Books Discussion of the Han Solo Trilogy, by A.C Crispin.

Bria Tharen was a deeply flawed character. She did everything wrong that Leia later did right. I think that was kind of the point. I don't see her as a "Mary Sue" type at all.

 

That would be accrispin as the "Posted By Member" - but I'll dig some of them up and link them - save time.

These are all the "writing-related" ones that I can think of, that might be of interest.

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/who-is-the-worst-couple.2937353/page-2#post-2993189
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...d-leias-romance.1741104/page-181#post-3320140
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/han-solo-triology-by-ac-crspin.6347023/page-2#post-6368730
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-many-hands-on-the-plans-death-star-1.6851926/#post-6869780
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...cludes-aotc-stuff.6901485/page-2#post-6941487
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/how-did-chewie-and-han-solo-become-friends.9316580/#post-9355875
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...iscussion-thread.5817005/page-5#post-10470874
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/nudity-in-the-eu.10542502/page-8#post-11126451
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...olo-trilogy-and.11147179/page-4#post-11201158
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...iscussion-thread.5817005/page-5#post-11236293
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/hans-father.11278391/#post-11289023
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/author-analysis-ann-c-crispin.23943853/page-2#post-23997999
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/author-analysis-ann-c-crispin.23943853/page-2#post-24038203
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/a-c-crispin-author-topic.24285154/#post-24311443
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/han-solos-other-daughter.24754196/page-3#post-24777536
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/frustrated-with-the-eu-novels.30303491/page-2#post-30334867
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...-won-any-awards.30018848/page-2#post-30205504
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/funny-sw-lit-names.28317507/page-2#post-28588259
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...star-wars-novel.29962797/page-2#post-29981361
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...rilogy-iii-rebel-dawn.29948157/#post-30011806
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/continuity-does-it-still-matter.30051644/page-6#post-30126251

 

My experience with her was somewhat different than yours. She took criticism personally, saying it was "mean-spirited" even when it wasn't, and pulled some unprofessional behavior, but got away with it because she was (flourish of trumpets, please!) an AUTHOR.

She was so sensitive to criticism that I wondered how she ever became a writer at all, given that writers almost invariably receive much rejection before getting published. Also, she had to realize that the unnecessary, gratuitous creation of Bria, a clear self-insertion character through which she admitted she lived out her romantic fantasies regarding Han/Harrison, would cause some controversy, particularly with the way Bria was framed as Han's first love and the "reason" behind everything he does/says in the OT, as well as her being made directly responsible for many major events in the overall story.

Sneer at it if you must, but Han/Leia fans, who had seen their couple get badly mistreated in the EU already, and would endure still more mistreatment while other pairings were glorified in the NJO, were not happy that the creation of Bria led to discussions as to who Han's "true love" was: Bria or Leia. There should be no question that his first, and true, love is Leia. And don't incredulously ask if I really believe Han was celibate before he met Leia. I do not believe that, nor do I know of anyone who does. A guy as good-looking, charming, and funny as Han would have had lots of girlfriends/lovers...but he had never been IN LOVE before he met Leia. Sex is not the same thing as love.

Considering how the authors have taken pains to cast Mara as Luke's first love, which includes blatantly rewriting history, I don't think it's too much to ask that Han/Leia fans receive the same respect for their couple, which they haven't. I might add that they're a canon couple; Luke/Mara exists only in the EU/Legends -- but they were held sacrosanct while Han/Leia were abused, minimized and insulted.

Funny how none of the other characters saw her as flawed (and the flaws were generally the "actually make her better" type, such as, "She's too devoted to her cause"). In fact, every other character thought she was the greatest thing in the universe. Even Boba Fett liked her.

Also, there are many factors in Mary Sue-ism other than "flawlessness." I've seen people say Mara Jade is not a Mary Sue because her creator was a man, as if that's the only qualification. A character does not have to be the same gender as its creator, nor does said character have to start out a Sue/Stu to qualify for the title -- particularly if said character is part of an ongoing storyline with multiple authors. Mara didn't start out a Sue, but she became one in the NJO.

Which is why I was glad to see the EU, including its Sues, get kicked to the canonicity curb. I loathe Mara, but Bria is a special irritant to me as a Han/Leia fan. Authors are worshipped and deferred to on this forum, unless, of course, they're Barbara Hambly. Any criticism of them is treated as "abusive." People have been banned for calling Timothy Zahn a hack, never mind that Lucas is regularly called a hack, and worse, all over the damn forums.

