We all know that Hoth was a simmering mess of hormones and stress and I would pay good money for a soap opera about them. Here are some things which Definitely Happened:
There’s a betting pool going on who takes Luke’s virginity. The favourites are Han and Leia, but Wedge Antilles has pretty good odds, and there’s a small contingent of aliens who are convinced it will be Chewie (after all, who could resist that Wookie musk? Headcanon: most alien races consider humans soft and gross. Most alien races find Wookies absurdly attractive. Han Solo isn’t the ladykiller; Chewie is.)
Leia and Han scream at each other in every corner of the base. Everyone is desperate for them to fuck. They do not. The sexual tension is so thick that it could be cut into blocks and sold as wall insulation. More than once they are ‘accidentally’ locked in a supply cupboard in the vain hope that claustrophobia will act as the catalyst that enables their frustration to spark into true love – or at least nasty raunchy cupboard sex. It does not. All that happens is that the offender has legally changed their name to escape the Wrath of Organa.
Someone paints a shirtless Han Solo on their X Wing. Leia is furious. Han is delighted: both at the highly flattering portrait (he has an eight-pack, he is shredded) and at Leia’s fury (you’re jealous princess/no I am not/you’re jealous, hey I can pose like that for you if you –). Hoth’s winter had nothing on the chilly silence that followed that suggestion.
Luke and Leia both have very graphic dreams about Han Solo. Han Solo has very graphic dreams about the twins – individually, together, he’s thirty fucking years old, why is his brain doing this to him.(Later on they will, individually, realise that due to Luke and Leia’s Force-bond they probably created a circle of Han Solo Sex Dreams: Leia had them, so Luke sensed her lust for Han which intensified his own lust for Han, which led to Luke having Han Solo sex dreams, which led to Leia lusting – and so on, and so on. For the sake of their sanity, they never share this revelation which each other.)
Luke is SO COLD. All the time. WHY DOES NO ONE APPRECIATE HOW COLD HE IS. He comes from a desert world. Of course he’s cold! What is all this white stuff? It was pretty for the first fve seconds but holy fucking Force it is so cold it burns and what the hell is going on with that? He bundles himself up in so many layers that he waddles rather than walks. Fearsome Last of the Jedi indeed.
Luke tapes a knife to a cleaning droid (disc-shaped things that swish around the base, sucking up dirt) and names it Stabby. Why, says Leia. Luke, the boy from Tatooine, shining and happy despite everything says why not. Why not indeed. Stabby is very fond of chasing Han. Han wants desperately to shoot the fucking thing– but then he sees big-eyed Luke and sharp-toothed Leia cooing over it and, well. A little bit of light stabbing is nothing, compared to those two smiling.
STABBY THE SPACE ROOMBA!
I am torn between wanting Stabby to be grabbed and evacuated along with the Rebels and make it to the next base, and wanting Stabby to get Vader.
Compromise: shortly after losing the Millennium Falcon, Vader, storming through the Rebel base, is startled to feel a sudden jolt of pain from the artificial sensors on his left leg prosthetic: a sharp sensation on his ankle. Surprised, because he sensed no threat–is the limb malfunctioning?–he looks down, and there is a cleaning droid with a knife taped to it, a little painted-on Rebel lieutenant’s insignia, and the word STABBY written on it.
He stares down at it, completely and utterly taken aback for the first time in over a decade. Fearlessly, it chitters back at him, sounding very triumphant.
He picks it up.
Off in the fractal weirdness of hyperspace, Rebels on several ships are surprised to find an update on Stabby’s kill-update feed, and then thoroughly shocked at the accompanying image: the upward-pointing camera has captured an image of Darth Vader staring down at the droid.
It’s the fastest news ever to travel through the Rebel grapevine, the mix of triumph and loss that is, they are certain, Stabby’s heroic last stand.
Until a day later, when the thing updates again, this time showing an extremely confused Imperial officer. And another, and another, and another, day after day.
They cancel the funeral.
Vader hasn’t done much just for the fun of it in two decades. Watching Imperial officers swear and clutch their ankles as a cleaning drone with a knife taped to it, an Imperial emblem, lieutenant’s insignia, and the word STABBY painted on it, bumps into them and then chatters triumphantly, he’s figured he’s earned.
STABBY FIC! STABBY STARWARS FIC! YOU HAVE MADE MY DAY!
