These lightsaber fights were EXTREMELY well choreographed, and well shot. A few other things I geeked out about:
* Lightsabers aren’t actually frozen beams of light–they’re LOOPS of plasma, that come out of the handle, turn around, and flow back into the handle. They resist motion because they’re actually already IN motion. It’s less like hitting someone with a sword, and more like hitting them with a chainsaw. This explains a lot of things that happen in the duels–any time a lightsaber hits the ground or an obstacle, it skips and kicks away from the absorbed momentum.
* Because lightsabers bend in a loop, they actually have an “edge” and a “flat,” even though it’s not clearly visible–your cutting technique actually matters, A clean cut will pass right through a human body, but a sloppy cut (like the wild swings that Kylo, Finn and Rey are throwing around) is going to contact human flesh and then actually kick away. This is why when Kylo cuts Finn’s back, he leaves a long gouge rather than just cleaving him in half–it’s a sloppy cut, and he has poor control.
* This also explains why the shape of the side emitters on Kylo Ren’s lightsaber aren’t a problem–when two lightsabers connect, they lock together and stick (imagine two chainsaws locked together!). This is why Ren doesn’t have to worry about another blade sliding down his and severing the plasma vent on the side. You can see this in the way Ren manipulates Rey’s sword when they’re in the bind in the end of their duel–he knows that if he’s physically stronger he can actually yank Rey’s saber around in her hand.
* You can tell here that while all of the combatants have at least some close quarters combat training, none of them REALLY know how to use a lightsaber. You can see this especially in when Rey first attacks Kylo Ren–note that she keeps trying to stab him. It’s very rare that we see other lightsaber users attempt a stab in the heat of combat–nearly every other blow attempted is a wide, sweeping slice. Stabbing strokes like that are *quarterstaff* techniques–designed to take advantage of the extra range that comes from having an extra 2 feet of stick to put between you and your opponent. It’s obvious when she attempts these attacks that she overbalances herself (because the lightsaber is shorter than the quarterstaff she’s used to) and that Ren has never been attacked by a lightsaber this way before.
* Also, look at how janky Ren’s lightsaber blade is! The thing is so obviously a Pinto compared to the Ferrari that is Anakin’s old lightsaber, and it’s all beautifully rendered without a word just in the design of the prop and the effects.
I loved pretty much everything about these movies, but the lightsaber choreography may be my favorite part.
#all right now I have to figure out how to write porn about lightsabers
“I’ll show you the Dark Side.”
“Your daughter is gone. She was weak and foolish like her father. So I destroyed her.”
More photos from my shoot with Trevor Toma, of my new cosplay that I’m incredibly excited and proud to share – Fem Kylo Ren! Soft parts are by me( Mistress of Fear ) and Seraphim City Couture, gloves by J. Fuqua, everything else made and/or fabricated by me.
If you’d like to read my post about why I wanted to cosplay this character, and what it means to me, you can find it here! May the Force be with you.
Here are some samurai inspired designs I did based off TFA. 🙂
1. Samurai Kylo Ren
2. Feudal Rey
3. Ronin Finn
4. Commander Poe (Revision)
5.Samurai Taichou Phasma
6. Ashigaru Nines
*This was a bit tricky, but I just decided to have fun with it. I ended up fusing the Jutte, Tonfa and Katana into one weapon to make it more menacing.
Ben Solo (around 15) and Rey (around 4) at the Jedi Academy. Ben is already firmly under Snoke’s influence, already knowing he has to kill his fellow students on Snoke’s orders, and allows nobody to break into his shell. Rey is still trying.
Okay, I’m doing it. Ben and Rey at the Jedi Academy speculative AU art. Help me I regret nothing.
Edit: Over four thousand notes in four hours? Bloody hell, guys. Thanks. Wow. If anyone feels like supporting my work even further, please have a look at my Patreon! ❤ http://www.patreon.com/jennydolfen
So I just came across @kylostahp and @kdazrael ‘s ( sorry if this is weird sdlfjsklfdj ) discussion of Unknown Regions / Core Worlds culture and the weird class undertones between them, and especially the kind of upbringing Hux would have actually had, considering that the ones who fled to the Unknown Regions weren’t the low- or mid-level people or the civilians, for the most part. It was the soldiers. The officers. The sort of people you don’t generally found new cultures and civilizations with.
anD JUST. I’m so invested in this now? And I didn’t know I was. But I am so here for Hux to have learned much too young that to falter is to fail, and to fail is to die. For that knowledge having been ground into his bones.
