#ying yang
A little bit of preface…
I started writing fiction when I was in the 4th grade. I can still vividly remember the assignment. I had a composition notebook and we had to write two pages front and back once a week. Everyone wrote diaries, but my life was so boring that I couldn’t fill two pages with the details of my day to day. Instead, I wrote my first story. I went from struggling to write two pages a week to writing 10 pages in one sitting (still front and back). I filled the notebook and started another.
I love to write. It feels like I always have. I’ve never stopped. It’s usually just an idea that I want to flesh out because it becomes this thing inside my brain that won’t leave until I give it life.
Aside from that notebook, that first story, I’ve never shared anything I’ve written with anyone outside of my very immediate family. I think it’s because I fear giving something I love so deeply to anyone other than the people I trust the most to deal with me gently.
But, fear aside, this blog is where I post all my thoughts on Star Wars. An idea formed that I couldn’t put away and my first bit of fan fic was the result. I’m going to post it, otherwise I’ll probably lose it to an outdated thumb drive like I have so many other things and I don’t want that,
So, if you like….
The Supreme Leader sat upon his throne with his head in his hand. The pain behind his eyes had bloomed shortly after the assembly gathered before him had begun to present their never-ending litany of updates, losses, failures, and concerns.
The meetings were daily, rarely productive, and Kylo had grown tired of them quickly. None of his considerable skills in the force could replace what had been lost when the Supremacy fell, a fact of which everyone seemed eager to remind him.
As Director Tannel droned on about shortages and sabotaged supply lines, a truth bloomed in his mind as well. He was not well suited for this type of leadership. Snoke’s aptitude for cruelty and control, his abundant power and the will to use it, had made him a more effective leader.
He craved the autonomy that being Snoke’s apprentice had given him. He had taken his ability to largely serve his own interests for granted. He had been able to pursue his revenge and anger with little question or interference, as long as it served Snoke’s agenda as well. With only a few exceptions, the objects of his venomous rage were gone and with them had gone a greater sense of purpose than he had expected.
His mind inevitably wandered to the many failures his young reign had already seen. The list replayed in his waking mind constantly, a mantra of self-loathing.
His failure to sense the scale and depth of deception on the part of Skywalker and the scavenger.
His failure to punish Skywalker.
Hi failure to end the Jedi.
His failure to end the Resistance.
His failure to end the war.
His failure to find the Resistance and escalate the war after the loss on Crait.
His failure to stop his personal furies from causing all his other endeavors from failing.
His failure to garner any kind of true respect from the other members of the First Order because of all these failures.
He reigned only through fear and force and failure.
His mother had known. Her lifetime of service had given her keen eyes for good leadership and she had not seen it in him. She had acted to spare him from the mundane tortures of it. At the time, he had resented her decision, seeing it only as a reflection of whatever inadequacies he had always had in her eyes. He was now able to recognize her wisdom.
The thought of her sent a spike through him that rippled into the currents of energy surrounding him. The anger was still there but what had been a roaring flame had dimmed to an ember, suffocated by a deeper pain. It was a regret to which he would never give voice.
Hope. The word floated up, spontaneous and unwelcome. He fought to keep the snarl from showing on his face. Whatever he might have taken from his mother had died with her on some remote and desolate planet whose name he might never know.
But not only her. A face, young and earnest and full of light now appeared before him. This time, he did snarl. He would not think of her.
“Supreme Leader?” The sound of General Hux’s voice, openly dripping with disdain and disappointment, snapped Kylo back to attention. Neither Ren, nor any other person present in the room, needed a power like the force to be able to interpret its tone.
A few of the others in the room shifted weight nervously, exchanging quick glances of concern for how the notoriously tempestuous leader would respond to such provocation.
Ren could sense their fear. It emanated from them, and everyone else, like a jagged edge that he felt caught upon at every turn. They all regarded him as a monster. They regarded Hux the same way and none of them wanted to be present for a confrontation between them.
