Funny enough, Leia ended up running black ops missions for the Rebellion, while Luke piddled around a dirt farm with his head in the clouds.
But just remember: Luke isn't a Mary Sue, ok? Long as we're crystal clear on that!
I liked those Tales of books when they first came out. The Tales from the New Republic one is still decent because they are completely stand alone stories. I tried rereading Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina about a year ago and most of those stories end up with "And then I was sitting there when this crazy old guy whips out a lightsaber..." or "I was having a drink when in walks Han Solo and Chewbacca. I wonder what they're up to?" It gets old by the second story.
Ah yes, the fishbowl universe. One of my least favorite aspects of the late 90s/early 00s Star Wars. There was this desire to provide everyone with a backstory, frequently connecting them intimately to the events of the galactic civil war. Nobody was ever just "I dunno. Some spacer." They were the guy who transported the Bothan spies who stole the Death Star II plans, or the dude who was told to totally disable the hyperdrive on the Falcon in Cloud City but secretly left a backdoor to undo all the damage that he knew a clever droid could find or whatever.
I hated that. HATED it. It's lazy writing and it kills your worldbuilding by making everything seem tiny.
The one thing I'd say I appreciate most about the Disney era has been the effort to try to expand the scope of the Star Wars universe. Yes, they do a lot of repeated beats, and they riff on existing material, but they also do expand things into new territory. I just want them to do more of that. Much more.
I think we can all agree that the concept of original intent is worth very, very little in regards to any iteration of Star Wars.
So many of George's positions have varied over the years. But IMO that is an argument put more weight on the stuff that he didn't vary.
We still regard George's input on SW to be more legit than anyone else's by a country mile.
As I've said, I don't regard George as the final word on Star Wars canon. I wouldn't even say I regard George as the final word on George with respect to Star Wars anymore. But I think a lot of that comes from how many drafts of the story there were, and how the story has evolved in his mind over time.
I think it's easy to forget that people don't always have a perfectly clear recollection of their own timeline and history. I might say "Oh, my attitude back in 2001 was XYZ," but you could dig up records to prove that I didn't think XYZ until 2003. But what the hell do I know? I can barely remember last week anymore. I would believe that George has a rough sense of what he wanted and thought back in the day, but his recollection of that gets influenced by what he thinks and wants today -- just like everyone else. He's not an omniscient narrator. That's why you'd want to look at documentary evidence to indicate what he thought and when.
It's also why he says contradictory stuff, I think. "I always intended blah blah blah." Did you though? ALWAYS? And that never changed? Like, he could say "I always intended for Leia to be Luke's sister," but it might be more nuanced than that. Maybe he always intended for Luke to
have a sister, but for that sister to not be the princess character that Luke rescues. Like, Darth Vader wasn't always Luke's father. He wasn't even always a Sith. So did he "always intend" for "Darth Vader" to be reminiscent of "Dark Father?" Or is that something that he came up with in the 4th draft or whatever?
At the end of the day, it may be interesting to look at the development of the OT, but beyond that...who cares? It doesn't matter.
