#also .. i fully see hux as wanting to destroy kylo but no fucking way hes going straight to the resistance with info whaaa

[like-sands-of-time]

And they were dyads

Oh my god they were dyads

[breakingbadfics]

Thought Experiment Part 3

Do it again, my way.  

So this one gives me a degree of creative libery because I’m adhering to a simple premise of “give rey a girlfriend and eventually get to the point where they can beat the tar out of kylo ren.” 

There is no “rogue sith” outlier in my version of this story and so my version of “The Sith Resurgence” wouldn’t even be named that. but I’ll continue to refer to it as “my version” simple for ease of use. 

The story begins With Han Solo, Chewbacca, and a girl. they’re in a piece of shit ship that they’ve been using while they hunt down the millenium falcon. 

This girl is simply refered to as “Kara” 

The story of episode 7 plays out as it had in the movie. up until Rey and Finn meet Han and Chewie, this is the reveal of Kara proper and the eventual reveal that Kara is in fact running with Han and Chewie because her father Luke Skywalker entrusted her to them. 

Yeah we’re going there. Mara Jade is canon in this version of the story, She and Luke had a baby. The eventual reveal being that Kara was increcibly young and hadn’t begun any force training when things went south with Ben Solo, and Mara Jade died protecting her child as a building collapsed in on her. 

Racked with guilt over failing Ben Solo, and Leia. Luke chooses to go into seclusion, and (while a bit fucked up) chooses to hand Kara over to his sister and brother in law knowing that they’ll lead her right and it’s really the only thing he can think of that would even start to make up for screwing up with Ben.

Kara Skywalker takes heavily off Han having spent a large chunk of her life with him, she’s exceptionally care free, an exceptional shot when given the chance but has the kind of take no shit attitude from Leia. She’s been living under the assumption her real father died in an accident she’s too young to remember, but is suddenly shocked with surprise to find that not only is he not dead but the primary goal of the Resistance is to find her dad so she leaps at the chance to join Rey and Finn 

Kara is also the first to get the crush on Rey, and Kara tends to be a more grounding empathetic kind of source for Rey who would over the sort be more angry with things. 

We also don’t mince words here, Kara’s gay, Rey has never had a relationship with anyone long enough to realy know what she likes, but she likes Kara. and they’re in a relationship somewhere between the ending of 7 and 8. Kara is the one who declares her feelings and Rey wants to try. 

The Majority of the events of Episode 7 playout as normal but keep the aspects that foreshadow the forcebond. Then on top of that  this version of the story we’re going to make Kylo Ren a threat. regularly showing off just how often he’s willing to make examples of everyone around him to the point that the scene where he force chokes a dude after he proceeds to carry him by the throat out into the front to display his death to a bunch of other first order officers to make a show of it. if you are going to have Kylo Ren be a piece of shit scum of the galaxy bad guy, you make him do the bad guy shit. 

Han Solo Dies and now it’s compounded. This is a man who’s now a father figure to two young women; Rey and Kara, and with the latter being much more closely tied to him, witnessing the death of the man who raised her being a galvanizing event that makes he have zero empathy for her cousin. 

The events of episode 7 end in roughly the same fashion with that leg of the story ending with Kara and Rey staying with the resistance until Finn is no longer in a coma. 

Episode 8 begins with Rey and Kara participating in the easrly space battle and the bombing run at the start...well I’m split between it doesn’t happen at all, or it’s happening with out a hitch. So I guess for the sake of things they remain more or less the same. 

Meanwhile Finn comes out of his coma, Rey and Kara grab him and they shoot off to find Luke Skywalker. 

Meanwhile Poe ends up getting tagged up with Rose. Rose having a lot of words to say to poe and a lot of things to guilt him for. He is in effect responsible for her sister dying and she’s basically going to stay stuck on him, during this event they both decide to go find the master code cracker on canto bight. 

We get to Ahch-to. 

Theres a lot of emotion. Anger, sadness, screaming. This is the reuniting of a father and daughter. the daughter having trhought her whole life her was dead. There ids a lot to go over 

assume a couple of chapters are devoted to explaining everything from luke to kara, and rey, and everything involving Ben Solo. 

This is also the formal introduction of the force bond. The Force Bond serves the same literary purpose and ultimately creates the same kind of back and forth that Rey and Kylo Ren are able to speak to one another, but not physically interact. While still antagonistic it does allow them to have a slightly better angle at “Seeing each others point” but it’s made very understood that Rey has zero romantic desires towards Ben Solo, that said, it’s also a little less likely that Ben Solo is going to die. 

Canto Bight goes like this Rose and Poe go looking for the master code cracker, and...get both. The Benicio Del Toro, and the weird sauve dude. the fake cracker and the real one present two sides of neutrality. during interactions Poe and Rose find out that The true master code cracker has accepted jobs from both the resistance and the first order on more than one occasion, never once informing one or the other of how he refuses to stick to one side and boldly showing pride in how he’s taking advantage of both sides, the del toro cracker is...what you saw  in the movie, the guy pushing the whole “the only smart move is to not bother trying to get involved, and when you do get out as quick as you can”  Rose and Poe hate both of them equally, and they both die before episode 8 is over. 

Episode 8 ends similiar to the movie but with some changes minor and major. it’s both Kara and Rey that help the resistance escape from the first order, both of them doing the clearing rocks with the force thing. This is effectively the moment they cement theirselves as a couple. 

and second Luke doesn’t die. There’s no overlying reason. I just don’t think Luke has to die. 

Well there’s one. sometime around chapter 30 of the sith resurgence there’s a discussion had with the protagonists where there’s mention of who knows how many force sensitives are actually in the resistance and have never known it, and this is brought up as a cool “maybe we can do something with that” which is very hastily dashed away because the only person capable of teaching the force is Aliana and Leia dislikes her, so the idea is tabled. 

So in my hypothetical Luke doesn’t die and basically goes on to start training Finn, Rey, Kara, and a handful of students pulled from both in the ranks of the resistance. it’s recognized that he himself is fallible and that he should not be seen as the be all-end all of the jedi philosophy, only someone who gets the ball rolling

Episode 9 shows that Kylo Ren assumes what he believes to be his true nature and rises to the ranks of Sith lord, submerging himself in the teachings of all kinds of sith lord holocrons. Though it’s slow, arduous, and difficult when every once in a while he’s pulled back when Rey talks to him as Ben. 

Rey and Ben’s relationship should be understood as complicated, but when I say complicated, I mean there’s a strained notion of listening to each other but taking a heaping of salt along with it. Rey does not take shit at all, she recognizes that Kylo Ren’s identity is a security blanket designed to make him look strong. through the times they see and talk to each other using the force bond she very frequently talks over him and through him, she doesn’t call him kylo ren, she doesn’t accept him as Kylo Ren.  Rey is effectively in charge when they talk. However sooner or later something cracks and Ben becomes human...kinda. Rey does not consider Ben her friend, nor does she feel put upon to try and redeem him. 

More that Rey realises Ben might not be totally in control of his actions

The events of this version of episode 9 are much more personal. more contained. it’s obvious that the first order are going to lose, but everyone is waiting to basically find out what they’ll do as their last ditch effort. 

The plan? a last ditch effort to take out corruscant, destroy the entire galactic republic by way of eliminating the entire governing body. 

How are they going to do it? The Death Star. Kinda. 

So the first order very quietly start scavenging and eventually found themselves pulling the debris and other things off the Second Death Star, They rebuild the Super Laser, it can only fire once, and there’s a 50% chance that the things will explode, cuasing unknowably large amounts of collateral damage. 

Hux has checked out mentally. Phasma is quietly planning a coup because holy shit the supreme leader is suicidal. 

And he is suicidal by the way. 

Ben Solo is possessed. By what? The ghost of Snoke. It’s a very gray area but Snoke, like any abusive parent figure wants to live vicariously through their child, and in being killed by Ben at the end of episode 8 allowed him to do so very literally. 

because lets go all the way in with how blunt this metaphor for being manipulated into hate groups can be 

The stories final battle is effectively setting over corruscant, a complete mess of an affair with the planet doing what it can to evacuate, the fully ammassed Republic and Resistance forces fighting against a first order with nothing to lose and have fully embraced their existence as a suicide cult. 

Ben Solo, and Snoke fight each other mentally, while fighting Rey and Kara. There are Knights of Ren, who are fully aware of the situation with Kylo Ren, so there’s this huge fight where our three story focuses are fighting each other, while also occasionally fighting the villains henchmen, who are also occasionally trying to beat the shit out of Ben when he wrestles control of his body. 

Kylo Ren is killed. Snokes spirit dies. Rey stabs him through the stomach, and pull it out through his side. 

Ben Solo lives. 

In the end Kara is the one who chooses to use the Force healing tactic to heal Ben Solo. citing simply that he has no reason to not live, be that turning himself over to the authorities, trying to rework himself. The simple point is he has to attone in some way, and that isn’t by dying. 

The story ends with Rey and Kara celebrating, the republic and the resistance celebrate victory. 

The end. 

I’ve been working on this for days and it feels rushed here and there and I ‘m trying to not sweat to much detail on somehting dumb like this. 

[luminousbeansarewe]

what are your takes/version of how the sequel trilogy went down? because i also have my own version in my head, not.... that, but im really interested in the ideas other people have had for it

hoo boy there’s a lot of ground to cover here lmao i will try to keep them as short as i can... i also enjoy multiple versions of events and outcomes for the sequels as long as they’re in-character so i’m not trying to say no other version of the sequels is good or cool bc only a sith deals in absolutes amirite? (i won’t apologize for that dumb joke.) first the jumping-off points:

first of all, i fully support Force-sensitive Finn. even if he didn’t become a full-blown Jedi, if the entire concept of the Jedi was reforged and we don’t see him become the kind of Jedi we saw in the prequels (more on that later), i see him as someone who was attuned to the Force in a way that is similar to how i conceive of Barriss; empathetic to the suffering and joy of others. this would drive him to defect from the Empire and fear it, too. i also saw him becoming a reluctant leader for the rebellion, and there’s a GREAT fic which i’ll link here that riffs on the idea that he creates a spark within the stormtrooper ranks and more and more of them begin to defect... which i love

Rey being a nobody is cool to me. the ONE character moment where she became super relatable for me was when she realized how frightened she was of her own Force abilities. but i don’t think she has to be the legacy of Palps to have that. she doesn’t need supercharged powers to be spooked by them in a post-Jedi Order world where the most recent memory anybody has of the Force is Vader. (also Rey being a Kenobi seems more out of character for Obi-Wan than anything else lol he was pretty committed to the ways of the Order even after they were destroyed, plus he already had one kid to furtively watch over... just imo). this also ties into my expansion on the Force.

Poe being not a carbon copy of Han. i think Leia looked after him, found him somehow after she sent Ben to the Jedi Academy and was a motherly figure in his life. i like the idea that he was a little shit, and she’s the one who taught him to turn his reactive defiance of authority into bravery when fighting for the rebels. i think he looked up to her, wanted to be a leader like her. i saw him in the position of generals like Akbar by the end, as he learns to balance risk-taking with steady leadership. I wanted to see that growth, how those leaders are formed, see Leia get to impart her wisdom to someone. (also i fully support Finn/Poe and Finn/Rey/Poe, i’m not a committed shipper so i’m down with no romance at all between them but those ships are choice af and Stormpilot is all Oscar Isaac wanted anyway, so...) plus can u imagine the dichotomy of Ben the fallen son with Poe, the “adopted” son who became what Ben couldn’t? the guilt of Leia for not knowing how to teach her son about the Force, doing better half-raising a nobody who had the same shitty attitude as Han when they met but no Force ability? THIS IS JUICY CHARACTER CONTENT

Rose was given cheesy lines to introduce an important topic: that fighting is all well and good but throwing away your principles defeats the purpose of the fight in the first place (an important theme in the Clone Wars era, too.) she was there to be the voice of the truly little people in the gffa, who we don’t hear much about in the other trilogies. Finn’s sensitivity puts him at risk of the sorrow-to-hate arc i described for Barriss; Rose is there to be the empathy that sustains hope rather than becomes a crushing weight. i love the idea that she might rally volunteers from blue-collar places (like... Lothal, for example?) and spearhead the notion that the New Republic should be very different from the old one, calling out the fact that working conditions didn’t change with the shift from republic to empire and the First Order simply took it to an extreme that left her and her sister with nothing else to lose.

Ben Solo, hoo boy. so here’s the thing, we don’t KNOW Ben Solo. we were expected to want him to be redeemed because he was the son of Han and Leia, and that’s it. that’s lazy as fuck. him killing Han in the first movie (if it happened it should have been in movie #2, that’s how fucking second acts work) was an excuse to shock people, subvert the ‘i can’t kill my own father’ thing, and make sure we knew he was “evil” even though we’re supposed to also want a redemption arc? you have to read the Rise of Kylo Ren comics to learn that he was a) hounded by the voice of Snoke in his head from childhood, manipulated by it, which is horrific bc it’s like grooming... or b) that he felt HUGE pressure as a legacy Force-user to save the galaxy, lead the New Jedi Order, etc. these are much more empathy-generating and we should have learned them in TFA. echoes of Anakin much? which is why i think him being redeemed in a way other than self-sacrifice (which made sense for Vader given his long history of being a terrible person, knowing it was too late for him in the end, and really just wanting to save his son rather than “become good again”) is more interesting than him just falling (which is too much the same as the prequels.)

it should have been Finn’s call, a moment of Truth that held the balance of Finn as either falling prey to darkness or learning forgiveness, whether or not Kylo got redeemed. Finn and Rey working together to get to that point while Rose and Poe took on the military aspect of the Big Finale would have been great. Finn with a lightsaber to Kylo’s throat, feeling the temptation to murder him instead of making him face what he’s become in a meaningful way? Rey trying to urge him away from darkness as she’s been tempted before, but this is the first time Finn’s really been tested, and he was the one who so often reminded her of her own humanity? Rey calling up Rose’s point of creating a new paradigm instead of recreating the old one, of Poe’s growth or Leia’s willingness to take Ben back showing it’s possible? shiiiiiiit

the rest is going under a cut!

SO... given those things as a basis...

there being no scene where Force-ghost Anakin bops Kylo on the head (but you know, more subtly and with gorgeous metaphor ofc) was a travesty. we needed some version of that, also imo that reaffirms that Anakin was the chosen one... as him redirecting his grandson away from that path would be restoring hella balance

Snoke should have had his own fucked up backstory, if he was even there at all. a dark sider fucking with Ben Solo is reasonable to me, but Snoke could have been someone who looked up to Palps as much as Kylo supposedly looked up to Vader. that would have been interesting... maybe there are multiple “nobodies” who are being touched by the Force, just like there always were in the prequels era, but some are going dark with no Jedi to try to convince them otherwise? or, maybe Snoke’s life was ruined by the Empire and he chose to become the beast that harmed him, whereas Kylo becomes the version where you think you want to do that but then realize that it’s just as bad and you still have empathy and regret what you’ve done?

Thrawn being the main military antagonist, since they couldn’t be arsed to make Hux into anything but a sniveling baby fascist (despite his really upsetting backstory of an abusive father, also found in the comics... noticing a trend here?). Thrawn was already established and beloved in the legends. why would you not use him. whY?? he’s like a foil for Tarkin. contention between him and the Force-users in charge (Snoke and Kylo) would have been VERY interesting, esp with the character of Thrawn in the new canon seeing the Empire as a ‘necessary evil’ and now maybe having the potential to make it into something else? how’s JOINING WITH THE NEW REPUBLIC for a subversion of the classic tropes, Rian?????? you fucker????

if Thrawn’s history is “too storied” for a bunch of cowards to "fit” into a new movie trilogy, invent another antivillain to take Thrawn’s place whose history is a little more concurrent with the sequel era... you cowards

Luke fucking off after his failure isn’t out of character IMO. he was THE STRONGEST JEDI EVER and his star pupil still fell? maybe he broke under the same pressure Ben did. maybe that’s what allows him to reach back out towards Kylo and reconnect, admitting his failure. i want to hear more about him cutting himself off from the Force bc i LOVE KOTOR 2 and Kreia, but maybe that’s too much for one trilogy to delve into meaningfully, i dunno

Han fucking off after Ben wrecked the temple isn’t OOC either. i think Han was always a little frightened of the Force, the way many non-sensitives are. I think he was critical as a father, because he was critical of himself and Han is the king of projection. i wanted more of the dysfunctional relationship between him and Ben.

if Kylo kills Han, the scene needs to show more of the fact that Kylo actually regretted it, which Snoke only alludes to in TLJ, foreshadowing his future. i rewrote Han’s death scene for a friend and got a lot of good feedback about it so maybe i’ll post it here sometime. i can get behind a version where he doesn’t die, too, i just haven’t fleshed it out in my own head.

i like the idea that the Jedi Order needed to be remade, and that Luke saw the failure of the old order when he saw Ben turn like so many of the Jedi in the Order did. i like that Rey and Finn might spearhead this, and maybe Kylo’s role is to know the dark side intimately enough now that he can actually teach how it works, how to deal with it... how inevitable its temptation is. because...

in this canon, i don’t think the Force has light or darkness. i think it’s Force-users who do. it is their internal landscapes which cause them to “fall” or be redeemed or not, after all. Finn can attest to the same, so can Rey and Luke... so like, all the Jedi need DBT therapy or something i guess. lmao hold the dialectic, you nerds

the Force has shown time and time again that it cannot be “balanced” so maybe it is ourselves who need to become balanced instead

the Force is chaos, a never-ending series of colliding butterfly effects that to us will always and inevitably be seen as turmoil, cause and effect on a cosmic scale. if you drink too greedily of its power, or try to exert total control over it, by its nature it will consume you because it is beyond your mortal ken. whatever you hunger for, the force will give you more and more of it until you are overwhelmed, drowning in it

this is why peace was a central teaching of the Jedi... peace, the antithesis of chaos, which can only ever be created from within, the eye of the storm which must be sought time and time again

anyway thanks for coming to my ted talk? i’m always down to hear other people’s ideas for these characters tbh. and always down to get more into these topics if you want to know more... esp as it relates to the failure of the Jedi Order, or KOTOR 2 and Revan and Kreia, or OF COURSE my OCs because Sol has a very interesting relationship with the Force.

thank you for this ask lordimperius!! ^_^

[killingpast]

common misconceptions about ben solo:

1. )  “ he’s a big puppy / uwu soft boy ”  no.  wrong.  i hate this.  i cannot begin to explain why i hate this idea that he did nothing wrong.  he did.  that’s the entire point of his character:  to do wrong, then redeem himself from said wrongs.  to contrast the protagonist, rey,  &  to add depth to the conflicts of light vs. dark.  not to be woobified.  kylo ren is a terrifying man with anger issues  &  flaws in need of attending, he uses poor  &  hurtful language because he has been treated by snoke with such language, which he needs to unlearn.  he is not a school boy who blushes to his ears  &  stammers when in the presence of a cute girl.  he is a man, he is almost always more composed than his counterpart, he is capable of horrible things,  &  he carries himself in that exact manner.  alternatively,

2.)  “ he’s killed trillions @ hosnian prime  &  is a nazi ”  every time i see this i laugh because the idea of hux seething in the background as kylo ren absorbs every single ounce of credit  &  notoriety for his grand  ( specifically framed as nazi-esque )  speech about galactic domination  &  ‘ demonstration ’ of power ... it’s a sad day for hux.  sure, blame the lost lives on kylo, he was on the side that hit the big red button, hold him to that.  but he did not want it  &  was against it.  does that make him still guilty ?  yes.  but he is not a character who frothed at the mouth to destroy worlds. he was twisted, misguided  &  chained by snoke  &  loathed every moment of it.  hold him accountable for what he had a direct hand in, because there are plenty of other reasons to outcry his character.