People wish Lucas DEAD on the forums and get away with it, but heaven forbid someone hurt a widdle author's feewings by disliking their blatant self-insertion Mary Sue and refuse to buy weak "explanations" like, "I created Bria to show why Han waited three years to put the moves on Leia, and why he hated the Rebellion." Wha-? ESB occurred three years after ANH for many reasons, external and internal. Should Han and Leia have gotten together offscreen during the three-year gap, to suit Crispin's sensibilities? Or was she oh-so-conveniently appropriating a fact of the storyline and using it to offer false justification for the creation of her Mary Sue? And Han didn't "hate" the Rebellion, he simply considered it folly.

Both Han's creator and his portrayer have explicitly said that Han had never been in love before he met Leia. The creation of Bria, which was totally unnecessary and "explains" nothing that isn't contrived beyond belief, messes with that.

 

I noticed Crispin's reference to that when I went back through the comments.

 

Some Sues/Stus are so blatant that there's no need to go in with "radar on full blast" to see them. And of course, there are always people who rush in to claim that so-and-so is not a Sue/Stu because of some minor and usually irrelevant-to-the-story flaw, such as -- and this really happened -- a Bria fan insisting she wasn't a Sue because "her nose was too large."

But even if a Sue/Stu is genuinely flawed, they can still qualify for the title, if no one else in the story sees him/her as flawed. No one sees Bria as flawed, nor does anyone see Mara as flawed in the NJO. Both of them are worshipped by all for their beauty, bravery, and strength, and are referred to as ideals to which other characters should aspire to be like, never mind that they'd certainly fail in the face of such perfection.

Mara, for instance, did not qualify in the SLIGHTEST to be a Jedi master, but she was made one. She failed miserably with her one and only pupil, Jaina, who not only turned into an insufferable brat, but who flirted with the Dark Side, while under Mara's tutelage. She is insensitive, uncaring toward anyone but her kid, violent, wrathful and bad-tempered...yet Luke never questions his decision to make this horrid woman a Jedi master, and "envelopes her in his love" whenever she throws a tantrum instead of telling her to suck it up and act her age rather than her shoe size. He doesn't even blink when she hypocritically rips into his relatives, living and dead. He rewards her for her stupidity in rushing to hack at the vines of a living planet that dared wrap themselves around her ship by making out with her later. Then when Jacen leaves the room as they start making out, she asks if Jacen left because he's jealous of what they have. (More likely he was nauseated by the sight of his middle-aged aunt and uncle schmooping over each other for the millionth time.) Does Luke maybe think she's being a tad self-involved and narcissistic and remind her that not EVERYTHING is about her? Of course not...not Ms. More Than He Deserves And All He Ever Wanted, whose "beauty makes his throat close" even when she's in the throes of a supposedly fatal disease. But that shouldn't be surprising, as he thought it cute and amusing when his 15-year-old nephew drooled over Mara in her flight suit (gag me).

Some point to the canon characters by way of "defending" a Sue/Stu: "Luke was created by George Lucas -- that's LUKE-as!" Now, it's true that Luke has some Stu-ish characteristics, including being named after his creator (Lucas's nickname in high school was "Luke S," which is a play on the phonetics of his surname). However, he lacks what Gary Stus always have: supreme coolness. He's earnest and kind of dorky. Han supplies the "coolness" that he lacks. So really, Luke and Han put together are Lucas's Gary Stu -- they did, in fact, start out the same character, Kane Starkiller or something, who even LOOKED like Lucas (short and bearded) according to early character sketches. But at some point, he separated the character into two and made them yin and yang, so to speak.

 

Yeah it was super weird when that came up in books set before that even happened.

 

anakinfansince1983: Okay, thanks for explaining that to me, I didn't mean to sound critical. Based on what your describing about a favored character, I can kind of see what you're getting at.

Iron_lord: Holy smokes, thanks for all those links!

 

When you phrase it that way, I totally get what you're saying. Sometimes it can go either way for me, if I feel like there's something about the writing and the construction of a narrative that is too mechanical or trying too hard to get me to like a character, it puts me on alert. Sometimes, even if I detect that going on in a story, I'll still end up like a character anyway.