But do they send in a rescue unit to reclaim their most honorable POW?
no, the rebels are all too happy to have vader backing one of their most valuable psychological weapons. stabby’s antics are invaluable for their ability to escalate tension within imperial ranks, and vader’s personal amusement means stabby will get to keep running his miniature interference mission for a long time to come
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSS
STABBY LIVESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Grand Moff Tarkin limps into Vader’s quarters. Again. “Lord Vader, enough of this.”
“I have altered the droid; pray I do not alter it any further.”
(If there’s one thing young Anakin Skywalker can appreciate, it’s a hot-rodded maintenance droid, c’mon.)
VADER PUTS A LIGHTSABRE ON STABBY
HE CALLS IT HIS APPRENTICE
MY SON WILL NOT TURN TO THE DARKSIDE BUT MY SON’S STABBY SON WILL
Stabby is eventually recovered and given a medal after the defeat of the Emperor, but his poor little chassis is too badly damaged by then to even hold onto the knife anymore. His internal mechanism is removed and upgraded, and then the Master Droid Tech charged with fixing him casts around for a new casing to put him in.
“Hey!” calls a teenaged Poe Dameron, walking into the Droid repair shop. “I got this decommissioned BB-8 chassis they said to bring in here. It needs a new owner. Captain said I can have it if I can find a new mechanism for it.”
The Master Droid Tech looks at Stabby, then at the BB-8 chassis, then back at Stabby. Stabby turns his unsheathed ocular sensor to Poe and beeps adoringly. (This is a common if relatively new reaction to Poe Dameron, who has just graduated from his Awkward Stage.)
“Yeah, I got one for you right here,” the Tech says, grinning.
There are people who tend to criticize the Star Wars franchise on a whole, as being very black and white. But I think the current Star Wars movies have done something really interesting with that:
We see a man, raised from infancy as a Stormtrooper, brainwashed and with no other moral compass, who is ordered to take part in a massacre, but chooses not to. Later, he seizes the opportunity to rescue a tortured prisoner and escape with him.
We see a scientist ordered to build a death weapon, still manage to leak out information to the people who can stop it, and build in weaknesses that can be exploited.
We see a career Imperial choose to defect rather than continue to work for a corrupt regime.
The new movies have given us a number of stories about people who on the wrong side, by choice or by force, but still choose to do what’s right in the end.
And that’s why I get so frustrated by fans who insist that Kylo Ren MUST have a redemption arc, because Star Wars is “about redemption.”
Because they’re right and they’re wrong. Star Wars is about CHOICE. It’s about people who choose to do the right thing, even when it’s hard, even when it’s painful, and even when they might have started on the wrong side. It’s about abandoning the darkness, and choosing light..
Vader didn’t have a “redemption arc.” He had a moment of choice, and despite all of his past evil, when it came down to it, he chose to save his son.
Kylo Ren chose to leave the Light. He chose to betray Luke. He chose to join the First Order. He chose to massacre villagers. He chose to torture helpless prisoners. He chose to aid in a genocide. And when face to face with the same choice that saved Vader, he chose to murder his father.
We do not need this mass murdering patricidal monster to represent the Star Wars theme of choosing light over darkness. We have Finn, we have Galen Erso, we have Bodhi Rook.
That’s where you’ll find themes of the Star Wars Universe alive and well. Not Kylo Ren.
theory: r2-d2, upon seeing Living Legend Luke Skywalker for the first time in a couple of decades, chases him all around the Resistance base, squealing with rage:You FUCKER you LEFT ME you JEDI PIECE OF SHITE you useless Jedi fuck come back here so I can fucking kill you –
He shocks him repeatedly, while Leia howls with laughter in the background
Okay, so we all know that Poe went around the Resistance base telling everyone about the Handsome Stormtrooper that saved his life – but what about BB-8? Imagine BB-8 coming back to base and promptly telling everyone about the good brave human who saved his Poe. This is Finn he is so lovely, he is the best of all humans, look at him, be nice to him – he’s a little bit slow – doesn’t understand droid at all but he’s a quick learner.
And imagine ALL THE DROIDS falling into line, looking after Finn, and Finn is just so nice to them because he remembers what it’s like to be treated like you’re nothing, like you don’t have a personality. And they just adopt him: Finn the best human, they designate him, and R2-D2 – battle-hardened war vet that he is – teaches him binary but teaches him the bastardised sweary binary that all the older droids speak and BB-8 is innocent and oblivious and C3-PO is scandalised because Finn is going round saying things like fuck me this is hot in this little whistle-beep.
And whenever Finn sits down he’s surrounded by happy young droids who absolutely adore him, and he is just so nice and all the droids go out of their way to do things for him.
And yes. Give me sweet lovely Finn with his droid ducklings.
