snapshots from an AILUROPHILE Lots of Star Wars • Still prefer the timeline where I get stories with Mara Jade (sorry I'll never be sorry about that) • Luke & Mara • Han & Leia • Hux & Ren • Anakin Solo • Mulder & Scully • Severus Snape • Stories • Bungalows & Cottages • Buffyverse • Cats • Natasha Romanoff • Other fandoms, actors, and miscellany as the mood strikes My Fic
“Fear not, for behold, I tell you good tidings of great joy which will be for all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior, tis Christ the Lord. And this should be a sign unto you. You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger…Glory to God in the highest, and good will towards men”
I’ve been thinking for a while I want to make changes in my tumblr presence. I think I’ve finally decided what those are going to be.
I’ve created @jedihafren which I’ve been using as mostly a writing announcement blog with occasional reblogs as related to my writing. But I’ve finally put together an actual sort of plan (omg) and so here is what is happening.
@jedihafren will be my main writing/fandom blog. It’s going to be high on the Star Wars content/some personal writing updates etc, but if you like this blog and you want to keep following me, pop over there and follow that.
@jeedai-librarian is my non-fandom blog (mostly). It’s been a side-blog project for a while, but it tends to be a lot of scenery, some art (including some fan-art), and it’s more sporadic, but it’s there.
I’m keeping @youngestsolokid for Solo family stuff, but it’s been on hiatus while I dove into writing more completely.
At this point, this blog will stay here - I’ve got a lot of things liked, and a lot of things queued, and it’s probably not going to go completely dormant, but I’m switching focus over to the other. I’ll be adding followers as I have time to do so, but this is kinda what’s the what!
It’s been so long since I read most of the 90s EU, and I’m not rereading all of it, even though I am trying to touch everything that Anakin Solo is mentioned in for @youngestsolokid.
Last night, I breezed through Planet of Twilight. I don’t like it as well as Children of the Jedi, a fact that is highlighted by the fact that I ended up skimming big time. CotJ had moments I very much liked, particularly when it came to Han & Leia – or maybe after Han & Leia in canon, I’m just nostalgic and drastically sentimental for a timeline where they work together as partners instead of always on opposite ends of the galaxy in a timeline where they ‘have two personalities that wouldn’t really work together’ Thanks for nothing JJ. Okay, moving on.
There are moments in PoT where I did not like Leia’s characterization. She came off whiny, or weak, and in ways that didn’t feel in character to me. Then again, she is Anakin’s daughter, and let’s be fair, Anakin can be whiny. Why don’t I like the idea of Leia being whiny? She has been kidnapped in this book, feeling a little sorry for one’s self is therefore not an unreasonable response. It’s possible we allow our male heroes to be whiny in a way we won’t allow our female ones to be. But I feel like in CotJ she gets her act together and moves, so I’m not certain what happened here.
That said PoT does two things that I like. The first is female friendships, the second is, that it makes an effort to deal specifically with Leia’s parentage, her coming to terms with that parentage, and what it potentially means for her children.*
Callista gets a bad rap sometimes. And I will be the first to say that I find the romance storyline to be super problematic on a lot of levels, but I want to talk for a minute (and thank Barbara Hambly), because in PoT is something I love - two women being friends and working to improve themselves. There is a scene near the end where Callista and Leia are working together. Luke has been pestering Leia to take on her lightsaber training more, and Leia has been struggling with who her father is, what her Force sensitivity has the potential to mean for her and for the galaxy. And she and Callista talk about this, in and around lightsaber drills together.
"Luke was able to confront Vader," said Callista. "To be defeated by him--to cut off his hand, as his own had been cut off to accept that this was his father. To surrender that fact, and go on from there. You never had that chance."
"It's not an experience I'd stand in line for," remarked Leia drily. "I knew Vader. I saw him tagging after Palpatine every time I went to Court. Believe me, I'll never accept that he was my father."
"Then you'll always be the slave to his shadow."
Later in the same scene the following exchange takes place:
"I don't know what it would mean," she said slowly, groping for words, "if I accepted it. If I made him a part of me, the way Luke has."
"You mean for others'." Callista wrapped her long arms about her knees, sitting perched on a smooth hunk of crystal like fused glass, her dark hair frayed by straying winds across the crimson leather of her jacket. "Those who would ask what his daughter was doing ruling the Council?"
"Maybe," said Leia. "Mostly for myself. And for the children. It will take time." The thought of it revolted her, furious anger succeeded by the heat of tears in her throat.
"No one is asking you to do it tomorrow. But if you know what parts of him are inside you, you can know what to build a wall around and what to take into yourself. Because you cannot afford not to be strong, Leia," she said.