 

Exactly. Particularly if they are OCs. I understand that an author is going to be fond of characters he, or she, has created, but that's what original novels and fanfiction are for. When you're writing for series, it seriously grates to see OCs start to dominate and even take over the story, at the expense of the canon characters. Not only that, the canon characters are degraded in order to make the OCs look better.

The EU is notorious for this. Every character that Luke, Han, Leia, et al meet is better at something than at least one of them, or, in the case of Mara, better at everything than all of them. In the NJO, we heard time and time again how she's a better Jedi (though her actions showed quite the opposite) than Luke, a better/kewler pilot than Han (no one holds her smuggling past against her but Han still takes flack for his, never mind that he's done more for the side of good than Mara ever could), and of course, ten times more beautiful, a better mother, and much more powerful a Jedi than that weak, trivial female character, what's her name...oh, yeah, Laura...er, Leia. The authors pull out all the stops by making Leia old, gray and wrinkled while Mara stays eternally young and stunning, even while "fatally ill" and pregnant.

And don't tell me that "looks shouldn't matter," or that you wouldn't care if it were the reverse -- if Mara had been described as old and wrinkled while Leia stayed eternally young -- because I know better. Mara fans absolutely flipped out when her hair was described as "auburn" rather than "red-gold" in one book.

When authors rewrite the storyline by inserting their OCs into major events in the overarching story, it gets even more irksome. Bria is probably the most blatant example of this, but hardly the only one. She was inserted into every corner of Han's life; even the dialogue between Han and Leia is reworded slightly and put between him and Bria -- and into every corner of the overall story, what with starting the Rebellion and stealing the Death Star plans. The NJO even "resurrected" her by having Han pine for her while separated from Leia: she's his "first love" and he talks about the "good times" with her (never mind that she betrayed him and dumped him -- twice), and talking like the times since, with Leia, weren't good. I know for a fact that the authors would never DARE have Luke even think about Callista, let alone think of her fondly (not that I like Callista, but Luke's relationship with her has been turned into nothing so Mara can be his "first love"), and they'd certainly never DARE have Luke and Mara separate. Don't say they killed her off, because that's not the same thing and you know it. The whole galaxy flips out after her death and she gets to a) die a martyr; and b) disappear, as if she's on the same level as Yoda and Obi Wan. Luke is completely broken and thinks about naught but Mara after her death. Indeed, her death is the biggest tragedy to ever hit the galaxy. I doubt Leia would have been gotten anywhere near that kind of send-off had she been the one to die; she was, after all, "half trained and uncertain in the Force."

I am sure they would have had Mara be Leia's Jedi master (the poor man's Leia teaches Leia -- a perversity typical of the EU), had a backlash against the Sue-ification of Mara not started about halfway through the NJO. After all, Leia told Mara at one point, "You're a braver person than I am." She who has more bravery in her pinkie toe than Mara does in her entire Barbie-doll body. Mara trashes her mothering, then turns around and does the exact same thing she sniped at Leia for doing: sending her kid away for his own protection. And of course Leia humbly bows her head to Mara whenever Mara is scolding her, since Mara knows best. Mara's despicable behavior when Anakin (he who drooled over her in her flight suit) dies is completely glossed over -- we're supposed to think that her asking, "How's Leia?" one time is proof of what a caring, sensitive person she is -- whereas Leia chides herself for "selfishly" grieving when there are many people out there who have it worse than she and who need help. Yet who is it that the other characters repeatedly sing praises to the glory of? Mara.

 

Good God man! Get onto that.

 

...Man, I was not expecting what I found in this thread when I decided to click on it.

 

That's... basically saying you prefer one type of story to another, though.

Authors and screenwriters and whoever imprinting themselves is often necessary for a work to be genuine. As long as the character is flawed, be that internal OR externally apparent then they are "human" and empathetic and therefore functionally successful. It's clear to me (for instance and I use it because it's what I'm churning through ATM) from the TV adaptation that Hillary Mantel really loves Thomas Cromwell to an obscene degree, to the level that he's a friggin' ladykiller and there's a lot of "Hmm, I don't think so" moments in the greater context of history but it doesn't really matter because the work

A) Takes a character's perspective
and
B) Is about the thematic throughput, not the conveyances

And that's precisely what Crispin's books are, they're seen through the prism of an implicitly unreliable narrator, being Han, and an attempt to steer that character into the position we first meet him in ANH. I don't think it's that long a bow to attribute it all to wounded deflection - it's a choice and it's not necessarily inherent but it's not conjuring up what isn't there. In effect Crispin was, I assume, commissioned to do three books about Han Solo and how he came to be, and yeah she absolutely could have given him nothing but ineffectual dalliances and "winter romances" and whatnot but it would likely make for a pretty trite and thin set of books. Maybe it's not an issue, but I'd guess if that's what Bantam and whoever wanted they wouldn't have gone with Crispin.

