-06 03:02 am (UTC)SW timelines are difficult for me, but I was under the impression that Brendol had been dead for years when Cardinal interrogated Vi; is that wrong?
“Maybe treating his favoured cadets well was intended to create cadets who could pass as normal, well-balanced people?”
This really gets at why, for me anyway, Brendol feels so much less sympathetic than Armitage. It’s not because the things Brendol did are worse than what Armitage has done; they’re not. But in a very real sense Armitage can’t be genuinely personable, or affectionate, or empathetic because these, like most “human” behaviors, are learned and his social setting wasn’t conducive to his learning them. He’s able to manipulate others to strengthen his own chances of survival, but that’s all he can do. He’s a human who doesn’t know how to human.
I think Cardinal can actually do/feel those things, not just pass as being able to do so. I think we’re supposed to be glad Vi saves his life because he “deserves”–boy do I hate that word–a second chance. I don’t know whether Brendol is just passing or not; even some really evil people are capable of affection. But if he is passing, he’s doing so convincingly enough to inspire real affection and loyalty in Cardinal.
TLDR; still real tired of arguments that A. Hux decided to be evil.
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Date: 2018-12-06 10:59 am (UTC)Yes, to me Brendol is less sympathetic than Armitage because - as far as we’re aware - Brendol did join the Empire voluntarily, and then created a system to turn children into brainwashed murderers, again, presumably because he wanted to and he thought that would be a good idea. There’s no indication that Brendol was coerced or forced along that path. He chose to create monsters. Armitage, otoh is raised in that and by that. He’s the child of a child-brainwasher. That really suggests to me that he had very little choice in who he became.
As you say, Armitage’s tragedy is that he was kept close to his father, a man who had made a profession out of the psychological manipulation of children. There are definite times when you should deny the truth that is your family.
So yes. I’m totally with you that A.Hux has never really been given a chance not to be evil.
Cardinal is an interesting case. I know we’re supposed to find him likable and to be glad that Vi rescues him. But he never actually repudiates the First Order at all. His grudge is specifically with Phasma. He never actually chooses to leave - Vi gets him out while he’s unconscious, after which he presumably can’t go back without being killed as a deserter.
He clearly believes that the FO is a force for good, and that the Stormtrooper cadets are lucky to be there. For some reason that comes across as a pleasant, humanizing thing in him, whereas A. Hux’s belief in the FO’s goodness is treated as fanaticism. Yet because Cardinal manages to come across as personable, we’re supposed to ignore the fact that he is also a FO true believer, who sneaks around behind his superior’s backs to kidnap high priority prisoners and secrete them away for private torture sessions so he can get the dirt on his colleagues.
Cardinal is a good example of how being favoured by the narrative leads to the reader wanting one character to be ‘redeemed’ over another, I think.
I do think Cardinal genuinely loved Brendol, but then I think Armitage loved Brendol too. If he hadn’t, I think Brendol would have died a lot earlier (as Rax was clearly expecting when he’s dropping his nice father you have there. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to him. Here have a squad of killer orphans hints.)
(Edited to add that just because I think that Armitage loved his father, doesn't mean that I'm flying in the face of canon that he hated him. It's fairly standard for an abused child to do both.)