#wow ben and poe really are an iconic duo...omg...

[askbensolo]

Per the poetry reading, some of the best advice I've heard is "do it scared"

Definitely beats never doing the things you love and then living with what ifs. If you find you love it then heck yeah! And you find you don't want to read it to anyone else outloud afterwards then hey great! You figured out more of what you actually do and don't want to do!

Best way to make a good life is to let life itself shape and whittle you into the best shape for you, throw yourself into the rock tumbler of life and see how it makes you shine 👍✨️

Yoooo thanks for the advice! I went! And I dragged Poe with me. Because that's what he gets for making me go to that BB unit meetup with him. Worst experience of my life—fifteen BB droids all rolling around and sniffing each other's charging ports, or whatever the hell they do, and a bunch of over-enthusiastic droid owners gushing about their sweet little metal babies—horrible.

I think he took me because I showed him the results of that poll I made you guys do. He was unconvinced, and merely stated that he doesn't want to know what holonet circles I run in. And now he's made it his personal mission to make me a droid guy. Which I will—mark my words—never be.

So—anyway! The poetry meet!

It was pretty chill. There were only two people there that I immediately judged to be pretentious artsy bastards, and one of them was me. So...ya know. I've been feeling pretty ✨stressed✨ the past couple days, so it was good to go out and do something, even if I was kinda nervous at first.

I shared a couple of poems I had written about my parents a long time ago. One about my mom, and one about my dad. (AKA, some of my only works that aren't just massive explosions of angst.)

The only problem with that was that it exposed me as The Organa-Solo Kid™, which I make every effort not to be, now that I've flown the nest. I usually introduce myself to people as Ben Quadinaros (except for legal stuff, obviously). No one seems to know who that is—unfortunate for the galaxy's greatest Toong podracer with a most untimely end, but, fortunate for me, I guess. But my selected poems, which were very my mom and very my dad, were kind of a dead giveaway.

"Hold on. Aren't you Ben Solo?" this one Gungan girl asked.

I stared at her with a really dumb look on my face (a look I happen to have perfected). "I don't know who that is," I said.

"Wait, you're Ben Solo!" said the Rodian guy with the beret (the other insufferable prick in the room, besides me).

"Ew," I said. "I am so offended right now. That is literally an insult."

And then Poe started backing me up, only, like—badly. "Nah, I grew up with this guy," he said, patting me on the back. "His mom's name is—uh—Schmeia Schmorgana."

"Nice," I whispered.

"Thanks, Solo."

"Bruh—"

Well...I don't think the group bought it. Obviously. But, I think Poe and I made things awkward enough for everyone, that they all figured it just wasn't worth pressing the issue.

So...yeah! 10/10, would go again!