May the 4th Be With You 2020

[lucymonster]

Skip to: Ben/Kylo backstory  |  Ben/Kylo meets the Trio  |  Phasma ships  |  Qi'ra ships  |  Miscellaneous cute things

Dear Yoda,

Thanks so much for creating for me! I hope you'll find me an easy recipient: this letter includes a selection of my favourite things for inspiration, but I’m very open to anything you’d like to do. I’m requesting both fic and art for everything. 

Some sections of my letter are longer than others, but I’m equally excited for every character and ship I’ve included, and for gifts of any size. If a prompt seems to suggest a longer story, I’d also be thrilled with a short scene or excerpt based on that concept.

Other notes: I have no strong feelings about the line between gen and shipfic, so please don’t worry about your work being too shippy for a & request or too gennish for a / request. I’m just happy my requested characters are interacting. Past ships, background ships, love triangles and poly are all fine. If I haven't explicitly DNW'd a thing then I'm open to receiving it in good faith, even if it's something you might consider niche or opt-in. (Seriously. Every time I look at my likes list, I'm aghast at how many things aren't on it! My enthusiasm for fanworks far outstrips my skill at writing lists, so if you've got the perfect trope or plot or kink in mind, please assume I'm on board and forgive my carelessness in not asking for it directly.)

I'm lucymonster on ao3.

Thanks again, and happy creating!

General info

⛔ Do Not Want

• explicit under-18 smut (fade-to-black or ageing up OK)
• parent-child incest
• extreme gore, graphic organ damage, genital bleeding/cutting/tearing
• AUs other than canon divergence (including trope AUs: please no a/b/o, soulmates etc)
• pure fluff
• scat, vore, emetophilia, bestiality
• graphic depictions of needles, injections, transfusions or blood-drinking
• issuefic, character or ship bashing
• poetry
• unwarned major character death (tag or author’s note appreciated!).

 ⛔ Star Wars-specific DNW: Kylo Ren perma-dying without being redeemed, or anything that negates his and Rey's mutual romantic attraction. If you’re writing another ship, please let Rey have grieved Ben fondly and moved on, or let them have parted ways regretfully/amicably/without hating each other, or make them poly/open, or just avoid mentioning the issue at all.


⭐ Story likes

In general, my favourite stories are the ones where the characters feel like real, live, messy and imperfect people. I love fics that are thought-provoking or uncomfortable to read. I love to relax into well-earned (or not-so-well-earned) moments of happiness for my otherwise beleaguered faves. I love to laugh. Favourite themes include:

• anything with a strong character focus
• characters who are flawed and abrasive and challenging to love; difficult or dysfunctional relationships
• dark/gritty/moody aesthetics
• imperfect happiness, bittersweet undertones, unfulfilled yearning
• ensemble casts, background characters, outsider POV
• mundane details, little moments of human vulnerability
• politics, bureaucracy, propaganda
• banter, snark, gallows humour, quippiness
• guilty pleasures: denying them, suppressing them, and finally giving into temptation
• tropes: hurt/comfort, enemies to lovers, forced proximity, huddling for warmth, fake relationships, bodyswap
• descriptions of food, characters eating or sharing food, food as comfort
• military kink: uniforms, weapons, ‘sir’
• harsh environments, brutal weather, survival/adventure stories
• redemption (or failed redemption)
• crack treated seriously
• non-standard formats: drabbles, non-linear, epistolary, social media, in-universe meta.

💀 Dark likes

Honestly, go as brutal and fucked-up as you like. There's no such thing as too dark. I love my horror both overt and covert - if you're not feeling the in-your-face disasterfest, by all means creep me out with subtle insinuations or dark twists to sweet-seeming premises. Some favourite themes:

• noncon/dubcon (see my nonconathon letter for a laundry list of kinks I love)
• bad guys win, good guys go bad
• grey morality, antiheroes, villain-centred morality
• extremist politics, callous bureaucracies, the mundane horrors of life under the jackboot
• 'ugly' mental illness: violence, paranoia, self-destructiveness, warped thinking
• self-harm, suicide attempts or ideation
• psychological horror
• coercion, blackmail, abuse of power
• victim blaming
• self-harm, self-destructiveness, suicide atte
• physical torture: flogging, beating, burrning, bone-breaking, electrocuting
• psychological/'enhanced interrogation' style torture: sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, stress positions, extreme noise and temperature, deliberate humiliation.

