Mission on Mimban Two

[klcthebookworm]

Previous Installments

Introduction, One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Outline for Mission on Mimban

What Happens in the Chapter

Leia--angry at herself and everything else with this situation--does stay with Threepio and the Y-Wing until Luke and Artoo arrive. Luckily, she missed shooting him with her blaster when he does. They decide to hike to the beacon since neither of their ships are flying ever again.

Leia finds quickclay but it looks the same as all the rest of the ground, so really not her fault. Luke's hunch to stick to the tall growth pays off in no more sinking for the party. They make camp, and hike some more until they find a metal wall surrounding an outpost of buildings. Stormtroopers are casually patrolling, miners are coming off shift, and they figure out the Empire is energy mining on Mimban without the system government's knowledge or consent.

Luke steals a couple of miner coveralls and they disguise themselves. Luke takes it upon himself to mess up Leia's side buns hairstyle, but Leia stops him from putting mud on her face and does that herself. They head to the occupied buildings to buy food since Luke was smart enough to carry Imperial currency.

What I Liked

I am amused by the writerly effort to not call Luke's arousal a) arousal or b) a boner. I don't think I'm supposed to be amused, but you got to take what you can get in this section.

The sarcastic dialogue feels similar to what we heard on the Death Star.

• "The burden of public office was a lot heavier."
• "You can play toy engine later. Pull now."
• "I think maybe something in a print..."

Only one of those three is uttered by Luke though.

The droids found the metal wall while being their wonderfully bickering selves. I have no idea how long Luke and Leia would have circled around the beacon without hitting it if it wasn't for the droids' sensors.

"Both men carried their helmets casually. One dropped his, bent to retrieve it, kicked it accidentally up the street." So a career path in the Imperial forces is possible for klutzes. Good to know.

Leia's warning bells go off before Luke's once they reach the mining outpost. She figures out that the energy mining is what caused the atmospheric disturbance that disabled their ships. Of course she can't wait to tell the Circarpousians all about it because they'll join the Rebel Alliance for sure once they know.

Adjustable lightsaber works as a lock pick. Luke is using Anakin's lightsaber, which was built before the Purge, and I believe was always supposed to have more bells and whistles than the one Luke constructs later. But that's going off EU stuff invented far after this book was written.

Instead of a meter-plus shaft of white energy, the pommel put forth a short, needle-thin spoke. With concentration worthy of a master craftsman, Luke stepped forward and moved the energy beam along the slight space visible between the door and frame. A third of the way down the door a distinct click sounded and the door slid obediently aside.

And I just noticed we dropped into Leia's head for those few paragraphs. I try to be more strict with my viewpoint characters, so YMMV on that. I really don't know how that works without melting the door (since the door control works when Luke uses it to close the door), but it doesn't bother my sense of disbelief.

What I Found Problematic

The whole first chapter was strictly from Luke's POV, so when Chapter Two started in Leia's, it seemed like we'd get alternating POVs. Leia's POV lasts five pages of a twenty-six page chapter before we're plopped back into Luke's head. And we're plopped back while he's awkwardly pressed up against Leia in the cockpit trying not to have a boner. Leia couldn't pack her own supplies, really?

This one is more of a technical gripe. Leia drops off the Y-Wing and steps into hidden quickclay and begins to sink.

Trying to anchor himself with his left hand, Luke reached out with his right from the wing edge. "Lean toward me. Artoo, you lock onto the ship. Threepio, give me your hand."

She did as she was told, the motion generating squelching sounds from the bog. Her hand flailed for him, smacking the soft ground many centimeters from his.

Rising, he scrambled back to the cockpit and retrieved his walking stick, then returned hurriedly to his prone position on the wing and extended it. "Lean toward me," he urged her again. "Threepio, you and Artoo hold tight or I'll go in with her."

No stage directions for the droids at all! Artoo latching onto the ship makes sense (and I'm proud of someone thinking of it in 1978 decades before we see him do it in the Phantom Menace) but how is he holding onto Luke? How is Threepio providing leverage? We're wasting time getting Leia dirty and we can't have a couple of sentences to explain what the droids are doing?

Just how long do they spend hiking? " 'Even if it is an automatic station,' he remarked several days later" Wait, what, days? They only sleep once. This could be more clear and their conversation could have more character development than it does. We get Luke's theories on the beacon and Leia almost picking a fight because she's still pissed at herself over missing her summit.

