• kylo is even crazier than i expected
• hux is even more fed up than i expected
• finn is an even more precious cinnamon roll than i thought possible
• rey is literally the best character in the entire series and that is saying something
• poe better get more screentime in the next one
• kylo and hux better survive the next one
• and make out
• ok ok i know
• i noticed both armies were more gender-balanced and am wondering if that’s an in-universe change or if we’re pretending the space-80′s sexism didn’t happen
• is it just me or did phasma give up way too fuckin easy
• re finn’s hand-grabbing, i love that rey got to sound off about it, but imo he did it because he’s pants at talking, especially when he’s stressed out – he was indoctrinated from early childhood to be an obedient cog. he can process ‘that’s an airstrike noise, this is a canvas tent’ in an instant, but ‘how do i get New Friend and First Friend’s Droid to leave this death trap’ is just not happening, so he grabs and yanks.
• ok fic aside who let snoke brainfondle baby ben, because all this bullshit is their fault
• da fuq even IS snoke
• from people talking about it, i assumed the ‘tray of ashes’ aka ‘the cat box’ was in kylo’s room, but it was in the interrogation room, wasn’t it? am i misremembering?
• the interrogation scene with rey was some of the most amazing acting i have ever seen. just the way the balance shifts between them, rey going from scared and confused and defiant to aggressive and in-control, while kylo did the opposite, and all of it conveyed only with facial expressions. that was SPECTACULAR.
• ok but if starkiller charges by eating the sun…. how did it get charged up in the first place… did that used to be a binary system… ??

“As near as I understand it,” Finn continued, “enormous arrays of specially designed collectors use the power of a sun to attract and send dark energy to a containment unit at the core of the planet, where it is held and built up inside that containment unit until the weapon is ready to fire.”

“Impossible,” Ackbar insisted. “Although we know there is more dark energy in the universe than anything else, and that it exists everywhere around us, it is so diffuse that it can barely be detected. Let alone concentrated.”

Finn persisted, despite the discomfort he felt at disagreeing with someone of Ackbar’s rank and experience. “It can be, and it is,” he responded with certainty.

Statura, at least, seemed ready to believe. “If the engineering could be worked out,” he observed, “one would have access to an almost literally infinite source of energy.“ 

Finn nodded. “General Hux told us it’s the most powerful weapon ever built. He said that it can reach halfway across the galaxy.” Fresh murmurs of disbelief greeted this latest assertion. “And in real time. Because it doesn’t reach across the galaxy; it reaches through it.” He shook his head, which was starting to hurt from the effort of trying to explain what he had overheard but did not understand. 

Having been gathered in stages by an immense array of coupled collectors located on the other side of the planet, a tremendously compact volume of a type of dark energy known as quintessence had been accumulated at the center of the planet. Held in place inside a roiling molten metal core by the frozen world’s powerful magnetic field, augmented by the weapons system’s own containment field, it grew until there was nothing like it-nothing natural like it-in this corner of the galaxy. Penetrating to within a predetermined distance of the containment field, an immense hollow cylinder permitted a way out while ensuring that when the weapon was unleashed, gigantic groundquakes would not roil the world’s fragile surface. When the weapons engineers fired the device, a breach was induced in the containment field. At incredible velocity and accelerating exponentially, the concentrated volume of quintessence escaped, transforming as it did so into a state known as phantom energy and following the artificial line of egress that had been provided. Assuming that the rotation and inclination of the planet had been taken into account, the released blast of concentrated phantom energy would travel along a perfectly linear path, punching a small Big Rip through hyperspace itself until it left the galaxy-

-or encountered something in its path that was of sufficient mass to intercept it.

Traveling faster than anything ever generated by artificial means, through a torn portion of space-time whose properties were not fully understood, the concentrated glowing ball of energy lit the night sky above Republic City. Leia’s envoy Korr Sella was among those who gazed uncomprehendingly at the inexplicable phenomenon. Disturbed space was energized and lit up by its passage. It was as if a minuscule sun had suddenly appeared from nowhere, heading directly for the world on which she stood.

It struck with enough force to penetrate the crust and the mantle. Stunned scientists assumed the globe had been hit by an asteroid. The reality was worse, much worse. So powerful was the orb of phantom energy that as it dissipated within the planetary core, it blocked the free flow of elysium. Gravitons that normally moved freely and harmlessly through the planet suddenly were blocked from doing so. Almost immediately, the resulting graviton flux released enough heat to ignite the core…

Turning the planet into what astrophysicists called a pocket nova.

Expanding outward from the explosion, a tremendous burst of heat tore through the Hosnian system’s other worlds, searing their surfaces clean of life and incidentally obliterating all settlements, installations, and outposts, as well as the hundreds of ships belonging to the Republic fleet. In its wake, the detonation left behind a blazing, spherical mass. The home of the Republic had become a new binary system: one utterly devoid of life.