#Finn should have been the Jedi

[corellianhounds]

The Last Jedi AU: Ignore whatever’s supposed to happen or where people are in this movie. Paige Tico is foiled in her attempt to release the bombs that would take out the First Order ship. Her ship is boarded and she’s taken onboard the Star Destroyer as a captive intelligence officer, but before she’s captured she’s able to relay a covert message to Rose telling her what happened.

Instead of the diversion to Canto Bight, Rose is the one with the knowledge of splicing into Imperial ships and she and Finn impulsively plan to jet over to the Star Destroyer in an escape pod Rose had been experimenting with a cloaking device on, the two of them breaking in on their own.

Finn finds Poe to tell him of Paige’s capture and his and Rose’s plan. Poe knows that he can’t condone or contribute resources to it and knows for a FACT Leia won’t allow it, despite the fact Paige is a friend and the same rank he is. He’s torn between getting her back but needing to stay and lead, so he he tells them to take BB-8 and does that Mr. Incredible thing where he tells Finn and Rose what “NOT” to do to get into an Imperial flagship, him planning the distraction from the outside and still screwing with Hux over the comms and keeping eyes turned his way as Finn and Rose sneak onboard to find Paige.

Can you imagine if like they manage to get into some labs while they’re doing recon and Finn senses something? Can you imagine him hesitating as they move, telling Rose they have to go back while she’s hissing for him to keep moving? Her either hacking into the tech to redirect First Order troops away from their location, or going off to find her sister herself while Finn stays behind? Finn finding schematics and draftings alongside old codexes and scrolls before eventually coming to the humming, fractured kyber crystal in the next room, hanging suspended in midair above the equipment? Realizing as he’s digging through the odd mix of both scientific and semi-magical texts what it’s for, but that Ren hasn’t been able to force it to conform to his needs, too unstable to be housed even in his own lightsaber? Finn starting to configure and piece things together even as Rose tells him they’re running out of time?

As they’re sneaking around, gathering pertinent information to the plot and finding Ren’s plans for Rey and Skywalker, they’re nearly caught— Surrounded by First Order troops and with seemingly no way out, Rose and Finn prepare for the worst, when all of a sudden one of the troops goes rogue and eliminates all of their fellow officers instead. Paige Tico managed to escape and had disguised herself, just happening to be lucky enough to run into them in the lower levels. Paige tells them of some of the other rebel prisoners aboard the ship she was planning to break out, and the three of them, finally united, start plotting their means off Ren’s flagship when they overhear Hux in the corridor talking about Ren meditating in some inner sanctum with an order to be left alone with his own retinue on pain of death as he searches the Force or whatever for the location of Rey and Skywalker

Back onboard the New Republic ship Poe and Leia confer with the other generals as to what the Sith’s next move is going to be when they receive an incoming transmission from Kylo Ren himself.

As Kylo Ren and Leia Organa face off in what was to be their last confrontation, the tone and gravitas of their conversation somber, something flickers over the feed, and everybody on the New Republic ship’s bridge sees a blinding arc of light as one of the First Order troops behind Ren steps out of line and carves a blade of shimmering green in a downward arc directly behind him.

Outraged and caught off guard, Ren blocks the attack with his own blade, both lightsabers flickering with different energies, and as Finn’s voice shouts over the holo Poe realizes that not only has Finn given them an opening to hit Ren’s flagship, he may have even been able to stop this war in its tracks.

[skydaemon]

get that rey skywalker shit OUTTA here mr and mrs finn and rey star wars you will always be famous

[sweetnnaivete]

don’t play rey’s theme around me or i will start pining because i’m actually in love with her that’s my scavenger wife

[inquisitor-apologist]

Been getting back into my sequel trilogy bullshit (so many good Finn leads a Stormtrooper Rebellion fics out there) and honestly I don’t even think it’s that bad anymore? When I was younger I remember seeing so many videos about how the st was ‘the end of Star Wars’ and ‘the worst thing ever made’ but it’s just. Not that bad?

Like obviously the last Jedi was weird and very confused and more than a little racist in how it treated Finn and Poe but there were some decent ideas in there and Rose as a character was great. The force awakens was the same way—was it a good movie? Arguable. But was it a fun callback to a new hope with interesting new characters? Yeah. Even rise of skywalker, which thoroughly sucked, was somewhat entertaining, and I’m one of the sickos who actually liked the Rey Palpatine reveal.

Like obviously it could have been WAY better if they’d actually used some legends inspiration and had an actual idea for the story but it is what it is and I’m ok with it.

[vodika-vibes]

Holy shit this is beautiful! I think I legit stared at this for 10 minutes before I hit reblog.

The force works in mysterious ways and after years of travelling  through the galaxy Finn was able to find a path to his destiny

[clarasghosts]

it's still wild to me that rian johnson created a thoughtful film about who really profits from the wars in star wars, how you need to care about things bigger than just yourself and your friends, how you should be patient and listen, that you don't have to come from a 'special' family to really be someone, that the worst person you know isn't a theatrically large monster but a normal guy full of too much self-importance,

and people still act like he made a terrible film because it didn't cater to them, specifically

[smokestarrules]

there’s a really interesting phenomenon going on that I've seen mostly on twitter in which people are pretending The Last Jedi and the other Sequel movies is and was always good, actually.

it seems to me as if there's a new consensus that the people who did and still do dislike that movie are those mad about Rey being a woman, Finn being a black man, etc, and while I'm a thousand-percent sure that's true, that some people hate that movie for stupid and bigoted reasons, it doesn't change the fact that The Last Jedi (and truly, the entire Sequel Trilogy) is just flat-out a bad movie.

All three of those films suffer hugely because all three are fundamentally different at a ground level. They are inherently disconnected in a way that a trilogy should not be, leaping from idea to idea that the next film inevitably squanders. There is no consistent storyline other than 'First Empire Bad'; there is barely any buildup to to the reveal of Palpatine, Kylo Ren as a character flip-flops between tortured badboy to Maybe Redemption Arc and back. It's not because he's conflicted, it's because everything is simply inconsistent.

Finn and Poe are done huge disgraces by the end of it all, Kylo Ren having been deemed more important and heroic than they are, and The Love Story is just terrible. The end of The Last Jedi sees Kylo Ren successfully assassinate Snoke, which is a pretty cool fucking thing to happen, but Rise of Skywalker squanders the aftermath of that idea with the rushed redemption.

These are movies that feel like each one was supposed to have its own subsequent trilogy; put together, they're a mess.

[saphronethaleph]

So a sort of look at a structure one could do for the Sequel Trilogy, admittedly with hindsight.

Opening sequence? Basically the same, except that Poe is meeting with a Resistance spy - the data he's got is the evidence that means the First Order is more than just a rando Remnant faction but is a serious threat. Then the stolen TIE crashes but Finn and Poe link up together. They meet BB- and Rey, and the four of them escape on a ship - possibly the Falcon, but it could be another of the same type, they're supposed to be common. Alternatively make up a new ship type they steal and have that be the Iconic Ship of the trilogy.

Team dynamic is Poe Flies, Finn Shoots, Rey Fixes.

They're heading straight to the Resistance, or that's the plan - they may need to briefly detour somewhere if their ship got damaged in the escape (if so, this is where they visit Maz).

The Resistance is explicitly described as a deniable New Republic operation which is fighting this specific Remmant faction - at the moment. They've fought others before, they're kind of like knights errant, and they have at least one Jedi (let's say Qu Rahm) who gives both Finn and Rey some training.

