Response part three + commentary
At some point, I realized this was less about the fangirlblog post and more "Elizabeth has FEELINGS. About EVERYTHING. Hear her!"
Similarly, I’ve seen fans argue that Daenerys’ nudity or Catwoman’s overt sexuality, either of which could be considered equally as titillating as Slave Leia, empower women.
Um, yeah, I am not familiar with either of those fandoms - I mean, I know who they are, I've read A Song Of ... A Game of Thrones - but what's going on here is, there's a difference between a woman who is in control of her sexuality and a woman who is fanservice for guys. (I have yet to see a woman who is fanservice for lesbian women.)
There is a difference and I think [laugh] [sigh] this is one of those things that [sigh] is a you-know-it-when-you-see-it. It's that [pause] I think it's quite easy to tell when you're given a female character who is, who might be sexually aggressive, who might be, simply be - nobody is saying that there shouldn't be sexy female characters, that that's bad. But that there's a difference between a Playboy model, being objectified for the male gaze, and something like [laughs] Sarah Connor. It's different. Even something like ... you know, it can be meaningfully parodied, like, what was it, Codex in The Guild’s “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar” video, I thought that was a great take on fanservice. And that it was obviously parody. And I've seen a lot of characters who did have a sort of control of their sexuality and it's awesome.
But that's not what's happening here. It’s like, “oh, coincidentally her shirt ripped.” And that’s - just different from a character being not ashamed of her sexuality, which is a great thing. You can counter slut-shaming without fanservice.
Everyone, women and men, has the right to their opinion, and hearing each other out is often insightful.
I do agree with that.
What’s unfortunate, I believe, is when these discussions become focused only on the merits of the imagery, and not on the full context of the story. In fact, many times the people dismissing a female character don’t even understand the story.
Yes, that’s - I’m pretty sure I got what she was talking about, in terms of it being, making it an argument without understanding the situation. So a lot of times it ends up being this equally tortuous argument that makes no sense to anyone who’s actually familiar with the source material.
That said, the story is never without context. You can’t - nothing is created in isolation. And I think it is frankly ridiculous to pretend it is. And moreover that he - I also think that it’s honestly ridiculous to be...sigh...people are going to be more concerned, I hope, about the actual ramifications on actual living women than on the made-up ones. I think it’s not only right - it not only makes sense but is completely appropriate.
Ironically, by judging image and not story, those people are perpetuating the superficial society in which we’re only judged by how we look and not for what we do.
Yeah, whatever.
[nervous laugh] I try not to be snide here, because I do generally like this - I obviously just failed. Yes - it’s not about [laugh] perpetuating superficial society, it’s about people. I saw all the time - I’m an English major, and I see it all the time in literary criticism.
Someone really wants to make an argument about … like, sexism or whatever. But what they need to do is, say, to write an article on … Pride and Prejudice. And so they’ll try to mash these together and warp the story so hard that it’s no longer recognizable. They’ll, like, argue that P&P is a failure because … Elizabeth gets married at the end! And, while there are plenty of arguments to be made about marriage, we have a critic arguing that - the one I always remember is “against the broad chest of Darcy’s logic, Elizabeth pounds the ineffectual fists of her own.” And I was just like “what the holy hell? No.”
So I get this where it’s like, you ignore the part of the story that doesn’t fit your argument because what you want to do is make your argument, or if it’s just this - social justice feels good! thing. But I don’t think you can say that arguing about perpetuating this sort of beauty focus is the superficiality that we get.
In my blog about Princess Leia as the gold standard for a strong female heroine,
I would tend to agree, but [sigh] that’s more because I love Leia so much and at the same time, I - that was why I found her treatment in ROTJ so disconcerting. She’s - a great character and she’s probably the single most empowering one I’ve run across, but I’m not sure she can be considered the gold standard because of what happened to her in ROTJ.
I discussed the storytelling dynamic of balancing her sexuality with her role as a leader of the Rebellion.
Which was apparently resolved by making her no longer the leader of the Rebellion. Yeah.
This same internal struggle for identity - can I be a mother, a friend, a nurturer or a warrior, leader, taskmaster? - exists for women in real life.
Which, yeah, I do agree with that, and I think that’s why - why, I think, Leia spoke to so many people and people get so emotionally invested in the arugments around her, in ways that a long of times - you know - I may be biased by my sort of OT fangirliness, but I think people get a lot more worked up about Leia than I have seen them do around Padmé.
I think that’s partly because [laughs] we all knew Padmé was going to die. So even though there are people who get very upset by how it happened, nobody could have predicted what was going to happen in ROTJ while we all knew what was going to happen in ROTS. I think in a way it was more of a let-down. But I do think that people tend to react really strongly to things to do with Leia because of her iconic stature.
Sometimes the roles go hand-in-hand, and other times they are diametrically opposed. While I think Leia is an exceptional heroine, she was never given a true heroine’s journey.
True, she was not the main character. Well, in ANH she kind of was, but she became … in fact that’s one of my favourite things about ANH is that she and Luke get about equal screen time and about equal narrative attention. Han doesn’t even appear until he meets Luke, he is consistently secondary to Luke in ANH, I mean in terms of narrative. Leia - you have this Luke plot and this Leia plot, and I think Luke gets a little more attention but Leia is not really a sidekick to hi, she’s like a secondary main character. She’s a deuteragonist, I think.
And to some degree in Empire - there I think Han becomes - it becomes Han-and-Leia and then Luke, but then in ROTJ, she continues to get a lot of narrative attention but it’s sort of … irrelevant narrative attention. It’s like she’s certainly - her overarching storyline is not - you can tell, watching the OT, that what we are looking at is not Leia’s story. She’s just this character who is so important but has this strange narrative position of being more than a sidekick but less than a protagonist.
On the upside, George Lucas, and especially his team of storytellers from The Empire Strikes Back, did such a phenomenal job establishing her strength of character
Yeah. I would definitely agree that in a lot of ways, Leia is at her most … fabulous in Empire. As indeed a lot of the characters are. Except Han.
that Leia hasn’t really wavered in how she is portrayed within the Expanded Universe.
Hmm. I would have to disagree. Though I will say that she isn’t derailed in the way that Luke is, or - yeah, that it’s … I guess that she’s recognizable, which is a plus? But I don’t think you can say that she hasn’t wavered. Honestly, her - I’ve mentioned it before, but where Leia - it sounds like heresy, I guess, but even where she was in the Zahn trilogy - the Zahn books, didn’t seem to intuitively follow from where she was in ROTJ, it was almost like it followed from where she was in Empire and didn’t follow ROTJ at all. Which is a preference I totally understand, but I don’t think you can say that she hasn’t wavered.
Jaina Solo, the daughter of Han and Leia, started out on a great heroine’s journey arc. The stories confronted Jaina with questions about her identity as a daughter, a sister, and a Jedi, her mother’s choices, her female Master Mara Jade’s identity crisis as a mother/warrior, how all those variables affected her life, and most importantly the isolation heroes often face.
I totally agree with her there, it looked like there would be a really awesome arc for Jaina and then there wasn’t. We are completely on the same page there.
Too soon the EU faltered with Jaina’s story, though, and became afraid to deal with her role as the Sword of the Jedi - a label foisted upon her by Luke Skywalker in Destiny’s Way - as it impacted against her potential future as the Imperial Womb of Destiny - a nickname given to her by fans when it became apparent from the Legacy comics that she would most likely be the mother of a future Fel Emperor, when this is exactly the identity crisis most women will face in real life.
Yeah - yeah, that’s just - Jaina’s arc is just so weird. And yeah, I remember that one of the first things I knew from the EU was that Han and Leia’s daughter would be The Sword of the Jedi, and I thought it sounded … so badass! [laugh] And that would just be so cool in how it would work, and then - you know - it was just sort of trotted out when they needed to wipe somebody out, but otherwise it doesn’t really impact much.
Interestingly enough, Destiny’s Way was published in 2002, the same year Attack of the Clones hit the silver screen. Padmé Amidala’s role hadn’t really shifted from the leader and warrior of The Phantom Menace;
Except it … did? [sigh] I mean, I definitely like - I think Padmé in AOTC is definitely closer to Padmé in TPM than she is to Padmé in ROTS but at the same time I don’t think you can say her role is the same in that for one she was - the big thing about Padmé in TPM, that keeps me coming back to the character even though I have so many issues with her, is that Padmé is incredibly important to TPM in and of herself. She is important as Queen of Naboo, and - as a leader and a warrior, that is why she’s important.
