#also this is rebelcaptain-focused because of who i am as a person

[andorerso]

Rogue One as a Netflix series: what if the team survived Scarif? (in/sp; template)

[b-else-writes]

the tiger shark and the sun

New chapter posted for my Star Wars/Avatar the Last Airbender-RebelCaptain fusion AU! Feat: Jyn calls Obi Wan an old fart, Jyn tells Luke and Leia to stop being melodramatic about becoming evil, dragons, and me ranting about the “evil sexy matriarchy” fantasy trope. 

Read on AO3 | Read from start

Pairings: Jyn/Cassian, minor Han/Leia and Baze/Chirrut, random minor background pairings

Rating: T

Summary: Star Wars/Avatar the Last Airbender fusion AU. The Fire Nation, under  Fire Lord Palpatine and Lord Vader, has been at War with the world for  the last twenty years. When Jyn Erso lands on his doorstep the day  Cassian, last southern waterbender, is assigned to protect the Avatar,  she seems just another obstacle in ending the War. An obstacle he would  willingly remove. For exiled firebender Jyn, the Avatar is her last way  home - and to her hostaged father, never mind her own conscience. But as  their paths keep crossing, and the Avatar needs all help in saving the  world, Jyn and Cassian find they are more alike than they ever thought  possible.

Snippet under the cut!

Jyn woke with a start, rapidly trying to figure out where she was. She was lying on a straw mattress in a stone room. The early morning light filtered in through a low window. On the ceiling were carvings of circling sky bisons.

Slowly, her memory returned. Jyn sat up, taking in the small room in Hynestia, the Western Air City. Cassian and Kay were nowhere in sight. He had removed her bracers and her boots sometime after she’d fallen asleep, and left then. But there was a dent on the mattress from where he’d been. She could still smell him – and his horrible lizard – and she gave herself a moment to imagine a world where someone like her…

She hastily shoved the thought aside. Another, more pressing concern than her unrequited feelings had emerged. She was supposed to teach. Jyn buckled on her bracers and slid her boots on quickly. She combed her fingers through her hair, repining the bun, and set about finding Enfys.

It took her a surprisingly short time to get around: the entire city seemed to have been developed and built for easy accessibility, with lifts, railings, and maps everywhere. Enfys, after she’d shown Jyn her room, had said she was going to the temple. Jyn found her and Luke curled up on the temple floor, fast asleep.

Jyn crouched and poked her. “Wake up!” she hissed.

Enfys groaned, red braids falling in her face. “Jyn, it’s only dawn…”

“Enfys, I need your help.” Luke made a noise but continued to snore. Jyn pursed her lips. “I’ll make you those wheat pancakes with dates and honey you love,” she said in her sweetest voice.

Enfys cracked one eye open. “We don’t have honey or dates.”

“I brought a jar as a peace offering,” she admitted. There was a pause. With a groan, Enfys extricated herself from Luke’s arms, pulling her cape on. Luke made a little grumble and rolled over. Jyn refrained from commenting as Enfys trailed after her to the central atrium. Enfys was perfectly liable to turn it right back on her.

As Jyn got the ingredients out from her satchel on the war balloon, Enfys asked, “So, what’s the issue?”

Swallowing her pride, “How did you teach the twins?”

There was another long pause. “You didn’t think this through at all, did you?” Enfys said, covering her mouth with her hand. Jyn glared. “I’m not laughing, I’m not!”

“I hate you,” Jyn said, swatting the date jar away from Enfys’ grip.

“No, you don’t,” Enfys said happily, dipping one finger in the honey jar and licking it. Jyn crouched to light the cookfire. It took a moment for the flame to appear on her fingertips. She frowned, but Enfys continued to speak, refocusing her attention. “Well, for me it was simple – I just followed how I was taught by my mother and aunts and elders. I already had a lesson plan ingrained in me.”

Jyn shook her head, feeling her pulse race, though it had been a decade since Master Jorus had backhanded her to perform better. “That…is not going to work.”

Enfys’ face clouded over. She stood from her perch and began to help Jyn, brushing her hands against hers. “Well, then, start simple. Like how to produce fire. And go from there. Basic punches and blocks, you do that a lot, don’t you?”

“They’re called fire fists.”