🍑 Smut likes

Character-driven smut is my jam. I love sex that says something about the people involved, offbeat sex scenes, sex that's awkward and imperfect and humanising, unusual erogenous zones and intimate details about the characters' bodies. Favourite kinks include:

• orgasm delay/denial, sexual frustration, begging
• coming too quickly, loss of control, getting overwhelmed
• crying after sex
• rough sex, hate sex, power imbalances
• on the other hand: tender, adoring, needy sex with lavish attention to each other's pleasure
• humiliation, verbal insults, gendered slurs
• frottage, dry humping, clothed sex
• sex pollen, fuck-or-die
• different erogenous zones, being sensitive in non-genital places
• anal sex (het or slash), double or multiple penetration
• sounding, watersports, forced wetting
• public use, gangbangs
• loss of virginity, inexperience, clumsy sex
• praise kink
• scar worship
• uncomfortable, consensual-but-unpleasant type sex
• under-negotiated kinks
• any level of complex, problematic or questionable consent.

🎨 Art likes

I really love art! I'm not an artist or an especially visual thinker, and I worry that my attempts to prompt specific art would be stifling and unimaginative. But I really love art, so please know it's not a 'lesser' part of my requests just because my detailed prompts are often more fic-oriented! I'd love to see a scene from any suggested plot brought to life, or like, a portrait of my requested character/s, or cute little chibis, or anything else you'd like to do. Hell, treat my blank-slate tastes as a chance to do something different or experimental you've wanted to do, and surprise me with a thing I'd never have thought to ask for. Here are some things I've noticed myself liking before:

• dark colour palettes, black and white, splashes of blood red and bruise purple
• moody, gothy or industrial aesthetics
• light and shadows
• movement: rippling hair, action poses, billowing clothes, etc
• almost-but-not-quite touches, little tense moments where the intimacy could easily break and never happen
• emotive faces: yearning looks, welling tears, pain, joy, wistfulness, fleeting smiles
• fight scenes, violence, visible injuries, little rivers of blood/tears/sweat
• holding someone tight (clenching hands, straining arms, fierceness)
• comic panels, manga style, chibis, cute critters
• setting and background details
• costume details
• wearing partner's clothes
• kissing
• explicit art
• suggestive, teasing, almost-explicit art.

Requested ships

Ben/Kylo backstory

🖤 Ap'lek & Cardo & Kuruk & Trudgen & Ushar & Vicrul & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
I just really want Kylo Ren to have some evil bros who he can be his worst self with. I love how wildly different the Knights of Ren are from the First Order proper, and I’d love to see Kylo balance the tension between his obligations to two different groups: on one hand he’s the leader of a slick technocratic military with rigidly enforced conformist values, and on the other hand he’s the leader of a rough-and-tumble space outlaw bikie gang who wear dodgy handmade gear and tread dirt all over the polished floors. I’d love to know more about how the Knights see him, why they follow him, whether their loyalty is pure ‘strongest guy’s in charge’ or whether there’s also genuine respect and camaraderie baked into their dynamic. I’d love a missing/expanded scene of their fight on Exegol, if any of them have time to exchange words or feel any hesitation about hacking into each other like lifelong enemies. I’d love to see some of their brutal adventures together in Kylo’s pre-Supreme Leader days, and the crimes that made them so notorious and feared.

I’d also just in general love to know more about the individual knights. Even after the comics series, they’re still all pretty much blank-slate characters and I’ll be thrilled with anything that fleshes them out a bit.

