In 2002, Star Wars creator George Lucas told Time that the revolutionary-era women of Mexico inspired Leia’s look. “In the 1977 film, I was working very hard to create something different that wasn’t fashion, so I went with a kind of Southwestern Pancho Villa woman revolutionary look, which is what that is,” he said. “The buns are basically from the turn-of-the-century Mexico. Then it took such hits and became such a thing.”
I was going to be like “an AU where all Leia writes all her official dispatched he exact same way that Carrie Fisher tweets,” except I think we all know in our heart of hearts that this is in fact canon, and the first thing you learn in the Resistance is a basic fluency in emoji
One time the First Order manages to intercept a few official communiques and they’re all like “wtf is this code” while Kylo Ren is standing to the side just dying inside because MOM GOD THIS IS SO EMBARRASSING
darth vader would never write like this
THIS IS THE MOST VITALLY IMPORTANT THING I HAVE BEHELD OH MY GOD
Jabba, I wanna touch Jabba! I know it sounds gross but it might be delicious!
I have a chemical imbalance that, in its most extreme state, will lead me to a mental hospital… I am mentally ill. I can say that. I am not ashamed of that. I survived that, I’m still surviving it, but bring it on.
Carrie Fisher
I don’t think a lot of people realize how much it meant to see one of their childhood heroes speak about something that you also struggle with. A topic that is usually kept in the dark or horribly stigmatized. Carrie Fisher spoke and joked about her struggles with addiction, depression, and bipolar disorder and that meant a fucking lot, okay?
Billie Lourd, Fisher’s daughter, confirmed the death today in an official statement. Issued by family representative Simon Halls, the statement to People reads: “It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8:55 this morning.” Her legacy is incontestable – and probably a lot more than you knew.
As an occasional visitor to Star Wars fandom, here are some things I would like to see come out of Rogue One:
–
the fic about the reactions of the Empire’s IT and records management
departments when they learn that some trigger-happy general just
literally blew up an entire unique archival repository of key bureaucratic data – the comic about the first time some maintenance
technician tries to repair something on the Death Star and the guy’s
like, ‘where’s the documentation?’ and their boss is like ‘um, well,
funny story about that….’ – the in-depth analysis about various
mistakes the Empire makes in the original trilogy and how they operate
in context of an organization that has just, I repeat, LITERALLY BLOWN UP ALL OF
THEIR OWN BACKUP DATA. Of course it’s easy for any random hero to
impersonate a Stormtrooper! THEY DESTROYED ALL THEIR OWN PERSONNEL
FILES.
Rogue One, or, Why All The Empire’s Librarians and Archivists Joined the Rebellion
Rogue 2 plot summary: a bunch of Imperial waste management techs go AWOL and steal the Death Star plans back from the Rebels because how else are we supposed to get the dianoga out of the pipes when we have literally no idea where half of these ducts go or what they’re for
they complete their mission but in the end decide not to delete the plans from the main Alliance computers after they’ve made their copy because ehhhhh what if we never had to fix anything on that piece of shit again, what if that, it’s insured right?
This also explains why none of the bridges or giant pits in the floor have railings: literally no one knows if they’re supposed to be there or not, and once someone tried to drill into the floor to install some and destroyed the main air circulation wiring for half the station, now everyone just has to be real careful all the time
It also means that when they built the second Death Star in ROTJ they had to start entirely from scratch, yikes
in the end they decide not to delete plans from main Alliance computers because their heist crew contains one records manager who’s like ‘look, we’re SUPPOSED to have redundant data backups, this way we’re not even paying for the storage!’
this post has made the rounds amazingly on my dash and now it’s LITERALLY CALLING MY NAME.
pour one out for that tfa fic I was writing about della calrissian, disgruntled member of the new republic capital electoral commission, just trying to do her job and not get involved with the rebellion AGAIN.
never doubt my commitment to space bureaucracy.
I LOVE PEOPLE!
(Seriously, who’s up for a zine/anthology/cooperative AO3 series (group? tag? IDK) around the theme of various public servants sabotaged the Empire, joined the Rebellion, or avenged the besmirchment of their domains. #public servants of the empire, or the like.)
I love the way the glaring fucking design flaw that’s been pointed out since New Hope came out (your flying doom-planet that you’re going to use to subjugate the galaxy will explode entirely into so much space-dust after a love-tap from a single-pilot fighter if it’s in the right place? were you people high when you designed this?) just got shutupshutupohmygodshutuped away with Secret Rebels Sabotaging Things.
And it explains so much else, about everything, doesn’t it?
No guardrails over fucking bottomless pits? Some rebel sympathizer on the allocation committee line-itemed half the safety shit right out of the budget.
Helmets with no peripheral vision because fuck you, that’s why? The woman who designed them got conscripted into the job, and the only thing that makes her smile is watching those douchebag noncoms crash into each other in Y-intersection corridors.
Nobody notices there being extra stormtroopers running around? With the way Lieutenant Bob keeps dicking with the schedule, nobody can say for sure there shouldn’t be purple flying monkeys manning the security checkpoints. He’s run three Emperor Inspection Drills in as many weeks, and just three days ago he put the entire unit on duty at once and left the overnight shift “TBA.” He’s doing more to tank morale than Vader’s temper. Coincidentally, Lieutenant Bob’s homeworld got hit with a punitive tax hike six months ago, and people are literally starving in the streets.
