Anghraine

Somebody over at lj asked for Luke (and Lucy, heh), so I'll put it here!

(1) Luke is idealistic without being particularly optimistic. I know a lot of people regard him as extremely optimistic, but I think we definitely see a strain of fatalism in him. At the same time, however, he's a dreamer who longs for more, an idealist who is clearly itching to fight for a noble cause, and does so faithfully (not just in the first flush excitement or whatever).

(2) Luke is impulsive and reckless. He's not naturally patient; he has to work at it, and work hard, to get to where he is ROTJ, and it still snaps under pressure. (Lots of pressure, because he's done a good job! But still, it's not that he was born like that, or for that matter, left Tatooine like that.)

(3) Luke has lots of sheer nerve. He prefers negotiation and persuasion to direct confrontation, but he's really pretty happy with both, and easily bold and daring. It's also not a sort of thoughtless bravado - he knows what he's getting into. Sometimes the courage that's called for isn't about going in with guns blazing, and he has that too.

(4) Luke is very dutiful. He'll try to talk his way out of something he finds disagreeable, but once he's accepted a duty (or had one foisted on him), he does his best to stick with it. (We see this early in his arc, when he rejects Obi-Wan's offer, which might as well be custom-tailored to what he desperately longs for.) And he has to come to terms with the tug between his sense of duty and his intense personal loyalties.

(5) Luke is extraordinarily loving and kind-hearted. It's easy to think of this as a virtue and it generally is - particularly when it comes to his father - but his personal affection can and does overpower both his sense of duty and his basic ethics. There are few lines he's not willing to cross for the people he loves.

(6) Luke is clever and resourceful, and this is one that I really do think is overlooked. He persistently thinks of the practical side of things - no, we have to wait morning because of the Sand People, yes, it's brave but what does it achieve, that sort of thing. He's able to manipulate Han through a motivation that makes no sense to him and is so foreign to his worldview that he can hardly process it, he comes up with a plan to take out the walkers on the fly, and of course there's his elaborate plan in ROTJ. When Han says Luke is the brains of the party, it's snide, but it's also pretty much true.

(7) Luke has a short fuse. This is really, really, really clear in the movies, but ... idk. Anyway, he has plenty of rage, and though he's capable of calm and zen serenity and all, it's a struggle. Unlike Leia's similar moments, it's usually not about comforting someone else but self-control.

(8) I've referred to it in some of the others, but Luke is not actually all that confrontational (though he doesn't back away from them). His first instinct is to placate his opponents, to talk people into his perspective. He's perfectly capable of being assertive and demanding, however, and switches between the two styles fairly easily (I think he tends to be more placating with enemies/people he registers as dangerous, and aggressive with allies).

(9) Leia is far and away Luke's most important person; they have a natural affinity, are temperamentally similar (and heh, have similar fashion tastes), and are, well, telepathically linked.

(10) Luke doesn't really meet standards of heterosexual masculinity and does not care. Despite his occasionally self-effacing manner, he's actually very comfortable with himself, and only gets more so as he grows older. In interpersonal terms, he's gentle, supportive, wholly non-threatening, and easily expresses and accepts affection. His most important role ends up being as a child, he's deeply respectful of others' autonomy, and his identification with his father and desire to live up to/negotiate his legacy is the closest he gets to any kind of masculinity issues.