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

Oh wow. It's been too long since I watched ANH

 

This isn't actually how it is in the book.

 

Spoilers for CPOV:

Spoiler

Haven't read the whole book yet, but that Breha chapter OUCH. At least her and Bail were together....

I loved seeing TooVee again, although so sad that she was primarily concerned with Leia's dress for the upcoming Eclipse ball knowing what was going to happen

Love the cute reference that there's no reason Leia would ever need to be fluent in Shyriiwook though (but cool that she's proficient, I always wondered how well her and Chewie understood each other in the OT).

Haven't read every chapter but so far enjoyed the viewpoint of the Rebel watching Leia during the medal ceremony, the Rebel who gave the Death Star plans to Leia, and Beru.

 

Still catching up on the comics....Really liked the Han Solo one about him smuggling the Hutt, and also the obvious implication he was only staying withe Rebellion because of Luke and Leia, despite his assertions to the contrary.

The Princess Leia series was AWESOME! Beautiful artwork, Leia being in character, Leia dealing with the falling out of the Alderaan destruction (something that's completely glossed over in ANH) and Leia having a kick ass friendship with another female character that passes the Bechdel test on every page. Hell yeah! (oh and super cute when she uses the name Solo to go undercover).

 

Ah, I'm glad to see some love for this min, at last! I have no idea why, but many people strongly dislike it.

 

People dislike it?? Why?? It's so great! It's rare that you see Leia in character in the comics, but I thought she was captured perfectly here.

Spoilers for CPOV

Spoiler

The Greedo chapter was stupid. We didn't need a love triangle "backstory" that Greedo had a personal vendetta against Han because he stole his woman, the fact that he had a bounty on his head was enough for Greedo to want to capture him. And Han and Greedo aren't even the same species (or even close) so ??? Was this woman a human or an alien? So weird!

I noticed some parallels in the Beru chapter about her raising him even though she knows who his father is and Han & Leia/Ben. I know a lot of people bash Han for being a bad father because he said "There's too much Vader in him" but Beru said the same thing about Luke and no one says she was a terrible guardian??

 

Spoiler

Great, new canon has Han gambling with Rebellion's money and now he stole Greedo's girlfriend (who may not even be human)??? Sigh.

They're slowly turning Han from the lovable scoundrel he was in Legends and the films to nasty jerk in new canon. After them turning Leia into a physically and verbally abusive person in Marvel's comics, it's like I don't even recognize these characters anymore.

 

re: Leia

I found it a good enough story. The problem is for the creative team assembled, good enough is pretty middling - more was expected from Waid and Dodson.

 

HAN
’Twas not all bad—our past, our history?
Full many moments e’en, methinks, did glow.

LEIA
They still do glow within my memory.

HAN
Some habits of our lives shall ne’er be chang’d.

LEIA
Indeed, thou still art troubler of my days,
The one who keeps my spirit disarrang’d.
O, Han, if on our son thou chanc’st to gaze,
I prithee, bring him home with thee again:
Then two may yet be three: thou, I, and Ben.

—William Shakespeare’s the Force Doth Awaken by Ian Doescher. Art by Nicolas Delort.

https://sleemo.tumblr.com/

 

Awww. But reaffirms my beliefs that Leia was asking Han to bring Ben home to "them" not just her and Han died trying to fulfill that promise.

Spoiler

I don't know if he "stole" Greedo's girlfriend but apparently Greedo was in love with a woman who chose Han. Which...yeah, again super weird because they're not even close to the same species.

Okay, if we can get a chapter from the POV of the sea monster in the garbage compactor SURELY we can get one of a fly on the wall on the way to Bespin for the ESB equivalent of CPOV right???

 

The Luke and Leia panel at Salt Lake Comic Con.
http://fullofsith.com/archives/2139
And apparently

Spoiler

A member of the Story Group said Leia's weakness is her parenting.

 

Great...

 

He clarified it here: https://twitter.com/maribfcosta/status/916310063521894406 Apparently he said he wasn't trying to malign all working moms, but just Leia in particular And it was a "group effort" to screw up Ben, so I guess Luke and Han were involved too?

I think Pablo who has been very vehement that Ben's fall is not due to Han and Leia being bad parents outranks this guy, so let's just hope he's talking out of his ass.

I don't really care if Leia as an example isn't meant to be a maligning of mothers who work, that's going to be how it reads to a lot of people. Bail was a busy Senator who lived part time on another planet (something Leia didn't do before Ben went off to train with Luke), so if the backstory is that Leia's mistake was being a Senator while being a mother well that's some double standard gender BS.

 

I didn't read it as him making a statement against working women but I also didn't agree with him about Leia being flawless by design. Still, it's nice to see him confirm it nonetheless.

 

I still find it bizarre that SW would push this line of argument at all.
Historically, it's a new approach to explain the whole "fall to the Dark Side" - it's always been more cerebral/thematic. Not domestic. I've thought of "Why?" ever since Bloodline went to print. It seems confusing, the whole authorial intent.

 

I argued with him a bit on Twitter but he didn't back down his original statement. I think he's trying to say "I'm not blaming all working mothers, just Leia in particular." Which is still a terrible message. LFL can ---- off with their "Leia is a great feminist icon!" championing while simultaneously blaming her as a working mother on the sins of her child (pretty much the definition of anti-feminism).

