#(He has the emotional maturity of a toddler and gets cranky easily)

[moongothic]

Okay but has anybody made a CrocHawk Beauty and the Beast AU

[textualdeviance]

"The Force brought me here. It brought me to Rey, to Poe."- Finn, TROS

John Boyega is currently giving no fucks whatsoever on Twitter, which is glorious. Good timing for the third and final part of my trio-character profiles: Finn!

(See also: Rey and Poe)

Let’s face it: Finn is very easy to love. He’s basically an adorable, lost puppy you want to take home and cuddle forever. It takes someone incredibly pure of heart to go through what he did and still come out of it with not only a functional moral compass, but a sense that he has a duty to care for the people around him. He does have a short time where he’s more concerned with self-preservation than helping the Resistance (which he thinks is doomed), but once he gets past that, he’s all in, as exemplified by his attempt at a kamikaze run on Crait. 

And it’s that arc–getting past the trauma of his childhood to become a hero–that makes Finn such a compelling character.

How many people could be put through something as awful as Stormtrooper training from childhood and yet come out of it with as much inherent honor as a dedicated Boy Scout? Even with a little nudge here and there from the Force in the right direction (interesting, isn’t it, that he had that inexplicable urge to desert the First Order when he was on the same planet as the Force’s latest Chosen One), he still had to be a good person to begin with. 

As a side note: Honestly, I have to say how eyeroll-inducing it is when some hardcore Kyle stans talk about how tragic his life was, like he’s the only person in this story who’s ever suffered. I mean come the gibbering fuck on. Ben may have had Palpatine in his head from birth, but at least he had a loving family that tried their best to keep him safe and happy. Rey got left in the care of Unkar Plutt when she was about six. Can you imagine the horrors she had to go through? Can you imagine how alone she felt? She was literally starving and just trying to stay alive. And Finn was stolen from his family before he was even old enough to remember his birth name (check the trooper-database picture of him that comes up in TFA: He’s little more than a toddler.) What the hell do you think the First Order does to the kids it steals and turns into mindless killing machines? What do you think it did to the kids who for one reason or another didn’t take to that training? 

But I digress. The point is that Finn and Rey didn’t have Ben’s advantages and also had plenty of things pushing them to darkness (literally, in Rey’s case) but they still embraced the light–and the light in each other–anyway. They bonded quickly in large part because they both had such horrible childhoods, even though they didn’t know that about each other at first. These are some deeply, deeply scarred people who undoubtedly have extreme problems with trust and being vulnerable enough to love. Neither of them really know who they are when the story starts. They just know, thanks to the Force, that there’s something more–something good–they should be doing. And they’re also both drawn to Poe–Finn before Rey, of course–because he’s a caretaker and protector: Someone who proves over the course of the story that he won’t abandon them.

Both Finn and Rey have no clue whatsoever how normal adult relationships work when they first enter this story. Finn apparently has some understanding of the concept, since he asks her whether she has a boyfriend, but it’s very likely neither one of them has had any romantic relationships at all before they meet. They’re both technically adults, with adult brain development and judgment (though obviously some of that is colored by trauma), but when it comes to love? They’re lost. What they do know, within the first few minutes after they’re safe aboard the Falcon, is that they like each other a lot, and that bond continues to grow throughout the story. Finn of course also had strong feelings for Poe–the man who helped him leave the First Order and, believing in his humanity, gave him his real name–and he’s broken hearted when he thinks Poe has died in the TIE crash on Jakku. Taking his jacket is partly a disguise move, but also, he wants to hold on to something from the first person who treated him with true kindness. When Finn finally gets back to the base after the attack on Takodana, where does he go first? To see if his suspicions were correct about who was piloting that black-and-orange X-wing. He could have gone with Han, but if there’s a slight chance that his rescuer is still alive, he wants to know. Once he confirms that–their mutual delight at this is so lovely–the very next thing he does is tell Poe about Rey. That’s another adorable-puppy moment, I think: “Yay! You’re alive! I love you! Let me tell you all about this other person I love, too! You rescued me. Can you help me rescue her, too?”

The next several parts of Finn’s story come down to trying to maintain that instinctive connection he has with Rey, while also realizing Poe loves him, too. That last bit isn’t exactly easy, though. Finn is very focused on his own feelings. Having never really been loved before, he doesn’t easily recognize it in other people. Kindness, sure, but love? Eh. What he does know is how he feels about others, and most of that is initially focused on Rey. Only when Poe tells him (in a deleted TLJ scene) that she survived the battle on Starkiller and is safely on her way to her new mission does he relax at all. He’s also oblivious at that moment to what it means that Poe took the time to repair and return the jacket (I admit to some amusement at Poe’s slight crankiness at Finn not getting the hint about that.) All of that is quickly derailed, however, when the ship is attacked. Finn’s right there to take care of Poe when the hangar gets blown up, and shortly after, he picks up Rey’s beacon when it slips from Leia’s hand. Then (in another deleted scene) he goes to sit for a while to figure out what to do. BB-8 helpfully shows him a recording he made of Rey saying goodbye while he was convalescing, and that seems to push his decision to leave. Poe’s relatively safe, if worried about Leia and annoyed with Holdo, the cruiser is staying ahead of the FO ships for the time being, and Finn wants to go make sure Rey stays away from the front lines. Meeting Rose, of course, puts a wrench in that plan, but they make another one, he hands Poe wthe beacon (showing an incredible depth of trust there), and he’s off. 

In the middle of all the stuff with Canto Bight, Rose develops her own crush on Finn, which he’s once again oblivious to until that surprise kiss during the battle of Crait. When he finally sees Rey again, at the end of TLJ, he falls into her arms like that’s where he’s supposed to be. Between TLJ and TROS, Finn and Rose apparently resolve their potential relationship issues, but then we start getting some slight tension between Poe and Rey. 

Poe, of course, is still in love with Finn, and Finn’s in love with Rey, even if he insists to Poe (in Resistance Reborn) that they’re just friends–same as with Rose. She loves him back, and cares for Poe, too, but she’s still trying to deal with her own demons, and doesn’t have the mental and emotional bandwidth to deal with that stuff. All she wants to know is that Poe will take care of her BFF while she’s off. Poe, being rather more mature and experienced, figures out the solution: Go with her! And that’s where we see things starting to coalesce as they all finish the last steps of their personal journeys. 

By the time the story ends, Finn and the two people he loves the most have all come out of their trials by fire changed in very good ways: Rey has faced her darkness and defeated it. Poe has faced his own fears of failure and inadequacy and become a powerful, confident leader. And Finn has faced the people who stole his childhood and played a huge role in cutting them down.  

Most importantly, all three of them have found in each other what they’ve been missing their whole lives: Home.