3.)  “ he’s weak / can’t beat rey in a fight ”  the inherent misogynistic tone of this character hate is painful by itself.  REY IS STRONG, SHE IS CONSIDERED HIS EQUAL.  yes, the sequel trilogy lacks the flourish  &  flashiness of lightsaber battles that the prequels showed to be  ‘ the jedi in their prime ’  but that’s exactly it:  this is an era that does not have the proper jedi or sith teachings, particularly surrounding lightsaber combat, so their battles will not be as elegant.  the rawness of ben’s style, its wild nature, is simply different than our typical twirling escapades.  secondly, ben spends the majority of the sequels attempting to have rey join him;  he is not going for killing blows, he’s aiming to tire her.  rey, on the other hand, is able to battle him fully with the intent to kill.  in swordsmanship, non-fatal intent is considered a blatant hindrance.

4.)  “ he’s a sex god / he’s an awkward virgin ”  i obviously cannot go on blast saying ben solo fucks  &  fucks adequately or something like that, but i strongly disagree when people make him, as mentioned in the woobify section, an utterly oblivious school boy.  perhaps a bit shy at first ?  hell yeah.  this man is touch deprived, touch starved.  however, when people try to tell me that ben solo would be awkward with rey ... seem to forget that he can read her mind  &  that their skin on skin touch is akin to the intensity of grasping a live wire.  i mean, yes, he’s not a sex god, no, he’s human - they can still have moments, but he has a fairly good chance of knowing what the hell he needs to do to pleasure her simply via bond, their communication at one hundred percent clarity, down to the nitty gritty details.

5. )  “ ben pretended han solo forgave him  &  would never have been actually forgiven ”  han solo was specifically written to have already forgiven ben for what he did when he touched his cheek as he died.  han forgave ben for what he did in the past, what he was presently doing,  &  what ben could do in the future - in that very moment.  it was the love of his father that cracked through the darkness in ben  &  caused him to reel into a tailspin of conflict towards the light.  it is ultimately that loving father who ben confronts on kef bir, even just the memory, in order to accept his mistake  &  attempt to atone.  atonement for a wrongdoing cannot be declared inadequate by others because it is something only the suffering wrongdoer can free themselves from.  it is a spiritual moment condensed on screen in the span of just under four minutes for the sake of movie pacing.  in real life standards, this coping  &  acceptance  &  striving for atonement would happen over years of ben struggling to cope with his mistakes  &  trauma.  we got ten or so minutes of seeing ben  ‘ redeeming ’  himself, outright trying to be better.  we needed more.

6.)  “ ben solo should have lived ”  i mean, i can’t fully disagree, but i also believe that his death could have been framed into a much better message if it was ABSOLUTELY necessary for him to die.  i believe that ben solo living could have been narratively more interesting, but i also understand that disney wanted to be done with the skywalker bloodline entirely,  &  to show that it ended, on screen, to dispute any possibility of it returning.  ben solo’s death was poorly edited  &  executed  &  treated as a passing thought.  we needed more than that, as a general audience, to truly mourn  &  appreciate the character’s passing.  this is the end of a legendary family within a legendary universe, he deserved more than a quick fade away on some blue tinted dirt.  taken beyond what tros presented to us  &  written in a better way, the concept of ben’s sacrifice is beautiful.  if ben solo’s death had been filmed in a better way, paced properly, perhaps even given him some pre-death dialogue ... then i would have had no qualms with him dying to save rey’s life.

[elmidol]

To Be Drained by Devotion (NSFW)

Three Blind Tooke Part One Resistance is Futile

Read on AO3

Warnings: wound bleeding, oral, sex

Three Blind Tooke Part One: Resistance is Futile Chapter Twenty-Three: To Be Drained by Devotion

“This New Republic is young,” your father told you when for the umpteenth time you asked him why it was your mother had to work so late. “It needs steady hands to help build it. Strong hands to protect it. Patient hands to nurture it. Think of it like a sibling.”

“I want a different sibling,” you had stated obstinately.

You flinched as he lurched forward, his hands landing on either side of your head on the bed. “You’re proud, aren’t you? That the Resistance managed to destroy Starkiller—it was without you. How unnecessary you are to them.” You trembled at his words, feeling emotions surging through your chest, the pressure that threatened to choke you. “Replaceable… Everyone is replaceable, tooke. You are replaceable.” His lips twisted into a cruel mockery of a smile. “Trembling—are you scared, tooke? Is the Resistance intimidated?”

You reached up to your hair, his eyes on your every move as you undid the clip. You then lifted your arm, sighing whilst slipping the tooke hair clip into his locks. Above you, Kylo Ren’s shoulders heaved. There was something of an injured animal in the wild look his eyes held. You then dropped your hand to your chest. Blinked twice, watching him. He tried to remain still, and yet the anxiousness he was feeling showed well through his façade. The twitch of muscles. His jaw tensing. Eyes frantically searching your face.

“You can keep it, Ren…and give it to my replacement.” You were tired, your exhaustion displayed well through the passivity with which you spoke.

Kylo Ren wrinkled his nose, his brow furrowed as though he did not know how to respond. You sighed again. Waited for him to give into his anger fully. To hurt you—or break something within the room. Instead he averted his gaze. His shoulders continued to heave. In stark contrast to the norm, you were the passive individual and Kylo Ren was emotional. Though he would not allow those emotions to show completely. He was trying to stomp down on them. Using anger to kill—it was sorrow, you realized. Frustration. He did not know why he was upset, which had you curious as to what could render this man in such a vulnerable state.

Your mind started to take note of all the breakable items in the room. Ren’s mouth was in a constant state of motion; or, more precisely, his jaw. He nearly pouted, though at the last second he instead frowned. The man shifted his left leg, careful so as to not jar the injury on his side from the bowcaster. He settled down beside you, laying his head upon your chest. Your scowl deepened. This was not the result you had expected. You were tired of him. You wanted him to throw a tantrum and storm out of the room! The man had had the nerve to call you replaceable yet again, had mocked you, the Resistance—everything you stood for. And for what? Because you had commented on your father?

It had not been an invitation for him to cuddle against you; and yet Ren proved once more than he cared nothing for your wishes.

His breathing did not take long to relax. You could feel his body slumping further against yours as he lost consciousness. It struck you once more: he had sought you out for comfort. You were his tangible object. Rolling your eyes, you wished for all the galaxies that he had chosen someone or something else. You had nothing of your own, and here you were expected to give yourself to him. How laughable. On that note, you dipped your chin to take in his slumbering form. He was lying on his right side, the left being injured. It was on the left side of his head that you had slipped the tooke hair clip, and thus it was exposed. He had not done a single thing to remove it. Kylo Ren, wearing a tooke hair clip.

Father…father…Han Solo… General Organa is the leader of the Resistance—did Han Solo… I shouldn’t even care, not after everything he’s done.

And yet he had seen fit to bring you a small token of affection in a way, that single possession of yours. Comfort.

I’m so damn tired… I can’t do this… I have nothing—what the hell does he even want from me? His fucking fix… This is such bantha fodder.

“Just replace me already,” you muttered, placing a hand on his upper back. The man murmured your name, and you felt your heart stutter. So, you thought, he had not completely lost consciousness after all. Kylo Ren bunched up part of your shirt with his hand, clasping onto the material. He had once more tensed. Perhaps in pain, or perhaps because he was not dealing well with whatever emotional turmoil he was experiencing. A stream of air escaped through your nostrils. “You say it so often. So just do it already.”

“You replace my body with his.”

“His? Hux? You mean the man who ordered my mother’s execution? How…tactless of you.” You felt as though your throat were constricting again. You ran your tongue over your lips then bit down on your lower lip and shook your head. “Why are you even keeping me around? Just replace me already.” The hand loosened around your shirt, fingertips digging further into the material, tugging up more into a fist. “Go get in someone else’s bed…leave me alone.”

The man did not budge. You at last gave up, knowing that it would do no good to continue to push. He would not be leaving your side—for how long exactly, you were not entirely certain. Kylo said nothing further either. He kept his cheek rested on your chest, and at some point you fell asleep with him there. The Force user was there still when you stirred. You hummed to yourself as you peed, feeling rather awkward despite the catheter and also despite the fact that this was not your first time peeing with him around. You drifted off again afterwards.

What caused both you and Kylo Ren to awaken next was an exclamation of surprise. You both looked towards the door, where Doctor Urvno stood. The man’s face was drained of color, and he stuttered out an apology to Ren. His gaze darted between your face and Kylo’s. The Force user pushed himself up into a sitting position, wincing then pausing every few seconds. He was likely sore, maybe even stiff, you noted as you mimicked his movements. Urvno’s gaze was drawn to the other’s hair. The clip.

“A-ah, sir…I… I will have bacta injections administered…and fresh wrappings brought.” He was at last able to jerk his gaze away from the hair piece. The man shuffled out of the room, likely doing exactly what he said he would.

The silence that surrounded the two of you was, surprisingly, rather comfortable. Kylo Ren was making no move to press for any sort of affection or intimacy, any sort of physical contact aside from him sitting beside you. You glanced towards the man’s bowcaster injury. You wondered once more how he had managed to survive the wound, how he could be walking—limping, you corrected yourself, so soon after receiving it. You had never before realized quite how determined the man was.

This is who I’ve been up against, you thought, a swirling sensation at the base of your neck. And my body… He has me at such a disadvantage. I need to defeat him, but how? How long will it take?

“Why don’t you remove the tooke clip?” you asked, breaking the silence at last.

“You wish to be replaced…”

“I am…beyond tired, Ren.” You sighed heavily, allowed your eyelids to drift closed, and took a moment to gather all your thoughts. “I’m not…giving up, not exactly. But… I just… I really do have nothing.”

You did not expect him to answer, and thus you were unsurprised when he said nothing. Doctor Urvno reentered the room, the supplies in his hand. Kylo Ren obediently followed each of the physician’s directions as the man administered the bacta injections and redressed the Force user’s injuries. You observed your captor with vague interest. It still felt as though there was a light buzzing in the back of your mind, something telling you that none of this was real; it couldn’t be, if it meant everything you cared for was gone.

When Ren had been attended to, the Master of the Knights of Ren rose from the bed. “See to it that she is placed in my quarters before the cycle has ended.” Urvno stiffened, his gaze darting to you. You could read the expression clearly; he did not want you near Kylo Ren in this way. The man was not stable, unpredictable in the best of times. At long last did he remove the hair clip, which he slipped into your hand. “Don’t be foolish, tooke.”

You stared at his back as he limped out of the room. Only when you were alone with Urvno did the physician at last turn to you and begin doing as he had been commanded. You were grateful when the catheter was removed, though the process was rather uncomfortable. You were given time to shower and groom yourself before gloves were placed on your hands, caps on your teeth—anything to prevent you from harming yourself. You did not protest, having no desire to give them any reason to further your restraints.

Kylo Ren’s quarters were just as bleak as you remembered. Cold. Lonely. Simplistic and impersonal. You climbed onto the bed, cupped the hair clip to your chest, and laid your head upon the pillow. It had his scent. Which meant, your mind supplied, he had limped all the way from this room to medbay in order to give you the clip, in order to comfort you in his own way.

And yet I’m replaceable, you thought whilst rolling your eyes. Everyone could be replaceable in a way. Some, however, were a lot more difficult to replace. You wondered if you fit into that category for Ren. You were his fix, one that could not be easily replicated. Which was why he did not want you to die. His bark was, perhaps, worse than his bite when it came to you.

You slipped the tooke hair clip into your hair, snapping it into place. You fell asleep wearing it.

Kylo Ren woke you when he entered his quarters. He stripped down to his underwear, his bandages covering another good portion of his body, and climbed onto the bed with you. You grunted when his hand covered yours, something pressing against the glove you were wearing. His limb then returned to his side, and the man relaxed beside you. You opened your hand and stared down. A small child’s game. Electronic pet. A tooke, you noted as you began to press the buttons.

The little tooke on the screen ate the food you gave to it. Which reminded your own body that it was hungry. You shifted uncomfortably, also aware that you needed to use the refresher. You continued to hold onto the small game as you entered the bathroom. You set it down only as long as necessary, walking out and climbing back onto the bed beside him. Ren grunted as the mattress shifted under your movements.

“I had one of these…when I was younger… My mother bought it for me.” Again, no response. You looked at the man, finding that he had his eyes open and was watching you.

He knew… It was one of my memories that he saw…

“You said you don’t want me shattered… What do you even mean by that?” Those brown eyes staring up at you. That expression again, the hint that something was not quite right. You recalled how he had reacted to the word father. “Was it the idea that I was dead, or was it who I said I was with?”

“Tooke…” His chest rose and fell heavily. “…I killed him.”

“Ben?” you asked quietly.

A sardonic smile, a snort. “Han Solo.” You felt a lump form in your throat. Though you had never met the man, Han Solo had been one of your heroes in a way. He had assisted in the Rebellion. His wife was Leia, for stars’ sake! And his son had killed him. The game dropped out of your hand. “Why should you care—a man you never met?” He grimaced as he pushed himself up. “You have your own to mourn. Why worry about a man you never knew? He would have disappointed you, tooke.”

“That’s a cruel thing to say,” you whispered, watching him and holding back a comment on the hurt you identified in his expression. That’s what it was. He was hurting. This man had killed his own father… You could not imagine doing something so cruel, so evil. On opposite sides of the war, you reminded yourself. “He was my ally, in a way.”

“Do you take each of their deaths so personally?”

“Maybe.” His eyes had widened when he spoke, and now he shifted closer to you. You felt your entire body tensing, shuddering when he rested his forehead against your sternum. “You aren’t able to replace me like you say, are you? Not that easily…”

“No, tooke…not that easily.” It felt like a punch to the gut, that he admitted to this. You felt air escape you, and it took you a few moments before you replenished that supply. “The Resistance found you easy to replace…”

As though he were arguing that he was better than the Resistance. That he cared about you. Your enemy—it made your head feel as though it were spinning. He scooped up the game, pressing it into your hands again. You cupped the small device. Your mind was on the memory—dream?—of when you were standing beside your father. Watching as Kylo Ren reacted so violently to your death. So passionately. This man who had killed his own father, and he had been unable to accept your life’s end. Had not allowed it, in fact.

“When I was with my father”—he tensed at the word—“it was like I could see you… When you were angry that I died… He told me that I needed to go back. I wasn’t allowed to stay with him.” You could hear the moment he opened his mouth. No words came out, yet his hot breath washed over you. Your thumbs ran along the game in your hands. Gloves preventing you from feeling the plastic-metal casing. “I don’t know if it’s a real memory… It hurt so much—being torn away from him like that, it hurt. I don’t remember death itself, dying I mean… I don’t remember it or the pain, but…”

“You’re mine, tooke,” he said through clenched teeth. His hands found your hips, fingers digging into you. You winced, hissing at the pain.

“I’m not,” you growled back, your entire frame shaking as you hiccupped a half-second later. A swooping motion had you gulping in air as Kylo Ren jerked your body under his simultaneous to adjusting his posture so that you slipped between his legs. You regained your breath while he settled atop you, his hands pulling down your bottoms. “So you’re going to rape me to try to prove a point?” Again did he freeze, much as he had when you had tucked the tooke hair clip into his hair. He blinked at you, his eyes wide for a few seconds longer until he started to calm himself. Unpredictable… Yet somehow he’s more gentle… Why? “You can use my body for comfort,” you said, thinking of how he had done the same for you, “but don’t be so hurtful—in your actions or words. Stop…just… I’m so tired, Ren.”

