#Leia is literally one of the last people left from Alderaan and there is not enough talking about that

[thelesbianthespianposts]

Luke skywalker would not perform Nabooian rituals

Leia Organa would not perform Nabooian rituals

neither of them were born on naboo. Neither of them were raised with Nabooian culture. Why is it so hard to see people representing their upbringing as it was.

Show Luke making a recipe he learned from Beru, or Leia knowing a lot about alderaanian history. Something like that

[smallblueandloud]

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 for the writing ask- I AM SO SORRY I COULDNT STOP!!! xoxo

aaaah these questions look SO GOOD thank you so much <3 <3 for this ask meme, which will be open all weekend!

1. tell us about your current project(s)  – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

i pulled open all of my WIP google docs for this and my laptop started whirring ominously, lmao. this is going to be a Little Long but i love talking about my wips so who cares!! (under the cut because EXCERPTS)

guys and dolls but gay - very, very casual rewrite of guys and dolls if sky masterson was a woman. i’m loving how chill i’m being about this one because it’s so much fun to not have to worry how i’m going to write lyrics in a not-weird way and just focus on the story. this one’s first because it’s theoretically closest to being finished.

sky, laughing: “oh? people. all the people you turn down every day. well, i imagine there’s someone out there that’ll catch your eye.”

sarah, stiffening: “...yes, there will be.”

sky: “and what might this person be like?”

sarah: “he will not be a gambler, for one.”

sky does not miss the pointed pronoun. “i’m not interested in what he won’t be, i’m interested in what he will be.” she sits down on the desk, in a pointedly masculine pose, and sets her fedora next to her - at her most Hot Queer, basically. “how will you know when he gets to you?”

my fic for the aos rarepair fic exchange - i can’t give any plot or ship details, for obvious reasons, but it’s 1.3k and i’m having fun with it!

steven roadtrip of destiny - canon divergent fic set at the end of steven universe future where steven goes on a roadtrip instead of... canon. it deals with some heavy emotions and it’s also a character study so it’s tentatively shelved until i get around to rewatching suf. but i am projecting on steven like crazy and it’s really, really cathartic. it’s taught me a lot about myself too lmao.

He’s never been anonymous before. He kind of likes it. It means he can fold his arms on the table and put his head down without Pearl worrying about his posture, or someone asking him if something’s okay.

In the last few months, he’s grown to hate people asking him how he’s doing, or if he’s okay. He always ends up lying, because he doesn’t want to worry them, and he ends up feeling worse.

Probably because it’s more of him supporting other people without supporting himself.

He should have told someone how he was feeling. He should have reached out. Sadie could’ve helped him. Lars would’ve listened. Connie would have hugged him and then found him the appropriate mental health professional.

(God, Steven wants a hug. Also the appropriate mental health professional? Whoever that would be.)

untitled aos fic - i don’t want to give a lot of details because :eye emoji: and also i don’t know much about what the plot of this is going to be anyway, lmao. but here’s an excerpt:

daisy “that actor who doesn’t shut up about data harvesting” johnson (@daisyquake) tweeted: two weeks :eyes emoji:

Elena Rodriguez | Seven Cents S2 Streaming On Netflix Now! (@yoyorodriguez) retweeted and added: the problem with being friends with daisy is that you SHOULD have some insight into what her tweets mean but you still have no idea

Fitz (@justfitz) retweeted and added: Try being married to her

untitled star wars twins fic - because i am a total and massive nerd. i’m just kind of stuffing everything i have feels about from the post-anh era into this and planning on figuring it out later? i’m really loving talking about the culture of alderaan (and the culture of the survivors) and also i just love writing luke and leia’s relationship... so much......

(no excerpt for that one because i’ve basically posted all of it in various posts lmao)

aos ds9 au - i’ve posted a LOT about this already and i want to keep the plot a surprise but fsk is in this and married and half the cast is aliens, what else do you need in life.

“Good morning,” says Jemma, coming into the room with her hair wet and her uniform crooked. “Hello, darling.”

“Hi,” says Daisy, turning her face up for a kiss. Jemma obliges absently as she walks past, looking around the room.

“Has anyone seen my hair clip?”

“No,” say Fitz and Daisy in unison.

and of course, last but never least in my heart, chapter 3 of the magnum opus - writing this is on hold until my brain decides to stop hitting me over the head at every possible moment, but there’s like... 2k written so far? it’s. it’s going.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Coulson, and makes quick work of the right gauntlet. It’s only halfway through the left one that his fingers slow and he says, quietly, “Simmons designed these, didn’t she?”

She lets out a quick breath. “Yeah.”

He stays quiet for a few more seconds, finishing up the last of the straps, making sure they’re tight enough. Finally, he says, “She should be helping you with these.”

Daisy pulls her arms back and swallows down some words, or maybe a couple of feelings, or maybe a sob. “Yeah, well.”

2. tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project

the last sentence of the magnum opus!!!!!!!!!!

no, lmao, i’m gonna try to be serious. i really, really want to write some librarians fic in the near future? also MORE OF THE SENSE8 AU. i’m DYING to write some stuff about that. especially sam’s cluster, for some reason? Let’s Make Him Suffer (Comedically)! one day i’m gonna finish that list of what cluster/situation each song is about and then it’ll be over for all of us!

3. what is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

i spent about eight months imagining a scene where riza hawkeye was really injured and mustang was holding her in his arms (basically the promised day scene but with more privacy) so does that count?

hmm, just for some other possibilities: glinda telling dorothy about elphaba, laura somehow seeing or speaking to natasha during catws, a good omens au of the good place (specifically the ”i don’t even like you!” / “you doooooooo” scene), kencyrath au of star wars (ESPECIALLY THIS ONE, except setting up the first scene alone would take 7k, but i want to talk about leia and luke and their MESSED UP TRUST ISSUES in this au).

oh, also, something about star trek tng where jean-luc and beverly and jack were in love and then jack died and picard left. more specifically a scene set during the pilot episode where jean-luc very cordially offers beverly the option to transfer off the enterprise, that he wouldn’t dream of holding it against her, and beverly very cordially telling jean-luc to go fuck himself. i want to write 30k of that broken triad. i want it so bad. i dream of that fic. maybe one day when i find myself with a completely empty month or two, i’ll binge all of tng and Write Some Stuff.

4. share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)

since you and i have tww in common, i’m gonna do a tww fic! otherwise i’d have to reread literally every fic i’ve ever written, lmao.

(this is long but i put this post under the cut so i have RIGHTS. also consider this a sneak peek for the j/d fic in the sense8 au?)

“It’s okay,” says Helen. She sits for a moment in silence, seeming thoughtful. “The Congressman and I are in the same cluster,” she says eventually. “I’d- I supposed that’s easier on the Secret Service?”

“Yes,” says Donna. “The-”

She stops herself from saying anything further. President Bartlet and the First Lady aren’t exactly quiet about who’s in their cluster, especially with senior staff, but that doesn’t mean she should go talking about it in an unsecured room in LA, of all places.

To cover for her blunder, she gives up something else: “The same with Josh. They got really lucky with him, actually. It’s just him and me, so they won’t have to worry about anyone threatening the Chief of Staff through the barista in the local Starbucks.”

Helen looks up from the Ohio numbers she’d drifted back to, a slow smile creeping up on her face. “Josh is in your cluster?”

“Uh-” says Donna, feeling like national security wasn’t worth whatever she’s just blundered into. Oops. “Josh- Josh is my cluster, ma’am.”

She catches her mistake the second it’s out of her mouth, but Helen doesn’t call her on it, more focused on other revelations. “No wonder you two look at each other the way you do!” she says, sounding delighted. Donna shuts her eyes, praying for this to go away. It’s not that she’s ashamed of Josh - it’s just so, so complicated, and other people never think about how difficult it was. Still is.

i’m just... i really liked the idea of donna fumbling and having to reveal this to cover up for what else she was going to say? i don’t know why i’m so charmed by this. i think it’s because it would be impossible in the show - you can’t show what someone was going to say on television, not without a lot of setup and very careful scripting. it’s just a really fun situation to write about and i’m really proud of this conversation in general.

also helen santos was a dream to write and i love her a lot. i kind of want to write one of the fics in the series about her and her cluster solely because like... look at her. she’s a delight in literally every scene. i love her.

5. what character that you’re writing do you most identify with?

daisy johnson!!! i love writing daisy johnson!!!! she is the most adhd character i’ve ever written and i literally just have to transcribe my own inner monologue and it works perfectly!!!!!

Swing shift: 1600 hours to 2400 hours. Daisy always ends up getting back to her quarters at like 0030 hours, when Jemma is asleep and Fitz is reading some kind of technical journal. Then she has to eat replicated pizza, alone, and freshly replicated pizza is actually pretty hot but it feels cold at that time of night, like, spiritually.

6. what character do you have the most fun writing?

...whoops i literally just answered that lmao. uh. i also really love writing sky masterson in the guys and dolls fic? she’s just weaponized hot queerness in a suit and i love her for it. she is intentionally trying to seduce this repressed lesbian and it’s really funny and also really hot of her and it’s so much fun to write.

also, i wrote chidi for the tgp fic and it was possibly the most fun i’ve ever had with a pov, although that was also because i was purposefully trying to mimic the tone of the show. i still think that line about michael and a grenade is, like, the funniest i have ever been in my life. but chidi’s panic was surprisingly easy to write? all of tgp’s characters have such STRONG voices, it makes writing fic ridiculously easy as long as you don’t get stuck on a plot for six months.

7. what do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? would others agree?

oof, this one is ALWAYS tricky. uh? uhh?? i’m going to ruin everything by saying this but i basically alternate between the same two sentence structures and i am really frustrated about it. i also alternate between the same two styles of endings and i always use the same beginning (set scene, main character pov, thoughts-as-exposition, back to scene).

BUT ON A MORE POSITIVE NOTE i like to talk about emotions and relationships and character development!! i have my “queer subtext goggles” superglued to my face, lmao. i like to think about how characters must have felt about things in canon and how it must’ve influenced them. i like making people deal with the consequences of their actions, especially how it’s influenced they themself. i also just really, really like writing people who love each other, whether it’s romantic or platonic or anything in between. i just want them to be happy! i just want them to stick together! doesn’t matter what fandom, i stand by it.

[dalekofchaos]

Poe Dameron did nothing wrong

Hot take and total offense. Poe did the right thing in destroying The Dreadnought

While he lost a lot of lives, Poe was right in trying to bring down that Dreadnought. Poe’s reasoning for this run is that the Dreadnought is a “Fleet-killer”, and taking it out now could save hundreds, if not thousands of lives down the line. Yes, they lose all of their bombers and some of their fighters. Maybe 50-60 soldiers. However, the run is successful. The Dreadnought, which we see obliterate the surface of a planet with a single shot, is destroyed. 

Poe was revealed to be completely justified with the attack at the beginning, that destroyer was the only First Order ship with orbital bombardment cannons that have longer range, punch through the toughest shields and shred the biggest ships. If he didn’t do that, it would’ve followed them through hyperspace and destroyed the Raddus pretty quickly.

Poe didn’t disobey an order, he had convinced Leia of the plan. She was always in command, the call was always hers, and she decided to go through with it. However, when the consequences of the run are made apparent, she blames Poe instead of taking responsibility for her own call.

The Resistance drops out of hyperspace and is followed by the First Order. Poe’s concerns are entirely vindicated, and I think it’s hard to deny that the following engagement would have gone far, far worse for the rebels had the Dreadnought still been in play. Even assuming they survived that, what were they going to do once they got down to the salt planet? We saw this thing kill a planet earlier in the film.  

If The First Order was lead by competent leaders, that Dreadnought would have fired the orbital cannon on The Raddus and by destroying The Resistance and their fighters could’ve easily picked off their transports one by one. And guess what, if The First Order did have another Dreadnought on stand by, then they would have destroyed The Resistance on Crait. Poe Dameron single-handedly saved The Resistance. He should be commended and praised, not demoted and demonized. Leia slaps him, yet if Poe followed her orders they all would have died. Holdo keeps Poe in the dark despite Poe being her second in command and having the respect of the entire Resistance. Leia sanctioned the mission and did not see the bigger picture. Holdo kept the entire Resistance in the dark and they have the audacity to lecture Poe.

Poe did nothing wrong. Holdo didn’t just keep Poe in the dark, she kept the ENTIRE RESISTANCE in the dark. Holdo did more damage to The Resistance than the actual people trying to kill them

The only reason the rebels ultimately survive is because of this bombing run. This is never acknowledged, however, and Vice Admiral Holdo takes command and proceeds to dress Poe down just for asking for his orders and the plan. Keep in mind that Poe isn’t just some grunt. Even with his demotion, he’s your second or third in command, and he has the respect of the entire crew(Poe is the one who destroyed Starkiller Base yet that’s ignored), as evidenced by his later leading a majority of the crew in mutiny against Holdo.

Finn and Rose come up with a plan to stop the Hyperspace Tracking. He knows The Supremacy will continue to track the Raddus no matter what,  at this point Poe doesn’t really see any other alternative besides just possibly letting everybody die at the hands of an incompetent commander. It’s the only plan he’s been given, so he goes for it.

Holdo brought her personal crew from her ship and worked with them while snubbing the main rebel crew entirely. That’s a bit of a dick move, protocol or not. Continuing on Holdo.  In Bloodline, Holdo doesn’t stand up for Leia when Leia presents evidence that the First Order is a real threat. Why would Holdo have a ranking position in the Resistance when she didn’t think there was a need for it?

Connix assisted in Poe’s mutiny and she is  the “ultimate authority” on carrying out a retreat. Why was she not told about the plan? Her position and placement on the bridge next to Holdo is pretty “need to know”.

One of the biggest issues was not that Holdo wasn’t telling Poe the plan, but it was acting as if there was really no other plan. She was literally taking personal jabs at him when he was trying to find something out. If she said something like. “While it seems bad , we are working on a plan right now. We are not just going to stay here and have everyone die. Just have your pilots ready to go at a moment’s notice” But she didn’t even give him that. Remember up until Poe taking over, they were watching ship after ship being picked off slowly. The crew was given nothing and was told just to trust her. Blind faith in leadership is a horrible message. If that is the take away then why not just do what the First Order or the Empire wants. I mean seemingly they are in charge of stuff now. And we should follow orders blindly. Moreover they were down to < 1000 people, and from the POV of everyone else she was just watching people die. Rank be jammed. Anyone who cared about their crew would do something. He was a Commander and the flight commander there is NO way he should have been left out in the cold. Then Holdo has the nerve to say “he’s a trouble maker, I like him” while stroking his unconscious body.....THIS ALL COULD’VE BEEN AVOIDED WITH SIMPLE COMMUNICATION SKILLS 

When Poe finally mutinies with a large portion of the crew, Leia stuns him and it’s revealed that the plan was to empty their fuel reserves and send the escape pods to a nearby salt planet. However, when the plan goes into action, Finn and Rose’s contact betrays them and tells the First Order about the escape pods. This results in many of the escape pods being destroyed.This is played up to be Poe’s failure, but I disagree immensely. It’s Holdo’s failure.She had literally no reason not to tell anyone the plan. Poe, while his plan ultimately failed, had no reason to believe that Holdo wasn’t going to get them all killed. Nor did the crew. She’d given neither of them any indication that she was a competent commander, or that she had anything resembling a plan. In the face of that, Poe had the choice of either possibly letting everyone die, or trying something that, while it probably wouldn’t work, might just save the lives of everyone on that ship. In the context of the situation, I think Poe absolutely made the right choice, and any blame for what happened falls firmly on Holdo’s shoulders for being an incompetent leader who never inspired her crew or gave them any reason to believe in her, and yet expected them all to trust her with their lives and just believe that she was making the right decisions.

Holdo’s plan was stupid. Based on the First Order not having any WINDOWS. And based on being unwilling to admit she HAD no plan, and WAS in fact just trying to bail everyone out and see how many, if any, survived. She didn’t ram the Supremacy until almost every escape pod had been destroyed. HOLDO caused the deaths of far, far more Resistance personnel and soldiers than Poe ever did. HOLDO let her vanity and vainglory get in the way of effective leadership – if the people ON THE BRIDGE, FUELING YOUR TRANSPORTS, are helping to organize a mutiny against you because your plan is bad and going to get them killed, that’s a bad plan.  Holdo’s entire action was based on wanting Leia to be proud of her, and not Poe, honestly. And granted: that’s a perspective we know that Poe can have, too, but what Poe wants more than anything else is to make sure the Resistance survives and the First Order is brought down without a chance of restarting the way the Empire did. Holdo mainly seems to want to be in charge and restart the New Republic that failed to stop the Empire’s roots to grow into the First Order in the first place, and she was unwilling to ACT against the First Order until what, twelve Rebels were left?  She could have saved all of those unarmed, unshielded escape pods if she’d rammed the Supremacy as soon as the last pod detached from the cruiser. But she didn’t, because she never planned to take any actual actions to stop the First Order. Holdo’s idea of resistance was so passive, so laissez-faire, that she might as well have been a First Order mole for all the good she did. The difference between “the fire that will restore the Republic” and “the fire that will burn the First Order down” is immeasurable. Holdo – quintessentially in a White Feminist move – wanted to “rebel” only as far as it restored her own place of power in the Galaxy as a Senator in the broken New Republic that ignored the growing threat of fascism until the NR itself was destroyed. (This New Republic she wants to restore being the same one that allowed slavery to flourish “in secret” across the Galaxy, allowed for poverty like that on Jakku, allowed for the immoral disparity of wealth and power on Cantonica). In the novel Leia Princess Of Alderaan, Holdo’s “rebellion” doesn’t actually exist – she cares about people, specifically her own friends and the people for whom she is the Junior Senator, on Gatalenta. Holdo doesn’t really care about the good of the Galaxy. She cares about herself. Poe doesn’t care about restoring the New Republic. The New Republic is who looked him in the face and said that deaths caused by the First Order didn’t matter – or didn’t exist. They were corrupt and complacent, and they refused to acknowledge that the ideals of the Empire had not actually died down. Their treatment of poor, disenfranchised Systems – those whom the Empire had most exploited, in some cases – caused those same Imperial ideals to take root again and blossom as an open secret. They allowed for the Centrists’ (literal) xenophobia to be communicated like a legitimate viewpoint, keeping some Imperial POVs mainstream when they could have been condemned. The New Republic did not deserve to be destroyed with Starkiller Base, but it also didn’t do enough good to warrant being restored as it was. Poe cares about ending the First Order. Holdo doesn’t. If Holdo doesn’t care about preventing the tyranny of the First Order, then what exactly is she resisting…? Poe Dameron did absolutely nothing wrong in this movie, and he’s by far the most competent commander the rebels have at the moment.

[darthlordcommie]

What is Redemption?

Redemption: The act of saving or being saved from sin or evil. 

So, I’m going to talk about four characters who are often talked about in regards to redemption. Those four are: Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, Severus Snape, Zuko, and Ben Solo/Kylo Ren. I’ll be discussing them in that order. I’ll be starting with why they went down the dark paths they went on, what they did during that time, and finally, their “redemptions”. 

Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader 

So, in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, we encounter Anakin Skywalker at age 22. He spent the first 9 years of his life as a slave, and the next 13 years as a child soldier, while also being groomed by an abuser, aka, Palpatine. When he was 19, the Clone Wars began, and he spent the majority of those three years on the front lines of that conflict, racking up notoriety and trauma. So, when we meet him again in RotS, he is: 22, suffering from PTSD, has been groomed to be abused for over a decade, and lacking a sufficient support system. When he has dreams about his wife, who he loves, dying, he panics, partly because the last time he had dreams like this, it ended with his mother dying in his arms. So, he goes to Yoda for advice on his visions, and gets told that there’s nothing he can do, and not to mourn for the person who’s going to die. Anakin does not like that answer. But he sits on it, until Palpatine reveals himself as a Sith Lord and tells Anakin that he has the power to save Padme. Anakin goes and tells the Jedi, with the one he tells having spent years as somewhat hostile to him, and they go and confront him. When he arrives, Anakin sees the man he had believed to be his friend and mentor on the ground, and Mace Windu, who he was not close to, about to murder him without due process, or anything. And finally, when he’s just about driven mad with fear over Padme’s possible death, Anakin strikes Windu, and joins Palpatine. And we all know how that went. 

Over the next 2 decades, Anakin, now Darth Vader, spent his time killing subordinates who angered him and doing whatever Palpatine told him to do. That is known to have included mass murder, torture, genocide, and all manner of military action against innocent planets. (I am not specifically mentioning Alderaan, as while Vader didn’t do anything to stop it, he also wasn’t in charge of the Death Star at any time, so he is very much complicit, but the responsibility for the order isn’t his) When he finds out that Luke, his son, is alive and running around the galaxy, he tries to recruit him. But even then, he is following Palpatine’s orders, as he is still completely obedient to him. 

During the climax of Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader is confronted by Luke. At this point, Luke does not say “I forgive you”. He says “I love you.” He doesn’t absolve Vader of his sins, because that’s impossible. He offers his hand to his father, because he loves him, even knowing the horrific things Vader has done. And at the end, when he has to choose between obedience and his son’s life, Vader chooses his son, and kills Palpatine, being mortally wounded in the process. As Luke tries to save him, Anakin tells Luke “You already have.” Does this mean that Anakin is redeemed? No. He did good things before becoming Darth Vader, and he did bad things after becoming Vader. But he is saved, because he has chosen to be a good person. If he had lived, would he have done things to try and make up for his crimes? Very likely. But he didn’t, and his choice was not so much redemption, as it was a recognition that he didn’t have to be the monster. At the end, Darth Vader wasn’t redeemed, but he was a good man once more. And he died that way. 

Severus Snape 

So, prior to the events of the Harry Potter books, Snape was a Half-Blood who grew up in the Muggle world in an abusive household. When he was 9, he met Lily Evans, a Muggleborn with magic, who became his first friend. When he was 11, he went to Hogwarts, and joined Slytherin, quickly becoming one of the most notable practitioners of Dark Magic in that house. He made friends with people like Mulciber, Avery, and Rosier, and over his Hogwarts career, became known as a future Death Eater. He was also someone who had a rivalry with James Potter, and was, at least on one occasion when they were 15, flat out bullied by James. On that occasion, when Lily attempted to defend him, he called her a “Mudblood”, a known slur for Muggleborns. After this event, Lily ended their friendship for good, because she couldn’t keep ignoring that he was growing up to become a wizard Nazi. What was his response to the girl he fancied cutting ties with him for being a bigot? It was to join the magic Nazis right out of school. 

Snape spent years fighting Voldemort’s war to conquer the world, to the point where he told his master of a prophecy of the one person who could defeat him. This was when things happened. Because the person Voldemort believed to be his greatest threat was the son of Lily Evans, no Lily Potter, Snape went to Dumbledore, because he didn’t want Lily to die. He didn’t care about James, and he didn’t care about Lily’s infant son Harry. So, the events of October 31st, 1981 happened, and Harry was left the only survivor. Snape spent the next decade bullying students in Potions classes, until Harry arrived in 1991. At which point Snape promptly began bullying him for no other reason than being his parents’ son, and bullied him along with several other students for years, to the point where he was one of his students’, Neville Longbottom’s, greatest fear. 

At the end, Snape helped the good guys by getting them the Sword of Gryffindor, and telling them that Harry’s scar was a Horcrux. However, he only did so because Voldemort killed Lily, and resented the world because he didn’t have Lily for his entire life. He even resented Lily for rejecting him. So, at the end, he helped cause Voldemort’s death, but did he redeem himself? No, because he never felt remorse for what he had done, and in fact blamed others. 

Zuko 

So, Zuko was born and raised into an abusive family, and was abused for literal years by his father Ozai. This culminated in physical abuse, leaving a permanent scar across Zuko’s face, while he was exiled and sent on an impossible mission. At this point, Zuko became obsessed with trying to regain his father’s love, denying the truth that he had never had it to begin with. 

During this time, Zuko hunts Avatar Aang across the world, desperately trying to capture him and end the world’s last hope at stopping the Fire Nation’s conquest. In addition, he also assisted in the capture of Ba Sing Se, the capital of the Earth Kingdom. Afterwards, he returns to the Fire Nation, and sends an assassin after Aang. 

However, he slowly realizes that what he got wasn’t what he wanted, and after he finds out that Ozai intended to use Sozin’s Comet to wipe out the Earth Kingdom, Zuko turns his back on his family, and joins Aang. During this time he trains Aang in firebending, helps Katara put her demons to rest, and helps Sokka rescue Suki and Hakoda from prison, before ultimately battling Azula and saving Katara’s life in the climax. So, was Zuko redeemed? Yes, because he recognized that he had done wrong, fixed what he had done, and spent the rest of his life trying to do the right thing.

Ben Solo/Kylo Ren 

So, Ben Solo was raised by his parents, Han and Leia, until sometime in his teen years, when he began training to be a Jedi under his uncle Luke. Due to events that happened, Ben slaughtered his fellow students and joined the First Order, dedicating himself to Supreme Leader Snoke as Kylo Ren. 

At this point in time, Kylo Ren’s actions have included assisting in the capturing of numerous planets, the murder of multiple unarmed civilians, multiple counts of torture, the massacre of the New Republic, killing his father Han, killing Snoke to achieve control over the First Order, and the attempted wipeout of the Resistance and killing of his mother. 

Can Kylo Ren be redeemed? No, because unlike Vader, who took the chance of changing when a hand was offered to him, Kylo has repeatedly denied any chance of returning to the side of good, once by murdering his own father, who was unarmed and trying to save him. 

So there. That’s my take on redemption, who’s been redeemed and who hasn’t, and why. 

[atamascolily]

An Appointment in Sawarra, 4/?

Chapter one ends with more about Leia’s Orowood project, which is foil to Luke’s dream to rebuild the Jedi Order.

(one two three)

He took advantage of the pause to go back to his dessert. "Whatever this is, Winter, it's good," he said. "I wasn't sure I liked it at first, but it's growing on me."

"Thank you," Winter said. "Captain Solo doesn't care for naji berries, but they're traditional for this time of year according to the home calendar."

"Does that mean I can have yours?" Leia said to her husband, chopsticks aimed at his plate.

"Sure, princess, help yourself."

"Speaking of home, how's the Orowood project going?" Luke asked.

Leia sighed. "Blowing things up is easy. Building things is hard," she said when she had finished chewing her mouthful of naji. "Especially when we're working from scratch."

"Not entirely," Winter corrected. "Most of the architectural re-creations are based on holos and archival footage. And I've been able to fill in the gaps in the records where necessary."

She turned away towards the floor-to-ceiling window, towards the half-constructed cloudcutter that marked the new district from a distance. Her poise didn't slip, but in that moment, the aching, empty loneliness of carrying those precious memories, the last bastion between knowledge and oblivion hit him, and he let out a sharp breath as the emotions rolled over him and passed through.  

This time, it was Winter, but Luke was far too familiar with that experience and he, too, yearned for change. He wished he knew how to share that with Winter without inadvertently minimizing her loss in the comparison--especially when she took such care to conceal her grief in his presence.

"You know what I mean, Winter," Leia said, gesturing towards the window at the tower. "As much as I love Coruscant, it's so  <i>urban</i>. Integrating the city with anything approaching a natural landscape is an uphill battle."

"Literally," Han deadpanned. "I mean, that tower <i>alone</i> has been no end of trouble--"

Winter smiled, her grief sliding away like an outgoing tide. "At least we have plenty of orowood for our horticultural plantings. They weren't popular in the galactic trade, but there are enough healthy, fruiting specimens in botanic gardens and museums that we've had no trouble finding germplasm to work with--not to mention lumber for the interior work. I only wish we could have found some uneti for you, Luke," she added with an apologetic shrug.  

"That would be too easy, wouldn't it?" Luke said. "But I'm surprised there weren't any uneti on Alderaan. Even if there were no official Jedi outpost there, planting them seems like the sort of thing your father would have done."

Leia had made her peace with Anakin Skywalker's legacy, but Bail Organa was and always would be her father--on more levels than one. Luke didn't even begin to understand the byzantine intricacies of Alderaani kinship, but he'd come to accept Leia's private declaration of <i>both/and</i> rather than <i>either/or</i> as the peace offering it was. He did his best to return the favor.

"There was at least one," Leia said, and Winter nodded.  "He took us out to the Camaasi colony several times, and there was one tree set aside from all the others that most outsiders were never allowed to see. I never knew it was an uneti until you described it to me."

"It was a young tree, with feathery needles that caught the light, like nothing I'd ever seen before." Winter agreed. "Not much older than we were, but three times as tall. I remember wondering what it would be like to grow so fast--"

"Just as well we didn't, given how quickly we ran through our clothes as it was--" Leia said with a wicked grin, followed by something muffled and probably vulgar in Low Alderaani Luke didn't catch. The two of them dissolved into giggles at some shared reference that went straight over Luke's head--and Han's, too, from his expression.

For a moment, Luke couldn't help but imagine what life would have been like if Biggs Darklighter had survived the Battle of Yavin. Maybe it would be the two of <i>them</i> chortling over some teenage antic in Tatooine argot while Leia and Winter exchanged puzzled looks across the table. <i>Just another thing the Empire took--another piece I'll never get back--</i>

But it was good for Leia to have one childhood friend left, especially someone as close as Winter. He didn't begrudge either of them for it--and now there was peace with the last vestiges of the Empire at last, the old familiar enemy was gone, too.

Han cleared his throat. "Well, Luke's gonna restore the trees, but they'll have to work fast to catch up with Jacen and Jaina. I swear those kids are getting harder to handle every day at the rate they eat. No pressure, of course," he added with a nod to Luke.

"None taken," Luke said, unable to hide his amusement at the thought. "At least I don't have any buildings to construct."

"The buildings have their issues, but it's the people that present the greatest challenge," Leia said. "We haven't convinced many people to emigrate here yet. Thrawn’s siege shook them badly, and a lot of people who were here left as soon as the shields were down."

If you build it, they'll come," Han said with confidence. "You just have to sell it to 'em. Not everyone wants to live on dusty rock in the middle of nowhere like New Alderaan."

Winter sighed. "Too early to tell. Now that there's peace with the Empire... maybe people will re-consider. But old habits are hard to break... especially when those habits saved their lives many times over in the last few years."

"But <i>we'll</i> enjoy it here, no matter what," Leia said fiercely, grabbing at Han and Winter's hands for a moment--only to realize she had left Luke out. After a moment of internal struggle, she solved that problem by yanking his hand on top of Han's and gripping them both at the same time while still holding onto Winter's.

"I worry about the same thing with the Jedi," Luke said, when his sister finally let him go. "What if I spend my life working to re-build the order, and no one wants to come?"

It's a big galaxy," Han said. "There are a lot of surprises out there. Sure, sometimes, it's a secret Imperial superweapon, but eventually they'll run out of those, and maybe there's other stuff out there we don't know about yet."

"There's Mara," Leia said, counting off on her fingers. "Corran Horn in Rogue Squadron. And Nick Rostu, the Korun who helped you with Cronal at Mindor. <i>He</i> survived the purge, didn't he?"

"Yes," Luke agree. "But Nick's not interested in being a part of a new Jedi Order, and Mara and Corran are busy with their own lives. And even if they changed their minds, it'll take more than just the four of us. There's the historian I met at Exis Station last year, and Kirana Ti, and maybe others in the Singing Mountain Clan on Dathomir, but.. it doesn't seem like enough."

