#& threads ( rey skywalker )

[percentstardust]

continued from here | @jedischild

Rey is silent as she listens to her sister. She wants to ask her more about her mother. She wants to ask her about what happened to her. She can hear the grief in her voice. She can feel it through her force empathy. It threatens to consume her whole. She feels her emotions too much and her empathy just sucks up everyone else's. Their father is working with her on that.

"Yeah, I am starting to notice that I take more after our father too." She turns to look at her sister. "I remember that. I hate this. I hate not remembering. Father says to just give it time, but, I'm just....too impatient, I guess."

[voluntadfuerte]

@shefatales​​​ liked for a starter (for poe)

Rey looked at Poe, unimpressed and unapologetic. She wasn’t going to slow down for anyone. Least of all him. No matter what he said. “BB8 is fine. I suggest you stop motherhenning her.”

[bcbliophile]

[percentstardust]

Rey didn't want Kylo or Ben or whatever he liked to be called having access to her mind. This bond created by Snoke between them confused her. Especially now that he's shown that he does not want to change and that he does not want to come back to the light.

"I'm not really a Jedi either." Years of training missed because of being stuck on that damn desert planet until she found BB8 in need of help. She lets her sister take her hand.

"Okay. I will."

Nodding, Allea tried to think of some solution to what plagued her sister, she could understand the danger of letting Ben have uninhibited access to Rey's mind.

But there was still a tiny part of Allea that wanted to believe in the goodness inside their cousin.

"I'm no jedi, I don't know what to do about the bond. But I do know what we can do about everything else." She took Rey's hand, and tried to smile encouragingly.

"Follow me."

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Bit of thought and discussion last night over what makes a competent, effective movie vs a deep or interesting movie with Star Wars as our target.

So to highlight it in the most obvious way: George Lucas's movies are complex with deep plots, but are not well-written and fun to watch. So the prequels gained this reputation for being a bit of a slog because no matter how much Lucas loved this story he crafted, the way it was presented was lacklustre.

Meanwhile Disney tries to make a "competent" and entertaining movie with every attempt. Every marvel movie... before Endgame... was very entertaining and well-directed, regardless of if there was anything worth thinking about later.

When it came to Star Wars, Disney really struggled with this.

The Force Awakens is definitely a competent movie that hits all the beats they wanted it to. It has those good Classic Star Wars feelings, weighty lightsaber combat, a core cast that you love watching interact, and an emotional centre. It does the job it's supposed to, perfectly, whereas not taking a SINGLE risk with the franchise. It desperately doesn't want to be associated with Lucas's "boring power bloaty" prequels.

Of course the film recieves criticism for this, because it's just copying A New Hope without adding any new dna to the franchise. Every critic can see what Disney was doing, making a nostalgic star wars theme park, and they say they want Disney to deliver in the next movie.

Then comes The Last Jedi, where Disney's lack of direction became incredibly obvious. Rian Johnson took the Force Awakens critique FAR TOO MUCH to heart and made The Last Jedi the complete opposite - Everything TFA did, TLJ did in the opposite way. So instead of being a hero in waiting, Luke Skywalker is disappointing to Rey, he's ran away and fallen into squalor and he immediately throws away the lightsaber that brought him to tears at the end of the first film. And instead of leaning on the new trio everyone was excited about, Johnson splits them up permanently, with no interaction at all in the movie.

The Last Jedi tries to make itself more interesting by forcing threads into places that do not fit. Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy isn't a messy dark character, he's a starry eyed optimist, but this movie takes the easiest and cheapest route possible to turn him into something he's not because the author wants a darker more questionable story and has only got this one film to make it that way. The movie also leans hard into everything Disney was trying to avoid with the first one, long boring segments of whacky hijinks.

As a result a lot of writers have respect for Johnson's attempts to diverge from Disney tradition of super safe movies, his attempts to add stuff to Star Wars and make a unique film, but it completely fails as a competent movie and it fails as a competent story because there are too many authors clearly fighting with each other.

Movie 3... I've not seen it. I do know a lot about it, and Abrams spends the whole thing once again undoing everything Johnson did and trying to return to a safe Star Wars. TOO safe. To the extent that the plot completely lacks any comprehension because it needs to warp the story so much to return to the beaten path.

Somehow, Palpatine returned!! What the fuck!!! And why was this revealed in Fortnite???

Why are they puppeting Carrie Fisher's corpse?

Rise of Skywalker is disney at its worst because they have gone from being super safe to trying to return something adventurous to the safe path, without any degree of originality or creativity. I don't think a single actual writer worked on that film. It was all just direction to make epic setpieces, the pursuit of a "competent and entertaining" film instead of the ninth part of a story.

They are also repeatedly having to do this with Marvel. They have the lost the ability to do their own stuff with Marvel and are following a variety of comic plots, because that's "safe", right? But no, the comic goes to all sorts of crazy places, which gets in the way of making a competent and cohesive film. So theyre trying to get rid of some of that complexity, enough to make the writing bad, but not enough for Marvel to become coherent because that would require actually creating new stories and not following the basic, highly profitable guidelines of Marvel comics.

[starblightbindery]

Binder's Note for Forms by Trebia

How Forms fits in the long tradition of Star Wars fanfic.

My hope is that this project captures a snapshot in time from Star Wars fandom het shippers between December 2015 and December 2017, before the franchise confirmed any emotional intimacy—if you can call it that— between Rey and Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017).

Trebia, then aged 24, wrote and published the first chapter of Forms on Archive of Our Own on December 18th, 2015—the exact release date of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. When posting this first chapter, Trebia noted, “I��m just working off of memory from the one viewing I saw last night.” The entirety of the fanfic was completed and posted an exact month later, making this fic historically significant in Star Wars fandom as one of the earliest published “Reylo” stories.

A serialized novella that was churned out in an astonishingly short time frame, Forms is notable for predicting many elements of The Last Jedi (2017) and The Rise of Skywalker (2019), including the Reylo Force bond, Rey walking away from her training with Luke Skywalker, Kylo Ren pleading with Rey to join him, and Kylo Ren pushing his Force energy into Rey to save her life.

Throughout the story, Trebia mashed new and old Star Wars elements together—characters like the Mandalorians and Admiral Daala, settings like Illum and Kuat⁠—evincing her fondness for the Galaxy Far, Far Away. Forms has classic tropes from this franchise, like stealing a uniform to go undercover in an enemy base and the forced proximity of a “Slow Boat to Bespin.” Present in Forms are scads of fan theories from between the release of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. These included the theory that—echoing a Legends plot line from Dark Empire (1991) where somehow Palpatine returns and Luke Skywalker joins the dark side to try and take him down from the inside—Kylo Ren had strategic reasons for his apprenticeship to Snoke. Like many Reylo fan-works set in-universe, Trebia lends justification to his many antisocial acts, part of shipper efforts to make the character more self-relevant and sympathetic.

Forms weaves in tantalizing threads that were tossed around by fans and concept artists but ultimately not pursued, including Dark Rey, Stormpilot (Finn/Poe Dameron), and Rey's saberstaff. Trebia even predicted the Kuat Drive Yards plot line started in The Last Jedi (Rose Tico’s contempt for weapon's manufacturers on Canto Bight) and continued in the abandoned Episode IX: Duel of Fates script by Colin Trevorrow. Forms also addresses loose ends that probably should have been covered for a more cohesive nine film saga, like the Chosen One prophecy and direct interaction between Anakin Skywalker and Kylo Ren.

No discussion of Forms can be complete without also placing it in the context of Star Wars fandom in 2016. Reylo was a fringe pairing that made intuitive sense to many Star Wars fans, particularly women; however, prior to The Last Jedi, the ship was dwarfed by the popularity of slash ships like Finn/Poe and Kylo Ren/Hux. At the time, many fans theorized that Rey was Luke Skywalker’s long-lost daughter, making her Ben Solo’s first cousin, making Reylo an incest ship.

As noted on the Fanlore wiki, the tags on this fic changed over time. In addition to “Riding the bus to hell either way” Trebia joked with tags like “Possible incest?” and “Not incest until proven guilty in the court of law.” Following the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Trebia celebrated by replacing those tags with a celebratory “IT AIN’T INCEST.”

