Hello and thanks for reading. Here's a little context for this story for those who are interested.
My stories are only superficially about Star Wars. They are mostly about me. About things going on in my life. About people in my life. About challenges and conflicts in my life. It's all a bit twisted and filtered, but it's there all the same. My life is a version of Rey's life in hiding as the incognito wife of an executive in The Chosen One. Whole aspects of my personality appear as the character of Shan Damask in Fifth Wife. Rey's detached observer sense of otherness that appears in many stories, as well as the social and political observations that filter through many fics, all come from real life.
In this story, I am Kylo Ren. In real life, I am stubbornly resisting making a visit to my parents who live out of state, even though my mother's disease has progressed considerably and my father's heart issues have not recovered as we had hoped. They are both declining now. I don't really want to see them or deal with the situation. No one has killed anyone—we aren't the Skywalkers—but we are very arm's length. I'm fine with that although I feel guilty at times for not being a better daughter and I feel jealous of other adult women who have good relationships with their parents, especially their mothers. I see grandparents cheering at kids' games and coming to school events and realize that my own kids will never get that from my parents.
I am old enough now to understand my parents' perspectives even if I don't agree with them. I realize that my cold, asshole father has redeeming qualities. I see that my mother has been depressed for years and has a lot of internalized misogyny that makes her hypercritical of women, including herself. My parents worked hard and did their best for four kids. They weren't bad parents. But as an adult, we have little in common. I'm at the point when I am happy to let my siblings deal with them. I'm pretty checked out now.
Be grateful if you do not have estranged or broken relationships in your life. Say a blessing if you have a happy, loving family. Because that's not easy to find. And even if you find it, it might not last. Behind gauzy Christmas card photos and beneath carefully curated Instagram accounts are real people with real problems. That's true of my family and many other families. Star Wars is about many things, but it's partly about the masks we show to the world that hide our true selves. In real life, most of us have a public face. Usually it's better than who we really are. (Canto Bight, anyone?) That's the hook of Kylo Ren, who shows us a mask that is worse than he is.
I've done the whole deathbed thing in real life. This past fall first my father-in-law and then my mother-in-law each spent a month in the ICU. From September through November, one or both of them was in the hospital. At one point, we were expecting to lose them both. I went as far as buying new dress clothes for the kids for the funerals. Thankfully, they both recovered, even if my mother-in-law spent four weeks on a feeding tube and a ventilator. Trust me, you never feel so adult as when you are in hospital meetings and the first person you are introduced to is not the attending physician but the medical ethicist. The decisions were many and they were hard and there was not always consensus in the family. The experience was emotionally grueling for everyone, but especially my husband. It hit at a bad time. Our house in town was scraped to the slab in two rooms courtesy of Hurricane Harvey flooding and there were contractors coming and going daily. I was writing The Chosen One at the time and that fic has some gigantic chapters mostly because I write for stress relief and diversion. 8,000+ word chapters are never a good sign for me.
If you have read my other stories, you know that I always write Star Wars in the context of family relationships. This story is no different. That's why this fic is entitled Son of Darkness, borrowing one of Snoke's better lines from TLJ. Kylo in Part 1 is mostly understood in his role as son. His Skywalker family legacy—from Vader, to Luke, to Leia—exerts an enormous influence over his life. From who he is, to what he does. You really can't understand Kylo Ren without considering him in context of his clan. I don't want to dismiss Han Solo, but I have come to see Leia Organa as Kylo's true trolling parent figure. This came out in Tied on a String, and we revisit it here. When Kylo finally speaks to his mother, the conversation is as ugly as they both expect. And as unsatisfying too.
There is a lot of talk about failure in this fic. About the consequences of failure, the difficulties of confronting failure, and the fear of failure. We live in such a culture of success. Failure is a bitter pill to swallow. And, when you are a Skywalker, it has huge consequences. This too comes from real life. My husband is a very successful man and he works very hard. But he's had his share of setbacks professionally. If you're in the game long enough at a high enough level, it happens. Mr. Blue is being talked about for the top spot at the company when the current big boss retires in a year. He's maybe five years too young for the position, but he's definitely a contender. Corporate succession planning is a big thing, and my husband is not the only one in the running for the job. And that makes it a horserace of corporate backstabbing and positioning played out in executive committee meetings and company retreats and private dinners to plot an unofficial campaign. My husband is a competitive man and he wants to win. Still, we have conversations about the pros and cons of the job if he gets it. What it will mean to our family and to my husband. What a hard job it will be. We have long conversations about leadership styles and what works and doesn't work. He and I have had more than one pillow talk conversation that ends with concerns over 'be careful what you wish for.'
I have rubbed shoulders with a fair number of powerful men (and some women). And that gives me a window into what power looks like in practice. Power doesn't look like it looks in the movies. Powerful men are rarely young and handsome Christian Grey figures. They are mostly middle aged and older men who have completed the corporate or political cursus honorum to get where they are. Think Captain Canady and not General Hux. And though someone might be powerful in one aspect of their life, that does not mean that they are well rounded as a person or that they are confident in all things. Rarely is someone the total package and power is very often situational. People are real, with self-doubts and shortcomings and failings. Supreme Leader/Emperor Kylo Ren is, of course, an exaggeration. But he's more real than we like to think.