"Ya gotta start somewhere," Han said. "Wasn't the Rebellion the same way? That worked out pretty well so far."

"You'll find the way, Luke, I know you will," Leia said. "Go to Sawarra and see if this professor can help you with the trees. Worry about the rest later. "

"When are you leaving?" Winter asked.

"Tomorrow, as soon as my X-wing's ready," Luke said. "I thought about sending a message first, but if the system doesn't receive comm signals, maybe it's best to go straight to the station first."

"If you want, I can get you an official diplomatic position--" Leia started.

He shook his head. "Thanks, but I'd rather go as a private citizen and do this quietly, especially if the Sawarrans are skittish about the New Republic right now. I’ll send a message to Dr. Mendoza to meet me at the station if she’s interested, and that way I won't start a religious war by venturing on-planet."

"Either that or she can smuggle you in," Han said. "Kidding!" he added quickly, at Leia's glare, and they all laughed.

Luke sat back in his chair and let himself relax in the glow of family, peace and love--everything the four of them had fought so long and hard for over the years. A long, hard road remained, but Han, Leia, and Winter’s faith buoyed him, an oasis in the swirls of uncertainty that dogged him For now, it was enough to enjoy this moment, and, as Leia had said, follow this thread wherever it took him and let the future take care of itself.

"Right," he said quietly, almost to himself. "One thing at a time."

[morsking]

SCALDING fucking take but i feel like if the original trilogy had been released this decade and not in the 70′s and 80′s r*ylos would instead be divided into the kind of people who would ship vader and luke or vader and leia and once their blood relation was revealed they would plug their ears with their fingers and deny it insisting they aren’t family to justify their gross shipping and the kind of people that would ship them regardless of blood relation. either way, the thing they’d have in common is trying to wave away and justify the awful shit vader does not just to his kids before turning back into the light but to literally everyone else. 

there would be essay-long thinkpieces trying to argue vader blew up alderaan because he was misunderstood and that millions of people totally deserved to die and that it was leia’s fault for not cooperating or that he was justified in dismembering his son because luke wouldn’t consider vader’s perspective or some dumb bullshit like that. there would be legions of people saying they SWORE george lucas had written romantic undertones between luke and vader and that them being father and son was SO out of left-field. 

they’d claim vader restoring himself as anakin skywalker at the end was a romantic redemption rather than a familial one. they would completely miss the point of star wars being a story about family righting the wrongs from the past and the political message of resisting fascist domination while brandishing a hope that the bonds between people are unbreakable, especially when one person who used to be good has lost their way. they will desperately cling to the idea that star wars is about humanizing and prioritizing the well-being of abusers and that all they need is ~love~ and complete devotion at the expense of the self. vader’s character arc was about a bad person who slowly remembered what it was like to hold things dear and actively making the choice to throw that malice and emptiness away for the sake of protecting something important to him: that being his own son. luke didn’t abandon good for vader’s sake, vader abandoned evil for luke’s. vader made the decision to change and place value upon his family. kylo? he tried to convince rey she was worth nothing to everyone except him. he didn’t try to change, he just became more power-hungry and insufferable and try to drag rey down with him. 

anyway i almost lost sight of the topic with that last sentence BUT my point is uhhhh r*ylo is bad and r*ylos are bad and would twist and bastardize literally everything with a defined meaning into something that fulfills their delirious abuse-apologist narrative and this is not a mindset unique to star wars but boy with the imminent release of episode 9 and the indelible fallout from tlj it sure as hell is relevant.  

[dnmeinster]

Why The Last Jedi Fails

I've debated whether it would be worth spending time writing this, as I know there are many critical takes out there about The Last Jedi.  But I figure it's time to gather up all my critiques and criticisms of Star Wars Episode 8 and put them into one (hopefully) coherent post.  Warning: I will be praising some parts of this film.

After I saw The Last Jedi opening night, my immediate reaction was that I loved it.  It is a beautifully shot film with some great scenes.  My initial trepidations were ones I've come to accept: Rey's parents are nobodies and Snoke was killed off without a backstory.  However, in the hours after watching, my critical brain turned back on and started to dissect every other bit of the film.  After seeing it a second time, the problems became more apparent.

Let's start with the film's greatest problem and a huge missed opportunity: Canto Bight.  Everything surrounding this whole plot point and locale is misguided from the minute it's mentioned.  It starts by wasting Maz Kanata, a potentially interesting character who is given little more than a cameo to send Finn and Rose off to the casino world.  Even worse, Maz's short amount of screen time includes a dig at the prequels, when she dismisses any notion that they'd be interested in her union dispute.  Here, we get some insight into how this film will approach politics in the Star Wars galaxy.  But director Rian Johnson misdiagnoses what was wrong with the prequels.  Space politics can be interesting!  See:  Star Wars Bloodline.  Johnson's decision to shy away from it compounds the problems when they actually get to Canto Bight.

It all goes wrong from the moment they land.  Literally.  Finn and Rose "park" their ship in a spot they're not supposed to.  Then they enter the casino, in what is apparently an homage to the cantina but on a grander scale.  This diverse set of gamblers are apparently war profiteers, as is briefly mentioned.  But their only interaction with any of them is when they are approached and arrested for parking illegally.  Seriously.

In prison, they encounter DJ, who will eventually join them on their mission to disable the First Order's tracker.  But first, they have to go back to the casino area and release enslaved creatures so they can trample and maim these profiteers we are told are bad.  This is a very long sequence that ends with Finn saying how glad he was to hurt them.  Huh?  Hurt these people you don't know and haven't spoken to?

The entire Canto Bight subplot lacks any depth.  It's completely superficial, and maybe that would've worked if they didn't spend so much of the movie there.  But it ends up being a whole lot of time wasted on what amounts to finding a way to get DJ with Finn and Rose.  This could've been so much better.

HOW TO IMPROVE CANTO BIGHT

Honestly, this should've been caught when someone was reading Johnson's drafts, because we're basically stuck with a chunk a TLJ that degrades it while simultaneously expanding its running time.  But it could've been fixed, starting with Maz.

 Instead of having Maz phone in her appearance, they should have met her on Canto Bight.  Right there, we lose one prequel crack and give Lupita a slightly larger role.  While there, they interact with these profiteers, engaging in a moral debate about the First Order vs. the Resistance, while finding out how the conflict is viewed through the galaxy.  Were there a lot of systems missing the Empire?  How do they feel about the New Republic's destruction?  Eventually, that moral debate is what leads to fisticuffs and their subsequent imprisonment, as opposed to a parking ticket.

Johnson doesn't touch on any of this in TLJ.  His take on the morality of the conflict is restricted to two lines involving DJ.  First: 

DJ: Good guys, bad guys, made-up words. Let's see who formerly owned this gorgeous hunk-uh. Ah, this guy was an arms dealer. Made his bank selling weapons to the bad guys. (Hologram shows a tie fighter.) Oh... And the good. (Hologram shows an x-wing.) Finn, let me learn you something big. It's all a machine, partner. Live free, don't join.

And second, when DJ betrays them:   

DJ: They blow you up today, you can blow them up tomorrow. It's just business. 

Finn: You're wrong. 

DJ: Maybe.

This is the extent Johnson is willing to go when it comes to morality in the Star Wars universe, and it's just not enough.  Either dig in or don't mention it.  Short changing it is a disservice, but that's exactly what happens.

If the entire Canto Bight sequence was redone, it would not only be a better Star Wars movie, but a better movie in general.  It doesn't have to be exactly as I think it should be, but it needs vast improvements.  If Disney were to ever special edition the sequels, then Canto Bight should be singled out.  And yes, I do think they should special edition them, along with the prequels.  But that's for another time.

MOVING ON

The second greatest issue of The Last Jedi is how immensely it fails at being a sequel to The Force Awakens.  I am undoubtedly biased when it comes to discussing TFA because JJ Abrams is one of my favorite directors and I absolutely loved his take on Star Wars.  Now, one of JJ's favorite things to do is to approach plots as mystery boxes, whose contents are slowly revealed over the course of a TV series or movie.  And don't say he didn't have any clue as to where TFA was going, as he had an outline prepared for the sequel, and an idea for who Rey's parents were.  Along comes Rian Johnson, who, instead of opening that mystery box, takes a hammer to it.

So much of what is hinted at, left unsolved, or teased in TFA is either ignored, brushed aside, or poorly answered in TLJ.  This is a problem.  TLJ is supposed to be a direct sequel, not a spin-off or an unplanned continuation.  When Yoda suggests there's another hope in Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi provides an answer to who that is.  Imagine if it didn't.  Well, I suppose you don't have to cause this basically happens with TLJ.

There was a lot of set up in TFA, but Johnson used TLJ to tear all of that up instead of building on it.  Rey's lineage, strongly hinted to be significant through multiple scenes in TFA, is made to be meaningless in TLJ.  Maz Kanata teased having a story about how she came to possess Anakin's lightsaber, but that's ignored in TLJ.  Snoke is treated like a disposable villain, even though he somehow managed to stitch the Empire back together and tempt Ben Solo to the dark side.  The Knights of Ren are mentioned in an offhand comment in TFA and are completely missing in TLJ.  I could go on.

Okay, I will.  Why would Luke leave a map for his friends to find him in TFA if he went to Ahch-To to die?  And why did Luke leave it with Lor San Tekka?  (Johnson's answer:  stfu, Luke is emo now.)

The Last Jedi also feels like a smaller movie.  There are two new locations introduced: Canto Bight and Crait.  It revisits Ahch-To from TFA, and the rest takes place on ships.  This is not necessarily a problem, except it fails to show both the dominance of the First Order and the scope of their battle with the Republic/Resistance.  Star Wars is a big universe.  Shouldn't it feel that way?

And then there's issues with some of the returning characters.  Finn is tied down in the wasteful Canto Bight plot that doesn't do much for him.  Leia spends most of the movie in a coma.  Ackbar is murdered for no reason and with even less fanfare.  Poe gets an expanded role, though somehow it doesn't lead to much character growth.

And I can't forget Phasma.  A character with so much potential yet given such short shrift in both TFA and TLJ.  She feels tacked on in this film, when she could've been given a meatier role given how underwhelming all of Johnson's original characters are.  Which brings me to...

THE NEWBIES

The Empire Strikes Back introduced us to Yoda, Lando, and Boba Fett.  The only memorable addition to The Last Jedi are the porgs.

Johnson gives us three new characters in TLJ:  Admiral Holdo, DJ, and Rose.  There isn't that much to say about them, because, well, they're not very memorable and they're certainly not iconic.  Holdo is a one note character meant to serve as the adversary to Poe.  Her entire role consists of antagonizing him and withholding information.  She's much more interesting in Claudia Grey's novel, Leia: Princess of Alderaan.

I've already mentioned the role DJ plays during Benicio del Toro's criminally tiny amount of screen time, so that leaves Rose.  She's...okay?  Sticking her on Canto Bight certainly doesn't help her.  The most memorable thing she does is interrupt Finn's suicide run and plant a kiss on him, both of which come from almost nowhere.

It really feels like these characters are underdeveloped and the actors are wasted in the roles, and that's a shame.  But then, that's the story of the prequels as well.  It's just that it was less surprising when George Lucas was doing it.

THE WORST MOMENT IN THE LAST JEDI

Luke Skywalker is far from the Luke we remember in RotJ.  At least until the end of the film, when he leaves Ahch-To, joins Leia and the Resistance, and takes on Kylo Ren and the First Order on his own.

Except he didn't really leave Ahch-To, it's a Force projection, and the stress of creating it kills him.  What?

Han Solo's death makes sense given his son's role in TFA.  Luke Skywalker dies because Rian Johnson chose to kill him.  There is not a single reason plot-wise for Luke to die in this movie.  The Sequel Trilogy should not be about killing off a member of the original trio in each film.  And it didn't have to be.  What were they thinking?

When Carrie Fisher passed away, and it became clear Leia was not going to be in Episode 9, that should have convinced the powers that be to change the last three minutes of the film and allow Luke to live.  Yes, he can return as a Force ghost, but that's not the same.  They would've only had to cut Luke's disappearance and a line from Rey and BAM, Luke's still alive for Episode 9.

His meaningless and arbitrary death ruins this film.  (And after they spent a whole film trying to find him, no less.)

THE GOOD

Now that I've rattled off some of the major flaws I perceived in TLJ, let me list some of the good.

The Yoda Scene:  Easily the best moment of the film.

Luke tossing the lightsaber:  A hilarious and unexpected moment before there were too many "hilarious" and unexpected moments.

Hux:  The one minor TFA character Johnson does an excellent job with.  He may be my favorite character in the film.

Rey and Ren:  The development of their relationship is the strongest element of TLJ.

The Caretakers:  See Damon Lindelof's Instagram.

The Porgs: Adorable pests/wookie-fodder.

Luke flashbacks:  We needed more of these.

Artoo: BB-8 is stealing his thunder, but he can still get in a cheap shot.

Threepio: He's also in this film.

Praetorian Guards: That's some good lightsaberin'.

The Cinematography:  Seriously, this movie is gorgeous.

It feels like a Star Wars movie (minus one ridiculous ironing scene).

FAILURE

Yoda tells Luke how failure is the greatest teacher, laying out one of the themes of this film.  The other, a quote played over numerous TLJ trailers, is "Let the past die.  Kill it, if you have to."  Let's explore.

Weeks before Max Landis disappeared from Twitter following sexual harassment allegations, he described how every character in this movie fails:

REY - Turn Kylo - Fails KYLO - Turn Rey - Fails FINN - Turn off tracker - Fails POE - Save Revel Fleet - Fails SNOKE - Kill Rey - Fails LUKE - Train Rey - Fails HUX - Usurp power - Fails LEIA - Escape - Mostly Fails ROSE TICO - Turn of tracker - Fails HOLDO - Evacuate to Planet Secretly - Fails

That's a lot of failure.  Ironically, you can add one more:

RIAN JOHNSON - Make a great Star Wars film - Fails

But this theme is not why TLJ doesn't work.  It's the other one that drags it down.  The whole idea to let the past die.  If this was Episode 9, and Disney was about to start fresh with a new series of Star Wars films, perhaps it would work.  But this is the middle chapter.  The past, especially TFA, should not be killed.  It should define the entire Sequel Trilogy.

After all, this is a culmination of everything in the OT and PT.  The First Order is born from the Empire.  The Resistance is born from the Rebellion (and then turned back into the Rebellion?  Guess you can't let the entire past die, huh?)  Most of the characters come from other movies.  This is their last time to shine.

Johnson subverts expectations too many times in TLJ.  It works at first, with Luke tossing the lightsaber, but by the end, it has become trite.  Rey's parents are nobodies.  Snoke's dead.  Luke's dead.  The entire Resistance can fit on the Millennium Falcon.  (And Kylo Ren’s awesome mask is wrecked.) He's killed the past without building anything for the future.  That's left to JJ in the single remaining film in the trilogy.  Come on!

The Last Jedi is so polarizing because there’s so much to nitpick, whereas The Force Awakens mainly had only one general complaint leveled against it (it was too much like A New Hope).  One fan may be okay with Leia's Mary Poppins scene, while also despising how Luke became a cranky hermit.  Each potential negative has to be overlooked to come out of it with a positive view, but it’s a lot easier to focus and harp on the negatives.  And that's what's happened online, and, yes, in this post.  Also, killing off Luke for no reason was dumb.

Before I go, I want to mention how overrated Looper was.  Interesting concept, but it falls apart at the farm.  And they gave that director a Star Wars film, while taking one away from the guys who did the Jump Street movies and The Lego Movie.  Sigh.

If JJ sticks the landing with Episode 9 and churns out a terrific film, perhaps TLJ can be viewed in a new light.  And opinions do change over the years.  But even though Revenge of the Sith was pretty good, no one looks back fondly at the prequel trilogy.

[pingou7]

Daddy’s girls (or four times Jyn and Leia changed the story and one time they didn’t) by pingou @pingou7

The first time Jyn Erso — daughter of the Imperial scientist Galen Erso, yep, that one — sees Princess Leia Organa — daughter of Senator and Viceroy Bail Organa of Alderaan, yep, that one — she thinks nothing of her, in particular. But while her father had always called her Stardust, Jyn doesn’t take long to gather the Princess is a Supernova.

Jyn & Leia friendship. RebelCaptain - HanxLeia. Alternate Timeline.

Note: Almost a year ago I wrote this “girlie one-shot” about Jyn and Leia meeting as an entrance in the Rogue One fandom. I was intrigued with the idea of their rebellious teens. I give you a slightly revised version and the moodboard to go with it! Enjoy. (P.S: The matching tattoos with Kyber Crystal and the Rebel Logo sport the initials D.G. in Aurebesh… because I’m a perfectionist like that).

Read it on AO3 (or under the cut) 

I

The first time Jyn Erso — daughter of the Imperial scientist Galen Erso, yep, that one — sees Princess Leia Organa — daughter of Senator and Viceroy Bail Organa of Alderaan, yep, that one — she thinks nothing of her, in particular.

She’s a bit younger than she, a bit smaller (and that’s quite a feast, considering Jyn inherited her “petite stature” from her mother) she has a lot of luscious chocolate brown hair and eyes, fine clothes and she doesn’t talk much either, surrounded by Imperials as they are. 

But while her father had always called her Stardust, Jyn doesn’t take long to gather the Princess is a Supernova.

Two hours into the festivities, Jyn (who is regularly put under the ‘useful’ tutelage of her surrogate uncle Saw Gerrera, when her father can arrange it) catches the girl sneaking out.

“You have to be constantly on alert, Jyn, your father’s name and position can only do so much,” says the leader of the Partisans in her mind. So, she follows the girl discreetly. She’s getting bored anyway, and as usual, that bastard Krennic is creeping her out. A bit of fresh air will do nicely.

She doesn’t expect to see a Princess of a peaceful planet cursing in four languages (as far as she can tell, anyway) and grumbling about forgetting her lighter. A cig is hanging hazardously between her lips, and the frown on her youthful face makes her look older. Suddenly the royal persona she witnessed earlier seems a lot more interesting to the not quite Imperial/not quite rebel girl.

“You’re smoking?” Jyn asks with amusement.

“I’m trying to, apparently I forgot my lighter. Do you have a problem with that Miss Erso?”

If someone caught her smoking, Jyn would be sheepish or at least uncomfortable. Not Leia, she’s glaring, defiant, casual and plain scary for such a tiny package. Saw did say the tiniest fighters are usually the most dangerous. The older girl shrugs in response and goes to pick a lighter hidden in her combat boots — her dress is long enough to hide them, and her dad laughed out loud when she showed him she had no intention to change for classier shoes. Leia just raises a perfectly arched eyebrow, seeing black boots under her red-silk imperial garb, but she favors her with a smirk.

“None, your highness,” she finally answers, handing her the thing with a smile of her own.

“Drop the title, my friends call me Leia.”

A few hours later, getting home in the impersonal penthouse her father occupies on Coruscant, Jyn is amazed to see she made a female friend so easily. She’s not used to open up to strangers, and she had always been surrounded by men. But something in the princess of Alderaan just clicked with her, and the kyber crystal around her neck seemed to pulse, the more they spent time together. Trust in the Force, had been her mother’s last words, and while Lyra Erso didn’t have time to transmit her faith to her daughter, she feels like their encounter had somehow been the will of the Force, indeed.

—————————————————————————————II

The second time Jyn meets Leia in the flesh, one standard galactic year has passed. They kept in touch with a surprising regularity, through letters, Holocomms and the occasional video conference, but the daughter of Galen Erso is still rendered speechless when the Alderaanian shows up at her door, on a random Saturday night.

Her father is on Eadu for the supervision of a secret project — she couldn’t accompany him, and her Uncle Saw had just started settling on Jedha. Usually, she hates being left behind, but as she takes in Leia’s unusually disheveled appearance and too bright eyes under smeared black khôl, suddenly she’s glad for being alone.

Before Jyn can find anything to say, Leia has thrown herself at her, not caring if her embrace is awkward and probably stiffer than it should be.

“Jyn, I got a brother,” she says into her neck, like some let out a curse word.

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it Leia? You’re sixteen, but I’m sure you’ll be a great sister.”

You are to me, she wants to add, apart from dad and uncle Saw, you’re the only family I have left. But she’s saved from uttering such mushiness when Leia elaborates:

“I have a twin brother, Erso, a biological sixteen year old boy with whom I share DNA.”

Said Erso blinks stupidly at her friend, and stares as the recently elected senator literally vibrates in fury. Force.

She digs out Corellian whiskey shots from her father’s cabinet, and lets the Princess vent as they indulge. Unlike Jyn, she’s a lightweight, the fine, soft and fragrant liquors which are found on her planet didn’t prepare her for the rush of alcohol the amber liquid brings, whereas Jyn participates in drinking games with some of the imperial academy, once in a while.

Leia knows he exists somewhere, she heard her father speak about him with the Senator (and secret Rebel leader) Mon Mothma, but she doesn’t who he is, where he lives and what he looks like. She has a brother, she has always known a part of her was missing, but she’s just so angry nobody ever told her about it, not even her father, and she’s a complete daddy’s girl!

Somehow, the expression strikes Jyn, and she starts to laugh: “Well, I’m one too!” she declares a bit too brightly. Leia is clearly a talkative drunk but Jyn is a happy one.

When the girls regain consciousness the following afternoon, feeling like they’ve been stamped by a few banthas, Jyn is horrified to see a small fresh tattoo on her left calf: a star, a kyber crystal and the letters D.G. But Leia only giggles when she exhibits a similar one, with a star, the symbol of the rebellion and the same D.G. Leia sometimes has to conceal it with makeup, and Jyn is always sporting socks into her practical shoes, but their secret is safe, and it’s nice to have a shared reminder of identity, friendship and happiness in a world that is getting more fickle and dangerous.

—————————————————————————————

III

The third time Jyn encounters Leia without strangers in the vicinity, teenage shenanigans are far from their minds. Jyn turned twenty-one, the Princess is nineteen, and both are thrown head first into the Rebellion.

It’s been three years since the older girl got separated from her father, seeking permanently refuge with the Partisans on Jedha. She has been trained into a terrorist, a killer, a fighter, a rebel without a cause, and she knows her idealist of a father wouldn’t like it, if he knew. But it’s been a long time coming according to Saw and she just had to find a way to survive, while making the Empire pay for tearing so many people apart from their families, from their freedom. Galen and Leia are much more subtle, molding in the Empire society while alimenting the Rebellion. It’s smart, it’s effective, but Jyn didn’t think she could do this, too.

Until her best friend sent her Cassian Andor, a Rebel intelligence officer, K2SO his reprogrammed imperial Droid and her father a deserter pilot named Bodhi Rook. And after Jedha City and its Temple of Whills got destroyed, their improbable association counted two more members: A sightless Force believer named Chirrut Îmwe and a mercenary called Baze Malbus.

By the time Jyn reached the Rebel HQ on Yavin IV, she knew she had to follow Leia’s lead if she wanted her father’s plan to succeed. Of course, the Rebel leaders were more than wary of what she said, until she caught Bail Organa’s eyes, who vouched for her and her “allegations” and had Draven into a corner. She would get Galen’s plans of the Death Star, and pass them to Leia so that the Rebellion could bring a fatal blow to the Empire.

Cassian and her group of misfits — named Rogue One — were too late to save Galen on Eadu. They got the necessary backup on Scarif, and managed to come out alive, despite massive injuries, but Leia got captured by Vader.

When the two scarred women see each other again, they’re fatherless.

Jyn is still recovering in the medbay, next to Cassian, when Leia Organa comes to sit by her bed. Her jaw is set, and she’s frowning, and intimidating and so far from the carefree princess she’d somehow grown to love as a sister. It brings tears to Jyn’s bright green eyes, but Leia’s are getting darker, almost black.

“Jyn Erso, you’re not allowed to die, ever. Do you have a problem with that?”

“None, your highness,” she finally answers, swallowing her despair and soreness with a smile.

“Drop the title, my family calls me Leia.”

The urge to sob is back, through the princess’ tone is as demanding as ever, and when she exhibits the tattoo on her calf, Jyn ignores her nausea to hug the last survivor of the Alderaanian royals, almost like she did with Cassian, when waiting for death to come on the Scarif beach. Almost, but not quite. Leia Organa is her sister in all but name, but Cassian Andor is… Cassian.

————————————————————————————— IV

The fourth time Sergeant Jyn Erso hangs out with “The” Princess Leia, the whole Rebellion speaks about it for days.

She has the reputation of being unmanageable: Imperial born, Partisan grown and Rogue within the Rebellion. Everyone knows the small Rogue One unit is a special case, that they depend solely on each other, since they refused to be decorated for their dedication to the cause. As former spy Cassian Andor was practically Draven’s man through and through, nobody understands why Senator Organa sought out Jyn — and her team, by extension.

When they had to relocate on Hoth, and sleeping quarters were attributed, the Alderaanian leader chose to refuse her private room near the commandment to share with Erso, in the corridor which holds the members of Rogue One. The fact that Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, as well as the Wookie Chewbacca were also housed in that era of Echo Base didn’t rise as many rumors, which is strange to Jyn, but much more relevant, if she musts say so.

She’s seen how Leia is with Han, and while she has nothing against same sex relationships (Chirrut and Baze are proof of that), she laughed out loud when Cassian refused to meet her eyes and asked if she was with the Princess in that way. Apparently Kaytoo had been regrouping data and he and Bodhi (influenced by the rumor mill) came to the conclusion she and the Princess were “likely to be amorously entangled”.

“She’s family,” is always their response — to Leaders, to Rebels, to Rogue One and to Solo, Skywalker and Chewie. No more, no less.

Until Draven decides to reclaim Cassian for a solo mission, now that he is healed — his back is still fragile, even after several Bacta tank immersions — but the despicable man is intent on separating “his best intelligence officer” from his team, from her. She tries to plead with Cassian as much as she can — they still hadn’t addressed the thing that exists between them — but his loyalty is foremost to the Rebellion. He smiles gently at her, takes her hand and lets his thumb graze her pulse point, but she knows he’ll do as Draven bids him to.

“Eres mi hogar, no tengas miedo, siempre volveré hacia tí mi estrella.”

“I don’t speak Festian,” she mumbles at his door.

“I know,” he replies with twinkling eyes while she gets back to her quarters.

When she gets there, it’s Jyn who rants and Leia who listens, somewhat patiently:

“I can’t forbid him to go because you’re worried about him. Draven is right, he is a good agent, and this solo mission could bring valuable information to the Rebellion. But, tell me, do you like Captain Andor, Jyn?”

Leia didn’t even brush the subject before now, but she is used to get straight answers and suddenly Jyn feels trapped. She thinks of all the times he came back for her, when he didn’t have to. She thinks of “Welcome home”, of their embrace on Scarif, of his lips on her temple when the first Death Star was destroyed, of her hand steadying his trembling back around the Base, of his jacket she took and has yet to give back.

“I don’t know, Leia. Do you like Han?”

“Why do you ask me that? He’s insufferable, and has no sense of justice and even if Luke finds him great, I think he has the ego of…”

Jyn turns Leia out as she lays on her cot, and her hand comes against her calf, where the tattoo is safely hidden by socks and heating pants. She thinks of her dad, of her mother, of Saw, of Jedha and Scarif casualties and she hopes she will never have Cassian to add to that list. When Leia retells a witty comment from Solo in which he affirmed Leia liked him because he’s a scoundrel, Jyn interjects:

“He’s right on that one, though, you liked me because I wasn’t as proper as I pretended to be. You like people like Solo and me, I find kinship in his “selfish approach”, for one, and it doesn’t mean he’s not a good man.“

"I was far wilder than you were, Erso, and you know that!”

“We were daddy’s girls, but I chose to obey when you defied yours.”

As soon as the words leave her mouth, Jyn regrets letting her guard down. Leia’s impassive senatorial mask is back in full, and the chill in the air has nothing to do with Hoth glacial temperatures this time. She’s already berating herself in her head, hearing her father exhaling “my stardust” with his dying breath, when Leia’s steely tone pierces the silence:

“I’d do anything for my family. Maybe I can’t prevent your Captain to leave the Base, but I can assign you to Solo while he’s gone, since the two of you seem so alike”.

“Thank you Leia,” she whispers, “at least we have you in common, and that’s something. Tell me,” she asks in the dark, “do you speak Festian?”

“I’m not fluent, but I can manage, why?”

“What does Eres… mi hogar… and mi estrella means?”

“It means I should take the room away from Rogue One, or that I’ll have this one to myself soon.”

“I’m serious, Leia!”“So is Captain Andor Jyn, I can assure you. If you don’t get what he said already, I —”

“Please, tell me.”

It may be the last words she’d hear from Cassian and she can’t bear not to have the slightest clue of what he meant. Jyn never copes well when people are leaving. She’s on the verge of sleep when she hears: You’re my home, my star. She’s not sure if it’s Leia, or Cassian, or Galen speaking — in her nightmare, she loses all three on Scarif.

By morning, everyone is gathered in the hangar and Jyn tries to follow the rush which precedes missions. She naturally gravitates around Rogue One, and tries to ignore Cassian while Bodhi and Luke Skywalker chat about piloting. It’s only when Han and Chewbacca join in that Leia makes her way to them:

“Han, Sergeant Erso will accompany you and Chewie on your reconnaissance mission.”

“Oh, and what about you, your Worship? You’re not up to join me for a bit of fun, anymore?”

“Corellian things make her a bit reckless, in my experience, Solo. Don’t worry, I should keep my head cold.”

Luke seems confused, Han turns even more smug, but under Leia’s glare Kaytoo declares she has a good chance to die in atrocious circumstances. Then Baze snorts, and Chirrut smiles, and Bodhi fidgets, but Cassian grows even moodier, stiffly saluting Leia before walking away. He doesn’t look at Jyn once.

—————————————————————————————+1

The next time Jyn sees Leia for more than debriefing between two missions after the Battle of Hoth, she seems almost broken, cradling Luke to her chest aboard the Falcon. Skywalker is missing a kriffing hand, Han Solo is nowhere to be seen (someone named Lando Calrissian emerges from the cockpit), and the Princess refuses to say anything. Leia Organa has nothing to say, and in the seven years or so since Jyn can call her a friend, that’s a first.

She instantly reaches for her, but her eyes are fixed on Cassian. Mon Mothma takes charge, and the Base (which is in the Endor system for now) is getting back to normal, but Jyn can’t leave Leia’s side, when she’s glued to Skywalker in the medbay. When Kaytoo, of all people, is “sent to retrieve her for the night”, Leia is still clutching her hand. Once Jyn assures she’ll come back later, the Princess says ‘I know’ in an odd voice, and the rebel doesn’t know quite to say.

As foreseen, Jyn and Cassian had started living together — Han had been a bit too flirtatious with her after they got back from Takodana, Cassian downright punched him and while furious with the whole situation Leia rattled them out loudly: “Cassian and Jyn are in love dumbass! Why don’t you try your pick up lines on someone desperate?”

“Like yourself, you mean?” The smuggler had replied, otherwise unfazed by the whole commotion. But he did send Jyn a wink when neither Cassian nor Leia were looking. Even if her best friend is still in denial, she considers Han family.