The story's strong influence in early Reylo fandom reflected a hunger for more Star Wars romances about the pull between light and dark. After all, the sequel trilogy did not set up Kylo Ren as a horned, alien-appearing monster or a wrinkled geezer. Unblemished by the ravages of the dark side, Kylo Ren was depicted with pillow lips and a fabulous, voluminous coiffure unencumbered by his helm (which really should have flattened it to his scalp.) The groundwork for a lightsider/darksider romance was previously explored in other Expanded Universe stories. At the forefront of these were watered down lightsider/darkside romances like the tepidly written romance between Luke Skywalker and former Palpatine agent Mara Jade. Given Mara Jade was hardly a champion of the dark side, there was no risk of corrupting Skywalker. But the Expanded Universe also boasted stories that played with this dynamic, like the twisted connection between Fable Astin and Jaalib Brandl by Patricia A. Jackson for the Star Wars Adventure Journal (1994), the conflict between Jaina Solo and Zekk in Kevin J. Anderson's Young Jedi Knights (1996),or the passion between Darth Revan and Bastila Shan in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003). In this respect, Forms and the rest of the Reylo fan fiction oeuvre continues the grand fan tradition of Star Wars villain fucking.

“Darksider and lightsider conflict is one of the most fascinating points of Star Wars,” Trebia said in 2016, when interviewed by Spencer Kornhaber for The Atlantic. “Rey and Kylo represent the fight to find the balance.” Yet, at the time, the fledgling “Reylo” ship was abhorred by affirmational Star Wars fans who despised the emphasis on shipping with a female gaze, as well as scorned by media commentators who found the ship to be “problematic.” In male-dominated, established fan spaces like Reddit and Jedi Council Forums, discussion of Reylo was effectively banned by moderators through the freezing of threads. In other fandom spaces like Twitter and Tumblr, discourse about Reylo mirrored larger purity culture. The ship became a convenient target for alt-right misogynists, and also for anti‑shippers concerned that the ship “romanticized abuse.” Productive and unproductive debate arose around media consumption construed as agreement or approval, whether a sympathetic Kylo Ren lends people to give more latitude to real-life white right-wing men with anger management problems (or if it's the other way around), and if shippers can tell the difference between a fictional antihero and the same dangerous thing in real life. Critiques of Reylo fandom also included the implicit racism inherent in the sidelining of John Boyega’s heroic character Finn in favor of white whiny fascist Kylo Ren. (It did not help that 2016 also saw the election where white American women voters decided to displace a competent Black man with a white whiny fascist.)

In the September 2020 issue of the Journal of Fandom Studies, Andrea Marshall notes that Reylo “fan fiction acts as a locus of resistance to gendered oppression as feminist authors construct selves that critique the source material and the fandom for gendered oppression within tropes and attitudes.” By having Rey actually interact with and befriend a woman other than Leia, Forms already improves on the source material. It's a delight to see Forms depict older women over age fifty who are plot-significant and interact which one another, if only because Star Wars movies are fairly gender regressive. On the other hand, Rey's strategy to convert Kylo back to the light is to uh, suck the badness out of him. It's Padmé Amidala logic—sure, he arranged the wholesale slaughter of an entire village, but he can also deftly finger you to orgasm! Granted, Star Wars is infamously a franchise of excuse making, where really shitty dudes manage to turn it around and do the right thing at the last minute. Forms also doesn't push all that hard to actively resist the neo-fascist allegory in the sequel trilogy, particularly in Trebia's appendix, which dissatisfactorily explains that all of the First Order war criminals in the story ended up as instructors in military academies. (Who would even hire them, Albus Dumbledore?!)

Fics like Forms led to “ship wars” discourse, which led to the publication of ozhawkauthor's “The Three Laws of Fandom” meta essay on January 1st, 2016. “Laws” is a bit of a misnomer since there is no enforcement body; the essay is more of a request for courtesy in fandom spaces. The laws were also meant to apply specifically to shipping, not fandom or media criticism as a whole. “It’s not up to you to decide what other people are allowed to like or not like, to create or not to create,” wrote ozhawkauthor. “That’s censorship. Don’t do it.”

For fans conscious of fandom history and the impact of censorship in spaces like FanFiction.net and Livejournal, ozhawkauthor's guidelines—(1) Don't like; don't read, (2) Your ship is not my ship, (3)Ship and let ship—felt intuitive. This is reflected in spaces like my bookbinding guild, Renegade, which—similar to Archive of Our Own—takes a hands off approach to policing content. This did not prevent widespread handwringing about Reylo content. Star Wars fan ughwhyben reflected on the “gigantic fandom that is suddenly experiencing a renaissance, where an influx of mainstream folk are trickling into (or running into) the fic side for possibly the first time right now and don’t have this training. It’s like we’re flickering back and forth between the modern evolution of fic side fannish culture and what things were like in, for example, 2001 when I first stumbled in.”

Decades ago, in May 1981, Lucasfilm reacted to the publication of “Slow Boat to Bespin” by Anne Elizabeth Zeek & Barbara Wenk by declaring a ban on smut in fan fiction. I've included in the errata of this binding a letter from 1981 written by the Star Wars fanclub president to circulating fanzines threatening legal action. While slash was also caught in this net—disproportionately targeted given non-explicit gay romance was not okay even though Star Wars has non-explicit het romance—it was this fairly tame (by fic standards) heteronormative fic, featuring Han Solo and Princess Leia, that signaled to Lucasfilm that smutty fanfic was no longer on the fringes and now needed to be addressed to protect the “wholesomeness” of the franchise. Subsequently, fanfic writers had to make a conscious decision to flout Lucasfilm’s policy and go forth with propagating their smut.

And, in 2016, of all the ships in all of fandom, it was the Reylo Star Wars pairing, featuring this specific heteronormative female power fantasy (of being able to leash a villain by the dick to drag him back to the light) that led to a communal reaffirmation of these fandom norms. In her interviews with the The Atlantic, Trebia directly quotes from the Three Laws of Fandom, endorsing “ship and let ship” as a basis for creating Reylo fanworks. “I am fully involved in the garbage compactor that is this pairing, and I love it,” Trebia said. “No matter what way it goes, I will stick with it.”

After studying early romance novels from the late 1600s and early 1700s, Ros Ballaster observed a polarity between didactic love fiction and amatory fiction. Didactic love stories are sweet—aspirational, moral, and idealized—while amatory fiction is spicy—erotic, transgressive, untethered from social sanction. We do see representations of didactic love in Reylo fan fiction, particularly in contemporary romance “Modern AUs” like Ali Hazelwood's The Love Hypothesis (2021)where the Kylo's homicidal Sith rage is sanitized to a more socially-acceptable grumpy academic brooding. One can comfortably bring Adam Carlsen, Ph.D home to meet Mother. But certainly, the majority of Reylo fic written by fans gravitate towards and come with the self awareness of the amatory. For one, Trebia loudly proclaims in her Chapter Two author note: “MORE TRASH FOR THE TRASH GOD.”

Discourse over the “morality” of Reylo fan fiction tends to overlook the distinction between the didactic and the amatory. As compelling as the idea of a “Force dyad” is in fantasy, this relationship is not meant to be aspirational in a literal sense. Yet, readers of Reylo fiction were and continue to have to defend their interest in the archetype with disclaimers—yes, it's trash, yes, I know it's problematic—while men in fandom are not held to the same standards when it comes to “problematic” media they consume or enjoy, whether it's a Michael Bay blockbuster film or male-gaze pornography.

As Deborah Lutz notes, “The Dangerous Lover Romance” is a centuries old, conventional way to represent erotic desire and romantic love. The “sublimely tormented Byronic hero” is hardly groundbreaking, to the extent that Rian Johnson's depiction of Reylo in The Last Jedi subverts the trope—at the end of the film Rey isn't enchanted, she's repulsed. The same way Star Wars replicates Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey monomyth, Reylo stories like Forms reflect the broad appeal of the “how-the-turntables” Dangerous Lover romance—where the woman protagonist, initially subjugated by the debased, restless misanthrope, ends up subjugating him through her strength of will and the power of love. Trebia's Kylo even sports malevolent scars like so many Gothic male romantic leads before him—always on the face. In the Gothic romance, the heroine accesses socially undesirable aspects—power, rage, craving, desire—as expressed by her double, the Dangerous Lover. His presence in the story provides a basis for her disinhibition. The Reylo ship follows a well-trodden cultural script of transgressive female desire.

Forms the fan fiction novella is a notable cultural artefact reflecting a distinct period of time in Star Wars fandom. At the time, Reylo fanfic held all the promise of improved representation for women characters, crossed with the instinctual, regressive insistence that maintains a white male character in the forefront. Reylo fan fiction produced in early 2016 also led to the reification of anti-censorship values in fandom. Seven years later, a fandom that was once derided has gone fully mainstream, as fic writers like Ali Hazelwood, Ashley Poston, and Thea Guanzon top traditional publishing bestseller lists. What Trebia knocked out, hours after her introduction to the characters, is now it's own Star Wars literary tradition.

[artist-issues]

Hello! My ask is about The Rise Of Skywalker. I would like to read your analysis of Reylo's scenes such as their dialogues in the film, Rey's declaration to Ben ("I did want to take your hand. Ben's hand."), Ben's return to the light side and the reylo kiss. The declaration, Ben's return and the kiss, for me, are the only good things about this film.

