hatred empowers us
Oct. 2nd, 2011 01:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraine...to quote Darth Vaarsuvius.
This isn't fic -- I'm going to try and post Lucy in a few chunks, starting tomorrow, and then move on to First Impressions. No, this is just me complaining about a trope I hate, with respect to one of the Star Wars expanded universe's novels and Pride and Prejudice. (Doesn't everyone think of these things together?)
Awhile back, I read Tatooine Ghost, which I’d heard was one of the less annoying products of the post-ROTJ EU. Shockingly, I didn’t like it.
I really, really didn’t like it. I definitely didn’t buy it (so all of this is going off memory, but I think it was pretty straightforward).
It wasn’t the writing, though that wasn’t anything exceptional. It wasn’t the “meh” plot. It wasn’t the phenomenally bland Kitster Banai (where’sfialleril when you need her?) and less-than-thrilling Han Solo. It wasn’t the idea of Han and Leia as the Solos (though it grates). It was Leia.
In many ways, Tatooine Ghost is about Leia’s troubled relationship with her natural father. The storyline smacked of ‘excuse plot’ to get her to Tatooine and force her to deal with Anakin-as-Anakin and not Anakin-as-Vader. That is not my issue -- I think random something-or-other bringing Leia to Tatooine and forcing her to confront her legacy is an awesome idea.
My problem is with the way that Tatooine Ghost handled it. Basically, TG fell back on this incredibly annoying trope (which, alas, I have not yet found at TV Tropes -- I’m sure it’s only a matter of time) that I see ALL THE TIME.
It goes something like this.
Person A does something unpleasant to Person B. The level of unpleasantness varies, but it’s sufficient that normally you’d sympathize with Person B and dismiss Person A as a total asshole. Since the whole point is to get Person A and Person B on reasonably good terms, Person A has to gain our sympathies somehow.
This is done by making Person B completely overreact to whatever happened, blaming Person A for things they didn’t do, going on and on about comparatively minor slights, often falling into gross hypocrisy, and generally making every complaint except the one they have a right to make. If they do make it, it’s lost in the mass of irrational vitriol, allowing the author and readers to dismiss B’s antipathy to A as unreasonable, self-sabotaging, and just … well, wrong.
Quite often, there are a number of other characters around to go “lolwut” at B, attempt to explain (or mansplain!) things to them, and so on. But silly B, they just don’t listen, and keep being silly and unreasonable until confronted with irrefutable proof of their wrongness. Then they’re sorry!
(Undoubtedly by pure coincidence, A is often male and B is often female. There’s enough variation that I went for gender-neutrality in the summary, though. Oh, and the extras vary quite a bit.)
I can think of exactly one example of something that does this well: Pride and Prejudice. And a more quintessential, over- (and poorly-)imitated example would be hard to find.
Darcy insults Elizabeth at a party, within her hearing. She is, understandably, insulted. Less understandably, she remains convinced that his character was frozen in time at that moment and refuses to see anything beyond it, in the face of steadily mounting evidence. She reads his awkward attempts at flirtation as really involved insults. She reads confessions as boasts. She prides herself on her perfectly perfect judgment of everything, and turns around and accuses him of vanity.
So when the inevitable showdown comes, she rips him up one side and down the other about (1) things he did and is totally at fault for, (2) things he did, but for different (and more defensible) reasons than she thinks, and (3) things he never did at all. And while she seems to be celebrated at the moment, the scene becomes agonizingly cringeworthy in retrospect. When the truth comes out, Elizabeth is devastated, feels like a horrible person, turns her criticism on herself for once (and is much the better for it).
Oh yeah, and her sister served as the Lolwut Squad all through the first half of the book. P&P is this plot. There’s just one thing.
Elizabeth was right. Oh, not about everything she said. Not about most of what she said. But Elizabeth continues to believe that Darcy is a jerk even afterwards, and it turns out that after Darcy got over being royally pissed off, he believed it too. So he tried to be more considerate, or at least act in more considerate ways. And Elizabeth finds that, while he was certainly a jerk when they met and when they proposed, he’s (1) not like that all (or most) of the time, and (2) now trying really hard to not be like that ever (with only partial success, because Austen).
