Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

abrightshiningstar asked: D, for Star Wars!

For this list of fandom questions!

D: What was the first thing you ever contributed to a fandom?

I’m pretty sure it was this fluffy Rey/Poe/Finn fic, featuring the three of them on a forest planet, cute shy pre-relationship flirting, BB-8, and flower crowns.  And Rey attempting to eat the foliage.

Here is an excerpt:

Finn’s teeth flashed in a grin as he laced his fingers through Poe’s–Poe stomped down on a blush, he was a grown-ass man, he was not going to turn into a kriffing Academy kid over a pair of pretty young things.  Even if they were as pretty as Rey and Finn.  Finn didn’t seem to notice his moment of internal struggle, pulling him after Rey and BB-8 with a laugh.

The trees gave way to low growth, shrubs and wildflowers and grasses, near the lakeside.  Rey nearly shrieked in delight at the discovery of a patch of flowers in a shade of brilliant red, dotted here and there with the tiny light blue blooms that practically infested this system.

“They come in colors!” she cried, and Poe made a mental note to get Rey out more.  This was their first free day since Finn regained full function and Rey brought back a very reluctant Jedi master, but he could probably trade some favors to get her a few flowers to keep on the base.

If you require an antidote to the sheer density of fluff in the above fic, I also wrote this one.

Anonymous asked: humble request: rey or phasma, ur choice, for the headcanon meme

Heck, how about some Rey feelings.  Please observe that I have literally never given a fuck about the extended universe for more than long enough to Make Things Worse, and I have no idea what Rey’s canonical backstory is in the New EU.

A: what I think realistically

So…this is what I started following Wilde for, way back in the day, but Rey has definitely eaten a dude before, right?  Like, she grew up a feral desert orphan child and has definitely killed a couple people to protect herself and her home and her food supply, and. Well.  Supposing it was a sort of being whose flesh isn’t toxic to humans…that’s a lot of food.  Your average human runs about 40,000 calories, if you eat whatever organs are edible (not all, but a good number) and make appropriate use of the bones. That’s literally almost a month of food for a skinny nervous abandoned teenager.  More if you ration it.

Rey feels worse about losing some of the meat because she was learning how to cure it than she does about any other part of the situation.

B: what I think is fucking hilarious

Rey has never had a last name.  Neither has Finn.  Finn comes into the Dqar base unconscious and bleeding out and who the hell else is going to put themselves down as people to contact in case he needs something (in case he dies, they do not think) except Rey, who Finn came back for, and Poe, who came back for Finn.  So through some confusion with medical staff Finn is officially down as Finn Dameron because…well, Poe’s not going to tell them they can’t, okay?  Poe has a big extended family back on Yavin IV, they won’t mind one more, and honestly just Finn is starting to look a little lonely, flapping out in the breeze without any other names on it.  The guy can pick a last name when he wakes up, but for the moment, Finn Dameron it is.

Rey is informed, after she’s had four ribs and a mild concussion repaired, that they’ll need her last name so that they can record the concussion and make sure future doctors know about it.  This takes a remarkable amount of explaining about the point of medical records, followed by a lengthy but competently recalled list of every notable injury Rey has ever sustained.

“Thank you, Rey,” the medic says dryly, noting down the last of them.  “And a last name?  You can just pick one to fill in, for now, and change it later if you need to.”

“Dameron,” Rey says offhandedly, because last names are about family and family are the people who come back for you and honestly that’s about the extent of Rey’s understanding on the matter.

By the time Rey’s back from hunting down Luke from some backwater corner of the galaxy, the entire Resistance knows that Poe Dameron gave Finn his jacket and Rey his droid (temporarily, he did get it back, but no one seems willing to listen) and the both of them his last name.  As far as Rey is concerned, corralling Finn and waiting for Poe in his quarters is nothing short of the obvious solution to everyone’s problems.

Rey is a feral desert child whose knowledge of bureaucratic nonsense is limited at best and nonfunctional at worst.  She mis-files a couple of things a week, and usually it’s caught by the actual administrative staff, but how were they supposed to know that she didn’t understand that she’d accidentally filed all her documents with two spouses. She does live with Finn and Poe, she protests when it comes up, and they are her family, and they aren’t related, she just eliminated options until there was only one left!

