veronica (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aberration) wrote2021-04-18 06:48 pm
aberration) wrote2021-04-18 06:48 pm
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Movies I've logged –
One Night in Miami... (2020) ★★★★1/2
The Incredibles (2004) ★★★★
Icarus (2017) ★★★★
Stray Dog (1949) ★★★★
Home on the Range (2004) ★1/2
The Duchess (2008) ★★★1/2
Three Identical Strangers (2018) ★★★1/2
Chicken Little (2005) ★★
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) ★★★
Palm Springs (2020) ★★★1/2
Cars (2006) ★★1/2
Meet the Robinsons (2007) ★★★
Fyre Fraud (2019) ★★★
Ratatouille (2007) ★★★1/2
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004) ★★★1/2
To All the Boys: Always and Forever (2021) ★★1/2
WALL-E (2008) ★★★1/2
Bolt (2008) ★★1/2
The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003) ★★★★1/2
Fyre (2019) ★★★
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) ★★★1/2
Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) ★★★★1/2
The Princess and the Frog (2009) ★★★
Up (2009) ★★★1/2
Tangled (2010) ★★★
Winnie the Pooh (2011) ★★★
And I mean. It's still plague year. I did get my second vaccine on 4/8 (Pfizer) and only relatively mild side effects with the vaccine overall so, I am hoping to get the nerve to do my first hopefully heading into post-covid task of getting a haircut. I've also been wearing my glasses since last March so I'm going to try switching back to contacts to push my mindset forward a little. But you know, it's still covid, everything is still forever uncertain, and so I've been playing a lot of Sims 4 and watching TV.
Which I could talk about but - whatever - this is going to be a Random Star Wars Media post instead, because that's what I got written. In this case two Star Wars novels.
So, first up, Last Shot by Daniel José Older! Which, uh.
...I could not follow what was supposed to be happening in Older's writing. I really can't explain this, other than the times when I'd get annoyed about something usually involving a woman and yeah okay then I might have skimmed a bit, but other than that I was just reading normally? And I literally could not follow what was going on? I don't know, okay I don't generally have this problem, I just had real trouble with Older's style of writing. It didn't even strike me as bad prose or something, it's just that for me I could not follow what it was supposed to be conveying. And finally about 70% of the way into the book, I just went to Wookieepedia and looked up a synopsis, which did help me better understand and follow what was happening, but, well, then we get into spoilers –
Me, tovaradia, who has read this book: You know this is about a droid apocalypse, right?
Her: .........it was?
So the basic plot of this book is like. In the past Han did a thing with Sana Starros that involved trying to steal some kind of trigger thing and the ultimately losing it, and also Lando and L3 went to like a place where L3 realized someone had created a potential virus that would make all droids want to kill organics and like… maybe sabotaged it and also left a program to build a bunch of copies of herself, and also this medical student dude and his friend got kidnapped by criminals who murdered his friend and then he lost his mind and I think killed a lot of them, maybe, and started sewing human arms on droids which, why, and then I think got kidnapped by another gang but then killed all of them and anyway long story short he wants to cause a droid apocalypse because droids are better maybe, and the actual current story in this book is one of Lando's droids getting stuck by the virus and trying to kill him and him getting Han to help him track down the former medical student.
This is as I remember it without checking the summary again. So it's like, in addition to the current narrative, there are three separate flashback narratives, and it's not at all clear from the outset what any of these three flashback narratives has to do with the main narrative, and on top of that, again, I just had some issue trying to read Older's writing where I couldn't follow what was supposed to be going on. The only similar experience I can think of was reading The Seventh Cross, but I figured out that was because the point-of-view kept changing without much indication in the text that that was happening, and once there was really only one point-of-view left I was fine. But with this I just literally could not follow the actions of the characters. And I don't. Think I'm stupid? This isn't usually a problem for me?
I kind of think it may be that maybe the issue is that Older sort of flits from one bit of action to the next without like, connecting them. Like near the end there's a scene where Lando facing off against the villain and sort of rigs the thing? box in space? they're in to explode, and has to get out in a hurry, and he heroically escapes by the skin of his teeth and in none of this is anything said about the villain, so I just assumed he died in the explosion. Except suddenly in the next chapter, oh the villain is now in this other place! There's no 'here's how he got there' that I recall, he's just there.
Or maybe there was and I just sucked at reading this book, I don't know. But even with books I don't necessarily like reading I can usually follow the very basics of, 'A and B are going to C and doing D.'
