Author Topic: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness...
Divia  544 posts
Registered: Jun '05
23791_Aayla Secura
Date Posted: 2/19/07 4:26pm Subject: RE: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness...
rumsmuggler posted:
I was kinda hoping that she died, so Luke would stop being so lame and actually start fighting, but instead she got pregnant and not only lived, she destroyed it and gave birth to Ben.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Coomb_spore


Come now. did you think she would actually die. Though, that would have been nice. grin

 

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Carnage04  4916 posts
Registered: Mar '05
43718_Darth Nihl
Date Posted: 2/19/07 4:31pm Subject: RE: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness...
BobaMatt posted:
There's nothing wrong with starting in medias res. The problem is that the story of her infection is a bit muddled and unsatisfying.


Agreed. Especially since it was an ongoing plot point. If it was a minor little thing that got resolved in Vector Prime it would be no big deal....but this went on for books and books and just about took her out of the picture during that time. She was sick enough that Luke sent her to Ithor with a bodyguard (Anakin Solo) to try to recover.

I still don't understand why people were hoping Mara would die! Even if you don't like her character that much, no Mara = No Ben.

Carnage

 

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Divia  544 posts
Registered: Jun '05
23791_Aayla Secura
Date Posted: 2/19/07 4:35pm Subject: RE: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness...
Well, it would have been easy for Luke to go on some drunken escapade and knock up a few chicks like my bro did when my other bro killed himself. Grief does crazy things to people.

Mara didn't have to be the only one to have Ben.

 

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Carnage04  4916 posts
Registered: Mar '05
43718_Darth Nihl
Date Posted: 2/19/07 5:03pm Subject: RE: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness...
Divia posted:
Well, it would have been easy for Luke to go on some drunken escapade and knock up a few chicks like my bro did when my other bro killed himself. Grief does crazy things to people.

Mara didn't have to be the only one to have Ben.


Luke is no spring chicken at this point and he absolutely LOVES Mara. He's 50 when the NJO ends. I say he's not thinking about knocking up chicks in a drunken stupor at this point. When peace breaks out, I see Luke as honoring Mara by Staying single for probably 10 years at the least. It is possible he may have chosen not to take up another mate ever again. Of course, my thoughts on marriage are prudish and outdated. I'm quite a bit younger than Luke and have no children but If my wife died tomorrow I would never take another....not for companionship, not for a one night stand, not for children.

That and Force Ghost Mara would have probably screamed at him when he started to get frisky, and dole out beatings in the netherworld.

Carnage

 

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Divia  544 posts
Registered: Jun '05
23791_Aayla Secura
Date Posted: 2/19/07 5:30pm Subject: RE: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness...
Men don't hit meaphose(well...not like women..theirs is much different...)so he could still have kids. I always envisioned the skywalkers with supersperm. Why..I have no idea but why not?

 

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SephyCloneNo15  6880 posts
Registered: Apr '05
8068_R5-D4
Date Posted: 2/19/07 8:21pm Subject: RE: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness...
Carnage04 posted:
That and Force Ghost Mara would have probably screamed at him when he started to get frisky, and dole out beatings in the netherworld.


You will not Kark anyone else, Luke Skywalker!

Mara's final wish, ingrained in Luke's psyche.

 

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nom_anor_no_more 
Registered: Feb '07
Date Posted: 2/19/07 9:51pm Subject: RE: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness...
Don't need to get a grip... This thread had more to do with an under developed plot device than anything else-- wait!

Thrawn is DEAD?!

Why didn't anyone tell me?

 

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nom_anor_no_more 
Registered: Feb '07
Date Posted: 2/19/07 10:09pm Subject: RE: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness... - Date Edited: 2/19/07 10:13pm (2 edits total) Edited By: nom_anor_no_more


Well, how does anyone pick up a disease? You just get it. And then in BP, we learn how she got it, along with the big reveal that the Vong gave it to her. We start the series and Mara has come down with something. It's not exactly like starting with Chewie dead or Han missing a leg. We're simply jumping in in the middle of something -- like we did with the Galactic Civil War, the Empire, Warlord Zsinj, the decline of the Remnant (we leave off Darksaber with the Remnant under Pellaeon and every single book after that talks about the Remnant like it's already dead up until HOT), Palpatine's DE resurgence, the Separatist crisis, Quinlan Vos's glitterryll investigation, whatever. Star Wars, and storytelling in general, has a long history of beginning in media res and filling you in as it becomes necessary to do so.

From Vector Prime:

"Not like him," Mara replied, somewhat softly, and the sudden weakness in her voice reminded Leia and Jaina that Mara, despite her nearly constant bravado and overabundance of energy, was seriously ill, with a strange and thankfully rare disease that had killed dozens of others and against which the best doctors in the New Republic had proven completely helpless. Of those who had contracted the molecular disorder, only Mara and one other remained alive, and that other person, being studied intently on Coruscant, was fast dying.

Okay, great... but c'mon, this paragraph has an entire novel in it. This is supposed to be the first trickle of a plot point that would not come to be explained until Balance Point, a novel that would not be published for nearly two years? Lame.

 

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rumsmuggler  18348 posts
Registered: Aug '00
19227_Lando Calrissian
Date Posted: 2/20/07 6:28am Subject: RE: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness... - Date Edited: 2/20/07 6:36am (1 edits total) Edited By: rumsmuggler
Divia posted:
rumsmuggler posted:
I was kinda hoping that she died, so Luke would stop being so lame and actually start fighting, but instead she got pregnant and not only lived, she destroyed it and gave birth to Ben.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Coomb_spore


Come now. did you think she would actually die. Though, that would have been nice. grin


I said I hoped she would die, not I thought she would die. I knew deep down that she wouldn't die, but I wouldn't have minded if she bit the dust. Maybe i'll get my wish sooner or later.