“My mistake,” Enfys said, her eyes sparkling with mirth, “Fire fists and fire kicks and fiery-ness and aallll that.”

Jyn bit back a smile, extending the plate with honey-drizzled wheat pancakes. “For her highness, the Queen of Mon Cala.”

Enfys immediately grabbed it, digging in with a moan of delight. “One of the few things from the Fire Nation worth saving,” she said, her mouth full of food.

“What’s the rest?”

“Don’t fish for compliments,” Enfys said easily, making Jyn grin. As Baze and Chirrut came in, Enfys added, “Just remember to be patient.”

“I am a beacon of patience.”

Enfys laughed. “I meant with yourself, Jyn. You’re doing something new and difficult. So be kind to yourself as you figure it out.”

She sighed, resting her head against her best friend’s shoulder. “And yet you won’t share your portion with me?” she asked, fighting down her own rising panic.

“You’re impossible,” Enfys laughed, giving her a kiss on the cheek. “Now eat up for your first big lesson, Master Jyn.”

Jyn stretched and popped out her muscles. She, Luke, and Leia stood in a beautiful courtyard of cream and white clay and wood. She imagined it must have been a communal space when Hynestia had still housed Air Nomads. She didn’t like dwelling on that too long. She could still feel…something clinging to the place. Fire child, they whispered, stroking her face and hair, this is what your people did.

She would have preferred pure hatred, but she felt that was not their way. It would have been easier than guilt. Especially when she saw the sadness in Enfys’ eyes.

Jyn focused back on the twins. Both wore expressions of trepidation, Leia in particular throwing her suspicious looks. Jyn tried not to take it too personally. “Have either of you ever firebent before?”

They exchanged a look. “Once,” Luke said, shifting a little, “We… we burnt Cassian by accident.”

Multiple statements immediately became clear in Jyn’s head. She pushed aside her own empathy for Cassian – and her instinctive urge to get angry on his behalf. Cassian held no grudge about it. Patiently, she said, “Most firebenders accidentally burn themselves or others when they’re starting out as children. It’s…normal.

“Alright then, let’s see what fire you can produce,” she said, folding her hands behind her back. Keep patient. Don’t be like Master Jorus. Don’t be what the Air Nomads know you could be. The summer heat touched the scars on her arms.

Exchanging another uneasy glance, the twins sank into a low hot-squat, good form, and punched.

A puff of smoke came out.

“That’s it?” Leia glared. Jyn resisted the very powerful urge to groan. “Let me demonstrate,” she said. Her muscle memory was so honed that Jyn didn’t even need to think. She sank and punched, sleeves billowing.

She produced a tiny gasp of flame.

Leia began clapping. Jyn scowled. “Don’t patronize, you know what it’s supposed to look like,” she grumbled. Jyn punched again. She slid into various forms, again and again. Only wisps of flame. “What in the…”

“Maybe you were never as good as you thought you were,” Leia said, grinning slightly.

“Oh, you’re hilarious,” Jyn snapped, trying in vain to produce more flame.

“Maybe it’s the altitude?” Luke suggested, though he didn’t look convinced. Jyn stared at her hands. Her inner flame felt cold and dull in her chest, despite the sunlight pouring over her skin. Sól, give me power, she thought, but none came.

Her firebending was gone. Somewhere, she could feel Master Jorus laughing.

The group sat around the cookfire, eating and chatting. The summer days were long, Chirrut knew. He could still feel heat despite the dinner hour. Baze had passed him his bowl, their fingers brushing. He smiled, gripping Baze’s fingers momentarily and grounding them both.

He heard Jyn clear her throat to speak. “There’s…a problem. I’ve lost my firebending. Well, not lost…but it’s weaker now and I can’t figure it.”

Chirrut considered as he munched. Bending was inherently spiritual, something that many had now forgotten, preferring to use as a blunt instrument. Jyn had never struck him before as someone who wanted to look within herself.

“Maybe it’s because you changed sides,” Cassian spoke up. Chirrut’s seismic sense could feel Jyn immediately perk up and orient towards him. Oh, young love. “Your firebending used to come from anger and desperation. Now you have none.”

“So, what? We piss Erso off?” Han asked, poking Erso with his sword butt.

Jyn kicked him in the shin. “Cut that out! It’s not an option.”