“Alright, tooke,” he whispered, resuming stripping himself and you. You eyed his side, noting the way he was wincing every few seconds. Perhaps he had torn open the wound once more. Rather than enter you immediately as you had expected, he slipped down your body and began kissing at you. You closed your eyes, feeling what he was doing to you. You hooked your legs over his shoulders, arched your back, and moaned as his tongue parted your slit, tracing along your labia then swirling against your clitoris. You clutched the small game in one hand, using the other to run your fingers through his hair, to grab at him as you bucked your hips, trying to get him to fuck you with his tongue. “Patience.” His breath was so warm against you as he spoke.

“Mm…Kriff!” He was going so agonizingly slow, much as he had that day he had you pinned while he watched the interrogation. Rather than continue, he began kissing, licking, and nipping a trail up the length of your body, his mouth soon sealing over yours. You responded immediately, wrapping your legs around him. “Ah! Fuck! Nnn, fuck.” You were shuddering, trying to ignore that there was a rather distinguishable wetness on your stomach from where he was bleeding on you. “You’re going to…nn. Ren, you—mm.” He collapsed atop you when he ejaculated, the man unable to support his own weight. “Kriff…you’re…fucking…heavy.”

Kylo Ren curled his body around yours, resting his head atop your chest as he had on the hospital bed. This time, however, you found that your feelings towards him were slightly less bitter. You were, nonetheless, thankful when he managed to shift so that his full weight was not on you. You balled up his bedsheets and pressed them to his side, commenting that he should seek treatment. A humorless chuckle, him commenting that it was not as though you truly cared—and you maneuvered yourself so that you could peer down at his face; it was an uncomfortable position for your neck, and yet you could not stop yourself.

“Perhaps not completely, Ren,” you admitted. “And yet…a little bit… I care a little.” He was the only person you had left with whom you had any sort of deep bond, born out of hatred though it had been. His mouth twitched, and the man reached out an arm. His commlink flew from his bedside table into his outstretched hand. You remained quiet while he called for a nursedroid. He would be bandaging himself, you noted. “My relationship with my father was different… I…miss him. And I miss my mother… I don’t… My last contact with her was…” You brushed underneath your eyes in order to wipe away your tears. “She thought I didn’t care that my father was dead. That’s not fair.” Through all this, the Force user said not a single word.

The nursedroid entered the quarters, and it was only then that Kylo Ren pulled away from you. You drew the child’s game towards your face, playing a small mini-game with the tooke. Nostalgia tugged at you, and you thought once more of your childhood, of sitting between your parents as you, while a child, had played such a game. Kylo Ren tended to his wound, re-bandaging himself. He then sent the droid away, walked into the refresher, and returned within a few minutes. You set down the device.

“My body is shattered.”

“No. It’s mending, tooke.”

“It will never be the same.” A smile threatened to form on his face, yet instead he settled for smirking. “Worse than a typical injury… I hadn’t even realized…even after I died… I didn’t understand the full extent…”

“I have told you countless times, tooke—how much you impress me.”

“By surviving?”

“Yes.” You nodded, bobbing your head and staring straight forward without truly seeing anything. “Your will to survive…though you would sacrifice your life for a cause…not many would find the strength…continuously, as you have.”

“It’s…exhausting.” His jaw twitched, his lips working against one another though he said nothing. Perhaps he was fighting back emotions. Sentiment was a weakness, you recalled him saying on more than a single occasion. “Are you tired?” Kylo Ren narrowed his eyes at your inquiry. Your lips quirked up into a small smile and air puffed out from your nostrils in a light laugh. “Rest allows the body to heal.”

“You’re openly seeking my company.”

“Maybe I am,” you said, unsure if this were so while at the same time concluding that it was quite likely. “You brought me…comfort. You’re injured, and yet… It’s not a quick stroll to medbay from here. I do…appreciate…what you did for me.”

“I have no need for comfort, tooke.” His eyes bespoke his lie, and yet you knew better than to argue.

Instead you pulled some of his blankets over your naked body. “Maybe I still need to be comforted.” A completely true statement. You felt waves of numbness and pain rolling through your mind in succession as they had been since you had known your mother would die. They had, naturally, worsened at the news Doctor Urvno had shared with you. “I feel so alone…and you’re the only one who… Maybe on a small level you do care.”

“About you?”

“Something like that.” He had taken a tentative step towards the bed. “I’m pretty sure the understanding is that I’m supposed to be your fix.” Two steps more. He was so close to you. Had you wanted, you could have reached out and touched him. You, however, did not. He needed to come of his own accord. “You’re not as merciless…as monstrous…as I had always believed. There’s something so…human about you… Even if you do not allow yourself to entertain such emotions, you understand mine, don’t you? Sentimentality. Grief. You brought something to comfort me… I honestly don’t know why you would show me such mercy when I’ve tried so hard to kill you every chance I’ve gotten.”

Kylo Ren at last moved back onto the bed with you. He lifted the blanket long enough to climb underneath, and then pressed his body against yours. You altered your position so that you were lying on the other side of him, spooning with him in a way that he was able to lay on his uninjured side. His arm was wrapped around you, and you placed your hand atop his. You glanced at the tattoo on your finger.

“Goodnight, Ren.”

Once more no words. He hooked his face against your neck, and you could both hear and feel him breathing in your scent. Something familiar. It was relatable for you, how he was acting. You had done the same to him countless times when seeking out something to cling to, something familiar, something for comfort.

So…stubborn… you thought, calling to mind his reluctance to admit to—complete denial over needing to be comforted. On some level, killing his father had, unsurprisingly, weakened him. That he seemed almost confused as to why this was baffled you. How could he ever think it would be right to kill his father? I don’t understand him… You clutched his hand, pulling it closer to you, pressing your lips against it. You did what you could to return the favor he had paid by his efforts to comfort you—how many times had he split open his wound doing so, you wondered. Devoted… He is such a…devoted person… Gives his all for the cause… In this, you felt almost a camaraderie. How well you knew the drive. You would give your all to fulfill your duty, one-thousand percent. Your life. Your everything.

For once the idea that you could be anything like Kylo Ren did not repulse you. This was one similarity, though it drove the pair of you to opposite sides of the war, that you could proudly embrace.

[We were cut from the same cloth, Then sent to different masters. Here we stand before one another— Which step in life truly matters?]

[achingforthestars]

some things i liked and did not like about the rise of skywalker ***spoilers***

now having seen it and having had the time to sit and talk and collect my thoughts, i have a list of the things i didn’t enjoy and, amongst all this negativity, the things i did. 

contains spoilers of course!

things i did not enjoy:

finding out about palpatine off-screen

so stupid! this was one of the things i disliked the most because of what a cheap, lazy writing choice it was. i wanted to see the characters have to put it together, have to work for it and then when facing palpatine, have it be on their terms instead of his? instead we get him announcing his presence and kylo meeting him in the first 3 minutes. 

treatment of characters

i made a post about this. just so much wrong, so many deserved better, most of all rose, rey and ben. a lot of the characters were treated as afterthoughts. 

implied finn having feelings for rey

dumb. overdone. tired.

knights of ren

felt cheap and underused. learned nothing about them, it was something i was waiting 3 movies for and the final chance to show them was wasted. 

the resistance is back to perfect! 

i understand that this was due to the timeskip, which i guess was necessary, but i felt that it was kind of cheap to not show any sort of struggle. a year has passed and BAM they’re right where they were in TFA. the losses faced in TLJ very much felt erased. 

the pacing

awful. just awful. things felt too rushed or too slow pretty much through the entire movie. 

the visuals

much less well-done than TLJ. the use of colour and light was much weaker in my opinion, the locations more generic, and the imagery lacking. that said, palpatine’s lair was so fittingly creepy, and the reylo moment on kijimi/kylo’s ship with the black and white juxtaposition - those were nice. 

irrelevant or convenient plot elements

zorii bliss was not a necessary character. chewie was conveniently on another transport. d-0, while super cute and funny, was also just a deus ex machina. hux being a spy - could have been entirely removed but oh, finn and poe need to get off the ship somehow. rey’s return to ahch-to was rushed, her interactions with luke could have been on any other planet. she did not need to pilot luke’s x-wing specifically but they forced it. lando - lando was basically a consolation prize for chewie with little relevance. pryde literally could have been replaced with hux and made for a more interesting narrative. 

snoke clones

what the fuck was that?

the fleet

somehow the entirety of the fleet was magically stored, 100% operational and with fully functioning crew, under the crust of some random planet? and every single one of those ships has planet-destroying capabilities? 

the other “fleet”

where the fuck were these allies in TLJ, huh? i get that it’s the last stand and maybe more people showed up because of that but damn. 

leia’s absence was felt

i understand this was not in the control of the creators but truly, i felt like there was a gaping hole where leia should have been. 

the Trio

i enjoyed their banter but it felt inconsistent through the movie. rey and poe didn’t get along one minute, the next they’re fine. if this had been introduced and pushed in previous films, it would have made more sense and felt less hollow. as it stands, it felt like a forced attempt to call back the OT vibes that just fell flat.

rey palpatine

ugh. let’s reduce strength to a bloodline and in the process ignore what was set up in the last movie. yay! also, palpatine fucked someone at some point and that is utterly disgusting. 

rey skywalker

felt forced. she did not need to take the skywalker name.

kylo’s transition to ben.

before anyone jumps on me, i want to clarify that specifically i am referring to the speed of his transition from ruthless supreme leader to full on ben. i loved his redemption, i just wish i could have seen him do it more gradually and with a bit more struggle? he just goes from “i will find you rey and turn you dark like me” to “i am ben solo” so quickly that i found it a bit jarring? 

palpatine’s constantly changing plans. 

kill rey, no wait, take the throne rey, no wait, let me kill you both and take the throne myself. pick one you crusty fuck. 

force dyad

honestly why establish it if you’re going to ignore it in about 2 seconds?

inadequate expression of star wars main themes

the ideas of hope, of redemption, of love and of family - all central to star wars, and none properly delivered on. 

ben’s death. 

heartbreaking. he deserved love and happiness and a life. that’s all i can say about that. however, in a transition to things i liked: if he had to die, i’m really pleased that it was with an act of love. he chose to make a sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice, for his soulmate. i don’t like that he had to die, but i can find peace in the way it happened - on his terms, on the light side, in the arms of the woman he loved.

things i did enjoy (a lot actually):

babu frik

was so fucking funny. that is all. 

c-3po.

also surprisingly funny for a droid i’m usually annoyed by?

jannah

i surprisingly really loved her character. i thought she might be an addition like zorii bliss, but i enjoyed naomi ackie’s acting a lot. she felt much more genuine. however i do think there was a missed opportunity in working on her and finn’s shared background as ex-stromtroopers.

force healing abilities

i thought were super cool! i really liked healing the serpent, it was a nice subversion of the expectation to be trapped and outrunning a monster through a labyrinth of corridors. loved how when rey healed kylo, she healed his scar too. just also it’s always nice to see new things being done with the force.

force fighting. 

it was lovely to see force techniques being used in the lightsaber battles (as compared, for instance, to the throne room fight of TLJ); and also to see force-aided physical feats like jumps that don’t look like naruto-style ninja backflips. definitely felt more real.

poe’s moment in the x-wing

taking in the damage and destruction all around him. i felt the weight he was feeling in that moment.

rey picking herself off the ground

after palpatine drains her and kylo’s life force. i loved her moment of peace and centering, gathering the strength to do what comes next. while i didn’t love the voices of the previous jedi, it made for a lovely sequence of “i’m not done with you yet” and showcases her strength.

the moment with ben and han

gorgeous scene echoing han and ben’s last interaction in TFA. just an amazing callback with such different emotion and the final turning of ben back to the light. i really loved this bit.

adam driver’s acting performance in general.

absolutely the best, the most amazing, performance of the film. if nothing else, the switch from kylo to ben, despite having zero dialogue, should speak for itself. he managed to convey a completely different personality through his mannerisms, physicality and visuals alone. oh, and the death/ressurrection scene! the absolute desperation with which he crawls to the woman he loves. the infinite depth of emotion adam manages to transmit through only his eyes and his facial expressiveness. he deserves an oscar nomination for this in my opinion. 

reylo kiss

i don’t even need to explain this. the smile. the pure happiness, the tender touch, the moment of just love and joy and letting themselves be together, finally. i could not have asked for more of a beautiful first kiss. we’re ignoring what comes after. 

overall impression

tros fell flat. i lived for ben’s redemption and reylo, but this was not enough to make up for the mistreatment of most of the characters, the poorly coordinated and frankly rushed structure, and most importantly, the failure to deliver on its themes of family and hope. i felt like it tried to do too much and achieved too little. 

[kyluxtrashpit]

K so I said I might write a post about what I wanted from ep 9 and then I ended up doing it. So this is essentially a summary of the movie I would’ve made if someone gave me that ability. It’s not fully fleshed out, but I literally could not stop myself from typing it out once I starting piecing it together lmao

Even though this is my own creation, I still consider this a spoilery post SO WARNING FOR RISE OF SKYWALKER SPOILERS RIGHT HERE

I still think the best thing to do with ep 9 would be to centre it on the FO falling apart instead of ‘oh no daddy palps is back :o’. Truth be told, I’d rewrite TLJ too if I could, but I’m going to try to work within its constraints on this as well as keep some tros stuff intact for the sake of trying to work with it. So here’s the basic plot of what I would’ve liked to see:

Kylo undermining and removing authority from Hux while he focuses on Force stuff. He’s still looking for secrets and holocrons, but there’s no palpatine

Meanwhile the Resistance is working on building up their forces and helping the little people, plus trying to get info to take down the FO

The focus of the Resistance side is them trying to get the strength to face the FO and working together and all that good stuff. Focus more on the small acts of goodness in the galaxy that bring people together and end up with those they help joining the Resistance. That’s where they get their strength

Rey’s story would also be mostly about mastering the Force (and Leia still helps to train her) and the love and family she’s found among the Resistance. She’s still stupidly powerful though. I’d love to make her a Skywalker, but hell, it’d even work if she remained a nobody. TLJ was her crucible; she knows who she is now. She doesn’t need anyone else to tell or write her story for her

Also I really want her to go grey jedi. So maybe she realizes what Luke really meant: it was time for the jedi not truly to end, but to change. To embrace emotion without losing themselves to it. To realize that the only true way to achieve balance is not by staying light in order to defeat the dark, but instead learning to master both and keeping the balance within herself. That way, when the darkness is defeated, it won’t need to rise again: true balance. This would be her growth in the story, to learn how to embrace true balance in the Force

Also Finn’s story is still going to focus on the Stormtroopers (and Jannah can 100% still be there). So he finds Jannah and her team in Act 1, and then in Act 2 they unearth some secrets as to how Stormtroopers are brainwashed. Conditioning can’t be broken out of by will alone; Finn was Force sensitive. But something else happened with Jannah and her company. An idea is born: could they recreate that on a large scale and free them all? That’d be a huge blow to the FO and it would save all those troopers who never had a choice in what to be

Poe’s focus would still be on becoming the leader they need him to be, with lots of fun trio moments. So his wouldn’t actually change that much, but nothing about him being a drug dealer. I’m sure Zori could still be worked in but tbh I didn’t feel she added much to the plot

Rose is there a lot more too and comes along on all their adventures, happy to liberate anyone they can. She’s always been in it for the little people and that’s where she shines

Also Kylo is even more erratic, even more lost. He feels torn apart all over again. He’s not doing well as SL; he thought it would make things clearer, but it didn’t. He’s unstable and feral, focusing on all the wrong things and making bad choices because of it

Near the end of Act 1 of the movie, Hux betrays Kylo in a near deadly fashion, but Kylo manages to escape by the skin of his teeth

The Resistance gets word of a civil war within the FO. It;s Hux’s fleet (the red troopers + newer FO officers) vs Kylo’s fleet (mostly the older imperials who remember Vader + the KOR – you can keep Pryde here too if you want). This is their chance. They can take advantage of the chaos

While Kylo recovers from Hux’s attack, he starts having doubts again. Nothing has felt right since he became SL but what other choice does he have? He can’t go back, can he? He’s not supposed to want to. And even if he did, he’s too far gone to ever be welcomed, even by his own mother. So he continues fighting against Hux, more harried and haunted than ever

This situation degrades quickly. Both sides are getting hits in, but Hux is winning. Worse yet: it’s spilling over and doing collateral damage. Places controlled by the FO are being exploited, even worse atrocities being committed against them in this rapid arms race to superiority

Hell, maybe Hux’s fleet still has those planet-destroying canons like Palps’ fleet cause why not, everyone seems to think SW needs a superweapon in it. Anyway

There’d be more development on the heroes’ side as I detailed above here. Rey helping people and learning to be grey. Finn discovering the secrets of the Stormtrooper program. Poe becoming a leader. Rose comes with them on their journeys. Leia is heard rather than seen for the most part; she’s surviving this time around, but her presence is felt through her messages and dialogue snippets rather than physically being in the scenes. Some of the footage could be used, especially her hug with Rey, but I’d use much less of it

The Resistance knows they have to hurry. Do they have enough people? They have no idea, but they’re gonna try anyway. They have to. And you can still have Lando do basically the same thing; show up, be cool, then go get some more people

I’d like to do more with the KOR too, but tbh I’m not sure how other than just some scenes of them and Kylo doing Ren Stuff (whatever that may be). But there’d definitely be something

