Ppl always saying “u need Jesus,” and “find God,” and “go 2 church,” and like, Stephanie Meyer is a fanatical Mormon and if loving the baby Jesus didn’t stop her from writing the c-section-by-tooth-werewolf-attracting-hellbaby, why the fuck you think He’s gonna stop me?
MAJOR SPOILERS, obviously, for Rogue One (and anyone who wants to read the novelization).
Jyn went through all of Cassian’s things while he was off having his secret conversation w Draven and made a mental note that there was ‘no holoimage of a dutiful wife’ like chill girl you could just ask him if he was single
THE BLASTER PISTOL SHE “FOUND” WAS STOLEN STRAIGHT OUT OF CASSIAN’S BAG LMAO IM SCREAMING
and he knows it too and lets her keep it looool
Moments after Cassian saves her life by shooting the rebel with the grenade, Jyn tackles him to the ground and saves his life in return
these two seem “pressed together” a lot like we get it, personal space is not a thing
Cassian is literally Always Stressed about Jyn being cold and injured after their battle in Jedha
but like, side note, Cassian is literally always stressed about Jyn anyway
even when he knows she’s served her purpose in the mission and is by all means ‘expendable’ (and is justifying in his mind a million reasons to leave her behind) he’s desperately trying to save her as Jedha is collapsing
Cassian comes up with a hundred reasons why he SHOULD shoot Galin Erso but what it comes down to in the end is the fact that he has Jyn’s eyes and he just CANT DO IT please someone end my suffering
when Cassian sees the explosion on the platform he whispers Jyn’s name
and then he RACES to save her, and the logical part of his brain is like “where would we even go? we’re trapped here anyway” but he’s so frantic he doesn’t care, his one track brain just locks onto Jyn and her wellbeing
their fight after is so emotionally charged I almost can’t handle it
once Cassian realizes Jyn won’t be getting the support from the council he slips out quietly with Bohdi and they gather people together to pull off the death star plan mission
when Jyn realizes what Cassian has done for her, how much he believes in her, and how dedicated he is to helping her, she finally starts healing for the first time in her character arc (which is why the line “welcome home” is so destroying like…….. this is the first time in the entire book that she actually feels hope)
something I didn’t realize in the movie but was spelled out more obviously in the book: when Jyn sees Cassian shot while they’re climbing the tower and he falls, she thinks he’s dead, and is literally so distraught she almost lets herself fall after him for a millisecond hahahaha 🙂 🙂 this is fine 🙂
and when she sees ‘the man in the white cape’ she mentally lists Cassian’s death up there with her parents as ways the man has made her life a living hell, and she burns with rage
and when she realizes Cassian is alive (and that he’s ended her nightmare by killing Krennic) he “looked as beautiful as anyone Jyn had ever known” and once she beams the plans to the death star out, she stumbles to him smiling like a child
when Cassian sees her smile he’s shook by how ordinary it is, how it turns her into a woman he might have known and understood “He hadn’t known her, didn’t know her, of course. There wasn’t the time.” NO
in the end Cassian still had a hard time forgiving himself for all the awful things he did in the name of the rebellion but looking at Jyn and knowing he’d given her what she needed, that was enough.
“Her faith carried him with her.”
As Jyn is carrying Cassian (who is SO WEAK and SO BROKEN) toward the beach, she blocks a dead rebel soldier from his view
“Somehow she found herself closer to Cassian than before. Her breathing matched his, or his matched hers, deep and steady.”
and Cassian, completely out of strength, somehow still manages to hold her tighter, as tightly as he can, as the bright white light blinds them both and they become one with the force
(so basically, lots of tears were had) (I’m so Shook)
so if there’s one single trope i’m always down to fight it’s the animal bride (folklore motif 402??) which a lot of you are probably familiar with as the selkie – the fisherman either falls in love, steals her skin to trap her on land/gain power over her, or they fall in love and THEN he steals her skin to keep her from leaving, and either way she spends a lot of time gazing sadly out to sea and then she or her child finds the skin and never returns again. and that’s awful on a whole lot of levels – it’s not love, it’s control.
