I love the Han Solo comparisons that everyone made for Cassian during promo for Rogue One and then it totally bait and switched that Jyn was actually the vest-wearing, mercenary asshole who reluctantly joined a noble cause and got a crush on a rebel with pretty brown eyes and a stick up their ass.
how long do you think it’s been since cassian last held someone, or was held? few months? years? over a decade maybe? this man’s family was killed when he was six and his only friend was a droid, i think it’s pretty safe to say it’s been awhile. there is so much bullshit here: like the way his eyes close slowly, savoring the feel of her, the weight and warmth. he breathes out, grips her tighter. the way she pulls him closer in response, the way they just ease together, like holding this person is the most natural thing they’ve ever done. GOD!!! what the fuck!!!!!!! this is bullshit. fuck diego luna and fuck lucasfilm
Okay, I have a lot of emotions about this.
I know all the rebelcaptain shippers like me love to tell our stories of Jyn and Cassian falling in love, making out in corners, etc, and in particular we love all our AUs where they survive Scarif and have a relationship, and make their way towards some kind of happiness together - & clearly we are a bunch of the most hopeless soppy ha’porths imaginable - but in allowing ourselves to wallow in all that we are half-forgetting how immensely subtle the canonical relationship is, how well scripted and how brilliantly acted.
Don’t get me wrong, I want as much as anyone to believe this could/should/would have been a love to sway the sun and the other stars! And I’m one of those who went into the film the first time really hoping that the script was not going to push another slightly-forced “we-only-just-met-but” romance on me. The love story crept up on me unawares, and tore my heart out; because incredibly, and largely by resolutely focussing on not telling it as a love story, they made it a completely believeable one.
Yet what we actually get to see is almost entirely platonic; two people who discover a kindredness of spirit, and who help one another to recover a sense of belonging; who become comrades, and are edging towards being friends, and who may be just beginning to wonder if they could be more; and then in the end they don’t have time. And yet, they manage to say everything that has gone unsaid, including all the might-have-beens, without a single word, in those two last scenes; the elevator, just looking at one another without speaking, and finaly on the beach by this simple act of holding one another in the face of death, being there
for one another
right through to the very last - which is an ultimate act of love.
Words, confessions of love, kisses, would snarl up the clear and unabashed emotion of this moment and burden it with too much thought, too much consciousness. It all stays interior, instead, and is shown only through their body language; through the things the OP here remarks on, they way they hold one another, so close and yet so gently, they way they fit together so tightly and find so much comfort in that closeness. All their awareness of the future they’ve laid down in order to complete their mission, all their awareness that they have come to like one another, that they would have been glad of the time to know one another better; their awareness that their chances have finally run out, but they won, is all carried just in the way they embrace. It’s that simplicity, that acceptance of the fact everything else must be left unsaid, as these two really quite ordinary, and very damaged, people - who in the end have found it in themselves to be consumately brave and honourable - accept their fate and roll with it, and pack all the years of comradeship, friendship, love, hope, that they could have known, into giving one another the last blessing of not dying alone.
And because we have two very good actors here, they don’t need any lines to do it. They just show it.
The result is almost a Sci-Fi equivalent to Hamlet’s “If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be
not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all… Let be.”
So that last scene on the beach, with Jyn and Cassian holding each other as the wave of the Death Star’s blast rolls in…
I have some thoughts about this.
Specifically, I noticed that, even though they could have just leaned into each other and held hands or touched foreheads or even just had their shoulders to the blast, they didn’t. Jyn is holding Cassian tight to her, looking directly over his shoulder into the wave of oncoming light, and he looks back over hers, away from the water.
And, see, throughout the first two thirds of the movie, prior to Jyn rallying to the Alliance cause after her father’s death, the thing that distinguishes her from the other characters is that she’s willing to close her eyes to the threat, to not look up at the Imperial flags. Cassian, on the other hand, is entirely defined by the fact that, to be blunt, he’ll look at the war head-on and do the dirty work, he’ll spy and kill and manipulate because it has to be done.
And I think it says a lot that, upon their deaths, they fly in the face of those character traits. With Cassian at her side, Jyn has the strength and pride in herself to look straight into the blast wave bringing her death and smile. And with Jyn beside him, Cassian can look away and close his eyes and pretend that everything will be okay.
cadeteyes asked: If you're taking rogue one prompts, could you do headcannons for the tragic space bbys (those being Cassian and Bodhi. I have a few of my own but I'd love to see what other people think)
I am…sorry…it’s possible I went Full Tragic with these.
Cassian
Cassian Andor has a home planet—Fest—but only
in the most generously technical sense.
(When Jyn asks, he shrugs and says “It’s cold, somewhere out on the Rim. My sister showed me how to throw snowballs
there when I was four.” That’s about
what he knows.) His parents are
merchants—legitimate merchants, thank you very much—and he learns young how to
act like he knows where he’s going and what he’s doing, because wandering young
children are always kind of a popular target for trouble.
Cassian doesn’t remember a single day when
someone flipped a switch and he lived in the Empire, it was more of a slow
slide until suddenly everything was Stormtroopers and the whispers of Darth
Vader and the Imperial Flag high overhead.
And one day he looked up and saw the flag, and looked down and saw his
parents smuggling information out of merchant centers for those who needed it,
and he decided he was going to do
something. That’s the day he
remembers.
Cassian has never been naïve. Three weeks later, he learned that spies die,
and that, sometimes, saving something is worth paying with your life. His parents and his sister bought his escape
with theirs. Watching their blood cool
as he hid, he decided he was still going to do something, even if he died
trying.