I think it'd be fairly challenging to have to create an exciting and enticing "new" story for these characters and not introduce new elements that up the ante. There's no challenge if the film characters are automatically the best by virtue of being film characters. I completely agree that a lot of the Mara Jade stuff was risible (especially the continual assertions that she was better than Vader which registers high on the how about no-o-meter) in execution but the idea of having a character who surpasses the film characters in certain aspects is not terrible in concept. Effectively with that character it should simply have been that she was the best at subterfuge, duplicity... the skills that form the justification of her backstory. However I don't think that the Tharen thing is quite at the level asserted here... there's always a sense (or at least as I took it) that there's a juvenile component to it... Han's the "junior" one of the pair, if not literally then certainly emotionally, and he certainly thinks he's in love but probably realises at Cloud City or whenever there's that dawning moment that he wasn't, and now he is, and that's effectively where Luceno goes in Agents of Chaos - Han's trauma causes him to totally regress into that completely juvenile pre-OT state and fondly remembers the "good old days" that actually weren't so good. It's not about damaging the supposed imperviousness of the Han/Leia relationship or whatever, it's completely to do with how he handles a possibility that he'd never even comprehended. And I don't get why that's means that Luke should've gone through the same... there's no equitable event for him to go through, he went through those traumas during the OT.

 

Personally, while I think "Mary Sue" is an utterly toxic term that needs to be expunged from the internet with extreme prejudice, I actually do agree with many of the criticisms of Bria Tharen in here. As a character she's... unengaging, at best, and I heartily disagree with what she represents in terms of OOU decision-making. But it's just really, really surprising to see what this thread turned out to be; as a comparison, while it's hard to seriously discuss Timothy Zahn without bringing up some of his more questionable character decisions, I don't remember any thread about him or his works degenerating entirely into attacks on Mara or Thrawn.

 

Some people are so attached to a character that any time any other character appears in a similar role and isn't clearly pushed down into a subordinate position, they get all threatened. How dare Han have a girlfriend before Leia! Especially one who's not terrible, you know, aside from the drug addiction and the lying and the leaving him! How dare Corran/Mara/Kyp/Kyle/whoever be good at Jediing, it's like they're out to diminish Luke! How dare they have anything to say to him! They should just grovel at his feet constantly so it's clear who had their own movie and who didn't!

90% of the time, all the cries of "Mary Sue!" are just outrage that some new character *spits* is allowed to also be good at heroism. Or villainy. Because the entire rest of the universe needs to exist on a visibly lower plane than whoever was in the movies. I don't buy it, I don't like it, I'm a little tired of constantly hearing about it, and I don't take it seriously.

 

Any thoughts on the Crispin short stories? Like the one on Kabe the Chadra-Fan, in Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina?

 

Well as far as that goes, the really telling phrase isn't so much "Mary Sue" as it is "OC". I think in the minds of a lot of people, even those who generally loved it, the EU never quite managed to transcend being seen as glorified fanfiction, and so of course the movie characters have to be the best at everything, because they're the only "real" characters.

Which I'm not calling a good thing, by the way - it's what ultimately led the EU to ruin in the post-NJO. My objections to Bria are more just that I fundamentally disagree with the idea that the loner Han of ANH had cared about big things before and was just in his "solo" mode then because he had gotten his heart broken. Making the story of how the Han of ANH became who he was be that he was a lot like the Han of post-ANH until some bad stuff happened seems wrongheaded to me.

 

Han's still pretty self-centred before arriving on Ylesia (the only person he cares about a great deal was Dewlanna, who raised him) and Han's focus on rescuing Bria, doesn't really change his character all that much - he's still pretty unscrupulous in all other respects.

Same with after leaving the Academy - he has both an altruistic streak and a selfish, ruthless streak - both of which stand out in the Brian Daley books as well.

