Nat/Finn + self care

You mean two people who don’t know how to self care

how's he feeling about the hero thing these days

OKAY NAT AND FINN AND SELF CARE, all juicy topics.

Sabriel and Finn?

Yes, I think I'm funny

You’re hysterical

finn's thoughts on his friendship with joric so far.

I feel like a lot of what draws Finn to Nat in the first place IS a sense that she, upon both early impressions, and on getting to know her, is that she is the kind of human that Finn sees himself in; a hero. By his definition. Someone who like, really puts other people first and like

Also, honestly, treats it like work. Like, it’s a career.

And he knows a little bit about how complicated that is for her, in ways that he doesn’t know a lot about, and the stuff he does know about is not stuff that he can relate very directly to. But i think there IS a shared sense of like, not having a lot of choice in the direction of their life (whether that is true or not)

And ultimately, in a really simplistic sense, they are both kind of workaholics, for lack of a more nuanced or specific word. They’re Doers, who have a strong sense of duty or responsibility for others and an underdeveloped sense of self care

Nat and Finn are both the kind of people who like, train and count it as self-care

Hand waving them going running together sometimes and that’s what they think counts.

I mean, Finn spend the last mission slacking off and eating donuts but i;m not sure that he feels positively about that

EVERYONE ON THIS SHIP NEEDS TO LEARN HOW TO VALUE SPENDING THEIR TIME ON THEMSELVES

I mean, Finn does to an extent, he has fun, he knows how to relax, but i think that’s like, something he doesn’t do as consistently, and honestly, he’s SURROUNDED BY PEOPLE HE LOOKS UP TO WHO DO NOT DO THAT

They are all terrible role models

finn itachi trust

Jake + Finn + avoidance

SaroSaron: they are....and also very good ones. In some....other ways

goodluckmodes: LMAO NOT....BAD? NOT good. It’s complicated.

This is true

Being a hero to finn is very multi faceted; it’s both a big like, ephemeral role with a lot of rules and mythology and also

A literal job.

That he takes very seriously

And in either case, Finn sees that as his role in the world. It’s very much a hierarchy that he places above his own needs and wellbeing in the grander scheme of things.

I actually think, to dive deep into CR stuff, old and new, it was like a BIG BLOW for Finn’s sense of direction on Ximilia when Helen left, specifically because he like, bee-lined for her, and swore a literal oath to her within like, his first week and it genuinely gave him a familiar and comforting sense of purpose

Because...that’s what he does at home.

Like, McCoy is still a doctor, on Ximilia, Newt is still a scientist

And Finn kind of had his self-perceived role stripped away from him

And Helen was one of the few people who really shared his own world view of ‘yeah, it IS okay for you, a 16 year old boy to throw your life into danger in service of keeping someone else safe’

And most everyone else is like ‘actually, no, you’re a child, you shouldn’t feel responsibility like that’

HE DOES have some people for whom there is nuance

But i think it’s been a big vacuum for Finn

Stacked on top of the last couple missions being non-combat oriented, which kind of limited his usefulness to smaller, more localized helping. Which he does enjoy. But the HERO thing is a real Damocles sword for Finn

And the longer he goes feeling cut off from that, i think the more restless he gets.

HE’S WORKING TOWARDS FILLING THAT WITH OTHER THINGS

He’s making friends, he’s learning more about first aid and whatnot from the medical people, he’s not like, sitting around in misery about it, or twiddling his thumbs. But it’s definitely not something that is going to evaporate overnight

I need to eventually find someone new for Finn like, offer to swear an oath to, but I absolutely want them to be like “NO THANKS?”