Kylo raised his eyes to meet the general. Hux made no attempt to conceal the contempt that played across his features. Their relationship had always been hostile but it had, at the least, been functional. They had been begrudgingly united under Snoke as servants to his greater plan. It had required little direct interaction with each other, which had proven to be the only thing maintaining the fragile balance in the relationship.
His ascension to the throne immediately followed by his failure on Crait had changed that. That failure, which Hux had seemed keen to expose to the senior officers until Kylo choked the words from him, had come at the very admonitions that Hux had warned him against. I should have killed him, Kylo thought, but the words of his old master echoed in his mind.
It was true that the general’s single-minded pursuit of domination had produced technology beyond what anyone had thought possible. An animal like Hux, whose singular concern was the defeat of his prey, was an asset even if it considered everyone to be prey.
Kylo wondered if Hux could sense his murderous intent as he glared at him coldly. He had been aware of Hux’s intention to destroy him if an opportunity presented itself for quite some time. An instinct to detect and react to danger had awoken him suddenly in the throne room to find the pale man standing over him with death in his mind.
Scorn and disbelief had emanated from the General at Ren’s insistence that the inexperienced girl had defeated Snoke, Ren, and the entirety of the guard single handedly. Another failure, and a dangerous one.
“Something to add, General?” Kylo kept his tone bored; certain this would further agitate Hux.
“You seem displeased with Director Tannel’s report. A five percent production increase after losing the Supremacy is better than we could’ve hoped for. Leader Snoke wou…” The words were cut off by a gargled noise as Hux began to grow red.
Ren stood, his hand outstretched, as he said, “I am displeased by a great many things, least of all your insistence on pestering me with reports concerning how all of you are hardly managing to do the bare minimum of what you’re being asked to do and expecting to be praised for it.” He closed his hand a fraction and Hux’s eyes began to roll into the back of his head. It would be so easy. He was just a moment away from crushing the life out of this small, insignificant man when his head suddenly throbbed more painfully causing an explosion of white lights behind his eyes.
He released Hux, who gave a wet gasp and collapsed to his knees. Kylo regarded the rest of the room as he asked, “Anyone else?”
They gathered Hux and hurried from the room. The last thing Kylo saw was the angry and still red face of Hux glaring at him as the doors to the elevator closed. Like any predator, Hux hated to be dominated.
Kylo crossed the room to another lift, which led to his personal quarters. A medical drone would be able to deal with his headache in an instant, but he wanted relief from more than just pain. He stripped to the waist, laid down on his sleeping pallet, and closed his eyes.
“The fleet. There’s still time to save the fleet. Order them to stop firing.”
He turns away from the girl to face the still smoking corpse of his master. The force around him pulsates in a chaotic tumult of emotions; elation, resentment, relief, expectation, fear, hunger, power. It’s all so clear, the failures of history. The answers for the future. Luke had been right. His passive, limped handed approach was misguided but the necessary result was still the same. It had to end, all of it.
“Ben?” He barely hears the quiet plea. It echoes in the force around him, and his heart lurches. She had come to help him, had fought with him and for him. Nothing had ever felt more natural. Surely, she had sensed it as well. Whatever the cause, they were inexorably connected. He had found more than an equal, he had found an ally. He twists to face her.
“Please don’t do this Ben.” A familiar dread settles in his stomach as he watches the girl. Her fear and anguish are smothering him and, as he feels a tremor move through his body, his extended hand trembles. He can sense a hesitation in her, some small and quiet conflict.
“Please.” He speaks to that hesitation, and his voice breaks on the word as he unconsciously leans towards her.
Kylo opened his eyes to the dimly lit ceiling of his personal chambers. The dream enraged him. He had enough treachery in the world to contend with without his own mind betraying him during the scant hours he had to rest. More failures to add to the list.
He had been a fool. She was no different from anyone else. When she looked at him, she had seen a tool, a means to an end. Just like Snoke, just like his parents, just like the entire galaxy. She had not come for him, only what she could use him to achieve. How could Luke’s protégé do anything but betray him? How could he not have seen it?
