Comments | elizabeth_hoot: hatred empowers us

elizabeth_hoot

hatred empowers us

Oct 02, 2011 01:31

...to quote Darth Vaarsuvius.

This isn't fic -- I'm going to try and post Lucy in a few chunks, starting tomorrow, and then move on to First Impressions. No, this is just me complaining about a trope I hate, with respect to one of the Star Wars expanded universe's novels and Pride and Prejudice. (Doesn't everyone think of these things together?)

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character: elizabeth bennet, fandom: austen, genre: meta, character: anakin skywalker, character: han solo, character: leia organa, expanded universe, fandom: star wars, character: fitzwilliam darcy

Comments 17

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elizabeth_hoot October 2 2011, 19:03:19 UTC

It wasn't awful or anything, really. But painting Leia as unreasonable for her resentment is ;a;dkf;fkjd;ajdf;akdf no.In the comic, they were originally going to name him Han Junior, I think, until she decided on the spur of the moment that she wanted her son to be the biggest badass ever, and accordingly named him after the biggest badass in the family. Which makes a twisted sort of sense on its own, but is truly bizarre when you stop to think about it ( ... )

In which I find myself in the awkward position of having to defend the EU... ladyhadhafang October 2 2011, 18:06:07 UTC

Haven't really read TATOOINE GHOST, so I can't judge, but...I'm going to have to disagree somewhat. :) I think the EU can be good -- not necessarily the post-ROTJ EU, but the pre-TPM stuff and some of the CLONE WARS stuff. LABYRINTH OF EVIL's very good, for instance (great characterization of Anakin, Grievous, Dooku, etc.), the KOTOR games are fucking *awesome*, DARK RENDEZVOUS is good, WILD SPACE is good...so there's not just crap in the EU. The good EU manages to expand on canon in some way and even improve it a bit -- it may be published fanfiction, but it's good published fanfiction. And the novelizations are quite good too -- even though they're technically G-canon, really. (If an interpretation ( ... )

Re: In which I find myself in the awkward position of having to defend the EU... elizabeth_hoot October 2 2011, 20:40:25 UTC

aven't really read TATOOINE GHOST, so I can't judge, but...I'm going to have to disagree somewhat. :) I think the EU can be good -- not necessarily the post-ROTJ EU

Sure? I mean, I don't really understand what you're disagreeing with here -- I don't think I even mentioned the EU at large? As you know, I like things like Shadows of the Empire and whatnot. Of course fanfic can be good, profic included. This was about Tatooine Ghost specifically.

I don't think he meant to, but IMO 'doesn't want children' as a marker of inner conflict and 'is okay with having children' as a marker of psychological maturity or whatnot is, as a trope, inherently rife with unfortunate implications. It was just yet another annoying thing.

My issue is honestly not with Leia forgiving or not forgiving her father. I agree that she'll be better off forgiving him and I love the idea of her coming to terms with his legacy. My issue is with how it was done -- that Leia's completely valid resentment of her father is presented as irrational and unreasonable by ( ... )

Re: In which I find myself in the awkward position of having to defend the EU... ladyhadhafang October 2 2011, 20:43:10 UTC

Ah. Okay. Gotcha. :)

darth_eldritch October 3 2011, 02:10:47 UTC

I read that book and I was quite underwhelmed by it. Troy Denning isn't a favorite of mine, and it's no surprise to me when I learned that he is Christie Golden's mentor. That says a lot right there.

I did like how he presented another side of Anakin, the young Anakin, but how Leia was handled, yeah, I fully agree.

elizabeth_hoot October 3 2011, 05:56:11 UTC

Oh, I'm glad it's not just me! I'd generally heard good things about it, and it was okay, but ... eh.

Christie Golden's, really? Wow. That -- yeah. Explains a lot.

I like the idea of Leia seeing another side of him, definitely. Just, not like that.

darth_eldritch October 4 2011, 00:45:45 UTC

While there was some good points in it, Tatooine Ghost annoyed me in several ways. The one I remembered the most was the constant action-action-action. I like writing a lot of action myself to have something happening, Denning's was excessive ( ... )

elizabeth_hoot October 4 2011, 16:31:20 UTC

I didn't care for the action either -- even SW itself wasn't, but TG is so obviously an excuse plot for character/relationship issues that the BAM BAM BAM seemed even more out of place. I mostly skimmed the action scenes for character stuff.

Honestly, I have difficulty seeing Leia being unforgiving for Han's sake more than her own. I guess it's a popular romantic trope, but -- it's not how I see Leia. I think, if Leia refused to forgive him (which, given how much gentler ROTJ!Leia seems, I'm not sure she would), it would be caught up in what he did to her and Han and Luke and Padmé and most of all the entire galaxy.

Well, Leia's fears did end up coming true, but that was ridiculous something that could have happened to any Force-user. I'm pretty sure Jacen didn't inherit it (and of course, Jaina and Anakin didn't end up turning).

Thread 9

kokiri85 October 3 2011, 03:26:19 UTC

Oh, yes, that trope! I've never thought about it quite like that before, but it's often bugged me.

It's like the writers don't know how to show person B forgiving A if A is actually guilty; reconciliation can only happen if they find a way to make A seem like the real victim. Like they have to make A deserve the forgiveness somehow, something that B owes them instead of a gift they choose to give.

Which may or may not be exactly what you're even talking about; I've never read Tatooine Ghost, I avoid the post-ROTJ EU like the plague. But I've read fic about Leia and Anakin that seemed to use this as well. Because the writer wants Leia to forgive him, she's therefore supposed to do so and any reasons she might have for holding back have to be made out as wrong. I want her to forgive him as much as the author does, but it isn't really forgiveness if she owes it to him.

On an unrelated note: I've been lurking around here ever since you posted links to your Lucy story, and I've done some fanart if you're interested : link

elizabeth_hoot October 3 2011, 06:24:58 UTC

Other people have seen this! Awesome. Well, not, but it's difficult to put into words exactly what it is and why it bothers me.

And yes, I agree that's what's going on there. It has to be owed, something B ought to do just to be halfway decent, not an extraordinary gesture on B's part.

You're right, it's super-common in Anakin and Leia fic in general -- that's honestly why it annoyed me so much. It wasn't that I'd never seen it before, but that I'd seen it everywhere and getting it in the 'official' (but not film canon) fic was just the icing on the failcake. She is presented as wrong, and because the situation is so extreme they have to make her, well, stupid to actually get away with it ( ... )

kokiri85 October 4 2011, 00:20:04 UTC

I will admit that it seems like it'd be a hard thing to write; I have no idea how I'd go about it. But then, I'm not trying to be a writer either.

You're welcome, I'm glad you like it! I drew it largely because I was trying to picture Lucy as I was reading, and I wanted an illustration for myself.

I thought I poked around quite a bit, but I did not see the paper dolls so I guess I was less thorough than I thought. I will have to find them!

And, well, I plan to do more. That doesn't always translate into anything.

elizabeth_hoot October 4 2011, 16:22:38 UTC

In retrospect, I realized that the dolls are probably spoilery as hell. But if you don't mind that, they're here and here.

Honestly, just those two are amazing. <3