I thought all of the Rise of Skywalker was really terrible. Terrible writing, terrible plot, and even some pretty terrible characterizations. (I thought the actors did their best, though.)

Basically, ROS had several threads that TLJ and TFA had braided together. All it needed to do was tie those threads off. But instead, it unraveled them and tangled them up and said “done! All tied up!”

For example:

Thread 1: Finn’s journey from fear to faith.

Thread 2: Leia’s hope for her son.

Thread 3: Poe’s journey from hero to leader.

Thread 4: Hux’s growing, rabid desire for control. (It’s why the organization’s called the First “ORDER”)

Thread 5: Kylo Ren’s learning that power won’t make him feel secure.

Thread 6: Rey’s learning that she doesn’t need to be “somebody” because it’s all about something bigger than herself.

Thread 7: Kylo Ren and Rey learning their respective lessons by finding the answers in each other.

TLJ took what TFA started and got you those threads. Then TROS said “never mind, we don’t like those threads” with most of them. For example, Poe and Finn suddenly have nothing to do. For example, Finn is not doing anything that requires the faith he began building at the end of TLJ; he’s just following Rey around. Poe is not learning how to lead, he’s just info-dumping and trying quick three-man hero missions, unlike the lesson he learned at the end of TLJ. Hux is not strategizing with rabid extremism for control; he’s just pettily throwing his life away to get back at Kylo Ren. Et Cetera. The threads all get unraveled or tangled up or left dangling uselessly.

EXCEPT for Thread 7.

They make an attempt at “Kylo Ren and Rey learning their respective lessons by deepening their bond.” The problem is, without the other threads, that one just doesn’t fit any better than the rest of the story.

First off, I 100% agree that Kylo Ren and Rey would be involved romantically, in some way, eventually. There’s literally no way around it. Romantic attachment is choosing to commit to someone on an intimate level. Because they’re Force Bonded, and because they are the only people in the universe who have similar identity crises and deep family-related angst, they were bound to intimately understand each other. They started caring about each other in TLJ. All TROS had to do was fan the flames of that care up in a way that led to their character developments concluding.

Rey just needed to demonstrate more of the letting-go she demonstrated at the end of TLJ: she wants Kylo Ren to be Light, but she realizes there’s nothing she can do to force it, even if she begs and pleads, so she just keeps doing the right thing on her end and trusts the Force, believing he’ll come to the right conclusion in the end no matter how much evil he’s done. What’s that ladies and gentlemen? It’s called ✨ unconditional love. ✨

Then Kylo Ren just needed to see that love. Literally, just see and continuously experience it. Even if he’s trying to hunt her down and kill her or take everything from her or whatever, she just keeps refusing to kill him and believing he’ll turn good. After all, that’s more than his parents did for him back when they sent him away—and since then, whatever unconditional love Rey shows him is strengthened by the examples of unconditional love Han Solo and Luke showed right before they died. Plus the alternative to accepting unconditional love—murdering everything that might give him a sense of power—hasn’t been making him feel any better. So he was primed for redemption via Rey.

That’s all they needed to do in TROS. Not so hard, just write a reason for her to save his life or spare it again, even after their previous encounter and even given his new status as Supreme Leader. He’s halfway there. Continued pushes are all that’s needed.

Just like Luke Skywalker in the Revenge of the Sith, Rey and Kylo Ren don’t really need to develop much more in the final movie of their trilogy. They just need to put what the first two movies taught them to a big final test.

Anyway. With that in mind:

Let me give you the bite-sized version 😅

The Force-Searching Scenes - I don’t like these because they’re all Kylo Ren searching for Rey, with little to no engagement from her. She feels more like she’s given up on him in these scenes and is just trying to win an argument whenever he barges into her brain. He, on the other hand, might be looking for her, but it’s with one hand on his grandfather’s mask. Which is totally the opposite of him “letting the past die. Kill it, if you have to.” So he’s taking weird steps backward, toward TFA, as if TLJ never happened… and that tarnishes his motives for finding Rey, in my mind. If he’s going back to trusting the past and the idea of his grandfather, then why does he want to turn Rey to the dark side? When Vader failed to turn Luke, he tried to murder him. Kylo Ren knows that. So meditating on a mask he should be giving up on in order to find and turn Rey makes no sense, so it takes the tension out of those scenes for me.

Fight Scenes - Again, it makes no sense that Kylo Ren would still be pursuing turning Rey to the dark side so doggedly. Neither of them could convince the other at the end of TLJ. They split a lightsaber in half to prove it. Now, that doesn’t mean they should be giving up on each other completely. But Kylo Ren should be acting like he’s given up on her, even if just to convince himself. That’s what he’s done this whole time: turned to killing the people who fail him to make himself feel more powerful. She has a reason to keep believing in him: she’s on the Light Side of the Force. But instead, she’s the one acting like she wants nothing more to do with him. He mentions how he’s going to turn her to the dark side multiple times in the movie. But she doesn’t say more than one quipped question hinting that she still wants him on the light side. So the “attachment” focus of their fights loses all it’s tension because again, it doesn’t make sense. After TLJ, he should be at least trying to give up on her and pursue killing her, if anything. And she should be steadfastly believing in him, while pursuing doing the right thing no matter what he does. That’s where they were in their character development. More fighting barely makes sense.

Healing Scene - I liked this scene only when Rey heals Kylo Ren. Their fight beforehand, and her ramming his lightsaber into him, still makes no sense. She’s angry at him because of her connection to Palpatine and she’s fighting him like that’s going to exorcise her identity…but Rey being a dark, angry descendant of Palpatine never made sense (it unravels her whole character development.) So her motivations in this scene don’t make sense…until she heals him. Then, suddenly, there’s a glimpse of that Rey we left on the Millenium Falcon in TLJ: she’s healing him, even though he might just stand up and attack her again, because she genuinely believes he’s Ben and she just needs to show him mercy until he comes around to believing it. And THAT is part of what turns him. So I like that: I just think it was executed really poorly. She should never have been healing him from a wound she caused.

The Kiss - The kiss was just basically the TROS storytellers confirming that they were romantically attached instead of just enemies-to-friends/Allie’s attached. Because…for some reason they had to confirm that visually. I just think, again, that they didn’t set it up and execute it well. They have no conversations and no significant attention paid toward each other between the healing scene and the final battle. They might be force-linked, but the audience needed to see that bond turned romantic, or him turned good before any overt romantic gestures, much earlier on. Other than that, I like that he healed her. I love Adam Driver’s acting in that whole scene. Makes me wish they gave him more to do.

The Death Scene - This should not have happened. It was lazy. Kylo Ren is a character who has been trying to fulfill himself by making BIG, final (emphasis on “final”) choices. Having him make one more big final choice, to end his own life, was not good character development. He should’ve had to live with what he’d done so he could learn from his mistakes. That’s where his whole character was headed. He’s always failed to learn from his past: he thinks he can just erase it. You know what giving up your life for a different hero and then fading away is? It’s nice, but it’s just another “erase” choice. Additionally? It’s terrible for Rey’s story, too. She finally had someone she chose, someone she waited for who actually came back, somebody who understood her…somebody who’s redemption rewarded her long faith…and she’s left alone again. That’s just the worst. Plus, what did she need him to heal her for? What exactly did she die of? He was way more injured than she was.

What they should’ve done was, Kylo Ren and Rey save the day, and then he’s condemned to death for his crimes by the New Republic, but in honor of Leia’s life of sacrifice and belief in him, he’s given enough of a pardon to simply be banished to the unknown reaches. And Rey goes with him, because she can finally stop waiting, she loves seeing the galaxy, and they can learn about the Force together…plus, they’re obviously deeply connected. And that would be a great homage to Leia’s legacy as a character who never gives up on hope, and that hope is ultimately rewarded. Instead of having her give her life to reach him…so he can live for an hour or so before also dying.

Long story short…you’re right! I just think all the elements you liked should’ve been way more central, built up to, and placed where they fit in a better movie!

[percentstardust]

@hopegained

"A whole lot better? How so?" The youngest Skywalker asks, truly curious to what he means. She is not sure if he is being self deprecating or not. Social cues and tone are sometimes hard for her to tell the difference between. She does not know how her life would be better without an older sibling in it. In fact, she had always thought about if she had siblings while on Jakku. The couple that kidnapped her said she did. They were not entirely wrong even if they had altered her memories at that point.

