#(also sorry to all the han and chewie fans I LOVE them but they did not qualify for blorbo status sorry) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

deniigi · 3 years

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hi I have something for y’all called a disaster.

I wrote an Inimitable!Spiderman/Modern Star Wars AU because no one can stop me, not even myself. it is like 47 pages long. I am handing it tenderly to y’all.

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Title: impossible scenario

Summary: Peter runs into some drunk assholes arguing, calling each other Han and Luke. He lets it roll off him until he can’t anymore and eventually finds himself for the first time on the other side of someone more chaotic than himself.

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There was an argument happening under a fire escape. Peter knew about it because a concerned dude wearing a fuckin’ Yankees cap had flagged him down with waving arms and told him that someone needed saving, Spiderman. Some tall asshole was kidnapping a young blond dude, the guy and his too-cool-for-him girlfriend explained. They’d heard the two scuffling.

Peter maybe stared for a beat too long at them because the gal pointed two blocks behind him and said, “That way. I think the blond guy might be drugged. He’s slurrin’ something strong.”

Peter liked her shoes. They looked like Miles’s, but blue.

“Spidey?”

Miles told Peter all the time that he wasn’t cool enough to wear Jordans. MJ and Johnny had agreed. Such sad times.

“Spidey.”

“I got it,” Peter sighed.

The gal tsked.

“Man, you’re too young to be this jaded,” she said.

Peter sighed.

“You’re the third person to say that this week,” he said. “You think I should go back to therapy?”

There was a pause.

“You know that answer, dude,” cool-gal said. “Go save the twink.”

Twink. Got it. Thank you, citizen.

“There are websites for that shit, Spidey.”

Bye now.

“Apps, even.”

Bye, bye.

“BetterHelp or Headspace or somethin’—”

“Two blocks, you said?” Peter asked.

Two blocks away, there was indeed a man with dark hair trying to lift a violently intoxicated twink up onto the first steps of a fire escape. Peter examined his options. There were many ways to ruin a potential kidnapper’s day. His favorite involved coke and mentos, although he’d received feedback that that was a waste of perfectly good food. Down the list was also the option to walk over and scream bloody murder so that the kidnapper shat themselves and dropped their target.

That was good, but Peter was tired and the thought of mustering up the energy to scream at a noticeable volume made his thighs turn to Jell-o.

That left snark and violence.

Today, he would not choose violence. Only for today.

He strode out of his dark temporary residence between two dumpsters directly towards the tall dude and his mark. The mark was a messy one. Bless his heart, he was unwittingly making himself the most noncompliant victim to have ever victim-ed. Every time the tall guy got him almost vertical, he gave up his corporeal form to become drunk slime and ooze back to the ground with various moaning sound effects.

It would have been funny if not for the kidnapping context.

The fact that Peter had been standing there under the beams of two separate side-building security lights and neither of those two had noticed yet was also objectively funny—or would have been, if Peter had the capacity for processing humor at the moment.

Alas. This was what he got for telling Tony that he’d evolved beyond the need for sleep. He got caffeine-pilled. And there would be no true rest until that shit wore off, exhausted as Peter’s body yearned to be.

“Kid, work with me here,” the tall guy said.

“I can’t, I’ll die,” the shorter one moaned.

“Luke.”

“I’ve done my time—thirty years in AZKA—”

“Keep your voice down, oh my god.”

Peter was just standing here, fellas.

“Luke.”

“Why’s it always me? Why’s it always gotta be me? The hell did I do to piss off the whole galax-galaxy? HA. My bad, my bad. The whole universe?”

God, what a mood.

The tall guy dropped his grip on the smaller one and loomed over his puddle of ooze with poison in his gaze.

“People are going to die, Luke,” he said.

“So what? They’re always dyin’. Everywhere I go, people’re dyin’ and when it’s not them dyin’, you know who is?”

“Kid.”

“ME.”

“So you’re just gonna wallow there, feelin’ sorry for yourself?” the tall dude snapped.

“Sure am,” the puddle of ooze hummed.

This was not a kidnapping. This was a come-to-Jesus in the back alley of a bar. Peter was not needed here. He turned around on his heel and stopped when he heard a sharp intake of breath.

“Is that?” someone whispered.

“Don’t mind me, pal, just your friendly neighborhood—” he started.

“Look what you did,” Tall and Handsome hissed at Ooze-Man. “Someone went and called Spiderman on us.”

Peter lifted a brow as Ooze-man ripped its chest up from the asphalt and composed itself back into a human shape with fluffy blonde hair and huge wide eyes.

“Omigod, it’s Spiderman,” the guy said. “Wait, no. Gimme a hand. No, not that one, fuck off, nevermind, I don’t need you.”

He drew himself up to standing, only leaning slightly on his buddy there and gave Peter as lopsided smile.

“Hi, there,” he said with a twang that Peter couldn’t place. “Were you lookin’ for someone, handsome?”

Ah, they had reached the time of night when all the drunks needed to tell Peter things he already knew about his ass. He loved this time.

Not to mention that this dude looked eerily like Johnny. Scarily like Johnny. So much like Johnny that Peter almost wanted to take a picture of him to send to Sue so that she could print up some lost and found posters.

“Just lookin’ at you, babe,” he said. “This guy botherin’ you?”

The tall guy blanched and then grabbed at his face in horror. Peter swallowed his laugh.

“He sure is, hon. You got time to rescue me?” Blondie crooned.

“Luke, please. Please.”

“Because I’m in real distress,” ‘Luke’ said with a pout mighty enough to fell Thor.

“You sure seem like it,” Peter said. “C’mere. I’ll walk you home. Leave that tool, he ain’t worth your breath.”

He held out an elbow like proper gentleman and was pleased at the hand that Luke laid over his heart in response.

Peter could imagine Johnny’s face in six different expression of jealous horror at a selfie taken with this look-alike. Each was beautiful in its own special way. As payment for being referred to counseling by the public, he at least deserved to receive at least two of those faces.

“You mean that?” Luke asked him.

“He doesn’t,” his tall companion said.

“I sure do, where do you live? I’ll walk you,” Peter said.

“Oh my god, I’m gonna cry, he’s gonna escort me,” Luke said, all choked up and fanning his eyes lightly.

This tall friend grabbed him before he could escape, though, and pulled him back behind his own body.

“Listen, Spidey, this is a misunderstanding,” he drawled. “I know this idiot—he is technically my idiot— and I’m the one escorting his ass home. Thanks, though. You’re a real menace. Beat it.”

MMMMMMM.

And here Peter had been planning on being jaded and miserable this fine night. How could he now when this dude was ticking every box that made him feel alive?

“What’s your name, dollface?” Peter asked across the short distance.

“None of your business,” Tall Guy answered abruptly.

“Luke,” Luke said around him. “Are you gonna save me?”

“In just a minute,” Peter said, striding forward with a hard roll in his shoulder and deep drop in his knees.

It was amazing how Tall Guy wanted to take some steps back all of the sudden. Peter couldn’t help but let a smirk widen his face as he advanced.

“Okay, hang on now,” Tall Guy said with both palms out in front of him. “You don’t know what this is about, Spidey. You don’t want to get involved with this, trust me. He’s just bein’ dramatic. No need to get testy.”

“You sure do a lot of talkin’ for your friend there,” Peter noted through his grin.

“Yeah, Han,” Luke said.

Ha.

Han. Han and Luke. Ned was gonna be enraptured when Peter told him about this later.

“Luke. Back me up.”

“Why should I?”

“Because,” ‘Han’ finally snapped. “I’m not doin’ this because I want you to suffer, alright? I don’t want nothin’ to do with it either, okay? No one does. But it’s this or—”

“Or everyone else,” Luke finished for him in a strangely toneless voice.

Han sighed.

“It’s always everyone else,” Luke said.

“Not here.”

“Why’s it always everyone el—No, no, here. Why not? We’ve got fucking Spiderman in our midst, how much more surreal can this moment get? No. You listen to me, Han—”

“I’ve been listening to you all damn evening and you know what I’m hearing?”

“—I lost my life for this. I lost my home, my aunt, my uncle, my hand—”

“I’m hearing you making this about you.”

“—everything I ever knew, and I tried to make it right, didn’t I? I made the school. I gathered the kids—”

“And it’s not just about you this time, kid. It’s not about you, it’s not about me, or Leia, or Chewie or—”

“—I lost my kid and the love of my life, and I finally get a second chance at finding them and giving them the goddamn happy ending they deserve, and the next thing I know—”

“Luke, you’re the only one,” Han said.

“I WAS NEVER. THE ONLY. ONE, HAN,” Luke roared out of absolutely nowhere, sober as a saint. “I was never the only one. EVER. Ahsoka. Go find her. She’s everything that I’m not and more. She’s the real—”

“Luke.”

“Stop saying that name. I HATE that name. I would do anything for twenty goddamn seconds where I didn’t have to be him.”

“You don’t mean that,” Han said quietly. His shoulders had rounded out and become black and heavy under the weight of their shadow. Luke’s eyes, however, looked like topaz.

“I mean it,” Luke said.

Oho.

So shit had gotten real tense, real fast, so Peter about to make a decision that was gonna make Shelley so proud of him she would weep when he finally slunk back in through her office door.

He was leaving. He was turning around and taking a wee jog. Maybe turning a corner, having a little jump over a fence, up a wall, to a place as far away from this one as superhumanly possible.

Bye, bye.

“This galaxy needs you, Luke.”

Peter stopped five paces away.

“They need you,” Han repeated. “And I need you.”

Peter slowly looked back to see that Luke’s face had twisted sharply out of the light, towards the alley wall.

“I’m sorry that we met again like this,” Han said quietly. “I’m sorry it’s always you. You don’t deserve this. No one deserves this.”

“Shut up,” Luke said.

“But if you don’t do something, then it won’t be just me and you and all these random others sliding back into that cesspit we all barely crawled out of.”

“Stop.”

“You’ll never find him if things go back the way they were.”

“You—you don’t know that. There—maybe—”

“Luke. Listen to me. Please.”

“Maybe there’s a chance—”

“Luke,” Han said reaching out and putting a hand on Luke’s shoulder and clenching it hard enough that Peter should see the bunched fabric, “Do you want Din to live through this shitshow a second time? Hasn’t he suffered enough?”

Peter shivered. The pressure at the base of his neck was building. The Spidey Sense wanted to hiss in his ears like white noise. It pinned him where he was, staring over his shoulder at those two solid shapes, one digging a hand into the flesh of the other.

His stomach turned.

Luke said something that Peter couldn’t hear. Han pulled him toward his own body by the grip he had on his shoulder. At first, Luke seemed to stagger, like he was walking on black ice. He stopped a single step away from Han’s body, still with his face angled severely away. Han said something to him.

There was a long pause, then Luke seemed to fall forward. Han caught him and crushed his head into his shoulder, lowering his own until it was almost touching Luke’s ear. They clung to each other.

Luke was crying.

The Spidey Sense started to crackle and pop in Peter’s ears.

“I gotchu, kid,” Han said in a rasp. “I gotchu. We’re gonna get through it.”

Peter blinked once and finally unlocked the muscles in his neck. He wasn’t meant to witness this. He held out a wrist and fired a line.

It was weird.

It was just weird.

Something wasn’t right. And Peter couldn’t make his stomach not writhe about it.

Luke.

Han.

An offhand mention of like, characters. Character names. They were character names. Leia, Chewie.

Peter had heard of people who lived their lives honestly believing that they had been other people—fake people—in past lives, but like, damn man. Why would you put yourself in a position like that were you were moved to actual tears for some elaborate street-drama?

Maybe it had been a joke? That was the only thing he could think it could be. Maybe the universe had gazed upon his hubris at work and gone ‘ah yes, I know what this young man needs: emotional confusion at midnight on a Thursday. That’ll fix him.’

If that was the case, then yeah. Good job, universe. Good job, larpers. Y’all are equally sick.

But if not—and Peter no longer lived in a world where he could rule out any possibilities—then he had just witnessed—Dude, he’d just witnessed—

He couldn’t even think it. It was beyond him. It was so far beyond him that like he might have a real stroke taking the thought seriously.

There was only one person who could hold that kind of information unscathed.

Only one.

PP: Ned. I need you to listen to me and tell me I’m not crazy.

NL: no promises but go on

PP: I think? I just saw? Luke Skywalker? And Han Solo? In an alley behind Kitty’s?????

NL: fascinating

JS: Say more

PP: who let you in here?

JS: you?

PP: SECURITY

NL: Peter say more

PP: I can’t there’s a nerd in here and it’s vibrating at the wrong decibel. SECURITY???

MJ: yeah?

PP: I’m trying to have a breakdown. Can you remove Matchstick please?

MJ: what kind of breakdown

JS: he thinks he met Luke Skywalker

PP: Security has failed me. God?

NL: Peter can you name three things you can see.

PP: I am not manic. I am in touch with reality. I’m just having anxiety because I just fucking saw two people calling each other Luke and Han fighting behind Kitty’s. Like real fighting.

JS: nicknames?

PP: I—

PP: oh my god nicknames

PP: Johnny I’m so sorry I ever doubted you. never leave my side

JS: 😊

MJ: wow that’s cringe. Imagine naming yourself after SW characters

NL: does kitty do a cosplay night now????

PP: idk it was wild. People thought that ‘Han’ was trying to kidnap ‘Luke’ but when I got over there, Luke started flirting with me and then shit got real and they started arguing over like him hating his name and not wanting to do something and losing everything or some shit

NL: that’s a lot. I’m sure it was nothing, though, peter.

PP: yeah it was. My SS has been going nuts ever since I left. You think they bugged me?

JS: yes I will come search your body imminently

MJ: my job storm, back off

JS: after MJ has finished prelim checks, I will then search your body for you out of the kindness of my heart ❤

NL: that’s weird, the SS doesn’t usually freak out about cosplayers

PP: ikr?

NL: lol imagine if they were serious

MJ: don’t say that

JS: well now we have to lean in. thanks ned

JS: they were definitely real. God they were so real. You hear that Fate? You got us. They’re definitely real.

PP: BUT WHAT IF THEY WERE?

MJ: cue breakdown

NL: that would be so fucking funny. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo trying to save the world from the hellscape of nyc. The rats alone would thwart them.

PP: ned I’m freaking out

NL: oh you mean you’re actually freaking out?

PP: deeply

NL: oh shit sorry. I’ll be over, have you slept yet?

PP: NO

MJ: on it

JS: can I join?

NL: no johnny

MJ: no johnny

PP: 😭

JS: one day our love will build a bridge, peter. In the meantime I am stroking your ear comfortingly from midtown

Need and MJ’s weight pinning him to a mattress brought sleep but not necessarily comfort. They both thought that this was a sick joke someone had played on him that was now destroying his psyche. They thought that the couple pointing him back towards the cosplayers had been in on the joke.

Peter would have agreed with them if it wasn’t for the Spidey Sense. Everything else lined up perfectly.

Ned sighed in the morning and told Peter to go talk to Wade.

Wade’s hallucinations were, by far, more auditory than visual, but he stayed quiet while Peter talked his ear off over the phone in his locked office. He waited until Peter had run out of words to describe the feeling of impending doom and then huffed a bit of a laugh into the receiver.

“Them Star Wars people are unreal, Pete, you know this,” he said. “Look at Ned.”

Ned was perfect.

“Take off those rosy shades, hon. Now, look again.”

Ned had perhaps memorized the entire scripts of the first three movie and 90% of the spaceship names and the jedi lineages.

“Uh-huh. Keep going.”

Peter didn’t want to.

“We all gotta do shit we don’t want do.”

Fine.

Ned’s goal in life was to go to his wedding in a stormtrooper suit.

“Keep going.”

Every Lego project they’d built together since 13 years-old had been a Star Wars-related one. When Ned had decided to move out of his parents’ place, he’d shed actual tears over MJ and Peter mutually suggesting that he sell some of his memorabilia.

“Will this delightful buffet before our very eyes, what is the likelihood of your two pals being drunk larpers in too deep to quit?” Wade asked.

73%.

“Uh-huh.”

“Thanks, Wade.”

“No problem. Although, now I gotta see this. You said they were behind Kitty’s? You think I can get a stormtrooper costume in 8 hours?”

“They’re not still gonna be there, Wade,” Peter huffed. “It’s 10 am.”

“You ain’t know that. What if Luke Skywalker’s a useless drunk, huh? You ever think of that?”

No.

“What’d he look like?”

Peter groaned.

“He looked like Luke Skywalker,” he said. “Blond hair, blue eyes—sort of like a chipmunk that forgot its stripes.”

“I’m onto you, Skywalker.”

Peter hung up to Wade’s cackle. He slouched low and tapped his pen against his desk. Then against his fingers.

He stared at the edge of his keyboard.

“What’s the weirdest thing you could imagine, Pete?” he asked himself.

PP: sam

SC: yeah?

PP: do you like star wars?

SC: nah

PP: you’re perfect

PP: do you believe in past lives?

SC: like spiritually or culturally? I know I was a cult-kid for a min there but before that we were Buddhists and like, past lives are part of the package

PP: that’s cool. What do you think of people being reborn as themselves again like, 500000000 years later? From a galaxy far far away?

SC: I don’t think about those people

PP: okay well, hypothetically. Let’s say that you were going to imagine someone who embodied that whole spirit. Who would it be?

SC: Buddha

PP: not buddha

SC: is this a riddle? Is it Jesus?

PP: THOR. Thank you this has been helpful ily bye

Mr. Stark asked him over a cup of viciously black coffee why Peter was seeking out the demigod of his present nightmares.

That usually meant that he and Thor had disagreed on basic physics principles again. Peter took that also to mean that the demigod was still in the building. Possibly loose.

“He’s with Banner,” Mr. Stark said scathingly.

“Thanks, you’re amazing,” Peter said as he sailed out of the room.

Thor was sitting on Dr. Banner’s lab table, despite Dr. Banner telling him to get off no fewer than two times in the five minutes that Peter was in there, schmoozing and making pleasantries. He warmed Thor up to the home-run hit by asking him all about past lives and present lives and what the soul was on Asgard. Thor was only too happy to explain a load of nonsense that made Banner roll his eyes and poke at his muscles with a thermometer.

“So, hypothetically speaking,” Peter drawled in a very casual lean, “With the infinite galaxies and universes, etcetera, there could be one where Star Wars people exist. And so hypothetically, they could get reborn into a universe like ours.”

Thor blinked at him.

“You remember the laser swords?” Dr. Banner deadpanned.

Thor lit up.

“I suppose it’s possible,” he told Peter indulgently. “But if that was the case then it would be a long tragedy, no?”

…yes…

Say more, Thor-man.

“Well,” Thor said with a big, happy smile, “The series of events that unfolded in that story seemed to me to be one of triumph and tragedy. With one would come the other—that’s how these stories work, yes?”

…yes.

“So if Master Luke Skywalker and his companions arrived into our space here, then they must experience the same in order to be themselves,” Thor said, bobbing his head in pity. “Perhaps what would look like a new start for such people would result only in terror and disappointment until the same conclusion was reached.”

Peter felt his own grin twitch.

“So it’s not impossible?” he asked.

Both Thor and Banner looked at him quizzically at the same time.

“Peter?” Dr. Banner asked. “Is this coming from somewhere?”

Peter’s grin twitched so violently, it turned into a grimace that even superstrength would not let him maintain.

“Can I borrow one of you?” he asked.

Wade was not happy to be met outside of Kitty’s in the middle of the day, especially because his stormtrooper outfit, in his words, ‘did no justice for the size of his balls.’

Peter was ignoring that. He dragged Thor past Wade’s righteous anger until he was standing on the place where the other two had stood the night before. Thor stood there gamely.

“There,” Peter said. “Any like, energy signatures?”

Thor glanced around and shrugged.

Wade scowled at him and hounded him off the spot so that he could stand there instead.

“I feel nothing,” he said, devoid of emotion.

“Same,” Thor said.

Damnit.

“Perhaps you are—”

The Spidey Sense smashed through all of Peter’s sense and screamed at him to get to the street.

Get to the street. Get to the street. Get to the—

There.

Across the way. Chipmunk, no stripes.

That was the guy from the day before. He was on the opposite sidewalk smashed in with the crowd, dragging a hand through his hair and laden with a backpack and two separate totes. He was wearing a strange set of clothes—a mash of casual and formal—and seemed to be in a hurry, the type of hurry that involved pushing past folks at a half-jog and not stopping at streetlights.

“Got ‘im,” Peter hissed.

“No shit?” Wade asked over his shoulder.

Thor made a sound of interest.

“I see him, too,” he said. “What incredible energy, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Wh—

Peter whirled on him.

“Don’t you fucking say that,” he warned. “I’m gonna go distract. You two, on my six.”

Peter broke four traffic laws on his way around the block. He swung himself around a corner and fucked up the collar on his labcoat and counted to four before stepping out right into ‘Luke’s path.

They collided. Luke stumbled back and dropped one of his totes.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Peter blustered. “Are you okay?”

Luke swore and dropped down without answering, collecting the odd ends of metal that had clattered out from his bag and now rolled loose over the pavement. Peter stooped to join, gathering rings and pipes of all sorts of sizes in his hands. Oncoming folks gave them a wide berth.

It took a moment for Luke to realize what Peter was doing, but when he did, his shoulders went stiff as a board.

“DON’T TOUCH THOSE,” he snapped, just as Peter made to pick up a little plastic bag with a wad of tissue inside it.

Peter froze.

“Oh. Sorry,” he said.

This time, Luke finally met his eye.

“Oh, Jesus. No. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” Luke blustered, “Thank you. I’ll—I’ve got them. Thank you, though. It’s okay.”

He took the metal out of Peter’s hands and stuffed them back into his bag. He snatched the plastic bag before Peter could touch it and put that on top.

“Excuse me,” he said as he stood. “Thanks again.”

And just like that, he hurried off past Peter down the pavement.

Peter watched him go.

“Catch?” Wade asked softly from the corner.

“Negative,” Peter said, reaching into his sleeve and holding up the thin aluminum tube he’d hidden up there by the edge of his shirt-sleeve.

It was shiny and longer than he’d expect for any plumbing project. The inside appeared to be coated with some sort of heavy, non-reactive material, and half of the outside had grooved bands carved into it.

“Someone’s building something,” he said.

“Mid-century sink?” Wade asked, taking the tube.

“Nope,” Peter said.

NL: That is a lightsaber hilt

NL: where did you get that? It’s like mega accurate. Was it etsy?

PP: I stole it

NL: give it back

PP: I can’t I stole it from Luke Skywalker.

NL: Peter.

NL: we talked about this.

PP: He’s Luke Skywalker. I swear on the grave of my mother

MJ: this is a problem. This is now an intervention.

PP: I will prove it. If he’s Luke Skywalker, then he will do ANYTHING to get this thing back.

NL: and if not?

PP: then I will wait two days before politely tracking down his home address and then I will return it via wall crawling

JS: UM

JS: SORRY

JS: PETER CAN YOU CALL ME?

PP: no

NL: no

MJ: no

JS: are

JS: are you sure??? Because there’s a guy in Reed’s lab right now talking to him and Sue, asking SUPER politely for access to—I shit you not—the crystals we picked up from that space trip the other day???

NL: …

PP: …

MJ: …

PP: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

MJ: fake

NL: no way

PP: WHAT’S HIS NAME, JOHNNY BOY????

JS: I can’t

PP: nope you gotta

JS: I can’t I’m gonna cry I didn’t ask for this

MJ: out with it

NL: please say it’s obi-wan

JS: HHHHHHHHHHH

JS: nope

JS: just a guy named Ben 🙃

PP: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

PP: I told you motherfuckers

JS: right. So like. Awkward. But you uh, know that hilt thing you have?

PP: …is Obi-Wan Kenobi about to beat my ass, Johnny?

There was something about putting the hilt into the palm of someone more famous than Captain America that made Peter’s knees weak.

It did not help that Luke Skywalker had flirted with him the other night.

It did not help that Luke Skywalker didn’t recognize him as Spiderman.

Nothing helped, really, especially when those big topaz eyes lifted and Peter could see that their rims were red and raw.

“Thanks,” Luke Skywalker—the embodiment of hope itself—said in a soft, defeated rasp.

Every alarm in Peter’s head said to save him. Save him from what? How? Who knew.

Ned and MJ seemed to feel the same way, if the pressure on each of his arms was anything to go by.

“Well, that’s all cleared up, then. Thank you so much for your help; it is deeply appreciated,” a stupidly pleasant gentleman with a perfectly combed beard and lovingly coifed light hair said to the room at large.

Obi-Wan Kenobi—pardon, Ben Kennedi—was far more handsome than any movie could ever dream to make him. What they’d done to him in the 1970s, Peter saw now, was a fucking crime. He watched as this beautiful human being set a warm hand on Luke Skywalker’s—pardon, Luke Naberry’s—shoulder and used it to steer him towards the Baxter Building’s front entrance.

He watched as the two of them, like true Master and Padawan, stepped out onto the landing and opted for the stairs. For one fleeting, unbelievable second, Luke looked back over his shoulder at all of them before taking the next step after his Master.

He was right the other night.

He wasn’t the only jedi. Not anymore.

“So that just happened,” Sue acknowledged for everyone after the door had clicked closed and the sound of footsteps had faded off to nothing.

“I’m going to cry,” Reed announced.

“This is single-handedly the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Ned said.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi walked into our kitchen,” Reed told Sue like she hadn’t been there right next to him.

“The empire is trying to establish itself under our very feet,” Sue said back a little viciously.

“The real empire,” Reed whimpered.

Wait.

No, go back.

“For real?” Peter asked.

Sue and Reed looked back at the rest of them and then exchanged a look.

Peter was sad now. Depressed and laid out on his side staring back at Valeria’s huge eyes on the floor while Ned and MJ and Johnny asked Reed and Sue two hundred clarifying questions.

Peter didn’t need the specifics. He was thinking back on the conversation that he’d witnessed between Luke and Han Solo—Han Solo who was tall with dark hair and dark eyes and an accent straight out of New Jersey. Solo who had probably been charged with forcing Luke to face the facts in front of all of them because he was the one who Luke trusted most.

But it had shattered them—both of them.

The New Hope had given up everything. He was tired. His heart was torn. He was jaded just like Peter had been that same night. He’d been avoiding the tightrope that Peter had already started crossing, though, probably looking for every possible way to not have to set the first foot on that wobbly line.

He’d walked it before.

Valeria reached out with a chubby, round hand and touched the side of Peter’s face.

“Spiderman,” she said with terrifying understanding, “Someone needs help.”

He wriggled in close enough to bonk heads with her.

“Baby Storm,” he whispered, “I think you’re right.”

MJ thought that Peter needed to leave things alone. She pointed out that he had plenty of problems without getting involved in universe-saving. She gestured to Johnny and volunteered him for the job.

Johnny refused on account of needing to be the prettiest blond in any room. He claimed that if he wasn’t, he had to fight for dominance.

Ned was on the other end of the spectrum. He had 43 reasons why Peter should get involved with things, and 40 of them ended up in the same place which was ‘it would be cool.’

One of Ned’s better reasons, however, involved pointing out that Peter had already stolen half of a lightsaber. He was good and involved now, whether he wanted to be or not. And that was enough for Peter to decide to go on a hunt to give a formal apology.

He recruited Ned to help him locate Luke Skywalker.

That didn’t work.

They tried Luke Naberry.

That didn’t work either.

They ended up going through every possible iteration of every Star Wars name they knew and then filtered out the people who’d been named by exuberant parents and then filtered out anyone who didn’t live in New York and they ended up with fat lot of still nothing.

It was like Luke Skywalker didn’t truly exist in this world.

Until MJ found his Instagram by typing in ‘guys who look weirdly like Luke Skywalker.’

She held the phone aloft in triumph and they all gathered round to gape in awe at her intelligence and research skills.

Luke’s Instagram was nothing but pictures of coffee.

He had one selfie and this selfie was enough to have gotten him onto a BuzzFeed article. In it he was holding—you guessed it—coffee. Iced coffee. One in each hand.

He was shaking them, and one had been labeled with his name—hence the public connection made.

“Someone needs to tell him that coffee is not a food group,” Johnny observed.

“Maybe he works nights,” MJ said.

Ned lifted an eyebrow.

“Maybe this is his job,” he said.

