#Between Reynard and Isengrim

[felassan]

“ 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘰𝘹 𝘴𝘢𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘣𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥, 𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘮𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘰𝘭𝘧 ” -- The History of Reynard the Fox, trans. by William Caxton, 1481.

(art by @needlesslycryptic ♡)

[limerental]

limerental's fic writing reflection 2024

this year i posted a total of 128,831 words on ao3 in 41 total fics. the fandom tag I used most frequently was The Witcher (Video Game) with 22 total fics, the ship i wrote the most was Isengrim/Dijkstra with 5 total fics, and the character I wrote the most was Vernon Roche with 13 tagged fics.

lmao. How did this happen to me? for real

fic by fic reflection under the cut

i started off the year (literally posting the first chapter December 31st 2023) with parallel lines, a reynard odo/vernon roche 5+1 featuring book and game canon blending, lots of political intrigue interspersed with pwp, and excessive character studies. i'm really fond of how this one turned out, especially the +1 outsider pov chapter, and i'll always like this very niche rarepair.

in january i finally finished a playthrough of tw3 and wrote sanctuary, a keira/lambert ficlet as a love letter to the unparalleled snark and banter and horniness between those characters.

mid-february, i started working on chained, a iorveth/roche slave caravan forced proximity handcuffed together canon divergent fic which is frankly one of the most immediate fic i've ever written and therefore also the most i've ever written about bodily functions (this is saying a lot as someone with a piss kink). what a wonderful endorsement for that fic!

after finishing chained in mid-march, i immediately started putting roche in more situations with homesick (letho/roche), punishment (dijkstra/roche), and curiosity (isengrim/roche). i won't say they're my favorite little fics of the year, but they were satisfying enough to write.

i then suffered a fascinating diversion into being briefly possessed by ghostsoap of the call of duty shoot and kill people in the head video game and so wrote try to wake up which was about uh... shooting in killed people's uh... in their.... um.

i took most of may off for my sanity (in my real person life, i work in horticulture managing retail greenhouse production. may is a blur) and toward the end of the month started (spite)-writing my ciri/everyone fic carry what i need to carry. it ended up being lots of fun and also my longest fic of the year. the ships and characters list on this one is truly intimidating to look at, but i'm really pleased with how I managed to deal with and depict ciri's sexual trauma, especially that side of things was so fully neglected in other adaptations.

in late july, i started replaying tw2 and write come back to me in a blur which is a yenralt canon divergence fic where yen came to flotsam instead of sile.

in august, i started on claimed, the iorveth pov sequel to chained which was essentially a prolonged roche whump sickfic with a side of iorveth shaking his fists at trees. i like this one nearly as much as the first installment, probably because of the excessive amount of banter.

my second non-witcher diversion of the year was a deadpool & wolverine fic, we deserve a soft epilogue, and the metacomedy of it all was deeply deeply fun to write. side note as a big enjoyer of the first deadpool movie, it's an actual crime that vanessa is written out so often haha hehe

and that was it! i spent october drafting ideas for my ficletvember 2024 where i wrote a fic a day for all of november, ending up with 28k. this year it was a pretty eclectic mix of twn and game and book canon.

overall i feel like though i wrote less than previous years, the stuff i did put out had more substance to them and were better written. i never could have written that ciri fic or claimed or even parallel lines in 2020. for one, no one could have predicted the absurd niche canon deep dive i've fallen into the past year. me?? writing more games canon than anything else?? it's truly whacky goofy. i wouldn't change any of it or the supportive crevices i've crawled into this past year.

[sparrow-in-boots]

amanda the adventurer and fairies (if you even care)

imo we're too focused on christian mythos with all the demons and sacrificial lambs, and forgetting the very pointed celtic mythology cues in this narrative and I'm here to be the change I wanna see in the world, so let's go!

game spoilers below, you know the deal uwu

I think the biggest hint that we should not get hung up on Christian mythology, is the fact that in the very introduction with the letter by Aunt Kate, she pointed says "by the gods." Not "by God", gods plurals. We're to take a polytheistic angle with this, but which exactly is nebulous at first.

Behind the Catching Up With Colton news clipping, there's news about a Celtic relic, the crown of the stag, being stolen, and suspicion of a gang called the Demons. This was pointed out as an easter egg from another game, but I feel there's more to it.