But she left you alive, a tiny voice reminded him. It was a confusing and inconvenient truth. Perhaps,thought Kylo, Luke thought I would do more damage as a failure.
At the thought of his Uncle, the bitterness seethed and coiled in him like a living thing. He had been wholly defeated by his former teacher. The old Jedi’s trickery made Kylo look weak and foolish and had cost the First Order its most vital success thanks to Luke’s little spy. Luke’s every action had been designed to unhinge and humiliate him, down to the familiar worn dice he had so loved as a child.
The act had cost Luke his life but, even in that, there was little satisfaction. He had robbed Kylo of the hope of revenge, a primal need that had driven him and was now extinguished.
Luke died and became a greater hero, greater legend, than he had been in life. Had he been capable of separating himself from it, Kylo might have been able to admire the all encompassing brilliance of the strategy.
Instead, he focused his remaining rage on the image of the scavenger. There had been no communication in the months since Crait. On occasion he had sensed a familiar shudder in the force but, each time he had turned, nothing was there. The door remained shut, and he sensed the purposeful intention. She had neither the need nor the ability to manipulate him any further.
He closed his eyes, intent on banishing the turbulent and uncontrollable thoughts.
The landscape is beautiful. Its lush fullness reminds Kylo of his home world. The sky is deep blue, an azure rarely seen from the deck of a star destroyer. Shades of emerald and jade color the trees and other plant life, made electric by sunlight streaming through branches above. The air is warm but not stifling as a gentle breeze lifts the hair from his forehead.
A small pond lays ahead, its murky depths transformed by the golden crests of sunlight that travel on its waves. A slight figure sits beside the pond, her face lined in concentration as she levitates small rocks into the pond, creating ripples.
Kylo steps out of the shadow of the trees and the figure looks to him. Her smile sends a cold wave of fear and adrenaline through his body. He had expected anger, not only in her but in himself as well. This unexpectedly warm smile shakes him to his core. He reaches out, expecting to find deceit or well-masked hatred, but he feels only warmth, pleasure, contentment.
“Ben!” She calls to him, and waves him over. As he approaches, he sees her smile falter. She appraises him, and the smile is replaced with a frown of confusion. “What’s wrong?”, she asks.
“What do you mean?” He is pleased to hear that his voice remains steady. He cannot betray the deep unsettling in his spirit.
“You look…different. I don’t like it.”
Kylo looks down to see his usual heavy robes and gloves. Only his cape and lightsaber is missing. “Where are we?” He has an urge to lean over the edge of the pond and observe his reflection, but an instinct stops him. He is deeply afraid of what it will show him.
She looks confused again. “Are you going to ask me that every time?” She gives him a small smile and turns her attention back to the rocks. It seems she has decided to forgive his appearance.
“Is anyone else here?” Kylo lowers himself to the ground next to her, watching the movement in the ponds as the rock tossing resumes.
“Not right now.”
“Why are we here?”
“You can keep asking me that question and I can keep telling you that don’t I know any better than you do.”
“Do you know what planet we’re on?”
“No.”
“How often do we come here? Do I always come with you?”
“Ben!” She is exasperated “You’re ruining my concentration.”
Kylo is quite for a few moments before saying, “I would’ve thought tiny rocks like these would be no challenge for you after Crait.”
The hovering rock falls to the surface of the pond with a deep plop. She turns to him, all amusement gone as the color drains from her face.
“You’re not Ben.” She has gone very still, as though confronted by a dangerous animal.
“You’re right, I’m not.” Kylo intends for the words to carry menace, but they fall flat and out of place in the beauty of the setting.
She scrambles to her feet, moving quickly to put some distance between them. “How did YOU get here?” she demands angrily.
“I have no idea. I was hoping you could tell me.” They stare at each other before Kylo adds quietly, “You have nothing to fear from me. I don’t sense that I could harm you, even if it was my intention.”
At these words, she sneers but her shoulders loosen an almost imperceptible fraction. “I’m surprised you didn’t try to kill me.”