Everything is a high-stakes game for him. He grew up hard-scrabble, blood-on-teeth, taught with a whip and a story of the Empire that was, the life that should have been theirs. His teachers were old soldiers. Survivors, not professors. They re-opened the military academies to preserve the echoes of their old glory, of course. Looking back on it, Hux recognizes the effort as almost pathetic: it’s like a prisoner, barred in their cell, screaming you haven’t stopped me! You haven’t! The entire point, he thinks, is that the Empire did fall. The entire point is that this time, it won’t.
So they re-open the academies. That’s well and good. But running a school is hard, and they’re already so pressed for resources. Where would they find the money for dedicated facilities? What they had were warehouses, empty hangars, running laps through the tunnels beneath the planet’s inhospitable surface, passing the cold eyes of their fellow wolves and monsters. The gentle did not live long there. If you weren’t good enough, you were gone. In the social order the students built, there is only hunter and hunted. Their commandments are not ones of peace; their catechisms do not promote harmony or joy. The students practice the verses until they know it by rote. Take the jeers, the fists-on-ribs; tear the teeth from their mouths. Be the best, or you are nothing. Be what the Empire should have been. These children learned how to ration too young. They learned how to fill themselves instead with stories of glory, of what was, of what should have been.
We’ve gotten some asks and seen posts about authors being super excited to participate, but finding it hard to come up with a story idea.
That’s why we’re asking anyone (other authors, artists, fans, etc.) that has a prompt or headcanon idea (that they’re not using for their work) to send it in! We’ll share them with everyone. Then, when we get enough prompts, we can compile them into a master post!
A few more to add to your lists ( if that’s okay! ) —
Doctor Who AU. Hux doesn’t stop to question why his boss, the head of UNIT, never addresses him in person. He assumes it’s for security reasons. He certainly doesn’t expect it to be because Snoke is actually an evil alien superpower in contact with the insufferable Time Lord who is, in his newest incarnation, insisting everyone call him Kylo Ren. But when your boss offers you a promotion from head of a miserable military organization on a dull rock of a planet to his second-in-command in his galactic missions, and all you have to do is put up with the 90′s Earth emo rock Kylo Ren insists on blaring inside his TARDIS —- well, it’s worth it. Probably. It had better be, at least.
Dungeons & Dragons AU. Snoke DMs. Phasma drags Hux into it; Hux agrees, largely because it gets him out of the house after school lets out. Neither of them are the most imaginative players, but their third party member, Ben — sorry, no, Kylo Ren in the game — makes up for it by leaps and bounds. Why or how the rest of him put up with his histrionics, no one knows. But when an ill-timed natural 1 found Hux’s character making out with Kylo’s rather than giving a moving speech to his troops, the relationship starts spilling out into the the real world, and there’s nothing to be done to stop it.
Professor AU. Hux is unseasonably young to be the head of the history department and dean of academics, but there you go. It’s not like he doesn’t deserve it. As experts in military history and strategy go, there really isn’t anyone better. His job and his life as a whole would be so much easier, though, if it weren’t for the newest junior professor at the school. Kylo Ren, he has his students call him. Hux thinks this is absurd. Almost as absurd as the reports that Ren has been — destroying school property? And lingering outside Hux’s office with coffee? Really, it’s ridiculous, all of it.
Star Trek AU. ( Specifically Voyager. ) After a freak occurrence strands the starship Finalizer in the delta quadrant with the rogue ship they were chasing, Hux – a Starfleet officer – is forced to cooperate with the head of the rogue ship – a ruthless, temperamental man named Kylo Ren – if they’re to have any hope of returning home.
Alt. Star Trek AU. Kylo Ren is one of the v’tosh ka’tur, the Vulcans without logic. He abandoned the way of logic after being coaxed from it by a teacher of his, and has since given in to all of the fits of passion that come with his species and his lack of control. Hux, on the other hand, is the strict, cold commander of a Federation starship. The minute Kylo gets assigned to serve with him, tensions fly through the roof. Phasma starts a betting pool: who thinks Kylo and Hux will murder one another? Who thinks they’ll wind up having sex? Who thinks both?
Prohibition-era AU. Deep underground the city, in the natural caves and corridors, there is a speakeasy run by a man named Snoke. He has two right hands, and if you see them, you may as well begin to say your prayers: the red-haired one is a sharper shot than anyone alive, and the one with the curls and the ears will take a sword – a literal sword; where did he find that old relic? – to anyone who stands in their way. They bring in the booze, handle the money, fight like alley cats every chance they get. But if you look closely, you can sometimes see the red-haired one’s eyes sliding over to his counterpoint during the evening parties, admiring the way the suit fits over his long lines – or else the one with curls tenses whenever some pretty guest flirts their way over to the redhead. If you didn’t know better, you’d think they were involved.
dispatches from the dumpster 