 

This just needs to be said twice. This trilogy too often felt like watching the OT in reverse. Add to that the way things ended between her and Han (not to mention the other smugglers) and I just can't bring myself to remotely like the character. Once I really couldn't stand her, it made it difficult to enjoy her having a role in the formation of the Rebellion or her "heroic ending".

Regarding the series as a whole, the only other thing I didn't like about it was that nearly every line in the movies now turns out to have a "real meaning" that comes from these books. It could have worked sparingly, but it was overdone. That said, the Hutt intrigue in these was my absolute favorite part - one of the highlights of the Bantam run. I wish they had done a book or trilogy focused just on that.

 

This thread did get a little ugly for a bit there. At least the OP basically got his questions answered before that.

 

EXACTLY. What I find improbable is that Han is made cynical and hardened simply because some girl dumped and betrayed him, rather than it being the result of a life of hard knocks and of seeing how the world, or rather, galaxy, operated. He was a smuggler. Smugglers aren't usually known for their wide-eyed idealism. That was perfectly fine as an explanation, without adding some girl that is the be-all and end-all behind EVERYTHING he does and says in the OT. Crispin claimed that Bria "explained" this or that, but she fails to recognize that the "explanations" are for things that are contrived beyond belief, or which take a fact and built up contrivances around it, so as to "justify" the creation of her blatant, self-insertion Mary Sue. No, Bria is not perfect, she's boring, weak and selfish. But no one in the books sees her flaws, they all think she's the greatest thing in the universe. Even Boba Fett. Besides which, another, rather important characteristic of Sue-ism is what I mentioned before: being a self-insertion character through which the author lives out his/her fantasies: in this case, Crispin's romantic fantasies about Han/Harrison.

Why WOULDN'T his romances be shallow before he met Leia? He struck me as being pretty casual about romance, as well as everything else, before he hooked up with Luke, Leia, et al. And I noticed that once again, people resorted to the, "What, do you think Han never had a girlfriend before Leia?" non-argument. I already SAID that I never thought that, that a guy like Han would have had MANY girlfriends/lovers. But he had never been IN LOVE before he met Leia. I find that a lot more believable than him being obsessively in love with Bria for ten years, to the point where he names his ship after her and keeps a letter she wrote him like some treasured possession.

I found his romances in the Han Solo Adventures much more believable. In fact, I find that trilogy of books a much more believable account of Han's pre-ANH adventures, rather than three romance novels about his obsession with some stupid girl, complete with "love" scenes that the author bragged were inspired by "her libido." TOO MUCH INFORMATION.

Oh, and as for the other non-argument, the "what, do you think the movie characters are going to be the best at everything, all the time?" No, I do NOT think that. That would be boring. But the point I was making was that it is JUST as boring to have them be incompetent doofuses who can barely tie their own shoes while EVERY CHARACTER THEY MEET is better at something than at least one of them, or, in the case of Mara, better at everything than all of them. The authors take special pains to make sure the canon characters are weak and helpless while the OCs run rings around them. That is JUST AS BORING as the first scenario, with the canon characters being Superpeople. Like anakinfan said, it is much more interesting when they all work together.

I fail to see why a thread cannot delve into criticism of an author's OC. People all over the boards say MUCH harsher things about Lucas's characters, and about Lucas himself, than has been said in this thread about Bria or Crispin. If you think this thread is "ugly," really, you have no idea. Example: threads where people say, "I wanted to bring barbecue sauce to the theater when I watched that whiny p*ick Anakin fry in ROTS," or fantasies about Jar Jar being gruesomely murdered.

Oh, and by the way, I do object to seeing Han and Leia's romance be abused and treated like nothing, especially in the face of the glorification that other romances get in the EU. I also object to seeing Leia be degraded, insulted, and minimized so some female OC can shine. In fact, I dislike seeing any of the canon characters get degraded, insulted and minimized some some OC, male or female, can shine, but it happened most blatantly with Leia, time and time again. EVERY female character that comes along is better than Leia at...well, just about everything.

 

There's criticism and then there's brutally, wildly, hyberbolically flogging a nearly twenty-year-old novel trilogy and its author. Whether its valid criticism or not is almost beside the point. And I'm fully aware "other people do it" but that's neither a valid justification nor makes it any less ugly, IMO.