Omg please

I need to see that actually

Also all these thoughts are so good 😭

I REALLY WANT IT

Extremely IC of Finn, he Needs a Job

I am gonna hit the rest of these in the morning because it’s LATE, but feel free to hit me with more, this is really helping me get the juices flowing

I feel like I’ve been really needing to just TALK about some CR and game stuff in a big way and this is helping a lot

I’m trying to use this to formulate ideas, so the more input the better

finn + future
also finn and yzak + trust

OKAY I'm gonna do a couple more since I'm still awake

sarahthesilent: Sabriel is someone Finn sees as like, one of the more stalwart and responsible Adult members of the crew

which is very Finn because I think shes like, 19? but then a lot of Finn's adult CR are technically only a few years older than him

FINN LIVES THE BLESSED LIFE OF HAVING BEEN ALLOWED TO HAVE A CHILDHOOD so I feel like his maturity level comes across lower than a lot of people here who are quite close in age

Finn is also like, NOT in a big rush to be seen as an adult in all ways. (I mean culturally he just doesnt necessarily.have the same concept of it)

but also he is pretty okay being baby

he lives at home with family still, he's not ready to be An Adult

THAT'S A SIDETRACK

the point is, Sab isnt much older but Finn sees her as one of the MORE MATURE people on the ship, mostly because she's quite earnest and driven

shes someone he sees as being a reliable and like, regular part of the crew. She's always involved in discussions and acquisitions of the orb, for instance

she takes her role here SERIOUSLY

and does not waver

and on that same note, she has a very calming presence. She's genuinely kind and attentive, and Finn has had some really nice moments with her! I think she is someone he would sincerely trust in a difficult time

even if ultimately, he doesnt know that much about her (but really would like to know more and probably will start prying soon)

if u wanna ramble about finn and iris about literally anything... i wont stop u.......

OKAY IM BACK with a good night’s sleep and ready to ramble :>

contessas: OKAY, Joric and Finn

Finn has honestly thought Joric is incredibly cool since day one; he’s just like, a big, strong, Nordic hero (the hero part being an assumption on Finn’s part, based on him liking Joric and just assuming he’d a Good Guy)

Joric and Andy are the two characters who most remind Finn of Billy, the big adventuring hero that he looked up and listened to stories about growing up....only they are also human which is important

Let’s take a moment to appreciate Billy, who is pretty old and done with adventuring by the time Finn meets him (and also dies in a pretty gnarly, traumatizing way early in canon)

BUT OBVIOUSLY ANYWAY, JORIC IS VERY DIFFERENT THAN BILLY, that was just the tiniest connective thread when Finn first met him

Overall, Joric has been someone Finn sees as kind of like, uncomplicatedly nice to him. He’s always down for exploring a cave or whatever, and never complains or hesitates about it

He’s also someone who has told Finn a lot about his world, and Finn genuinely really like talking to him about that stuff...the sort of smaller, inconsequential stuff like your favorite place to go fishing

I think he likes Joric’s outdoorsy flavor

There’s a lot of very indoor people on the crew

And it’s occasionally kind of alienating, because Finn LOVES being outside, and feel a lot more at ease when there’s a lot of trees and grass and sky around, and that’s something that joric also seems to Get

FINN JUST REALY THINKS HE’S COOL, and he finds his presence and attitude to be a calm spot amongst people that he sometimes finds confusing or difficult to relate to in certain ways.

Honestly, not to get wildly off topic but also like, i made this plurk basically to GET wildly off topic -

So much time among the crew of the Ximilia for Finn has been focused on trying to navigate how to relate to and fit in with a large group of humans (which is doubly challenging in a way Finn doesn’t quite realize because they are also all from very different worlds/cultures and there isn’t like, a uniform culture to fit in with here)

In many ways that has kind of overtaken any thoughts about his regret (which exists very quietly on a low back burner, not being dealt with )

In some ways, it’s kind of tragic because he is going to eventually go back to a world without humans

CAN I HAVE... FINN AND YUJIN.... care

Or, that has humans, but a human society that as far as he knows, is very isolated and removed from the rest of the world. He doesn’t strongly relate to them, because they have led a separatist exist and have been led to feel very afraid of the world around them (and also to feel very little responsibility outside of the insular human world)

((Which is all very understandable when you consider that humans were very nearly wiped out more than once, and face a lot of very real external threats in the form of not just like.....war and mutagenic radiation, but a history of a lot of new species’ that saw them as prey, and also very debilitating epidemic disease ))

But that was stuff that was outside of Finn’s experience, either because it happened before he was born, or because he was no longer living with the humans when it happened.