The Jedi Order as a whole is not involved with the First Order fight because it's utterly routine, there's dozens of Remnant factions... at least until BB-8's information reveals that the First Order has Kylo Ren associated with it, and also the existence of Starkiller Base.

The knowledge of BOTH of those things means that the Jedi Order is able to evacuate their current temple (Naboo or Yavin? Either way it should be a known planet) just in time before it gets blown the fuck up by Starkiller base. Then there's tension involving the need to swat SK base quickly, which mostly goes as per the original film.

In the second film:

The Resistance is still tiny, and the First Order's actions have promoted them from "just another Remnant faction" to "holy fuck" and they're starting to weld the Remnant back together. It is actually not widely known that Starkiller base got destroyed and the First Order is using intimidation tactics to pretend they're unbeatably strong - not helped by how the Resistance genuinely is pretty weak, nobody on the Republic side wants to be the first to jump, and Leia is trying to talk everyone into giving more support (it does slowly tick up)

The general structure here does need more changes than TFA did, simply to fit into the trilogy as a whole, but here I think a good Driving Question could be finding out who Snoke is and where the Knights of Ren came from. Our Heroes are juggling between getting Jedi training (for Finn and Rey), launching raids on the First Order, and trying to find out Snoke's origin - the latter of which fails, but he does get killed instead by Kylo Ren, who takes control of the First Order.

The main ending note at the end of the film would be the loss of Leia; she tried to turn her son back to the light side with full sincerity, but also went to kill him if he didn't. Neither worked, but he's been badly wounded and about half of the Knights of Ren got taken out. (n.b. if this is cheating to get around Carrie Fisher's death, and it probably is, that could be Luke's demise instead - or both.) Our Heroes might well be involved with a hot-extraction of R2 and C-3P0, who have important details of what happened.

Third film:

The death of Leia/Luke/both has become a rallying point and the New Republic is gearing up for war, which gains momentum with every day that the First Order doesn't blow up a planet; it's made clear in scenes showing Kylo that he's under a huge amount of pressure, because Starkiller Base made promises that the First Order cannot fulfil. In lieu of that they're having to turn instead to more standard means of brutally enforcing their claim to authority, and it's not working out well.

Our Heroes meanwhile are involved in hit-and-fade strikes, one of which sees the death of Qu Rahm. The loss of their teacher causes Rey and Finn some problems, but Poe is the one who pulls them out of it - it doesn't matter if they have a teacher or not, what matters is who they are, and that didn't change because they had a teacher. All he did was open their eyes to who they really were.

That's the realization that drives the stormtrooper-rebellion side of things from the Resistance/Republic side, while on the Imperial side we see Phasma having more and more trouble keeping a lid on things. Finn is The Traitor and basically blamed for everything that goes wrong ever as far as the First Order is concerned.

Running out of options, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren orders a decapitation strike by the entire F.O. fleet on the capital world of the Republic. This is a serious threat, because normal strategic calculus assumes that you just don't DO this, and this is what leads to the big final battle over said capital world - the Republic is outnumbered on a tactical scale, and the available members of the Jedi Order help launch an assault on the First Order flagship to try and disrupt the F.O. fleet.

This is where the Stormtrooper Rebellion is really kicked off, as Finn brings the existing tension in the First Order fleet to a boil (key moment: a Stormtrooper panics at the sight of Jedi, one of their officers tries to gun them down, Finn kills the officer before it can happen; this is the moment that disproves the propoganda and it spreads). Rey gets the big final duel, but it's against Kylo, and on at least two occasions she manages to call in strike support from Poe flying outside in his starfighter. This means the final battle is the Jedi Order versus the Knights of Ren on a super star destroyer being torn apart by Imperial infighting, and the resolution is liberation - for the stormtroopers, for example - and the surrender of the remaining First Order fleet.

[ariainstars]

Why Is Star Wars No Longer About Heroism?

Ever since the prequels, the Star Wars franchise has emphasized over and over that the Jedi were everything but all-wise, flawless heroes. That needed to be said, and the fan’s vicious reaction to that was and is often disgraceful.

However, thinking back now: I guess most fans could accept the way the Jedi are portrayed as being flawed as long as someone else was the hero in their stead.

A story’s protagonist must not always be and look cool (I already wrote at length about this), and they do not necessarily need a villain as a foil just to point out “this is the hero because the villain is his opponent”. But in some way or another, they must be heroic; it must be clear enough to see why their story is worth being told. As viewers, we want someone we can identify with, in a way we can understand and cheer for.

The Saga: Prequels

Revenge of the Sith is a very dramatic story about a damnation, and for one movie, that’s perfectly fine. But if the franchise keeps telling stories where someone fails and dies, becomes a worse version of themselves or doesn’t mature at all, why should the fans still want to watch them?

The Saga: Classics

Luke Skywalker was a fantastic hero because he chose forgiveness instead of revenge; an unusual turn of events for an action movie, but something almost every viewer understands. While the saga has a lot to do with fatalism, Luke set his own will and choice against the terrible fate of being the biological son of his and his friend’s greatest enemy, and he was proven right. Even Darth Vader was a hero in the end, because by saving his son, he overcame his hatred (the way Luke had implored him to). Return of the Jedi ended with a huge celebration and a family reunited.

The Saga: Sequels

One of the things I loved most about The Last Jedi was the promise of a better future for the characters and for the entire franchise. By denying its narrative threads, ignoring it, even trying to “patch it up” with the subsequent movie, the entire trilogy lost its sense. No one became a hero in the end, overcoming themselves. (Luke overcame himself once more, but he already was a hero.) And it’s not like there wasn’t the potential for the other characters, on the contrary.

Finn and Poe both learned important lessons, but it’s made clear from the start that they are good guys; they do not change considerably like Kylo Ren who redeems himself or like Luke who from a simple farmboy matured into a powerful Jedi.

Kylo Ren alias Ben Solo is the most tragic hero of the saga because not only did he die young and healthy and without ever having been a hero (unlike Anakin, whose heroics we can admire on and on in The Clone Wars), but because he disappears into nothing. He could have saved the Canto Bight children undoing Anakin’s curse at the Jedi temple; he could have found what Balance in the Force means and left the legacy to Rey; she could have fallen to the Dark Side and he could have redeemed himself to get her out. (To an extent, he does, but that is not clear enough since we never see her actually doing evil.)

Ben doesn’t even leave a charred helmet behind. If Rey, who grew up in the middle of nowhere, knew that Vader had redeemed himself, then this was a galaxy-known fact; and the same young woman ran from the place where her soulmate had died into the arms of her best friends and told no one of what he had done to save her, so that in the end, the last Skywalker scion did not even die with honour. Not only does that taint the Skywalker family legacy, it also deprives the sequels of their only character who really could have been interesting by becoming heroic against all odds, and the only relationship (Dark / Light / Balance) that was really new and groundbreaking.

In-Between

The Mandalorian was immediately beloved because it tells of a man who gives up his cruel profession to take care of a child, although it belongs of a species he has never heard of and has powers which he doesn’t understand.

Rogue One and Andor were the stories of people who become heroic despite the adversities even if it costs them their lives.

The Bad Batch was generally well received because it tells of these five guys who all stick together to protect their little sister. One of them even goes from belonging to them to betraying them and then going back again.

The Clone Wars and Rebels are about people being or becoming heroic, not simply by killing the bad guys but by facing their own weaknesses.

