Books Journey to TFA: Lost Stars by Claudia Gray (finally coming to paperback Aug 1!)

Actually, I just realized there's a really great set up for a sequel.

There's going to be probably no war crimes trials because there's a treaty with the Empire, not a dissolution.

Which means that in all likelihood, Cien Ree is going to be repatriated back to the Empire.

WOW, talk about an Ironic Hell.

 

I've got to say there's something I hadn't picked up on which kind of makes the book even better and that's how Cien Ree really misses her own reflection. A lot of the book basically has her looking down Nash Windrunner as well as thinking him as outright insane.

Which, fair enough, he's so far around the bend he's coming back. However, Nash has the exact same elaborate series of justifications and insane rationalizations Cien Ree does--even though Cien Ree's mother is enslaved by the Empire to a virtual death-sentence. It's also a case you could very well view the man as in serious need of psychiatric help and counseling but there's absolutely no one who doesn't tell him, "This is for the good of the Empire and you need to follow it through."

Cien's handling of her friend is entirely understandable but also about the absolute worst way to handle it as well as hypocritical.

 

My biggest issue with how she represented oppression in the Empire was how she totally skipped over the role of women. Is it not totally obvious even to kids reading this that we never saw women in the Empire in the films? That completely threw me off the entire way through the book. She finally got around to talking about the slavery of a couple species, though didn't really discuss xenophobia at all. Missed opportunity to explore those issues in a YA novel that's otherwise relatively layered.

 

There's no black people in the OT Empire either but the idea the Empire is racist is stupid. It also would be rather off with the new EU as we've got a female (lesbian) Moff, a black female Admiral, and Captain Phasma who is actually Commandant of the Stormtrooper Corps.

Plus we have the greatest female Imperial who ever (or ever will) lived.

 

Why is that stupid? They're xenophobic and there's no black Imperials shown in the films.

The EU isn't canon, so those lady Imperials don't count (sorry). Phasma isn't in the Empire, she's in the New Order, which is clearly a bit different.

 

Well, the television shows certainly do count.

But for a real answer, the idea of making the Empire of a galactic-spanning civilization sexist, racist, AND xenophobic just on the basis of appearances in the movie runs into some questionable territory. If we unravel this particular ball of string, it means:

* The First Order is a reformer organization rather than a bunch of crazy radicals.
* The Rebellion was racist and xenophobic until Return of the Jedi.
* The Rebellion is probably still pretty sexist since only Leia, Ion Canon Girl, and Mon Mothma exist.
* The Empire as a fandom for toys and girls who like them will be exclusionary.

Daala, for example, really offended a lot of female Imp fans.

Anywho, Tua is from the show so she counts.

 

Okay, so one female Imperial outside of this book. Ever. You're right, I take it back, the Empire isn't sexist at all.


The First Order can be slightly more inclusive and still consist of crazy radicals.

The Rebellion specifically did contrast with the Empire in this regard, even if the numbers were still heavily skewed toward white human men. A lot of members of the military arm of the Rebellion were also former Imperials, so it would be reasonable to expect more of them to be human males if that's what the Empire selected for.

That same logic translates to the Resistance to some degree, but maybe they are still pretty sexist! They should have had more than just Leia around the table planning the offensive against Starkiller Base.

Most fandoms are unintentionally exclusionary to girls and people of color. That doesn't mean we aren't fans anyway, but it's still an issue. (One which TFA went a long way to address with the three new main characters and it's absolutely fantastic.)

At any rate, there's a distinction to be made: Casting in the 70s reflected that time and of course it was mostly white men. But, the Empire is also most definitely sexist and xenophobic. It's part of the whole evil thing and it's intentional. My original point was that the author missed a great opportunity, particularly for a YA audience, to talk about those issues more. I felt like pretending women had always been there and ignoring the fact that Ciena was the only female in a leadership position (and then only out of desperation as the Empire crumbled) was a lame move.

Further, I just don't understand the need to argue this point and try to claim the Empire isn't awful on all fronts. What's the point of defending that? Why is it so controversial to call the bad guys sexist and suggest it ought to be pointed out?

 

I guess because it's good clean fun which should be encouraging to young women, potentially who want to serve in the Armed Forces.