For the most obvious lead, there's the Pied Piper theory for Hameln entertainment, which is a fairytale. In the Coffee Break tape, we see how Sam wanted to "show the world is a magical place" which I do believe he meant as just that, being optimistic as he's characterized, but that's also a lot of settings in fairytales. There's the known world and the fantastical, magical world. And to expand on that, the setting of the story being limited to a single city and community instead of being something with a broader reach matches the usual setting of a fairytale being restricted to a single village or town. Not that unlike the Pied Piper story itself, set in the city of Hamelin.

If you really want to squint at it, things such as baking and sending cookies as a form of thanks, while pretty common daily life things are also linked to rituals to pacify the fey and offer thanks to magical beings. Cookies and pies are also incredibly common baked goods in fairytales, and for instance, the tale of Hansel and Gretel has a house of candies that lure them inside, to a witch who would fatten them up and eat them. While sweets are present in the tapes, they are often exchanged for pieces of meat and organs, almost as if they are interchangeable.

Bringing it back to the Celtic Relic clipping, there's a long explanation that the crown was given as a peace promise between the Fey and the human kings. As such, let's take a look at Celtic mythology.

Foxes in myth are messengers between worlds and are often connected to the afterlife. Also, foxes are often portrayed as fey-aligned creatures, due to their mischievous and cunning nature. Also to go broader than that, there are the myths of Reynard the Fox, a trickster spirit in folktales across Europe that often coexists with Isengrim the Wolf. It's also a common trope that foxes can shapeshift.

Picking a fox to die in a hidden bear trap is quite symbolic in itself. The fairytale character who outwits all and escapes the most difficult situations has been bested, not only defeated but killed. "Silly Mr. Fox" can not only be a display that there is no clever way out of this trap, but also that traveling between worlds is impossible or will kill you.

Now to the "Lonely Kitten", she's clearly representative of Rebecca, caught in a trap as well and without help in sight. When you try to help her, you end up as one more hanging piece of meat. Cats however are more deeply connected to fairies than foxes, with myths like the Cat-sìth which steal souls from the deceased and can curse folks who won't pacify them. One is even described as "the king of cats." While these cats are described as big as dogs, and black with a spot of white on their chests, choosing a cat is quite the artistic choice.

As for Wooly, sheep have in christian mythos the symbolism of the sacrificial lamb and so on, but let's take a look at Celtic tradition.

In Irish myth, the goddess Brigid (associated with wisdom, poetry, healing, protection, smithing and domesticated animals) was the owner of Cirb, a castrated ram who was king of all the rams and sheep of Ireland. Brigid was one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, a group of gods that became the Aen Seidhe. The fairies.

Furthermore, Cirb rules even over the seven sheep that belong to Manannán, a warrior god and ruler of the Otherworld, a realm of gods and the dead. He's responsible for keeping it hidden with a veil of invisibility, and it has been pointed out that at least two of the demons Rebecca is made to recite the names of are also granters of invisibility. Not only that, these sheep were fabled to produce enough wool to clothe every man, woman, and child the world over.

In a crossroads of christian and pagan, there's a myth that animals gain the power of speech after the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve, including sheep. On most stories, it can only happen when they are observed and are unknowingly overheard by humans. There's also the common trope that children can hear the voice of animals while adults cannot, as a show of the magic of innocence.

I can't quite especulate much beyond this, but I think there's something to chew on here.

[lets-talk-story]

Lords, you have heard many tales, That many tellers have told to you. How Paris took Helen, The evil and the pain he felt Of Tristan that la Chevre Spoke rather beautifully about; And fabliaux and epics; Of the Romance of Yvain and his beast And many others told in this land But never have you heard about the war That was difficult and lengthy Between Reynard and Isengrim

- Pierre de St. Cloud, Roman de Renart

[tehri]

Hobbits and naming conventions

The most common comparison that’s been going around lately has been between the names of hobbits belonging to the Baggins family and the Took family. There is quite a distinct difference between the names, so it’s understandable that it seems a bit jarring to go from something simple like, say, Longo to something more noble-sounding like Isengrim.

In comparison, the names given to girls are very different. True, there are a few more nonsensical ones, like Belba. But there are also plenty of flower- or gem-names. This also gives a very odd contrast between the names of male hobbits and those of female hobbits.

However, there is a bit of reasoning behind the names, at least those belonging to hobbits from families with Fallohide blood. Those are not taken out of thin air. They were oftentimes given names evoking figures of legend (whether this means figures of legend in our world or in Middle-earth is hard to say, but it’s certainly not mistaken either way).