“Yeah, me too.” The words slip from his lips before he can stop himself. She recoils from him, mistaking it as a threat. Better she thinks it is, Kylo muses to himself. The truth is more dangerous. In the place of the rage and hatred he expected, the sight of her had brought only relief.
“What do you want?” She demands.
Staring into her eyes a thousand answers spill unbidden into his mind, but only a few seem reasonable. “Tell me about this place. Whatever you can.” Kylo sinks back down to the ground, only then aware that he had sprung to his feet at the same time she had.
She hesitates, unwilling to sit or move closer. Kylo can sense an internal debate and waits.
“I’ve already told you everything I know.”
“Is it only ever us?”
She shakes her head before saying, “I saw a pair of wolves once, they drank from the pond. Sometimes there are people.”
“Do you know them? Recognize them?”
“No, but they aren’t strangers either. They feel familiar.”
“What do they look like?”
“They look like people.” A touch of her earlier annoyance colors the tone and Kylo bites back a smile. “Except for one of them. He doesn’t look like anyone I’ve ever seen. He’s very small and old, and…green. He has a strange way of speaking.”
Kylo’s eyes widen at this. It’s not possible. “Talks like this, does he?”
“Yes! How did you know that?”
“His name is Yoda. He’s the Jedi master who trained Luke.” His teeth grit together on the name of his uncle.
There is a pause before she responds. “Luke is gone.” There is sadness and anger in her voice. “That should make you happy.”
“What about my mother?” He can see the sudden change of subject shocks her. She had expected a fight. Her whole body sags as if pressed under a great weight.
“Ben…I…”
“I know she’s gone.” Kylo interrupts. “After Crait I heard the distress call using her personal code. I had thought her dead already. When she passed into the force, I felt it.” He looks at the ground, afraid she would see his weakness at the memory. “Was it…peaceful?”
A wry smile forms on her lips as she steps closer. “You knew her, as well as anyone. What are the chances of that?”
He nods. “She wouldn’t have wanted peaceful. Good for her.” His mother had died as she had lived and there was honor in that. He swallows hard against the stone in his throat before asking, “Was it the First Order?”
“No. She was recruiting for the resistance. There was a turf war, a local thing. She got caught in the middle.” There is a long silence before she continues. “She still loved you, you know.”
When he doesn’t respond she presses on. “She left you a message.”
At this, his eyes fly to her face and he is startled to find that she is seated in front of him, just an arm’s length away. “What did it say?” His voice is hushed. Had the girl not moved, she surely would’ve missed the question.
“I don’t know.” Her eyes are sad as she answers. “It’s sealed, bio-encrypted to only open for a genetic relative, only you.”
“Where is it?”
“’I’ll bring it to you, someday. I promised her I would.”
“But you don’t have it here?”
“Of course not.” Her expression is confounded, as if she can’t believe he would even bother to ask her that question.
Kylo changes the subject again. “Where are your friends?” He cannot stop the note of derision in his voice.
“I don’t think I want to talk about them with you.”
An awkward silence settles over them. He uses the pause to glance around the area again. He looks for anything that might help him identify their location. The dense trees block the horizon and he can see nothing beyond them. There are no strange plants or animal life that might narrow down the search, no sounds.
“You really don’t know where we are? You’ve never seen this place before, even in a dream, like you did with the island?”
She gives him another strange look but does not respond.
“What do we normally do here? Or rather, what do you and Ben do here?” The shape of his old name is strange on his tongue. He can’t remember the last time he spoke it out loud.
“Mostly we talk.”
“About what?”
“The force. Our memories, our pasts. He teaches me about the Jedi, their history, how to build a lightsaber. He tells me stories about growing up with Han Solo as a father. ”
A wound, old and never healed, throbs inside Kylo. He knows that she can feel it. Suddenly, her hand extends and her fingertips trace the path of the scar she left on his face. “I had to stop you.” She whispers. The last person to touch him in such a way was his father, moments before he fell into oblivion at Kylo’s hand.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” His voice breaks but he has to ask. He has to know.