“What you need is a new source,” Chirrut said. “And by that, I mean an old one. The original. For earthbending, the first earthbenders were the badgermoles. When I was young, I ran away and hid in a cave. A blind child was better off gone.”

He still remembered the pain and fear as he had fled Jedha’s orphanage, stumbling through the crowds of people out into the scorching, shifting ground he had learnt was sand. Finding his way into the Catacombs. Surrounding by the dead, as he imagined he would soon become.

The Spirits had other plans. There had been a great crunch of rock, and a soft, wet snout had nosed him. They had recognized him as one of their own. “The badgermoles are also born blind. I learnt earthbending as an extension of my senses. Earthbending is not a martial art – it is a way of interacting and moving through the world, and that is the form I taught Luke and Leia.”

The wonder he had felt as he began to feel the world expanding outwards beneath his palms and feet. The grubs and creatures that lurked beneath the desert sand. The hardy plants that nourished from the earth. The secret oases. The possibilities that had exploded to him. His only regret was that it was no help to non-benders and other benders, but Chirrut was nothing if not stubborn. He had tried to help them too, as a Guardian of the Whills.

“Firebending isn’t like that,” Jyn said quietly, standing up and pacing.

“But surely you must know who the original firebenders were,” Enfys said, “I learnt from my Tribe, but the first airbenders were the sky bison. That’s influenced our bending to use gliders to fly, to our culture!”

Jyn walked over to Chirrut. He felt the same turmoil of his childhood self, in her. “It won’t work. The first firebenders were the dragons, and they’re extinct. There’s no other way.”

Baze squeezed Jyn’s hand. “There is always another way.”

Jyn was silent for a moment. When she spoke, he felt the vibrations. There is something she is concealing. “We’re not far from the island of Dathomir. The witches of Dathomir were said to be the first to learn firebending from the Dragons. They were killed off thousands of years ago. You still hear stories, but there’s no proof their society still exists. We might find something. Otherwise…”

“Sometimes the shadows of the past can be felt by the present,” Chirrut said. Several of the group shifted uncomfortably.

“We don’t have much of a choice,” Luke said, “Han, can we borrow the Falcon?”

keep reading

[rxbxlcaptain]

I was tagged by @callioope at a time when I was conveniently attempting to avoid my own writing, so thank you for helping me procrastinate, lol! 

+Where do you publish your work? "Publish” sounds a bit official, but I post my writing either here or on AO3 as Kobo! If I ever get around to publishing my original writing, I’ll probably publish it on my main blog @letthepeoplesay-oh!

+What medium/application/etc.? If I know I’m going to be sending my work to my beta, I’ll write it on Google Docs, since that’s how I’ll share it, but if I’m just going to be doing my own editing, I’ll write it on Microsoft Word since it never requires an internet connection and I can write wherever! One of my other favorite applications when it comes to editing is WritingAid, which will examine writing for overused words/phrases, find other filler words and the like. If you guys are looking for a quick editing tool, I would completely suggest it! (With the understanding that it is a machine and sometimes you have to roll your eyes at it and go “No, I want it to say that, thank you very much.”)

I’ve also some some random notes on my phone (since that’s always with me) whenever a really good line I want to remember runs through my head or if I come up with a good concept for a prompt! (The trick is remembering how I wanted to use that line when I finally get the chance to sit back down at my computer.)

+Do you collaborate with others? I can’t say that I have! I’m going to lean towards I simply wouldn’t collaborate and that has everything to do with me and little to do with other writers (because, believe me, I’ve met plenty of authors on this site that I would be honored to work with!) I’m just a bit... controlling when it comes to my work? Not the best quality, I realize, so I don’t want to subject other people to that!

+How much editing do you do before you publish? Depends on the fic, really. A lot of my prompts don’t get a lot of editing, especially if I’ve got several sitting in my inbox that I need to answer. Anything that’s a multi-chapter work (Luctor et Emergo, for example) gets literally so much editing before it’s published. I’ll hammer through chapters three or four times before they’ll see the light of AO3. 

