I see your 'Armitage never went back to Arkanis' and raise you 'Armitage had the opportunity to go back to Arkanis on some Order assignment, but he delegated it to someone else, saying he was too busy, when in reality he couldn't face up to going back'
In my head cannon, Brendol told 5 year old Armitage that the New Republic killed his mother in the bombardment of Arkanis. He told him every day that the people who stole their lives, destroyed their home, and killed his mother are the same people responsible for chasing them into the Unknown Regions. That if they stop, the New Republic hunters will kill them just like his mother.
So the scared little boy was fed horror stories about their enemies every day by a father who hated him. Nevermind that the true story was Armitage's mother was ABANDONED because she served no value to the remnant. That she was ordered left behind and Brendol didn't lift a finger to fight it.
No. Little Armitage was fed lies and hatred until he was sick with it. We get to see that boy grown up into the man screaming about the end of the New Republic in a unhinged speech before giving the order to fire and destroy the Hosnian system.
He's still a scared little boy inside, playing soldier, avenging his dead mother, and nobody alive can see it because most everyone who knew that little boy is dead, some of them by his hands.
He can't go back to Arkanis. He believes his mother is dead. The image of her blood spilled on the steps of the academy is burned into his mind. He always had an active imagination (read the novelizations, its clear he does) and his father used that to plant those images. Hell never set foot on that planet as long as he lives because as irrational as he knows it is, the scared little boy in him still imagines her blood running down the stairs and he's terrified that he'll see it.
Since hux was kind to a kid in one of the novelizations, do you think he is actually fond of kids and may want to have kids? Or is he too focused on the first order/doesn’t want any due to his own childhood?
Thank you, anon, for this opportunity to blather. I’ve broken your ask down into two distinct questions, for the sake of organizing my thoughts:
How does Hux relate to children?
Does Hux want children of his own?
Let’s dive in.
HOW DOES HUX RELATE TO CHILDREN?
Since your ask alluded to the transport scene in Delilah S. Dawson’s Phasma, I’ll open with it here:
When faced with a traumatized young woman (Phasma, eighteen) and a terrified little girl (Frey, six), Armitage Hux (twenty-four) neither scolds the little girl for her outburst nor admonishes the young woman for her inaction; instead, he handles the situation with startling gentleness—and a clear aptitude for communicating with children.
Armitage’s motivations in this scene are opaque to the reader, but I see his attempt to soothe Frey as an attempt to spare everyone on the transport the ire of Brendol Hux. After all, who understands better than Armitage the dire consequences of disappointing his father? Or the fear and confusion of being torn from a homeworld at a tender age?
It’s not unreasonable to assume that Armitage sees a bit of his younger self in Frey, here, which is why I like to read this scene in light of the following passage from Chuck Wendig’s Aftermath: Empire’s End:
Funnily enough, the passage above is the second time child Armitage is packed onto a transport in as many books. We’re not shown the Huxes’ escape from the Arkanis Imperial Academy in Aftermath: Life Debt, but imagination can fill in the gaps; in the midst of a siege, perhaps under the cover of night, Brendol Hux rounds up his illegitimate son (Armitage, five), an attendant droid (DDM-38), and a few essential belongings before traveling with bounty hunter Mercurial Swift to join the Imperial Remnants on Jakku.
How well does Armitage remember the chaos of that flight? And how desperately did that redheaded boy want to hear words of reassurance from the adults around him? Very well and very desperately, I’d wager. So well and so desperately that his first instinct, when faced with a child in parallel circumstances, is to offer the comfort he was denied.
It’s hard to square this behavior with Armitage’s role in the First Order’s stormtrooper program unless we consider the idea that Armitage believes some of his own propaganda: that the life of a stormtrooper is a better future for the children absorbed into the First Order’s ranks than whatever might await them on their impoverished homeworlds. The First Order may be brutal, but its ordered brutality—contrasted with the “savagery” of the Unknown Regions—is virtually all Armitage has ever known. For all that it’s obvious to us viewers that abducting and training child soldiers is evil, Armitage genuinely believes he’s doing right—which isn’t all that surprising, if we consider the hand he’s been dealt.
