#I was definitely thinking of Finn and Rey VS Kylo in TFA

[imaginative-joy]

Okay, so a lot of folks think that Kata's Force-sensitive. Not a bad thought at all. Buuuuuut... what if she doesn't like the fact that she's Force-sensitive? She saw what giving into the Dark Side did to her dad, the Inquisitors killed her mother, and she watches Cal shoulder the responsibility of the Force and the mantle of Jedi Knight every day. Given her turbulent childhood, she'd rather never use the Force.

But when Cal needs help, she nonetheless takes up his lightsaber and marches into battle.

[teiasviago]

Saw your tags-- I thought TLJ was bad; BUT I also think The Force Awakens and ...what's the other movie's name (whoops, forgot) was bad. But y'know what? THAT'S FINE. :DDDD You love Rhian Johnson's work, I think he was trying to be complex but made a mess. I disagree with most criticism that he made the movie because he hated the IP: he was definitely passionate about what he created, of course. His shots are beautiful. And I like seeing your passionate posts, because I like seeing intense love!

I just hate when people make a huge stink over TLJ as if TFA wasn’t the most mid, mediocre, medium, middle of the road movie to exist. It was so formulaic that most of the things I don’t like about TLJ (which aren’t that many but no movie is perfect) are forgiveable because at least it was made with passion and heart—with a message and theme beyond “look, it’s Star Wars!” And if TFA lacks that, I’m not quite sure what that makes TROS, lol. A shitshow? A catastrophe? An insult to the art of movie-making on levels no one dreamed possible?

I mean, no reylo that I know of wanted what we got in TROS. We understood the nature of their relationship within the movies and were happy that Rey and Kylo’s relationship was given complexity beyond good guy vs bad guy. We were happy that they were made into complex characters, too. And from my stint in the fandom, while reylo was the big thing most of us wanted Finn and Poe to be together—they definitely had more time and chemistry together, IMO. Gah, what a world with canon finnpoe though...

I do think that to make TLJ with all its deviancy from the fans’ perceived norm for Star Wars Rian Johnson had to have a little “fuck you” going, and based on Knives Out and Glass Onion that seems to be a common thread in his movies—a little bit of “fuck you” to certain people but ultimately giving love and care to those that need it.

In the end, I think people just like to hate, especially when hating something is popular. I just see people making a big stink out of something that’s not a real issue just to make themselves sound like big thinkers. Sometimes you just don’t like something, and that’s fine. Wasn’t made for you. I’m glad you understand that! <3

[finns-poe]

Jokes aside I honestly I think I would have loved to have seen Kylo and Finn meet again and not just bc the forest fight rematch and to see Finn kick his ass.

But like do you remember that scene in TFA where Finn doesn’t shoot. and Kylo just looks at him but doesn’t do anything. From that moment I always thought Kylo and Finn were deliberate parallels and foils bc at that moment they were both struggling. It was almost like empathy on his part. Except Finn did the right thing and Kylo just went deeper into the dark. Also later during forest fight when Kylo calls him a traitor. The irony Bc he betrayed his family first.

I always thought that would have been brought up again and be explored in an interesting way but no.

YES!!! cause they're literally the opposite of each other like kyle is "raised in a good environment but turns bad/evil" where as finn is "raised in a bad/evil environment but is good" and it just makes so much more sense if the sequels were about finn vs kyle and in the last film they would have finn (a full jedi now) defeats kyle in an epic lightsaber duel or something literally poetic cinema would have loved to have seen it. If only they didn't bait and switch finn and rey :/ finn and kyle definitely needed another showdown where finn would win we were robbed

[themattress]

Holy Shit!

https://imgur.com/gallery/WKkli

https://imgur.com/gallery/j9OQylb

Beyond the proof that the guy who uploaded this is involved with Bad Robot that he provided at the end of his second post, these definitely seem legit because the first post was in 2018, before The Rise of Skywalker came out, yet the treatment contains some blatant concepts that ended up finding there way into that movie that I have a hard time believing anyone but J.J himself could have come up with (plus, the rest of the plot is very J.J-like, as I’ll get into.)

So these definitely seem to be the discarded Episode VIII and IX treatments. Thoughts?

- Luke’s reasons for coming to Ahch-To definitely seem more in line with TFA than in TLJ, seeing as if he wanted to just “go there to die” he wouldn’t have left a freaking map to the place behind, plus it seemed off that someone disillusioned with the Jedi ways would go to the site of the first Jedi Temple to begin with. His portrayal also matches what we saw at the end of TFA (seeming to be in mourning for Han), and fits the “kind but sad” description from the script. And far from cutting himself off from the Force, Luke has been influencing it from afar as part of his grand plan, explaining Rey’s vision when she touched his lightsaber.

- Luke has a wife and kids! Sadly for EU fans, the wife is not Mara Jade.

- It was Luke’s influence via the Force that explained the things Rey could do that fans deemed her a Mary Sue for, plus some other things that weren’t so routinely noted such as the remarkable coincidence that she and Finn just happened to run into Han and Chewie right after obtaining the Millennium Falcon. Not sure how well this would have gone down...

- Saccrum, Snoke’s home planet, is literally Exogol. Secret ancient Sith planet that is nigh impenetrable to all non-Sith, site of the final battle and (as we’ll soon learn) where Snoke is repeatedly cloned and where Palpatine is resurrected by Sith alchemists...it’s fucking Exogol.

- I recall concept art for Kylo Ren’s partly metallic face floating around.

- Dathan Naut seems cool, but she never really amounts to much.

- So it seems J.J Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan’s vision for the Sequel Trilogy always seemed to boil down to “All the generations of Jedi vs. all the generations of Sith reaching a climactic battle, with Skywalker vs. Palpatine at the heart of it, and the Palpatine who becomes a Skywalker as the key to victory.” That idea was always where they were going.

- Jedi/Sith Holocrons were always gonna be a thing, which is why Rebels worked them in.

- Live-action Ahsoka was also always an objective, it seems, and I bet the way they wrote her out in Rebels’ “Twilight of the Apprentice” was to potentially serve as a lead-in for her appearance in the Sequel Trilogy. But because that never came to pass, they brought her back toward the end of the series and set her on the new trajectory that she’s currently on. Honestly, I think that’s for the better, Ahsoka wouldn’t have really fit in the main film series.

- Not big on this Cfi-Xi character, she mainly seems to be here to “no homo” C-3PO. And her main role relating to the Sith Planet ended up played just fine by C-3PO in TROS anyway.

- BB-8 had the kind of fake-out death they ended up giving to Chewie.

- Wow, so Hux was supposed to die in Episode VIII and Phasma in Episode IX originally. Funny how that got totally flipped backward in the versions we actually ended up getting.

- OK, this “family time” that Rey’s getting is precious. It’s sad we didn’t get to see this.

- Hoo boy, “this is the bad ass Luke Skywalker we’ve been waiting for!” Really? Et tu, J.J and Kasdan? In light of the recent showing by Luke in The Mandalorian, I again question why this portrayal of the character is so widely beloved by fans when it has little to no basis in the OT.

- Rey vs. Kylo Ren in a raging ocean backdrop; here in Episode VIII rather than IX. Similarly, it’s a duel that Kylo clearly has in the bag, but a fluke in the Force allows Rey to survive, although I much prefer the fluke we got to the one this treatment proposes because....

- Goddamn it, J.J. You’re doing the time travel / time paradox shit again? Were Lost, Fringe and Star Trek not enough for you to explore that concept in? This is the biggest part of these treatment drafts that rubs me the wrong way, it’s just so needlessly convoluted and cliche.

- Also, yet another Mystery Box in Luke’s severed hand on Saccrum.

- No Jedi Leia in that flashback? Yeah, I can see why Kathleen Kennedy rejected this.

- Btw, Rian Johnson wasn’t the only one who was going to turn Luke into an asshole failure, it seems. Making this highly risky plan with Ben and not letting his parents know about it? Dick! 

- Snoke is the one who destroys Luke’s academy, not Kylo Ren. And he does so as he is dying; another clue-in that there’s more to Snoke than it seems given that he’s still around.

- Lando would have been in Episode IX anyway, albeit still running Cloud City.

- The idea for this Episode IX is that the Skywalkers are a Jedi dynasty that long predated Anakin (Shmi being a descendant of it), and the Palpatines were their Sith enemies. Sheev Palpatine also would have died his first death generations ago and was being constantly resurrected via clone bodies made on Saccrum ever since, so the one that Anakin killed wasn’t the original; Palpatine can’t be stopped unless Saccrum is destroyed. While not as convoluted as the time paradox shit, I appreciate the simpler route they ended up taking.

- J.J and Kasdan always wanted Rey’s father to be a defective Palpatine clone.

- There was never a planned origin for Snoke in these treatments; wherever he came from the bottom line was that Palpatine brought him onto his side by promising to share his key to immortality (constant cloned bodies made on Sacccrum) with him. Again, this ended up being simplified into Snoke just being a whole-sale creation of Palpatine’s from the very beginning.

- Since these are treatments, the “love” part of the dynamic between Rey and Kylo Ren is highly underdeveloped and would likely have been fleshed out in screenwriting. The end result, with the deprogramming vision of Rey and Darth Vader, sounds pretty effective though, but I think I much prefer the Leia death / vision of Han version that we ended up with.

- LOL, the “droid way of making love”. I want to see this idea repurposed someday.

- That’s an interesting twist on Alderaan, although it really doesn’t amount to anything given that the planet Leia grew up on and called home still got destroyed by the Death Star.

- “Magic blood”, another J.J-ism. Again, I much prefer the simpler version TROS gave us.

- The climax’s structure is basically the same as in TROS, with Rey (and others) heading to the Sith planet from Ahch-To and then Leia’s Resistance forces going there from their base, with Rey and Ben facing Palpatine. The biggest differences is that we also have Luke vs. Snoke and Finn vs. Phasma battles going on, in addition to a Jedi vs. Sith ground battle.

- Yeah, I don’t really care for how Phasma’s death is handled: making her hideously scarred and treating her sympathetically don’t sit right with me. Rian Johnson did it better, IMO.

- No red stormtroopers here, but there are red Tie Fighters.

- Ben still gives his life to save Rey, albeit in a less literal manner.

- Palpatine still wants Rey to ascend to the Sith throne and rule by his side. Also: “he loves the smell of burning hair, it reminds him of home”!? Wow, that’s dark in what it’s implying...

- OK, so while not a Jedi, Leia is the Big Damn Hero in the end. That makes sense.

- WTF? Rey straight-up kills Palpatine with Sith lightning!? Yeah, that definitely wasn’t ever gong to fly with Lucasfilm, since it totally contradicts ROTJ’s message! It was inevitable that we’d end up with the more correct “Rey deflects Palpatine’s own Sith lightning back at him”.

- “Rey Skywalker” is the end point for the story here as well, but it ending on Tatooine is so much more emotional than ending it on Alderaan Prime, a place that only just now exists.

My final impression is that we probably could have had the best version of the Sequel Trilogy possible IF the right corrections were made when adapting these treatments into real screenplays, such as axing the more convoluted and pointlessly fanservice-y elements and making different choices for a few of the characters (Rey, Kylo Ren, C-3PO, Phasma, etc...also something more substantial for Poe since they clearly had no idea what to do with him). However, it was also an impossibility for it to ever happen due to many different factors, the biggest of which being Carrie Fisher’s passing in 2016. So as it stands, I am still satisfied with the version we got and am especially happy that J.J returned for TROS to provide the end of the Skywalker Saga with some of his original (mercifully fine-tuned and simplified) ideas.

[littlemissbigears]

The Sequel Triology We Could’ve Gotten, TLJ Edition:

*Set two years after TFA.

*Kept the original concept of Rey being Luke’s daughter and have Mara Jade be her mother.

*Keep Luke in character, I would imagine him kinda being like Uncle Iroh. He would have tried to help Ben from going to the dark side but ended up watching his nephew reject him and his good upbringing in favor of the First Order.

*Speaking of the First Order, let’s actually give a coherent backstory on it! The First Order would have started as a group of Sith apologists who justified the existence of the Empire. Snoke saw the Empire fell and believed that it should be brought back, but stronger. While the rumors of the Sith apologists began shortly after ROTJ, they became more prominent around the time that Ben became Kylo Ren and joined them.

*Actually give Rose Tico a personality and backstory! I retconned her and her sister Paige to have been former students of Luke when he had the Jedi school. Rose and Rey would have trained together and would have been best friends. Then Kylo happens and slaughters his innocent peers, one of those victims would be Paige. Rose is kidnapped and forcibly recruited to become a Knight of Ren. Like Finn, she escapes once finding the strength to stand up to Kylo. She escapes in a ship and is chased until she crash lands on the planet where the Resistance Base is. Luke is training Rey when they see the crash and are reunited with Rose. Rose is eager to fight with the Resistance and wants to destroy the First Order before they make more recruits out of innocent children. Poe x Rose...I said what I said they’d be super cute together, definite hanleia dynamic.

*FINNREY! Both are realizing their strong feelings for each other but are conflicted about acting upon them due to being in the middle of a galactic war. Think of the song “Rewrite the Stars” and you get the picture. Everyone in the Resistance ships them and Poe and Rose are the proud wing man/woman.

*It is Leia who confronts Kylo, not Rey. She goes up to the First Order to try once again to get her son back. Kylo still kills Snoke but reveals that he won’t turn even with his mother’s love and tries to kill her. Throughout the movie it builds up Leia’s force sensitivity that she has tried to not channel but it is in the Throne Room that she finally channels the force in order to protect herself. She brought along the lightsaber Luke gave her as a gift once to protect herself in case Kylo did this.

*Finn is shown to be force sensitive and he is conflicted about this. He wants to train with Rey but he feels he is undeserving. He was a stormtrooper, he shouldn’t deserve getting trainer from Master Luke. Rey and Luke prove him wrong and he ends up becoming a padawan at the end of the film.