In AOTC, it barely sets up this, there’s this vote thing, you know people ar etrying to kill her, but that doesn’t come up again really. We leave that to just sort of be in Naboo and have her fall in love with Anakin on, you know, plot schedule, and then there’s the whole thing in Tatooine and then they go to Geonosis and she starts fighting and she’s a badass, but she’s not a leader there, I don’t think, at all. When she is a leader she’s not a warrior. Yeah, I think Padmé in AOTC is - something very different is going on than what we see of her in TPM.
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And Lucy commentary! (Transcript below.)
Lucy rocked back on her heels, gaping. "What's this?" she cried.
The astrodroid somehow managed to look sheepish, and beeped.
Uh, artoo is - I remember when I was writing these stories, they were both for SW, and the hardest characters - there were four who were nightmares to write - Chewie, Vader, Yoda, and Artoo, and Artoo was probably the worst. I couldn't think of anything other than "he beeped, adverbly." So yeah, he was really difficult.
"What is what?" Threepio said indignantly. "She asked you a question! What is that?"
The girl in the hologram crouched, reaching one hand out. "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope," she said. "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope. Help me - "
Artoo beeped again.
"Oh, he says it's nothing, ma'am," said Threepio. "Merely a malfunction. Old data. Pay it no mind."
Lucy sat back, considering the unknown girl. "Who is she? She looks so pretty and - and helpless."
Okay, so [laughs] what I was doing ... is that I prefer to think that Luke and Leia react so strongly to each other - it's a psychic twin demigod bond thingymajig and is not actually them being attracted to each other. Which is I think is actually the official explanation, not that that matters. Anyway! So the not - obviously they would not have any ability to process what this thing actually is and so they - they frame it as attraction, especially - [laugh] you know, I'm not sure it's especially Luke, they both do it.
Um, anyway, here, I think I have Lucy - she's feeling the same thing that Luke is, but she presents differently, I think, because it's much more of a - oh, a damsel, she wants to be a hero, so it's more about Leia as a damsel in distress than Leia the beautiful woman, though she registers that too.
"Er," Threepio said. "I'm afraid I'm not quite sure, ma'am. I think she was a passenger on our last voyage. A person of some importance, miss. I believe."
Yeah, he's lying again. In the original, I honestly wasn't sure if he - it doesn't really make a lot of sense. He obviously knows Leia, it's almost the first thing, with the whole the princess won't be able to escape again - he knows who she is. Even setting aside the prequels, which this story doesn't - so yeah, he's got to know something.
The recording continued to repeat itself. It seemed obviously incomplete - perhaps it had been damaged in some way. No surprise, considering Artoo's state. But there was enough to win Lucy's sympathy. She watched the hologram cycle through the message again, unable to miss the pleading and desperation in the girl's low voice.
Somebody had to do something, she thought, feeling as if she had become infected with the other girl's urgency. Lucy didn't know what any of this was about. She didn't know the girl. But somehow, that didn't seem to matter. She had to help her.
So yeah, you get this - she - the hero complex more than the Dulcinea thing that Luke has.
Besides, hadn't she longed for something to do? Something important? And now, this had all but fallen in her lap.
A little self-awareness there!
Threepio was still talking.
That's a shock!
"Is there any more of this recording?" Lucy asked abruptly. She reached towards Artoo, and he let out a frantic squeal.
"Behave yourself, Artoo. You're going to get us into trouble!" Threepio hissed. Lucy bit back a smile. "It's all right, you can trust her. She's our new mistress!"
The astrodroid gave a long string of beeps and whistles.
"He says he's the property of Obi-Wan Kenobi, a resident of these parts. And it's a private message for him."
Lucy tilted her head to the side.
"Quite frankly, miss," Threepio said, "I don't know what he's talking about. Our last master was Captain Antilles, but with what we've been through, this little R2 unit has become a bit eccentric."
I always - for some reason, I always assumed that Captain Antilles was Bail's brother and that that's his birth name - yeah, I just kind of always figure that Organa was the Queen's family name...which would make more sense, honestly, it would be the royal house, but ... yeah, there's basically no reason to think that but I always sort of did, and so that they always knew Leia, just peripherally.
"Obi-Wan Kenobi," she said thoughtfully. "I wonder if he means old Ben Kenobi?"
The incredible pseudonym of impenetrability!
She knew old Ben - not well, but probably as well as anyone did. Years ago, she and Biggs had gotten lost in the desert, and it had been old Ben who found them and brought them home.
Uh, this was inspired by a comic that - it's not Biggs in the comic - but something kind of similar happens. It's not exactly the same thing and I wasn't imagining it as exactly the same, but that's where the idea came from.
She'd spoken to him once when she snuck off to Anchorhead, too - he happened to be passing through and didn't tell her aunt and uncle about it, which was enough to win her childish approval.
I have no doubt that when she says 'childish' she means, like, fourteen. To her, two or three years ago, she was an infant.
They'd happened across each other a few other times, too, in the ordinary course of things.
Oh, this - a lot of people say that - sort of blame Luke, in a weird way, for being so devastated when Obi-Wan dies, because apparently he only knew him for one day - which honestly I think is ridiculous. Luke recognizes him on sight, upon waking just after having been beaten unconscious, clearly knows who he is, we have no idea how long it took them to Alderaan, but my impression was always that it was several weeks. We know that Tarkin managed to send people off to Dantooine, that they surveyed the base, and then got back, in the time that it took Obi-Wan and Luke and Han to get to Alderaan - or not-Alderaan, as the case may be. So I definitely got the feeling that Luke already knew Obi-Wan before this started, sort of in a normal way, I guess, a neighbourly way, and got to know him as his mentor for at least a couple weeks.
But he was just a normal - well, just an odd old man. She couldn't believe that Ben's family could get caught up in something like this. She couldn't believe that he had family at all.
This is sort of a depressing line when you think - he doesn't. Really, she is his only family in a weird way, as Anakin's daughter. She's a sort of surrogate niece - which will come up again - yeah, he honestly has no other family.
Threepio turned towards her hopefully. "I beg your pardon, ma'am, but do you know what he's talking about?"
"Well, I don't know anyone named Obi-Wan," Lucy said, getting to her feet and searching through her tools, "but old Ben lives out beyond the Dune Sea. He's a kind of strange old hermit."
"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi -"
"I wonder who she is," Lucy said, glancing back down at the hologram. Again, she felt that inexplicable rush of concern and determination.
So yeah, that's it being the ... thing.
"It sounds like she's in trouble."
Lucy looked into the girl's frantic dark eyes, and set her jaw. "I'd better play back the whole thing," she decided, and stalked over to Artoo. He gave a high, robotic wail.
"He says the restraining bolt has short-circuited his recording system," Threepio told her. Lucy sighed, looking back at the hologram.
I have to save her. I don't know why, but I have to. If I don't, something horrible's going to happen to her, I just know it is.
She tried to ignore the feeling that something horrible was going to happen anyway.
Yeah. She probably shouldn't ignore her feelings.
Threepio said something about removing the restraining bolt.
"Hm?" Lucy looked back at the droids, and grabbed a small bar off the table. "Well, I guess you're too small to run away on me if I take this off.
Hahahaha.
Okay."
It was the work of a moment to wedge the bolt off. "There you go!" she said, and glanced down.
The hologram had disappeared.
"Where'd it go? Bring it back - play back the entire message!"
Artoo's beep managed to sound innocent, curious, and bewildered at the same time.
I find it extraordinary that Artoo doesn't even need words to get across his various emotional states.
Lucy glared and Threepio turned furiously on his companion.
"What message?" he cried. "The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!"
Lucy opened her mouth to snarl at the little astrodroid, then shut it when she heard her aunt calling from another room.
"Lucy? Lucy! Come to dinner!"
"All right. I'll be right there, Aunt Beru!" Lucy shouted back, and shook her head.
Threepio turned towards her, his voice sounding fretful even for him. "I'm sorry, miss," he said miserably, "but he seems to have picked up a slight flutter."
Lucy tossed the bolt aside. "Well, see what you can do with him. I'll be right back," she said, and ran out.
Artoo blinked in his companion's general direction.
"Just you reconsider playing that message for her," Threepio told him.
He beeped plaintively.
"No, I don't think she likes you at all. And I don't like you either!"
This is one of the - really a very few scenes that are not from Lucy's point of view - well, moments, to be more accurate. I thought of taking it out for that reason. I like it because - it's weird to talk about characterization with Artoo, but - it shows that Artoo is already found of Luke, in the movie, Lucy here, and wants her to like...him, even though the primary loyalty is to Leia and it leads to that - Artoo ends up becoming Luke's and Threepio stays with Leia, in the end.