To Finn, who grew up in a world where marriage barely existed as a concept and certainly wasn’t something he was familiar with, this seems perfectly legitimate.

To Poe, who is literally the last person on base to find out when Leia very dryly hands him an anniversary present and says “I hear you got married this time last year,” this prompts a lot more questions.

C: what is heart-crushing and awful but fun to inflict on friends

Do you ever think about Rey as a little girl, trying not to cry because it wastes water and she has so little water left, and sitting out under the stars as she wonders why she wasn’t good enough? Why she wasn’t good enough for her parents to stay?  Why she wasn’t good enough for them to take her with them?  

Why she wasn’t good enough for them to love?

Because if you ever think about that, let me raise you one up.  Do you ever think about Rey as a young woman, holding an ancient weapon in both hands and trying to drive back a ragged blade of scarlet light, trying not to fall into the crevasse opening below her feet, trying not to die here, at the hands of this wild-eyed creature behind that terrible mask, this monster who killed the only person who had really, truly offered her a place in the world (do you want a job)—and do you ever think about how, in total desperation, she reaches out to the Force and begs I am not good enough for this, please save me anyway.

And the Force comes to her call with the force of a sun being born and answers oh, wild girl, newest heart, thing-with-teeth-and-starlight-eyes, you are just as good as you choose to be.

And Rey opens her eyes and throws the monster away from her and, prowling forward with her teeth bared and starlight in her eyes, makes a choice.

D:  what would never work with canon but the canon is shit so I believe it anyway

Right, so, we all pretty much know that Rey is probably going to be Luke’s daughter because ultimately Star Wars is the story of the Skywalker family more than anything else.  But honestly I think if I had total creative control here I would go with that one suggestion that has drifted past once or twice about Rey being the Force’s second attempt at balance, another Force-child meant to repair the damage wreaked in the wake of the last. Her mother was not a Skywalker.  Her mother was no one of note.  Her mother was not equipped for a child like Rey.  Rey was born and the Force shook, and Rey cried and the Force soothed her, and Rey laughed and the sun’s light was less brutal.  Her mother ran when Rey was seven.

Rey had no control over it, of course.  But alone, scaling the gutted hulk of fallen destroyers and battlestars, Rey always seemed to find the last valuable items, waiting to be ripped from the walls and control panels, and she never stumbled, never fell into the depths below her, never quite got severely injured.  Once, she found a ship wrecked on the sand and followed a tug that anchored somewhere under her breastbone, and found a door that had jammed shut in the crash.  No one had ever tried to open it.

When she pried the door free, Rey ripped out the hyperbaric chamber beyond and managed to rig up a sledge behind her speeder, and took a dead relic of a dead man who had once been the Force’s own child, unknown father-twin-cousin-self to Rey, to be traded for food.  It had earned her an entire month’s portions, and the quick-rise bread and the protein bars tasted strange on her tongue.  Like cannibalism, almost.  Eating one’s own kind to survive.  

The first time Rey uses the Force—intentionally, with anger and willfulness and desperation behind it—Luke and Leia almost have a mutual heart attack.  The sunburst of presence, the supernova, is familiar but unspeakably foreign, a gravitational pull like a supermassive star that draws the world behind it and how dare anyone question.

The first thing that flickers through Luke’s mind is an impossible Father?  On Dqar Leia feels a fierce lurch of Ben, you fool, don’t you dare—

When Rey fights with her saberstaff, white light a deadly halo around her hands, she could almost be another Jedi, at the height of his power and honor and glory long ago.  But Rey has never allowed anyone to dictate to her, and perhaps this is why the Force left her alone, to raise herself and learn her own limits.  Rey is a killer, certainly.  Rey will do what has to be done for the survival of herself and her people, now that she has people.  But no one has ever told Rey to feel nothing, to abandon her heart, and Rey’s heart holds the whole of the Force in its folds, her blood pumping starstuff and power.

When she stands again the First Order, against the Knights of Ren and their captain, against generals and armies and machines, against Snoke, the last of the Sith Lords, the outcome is foregone.

andhumanslovedstories:

Ever since the last Jedi trailer came out, I’ve been trying to think of Deep Good Meta to contribute to the Star Wars fandom but literally all I’ve got is:

Rey standing out in the rain. Luke asks her what she’s thinking. Rey closes her eyes. “I am going to have sex with my boyfriend in the rain,” she announces.

