#Pointless Romance

[fy-khan]

[News] 171120 The title for the ‘Female soldier’ themed web drama ‘Let’s Go Army’ has been confirmed to be ➡ ‘Pointless Romance’, planned to air in March next year

The title for the web drama ‘Let’s Go Army (working title) has been confirmed to be ‘Female Soldier’s Dignified Pointless Romance (품 위 있는 여국의 삼질로맨스)’ (in short, ‘Pointless Romance (삼질로맨스)’) and filming started on the 18th of November.

A drama official revealed to chicnews, “’Pointless Romance’ has been confirmed to be the title for ‘Let’s Go Army’ and filming started last 18th. This week, we finished filming in Gyunggido and Paju, Seoul, etc. We’re going to continue filming in Hoeseong, Gangwon-do. After finishing the preproduction in January of next year, it will be revealed through NaverTV Cast in February, and it’s planned to have it air on cable channels etc. sometime around March.”

©

[lazybarbarians]

Moving Target by Cecil Castellucci and Jason Fry

Ragnell: This week we read Moving Target: A Princess Leia Adventure. It’s the YA novel for the new Star Wars canon set between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, a companion to last week’s selection actually, and actually has ½ the same authors.

The story takes place a few months after ESB, when the ship Leia’s riding on gets attacked. This sets up the background, which is that she and luke have been identified as symbols for the Alliance and are being moved around secretly and separately because they are massive targets. The entire Alliance has split into small cells that never stay in one place very long since the Hoth attack.

Leia’s being doing recruitment and diplomatic visits. She gets called to see the rest of Alliance High Command and finds out there’s a new Death Star being built, and the Alliance needs to gather the fleet and plan an attack before construction is complete, but they need to avoid Imperial attention. To that end, Leia volunteers to act as a decoy and draw Imperial attention away from the gathering by posting a fake recruitment mission and just basically being a moving target.

During this she speaks to Luke and Mon Mothma, which are very sweet scenes in which both characters try to convince her that it's perfectly acceptable to put aside her sense of duty to rescue Han. (Han’s rescue is not something the Alliance can afford to do, but no one’s objecting to a small volunteer force.)

After that she collects her team of dupes, a naive idealistic comm specialist named Kidi, a literal-minded mechanic named Antrot, the pilot Nien Nunb (Lando’s co-pilot during the RotJ Death Star run), and a commando named Lokmarcha, Lok for short. Lok is assigned by one of the Interchangeable Disposable Alliance Generals You Will Never See Outside This Story as a bodyguard for Leia, which she understands but is annoyed at. Only Leia and Lok know the mission is a decoy, the others are fairly earnest and a source of guilt for Leia.

They set up beacons using old encryption codes Leia knows the empire cracked at 3 different locations. The first one involves climbing up a chimney, the second meeting cool pirates, and the third a farmer matriarch who says she’s just gonna tell the Empire to go fly a kite as soon as they’re done setting this stuff up. Both the first and second meeting points get a very fast visit from a very bland villainess who has a Star Destroyer. Why she gets a Star Destroyer I don’t know. The third involves Leia breaking the truth to her whole team and helping the matriarch defend against the Imperials. Then she goes to the fake meeting point to warn away the recruits, and gets captured.

They come up with some plan to blow up the ship, but instead Lok dies in a grisly manner because he has a suicide EMP device in his chest, Leia stealing the bland villainess’s clothes and Antrot dies blowing up the ship so they can escape the Star destroyer. The recruits attack the thing to help them, Leia, Kidi and Nien survive and Leia calls Luke who tells her that they’re ready to start the third movie.

Oh, and Kidi and Lok got together so Kidi can be sad about Lok’s death and Leia can connect the whole thing to Han but there’s barely any page time spent on it.

So, this book is annoying to me because it could be a lot better than it is. And it has some good parts, mainly Leia’s characterization, and the scenes with Mon Mothma, Luke, and Nien. A few here and there during the mission too. But it falls short for two reasons for me.

First, it starts off implying that Leia and Luke have been traveling on different ships and not really doing much for the better part of the year while Han is gone. I don’t like that, it seems wasteful. This is prime twin-teamup time, and there should be room left for stories where they do even if this particular one is a Leia solo story. But it seems to position itself to account for most of the year, and while the interaction with Luke is wonderful the wistfulness implies that she just hasn’t been able to see him much since Bespin and I hate that. So right away, the book loses some points for me.

The second problem is that Leia is presented as needing a specific character arc in this. In ESB, we saw her open herself up to romantic love. We didn’t see her learn to put aside her sense of duty, a core concept of the character since her first appearance, to allow herself that time. And the writers have the best idea, they present this perfectly in the early scenes with Luke and Mon Mothma. We see Leia’s pessimism and cynicism contrasted against Luke’s faith. Then we get Mon Mothma pulling Leia aside to tell her it’s OKAY to want a life for herself, it’s okay to pull back from her duties to work to get that. So Leia starts out the book thinking it’s selfish to have romance and she won’t be able to have Han back anyway.

