In my family there was no emphasis on the importance of language. It was the theater that got me started reading, it was there that I began my transformation: I noticed that I was less aggressive now that I could finally put a name to the things that frustrated me. I started becoming more reasonable, noticing how this was reflected in the people around me. (x)
It’s difficult for me to stay in touch with my old Marine friends spread out all over the world. It was even more difficult explaining to them what I was up to at Juilliard, like the acting exercises in pajamas, pretending to hold a cup of coffee to find my “inner color”. But I’m convinced that theater can help those who are fighting far from home. It’s important to face certain feelings, and somehow find the words to express what’s inside. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that we need to think about what’s happening, describe it, talk about it.
@snowstormsss replied to your post “I believe y’all are capable of expressing a difference of opinion...”
what happened???
basically there was a post talking about kylo killing luke’s other students,
which he did, canonly, do. its literally how he got his nickname.
He destroyed his fellow Jedi students and became Snoke's apprentice as well as a Knight of Ren, and was given the moniker of "Jedi Killer" among the First Order ranks.
and that excusing his behavior and / or ignoring it means you’re not appreciating his character in its entirety which is true ! its important to recognize the shitty things that have been done, but recognizing it as a whole, and now everyone’s up in arms about it, that their being policed if they don’t think he did it ?? I’m not good at summarizing shit that i’m not a part of but my two cents are
kylo ren has done bad shit. being a victim of abuse explains behaviors but doesn’t acquit you from them. he doesn’t get to do bad shit with impunity. NO one does, regardless of what they’ve been through as an individual. i love kylo ren / ben solo, i relate HARDCORE to his character as a child who survived abuse and neglect and abandonment. but taking away the awful things thins out his story. he’s got a lot to atone for. we may not know the circumstances of what happened outside of luke’s retelling ( re: he left luke for dead but didn’t actually kill him himself, and there’s a chance that the students attacked him first and he was defending himself. we don’t know enough to speculate beyond the facts we’ve been given. ) i mean, headcanon away, i love conjecture as much as the next star wars fan but you cannot treat it as irrefutable fact.
send me a song + pairing and I’ll write a ficlet to fit the mood.
The landscape wasn’t the most attractive thing to look at- everything worth seeing had long fled past the windshield and into the past. It was all flat land, bleak sand with an occasional rock as mild distraction. It should have made focusing on the road ahead easier, should have motivated him to keep eyes straight forward. But alas.
Ben kept looking at the passenger seat- more decidedly at the curled up body nestled there. Beneath a shapeless yellow blanket poked out a striped foot- shoes deserted on the dashboard twenty miles back- and a heap of brown hair, tousled and restless and haphazardly framing a drooling, sleeping beauty. Rey. The name, like the face attached so fondly to it, swept through his mind like a sandstorm and cluttered it with feelings that had no place on a pothole-ridden, 50-mph road. One of said potholes made an appearance, turned the car into a roller coaster, dipping him and his sleeping passenger low before throttling them back up. He caught the steering wheel and a harrowing sentiment in his throat. Glanced over to the side, worry tangled around his ribs- but Rey still slept, a boulder incapable of being moved.
Yet, instead of accepting this with relief, and honing in on the yellow dashes prodding him onward still to a destination he had no real care for, Ben kept looking back over at her, at the singular strand of hair that weaved in and out of her mouth, brushing her bottom lip as she breathed. Every once in a while, it tickled her nose, made her wiggle her nostrils, pulling a smile from his lips.
Look at the road, his mind chided him each time his heart stole a peek.
Look at the road. Now it was his mother’s voice, reminiscent of a time when his father was behind the wheel- committing the same crime Ben now partook in.
On an impulse, Ben pulled over to the side of the road. With a sharp snap, he turned off the engine, and took a deep, centering breath. But even then, his eyes could not return to the road. His vision was filled with Rey.
Not all the swerving or near-death moments of his driving could wake her. She’s still a heap of slumber, a complete contrast to the bundle of energy she was only an hour ago- all pushed up to the edge of her seat, hands pointed this way and that, curiosity barely held down by an insistent seatbelt. She was supposed to have kept track on the map where they were, but every hint of movement in the passenger window, any song she knew or wanted to on the radio, sent her humming off track. Yet none of that had distracted him as much as that one strand of hair, still stroking her lip.
With a meaningful sigh, Ben reached over. A single finger carefully guided the strand back into place amongst the others, his touch far too lingering and broad on her skin for such a miniscule task. He skimmed just above her upper lip, dipping down its outline, across the landscape of her rising cheekbones and over to the curve of her ear. Still, her breath was even and deep, only a slight deepening of color to her skin evidence of his presence, perhaps, in her dreams. He smiled at the prospect, and leaned back against his seat, sitting in the sound of her breathing, reveling in the view of her- more precious and profound than anything he’d seen on their trip or would ever see. He hadn’t cared much for the trip to begin with, except that it was with her. It was for her. Even if, at the start, Rey had meant it for him.