"Luke wondered how many hours they'd slept. Nights and days would be long on Circarpous/Mimban." This seems like information you'd have before traveling to a different planet in the GFFA. And the Rebel Alliance doesn't give their members chronos or put them in the survival packs? That would settle my how long are they hiking question. I got annoyed enough by the how many days did they hike that I looked up Mimban's planetary information in Star Wars: The Essential Atlas by Daniel Wallace and Jason Fry. "Length of Day: 21 standard hours." That doesn't seem that long; what planet is Luke comparing it to? Not that I really care because nothing interesting is happening on this hike unless we count the camping scene of almost sexual assault.

The camp scene starts so innocently. Leia makes a camp fire while Luke and the droids construct a "rain shelter by stretching the two survival capes between the parted roots of a great tree." Threepio and Artoo offer to stand guard and move out of the fire light. Leia leans against Luke, Luke puts his arm around her shoulders, and they fall asleep like that.

Then Dot Matrix's virgin alarm goes off and wakes Luke up.

Then he happened to glance down at his companion's face. It was not the face of a Princess and a Senator or of a leader of the Rebel Alliance, but instead that of a chilled child. Moistly parted in sleep, her lips seemed to beckon to him. He leaned closer, seeking refugee from the damp green and brown of the swamp in that hypnotic redness.

We are well aware of Luke's unrequited love for Leia by this point. My growly rage is aimed at the sexist writing. Foster, you described the love interest as a child. A child is not sexy. A child should not inspire a heterosexual male to steal a kiss when the other party is unable to give consent for said kissing. Not to mention that Leia is not a child; she is a grown woman of twenty-one in this story. Go find a better metaphor.

Luke does not kiss her, not because Aunt Beru taught him it's not right to kiss unconscious women who are depending on your partnership to get out of a mess alive, but because he's a lowly fighter pilot unworthy of a Princess. He does remember that his job is to protect her on this mission. "He would even defend her from himself, he determined tiredly."

Sorry, I'm still too pissed over the child bit to give Luke any cookies for not assaulting his traveling companion. In light of this, it's probably best that we only have one camping scene on this how-ever-long hike to civilization.

Everything Leia has contributed to understanding their situation is negated by her starting to throw a fit over stealing clothes. Maybe if you carried money, you could pay for them instead, your Highness. And I'd be a little more sympathetic to the whole "what would a representative of the Alliance be doing with common currency on a diplomatic mission" if someone had given Luke a budget to cover Leia's expenses in an emergency or if her attitude was more "they blew up my planet, I'm not contributing to their economy." Though if that was her attitude her upset about stealing makes less sense.

I'm surprised the you-need-to-turn-your-head clothes changing scene ended up in this section. It is cute and innocently titillating, but Leia's line about trusting Luke sends me back to the camp scene of almost sexual assault and how that's a bad sign for trust. It's a shame that a scene that is 90% okay is ruined by the earlier NOT OKAY scene.

Foster has never gone overnight camping with anyone wearing make-up if he thinks a painted face survives sweat and the ever-present swamp mist he describes. And if the GFFA does have magical make-up that can survive all that, it's not coming off with spit and I want to know more about it. Luke critiquing Leia's walk is one thing, but really two days hiking through a swamp doesn't make her nasty enough to resemble a miner? Go camping, Foster.

What Changes in My Fic

Remember to come back to this book to steal Threepio and Artoo insults. I had a time creating them for Star Wars: My Home Is You, so I need more examples.

In an effort to get on with this project, I'm going with they crashed a roughly two-day hike away to the mining outpost and that was far enough away for the Imperials to not notice crashing ships.

Now to fill in the plot events for the first act. Helping Writers Become Authors further explains this breakdown.

• Hook 1% mark = Crashing onto Mimban
• Set-up 1% - 12%
• Inciting Event 12% mark = Finding the Imperial mining outpost
• Build-up 12% - 25%
• 1st Plot Point 25% mark

This will be added to and possible switched around as more chapters are covered.

The love story is getting overhauled. Luke and Mara have the soul bond already, but Luke's OTP right now is Mara and Agency. So he wants to be a good friend to someone who has never had one before. Mara's still over coming the whole Jedi were evil propaganda she was raised with so she doesn't feel that Obi-Wan is in her corner. And Leia has been reflecting the suspicions of the High Command. Mara really doesn't have friends yet, despite how friendly the Rogues are being. So if there is camping in my narrative, it will not include almost sexual assault.

On to the next chapter.