There was a pause.

Some snooping revealed that Luke was an honest to god food website editor. He was a cameraman.

Repeat. Luke Skywalker, cameraman. He filmed all the food hosts for his company’s Youtube channel. He edited videos. He more or less blended into the background of everything, while having his finger prints on damn near everything.

This was a man after Peter’s own soul. They were kindred spirits in hidden identities, content creation, and suffering under a boulder of responsibility too great to cope with.

He had to find him now.

And after they had his Instagram it wasn’t too hard. He seemed to hang out in various parts of the Bronx and Peter just so happened to know some folks out that way.

Louis told Peter that he would never speak to him again if he found, befriended, and then didn’t share Luke Skywalker (the man, the real man, I’m not fucking with you, Louis). But he also recognized a place on Luke’s instagram that he seemed to be working his way through the menu of. He sent along an address and told Peter not to forget his promises.

Angel asked why he was looking for Johnny Storm in the Bronx.

Peter left Louis to rattle sense into her.

He took a walk on Saturday morning. A long walk. A long train ride, then a walk, then a half hour of squinting, and then, lo and behold, he found a blond guy banging his head into the center of an out door metal table across from a woman with heavy braids trailing down the sides of her neck. She was much older than him and drummed white-painted fingernails across her cheek as she thought.

Peter hid and called Ned and MJ for an ID. He peeked the phone’s camera out enough for them to see the other two and then snatched it back.

Ned was about to flip a table.

“That’s clearly Ahsoka Tano,” he said. “She—the braids, dude. Dead give-away. And she put ribbons in them, like what even is discretion?”

Peter didn’t know that person. He continued not to know this person, even as Ned dragged him through a trainwreck of Star Wars lore.

“So she’s a friend,” he said.

“She’s like a jedi, but not like a jedi, she was a jedi, but then she said ‘fuck the order’ and—”

Great. Peter was approaching.

Ned held his face in his hands. MJ told Peter to report back on his findings. Peter ended the call and inched closer, weaving through the crowd and slipping into the coffee joint to see what nonsense they were selling.

It was nonsense with lots of syrup. He could never say no to syrup.

He watched the two outside while waiting for his order. Luke gesticulated to his friend and she spoke, giving reasonable gestures back. He stopped her and dug out his phone and that little plastic baggy full of fluffy material. He answered his phone. His friend took the little bag and held it up to the light.

She frowned at it.

Luke pushed away from the table and walked away to take his call. Peter’s order was called. He grabbed it and swerved out towards the patio.

“Hello,” he said at the edge of Luke and his friend’s table. “Is this seat taken?”

Luke’s friend stared at him.

“It is,” she said. “Move along, hon, you’re ten years too young.”

Wow.

“For your friend?” Peter tried. “Could I leave my number?”

He had this lady’s attention now. She was looking him up and down, appraising. Peter tried not to flex. He stayed cool. Matt-levels of cool. He smiled winningly.

“Alright, why not?” she said, digging through her bag for a receipt and a pen. Peter beamed as he leaned down to scrawl his number down on the back. He got halfway through before he heard a step stop nearby.

“Look alive, kid,” Luke’s friend said. “Hey, Luke, this guy was just—”

“You again?” Luke said.

Peter lifted his head and brows.

“Hi,” he said. “I just wanted to apologize.”

There was a long silence.

Luke’s friend looked between them and then gave Luke a long, judgmental stare.

“You don’t have to,” Luke said. “Thanks, though. How did you find me here?”

Mmm. Beginner’s luck.

“Here,” Peter said, offering his number on the receipt. “If you ever need someone to talk to who gets it.”

Luke’s friend bit her lip and looked away in secondhand embarrassment. Peter ignored her for now.

“Thanks,” Luke said. “You don’t and you won’t. But you’re very pretty.”

Nice.

“You’d be surprised,” Peter told him. “Gimme a text. I’ll leave y’all alone now. Enjoy your coffee.”

He left. But not before hearing, “but that ass, Luke.”

Ned told him that there was no way that Luke was ever going to text him and he was disappointed in Peter’s hostage-taking skills.

But he was proved wrong two hours later and, for his crimes, had to admit Peter’s brilliance publicly.

LS: hi sorry. This is Luke. This morning when you stopped by our table, did you happen to see a little plastic bag on it?

Why yes. The one in Peter’s pocket right now? That bag?

PP: hi!! I did, actually. You guys aren’t very subtle 😏

LS: it’s not coke

PP: I’m not judging

LS: no, it’s not coke, I swear. It’s something INFINITELY more important. Did you happen to see if it had fallen on the ground?

PP: ah, no, sorry. I didn’t see it

PP: OH NO

PP: oh my god I’m so sorry, I think I took it with me when I accidentally took your friend’s pen.

LS: I

LS: what’s your name?

PP: Peter ❤

LS: Peter, you have a fucking problem

LS: I’m starting to think that you want something from me. And listen, you’re a handsome guy, but I’m not available and my type isn’t kleptomaniac. What do you want for it?

PP: well you got me

PP: to talk

LS: about what?

PP: mostly about why you look like you’re a wet phonebook in a bad gutter

LS: a phonebook???? What era are you even from????

PP: I could say the same to you, sir.

LS: I

LS: wh

LS: alright touche. The point is that I’m not going to talk to you. I just need that bag back. It’s a life and death situation.

PP: what are they? They aren’t coke crystals.

LS: how would you know?

PP: what are you, a cop?

LS: NO. This is going nowhere. What. Do. You. Want?

PP: To. Talk.

LS: I’m not going to talk to you.

PP: then why did you ask me to rescue you?

He held his breath.

LS: I didn’t

PP: you did

LS: I didn’t ask you for shit. This is it. What’s your last name.

PP: Man 😊

LS: Man what

PP: That’s my last name.

LS: Peter Man.

PP: oop, nope, sorry. That’s someone else.

LS: …so I’m calling the police, now. That’s what we’re saying?

PP: depends. Do you still need to be rescued?

Come on, Skywalker. Come on, remember.

LS: I never asked you to rescue me.

PP: You did. Think back.

LS: I didn’t

LS: I just made a joke to

LS: WHAT AFAJSDFA DTTH E FUCK

Peter cackled and let himself fall onto his back.

PP: Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ❤

LS: YOU’RE

PP: Just your friendly neighborhood guy ❤

LS: YOU

LS: you

PP: me

LS: THAT’s how the storms knew you

PP: yep 💋

LS: I don’t even know what to say

PP: it’s okay, you don’t have to say shit. The main thing I wanted you to know was that I hear you. And if you need it, I’ve got you.

LS: You’re literally trying to rescue me??

PP: it’s my job

LS: IT ISN’T. How have you never been arrested? how did you find me? Did you track my phone? Is it some kind of spider thing???

PP: yes

LS: I am legally obligated to kill you with the force now

PP: harder daddy

LS: ADaaSDASFSDFSdd

LS: oh my god Han is going to lose his gourd

LS: I’m sorry I just I can’t believe you of all people stole my damn hilt

PP: I’ve got……………………..sticky fingers

LS: go die

LS: no I didn’t mean that sorry that’s a thing with me and my sister. I mean, okay. You got me. Hero of NYC.

Peter’s cheeks were starting to hurt.

PP: I’ll bring them back to you.

LS: Please do, Ben’s about to have a stroke.

PP: you mean obi-wan?

LS: he’s convinced his cat ate them. There’s a staring contest happening. No one has blinked in two minutes and I don’t want to be here for the internal investigation.

PP: where do you live?

Luke sent an address. Peter held his phone high and walked it into the living room where Ned was bitchily composing an Instagram post. He and MJ looked up at the same time.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Peter said. “Luke Skywalker and Co. live in a cemetery.”

It wasn’t a cemetery. It was a funeral home, but close enough.

Luke was waiting outside on the stoop in a cardigan about four sizes too big for him. It was there probably to protect him from the equally large ragdoll cat in his arms.

Peter smiled. Luke stared at him and then shook his head and went through the screen door. Ned gave Peter a biting look.

“Made friends, I see,” he said.

“We’re doin’ great,” Peter told him, hopping up the stairs. “Look at us, totally—”

“Insidious.”

Peter stopped and turned nervously to see through the screen door where Obi-Wan Kenobi had seized both of the cat’s cheeks. Luke continued to hold it with maximum doneness levels.

“Where have you been?” Obi-Wan asked the cat seriously.

“We have guests,” Luke said. “Take your beast.”

Obi-Wan snatched the cat out of Luke’s arms with contempt all over his face.

“You are a villain of the highest order,” he told it.

“Ben. Guests. Please evacuate. I am hosting negotiations,” Luke said.

“We should have named you ‘Sith.’”

“Ben.”

Peter was not going to laugh at Obi-Wan Kenobi. That was too surreal.

“Come in,” Luke said, returning to hold open the screen. “I hope you’re not allergic. There are two of them.”

T-two?

“The other one is Junior.”

Peter stepped over the threshold and found himself in a room that looked like a human birdhouse. It was full of surfaces that were almost completely empty, as though an enrichment object had once lived there but had been removed as punishment. Luke waved Ned and MJ in and accepted their apologies on Peter’s behalf.

Peter ignored them to lock eyes with a creature more stunning than any he had ever encountered. It sat on the kitchen counter by a single clear jar labelled ‘Not Spice.’ It blinked grumpy green eyes.

“Oh, it’s these people again?”

They all looked behind them to see Obi-Wan peering around a doorframe with the first cat draped over his shoulders.

“Kleptomaniac,” Luke said, pointing at Peter. Peter waved.

“Huh,” Obi-Wan said simply. “I will distract Ahsoka.”

He vanished. Luke grimaced after him.

“Let’s go talk in the back,” he said. “There are no bodies, I promise.”

The funeral home had a little deck and a yard small even for this far out in Queens. It was crammed full of plants that appeared to be in a competition to bloom. Luke invited them to sit and then left to make coffee.

Coffee, yes, how had Peter forgotten.

He peeked over the side of the deck down where there was a large stone set in the center of the garden.

“A seeing stone,” Ned whispered to him.

“Oh, how did you know?”

They all jumped.

Peter swore that Obi-Wan hadn’t opened that sliding door. How had—what—

Ned was at a loss for words in the face of one of his greatest heroes.

“I—uh. M-movie? I mean, sorry. It was in The Mandalorian, second season, with the—”

“Yet more television,” Obi-Wan said derisively.

They all stared.

“Can you teleport?” MJ asked him.

“I thought you were bothering Ahsoka?” Luke asked, from inside. He squeezed past the man and his cat with three glass mugs in hand. He set them down on the little square table off to the side of the desk railing.

“I was, but then I got curious,” Obi-Wan said. “And I lost Junior.”

Luke stared at him.

“I’m going to lock you in the basement,” he said.

“Try, try, and try again,” Obi-Wan told him, petting his beloved cat’s head.

“Do you even know who Spiderman is, old man?”

“More television.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Peter had to keep a conscious watch on his jaw, lest it fall open in the face of the most handsome, clueless man on the planet. He watched as Obi-Wan, disgusted with all this ‘television’ nonsense skulked back off into the guts of the home. Luke shut the door behind him.

“So,” he said, holding out his hand. “We’re talking. Fork ‘em.”

Ah.

Fair was fair.

Peter produced the plastic bag from his pocket and handed it over. There was a shout somewhere inside followed by someone going ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’

“Ben keeps our home ghost free. He terrifies all the wannabee haunters,” Luke said simply. “Thank you for these. I imagine it’s somewhat of a shock to learn that it’s all real.”

It was, but it wasn’t the weirdest thing Peter had encountered by far.

“How long have you lived in New York?” he asked conversationally.

Luke gave him a weird brow.

He seemed smaller than before in that enormous cardigan. Certainly smaller than the movies made him seem. His face was a little thinner too, and his lips seemed to slope into an almost permanent pout.

“About twenty years,” he said. “We were born in California, but Anakin moved us here when we were eight.”

Anakin? Like, Darth Vader, Anakin?

“’Luke, I am your father’—yeah, that guy,” Luke said with a scoff. “Except, you know, he ain’t dead. And he’s the only one who can make Ben remember that tea isn’t a meal, so we keep him around for that and to scream back at Leia.”

Peter was already completely lost to the dynamics of this household. It wasn’t like the books and movies—Ned’s twitching for his phone to take notes was proof enough of that.

“That’s awkward,” MJ said. “So did y’all do like, collective counselling for the past life shit?”

Luke deflated and moaned into his hands.

“It’s not past life shit if your damn name is the same,” he said. “It’s complicated.”

It sounded like it.

Imagine growing up with your apparently-Star War-obsessed father and uncle who’d built a home and a business (presumably) around that shit, only to find out later that they’d done it because it was literally their religion.

What a trip.

“When did you find out?” Peter asked gently.

“Oh, you know. Last week,” Luke said with a bitter grin. “Quit my fulltime job. Dumped my ex. Broke my lease and now here I am. Once again. Back at this place.”

“Do you want a hug?” Ned asked into the awkward silence.

“You’re very sweet,” Luke said. “If I touch another human, I will start crying and never stop.”

Yikes.

Barely holdin’ on by a thread there, buddy? How’s the hyperawareness going?

“Why does it matter, is my question. For you, I mean,” Luke said with a suspicious squint. “You fought a goblin guy, didn’t you? With a hover board?”

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh, yeah.

Yeah, Peter sure had done that.

“And like, the bird dude? Didn’t you down a plane?”

Perhaps.

But Luke had blown up the Deathstar, no?

“These things are not equivalent,” Luke said flatly. “I joined a rebel alliance. There were loads of us.”

Mmm. Perhaps so.

“God, how old are you even? You look 22.”

Peter gawked.

“I’m 27,” he said.

Luke did a double-take.

“That’s a lie,” he accused. “Tell the truth or be compelled.”

“By the Force?” Ned asked hopefully.

Luke blinked at him. He pointed at the glass sliding door which revealed Obi-Wan holding Junior the cat above his head by the kitchen sink.

“The Force,” he said.

Ned’s face fell.

“Do we not have the Force, here?” he asked.

Luke flinched.

“Listen,” he said abruptly, “We’re workin’ on it. This isn’t our original galaxy. The rules are all different. The only one who’s managed to make even a spark happen is Obi-Wan so far, but as soon as we find Master Yoda, it’s over. We’ll already have won.”

“You lost Yoda,” MJ mused.

Luke stammered and caught himself.

“We lost a lot of people,” he snapped. “It happens when you shift galaxies. Anyways, that’s what the stone is for.”

MJ glanced back at the stone and then leaned her forearms onto the small table.

“So, let me get this straight,” she said. “You jedi folks all popped up over here by some cosmic accident. You don’t have the Force. Most of you don’t even remember who you are. You lost your most experienced Master, and you’re going to fight the Sith?”

Peter stirred his coffee nervously.

Luke’s eye twitched.

“We don’t need the others,” he said. “We only need the Force. To fight the Sith. Yes.”

MJ frowned deep and held her chin with both hands.

“So you need the thing you for sure don’t have the most,” she said.

Luke opened his mouth, but not before the window by the door snapped open and Obi-Wan leaned out to say, “We always have the Force.”

Luke covered his face in despair.

“I was listening from the kitchen window,” Obi-Wan told him lovingly.

“GO FIND CODY ALREADY,” Luke roared at him.

“I did, he’s right here,” Obi-Wan said soothingly, stroking his angry cat.

“The other Cody.”

“Oh, I am trying, don’t you worry.”

“Ben, so help me God—”

“Force.”

“SO HELP ME FORCE—”

Star Wars had really left out the part about Luke’s explosive temper. Peter winced, but Ned laughed and the sound seemed to have a calming effect on Jedi-on-Jedi crime about to take place in the kitchen. Obi-Wan appeared pleased with this development and emboldened. He wove past Luke out onto the desk and came over, cat and all, to point down to the seeing stone in the middle of the garden.

“Others who feel the Force’s energy will be drawn to it,” he told Ned fondly. “It’s how we got Luke back home.”

“It’s not,” Luke said. “You called me.”

“And so others will also come,” Obi-Wan said with confidence. “The most important thing is that we believe in the Force. And from that, we will find guidance and power and—”

“He means Yoda,” Luke translated. “He’s been putting frogs on it as an offering, even though me, Ahsoka, and Anakin told him that this is a human’s world. A human’s world, Ben. Even if he did eat them, he’s not eating them raw.”

“Don’t be discouraged by Luke’s attitude, he is very stressed,” Obi-Wan told Ned and Ned only affectionately. “I told him not to be, you see there are four of us here already, and the Chosen One is among us.”

“Anakin told you to stop calling him that,” Luke moaned, massaging his temples.

“He was the first to be aware of our present situation,” Obi-Wan said.

“He took a hallucinogen and had a paranoid breakdown,” Luke pleaded. “Ben, please. Go inside. Think of your blood pressure.”

“Perhaps, but it was a useful breakdown, was it not?”

“I am so sorry for him, he’s getting senile,” Luke said to the rest of them.

“Your energy is different,” Obi-Wan informed Peter out of absolutely nowhere. “Are you also Force-sensitive? Were you drawn to the stone?”

Er.

No.

Sorry?

“He’s Spiderman,” Luke said, gesturing pointedly. “Remember Spiderman?”

Obi-Wan did not. Peter suspected, actually, that Obi-Wan still used phonebooks, if he used phones at all, that was.

Luke took a deep breath and let it out.

“Okay, let me just lay it out,” he said. “We’re doing the best we can with what we have. You don’t have to get involved with this. We appreciate your help, but what would help us even more is if you stay out of it, alright?”

Yeah, okay. Sure. Peter could respect that.

“Amazing. And don’t tell other people.”

Understood.

“Unless they’re Force-sensitive,” Obi-Wan said. “In which case, ask them how they feel about rocks.”

Luke just stared at him coldly this time.

“You didn’t used to be like this,” he said dangerously.

“No, I used to be stressed,” Obi-Wan told him. “But you and Ani are doing that for me, so I have resolved to be a free spirit. Nice to meet all of you. Have more coffee. I don’t like this one; I will have it out of the house by sundown.”

He left, and possibly for good this time. No one knew what to say in his absence.

“So,” Peter tried, desperate for something to break up the tension. “You said a few days ago that you were looking for someone?”

Luke finally stopped making growling faces towards the sliding door. He lit up like a bulb.

“I am, actually,” he said.

Luke was looking for a very particular person named ‘Din.’ He described him as ‘six feet tall and covered in armor.’ He asked if they knew of such a person.

Peter had to shove a hand against his mouth in case he made an unwanted connection between this description and Obi-Wan behavior.

“Haven’t,” MJ said. “Who is he?”

“My husband,” Luke said.

Ned choked.

Peter choked.

MJ tilted her head.

“You have a husband?” she asked. “I would have remembered a husband in that series.”

Luke leaned his chin on his palm and gazed sideways over the city. He seemed to sigh.

“I don’t know why he isn’t connected to me in the media created here,” he said. “It’s probably because he’s always been very shy.”

Oh, aw. Peter loved that. The contrast between them was heart-warming.

“We had a son together,” Luke said. “His child. He brought him to me. One of my students, at first.”

Hang on a minute here.

Peter exchanged a glance with Ned. Ned tried very hard to pick a way to approach this sensitively. He landed on asking, “What was his name again?”

“Din,” Luke said. “Din Djarin.”

Ned cringed.

“He was a Mandalorian,” Luke explained. “Very, very, very shy. Like, he would rather chew off his own leg than make small talk with a stranger. I think, before I knew all this, I was still subconsciously looking for him. All my exes are the same type.”

That—

Okay, so like.

Did these people own a TV?

“Do we look like we own a TV?” Luke deadpanned. “No. If Ben senses anything bigger than a datapad happening in this place, he’s driven to madness and breaks it.”

UH?

“He doesn’t actually break it,” Luke sighed. “He just finds a way to make it unusable—putting clothes on it, disconnecting the monitor, that kind of thing. He thinks they waste electricity.”

What a guy. Peter wanted to put him and May in a room and see what conspiracies they could spin together.

“Why do you ask?” Luke asked.

Ned cleared his throat.

“Do you have a, uh, datapad, then?” he asked.

“DIN. That’s DIN. He’s got his own show. Oh my god, that’s—stay right there. Don’t move.”

Bless this man. Peter wanted to hug him so bad. They’d lost him to the staircase leading up from the second floor to the attic. Peter wondered who he was showing the tablet to.

Maybe Obi-Wan?

“I told you this already,” a voice up there said.

“LOOK AT HIM.”

“You’re killin’ me, smalls. We had this exact conversation last week. Did you forget?”

“You knew where he was.”

“Alright, alright. Downward march.”

Anakin fucking Skywalker came down the stairs with a handful of Luke’s shirt in one hand and the tablet shoved under his other arm. He paused and frowned at the three of them in the kitchen frozen in shock, and then apparently decided that that didn’t matter. He carried on dragging Luke with him towards the kitchen counter. He dropped the tablet onto it and Peter realized that the lower half of his sleeve on that side was empty.

He watched as the guy let go of Luke and chased the not-angry cat off the counter, cursing.

“Alright, this?” he said, tapping on the tablet. “Is the link I put here.” He rapped the same finger on what Peter now saw was a whiteboard covered in rows upon rows of symbols that he’d never seen before.

“Din here? Din here. You see?” Vader told Luke with untold patience.

“I can’t read that,” Luke moaned. “You lied to me.”

“It’s up in the kitchen, Luke.”

“You’re a liar and a cad. Do it in Basic.”

“This is Basic.”

Oh, dear. All that fanfic about Luke meeting Darth Vader and having a breakdown was looking real embarrassed now, wasn’t it?

“If it’s Basic, why can’t I read it?” Luke demanded.

“Because, like I told you last night, the night before, and the night before that,” Vader said painstakingly, “It doesn’t all come back at once. It’s going to take time.”

“We don’t have time,” Luke snapped.

Vader leaned his head back with half-lidded eyes. Luke didn’t look even remotely like his kid, even with him looking all pre-quels-like now.

“We talked about this, too, remember?” Vader asked.

Obviously not. Luke was distressed. He had eyes only for the tablet now.

“No, of course not, silly me,” Vader said. “Why are humans here?”

“Ahsoka went home,” Luke said.

“Thank you, that was not my question.”

“What was your question?”

“Why are non-order humans here?”

“I told you, Ahsoka went—”

“Son, I will kill you if you continue to act like Obi-Wan,” Vader said without missing a beat.

“You can try,” Luke said offhandedly. “But only one of us has two handed grip.”

There was a long stare.

“It’s Obi-Wan,” Vader told him. “Why do we have living guests?”

He gestured back to Peter, Ned, and MJ like they were flies on a set of blinds.

“Oh, because that’s Spiderman and he stole your kyber crystals,” Luke said.

Vader rounded on Peter, and Peter actually felt fear.

Vader blinked once.

“This may as well happen,” he decided somehow placidly. “I’m going back upstairs. Where did your grand-master go?”

“Into the mist,” Luke said. “Can you feel Din?”

“Negative, ghostrider.”

“When the Force chooses you first out of favoritism, can you feel for Din?”

“Ah yes, can I feel for your Force-repellant life partner with all of the Force energy that I do not have? Yes, I sure can.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Anytime, primary monstrosity of my loins.”

UM?

This felt a little hostile for Peter’s tastes. Not that it wasn’t earned. Clearly it was earned. It was just horrifying.

“Guests, you are dismissed,” Vader said in their direction. “Unless you’re drawn to the rock outside, in which case, you may stay. Otherwise, do not darken this doorstep again, or else we will leave you with the other dead in the morgue.”

“Thanks for bringing the crystals,” Luke said from behind him. “And for talking. I do feel better, actually.”

They left the funeral home. Obi-Wan was outside by the mailbox as though waiting for them. Peter wasn’t sure he had any emotional energy left to approach him with.

“Thank you for speaking to Luke,” he said as the three of them attempted to pass unnoticed. “It’s good for him to talk to others his own age.”

Uh-huh. Good night, sir?

“Good night, Peter, Ned, and Michelle.”

They hadn’t given their names.

They definitely hadn’t given their names.

Ned wasn’t sleeping for two years. He made this clear with a lot of clapping gestures and then rolled around on the floor, talking about all kinds of shit that Peter couldn’t decipher. MJ watched him and flicked her eyes up to Peter with concern on her forehead.

“That family is cinematically dysfunctional,” she said.

Correct.

“They’re barely their own characters.”

Correct.

“What now?”

Peter wasn’t sure. The best he could think of was to just keep an eye on the situation. Maybe check in every couple of weeks?

“If you say so,” MJ said. “I think you made Ned’s life, by the way. Good job.”

Peter tried checking in every two weeks. It started because he happened to hear of a tunnel collapsing in Queens nearby the funeral home. He texted Luke to ask if he needed a save and all he got back was a ‘well, not anymore.’

After that, Peter kept a close eye on happenstances occurring around the city. There were more than he bargained for. And when he glanced at Luke’s Instagram after the first week after the tunnel collapse, he noted that two of the nails on the hand Luke held his coffee to the camera with had gone completely black.

That was worrying.

Peter was used to be the danger-prone asshole in his friendgroup. He did not like this role-reversal. MJ asked him sarcastically what the problem was.

He texted Luke again.

PP: how many nails do you have left bro?

LS: we put a hole in one to release the pressure

PP: that don’t sound great bro.

LS: it’s fine. Oh, but good news

PP: oh?

LS: the most predictable thing ever has happened. The Vader has regained force power

PP: that’s worrying

LS: ? why?

PP: won’t he go dark?

LS: ah, no. He fucked up and raised me and Leia with Ben this time after our mom died. He had his chance to go dark and traded it for 8 consecutive hours of sleep instead.

PP: I truly don’t know what to say

LS: It’s fine we did 12 years of family therapy after the accident so we are no longer on the DSS watchlist

PP: I know less what to say

LS: he won’t find din :/

PP: is that your priority right now?

LS: aren’t you supposed to be spiderman or something? Don’t you have chaotic things to say?

PP: you know normally I do, this is literally out of character for me. but I think you also might be absorbing my chaos.

LS: that’s fair. I have that effect on people. Hey, is your buddy Ned available to chat? He knows more than I can remember about my old life. Can I borrow him?

That sounded like a horrendous decision.

PP: yeah let me get you his number.

LS: thanksssss

Ned reported a few days later that his services were needed at the funeral home. He was leaving them all now to befriend Luke Skywalker as was his true destiny.

He came back a few hours later and reported that his services had been helpful and he was pleased to say that Darth Vader was now the official herder of ‘wans’ in the house. This included all Obi-Wans and padawans.

He seemed to be the only guy there who could like, retain information given to him for some reason. He accepted this as his lot in life and went around repeating the same things to the others ad nauseum until they finally stuck for them.

Peter wondered if that was his personal hell.

Ned didn’t think so. He thought the guy was pretty chill about it and had probably been doing it for a while now. He did it more for Ahsoka Tano and Luke than he did for Obi-Wan. Although that was probably because Obi-Wan appeared to be on a hunt that made all non-relevant information given to him slip off his back like water.

Another two weeks. Another text.

PP: hey luke, I saw you drowning on the news. You okay?

LS: GOD my ex-workplace keeps calling welfare checks on our house. We’ve had more cops here then flies these last few days.

PP: ex-workplace is one way to refer to your old job. Sounds like they cared about you. What did you do?

LS: preschool teacher.

Peter was going to lose his shit right here on this bed.

PP: was that your calling?

LS: that was Luke Naberry’s calling. Luke Skywalker’s calling is to make the lightsaber go vrrrrrrm

PP: you honestly terrify me

LS: thanks han says the same thing. OH. HE FOUND CHEWIE.

PP: no shit??

LS: yeah I told Ned, not you. But yeah. He found him lugging boxes for a bodega. And now they both work at the same bodega. Which like, objectively, is a bad thing because Han was a UN translator.

PP: I’m

PP: sorry

PP: what?

LS: I know he was all respectable and shit. It was awful. I can look at him again without feeling like I’ve failed in every part of my life.

PP: dare I ask what your sister does?

LS: lawyer

PP: not senator?

LS: we’re not old enough to be senators.

PP: every moment becomes more concerning than the next. You fascinate me. This is why they put you in like, all the films.

LS: because I’m sexy yeah

PP: that too

LS: not to you. I’m off-limits bub. I’m married.

