Its Funny Because Until I Mentioned Specifically That I Was Talking About Leia And Han She Seemed To

It’s funny because until I mentioned specifically that I was talking about Leia and Han she seemed to be coming down on their side. “Parents probably shouldn’t prioritize their children above everything else” but once I said that the character in question was the son of Han and Leia ‘oh, they shouldn't have kids because they’re too selfish to be good parents’.

On some level I do agree that they were selfish but I would say it was more of Leia was young, only 24-25, when she had Ben and being a parent is a huge responsibility and on top of that she was a Senator in the New Republic. And if I understand what I have heard about Leia, Princess of Alderaan correctly, haven’t been able to read the book yet, her caretakers were mostly Droids so she wouldn’t have thought too much about leaving Ben in the care of Droids and she probably didn’t feel like she could really ask anyone for parenting advice or people would offer advice that she didn’t feel comfortable with.

My SIL, the same one in the Ask, told me that I don’t need a crib for my baby and that a Pack and Play will do just fine but that means that the Pack and Play has a dual purpose, sleep and play, and what if I put him in there when he misbehaves then could create confusion about what the Pack and Play means to him. it is where he sleeps? Is it where he plays? Is it where he goes if he hurts the cat?

Han is harder but right now my husband is more excited about becoming a Father than he is with acknowledging the responsibilities that come with becoming a Father. He still wants to get things he doesn’t need because of X. I can’t tell you how many Yugi-oh Cards he has beyond more than enough to fill what I think is a duffel bag big enough to haul sports equipment and they still don’t all fit in it. I think he’s played with them maybe once or twice in the 18 months we have been married and asking him to sell them or teach kids at the YMCA seems to border on blaspheme; especially the teaching kids how to play part since he’s more open to selling some of them but complains about more than likely not getting a lot for the cards.

The point is Han would have to do a lifestyle change and from the sound of things in The Last Shot Han was a Stay at Home Dad when other things weren’t calling for his attention and for someone that was used to not having a house or family to return to it would be a massive change to suddenly have a wife and son to return to and not just ‘onto the next mission’ and being rootless.

And if Han was the parent that was able to be home more often by the simple virtue of being free more often than Leia was he would have had to deal with Ben’s potential Force aided meltdowns. My nephew ‘Ronnie’* when he was almost two had a meltdown in the car because there wasn’t anymore juice for him to drink and my niece ‘Chibi’* who was seven at the time had a meltdown over me turning off the TV and refusing to turn it back on until she got dressed for the day since it was after 10:30; there was a lot of ‘turn the TV back on!’ and ‘not until you get dressed’ going on.

Now imagine a similar situation to the ones above but the child in question can make objects not bolted down shake, rattle and maybe even float and flying around when they’re angry or even snatch the remote out of your hands without touching it and there’s NOTHING you can do to stop them from doing it.

In the Star Wars Legends someone (Han or Luke) recalls how the youngest Solo, Anakin, would have Force Assisted Temper Tantrums where everything in the room would end up against the walls. It was either played for laughs or just a memory, I can’t remember, but in all honesty that would be terrifying to witness a three year old trashing a room.

Another Blogger who has Special Needs children said it’s hard and it is. My younger brother ‘Joe’* was nonverbal for several years and on top of that was a Houdini; turn your back to him long enough he would push the needed objects in front of an outside door so he could get up high enough to push aside the chain installed near the top and run off and the whole neighborhood would go looking for him.

We have resources available for parents with Special Needs children whether it be Respite or Speech Lessons, this is how Joe learned how to speak, or support and resources but Leia and Han wouldn’t have had the same resource for Ben since there no doubt aren’t any books lying around that talk about different methods to use or try when raising a Force Sensitive Child. They would have been on their own and unsure how to properly handle it since they probably didn’t want to outright discourage him using the Force but didn’t want to encourage it either.

And that’s not even touching on Snoke’s interference and the Shadow of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader that hung over Leia and Han.

TL:DR  parenting is hard and parents make mistakes thinking that they are making good choices.

* Not the person’s real name

I talked to one of my SILs about Ben a bit and how he was raised, can’t remember the exact context (pairings?), and at first I didn’t mention it was Star Wars and when I did and mentioned who his parents were she, having not seen TFA or TLJ and not being a big Star Wars fan, immediately said ‘they’re both too selfish to be good parents and I felt that way for years and people are surprised when I say that. Good people but would make bad parents’.

^^^

Yeah. I’m not a fan of people who villainize Han and Leia as these horrible parents either, but one of the things that I think makes the current iteration of Skywalker family drama so compelling is that it’s this complex web of fault and mistakes and tragedy that is both and neither. Han and Leia clearly loved Ben, loved him deeply, but that wasn’t enough to protect him and give him what he needed. And frankly, I think that’s more true to life to a lot of our experiences with our families than a mustache twirling scenario where Han and Leia just let him be raised by a coffee maker in a cave somewhere or where they were perfect and Ben was a bad seed. That’s what makes it so moving and compelling, that Ben and Han and Leia have all loved and hurt each other in equal measure. And it’s what makes Han’s desperate attempt to save his son a redemption for him and for the ways he failed Ben without even meaning to– Ben’s redemption is his family’s also.