I didn’t hate the prequels, Solo, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan Kenobi or The Acolyte (although I heard of many fans who do). I find these stories mediocre. But again: please tell me what is heroic about what these characters do. They go through some crisis, but they don’t emerge as heroes because they already were; except for Boba who remains stuck between being villain and hero. Qui-Gon frees little Anakin from slavery, Han Solo gets his freedom and his ship, Mando gets Grogu back, Obi-Wan saves Leia etc. They don’t learn and become better people from what they went through. Hardly anyone will watch these stories staying glued to the screen, with baited breath, eager to learn what will happen next. Why should we?

Women in Star Wars

Rey was criticized more than enough by the fans for being all too perfect, and with good reason; but let’s face it, it’s a typical Star Wars mistake. Unless they are villains like Morgan Elsbeth or Asajj Ventress, females in Star Wars are always heroic from the start. Maybe they mature somewhat, but they have no major flaws and weaknesses they need to overcome like the male characters. That is also why I believe fans tend to viciously attack the Star Wars heroines: not because they hate women in general or female heroes.

If you want to create interesting new Star Wars content, among other things you need the guts to portray females as doing wrong. At best, they’re ambiguous like Holdo or Master Vernestra. The first shows that she’s a heroine after all, the second doesn’t, but neither undergoes a major change. If the sequels had ended with Rey being the villain, that would have spared the studios a lot of criticism against the “all too flawless heroine” and set up the next trilogy with a powerful, already defined female villain.

Osha from The Acolyte is a weird mixture - she does kill Master Sol in revenge and her light sabre bleeds red, but does that mean that she is a villain now? She was understandably very angry with the man who had lied to her and destroyed her home, but that she went as far as actually killing him was uncalled for: it was a spontaneous choice sprung from anger about something that had happened years earlier. Anakin’s dark deeds were a conscious decision made from despair, made in hope of saving the future. His fate felt tragic. Osha does not feel tragic: in the end she is neither a fallen hero we can mourn nor a heroine we can root and feel happy for.

Where’s the Bottom Line?

Most viewers can’t identify with characters who are perpetually down on their luck, who they already know will end badly, or who never really get anywhere. If characters don’t always look aloof and roguish, even fail sometimes, that’s good: it makes them more human than the campy protagonists of older stories. But as a viewer, you want to take something home. Stories that don’t go anywhere leave you feeling high and dry. I accepted that The Last Jedi left so much unsaid and undone because I was willing to wait the two years to see how the story would be wrapped up: to say that I was disappointed would be a huge understatement. And the elements of that storyline weren’t picked up and continued even to this day.

Children and young people in particular want to take examples and role models from stories. Conflicted and human characters are acceptable as long as their conflict is clearly defined and, in the end, they overcome it.

When characters lose all the time or their experiences don’t lead them anywhere, we’re just frustrated. It must not necessarily be in the context of a war: consider simple, early Disney movies where Snow White finds a place to stay doing hard work after she was almost murdered, or where Cinderella is kind to the animals in her house although she’s reduced to the status of a servant. A hero must not necessarily have a weapon in their hand. They must undergo a trial, be in danger from the outside and or run the risk of becoming bitter and aggressive, but emerge as better than they were in one way or another.

Stories about losers and victims, or even about flawless heroes, can be interesting up to a certain point. But they’re not satisfying. The Star Wars classics are still unmatched because over six years, they told a story that is nuanced and multilayered yet entertaining, and that leaves the viewers with a sense of happiness and fulfilment, and even excitement about possible future developments. If the franchise doesn’t pick up this kind of storytelling again, I’m afraid it’s destined to die, because no one will know what the point in watching it is any more.

[raleighrador]

Torturing myself with ways Disney changed Star Wars - Violence & Strength part 2

A further follow to this https://www.tumblr.com/raleighrador/774909537693171712/a-final-thought-to-add-here-my-belief-is-that?source=share

If you like the sequels and specifically like Rey, you may want to skip this post. As a character I think she - as might be expected from the face of the sequel trilogy - is the purist distillation of how Disney fundamentally changed the narrative role of strength and violence, and power more generally.

I also think this broadly makes for an uninteresting character that has limited efficacy as part of a story, and is almost purely a marketing/fan service vehicle.

On violence and strength: Rey basically wins every single meaningful fight she gets into. Almost every physical confrontation is an illustration of how badass and competent she is. This is true throughout the trilogy.

In TFA her first confrontation is with Finn, a trained storm trooper raised from childhood to be a soldier. Rey effortlessly disarms him and gets him on the ground. Sure, she has a weapon and he doesn't but still.

Compare this with Luke's first few conflicts - he is knocked out by the Tuskens, he needs Ben to save him in the cantina.

There is the climactic fight with Kylo Ren. First, she "overpowers" Kylo and is able to snatch the lightsaber out of his Force grip, and then she defeats him in a duel. I know Kylo had been shot by Chewie but when I watch that scene I don't see anything that is meant to indicate he is operating at far below his best.

Again, compare this to either Luke or Anakin's first duels (after significantly more training). They both lose, badly, and are dismembered. Sure, Vader and Dooku are perhaps meant to be understood as far more powerful and dangerous than Kylo but the point remains.

Rey actually has limited fights in TLJ - but the throne room is clearly the most meaningful one. Again, pertinent observations: Rey (and Kylo) are able to defeat 8 Praetorian guards (who have the visual and contextual signal of "baddies you should worry about, not regular mooks"). Her and Kylo then again play tug of war with the lightsaber, and are evenly matched to the point that the saber gets ripped in half.

Again - Rey doesn't lose. In fact, we get a long lingering fight scene to show how cool and bass and good at fighting she is. She is tempted by Kylo, tempted by the dark side, and rejects it.

Completely unscathed, it is worth adding.

Again, compare this with Luke (tempted and mutilated by his father), or Anakin who gives in to the dark (on Tattooine and arguably on Geonosis) and is mutilated physically and spiritually in doing so.

Finally we get to TROS.

Rey's first "fight" is with Kylo where she destroys his TIE with a saber, then uses force lightning to destroy a ship (and maybe but turns out not actually kill Chewie).

Her second is the vision/teleport duel with Kylo across the ship and the planet. Again, it is a draw, Rey certainly doesn't lose.

She and Kylo duel again on the wreckage of the DS. Maybe Kylo is distracted but he certainly isn't winning, and Rey then stabs him (which is commonly believed to indicate someone "winning" a sword fight). She then Force heals him and saves his life.

On Exegol her and Ben Solo then murder their way through the Praetorians and Knights of Ren, before directly confronting Palpatine. The jeopardy in the narrative is created by the fact that if Rey kills Palpatine out of anger, she becomes a Sith, but if she doesn't kill him she dies and so does the Resistance. Rey then hears the voices of all the past Jedi - including, just in case we didn't get it, Anakin Skywalker telling her to bring balance to the Force like he did (did he?) - and magically teleports Ben's lightsaber so she can dual wield and redirect the lightning Palpatine is blasting and kill shim with that.

She then dies from the effort (before immediately being brought back to life by Ben).

Again, contrast this with Anakin's fight with Obi-Wan on Mustafar or Luke's confrontation with Vader on DS2. Anakin and Obi-Wan both lose on Mustafar - the mere act of engaging in violence empowers the Dark and ultimately completes the creation of Darth Vader.

Luke only wins by throwing down his saber, by refusing to meet violence with violence.

Lucas had a clear metaphysical logic that is reflected in the use and role of violence.

Violence has a cost. There is no escaping that. Violence is almost always wrong - even if you believe it to be right and approach it dispassionately. There is no just killing, not such that your soul can survive.