"Oh. Okay. You're joking." She doesn't see how that's a joke. Oh well. She shakes her head, smiling at him. "You're welcome. "Training course? No, I don't want to. I need a break from that." Her? Wanting to take a break? A wild concept. "I made you something, actually. "

@percentstardust: ❝ I’m glad you were born, my life would be pretty boring without you ! ❞ ( From Rey )

"Really? 'Cause I think it'd be a whole lot better, actually." An old habit, a shortcoming of his that he was still trying to break. Self-deprecation had been a way to conceal his guilt and failure. He was getting better—he'd promised himself that he would, if anything—but sometimes it would he'd slip back into it at a compliment or praise.

Eron collected his thoughts, pushing away the worst of the worst into the void of his mind before showing his sister a warm smile. "I'm joking. Thanks, Rey. Wanna do the training course? Think of it as a birthday present, so you don't gotta cough up those credits to get me something."

[atopvisenyashill]

i think the problem with hotd is that people are expecting asoiaf levels of writing or early got levels of writing but they're just not built like that lol martin is a generational talent but f&b is not that good and some changes are needed

okay so-

f&b is bad

objectively yes. i think it has better world building than a lot of other fantasy out there but the concept of “hiding my hints about the main series through world building with an unreliable narrator” is not done particularly well with f&b. i think it just doesn’t fit george’s gardening writing style and i wish he’d let it go or at least rework the concept.

some changes are needed

again, yeah objectively, and that’s not even just an f&b thing. adapting a series with this many characters and this many moving parts is monumentally difficult and that’s not even getting into how moving from book to film is always a challenge bc something that works on paper won’t work visually. but also, with how all over the place f&b is, it makes sense to tweak things to be more thematically resonant.

people are expecting better writing but these people do NAWT have that dog in em

again objectively right. it’s not just that no one can stand up to george’s writing, it’s that d&d just fundamentally misunderstand or don’t care about a lot of the main themes and characters in the books. they specifically spoke derisively about fans of the books who were “moms” (what the fuck does that even mean!) and nerds who like to analyze themes, because d&d are fake nerds, they are NOT fantasy lovers and they are NOT good writers. then you get condal, who imo buys way too much into the idea of the divinity of nobility in fiction (which is a very common thing in american fantasy. i think i’ve talked about this before, but mia from btb had a really great thread basically saying that divine nobility is so common in american fantasy bc we’ve never culturally HAD a monarchy & therefore don’t have that cultural memory of “this system sucks and we should be guillotining these freaks post haste” and this is something george is specifically critiquing!) which is why he’s so willing to cut lowborn or what i like to call “middle class nobility” like jeyne poole, beth cassell, and nettles (and tbh i think there’s shades of this in why sandor is written so abysmally too) and i do think ryan UNDERSTANDS that monarchies are Bad but he has this preoccupation with Exploring Divine Right that eclipses a lot of the class analysis. and hess is just like. idk what that woman’s problem is tbh i think she has a preoccupation with women being victimized and while i think understanding the ins and outs of what Being A Woman In The World is incredibly important to have in the writers room, i also think what she wants is catharsis and that’s just not something this series is ever going to offer anytime soon.

all of that to say, condal & hess may have a better understanding of the series and less weird hang ups about gender, race, and sexuality than d&d, they’re already kind of fucked bc the og show is such a bad adaption and they have their OWN hang ups that they seem completely unaware of, and no one to tell them no bc this ip is hbo’s cash cow.

the problem

HOWEVER. i feel similar about like, the last jedi for example in that i think that was a deeply flawed and annoying movie that misunderstands the entirety of lucas’ skywalker saga and is way too focused on kyle ron’s whiny bitch baby tantrums over his parents getting divorced when it should have been focused on THE MAIN FUCKING CHARACTERS in rey & finn, ntm the incredibly weird racial dynamics of how rian wrote finn, poe, rose, and tio benicio’s character who i forget the name of. BUT. i also think a lot of the good, necessary, and CORRECT criticism of tlj gets lost in the misogynistic racist nerdboy backlash to Women And Brown People Existing, and then further buried by Disney running the IP into the fucking ground (as well as, unfortunately, queen carrie fisher dying before production was finished).

So IMO i think there’s a non zero chance that HBO does some meddling with hotd bc it’s expensive and a big ip, and because tbis is a series that means a lot emotionally to a lot of people, including some of the most annoying illiterate assholes on the internet, a lot of the really good, necessary, and CORRECT criticism gets lost under the sheer amount of people with nicola-or-holliday-as-rhaenyra-icons bitching about how they don’t let rhaenyra look girly enough and never mind that outside of like two scenes where she HAS to wear trousers, she’s ALWAYS WEARING DRESSES AND JEWELRY??? it’s like, yeah i DO think the way they write daemon’s interactions with his daughters & laena is stupid & bad & makes him less interesting as a character and i think part of that is hess’ preoccupation with victimization and catharsis but do NOT put me in the same goddamn conversation as people unironically saying that targaryen problems started when they started fucking andals, it’s not MY fault the h particles go craaaazy in this fandom!

[percentstardust]

@arcanedreamt

"Nyssa." She is standing awkwardly in the doorway of the room her older sister has claimed as her living space on the base. "I can't sleep. I keep having nightmares." She moves into the room, the door slides close behind her.

"Can I.....can I sleep in here with you?" She's got a blanket and pillow. She will lay on the ground if need be. She has slept in worse on Jakku. Nyssa slept closer to her than Eron did so she is who she sought out first. "I don't snore, I promise. I just--I don't want to sleep alone."

[vibrantbirdy]

Hi! How are you??

Can I request a Kylo Ren x Reader, where the reader is Rey’s older sister and has telekinesis (very powerful) and protects him from all the people who are after him but over use them and pass out but release a energy blast but he catches the reader in his arms and places them his bed and waits till they wake up.

thank u :)

Thank you anon, you are my first ever request! I hope this is the sort of thing you were looking for.

Requests for Character x Reader fics are currently open in my Asks. Please read the guidelines first before requesting.

Title: Frequency Fandom: Star Wars: Skywalker Saga Genres: Sci-Fi; Action/Adventure; Enemies to Allies; Hurt/Comfort Setting: Post The Last Jedi, Pre The Rise of Skywalker Main Characters: Kylo Ren x Female Reader Chapters: 1/1 (Complete) Warnings: Mild/canon typical battle violence; mild/canon typical swearing Word Count: 2394 Summary: You are Rey's long lost sister - a powerful force wielder - and you encounter the First Order's Supreme Leader, Kylo Ren, as you both search for something on a mysterious planet.

You are almost back to your shuttle when you hear it. Blaster fire. A lot of it. It echoes round the forest clearing and bounces off the ancient, gnarled trees typical of this green planet.

Lunah Prime.

You thought there might be something here to help you in your search, something within the ancient Jedi Temple. When you finally reached they decaying structure, however, you found it desecrated, gutted of all its artefacts and worse. At some point following the Clone Wars, it had been turned into a scrapyard for Separatist battle droids.

Even dormant, they were the stuff of nightmares. They were rusty looking, mechanical limbs strewn here and there. Dead. Even so, you'd been extremely cautious as you'd stepped over each and every one as if it were a sleeping predator.

Trust the First Order to just barge in and wake them all up. And why did they have to rain on your parade?! Their timing couldn't have been worse.

Idiots you seethe under your breath.

But it's not your concern. You are nearly at your destination. You carry on through the long, damp grass, making your way back to your shuttle with purpose. When you'd arrived, this clearing had been empty. Now it there were four First Order transports resting on the meadow in a perverse juxtaposition against the natural beauty of Lunah Prime's forested landscape. You are glad you landed somewhere more discrete.

The din of the firefight is close now. You don't stop. You don't even look back. You keep marching forwards towards your goal of getting the kriff out of here.

Just under a year ago, you'd felt a strange ripple in the Force. Distant, but so clear, so full of light and hope. And so familiar. In that moment, you knew your sister was alive and that something had awakened inside her.

It was as if Rey was finally exploring her own connection to the Force. Something you'd been doing for years now. And now you felt her presence as a thread between you, connecting you, so fragile that you felt if you let go of it just for a second, you'd lose it forever. So you never did.

You doubted Rey was aware of it. She had been so young when your parents had sent you away from Jakku. You had been ten and Rey had only been three when you'd left. She probably had no memory of you at all.

You knew your parents had done it to protect you. And Rey. But the memory still stung. Still, after that incident in the market when you'd thrown that idiot boy across the street and into the animals' water trough with your mind for pulling your hair one too many times...well... Even as a child you knew your parents had little choice after that. You'd drawn far too much attention to yourself and your family. You never understood why, but you knew you were in hiding on that junkyard of a planet. You'd never seen Rey or your parents again.

Your reverie is interrupted when you realise just how loud the battle at your back has become. You can't help it. You pause to turn and look at the carnage.