One of the core tragedies of Armitage Hux’s character is that his sincere drive to “cure” the galaxy of its ills (to borrow verbiage from Kwame Mbalia’s The Last Order), combined with his upbringing in a military cult, grooms him into exactly the sort of zealot who can adopt a legitimizing narrative for geocide. While I doubt Hux has any personal desire to inflict cruelty on children, and I suspect he feels protective of them in a manner he considers shamefully revealing, he’s either unwilling or unable to let his suppressed empathy interfere with the Order’s purpose. In this regard, I find him an interesting foil for Andor’s Luthen Rael.
DOES HUX WANT CHILDREN OF HIS OWN?
My knee-jerk response is no.
Hux, at least in his private thoughts, canonically expresses a desire to build a legacy, but at no point does he connect his desire for a legacy with a desire for children. He’s too preoccupied with the war to take proper care of himself, let alone a child, and even in a hypothetical future where the First Order conquered the galaxy with Supreme Leader Hux at the helm (a Pax Ordinata, if that’s legitimate Latin), I doubt he’d be able to spare the time and attention a family would require while juggling the responsibilities of governance.
Also, as you pointed out, the specter of Armitage’s traumatic childhood looms large, and I suspect he’d prefer a childless existence to the possibility of becoming his father. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe Armitage would ever treat a child the way Brendol treated him, but that fear would be difficult to shake.
I could see Hux fulfilling a paternal role to a child somewhat against his will—that is to say, if the child in question chose him, somehow, or he was meaningfully attached to a single parent—but I find it unlikely that he would agree to have children of his own. Precisely because Hux would care for them, they would be a weakness others could exploit.
Listen here friendo I didn’t sit through a year of organic chemistry for you to come into my house and call a carboxylic acid a saturated fatty acid you respect that hexadecanoic acid
And I didnt get a degree in biochemistry to hear you say that carboxylic acids with aliphatic chains arent fatty acids. That hexadecanoic acid IS a saturated fatty acid!
Op I have to let you know that this artwork single-handedly made me go read the manga (I’m about halfway through as of now so don’t spoil anything!) and I’ve never read manga before or anything. Until yesterday I did not know what Witch Hat Atelier was. This is was done so beautifully I needed to find out where it was from.
Iness Rychlik ~ Victorian Erotica with Subtle Cruelty
The BeeKeeper
Love and Devotion
The Instruments of Torture
Impatient
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not
Thorns
A Scene of Silent Despair
Greed
Iness Rychlik is a Polish-born photographer and filmmaker with a particular interest in historical drama. Despite her severe myopia, she has been dedicated to visual storytelling for over a decade. Rychlik’s still images are published on book covers worldwide. More recently, her focus has expanded from portraiture to dark feminine erotica. Iness is fascinated by the idea of conveying sexuality and cruelty in a subtle evocative way. Her conceptual work provokes the viewer’s imagination, rather than satisfy it.
A quick personal update: things are absolutely terrible for now :( My neighborhood keeps being bombed, and the bombings are nearly daily. I can't live, I can't breathe, I hit the critical stage where I'm unable to even read or watch something. I start, but I instantly grow distracted, anxious, and indifferent. Waiting for things to get better or to adjust to this new, even more terrifying reality.
Came across this video. Just one example of many daily similar ones in Ukraine.
English translation:
OP's words: I'm so fucking glad I got to capture this in time cause fr by afternoon it was already gone
Large laminated note:
"I ASK OF WHO UNLAWFULLY OCCUPIED
THE BASEMENT ROOM, WHICH BELONGS TO APARTMENT №11, THAT THEY FREE IT BY 31.7.20026
IF THEY DO NOT DO SO, THE APARTMENT WILL BE CLEARED OUT IN COMPANY OF CITY POLICE"
Handwritten response in sharpie under date: "oh then I've still got plenty of time"
Cats of Kodinsk @catsofkodinsk - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
ellievsbear
snowghoul
andulkaphoto
titsay
amandla
jacobvanloon
turnnoffyourmind
