#tlj visual dictionary

[resurgentclass-stardestroyer]

Hux's Blaster Pistol, from Star Wars: The Last Jedi: The Visual Dictionary

[piglet26]

Reylo Scenes: TROS Part 1

If there's one name I don't wanna hear about my Reylo it's Colin Trevorrow.

I will be referencing the novelization, BTS interviews, comics and visual dictionary cause how do I say this? All of that makes the movie more coherent. That's the main issue with the movie. A lot of information was left on the cutting room floor.

Side note: There is one line in the novelization "a kiss of gratitude" the way anti-Reylos clung to that shit, like, it was even in Screenrant articles. It's one line while the rest of the novel heavily supports Reylo. This is in the BTS video for the making of the film from the team.....

"What if your sort of soulmate in the force was your enemy? Circumstance pits them against each other, but the force bonds them together. They understand each other almost from a point of view of fate and yet fate has made them enemies" That's a great story! Genuinely that's a wonderful literary, cinematic and epic story.

Daisy Ridley, "The stuff with Adam always has been so emotional. Trying to find that balance of feeling the light side but also feeling the draw to the dark side."

Adam Driver "He learns that over the course of the movie that they're two halves of the same thing. I think it just, if anything, reaffirms what he knows intuitively and has known for a while but hasn't been able to articulate until he can."

Seriously Antis?!... Accept the shit, enjoy the ride and move on.

In the visual dictionary the information provided from Ren's perspective during the interrogation is "Kylo Ren feels an innate connection to the scavenger, unaware that they form a prophesied dyad." In the time period between TLJ and TROS, Rey and Ben actually have had a run-in with one another though they haven't had a forcetime since the TLJ.

General Hux quote from the novel 'Ren had no soft spots for anyone - except maybe the scavenger' No, maybe about that. Stormtroopers stay in awe.

The movie starts with (The most chopped up opening) bad ass supreme leader Kylo Ren for literally 5 minutes before he's co-pilot to dummy Palpy. In the novelization it's revealed what exactly he saw during the hut vision with Rey. "He’d glimpsed her parents in a vision, a poor, frightened couple eking out a meagre existence, surviving on the edge of desperation. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told her they were nothing, nobodies. But Force visions were filled with tricky truths and potential realities. Maybe he had missed something." No, her story hadn't been retconned yet.

Grandpappy Palpy offers Ren the Sith fleet if Kylo kills Rey (except he doesn't want her killed...Ren's the backup?) Kylo pursues Rey under the pretense that he agreed to kill her. Ren ain't even about that life. He's like oh sure! Get the fuck out of here.

Meanwhile Rey is training with Leia/R2D2 with the assistance of Poe and Finn. There's a moment when Kylo Ren is praying over his grandpappy Darth Vader mask and bridges his mind with Rey's (They should've done more with this in this movie).

We don't know if she's confided in anyone about her connection to Ren. It would have served the story better if she had.

The damn mask is back. *Eye Roll*

On Pasaana we have their first forceskype. In the movie, it's like two ex's running into each other and don't know what to say.  God bless Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley, but mainly Adam Driver for all the work he put into spinning mostly exposition writing into something swallowable. Yes, the dialogue is stiff, but Ren's motivation at this point is semi-layered. He warns her that Palpatine wants her dead not only because he wants her at his side, but also to protect her from Palpatine. Ruling alongside Rey has become Ren's greatest ambition. Ren and Rey mean King and Queen after all. In the novel, 'He wanted to kill the past, yes. Rule supreme over the galaxy, certainly. And the massive fleet on Exegol would help him do that. But the ambition that cut into his being was the thought of reigning side by side with her. They were connected. They had defeated Snoke. Together they would be invincible.'

Both Rey and Ren are so desperate for that connection. Both also understand how powerful they were and could be together. Their battle together in Snoke’s throne room features some of the best visual storytelling in the entire series. This is where you see them together at their best, showing the promise of the potential they possess as a unit. Not to mention the emotional depth they bring to the others lives. Both are looking for confirmation of the others feeling.

