i want to hear your hot takes about how leia handles the idea of darth vader as her biological father bc i remember a point you mentioned on a past post about how most depictions are really hard for you to get into (paraphrasing) and boy i could not agree more it is SO HARD for me to imagine any kind of family kinship like luke has w the guy. leia is not here for that. fuck that noise says leia. imo.
i struggle to get into most depictions because a lot of them depict a leia that relies on the weaknesses of her character, rather than the strengths; carrie fisher had a really damning criticism of how lucas wrote leia, where she says that, you know, leia's written to be the ultimate female badass, who is worthy and strong specifically because she takes no shit, but any deeper meaning is far from present. by the time of ROTJ, when she's going to presented as han's final love interest, leia has to be sufficiently separated from her stereotypically masculine traits - her clothes come off to remind you that she has sex appeal, her hair comes down to symbolize that she's unwinding and becoming more feminine and thusly less of the abrasive, bull-headed leia from the first two films.
there are a myriad of ways that people deal with the inherent misogyny of leia's writing, but the most popular one is to double down on that take-no-shit leia, who mouths off through ANH and ESB, as if the gestalt of her personality has to be this abrasiveness. and, like, i appreciate that, and being generally kind of an asshole is absolutely a cornerstone of leia's personality in the films; her first words to the guy here to rescue her are, "lmao, fucking manlet," and she tells tarkin he smells like ass and she calls han some variation of stupid about forty times a minute, and then calls chewbacca a "walking carpet." granted, leia's in pretty extreme circumstances - captured, tortured, and then subjected to the loss of alderaan all at once - but ESB kind of shows you that the more leia cares about someone or something, the more generally unbearable her personality becomes, the one exception being luke. it's really significant that the will-they-won't-they dynamic she has with han is all about leia caving and admitting that she has feelings for han - partially this is inherent misogyny, but as it is the text, i go for the interpretation that leia's abrasiveness and raging bitchmode attitudes are all about protecting her vulnerabilities, and that emotional intimacy intimidates her.
there are exceptions to this rule, naturally, and those exceptions prove that leia is way more compassionate than people really give her credit for. the way she cares for luke in ANH despite having lost not only her whole family but her whole planet is nothing short of awe-inspiring, that maybe she's just had the absolute worst handful of days in her life but her first instinct is to pick up someone else's pieces is nothing less than one of the most tender acts of kindness in the entire saga. the way she's gentle with luke after he loses a hand to vader in ESB, the way she holds him and wraps a blanket around him and resolves to get them the hell out of there, the way she says, "someone who loves you," to han in ROTJ, even the way she's really quite kind and playful with the ewoks in ROTJ, all of that speaks of someone who isn't an inch less compassionate than luke is, the saga just happens to not be about her going before the emperor.
the idea that leia's personality is solely cold as ice just isn't borne out by the way she acts in the films; she's not inherently angry, she's masking. her anger isn't a lack of compassion, but an overabundance of it that she seeks to hide. and a lot of the theories about how she might relate to vader as her biological father tend to rely more on the idea that leia's in some form inherently vengeful, when it's never indicated in the OT that she has any kind of vengeful tendencies; she has just tendencies. she strangles jabba with her own chains and it's the ultimate comeuppance for the crimes against sentient lives jabba has wrought. when she snipes at vader in ANH, all she says is the absolute, unbroken truth - that more people are going to turn to the rebellion the harder the empire tries to keep them in line.
that's not to say that i see leia forming a strong kinship with vader at all - far from it, and while i don't think leia is entirely without curiosity as to how her biological father ended up being darth vader, i don't think she has the same yearning that luke does to know their father, and vader's crimes against her personally are legion. she's not going to be instantly over that just because she shares blood with him. i am definitely not saying that, if i were writing it, leia would instantly want to form any kind of bond with vader. what i am saying is that i've seen a lot of takes that emphasize leia acting out of revenge, or acting inhumanely, or entirely unable to empathize with why luke wants his father so badly - but i think that forgets that leia, too, is an orphan who misses her parents, and that fundamentally she adores luke and is hugely invested in his wellbeing. so i think how she handles it has a name and it's luke, and at the end of the day, leia can't entirely resent something that has connected her so profoundly to her best friend. i think she sits somewhere between, "this is the most fucked up news possible," and then she looks at luke and it's like okay, but it's bearable.
romaincrisis
germansingergirl
izzy806
kaledo-art
theartofmadeline
jacobvanloon