Stormtroopers are sprinting from the treeline into the clearing and towards the safety of their transports. They are in full retreat and their numbers are shockingly low. Then, you see the hoard of battle droids in pursuit.

Their advance is terrifyingly constant, pace neither quickening nor slowing as they creep inexorably forwards. They are shooting the Troopers without mercy, cruel blaster bolts searing through white armour and into retreating backs.

At the rear of the retreat is a tall young man clad all in black with tousled, raven hair. He is moving backwards, a solitary figure staying the advance of the droids alone. He swings his lightsaber, a fiery blade spluttering red with fierce looking cross-guard vents, and blaster bolts ricochet off it into droids and trees alike.

Immediately, you feel his presence in the Force. His connection to it is devastatingly powerful. He is ferociously strong with the Dark Side and you know it can't be anyone other than Kylo Ren. Supreme Leader of the First Order. Usurper of Snoke's throne.

Ren must have been looking for something in that ancient Jedi Temple too.

Soon he is the only non-mechanical lifeform on the field. You feel an unwelcome flash of admiration for his valiant effort. But no one, not even Kylo Ren, can hold off an entire garrison of B1 and B2 battle droids indefinitely.

The droids continue to encroach on his position, relentless, swarming like insects. Ren is tiring, his defensive swings become laboured and clumsy. You watch with an indifference that alarms you as a blaster bolt glances off his right thigh.

Ren lets out a cry of fury and pain. He is now on the ground, crawling backwards on his bottom as he uses his lightsaber to deflect a tide of blaster bolts with an intensity only desperation can fuel.

When he can, he uses the Force to blast droids backwards at great velocity. But his strength is clearly failing. He's covered in mud and his face is spattered with blood. His long legs flail as he scrambles backwards, trying to get purchase against the sodden ground with his uninjured leg.

You know you could help him. You're not a Jedi. But you have a raw power you've never quite understood, although you know it stems from the Force. You have always used it sparingly. You find it difficult to control. It drains you and necessitates that you rest and recover. It slows you down. And you don't have time for that...

You should leave Ren. It's no more than he deserves. Momentarily, you really think you've convinced yourself that you could abandon this man to die.

Dank Farrik you swear.

You sprint over to the fallen Ren, adrenaline surging through your entire body. Within moments, you are standing above him and have conjured - for that really is the only word for it - a shield of energy around the both of you.

Innumerable blaster bolts bounce off the thrumming wall with no effect. As you face them head on, you suddenly realise how many droids there really are, and your begrudging admiration for Ren's last stand increases ten-fold.

You take a few deep breaths, squeeze your eyes shut and centre yourself.

I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force and the Force is with me.

You repeat the ancient Jedi mantra an wizened man once told you about on some backwater moon years ago in your head. You don't know if the old-timer was making it up or not, but you have always found that it helps to ground you, to strengthen your connection to the Force, so that it feels that is nothing else in the Galaxy but your link to it

Then, with an almighty effort, you extend both your arms out in front of you and push. You watch as your shield becomes a battering ram, sending droids flying up into the air. You hold them there, unable to stop yourself marvelling at the surreal sight of hundreds of battle droids floating, weightless in the air, before you whip your hands downwards, palms facing the ground. The droids crash down to earth with a deafening cacophony of crunching metal.

You sway on the spot but stay conscious long enough to look down at the man whose life you've just saved. Ren's face is framed with wild tendrils of black hair and, expression softened by surprise and relief, he is disarmingly handsome. He has deep set golden eyes, a strong, prominent nose and full lips.

But... why is it blurry?

You stumble again and look up at the sky, trying to catch your breath and reestablish your balance. You're so tired. You need a minute. Just a minute and you'll be fine.

And then all fades to black.

*************************************************

Ren manages to sit up just in time to catch you, a large, gloved hand cradling your head and protecting it from slamming against the ground as you fall heavily against him.

He looks up and around in complete awe at the suddenly deathly silent surroundings. Battle droids, hundreds of them, lie either still as the grave, or twitching mournfully.

How fascinating, he thinks.

He hisses in pain as he staggers to his feet with you hanging limply in his arms. He is strong and powerfully built, but it's no easy feat to carry you with his injured leg which drags behind him as he starts to make his way slowly across the blaster cratered ground and the mechanical bodies of ancient battle droids strewn here and there.

Eventually, Ren realises this would be much easier if he had at least one hand free to help him balance so he lifts you up and slings you over his shoulder instead like a sack of meiloorun fruit. A supporting arm is crossed under your backside and your head lolls against his broad back in an undignified fashion. But Ren is growing impatient and weary and there is no need to be delicate when you are unconscious.

When he finally reaches his shuttle, he has to bend down even further than normal to make sure he doesn't bash any part of you off the door frame. He lumbers through the arterial corridor of the ship to his small, sparse quarters where lays you down with surprising gentleness onto his own bed.

Ren looks down at you, brows furrowed in curiosity as he studies your peaceful face. There is something familiar about you that he can't quite place. He takes up your hand, which seems tiny in his own, and closes his eyes.

He reaches into the Force, searching. Then his scar, the one that runs down the right side of his face, the one Rey gave him on Starkiller Base as it was collapsing all around them, throbs.

Of course. Your connection with the Force resonates on that same, high frequency. You can only be her sister. Perhaps a few years older than she is. But there's no mistaking it. That same strong resolve, that drive, that courage.

Your strength in the Force is brutally raw and untamed, but perhaps even greater than that of Rey. If tempered, if trained, perhaps you and he together could...

Ren rejects the thought almost immediately after it enters his mind. The wound of Rey's rejection of his hand on Snoke's gargantuan vessel, the Supremacy, still runs deep.

He doesn't need anyone. He can't trust anyone. What he needs is to focus on finding Palpatine and ridding himself of the only threat to his power left in the Galaxy.

He wants that Sith Wayfinder to light his way to Exegol. This disaster on Lunah Prime is only a minor foot note in his route to absolute power. He is so close now. He can feel it.

As the lingering adrenaline of combat starts to fade, Ren suddenly realises how exhausted he is. He removes his gloves and places a hand against your forehead, then two fingers against your neck to check your pulse. You'll be fine, he confirms. You just need rest. Then he can decide what to do with you.

He looks around at the sparsely furnished room searching for a chair, a bench, anything for him to rest in or against. First Order transport shuttles are spartan at the best of times and this is certainly not one of those.

Defeated, Ren winces as he lowers himself to the floor. He removes his long, black cape from around his shoulders and fashions himself a makeshift, muddy pillow which he lays his head upon gratefully. He acquiesces to keep watch over you for a little while until you recover. He owes you that much.

He just needs to rest his eyes.

********************************************************

When you wake, you are lying in an unfamiliar bed in strange surroundings. At first, you are too drowsy to register much but as your consciousness starts to return, you start and sit up as you realise you are on an Imperial shuttle. You look around the functional room. It is, thankfully, empty.

Empty save for...

What is that noise?

Someone is snoring. Only gently, but you are sure of it. You look down and to your surprise, on the hard, cold durasteel floor, the Supreme Leader of the First Order is asleep.

You feel a twang of gratitude that Ren didn't just discard you there in the clearing amid the bodies and the mud with battered and broken droids. Strange how a man with such a history would still give up his bed for an injured woman. How quaint.

Still, you don't know exactly how grateful for your intervention Ren is and you don't want to wait around to find out. You remove your shoes, desperate not to make any noise, and carefully extract yourself from the bed. Boots in one hand, you step over the sleeping man and pad barefoot to the door.

"Wait."

A deep voice, quiet but commanding resonates throughout the tiny room and travels up your spine. You freeze and turn. You jump involuntarily as you realise Ren is already on his feet, only inches away. He towers over you, your forehead only coming up to his broad, solid chest.

You look up and into his amber eyes with defiance, refusing to let him see your fear. This man would be dead without you, you remind yourself. If you have to remind him of that so be it.

You wait for him to speak, but he doesn't for a long time. He is looking at you intently, his face unreadable.

"It's nothing," he says, finally. His expression seems to soften and when he speaks next it's with disarming uncertainty, "I ... hope you find what you're looking for."

"I wish I could say the same for you," you quip with more bravery than you feel.

The ghost of a smirk leaves a faint trace in the dimples of his cheeks and he nods.

You turn on your heel and stride quickly down the corridor of the First Order transport and out into the meadow where you wriggle your toes in the wet grass and inhale lungfuls of the fresh, forest air. You waste no time in locating your ship where you drop into the pilot's chair with a relieved sigh.

Now, onwards to find Rey.

[f1a1w1n]

No, you don't

Part two of No, you don't

Summary: This fic is sort of a time skip to when we land on the rebel base, cause I didn't want to recite the whole movie. Basically in this fic, you meet Poe for the first time and are shocked at how annoying and handsome he is. It's a slowburn, enemies to friends to lovers fic. Reader has the force.