PP: how’s that going for you?

LS: Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

PP: I see. So no Din yet?

LS: I will find him if it kills me

PP: that’s so romantic. Hey you should watch that series. They gave him a little green yoda in it. Really cute.

LS: that’s my son you piece of shit

There was no winning here.

MJ asked him a few weeks later if he was still keeping up with the Jedi drama since the whole city had recently decided that Peter was a snack.

Obviously he hadn’t.

She told him not to worry, Ned had. She told him to talk to Ned, so he went and talked to Ned with a heatpad in one hand and a coldpack in the other.

Ned patted at him sympathetically and informed him that Luke had reunited with the Force. It was going poorly for him, mostly because the Force wasn’t used to people being in touch with it in these parts of the universe. It kept telling each of the jedi that there was a disturbance and then luring them to each other to fight to the death.

Luke described it as the Force-equivalent of an auto-immune disease.

They’d taken to gathering in the living room of the funeral home to meditate in a circle, as though to calm the Force’s anxiety while scenting each other for protection.

It had a 40% success rate. Everyone was sleeping in locked rooms for the time being, just in case someone got compelled to do something rash.

Peter asked Ned if he’d finally lost his crown as King Chaos of NYC.

Ned patted him on the knee more firmly than before and said that he could regain his crown by introducing a calming element into the jedi household.

Peter had his pride to defend, so he asked what that element ought to be.

Din Djarin, the Mandalorian, the leader of all Mandalorians, was bound to have a name that looked nothing like the one they had for him. Luke nearly exploded when Peter approached him to asked him (and his taped fingers) more about who Din Djarin was outside the name.

They proceeded with caution, however. So far, Peter and Ned had discovered only dissonance between Luke’s account of his life partner (his ‘heart, stars, sun, and sand’) and the guy on the screen for the tv show. That was to be expected, given that they had met Luke now and learned of his somewhat explosive personality.

But even still, Luke’s description of Din Djarin as ‘kind, compassionate, tender, shy, emotionally stable, dependable, sweet, caring, and hunky’ seemed slightly biased.

Peter just wanted to know how tall this guy was. Hair color. Eye color. Skin color. Blood type. That kind of shit.

Luke said that Din had brown hair, brown eyes, Type Who Knows What blood, and was about six feet tall. He had no idea how much he weighed. He’d never had need for that information. He knew that Din was human, which was probably helpful in a galaxy far, far away. He knew that he spoke Mando’a as his first language, then Basic, then a whopping fifteen others. And he knew that Din was probably looking after their son.

Vader asked Peter over a mug of coffee (also labeled in the funeral home’s cabinet as ‘not spice.’) if Spidersenses could overcome a dearth of information. It took Peter a few moments to realize that he was sympathizing with him.

“You’re not going to find Din,” Vader told Luke. “You need to look for the kid. You’ll find the kid first, you always have.”

Luke took his coffee and poured it down the drain.

Peter decided that he didn’t want to get in between that burgeoning battle. He told Luke to text him if he remembered anything else.

Wade was pissed that Peter had been meeting and ‘cavorting’ with Luke Skywalker without him. He claimed ownership of the Din Djarin mystery in order to cram himself into Luke’s good graces. But quickly, he ran into the same stumbling blocks as Peter.

Din Djarin was six feet tall with brown eyes and brown hair.

That was what they currently had to go on.

Wade would have torn out his hair if he had any, but he stopped himself and accepted the challenge. Peter watched over his shoulder as he chicken-pecked his way into a list of social security numbers held by the NYC State ID issuing department and started methodically filtering names that did not sound like ‘Din.’

He started broad with all ‘D’s and then narrowed it down further and further and further until he was left with a shitload of Daniels.

He stared at the screen before him and vibrated.

Peter massaged his shoulders before he cracked.

It helped. Wade started filtering by height, then by eye color. Then by hair, and only ended up with several hundred people.

He vibrated again, but this time, Peter couldn’t help him.

He sighed. Wade said that there had to be a better way to do this. He got up.

Wade made about four thousand missing posters with the name Din Djarin on them which he recruited the whole team to plaster up around NYC. This was not a request.

Miles asked him why they were doing this for a tv character and had to be let in on the gig.

He lost his shit.

Louis tried to retain his shit.

Angel still didn’t know how the whole jedi thing worked.

Dave hummed and haw’ed and took his time in calling bullshit. Wade asked him to look deep into his eyes and ask if he was entertaining bullshit that fine evening.

Dave changed his opinion and took a stack.

There was no way that shit was supposed to work. There was just no way. A) because Wade had the worst ideas of all mankind and B) because Peter had the worst luck of all mankind. So the two of them together should have destroyed all the prospects of success for that job.

But instead, while they were hatching a new plot involving setting up a sham sociological study for people who responded to Star Wars names, Wade’s phone went off.

He grabbed it and opened the message and lo and behold right there was a note that read,

“I hope you are not a reporting body because this is going to sound certifiably insane, but I think I might be the guy you’re looking for?”

Wade screamed.

Peter scolded him not to get too excited too soon. They had to see the man first.

Wade texted furiously, asking for a picture and got a message back that said, “please do not dox me.”

They got no answer until Wade promised not to dox the guy.

And then they got an image of a man with brown hair and brown eyes with olive skin. His face was remarkably square. The picture wasn’t just him, though, he had in his arms a little boy with a head covered in tight ringlets. His eyes were so dark they were nearly black and he was maybe two years old.

The caption said, “apologies, my son needed to be in the picture.”

Wade cooed and entered Dad Mode to ask how old the baby was and what he liked to do and Peter lost the fathers to that small talk for a while before Wade oh-so-casually asked, “So you feel like you’re from outer space?”

“It sounds strange,” the guy on the other said wrote back, “But I do. Like every day I wake up and look in the mirror and something is wrong. I feel like I’m always forgetting something when I leave the house. I watched the tv show of the guy who’s name was on your fliers and the kid in it reminds me so much of my son. It’s eerie. They make the same sounds. He made the same sounds before we even watched that show.”

Wade whistled.

“I think this is him, Pete,” he said. “He called Baby Yoda a ‘kid’ not a yoda.”

Peter stared. He hadn’t even caught that. That was smart as hell.

“So what now?” he asked.

Wade sniffed.

“Get Skywalker to send you a selfie,” he said.

PP: Luke are you pretty right now?

LS: My face is intact

PP: take a selfie and send it to me

LS: cannot do that. Face is intact is a baseline situation. Let me find an old one. Oh, they all have my ex in them. This is awkward.

PP: it doesn’t matter I can crop it.

LS: no I have to be cute or I’ll perish hold on

PP: are you sure you’re not Johnny Storm?

LS: yes, he’s got loads of muscles. Sent.

Selfie acquired.

Luke looked very smiley in it. His eyes were blown out from the lighting, but it showed his sloping smile and his low, back-set dimples. Peter sent it to Wade. Wade sent it to his new friend.

They waited.

They waited five minutes.

Then ten.

Then half an hour.

Then nearly two.

And finally, Wade’s phone rang. He picked it up and set it on speaker so that Peter could hear.

“Hello?” Wade said.

There was a long pause.

“Where did you get that picture?” a low, almost smoky voice demanded on the other side.

“A friend,” Wade said sleazily. “You know him? He’s a cute little thing, ain’t he?”

It took the dude on the other side of the line worryingly long to respond.

“What do you want?” he finally asked.

Wade brought his head down in interest.

“What’re you willing do to?” he asked.

They waited. Peter didn’t know what was taking this guy so long to—

“Anything.”

Ah.

Okay. That.

That sounded about right.

Wade cackled.

“You know his name?” he asked.

“I do,” the man said.

“What’s his name then, pal?” Wade asked.

“It’s none of your fucking business.”

Holy shit. Holy shit. Peter clutched the back of the couch. Wade was grinning so hard, Peter could see it through his mask.

“You want him, you need to show me that you know who he is,” Wade said. “I ain’t got ‘im here, but I know where he is. Come on, big boy. Who is he?”

Peter could hear the man take in a deep, shaky breath.

“His name is Luke,” Din fucking Djarin, the Mandalorian himself, said.

Din fucking Djarin’s name at the moment was Danny Jabaran. He stood six feet tall with a medium build and that baby of his in his arms.

He was not afraid of Wade.

He was not afraid of Peter.

The suits didn’t scare him; this man was a space warrior. The leader of the space warriors. Peter was humbled to stand in his presence, old jeans and tattoos and all.

“Vigilantes,” he acknowledged.

“Deadpool,” Wade said, offering a hand. “And this is?”

“Grogu,” Djarin said.

Baby Yoda lifted his big liquid eyes up to Wade and blinked twice. Then he wriggled around and hid in Djarin’s neck. Djarin put a hand on his back and didn’t drop eye contact.

“Tell me everything,” Djarin said.

Ned screamed. Michelle screamed. Peter reminded them that he had neighbors and invited Mr. Mand’alor to sit on the couch for a bit while he called Luke.

Michelle claimed the spot next to Djarin and asked Baby Yoda Grogu for his little hand. He studied her and hid again, making a prolonged sound of distress that Djarin cut off by saying, “Hey. Manners.”

This somehow made baby Grogu turn back to Michelle to stare at her offered hand.

He took it. She shook with him and then took hers away.

Grogu perked up and reached for it again.

“You’re the Mandalorian,” Ned said.

Djarin looked right at him.

“A Mandalorian,” he corrected.

Ned blinked back tears.

“You’re so cool,” he creaked.

Djarin frowned.

“You...are too?” he tried.

Ned wept into a fist.

Peter left them to call Luke in his bedroom. Luke picked up on the third ring with the start of an ingrained greeting that sounded a whole lot like a customer service recording. He caught himself, though.

“I have someone I’d like you to talk to,” Peter said. “I think you might want to sit down.”

Luke’s unusual quiet on the other side made Peter grin.

“Are you sitting?” he asked.

“I’m sitting.”

“Alright, one moment,” Peter said, walking out into the living room. Djarin had edged far, far away from Ned, as far as he possibly could without being rude. He looked up when Peter came over and sat down on the arm next to him.

“Say hi,” Peter said.

Djarin frowned at him and then the phone.

“Who’s that?” he asked.

Peter waited. Djarin lifted his head over to see the phone’s screen.

“Hello?” he tried.

“Din?”

The Spidey Sense crashed through Peter like a tidal wave.

Djarin had gone completely still.

“Din? Is that you? Can you hear me?”

“Shit,” Djarin said, lifting a hand to cover his eyes. “Goddamnit. Jesus.”

“DIN.”

“Dank Fucking Farrik.”

“Oh my god.”

Baby Grogu’s face snapped toward the phone with huge eyes. He grabbed at Djarin’s collar, then his jaw and started bouncing a little in his arms.

“Bu?” he asked.

Djarin couldn’t make himself move.

“Grogu?” Luke asked. “Hey, baby, is that you, bubba?”

Grogu grabbed Djarin’s face urgently, so that he couldn’t hide his raw eyes anymore.

He pointed at the phone.

“Yeah, I hear ‘im, kid,” Djarin said.

“MMMMM. Gib.”

“Ah. That’s not ours. We don’t grab. We ask,” Djarin reminded as Grogu pleaded for the phone. Peter snickered and gave it to him. He just held it, staring.

“Do you wanna see him?” Peter asked. “Luke, can we maybe video chat?”

“Y-yeah,” Luke said. “Hold on. Oh god, my face. Uh, hey Din are you still near-sighted, hon?”

Djarin huffed a laugh that turned into a whole-body tremor.

“I got contacts,” he said a little hysterically.

“You got WHAT?” Luke yipped, “Okay, no. No, I gotta. Be still, this heart. Okay let me just take off the butterflies. On moment, Grogu, Daddy’s just gotta dunk his face in the damn sink.”

MJ bounced her eyebrows at Peter as he gently took the phone back from Grogu and tapped on the camera. He offered it back the kid and received a deep gaze of wonder in return. Djarin turned the screen right-side up in his hands.

Luke finally turned his camera on and revealed himself to be very swollen in the jaw with damp hair and a cut very close to the rim of his left eye.

Grogu screeched.

Luke laughed.

“Look at you,” he said, “I’m gonna cry. Oh my god. Where’re your ears, pal?”

Grogu analyzed this reaction for 2 full seconds and then shoved the camera right into his dad’s forehead. Djarin took it from him and liberated himself so that he could see Luke who was clutching at his face, absolutely already sobbing, bless him.

He looked up to see Grogu and instead got Djarin and finally just broke right in half.

Peter swallowed back the growing lump in his throat. His eyes were starting to warm a little.

Djarin found a watery smile in himself.

“I know you’re not cryin’ because of me,” he said gently.

“Where’s your helmet?” Luke sobbed, wiping viciously at his eyes. “People are watching, you harlot.”

“I know,” Djarin said. “I lost it.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Luke.”

“This is all my fault. I should’ve—I should’ve—”

“Luke,” Djarin said again, full of warmth, “You died for us.”

Luke shook harder than ever.

“There is no greater sacrifice a warrior can make,” Djarin told him. “I was honored for you to have made it for me and our son. This has always been the Way.”

“This is the Way,” Luke stammered.

“I missed you,” Djarin said. “Where in God’s name have you been?”

“I was a preschool teacher in the Bronx, man, I dunno what happened,” Luke said tipping his face up to force the tears back in.

“In the Bronx? Where?”

“Uh, off Allerton and Lurting?”

Djarin started shaking with laugher.

“I work off Laconia and Mace,” he said.

“You what?”

“We’ve been blocks apart this whole time.”

Awwwwww.

“I’m going to stab myself,” Luke moaned. “I’m going to stab myself in the arm. I was right there and I sold out for my part-time gig barely weeks ago. Oh my god. I’m going to—move, old man, I’m suffering—Wait. Din, did you find your parents?”

Djarin stood up and held the phone out straight.

“Where are you right now?” he asked.

Look at all these people hugging each other.

Look at them crying all over. There was a baby in there, wailing because he was so happy to be back in the arms of his other dad.

Aww. AWWWW. Peter was getting emotional again, he was going to see himself out.

“Wait. Peter.”

He looked up to find Luke holding a hand to him.

“Thank you,” he said. “You really are a superhero, you know that?”

Yeah.

Sometimes, he did.

The city had plenty of problems as it was, yeah, more now with a bunch of jedi running around, linking up with each other and spreading memory like mushroom spores. But it didn’t feel that much different.

What it felt like now was Ned showing Grogu how to hold his hand at the seeing stone in the funeral home’s back yard to make the Force happen while Obi-Wan reported cheerfully that the cat perched on it was still not levitating.

It also felt like watching Luke freak out over text to Ned and Michelle about his ex losing their mind at him dumping them after two years to marry this random mechanic within a week of getting together.

Peter got to see this from new angles, too, one of which was the bottom of the funeral home’s attic stairs, which Anakin Skywalker liked to sit on while his grandkids—both Grogu and Han Solo and Leia Organa (pardon, Leia Naberry)’s son—came over to show him things that he was very well aware of. These were stolen from him by Auntie Ahsoka and her friends who Ned knew and Peter did not.

And there was something warming about how even these folks—people from a galaxy far, far away, occasionally needed a Spiderman.

#spiderman #starwars #dinluke #inimitable verse #ficlet #this is the niche of the niche but I know like 5 of you read both my mando and spiderman fics #so this is for you doll #and also the fact that I have a fucking PROBLEM

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mischiefandi · 4 years

Text

A Shitty Love Song (Part 1) - Stiles Stilinski

Wild Ones

A/N: hey everyone! this has been a long time coming! thank you for lovely comments on my previous post, im super happy to finally be posting this. a HUGE thank you to @duskholland for helping me out so much with this series, ily to death bitch. enjoyy yall

Summary: Y/N is a 17 year old girl who struggles in an epic battle against herself. Whether it is amor’s icy grasp or life’s unexpected course that forces her to finally open up, only one thing is certain. The truth cannot be long hidden.

Warnings: underage drinking, party times, maybe a couple of swear words but im not sure haha

Word Count: 5,3K

Pairing: Stiles Stilinski x Reader (Y/N)

Series Masterlist

(picture is not mine -> credits to @ pechka on unsplash)

Seasons before, in the early fall where the leaves don’t yet want to leave their wooden hooks, Y/N had just started her junior year of high school. Being the new girl in school, she was afraid of being alone - something she had always been - but not this year. Whether it was chance or fate, she happened to fall upon a curious but wonderful group of people who quickly became her friends.

At its center, Scott McCall, young lacrosse player with a boyish charm and a heart of gold and by his side, Stiles Stilinski, an eccentric and spirited young man. Surrounding them were Lydia Martin, the fiery and confident genius, the sweet yet lethal huntress, Allison Argent, and finally Isaac Lahey, charming Mr Mischief himself.

This pack of wild cards had found a new companion, and Y/N fit in like a puzzle piece filling in its designated spot. She got along with everyone in the group, forming indestructible friendships with these eccentric teenagers, and she felt fortunate beyond belief. More often than not, she would eat with them by the walnut tree outside of the school. The group would share stories and food, complaining about the soporific lessons from the earlier period, or excitedly planning the next outing, the next party. Every week, the teenagers would go hang out in the woods by the mystical ruins of the Hale House, doing more of the same. Life was light and good.

The group had planned on hanging out by the Hale House one quiet September afternoon, but the universe likes to play tricks, and somehow Y/N and Stiles were the only ones to show up. Deeming it a happy accident, the pair walked through the damp woods together, talking about their day and slowly letting each other in. Laughter echoed between the trees and the wind turned.

🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙

A little more than a month had gone by and Halloween was just around the corner. Classes seemed longer than usual, bigger stacks of schoolwork forming daunting piles on Y/N’s desk. But school was the last thing she could think of when she got home after a long day of concentration. The only thing that mattered, was Stiles. Video calls, phone calls, and late night texts that seemed to never cease took over the second Y/N’s feet passed the threshold of her home. And nothing compared to these conversations.

“I’m sorry but no.”

“Stiles, stop, seriously.”

The mole-speckled boy lunged forward in front of the screen and passed a shaking hand through his spiky hair.

“There is no way you like the second trilogy better than the first one. It’s just not possible.”

“Well it is possible, because I do,” Y/N retorted, her unfazed expression gleaming back at him.

“Literally how? The group dynamic alone should make you see reason. I mean come on. Han and Leia? Han and Chewie? Han and Luke?”

“You do know Star Wars doesn’t exclusively revolve around Han Solo right?” she asked, her lips breaking into a smirk.

“First of all, no. Second, give me one single reason why the second trilogy is better than the first,” Stiles said, “I dare you.”

“One reason?”

The boy nodded, serious as a statue.

“Hayden Christensen.”

Stiles groaned deeply, his face buried in his large hands.

“Can’t even have a serious discussion about Star Wars with someone rational.”

“I’m not sorry.”

“You’re the worst.”

Y/N paused, holding a finger to her chin.

“Hmm, agree to disagree.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Hey! How can we have an intelligent debate about anything if you use swearing as a last resort.”

“I have given up on us. It’s over.”

Y/N laughed profusely against her pillow, shaking her head.

“You’re a drama queen.”

“FRIENDSHIP OVER!” Stiles bellowed and Y/N shot her head back, unstoppable laughter erupting from her stomach.

“It’s going to make things awkward at the party, Friday,” Y/N said between chuckles, her laughter quieting down.

“Who said you were even invited,” replied Stiles, adjusting his shirt, revealing a tiny patch of skin just above his sweats. Y/N’s eyes flicked over to the screen but the second had passed.

“Funny. Listen, I gotta get some sleep otherwise I’ll pass out in math or something.”

“Yeah, I should probably also go to bed sometime soon.”

“Hopefully before tomorrow morning.”

“Har-har,” said Stiles, smiling at the camera, his chocolatey irises beaming at Y/N.

“Goodnight nerd.”

“Goodnight loser.”

Y/N stuck out her tongue at Stiles before hanging up the call.

That night, as she carefully brushed her teeth and got her clothes ready for the next day, Y/N thought back on her video call with Stiles, a warm smile spreading on her lips.

🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙

The week passed so slowly, each hour lasting an exhausting eternity. School, demanding as ever, while keeping Y/N busy, was the reason why time seemed so lengthy. The nasty side-effect from tantalizing hours is the amount of thinking you do to keep busy. So Y/N did just that. She thought about how much she cared for her group of friends, she thought about the fact that she had never felt like she belonged like she did then.

She thought about how nice it was sitting by the Hale House, enjoying each others’ company, how life is so much lighter when you feel surrounded, how much she had learned about herself after meeting the pack. She thought about the band Stiles and her liked so much. She thought about Star Wars. She thought about the sound her computer made when Stiles sent her a message. She thought of his hair, his moles, his neck. She thought about how thrilling it was when he sat next to her. She thought about how much he mattered in her life, just like the others mattered too.

Y/N did so much thinking that week. But the funny thing is, amor has a way of tricking your mind. Your body believes one thing but your mind has been bewitched, and no amount of thinking you do can remove the fog clouding over your eyes.

When came Friday, Y/N was happy to be done with school, bursting through the doors of the establishment, excited to go home and get ready for Danny’s Blackout Party. She was thrilled about going, however nervous she felt.

She had never been to a party like Danny’s rave before and she had no idea what to expect. But more importantly, she was afraid of crowds. She had tried going out to packed bars with people from her old school, but the chaos and the drunks surrounding her made her feel beyond uneasy.

“Y/N! Wait up!” She heard Allison exclaim, and she slowed down her pace, allowing the brunette to catch up with her.

“Are you excited for tonight?” asked Allison, her light brown eyes gleaming brightly.

“Yeah, it’s gonna be...crazy.”

“You okay?”

Y/N forced a smile and nodded overenthusiastically.

“Yeah! Just tired. It was a long day,” she replied.

“Same here, which is why, we need to let loose tonight! Let’s get ready at Lydia’s, so we can all head over there together.”

“Sure. Quick question though, how did Lydia get us invited in the first place?”

Allison giggled, nodding her head towards Aiden and Ethan standing by their motorcycles.

“How do you think?”

The girl’s laughter echoed through the cool autumn air and disappeared with their cars. It was going to be a night to remember.

🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙

As Y/N and Allison reached Lydia’s house, Y/N couldn’t help but feel more and more anxious, tightly gripping her bag filled with clothes and makeup. The party was starting to worry her.

People had been whispering about it all day back at the high school, talking about the numerous illicit drinks that would be served and the intriguing entertainment. It seemed like the Danny had gone all out for Halloween. Still, not knowing exactly what to expect practically terrified Y/N.

She was outgoing, but big crowds and chaos were things that made panic bubble up inside of her very core, quickening her heartbeat to a frightening extent. She loved dancing and partying, and much like other people her age, she loved a good drink every once in a while, but huge events and big blowouts, she had never been a fan of.

Putting on a brave face, Y/N shut the car door and walked up the stairs to Lydia’s front porch, ringing the doorbell as Allison locked the car. After what seemed like mere seconds, Lydia opened the door, letting the excited girls in.

“Finally. I thought I was going to have to get going without you,” she said, smirking at the pair.

“Y/N couldn’t decide what to wear,” replied Allison, sending Y/N a look that made Lydia scoff.

“Excuse me if I've never been to a neon-themed rave. How am I supposed to know what to wear?”

“Well the name of said rave could be a pretty good indicator,” mocked Lydia as the girls walked up to her bedroom, shutting the door behind them.

“Ali, what are you wearing?”

Allison giggled with a smirk and did a demonstrative twirl, showing off her burgundy flannel shirt and black jeans.

“This!”

Lydia raised her eyebrows at the brunette, a confused expression etched on her face.

“Am I the only one here who understands the term “neon”?” she asked.

Allison shook her head then slowly unbuttoned her shirt, revealing a neon pink bra.

Y/N laughed, shaking her head. This stunt was definitely orchestrated for someone special.

“Wow. Isaac will love it.”

“It’s about time you two did something about your situation,” joked Lydia, reaching for an eyelash curler.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” replied Allison with an innocent shrug and a slightly less innocent wink.

“Well now that Allison’s outfit is sorted, it’s your turn, Y/N. Let’s see what’s in this enormous bag of yours.”

The strawberry blonde bent down and grabbed Y/N’s bag before she could say anything, emptying its contents in a flash.

“No, no, definitely not, no…Y/N, why are all of these clothes black?” inquired Lydia, with a look of disgust she had difficulty hiding.

“Lyds, I told you, I don’t know what to wear to a rave.”

“Show me your bra.”

“What?”

“Show me your bra. If it’s the right colour, we can just pair it with some of my clothes.”

Y/N reluctantly removed her white shirt, revealing an electric blue floral lace bra, much to Lydia’s delight. Allison whistled approvingly.

“Okay here’s what we’re gonna do.” Lydia walked over to her closet, carefully studying its contents. Allison and Y/N exchanged a glance as Lydia clapped her hands together.

“This goes with this, and you have to tuck it in, like so,” she said, “okay, try this on. Now.”

Y/N looked down at the outfit her friend had put together.

“Yes ma’am,” she mumbled, her face as white as a sheet.

Y/N walked to the corner of the room as the girls chatted and finished getting ready. Her heart thundered as she passed her neck through the bottom of the sheer black top Lydia had handed to her. Looking herself in the mirror, all she could see was a blushing dishevelled mess. Her bra covered most of her chest, but the curves of her breasts were only slightly hidden by the black mesh material she was wearing.

“Okay, this is okay…” she muttered to herself, trying not to panic.

Bending down, she grabbed the black layered skirt she had brought with her and brought it up to her hips, tucking the top inside. The skirt helped balance out the outfit, but still Y/N wasn’t fully convinced.

“How are you feeling?”

“Kind of nervous honestly.”

“I meant how do you feel about the outfit- but you’re nervous? Why?” asked Lydia, walking over to Y/N in front of the full-length mirror.

“It’s just- I’ve never been to a big party like tonight, much less looking like…this,” Y/N reluctantly replied.

Lydia bit her lip and sucked in some air before smiling widely at Y/N and taking a step forward.

“By “looking like this” I hope you mean by looking incredible. Y/N, look at yourself. You’re tall and confident, the outfit looks amazing on you. Your look is not the problem,” she said, gently.

“Then what is?”

“You tell us,” replied Allison, walking over to the girls by the mirror.

Y/N exhaled deeply and turned around to face her friends.

“I hate crowds. I love partying don’t get me wrong, I just- I get really really panicky around big crowds of people. The noise, the warmth, all of it, just terrifies me. I’m worried that I’ll hate it and freak out or something. I’m sorry, I probably should have said something before.”

As soon as the daunting words had slipped through her lips, Y/N felt a weight lift from her weary shoulders, a wave of relief passing over her entire body.

“Hey, it’s okay. Everyone’s got something they’re uncomfortable with. It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” said Allison, sweetly.

“I know, it’s not that I’m ashamed, I just- didn’t wanna be a downer. I really am excited for tonight! I’m just nervous.”

Lydia placed her hands on Y/N’s shoulders and smiled brightly.

“Look, you’re gorgeous right now. Even without my help, you’re gorgeous. And tonight, we’ll be around the whole time. If you feel freaked out or you start to panic, we’ll go outside and get some fresh air. We don’t mind.”

“Exactly, we’re your friends. You know you can depend on us on occasion,” Allison joked and Y/N laughed, shaking her head timidly.

“Seriously, Y/N, we’re gonna have a ton of fun tonight. And if you need anything, whatsoever, we’re both here,” added Lydia.

Y/N’s heart swelled and she felt her eyes filling slowly. Blinking the impending tears away, she smiled widely, her radiant eyes following suite.

“Thank you, both of you. You’re the best.”

“Agreed. Now, that’s sorted. Are you comfortable with the outfit?” asked Lydia.

Y/N looked at herself in the mirror, analyzing every detail of her figure, taking in how “out there” the outfit was. After a few seconds, she nodded to herself and smiled.

“You know what? You only live once.”

Allison giggled and rested her arms on Y/N’s shoulder.

“Tonight is going to be amazing!”

🌙🌙🌙🌙🌙

As Lydia’s car pulled into the parking lot in front of the venue - a large concrete building comparable to a construction site - Y/N sent a text to her friend.

Y/N: we just got to danny’s party

Y/N: u guys here?