But anyway, to CIRCLE BACK AROUND

It’s been very interesting to explore Finn trying to carve out a place amongst humans who are fundamentally not the same as the humans he is going to go back to

lol these people are inside cats, joric is an outside dog.

Joric IS an outside dog

Outside dogs need to stick together

hell yeah!

Sani_Caranza: OKAY, YOU MONSTER

Itachi + Finn, trust

I think an important thing to acknowledge about Finn is that he’s pretty inherently trusting

So i would say there’s an unusual like, horseshoe shape to his trust of Itachi, because he had that thrown back in his face literally on his first in person meeting of Itachi

Like, Itachi kind of subverted ALL his expectations, based solo on....assumptions, and that everyone else on the crew had been pretty nice and accomodating. And i think to some extent, Finn expects people who are ostensibly on his side to just....like him. Like, he hits it off easily with people and doesn’t really take rejection very well

And Itachi kind of, from Finn’ perspective, rejected him (and his ideology) in a VERY BIG WAY. Which in many ways was more the crux of the problem than.....the horrifying thing he did. Which was TRAUMATIZING but like, in a way that Finn can kind of just

Vault LMAO

Just bury that bad boy

But i think his distrust of Itachi for the remainder of that mission in particular was strong and rooted deeply in feeling betrayed by someone who he simply assumed would help him, minimal questions asked

Which OBVIOUSLY WAS NOT A FAIR OR GOOD THING TO EXPECT OF ITACHI

A man he literally did Not Know

Itachi then immediately turning around and saving his life, and so soon after, was like....sure extreme whiplash.

Honestly, ultimately, that gave finn a complicated view of Itachi, but i dont think the different things Finn thought about Itachi were really resolved into one complete human until after the Felix incident. Like, before that Finn had a number of opportunities to really see this, softer, more caring side of Itachi, and he had the knowledge that other people

That he inherently trusted, also cared about and trusted Itachi, and that like

But it wasn’t until after that that I think Finn was like, ‘oh, okay you actually care about me, in your way’ and I think was able to internalize Itachi’s brand of caring and that pretty much tipped the scales formally into fully trusting him

BUT

I think what is so special about it, as CR, is that finn does trust people easily. Like, he’s not stupid, and is very aware of people’s flaws, but often chooses to actively look past them (healthy) or ignore them (unhealthy)

Itachi was a rare incidence of someone rejecting, and subverting Finn’s instinct to trust him almost immediately

But then, kind of won it back

And in many ways that makes it feels MUCH bigger, and earned in a lot of ways that everyone else did not.

WHICH IS NOT TO SAY THAT EVERYONE ELSE DOESN’T DESERVE TO BE TRUSTED

But Finn gives them that pretty freely, you’d have to fuck up pretty bad for him not to

The only other people to really bend or break that sense of trust were like, Jun Shortaxe, and Felix

Who both stands as interesting contrasts to Itachi by being people who actively manipulated Finn’s trust for them by presenting a false sense of friendship. Whereas Itachi was.....very much the opposite .

I do think that is all something that Finn is going to really internalize and carry with him

OOC I’m so mad about how that CR turned out (in a good way)

I’m just like, “what the fuck, what the fuck” all the time with these two, starfaring

(Doing my tags and then coming back to this)

finn's vault continues to be so concerning LMAO

and god this is just

so good

I love that by being a dick, itachi actually made their eventual understanding of each other more earned

I KNOW

At this point it would be so much harder for Finn to NOT trust Itachi

He really gets it now

The Itachi Appeal

RIGHT

wei wuxian gesturing like

"you see?"

LMAOOO

He knows what’s up.

