Ben Solo | Kylo Ren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
forcecalls) wrote2020-02-13 06:07 pm
forcecalls) wrote2020-02-13 06:07 pm
(no subject)
(scattered excerpts from the writings of Ben Solo, formerly Kylo Ren, formerly Jedi, formerly Sith, now undefined)
[What follows are the musings of a man trying to wrap his mind around what he is, to define a new generation, and to keep himself busy in the way his wife asked him to. They will be in no particular order, probably not even chronological.]
[relevant psl]
Intent
Whatever this turns out to be--notes, memories, ideas--I expect to rewrite it all before it gets passed to anyone else's hands. Whatever I happen to think to write, as I think to write it, will probably be too scattered to make much sense as a text. But it will be my thoughts, for whatever that may be worth.
Dyad
I didn't pay much attention, either, when he said it. I had always been alone; how could this legendary connection between two people have anything to do with me? But something about that idea stuck with me. Maybe some part of me realised, or maybe it was my loneliness that made the idea appealing. Still I, too, had nearly forgotten about it, until her.
There are no words adequate to describe what Rey is to me. "Two that are one." She is my other half, a part of my soul. We feel what the other feels, connect across distances. I think I was aware of her, somehow, before we had even met. Not consciously. But something about her has always been familiar to me, beyond the vast amounts of experience we share (...despite the vast difference in our experiences.)
If I start to write out what I feel for her, it might be years before I stop. I'll spare everyone the trouble.
I do wonder about others. "Not seen for generations" was what Palpatine had said about the strength of our bond. There have been dyads before, then, but I have no way of knowing whether there is any record of them. I wonder if their lives were anything like ours. If their love was anything like ours.
Meditation
The preferred form of meditation for the Jedi involves emptying the mind. One takes note of any emotions they feel, but then releases them, one by one, allowing the Force to fill the void. I doubt I can describe how to do this; to this day, I don't believe I've ever succeeded at it, though I may have enough to convince others. There has always been too much I could not let go of, distracting from the process. I could focus. I could tap into the Force. I could not wipe clean the contents of my mind or my heart, nor did I want to.
The Sith spend no effort on removing emotions. They focus and heighten them, instead. The Sith meditate in rage, letting it fill every fiber of their being. By allowing it to expand, it become that much more powerful. By focusing it and allowing it to mingle with the Force itself, it becomes a sharpened weapon. It is, on the surface, an easier task than creating a false emptiness, but this, too, requires letting go of all things but that rage. Again, I have never managed it.
What has worked, in my experience, is, as usual, simultaneously both and neither. I make no effort to make space for the Force to fill; doing so only leads to frustration. Rather, I sort through what exists, honing in on one place, but never losing awareness of the rest. One does not need to make room for the Force, only to look for it.
Like the Sith, I use emotion as a focus, sifting through until there is only one at the forefront. In the past, it was usually anger. Sometimes it still is, but more often recently, love is the easiest. There are times when this is all I want, to sit in that one feeling and give it focus and strength. But sometimes, like the Jedi, there is another step beyond that, to nothing but the Force itself. There, in the eye of the storm, is balance, chaotic and peaceful at once, neither light nor dark. It is power. It is truth. It is clarity. And it is always there, no matter how much the tumult of thoughts and feelings continues to rage around it.
Training Remotes
The ones we had in the First Order lacked this limitation; they were designed to be destroyed. Perhaps that's wasteful, but it makes for both a more realistic and more engaging exercise, when the simulated enemy poses a real threat and there's nothing holding one back from attacking it at full force. This is the sort of thing a small, simple, and very replaceable droid like this is good for.
They were still harmless--their blasts were designed to cause brief pain but no lasting damage--but significantly more vicious, with an attack rate that only increased the longer the remote was active. There was no method for turning them off. The trainee would have no choice but to destroy it or allow it to ramp to an overwhelming level of difficulty.
Attacking something like this proved a more useful challenge. There is skill in being able to track a small and highly mobile target, capable in a way of defending itself, enough to land a damaging strike. There is also skill in not attacking something like this. Leaving it active as a test of endurance, continuing to deflect the onslaught of fire until it finally runs itself out of battery life. It was in doing the latter that I learned not just how to defend fire with a lightsaber, but with the Force itself, holding the blaster shot still in midair. Without this sort of challenge, I expect the thought would never have occurred to me.
There are many ways in which Snoke's methods were, in retrospect, too harsh. There are also many in which Luke Skywalker's were too soft. This is one of them. I wonder if any of these First Order models still exist by now. They are one of the few things I miss.