*Finn will also be the long lost son of Lando. Lando would’ve married the secret daughter of Mace Windu. They had two kids, Finn and Jannah. Unfortunately, when the twins are born they are kidnapped by the growing First Order and recruited. Mace Windu’s daughter is killed while trying to save her newborns. Luke and Leia find out about Finn’s parentage when they encourage him to take a DNA test in hopes of locating his family. Finn is them given the choice to locate his father, he doesn’t know how his father will process what he did in the First Order.

*Rey not coddling her cousin Kylo at all and instead is pretty resentful towards him. She struggles with the Dark Side and suffers from PTSD due to that fateful night at the Jedi School and Kylo’s torture in the previous movie. Luke helps his daughter to find balance and the two make up for the lost father/daughter bonding time.

*FINNREY FORCE BOND

*Leia dies an honorable death. She saves Poe during the battle on the First Order ship. While Rey and Luke are kicking Kylo’s butt, Leia is working her way to the other fight on the ship. The other fight is Finn, Poe, and Rose vs the stormtroopers. They had tried to start a rebellion but it didn’t work so well, although Phasma will do some thinking about what Finn had said to her. Leia is able to get in the way between Poe and an attacking stormtrooper and is wounded badly, she dies back at the Resistance Base.

*Poe is promoted to General.

*Poe and Leia would have had a sweet mother/son relationship.

*BB8, R2D2, and C3PO interaction PLEASE!

That’s all I can think of😂😂😂😂

[blacklakeinavalley]

Reylo confessions / TRoS personal review upon first watching

"You opened yourself to the dark side for a pair of pretty eyes” - in retrospect this pretty much sums up how my obsession with the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy came into being. I was here for Reylo, Bendemption, and most of all Ben Solo since around TLJ. I could and still can relate to this character’s struggles and find him physically very attractive. That’s basically how it went down.

I had only once watched the OT, a few years before TFA came out. Then, in 2015, friends dragged me to watch TFA (I was like “meh, blockbuster” aka a snob at that time). I was pleasantly surprised though when I found the movie very well-made and entertaining. I did NOT get the Reylo-vibes then but remember strongly identifying with Rey’s fear at the beginning of the interrogation and Kylo’s line “You know I can take whatever I want“ making me shiver. I cheered at Rey for beating Kylo up on Starkiller Base and (joke’s on me for the worst take ever) legitimately left the theater believing him dead because of the explosion of the planet. That didn’t make me sad, but satisfied.

I did not think about Star Wars again until January/February(?) 2017. Another group of friends planned on watching TLJ together and and I browsed the Internet for some critics to read in advance, just out of curiosity. Somehow I ended up watching the interrogation scene on Youtube again and again, the sexual tension between the two I now clearly recognized finally taking my breath away. I discovered skysilencer’s/chandrilasky’s wonderful blog (which doesn’t exist anymore) about Rey’s and Ben’s relationship and generally started reading as many metas on this topic as I could find.

I fell in love with the pairing, and especially the portrayal of Kylo / Ben. Getting to watch TLJ in the theater was a bit disappointing for me though, after having read so many raving reviews on tumblr beforehand. At that time I could not really appreciate the changes in pacing and all the depths and nuances. By now I love this movie. Strangely, I never watch it in one go, only in smaller portions. Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I like TFA just as well. Ironically, the fight on Starkiller Base is still my favorite Reylo scene ever - because there’s so much more going on than “Rey beating Kylo up“. For me, TFA definitely is a lot easier to watch, mostly because of the more conventional pacing, I guess.

Therefore I was quite happy when I heard that JJ Abrams was going to direct episode IX too. I actually never doubted that he had planted the seeds for Reylo in TFA / episode VII. Sadly, TRoS, which I finally went to see with my sweetheart yesterday, left me pretty untouched for the most part. After roughly two years of really looking forward to, actually longing for this day, seeing it was not the experience I had hoped for. This is not to say that the movie per se is only bad.

TRoS spoilers ahead!

I am a sucker for “grounded” speculation and have difficulties to keep away from spoilers. And I’m really invested in Ben Solo’s fate. This led to me reading JediPaxis’ leaks weeks ago and hanging around on this site pretty much non-stop shortly before and since the premier of the movie. When the realization that Ben Solo actually dies (or does he?) kicked in, I went through some kind of mourning that included having difficulties to concentrate, the urge to cry, listening to sad music, and definitely crying a lot while watching a camrip of him finding happiness and then dying in a loop.

And maybe that’s one of the reasons why I couldn’t enjoy the actual movie more. I already knew the whole plot, had seen lots of gifs and had already kind of processed the emotionally challenging stuff, at least to some extent. So I just didn’t feel much, neither surprise, nor joy or grief while watching. Again, joke’s on me for getting myself extensively spoiled and reading about other people’s (negative) reaction to the movie. I didn’t even look forward to seeing it anymore, tbh.

My boyfriend on the other hand, who has seen TFA once and TLJ twice in his life and went into TRoS openmindedly after only a very short recapitulation of what had happened in the previous films, actually really liked it. He found it very entertaining, even surprising and well-made, especially the camera-work. He was all for Rey being a power women, for example when she prevented the transporter Chewie was presumably on from leaving by Force powers (Chewie then being on another transporter, not the one that got destroyed, was a cheap move and sort of a plot hole for him though). He generally sees the whole thing as an action adventure and advocates for not intellectually dissecting it or expecting too much depth out of a Star War. He likes the OT as a casual fan (he was the one to show me the original films in the first place), didn’t like the Prequels at all, was not a fan of TLJ and found TFA okay. We are going to watch TRoS again early in January with friends and he’s looking forward to it. So for him, episode IX is the best sequel film.

What I personally liked about TRoS:

- the very beginning - because Kylo and all the voices in his head, the nightmarish setting of the Sith temple as a representation of (mental) darkness, hopelessness and loneliness ...

- the overall feeling of the Pasaana festival (joy! color! coming together to celebrate!)

- the Poe and Zorri dialogue on Kimiji, because FINALLY a quiet and somewhat thoughtful moment AT LAST

- Finn and Jannah bonding over being former Stormtroopers being another somewhat quiet moment in the movie

- Ben seeing Han in memory actually made me feel SOMETHING

- the scenes of the last battle to end all battles (both Rey/Ben vs Palpatine and Resistance vs First Order) were sort of okay

- somewhat unexpectedly, I also really sympathized with Poe during some moments of the final battle

- the Rey and Ben Solo stuff after his final turn to the light was beautiful and heartbreaking (side note: I like to think that all the Jedi were talking to Ben too as he was rising/climbing from that pit)

- Kylo Ren / Ben Solo is already an icon, thanks to Adam Driver’s amazing acting skills and admireable dedication to this role. And that’s also true for TRoS.

- I actually liked the Resistance base scene after their victory, their immense relieve was so palpable

- the overall visuals of the movie are fine

What I did not enjoy:

- Everything felt so rushed. There’s too much happening in too little time, especially during the first half. The movie just doesn’t take any time to breathe, the effect being that you don’t really get into the story - the exact opposite of what the fast pacing was supposed to accomplish. Maybe less would have been more. Or the movie lasting for 15 minutes longer.

- Probably the worst thing: Most dialogues/lines, especially in the first half, are just super cringey ... TFA and TLJ dialogue never felt like this - or have I just gotten used to their text script over time? I have the small hope though that everything will sound better (at least to me) in English (we had to watch TRoS in German). Kylo Ren talking through his helmet was the worst in that regard, because Adam Driver’s voice is so distinct to me by now that the German voice-over felt 100% out of place and got me super irritated. It was downright painful.

- Very personal opinion: Upon closer look, both TFA and TLJ seem to be about Ben pretty much all the time, and I am all here for it. I did not get the same impression out of TRoS. But maybe that’s just a “recipient as co-creator of a story“ thing and I might be able to construct such a reading also for TRoS over time, after getting to know the movie better.

What really matters to me in the end:

- I am still invested in the character and story of Ben Solo. A movie (TRoS) made me mourn a fictional character, which IS something, even if said character was built to a great extent in previous movies.

- As said before, I enjoy theorizing, analyzing and the quest to better understand stories. And I just don’t want to be mad at the creators already. Ben’s death was painful, but I understand this pain as an invitation to delve deeper into all if it. If in the end the script and plot keep making little sense (which is a real possibility), I will keep to cherishing the parts I liked.

Conclusion:

Yes, I found TRoS very disappointing upon first watching, script-wise way below TFA and TLJ. Very likely it will always feel rushed and badly written to me. Maybe I'll like it even less after watching it again in about a week from now.

But, for the reasons mentioned above, I will probably still give it multiple (undeserved) chances. Because there certainly are good parts in it.

---

Kudos if you’re still here! And sorry for any language mistakes. Please comment, if you feel like it.

[dyadsaber]

Part 6 of A New Reylo Reads TFA: In Which a Dyad In the Force Has One of the Neatest Looking Lightsaber Battles I’ve Ever Seen and I Finally Get to the End of This Novelization

Previous parts in my dyadsaber text posts tag. 

I came out of the theater the first time LOVING the Rey and Finn vs Kylo in the snow as Starkiller Base falls apart around them scene.  Unless I’m completely forgetting something, we’d never seen a red vs blue lightsaber fight in SNOW before, and I thought it was GORGEOUS. (I know Luke uses his on Hoth, but the Wampa doesn’t have one too, so it doesn’t count.) I just watched the whole sequence again on youtube, you know, for research reasons, and I still love it just as much as I did the first time. (Maybe more?) 

Anyway… here’s my rundown of that scene from the novel: 

First of all, I HAVE QUESTIONS about which side of the Force Rey is drawing on here. TLJ kind of touches on the fact that Rey doesn’t have the “OMG the dark side is ALWAYS EVIL” indoctrination that kids at the Jedi temple (and Luke) would have gotten, and the number of times she’s described as drawing on anger and fury here made sit up and pay attention.

When Rey’s about to shoot Kylo and he freezes her with the Force, we get this: 

“She strained against him, HER ANGER GIVING HER STRENGTH. But she couldn’t fire. He was struggling also, against her newly discovered ability” 

Sure, she’s not able to break free, but he’s been using the Dark Side for a touch longer than she has. Not saying she is for sure, here, but I think it’s one possible reading supported by the text. (Hi I teach English just in case I haven’t said that yet). Personally, I think she was. I also think BOTH of the “sides of the Force” are both amoral and necessary, and drawing on the Dark Side out of anger and desperation isn’t always a sure path to Sith-dom.  

Finn igniting Anakin’s lightsaber is still a moment that makes me love him… he’s ready to defend his knocked-against-a-tree friend with WHATEVER HE HAS, even if it’s a weapon he’s never used before and doesn’t quite understand, and that is sweet and good and loyal, and it endeared Finn to me A LOT.  I remember that when Finn turned it on and stood there in that blue glow in the theater, we ALL gasped.  I don’t remember if it had been in promo material or not, but seeing it on the big screen was… An Experience.

ANYWAY, after Finn does the awesome thing he does, Kylo has a line I’m really glad they cut. After the “That weapon is mine” exchange, we get…

Drawing himself up, a towering figure in the snow, Ren did not even bother to gesture. “I’m going to kill you for it.” 

I mean… he almost DOES (kill Finn, that is) but announcing it is a little too MWAHAHAHA villain for my taste, and I’m glad they let him speak with actions rather than words here in the film. 

So… one of the fun things about all of a sudden caring a WHOLE lot more about Kylo Ren is that I’ve gotten to fully appreciate how incredibly good Adam Driver is at the physicality of this character.  (And by that I mean “I’ve watched a lot of behind the scenes clips and stared at gifs a lot.) It’s just FUN to watch him fight, so this description from Finn’s PoV made me smile. 

The longer the contest continued, the stronger Ren seemed to become. It was as if he was enjoying the challenge. Feeding upon it.

Upon reflection, I know exactly why I love this. It reminded me SO HARD of Jaime Lannister, another pretty terrible (and just plain pretty) fictional character I would get in fights defending. I just like secretly morally conflicted dudes who swing swords, know how good they are, and are kind of assholes about it, ok? 

Give me ALL of the confident, arrogant, Kylo Ren fights.  (Fic recs always welcome. Like I said, I’m new here.) 

This next bit made me wonder about how the “fighting over an object with the Force” thing works. Because this is the FIRST time we see the dyad both try to summon that lightsaber at the same time: 

Ren extended an arm toward the device lying in the snow. It twitched and then began to vibrate as the Force called to it.

But… it doesn’t explode. And this made me wonder, “Why NOT? What was different?” 

Here’s what I’ve got. 

Maybe it went to Rey because she started trying to call it first. So even if he had more experience and wouldn’t have had to try as hard as she (probably) did since it was her first time, the Force… recognized her prior claim? Also I think what happens in TLJ is that the two of them “reach” for the lightsaber at the exact same moment, and so there IS no prior claim, and so they have to duke it out with raw strength, which goes about how you’d expect when they’re equals.  

That still doesn’t explain what happens with the ship in the desert in TRoS though…  Rey definitely reached for it first.  But also, unlike a lightsaber, the ship had ENGINES that were trying to work against her. That might be an explanation.  I wonder exactly what Kylo was trying to do there, anyway… help it break atmosphere like it was trying to do anyway, I’ve always assumed.  So if I’m right, that would make the scene make more sense, and it would mean the rules are: (I’m sure I’m proved wrong a million times in media I haven’t seen yet, but here we go)

A stationary object will usually go to the first Force user who calls it. 

A stationary object will go to the Force user who is “stronger” in the moment if they call it at the same time, (and in the absence of a clear winner, explode?).

A moving object that whose direction the Force user is trying to change will be more resistant and tends to negate #1. 