Which is to say, Pride and Prejudice is a nuanced version of this where Person A is successfully rehabilitated on many different levels, where Person B does overreact, but where that overreaction does not erase Person A’s offense, and where Person B’s single valid objection is not dismissed with the mass of unreasonable vitriol, but carefully differentiated.
Okay, back to SW and Tatooine Ghost. In this novel (and in a lot of Skywalker-centric fic in general), Leia’s antipathy towards Anakin is presented as irrational and unreasonable. Yeah.
Off the top of my head, here are some of the reasons Leia Skywalker Organa has to hate her father.
(1) He turned to the Dark Side, sacrificing his judgment and basic integrity of personality for something that didn’t work anyway, and leading to nasty consequences for pretty much every life touched by his, including hers.
(2) He choked her pregnant mother into unconsciousness, at the very least contributing to her death.
(3) He helped lead an oppressive fascist regime that she has dedicated her life to fighting.
(4) He murdered a lot of people, including children.
(5) He hunted her down and captured her.
(6) He tortured her for information.
(7) He cooperated with the man who blew up her entire planet.
(8) He captured her again, tortured both of her companions, and intended to take her away to some undisclosed location for some undisclosed purpose. It wouldn’t have been nice.
(9) He sliced off her twin brother’s hand.
(10) When he discovered her existence, his immediate reaction was to use her as leverage against her brother by threatening to turn her to evil, too.
But in Tatooine Ghost, we don’t (as far as I recall) hear Leia say, “he tortured me and he tortured you and that is not something I should just get over, okay?” We hear some vague idea that his blood is tainted or something and, somehow, his voluntary turn to evil could be transmitted in his -- and therefore her -- DNA, so she shouldn’t have kids.
She seems offended that his old friends retain their affection and admiration for him, even though he never did any harm to them or Tatooine -- rather the reverse if he did free the slaves (and in any case, as a slave who got away and proceeded to become the second most powerful person in the galaxy, it’s hardly a stretch to see why he’d be a local hero regardless).
She also seems to be under the impression that he emerged from the womb in full armour and struggles to even consider that he wasn’t a child of the Corn. She even admits that she would likely have done exactly what he did to the Sand People in his position, while still regarding it as proof as his innate evil or something.
It’s Han who has to be the voice of reason. He’s the one who points out that people aren’t generally born evil, that the people of Tatooine have valid reasons to admire Anakin Skywalker, that he or Leia would likely have done the same thing if somebody they loved had been tortured to death, that evil is not a hereditary disease.
(His “it’s your choice, but” guilt-trips on her in regard to having children are pretty squicky, by the way, as is the narrative’s implicit endorsement. See, when Leia is all confused and irrational and conflicted, she doesn’t want children. Then she comes to terms with her family and grows as a person and is at peace with herself, so she’s okay with having children. Offspring are emblems of maturity and moral growth, y’all.)
And in accordance with tradition, Leia pays no attention to any of this and only comes around when confronted with irrefutable evidence that Anakin was not born evil: his mother conveniently left a journal full of daily accounts of their lives, which unsurprisingly include Anakin being a child and not a tiny Darth Vader. So Leia realizes that hey, she’s not a carrier for evil, Anakin made these things called choices that generally happen in sequences over extended periods of time.
I think a holojournal from Padmé would have been cooler, and more likely to provide a compelling look at her father as a good person-gone-horribly-wrong than the fact that he was a nice child. Padmé’s voice would also likely be more powerful and immediate for Leia in particular, since she actually remembers her.
End result: Leia is somewhat reconciled to her heritage, at least to the point that she gets over her silly childfree ways and presumably goes on to conceive offspring (...a future Sith Lord, lol, a on-again-off-again cool daughter, and another brother she actually names after her father idek).
Yeah, no. Cool subject, painful execution.
This isn't fic -- I'm going to try and post Lucy in a few chunks, starting tomorrow, and then move on to First Impressions. No, this is just me complaining about a trope I hate, with respect to one of the Star Wars expanded universe's novels and Pride and Prejudice. (Doesn't everyone think of these things together?)
