One for Sorrow

I was thinking about Star Wars this morning. Recently I read a conversation where a number of people said, "I couldn't care less about Han Solo." Now, I happen to love Han, but I didn't find this a shocking confession, especially given the way they explained it. They liked the Skywalkers because it was their story. I had to agree. While I love Han in the OT, I would always say that SW is Luke's story, along with Vader's. Leia is also a bigger part of it than Han is. Han gets involved with them and affects events (a perfect example obviously being when he knocks Vader out unexpectedly so Luke can get to the Death Star), but his personal development runs on a completely separate track from the main storyline. It's a subplot that could pretty much lift right out--it's really just extra that Lucas gave him a clear arc of his own, and in the end that arc is rightfully pushed to the background so Luke and Vader can have their final confrontation. Even the first time I saw RotJ I noticed that Han didn't have much to do, but while I'd liked to have had a better storyline than the Ewoks, I thought the resolution of Luke's story was more important, and that was done well.

In the prequels I was pleased that Lucas resisted the urge to stick in a young!Han to go along with young!Boba Fett and younger!Chewie. I'm sure a random scene where Lucas managed to have a boy on a street we could recognize as Han would have been a crowd-pleaser, but I'm glad that there was hint of Han whatsoever in the prequels, beyond what was, imo, an obvious foreshadowing nod to him and the world he lives in by Obi-Wan when he killed Grievous with the help of a good blaster by his side ("so uncivilized").

Anyway, this got me thinking about why I like Han for all these reasons, because I realized the same is true for what is probably my favorite character in the series, R2D2. ( They don't believe in luck/fate. )

Ugh. Got no sleep last night. I might as well have gotten up and written this at 3am because I could not sleep. Is there anything more depressing than lying awake all night and then hearing the garbage truck rumbling down the street to tell you it's almost time to get up?

Anyway, this gets back to Frodo and Sam in ROTK. There's certain interpretations of the way these two are in ROTK that I see all over the place--in fact, before I saw the movie this is the way their characters were presented to me. It's frustrating not only because it's inaccurate, but something else. Figuring out the "something else" led me to an idea I never thought I'd arrive at, which was that ( in some ways slash can really suck. )

Thanks to everybody's sympathy for my hot water problem! To continue the saga, the hot water came on last night around midnight so I jumped in for a quick shower. Good thing too, as this morning it was ice cold. I called the super and got dressed, then it came on again at something like 8:20. So I had a dilemma...could I actually get to work somewhere in the vicinity of not-too-late with a shower? I decided to do it, which was kind of an interesting experience, making the shower the last thing of the morning instead of the first thing. Ridiculous but amusing for a day. I'd already put on make up and dressed and eaten and all that, so I just had to dry my hair (as quickly as possible). Seems like this is the way characters must do it on soap operas, so they can step out of the shower with wet hair but also lipstick.

The super called a mechanic, I'm happy to say, so this will hopefully be fixed. We went for about a five days last winter with no heat or hot water (after it had been iffy) because the boiler finally died. When they got a new one I figured this was not something I'd have to worry about for a while. Grrrr.

( Thoughts on Trilogy Tuesday )

I was in the middle of updating yesterday when all the lights went out. (I was also listening to the excellent Scarlet Pimpernel tape from conniemarie sent me. Thanks Connie!!!

This is far too many times I've had to walk home from work. It doesn't kill me but my shoulder hurts again because of my bag. Gripe gripe gripe. PT kept running in to the office where we were hanging out with updates: "The whole block is down!" "The whole east coast is down!" and my personal favorite: "PEOPLE ARE COMING BACK TO LIFE AND EATING THE LIVING!" PT is a great person to have around when these things happen. His black humor about the situation and our imminent death was better than anything I was missing on TV.

At the time I got cut off I was whinging about things in the kitchen. Not my kitchen--Frodo's kitchen. I went in there yesterday and almost ran screaming away. Okay maybe I'm exaggerating. ( The thing is, I was a little creeped out. )

Edit: Running off for the weekend now, be back in a few days!

My very first fandom was X-files. Well, we know how that show ended. ::sigh:: But last night a friend I met through that fandom came into NYC and she and another X-phile friend and I went out to dinner. I can now officially say that I really have discussed Wittgenstein over drinks. (Even if it was only briefly and only one of us really knew Wittgenstein and it wasn't me and I'm probably misspelling it.)

Here's the thing we were wondering about. ( Why do we always like the characters in a fandom that are widely despised? )