Finn’s breathing is sharp and shallow beside him. Ren can feel the panic thrumming around them both, his own heart shuddering in his chest. A hand reaches out and takes his, their palms cupped together as they flee.

There is a sheen of sweat along Finn’s brow as they hide, as Finn tries desperately to control his breathing. Ren’s hand tightens around the hilt of his saber, his left… he looks down. Their hands are still intertwined, Finn’s dark skin against the black of his glove. It feels… important. “You’re… holding my hand,” he says. It is the only coherent thought he can articulate.

Finn’s breathing has steadied somewhat. He still holds the blaster in his left hand, shifts to drag his forearm along his brow. He drops Ren’s hand, unlinks them as if he’d been burned. “Sorry,” he says breathless, distracted and embarrassed. His eyes don’t meet Ren’s.

Chapters: 5/5 Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Finn/Kylo Ren Additional Tags: That’s Not How The Force Works, Force-Sensitive Finn, Pining, Additional Warnings In Author’s Note, Force dreams Summary: Finn just wants to keep his head down and prove himself in the Resistance. Unfortunately for him, he also has to deal with Kylo Ren haunting his strangely realistic dreams, accidentally getting General Organa as a teacher, and a spreading stormtrooper rebellion.

I love this pairing and most of my favourite fics are either standalones or unfinished.

I love that it's from Finn's POV and that it's about the personhood of the stormtroopers.

I love how awkward and tentative the relationship with Kylo is at first and how it processes.

I love that it has so much Leia - and I didn't even miss Luke.

I really enjoyed Poe in this too. I loved all the characters.

I also kind of love that I blurred through it today and that now I get to re-read it and go over it a million times.

This is kind a c/p-ed from a reblog, but I’m posting it separately b/c I’m interested to see everyone else’s take on this.

The Chinese poster has Finn with fire in the background and a bunch of stormtrooper bodies behind him and I’m just getting so many finnlo feels.  I think there’s something really interesting in the parallel between Kylo and Finn destroying the people they grew up with in a pile of bodies and flame.  I’ll probably be able to articulate this more clearly when I see exactly what happens but man I’m already getting vibes.

It’s also sad that he can’t articulate any feelings (if he has any) about it with anyone he’s now around.

It’s not that I don’t think musings about what a sweet innocent soul he is and imagining what his humble life must’ve been like are coming from a loving place, but Finn’s character has already been filled in via a canon source, and it was not humble. 

Read the novel “Before the Awakening,” where you will learn that while FN-2187 may have pulled shifts as a janitor just like any military trainee has to work some shit jobs, he was actually the absolute rock star of his elite band of Stormtroopers. He was the natural leader, the best of them all, the highest scores in every possible measure, someone Phasma and Hux were well aware of as the shining example of what their pet Stormtrooper program could accomplish. He was everything they’d worked for for years.

The only problem was, he cared too much about his fellow Stormtroopers, even though they didn’t return the feeling, due to indoctrination and some envy of his superiority. It is pretty obvious, reading BtA, that Finn is Force sensitive. It is that Force sensitivity that set him apart, and made him the one who could overcome a lifetime of indoctrination and get out.

I know it’s the fault of the film for sketching him so lightly, but guys, it is crucial that we start acknowledging who Finn is, and his strengths. Which, canonically, are leadership, strategy, all the skills a commander must have. I worry that there is too much PRECIOUS PURE CINNAMON ROLL going on and not enough shared knowledge of his *canon character background and gifts*.

Greg Rucka’s Star Wars novel Before the Awakening is A) Quite good and B) Explains much about Finn’s stormtrooper training and social circle leading up to the movie. 

In a nutshell: 

Finn was trained in a squad of four boys: Him (FN-2187), Nines, Zero and Slip. 

Nines and Zero have nicknames based on their alphanumerical designations (Zero’s is FN-2003, likely used by the ficcer mentioned above, Nines ended in 9s, etc.). Slip was called slip because he was a fuckup. 

Turns out, most troopers have nicknames

Why does FN-2187 not have a nickname? Because nobody really likes him. An older trooper tells him straight to his face: he’s an outsider. It just happens to some troopers. 

Why is this extra tragic? Is it because Finn’s a shitty trooper? NO. He’s actually top of his little trooper class. He’s the fucking bomb, with a blaster, with tactics, with hand-to-hand weapons. Phasma’s got extremely high expectations for him. (what a fuckin mary sue amirite)

So why is this actually extra tragic? What’s Phasma’s one problem with him? Finn cares too much. He cares about keeping his squad alive.

He cares about going back for his friends more than the mission objective SOUND FAMILIAR? 

So Phasma tells him to stop coddling Slip or face consequences. He does. 

And then: the skirmish on Jakku. A trooper dies and Finn loses his final shred of faith in the First Order. Who is that trooper? PROBABLY SLIP, IT REALLY SEEMS LIKE. Basically Finn’s brother, even if he never really fit in with his squad.

And then: the first thing Poe does is give him a nickname based on his alphanumerical designation JUST LIKE HIS TROOPER FAMILY, NINES AND ZERO AND SLIP, WHO NEVER LIKED HIM ENOUGH TO GIVE HIM ONE. 

IN CONCLUSION the trooper in the gifset above who recognizes Finn on sight (and who has been meme-nicknamed TR-8R) is likely Zero or Nines. 

This is kind a c/p-ed from a reblog, but I’m posting it separately b/c I’m interested to see everyone else’s take on this.

The Chinese poster has Finn with fire in the background and a bunch of stormtrooper bodies behind him and I’m just getting so many finnlo feels.  I think there’s something really interesting in the parallel between Kylo and Finn destroying the people they grew up with in a pile of bodies and flame.  I’ll probably be able to articulate this more clearly when I see exactly what happens but man I’m already getting vibes.

It's also sad that he can't articulate any feelings (if he has any) about it with anyone he's now around.