Just a Memory spork - Chapter 1
Nov. 17th, 2024 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
esmeandfictionOh look, another Reylo fic. Aren’t I predictable. However, unlike most of the other Reylo fics I’ve sporked, this one actually has a great idea. The premise here is that Rey gets partial amnesia where she doesn’t remember anything that’s happened since Starkiller Base and she wakes up to learn that she’s married to Ben, whom she still sees as Kylo Ren. If done well, that idea could make for an awesome, AWESOME story.
Which makes it all the more frustrating when the fic fails to deliver. Also unlike a lot of the other Reylo fics I’ve sporked, this one doesn’t make me want to tear my hair out. It’s more in the “mediocre” category than the “god-awful” category, but it’s still fucking irritating that it completely wastes such an awesome premise.
All right, let’s just get down to business.
As usual for Reylo fics, the lovebirds are here to spork with me.
REY: Just PLEASE tell me this isn’t a story where I go on a crazy man-killing spree.
ESME: You’ll be relieved to know that it isn’t. In fact, it’s really tame in the badness factor – it’s just heavy in the “lost potential” factor. It has a great idea that, thanks to uneven writing, gets wasted. In fact, it’s a lot like many of the ideas in the sequel trilogy itself.
REY/KYLO: HEY!
ESME: Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
KYLO: Okay, we’re not here to start fights about our movies. Let’s just get this started so we can get it done with.
ESME: You’ll also be relieved to know that the fic is short. The author only wrote five chapters before giving up.
REY/KYLO: GOOD!
ESME: Okay, let’s get started.
Rey opened her eyes. It was bright in this room – a room she didn’t recognize. When she tried to sit up, a sharp pain radiated in her temples. Rey lay back down.
ESME: Okay, the writing’s a little bland, but eh, I’ve read blander.
KYLO: I love when a compliment on a fic is “I’ve read blander.”
Where am I?
REY: In yet another Reylo fic.
If she was in this much pain then something must have happened.
REY: Wow, isn’t other me brilliant?
She must have been hurt,
REY: WOW, I just can’t get over what a genius other me is!
and if she was hurt then she would be in care right now.
REY: Not necessarily. On Jakku you were basically expected to care for yourself if you got hurt.
But this room was unlike any med bay she’d ever been in.
REY: I hadn’t BEEN in many med bays at all! You think Unkar Plutt made sure to provide his scavengers with good health care?
The Falcon’s med bay was a far cry from this.
REY: And I didn’t really SEE much of the Falcon’s med bay since when Chewie was injured, I was helping Han fly the Falcon.
ESME: I have a feeling that the author forgot that other you doesn’t remember anything since TFA.
This was clearly a bedroom.
KYLO: Oh wow, a room with a BED is a BEDROOM! Mind blown!
Rey lay on a large queen bed, the softest she’d ever felt. Her bed in Jakku
ESME: ON Jakku, not in!
was hard and full of sand,
KYLO: Not sand, I HATE sand!
this bed was like a cloud and the blankets were thick and clean.
REY: Okay, I’ll admit that sounds nice.
Rey looked around the room. The walls surrounding her were dark green, like the forest she’d seen on Takodama.
ESME: It’s Takondana, not Takodama. I’ve said it before, but if you’re going to write Star Wars fanfic, SPELL THE PLANET NAMES RIGHT!
Most of the furniture around her was made to look like something from the woods. Whoever’s room this was clearly liked things natural and beautiful and green.
ESME: This is actually a nice idea, given how impressed she was with the very idea of so much green existing in one place. I can see her wanting to decorate her room to look like a forest.
Rey tried to sit up again. When she moved slowly the pain in her head wasn’t so bad. To her right was a transparent screen projected over a monitoring device. Rey looked down at her arm. She was hooked up to the device by tubes in her arm and sensors clamped onto her finger.
KYLO: And why isn’t anyone MONITORING HER? For that matter, if she’s been in a coma for a while, why isn’t she in a HOSPITAL?