“Oh,” says Luke, who was maybe expecting something about feeling the flow of the Force, but he’s adaptable. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”

“I’m going to go ask Finn to be my boyfriend and then we are going to have sex in the rain.”

Luke nods. “A sound plan.”

Personality wise, Rey has perhaps one of the firmest chins he has ever seen, second only to his sister which is a thought Luke promptly pivots away with a Jedi master’s aptitude for resolutely not thinking about things and calling it meditation.

Rey raises her firm chin yet higher. “We’re going to do all the sex things in the rain.”

“I’m very happy for you,” Luke says with complete honesty. He’s happy for Finn as well, if a little concerned he should give the boy a head’s up. Rey grins at him. Luke doesn’t grin back but mostly because he’s still trying to be stern as a teaching technique so he doesn’t get attached.

He’s aware, by the way, that he’s failing.

Pushing that thought aside (he’s very good at that these days–it’s a very quiet island, it doesn’t offer much options for hobbies besides ignoring thoughts and brooding on them and occasionally fishing), Luke asks, “You do know what you need to know?”

“What, like how to do it?” Rey asks. She wrinkles her nose. “Yeah. Of course. Sort of. I’ve done it before, loads of times.” There’s a very thoughtful pause. “There weren’t many humans in Jakku,” she says, a little worry slipping into her voice. She furrows her brow. “But I figure humans, you know, other humans–it’s basically the same but with only the four limbs. Less slime. And no scales?” Luke gets the impression she didn’t mean that last part to be a question.

And because she’s a student, a young student, his only young student and fellow human on this island whose population has suddenly skyrocketed to four, he does not say what he’d say to a friend and peer, which is, “honey you can’t make assumptions like that, you would not BELIEVE what people with dicks have done to modify them.” Instead, because he’s a mature teacher who is frantically relearning how to be that to the hungriest student he has ever met, Luke says, “I can’t vouch for Finn’s situation. But I’m sure you’ll have a very good time.” After Luke discreetly passes her a few anatomical drawings, just to be on the safe side.

(via aethersea)

Anonymous asked: More Stormtrooper Religion stuff?

notbecauseofvictories:

Nothing loves what is dead like the First Order. A world conceived out of passion for the rotting corpse of the Empire and founded by her widowers—necrophiliacs, to a man. It’s a perversity that shows itself in odd ways, flickering through high ceremonies and the songs they sing. A world caught up in self-loathing for its own existence, a New Republican reporter wrote once. Survivor’s guilt given a permanent residence.

The article was widely touted, might have even won the Regaal Prize—Leia vaguely remembers reading about it over her morning caf, and resisting the urge to throw her datapad at the wall. (Instead, she threw the mug of caf, startling Han and making Ben scream. Maker, won’t someone think of the poor ex-Imperials? Leia had snarled, nostrils flaring. They’re so sad they lost their oppressive empire.)

FN-2187 does not remember reading it, mostly because he didn’t. The article was published to a New Republican holochannel, and never made it past the Order’s censors. It was deemed dangerous for public consumption—not for alleging that the First Order considered living a kind of cowardice, but for the suggestion there was anything at all strange about that.

The holonews reporter never saw any of the stormtrooper training facilities. By design—the First Order’s leaders were perverse, not stupid. They knew what story would be written, if he had seen all those warm-blooded bodies under the tyranny of the grave.

It would have been a very different article.

.

Finn remembers the way Slip wanted to die. And Zeroes. And Ace and Ello and Four—they’d discussed it enough, in whispers after lights-out, or during meals, their heads bent together and eyes bright, hard, planning for fire and glory. Though Crisper had always wanted to go in a daring undercover mission, like in the Black Ops propos—and Ohs had liked the idea of hand-to-hand combat with a dangerous rebel, a vibroblade to the gut.

(You just like that because it’d give you a chance to get out a dramatic speech, Ace had laughed, and Ohs had scowled and flicked protein flakes in her hair.)