"I offered you my hand once, you wanted to take it, why didn't it?"

"You could have killed me. Why didn't you?"

 

Next scene is in the desert of Pasaana. The second Ren is on the planet she senses him through the force and he sense her. The infamous running in the desert to run you down trailer scene. Prior to the movie release people correctly presumed this was Kylo Ren, but thought it was a training exercise hahaha because it made no sense. The movie was released and it still made no sense unless you've read the novel.

Kylo Ren sensed her before he saw her. As he flew his TIE whisper along the flat desert, she was a bright presence in his mind, practically glowing with determination and ferocity. He finally understood. Han Solo was his past. But Rey was his light.

The dark side clouded his judgement and urged him to cut all the ties to light. In the end, the murderous impulses contradicted his deepest desire to have Rey for himself.

I'm actually more interest in the scenes in the last 3/4 so moving onto those.

[nowritingonthewall]

There's something I've been wondering about since I've watched The Last Jedi & I'm curious of what are the thoughts about it. Poe is seen wearing his mom's ring only from the second movie as the entire thing has been introduced with the Visual Dictionary.

Are there HC about why he doesn't have the ring in The Force Awakens? Could it be he left it back on D'Qar or something or did he put it in BB-8 like he did with the map? Or maybe did he entrust someone else to keep it for him?

Hello Nonnie, thank you so much for dropping by 🥰

That's an interesting question and I think there may be several possible answers to that.

First of all, it might be possible that Poe *is* wearing the chain with his mother's ring in TFA and we simply aren't able to see it, due to his comparatively modest fashion choices. As we all know his neckline wanders downwards as the trilogy moves on, so it might just be hidden in TFA.

He might also have left it at the base because at the beginning of TFA, D'Qar still felt pretty safe for him. Maybe he expected to be captured and didn't want it to fall into the First Order's hands. At this point, he hadn't experienced an emergency evacuation yet and even though the Resistance was very much aware of the threat looming over their heads at all times, the full blown ferocity of what the FO is capable of hadn't been revealed yet. By the time we get to TLJ, of course, there is no longer a safe place for Poe to leave the ring.

And even though Ajan Kloss offers a semi-safe haven, there's always the chance of returning from a mission and finding the base to be abandoned or even destroyed. So at this point the safest place for the ring is right with Poe.

Then, of course, he might have left it with a special someone on base. Either because he is afraid that there is a good chance that he might not return this time OR as a promise that he *is* going to return from this dangerous mission 🥺

I also really love the idea of Beebs keeping it for him. Maybe he even had a little chat with his droid, in which Beebs offered to store it for him because Poe is a little accident prone. Poe would deny this, of course, until their conversation turns into an eyebrow raising contest, which Beebs wins, of course (he is literally the only one who would be able to beat Poe in a competition like that).

I am sorry, I didn't mean for this to become quite so long.If you have any more HCs, I would love to hear them 🥰

[the-force-awakens]

I've always found it an interesting tidbit that Poe was raised by Shara's father during the war and wish we had more information on him considering he's most likely passed by the time of Freefall. I'm also curious as to where Poe was during those years considering it wouldn't have been Yavin-4. I'm just eager for more info about the Dameron-Bey family as a whole.

I've always wondered about Shara's father! I wish we knew more about him also, like - even just a name. Soule, how about instead of bullying Lando for the 44th issue in a row, you give me more Bey-Dameron Family Lore, huh?

Yeah, I've also wondered about that, and we got SO close to finding out in the comics. The Empire - or at least, Tarkin's apprentice - knew what planet Shara's father had Poe on, because she threatens Poe and Shara's father to make Shara talk (which can I say, the Empire has done a lot of fucked up things before, but I think that one might be one of the things that floored me the most. Threatening a barely one year old child's life just to make his mother talk...what the fuck).