Okay, here are things I like:
- I like plenty of Older's ideas for Star Wars things! I liked our computer programmer Ewok and nonbinary pilot! And Han getting told off by that Gungan for imitating the accent, though that character really only existed for that moment. Which kind of goes for the others, too, honestly – ultimately the story's not about them. Peekpa the Ewok is a fun bit of comic relief but that's kind of it. Taka is fun but again there's not much deeper characterization, beyond that they get an honestly incredibly tacked on Alderaanian backstory, which is already becoming a pet peeve of mine, like quick tragic backstory without any work, just make them from Alderaan! I mean, yes, this story was always going to focus on Han and Lando, but maybe if the novel hadn't been so overstuffed and convoluted with all these different timelines there might have been more space to make the various members of this crew more well-rounded.
- I did get the impression I'd enjoy Older more as a screenwriter. There was one scene I really liked where Han and Lando get into this big argument which is clearly a routine thing to get it all out of their system, while they're simultaneously working on the ship, and I really enjoyed the dialogue and their personalities coming through. Also I guess there wasn't much action for me to follow since it was just the two of them arguing. But regardless, I'd still need someone to go over Older's work and write 'STOP IT' in red pen over basically anything involving women.
- Kind of related to the above, but I generally liked the Han and Lando characterization, particularly Lando. I also sort of liked... the idea of a gesture for L3, though honestly I'm not sure what's stopping them from just downloading her out of the Falcon and into a new droid body. Though I have a fix-it fic idea in my head where Hera and Chopper basically help Lando do that.
But, yeah, that's pretty much what I've got. I've talked about my issues with Older's writing, though I think even if I didn't with that problem, the amount of flashbacking and switching around in this book would have been a bit much. It comes at a huge cost to the narrative moment in the story, reaching a peak where Older steps away from the current story's climactic moment for a chapter flashback that's like, before some of the flashbacks in this book but after others and I guess was contiguous with the villain's flashback narrative specifically but also. Was just not that important or related to what was immediately going on and absolutely not worth crushing the momentum of the main story's climax. I just do not get it, I'm sorry.
And yeah, I guess I didn't find the villain compelling, or um, comprehensible. He decides droids are superior to organics because, reasons. But also puts organic parts on droids. At one point he's like "organics make droid parts for themselves, why has no one considered the other way around??" and because why????? Would you?????? How is some random rotting fleshy arm better than just a machine one????? If organics could easily make new organic body parts for themselves they probably would?????????? This doesn’t make any sense other than I guess to appear grotesque and whatever?????????????
Beyond that, though, my personal opinion is also that a droid apocalypse is way higher in stakes than a Han and Lando buddy adventure needs to be. It's really way higher in stakes than almost any Star Wars story needs to be. One thing I actually really like about the Star Wars universe is that as high as the stakes are in the stories, planets being destroyed or fighting fascism or etc., there are always other parts of this Galaxy that remain relatively beyond or unaffected by many of the main stories. There may be a Galactic Civil War raging but Jabba the Hutt's court is just business as usual, the Resistance is facing annihilation and bigwigs are blissfully gambling at a high end casino. It's all so big that it very much can't be all contained by a single narrative. To me, a true 'annihilate all life in the galaxy' storyline in this franchise would have to be really, really earned and this is just. Not that. It's Han and Lando, just let them rob a bank or something.
If we're going to go with the droid apocalypse, it might also have been nice to include a droid perspective beside L3 making a bunch of L3s or whatever. Like. What about having a droid? On that crew? Or something? No? Okay.
And then like I said, there's women. And Older absolutely falls into writing all women as in three distinct camps: mommy, girlfriend, and teddy bear who can't be your mommy or your girlfriend.
Anyway, here's a very brief appearance Mon Mothma makes near the beginning of the book:
"Just a moment, Elsie," Mon Mothma said. Han raised an eyebrow at the sternness in her voice. "General Solo, may I offer the admittedly unsolicited advice that you not be so brusque with your droids? They are, after all committed to the service of all our safety and comfor –"
and then this goes on and it's just.
It. Just. WHY. When does she do fucking anything like this in canon? Why have her nag like this other than because she's being conceptualized as 'mommy.' Would Ackbar be written this way? Or, hell, Bail Organa, who actually is famously a father? God, justice for Mon Mothma, I am begging you.