+Do you listen to music? Yep! I can’t listen to music I know well, because I’ll start dancing and/or singing along (only to find words from those songs in my writing later on) but I have about 12 hours worth of soundtracks/scores on my phone (Harry Potter, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey... A whole, wide range) that I’ll play in the background, or I listen to salsa music, since it’s upbeat and I don’t speak the language they’re singing in, so I won’t accidentally write some of it down! (Another fun bonus with listening to music in Spanish: if I listen to enough of it, I convince Spotify I speak Spanish, and then it’ll start playing me ads in Spanish and, again, since I don’t speak the language, it’s a lot easier for me to ignore those than English ones!)

+How do you decide what to write about? When it comes to fics, I normally pick out one detail that I’d like to play with (I’m currently attempting to write a “What if Galen survived?” AU that’s a perfect example of this!) or some scenario that I’d love to see the characters in. Often, I’ll choose a plot because I really just want two characters to interact (like Jyn and Han in Begin Again or Jyn and Luke in Faith) and attempt to manipulate the environment around them to figure out how that would be logical!

+When do you write? I wish I was organized enough to have a specific time that I wrote, in all honesty. A lot of the time it’s in the afternoons when I first get home from work or in the morning when I have downtime at work. I often tell myself I’m going to write before I go to bed, but then I’ll often start scrolling through Tumblr instead and, well, that idea goes out the window. 

+How often do you write? Again, totally depends. Some weeks I’ll write every single day and then some weeks I won’t ever touch my keyboard in a creative sense. Ever since I started writing for Rebelcaptain, though, I don’t think I’ve let a full week go by without writing at least something for them. 

+Do you take requests? I do! I love getting prompts because I always feel more motivated to get a fic out there if I know there’s a specific person waiting for it, rather than just “Oh, I’d like to publish this sometime” (Those stories sit in my drafts for quite awhile, in all honesty). I can’t promise I’ll fill all requests or how quickly I’ll fill them, but if you guys have any prompts, feel free to send them my way!!

+Is there a genre or type of story you want to write but are hesitant to? To be completely honest, I’m a little hesitant of starting a multi-chapter fic within the Star Wars universe. One of my favorite ideas for a fic I’ve got bouncing around in the back of my head is a story where Jyn is raised by the Organas rather than Saw Gerrera, but I feel like I’m not familiar enough with the interworkings of the SW universe to write that accurately. Though I’ve loved Star Wars for most of my life, I’ve only really dived into the fandom with the last year or so. Hopefully at some point I’ll get past this, because I’ve definitely got things I want to write!

+Any inspirational quotes, videos, tricks, articles, etc that help you stay motivated? So this might be a little out of left field, but the other week I was googling when the next Game of Thrones book would be out and I found this wonderful quote from George R.R. Martin: “[The next book is] not done yet, but I’ve made progress. Not as much as I hoped a year ago, when I thought to be done by now. I think it will be out this year (but, hey, I thought the same thing last year).” For some reason, that was just so comforting to me? Because if world renowned author George Martin gets behind on his projects, it makes me feel a bit better that I’m behind on mine as well!

+Go to page 7 of your WIP, skip to the 7th line, and share 7 sentences: As proof that I am not completely abandoning Luctor et Emergo, here’s a section of the next chapter, which is focusing on Cassian’s journey at Hogwarts:

“If you were one of my snarkier students, Andor, I’d worry you were giving me cheek with that question.”

Cassian attempted to smile at the professor, but found the motion difficult. If he had done the spell correctly, why did he need to demonstrate it again for the professor?

“Andor, you just performed that spell non-verbally,” Professor Draven told him, emphasizing the last word. “Which is a skill I don’t teach until after you’ve completed your O.W.L.s.”

“And here I’d just thought I’d lost my hearing,” Kay muttered, sending his own pillow flying with a “depulso” under his breath. When Cassian shot him a dirty look, he merely shrugged his shoulders. “What? You talk quietly enough on a daily basis.”

“One of us should,” Cassian shot back.

Tagging: @thenewleeland, @jynandcassianandor, @operaticspacetrash, @leralynne, @lyresandlasers and any other writers who want to do this!

[a-non-sequitur]

rogue one: JUNIOR novel: reaction

So I’m reading the Rogue One: Junior Novel by Matt Forbeck because… look, I’m just desperate for every bit of official Rogue One material I can get and both Guardians of the Whills and Rebel Rising aren’t out for three weeks. I’m also mildly curious as to how a morally dense and complicated movie gets translated for younglings. What’s important to emphasize? What’s not?