ESME: Because . . . reasons.
She couldn’t remember how she got here.
REY: Yeah, other me, that’s kind of how being unconscious works.
What’s the last thing I remember?
REY: Being in canon?
Starkiller base. A rift in the woods. Han.
ESME: And Han, you know, getting MURDERED, but that’s apparently not important enough to mention.
And a pair of pretty eyes.
REY: (facepalms) Other me, I’m going to say this calmly.
THE LAST THING YOU REMEMBER IS KYLO REN MURDERING HIS OWN FATHER AND TRYING TO KILL YOU AND FINN, BUT YOU’RE JUST FOCUSING ON HIS “PRETTY EYES”???? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU???
”I’m not giving you anything.”
“We’ll see.”
Rey shuddered.
ESME: Yeah, add in a quote from the mind-rape scene for good measure.
REY: This isn’t one of those fics that romanticizes that scene, is it?
ESME: No, it’s just one of those fics that glosses over the stuff Kylo did in favor of getting straight to the sexytimes.
KYLO: And how exactly do you do that in a believable way when she doesn’t remember anything since Starkiller Base?
ESME: The key word there would be believable. This fic ain’t.
REY: And WHY haven’t I given a single thought to how Han was MURDERED??
ESME: Because like most bad Reylo fics, this story forgets about Han most of the time. After all, why should a little thing like patricide get in the way of sexytimes?
Maybe she’d been injured during her escape from Starkiller base. Maybe someone from the resistance had brought her here.
REY: I just can’t get over other me’s amazing intelligence.
Rey swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The wood floor was cold and bumpy on her feet. When she stood her legs were wobbly, like they hadn’t been used for a long time. Rey walked a couple of paces in front of her bed to get her legs used to bearing weight, then she headed out the door on her left.
KYLO: Wait a minute, I thought she was hooked up to monitors.
ESME: She was, and there was no mention of her unhooking herself.
KYLO: And again, WHY AREN’T THERE DOCTORS OR MEDICAL DROIDS WATCHING OVER HER AND WHY ISN’T SHE IN A FREAKING HOSPITAL??
She walked into a round room. There was a kitchen curving around the far wall and circular couches around a fireplace that burned in the middle of the room. Floor to ceiling glass windows lined the whole room.
ESME: So people can watch when Rey and Ben get it on.
REY/KYLO: (glare)
ESME: Seriously, though, that sounds awful. I’d feel exposed all the time.
A door whizzed open on her left. Rey spun around to see none other than Kylo Ren as he walked through the door.
KYLO: Well that was abrupt.
Rey’s heart thudded in her chest.
REY: How nice of you to let me know that my heart is in my chest.
He wasn’t alone. Finn walked in behind him, followed by a man with brown curly hair she didn’t recognize.
REY: I didn’t recognize Poe’s hair?
It took them a moment to notice her. When Ren saw her, his jaw dropped open. “Rey.”
KYLO: That’s a very subdued reaction, other me, seeing as how your wife’s been in a coma for a while.
Her head hurt. What was he doing here? And dressed like that? His robes were gone. Instead he wore black, loose fitting pants and a fitted black long sleeved shirt.
REY: (facepalms) Other me, as far as your memory is concerned, you just saw this guy MURDER HIS OWN FATHER, but the first thing you focus on is how he’s DRESSED???
ESME: Yeah yeah, She Who Must Not Be Named soiled the good name of Harry Potter and all that, but the quote still fits.
His hair was shorter than she last remembered
KYLO: And what’s wrong with the way my hair is now???
but it still curled around his ears in a way that made it hard for her to stop staring.
REY: When you’re finished drooling, other me, you might want to remember how he MURDERED HIS OWN FATHER.
And Finn was with him, looking healthy, unhurt and not at all scared of Ren.
REY: Oh, no comments about how Finn let his hair grow out? Or does other me not notice because his name isn’t Kylo?