Da da da da.
After dinner, Lucy stomped away from the table, then stopped in her tracks.
I thought of including the conversation there, but the conversation that's in canon wouldn't have really worked sicne she can'ta pply to the Academy in any place and it was probably about something else. I'm sure there's always something. I did want there to be a fight, the dinner fight, so I just sort of allude to one. Yeah.
She hadn't meant to pick a fight with her uncle. She never did. They just seemed to happen. It'd always been - it wasn't that he didn't care about her. She knew he did, and she loved him. But they'd never been able to understand each other very well, or even to get along. He was always trying to make her into something else, as if she were a doll that could just be carved into the right shape. And she -
Well, she knew she wasn't the niece he would have wanted. Not that he'd wanted one at all, and she was grateful for everything he'd done. She was just furious at the same time.
I was trying to walk a fairly narrow road with Owen's and Lucy's relationship - they're both culpable to some degree, Lucy is so wilful and insolent and dutiful, but not in a - she's always dreaming, she's the head in the clouds type, and Owen is - she's right, he is trying to turn her into something that she'll never be. He was trying to do the same with Luke, but I think it's a bit more disconcerting with a girl.
And the other thing there is that - she's very much their niece. I don't ever get the feeling from the movies that he regards them as his parents - I think it's quite clear that his father is Anakin Skywalker in every way, and that he's not been brought up as Owen and Beru's son, he's not been brought up to think of them as his parents. He's much more - he wasn't adopted. A lot of people, you know, this is another thing I see coming up, is, why does he get so much more upset over Obi-Wan, and then Anakin himself, than the people who raised him? They were his parents! - no, clearly they were not his parents. I do not think it could be more clear who he regards and has always regarded as his father.
And so she is very much their niece and has been brought up as their niece. She's - in a weird way she's the poor relation, but at the same time, one who is beloved in many respects.
My more personal take on it - I kind of doubt that Owen and Beru actually wanted children? They didn't ever have any of their own, they didn't adopt, they didn't - they have Lucy, or Luke in canon. And Bail and the Queen, they had been meaning to adopt, but Owen and Beru just didn't. There could be plenty of reasons for that, it may very well be that they just didn't want children, and - a lot of people assume they couldn't have them, but yeah, I'm going here with the they didn't want children, but they did love her. And so she knows that they love her and she wants to be grateful, she knows they didn't have to do anything for her, but at the same time it's...it's a troubled relationship.
Lucy took a deep breath. She couldn't work like this. Her hands were still shaking. Instead of returning to the garage right away, she veered right and ran outside to watch the sunset.
Biggs always said that the stars didn't control anyone's life, yet these ones certainly controlled hers. They seemed so near, as if she could reach beyond them with the barest modicum of effort. Instead, she felt menaced by them, hopelessness eating at her as the radiance of the twin suns faded into darkness. Something in her recoiled from the sight, ominous in a way it had never been before, but Lucy kept her eyes fixed on the two stars, wind pulling at her skirts and hair.
This - this was the single most difficult scene to write, in the entire story, and it's like four sentences or something. Of course it is the famous binary sunset scene, which I think, one of the reasons is, it manages to communicate so much without a word. A writer who doesn't have any visuals going on here to try and have that moment just with words was really really difficult. I think it took me like three twenty-minute sprints with
hlbrto get - I was whining at them the whole time, we're talking about a thirty second scene here. I ended up making it - I thought of cutting it out, but it seemed too important for that. So I had it be less a hopeful scene and more a creepy scene, and of course, the sort of obvious symnolism of the twin suns, which of course is what she and Leia are, after a manner of speaking. The twin fading away is - at some level, I guess she knows, and is able to be completely creeped out by that.
Tatoo II vanished below the horizon. As if it had given her permission, Lucy finally looked away, wrapping her arms around herself.
That girl needed her.
Yeah, obviously the connection is right there, she just can't get to it.
Lucy needed to help her, even if she didn't know why. But how could she help anyone? How could she even get out?
That's kind of her refrain, like - of all people, Maria Bertram in Mansfield Park, with the starling - I can't get out, the starling said, I can't get out. That's her refrain while she's here. Even for Luke, to a degree, but I think more for her. She can't join the Academy, she can't go to the Rebellion, a lot of the avenues that duty prevents Luke from taking, she just can't take regardless. So that's kind of her, her thing. I can't get out.
She sighed and went to finish cleaning the droids.
"I can't believe him," she muttered to herself. "He doesn't have to do this. He just wants to punish me! It's not f - "
Yeah, that's her other refrain.
The garage was silent. Lucy froze, her eyes darting from corner to corner, then grabbed her control box and turned it on.
Threepio yelped, popping up from behind the skyhopper.
Lucy stared. "What are you doing back there?"
"It wasn't my fault, ma'am!" he wailed. "Please don't deactivate me! I told him not to go, but he's - he's faulty, malfunctioning: kept babbling on about his mission."
"Oh no," breathed Lucy, rushing out of the garage and back outside. She grabbed her binoculars and peered all around, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
"How could I be so stupid? He's nowhere in sight," she said, and let the binoculars fall. "Blast it!"
"Pardon me, miss," Threepio said, sounding even more miserable than usual, "but couldn't we go after him?"
Lucy was already shaking her head. "It's too dangerous with all the Sand People around," she said practically. "We'll have to wait until morning."
Early in the morning, she thought; they'd have to leave before Owen realized she was gone.
She did wait, but slept poorly, and woke as soon as possible, pulling on a tunic and one of her only pairs of pants.
Yeah, I wanted her in Luke's iconic outfit, but I'd established that she usually wears dresses, actually, so I ... yeah.
Last night's lecture was more than enough for one week.
"Lucy?" Beru glanced up as her niece rushed towards the door. "What is it? Is something wrong?"
Lucy almost kept running, but her cooler side prevailed. If anything happened, Owen and Beru would need to know where she'd gone. She stopped and turned around.
This was part of -- wanting to show her as a basically nice person, what with all the complaining up to this point.
"I have some things to do before we get started today," she said vaguely.
"Well, be careful. The Sand People - "
"I'll be back before breakfast. Tell Uncle Owen, will you?" Lucy kissed her aunt's cheek and smiled at her. "I'll be all right, I promise."
She dashed out to the garage and picked up Threepio. Then she drove off without a backwards glance, relieved just to be flying again.
Of course, that is the last time that she could have seen it, but of course she doesn't look back, because...she's Lucy. [laugh]
Her awkwardness on the ground always disappeared in the air.
I imagined her as sort of, well, awkward, in how she moves. Until lightsaber training - it probably kills most of that.
The wind, even as it pulled at a few loose tendrils of hair and screamed in her ears, was familiar, almost friendly; Lucy could feel the slightest change in the currents and respond as soon as it happened. Before it happened, sometimes, but that was mostly when she was younger and less skilled.
Obviously, if you have that sort of foresight and act on it too soon, that could be disastrous. But I think she's managed to compensate.
Beyond that, she understood machines. Everything she flew seemed like an extension of herself; with her hands on a wheel and her feet on the floor of a ship, even one as slight and unimpressive as this, she felt like she could rule the galaxy. Like she already did.
Heh. Yeah, no foreshadowing there!
Lucy took a deep breath and released it, leaving Threepio to his trivial chatter while she kept her eyes on the sand, alert for a sign of anything suspicious. She could hardly miss an astrodroid as distinctive as Artoo, she reassured herself, and it shouldn't take long to catch up with him. After all, he could hardly walk, let alone fly.
Okay, that was probably a ... too snide a jab at the prequels. While I dislike the prequels itnensely, I actually try not to bring it into my stories, because they're usually prequel-compliant and I don't know, I think that kind of - everything I write, it tends towards the comment-y on canon-y, but I find stories that just exist to bash something or to uncritically praise it - it's annoying, and so I really try not to do that even though I don't like the prequels. So this was ... a moment of weakness.
"Look, there's a droid on the scanner!" she cried. "Dead ahead. It might be our little R2 unit. Hit the accelerator!"
Within a few minutes, they'd caught up with the droid - definitely an R2 unit - and she sprang out. Even with a coat of dust and grime, it was unmistakably Artoo.
"Hey, just where do you think you're going?" said Lucy, glowering at the droid.
He gave a feeble string of beeps.