Which is why, once Cassian is here to gather her into his arms, Jyn lets the tears Leia refused to shed fall. For Han, for Luke, for Leia and for the kyber crystals, around her neck and on her skin which both seem so heavy tonight. He rocks her softly, murmuring in Festian against her hair, and Jyn wants to slip under his skin, safely curving around his beating heart, when the Corellian is frozen in carbonite. A while later, he grants her wish as much as she can expect, for if she doesn’t slip under his skin, Cassian settles under hers, proving to each other that they are alive and whole.

When Luke and Leia decide to go rescuing Han on Tatooine, Jyn wants to accompany them. But then Bodhi comes back injured from the Operation Yellow Moon and as much as she likes Han and the rest of Leia’s companions, the Rogue One crew is her family. The Jedhan pilot is her only living link to her father, besides, as Baze and Chirrut said, they have to stick together no matter what.

So she embraces Leia when they depart for Skywalker’s home planet, and the Alderaanian advises her to “remain close to her boys while they’ll be Hutt-kicking”. As usual, Bodhi is too impressed by Senator Organa to say anything, but while Chirrut smiles in the direction of her best friend, Baze grumbles about age difference — of course, Kaytoo is also bothered to be referred to in such derogatory manner, he’s not a boy, he’s a Droid and if he should belong to someone, it’s Captain Andor, certainly not Jyn Erso… But Cassian only salute politely the expedition and it’s only when they’re somewhat alone that he says he doesn’t mind being one of Jyn Erso’s boys as long as he’s the only one she stays close to. She rolls her eyes at him (he’s far mushier that he’d been when they met four years ago on Jedha) but lets him kiss her.

If she stares at her tattoo, praying to the Force for Leia’s success with her mother’s crystal in her hand, nobody says anything about it.

After that, things accelerate almost too fast for Rogue One to process, but since Scarif, each one them felt as if the Rebellion didn’t really need them. The point is, they find themselves surrounded by Ewoks, celebrating the fall of the Empire, the second Death Star is destroyed, Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader are dead, and both Jyn and Leia have to learn how to respect their fathers 'legacy, in a freed galaxy.

Finally, when the third day of festivities is coming to an end, the two women sneak out for a while. It’s been quite sometime since Princess Leia had quit smoking, but Jyn Erso still has a lighter on her, and they pass it to Luke, since he “needed to light a fire for personal reasons” (must be a Jedi thing). As they watch him walk away, his sister brings out a flask of Corellian whiskey — which she certainly got from Han — and both daddy’s girls toast it to the starlight sky:

For Galen, for Bail.

[elsinore-snores]

an entire detail star wars episode IX plot I wrote myself

please read this if the last jedi made you horribly depressed and angry bc i fixed all of it!

also im broke and this took 3 days to write so if you want to donate to my paypal it’s putumark@gmail.com

We open with a crawl that reveals that Finn and Poe haven’t seen each other in several months. Poe has been busy working on establishing new leadership in a resistance that parts of no longer trusts him, and Finn has been trying to find out who he is now that he’s out of his coma and in a abusive relationship. Leia has left because she feels she can no longer command the resistance objectively, now that Kylo is in charge of the FO and she shit on Poe like that. The Resistance is more splintered than ever, divided over whether or not Rey WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE PERSON WHO SAVED THEM FROM THE FIRST ORDER is really working with them or not. 

(continued below)

Okay, now the movie starts. Because of this distrust, Rey leaves in the middle of the night without telling anyone, prompting Poe and others to question her loyalty to the resistance. Finn sticks up for her, but Rose does not. Poe and Finn have a tenuous reunion with Rose present, and Poe is very suspicious of Rose. He notices something strange about Finn, and confronts him about it privately in a very gay scene where they express concern for each other, and Poe opens up to Finn that he’s never had a chance to heal from Kylo’s torture BUT ALSO now that he feels he was betrayed by General Organa, who slapped and stunned him and objectified him, and who he viewed as a surrogate mother. He also asks Finn about Rose, and Finn finally tells him that since he’s woken up from his coma, he’s felt different. He’s been having strange health problems, feeling dizzy, having lots of anxiety, and being clumsy as a result. He tells Poe that he’s always had a voice in the back of his head telling him to run, but that it’s louder than ever now, and that he feels like anything good he has, he needs to be grateful for and hold on to, because he might not have it soon enough. This includes Rose... Poe asks Finn if he is happy, but they are interrupted an urgent high command meeting. 

Ultimately the new Resistance high command (led by Ackbar, my fish boy) decides to send Poe and Finn to find Rey, and leaves the judgement up to them whether she is going to or already has betrayed them. They’ve managed to track the ship Rey used to flee to the planet of Qi Nuur, a planet populated by refugees from the war. Her ship landed on the outskirts of a major city, and the high command expresses concern that Rey may give the coordinates of the city to the FO, or that her being there might make a city full of innocent refugees a target. Rose tries to stop them from leaving by basically implying Finn isn’t competent enough to handle it, (in like an albeist way) but Finn sticks up for himself and they break up. Bye Rose! Finn and Poe and BB8 take the falcon and fly to the planet.

They find Rey’s ship, but not her. Finn is distressed to see she left her lightsaber behind, as well as the kyber crystal necklace she took from Luke’s hut. (She did this off screen in TLJ.) They go to the city to find her and Finn sees again, firsthand, the destruction that the First Order has caused. Finn is completely overwhelmed by the emotion around him and needs to sit down. Poe is compassionate and understanding, and does his best to comfort his friend. He feels guilty, and Poe tries to convince him of his bravery, (because he is freaking brave fight me) but it’s clear that Rose’s distrust of him and degrading remarks have left a mark. Poe goes off on his own to look inside a makeshift Force Temple to see if Rey is there. Finn speaks to several refugees. He asks them if they know any families who have lost children to the stormtrooper program, but they tell him every family who had a child taken into the program was child, so the children would have nothing to go back to. 

Finn finds himself distracted by an old building he feels himself pulled towards, which he enters. It is a makeshift library, and the old man who runs it explains that they are trying to save all the knowledge that the FO wants to destroy. When he sees Finn has a lightsaber he assumes Finn is the new jedi he’s heard so much about. Finn tries to tell them he is not. but he’s stunned when the old man tells him that he never had any hope before that anyone could stop the first order, but he has hope again now that this new Jedi will be what is finally needed to restore the balance to the force. He tells Finn that he has spent his entire life as a coward, after his family was killed by the empire during the destruction of Alderaan, but since hearing about this new Jedi, he has become inspired to save this knowledge and fight back against the FO. He gives Finn a book that once belonged to Obi Wan Kenobi. Finn finally breaks down and tells him that he’s “just a stormtrooper who rebelled”. The old man is DELIGHTED by this, and tells Finn that it takes real bravery to fight back against the people who enslaved him his entire life. Finn feels now that the things Poe has been gushing about (his bravery) are not just Poe being nice and friendly. Finn tells the old man that people like him give him hope and are the reason he keeps fighting, and specifically mentions Lor San Tekka and the bravery of the villagers at Tuanul.

Poe finds Finn and tells them that they have to go, that the First Order is coming. Finn asks if they’re running, and Poe tells them hell NO they are stealing a transport ship and evacuating the city. HE��S THE BEST PILOT IN THE GALAXY AFTER ALL. The hype is real, we recapture the magic of the TFA escape scene. They have the Resistance’s full support on this, and the starfighters are going to buy them time to do whatever they need to do. They steal the ship and begin loading it with refugees. They’re almost done when the first FO TIE-silencer piloted by Kylo breaks through. Finn senses this as it happens, and becomes extremely dizzy and distressed, before he can even see the TIE. It’s about to attack when Finn and Poe confess they love each other. They kiss in front of the refugees and the LOVE between an ex-STORMTROOPER and a RESISTANCE FIGHTER becomes a symbol of hope against a fascist authoritarian dictatorship. Finn runs to the falcon like a hero and takes off to fight them, telling Poe he’ll buy them time. Finn is only able to use one-gunner in the Falcon, and so can really just chase the TIE around while taking hits. He takes a bad hit and starts to go down when the force ghost of Han Solo appears to him and tells him the secret to how he made the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs when a parsec is a unit of distance and not time. He tells Finn he cheated and took a shortcut. He instructs Finn to do the same thing and cheat. Finn gives up control of the Falcon and makes it seem like it’s about to crash into the ground. In the LAST SECOND Finn flips the Falcon upside down and launches into light speed only a few meters from the ground. Kylo gets his Silencer destroyed by the ensuing explosion of dirt and rock that kicks up from the ground when Finn did this. It’s great, he’s so mad. 

Finn closes his eyes and let’s something guide him, telling him to duck out of lightspeed at the exact time he’s meeting up with Poe’s refugee ship, which is about to dock on Takodana. Poe comms him and tells him he’s “One hell of a pilot!”

They embrace with a hug and a kiss when they land on Takodana, and Maz Kanata is just delighted by this. She tells them that (gay) love is the most powerful weapon they have against the First Order. Also, groups of refugees are pointing at Finn, all excited. Finn is a little paranoid at first, but Poe explains he was literally talking him up the entire time to the entire ship full of refugees, telling the the story of the stormtrooper with empathy who was fighting to save them all. Maz Kanata has been rebuilding their castle using elements from all of the different cultures that are now mixing together on Takodana, which has become a melting pot of misplaced people. 

Later that night, Finn and Poe watch all these people happy and interacting because of something they did! They’re the heroes! Poe keeps glancing at Finn, and Finn is confused, because Poe looks confused by him. Like he’s trying to figure something out. However, Finn keeps noticing Maz Kanata staring at him and excuses himself to go talk to her. Finn asks her if he still has the eys of someone who wants to run. She tells him yes, but they’re not running away from something, but towards something. His destiny. Maz tells Finn of a powerful force user, who he assumes to be Rey. Maz tells him this person is more powerful than Rey, so he assumes it is Kylo. She tells him that there is no light side and dark side. She tells Finn that the Dark side, or rather, negative emotions like fear and sadness and even anger, are not bad. She tells Finn that he should be angry, and that he should embrace his anger. Many injustices have been done to him and people like him, and that his anger can be used for good. She tells him of a prophecy from thousands of years ago, that one day a force user will arrive who is truly “grey”. Not tempted by the “light” side or the “dark” side. When he finally asks if this is Rey or Kylo, she says “No. There is another. One more powerful. Who will bring balance to the force.” Finn insists they have to find them, but Maz tells him they must find their way on their own. 

That night, Finn dreams about stormtroopers. He hears whispers behind helmets that some of them are discussing if the FO is really doing the right thing. He sees they too struggle with the ideology they have been brainwashed with. He seems some of them who have NEVER been behind it, and have been trapped there, unable to escape. He wakes up with a star and then wakes up Poe (they’re sharing a bed) and asks him if he trusts him. Poe replies of course he does (they also just had sex) and we cut away, implying Finn told Poe something important.

Now the story switches gear. (This is relevant, I promise.) We see one of the stormtroopers Finn was dreaming about. This person is what’s known as a “supertrooper” a very tall , very buff stormtrooper who exists solely to train other stormtroopers. This is a flashback to TFA, right before Finn defects. Finn comes back from Tuanul with blood on his mask and this supertrooper asks Finn what happened, if he’s injured. It’s implied they are friends, or at least familiar. This supertrooper has no clue what the FO is really doing. Finn asks them if they’re ever seen another trooper’s face before. They reply they haven’t. Finn takes off his mask and asks them to do the same. She does. Her designation is KT-2100. Finn tells them what the FO is doing, and the trooper is devastated. (This person is implied to be mentally ill, and also spends every single day of their life being beaten up by other people.) Finn begs them to leave with him, so they can do the right thing, but they refuse, insisting it’s better to remain inside the FO to take it on from the inside. Dissent in the ranks. The rebellion begins, and it begins with Finn.

Now we’re back with Finn and Poe, who are about to dock at Resistance base. The Resistance’s new priority is finding this grey force user and helping stormtroopers escape the FO. The Resistance high command trusts Poe and Finn again because of their brave actions. But Finn is acting very strangely, barely able to stand, shaking and claiming he sees “stars” are Poe’s head. Poe believes it’s PTSD or some other form of anxiety, and tells Finn about his own PTSD, which they discuss (again) because it is important. He gives Finn his mother’s wedding ring and tells him to dangle it in front of him from a chain and spin it around, as this always calms him down. Finn does while Poe is out of the room (Poe is getting Dr. Kalonia), and eventually sees a planet spinning in place of the ring. This is the planet of Ugu En (it’s a Nigeria reference. This planet is important, I swear.) Kalonia comes to take Finn to the medbay, because something is wrong with his heart and he’s having a hard time breathing.

Now Rose is back. She is portrayed as what she would be if she were a real person: an abuser. Poe confronts her and tells her there isn’t a place for people like her in the Resistance. She asks, real angry, “What gives you the authority to kick me out?” and Ackbar comes out of nowhere says, “That’s the new General in Chief of the Resistance.�� My boy, General Dameron, in charge of the Resistance. 

Poe meets with HIS generals (my boy!!!!) and they come up with a plan of attack during their next battle. They are interrupted with a comm from an outpost on a nearby planet, which claims to be intercepting a comm from someone claiming to be a supertrooper onboard the FO star destroyer The Organizer. Poe puts them through. It’s KT-2100! She tells them she evacuated the command deck by destroying a gas pipeline, and only has a few minutes to transfer information to them before the gas will kill her. One of the other generals is suspicious, but Poe shuts them down. Poe thanks them for their service and accepts the transmission, but filters it though the outpost first -- so the FO can’t trace it back to them. Poe tells KT they are getting the information and they need to evacuate, but they refuse. They insist they need to destroy the communications system after the message is sent, so the FO can’t track down the outpost. KT is starting to cough and is obviously getting weaker. KT asks them if FN-2187 is there, and Poe lies and tells them they are, then has the comms officer patch them through to Finn in medbay. KT tells 87 that wants to do the right thing, to be good and brave like him. She tells Finn about all the countless stormtroopers who are inspired by him. She says,”I’m inspired by the courage I see from those around me.”

Finn is just??? a wreck??? Poe tells her that he goes by Finn now, and asks her if she wants a name. The whole thing is really just sad??? She tells him yes. Poe names her Bey, after his mother, who he tells her was a brave woman who fought back against the FO. The transmission finishes sending, and just in time because stormtroopers (not innocent ones, bad ones who don’t care about killing people) with gas masks enter, about to kill her. Bey, who has spent her ENTIRE life fighting stormtroopers, and is so damn tired, screams something like “I always go easy on you!” and destroys the comms system with a riot baton. Then she beats the shit out of those stormtroopers offscreen. 

The new information provided tells them the FO has been building a new weapon, one powered by a matrix of kyber crystals, based on designs from noone other than Galen Erso -- on the planet of Ugu En (see, relevant). This is an extremely precise, long distance beam of pure kyber energy. It doesn’t sound like much, but it can literally slice planets in half like an orange. Think of it as an extremely long lightsaber. The kyber crystals must all be the same size, and since they are impossible to cut or shape, the FO is missing one! They believe Rey has it, but we know the crystal is from Luke’s necklace!

Now we’re back to Finn. He is getting worse, but is still cheerful and optimist about the Resistance now that Poe is in charge. He tells Poe he sees stars around his head, but no one else’s. Finn AFFECTIONATELY calls him “Flyboy” and asks Poe if he can use his last name.This is literally what marriage is in space, and Finn knows it. Finn Dameron, space married to the General in Chief of the Resistance. Finn tries to give him the crystal necklace, but Poe tells him he needs to give it to Rey, when they find her. Finn, now full of inspiration and happiness, feels much better and is ready to go back to Jakku. His heart is still bad, and Kalonia insists on coming with them. 

(Guess who’s in exile!!! It’s Rey now.)

Finn knows where Rey is because of a force pulling him towards her, and it leads them right to her. She is back to being a scavenger, living in the same village from the beginning of TFA. Poe still does not trust her 100%, but Finn is over the moon to see her. Rey is lukewarm, and stays suspiciously far away from Finn, and will back up from him if he comes closer.(I will explain this later!) Finn feels this is his fault, and goes back to the Falcon. Poe questions her, but Rey avoids giving him answers, instead revealing she has found Galen Erso’s notes which he hid from the galactic empire. The notes discuss the FO’s crystal matrix and Obi Wan Kenobi and Poe shows her the book the old man gave Finn. The book details this prophecy of a grey jedi, someone who will finally put an end to the mess that the galaxy is in. Rey finally breaks and tells Poe she’s "not the Jedi you’re looking for.” that the prophecy refers to. She tells Poe she must remain in exile in order to maintain the balance of the Force. Poe fears the worse, that’s it’s fucking Kylo, and confronts Rey about betraying Finn for Kylo. Rey explains that the only way to kill Snoke was to trick Kylo into doing it, and that she knows the Force will fix everything eventually. Poe, frustrated and betrayed, is about to leave. He’s getting on the Falcon when Rey tells him to “take care of her father’s ship”. REY SOLO CONFIRMED. Rey looks up into the cockpit of the Falcoln and sees Han’s force ghost standing behind Finn. Han’s ghost tells Finn that Rey is “Everything he’d hoped she’d be” and tells him him he’s so proud of her. He also tells him that he saw stars around Rey’s mother (soulmates). Finn and Poe leave with Galen’s notes and Obi Wan’s book. 

Obi Wan’s book reveals that this grey jedi will be born on, you guessed it, Ugu En, the first planet in the galaxy that life sprung from. and that this person will be the first force user in their family. Poe wonders why the Force would chose to put so much power into one person, and Finn tells them that maybe that one person is all the Force needs. They head to survey Ugu En, and Finn is stunned when it’s the same planet from his ring-based vision. A FO patrol spots them, and a chase ensues while Finn panics because of his vision. Kalonia tells him to take it easy, but Finn begins to panic. Poe tries to comfort him, but ultimately, Kalonia has to sedate him so his heart doesn’t give out. 

While Finn is out, Kalonia tells Poe that she grew up on a planet with constant lightning storms, and that she remembers the way the electricity would hang in the air just before a strike. She tells Poe that’s how the air feels around Finn, like lightning is about to strike. Poe agrees, and tells her about the Force-sensitive tree he grew up with. He says the air around it buzzed as well, just like it does as well.  

Poe then decides to  head to Yavin 4, to his families’ ranch. We meet his father, Kes, who is delighted to meet his son’s space husband, the hero of the resistance. Poe tells them about the supertrooper who leaked them information, and how he named her after Shara Bey, and Kes tells him Finn and this woman remind him of a brave man he met once, Bodhi Rook. Kes and Kalonia are old friends, (Kalonia is high lesbian though) and excuse themselves to talk. 

Poe takes Finn to the force sensitive tree, now suspicious Finn may be Force sensitive. He asks Finn if he feels anything strange, which Finn replies he doesn’t. Poe asks him if he feels the electricity in the air, and he replies he can’t. It feels normal to him, he says. It feels right. Finn tells him he always feels like this. 

Finn touches the tree, and everything clicks.

HE’S THE FORCE USER!!!! The chosen one. My boy, the hero of the resistance, Finn Dameron. He did that! 

Poe asks him if he feels anything, and he feels EVERYTHING. Force vision time for my boy!!!! He sees great jedis from years past! Mace Windu! Yoda! Obi Wan! And sith lords! Darth Plagueis and Sidious and Maul! He sees the Knights of Ren, and how all of them have thrown the balance of the Force off so much they compensated by giving Finn enough power to equal them all put together. He sees Rey, crying because she can’t come near him because he’s so powerful with the Force it will overwhelm her. The Force ghost of Luke encourages him to embrace the anger he feels towards the FO. Luke tells him that keeping the Force inside of him is killing him. Luke tells him it’s okay to be angry, and explains he went into exile to hide his anger after his academy was destroyed. He also tells Finn that he wishes he had killed Kylo as a child, and that his refusal to act on what he knew was the only way to save the galaxy has cost so many lives. He begs Finn to be stronger than he was, and not to equate killing for the right reasons to killing for the wrong reasons. He tells that he is the Force and Finn the Force is with him.

Finn comes out of his vision with a clear and focused sense of purpose. He tells Poe he needs to go to Ugu En and fight Kylo and the KOR, to fulfill his destiny and bring balance to the universe. Poe asks Finn if he needs to train first, and Finn reminds him he was top of the class at the academy! Poe is supportive of his grey jedi boyfriend. He comms the high command and they start to come up with a plan.

Now cut to the inside of the FO base on Ugu En. Hux is giving some kind of fascist propaganda speech and it’s a dystopian nightmare. Stormtroopers stand at attention. We pan across an aisle of stormtroopers, each one identical.. and then we see one with a red handprint on their helmet...

All hell breaks loose when sirens go off and the lights cut out. We’ve got stormtroopers shooting FO officers, we’ve got fascists running in fear! Someone burns that giant FO flag to the ground. Stormtroopers rebel en mass! A group of young cadets (children) are cornered by a trooper captain, but out of nowhere comes my main girl! Bey! She kicks some serious ass. And the cadets escape. The FO flag burns and catches everything else on fire. Fascism dies in flames!

Hux runs outside with the other officers, to try and escape -- but here comes the resistance! Led by the Falcon, Poe leads an attack from the air. The Resistance hacks FO comms and announces any troopers who want to surrender need to throw down their weapons, and they’ll be spared. Poe lands the Falcon and Finn and he get off. He knows exactly where Kylo is and he’s coming for that bitch! Poe is there to back his boy up with his blaster! All the stormtroopers are psyched because there’s Finn! The hero! The best guy! Finn and Bey embrace! Friends, reunited at last! Bey is a very important buff butch who picks Finn and Poe up with one arm each and hugs them. Together they go  take the FO down! 

Big Resistance ships arrive to move the troopers out of danger. Everything is on fire. Hux is hiding like a coward with a blaster among the rubble of his fallen fascist empire! Poe squares off against Hux, giving Finn and Bey time to get to Kylo’s throne room. Poe demonstrates his excellent marksmanship when he shoots Hux in the eye, because I hate him. Bye rat!

Finn and Bey face off against the KOR. Finn uses a lightsaber, Bey a riot baton. Finn is an excellent fighter, top of his class, and Bey has been fighting stormtroopers every day of her life for her entire life. They win.

Now it’s Kylo’s time to die! Finn goes to face him alone. He’s still a little piss baby though, even though he’s in charge now! He taunts Finn, trying to make him angry to move him away from the balance of the Force inside him, and also because Kylo feeds on negative emotions, because he’s a toxic trash pile. What he doesn’t realize is that Finn is just as full of (gay) love as he is angry, and so they balance each other out. Kylo eventually realizes he can’t best Finn at a duel, so he starts using the Force to try and throw him around. But he doesn’t know is that Finn is so powerful that he can redirect any Force energy used on him, so that doesn’t work. He wins and doesn’t hesitate to cut Kylo’s freaking head off. Bye!

Cut to later. Finn and Poe are getting married.The force ghost of Luke and Han are there, proud of their gay sons. Bey is gay and crying and also she has a girlfriend, I don’t care who. I’m crying. I’m gay. Peace is restored to the galaxy. 

Thank you for your time please ask me any questions you want I cannot shut up about this.

[thebastardofgloucester]

Okay, so. Thoughts on the mess that was Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi.

- I can see why a lot of people had a big problem with Poe’s arc – mostly that it started him from such an obnoxious place that wasn’t entirely in keeping with his portrayal in Before the Awakening or the comics (honestly I think his character in TFA is sufficiently thin that it wasn’t really out of the realm of possibility). There’s also the component of the Angry Latino Man racist trope with his aggression towards Holdo and Leia. Leia slapping him was unnecessary. Leia stunning him so he flew back into a wall(?!) was really unnecessary, and combined with brutalization of the other characters of color was a Problem.

- But nonetheless I loved where it ended up. I did love Poe learning the brutal lessons of command, putting him in a place to be Leia’s successor as the leader of the Resistance. He is a hotshot pilot. Going from that to general, with all the need for long-term thinking that requires, is not an easy leap. So while I understand where people who hate it are coming from, I think that Poe’s journey to becoming Leia’s heir to the role of leader is the most compelling part of the film.

- God Luke was a mess. His grumpy old man act was funny but it hurt so much to see Luke, the beating heart of the OT, reduced to a bitter version of Obi-Wan, minus the hope of believing in the future. TFA and TLJ utterly broke Luke in a way that was just…too much. And god, he would never draw a weapon on his fucking nephew, no matter how scared he was. He might aggressively confront Ben, trying to get him to give Snoke up, go after the source, but killing his nephew out of fear? What? W H A T ?

- that said, that was the most meaty material Mark Hamill has ever been given and he fucking killed it, so props to him.

- What was Rey even doing through most of this movie. All the clarity and dynamism of her character was just sucked away and outside of some moments on Ahch-To she was either a prop in Kyle Ben’s narrative or a walking deus ex machina. She technically becomes the Last Jedi and turns her back on Ron but like…we didn’t see any of that? Does she even want to be a Jedi?

- look…I have been on the Rey Skywalker train forever. I am not happy with her being from unremarkable origins (assuming Kyle is telling the truth, and given that he is a manipulative abusive asshole he may not be) in part because it actually feeds the unfair idea that she’s somehow unrealistic (whatever that means in a space wizards franchise) or a Mary Sue character. She shows a level of skill, instinct, and power that has previously only been manifested by…Anakin Skywalker. That needs an explanation. Either she’s a Skywalker, or a vessel or champion of the Light Side of the Force, or some other shit, but there does need to be a reason. Luke and Anakin have a reason – they are Skywalkers, one Space Jesus and the other the son of Space Jesus.

- I have no idea what motivated Rey for so much of the film. Her quasi-Bespin going to Kyle thing was a fucking mess and required a lot of idiot balling. Rey is smarter than that. Rey saw Kyle murder his father – she would not just trust him enough to go alone. Basically Rian either did not get Rey as JJ Abrams made her or he didn’t care. Either one is utter bullshit. Some cool action sequences mean nothing without the character dynamics to back them up.

- God, Finn…Rian took the problematic aspects of Finn’s comic relief role from TFA and just…ran with them. I didn’t object to him trying to run off to find Rey – he has no real attachment to the Resistance. But his whole mission is just…pointless. There’s no follow up on his being a Stormtrooper who overcame his programming. We get some interesting stuff with Rose about his being a legend when he’s not comfortable in that role, and I kind of liked the way his self-sacrificing behavior was called out by Rose so he knew that besides Rey people actually cared about him, but…there were so many missed opportunities, and so many unnecessary injuries and physical jokes.

- I love Rose. I do. I don’t know that there was really a place for her in this story. Her ‘eat the rich’ working class background was cool, she’s a huge sweetheart, Kelly Marie Tran gave a great performance. Her romance with Finn was a rushed mess. A crush I can believe, fine. Love after like two days max? No. They didn’t earn that. Honestly if you are going to introduce your first significant woc you have to find more to do with her. It was nice that (unlike Leia and Luke) she got a chance to grieve her losses

- Kyle Ben’s eventually becoming the irredeemable supreme leader actually works pretty well, but how it got there…on the other hand…Kyle shows his true colors when he turns on Snoke…in order to take his place in the finest traditions of the Sith. He’s the full-fledged villain for episode IX. As it should be.

- What the fuck was Snoke. Why did the film bring him and Rey and Kylo together in an awkward and forced series of developments and then just cut him in half. We have no idea where he came from, his relationship to the Empire, his goals, his plan with Kyle and Rey and Luke…it’s just an enormous blank and we’ll never get an answer because Rian got bored and just decided to off him. It’s not like I care about him as a character, obviously. His death hardly upset me other than the fact that it was pretty bad writing.

- why the everliving fuck did we have to have YODA show up, basically to give a non-chalannt mea culpa and say ‘actually the Jedi were kind of shit.’ Like ANAKIN? Why the fuck would you not use the person the Order failed the most. Also Yoda looked fucking terrible I have no idea why they used a puppet AND CGI.

- On the plus side, Leia did a truly spectacular Force Thing (though that was some cheap shit by Rian spacing her like that). Then she was unconscious. She never got to mourn Han at all. She passed the torch to Poe, but I can’t help but be disappointed when so much was promised. Also…no one came to her aid? I know that in Bloodline her parentage being revealed ruins her reputation and strips her of her influence…but no one? What the fuck?

- DJ was just a useless character. Maybe they’ll be a payoff in episode ix, but he serves no purpose but to set up an inconsequential betrayal, unless you count Phasma dying (also a cheapening of her character as laid out in her novel) as a tremendously important moment. All the damage was done by Holto’s sacrifice. Finn and Rose and BB-8 were pretty incidental.

- the Porgs were stupid space puffins and despite myself I’m kind of fond of the stupid things. The crystal foxes were much cooler, of course.

- R2D2 and C3PO were props in this film. Chewbacca too.

- Luke…weirdly his facing his fears and sacrificing himself was one of the best parts of the mostly-okay third act? I liked the new, less flashy but still impressive Force power of projection, and he got some chance to say goodbye to Leia at least, and he got to lay down the law to Kyle Ron. But…he died alone. That’s not fucking okay. That’s a betrayal of Luke, the heart of the original trilogy. It’s just…wrong. And it’s sad and heartbreaking but not really in a satisfying way. And he never really passes the torch to Rey – he sacrifices himself to fix his fuck-up with Kyle. He deserved more than that. All the Skywalkers did.

- the space battles were pretty great, the whole tracking thing and the slow race was very Battlestar-y, even if the mechanics of the plot were a bit questionable.

- I need to read Leia Princess of Alderaan to get the backstory on Holdo. Her character was interesting (though we could have used more backstory or elaboration on how she became so respected a military leader) and her relationship with Leia was tantalising but there just wasn’t enough. Her heroic sacrifice was fucking awesome though. If she had to go out she picked a good way to do it.

- Billie Lourd got a character and lines and that was pretty great.

- Okay, minor nitpick that actually REALLY BOTHERED ME. Among the casualties in the opening battle appeared to be Temmin ‘Snap’ Wexley, one of the protagonists of the Aftermath books, and the son of the delightful Norra Wexley. Like, first, Mister Bones would fucking swim through space and stab Kyle Ben with his vibroknives because he is Norra’s motherly love incarnate in a psychotic droid. And second, Norra deserved better. She’s probably dead now and that is bullshit in itself.

- Or it might have been another bearded guy, in which case like Jessica Pava his absence bothered me. Like…where did these people go?

- blowing up the bridge to kill Ackbar et al was just cheap bullshit honestly

- the war profiteering and moral ambiguity was not elaborated enough to justify its inclusion, honestly. I’m not averse to that sort of moral ambiguity but you have to earn it to stick it into a Star Wars film. They didn’t. And again, DJ was just useless.

So, yeah, to review – this is not a movie I was ever going to like. I got almost nothing I wanted out of it, it fucked over the Skywalkers royally in a way that left me feeling bitter and betrayed, it misused or wasted Finn and Rose, Rey’s character was inconsistent at best with little to no on-screen development. The opening was strong. The second act was an epic dumpster fire, particularly everything with Kyle and Rey and Snoke and everything that led there. The third more or less pulled the majority of story threads out and left them in an interesting place for JJ Abrams in episode ix to maybe do some interesting things, but the path it took to get there had…problems.

Rian doesn’t love Star Wars like I love Star Wars, and he really doesn’t like the Skywalkers. I guess that’s what some people wanted – for an end to the Skywalker-centric narrative. Personally I think that is utterly missing the point of literally everything about this series, but whatever, people will disagree.