The girls looked up at the windows on the top level, the neon lights shining through catching their attention, the music already reaching their ears.

The group excitedly entered the building, Y/N’s heart thundering against her ribcage. Allison noticed the worried look on her friend’s face and she slipped her hand in hers, sending her a warm smile. Y/N took a deep breath, and the three beautiful girls went into the otherwise empty elevator. On the way up, Y/N’s phone vibrated against her palm and she looked down at the screen.

Stiles: we aren’t there yet

Stiles: Scott needed to go get something

Y/N’s heart couldn’t help but sink a little. She had hoped the boys were going to be there already, though why, she couldn’t say. Her phone interrupted her thoughts again.

Scott: by smth, Stiles means someone

Scott: and by someone, he means Kira

Scott: also we’re late because of the jeep

Scott: ;)

Y/N chuckled and texted him back, Lydia and Allison sharing an inquisitive look.

Y/N: figures :))

“Who is that?” asked Allison as the elevator doors opened.

Y/N winced slightly and turned to Allison.

“It’s the boys. Scott was just telling me they picked up Kira…”

“Oh.”

Lydia looked from Allison to Y/N, and back, the awkwardness beyond tangible.

“Are you okay?” asked Y/N, worried that the news had killed the mood.

“Honestly? I don’t love the idea of partying with my ex and his new girlfriend, but we broke up three months ago. We’ve both moved on. Besides, I really like Isaac. I’m not gonna let this ruin my evening,” Allison answered, a soft smile on her lips.

“Allison has Isaac, Scott has Kira, Stiles- well I don’t know about Stiles. That leaves you and me, Y/N. You can help me avoid Aiden tonight,” said Lydia, straightening her dress.

“Aiden, as in, the guy you hooked up with who just so happens to be the guy who invited you to this rave?”

“Precisely.” Lydia walked away hurriedly, and the girls laughed, entering the venue.

The grey concrete in the hall was uncharacteristically bland compared to the other-worldly burst of colours inside of the venue. Neon blue, pink, orange, yellow, and green exploding in every direction, paired with blaring purple lights attached to the concrete beams above the dancefloor where what looked like at least 70 people were jumping up and down to the beat of Losing It by FISHER. Strands of white UV tubes hanging from the ceiling all around the dancefloor lit up every white item of clothing in the room, turning the pure colour into a bright purple.

This giant nebula of chaos and colour made Y/N’s blood pump ten times faster throughout her body. That or the the bass blasting through the giant speakers by the DJ. Either way, the thrill of it made Y/N shiver, her whole body completely frozen in place.

“This is crazy!” Allison gasped.

“Danny really went all out,” said Lydia, staring at the dancing figures in the center of the room.

Y/N’s phone buzzing woke her from her trance and she read the text.

Stiles: be there in about 20 minutes

Stiles: can’t wait to embarrass you on the dancefloor

Y/N: oof

“Let’s go get a drink,” Lydia urged, walking over to the large snack table with numerous bottles. Y/N read the labels and nodded, impressed by the wide range of drinks.

“Wow. Jack Daniels, vodka, a shitton of beer, wine coolers, rum, Jagermeister…Danny really did go all out.”

“Pass me a cup,” said Allison.

As the girls filled their glasses, Lydia eyed Y/N’s cup.

“Y/N, are you sure you want to start with a triple shot of vodka?”

“Yeah, it’s fine!” Y/N exclaimed, downing the drink before anyone could stop her and gasping as the strong liquid burned its way down her throat.

“Ohkay, take it easy,” said Allison, shooting a worried glance at Lydia.

“I’ve got it under control,” replied Y/N as she refilled her cup.

“Let’s go dance!”

Allison dragged the girls away from the table, walking over to the dancefloor. Y/N downed her second drink and nodded wearily.

“Yesss, let’s do this!”

The looming herd of party-goers, intimidating as it was, seemed a little less daunting now that Y/N was actually at the party.

“How bad could it be?” she thought to herself before treading through the mass, occasionally bumping against people energetically throwing their limbs around.

In the middle of the chaos, Allison stopped and started moving her hips in sync with the song, Lydia quickly following suit. Y/N bobbed her head along to the beat of the bass, her arms swinging awkwardly on either side of her body. Allison laughed and grabbed her friend’s arms forcing the movement to flow through Y/N’s limbs. Lydia busted up and down, moving her waist so naturally it seemed like she had been born for this very moment.

Closing her eyes, Y/N tried to focus on the music vibrating throughout her body, the memory of the colours surrounding her floating behind her eyelids. Allison sang along with the lyrics of the current song, shouting out the words as she moved from side to side. Y/N slowly started to lose herself to the music, letting go of her inhibitions, forgetting the world around her.

When the beat changed, her feet jumped up and down, as if they had a mind of their own. Her head felt heavy yet no thoughts crossed her mind. The music had gotten rid of all concentration, the only thing left was the bass flowing through her veins, making her entire body pulsate to the beat.

Beads of sweat trickled down Y/N’s neck as she kept dancing, her feet starting to ache with every jump. It had only been about fifteen minutes, but to the dancers, it seemed like a wonderful eternity. Finally, Lydia tapped on Y/N’s shoulder and shouted by her ear.

“Let’s do some body painting!”

Y/N nodded profusely, a wide smile on her lips.

“Ali went to dance with Isaac!” Lydia shouted as the pair pushed through the crowd.

“Where’s the paint?” shouted Y/N, trying to hear her own voice over the music and failing miserably.

“Over there!”

A tall blonde boy holding brushes with purple and pink tips smiled as the girls reached him, his charismatic grin turning Y/N’s cheeks bright red.

“What can I do for you ladies?” he asked, his pearly white teeth a bright purple as his grin widened.

“My friend over here needs a lot of paint. Emphasis on lot,”Lydia insisted.

Y/N shook her head, giggling stupidly.

“Not too much paint,” she said warmly.

The boy smiled with a wink.

“Let me worry about that.”

Y/N removed her mesh top, holding it with her right hand, patiently waiting for the boy to start painting across her chest and back. She shivered as she felt the cool wet tip of the brush meet her sweaty skin, sliding a few inches down, a thick stripe of paint spreading across her back. Y/N giggled at the cold feeling, the alcohol in her system reaching her head. She closed her eyes and bent her neck to the side as the boy continued his line up to her collarbone.

“What’s your name?” she heard him ask.

“What’s yours?” she chose to answer, smiling wickedly.

She heard him laugh as he started painting little dots up her back.

“Jeremy.”

“Nice to meet you, Jeremy.”

“You know most girls like a proper introduction before getting this close,” he said over the pulsating music, his breath fanning over Y/N’s neck as he painted small strokes down her shoulder. Y/N grinned mischievously.

“I’m not like most girls,” she teased as she turned to face him.

“No, I guess you’re not,” the boy replied, his eyes darting towards her lips and back up.

“I’m almost done with your body- I mean with the paint,” he said, shaking his head with a grin. Y/N giggled and stepped closer.

“I’m all yours…” she replied.

Jeremy’s deep blue eyes lingered on hers before focusing on her chest. Y/N thanked the universe that he wasn’t looking straight at her, otherwise he would have seen her cheeks fill with red for the second time. He delicately placed pink and orange dots up and down her chest, careful as to not stain her bra and she watched him, observing his concentration with admiration. Finally, he looked up, smiling at her.

“My masterpiece is done,” he declared, placing the paintbrush on the body paint stand.

Jeremy reached for a mirror and handed it to her. She admired the strands and dots painted across her body in a chaotic waltz, the hot purple and pink clashing against her skin. Looking up at him, she grinned widely.

“You’re talented,” she said.

“It’s easier when you have such a good canvas to work on…” he replied, sending her a look hot enough to melt her.

Momentarily remembering the outside world, she looked around and quickly realized Lydia wasn’t there anymore, probably off dancing or looking for Allison. Y/N turned back to Jeremy.

“I’m sorry, I should probably go check on my friends…” she said, biting her lip as she slipped her mesh shirt back on.

“Of course. Maybe later, we’ll bump into each other on the dance floor?” he replied, a nervous smile etched on his lips.

“Yeah, maybe.”

Y/N winked at him and walked away, trying her best to keep her cool.

“Well that was something.” She thought to herself, a wide grin planted on her face.

Looking around, she couldn’t find either of her friends, nor could she find Isaac. Slightly disappointed, Y/N walked over to the table and poured some vodka in an unused cup before knocking her head back, letting the burning liquid run down her throat.

She eyed the dancefloor and thought back on her previous conversation with Jeremy. She was beyond nervous. She’d never actually kissed a boy before. The opportunity just hadn’t ever presented itself. But now that she was here, feeling tipsy as ever, a few feet away from the cutest boy at the party, she couldn’t help but think, why not?

Wiping her sweaty palms on her skirt and downing her fourth - albeit, strong - drink of the night, she nodded to herself and walked over to the dancefloor.

As Five Hours blasted through the speakers, Y/N pushed her way through the sweaty crowd once again, making her way to the center of the dancefloor. Ignoring the world surrounding her, she closed her eyes and gave in to the music, feeling every beat of the song pulsate throughout her entire body.

Colours, flashing lights, the feeling of people’s skin against hers, her head spinning and swaying in every direction, it made her feel alive. As the last drop of the song reached its peak, Y/N jumped with the crowd, knocking her body against complete strangers, feeling the warm and sticky air fill her lungs with every breath.

The song Too Much by Curbi started to play and Y/N felt someone’s body against hers. Closing her eyes, she turned around and felt a pair of strong arms wrap around her waist. She sighed lightly, enjoying the feeling of her skin against the boy’s. His fingers treaded down her back, firmly settling just above her ass, holding her steady in a sea of bustling bodies.

She danced against him, turning around again, her back facing his front. Moving against his body, she felt his arms tighten around her, pulling her in. His hot breath fanned over her neck and she moaned slightly, squeezing his hand reassuringly.

Suddenly, time seemed to stand still when his lips lightly touched her warm skin. Y/N inhaled sharply, her eyes still shut. The only thing she could hear now was the sound of her heartbeat furiously thundering against her ribcage. Slowly caressing the boy’s arm, she allowed further access to her neckline, moaning loudly as she felt his feverish lips plant warm kisses on her neck, inching higher and higher. Y/N’s hands reached for his and she tugged them closer to her body, her hips still moving against him. His lips danced furiously across her neck, leaving dangerously beautiful marks on her skin.

The music seemed only to heighten her senses. Her legs almost gave out when she heard the boy groan lightly against her ear, her response, a small whine at the loss of contact with his lips. She turned around and tried to open her eyes, the bright lights bursting through the gap in her eyelids. Squinting at his face, trying as hard as possible not to lose herself to the music again, Y/N’s eyes caught a glimpse of the boy’s face.

Bright pink dashes stained his cupid’s bow and the right corner of his bottom lip, the paint from her neck helpless in the face of a passion like this one. Y/N’s eyes scanned the rest of his face and widened slightly when they met amber irises, warm and inviting and so familiar. Her fingers threaded through his damp dark brown hair, her brain trying to comprehend what was about to happen.

His chocolatey eyes looked deep into hers and he licked his lips slowly, the world around them fading. Y/N felt her vision blur as she inched closer to him, her nose picking up the scent of old leather and pine trees and rain. His lips lingered over hers and she felt a chill as her name echoed through the air.

“Y/N…”.

Their lips connected in a frenzied blur, sending sparks of pleasure throughout Y/N’s entire body and the chaos surrounding the pair completely swallowed them. His teeth slightly bit her bottom lip and she deepened the kiss, ardently giving in to his deliciously demanding mouth. Unable to control her body, she steadied herself against him, tugging at his shirt with one hand, the other cupping his face as he sucked on her delectable lips.

Their bodies so unbelievably close disappeared in the crowd of dancers, the whole world somehow a thousand miles away.

Time, a forgotten concept.

A/N: I seriously hope u enjoyed this!! if u did please reblog :)) (would be super helpful especially with tumblr acting up w the tags and all that) <3 part 2 coming soon!!

if you would like to be added to this series’ taglist, please send me an ask :)

If you would like to be added to my taglist(s), feel free to fill in this form

#stiles stilinski #Stiles Stilinski fanfiction #Stiles Stilinski x reader #Stiles Stilinski x reader insert #Stiles Stilinski fanfic #Stiles Stilinski series #teen wolf #v writes #<33 #eeeek #dylan o'brien

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bethanyeliseart · 4 years

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Rise of Skywalker, a movie I genuinely loved!

Ok so I've had almost a full day to think about my thoughts on Rise of Skywalker. Right from leaving the cinema, I knew that I loved this movie! Sure it had it's flaws but every single Star Wars movie does and I like to think the positives outweigh them. It had amazing cinematography, the adventure was there, and all the emotions that come with Star Wars.

SPOILERS AHEAD

I think first I'll talk about the flaws because I love ending things on a cheery note. First, Rose Tico was pushed to the sidelines and I wish we got to see more of her character arc. I think after seeing the backlash some fans had for Rose, JJ was afraid to have her in the spotlight. She could've done more. I would've liked to see her interact more with Finn even platonically. And interact with Rey.

Second, I'm a huge Anakin Skywalker fan so part of me feels like they disrespected his arc in this movie with Palpatine being back. I kinda felt like it was all for nothing. But then I did see some other reviews that said he brought balance for a long time, but balance isn't permanent. So that post brought me some peace on that, thanks to who wrote it (I can't remember who, sorry!).

Third, Ben Solo's death. So I'm not sure if I just hate it because I loved his character or if it really wasn't a good decision. Star Wars stuck to their algorithm of redeeming the villain but to only kill him seconds later. We already saw this with Anakin. Did we have to see it again? Then again it was really meaningful that he sacrificed himself for Rey. Maybe he's still alive somewhere, idk I'm in denial still.

Ok so now onto things I liked/loved which is a lot, but I'm not good with reviews so I might not name all!

First I must say that I loved Rey and Ben's relationship and chemistry. There isn't too much dialogue, but you can see how much they care for one another through expressions. Props to Adam Driver for conveying so much in just looks and actions. The way he looked when he found Rey's dead body was so heartbreaking. He looked so vulnerable.

Also the way Rey was so relieved to see Ben after he brought her back. She smiled like he was this bright light. And oh my, my heart fluttered when they kissed. It's probably just me being the huge romantic that I am, but that was one of my favorite parts. From the beginning they had a strong emotional connection. In TLJ we can see how strongly they feel for one another. Ben wants her to be by his side constantly and really opens up to her. Rey does the same. She let's her self open up about her past and desire to belong somewhere/someone to Ben. In my mind, the buildup was there. It saddens me that it had to be a tragic romance, but Star Wars always has that tragedy. Ben also showed that hope leads somewhere. Rey held onto hope that he would return to the light and he did. He was at peace when he died.

Second thing I loved was the trio of Rey, Finn, and Poe in this movie! We have been waiting to see them all in action together since TFA. And JJ did not disappoint. The banter between the three flowed nicely and was comedic. It felt like a family. It was also so nice to see Rey interacting with Poe! You can tell they have spent a lot of time with each other. For those who think Rey is alone, she has these two guys for her family.💛

The scene where all the ships showed up last minute gave me Endgame vibes and I loved it. Especially when the main theme started.

The entire be with me scene in the throne room was chilling and awestrucking! (wow that first part of that sentence just threw back to GoT😨) When Rey looks up into the sky and the lightning fades to the calm and serene stars I too felt so relaxed. The soft music was so lovely, John Williams never fails. Hearing the jedi voices was what had me smiling like an idiot, especially hearing Anakin's voice saying "Bring balance as I once did". (I guess that's proving that his arc wasn't completely ruined). I would've loved to see Hayden Christensen, but I appreciate that we got to hear his voice.

Was anyone else so surprised to see Han even as a memory? It's not even that I was surprised because of how it goes into the plot, because it makes perfect sense for Ben to look back and remember his last interaction with his father. His father would be the key in him returning to the light. It just surprised me because I did not expect Harrison Ford to show up on set of Star Wars ever again😂. It was a very nice and welcome surprise though. From the moment he killed Han, you could tell Ben felt regret and remorse. I also loved that Leia reached out to her son one last time, showing Ben that his family has not given up on him.

LEIA! It was so awesome to see her training as a jedi with a lightsaber! That flashback gave me so many chills. I loved how Leia continued to train Rey even though she knew she was related to Palpatine. It shows that Leia doesn't judge someone based off blood. Leia loved Rey and had faith in her. People can't help where they came from.

It was so sad to see Leia die but we all know it was going to happen. Chewie's reaction was so emotional and made me shed a tear. The galaxy will remember Princess Leia and Carrie Fisher forever.❤

The Ending

Overall, I loved the ending. Sure I'm still devastated that Ben is dead, but looking at the big picture it was good/satisfying.

People are saying that Rey didn't grieve Ben and she moved on too quick. I think she knows that he will always be with her because no one's ever really gone. He is one with the force. (Ngl, part of me likes to believe he is alive out there somewhere or waiting to come back).

Also as I said before Rey still has people she loves! Finn and Poe are still alive and there for her.

This is just the way I saw it, but I don't think Rey plans to stay on Tatooine very long/permanently. Rey didn't start and end the same way. She has a family now (Poe and Finn) and knows who she is. I think she went there to pay respect to the Skywalker family, it is where it all started with Shmi and her son, Anakin. She buried the lightsabers because they are no longer needed (her new lightsaber is beautiful btw) And don't hate me, but I don't mind her calling herself Rey Skywalker. She felt a deep connection to the family and both Luke and Leia took her under their wing. She doesn't care for/need the name Palpatine. It's not who she is. Which brings me to people being mad that Rey wasn't a nobody. I respect their reasons and everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but I don't think it hurt her character arc. Rey being related to the worst Star Wars villain and still not falling to his dark ways shows how strong she is! She defeated him and brought balance once again to the galaxy despite being his blood.

The ending shot was beautiful and was a perfect way to end the Skywalker saga. The binary sunset and theme was ethereal. It's how the movies started and it's how it ended.

Star Wars is tragic, romantic, and hopeful. This movie showed all of those things. We lost Ben but he felt love again with Rey. Hope was restored with him turning back to the light and Rey defying expectations of a Palpatine. Personally, I loved this movie so much and it did not let me down.

Feel free to add anything you liked about the movie!

#rise of skywalker spoilers #tros spoilers #star wars #rise of skywalker #rey #reylo #ben solo #anakin skywalker #also would've loved to hear padmé's name mentioned #the galaxy forgot her #the rise of skywalker #rise of skywalker review

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ariainstars · 4 years

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Did Princess Leia Love Her Son?

Warning: long post. (And possible unpopular opinions ahead.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This entry is slightly more personal than my others; I might be kicking up some dust but I will try to approach a subject that to most people is unthinkable. I went through psychical abuse for decades, so I believe I know what I’m talking about.

Some mothers don’t love their children.

I am aware that most people on this planet are convinced that a mother, any mother, will love her child no matter what. Unfortunately, the idea is seen through very rose-tinted glasses.

Some mothers don’t love their children because they can’t.

The reasons can vary - honestly, I don’t see many parallels between Leia and my own mother. But I know the signs. And the more I think about it the more I get the distinct impression that Leia did not love for her son, if we define “love” as the faith in someone’s goodness. Padmé knew that there still was good in her husband until her last breath, and Luke believed the same of Vader, even though his father had done nothing but hunting and terrorizing him and his friends. Leia, on the contrary, feared her son since before he was born, and her conviction of his evil nature never abated although he never hurt anyone for many years. The fact that her fear runs so deep says volumes; even more so when we consider that she is the only one who did not directly get hurt by him. Han was stabbed through by his son, before Chewie’s eyes; and Luke was left by his nephew for dead, even if the tragedy at the temple had not been intentional on Ben’s side (see The Rise of Kylo Ren by Charles Soule, the story therein is officially part of the canon).

I anticipate, again, that I think one of the sequel’s worst faults was to explain so little and leave so much to the audience to deduce from things unsaid, hints, and parallel situations throughout the saga. (One of the reasons being, I guess, the release of The Last Jedi: we saw from the general audience’s reactions on social media what can happen when unpopular though realistic things are said.)

Leia - A Princess Without a Realm

Let us recapitulate what we know about Leia. She grew up serene and protected on a beautiful planet with adoptive parents who loved her and gave her a good education. She is an intelligent, confident woman, strong in her ideals and beliefs. She never shows fear or sorrow, not even when her home planet is blown up before her eyes, when she is held prisoner and tortured, when she has to watch the man she loves being frozen in carbonite before her eyes, when she finds her brother crippled, when she is held by a disgusting lecher like Jabba, or when she learns that Vader is her own father.

Being raised a princess, Leia was probably taught very strong self-control: no matter what she had to endure, she never buckled down or lost her countenance. It cannot be denied however that much of her adult life was traumatic. What we euphemistically see as “adventures” and “all’s well that ends well” in the classic films would leave any person with a huge post-traumatic stress disorder; and Star Wars is, as far as I can judge, a psychologically well-studied story.

From the novels we learn that Han and Leia got married shortly after the battle of Endor, and that their son was born about a year later. One year is not much to recover after a war that cost so many lives and made all of them suffer so much. Han was probably more resilient than the twins due to the life he led before he met them; but he had been through a lot, too. Even if they loved their son with parental instinct, they both were not ready for the task of parenthood. And Ben was not an easy child: from his adult self we can deduce that he was always oversensitive and very intelligent. His family, like many well-meaning families, chose his future (his profession, we might say) and never explained his family’s past to him. But like any child with an emotional nature, Ben sensed that something was wrong about him; he did not know what it was since nobody told him about his grandfather; and wanting desperately to be loved, he began to blame himself, accepting the connotation “I am a monster” since he was still a child.

Leia had felt both her son’s power in the Force and Snoke’s influence on his mind since he was still in her womb. Let us only try to imagine the horror she must have felt, knowing that a new Darth Vader might come from her! It is difficult to say for whom she feared most - her son, herself or the galaxy at large. Leia was adamant that he had to become a Jedi, hence her quarrels with her husband, which their son sometimes overheard. But since he was ultimately sent to training with his uncle, he also understood that his father had not managed to prevent his being sent away, like a defective item that needed to be fixed.

Kylo told Rey that “Han would have disappointed her” and later said to her and Finn “Han Solo can’t protect you”: so, he obviously felt Han had come short of a father’s primary duty, i.e. keeping his child safe. Let us remember for a moment how crucially important this message always was through the saga: Shmi let her son, the only thing that had made her happy, join the Jedi so he could be free. Owen and Beru sacrificed themselves to prevent the Imperial stormtroopers from finding Luke together with the droid. Anakin betrayed the Jedi order in his despair to keep his family (wife and unborn children) safe. And Ben fell to the dark not due to Snoke’s influence, he resisted him for over twenty years; he only rebelled and left his uncle’s temple after an attempt on his safety.

We do not learn (to my knowledge) whether Ben was in contact with his parents during his years at Luke’s temple. It is not mentioned however, so I assume that even if he was, nothing noticeable happened. Han sees his son again when he is a grown man… and I find it interesting that the scene has a sexual connotation. Ben does not notice his old man at all, although he can sense him in the Force (later on Starkiller Base he does), he only cares about securing Rey. And Han sees him carrying her away like a bride, probably wondering how his little boy grew to be this unknown, dark, hooded figure, who wreaks terror on Takodana yet is surprisingly gentle with a girl.

From The Rise of Kylo Ren we learn that Ben had not intentionally caused the fire at his uncle’s temple; but he had been blamed for it by his surviving fellow students and chased by them off the planet. In TFA, we learn Leia did not doubt for one moment that Luke’s narration of the night at the temple was true. She blamed Snoke, but it never occurred to her that Ben might be innocent - her own son. She did not try to communicate once in all the years he was Kylo Ren but left him alone while he damned his soul committing crime after crime. Luke never told her the truth, even when he met her again one last time, and she did not question it. Leia did send her estranged husband to “get their son back”, but obviously she did not consider actively participating in this task. We only see mother and son “interact” emotionally from time to time; they never meet and never talk. Ben sees his father, has a conversation with him, Han even touches him; Luke does not touch him and they don’t exactly have a dialogue, but at least they meet. To me, that is significant.

When mother and son sense one another on two different ships at the beginning of The Last Jedi, Leia’s mind is perfectly silent. We merely see that Ben feels his mother is aboard, which makes him pull his finger from the trigger. But his expression changes: from belligerent and angry, he becomes vulnerable, shy. He even looks more boyish. Ben is aware that his mother disapproves of his choices, but he has no chance to explain to her how things could come this far.

„You can’t go back to her now. Just like I can’t.” Kylo (intending Leia) to Rey in The Rise of Skywalker

Leia does not know her son. She wants him back “home”, but to her, that means fighting by her side; it does not occur to her that her son is fighting for his life, that he became a war criminal without having wanted it, and that he can’t simply go back and put himself to trial: he is aware that nobody would believe him. Fatalism caught up with him and his family the way it already had with Anakin. His mother and uncle always felt that he was doomed; and since they believed it, the galaxy at large believes it, too. Snoke knew that by pushing Ben to patricide he would shut all remaining doors for his apprentice - nothing but self-hatred left for him, no way to go back even if he had found the courage. What was he supposed to do, go back and say, “Hi mom, sorry I killed dad (your husband)”? It baffles me to this day how many fans believe that he that he “chose the Dark Side” and that he could just as easily switch sides, like nothing had happened.

Leia never trusted anyone who was not on her side. In ANH she immediately hit it off with Luke, who not surprisingly turns out to be her twin brother; and as we learn in TFA, she and Han fought all through their marriage, though that didn’t prevent them from loving one another. Leia either expects someone to think the way she does, or to be only just so different that she can keep him in check.

“Han - don’t do it.” “Do what?” “Whatever you have in mind - just don’t do it!” Han and Leia in The Force Awakens

This reaches a sad and somehow grotesque turn when Leia takes Rey as her apprentice. With her brother dead, Leia is the only one left to do it; and though it is understandable that someone must carry on the Jedi knowledge, I myself would be extremely wary of training a girl who is none other than the flesh and blood of the man I fought against for years and who caused so much death and terror throughout the entire galaxy.

Leia had not met Palpatine though; her horror of the Dark Side was embodied by Vader, who had imprisoned and tortured her, forced her to watch while her home planet was blown up before her eyes, frozen her boyfriend in carbonite and maimed her brother. Leia never forgave Vader, and even if unconsciously, she probably blamed him for having somehow come back in the son she was carrying. I doubt whether Luke ever talked to his sister about Vader and told her about the broken, sad old man he found behind the mask. There is nothing suggesting that they did, and besides Luke and Leia both do not seem to me like two people very prone to introspection, they always look to the future. (Which is of course a good thing, but then again denying traumata always backfires.)

„Skywalker, still looking to the horizon. Never here… The need in front of your nose.” Yoda in The Last Jedi

Leia did not want to repeat with Rey the mistakes she had made with Ben and that’s good and well; however, she feared her son but was not in the least afraid of Rey. Maybe she “always knew who Rey was”, but she obviously never knew who her own son was. As Count Dooku once said to Obi-Wan, the Dark Side clouded her judgement - preventing her from seeing the human in Ben, and from seeing the monster in Rey. This is not due to their respective bloodlines, but because Rey’s uncompromising attitude is familiar to Leia, while her son’s stormy, questioning mind is unfamiliar and frightening to her.

Though Leia did not actively order Rey to kill Kylo, they were on opposite sides of the war; and Rey practically kills him with his own mother’s help and thanks to her training. Both women know what they are doing and they are acting on their own initiative. Obi-Wan and Yoda also had wanted to groom Luke into killing Anakin, but this one was not aware of his connection to him; and Obi-Wan in particular was not plotting against his own flesh and blood, even though he did raise Anakin like a younger brother.

Comparing Leia with the other Star Wars mothers makes her failure even more evident. Shmi was an ordinary slave, probably not even learned, but she raised her son to be a good boy and always believed in him; giving him away was a sacrifice for her. Her son was everything she had, which is why she gave him so much in return. Leia has her background as a princess, her military and political career, her husband, her brother, her friends: so, of course her son wasn’t everything for her. Leia gave Ben away hoping that Luke would form him into a powerful ally for her Cause. The mistake both women made was thinking that growing up as Jedi would be good for their sons. When Anakin left his mother, he had everything to gain: freedom, a place in life, and (he hoped) the chance to come back and free his mother as well. When Ben left home, he had everything to lose: his family to which he most probably had no contact, his wish of becoming a pilot, the chance of a family of his own since a Jedi is not supposed to get married. The ways of the Jedi let each of them down, although their backgrounds couldn’t differ more.