He was sitting at his desk, a paper blotched in black ink and something clear and wet in front of him. Papers much like the one before him were crumpled in a heap on the floor, on his lap. He’d been trying to write, trying to focus, but everything was blank. His mind had gone so loud and violent, it went blank.
Then something came, raining in around the corners of his vision, cool and soft on his skin. Hands at his cheeks, pulling him up from the void.
“We’re going on a trip. Pack your bags.” Rey left no room for argument, or even a question of “why?” He already knew. It was there in her eyes, or rather on the rim of them- red and wet. She’d long stripped off the funeral blacks, but despite her iron-clad will that red would not be scrapped from below her eyes. They were fitting to her spirit, somehow. He couldn’t quite place how, but he loved the look of it, the look of her. He loved her - always had but somehow he realized it again and again each day, this day more than most. So, he didn’t say anything to fight the idea of finally leaving the apartment after a countless span of sitting and wasting, of packing bags and collecting maps and itineraries for a future. Of leaving the pain he usually drowned in, behind.
For her.
For her, he drove to places he’d seen before, if only to see them anew through her eyes. They weren’t red or wet anymore, and his mind wasn’t blank or violent or loud. It was humming, a throaty, lively sound like the idle engine as he sat there, watching her, loving her. He leaned over, giving into the sentiment stuck at the back of his throat, and gently pressed his lips to hers. He could taste a dream there, a future hazy and sweet. He wanted to push deeper into it, to feel her lips and that dream solidify firm around him- but she was sleeping. And he didn’t want to wake her.
Ben pulled away then, the dream lingering in a lopsided smile on his face. Perhaps she’d sensed the robbery, or felt the kiss intrude upon her dream- either way, Rey’s eyes scrunched up, waking. Slowly, she dragged her eyes open and immediately looked to Ben, confused.
“Pit stop?” She asked, voice distant, still dreaming. Still smiling, Ben shook his head.
“No.”
“Why did we stop?”
For some reason, he was too embarrassed to speak the truth. So, he shrugged and evasively said, “pulled over.”
Immediately, she shot up, blanket fallen to the floor. “Were you speeding again?”
His smile wavered, eyes narrowed. “Again?”
“Oh spare me,” Rey snorted, rolling her eyes. “Just because you barely get caught, doesn’t mean you aren’t speeding, Ben.”
“Not my fault the speeding limit was made with toddlers in mind.”
Rey ogled him, mouth gaping. “Seeing as toddlers are sometimes in cars, yeah.”
“I wasn’t speeding.”
Now her eyes are narrowed, lips pursed. “Then why did we get pulled over?”
“We didn’t,” he admitted begrudgingly, hand on the steering wheel, and the other gearing to shift out of park. “I pulled over.”
Her mouth opened, shaped in a question, but then she stopped herself, remembering perhaps the feel of something plump and possessive pressing into her sleep. Slowly, her mouth shifted, shaped into a smile.
“Ben, you’re adorable.”
“Please stop.”
“No,” Rey asserted, grinning from ear to ear, her knees on the seat and bridging the space between them. She planted her chin into the crook of his shoulder, and hummed. “You. are. adorable.”
If only he’d looked at the road. He stared at it then with an overwhelming focus. “Go back to sleep,” he muttered, but she was wide awake, stubbornly so.
Rey beamed, and the light of it doubled the already blinding glare of desert sun in the rearview mirror. Sunlight kissed his cheek, and it was as soft and warm as he thought it’d be. He smiled against his will.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he admitted sheepishly. “I just-”
“I know,” she breathed quietly, and pressed another kiss onto him- on his neck this time, and it’s more sun flare than sunlight this time. He turned his head to face it head-on, heat rising in his cheeks, his chest, his veins. Dizzyingly so.
She kissed him again, lips to lips, and the taste of a dream was still there, dancing across her flesh, teasing him to follow it down her tongue and deep into her. It was a road he followed eagerly, chasing her and the promise of a happy end until the gas in their car was pure smoke and engine fire. He forgot about driving completely, about the real car parked on the side of a real, busy highway, and followed her wherever she was leading him- her hands mapping parts of his body she’d already traveled across endless times, and his doing the same, reverently, rediscovering the softest patches of skin that made her sigh a heavenly sound of want into his mouth. His palm pressed flat and hard against her stomach, drifting down a darker road-
Police sirens blared loud between their lips, and Rey jumped, cursed something nasty and beautiful. “Oh, god,” she muttered, red-faced and hair absolutely wrecked- more so than sleep had already rendered it.
“Sweetheart,” Ben said, low and teasing. Rey glared at him, already knowing- “Now we got pulled over.”
“Please stop.”
He grinned, cheeky and unreasonably happy. Just like before, he couldn’t bother to take in the surroundings, or the police officer walking up to the driver’s side. He could only ever see Rey. She was the landscape, the road- the journey and the destination. And God, did he love the ride.