Honestly, Finn would probably not have even TRIED with Itachi if not for wei wuxian being friends with him.....it’s such a green flag

Finn just like HM OKAY, THERE’S GOT TO BE SOMETHING TO THIS ITACHI THING

Okay, mostly caught up on tags so lets look at this again

safelybeds Finn + Jake + Avoidance

Cool cool cool

Cool

There’s so many ways to interpret this little morsel

I think like, the obvious thing, is that Finn and Jake participate in a lot of unspoken avoidance together

A GREEN FLAG

A GREEN FLAG LMAO

Ie/ anything Finn doesn’t want to do/deal with, Jake is....i don’t want to say happy to help him avoid, but he does help him. Whether that’s not pushing too hard, or going along with some of Finn’s les good instincts, or just straight distracting him from something challenging

It’s a behavior they both kind of share to an extent....like i don’t want to co-opt Em’s space and talk about how obviously Jake is not a character who sees hardship as bad...to the contrary he literally SAYS that problems and hardship are necessary ingredients to living a full life

I think to some extent Finn agrees with that....but perhaps less consciously and more

Generally

But etc etc

I feel like im rehashing very well known facts about these two here

I think a more intersting thing too, that is coming to light more in Ximilia is how much Finn actively avoids things about jake that he doesn’t want to know

finn wants jake to be happy, he wants him to be healthy, he wants him to be there and kind of unchanging and sometimes that means actively turning his head away from anything that contradicts that reality

jake is NOT always happy, he’s often stressed, he’s often stressed

About Finn

He’s not as young as he used to be

He’s mortal and fallible and capable of being hurt

All things that Finn has not really deeply confronted about his brother, who has always been older and stronger and more powerful in ways that, especially when you are a kid, feel LIMITLESS

And I don’t think Finn WANTS to think about those things

I think I’ve mentioned before that, there being humans on this ship who are of comparable age to Jake is kind of jarring for Finn

Not because 40s is OLD

But there are so many people on the ship of different ages, that it’s impossible not to see and acknowledge in real time, how different being in your 40s is from being in your teens

I think that’s a gap Finn has not had to look at very often

And in some ways that gap has been closing as finn has gotten older and more independent, and in other ways it has gotten wider for those same reasons!

They are never again, going to the the same emotional age

That ended when they were literal babies

Which is kind of a hard, sad thing to acknowledge

A SIDE NOTE IS THAT I LOVE, LOVE how much AT, a show that is very much about growing up (not just finn and not just children) centered the strangeness of a world wherein people age at so many different rates, and rather than ignoring or handwaving it

Actively kind of address and lean into how that would make regular relationships complicated

I’m verklempt over here

There are characters who age many times faster than others, there are characters who are immortal and have kind of an arrested development or an extremely slow one

Please come into my space whenever you want

Even Finn’s relationship to his own age is VERY colored by all this because he doesn’t have humans around and so like, there are a lot of ways in which he grows up FAST and feels very grown up

But there are also a lot of ways that he doesn’t, and not having a real understanding of what “adulthood” looks like in human society means he gets to retain a lot of like

What we consider childhood

For longer than what we would consider standard

(With the obvious understanding that “adulthood” is a relative, and culture term that varies quite a lot)

But ANYWAY

I think in Ximilia these two coming from different canon points, knowing they are from different worlds...there’s a lot they are leaving unsaid.

There’s a lot of avoidance of anything too challenging, maybe in part because when everything around you is pretty complicated and hard

Perhaps the last thing you would want to do is challenge the status quo of the one relationship that you have from home.

WHICH IS COMPELLING

They’re been a lot less up in each other’s business than they would be at home, despite being in a smaller space

AND YES, some of that is just, you can’t thread everything

But i prefer to kind of lean into and write that stuff into the characterization rather than just handwave everything away

OBVIOUSLY, safelybeds FEEL FREE TO DISAGREE IF YOU THINK THAT’S A BAD DIRECTION

But i think at least, from Finn’s side, he’s like

Not prying much with Jake, and he’s also not going to him directly with a lot of stuff and I think that’s a very real example of not just

Avoidance, but desperation to maintain the status quo

Finn basically didn’t tell Jake anything about things that happened before Jake arrived

Like he told him about the people

But he didn’t tell him much of anything about Alydhion

He hasn’t even told him he was learning to cook

Because that would disrupt their status quo

And i think Finn really, consciously or otherwise, wants that to be the same.

