(Dunno how I missed this earlier)
You laugh, but in the, um, adult anime La Blue Girl, Miko, the main heroine can use her pubic hair as a weapon.
As far as I’m concerned, the book is the book. What the author intended or thought of later or decided to retcon in a sequel may be interesting, but what a book says is limited to the words in the book. I feel like writing a book that says “A” and then later going “oh yeah, it’s really B” is just cheating. It also makes reading the book pointless, as you don’t actually get the story from the book, but have to wait for the author to die and all of their papers to be published in case they change anything later, which is silly.
My fanwank for Stormtrooper armor was that energy weapons are not as ubiquitous as they seem throughout the galaxy and projectile weapons (like what the Tusken Raiders used to take potshots at the pod racers in The Phantom Menace - known to us Terrans as ‘guns’ ;)) were equally/more common. To which the Stormtrooper armor was perfectly fine in providing protection.
Then I remember Ewoks beating the crap out of Stormtroopers on Endor with tree branches and my theory gets torched like Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru 
For what it’s worth, consider the exposition from BATMAN BEGINS, for the prototype body armor that Wayne Enterprises had been working on for the military – the stuff that (a) the Pentagon said would’ve been way too expensive per soldier; and, besides, (b) is only bulletproof against “anything but a straight shot.”
So our hero of course starts wearing that discarded prototype, and so long as nobody ever lines up a straight shot the nimble ninja survives glancing gunshots while putting crooks in the hospital. But I ask you: what if folks in the movies are only ever shown landing straight shots against Stormtrooper armor?