Luke and Anakin are - narratively - consistently punished for choosing violence. Every time they try and solve a problem with violence they lose a loved one, a body part, a piece of their soul.

The same is true - to a lesser degree - for Obi-Wan. He defeats Maul but loses Qui-Gon. His decision to follow Dooku results in his and Anakin's injuries and achieves nothing. He is the one who swings a saber through whatever limited remains of Anakin might exist and heralds the final birth of Vader.

Contrast this with the fight on the DS. Obi-Wan knows there is no victory in fighting Vader, but in refusing to fight, in sheathing his sword, he can achieve a power far greater than the Sith can imagine.

TLJ's final scene where Mirage Luke confronts Kylo is actually also consistent with this, and it's why it is in isolation some of my absolute favourite Star Wars.

TLJ is also very confusing while it DOES apply the same logic as Lucas to Luke (try and kill your sleeping nephew = bad, using the Force to distract the First Order while you never actually harm anyone = good) it doesn't to Rey or Kylo.

Disney - by contrast - certainly do not treat violence in the same way. In fact, Disney takes a starkly different view which is almost readable as "might makes right" or maybe more accurately "being right makes you mighty".

Rey is good and pure and therefore she wins all her fights. She is on the side of the Light and so cannot lose. Kylo Ren, by contrast, is Evil and so despite more training and experience he consistently loses. It is only when he fights for the right reasons - killing Snoke and his guards to help Rey, or saving Rey from Palpatine - that he wins.

This is... distinctly weird. How, for example, are we meant to reinterpret the original 6 films or the wider Star Wars universe with this logic? I take it Palpatine was mostly right?

What you might say is actually that violence has no narrative weight. Maybe. That is as much of a change from Lucas as anything else but it also significantly limits the ability to tell a story in the context of the medium of sci fi action movies.

And that is actually the point, I think. There is no meaningful narrative interpretation of violence in the Disney films. The fight scenes serve no real purpose - they do not represent crucibles in which characters develop and transform, nor do they provide any level or moral insight.

They are purely vehicles for a) cool cinematography (and to be clear, the Sequels are consistently BEAUTIFUL and the fights scenes are some of the best) and b) emphasising how awesome the poster girl is and how neat it would be if you bought Lego and action figures and and and.

[nerdieforpedro]

WIP Wednesday

The last one I did may have been in September. 👀 Been a long time. Haven’t really been writing much fanfic. Stuck on different papers for school. I was tagged by @evolnoomym and she shared ideas so I will too! ❤️ @pr3ttynpiink also tagged me and looks to be cooking up some fun new fics. 🥰

I want to write something for Modern Din and Christmas to go in my series: This is the Neighborhood Din, but it will likely need a chapter between that to make sense. (Every so often I care about making sense). Also more Luke doing Jedi yoga on his lawn and Poe & Finn being boyfriends because I want it all!

I need to write a new chapter of Weddings 101 with Dieter. Kinda left on a cliffhanger and a lot happened in my mind that should be posted 🤣

There’s a little over a month until the DMAMC 2025 challenge is due, haven’t written anything. Actually forgot about it, but fear not! I’ll think of something. 👀 My character is Pero Tovar (I doomed myself by picking him 😭 like the level of difficulty). But maybe I’ll revisit a pairing I’ve done.

Random but working on a Baldur’s Gate 3 fic and bugging @perotovar (Erin beta read for me what I have so far), @megamindsecretlair reads the snippets I send her and @soft-persephone looks at the pics I send her and is honest 🤣🤣🤣). Everyone’s favorite moody (for many a legit reason) and murderous pale elf who’s a vampire Astarion and an OFC. Things that happened between these two: a lot of staring, mocking Gale (everyone’s favorite past time- he makes it easy but also the wizard is really nice insane like everyone else but nice), drying some hair, hugs and some tears. Lots of angst, fluff and comfort. Haven’t decided on smut yet, is likely but I’ll see how it reads.

Didn’t realize that A Safe Place for Us was up to chapter 7 on AO3 and only 5 on Tumblr 👀 My bad. I should be able to post one chapter on here before November ends. The formatting and graphics take me the longest. 🤓

I also have a secret Santa fic things I’m supposed to be working on for a discord group but I also have not started. 👀 Unsure of which direction it should go in. I’ll figure it out, eventually I think.

The first paragraph of chapter five of “A Safe Place for Us”:

Waking up to Dieter takes getting used to for Aisha. It’s not unwelcome, she’s just not used to someone clinging to her like he does. Every morning he stays at her apartment is one where he has his arm and head somewhere on her. Chest, stomach, thigh, back, ass one time because he enjoys scissoring her entrance wider and scooping his spend that drips out of her back in before pumping his fingers to stir his cum within her.

Yeah…chapter five is…a ride so to speak. 👀 Forgot we had a strong start.

I found a WIP that contains Marcus Pike angst:

His romantic relationships and come and gone just like yours but you always had each other. Though, you treated yours as ways to work off the need you felt for your friend. To distract yourself, even when you were with your other partners, you’d think of him during the throws of passion, even when having simple meals and they may chew too loudly. You loathed your behavior toward your partners and your friend, biting your lips to not utter his name while under someone else.

“Marcus…”

Is the only name you want to say but can’t.

Hmm….might be a good holiday one or something. 🤔

That’s the ideas for now. Always a lot and never finished. ✅ Would it be Nerdie if they were? 😎

Have a happy Thanksgiving, holiday, days off of work and stay safe!

NPT: @chaithetics @schnarfer @inept-the-magnificent @yopossum @djarinmuse @604to647 @secretelephanttattoo @magpiepills @maggiemayhemnj @murder-wife @sin-djarin @syd-djarin @morallyinept @westside-rot @tinytinymenace @sunshinehaze1 @soft-girl-musings @goodwithcheese @jolapeno @bluestar22x @clawdee @romanarose @beefrobeefcal @bitchesuntitled @bitchwitch1981

[beskarfrog]

Din leaned against the door to the school house, his boots muddy from having walked through the streets of Sundari. The door was left open as usual to let cool air and the occasional frog in. It was officially monsoon season on their part of Mandalore and not for the first time, Din wondered why the Jedi couldn’t have built his school on ground that was a little further out of the floodplain.

Inside the little school, the Jedi was sitting on one of his weird little pillow mats with all the children crowded up around him. Grogu was sitting in Ragnar’s lap, Rey and Finn on each of his sides. Paz had been infuriated when Ragnar had first asked to go with the jett’ike for lessons after regular training. He had been won over eventually when the Armorer suggested it would be a good opportunity for Ragnar to learn how to fight against a Force-user.  

“Alright, how about a story for our history lesson today?” the Jedi asked and got a positive reaction from the kids. Din let the soft drone of his voice wash over him as he considered the scene before him.

He hadn’t expected to see the Jedi again after Grogu had come back to him. Much less had he expected the Jedi to show up two months after they’d retaken Mandalore and Din was trying to figure out how to run a planet. He’d arrived in a beat-up pre-Empire ship with a handful of children. They had all been brought before Din and his newly formed council.

“The school was attacked. The New Republic isn’t safe for us anymore. They have…expectations for how the Jedi should benefit them,” the Jedi had explained, his face impassive and cold. The children lingering in the shadow of his dark robes looked both nervous and defiant. Din wondered if that was how the Jedi felt too.

“Why come to us?” Bo-Katan asked, a few chairs down from Din.

