APPLICATION | AEFENGLOM

[bythehand]

there's something that could be considered a spoiler for the rise of skywalker in the history link, and blacked-out below the abilities section! it won't include plot details, but it is something significant enough that it mentions meriting in the app.

Player Information
Name: dani
Age: 28
Contact: comatoseroses
Other Characters: N/A

Character Information
Name: Finn
Canon: Star Wars
Canon Point: post- 'The Last Jedi'
Age: 23
History: wookieepedia page (be wary of rise of skywalker spoilers!). I tend to include tie-in novels in my characterization/timeline (Before The Awakening and Resistance Reborn, namely), but generally none of the tie-in comics.

Personality:
At heart, Finn is first and foremost a kind individual. The First Order viewed sympathy and empathy as weaknesses, but no amount of training could take those out of him. He was rebuked for going out of his way to help a less-capable cadet on multiple occasions, team-oriented to what the Order viewed as a fault, and couldn't follow orders to kill civilians. He felt grief when he thought Poe Dameron died during the first film, and sympathy for Rose Tico when she described what the First Order did to her homeworld. His instinct when seeing someone struggling is to try to help. He's a compassionate and genuine person, to say nothing for being especially expressive and easy to read. He finds himself getting attached to and relying on others without really thinking about it.

And of course, once he has gotten attached or essentially decided someone is with him now, Finn's devotion is ride or die. He even felt attachment to his cadet squad in the Order. He cares fiercely for his friends, of which he's made very few, and would do just about anything for them. Rey, a prominent example, is someone that (in the span of canon, at least) he's only known for a handful of days. Yet he's so attached to her that he not only runs back towards the First Order for her sake (blatantly lying to the Resistance along the way), but he also charges Kylo Ren with a lightsaber after she gets injured.

Hand in hand with that undying loyalty is dedication and follow-through, plain and simple. When Finn makes up his mind to do something, he will do it. If he makes a promise or agrees to an exchange, he keeps up his end of the bargain. As one example, he promised BB-8 that he'd get it back to the Resistance before bailing for a different system, provided it backed him up enough to get them both off-planet to begin with. Later on the Resistance base, he said he could lower the shields on Starkiller, and though he lied about his methods, he followed through.

Loyalty and dedication can all sort of boil down to the same root, though: stubbornness. Finn is capable of being about as bullheaded as they come. He can be argumentative to a fault, one one notable occasion literally to the point that if he hadn't started arguing, maybe the ship he was in wouldn't have been… hit by a missile. If he thinks he or someone else is being mistreated (or anything along those lines), he definitely has no trouble speaking up about it. Petty bickering and stressed yelling at people is one of his refined crafts, and he knows how to dig his heels in like you wouldn't believe.

Finn is also an incredibly brave person. Not just in terms of being willing to charge into battle for people he cares about or impulsively trying to help when he sees a person in trouble. After a lifetime of brainwashing by the First Order, where disobedience is a one-way ticket to reconditioning, he still lowered his blaster in plain sight of anyone who might look his way rather than fire on innocent people, going directly against his orders. In both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, he's willing to step up and head back into the heart of the First Order to help the people he cares about, and willing to use his extensive knowledge of how things work to give them the best chance of success. There are a lot of actions of his that are directly driven by fear, but you can't really have bravery without fear.

While fear isn't always a weakness in that context, the way that it impacts Finn's choices through canon does tend to hold him back. From the second he decides to leave the First Order, fear of their pursuit and retribution pushes his every action through most of The Force Awakens. His primary long-term concern is getting himself out of the galaxy, as far away from the Order as possible, and that doesn't change for a while (apart from expanding to include Rey). He was raised to view the First Order as the be-all end-all of power. Even when he's charging back into Order territory to save a friend, that fear remains. During The Last Jedi, a lot of his initial actions are rooted in fear for the safety of Rey/the Resistance. It takes a lot of personal growth for him to officially switch over from running to wanting to stand and fight.