"Mistress Lucy here is your rightful owner!" Threepio exclaimed. "We'll have no more of this Obi-Wan Kenobi gibberish!"
Artoo started to protest.
" - and don't talk to me about your mission! You're fortunate she doesn't blast you into a million pieces right here!"
Artoo gave an alarmed squawk and Lucy, turning to stare at Threepio, shook her head.
"No, no, it's all right," she said quickly, "but we'd better go."
Before she could even turn back to the landspeeder, however, Artoo had started beeping again, the sounds rising to shrieks as he wobbled back and forth. Lucy gave them an exasperated look.
"What's wrong now?"
"Oh my," said Threepio. "Ma'am, he says there are several creatures approaching from the southeast."
Lucy's eyes widened. She glanced over her shoulder - and saw nothing, but it didn't matter. She knew what was out there.
"Sand People!" She ran to the landspeeder and grabbed her laser rifle. "Or worse."
The rifle was one of the few pieces of machinery she'd learned to use because of her uncle, not in defiance of him. He'd taught her to shoot when she was a little girl, and insisted she carry the weapon with her whenever she left the homestead.
You know, I wanted to show that it wasn't all about sheltering - I mean, he wanted to protect her, but it didn't always take the form of the 'stay in the house' thing he's got going at the moment, but it was teaching her how to defend herself as well as staying out of danger. Yeah, this was me trying to make up for very nearly Owen-bashing in the earlier parts.
Just in case, he always said.
Thanks, Uncle Owen, she thought, and returned to the droids. "Let's go have a look," she said briskly, then laughed when they stayed frozen in place. "Come on!"
Overburdened with a sense of self-preservation, she is not!
Carefully, Lucy threaded her way up a rocky ridge and grabbed her binoculars, scanning the canyon. She could see two enormous banthas, but neither of them had any riders.
"There are two banthas down there, but I don't see any . . ." Lucy froze, catching a small raider at the edge of her vision. "Wait a second, they're Sand People, all right! I can see one of them now."
She tried to focus on the distant raider. Instead, the binoculars went dark and she looked up in alarm: a large Tusken Raider was looming over her. He howled, shaking his weapon.
Threepio backed right off the side of the cliff, bouncing and rattling on the way down; Lucy grabbed her rifle and leapt out of the way, blocking the raider's double-pointed gaderfii as well as she could. The rifle cracked.
Stupid, stupid -
She was scrambling back, rolling left and right as she tried to avoid the swinging gaderfii, then reaching out only to have her hands close on air. There was nowhere left to go.
The raider gave a cry of triumph, swinging his weapon in the air, and Lucy squeezed her eyes shut. The blow, when it came, was quick and precise, and she only managed one scream before slumping to the ground.
The Sand People dragged her back down the cliff and dropped her body near a dark alcove in the rock, while they went to ransack the landspeeder.
This is the other, one of the only sections that sort of backs up from inside her head, or at least inside someone's head, and ends up switching over to, I think, maybe an omniscient third-person.
Artoo, cowering in the back of the alcove, whirred to himself, then made small distressed sounds.
The raiders didn't seem to hear him. Several of them began pulling strips out of the landspeeder; Artoo could only rock in anxiety, his sensors fixed on the unconscious girl in front of him.
Then, something deeper in the canyon gave a great howling moan. The raiders stiffened, dropping their salvage, and fled as an indistinct brown figure slowly approached them. Artoo rolled a little back, his sensors darting across the canyon.
The figure - a man in a hooded brown robe - knelt beside Lucy's prone body, his hands dropping to her wrists. Then he reached up and pressed his fingers against her temples.
Artoo moaned.
The man turned towards him, pushing his hood off, and revealing a weathered, kindly face. He was an old man, or looked like one, with piercing blue eyes, a mop of untidy silver hair, and a small, neatly-trimmed white beard.
One of the things I've found is ... I'd never written for a movie fandom before Star Wars, I'm not really a movie person in general, and it's very odd to describe someone when you actually know what they look like. You know, with book character it's always a bit vague, but here, it's ... trying to describe Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi! It was definitely very weird. And I couldn't help but notice that he has this, like, messy hair and then that perfect little beard. Ah, Obi-Wan.
He smiled at the little droid.
"Hello there!" he called out. Artoo trembled, emitting a low, warbling beep.
The old man gestured for him to approach.
"Come here, my little friend," he said, and his voice gentled. "Don't be afraid."
Artoo's sensors went back to Lucy. He beeped inquiringly.
"Oh, don't worry - she'll be all right," the man said. He dropped a hand on her shoulder and gave her a light shake.
The world swam before Lucy's eyes. She groaned, struggling to sit up, only vaguely aware of the hand supporting her back.
Re-reading, I think both the brief bit with Artoo and Threepio in the garage, where they talk, and this one, if I were writing it now or editing it now, I'd probably cut those out or do something because I think they're both awkward.
"Rest easy, child," he said, with a wry look. "You've had a busy day - you're fortunate to be all in one piece!"
Lucy rubbed her neck, then blinked several times, still trying to orient herself. Her gaze landed on the old man's face.
"Ben?" she exclaimed. "Ben Kenobi? Boy, am I glad to see you!"
Yeah, this was the thing I was talking about earlier, where it's quite clear that Luke recognizes him and knows him already. And is probably - Obi-Wan is probably in fact the last person alive that's still in Luke's life that he does know. Just about everyone else, Han, Leia, are strangers to him, he's known them at most a few weeks. And so Obi-Wan is probably the closest to home he has, and of course that Lucy has here.
At that, Artoo waddled out of the alcove as fast as his wheels would take him. Ben's expression turned reproving.
"The Jundland wastes are not to be travelled lightly," he told her.
Artoo, whose creator had evidently not seen fit to include any sense of self-preservation,
It's not like Anakin was overburdened with it himself - I'm trying to imagine who could conceivably have made Artoo? But I assumed that Anakin was probably the one that did a lot of the customization there.
gave a string of happy beeps and whistles. Lucy ignored him, clambering to her feet and leaning heavily on Ben as he helped her walk to a large rock, where she collapsed.
"Tell me, young Lucy, what brings you out so far?"
I think I mentioned this on one of my rewatches or whatever, but one of the things I really like about how Obi-Wan deals with Luke and here, Lucy, is just about everybody refers to him as "Skywalker." The name that people know him by. Which is great, it's a fabulous name, but in a way it's like he's interchangeable with his father to most everybody. Even Anakin himself refers to him just as "Skywalker" at first. And I mean, it's in Empire, so it's not a retcon-y thing. And yeah, he - also sometimes calls him 'young one' or other things, but you know, Yoda, Palpatine, his, sort of, his identity seems consumed in his father's.
And I really like that, more in retrospect, but I really like that Obi-Wan doesn't do that, he instantly relates to Luke as Luke, and here as Lucy. It might be even easier with the gender difference, but actually - I think it'll probably become clearer when I'm actually re-reading the chapter, but I suspect that the gender difference, the fact that Anakin is a man and Lucy is a young girl, it only makes the similarities more pronounced to him.
Lucy waved her hand at Artoo. "This little droid! I think he's searching for his former master - I've never seen such devotion in a droid before." Both humans looked at him, and Artoo gave a small, sad whine.
It's a bit depressing when you think that Obi-Wan isn't and wasn't Artoo's master. Whoever he was given to in the interim - Antilles or whomever - I think it's, Leia's his master, and before her, of course it was Anakin, so this little sad sound he makes in the movie when he's searching for "his former master" manages to be...I mix that up with Anakin.
Lucy turned back to Ben. "He claims to be the property of an Obi-Wan Kenobi. Is he a relative of yours? Do you know what he's talking about?"
Ben's eyes widened, and something very like dread came over his face. He sank down. "Obi-Wan Kenobi," he repeated, lingering on the syllables. "Obi-Wan. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time - a long time."
"I think my uncle knows him," said Lucy, remembering last night's quarrel. With a decided effort, she kept the familiar note of petulance out of her voice.
Uh, that's just a sort of reference to the "oh my god Luke whines all the time" thing.
"He said he was dead."
Ben shook his head. "Oh, he's not dead," he said, and then his old wry look came back. "Not yet."
I think that's what makes Obi-Wan so likeable, that for all that he is the i-dotting t-crossing straitlaced Jedi, he's got that wry, self-effacing... he can laugh at himself. I think that's what makes him so likable, even while he's...plotting patricide and things.
"You know him?" asked Lucy, feeling that she couldn't be surprised by anything, at this point.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Oh, so many things.
