SPOILER "Aftermath: Empire's End" By Chuck Wendig (Discussion)

Thank you!

 

@LadyMusashi, I see that @FN-3263827 and @Choose Light diplomatically and I presume quite deliberately ignored your rather callous and surprisingly uncompassionate remark (and no, that playful emoji makes it even worse!), but I shan't.

Spoiler: vis-a-vis baby Ben needs a snuggle - Han and Baby Ben scene

Han looks into the eyes of his son. “My son.” How the hell did that happen? Well, he knows how that happened. A night under the stars and the canopy of Endor trees. But in the larger sense, the galaxy is a far stranger place than he figured on if it’s letting him be a father.

Solo stands in the nursery alone. The boy, Ben, wriggles and gurgles in the round white bubble of protection that is the infancy cradle. Han leans forward over it, arms crossed on the rail while looking down at the child’s chubby face and dark eyes. They regard each other. The child burbles. While Leia is in the other room taking a shower, Han says in a low voice, “Hey, it’s you and me, kid. Whole damn galaxy against us, but we’ll make it through okay. I’m not always going to be the best dad. Come on, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here--I can barely take care of myself. But I’ll always keep us pointed in the right direction. Even if we zig and zag a little to get there. There’s your first lesson. Sometimes doing the right thing doesn’t mean following a straight line. Sometimes you gotta--” He takes his hand and gestures with it, like it’s a fish, swimming this way and that, left and right, and up and down. “Don’t tell your mother I said that.” Ben starts to cry. It comes on fast, like a tropical downpour. Staring up all innocent, and then it hits him—boom! The little body tightens up and his mitts make little rubbery fists and punch the air. His white cheeks bloom with red. The sound coming out of him is like a storm siren.


Han winces. “Aw, hell.” He looks around him like there’s gotta be something or someone there to save him. Nearby he finds a small Tooka doll that Lando sent over. And he takes it and thrusts it into the air above the boy and wiggles it. “Here. Look, uh, the cat is, uh, the cat is dancing? Dancing Tooka. Come on, kid, you gotta give me something here.” It does nothing to stem the tide of tears. Han growls, looking around for something else. He’s about to yell for Leia, but there she is, coming in through the doorway.

“He’s, uh, you know, he’s making that sound again.”

“He’s crying.”

“Right. Yeah.” Han holds up a finger. “It’s not my fault.”

“Han,” Leia says, coming over to him, still in her towel, “it’s okay. He’s a baby. Babies cry. It’s how they tell you they want something.”

“Oh. Yeah, I know. Of course. Maybe you could do your, uh…” He mimes his hand floating in the air in an almost religious gesture. Leia has a connection with the kid that he can never have. Like Luke, she has the Force. That’s a thing he never used to believe in. But since getting caught up with this group, he’s seen a whole lot of strangeness just to believe it’s just a bunch of hooey. Leia can’t do what Luke can do, and maybe never will. But she can quiet the kid with but the faintest of gestures. He hates to admit it, but he’s jealous of that. Han will never have that with Ben. They’re connected in a way he can’t even begin to understand. “You know, use the Force?”

“Why don’t we try something else?”

“A little brandy on his gums?”

“Pick him up!” she says.

“Just—pick him up.”

“Yes, he’s your son. Use your hands. Go on, Han, pick him up. He wants to be snuggled.”

“I smuggle, not snuggle.”

“Han!”

He sighs. “Okay okay.” He stoops down and gingerly reaches for his son. He hoists him up, and Ben twists and turns in his grip. “He’s so small.” Han thinks how easy it would be to break him, or to drop him. The boy is vulnerable to everything! So he does what feels most natural—he protects the kid, by bringing him close to his chest. And just like that, Ben stops crying. The boy nuzzles up against his collarbone. He burps once, his dark eyes pinched shut. And he’s out like a light.

“See?” she says. “You don’t need the Force at all.”

“But I’ll never have what you have with him.”

“You don’t have to,” she says sweetly. “You will have your own thing, because you’re his father.”

#SaveBenSolo

 

i didn't ignore it ~ i gave her a raspberry! hahahahaha : D

 

I'd appreciate thoughts on this:

The truth in our soul

Is that nothing is true.