KYLO: (mutters) Neither is mine.
REY: Other me still thinks it is.
”Finn! Get away from him!” Rey gasped.
Finn’s brows drew together. “Rey. Are you alright? Maybe you woke up too soon.”
REY: That’s all Finn has to say about me not remembering my own husband?
Ren looked hurt.
KYLO: Again, other me, very subdued reaction to your wife not remembering you.
Rey couldn’t understand why he’d have any reason to be.
ESME: Any more brilliant insight?
He’d tried to kill Finn, and her.
REY: And, you know, he DID kill Han, and that’s fresh in your mind again, but sure, go ahead and keep not mentioning it.
Her saber. She needed her saber.
ESME: It’s not really “her” saber when she’s only used it once as far as she remembers.
Rey tried to summon her sabre
ESME: (grinds teeth) You were just spelling it “saber.”
by tapping into the force
ESME: And the Force is CAPITALIZED!
to call it to her. It didn’t occur to her that she wasn’t able to do this before, on Starkiller, it had been a bit of beginners luck the first time.
REY: (blinks) Am I the only one who didn’t get that sentence? I WAS able to summon the lightsaber on Starkiller Base.
ESME: I think it’s saying that you weren’t able to do it before Starkiller and that it was beginner’s luck when you DID do it on Starkiller, but God, that needed a rewrite.
Instead, the only thing that entered her mind was a headache.
REY: Yeah, that happens a lot when I read Reylo fic.
One that made her dizzy.
She was apparently too weak to use the force at the moment.
ESME: Telling and not showing, such brilliant writing.
Rey started to fall as her legs gave out underneath her. Finn rushed forward and Ren put his hands out. Rey felt his force powers curl around, cushioning her fall enough to drop her into Finn’s arms.
KYLO: Exactly where am I in relation to Rey? Why don’t I just catch her MYSELF if I’m close enough to do so?
Her breathing came in heavy and the room spun. That was the last thing she remembered before she passed out.
REY: Why do I pass out so much in Reylo fics?
KYLO: Maybe because a lot of Reylo fic writers want you to be a fainty fluttery damsel.
ESME: Well, that’s the first chapter. Basically, it’s a great idea ruined by incredibly mediocre execution, and that’s going to be a running theme. Also, the author only wrote five chapters before giving up.
KYLO: At least it’s short.
ESME: Anyway, before we go, I have a little spitefic that attempts to breathe life into the bland writing.
Kylo gasped the instant he noticed Rey, staring at her as if she were an oasis in the desert. “REY!” Before Rey could react, he ran up to her and threw his arms around her, squeezing her close to him.
Rey stiffened up, too shocked for a moment to do anything, then her survival instinct kicked in and she pushed herself out of his arms. “GET AWAY FROM ME!”
Kylo blinked at her, his breath coming out in tiny pants – he actually looked hurt. “Rey . . .” he whispered, “. . . it’s me.”
He took a step towards her and Rey instinctively stuck her hand out, sending the Force through her arm and shoving him towards the wall, where he landed in a heap. Her mind's eye kept seeing the flaming blade piercing through Han's chest, making her own chest ache at the thought that Han was truly gone. “Finn, what’s going on??” she shouted. “Why is he here??”
Finn gulped, licking his lips in an awkward manner. “Rey,” he said in a slow, careful voice, “what’s the last thing you remember?”
“You don’t remember me . . .” Kylo voice came out in a horrified whisper as he stared at her with forlorn eyes. “You don’t remember us?”
“Us?” Rey exclaimed. “What the hell are you talking about, murderous snake??” She lunged at Kylo, but Finn stepped between them, wrapping his arms around her in a gentle but firm manner.
“Rey, listen, we need to talk!” He stared into her eyes. “He’s not who you think he is.” He glanced back at Kylo. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll live,” Kylo grumbled, still gazing at Rey with those hurt eyes.