The confidence/willpower of a Force user (and size of an object only insofar as that affect confidence) is a variable that probably throws a wrench in all three of these. 

Dyads facing off probably screw with the normal course of things, too.

Thank you for coming to this episode of “I need my media to make sense and spend way too much time trying to make it do so.” 

And then… Kylo Ren sees Rey….

“It is you,” Ren murmured. His words unsettled her: Not for the first time, he seemed to know more about her than she did about herself.

He doesn’t say this in the movie. He doesn’t say anything when he sees her, I don’t think.  But when I read this… my heart stopped a little. 

This isn’t what you say to the random girl you met in the woods and who you think has the map to Uncle Luke, even if she is Force Sensitive as Hell.  

This is what you say to a girl you suddenly realize you’ve seen in that place between asleep and awake for most of your life, a girl that you’ve always been subconsciously aware of. This is what you say because you’re beginning to understand that the scavenger you brought on board and this girl you’re just now remembering clearly for the fist time are THE SAME PERSON and she is VERY connected to you.  

What I’m saying is… Ben has been aware of Rey for YEARS without realizing it, and this line FITS THAT THEORY. 

And then they fight. And it gets REALLY interesting. 

Expecting weakness, he encountered only strength. Her skill with the device was raw at best, but it was backed by a fury that was as new to his experience as it was unexpected.

Example #2 of Rey’s maybe-Dark-Side-Use.  The paragraph leading up to this talks about her being “consumed with rage,” and I can hear every (ok, almost every) Jedi master in history talking about how letting anger fuel your use of the Force is a no-no, so I don’t think I’m grasping at straws here. Poor Kylo. He didn’t stand a chance. Angry, “possibly using the Dark side without knowing it” Rey is unexpected and kinda hot, OK???

Flipping away from the Starkilling Snow Fight for a moment, there’s a line of Snoke’s that he does NOT get to say in the movie when he tells Hux to abandon ship and come to him with Kylo Ren. 

He added grimly, “It appears that he may have been right about the girl.”

I. Have. Questions. Did Snoke not BELIEVE Kylo when he flat out said she was a REALLY STRONG untrained Force User? Did he not know who Rey was (Palpatine’s granddaughter)? What does this tell us about Snoke’s independence from Palpatine? (Something I’m still not clear on.) The easiest answer is, “You’re thinking about this too much, Dyadsaber.  No one at DLF knew that Palpatine was going to come back yet when TFA was written, so no one worried about it.” 

BUT I NEED IT TO MAKE SENSE. SO, I’ve decided that Snoke didn’t understand how much of a pawn he was. He probably thought he was Palpatine’s heir or disciple or whatever Grandpa Palps convinced him he was.  Anyway, this would mean that Palpatine could give him a lot of autonomy and agency, especially when it came to corrupting Ben, while still keeping a close eye on Snoke through the Force so he could intervene when he had to. If anything in official material contradicts me, I’d love to know. 

And now for a bit that made me scream a Shakespeare line at my kindle. At one point, the narrator observes,  

What she lacked in mass, she made up for in ferocity.

This is basically a less poetic "Though she be but little, she is fierce," AND I LOVE IT. Someone who’s crafty needs to cross stitch this under Rey’s silhouette or something. 

More lines they probably cut for time, but are really telling.  When he’s got her backed up to that cliff: 

Ren held his lightsaber, poised to strike. “I could kill you right now. But there is another way.” Breathing hard, Rey looked up in disgust at the man looming above her. “You’re a monster.”

Again with the threatening to kill people.  Jeez, Kylo. WE KNOW. Seriously, though, I love this. It’s so HIM that he wants her to know he had the advantage and chose not to press it. It says a lot about how he wants to present himself and his intentions to her. As he does in the throne room later, he wants her to give her a choice, and for her to CHOOSE him. 

Also, I can feel TLJ Rey’s MURDEROUS SNAKE energy radiating off of that “you’re a monster” line. 

And instead of being DETERRED by her insult, he comes back with THIS… 

“No. You need a teacher.” He was beseeching and insistent all at once. “I can show you the ways of the Force!”

“Yeah, I know you just called me a monster, but wanna be my student instead?” The arrogance and presumption of this bit of novel-Kylo is SO VERY HIM. Also, “Beseeching but insistent” is so on brand for him when it comes to her.

And the last thing I marked from the fight was THIS bombshell that doesn’t quite come across as obviously (if at all) on screen. Rey has him on the ground, face bleeding, and…

Kill him, a voice inside her head said. It was amorphous, unidentifiable, raw. Pure vengeful emotion. So easy, she told herself. So quick. She recoiled from it. From the dark side.

I mean, if you read between the lines, Rey’s been drawing on the Dark Side without realizing it for a while now. It’s understandable.  She’s seething with pain and anger and a desire to avenge Han, but there’s a difference between using that anger to defend herself or try to just GET AWAY from Kylo, which one could argue is mostly what she’s been doing, and killing him when he’s bleeding on the ground.   

And she doesn’t do it.  TAKE THAT, TLJ LUKE (Note: I love TLJ Luke. I just also love yelling at him).  Rey has a CLASSIC opportunity to make a choice that would send her down a truly Dark Side path - striking down an unarmed enemy in anger - AND SHE DOESN’T DO IT. She RECOILS. (And then Starkiller takes the choice away from both of them by literally crumbling away and leaving a chasm between them.  If I believed the Force was sentient, this would be a moment where it was saying, “You children are not ready to play nice, and I don’t want to kill each other, so you I’m going to separate you.”) 

And that’s that. The next time they see each other, they’re Forcetiming, and I cannot WAIT to read how that goes in the TLJ novel. 

Some last thoughts: 

Because it would have been hilarious, I’m sad we didn’t the fact that Hux...

followed the troopers carrying Ren into the nearby shuttle.

CARRYING. REN. We were robbed of two (four?) poor storm troopers trying to carry gangly, bleeding, passed out Kylo. I am OFFENDED.

Right before Rey leaves for Ahch-to, she and Leia have THIS fascinating exchange…

“I’m proud of what you’re about to do,” she told the girl. 

Rey replied in all seriousness. “But you’re also afraid. In sending me away, you’re—reminded.” 

Leia straightened. “You won’t share the fate of our son.” 

“I know what we’re doing is right. This is how it has to be. This is how it should be.”

I REALLY wish they’d left this in.  I like that it makes explicit that this is the second time Leia has sent a Force user she cares about to Luke, and that choice WEIGHS on her.  (And this shows how much she already cares about Rey, too… MY HEART.) 

The fact that Rey is perceptive enough to PICK UP ON Leia’s concern, and that Leia reassures BOTH OF THEM that what Ben won’t happen to Rey just makes me love both of these characters so much. Also, I think Leia’s worry and Rey’s conviction sets up the conflict Rey has within herself and her own journey with coming to understand balance in TLJ nicely. She’s just… so confident and cheerful in that last line, and I know what’s coming, and it hurts so good. 

And finally, the last line of this book made me laugh out loud. She’s standing in front of Luke, holding out the lightsaber, and....

She wondered what would happen next.

Luke's gonna yeet that lightsaber.  That’s what.

If you read all of these, thank you.  I’d love to know what you think. I never meant for this to get so long, but I’m wordy and newly shippy, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.  Stay tuned for hopefully shorter posts as I dive into Last Jedi in a day or two.

[abandoned-as-mustard]

I hope you don’t mind me asking, but i really wanna hear your meta/thoughts on what it must be like for ben vs kylo rattling around in his head and the moments where it must be like a battle over who gets the steering wheel in a very literal sense

No worries, I'm glad to have something to do :P

A lot of my thoughts have been inspired by other metas alongside the ewatches of scenes.

The times when it's clear to see there's an internal battle are usually any time he shows emotion or does something out of the ordinary. Take start TFA kylo. He kills that Jedi who says he knew the old him. Then later, when Finn is about to escape, Kylo - fully masked - slowly turns his head towards him, and watches.

He senses the conflict in him... And lets him go. This is the man we just saw mercilessly murder a remnant of his past - but his old self creeps through in ways that he can't control. He can't escape, and he can keep up the facade as the big of the FO, but letting Finn escape would be a reflection of his own desire to do so.

Any time a reminder of his past is brought up, ben solo is banging on the walls inside him.

When Rey turns the mind reading on him during interrogation, saying he's afraid - that's something you're not allowed to feel. Fear of the fear leads to violence, and knocking more holes for ben solo to peep through. Ironically.

Because TFA chose to show him to us just before the catalyst came... aka Rey... And not during the middle of his career, where his mask enables him to visually hide his expressions... until they're smothered, and he doesn't have to try anymore.

So it's hilarious that he willingly takes his mask off for Rey. He's KYLO REN! He doesn't need to prove himself! Opens himself up to the possibility of vulnerability at a simple provocation - "creature in a mask!"

One might be able to say that while it was Kylo Ren directing his words, it was definitely Ben solo wanting to be seen as a human being, as simply a boy talking to a girl. Given the very obvious seductive tones and roving looks he gives her.

Leading on from the Finn point: Take the scene where he kills his father. Knowing what we know about him, he can sense other people's presence and their intentions. He would've sensed Han hiding there and walked straight past him. When Han steps out and calls out to him it's like, dammit. Maybe if he pretended he didn't know he was there, he wouldn't have to kill him. As snoke so harshly ridicules, the deed split him to the bone.

Ironically straight afterwards, spurred on by humiliation, he jumps in his ship and soon has the opportunity to kill his mother. Which he doesn't, of course. The idea of killing his mother isn't so bad when it's just a concept but when faced with feeling the presence of a parent, again, ben solo takes his finger off the trigger. His look of distress when another tie fighter shoots anyway is blatant loss of control. Hey, that's my mother, you bastard! Or you could view it as completely childlike, like a cry for mummy!

(Note that both his parents sensed their death was imminent. Han knew he was risking his life stepping out. And Leia was waiting for Ben to pull the trigger. )

And it's interesting how he destroys his own mask so we are allowed to see that. For all his success of being emotionless, ruthless kylo ren, he was called a child in a mask! Snoke has actually accelerated the rise of Ben solo!

And of course there's the hut scene where he's completely ben solo. And the throne room fight scene. Both examples of when Ben solo didn't have to fight kylo ren, kylo ren simply didn't exist. (And the moment before ben kills snoke is a fine example of Ben solo actively masquerading as kylo ren, having already made up his mind. Would kylo ren - lashing out and running away from things - have been so cunning? Ben's time in the FO has merely added cunning to Ben's traits.)

I guess we could now talk about TROS (as much as I hate to), but there were a few tiny nuggets in the mess. Rey, fuelled with dark-sided rage, stabs him straight through, when Leia picks this moment to pop off.

Now Leia has died, not of his own hands - but it still feels as searing as the lightsaber in his gut.

Note that dark siders don't get force healed. They rely on machines and med bots (as in first force bond scene, and with Vader becoming part machine). Even before Rey healed him and dropped his name, he's shifted back to Ben. Ben is being healed of Kylo ren.

And so we know after that, he's completely ben solo, and the rest is history. Who else but a Solo would charge head first into danger with only a blaster?

The not even thinking twice to give up his life force for Rey? Selfless. Parallel to his parents knowing they might die but spurred on by love. On the certain likelihood of there existing a "ben solo lived" alternative (given the shady editing out of Rey's dialogue and the falling-to-the-ground footage being reversed) ben would finally learn that doing good has rewarded him with life. That doing good has an actual reward at all, and he gets to see how. There was no life in the FO and now he has one.

TL;DR: Ben's past manifested through people - particularly family: han, Leia, and Rey his other half- were the catalyst for his change, and for the moments he struggled so hard he could break through. But all the little moments added up too, which allowed these people to have that effect.

Hope you enjoyed the read!

[sowhotalksfirst]

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers below.

Okay, now that the spoiler warning is out of the way...

No one cares, but I want to get some feelings about this movie off my chest since no one I know has seen it yet, so I have no one to rant to. 

So beside the spoiler warning: I did not love it warning, so if you did, you might not want to continue. 

So there was obviously a lot of issues with characterization and Disney/white men being their usual, racist, homophobic, sexist selves. Which honestly led to a lot of the bad plot decisions (like trying to shoehorn in other girls for Finn and Poe to try and erase FinnPoe and FinRey at the same time). And honestly, the plot was so bad. Like, it was boring, predictable, and just not goo writing. 

Some of this stems from the beginning of this trilogy (I liked a lot of Force Awakens, but it set up the same plot structure as the originals (and also completely fucked up Han and Leia’s characters, but that’s another rant)), and some stems from the cluster fuck that was the second one. But even with the restraints they created for themselves, they could have done so much differently and be more original with things. 

Instead of Palpatine coming back with no real explanation whatsoever (and completely nullifying the point of the original trilogy), and Rey somehow being his granddaughter (like who thought that in any way made sense?), and the whole mythos of the Sith getting fucked up (There’s always two, no more, no less (I know the prequels don’t count for much, but still)), what if it had been Plagueis? 

Like, Palpatine admitted to Anakin that he didn’t learn the power to cheat death from his master before he killed him, but that together they could figure it out. So while having Palpatine come back is dumb, disrespectful, stupid, etc, what if it was Plagueis? He let Palpatine “kill” him, and then sat back and waited, and done whatever. There’s definitely some real interesting potential there. 

Rey should 100% have stayed a “nobody”. Her being a Palpatine make ZERO sense (cause yeah, the emperor has a son, but that’s not important at all at any moment). Like, honestly, it builds in her found family so much more when it’s actually that her parents just sold her for the money and forgot about her. I know people love to try and do the whole “there was actually a reason for X’s parents to leave them permanently traumatized” or whatever, but it made no sense, and it would have made her choosing the light, choosing her found family, so much more meaningful. 