Even he and Rey had discussed it, over the patchy transmissions sent between D’Qar and Ahch-To. I used to know for sure, she writes. I’d grow old, too old to scavenge, and then I’d starve. Or I’d fall, and break a hip, a leg, a spine, and starve. Or I’d fall ill, and if the poison in my blood didn’t take me, I’d starve. 

But I don’t know anymore, she writes.

When he asks Poe how he wants to die, Poe blanches, the humor vanishing from his expression. What? Why would you ask that?

It takes a fumbling, long and terrible explanation, with Finn backtracking desperately and Poe struggling to keep all emotion out of his eyes. What was yours? he asks, after Finn has finished, and they’re sitting in awkward silence. Finn is trying not to notice how white Poe’s knuckles are, where he clutches the mug of caf.

My what?

The death you wanted.

Finn blinks. He lived on the edges of those conversations, FN-2187 with no nickname; no one’s ever—asked him before. He answers without thinking: I didn’t…I didn’t want to die.

.

Death is a flat plain endlessly, a stormtrooper sings, my voice opens and calls you in.

Hail, hail, the line of troopers answers as it marches; death, we come in.

.

Finn spends the entirety of the Resistance funeral sweating cold and shaking, his hands fisted so tightly that his nails leave crescent-marks on his palms. Afterwards, he has to excuse himself to the refresher, and his knees give out under him.

He cries, something hollow and yet heavy in the pit of his stomach. (No one is there to see, so he laughs too, against his fist, wild and terrible, an animal sound.) I guess there’s something the First Order does better, he says bitterly, to no one in particular.

.

When Leia mentions going back to collect the dead, Finn stares at her like she’s suggested he split open his ribcage and hand her his still-beating heart. Are your orders unclear, Lieutenant Finn? she asks, and he quickly schools his face back into blank stillness.

No, General.

Still, he stares throughout, they fold hands over bellies and shut unseeing eyes. (He twitches, whenever this is done, but Leia could not say why.) Even when he helps—he’s not squeamish, not the way Leia used to be around the dead—he stares, as though he can’t follow the sense in what his hands are doing. 

The sun is much lower in the lavender sky when Leia comes to stand beside him. He is staring down at the blue-shrouded body frowning, a faint line between his brows.

It’s rare, that we have the chance to do this, Leia says, and Finn blinks at her. Often battlefields are compromised, we can’t…go back. X-wings are built to implode upon impact. Most of the time, our dead are lost to us.

(A field of rubble, where Alderaan hung amid the stars.)

Do you—believe they’re still in there? Finn asks tentatively, glancing down at the shrouded body.

No, they’re dead.

Why, then?

The First Order never retrieved bodies? He shakes his head, and Leia considers this for a moment. What did you do with the armor of dead troopers?

Finn blinks. If it was still in—working condition, their squad got first pick. I had a…a friend’s armguards.

Leia nods. The principle is the same. It’s easier, when there’s something to hold. Otherwise it’s just absence. Open wounds heal more slowly.

Finn’s expression flickers on ‘heal’, and his mouth shapes the word almost uncomprehendingly, trying to sound out a strange language. (She wonders how they speak about mourning in the First Order—necrophiliacs, she suddenly remembers. Then she wonders if they mourn at all.)

Yes, General, Finn says, finally. I understand. 

They stand there together in the gathering violet dusk, as the bodies are carried up from the dust.

skymurdock asked: Star Wars or Hamilton, 1 2 3.

STAR WARS IT IS

For this thing

1. Name your politically correct ship that no one ever questions.

I really genuinely like Han/Leia because I am a sucker for the “I just really enjoy shouting at this person and get really furious when they risk their life suRELY THIS DOES NOT MEAN FEELINGS” thing and I feel like that’s…all of Hoth.  The whole time.  All of it.  

Also, listen.  I will die on the hill of The Damerons as a totally adoring, poly unit of heroes in which Rey sleeps with her back to the wall and her head on Finn’s chest and her fingers tangled with Poe’s, who gently traces the line of the callous on her thumb in his sleep, and Finn lies there and stares at the ceiling and wonders how the FUCK he got this lucky.  (Because you deserve it, baby, you fucking deserve it.)

2. Now name your trash ship.

…I mean…Anakin is a trash can, so does Anakin/Padme qualify, or does Padme’s general quality everything lift them from the dumpster fire?