Rey felt her breath shortening. “Finn, what is going on??”
Finn looked back at Rey, sincerity in his eyes. “It’s a long, long story.”
Not great, but at least I tried to insert actual emotion into the fic. See you for Chapter 2.
Which makes it all the more frustrating when the fic fails to deliver. Also unlike a lot of the other Reylo fics I’ve sporked, this one doesn’t make me want to tear my hair out. It’s more in the “mediocre” category than the “god-awful” category, but it’s still fucking irritating that it completely wastes such an awesome premise.
All right, let’s just get down to business.
As usual for Reylo fics, the lovebirds are here to spork with me.
REY: Just PLEASE tell me this isn’t a story where I go on a crazy man-killing spree.
ESME: You’ll be relieved to know that it isn’t. In fact, it’s really tame in the badness factor – it’s just heavy in the “lost potential” factor. It has a great idea that, thanks to uneven writing, gets wasted. In fact, it’s a lot like many of the ideas in the sequel trilogy itself.
REY/KYLO: HEY!
ESME: Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
KYLO: Okay, we’re not here to start fights about our movies. Let’s just get this started so we can get it done with.
ESME: You’ll also be relieved to know that the fic is short. The author only wrote five chapters before giving up.
REY/KYLO: GOOD!
ESME: Okay, let’s get started.
Rey opened her eyes. It was bright in this room – a room she didn’t recognize. When she tried to sit up, a sharp pain radiated in her temples. Rey lay back down.
ESME: Okay, the writing’s a little bland, but eh, I’ve read blander.
KYLO: I love when a compliment on a fic is “I’ve read blander.”
Where am I?
REY: In yet another Reylo fic.
If she was in this much pain then something must have happened.
REY: Wow, isn’t other me brilliant?
She must have been hurt,
REY: WOW, I just can’t get over what a genius other me is!
and if she was hurt then she would be in care right now.
REY: Not necessarily. On Jakku you were basically expected to care for yourself if you got hurt.
But this room was unlike any med bay she’d ever been in.
REY: I hadn’t BEEN in many med bays at all! You think Unkar Plutt made sure to provide his scavengers with good health care?
The Falcon’s med bay was a far cry from this.
REY: And I didn’t really SEE much of the Falcon’s med bay since when Chewie was injured, I was helping Han fly the Falcon.
ESME: I have a feeling that the author forgot that other you doesn’t remember anything since TFA.
This was clearly a bedroom.
KYLO: Oh wow, a room with a BED is a BEDROOM! Mind blown!
Rey lay on a large queen bed, the softest she’d ever felt. Her bed in Jakku
ESME: ON Jakku, not in!
was hard and full of sand,
KYLO: Not sand, I HATE sand!
this bed was like a cloud and the blankets were thick and clean.
REY: Okay, I’ll admit that sounds nice.
Rey looked around the room. The walls surrounding her were dark green, like the forest she’d seen on Takodama.
ESME: It’s Takondana, not Takodama. I’ve said it before, but if you’re going to write Star Wars fanfic, SPELL THE PLANET NAMES RIGHT!
Most of the furniture around her was made to look like something from the woods. Whoever’s room this was clearly liked things natural and beautiful and green.
ESME: This is actually a nice idea, given how impressed she was with the very idea of so much green existing in one place. I can see her wanting to decorate her room to look like a forest.
Rey tried to sit up again. When she moved slowly the pain in her head wasn’t so bad. To her right was a transparent screen projected over a monitoring device. Rey looked down at her arm. She was hooked up to the device by tubes in her arm and sensors clamped onto her finger.
KYLO: And why isn’t anyone MONITORING HER? For that matter, if she’s been in a coma for a while, why isn’t she in a HOSPITAL?
ESME: Because . . . reasons.
She couldn’t remember how she got here.
REY: Yeah, other me, that’s kind of how being unconscious works.
What’s the last thing I remember?
REY: Being in canon?