I didn’t double 2,734 words but I got it over 4,100 words before shooting the chapter over to my Beta. Thank you @nightsofreylo for giving me the competitive desire to push through my writer’s block to complete a chapter and I wish you luck in all your projects.

You’re amazing! 

I'm 1,587 words into the next chapter of one of my fan fics with that number is going to climb higher tonight. if you don't mind sharing how many words are you into the next chapter of WHS? And I will see if I can match you; by spreading it over my two other WIPs if it's more than I usually make my chapters.

I’m actually working on Driftwood at the moment. I’ve written 458 words of my 2500 word chapter goal.

(I’ve technically got a little over 1,000 words of the next WHS chapter, but that’s probably going in the bin, so it doesn’t feel right to count it.)

Good luck with your word count goals tonight! 💕

I don’t think many people are familiar with how the military works and I heard that the mock court martial either acquitted Poe or all charges or found him not guilty but I didn’t watch it and only read what the panel found.

I think too it boils down to ‘a hero should be right/in the right’ and people forget that the heroes aren’t always right and there were people that wanted Poe to be in the right without considering just how freaking stupid Poe was and that he got a lot of people killed all in the name of pride.

People wanted Holdo to somehow be villainess or something to give credence to Poe’s actions without stopping to see how his earlier and present behavior didn’t exactly instill confidence in his abilities to Holdo.

As I mentioned, he disobeyed a direct order from General Organa, heck he freaking hung up on her because he didn’t want to listen to her order his butt back to the ship because he wanted to destroy that Dreadnought and he didn’t care what it would take as long as it was destroyed and they could brag about it.

Sidenote: Cobalt Squadron, the bombers, had been under Vice Admiral Holdo’s command but she had offered their services to Leia so Poe ordered people that Holdo had been responsible to their deaths.

Someone, I can’t remember where exactly, suggested that Poe and the others that helped him mutiny, seeing that they seemed to be his age and younger, were raised on the stories of the Rebellion and how orders had been disobeyed and it had won them the day. The Rebellion was being disbanded after the discovery of the Death Star but a band of saboteurs decided that they were going to go to where the Death Star Plans were stored and steal them which in turn encouraged others to go and help and they ultimately succeeded in stealing the Death Star Plans and won their first major victory against the Empire, Poe who was the son of two Rebels was sure to have heard a watered down version of what happened at Scarif so why wouldn’t this be any different?

Either way Poe had proven to Holdo that she couldn’t fully trust him to obey any orders she gave him since everyone probably knew that he hung up on General Organa and if he was willing to disobey orders from superior officer he supposedly respected because he didn’t like the orders than he’s even less likely to obey orders he doesn’t like or agree with from an unfamiliar superior officer.

Then you have his insistence that she share her plan with him in unsecured locations in front of people while they’re being chased by the enemy that followed them through Hyperspace, which should be impossible.

People have argued that Holdo could have said the presence of a possible spy was why she wasn’t sharing her plan but she didn’t owe this disrespectful pilot anything no matter what people might say.

Poe doesn’t think things through. If he through he would have realized that he needed to put his pride aside and tell Admiral Holdo about how the First Order was tracking them and how they could stop it long enough to escape into Hyperspace instead of giving Finn, a First Order Deserter, and Rose, a mechanic, a mission to find a Code Breaker a former pirate told them about so they can slip aboard the Supremacy.

Holdo was right to freak out at Poe when she learned what he had done. He had compromised the Resistance on a ‘maybe’.

It seems that Poe was a victim of the Deadly Sin Pride. He had been right so many times before that surely he couldn’t be wrong about this or this.

Hoesntly I think he was a moron for having someone untrained in espionage to be a spy. Yes, no one would suspect a clumsy idiot like Kaz as a spy but Kaz wasn’t trained, as he says to Poe at one point, in the art of being a spy and spies need to know how to not jump to conclusions since that is dangerous and using his real name allows anyone to look him up, Captain Doza sure did, and learn that he used to be a New Republic pilot who, out of the blue, decided to settle on a refueling station in the middle of nowhere and become a mechanic, a terrible one at that, with hopes of one day becoming a racer. Anyone working for the First Order on the platform is going know or learn he’s probably a Resistance Spy and either get rid of him or keep an eye on him and report what they see Kaz doing to their superiors.

TL; DR Poe is a prideful moron that may or may not have learned his lesson..  

1/2 It’s really annoying that there are people that think Poe was right to go behind Adm Holdo’s back or that she was wrong to without information from him. Come on people! Poe ignored a direct command from General Organa and as a result lost the Resistance ALL their bombers and acts like a spoiled child when Leia rightfully demoted him and when Holdo rightfully refuses to bring him in on the plan. He asks in front of others when they’re somehow being tracked by the enemy.