Many fans criticize that in RotS Padmé, the brilliant strategist and brave fighter of the first two prequel films, is ostensibly reduced to “barefoot and pregnant”. It is true that Padmé has laid down her mandate and of course she wants to protect her unborn, but that does not make her passive: shortly after having witnessed a political putsch and with it the end of all her political aims, she walks into the lion’s den on Mustafar, vulnerable and alone, to get her husband out of there, although she was told that he committed a carnage at the Jedi Temple and knew that he was capable of that (years prior, he had told her about the Tusken village himself). But she still believed in him.

There is an obscure flashback scene in The Rise of Skywalker, where during their training Leia says to Luke that she will become a Jedi only on the death of her son. This makes perfect sense: a Jedi always must face his own darkness to finish his training. Being in a way the reincarnation of her father, her son is her Dark Side, the one she refuses to face. Leia already knows or senses that she and her son will be on opposite sides, and that in order to become a Jedi and become one with the Force, she will have to confront her own child. The act is physically carried out by Rey’s hand: Rey was her pupil, she was like an adopted daughter in her son’s stead to her, Leia had sent her on the mission to retrieve the wayfinder, she was the one who called Ben when they were dueling, so in a way, it actually is Leia who kills Ben. It is her incapacity to love her son for being himself, as a person and not as a projection of her own darkness, that causes his tragic fate.

Leia is oddly distanced from her son; she expects him to deliver, i.e. become a good Jedi, or at least submit himself to her mercy. She never understood his dilemma in the slightest - that he never wished to be a Jedi, and that he also had not wanted to become an evil warlord but was pushed into it when there was nothing left for him to do. He had to become a Jedi or nothing; she would not have accepted him simply for being himself (the way his father did).

Ben - Child and Grandchild Of War

Leia and Luke fail to rebuild the “better world” of the Old Republic because they both don’t acknowledge that this world does no longer exist and that it can’t be restored. Leia is a princess, but Alderaan is gone; Luke is the last Jedi, and the Jedi are extinct. It is their refusal to accept that the past is over that ultimately leads both of them to disaster. And in a way, Ben understands that the way Luke does, eventually.

“Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. It’s the only way to become what you were meant to be.” Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi “It’s time for the Jedi to end.” Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi

Ben is a child and grandchild of war; both generations before him had to watch people they cared or were responsible for suffer and die. He grows up in a period of peace, but like any child whose parents have not overcome war traumata, their pain is handed down to him like a cursed heritage. His family keeps him warm and fed, clothed and instructed, but they fail capitally when it comes to his emotional needs; as for any questions he may have, they choose to simply ignore them. They fail him long before the disaster at Luke’s temple: it is only the last drop. Like Anakin before him, he feels betrayed, abandoned and left behind by the ones whom he chiefly ought to be able to put his trust into.

We are confronted over and over with the strength of the Light in Ben: even when he commits the patricide he hates what he is doing, and afterwards he is traumatized, his self-hatred deeper than ever. While Anakin projected his anger and frustration to the outside, Ben will rather hate himself. But their emotional reaction to their mothers are the same - both could not be by their mothers’ side in her dying moment, and both feel like they let her down, taking the blame on themselves.

Remember how Ben turns around immediately, on the Death Star ruin, right in the middle of a fight with the girl he loves, who is in the throes of the Dark Side, who he wants to protect from herself at all costs - all because his mother calls him? It looks like she is trying to prevent him from doing evil; but if that is the case, it only proves how little she understands him. Her son was not doing anything bad, on the contrary, he had found the girl whom she herself had trained under the influence of her own malignant self, and was trying to make her reason and accept herself instead of projecting her fears and her anger onto him.

“The Dark Side is in our nature. Surrender to it.“ Kylo Ren in The Rise of Skywalker

In TFA, Han faced his son personally; on that fatal bridge on Starkiller base Ben at first walked away from him although he sensed him, when Han called him he did not turn around, and he resisted Snoke’s order to kill him as long as he could; he would not have managed to do it had Han not understood what was going on and allowed his son to kill him so he could save his soul with his forgiveness and unconditional love.

On the bridge of the ruins of the second Death Star, Ben does not struggle at all when his mother calls him. Maybe because he feels that she’s dying; but I also believe that it was what he had waited for all along - his mother finally reaching out to him. In that moment his fate is sealed: Rey stabs him through, annihilating his Kylo Ren persona. From now on, he’s Ben, the name his mother called him by. This is the moment of his redemption and also the beginning of his end.

Ben did need Kylo. Kylo Ren was his Dark Side, and like his grandfather Anakin, Ben Solo was meant to be the Balance. We could already have guessed, in this moment, that he was not meant to survive; in order to live he ought to have learned to reconcile both parts of himself, Light and Dark, not to shed one of them. His moments of heroism on Exegol, thought few, show us how powerful he can be when he is in balance. But neither Rey nor Leia (or Han, for that matter) ever acknowledged Kylo’s right to exist, or understood the importance of Balance for lasting peace.

This scene just proves how desperate Ben was for his mother’s approval. All it needed was one gesture, one word. He did not want to be a Jedi; my guess is that he accepted to be his uncle’s apprentice in hopes that this would teach him to become more the kind of man his mother wanted him to be. Luke was an unreachable role model before his eyes; no matter what he did, Ben was always aware that he could not come up to his standard. Luke was a galactic legend, a savior, a saint-like figure ever since Ben was a child, and Ben neither was that way nor did he want to: in his heart, Ben is a normal boy who wants to be seen as a person. Anakin and Luke were affectionate and searching for emotional connection, too, but both also wanted to prove themselves. Ben does not strike me at all as being ambitious. He is neither truly hero nor villain but, in the first place, someone who wants to love and be loved. He wants to live his own life, make his own choices, have control over his own fate, protect his dignity as a human being and as a man. This is often misinterpreted as being “power-hungry”, but to me, these are very natural desires. And he has to carve his own way; he can’t simply embrace the path of the follower, because he is by nature both blessed and cursed with an extraordinary power which sets him apart from others. This is nobody’s fault. And it is much more frustrating for him than for the world around him, where, each in his way, everybody seems to think “If only he would behave!”

Ben is aware of the fact that he never was first for anyone in his life. His parents and uncle were much more attached to one another than to him. Ben is someone who tries so hard to change, only to realize over and over that it’s not enough. And this reaches a sad and terrible peak that night at the Jedi temple, when he has to learn that despite all his efforts, Luke thinks he would be better off dead. No wonder all of his anger and frustration come to the surface when he sees his uncle again on Crait, this is obviously a rage born from a conflict of long standing. From his point of view, Luke destroyed his life. And although Luke had not wanted that, it cannot be denied that in a way he did, and worse, that he ran from his guilt instead of trying to repair the damage.

The alternative, Ben has to find out, is not better though: the Knights of Ren and Snoke make him give up all the rest of what he is, and Snoke keeps demanding more - the ultimate sacrifice of his father, the person who was closest to him, by his own hand.

I am aware that many fans find Kylo / Ben “embarrassing” due to his emotional tantrums. His mother, his father or uncle, or his grandfather would never have behaved like this! When they killed someone, it always had style, so it was justified… even if Kylo’s tantrums are directed towards machinery and not taken on people. Few seem to consider that he is not “immature and childish”: he is a man who was pushed to the limits of emotional endurance throughout his life. (This is also a bit personal for me - I know situations like that from own experience, smashing household articles simply because I couldn’t take it anymore. Lifelong abuse is no laughing matter.)

Ben is in a vicious circle: his strong emotionality makes him vulnerable, the abuse makes him even more emotionally unsteady, and so it goes on and on. He has no way out, except for the faint hope to find someone who will see him as a person at last.

“I have no choice and I never did... Whether it’s Luke Skywalker or Snoke, neither one sees me as a person. I’m just a legacy, a set of expectations.” Ben Solo in The Rise of Kylo Ren, 4

That Ben loves both his mother and Rey despite the fact that one took the other as her apprentice and the other uses this training to kill him only proves the depth of his dedication. At no time we see him being jealous towards Rey, or angry at his mother because of her double standard. Ben’s love for his mother is unconditional. And his love is also unconditional for Rey, whose soul and body he saves giving up his own although she took everything from him, including his life the moment he lowered his defense.

Rey and Leia represent the general audience’s point of view: how could anyone not wish to be someone as cool as a Jedi, and getting the chance to fight against the bad guys? Ben is the other point of view, someone who indeed does not want it at all. It takes him a long time to find out what he actually wants to do with his powers: “Give a new order to the galaxy”, together with Rey. When she refuses and leaves him, he feels not only betrayed but humiliated. All he is left with is the maddening desire to burn the house down for good, the ultimate sin his uncle saves him from by sacrificing himself on Crait.

Conclusions

One of the troubles with a weak, absent, violent or otherwise dysfunctional father figure is their repercussion on the mother figures: Padmé can’t be a mother because she is physically absent, and Leia can’t because she is emotionally absent. Much as Ben may love Leia, he knows her. He knows that to her he always was more a burden than someone she loved having around; he is aware of her fear of him, which is why he rightly assumes, after the tragedy at the temple, that she will never believe it was not his doing.

And this is what brings me to my first point: a mother may not be capable of loving her child. She may nourish fond memories of the sweet baby and cute toddler she used to take care of, but the more the child grows, the more a traumatized mother will be terrified by the emerging personality of an intelligent child which might see through her carefully built-up walls, and even more scared of the child’s emotional development into a person she can no longer keep in control, who might doubt her, and want to make his own choices. Of course, being born with the Force is a huge responsibility. However, it cannot be denied that the Jedi Order failed, and that both Leia and her brother did not question their ways; instead, they did everything to prevent Ben from questioning them.

The actual tragedy of a dysfunctional mother-child relationship is that a mother may not really love her child, but a child instinctively loves the mother because its psychological balance roots in its faith in the mother’s love.

If unavoidable, in extreme cases the child can of course learn to let go, accept that its own mother could not love it, and that this was neither her nor the child’s fault in the first place; but that takes time and effort and needs a lot of support from other sources. Things Ben never had, because he had to fight for his life while his own mother was the general of the Resistance, each and every member of which would have killed him in cold blood had they had the chance. (Remember how Poe tried to shoot him in the back in TFA, and Rey shot at him in TLJ when he was in sickbay, wounded and unarmed? And these are the good guys.) He’s the Bad Guy, remember? Not Leia’s son. Just like Rey is the Good Heroine, not Palpatine’s heir. Nobody questions what the Good Guys do.

Leia may have loved Ben to a certain extent, but of one thing I am fairly sure: unconditional is not what her love for him was. Leia knew that there was still light in her son, but she did not realize that he was desperately searching for Balance between both sides. Leia did want him back, but only if he was willing to embrace only the Light Side and to shed the darkness in him, like that was even possible. Luke and Leia, like almost all the Jedi before them, pretended that there was no darkness in them… which made the darkness all the more powerful in someone who was closely connected to with them.

Ben, like his grandfather, is more honest and authentic with his feelings than the people he knows. That he so often errs results from lack of judgement; Ben reminds me of someone who keeps stumbling because he’s left in the dark. His grandfather’s is also the story of a human tragedy, precisely because Anakin, too, did not know what was going on behind stage. Luke’s story is eventually a success because Vader tells him the truth, which first shocks him but then makes him develop a strong and mature personality.

Star Wars is about a family made unhappy by a distorted idea of masculinity; an idea mostly brought up and propagated by the Jedi. Both the detached type like Mace Windu, Obi-Wan or Yoda and the cruel and sardonic Vader are a product of this attitude. We have until now never seen a happy family during the course of the whole saga, with a united couple of parents growing and protecting their children together. Anakin became a villain simultaneously with being a father; I find it interesting that his son Luke seems to have escaped this fate partly because he never was confronted with fatherhood.

Leia wants her son back as her child; she does not expect him to become a grown man who makes his own choices. One of the things that make the final trilogy of the saga so dissatisfying is, to me, that a Skywalker man again was denied the dignity to be on his own, to develop a healthy masculinity and to make his own choices instead of being expected to simply do what he was told.

Not surprisingly, Ben is saved by his father, the most human of the bunch. Smuggler, adventurer, “nobody”, cheater, thief, war general… Han Solo was always first and foremost himself, which is why he understands his son’s human side best. As Luke is a Jedi, Leia is a princess. She never is a mother above everything else, the way Shmi was. Unconsciously or not, she places power above family. Ben calls his father “Dad” in TRoS (in TFA he referred to him by his name); he never calls Leia “mother”.

Of course, like Luke, Obi-Wan and all the Jedi before them, Leia has no truly bad intentions. She does want her son to be safe and happy - on her conditions. She cannot understand his desire to reconcile with the darkness inside of him, respectively to take Vader’s skeleton from the family closet; she accepts only a part of him. When Ben finally “comes home”, in death, it is as Han’s and Leia’s child. And this also, unbeknownst to her, causes Rey’s lonely fate since her mate, her other half in the dyad, is gone.

The heroes of old have proved incapable of giving their son and heir the support he would have needed; when they faced their guilt it was too late; and still after death, none of them accepted the Dark Side’s right to exist. Ben “comes home” purged from his sins, without having integrated the two parts of himself, and leaving the greatest power in the galaxy in the hands of a young woman who is very far from understanding Balance in the Force, or only the necessity and importance of it.

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What does all of this mean for us, as the audience? Maybe that it’s time to grow up. Becoming an adult has much to do with seeing the limitations of the people (heroes) you used to trust blindly when you were a child. Many people never accept that, or feel let down for life. I think the wisest course is to learn how to grow and mature together with your people you used to admire, to learn from one another precisely because none of us is perfect, but we all can grow and mature the ones through the others.

The Rise of Skywalker told us, among other things (though not saying so openly) that even a positive and universally liked character like Princess Leia is not immune to the Dark Side of the Force, and that she may support it fully convinced of doing the right thing. It does not make the good she did undone, and does not deny her positive sides. And it does not say that we can’t love her any more. Anyone is entitled to be annoyed by these revelations. Leia is not a bad person, she’s human. But waking up from our ideals of heroism and happy endings may be more to the point for our own growth.

Our parents, our heroes, anyone can err for many reasons. To see their mistakes does not mean giving up on their or our ideals; the good things they stand for are still valid. Yet seeing their weaknesses and finding our own way to honor those ideals is perhaps a better way to get on with our lives than thinking that there is someone, anyone in the world we can look up to because they are, and always will be, perfect.

Side Note: Speculations

Although many affronted fans claim so, the heroes of the OT were not dismantled by the ST: Luke, Han and Leia each in his own way show their heroism again in their respective situations. But it is also made abundantly clear that where they failed was their duty towards the next generation. The thought is of course disturbing because a mother is supposed to give affection to a child, a father to offer it protection and advice, a mentor to foster its capacities. In Ben’s case, all three of them failed blatantly. That they managed to do so with Rey, a perfect stranger to their family, would be acceptable if she were not the offspring of Palpatine of all people. As it is, her “inheritance” of the Skywalker legacy feels as unearned as Ben’s failure and death feel undeserved.

Parents in Star Wars always have failed their children because they were in some way absent. Anakin, Luke and Ben, all three generations of Skywalkers, suffer from a father trauma. Anakin was always a father, never a son; Luke always a son, never a father. Which brings me back to the point I can’t give up on: a healthy father figure, someone who was a son and becomes a father, who went to the Dark Side but came back, who was not only redeemed but also rehabilitated, and finds an equally strong mother figure by his side, is essential if the galaxy is ever to find lasting Balance. I am not giving up hope. 😉

#star wars #leia organa #ben solo #kylo ren #han solo #luke skywalker #anakin skywalker #darth vader #palpatine #the force awakens #the last jedi #the rise of skywalker #padme amidala #shmi skywalker #dysfunctional family #read more #princess leia #motherhood

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reylorabbittrail · 4 years

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Long, Barely Coherent Thoughts about The Rise of Skywalker

Since some of you wanted to hear my thoughts about “The Rise of Skywalker”, I’ve taken some time to write them up and provide context for why I responded the way I did.

A small preamble: I didn’t hate it. Hate is a strong word. And there were moments that I liked. Some that I even loved. However, the aggregate feeling for the movie overall was disappointment. For certain elements, it went beyond that into something genuinely painful and I don’t think that will make sense unless I also go into why I loved the previous two installments of this trilogy.

Also, if you loved this movie, I’m very happy for you. This is about my personal response to a piece of media and I make no judgements on those who enjoyed what you saw. I wish I could join you.

Finally, I will be talking about some sensitive subjects, including child loss and abuse. Please be aware of that before reading further.

Okay, so what was my overall impression of The Rise of Skywalker?

Soulless. Cowardly. Incoherent. Badly paced.

I spent large portions of the movie unable to get into the action because the pacing was so breakneck. There was no time to breathe. Consequently, there was never enough time to recover from one rush before another started. If everything is exciting, nothing is.

I think that this was a deliberate choice to cover up the lack of sense behind the exposition. Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron looks dead inside as he temporarily takes up the mantle of Basil Exposition to explain that somehow or other, Emperor Palpatine has returned and there’s a hard time limit on destroying his fleet.

This is a fine example of a running problem throughout the movie. Whereas both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi used visual storytelling to move the story forward, things in TROS were explained through dialogue time and again. And the dialogue was incredibly clunky.

But back to the story. We are given a paper thin explanation of the Emperor’s return, and immediately are thrown into a fetch quest to find the Big Bad. I’m sure it will make an exciting video game adaptation.

The thing though is that the fetch quest makes no sense. One of the wayfinders is found in the first two minutes of the movie. Yes, it’s in the hands of the bad guys. But does the audience not remember that our heroine is bound to the villain? Why couldn’t she try to use that bond to get at the directions? Why does the Resistance not try to use that bond? Has she hidden from them her connection to Kylo Ren? Either she’s built up a wall of mistrust between her found family and herself by keeping the bond a secret, or she’s revealed all and no one thinks to try to use that bond to their advantage. It’s just conveniently overlooked.

Oh, a sidenote. Wayfinder. Why? There is an in-universe word for such objects already. It’s a holocron. Why not use holocron? We throw Star Wars-isms at the audience all the time. It would be an Easter Egg to the diehards while not bothering the general audience one iota.

Back to our fetch quest. We head to the desert planet of Pasaana. There’s a festival going on. A festival about family. Rey looks longingly at children and infants. A child gives her a fertility necklace. And then suddenly she’s connected by her bondmate through the force.

Now it’s no secret that the Rey and Kylo dynamic is one of the reasons I loved the first two movies in the trilogy. The actors have great chemistry. More importantly, the characters have interesting conflict. And yet that conflict seems off in this movie. TLJ left them complicated enemies. But they feel out of character. I don’t understand what each is trying to get out of their encounters. I have to do massive amounts of work to understand their actions and the dialogue doesn’t help. Because it doesn’t ring true.

Setting such details aside, Kylo rips off the necklace in a moment worthy of the Phantom of the Opera and for once it’s an action that makes sense, having both the subtext of obsessive love and jealousy, and the text of offering a clue for analysis to Rey’s location. Bravo. The writers did something right.

Meanwhile, we get a clunky reintroduction of Lando Calrissian. Has he been stuck on this desert for over 7 years? Longer? We just don’t know and he doesn’t tell us. Our heroes hitch a ride and then we get a fun speeder chase.

Okay, a couple more questions. There’s some good stuff here. The omnipresence of the First Order helps convey how thorough their control is. But why doesn’t Rey hotwire the speeder? It was established two movies ago that she’s a good mechanic. And on Jakku that kind of skill makes sense. Why hand that off to Poe? And why this Trio stuff. It’s fanon. We have just been assuming that Finn’s best friends would form the new Han, Luke, and Leia. Because reasons. None of them textual. It was a failure of TFA to not establish this dynamic if this was an essential element of Star Wars that had to be there from the start.

Which gets to the heart the problem in fandom which is that Star Wars is different for every fan. What is essential to the series is subjective. For me, Star Wars is light sabers, hyperspace, the Force, epic battles, strange world with one biome only per world. So I’ve never felt like something was missing. But if an essential element was a very particular character dynamic (like a good guy Trio), then I can see why some fans felt let down. As if all the pieces were there but never got put together.

Back to Pasaana. We have a brief descent into the underworld in which Rey has a moment of true Jedi compassion and is rewarded when her compassion for the monster leads to an exit from said underworld. Nice. Mythically coherent. And hey, we also get one of the MacGuffins we’ve been searching for, so, bonus.

Now we get the arrival of Kylo and his backup band. What was the point of these dudes? I mean, they look cool and I can’t wait to edit videos of them to classic NKOTB. But narratively, why are they there? Why did Kylo reforge the mask? Why all these questions in the third act when we should be in the process of tying up loose ends.

Rey, in a moment reminiscent of bull leaping from Crete, goes out to stall them? I guess? And then ends up in a battle of wills with Kylo that leads to her inadvertent use of Force Lightning.

Okay, another side trip. Are they trying to make out that Dark Side Powers are genetic? Because that’s all I can figure. Really, it’s kind of gross because it suggests that darkness isn’t a human trait that we all carry and must confront, but rather that Rey’s specific problem is a dark legacy. Which, that’s Kylo’s story. He’s the one grappling with the legacy of Vader and how that led his family to fear his darkness rather than aid him in confronting it.

Anyway, we have Rey briefly thinking she’s killed Chewie and that sets our heroes off to our next quest location and another set of problems: Why did we make the Latino man a drug runner and car thief? No, this isn’t just putting an unneeded real world spin on the universe. This is about narrative consistency. Because in a bid to make Poe Dameron an ersatz Han Solo, they broke his actual in-universe back story that had been established in comics and novels. That Poe Dameron was a pilot in the New Republic Navy, the child of war heroes Kes Dameron and Shara Bey. He grew up on Yavin IV. When did he have time to be a smuggler? He’s only a few years older that Ben Solo.

See Lucasfilm has a Story Group that is supposed to help keep narrative consistency between the various media released. And I can’t help shake the feeling that the Story Group was ignored or stonewalled. To please who? The fans? Which fans? Because I would be under the impression that the fans who read the novels and the comics, who dig the trivia aspects of the universe, would be the first to desire the universe to remain coherent.

The Kijimi stuff is fun. Babu Frik is adorable. C3PO is touching. There’s good moments. There really are.

We now go to the infiltration of the Star Destroyer (Does it have a name? Nerds, help me out here. Usually I know this sort of thing.) Again, good moments. I like the implication that Rey’s Force Powers disturb Poe, but it’s never brought up again. One of dozens of Chekhov’s guns left unfired. This is incredibly sloppy in the plotting. Hux is the mole!?! Fun. Yet, again, wasted. And out of character, but I’m sure that’s not going to bother the general audience. Rey gets caught sneaking around in Kylo’s bedroom? Priceless, and some good imagery (smashing the altar to Vader) combined with incredibly clunky dialogue and some more serious questions that never get answered.

The whole time Kylo thought Vader was talking to him it was Palpatine? Why the hell does he still have that mask on a pedestal? He just couldn’t bear to get rid of a collectible? He hadn’t had time to konmari yet? And just what does smashing the pedestal symbolize? Is this the start of Kylo breaking free? We’ll probably never know.

Rey escapes on the Falcon. After getting the worst character reveal in the Saga. I’m sorry. Rey Palapatine is just dumb. I liked that she was a nobody. It allowed her to be the Forces solution to the manipulation and abuse heaped upon the Skywalkers. She was brought into the story and bound to the last scion of House Skywalker as a corrective. She wasn’t overpowered. (No really. She executed a few very basic Jedi skills in the first two movies, none of them exceptional.) And her skill level makes sense the moment you understand that she is bound to Ben Solo. She is literally downloading his training. She can do what he can do. Even her fighting style mirrors his. Fun fact: if you watch the scene in The Last Jedi where she’s practicing sword forms on Ach-to, and compare them to Kylo in his duel with Luke, they’re identical. To a move. Rey is powerful because the Force chooses its vessels. No one was asking who Mace Windu’s parents were. Or Ki-Adi Mundi’s. But Rey is skilled because a very clear in universe device means she has access to Ben Solo’s mind and that included every skill he ever learned.

Alrighty, so now our team is on to the next step in the quest, the ocean moon of Kef Bir, one of the many moons in the Endor system. (No, it’s not the Forest or Sanctuary Moon with the Ewoks.) We meet Jannah, another wasted character. She is pretty and could have been cool. But she exists for us to realize that Finn is probably Force Sensitive and that he broke conditioning not due to innate morality but because he’s not a Muggle.

Which brings me to my gripe with how Finn’s character was treated. He spent the whole movie running around shouting Rey. That’s it. That’s his arc. I don’t mind that he can feel the Force. But I feel like his development was regressed. He had a clear character arc in the first two movies. From a man running away from responsibility to one willing to fight for a friend, to a man willing to commit to cause. This movie should have had him building on that, and perhaps like Moses returning to free the rest of the Stormtroopers who are canonically child soldiers brainwashed into fighting for the bad guys.

Back to the plot. Rey takes off for the Death Star, searches the haunted house and yet again has her moment in the cave, this time confronting a dark vision of herself. Dang that was cool. Would have liked to see more of that. Anyway, she confronts Kylo and he smashes the holocron. Emphasizing for us how pointless this fetch quest has been. Girl could have hopped a ride in his TIE at any point and dealt with the fallout after they dealt with the emperor.

They fight. It wasn’t a bad fight. Just not my favorite. It did emphasize though that Kylo is never ever fighting on the offensive with her. Never in three movies has he ever taken an advantage of an opening for a killing blow, and never was it more obvious than in this fight. Kylo gets distracted, Rey stabs him mortally, and this act seems to wake her up from whatever possessed her in the throne room. She heals him and runs away.

This brings up another thing that bothers me. I know the filmmakers were working with some severe challenges with their footage of Carrie. I don’t think it was badly used for the most part. But I was left baffled at what exactly was going on here.

I was not baffled at Kylo/Ben’s confrontation with Han. This was the high point of the movie for me. It was pitch perfect in tone, and touched on the one an only sin Ben ever committed that wasn’t connected to a war objective, the murder of his father. And it made clear that the prodigal was loved and wanted and it wasn’t too late to come home. The heart of Ben’s problem has been the conviction that he has done too much wrong to come home, and while it is only a memory, it is a true memory of the man who loved Ben enough to walk straight into Hell though he knew it would probably be the death of him. I can forgive this scene for throwing the lightsaber into the ocean. I realize that most of the audience doesn’t know that you can heal kyber crystals. Yes, the saber was a metaphor for Ben’s damaged and unstable soul, and yes, it would have been poetic (and badass) for him to show up later with a healed lightsaber, stable and blue and looking like something an angel would fight with. But I’ll forgive that for the poetry of what happens on Exegol.

And then we go to my low point. I’ll set my costumer’s beef with Luke Skywalker’s wig aside. It looked cheap and that’s all I’ll say. It was more the deliberate middle finger to TLJ in the lines while ignoring that Luke’s most iconic and Jedi-like moment in the original trilogy was casting aside his lightsaber in an act of compassion. Yes, Rey was burning her ship and throwing away her weapon for the wrong reason. And it was a deliberate echo of Luke who also was appalled when his fear was twisted by the Dark into an attack on his nephew. She is overcome with the same shame and fear of self. Luke can speak to this in a real way. With better dialogue, it might have worked for me. Alas, it didn’t. Instead we got more exposition to provide us with an extra lightsaber. And more questions about why everyone in this family gave up on Ben Solo.

Here’s the thing. If Leia remains untrained, lots of things make sense: her instinctive but infrequent use of the Force; her fear for her son and sense of inadequacy in dealing with he struggles with darkness, her unresolved issues with her father which lead her to hide her parentage not only from the galaxy but also from her own son. All of this is undone by the training reveal and makes us wonder why everyone was willing to help a descendent of Palpatine but not their own flesh and blood. And in a movie that used dialogue to explain nearly everything, these lacunae stand out more than they would in a film that trusted the audience more. See you could have had Luke say “We messed up. We gave in to fear. And we didn’t want to make the same mistake with you. Rey. I’m the son of Darth Vader. I know more than any man that we are more than our bloodline. And forgetting that with Ben was the worst mistake of my life.” But he didn’t. Which in a movie which tells as much as or more than it shows seems like a deliberate choice.

