Sorry, I’m not up to date on the details of Star Wars outside the movies, but was R2-D2, like, Leia’s droid between the Prequels and the Original Trilogy? Whatever the case, I think I might need it to happen in a crack fic.
Because I’ve suddenly imagined R2-D2 accompanying Leia to her Senate meetings. In reality, it would probably be very dangerous for R2 and Leia. But I think it would be perfect for a crack fic.
Like, just imagine if Leia and R2 are just strolling around the halls of the Senate, with Leia ranting to R2 about something or other. And then bump into an older Senator by accident. And at first it’s all pleasantries and apologies, but then the older Senator takes one look at R2, turns a color that is not a good color for their people to turn, and then says in utter horror, “IT’S YOU!”
Because surely there must be older Senators out there from before the Empire, who remember that horrible little nightmare droid who tailed those awful Jedi around and occasionally Senator Amidala. (Like, there must be people out there who witnessed R2 blow up a building or even straight-up kill someone.)
And Leia’s like, “What? You know my droid?”
And the Senator’s got a hand over their heart, both to soothe themselves and a little protectively, and says, “My dear, I couldn’t forget that thing if I was dead. That’s the little bastard who set me on fire! Granted, it was an accident and it saved Senator Amidala’s life again, but still. She was far too fond of it! That and that debonair Jedi it belonged to!”
And Leia lights up immediately because oho, this is interesting. Meanwhile R2 is basically swearing up a storm trying to push her away. And the Senator has an expression on their face like, “Oh, damn, I shouldn’t have said that.”
Anyway, Leia accidentally figures out who her parents were because R2 is a memorable asshole that old politicians still see in their nightmares.
I want either that crack fic or an even crackier fic that goes like this:
Darth Vader: *walking down a hall in the Senate building, annoyed af that the Emperor is making him be here to intimidate people for some vote or another, scrolling clickbait quizzes or ship commercials on his datapad*
The sound of something clattering comes from ahead. Darth Vader looks up and sees a droid getting kicked out of a conference room, beeping explicitly and indignantly over just being lost, at the far end of the hall. The droid looks down the hall at Darth Vader. It’s unmistakably R2-D2.
Darth Vader: “…”
R2-D2: “…”
R2: *backs up one inch*
Vader: *takes one step forward*
R2: *SCREAMS*
R2-D2 whirls around immediately and flees around the corner. Vader is too surprised to immediately stop his old droid, but drops the datapad and books it after him (as much as DV can book it). What proceeds is probably a Star Wars version of the Benny Hill chase between R2-D2 and Darth Vader.
It ends in R2, covered in soot and scratches, barely managing to get away after causing enormous amounts of mayhem and property damage.
Leia: “There you are! Artoo, where have you been?”
FINALLY receiving some validation for my Catholic Boba Fett headcanon !
I…..
who wrote the book.
Daniel Keys Moran, it’s from a collection of stories called “Tales of the Bounty Hunters”
I am SO happy with Catholic Boba. I am SO pleased that Boba Fett is a PAPAL LOYALIST. Thank GOD (And the Pope) For this.
Okay, but can we just appreciate the fact that this scene is Boba being handed Leia in her slave outfit to rape as a gift from Jabba the Hutt, and Boba’s response is not only to refuse touching her but handing her a sheet to cover herself and even offering that she can sleep on the bed while he sits in a chair across the room?
Boba tells Leia, “Sex between those not married is immoral,” which is a Mandalorian cultural thing
because children are everything to Mandos and sex which might result in
pregnancy is a big no-no unless both parents are ready and willing to
raise that child; marriage to Mandalorians is two people making a mutual promise to help each other, particularly helping each other raise any children they might conceive or adopt (adoption happens a lot in the heat of the moment, apparently; it canonically appears to be a bigger risk than unplanned pregnancy – “whoops, honey, I accidentally adopted this kid I found on the battlefield” “oh. well. we knew that might happen having unprotected combat and all”).