Leia is meanwhile, well, Han's helpful wife who doesn't do much beyond be at the beginning of the book and then I think in the middle to show up and help them out of a jam by… completely ignoring an earlier established point that their mission had to be under the radar to the New Republic just, actually not that anymore! But other than that she's not very present and his being mom to Ben.
And, well, Peekpa the Ewok is as I described above.
Which leaves the girlfriends. Older writes Kaasha like he wants to be able to say "no I'm totally not just writing a sexy Twi'lek girlfriend" but uh. Honestly her rebel background and battle tatics talent feels like lip service around her relationship with Lando. There's certainly a lot more of her being naked in bed with Lando than there is her doing any kind of particular strategizing. There's a scene where Lando touches her lekku and she says something about how that's considered 'beyond sensuous' which honestly read like a line from a love interest in a bad action hero and/or Dan Brown novel. And maybe unfairly I mentally compared it to an exchangevaradia and I wrote between Hera and Kanan, where Kanan imagined having lekku to be able to use the Twi'lek lekku language, and Hera warned him of how much it hurt if someone grabbed one. Just, I don't know, the idea of engaging with a woman character as a person and not. Sexy Person.
The other girlfriend in Sana Starros, and I kingdom for someone to write Sana as I remember her from her original appearance in the comics, as surprisingly grounded and level-headed for someone who apparently used to pull smuggler stunts with Han. It gave her a sense of wholeness that warping her into an overwrought teenager (Aphra) or Archetype Flirty Competent Action Girl (this) does not.
So just. Like many guy writers, Older doesn't seem to have a handle on how to write women without some kind of one-dimensional angle or archetype to force her into. And it's tiring to see how these characters can't be written beyond the mentality of 'how do they relate to the men.' I'm not saying there can never be girlfriends, I sure love girlfriends, but a girlfriend should also be a character independent of this lens. And when any woman who shows up fits so easily into these three types, it's pretty damn noticeable.
But yeah, while I liked many of the ideas in this book, Older's writing style just didn't work for me (and the writing of women outright irritated me), and this whole plot was way more convoluted and contrived than it needed to be.
And then next is Zoraida Córdova's A Crash of Fate, the other Galaxy's Edge novel. Beware below for spoilers and also my very unpopular personal opinions on romance fiction.
This book is about a boy named Jules and a girl named Izzy who were best friends as very young children and then Izzy moves away, and about thirteen years later they reunite and are in love.
That is what it is about. Anything else that happens in this book is incidental and has no relevance beyond the always momentary tension it may or may not contribute to that central relationship.
which. It's a romance novel. In Star Wars. I can't fault it for aligning with the expectations of its genre. But in turn, it does demonstrate why I'm not interested in romance as a genre. That everything in a story turning on, or only being relevant as far as, how it impacts a central romantic relationship is not something that works for me.
And okay, I'm certainly saying some of this out of irrational feelings of resentment and loneliness. I've more than once felt like I'm basically being accused of misogyny if I say I'm not into the romance genre. Or tweets that are like "stop complaining about lacking queer content when there's ROMANCE" like fuck that I'm going to demand queer content in every fucking genre, thank you very much.
And it’s not even like I don't like romance in stories! I certainly have my ships and enjoy romantic interaction between characters. But both within and without the romance genre itself, I do often find in media that romance begins to trump anything else about a relationship (or sometimes like, a plot). Characters become defined by their romantic relationships and neither they or their relationship can escape from it. It's really a big reason why I prefer women lead characters to either not have a romance or be in an f/f romance, because with het the leading man often takes over the story. But regardless, romance works for me when it's part of a larger story, and when I can see how the narrative events, themes, and the nature of the characters themselves works to produce the romance. And I'm not saying that's better or that the romance genre is bad, just that this kind of thing is what I need in order to enjoy a romantic relationship in fiction now, and not all stories (honestly, especially in the romance genre) feel especially concerned with it.
(I guess another big confession, I actually only rarely read fanfiction. And in general can feel rather alone in fandom.)