Also, maybe don’t just say fuck-all to the rules of the universe just to make things fit your plot? I know a lot of this was the last jedi’s fault, but jj took it even further, like the whole physical items magically force teleporting places and the whole dumb healing thing. Just, ugh. 

I don’t even want to get into fucking Kylo Ren. I’ll just say that the Knight of Ren ended up looking exactly like the group an angsty, fascist, evil teen with anger problems would create. Even if they were literally pointless.

Finn. My poor, poor Finn. There was SOOOOO much potential they lost because their racist, homophobic asses could let FinnRey or FinnPoe happen. Like they spent so much effort in this movie trying to justify Reylo, while completely ignoring everyone else.

The group of stormtroopers that defected just cause *Force*? Why the hell wouldn’t you make it that be because of the stories of FN2187, the stormtrooper who got out? Why is the downfall of the First Order in the fact that they thought kidnapping and brainwashing children would work to create an obedient army, but in fact it just makes them all want to leave, but just think it’s impossible. And Finn is the one who starts to inspire them all. Of course no one in the resistance knows about it until they meet the group, because the First Order would be desperately trying to keep it under wraps, but the word still spreads: If FN2187 got out, so can we.

Can you imagine Finn facing a whole battalion of stormtroopers (and/Or finding someone to hack into all the first order ships so he’s broadcasting to everyone), and giving and Independence Day type speech, and watching them take off their helmet one by one, and turning on the first order? How incredible and powerful would that have been! The first order should have been brought down by the stormtroopers. 

And also my poor, poor, Poe. Instead of trying to force in a weird smuggler backstory with whatsherface to try and prove “See, he’s straight AND a womaizer!”, Which did not land at all, and was just super awkward, why not, you know, develop his character? Not just have him there to be comic relief? 

UUUUUGGGGGHHHHH! 

I feel like JJ and co just took the most boring, predictable, and bad route to finish off the trilogy, and it showed. I mean this trilogy had flaws from the beginning (again, tfa wasn’t horrible, but it was a rehashed plot, they didn’t really put a ton of thought into it. how did the First Order take over so fast? Why is it still a “resistance” instead of the new republic vs the first order? Why is Kylo Ren the worst fucking character ever?), but then craig just dug a fucking hole, and instead of trying to fill it back in a little, JJ just kept digging. 

Also it’s really annoying and gross to me that the only thing in the general rise of skywalker tag is like all reylo. Like, you have to search Anti Rise of skywalker to get anything not about fucking abusive gross reylo.

[sasskarian]

The Mostly-Complete Rise of Skywalker semi-liveblog and reaction list that literally no one asked for

I really dig the parallels between Exegol and Korriban. The way both places felt massive and cramped at the same time, all ominous and tomb-like. Both of them are desolate, devoid of all life. They both feel barren, but not just barren. Korriban feels like history crumbling beneath your fingertips. Exegol feels like a place that’s actively trying to wound you with its desolation, like it’s sucking the life out of you to try and renew itself. (Which, given that Palpatine is there and what he does later, yeah, that tracks.)

When Palps tells Kylo to kill Rey, you can see the micro expression in his eyes. The way the muscles in his face tighten up for a second, the brows drawing down in an expression of disdain and repulsion. If we could have seen his mouth, I’d lay money down on there being a sneer flash across his face for a moment. And damn if Adam isn’t a good actor for being able to portray something that subtle.

There were definitely a few moments where Chewie bitches at Poe for the stunts he’s pulling, including a very definitive accusation of “Rey would never do this to me or the Falcon,” or something along those lines. (This is when Poe snarls, “Yeah, well, Rey’s not here right now, is she?”)

Kylo reaching out into the Force. We’re supposed to think he’s trying to reach Anakin/Vader, but I don’t think that’s what happened at all. I think that he reached for Rey specifically, possibly as a self-soothing gesture. The need to feel her alive, reassure himself. And because of Rey’s feelings and connections to his own family, he’s clearly struggling with his more monstrous acts, and with seeing Luke and Han as intrusive thoughts.

Rey failing the training course because of him makes perfect sense. Notice that this is also when she gets angry.

The Kintsugi vibe given off by Ren’s helmet repairs are fascinating.

Given the way Pryde keeps focusing on Hux during the meeting, I feel like he suspects Hux.

I find it interesting that Finn seems to be the peacekeeper in the OT3. Poe is definitely a hothead, even though he’s matured since TFA and TLJ. And Rey snaps back at him, indignant that he’s snapping at her. And Finn is the one doing the “Guys, guYS, we don’t have TIME for this” routine.

I like the quiet horror of Rey recognizing Exegol’s name. Whether it’s Force shenanigans, or from reading Luke’s books, or from the vision, whatever. The recognition followed by horror is Good Fucking Acting.

I wish that there’d been a little more of Luke or Leia reassuring Rey that a name is just a name. That the legacy is what you make it. And that as the children of Anakin Skywalker, they know that better than anyone. I feel like that would have been a good tie-in and highlight for the way the surnames are treated in the movies. Ben shunning both Organa and Solo, Rey having a last name at last but one that carries the same kind of stigma and Dark past.

I… kind of wonder if Ren surrounded himself in atrocities as a means of self-punishment. We know it’s canon that he keeps being pulled to the Light, and that every time he does, he tries something Dark. Maybe it’s his way of reminding himself how far he’s fallen and that he can’t ever go back home again (which we know is bullshit, but hey, abuse fucks your brain up, and Snoke was abusive af). Like, again, I know it’s mostly just in the comics so far, but we see him a lot saying, “I never wanted this,” “I don’t want to do this.”

The Pasaana dance in the festival seems pretty clearly modeled after tribal dances, and that makes me wonder if powerful dances like the Dha Werda and the Ancestor Dance shown in the film send ripples through the Force. And what that might be like.

I… kind of like the idea of Ben and Kylo struggling for control? I need to finish reading TLJ and read TRoS when it comes out, but there are things Kylo does—the almost-gentle banter with Rey, the way he reaches out in TLJ when she’s on Ahch-To, warning her about Palps—that doesn’t make sense from a purely Kylo perspective. I mean, I’m also an angst gremlin who enjoys the idea of Kylo losing more ground to Ben Solo, and having serious identity clashes.

The bond between Rey and Kylo has grown exponentially. Each movie, it gets bigger and more powerful. In TFA, it allowed her to look into his head. And he wasn’t able to really bring himself to hurt her. In TLJ, it bridges impossible distances of space, even so far as transporting physical objects across the distance. And in TRoS, we see that it’s gotten so strong, it literally blocks out the rest of the physical world. You could argue that the darkness in the bond is what’s overshadowing it, but I don’t count it that way. Rey’s surroundings on Pasaana are slowed down and muted, as if only Ren is her focus.

The trio is so drift compatible, it hurts.

The way the trio grabs for each other, though. It was beautiful. Disney may have decided that Poe/Finn wasn’t a thing, which we all know is a damn lie, but this movie ships the OT3 so hard. The way Poe catches Rey as she falls, the way they both turn at almost the same time to look for Finn. The casual touching.

Childish though it was, I did enjoy the “mine’s bigger” joke with Rey’s lightsaber vs Poe’s flashlight.

Rey shows an affinity for Animal Empathy. Ren has used Stasis more than once. I could even argue that there’s been some subtle Battle Meditation going on throughout the series. And I kind of? Like that we’re seeing some of the more obscure and subtle Force powers.

Also? The snakey slow-blink? I love.

Rey seems to have some psychometry abilities. And I love it.

The way Rey says “I’ll be right behind you” isn’t what it sounds like. It has a lot of layers to it. (Just like Han’s “I know” in ESB) It’s declaration of intent (“I’ll handle this”), it’s a request (“Trust me”), and it’s consolation and reassurance (“I’ll be fine.”). The way all that is conveyed with five simple words is. Ugh. My heart.

As Finn gets stronger in the Force, I’m enjoying seeing his instincts kick in. He senses Ren’s approach, which is a nice completion of the parallel to TFA when Ren sensed him as the traitor.

I don’t know who’s read the Rise of Kylo comic, but the way she slices his ship to bring him down is a direct parallel to the shot he made when he escaped the destroyed Temple. (I love all the tie-ins, honestly)

Rey was doing okay with trying to pull the transport down until Kylo stepped in to push her. The most likely scenario is less “force lightning is genetic” (because that’s crap) but more that anger clouded her mind and she already had a direct Force ability going.

When I asked my roommate why she thought Rey couldn’t sense Chewie’s life force, she gave me an interesting theory. Well, a few, but one I think makes a lot of sense. The first was that Chewie was already off-world and thus too far away (later debunked by her sensing him as the Destroyer is in orbit). Or that maybe the transports were shielded against Force Abilities, but given that they’re so rare in this era, I don’t think that’s the case. I agree with my roomie in saying that it’s more likely that Rey burnt out part of her senses and basically put herself in shock due to the feedback of casting a powerful and traditionally dark side ability for the first time.

The first couple of times I watched the movie, the entire Threepio arc bothered me. Why didn’t they just plug him into the navicomputer, the way they’d done before? Why the angst build-up? Then I remembered that they left the Falcon on Pasaana, and it’s possible that L3 is more equipped to talk to Threepio’s forbidden memory banks than a post-TCW era ship that’s almost certainly out of date.

…Zorii and Poe have A Past. I’d put money on them having banged like screen doors in a hurricane at least a few times.

“Who are you hanging out with that spEAKS SITH?!?”

I? love? Babu?

“Does she do that to us?” had me in tears.

Oh my God, the sheer #aesthetic and foreshadowing of her duel with Ren. The red fruit (cherries?) spilling across the floor, the stark color against the too-bright white. The way Vader’s helmet thunks on the ground like a sour note in a song, the way the pedestal shatters with their combined strikes. Vader falling from Ren’s worship (as the truth is revealed that it was Snoke/Palps messing with his mind and he never heard Vader), the dark glass shattering the same way the darkness in Ren dies with him.

Finn is… kind of a gossipy biddy and I love it. The way Jannah hands him the part and he just flat out abandons the work to talk, the body language as he hoists himself up to sit on the ledge. I love it. He’s precious.

I wonder if the Death Star echoes in the Force. So many brutal deaths in those halls. So many restless ghosts.

…okay, I’m not sure how to feel about the dagger lining up with the fallen DS’s architecture. Because like. There’s so many layers to that? That suggests that Palps had the dagger created after Endor/RoTJ. Which suggests that he may have had the Wayfinders created then too (though it seemed pretty comfy in the Vault, so maybe he already had them?) (Also, there was one on Mustafar. Was it planted there? Did Vader know about Exegol? I need more information than this!) And like. The Death Star is sitting in a violent sea. It’s going to degrade eventually. What if the horizon line had changed? What then? It seems flimsy, for all that it was dramatic and cool.

The sheer aesthetic in this movie, though. The symbolism is everywhere. Like Rey taking the skimmer. I love the aesthetic choices of her struggling against these giant, furious waves as a fantastic visual analogy of her struggle against the emotions churning away inside her. And how Despair and Fear and even Anger threaten to overwhelm her and drown her, but she keeps holding tight to that little skimmer the same way she’s clinging to Luke’s teachings and Leia’s love and faith in her. Their belief in her.

“You don’t know what she’s fighting.” “And you do?” I wonder if, as a Force Adept, Finn can sense the bond between Rey and Ren, and that she’s struggling against it. As well as the Palpatine name.

Theory (that may or may not have been explored in the Legends EU): Any place steeped in enough Dark emotion can become a place of visions like the Mirror Cave and Dagobah’s Cave. Rey comes face to face with her worst fear on the Death Star.

Speaking of, I wonder if some small part of Rey enjoyed the vision of her and Kylo as Emperor and Empress. I wonder if that’s where the abject horror comes from.

Speaking of more aesthetic, the on-screen contrast and history of the window where Vader and Luke dueled, and the shot of Palps’ throne over Rey’s shoulder. Sorry not sorry but I’m going to be forever in love with the cinematography in this movie.

Ren seems… almost exasperated that she’s still drawing her saber on him. That has fic potential.

That. Entire. Fucking. Duel. That entire battle. Just… oof. OOF. My heart. It blew everything in me wide open. Looking with the eyes of a writer and SW expert instead of the wide-eyed “my hEaRt!” first reaction, I saw So Much. Like Rey and Ren trading battle stances. IDK if anyone else noticed, and it’s happened before (the throne room battle in TLJ, notably, but also their duel in Ren’s quarters). But here, it’s so clear. They gave and took from each other as they fought, and that broke my heart. It threw me back to KotOR II’s echani battles, and the fight between Sun and Mun in Sense8. Here, unlike TLJ, they weren’t fighting in tandem with each other. This was back and forth. Rey starts out saber up, in what looks like shii-cho. Kylo, like always, starts out in Ataru, with heavy, powerful strikes trying to bludgeon down her defense. Rey switches to an offensive, then to fast, agile strikes holding her lightsaber Ahsoka style. Kylo then switches to shii-cho, and Rey enters Ataru, with the aggressive offensive. The way they switched between each other was fantastic.

Near the end, Rey starts giving up. You can see it. Her movements get sluggish, like she’s just going through the motions. Like she’s so tired of fighting the bond in her head, her reluctant pull to him, like she’s just. So Fucking Tired. She’s resigned.

Kylo Ren dying by his own lightsaber while Ben’s mother called to him. That symbolism. That symbolism, though.

The way he looks around, like he’s in shock. The way the battle just stops, and he’s sitting there, dying. You can see the change in him, as Ben wakes up and Kylo dies. There’s so much shell-shock and disorientation, like someone who’s been asleep for too long, waking up confused. And I’d like to believe that Rey healing him poured not just healing but maybe a little Light into him, and that, along with Leia reaching for him, is what gave Ben the strength to rise over Kylo and overpower him. (See also, my love of internal power struggles)

“I did want to take your hand. Ben’s hand.” Excuse you, I did not sign up for this feels trip.