“What is that saying you have? A Mandalorian is both hunter and prey. Your people understand what it is like to be hunted for what you are,” the Jedi said, gaining a thoughtful nod from the Armorer. He had looked at Din as he said it and Din knew that there were layers to that statement. Yes, all Mandalorians knew what it was like to be persecuted for their allegiance to a nearly dead Creed, but Din specifically understood what it was to be hunted for having a child with strange powers.

Paz and Bo-Katan had gotten into a rather vicious argument about the situation, but the Armorer had been of the same mind as Din. Children in need were children in need, even if they came with an ominous wizard attached to them. Paz had wanted to kill the Jedi and keep the children, but eventually he had been convinced that the kids would need training for their magic. Din was relieved because he was becoming concerned that, be it Bo-Katan or Paz, his council was about to become one person smaller if the argument dragged on any longer.

In the end, Din had told the Jedi, “We will let you build a school here, but you’ll live as we do. The children will be raised with the other Mandalorian ade. No one will be required to swear the Creed. That is not the Way, but we are trying to rebuild our culture.”

“I understand,” the Jedi had grimaced, “The Jedi used to live in community too. We had a similar sense of culture once from what I am told, but that was before I was born.”

“I…I will do what I can to make sure your children are safe here,” Din had said and that was the end of the matter.

The only person who was completely satisfied with the arrangement was Grogu. Din was shocked to find out how much the kid liked the Jedi - Luke, as he’d introduced himself. He had expected some animosity since Grogu had left, but Luke had been surprisingly happy to see the womp rat again. At first, Din had been reluctant to let the kid join the other little sorcerers in training, but they all seemed to like him. 

That was the real problem. The Jedi and his jett’ike liked everyone, even Paz. Luke was always willing to accept ade or even adults into his weapons training sessions at his little school. He brought homemade uj’alayi  to all the community meetings, complete with little paper wrappers the kids had decorated. His sister and her smuggler husband visited often enough that it was obvious that the Jedi cared about his family. Luke was a better Mandalorian than half the people Din had met on Mandalore and he hadn’t even sworn the Creed.

It made it incredibly hard for other Mandalorians not to like the strange little sorcerers back and there had been a lot of talk about adopting the Jedi and his children into a clan. He was a proficient warrior, good with children, and after the first month, it was clear that he cared about the community they were trying to build. He was the perfect riduur, but it made Din want to grind his teeth any time anyone talked about challenging him for his hand.

It hadn’t taken him long to figure out why. It was made all the worse when the Jedi had started to befriend him in earnest. At first, it was just mutually commiserating about the problems of raising Force-sensitive children, but it slowly became something more. Luke opened up, shedding the persona he seemed to wear like his billowing black cloak. Din caught glimpses of the darkness that lurked within him, the turmoil he went through to fight back against those impulses. Din knew how painful it was to peel off your armor in front of another, even if you wanted them to see you as you really were. 

And Luke let him see. 

So, now Din leaned against the door to the nursery as the children ran out past him to play in the yard. Grogu was too enthralled with the game Ragnar and Rey had started to even notice him in the doorway.

“Here to pick up Grogu?” Luke asked as he rose up from his mat. Din nodded but waved his hand in dismissal as Luke went to call for him.

“He can play. I don’t have anywhere to be for a while,” Din said as Luke walked over to join him in the doorway. “The story you told. It wasn’t very happy.”

“The story of the Jedi has never been a happy one,” Luke said, his smile soft and touched with sadness. His hair had a little extra wave in it due to the humidity. Din wanted to reach out and run his gloved hand through those waves, “But it is full of hope. Foundlings are the future, right?”

“This is the Way,” Din inclined his head, which pulled a more genuine smile out of Luke. Something sharp twisted in Din’s chest and he swallowed, thankful for the millionth time that his helmet obscured his face.

He needed to get this over with, to do what he actually came here to do.

“Do you…Would you want to spar? Not right now, but some time. Maybe tonight?” Din asked, tamping down the impulse to twist his hands together. He was a Mandalorain. He should be bold with his feelings, not the awkward nervous thing that Luke seemed to turn him into.

“Mand’alor,” Luke's smile turned blinding as he pressed his gloved hand to his chest, mockingly scandalized. His blue eyes were sparkling, even in the grey overcast light of the rainy day, “If I didn’t know better that sounds like a date.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Din mumbled, his heart sinking. He knew it was unlikely for Luke to reciprocate his feelings, but the Jedi’s sister had made some comments last time she visited that had given him the courage to at least find out.

“I’d like it to be, Din, if that's alright,” Luke said and gently reached out to catch Din’s hand. He threaded his fingers between Din’s, giving his hand a firm squeeze. Din returned it, a flash of hope rising back up in him. If this went well, he was going to send Senator Organa a whole case of tihaar.

“We’ll have to find someone to babysit, though,” Luke continued, tugging on Din’s hand to pull him a little closer, “You’re my go-to person for watching the kids, but you’ll be busy, obviously.”

“Paz said he would. Ragnar’s been wanting to have everyone sleep over at their house,” Din said, grateful that he’d planned ahead for that problem. 

In the yard, the kids had gotten into a mud fight next to the frog pond. Grogu was practically a brown blob while Finn was doing his best to avoid the mud that Rey and Ragnar were slinging at each other. Din knew he really ought to intervene, but if Paz was watching the kids for the night…

“The Force bless that man,” Luke shook his head, squeezing Din’s hand again.

[darthmaclunkey]

seeing last jedi again was so good. i will be fighting in the last jedi trenches until i die. if last jedi has no fans left on earth then i am dead etc etc. some very rambling and incoherent thoughts under the cut:

i love luke so much in tlj. luke skywaker is my all-time favourite character from anything, because he really embodies one of the core messages from star wars: being good is a choice, and it's a choice you have to keep making. right from the start of new hope, we see how luke is just constantly thrust into situations where, time and time again, he's given the choice of the easy way out, or tempted by the dark side. but luke always chooses to do the right thing, even when it's hard. in rotj we do get a glimpse of him as this aloof, emotionless jedi, but then it all unravels in the finale when he is forced to confront vader. i know a lot of the vitriol around last jedi is from people who think it ruined luke's character, but to me, his arc makes perfect sense. sequels luke is a man who has spent his whole life making sacrifices and working hard to do good, until it's all torn away from him by the dark side - a dark side plot specifically designed to undermine luke and the light, mind you - yet he still blames himself, because a fleeting temptation from the dark to take the easy route out and save the galaxy from what he saw in ben almost got him, but it didn't. and he paid for that temptation dearly. i would have hated to see a sequels-era luke who was just some epic version of the distant, quasi-mystical jedi knight we see in rotj (as i've seen some people saying that's how he should have been). what kind of character arc is that? he gets to the end of the OT and then never changes? i'm drawn to luke because of his humanity, the fact that you still see the tatooine farmboy in him years later. his sacrifice at the end of last jedi is so beautiful and poignant to me; a lesser script (cough tros cough) would have had him jump in an x-wing and show up to plow through the first order with his lightsaber. i love what we get instead: his moment with leia, her touching his hands and realising he's a projection - his knowing wink to threepio - the image of him emerging from the dust and smoke, unscathed, and how it clearly puts the absolute fear into kylo ren - the way he doesn't even attack, just dodges and blocks - then, finally, the shot of him on ahch-to, watching the sunset, and, once he's gone, the image of his cloak blowing away in the wind, symbolic of his spirit joining the cosmic force. that's my jedi master luke. funny, powerful, human, flawed, but still, after all this time, making the choice to do good and fight for others, even if it's the hardest thing he'll ever do. whew. luke skywalker i love you.

