#god what an completely unforeseeable coincidence that all my favorite minor sw characters are serious and dedicated idealists

[notbecauseofvictories]

hello Sarah!! hope you're doing great. who are your three ABSOLUTE fave minor characters from star wars?

That’s…a very hard question to answer, which I did not realize until this moment! I never saw myself as a minor characters person, but something about those star wars lends itself to collecting a whole bunch of secondary characters and developing intensely specific headcanons about them which you would die for, probably.

However, I decided I would just pick my favorite minor characters from Rogue One/Solo/each of the Trilogies, since that’s easier.

Prequel Trilogy — Mace Windu

I’m not much of a Jedi person—my preferences are clearly oriented to the Rebellion and the regular old humans of the galaxy far far away. But I once wrote myself into having a lot of feelings about Mace Windu, and since then have never recovered. I’m still stuck on a Mace Windu who is stubbornly good, good in the most absolute sense, but also pragmatic and unyielding and cold and ambitious. 

I always liked the idea that Mace had a particular grudge against Qui-Gon—not for any particular personal reason, but. Well, they were approximately the same age, and where Mace had been playing the long-game to advance through the Order, Qui-Gon was off running all over the galaxy with his mouthy padawan, rescuing whoever he felt like and talking about mystic Force nonsense. Mace sees it as the waste of a good Jedi. (Qui-Gon has no idea.)

Original Trilogy — Mon Mothma

I realize this is sort of cheating, since Mon Mothma’s role is expanded on a lot in Rogue One, but she was original first, so it counts.

Anyway, I love Mon Mothma. I’ve come up with a whole world of headcanons for her, from her studying poetry in university to her relationship with Padme and Bail Organa (she and Bail don’t actually like each other much—but they respect each other and are too civilized to let anyone else know about it.) To how, after Palpatine became Emperor. she basically just said “fuck it” and made it her entire goal to make his life miserable and shout about tyranny on the Senate floor. (The Partisans smuggled her offworld just before the black squad had a chance to strike; that’s how she knows Saw.)

I just really like Mothma, this woman who is clearly more of a liberal politician than a glorious revolutionary, yet clearly is determined to have that role. She’s also…literally the only person who witnesses the Republic, the fall of the Republic, the rise of the Empire, the fall of the Empire, and the rise of the New Republic. I have to imagine that after the Empire falls, she becomes the George Washington of the New Republic, which in itself is a cool idea. (I keep meaning to write that post-war fic about Leia adjusting to peace, and how badly she fits inside it, how guilty she is about it, when Mon Mothma is thriving amid the rebuilding…)

Rogue One — Saw Gerrera

I love Saw Gerrera. I love him, specifically, in three ways:

1) Separatist-turned-Anarchist-for-Hire! I firmly believe that Saw spent most of his younger life as a Separatist, and learned all the ways of violent resistance there. So when the Republic becomes the Empire, he’s already ready to go, he’s got knowledge that’s suddenly very valuable and needed by a lot more worlds than used to want it. I still picture the Partisans as kind of roving band of violent revolutionaries for hire—if you’re the anti-Empire insurgency on planet X, you can send Saw Gererra a message, and in exchange for food & lodging, they’ll teach your people how make bombs and tap into frequencies and spy on your local Imperial outpost.

(this fic is tentatively entitled “saw gererra and his anachist’s cookbook crew kickstart the rebellion by building a huge network of insurgent cells on every planet from the outer rim to the core”)

2) The imagined agony that is Lyra/Saw! Listen, I realize I talked myself into this one, but—Lyra Erso was the one who knew Saw. Once Galen realized how deep in shit he was, she and Saw arranged to get them out of the Empire and into hiding. Their love affair was conducted almost exclusively via transmit, ala this headcanon I came up with ages ago. 

3) Feral Affection-Starved Wolfchild Adopted By Emotionally Ill-Equipped Radical, aka, Jyn Has Complicated Feelings About Saw Gerrerra, Who Is As Much Her Father As Galen Ever Was.

I literally did write a fic about this.

Solo — Enfys Nest

The minute she took off her helmet, I was sold. I love that she’s young, that she’s inherited this enormous burden from her mother. (If you’re going to kill off everybody’s mom, star wars, then you’re correct, the least you can do is make those moms baller freedom fighters.) I love that her gang is called the “Cloud Riders,” and that they’re integrated with the local people. I love her cape. 

Solo, for all its faults, had very good capes.

I will, someday, write that fic where Enfys and Saw and Mon Mothma bring their disparate factions together to talk about The Future of Rebellion In The Galaxy and everybody fights a lot about it, and there’s probably fraught sex, somewhere. It’s not a rebel convocation if no one’s having emotionally and politically fraught sex.)

New Trilogy — Phasma

I don’t pay attention to any star wars that doesn’t happen onscreen, but I heard through the fannish grapevine that Hux’s dad was the one who set up the new stormtrooper program. Since then, I’ve been obsessed with the idea that Phasma was the first-ever New Stormtrooper, like a proof of concept. A stolen child herself, raised by Hux the Elder to be a monster and a prodigy. (Literally, the translation of “Phasma.”)

This also means that a) Phasma has complicated feelings about Hux the Elder, who is the closest thing to a father she’s ever known, but definitely doesn’t see her as a human being; b) Phasma and Hux are weird sibling-like things, except not siblings at all; and c) Phasma can take all these awful twisted-up narratives about ownership, love, and humanity, and foist them all on FN-2187 in the most fucked up way.

I have a partial draft of this fic, and the google doc is literally titled “frankenstein, but space.”