Lit A Cynical Walk Through the NJO

What's wrong with Farmboy? Again not married but by watching my parents and other parents, they do have nicknames for each other. I remember a mention by you on another thread about Mara being pregnant with the disease and her complaining , again can't comment on how rough pregnancies can be, but added with the fact her child might not be born and however bad the disease is (she was the only one to survive that long, the rest died shortly after they got it didn't they?) I probably am giving her the benefit of the doubt. The reaction after Anakin's death? Trying to remain level-headed to help keep Luke calm because he would blame himself for sending his niece, nephews and friends on a suicide mission. The baby comment? Well I'm not Force-sensitive so I can't tell what babies can and can't feel and remember from when they were younger but she was imo trying to keep things under control. Satisfactory answer? Doubtful but that was my take on it.

 

Maybe that's because you've posted it many times in many threads.

Mara is horribly written in most of the NJO, but that's not the character's fault - it's the fault of writers like R.A. Salvatore who ONLY know how to tell, not show. But he does it to every character. To be fair, he's especially horrible at it when it comes to Mara, primarily because the dude couldn't be arsed to read the books in which she appears and so he had to give her a disease and turn her into a weepy Lifetime movie of the week character. But that's why I can't stand Salvatore's writing. I recognize the fault is in how poorly constructed the book is.

The "Farmboy" is fanon which made it into EU canon thanks to "writers" such as Traviss, who again, couldn't be arsed to read ANYTHING and made up her own interpretation based on what she found on the internet. Zahn never has Mara call Luke "farmboy"to his face as a nickname; neither do other authors who have actually read the books prior to the NJO. Again, not the character's fault that the Denning Rey era is full of crappy writing and especially crappy editing.

And Mara isn't the only character to suffer from horrible characterization - they ALL do. Han is character assassinated by nearly every NJO and post NJO author, as is Leia. Neither of them has a real role to serve - they merely pingpong all over the galaxy as it suits the writer's needs, not their actual character arc. Jacen - well, there are threads devoted to how badly Jacen is depicted from the NJO on. Jaina flipflops from book to book. Vergere - WTF?!? She's made to fit whatever agenda the author has at the moment. Danni Queeeeeeeee38388-hdohsae- oh, I'm sorry, I fell asleep on my keyboard just thinking about her.

And don't get me started on the hatchet job the NJO and post NJO do to Luke.

As for Anakin thinking about how Mara looks in her flight suit, you mean this passage from Onslaught?!?!

Um, that's the author SHOWING and not telling us that Mara is sick and is feeling chilled despite the warm temperature. Since the reason they are on Dantooine is to a) scout for Vong incursions and b) hope that the planet's atmosphere will help Mara, it's also telling us that so far, b) is unsuccessful. There is absolutely nothing else that can be read into the scene. Unless you think that when someone asks you if you feel okay because you are wearing a heavy sweater on a summer day = they are lusting after you, of course.

Right. She's having a normal pregnancy when she's in her mid-forties - yes, characters in the GFFA live longer than characters in our world, but she's still at the top range of ages for pregnancy judging by comments made in the text. Any ob/gyn will tell you that pregnancies late in life incur major risks and aren't textbook "normal." And she has a disease very close to cancer, taking a drug that is so not FDA approved and given to her by a very shady character, and is in the middle of a war that is affecting her personally. That's nowhere near normal.

It's obvious in Balance Point that the pregnancy was a surprise and occurred despite taking measures to prevent it:

Telling Luke it was his fault is a joke. That's what the two of them do together: they snark. I joke with my husband like this all the time (and I also call him by his last name as a nickname, as I kept my name).

You're welcome to detest the character - be my guest. But your reasons for doing so don't really appear in the text. And showing not telling is very much the fault of the author, and the editor who should have caught the amateurish writing before allowing it to be published.

 

First off, anakinfansince1983, I agree with you 100% about Mara's reaction (or supreme lack thereof) to Anakin's death. The boy was her karking apprentice and she acted like it was some other family's kid, like it was Raynar Thul or someone else who "didn't matter" in a family perspective. Ben did need to be protected from negative feelings as a baby (DNT shows us why; he's extremely afraid of the Force because of all the death he felt during the war as a baby), but the man's nephew just died–and worse, it was her nephew too, and her apprentice. Show some emotion!