Rey running away. I have… conflicted feelings on? Did she run away because she was grieving? To escape her own history? Did she run because she gave into the dark and struck down Kylo in anger? Or because she was tempted by Ben?

I know everyone says that Han was just a memory but I prefer to believe that Han’s just too stubborn to be a proper Force Ghost. And Disney and Lucasarts can pry Force Sensitive Han Solo out of my cold dead hands.

Luke, materializing out of the air and catching the saber. My heart screamed. Especially when he chided her (and himself) that a lightsaber deserves more respect.

“Leia didn’t tell me.” I think… I think Leia was trying to, without saying the words, “Rey, you’re a Palpatine.” She said, “Never be afraid of who you are.” And oh, God, that’s something Leia would know. In the EU she struggles with being Anakin’s daughter, with the legacy of Vader hanging over her. She struggles with it so much. And finally comes to terms with it. So if anyone knows what that’s like, it’s going to be her.

­­­"She sensed the death of her son at the end of her Jedi path." So... she had nearly thirty years to plan for it. Yoda says, “Always in motion, the future is.” I don’t believe for a single instant that Leia Organa shrugged her shoulders and said “Welp, guess my kid’s gonna die.”

Luke KNEW Ben would go to Exegol. He knew and no one will ever convince me otherwise. “Take both sabers.” She’d need one for Ben.

I wonder if Lando looks at the Falcon and sees all the little pieces of Han.

So. The arrival order at Exegol threw me for a while. Rey gets there, in Red 5. Using the toasted Wayfinder. Then the Resistance arrives, following her trail. We see Ben arrive in a TIE fighter. But… how? Rey’s trail was given to the Resistance on what I can only imagine is an encrypted wave data burst. We know it was technically given to Lando, so that the people joining the battle could find them. But Ben’s in a TIE fighter. Did he get the message from Lando? Were the coordinates already programmed into the TIE via the Final Order? Did he memorize the path from before (given that he’s a stellar pilot like Han)? Did Rey give it to him?

I hate Palps being a one-trick pony in the movies. We see him in TCW having other abilities, and mad saber skills. But in the movies, his schtick is the same every time: He seduces people to the Dark and makes them feel like they don’t have a choice, usually by dangling, “Look, you can SAVE THEM” in front of everyone. And then once he has them, he keeps them by constantly belittling them and reminding them that there’s nowhere else for them to go, because they burnt all their bridges. (Ex: Vader being reminded of what he did to Padme, and Kylo being reminded via Snoke of his own actions)

WEDGE. WEDGE ANTILLES. WEDGE.

Rey felt Ben’s approach, and you can see the change in her body language.

THAT IS THE MOST HAN SOLO THING I HAVE EVER SEEN AND IT’S NOT EVEN HAN SOLO. Watching the changes in Ben (vs Kylo) is so fucking great. He’s lighter, he’s faster. He skids (Han/Death Star), shoots behind him (Han/TFA), and the Solo Shrug. Ugh. Seeing Leia and Han blended in Ben with the Solo swagger, and Leia’s grace is fantastic.

Also: he looks so Soft. And so much younger.

I wonder if they’re communicating through the bond? He knows she can see him, because he nods at her to give him the saber. And unless I didn’t see correctly, she mouthed/whispered his name. And again, we see the connections between them in the fighting style. They’re still acting and reacting like extensions of each other.

The way they meet, the relief on their faces. Relief that melts into stubbornness and determination. Also, the way they take up their sabers in the same stance, the same expression. It’s delicious.

We were ROBBED of seeing the Jedi around Rey. ROBBED.

I’m STILL SALTY that they weren’t there for Ben (that we can see anyway).

Ben proceeded to completely shatter my heart. When he pulls Rey into his lap, he looks around like he’s waiting for someone to tell him what to do. He’s actively seeking guidance and help. And because we don’t have an in to Ben’s head, we don’t know if someone told him what to do or how to do it, or if anyone comforted him. But we do see his face go from disbelief to despair to acceptance.

The face touch. Stop breaking my damn heart.

When the Core ships arrive, I’m almost positive I saw The Razorcrest and the Ghost. I need to check the disc where I can pause it, but I’d put money on it that I saw them.

The way the trio grabs for each other at the end is more movie-shipping-OT3. Finn holding the two people he loves most in the world, right where he can see them. Poe taking Rey’s hand. They don’t know what happened in the Citadel, but I’m pretty sure Finn can feel how tired Rey is, how wounded she is. And they’re There For Her.

Rey burying the sabers on Tatooine has so many emotions attached to it. Tatooine, where Anakin Skywalker was born of the Force, where Luke spent his formative years. Luke and Leia resting together in the Force, as their student moves on and tries to find her way in the galaxy. And the parallels and tie ins from TFA to now, like Rey building a dual saber from parts of her quarterstaff, the sand sliding, and the OT callback to the protag being silhouetted by the twin suns, were satisfying.

Rey’s saber being yellow is something I find… interesting. If you look at the newer movies, whenever a blue or green saber crosses with a red one, the light sparks and blending of the plasma fields look yellow. And Kyber crystals (in the new canon) aren’t colored. They take on a color when the jedi awakes the force in them. So for her color to resonate yellow as someone balanced in light and dark makes a lot of sense.

I have… Opinions on the surname controversy that I’m still trying to sort through. And I definitely have Opinions on Ben sacrificing himself (mostly that the entire sequel trilogy spent two and a half movies harping on about balance only to kill off half the balance and leave a Force Wound in their protag)

***

Was Rise of Skywalker a good movie? Eh. That depends a lot on your criteria.

Was it a successful Star Wars movie? That also depends on your criteria.

But for me, it felt like Star Wars. It felt like an ending to the Skywalker saga. Did I get everything I wanted? No. Am I salty about parts of it? Absolutely. Are there plot holes I could drive a Death Star through? You betcha. Were we robbed of a better, more cohesive movie based on the leaks from JJ’s crew? YUP.

But I found things to enjoy. I got things I wanted (OT3! Force Sensitive Finn! Bendemption! Lando! Hope for the galaxy!), didn’t know I wanted (Master Leia! D-O the anxiety droid! Generals Finn and Poe!), and things I definitely didn’t want.

[we-are-what-they-grow-beyond]

some seriously self indulgent TROS thoughts that no one asked for: spoilers ahead!

(i’m gonna try tag every spoiler tag I can think of just in case anyone out there does care, but tbh this is really just for me lol)

the following is going to be a very ‘off the cuff’ series of ramblings so I apologise if it’s all over the place 

Overall.. I think I liked it? I left the cinema feeling euphoric, which is honestly all I wanted from ix. While there were very few immediate things that I took offence to as I was watching it [unlike TLJ] I have a bad feeling that some doubts about certain scenes and character choices are gonna creep into my brain in the next few days. Like the longer I think about it, the worse it’s gonna get.

The beginning was a mess. I think every single person who has seen it can agree on that much. There was so much exposition and heavy handed course correction from TLJ that it felt laboured and disjointed. The pacing was at this crazy breakneck speed.. we must have visited at least six different planets in the first fifteen minutes. I think that Poe’s ‘hyperdrive jumping’ [?] sequence really set the tone for the first act - just a constant barrage of different locations and characters.

And I understand that they had to do this. The events of TLJ left them no choice, they needed to establish every main character’s position [both physically and mentally], portray the current state of the war as well as rebuild a believable rapport between our core trio all within the first fifteen minutes if they wanted to give the last act any chance of sticking the landing. And to some extent I think they achieved this. In all that running around on different planets, bickering amongst the trio and the funny asides from Threepio - it really felt like something straight out of the OT. For the first time since TFA I cared about these characters. 

However. In doing this, they continually broke the cardinal rule of screenwriting; show don’t tell. While watching the first act I felt weighed down with information, like every five seconds another character would pop in with a monologue that sent them on another wild goose chase in which they had to find another hundred things that I would inevitably struggle to remember. ‘So now they need to go here, to see where Luke went, because he wanted to find this guy, who has this object, that will bring them to this other place, so that they can see Palpatine?’ It was so heavily reliant on dialogue alone that it ultimately lead to this sense of utter messiness. 

Where the film thrived was in it’s action set pieces. I adored the way the force was portrayed in this film. The scene in the desert in which Ben [yes Ben, but more on that later] and Rey pulled that First Order Transport out of the sky sent shivers down my spine. We have never seen the force used like this before and the amount of power Rey held was absolutely staggering. I loved it.

The saber battle on top of the Death Star was a visual highlight. Even though I felt like I’d seen most of it in TV Spots the urgency never went away. The moodiness of the water and mist cut through by the blue and red light was beautiful. 

The one shot of Poe, Finn and Chewie running through the Destroyer hallway felt like an echo back to everything that lies at the heart and soul of this saga.

We’ve been begging for more space battles and boy did we get a good one. When Lando and Chewie sauntered in on the Falcon with their thousands of rebel support ships set to the theme I was sobbing. There were so many little references in that one shot, from Rebels to Resistance to even Wedge Antilles - My heart swelled. 

But where I really broke was on Ahch-To. One of my biggest gripes with TLJ was its treatment of Luke. Every time I watch it again that shot of his submerged X wing infuriates me beyond measure as Johnson never chose to do anything with it [despite there being an obvious answer]. We finally got that scene in this film, the scene I was so desperate for; a callback to perhaps my favourite moment in the whole skywalker saga entangled with an apology for TLJ’s treatment of our favourite jedi master. Set to Yoda’s Theme, I felt like for a split second like I was watching Empire, and that meant the world to me. Thank you J.J.

The characterisation is perhaps the most divisive part of the film for me. It took so many risks, it’s going to take quite some time for me to properly digest them all. 

I want to start with our beloved Leia. The CGI, although perhaps not quite as seamless as some reviewers are making it out to be, worked well enough. With the knowledge of Carrie’s passing, it’s easy to poke holes in the performance - I found the beginning of her screen time particularly jarring, with her mostly addressing Rey with one word answers. I knew that there was supposed to be an emotional weight to all her scenes, as there she was, our princess, somehow miraculously on our screens for one final time. But I didn’t cry. I didn’t feel as if she was truly there in body or soul, and the emotional power of her scenes suffered as a result. Maybe in time, as we forget about the circumstances under which this film had to be made, this obvious detachment might fade away. And I sincerely hope it does, because the backstory they gave her is what truly deserves to be remembered about Leia in this film. The flashback scene of her training with Luke was glorious, the cgi really worked well here, and for the first time we saw Leia as a fully fledged jedi. This is something I could never ever have even imagined and I’m so pleased they did it, it would have meant so much to me as a young girl. As for her death, I believe they did the best they could with it. She ultimately died saving her son, protecting both the light and her family - two themes that have been so central to this entire forty two year saga. I don’t think they could have done much more. 

I was shocked to see Harrison in this, surprised isn't even the right word. But this bewilderment that I felt thankfully didn’t overshadow his integral role in the so called ‘Bendemption’ arc, in fact I think it really tied the whole thing together nicely. I have hated the idea of Kylo’s possible redemption since the moment we found out his true heritage during TFA, I thought it was too simple, too obvious. But the way in which it was dealt with here was wonderful. It showed Kylo to be entirely complex and ambiguous, and at the end of it we saw Ben for what he was, a young and vulnerable young man who ultimately made some terrible choices, the conflict in him was brilliantly acted. It was ultimately his parents that pulled him back to the light, not just Rey, and that fact alone saved this story arc for me. 

[I refuse to talk about the kiss. I hated it. It didn’t need to happen.]

Rey is a difficult one. Was the Palpatine bloodline convenient? Yes. Terribly so. Did it make sense story wise? Only kind of. But, I think it drew a definitive line under the nine film conflict which was ultimately at its core just Skywalker vs Palpatine, so in that sense I’m happy it happened in the way it did. 

[Sheev on an aesthetic level looked dreadful I thought. Proper rubbery. And the logistics of how he survived/who all those chanting followers were/where he got all those Imperial star destroyers from is extremely questionable. I try not to dwell on it.]

My mixed feelings about Finn and Poe cannot be overstated. The film did a good job at giving them more to do, we really got to see John and Oscar bounce off each other and at the end of the day, that is my kryptonite. However, Finn had little to no character development throughout the whole trilogy. All he did was figure out that he didn’t want to be aligned with the First Order anymore, deciding he wanted to fight for what is right. But the thing is, we saw him make that decision about ten minutes into TFA. It didn’t need to be rehashed again and again in every film. We wanted more - we wanted him to be force sensitive, we wanted him to form meaningful connections with others. On some level they delivered on that, we saw a little force sensitivity, he got his own back with Hux, he found his tribe in Jannah and the other deserters.. but it felt like an afterthought. Nothing was ever dwelled upon- even his confession to Rey [whatever it was] was completely forgotten about in the end. Finn as a whole felt like an afterthought. 

[Don’t even get me started on Rose, Kelly deserved so much more. I was embarrassed by the amount of screen time she had.]

As for Poe.. Oscar did a brilliant job in this, he successfully harkened back to our favourite scoundrel Han Solo stereotype and I felt that gave the trio’s dynamic a clear anchor. His interactions with both Finn, Threepio and Chewie as he kept crashing the falcon really made me laugh, it was nice to have some actual humour littered throughout, unlike the goofy slapstick stuff in TLJ. But.. the Zorii love interest and backstory made zero sense canonically. Zero. Aside from the ‘can i kiss you’ stuff being extremely contrived, there is physically no actual way Poe could have ever been a spice runner on this new planet that I can’t remember the name of. He lived on Yavin his whole life until he came of age to join the New Republic Navy, and from there Leia recruited him into the Resistance. This much has been documented in countless books and comics. J.J really decided to throw that all away so that they could what.. get that universal key thing? Did they even use it? Was there any other point of Zorii’s character other than that key? Not really. Don’t try to tell me that Kes and Shara’s son ran away from home to become a criminal for no reason. Just don’t. [He was still wearing Shara’s ring throughout and they didn’t do anything with it.. I wonder will we get more of an answer to this in the novelisation?]