The question of life

Is what then do we do?

The burden is ours

To penance, we hew.

The Force binds us all

From a certain point of view.​

It's from the Journal of the Whills, quoted in the Interlude on Christophsis, where members of the Church of the Force are returning kyber crystals that the Empire stole.

Is this retconning Obi-Wan's "lie" and making it all mystical-Jedi? Or is it just "coincidence"?

Also "The Force binds us all" is not that far away from the belief of the Acolytes of Beyond, that the Force binds us all, and only Dark Siders are able to break free....

 

Yes, sorry I wasn't clear--I meant that last line "from a certain point of view." Did Obi-Wan know of that line? Of course he did!

And yes, Dark Siders seem to be more prisoners, despite the power that they seem to think is better than light siders...but of course, that's only from a certain point of view. It would be very easy for them skew those words from the JofW if they knew of them. Nevertheless, we know of one Dark Sider who broke free of the Dark Side--but not the Force itself.

 

Me too. Sure the kid is leverage, and that kid had no chance as far as nurturing. I like to think she felt sorry for him, she isn't a horrible person, just well, a survivor and stubborn.

 

I already said it but this entire snoke is from the unknown regions of the galaxy thing could add a whole new history and mytholgy to the canon which is so exciting.snoke was calling out to Darth Sidious ! I will look at ROTJ with different eyes now!! Try to watch the scenes at the emperors throne room and to not think about snoke !

 

i hate to beat a dead horse, but couldn't/shouldn't the kid have a chance at nurturing?
why couldn't Sloane have actually taken him under her wing?
she could have maybe recreated the Empire in a less harrowing image!

i mean, i suppose we don't know, ultimately, what she ended up doing, but her behavior in that moment is a chilling indication that she doesn't actually care anything about little bastard Hux's suffering; she just wants to protect herself. yes, it's survivor instincts, but she lowers herself to the level of the children by doing it.

 

I wished Jom was just left on Kashyyyk. That would have satisfied me, he said he was going to help the wookiees. Just throwing him to throw him in and do that, was it just so that one of them had to die?

--- Double Post Merged, Feb 24, 2017, Original Post Date: Feb 24, 2017 ---

They really should have given him a kitty.

 

hahahahahaha ~ they probably should have.

also: i couldn't agree more about Jom. better he disappear from the narrative than to have such an ignominious end.

 

I choose to believe the long-lived space kitten Millicent was given to Armitty by Sloane.

--- Double Post Merged, Feb 24, 2017 ---

I'm pretty sure this "calling" entity is Snoke...but I'm a little nervous TPTB are going to pull the rug out from under us on this. (Not sure why. Paranoia, probably. )

 

if she did, it didn't help ~ hahahahaha

 

Are we sure that the Church of the Force is light side and Acolytes of Beyond dark side though? What is light and what is dark, what would Qui-Gon do?

I don't know why I have endeared myself so much to the First Order characters, maybe because they are so animated?, more than Rey and Finn either (though I do love them don't get me wrong it could be that Luke factor where you were supposed to relate to them or put yourself in their shoes I guess.) Rae Sloane was what like in her 50s? Do we know how old she was, she seemed to be middle aged and around for a bit. She may have been gone by the time TFA got around. Either way, everyone seems more human I guess, than the typical baddies, like Palps, and Darth Vader in the beginning. This book though, I really think I need to give it a few more reads. I must have read the second one 3 times by now. Re-reading the first one now.

 

i took it as sorta tongue-in-cheek, i guess ~ hahahaha
but perhaps more importantly it's there to remind up of the bias of pov; the AotB, the CoE; perhaps none of them are to be trusted.
the ultimate expression of the Force is something else. something more.
something grey?

and if i were to over-analyze (as we're practically called-upon to do here), i would also say it's telling us that there is no such thing as destiny--that we are not bound. the choice is up to us.

 

I think it's pretty clear that the Acolytes are Dark Side, what the Church of the Force and even the Journal of the Whills are remains to be seen.

 

Yes, but I think what @FN-3263827 said about looking at things with a bias has something to be said for itself. Do you follow the light side, the dark side, a code, or just The Force. Makes me think of Chirrut as the Force wills it, or Qui-Gon with some of the things he said.