(I do wonder in general how Star Wars film novelizations - both the adult and children versions - are handled. How much of the movie do they even see while writing, if any? Is there an Official Person who makes sure the characterizations/internal monologues/etc. are What They Should Be? Is every extra bit that’s in the novels but not in the movies okay'ed as canon? Did Forbeck use Freed’s novel as reference? Etc etc.)

Favorite/Interesting bits:

really emphasizing and contrasting Jyn’s self-preservation throughout the novel

This is a girl who looks at every situation (innocuous or not) and her very first thought is, “Will this kill me? How can I survive this?” 

And yet, when she’s forced for time, she makes snap-second decisions that go against this - eg saving the girl on Jedha, standing in front of K-2 when Baze aims his blaster. 

It’s not that her self-preservation is a facade, per se; it’s definitely real. It’s just clearly a thought process that she’s been forced to cultivate rather than something innate to her character. 

on Eadu, Cassian really wanting to make sure his entire crew is safe, even though (1) they’re not his crew (yet), and (2) he has no official obligation to… any of them except K-2 and, possibly, Jyn. Even when he’s thinking, “Jyn is going to murder me once she realizes I assassinated her father,” he’s simultaneously thinking of ways to make sure the entire Rogue One crew escapes Eadu.

Bodhi:

Bodhi being salty (in his head) at K-2’s and Cassian’s flying+crash landing on Eadu. Made me smile, tbh.

Bodhi’s internal sarcast-o-meter. Example:

The Empire had lit its landing platform with spotlights to make it easier for legitimate shuttle pilots—like Bodhi had once been—to find it.

Cassian pulled Bodhi down next to him, as if anyone in the base could spot them all the way over there. In the storm. At night.

But Bodhi went along with it anyhow. Cassian was the spy, after all.

Cassian pulled out a set of quadnocs and focused them on the landing platform. Bodhi didn’t think there would be much out there to look at, but he decided to let the spy go spy if he wanted to.

While both Freed and Forbeck heavily characterize Bodhi as being very brave while still being very scared, Freed also focuses on Bodhi’s mental trauma post-Bor Gullet, whereas Forbeck... basically dismisses that experience and instead focuses on Bodhi’s anger/righteousness to help inspire Bodhi’s inner monologues. I wish he had, you know, taken Bodhi’s torture seriously, but I did think this alternative perspective was an interesting take.

Baze mourning Jedha and Wanting Revenge. The loss of Jedha eats at his every thought when his perspective is featured.

Even with a constant barrage of “brother” and “best friend” hogwash, it is impossible for either Rogue One author to hide how In Love Chirrut and Baze is. 

Krennic continuing to have Z.E.R.O. emotional intelligence and blaming Lyra for everything Galen did (Krennic’s trans-media constant hate-on for Lyra makes me as schadenfreudestically happy as his completely one-sided hard-on for Galen) 

the Jyn-Cassian argument was handled really well, I think. The author doesn’t try to simplify it into a “he or she is the winner” but let’s kids know that the argument was messy, that they both had reasons to be right while both realizing that they’re not completely right at the same time. That emotions running high can affect what and how you argue about something.  

the complexity of Jyn’s opinions of the Rebellion (both the Alliance and the Partisans), especially her frustrations with them 

everyone (including Cassian) keeps viewing Jyn as mission leader and Jyn's like I DONT KNOW WHAT YOU WANT ME TO DO WITH THIS; I THOUGHT CASSIAN WAS LEADING 

i’ve always been of the camp that categorizes K-2 and Cassian not just as bffs but as considering each other as actual family to each other. So I always get excited when I come across little bits over how much they care for and are reliant on each other. 

 At least not until after Cassian and Jyn had grabbed the tape and gotten away.

 “Kay!” Cassian yelled. The droid could hear the anguish in the man’s voice. They’d put a lot of work into each other, after all. 