"Well, of course I know him." Ben chuckled and tapped his chest. "He's me!"
Click to viewSimilarly, I’ve seen fans argue that Daenerys’ nudity or Catwoman’s overt sexuality, either of which could be considered equally as titillating as Slave Leia, empower women.
Um, yeah, I am not familiar with either of those fandoms - I mean, I know who they are, I've read A Song Of ... A Game of Thrones - but what's going on here is, there's a difference between a woman who is in control of her sexuality and a woman who is fanservice for guys. (I have yet to see a woman who is fanservice for lesbian women.)
There is a difference and I think [laugh] [sigh] this is one of those things that [sigh] is a you-know-it-when-you-see-it. It's that [pause] I think it's quite easy to tell when you're given a female character who is, who might be sexually aggressive, who might be, simply be - nobody is saying that there shouldn't be sexy female characters, that that's bad. But that there's a difference between a Playboy model, being objectified for the male gaze, and something like [laughs] Sarah Connor. It's different. Even something like ... you know, it can be meaningfully parodied, like, what was it, Codex in The Guild’s “Do You Wanna Date My Avatar” video, I thought that was a great take on fanservice. And that it was obviously parody. And I've seen a lot of characters who did have a sort of control of their sexuality and it's awesome.
But that's not what's happening here. It’s like, “oh, coincidentally her shirt ripped.” And that’s - just different from a character being not ashamed of her sexuality, which is a great thing. You can counter slut-shaming without fanservice.
Everyone, women and men, has the right to their opinion, and hearing each other out is often insightful.
I do agree with that.
What’s unfortunate, I believe, is when these discussions become focused only on the merits of the imagery, and not on the full context of the story. In fact, many times the people dismissing a female character don’t even understand the story.
Yes, that’s - I’m pretty sure I got what she was talking about, in terms of it being, making it an argument without understanding the situation. So a lot of times it ends up being this equally tortuous argument that makes no sense to anyone who’s actually familiar with the source material.
That said, the story is never without context. You can’t - nothing is created in isolation. And I think it is frankly ridiculous to pretend it is. And moreover that he - I also think that it’s honestly ridiculous to be...sigh...people are going to be more concerned, I hope, about the actual ramifications on actual living women than on the made-up ones. I think it’s not only right - it not only makes sense but is completely appropriate.
Ironically, by judging image and not story, those people are perpetuating the superficial society in which we’re only judged by how we look and not for what we do.
Yeah, whatever.
[nervous laugh] I try not to be snide here, because I do generally like this - I obviously just failed. Yes - it’s not about [laugh] perpetuating superficial society, it’s about people. I saw all the time - I’m an English major, and I see it all the time in literary criticism.
Someone really wants to make an argument about … like, sexism or whatever. But what they need to do is, say, to write an article on … Pride and Prejudice. And so they’ll try to mash these together and warp the story so hard that it’s no longer recognizable. They’ll, like, argue that P&P is a failure because … Elizabeth gets married at the end! And, while there are plenty of arguments to be made about marriage, we have a critic arguing that - the one I always remember is “against the broad chest of Darcy’s logic, Elizabeth pounds the ineffectual fists of her own.” And I was just like “what the holy hell? No.”
So I get this where it’s like, you ignore the part of the story that doesn’t fit your argument because what you want to do is make your argument, or if it’s just this - social justice feels good! thing. But I don’t think you can say that arguing about perpetuating this sort of beauty focus is the superficiality that we get.
In my blog about Princess Leia as the gold standard for a strong female heroine,
I would tend to agree, but [sigh] that’s more because I love Leia so much and at the same time, I - that was why I found her treatment in ROTJ so disconcerting. She’s - a great character and she’s probably the single most empowering one I’ve run across, but I’m not sure she can be considered the gold standard because of what happened to her in ROTJ.
I discussed the storytelling dynamic of balancing her sexuality with her role as a leader of the Rebellion.
Which was apparently resolved by making her no longer the leader of the Rebellion. Yeah.
This same internal struggle for identity - can I be a mother, a friend, a nurturer or a warrior, leader, taskmaster? - exists for women in real life.
Which, yeah, I do agree with that, and I think that’s why - why, I think, Leia spoke to so many people and people get so emotionally invested in the arugments around her, in ways that a long of times - you know - I may be biased by my sort of OT fangirliness, but I think people get a lot more worked up about Leia than I have seen them do around Padmé.
I think that’s partly because [laughs] we all knew Padmé was going to die. So even though there are people who get very upset by how it happened, nobody could have predicted what was going to happen in ROTJ while we all knew what was going to happen in ROTS. I think in a way it was more of a let-down. But I do think that people tend to react really strongly to things to do with Leia because of her iconic stature.
Sometimes the roles go hand-in-hand, and other times they are diametrically opposed. While I think Leia is an exceptional heroine, she was never given a true heroine’s journey.
True, she was not the main character. Well, in ANH she kind of was, but she became … in fact that’s one of my favourite things about ANH is that she and Luke get about equal screen time and about equal narrative attention. Han doesn’t even appear until he meets Luke, he is consistently secondary to Luke in ANH, I mean in terms of narrative. Leia - you have this Luke plot and this Leia plot, and I think Luke gets a little more attention but Leia is not really a sidekick to hi, she’s like a secondary main character. She’s a deuteragonist, I think.
And to some degree in Empire - there I think Han becomes - it becomes Han-and-Leia and then Luke, but then in ROTJ, she continues to get a lot of narrative attention but it’s sort of … irrelevant narrative attention. It’s like she’s certainly - her overarching storyline is not - you can tell, watching the OT, that what we are looking at is not Leia’s story. She’s just this character who is so important but has this strange narrative position of being more than a sidekick but less than a protagonist.
On the upside, George Lucas, and especially his team of storytellers from The Empire Strikes Back, did such a phenomenal job establishing her strength of character
Yeah. I would definitely agree that in a lot of ways, Leia is at her most … fabulous in Empire. As indeed a lot of the characters are. Except Han.
that Leia hasn’t really wavered in how she is portrayed within the Expanded Universe.
Hmm. I would have to disagree. Though I will say that she isn’t derailed in the way that Luke is, or - yeah, that it’s … I guess that she’s recognizable, which is a plus? But I don’t think you can say that she hasn’t wavered. Honestly, her - I’ve mentioned it before, but where Leia - it sounds like heresy, I guess, but even where she was in the Zahn trilogy - the Zahn books, didn’t seem to intuitively follow from where she was in ROTJ, it was almost like it followed from where she was in Empire and didn’t follow ROTJ at all. Which is a preference I totally understand, but I don’t think you can say that she hasn’t wavered.
Jaina Solo, the daughter of Han and Leia, started out on a great heroine’s journey arc. The stories confronted Jaina with questions about her identity as a daughter, a sister, and a Jedi, her mother’s choices, her female Master Mara Jade’s identity crisis as a mother/warrior, how all those variables affected her life, and most importantly the isolation heroes often face.
I totally agree with her there, it looked like there would be a really awesome arc for Jaina and then there wasn’t. We are completely on the same page there.
Too soon the EU faltered with Jaina’s story, though, and became afraid to deal with her role as the Sword of the Jedi - a label foisted upon her by Luke Skywalker in Destiny’s Way - as it impacted against her potential future as the Imperial Womb of Destiny - a nickname given to her by fans when it became apparent from the Legacy comics that she would most likely be the mother of a future Fel Emperor, when this is exactly the identity crisis most women will face in real life.
Yeah - yeah, that’s just - Jaina’s arc is just so weird. And yeah, I remember that one of the first things I knew from the EU was that Han and Leia’s daughter would be The Sword of the Jedi, and I thought it sounded … so badass! [laugh] And that would just be so cool in how it would work, and then - you know - it was just sort of trotted out when they needed to wipe somebody out, but otherwise it doesn’t really impact much.
Interestingly enough, Destiny’s Way was published in 2002, the same year Attack of the Clones hit the silver screen. Padmé Amidala’s role hadn’t really shifted from the leader and warrior of The Phantom Menace;
Except it … did? [sigh] I mean, I definitely like - I think Padmé in AOTC is definitely closer to Padmé in TPM than she is to Padmé in ROTS but at the same time I don’t think you can say her role is the same in that for one she was - the big thing about Padmé in TPM, that keeps me coming back to the character even though I have so many issues with her, is that Padmé is incredibly important to TPM in and of herself. She is important as Queen of Naboo, and - as a leader and a warrior, that is why she’s important.