Awhile back, I read Tatooine Ghost, which I’d heard was one of the less annoying products of the post-ROTJ EU. Shockingly, I didn’t like it.
I really, really didn’t like it. I definitely didn’t buy it (so all of this is going off memory, but I think it was pretty straightforward).
It wasn’t the writing, though that wasn’t anything exceptional. It wasn’t the “meh” plot. It wasn’t the phenomenally bland Kitster Banai (where’s
fialleril when you need her?) and less-than-thrilling Han Solo. It wasn’t the idea of Han and Leia as the Solos (though it grates). It was Leia.In many ways, Tatooine Ghost is about Leia’s troubled relationship with her natural father. The storyline smacked of ‘excuse plot’ to get her to Tatooine and force her to deal with Anakin-as-Anakin and not Anakin-as-Vader. That is not my issue -- I think random something-or-other bringing Leia to Tatooine and forcing her to confront her legacy is an awesome idea.
My problem is with the way that Tatooine Ghost handled it. Basically, TG fell back on this incredibly annoying trope (which, alas, I have not yet found at TV Tropes -- I’m sure it’s only a matter of time) that I see ALL THE TIME.
It goes something like this.
Person A does something unpleasant to Person B. The level of unpleasantness varies, but it’s sufficient that normally you’d sympathize with Person B and dismiss Person A as a total asshole. Since the whole point is to get Person A and Person B on reasonably good terms, Person A has to gain our sympathies somehow.
This is done by making Person B completely overreact to whatever happened, blaming Person A for things they didn’t do, going on and on about comparatively minor slights, often falling into gross hypocrisy, and generally making every complaint except the one they have a right to make. If they do make it, it’s lost in the mass of irrational vitriol, allowing the author and readers to dismiss B’s antipathy to A as unreasonable, self-sabotaging, and just … well, wrong.
Quite often, there are a number of other characters around to go “lolwut” at B, attempt to explain (or mansplain!) things to them, and so on. But silly B, they just don’t listen, and keep being silly and unreasonable until confronted with irrefutable proof of their wrongness. Then they’re sorry!
(Undoubtedly by pure coincidence, A is often male and B is often female. There’s enough variation that I went for gender-neutrality in the summary, though. Oh, and the extras vary quite a bit.)
I can think of exactly one example of something that does this well: Pride and Prejudice. And a more quintessential, over- (and poorly-)imitated example would be hard to find.
Darcy insults Elizabeth at a party, within her hearing. She is, understandably, insulted. Less understandably, she remains convinced that his character was frozen in time at that moment and refuses to see anything beyond it, in the face of steadily mounting evidence. She reads his awkward attempts at flirtation as really involved insults. She reads confessions as boasts. She prides herself on her perfectly perfect judgment of everything, and turns around and accuses him of vanity.
So when the inevitable showdown comes, she rips him up one side and down the other about (1) things he did and is totally at fault for, (2) things he did, but for different (and more defensible) reasons than she thinks, and (3) things he never did at all. And while she seems to be celebrated at the moment, the scene becomes agonizingly cringeworthy in retrospect. When the truth comes out, Elizabeth is devastated, feels like a horrible person, turns her criticism on herself for once (and is much the better for it).
Oh yeah, and her sister served as the Lolwut Squad all through the first half of the book. P&P is this plot. There’s just one thing.
Elizabeth was right. Oh, not about everything she said. Not about most of what she said. But Elizabeth continues to believe that Darcy is a jerk even afterwards, and it turns out that after Darcy got over being royally pissed off, he believed it too. So he tried to be more considerate, or at least act in more considerate ways. And Elizabeth finds that, while he was certainly a jerk when they met and when they proposed, he’s (1) not like that all (or most) of the time, and (2) now trying really hard to not be like that ever (with only partial success, because Austen).
Which is to say, Pride and Prejudice is a nuanced version of this where Person A is successfully rehabilitated on many different levels, where Person B does overreact, but where that overreaction does not erase Person A’s offense, and where Person B’s single valid objection is not dismissed with the mass of unreasonable vitriol, but carefully differentiated.