So allow me to begin with the grand one himself, Gerontius Took, also known as the Old Took. His name is of some debated origin, with some ties to Greek, Latin, and Welsh. In Greek, the element geron means “old”. The name is also an actual Latin name from the Late Roman Empire, and in Welsh it is rendered as Geraint; put quite simply, the name means “old man”. Let me also bring up two of his sons - let’s go with Isengrim and Hildibrand. To start with the eldest, Isengrim, his name is Anglo-Saxon in origin and consists of isen, meaning “iron”, and grim, meaning “fierce”. There is a chance that Tolkien actually named him after a wolf that appears in the medieval story of Reynard the Fox. Then we have Hildibrand, whose name is likely of Lombardic origin and consists of hild, meaning battle, and brand, meaning sword. He was probably named after a character of Germanic legend.

Then, let me point at the Bolgers. They were also a family with Fallohide blood, and followed the same naming customs. For instance, Odovacar Bolger, Fatty Bolger’s father, shares name with a Germanic king of Rome. Fredegar himself (Fatty, that is) has a name that combines two elements that are either Old High German, Old Saxon, or Old English - fridu, or frithu, which means “peace”, and gār or gēr meaning “spear”.

But it is not only families with Fallohide blood that have different-sounding names. The Brandybuck family, which can be claimed to have Stoor blood, have a naming convention of their own that likely reflects their old connection to the Men of Dunland. The names are somewhat Celtic in sound, though not all of them have actual meanings.

Let me begin with our main man, Meriadoc “Merry” Brandybuck. His name is, in fact, Welsh and means roughly “Great Lord”. The names of his great-great-grandfather and his great-great-great-grandfather, Marmadoc and Madoc, are also Celtic in origin, with Madoc being found among Welsh names and Marmadoc being derived from the old Irish Máel Máedóc (roughly “follower of Saint Malachy”). Fun fact: the name Marmaduke is from the same one as Marmadoc.

So how about the Brandybuck names that sound Celtic, but have no meaning? Well, we have an excellent example in Merry’s uncle Merimac, younger brother of Saradoc Brandybuck. The name Merimac has the Celtic mac in it, which at the very least in Irish means “son” (I can’t answer for Scottish Gaelic or for Welsh, I only know a little bit of Irish). However, the prefix meri does not appear to have a meaning in modern day languages; though Tolkien did have some Westron words written out, and meri could simply be a sort of “translation” of the Westron kali, which would indicate that it means essentially “jolly”. Actually, Saradoc’s name is of personal interest to me. I’ve found a note claiming that the name is derived from the Welsh Caradoc, the name of a semi-legendary ancestor to the kings of Gwent. Which at least in my opinion is pretty cool. But I can’t find any links that may confirm the claim, so it shall, for now, remain a dream.

BUT. What about the nonsensical names that appear in various families? Well, there is the post going around about how these names are Baggins names, which is an outright false claim. Yes, they sound odd, and since people mostly pay attention to the Bagginses they’ll only really see them there. But fact is, that the names are everywhere. The Proudfoots have them, the Hornblowers have them, the Boffins, the Burrowses, the Chubbs, the Goodbodies - they’re everywhere. They are, therefore, presumably very common. And it’s not just the male names either.

Look at the female names as well. Belba? Chica? Tanta? No, it’s not just the male hobbits that have odd nonsensical names, even if flower- or gem-names are more common for female hobbits (with the gem-names being more specifically for upper-class female hobbits). But then we also have the names Belladonna, Donnamira, and Mirabella - the names of Gerontius Took’s three daughters. These three names are distinctly different; Belladonna is of Italian origin, as is Mirabella - I can’t actually find a definite origin for Donnamira, but since both halves of her name are Italian/Latin in origin, I’m willing to wager that’s the intention there. Odd bit of contrast, no?

Either way, I’m willing to bet that these nonsensical names that keep popping up in so many families are something of a custom in hobbit families with Harfoot blood. That’s not to say that it is the only custom; we don’t know if the Gamgee family had Harfoot blood or otherwise, as it’s never stated, but it appears to be heavily implied - and most of them appear to have Old English names.