2/2 “Poe didn’t tell Holdo HOW the FO was tracking them and that there was a way to stop it long enough for them to escape and continues to act childish when Holdo refuses to tell him the plan when he asks in front of potential spies. He even discusses the Resistance’s plan without knowing if there’s any unwanted ears listening in. If he had kept his mouth shut and trusted his commanding officer the Resistance would have escaped the FO without losing so many.”

*****************

Poe’s lesson of the day was how to be a good subordinate and have respect for your commanding officer, even if you don’t know them or trust the way they operate, because if they give you certain orders, it’s for a reason. And that “heroic sacrifice” should be a very last resort, not just tossing soldiers to their probable deaths like it’s going out of style.

The Dameron/Amilyn storyline was pretty definitively explained right after TLJ was released. A group of Star Wars fans who are lawyers even put Poe on mock court-martial at SD Comic Con. If some people don’t understand or want to acknowledge the concept of chain of command, or don’t appreciate the subversion of the “rogue hotshot is always right” trope, or are just plain sexist, that’s on them.

I love Self Forefilling Prophecies.

“The quote is simple enough, it’s Qui-Gon’s defense of Anakin after Obi-Wan insists that he and the entire Council can see that Anakin is dangerous.

‘His fate is uncertain. He’s not dangerous.’

And it’s true, Anakin wasn’t dangerous, not at this point. Ani was a relatively happy little boy who was expressive, emotive, and unerringly kind, who had been raised to think intelligently for himself and problem-solve along the way. But the things that made him a good person in normal circumstances were the very things that turned the Jedi Order against him. The Jedi would need to take everything that was /Ani/ away and instill their own doctrines, beliefs, and ways of seeing the galaxy to make him one of them, but at his advanced age, Anakin’s personality was likely setting into place. They wouldn’t be able to fully overcome his own instincts and opinions – he wasn’t a baby or a toddler who they could teach or force to think how they chose – therefore he was /dangerous/, he was other, and they immediately treated him as such.

Instead of welcoming him with acceptance and understanding or even compassion, the council immediately set themselves apart from Anakin and make it clear – to a child who had just escaped enslavement and had helped two of their own order – that he was not welcome in their company because he was going down the dark side path simply because he admitted to feeling fear. …In an entirely new place with strangers who are testing him left, right, and center, far away from the only source of love and security he’s ever know, it’s no wonder Ani is afraid. The Jedi use a little boy’s love of his mother to make him unworthy of their time and consideration, they twist love into a weakness and call themselves the better for it.

…Qui-Gon was right. Anakin wasn’t dangerous until the Jedi made him so. The Jedi created their own destruction and it eventually cost them everything. I think this is a theme that often goes overlooked because it’s the ‘good-guys’ doing the wrong things and we like to turn a blind eye to that sort of thing, but it bears noting that the same thing happens again in the sequel trilogy. Lessons are not being learned here. Ben Solo struggled with the darkness inside himself all his life, but it was Luke – a Jedi – who sealed his fate and the galaxy’s by deciding for everyone that his nephew was /dangerous/ and needed to be dealt with. Another great evil is born because of the judgement of the peace-keeping righteous. And it’s just as Rey says, Luke created Kylo Ren, the same way the Council created Darth Vader, and it began here in The Phantom Menace.”

—The Phantom Menace: Judgement and Consequence

(via whimsicalmutterings.wordpress.com)

Disaster Resource

A helpful resource I learned about today for those affected by Hurricane Micheal is crisiscleanup.org they will match you with a group to help clean up once it is safe to send people in.

Pass it along!

crisiscleanup.org

Interestingly enough for nearly the whole conversation Vader keeps ‘eye contact’ with the Emperor and only looks down/bows his head near the end of it. However in s2 e1 of Rebels Vader spends either the whole report/conversation looking at the deck/projector in front of him instead the hologram of his Master or looked at it only after a certain point in the conversation; I can’t remember.

There are some people that claim that people who are lying are more likely to keep eye contact with the person they’re lying to so they can gauge just how much you believe them instead of avoiding your gaze. And seeing Vader was basically denying that he knew anything about the possibility that Luke Skywalker = Anakin Skywalker’s son he might have wanted to keep an eye on his Master.

If not than, depending on what the Emperor allows from Vader, not staring at the deck/lowering his gaze could have been Vader’s way of letting Sidious know that he wanted to challenge him as the Sith Master. After all Vader’s the one that suggests that they attempt to Turn Luke to the Dark Side and make him an ally and the Emperor seemed to really like that idea.

I mean wasn’t he all excited when he learned from Aphra that Vader had been up to all sorts of Sith like shenanigans behind his back and basically told Vader that he had become afraid that Vader had lost all his ambition to be a true Sith years ago? 

one of my favorite scenes in The Empire Strikes Back (and the Skywalker Saga in general):

Palpatine: “The young Rebel who destroyed the Death Star. I have no doubt this boy is the offspring of Anakin Skywalker.”

Vader: