jewishcomeradebot:

Finn Appreciation Week, Day 4: Tropes

To Understand, To Forgive

There are things Finn can understand.

He can understand how the weight of someone’s opinion can push you to doubt your own judgement, to justify actions to yourself that you would otherwise never take.

He can understand being trapped and having no way out, to desperately search for one, while trying to survive in a system that demands total compliance.

But he cannot understand not searching for such an out, understands even less how someone cannot take it when it is offered, not once, but twice. Doesn’t comprehend how anyone can reject that chance of freely offered escape.

There are things Finn can forgive.

The other Stormtroopers, the cadets that trained alongside him, he finds it difficult to judge them harshly. He knows what they all went through, the violence both mentally and physically they were subjected to, the abuses heaped on them to make them comply. He can’t find it in his heart to condemn those that gave in, those that could not find a way out and – knowing that defiance meant death – obeyed orders, though he asks no one else to share his forgiveness of them.

But he cannot forgive those who visited violence on others with malicious glee, those who had a choice, had the rank and influence to choose differently, but didn’t. Nor can he forgive those who inflicted violence on him, those who for their own goals, or their own joy, caused him pain and injury.

This is why he’ll never understand Phasma, nor forgive her.

This is why he’ll never understand Kylo Ren, nor forgive him.