[simply-kelp]

your heart is gold and my hands are cold (ao3 link)

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.

There is… Ren’s hand feels cold, misses the shared contact even if it wasn’t skin on skin. He blinks, flexes his free hand as if it were something new and foreign to him. “I…” he begins hesitantly, softly so not to give away their position. “You didn’t have to let go.”

[maytheforceormaynot]

[evilblubber-deactivated20190628]

hi hello I haven’t drawn fanart in seven hundred years but also where the fuck are my finnlo shippers at I have fallen in love

[stopthatimp]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

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.

IIIIT’S HEEEEEERE

[ghost-no]

I have just finished reading this and I have to say: THANK YOU!

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.

I hope you write more Finnlo. This is awesome, and reading it made me so very, very happy!!

[doing-talking]

[ghost-no]

It's happening!

[demonicality]

doubt im the first person to point this out but did anyone else get hype when they saw kylo still has the scar where finn got him

[doing-talking]

Finnlo thoughts about that Chinese Finn poster

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.

Thoughts?

[ghost-no]

I agree there’s an interesting parallel (as there often is between Finn and Kylo), and feel a little short-changed by some of the scenes where Finn is shooting at stormtroopers but we never see him feel something more about it?

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

Although, that does make an interesting prompt for a fic.

[doing-talking]

Absolutely! Yeah, I’ve heard that in the books he’s portrayed as not being very close to any of the other troopers, which I guess is fine, but seems like a bit of a cop out when it comes to explaining why is okay killing people he was raised with.

But yeah, that does lend itself really well to fic material! *scribbles down ideas for later*

[ghost-no]

I've heard about Finn being isolated in the FO, which later explains the fast bond he and Rey have. lol, It does create and interesting timeline for potential interaction with Kylo then because I couldn't see that association making Finn any more friends. That said, I'm pretty big on the idea that anything outside of the films isn't canon until it's directly referenced in the films but it's a good jump off. It's also interesting that some of the speech between Kylo and Finn in the final confrontation in TFA is different in the novelisation. I got the impression Abrams would change things if it wasn't working somehow in the scene - and I always wonder what changed there and what the actors' headcanons were to cover the exchange because it seemed like something personal (at least to Kylo) had transpired there in terms of Kylo's intent to punish him directly. They took out the line where Kylo explicitly states he intends to kill Finn to get the lightsaber (which begs the question of why he didn't even after he was done playing; maybe they wanted to give the character more wriggling room?).

[queenpangolin]

There are posts about Finn that come across my dash frequently that really concern me.

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*.

Please spread the word about Finn. This sort of thing shortchanges him horribly. When the FO lost FN-2187, they lost more than just another Stormtrooper. They lost a future general, and the Resistance picked one up.

[starwarsvillains]

“Traitor!”

[fatcr0w]

Ok but I feel like this guy knew him and I want that story

[svgabby]

Need to know the relationship between Finn, this stormtrooper, and the one that died in Finn’s arms.

[fatcr0w]

I already read a fic that gave the dying trooper designation FN-2003. I need some fanon to fill in the gaps.

[fatcr0w]

FN2187 was popular and his defection pierced the hearts of the entire fn troop

[nerdgerhl]

YOOOOOOOO I HAVE THE CANONICAL ANSWER FOR THIS AND I’M SEEING ALL THESE TR-8R POSTS I CANNOT STAY SILENT.

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. 

IN CONCLUSION finn my bby D:

[doing-talking]

Finnlo thoughts about that Chinese Finn poster

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.

Thoughts?

[ghost-no]

I agree there's an interesting parallel (as there often is between Finn and Kylo), and feel a little short-changed by some of the scenes where Finn is shooting at stormtroopers but we never see him feel something more about it?

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

Although, that does make an interesting prompt for a fic.

[ghost-no]

Hello, new to this ship (and made a secondary blog for it). Are there any Finnlo people left after TLJ? And how do you feel about TLJ in terms of your ship? To me it seems like those writing it stopped around the time spoilers for TLJ started to come out. Which is a shame.