Seriously though, this scene. WHY DID THEY DELETE THIS SCENE?
And as they went away with Luke letting Han’s hand trail out of his, I thought, “…as though millions of Han/Luke shipper voices suddenly cried out and were silenced.”
In all my days I’ve never shipped this till…
Welp, if I didn’t ship it before…
True story from ancient fandom corner: people did ship it, and that shit was stomped on harder than any slash has ever been stomped on. There were lawsuits. SW slash went WAY underground–even in the days when all slash was underground. There were ‘zines, but they were precious as carbuncles and basically if you had one or wrote in one you were like a fucking badass slash bandit.
From what I understand, the Phantom Menace brought Star Wars slash into the fannish mainstream, when Qi-Gon/Obi-Wan exploded onto the Internet ca. 1999-2000, and it was a big enough phenomenon that LucasFilm didn’t bother pursuing it anymore.
i vaguely remember hearing that this was because fans were really uncool and harrassed mark hamill by like. throwing explicit zines at his house. but my brain could be totally making that up
The Lucasfilm vs Fandom Dispute had nothing to do with fans throwing zines into Mark Hamill’s front yard. But it did involve adult themed fic (het) and a Swedish zine.