I’VE BEEN THINKING A LOT ABOUT THIS STUF WRT THEM GENERALLY, AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR THEIR CR AND HOW TO PUSH IT INTO NEW AND INTERESTING PLACES

Because obviously cast-mates have a bit more rigid of a trajectory in terms of CR growth, (even though we took them BASICALLY from the end of their canon, but they just have such a well defined relationship)

But i am very interested in that late stage point at which Finn and Jake might have like, a brief couple of years where their relationship can approach more equality, because Jake doesn’t like

Actively have to take care of Finn anymore. He MOSTLY can take care of himself, even if he does want to

I think, as I mentioned in Em’s plurk, an interesting thing to play with MIGHT be that like, strife between Finn wanting to hold Jake perpetually in a state of ‘older brother who protects me and solves my problems or helps me solve them’ and someone who i starting to open up with other people, or have relationships with other people

WHICH HE HAS LOTS OF BACK HOME

But nothing is regular here, and i think that in some ways

“Jake’s girlfriend knows stuff about Jake that I don’t” and “these people we have only known a couple months know things about Jake that I don’t” will hit different

Perhaps because Finn is doing so much avoiding with Jake.

I don’t know if any of this will even come to a head or even come up between them, but it’s definitely stuff I’m thinking about with Finn’s characterization and trajectory either way

gaignun: okay, gonna hit these

Finn + Future

I genuinely don’t think Finn thinks too hard about the future, or at least he doesn’t think about it in terms of hard specifics

He lives his life very in the moment

And like, maybe in the past, stressing about stuff that doesn’t matter

Finn doesn’t have some well thought out plan or vision for what he thinks the future holds beyond some like, big sweeping things, some of them more grounded in reality than others

If anything i think he actively AVOIDS thinking about the future too much.

Finn has already lost so much of his family, and his he’s burdened, whether he admits it or not, with the knowledge that the rest of his family are also going to die way before him and that is something he doesn’t! Want to think about!

I think it’s telling that the ONLY time we ever hear Finn talking concretely about an expectation of the future, is

Generally about him and Jake being to forever, and how he fully expects to die saving someone else

Everything else feels pretty incidental, and I think for better or worse, he’s pretty willing to just go along with whatever is happening in the moment

and that’s not BAD

At least not all bad

it gives Finn a lot of freedom, and a lot of ability to be very spontaneous and present in the moment and unafraid of what’ to come

JSHGLSG

Omfg OKAY CONTINUING

I think that’s about it for Finn + Future

To relate things back to the game, I think Finn is really not looking too hard at the future on the crew either. Like he sure knows that altering timelines to fix something is not an easy fix without flaw but he’s also ignoring that

Yzak + Finn, trust

So, DOUBLING up a little with some above stuff, since I talked kind of generally about trust, and really, how easy it is to get Finn to trust you

I do think Finn sees Finn as BEING someone trustworthy....like, he’s kind of hotheaded, but he also seems like he has a pretty rigid sense of honor, or something like it

And it ultimately makes him seem like someone who is reliable, who is not going to act i like, selfish or dismissive ways

That’s the big scheme

On the small, Finn has had some small, pleasant moments with Yzak that make him seem like a really decent person. He helped Finn with his soup endeavor and he actually opened up to Finn about family back home, which, across the board Finn sees as like

A very vulnerable thing!

Because seemingly everyone on this crew has estranged or difficult or traumatic family issues, and often do not want to talk about that stuff (understandable! Finn often doesn’t want to talk about that stuff either!)

Finn absolutely doesn’t hold that against anyone (not the least of all because he knows that a lot of people are not going to want to open up to someone younger than them) but when someone is willing to actual answers his questions and share some of their past with him freely

It does not go unnoticed. He appreciates it! It makes him feel trusted

So like, conversely, while Finn TRUSTS quite readily

He doesn’t, as often feel trusted by others, especially not with like, personal information. So the people who do open up to him like that, even a little, really make him feel included and valuable in the crew.

(taking another break and coming back for the final haul)

Okay got REALLY DISTRACTED WITH BULLSHIT, and now I’m taking a break for some social activities, but I STILL GOT YOU BABIES derkins and smithsyndicate

TAKE YOUR TIME!!!!!