🖤 Armitage Hux & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
I’m LIVING for the pettiness of Hux turning traitor to his whole life’s work because he hates Kylo Ren just that much. I love the overwhelming inequality of their enemy dynamic, how completely Hux has lost their power struggle from the earlier movies and how he’s left to stew in consuming hatred while Kylo barely bothers with him any more except to throw the occasional jab. But I also love that he clearly still has some kind of strategic or practical value, since Kylo hasn’t yet caved to the temptation of doing away with him completely.

I’d love to see more spiteful banter, cutthroat politics and one-sided scheming. Does Hux often get called on in Supreme Council meetings to account for the embarrassing private thoughts Kylo has sensed in him? When he’s not busy being a punching bag, how much leeway does he have left to actually do his job? Does he find any sympathy among his fellow councillors? (The new visual dictionary suggests that First Order command is fairly evenly split between admiring their new Supreme Leader and gritting their teeth to put up with him. It also suggests that Kylo has made criticising him an act of treason, so Hux will have to be careful if he wants to drum up support against the bullying.)

I’m also interested in any and all worldbuilding around the First Order’s political platform, military strategy and internal machinations. The whole thing veers so wildly between ruthless efficiency and disastrous incompetence – I can’t look away.

🖤 Snoke & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
My favourite take on this relationship is 'vulnerable asshole gets in way over his head with a much bigger, badder asshole'. I'm intrigued by Kylo's volatility towards Snoke: the brainwashed hero-worship, the seething resentment, the willingness to turn on a dime and gorily murder him. I also have a weakness for cracky stories about big scary villains being secret failboats, so would welcome something darkly funny about their student/mentor relationship or the inner workings of the First Order bureaucracy.

If you've read the Journey to TROS and Rise of Kylo Ren comics, they have been so good to me with all the Ben and Snoke backstory, and I'd love to see any element from them explored further. The 'invisible friend' vibe Snoke kept with kid!Ben, chatting to him in his head, subtly reinforcing his tendency to feel misunderstood and ill-used. The warm, paternal affection he offered a scared young adult Ben after his flight from Luke's temple (that hug!!!). The erratic, abusive mentor he revealed himself as once his hold was secure (that face slap!!!). I'd love to see Kylo training with Snoke, confiding in him, relying on him, chasing his approval - or suffering his disappointment.


🖤 Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Tai
So: that 'special bond', right??? I renounce everything I've ever said about Ben the Kissless Virgin, because clearly he and Tai spent many a recess hooking up under the bleachers at Jedi school. Tai is the only person in the galaxy Ben trusts to see him as a person instead of a legacy. And now Tai is gone and there's nothing for it but to renounce his entire past self and become evil. I knew Ben's turn was going to be tragic but I'm still reeling that it turned out so goddamn romantic.

(I also like the precedent it sets of Ben being prone to turning on a dime and changing personalities like clothes for love. He definitely has a little bit of that Rebecca Bunch, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend vibe going on.)

I'd love to know about their temple adventures together and the bond they built along the way! Group assignment where their task is to fly offworld together and find some ancient Jedi treasure? Sparring sessions? Late night conversations and telepathic bby!Jedi intimacy? (Please do make them 18+ if you go the explicit smut route, but I have no objection to T-rated teenage fumbling.) Or, how about their bond after Ben leaves to join the Knights of Ren - is Mimban the first time they've spoken since Ben's flight, or has the Force connected them before and shown Tai flashes of who Ben is becoming? What about the aftermath of Tai's death? Grief, ghosts, spooky darkside resurrection attempts? 

Ben/Kylo meets the Trio

❤️ Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
❤️ Poe Dameron & Finn & Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
TROS spoiled me rotten with two versions of this ship that I love equally: the harsh adversarial chemistry between Rey and Kylo in the first half, and the ride-or-die devotion between Rey and Ben in the second. I love how completely every stage of his arc revolved around her, from his perverse early efforts to make her like him (maybe this time taunting her about her parentage will do the trick!) to his turn right after she stabbed him on the Death Star (he was barely even fighting back!) to his desperate sacrifice play at the end. I love how Rey’s inner darkness came through – not the parentage reveal per se (use it or retcon it, I’m neutral) but her mounting anger and the fear of her dark side vision that ironically becomes realer the more she dreads it. TLJ made me ship them like burning, but TROS showed me just how much they truly have in common.