So it feels kind of pointless to go into the "plot" of this book because again, it's only really important in how it does or does not influence Izzy and Jules' love story. Like, two other things kind of happen and both kind of get resolved. But they progress in the background, except for brief instances of action or drama, and then they're weirdly all but forgotten until something needs at to shove the characters again. Izzy stuns a woman while stealing back a parcel from Hondo Ohnaka's office and then five minutes later Izzy and Jules are carelessly feeding each other jerky as they stroll around Black Spire. Izzy's ex shows up and it doesn't matter because Izzy doesn't like him and Jules is never actually threatened by him, yet the plot seems to serve no purpose other than to create ~drama~ with, I guess, his existence. The First Order and Resistance make cameos, but beyond like, I guess a suggestion that some people in Black Spire like the First Order and some don't, nothing is followed up or comes of that, really.
And there's an unironic use of "too pure for this world" to describe Jules which, I'm the kind of shitty person who's going to roll my eyes at that.
And Jules and Izzy, well. They exist to have their love story. Izzy does struggle with the idea that her mom was a dangerous bounty hunter, there is some stuff about her relationship with her parents that I could have been into, but again it just doesn't matter because Jules is never going to have any actual misgivings about her, and then in the end Izzy finds a message from her dead mother confirming she loved her all along because god forbid anyone actually have to just learn to move on from anything!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ahem
And I mean, Jules is in fact a brave little soldier who is too precious for this world. Done and done.
(I'll acknowledge that perhaps a problem with the way I read is that unlike a normal person who read this as a quick cute little story, if something goes into my reading cycle that means I'm stuck with it for a while, so yeah it has to be fun to read at a reasonably slow pace.)
So anyway, I feel caught in a bind here where it's like if I'm critical of Córdova's structure here, then I'm just being critical of a romance book for following romance genre conventions, and if I say I'm not going to criticize it because of that, then it's 'no that's not a romance convention here are x y and z book that don't do that' and you know please do not do that, this is extremely not me asking for romance recommendations.
So whatever, the bottom line here is that I just don't prioritize romance in stories in the way others often do, and I also think I prioritize what I can get out of a romantic relationship in fiction differently from how others do. Which is fine just. idk please don't make me feel bad about it.
Anyway, I guess on the roll of 'Veronica shares their deeply unpopular opinions about fiction' my next post will be 'Please Stop Talking To Me About Tropes, I Actually Consider Them A Comparatively Minor And Utilitarian Part Of Storytelling.'
I had been planning to write up something about Shadowfall, the second book in the Alphabet Squadron trilogy, but I took so long that I'm now reading the third and final book so uh. I'll just wait until after that. And you know maybe write a review of something that isn't Star Wars
One Night in Miami... (2020) ★★★★1/2
The Incredibles (2004) ★★★★
Icarus (2017) ★★★★
Stray Dog (1949) ★★★★
Home on the Range (2004) ★1/2
The Duchess (2008) ★★★1/2
Three Identical Strangers (2018) ★★★1/2
Chicken Little (2005) ★★
Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) ★★★
Palm Springs (2020) ★★★1/2
Cars (2006) ★★1/2
Meet the Robinsons (2007) ★★★
Fyre Fraud (2019) ★★★
Ratatouille (2007) ★★★1/2
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004) ★★★1/2
To All the Boys: Always and Forever (2021) ★★1/2
WALL-E (2008) ★★★1/2
Bolt (2008) ★★1/2
The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003) ★★★★1/2
Fyre (2019) ★★★
Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) ★★★1/2
Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) ★★★★1/2
The Princess and the Frog (2009) ★★★
Up (2009) ★★★1/2
Tangled (2010) ★★★
Winnie the Pooh (2011) ★★★
And I mean. It's still plague year. I did get my second vaccine on 4/8 (Pfizer) and only relatively mild side effects with the vaccine overall so, I am hoping to get the nerve to do my first hopefully heading into post-covid task of getting a haircut. I've also been wearing my glasses since last March so I'm going to try switching back to contacts to push my mindset forward a little. But you know, it's still covid, everything is still forever uncertain, and so I've been playing a lot of Sims 4 and watching TV.
Which I could talk about but - whatever - this is going to be a Random Star Wars Media post instead, because that's what I got written. In this case two Star Wars novels.
So, first up, Last Shot by Daniel José Older! Which, uh.
...I could not follow what was supposed to be happening in Older's writing. I really can't explain this, other than the times when I'd get annoyed about something usually involving a woman and yeah okay then I might have skimmed a bit, but other than that I was just reading normally? And I literally could not follow what was going on? I don't know, okay I don't generally have this problem, I just had real trouble with Older's style of writing. It didn't even strike me as bad prose or something, it's just that for me I could not follow what it was supposed to be conveying. And finally about 70% of the way into the book, I just went to Wookieepedia and looked up a synopsis, which did help me better understand and follow what was happening, but, well, then we get into spoilers –
Me, to
varadia, who has read this book: You know this is about a droid apocalypse, right?Her: .........it was?