Near the end of Act 2, there’s a particularly brutal fight. I’d want Kylo and the KOR on the ground here, doing their shit. It feels kinda cheap to have him almost die again but tros also had 2 death fake outs for Kylo before the actual death so fuck it lmao. He thinks he’s going to win (maybe Hux is even there? Or maybe Phasma is revived? Or even just some fancy trooper akin to FN-2199 or something. Maybe it’s even Force-nullifying tech), but then the last minute he gets his shit wrecked

He’s dying. He reaches out with the Force, violently, affecting everyone. Rey hears it through the shattered bond. Finn even hears it, though faintly. It hits Leia hardest of all

Meanwhile, Kylo sees the ghost of Anakin instead of a vision of Han. Anakin, who knows better than anyone what it is to turn to the dark, but also what it is to turn away from it. The scene would still play out similarly, but not mirror the past scene with Han so much

(Look, I know a lot of people don’t like bendemption, but I think that redemption is always possible as long as it’s written well. And that applies to pretty much any character. TROS just needed more time to develop it, which I am attempting to do here by showing Kylo’s instability at the beginning)

Anakin manages to heal Kylo enough to bring him back from the brink of death, but not fully. I don’t think I want Kylo to toss away his lightsaber, but he still could. Regardless, there’s some sort of symbolic gesture to prove he’s changed his mind

A ship arrives: it’s the Resistance. Finn and Poe are cautious, but Rey doesn’t fear him. She confronts him about this sudden change of heart, but she can feel his sincerity. So she reassures Finn and Poe and they bring him along, though no one is really happy about it. They fix him up

With Kylo’s fleet all but destroyed, Hux is ready to take out the Resistance and everyone who sympathizes. Now perhaps we have a planet the trio had previously visited get destroyed. There’s still an ultimatum from the FO to obey or die. It’s a crackdown. A final act to ensure domination of the galaxy. Hell, you can even still call it the Final Order if you want to

The Resistance now strikes. Lando’s getting more back up, if he can, but they take who they’ve got. Kylo is there and there’s a lot of mistrust (could be played for humour too) but not enough time to get into it. They need to do this or too many will die. If he tries anything, Rey will strike him down and she tells him so. She’s done listening to his attempts to get under her skin

This Kylo is also definitely more Ben (I’m mixed on whether he should just go back to his old name or not so I’m keeping him Kylo for the sake of this summary). There’s guilt, though. A lot of it. You can see it on his face and in what he says. But helping to fix this will be a start. His crimes aren’t forgotten; he wants to make up for them however he can

Also Finnrey happens. They kiss before the fight this time and it’s very cute and romantic

So basically the end fight is Resistance fleet vs FO fleet. Poe is leading the charge. Meanwhile, Finn, Jannah, Rose and company sneak on to try to end FO conditioning. Rey and Kylo also sneak on; they’re going for Hux and the elite troops he uses as guards

Hux is going to have to have Force-nullifying tech of some sort (which I think is extremely underused in the SW universe as a whole btw). But he underestimates what Rey (powerful as fuck) and Kylo (Skywalker) are capable of

I’m not 100% sure how this fight plays out but I think I want Rey and Kylo to take out Hux’s elite troops without being able to use the Force. It’d be a fun struggle to watch and also make the fight much more visceral and difficult for them. But they both know how to fight, so they win

On the other side, Finn, Jannah, and Rose manage to do whatever to free the Stormtroopers from mind control (I’m not sure exactly how this would happen, but it’s star wars, it doesn’t need to make much sense). We get the first stage of a full trooper rebellion. They go after the officers immediately

Outside, Poe is struggling, just like in tros. They might lose this. Even if the landing party wins, there’s just too many of them. Cue Lando bringing a big fleet to help and giving us an epic space battle

Back inside: something exciting happens and it turns into a struggle between Hux’s tech and their combined Force powers. This is how I think it should go:

Kylo gives Rey his Force powers, which knocks him unconscious. Rey now has the power to break through on her own. It shouldn’t be possible. She sends out a concussive blast that knocks Hux back. The ideal here would be Hux being captured and taken in alive to be tried for war crimes, but I know that’s asking too much lmao so

If I can’t have definitively alive Hux: Rey approaches him but the ship makes a buckling noise; her Force powers compromised the structural integrity. Debris falls, obscuring Hux (and probably implying it killed him), and she knows it’s time to run. Kylo also comes to around this moment and follows

(And for real, I’m also okay with Hux dying for sure here, because at least he got to have his day first, but this is fantasy land lmao so I’m just not gonna have it happen as far as that goes)

Finn, Jannah, and Rose lead the stormtroopers onto transports as the ship starts falling apart. Rey and Kylo (and Hux, if I got my way) show up and make it in too. They take off and make it out just as the Finalizer crumples. Everyone lives! (Plus Hux is plausibly still alive even if I can’t have him definitely alive sdkfsdkl)

They call for the fleet to stop; the Stormtroopers on every destroyer are rising up, freed from their shackles. Shot of FO officers tied up and captured as the Stormtroopers, without their helmets, celebrate

A sidenote: I can’t decide whether I want Kylo to have lost his Force powers permanently by giving them to Rey or for him to get them back. I think losing them would be a good act of sacrificial penance, but at the same time, I’m not sure if that’s a thing so lmao. I’m open to possibilities here

End bit would still be a celebration. Rey and Finn and Poe still hug. The Stormtroopers are happy. We can still have that moment with Lando and Jannah; the implication of trying to find where every one of the troopers came from. The FO officers have been imprisoned. Everything is right in the galaxy again

Now there’s one more scene with Kylo: he stands in front of a door, looking pensive, squeezing and unsqueezing his hands into fists. The shot moves to his back and the door opens. You can’t see what’s inside but you hear: “Ben?” followed by a pause, and then a small, broken “Mom.”. He steps inside and starts to fall to his knees. End scene

Now, as a last scene, we could still do Rey having a funeral for Luke on Tatooine and keep the ending shot basically the same except Leia and her saber aren’t there because Leia is alive. Rey could still decide to be a Skywalker if she’s a nobody. The shot of two suns. The End.

[themattress]

Look, I like The Last Jedi. I think it's a good movie, and far from the worst Star Wars movie or the utter ruination of the whole franchise. In fact, I think it did several things that were very necessary in moving the franchise forward in a good direction. And I will always stand by that.

BUT with that said, this guy makes a lot of valid points about the inherit wrongness of what Rian Johnson pulled with it, which harms how well it ages. As the middle chapter of the trilogy, so much of what it did in "subverting expectations" repeatedly ran the overarching story into brick walls. While The Empire Strikes Back being divisive back in its day just like TLJ is now is certainly true, I have to admit that even back then Empire set up these plot threads to be wrapped up in the concluding entry:

* Luke needed to complete his Jedi training, his maturation process, and his Hero's Journey. * Luke needed to finally face and defeat Darth Vader once and for all. * Luke needed to emotionally struggle with the fact that Darth Vader was his father. * Han needed to be rescued from Jabba the Hutt. * Leia being able to hear Luke through the Force needed to be explained. * The Luke/Leia/Han "love triangle" needed to be resolved. * Yoda's comment about there being another hope needed to be addressed. * Obi-Wan had to be taken to task for lying to Luke about his father. * Lando needed to further progress in redeeming himself. * The Rebellion needed to fully regroup and strike back against the Empire. * The Emperor himself needed to finally show up in person and try to bring Luke to his side. * Everything about Darth Vader needed closure, really.

And on the whole, many people were emotionally invested in the story and wanted to see how it ended.

Regardless of one's thoughts on Return of the Jedi, it did pick up all of those hanging threads and wrapped them up.  Now, let's look at what The Last Jedi left up in the air in comparison:

* Rey has the Sacred Jedi Texts to learn from, but she's so OP that it doesn't seem she needs much training to pick up skills from them. * Rey has no personal conflict to deal with, as learning the truth of her parentage has actually liberated her from such things. * Rey and Kylo Ren's connection doesn't even need to progress, since Rey literally slammed the door on him at the end! * Finn is firmly committed to the Resistance and...that's it, he's got nothing left. * Poe has matured into a real leader and...yeah, his arc could possibly end right there. * Luke dies, and there's no urgent in-story requirement for him to reappear as a Force Ghost. * Leia has no clear path forward, and Carrie Fisher is dead. * Kylo Ren is the new Supreme Leader and...yeah, he's going down. He lost in TFA's finale, he lost in this film's finale, he'll lose again. * Hux wants to betray Kylo Ren, but he's portrayed as such a buffoon that does anyone feel any suspense from this? * Phasma is dead, nothing more can be done with her. * Snoke is dead, nothing more can be done with him...we never even got any backstory that could’ve given some more material! * In regards to the new characters, Holdo is dead, DJ is gone for good, and Rose had a completed arc that doesn't leave her any clear path forward. * The Resistance has to regain strength and destroy the First Order, but that's a foregone conclusion at this point. * I guess Broom Boy and other Force-sensitive children could rise up to be heroes many, many years later?

And the emotional investment that many people had in the story and its resolution was destroyed, as the set-ups from the first movie were all discarded, the direction of the trilogy's story was left in an unclear fog, and so many of the characters ended up looking bad and not worth following anymore.

And yeah, it's great that Rian Johnson's vision spared us from Colin Trevorrow spearheading the final installment of the trilogy, that still could have happened while adhering to a basic trilogy outline that pushed more elements from the first movie forward and left some elements to be resolved in the last movie. Y'know, like the one J.J Abrams apparently wrote and Kathleen Kennedy foolishly allowed Rian to discard altogether?

Imagine if there was the usual time skip between movies with TLJ.  Rey could be back with the Resistance and go on a mission with Finn, Poe, Rose and the rest that incorporated a lot of the whole Oochi / Sith Dagger / Rey's parents stuff that ended up in TROS, with flashbacks showing her time with Luke on Ach-To and how she eventually learned about the origins of that mission from Luke himself. Along the way we get her Force Skypes with Kylo Ren until ultimately she returns to Ach-To to confront Luke on what really happened in the past with him and Ben Solo, and then we get most of the same stuff that happens afterward in TLJ but with the addition of Rey being revealed as Palpatine's granddaughter by Kylo rather than revealed as coming from nothing, Kylo Ren defeating Rey and claiming the Sith Dagger for himself (which would guide him to the Wayfinder at the start of TROS), and the final scene being the Palpatine broadcast being heard by the peasant kids playing with their toys rather than just a big thematic moment that is cool but doesn't actually mean anything for this saga. Imagine how much better the movie and trilogy would have been if it had gone that route!

Rian, my man, you did some good, but you also really fucked up.

[dalekofchaos]

Ways they could’ve handled Supreme Leader Snoke in the Last Jedi  and what they did instead

My other Sequel trilogy wasted potential posts

Rey

Finn

Poe

Rose

Luke

Han

Leia

Kylo Ren

Captain Phasma

Hux

List of ways they could’ve handled Snoke in TLJ

Show Snoke completing Kylo Ren’s training. SHow Snoke sending Kylo to Mustafar, Dathomir, Malachor and Moraband

Have Snoke give Kylo Ren one final test, killing his mother General Organa

Order Kylo Ren and the Knights Of Ren to Ach-To to kill Luke Skywalker and bring Rey to him

Show Snoke using Battle Meditation against The Resistance, while Leia uses BM against Snoke. Leia’s will against Snoke’s might over Ach-To, while Snoke is trying to kill Luke, Leia is trying to save her brother.

Make Snoke Darth Plagueis It makes sense and ties the three trilogies together.  Darth Plagueis was a powerful Sith Lord who could influence the midichlorians to create life and also save others from dying. He taught everything he knew to his apprentice, Sheev Palpatine (aka Darth Sidious), but he eventually lost his power and young Palpatine killed him in his sleep. How could Plagueis not foresee his own demise at the hands of his ambitious apprentice? Why did Plagueis suddenly “lose his power”? The truth is, he didn’t lose his power and he knew Sheev planned to kill him. It was part of the plan. By dying, I believe Darth Plagueis was able to transmit himself into Sheev and assume control of his body, almost like an infectious disease. Ever notice his name? Darth Plagueis. Plague, as in an infectious disease. Darth Plagueis unlocked the secret to immortality by moving from one body to the next, continuing his lifespan through multiple hosts over countless years. Ever wonder why Palpatine was so obsessed with training a powerful young apprentice? Surely he knew that one day the apprentice would want to overthrow him, so why train his own murderer? In Return of the Jedi, Emperor Palpatine continually provokes Luke to strike him down. Why would Palpatine want to be killed if the goal is longevity? Because Emperor Palpatine was assumed by Darth Plagueis and, through his death, he would then be able to transmit himself into a new host body. He wasn’t just looking for an apprentice, he was looking for a new body since Palpatine’s body was growing old. Luke Skywalker was meant to be the next host body for Darth Plagueis. But unfortunately for Plagueis, Darth Vader had a change of heart and defeated the Emperor. Snoke was Plagueis. It’s the only way to make things work. StarWars.com describes Snoke as a seeker of arcane and ancient lore, and the Last Jedi Visual Dictionary shows that he is a collector of rare memorabilia. At some point, Snoke must have found the wreckage of the Death Star on the forest moon Endor, and was infected by Darth Plagueis when he came upon the corpse of Palpatine. Did you ever wonder why Snoke thought it was so important to complete Kylo Ren’s training? It’s because Snoke was Darth Plagueis and he was training his next host body. Plagueis didn’t have a choice but to infect a really old political influencer like Snoke. Kylo was being groomed to become the next host body. Remember the infamous(ly terrible) scene in The Last Jedi where Snoke is “predicting” how Kylo Ren will kill Rey? Wasn’t it a little too obvious? Wouldn’t Snoke have been able to foresee Kylo’s treachery? See through his conflict? It’s because he wasn’t predicting Rey’s death, he predicted his own. He knew Kylo would kill him. He deliberately bullied and provoked Kylo in order to stir his anger into hatred to further fuel his dark side and lead him to completing his training. So let’s say Kylo puts on his ring for his official coronation as Supreme Leader and Plagueis take’s full possession of Kylo Ren, Plagueis had an apprentice who has fully cemented himself into the dark side and now a new and more powerful body. Darth Plagueis has everything he needs to way waste to the Resistance and the final destruction of the Jedi.

What they chose to do with Snoke instead

Snoke died pointlessly without doing anything with him. Supreme Leader Snoke is wasted and there is no reason to care now that the villain you’ve been building your trilogy around is dead. Snoke’s death was too soon. Snoke is a dark side user. Calm and collected. Old enough to see the rise and fall of the empire. He takes no risks and does what it takes to win. He was different from Palpatine and I dare say he even had potential to rival Kreia. He was a mastermind and did not allow himself to be a slave to the dark side. He did not want his apprentice to die like the Sith masters of old. He did not want to keep power until his dying breath. Snoke was not the average Sith Lord, he was different.  He was respectful, he was very powerful, and watching his scenes, even when faced with failure, he remained calm and collected because he was playing the long game and was not a slave to the Darkside like the Sith. He was invested in turning Kylo Ren into Vader’s heir and even has a ring from the catacombs of Vader’s castle. Snoke was so interesting, so many unanswered questions and this well thought out villain. And then TLJ turned him into a dumbed down Palpatine rip off. The claim that Snoke and his backstory is not important is dumb, considering that we know nothing on why this war is even happening or even why The First Order is doing ANYTHING! We want to know who Snoke is because we want to know how this random evil guy was able to destroy the lives of the entire original trio, corrupted Ben Solo and override the happy ending the entire original trilogy and prequels were fighting for. The struggles of the prequels, the clone wars, rebels, original trilogy, all of these stories and struggles were undone because of Snoke, so of course we have questions. Why do the remnants of the Empire follow Snoke and where did he come from? Not wanting to know the motivation of the villains is just plain ignorant. They completely wasted Snoke. Snoke is a power from the unknown regions. He was SO powerful that Palpatine sensed him, Palpatine was so focused and invested in Jakku in hopes of getting closer to the Unknown regions and he wanted to meet what he believed was the source of the dark side of the force. And they just kill him off so easy? Now there is no reason to care. Kylo Ren is not an intimidating villain and it’s pretty obvious he’s turning to the light in Episode IX. Hux is a bumbling incompetent fool and I’m pretty sure they already confirmed he will be more comedic in Episode IX instead of being a threat. There is a villain problem for the Sequel Trilogy. There is no menace in The First Order anymore and I really feel there is no reason to care.

Pointlessly tried to kill Rey instead of trying to turn her

“Your Snoke theory sucks” card is patronizing and insulting. God fucking forbid your audience is fucking invested in the story. God forbid we actually care about learning about the big bad of the sequel trilogy. God forbid we put more thought into Snoke than you did. “Your Snoke theory sucks” no Rian, your Snoke card sucks, your inability to do ANYTHING with Snoke sucks and talking down to us for caring about the direction of the big bad and killing him for no reason sucks. You arrogant piece of fucking shit.

Because Snoke was killed, they copped out and lied out their asses that it was always the plan to bring back Palpatine….bullshit. “oh but wait Snoke was a host body for Palpatine” BULLFUCKINGSHIT. Not originally. Snoke was someone who was supposed to be the darkness Palpatine was trying to get closer. Snoke was the man who destroyed 30 years of peace. He could’ve been anyone, hell even Darth Plagueis. But no, why create interesting characters when you can bring Palpatine back because it’s obvious you have no original ideas.

[butididnottried]

“The Rise od Skywalker” spoilers.

