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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

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

Discussion in 'Literature' started by unicorn, Feb 10, 2016.

  1. Stymi

    Stymi Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 10, 2002
    A woman can **** up in a story and it not be a "message," a trope, or a representation of something all women do.

    I'm not seeing that theme at all.

    That being said, Ben being a smarmy, privileged ******* is no one's fault but his own. Just as Anakin's dickishness wasn't Obi-Wan's fault (although Obi blamed himself)--they were Anakin's ****** and selfish choices. Likewise for Ben.

    Sent from my Moto X-Wing
     
  2. unicorn

    unicorn Chosen One star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 19, 2001
    The thing is, the "career woman make bad mothers" has been around since the 1960s/1970s, when women started going out to work. My own mother was told repeatedly me and my sister were going to end up delinquent or criminals because she was a terrible mother for putting her career over her family. If the backstory is that Leia (a beloved heroine by millions of girls and women) screwed up Ben because she decided to have a career instead of staying home and being a housewife, that WILL send a message that women can't successfully have both an important career and be good wives and mothers. They're saying if Leia had only decided that instead of having a career to make the galaxy a better place, she had given that up to stay home and be a housewife, Ben would have never gone Dark, all those padawans (and countless others that he murdered) would still be alive, and the First Order would have never gotten so strong without Kylo leading it, so Leia in the end caused way more harm than good in the galaxy, despite fighting for the good of the galaxy her entire life.

    It's especially going to look like a double standard when you have Bail Organa, a Senator (same job Leia had) who didn't even live on the same planet as his wife or daughter most of the time (meanwhile Ben at least lived on the same planet as Leia), who is adored by both Breha and Leia as a wonderful husband and father, despite having a busy job. So if Leia is supposedly a crap mother because she had a career as a Senator, while Bail is revered as this amazing father when he held the exact same job, and one's a man and one's a woman...it's going to look like a gender double standard no matter what their intention is.

    It's like the people who want Rey to end up with Kylo - sure, Rey is only ONE character, but she's someone millions of girls look up to, and if she ends up with the guy who kidnapped and tortured her and murdered her father figure in front of her, that does send a terrible message to young women. (Sorry if other people in this thread ship Reylo, but that's how I feel).

    Agreed on Ben being a privileged ******* though. Of the main characters in SW other than Padme or Leia, I don't think anyone had a better childhood than he did. I finished reading Rebel Rising last month, and Jyn also had a childhood that was a million times worse than Ben's, so I'm not sure why LFL keeps thinking we'll have sympathy for a 23 year old dude because his parents had jobs.
     
  3. PCCViking

    PCCViking Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Jun 12, 2014
    I hope they don't blame Han and Leia's careers for Ben turning to the dark side. Judging from the limited canon information, it looks like Ben would have had it better than Jacen, Jaina and Anakin from Legends, where Leia was the Chief of State. Despite Jacen's fall to the dark side, at least Leia's career choices wasn't to blame for that.
     
  4. Claire1976

    Claire1976 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 20, 2013
    I sincerely hope not but I fear that’s the direction they are heading in. What an awful message to send out to young impressionable kids if that’s the case. Oh so your parents have jobs and you feel neglected, but don’t worry you can vent your frustration by becoming a psychopath and committing patricide. It’s ok, every one understands why you did it, you poor thing.

    Ugh.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
  5. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    At some point, in the future, this may become the status quo, but right now? We're not there yet, which is why this strikes such a weird note with everything else LFL have been doing in the same area.
     
  6. Jedi Jessy

    Jedi Jessy Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 28, 2016
  7. unicorn

    unicorn Chosen One star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 19, 2001
    Ew, people actually thought Leia would sleep with Obi-Wan or Lor San Tekka? And I can't really blame people for thinking Han and Leia were split up forever, because the way the movie showed it Han could have split right after Leia got pregnant or they could have seen each other a few months ago, it was never really made clear. Most of the people I saw it with who were casual SW fans thought that it was similar to Indy and Marion where Han knocked Leia up and ran off and was an absent father in Ben's life.