The writing was overall clumsy to outright bad, with bursts of inspired storytelling but mostly buried under Kyle apologism.

Corvus fairly points out that The Empire Strikes Back is not nearly as good as movie as it is without the events of Return of the Jedi, so to an extent it’s hard to fairly judge the film when you don’t know where it is in the overarching story. But equally this film had so many opportunities to develop the characters and build the world and it just. Did not.

As for a rating, it depends when you ask me. I’d rate it somewhere between a 5 and 6/10. Maybe a 4 in some aspects. It’s not Attack of the Clones bad, but it’s worse than Return of the Jedi, The Force Awakens, A New Hope, ESB…I mean, I liked Rogue One more. Frankly Revenge of the Sith was more emotionally satisfying, especially in the context of the Clone Wars series. I’m never really sure where to rate The Phantom Menace. This might be better. I’m not entirely sure, and that’s pretty damning,

I’m just…so disappointed and frustrated and have basically decided to treat the new canon post RotJ as more of alternate universe than anything else. Which is kind of sad, honestly.

tldr; Anakin Skywalker Did Not Die For This Shit

[smonksthemuse]

In which the Queen speaks, Vader is Spoken To, things really do escalate this time, and four becomes three

here on my AO3

Breha Organa, Queen of Alderaan, had been called many things. Focused and determined, some said. Canny and wise, said others. Intuitive, regal, graceful and kind were also common descriptors. The most popular word by far, though, was sharp.

Breha had heard that word, ‘sharp’, used in many ways in regard to herself. Sometimes it was her intellect people referred to, or her wit. Sometimes it was her demeanor, her voice, her expression or her eyes. The word had even been used to describe her wardrobe.

‘Sharp’ was how Breha felt right now. As she heard Vader’s words rumble from his armored chest, as she watched shock fill her daughter’s face, as she and Bail lived through their worst nightmare, Breha felt sharp. It was a mixture of panic and rage.

“The truth that I am your father,” Vader said.

“The hell you are,” Breha hissed.

All three of them turned to look at her. She had been silent until now, but no longer. Breha was terrified for her life, and for the lives of her husband and daughter, but almost moreso she was angry. She was furious beyond belief at the hulking machine of a man standing before them. He dared call himself Leia’s father? He had no right.

Breha wasn’t going to let this go on the way Vader wanted. She wasn’t going to stand back and let him speak of how Leia had been ‘stolen’ from him, how he was her parent and how Bail and Breha, the people who had loved and raised her, were not. How he had been wronged and betrayed, how Bail and Breha would pay for their crimes, how Leia would come away and serve the Emperor alongside him.

He would not say those words. Breha wouldn’t allow him. No, she was going to speak now. She was going to let Darth Vader know exactly what she thought of all this, and of him, and of a number of other things that she had silently steamed over for the last nineteen years. She didn’t care about his powers or his bloodlust. He had come here, and he was going to listen.

“Breha…?” Bail looked at her nervously. He was probably even more worried now, Breha thought. Her husband was oftentimes more cautious than she, and that could be both a good and bad thing. He had likely still hoped they could find a way to convince Vader he had made a mistake, or at least stall him with diplomacy and discussion long enough to think of a plan. But that sort of strategy would be no use here. Even if Vader was open to finding a solution that didn’t involve their deaths, Breha had already begun, and she always finished what she began.

“What exactly,” Vader growled, stepping forward, “do you mean by that, Queen?”

“I mean that you are not her father in any way that matters, and I won’t stand for you claiming otherwise!” Breha stepped forward as well, even though she had to crane her neck up even further to look at him. “You have done nothing to earn the right to be called her father, quite the opposite, in fact! After everything you’ve done, you don’t deserve to look at her!”

Vader snarled. “I -”

Breha cut him off. “No! We! We are her parents! Bail and I, not you!”

Her fists were clenched now, her jaw tight, heart pumping faster. “We raised her. We loved her. We took care of her and kept her safe. You were off killing in the name of the Empire. You were securing the rule of a dictator who has brought nothing but death and destruction to the Galaxy. You were choking the life out of planets, systems, and people without remorse.” Breha took another step forward, looked him dead in the eyes of the mask, and said her next words quietly and deliberately.

“Just like you did to Padmé.”

Vader snapped his hand up and suddenly the air was gone from Breha’s lungs. The pressure around her neck was excruciating, unbearable, so tight she couldn’t even exhale, much less inhale like she so desperately needed to. Her vision went spotty, patches of dark wavering in front of her eyes. She couldn’t feel anything but the pain in her throat and lungs, but she heard Bail and Leia shouting. It was distant and dull though, like the panicked heartbeat pounding in her ears. The blackness was taking over, and she was falling into it, down and away…

-eha? Breha? Breha, please-

Mother! Mother, can you hear me? Wake up! Mama-

People were talking… Bail and Leia?

-wear on my life I will kill you for this! I’ll kill you!

Leia, we need to focus on your mother-

What was that deep, rumbling sound? A voice? Vader?

Shut up! You evil, murdering son of a -

Breha coughed, and the fire in her throat grew ten-fold. It was agony, like pure liquid pain was coating the inside of her windpipe. It made her cough even more, and tears sprang to her eyes as the pain became worse.

“Breha!”

“Mama!”

She felt hands on her, gently propping her up and touching her face. She heard anxious murmurs and cracked open her eyes to see the two blurry figures of her husband and daughter above her.

“Bail, Leia,” she tried to say, but it brought the coughing back full-force. Her voice was weak and raspy, and she was immediately shushed by her family.

“Don’t speak, love,” Bail said, voice tight with worry and anger. “He strangled you. Just keep breathing.”

“He tried to kill you,” Leia seethed. Her face was twisted in absolute rage.

“She should not have spoken of things she does not understand.” Vader’s loud, rough voice came from the left and Breha flinched. “I would advise you, Queen Organa, not to mention Senator Amidala to me again. I will not allow the Princess to sway my hand so easily a second time.”

Leia began to speak, but Bail interrupted. “The Queen needs medical attention,” he said sharply.

“Our discussion is not finished, Organa,” Vader growled. “The Queen is well enough to remain.”

“I am going to call for medical attention,” Bail said, voice quiet and cold. Breha had rarely heard her husband use that tone, but the few times he employed it, he had gotten what he wanted.

This time was no different. After a tense few beats of silence, Vader acquiesced. “Very well,” he grumbled. “Call. But you and the Princess will remain here and we will continue our talks.”

Leia stood up from where she and Bail knelt holding Breha. “Absolutely not!” she said furiously. “I’m going with my mother, you -”

“Leia.” Breha forced the word out despite the rush of pain it brought. Bail shushed her, but she ignored him. Leia looked back at her, and she continued. “Stay with your father, Leia. I’ll be alright.”

She took a rasping breath and turned her head, the slight movement causing her vision to waver. She waited for it to clear and said, “Vader.”

His mask tilted down to look at her.

“We are not finished.”

Vader didn’t answer. Bail made the call for aid, and no one spoke again until the medics, accompanied by several guards, arrived with a hover-gurney to take Breha to the palace medical wing.

As they left the room and began quickly down the hall, medics already beginning to examine her, Breha sent a prayer to every Alderaanian god, goddess, spirit and saint that she had ever heard of, and a prayer to the Force itself.

Please, keep them safe. Keep Bail and Leia safe.

it’s literally been like seven months since I updated this fic fuck me

anyway I hope you like it, and don’t worry Breha will definitely make a return

[ahsokasloyalty]

You know what? Might as well go for it. And don't complain, you asked for this, this is The Revenge of Me.

It's been few months since the battle of Endor. He had done some more travelling around the galaxy with some new friends from the Rebellion he equired, usually things that needed to be done, still battles that needed to be fought, but he was literally made for that, so being with the last few people he had left was more important for him than whether he was supposed to fight or not.

But this time it was different. He felt quite excited and he didn't know why. Hadn't he known better, he would dismiss it as nothing, but he spent too much time around jedi, fought side by side with the two best of them, there was no way he would just glance over it.

He has been on this planet for days now and nothing happened, yet the feeling didn't leave him. It is starting to be annoying, he can barely focus on anything else by now.

But then it comes and it was worth the wait.

"Rex?"

He knew something was up, but this isn't what he was expecting. He turns around at the known voice. "Ahsoka!" The sight of her makes him weak inside - she survived it. If not his brothers, at least his sister did.

She smiles at him with that slight mischief in her eye, though her eyes are full of expierience, pain and death, she still manages to smile. He doesn't hesitate and hugs her as much as he can, hanging on to the one person that went throught it all like he did and survived like he did.

Ahsoka returns the hug gently.

After few seconds, Rex pulls away, saluting with mocking seriousness on his face. "Commander," he says.

Ahsoka repeats his movements. "Commander."

"Captain is fine with me," he smiles again. "I never got used to commander anyway."

"But you deserved it." Her warm smile brings back happy memories.

Someone coughs behind Ahsoka.

"Oh, right! Sorry." She half-turns away from Rex to reveal a couple of young people, who stood behind her.

He recognizes them of course. Heroes of the Rebellion, princess Leia from Alderaan and a new jedi, Luke, whose last name Rex never caught. In the past few months news spread that those two were twins, but were separated after their parents' deaths at the end of the Clone War.

Rex looks at them. Those two are young, way too young to be the ones, who has to save the galaxy, but then again, so were so many others, who fought and didn't get to see the Rebellion succeed. At least those two kids are alive.

"Luke, Leia, this is captain Rex. He served with me and general Skywalker during the war."

"We're honored to meet you, captain." The boy flashes him a smile, a familiar one, but not enough for Rex to recognize it at the moment.

He chuckles. "Hardly, kid. There was so many more like me. But there is no one quite like you two in the galaxy." Though he used to know people, who could compare to those two.

Ahsoka gives him a mysterious smile as if she knows one thing more than he does. "Rex, you know those two. Princess and general Leia Organa and her brother, new jedi master and commander Luke Skywalker."

Rex looks at her when she says the last word. Tears well in his eyes and the world around him is suddenly blurry. The next thing he knows, he is hugging those kids. Both are surprised, but not at all offended and return the embrace.

When he finally lets go of them, tears are all over his cheeks.

"Are you all right?" The princess asks gently.

He nods vehemently, before he manages to speak. "I thought-" He sniffs. "I thought you didn't make it. I didn't know she would manage..." he sobs again as his voice trails off.

He pulls them back to himself one more time, trying to let go, because they don't know him at all and they must've been uncomfortable, but it is as if he lost all control. He finally manages to let go off them once more and starts mumbling again.

"I- I have something for you." He reaches into his pocket. One that he always touched only to make sure its content is still safely in there.

The twins watch as the captain pulls out an old shiet of paper. It seems very old-fashioned - after all, who would use paper, when there are datapads? And what could he possibly have for them when he didn't seem to know who they really were seconds ago.

Rex's gaze is so misted, he completely misses their puzzled expressions. He clutches the paper one more time. He got used to it, so much - the spot on his heart, where it has been all those years, feels cold now and it all comes back to him.

"I don't see any point in this, senator. I mean, I'm glad to help, but I will be of no use. I don't understand this and you always look perfect no matter what you wear." He hesitated. "I mean-" He could feel the blood rising his cheeks. Dammit, he wasn't trained to talk with people unless it was orders. "I mean, general Skywalker would certainly agree." And would not like to hear me say that, he added in his head.

She giggled. "Yes, he would. In fact, he's been telling me this all too many times."

"Right," Rex mumbled. "But there is something different." He looked at her with a frown. "You don't usually wear this type of clothes to parties."

"No," she admitted, "but I might as well start now since I would have to switch it anyway in a few months. At least I can pretend now like it's just a change of styles rather than anything else."

Rex blinked few times in confusion. "But- but why? Why would you have to change your style? What's happening in a few months?"

She smiled, the smile reaching her brown eyes and shining warmly.

Now Rex realizes, where he recognized the boy's smile before. It was his mother's smile. He looks at both of the twins again. They both resemble both their parents in their own way. His gaze blurs again.

"The birth of my baby," she said.

Rex's jaw hit the floor and his eyes almost rolled out of his head. After few seconds, he managed to collect himself. "Congratulations." He fought hard, but could not stop himself from hugging her. He felt so trusted in that moment.

When he let her go, she gave him a thoughtful look. "What do you say if we skipped the party? I could use some talk about it. I can't talk about it to... almost anyone," she admitted. "Not to mention I don't have the mood and I might as well throw up any time."

"Are you all right?" he asked immediately.

She smiled again. "Yes, that's normal. This little one is giving me a hard time already." She placed her hand on her stomach and looked down on it. "Aren't you?" She looked back up at Rex. "So? What do you say?"

He only managed to nod, this whole thing completely foreign for him.

In the next second, the senator threw him off the rock with a stern gaze too frightening for someone her size. "But you must promise me, not to say a word to Anakin about this."

Out of pure confusion, he saluted, down the line seriously. "Yes, madam." He almost yelled and deep down started to hope, general Skywalker wouldn't find out that they weren't at the party at all.

She sat down and beckoned at him to sit next to her. He did and she pulled out a paper. She showed it to him. "I've been thinking just about names already, but I'm not sure. What do you think?"

He took the paper and read every single one of them. "Why are those down here like this?" he asked, pointing at the carefully writen, but much smaller names at the bottom of the paper, made with beautiful handwriting as if they were important for her, but also aside as if already dismissed.

When he didn't recieve immediate answer, he looked up at her. To his surprise, she was blushing.

"Well," she started nervously. Suddenly, she seemed shy. This was new. "You see, when I was a child and thought about having children, I always imagined I would have a boy and a girl and their names would be Luke and Leia, but now that I'm older, it sounds silly."

He shook his head. "I disagree. Those names are all pretty, but I think those two are the most beautiful of them."

She blushed harder and once again brushed her fingers on her stomach. It seemed like a habit already.

"I think you are overthinking it, senator. Those two names sound perfect for your child."

She looked at him with the warm smile again. "Thank you." Then her energy returned. "But there is still time for that. What do you think they will look like? If it's a boy, I can't see him with anything but blond hair, what do you think?"

He didn't have time to respond, but he didn't mind.

"But whether a boy or a girl, it will probably be a jedi." She sighed. "Though I could make the child a great politician too."

"That might be a bigger challenge than you think, if the child is after their father," Rex noted.

The senator laughed. "You're right. But I accept the challenge." She caressed her stomach once more. "I just hope the child will be healthy and happy."

"I don't doubt it."

"But what do you think the baby will look like?"

Rex thought about it only for a second. "I don't know. But what I do know, is that the child will have the best from both of you, making it the best person the galaxy ever saw."

Tears showed in her eyes and for a split second, he thought he said something he shouldn't, but then she wrapped her arms around his neck and sobbed. "Thank you, Rex. This means so much to me."

He returned the embrace, waiting for her to be ready to let go. When she did, the tears were gone again.

Dispite the conclusion he provided, they went on to talk for hours. Some more about the names and the way the child will look like all the way to what their nursery should look like and what the child will be good at.

He ended up keeping the paper with a promise he would look and ask for more names. "Though I think all me and my brothers can come up with are nicknames."

"They better be nice," she warned with a smile. "And don't lose it. You have to give it back to me." She pointed at the paper.

"I will, senator." He swallowed. It was a war after all and he was a soldier fighting at the front lines. "But if I don't have the chance at returning it before the kid is born, you still have two perfect names."

She gave him the warm smile again. "You're right. I do."

With that they said goodbye. He never saw her again.

Looking at the paper in his hands, yellow, greasy and old, he realizes that he never thought he wouldn't be able to return it, because she would be the first of them to die.

"Your- your mother gave this to me," he stutters, handing them the paper. "She asked me to find some more. I never got the chance to return it to her." His eyes filled with tears again.

The princess takes the paper from his hands. It feels like an incredible weight lifted off of him and at the same time, he already misses it.

Leia unfolds it and gasps, her brother leaning over her shoulder to look at it. "Those are-" He looked up at the captain.

Rex nodded, watching them read through it.

"Racer?" Leia looked sceptically up at Rex. Her brother laughed.

"Us clones used nicknames more than usual names. I knew that was what I would get, asking my brothers, but I didn't have much other people to ask," he says, feeling a little embarrassed.

"Well, I like that one," Luke notes.

Leia scoffs. "Of course you would."

Rex watches them, a familiar feeling, as if he has seen this before, spreading through him. He can tell when they reach their names, their eyes glowing with tears so suddenly.

"But why...?" Leia starts.

"When your mom was a child herself, she thought she would name her children like this. When we talked about it, it seemed silly to her. I knew, she was wrong about that one."

They both look up at him again as another tear runs down his cheek. "She loved you both very much. All she wanted was for you to be healthy and happy." He hesitates, knowing how ridiculous it will sound, but having to ask nevertheless. "Are you?"

After a second they both smile warmly. Luke takes his sister around her shoulders. "Yes."

"We are," Leia adds. "As much as we could be."

Rex nods. He needed to hear that. But maybe that is why they have said it. After all, if they are anything like their parents, which they are more than obviously, they would do anything for others to feel better.

He looks at them carefully, one last time. The last he had seen them, they weren't even born yet and he thought them to be one. And after months of being excited for his general and the senator, he thought he would never actually got to see them, because they died with their mother.

Studying them, he knows, he was right. Each has the best of each of their parents in their own unique way and together they are just what the galaxy has needed.

"Leia, Luke." Perhaps he shouldn't be calling them that, but he needs to say those names, he never pronounced them out loud before. "Your parents would be very proud of you," he says, voice finally calm and tears dried.

The twins look at him, both brown and blue eyes glowing.

He nods and smiles at them one more time. "May the Force be with you." Then he turns and walks away.

He finished his last mission, returned what needed to be returned and it was time for him do something else.

_________________

(I should've been studying! But no, here I was for hours writing this. I blew through several paper tissues, because I couldn't stop crying, but now I literally have no more tears to shed, probably forever. I just burnt a hole into my soul and I hope y'all're happy.

Also, if this doesn't upload or I accidentaly discard it, I swear I will kill myself.)

Edit: I just read through it again, and oh my Force, weren't there terrible mistakes. I hope I corrected all of it.

Listen to this: Rex and Padme regularly hang out and occasionally, Padme requests him to join her to go to a ball or something. So Padme asked him for advice on a dress, Rex tells her it's very heavy and layered compared to her usual party attire.

To which Padme responds with if she starts wearing covering clothing now, in nine months, people will assume it's her new style and won't ask about it. Rex is then taken back, what's happening in nine months. Padme then says, "The birth of my baby" and Rex's jaw hits the floor.

She tells him they can talk about gooey baby stuff if he promises not to say anything to Anakin. Rex obviously agrees and then the two don't go to the party and end up talking about baby names and whether it'll have Padme's nose, or Anakin's hair, little things like that. They even look at baby furniture, making a list of furniture aesthetics and good names. Rex keeps the list, asking his brothers for name ideas every now and then.

So for a whole nine months Rex is smiling like a goof ball for Anakin's and Padme's baby, waiting and waiting for Anakin to explode and tell him he's gonna be a father. But that never happens. The war ends and Padme dies.

Years later, Ahsoka introduces him to two kids and Rex starts balling right there. Pulling a half-degraded paper from his belt and hugging these two kids like no tomorrow. Because he never thought he'd get to met their kid, let alone two.

[nancethepants]

Thoughts on “The Last Jedi”

Cons

Rey trying to save some dude who killed one friend and left another in a coma, hunted her, tortured her and wants to destroy the family she’s finally found (the Resistance) after looking for that family all her life. And since she’s not a Skywalker or a Solo trying to save her family, there IS NO THEMATIC REASON, EITHER AS AN INDIVIDUAL IN-UNIVERSE MOTIVE OR  FOR THIS UTTER BULLSHIT. Why didn’t she just say “See ya, Luke I’ll just kill him myself.”!?!?!?

Luke, who refused to lose hope that he could bring his father back from the Dark Side after three movies of terror, deciding to kill his nephew Ben Solo, instead of the true source of the darkness in Ben’s mind, Snoke.

Snoke being set up as the most powerful and terrifying Sith Lord ever -- who literally Force bonds Rey and Kylo together, makes both believe basically anything he wants them to, throws both bodily around, controls and keeps both of their lightsabers away from them like it’s no big deal ... and Kylo cuts him in two before Snoke even realizes what’s going on.

The Star Wars saga is about the Skywalkers, and now that Luke and Leia are both gone, that means Kylo Ren is the last Skywalker standing? This is how we’re ending a series that started with “A New Hope”? What a fucking joke. 

Finn doesn’t touch a lightsaber the entire time, even though this is the longest Star Wars movie ever made and the point seemed to be that anyone could be the Chosen One?!?!?!

Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, savior of the galaxy and redeemer of Darth Vader, tried to dissuade Rey from his side by milking a set of disturbingly human-looking breasts?

Poe is a total dick to Admiral Holdo, and I think she was supposed to be side-eyed by the audience, but I loved everything about her immediately, and it made me wonder why the fuck he was disrespecting both her and Leia by being a mutinous pos the whole movie?

Rian’s message seemed to be “burn everything down so we can let the series become something new and great” which is ... also the message of the villain? I’m really confused.

LEIA IS IN A COMA FOR LIKE HALF THE MOVIE?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

The resistance is about 20 people now, and no one in the entire galaxy responded to their cry for help, so how are they supposed to rebuild? Are all those little kids going to grow up in 20 years and join up, so Episode 9 is just Rey as the bitter old Jedi who gives up on everything?

Pros

BB-8 saving Finn and Rose was pretty sweet.

The Porgs were not annoying.

Callbacks to “Leia, Princess of Alderaan,” by Claudia Grey, which I really enjoyed.

[graciecatfamilyband]

Han/Leia Appreciation Week Day 5: AU

It’s still 11:00pm Pacific Time, folks! Thanks for @asmoonlightthroughthepines for goading me on and for the metaphor “like a gundark walking on ice.” Thanks to @organanation for a quick, sleepy look-over as I finished it up (any typos and errors should be attributed to me!!!!). And credit to @rogueandjedi for the Corellian love stone head canon that plays a small role here, as well as to @otterandterrier for reminding me of it and letting me steal her idea of a box. And @onwardintolight for a last minute suggestion I needed. Mild torture references.   

Bail Organa was rooting around in the galley, trying to find one of those pre-made, generously titled “meals” he knew the smugglers kept. The former Viceroy of Alderaan had gotten peckish and, estimating that there was some time before either the Corellian or the Wookie began to make the evening meal, had decided it was useless— silly, really— to sit around and wait. It felt invasive going through the other man’s ship. But neither was Bail comfortable with asking the smuggler for everything, like a child— “Can I have? May I please?”— and he could tell Solo was frustrated with him going without and equally uncomfortable in the role of giver. Look, I’m not some Imperial stooge who needs his ego fed by you either beggin’ or sufferin’, Solo had snapped, tossing him an extra jacket when he’d found Bail shivering at the Dejarik table earlier that day. So unless it’s the hyperdrive or somethin’, for kriff’s sake, just take whatever it is you need.

Still, it felt strange to be rooting around in the Corellian’s domain, sifting through his possessions. Almost dizzying— either the freedom of it, or the fear of it going somehow terribly wrong. Perhaps both. Everything Bail had touched in the last six years had served a purpose secondary to its function. A book was a gift to Bail for being a good pet, a well-chosen reminder of all he had sold out to survive every day. A humiliation to taunt him as much as to force agony over whether to accept the degradation of the book or to brave the stifling, physically painful boredom of his isolated days. Medical attention was a reminder of Imperial Colonel X’s power to give as well as to take away, and ultimate control over Bail’s body. After all, Bail couldn’t even die. He shuddered, and did his best to put those thoughts from his mind, and to ignore the dreadful sense that the other shoe could drop at any time. Solo might be a lot of potentially very unsavory things, but he wasn’t a sadist. Bail could tell that; Bail knew knew sadists.

Neither Solo nor Chewbacca seemed not to trade in such double meanings. If Bail was given an extra blanket, it’s because the temperature regulator on the Falcon was on the fritz and humans, not being Wookies, get cold. A book was whatever datachips happened to be lying around, and the Viceroy was equally welcome to choose 1,000 Modifications for YT Series Freighters to Try Before You Die (Or Until They Kill You) as he was to choose Foundations of Democratic Societies— the latter being a favorite of Bail’s that Solo dubiously claimed was accidentally left by a diplomat he’d supposedly been transporting on New Republic business. Bail grimly hoped it wasn’t left by a diplomat Solo had killed in his sleep.

The Viceroy supposed he was only riffling through food and kitchen supplies anyway, although he desperately wanted to check the rest of the ship to find out who the man was really. It was plausible enough Solo had done some runs for the Alliance at some point in time, but if there really was a New Republic, it seemed doubtful he was currently in their employ. Bail didn’t have the courage yet, though, or the sense of how to do so without getting caught. And it wasn’t as if there was much he could do if he found something unsettling. He knew literally nothing of the state of the galaxy, had no money, no connections. If Leia really was alive, and he could get somehow a message to her— but then, that information came from the smuggler too, and he was afraid to let himself believe.

In a cabinet, Bail found a packet labeled in Mandalorian that appeared to be food. The graphics on the wrapper appeared to indicate all that needed to be done was to add hot water and wait two minutes. Easy enough, he told himself. The electric kettle was prominently displayed in the galley. All he needed was a bowl. And maybe some scissors, he thought, as he fumbled with the package. Damn. How did anyone open these things?

Rooting around another shelf, Bail hit something with his outstretched hand and caused a domino effect as items came tumbling out of the cupboard. His clumsy attempt to stem the clatter seemed to knock over another slew of kitchenware, and the clatter continued. Something fell, heavy, onto his foot. Sithspit, that hurt. What in the Corellian’s hells could be that heavy?

He looked down to find a box of fine, maroon velour near his foot, metal kitchen supplies and cast-plast cups scattered about. Not his business, he told himself, as he bent down to examine it. He found the box took some exertion to lift. Not his ship, not his business, Bail repeated to himself, as he shifted the box from one hand to the other. It was soft and beautiful. Pristine. Nothing like the ragged, utility-based, slightly dirty surroundings of this ship, nor like the clinical steel of his recent cell. He hadn’t touched anything like it in— he sighed, and looked around. He couldn’t hear Solo, which meant he must not have heard the commotion or cared enough to investigate. Bail knew he should put it back.

It was probably something the man was smuggling. Still, who stowed “merchandise” in the galley? That seemed a bit much, even for smugglers. And what could it be? It was too heavy for jewelry, despite the box. Maybe a solid brick of a precious metal or gem. Still, it would have to be extremely precious to be worth transporting so small a quantity. Was it possible that it was some small, dense weapon? He should put it back.

His fingers tingled with a need to know, to gain as much information as he could about the man who held Bail’s life in his hands more than he cared to admit, and he found himself opening it. For a moment he was confused, then realization dawned—  

Oh. Oh. Well, that was— unexpected. There were no feminine touches on the junker ship, nothing that gave away that there was a woman in this man’s life. Or another man, for that matter, he shouldn’t make assumptions. The rock didn’t look quite, traditional, but it was definitely—

Bail started at an almost familiar stomping that was accompanied by a shout of, “You makin’ us dinner, Viceroy?” Solo entered the small galley space, wiping his hands down on an already grease-covered rag. Bail watched the cheerful look fade from the man’s face, and felt the color drain from his own. “What are you doing with that? That isn’t yours,” the Corellian continued, pointing at Bail, nostrils flaring. “No, it isn’t,” Bail agreed firmly, hands shaking only slightly as he held it out the smuggler who closed the gap between them to snatch it back immediately, snapping the box shut. Solo held it close to himself, protectively, and glared. Breathe, Bail told himself. Just a misunderstanding. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-” “You shouldn’t go prying into other people’s stuff!” “I was just looking for the scissors.” “Well, there they are,” Solo pointed to the floor. “So they are.” The two men stood there for a moment, kitchenware scattered between them, Solo grasping the box as if Bail might yank it from him at any moment. After an impossibly long moment of tension, Solo relaxed.  “S’okay.” He ran his thumb over the velvet. “S’ not a big deal,” Solo said almost to himself, bending over to deal with the spilled silverware. One-handed. Bail bent down to assist. The silence stretched between them, except for the clanking of the kitchen stuff. This is ridiculous, Bail thought to himself. I can’t tiptoe around here forever like a gundark walking on ice.

“Is there an order to this?” the Viceroy asked, as he contemplated where he was supposed to put the— mittens? “Not really.” You don’t say. “Think you wanted these,” Solo said, handing the scissors over. “That’s alright,” Bail said, taking them, but placing them back in the cupboard. I’m not really hungry anymore.”

“Almost dinner time anyway,” Solo observed. Silence again. Bail hesitated for a moment before saying, “That’s a very unique stone.”

The smuggler stiffened. “I said it was okay, not that I wanted to talk about it,” Solo avoided Bail’s eyes, resuming his task of lifted a chipped mug into the cupboard a bit more firmly than necessary. Bail wondered vaguely where the Wookie was as a chill ran up his spine. Peace, he told himself. Captain Solo’s irascibility seems to be an important part of his personality. He’s no threat to you.

“Whoever that’s for, they’ll like it,” Bail ventured, pointing to the box Solo still clutched close.

“Y’don’t have to suck up to me, Viceroy,” Solo groused. He closed the cupboard and was silent for a moment, leaning back against the counter. His face seemed to change, as if weighing something. In a rush of air, almost as if before he changed his mind, Solo asked. “You think so?” Without waiting for a response, he shook his head, muttering to the box or himself, “I’m not sure.”

Bail didn’t think Solo seemed overly eager for his opinion, but he had asked, and it was more of a discussion than he’d had with the man about non-“need-to-know” information thus far. He wasn’t sure if he sought to be useful to Solo out of a sense of self-preservation, to alleviate boredom, or simply out of habit from playing the game with X. Maybe even a desire to connect with people, if he could still do that. Did it matter, really? Drawing on his knowledge from a previous life, and taking in a deep breath, Bail went on.

“The fusing of the two rocks is highly unusual for the tradition of the Corellian- ah, stone,” Bail said. He hadn’t missed the tightening of Solo’s jaw and tensing of his shoulders, and he decided to skip over the word love. He was rewarded by a slight sagging of the smuggler’s shoulders, so he went on. “It looks like it was done with great care, by someone who knew what they were doing. It must have been expensive.”

“Yeah.” Solo rubbed the velvet absently. “She’s not gonna care so much about that. I mean, I didn’t want to get her something cheap.” He looked at Bail as if to emphasize that he wasn’t— what was the phrase?— cheaping out. “But it’s not gonna impress her that it cost a lot.”

Bail thought it didn’t seem like the smuggler made all that much money, and that it must mean something to the lady that he was spending it on her. Solo certainly wasn’t spending it on himself.

“So it is for someone then,” Bail said, failing to suppress a small smile. A narrowing of the eyes from Solo. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” Bail said mildly, putting his hands up in (mock?) surrender. “I just didn’t know you, uh, had someone. I don’t mean anything by that either!” he added, preemptively, as something dark across Solo’s face. “I’m just trying to make conversation.” He brought his hands down but left his palms up as a gesture of peace.

Solo blew out more breath, and tucked the box into a vest pocket. He began opening other cupboards, presumably getting dinner started. “If you wanted to do something helpful, you could fill this pot with water and put it on the stove to boil.”