[While I’m on the subject of the comics and novels, the decision to kill off Snap was brave. I really loved him in the comics and I’m sad he’s now gone and Karé is now alone. Not that any of that was mentioned but-]

Lando was used just the correct amount. I’m happy he got the ‘I have a bad feeling about this’ line, and I think any more screen time and we could have seen some holes in Billy’s performance. [sorry Billy]

Chewie had some great moments in this surprisingly. He was essentially just an extra in TLJ so it was quite refreshing to have him be a key player again. [I had forgotten about the clips from the trailer that showed him aboard the Destroyer, so when he ‘died’ I really thought he was dead for a moment and I was so angry that that was how he went lol.] But his reaction to Leia’s death was so touching and although it was a tad fan-servicey, I loved the fact that he finally got the medal he missed out on in ANH. It made me chuckle.

The same can be said of Anthony Daniels as C3PO and all of the other droids. I felt as though they really clawed them back into the mix this time - Threepio’s worrisome queries were wonderfully nostalgic and not to mention hilarious, and D-0 was a great new addition. The droids always brought a levity to star wars, it was their job, and they did this to great effect in this film. There was some questionable switching around of R2 and BB8 which I didn’t appreciate - there is absolutely no way that BB8 wouldn’t be Poe’s astromech for the battle against the Final Order but I’m willing to let it slide.. [also why was he on Tatooine with Rey at the end?]

It really sounds like I had more problems with this film than highlights, and I promise that’s not the case. In the end, it made me feel happy, like I was watching something akin to the OT again, and yes some parts of it were clumsy, but the heart of it was there. It all really comes down to whether or not you believe a film must be ‘good’ in order to be.. good. With something as big and sentimental as star wars I think it’s a lot more complicated than that. Return of the Jedi was an utter mess- but yet we all still worship it and the characters it gave us. Why can’t the same thing be said for TROS? It was clunky, but it was surprising, and powerful and fun. It gave us the characters we loved and some interesting new ones, some top-tier lightsaber battles and a conclusive ending to the saga that has defined so many lives. At the end of the day I think that’s all it needed to be. 

[him-e]

Hey! I love your analysis’ of Reylo. They’re my favorite. I have a loaded question (hopefully you’ve never been asked) — when do you think both Rey and Kylo became PHYSICALLY attracted to each other? And when do you think Rey became ROMANTICALLY attracted to Kylo, because I think we can all agree after killing Han Solo and their fight on Starkiller Base, she was, and rightly so, hostile and angry. Sorry if it’s a stupid question but you just seem to go really in depth with details. :)

ok so I noticed a very similar ask is already making the rounds on here, but since I started writing this post before I saw it, you’re getting mine too, yay. 

First: physical vs romantic can be a false binary. Some people don’t experience a difference in physical attraction vs romantic attraction. On a literary level, and especially in the context of a space opera/fairytale geared towards a young audience, the distinction might be entirely redundant: the two spheres coincide, as the sexual element is never explicit in fairytales, and the romantic interest is often a stand-in for both. You don’t get a point where the characters are “only” physically attracted to each other in this kind of stories.  

Second: going from hating someone to falling in love with said someone is a pretty standard romantic trope. It’s juicy, it’s sexy, and it’s all about CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. In enemies to lovers stories, the initial hatred is not an obstacle but part of the romantic build-up.Usually there isn’t “one” turning point where the relationship dramatically changes, but many. It’s a gradual evolution. 

With that said… I believe a degree of attraction was always there on both sides (Kylo’s side being a bit more self-evident than Rey’s, though Rey’s part is interesting as well, more on that later). The romantic feelings, on the other hand, are still a work in progress. They still haven’t acknowledged them. 

Let’s start with Kylo because it’s easier. 

1) Kylo is VERY attracted to Rey since the beginning.

Our boy is very transparent when it comes to Rey.He instinctively recognizes that there’s something special to this girl, and he’s drawn to her like a moth to a flame.

^ He looks her up and down. Adam emphasizes this gesture with a blatant head motion because he’s wearing a mask and he can’t be subtle about it. Which means he was probably asked to be unsubtle.

^ He gets in her personal space immediately after that. There’s really no need to be this close if he wanted to simply mind probe her. 

This is especially interesting because the way this scene is edited we don’t see how he got so close that he’s practically…what, sniffing her neck? Whispering in her ear? So I guess the final cut was rather toned down compared to the raw footage of this scene, and it’s for the better, since Rey is immobilized and terrified and in no position to give consent to this closeness. (tbh, I suspect he was originally meant to touch her or cup her face in this scene, and they cut it because they wanted to make sure that Kylo never touches her—aside from bridal carrying her into his ship. See also how he touches her during the interrogation in the tfa novelization but not in the movie. This is an excellent decision in my opinion. It’s crucial that Kylo doesn’t cross that boundary without Rey’s consent, so it makes it all the more poignant when he touches Rey’s outstretched hand in TLJ. Yeah, don’t tell me this wasn’t all planned.)

This attraction isn’t conscious on Kylo’s part—he seems to be completely clueless about it. Both Rey and Kylo are coded as very immature for their ages, both because they’re supposed to have a coming of age arc (which in true sw fashion overlaps with a hero’s journey), and because they’re emotionally stunted as neither had a “normal” adolescence (for different reasons).

^ more unnecessary closeness and he’s also blatantly looking at her lips and neck here. I won’t go in deep into the interrogation scene because there’s too much to dissect, but yeah, the whole thing is Kylo being ridiculously fascinated by Rey and not knowing what to do with it.

But this is also where he starts going deeper into her… ahem, poor choice of words, sorry. I mean he looks inside her mind and he’s enraptured. He sees her loneliness, her fear to leave the place where she’s bound in a forced state of childhood, he sees the island of her dreams—and her affection for Han, which immediately triggers a cascade of unpleasant feelings for him. In short, this is where he connects with her emotionally (although forcibly) and where it stops being just curiosity and attraction and becomes something more, on a deeper level than just the physical, for him.

(casual reminder that this is a space opera so yes, Kylo can see a kaleidoscope of Rey’s inner world and HOPELESSLY FALL IN LOVE WITH IT in the span of 2 minutes of mind probe. This isn’t to be taken literally.)

As she slips out of his grip just when he’s starting to know her, Kylo LOSES HIS SHIT. He gives in to a childish temper tantrum at the sight of her empty interrogation chair, and when she shows up again at Finn’s side, he sees red. This is very possessive/jealous coded behavior.

THEN REY SUMMONS THE LEGACY SABER AND HE’S LIKE:

^ Heart eyes, motherfucker. I think at this point our boy’s fallen HARD. He still doesn’t know, of course. But it’s clear that this moment—the whole duel with her—left a huge impression on him. Later in TLJ, he tells Rey that she has “that look in her eyes, from the forest”, which, wow, someone’s been thinking about Rey’s eyes A LOT and memorizing that particular expression and romanticizing the shit of of it.

Verdict: Kylo immediately finds Rey attractive but has probably no idea why he feels that way, and starts making a lot of irrational decisions in order to take her with him and make her stay. By the end of TFA, he’s already caught a variety of Feelings. They will only intensify in TLJ, but the foundation, both in physical and emotional terms, is already there.

2) Rey. Rey is more complicated because she’s our protagonist/main pov, she’s female—female attraction is depicted differently than male attraction—and most importantly she’s in a situation of disadvantage for most of TFA. Due to her limited agency she is forced to react rather than act, and she’s constantly in a fight or flight mode. 

This, of course, makes her (subtle) attraction hard to notice and problematic to discuss, but we’ll get there.

^ Her first reaction to a full masked Kylo Ren is blind terror (with reason: Kylo chases, immobilizes, and then threatens her with his lightsaber). But remember: per the novelization, “she has seen this man before. In a nightmare, in a dream”. This already introduces an element of ambiguity: why this distinction? Was the dream pleasant? Kylo is, at this stage, the physical manifestation of a shadow that seems to be haunting her (in her subconscious, but also in the force vision she had minutes before). It isn’t as much repulsive as it is scary. 

Soon enough, she starts conversing with the shadow. Once the initial terror fades, she regains composure and starts demanding answers, even as tied up to a chair as she is.

The unmasking is a crucial moment.

^ This is when Rey sees Ben’s face for the first time—the prince underneath the beast—and it confuses her. It’s where she loses her combative attitude and has to regroup for a minute. She blinks, she breathes in, her eyes wander across his figure.The novelization states that it’s because he looks so average (LOL, sure) and not monstrous at all, but beyond the surface reading, this already tells us that Rey took time to register Kylo’s facial features and find them strangely unthreatening–even familiar. She definitely doesn’t find him repulsive or odd-looking.

From this moment on, she has trouble looking at him. She’s constantly avoiding his eyes or stealing short glances at him—he turned from creature into man, and she’s suddenly hyperaware of his closeness and her restraints. (this is where most people feel uncomfortable with that scene, because it’s dripping with ambiguous tension). Then she finds Kylo in her mind, she fights back and locks eyes with him again, this time unafraid. She chooses to look into the monster and while she turns the tables on him, invading his mind, she finds herself “inexorably drawn to”… something. His fears? The novelization leaves this unsaid, but the choice of words is interesting. She’s not merely pushing him out, or defending herself anymore. She finds something that intrigues her in there. That draws her in.

This scene is where they truly reveal themselves to the other—Kylo’s humanity and weaknesses, and Rey’s powers and strength. It leaves them both shaking and bewildered. It’s a sort of initiation—for both. To each other’s force powers, but also to the attractive power each has on the other.

Then comes another turning point—Han’s murder, which Rey witnesses from a privileged perspective.

^ There’s a sort of softness, but also enrapture, in her expression here. She’s completely sucked into this scene, all but forgetting she could shoot Kylo from where she is and end this at any moment. No, what she’s seeing is another side of Han, but also another side of Kylo Ren.

It goes back to when she was first introduced to the story of Ben Solo.

See? Raptured. Camera zooming in on her face. Light spheres floating around her as Han tells her about the boy who destroyed it all. This is a magical moment, the cinematography is telling us. 

On some level, even before meeting him in person, she’s drawn to him. Remember, this is a fairytale.

By the forest scene Rey is horrified, angry, exhausted, grieving. In the span of two days she was forced to grow past childhood, cut her umbilical cord to Jakku, and enter a scary phase of transition into adulthood, which Kylo is, like it or not, a big part of. Now she’s seen him murder his own father—he is a monster with a human face, something that seems to enrage her even more. The following duel is more of a discovery of her own powers (and potential darkness) than it is about Kylo (whereas for Kylo it’s definitely about Rey), but in the end she can’t bring herself to kill him. Again, this tells us more about who Rey is and what is her inner conflict than it does about her relationship with Kylo but… it’s something. I think on an instinctual level, even at this early stage, she recognizes something in him that resonates with her. His loneliness, his anger, his misery perhaps.

Verdict: at the end of TFA, Rey is mostly angry and scared of Kylo. All her actions revolve around getting the hell out of dodge, keeping Kylo out of her mind, and punishing him for Han’s death. Understandably. 

But she’s also curious. This man confuses her. He shows up in her subconscious, and he’s inextricably linked to her understanding of the Force, and her first experiences with it. It’s a sort of imprinting.

TLJ is when the really meaty part begins for Rey. In broad terms, TFA was Kylo’s romantic/sexual awakening to Rey, and TLJ is Rey’s to Kylo.The peaceful, safe setting of Ahch-To and the fact that through the force bond they can communicate but NOT hurt or manipulate each other draws Rey out of her fight or flight mode, allowing her to explore on her terms Kylo’s character, and all the questions and doubts he arouses (heh) in her. 

In their first force bond interactions, Kylo is calm and collected. In the other scenes he’s had so far he’s a hot mess of boiling rage and hurt (just minutes before, he smashed his helmet and launched an attack to the Resistance in which he thinks his mother perished), but with this girl who slashed his face in half and left him bleeding like a pig in the snow, he’s quite the soft spoken gentleman, lol. I think he’s been thinking a lot about Rey, he came to terms with his fascination for her, and now he wants to make Rey think about him too. He tempts and taunts her, from a place of relative knowledge/wisdom (or so he thinks). Rey’s the one who is in emotional turmoil. 

^ Initially, she tries to stick to her feisty heroine script, and she still has a lot of genuine rage and disgust for him, but mostly she can’t make sense of him. She feels insecure in what she knows (not just about Kylo but also about Luke, the Force, her role in this, everything. Nobody is telling her anything!), so she overcompensates with knee-jerk aggression and a false display of confidence (”I know everything I need to know about you!”). 

She also calls him “murderous snake!!!!”, which is hilarious and very revealing. IDK about snake symbolism in the GFFA, but here on earth, and especially in western culture, snakes symbolize insidious seduction, and that’s certainly the authorial intent behind this choice of words. By saying this line, Rey is framed as the quintessential virtuous maiden trying to resist (sexual) temptation, that biblically goes hand in hand with knowledge—which is exactly what Kylo offers. 

On a subconscious level, I think she already recognizes Kylo as a seduction.

^ This is the first thing that throws her off balance. She was probably expecting some angry shitty warped-moral-compass rebuttal, instead he quietly agrees that he’s a monster, while also “coming into the light” to let her see his face better. To make her see him. During the whole conversation, and part of the following force bond scene as well, Kylo is almost morbidly insistent to share with her the details of his past (”Did he tell you what happened? Did he tell you why?”). He wants her to see him, ugly as he is (in a spiritual sense).  