So, i saw it. I was on a whole night marathon and saw all three movies one after another. I actually like “The Last Jedi”. Like, i really like it. I know all issues and problems that people have with this one, i understand it, and it’s still Very Good to me and there will be some comparisons. Also, i’m not sure if this is important, but SW is not a part of my childhood and i have no nostalgic feelings toward those movies. Hi there, i’m an average fan?

So.

Tbh i expected a pile of thrash on fire after what i read about this movie, because people are only complaining, without really recalling anything good (but i also avoided big and long and detailed reviews to avoid as much information as i can xD). And there are good thing in it, and i had surprisingly a whole amount of fun while watching it. But still, at the end, overall this whole movie can be summarize into CONFUSED WHAT.

Good stuff:

- J. J. Abrams know how to invoke a fell and spirit of grand adventure. At the beginning this move has a crazy amount of it, until Rey split from Finn and Poe. They just need to go after this mcguffin dagger to find another mcguffin, they need to go to this palce to find that or someone, they need to go somewhere else and there are problems but there’s a solution, but they need to go to third place to again find someone. I would be kinda annoying if we wouldn’t have all three of them together - Rey, Finn and Poe. Finally! I really like them all being together, being friends, bantering, being dumbasses and smartasses and me gusta very much those dorks.

- They do not conform that, but let’s face it - Finn and Poe are married. There’s no heterosexual explanation for their relationship in this movie. I’m aware that in script they weren’t particularly wrote like that, and maybe it’s because actors were playing their character in this way, but there’s another explanation. A few months ago in review of “X-Men: The Dark Phoenix” i read that Hollywood just don’t know how to wrote real male friendship, full of emotions, and they end up using romance tropes and cliches. And Finn and Poe are perfect example to uphold that theory. Like, really, look at them, they’re bantering like an old couple.

- I really like Reys path in this movie. Seeing all three movies together shows how much she grow with every next installment. In TFA she is nice and joyful character, but kinda basic; in TLJ she learn more about how world works, about herself and choose her own path. And now in TROS she is very conflicted, torn apart and sacred of her own powers, while trying to stay herself. And Daisy Ridley really hit the spot with her performance.

- Leia had an lightsaber? And was training with Luke? And now she was teaching Rey? Like... FUCK YEAH?! And also Finn? Force sensitive? YEAH BABY!

- Rey and Kylo fight on ruins of Death Star surrounded with raging ocean and those exquisitely animated giant and heavy waves. So good? SO GOOD.

- Palpatine went full Thor and every cell in my body was hollering with laughter. As soon as it’s possible someone need to edit this “unlimited power!” yell to this scene. Please.

- ahahahahaha, Hux, you magnificent, pathetic, petty asshole, ahahahahaha.

- this is not about movies, but there was a fake fanboy at my screening. Between TLJ and TROS this dude behind me was explaining sequels to his friend and i was typing a message to my friend, so the only thing that i heard was “the first movie did Abrams, you know, the one that made LOTR, and the second one did Johnson , and he is ooold.” I have no idea what to do and think about this.

- new ways of using force. Hell yeah. Force the shit out of this. Stronger force skype? Totally. Teleportation things on purpose through force? Absolutely. Being almost in two places at once through force. I’m totally here for that. Rey being probably the most competent person in force? Kick their asses baby, i’m holding yo flower!

- MERRY!!!???

??? stuff:

- apparently reylo is incest, because Rey and Kylo are related. Really? How? Is there in any movie any, even smallest, hint that Skywalkers and Palpatines are blood related? I have no idea.

- The way how droid are treated in those movies is troubling. Are they alive? Are they self-conscious? Or they’re an artificial intelligence so developed that they can with no problems fake that?

- sooo... Kylo. I love this problematic asshole. Well, in case of genocidal murdered word “problematic” is very mild, but whatever. What i read about this movie, people were raging because woman (Rey) exist only to heal a man (Kylo) that was abusing her, but i don’t see that this way. Like, not at all. And how i see how Rey and Kylo plot is developing makes it hysterical, especially after TLJ where Kylo was established as main villain. Because in this movie with every scene Kylo exist more and more as support to Rey story, he’s an walking exposition for Rey and motivation for her to doing things. He was less and less his own character, and was more and more existed for Rey. Like, he totally could be put in the fridge. xD When Rey stabbed him i thought “oh, so they’re killing him now? When were not even close to the end? Well, ok, i do not see a more purpose for him in this plot, so yeah, kill him” but then Rey saved him and i was like ??? because what more you want him to do? And then he disappears for a big chunk of time and show again at the end and he even wasn’t needed here and don’t do that much? Just... lol. Ok, he did That, because it’s “Star Wars” and SW just Works. Like. That. or it’s not Real and True “Star Wars” boo-frikin-hoo. But on that later.

- as a example for Kylo being a lesser character and more of a tool for the sake of the plot is fact, that in TROS Darth Tantrum is weirdly collected and put his shit together. At the beginning when he finds Palpatines lair and learns that this dude was behind all of this, behind forming First Order and all voices in his head, Kylo should lost his marbles and just murdered Palpatine. But even if somehow not, at the news that Rey is emperor granddaughter he absolutely should throw the biggest tantrum in all history of tantrums and not only obliterated Palpatine but also this whole place. But no, he made A Plan and decide to once again to “propose” to Rey. Like she didn’t rejected him definitely in previous movie and like they both not decided that when they meet next time, only one of them are going to survive. But hey, let’s go with this “i want you by my side to rule the galaxy” plot again. :/

- and there they go with that helmet again. In TLJ scene where Kylo destroys his helmet it’s a very powerful moment. Not only for him, but for direction with which the story would go. Because he is not Darth Vader. Because we do not need another Darth Vader. Buuut, on the other side i can let this a pass, because since he agreed to join Palpatine and once again is going to lead The Knights, he needed to wear this helmet again to prove this loyalty and make them trust him. So, hard pass on that. And tbh, that ugly mask looks a lot better with those bright red cracks.

- And also Leia, that was also there only for her son, because as a mother she can’t be anyone else. Aaand... idk about that. Leia force connected to Kylo so he could turn back to the light? She sacrificed herself for him? Eeeeh... it was weird scene. And there’s no clear explanation why? Only Kaz Manata said that this will use Leias all life force that she has? Did i missed something? Did movie forgot about something? For me it looked like Leia was distracting Kylo, because it look like Rey was going to loose this fight, she was more and more angry, and in this moment she would fully go on the dark side. So Leia saved Rey, she felt Reys struggle. At least i it’s how i interpreted this scene, because it’s one of the most baffling one. Just ???

- there’s whole sith culture. Just. There is. But if there’s only two of them at most at a time, they probably exist for far longer to develop all of this, and to build all of this, and to be cooperative with each other? Which is not their strongest trait? And all these people in emperor throne room were past siths force ghosts or real people?

- apparently being a sith and making lightning came out of your palms is genetic? At least i understand that like this. Because the reason why Rey shot lightning while trying to rescue Chewie was not because she was angry and mad and doubting, but because shes Palpatine? What?

- this is a very minor thing, but when Rey enters Death Stars ruins there’s stormtroopers armors lying almost everywhere, but there’s not even a one bone?

- oh wow, a planet get blow up with even more miniaturized death star ray. And they have hundreds of these. And hundreds of destroyers. And no one notices there was whole space army built. How? I can understand that they ignored the space nazis rising again because, well, just look what is happening in real life, but using money and resources at this scale is however something else, very expensive and i can’t believe no one noticed this.  

Bad stuff:

- Rey is Palpatine. What. I mean... what? It’s just... uuugh... Why are you making me thinking about Emperor having sex? I only hope that was some crazy nazi fangirl that totally wanted to fuck him. Or maybe it was artificial insemination? Well, doesn't matter, it’s BIG EEEW in every option. And i don’t want to think about other way. :/ At least it makes sense why Emperor procreate? In other stories al these evil dudes that want to live forever and rule everything are having children just... because they have children. For drama or something, because story needs someone to betray this evil dude, or some other eye-rolling stereotypical reason. Like, having offspring especially to posses their bodies and live forever in this way is not very original, but it’s something.

- TLJ was like “you can be from nowhere, you can be from the bottom of society, you cen be the poor and miserable, without family or amazing heritage, and you can still do amazing things, you can climb up and make a difference, you can be better and better, you can make your own story despite your awful background” and TROS be like “fuck that, viva la royalty, you need a powerful heritage, you need a powerful and important bloodline or you’re nothing”. Oh, how nice is that. :/

- that opening crawl. It’s bad. Just bad. Even worse than “The Phanom Menace” babbling about economy.

- PALPATINE IS NO FUN AT ALL!!! HOW DARE YOU NOT MAKING IAN MCDIARMIND NOT ENJOYABLE AT ALL???!!! SHAME ON YOU ABRAMS!!! SHAME ON ALL OF DISNEY!!! ...well, ok, this was this one small thing, BUT STILL!!! AUGHR!!! I’m so mad about this. I was expecting not a very good movie, but at least i was hopeful that emperor would be such a treat.

- pulling emperor out of nowhere was an mistake. They should stay with what TLJ established and made Kylo main villain. No redemption, no bullshit like “there’s still light in him”, no Ben Solo, no forgiveness, no nothing. Just Rey beating the shit out of him and killing him. End of story. But no, “Star Wars” can’t be like that, it’s not how this world works, THIS IS NOT REAL “STAR WARS” WAAH WAAAH WAAAH. You’re a genocidal murdered? A space nazi? You’re ruling a regime that is weltered in blood of the innocence? Doesn't matter, there’s always hope. Just do one small, good thing and you will be at peace. Fuck off with that. At the end of TLJ when Kylo entered that mine, and rebel survivors entered deck of Falcon, and Rey and him were still force connected, and she cutted off him because she understands that there are things that can’t be forgave, and there are people that do not want help and just don’t want to be better and fuck “Steven Universe Future” did that a lot better on eleven minutes, and SW series is struggling with this since beginning. Because there’s white and black, good and evil, and there’s nothing in between, and when someone comes from one side to another they become a completely different person because yes that how it works. And people are totally here for this because it’s for kids and it needs to be simple and we can’t let this story grow beyond that stupid absolute duality. I know that there are people that were on far right but they changed and become better and good for them, but if you want to do that in your story, show the struggle of this difficult path and let this scum survive and face the consequences. Take at least a minimum of responsibility of what you’re showing to kids. :/ But nooo, he was stabbed, his mom died, his dad showed up and said... something, and now Kylo is dead, and Ben alive again. Sarcastic yay. Also, if you’re repeating dialogue from first movie, in almost this same situation, but in a different context, EARN IT. Second also, that kiss. Eeeeh... If you really need to be Like That and made some weird understanding between them, maybe just make they touch their foreheads? And oooh, yes, i almost forgot. At my screening when Kylo flopped at the ground, died and vanished, the whole audience laughed. But it wasn’t a loud, merry laugh, but a nervous and awkward, like “did i just saw this cringy shit?”. Amazing.

- they remembered about Knight of Ren. And did nothing with them. They just were showing up here and there through the whole movie without any purpose. But that’s Johnson fault, that he did not include them in TLJ. No wonder that they did not have time for them in TROS. Just waste.

- the amount of fanservice is killing me. I have nothing against it, if it’s just a nice treat for fans here and there, but when a whole movie is dedicated to it it’s just not very bearable. And plot suffer from it, because instead of write a good story they’re focusing at how to connected these thing from original trilogy.

[yourfandomfreak]

The Rise of Skywalker

a lot of this movie felt rushed, and that’s not a good thing.

it lacked so much of the elegance and care and pacing that the last two movies had.

but here’s my feelings and thoughts:

I knew that Ben Solo died, and that Palpatine died, and that Rey was Palpatine’s granddaughter. and that Reylo was canon for a brief shining moment

I didn’t know that Han would show up one last time, at the breaking point of Kylo Ren dying and Ben Solo coming back. I cried real tears in that moment. because it was such a beautiful echo of that painful moment from TFA. this time, Ben did what, deep down, I believe he wanted to do: reject the dark side and throw away his light saber that was bled to be evil

Lando Calrissian’s entire presence in this movie was a shining light.

C3PO getting his fucking memories back because like hell is he forgetting everyone forever; he’s the droid Anakin Skywalker built. he’s not losing himself again.

Chewie living and kicking ass

Rey’s Force lightning was a shock, but it makes sense.

the film beginning with Kylo Ren destroying people to get the Sith Wayfinder and the film ending with Ben Solo defeating the Knights of Ren, and resurrecting Rey.

Ben and his mother Leia becoming one with the Force at the same time made my tears well up again

Jannah also being a former stormtrooper like Finn was really cool. I hope there are more adventures with her.

Hux being the spy for the Resistance was actually kinda brilliant; his motivation made sense. it’s not that he wanted them to win, he just needed Kylo Ren to lose.

the way he died though was nuts; the one dude being a servant of the Sith? damn ya’ll

Poe and Zorii had some nice moments; I’m glad she survived.

bit disappointed that Rose barely got any screen time. even if they didn’t have her and Finn be a couple, she still deserved to have a bigger role.

I wonder if Finn was going to tell Rey he loves her or that he’s Force sensitive too (because it hinted at both). I wouldn’t have minded either or both.

I enjoyed seeing Finn, Rey, and Poe interact much more and all three for the first time.

part of me doesn’t like that bit of retconning of Luke and Leia knowing Rey’s heritage; even if they didn’t know at first and then put the pieces together from what Luke was researching, and they didn’t tell her about it because it’s such an intense thing, it still bugs me. however, I even get that it mirrors how, in Return of the Jedi, Luke confronts Obi Wan about lying about Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker being the same person and being Luke and Leia’s father.

hearing all those Jedi voices was truly wonderful. I want to see that part again. Yoda, Qui Gon, Obi Wan, Anakin, and others (was Asohka in there too? I heard she would be. I just expected her voice to be over the ship comms)

some of the tech stuff felt strange with Palpatine because even though I figured there would be life support, some of it just felt…..I don’t know, like it didn’t fit?

but him being powered by all the Sith that came before, and then Rey defeating him with the power of all the Jedi that came before was incredible. there’s a part of me that has had trouble relating to Rey, maybe because I relate to Kylo Ren/Ben more, but her struggles with the Dark resonated with me more this time. and making her own legacy, not Palpatine’s, but one that is her own and carries the best of her parents, was good.

again, I see the seeds of retconning that tries to not look like retconning, but Rey’s parents being no one because they chose to stay in obscurity and hide her from the real enemy, was interesting. it just sucks they died and they didn’t come back for her. they sold her to keep her safe; they didn’t even try to leave her with someone safe? with someone better than fucking Unkar Plutt? like damn

loved all the back and forth with Rey and Kylo, and their duels, and physical objects crossing between them.  that was a cool touch. He was still hung up over her rejection, and she knows his father’s death still haunts him, and I enjoyed how in their long duel on the death star remains in the water, how it starts with rage, and ends with healing and her saving him.

and how Leia was reaching out to her son at that very moment, and Rey didn’t realize, and she also realizes she doesn’t want to kill him, so she heals him. and that leads to the Han and Ben moment that was one of the best in the movie.

one thing I wanted was for the Dark side to be explored in a way that explained that things like passion, love, and emotions like anger and fear, don’t need to be a bad thing, they can be channeled in a good way. but hey, that’s just my feelings about it.

Rey and Ben fighting evil together and her realizing he came back to save her, was a powerful moment. she got what she wanted; Ben came back.

and they kissed, and he smiled, it was a beautiful moment. he knew he would die bringing her back but he did it anyway. I don’t think that it’s fair that he had to die, that the last Skywalker had to die (not saying Rey taking the name is insignificant, but you know what I mean).

I remember hearing that in the previous EU, Leia did train in the Force more, she just didn’t fully pursue being a Jedi.

but I still think it’s badass and that she trained, and even built her own lightsaber.

seeing Leia and Luke’s force ghosts at the end was beautiful. and seeing Rey having built her own lightsaber, and take the Skywalker name, was really cool too

and it’s not that I don’t think Rey can be strong and awesome on her own, or with her new family, but it didn’t feel the same without Ben being there too because he deserved to live, and he deserved to be happy. These two truly understand each other, and should’ve stayed alive together

those are my initial thoughts. having a few days to process spoilers made it easier.

I still love Star Wars and all that it means to me; I never knew I could love it more, but I’m so glad I do, and that I know of more fans like me.

Reylo lives on, and so does the Force and Star Wars.

[thepaperpanda]

Sleeping with the enemy || Part II

Part I

Words: 2314

Warnings: Smut, Unprotected sex, threesome

SUMMARY: Trying to make Kylo jealous, reader is coquetting with Hux. Reader will have an opportunity to meet him more intensively. But, of course, Kylo can read her mind...

Author: Cass & Beast

Few days have passed.

Because of the way Kylo had treated you before, you were shunning him as much as you could.

Of course, few times you both passed each other. Without any word. Even without a single glance. But it made you feel comfortable somehow. You didn't have to deal with his mood swings at least.

Hux pushed you with his shoulder while you were sitting in the canteen.

"Could you be so polite and start to listen what am I saying?" He muttered looking at you with a frown. "Make yourself useful and go to Kylo. I have the important report for him, but I don't have the patience to deal with that man."

He gave you report and walked away like nothing happened, looking over his shoulder. "Better do this quick."

The folder with report was red and rather big.

You raised your head to throw Hux angry glance.

"Yea. Of course. I have to do everything in behalf of you, because you're too lazy to do a single thing."

Loud sigh left your mouth. "I'll do this."

Hux only sighed heavily. "Learn some respect, child. Just won't hurt your knees, when you will get to his chamber." He said with sarcastic tone, then left the canteen.

