Lit Han and Leia in the EU - A Discussion Thread (Life Debt spoilers must be tagged)

Spoiler

It's the whole "but it's for kids" cliché. Which a. doesn't give kids enough credit, and b. ignores the fact that SW has generally been geared towards every age group practically.

Also there is unfortunately this feeling in fiction, and it tends to be much more prevalent when it comes to female characters, that they somehow become "less pure" or heroic if they dare to have a romantic/sex life of their own. Not by everyone certainly, but prevalent enough to be noticeable.

Me, I find the new take refreshing myself. This stuff happens, so why try and deny it?

I do have one potential concern however, between this and RO, I really hope that LF doesn't get into the habit of going "well this prominent new character wasn't in the OT, so they must be dead. Because we don't think that our audience will accept any other explanation." Like if Emila Clarke's character ends up being Han's pre-Leia SO (or one of them at least), I hope that LF doesn't go in with the attitude that she automatically has to die just because we didn't see her in the OT.

 

The problem with killing POC: the number of poc character still is less than white characters, killing them is like ignore this problem. RO had a group with latin and asian actors but their characters died in their first movie, I'm latina and I was wanting to see some of them surviving. Korr Sella died in TFA without say one line before and nobody mention her during TFA

Luke's girlfriend (in Heir of the Jedi) was a black woman and she died in the book, it's was really necessary? They didn't need to do it, "but where's she in OT?" they could easily said she is in others missions, OT didn't show every rebel. There's even a trope about it (I don't remember the name) that is about how much is frequently people of color dying in movies/books (sometimes they're the only character who dies).

 

Spoiler

Yes on both counts, especially the female character thing. Like Han is definitely not a virgin before Leia, so who cares if Leia isn't as well when she starts a relationship with Han? And even for the SW books that weren't specifically labelled YA, everyone knew that 10-12 year olds were reading them anyway, and there were much worse scenes (like Xizor trying to rape Leia with his pheromones) in previous Legends books.

I think the attitude is to kill them off to prevent speculation like "Kura is going to show up when Han and Leia are separated and Han will have an affair with her!" which I unfortunately wouldn't put past some future EU author to do. Although with Kier, I don't really think he had to die because they were obviously going to break up anyway due to their incompatible political ideologies and then you can just assume he died in the Alderaan explosion (though I guess Alderaan being destroyed proved his point eventually lol).

Jedi Jessy, I see your point and it is an unfortunate common occurrence that POC die more commonly in fiction than white characters. I'm not sure I see it in those particular cases, because I feel like each of their characters was sort of "doomed" the minute we meet them because we know that Jyn/Leia/Luke are single. I think it's more just a YA thing coming of age trope to kill off the love interest in the most dramatic way possible.

Really, I wish the films would do more diversity instead of white brunette + men of colour because well, other than Rose there is still a painful lack of WOC in Star Wars films.

 

We have the best Star Wars covers here in Brazil.

 

Claire1976, I've had a chance to listen to them now and they talk about Han/Leia in the first episode. It was interesting because they talk about how everyone when they saw TFA just assumes they never worked out, Han was off smuggling and Leia was committed to duty and they came together and had a kid but then Han took off after that and how surprised they were to see them still solid and together in Bloodline, but that the marriage worked within their personalities.They also go into a good character discussion on Leia in Bloodline and how we never see her deal with the trauma of losing Alderaan in the movies but the book makes clear she has PTSD from it.

 

Thanks for the nod.

Here's a link to it

http://boards.theforce.net/index.php?threads/50046128/

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It is a good looking cover. But Leia looks more like an aged version of OT Leia than how older Carrie Fisher looked in the ST.

Sent from my Moto X-Wing

 

http://eleven-thirtyeight.com/2017/09/like-mother-like-daughter-breha-and-leia-organa/ Like Mother, Like Daughter Leia and Breha Organa.

Spoiler

But perhaps the greatest strength of the book is the depiction of the relationship Leia has with both her adoptive parents. We’ve seen plenty of Bail Organa in Star Wars before; Leia mentions him as a part of her plea for Obi-Wan’s help, he plays a major role in Revenge of the Sith, and has popped up in several books as well as the RebelsTV show. We have ample knowledge of how close he and Leia were and, of course, we know he trusts Leia with his life. But so far Breha hasn’t gotten nearly the same treatment; we know almost as little about her as we did when she first appeared on screen almost fifteen years ago. Fortunately, Claudia Gray stepped into that gap and wrote the mother/daughter story that Star Wars has sorely needed.

 

Finally got my copy! It took ages to arrive. Starting it tomorrow, too tired now. Looks good though! Love the cover art.


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Spoiler

The most disturbing thing I read on Tumblr about this book was that Claudia Gray must had Adam Driver in mind when casting Kier based on his description...WTF? (by a Reyloer)

And then a bunch of nonsense about how this book PROVES Leia was a terrible mother to Ben because she swore she would never love again after Kier, so she never loved her son. Hahahaha, people are so pathetic in trying to justify their head canons that Leia was an abusive mother.

 

I guess everyone is ignoring the parts where he was described as tan.

 

Spoiler

Oh and a bunch of "Kier is exactly who Ben Solo would have been if he hadn't had abusive parents! You mean a non-existent character you created in your mind to ship with Rey? LOL, I cannot with these people. It just makes me sad that we can't even get a PREQUEL book about Leia without fans trying to link it to Reylo.

My expectations for Reyloers is rock bottom but I have to say they even surprised me with trying to ship Kylo with his mom

 

Yeah, BD ain't that fast, but they can be cheap. Have you looked under the cover too?

 

Spoiler

I'm down with that casting.

Also relevant to the discussion up thread from Claudia Gray's Tumblr: http://claudiagray.tumblr.com/post/131842869088/the-idea-that-sex-is-something-a-woman-gives-a/amp

 

I have now.....the Alliance insignia? Or am I missing something else?

 

Nope, that was it - I just really liked the design and neat touch.

 

No Leia but I did like the Han and Chewie stuck in the Falcon with a tempting Hutt issue, mostly because there was a decent amount of Han quipping. And he gets to be kinda nasty to a evil killer Hutt crimelord, which I'm sure was cathartic to him on some level.

 

Kind of similar to what Beth Davis said about Jyn Erso in Rebel Rising, or what Patty Jenkins said about Diana in Wonder Woman.

 

Claudia announced today she's leaving Twitter due to some harassment by fans, I hope it's not related to this People seriously need to chill, it's a fictional universe.

 

Oh that's awful if she's quitting Twitter because of fan backlash over this Leia book. Even those that don't agree with certain aspects of it should grow up and not harass the poor woman!


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That's feckin' terrible.

I'm not on Twitter, due to its now notorious rep in part, but that's just awful news.

 

From what I understand it's because some people take the opinions she expresses on twitter as officially from Lucasfilm. Or something of the sort.