Starkiller base. A rift in the woods. Han.
ESME: And Han, you know, getting MURDERED, but that’s apparently not important enough to mention.
And a pair of pretty eyes.
REY: (facepalms) Other me, I’m going to say this calmly.
THE LAST THING YOU REMEMBER IS KYLO REN MURDERING HIS OWN FATHER AND TRYING TO KILL YOU AND FINN, BUT YOU’RE JUST FOCUSING ON HIS “PRETTY EYES”???? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU???
”I’m not giving you anything.”
“We’ll see.”
Rey shuddered.
ESME: Yeah, add in a quote from the mind-rape scene for good measure.
REY: This isn’t one of those fics that romanticizes that scene, is it?
ESME: No, it’s just one of those fics that glosses over the stuff Kylo did in favor of getting straight to the sexytimes.
KYLO: And how exactly do you do that in a believable way when she doesn’t remember anything since Starkiller Base?
ESME: The key word there would be believable. This fic ain’t.
REY: And WHY haven’t I given a single thought to how Han was MURDERED??
ESME: Because like most bad Reylo fics, this story forgets about Han most of the time. After all, why should a little thing like patricide get in the way of sexytimes?
Maybe she’d been injured during her escape from Starkiller base. Maybe someone from the resistance had brought her here.
REY: I just can’t get over other me’s amazing intelligence.
Rey swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The wood floor was cold and bumpy on her feet. When she stood her legs were wobbly, like they hadn’t been used for a long time. Rey walked a couple of paces in front of her bed to get her legs used to bearing weight, then she headed out the door on her left.
KYLO: Wait a minute, I thought she was hooked up to monitors.
ESME: She was, and there was no mention of her unhooking herself.
KYLO: And again, WHY AREN’T THERE DOCTORS OR MEDICAL DROIDS WATCHING OVER HER AND WHY ISN’T SHE IN A FREAKING HOSPITAL??
She walked into a round room. There was a kitchen curving around the far wall and circular couches around a fireplace that burned in the middle of the room. Floor to ceiling glass windows lined the whole room.
ESME: So people can watch when Rey and Ben get it on.
REY/KYLO: (glare)
ESME: Seriously, though, that sounds awful. I’d feel exposed all the time.
A door whizzed open on her left. Rey spun around to see none other than Kylo Ren as he walked through the door.
KYLO: Well that was abrupt.
Rey’s heart thudded in her chest.
REY: How nice of you to let me know that my heart is in my chest.
He wasn’t alone. Finn walked in behind him, followed by a man with brown curly hair she didn’t recognize.
REY: I didn’t recognize Poe’s hair?
It took them a moment to notice her. When Ren saw her, his jaw dropped open. “Rey.”
KYLO: That’s a very subdued reaction, other me, seeing as how your wife’s been in a coma for a while.
Her head hurt. What was he doing here? And dressed like that? His robes were gone. Instead he wore black, loose fitting pants and a fitted black long sleeved shirt.
REY: (facepalms) Other me, as far as your memory is concerned, you just saw this guy MURDER HIS OWN FATHER, but the first thing you focus on is how he’s DRESSED???
ESME: Yeah yeah, She Who Must Not Be Named soiled the good name of Harry Potter and all that, but the quote still fits.
His hair was shorter than she last remembered
KYLO: And what’s wrong with the way my hair is now???
but it still curled around his ears in a way that made it hard for her to stop staring.
REY: When you’re finished drooling, other me, you might want to remember how he MURDERED HIS OWN FATHER.
And Finn was with him, looking healthy, unhurt and not at all scared of Ren.
REY: Oh, no comments about how Finn let his hair grow out? Or does other me not notice because his name isn’t Kylo?
KYLO: (mutters) Neither is mine.
REY: Other me still thinks it is.
”Finn! Get away from him!” Rey gasped.
Finn’s brows drew together. “Rey. Are you alright? Maybe you woke up too soon.”