i love how last jedi looks. with the exception of maybe empire, i think it's the best-looking of all the films. it's stuffed with references to absolutely classic cinema, like the shot in canto bight that's an homage to the café dolly shot in wings, or the classic hitchcockian dolly zoom as finn and rose look over the cliff, and the opening sequence with the bombing run is just a straight homage to old war movies, which is just what the OT did with the space battles being shot-for-shot remakes of ww2 dogfight footage. original-flavour star wars was a love letter to to so many other films and tv shows, so this feels so natural. at the same time, there's a lot of sequences that feel really innovative for star wars, like the montage that accompanies rey's connection to the force on ahch-to, or the film's extensive use of close-up shots and slow-mo. the lighting is gorgeous. finn's fight with phasma looks astonishing on the big screen - the colour grading and visual effects really go off in that scene.

i love all the force skype sessions with kylo and rey, but especially the scene where she's out in the rain and, when they disconnect, you see kylo running his hand over his face then shaking the rainwater from his glove. something I hadn't appreciated before is how well the film sells you on the idea that they are both present in the same space, despite seeing them both shot against different backgrounds. the intimacy of the rain-on-glove thing gets me every time.

i love everybody's arcs. every single member of the main trio has a full arc in the film. rose tico is such a lovely addition to the main cast, i hate how she got totally shafted in rise of skywalker.

on a completely superficial note: the main cast are all at their hottest in last jedi. especially poe dameron. especially poe dameron.

the throne room fight scene is one of my favourite movie scenes ever (and in star wars, it's only beaten out by the binary sunset scene from new hope). i WISH i could relive the first time i saw it at the midnight screening i went to in 2017. i may have been sitting politely, but i was hooting and hollering internally.

rian johnson, they could never make me hate you.

[frumfrumfroo]

TFA marketing is the reason why so many (including me) are hung up on the Jedi Finn thing. It is beyond callous and tonedeaf to tease a black central protagonist in a franchise that has never had one, only for it to be a bait and switch. I will never forgive JJ for this. Rian giving Finn his own arc was a needed corrective but for better or worse the Jedi/Force are the center of Star Wars so it still feels like a downgrade compared to what could have been. And then JJ blew it again and destroyed the consolation prize arc too, because his nostalgia boner is the root of every problem in the ST. Finn often gets used as a shield by reactionaries/grifters and there's a lot of disingenuous concern trolling going on. But between the botching of Finn's character and the Acolyte being canceled, black fans have real reasons to be bitter at Disney Star Wars. And until they produce a black protagonist that they don't muck up, it'll stay that way. For all its faults, the MCU is miles better than SW in this singular regard.

I do not mean to suggest for one moment people shouldn't be pissed at DLF, because they absolutely should. TFA had weak characterisation in general and was particularly piecemeal and poorly thought out for Finn, who was obviously some kind of composite of two ideas or two characters from previous drafts which were mutually exclusive. The Everyman and the ex-Stormtrooper are two things that can't be the same person unless you really put in the work. Which they didn't.

And then, of course, tros completely ruined and shit on both Finn's arc from the first two films and the qualities which had made him heroic and admirable by making him FS and using that to explain why he could break free of the FO indoctrination. Because why would compassion be important for a main character in a Star War?

It's just very frustrating that so much anger is misdirected and TLJ/Rian when the things people have a problem with are from TFA or, indeed, the marketing for TFA.

[dalekofchaos]

Context

Rey and Ben switch sides

Throughout the movie, Ben demonstrated a more Jedi like stance, while Rey is prone to anger, takes the quick and easy path and fights like a Sith. So instead of truly doing something subversive, by making the heroine a villain and having someone we thought was the villain fight to bring her back to the light. DLF is once again too cowardly to take risks with this trilogy and sticks with the status quo by having Ben stay with the darkside and Rey as the Jedi, cause godforbid we try something different.

So what if instead of Ben revealing Rey's parents were "filthy junk traders" Snoke reveals she was Palpatine's labrat. "Tell me dear child. Did you know the Empire fell at the battle of Jakku? Of course you do. What's not common knowledge is Palpatine's secret laboratory on Jakku. Constantly trying to create the perfect apprentice to replace Lord Vader and his final experiment was deemed a failure. Kept in suspended animation...until pathetic junk traders thought they could make a quick buck. To their disappointment. They found a child. You. Palpatine's labrat."

And this revelation causes Rey to lose it. Ben helps by using Rey's lightsaber to kill Snoke, the throne room fight happens and that's when the turn happens.

Ben decides he wants to save his mother and the Resistance. Damn Snoke and The First Order. All the dark side brought him was misery. He should have left with Han when he had the chance.

And all Rey wants to do is burn it all down. "The Jedi. The Sith. The First Order and the Resistance. Like you said, it's time to let the past die." They fight for the lightsaber, the Holdo manuver happens and Ben leaves first.

Rey kills Hux.

Ben, Luke and Leia reunite and make up after so many years of hurt, betrayal and remorse.

Luke and Ben fight off The First Order.

But something is terribly wrong.

In the amidst of the battle, Rey returns and is enraged at the site of Luke Skywalker and unleashes the full power of the darkside on The First Order.

Luke tells Ben to protect his mother and the Resistance.

Luke sacrifices himself. Tells Rey he's failed her and he's sorry. Rey can only scorn Luke.

Rey goes in for the kill and that's when she realizes he was never there.

"I will always be there with you Rey, just as I should have been as your master. Don't be what he made you to be."

And all Rey can do is breakdown and cause a force scream strong enough to leave a crater.

Ben, Leia, Finn and Poe work together and plan to bring Rey back and save her from herself.

Rose and Poe switch roles

TLDR; version.

Finn is a child soldier who knows the horror of war. Poe is the one who needed to see that this war is not as black and white as he believes it to be and actually be confronted with Slip's death and in turn both Finn and Poe liberate a camp of freshly recruited child soldiers and the master codebreaker.

Rose actually has history with Holdo. If you read the novel TLJ:Cobalt Squadron. You will know it ends with Rose serving on Holdo’s ship the Ninka. Now imagine this. Rose just lost her sister and Holdo is withholding information that is vital to the Resistance’s survival. Rose is kept in the dark and believes this will be the end of everything and doesn’t want Paige’s sacrifice to be in vain. So Rose covers Finn and Poe’s escape to Canto Bight and works with Connix and those loyal to Poe and leads a mutiny against Holdo. Remember. Holdo didn’t just leave Poe in the dark, she left THE ENTIRE RESISTANCE in the dark. So Rose would lead the mutiny and Leia would awaken to stop her, only Leia would not stun her. Leia would talk Rose down, ya know, like Leia would actually do.

Kylo cuts Rey's hand off

After Rey refuses his hand, Kylo simply lets Rey get her lightsaber and uses Rey's feralness against her and cuts her hand off and severs her lightsaber. Kylo leaves Rey while he takes her hand. "I have everything I need."

In Episode IX from this scenario, we would find out Kylo Ren used dark side alchemy to clone a Dark side Rey from her severed hand.

Captain Phasma actually does something.

My better use for Phasma is basically making her obsessed with killing Finn.