These prompts have gotten long, I know, but they’re by no means an exhaustive wishlist. If it features my faves being attracted to each other, it can’t fail to fill me with joy.

- In the year between TLJ and TROS, Rey and Kylo conduct an angry, wistful, let’s-pretend-this-is-just-hatesex relationship through their Force Bond. I love the awkward intimacy of them living inside each other’s heads, popping into each other’s lives at uncontrolled moments, being forced to share the very fabric of their souls even as fate and their own moral convictions pull them in opposite directions.

- Ben survives Exegol, and he and Rey go to work dismantling what’s left of the First Order around the galaxy. I’d love to see what their relationship looks like when they’re not under immediate end-of-the-world pressure – name change or not, I’m sure there’s still plenty of Kylo Ren left in Ben to cause friction. I’d also love to see him clash with her Resistance friends, who I doubt are quite as euphoric about his turn as Rey was.

- Ben doesn’t survive Exegol, and Rey breaks the laws of responsible Force use trying to bring him back. Maybe it works and they get joyously reunited. Maybe it works, but Ben comes back wrong and everything is horrible, or else it throws the universe out of balance and Ben is forced to sacrifice himself again to make it right. Or maybe it doesn’t work at all, and Rey has to come to terms with her grief (perhaps with some help from Ben’s happily-at-rest Force Ghost?).

- Rey falls to the dark side. Kylo Ren gets what he wants, and the two of them overthrow Palpatine and ascend together to their tastefully gothic Sith throne. Aesthetics, kinky porn or grimdark worldbuilding – I’m here for any aspect of this AU!

- Time travel! Maybe a post-Exegol Rey goes back in time to save Ben (from dying, or from falling in the first place)? Maybe an older Kylo Ren from a First-Order-won-the-war alternate timeline comes to regret his choices, and travels back to try and fix them?

❤️ Finn/Rey
Rey confiding her dark vision in Finn was the moment that took me from ‘they’re cute together’ to ‘actually I ship it like burning’. Their intimacy and mutual trust are gorgeous, but I’m less interested in the happy, healthy side of their relationship than I am in the trauma and struggle underpinning it: Finn knows what it’s like to feel morally unmoored, and Rey knows he’s the one person she can talk to about the strain of choosing good when fate seems determined to pull her towards evil. They’ve both seen so much darkness and they’ve both come dangerously close to giving into it. They’ve both had a hard, messy time figuring out who they actually are. I want to see more of that mess and its aftermath.

- After Exegol, Rey trains Finn in the Force. I’d love to see how Force sensitivity works differently in ‘normal’ people who weren’t chosen from birth and bred from a long line of Sith/Jedi royalty: Rey’s powers came to life like a roaring wildfire, whereas Finn’s have been more of a slow, contained smoulder. Stoking them might take more effort for him, but he’s nothing if not determined.

- With the First Order defeated, stormtroopers and low-level officers are repenting of their past allegiance in droves. Finn’s experience as a defector and his and Rey’s Force-enhanced insight make them well placed to deal with the influx, whether that means finding a place in the recovery effort for the genuinely repentant, or sifting out dangerous opportunists trying to hide their war crimes in the ‘I was just following orders’ crowd.

- Poe already felt excluded when Finn and Rey were off whispering without him; now they’re Officially Together, and the trio dynamic needs to change to accommodate. (As the most optional of optional details, OT3 vibes are welcome if you’re that way inclined! I haven’t requested Finn/Rey/Poe because I’m too lazy to write a whole extra set of prompts, but I think the three of them are great together.)

- Another secret Finn never told Rey is that he’s a virgin. He tries to bluster his way through their first intimate encounter, but it quickly becomes obvious he has no idea what he’s doing.

❤️ Finn/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Death cannot stop true love! I honestly expected TROS to kill my dearest rarepair; instead it gave Finn Force powers and opened up a whole wide wonderful world of ghostfucking and redemption possibilities.