Bail did so, musing slightly on the ordinariness of the situation. An older man discovering a younger man had a girl he was sweet on. And he was pretty sure Solo must be quite sweet on her. Even his guardedness suggested that, like the stone, the relationship was— well, precious. The whole thing was practically ordinary. Endearing even, if you could apply that term to the rugged (Alliance-affiliated?) criminal he’d fallen in with. Perhaps the woman thought so.

“Thought matters more to her than expense,” Bail said sagely, bringing back the topic. “Smart woman.”

“Mmmm, incredibly,” Solo said absently.

“The first rock is Corellian, yes? From the Thaos region?”

A nod from Solo. “You know your stuff.”

““The second rock, is it a meteor?”

“No.” Solo said it so finally, Bail decided not to push it. 

“What’s she like?” he tried. “The woman to whom you plan to give this stone?”

Solo shrugged, “Y’know.”

“I don’t.” Bail chuckled slightly. All men seemed to think that they woman they chose was the universally desired kind, but you could tell a lot about a man by the qualities he valued.  

Solo grimaced a little, as if letting Bail in might cause him pain.

“I haven’t heard anything but Imperial drivel in years, Solo, give me something.”

“Here,” Solo handed him a pot lid, “it’ll boil faster.” Bail covered the pot and checked the electric heat of the stove to make sure it was on. Solo opened the conservator and took out some kind of vegetable, and began chopping it. “Like I said,” Solo said after a moment, “Real smart. Funny.” He shrugged. “Y’know. Tough. Doesn’t take shit from anybody.”

“A quality I’m sure comes in handy for being in a relationship with you,” Bail mused.

The Corellian looked up from his chopped vegetable, and for a moment their eyes met. In that moment Bail felt his heart jump back in unexpected fear. He’d been really pushing it this whole time, had he finally gone a step too far?

Solo leaned in. “Are you suggesting I’m difficult to live with, Viceroy?” The question had none of the cold steel that preceded a punishment from X, a mild deadpan from slightly upturned lips. The flash in the Corellian’s eyes was surprise rather than anger, and there was the glint of amusement.  

Without thinking, Bail countered, “Who puts forks on a shelf when they a perfectly good drawer?”

Solo smiled, pulling out the drawer behind him. “Drawer has hydrospanners and some good copper wirin’ n it.”

“Ah, of course.” Bail assented.

The Viceroy didn’t know anything about the Corellian. Didn’t know if he’d be a faithful husband, or a good provider, or whatever it was he or the lady hoped for in their relationship. But he’d always liked married men- a prejudice perhaps, but he frequently found them to be more solid, and that he had more in common with them. Especially when they valued their wives’ intelligence and independence.

Maybe Captain Solo wasn’t so bad.

[jirnkirk]

so………. i wrote a rebelcaptain fic, about 7k, about favorite colors (it’s a weird topic but whatever) and before i post it on ao3 i’d love some feedback. i reworked the second scene literally five times and the whole thing is far far from perfect but it’s reached the point where i don’t think i’m getting anywhere with it tbh. but anyway pls comment tysm

i. Massassi Base; green

The celebrations are just gearing up as Jyn knocks on his door. She has guessed that they both share an aversion to the jubilation that left hundreds of bodies in its wake, bodies blown up by grenades or felled by blaster shots, disintegrated now, just flecks floating in space. She knows no one will miss them at the party; the attention has been taken from the Scarif survivors and placed on Han Solo, Leia Organa, and Luke Skywalker, all eager-eyed and fresh, reveling in their accomplishments.

Jyn just feels tired.

The door opens and, as she expected, she is greeted by Cassian, who wears loose gray pants and a thin white shirt, a marked difference from his typical beige uniform and large, fur-lined parka. He is assisted by a crutch under his arm, and Jyn can see the outline of bandages poking through his top. He received treatment in the bacta tanks for two days, and the doctors said he was lucky to be alive. That they were both lucky to be alive.

Jyn doesn’t feel that way.

She feels stranded. She had been prepared to die on that beach, listening to the waves crash, watching as the world exploded in a beautiful pink, simply holding Cassian. She had been ready to greet death with open arms and a smile before the opportunity had been snatched away. Dying, she has come to find out, is easy; living, on the other hand, is a much taller order. Especially when everyone you know has been ripped away.

Except Cassian.

“Jyn,” he says, and there’s only a little bit of surprise in his voice. He winces as he talks, his ribs still aching, no doubt. She’s surprised he can even stand, to be frank, but a little bit of stubbornness and pride can go a long way.

“Can I come in?” she asks, and he draws the door further back and steps aside to allow her into his room.

After she crosses the threshold, he shuts the door behind them. Jyn supposes she should feel embarrassed, sneaking into a man’s room in the middle of the night, but she thinks that she’s gone through too much with Cassian to allow such trivial shame to prick the back of her neck, so she holds her head up high as she studies the space around them. His quarters are bigger than hers, but still small; the walls, floor, and ceiling are all gray concrete, with the white sheets on the bed and the ivory table shoved against a wall providing the only breaks in the monotony. There are no personal effects. In that, they are alike.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Jyn says mechanically, though she knows Cassian has not been asleep. The bed sheets are rumpled, like their occupant has been tossing and turning, unable to rest.

Cassian knows she knows, but small talk is normal, and normal is sane. Normal is good. If Jyn squints, she can pretend they’re somewhere else, far away from this base, far away from this rebellion, tucked in a safe corner of the galaxy. But they aren’t.

“You didn’t,” he responds automatically, his voice hoarse and tired. Jyn walks further into the room and he follows her with a strange, loud, three-legged gait, breathing heavily. She stops when she gets to the edge of his bed, trailing her fingers along the thin comforter, feeling Cassian’s gaze on the back of her neck.

“I didn’t want to be alone,” she mumbles to the mattress.

Cassian shifts his weight. “Let’s go outside,” he suggests suddenly. Jyn turns to face him, confusion flitting across her face as her brows knit together. “It’s quiet,” he explains quickly, mumbling. “Quiet and peaceful.” She glances down at his leg, then his bandage, then back up at him, and sees his jaw has set and his eyes have hardened, so she nods. She opens the door for him and he shuffles out, each breath causing him to grimace, but she knows offering help would be more painful, so she shuts the door and keeps pace with him. Cheers filter down the hallway, muffled by the walls but clear enough, full of hope and joy. Jyn ignores them.

The walk to the entrance to the base takes fifteen minutes, when it usually takes little more than five. Jyn says nothing, and Cassian just looks angry. The guards nod at them and open the doors; though the base is usually locked down at night, they seem more than willing to let Jyn and Cassian go out. It seems that not everyone has forgotten Scarif so quickly. Or maybe they have relaxed tonight. Jyn wonders if the guards wish they were at the party.

The cool evening air hits their faces as they step outside, the doors sliding shut behind them. The guards posted outside the base glance at them only once, just long enough to discern their identities, and face front again, their limbs relaxed without the threat of the Death Star hanging above their heads. Jyn breathes in the scent of the forest, damp and mossy, and exhales slowly, feeling the tension leave her shoulders just a little. Cassian has begun to limp towards the treeline, so Jyn follows him silently until they reach the edge of the forest. Panting, he throws his crutch to the ground and lowers himself down, his face blanching as he does so. Jyn bites her lip and barely restrains herself from offering a hand, an arm, something. Once he settles himself on the leafy forest floor, Jyn follows suit, the foliage crunching under her weight. With the temple behind them, as they look out into the forests of Yavin IV, Jyn can almost imagine that the Rebellion is a distant memory, that there is no war, and it’s just her and Cassian, listening to the sounds of the trees rustling in the gentle breeze.

Jyn twirls a stray blade of grass between her fingers. “I always liked green,” she admits. Yavin IV might be the greenest place she’s ever been; the trees and shrubbery are practically untouched except for the Massassi temples dotting the landscape.

Cassian shifts his weight so he can rest his back against a mossy tree, his breathing slowly returning to normal. “Why?”

She shoots a sideways look at him, frowning. “I don’t think people normally ask why someone’s favorite color is what it is.”

“You can just say there’s no reason.” Cassian picks up a handful of leaves in his right hand and crushes them, letting their remnants float to the ground. “I don’t have a favorite color.”

Jyn raises her eyebrows. “You don’t?” she asks, somewhat incredulously.

Cassian shrugs and scoops up some more leaves. “I don’t have a reason to.”

Jyn falls silent, watching the battered leaves fall from Cassian’s hand. She feels a pang of pity for his childhood; while her own may have been twisted and  strange and cut short, she had a favorite color, a favorite toy, a favorite book. She could remember a life untouched by loss, or grief, or fear, quick as it may have been. Cassian glances sharply at her and Jyn looks away, hoping that the pity did not show on her face.

“It reminds me of home,” she finally answers.

“Where?” Cassian’s voice is gentle and inquisitive; they are two normal people, sharing normal things about each other, like where they grew up. If Jyn repeats that enough, she can almost believe it.

“Lah’mu,” she replies, the word sticking in her throat. “In the Raioballo sector. I wasn’t born there, but I remember it the most. It was…” She pauses, deliberating what to say. That it was misty and damp, but her parents always had a fire burning, so their simple house was never cold. That she would write words in the volcanic soil to practice, finding it more entertaining than a pen and paper, and her mother would scold her afterwards for bringing dirt into the house. That the water from the ground tasted so strongly of minerals that drinking water had to be distilled from the air. “It was beautiful,” she finishes softly, her voice barely audible.

Cassian has stopped ripping up leaves from the forest floor and has started staring at her. Before, he had just been looking. Now his gaze goes through her skin, to her very center, where she is most vulnerable and naked. But his eyes don’t wound. They’re kind. Jyn bows her head and sets her jaw against the tears that begin to gather in her eyes, clouding her vision but never spilling over.

Cassian reaches out a hand and puts it on her knee. Jyn doesn’t look at him, can’t look at him, but she feels warmth radiate from where his calloused hand rests on her leg, and she instinctively grasps his fingers with her own, feeling the rough callouses that mirror the ones on her own palm. She can’t remember the last time she held hands with someone, or the last time she touched someone for no reason at all. His skin is reassuring against her own. It reminds her that he’s still there, that he came back for her when no one else had.

“I’m sorry,” Cassian murmurs, and Jyn knows that he is expressing his sympathy and sorrow for much more than just the loss of her home.

“Me, too,” Jyn whispers. Sorry for her mother, sorry for Saw, sorry for her father, for K-2, Bodhi, Chirrut, Baze, for Scarif and Alderaan. Though she doesn’t say any of those names, Cassian can hear them laced through her voice. Jyn looks back up, her eyes clear, and moves to sit next to Cassian by the tree, bark scraping her back as she positions herself beside him. She doesn’t let go of his hand.

They sit peacefully until true nighttime begins to settle over the forest, and the green is replaced by varying shades of black and gray. Wordlessly, they stand, Cassian hissing in pain as he hoists himself up with his crutch, and turn to go back to the base. The guards let them in and Jyn and Cassian wind their way back to their rooms, Cassian gritting his teeth as they walk. Jyn is surprised the doctors allowed him out of the med bay, but she supposes that he didn’t give them much choice in the matter. Compared to climbing the comm tower half-dead, this must be simple.

They reach Cassian’s room first. Jyn has noticed that the rooms of those higher up in the chain of command are closer to the entrances, no doubt to allow them to evacuate quicker. Sergeants are located further away. The new title still prickles Jyn; it fits her poorly, like an itchy shirt that’s too big, but she got tired of looking down and running. So the placard on her door reads Sergeant Erso. Captain Andor flashes in the light at her as she opens the door for Cassian and he drags himself to the bed, where he immediately collapses.

Jyn hovers by the doorway. He looks exhausted.

“Goodnight,” she says finally.

Something flashes in Cassian’s eyes. Disappointment, so brief that Jyn barely notices, and most likely would not have noticed if she were anyone but herself. She begins to pull the door shut before she can be drawn back in.

“Goodnight, Jyn,” Cassian says. Jyn looks back at him and sees him smiling, close-lipped, but his eyes have crinkled around the edges. She smiles back and closes the door.

ii. EF76 Nebulon-B frigate Redemption; red

They stand a hairsbreadth apart, pressed in on either side by the walls of the narrow hallway they have escaped to near the docking bay, so close that Jyn can count Cassian’s eyelashes. A great clamor swells from the hangar as mechanics give finishing touches to the ships and pilots shout goodbyes as they board, but Jyn pays the commotion no attention, trying to soak in Cassian for as long as she can.

He says, “Eight days only. Just gathering intel on Bothawui. First mission back, so it’ll be easy,” and flashes her a smile, a forced kind of lazy that makes her uneasy. The kind of smile her father gave her when she caught him late at night, huddled guiltily over plans, or the one her mother would carefully arrange when Jyn asked too many questions on Coruscant. Jyn has inherited that smile, and she recognizes it easily.

He was only cleared for duty two days ago—Jyn thinks it’s too soon—and it has only been seventeen days since Scarif. When she closes her eyes,  Jyn can still feel the heat of the Death Star’s laser against her skin, can still hear the waves roaring as they come crashing towards the beach, can still remember screaming until she was hoarse when Mon Mothma told her that the plans were lost, can still remember watching the last remnant of her father explode and be lost into space and the cheers that followed. Most of all, she can remember the feel of Cassian trembling underneath her as they waited for death, sand digging into her knees, the only time she had truly felt at peace even as death barreled towards them. But now that they are here, stuck in the vastness of space with a quarter of the Alliance fleet as they search for a new base, the thought of losing him almost makes her stagger.

“Don’t make any stupid decisions,” Jyn mutters, and she means it as half a joke, but the words carry more weight than she intends and hang heavily between them.

Luckily, Cassian plays along. “How can I if you won’t be with me?” he asks, a smile dancing on his lips.

Under different circumstances, she might have smiled too, but she finds her jaw has suddenly locked and her heart has leapt up into her throat. She screws her eyes shut and balls her hands into fists, and feels Cassian’s warm hand press her head against his chest. She can’t help but flash back to all the times she has been left: by her parents, by Saw, by K-2, by Bodhi and Chirrut and Baze and, unbidden, tears slide between her eyelids and drop onto Cassian’s shirt.

It’ll be easy, she tells herself, but even that simple lie rings hollow and false in her mind.

“Jyn—” Cassian begins, but his tone is too gentle and sounds like a goodbye, like he’s going to say something she can’t come back from, so Jyn cuts him off.

“Just make sure to come back, okay?” Her voice is quieter than intended, barely above a whisper, and it quavers.

His gaze softens as he nods, and wraps his arms around her, pulling her in tighter against her chest, and she can feel him rise and fall underneath her; the embrace is warm and unassuming and quietly fierce and as he releases her a heartbeat too late, Jyn fights the urge to tug him back and feel his arms around her again.

“I will,” Cassian murmurs, but Jyn doesn’t believe him. Promises are a dangerous thing, because they represent a future they can’t afford. “You be safe,” he adds softly, and then he reaches up to brush a lock of hair behind Jyn’s ear, and his fingers leave a trail of stardust where they brush against her skin. They linger like that, Cassian’s palm against Jyn’s cheek, warmth spreading from her stomach throughout her entire body, until they can no longer ignore the shouting from the hangar and Cassian sets his slim shoulders before he marches towards the cargo bay. He still has a limp; he’ll probably have it forever, that’s what the medics said, and his footprints echo unevenly as Jyn stares at his retreating back, which grows smaller and smaller until Cassian  turns a corner and disappears.

As the days pass, and five days turns into eight, eight to ten, and still Cassian doesn’t return, Shara Bey, her temporary partner, tells her not to worry.

“Captain Andor is a pro,” she tells Jyn confidently as they dodge blaster fire on Jelucan. “He’ll be fine.”

“Kes is gone for much longer than scheduled all the time,” she says through gritted teeth as she weaves their ship in and out of TIE fighters, maneuvering so two of them crash into each other and blow themselves up. “Kriffing idiots,” she grins. Even if she doesn’t share her sunny outlook, Jyn decides she likes Shara.

“The Alliance is really bad at time management,” Shara informs her cheerily back on the Redemption, a cup of caf clutched between her hands. “They probably just underestimated the time it took.”

“It’s been two weeks,” Jyn says, a little helplessly, her bowl of mushy, congealed oatmeal untouched. Her eyes are puffy from lack of sleep, and she doesn’t miss the way Shara looks at her with pity. Jyn suspects the happy act is partially a charade for her benefit, but she appreciates the effort nonetheless.

Two days after, they bring him back battered and bruised and bloody, limp as a rag doll as a stretcher wheels him to the med bay.

Jyn watches with hungry eyes that threaten tears behind the fiery rage burning in her pupils, and when she blinks, she sees red spots on the inside of her eyelids flashing in front of her as her heart slams against her ribcage, waiting for something, anything. The medics bar her from the room, so she paces, feeling as if she’s suffocating, choking, drowning in a sea of fear that presses down on her chest until she can’t breathe. He was red, so red—red spiraling out from his abdomen, on his forehead, caked beneath his fingernails, seeping out from his thigh. If she stops moving, she thinks she might collapse, sink to the floor with her head between her knees and collapse into the dark depths of sorrow and self-pity. But she’s stronger than that, so she doesn’t pause until he is wheeled back out—how long that was, Jyn doesn’t know; it was long enough for Draven to stop by and tell her to go to bed, but after Jyn gave him a terrible, bloodshot glare, he gave up—and then she follows him to the bed they set him down in, where he looks small and fragile, his chest rising and falling shallowly, his skin pale.

“He should wake in approximately three hours,” a med droid tells her, as miffed as a droid can possibly sound; no doubt it didn’t want her interfering with the patient, but Jyn simply settles into the chair by Cassian’s bedside and ignores the droid, so it moves out of the room and slams the door behind it.

She doesn’t know when she falls asleep, only that when she wakes up, her neck hurts from the chair and Cassian is staring at her.

Jyn sits up quickly, a little too quickly judging by the sharp pain in her neck, but she brushes the twinge aside as she takes him in, alive and breathing and looking like a miracle.

“Hi,” she whispers, afraid to say anything else.

His skin has regained some of its color, and his eyes are sharp and alert; she wonders how long he has been awake. “Hi,” he echoes, a bit raspy.

Jyn’s eyes are drawn to the bacta patch on his upper arm, where dried blood is still visible around the edges. Cassian follows her gaze and shifts his gown so that it covers the bandage. “I’ve had worse,” he reminds her, but Jyn can feel the fear creeping back up her throat, constricting her airway, and the possibility of having lost him hits her so suddenly that the words are tumbling out of her mouth before she can stop them.

“I was so scared, Cassian,” she blurts tremulously, the pent-up fear and anger and loneliness she feels pouring out all at once, and Jyn finds herself half-sobbing as the words fall out of her mouth, her heart racing: “I was so scared you weren’t going to come back and-and-and I just—you were so red, I thought I could lose you, everything was so bloody—”

“Jyn,” Cassian cuts across her, firm but gentle, “it’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.”

She meets his eyes, brown boring into green, and takes a deep gulp of air to steady herself.

I’m not going anywhere.

Promises are a dangerous thing, but Jyn allows herself to keep this one, at least until morning, because he has come back for her every time: on Jedha, on Eadu, on Scarif. Come back when everyone else has gone. So she takes Cassian’s words and places them next to her heart as she slows her racing pulse, letting deep breaths of air settle into her lungs. And then she reaches out to clutch his hand, their fingers tangled together, and she lets herself relax.

“Thank you,” she breathes. “For… for always coming back.” Her voice still quavers, her lips still tremble, and though the words seem woefully inadequate for the depth of gratitude she is trying to convey, he gives her a quiet smile; in that moment, an unspoken something passes between them, and Jyn knows he understands, and his words echo in her mind: welcome home.

Then Cassian’s smile widens turns into a grin, and with a mischievous glint in his eye, he asks, “So I take it you don’t like the color red?”

Jyn laughs, a sound she hasn’t heard since Cassian left, and gently slaps his arm. “I hate you,” she grumbles, and out of all the lies Jyn Erso has told, this may be the biggest one.

iii. Echo Base; white

Her mother is dying.

She’s had these dreams before; they’ve followed her since she was eight years old, so she knows what happens next.

Krennic stands over Lyra’s prone body, cape flapping in the wind, laughing as kicks her head with his boot. Her head lolls to one side and Jyn, hiding in the grass, can see the death in her mother’s glazed eyes. Jyn hurls herself at Krennic, howling, trying to gouge out his eyes, but he swats her aside effortlessly and continues to laugh as he points his blaster at Jyn, who falls down in the grass but doesn’t perish with her mother this time, not like she normally does. No, her brain has made a new scenario, and now Jyn finds herself on the comm tower, dragging her broken body towards the satellite, choking from sand and blood and fear. The tips of her fingers are bleeding from the effort of crawling along the path, and then a boot steps on her hand, and she feels her fingers break under the weight, and she screams, screams until her voice gives out and her throat bleeds raw. Krennic tsks at her and shakes his head from side to side. “Galen would be so disappointed in you,” he chuckles. A shot rings out and Jyn looks up to see Cassian, he’s come back for her, he’s shot Krennic—except, no, that’s not right, it’s the other way around; Krennic smiles as Cassian falls, and Cassian is Bodhi and Baze and Chirrut, and Jyn wants to tear Krennic’s face apart, but she can’t move as he throws her off the tower like a rag doll—

The lights switch on and Jyn sits bolt upright in bed, her heart racing. Her shirt clings to her back and hair is plastered to her neck with sweat even though the sheets have been kicked off the bed and there are goosebumps on her arms. A knot begins to grow in her stomach as she blinks to adjust to the sudden influx of light, and she can make out Cassian standing by the switch at the door, concern evident on his face. She hadn’t even noticed him getting out of bed.

“You were screaming,” he says gently, even though they both already know that.

Jyn swallows. “How loud?” she whispers. The walls between the rooms were thin; someone else could easily have heard her. Usually she wakes up on her own, shivering, and Cassian slings an arm around her and she can go back to a listless sleep, but the longer the Alliance has stayed in Hoth, the worse her dreams have become, egged on by the frosty air; the bags under Jyn’s eyes could swallow an ocean. She thinks Cassian can’t sleep, either, or at least not well; he just wears it better. He had pretended to be sleeping when she had first crawled into his bed during a mission to Bothawui, and they had quietly settled into the same room at Echo Base, though Jyn technically had quarters right next to Cassian’s, which she knows he requested specifically, though he has never said so.

“I think I’m the only one who heard,” Cassian responds, and silently moves back to the bed. She positions herself with her back to the wall, knees drawn up to her chest, and he joins her. The motions are completed with a practiced ease, a familiarity that only comes from many repetitions. Her mother used to say that repetition was the only way to become good at something. They are very good at this.

Whatever this is.

She wears only a thin shirt and shorts, and Cassian wears no shirt at all, revealing the patchwork of scars that lace his back and chest, but embarrassment over skin seems tedious, like a waste of energy. They are beyond that; their intimacy is something deeper and more profound that Jyn cannot quite put into words. She distantly wonders how many rebels think that they’re sleeping together. The whole base, probably. Technically, Jyn supposes, they’re not wrong.

“What was it?” Cassian asks.

Sometimes Jyn can’t answer, because the only thing she remembers are flashes of intense, scalding emotion: fear, anger, sorrow, powerlessness. She considers for a moment before replying simply, “White.”

Cassian doesn’t press. He waits for her to continue of her own accord, letting her mull over her next words so that they do not rip open a fresh wound, and she is grateful for it.

“I hate this planet.” Sometimes, she has to go in circles before arriving at the source. Cassian is all patience. She wants to trace the outlines of his scars, the blaster wound from Scarif, a jagged ridge that slices across his navel, two matching silvery lines down his back, smaller marks around his collarbone. “I hate how you could go to the other side of it and it would look the same. It’s blinding.” The next words get trapped on their way up and she swallows, unable to speak.

“It reminds me of Fest,” Cassian murmurs absentmindedly, filling the silence. “Fest had more citizens and cities, but it was cold and harsh. Like here. I can’t remember much, just snatches of memories.” He scratches at the mattress distractedly as he talks. “A cup of hot chocolate warming my hands, Stormtroopers crawling around the industrial cities, my father teaching me how to aim a gun… He always said that if you could shoot in a snow flurry, you could shoot anywhere.” Cassian smiles at the memory, his face momentarily taken over by an untainted happiness Jyn has never witnessed before, and she watches with fascination, wondering at the man he could have been. They have all lost in this war. They have lost family, friends, allies, but most of all, they have lost the people they could have been. They have lost possibilities; they have become bound on either sides by the walls of the Alliance and the Empire, only one long path stretching out before them. Sometimes, Jyn lets herself imagine the door at the end of that hallway, what it might lead to. Never for long, though. Too dangerous.

“I was born on Vallt,” Jyn admits slowly. “It was similar. Cold. Harsh.” She chews her bottom lip as she searches for what to say before she finally settles on, “This planet is too white.” She takes a deep, shuddering breath and tries to steel herself. “It reminds me of emptiness, the kind you feel when you have nothing left. I look outside and I see Stormtroopers, and I see Krennic and his white cape.” She locks her jaw. “White reminds me of fear.” Cassian’s smile has faded as he listens to the words unsaid. “And…” But she can’t continue. Jyn feels like a child, like when she would have a bad dream and sneak into her parents’ room and slither in between them, cocooned by their warmth and comforted by the rise and fall of their chests against hers, but they aren’t here anymore, just like Bodhi and K-2 and Chirrut and Baze—

No, she tells herself. Stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it.

But the images keep coming, this time not dreams but memories: Lyra crumbling onto the ground, Galen choking on his own blood, K-2’s voice over the intercom, the green laser from the Death Star swallowing Jedha and Scarif, and somewhere very far away Cassian’s voice says, “Jyn,” but she cannot see in front of her because her eyes are swimming with tears that pool but never fall, and panic begins to rise in her chest, her breath coming in quick, short gasps as her throat constricts. “Jyn,” comes Cassian’s voice again, more urgent. She feels a pair of steady hands grab her arms, trying to pin them to her sides, but she throws him off, flinching at his touch, something primeval and feral awakening in her as she kicks out at him and her foot connects with his side.

“Get off of me!” she growls, heaving herself off of the bed and stumbling blindly across the room, great sobs heaving in her chest, she can’t breathe, her vision is crowded with the dead, with all those who left her, all those she killed, the world spins—

“Jyn.” Strong hands take ahold of her arms again and she is whirled around to face Cassian. She tries to slide out of his grip, but her limbs have gone limp, the tears have started to spill down her cheeks, she can taste salt, and they drip down her chin and fall into her shirt, and she can hear Cassian telling her to breathe but she can’t, her lungs are collapsing, her throat is closed, all she can see is the white walls, the white floors, the white bed, and he tells her, “Focus on me. Focus on my voice.” He sounds calm and collected, like he’s done this a thousand times before, like nothing is wrong. “Try to breathe. In through the nose, our through the mouth.”

Focus on my voice. Jyn claws herself towards the noise, steady and low, soothing, and Cassian slowly begins to come in focus. She feels herself shivering in his grip, her muscles shaking, but she manages to gulp in one breath and exhale shakily. “In through the nose, out through the mouth,” he repeats. Over and over and over and over until Jyn’s heart rate has slowed to a fast jog and the sobs have stopped coming, though she keeps crying, crying like an infant, her lower lip trembling. “Just breathe,” Cassian instructs, and Jyn follows shakily. “You’ll be fine.”

She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes to stem the flow of tears, feeling more exhausted than she has ever been in her life. Cassian pulls her in gently, and she lets her arms drop, her head resting on his chest; he strokes her hair, his breathing slow and stable, and quietly murmurs, “You’re okay, Jyn.”

She can’t speak, just buries her face deeper into his skin, breathing in the scent of him, feeling his heartbeat. They remain frozen like that until the warmth from his body has spread over Jyn, and she can breathe steadily again, and then Cassian pulls away, tilts her chin up at him and kisses her. A simple kiss, though they have been building up to it for years, dancing around each other, pulling close and pushing away, and as their lips meet, Jyn feels her skin tingle. When he pulls back, she wraps her hand around his head and bends him closer, their lips crashing into each other this time, and he tastes like home, and he takes like kept promises.

iv. Bright Tree Village; brown

The morning air is still cold, and its tendrils brush Jyn’s face, raising goosebumps as she steps onto the platform outside the hut they had been put in for the night. She feels like a phantom; the reality has not sunken in yet, although the charred branches from the bonfires last night and scattered remains of food on the ground informs her that yes, the Emperor is dead, Darth Vader’s body has burned. Yet this moment just feels like a short pause, a collective breath by the Alliance before they wade back into the fray.

But she will try to enjoy this respite while she can.

Below her, Luke and Leia sit on the forest floor, heads bowed. They are still wearing their clothes from last night—Leia in a simple beige and gray dress, Luke dressed in all black—and she can just make out their mouths moving rapidly. Trying to make up for lost time, she supposes; they must have a lot to catch up on. Shara Bey and Kes Dameron run after their son, Poe, who is sprinting around as fast as his tiny legs can take him, which is not very quick, allowing Shara and Kes to sneak kisses before they have to go grab him. Jyn has heard Shara describe him with such longing in her voice it made her heart ache, listened as she detailed his tuft of dark hair and wide eyes, and as Shara scoops Poe up into her arms, laughing despite the bruise on her collarbone and the dark bags under her eyes, Jyn allows herself to smile. Kes wraps his arms around Shara’s waist and kisses Poe on the cheek, laughing at something his wife says in his ear.

She hears Cassian before she sees him, the wooden boards groaning unevenly under his weight before he appears in her peripheral vision. He stands by her side, hair mussed up, with a shallow cut on his left cheek, and he reaches out to lace his fingers with Jyn’s, each ignoring the dirt caked into the palms of the other. He inhales the fresh air, drinking in the view from among the trees that stretch far below them and far above them, the green disappearing into the pink- and orange-streaked sky as the sun begins to filter in through the leaves. The lines seem to momentarily disappear from his face, and for once, he looks his thirty years. Beneath them, Han Solo has joined Luke and Leia, gently kissing the princess  after he sits down on the leafy ground. Others have begun to trickle down from their huts, bleary-eyed but cheerful as they greet their comrades with lingering hugs and wide smiles. Several Ewoks have joined and begin to clean up their village, darting in between the legs of the rebels to pick up the trash, and Poe squeals with delight as he sees one, causing Kes to shush him hurriedly.

Cassian and Jyn stand like that for a while, clutching each other’s hands, watching the peaceful scene unfurl below them. They have the luxury of leisure now, at least for the moment, and they want to relish in it; forks have appeared in their path, and each split brims with possibility. Their path. They always been a we, Jyn supposes, ever since he handed her a blaster before Jedha; their webs had been tangled together, even when they were at a distance. It used to frighten Jyn, but now she only squeezes his hand tighter.

“Where will we go?” Cassian asks eventually, his voice still sleepy and scratchy. This is probably the first decent night’s sleep he’s had in years, save for the times he lay unconscious in the med bay.

Jyn shrugs. “Probably Coruscant. I’m sure Draven wants us to do some cleanup—”

“No,” Cassian cuts across her. “I don’t mean tomorrow or whenever we’ll ship out.” He grips the bark railing in front of him with his free hand and looks out to the sliver of horizon he can make out between the trees. “I mean after.” He relishes the words, daring and bold and brimming with opportunity.