I feel like this is the sort of conversation that is somewhat rare in the EU, and the scene itself acknowledges the benefits of Leia learning and sharing with someone who is not her brother – that the wisdom of someone else is necessary. And I’ll admit, that weird romantic stuff aside, I like Callista and Hambly better on my reread because of some of these things that have pulled out and taken prominence over the Who Should Luke Marry? question.
But going back to a quote from above:
“Believe me, I'll never accept that he was my father."
"Then you'll always be the slave to his shadow."
In some ways I feel like this exchange actually summarizes the crux of the change between Leia in Legends and Leia in Canon. I feel like by Bloodline, Leia is still grappling with this. It is still a secret that she holds with Luke and Han and no one else, and I feel as if it actually creates precisely this sort of situation – that Leia in Bloodline is still a slave to Vader’s shadow, and ultimately, that shadow is recreated in the form of her son.
And speaking of sons, the dream sequence involving her children becomes also fascinating in the comparisons between Legends and canon.
"You've done well, daughter." Bail Organa extended a hand to touch Jaina's heavy chestnut hair. The gold ring on his finger gleamed like a fragment of the world's final sunset. "What have you taught them, these young Jedi of the House of Organa?"
"I've taught them to love justice, as you loved justice, Father." Leia's own voice sounded deep and quiet in the chamber's gentle twilight.
"I've taught them to respect the rights of all living things. I've taught them that the Law is above any single being's will."
"But we know better." Anakin spoke in the breaking treble of an adolescent, and there was an unfamiliar, ugly grin on his face as he stepped forward, and a light in his crystal-blue eyes that Leia had never seen in waking life. "We're Jedi Knights. We have the Power." His light-saber licked out crimson from the shadow and slashed her father in half.
…
"We're Jedi, Mother," Jaina said. "There's no Law for us. We can do whatever we want."
Anakin said, "That's your gift to us. We're Jedi because you're Jedi, too. We are what you are." He turned to look back at the pieces of Bail Organa's body, the eyes open and staring in shock, the outstretched hand with its golden ring. "And anyway he wasn't really your father."
The dream represents Leia’s worst fears for her children, a fear that is ultimately realized in Legends with Jacen, but Jacen’s descent springs largely out of the war and broken pieces rather than out of Leia’s own fear. In Legends I see Leia confronting those fears and what it means to be a Jedi, or have the Force, and how it influences and impacts her earlier in her timeline and with more vulnerability than I see her doing thus far in canon. And this book is one example of this.
What’s funny is that while the most obvious comparisons to the EU kids is Jacen to Ben I feel as if you could insert Ben into Anakin’s lines, and have not just a dream that represents Leia’s worst fears for her children, but the reality of it. (Be right back, I’m crying for a bit for Leia). You could complain, perhaps, about there being some confusion about being a Jedi versus a dark side user, but it also makes sense in the context of Luke saying that their father was a Jedi - and he was - and then he turned dark. Dreams and fears aren’t necessarily rational after all. And the fear that becoming a Jedi might lead into a similar path for her or for her children is definitely a reasonable fear.
Overall this book feels like it focuses quite a bit on Leia’s struggle with her Force sensitivity, and the legacy it grants her: Who she might become if she grants herself the acceptance to learn to use the Force. As before mentioned there are scenes where I didn’t care for Leia’s characterization, but there are bits that I liked too, and the dream speaks to the anxieties of raising Force sensitive children with the legacy of their grandfather, and I like that.
I personally prefer a Leia who embraces her past and moves forward from it earlier, but I am fascinated by a timeline where she doesn’t. Early on this felt like a difference, but after Bloodline, and as I continue re-reading the 90s EU, its only reinforcing that it’s very much a difference in the Leia’s in timelines, and it feels like a critical difference.
*In one of the odd aspects of the lack of over-all planning of the Legends EU, this is also somewhat dealt with in Tatooine Ghost, which ICly, comes chronologically earlier, while OOCly is written many years later. So… it’s acknowledged, moving on.
Believe me, I'll never accept that he was my father.""Then you'll always be the slave to his shadow.
Exchange between Leia Organa and Callista about Darth Vader; Planet of Twilight by Barbara Hambly
I wrote a longer meta about this and Planet of Twilight in general, but this exchange neatly summarizes what I feel like is possibly the crux of the change between Leia in Legends and Leia in Canon in some ways. I feel like by Bloodline, Leia is still grappling with this acceptance. She still sees Bail as her father primarily, and the galaxy almost definitely does. It is still a secret that she holds with Luke and Han and no one else, and I feel as if it actually creates precisely this sort of situation – that Leia in Bloodline is still a slave to Vader’s shadow, and ultimately, that shadow is recreated in the form of her son.
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