Word count: 1.25k

Warnings: Not really anything, mentions of blood.

~

I’m picking the thread from my skirt when Rey comes bursting in. 

“He won’t stop following me!” she walks back and forth to demonstrate. “Go away” She points her finger at him, and then at the door. I laugh.

Rey argues with the orange droid as it beeps angrily… or as angrily beeps can go. 

“You can understand it?” I swivel around to face her. 

Rey pushes the droid away with her foot. “Yes, unfortunately,” 

I smile. “What’s he saying?” 

“Something about a pilot… and a stormtrooper” the droid frantically pushes her foot “I found him in some scavengers net”

“Hey come here,” I put my hands out and the droid rolls over cautiously. I spin the droid around and look for the serial number. “Hmm… he’s a republic droid”

“Like the rebels?” Rey asks. She puts out her hand and squeezes her eyes shut “like Luke Skywalker?” 

When she says that the droid goes crazy, rolling back and forth beeping rapidly. 

I smile. “Yes… exactly like that, thats exactly how the force works” 

Rey grins. “Come on let’s go to the town,” 

We walk out to the speeders as Rey chats with the droid. Rey scoffs as as the droid tells her he’s the most important droid in the galaxy. 

While I'm haggling with Plutt about how good this scavenge was. Rey chats with her new friend. 

Plutt raises his hand to quiet me. “The scavenge is weak... I have many other scavengers that get me better quality stuff than this" He gestures to the pile of scraps, then he looks behind me "...but- I'll take that...how much for the droid?” 

“It isn’t for sale” Rey answers for me. 

Plutt reaches behind him and dumps a truckload of portions on the counter. “Sixty portions.” 

I turn to Rey and shoot her a look saying. Is it really not for sale?! 

She gives me a look that says. Yes! Now drop it!

Suddenly the droid beeps franticly and rolls full speed for a man drinking water from an animal trough. Ew. I think. How can you be that desperate? 

Rey runs after the droid and I pile the portions into my bag. Subtly sweeping a extra one. He wouldn’t notice.. right?

The man sees Rey sprinting full speed at him and runs the other way. Honestly, I couldn’t blame him. Rey chases him around the market, weaving in between stalls. Suddenly I popped out between two stalls and tripped him over. 

“Hey!” 

"BB-8?" The man sounds shocked.

All of a sudden TIE fighters began to shoot at the market blowing everything in their path to smithereens. “Run!” I heard someone yell.

The man dragged Rey by her wrist out of the market, in turn Rey gripped on to my arm. We fumbled around trying to escape the TIE fighters blasts. 

“Over there!” Rey pointed to a ship as it blew to bits. We ran the other way. “Nevermind!” 

The man leads us to a dirty-looking ship. We jumped on as the droid rolled in after us. Rey and I hopped into the cockpit and we began furiously flipping switches and pulling levers. 

“Shields aren't working!” 

“What should I do?” the man said, his brow furiously sweating. 

“Go down there!” I messily pointed behind me. “Fire back at them!” 

The man ran off. Rey pulled back on the throttle and we took off shooting into the desert, spinning and flipping the ship, trying to avoid the TIE fighters. I took a panel of of the cockpit and fiddled with wires and switches to try and get the shields on. 

“Why aren't there any shields?!” I heard the mans voice over the intercom. 

“I’m working on it,” I shout back. I unbuckle my seatbelt and stumble out of the cockpit, putting my arms out for balance as the ship lurches from side to side.

“Where are you going?” Rey yells as I rip another panel of of the ship.

I don’t respond. 

Finally we shoot of into hyper space. I heave out a sigh. 

Rey runs out of the cockpit and tackles me with a hug. We squeal and jump around. 

The man walks out, shock painted over his face. His shocked expression turners into a wide grin. 

I grab his arm and shake it while laughing with Rey. 

Rey sticks out her hand. “Rey,” she’s grinning. 

He thinks for a moment. “I’m Finn,”

They shake hands and then Finn offers his hand to me and I introduce myself. 

Time skip~

Han Solo finds his ship and takes us to Maz. After Rey speaks with her she seems shaken. After the fight on Takodono, we realise that Rey was taken. Later we finally reach the rebel base. 

(also I'm sorry for the time skip, but we want to get to the juicy parts right?)

I feel the ship gently touch the ground, lurching me from my thoughts. I’m pressing a rag to my side from where a stormtrooper shot me. The rag is almost soaked with blood at this point.

Where are you, Rey? I think. Why are you making me do this?

I do something that I haven’t done in years. I close my eyes and try to reach out to her with the force. I feel the energy around me buzzing. I try to reach out beyond that, I let myself go back to Takondo, the last place I saw her. I know the force is strong with her, but I’ve never said anything. I didn’t want her to be burdened with it like I am. 

I reach my mind out further. I feel something… it's dark. 

Han Solo walks over, jerking me from the force. “Listen, kid… we’ll get her bac-” he’s going to say something but I can see him rethink his words. “Don’t get on their bad side,” he jerks his head towards the rebel base. "more so, don't get on the generals' bad side, she's a real pain in the-" He walks off muttering about the general.

“...okay,” I slowly stand up, clutching my side. I look over to Finn. He’s sitting with his elbows on his thighs and his head in his hands. 

I put my hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get her back,”

I turn around and follow Han and Chewie out. I see rebel soldiers run over to us. Someone sees the blood from my side and yells “Medic!”

I guess it's worse than I thought.

I feel Han put his hand on the upper part of my back, steadying me. I realise I'm swaying. 

I hear Finn’s voice, “God! Where are the medics?” 

“Kid?” I hear Han say.

“Hm?” 

"Nothing you're just really pale, kid"

He turns the the rebel solider running towards to us. He’s in a fluro-orange flight suit, and he swipes his brown curly hair out of his face as he approaches us. 

“Finn?!” he says, running to give Finn a bear hug, he punches his shoulder. “I thought you were dead.”

“I thought you were dead!” Finn says, the grin on his face widening, his smile drops when he remembers I’m bleeding out.

“We need a medic,”

“Agreed.” Finn’s friend turns around and yells for a medic, people quickly scramble to get one. I see his eyes on me, they look me up and down. My cheeks don't flush because I'm losing so much blood-

Suddenly the droid pops out of the Falcon, zooming at the man in the flight suit. 

“BB-8!” He exclaims. “I missed you!” 

How can you miss a droid? I thought. I roll my eyes. I look back to the man in the flight suit, he’s looking at me. God, I hope he didn’t see that. 

Of the bat I cant help but notice how handsome he is. His dark curly hair lays on his forehead, lightly swaying in the breeze. And his eyes, god they are so dark. There dark and warm, like a cup of deep hot cocoa. When he talks his jawline could cut glass. 

I feel myself buckle in the knees, not because of his ‘rugged’ looks. I feel faint. Finn rushes to my side. “You okay?”

"What d'you think?" I say through gritted teeth.

Finn turns to the man in the flight suit. “Where are those medics, Poe?”

“I don’t know,” Poe takes a step toward me, holding out his arms slightly as if I were about to collapse. 

I let out a pained laugh that really sounded more like a yelp of pain. I fall to the floor. My vision goes dark at the edges. I hear voices muffled my a high pitched ringing. The last thing I see is Poe above me yelling my name.

Masterlist

Thank you for reading!!! I hope your day goes well <3

Taglist:

@kingtwhiddleston

If you want to be tagged, comment or you can fill this out.

[skywalker-swift]

Ao3 Masterpost

Hi friends! I've decided to make a masterpost of all of my work on Ao3, where my username is casuallysavingtheworld. If you see a fic you recognize and didn't know it was me who wrote it, hi! My name is Kate, I write mostly Dinluke/Star Wars fanfic!

Currently, you have to be a registered user to leave comments on my works. This is because I've had a couple of shitty people hiding behind the internet being rude. If you do not have an ao3 account, but would like to say some nice things about my works, please send me an ask! I love talking to people about my writing. Kindness is always appreciate it!

This masterpost will be updated periodically with new works as I continue to write! Please read the tags of each story on Ao3 before reading.

Thank you!

wherever you stray, i follow series

Republic never fell, and Anakin didn't go to the Dark Side AU. Luke is an ambassador to Mandalore and Din is the Mand'alor.

wreck my plans, that's my man | Rated E | Part 1 -Dinluke, with background HanLeia, and super light Boba/Fennec and Cara/Bo-Katan Luke Skywalker-Naberrie is sent on a diplomatic mission to Mandalore, on behalf of the Republic. He plans on getting the work done and leaving as soon as he can after the two years is up, but that was before he meets the Mand'alor.

i take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover | Rated T | Part 2 -Dinluke, with background Anidala, Hanleia Anakin, quite frankly, is sick of his son’s shit.