Cassian speaks…a lot of languages. The running joke in the Rebel Alliance is
that if you need a translator and none of the droids can manage, it’s time to
call Cassian. He just kind of picked
them up as he drifted, after his parents died, and hell, he was six then and
it’s been twenty years, he’s worth his weight in gold as a linguist. Of course, he’s only fluent in about eight,
but if you need to talk to some random guy from Fuck All Nowhere, Outer Rim,
Cassian’s your man. It doesn’t matter if
he’s never heard the language before, he’s going to Make It Happen. That’s the other thing Cassian’s known for:
Making It Happen. It’s a good trait in a
spy.
(Cassian never meets Luke Skywalker—he dies
just hours too soon. But Luke would have
liked to listen to Cassian curse in a cluttered mix of Bocce and Huttese and
Force knows what else. It’s the sound of
home.)
Cassian was formally recruited into the
Rebellion because he managed to pick a spy’s pocket successfully, and then the
spy watched this skinny eleven-year-old lie his ass off to a Stormtrooper and steal a speeder. The spy (Cassian doesn’t remember his name,
the man died on his next mission and Cassian cried for him) basically tucked
Cassian under his arm like a football and kidnapped him. He was welcomed like a prodigal into the
Rebel Alliance, his family remembered for their sacrifice and his information
collected over his wanderings a desperately needed help.
His method of official entry to the Rebellion
had a serious impact on Cassian’s recruiting style.
Cassian has met Leia—she’s almost seven years
younger than him, and she acts like he should know how high to jump before she
gives the order. He thinks she’s
Great™. He once watched her slay a man
with nothing but words at forty paces and it was the most amazing thing he’d
ever seen. He thinks Bail Organa is Also
Great™ and is absolutely flattered beyond
belief when he one time hears Bail refer to him as their best spy.
And finally: Cassian has done some bad
shit. He’s killed, he’s lied, and he’s
been on both sides of the interrogation table more than once—sometimes nicely,
other times…less so. But the Rebellion
is his home, it’s the only home he’s
ever had since the warmth of his sister’s hand and his mother’s smile and his
father’s voice, and he’s willing to do what he has to in order to protect
it. He regrets very little, and he still
holds his hope for victory close to his heart.
And it burns him that Jyn Erso
is so ready to act righteous when she’s hidden from the war all these
years. It burns worse because he watches
her speak and watches her rage and Force
she’s like a star given human flesh, and he can’t breathe with how much he
wants to see her lit up with belief in something.
He dies at peace, breathing easy, because
he’s protected his home and he’s seen Jyn on fire with passion and righteous
anger and it was all he’s ever dreamed.
Bodhi
Bodhi Rook doesn’t remember this—there’s a
lot he doesn’t remember, from Before—but
he has met Baze and Chirrut before.
Actually, he met Guardian Malbus and Guardian Îmwe, when he came up to
their knees. All he remembers is that he
loved the Temple of the Whills, loved the smooth warmth of the carved stone
walls and the way the altar glowed dimly in the dark and the feeling of
breathing in energy when he stood
near the crystals. He doesn’t remember
Guardian Malbus’ booming laugh as he gaped up at the arches of the ceiling, nor
Guardian Îmwe’s wide grin when he breathlessly said that it was beautiful. He doesn’t remember the way he touched a
kyber crystal—so daring he could barely believe it of himself—and felt it sing
under his fingers and saw Guardian Îmwe’s milky eyes turn toward him as if
summoned by the thrum in the air.
Bodhi also doesn’t remember that he swore up
and down for a full two years that he was going to be a Guardian.
Bodhi does
remember a specific day when the flag of the Empire rose overhead. The clones they had come to trust as the
strong arm of the Jedi swept through Jedha City like a storm, and Bodhi
remembers with horrible clarity the stark white of their uniforms, scrubbed
clean of the individualized markers they’d been so proud of. He remembers most clearly of all the body of
one of the Guardians who had been most indulgent of him, a tall, powerful
Togruta woman with a lightning-like scar branching down the length of her arm,
splayed broken on the ground with her glazed eyes pointed to the flag hung out
from the Temple wall.
Bodhi remembers the lesson he learned that
day: even the best fighter can’t stand against the Empire.
Bodhi has two mothers and twin baby brothers
and they need to be fed. The Empire pays. He’s sixteen when he swallows down his nausea
and takes the cargo job. He’s a good
pilot—they don’t care about his age.
It doesn’t hurt as much to watch them rip out
the kyber crystals if he doesn’t watch.
Bodhi has seen more combat than you might
think. He’s been hit by raiders three
times, Rebels twice, and perfected the fine art of ‘running like hell,’ but it
doesn’t always work out. He’s only ever
had to shoot someone twice.
He doesn’t want to talk about it.
Bodhi is a little in love with Galen
Erso. Not so much with the man himself,
although certainly there’s an appeal to the nimble fingers and soft voice and
steady gaze, but with his courage.
Bodhi, who misses the steady pulse of the kyber crystals, listens to
Galen speak quietly about resistance and courage and finding a way to do the right thing, and sees the bright flicker of
brave-hearted determination beneath the veneer of the Imperial engineer. He listens, and Galen’s voice washes over
him, and Bodhi loves him for the steady gaze in his eyes.
The same brave-bright storm lights in Jyn, as
she fights to convince the Alliance of her father’s message, and she looks at
him with a steady fire in her eyes, and Bodhi loves her for it.