“Which time?” She asks, her lips curving into the ghost of a smile.
Kylo gives a sudden cough, the closest thing to laugh he can bring himself to do. “In the throne room. Why did you leave me alive? It was foolish. The right thing, the easiest thing, would’ve been to kill me.”
A single tear courses down her face as she regards him. “There are people who love you.”
“Not anymore.” The words echo in his mind with finality.
She rolls her eyes, but her face loses none of its softness. “There are people in this world who could love you still. I don’t have the right to end that. I would never want to be the person who takes that away from anyone, even you. Besides, I would never hurt a defenseless person.” She pauses as she regards him. “Are you going to make me kill you?”
The thought of death, of simply not being, sends a thrill through him. He knows she feels it and can only hope that she misinterprets it. Perhaps she will regard it as bloodlust, an eagerness to wage war on all she holds dear. On her. When he answers, he tells her the truth. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to. Whatever happens, I want you to know that.”
The words are so gentle and sincere that he lashes out without thinking, afraid that he will break apart if he does not. “Because you think there’s good in me, that I can be saved?” He snarls.
“Yes.”
“Then you’re a bigger fool than Luke was.”
She frowns deeply, clearly angry. “Then I’ll die a fool or you’ll die a fraud. That’s up to you.”
He chokes out another cough, amazed at the girl’s ability to be so disarming and so confrontational at the same time.
Her face grows sad and tired as she says, “It’s not too late.”
“You’ll help me?” He replies in a mocking tone.
“No. But you could help yourself.”
“Because you got what you needed from me, Snoke dead and your precious resistance spirited away in that scrap of garbage you love so much.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes it is. You came to the Supremacy to save your friends, save the resistance, maybe you thought it would even save the whole galaxy. You used me.”
“And you didn’t use me?” She is angry again. “You killed Snoke only to protect me, am I supposed to believe that? That there wasn’t some part of you that wanted to be free of him and used me as a distraction to do it?”
The silence boils between them, each furious at the other.
“I wanted to end the war, you’re right, but,” her voice breaks and her eyes fill with tears. “I wanted to do it with you, not in spite of you. I believed that you had the power to do it. I still do.”
There is a long and awkward silence before Kylo responds. “You’re right too, I did want him dead. I hadn’t resolved to do it until you came to the Supremacy though. I saw you in that ridiculous pod and I knew I’d have to kill him.”
“I don’t want to be your enemy.”
“Why not?” The words are a whisper.
“Because you’re a part of me.” Her tone implies that this answer is obvious. “Whatever those connections were, whatever this is, we’re a part of each other. And watching you destroy yourself hurts.” On the final word the tears spill down her cheeks.
Watching the girl weep, there is a sudden sting in his own eyes.
Awake and staring again at the ceiling, Kylo’s hands go immediately to his face and feel wetness.
It should feel like a betrayal, he thinks, but this is something else.
That’s a wrap!
Hearing that filming for Episode IX has finished has left me with a profound melancholy. It’s the same feeling I get when I start the final chapter of a book series I’ve been deeply invested in. There’s a strange grief in knowing your time with characters you’ve come to love is growing shorter and shorter with every word. Every step forward seals the fate of those characters into a finite and unchangable history.
I am not ready to let go.
Happy Valentine’s Day everybody!
Check out this gorgeous art work from the 2019 Star Wars celebration…
Credit: Cristiano Siqueira
Star Wars and Mardi Gras
Here’s Pt. 2 showing all the amazing things I caught at the New Orleans sci-fi parade
I really loved this about the parade, it was VERY Leia centric
More of the Star Wars stuff….
MY MOST FAVORITE!
They really like stickers, so many stickers
Holy water from the Supernatural crew and a wand from the Harry Potter’s
This cracks me up
All the other stuff, look at that puzzle!!
It was seriously a great time, every Star Wars fan should go to this parade!
The Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbaccus Pt. 1
I’m in New Orleans for some of Mardi Gras this year. The first parade of the season was last night and I think y’all would love it. It’s dedicated to all things Sci-Fi and fantasy but primarily focuses on Star Wars.