(Luke comes back from a mission on Mandalore with a surprise, a husband and a child. Anakin doesn't know how to handle this.)

all along there was a invisible string tying you to me series

A golden string of fate soulmate AU.

one single thread of gold tied me to you | Rated T | Part 1 -Dinluke with background HanLeia Luke just sits and stares, as it’s all he can do, hoping one day, he’ll be able to follow his string, all the way to whoever is on the opposite end of it. He bets they’re beautiful, no matter what they look like. At night, in Luke’s dreams, he catches glimpses of deep brown eyes, a pre-empire ship, armor and a silver helmet.

(Luke Skywalker has a golden string attached to his finger, that floats into the sky, leading him somewhere, to someone. He's the only one who can see them. During the adventure of a lifetime, he searches for answers, eventually leading him exactly where he needs to be)

hell was the journey but it brought me heaven | Rated T | Part 2 -Dinluke, no background relationships He hates that he can see the strings, something he realizes no one else around him can do, and Din hates them. His string wants to lead him away from the things he’s come to know, the life he wants to live. He’s trying to be brave, god damn it, and the string keeps pulling and tugging, trying to get him to follow it.

(Din Djarin has a golden string attached to his finger, that floats into the sky, leading him somewhere. He's the only person he knows who can see them. He runs from it, hating that they exist, which leads him exactly where he's supposed to go.)

honey, life is just a classroom series

College AU series, with both Dinluke and RoseRey.

up on the roof with a schoolgirl crush | rated T | currently the only part, working on the next part! -RoseRey, with background DinLuke Professor Djarin looks disheveled. Professor Djarin never looks disheveled.

On one of the last Fridays of the semester, Professor Djarin is late to class. Rose wants to figure out why, and why he's acting so anxious, all while trying to keep sneaking glances at Rey, her long-time crush.

Where only the sweetest words remain

Hades/Persephone AU. I will not be writing more in this AU, series complete.

when suddenly I saw you | Rated T | Only one part of this series -Dinluke, no background relationships This story is about two people. One was considered life. The other was considered death. It starts like this. (Or a retelling of the story of Hades and Persephone, with Din as Hades and Luke as Persephone)

all's well that ends well to end up with you

Canon fix-it, post season 2 of the Mandalorian. Series completed.

what must it be like, to grow up so beautiful? | Rated T | Part 1 -Dinluke, background Hanleia if you squint Grinding his teeth down, Din was once again, grateful for his famed helmet to hide how he was really feeling. Leaning against a wall, away from the rest of the party guests, the party Leia had crafted, Din couldn’t help but think about the moments he realized he had feelings for the Jedi. (Din thinks about all the moments he realized he had feelings for a certain Jedi)

you drew stars all around my scars | Rated T | Part 2 -Dinluke, family relationships Din’s eyes catch the pale scars that line many parts of the Jedi’s body. They are all parts of Luke’s past, which led him here to this moment with Din.

[graysistance]

𝙨𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙝𝙤 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙖𝙛𝙩𝙚𝙧

the year is 34 aby, and the resistance has a new political star.

two, actually. 

a young woman who streaked from galactic oblivion to not only survive capture by kylo ren and torture by the first order, but count a victory against ren to her name, and a young man who'd turned away from the first order's stormtrooper programming, proved that starkiller base wasn't as defensible as the first order would like to think, and just narrowly survived what could have been a debilitating lightsaber injury.

frankly, rey is upset to have missed the bulk of finn's recovery. mostly his waking up. instead, she'd run off to the other end of the precious map bb-8 and r2-d2 had put together, components practically shaking with hope and glee. leia's blessing and pleas had gone with her, an enormous privilege, but when all was said and done finn was far more preferable to cantankerous luke skywalker. not even the stunning setting with water as far as the eye could see helped.

in the end, luke agreed to return to his sister's side - and by extension, the resistance. either rey convinced him or he convinced himself; it almost didn't matter. the journey back to d'qar nearly reduced rey to exclaiming in luke's face that she didn't know how luke managed to achieve what he apparently had over the course of the galactic civil war, but she held her tongue and they did in fact arrive in one piece. the reunion of a long-parted sister and brother managed to soften her heart at least a little. as did being able to throw her arms around a mostly recovered but very awake finn at long last. 

eventually it was decided that luke would begin to train rey in the ways of  the jedi arts while leia contributed as she had opportunity. suddenly rey's life was busier than it had ever been before. hours spent in hyperspace became days spent in focused mediation or exhausting rounds of dueling and saber forms. her time on d'qar was limited, and therefore time with her friends was as well. rey began to hoard opportunities to join resistance fighters in the black, defending planets in need or forming up to rain fiery hell down upon the first order. 

all that changed when, after a few standard months of tutelage under luke, the skywalker twins sent rey out alone on a mission to stalsinek iv with nothing save her recently completed yellow bladed saber and a short holo from leia referencing some prior agreement of safe passage "should anything go wrong."

her mission: find the site of a fabled great fountain that supposedly spewed water that granted healing and a longer lifespan. the drinking of the water wasn't the point, luke emphasized, but to sit in the fountain's presence, feel the strength of the force around it, and meditation in the wash of heightened power. he'd called it a "nexus", much like the caves of dagobah from his youth or the jedi temple on ach-to and the cave below from rey's recent experience. it was there she was supposed to find some semblance of balance and peace. 

during rey's most arduous journey yet to the mysterious hapes consortium, she began to wonder if balance or peace were even possible. 

once she'd manually threaded her way through the heavily ionized minefield of the transitory mists, locking the consortium away from the rest of the inner rim and indeed the rest of the galaxy itself, past the tangled knot holes that threatened to yank her into a plethora of unknown hyperspace lanes and setting her progress maker knew how far back, rey arrived in the hapes cluster that contained stalsinek iv. with great care rey crept her way through consortium space, clinging to the barest threads of the force to show her the way. and show her the way they did. 

from space, stalsinek iv was a jewel-toned planet that conjured images of rich forests and the constant presence of burbling rivers and streams. rey only had moments to feel the intensity of gleeful relief before the falcon's sensors blared, warning her of a speedily approaching craft. she had mere seconds to flick the shields on full blast before multiple barrages of cannon fire slammed against the falcon's hull. 

kylo ren had followed her through the transitory mists and waited until she'd slowed her search to a crawl before attacking, the absolute sleemo. he was not at all interested in keeping to a low profile and continued to unload his munitions onto her, cornering rey into firing back. 

what followed was a concentrated dogfight that left rey's head pounding as she grit down on her teeth in painful ferocity and the entire span of the falcon groaning from sharp turns and dives. all the while, the two ships crawled closer and closer to the surface of the rainforest planet. 

in a sudden, inspired move that rey could barely telegraph, she fired precisely toward one of kylo's sublight engines and hit dead on. in the resulting explosion, she lost all sight of his ship and, taking the advantage presented, dove almost instantly for the planet's surface below. 

the smoking falcon eventually landed quietly in an almost too-small clearing. rey was beginning to find it both difficult and almost natural to calm her rush of adrenaline. the force was almost breathable it was so strong, and rey could trick herself into believing she saw the force itself filtering through sunbeams like fog. putting kylo ren from her mind and the oddly bittersweet possibility that she may have crippled him and left him to whatever hapans may come across the debris of his tie, the young woman pressed forward. 

she was led step by step, leap by leap, to a quietly glimmering fountain. the clearing around it was dotted with an arrangement of glittering stone pillars covered in carvings that appeared ancient. such confounding and unearthly beauty left rey speechless and awestruck to the point of utter stillness. how long she stood there, she couldn't quantify. she only knew her time of mute reflection came to an end with the crack of a saber igniting behind her. 

kylo had not only survived her blast, but followed her down to the surface and through the barely habitable jungle to the fountain luke had warned her was partly myth, but could still be real. 

the following fight was merciless. 

hours or mere minutes long, rey and kylo clashed again and again and again, losing their sabers only to find them again, diving between columns and dodging falling debris. and all the while, the force nexus roared, imbuing each force user with an intensity of power they'd never before felt capable of. not even on starkiller base when the voices of jedi past had whispered in her ear, encouraging her with every strike and even suggesting multiple offensive moves she'd never before considered with a saber or her quarterstaff. again and again red mingled with yellow as rey valiantly attempted to drive kylo away. yet they were evenly matched with every swing, the force answering each of their calls to it with roars of might. 

and then the force quieted and was gone. 

completely. 