It just says a lot about Boba, and Mandalorians in general, that they’re big buff armoured warrior types who apparently canonically have a very strong cultural bias for responsible sex. I mean, how many times do we see the fantasy/sci-fi warrior soldier stereotype = rape, or at the very least coercive sex, in pop culture? In so many movies and comics and novels, the female heroine/hero’s woman is captured by bad guys and offered as a “gift” to some big hunk of a warrior/gladiator/what have you who either does whatever he wants with her (explicitly on screen or implied off-screen by her ruined makeup and torn dress) to further the hero’s rescue-and/or-revenge-journey or maybe seduces her with his ~manliness~ and huge muscles/weapons even while there’s still that element of power imbalance as she surrenders helplessly to the ~instinctive urge~ to mate with the alpha male. Sex, or they-were-going-to-but-last-minute-interruption/rescue, is the inevitable outcome of a sci-fi/fantasy woman in a gold bikini being shoved into a soldier/warrior/gladiator dude’s quarters/cave/den/hovel.
And Leia is genre savvy and knows this. She fully expects Boba to rape her, and says as much. But his response to her threatening to kill him or kill herself if he touches her is just “woah there, lady, have we entered a culturally binding contract to conceive and raise children? no, we have not. so don’t flatter yourself thinking I’ll get my gametes anywhere near your uterus, thank you very much!” And Leia is a bit offended and wrong-footed, telling him “um, rape is immoral too, y’know,” but Boba just dismisses it all, “well, yes, rape is bad, but like it’s so far off the table here that it’s basically a non sequitur, why would I rape you when I don’t even want to have consensual sex with you, come on.”
I just love the fact that in Mando culture, consensual sex is EVERYTHING, it’s even CONTRACTUALISED. You know how all those MRA anti-feminists are all up in arms about movements like #MeToo and whining about how totally unreasonable it is to expect everyone involved to consent to sex, what, do femi-nazis want everyone to fill out consent forms before sex haha how ridiculous – and then we have Mandalorians, the most alpha of alpha people of all genders, all fake nerd boy incels’ epitome of badassness, literally contractualising consent. Boba Fett, pop-cult bad guy extraordinaire, not only refusing to rape Leia in her slave costume (unlike every single incel in the world who has masturbated to that scene of her on her knees in chains) but being genuinely offended at the thought of having sex with someone without pledging himself fully to her safety and welfare.
This short story was the moment I fell in love with the EU’s Boba Fett and Mandalorians in general. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
This is amazing, I had no idea of the context! Thank you for writing this!
@cinlat and @kunoichi-ume this is kind of confusing to me in the respect that I’d also heard folks make mention of things like “what happens at Mandalorian parties, stays at Mandalorian parties”, obviously consent still being a thing…it’s the “before marriage” or “outside of marriage” thing I’m confused on. Because clearly you -can- have sex without the intent on having children. I defer to your knowledge of Mando culture…
Okay, so here’s my take on it.
I’m going to break this down to the best of my ability, bearing in mind that I focus more on the Old Republic (some what, 3000 years before this scene takes place?) Firstly, rape wasn’t an acceptable means of celebration within Mandalorian culture not because they were virgins/committed to their spouse, but because Mandalorians don’t recognize a “Lesser sex”. Women were not tools or property, but fellow warriors. There were not men and women, only Mandalorians and everyone else. Does that mean rapists didn’t exist within their culture? Of course not. Glad to know Boba wasn’t one of them.
Secondly, and the thing @melissagt asked about, was the virginal troupe. Considering how low key of a guy Boba was, I’m not surprised that he held this viewpoint. He had bigger things on his mind than sex and wasn’t raised by a clan. He had his father, who he lost at a young age, then various vagabonds and roughians who took him in after that. Boba didn’t rejoin the mando culture (to the best of my knowledge, again, not a Boba expert) until he was grown. He’s a man who’s formed opinions from experience and exposure.