Okay, back to SW and Tatooine Ghost. In this novel (and in a lot of Skywalker-centric fic in general), Leia’s antipathy towards Anakin is presented as irrational and unreasonable. Yeah.
Off the top of my head, here are some of the reasons Leia Skywalker Organa has to hate her father.
(1) He turned to the Dark Side, sacrificing his judgment and basic integrity of personality for something that didn’t work anyway, and leading to nasty consequences for pretty much every life touched by his, including hers.
(2) He choked her pregnant mother into unconsciousness, at the very least contributing to her death.
(3) He helped lead an oppressive fascist regime that she has dedicated her life to fighting.
(4) He murdered a lot of people, including children.
(5) He hunted her down and captured her.
(6) He tortured her for information.
(7) He cooperated with the man who blew up her entire planet.
(8) He captured her again, tortured both of her companions, and intended to take her away to some undisclosed location for some undisclosed purpose. It wouldn’t have been nice.
(9) He sliced off her twin brother’s hand.
(10) When he discovered her existence, his immediate reaction was to use her as leverage against her brother by threatening to turn her to evil, too.
But in Tatooine Ghost, we don’t (as far as I recall) hear Leia say, “he tortured me and he tortured you and that is not something I should just get over, okay?” We hear some vague idea that his blood is tainted or something and, somehow, his voluntary turn to evil could be transmitted in his -- and therefore her -- DNA, so she shouldn’t have kids.
She seems offended that his old friends retain their affection and admiration for him, even though he never did any harm to them or Tatooine -- rather the reverse if he did free the slaves (and in any case, as a slave who got away and proceeded to become the second most powerful person in the galaxy, it’s hardly a stretch to see why he’d be a local hero regardless).
She also seems to be under the impression that he emerged from the womb in full armour and struggles to even consider that he wasn’t a child of the Corn. She even admits that she would likely have done exactly what he did to the Sand People in his position, while still regarding it as proof as his innate evil or something.
It’s Han who has to be the voice of reason. He’s the one who points out that people aren’t generally born evil, that the people of Tatooine have valid reasons to admire Anakin Skywalker, that he or Leia would likely have done the same thing if somebody they loved had been tortured to death, that evil is not a hereditary disease.
(His “it’s your choice, but” guilt-trips on her in regard to having children are pretty squicky, by the way, as is the narrative’s implicit endorsement. See, when Leia is all confused and irrational and conflicted, she doesn’t want children. Then she comes to terms with her family and grows as a person and is at peace with herself, so she’s okay with having children. Offspring are emblems of maturity and moral growth, y’all.)
And in accordance with tradition, Leia pays no attention to any of this and only comes around when confronted with irrefutable evidence that Anakin was not born evil: his mother conveniently left a journal full of daily accounts of their lives, which unsurprisingly include Anakin being a child and not a tiny Darth Vader. So Leia realizes that hey, she’s not a carrier for evil, Anakin made these things called choices that generally happen in sequences over extended periods of time.
End result: Leia is somewhat reconciled to her heritage, at least to the point that she gets over her silly childfree ways and presumably goes on to conceive offspring (...a future Sith Lord, lol, a on-again-off-again cool daughter, and another brother she actually names after her father idek).
Yeah, no. Cool subject, painful execution.
no subject
on 2011-10-05 01:30 am (UTC)Well, because, as you say, Denning went for a really stupid interpretation of Leia's issues with her biological father. Because, I mean, Leia trying to unpack that she's the kid of a man who blew up her homeworld, tortured her, cut off her brother's hand, and did all of that in service to a government she thought was so vile that she joined an illegal resistance movement... and then she finds out that he's the product of the same kind of sentients'-rights abuses that she probably went on mercy missions to ameliorate. Now that is a story. (And one that gets bonus points for actually showing that Anakin's life as a slave sucked, i.e. actually making what gets shown of slavery in this series being as ugly as it should be.)
