Do You EU?

A/N:  This is NOT my caption, but I like it ;-)

So, we have all these fanfic 'truths' that we discussed on the last post and that brought up some 'EU' terminology discussion.  I have to tell you that when I first discovered fanfic, I had no idea there was any Expanded Universe where Han and Leia got married and had children.  I can remember when I first read Leia's wikipedia page and it chronicled their marriage and had the name 'Solo' tacked on to the end of hers, I stood there (well probably I was sitting) with my mouth agape.  It was like I had discovered Atlantis.  And well, it wasn't long after that that I found the infamous 'EU' profic.

To Read or Not to Read?

I seriously debated on whether or not I wanted to, first of all, spend money on these books, and second of all to 'buy in' to the entire Expanded Universe universe.  Being a seasoned fanfic reader (six months in - haha) I had already heard dreaded stories of Hapan Princes, kidnapping and death.  But like anyone who decides not to heed a warning, I ordered a set a books from Amazon.com and waited.

Now, even though I got into the game late and could've read the books in the right order, I didn't do that.  I read reviews on Amazon and ordered books by those that seemed interesting, seemed to have Han and Leia in them and got decent reveiws by those who had bravely gone before me.  (So I didn't get COPL in that first order).  I can't remember the exact order but I know I had the Tim Zahn Thrawn Trilogy among maybe two others.

I enjoyed them.  No, they weren't the mushy, romantic storylines that I migrated to in fanfic, but it was Han and Leia, right?  I loved anyone putting words into their mouths outside of the movies and because it was profic it seemed official that they were married and in love and all that stuff I had been reading free online seemed validated.  So I ordered more.

Well, let's just say that, at least for me, once I was entrenched in the entire thing I just had to keep going.  So I did, in my next order, try to start reading from the beginning (that being post-ROTJ).  Oh, the Courtship of Princess Leia almost put a nail in it.  It really, really did.  But it didn't.  I'm still reading. 

I recently finished the New Jedi Order series, this is where all the death came in (well, not all of it, but damn - let's not think about that right now).  The first part of the series was rough for Han and Leia (and me) to say the least, but toward the end they actually had some really good time together.  The last book, Unifying Force, I thoroughly enjoyed and was heavy, heavy on the Han and Leia.  (not like fanfic heavy, but profic heavy - guys, c'mon).

Anyways, I'm re-reading the Dark Nest Trilogy now, since I read it last year and now want to proceed in order and since I know more of what is going on with all the characters.  From what I remember, this trilogy had quite a bit of Han and Leia but Jaina does turn into some sort of bug, so there is that.

What's amazing, and I'll close with a question for those of you who have read any of the profic.  But what's amazing to me is that what really 'bugs' me (haha) about the profic, MAYBE even more than the dreaded COPL - is the Luke/Mara crap.  Ugh!  Those two get more kissy time than Han and Leia ever do and they are always together!  I mean they are Jedi Masters, for Sith's sake - dont' you think they would have just as many obligations and adventures that would separate them as Han and Leia do? 

But that's not the best of it.  They call each other 'dear wife' and 'dear husband' and I want to puke all over the pages while I'm reading it.  Just last night I read that they 'didn't want to be separated from their child, Ben, during his formative years' so they kept him with them all of the time.  What the what?  If I was Han and Leia I would be throwing three kinds of ape shit fits over this!  Wasn't it Luke who convinced Han and Leia to hide their kids when they were babies?  I call bullshit. 

(I apologize if any of you are Luke/Mara fans and although it may not seem like it, I actually don't mind Luke and Mara, I'm just sayin', you know - in comparison, it isn't fair.)

So, before I totally lose all control (no I haven't really lost all control yet, you haven't heard half of the curse words I know - both in English and Star Wars-ease), I'll pose my question: 

What's your biggest pet peeve in the Star Wars Expanded Universe ProFic?

Universal Han and Leia Fanfic Truths

If you read enough Han and Leia fanfic - and sometimes even if you only read a little bit - you will come across certain recurring elements that have no blatant reason for us to believe them to be true based on what we see in the movies, but it just seems that collectively the Han and Leia community believes them to be fact. Of course with any of these, there are exceptions. But here are a few examples of things that always seem to pop up:

1. Leia can't cook. Seriously, I don't think I've ever read a fanfic in which Leia whips up a five-course meal for her and Han. Why do we all believe this to be true? In the entirety of the movies, she never even eats let alone has the opportunity to cook anything. I suppose having grown up a princess we could all infer that she always had her meals prepared for her and skipped learning how to cook anything decent. Who are we to say that part of her privelaged upbringing didn't include training from the finest culinary artists in all of Alderaan? But none of us seem to believe that. So, in every story I've ever read in which Leia enters the kitchen, other characters in the story get very nervous...

