Lit A/V The Force Awakens and the EU [TAGGED spoilers.]

If Luke Junior will go on a holiday to see where his dad grew up and on a Star Tours trip I will forgive Lucas for the pod race and beg him to bring that back instead.

 

Actually, even if they throw out everything post-ROTJ, we only lose about 22% of the EU. If they keep the NR-era then we only lose ~10%.

 

How about the EU stays in place up to the end of the NJO with the retcon that Jacen/Jania/Anakin/Ben weren't actually Luke/Leia's kids, Chewie managed to survive the moon and came back pre Ep7, and Luke got a divorce at the end? Just need half a page reprint of the last NJO book with this tacked on:

LEIA: "Sorry, Jania and Jacen, you were our 'starter training kids', now our real kids are grown up so gotta make time with them."
LUKE: "And, Mara, babe, it isn't working out. You can handle that baby, right?"
JANIA: "Huh?"
HAN: "Chewie, show them the door, please."
JACEN: "But..but.but...!"
LEIA: "Thanks for all your service to the fledgling New Republic! Really! Now, about those rings around the planet..."

 

I can deal with that. Anything to keep the NJO canonical.

But Mara has to break up with Luke. I mean, Luke breaking up with Mara kind of strains believability......

 

Well, if Luke has a different wife in Ep. 7 and a twenty-something son then in a shocking twist it's revealed that Luke was actually a polygamist all along (which is one of those New Jedi Order things he made up on his own, thank you very much!). Mara found out. First line Ep. 7 wifey has to Luke is, "Honey, that black eye is clearing up nicely-" "Let's not talk about it, dear."

 

You just pitched me your next article.

 

That actually is a really cool story that I now wish we'd had years ago even without the ST to preempt it.

 

If they A) Actually do try to write a story to reconcile Chewbacca's return with the pre-2015 EU, and B) Have the mayor of Sernpidal play a key role in saving Chewbacca's life on Sernpidal, then Abrams can do whatever he likes with Episode VII, the Disney buyout will have been worth it for that alone.

 

No-no-no!

*Rereads post*

No-no-no!

Seriously, if it comes down to that then I don't think it's worth it. The emotional impact of a lot of stuff that happened would be reduced drastically. (And yes, I know you're probably kidding.)

No-no-no!

Edit: I'd be fine with the Chewie retcon. It'd be pushing believability but I'd live with it. Especially with a Mayor of Sernpidal tie-in. But the rest of it, the divorce and the "fake kids" thing...no-no-no!

 

For me, Luke shouldn't have married Mara to begin with.

Nor do I overly much care for how the next generation or even the 'elders' are done in NJO. I'd be totally cool with Chewie alive the moon business is rather dumb.

 

Out of curiosity, AFS, why do you agree with me on this point and is there anyone you would pair Luke with?

 

I'm joking but the thing I'm driving at is, if there's different kids in the ST for Han & Leia and/or Luke (if he even has one, probably will, generational saga and all that. But Luke's offspring will probably be late teens / early 20s and not Toddler Ben age for the time period), then the solutions boil down to A) insane retcon time B) never mention the pre ST post ROTJ EU ever again.

 

AFS: Thank you. In this I agree with you wholly. Well said.

 

Oooh, found this in another thread. Big props to Jedsithor for winning the retcon no prize! Someone forward this post to Leeland Chee, STAT!

 

I, personally, think people see Mara as more abusive than she is. Really she's just playful with him; none of what she says is actually ever backed up with action–she never beats him up, or shoots him, or anything. Sure, she has an abrasive attitude, and Luke takes it. Honestly, that's probably how I'd be with a wife like that, because I'm a very non-confrontational person (like Luke) so if she were being snarky with me like that I'd probably just smile, nod, and move on. Actually, my brother treats me almost exactly like Mara treats Luke, and I've never had a problem with it. I just, shrug it off because that's his personality, and mine is to not be bothered by it. As to the "Farmboy" line, I find it endearing, personally. He was a Farmboy, after all, and it was a subtle callback to the beginning of their relationship, when she says something to the effect of "even a dumb farmboy wouldn't have fallen for that" and he said "hey, I take offense to that." So she started calling him Farmboy. It's like when it said in some book something about Han or Leia saying something about "discussing it in a committee" and Luke never really understanding–it was unique to their relationship, a factor from before they were married that kind of stuck around as an in-joke.