Jyn sucks in a breath. “We might not—,” she begins on instinct, trying to stop him before his words get too dangerous.

“Don’t,” he says softly, letting go of her hand and turning to face her, pushing a stray piece of hair behind her ears. “Don’t say that. Not now.”

She understands. Not now when, for once, everything has gone their way, not now because they thought they would never make it this far and they deserve a future, or to at least imagine one, not now because they have earned a little bit of hope. So Jyn chews her lip and considers, trying to rack through all the planets she hadn’t been to, through the ones her parents had told her about, until she answers, with finality, “Naboo.”

Cassian nods, pensive. “My parents went there once, when they were first married,” he recalls, smiling briefly. “Whenever there was a particular cold day, my mother would always grumble and say she wished they had settled there, where green things could actually grow.”

“My father said it was the most beautiful planet he had ever laid eyes on,” Jyn recollects, recalling vivid descriptions of rolling hills, water so clear you could almost see the bottom, red roofs shining as the sun’s rays hit them, trade stalls with a variety of goods, each different from the last, and a happiness that seem to invade the air so that you couldn’t help but laugh.

“Lots of green,” Cassian remarks, a playful light dancing in his eyes.

Jyn gently shoves him with the palm of her hand and he rocks back on his heels but never loses his balance, smirking at her. “Maybe after we go there, you’ll learn to appreciate colors more. Might even get a favorite one,” she teases, grinning at him.

“I already have one,” Cassian says easily, smirking, but a hint of color creeps up the back of his neck and seeps into his ears.

Jyn raises her eyebrows. “What is it then, you lying bastard?”

Cassian throws his hands up in mock submission. “Easy there, I didn’t lie. I didn’t have one before, but I do now.” Jyn’s eyebrows move further up her forehead until he admits, “It’s brown.”

“Brown,” Jyn says flatly, more of a disappointed statement than a question.

Cassian nods. The smirk has disappeared from his face. “Brown,” he confirms.

“Like the Ewoks?”

Cassian laughs, and Jyn is startled at the sound; without other troubles lying in wait in his mind, his laugh is easy and light, like a gentle breeze playfully wheeling through the trees. “No. Not like the Ewoks.”

“Like what, then?” Jyn prompts.

He shrugs and casts his gaze downwards, at the now-busy ground below them. “Like home,” he murmurs.

Jyn frowns, bemused. “But Fest—”

“Not Fest,” Cassian interrupts, raking his gaze over her dark hair, her dark eyes, like he’s trying to memorize her, every line and scar and bump. “You.”

Jyn feels her breath catch in her throat. The sounds of morning below have vanished, and she can only hear the beating of her own heart hammering against her ribcage. She instinctively reaches out towards his face, tracing the outline of his jaw, and smiles a watery and trembling smile at him, and she feels safe. Like she’s home. Through everything, their one constant has been each other, and somewhere along the way they fell in love. He catches her hand and presses it to his skin, closing his eyes and leaning into her palm, and breathes in slowly. Jyn cups his other cheek and kisses him gently, just once, before she pulls back and they rest their foreheads against each other, simply there, reveling in the each other.

Someone clears their throat behind them.

Jyn releases Cassian and turns to stare at Draven, who looks like he hasn’t slept at all and is nursing a bad hangover. “Sorry to interrupt,” he begins drily, “but there’s work to be done.” He glances over them, and Jyn expects to see some sort of disgust and sourness in his expression, but he seems as if he’s about to smile at them, or maybe he’s just in a lot of pain from last night. “We need you to go to Coruscant,” he informs them, “to help stamp out loyalists hiding there. Report to me in two hours.” He looks at them once more then turns on his heels and leaves, crossing over a rickety bridge to another hut.

“You were right, then,” Cassian says mildly as he watches Draven’s retreating back. “Coruscant.”

Jyn rests her head on his shoulder. “Then, Naboo?”

“Naboo,” Cassian promises.

As the sun’s rays begin to shine down on them, Jyn wraps her fingers around her kyber crystal and smiles at their future.

[mab-hatter]

Little Soldier Boy - Part 1

I have been writing this for AGES, (both due to procrastination, and just general life being a pain in the butt and getting in the way), but I've finally finished it and can share it with you guys. 

This is a meta that in its simplest form is comparing the two fictional worlds of Star Wars, specifically the Sequel Trilogy and Avatar The Last Airbender. And Yes, there is a reason it is first and foremost tagged as 'reylo'. So, obviously, there are going to be MAJOR spoilers for the entirety of Avatar The Last Airbender (Atla), as well as a few spoilers for its sequel The Legend of Korra (LoK), and I recommend you go watch both if you haven't already, especially the former. There are also obvious spoilers for Star Wars episode VII - The Force Awakens, (though I don't know why you'd be on this tag if you haven't watched it) as well as some potential spoilers for Star Wars episode VIII - The Last Jedi, and even some Clone Wars call backs. Anyways this is going to be extremely long, so you have been pre-warned. Also have fun.

There is no way I could completely sum up Avatar the Last Airbender or Atla in just a short overview. It's got too many variables and complexities for that. It would truly be a dishonour to try without showing you the actual show or telling you to go watch it yourselves. Simply put, Atla is a hero and heroines story wrapped up with redemption arcs and great villains. The main hero is a boy called Aang who was trapped in a ball of ice for 100 years and in those 100 years a war was going on, and still is when the story starts. It's set in a fantasy world with four nations representing the four elements (Air, Water, Earth and Fire). In this Universe there are people called Benders who can control their respective element, bending being that universes form of "magic" (it has a lot to do with the Asian concepts of balance, chi/ki and flow of energy - bending styles being inspired by different martial art forms and variants of tai-chi). The Avatar (Aang) is meant to represent balance by controlling all four elements. The story is about Aang and his friends going on a journey, set in a time of war with the Fire Nation (against the Fire Lord - whose voiced by Mark Hamill) who are trying to conquer "the world" - Its most definitely a morality tale, and in many ways a Fairy Tale too, and has essential themes about growing up, forgiveness, hope, love, following ones destiny and most importantly finding balance in a world tipped towards chaos and destruction. (I SERIOUSLY recommend you  go watch it, no NOT the horrible movie...ugh I wouldn't put you guys through that on purpose, no I'm talking about the miracle Nickelodeon Cartoon series If you haven't seen it already).

Now what does this have to do with Star Wars, Kylo Ren, redemption and reylo? Well when I first went into the movie theatre and watched The Force Awakens I was also taken aback at the serious hints towards Kylo Ren (the marketed villain) getting a redemption arc. I know there are so many wonderful and intelligently beautiful meta pieces about the in-movie and literary reasons etc for Kylo to be redeemed. Though for me initially, from the very start of the movie when Kylo spared Finn, to his behaviours and seemingly complex history, right to the jaw dropping 'holy shit' moment I had when he took off that helmet (I literally said in cinema - "whoa, was not expecting that" to the raised eyebrow of my Dad (an eternal star wars fan since 1977)) and just how the story ran his character - it reminded me quite nostalgically and strongly of one of my favourite fictional characters. This character, in my opinion, has one of THE BEST redemption arcs in all of fiction and I don't say that lightly, I've read quite a few (there might be better, but this one is certainly my favourite). I introduce you to Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation...

and I'll explain why me comparing Kylo to Zuko was the initial reason I thought Kylo was going to get a seriously awesome redemption arc.

Redemption.

First off, I'm going to compare their characters, backgrounds and personalities as well as their character relationships; going off of their character-portraits in their respective first acts. Whilst also taking some developed-traits and differences that Zuko displays later in the series that also link to Kylo. This is NOT me saying that Kylo is Zuko 2.0 or something like that, they're their own characters and I wouldn't have it any other way, this is me saying why the ways in which Zuko and in general Atla paralleling TFA and SW have lead me to believe that there are going to be some truly amazing things coming out of this trilogy of movies (that hasn't already been noted from TFA).

Zuko and Kylo are BOTH born of royalty, they're both Princes.

Zuko is the son of the Fire Lord, a prince of the Fire Nation and connected to the royal family through powerful bloodlines (Sozin's bloodline from his father Ozai, - Sozin being the Fire Lord one who originally started the 100 year war, and Roku through his mother Ursa - Roku being the previous Avatar).

Then there's Kylo, and although Han may have been a scoundrel and an orphan whose bloodline had no significance and wasn't force sensitive at all, his mother Leia is force sensitive, a Skywalker... so powerful blood from Anakin, as well as Leia being a Princess of (a destroyed) Alderaan. Furthermore Kylo being the Grandson of Padme Amidala a Queen of Naboo, as well as J.J's commentary of Star Wars being a Fairy Tale and him saying 'this' about Kylo, which also tie the hypothetical 'princely' bow nicely on the Skywalker present...

"But when his mask comes off, you see Adam Driver, and he just looks like a sort of prince. And it makes no sense. Why would he need to wear a mask?" - J.J Abrams (TFA commentary)

They both hail from families who have a history of good and evil, light and dark. Through them, Zuko and Kylo were both born into luxury and comfort due to their blood and high standing in their in-universe societies. Zuko and Kylo were also both born into dysfunctional families, Kylo actually more than Zuko in some respects and Zuko more than Kylo in others.    

When Zuko was born, his father despised him and thought him a 'blight/shame', because he didn't think he was a Firebender (even though he was) and even threatened to kill him by throwing him over the walls of the palace (what the fackity fuck Ozai?). Which is a direct contrast to Han who was weary of Ben/Kylo BECAUSE he was so force sensitive and Han wasn't and didn't feel he could connect with Ben due to this (as indicated in one of the Aftermath books I believe). Though don't worry I'm not saying Han's like the Fire Lord - god no. I love Han, it's just a bit ironic - a reversed mirror. Anyway, when Zuko was very young the only person who truly LOVED Zuko (apart from his Uncle) was his mother Ursa, who disappeared for "reasons" (it's in the series, though let's just say it was Ozai's fault), leaving Zuko alone with his powerful and cruel father and his evilly manipulative and snake like sister Azula. This turned Zuko, a youthfully innocent and kind boy, to become emotionally broken and incredibly angry due to the mental and physical abuse he received at the hands of his family. (Ozai and Azula were both hugely cruel dickheads to Zuko when he was young, leaving him mocked and alienated without his mother). Zuko is a very passionate and emotional character, and at 13 years old in a meeting he spoke out against his father  and a fire nation General. They were talking about strategically sacrificing innocent lives as a diversion in an attack against one of the nations. Zuko was called to have a fire bending duel (Agni Kai), to fight for his honour at having outspoken against his father's Generals and also having an opposing opinion of compassion compared to cold calculation, but instead of the General it was his father Ozai who came to fight him... and when Zuko refused, his father called him a coward, BURNED HALF HIS FACE and then proceeded to banish him. Yes, ZUKO has a burn scar on one side of his face... A scar (now I'm going to get to that later). You could also parallel that to Kylo seemingly not wanting to become a Jedi, if you take into account that Leia had to 'SEND' him away instead of him wanting to go - and how in the end, this led to Ben going down a dark path to become Kylo Ren and left him potentially feeling more abandoned than ever.

Although Kylo having those 'special powers' and being a force sensitive prodigy in a sense is actually more akin to Azula who was a fire bending prodigy, whereas Zuko had to work to become good at the in-verse "magic", and due to his lack of natural talent in bending, he actually became a master swordsmen at a young age and could be considered a prodigy of the sword (whereas I believe because Kylo focused so much on using his power in the force, his skills with a Lightsaber suffered a bit - as he uses only Form 1, the most basic Lightsaber fighting form - even though he is a good fighter, though I believe his 'lack' of training has a lot to do with that too).

I think that says more about the difference in the in-verse magic though. I've always thought that the difference between Benders is a person is simply born as a bender or a non-bender, and if you are a bender you could be more naturally akin to learning something and picking it up with practise than say another bender, even though technically they could become just as powerful as each other. Whereas in the Force there are people who are just born with more power when it comes to the manipulation of the force and mastery of its many nuances. That on some level everyone is force-sensitive, but depending on who you are that sensitivity varies, whether that's due to their bloodline or the will of the Force itself.

Now not much is known about specific events or what Ben/Kylo was like as a child (yet), but from this quote given by Adam Driver you can deduce quite a lot.

“If you really imagine the stakes of him, in his youth, having all these special powers and having your parents kind of be absent during that process on their own agendas, [being] equally as selfish,” said the Girls star. “He’s lost in the world that he was raised in, and feels that he was kind of abandoned by the people that he’s closest with. He’s angry because of that, I think, and he has a huge grudge on his shoulders.”  

Which says a lot. Both Zuko and Kylo felt 'abandoned' by their respective families, they both felt 'pressure' to be the best because of the bloodlines they were born from and the responsibilities they were born into. Therefore, because of this in Act 1 for both they share this arrogance and feeling of superiority over others (Kylo playing cat and mouse with Finn, mocking Hux, "You know I can take whatever I want" etc/Zuko calling people a peasant, pronouncing his need to reclaim his honour above all else and being just a general bully to those he deemed beneath him).

I believe they both have a grudge on their shoulders for both their families, for the same reasons. Their feelings of abandonment - making them feel lost, alone and unloved. At the start of their stories (and for a lot of Zuko's character arc) they are both angry, EXTREMELY SO.  Angry at the unjustness and unfairness of the world they've been born into, angry at the people they're supposed to be closest too for making them feel so alone and unwanted, and angry at themselves. I think that's something a lot of people misunderstood initially about Zuko, and some still do not understand about Kylo. They may lash out verbally and physically at the people and world around them, but really (though there are exceptions) they're not usually angry at what's around them or the people they meet, they're angry and frustrated at themselves. I saw that in Kylo, because I saw the exact same thing in Zuko.

They both actually use this anger to fuel their own power. Kylo uses his rage to fuel his power over the dark-side, and Zuko uses his anger and fury to make his bending more powerful and to produce fire more potent and additionally dangerous.

Both are desperate to belong somewhere, after feeling so lost for so long; making them extremely impatient and short tempered. Kylo wants to find that in the darkness, where he believes his Grandfather found belonging and a purpose, found strength. 'Supreme Leader is wise' he said, though I think he's trying to convince himself more than anything; a mantra that comes out of his lips that aren't actually his words, but someone else's falsities and fabrications, a fraying rope he's desperately clinging to even though his feet are literally inches away from the truth. He thought that being with Snoke and the First Order was the best place to be, that Snoke offered him a place at his side when everyone else left him behind...even Luke most likely (waiting for TLJ to give more details on their past and relationship, though I have a feeling what happened may have been Luke creating his own self-fulfilling prophecy). In the Aftermath books and Bloodline there are hints that Snoke has been targeting, grooming and manipulating Ben to come and be his puppet  before he was even born; which is extremely unsettling.

Excerpt 1: Luke. She reaches for him but doesn’t find him. The dark, now lit with stars. One by one, like eyes opening. Comforting at first, then sinister as she worries. Who is out there, who is watching us? Hands reach for her, hands of shadow, lifting her up, reaching for her throat, her wrists, her stomach - Inside, the child kicks. She feels her baby turning inside, right-side, up and down, struggling to find his bearings, trying so hard to find his way free of her. It’s not time, she thinks. Just a little longer. Leia.

Luke, she wants to cry out. But her words don’t come. Her mouth is sealed, a hand pressed over it. One by one, stars go dark again, winking out of existence as if by a hand slowly closing over them -

Leia! She gasps and wakes. Han. It’s just Han. He’s by her side of the bed, rousing her, gently shaking her shoulder. The dream recedes like a wave going back to sea. Hi, she says, her mouth tacky, her eyes full of sleep. Her middle twists too - it’s not the baby. It’s some unseen fear uncoiling. The remnants of the dream haunt her - but they break apart like a sand castle as she sits up and clears her head, doing as Luke taught her to do. Breathe in breathe out. Be mindful of the world, the galaxy, your place within it. Everything will be OK. The Force will be your guide. Excerpt 2: He is less a human shaped thing and more a pulsing, living band of light. Light that sometimes dims, that sometimes is thrust with a vein of darkness. She tells herself that it’s normal - Luke said to her, Leia, we all have that. He explained that the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. Right now, her son is upset, tumbling inside her as if he can’t get comfortable. His light, flickering with dark. She centres herself and concentrates. The walls of the room fall away. Everything is white and then it’s black. Then she’s in the calm, airless void. As Leia finds her peace, so does her son. He stops turning… Then he gets the hiccups. Hic.Hic.Hic. She sighs and it brings her out of it. But she laughs, too. Because the hiccups tickle her. They are like bubbles inside - a curious effervescence like nothing Leia ever felt before. My son is alive. The future is bright. … The baby turns inside her again, troubled by something she cannot feel and cannot yet understand.

Star Wars and Atla both have their "Big Bads"...

Obviously we don't have all three sequel movies yet, so I'm only going off of information said/shown and given in TFA and the canon TFA books about Snoke. To me the surface level of Snoke is him being, at least aesthetically, an Emperor 2.0 for the general audience. He's the giant hologram, the deformed baddie sitting above everyone on his 'throne' of command. It's to get them to think and recognise 'oh this guy's the Big Bad that's got to be defeated like the Emperor or the Fire Lord', and I think it was intentionally done to have this ancient evil giant hologram 'supreme leader' so the audience can essentially feel like it's Star Wars - to get them familiar with the franchise again. Although if you look a bit deeper, it's actually pretty weird... Why would they reveal the big bad in the first act? Both the Fire Lord and the Emperor were only physically introduced (not through hologram) to the audience in the third Act, like their character hype was seriously built up for the audience before the big reveal. With the Emperor having his giant Hologram moment during the 2nd Act/movie, and only once. Snoke is revealed in his 'giant hologram form' multiple times throughout the FIRST ACT of the story (no shadowy cloak or cleverly using camera angles to partially hide him - only lighting choices, and even then beams of light are mostly illuminating him from the back), and from rumours that there's going to be a physical life-size puppet of Snoke in TLJ it seems we're going to physically meet his character in the 2nd Act. Also although just like Palpatine and Ozai, Snoke is similar to them in terms of his snake like manipulation, grooming somebody whose very powerful into becoming their own personal puppet and wish to conquer and dominate their respective world/galaxy - Snoke is quite different. His personality, as one dimensional as it is in TFA, is not the fun and powerfully evil emperor of the original or prequel trilogy, or the cruelly brutal and mocking presence of the Fire Lord. Snoke is presented as this almost omniscient, crookedly "wise" and creepy father figure, who uses no physical violence as of yet, only his words and his use of a 'dark power' and the influence they have over others - especially to Kylo and even Hux (obviously this could change, but I have a feeling they wouldn't destroy a foundation they've already started and will instead build on the characteristics I mentioned).

^Snoke's full speech taken from the audio book of TFA to Hux and Kylo and reveals a lot about his character, ideals and motives as well as The First Orders and even Kylo's own knowledge and denial towards his inner conflict (his compassion).

Also, unlike the Emperor or Vader, Snoke isn't actually a Sith - as said by J.J and Pablo there are no Sith in TFA as all the Sith are supposed to be dead (thanks Anakin), which leads me to believe Snoke may be something far more ancient and far worse than a Sith (because why would they introduce a big bad that's less scary/powerful than previous villains?). This could lead into the theories that he's from the unknown regions, but its yet to be seen what his history is, apart from 'ancient evil'... (I'm not going to go into the 'Who is Snoke, potentially, theories' because I don't want to give myself more of a headache about it than I already have).

"No it was Snoke, he seduced our son to the dark side", is an interesting quote from Leia in TFA. Snoke has been manipulating and seducing Ben against his will to become his puppet for longer than the Emperor ever did with Anakin, and he succeeded because like the Emperor, Snoke was clever and wickedly patient. He exploited Ben's vulnerabilities (like a true child groomer), and used them to control him even though Ben at that time might not have been fully and or consciously aware of it.

Also the implied personal connotation of Leia knowing who Snoke is, most likely as a fellow political power since in Bloodline she has a huge role to play in galactic politics as a populist, and this means that Snoke parallels the Emperor in that way as a true puppet-master who has immense wealth (especially going off the TLJ Lego leaks that Snoke has a golden dressing gown - which is extremely humorous). As well as the potential spoilers of Snoke living in luxury which would all fit to this idea, and would explain how The First Order can afford all of the high-tech and dangerous "toys" they get to mess the galaxy up with. The fact that Snoke's character was revealed so early on, and that he has such strong ties to Kylo and his reasons for becoming an antagonist, is actually also a huge hint to Kylo's redemption. The Emperor and the Fire Lord didn't need to be revealed early, because they were just the big goal for the protagonists to defeat at the end of the story to complete their arcs and receive that happy ending (the proverbial dragons in the Fairy Tale being killed by the hero/heroine before winning the Princess/prince and having that 'they all lived happily ever after'). They didn't need to be revealed early on, because in the OT you had Darth Vader who was a faithful villain till the last moment of the third act, and in Atla you had Azula and her cronies for the second act and most of the third to carry the Villain title as Zuko went into his redemption. The fact that Snoke needs to be there, shows in itself that Snoke doesn't trust Kylo not to turn back to the light (confirmed by the fact he was given a 'test' to prove himself and that Snoke didn't complete his training), that without his presence he would most likely rejoin the 'good guys' and not be a self-sustaining Villain like Darth Vader or Azula. He's like a controlling parent, he has to be, because Kylo (unlike Vader or Azula) doesn't have clear motivations to have him act independently as a villain without Snoke's supervision (I mean he has a tracker on his belt - Snoke has SO much confidence in Kylo it seems -_-); and the fact that it conflicts him to the point of wanting to be 'free of this pain' show it wouldn't take much to push him one way or the other. Kylo's motives are a bit of a mystery to us apart from feeling 'abandoned' and wanting to be 'strong' and not 'weak like his father' (though I'm pretty sure there's more to it than that), or he does have clear motives but they're motivations that conflict between bad and good and we could say they do have some conflict with Snoke's plan; aka that entire thing about Hux saying,

"Careful Ren, that your personal interests not interfere with orders from Leader Snoke."

Which was about the map, which has connections to Luke and the first Jedi Temple...so we can assume a lot of his motivations have something to do with one or both of those things and assumedly whatever happened/Kylo did/Kylo learned/Kylo saw/Kylo ??? at Luke's temple (TLJ give me answers please). In essence neither is he truly good or truly evil (<- "there are no Sith in TFA")... which in my book makes him a beautifully crafted character and an interesting antagonist (at the moment), so much drama, like an ionic lattice of compelling story writing compared to the simple covalent character structure of other villains I can think of. (<- If you understood any of that, congrats).    

Anyway -  I don't really like Snoke's character as a villain, yet, because I feel like I need more to work with...But going off of what was said in the TFA novelisation (link above) about him always being there, watching the empire rise and fall, pulling strings, I can definitely say I hate him for what he did to Ben - what Snoke did to Ben is actually worse than what the Fire Lord did to Zuko, because for all the abuse Zuko received, the Fire Lord never really gave Zuko a reason to love him. Apart from Zuko's own sense of loyalty to his family, that he feels in his own naive thinking that, that is where he belongs - because his own morals and honour are important to him. Snoke not only makes Kylo turn away from his own family and turns that loyalty against them, but he nurtures it, grooms Kylo into feeling that what they're doing is morally justified. The fact that Kylo felt abandoned and lost was what Snoke wanted, and snapped Kylo right up into his proverbial jaws at the first chance he got - and Kylo let him, because he probably thought that nobody else cared. He'd convinced himself through Snoke's own 'offer' and manipulation that somebody actually cares about him, when in reality "Snoke is using" him and sees him only as another piece of clay to be moulded in order to attain his goals. Now will this deluded concept that Kylo has remain? Well in TFA it's already cracking. Like I said before he's trying to re-convince himself that what he's doing is right. And Kylo may be reckless, but like Zuko he isn't stupid - he's just lost, he doesn't know what's right or wrong anymore and that makes him feel SO conflicted. "I'm being torn apart...It's too late", he knows, god he knows, but just like Zuko in his reckless misguided naivety he thinks that by passing a test and achieving a goal all that conflict will go away - that he'll finally feel like he belongs.

The fact that Kylo actually shows such heavy signs of conflict in his first Act was astonishing to me, like he verbally pronounces it. For Zuko, who has a REDEMPTION ARC, there are practically no verbal queues to the audience from Zuko for a season and a half that heavily imply his redemption/inner-conflict. It's actually other characters like Iroh that say things such as,

"Your critical decision, what you did beneath that lake, it was in such conflict with your image of yourself that you are now at war within your own mind and body", - Iroh to Zuko after commits his first redemptive act towards the mid-point of the second season.

What I'm trying to say is that Zuko was actually less conflicted than Kylo at the start of their respective stories, which is amazing and really shines a light on the fact that the pacing for Kylo's redemption will be a lot faster/pushed forward more (which hopefully gives us more screen time of Kylo on the side of the 'good guys'/'neutral' depending on how they go about it- I can't wait for all the incoming snark, it'll be glorious).

We all know that the sequel trilogy (like the original and prequel) will be compromised of three movies/3 acts you might say. Atla is also compromised of three seasons (Three books) or 3 Acts and each act was crucial in Zuko's redemption, just as I'm sure the three act structure will be crucial to Kylo's. Let's get one thing straight, Zuko in the first season of Atla was a VILLAIN. He had goals that were conflicting with the Protagonists and he was one of their main antagonists during that time. Zuko had plenty, although not as many as Kylo, hints towards his redemption; but I'll get to that later. Obviously Star Wars will have to speed up Kylo's redemption a little more than Zuko's in Atla, that's just a given fact. A TV series of 20, 20 and 21 episodes with about a 20-25 minute run time per episode - in comparison to three movies with about a 2 hour run time each - can take it's time a bit and be a little more subtle. I'm not saying that Kylo's redemption can't be subtle, compelling and amazing; cause I have no doubt it will be. I'm just saying that for Kylo in his first act his hints are far less subtle than Zuko's, meaning the pacing's going to be run its course in a shorter time-frame.  

In Atla Zuko's turning point or where he redeemed himself is actually in act 3, but I think due to having less time Kylo's turning point will (quite naturally in the context) happen in the second Act/The Last Jedi. (Ach-To = Act 2 <- lmao). Although Zuko was actually supposed to have his turning point at the end of the 2nd season, but for some reason instead of it being his redemption it was turned into his test/rejection of a redemptive act/choice. (I'm not sure why the creators of Atla, Bryke (Bryan (Bryan Konietzko) and Mike (Michael Dante DiMartino)) decided to change this, but I guess it gave the story a few more twists and choice-encounters so whatever). Kylo may also have a rejection/a betrayal that he commits within TLJ too, just to show that characters redeeming themselves isn't usually a straight path from start to finish - and that characters do make mistakes and sometimes have a relapse in judgement, just as real life people do. At the very least I believe, there will come a point in TLJ where Kylo will have to make a choice...To redeem himself, or to be once again seduced by a false sense of belonging? We'll just have to wait for Christmas to find out I suppose (I'll go further into this idea later in the meta).                                      

Now both Zuko and Kylo have these 'goals' that they become obsessed with - and a 'test'. Zuko's goals are finding the Avatar and therefore restoring his honour so he can feel like he belongs. Kylo's goal is finding that map to the first Jedi temple - for both the Supreme leader and his own personal agenda. Although we still don't know what his agenda is, having something do with "I'll finish what you started" - aka whatever Anakin Started (the destruction of the Jedi? creating Balance? an extreme hatred of sand?????) but its either about Luke and or The last Jedi temple on Ach-To as I've said above - and not being tempted back to the light in order to prove to the Supreme leader and himself that he belongs somewhere.

Zuko's "test" is actually him rejecting the call to join the 'good guys' and he completes this test by betraying his Uncle and all his Uncle tried to teach him about doing good and finding oneself , by fighting the Avatar (there was this big coo with Azula and basically Zuko is pronounced to have killed Aang even though Aang was still alive...), and achieving his goal therefore returning his 'honour' and going back to his father and the Fire Nation.

Kylo's "test" was on that bridge, and although he didn't achieve his goal of getting the map (it's Rey's fault, he's just too recklessly curious about her, but I believe that he will get to Ach-To anyway and confront the protagonists; though that has stuff to do with Fore-Bonds and we're not talking about that at the moment), he did achieve his test albeit it almost accidently. Also his test and rejection to redeeming himself happen in the first Act, unlike Zuko's, also a sign at a faster paced redemption arc. He confronted his father, and killed him which was what the supreme leader wanted - but he did it out of rage and being pushed by the dark side. As J.J said, Kylo WAS being convinced to come back to the light, just as Iroh and even Katara started convincing Zuko to be on the side of good before he betrayed them. Zuko and Kylo both do these acts, and make these choices, believing that it will solve their conflicts and they'll finally feel like they belong - Zuko with his honour and Kylo in the dark side.

Guess what? It won't. For Zuko, even though he was accepted back by his father and reclaimed what he thought was his "honour", Zuko did not feel belonging. Redemption is not something that is deserved, or forced upon someone. Redemption is a decision that a person makes. Anybody can redeem themselves if they want to, but they have to want to, nobody else can decide that for them. They can influence* them but in the end it is their choice. This was the point in Atla that a lot of people realised Zuko's anger and frustration was directed at himself, and that what he had done didn't "magically" fix everything. In season 3 there's this episode where it becomes abundantly clear...

Zuko:

"For so long I thought that if my dad accepted me I'd be happy, I'm back home now, my dad talks to me, ha, he even thinks I'm a hero, everything should be perfect right? I should be happy now, but I'm not, I'm angrier than ever and I don't know why?!"      

Azula:

"It's a simple question you need to answer then, who are you angry at?"

Zuko (bold) - Azula, Mai and Ty Lee (normal):

"No one, I'm just angry"..."yeh who are you angry at Zuko?"..."everyone, I don't know" ..."is it dad?"..."No, no."..."is it your uncle" "No, no, no, NO"..."then who, who are you angry at?"..."answer the question Zuko"..."talk to us"..."who Zuko"..."who are you angry at"...

Zuko:

"I'm angry at myself.”

This. This is the result of Zuko completing his test and achieving his goal. He was being eaten up with guilt over what he did, and what he thinks he lost. It made him more feel more conflicted and lost than ever, he felt deep regret and emptiness at his own actions instead of the fulfilment and confidence in himself he thought he would feel if he proved himself. It is a false honour he had regained, because he thought honour was something that was given, not something that you proved through your own choices instead of others making them for you. And this pinnacle of conflict made him so angry and unbalanced that it lead to him making the ultimate choice - to want redemption.

"For so long, all I wanted was for you to love me. To accept me. I thought it was my honour that I wanted, but really, I was just trying to please you!" - Zuko confronting his father Ozai in Book 3.