Make Phasma a deranged individual obsessed with capturing and executing Finn. Phasma is basically Captain Ahab and Finn is her great white whale to chase. She flies her own personalized Chrome Tie Interceptor. She is hunting Finn to the ends of the galaxy. Each battle they face she is there ready for him, every time he isn’t there, she kills every Resistance soldier there. Phasma is losing it, Hux is worried, but both Snoke and Kylo believe this will be beneficial in destroying The Resistance. And finally she finds him on The Supremacy. Finn and Phasma go head to head. finally on equal levels and in this moment it happens. Finn’s old comrades come, Finn believes this is the end, but to his surprise they shoot Phasma down. Phasma is knocked down in the ruins of the Star Destroyer. But Phasma makes her escape with Hux.

As for her role in TROS, I would have Finn reveal the truth to everyone that she disabled the Starkiller shields and after Finn convinces the Stromtroopers to rebel.

Finn and Phasma fights. Finn wielding a Lightsaber, while Phasma wields a Darksaber. Finn's brother in arms helps him and as Finn has her at his mercy. "You were always scum."

"I'm a Jedi" and then Finn decapitates Phasma, ending her reign of terror.

Rose Tico the spy.

There are two ways we can play this. The sympathetic way and the evil way.

The sympathetic path.

Many people thought Rose was going to be a Lando type figure right? Well let's remember, Rose was heartbroken about Paige and what happened to her world. So let's say Hux made a deal. Put the tracker on the Raddus and deliver FN-2187 to the Supremacy for execution in exchange for The First Order to end the occupation of her homeworld of Hays Minor. Only, The First Order is not the Empire, it's worse. So when Rose asks if he'll end the occupation, what Hux does is give her one tiny rock. "A deal is a deal" Rose looks horrified…"what have you done" "that's all that's left of Hays Minor, The First Order does not deal with Resistance scum" Rose is horrified and broken, whatever hurt Finn felt from Rose's betrayal, she is now his only hope off the Supremacy. So Finn and Rose help each other because they now both know what it's like to lose everything to The First Order.

The villain path

First of all. Rose Tico was Paige’s sister. The real Rose Tico died prior to the battle of Starkiller Base and was replaced by the changeling(like Zam Wessell) known as Rosita Thorn. Her mission? Infiltrate The Resistance, place the hyperspace tracker on board The Raddus and bring the traitorous FN-2187 to either be reconditioned or executed for treachery.

Meanwhile, Holdo tells Poe while they are isolated. "There is a spy on board. It is a changeling, who can turn into anyone. I kept you out of the dark because I didn't know if I could trust you. But now I do and our plan is to escape." Meanwhile Holdo's people finds a dead body. The real Rose Tico and then Poe realizes Finn is alone at the spy's mercy.

Upon arriving on The Supremacy, Rose signaled Hux and Phasma, which causes their capture. As they get captured. While Finn and DJ are forced on their knees, Rosita shows her true colors as she shoots DJ and salutes to Hux. “Just as planned, my general”

Her mission was a success. Finn only managed to escape due to the Holdo maneuver.

She becomes the right hand and lover of General Hux

Rosita would keep the appearance of Rose Tico because she’s grown “accustomed” to Rose’s face. Only looking more regal, wearing her hair down and wearing First Order uniforms.

Next Hux and Rosita plan to kill Pryde and after Kylo Ren and Rey kill The Emperor. Hux and Rosita will kill the traitorous Kylo Ren, Rey and then FN-2187, thus securing their and The First Order’s dominance over the galaxy. Long live the Supreme Leader and his Empress!

Grand Master Luke,

I feel like you can have the great character arc of TLJ, while also being badass like he was in The Mandalorian.

First have it be ANAKIN, not Yoda who helps Luke out of his slump.

Have Luke lift the X-Wing from the water.

When Finn about to make his sacrifice, and suddenly, we hear the blast of an old X-Wing destroying the siege cannon. Thus saving Finn, Rose and The Resistance. Finally we see Luke and Leia’s moment. This time it actually holds meaning because Luke is actually there. And then we would see the bulkhead open and Luke enters.

Kylo Ren orders every ship to fire on Luke AT-M6’s all firing but to everyone’s surprise, all blasts stop frozen in midair. Luke wipes the salt off his robes and sends the turbolasers right back at the AT-M6s and TIE-Fighters. Brings down the transports and Kylo’s shuttle. Kylo descends from his crushed shuttle, throwing a tantrum and preparing preparing to kill his uncle. We have a real lightsaber battle between Luke and Kylo. Luke has his green lightsaber. Their blades clash. Their dialogue remains the same, but Luke is there. Luke is toying with Kylo, similar to how Vader toyed with him on Bespin. Luke and Kylo’s exchange remains the same. “I failed you Ben, I’m sorry.” “I’m sure you are! The Resistance is dead. The war is over, and when I kill you, I will have killed the last Jedi.” “Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong. The Rebellion is reborn today. The war is just beginning. And I will not be the last Jedi.” ”I’ll destroy her, and you, and all of it.” “No. Strike me down in anger and I’ll always be with you. Just like your father.” Kylo then shouts “NOOOOOO” but more dramatic When Kylo makes his dramatic slut ™ lunge at Luke, but Luke embraces it like Obi-Wan did and becomes one with the force.

He dies with peace and purpose and most importantly refuses to give Ben the victory he craved for and mocks him by saying he will always be with him.

Luke spreads Leia's message.

Towards the end of the film, two of the Resistance members tells Leia, “Our distress signal’s been received at multiple points, but no response. They’ve heard us, but no one’s coming.”

After waiting two films to see what any of this means to the galaxy, the only response we get is literally nothing. Nobody cares, nobody’s coming. For all we know, this planet could explode right now, wiping out the Resistance and the First Order, and the entire galaxy would be better off. They have no impact on anything of actual importance, like children fighting in a sandbox.

In my mind, much of the bitterness in my mouth by the time the finale came up could have been washed away with one simple change (technically two but who cares):

Luke does his “See ya around, kid,” line and vanishes, followed immediately by a massive fleet appearing in the planet’s orbit. Ships of all different sizes and shapes, from countless planets throughout the galaxy, uniting and standing up to the First Order for once. They don’t even have to attack, just show up and fire a few shots to blow up a few walkers or something as the First Order retreats in a panic. Luke also isn’t dead. Instead of just buying 3 seconds to retreat deeper into a cave, we find out that he appeared as a “force hologram” to several major leaders in the galaxy, calling them to arms. He then bought the Resistance time to hold out until help arrived.

This gives SEVERAL intriguing leads for the next film.

We see the galaxy fully united against this threat. To see a legitimate fleet and to see that the galaxy really does give a shit about what’s happening, would literally be the first hopeful thing we see in this entire goddamn trilogy that’s supposedly all about “hope.” Think something on the level of the Rohirrim and Gandalf riding in at the end of Helm’s Deep.

Luke is alive and now rallying people to stand up to the First Order. His meager prank is supposed to inspire the galaxy? If you want to inspire them, you NEED to put in more leg work than that. We need to see that Luke gives a shit and has truly accepted the mantle he’s been rejecting the entire trilogy. His final act in this film could be EVERY BIT AS MEANINGFUL without him just giving up and dying afterwards, if not far more so.

We can see how desperate the First Order gets in the third movie. After taking so many beatings, this militant faction seems to suffer no actual losses. To see them reduced to guerrillas in need of a last resort - to see how dangerous they can be at their most desperate - would be a refreshing and interesting twist on something that has now been done to death.

