Star Wars Meta

This may seem like a small detail, but I'm excited and emotional about the fact that Finn's hair is longer in TROS and he is otherwise developing his own distinctive style. It shows how he is growing out of the long shadow of the First Order's brainwashing and is becoming his own person, and implies that the Stormtrooper program itself--indeed, all attempts to turn humans into unthinking machines--is ultimately a failure. I find that to be a tremendously positive and life-affirming message.

Link to full meta

“I wouldn't want to marry anybody who was wicked, but I think I'd like it if he could be wicked and wouldn't.”

This quote from L.M. Montgomery's Anne of the Island sums up my feelings about Finn, marriage part very much included. He tends to get portrayed as either this hopelessly good, nice dear who couldn't hurt a fly or a ruthless killer who turned on his former comrades without a second thought, but the character as presented in canon is neither. He is good and conscientious not because he couldn't be any other way but because he actively fought to be.

That's another way he and Kylo Ren are foils. The former Ben Solo was brought up to be a protector and has capacity for good (+ gets a fuck tonne of credit for it despite never acting on it</salt>), while the former FN-2187 was brought up to violence and has the capacity to be evil. Both men chose in the opposite directions, and their choices and not their upbringing are what would come to define them.

Finn's subversive decency