OMG I NEED THIS ARTED. Just. Finn. Droids. WHAT ARE YOU DOING FINN CAN WE HELP WE’LL JUST WATCH IF YOU DON’T NEED US. FINN IS SLIGHTLY THIRSTY. FIND WATER.
i will protect the baby star wars fans who’ve only been here for less than a year from the nasty 40 year old veterans who think they own the saga with my life
Protect them from…what, exactly? The thing is, the “baby” Star Wars fans are essentially the majority now. They are the ones who loved the original movies, maybe liked the prequels, and then, along with 95% of the world, embraced the “new” Star Wars. The Star Wars tag on tumblr is filled with Finn, and Rey, and BB-8 and Poe. The Star Wars tag on A03 is filled with stories about Kylo Ren and General Hux. The tumblr banner on May 4th was BB-8. The world is full of fans making fan art, writing fic, and generally flailing all over the new Star Wars. Hell, even Wookiepedia has sectioned stuff into “canon” and “legend”. The stories that I loved, the characters that I grew up with (including some incredibly strong women who were pilots and smugglers and jedi and sith) have been trashed. The family saga, the story of a family who overcame the dark, who were better than their parents, who saved the galaxy and then remade it, those stories are gone. Finished, done. And the thing is, sure, I can collect the books, read them over and over again, but going forward? They will be lost. Lost, because new fans would have no reason to read stories about Han and Leia’s three children or Luke’s wife Mara. They will have their new stories. So the 30 some odd years of collaboration, and world building, and love for this shared, combined universe is gone. Forever. Once the generation of “nasty 40 year old veterans” goes, who will be left to remember anything of what was created in the time since Return of the Jedi and before Disney? The new fans won. You get a new movie every year, new comics, new games, new tv shows. You get countless works of fan art, fan fic, fan anything. You get it all. Us bitter old fans can’t even comment about the mechanics of the existing Star Wars universe (because Star Wars isn’t ye old scifi) without getting screamed at for being a bitter old fan who is ruining everyone’s fun. My stories, my characters, are gone forever, but if I’m not jumping for joy over the new disney Star Wars, if I don’t shout my love for Rey to the heavens, then I am nothing more than a bitter old fan who just needs to sit in the corner and shut up and let the kids have fun. It’s like a bunch of kids on the playground who discovered a new way to play hopscotch that has nothing to do with squares and numbers and when the one kid who always played it the other way says “but wait, what about what we used to have” they gets shoved into the mud and told to stop complaining and being bitter already. So, no, I’m not going to protect new fans. I’m not going to worry about being inclusive in the fandom. You have 95% of the rest of the world to do that for you. I’m going to take my 26 year-old, bitter, nasty self, and quietly collect what I can from the old canon and mourn my stories in peace. And yeah, sometimes I’ll interject on a post. Sometimes I’ll be bitter. I think I’m allowed that much.
Signal boosting this because I think it’s worth reading and knowing.
To me, it’s not the new fans who need to be held accountable for Disney taking three decades worth of EU and going “yeah, none of that is canon anymore. Just focus on the stuff we’re trying to sell you now! :D“
But I also don’t like the pressure I’ve seen brought to bear on the part of the fandom that knows / cares about / remembers the rest of Star Wars. This flurry of defensiveness, asserting that the only reason anyone would possibly not love TFA is [insert disparaging remarks about everyone who isn’t relying on JJ Abrams to introduce them to Star Wars] has been presumptuous, insulting, and single-mindedly focused on shutting up anyone who didn’t like this film.
I get that a lot of money hangs in the balance. If older fans were to criticize TFA on social media as openly as they lambasted the PT, Disney would be very screwed indeed. But I care a lot more about fandom being a space where people can express their feelings honestly than I do about protecting some company’s profits.
And if your immediate thought is “but what about fans who act like massive douchebags?“ they enable themselves. My focus right now is on people who do feel the sting of social shaming and are feeling pushed to embrace the ST, or be silent if they can’t be positive. Because fandom should be diverse enough that at least some of us can listen to and commiserate with the longtime fans who feel like they lost, and feel like the new stuff just isn’t for them, and are disappointed about it.
I’m saying this even though “Leia and Han got married and had three kids“ never appealed to me. I can still look at what @djemsostylist is saying and really get that the new films have written people she loved and admired out of existence. And changed the course of Luke and Han and Leia’s whole life. And that because the old-EU was Jossed, most of the fannish energy going into Star Wars now will completely bypass the stories she grew up with.
Until she pointed out what that felt like, I hadn’t understood what a significant loss it was. But I’m certainly thinking about it now.