In AOTC, it barely sets up this, there’s this vote thing, you know people ar etrying to kill her, but that doesn’t come up again really. We leave that to just sort of be in Naboo and have her fall in love with Anakin on, you know, plot schedule, and then there’s the whole thing in Tatooine and then they go to Geonosis and she starts fighting and she’s a badass, but she’s not a leader there, I don’t think, at all. When she is a leader she’s not a warrior. Yeah, I think Padmé in AOTC is - something very different is going on than what we see of her in TPM.
-------------------
And Lucy commentary! (Transcript below.)
Lucy rocked back on her heels, gaping. "What's this?" she cried.
The astrodroid somehow managed to look sheepish, and beeped.
Uh, artoo is - I remember when I was writing these stories, they were both for SW, and the hardest characters - there were four who were nightmares to write - Chewie, Vader, Yoda, and Artoo, and Artoo was probably the worst. I couldn't think of anything other than "he beeped, adverbly." So yeah, he was really difficult.
"What is what?" Threepio said indignantly. "She asked you a question! What is that?"
The girl in the hologram crouched, reaching one hand out. "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope," she said. "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope. Help me - "
Artoo beeped again.
"Oh, he says it's nothing, ma'am," said Threepio. "Merely a malfunction. Old data. Pay it no mind."
Lucy sat back, considering the unknown girl. "Who is she? She looks so pretty and - and helpless."
Okay, so [laughs] what I was doing ... is that I prefer to think that Luke and Leia react so strongly to each other - it's a psychic twin demigod bond thingymajig and is not actually them being attracted to each other. Which is I think is actually the official explanation, not that that matters. Anyway! So the not - obviously they would not have any ability to process what this thing actually is and so they - they frame it as attraction, especially - [laugh] you know, I'm not sure it's especially Luke, they both do it.
Um, anyway, here, I think I have Lucy - she's feeling the same thing that Luke is, but she presents differently, I think, because it's much more of a - oh, a damsel, she wants to be a hero, so it's more about Leia as a damsel in distress than Leia the beautiful woman, though she registers that too.
"Er," Threepio said. "I'm afraid I'm not quite sure, ma'am. I think she was a passenger on our last voyage. A person of some importance, miss. I believe."
Yeah, he's lying again. In the original, I honestly wasn't sure if he - it doesn't really make a lot of sense. He obviously knows Leia, it's almost the first thing, with the whole the princess won't be able to escape again - he knows who she is. Even setting aside the prequels, which this story doesn't - so yeah, he's got to know something.
The recording continued to repeat itself. It seemed obviously incomplete - perhaps it had been damaged in some way. No surprise, considering Artoo's state. But there was enough to win Lucy's sympathy. She watched the hologram cycle through the message again, unable to miss the pleading and desperation in the girl's low voice.
Somebody had to do something, she thought, feeling as if she had become infected with the other girl's urgency. Lucy didn't know what any of this was about. She didn't know the girl. But somehow, that didn't seem to matter. She had to help her.
So yeah, you get this - she - the hero complex more than the Dulcinea thing that Luke has.
Besides, hadn't she longed for something to do? Something important? And now, this had all but fallen in her lap.
A little self-awareness there!
Threepio was still talking.
That's a shock!
"Is there any more of this recording?" Lucy asked abruptly. She reached towards Artoo, and he let out a frantic squeal.
"Behave yourself, Artoo. You're going to get us into trouble!" Threepio hissed. Lucy bit back a smile. "It's all right, you can trust her. She's our new mistress!"
The astrodroid gave a long string of beeps and whistles.
"He says he's the property of Obi-Wan Kenobi, a resident of these parts. And it's a private message for him."
Lucy tilted her head to the side.
"Quite frankly, miss," Threepio said, "I don't know what he's talking about. Our last master was Captain Antilles, but with what we've been through, this little R2 unit has become a bit eccentric."
I always - for some reason, I always assumed that Captain Antilles was Bail's brother and that that's his birth name - yeah, I just kind of always figure that Organa was the Queen's family name...which would make more sense, honestly, it would be the royal house, but ... yeah, there's basically no reason to think that but I always sort of did, and so that they always knew Leia, just peripherally.
"Obi-Wan Kenobi," she said thoughtfully. "I wonder if he means old Ben Kenobi?"
The incredible pseudonym of impenetrability!
She knew old Ben - not well, but probably as well as anyone did. Years ago, she and Biggs had gotten lost in the desert, and it had been old Ben who found them and brought them home.
Uh, this was inspired by a comic that - it's not Biggs in the comic - but something kind of similar happens. It's not exactly the same thing and I wasn't imagining it as exactly the same, but that's where the idea came from.
She'd spoken to him once when she snuck off to Anchorhead, too - he happened to be passing through and didn't tell her aunt and uncle about it, which was enough to win her childish approval.
I have no doubt that when she says 'childish' she means, like, fourteen. To her, two or three years ago, she was an infant.
They'd happened across each other a few other times, too, in the ordinary course of things.
Oh, this - a lot of people say that - sort of blame Luke, in a weird way, for being so devastated when Obi-Wan dies, because apparently he only knew him for one day - which honestly I think is ridiculous. Luke recognizes him on sight, upon waking just after having been beaten unconscious, clearly knows who he is, we have no idea how long it took them to Alderaan, but my impression was always that it was several weeks. We know that Tarkin managed to send people off to Dantooine, that they surveyed the base, and then got back, in the time that it took Obi-Wan and Luke and Han to get to Alderaan - or not-Alderaan, as the case may be. So I definitely got the feeling that Luke already knew Obi-Wan before this started, sort of in a normal way, I guess, a neighbourly way, and got to know him as his mentor for at least a couple weeks.
But he was just a normal - well, just an odd old man. She couldn't believe that Ben's family could get caught up in something like this. She couldn't believe that he had family at all.
This is sort of a depressing line when you think - he doesn't. Really, she is his only family in a weird way, as Anakin's daughter. She's a sort of surrogate niece - which will come up again - yeah, he honestly has no other family.
Threepio turned towards her hopefully. "I beg your pardon, ma'am, but do you know what he's talking about?"
"Well, I don't know anyone named Obi-Wan," Lucy said, getting to her feet and searching through her tools, "but old Ben lives out beyond the Dune Sea. He's a kind of strange old hermit."
"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi -"
"I wonder who she is," Lucy said, glancing back down at the hologram. Again, she felt that inexplicable rush of concern and determination.
So yeah, that's it being the ... thing.
"It sounds like she's in trouble."
Lucy looked into the girl's frantic dark eyes, and set her jaw. "I'd better play back the whole thing," she decided, and stalked over to Artoo. He gave a high, robotic wail.
"He says the restraining bolt has short-circuited his recording system," Threepio told her. Lucy sighed, looking back at the hologram.
I have to save her. I don't know why, but I have to. If I don't, something horrible's going to happen to her, I just know it is.
She tried to ignore the feeling that something horrible was going to happen anyway.
Yeah. She probably shouldn't ignore her feelings.
Threepio said something about removing the restraining bolt.
"Hm?" Lucy looked back at the droids, and grabbed a small bar off the table. "Well, I guess you're too small to run away on me if I take this off.
Hahahaha.
Okay."
It was the work of a moment to wedge the bolt off. "There you go!" she said, and glanced down.
The hologram had disappeared.
"Where'd it go? Bring it back - play back the entire message!"
Artoo's beep managed to sound innocent, curious, and bewildered at the same time.
I find it extraordinary that Artoo doesn't even need words to get across his various emotional states.
Lucy glared and Threepio turned furiously on his companion.
"What message?" he cried. "The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!"
Lucy opened her mouth to snarl at the little astrodroid, then shut it when she heard her aunt calling from another room.
"Lucy? Lucy! Come to dinner!"
"All right. I'll be right there, Aunt Beru!" Lucy shouted back, and shook her head.
Threepio turned towards her, his voice sounding fretful even for him. "I'm sorry, miss," he said miserably, "but he seems to have picked up a slight flutter."
Lucy tossed the bolt aside. "Well, see what you can do with him. I'll be right back," she said, and ran out.
Artoo blinked in his companion's general direction.
"Just you reconsider playing that message for her," Threepio told him.
He beeped plaintively.
"No, I don't think she likes you at all. And I don't like you either!"
This is one of the - really a very few scenes that are not from Lucy's point of view - well, moments, to be more accurate. I thought of taking it out for that reason. I like it because - it's weird to talk about characterization with Artoo, but - it shows that Artoo is already found of Luke, in the movie, Lucy here, and wants her to like...him, even though the primary loyalty is to Leia and it leads to that - Artoo ends up becoming Luke's and Threepio stays with Leia, in the end.