Lando the Master Codebreaker

Let’s look at Maz’s description for the Master Codebreaker “He’s a master codebreaker, an ace pilot, a poet with a blaster.” That sure does sound like fucking Lando to me. It still baffles me that they gave us a casino planet in TLJ but then chose to not include Lando in that setting although he was introduced as a gambler back in TESB. Lando is the person Finn and Rose are meant to meet, the one in the Indiana Jones type tuxedo and has the a red plom bloom. Only, Finn and Rose actually parks legally and doesn’t get stupidly arrested. Lando is on Canto Bight to grieve in his own way for Han, but also because he’s doing a stakeout on Crime Lord King Prana(played by Benico del Toro and King Prana was set up by being the guy Han was gonna sell Raftars to) Finn and Rose help Lando out and in exchange, Lando helps Finn and Rose in their quest to disable the Hyperspace Tracker. We also get to see Lando and FInn both grieve for Han. So yes, Lando would be able to disable the Hyperspace tracker, but Phasma would catch them on their way to the escape pods.

Or my other use of Lando.

Lando brings the remnants of the New Republic after hearing Leia’s message. After Leia’s signal and Luke’s sacrifice, Hux informs Kylo Ren that they have the Falcon in their sights(keep in mind they have their fleet in orbit) a massive fleet appearing in the planet’s orbit. Ships of all different sizes and shapes, from countless planets throughout the galaxy, lead by Lando Calrissian flying his flagship the Lady Luck! Uniting and standing up to the First Order for once. They don’t even have to attack, just show up and fire a few shots to blow up a few walkers or something as the First Order retreats in a panic. Prior to Luke’s sacrifice. we find out that he appeared as a hologram to several major New Republic leaders in the galaxy, calling them to arms. He then bought the Resistance time to hold out until help arrived. Together with Leia’s signal and Luke’s message. New The Republic is united in facing The First Order.

Rey and Luke vs Kylo and Knights of Ren.

The rumored scene we all wanted. Kylo uses his newfound connection to Rey to find her and summons the Knights. She will not escape this time.

Rey in the meantime helps Luke to reestablish his connection to the force, alongside the force ghosts.

And then they arrive.

Rey fights the Knights, while Luke fights Kylo.

The fight is raw and full of emotion, but it ends with Kylo wounding Luke and abducting Rey. Meanwhile The Resistance has a space battle above led by Leia and Snoke via Battle meditation. Leia's will vs Snoke's might. The fight for her brother and Snoke's fight to snuff out the light. It ends with the Twins reunited by the vow to save Rey via training Finn.

Leia sacrifices herself

We had no way of knowing of Carrie's unfortunate passing. But I feel like it should have been Leia.

Leia should have been the one to destroy Snoke's ship with a final sacrifice. It would have closed her story on both a badass and meaningful note, dying to save her rebellion.

They should have done it so that she didn't have long to live anyway due to her injuries from the bridge explosion and exposure to space. With all that, she decides to give her friends a final escape. Before doing so, she could have reached out to Luke with the force for a final goodbye, the same way they communicated on Bespin in the Empire Strikes Back. This would have reminded people that communicating via the Force over long distances has precedent.

This act would have inspired Luke to actually come out of hiding, raising his X-Wing from the sea and coming to help the new characters.

It would have also made the Mary Poppins scene at least a little more worth it, seeing as she flies through the hologram of Snoke's ship, setting up the sacrifice.

As for how Holdo fits into things? Both Poe and Holdo get their heads out their asses and learn to work together for the Resistance, the Republic and for Leia!

Finn is never in a coma and goes with Rey to Ach-To

Rey and Finn travel to Ach-To together. Finn is never placed in a coma. Shocker, they are in a futuristic setting and give Finn a cybernetic spine and Finn makes a full recovery! Finn goes with Rey...like he should've in the first place!

Luke trains Rey and Finn to become a Jedi. Rey and FInn’s optimism and dedication reminds him of himself. Finn is proven to have what it takes to be on the path of a Jedi, meanwhile Rey is struggling and is giving in to her rage and passions. This leads to the force bond between Rey and Kylo Ren and leads Kylo and the Knights Of Ren to Ach-To. Rey, Finn and Luke face Kylo and the Knights Of Ren. Rey willingly goes with Kylo to save Finn and Luke and the rest of the story is about Finn saving Rey no matter what the cost

Anakin, not Yoda greets Luke

Yoda appearing to Luke in TLJ to tell him “failure, the greatest teacher is,” is bullshit. Yoda never learned this lesson to begin with. Yoda is the last person who should be saying anything like this to Luke.

Let’s see

Treated Anakin like a burden ever since Anakin entered the Council chambers as a child

Refusal to trust Anakin. As a child, he was told he would be a problem and Yoda and the Jedi’s refusal to nurture Anakin because he was “too old” to be indoctrinated by their code was their undoing. There is a quote that sums up the Jedi’s cold reception to Anakin perfectly. “The Child Who is Not Embraced by the Village Will Burn it Down to Feel its Warmth”

Refused to let Anakin to free his mother, one of the things that played into Anakin’s fall(Isn’t it weird and by weird I mean hypocritical that the Jedi found value in saving Clones, who were made to be disposable, but they couldn’t be bothered to save Shmi, Anakin’s actual mother?)

Is perfectly fine helping Ahsoka with her vision of a loved one dying, but suddenly Anakin needs to let go

Dude was okay befriending the most evil guy ever but he had no compassion or even a kind word for a 9 years boy who was about to be returned to slavery? Fuck him! For that and for allowing the Order to remain subservient to a known corrupt Senate that allowed slavery and organized crime to grown unrestrained. 

Raising students who capable of only blindly following him (“One did not argue with Master Yoda; in the Jedi Temple, this was learned in infancy. No Jedi ever forgot it.”) and for creating a community that ostracized anyone who didn’t perfectly fit in.

He failed generations of students, he failed the Order, he failed the Council, the Senate and the galaxy. Yoda can be traced as the source of everything that went wrong (internally) with the Order: their coldness, their false detachment, their corruption, etc. He was the common denominator in 900 years worth of religious, political and educational stagnation. Yoda’s inability to change and question himself doomed the Order (and the galaxy with it)

Even worse, Yoda intended to die without explaining that Vader was his father to Luke. In a deleted scene Yoda says “Obi-Wan would have told you long ago had I let him…..” Basically, Yoda had forbidden Obi-Wan from telling Luke that Darth Vader was his father. Luke was then trained in the Jedi arts to eventually face and kill Vader with the intention of never disclosing the important detail of Luke’s paternity despite Obi-Wan’s apparent objection to the idea. This revelation reveals Yoda is actually a self-serving dick who puts the means to an end above morality while redeeming Obi-Wan for the reasoning of why he lied to Luke about his father.

Yoda did not learn this lesson. Yoda refused to see his own faults or the faults of the Jedi of old. Yoda did not earn this moment.

You know who would have been the perfect person to tell Luke that failure is the greatest teacher? His father, Anakin Skywalker. If anyone deserved that moment, it was Anakin Skywalker. Both because this should have been his chance to speak with his son AND because when someone is the embodiment of the failures of the Jedi Order, they’re really the one best qualified to call out the bullshit of that organization. Anakin would’ve been the best person to tell Luke to confront Kylo, his grandson. He knows failure more than anyone. Failing to save his mother, failing to save Padme, his failure into giving into the dark side and his fall. Anakin would’ve told him. “It wasn’t your fault what happened to Ben, I’m asking you to come back and save your sister, my daughter. Leia needs you. You never gave up on me. Don’t give up on your friends, your sister or even yourself. You saved me when I thought all was lost, there is still time to make things right. Remember you are a Jedi, like me. Not the last of the old Jedi, Luke. The first of the new.“

[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.