Over the course of the mission, she changes her mind. Which is the problem. There’s really not a lot in the mission driving this lesson home. The four parts of the mission itself never really give Leia reason to reflect on Han. She reflects on her time in the Death Star, and balances whether the ends justify the means but there’s not a lot to remind her what she’s lost. Instead it lets her get her mind completely off of Han while she’s working.

The background romance between Kidi and Lok reminds her of herself and Han when they catch them kissing, but there’s not a lot of groundwork laid during the bickering and honestly not a lot of parallels between either character and Han, or really either character and Leia. Lok’s death should underscore this lesson too, but we never see how Leia connects the dots. Really, the only character on the entire crew who reminds us of Han is Nien Nunb, who’s a little roguish and a source of humor, while the others are all aspects we see in Luke -- an innocent technician, a young idealist, and a badass commando who’s willing to sacrifice himself to give everyone else a shot.

It would’ve been better to shape the mission around something that drives home Leia’s central character arc, rather than have it be work that takes her mind off her problems with a brief interlude of two people with a situation that vaguely resembles her. Maybe more use of the one character with traits in common with Han, I know they can't kill Nien but they could have made Leia fear for him more. Instead we got a quick death for a character in a romance as a cheat to a lesson, and I know both Castellucci and Fry can write better than this.

Kalinara: I didn’t find the book quite as annoying as you did. But I do agree that there were a lot of missed opportunities.

The best part of the book were the canon characters, honestly. As you mentioned, the dynamic between Luke and Leia was lovely. Their scenes together shined. I also really liked the way Mon Mothma was used. She was a welcome maternal figure, one who wasn’t afraid to talk to Leia about her losses and encourage her to find happiness where she could.

The biggest problem for me was that it feels like this book basically shunts Leia to the side of any meaningful plot during this time period. I mean, Lando and Chewbacca are looking for Han. Luke is doing...Jedi stuff. Leia’s part of a distraction mission to hide the rebels’ true plans regarding the Second Death Star. A mission that we know is pointless, since the Second Death Star was a trap anyway.

Leia has strong, appealing characterization, but the characters that she’s stuck bouncing off of are basically stock placefillers. Kidi is the sweet ultra-liberal, tree-hugging stereotype girl, Lok is the frowning by the book military guy, the third dude, Antrot? Is basically whiny nerd comic relief so forgettable that I’m still not sure I got his name right.

Leia never has an opportunity to really connect to any of these characters, and there’s really no reason given that she should. The only one she has any sort of real connection with is Lok, and she does shine there, as she manages to smoothly assert her authority while still respecting his concerns.

I think it stands out to me because one of the best parts of the first (or maybe second) chapter was Leia musing about how her life in the Rebellion hadn’t given her the opportunity for friendship. Luke, Han, Chewie, the Droids, they were the first time she really was able to connect to people on that level. I expected that to mean something with these new characters. I expected to see Leia make friends. But it never really happened.

It’s not just a matter of these characters being OCs, because authors in both the Expanded Universe and the new canon have managed to introduce OC friends for Leia that worked very well. Winter was a staple in the old canon. And Ransolm Casterfo, for all the complications there, had a very vivid connection to Leia in Bloodlines. So it is absolutely doable. But it didn’t happen here.

Lok came closest, but he was still more archetype than man. Kidi and Antrot were too young and wide-eyed. Which is a bit weird to say, considering how Leia latched onto Luke. But Luke was a kid who rescued her and was never in her direct command, so there’s a subtle difference there. She and Luke and Han were equals in an emotional sense, and these kids are not.

Nien Nunb comes closest. He’s definitely the most vivid of the characters (I admit, I think of him almost as an original character because it took me ages to remember who he was. I fail Star Wars forever). And he and Leia do interact a lot more like friends, but there isn’t much chance to explore that relationship dynamic either. He always seems to miss the fun chimney climbing adventures, only to rejoin them again later.

I think maybe the problem is that the authors were trying too hard for the romantic parallel, which meant we wasted way too much time watching Kidi and Lok play Ollie and Hal on a road trip, rather than seeing Leia’s relationship develop with either character. They should have gone for a friendship parallel instead. Because that’s the thing, Han was Leia’s friend long before he was her love. And Leia isn’t just neglecting her feelings for Han during this time period, she’s also letting duty get in the way of being with Luke. (In that sense, I actually liked that they hadn’t interacted much during this time period. I think it fits with Leia’s theme.) She needs to learn that she can be selfish, so to speak, and value her friends, and be able to find happiness with them. Both the friend she loves romantically, and the friend that she doesn’t.

And honestly, I thought Lok’s death was rather disturbing for a YA novel. Maybe I’m just an old fuddy-duddy, but that was a bit much.