So the basic plot of this book is like. In the past Han did a thing with Sana Starros that involved trying to steal some kind of trigger thing and the ultimately losing it, and also Lando and L3 went to like a place where L3 realized someone had created a potential virus that would make all droids want to kill organics and like… maybe sabotaged it and also left a program to build a bunch of copies of herself, and also this medical student dude and his friend got kidnapped by criminals who murdered his friend and then he lost his mind and I think killed a lot of them, maybe, and started sewing human arms on droids which, why, and then I think got kidnapped by another gang but then killed all of them and anyway long story short he wants to cause a droid apocalypse because droids are better maybe, and the actual current story in this book is one of Lando's droids getting stuck by the virus and trying to kill him and him getting Han to help him track down the former medical student.
This is as I remember it without checking the summary again. So it's like, in addition to the current narrative, there are three separate flashback narratives, and it's not at all clear from the outset what any of these three flashback narratives has to do with the main narrative, and on top of that, again, I just had some issue trying to read Older's writing where I couldn't follow what was supposed to be going on. The only similar experience I can think of was reading The Seventh Cross, but I figured out that was because the point-of-view kept changing without much indication in the text that that was happening, and once there was really only one point-of-view left I was fine. But with this I just literally could not follow the actions of the characters. And I don't. Think I'm stupid? This isn't usually a problem for me?
I kind of think it may be that maybe the issue is that Older sort of flits from one bit of action to the next without like, connecting them. Like near the end there's a scene where Lando facing off against the villain and sort of rigs the thing? box in space? they're in to explode, and has to get out in a hurry, and he heroically escapes by the skin of his teeth and in none of this is anything said about the villain, so I just assumed he died in the explosion. Except suddenly in the next chapter, oh the villain is now in this other place! There's no 'here's how he got there' that I recall, he's just there.
Or maybe there was and I just sucked at reading this book, I don't know. But even with books I don't necessarily like reading I can usually follow the very basics of, 'A and B are going to C and doing D.'
Okay, here are things I like:
- I like plenty of Older's ideas for Star Wars things! I liked our computer programmer Ewok and nonbinary pilot! And Han getting told off by that Gungan for imitating the accent, though that character really only existed for that moment. Which kind of goes for the others, too, honestly – ultimately the story's not about them. Peekpa the Ewok is a fun bit of comic relief but that's kind of it. Taka is fun but again there's not much deeper characterization, beyond that they get an honestly incredibly tacked on Alderaanian backstory, which is already becoming a pet peeve of mine, like quick tragic backstory without any work, just make them from Alderaan! I mean, yes, this story was always going to focus on Han and Lando, but maybe if the novel hadn't been so overstuffed and convoluted with all these different timelines there might have been more space to make the various members of this crew more well-rounded.
- I did get the impression I'd enjoy Older more as a screenwriter. There was one scene I really liked where Han and Lando get into this big argument which is clearly a routine thing to get it all out of their system, while they're simultaneously working on the ship, and I really enjoyed the dialogue and their personalities coming through. Also I guess there wasn't much action for me to follow since it was just the two of them arguing. But regardless, I'd still need someone to go over Older's work and write 'STOP IT' in red pen over basically anything involving women.
- Kind of related to the above, but I generally liked the Han and Lando characterization, particularly Lando. I also sort of liked... the idea of a gesture for L3, though honestly I'm not sure what's stopping them from just downloading her out of the Falcon and into a new droid body. Though I have a fix-it fic idea in my head where Hera and Chopper basically help Lando do that.
But, yeah, that's pretty much what I've got. I've talked about my issues with Older's writing, though I think even if I didn't with that problem, the amount of flashbacking and switching around in this book would have been a bit much. It comes at a huge cost to the narrative moment in the story, reaching a peak where Older steps away from the current story's climactic moment for a chapter flashback that's like, before some of the flashbacks in this book but after others and I guess was contiguous with the villain's flashback narrative specifically but also. Was just not that important or related to what was immediately going on and absolutely not worth crushing the momentum of the main story's climax. I just do not get it, I'm sorry.