Have you noticed that I’m ignoring the space battles? That’s because they’re forgettable. I just didn’t care about them. Especially since the galactic conflict remained essentially unresolved. Back to the Force Plot, the only plot that matters.

Rey confronts Palpatine. Yawn. At this point I just don’t care. For most of the movie, she hasn’t seemed like my Rey. I couldn’t relate and by this point I’ve lost interest so I’m more wondering where did all these people come from. Are there concessions? How much does a hot dog and Coke cost on Exegol? Does this stadium have bathrooms? Nice to see that it’s built like the AT&T one down the street with the sliding roof panels. And then my boy Ben Solo arrives and the film is good again. Without a word of dialogue (besides “ow”) Adam Driver delivers the best performance of the movie, showing that the Han Solo of the trilogy was there the whole time in his son. Was there ever a more Han Solo thing than running into a Dark Side temple in your pajamas, armed only with a blaster? And then Rey passes him Anakin’s saber. OMG. Brilliance. The best part of the movie. For a moment I thought that they would at least wrap it up well. And for a moment they’re side by side and all is right in the world. And then Palpatine throws Ben in a pit.

I hate this. I don’t hate this movie but I hate this moment. For three movies we’ve set up that Rey and Ben (He’s Ben now; don’t’ @ me.) are equals in the Force. They have a Yin/Yang dynamic that made this work. The natural conclusion here should have been that they take out Palpatine together. Because both have a beef with him. This is the man responsible for ruining the lives of four generations of Skywalkers. And while Ben is at the bottom of a pit, Rey stands alone, calling on the Jedi to help her.

The Jedi that are ignoring the Skywalker at the bottom of the pit.

Including Ben’s grandfather that he’s been begging for years to help him.

Including his uncle who promised to always be with him. (We were robbed of Ghost Luke trolling Kylo. Robbed I tell you. Mark Hamill would have nailed that.)

Ben is at the bottom of a pit being ignored while the Jedi transform Rey into their sacrificial lamb for Girl Power points.

So, yeah, I hated how Rey defeated Palpatine. It was wrong. It wasn’t in union with her bondmate. It wasn’t through the power of love and compassion. It was Space Wonder Woman meets Harry Potter. And then she dies. Because the Jedi only ever viewed people as tools in their grand battle with the Sith.

But Ben. Oh, Ben loves Rey for who she is. And he climbs out of the pit without a lick of help from anyone and cradles her lifeless form in the most heartbreaking Pieta, and you can see on his face the moment he make his decision and gives everything of himself to bring her back. It was beautiful, and they share the most pure, the most perfect kiss.

And then he dies.

And that’s where the movie breaks me. Because he didn’t have to die. It doesn’t make sense. Why does Leia hold on until this moment? Why does Maz seem satisfied? Where did Ben go? Why does he go unmourned? Where is his Force ghost? This movie just leaves us with more questions.

And the very end kills me. Rey is on Tatooine. A dead world that holds no importance to her (or Leia, I might add). She buries the Skywalker sabers. A funeral. She sees the ghosts of Luke and Leia bless her as she takes on the Skywalker name. A name that she could have taken in a life-affirming way through marriage, but that appears as scavenged from the dead that she has surrounded herself with as she ends the movie an eternal child, side by side with a stolen droid.

It makes no sense.

But whence my nerd rage? Why do I care? Why have I devoted over 3K words to this?

Because the first two movies in this trilogy made me care about these characters.

When I first saw The Force Awakens, I connected immediately with her loneliness. Loneliness is something I get viscerally. I have always been socially awkward and had difficulty making friends. I rarely felt known or understood and I understood that deep longing to belong. When Rey was being interrogated by Kylo Ren, that was what struck me. He notices her loneliness.

And you realize that Kylo is projecting. That he is seeing in her a kindred spirit. He too is lonely, and trapped by fear into being stuck in a place that he knows in his heart of hearts is a dead world. He too is trapped by relics of the past.

So, you see, Rey and Kylo were both me. I had lived that loneliness. I had experienced profound isolation and the sense that no one truly understood me. I desperately wanted them to find their belonging and heal their wounds. And that’s certainly the story that TLJ picked up on and continued.

But there was more. I became fascinated with the question of how the son of Han and Leia fell, and I could see the possibilities in the pattern of their characters: Leia, the woman driven by duty, trying to build the New Republic to make a better galaxy for her son, and leaving her son vulnerable to predation in the process; Han, a man who had only just stopped running from responsibility, and who’s own lack of father figures left him feeling inadequate as a father. Throw in a villain who can groom and psychically abuse their son and you have the ingredients for a tragedy.

And because I identified with Leia, Ben became, in a way, an additional child. A parent’s greatest fear is that in trying to do the right thing for your child you inadvertently make things worse. Poor Leia. She needed a mother to tell her child mattered more than a bill in the Senate. That the galaxy could wait. But Palpatine killed her mother. Both her mothers, because he was as complicit in the death of Breha Organa as he was in the death of Padme Amidala Naberrie.

So when Ben Solo died, it was like losing a child. And anyone who knows me personally knows that I do not choose that phrasing lightly. And being a mother, there is always a sense of survivor’s guilt. The sense that if you had done the right thing, it wouldn’t have happened. It doesn’t matter if that isn’t the truth. It’s how it feels.

I have met so many people online who identify with Ben Solo because they were abused as children. Who like him processed their trauma in unhealthy ways. It’s not where I come from, but I have the capacity to empathize and hear the message they’re inadvertently being told: that if you do bad things because you’ve been groomed and manipulated and brainwashed, you can’t come back. Even if you turn your life around, it won’t matter. You’ll only find peace in death and you will die unremembered as punishment for your sins. And your family will replace you with someone nicer and easier to live with.

But I can hear you saying: It’s not that deep. It’s fake and in space. It’s just a story.

Well, here’s the problem:

1) The brain does not distinguish real people from fictional characters. The part of the brain that produces serotonin and dopamine can’t distinguish fact from fiction. This is actually why art has the power to heal. The catharsis experienced in a work of art can help us process trauma because we relate to the characters in the story. But the flip side is that stories can cause genuine trauma. If we related to characters in a story and they are treated unjustly, we feel that injustice and it hurts as badly as if it were real.

2) Ben Solo was written to be sympathetic. He is the child of beloved characters. His backstory is one filled with pain. He was failed by every family member who should have protected him. He was abused physically and mentally for years. Recently published materials exonerate him from the destruction of the Jedi temple. It was all part of a plot to push him to the Dark. All Ben ever wanted was to be loved for who he was. And that was snatched away from him.

3) I can’t turn off my brain. I can’t stop asking questions and trying to make sense of things. I can help but see the Chekhov’s guns and the symbols and the messages, however inadvertent.

4) It is a grand failure of a movie if it only works on a surface level and not when you start digging deeper. Every other Star Wars movie, including The Phantom Menace, rewards the person who can’t turn off their brain. This was the first one that falls apart so completely the second you start asking questions.

I wish I could like this movie. I was prepared to like it if not love it. And while I got Ben’s redemption and the Rey and Kylo romance that I wanted, I feel like I got nothing. Like they don’t matter at all.

I am planning to start new hobbies in the new year. I got some war gaming miniatures painting sets for Christmas and I’m glad I have a new special interest to pour myself into. I have enjoyed sharing my love of Star Wars trivia with my kids but it just hurts too much at the moment to spend time thinking about a franchise that has been so badly mangled. I’m probably in the bargaining stage of grief at the moment. I wholly buy the theory that there was happy ending filmed and someone blinked in the game of chicken, leaving us the mess that we were handed.

I’m also planning to get back to writing. If even Disney can’t tell a fairy tale properly anymore, it’s time for a new batch of writers to get out there and tell the stories I want to hear. I am sick of grimdark fantasies and cynicism masquerading as sophistication. I may write a fanfic or two to fix the story in my mind, but I think that ultimately I need to be creating original works. I know that there are children eager to believe in happy endings, plenty of women who believe that Byronic heroes can be redeemed, and not a few men who will buy both if the story is well told.

#tros spoilers #negativity #cw:child loss #cw: abuse

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meteor752 · 4 years

Text

So...I just watched The Rise of Skywalker

And it was...a movie

Now, if you don’t want it spoiled, then don’t click keep reading, because I will immediately start after that.

Got it?

Good

Now that that’s out of the way

THERE IS A CANON LESBIAN COUPLE IN STAR WARS AND THEY SHARED A KISS, I AM DEAD

Sorry I just had to get that out of my system

I am not a movie critic, and for the most part I just enjoy a movie unless it bores me. But I have been saying that I will do this review, and I will, so I will just go over important part by important part.

Good?

Good.

The first scene

This is, hands down, my favorite scene in the movie. The way they introduced Palpatine and that we never really see his face in the scene is really menacing, but still oddly hilarious.

I mean, the man is hanging there quoting himself. He later literally said do it!! I’m surprised he didn’t start to tell the story of Darth plagueise the wise.

Plus, the fact that Kylo doesn’t want to join Palpatine and become his apprentice, but just kill him, is really cool to me. It shows a little different side of his character, that he wants to be his own and not just the next Vader.

Also, after Palpatine saying “I created Snoke”, there’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment of a deformed looking Snoke in a cubicle, so that’s that character's backstory. He was a failed clone all along!

Poe, Finn, Chewie & the Spy

The start of this scene is just pure fluff between our dear space husbands and their mom’s, husband's dog.

The revelation of the spy was cool, but I kinda immediately guessed that it would be either Hux or Phasma.

I really liked the chase scene, plus the banter between the characters. Character interaction is a thing I love in franchises, and this movie does a good job with it

Master Leia

I LIVE FOR LEIA TRAINING REY TO BE A JEDI

The Rey training scene though was...unnecessary, dunno why it was there.

Rey’s always been a kinda on-off character for me. I like her when she’s loose and chill instead of a “badass”. In this movie...I mean she has her moments, but for the most part I didn’t want her there

C-3PO, R2-D2 & BB-8

The fact that BB-9e wasn’t in this movie is a crime

I like Threepio, like most other fans, but he’s just like always been...there for me. In this movie though, holy shit did he shine!

To be quite honest, he was probably one of my favorite characters in it, just because he kept that lightheartedness in an otherwise angsty movie, with some occasional fluff.

What I really like about him is that they made this his movie! Artoo and BB-8 were barely in it, and when they were they didn’t do much, so Threepio could really shine! Literally, he’s made of gold. The latest eight movies he’s basically been bullied by every character on screen, no one really seems to like him (Poe did it in this movie, so it’s still a thing) but they gave him a lot of screentime and I like that!

I don’t like BB-8. He’s mostly there to sell toys, and I get that that’s what Star Wars is all about these days, but don’t make it obvious!! Cough, cough PORG!!!!

Artoo was underused as kriff in this movie. He did basically nothing, despite being one of the franchises most popular characters. My favorite moment in the movie however is when Wiped Threepio And Artoo reunite, and he actually sound HURT when Threepio doesn’t recognize him!! He calls him his best friend okay!?!?

Lando

!!!!

His introduction was so fricking cute! Chewie just went to hug him instantly, because that poor fluffy boy has lost enough!!

Threepio going to explain who he is, and Rey just going “We know who he is!” Is so heartwarming, like he’s a war hero! People idolize him that’s so cute!!!

Knights of Ren

Will get more into them in another section, but look really cool but really underused

Stormpilot, Jedipilot, Stormjedi & Stormjedipilot

Let’s get this over with

All three of the first ships are evident in this movie.

Rey and Poe arguing about BB-8 and The Falcon at the start of the movie...is basically all we get for Jedipilot but what’d you expect?

Poe making Finn general, their banter throughout the movie, the little very unnecessary fight they had, the reunion at the end of the movie-

THIS

Rey: So what were you going to tell me?

Finn: We’ll take it later

Poe: What, you mean when Poe’s not here?

YOU JEALOUS BRO???

Finn wanting to tell Rey something was most likely confessing some feeling for her, but then they survived and yeah, and it was fucking dropped?! Did JJ just forget about that???

Plus, I’ve never noticed this before, but Finn yells Rey’s name a lot.

The reunion hug between the three of them at the end of the movie is what kinda made me like Stormjedipilot. Poe and Rey holding their hands over Finn’s back while he buries his head into their shoulders, like yeah I like that.

Chewie’s “death”

I, to be honest, kinda wanted Chewbacca to die a little here. It would have made Kylo’s turn so much more compelling.

So it is my personal headcanon that Kylo did not know that Chewie wasn’t on that ship, and for a few minutes he actually thought that he, Uncle Chewie, had died. Because I couldn’t be the only one who saw a bit of pain on his face.

Kijimi

I first did not like Zorii, mostly because I thought she and Poe would have had a “relationship”.

Though, when Rey held a lightsaber against her throat, and she just impressively said “Not that it matters, but I like you.”

Gal, you GAAAAY

And also that twice, twice, Poe asks if they should kiss and she dismisses both tries, that I like. Good job movie, god job.

During the raid, you can hear female Stormtroopers, and I think that’s really cool. We’re in movie nine and first now does there exist female Stormtroopers that isn’t Phasma!!

Threepio’s wipe is sad and I liked it, but I feel that they made it a little too sad, considering it was afterwards mostly played as a joke and then they gave him his memories back

Hux the spy

Again, Chewie should have remained dead, but whatever.

I have no problem with Hux as the spy, I was just sitting in the theater mumbling ‘Fulcrum’ while my brother was looking at me weirdly, but what I don’t like is what they did with it.

For Hux just to be shot by some General we’ve never met before is just the equivalent of a letdown, especially since so many people like his characters. Including me, he’s one of the best parts of the Sequels!!

Rey Palpatine

Just so everyone knows, I saw this coming. I mean sure, I still liked the Qui’ra theory more, but when Palps started talking about how he knew who the girl was, then I was just like okay she’s a Palpatine.

What I don’t like is how they don’t talk at all of how this came to be. Like, I don’t even know which one of Rey’s parents who’s Palps child. Who the hell did he fuck?!?!

So yeah, whatever twist, bad execution.

Endor’s Stormtroopers

THIS SCENE IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF WHY I DON’T LIKE REY

They often do this in movies. Heroes have to do something, they can’t do anything at that moment so they have to wait, main Hero does it anyways.

IT’S ANNOYING AS HELL

Finn and the Ex Stormtrooper I can't remember the name of’s bonding moment was cute, but I just kept thinking to myself “Are they siblings? Because it wouldn’t be the first time this has happened,”

Finn getting mad at Poe is weird as shit and I don’t like it.

Dark Rey vs Rey

Huge letdown didn’t like it next

Rey vs Kylo, final battle

It was...fine, I guess. I like that Rey fucking stabbed him, that was cool.

Leia dying to redeem Kylo was dumb! I get that they needed to kill her off in a natural way and not just off-screen but come on!

Plus, if you would ask me, Kylo didn’t need a redemption arc. I think he should have died. As a bad guy.

Han Solo And Lightsaber Toss

Han Solo talking to Kylo was cool, though how does it work?? Was it a vision? Luke manipulations the force? Kylo only saw what he wanted to see?

That Kylo just tossed his lightsaber was symbolic and stuff, but a really stupid decision from his part. How are you gonna protect yourself now, huh? THE FORCE?!?!

Rey going into Exile

THIS SCENE WAS FUNNY AS SHIT!!

Just, Rey, thinking that every Jedi goes into exile, when they don’t feel like dealing with it anymore, and she’s fucking right!!! Yoda, Obi-Wan And Luke would be proud!!!!

Luke’s force ghost also has nearly identical hair to Anakin, which is adorable. Dunno how many that noticed that, since the people I’ve talked with about the movie didn’t, but that was literally all I could think about.

Knight Leia

When Rey picked up her lightsaber, my brother beside me was like “That’s Luke’s green one!” And I got mad because that’s not his lightsaber design at all. Know your facts bro!

That Leia was a Jedi is understandable, I mean was Luke not going to train her? But I’ve always seen her that she could use the force, but didn’t use a lightsaber because she’s badass.

I kinda also wanted her blade to be purple? I think it would have fit her much better, as she is probably the most balanced Jedi we’ve had for a while and she’s got a lot of anger that little Skywalker, but blue works fine I guess. Better than green.

Star Wars Endgame

I liked this scene, it was cool, Artoo got something to do, and Finn and Rose riding those horse thingies is an inside joke between those two at this point, convince me otherwise.

Lando And Chewie arriving though, and the First Order stating that they are “just people”, was really beautiful. Cool scene all and all.

Rey and Palpatine

Palps is still quoting himself! He fucking said “Do It” JJ knows what’s up!!

One thing that I’ve been trying to figure out since I saw the movie was what the hell was Palps’ goal? He said for Rey to strike him down (Said the same to Luke, is he suicidal??) and then he would become? Apart? Of her? What?

I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make any sense.

Kylo vs Knights of Ren

So these are Kylo’s guys, right? His inquisitors, per say.

Except these used to be Jedi, his clanmates, his friends.

So why the kriff did they all turn against him like that?? AND WHY DID HE JUST FIGHT THEM BLINDLY DUDE THESE WERE YOUR FRIENDS!!

If I could have changed anything in this movie that has nothing to do with ships, then it would be that at least ONE of the knights would have supported Kylo and not just blindly turned against him.

Though I must say, Rey giving Kylo Luke’s lightsaber through their bond, was pretty badass.

Palpatine steals Kylo and Rey’s bond

The. Fuck.

WHAT KIND OF FORCE POWER IS THAT?!?!

IF YOU CAN JUST STEAL A JEDI’S FORCE BOND, WHY DIDN’T YOU DO THAT WITH ANAKIN AND OBI-WAN PALPS?!?!? HUH?!?!?!

But for real, stupid decision, could have gone without it.

Jedi Rey vs Sith Palps

It was cool, a cool moment, I sat excitedly and whispered to my brother all the voices I recognized, I think Ahsoka could be heard??

...

I looked it up and yeah her voice is there, which means that she’s dead R.I.P Snips.

One of the better scenes of the movie, though I think it’s cheating because of nostalgia and love for these characters.

(I LOOKED UP WHICH THE VOICES WERE, AND WE’VE GOT FRICKING AAYLA SECURA, LUMINARA UNDULI, ADI GALLIA AND KANAN JARRUS!!!)

Reylo

*Sigh*

Ya know, I really hoped this wouldn’t happen. I almost wanted to skip this, and really make all the Reylo fans mad.

But I have to talk about this.

This kiss, should not have happened.

Now if you are a Reylo shipper, that’s good for you, I ship way stranger things than that, but to actually make it canon?!?!

Kylo having a crush or something for Rey? Sure, I can understand that’s he’s pretty much obsessed at this point. But for Rey, badass Rey who is pretty lesbian, to have feelings for Kylo? THIS IS NOT A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP PEOPLE!!

And that they made a toxic relationship canon, but not a gay one, really says something about Star Wars doesn’t it.

Death of Kylo

I laughed out loud during this scene. Not joking, people around me were annoyed. And that his clothes didn’t disappear? Is Kylo a naked force ghost? Did he do that for Rey?

Wait

Don’t answer.

Happy Rebels

The Lesbian couple that kissed was obviously queerbaiting, and you should never praise that, but that is probably all we will get Gays, so let’s just take it and cry on the inside.

Is that Stormtrooper gal Lando’s daughter? Because my brother whispered that to me, and I got those vibes too. Or is she way older than what she looks like and we were supposed to see her as a love interest?

The hug was cute.

Rey Skywalker

I will never accept this as canon ever.

To see the moisture farm again was nice, I liked that.

And for Rey to finally have her own lightsaber, and a yellow one too (I read a fanfic where she had a yellow one, was that like pre-seen??).

But the Skywalker thing...eh.

I would have found it cute if she’d said Rey Palpatine, as if she’d embraced her origin and decided that the name Palpatine isn’t just to be afflicted with the emperor, but also with her, the last Jedi.

Also, did she go into exile? Because damn, those Jedi do that a lot!

All in all, I liked this movie! I wasn’t bored a single bit while watching it, as there was always something going on, and I like when that happens. I don’t think that had happened since Empire with a Star Wars movie.

It isn’t in my top three, but it’s up there, and better than The Last Jedi.

Though I must say, they did take some things from Return of the Jedi and put it in this movie, specifically the ending.

Though I must say, and don’t hate me for this, it was better than Return of the Jedi okay bye

#the rise of skywalker #The rise of skywalker spoilers #The Rise Of Skywalker review #Stormpilot #finnrey #damerey #Finnpoerey #Reylo #I can't believe I used that tag

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imagitory · 4 years

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Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker review [SPOILERS]

Hey, everybody! So I just got back from seeing the newest Star Wars and...whew, am I tired!

For those of you who want a spoiler-free review, I’ll just say that there’s a reason people are so split about this movie. In some ways, I could argue that TRoS is trying to be its own stand-alone thing, and it does so by shoving in way too many plot beats and new characters without enough development or even a satisfactory conclusion for them...and yet at the same time, it tries so hard to evoke the original trilogy like The Force Awakens did, whether through iconography, cameos, or other kinds of fanservice. To put it very simply, if you disliked The Last Jedi, you might come out enjoying this more, since this movie and its director clearly shared your view, but even if The Last Jedi is a flawed film, I feel it still ended up having better direction, character arcs, and storytelling than this film did.

For those of you who don’t fear spoilers...journey on.

The Good!

+Just like in the other installments in this new trilogy, there were some great action moments. I liked when Kylo and Rey were fighting over the First Order ship with the Force, pulling it back and forth like they had previously done with Anakin’s lightsaber. Poe’s lightspace jumping in the Millennium Falcon was a cool trick, and I actually really enjoyed the short suspenseful bit with Poe, Finn, Rey, and the droids sneaking around in the wintry planet Kijimi, too.

+The trick at the end where Rey passed Kylo Anakin’s lightsaber through the Force and the two battled side-by-side while in different locations was neat. I might’ve liked to see that trick used differently (see below), but it was still really cool.

+Poe and Finn were acting like SUCH boyfriends during this entire movie. I don’t care how much “NO HOMO” J.J. tried to slap on these guys in the script (and I’ll discuss that in a minute), these two were friggin’ boyfriends and that was canon, end of story.

+I liked that Leia was able to mentor Rey, and Leia’s death was appropriately sad. It felt like I was mourning Carrie all over again, especially since we’re so close to the anniversary of her death.

+It was kind of cool to see Luke’s old X-Wing again. I might’ve had it reappear in a different way, but it was still cool.

+Rey hearing all of the Jedi in her head for the first time when she was facing Palpatine at the end was great. I might’ve pushed it further and made it more visually interesting, but I’ll get to that in the more negative section.

+For all of the rather unnecessary fanservice, there were a few music cues that really worked -- namely, the Imperial March echo when Rey arrived in the old throne room on the Death Star, Leia’s theme upon her death, and the Jedi theme when Poe saw the fleet of reinforcements arriving.

The Not-So-Good...

+The Reylo-ness of it all. *dodges knives* OKAY. LISTEN --

If you’re a Reylo shipper, then good for you. I mean that sincerely. But I’m sorry, I am convinced that this ending could only have been satisfying to you if you were on the Reylo ship from the very start due to your own personal shipping preferences, because there is NOTHING in the films that justifies the powerful emotional bond that these two supposedly share. Rey and Kylo only met two movies ago, and in both movies, Kylo showed no interest in improving himself and being a better person. None. I don’t care if Rey “sensed” goodness in him -- that is a terrible, weak short-cut for a writer to use, to tell us that Kylo is good without showing it to us. We still see him slaughter people en masse in the very first scene of this movie. We still see him trying to force Rey to join him, even if it puts the people she cares about in danger. We still see him hooking up with Palpatine -- FRIGGIN’ PALPATINE -- after he’d only just rid himself of Snoke. I don’t care if Kylo thinks he can get rid of Palpatine like he did with Snoke -- I don’t care if he’s conflicted and worried about Rey -- we the audience see no evidence that Kylo has truly changed his ways and is worth saving. Leia SACRIFICED HER LIFE to try to help him -- for what?? I know she’s his mother, but I’m sorry, Leia: if your husband couldn’t save your son from himself, why would you be able to? Why didn’t you almost dying in The Last Jedi not affect your son more, if he really cared? Why was calling his name all you had to do? Why didn’t you do that before he started killing all these people? Because it wasn’t dramatically convenient? Because he was fighting Rey at that exact moment and the writers needed to find a way to end that action scene that otherwise could’ve ended with either Rey or Kylo dying? And I’m sorry, but this whole storyline resulted in the one thing I’d dreaded more than anything would happen in a story that shipped these two -- Rey became a tool to Kylo’s redemption. Rather than standing apart as someone with no legacy who builds her own through being a good, noble person, she became defined by her familial and romantic relationships more than she was by her actions. I know Rey ended up defeating Palpatine in the end, but most of her screentime still ended up devoted to her “bond” with Kylo Ren and showed how her love brought him back to the Light. Because seriously, screw the love Kylo’s parents showed him, or Luke showed him -- all they did was sacrifice themselves trying to help him while also standing by their morals and never being tempted to fall like Kylo did -- no, only Rey could’ve brought him back to the side of Good.

And before any of you even try to wave the Sith Lord of my Heart, Darth Vader, in my face, as Snoke said in The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren is no Vader. Vader was tethered to the Empire and to the Emperor, thanks to the injuries he sustained on Mustafar that left him trapped inside his mechanical suit -- if he’d left the Empire, he would’ve died, and on top of all that, he’d already lost his entire family and turned everyone he’d ever cared about -- who were all Jedi -- against him by falling to the Dark Side. Vader had been Anakin -- a slave who was bought out of enslavement by the Jedi, who then turned around and taught him to -- to borrow a phrase -- “conceal, don’t feel,” even if it meant turning a blind eye to the death of his wife and unborn child. Kylo Ren turned to the Dark Side because...honestly? WE NEVER GET A GOOD ANSWER. The best I can get from the films is that Kylo Ren was manipulated by Snoke, who went on and on about how powerful Kylo was and how he should use that power to “bring order to the galaxy” and stuff like that, and then one night Luke held a lit lightsaber over his head for a minute. That justifies falling to the Dark Side and slaughtering all the wittle Jedi? No! And yet Kylo never once has to grapple with what he did -- he never has to make amends. He’s just forgiven, like that! And although Vader likewise never got the chance to make amends, his sacrifice means more than Kylo’s because Vader, through his sacrifice, finally learned the true meaning of love after an entire lifetime of knowing so little of it. The only people who had ever loved Anakin either died or left him -- Kylo always had people who were willing to forgive him, and he spat in their faces. Vader had no one, until his son discovered who he was and tried to reach out to him. And when he reached out, Vader didn’t stab him through the chest or immediately brand him with the murder of his evil master -- Vader followed orders and brought Luke before the Emperor, yes, but when Luke was about to die, Vader saved him.

Kylo Ren’s story could not and SHOULD NOT be Vader’s story, so giving him the same ending is completely unjustified and mismatched with the story being told. Even if the story of a girl and a guy saving each other with “the power of love” was somehow equal in emotional resonance to that of a son trying to reconnect with his father and his father sacrificing his life to save him, that story of a guy and a girl was not built up properly, as we never get much backstory about why Kylo fell, much action on his part to acknowledge his mistakes, or rationale for why we should care about him despite what a terrible person he was and still is. He cares about Rey -- great! Does he care about the Resistance? Leia? Luke? Han? Lando? Chewie? ANYBODY excluding himself and Rey? Han as a Force Ghost at one point suggests that Leia will never die as long as they remember what she stood for -- since when is that something KYLO REN ever cared about?! Leia DESPISED the Empire and Darth Vader, and yet Kylo Ren and the First Order have done nothing but wrap themselves up in their rhetoric and iconography!

