permissions post (SPOILERS FOR ALL OF TRoS)

[patrilineal]

SPOILERS FOR ALL OF THE RISE OF SKYWALKER

BEN SOLO (KYLO REN) GENERAL OVERVIEW • backtagging Always. • canonpoint I'm interested in the lead up and aftermath of The Rise of Skywalker. • general interpretation stuff Ben Solo is a thoroughly traumatized and groomed thirty-something who's been through a lot, and has never been anything but a puppet on someone else's strings. However, that doesn't excuse his actions. In the worst of ways, he's both a Skywalker and his father's son: tempestuous, stubborn, blinded by what he thinks is right, allows his inferiority complex to build up into arrogance and a superiority complex, he's violent, angry, moody, and doesn't tend to do a single thing pragmatically in his life. Again, just like his family. He's committed to a monstrous persona while constantly feeling uneasy about it, and has hurt a lot of people while caught up in that. All that said: Star Wars is a series about forgiveness, and how someone can forgive themselves and others. It's always been about how nothing is ever purely light or dark, with the exception of Palpatine himself, that dick. I've been an Anakin Skywalker fan since I was 12 and I was betting hard on Ben being redeemed. If that isn't your cup of tea, that's fine. • canon familiarity I'm familiar with a lot of Star Wars canon up to around Solo coming out, which is when I took a break. I'm catching up. I read a lot. • offensive subjects Anything to do with grooming, sexual assault, or animal abuse. If you're into darker takes on Kylo, that's cool—I mostly just want to play him as an impractical manbaby who doesn't entirely know how to be good because he was too committed to trying to be the exact opposite for so long. RP WANTS • general shipping stuff As much as I'll joke I'm into "vanilla as fuck" Reylo, it's mostly in the way where I'm not into exploring darker themes with them. Ben is difficult, impractical, and doesn't know how to be a person because he's incredibly stunted. Personally, I like when ships are difficult. I like when they fight and are at odds and almost do really hurtful things that they may not be able to come back from at any point. I don't know how to do fluff without tension. • scenarios There are a lot of things I'd like to play out following The Rise of Skywalker: • Anakin trying to reach his grandson while Palpatine is messing with his head as a kid. Palpatine is blocking this connection, but what happens when Anakin breaks through for once, actually having a conversation with Ben? • General Ben and Anakin stuff. Anakin definitely has the way more traumatic past, but they were both groomed to be little more than Palpatine's tool. • Slight rewrite of the end of the movie where Ben doesn't die, but the First/Final Order aren't completely done. The last dregs of the Empire/First/Final Order are trying to subjugate a part of the galaxy. What insight can Ben provide? What leadership did he even offer while being Supreme Leader? • Many scenarios where Ben returns and has to deal with Finn, Poe, and the rest of the Resistance. • Leia's sacrifice means that Ben is between the living force and actually being alive, but caught in limbo. Rey's his only connection to returning. So, what now? • Ben and Luke stuff! • "I came back from the dead and the world is even worse than how I left it." AKA apocalypse shit? • Ben feels his mother dying before The Rise of Skywalker, and Palpatine's transmission comes in. Torn between the threat to his power and the ebbing source of his mother's life, he returns to her one last time! • Leia trying to reach out to her son. • And more! • I'm generally here for "Ben lives but hasn't been a Good Person for so long that he doesn't know how and is often a ruthless assholish dick because, whoops." • Hilarious Force-bond shit. • Timeline shit where he has to spend time with a young Luke, Leia, Han, Anakin, or even the Jedi order. Maybe he got thrown there when he "died." • I also have an Anakin journal @ @supportsystem, so if you want to play the Ben in a lot of the Anakin shit, let me know. 👍 dynamics Ben with anyone! Not just shipping. Any gen. We can make a Star Wars AU where your character is there. Let's do it. 👎 dynamics Anything where Ben is a predator in ways that clashes with my offensive subjects (as I've been walked into this with him before and it made me very uncomfortable). Also: yes, Ben is a divisive character and people have a lot of interpretations about him. I've seen them all. I genuinely don't care, especially if you don't like his redemption arc. This is the shit I'm here for, and I like to maintain the assholery while the asshole tries to do better. • ships I'm down to try Reylo, Ben/Finn, Ben/Poe, Ben/Rey/Finn. • ships I'm not down to try Anything else, honestly? But especially not Kylux. Hux is too much of a cartoon villain for me to take seriously, and the true rivalmance in the sequel trilogy has always been Ben and Rey.

Comments

(TROS spoilers, obviously)

[forcevisions]

[ It's easier than she thought it would be, to grieve someone so close. Maybe it's just because she doesn't have experience. Maybe she's not doing it properly. But Rey never feels it, never feels him fully leave her in the Force, and it's that which keeps her steady, held together, to get back to D'Qar, and to Tatooine, where she buries Luke and Leia properly, in the only way she can.

Rey Skywalker feels more accurate, somehow, than anything else. Because she is a Skywalker — raised by them more than her own family, and connected still to Ben in the Force.

When she feels him again, really feels him, she's shoveling sand out of the living area of Beru and Lars' old home to make it livable again, patient and diligent and entirely manual. It feels good to be connected to the world in ways that aren't the Force, even if it would make this job easier. This feels familiar in a way that anchors her, and she's not quite ready to share her grief with others yet, doesn't know how to let them be there for her.

She stops with the scrap metal she's been using for a shovel and lifts her head as something pierces the air. Something familiar. The sound of tunneling space and the itch of a presence at the corner of her mind. ]

Is that you? [ The question is barely a breath, but then, they've seldom needed words except to deflect their feelings. A traitorous glimmer of relief lights in her chest, bolder than it deserves to be given that she can't even speak his name. ]

[patrilineal]

Yes. [A single word. But it's been a struggle to do more than that, to reach out beyond being a presence in her mind. He knows that she's connecting him, but he doesn't know how or why. All his reading on the Force never prepared him for this. Life after death. What he knew was theoretical. What he knows doesn't match, doesn't feel—right.

Then again, unlike his grandfather, he never sought to deny death. He accepted the impermanence of existence when he allowed his anger and turmoil to guide him. It festered and cut off his connection to the light—or he tried to let it. Tried. And ultimately failed.]

I can see where you are now. [A change. A unique diversion. To ensure she doesn't mistake how or why he's here.] Not the view I hoped for.

[Ben is no Anakin Skywalker, but he can judge a desert planet all he wants. Tatooine isn't ... a sight for currently dead eyes, to say the least.]

[forcevisions]

I didn't come here for you. I needed to be alone.

[ How he'd left her. Alone. It's the faintest hint of resentment, half-hearted because she doesn't really mean it. Not when she's filled to the brim with the pure relief of hearing his voice again when she never thought she would again.

Rey does not want to dwell on her own feelings. Her grief. The way she had chosen to isolate herself from the family she fought and died for because she did not know how to process what she had lost. So she hastens beyond it quickly. ]

Where are you?

[ He hadn't been there, with Luke and Leia. He isn't even fully here now, in the sense of being able to see him, and she does whip around to search. ]