2. Han didn't have a stable home life growing up. Whether you subscribe to the back story put forth by the Han Solo trilogy or not, it seems that we are all in agreement that Han's parents were no Ward and June Cleaver, even if he did know who they were. Whether he was orphaned and has no idea what happened as is written in the "official" version, or maybe his family was killed when he was a bit older and he remembers it, we seem to have decided that he wasn't the kind of kid who was tucked in every night by his mommy and daddy and played smashball on the local little league team. I'm sure most of us have read versions of his story in which his parents or at least one or the other are still alive and he chooses not to talk to them, but I think we are all in agreement that after he got the medal for helping blow up the Death Star he didn't call his parents to tell him about the new chick he met.

3. Leia is a virgin. Ok, this one isn't completely universal. But I think it is at least generally accepted to be truth. There is that "popular" Leia-was-raped-on-the-Death-Star theory, but it is not one I have ever really subscribed to. When Luke finds her, does she look like the type of girl who was recently raped? Forget the fact that she doesn't particularly look like the type of girl who just saw her entire planet blown up, either. Maybe it's the fact that she wears white all the time or fights her feelings for Han so adamantly, but for the most part, we don't read about a Leia who slept with a few boys back in University.

4. Han is definitely not a virgin. This one almost goes without saying. Do we need a reason? He's Han freaking Solo. Plus, he's a hot guy in his early 30's. How could he possibly not have been getting some action before? Although once upon a time I did read a story, which unfortunately I can't find anymore and don't know the name of, in which Han was the virgin and Leia was the experienced one. It didn't get into all of the fun details, but it did have Leia finding out about his inexperience and offering to take him to his cabin and "show him the ropes" so to speak. But honestly, I don't think anyone sees that as a possibility.

5. If anyone is cheating on anyone, it's Leia cheating on Han. I'm not a big fan of stories that involve cheating and I'm not a fan of cheating in real life. I don't get it. You want to sleep around? Fine. Just make sure that anyone you're involved with knows up front so you're on the same page. But if a fanfic writer must put some cheating into a story, it is almost exclusively Leia cheating on Han. Or another man vying for Leia's affections, such as Isolder. I can recall one story in which it even alluded to the possibility of Han cheating on Leia, and in the end he couldn't go through with it. I don't see either one of them cheating in the first place, but I'm not sure why everyone always sees Leia as the one being unfaithful. Is it because we can see Han forgiving her but not the other way around? Because if a man cheats, he's just a horrible person and doesn't deserve another chance but a woman does? I don't know, but that's the way it always seems to go.

So there are five of them, anyway. I'm sure there are more and feel free to add if there are any you feel I've left out. There's another possibility I had thought of, but not sure how to put it delicately. It has to do with rumors of certain Corellian, um, attributes, maybe? Ones that would be greatly in Leia's benefit. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Two fanfic writers collide...

Due to crazy circumstances involving my current extensive travels of the U.S., the opportunity arose that Push and I would be close enough in proximity that we might actually be able to meet face to face. We already knew each other's true identities (yeah, that's right, her real name isn't ShouldIGetOutandPush and my real name isn't Zyra, isn't that shocking?) so meeting in person wouldn't compromise already-previously-lost anonymity. The timing worked out, and this evening we finally got to talk face to face.

So, what is she really like in person? Two words: total bitch. Okay, that's not actually true. Not even remotely. While we had shared one awkward phone conversation mostly because I am terrible at talking on the phone, this, while a little weird at first, eventually had us falling into our usual e-mail conversation without all the hassle of typing. And no typing lol, just literally laughing out loud. While admittedly it is a bit strange to have these out loud conversations about Star Wars that we usually keep as a closeted secret from friends and family (except I totally talk about Star Wars with my brother and some of my cousins, though definitely not about the Han and Leia relationship) it was nice to be able to talk about it and meet the person behind the e-mails.

Of course there were initial jokes about whether or not one of us was really using this whole thing as a ruse to murder the other or take all their money. Or maybe one of us was really a perverted old man. But honestly, it seemed like an awful lot of trouble to have gone to before hand with such an elaborate ploy. There have to be easier ways to reel in a victim aside from trading e-mails about Han and Leia and writing chapters and chapters of stories about them in the hopes that maybe sometime in the near future you might be able to convince the other person to come close enough during a cross-country road trip so you can eat their liver and wear their flesh as a hat.