At this point, Rey’s sexuality is GETTING ANSWERS AND FIGURING SHIT ABOUT HER ROLE IN THE FORCE. And Luke (the biblical “God” of the island) is giving her none of that, other than hippie lessons about how the Force is a superior power blah blah and you better not fuck with it blah blah don’t go in the dark wet hole and remember that the Jedi aren’t supposed to intervene in mundane shit, blah.

I actually think the deleted fish nun party scene is important to understand Rey’s state of mind entering the third, and crucial, force connection. The point of that lesson—at least the way Rey understands it—is teaching her inaction and second-guessing her instincts. Luke is projecting his own disillusionment on her. He’s telling her to stop believing in heroes, when what Rey actually needs is believing in herself as a hero. She comes out of it feeling more frustrated and humiliated than ever. Depressed, almost.

Kylo, instead, gives her answers. Not definite answers, but something that propels her into action. He tells her, “do this and this in order to become the person you’re meant to be”. He strokes her ego. He talks about her destiny. He echoes and validates her suppressed anger and frustration. He digs up a painful truth about her family, and encourages her to face it. Even as she demands to know the reason he murdered his father, he makes it all about her. First, he made her see him; now he’s making her see herself through his eyes.

And, of course, he’s half naked through the entire thing. This is the first time Rey is confronted with something textually (as in, not simply existing in the subtext) sexual. The shirtlessness is obviously here for a meta reason too (to loudly communicate the romantic undertones of the dynamic, to symbolically strip Kylo of his layers, and to give the audience an eye candy) but even Rey the character is aware that this has to do with sex, someway. 

^ That’s why she stutters and averts her eyes. This is the unmasking 2.0, only this time the sexual implications are in the forefront. In a pg-13 format, of course, but still largely readable even for children.

This is where Rey starts wondering if they could actually touch. Gee, what a coincidence. 

The shirtless scene is a huge turning point where the romantic build up becomes, for a short while, glaringly sexual. It would be easy to say that this is when Rey’s physical attraction is born, but that’s an oversimplification. Everything in this movie and in the movie before has been building to this. Kylo Ren has been at the forefront of Rey’s thoughts since Starkiller. She has a powerful psychic connection to him, talked about him with Luke, wondered about the reasons of his patricide, questioned his backstory, exercised frantically to blow off the steam of their encounters. 

This isn’t when Rey first begins to feel attraction to Kylo—it’s where she’s first faced with the reality of it, and us with her.

And facing this reality is, in part, what prompts her to go into the dark side cave—the one the older male authority figure forbade her from going, the one in which she already subconsciously expects to walk a threshold. The threshold of knowing what happened to her parents, the question that she’s been avoiding for so long, that kept her bound to Jakku, to a version of herself who never grew up past childhood because growing up would make the years and years of abandonment painfully real, rather than just notches on a wall.

The cave scene has all the markings of an archetypal rite of passage into adulthood (and womanhood). The water, the near-drowning experience, the visions, the multiple selves, the mirror. Rey goes into it fully understanding that however it goes, it will imply a loss of innocence. Thematically, it’s a direct continuation of the other loss of innocence she’s just experienced—the sexual one, with Kylo.

Rey doesn’t get the answer she hoped for, but one that forces her to mature and come into her adult self—it’s time to take responsibility and be the hero of her own story, because the adults she were waiting for are nowhere in sight. So she comes out of the cave as more mature… but also desperate for human connection. Or rather, for connection to a specific someone. She feels “relief” when she senses Kylo’s presence in the Force inside the hut. 

And when she sees him, she thinks again of touching him.

In the movie we don’t get how the conversation started, and the novelization doesn’t delve into details either, and boy what would I pay to know what sparked Rey’s confession. But we can imagine. By this point, Rey already feels a kinship with Kylo, and her distrust and skepticism for him has eroded. She sees her own loneliness in him. She feels they were both betrayed by parental figures on some level. She’s made the mental connection that if Vader was brought back, then Ben could be too, by someone who loves him. Their force connections have been strange but they also gave her the chance to discuss stuff she would have otherwise bottled up. He’s physically attractive to her. He doesn’t judge her for going into the darkness. And when he tells her what she needs to hear the most—that she’s not alone—she makes that leap and reaches out to touch him.

It’s an olive branch, a comforting gesture towards someone she feels is just alone as she is, but it’s physical contact she seeks. She could have offered her sympathy in any other way, yet she chose to reach for his hand. Remember, she’s been thinking about touching him for a while already.

Kylo, after a moment of confusion, responds by taking off his glove. This is such a loaded gesture in terms of its romantic/sexual meaning that I’m still in shock it actually happened. He’s baring himself to her, so that this contact happens without barriers. His skin is not covered in first order leather when he touches hers. This is the real him.

^ And then they have their visions of the future, and that One Perfect Tear falls down Rey’s cheek and Luke blows up the hut and this is where my analysis can stop because by this point it’s completely obvious that our girl has FALLEN HARD, and since she’s the *shoot first, ask later* type, she hops on the Falcon to get her boy back before she can admit to herself she’s stupidly in love with him.

Rey saw a vision of herself with Ben Solo at her side, and she’s so blinded by the beauty of it that making it happen as fast as possible becomes her number one priority.

But feelings for someone don’t change overnight so radically. If she’s so massively affected by that vision, it’s only because her romantic attraction for Kylo has been building up at a consistent pace since the start of the movie, getting her to a point where she spontaneously sought an intimacy with him.

It’s the same for Kylo. Rey literally ships herself to him, but he’s no less reckless than she is in barreling into this promise of a future idyll. When Rey gets on the Supremacy, he already knows this has to end with Snoke’s death somehow. He doesn’t know how to do it, but he will. He will sacrifice his master to be with her, just as she did.

If you asked either of them if they’re in love with each other, I bet they would stare at you with uncomprehending eyes—it’s like they lack the basic lexicon to understand their feelings, let alone verbalize them. So Rey’s like “save the fleet because it’s the morally right thing to do!”, and Ben’s like “join me to rule the galaxy!”, and they’re both like, “you’ll stand with me!”. They’re trying to express the love they already feel but they’re doing it in non-romantic terms, because that’s all they know.

(gifs are credited with the “ ^ “ - click on it and reblog the op!)

[pacificwanderer]

Super Salacious B. Crumb Sunday Headcanons!

Here’s my weekly roundup of headcanons and other fun stuff. Send me your happy SW thoughts if you’re interested in having a little fun with me (either anon, or off, whatever you’d like). This week, we’ve got some rumors and spoiler head canons, some speculation about Ben’s role if and when he leaves the FO, and more!

What amuses me the most about the supposed 0G scene is that everyone assumes it will be a Rey vs Kylo scene and no one ever thinks what if it is Kylo vs KoR for example? Or the supposed bounty hunter Keri is playing? ;) those two options would make that scene soo much more interesting than just another rematch between Rey and Kylo, they will have one of course, they need to 'talk' and clear a lot of things, but i see that happening on the ground ;)

I’m on the fence concerning a rematch between Kylo and Rey. On the one hand, lightsaber battles are cool af and I get why people would be down for a rematch, on the other, I have a really hard time seeing them fight each other. Like, you’re telling me Mr. Holding you on the edge of a cliff and imploring you to be his student is going to be hardcore into fighting the girl he cries a lot over? I just... Have a hard time with it. And similarly, you’re telling me Ms. Shipped myself into enemy territory after crying over you, prettying myself up, fighting for you, and then crying some more about you is going to be super into it too? ReallYYYY? Lol I mean, people can imagine/headcanon/want whatever, but this is what I struggle with. But I feel you, nonnie, lol I see most of their “discussions” being on the ground naked. I’d love to see Keri kick some ass in 0Gs, so I’m down for that too! OO kick some KoR ass! Lol.

Cheers!

What plot do you think can involve poe finishing at the same time than 3po? Friend told me that just that day Joonas was returning to work, and then the next week was it R2 or BB who finished? So the last ones standing to the last day were Ben, Rey, Finn, Rose, Chewie and maybe Naomi's character, double date and chaperones?

Depends, Nonnie. There wasn’t much seen of Oscar on set after Jordan, so if they were doing some sort of pick up, or out of sequence shooting, it could be from anywhere. According to Oscar, he and Anthony had a lot of scenes together, so it’s possible they were finishing up whatever work they needed to film for 3PO and Poe.

Hi! So it's pretty common to compare Rey and Kylo to Beauty and the Beast, but I just realized something -- in Disney Channel's "Descendents", the son of Belle and Beast is also named Ben so... coincidence??

Haha, probably? I mean, Harrison’s son is also named Ben and, iirc, there was a name switch at some point, possibly with his input. Though, it also does tie into “Ben Kenobi,” aka, the reason Ben’s parents got together in the first place. But that is a fun coincidence!

What do you think Ben will do after he leaves the FO? Because I doubt he’ll go to the Resistance even though Rey is there. Even if Rey leaves the Resistance, I’m not sure if he will go to her since maybe he’ll think she would not want anything to do with him. Also do you think Rey understands or realizes that maybe the one of the reasons why he would not go to the Resistance is because maybe he thinks they would not accept him or they will persecute him? (A lot of ‘maybes’, sorry)

I don’t see him joining the Resistance either, Nonnie. I don’t see him dumping one cause only to take up another (and one that he seems to have a problem with, if his opinion concerning senators and the New Republic is anything to go by). I think his journey, like Rey’s, is with the Force and not so much being a part of the Resistance. They will bring balance and peace in their own storyline, while characters like Finn, Rose, and Poe (among others) will work towards their goals. I don’t really think that Rey will be that present in the Resistance, either, but I think their Force connection will help fill in the gaps between where they were and where they currently are at. These two need time and to talk to resolve their issues, and to take steps towards claiming their own happy endings, whether that’s together or not (though I think it will be together).

I think that Ben also thinks that the reason Rey didn’t killed him when he was unconscious was because she is a good person so it’s natural for her to show mercy but he doesn’t give thought that she also ultimately wants to be with him as a partner and lover. And Rey will probably think that she isn’t a good person but a selfish one because she went to Ben wanting him to leave with her not solely because it’s for the Resistance but because she wants him.

I think you’re onto something, Nonnie. I agree that their issues right now come from the fact that, instead of talking to each other about what they saw and what they want, they jumped to conclusions and made assumptions (that they both saw and wanted the same things, when they clearly didn’t). I think that, once they sit down and talk through their issues, it’ll be gravy.

How long do you think Ben will last as the Supreme Leader in IX? Do you think it will last until the 2nd act? Or he will be out of the FO very early on? Because based from the leaks, it seems his reign will last longer...? I am not so sure

For a hot minute lol. Someone on twitter stated that Ben had to become the Supreme Leader in order to realize that was never what he really wanted. And even Leia, in the Bloodlines novel, says that she doesn’t think Ben would be interested in retaining a title (as prince), which I think is true. I don’t see that much of his story taking place outside of what’s going on with Rey, but that’s just my speculation. I think he’s been told for so long what his destiny is meant to be that he’s never actually had a moment to sit and consider what he wants. It’ll be interesting to see what happens concerning this and the conclusions he draws in EPIX.

I am pretty sure that if Rey and Ben do reconcile and she sees that he finally becoming more balance like letting the light in and being more Ben Solo, she’ll defend him even against the Resistance if they are hell bent on killing him. If they give her the choice to either kill him and stay with them or be kicked out and marked as a threat for fraternizing with the enemy, she’ll gladly leave them.

I agree, Nonnie. I think a great aspect of Rey’s character (and one that, incidentally, Padme also shares), is her willingness to believe the best about people, but also the fact that she’s not afraid to call them on their bullshit. I agree that, if she sees him taking real strides towards righting the wrongs that he’s committed/coming to the Light, etc, she’ll go to the ends of the galaxy and back again to keep him safe. I’m interested to see how their Force Bond plays out once people in the Resistance know about it and whether that causes any tensions within the organization (I HOPE IT DOES MWAHAHA).

I am not afraid of discourse after what we went through in pre-TLJ days. Of course they are going to try to continue to sale Rey Finn and Poe as the trio just as they did with both TFA and TLJ to try unsuccessfully hide what truly is going on. We do know at some point in the film Rey goes off on her own for some reason. Personally, I think it only PARTLY has something to do with trying to hide her bond to Ben. Imagine how awkward it must be for her? lol. Looks like she's talking to herself.

Haha man, do I ever want the fanon thing where Rey is talking to Kylo with their bond and then someone walks in and sees like her or him talking to thin air LOL. I wonder if anyone else can see it? Doesn’t seem to be the case, if Luke’s reaction on Ahch-To is any indication. I definitely think her bond/and the scar she got defending him, will be some source of drama in EPIX and I can’t wait!

Cheers all! Thanks for chatting about SW with me and for your input!

[queenofcarrots]

Pick your top 10 ships without reading the questions. [or if you’re a one ship dedicated blog, feel free to answer all of them for just that one, or do all the ships from one fandom, this is just for fun] 

Thank you @lilithenaltum for tagging me!

ed. I just picked five

1. Finnreylo (Rey x Finn x Kylo) [also 6]

2. Finnlo (Finn x Kylo) [also 7]

3. Reylo (Rey x Kylo) [also 8]

4. FinnRosePoe (Finn x Rose x Poe) [also 9]

5. Tasertricks (Loki x Darcy Lewis) [also 10]

Now answer the questions so your followers can learn a bit more about your ships

Do you remember the episode/chapter/scene where you first started shipping 6?

[Finnreylo] I always loved the dynamic among those three coming out of TFA, it was probably the lightsaber duel on Starkiller that did it to me.

What’s your favourite fanfiction for 4? 

[Finnrosepoe] I don’t actually know if there is FinnRosePoe on their own, they are usually background in Reylo fics. That said I love them in Let’s Get Together

What’s your favourite fan art/picture for 2?