 

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Havac  14328 posts
Title: Lit Mod of War
Registered: Sep '05
23735_Obi-Wan Kenobi
Date Posted: 2/20/07 2:47pm Subject: RE: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness...
nom_anor_no_more posted:


Well, how does anyone pick up a disease? You just get it. And then in BP, we learn how she got it, along with the big reveal that the Vong gave it to her. We start the series and Mara has come down with something. It's not exactly like starting with Chewie dead or Han missing a leg. We're simply jumping in in the middle of something -- like we did with the Galactic Civil War, the Empire, Warlord Zsinj, the decline of the Remnant (we leave off Darksaber with the Remnant under Pellaeon and every single book after that talks about the Remnant like it's already dead up until HOT), Palpatine's DE resurgence, the Separatist crisis, Quinlan Vos's glitterryll investigation, whatever. Star Wars, and storytelling in general, has a long history of beginning in media res and filling you in as it becomes necessary to do so.

From Vector Prime:

"Not like him," Mara replied, somewhat softly, and the sudden weakness in her voice reminded Leia and Jaina that Mara, despite her nearly constant bravado and overabundance of energy, was seriously ill, with a strange and thankfully rare disease that had killed dozens of others and against which the best doctors in the New Republic had proven completely helpless. Of those who had contracted the molecular disorder, only Mara and one other remained alive, and that other person, being studied intently on Coruscant, was fast dying.

Okay, great... but c'mon, this paragraph has an entire novel in it. This is supposed to be the first trickle of a plot point that would not come to be explained until Balance Point, a novel that would not be published for nearly two years? Lame.

An entire novel out of . . . people getting sick? You're kidding. That tells you all you need to know. We start the book, Mara's got a disease, she's had it for a little bit and it's very deadly. Struggle against disease set up. We don't need to see every single event in these people's lives. Did we need to get a story of Corran Horn joining the CorSec academy before we could accept him as an ex-cop? Did we need a whole book about Echo Base getting built before we could buy this whole secret base thing and how important it was? Did we need a novelization of Han's ill-fated Kessel Run in order to understand what the hell was going on with this debt-to-a-crimelord thing that plays throughout the entire OT? No, we got told some background detail and got the outline of what we needed, and accepted that we didn't need a full-blown narrative of every backstory detail.

 

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BobaMatt  14581 posts
Title: TFN EU Staff
Registered: Aug '02
47935_Luke Skywalker - Dark Side
Date Posted: 2/20/07 3:28pm Subject: RE: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness...
While I agree, Havac, that there's not a whole novel there, I still see the problems with how she got sick, so I did some thinking and here's what I got.

The planet where Mara got the disease did not always have an unbreathable atmosphere. Some catastrophe that occured soon after or soon before Mara and company arrived there made it such, perhaps temporarily. Because of this, they were issued breath masks. Either because of a rush or because of the equipment itself, thoroug htests could not be done, and so Mara just did the usually effective Jedi thing: she scanned it with the Force. Unfortunately, coomb spores are not present in the Force, just like their creators. The catastrophe that caused the atmospheric troubles was actually orchestrated by the Vong so they could spread the diseas discretely and so test the agent. The reason they corrupted an atmosphere rather than testing it on creatures that generally need breath masks is because most species breathe oxygen and they needed a wide test body.

 

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Carnage04  4916 posts
Registered: Mar '05
43718_Darth Nihl
Date Posted: 2/20/07 5:14pm Subject: RE: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness...


The planet did not have breathable air due to a recent cataclysmic event? This would make me think even harder about me not bringing my own source of Oxygen. Either someone designed this "Disaster" and could not be trusted or the populace was fairly incompetent and was not worthy of being trusted to have suitable environmental containment suits available.

Carnage

 

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Ataro_Soresu  360 posts
Registered: Apr '06
24100_Obi-Wan
Date Posted: 2/20/07 6:52pm Subject: RE: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness...
doh! Guess I should read a little closer. Sorry, guys.

Still think there are circumstances where Mara is....fallible.

 

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BobaMatt  14581 posts
Title: TFN EU Staff
Registered: Aug '02
47935_Luke Skywalker - Dark Side
Date Posted: 2/20/07 7:10pm Subject: RE: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness...
Carnage04 posted:


The planet did not have breathable air due to a recent cataclysmic event? This would make me think even harder about me not bringing my own source of Oxygen. Either someone designed this "Disaster" and could not be trusted or the populace was fairly incompetent and was not worthy of being trusted to have suitable environmental containment suits available.

Carnage

No, I mean they set it off around the time Mara arrives.

 

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nom_anor_no_more 
Registered: Feb '07
Date Posted: 2/20/07 8:18pm Subject: RE: Mara Jade Skywalker's Illness...
Okay then, how about an eBook where we see Nom Anor spinning his web and getting everyone sick and the infection of Mara can be a side event in an otherwise Nom Anor-centric story?

Maybe not a whole novel, fine. But was Mara sick at the end Vision of the Future? Her illness, as a subplot, was poorly revealed- the first three pages of what would become a 20 plus story tale is not the appropriate place for that kind of revelation.

 

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