 

It's just insane to me that Ben's fall to the dark side is being placed so heavily on Han and Leia... obviously parents play a HUGE role in shaping their children, that hardly needs to be said. But Ben is an individual and a grown a** man, responsible for his own choices????!!! I feel like someone somewhere along the line said, "Wait, it doesn't make any sense for Kylo to be as confused and dark as he is. We need to explain how this could have happened, given how committed to the light side of the Force and the Rebellion his parents are." As if it never happens in real life that children end up with wildly different perspectives and values from their parents...
This is nothing that hasn't been said before, I guess. I'm just annoyed that new additions to the "Leia sucks as a working mom" narrative are happening when it's a terrible explanation for anything and not in her character. Sure, she's imperfect, of course. But having this one dramatic and unrealistic "character flaw" of not being able to balance work and her son just seems like its excusing bad writing... real people are more complex than that. Leia deserves more complexity than that, and other people (Zahn, Gray) have written her to be more complex than that, so it's obviously not impossible.

 

It's definitely lazy storytelling and falling into the Hollywood cliche of "a career woman can't balance work and family!" because they need to find a "flaw" for Leia. Um, has anyone seen ESB? She has LOTS of flaws, that's part of what makes her great as a character. And this guy seems to be going on results based parenting - Ben fell to the Dark Side therefore Han, Leia and Luke must have screwed up. By that measure I guess the sand that raised Rey and the stormtroopers who raised Finn were great parents?

And also, it just seems like a lot of the storytelling group and Han/Leia haters never watched ROTJ when they talk about how Han and Leia would have been a terrible couple and parents? Han's whole character arc is going from selfish to selfless and part of the whole (there's an explicit paragraph in the ROTJ novelization about that), and Leia's is learning to put love ahead of the cause (again, there's another entire paragraph in the ROTJ novelization about that). Their relationship in ROTJ is completely non volatile - they argue ONCE and then Han apologizes right away. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but it's really frustrating that someone at LFL actually believes this crap.

 

It certainly makes the development of their relationship appear fragmented and jagged.

There's a smooth positive curve up to the end of ROTJ, then it starts going all over the place - conflict appears suddenly and without sensible explanation.

Oh well.

 

If they wanted Ben to essentially inherit the dark side from his parents, they chose pretty stupid elements like Leia working and Ben being the grandson of Darth Vader.

Both Leia and Han have actual traits that they could pass on that could lead to the dark side. He could turn out like them in many ways, yet fall to the dark side, anyway, and at the same time it could have little to nothing to do with their parenting.

 

Would have been lovely and powerful for the story to be more about how good intentions and beautiful, strong qualities in people can get twisted by fear, injustice, circumstance, etc. (which is way more realistic anyway), than finding someone other than Kylo to "blame" for Kylo's fall. I really appreciated Leia's moment in Bloodline where she realizes that her passion for justice could lead her to do increasingly questionable things - all the while with good intent. Maybe they felt that slow progression from good intentions story had been told already with Anakin? But I like your point CT-867-5309 that they missed an opportunity to showcase specifically how parts of Han and Leia's personalities could become twisted or confused and misdirected towards the dark side.

 

That would have been more interesting - an analogy to the troubled young men who get involved in ISIS in misguided ideology. And really, the "his parents screwed him up by not being around enough" MAYBE would have worked better if the other two protagonists didn't have childhoods with NO parental guidance at all and turned out fine.

Their relationship seemed fine in Aftermath and Bloodline. But the reversion of their characters to their ANH/ESB personas by the Storytelling group (Leia as duty bound ice queen, Han as selfish scoundrel) seems cheap and lazy. I have issues with Lucas, but I know he would have never allowed his characters to be desecrated like this. Help us Pablo you're our only hope.....

EDIT: Speaking of people who never saw ROTJ, I'm arguing with some guy on Twitter who actually said "Han would put self before everyone [therefore he was a crappy parent]". Um, did this guy watch anything past the first half of ANH? Literally, Han's entire character arc in the OT is going from selfish to selfless and he repeatedly risks his life to save Luke and Leia over and over and over again. How could anyone finish watching the OT and walk away thinking Han is a "selfish" person?

 

Just my opinion, of course - but I've always thought of the Dark Side as being presented in SW more along the lines of:

Good person > flawed in certain ways but determined and bold > manipulated by the Sith/Dark-siders > Falls to the Dark Side > commits evil > realises mistake / enlightenment > redeemed

But the new way it works now appears more like this:

Good person > offspring of flawed parents > bad influence rubs off from parents > neglected by bad parents > Let the Dark Side Begin! > TBA (Please see The Lost Jedi)

The first has potential, the second is much more limited.

 

From the Official Trading Cards:

The playful bickering between Han Solo and Leia Organa was typical of an exciting chemistry that only grew as the years went on. They were eventually married, and named their son Ben, after the great Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, whose actions first brought them together.

Well at least the description of Han and Leia's marriage is complimentary instead of tearing them down like most of the official material.

I still don't really understand why they named their son Ben, after reading PLOA and the close relationship Leia has with Bail I feel like Bail would have made more sense. According to Pablo Ben's original name was an original name not named after anyone and Harrison requested it be changed to Ben (since one of his son's is named Ben), so I guess they had to retroactively give an explanation.

 

My biggest gripe with the new canon is how poorly developed Kylo is. I have no real understanding of what motivates him and how he turned out so bad beyond being an entitled brat who didn't get enough attention from mommy and daddy and uncle Luke. Having him kill Han went too far too fast with him so I'm not even invested in him being redeemed. I just wish Han and Leia's only child didn't have to be such a completely hollow monster.