Chat corner 42: Romance

[annathecrow]

Welcome to this week’s chat corner!

Optional prompt

Are you sick of Valentine’s Day marketing yet? This week’s topic is supposed to come from Legends, so lets talk about “Courtship of Princess Leia“, AKA one of the most memetically bad EU books ever.

I have no idea whether it’s actually bad or not. I’ve also read somewhere that for such a terrible book, it’s the source (or at least inspiration) of a huge amount of current background worldbuilding. (I know Dathomir was mentioned…) Anybody here who has read it and can report?

Comments

[annathecrow]

(The Dark Side post link, as usual, if you need to yell about something.)

[kittywhite]

I have read it but it was years ago so don’t remember all the fine details except Leia and Han both being rather out of character. There are some hilarious 1 star reviews out there if you want a rundown on it.

You are correct in that it’s the first time we learn about the Witches of Dathomir and the backstabbing matriarchal society of Hapes who will produce Tenel Ka, a future student of Luke’s who must balance being a Jedi and heir to a throne where everyone is trying to kill you.

[annathecrow]

You know, reading 1-star reviews of this might actually be a fun activity, I'll think about it :D

The Nightwitches are cool, I just wish they weren't such a "evil man-hating separatist feminist" stereotype. Ugh, what is it with writers that almost every time they want to write a matriarchy, they end up with "we eat men for breakfast", complete with sexual violence?

[kittywhite]

My favourite of the reviews calls Prince Isolder “space Michael Bolton” and now I can’t unsee it!

[annathecrow]

I can't get over the fact that he's called "Prince Isolder". Can't decide whether it's more "wait, as in Isolde, but a dude?" or "wait, as in 'I solder'?" XD

[yourlibrarian]

Huh! I am just about to read about a visit to Dathomir in a fanfic and I wouldn't have guessed it came out of a tie-in novel. But then there seems to have been more canon content in SW auxiliary sources than is typical for most canons, right? I gather a lot of book and comic stuff ended up in one of the TV series.

Also, as a side note, soooo tired of Valentine's Day stuff. My partner and I years back decided to stop marking it at all because I figure we already have our anniversary for that, and it's just an opportunity for stuff to get jacked up in price.

[annathecrow]

The SW canon as an entity is fascinating. It's tiered (the movies always had absolute authority), it's been created by hundreds of creators but still overseen by Lucas for decades, it's been actively developed as multimedia... and the fact that now it's actually split in two, but the new "official" half still takes ideas from the old one!

The Marvel/DC comic universe canons are more of a mess, but they don't try to keep a consistent timeline. SW does and somehow succeeds, that's just wild.

More to what you actually said: I don't know about books, but TCW picks a lot of material from the SW: Republic comic series. It makes heavy changes though, it's interesting to compare and contrast if you know both.

As for Valentine's Day... ugh. "Lets enforce the gender binary, gender essentialist stereotypes, and reinforce the idea of a romantic relationship being necessary for happiness, all in a nice consumerist package!" I'm too damn queer for this bullshit.

[yourlibrarian]

A lot of work and coordination alright! I wouldn't have known except for discussions in the SW Rebels aftershow where it was often mentioned that so and so character or storyline came out of some comic or even video game.

[astromech1138]

Maybe I have awful taste but I don't think this is the worst of the EU books :P Sure, Han kidnaps Leia so she doesn't fall in love with SW Fabio, but there are witches riding Rancors! And Luke's out there doing....something. It was interesting to see Force users who weren't Jedi, and the book was fun enough I'd read it again (which I wouldn't say about all the EU books I've read), although yes, it is totally ridiculous and I'm glad I paid $1 for a used copy.

[annathecrow]

hehe, I wondered if there might be someone who'd enjoyed it! Would you recommend it? And which books do you think were worse? *wags eyebrows* (...maybe we ought to take that part to the Dark Side, but I'll leave that choice on you)

[kittywhite]

Check out the kid’s Jedi Prince series for some “so bad it’s good” fun!
I’d love to do a dramatic reading of it if I ever find my copies.

[astromech1138]

"Recommend" might be too strong of a word ;) But if you're set on reading the 90s EU books, it's much better than Planet of Twilight (I STILL remember how bad this one is, 25+ years on, and refuse to reread it), or Darksaber (awful, awful, makes no sense at all, Luke spends half of it sipping comet water with his new girlfriend, who is a ghost in the body of his former student, and then they fight a whole army of tech-savvy wampas--and the darksaber is not the same weapon we know from the current canon), or the Jedi Academy trilogy volumes 2 and 3. I could go on, but maybe that's for the dark side ;)

I love the 90s EU books. They are not very good (with the exception of Zahn and most of Stockpole) but they are fun and campy, and my tolerance level for Star Wars-related nonsense is high.

[kaasknot]

i first read it when i was a kid, so that probably skews my perception, but it was my favorite of all the EU books i'd read. dathomir is completely different in TCW, it's like GL took the concept of "witches of dathomir" and went completely in another direction with it. honestly, i prefer courtship's version. sure, the book's a little goofy, but i still love it. they had some interesting worldbuilding about the jedi, too.

[annathecrow]

Hmmmm. The idea of a completely different take on the Dathomir witches is honestly intriguing. In what ways are they different to TCW?

[annathecrow]

If anybody wants to talk about the finale of The Book of Boba Fett, I made a post for that.

[astromech1138]

I'm slowly making my way through a list of "essential episodes" from TCW, and I just got to the ones where Ventress returns to her homeplanet -- of Dathomir! I think this is my first sighting of it outside of Legends books.

What a missed opportunity not to have the witches ride rancors. Why on earth did they cut that out?!

[annathecrow]

Wait, so TBOBF does re-canonize something from Legends after all! I forgot about that bit! :D

Also, yeah, that would have been cool. Maybe they were afraid that would make the Witches too cool for the sort-of villains they are. :P

[astromech1138]

The TCW witches were too Hocus Pocus/The Craft and not enough Star Wars for me -- riding rancors was just what they needed! (Actually, I think I like the book witches better than the TCW ones.)