[emphasis mine]

rebelcaptain: the junior novel is nowhere near as shippy as the adult novel (... that sounds pornographic, whoops). there’s definitely hints - especially from cassian’s side - where their thoughts go WHY AM I ACTING LIKE THIS AROUND THIS OTHER PERSON; LET ME TRY TO RATIONALIZE MY BEHAVIOR INSTEAD OF EXAMINING MY EMOTIONS, but honestly, spiritassassin has more shippy internal monologue than rebelcaptain here.

in general, that the author repeatedly showed that it doesn’t matter so much what your thoughts necessarily are - it’s the choices you make that carry the greater weight. 

Bodhi wishes that he could send other people into the firefight on Scarif to connect the communications relay, but he does the run himself. 

Cassian justifies the assassination of Galen repeatedly, but he doesn’t pull the trigger. 

Jyn imagines just giving up to Imperial forces at the top of the data tower, but she rushes to the end of the platform to fix the satellite. 

Etc. etc. A lot of little instances like that.

[rose-of-gabriel]

Fuck my ass in half, I forgot that it’s CASSIAN ANDOR APPRECIATION WEEK.

Yo yo yo so Cassian Week started yesterday. Oops. Better late than never.

May 15: Favorite Scenes!

Oh my gosh, how am I supposed to choose? (This is just going to be a ridiculous fan-girl rant so cheers, guys)

Okay so our very first glimpse of him is on the Ring of Kafrene. The camera slowly descends into the bustling city streets and focuses on the back of this one man in a dark jacket. He turns around (we just get a fricking profile) and I knew instantly yes this is my precious son and also my hot Mexican space daddy

Then the scene with K, Jyn, and Cassian in the shuttle about to set off for Jedha is sooooo goooood. Not only is K2 a seven foot tall child, but Cassian, super spy supreme, is a stuttering bumbling mess when he hears that Jyn has a blaster. Then he not only asks her where she got it (knowing that it’s his), she lies to his damn face and he lets her keep it. Guys, come on. “Trust goes both ways.” And you can see it in his face that for some kriffing reason, despite every nerve in his super spy body telling him not to trust her, he does, and he has no fricking clue what to do about it.

(honorable mention: the entire charade through Jedha City is fricking beautiful to watch. every ten seconds it’s “grumbled information, worry about Jyn, awesome one-liner, worry about Jyn, worriedly drag Jyn through an alley, get a conflicted boner as Jyn murders stromtroopers with her bare hands, witty banter with K, smile at Jyn” )

(also honorable mention: Cassian’s fricking face when he’s stuck in the cell with Chirrut and Baze. literally can’t think about it without cracking up)

Okay okay back to serious talk. They’re on their way to Eadu and Cassian is basically praying that he doesn't have to kill Jyn’s father because woopty doo, he likes her. The look on his face when he gets the message that the orders still stand? His eyes widen like shit shit shit no and then he puts his forehead against the console because he’s in the Rebellion this is his mission it doesn’t matter that he will be taking away the only family Jyn has left. Then he slams the headset back into its holder because he’s a killer that’s all he’s good at he doesn’t care that Jyn will hate him it’s fine SHUT UP.

(another honorable mention: Cassian trying and failing to convince everyone that Jyn should stay behind because she just should, okay?!?!?)

holy shit we aren’t even halfway through the movie and this is really long

Alright, I’ve got it. My ultimately favorite scene of Cassian is when Jyn and Bodhi come out of the council meeting. Jyn is mad and dejected and losing hope almost as fast as she started to gain it back. Then Baze points behind her and who is there? Who’s there, guys? Cassian Jeron Andor in all his bashful modesty like, “hey I trust you, and I know how these stupid politicians work, so I got together a ragtag group of not-so-clean- heroes and now I’m going to deliver this awesome fricking speech and be all shy and sweet the whole time then I’m going to walk right into your personal space and you’re going to be cute and then I’ll be cute back” like come on? And you know that some of these men, if not most, took some major convincing to help the daughter of the creator of the Death Star. You know he was relentlessly defending Jyn, declaring his utter confidence in her.

realizing all my fav scene are mostly rebelcaptain centered, what do you want from me I am garbage?

[sensationseeker]

https://78.media.tumblr.com/ac07b9e1a0184fef6576bb49c3cde150/tumblr_p6fko8Lm151xnqe5bo5_640.jpg

When Cassian is that bitch wearing a full winter ensemble in the middle of the desert screaming @ his own team to fight him climbing 7,000 stories with a broken back to make sure he sticks it to the Empire why am I nonstop reading about all the ways he is vacant and wishes he would die. “Is there anything else to his personality besides ‘hates himself’” ???