Kylo was sitting in his room waiting for any pieces of information.

He looked surprised when he saw you in the door

"Ah! Hux's loyal scum. How's new work?" He asked, smiling meanly.

You pretended to not hear what he has said.

"You report is ready, sir."

You put the folder on his desk, not even looking at him

"I hope those are a good news." Kylo said and got up from his seat.

He walked to you and put a finger under your chin, forcing you to look at him.

"Not so eager anymore? I thought you enjoyed it.." He purred.

"Fuck off." You mumbled under breath took step back. "Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?"

Kylo grabbed you by hair to hold your head in place, he looked into your eyes.

"First, show me some respect. Second, stop lying to yourself. We both know what do you want. We know how it will end." He said wrapping arms tightly around you. Every visit in his chamber ended like this, no matter what, he was always acting in the same way.

His eyes were full of anger and you saw it.

You turned head aside.

"Don't flatter yourself too much, sir," you said looking at the wall and focusing yourself on muting your emotions.

"Listen... I can feel it." He had his arms wrapped around your waist.

Brunette muttered softly getting closer to your neck. "I still like your scent, you know... the scent of sweet naive girl..."

Kylo looked at you. "Your heart is pounding every time you get closer to me... and you tell me to 'fuck off'... that's rude, little one."

You resisted

"Leave me alone. You kow nothing about me."

Your hands clenched into fists.

"I know more than you know, little one. Now go back to work." Kylo released you from his grasp.

Hux was waiting at you.

"Finally! How are your knees?" Man asked with a smile. "If I can be honest. When I saw you the first time I thought you have more self-respect... You should take a real man. Not the unstable leader." He muttered.

"I don't know what are you talking about."

Walking next to him, you were focused on the corridor. But you good knew what he was talking about.

"Come on... stop pretend that you are so hard to get." He muttered rolling eyes.

Hux looked at you. "My people are celebrating because of destroying resistance base. Maybe you should relax? With me?" He asked offering his arm. "What would you say?"

The need of revenge on Kylo was too huge for you to stop, so you nodded slightly.

"Yea. Right. Well. Yes. With a pleasure."

"Pleasure by my side, Y/N."

He walked with you into the control room. "I never was a fan of it. They only get distracted." Hux winced looking at his people. "But at last I can spend some time with you." He admitted with soft smile.

"I see, Hux" you smiled a bit at him. "So. What's now?"

He shrugged. "We will wait till..." Before Hux could finish his sentence, Kylo entered the room.

He looked at everyone, frowning. "At last for once you all were usefull."

Hux rolled his eyes. "As always. He talks like he is the one that did whole job." He muttered to you.

You gave a little nod.

"Exactly. He behaves like he would be a Supreme Leader."

You patted Hux's back.

"I think you would be better than him."

"I... Thank you." Hux only nodded.

Kylo walked to two of you. "Since when YOU are celebrating... With her?" He asked looking at Hux but pointing at you.

"Since I know, how to treat a woman. Not like someone is treating us." Hux smiled sarcastically and pulled you closer.

You were glad. Seeing the grimace on Kylo's face made you strangely satisfied with yourself.

"Hux. Can you help me with reports? I have to finish them, but I am not sure how."

You grabbed him by palm.

He squeezed your hand. "Of course, with pleasure, Y/N."

Hux left room with you. You both could hear how angry Kylo was screaming at everyone. "THAT'S ENOUGH! Go back to work!"

Hux only laughed at this.

"I love to annoy him."

"After his last behavior towards me, I found this pretty funny to make him angry. He is like a blind child. In control."

You winked at him and left his hand.

"And where are you going little one?" He grabbed you by palm and pulled you closer. "You won't run away so easily." Hux smiled at you.

You bit lower lip, wrapping arms around his neck and getting on you tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

"Don't worry. I am always around."

You winked at him and walked away, to go back to work.

Hux walked to you and wrapped arms tightly around your waist. "Now you won't get rid of me." He purred softly into your ear.

You giggled and turned around to look him in the eye.

"Oh really?"

With a corner of the eye you saw how Kylo was leaving a main room. You were sure he saw you and Hux.

"Of course you won't." Hux smiled.

Kylo stopped and looked at two of you, frowning.

"Sir, do you need something?" You asked viciously looking at Ren over Hux's shoulder.

Kylo only walked away.

Hux looked behind and then back to you. "Let's go to my chamber or better no… Too many guards on our way there.."

You nodded with soft smile. “Come to visit me at evening. I will be waiting.” You said and then walked away.

In a little, softly-lit bedroom, you're on a average sized bed. You're freshly showered, nude, and just a bit softly squirmy from anticipating what will happen next. You lied there for a bit, at times rubbing yourself for a moment. It was when Hux arrived.

"General Hux, I was sure you'll come." Your voice was soft like never before.

He entered without knocking, being sure of himself. He got undressed and quickly joined you on the bed. Without a word, Hux lied down beside you on your left and gently caressed you, starting at knees and gradually tracing your whole body, increasing your delighted squirming.

A few kisses later he pulled you toward himself with firm strength and determination, yet always gently. Mostly on his back but somewhat leaning toward you, Hux directed your hips onto his so that your left buttocks covered his crotch entirely. With his left hand he pulled your left leg around his left leg, then pushed your right leg sideways to be flat against the bed. He continued to pull a bit here and push there, bringing your hips a bit more up on his, his right hand cupping your right buttocks at times, rubbing your crotch.

"Y/N, you're fucking beautiful," Hux whispered.

He rubbed you a bit more between the legs, wiggled his fingers wherever they might be, shifted a bit now and then for effect, to find just the right spot for himself to settle in, then he caressed your torso, breasts and face with his left hand. He kissed your face then paused.

Kylo walked in the room.

Ren walked around the bed, leant across it and kissed you, first on the neck, then the right nipple, gently sucking it into his mouth and rolling it with his teeth for a moment. Then fully on your lips, tasting and inhaling you.

He leant back, put his right middle finger on your lips, you wanted to suck it into you, but Kylo quickly slipped it out, and traced a line down your center - chin, to neck, to sternum, to belly, between your lips. He slided it into you while whispering softly. "Be still, Y/N." He knew this was a challenge for you, but one that you willingly accepted.

Kylo held it inside you, not moving, and instructed you to demonstrate your muscles. As you did, his initial response was firm. "That is not enough. I know that you can do better ... I've felt it." You closed your eyes and squeezed tighter, imaging his cock instead of his finger.

You were eager for more. The novelty of the situation, the posture of your hips pushed up yet supported, the attentions and arousal of Kylo and Hux gave you new levels of excitement. With Hux beside and below you, and with Kylo so tantalizingly near and above, you looked Kylo in the eye and quietly begged. "Please."

Kylo sent a questioning look to Hux who nodded. Hux pushed his hand deeper under you. He also firmly pushed your legs farther apart, almost uncomfortably. With his left hand keeping you legs apart, Hux used his right hand to tease into readiness wherever he could reach.

Kylo, enjoying watching you try to stay still while you were beginning to uncontrollably squirm and moan, reached down and petted you body, keeping intentionally away from where Hux was touching.

Kylo bent down and gave you a few long, full-tongue licks along all of your pussy that sent you into a delicious, creamy, thrilling orgasm. One more quick lick followed by a little slap on your heated, ready pussy, then Kylo looked into your eyes. "You're incredibly tasty, Y/N. I needed that."

Hux continued to hold your legs apart and pushed you up a bit further. Kylo positioned himself in front of your spread legs, got himself ready and in a strong stance, then leant forward to enter you.

Kylo entered you in one, agonizingly slow, deep, powerful motion.

Hux shifted his hips slightly. You gasped and shuddered as Hux pushed into your ass. His hands on your sides, fingers curved around to hold your nipples. Lips on the back of your neck. Kylo reminded you to be still, to enjoy all of the sensations, the hardness within you. The strong men below and above you. The pinching nipples. Hux's teeth on your shoulders and the back of neck. Kylo's lips and breath dancing with hers.

"Oh God.." You could only mumble quietly enjoying the pleasure.

Kylo started to move his hips. Slowly withdrawing until just the tip remained. Your eyes were closed as you absorbed the feelings. The smell. The sound of moist bodies moving with each other.

While Ren held himself just barely inside of your quivering pussy, Hux slowly pulled out until he too had only the tip of his cock inside. They both felt your muscles contract as you tried to pull, to will them both back into you.

You whimpered just a bit.

Suddenly you imploded as you felt both men thrusted deeply, filling you beyond fulfilling. They were simultaneous in their plunge and withdraw. Plunged and withdrawed. You lost sense of time. Of connection with gravity as you were suspended between the two.

A whisper from Kylo brought you back for just a moment until you realized that it was a signal for Hux, and in an instant the rhythm had shifted, with one sliding inside you deeply as the other pulled back.

"Fuck! Fuck, it's so good! Fuck me harder!" You grunted loudly rubbing your clitoris.

And you were off again. Nearly floating above yourself as you orgasmed over and over. Your body moving in sync with theirs. Breathing as one, thrusting as one.

It didn't take long before Kylo and Hux reached their peaks, too.

Kylo was first, cumming deep inside of your clenching pussy.

"Fuck!" Ren leant down to suck on your pulse point, riding his orgasm off.

Hux was second, but before he came, he slipped out of your ass and pumped over his length, rolling you a bit. Seconds later, he erupted his load on your belly.

Hux kissed your nape as you panted deeply trying to catch a breath.

You weren't expecting something like this to happen. You knew subconsciously, that Kylo will join you since he could read your mind. But it was way too much from what were you expecting.

When Kylo slipped out, too, you rolled on the bed, covering tour figure with quilt.

"How did you like it, Y/N?" Kylo asked, dressing his boxers on.

You took deep breath and were about to answer, but were cut by Hux's kiss.

"Great." You managed to whimper.

It didn't take long for three of you to fall asleep. Your head rested on Hux's chest while Kylo had his arm wrapped around your waist, spooning you.

Sleep came fast, and the last thing you remembered was Kylo's whisper.

"I think I fell for you, Y/N."

Gif: by Cass

Pandies🐼: @blue-dragon-ice @calkingwood @imidarogerson @grossograsso @thewildgardensstuff @irai-lauri @leven-and-ashley @la-verdura @bearded-steve-rogers @sebbystan-plantlover @atuckyismylife @krispyjellyfishzombie @personality-within @haseki-huricihan @choppedgardenwhispers @vroobelek @lattimelka @chris-beamz @hidden-secrets69 @side-blog-of-me @purepearls @i-am-margerita @volcanoxxx @kastrup-sofie  @mikkal-akasaki  @withoutashadowofhope  @radbluebirdeagle @marvel-fan-site  @smutloversblog  @buquete  @super-psycho-love69 @tanglesss @peter-sommer @baysidewest @vegemania @philip-stan @chodiusmmm @subwaystunnel @tykorclint @dagger-dragger @kurant @nothing-can-least-forever @oxfordkipem @deliciousbouquet90  @tuptuptup @hellenna80  @karina-marina9 @latimeriaaa  @bratko @wurld89  @scott-evans @kiss-me-rouge @ovonel-espaniol @dancing-tacco @ratugadhi @white-tiger-shangrila @peter-sommer @axn69  @eternal-life-awaits @mrs-laura-harmon @artsy-inside @gleeeeees @darkllaama @jatut @agawux @fuzzy-tigrrr @jrjohnsson2 @cassandbeast @maaargoshaaa @dontgetmewrongman @einexx

[emperorren]

What Reylo scenes would you want to happen in Episode IX? In the context of there being no limitations (PG-13 rating, things Disney wouldn't do, the plot (within reason))? Thanks!

(please excuse my lack of coherence but tlj, unlike tfa, left me with lots of question marks on the future evolution of reylo. It unexpectedly covered most of my preexisting predictions for this ship while also leaving their relationships unresolved, so I’m currently in the process of adjusting my predictions to the new circumstances and the changed dynamic and I’m just going to spitball in no particular order and no attempt at sticking to any coherent idea of plot)

number one on my wishlist is a deepening of the force bond in terms of what they can feel and how they can use it

I want the force bond to explored from different angles: what it means in terms of force lore, why it happened to them, what makes them special to the Force, how do they physically feel, how they deal with this intimacy they don’t understand now that they’ve hurt and disappointed each other so much. But I also want them to study it, as opposed to passively experience it. Perhaps try to manipulate the bond to either shut the other out or keep an eye or each other or (also) use it in an attempt to weaken the other in a duel

I want to see new visual ways to convey how the bond progressively grows and expands between them. So bring on all kinds of obscure lynchian visions, shared dreams, nightmares about each other dying, sensing each other’s approaching, tapping into each other’s conscience and deeply buried memories of their childhood and past abuse (that would be an awesome way to include a snoke flashback, as well as more details of rey’s parents), even better if the other’s present self is there to witness it too

at least an antagonistic duel filled with angst and rage and betrayal on either part, physical and raw and bloody. Yes I want to see some blood. (you said no rating limitations) I can imagine their duel to quickly turn into a battle of wills in which they try to overpower the other via the force bond

rey could use some of kylo’s signature tactics like the force stun and the force choke on kylo himself (which would obviously both terrify and turn him on)

even better if, at some time prior to this climatic duel, rey asked kylo to teach her to use those powers and he agreed—knowing fully well that she means to use them against him, but he’s self destructive like that and he is perversely fascinated by the idea of her being the fated angel of death who will finally put him out of his misery. Rey feels that and it upsets her in a similar way seeing him beat his own wounds on starkiller did

they’re both miserable without each other, but they don’t want to show it, so this leads to at least one scene in which Kylo tries desperately to pretend he hates Rey but as soon as she shows up all he can do is stutter and spit some badly rehashed insults while also looking like he’s about to cry. Rey can’t speak at all

perhaps this happens in the throne room while Renperor is sitting on the throne. Maybe they should continue the tradition of rey ending up in enemy territory (better if willingly), or maybe this time it’s Kylo who is captured by the resistance, and rey is conflicted about it and feels his pain as he’s wounded and kept prisoner, and after a while she secretly sets him free 

arguing on the jedi texts via force skype

arguing on how to rebuild the legacy saber via force skype

kylo being an insufferable know-it-all nerd

more force bond shenanigans: feeling the other’s physical pain (maybe because they’re being tortured or beaten in combat) but not being able to see the other (since the force is mad at them and they’re mad at each other, the bond won’t work properly for at least 1/3 of the movie), and going crazy with panic while also being in unspeakable physical pain through the bond

the eroticism of the force bond should be amped up, pg-13 be damned. Give me all the awkward and increasingly bolder force-touching, feeling each other’s arousal at the worst times, teasing and taunting each other, the unresolved sexual tension getting more and more literal, seeing each other naked, rey and kylo trying to keep their forbidden psychic affair secret to their respective organizations, while also being more and more desperate for each other

Rey struggling with the dark side. Perhaps accidentally unleashing her powers in a moment of wrath and killing someone in the process, then plagued by guilt and blind panic going to Kylo for advice

Alternatively Rey having a conflict with Poe and/or Finn once they learn of the bond. Poe wants to keep her in custody or use the bond to lure Kylo in a trap. Rey is furious and she runs away (to Kylo). I can honestly see Finn being deeply hurt by Rey’s bond with Kylo, but ultimately choosing to support her. (this could also mean interesting things for the poe/finn dynamic

let’s be real: a version of the Most Tropey Reylo Trope, aka Stranded Together On A Mysterious And Remote Corner Of The Galaxy, HAS to happen in some form eventually

especially if one of them is injured when this happens. Let’s say both.

they end up on the Falcon together. they tend on each other’s wounds (more shirtless moments, probably). Rey cups Kylo’s face in a callback to Han’s gesture, traces his scar from his cheek down his chest. Major ship tease moment 

perhaps this is followed by a galactic trip to either find some ancient artifact or to collect some crucial information to their understanding of the Force, the Galaxy, the Balance and their role in all of this, that would lead to some earth-shattering reveal 

maybe they go find the Bendu to inquire about the balance, possibly after reading some cryptic line in the jedi books

at some point, they should go back to Jakku. Would really love to see Kylo’s walking with his billowy dark robes through a sand storm and them finding shelter in Rey’s old AT-AT and Kylo seeing the scratches on the wall

there should also be some sort of cliff scene or an equivalent, because I’ve become attached to that pre-tlj headcanon; though, clearly, now that their dynamic has evolved it wouldn’t make sense for it to play exactly like it would have for eight

in general I want them to be alone with each other on an inhospitable planet, better if connected to the dark side. Like Mustafar, or somewhere in the unknown regions (Malachor?)

Leia’s funeral. Rey helps Kylo connect with his mother one last time via the force bond, letting him touch her face with her hand. 

Kylo cries in Rey’s arms.

Rey meeting the Knights of Ren?

probably some version of the forceback scene, though part of me believes tlj covered it with kylo killing snoke (note how the forceback has rain in it—foreshadowing the intense bond manifesting on ahch-to, and the “clan leader” could be a metaphor for snoke)

one of them (or both) will try to find a way to sever the bond permanently. maybe during the galactic trip hey learn of an ancient ritual and they agree to perform it and Kylo goes first but halfway through it Rey realizes it’s too painful (both physically for Kylo and emotionally for both of them) and she implores him to stop

“I can’t lose you”

Hux’s hostility only grows bigger and bigger and Kylo starts feeling threatened. Rey feels it through the bond, she panics. 