It at the very least implies that Poe is a space baby, which I love so fucking much because the concept of space babies is my FAVORITE thing in the absolute world, and I think it really adds more depth to the "I belong to the stars" line if Poe was genuinely born amongst them, and I can't be certain but I do believe around that time, the Rebellion was mostly just living on cruisers and didn't have a set planetary base yet.

Yeah, me too! I'm so curious about so much like - clearly Kes and Shara weren't part of the Rebellion when they met. iirc they meet around 3 BBY, and then of course the tlj visual dictionary mentions that Shara's wedding ring is made out of scrap from the rebellion and I'm like. I NEED to know about these two and how they went from a fucking one night stand to pRESUMABLY joining the Rebellion together and then at some point going FUCK IT we're getting married WHILE serving in the Rebellion like HELLO. I NEED TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT THESE TWO. GIVE ME A NOVEL ABOUT THEM LIKE WE GOT FOR KANERA, PLEASE. LUCASFILM. LUCASFILM PLEASE. AND GIVE IT TO BETH REVIS WHILE WE'RE AT IT.

[short-wooloo]

Minor addition, but lightsaber color comes from a Jedi bonding with the crystal, natural unbonded crystals are white

(which also highlights the horror of bleeding/purifying crystals, bleeding a crystal is forcing it to be something it's not, and though it can be healed by purifying it, the crystal is now white and cannot be any other color anymore, it can't bond with anyone anymore, the scars of the dark side remain)

But this also makes what Anakin did even more creepy, the sabers were green because that's the color that resulted from Ahsoka's bond with the crystals, but by changing the color to blue-the color of both of Anakin's lightsabers, it implies that Anakin decided to bond the crystals with himself, gave them to Ahsoka, and then call them "better"

Holy fuck that's messed up

And like, you can modify/bond with crystals without changing it, because Rey does that with Anakin's own lightsaber!

According to the ROS visual dictionary, that's what Rey did to repair the lightsaber after it was destroyed in TLJ

(Last note, but apparently for the original drafts of the final arc Ahsoka's lightsabers were their original colors I don't know why they changed this, especially since blue has become the most overused lightsaber color)

Anakin changing the color of Ahsoka's lightsabers is such a weird writing choice to make because it honestly makes zero sense with everything we've been shown or told up until then about how lightsabers work.

In the Gathering arc, we see all of the kids pick up what appear to be pretty similarly colored white crystals, but they don't all end up with the same color lightsaber. We hear them discuss the importance of choosing the design of the hilt to suit them, but never once hear them discuss any importance to choosing the COLOR of the saber. There's never any indication that the Jedi can choose the color of their saber, it's effectively chosen for them when they're led to a crystal to begin with.

The only other times we know someone can change the color of a crystal is bleeding and purifying which requires a lot of effort and appears to result only in red or white blades.

So for Anakin to have changed the color of Ahsoka's sabers from green/yellow to blue, either we need to completely discount that worldbuilding and assume that the hilt provides the color somehow and can be engineered differently, or Anakin somehow found two new crystals that he was able to confirm were blue and replaced her crystals with the new ones.

The option was there to just have Anakin have adjusted the design of hilt if they wanted to have Anakin do something to her lightsabers that was invasively sweet in a typically Anakin sort of way, to make them match his and Obi-Wan's more or something. Or if they wanted it to be genuinely sweet, he could've just given her back the sabers normally. And instead, they just... threw out everything we ever knew about the lightsabers just to give Ahsoka sabers that they were going to have her throw away in 3 episodes anyway and never get back. I don't really see the point of it when the lightsabers have no emotional impact upon anything.

[kirstyofjakku]

Big mood.

