#Cassian is just bizzaro-world faramir without even basic literacy lol

[morwensteelsheen]

for the character meme: faramir and cassian

yaaaaaaas thank u 👑👑👑

Faramir

How I feel about this character

Oh boy. Yeah. So I see in Faramir what I wish I were — not just the good stuff like the pacificism and the intellectualism and the romanticism, but what I wish my flaws were too. It’s hard to not treat him as something of a literary patron saint of historians for all the incredible exposition work he’s given throughout the books, y’know? Like he has this incredibly historically-minded perspective on things, yet instead of taking it and behaving (as I tend to) in a sort of deeply pessimistic, confrontational, and defeatist way, he uses it to enable his (over)confidence. And I think that’s really brilliant and something I wish I could do. Yeah. God. I feel a lot of things about Faramir all the time, constantly torn between gender envy for him and normal, slightly furious envy lmao.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

lol whoops it’s just Éowyn lol. I am very much pro he and Aragorn shagging, if I don’t think too hard about it, but there are basically no other characters in the book who have forceful enough personalities to act as a countervailing force to some of his, uhhhh, Extremes, and I think Éowyn ends up being his [David Duchovny voice] human credential, which is lovely.

I guess I’m also partial to the Faramir-As-A-Sloppy-Bitch hypothesis which has him behaving like a bit of a fuckboy, but that’s not really shipping so much as character development? I guess?

My non-romantic OTP for this character

I’m buying him one of those awful one man wolfpack tshirts lmao, my dude absolutely does not have pals. I think he’s got loads of decent working relationships with people and is definitely charismatic when he wants to be, but outwith that……. lol

My unpopular opinion about this character

looooooool, I feel like the Faramir Is Not A Crybaby one is well trodden ground at this point, but one of my favourite unpopular opinions is that I think he’s, like, 15% more cynical than everybody gives him credit for. I think a lot of what he does can be construed as very obviously, uhhh, putting the moves on, I guess? Like I think he’s not making grand statements to Éowyn because he’s Magically Compelled To Do It, but because I think he absolutely 100% knows it’s stroking her ego. And I think playing one man good cop/bad cop with Sam and Frodo isn’t him rapidly changing his Take on the situation after getting new information, I think he’s very purposefully trying to unsettle their psychological defences a bit so he can get a better sense for what’s really going on and whether these two guys are going to end up handing Isildur’s Bane™ over to Sauron.

One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon

Actually nothing super significant. I guess I think the one kid shit is nonsensical. Even without turning on dumb horny shipper brain that says 0% chance he and éowyn weren’t fucking loads, I genuinely refuse to believe that any self-respecting feudal lord would not at least go for the And A Spare, if not And Several Spares, especially if you’re Faramir and your entire family got obliterated leaving you — Man Who Was Not Meant To Hold The House Down — the sole survivor.

Beyond that Faramir gets exactly what he ought to out of LOTR (though I would have loved to have read about his misery life in the Fourth Age), and I can’t really complain? Maybe a line or two at the trothplighting in Rohan? A chat with Galadriel? idk he really did fine for canon appearances imo

Cassian

How I feel about this character

There’s no way to say this without sounding slightly unhinged, but the scene in R1 where he shoots the injured informant on the Ring of Kafrene is genuinely one of my favourite moments in all of Star Wars. It threw down the gauntlet for visceral depictions of the unfeelingness of the GFFA in a way that hadn’t really been done before. Both the OT and the PT make gestures at it (the destruction of Alderaan is a good example, as is the slightly-bungled slavery subplot in TPM), but neither really show how fucked up people can get when they’re living in a fucked up world and they never show good guys doing things that are of ambiguous morality. Cassian ends up making a (surprisingly, given it’s a Mouse™ production) sophisticated argument for how the Real World works once you get past the golden boy heroes. Yes Luke blows up the Death Star, and yes he brings Vader back to the Light — both things that are unambiguous moral goods — but the reason he’s able to do that is because there’s someone like Cassian out there taking the karmic/emotional/spiritual/whatever hit to enable the Golden Boy behaviour. And I think that’s a really beautiful, really exciting bit of narrative development for SW generally, but to also do it in the context of Cassian — who actively defends his choices? That fucking rocked. I’m bracing for impact with the new show but R1 Cassian is absolutely one of my favourite SW characters, lovely wee man.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Literally just Jyn. Actually funnily enough he’s very much like Faramir to me in that I think if he didn’t end up with Jyn, he wouldn’t have really ended up with anyone at all. Not in a weird comphet or soulmates way, just in that I think sometimes people need a very specific kind of personality to wear down their defences and sometimes it’s a very specific kind of personality.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Okay in a fix-it AU I like to think he and Hera would get along fabbo, but from a great distance, as I think each of them would prefer it. Otherwise, I’m sorry to say it but my guy absolutely does not have pals lmao. Cassian no mates rip

My unpopular opinion about this character

I don’t think he’s actually repentant for the fucked up shit he’s done. When he tells Jyn that he’s had to do stuff he isn’t proud of, he’s not saying that because he’s seeking absolution or a chance to do penance or whatever, he’s saying it because it’s objectively true. He has done some stuff he’s not proud of, but contextually I think it’s pretty clear he’s able to justify it to himself well enough that he’s not looking for redemption or whatever.

One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon

I feel like I need to whisper this so the monkey’s paw doesn’t curl in advance of the show, but it would be genuinely very interesting to see him try to build an actual espionage network for the Rebellion. SW: Rebels touched on the notion of industrial sabotage (actually Mando did too, didn’t it?) and I think it would be especially interesting to see them try that out in a resistance/rebellion framework via Cassian. Let him do some covert ops organisation of workers to undermine Imperial production/supply lines or whatever.

Give me a character xxoo