I love these two as enemies drawn together by circumstance, as foils to each other's best and worst traits, as lost soul with a shared background in evil doing their best to leave the First Order's influence behind. I love pre-canon stories where stormtrooper!Finn stumbles into his scariest commander's orbit (only to find that maybe he isn't so scary after all?) I love post-canon or divergent stories where Ben defects to the Resistance and Finn helps him find his footing on the new terrain. I love happy endings and bleak disasters and bittersweet could-have-beens. Honestly, if these two are interacting, I'm happy.

- Ben survives Exegol and helps clean up what’s left of his First Order mess. Finn agrees to work with him for Rey’s sake, but his own feelings about his former commander are a lot more complicated than just ‘yay he’s good now’.

- Ben (alive or as a Force Ghost) takes an unexpected interest in Finn’s Jedi training.

- Pre-TROS or in a First Order wins AU, Finn gets captured and Kylo Ren takes a keen personal interest in his interrogation. (Torture and noncon are good; Finn’s awakening Force powers are good; Kylo’s immense frustration that all his Resistance captives keep manifesting unexpected powers and resisting him is good.)

❤️ Poe Dameron/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
I love this ship best when it's fraught and baggage-laden. Please lean as hard as you like on their (past or current) enmity, quick tempers, ideological differences and that one incident with the torture and mind invasion and whatnot. You know, that one. I'm sure Poe still remembers it.

(These prompts are extra long, sorry, as I've brought them over directly from another longer wordcount exchange. It bears repeating that I'd be just as thrilled with a short scene or excerpt from any of them!)

- Besides impulse control issues and their love for Leia, their piloting skills are pretty much the biggest thing these two have in common, right? Based on the cross-sections book and visual dictionary, Kylo Ren's main non-murder hobby seems to be pestering his engineers (sorry, I mean 'supplying detailed post-flight reports') to improve his custom prototype starfighter's speed and handling. And Poe, as we all know, is the Best Pilot In The Resistance. It's a match made in revhead heaven. I'd love to see a redeemed Ben defect to the light side and bond with Poe over their shared love of flying irresponsibly fast. Maybe they get lumped together on a mission or drawn into some kind of race or pissing contest. Maybe they get accidentally transfixed watching whatever the space version of Fast and the Furious is. Maybe they pool their expertise to acquire black-market engine upgrades for the cause. Testosterone, competence porn and petty one-upmanship all highly encouraged.

- I'd be equally keen to see this happen sometime pre-TFA between Poe and Kylo Ren, or in a divergent AU where Ben either survives Exegol or defects to the light side earlier in canon. Either way, two hot-tempered men who have good reason not to like each other and ample incentive to ignore their sexual tension get thrust into a survival scenario where they're forced to work together. Some relevant tropes: reluctant trust. Competence porn. Hurt/comfort. Huddling for warmth (and maybe popping ill-timed boners in the middle of the night? IDK man I'm just saying, that's a thing that happens sometimes, y'know, whatever). Awkward intimate conversations when there's nothing else to do and no one else to talk to. Changes of heart brought on by getting to know each other better - or stubborn refusal to change heart, but the experience touches them deeply and they part with wistful knowledge of what could have been.

- Instead of falling to the dark side, Ben Solo quits his Jedi training early and runs off to make his way in the galaxy as a spice runner. He crosses paths with Poe, who's doing likewise. I'm interested in cynicism, grey morality and bad decisions: what does the galaxy look like if a) Poe fails to have his come-to-New-Republic moment and b) Ben avoids becoming all-out evil but never quite gets as far as committing to the light and following his parents' heroic footsteps? I like lost men who haven't quite figured out how to live inside their own skin. I like failboats trying hard to act rebellious and badass. I like competitive tension and trust earned the hard way. I also adore worldbuilding about the galaxy's underworld subcultures: the seedy cantinas they frequent, the fashion they think makes them look cool, the music they listen to.