Kylo is the same. Snoke implies to Kylo that by confronting his father, and in turn killing him and passing his 'test', he will become fully enveloped in the dark side, and become strong like his grandfather (Vader, not Anakin - it seems Kylo is seeing the truth as Obi-Wan said "The truth is often what we make of it" - his own interpretation/believing what he wants to believe. Seeing his own personal truth, not the objective truth when it comes to his grandfather, choosing to ignore how he came back to the light - as I believe he knew of Anakin's story, but Snoke twisted it for his own purposes). Snoke will then 'trust' him enough to "complete his training" and to Kylo this means that he will no longer be lost and unwanted. He will FINALLY belong. Of course I think that Snoke was lying, and 'using' Kylo by wanting to make him feel more conflicted in both the light and the dark as Snoke wants Kylo to be the epitome of both - as he believes that will be MORE powerful (not a Sith, not a traditional Jedi, something more), but will also make him easier to manipulate just like Palpatine did with Anakin. Kylo deep down knows he's being manipulated, he knows he's being used, and he WAS being convinced to go back. I believe he feels he, like Zuko, has no choice. That "it's too late", and he's done too much. He thinks he knows what he has to do to belong, and it's his 'addiction' to this idea of proving himself, of not being conflicted and finally being accepted that overrides his 'pull to the light' in this moment. They're addicted and obsessed with this idea of being accepted by proving themselves. Zuko is described as such in his first act...

'So that's why he's so obsessed, capturing the Avatar is the only chance he has of things returning to normal' - A random Fire Nation soldier talking to Iroh about Zuko.

That says a lot about Zuko's Act 1 and Act 2 mentality. "Only chance" and "normal", that also reflect Kylo's mentality too, because Kylo's never really felt normal; and that this is his "only" chance to feel welcomed. As even in the First Order, Kylo was different. A Knight of Ren, separated and segregated from the rest - treated as if he really is a freak/creature/monster, still as alienated as ever. Above not among, which at the same time can make them feel like they're beneath. Just like Zuko, who was alienated from his nation and his people by his father, banished, still different, never welcomed.

"I know what I have to do, but I don't know if I have the strength to do it" - this is his conflict warring within himself, it's almost palpable. He knows what he thinks he must do but he's starting to have doubts, and he hates himself for that. It directly parallels with this line from Zuko in season 1,

"Stop it Uncle. I have to do this".

Further solidifying the feeling of having little choice, that there are no other roads or paths that they feel are available to them that they think they can really go down. Kylo really is afraid he can't be as strong as his grandfather, not power no (I don't think he cares so much about that - he's more prideful then greedy), strength is something he seems to value and strives for just like Zuko strove to be strong and worthy in the eyes of his father. Kylo wants to be strong and worthy in the eyes of his grandfather, somebody he feels he can relate to. It's this fear and self-anger and frustration at himself that I think are the things that push him into committing this horrible patricidal deed. And let's be honest...what Han said was pretty emotional, but if you think of the years that Ben felt abandoned by his father (since it's pretty obvious Han hadn't seen his son since he was a boy/teen), you'd think Kylo wouldn't trust him over the 'wise' supreme leader who in Kylo's eyes actually gives a shit about him. Now we know that's not true, and Kylo realises it as well at THIS moment...

(Although this also links to Kylo feeling Leia's anguish at Han's death through a familial fore-bond I believe Kylo and Leia share, as well as Leia's general force sensitivity, Leia feeling Kylo's immediate regret and guilt which is reflected in Kylo's face and him reacting to what he's done). With that final swift hand touch (I know it was improvised, but Harrison Ford wouldn't have done it and J.J wouldn't have kept it in unless it was confluent to the scene and canon), and with evidence from the Junior novelisation of TFA Han 'forgives his son', because he loves him. In the script it says...

Kylo in his first act, after his 'test' of loyalty and proving thou self to the Big Bad, it does not make him stronger - it makes him WEAKER. Snoke lied to Kylo, in a way he betrayed him, someone Kylo thought had accepted him, and just like with Zuko it was not at ALL what he expected. Like Zuko he feels regret and shock and emptiness at his own act instead of the self-fulfilment and confidence that he was expecting, that Snoke promised him. He's 'horrified' at what he's done, just like Zuko felt horrified and guilty at himself for betraying his Uncle. I believe just as Zuko's act of betrayal to his uncle was the eventual thing that helped him make the choice to redeem himself, Kylo's act on this bridge and Han's sacrifice will be the deciding factor that will begin to turn Kylo back to the light, and redeem him as Ben Solo.

Kylo very literally does feel weaker by doing this, his act creates more conflict and confusion in him, which I actually think overshadows his usual rage with sadness and regret. Even with him being angry at Finn, and battering his wound to both stem the flow of blood from Chewie's Bowcaster wound though to also cause pain to fuel his anger, it's not enough anymore. With that diminishing rage his practised power/skilled control over the force diminishes significantly. He really does become weaker, because his reason/usual power that he draws on isn't as reliable as he thought. What I found incredibly interesting was that something very similar happens to Zuko. When Zuko decides to join the protagonists, because he's no longer hunting his goal to regain his honour, and has finally accepted himself for who he is, his usual rage and anger that powered his flames before when bending - it was gone. That well of power had been diminished, and it leaves Zuko being unable to bend/use his bending to anywhere near the level he could before. Zuko was also 'weakened'.  Now in order to become even more powerful than he was before, and regain his bending without drawing from anger (which btw is reminiscent of Sith teachings), Zuko has to go on a small journey of, I guess you could say 'enlightenment'... and I think Kylo's going to have a similar journey as even though drawing on the dark side and anger can be powerful, I think the sequel trilogy is introducing an idea of something even more powerful that Kylo will have to discover just like Zuko did - but I'll get to that later. Kylo must find a new reason, just as Zuko did.  

Going back to Kylo's decision on that bridge, Han forgives Kylo before his death, but he's also afraid for his son that he will never find his way home to the light. Zuko's Uncle Iroh, when betrayed by his nephew instantly forgave him because he loves him like his own son, but he was afraid for Zuko and that his nephew would never turn to who he truly was - a good person.

Zuko redeemed himself. He did it by himself, by making his own choices through realising his mistakes from his own feelings of regret. Kylo's guilt and increased feeling of conflict isn't going to go away any time soon, it's actually going to get worse. As Adam said in the Vanity Fair interview about TLJ...

"I feel like almost everyone is in that rehabilitation state. You know, I don't think that patricide is all that it's cracked up to be. Maybe that's where Kylo Ren is starting from," Driver teases. "His external scar is probably as much an internal one."

This quote sums up what I've been thinking about ever since I first started comparing Kylo to Zuko in 2015, and what direction Kylo's character would potentially be going. Kylo is trying to heal after what happened in TFA, but those internal scars aren't going to be healed with a bacta tank. Those scars of regret and sadness and conflicting emotions are going to eat Kylo alive in The Last Jedi, just like Zuko's started to just before he realised his mistakes and chose to change. I believe in TLJ we're going to see Kylo realise just like Zuko did that proving himself to be accepted by his 'master'/'abusive father figure' hasn't actually done anything. He doesn't feel stronger, he doesn't feel more confident or more powerful, he doesn't feel accepted. He doesn't feel like he belongs. Kylo's going to feel more isolated and lost than ever at the start of the Last Jedi. It's nothing like he thought it would be, and that's going to make him confused and angry. On the inside he'll be suffering, a self-inflicted wound that began with his parents, had started tearing open inside him with whatever happened at Luke's Jedi temple and with this act/refusal to be redeemed has instead of sealing the wound...he's torn it to reveal a chasm. What happens when a wounded animal feels cornered, wounded and alone like he must be feeling? They lash out. 

Kylo is not towards the end of his redemption arc just yet, actually he still needs to go through quite a bit before he concludes his arc. This is where the pacing of Atla and the sequel trilogy differ, with Zuko's test being in the second Act and his turning point in the third, Kylo's test was at the end of the first act and I believe his turning point with be somewhere in this second act. Zuko completed both the goal and the test as one and the same, well technically he completed his test - but since Aang was still alive his goal was still incomplete, though for a while nobody knew that. This makes Zuko incredibly anxious and worried, and he sends an assassin to finish the job (due to his sister being a political and manipulative snake, and using the knowledge that Aang may be alive as potential black-mail/insurance against Zuko for later). Kylo may have completed his test, but obviously as I've stated above he will not feel fulfilled and centred where he is. Kylo's failings I think are going to be heavily addressed at the start of TLJ/act 2, just like Zuko's were at the start of the second season of Atla (Ozai sends Azula to kill Zuko for  his failings - siblings am I right?) and I'm predicting there's going to be a very angry and disappointed scene with Kylo and Snoke at the start of TLJ. Kylo like Zuko is going to be kicking himself, his frustration and anger at himself are going to reach a fever pitch, it's not going to be pretty unfortunately. Combine that with Kylo's sadness, regret, guilt and increasing conflict and you have yourself one very misguided, confused and furious Kylo Ren. I believe he's going to be feeling all of this at the start of TLJ, and at some point that's where this is going to come into play...

The Broken mask. The fact that smokes coming up from it, means it's likely been destroyed by a Lightsaber, and I can't imagine why it'd be Rey or Luke (I don't think they'd specifically target his mask in a rage) - so it makes sense that Kylo's the one who shattered it. Now what I always found really interesting is that both Zuko and Kylo have personas. Now I'm not saying that the persona of Kylo Ren will be shattered with that mask, I think shattering the persona he's created will be a lot harder than simply destroying the mask. It will take time. Ben Solo became buried under the Dark side persona of Kylo Ren, using this persona to commit horrible acts on and to others (although the persona and the person underneath are one and the same, the person with the persona still feels a disconnect between the two if you get what I mean). Ben has Kylo Ren and Zuko has the Blue spirit.

They both use these personas to hide their own faces, to feel disconnected from who they truly are, so they feel morally justified in committing acts that aren't really very morally 'good' - similar to the 'split' between Anakin and Vader as personalities even though they're the same person.

Though Zuko never did anything nearly as bad with his as Kylo, you have to take it with a pinch of salt. Although Atla can get very dark at times and covers some really heavy themes and tackles really meaningful issues and philosophies it gets nowhere near as dark as Star Wars does, because that's just how they're both written - simple as saying Star Wars is just an incredibly dramatic space opera in comparison to Atla, not saying that Atla can't be dramatic because it can be, but nowhere near to the level that TFA is. (blowing up Hosnian Prime/5 planets with a giant red sun laser of death...). These personas represent the darkness in both these characters, and the outer-mask of strength they want the world to perceive them as and fear them for compared to the vulnerability within...or a "Vulnerable Warlord" - cheers official Star Wars Databank, loving the descriptive oxymoron, very Kylo... Zuko got rid of his mask just like Kylo's going to shatter his, after Zuko used it for the first time for good instead of bad, and it leaves him feeling so conflicted, yet wanting to keep using it cause it makes him feel powerful -  that Iroh tells him to let it go. That's where Zuko really starts to change, linking back to Iroh telling him he's at war within his own mind. That's why I believe that Kylo will in a way mirror this, trying to crush the conflict and feeling of weakness he feels after TFA by destroying the mask that he hides behind, and possibly feeling frustrated with what he couldn't do in the past, but with what he also must do in the present/future. (There are theories that the mask being a relic contains dark side energy/Sith energy, so by destroying it Kylo might actually be helping himself more than he knows). 

Uncle Iroh. Throughout Avatar the Last Airbender, Zuko's journey and story through both the first and second Act's and towards the end of book 3 - he is always there by Zuko's side. He supports Zuko, helps him, guides him in a way that is unbiased and completely selfless. Iroh is funny and wise from experience and extremely humble with kindness. He is also strong willed but softly peaceful, and incredibly open-minded. It is shown through Atla that Iroh experienced much pain and a lot of heavy responsibility in his life, but he unlike Zuko at the start of his arc, had come to terms with who he is and his place in the 'cosmos', and had found soulful peace and a deep connection to the spirit world.

He dedicated himself to teaching Zuko, to being the family the banished prince never really had, and to be the friend Zuko needed in order to realise what was really important. He mentors Zuko about the world, using his experiences of its many different cultures and all his vast knowledge, trying to open Zuko's closed minded and prideful views of his own reality and the people in it; to show him its diversity and complexity. That people don't have to stay on one path, but have the freedom of will to choose their own. He is (especially for Zuko at the start of his arc) one of Zuko's main character foils, who is also an 'antagonist' though I've never really viewed him as an antagonist, and more as a neutral character. The voice of reason, the lighthouse in the storm. He is Zuko's true father figure, who has really been a Dad to Zuko more so than his actual father -

"After I leave here today, I'm going to free Uncle Iroh from his prison, and I'm going to beg for his forgiveness - he's the one who's been a real father to me." - Zuko during his big speech to Ozai in Book 3.

I believe not just Zuko, but everyone, should have an Uncle Iroh in their life...and his Tea jokes.  

Especially Kylo. This is one of the main ways in which Kylo and Zuko differ as characters at the moment. Kylo doesn't really have an Uncle Iroh in his life - instead he has Snoke, and as I've talked about that's not a good thing. He didn't have one when he felt abandoned by Leia and Han as a kid, he may have had one in Luke but whatever happened at that temple unraveled whatever had been built between the two it seems (I need answers Rian!)...and in the last 6 years in the timeline since he joined the First Order, up to the present canon in the sequel trilogy of TFA and the start of TLJ it seems, Kylo is still very much alone. Zuko always felt nobody understood him, when the person that could understand him the most was literally standing right next to him the entire time, and his realisation of this is one of the big reasons he turns to become a protagonist. Just as romantic love turned Anakin to the dark side, it seems Kylo has the same conundrum with his familial bonds - in that the mistakes of his family are what pushed him to Snoke and the dark. Though that doesn't mean family won't play a huge role in his redemption, because it already has, and I believe there are characters in this sequel trilogy that will be Kylo's representation and will partially evoke the characteristics and story-relevance of Iroh and how they will influence Kylo's redemption like Iroh did Zuko's.

Han Solo (The Father).  

I've already talked above about how Kylo killing Han and Zuko betraying Iroh were their 'tests', and the relevance this had for Zuko and his redemption and how it already has and will impact Kylo in the future. As Iroh was the catalyst and the over-arching reason for Zuko to want to join the good guys, apart from his own moral conclusions, Han's death at Kylo's hands will be the catalyst that eventually redeems Kylo and pushes him towards that turning point and so on... as I've already explained before, so I think you get how Han and Iroh's characters parallel each other in that sense. (Unfortunately for Han and my heart, Han unlike Iroh with his nephew will never get to see his fully grown Son redeemed, and in a sense that's extremely tragic and makes what happened even more sad but powerful and important).

Now there was a line in TFA that always really stood out to me.

"Take off that mask, you don't need it", Han talking to Kylo on that bridge, wanting to see the 'face of his son' beneath, who he thought he was (Ben), not who he had become (Kylo). It stood out to me, because it always reminded me very fondly of this line...

"I wonder who could be behind that mask?" which was Iroh talking to the Blue Spirit, knowing it was Zuko underneath and wanting to see his nephew, not the beastly looking persona he was hiding behind.

In Zuko's case, after Iroh says this to him and sees straight through the persona, after finding Zuko in front of the protagonists pet bison Appa (who means a great deal to them and is actually what is driving the story at that point in the season - to find Appa) where Zuko was thinking about taking Appa as ransom... Iroh calls Zuko out on his short-term thinking and reckless actions. He worriedly and angrily shows Zuko that what he is doing is obsessive and could potentially get him killed - and then Zuko says,

"I know my own destiny", (Zuko) and,

"I have to do this", (Zuko) which very much sounds like a different way of saying that he has no choice, or,

"It's too late", (Kylo) and or,

"I know what I have to do, (but I don't know if I have the strength to do it).", (Kylo) - in my humble opinion. Iroh has this big speech, and part of it goes as such:

"Is it your own destiny, or is it a destiny someone else has tried to force on you?".

Which also sounds very similar to Han saying,

"Snoke is using you for your power".

The words may be different, but the themes and meanings behind the two sentences are the same - that Kylo and Zuko are being used. Kylo and Zuko at the start of their arcs are blinded by this 'destiny' they both believe they think they have - and they do have destinies - just not the way they first believe and for Zuko this comes full circle by the end of his arc, just as I think it will for Kylo in knowing what their 'true' destinies are. One of Kylo's script prompts was -  

*Eager to fulfill his destiny* before landing on Takodana, and Zuko saying in Book one when he's the main antagonist -

"I want my destiny!", so both of them do have these notions of achieving their own destinies in order to be accepted, not realising that by chasing this false destiny, (although in real life I don't personally believe in the notion of destiny, but both Star Wars and Atla have pretty strong themes of it - so I'll go with it for the moment) they instead stumble onto their true destinies, Zuko's being that he joins the protagonists, and Kylo's will be the same in that he'll help Rey.  

Also Iroh says in his speech "I'm begging you prince Zuko! It's time for you to look inward", paralleling Han practically begging Kylo on that bridge that "No, my son is alive/Come home, we miss you", to find himself again, to step away from this dark path and become Han's son again - Ben.

A redemption arc essentially is taking a character that's antagonistic/done wrong, breaking their character down through different decisions/choices and events (which usually isn't a straight line, but has many twists, turns, rejections and conflict/regrets) and then building their character up again into a protagonist or someone who is more neutral through redemption. For both of them, the parts in which these quotes are taken from are the start of the breaking down of their characters into their redemption’s, like really announcing it if the hints hadn't already been obvious. Although Kylo has already taken his mask off for Rey, the removal of the mask in front of Han has its own weight. Han seeing beneath the persona and seeing his son/his vulnerable boy all grown up and buried in darkness whilst struggling not to drown really tugs on the heart strings, for the audience and Han himself. That scene on that bridge with Han, without the barrier of the mask, is the first time that Kylo really shouts out the obviousness of his redemption. There were hints throughout the movie, his 'pull to the light' when talking to Vader's helm, the obvious foreshadowing of 'I will not be seduced', cause let's be honest when a character (especially a Skywalker) says that the total opposite is going to occur. His sparing of Finn ('saving the cat' as others in the community have expertly noted with their over worldly screenplay knowledge, and yes I have read the book "SAVE THE CAT" by Blake Snyder, I highly recommend it if you haven't read it). The script ->

...scenes with Rey and his 'compassion' for her, his clear want to not use Star Killer and something else, something big that I'll save for later - etcetera... bam bridge scene! (and then links to everything I've talked about above, including Han's death as the catalyst). Han, although he may be gone, will be one of if not the most important character influence for Kylo's redemption and in turn will give Han's death meaning. In the points I've shown before, he has already been a major Uncle Iroh type character for Kylo and will continue to be even in death. He was supposed to be the 'weak and foolish' part of Kylo that his son wanted to destroy on that bridge, and although I expect others and Kylo to punish himself for what he did (for what he did was a terrible thing, and he needs to face its consequences which I'm pretty sure he will as 'patricide isn't all it's cracked up to be'), it will instead be the thing that makes Kylo wiser, more humble, and ironically stronger.

Leia Organa (The Mother).

Iroh never gave up on Zuko, not once throughout the entirety of Atla. Sure he became frightened/worried for his nephew, but he never turned his back on him, nor did he say anything as final and defeatist as "If Luke couldn't reach him how could I?" and or "We lost our son. Forever." which is what Han says. And then guess who stands her ground and says "We can still save him", and then goes on to say this...

"There is still light in him. I know it." Yeah Leia does. She believes he is still good, she hasn't given up on him, and she wants him back ("You think I want to forget him? I want him back!"). She still holds out hope, whilst fighting for what she believes in -  the rebellion/resistance - as she always has done. Just like Padme who said something similar about Anakin ("There is good in him."), and she was right, because "Women always figure out the truth - ALWAYS!". And just like Iroh, who continued fighting for what he believed in, through another secret organisation/'resistance' called the White Lotus alongside the other oppressed nations, he still held out hope his nephew would return and become good, even after he was betrayed by him - until Zuko and him reconciled later and his hopes were proven to not be futile.

"You have light and peace inside of you." Is a quote from Iroh talking about Zuko, to Zuko, that I thought paralleled Leia's quote about Kylo's inner light beautifully. Both are talking about the light they know and hope is there in these characters that they unconditionally love, who have taken a wrong turn and gone down a dark path. They believe and see their potential for goodness, where no one else does. When everyone abandons Zuko, Iroh is there, still believes in him, still hopes. Just like how when Kylo turns to the dark, everyone abandons him, even Han to an extent, except for Leia who although cannot be there with Kylo, believes in him and hopes he will come home. Her hope even convinces Han that his "Son is alive". All Leia wants is for someone to find Kylo and "Bring him home," Whether that's her, Han, Luke, Rey or anyone - even Kylo himself. In the same vein, all Iroh wanted for Zuko, was for his "Little soldier boy to come marching home...", in the absence of his own son, and he was shown that his hope that Zuko had potential for goodness and the freedom to make his own choices was not in vain. Atla is all about hope, and seeing the potential in people to be better. Star Wars is also about hope and seeing the potential in people for good, and Iroh in Atla and Leia in the sequel trilogy represent these ideals (whereas in the OT forgiveness and seeing good in people was more along the lines of Luke's character, whilst Leia and Luke together were more about Hope in times of darkness). I believe George Lucas once said something along the lines that the original trilogy was Leia's story, or as much her story as it was Luke's. She has always been fighting, even before the first movie introduced her, and she never EVER gave up. She was as tenacious then as she is now, and she will never give up on her son. (Ah~ I'm sorry if this is making anyone miss Carrie, I miss her too and I always will - it's just a really terrible thing, that has no positives for anyone).

Anyway, some people have speculated that Leia and Luke might meet in The Last Jedi. There's no hard evidence for this (cheers Pablo), but if Luke and Leia were to meet in assumedly the second act (since Leia's part of the resistance plot and Luke, Rey and Kylo are part of the 'force plot') of the movie, then there's a high chance that Kylo might be there with them. Now this is just pure theory and a 'hope' of mine I guess you could say, but I would love for a reconciliation scene between Leia and Kylo like the one Iroh and Zuko had. Just like in Atla, the scene would have so much power and emotional weight to it, and would be really compelling and interestingly heart-wrenching to watch. If this were to happen, it would also align with my thoughts on the sequel trilogy having a faster paced redemption than something like Atla, as straight after Zuko's turning point he meets the person he loves that he betrayed and Iroh forgives him, so if Kylo as I've speculated has his turning point in Act 2 of the story arc rather than act 3, then a reconciliation between Kylo and Leia would make sense. Also it's pretty obvious that Kylo cares for his mother, a lot more it seems than he did for his father. He felt closer to here as a child since they were both 'force-sensitive' and Leia understood him in that sense, (same excerpt where Han felt he couldn't connect with Ben) and Kylo is against using Star Killer BECAUSE the resistance planet (D'Qar) they were going to blow up after Hosnian prime potentially/almost certainly had Leia on it, and in the books as soon as Snoke mentions Leia's name Kylo immediately changes the subject. So although Han coming to and forgiving his son on the bridge was an emotional blow for Kylo, Leia coming and forgiving Kylo would for the character probably feel much more important. Not for the audience cause both Han and Leia are equal in that sense - but for Kylo it would be something he thought impossible and would show how Leia has evolved as a character even from her fully resolved arc in the Return of the Jedi - in that she understandably couldn't acknowledge or forgive her father and only did years later (with probably a lot of influence from Luke). Unless a character dies, even if they have a fully resolved arc, they are still always changing, always making mistakes, always growing even if it's not written. Just like in reality people have arcs of growth, but life isn't just going to be like 'yep, that's it your done, have a cookie', life is a series of character arcs that make up our own story, just like these characters, however fictional and that's what makes a character feel more realistically three dimensional/human.

Leia showing Kylo forgiveness would not only bring Leia's arc of forgiving full-circle, but would bring both Leia and Kylo that sense of peace, as it did Zuko and Iroh. They may not do this, and they may not meet at all, which would be a shame since It won't happen in episode 9 as Leia will not be there anymore (there's also a potential-spoiler that Leia might/will get seriously injured in TLJ, I don't know how early or late in the film this would be, but it'd be really tragic if Luke and Kylo did get to her only to find her in a coma or worse, unable to speak to/see them ever again even with them right there). She will still always be an Uncle Iroh type character, with his themes, with her silent support, forgiveness and hope as well as her will to fight evil from across the galaxy for the people who can't fight and her son - but if they do meet, then like Iroh her hopes will not be futile. Just like Iroh, finally, she'll be able to see her little soldier boy come marching home.

Luke Skywalker (The Uncle).

Talking about life still going on for characters who've already had fully resolved arcs, it seems Luke's gone on quite a bit of a tangent. Having his face the biggest thing on the poster; which is usually saved for the villains? Being doused in red which is a representation of the "dark side", just like Kylo our current antagonist (whose face on the poster is smaller/seemingly more passive or sad compared to Luke's aggressive facial expression)? Isolating himself on an island? Not coming to the aid of his friends and dear sister? Looking like a grumpy old man whose tired of the worlds shit instead of a wise peaceful and accepting Jedi? having his new order burn down? from which a presumable lapse in faith or an enlightenment ensued and so then wanting the Jedi to END?    

Ok I do actually like where Rian might be taking Luke's character, and how compelling it might be for the story and its ramifications on not only him, but Kylo and Rey too, as well as the whole of the Star Wars verse. The possibility of the old and seemingly corrupted ways of the Jedi being scrapped and a new order of force users being formed with their own code  aka grey (general term that's not canon) Jedi? Hell yes that sounds amazing! (also I enjoy the idea that either the force or the island itself is keeping Luke there, and once you land it doesn't let you leave or something along those lines).  

In Atla Iroh was one of the most neutral characters in the entire series, even when he was supposedly with the 'antagonists' he still found time to help those on both sides of the war. He supported Zuko in his quest for the avatar, but he also helped characters like Aang, Toph and Katara - the protagonists. He never discriminated between nations, he was always compassionate and kind to those he met, and never used violence unless it was absolutely necessary. If you've watched the series you'll know what I'm talking about when I say he was the grey between the black and white and a physical representation of balance, just in a different sense than the Avatar. Nothing can be confirmed till The Last Jedi comes out and reveals Luke's current character, but it would seem Luke after isolating himself on Ach-To due to whatever happened at the temple, has become a similar representation of neutrality. He has stayed on Ach-To, studying ancient force-user and Jedi scripture (those books in the trailer), trying to find this balance in the force, which is what I believe he is going to try to show/teach to Rey and potentially Kylo. Luke will not be on 'one side or the other' rather he will be a neutral character who only wishes to restore balance. One side conquering the other does not bring balance, as we've learned from both the prequel and original trilogy, just like how Iroh only wished for balance and peace; and is why he strove so fervently to have himself and Zuko try and help the avatar in book 2 and 3 instead of hindering him.

Through the Original Trilogy, Luke was one of, if not the most forgiving person in the entire galaxy. He forgave his father, Vader who had slaughtered and destroyed so many and so much, and returned him to the light. I don't know how much has changed with Luke's character, but I wonder if that forgiveness is still there, as there were rumors that Luke would order Rey to 'kill' Kylo if he landed on Ach-To. Life can do that to a person, it's not impossible or unrealistic for real life people, so it begs the question if this would happen to a character in Star Wars....but Luke's forgiveness was a powerful thing, and if like Iroh who forgave Zuko of his transgressions and betrayal that could have potentially doomed the world, then maybe if through Kylo slowly starting to show he can be redeemed through his own actions, Luke can forgive Kylo for what he's done and move forward as Iroh forgave his nephew after Zuko made his own decisions. If not to bring balance, then for Han and Leia's sake. Family has always been important to Luke, and I don't think that will have changed. Unlike Han, Leia or Rey, I don't think Luke's going to be one of the MAIN reasons Kylo will redeem himself, since Han already has said "If Luke can't reach him how can I?".

I say Luke could have the 'biggest' Iroh type role towards Kylo, because theoretically if Luke were to forgive his nephew and they were to reconcile, or even just tolerate each other as allies...Luke could take on the guide/teacher type role to Kylo as he had before the temple incident, only this time he will encompass all of the force instead of what I assume was just the light - as he will probably do to Rey, and the same role Iroh had to Zuko - to broaden their knowledge/minds and show them that instead of 'light' and 'darkness' it's "so much bigger" as Luke puts it in the trailer. In Atla it's revealed Iroh has learned bending techniques from every nation, after all his travels, in order to become stronger and more fluid/knowledgeable in his own element. This could link the idea of Luke using both sides of the force, or at least learning all branches of what makes up 'the force' instead of like the Jedi beforehand limiting themselves to only the light, trying to cut themselves off from basic human emotions/needs, which lead to their destruction in the first place. Iroh then uses his expanded knowledge of the other benders/cultures, specifically water bending techniques, in order to teach Zuko how to redirect lightning (lightning-bending is an advanced form of fire bending) which is incredibly important in terms of not just Zuko learning to defend himself from deadly attacks, but also an important lesson in understanding the elements and in turn the world aren't isolated from each other, but rather connected to one another. I don't know if this will happen or not, but like Iroh, Luke could be the guide Kylo needs in order to balance himself in the light and the dark, and rather than 'tearing himself apart', help him find the calm and belonging in the grey between the dark and light of the force. This is all speculation, and we'll just have to wait and see for the answers. I was hoping that Leia would take on an even more supportive/familial and guiding role for Kylo in ep 9 (which from things Kathleen Kennedy and even Carrie herself had said seemed possible), but due to Carrie's unfortunate passing, it looks like that role will most likely be passed onto Luke instead.

There is actually another character in Atla I could compare Luke to as a neutral, mysterious, god-like figure connected to the 'universe' as a whole through meditation and isolation. That's the Guru.

He helps to teach the main hero Aang how to unlock his full potential, just as Luke can teach Rey and possibly Kylo how to open themselves up to the world around them and learn to balance themselves in the entirety of the force, and be connected to it on a level beyond 'crude matter', just as Iroh was deeply spiritual in Atla.

We know practically nothing about what transpired that day at Luke's Jedi temple, what we DO know is that it shook Luke so heavily that it led him to believe the Jedi must now end, whatever students/acolytes Luke had (apart from Kylo) were killed, the Knights of Ren (and presumably Snoke) were involved, and this event has heavy links to both Luke and Kylo Ren and his 'turning point' to the dark side when he was seemingly 23 years old. Kylo/Ben would have been in his teens when he was 'sent away' to Luke to become his apprentice, so let's just say he was around 15 at the oldest. From 15 to 23 would mean Kylo spent at the very least 8 years under Luke as his student (compared to 6 years in the First Order). Add to the fact that they are family, would most likely mean Kylo and Luke in that time did have a friendly/familial bond between them and that they cared for each other on some level. When Luke and Kylo meet in the Last Jedi, and it's almost certain they will, ALL of that history is going to come to the forefront. I have a feeling that whatever is revealed is going to show either Luke is not as innocent as others may believe, or that Kylo was not as guilty as was first thought, or perhaps both - especially with how Luke's been marketed in posters and how Mark Hamill initially 'didn't like' where Rian had gone with Luke. In bloodline there was a 'dirty' political move made on Leia, where her and Luke's familial connection to Darth Vader was publicly broadcast throughout the galaxy; which both destroyed Leia's political career, but would also mean Kylo found out about his family heritage (which Leia or Luke hadn't revealed to him) most likely in public, surrounded by people who most certainly hated and feared Vader for what he had done to the galaxy, and would in turn be hateful/fearful of anyone related to him - especially if they were force-sensitive. In Atla, book 2, when Zuko goes on his own journey in the Earth Kingdom, he comes across a village where he is accepted and stays/works for a while, but when he reveals he is a fire-bender and is recognized as the Prince of the Fire Nation and his heritage/bloodline is revealed, even those who were kind to him in the village suddenly hate and fear him because of what he represents to them as the 'enemy'/a fire nation 'monster'. Zuko is shunned again, first by his own nation,  and now by others, both because of his family. The same with Kylo, in his mind he was shunned by Leia and Han and sent to Luke, and after this event he was probably shunned by the entire galaxy - no wonder he turned to Snoke. Both Zuko and Kylo are judged for their families mistakes, and not seen as simply themselves.