And OMG so with you on the reproductive/anti-childfree squick in this. So much. And I could even see the process as being, "Leia discovers some of the things that actually made Anakin susceptible to the Dark Side, which were environmental rather than child-of-the-Corn thing, and the discussion between her and Han about having children moves to the more honest level of 'Are we both ready, willing, and able to be good parents?' with a healthy helping of, 'And if we are not, we are not having kids, TYVM'." But... it was just so badly written.
Also, do want Leia's reaction to Padme's journal, because, as you say, that would have been that much more powerful. Or, you know, love-letters between her parents. During the war. Where someone who, like Leia, has some front-line experience with combat, would begin to get a glimpse of how Anakin went off the rails, and perhaps in particular how the Jedi Order contributed to that (and by extension, how the NJO needs to look and not to look, and that could be a tipping point for her in terms of getting involved with the NJO, because she's so not letting that happen again.)
no subject
on 2011-10-06 05:28 am (UTC)It is stupid! Well, Vader didn't blow up Alderaan (I think it's implied that he advised against it, even, and he definitely doesn't care for the Death Star), and I'm not sure whether Leia would directly blame him or not, but the other stuff, yeah. And then finding out that he started on the bottom-most end of that cycle, I think it would be a lot more devastating for her. And I definitely think she'd be even fiercer about stopping that kind of thing.
I'd really like to see a thoughtful treatment of Anakin's slavery. But it seems like it's mostly this 'and here's your tragic backstory, kthxbai' thing.
I'm glad someone else was squicked by the childfree stuff! Gah. If that was her sole objection, yeah, I can see some kind of process. But using it as direct code for her growth? No please.
I really love the idea of Padmé keeping a detailed record -- it seems very Padmé to me -- and Luke and Leia, who've been trying to figure everything out from scraps, finally tracking down their aunt and getting their mother's entire story from her own mouth. And there'd be enough of Anakin's tangled in there that they'd pretty much see his fall happening (and it could fill some of the canon blanks in that regard too), and they'd be all NEVER AGAIN and ... well, what you said.
no subject
on 2011-10-07 12:46 am (UTC)*facepalm* Duh--- my bad. Though I think in terms of Leia's lived experience, the memory that her father was, like, standing right behind her when his colleague blew up her homeworld and... I don't know if she would know that he was not a Death Star fan and/or that he was against the whole "geocide" thing, or how she'd feel about it if she did know? But... he was there on the enemy side, when they destroyed her homeworld; I think that would be kind of an immediate experience for her once she found out he was her father, if that makes sense. (That and the torture; but Leia seems like the sort of person who'd suffer for a cause, so in some ways him going along, as she saw it, with the destruction of Alderaan might be harder for her to forgive.) But, yeah, my bad on blaming him there.
And, yeah, for Leia to find out about Anakin being a slave--- "devastating" is a phenomenal word for it; just completely breaking her paradigm.
And oh, yes, a thoughtful treatment of Anakin's slavery = DO WANT. I think it would take a lot of socioeconomic analysis of Tatooine and the GFFA in general to pull it off, though, which is tricky in a shared world like the pro-verse is.
Totally squicked by the childfree issues, here! I... just hate that trope so much, like I hate when people just assume that I or anyone else is going to have children some day. No.
Oh, wow, yeah, the twins with their mother's diary = AMAZING experience. And I'm glad my idea of the effect on their understanding of what the NJO should be makes sense!
no subject
on 2011-10-07 08:44 pm (UTC)I know I read one story by irnan where she categorically refuses to blame him for that, but has a lot of irrefutable objections -- which I liked. And I read one by wyncatastrophe where she did blame him, knowing it was irrational, which also worked for me. So yeah, depends.
Socioeconomic analysis of Tatooine = DO WANT. That would be awesome. But yes, to figure out how slavery actually works, and how the freeing-the-slaves things worked out, and whatnot. For one, you'd have to consider whether Tatooine fell under Republic laws and if so what those laws even were. Qui-Gon seems oddly blasé about slavery, anyway, which gives me the impression he's run across it plenty of times before.