Though that's another ball of beeswax.

But to each their own.

 

Also, this has been discussed elsewhere and at greater length, but it's hard to deny that Imperial in-universe sexism enabled out-of-universe sexism among fans. Daala is an excellent example of this in action.

 

I'm not familiar with this, actually.

 

In a nutshell, criticism of Daala with sexist overtones - e.g., she's incompetent so she really did sleep her way to flag rank and is just lying to herself when she dismisses the idea - would not have been possible, or at least as possible, if Imperial sexism did not exist to lend any sort of in-universe credence to those arguments. In that specific case, for instance, we've seen many male Imperial admirals over the years who aren't as good as they think they are; Daala could just be one of them in a gender-neutral Empire.

 

In a galaxy that has creatures like Hutts, why would humans bother discriminating against each other?

 

Because humans are idiots?

 

Do Bolvan and Hija appear? If not, are they mentioned?

 

I'm reading the other YA novels now and they've all been fast reads, is this despite its length a fast read?

 

Deceptively so.

 

It was for me, but that was probably because I loved it so much that I couldn't put it down.

 

In the OT as a function of casting/budget in the 1970s I guess the Empire ends up as all white men, this then largely continues into the EU with notable exceptions (Daala, Thrawn etc). So looking just at that there is definitely solid basis for the sexist/xenophobic labels.

In the new continuity, which is canon Lexu, we're starting to see a more diverse Empire at least in terms of gender and skin colour amongst humans. Keeping in mind the books can only show us a small slice at a time we've already had a lot of page time given to the likes of Ciena Ree, Rae Sloane and Thara Nyende in the Battlefront novel plus Ciena's female friends in Lost Stars, that show there are women serving at all levels of the Empire and also in combat roles. Female characters or background extras amongst First Order forces in TFA reflect a continuation of this whilst Ciena, Rae and Finn are part a steadily building diversity in the new continuity. Based on this I'd now just classify the Empire in the new continuity as human supremacist xenophobes and not sexist or racist (within Human-only society).

 

Also Lords of the Sith and A New Dawn are cannon novels. So the lesbian Moff and the black Imperial Admiral are cannon, not Legends, they are there. The idea of the Empire being sexists as well all the other stuff it does is silly - just pile everything evil we can think on it, no need for moderation and nuance (even the 40k Imperium doesn't care about your gender/skin color and that one make the Galactic Empire look downright benign).

 

I totally forgot about the Moff in Lords of the Sith... also another Battlefront example would be Everi Chalis as a planetary governor.

 

Ah, I agree.

Compare Ysanne Isard and Daala and you'll see some interesting contrasts too. Both of them were lovers of major Imperial characters (Palpatine as well as Tarkin) while both rose to their positions at abnormally young ages while being fanatics. However, Isard generally has the respect of fans and is considered more like Diana from V (who also was the Emperor's lover) in that she was competent as well as exploiting her ties to the Republic.
Daala was treated with a great deal of sexist language left and right with the attempts to redeem her character never working--perhaps because the one in Fate of the Jedi was as out of character for her as Darth Caedus was for Jacen Solo.

Even so, Daala was a severe problem because a lot of women authors WANTED to write about female Imperials because they liked the Empire. It's why Daala kept showing up as the only major living female Imperial Admiral. This despite the fact the character was a repeated unrepentant war criminal.
Now we have Rae Sloane and others to choose from and Thank the Force for that.

 

It's also notable Kevin J. Anderson INVENTED the fact the Empire was sexist. There were numerous West End Games Imperial female characters who you'll never have heard of but who got buried because the novels had more prominence.

* Lira Wessex: Did you know the Imperial Star Destroyer was designed by a woman?



* Tanda Pryl: Captain of the Thunderflare



* Tour Aryon, the Governor of Tatooine



* Elena Shelvey, Jedi Hunting ISB Agent

 

And before WEG, there were quite a few female officers in the Marvel Star Wars comics:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Zeta_Traal
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Plikk

 

Not in the books, but in A New Hope: Motti says to Tagge, "Dangerous to your starfleet, Commander, not to this battle station."

 

"The Death Star is heavily shielded and carries a firepower greater than half the starfleet."