On that note, though, I will acknowledge that Kylo Ren, as a character, has always given me certain troubling real-world-like vibes, and that may be part of the reason why it really infuriates me that the movie tried to redeem him. Kylo Ren is a privileged young man from a respected, powerful family who embraces and romanticizes the atrocities of a previous generation, resents others (rather appropriately, a young woman and black man with no greatness in their family names) for taking what should be “rightfully his,” and vows to bring things back to when that previous evil institution was in its full glory -- isn’t that exactly what modern alt-right Neo-Nazi types do? Romanticize the Third Reich and the Klan and wrap themselves up in their supposed “glory,” while being nothing but a pale, pathetic, anger-driven imitation? Even if you don’t personally see Kylo the same way I do, I hope you will at least respect that -- given this lens I see the character through -- it makes sense why I dislike any attempt to give this character sympathy.

+ *inhales heavily* ...Rey...is a Palpatine. *groans in aggravation* J.J., ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS? Did you not get why Rian Johnson made Rey’s backstory the way he did, or were you just so in-line with anti-TLJ fans that you wanted to spit in his face in film-form? I know a lot of people were pissed off when Rey was determined to be a “nobody” after what felt like hints of a more developed backstory in TFA, but I seriously can’t help but think that those people missed the point. Rey being a nobody and yet being talented in the Force fixed the whole problem brought up by the Midiclorians in the prequel trilogy -- namely, the thought that you can only be born special, because of your genes. With Rey not being a Kenobi, or a Skywalker, or a Palpatine, it says, “Yes -- you don’t need to have been born special. Anyone can tap into the Force, because it is everything, as are we.” This is even why it’s hinted in previous movies (and once or twice in this movie, though it doesn’t go anywhere) that Finn is Force-sensitive -- Finn, a ex-Stormtrooper! But by turning Rey into a Palpatine all along, J.J. has once again made the Force only something that a select few can tap into -- only special people can have the power needed to stand up to evil. Sure, ordinary people like Poe and Finn can blow things up, but only special people like the Skywalkers and the Palpatines can stop the Sith from destroying the entire rebellion. Instead of this being a story about a girl who had no legacy and yet earned the title of heir to the Skywalker legacy purely through her noble heart and selfless deeds, this became a story of two people -- one from a good family and one from an evil family -- having to come together to deal with their family drama and save the galaxy. Maybe some people wanted to see that from the start, but frankly I didn’t, and even if that story could’ve been told well, it was not the story that we were set up to watch, after we saw The Last Jedi. It also irritates me because of how much the film tries to play Rey’s parents SELLING HER ON JAKKU as them “saving her” from Palpatine. I call BULL. Even Luke was only “saved” from Vader by being given to relatives on a backwater planet -- Rey’s parents ABANDONED her. If you thought that Frozen 2 retconning Elsa and Anna’s parents’ attitudes toward Elsa’s magic was problematic, whoa, boy, have a gander at this. (I actually kind of like Agnarr and Iduna as individual characters in Frozen 2, but I actively have to distance Frozen from its sequel because of canon discrepancies like this.) Rey’s parents didn’t need to have a “good reason” for dropping her off on Jakku -- this film even acknowledges that Rey’s real family is the family she found: Finn, Poe, BB-8, Chewie, Leia, and the Resistance. Rey’s parents could’ve been assholes. Many people’s parents are assholes. Rey is not their child anymore: she is a Skywalker, and that’s all that matters.

+Oh yeah, and speaking of The Last Jedi, NOTHING matches up in this. J.J. literally wrote two complete movies and shoved them together in this one in a vain attempt to completely retcon the last film. Poe earning back his position in the rebellion after learning a lesson about not always barreling into danger without thinking? His character arc has vanished and he shows no more talent for strategy or leadership than he did before. Rey only seeing herself when she was looking for her family? Nope, turns out she was a Palpatine all along: the Force was just trolling her, I guess. Kylo accusing Rey of killing Snoke? Doesn’t come up at all. The young boy using the Force to pick up the broom? Never appears. The signal sent across the galaxy asking for help? Poe says half-way through the movie that nobody came, so it may as well have never happened. Rose and Finn? No mention of the kiss on Krait or anything -- they act like they barely know each other, and Rose has almost no screentime. Even Lando’s return, which should’ve been great, happens when he appears on this random India-like desert planet -- why was he there? Why does he no longer live in Cloud City? Wasn’t he its leader? Wouldn’t he have better fit in a planet like Canto Bight, one that was glitzy and kind of seedy, instead of a pastoral place like that? It’s like reading the first six books in the Harry Potter series, only to end on a version of Deathly Hallows where -- surprise! -- Hermione was actually a pureblood witch all along and she’s actually related to the Lestranges and also Hagrid pops up in Godric’s Hollow to save Hermione and Harry from Nagini for no reason at all, plus Ginny is just a side character now and the author seems to want you to think Harry likes Hermione even if Ron and Harry totally have more chemistry but NO HOMO YOU GUYS COME ON.

+Hahaha, on that note, WOW, have I never seen a film more desperate to try to prove to its audience that its two male main characters are not totally boyfriends. Even though J.J. decided to placate angry fanboys by rather unfairly marginalizing Rose Tico (come on, she may not have been written the best in Last Jedi, but you’re not going to fix that by IGNORING HER ALL TOGETHER), he still thought it best to introduce two new female characters, Zorii and Jannah, who both could’ve been very interesting if they’d had their proper amount of screentime and development, but instead only serve to be substitute “love interests” for Poe and Finn. That might sound harsh, but they literally have no other substantial relationships that get explored in this movie outside of the ones with their respective “guy.” It felt like the film was going, “Look -- Poe’s not gay! He’s got history with this chick, and he gives her a look at the end! And look -- Finn’s not gay! He might’ve been trying to confess his feelings to Rey which totally made his not-boyfriend uber jealous BUT THEY’RE NOT GAY YOU GAIS, and he’s doing stuff with this girl, who was also a Stormtrooper!” Sorry, film, but methinks you doth protest too much. (Even Poe’s actor Oscar Isaac apparently thinks so.)

+Another theme from The Last Jedi that I loved and J.J. clearly didn’t is that the dichotomy between “Jedi” and “Sith” doesn’t inherently equate “good” vs. “evil,” and therefore just because the Sith are evil, it doesn’t mean that the Jedi -- who preached detachment from all affectionate emotions and familial ties -- were right. Even the Resistance is flawed. It’s actually something the prequels and the Clone Wars TV show preach too, and it brings so much more grayness to the Star Wars mythos. In The Rise of Skywalker, however, the Jedi and the Resistance are just seen as the good guys, period, end of story. Who cares if it results in your story being shockingly simplistic and oddly shallow, when compared to the rest of the Star Wars universe?

+The treatment of the Stormtroopers in this movie was actually kind of infuriating. We consistently get reminders about how the First Order’s Stormtroopers were child soldiers who were stolen from their homes and brainwashed, as evident by both Finn and Jannah, and yet throughout the entire movie, they still get cut down in the hundreds without care. Even Finn -- an ex-Stormtrooper himself -- shoots them up like they’re NPCs in a video game! For a film trilogy that did something so powerful by showing the humanity underneath the white helmet, we sure got a film that didn’t give a shit about these people unless they had their helmets off.

+Speaking of the First Order, I saw the Hux-as-the-traitor “twist” coming and I hated finding out that I was right. Honestly it could’ve been played very interestingly if Hux maybe tried to overthrow Kylo and take over the First Order himself, therefore showing how Kylo’s fear-stoking and hatred don’t bring out any loyalty in his followers, but it only results in Hux immediately getting axed off and replaced with another First Order officer we’ve never seen in any of the previous films and therefore don’t care about. Why couldn’t we have reused D.J. the hacker from the previous movie as the spy, or better yet, have the “spy” actually be Kylo, leaking information that he thinks might coax Rey to the Dark Side? The last two films built Hux up as an interesting character, but he was tossed out even more unceremoniously than Commodore Norrington was in the Pirates films.

+This problem of “replacing one antagonist with another out of the blue” is replicated on a large scale with the return of Palpatine. This entire film series has been centered on Kylo Ren and the First Order, but all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we’re just expected to turn all of our focus onto Palpatine and the Knights of Ren, both of whom have had no bearing on the story previously. It could’ve been cool to learn more about the Knights of Ren, but we don’t learn anything about them -- we just see them suddenly being there, when they’d never been there previously. As for Palpatine...did we REALLY need him brought back? Really? The First Order was a threat because they’d wrapped themselves up in their romanticized, false view of the Empire -- that was a choice they made. It didn’t have to be because Palpatine was secretly alive all along and was pulling the strings -- people can do things of their own accord, without a grand, evil mastermind coming back from the dead out of nowhere. Kylo Ren finally got out from under Snoke’s shadow in The Last Jedi and I was so excited to see him come into his own as a villain, but instead all he did was skirt around the coat-tails of Palpatine the entire movie, and it was really disappointing. I WANTED a final confrontation between Kylo and Rey in the climax, like the films had been building up to -- instead all we got was a half-baked “redemption” for Kylo where he teams up with Rey to fight somebody else who just wandered into the story out of nowhere. Even Palpatine’s plot didn’t make any sense -- he tells Kylo for the first half of the movie that they need to kill Rey even though Kylo really wants her to turn to the Dark Side instead, only for Palpatine to (I guess) change his mind at the last minute when Rey arrives in his lair, and yet they play it off as him having planned for that to happen all along because he needs Rey to kill him so she can become one with him and all of the other Sith -- look, I know Palpatine’s whole characterization is hinged on him being a criminal mastermind, but all I want is some consistency! How are we supposed to know what the threat is if we don’t know what our villains want?

+“The Force” is used to rationalize a lot in this movie, from where Rey decides to walk to what plot devices our heroes will need later to why our characters do what they do. Even Finn, who in The Force Awakens accented that he made a choice to break away from the First Order because he saw what he was doing was wrong, now apparently believes that the Force decided that he should join up with Poe and Rey...and I just don’t like that, let alone buy it. The Force was never equivalent to “destiny” -- yes, Anakin was the Chosen One, but he only fulfilled it because the Jedi believed in it enough to train him and he fulfilled the prophecy in a way no one could’ve imagined...and even so, the Force doesn’t dictate everything. Everything is part of the Force, and the Force is part of everything -- but it shouldn’t just be a deus-ex-machina that moves the plot along or does whatever the author needs it to do. For instance, why can the Force suddenly heal wounds?? Since when is that something it can do?? If it could do that, and someone largely self-taught like Rey can do it, then why didn’t Jedi Master Anakin or Obi-Wan ever do that? Why didn’t Anakin use some of his life force to save his dying mother? Why didn’t he think to use it on Padme, or why didn’t Obi-Wan use it on Padme? Why didn’t Luke think to use it to save his father? The only reason why the Force can do that now is that the writers needed to justify why Kylo could give up his remaining life force for Rey, but in order to do that, they give the Force an ability it’s never had previously and doesn’t match up with the previous canon.

+If we’re talking about the Force, though, I have to write a separate bullet point accenting this -- WHY. DOESN’T. FINN. USE IT?? The film clearly likes the thought of Finn being Force-sensitive, but it’s too cowardly to just make Finn a Jedi. When Kylo and Rey were fighting over the ship, why didn’t Finn do something to help?? Why didn’t he blast Kylo or, more relevantly to this discussion, show off some of his latent Force talent by helping Rey yank the ship back? Why didn’t Finn use his Force ability to reach out to Rey while she was fighting Kylo, or fighting Palpatine? He could’ve been the one to wield Anakin’s lightsaber and fight side by side with Rey in that final battle, if Kylo had been the villain like he should’ve been. Maybe Finn confronts Commander Hux inside the command post while Rey’s fighting Kylo, and when Rey tries one last time to connect with the Jedi of the past, she’s able to connect to all of the Jedi, living or dead -- including Finn, as he also has been nurturing a talent in the Force! Through their new mental connection, Rey and Finn are able to help each other, while also being surrounded and spurred on by the corporeal, translucent spirits of Anakin, Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace Windu, Ahsoka Tano, and the rest, all appearing and disappearing one after another around Finn and Rey as they fight. Poe should’ve been commanding the troops from above in Luke’s old X-Wing, it being the only ship he could get his hands on (because I’m sorry -- Han gave Rey the Falcon, she should be the one using it, yet this film just stubbornly kept her out of the driver’s seat for some reason), giving them all of the support he could from the air so that the rest of the First Order can’t interfere with the four-way duel between Finn, Rey, Kylo, and Hux. Maybe when the electricity in the ships gets messed up, Poe’s even able to remember something Rey or Finn told him to tap into the Force enough himself to keep himself airborne until he’s able to crash-land safely. While Hux and Kylo fight to destroy their opponents individually, each seeking glory and victory solely for themselves, Rey and Finn fight together as friends, taking lessons from the Jedi that are their mentors but also standing apart from them and being better than them.

+This movie really felt like two stories smashed together because there were way too many plot lines that were dropped like a hot potato not long after they were introduced. Finn having something to tell Rey? No conclusion. 3PO getting his memory wiped? Resolved quickly a few scenes later with little fall-out. Chewie supposedly getting killed? We find out within minutes that he survived. All of the new characters we meet, like Zorii and Jannah? They get one or two short scenes each where we barely get to know them at all. Even the India-inspired planet I mentioned earlier gets blown up because the First Order thinks it’ll upset the Rebellion and get them to come out of hiding, but...this film is the first time we’ve even seen this planet! We barely spent any time on it! This is really the obvious first choice of a planet whose destruction would upset the Rebellion? We don’t even know any of the characters who live on it personally! At least when Alderaan got blown up, Leia’s parents were on it, so we feel sad for Leia’s sake, but we haven’t built up any emotional investment in that planet that was just blown up.

+Along with this movie feeling like it had too much stuff in it, it also felt very, VERY long. The pacing was very bad, with there being no organic rise and fall to the action and the climax really just feeling like a bunch of plot turns stacked haphazardly on top of each other. When I came out of the theater, I even heard a little boy say to his dad, “That was really long,” and I had to agree with him. It’s not even that long compared to other Star Wars movies, but I just felt like I was being yanked around by the arm throughout the entire run-time, so rather than feeling invested in what was happening, I found myself tuning out and wanting the filmmakers to just get to a point.

Overall, I really don’t think I can recommend this movie. Every Star Wars fan should probably see it, and it’s possible that quite a few of you might get more out of it than me if you disliked The Last Jedi and want to see a movie that “sticks it” to that movie for whatever reason...but even if you do, surely you would agree that stories should not be written like this, where one part is completely invalidated by another and there’s no build-up for anything that happens? Stories should not be just something that you’re passively pulled through by the author -- they should engage you: make you feel for the characters, make you think about its themes, make you guess what might happen next. A story doesn’t mean less if you can make educated guesses about where the story might go if you see where it began -- it also doesn’t mean less if it subverts old literary or canon tropes. But this movie didn’t subvert anything -- instead it openly contradicted and retconned just about everything in the last movie, to the point that Rise of Skywalker clearly wanted to be two movies but didn’t have enough development or care put into it that could prompt a real emotional reaction from its audience. In short, it ended up being an overly complicated, watered-down retread of Return of the Jedi with none of the power in its supposedly “bittersweet” ending. The first two installments in this trilogy got me excited for a new take on Star Wars, to the extent that I for the first time actively looked into the fandom surrounding the films instead of just enjoying the films on my own. It’s therefore quite disappointing to me that the trilogy had to end on such a weak, petering note.

Overall Grade: D

#the rise of skywalker #star wars #star wars spoilers #spoilers #opinion #analysis #oh boy here i go #reviews #anti-reylo #anti-kylo ren

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lajulie24 · 4 years

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TROS thoughts (spoilers)

- I mostly enjoyed it, but honestly I think that’s because I’d gone in with the attitude that the entire sequel trilogy is really well-financed fan fiction with some new characters I really like.

- But fuck you JJ for that stupid kiss. I saw it coming a mile away and was like, please don’t, please don’t, aw fuck me they did.

- Rey did a lot of cool stuff, and I LOVED that Leia was training her in the Force. Also Leia had a lightsaber!

- I’m very mad at how JJ walked up to Force-sensitive Finn like six times, and then did NOTHING with that.

- Justice for Rose Tico, who had like four fucking lines. I need to write a bunch of Rose-centric fanfic now.

- I liked Jannah a lot, but why TF are you introducing all these fucking new characters in the last movie and then giving us five seconds of story with them? Her story could have been so cool!

- I definitely approve of how they took out Hux. Thanks for not making him a hero, but a petty bitch who just wants to give Kyle Ron his comeuppance. And then just dies. Ha!

- I’m not sure how I feel about the Han thing. I had a feeling it was coming, and I didn’t hate it, but it mostly makes me mad about what they did to Han in TFA again.

- That’s actually how I feel about this whole Kylo/Ben redemption shit. Kudos to Driver, who really did do a good job, but basically EVERYONE had to die to service some basic white dude with anger issues in his road to redemption. Han, Leia, Luke, half the Resistance.... so dumb. Rey almost died multiple times because of him.

- The Leia stuff I think they did the best they could with. I cried when Chewie mourned her especially (although that kind of made me sad about both Carrie and Peter Mayhew, so bonus tears).

- If Han’s memory was talking to Ben I kind of wish he’d said something like “your mother and I are together now” or “your mother is gone, but she’ll always be with you.” The way it went, it kind of made Leia’s death to serve Ben, which...no. Leia had a life that was not just about serving others.

- Speaking of Chewie, I almost cursed aloud when it looked like they made Rey kill him. This is worse than dropping a moon on him.

- What was up with the FinnRey constant tease? It was like someone was writing a Finn/Rey fic and then Kylo wrote the last chapter. It’s wartime, folks. Tell people what they mean to you now.

- Not to mention the FinnPoe tease.

- Also, what the fuck was up with Poe’s characterization? We see some of his TFA characterization, then it’s like he gets haunted by the ghost of TLJ and turns into an asshole for a while. Then real Poe is back.

- Also, I will rant more about this elsewhere, but clearly the supposed Story Group at LF is just sitting around smoking weed instead of making sure the novels and the movies and the tie-ins all tell a consistent story. They jossed most of Poe’s backstory from Before the Awakening and several parts of Bloodline, and probably some other things too. (Of course, if anyone had read Before the Awakening they might not have given Poe a very similar lesson he had to learn in TLJ.)

- A spice runner? The fuck? Also, Poe can be his own character, you don’t have to turn him into Han Solo In the Mos Eisley Cantina, okay? Han had character development beyond that, btw. (Begins to draw up plans for Poe fixit fics...)

- So....Force Ghosts can....catch lightsabers and lift things with the Force now? The fuck? (Although thank you for at least partially redeeming TLJ Luke. Though his hair was atrocious.)

- Everyone in the Force has bad hair. Luke, Han...Leia probably has split ends now.

- I was worried about what would happen with Lando, but they did use him pretty well. Definitely liked the Lando tour to drum up support around the galaxy.

- FIVE SECONDS OF WEDGE!

- Too much Greg Grundberg. Sorry, I’m just not a fan.

- Where was Jess Pava? Karé Kun? You have a jazillion characters in the comics and tie-ins, why not use them? Of course, this means they didn’t die, soooooo.....

- I kind of had a similar quibble with the “strike me down and I win” business with Palpatine as I did with the Luke scene in ROTJ. So, they can’t strike you down because then the lightsider goes dark and you win, and they can’t just not fight because you win, so why are we even bothering to have this conversation?

- The “what’s your last name, Rey?” business was kind of forced, especially since there are so many people in the GFFA who only go by one name. Do people go around asking Chewie for his last name all the time?

- I did love that the new trio actually spent time together and went on adventures. And except for some of the arguing that seemed a bit forced (for a while I was afraid they were trying to give Poe and Rey a HanLeia on Hoth thing except without any of the affection), overall they were pretty great.

- They did go to some cool places. Although if that was Endor, it really got fucked up by the Death Star, huh? And do you have to kill a planet right after you visited there? Seriously?

- It takes some of the impact out of the destruction of a planet when you just off them constantly.

- I’m still deciding how I feel about Young Luke and Young Leia CGI business. They were a bit cartoony looking.

- The Jedi voices thing was cool. I liked the emphasis that Rey wasn’t alone.

- I really liked Rey’s staff lightsaber. Making it her own. Cool.

#star wars #the rise of skywalker spoilers #tros spoilers #the rise of skywalker #star wars thoughts #star wars spoilers #rise of skywalker spoilers #it wasn’t bad

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disasterpurplebois · 4 years

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Spoilers for TROS. I have opinions, please come talk to be about them.

Apparently this is a really unpopular opinion but I actually liked TROS. There were a couple things I could have done without, and it did not necessarily nail shut all the questions fans had. But I do think it left it open for more storytelling in the future.

1: Bendemption

Overall, I am happy that Bendemption happened but I wish he didn’t die at the end? I thought it was a little much for them to he’s dead-oh wait, she’s dead-oh wait, oh no yeah he is dead

2. Reylo

I was never a fan of this ship. So I’m not super happy that they just threw that kiss in at the end and then Ben keeled over.

3. Legacy Cameos

Fucking SPOT ON. I was sobbing when Han came back to help Ben. “I know” COME ON it was perfect. I thought they used Carrie’s extra scenes perfectly. Chewie was amazing as per usual. Luke redeemed his TLJ persona well. I would have actually liked to SEE Anakin and Qui Gon....

4. Stormpilot vs Finnrey vs whatever the other ship names are

I think they left it pretty open-ended tbh. That threesome hug at the end? You bet your ass I ship them as a thruple now. Their banter throughout the movie was amazinggg, I loved it so much. But I am upset that we never got to hear what Finn wanted to tell Rey.... I can assume what it was but I’m disappointed that they gave us the Reylo kiss instead of that declaration. It should have been both or nothing

5. New and side characters

Could have been expanded upon more, felt a bit like the Rose storyline was pushed to the side. I liked the shoulder touch from Finn, made me feel like they parted as amicable friends (not that they were together at all really), happy to see that she was more mature and goal-driven this movie. Honestly, I would love to see and movie or mini series about Jana and the other ex-stormtroopers

6. Rey Palpatine

I was totally convinced Rey was a clone, esp because of the scene in TLJ in the cave where she asks to see her parents and just sees herself... idk how I feel about her being Palpatine’s granddaughter... need to stew on this more.see the movie again

7. Rey and Ben being connected, force things

I feel like that should have been explained more. I also feel like it should have been a both die or both live situation. I’m not really sure where Rey’s story goes now without Ben. Does she continue what Luke started and train new Jedi? I think Ben would have been essential in helping with the more difficult students who felt pulled to the dark side. Also, where is the balance now? If Rey is a Jedi the there should be a dark force she will have to contend with now. Or, not that I wanted this to happen to her, but by eliminating the Sith she should have also eliminated the Jedi. The force would still be a thing, people would still be force sensitive but there would be no dark or light side

8. Hux

OH HELL NO. They made him a spy and didn’t fucking explain it???? Like when did he turn? I assume it was after Ben became supreme leader because he said “I just want Kylo Ren to lose” but they didn’t really explain his motivation beyond that. Like what what his plan? Or was he so single-minded about destroying Kylo Ren that he didn’t think about his position after the downfall? IDK man, this needed some more. I thought his death was rushed, not dealt with very well. I feel like he was a bigger character than that, to just be shot, end scene.

9. That kiss

the background lesbian kiss at the end was NOT an acceptable substitute for Poe and Finn, I’m sorry, I would have preferred they didn’t have it at all. Well... maybe not. I appreciate the effort. But I still would have preferred Stormpilot

#the rise of skywalker #star wars #swedit #trosedit #spoilers #tros spoilers #reylo #bendemption #finnrey #stormpilot #finnpoe #hux #rey skywalker #ben solo #kylo ren #luke skywalker #leia organa #han solo

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thefudge · 4 years

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‘aight i saw this movie finally (the pirated version, cuz i dont shill anymore) and

it was okay. chaotic and uncoordinated and clearly unplanned - i mean it reeks of “throw everything at the screen because we’re out of time” - but i enjoyed parts of it and i can see a good movie buried under all of this lost potential. in order to make TROS good, however, you’d have to rewrite the whole trilogy. you’d also have to rethink this world. i think the folks in charge committed a “prequels” error in thinking that the universe of star wars matters more than its characters. so you got all these kooky planets and alien species, and you’ve got side-quests and a dozen new characters/creatures, added without forethought or real stakes, just to show us how big the star wars playground is. whereas, going to a new location should be about the characters first, and the location second. lucas did the same in the prequels: crammed every frame with a million things because he had a thirst for his own universe, but at least he was passionate. disney is just calculated.

i do think this movie’s better than the prequels lol, it’s just that it could have been proper good if they didn’t try to appease the fans so much and play it safe. i’ve written about kylo/ben’s death in other posts and what i think about his character. as for rey “palpatine”, ehhh. in the context of the movie i give them points for trying their best to sell it, but it would have been far FAR more powerful if she really was nobody. if you wanted a compromise, she could’ve been palpatine’s experiment or a clone, and that would’ve made her “nobody”, while also his creation. but i would’ve preferred it if she really had nothing to do with all of this BS. because a) it’s obvious they didn’t plan rey palpatine from the start, and b) if they did, it was very poor storytelling. the palpatine reveal should’ve happened in the second movie so that rey could actually react to it, so that the conflict about her dark lineage could be explored in depth. TLJ!rey seemed at peace with finding out she’s nobody, like that was her closure. to retcon that in the 3rd movie just because some folks didn’t like TLJ is cowardly. if they really wanted to do rey palpatine, they should’ve committed to it. idk which reviewer mentioned smth about how rey’s past ultimately was more important for these people than rey herself. they invested so much in this “secret” that they kind of forgot about her as a person. i wish these movies weren’t just her running around, mouth agape, chasing this illusory secret. TFA!rey, before she got dragged into this legacy shit, was far more interesting. rey skywalker is also just...really weak. i get what they were going for thematically, but again, the stronger message would’ve been: “i’m rey. just rey”. earlier she gave the same answer to that little girl in “burning man” village, but feeling sort of ashamed about it. now at the end she should’ve said it proudly. “i’m rey, just rey, and that’s enough.” but what do i know. old lady sigh

i liked some of the action sequences and the indie “a new hope” vibe of the resistance. i didn’t like the side-trips and all the macguffins, kerri russel’s character was...really unnecessary, i’m sorry, janna was fine, at least she made more sense in the story. and rose was shafted because of racist assholes on the internet. OLD LADY SIGH.

i liked the reylo interactions and their saber fights (when she stabbed him with his own saber? noiiiiice), but i think it would’ve been cooler if they’d kissed during one of those fights, actually. the kiss at the end was nice...but as always with these two, it felt very kindergarten to me. i’ve complained elsewhere that they keep making them act like uwu shy space babies. i would’ve liked a hate/love kiss mid-battle and for them to pull back sort of shocked but unrepentant. a lot of their fights had that kind of UST and i think that’s where they should’ve capitalized on it. but i guess that’s too sexy for disney. OLD LADY SIGH. i would’ve preferred a more sober moment at the end, like touching foreheads as he dies or smth, because lol it was inadvertently funny how quickly he died after they kissed, the tonal dissonance was aaall over the place.

OH and finn/poe’s dynamic in this movie was weirdly belligerent and i didnt get it. maybe because these two didn’t get to spend enough time together in TFA or TLJ to set this up, but having them act like #married rebel veterans who’ve been together for years and resent each other was...weird. they jumped into this snippy, almost aggressive banter waaay too fast. i know folks think they should’ve let them be gay, and while i would not be opposed since they have a lot of chemistry....i...actually....maybe....ship finn with rey more.

yes folks, this movie actually made me ship finnrey more.

i think it’s the fact that they finally addressed force-sensitive finn, although they did it in a pretty lame fashion. but at least they did (there were many missed opportunities where finn could’ve acted on his force-sensitivity. that scene where rey and kylo both wrestle-levitate that ship in the sky...and finn just watches from the sidelines...instead of trying to control it too...OLD LADY SIGH). anyway, rey and finn’s connection within the force was subtle and i liked it. i liked the unspoken yearning between them that felt a bit more mature here than in previous films. the final 2019 twist is that i’m tentatively back on finnrey (2015 me also liked them but i quickly lost interest when finn was infantilized and then put into a coma...).

i DIDN’T like that finn/rose was totally forgotten (not a pair i ship but rose nearly died for him...wtf). and i also don’t think the finn/rey/poe trio works...as a trio. there was this painful scene towards the beginning of the movie where poe and rey started levelling playful insults at each other and it was awwwwfuuuuul. it felt like recycled marvel humor. and it got worse when it was the three of them bantering. they could have been a really fun trio if they had actually spent more time together in previous movies. here it felt really forced, sorry.

oh yeah, the chewie medallion scene...less painful than i thought it would be. chewie mourning leia, though? oooouch, i felt that. probably only really heartfelt moment in this movie (i’ve written elsewhere how i think the ben/han moment was robbed of its weight, though i can see why people love it).

in terms of comedy, though, hux’s death has to be number one.

anyway! glad this is over and done with. maybe now they’ll start telling star wars stories that don’t always involve the “empire” and the rebels or the fkin skywalkers. here’s to hoping.

and whew, thank god for fanfics

#tros review #tros spoilers #tros #my thoughts #sw

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shizekarnstein · 4 years

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At first I had doubts about posting this bc as a prequel fan I GET how annoying is to have to read and listen as so many ppl at once make fun and nickpick everything about a movie you like but... god was this bad. Like so so bad.