It definitely hit all my childfree buttons. I'm not -- passionately childfree, I guess, but I don't want children and the idea that I'm incomplete without them is quite pervasive enough without getting it in my happy funtiemz fandom too.
no subject
on 2011-10-09 10:14 pm (UTC)Yeah. I got the sense that Tatooine was outside the Republic's boundaries/not a part of it, because Watto won't accept Republic credits, and that's usually a big thing for a government, making sure its currencies are accepted within its own borders. And you're right about Qui-gon's utter lack of shock, so this is probably something that goes on in a lot of places not a part of the Republic. And maybe has something to do with why those places are not part of the Republic. (I could see Qui-gon having gone on diplomatic missions where he's trying to get some planet or other to join the Republic and then finding out that slavery is practiced there and having to deal with that in the negotiations.) And good question on the nature of the Republic's anti-slavery laws!
I am passionately childfree, and oh Force but the number of books that push one or more of my buttons on that subject!
Ditto, ditto, ditto!
And now I am off to dig through your journal for the awesome fic about Luke and his niece and ghost!Anakin having words with Luke's other niece about what she does while using the Skywalker name, lol!
no subject
on 2011-10-10 10:42 pm (UTC)I got the feeling that Tatooine is a bit like the Old West (aside of the obvious visual parallels in ANH, of course) -- maybe technically falling within its borders, but so far on the fringes that the Republic has no functional authority; the Empire has more by ANH, but it still seems largely lawless (and in the script, there's a very *gasp* *horror* response to the Empire's tightening control).
I haven't seen the PT in awhile, but I'm wondering if slavery is illegal in the Republic, or if it's more that it's illegal in most of the systems and generally disapproved of, but for political reasons or something it's never been outlawed in the Republic as a whole. So Qui-Gon could have run across it every now and then on Republic business, enough to be largely indifferent to it when we see him.
Heeeh, thanks!
no subject
on 2011-10-10 11:20 pm (UTC)I like the Old West comparison too--- and that Tatooine, like the Old West, hasn't fully organized itself for "statehood" i.e. membership as such in the governing body in question.
Padme mentions "the Republic's anti-slavery laws" in TPM, and it's definitely in-character for a queen and future senator to be well up on the laws of the Republic (and in-character for Padme specifically to be somewhat clueless about how they work in practice, especially in terms of the uglier side of things). But Shmi immediately counters that with "The Republic doesn't exist out here" which makes me think that there are a lot of places where the Jedi operate that aren't under Republic law, because two planets that are side-by-side might not both be members of the Republic--- Naboo and Tatooine, for example, are astrographically close enough (on at least most of the GFFA maps I've seen) that Qui-gon and Co. can duck over there in a pinch, but Naboo is a Republic world and Tatooine isn't.
You're welcome!
no subject
on 2011-10-11 12:35 am (UTC)Oh, right, then there are definitely some kinds of laws against it. I always took the "doesn't exist out here" as more metaphorical, I guess -- that it should but functionally doesn't. And I don't see why Padmé would expect Republic law to even apply if it's not part of it, but it could be part of her naivete about how these things actually work in reality. It is a bit odd that she'd know so little about something so near, though -- but at those distances/with hyperdrives, alliances and familiarity and whatnot probably don't have that much to do with proximity.
no subject
on 2011-10-11 11:02 pm (UTC)Yeah, I can totally see the metaphorical doesn't-exist. On the other hand, Tatooine doesn't seem to have enough of a coherent governing body to be able to enter into any kind of relationship with other governments as a whole. And Padme not knowing--- naivety plus taking for granted that, as you say, "hey, we're astrographically close, how are we not part of the same government?" makes sense to me. (I'm thinking of Tatooine as being like how "bad" neighborhoods sometimes exist fairly close to "good" ones.) Also that Jabba and Co. would be most happy to keep their business private to prevent meddling do-gooders from sticking their noses in, lol.
Though maybe there is some organization on Tatooine that was organized enough that it has membership in the Republic? And this is what Padme is thinking of? It's just that that organization doesn't represent the whole of what's going on on the planet? IDK. We do not get enough good political-science detail for my taste!