In case you were desperately waiting on my inane rambling

Uwah Finn ;;;; I love how he's kind of opposite of Yzak in that regard wrt the future

And lmfao it's so funny about the age thing

Esp since Coordinators are considered adult a lot younger so 15/16 is basically adult for him. They got 15 and younger in the military/enlisting and canon shit's got them in bars at 17 so
So that AND he fact that the whole DIFF UNIVERSES/ETC thing experiences say more to age to him even beyond that

So young, yes, but also he doesn't instant assume LMAO KID WHO KNOWS NOTHING AND HAS NO EXPERIENCES and Finn doesn't always let off those vibes so he doesn't see the point in shying away from speaking about different things (since xim also has HIS ass learning brand new things left and right from other realities like )

YEAH perfect example of how all these different worlds treat different ages and expectations of adulthood and childhood differently and that’s really interesting!!

Okay coming back to FINISH THIS MEME LIKE I PROMISED! A very tiring work week kept me from it but I’m feeling RP chatty again at last so to ROUND IT OUT

derkins: 100 YEARS LATER, FINN + IRIS; bound forever by the blood oath of being teens on a ship with like....whatever it is? Three of them?

Finn is very weird around teens because he JUST DOESN’T HANG AROUND THEM. Although, ironically, the teens he has met on Ximilia have been markedly more adult-behaving than him, and maybe just in large part due to being from human cultures where the expectations and wants of growing up are higher

Finn has ZERO pressure to race to race toward a pre-prescribed adulthood, and has a brother who worked VERY HARD to retain his childhood or a sense of it for as long as possible.

That said, if there’s a latent ‘I’m a grown up’ trait that Iris and Finn share, it’s that they haven’t opened up with each other much yet, PROBABLY JUST DUE TO.../checks notes
trauma

Finn has a lot of ASSUMPTIONS that are almost certainly not true about Iris (like the fact that he probably thinks he’s like, a professional criminal) but the more concrete things are that he finds him trustworthy, and it’s clear that he has interest and motivation in actually helping the crew and being a team player

Which are things Finn values a lot in people

Especially when things get hard/complicated and the crew splinter their opinions

ALSO, safelybeds I do feel like Finn must have an awareness of Iris and Jake getting close too which almost puts him in a (more positive) Tiffany category for Finn. Like, without like. The bad parts. LMAO

OKay, next isssss

smithsyndicate Yujin + Finn + care

HITTING ALL THE LIKE, PEOPLE FINN KNOWS JAKE SPENDS A LOT OF TIME WITH (always a positive category in Finn’s mind)

tiffany...

Jake’s crime child friend of yore

Jake is always out here making friends with kids. Arrested development....or dad guilt? Maybe both.....

YUJIN however is old (he’s not old) in Finn’s eyes, and extremely mom-coded

In that way that, as we discussed, Finn thinks Moms are Good and Dads are Bad

OLD CODED

(OBVIOUSLY HE KNOWS THAT’S NOT ALWAYS TRUE, IT’S JUST HIS OWN DEFAULT FEELING)

Old coded

But yujin arrived in the same wave as Finn and that makes him feel like a very stable, reliable presence. Finn also spends a lot of time helping around the infirmary so i feel like they probably have a lot of like, passive interaction that is comforting

Finn knows that Yujin is someone kind, who cares a lot, and especially cares about Ryu and Kazuma, but has also come to be very caring toward people on the ship. He’s definitely in many ways, an enigma to Finn

But he feels Off Bounds for prying; he’s too Adult and too austere for Finn to feel like he can or SHOULD be nosy about him. (That’s Jake’s job)

But he does kind of provide a glimpse into like, the kind of parents of the world who do actually care, and try very hard. He doesn’t know about Yujin’s BIG MISTAKES, ofc but

I feel like if he did he would (complicated feeling) find him to be a very

Ideal example of how parents can like....fuck up but still try and be decent people. And be better

THIS IS GOOD..... and I think there is totally a like

adult authority figure walling his bs off from a kid who he thinks doesn't need to see it