Kylo Ren, (Accidental) Resistance Hero [12/X] (DISCONTINUED)

[thispatternismine]

Fandom: Star Wars

Relationship(s): Reylo, platonic Roselo

Summary: Kylo Ren is forced to flee the First Order when Hux stages a coup, but any hope he might have had of reconciling with Rey is dashed when his former troops move on the Resistance, wiping them out. Unable to sense Rey in the Force (& so believing her dead), he vows revenge & declares war on the whole First Order, with the help of only a very confused Resistance technician, a couple of droids, & some porgs.

OR: Kylo Ren goes on a rollicking revenge rampage against a whole army & somehow becomes the new face of the Resistance as a result. BB-8 is so done. R2-D2 is even more done. Rose Tico isn't sure she signed up for this shit. But at least the porgs are happy.

Chapter 1:  In Which Insomnia Can Save A Life
Chapter 2:  In Which Rey Ponders Her Love Life
Chapter 3:  In Which Kylo Ren is Late to A Party
Chapter 4:  In Which Rose Goes On A Shopping Trip
Chapter 5:  In Which Kylo Ren Has to Return Some Library Books
Chapter 6:  In Which Lost Property is Returned
Chapter 7:  In Which Ben Solo Goes For A Walk
Chapter 8:  In Which Engineering Happens, & An Execution Takes Place
Chapter 9:  In Which Hux Receives An Uninvited Guest
Chapter 10:  In Which Rose Gets A Makeover
Chapter 11:  In Which Kylo Ren Gets A Hug & is Confused by the Concept
Chapter 12:  In Which DJ Gets Force Choked (& the author gives up)

Explanation for abandonment:

So yeah I'll be upfront about this: I can't continue this fic, at least not right now, & not any time soon, if ever.

I was blocked on it for a while even before TROS came out & caused the fandom to implode (chapter 11 had actually been done since March 2019 & I'd been saving it until I'd written the next chapter, but I ended up posting it in December in a state of pre-TROS euphoria & 'fuck it why not?'). Then JB opened his mouth & I felt that Rose could do way better than Finn, but I wasn't sure what direction to go in with her & wanted to rethink her story.

Even after TROS I still intended to continue, but opted to work on finishing Something Changed as that was much smaller in scope & it was fairly easy to get it done & out the way, as well as writing a oneshot for another fandom because the idea had been in my head for a while, so that way I wouldn't be juggling multiple fics... Only to start working on Kidnapped. Because of course.

Even after I got back to working on this, progress was slow. I'd come up with (& deleted) several different half-written versions of the chapter & nothing seemed to work. Eventually I sat down & worked out properly what I wanted to happen, coming up with a nice bullet point chapter outline. At last! I knew how the chapter needed to go!

And that was the point my enthusiasm for Star Wars, which had been coasting by on pure spite at that point, ran out.

The closest I've come to abandoning a fic before now was with Marry in Haste, where I'd bailed on the fic for so long my motivation for it had deserted me, & I figured I'd come to resent it if I forced myself to keep working on it. But... I was still at least interested in that fic, & I didn't fall out of love with the characters, or the fandom, & also it was based around a trope that I could wrap up super quick if I wanted to ('marriage of convenience becomes real when the characters realise they have feelings for each other') so readers got some closure.

But this is just... Ugh. TROS wasn't just terrible. It made the whole saga a depressing meaningless mess by how it tied everything up. It's particularly hard to care about reylo after seeing one half the pairing as a bland husk of a character who ended up usurping the other half's place & nobody caring. (It didn't help that the trilogy had been so concerned with having her be some kind of paragon that they never gave her much of a personality to start with - Rian tried, bless him, but it wasn't enough.)

I don't want to entirely rule out continuing this in the future, but that's only because theoretically anything is possible & I hate saying never. But possible doesn't mean likely.

For now though, I have put something together as a final update. I had a bunch of small sections of the intended chapter written left over from the various versions I attempted to write, & I figured I might as well post something to show for months of work, so I forced myself to smash them together & work them into something hopefully coherent.