Finn has trouble sleeping. He’d always been a light sleeper and that coupled with the nightmares he gets means that he just has trouble willing himself to sleep each time. Later, when the war is over and it’s just him with his partner, Finn spends hours counting their breaths so he can lull himself to sleep.
It’s a little thing but hearing his partner breathing softly next to him, laying in the dark wrapped up in each other’s arms makes him feel at ease. Which helps him a lot in his sleep. Back when he’d been with the First Order, Finn had always found himself sleeping with one eye open
Extra headcanon is that a lot of Stormtroopers who’d be slated for elimination or reconditioning were often taken at night so as to not rouse any “excitement” according to the officers. Finn had the unfortunate experience of seeing one stormtrooper taken and never return.
Finn develops a taste for spicy foods the minute he’s able to expand his palate. He genuinely cannot get over the spices that he knew of but didn’t really get to experience when he’d been in the First Order.
Catch this boy saying something isn’t spicy enough later on down the line and added chili flakes.
Finn wakes at the crack of dawn and runs. And runs and runs. The nightmares that plague him at night seem to slip away in the early mornings and fall down to the ground with his sweat. So he runs every morning without fail. And only when it feels as though he’s about to bust a lung does he eventually stop and looking up at the sky.
Finn is really good at diplomacy. He’s good with his words and is able to convey so much meaning without even trying. He’s persuasive, a natural born leader and that is why Leia has him sit in on meetings more and more. They start off as simply strategic meetings; things that require his intimate knowledge of the stormtrooper training. Then it grows to outlining future battles. Then it grows to coming with her to meet senators and working on diplomatic missions to other planets. It just grows and grows until it’s simply natural to have Finn at Leia’s side. Helping and working with her.
Finn has a lot of admirers: people who heard about his help in destroying Star Killer, people who heard about him defecting and people who just look up to him as the leader he’s become. People watch for him, they notice him and it’s a little overwhelming at first. A little too much that has Finn on the edge of his seat. But over time he gets used to it.
Plus, people bring him a lot of treats and tbh that’s amazing and Finn treasures them all.
There are still days though that make Finn feel disconnect; from reality, from the events that are happening around him. There’s a part of him that still feels as though he’d wake up and he’d back with The First Order, killing at their orders and having no will of his own. Sometimes this part of him hisses that there’s a catch. That there’s always a catch and Finn needs to figure it out before he’s cut loose and set to drown.
This usually happens during the moments right after he wakes from his nightmares. Those moments when it’s just his harsh breathing and the slowly brightening sun around him.
When Finn first meets his family he got so excited, so apprehensive that he accidently force lifted everything in the space around him….Including his family. They all laughed about it when it happened and Finn wore the biggest grin for like a week when his mother pulled him close and told him “welcome home son.”
Finn has an older sister. She’s older than him by about 12 years. She’d been there when he’d been taken; taken right from her grasp in fact. Their meeting is subdued in all actuality. His sister slowly walks over to Finn and pulls him super close and holds him for a really long time. Finn hugs her back just as fiercely. It doesn’t take long for the two of them to cry silently in each other’s arms.
Finn is Force Sensitive. Extremely so. He spends hours researching and learning more about his ability now that he doesn’t actually have to hide his abilities. He spends the days learning and listening to holos about anything Force related.
He spends a significant amount of time with Leia as she and him go over his force sensitivity, what it means, and how he can control it. Leia, after having sensed Finn’s wariness with how extreme the Jedi’s teachings were (Finn is very much attuned to his emotions so asking him to not accept them, to reproach them is too much) introduces him to other schools of thought. Careful to tell him that each has its own merits and detriments.
I’m seeing a lot of people taking notice to the lack of Finn merch and his separation from the other characters when it comes to shirts, covers, toys etc.
I’m happy the posts are gaining quite a bit of attention, so maybe now would be a good to time take the discussion to twitter and try again with the #whereisfinn movement? If #makefinnajedi was able to become trending at one point then I’m sure #whereisfinn is due for another shot.
Don’t just tag it as #whereisfinn though. Tag it also towards Lucasfilm as well that way they know how many people are upset about it. Just a thought and Good luck.
I don’t have a lot of experience with these polls but they do seem to have a pretty regular schedule, judging from the dates of past polls and quizzes. Whatever happened, Kyle has pulled slightly ahead now–so Finn fans, go vote! #rebelfinn
Does anyone remember seeing art of Finn and his old squad (Zeroes, Nines, Slip) that was a closeup of their faces side by side? Or did I dream it? I’ve been searching for it everywhere but so far, nothing.
There’s artwork by Phil Noto that features at least two of Finn’s squadmates from Before The Awakening, but,from a background perspective only.
I don’t believe there’s ever been more detailed official artwork of Slip (who doesn’t get a face reveal at all), Nines and Zeroes, which makes me wonder if it would be possible to commission that from Noto?
That is a really interesting idea! I’d love to see art like that, especially official art of Slip. I’ll have to check Mr. Noto’s commission terms.
@doorsclosingslowly Thank you for the tip! I found the art in my search and it’s really good (it even has a black-and-white version which I want for my meta), but I won’t be using it due to issues like Finn and especially Zeroes looking much older than Nines and Slip. Nothing against the art or the artist, it just falls into tropes that I don’t want to perpetuate.
Funny thing is, both @kyberfox and I recall seeing art that is kind of similar to the one doorsclosingslowly pointed out, four close-up head shots side by side, but larger and more realistic in style. It’s fully possible that she and I occupy our own alternate universe where this art exists, though, because I can’t find it anywhere.
“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.”
– from Anne of the Island
Oh look, my childhood idol Anne Shirley is confirmed anti Reylo and pro Finnrey. Good one, shippers!
LJ, this is the best Finnrey confirmation i’ve yet seen
Right? Like, look up “people who could be wicked and wouldn’t” and you’ll find a picture of Finn.
Does anyone remember seeing art of Finn and his old squad (Zeroes, Nines, Slip) that was a closeup of their faces side by side? Or did I dream it? I’ve been searching for it everywhere but so far, nothing.
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.
There was a lot of work put into this and it was so good to have dear Anasi the spider included. This is great meta and I like that it can be incorporated into any existing meta a Finn fan may have, like him leading a stromtrooper uprising or being force sensitive.
Thank you! I was really excited to find out about Anansi and Eshu in my research. I think they’re the first trickster figures I’ve come across that have an explicit focus on language and communication (although it’s inherent in all tricksters given their nature), which is perhaps fitting since West Africa is such a linguistically diverse region. Their stories gave me more insight on the trickster figure and about Finn himself, how stories and language galvanize and move people. The American Gods portrayal of Anansi starting a slave uprising, for instance, is in keeping with his historical role as an inspiration for resistance by enslaved African diasphora populations. If Finn were to give a speech rallying his rebellious troops I would d i e
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