Da da da da.
After dinner, Lucy stomped away from the table, then stopped in her tracks.
I thought of including the conversation there, but the conversation that's in canon wouldn't have really worked sicne she can'ta pply to the Academy in any place and it was probably about something else. I'm sure there's always something. I did want there to be a fight, the dinner fight, so I just sort of allude to one. Yeah.
She hadn't meant to pick a fight with her uncle. She never did. They just seemed to happen. It'd always been - it wasn't that he didn't care about her. She knew he did, and she loved him. But they'd never been able to understand each other very well, or even to get along. He was always trying to make her into something else, as if she were a doll that could just be carved into the right shape. And she -
Well, she knew she wasn't the niece he would have wanted. Not that he'd wanted one at all, and she was grateful for everything he'd done. She was just furious at the same time.
I was trying to walk a fairly narrow road with Owen's and Lucy's relationship - they're both culpable to some degree, Lucy is so wilful and insolent and dutiful, but not in a - she's always dreaming, she's the head in the clouds type, and Owen is - she's right, he is trying to turn her into something that she'll never be. He was trying to do the same with Luke, but I think it's a bit more disconcerting with a girl.
And the other thing there is that - she's very much their niece. I don't ever get the feeling from the movies that he regards them as his parents - I think it's quite clear that his father is Anakin Skywalker in every way, and that he's not been brought up as Owen and Beru's son, he's not been brought up to think of them as his parents. He's much more - he wasn't adopted. A lot of people, you know, this is another thing I see coming up, is, why does he get so much more upset over Obi-Wan, and then Anakin himself, than the people who raised him? They were his parents! - no, clearly they were not his parents. I do not think it could be more clear who he regards and has always regarded as his father.
And so she is very much their niece and has been brought up as their niece. She's - in a weird way she's the poor relation, but at the same time, one who is beloved in many respects.
My more personal take on it - I kind of doubt that Owen and Beru actually wanted children? They didn't ever have any of their own, they didn't adopt, they didn't - they have Lucy, or Luke in canon. And Bail and the Queen, they had been meaning to adopt, but Owen and Beru just didn't. There could be plenty of reasons for that, it may very well be that they just didn't want children, and - a lot of people assume they couldn't have them, but yeah, I'm going here with the they didn't want children, but they did love her. And so she knows that they love her and she wants to be grateful, she knows they didn't have to do anything for her, but at the same time it's...it's a troubled relationship.
Lucy took a deep breath. She couldn't work like this. Her hands were still shaking. Instead of returning to the garage right away, she veered right and ran outside to watch the sunset.
Biggs always said that the stars didn't control anyone's life, yet these ones certainly controlled hers. They seemed so near, as if she could reach beyond them with the barest modicum of effort. Instead, she felt menaced by them, hopelessness eating at her as the radiance of the twin suns faded into darkness. Something in her recoiled from the sight, ominous in a way it had never been before, but Lucy kept her eyes fixed on the two stars, wind pulling at her skirts and hair.
This - this was the single most difficult scene to write, in the entire story, and it's like four sentences or something. Of course it is the famous binary sunset scene, which I think, one of the reasons is, it manages to communicate so much without a word. A writer who doesn't have any visuals going on here to try and have that moment just with words was really really difficult. I think it took me like three twenty-minute sprints with
hlbrto get - I was whining at them the whole time, we're talking about a thirty second scene here. I ended up making it - I thought of cutting it out, but it seemed too important for that. So I had it be less a hopeful scene and more a creepy scene, and of course, the sort of obvious symnolism of the twin suns, which of course is what she and Leia are, after a manner of speaking. The twin fading away is - at some level, I guess she knows, and is able to be completely creeped out by that.
Tatoo II vanished below the horizon. As if it had given her permission, Lucy finally looked away, wrapping her arms around herself.
That girl needed her.
Yeah, obviously the connection is right there, she just can't get to it.
Lucy needed to help her, even if she didn't know why. But how could she help anyone? How could she even get out?
That's kind of her refrain, like - of all people, Maria Bertram in Mansfield Park, with the starling - I can't get out, the starling said, I can't get out. That's her refrain while she's here. Even for Luke, to a degree, but I think more for her. She can't join the Academy, she can't go to the Rebellion, a lot of the avenues that duty prevents Luke from taking, she just can't take regardless. So that's kind of her, her thing. I can't get out.
She sighed and went to finish cleaning the droids.
"I can't believe him," she muttered to herself. "He doesn't have to do this. He just wants to punish me! It's not f - "
Yeah, that's her other refrain.
The garage was silent. Lucy froze, her eyes darting from corner to corner, then grabbed her control box and turned it on.
Threepio yelped, popping up from behind the skyhopper.
Lucy stared. "What are you doing back there?"
"It wasn't my fault, ma'am!" he wailed. "Please don't deactivate me! I told him not to go, but he's - he's faulty, malfunctioning: kept babbling on about his mission."
"Oh no," breathed Lucy, rushing out of the garage and back outside. She grabbed her binoculars and peered all around, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
"How could I be so stupid? He's nowhere in sight," she said, and let the binoculars fall. "Blast it!"
"Pardon me, miss," Threepio said, sounding even more miserable than usual, "but couldn't we go after him?"
Lucy was already shaking her head. "It's too dangerous with all the Sand People around," she said practically. "We'll have to wait until morning."
Early in the morning, she thought; they'd have to leave before Owen realized she was gone.
She did wait, but slept poorly, and woke as soon as possible, pulling on a tunic and one of her only pairs of pants.
Yeah, I wanted her in Luke's iconic outfit, but I'd established that she usually wears dresses, actually, so I ... yeah.
Last night's lecture was more than enough for one week.
"Lucy?" Beru glanced up as her niece rushed towards the door. "What is it? Is something wrong?"
Lucy almost kept running, but her cooler side prevailed. If anything happened, Owen and Beru would need to know where she'd gone. She stopped and turned around.
This was part of -- wanting to show her as a basically nice person, what with all the complaining up to this point.
"I have some things to do before we get started today," she said vaguely.
"Well, be careful. The Sand People - "
"I'll be back before breakfast. Tell Uncle Owen, will you?" Lucy kissed her aunt's cheek and smiled at her. "I'll be all right, I promise."
She dashed out to the garage and picked up Threepio. Then she drove off without a backwards glance, relieved just to be flying again.
Of course, that is the last time that she could have seen it, but of course she doesn't look back, because...she's Lucy. [laugh]
Her awkwardness on the ground always disappeared in the air.
I imagined her as sort of, well, awkward, in how she moves. Until lightsaber training - it probably kills most of that.
The wind, even as it pulled at a few loose tendrils of hair and screamed in her ears, was familiar, almost friendly; Lucy could feel the slightest change in the currents and respond as soon as it happened. Before it happened, sometimes, but that was mostly when she was younger and less skilled.
Obviously, if you have that sort of foresight and act on it too soon, that could be disastrous. But I think she's managed to compensate.
Beyond that, she understood machines. Everything she flew seemed like an extension of herself; with her hands on a wheel and her feet on the floor of a ship, even one as slight and unimpressive as this, she felt like she could rule the galaxy. Like she already did.
Heh. Yeah, no foreshadowing there!
Lucy took a deep breath and released it, leaving Threepio to his trivial chatter while she kept her eyes on the sand, alert for a sign of anything suspicious. She could hardly miss an astrodroid as distinctive as Artoo, she reassured herself, and it shouldn't take long to catch up with him. After all, he could hardly walk, let alone fly.
Okay, that was probably a ... too snide a jab at the prequels. While I dislike the prequels itnensely, I actually try not to bring it into my stories, because they're usually prequel-compliant and I don't know, I think that kind of - everything I write, it tends towards the comment-y on canon-y, but I find stories that just exist to bash something or to uncritically praise it - it's annoying, and so I really try not to do that even though I don't like the prequels. So this was ... a moment of weakness.
"Look, there's a droid on the scanner!" she cried. "Dead ahead. It might be our little R2 unit. Hit the accelerator!"
Within a few minutes, they'd caught up with the droid - definitely an R2 unit - and she sprang out. Even with a coat of dust and grime, it was unmistakably Artoo.
"Hey, just where do you think you're going?" said Lucy, glowering at the droid.
He gave a feeble string of beeps.
"Mistress Lucy here is your rightful owner!" Threepio exclaimed. "We'll have no more of this Obi-Wan Kenobi gibberish!"