REY: That’s all Finn has to say about me not remembering my own husband?
Ren looked hurt.
KYLO: Again, other me, very subdued reaction to your wife not remembering you.
Rey couldn’t understand why he’d have any reason to be.
ESME: Any more brilliant insight?
He’d tried to kill Finn, and her.
REY: And, you know, he DID kill Han, and that’s fresh in your mind again, but sure, go ahead and keep not mentioning it.
Her saber. She needed her saber.
ESME: It’s not really “her” saber when she’s only used it once as far as she remembers.
Rey tried to summon her sabre
ESME: (grinds teeth) You were just spelling it “saber.”
by tapping into the force
ESME: And the Force is CAPITALIZED!
to call it to her. It didn’t occur to her that she wasn’t able to do this before, on Starkiller, it had been a bit of beginners luck the first time.
REY: (blinks) Am I the only one who didn’t get that sentence? I WAS able to summon the lightsaber on Starkiller Base.
ESME: I think it’s saying that you weren’t able to do it before Starkiller and that it was beginner’s luck when you DID do it on Starkiller, but God, that needed a rewrite.
Instead, the only thing that entered her mind was a headache.
REY: Yeah, that happens a lot when I read Reylo fic.
One that made her dizzy.
She was apparently too weak to use the force at the moment.
ESME: Telling and not showing, such brilliant writing.
Rey started to fall as her legs gave out underneath her. Finn rushed forward and Ren put his hands out. Rey felt his force powers curl around, cushioning her fall enough to drop her into Finn’s arms.
KYLO: Exactly where am I in relation to Rey? Why don’t I just catch her MYSELF if I’m close enough to do so?
Her breathing came in heavy and the room spun. That was the last thing she remembered before she passed out.
REY: Why do I pass out so much in Reylo fics?
KYLO: Maybe because a lot of Reylo fic writers want you to be a fainty fluttery damsel.
ESME: Well, that’s the first chapter. Basically, it’s a great idea ruined by incredibly mediocre execution, and that’s going to be a running theme. Also, the author only wrote five chapters before giving up.
KYLO: At least it’s short.
ESME: Anyway, before we go, I have a little spitefic that attempts to breathe life into the bland writing.
Kylo gasped the instant he noticed Rey, staring at her as if she were an oasis in the desert. “REY!” Before Rey could react, he ran up to her and threw his arms around her, squeezing her close to him.
Rey stiffened up, too shocked for a moment to do anything, then her survival instinct kicked in and she pushed herself out of his arms. “GET AWAY FROM ME!”
Kylo blinked at her, his breath coming out in tiny pants – he actually looked hurt. “Rey . . .” he whispered, “. . . it’s me.”
He took a step towards her and Rey instinctively stuck her hand out, sending the Force through her arm and shoving him towards the wall, where he landed in a heap. Her mind's eye kept seeing the flaming blade piercing through Han's chest, making her own chest ache at the thought that Han was truly gone. “Finn, what’s going on??” she shouted. “Why is he here??”
Finn gulped, licking his lips in an awkward manner. “Rey,” he said in a slow, careful voice, “what’s the last thing you remember?”
“You don’t remember me . . .” Kylo voice came out in a horrified whisper as he stared at her with forlorn eyes. “You don’t remember us?”
“Us?” Rey exclaimed. “What the hell are you talking about, murderous snake??” She lunged at Kylo, but Finn stepped between them, wrapping his arms around her in a gentle but firm manner.
“Rey, listen, we need to talk!” He stared into her eyes. “He’s not who you think he is.” He glanced back at Kylo. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll live,” Kylo grumbled, still gazing at Rey with those hurt eyes.
Rey felt her breath shortening. “Finn, what is going on??”
Finn looked back at Rey, sincerity in his eyes. “It’s a long, long story.”
Not great, but at least I tried to insert actual emotion into the fic. See you for Chapter 2.
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Date: 2024-11-18 09:46 pm (UTC)