- Ben survives TROS but gets imprisoned for war crimes; Poe visits. I'm kind of obsessed with those reality shows about life behind bars, so any details about Ben's prison life and daily routine would be super cool - it's a hell of a lifestyle change from Supreme Leader to repentant inmate. I'd also love to know more about how the galaxy's justice and incarceration systems work. I'm also really into the complexity of redemption and forgiveness, and how - if at all - two people can ever come back from something as bad as what happened during the war.

❤️ Finn/Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
❤️ Poe Dameron/Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
❤️ Poe Dameron/Finn/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren/Rey
All of my thoughts and prompts about Reylo, Finnrey, Finnlo and Kylo/Poe apply here too! I ship them in any configuration: ‘true’ poly ship, poly-V, or complicated mess not otherwise specified. Please mush them together in whatever way seems best to you.

In general, I love (functional or dysfunctional) found families, and the ways that different two-person dynamics can play out as part of a larger whole. Ben/Kylo and Rey have their intense cosmic soulmates thing going on; Finn and Rey have their adoring trust and mutual loyalty; Rey and Poe have their combative rival energy; Finn and Poe are, like, basically married. Ben is the outsider who showed up super late to the not-being-evil party. Poe is the only mundane in a group of space wizards. Finn is neither/nor: too Force sensitive to fit in with Poe, too untrained to keep up with Ben and Rey. How does a group this disparate work in practice?

Phasma ships

💚 Armitage Hux/Phasma/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
💚 Phasma/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren

I'm here for this equally as a pairing or an OT3. All three of them are difficult, damaged people with competing professional agendas and very different views of what it means to be part of the First Order. I'd love a fic that explores the power struggles between them, and the clash between their need for human intimacy and their need to get one over each other at all times.

I'd be really into Phasma Doing What Must Be Done to secure her position. What does she think of Kylo (and Hux) - does she respect them as allies, or look down on them as sheltered brats who've been handed power they don't deserve? Does she grit her teeth when she takes them to bed? Is she using them, or are they using her?

💚 Phasma/Qi'ra

Two fiery, ruthless survivors who've left behind everything they ever knew and loved to safeguard their futures and secure their ambitions. I'm into this ship for its cutthroat potential, mutual convenience and the chance for these hardened warriors to expose one or two of their deeply buried vulnerabilities - or forcibly expose each other's.

 

What would an alliance between them look like? Maybe Qi'ra finds her cartel working for the First Order? Or maybe Phasma's luck with the Order runs out, and she enlists with Crimson Dawn for another chance to make a life for herself and put her warrior's skills to use?

 

💚 Phasma/Rose Tico

I'd love this dark and twisted: Rose falls into First Order captivity? AU where Rose joins the First Order after being radicalised in the other direction by her childhood on Hosnian Prime? Survival story where the two of them get stranded together and are forced to work together?

I also love the idea of Phasma getting out of the Order and having to find a new cause to keep herself afloat. Maybe it ends up being in her interests to defect to the Resistance. Or maybe she survives the war and they run into each other somewhere down the line, once old hostilities have had time to cool and all that's left are half-healed scars.

 

Qi'ra ships

💜 Leia Organa/Qi'ra

Leia was raised as royalty and lost all of it; Qi'ra was born in the gutters and clawed her way up from nothing. Both of them are deeply driven, albeit by clashing goals. Both of them are whip-smart and pragmatic and capable of immense political subtlety. And of course, both of them have loved and lost Han.

 

(Quick note on that: Leia and Qi'ra's shared history with the same man is a big part of what makes this ship interesting me, so I'd prefer a fic that doesn't retcon out either pairing. I'm also not keen on out-and-out infidelity, ie 'I'm doing this in secret and I know you'd feel betrayed if you found out'. But I'm fine with any level of agreed or incidental non-monogamy, timeline changes, breakups/divorces, or however else you prefer to handle their tangled history.)

 

I love the idea of the two of them first meeting as older women, linked by grief and shared regrets that evolve into something deeper between them. Perhaps Qi'ra has had enough of living in the shadows, and joins forces with the Resistance against the First Order threat?