    Yeah, Leia wasn't portrayed very well in Legends on being a mother. Though at least they had Han who was a house husband staying home with the kids, so they had one parent around all the time. A lot of people are now criticizing Han and Leia for both having important travel intensive careers. Them sending their children off for the first two years of their life though was ridiculous and I could never see Han or Leia agreeing to that. Those are vitally important bonding years!

    EDIT:
    GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!

    From our very own MandrinaQ and her dinner with Chuck Wendig:

    mandatheginger
    Last Thursday I had so much fun with a bunch of famous people.
    There was even a very serious (read: we were drinking) conversation about Han & Leia’s HAPPY marriage in the Aftermath trilogy. Seriously. That happened.

    Ahh, details? This fascinates me because so many people got out of the book that Han was miserable being settled down and wanted to run away from being a husband and father, and there were a million articles about how this book foreshadowed Han and Leia’s break up. Did Chuck mention any of those and what he thought?

    mandatheginger

    He said he literally WAS NOT foreshadowing their splitting up. That they were just regular newlyweds with the added stress of trying to end a war. Like- they were perfectly happy!
     
  8. Stymi

    Stymi Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 10, 2002
    Is there rampant sexism in the US? Yes. But still...let a story and the characters be who they are.

    I think that approach is a mistake and boxes women and other underrepresented groups into acceptable/unacceptable roles as much as anything else.

    Plus...like I said, that is not my take on why Kylo is a dick at all, even if his parents blame themselves. (Good parents tend to do that.) I'm sure others see it differently...Lorr San Tekka (sp?) is a good example.

    Sent from my Moto X-Wing
     
  9. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    Here's the thing though: Can I really buy that a company as media savvy as LFL, with all the awareness of how high-profile SW is as a franchise, is missing that they've built a nigh-on pitch perfect position, except with the discordant note that is how they're handling Leia?

    It just doesn't add up for me.

    And then we get a book like Leia: Princess of Alderaan, which pinballs all the way back to what the character should be.
     
  10. unicorn

    unicorn Chosen One star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 19, 2001
    But, if we are letting the characters be who they are, there's nothing in the OT that Leia would be a terrible mother. She's given the stark choice in ROTJ - help the Rebellion out during a dire time when they need her or rescue the love of her life, and she chose the latter, and this is during a much more dire time for the Rebellion than during a time of peace. The director of ROTJ even said Leia's scene with Wicket in ROTJ is to show her nurturing, maternal side because ROTJ is supposed to be about Leia's character arc of learning to live beyond the Rebellion and having a personal life, so she's deliberately written to be softer, more nurturing, openly affectionate with Han and Luke, etc. to show how she's grown from the ice princess we see in ANH. That was the whole point of her character arc (while Han's was going from selfish to selfless) so again it's kind of counter intuitive from the character we last see in ROTJ to immediately revert back to being an ice queen who puts the New Republic ahead of her family all the time.

    And, maybe at one point we will be able to get to the point we don't have someone like Trump being elected President and women have equal opportunities as men...but we're not there now, and presenting a backstory that Leia deciding to have a career instead of being a housewife was in retrospect a catastrophic choice that has consequences for the entire galaxy, yes, would send a terrible message to young women on having to choose between career and family (you can't have both). It's like if they kill off Finn halfway through Episode VIII and people criticize the trope of killing the visible minority character early on - we're just not at the stage yet where women and POC are fairly represented in media that HOW they are represented matters a lot, no matter how the intention.

    EDIT:
    Jedi Ben
    This - LFL has repeatedly gone on record of how "SW is for girls now" "SW is now feminist" "We're celebrating female heroes the way we used to celebrate male heroes" and patted themselves on the back for their new feminist and diversity mantra. They're acknowledging that representation matters and that when people watch media of people who look like them on screen (girls/women and POC) their representation matters to them. So to turn around and be like "Oh, but Leia the original SW heroine who millions of girls looked up to was a crappy mother because she had a career as a Senator" is...pretty hypocritical and tone deaf.

    Leia in the book repeatedly thinks about how close she is to her parents and how much she appreciates that they raised her, not nannies or droids, so it doesn't make sense that she would then go onto push her own son off to be raised by nannies or droids instead of by his parents.
     