This version of Kylo is by far the most "grey" that I have written. I shelve books in the school library and recently I listened to a young boy tell me his theory that Kylo is a double agent and he's secretly working for the good side. His boyish need to believe that the bad guy is really the good guy drew me in. And it got me thinking. What if Kylo is right about the past dying? What if Kylo is truly the hero and not the anti-hero villain? In our own history, huge shifts of mindset of religion have resulted in clashes of ideas and violence (the Reformation anyone?) Why should it be any different in Star Wars? I like the idea of Kylo thinking he's the good guy (it appears in lots of my fics, especially Ghosts of the Past). I think Anakin Skywalker thought he was the good guy at the end of Episode 3. There is a huge romantic streak of altruism in the Skywalker clan on both the Light and Dark Sides, it just expresses itself in different ways. Plus, I like a purposeful villain—they are the most complex and interesting characters. They are also the most real life. Hitler had a purpose. So did Stalin. So did Bin Laden.
Luke's reaction to Rey ("you went straight to the Dark . . . you didn't even try to fight it . . .") is very telling for me. I just can't see how Luke Skywalker would ever accept a truly grey concept of the Force. Having seen the Dark Side in his father and Palpatine and now his nephew, I don't think Luke could ever accept it as okay. That's a big part of Luke's depression and frustration in TLJ—he sees that the Jedi have failed but he's not sure how to fix it. He is trapped in the mindset of the past.
Snoke is just as unwilling to accept the Light Side. You know he's been ridiculing and torturing poor Kylo for his repeated calls to the Light, seeing them as personal failings. Snoke is not going to accept the threat of the Light any more than Luke will turn a blind eye to the Dark. Both of these men are dug into their respective positions, even if Luke has begun to question his. These guys need to fall by the wayside in order for Kylo's grey ideas to take hold. The more I have thought about it, the more I think Kylo is right and the past does need to die for things to move forward.
I like the idea of Kylo being right about a lot of things. He might be right for the wrong reasons (some of 'let the past die' is convenient retribution), but he's still right. A lot of fans, including myself, want to see Kylo be the hero of the sequel trilogy—he's the Skywalker, after all. Many people seem to think that requires Kylo to be redeemed to the Light. I think it would be more interesting if Kylo ends up in the middle. If he is the Chosen One messiah of the Force his grandfather was meant to be. If immature, troubled, unstable Kylo is the one who figures it all out. He's underestimated and written off by everyone. We see that literally from Luke and Leia ("I've come to face him . . . I can't save him . . . I know my son is gone") and Snoke ("Now, I fear I was mistaken . . . you're just a child in a mask") in TLJ. But what if the joke's on everyone because in the end Kylo is right? Certainly, as a trained Jedi and neo-Sith, Kylo has the perspective to understand what works and doesn't work about both sides of the Force. The only other Force user I can think of with that experience has been Anakin, Mr. Chosen One himself.
Rey is open to the Dark Side for answers, going to the Dark cave on Ahch-To and 'Force-timing' with Kylo. Rey doesn't have the reflexive, knee jerk reaction that Luke and Leia have to Darkness. But that doesn't mean she's on board with Kylo. Rey still clings to the fairytale idea of the Jedi that dogs Luke. At least in Part 1, Rey isn't ready to embrace the grey. She is very new to the Force and completely untrained and understandably very skeptical of Kylo and his motives. Given the context of what has happened, I think that's very plausible. Sometimes, you can tell someone a truth but that's not enough; they have to discover it for themselves in life.
Part 1 ends when our lovers have finally gotten together and, like much of the rest of their interactions, it's a muddled mess. This sex is not sexy. Inexperienced sex never is. So there's no way this was going to be mind blowing. Their night together turns out to be a let down for both Kylo and Rey for different reasons. All along, Kylo and Rey keep circling one another with expectations for the other. The throne room scene is the canon example—what happens is some but not all of what Rey wants. That same miscommunication/wrong assumptions/unmet expectations pattern continues in this fic and even in bed with our lovers. Our lovers might be able to talk through the Force, but they talk past each other quite a lot. There is no real meeting of the minds about anything between Kylo and Rey in Part 1.
Rey flees because she's confused about the Force and about Kylo. Never fear, there is no Skywalker baby on the way. I've written that 'secret kid' plot too many times as is. Rey will be heading out to discover some things for herself.
Kylo is going to slog forward through his Empire building. Alternatively pissed and pining for the girl that got away.
I am not a big fan of the Force bond plot device, but I am coming around to the idea. As I've thought about it more, it's less of a shortcut to intimacy and more of a shortcut to conflict. I don't like the idea of the bond being a way to read each other's minds and emotions. The whole 'you're in my head so of course you understand lonely me and now I love you' is kind of lazy. But now that I have TLJ dvd on permanent repeat in my car for the kids, I see how that TLJ's Force bond depiction is not so bad. So, look for that coming in Part 2. Our lovers might be apart but they are by no means separate.
Thanks for reading. More to come.