💜 Qi'ra/Rey

I'd love to see inexperienced, rough-and-ready young Rey with a smart, ruthless, manipulative older woman. I can picture Qi'ra as a freewheeling criminal agent in a post-First Order takeover world, playing both sides and keeping channels open with the Resistance for shady reasons of her own. I'd especially love anything that touches on her history with Han, or anything that plays up the age gap and Rey's desperate need for a parental/mentor figure.

 

- Dark!Rey took Kylo's offer and joined the First Order. She meets Qi'ra through their shared dark side allegiance.

- Qi'ra hates the First Order as much as anyone, whether for conscience reasons or because they interfere in her business. She's willing to help the Resistance, but there's too much baggage for her and Leia to ever really work together. Rey becomes the go-between.

- Qi'ra sees a lot of herself in this hungry spitfire from bumfuck, Jakku. She courts her to join Crimson Dawn.

💜 Qi'ra/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren

Qi'ra is a smart, ambitious survivor who's willing to use sex and intimacy to get what she wants. Kylo is a handy source of power and also a bottomless pit of easy-to-manipulate emotional needs. I'd love to see virgin Kylo with older woman Qi'ra, or maybe Qi'ra indulging her nurturing side with a younger and more energetic toyboy. Maybe she's using him to get to Snoke, or to keep the First Order out of her private cartel business. Or maybe she sees herself as a mentor figure of sorts, an early exponent of letting the past die and becoming who you were meant to be.

 

I'm heavily into the Oedipal potential here: is Kylo hyper-aware that he's fucking his dad's ex? Is Qi'ra nostalgic for Han? Does it bother either of them that she's old enough to be his mother? Please feel free to lean into the age gap and keep-it-in-the-family vibe as hard as you like.

 

Alternatively: redeemed (ish) Ben Solo walks away from the Order but isn't quite ready to join the Fight Against Evil. Working for Qi'ra is a decent morally grey option.

 

Miscellaneous cute things

💙 Babu Frik & C-3PO

I'm not even sure what to prompt here. I just know that the scene between Babu Frik and C-3PO was the single most fun moment in all of TROS, and I really really want there to be more of it! I love quirky character voices for non-human characters; any level of (flippant or deadly earnest) engagement with the Plight of Droids; Threepio being fussy, pompous and relentlessly petty-minded; Babu Saying The Thing.

Maybe their paths cross again post-TROS, when Threepio finds himself again in need of some sort of black market modification or maintenance? Maybe he enlists Babu Frik's help with mumblesomething idk droid intelligence network? I'd love some kind of tongue-in-cheek casefic or adventure story, but honestly, context is 100% optional - just put them in a room together and have them talk and I'll be so very happy.

💙 Baby Yoda & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren

‘He’d probably just put him in front of the TV so he could do what he needed to do. He’d be a negligent caretaker.’ – Adam Driver, 2019

I dearly want to see workaholic, ostentatiously eviller-than-thou Kylo Ren find himself suddenly responsible for the care and feeding of a weird adorable alien critter-child. Does Adam Driver have it right, or would Kylo warm up to his new charge? Would that miraculous strength in the Force catch his interest? Would – dare I even suggest it – Baby Yoda’s innate instinct for the light side be enough to touch the heart of a man who has committed himself so wholly to the dark?

💙 Finn/Kazuda Xiono

Finn and Kaz have a certain sense of overwhelmed-ness in common: they abandoned the strictures of their respective upbringings, they fell into their Resistance roles more or less by accident, they have a tendency to talk talk themselves up and then come unstuck when it's time to deliver, and they're both starry-eyed about Poe Dameron but not quite able to live up to his level of effortless heroic strut. They're both adorable failboats who nonetheless make themselves indispensable to the Resistance cause, and I'd love to see what would happen if a shared mission or a coincidence ever caused them to meet.

 

(For the record, I am blithely unconcerned about Resistance canon. Don't sweat about any spoilers, but you're also welcome to ignore the show's events and port Kaz straight over into movieverse, or diverge from canon at whatever point suits you.)