Although for real trash, you can’t do better than Rey/Phasma having really bitter angry hate sex.  Before Rey figures herself out and marries her two husbands, of course.

3. And your really trashy I’m-going-to-Hell ship.

…do I have one of these?  I don’t think I have–

oh no, yes I do, oh god I didn’t realize what the ship was for the fic but it was SO GOOD and I just.

Sith!Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan was not a ship I saw coming but F U C K.

It’s a really good fic okay, it sold me hardcore.  It’s this series by @poplitealqueen.  I should reread it because it’s been updated.  I’ll go sit in a hole now.

(I just really like Sith Qui-Gon and also Darth Venge, who I don’t think shows up in this one but is a big player in Re-Entry, which is like. Yeah.)

andhumanslovedstories:

Ever since the last Jedi trailer came out, I’ve been trying to think of Deep Good Meta to contribute to the Star Wars fandom but literally all I’ve got is:

Rey standing out in the rain. Luke asks her what she’s thinking. Rey closes her eyes. “I am going to have sex with my boyfriend in the rain,” she announces.

“Oh,” says Luke, who was maybe expecting something about feeling the flow of the Force, but he’s adaptable. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”

“I’m going to go ask Finn to be my boyfriend and then we are going to have sex in the rain.”

Luke nods. “A sound plan.”

Personality wise, Rey has perhaps one of the firmest chins he has ever seen, second only to his sister which is a thought Luke promptly pivots away with a Jedi master’s aptitude for resolutely not thinking about things and calling it meditation.

Rey raises her firm chin yet higher. “We’re going to do all the sex things in the rain.”

“I’m very happy for you,” Luke says with complete honesty. He’s happy for Finn as well, if a little concerned he should give the boy a head’s up. Rey grins at him. Luke doesn’t grin back but mostly because he’s still trying to be stern as a teaching technique so he doesn’t get attached.

He’s aware, by the way, that he’s failing.

Pushing that thought aside (he’s very good at that these days–it’s a very quiet island, it doesn’t offer much options for hobbies besides ignoring thoughts and brooding on them and occasionally fishing), Luke asks, “You do know what you need to know?”

“What, like how to do it?” Rey asks. She wrinkles her nose. “Yeah. Of course. Sort of. I’ve done it before, loads of times.” There’s a very thoughtful pause. “There weren’t many humans in Jakku,” she says, a little worry slipping into her voice. She furrows her brow. “But I figure humans, you know, other humans–it’s basically the same but with only the four limbs. Less slime. And no scales?” Luke gets the impression she didn’t mean that last part to be a question.

And because she’s a student, a young student, his only young student and fellow human on this island whose population has suddenly skyrocketed to four, he does not say what he’d say to a friend and peer, which is, “honey you can’t make assumptions like that, you would not BELIEVE what people with dicks have done to modify them.” Instead, because he’s a mature teacher who is frantically relearning how to be that to the hungriest student he has ever met, Luke says, “I can’t vouch for Finn’s situation. But I’m sure you’ll have a very good time.” After Luke discreetly passes her a few anatomical drawings, just to be on the safe side.

(via ifeelbetterer)

Anonymous asked: consider this tho: gwendoline christie plays rey and daisy ridley plays phasma bc a) have u seen that vid of oscar isaac and john boyega and gwendoline christie jamming all together to a led zeppelin song and b) small! terrifying! absolutely do not fuck with! phasma and c) rey using her size and strength to make dragging shit from wrecks easier and despite being able to beat junk selling food guy up does not bc she has no other way of getting food? pls consider

*gasp*

Anon.

Dearheart.

This…this is so beautiful…

I love this immediately, wholeheartedly, and entirely without shame.

Tall!Rey looming over Poe and Finn!

Small!Phasma staring Han down totally unimpressed!

*LONG GASP*

TALL REY BENDING OVER TO HUG FINN AND LOOKING SO AWESTRUCK THAT HE CAME BACK FOR HER.

STAMP OF APPROVAL

MAKE IT SO

unicorniolerdo:

the reason that rey’s hair is down is because she no longer needs to be recognized by her family since she found it

thank you for your time

(via princehal9000)