Note also that the nonsensical names have a tendency to sound very similar - chances are that later names on the family tree are derived from earlier ones, such as the names Uffo and Gruffo on the Boffin family tree, quite clearly derived from the name of Uffo’s great-grandfather Buffo. For that matter, why not bring up the name of our dear Bilbo Baggins? His great-grandfather was named Balbo. I daresay Bilbo’s name was derived from there.

So - nonsensical names? Sure, they sound weird. But there is clearly some form of meaning to them, even if it is just a certain naming convention or a wish to pay homage to relatives. I ask that you do not dismiss them, but instead view them as what they clearly are: a hobbit tradition, and perhaps a specific Harfoot custom.

Thank you for reading.

[lj-writes]

Finn the trickster hero

Finn is a lot of things--a military genius, a conscientious objector, a crack shot, an iconoclast--but beyond the realm of military and politics he also has mythological qualities in embodying certain archetypes, and to me the most prominent is that of the trickster.

Trickster figures are recognizable by distinguishing traits such as solving problems by wit and resourcefulness, actions that upset the social order, humor, crossing boundaries between realms, and physical transformation. Finn’s story contains all of these and more, with the effect that he plays the trickster’s role, a bearer of the unexpected and an agent of change.

A trickster is first and foremost defined by, well, trickery. Some tricksters are conspicuously lacking in physical force, such as Jacob in the Old Testament of the Bible in contrast to his stronger brother Esau. Some are depicted as smaller, weaker animals compared to their adversaries, such as Reynard the Fox in Western European fables in comparison to the wolf Isengrim, or Bre’r Rabbit of the Southern United States in comparison with Bre’r Fox. Other times martial prowess simply isn’t a big part of their story, such as Coyote of the Crow and Plains tribes’ mythologies and Prometheus in Greek mythology. Rather than physical force the trickster often uses some flaw in their opponent, such as vanity or cruelty, to get out of a tight situation or win the prize in a situation where they are at a disadvantage.

This is true of Finn, who made and executed a plan to steal a TIE fighter and rescue a Resistance pilot from under the First Order’s nose. In doing so he ingeniously exploited a flaw in the First Order’s organization by claiming it was Kylo Ren who wanted the prisoner--Ren, who reports directly to Snoke and is not a part of the strict military hierarchy that Hux so prizes, who has his own agenda and will act for it rather than his given orders, as he demonstrated more than once in The Force Awakens.

If Finn had tried to claim the prisoner transfer order had come from Hux or Phasma he may well have been required to verify the command, given that both these figures operate within the standard military system. But Ren? Who was going to question him and risk his explosive temper, short of Hux or Snoke himself?

In other words, Finn used the personal and organizational failings of his oppressors to brilliant effect in planning and executing his escape, and this planning made it possible for him and Poe to reach the TIE fighter without a single shot fired. Once they flew the TIE and hit a (literal) snag shots were fired indeed, in a sequence I have analyzed at length. A confrontation was inevitable at some point anyway, but it was due to Finn’s clever subterfuge that he and Poe were able to get so far without attracting deadly attention. This is itself a significant achievement that may have saved their lives when they were seriously outnumbered and Poe had endured physical and mental torture.

Finn also uses a subtle trick on the Resistance but of a different sort, which I will discuss near the end in the section about the trickster as communicator.

A characteristic of tricksters related to their trickery is humor. Trickster stories are replete with wit and fun, like Bre’r Rabbit laughing behind his hand as he begs Bre��r Fox not to throw him in the brier patch, or the Yoruba trickster god Eshu breaking his penis while using it for a bridge. (All I’m saying is, never, ever question Eshu’s dedication to infrastructure.) They are not adverse to being the butt of the joke, either, as when Anansi the spider, a beloved trickster figure of West Africa and the Caribbean, failed to hoard all the wisdom in the world and ended up dispersing it instead.

A few trickster stories are dark and frightening--no, I’m pretty sure the broken penis doesn’t count--usually when the forces of order and hierarchy catch up to the trickster and mete out torment as punishment, most notably with the Norse Loki and the Greek Prometheus. Even then, however, the trickster has a long and laughter-filled streak before they’re caught.

John Boyega made it clear in an interview that he explicitly went for humor when he auditioned for Finn, and the character correspondingly has a lot of funny moments in The Force Awakens. In fact, some of Finn’s tensest moments are also his funniest, as when he pleads with BB-8 to tell him the location of the Resistance base, or when he helps an injured Chewbacca who is in pain and lashing out violently.