They have a theme every year, here’s 2019
Here’s a few pics of the characters and decorations from the parade:
And some of the non-Star Wars
But the ABSOLUTE best:
If you ever go to Mardi Gras you should check this parade out!
I’ll do a part two with the amazing throws they were giving out, y’all will love them!
I’ve been thinking about this moment a lot lately….
The heartbreak on Rey’s face is devastating. A single second or two of film but you can feel the lifetime of hope and grief and longing that has defined Rey. In one tiny instance you see what Rey knows she is losing and her fear of what’s to come next.
And yet, there is no rage or hatred in her expression. She hurts for Ben. Again, she shows compassion that could only spring from an often disregarded depth of strength that few possess. It’s so incredibly powerful.
She recognizes the potential of the moment as well. She slowly raises her hand, perhaps to slow time before they together decide the path that is to come. It’s as if there is a moment in which she believes she can simply will Ben to be the person she needs, but all the while understands that he isn’t. In some ways, I think it’s a beautiful mirror to the moment where Luke stood over Ben as he slept.
I think part of what has drawn me into this story so fully are these types of moments. In just a second, you really feel the tension of knowing how much is balanced on the thinnest edge, in just that single moment before reality falls to one path or another.
There have been so many moments like that throughout this storyline. That kind of story telling engages the viewer so much more deeply, to be able to see those “if only” moments and to comprehend their consequences so much more fully. It creates a sense of ownership in the viewer, that burden of knowing the pain and loss that might have been spared but for the difference of a single second.
You have too much of your father’s heart in you, young Solo.
I had been convinced we were going to get a title announcement at the very least during the Super Bowl. We figured out a few days ago that that wasn’t going to happen.
The got me thinking, when would they do it? It seems pretty obvious the trailer will probably be released at the Star Wars Celebration in April but that’s SO FAR AWAY.
I really think they’ll do the title announcement before but something like that usually coincides with some other major event.
Seems like Valentine’s Day is the only “major event” or holiday between now and April?
At first I was like, “That would be weird.” but then I thought, “What if it was released on VALENTINE’S DAY.”
Be still my reylo loving heart…..
Does anyone else get a racing pulse when you think about how the title reveal for Episode IX might happen ANY DAY NOW.
So let me get this straight….
Rey, who:
Did not like having her hand held
Did not kiss Finn on the mouth when thanking him and leaving OR when finding out he came back to save her
Did not kiss Han on the mouth for a job offer
Did not kiss Maz on the mouth for helping her
Did not kiss Luke on the mouth for agreeing to train her
Did not kiss Chewy on the mouth for copiloting or letting her Fedex herself to Kylo
Did not kiss Leia on the mouth for reassuring, leading, or training her
Literally never showed any sign of such questionable personal boundaries
Was brought back from the dead by the person who:
She daydreamed about touching
Felt an electric shock for
Was literally the soulmate of
Got flustered when seeing half nekked
Begged and pleaded to join her
Called HER HOME
And immediately kissed him because:
That’s what friends do to say thanks?
She’d been an ungrateful bitch up to that point?
She’s clearly the biggest cock tease in the galaxy?
Of all the delusional, unsupported, nonsensical, unmitigated bullshit…
Is it just me
Or does Ben Solo going ham with a white cross hilt lightsaber feel like a HUGE missed opportunity to anyone else??
What if this made a baby……?
#Should have let Rian do Episode IX.
#NotMyEpisodeIX
I’m too young to have seen Return of theJedi in theaters so it’s nice of JJ to remake it
Also, CrossFit Jabba:
JJ Abrams sucks at Star Wars. ♀️
Two days to go and I’m just going to leave this little gem here:
#lowkeyhorny
Amazing covers from the upcoming Rise of Kylo Ren comic.
Apparently Luke and a young Ben Solo tangle with the Knights on a mission in the unknown region.
I’m just going to leave these two, staring at each other, behind this line, here….
Same ship?