[avengcrwanda]

Captain Phasma: Survival at All Costs

Escaping from a trash compactor into the chaos of collapsing Starkiller Base, Phasma’s first priority was clearing all record of her disastrous lowering of the station’s shields. In a further effort to tie up loose ends, she went to great pains to track down and eliminate Lieutenant Sol Rivas, a First Order officer who could have revealed her treason. This was not the first time Phasma secretly assassinated a troublesome ally.

– Star Wars: The Last Jedi Visual Dictionary

[spectordameron]

Definitely not making it up! Resistance Reborn by Rebecca Roanhorse features the charming scene of Maz physically assaulting and pinning Poe down to berate him, calling him arrogant several times (I think it's used probably eight times in two pages? I was genuinely shocked by how many times when I glanced at it the last time, did an editor not look at it) and comparing that so called arrogance to the First Order! And the author describes him as arrogant in nearly every interview she gave for the book (or supremely arrogant, if she was feeling a bit creative).

Various official tie in descriptions of him, especially for Topps and anything Pablo Hildago gets his hands on, uses the same thing, or uses other terms that essentially round back as synonyms for being arrogant, and that Skywalker: A Family at War in universe biography claims Poe is self involved and vain.

It is a gross perception of Poe that sprung up quite randomly and that Lucasfilm has been subtly pushing since before TLJ released properly (if you look at the visual dictionary for that film, you'll see that Hildago point blank rewrote the Resistance arc and Poes motivations, and goes as far to include that Leia doubts he can lead — the book came out prior to TLJ, and I really suspect it added to the poor reception of Poe's character) and hasn't dropped at all in the years since. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I can't remember re: novelizations, but I know Jason Fry dislikes Poe deeply and he wrote the TLJ novel and there's quite a few subtle digs in it from what I have seen at him.

What's quite ironic is that the tfa novelization opens with describing Poe as having a proud countenance that could be mistaken for arrogance.....

Guess Alan Dean Foster was a prophet.

okay maybe it's just because my eyes officially glaze over the term from how often I see it incorrectly applied to Poe, but I truly have to wonder why men, especially love interests, are always written by women and claimed by the protagonist to be arrogant. 'Cause I'm reading a romcom right now and it's got a dual pov and it's like, really undermining the claim that this guy is arrogant. I'm not even sure why the protagonist is calling him that he's just a smartass and a prankster...

[resurgentclass-stardestroyer]

"This included quietly eliminating his own father, the elder General Brendol Hux, whose elevated position in the early First Order gave Armitage a childhood of great privilege." —Star Wars: the Last Jedi Visual Dictionary

are you high. ar eoyu fucking high

[itsmeezra]

Poe stitched the tear in Finn’s jacket back together while he was recovering and honestly what a boyfriend thing to do

[tonictransistor]

Supreme Leader Snoke.... I gotta roast you.... WHAT ARE THOOOOOOOSE????

[the-force-awakens]

Oh it frustrates me too. I think when it comes to the visual dictionaries, it's safe to say they're not the best examples for Poe - and imo nothing by Pablo Hildago is going to be. He seems to not like Poe and doesn't seem to have a problem skewering facts to suit that (see: the tlj visual dictionary pretty much entirely rewriting Poe's arc and claiming he 'seeks out' Finn and Rose's help to mutiny as soon as he meets Holdo which we see plainly in the film is not what happened. There also seems to be the preferred method of the tros dictionary to refuse to acknowledge Poe blew up Starkiller and saved countless lives, instead wanting to pin him as an arrogant mutineer who just causes trouble instead of a hero who has saved lives.)

With the flight log and etc, I just sort of play fast and loose with stuff in what I personally consider canon — it could be the Doctor Who fan in me, but I'm a little more willing to accept a handful of small continuity errors (such as him meeting Tekka, there being jetpack troopers in the first Poe arc), but if something is regularly contradicted — yeah I'm gonna say that's probably not canon.

