@yellowsabered said: what's hux's thoughts on rey? and how about his thoughts on finn/him defecting from tfo?
Despite actually never meeting, he does not like Rey, however if the TROS novel is anything to go off of he truly believes she can defeat Kylo. His hate for her is mainly because she is against the First Order, a member of the Resistance. He was raised on Imperial beliefs which are a bunch of lies and revisionist history, that Palpatine was a humble man from Naboo who rose to power and the Jedi betrayed him, which is why he thinks the new Republic and the Resistance are treacherous and war criminals; the siege of his home world help feed into these lies. That and the only force users he knows are Ren and Snoke who constantly use their abilities to they throw him around physically and reading his mind without permission making him hate all force users, believing they're all like that.
After exchanging words with her Hux will come up to the cynical conclusion that she's naïve and ridiculous for thinking there's good within anyone, he's an abused bastard who’s very paranoid and believes everyone is as bad as people in TFO. However, Kylo’s constant defeats by her is more enjoyable to him for petty reasons like how much younger she is, how he constantly loses to a starry-eyed novice.
As for defecting; In the Before the Awakening novel, Hux was concerned about Finn because how he separated himself from the others after training so it wasn't completely a shock, it was more so that the program that his father spent years crafting that Hux ultimately altered after he took over his father's rule to rely on loyalty less physical punishments. He thought of him as a traitor, much like Kylo and Phasma did, that he was cowardly for carrying out orders on Tuanul in a very “ Oh. You won’t kill for us, but you will for the lying, loathsome war criminals ” way. Phasma was the closest thing he had to a friend so her demise helped fueled this hatred
As for defecting himself and his beliefs changing; I have it where it's a number of things and not just I'm Petty(tm) fuck Kylo Ren like in canon. During the months leading up to TROS is when decided to leak sensitive information to the Resistance because the First Order was no longer the First Order, Ren’s rule solidified it as another Empire He never saw the FO as a continuation of the Empire, but rather its successor, believing the Empire fell due to internal flaws, whereas he sees the First Order as a more refined and pure version of what the Empire sought to become but never achieved and wasn’t too fond of the thought of repeating the mistakes of the past so Kylo Ren can live in a fantasy where he follows in his grandfather’s footsteps.
It started out as a plan to get rid of Ren by having the Resistance do the heavy lifting and claiming the throne so as he fell, however, when Gallius Rax gave him the murderous children from the Jakku mines when he was very young; He was told that the future of the Empire was within the hands of the children that he and his father would train but as more Imperial veterans were rewarded with unearned promotions (he hates old Imperials, see tlj novel) being stripped of commanding power, assigned a babysitter in the form of his father's friend and likely childhood abuser; General Allegiant Pryde, plus the secret regime that was formed on Exegol in the from of the Final Order proved that no longer true and felt used and betrayed.
That’s when his hate for Finn started to die along with his ambition, loyalty to the First Order meant nothing. What he spent his life working on no longer might anything. Upon seeing the moldy animated corpse of the Emperor and finding out the Snoke was his alien clone, it was clear that Palpatine wasn't the humble man he was made out to be, that the Republic was right about him. Abandoning his Imperial beliefs, fearing that they are all lies, however, he did not adopt the new Republic’s ideals and is very reluctant to join the Resistance. Rather wanting to play the two off of each other for self benefit. But if someone were able to make a logical enough argument as to why he should, he's a man who can put aside his pride to work alongside people he does not like to achieve victory.