Why Rose is my fave new character

A Rose by any other name...

I loved the character. I loved the way she kept surprising me and kept growing in importance, but mostly I loved the escape pod scene.

When we first meet her she's, um, well, she's not played by Felicity Jones, Carrie Fisher, or Daisy Ridley. She's not physically beautiful. She's the kind of girl your eyes skip right over when you're checking out the room and wondering who you'll ask to dance. And I confess that's exactly what I did when Finn loads his bags on the escape pod. I skipped right over her.

So did Finn. She's just a gushing fangirl, a hero-worshiping nobody who doesn't quite dare to ask for Finn's autograph.

Then she stuns him.

Seriously, consider what a monumental step that was for her. Imagine you were part of the Resistance fleet, out of fuel, out of options, and nearly out of time. Then your hero shows up and you think "Thank goodness, everything's gonna be okay now!"

Then you realize your hero is abandoning ship. He recognizes a hopeless cause when he's in one. What would you do?

Would you beg him to take you with him? "Don't leave me here to die, take me with you!"

Or would you cling to tightly to what you want to believe that you make excuses for him? "Yeah, he's probably going on a secret mission to save the Resistance."

Or would you stay in hero worship mode and pretend you don't see the bags in the escape pod, and pretend that he's not doing what you secretly fantasize about doing yourself?

I have no idea how to confront a hero. If I held someone in such high esteem and caught them doing something cowardly my first reaction would probably be to doubt myself, to think I must be wrong because this dude's a hero so he's automatically right.

Rose saw through her hero worship and shocked the snot outta him. From star-struck groupie to star-striking hero in one quick moment. I wish I had that kind of courage. Many people can stand up to an enemy. Fewer can stand up to a friend. And almost nobody can stand up to one of our heroes.

But Rose did, and that makes her heroic in my eyes.