[Finnlo] TOO MANY TO CHOOSE FROM. I cannot possibly pick just one. 

What’s your favourite headcanon for 1? 

[Finnreylo] They are all broken/damaged in different ways, and they support each other completely and just love each other so much, they are able to work through everything life throws at them even when it’s really hard.

What do you like most about the dynamic between the people of 7? 

[Finnlo] (Fanon, not canon): They’re both so soft, and Finn is supportive, and Kylo just worships the ground Finn walks on. 

When 9 have sex is it more giggly or more serious? 

[Finnrose poe] Those kids giggle all the time all the time whether they are having sex or not.

Out of all the ships who do you think have the best chemistry? 

Kylo and Finn, both by themselves and within the context of Finnreylo

Which ship has the strongest bond?

Reylo, they have a literal Force bond in canon.

Which ship do you spend the most time reading fanfiction for/talking/writing about?

Finnreylo, she is the queen of ships and I love her the best.

Which one was your first ship? 

Tasertricks!

If 6 were to break up, how would it happen?

[Finnreylo] It would happen because Kylo was being a butt. He would leave and Rey and Finn would stay together but they would be miserable without him.

Between 3 and 8, who would last the longest if they were in a zombie apocalypse?

LOL the way I’ve done this, they are both Reylo. 

Does 7 hide their relationship, and if so, why?

[Finnlo] In canon they do, because of the whole “Supreme Leader being with the lowly Stormtrooper” problem.

What is 9′s favourite date to go on? 

[FinnRosePoe] Disney World!

What’s your favourite canon moment between 10? 

[Tasertricks] They literally never meet in canon, talk about a lost opportunity

What do 5 argue most about?

[Tasertricks] Loki wants to be naughty and Darcy has to hold him back

If you had to pick an OTP which would you chose? 

Finnreylo it’s not even particularly close

What’s the biggest kink that 1 shares? 

[Finnreylo] D/s, Kylo is a big ol’ sub and Finn and Rey take turns domming him.

Do 8 want children?

[Reylo] Absolutely.

Between 10 and 4, which would you rather became canon? 

Tasertricks vs. FinnRosePoe, I choose Tasertricks

Does 2 do much PDA? And does it annoy their friends? 

They are all over each other all the time and everybody thinks it’s cute.

Which of the ships would you say is the most romantic with each other?

Finnreylo and Finnlo, I think.

How would the proposal between 5 go?

[Tasertricks] Loki would propose and Darcy would think he was joking and she’d get annoyed, and then he’d be sad because she’s not taking him seriously, but it would work out in the end.

Who cooks more often in 3? 

[Reylo] Kylo, definitely. I don’t think Rey can cook at all, and she’s not picky, so when she does cook it’s not really good.

I’m tagging @lovethemfiercely and @valsansretour and @gamebird and @doing-talking and @skiplo-wave and @toxiclightsabr - no pressure!!

[kyluxtrashpit]

Okay so this started as an addition to @sinningsquire‘s recent post and the subsequent discussion but then it kinda took on a life of its own and then it got REALLY STUPIDLY LONG so I’m going to avoid cluttering the notes and just put my ramble here on my own blog lmao. Anyone is free to disagree, this is just me being inspired by the discussion and adding some thoughts, but this is also how the characters come across to me and I’m unlikely to change my mind at this point. Also I’m putting it behind a cut, but if you’re on mobile, I am so fucking sorry omg. Go filter ‘long post’, refresh, and then you’ll be okay

So the thing about Kylo and Hux that I keep coming back to years into this ship is that they’re complimentary opposites, which I think this is another example of. While I am on team ‘Kylo is going to be bad at Supreme Leadering’, I don’t think that necessarily means he’s bad at all leadership and military-related things ever. Because he’s not, it’s just that what he’s good at vs what Hux is good at are different things and there’s more to Supreme Leadering than a military operation

(Opinions lie beyond here! Read at your own discretion!)

First, I will say I’m basing more of this on TFA’s considerations than TLJ’s because TLJ suffers from Good Guys Need To Win syndrome really badly and that was honestly my biggest complaint about it, even immediately after coming out of the theatre. This is far from a rare occurrence and many sw villains have been essentially neutered by this (e.g. Thrawn in Rebels; one of the greatest Imperial strategists sort of succeeding like once ever and otherwise being repeatedly outsmarted by a child for most of the series). Hux was the most obvious victim of it (tbh I don’t think Kylo was ooc at all in TLJ), but I also think Snoke got hit a little too. Basically RJ painted the Resistance into such a tight corner that the only way he could get them out was to make the FO, which had apparently just recently claimed a big victory, look like complete morons

Personally, I’ve headcanoned Hux being useless in TLJ as a result of his repressed post-Starkiller breakdown. He just lost his life’s work and his boss physically abused him in public over it at least once, so it adds up, for me. Thus most of this comes from TFA and the pre-TLJ novelizations. But anyways. I’ll say now if you’re hard on the useless Hux train, you’ll probably disagree with every point below here lmao

So the thing about Kylo is that he seems good at small-scale operations. Give him a single squadron or a small group (e.g. his Knights) and I think he can get the thing done effectively, provided his emotional state remains stable (which, with him, is a pretty big concern). As some pointed out in the notes on the post that inspired this, he does do alright on Takodana. The mistake he makes is in taking the unknown quantity that is Rey as opposed to the known quantity that is BB-8, though in his defence, there’s no way he could’ve known just how badly that would go. And perhaps he did so partially because the Resistance had arrived and he didn’t have time to find BB-8 before it got messy when she was right there, so I’ll give him that one. He does make some other strategic mistakes, such as in the snow fight when he makes the mistake of underestimating and toying with Finn, but perhaps we can chock that up to his emotional state, him actively bleeding out at the time, and the fact that everyone seems to underestimate Finn. Still, I think he’s largely successful at small-scale stuff, as long as he’s relatively calm (note: he is not calm nor successful for the entirety of TLJ, aside from killing Snoke, which he had help with in the form of a distraction , so I won’t really go into it. It is the most cunning we see from him in any piece of SW media, but it appears to me to be an outlying example. It’s also the only time he’s ever managed to succeed at something he set out to do, aside from killing Han, which was only emotionally difficult, not mechanically so. But anyways)

As an aside, I also don’t think the main argument of Kylo’s family is enough of a claim to show he’s a good leader. Some go so far as to suggest leadership is genetic by discussing Padme, Anakin (who was Not Great, but did succeed sometimes), etc. but that’s not a thing so I’m not going to. He could have studied them, and maybe he did, but it’s not ‘in his blood’. Leia may have exposed him to some politics, but it’s hard to say. Last Shot suggests he spent most of his time with Han when he was little and we don’t know how young he was when he went to Luke, where he would’ve seen nothing. He could’ve been sent away at 5-6 and never even seen the Senate, or Leia could’ve brought him to Senate meetings regularly so he could learn until he was sent away at 15 or something, but as of now, there’s no proof either way. I mention this because of its popularity, but I don’t personally find the argument convincing either way and I don’t believe we know enough to say for sure

Now Hux, Hux is good at large-scale operations. He’s in charge of the Stormtrooper program, which he adapted from previous methods and has had exactly one aberration slip through the cracks ever. He commands the Finalizer and was chosen to work at the same level as Snoke’s personal apprentice, the two of them sharing second-in-command to Snoke (who appears to do fuck all). He’s also in charge of Starkiller and though there is some debate as to how involved he was with it, he certainly oversaw its construction and usage. Lastly, he also oversees the FO’s entire suite of technological advancement projects, according to TLJ. So Hux already has a lot on his plate that he’s managing and appears to be doing at least reasonably well at these things. Hux can command and organize and I don’t think anyone can dispute that

In terms of flaws, he fails to stop Finn and Poe from escaping partially because Poe is That Good and partially because he overcomplicates it, which tends to be the flaw of all big-picture thinkers (also, some luck on their side, considering they both survived the crash. iirc Poe didn’t in the original script, but Oscar asked JJ to please not make him die this time. So perhaps a bit of Good Guys Need To Win too). Small-scale fucks him up because he makes mountains out of molehills and that’s where he’s weakest, as seen also when Poe comes in with a single ship in TLJ, with the chase of the Raddus, etc. He’s capable of running large-scale operations, as I mentioned above, and while there’s debate on whether or not he’s a good strategist, I tend to lean towards ‘a bit above average’ for no other reason than it feels right to me, but there isn’t really any definitive evidence either way. He is also arguably the least responsible for Starkiller’s destruction; yes, there was a weak point, but it was shielded well and unavoidable to have. Phasma lowering the shields and Kylo not finding the explosives due to family problems are both more responsible than he is, imo

(Hux’s other fatal flaw is his underestimation and low opinion of the Force, which will most likely be what kills him regardless of how things play out, but that’s not terribly relevant to this discussion so)

So, with all that in mind: Supreme Leadering. What does that actually entail? Well, it is large-scale, which gives Hux the advantage based on my arguments, and even if we accept he is completely useless at strategy, there’s just so much more to it than that. The Order is now in control of the galaxy at large and needs to manage it, something Snoke most likely would have delegated based on what little we know of him. There’s making and maintaining trade routes, there’s managing supply lines, there’s bureaucracy, there’s the prioritizing of projects, there’s lawmaking, there’s the managing of staff, citizens, etc. This is essentially nation building we’re talking about here, except on a galactic scale. It’s complex, it’s tedious, and it is a massive undertaking, the kind of thing that Hux seems like the type to masturbate thinking about, given how he appears to thrive when taking care of large projects and also his power fantasies

And when it comes to Kylo? The thing is is that even if he could do it well, even if he could look at the big picture and effectively manage people and all of it, I don’t think he cares to

So not only do I think Kylo is ill-suited to something that large, as I originally discussed, I more importantly think he would hate it. Kylo hating paperwork may be fanon, to my knowledge, but it’s one of those things that no one ever really contests because it fits his character. Kylo is not patient. Kylo does not care about the bigger picture. Kylo is self-centered, as in he is focused only on his own interests, not those of anyone around him, even within an organization he claims to support. “Personal interests”, anyone?

In the TFA novel, it’s noted that Hux refrains from yelling at his staff even when he wants to because he knows it will only stress them out and make them sloppy. Kylo is known to violently attack those under him when he’s upset. So even if Kylo has the troops’ fear, Hux has their loyalty (the TLJ novel disagrees with some of this, most notably concerning the older Imperials, but tbh I doubt JJ is taking that anywhere so I’m ignoring it for now. They’re relics of a dying age, anyways. If I end up being wrong, though, I will adjust haha). Pablo Hidalgo explained on his now-defunct twitter, when asked why Kylo didn’t just rip the location of the Resistance base from Poe’s mind, that the reasoning is that he only wanted the map; the Resistance was Hux’s problem. This is in spite of the fact that the Resistance is the FO’s problem in general and Kylo is not only part of the FO, but a high-ranking member. There is also the failure on Crait, which was legitimately embarrassing, and while, yes, that was largely due to his emotional state, Kylo is in a state of emotional crisis for most of his screentime. So, not exactly a great defending argument. I also strongly suspect that will be a continuing trend with him until his inevitable death and/or redemption

These are not signs of a good leader. I also can’t see Kylo suddenly being interested in building a government, even if he could do it. Because he’s going to be focused on getting revenge on Rey for rejecting him, eliminating any fledgling Jedi Order she may or may not be attempting to make, and possibly a plot with his mother. Kylo’s motives have not and do not align with building a nation and at no point does he even seem to care about that in any capacity that involves actually doing something about it

So. This got really long but the main points here are that Supreme Leadering and military strategy are different skills, Hux and Kylo are good at different things (large-scale vs small-scale), and that even if Kylo could Supreme Leader effectively, he most likely doesn’t care to meanwhile Hux seems like he’d actually be pretty good at it (and, even if you think he wouldn’t be, at least he gives a fuck). So uh, yeah. There’s my significantly more than 2 cents and if you actually read this whole thing, then applause for you because it’s longer than the last fic I posted XD

[emperorren]

what do you think our odds of seeing celibate/solitary endgame rey for ix are, vs (as in the ship is definitively romantic) vs f/nnr/y endgame (as in the ship is definitively romantic) vs po/r/y endgame vs reylo endgame (as in the ship is definitively romantic)? i'm not asking out of shipping anxiety or whatever, but i'm putting together a betting pool for my sw group and i wanted to gauge probability from a reylo meta writer as a component, hope that's ok

celibate/solitary endgame Rey for ix: relatively high if Kylo dies/goes on exile/is otherwise unavailable to be with her (though not necessarily high in an absolute sense, since I do believe in a reylo endgame, see below).

f/re/y endgame: pretty much nihil. Finnrose is canon as fuck, and unless they dispose of Rose in an ugly way ( = fridging her, which, ewww), retcon Finn’s feelings for Rose, retcon Rey’s feelings for Kylo, and spend the entire final movie making up for the fact that F and R didn’t interact at all in the second installment of the trilogy, f/re/y’s chances are practically non existent at this point.

re/yp/oe endgame: ditto. Poe’s arc—if he even has one—so far hasn’t had a romantic focus, and his relationship with Rey is sooooooo important in the grand scheme of things that they made them meet at the end of TFA, then deleted the scene, then repeated the scene at the end of TLJ and it’s just a couple lines exchange. If it happens, it will be completely pulled out of thin air since there’s absolutely zero build up for it, and it will feel like a plan B romance. Best case scenario for this ship, though still abundantly unlikely, is that Poe will be played as /the other guy/ to give Rey a token romantic alternative to Kylo and create some extra conflict, as it’s generally the case with love triangles(and a “safe” option for Rey to end up with if Kylo’s arc goes the tragic route), but there’s zero build up for that as well.

reylo endgame: very high. Like 85% likely. (it’s already definitely romantic, btw)