These meetings can be risky, as I'm sure some of you know. I've had people who on paper I thought I'd be best friends with and then in person? Not so much. My first college roommate was like that. We wrote letters to each other the summer before (yeah, pen, paper and stamps) and I swear I thought I'd found my new best friend. I think it took me thirty-seven seconds upon meeting her to realize that that was not going to turn out to be the case.

It turns out, we were both who we said we were. I think I came home with all of my credit cards and none of hers. She stopped at my hotel and we drove a mere half-mile to get something to eat and she said she wasn't sure if I'd actually get in the car with her. Maybe we're both naively trusting, but it seems to have worked out okay so far. And you can all now be jealous that we got to sit around and talk about Star Wars and our stories and what not. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was. I mean, I don't know why I should've expected anything else coming from the person who not only knows the nerdiest things about me, but the one who I probably e-mail more times per day on a daily basis than anyone else. For the record, we do both have other friends and other things in our lives, so please don't be worried about that! I think she said herself when we were talking about this sort of thing that yeah, we're weirdos. But we're functioning weirdos. There's a huge difference.

So fortunately that all worked out so we can continue to e-mail each other without the cloud hanging over our heads of, "I really didn't like her in person." Or at least that's how I'm coming away from it. She may have an entirely different opinion! In which case I figure I'll have a pretty empty e-mail box in the near future. The only downside is that the chances of us meeting up again are pretty darn slim. Normally we are at least 2000 miles and a time zone or two away from each other. But hey, who knows?

We also agreed that adding captions to Han and Leia pics in the blog posts is a fantastic idea to continue on each post. So have at it. And thanks for dinner :)

My One and Only

Since this entire blog is dedicated to Han and Leia, I may be breaking some sort of unwritten code here, but I was thinking about other fandoms today.  As for myself, I have never written in another fandom nor have I had the desire to.  Maybe that's not entirely true, I may have thought about a few other of my favorite characters/stories, but none have ever "talked" to me like Han and Leia do, so I refrained from even attempting to write anything.  

In the same vain, I have tried to read from other fandoms, but just could never get interested in anything other than Star Wars.  I mostly read just Han and Leia stories.  Although I may read a story that just has one or the other of the two.  The only EU characters that I sort of nurse an interest in is Jaina and Jag.  Don't know why, but I kinda like those two.  Can't write 'em though. 

So this got me thinking.  I see many of the authors out there who have written in several different fandoms.  Sometimes in tandem, but sometimes, apparently exhausting one fandom and totally abandoning it for another.  For instance, I know of some fanfic writers that were formally Han and Leia writers who have left and gone to Harry Potter - never to return.  How and why does this happen?

Of course, I wonder about this particularly concerning the Han/Leia fandom.  I have a bunch of bookmarks on my computer to all of these Han and Leia pages/forums/etc. that have been abandoned for years.  It really makes me feel like I wish I had been around in the heyday of Han and Leia fanfic writing and that I have indeed "missed the boat" as far as that is concerned.  Well, there's nothing I can do about that now other than try and create my own heyday, which I guess is exactly what I'm trying to do.

So, in conclusion to this post, that may or may not actually have any kind of point.  Do you read/enjoy other fandoms?  Have you written in other fandoms?  Do you keep several fandoms alive at once?  Or do you leave one and replace it with another?

And here's a pic (and a caption):

Leia:  "'I can't believe we just did that."  
Han:  "Thank the gods, we just did that!"

I promise to update my story....

I know, I know. I'm being a bad fanfic writer. If I were following my story I'd be mad at me, too. In a rare turn of events, real life is really getting in the way. It's nothing bad or anything, just enough to keep me from having the time and energy to sit down in front of the computer and write. I swear I'll make it up to you somehow. Add to that the fact that the few times I did try to sit down and write, nothing really came to me. I'm trying to bridge the gap to the end of the story and not much is happening there. Bribes may be accepted though if they are good enough. But just to warn you, in general, it's probably going to be a slow two weeks coming from me.

What else is there to say? Oh, congratulations to Digs on completing her first story on ff.net. And what a way to start. Both she and Push started out with these huge, epic stories that are longer than the summation of everything I've ever written, I think. I don't have that kind of patience. We are also no longer receiving the dreaded error message on fanfiction.net which I know has made us all feel a lot better.

In other, totally random news, there is a new Jenny Craig commercial and Carrie is continuing to lose weight, so good for her. 20 more pounds and maybe then I can entertain the idea of getting her and Harrison back together for a movie set in Han and Leia's golden years. Episode VII: Chosing a Space Retirement Home. The scariest thing about that is I would still pay money to see that.