Hux finds out what’s going on with them and uses it to set up a trap to kill two birds with one stone and get rid of both Kylo and Rey. Maybe he imprisons Kylo after neutralizing his force powers.

how would he? well since Hux really hates the Force for being an advantage he has no access to, it makes sense to me that he’d try to ~kill it~. Now I obviously don’t think anyone can kill the Force, but maybe accidentally stumbling upon some old sacred text or artifact or creating a device that allows him to permanently sever the tie that binds the Force to all living beings? i.e. destroying force-sensitivity?

this could easily be the ultimate evil to defeat, and the final turning point for kylo—learning that his “side” of the war is actively trying to destroy his most beloved driving principle, the very thing he’s in service to? That should make him reevaluate his allegiances and spontaneously ask Rey’s help to stop this. (I originally wanted Snoke to be behind this, but I gotta admit Hux works better, with  his deep-seated resentment of force-sensitive beings)

sometime in act III there’s a huge battle and the resistance is being decimated and Rey is losing her fight and is almost unconscious and all hope seems lost and then suddenly Kylo’s ship appears and starts firing on the First Order and then he lands (a callback to the first time we saw him in the trilogy) and goes to join Rey while she’s watching all of this in a sort of semi-conscious slow motion haze and all she can think is, he came back for me

third time’s the charm, so there has to be a third offer, and this time the other will accept it. I’m not sure if I want Rey to be the one who offers Kylo, or Kylo to Rey

REYLO KISS. now I think we have VERY decent chances of actually seeing one in canon. But without the pg-13 limit? It starts as extremely sweet and tentative (Rey initiates it) and then deepens and SETS THE SCREEN ON FIRE. I’m torn between this happening in an intimate, quiet moment or during/after a fight (think the end of the praetorian guard scene for reference).

THEY FUCK. no rating limits. Unleash your imagination.

(better if they fuck while thinking this is going to be their first and last time, like the night before the battle that will decide both their fates, or kylo’s fate if he’s going to be executed by the resistance)

finally, i want to see them using the Force together. in some huge thing. Like stopping a death ray firing on a planet. (Coruscant or Naboo) Impossible? Maybe. But Kylo, alone, could stop a blaster mid air. Imagine what he could do with Rey

[i-gwarth]

The Last Jedi: themes of change, cycles of renewal, and bitching about lore

Spoilers included

Ok, so I was going to give this a bit more time, maybe watch the movie again to see if I caught all the details, but then I started seeing all of these reviews on Youtube from ostensible Star Wars “fans” that just... miss the themes of this motion picture by an enormous margin. So I’m going to tell you what it’s all REALLY about. And you can trust me, because I have a small blog on the internet and write long unwieldy sentences.

Here’s what I’m going to start with: AngryJoe begins his spoiler review by complaining about the death of Leader Snoke. About how he wanted to know about his origins, his powers, his damn rings. Joe asks “where were the lore masters” when this scene was written. And like... I admit I too was curious about Snoke when I first saw TFA. But here’s why I think clinging to that is wrong: as TLJ moved on with its own scenes I realized more and more that Snoke was an utter irrelevance. A red herring, a nebulous and powerful “evil presence” to kickstart the plot.

Nobody important. Film wasn’t about him in any way. And so of course he would die halfway through the film in a way that echoes the deaths of both Palpatine and Darth Maul (as always, the history of the Star Wars galaxy rhymes, and the past is echoed into the future). Just like Palpatine, he dies in the same movie that he makes his first “real” appearance in, at the hands of his own apprentice, whom he had derided and openly mocked in front of someone said apprentice clearly cared about. Hell, he even outright states he cannot be destroyed; if that’s not a dead giveaway I don’t know what is. We find out just as much about the Supreme Leader in TLJ as we did about the Emperor in ROTJ. Which is to say, no more than we need.

Again, this story was never about Snoke. He was a literal relic, physically and metaphorically left over from the old days. The new trilogy is about a new generation of heroes and villains inheriting things from the old guard and fumbling and making their own mistakes as they become independent and try to understand their role in this next chapter of history.

Rey’s parentage reveal is another thing that bothers a lot of people, who are more preoccupied with lore and the mechanical intricacies of a fantasy space opera than with the characters the entire story is built around. Of course Rey is a nobody, daughter of drunkards on Jakku. She’s not a Skywalker or a Kenobi or whatever. Because, again, this trilogy is about releasing yourself from the past. Kylo Ren sees this as “killing the past”: first his parents, Han and Leia, then his mentors, Snoke and Luke. Rey, on the other hand, interprets that same concept differently: she realizes that her origins, as the nothing daughter or nobodies on a nowhere planet, doesn’t stop her from becoming a fucking Jedi hero.

Hell, even fucking Yoda, the series-long stand-in for tradition, dogma and the ancient Jedi ways, understands this metanarrative need for change and renewal that both the franchise itself and the long-held philosophies within it sorely need. Rey doesn’t really need Luke’s teachings, inherited from generations of previous Jedi masters, just like Luke didn’t really need Yoda’s teachings that much. Both Luke and Rey took only the barest understanding of Jedi-ism with them into the confrontation with their respective masked men and their masters.

Here’s the thing though: it could be argued that this cycle of breaking off from the past has taken place once before, but was incomplete. Luke did learn some stuff from Yoda, like a loathing of the dark side, and attempted to pass that flawed knowledge on to a new generation with disastrous results. The renewal wasn’t complete, and the result was failure. The very fear and mistrust of someone powerful falling to the dark that Yoda and Obi-wan instilled into him is what led to the destruction of his new Order. However, Rey has the opportunity to take the cycle to a more positive conclusion: she has with her the ancient texts of the Jedi, but not the old Jedi interpretation of them. Luke never did pass that on to her, and indeed he realized why those ways of thinking had failed. I fully expect Rey to be able to create a truly new Jedi Order, based on a fresh spin on the old wisdom, making Luke Skywalker both The Last of the Jedi and, paradoxically, not.

If I may be allowed a dip into philosophy here, the old Jedi always had a problem with darkness and passion. Yoda relentlessly preaches about their dangers, and Luke is horrified when Rey doesn’t even hesitate to throw herself into the pit in her vision. In my opinion, this is a flagrant rejection of human nature, of the understanding that people can’t just be beings of pure light or pure darkness, and that a balance must be struck between them. Rey is a being of balance. She goes for the dark, sure, but it never corrupts her. Hell, even Kylo is like that, desperately trying to throw himself into the pit for the power it promises, only to never actually be able to go all the way down (and making a fool of himself in his failures). Maybe this will be the basis of the Jedi teachings going forward?

Back to the theme of renewal. Two more things get renewed in TLJ the way I see it: fascism and the rejection of it. It has been said before and it bears repeating: the First Order are the alt-right to the Empire’s Nazis. They’re angry, shithead fascist fanboys. Their convictions are paper-thin and they lack whatever structural cohesion and discipline made the old way work (evil as it was), and as a consequence they start falling apart rapidly as soon as their leader is dead. General Hux’s attempt at following chain-of-succession lasts all of 5 seconds before he backs down from the much more powerful Kylo Ren, like a schoolyard bully who has finally met an even bigger thug. Meanwhile the “Supreme Leader” Kylo Ren is a fucking mess, losing every single crumb of his mind the moment he catches sight of Luke Skywalker, and allows his old master to utterly humiliate him before his entire army.

The Resistance, meanwhile, goes back to the roots of... well, resistance. The old Rebel Alliance was created by rogue senators, stateswomen, financiers and true believers in the democracy of the Old Republic. However, the first thing we were ever told about that democracy, by the Prequel trilogy, is that it had been, for a long time, failing. This is what the scenes on Canto-Bight, who so many lesser reviewers deride as “pointless” and “leading nowhere”, are actually for. They reveal that the New Republic relies on the exact same corrupt power structures as the Empire and the Old Republic before it. The rich man who sold TIE fighters to the First Order also sold X-Wings to the Resistance. That whole segment of the story also reveals that the anti-imperial revolution had failed to protect society’s most vulnerable members. And surely enough, because the cycle of renewal did not complete in this case either, and the New Republic was ashes 30 years after it had started. The Resistance looks set to avoid making the same mistake, by appealing to a different “base”. Instead of nostalgia for an old, flawed power structure, it seems to be centered around support from very poorest members of society, people who have been abused their whole lives by those in power. Floor sweepers on the Starkiller Base. Sisters from mining planets devastated by the First Order. Stable boys in the casino-city Canto Bight. And a random junker girl whose parents had sold her for drink money.

That’s the new foundation. And the renewal seems set to complete itself this time.

Thanks for reading this far. Any comments would be genuinely appreciated.

[kadywicker]

spoilery pros/cons list under the cut!

cons first

my biggest issue w/this movie was finn and poes plots. while they do get abt the same amount of screentime as rey smth just feels... very empty. poes plot is esp ooc and finns just... idk how to describe it other than empty? it left a lot to be desired 

the humor was weird??? like? sw is humorous yes but... it was very different. not in a good way. like yeah i snorted with the whole “i’m holding for hux” thing from poe bc i hate hux and that was a big mood but it felt very off for the film/universe. as did luke throwing the lightsaber. and some other moments i dont rlly remember

kylo ren shirtless scene was literally awful and as a lesbian i wanted to kms

holdo was??? so fuckin pointless oh my fuck literally every time she was on screen i just literally did not care

yoda being there what the fuc gk

kylo being a fucking dumbass and not wondering how luke got a lightsaber when he literally just broke the thing in half but ig it’s p in character for kylo ren to not think for once in his life

the times that finn/poe were put in harmful situations played for laughs. like.... yes, the same happened to rey too but it has much different vibes when its moc being targeted. intentional or not it was a bad call and just made me incredibly uncomfortable

paige dying :(

pros !

shockingly bc i think im the first person to say this, luke’s characterization. the main complaints have been: a) regretted not killing vader b) considered/tried to kill kylo c) too cynical. now as someone whos a certified Luke Stan im gonna debunk these bc every one of those is down to misinterpretation or misquoting of scenes. a) he never said he regretted saving his father. in fact, he still has his kyber crystal from his saber hanging on a necklace in his hut. the conversation went like this. “the jedi have done awful things etc etc they created vader” “and you saved him” luke is not the one listing saving him as a mistake of the jedi. it’s rey countering that luke saving him was smth good the jedi did. and luke DOESN’T disagree. his only argument is that he regrets that it made him a “legend” which in turn lead to him being blinded to how dark kylo had gotten. which is honestly perfectly in character for luke. only he would feel bad for smth like that and beat himself up over it bc as usual hes a sunshine boy b) also didnt happen. when we see the scene from kylos pov, he mistells rey the story to make it seem like luke was some evil vengeful master. nope. he literally ignited his lightsaber for like 2 seconds bc he saw how many ppl kylo was going to kill before he realized what he was doing and went to turn off his saber but kylo had already seen. it’s also made clear later that while hes sorry abt what happened (which, cmon, this is luke. him feeling bad abt shit isnt an indication that its villainized. he apologized to an alien that didnt like him in anh) that he knows he was right and that kylo doesnt have good in him anymore. kylo was still the one who destroyed the order. rey was never mad at luke for trying to kill kylo simply for the sake that she felt “bad” for kylo. she was pissed that, from the distorted version kylo showed her, it seemed as if he’d “created” kylo who’d killed so many ppl.  c) okay yes hes cynical. but he doesnt stay that way. look. what have we seen from luke in the ot? we’ve seen him feel guilty over goddamn everything always and try and be a self sacrificing dumbass every second bc of that (i mean this in a very fond way i love my son). so when he blames himself for this shit, he tries to hide himself away so he doesnt fuck things up. we cant forget that while luke was a softhearted, emotional hero, he also had a lot of moments where he was cynical or annoyed (all of anh, dagobah, points in rotj). still, he overcomes that and realizes that he CAN still help and that the jedi are still needed. he talks about hope and is his same sweet self to leia and everyone else in the resistance. he also does have his sweet moments with rey.

moving on tho. holy shit the blatant parallels they drew with luke & leia and rey & kylo more than ever convinced me that they’re either siblings or cousins. him leading her into an answer of her parents being nobodies when shes already told him thats her biggest fear definitely isnt a concrete answer. like. they literally create the same scenes between rey & kylo and luke & leia. the weird ass hand scene thats been floating around also happens between luke and leia via the force. luke and leia communicate via the force more than once in the same way rey and kylo do. rey leaves in nearly the exact same manner to go to kylo as luke did when leaving dagobah to save leia. rey and leia also feel luke die via the force and they both see him in the same way rey & kylo and luke & leia have been seeing each other. if this were just a bond by snoke, that bond wouldnt exist between rey & luke & leia as well. i’m just saying y’all. luke was told his entire life growing up that his parents were nobodies and it’s stated outright in anh and yet look @ where we are now lads

rose was such a sweetie?? i didn’t love her introduction for reasons i’m sure youve all read by now but the rest of the movie she was a rlly good character and that hope sw is always about.

finn is called a hero who knows right from wrong and fights for whats right. finn is also given so many hero moments in the movie that got everyone in the theater cheering. he kills phasma. also, although dj does try and sell the whole “the rebels are just as bad as the first order” bullshit, finn calls him on it and fully proves just how bullshit that is. it’s definitely not the message of the movie.

finn and reys reunion oh gm yg od. that was so SWEET. she buried her face in his neck and he nuzzled her hair and they were both smiling and clinging to each other it was real blessed. rey also keeps asking abt finn and finn keeps asking abt her and honestly i feel god in this chilis tonight

the only good thing kyle did in this movie was force throw hux against a wall and knock him out bc hes annoying and i might hate kyle but god what a big goddamn mood

kylos irredeemable and stated to be so by the end and u kno what? thank fucking god

yes luke dying sucked and as a luke stan im gonna live in denial forever but if theres any way luke skywalker would go out itd be sacrificing himself for everyone he loves so 

[starkillerscience]

Just a few very quick TLJ notes in relation to my fics:

(Yes, there will be major spoilers for TLJ.)

First off, thank God I’m not able to write fic any more and that I hadn’t decided to wait until this film to continue my Starkiller Science fic following the plot of this most recent film, because it would have been IMPOSSIBLE.  No matter how much I’ve thought about it through the night and into this morning, there is no possible way that I could have included the reader character (Christina Xavier; which is what I will call her for the rest of this post) and still kept the same plot of The Last Jedi.  Second, Kylo Ren had amazing character development for the first 3/4 of the movie and then reverted back to his childish characteristics and just totally destroyed a proper redemption/grey Jedi arc that I had planned.

Like, none of Kylo’s actions would have been possible if he had known that Christina was on board the same ships as Leia.  It would have been too damn much for him.  He already didn’t want to fight because his mum was on board, but having his lover with a Force Bond on board, too?  No.  He wouldn’t have been able to fight, and he wouldn’t have allowed Hux to fire on the ships.  He would have sabotaged something so that the Resistance could get away.

On top of that, I don’t know how I would have incorporated the already existing Force Bond into the bond that Snoke created between Rey and Kylo.  Unless it was a weird three way call the whole time, and I wouldn’t have been able to take myself seriously.

Last, the odds of Christina surviving with the Resistance would have been nill considering that all of like 40 people survived the movie.  I told my friend in the theatre with me that after Laura Dern’s character fucking OBLITERATED Snoke’s ship, and after Hux killed off most of the Resistance, there would have only been enough people on either side to have like a bar brawl or something. idk.

So sticking to TLJ plot for a fic would not have worked, and I’m glad that I had fully developed a plot way ahead of time of how I would want the story to continue if Christina and Talia were there to influence the actions of Kylo and Hux.

My original sequel ideas had the First Order crumble apart under Hux’s leadership, leaving him and Kylo both more or less abandoned by Snoke who then used the Knights of Ren to continue on with a newly formed First Order under Captain Phasma’s command.  The basic plot structure was that Christina would briefly spend time with the Resistance to form a plan for her return to the First Order as a spy.  In that position, she would join Amena as a nurses aide to help with the mass casualties of the First Order, all the while gathering intel on the First Order to send back to Jessika Pava and Poe Dameron.

Meanwhile, Rey would train under Luke, Finn would go and join Rey when she and Luke return, and they would start forming a plan to take down Snoke.  All the while, Kylo would be on the run from the First Order after having largely disappointed Snoke.  Kylo would eventually sneak into the Resistance to beg forgiveness from his mother and try to make things a little bit more right.  During this time Hux and some First Order defectors would also be in hiding, biding their time, though Talia searches for them, finds Hux, and kills him.  Off the top of my head, I can’t remember how she manages to get here because some plot points are fuzzy after 20 months of not writing this fic.

Christina would eventually be found out as a spy and be held in prison on Snoke’s planet, basically being used as a pawn to get Kylo to come back to Snoke.  So Kylo teams up with Rey, Finn, and Luke with the intent of killing Snoke, which they would do in an epic showdown.  This would allow Leia and Luke to restore order to the galaxy, Rey and Finn and Poe could go off and have their beautiful perfect ot3, and Kylo and Christina could just gtfo away from both the First Order and Resistance to start their own lives in a way they most see fit.

The fic would have ended with Leia and Luke going on a trip to visit Kylo and Christina on the planet where they have made a home.  They walk up to the house, giving hugs, so happy to see one another.  And at the very end, Christina hands Leia a little bundle to hold: the newest member of the Skywalker family.

It was going to be dramatic and end cute as all hell.  But my PhD has taken over my entire life, and I also don’t have the motivation to write this, even if I had the time.  So instead, I am going to copy and paste all of my notes below about the sequel.  They are convoluted.  Entire plot points are missing that would have needed to be filled in as I developed the story.  There are run on sentences for days and my own commentary, but I think it pretty much sums up the ideas I had.  Enjoy.