And yeah, I guess I didn't find the villain compelling, or um, comprehensible. He decides droids are superior to organics because, reasons. But also puts organic parts on droids. At one point he's like "organics make droid parts for themselves, why has no one considered the other way around??" and because why????? Would you?????? How is some random rotting fleshy arm better than just a machine one????? If organics could easily make new organic body parts for themselves they probably would?????????? This doesn’t make any sense other than I guess to appear grotesque and whatever?????????????
Beyond that, though, my personal opinion is also that a droid apocalypse is way higher in stakes than a Han and Lando buddy adventure needs to be. It's really way higher in stakes than almost any Star Wars story needs to be. One thing I actually really like about the Star Wars universe is that as high as the stakes are in the stories, planets being destroyed or fighting fascism or etc., there are always other parts of this Galaxy that remain relatively beyond or unaffected by many of the main stories. There may be a Galactic Civil War raging but Jabba the Hutt's court is just business as usual, the Resistance is facing annihilation and bigwigs are blissfully gambling at a high end casino. It's all so big that it very much can't be all contained by a single narrative. To me, a true 'annihilate all life in the galaxy' storyline in this franchise would have to be really, really earned and this is just. Not that. It's Han and Lando, just let them rob a bank or something.
If we're going to go with the droid apocalypse, it might also have been nice to include a droid perspective beside L3 making a bunch of L3s or whatever. Like. What about having a droid? On that crew? Or something? No? Okay.
And then like I said, there's women. And Older absolutely falls into writing all women as in three distinct camps: mommy, girlfriend, and teddy bear who can't be your mommy or your girlfriend.
Anyway, here's a very brief appearance Mon Mothma makes near the beginning of the book:
"Just a moment, Elsie," Mon Mothma said. Han raised an eyebrow at the sternness in her voice. "General Solo, may I offer the admittedly unsolicited advice that you not be so brusque with your droids? They are, after all committed to the service of all our safety and comfor –"
and then this goes on and it's just.
It. Just. WHY. When does she do fucking anything like this in canon? Why have her nag like this other than because she's being conceptualized as 'mommy.' Would Ackbar be written this way? Or, hell, Bail Organa, who actually is famously a father? God, justice for Mon Mothma, I am begging you.
Leia is meanwhile, well, Han's helpful wife who doesn't do much beyond be at the beginning of the book and then I think in the middle to show up and help them out of a jam by… completely ignoring an earlier established point that their mission had to be under the radar to the New Republic just, actually not that anymore! But other than that she's not very present and his being mom to Ben.
And, well, Peekpa the Ewok is as I described above.
Which leaves the girlfriends. Older writes Kaasha like he wants to be able to say "no I'm totally not just writing a sexy Twi'lek girlfriend" but uh. Honestly her rebel background and battle tatics talent feels like lip service around her relationship with Lando. There's certainly a lot more of her being naked in bed with Lando than there is her doing any kind of particular strategizing. There's a scene where Lando touches her lekku and she says something about how that's considered 'beyond sensuous' which honestly read like a line from a love interest in a bad action hero and/or Dan Brown novel. And maybe unfairly I mentally compared it to an exchange
varadia and I wrote between Hera and Kanan, where Kanan imagined having lekku to be able to use the Twi'lek lekku language, and Hera warned him of how much it hurt if someone grabbed one. Just, I don't know, the idea of engaging with a woman character as a person and not. Sexy Person.The other girlfriend in Sana Starros, and I kingdom for someone to write Sana as I remember her from her original appearance in the comics, as surprisingly grounded and level-headed for someone who apparently used to pull smuggler stunts with Han. It gave her a sense of wholeness that warping her into an overwrought teenager (Aphra) or Archetype Flirty Competent Action Girl (this) does not.
So just. Like many guy writers, Older doesn't seem to have a handle on how to write women without some kind of one-dimensional angle or archetype to force her into. And it's tiring to see how these characters can't be written beyond the mentality of 'how do they relate to the men.' I'm not saying there can never be girlfriends, I sure love girlfriends, but a girlfriend should also be a character independent of this lens. And when any woman who shows up fits so easily into these three types, it's pretty damn noticeable.
But yeah, while I liked many of the ideas in this book, Older's writing style just didn't work for me (and the writing of women outright irritated me), and this whole plot was way more convoluted and contrived than it needed to be.
And then next is Zoraida Córdova's A Crash of Fate, the other Galaxy's Edge novel. Beware below for spoilers and also my very unpopular personal opinions on romance fiction.