Thirdly, if you consider that the average age of marriage for a Mandalorian was around sixteen, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine them as virgins. But, that leads into the fidelity of marriage question. War is long. Not only were children adopted on the battlefield, they were sired on it. Not from unwilling partners but from curiosity and general lust. If said man or woman produced offspring, they were honor bound to bring that child home and raise them as Mandalorians. I haven’t come across a single case of jealousy from the other partner because guess what? The war was long for them too. They weren’t just sitting at home pining, they found outlets as well. The mando marriage vows say nothing about fidelity within marriage, merely that their spouse holds their heart, soul, and respect forever. It’s a declaration of the highest love.
I’m not saying there weren’t faithful Mandalorians any more than I think the whole culture respected the consent of others. Merely that was what they held to as a common belief within their race. I commend Boba for his outlook of life and it should never have been expected that he’d rape Leia, so not really a high five moment in my opinion. But, I’ve seen too much to the contrary to believe “no sex outside of marriage” was a common Mando belief. Maybe in the future? Like I said, I’m much less familiar with that time period, but definitely not in the Old Republic.
I saw the tweets about this today, and I was like oh yeah, I remember hearing about that.
And then I saw the pictures and just— wow. What it would have meant to have these women in the movie, all this time. I can’t properly articulate it but it’s hitting me unexpectedly hard.
Wow thats a shame, even a nice old lady too. These Space Valkyries should have been left in.
I lived, ate, and breathed Star Wars from age 2 until 2005 when RotS finally beat the enthusiasm out of me, and I have NEVER, EVER in all my reading on behind-the-scenes and makings-of heard of these shots. It’s a shame there was no relaunched edit of the original trilogy they could have slipped these in OH FUCKING WAIT THERE’S BEEN LIKE 3 OF THOSE NOW.
Fuck. FUCK. Whoever decided to edit out and bury these needs to french kiss an angle grinder.
I want to see the old lady in the A-Wing. Seriously, it’s like, she’s somebody’s grandma. Some kid in the Outer Rim Territories got greased by the Empire for seeing something she wasn’t supposed to see, and her grandma, the bush pilot, decided “Fuck this, I’m gonna strap on an fighter and make the Empire fucking PAY for the moment it decided to fuck with MY FAMILY.”
DON’T. MESS. WITH. GRANDMA.
These are quickly being put into the “always reblog” category.
Whenever there is a war, there are women who are warriors. Then they get erased from history. Happens in real wars and fictional ones alike.
Less than 5% of general aviation licenses go to women. If these had been left in, you can bet that number would be higher.
^^^That knocked the breath out of me.
I just can’t believe they not only took them out, but refused to put them back in during the seventeen times they updated the movies. And of course the only possible explanation for this is: you do not belong here.
Literally though. How many stupid remasters have they done but THIS gets left out? Ugh
for the record the names of these characters are Sila Kott played by
Poppy Hands and Dorovio Bold played by Vivienne Chandler. I couldn’t find the name of the old woman though 😦
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dorovio_Bold
“As well as her appearance in the briefing, footage of the character in a cockpit during the Battle of Endor was also filmed, but not used in the final cut of the movie.”
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sila_Kott “Although played by British actress Poppy Hands in Return of the Jedi, Sila Kott was later dubbed over by an American man’s voice.”
It’s even more sad when you realize that this was cut so EARLY in the filming process that it didn’t even make the finalized screenplay, which is what the novelization is written from.
So, I was at the bookstore today, when I found a cute little book.
Funny, huh? It was short, so I started flipping through it, because hey, making fun of Darth Vader, right? All sorts of silly Halloween type monsters, and then this witch, too.
Aww. This is making me laugh, because really, it’s very silly. Let’s see what he says to this, because he was not impressed by the wolfman, the vampire, or the ghost…
WTH????
No, seriously, I was NOT expecting that.
Props for getting Darth Vader and how he probably feels about himself right, but uh… maybe tone it down a bit? I was not expected the mood whiplash.
wupacing 