the anomaly was enough to cause kylo to cease his barrage and rey hers, though their sabers were still locked together. rey stared into the obsidian blockade that was kylo's mask, unwilling to pull back. strangely, his helm left her view as kylo's head whipped to the side, apparently detecting something rey could not and trying to spot it before it got too close.

then the footsteps reached her ears. 

almost as soon as she heard them, the sound of blasters being set to what she hoped was stun overrode all other questions.

if her and kylo's dogfight had not alerted hapes' defenses enough, their fight and subsequent destruction of the fountain certainly had. 

although, rey was momentarily confused by the sight of armed soldiers wearing what looked to be night vision paraphernalia. but there was no time to think more on it once the command to put their hands in the air came. and as usual, rey had no intention of doing so. kylo, as it happened, felt the same. almost as if they were linked, kylo and rey began to take as many soldiers down as they could, enough to form a path of escape. they were nearly there when a strange thought to “stop the attack” squirmed its way into her head. very unlike rey to think such a thing, but the thought was persistent and rey eventually listened. as soon as she stilled, a cry of “set to stun!” broke through the air and rey went down like the ruins behind her. 

she woke in darkness and not alone. her and kylo had been brought to a cell of some kind and thrown in together to wait for whatever fate the hapans had in store for them. in typical fashion they argued until more soldiers arrive to remove rey from the cell and take her somewhere private to be questioned. there she found that whatever strange technology had been used to fool her into thinking strange thoughts that made her obey commands was once more being employed. every question she was asked, she had to answer in full truth, leaving no details out. 

but the strangest one was the question of whether or not the names isolder or tenenial djo meant anything to her. her open answer in the negative seemed to confuse her interrogator. 

eventually she was sent back to her cell, but quickly removed one more time before she could really begin explaining to kylo what had gone on. they said prince isolder had arrived. it clearly meant something very important that he was here, although rey couldn’t fathom why.

in short order, rey began to realize that her life was changing in a more immediate way than she could have ever fathomed: her and the prince were related. 

not only that, rey was the royal heir of hapes and granddaughter to ta’chume herself. quite possibly strangest of all, named kira. 

as isolder kept talking, answering all of rey's poorly pieced together and sometimes silent questions, the air was filled with more and more and more practically unbelievable stories that rey nearly refused to accept outright – if it hadn’t been for all the proof isolder was willing to provide. apparently, fourteen years prior, civil war had been tearing the hapes consortium apart at the seams and the royal family were scrambling to keep the throne and stay alive. the crown prince and chume’da’s six year old daughter was under heavy protection, but apparently not enough. to rey’s shock, she was told that she was not left behind in necessity or abandoned with prejudice, but sent far, far away from her home to the relative safety of coruscant. only, during a refueling stop on jakku, a bounty hunter tailing them at the behest of isolder's rebelling brother kalen pulled rey and her nursemaid from their ship, sold the little girl to unkar plutt, and flew away with the nursemaid never to be seen again.

a simple story resulting in a disaster that left a family in pieces. almost worse was the revelation that rey no longer had a mother. tenenial had died shortly after kira's birth under suspicious circumstances. rey didn't know which was worse: discovering that her apparent mother was dead, or realizing that even if she'd been able to grow up in hapes she would never have known her at all.

then came the alarm calling for the prince and his "guest" to be evacuated: kylo had escaped his – their – cell and was now nowhere to be found. and he was armed. rey sprang into action, determined to follow kylo and stop him before he made it off planet. a path of destruction was laid out in front of her and rey discovered that he'd taken her saber, too.

for the second time that day she plunged into the jungles stalsinek iv in search of her quarry. once she breached the walls of the mist patrol's outpost, the force returned to her with a vengeance and rey bounded to catch up with her rival, only to reach him just as he boarded his tie. with his and her sabers clipped to his belt. miraculously, the falcon was not far off. rey jumped in and threw all systems into overdrive in order to catch him. but for once, the force was on kylo's side -- that or his mind was far clearer and he managed to evade her completely, diving into the transitory mists and completely out of her reach.

this battle was over and she was weaponless. and yet on the ground things did not get better. a previously unnoticed transmission from leia had been beeping away, waiting for rey's attention. the first order had sprung upon the resistance's d'qar base, forcing them to abandon it completely. the entire population of the base was now in hyperspace on their way to what they hoped was a viable new location, still to be determined. luke was with her, offering advice and support, but they both urged her to return at once and meet them at a soon to follow rendezvous point. that had been five standard hours ago, and there was no second message.

rey turned for the mists and began her journey back anyway.

it was only when rey on a strange whim stopped above jakku for no other reason than to stare at it that the second message arrived to meet on batuu. black spire, specifically.

once arrived, poe and finn met her in a rush and practically carried her back to luke and leia. in short order, rey's entire story burst forth. both the twins' reactions to the name isolder were peculiar, but none more so than leia's. come to find out, leia had previously met isolder under almost equally as strange circumstances. but as rey came to the end of her story, silence reigned. continued to reign until rey was half inclined to demand the full details of what happened on d'qar. luke broke the silence first, however, by suggesting the two of them go in search of another crystal with which to build her a second saber. once that was done, he turned to his sister. what leia said should not have shocked rey, and yet it did anyway. leia suggested returning to hapes and speaking more with isolder -- maybe even stepping into the place his daughter should always have had at his side.

true power came not only from the force, leia said, but in other, more surprising places. this could be one of them.

so rey did the only thing she could do: listen.

after a standard month of searching and not-so-patient crafting, a second (still yellow-hued) saber fit perfectly into rey's hands, singing the same song as the first crystal had. soon after she slowly boarded an x-wing nursing feelings of dread despite all of the kindest goodbyes she'd been offered. batuu shrunk behind her along with the force signatures of everyone rey had come to love during her time with the resistance. there was no guarantee she'd ever see them again.

her arrival at the transitory mists was as unwelcome as the first go round, but she made it through the second time with far more skill. not sure what else to do, rey returned to the site of the force fountain and from there picked her way to the hapan military outpost. once again the force left her in a rush, but enough soldiers remembered her that her quiet request to speak to the prince was heeded unusually quickly. prince isolder was indeed called and arrived in record time. rey greeted him in embarrassed silence, unwillingly willing to do whatever he asked.

rey didn't remember much after that besides climbing aboard isolder's transport, arriving in a place called ta'a chume'dan and being told she would need to undergo a dna test before she could be presented with confidence to ta'chume. in a fog, rey went where she was led but barely slept in the room set aside for her.

the next morning, she was informed that the test results had finished calibrating. isolder at least had his answer:

rey was really kira ka djo.

what came after that, only ta'chume would be able to tell her.

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE: this verse is based off of the legendary fic "landscape with a blur of conquerors". while loosely following the beginning story beats of the fic, i've changed many details in order to make the story more my own, although all credit belongs our eternal reylo goddess thea for both the base idea and the inspiration with which to create a verse. this one goes out to you, kylorenvevo. may the force always be with you.

[percentstardust]

oh. uh. well. why…..why does it feel like we’re cursed, then? like the dark side is always going to meddle with us?

i should've done this long ago, but it's time to finally tell you about your great-grandmother. she's the reason why we carry this name.

[themattress]

Was inspired to check this out due to looking at posts by @flilisskywalker, and lookie here:

This absolutely vindicates two of my three core tenets as to why The Rise of Skywalker is Good, Actually(TM) (the third being that it's a miracle it functions as well as it does given the absolute shitshow behind the scenes that it had to contend with): that the makers had a very genuine, deep, and innocent / childlike love of Star Wars - all that Star Wars truly is and not the sanctified image of it too many people have in their heads - and celebrated in a Palpatine palpable and legitimately clever way, and that it's not supposed to be seen as merely "the end of the Sequel Trilogy" but the end of the entire nine-film "Skywalker Saga". This means that just narrow-mindedly looking back at the previous two movies like a truly tragic number of fans and critics do wasn't enough; the movie needed to tie in with all the Sith movies.

Why was Palpatine and the Sith Eternal suddenly a thing in this movie when they were nowhere to be found in the previous two? Because since Episode I, literally named after him ("the Phantom Menace"), Palpatine has been the Big Bad pulling all the strings so that he can find a way to live forever and rule an eternal Sith-controlled galactic empire. Why was Rey retconned into being a Palpatine and then chose to be a Skywalker? Because Palpatine and the Skywalker family has been the core plot thread for six movies before this trilogy, and this reveal means that it's still the core thread for these three. Why did Rey and Kylo Ren go through the motions that they did? Because they are both, in different ways, carrying out Anakin Skywalker's legacy, and this whole story began centered around Anakin (and of course, Luke and Leia also hold major roles in shaping Rey and Kylo Ren into what they are).

This isn't just "a trilogy ender"! It all clicks together! It's all part of a much larger whole!