What draws me most to Cassian that I couldn’t articulate for a while is how fully real he feels. He is heroic and loyal and determined but also yells all the time, h8 everyone except Jyn, can be mean and manipulative. And I like this depiction of a resistance member, him as a full and bitchy person—it makes his courage feel more real to me, emphasizes the choice and sacrifice he makes over and over to fight for good.

Beyond frustrating how much every part of the RO fandom tries to twist his character around to suit and prop whichever fave—only focusing on Rebelcaptain in this post because that’s tbh all I care about—turning him into this Depressed And Self-Hating And Suicidal shell who Doesn’t Know What He’s Fighting For, precisely because he is so vibrant and inspiring to me, and he is intended to be. It takes sooo much effort to read it any other way, you have to basically create an entirely new story and portrayal to support it, and it always winds up extremely convoluted and nonsensical. “Cassian tells Jyn ‘Rebellions are built on hope’ but he means it sarcastically even though nothing about his delivery and body language is sarcastic, it really has an impact on Jyn even though I just said he meant it sarcastically so why would it, it all comes together when Cassian is finally reinspired by the sarcastic words he never hears Jyn repeat because he isn’t in the scene.” “Jyn makes Cassian realize he is As Bad As A Stormtrooper and that he blindly follows The Rebellion so he starts blindly following Jyn instead”

Part of the issue and why you wind up with people needing to essentially create this fantasy story and personality for Cassian seems to be that most don’t understand what resistance organizations are or require and so fundamentally can’t understand Cassian’s actual purpose, duties, drive.

What I mean by fantasy personality: some fans can never shut up about Jyn wanting to fight the guy who pushes her on Jedha, yet ignore Cassian responding the exact same way to the guy shoving him in Saw’s cave. The Jedha push shows Jyn is Brave and Determined while Cassian is Cautious and Doesn’t Know What He’s Fighting For. We see Jyn go catatonic in moments of stress—Cassian needs to physically drag her away from Saw and Galen—but Cassian is the one who is empty and depressed and apparently will never be able to leave this behind or find any meaning in his life. In fact he doesn’t even deserve to.

What I mean by fantasy story: fandom obsession with Cassian and “orders” that don’t exist in the actual film. Cassian has no orders to kill Tivik at the beginning—he does so, he makes this choice on his own, because Tivik won’t be able to escape and the Empire must not know the Rebellion knows about the Death Star. If Cassian was in Tivik’s position it’s what he would expect. It’s also partly a mercy kill to spare Tivik torture Cassian knows he can’t endure. Likewise Draven’s decision that Galen Erso can’t be trusted and needs to be killed is debatable, but not some clear moral test the way fandom portrays it since he, u know, built the Death Star, and the Rebellion is a mess—it’s not wild to think they can’t be trusted with him. Cassian’s conflicted agreement isn’t “following orders,” it’s a difficult decision.

Aside from those things what other “orders” are in the film to apparently define Cassian’s entire character and purpose? Not to get into **** but Jyn’s “stormtrooper” and “orders” comments aren’t supposed to be truth, they’re Jyn misunderstanding Cassian’s position, Cassian as part of a resistance organization. Jyn is right on a personal level—Cassian betrayed her on a personal level—but Cassian is right on a larger scale and ultimately wins the argument. It is Jyn’s turning point to return to her cause, because of Cassian’s words. Not the other way around.

That is what Cassian’s sort of overall main purpose in the film is to me: to reinspire Jyn. I always feel there is such a sense of them immediately “knowing” each other, and the film and Jyn’s story are so moving to me as Cassian helping her get back to her true self. THAT is the whole point of **** and the film—not Amazing Leader Jyn randomly inspiring everyone, but Jyn finding her hope again through Cassian, his determination and devotion not to “the Rebellion” but to freedom. She finally finds “home” with Cassian, the team, the Rebellion, back to fighting the Empire, her cause she never truly stopped believing in.

One of the most moving images to me in the cinema, and I know Garth did not intend this but Rebelcaptain in the death elevator and the lights dim on Cassian’s face but his eyes still glow through the darkness, his whole character in one image imo.