The conclusion I’m drawing is that
the EU gave the SW franchise a handy and relatively
low-profile way to go left where the movies went right, thus
appealing to people they would otherwise lose. And that in the marked
hierarchy of what SW is willing to risk money on, ground-zero
of what constitutes “real” canon continues to focus on Skywalkers and
Solos (and potentially Kenobis) and center the life and times of white men.
Is it less like that
than it was? Yes. I don’t think they can afford not to change. But if
this recent “none of the old canon counts anymore unless we incorporate
it into what we’re making now” should telegraph anything, it’s that the stories that only get told in
the EU are uniformly vulnerable to being dismissed at any time, for any
reason. And a lot of fans will argue that the low quality of the
books justifies their being Jossed.
Now – a lot of the books are
canon-endorsed action adventures with Gary Stus and Mary Sues in space.
There is an overabundance of mediocre white guys saving the galaxy and
angsting over the force and getting laid. But we also lost POVs and
characterizations and stories that the movies have zero time for. Lando
Calrissian had a trilogy of books dedicated to his adventures. So did
Boba Fett, who thanks to the PT retcon, is PoC and arguably also
books-canon asexual. Several of the villains got books
dedicated to them. And so did a number of the members of the Jedi order
who weren’t central in the movie. The PT
got fawning publicity for being so fair and enlightened,
because three whole women got to hold lightsabers
onscreen. Regrettably, AFAIK no one who didn’t fixate on them can remember
their names, because they weren’t allowed to do anything. But – all these people who were basically extras on camera,
in book-verse some of their characters got adventures. And people read the books and loved them hard because it was
that or nothing.
It’s not great. It’s not even
adequate. But it was something, and now that has all been shoved aside.
Reblogging because this is important.
There are many, many people who were introduced to Star Wars via the OT, expanded their repertoire with the books and comics, and then some of them grew to love the PT and animated series as well. And many of those people were also shocked and hurt and felt abandoned by the franchise when Disney and Abrams did their thing. And one of the strongest threads that I have seen in common for many of these people is that it’s because the new Star Wars doesn’t… feel like Star Wars to them. And that’s a very personal thing. It’s like being evacuated from your house by the sea and then being told that now you’re living in the mountains. But you get there, set up all your things in a house that looks exactly like your previous one, has the same layout, the same architecture style, but… it doesn’t feel like home. And now you have your new neighbors telling you “Well why? Same house. Same things. Feel comfortable. Enjoy the mountains. They’re huge. You were just spoiled living by the sea so long.”
But it’s not about that. It’s about very personal feelings of belonging, and… your home by the sea might have had all kinds of problems and nothing was perfect, and maybe you complained about the plumbing or hated the salt in the air, but it was still home. And now it’s gone, and you’re being told you can’t go home again except by looking at all your old picture books and watching your old home videos. Sometimes your new neighbors will watch them with you, and some of them say “Well this looks pretty fantastic. The ocean looks amazing.” And that feels pretty great. But when most of them tell you “Yeah, yeah, ocean this and ocean that. You miss it but come on, there’s a mountain right there. Let’s climb it,” of course you don’t feel heard. And it feels like nobody cares, because they’ve never lived by the ocean or maybe they visited on vacation once, but… and here’s the crux of the matter, it’s not the same. It’s not meant to be the same, but whether it was meant to or not has little bearing on the way you feel about it.
And a loss is a loss, whether it is a house you lived in for twenty years or if it’s a fandom that has changed hands overnight. And people should be allowed to mourn their losses without being shamed for it.
Some people never adjust to mountain life. The elevation makes them feel weak, heights make them dizzy, the winding roads and the sudden weather changes are disorienting and intimidating, and the horizon makes them feel claustrophobic. But… some people do. Some people take up skiing, some people discover they love playing in the snow, and some people fall in love with the stark beauty of the rugged scenery.
And just the same, many people into the old Star Wars also made a personal choice to love the new Star Wars stuff, despite it all. Not because they felt they should, but because they found something there they could also enjoy. And grow to cherish. And that’s great, it’s fabulous, but it’s not a requirement and it’s not a gauge of how right or wrong one is over the other.
So yes. Protect the Star Wars newbies, for everyone should be able to enjoy what they love without having someone rain on their parade, but. Also. Protect the Star Wars oldbie who may or may not like the new stuff, for they are still a part of this fandom too, protect them because their parade has already been rained on and they’re still here, still loving it, and their emotions are just as valid. Please protect them both, please treat each other well.
Steel Phoenix Studios 