The guy who checks itineraries and rosters for incoming shuttle flights believed the hype about joining up and seeing the Galaxy. Turns out fuck literally every actual thing about this job, from officer infighting to civilian casualties to Vader’s last-minute order to have every surface in his on-board suite kitted out with fucking lava lamps, of all things. Like, they’re in space. He gets that, right? They can’t just stop by SpaceMart and pick up stuff like that. His boss is a dick and he was up all night making lava lamps out of cooking oil and food coloring, and you know what? The last thing he wants to do right now is check the manifest on the next delivery of cooking oil. He’s had enough with cooking oil. He took five showers when he got back to his quarters, and he still smells like fucking canola. The Wookie and the guy who hasn’t shaved in a month and the guy still picking half a tumbleweed out of his hair can blow up the entire fucking station for all he cares–he will help them plant the explosives, if it comes down to it–so long as they don’t make him talk about the cooking oil he’s signing off on as being delivered.
AN ENTIRE GENERATION OF PILOTS AND STARFIGHTERS PAYING TRIBUTE TO HIM
IT’S HIM
HE’S THE PILOT
Bodhi Fuckin Rook. Let me talk about Bodhi Rook for a second.
Riz Ahmed’s first acting role was as a guy imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. One of the Tipton Three, who tried to sue Rumsfeld for torture and religious abuses but who failed because the torture hadn’t technically been prohibited and Rumsfeld was technically immune from prosecution.
So we take a guy with a very specific set of imagery associated with him and we put him stumbling and terrified in the desert with a bag covering his head. Heck, put him through interrogation techniques invasive enough that people tend to go crazy from them.
Take this guy, this guy whose skin is brown and whose family live in a war-torn city full of suicide attacks against tank-driven peacekeeping patrols.
Make him clever and brave and beautiful. Make the audience cheer when his plans go right. Make his intel pivotal to everything, and then do it again.
Remember those jokes in Kevin Smith and Mike Myers movies about evil henchmen with regular families, about contract workers on the Death Star, about whether they deserved to die just for having worries about paychecks and taking a job?
Those jokes are all about Bodhi Fucking Rook, an intergalactic long-haul trucker, and they aren’t jokes anymore because his answer is that you don’t stay some anonymous jerk just keeping his head down and acting like the machine he’s in isn’t his responsibility. You find something pure and strong in yourself, that inch of integrity Alan Moore told us about once, the thing that’s worth more than your life.
Luke Skywalker resonated with the audience because he was a fresh-faced farm boy setting off on the hero’s journey, and that gets us on a primal gut level.
Bodhi Rook isn’t an ancient archetype like Luke is. Bodhi Rook is a modern achetype. Bodhi Rook is the human face that we all hope looks back in the mirror at us when we ask ourselves if we’re willing to compromise our humanity – are we willing to ignore Guantanamo and Manus, turn a blind eye to Rumsfeld and Dutton and Morrison? Is it okay to take a job installing air conditioning on the Death Star when you know that it’s the Death Star, because someone’s gotta do it and you need the cash?
We all hope that when the question comes, we answer the way Bodhi Rook did.
ok so Leia was heading to Obi-wan before the Battle of Scarif, and before she ever knew she or anyone would have the plans. It wasn’t just a last resort, “vader’s bout to get us we gotta go somewhere” decision. the fact that she was going to Obi-wan is probably the reason she was with the rebels and not on Alderaan.
so think in the context that a) Bail was knowingly sending his daughter, who has the genes of one of the most powerful force users ever, to go get a Jedi, b) Bail knew that he was sending the biological child of Anakin to Anakin’s former master and friend, c) Obi-wan definitely would knows who Leia is, d) Bail knows that Obi-wan is keeping an eye on Luke.
I’m not saying Bail Organa knowingly sent his force sensitive daughter to the only fully trained Jedi he knew how to get in touch with and also her force sensitive brother, but Bail Organa knowingly sent his force sensitive daughter to the only fully trained Jedi he knew how to get in touch with and also her force sensitive brother. Because he and Mon Mothma decided things had gotten to this point.
Someone in the tags said “Bail didn’t send the plans to Obi-wan. Bail sent Leia.”
YES. The Death Star plans were a last minute bonus. Bail’s actual plans for dealing with the Empire and the Death Star was LEIA
Leia was always his plan, even before the EU went entirely to hell and Disney rebooted it.
While other nobles of similar rank were in finishing school or going off to academies, Leia was learning to fight, she was learning to resist interrogation methods, she was building up resistance to the most commonly used truth serums in the galaxy, willingly dosing herself of a regular basis—that’s why the torture droid on the Death Star doesn’t work, she’s spent her whole young adult life training for the moment when she might be captured and tortured for information.
She was learning ciphers and codes, and using her royal upbringing to maneuver through social circles where lowly resistance spies—the lower classes, the non humans, the poor, the sick, the most vulnerable under Palpatine’s rule—would stick out like a sore thumb and be in immediate danger. She was using her class and privilege to fight back against a tyrannical rule, both as a senator and as a spy. She’s not even aware of her Force abilities at this point, though they probably help in some instinctual level. But other than that? It’s all her.
I’m not sure if it’ll be considered canon anymore, but in the radio adaptation of A New Hope some grimy Imperial shitlord who is tasked with “finding rebels” on Alderaan makes romantic overtures at her, and Leia—then only 18—smiles and plays the political game and says he’ll have to ask her father. Later on over dinner when the bastard threatens Bail over being a part of the rebellion she grabs the blaster out of his hand and kills him. She cries over it, it’s the first time she’s killed a real live person and not just a moving target, but she recovers quickly. Because their cover has been blown, and someone has to get the plans to the rebels. And it can’t be Bail.
It’s her. It has always been about her.
But instead we get the story of a young farm boy from the arse end of nowhere, gifted with special powers, being pulled up by fate and destiny to be a hero. And as much as I love Luke—let’s be real I adore him—I will forever be salty that Leia is perceived by many to be a Supporting Character, in her own god damn story.
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