Redeeming Qualities

"Believe it or not, you have a few. Besides having just saved a planet."


In other words,
Hello, GaaNaru, this is what I'm currently cheating on you with.
Don't worry, it should only be a fling, what with a more dedicated relationship tending to require a fandom to interact with and the fact that four years after the movie premiered and how it's never been overly popular to begin with, it's starting to seem devastatingly likely I'm the only person in the internets who ships these dudes.
But. Should it turn out I'm not, yes that could indeed be dangerous. See my history of falling hopelessly in love with underappreciated slash pairings I get to bear the brunt of keeping afloat, consisting mostly of a three-years-and-counting blissful obsession with the aforementioned Gaara/Naruto.
(Yes, this is an invitation to out yourselves, fellow shippers.)


Anyway, yeah. Sunshine. Mace and Capa.

~o0O0o~ And here be spoilers, so skip to the end if you haven't watched the movie (and watch the movie you should) ~o0O0o~

First of all, I just love this movie to bits, and I can't even remember when a single film has gotten to me quite this much. How unexpected. (Seems that's how it goes in my case. A movie about restarting the sun with a bomb? Pfft, wut? A shonen manga about an orange-wearing ninja? You really think that could possibly be something I'd be into, ever? Two hours later, I'm in tears and failing to convince myself I don't need to rewatch it right after. Feel free to laugh at me, I am.) And I like all of the characters and I swear I'm not trying to insert romance where it'd ruin the mood of the piece, but really. It's funny, these two. I just can't help noticing how, as superficially opposite as they are, it seems clear both of them have somehow managed to make exactly two things the center of their respective universes:

1. The mission. Okay, when your mission is to keep the sun from dying it's a pretty damn important mission, and living on a spaceship for one and a half years is kind of hard to push to the back of your mind, but no one in the crew seems as focused on not letting anything jeopardise their goal as Mace does. A lot of his problem with Capa during the movie's events is how he in Mace's mind is to blame for derailing it. He's not wrong about that. And Capa never meant to risk as much as they ended up losing. He made a bad call, but it wasn't because something was more important than the mission (and he shouldn't have had to be the one to make that call in the first place, instead, it seems more like the person who should have had that responsibility had already made up his mind - and not on the same grounds - and just wanted his blessing), but because he thought that was advancing the mission. Hey, sometimes you're wrong and your crew gets frozen, burned and stabbed by Freddy-Krueger-in-space. The stellar bomb their ship carries is basically Capa's baby, his life has revolved around developing and preparing to launch it since he was a teenager. There's not a careless move he would make when it comes to that.
It seemed to me like every member of the Icarus II crew had some kind of distraction, for some to remind them to still make plans for when they return home, for some to make them accept that they might not ever get to go home: Cassie buries her nose in books, Corazon tends the garden, Harvey misses his wife, Trey thinks he can outsmart the Icarus computer, Kaneda obsesses over the Icarus I, Searle worships the sun. Capa holes up in the payload compartment, but that's not really a distraction, repeatedly testing the bomb and going over his calculations to be sure it'll work. So what is there to keep him grounded? Or Mace?

2. Each other. Capa is a bit of a perpetual outsider. He's not great at dealing with people and doesn't feel a need to try, even when several members of the crew go out of their way to include him (Cassie, Kaneda and Searle in particular). So what does it take to get through to him and get him to notice you? I don't know, but there must be something judging by how when Cassie came to his bedroom in the middle of the night (no, let me repeat that: she came to his bedroom in the middle of the night - she's subtle like that) and told him she thinks he made the right decision, the first thing Capa could think of to say to that was moping about how Mace doesn't think so. And how, much later, when he's trapped in the airlock, bleeding and running out of time and oxygen, there are not one but three people on board who could help him (and none of whom is going to hear him through the door - but, panic), and who do we hear him calling for help? Yeah.
There are a lot of things about both of them that understandably annoy the other, and in such confining environment that's only amplified, but earning Mace's respect definitely meant more to Capa than he wanted to let on. And Mace sure was generous in providing him with opportunities to show he was worth it, even if a lot of the time it came out about as effectively communicated as pulling pigtails. One kind of wants to tell him something like get over your emotionally stunted military upbringing and say what you really mean like a grown-up already. Is there something you want to tell us about how you're so pragmatic and bigger-picture except when it comes to the resident pretty physicist?
I just love how they're both so stubborn and socially clumsy in their different ways but still Mace's only distraction is Capa, and Capa's only distraction is Mace. They fascinate each other in ways they're afraid to act on when everything is uncertain and depending on them, and sure enough that shared prioritizing doesn't help in making them less fascinated.

Like I said, I love the movie, for far more reasons than just two characters being slashable, and I wouldn't change it. But I can wonder about alternate continuities, because I think if anything actually healthy and lasting would have been to happen between the two of them, it would have been on the way home. Suddenly there's nothing but the distraction, and the relief of having fulfilled your purpose, and the emptiness of having, you know, fulfilled your purpose. What do you live for now? (And how long are you going to live because not every alternative has to have them make it back to Earth and get married and live happily ever after or whatever.) On the other hand, what's keeping you from living for whatever you want, now?

~o0O0o~ End of spoilers, at last ~o0O0o~


Wow, that was wordy. I guess I'm worried if I don't find that fandom this is the only time I get to gush about my new flame, so there you go. A ship manifesto in an Artist's Comment. You're welcome.

tl;dr: I apparently ship Mapa now. Make me feel less weird and say you do, too. Pleeeeease? :D


Before I shut up: materials are ink+brush, a 0.05 pen for the finer lines, and PaintShopPro7. A lot of the shading is done with ink and layer masks rather than digital painting.
This was an interesting experiment because I usually never draw real people (other than life drawing practice) or live-action characters. I'm probably blinded to whether there's any resemblance by now after staring at it so much. But it doesn't particularly worry me if they don't look like Chris Evans and Cillian Murphy, since my goal was to draw the characters they play, not them playing the characters. Hope that makes sense to you.


And finally, here's a fun trivia I'll leave you with: Capa's surname, which he is mostly known by in the movie, means shark in Hungarian (his full name is taken from a real person, who was a hungarian photographer). Who wants to be the first one to guess what this screenname I picked for myself years before the movie even was made means in Finnish.
THAT'S RIGHT! I ONLY GOT THE NATIONALITY WRONG! Because "cosmonaut" sounds funnier than "astronaut".