![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
litomnivoreThe arrival of Star Wars: The Force Awakens made the Star Wars fandom explode earlier this year. The modern Star Wars fan is catered to not only by seemingly every kind of product with enough surface area to slap Kylo Ren on (laugh all you want, this cereal is wicked delicious), but also by the width and breadth of the fanworks available to her. With decades of fanworks to sift through, the possibilities can seem infinite. But once she’s read her eyes out on all the Poe/Finn fic she can find and indulged in prequel fanvids set to Evanescence songs (kids, ask your parents), she might have a question.
Where, a new Star Wars fan might well ask, is all the Han/Luke fic?
"C'mon, kid…"
Han Solo and Luke Skywalker have all the hallmarks of a successful slash ship: namely, they are two white dudes who stand next to each other in a mainstream media property. Pointed, bitter joking aside, they’re initially thrown together by happenstance and grow to become friends after a rocky start over the course of A New Hope. They then embark on, with Leia, one of the greatest love triangles of the twentieth century. (It must be deeply stressed that nobody knew that Luke and Leia were siblings for six years. Including George Lucas.) Han and Luke clearly enjoy each other’s company and value each other greatly. On top of all that, Ford and Hamill have good chemistry and banter well together, the hallmark of any true Star Wars romance (prequels? What prequels?).
And yet, other and newer Star Wars ships seem to take precedence. Like Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi or Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi, the latter a pairing whose canon interaction is now limited to a single film. (Whose living canon interaction is now limited to a single film. I am perfectly aware that Qui-Gon sometimes appears as a Force ghost to Obi-Wan, presumably to continue the endless torment of having such a terrible Jedi as your master. Qui-Gon Jinn: the original Bad Idea Jedi.) It seems impossible that Star Wars fandom somehow just politely ignored the slash potential of Han and Luke from 1977 (when Star Wars debuted) to 1996 (when the first Han/Luke fanzine, Elusive Lover, was published), and yet that’s what the fossil record seems to indicate. And why didn’t it have more of a presence in the last two decades?
Well, friends and fen, to answer that question, we have to go back to the late seventies.
( Read more... )
Where, a new Star Wars fan might well ask, is all the Han/Luke fic?
"C'mon, kid…"
Han Solo and Luke Skywalker have all the hallmarks of a successful slash ship: namely, they are two white dudes who stand next to each other in a mainstream media property. Pointed, bitter joking aside, they’re initially thrown together by happenstance and grow to become friends after a rocky start over the course of A New Hope. They then embark on, with Leia, one of the greatest love triangles of the twentieth century. (It must be deeply stressed that nobody knew that Luke and Leia were siblings for six years. Including George Lucas.) Han and Luke clearly enjoy each other’s company and value each other greatly. On top of all that, Ford and Hamill have good chemistry and banter well together, the hallmark of any true Star Wars romance (prequels? What prequels?).
And yet, other and newer Star Wars ships seem to take precedence. Like Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi or Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi, the latter a pairing whose canon interaction is now limited to a single film. (Whose living canon interaction is now limited to a single film. I am perfectly aware that Qui-Gon sometimes appears as a Force ghost to Obi-Wan, presumably to continue the endless torment of having such a terrible Jedi as your master. Qui-Gon Jinn: the original Bad Idea Jedi.) It seems impossible that Star Wars fandom somehow just politely ignored the slash potential of Han and Luke from 1977 (when Star Wars debuted) to 1996 (when the first Han/Luke fanzine, Elusive Lover, was published), and yet that’s what the fossil record seems to indicate. And why didn’t it have more of a presence in the last two decades?
Well, friends and fen, to answer that question, we have to go back to the late seventies.
( Read more... )