This is now just my own personal thing but I count the first, I want to say 25 issues? of the Poe comics as canon, ending with that issue when Snap and Karé get married and he has that conversation with Tekka — because that was actually supposed to be the end of the comic run, but the title and Poe was so popular Marvel extended it and Soule had to very quickly hobble together another two arcs, but those two arcs have been contradicted by a ton of other media. Obviously, you have the tfa novelizations and the flight log contradicting Poe's version of events in tfa, but in both tlj novelizations Leia gives him his rank back officially pretty much as soon as they reach Crait, whereas in the comics it isn't until afterwards in the Falcon.

Furthermore, those arcs just keep getting contradicted - Wrobie (my beloved lesbian starfighter pilot) is cited in the star wars databank to have been missing from the D'qar evacuation because she was on a mission with Snap, and then last year's fantastic short story between Rey and Poe in Stories of Jedi and Sith takes place a few weeks after tlj and they're still living on the Falcon, which effectively knocks out both those arcs and (to my personal euphoria) Resistance Reborn - which in itself, gets retconned by tros, because they go for the (imo more meaningful) explanation that the galaxy has lost hope and that's why no one responded.

As for the overall timeline of the cold war - I just don't think they can decide how long it took, quite frankly? They change their minds on it every so often (originally, Han and Leia had only been separated for a year which I find hilarious considering their dramatic ass reunion and I wish they hadn't changed it for that reason), and again...I personally don't count the visual dictionaries as good for anything beyond minor character work + details on tech and little snippets of background stories because they're so often retconned. I know the fandom treats them like bibles but I see them as suggestions rather than orders.

I personally feel vindicated that it's officially confirmed my estimate for freefall's events have been canonized (since the visual dictionary did positively nothing to try and line up with it) and I was right about when the Resistance was formed but I utterly refuse to believe everything in the comics and SW Resistance happens the same year as tfa, I know time works funny in the gffa but damn (the implication Poe became crucial to high command in the span of (1) year and a general in 2 is impressive I'll give them that).

I like to think, regardless of what Lucasfilm tells us or inevitably changes their minds on, that he's been there for at least 3-4 years before tfa happens, just simply because I like the idea of him, y'know, being there for so long and having this rich history with the resistance and leia before Finn or Rey ever enter the story.

Maybe it’s the fact I’m studying to be a historian and instead applying my research skills to crafting a Star Wars mega timeline but I have personal beef with whoever is in charge of Poe’s timelines in the visual dictionaries and timelines books.

Joins spice runners at sixteen, in Freefall only a year goes by before he leaves but the visual dictionary says he goes home five years later, same dictionary says he joined the resistance three years before the force awakens and now the Star Wars timelines book has retconned that to one year before and squashed all of the comics into that year as well.

As frustrated as I am I do appreciate them feeling the need to point out in the visual dictionary he’s rarely clean shaven.

There’s just so many contradictions in canon media when it comes to Poe, such as having him meet Lor San Tekka in the comics and then in the flight log having Poe comment on he was surprised by his appearance when they met on Jakku

If only I could pay this much attention to detail when it came to my actual university assignments.

[darthrain]

Leia’s pages from  Star Wars The Last Jedi The Visual Dictionary

[the-force-awakens]

newbie anon is right. to me, you’re the royalty of the poe dameron fan club/defense squad. your word is the law.

lyra

I mean, wouldn't necessarily say that of myself? Fndjdkd I mean, I don't even consider my word law, I'm constantly teasing apart his canon and reconsidering my own perspectives on elements of it and my stances on certain headcanons or how I want to extrapolate from canon — y'all got a pretty good look at my thought process with the bloodburn thing. I went from a hard "oh no" to a "hm wait if I think about this-" in the span of about ten minutes after going to research things. That's just how I operate, I'm constantly just fiddling with my own fictional sandbox.

Honestly, the only thing I really do is just focus on stuff that is reiterated a bunch? Like if it's in the movies, that's canon, and if something goes against it...well it's probably not canon, but with expanded material it gets trickier.