  11. Jedi Jessy

    Jedi Jessy Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 28, 2016
  12. LelalMekha

    LelalMekha Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 29, 2012
  13. Jedi Jessy

    Jedi Jessy Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 28, 2016
  14. unicorn

    unicorn Chosen One star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 19, 2001
    Awww, that was so cute! Han and Leia bickering, and then Hera making Han say the Ghost is a superior ship to the Falcon, and then Leia teasing Han about it and them holding hands. So adorbs!

    Han's voice actor sounded kind of like him, but Leia's really didn't, but I bet that would be hard to find a match because Carrie has such a distinctive voice.

    Also MovieWeb has Indiana Jones as the greatest movie character of all time, with Han Solo in #3 and Princess Leia in #10. Power couple for the win!
     
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  15. Daneira

    Daneira Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 30, 2016
    I don’t like Han’s voice at all. He had none of that Harrisonesque charm. thought the guy that voiced TFA-era Han did a much better job. I don’t see why they needed a different person to do voice younger Han, just tone down the gravel.

    I don’t think Leia’s had a good voice actor since Ann Sachs in the NPR radio plays. Most of the cartoons make her sound like “generic female cartoon character”.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
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  16. Coherent Axe

    Coherent Axe Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 20, 2016
    The Young Han voice sounds like a reasonably good character study of Harrison's intonation and mannerisms to me (particularly any time he's being indignant, like throughout Empire), but the actor just doesn't have anything close to Ford's actual voice, so it's an odd assortment of familiar characteristics layered over a completely different voice.
     
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  17. MattOrgana

    MattOrgana Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 7, 2015
  18. Jedi Jessy

    Jedi Jessy Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 28, 2016
    This dress is making me uncomfortable. Seems like they made her too sexual (from Poe Comics)
    [​IMG]
     
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  19. unicorn

    unicorn Chosen One star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 19, 2001
    Which comic is this? I think it's okay, it's just the angle that makes it a bit more defined, but I've seen much worse.

    I can't really get into the Poe comics because I just can't read about Leia while separated from Han, it's too sad :( I honestly don't even know how that poor woman is even functioning.

    I did read the entire Han Solo comic finally and loved it! Marjorie really had Han's character down, and you can tell he already has it bad for Leia and it's pretty explicitly said she's the reason he's staying with the Rebellion (similar to how Zahn and Wells wrote it in the old EU). The final moment between Han and Leia was a shipper's dream come true.
     
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  20. MattOrgana

    MattOrgana Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 7, 2015
    I think the author was trying to pay homage to Padmé.

    [​IMG]

    Leia seems to be exiting a Nubian starship as well.

    But I agree with you that dress isn't something Leia would normally wear. She's very practical, even with her regal dresses (just look her TLJ outfits).

    Comic illustrators always accentuate curves on female, and muscles on males characters.
     
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  21. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    Not always, this tends only to be true for superhero comics. Other genres will be considerably more realistic in their visuals.
     
  22. MattOrgana

    MattOrgana Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 7, 2015

    I admit that I'm not much fan of comic books, and the only ones I've read were those of superheroes (besides, of course, the comics of "Turma da Mônica", which every Brazilian child in the last 40 years must have read ). Also, Star Wars comics are hard to find here in Brazil.
     
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  23. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    Well, despite the prevalence and sheer quantity of superhero material, there are lots of other genres within the comics medium, but getting hold of the material can be tricky.
     
  24. unicorn

    unicorn Chosen One star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 19, 2001
    Here's an excellent podcast on LPOA:

    http://www.starwarsreport.com/2017/10/27/leias-boyfriend-swbw-81/

    It's interested reading the different opinions on the Leia/Kier relationship - the woman on the podcast is totally into it and kind of fangirls over the part where Kier takes down Leia's braids (totally out of fanfic!) and thinks the relationship served as a foil to the Han/Leia relationship because what Leia ultimately needs in the end is someone like Han, not Kier. Meanwhile, the guy on the podcast thinks the relationship should have been cut out entirely and only wanted to read about the action parts lol.
     
  25. unicorn

    unicorn Chosen One star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 19, 2001
    Has anyone read the new Luke book out yet? Are Han and Leia mentioned at all in it?