Lets start with the opening credits. I honestly start laughing right there. Palpatine pulls as Moriarty and leaves a threatening message announcing his return and im ????? HOW DID THAT HAPPEN AND WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME INSTEAD OF S H O W I N G AAAAAAH. As soon as I saw that I knew I was in for an unconfortable ride.

I'll try to make this short.

Things I liked: aka the Good.

For the first time in years C3PO was actually funny? He made me laugh fulltime.

The new droid. Protect it pls.

Reys training montage.

Hans cameo. Especially his I know.

Luke and Leias flashback even if kind of contradicts everything about ST Leia but more on that later.

Force ghost Luke.

?????

Oh god I can't think of anything else????

Lando and his like three lines.

Oh I supposed all the people arriving to end the new sith fleet or whatever was cool if kind of unrelevant. Yes disney we know it's up to us regular people teaming up to put a stop to tyrannical regimes but the OT already told that. And better.

Palpatine's evil bitch energy. On that note I also liked Hux petty and dramatic energy.

The seeds for Kylos conflict were there more or less for the wholr three movies so AT LEAST that arc felt somewhat logical. Even if the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

At least the final shot was pretty??????

Oooh and Chewie's medal.

Things I didn't like: aka the Bad.

Lack of any semblance of glue connecting the story as a whole. For me at least it felt like a lot (and I mean a lot) of disconected threads and plot points one after each other.

John is a phenomenal actor but omg the "trio scenes" are horrible. I tried but I couldnt feel a single thing watching them. Their lines also felt so empty to me. In general I didn't connect with any of tje dialogue.

Finns arc is?????? Horrible.

Same as Poes (even is Oscar is like extra sexy this time around). Please stop trying to make him the new Han Solo.

Rose. Like cmon she deserved a better role.

The whole lets erase 3pos memory arc.

Rey can use force lighting.

Honestly I hated all the storylines.

Rey and Kylos fight in the watery version of Mustafar.

Palpatine is... just there. No explanation whatsoever.

REY PALPATINE.

His weird ass ritual like sooo unnecesary pls.

The force reviving people just bc rip Anakin.

It's not as if they didn't have the budget to make all the forces ghosts they wanted so WHY ONLY VOICEOVERS IM SO MAD.

The exegol plot was just such a mess. And boring. This is one of my major problems with the movie: I had never been so bored watching sw in my entire life. I almost fell asleep multiple times. Why.

LEIA BEING A JEDI CONTRADICTS LIKE EVERYTHING OF THE PREVIOUS MOVIES LIKE. AND HER REASONS FOR QUITTING IM. It was all in vain. Also omg they should have killed Leia in TLJ and be done with that bc her scenes in ROS are so so messy.

How they rushed Kylos redemption like. Well you healed me and my mother died and after interacting with this hallucination of my father (whom I killed btw just bc for the evil lols) I guess I don't want to opress the galaxy anymore.

Rey returning to Tatooine to bury the lightsabers pls.

REY PALPATINE.

Also wtf is that narrative: we, the palpatines, love our daughter very much. So we are going to sell and abandon her. For her own good.

Also ew Palpatine had a biological son. Who apparently wasn't as important as his granddaughter or something.

ASSPULLS EVEYWHERE.

And now the Funny:

C3PO is the MVP. srsly he was the only character I liked in the whole movie. What a legend.

Kylos new mask with red veins like omg I was laughing so hard

HUX BEING A PETTY BITCH AND ONLY CARING ABOUT KYLOS RUIN. AND THEN HE FUCKING DIES. I stan.

When they ran out of Carrie Fisher footage and compensated by throwing some pillows under a blanket and tried to make me feel something for "leias body".

The mustafar watery edition.

Rey being so angry all the fucking time.

Finn in general was a joke. Sorry finn fans.

The dialogue was so forced I coped by laughing all the time.

Palpatines evil lair.

THE KNIGHTS OF REN WERE SO USELESS OMG.

The tiny alien whose name I forgot.

Chewies resurrection.

The final showdown.

REY PALPATINE.

Guys I can't wrapped my head around the fact PALPATINE FUCKED.

When Ben dies and zaz his and leias bodies dissapear I laughed so hard the guy who was sitting at my right (who btw fell asleep in the middle of the movie 😂) startled.

So as you can see... i had to use humour as a coping mechanism to even endure this movie. They truly ruined Anakin and Luke so I guess the ot and pt are a waste of time. Anakin didn't destroy palpatine. Leia and the rest couldnt do shit to at least preserve the so hard won peace. Also rip padme im sorry the secret spell to revive the dead was invented like 50 years later.

#sw spoilers #ros spoilers #star wars #the rise of skywalker #my opinion #i really hope there are ppl who liked it bc good for you!! im so happy if you liked it

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okk--maaan · 4 years

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Adam Driver Tag Challenge!

Oh man! I was tagged into the ring by @mrsclydelogan @adam-driver-baby AND @babbushka! Thank you my sweet sweet friends! I’m about to pour my heart out about my beloved AD lmao

When did/What was your first film in which you discovered Adam?

Honestly I think the first thing I saw him in was TFA. Then TLJ rolled out and I was like ‘okay I’m listening’. And I jumped on The Dead Don’t Die (also cause Bill Murray). I was hooked.

Do you remember what your first impression was? What was it?

I didn’t think much of him at first lmao! I was like where’s Leia, where’s Han, where’s Chewy? Where’s my badass new lesbian Jedi? But that ALL changed as I got further into his filmography. In this essay, I’m going to talk about....

Favorite Adam Driver Movie?

I’m gonna have to go with TDDD. I loved him as kinda goofy kinda innocent Ronnie. (And again, Billy Murray, Tilda Swinton, Chloe Sevingy Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, RZA?? C’mon!)

Favorite Adam Driver character?

Oh you mean my husband, Charlie Barber? Yeah Charlie fo sho!

Kylo’s right behind him though.

Least favorite Adam Driver character?

Yikes I’m gonna have to say Jude. As a character, he was just icky and not good.

Sackler also got...questionable.

Favorite SNL skit?

Is the Chill Monologue an option?

Man BK Joe always gets me. I just love the sheer stupidity of it all. The stupid accent, the stupid outfit, the stupid half-up do. Fuckin BUSCOOTI COOKIE! I quote it all the time. (sorry Zannah lol)

Least favorite SNL skit?

Hmm probs the Cheer one. Don’t get me wrong, it had it’s moments but it mostly felt like the same joke over and over and over (and over) again. Plus that wig was weird lol.

Favorite Adam Driver hairstyle?

Long long long! Just like the rest of him! And just kinda pushed over. Yes. I think about Clyde and s6 Sackler hair a lot. A LOT. I- I- I have no words.

Least favorite Adam Driver movie?

TROS 🙃

I also wasn’t a huge fan of What If? Thought it was kinda boring.

On a scale of 1-10, how much do you like him?

Umm 100/10! Would totally recommend. I just adore the way he takes each of his roles. Always finds a way to make them personal, but easily accessible for a larger audience at the same time. And he has this honesty and authenticity to him that I feel you don’t get from many other actors. I hope he doesn’t lose that as he becomes more well known. And he funny. Love his dry ass sense of humor. Extra points for his face.

Do you think he’s a good actor?

Abso-fuckin-lutely! I feel like he puts so much effort and emotion and depth and thought into each one of his characters. Commitment? Yeah he’s got it. He’s so good at giving just enough of a character that you leave wanting more. Wanting to know more about that character as a person. I would love to get the chance to see him on stage.

Do you think he’ll ever win an Oscar?

Yeah...eventually lol. But we all know how that goes.

What is a role or character you would want to see him play?

I can’t think of any specific roles off the top of my head. But I hope he opens himself up to a more diverse range of directors and co-stars.

IF YOU DO THIS CHALLENGE, DO NOT REBLOG THIS, PLEASE MAKE YOUR OWN POST!

If you’re also an AD lovin homie, lemme hear your thoughts on these questions!

#tag game #adam driver #adam driver characters

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callioope · 4 years

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Okay, here were my thoughts, just, very disorganized and a bit emotional, but immediate thoughts

I think it’s really apparent that the sequel trilogy had very little coherent upper management direction. The problem comes from the top. They weren’t focused so much on story or character as they were fan service, and that strings through all 3 movies. We know from the beginning that JJ talked about how they wanted to use Luke in TFA, but he was too powerful and kept overshadowing everything. So they wrote his scenes as they did for this external reason, and wrapped the story around that. And that’s a mistake. It doesn’t grow organically from “okay what did these characters actually do next?”

How does Luke process his father’s redemption and death? And what is his purpose now?

How does Leia process this news that Luke is her brother and Vader was her father?

How do they both process their mother’s legacy?

I will not stand for this Padme erasure like she means nothing in this bloodline

Like Shmi means nothing

Mothers, apparently, mean nothing in this series!

And the idea that Palpatine and Snoke were able to exert their will on a person in another part of the galaxy through the Force, and that the Force essence of Anakin Skywalker was just let that happen?

That Luke and Leia wouldn’t figure out a way to address this before it got to the moment that canon claims it did?

For Force sake people, someone please acknowledge the existence of t h e r a p y

I mean, Mothma did

Sorry, I’ve derailed and I’m not really talking about The Rise of Skywalker.

At any rate. Lando is cool. Threepio, the galaxy does not deserve you and I’m sorry you always have to be the butt of everyone’s jokes. I will headcanon that the tension between Poe and Rey is because they both love Finn, but by the end of the movie the trio is All Good.

I liked the scene with the serpent, it was reminiscent of Ezra, so that was cool.

Where is Ezra?

I don’t understand how the Death Star stayed so well intact after that explosion. Like, that’s something that troubled me about the trailers, and still bothers me.

Jannah was cool but per usual we didn’t really get much of her.

I thought it was a shame that Rose’s part was diminished. Look, I didn’t like what they gave her in TLJ, but they could have remedied that by giving her a cool part. Why couldn’t she have gone with them? IDK.

Chewie collapsing when Leia passed GUTTED ME

But not as much as Rey burying Luke & Leia’s sabers at the Lars homestead and their Force Ghosts showing up and REY SKYWALKER

I did love the flashback of Luke training Leia

And I love that Leia trained Rey! i loved that!

Rey, Finn, Poe, they all continue to be compelling characters, even if we don’t know that much about them, the actors have great chemistry and I think that gets a little under utilized, but the actors make the most of their scenes together.

I didn’t see the ghost and that made me sad

OKAY finally. so. I did appreciate that all the Jedi kind of lived through Rey and I loved hearing all their voices -- namely I heard Kanan and Anakin and it was GREAT -- but I’m also like... so wait are they really all... gone?

I refused to believe that Ahsoka is gone

And Ezra

It’s just. It’s really reductive that they just seemed to have killed everyone. Again, I think it’s apparent that they really just wanted to write an OT era film, but they wanted to cast Mark Hamill, Carrie Fischer, and Harrison Ford, and so.... they just hit the reset button on the galaxy and I think that’s too much. They didn’t think deeply enough about the actual state of the galaxy before they pushed out TFA, and it really shows. I think too many big decisions were left up to the directors when Lucasfilm really needed to take responsibility and accountability for that.

I’ll say this. I do buy the Palpatine stuff. That dude is evil and powerful enough, I believe it. Oh, and they did a great job on lighting him. And his face. It reminded me of how they animated him in Rebels, and I dug it. EDITED: okay let me make clear. I don’t buy the REY Palpatine stuff. (Guys, we SAW how fandom reacted to the whole Voldemort had a daughter thing. Why did you think this was a good idea?) I’m saying, I could believe he clung to life somehow.

Oh, yes. and most importantly. FOREVER MIFFED that we never got Mara Jade. That’s a huge, huge whiff on Lucasfilm’s part. I can’t even.

PS one more things. R2 and 3PO are not best friends they are married get it right

Oh and PPS I never ever ever will care about Kylo Ren. Like. As Kylo he just creeps me out a lot. The way he talks to Rey is so incredibly cringy, it’s very squick for me. Han and Leia deserved better. Would have raised better. By that I mean if he really struggled with the Dark Side they would have handled it better. and helped him better. it’s just. it’s like how people say. If your conflict is because people just aren’t talking .... it’s a bit contrived, isn’t it?

#tros spoilers #star wars spoilers #star wars #these are not my full thoughts just everything I can get out NOW #i'm also tired #it's 1 am #tros

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jenniferladybug · 5 years

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Essay Wars - it’s a doozy

Last night my friend got in a texting debate about the story structure and character developments of Star Wars (a majority of it Kylo Ren). Well, what started off as my vigorous texting writing turned into full-blown essay responses.

Alright, let’s get into how this actually happened.

First, I was so excited about The Rise of Skywalker Final Trailer and I began to sing praises for Kylo Ren/Bendemption. My friend did not like that...so I whipped out the big guns.

I began to send scattered texts about certain things, mostly pertaining to:

Kylo Ren was turned to the dark side before he was even born via Bloodline, where Leia describes a dark presence over her womb.

Someone must be impersonating Darth Vader when Kylo goes to the Vader mask for advice.

Leia and Han were emotionally neglectful/did not know how to raise their son in the right way, mixed with brainwashing lead to Kylo Ren.

The Jedi are not good for the galaxy (yes, yes I know, but see my explanation down below...if you last that long)

Kylo wants to let the past die and start fresh with a new ‘order’, leave behind the Sith, Jedi, First order etc.

I also rambled on about a few other things in separate texts, but that is the gist of it.

So, in response to my scattered texts I received this from my friend Sammy, and oh boy was I ready:

So, let’s start with the story of Ben. The dark side since before he was even born thing is interesting and the fact that he’s been influenced his entire life by it is something they should have made much more clear in the films. That’s actually one of the problems I have with this new expanded universe- it just seems like damage control for the movies. The Previous EU EXPANDED everything, giving backstory to the characters we know and understand, in addition to secondary characters. Hell, they even gave us new characters as well but they never negated or changed the meaning of the films which is the bread and butter of the franchise, so if this super important info is coming from the book I think that’s just silly. You really shouldn’t have to read the novel iteration to understand what the movie did a bad job of interpreting. But I digress, that is some crucial info…

The Vader mask scene and the theory that it’s someone else like Snoke who has been pretending to be Vader is interesting, and I buy that, but like…Kylo didn’t know Vader was redeemed? Did Luke, Leia, Han, Chewy, Lando, Akbar, Wedge, or like literally anybody else form the Rebellion forget to tell him that? Big yikes.

IMO, feeling “misunderstood and neglected by his parents” isn’t a valid excuse for him to kill his own dad and being ok with his mom getting bombed to hell. Idk, you can ask why it’s ok for us to forgive Vader through his redemption arc but I think comparing his experiences to Kylo’s is like comparing apples to oranges. Vader was a BAD guy, but he ended up doing the ultimate GOOD thing in the end, and then the prequels fleshed out how he became bad intangible way, which to be fair, Kylo doesn’t have. But still, this is why most fans don’t take him seriously.

About the Jedi not being good- I challenge your credentials. “For a thousand generations the Jedi knights have been the guardians of peace and justice for the Old Republic”, then they were hunted down and everything turned to shit. And both in this canon and the previous one, it’s wildly considered that the few thousand years preceded the events of the movies things were super peaceful all things considered when the Jedi were in charge…and the Sith traditionally only operates in agents of 2. So how come everything was so peaceful for a thousand generations when there were a million Jedi and 2 Sith…ying yang in this case is bollocks.

And if Kylo really wants to “Start fresh”, why’d he start by becoming Supreme Leader of like the Star Wars version of ISIS? This is something we’ll need to find out in this next movie. I agree, his motive is to dismantle the Jedi and Sith way and create something else entirely, but the second Rey says “nah” he goes back to how he was. It’s not looking good.

The George Lucas rhyme thing lets not forget he’s talking about Episode 1 which was arguably one of the worst Star Wars movies made and he ended it with “hopefully it’ll work” and then grimaces…IDK bud lmao. And I doubt back in 1977 he knew there was going to be an episode 9 because he didn’t even know what he just made was Episode 4! It definitely was never a 9 episode arc from the get-go. Now, I know for certain after the prequels he had another trilogy in mind, and when he sold the rights to Disney he did hand them his drafts and notes, but even Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, admitted in his new book, they didn’t follow those drafts AT ALL. LIKE NOTHING. And he said that George felt betrayed. This idea of a new trilogy is something that was created in 2012, but I suspect they have been making this up as they went. After this last movie, Disney scrambled to get JJ Abrams back and figure out how they were going to get everything back on track. Daisy Ridley herself said JJ wrote a story for each of the 3 new movies, but Rian ended up created his own completely. I think that alone shows that production for these movies has been inconsistent, I don’t buy this was all part of some 9 series plan with a definitive beginning, middle, and end from the get-go.

Not sure what Rey’s lineage is, we’ll find out for sure in this next movie. I read one theory that Palpatine created her sorta through the force like many people think he did with Anakin.

So that was what I was up against.

Let’s take a brief moment to appreciate this:

Okay now that that is done...great.

My turn!

Now, I wrote my response (copied below) at top speed in about an hour, so maybe some of the things I say start sounding rushed or not as fleshed out as they should be. But I cracked my knuckles and gave it a go:

I am the first one to advocate for a film to have the ability to ‘stand-alone’ in any particular universe, whether it be Marvel, DC, Hunger Games, and Star Wars. By introducing a backstory for Leia’s pregnancy and hers and Han’s marriage in ‘Bloodline’, LucasFilm is doing just that: giving a backstory. In both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, there is proof that Snoke is the one pulling the strings when it comes to young solo. In the first film, Leia is quoted saying to Han, “There’s still light in him I know it! No. It was Snoke. He seduced our son to the dark side”, and in the second film Luke is quoted as saying, “Snoke had already turned his heart”. It is made apparent that ‘Kylo Ren’ is the production of Snoke, and Ren suffers abuse both mental and physical from his master. Though this changes when Kylo finally becomes free of the shackles Snoke once had on him when Ren slices him in half. The look of shock and release on Ren’s face when he realizes what he’s done says it all. Who are we to judge someone who is freshly out of the control of their captor? By just watching the films it is clear that Kylo Ren is not fully in control of his actions and he is being manipulated consistently as shown by the quotes above. When having that manipulation in conjunction with the neglect of a parental figure, then you get the full-blown reality that is Kylo Ren.

Feeling “misunderstood and neglected by his parents” is a valid excuse for turning to the Darkside in the world of a fictional fairy tale. Keep in mind we are not in a reality where this is okay, yet the world in which Star Wars exists allows such things to be redeemable and explainable. Take for example when Padme knew about Anakin killing younglings; she wanted him to still come home because she ‘loved’ him. If he had turned back to the light at that moment she would have most likely accepted him back. It is a danger of the force. They are not dealing with everyday normal emotions; the force, as well as the genre of the franchise, creates a heightened sense of urgency which is apparent throughout the forty-plus years Star Wars has been around (hell, as long as any fairy tale has been around). When you point out that Vader did the ultimate good thing in the end, do you mean to save his son and push Palpatine down a duct? If so, then this would be his redemption which occurred in the last of the original trilogies. If you are to treat Kylo with the same rules as Vader, then we must give him a chance to ‘do the right thing’, something which the filmmakers have been steadily building his character-arc for. Vader did numbers ‘wrong’ things, some of them much worse than Kylo has done. But yet the audience still chose to respect him, even before the prequels which fleshed out the story of Anakin Skywalker.

Now, you may be correct in that Ben Solo knew of Vader’s redemption, and I misspoke, to which I am sorry. He, in fact, learned of his heritage when he was training with Luke at his academy when he received a letter from his mother. The contents of the letter are unknown, though it is assumed she told him of his heritage when he was in his late teens. This was only because one of her rivals she was campaigning against in the senate threatened to leak the knowledge to the public that Leia was the daughter of the infamous Darth Vader. Ben had no idea before-hand though, so once again we assume that this had some type of impact. Imagine finding out your grandfather was Hitler. Would that be fun? But, since we addressed the fact that external material should not need to be consumed in order for a film to make sense, then we should disregard any idea as to how Ben Solo came to learn of his heritage. It is not mentioned in the films, but it is a widely held belief by many in the fandom that if Kylo Ren knew of his grandfathers’ redemption then he merely took this as a lapse in judgment in his late years (especially since it is hinted to in the films that Ren is speaking to someone via the Vader mask). Perhaps said mask has been telling Ren lies in lieu of the true story of the redemption. But that is speculation. What is not speculation is the line Ren utters in The Force Awakens, “Forgive me. I feel it again... The pull to the light... Supreme Leader senses it. Show me again... The power of the darkness... And I'll let nothing stand in our way... Show me... Grandfather... and I will finish... what you started.” What we can tell from the film is that Ren is in a constant struggle to stay within the dark, and through his words, it is expressed how this warrants forgiveness. The second half of the statement is even more worrying in the fact that Ren says ‘show me again’, referencing a previous time this ‘Vader’ has shown him what the darkness entails. Will we find out in episode nine if there was an imposter (Palpatine?) feeding more lies and brainwashing to Kylo Ren? That means not only was he getting terrible treatment from Snoke, but from his ‘grandfather’ as well. Perhaps this is why in the final trailer for episode nine we see Rey and Ren destroying said helmet. Until the film comes out, this will still be a mystery.

In coming to why I believe the Jedi are bad, I side with Luke Skywalker on this one. As he says in The Last Jedi, “ At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out. It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader.” To that, Rey points out that it was also a Jedi who saved him. Which is true! Yet, the rules surrounding the Jedi order are such that allowed for Anakin to search elsewhere for support. True, he was very conflicted, but the Jedi are so extreme that they do not welcome outside opinions or thinking. You are either all light or you’re bad. There is no intermediary. That is why the answer is grey Jedi. I know those exist, and what needs to happen is a yin and yang between the light and the dark. Working together fosters acceptance and love within the galaxy. Even the symbol in the pool of the Jedi Temple in which Luke tucked himself away had a figure in a yin and yang pattern. “Powerful light and powerful dark...a balance”. Yet, any dark whatsoever that the Jedi see they stamp out.

When Anakin says, “If you’re not with me, then you’re against me”, Obi-wan responds with, “Only sith think in absolutes!”. Well, can you see the issue there? Obi-wan is also thinking in absolute. Using the word only further segmented and cast aside Anakin, by labeling him a lost cause. Such a similar thing happened with Kylo Ren and the incident with Luke at the Jedi Academy. The momentary lapse which Luke expressed to Rey was the tipping point. In Ren’s eyes, even his Master saw him beyond saving. And since everyone around him insists on thinking in absolute, then he must be bad according to them, right?

Slowly, Ren is beginning to realize there is another way, something not presently defined within the Star Wars universe. It is not Sith, it is not Jedi, it is not the First Order: it is the ‘new order’ which he proposes to Rey. Yet, he is not ready for redemption yet. The entire point of the scene was for Rey to realize that Kylo Ren cannot be saved by anyone but himself. This is a very powerful message and I am quite looking forward to seeing how his self-realization occurs in Episode Nine. Now, keep in mind that he had banked everything on Rey saying yes, and in his mind, she is “Still. Holding. ON!”, which she is, and he is right that it is holding her back. How can you expect someone from a family of yelling, angry people to get it right the first time? In fact, Adam Driver had to ask Rian Johnson if Kylo Ren had ever kissed a girl before. Kylo is not experienced in this ‘love’ world. He did not receive much love language from his absentee parents, so the only relationship he’s known for most of his teen and adult life is that of Snoke and General Hux. At that moment in which he wakes up to realize she is gone is one of abandonment and rejection. He thought he had found his match, the answer to his loneliness, and she snapped his lightsaber in two. He is basically throwing a grownup temper-tantrum, which is blatantly apparent in the standoff with Luke. When Kylo threatens everything, even ‘destroying’ Rey, Luke claims that everything Kylo says is “a lie”. It is clear in the last few moments of the film when Kylo is defeated and on his knees holding his father’s die that the audience begins to realize his anger was all a facade. In that shot, he is merely a lost and lonely boy realising the path he has chosen is wrong. The final force-bond between Kylo and Rey exhibits every one of those notions. There is no anger in his face, not very ‘destroy-ee’ of him, and he looks up with her with an almost longing. But when she sternly shuts the door on him, once again he is left alone, the die slowly fading from his gloved hand.

If that doesn’t sound like poetry then I don’t know what is! George Lucas was quoted saying in the behind the scenes of the prequels, “You see the echo of where it all is gonna go. It’s like poetry, sort of. They rhyme.” Similar themes and sequences occur within the franchise, and they have kept that alive at Disney Lucas Films, especially in regards to the parallels drawn between Anakin/Padme and Kylo/Rey. They even designed their respective costumes in a similar fashion. Kylo has his mother and father’s anger and stubbornness. They had a rough idea of where it was all going to go. And in regards to JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson, JJ Abrams was an executive producer on Episode 8 and had a say in the general outline of the plot. JJ had set up the relationship between Kylo and Rey in The Force Awakens, and Rian continued along that path. He followed the skeleton needed to get the plot from 7-9. But think about it, Disney would not allow Rian to just veer off the path completely. Yes he had some creative license but within parameters. Sometimes I don’t think people understand the workings of a large corporation with creative decisions. On a project like Star Wars there is always input from the higher-ups. In addition, JJ Abrams auditioned potential Kylo Ren actors with the script from Pride and Prejudice (Mr. Darcy of course). This is made clear in the writing decisions and parallels which have been made for that particular character.

Lastly, would you really want George Lucas at the helm of this new trilogy? People thought the prequels were terrible and Lucas went back and digitally altered the originals against the will of fans. He is not technically the best when it comes to scriptwriting (Exhibit A: “I hate sand, it gets everywhere!”) Also, Mark Hamill was interviewed in the early ’00s and said, "You know, when I first did this, it was four trilogies. 12 movies! And out on the desert, any time between setups...lots of free time. And George was talking about this whole thing. I said, 'Why are you starting with IV, V and VI? It's crazy.' [Imitating Lucas grumble,] 'It's the most commercial section of the movie.'” Yes, the first film was a stand-alone, since they had no idea they would receive any further funding. But then the immense success allowed for Lucas to develop the franchise further.

What I think people tend to forget is that Star Wars is a fairy tale, and it is not supposed to be about ‘a mass murder’ who is going to jail. It is supposed to be about redemption at its very heart. George Lucus had expressed that he intended Star Wars as a series for “twelve-year-olds”. This explains things like Jar Jar Binks and other bizarre choices he has made as a creator. Though this explains a lot of why most of the people who hate the franchise now are angry adults online who live in an overly politically correct world judging a fictional character who is in the middle of a character arc. As JJ Abrams had said in the director's commentary of The Force Awakens, “We looked at it like […] a fairy tale. What are the elements that you’re going to see that makes it this genre, this specific genre? […] You’re probably going to have a castle, and a prince and a princess, if you’re looking at a fairy tale. We wanted to give these fundamental, not cosmetic, but prerequisite elements.”

Okay, I’ve talked too much. I am going to end it there for now. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

Haha hope that was entertaining and that sparked some thinking and inspiration. I know I let my keyboard run away from me and please excuse the odd typo from time to time. Let me know your thoughts.

I mean just look at that beautiful man.

Love you all!

#reylo #star wars #kylo ren #rey #long reads #in defense of kylo #ben solo #george lucas #bendemption

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