Like, personally, I do not consider anything in the visual dictionaries "canon" besides the little character details like Poe breaking his arm as a kid, just simply because a) the writer for those dictionaries really doesn't seem to like Poe at all, b) the tlj dictionary completely rewrites Poe's storyline to make it seem like fanon's interpretation of his actions in tlj were correct (they're not), and c) despite freefall almost definitely being in development at the time, the tros dictionary cites Poe being with Zorii for way longer than he was.

What I do count as canon is the stuff that gets backed up frequently by other bits of material. I consider the novelizations - even if I don't personally vibe with the tlj or tros ones - to be far more canon than, say, the last two arcs of the Poe comics just because they're more closely tied to the movies + you have the sequence of events in the tfa novel reiterated in the flight log, and the book that shall not be named is closely tied to those last two arcs of the comics, and the rise of skywalker + star wars.com has retconned it. twice.

There's still plenty of things I don't get about him! Sometimes my friends will just point out an angle I had never considered before (such as @/dameronalone who is a Poe expert - poexpert? - in her own right and gets him on a level that is simply just 😘🤌 amazing and showstopping, just to give one example) and it makes me reconsider things!

Mostly, I just like gathering facts abt him because I like tucking away information on things (or people) I love, and I like making sure I stay on top of things + read all his stuff because back in 2018-2020 sections of the fandom had a nasty habit of taking scenes of his out of context to make it seem like they were ruining his character, and after believing that for about a year just to find out it wasn't true fhdjdkddk left me determined to make sure I knew absolutely everything abt him so I wasn't duped again lmfao.

[fromsiberia]

I overheard that tlj visual dictionary mentions, that hux has a small team of hand-picked officer that follow him everywhere. Sounds nice, but now Kylo makes Hux follow him everywhere (because that way Hux will not betray him, you know).

So, Hux follows Kylo. And all of this offcers follow Hux. E-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e.

I hope Supreme Leader has a bed big enough.

[short-wooloo]

If you go off the sequel films alone (since they're higher canon than material like nooks and comics) Anakin's identity as Vader is not widely known, as it seems that the only non-ot characters who know are Rey, Snoke (and given how murky it is whether or not Snoke is his own being or just an extension of Palpatine he may not count) and Kylo

But going off expanded universe material, well the First Order holds Vader in high regard (which is a neat contrast to the legends Imperial remnants who came to despise Vader once the facts of Palpatine's death became more widely known), probably because the fo is a military junta first and foremost and Vader's role in the empire was primarily a military commander

Regarding Vader's turn and whether or not Kylo knows, well according to the TFA/TLJ visual dictionaries he and Snoke know, they just... don't care, as in their eyes, Vader's return to being Anakin was a last minute lapse, a mistake, an aberration, in their eyes Vader is who Anakin really is

And lastly, according to Bloodline, a prequel novel to tfa, the identity of Vader and fact that he is Leia's father is public knowledge, a political rival of Leia found a recording of Bail Organa confirming both, and it was released, destroying Leia's political career and her attempts to counter the rising first order through the republic, leading her to found/lead the Resistance to fight the first order as an insurgency, while also causing a deterioration in Ben Solo's relationship with his family (up to this point he had not known Anakin and Vader were the same person, having idolized the former) and furthering his own fall to the dark side

I like thinking about all of the people in the galaxy who will only ever remember Anakin as the piece of shit nightmare monster he chose to be.

I love remembering that most people in the galaxy will only ever think of him as a villain, a tyrant, an oppressor, a murderer, and never as a hero.

Like regardless of whether he was redeemed at the end of the series or not, his legacy is hatred. The galaxy will never remember him as a good person, it will always ALWAYS remember him as the person who helped destroy democracy, genocide the Jedi, and enforce the Empire’s tyranny for 30 years.

It brings me warm fuzzies to remember that.