BUT. but the thing is. you how selkies/seal women was a pretty common variation of this? another really popular one was swans.
i just want you to think about that for a moment. swans. like…I get it, they’re pretty, graceful birds, certainly it’s easy to imagine them magically becoming pretty graceful ladies? but have you ever fought a swan. swans are awful. swans are the devil’s geese. imagine seeing a pretty magic lady and being absolutely enchanted by her, and stealing her magic feather cloak, and then you go up and say ‘hey i’m in love with you, let me make you my queen, it will be great, we’ll be so happy’ and she just looks at you for a moment and…
you know i was going to say maybe she just shouts for her sisters and suddenly you’rerealizing you’ve made a terrible terrible mistake bc you’re surrounded by big fucking birds who are all hissing. but honestly if this swan lady is as aggressively down to brawl as any other generally unhappy swan, then she’d straight up fuck you up on her own. she’d just deck you roundhouse, honestly. you don’t fuck with swans. why does this trope exist
okay but consider this: a woman walks to the park every day and feeds the swans and watches them paddle gracefully around the lake, sighing to see how beautifully they swim.
finally one day, a swan comes up to her and says ‘why don’t you come and swim with us? you always sigh so wistfully to see us on the water, and you would be most welcome to join our company, for you have always been a true friend to our kind’
and the woman says, ‘i can’t swim’
and the swan says, ‘we’ll teach you’
and the woman says, ‘literally i can’t swim, my husband stole my sealskin and should i venture into deep water i would surely drown’
and the swan says ‘your husband fucking WHAT’
the next morning the woman’s front yard looks like this.
and neither the woman nor her husband are ever heard from again, though for very different reasons.
It may also interest someone to know that swans can projectile poop.
I know a real-world mama swan who got shot in the wing and walked four miles overland to get back to her babies and dad swan, with her broken wing bleeding and dragging the whole way. She just kept going. Don’t mess with lady swans.
Also? Swans don’t have a lot of obvious physical markings that divide the males from females. So some idiot might be like, “damn, that’s a sexy bird, I wanna marry her” and then like. It’s a dude swan. You just transformed thirty pounds of angry aggressive bird into 200+ pounds of angry aggressive adult man, who will totally kick your butt. (Also I’m pretty sure that if you turned a lady swan into a human, you would not get a willowy little 5′0″ girl. You’d probably have a 6-foot amazon with biceps the size of your head. Swans are heavy birds and it takes a LOT of muscle to get them into the air. They are among the baddest bitches in the bird kingdom)
And when a swan decides to beat you up, it is not with fancy martial arts. Swans are brawlers. They have bone clubs built into their wing joints specifically for beating people up. A human swan is gonna come at you screaming and spitting and just keep punching you in the face until you regret every decision you have made ever in your life and also some of the ones your parents made too.
I want a movie where the swan is either played by The Rock or Gwendoline Christie and the screaming brawls are the centerpiece.
The sorcerer’s eyes scan the lake greedily. He’s been coming here for months, dreaming. Waiting.
Choosing.
And now it’s time.
“That one,” he tells the two men he hired earlier this morning, pointing one long, ring-adorned finger at the most beautiful swan. “Bring her to me.”
The henchmen don’t ask questions. He paid them specifically so they wouldn’t ask questions.
Even so, henchmen A glances at henchman B from the corner of his eye.
“Dude,” he says when they’re far enough way from the cackling sorcerer that they won’t be overheard, “why the hell does he want a swan?”
Henchman B shrugs. “What do these sorcerer types ever want?”
They near the water’s edge. “Okay, but,” Henchman A says, “he’s not going to try and fuck it, right? Because I’m sort of uncomfortable with beastiality–”
“Oh my god,” henchman B groans. “Just grab the swan.”
It takes a bit of cursing, flailing, and begrudging team work to grab the swan. When they finally manage to tuck her wings against her sides and grab hold of her neck to prevent her from biting she goes limp, making the strangest, saddest sound that the henchmen have ever heard.
“It’s okay,” Henchman A tells her bracingly, feet squelching as they haul her from the muddy lake’s edge to the sorcerer. “He’s probably not into beastiality. Very few people are.”
Henchmen B coughs and averts his eyes. “Uh, yeah. Right. Hey, you don’t think this was too easy? I mean, the other swans are just…watching. Us.”
Henchman A glances over his shoulder. Sure enough, floating on the lake are about two dozen swans, all curving their elegant necks so they can watch the fate of the swan hanging in between them. Rather than seeming alarmed, they seem…amused?