Artoo started to protest.
" - and don't talk to me about your mission! You're fortunate she doesn't blast you into a million pieces right here!"
Artoo gave an alarmed squawk and Lucy, turning to stare at Threepio, shook her head.
"No, no, it's all right," she said quickly, "but we'd better go."
Before she could even turn back to the landspeeder, however, Artoo had started beeping again, the sounds rising to shrieks as he wobbled back and forth. Lucy gave them an exasperated look.
"What's wrong now?"
"Oh my," said Threepio. "Ma'am, he says there are several creatures approaching from the southeast."
Lucy's eyes widened. She glanced over her shoulder - and saw nothing, but it didn't matter. She knew what was out there.
"Sand People!" She ran to the landspeeder and grabbed her laser rifle. "Or worse."
The rifle was one of the few pieces of machinery she'd learned to use because of her uncle, not in defiance of him. He'd taught her to shoot when she was a little girl, and insisted she carry the weapon with her whenever she left the homestead.
You know, I wanted to show that it wasn't all about sheltering - I mean, he wanted to protect her, but it didn't always take the form of the 'stay in the house' thing he's got going at the moment, but it was teaching her how to defend herself as well as staying out of danger. Yeah, this was me trying to make up for very nearly Owen-bashing in the earlier parts.
Just in case, he always said.
Thanks, Uncle Owen, she thought, and returned to the droids. "Let's go have a look," she said briskly, then laughed when they stayed frozen in place. "Come on!"
Overburdened with a sense of self-preservation, she is not!
Carefully, Lucy threaded her way up a rocky ridge and grabbed her binoculars, scanning the canyon. She could see two enormous banthas, but neither of them had any riders.
"There are two banthas down there, but I don't see any . . ." Lucy froze, catching a small raider at the edge of her vision. "Wait a second, they're Sand People, all right! I can see one of them now."
She tried to focus on the distant raider. Instead, the binoculars went dark and she looked up in alarm: a large Tusken Raider was looming over her. He howled, shaking his weapon.
Threepio backed right off the side of the cliff, bouncing and rattling on the way down; Lucy grabbed her rifle and leapt out of the way, blocking the raider's double-pointed gaderfii as well as she could. The rifle cracked.
Stupid, stupid -
She was scrambling back, rolling left and right as she tried to avoid the swinging gaderfii, then reaching out only to have her hands close on air. There was nowhere left to go.
The raider gave a cry of triumph, swinging his weapon in the air, and Lucy squeezed her eyes shut. The blow, when it came, was quick and precise, and she only managed one scream before slumping to the ground.
The Sand People dragged her back down the cliff and dropped her body near a dark alcove in the rock, while they went to ransack the landspeeder.
This is the other, one of the only sections that sort of backs up from inside her head, or at least inside someone's head, and ends up switching over to, I think, maybe an omniscient third-person.
Artoo, cowering in the back of the alcove, whirred to himself, then made small distressed sounds.
The raiders didn't seem to hear him. Several of them began pulling strips out of the landspeeder; Artoo could only rock in anxiety, his sensors fixed on the unconscious girl in front of him.
Then, something deeper in the canyon gave a great howling moan. The raiders stiffened, dropping their salvage, and fled as an indistinct brown figure slowly approached them. Artoo rolled a little back, his sensors darting across the canyon.
The figure - a man in a hooded brown robe - knelt beside Lucy's prone body, his hands dropping to her wrists. Then he reached up and pressed his fingers against her temples.
Artoo moaned.
The man turned towards him, pushing his hood off, and revealing a weathered, kindly face. He was an old man, or looked like one, with piercing blue eyes, a mop of untidy silver hair, and a small, neatly-trimmed white beard.
One of the things I've found is ... I'd never written for a movie fandom before Star Wars, I'm not really a movie person in general, and it's very odd to describe someone when you actually know what they look like. You know, with book character it's always a bit vague, but here, it's ... trying to describe Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi! It was definitely very weird. And I couldn't help but notice that he has this, like, messy hair and then that perfect little beard. Ah, Obi-Wan.
He smiled at the little droid.
"Hello there!" he called out. Artoo trembled, emitting a low, warbling beep.
The old man gestured for him to approach.
"Come here, my little friend," he said, and his voice gentled. "Don't be afraid."
Artoo's sensors went back to Lucy. He beeped inquiringly.
"Oh, don't worry - she'll be all right," the man said. He dropped a hand on her shoulder and gave her a light shake.
The world swam before Lucy's eyes. She groaned, struggling to sit up, only vaguely aware of the hand supporting her back.
Re-reading, I think both the brief bit with Artoo and Threepio in the garage, where they talk, and this one, if I were writing it now or editing it now, I'd probably cut those out or do something because I think they're both awkward.
"Rest easy, child," he said, with a wry look. "You've had a busy day - you're fortunate to be all in one piece!"
Lucy rubbed her neck, then blinked several times, still trying to orient herself. Her gaze landed on the old man's face.
"Ben?" she exclaimed. "Ben Kenobi? Boy, am I glad to see you!"
Yeah, this was the thing I was talking about earlier, where it's quite clear that Luke recognizes him and knows him already. And is probably - Obi-Wan is probably in fact the last person alive that's still in Luke's life that he does know. Just about everyone else, Han, Leia, are strangers to him, he's known them at most a few weeks. And so Obi-Wan is probably the closest to home he has, and of course that Lucy has here.
At that, Artoo waddled out of the alcove as fast as his wheels would take him. Ben's expression turned reproving.
"The Jundland wastes are not to be travelled lightly," he told her.
Artoo, whose creator had evidently not seen fit to include any sense of self-preservation,
It's not like Anakin was overburdened with it himself - I'm trying to imagine who could conceivably have made Artoo? But I assumed that Anakin was probably the one that did a lot of the customization there.
gave a string of happy beeps and whistles. Lucy ignored him, clambering to her feet and leaning heavily on Ben as he helped her walk to a large rock, where she collapsed.
"Tell me, young Lucy, what brings you out so far?"
I think I mentioned this on one of my rewatches or whatever, but one of the things I really like about how Obi-Wan deals with Luke and here, Lucy, is just about everybody refers to him as "Skywalker." The name that people know him by. Which is great, it's a fabulous name, but in a way it's like he's interchangeable with his father to most everybody. Even Anakin himself refers to him just as "Skywalker" at first. And I mean, it's in Empire, so it's not a retcon-y thing. And yeah, he - also sometimes calls him 'young one' or other things, but you know, Yoda, Palpatine, his, sort of, his identity seems consumed in his father's.
And I really like that, more in retrospect, but I really like that Obi-Wan doesn't do that, he instantly relates to Luke as Luke, and here as Lucy. It might be even easier with the gender difference, but actually - I think it'll probably become clearer when I'm actually re-reading the chapter, but I suspect that the gender difference, the fact that Anakin is a man and Lucy is a young girl, it only makes the similarities more pronounced to him.
Lucy waved her hand at Artoo. "This little droid! I think he's searching for his former master - I've never seen such devotion in a droid before." Both humans looked at him, and Artoo gave a small, sad whine.
It's a bit depressing when you think that Obi-Wan isn't and wasn't Artoo's master. Whoever he was given to in the interim - Antilles or whomever - I think it's, Leia's his master, and before her, of course it was Anakin, so this little sad sound he makes in the movie when he's searching for "his former master" manages to be...I mix that up with Anakin.
Lucy turned back to Ben. "He claims to be the property of an Obi-Wan Kenobi. Is he a relative of yours? Do you know what he's talking about?"
Ben's eyes widened, and something very like dread came over his face. He sank down. "Obi-Wan Kenobi," he repeated, lingering on the syllables. "Obi-Wan. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time - a long time."
"I think my uncle knows him," said Lucy, remembering last night's quarrel. With a decided effort, she kept the familiar note of petulance out of her voice.
Uh, that's just a sort of reference to the "oh my god Luke whines all the time" thing.
"He said he was dead."
Ben shook his head. "Oh, he's not dead," he said, and then his old wry look came back. "Not yet."
I think that's what makes Obi-Wan so likeable, that for all that he is the i-dotting t-crossing straitlaced Jedi, he's got that wry, self-effacing... he can laugh at himself. I think that's what makes him so likable, even while he's...plotting patricide and things.
"You know him?" asked Lucy, feeling that she couldn't be surprised by anything, at this point.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Oh, so many things.
"Well, of course I know him." Ben chuckled and tapped his chest. "He's me!"