Like a lot of the heroes of Star Wars, Finn has a running habit of acting without thinking things through. He's extremely goal-oriented, but he'll often only end up strategizing to a certain extent on how to achieve it. For example, he promised to get the shields lowered on Starkiller Base, but his only real plan in going there was finding Rey and saving her. Even if he had some vague ideas about how they might manage it, the part where he got the shields lowered was pretty much improvised. And then in The Last Jedi there was that thing where he tried to sacrifice himself by crashing into a big cannon, which was 100% not pre-planned. Finn tends to follow impulse and risk his life without a second thought; it's sort of second nature for him to consider himself disposable.

So basically, Finn is a pretty good dude. He's got a history he's ashamed of, that he often goes out of his way not to share with people if he can help it (to the point of lying, however bad his poker face is in reality). He's a smart, capable soldier who tends to pick new things up quickly, from gunner controls with a 30-second tutorial to knowing his way around just about any ship model the First Order utilizes. He's goal-oriented, and often seeks out short-term goals to hop between to keep himself active and occupied. He's stubborn, argumentative, and impulsive, with a lot of anger/trauma beneath the surface that he hasn't quite properly acknowledged.

But he's also kind and compassionate in a way that his upbringing was unable to quash. Finn seeks out common ground with others and, at the end of the day, is in search of a feeling of belonging. His first instinct is to help others who need it, and he doesn't buy into leaving people behind if it can be helped at all. He packs a lot of contradictions into one compact, anxious frame.

Abilities & Skills:
The wiki outlines the bulk of Finn's canon abilities really well. He was trained to be a soldier from early childhood- strategy, firearms, hand-to-hand combat, melee weapons, small-unit tactics, etc.- and consistently scored in the top 1% of his tests and evaluations during that training. His performance was notable enough to earn him the position of leader on his old fire-team. He learns and adapts to new situations relatively quickly, if he's in the right mindset. He's not infallible or perfect by any means (there are numerous points in canon where people get the better of him, particularly where hand-to-hand/melee combat are concerned), and he's exactly as vulnerable to getting killed as any other squishy human, but he's definitely known to be a skilled soldier. It's kind of the only thing he does know.

TROS spoiler detail below:

Force sensitivity: The wiki does a better job explaining than I can, but I'll try to summarize. The Force is basically just a big energy field that surrounds everything in the universe and binds it together. People who are particularly attuned to it are able to tap into and channel it for all manner of mystical space magic, if they become aware of it and train to use it deliberately. It covers a lot of nebulous ground, from essentially telekinesis to prophetic visions to an instinct/ability to sense impossible things (feeling someone die, pinpointing the exact right direction/individual/needle in a haystack without knowing exactly why they know it's right, sensing emotions, mind-probing, changing people's minds to avoid arousing suspicion, etc. What a person uses it for-- good or not-- generally depends on the type of person they are.

Force-sensitive people tend to have a background of unconsciously using or tapping into it their whole life, whether they're aware of it or not. It tends to manifest in someone being particularly good at what they do. For some people it's mechanical prowess, for some it's physical performance, etc.

Finn was confirmed in recent canon to be Force-sensitive, which is one of those sort of lifelong things/abilities that retroactively applies to his character, otherwise I wouldn't mention it. I know that abilities from home are taken out of the equation going into the game, but it wouldn't feel right leaving it out knowing it's been made canonical. At his current canonpoint it's not something he's actively aware of.

Inventory/Companions: Just the clothes on his back!

Choice: Witch
Reason: It honestly feels like the most interesting and fun option to work with with Finn, and like something that would align more with his character than any of the Monster options. He tends to be pretty goal-oriented, and learning to use magic would give him something really clear and tangible to keep working towards. And the fact that if he didn't learn to channel it, a lot of innocent people could get hurt would be enough incentive for him to want to actively commit to learning. I also just really like the plotting potential that comes with playing a character in this slot.

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