 

I've never liked Mara. Personally, I wish she didn't exist at all. And who said those don't like her it's solely because she's abusive? I simply don't like her manner.

 

Well, no one said solely because she's abusive, I'm just saying she's not really abusive, just abrasive. There's a difference, although just barely. And what is it about her manner you don't like, I'm just curious?

 

A new casting rumor


http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-episode-vii-speculation-693268

 

She looks pretty, I'm down!

 

I like Mara. I have since I read the Thrawn Trilogy. She was an enigma, a headstrong, brusque mercenary with an Imperial past, angry at the galaxy and Luke Skywalker for robbing her of her life. Circumstances force her to team with the same man she hates, and, well, that's what they call that. But as I've grown up and read more of the EU, I've realized that she's never gotten a better portrayal than that initial one. Pretty much every book she's been in since, chronologically before or after, has been inferior. And I've narrowed the reason down to two factors.

First: she loses her mystery factor without gaining anything to take its place. When Mara debuted, she was the Emperor's Hand, something we'd never seen before. Ever since, she's been explained, her past, her work, her life, her feelings, all of it expanded ad nauseum. But she's never really been fleshed out in any way to make up for that loss. She's largely the same character she started as, just a lot less angry. And that's made her boring. I read through the NJO recently, and I noted in every review how lackluster her portrayal was there by and large. If anything, her pregnancy was the low point of her portrayal in the EU writ large.

And that's the second problem: the authors have no idea how to handle her. Not even Tim Zahn. A snarky, capable female spy is a terrific character template (Black Widow exists for a reason, as do Mockingbird, Peggy Carter, Maria Hill, etc), but that's almost never what she is. She's been a smuggler, a Jedi, a mercenary, pretty much everything in the galaxy except bounty hunting, and nothing's stuck. And then she married Luke.

I've heard it that having Luke and Mara marry was Zahn's idea for them from the moment they were introduced. If that were true, you'd think there would have been more of a plan for them than there wound up being. And if Zahn had a plan, he sure didn't share it with anyone. Because Luke and Mara's marriage, while it might look fine on paper depending on how you like the character, backfired. It wound up stagnating both characters in their "playful flirty" stage of a relationship and it never advanced from there, not in any way that wasn't reversed in the next book in line. Luke suffered, but at least he still had other relationships and stories to advance him, especially with his Jedi students. Mara had no one. She became Luke's satellite, never leaving his side except in rare circumstances, almost all of her character revolving around either him or "Hey, I worked for the Emperor once."

Out of all of the EU created characters, Mara's unique. She lasted a very long time, and is easily the best known pure EU character in existence (aside from maybe Thrawn). Friends of mine who have never read a Star Wars book in their life still know who she is through fandom osmosis, word of her spreading through the grapevine. But it's always in relation to the movie characters that everyone's placed on a pedestal. "Hey, did you know Luke got married to this red haired Imperial chick?" "Where?" "In the books. They've got a kid, too." She stopped being a character in her own right and became Luke Skywalker's wife, which is a role that damaged her character a lot. It might have been salvageable, except that the portrayals of her as such have been very much wanting for depth. I can think of maybe two or three quality scenes for her in the entire NJO that don't involve Luke or, later on, her obsession with baby Ben. Imagine if Leia and Han's relationship worked the way Mara and Luke's does. Would anyone have tolerated it? Of course not.

And then, the crowning moment, is her getting effectively 'fridged in LotF so her nephew can turn to the dark side, which somehow gets carried off without her husband immediately beating the snot-nosed little punk down.

So, yes, I like Mara, in concept. It's the execution that I don't like. I've tried writing 'fics with Mara in them in the past, she's a tricky character to get right, to strike a balance between being snarky and angry and still having some sort of internal goodness that might eventually turn her toward the light. I just have a hard time believing that paid, professional authors couldn't get that right on a consistent basis, or work out some sort of arc for her than didn't revolve around Luke.

*Sigh.* Who knows, and, really, at this point, who really cares? If Mara is going to appear in anything upcoming, my money's on her cameoing in Rebels at some point, a la Delta Squad in TCW. But aside from that, we might not ever see another story with Mara in it. At least not for several years, until Del Rey et al know what in Corellia's Hells is going on with the post-RotJ era.

 

Nice post but I can't disagree more.