[Image: Chewbacca has gripped Finn by the throat and pulled him close]

The trickster’s humor has a larger basis in his subversion of social norms, the way he upends the social expectations placed on him. The trickster’s stories are a surprise because they invert the prevailing power structure: the weak triumph over the strong with fast talk and wits, laughing at the high-and-mighty all the while. In this way the relative weakness, trickery, and humor of the trickster all act together to turn the tables on the strong and oppressive.

You can see this with Finn throughout The Force Awakens in the way he defies expectations of his role as a Stormtrooper. I mean, Stormtroopers don’t care about anyone or anything except the mission, right?

[Image: Finn bends over a dying Slip]

Stormtroopers follow orders without question.

[Image: Finn lowers his blaster, unable to shoot the prisoners]

They don’t think and act independently. They don’t go out of their way to help people. They respect their superiors no matter what. They- well, you get the idea. Finn takes every idea about Stormtroopers and turns it on its head. Heck, the guy can even shoot!

This upsetting of the social order means that tricksters are necessarily agents of change. They smash the status quo and bring not only laughter and fun but also insights into life and new ways of being. 

As quite a few fans have rightly pointed out, nothing in The Force Awakens would have happened without Finn. The awakening of his conscience and his resulting determination to get away from the First Order, both of them unexpected and indeed unthinkable developments that threw the First Order brass into confusion, were the catalysts for all the major events of the movie--Poe’s escape, Rey and BB-8’s departure from Jakku, and the destruction of Starkiller Base. He was not the only mover and shaker in these events but he provided the spark, the first push.

Such changes are a crossing over from one state of being to another, and indeed it is a common trait of tricksters to cross boundaries, both in the external world and sometimes in their own selves by changing gender and shape.

In the former capacity as a boundary crosser the trickster brings gifts from another world, such as the celestial or underground regions, to the earthly realm. This is the case with such figures as the Rainbow Crow, from the myth of the Lenni Lenape tribe of the Northeast United States, who flew up to the heavens to bring back the gift of fire; Coyote of the South Plains in the United States who released the buffalo from Humpback’s enclosure onto the earth; and Anansi of the Ashante people of Ghana, who bargained with the god Nyame to bring stories to the world.

In the latter capacity as a shapechanger the trickster changes their own shape and identity, again flitting around and between boundaries except this time within themselves and their relationship to the world. The aforementioned South Plains Coyote changes first into a bird and then a dog to release the buffalo. Loki of Norse myth is another famous example who frequently changed his race, gender, and species in stories.

Finn is both a boundary crosser and a shapechanger who went from the servitude with the First Order to freedom, bringing the Order’s secrets and his inside knowledge to the cause of fighting it. He also changes his identity and literal shape in the process, going from a Stormtrooper to a purported Resistance fighter to a traumatized fugitive to an actual Resistance fighter, though one who fights alongside the Resistance rather than giving himself fully to them. We even get a beautiful metaphorical scene of his transformation in a desert, reminiscent of Moses from the Old Testament after he himself fled from a genocidal, enslaving regime:

[Image: Finn walks through the desert, pieces of discarded Stormtrooper gear marking his path]

The ability to cross boundaries also means that the trickster is a communicator. Whether the boundary in question lies between socially expected behavior and unexpected/prohibited behavior, between states of being, between worlds, between identities, or between people, the trickster navigates these boundaries, shows that they are more porous than at first sight, brings goods from one side to another, and creates change through exchange across these divisions.

This communicator aspect is very explicit in the Yoruba god Eshu (Legba in the Fon tribe), a god of languages and information, and the Ashante god Anansi, a god of knowledge and stories. There is a story about Eshu that he walked on the boundary between the fields of two friends while wearing a hat that was black on one side and red on another. The friends quarrelled about what color the man’s hat was, only to to have Eshu intervene to show them the trick in the hat and tell them off for not putting him first in their dealings with each other.

I understood this story, besides being a wonderful example of trickster humor, to be an emphasis on the importance of communication in relationships. If you don’t try to see the other person’s point of view and open yourself to the possibility of transcending your own narrow perspective, you’re inevitably going to have misunderstandings and fights. Also remember, when the internet has a collective freakout over the color of a dress or a sneaker, that’s Eshu totally playing us.

