#sastrugi

[fourchette]

[tsururoach]

Arsenyo Von Sayer [Fire Emblem Edition]

[lionfloss]

geosteinmetz

[montair]

Mont-Tremblant National Park, Quebec, Canada

(2006)

[badspacebabies]

moodboard: Sastrugi (kylux, rated r, part 2 of tidal force)

Ren’s hand lifts from his chest, and then grips his jaw again, tugging his chin front. Ren’s thumb is pressed hard against his lower lip, and Hux, dizzily, entertains the image of Ren reaching inside his mouth with all of his thick fingers, sliding down his throat and plucking the words out from where they are stuck there, one-by-one, holding them out in the meagre space between their bodies, glistening and wriggling, as if they are a prize.

“Fuck,” says Ren. It’s soft, as if he has been quietly awed by something. “You’re so starved for it.”

[tsururoach]

Age Drawing meme

[badspacebabies]

by imochan (badspacebabies), rated R, 15.5K

classic kylux, hux-womp, sad frottage & spooky space mysteries

Ren is gone. Hux is fine. The past can't hurt you.

(All of these things are lies.)

-

Here it finally is!  Part two of the Tidal Force Series, sequel to Wracklines. Writing this fic was not exactly a labor of love, much more similar to a labor of, uh, pain—it took me close to seven months, and it’s been the first thing of real substance I’ve managed to finish for Kylux fandom since the end of last year. I’m so relieved and thrilled that it’s finally done, and I really hope y’all enjoy it.

That being said, despite my best efforts, this fic really is more of a sequel than a stand-alone. If you haven’t read Wracklines recently, I highly recommend that you do so before diving into this one (But Wracklines is very short! It’s a little weird! It sets the stage!)

Nobody likes a huge disclaimer on their sad smut, so in closing I’ll just send a huge thank-you shout-out to @reserve @eralkfang @nacho-witch @xan-drei @yeats-infection, and all y’all buddies on tumblr and tweetie (anon and otherwise, irl and online) that watched me suffer through writing this and helped me believe that it was worth doing.

[badspacebabies]

First I love love your tidal force series and I was just wondering, if you'll indulge me, if you have any headcanons or such for the group of feral children that Armitage gained, since I just loved that little slice we got to see with them

Thank you so much for your kind words about the Tidal Force series! (for ref, Part 1—Wracklines and Part 2—Sastrugi)

I don’t want to spoil too much for the last planned part of the series, as yet unnamed, since I’m not sure how much Hux’s feral murder orphans are going to figure in yet, but! I do have a lot of feelings about how they feature in Sastrugi, and am happy to share the little thoughts I do have. Spoilers for both of my fics, and for Wendig’s canon Aftermath series follow!

I’m a huge fan of the idea that the tall girl with the shaved head that Wendig mentions when they Jakku orphans / child soldiers are introduced will eventually become Phasma. Starting from this, I imagined that the children (who Rax puts under the charge of little Armitage Hux after the evacuation from Jakku) are begrudgingly accepted by Rae Sloane into the nascent form of the First Order as a way to rebuild and restructure the Stormtrooper program and the First Order forces. The inference here (and from Sastrugi), is that the merciless kidnapping and early-life conditioning of the Jakku orphans formed the basis for the First Order’s trafficking and conditioning of their Stormtroopers from a young age. An even more implicit inference from Sastrugi, at least, is that some of them went on to form the beginnings of the Knights of Ren, once Snoke deemed Kylo Ren prepared.

In terms of Armitage’s relationship with the Jakku orphans, especially in Sastrugi, you can imagine that having these children around him, especially as a strange, abused, and isolated child himself, was both formative and extremely weird. Rax made him their “commander,” and the children had been conditioned enough that, despite all their other additional training during and after the escape to the Unknown Regions, this remained one of their prime directives in life: to listen to little Armitage Hux and do what he wished. I think despite this power imbalance, and despite how much child Hux must have relished having a little agency and power in his life, it would have been impossible for him not to form a kind of attachment to them. He gave them names (his father berated him for this, but they stuck). He had a favorite (Tiro, the solemn brown-eyed boy with a soft voice). He felt bereft and a little abandoned when they saw less and less of each other. He is still, to this day, fiercely protective of, and a bit biased, when it comes to Phasma, who never died, and who never left his side, like she had promised to. 

All I’ll say in close about the operating theory underlying the way they feature in the Tidal Force series, is that they were the closest thing that child Armitage Hux had to friends, to playmates. When they began to die off, and leave him to begin “new training,” he experience a pale version of loss, of mourning—something as an adult that he has never fully reckoned with.