This book is about a boy named Jules and a girl named Izzy who were best friends as very young children and then Izzy moves away, and about thirteen years later they reunite and are in love.
That is what it is about. Anything else that happens in this book is incidental and has no relevance beyond the always momentary tension it may or may not contribute to that central relationship.
which. It's a romance novel. In Star Wars. I can't fault it for aligning with the expectations of its genre. But in turn, it does demonstrate why I'm not interested in romance as a genre. That everything in a story turning on, or only being relevant as far as, how it impacts a central romantic relationship is not something that works for me.
And okay, I'm certainly saying some of this out of irrational feelings of resentment and loneliness. I've more than once felt like I'm basically being accused of misogyny if I say I'm not into the romance genre. Or tweets that are like "stop complaining about lacking queer content when there's ROMANCE" like fuck that I'm going to demand queer content in every fucking genre, thank you very much.
And it’s not even like I don't like romance in stories! I certainly have my ships and enjoy romantic interaction between characters. But both within and without the romance genre itself, I do often find in media that romance begins to trump anything else about a relationship (or sometimes like, a plot). Characters become defined by their romantic relationships and neither they or their relationship can escape from it. It's really a big reason why I prefer women lead characters to either not have a romance or be in an f/f romance, because with het the leading man often takes over the story. But regardless, romance works for me when it's part of a larger story, and when I can see how the narrative events, themes, and the nature of the characters themselves works to produce the romance. And I'm not saying that's better or that the romance genre is bad, just that this kind of thing is what I need in order to enjoy a romantic relationship in fiction now, and not all stories (honestly, especially in the romance genre) feel especially concerned with it.
(I guess another big confession, I actually only rarely read fanfiction. And in general can feel rather alone in fandom.)
So it feels kind of pointless to go into the "plot" of this book because again, it's only really important in how it does or does not influence Izzy and Jules' love story. Like, two other things kind of happen and both kind of get resolved. But they progress in the background, except for brief instances of action or drama, and then they're weirdly all but forgotten until something needs at to shove the characters again. Izzy stuns a woman while stealing back a parcel from Hondo Ohnaka's office and then five minutes later Izzy and Jules are carelessly feeding each other jerky as they stroll around Black Spire. Izzy's ex shows up and it doesn't matter because Izzy doesn't like him and Jules is never actually threatened by him, yet the plot seems to serve no purpose other than to create ~drama~ with, I guess, his existence. The First Order and Resistance make cameos, but beyond like, I guess a suggestion that some people in Black Spire like the First Order and some don't, nothing is followed up or comes of that, really.
And there's an unironic use of "too pure for this world" to describe Jules which, I'm the kind of shitty person who's going to roll my eyes at that.
And Jules and Izzy, well. They exist to have their love story. Izzy does struggle with the idea that her mom was a dangerous bounty hunter, there is some stuff about her relationship with her parents that I could have been into, but again it just doesn't matter because Jules is never going to have any actual misgivings about her, and then in the end Izzy finds a message from her dead mother confirming she loved her all along because god forbid anyone actually have to just learn to move on from anything!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ahem
And I mean, Jules is in fact a brave little soldier who is too precious for this world. Done and done.
(I'll acknowledge that perhaps a problem with the way I read is that unlike a normal person who read this as a quick cute little story, if something goes into my reading cycle that means I'm stuck with it for a while, so yeah it has to be fun to read at a reasonably slow pace.)
So anyway, I feel caught in a bind here where it's like if I'm critical of Córdova's structure here, then I'm just being critical of a romance book for following romance genre conventions, and if I say I'm not going to criticize it because of that, then it's 'no that's not a romance convention here are x y and z book that don't do that' and you know please do not do that, this is extremely not me asking for romance recommendations.
So whatever, the bottom line here is that I just don't prioritize romance in stories in the way others often do, and I also think I prioritize what I can get out of a romantic relationship in fiction differently from how others do. Which is fine just. idk please don't make me feel bad about it.
Anyway, I guess on the roll of 'Veronica shares their deeply unpopular opinions about fiction' my next post will be 'Please Stop Talking To Me About Tropes, I Actually Consider Them A Comparatively Minor And Utilitarian Part Of Storytelling.'
I had been planning to write up something about Shadowfall, the second book in the Alphabet Squadron trilogy, but I took so long that I'm now reading the third and final book so uh. I'll just wait until after that. And you know maybe write a review of something that isn't Star Wars