Henchman A looks away. “Nah, I’m sure it’s fine.”
The sorcerer jumps from foot to foot when they approach, clapping his hands together. “Good, good! Now just hold her there, hold her!”
The henchmen watch as the sorcerer visibly reigns himself in, breathing deeply. He begins to mutter in tongues for a very long time, an awkwardly long time. The henchmen glance at each other with their eyebrows raised. Sorcerers, man.
Suddenly the sorcerer’s head snaps up, eyes glowing a blazing black. He points his bejeweled finger at the swan who has remained suspiciously limp between them and hisses a short, ominous phrase.
Henchman A fights not to scream as a bolt of blue lightning flies at them. Henchman B drops his side of the swan and Henchman A follows suit just in time. The bolt strikes the swan and there’s a blinding flash as the sorcerer begins to cackle again.
“Behold!” he screams to the sky. “My bride!”
The spots clear from the henchmen’s eyes and they gape at the swan. Or rather where the swan should be. Instead there’s a woman there, crumpled on the ground, in a white, soft dress that’s already muddy.
She slowly lifts her head, her face pointed towards Henchman A. Her eyes snap open to reveal a swan’s eyes, a deep unending black that looks… not right on a human.
“Oh what the fuck,” Henchman A says.
The swan woman levers herself up. And up. And up. And up until she towers over them. There are thick cords of muscle at eye level, thick arms and a broad chest that lead to a very strong neck . Most of her body is hidden by her dress, but it doesn’t take a genius to guess that she’s built like a fucking tank.
She is very, very swan-like, henchman A realizes.
“Oh what the fuck,” henchman B says.
The woman smiles, showing off white, small teeth. “Welcome to the thunderdome, gentleman.”
Her fist feels like steel when it connects with Henchman A’s face and he thinks he hears his cheek break. He falls to the ground hard and doesn’t even try to stay conscious after a hit like that. The last thing he hears is what sounds like laughter from the direction of the lake.
Henchman B tries to run, but the swan woman is fast. She grabs the back of his collar and slings him to the ground, hissing and spitting. She hikes up her dress, showing built calves, and brings her heel slicing down onto his stomach. He reaches and chokes at the same time, moving belatedly to cover his head.
He needn’t bother. The swan woman seems to be done with him.
The sorcerer’s still standing in the spot from which he cast the spell, mouth agape. “B-but, you– you’re a swan? Wha–”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the swan woman says. Her voice is scratchy and growls like she’s swallowed glass. It sounds a bit like the hissing merriment happening on the lake. “I’m not a swan. I’m your wife.” She cracks her knuckles. “And it’s time for our honeymoon.”
The sorcerer picks up his robes and flees into the forest. The swan woman is fine with that. The swan who’d had to deal with this last week said that its more fun when they run.
–The opening statement comes right out with the main thesis: “I still think [Eridan’s] character arc is a metaphor for the Obama presidency.” Such an odd assertion phrased in such a direct way is the first of the post’s many unexpected twist and turns. In a way, it’s an excellent thesis statement; it lets the readers know exactly what they can expect from the rest of the text. Notable is the inclusion of the word “still.” Had someone attempted to dissuade this individual from believing this theory? More than one someone?
–The first paragraph starts pretty slowly: the comparison of the guy who does everything in twos to bipartisanship and the claim that
a gay character represents the LGBT community
aren’t too out there when compared with the original assertion that Eridan Ampora symbolizes Barack Obama. Saying a character who wants to care for society’s downtrodden symbolizes social welfare programs is comparatively not much of a stretch either, nor is drawing a parallel between a major villain and the GOP. Then, out of nowhere, like the storm after the calm, like a clown honk followed by a gunshot, appears “Jade (Reagan) ”. Equal parts wham line and establishing character moment for our unknown theorist, the absurd comparison between lovable, open-minded 13-year old girl Jade Harley and Ronald Fucking Reagan, fortieth president of these United States, upends all our expectations, expectations which were pretty out-of-the-ordinary to begin with considering they were set by the comparison of Eridan Ampora to Barack Obama. That the anonymous theorist goes on to explain the reasoning behind this comparison in no way mitigates the shock. "Jade (Reagan)” changes everything. Anything can happen now. There are no rules anymore.