Welcome to the five pages of notes that I took.  Also, if you were wondering what it looks like when I develop a story and am designing it, welcome to that process:

starkiller science sequel: Crescent Base Captives

 (why kylo cut the Bond: On one side, he honestly believes that he’s going to die, and he wanted to shut her out so that she wouldn’t feel his death through the Bond, because that would be so detrimental that it could kill her.  On the other side of things, he figures that if he does survive, he’s going to be facing Snoke and more training, and he doesn’t want her to slip into the Dark side of the Force along with him.  So by blocking the Bond to the fullest of his abilities, he sees it as the only way to truly protect her.)

 christina is trying so hard to adjust to not having contact with kylo and being with the resistance.  She's promisted leia that she will bring her son back, but she has no idea how to actually go about this.  She's a scientist—not a warrior, not a diplomat.  But at the same time, she knows that she has allies.  She is still in contact with Talia to a limited capacity, though Phasma and Amena are harder to reach, and christina isn't sure if she /wants/ to reach them because they're so close to the first order.  Talia doesn't know what to do with herself. She wants to find Hux and bring him closer to her.  She can't let him go, even though she knows that he doesn't love her how she loves him. And with her collection of brains gone and research gone and everything else, she feels like she has been left with nothing.  The first order doesnt need her.  They have bigger fish to fry.  So she leaves and heads back to the academic planet, where she had also studied ten years before you.  She becomes an assistant in a university morgue, where she can teach brain anatomy and dissection to medical students.  She isn't really happy there, but it's something.  She still gets to play with brains, and she's safe.  But she longs for hux.  Longs for things to go back to the way that they were before.

 Christina is trying really hard to get closer to finn and poe and rey.  She sees them as being the only hope of getting kylo back.  She trusts finn fully, but he is slightly wary of her. He knows that she's a good person, but he can't forgive kylo for what he has done, and it's difficult for him to just forgive you supporting him.  But at the same time, he sees you as weak, as scared, and as willing to set things right as him and rey.  So he puts aside his anger at kylo and meets with you in private.  The two of you are on d'qar, sitting in the forest, and he vows that he'll still be your guardian angel.  And you break down crying beside him that you would receive such kindness once again when you least deserved it.

 From there, leia starts to draft a plan.  She and christina go through ideas with finn and poe about what o do with you, but there isn't much they can think of.  You aren't a warrior, aren't a politician. And leia ends up coming up with the idea of you spying and rejoining as a doctor.  It seems like the best idea out there, even though it's really morally conflicting.  Leia decides for you to undergo a bootcamp with some of the newer recruits, so the next two months are spent training physically.  It's a time to work on basic combat, building muscle, just generally getting some skills that she may need later.  She learns how to properly fire her blaster, how to fight hand to hand. She doubts that she will use most of the training, but there's something satisfying to seeing her arms become more muscular and body work better.  She had never worked out before this because she had spent so much time sitting and doing academic work.  “I got a brain work out” she tells Poe, and he laughs at her one night, because he remembers hearing stories from Jessika about her brainy roommate.  Jessika nd Poe and Finn are basically in charge of training Christina when she's not at the bootcamp during the days, and Rey is meanwhile training with Luke.  Sometimes, Christina swears that she can hear Rey's thoughts, but she wonders if she's imagining it just like the bits and pieces she's getting through the Bond from Kylo.

 SHE BECOMES A FUCKING SPY FOR THE RESISTANCE AND IS SENT BACK TO THE FIRST ORDER TO WORK UNDER AMENA.  She calls talia, and it turns out that talia is on her own teaching and generally hating herself.  But she gives her amena's comm and christina calls amena and basically begs for some position in the first order and to come back.  Amena doesn't know that christina will be a spy but thinks that she just wants back with her friends and people she knows or whatever.  Amena is like 'I don't know hwere to put you' and christina convinces her to take her back as an aide.  And so amena obliges but can't guarantee a pay at all.  

 Christina goes back to crescent base and meets with amena's younger cousin, Beatriz, who is also working as an aide.  Beatriz was a former Storm Trooper, but Amena pulled strings to get her into the medical centre since Beatriz was a field medic.  She has the skills and is safer there with Amena.  Beatriz starts to take Christina under her wing to teach her how to do the medical stuff.  Christina catches on quick since she had done some of this stuff during her schooling (like giving immunisations and doing assessments is fucking easy; she can do that. But learning how to give proper stitches and stuff becomes necessary.  And she learns how to use the equipment in the medical centre).

 Meanwhile, christina only feels bits and pieces from Kylo. He's on such a far away part of the galaxy that it's hard to feel much of a connection.  She only gets these fluttering emotions, and she knows that he's hiding from her.  Probably due to snoke.  Snoke gave ren the ultimatum to kill her or han, but he would prefer for them to both be dead so that kylo can delve even further into the darkness.  Especially when considering that killing han didn't work for the plans.  Snoke realises now that he shouldnl't have given ren the choice.  Kylo knows this, and he hates the fact that he's supposed to kill christina.  He sends her emotions every now and then when he thinks he can get past snoke, but it's so minimal that christina starts to wonder if she is imagining the Bond.  

 Kylo has been at the citadel for a couple of weeks, slowly healing.  The tendons of his right shoulder are completely fucked up, and he has limited motion.  He undergoes two different surgeries, leaving his shoulder completely covered in scars and a few screws and electronic tendons now wrapping through the muscle and joint.  It hurts when it rains, hurts to hold his lightsabre, but he works through it anyway. He thinks briefly about whether you feel the same pain (which you do on occasion, but you don't realise that it's when it's raining near kylo; you feel particularly blue and sad on these days. You tell amena that it feels like you have days where everything is raining on you.) and also thinks about how Amena is no doubt trying to recover from the blaster wounds—that is, if she made it out alive.  He hasn't heard a single word from Phasma to know.  Kylo has been kept purposefully in the dark because of snoke.  At first, it's because he is healing, but even after that, kylo understands that he's being trapped.  Snoke doesn't trust him, and he's right not to trust kylo, because kylo is being drawn to the light the longer that he is there.

             “Last time, I made the mistake of giving you an ultimatum,” Snoke sighed. “It was foolish.  I hadn't understood the full extent of your relationship with that woman.  If I had known it was more than lust, more than your desire to fulfil a possessive nature, then I would have forced you to kill her along with your father.  But this time, I will not make that same mistake. This time, you will be given an ultimatum that forces you to act in accordance with my will.”

           Ren swallowed the lump in his throat, already aware of what Snoke was about to ask.

           “This time, you may choose, but it is between her life and your own.  Choose wisely.”

 Though Hux has been in contact with Phasma, trying to get her to take a lot of the reigns of the first order.  She has been made a general, which is awesome, but she's stressed and upset that hux is hardly leaving the citadel.  He meets with her after four weeks, and she's boiling mad. She wants him to stay on the crescent base and finalizer with her and the troopers, but hux wants to keep an eye on kylo as well as get further training from snoke.  Hux sees the starkiller base's destruction as a major blow to his standing, and he fears that snoke will have kylo kill him or will simply eliminate him himself, so he's trying to suck up to snoke, I suppose. Phasma calls him out on this.  He tries to ignore that she is correct.

 At some point, hux falls out of favour with the first order entirely and is kicked out.  He kills the people who try to kill him under snoke's orders, but he knows that it's only a matter of time before he's captured by either the resistance or the first order and killed.  There is absolutely no one he can go to, and his credits have been reposessed by the first order.

 At some point, the first order asks christina to then be a spy on the resistance and like, she's then a double agent and everything is getting really shitty, and she can't keep it up, and one of her transmissions to jessika and leia gets intercepted, and phasma realises just what kind of position christina is in, and she shoves her up against a wall and is like 'DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DONE?'  and it hurts phasma so much, but she can't hide the transmission.  She is legally obligated to show it to the rest of the captains and generals and even to snoke.  And snoke demands that she be killed.  Phasma is heartbroken, as is amena and talia, so phasma at least sets up a trial.

 Kylo has been with snoke during this time still doing his training and shit, but when he finds out about christina's trial and that she will be killed on a certain date by blaster fire, he loses his shit. Breaking free from snoke's citadel, he makes his way to the crescent base and personally interrupts her trial (think dumbledore when he breaks into harry's trial at the ministry lol).  The Bond reawakens at this moment, and it brings Christina to tears because she can hear him again.  She can see him again.  She can hear his thoughts and how much that he loves her.

 He is furious and threatens to kill everyone there if she is not freed.  Phasma is there and trying to calm him down because they're all under orders from snoke, and he's basically like 'FUCK SNOKE.  SHE'S MINE.'  and one of the captains decides to post-pone the trial for another day, and christina is dragged away in cuffs to a holding cell.  Kylo demands entrance to see her, and through the bars of her prison cell, they finally meet again for the first time in over six months.  He promises that she's not going to die, and she doesn't know how to believe him because this whole situation is hopeless.  Kylo is called away from her, but he refuses to budge.  He won't leave the other side of her prison cell until the next day when her trial is starting up again.  He follows into the court room regardless of what anyone else says, and he interrupts and distracts everyone.  He argues on her behalf, but he doesn't kno what he's talking about.  The fact of the matter is that she's a spy, and nothing he can say will negate that.  As the verdict comes down, he screams out and quotes obi-wan in a new hope when he says that if vader cuts him down he will only come back stronger or whatever.  And christina is dragged away with an execution date set for three days from then.  Kylo follows back to her cell, but it's now being guarded.  He threatens to kill anyone, but the knights of ren are there, now guarding christina because of snoke's orders.  Kylo is furious because this means that his knights have turned against him.  He leaves in a storm of anger, determined now to save christina from the knights and kill snoke.

 From here on out, kylo is officially on an opposite side of the war from everyone else.  Like christina, he is no longer on a side.  He has simply chosen a person.  And it's her.  She is everything.

 Somehow he breaks her out or something idk.  He dumps her on talia's planet for safe-keeping because hiding her seems like a good option while kylo goes out to kill all of his knights.  He's now completely grey.

 Talia and christina don't feel safe because they know that talia is being watched by the first order; they see bazine netal twice and know she's watching them.  Talia makes the decision to quit, and they pack their things in the night and leave for another planet.  Somehow, this leads to them meeting back up with hux after a couple of weeks of hiding. They are only getting little bits and pieces of information that kylo is out fucking things up.  The whole galaxy is under war, and kylo has gone off on his own and is killing high up members of the first order and resistance alike. But you and talia are aware that they are not actually indiscriminate.  He is killing anyone who stands in the way of him and christina being together.  He is killing his knights, killing spies, killing people loyal to snoke.  He kills bazine netal but is heavily injured during the battle with her, thus he isn't able to come rescue chrstina and talia when they finaly meet up with hux again.

 Talia ends up killing Hux by shooting him in the head with a blaster.  this is significant because she destroys his brain.  he trehatens to kill her and it becomes apparent that his freedom means far more than any emotions he had for talia.  talia means nothing to him. he has talia at knifepoint. christina steps in and manages to get him to let talia go. christina has him pinned and he threatens that you can either kill him right there or he will kill both of you and escape.  you know that he is fully capable of doing what he says and ther is no way that even the two of you could get him back to the resistance.  so as you're holding him to the ground with a knife at his throat, that's when talia steps in andshoots him in the fucking face.  christina is splalttered in hux's blood and completely shocked.  there's hardly anything left of his head, and she shakily rolls off of him.  talia is heaving, still holding the blaster in her hand.  "YOU SON OF A BITCH!" she shrieks, and she shoots again where his head should have been, aimed directly at what was once his brain.  she sinks to the ground, sobbing violently. what had once made hux the most fearsome general in the galaxy is now gone—to talia, a brain is the person. Without it, they are no longer real. all that is left are the blood splatters against the ground and the burnt hole in the dirt from the plasma blast.

 They escape, no longer being chased by anyone, and christina decides tha the best course of action is to get talia to the resistance.  She'll be safe there.  Talia is reluctant but she is taken in, though she's a bit of a pariah there because of her background.

 Christina goes back out, this time with help from poe and jessika.  Her goal is to find kylo, who's currently recovering on his own in a shitty inn on some backwater planet, trying to lay low.  The three of them find him, and he has an infection and is kind of out of it. Jessika brings in a med kit, and poe kind of can't believe that he's here, helping the dude who tortured him for information a year before.  But they fix him up becaue they're GOOD DAMN PEOPLE.  And there needs to be a fluffy scene of kylo and christina sharing a room as poe and jessika get their own room in another part of the inn.  And like, sexy kylo times idk.  But damn, we will all be in need by that point.

 Kylo requests that poe and jessika keep christina safe but drop him off at snoke's citadel because he wants to go kill snoke.  They're like 'no, ur hurt and dumb'.  And rey finishes her training around this time and they're like, 'team up with rey'.  Kylo is like 'ew gross no'.  But they team up anyway, and they start to devise a plan with Finn, and the three of them are going to go kill Snoke together with Luke.  Idk.  Something like that.  Meanwhile, poe and jessika are going to launch an offensive against snoke's planet and the final forces under phasma's control who are all around the planet.

 The battle is going on in the air. And then there's the in person battle of the three force sensitive bbs against snoke.  Christina is with leia.  Ships are leaving the finalizer as the battle rages on, and you realise that this will be the end for phasma.  She is the resistance's primary target along with some of the generals and captains of the first order.  Amena refuses to leave phasma, but she makes Beatriz leave, because Amena knows that anyone who stays is going to die there.  Beatriz comms Christina for help, and Christina is like 'I really can't help you. Just lay low.  Get somewhere safe.  And never say that you're from the First Order again.  I'm sorry.  That's all I can do.'  except you actually /can/ do something.  You comm beatriz back as she's crying and tell her to go to eriadu; market 67; the fountain.  She's confused but agrees.  captain harpin maltolpol is with her because I think they're going to get together idk. You comm samson and tell him to go to his usual spot in acouple of days to pick up those idiots.  He does and takes them to his home planet where they go into hiding.  They live happily ever after probably because they're good people at heart.

 Anyway, battle is continuing, and christina is very involved because of the Bond with Kylo.  Rey is kicking ass.  Finn is too for a while but gets injured along with Kylo.  Snoke starts manipulating any metal and wiring in their bodies, and Finn has metal rods in his back from Kylo's attack and Kylo has metal and wiring all through his right shoulder from a battle, so both fo them are kind of down for the count.  And rey is still fighting snoke, and christina kind of transfers into kylo's body and starts fighting.  This is a major parallel to the fight with stratoveer, because she takes kylo's lightsabre and uses it lefthanded as she had in that battle.  She feels like she's really there, just to Rey's right as they both take down Snoke.  And Kylo is cheering her on the entire time and feeding information about fighting. They are essentially sharing his body during the fight, and Snoke starts to realise that he's losing.  And Rey kicks him and uses the force to take away his lightsabre, and then christina gives kylo his body back, and he beheads snoke with his left arm and then drops down, realising that this is all over. He's done it.  And rey runs to finn.  Just as this battle has ended, the finalizer is critically damaged by poe, and it's only a matter of minutes before it all explodes, which will take out parts of the citadel planet.  So then kylo, rey, and finn all have to run to escape back to their ship, which rey pilots away as the boys sit in the back all injured and dumb and whatever.  Idk where luke was during this lol.

 The finalizer explodes, and everyone heads back to the resistance base on d'qar, and kylo falls to his knees before leia, asking for forgiveness.  She hugs him and doesn't even know what to say, because he has redeemed himself, and she's so happy that he's capable of love.  But she also knows that he is wanted by the new republic.  Christina comes over, and leia knows that the two of you must leave.  She says that they'll all be in touch, but she shushes them away and makes them promise to keep hidden.  Kylo nods. After all of the shit that he's gone through, nothing sounds better.  Kylo gets fixed up since his shoulder is shit, and then in the dead of night, they board a ship, heading for who knows where.

 Christina ends up taking kylo back to her original home planet, which is coincidentally where samson is now living. It's warm.  Sunny.  Bright. She hasn't been there since she was 17 and had left for university.  Kylo asks if she wants to visit her family but she shakes her head.  They were never close, and it wouldn't do any good to show up. They most likely believed that she was dead, and that was fine.  Besides, she has a new family.  It's kylo. It's leia.  It's talia.  Beatriz. They end up telling beatriz and harpin to join them on the planet after a little while, and though they don't live that close to one another, it's nice to know that there are other people in hiding with them.  A few people end up knowing that kylo and christina are there—leia, talia, jessika, poe, etc.  they occasionally visit.    THAT OR THEY GO TO SAMSON'S HOME PLANET.  I think this would make more sense??

 Talia works for the resistance and new republic, doing research.  She finally seems happy.

 The fic ends with kylo burying his hands into the earth, and christina is bringing a potted plant over to him with Pickles rubbing up against her leg.  They are planting it beside a house that they built from hand.  It's earthy and so incredibly opposite from the starkiller base, which had been dark and rocky.  There is beautiful metal work, which christina has done with the Force in her artistic metal bending and whatnot.  A ship flies by, and you look up, recognising it.  It parks just over a hill, and a few minutes later, Leia walks up with Luke following shortly behind.  Christina runs over to her, giving a hug as Luke gives Kylo a pat on the upper arm before Kylo hugs his mother.  They are standing there in the dirt path before their house, greeting, and Leia mentions, “Now, while I love seeing my son and daughter-in-law, I believe you owe me another introduction.”  and all four of you go inside the house to see a cooing little girl in a crib beneath an open window, light pouring upon her.  Leia holds her grand-daughter for the first time, and there are tears in her eyes.  The scene ends with the two of them as Leia rocks the infant in her arms, seeing through time to when she did the same with Ben.