[Image: A statue of Eshu]

Comparing Finn to a god of language and communication may seem paradoxical, given that the character is only shown speaking Basic and is not presented as multilingual, being unable to speak Shyriiwook or Binary in contrast to Rey who understands these and more. In fact Finn’s lines make a point to emphasize his lack of knowledge (”You can understand that thing?” “I don’t speak that.” “What’d he say?”).

What interests me, however, is just how effectively Finn communicated with Chewie and BB-8 despite his inability to understand their languages. Think about it: He successfully saved Chewie’s life, reasoning with him despite the language barrier (a boundary, to put it another way) and faced with a much larger and stronger being who was getting violent from pain and fear. Finn also convinced a Resistance droid to reveal the location of their secret base with the same linguistic difficulty--and this, right after revealing to said droid that he was not actually Resistance.

The levels of empathy and trustworthiness it took for Finn to work with and talk to these beings under these extraordinary circumstances are simply phenomenal. These incidents demonstrate that Finn is an extremely effective communicator even when he is hindered by language. He crosses the boundaries of interpersonal mistrust and caution on a level that goes deeper than words.

In their capacity as communicators tricksters may also use and manipulate language, especially in situations where they experience a disadvantage in power. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. called this act Signifyin’ after the Signifying Monkey, which he treats as an equivalent to the Yoruba god Eshu. The Signifying Monkey uses the power of figurative language to outwit Lion, his oppressor, something Gates compared to dismantling the master’s house using the master’s tools, repurposing the quote of activist and writer Audre Lorde that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

We watch Finn engage in this careful use of speech when he talks the Resistance into letting him onto the mission to Starkiller Base. When Han asks him whether he can disable the shields around the base, Finn replies:

“I can disable the shields. But I have to be there, on the planet.”

When Han asks him again later on the base, of course, Finn freely admits he doesn’t know how to disable the shields; he was just there to get Rey.

Notice, however, that Finn did not lie outright as he did when he told Poe’s guards that Ren wanted the prisoner or when he told Rey he was with the Resistance. Finn’s words can be interpreted as, “I can disable the shields [by figuring out how when I get there]. But I have to be there, on the planet [so I can see the situation for myself and make a plan].” In this sense this statement is not factually incorrect per se, rather an expression of confidence spoken with the certainty of fact.

Finn knew, however, that saying he definitely can disable the shields in response to Han’s question would be taken as saying yes, he knew how to disable the shields. He was, if not lying, deliberately misleading the Resistance here by exploiting a gap between the literal meaning of his words and the understanding of them in context.

Just to be 100% clear, I don’t blame Finn for this deception one bit. He did in fact find a way to disable the shields and it’s not like the Resistance had any better options, so anyone who wants to hold this conversation against him can fuck off. He employed this trick not out of malice but because he was trying to overcome a disadvantage: If he wasn’t seen as someone who could contribute, he wouldn’t be able to go on the mission with Han and Chewie, and his strengths in having worked on the base and his considerable tactical smarts might be dismissed in a newcomer and stranger. The Resistance may not have been his oppressors but he had just met them, and it’s not a stretch to say his trust of authority in general was running low after his experiences with the First Order.

So what does Finn’s role as a trickster hero mean for the future of his story? For one thing, I believe he will continue to bring about profound change to a galaxy far, far away in whatever capacity he is in--whether as a Jedi, a badass Resistance fighter, a leader in the renewed Republic, or, my favorite possibility, the leader of a Stormtrooper uprising.

Another thing we can infer about his character is that he won’t get complacent. The Republic (Old and New), the Jedi Order, even the Rebel Alliance at points became set in their ways and a hindrance to progress and justice. Finn as a trickster can keep subverting expectations and changing course so that any organization he leads or influences can keep its actual goals in sight instead of blundering forward out of sheer inertia.

Finn’s ability as a communicator, the way he resonates with people on an emotional level, and his commanding grasp over language and story also open exciting possibilities for his character. Remember how beautifully he told his truth to Rey? Imagine his story inspiring thousands. Millions. Imagine him setting people’s spirits across the galaxy on fire with his inspiring speeches, as Anansi the Spider did in American Gods, urging them to fight, to reach out and grasp justice in their hands.

We have in Finn a character who constantly renews himself and the world around him, who upends power structures, and keeps us laughing all the while. Life with a trickster is never dull, and if used correctly the character of Finn will keep us guessing, keep us interested, and keep us inspired. That’s what being a trickster hero is all about.