To conclude, Han is the one who is the representation of Iroh as a catalyst for redemption, and a parental figure of forgiveness. Leia is the representation of Iroh as one who has unconditional love, forgiveness and hope for her son. And Luke is potentially the familial support (instead of Leia) and voice of reason/the guide for Kylo, as Iroh was to Zuko (as well as family drama, and someone who potentially has all the answers).

Aesthetic.

Kylo and Zuko are very similar in their looks and personality, Zuko is the oldest in the group of the main 'kids', tall, quite mature, handsome, but his personality shows he can be vulnerable and emotional. Kylo is also incredibly tall, fit, looks like a 'prince' handsome and can be incredibly emotional/vulnerable... I mean...

^that's Kylo.

^realistic depiction artwork of Zuko.

I think you get the point.

What I want to talk about is how Zuko's aesthetic actually changes, as is normal when characters develop, through each Act of Atla and how that relates to Kylo. Visual story-telling is incredibly important in a visual medium, and this is especially essential when it comes to characters and the designs of their costumes and general look. Below is an image of what Zuko mainly looks like linearly through each of Atla's three books/three seasons. I'm going to for the most part ignore how his hair changes because it doesn't really apply to Kylo, and actually has more to do with Anime tropes and how an anime characters hair will change drastically as they develop (as I said Atla has heavy Asian influences, and some animators who take their styles/are from Korea and or Japan).

In book 1, Zuko wears heavily plated fire Nation armor that has many layers and covers him up almost completely. It has dark red and grey colorings, that incite imagery of fire and smoke - and it has always seemed like something that would be very suffocating and restrictive. Sharp angles and hard lines. His hair is shaven off all except for the pony-tail at the back, which gives monk like imagery in correlation to his exile, and the ponytail has links to the Fire Nation culture and his honor and loyalty to his nation. Also his face is usually pressed into a scowl, because book 1 Zuko almost never really genuinely smiles). 

Compare this to Kylo in TFA. Kylo wears heavy robes, and has many layers of clothing, that cover him up almost completely except for his head which is covered by a mask - it always felt like it restricted his movement and was incredibly suffocating, as if under all those layers he was making himself suffer, since wearing it constantly couldn't have been comfortable. The coloring is black and dark grey to elicit the visual metaphor of being enveloped in the dark side. He is described by some as a monk-like figure, uninterested for the most part in normal human carnal desires and behaviors, completely focused on his task (except for Rey, but even she is linked to him wanting to find the map, though loosely). There is only one point throughout TFA that Kylo actually smirks/lifts his lips upwards slightly, for the rest of the movie it's pretty obvious his mood is not one that invokes a happy face.

Both Zuko and Kylo in their first Act's metaphorically and physically are wrapped up in layers of 'armor' and their own walls, masks and personas they've created to hide themselves from the world in order to seem  stronger and not actually shattering apart on the inside and making themselves go through hell. Kylo taking off his mask was such a big deal, because it was a metaphor for him showing a part of himself that nobody else sees and making himself vulnerable, and no pure evil/villainous character would ever willingly show their opposition weakness, which makes it all the more strange that Kylo did.      

From the breaking down of a character through both their personality and their aesthetic, and then through redemption, they can slowly be built back up again - which is something that happened to Zuko and is what I believe will happen to Kylo.

In book 2 of Atla, after Azula has attempted to kill Zuko and he seemingly 'cuts ties' with the fire nation completely, he has to go into hiding. He loses the bulky Fire Nation armor for more common clothes, which are quite layered, but nowhere near as heavy as the armor. They're green and brown, colors that are more connected to the Earth and plants, and are much simpler and less grand in design. They represent Zuko 'coming down to earth' for a bit, or getting off his high-horse.  By wearing commoner clothes, he is no longer 'above' the people, but among them. It allows him to see from a whole new perspective/angle, and realise the world is a much bigger place and not everything is about him. It's about him learning and expanding his understanding of the world, and by shedding those extra layers he is metaphorically showing more of himself/being more like himself - which is ironic as he's hiding - by starting to accept himself and the world around him a bit more, but not completely (that only comes to full fruition in Book 3). He is less angry, more confused, lost and just trying to find himself.

Now from images we've been given of Kylo from the Battlefront II The Last Jedi heroes pre-order images, the TLJ poster, Vanity Fair and the TLJ trailer we can see the similarities of what happened to Zuko happening to Kylo.  He's lost the cowl to shadow his head and features, and replaced it with a billowing cape (like a true Skywalker). There has been a loss of some of the layers that were on his original outfit, giving him a lot more freedom of movement and should be less suffocating, including more of his neck and legs showing. From what we can see from the trailer and all the promotional stuff (including the broken mask), Kylo will not be wearing the mask for most, if not all of the movie, showing us his face which was considered a vulnerability to him in TFA. He's starting to strip away those physical and metaphorical layers, and from all the stuff we've been given off his face, rage hasn't really been the main emotion. Mainly it's been seriousness, lost and sad looks and even more vulnerability. It's possible in the movie, they may use less makeup and make him look a bit more disheveled like in the image above, in order to get across the point that on all fronts he's falling apart and off kilter. Also the coloring may still be dark, but it's leaning less towards black, and more towards grey (including the cloak), which could also be a visual queue for him starting to move towards the 'grey' area of the force that encompasses both dark and light. This is the stage where he'll be lost and trying to find himself, less confident and far more desperate. He's becoming more vulnerable, and will be showing more of himself rather than the character who just wants to be a Vader 2.0. It's indicating that instead of Kylo, we're going to see more of Ben Solo.

That's about as far as I can go in terms of comparison between the current aesthetic of Kylo in Act 1 and 2, compared to Zuko, as I'll need to wait for Act 3 or episode 9 in order to completely finish it, and by then I'm sure it'll all be confirmed anyway. But, since I do have what Zuko looks like in his Act 3, I'll try and make a prediction of how that'll link to Kylo in his own Act 3.

In book 3 of Atla, Zuko's main outfit for most of the season is that of 1 or two layers of light fire nation garb, the coloring of the clothes are that of light/dark reds and golds. His clothes at this point are incredibly light, non-restrictive allowing him to use his Chi/Ki more fluidly and really breathe (as fire bending is of the breath) instead of suffocating him. By stripping away all those metaphorical and physical layers, he's showing himself for who he is, and by wearing the colors of his nation and his ancestry it shows he has come to know who he is and should be (as he discovers his ancestry is not only to Sozin, but to Roku as well) and that he accepts himself - and therefore has found a harmony within himself (<-'The Fire bending Masters' episode) . He no longer cared about disappointing his father, for he realised there was no true honor in being a puppet to a father who didn't love him, and that he would only find honor by doing the right thing. And by doing this, accepting himself, he found belonging.

"We've created an era of fear in the world, and if we don't want the world to destroy itself, we need to replace it with an era of peace and kindness."

- Zuko, The Day of Black Sun, Part 2: The Eclipse, Book 3. (his speech to Ozai)  

If Kylo follows this pattern by ep 9, and I'm not an expert on clothing, but I'm going to assume his clothes will be far less restrictive with different shades of grey and brown aka a lot lighter/less 'pure' dark side colours - I may be wrong, but we'll just have to wait and see. But more importantly, instead of being lost and confused, like Zuko he'll finally be able to have the truth instead of all the lies and mistruths he's probably been told by Snoke or not told by others, if he doesn't already figure them out in the Last Jedi (there are rumors that there will most likely be force ghosts in TLJ so let's hope they help straighten out the truth, especially Anakin). Instead of striving to be strong like his grandfather, or wanting to please the Supreme Leader, or hide from/fight the rest of the galaxy due to his heritage - he'll finally be free of those mental chains and able to see that he in fact does have a choice. And hopefully he'll finally accept himself for who he is, instead of trying to be someone else like Kylo Ren, and instead Ben Solo will finally find the belonging he's always been looking for... in unexpected places. And like Zuko, ironically it will make him stronger but also more humble and hopefully, kinder.

Act 1 = Villain/antagonist/anti-villain Act 2 = Conflicted anti-hero Act 3 = Byronic Hero/protagonist

Now I've been saving the best till last...their scars.

In terms of general aesthetics for characters, especially Byronic heroes, scars give the characters complexity and depth. There's history behind those wounds that can make them far more compelling. In the case of Zuko and Kylo, their scars come from very different circumstances, but the metaphorical weight behind those scars is still significant for each. The fact that Rian changed the scar for Kylo, moved it and made it smaller (cat-scratch) to be more aesthetically pleasing doesn't really scream 'ugly sith villain' now does it? More like 'I want this character to be complex, but not so much that he looks purely evil and loses that "princely" look' unlike Zuko that has quite literally a huge horrible burn across half his face, yet somehow makes him a far more beautiful character, in my eyes anyway.

Zuko's scar comes about when he dishonors his father at the young age of 14, and his father severely burns half of his face - he receives it before the story of Atla even starts. It was one of the many cruel lessons Ozai gave Zuko, a Punishment, and had the most lasting effects. He would hide it, wouldn't let anyone touch it/get near to it, he despised it - like a mistake in an otherwise perfect painting. It was first a blemish to Zuko, something that represented all his mistakes, all of his weakness. It represented everything Zuko didn't want to be, but as the series went on, his scar eventually turned from his weakness to his strength. By the end of the third act, Zuko no longer cared for his scar, it was a part of him, a representation of all he had endured and survived and risen above. By accepting it, he was accepting his flaws, and accepting himself.

Compare that to Kylo, who when we first see his face, it's of this handsome 'prince' like figure, no scar, nothing. Whereas with Zuko we never got that 'holy shit' moment, because to the audience he always had that scar, that was just who he was to us. It would be hard to see Zuko without it, as it was such an integral part of his character.

It's Rey that gives Kylo that scar in the First Act, different from Zuko in Atla, but in a sense very similar. Rey giving him that scar is a representation of Kylo's supposed 'weakness', his compassion. If he had killed Rey on that ledge it would never have happened, but he didn't want to - he wanted to teach her, and that lead to his face being burned and in a way Rey teaching him a lesson instead. Kylo's scar is a physical representation of the compassion and pull to the light that Kylo wants to crush and so desperately be free of. It's almost as if Rey made a crack in that wall of his, the lie of his persona being broken apart leaving him vulnerable, and now his 'mistakes' and 'regrets' a permanently etched on his face.

I read somewhere that the scar runs along the place where Han touched Kylo's face, and that it was some universal punishment for what he did. I like that idea, because not only is the scar physical, as Adam Driver has said it's also metaphorical, and it's a symbol for Kylo's own walls of confidence and denial starting to crack, due to what he did to Han and what happened in that forest with Rey. Zuko was burned because he refused to fight his father, Kylo was burned because he refused to kill Rey. It's his 'antagonistic' character starting to break down, as well as giving Kylo a personal link to the protagonist, Rey, and how they are personally connected through what she did to him. She didn't go for the kill, she could have but instead she went for the face, and there's a reason she did it.

Unlike Zuko's scar, which has nothing to do with attraction and more to do with honor and weakness, Rey sliced Kylo's face because she was attracted to him, and the fact he didn't look like a monster - and she hated that. She probably wanted him to look as monstrous on the outside as she thought he was within, as she thought she would see when he took off that mask. It was about lessening his beauty, and de-humanising him, just as Zuko is de-humanised and only seen as 'The banished Prince of the Fire Nation' instead of an actual person. The irony is, Kylo's scar may be a symbol for his weakness and compassion, but Rey gives him that scar because she too is trying to stifle her own compassion for him (aided by a petty revenge she was trying to enact due to her taking strength from the dark side at the end of that fight). It makes me wonder how she'll feel when she sees it in TLJ? will she try to stifle her compassion further, or will she feel even more guilt?

Anyway both Zuko and Kylo's scars represent their imperfections, physically and metaphorically, and weaknesses that have the potential to turn into strengths. I find it curious that they are both 'burned' by things linked to their respective in-verse 'magic'. For Zuko is was the flames from his father's 'fire bending', and for Kylo is was the concentrated plasma (superheated flame/the 4th state of matter + Kyber crystals are found in the heart of stars, giant balls of flaming gas, and that's how light sabers are powered) of his grandfathers Lightsaber - so they're both burned by fire that was created by one of their family members that they don't want to disappoint and prove to that they are strong - to sum it up simply. Kylo's scar, just like Zuko's, will be the symbol that he will at first see as the pinnacle of all his weaknesses, but then eventually come to realise it represents what can actually make him strong, and he will through that learn to accept himself and all his scars and mistakes, physical and or psychological...a reminder of his guilt at what he's done, so he doesn't repeat history and instead strives for better; bringing balance to the force. The fact that they gave him this scar AND he lost the battle with the hero in the first act are both key pointers towards setting the groundwork's for a complex character whose going to have a compelling redemption.  

Kylo Ren's "Failure" as a villain.

This is one of the main things I noted that indicated to me that Kylo was going to get a redemption arc, when I first viewed TFA, and re-watching ep VII only confirmed it for me. Zuko and Kylo in their first acts fail to be strong villains. Not strong in the terms of the characterization, because Zuko and so far Kylo are strong characters in that sense, more so in terms of us taking them seriously as antagonists.

Below I'm going to bullet point how Zuko and Kylo "fail" as villains within their first Acts, and why that's the point.

Zuko and Kylo are both Funny.

It's true, watching through TFA and Book 1 of Atla there were numerous times where I laughed aloud at these two characters, whether it was a silly/clumsy thing Zuko would do, or that Iroh would say to him, and don't even get me started on the humorous bits within TFA that come from Kylo and his character interactions (his sarcasm to Hux and Mitaka, his outbursts of rage always seemed very comical to me as a watcher, etc). Within their first Acts, Kylo and Zuko are constantly undermined and made fun of, which if compared to Vader or the Emperor, or even Azula would never happen. Sure there's dark humor, but usually from villains you don't get comedic relief like you do with Zuko or Kylo, because villains are supposed to be built up to be intimidating/feared and sure Kylo and Zuko can be powerful, intimidating and scary, but they don't evoke it in the way that Vader or Azula would.

Secondly, some things Kylo tolerated throughout TFA would have been instantaneously crushed if it had been Vader, but Kylo unlike Vader takes it out on the inanimate objects instead of his crew. Similar to Zuko, even when he was an antagonist, towards his opponents he was still honorable, unlike Azula who was cunning and very tactical. Like Zuko, Kylo always takes the direct path, he's not manipulative like Azula, and he's incredibly honest to his enemies just as Zuko was (aka not lying to Rey about her friends instead of lying in order to blackmail her). Sure you can have an honest villain, but you don't introduce antagonists who will stay antagonists by making them less threatening by undermining them and making their characters intentionally comical, ESPECIALLY within the first Act when you're trying to build up your villain. Sure, the rebellion won and blew up the first death star in A New Hope, but Vader still attained a victory by defeating one of the two last Jedi, and his former father-figure/master Obi-Wan and not having Vader himself physically defeated or even confront  the main hero, and NEVER was Darth Vader used intentionally as comic relief.    

Thirdly Kylo and Zuko are immediately undermined by the protagonists at the start of their stories. Zuko and Kylo both enter on large loud ships, surrounded by masked sometimes incompetent stormtroopers/fire nation soldier with ominous music playing, into a small isolated village that was hiding something important. After first showing up, and threatening the people there in order to attain the thing of importance (the avatar/the map) Zuko defeats Sokka in hand-to-hand easily and Kylo stops Poe's blaster bolt. Immediately after, Kylo is undermined by Poe when he's asking him about the map, talking back to him and not taking him seriously with the mask on. Similarly, Zuko is undermined (first by Iroh not bending to Zuko's commands) and by Sokka who humorously hits him round the head with his boomerang at the start of Atla - then by Aang straight after sending him on his backside. By undermining them at the very start of the story, the audience subconsciously takes them less seriously as 'scary' antagonists. You've made them amusing to us, and so we see them less as detached pillars of evil, than we had originally. Instead by making them tipped of balance by others/making mistakes, to the audience, you actually make them see more human.  

Fourthly, his continuous inability to retrieve the map. This is less important, because this mainly happens because him not getting the map is what moves the plot forward, just as not being able to apprehend Aang was what motivated Zuko and the plot of Book 1 Atla. Though just like Zuko, Kylo is thinking about his own personal goal of why he wants the map, just as Zuko wanted to get back Aang, rather than prioritizing his Masters orders, which shows Zuko and Kylo had a knack for being disobedient - especially when you consider Zuko turned his back on his Nation in Book 2 (although that was because his sister tried to kill him). The only order Vader ever disobeyed was when he redeemed himself at the very end of the story, and Azula was cunning but never disobedient when it came to her father Ozai. Not following orders, and getting sidetracked, such as capturing Rey instead of the droid because Kylo personally wanted to, were some of the reasons why he failed and allowed the resistance to not only win but find their way to Luke first, which was a huge blunder. And Azula only tried to kill Zuko and Iroh because they were apparently 'disobedient' and went against orders whilst being unable to fulfill the goal Zuko had been banished for in the first place, whereas villains like Azula or even Zhao had a better track record of victories than failures. Disobedience within the first Act is a clear foreshadowing to them turning their back on their "masters" completely later on, just as Zuko did to Ozai, and hopefully Kylo will do to Snoke.

Fifthly, one of the earliest clues supporting Kylo's potential redemption, and his first failure as a villain, was sparing Finn - one of the trilogies main heroes. He knew Finn didn't shoot, he can read people minds and intentions, so he knew why and he still let him go out of compassion instead of alerting someone or killing him. This Act, in terms of a domino effect, allows the resistance to win and get the droid. In the same vein, within Book 1 Zuko also saves Aang. The Avatar had been captured and was being held by Zhao, and although Zuko did it for personal reasons, under his persona as the blue spirit he saves Aang and frees him (not thinking about his Nation, but himself) and after this act, that was the first time Aang ever offered to be friends with Zuko. Even though he refused, putting that option on the table in the first place was proposing the idea that maybe they COULD be friends, which was huge. Them both having these "save the cat" instances are foreshadowing and a set-up towards their eventual turn to becoming good, but  are also moments that make us again see them as more human and less as "villains".

Finally, Kylo and Zuko both being utterly defeated at the end of their stories first Acts. At the end of TFA, although the fight was pretty close at times, Rey towards the end kicked Kylo's ass. She overtook him in the force, burned him, disabled his Lightsaber and all in all at the last moment completely overpowered him - granted there were many reasons Kylo wasn't fighting at full capacity, but he still Lost. Zuko at the end of the first season of Atla, gets his ass handed to him in the final fight. He gets completely overpowered and defeated by Katara after a back and forth battle, and altogether it's a victory for the good guys. With villains in stories, you DON'T have them get utterly defeated like that within the first Act. Usually the antagonist always needs to have their own personal victory, or the protagonists lose but live to fight another day, because if you have the antagonist lose in the first Act there is no tension later on. The hero has already won, there's no drama there, no build up towards a second potential fight because you know the protagonists have beat them before - they're less of a threat (and unless they're a onetime villain aka a mini-boss, this doesn't work). That's why with normal villains who are present through the majority of the story that doesn't usually happen, because that's just them being a failure of a villain and makes the story less compelling (lowers the stakes); UNLESS that "villain" is going to have a redemption arc. By having the protagonists beat an antagonist whose going to have a redemption, that allows for the antagonist to be knocked off their podium of pride, and re-evaluate the world around them/what they're doing wrong. It allows for a crack in their psyche, in which a character  can naturally be broken down and then built back up again as a protagonist.  

Looking at how many hints there are towards Kylo getting a redemption arc, it makes me wonder... Who is going to be the main "force" villain in either Act two or Act Three? Sure we've got Snoke, but he's the "big bad", the final boss. In Atla, we had the main villain in Azula, who was only introduced at the very end of the first act, and then towards the end of the third act the protagonists faced the final Big Bad - The Fire Lord. In the Original Trilogy, you had Darth Vader as the main villain who was present throughout the trilogy, and the heroes had to face the Big Bad - the Emperor - towards the end of the third act. In these stories there is always what I like to call the Beta villain to the Alpha Villain, usually this Beta Villain is the subordinate, student or underling to the Alpha Villain - they are powerful, and face the main protagonists on usually an equal footing, but they are still a servant to the Big Bad (This would be Kylo if he weren't going to be redeemed, but if he weren't I'd would be comparing Kylo and Azula instead of Kylo and Zuko, but I haven't since Kylo's character resembles Zuko's far, far more). When you've got a character you want the audience to root for/an antagonist you want to redeem later, you always introduce a villain that's worse. Aka in Atla it was Fire Lord Ozai and Princess Azula, and in the original trilogy it was of course the Emperor. We've got Snoke, but is that enough...

If Kylo is being redeemed, he's going to be fighting alongside Rey and the protagonists, not against them. Sure we've got Phasma and Hux, but Captain Phasma is more of a personal antagonist for Finn, and for force users like Rey and Kylo I'm not sure she'd stand much of a chance. There is Hux, but Hux is more of a Zhao type character, with some of the sibling rivalry that Azula and Zuko had - but not really the same. Zhao was one of the other minor antagonists within Atla Book 1, and just like how Hux is an antagonistic rival for Kylo who dislike one another immensely but are technically on the same side, Zhao was a power-hungry and villainous pain in the backside for Zuko, constantly undermining him and trying to rival him -  above all else wanting to win the Fire Lords favor and destroy Zuko's chances - even if that meant killing the banished prince, and so Zuko and Zhao also both hated each other; they even had an Agni Kai (fight of honor between fire-benders within the fire nation). Zhao was "taken care of" in Book 1 (by a giant blue fish), and was as I said above, a 'mini-boss' - aka not very impactful to the story overall. If Hux had died in TFA, (apart from the fandom and all the Millicent and hair jell jokes), for the story it really wouldn't have made much difference - and people are making bets as to whether he dies (and even how he dies - though that's more for fun) in the upcoming episode. So unless Hux is some secret dark side force warrior, and he's just been hiding it all this time, I don't think he's going to be the 'force plots' Beta villain either. I mean, they don't HAVE to have a beta villain, there are some works of fiction that follow similar story arcs which don't, and they could have Rey and Kylo simply mowing down Stormtroopers, taking out space craft, dominating battlefields, doing co-op undercover missions and using their skills on non force users till they get to Snoke, but it's extremely unlikely - why have Rey and Kylo train to become skilled in Lightsaber fighting and force powers only to have them fight enemies who can't also use said powers? This is Star Wars, one of the biggest space-operas and dramatic Fairy Tales in modern fiction, and having an opponent(s) who are on equal footing, can use the force and fight with a Lightsaber against Rey and Kylo is much more compelling, much more personal for the characters, and far more fun and dramatic to watch. I mean who doesn't love a force-warrior Lightsaber/force fight, especially in a "force plot" where you can have the resistance take care of less powerful threats and political maneuvering? There needs to be more to cause chaos than just Snoke, and it sounds unlikely that Kylo would be Snoke's only powerful piece on the board with how "wise" he seems to be.

There's a few options (they could do as I said above, about not having a Beta "force" villain, however unlikely). Either they're going to give an already established character a major upgrade or reveal (maybe one of the Knights of Ren? one of Luke's acolytes that survived? etc) - or they're going to Introduce a completely new character - and début them in the second Act/ep VIII, or even ep IX, just as Azula became the main antagonist/the Beta villain in Book 2 of Atla. Or...Snoke isn't actually the Biggest Bad, and there is surprisingly something far worse/far more powerful with the potential to be something we've never seen before in Star Wars, possibly something that exists outside the influence of the force (though unlikely), or something just plainly nightmarish. It's food for thought at least until we see for ourselves, I trust that whatever we're given at the very least it'll be a good story.

Betrayal.

In terms of paralleling Atla and The Last Jedi, I've been a bit all over the shop due to the differences between the two stories, but in this case linearly these two events would fall into the same place. The end of the second Act. I've talked about Zuko betraying Iroh before, as well as Katara and Aang in the finale episode of Book 2/the second Act "The Crossroads of Destiny", and how it really put a spanner in the works in terms of Zuko's redemption. Zuko and Katara even fight each other, after Katara becomes confused, angry and hurt over Zuko betraying her trust and saying something along the lines of 'I thought you'd changed'. I've always paralleled Zuko's betrayal of Iroh at the end of Act 2, to Kylo betraying Han at the end of Act 1 of the sequel trilogy. In TFA, Kylo although on the side of the First Order is tied to this continual theme of inner-conflict. Similarly throughout book 2 of Atla, Zuko spends the entirety of the second Act within his own conflict, between both good and bad. He struggled with it, just as Kylo was struggling with the light and dark. Zuko then has a moment where it seems he's going to join the protagonists, but then betrays them for the antagonists. The same thing happens to Kylo on that bridge, for a moment we think he's going to come back to the light, but then betrays the protagonists for the darkness. Only after did Zuko find his way to redemption in the third act, just as I believe Kylo will find his way to redemption in the second Act. I've already talked about the parallels between Zuko and Kylo, so why am I going over it again now? Well as I think I've said before, Zuko's redemption wasn't simple, it has twists and turns. Actually most redemptions in good stories are usually never as straight forward as that, it's just a general rule of basic compelling story telling; you make the character make mistakes, so they feel more human and it's even more satisfying when they eventually do the right thing. There has been speculation that if Kylo were to join forces with Luke and Rey, there's a possibility that at some point in TLJ he may betray them for Snoke and his manipulations. I have no doubt that he'd continuously be tempted to go back to the dark completely, but full betrayal is another matter. For one it would put another twist into Kylo's redemption arc, create even more drama between the characters and set up some interesting plot points for episode IX. However, Atla was able to have such a prolonged development and have multiple twists in Zuko's redemption, because Atla was a TV series. In movie form, they may simply not have enough screen time to break down Kylo's character, build him up in redemption then break him down through betrayal AGAIN and finally have him fully redeem himself. It's a bit convoluted, especially since I'm sure Kylo will be a protagonist by the end of this trilogy. I believe they're going to spend a lot of The Last Jedi having Kylo a bit on the fence like he was before, except this time he won't betray those he has compassion for, especially Rey.

This entire trilogy is about balance, as in all 3 acts will be metaphorical representations of this balance. If the first Act - The Force Awakens - was about light conquering darkness, then the second Act - The Last Jedi - will be about darkness conquering light. And finally in Act 3 there will be balance between both. In TFA, Kylo's light was  beginning to conquer his dark, that's why he was so conflicted. So in TLJ, perhaps instead it will be Rey's dark conquering her light? There have already been theories about Rey facing her inner darkness, and possibly her past being connected to some form of evil in the galaxy. It's very speculative, and it's more likely than not that it won't come true, but...what if Rey becomes the one who betrays the light? In TFA Snoke already ordered Kylo to "bring the girl to me" and had sensed that there was an awakening in the galaxy after Rey left Jakku. Assumedly, either Snoke is going to send Kylo to dispose of Rey, or he's going to send Kylo to retrieve her again for his own uses. The Last Jedi is going to end in a dark place. In terms of a story telling arc, as the second part of a trilogy it has to end badly for the protagonists, and be either a win or a bitter-sweet victory for the antagonists. So in the third act the stakes become higher and the story more compelling, or else there's no tension. There have been jokes and theories of Rey "going dark", but... If at the end of this second Act, a scenario occurs where Rey gets captured but this time by Snoke, or she goes with him as someone she cares about is in danger, or Snoke (or an even darker entity) manipulates her using her past and vulnerabilities as well as her own natural pull to the dark side as shown in TFA - it could set Rey on a dark path at the end of the second Act, or at least an extreme temptation to the darkness. Just as Zuko had a betrayal at the end of the second Act, perhaps Rey instead will parallel Zuko as the one who will betray. As Kylo begins to become more connected to the light and out of the darkness, Yin becoming Yang, perhaps Rey will fall more out of the light and into darkness, Yang becoming Yin. If anyone reading this knows of the Knights of the Old Republic, you know a similar scenario occurred between Revan and Bastila when they were on the Star Forge. One was a Jedi of the light, then fell to the darkness, before becoming more grey in terms of the force, though still good (Revan). Whilst the other was of the light, but fell to darkness before returning to become good, but more 'grey' (Bastila). If Rey turns to the darkness at the end of The Last Jedi, it will be Kylo who will not force her, but give her the choice to turn back to the side of good as he will understand what it is like - and show her the same compassion she will most likely show him. Where they can both become neutral/'grey' in the force and be balanced. Just like Revan gave Bastila the choice to either go back to the light or have him join her in the darkness, and just like Zuko gave Katara the choice, freedom and support to do as she needed in Book Three of Atla. Again this is all hypothesis until proven fact through evidence. Though it would be interesting to have one of the stories main heroines go through something like this, I'm skeptical about her going full dark and then coming back to the light, rather I think she'll be severely and rigorously tempted, but she is a strong willed and stubborn character, so I feel her compassion and natural affinity for kindness in the end shall prevail.

At the end of this trilogy, balance should be achieved. We know that when there are two opposing forces, even if one conquers the other, as the Original and Prequels taught us, that will never truly bring balance. That's why the idea of the "grey Jedi" is so important, and Lor San Tekka was right in a sense - "Without the Jedi there can be no balance in the force" - Jedi, just not in the original sense of the term, because they would encompass all of the force, and they wouldn't be tied to one side or one political group/government like the Jedi of the Prequels were. No more restrictions. They would be neutral warriors who not discriminate and or side with one thing, all they do is fight for what is right using what the force gives them naturally. Instead they'd focus on keeping balance and peace in all corners of the galaxy with their own freedom, no longer chained down to a corrupt creed. At the start of Atla, Zuko was the banished Prince, and by the end he was the Fire Lord that brought balance and peace. I believe by the end of this sequel trilogy, in a tragically flipped mirroring of Zuko, Kylo instead will be the banished Prince - as retribution for the sins he's committed, and he has done wrong there's no question about that, so he will need to have some sort of recompense in some form. A wondering neutral warrior helping those and bringing balance, mirroring Ben Kenobi the man he was named after, who spent 20 years doing the exact same thing. Who in that time did not consider himself a true Jedi, but never turned his back on his duty to watch over Luke, or help those who needed it.

Only this time, I don't think Ben will be alone.  

Well kriffing hell, cack me! Cheers for reading the First Part of me trying to type down the stuff inside my head about these two fictional worlds and their characters before I become (even more) insane. There is more but it was getting so long I decided to put it into a two part post, the second will expand more on general parallels and the ships rather than just redemption, so go to part two (when I finally get it up) in order to read more and become further engrossed in the dark side mwahahaha.

p.s If any of the Star Wars Connection People are reading this, first off hello there! Second off I was actually towards the end of writing this meta when I saw your videos on my notifications come out detailing similarities between Atla and Star Wars. I know parallels have been drawn in the community plenty a time, but it still blew my mind a little bit  that you guys were talking about something I’ve been furiously typing down for weeks - lol.

 If any of you guys haven’t already, I seriously recommend you go check out their Star Wars Connection Podcast on YouTube - it’s got some pretty funny yet brilliant analysis on Star Wars, especially the sequel trilogy. Including ships, symbolism and general theories. They’re a testament to the community and some of the stupendous people in it, and they’re only a small fraction.