As to the farmboy nickname, it doesn't really bother me; I always found it cute and I believe it originated when Mara said something before they were married about making a "dumb farmboy mistake" and Luke said he took offense to that, so it became kind of an in-joke, like Leia and Han's "I am not a committee" in-joke that Luke doesn't get. Her calling him Skywalker, I don't really get–way too formal and, you're right, it could be construed as condescending. But I guess the authors just kept her calling him that because that's what she called him in the Zahn books, forget that they weren't married them. In one of the books, after she calls him Skywalker, he actually shoots back a comeback and calls her "Jade", so that could be the author making a joke about how ridiculous it is for her to call him by his last name. Or something.

The marriage thing, I have no say about. I'm 17 years old, my mom has three other kids (all three younger than me), and I only remember the last pregnancy, and even then I was 9 years old and I don't really remember how she acted, but I do know she didn't complain about hormones and swollen ankles and that stuff. Then again, it was her fourth pregnancy. I don't know how she reacted during her first one (mine). But I do know that I always construed at least some of Mara's complaints as jokes. Some were probably serious, yes, but some of them were in all likeliness, jokes. And the one about vaping Luke where he stood if he did it to her again, I've said before that it could be taken as a flirtatious dare type of thing, but I don't know; she may've been serious.

 

Mara's poorly written much of the time, it's as simple as that. In her original incarnation, in the Thrawn Trilogy, she's an enigma, we don't know anything about her and her abilities take us by surprise. In much of the early Bantam era, it's the same way. But as time goes on, as she becomes better and better known to the authors and to the audience, both IU and OOU.

She becomes a gateway EU character, someone who hangs out with the movie characters, and marries one of them, but anyone who only knows the movies otherwise won't know who she is. Introducing her to that audience, ones who haven't read her early exploits, becomes necessary, which unfortunately takes the form of the other characters saying how awesome she is.

The other problems, her being fed melodrama, reacting poorly to various situations (her own disease, her child, Anakin's death) can be chalked up to poor writing and poorly defined characterization. Timothy Zahn wanted to pair Mara and Luke early on, but I'm not sure he had any idea what their relationship would be like once they were, or how Mara, a life-long spy, secret agent and loner, driven by the Emperor's will in her youth and an irrational hatred through adulthood, would adapt to married life.

It's been a long time since I read the Hand of Thrawn duology, and I can't remember what Mara's characterization in those books is like. But I do remember that it was meant to be a turning point in her life. She willingly gave up her ship, which symbolized her independent loner streak, in favor of being with Luke. Seeing her adapt to a married life, to a life where she's settled down and expected to be a wife, a Jedi and a public figure, would be a great story. But we didn't get it. And because of that, when the NJO was planned, they had to take Mara from HoT and advance her several years, without having much of an idea as to what she would do when she got there. Note how Luceno, the man in charge of this series from a writing standpoint, used Mara in two scenes over two books. She simply isn't important to the plot in any way.

Giving Mara a disease was a smokescreen for the fact that the authors really didn't have any idea what to do with her otherwise. And it shows in her characterization. She doesn't read like Mara Jade, a Jedi or even a good wife; she reads like a petty Mary Sue who everyone loves but doesn't actually do anything because oh, she's sick.

There's no character who suffers more in this series, so far as I've read, than Mara Jade. Honestly, she hasn't been well written since probably the Hand of Thrawn books. Allegiance and Choices of One don't count, since she's younger there. Ever since she and Luke married, no one has any idea how to write her or what she should be doing (except for the LotF authors). Like Chewbacca, she was considered a tangent of the main cast, not a character in herself, losing her purpose in the plot after Ben was born and becoming a satellite of Luke, where her every action or word revolved around him. And, like many satellite characters, her role became to die when the authors felt the main character she was orbiting needed a kick in the butt.

Do I hate Mara? No, I love Mara. I just wish she were written better.

 

More seriously, this thread is resurrecting all manner of old loathing for NJO I had thought I had buried, guess not. Might be time for an experiment I never got around to doing a few years back....

 

Now I want A1983 to read LOTF and post about it.

 

Yeah, that's the biggest problem. Pre-NJO Mara was never a drama queen, but the authors didn't know what to do with a Fourth Big Character. She was virtually inseparable from Luke, and everything she did was either backed by him, or she was backing something he was doing. She never did her own thing, other than go to Dantooine for a while and sit around to get better. Even then, she had Anakin with her. My favorite moment with Mara in NJO was when she was fighting Yomin Carr in Vector Prime, because for once she did something cool by herself.

 

Post a webcam pic of the next book in line and people jump to the conclusion that it's the only book you have and/or have read.

RE: Mara,

She's the most inconsistently written character in the EU, hands down. She's Zahn's mouthpiece on Luke. Beyond that, most authors simply don't know what to do with her, and I don't blame them. Here you had a character with a lot of potential for stories - single Force-sensitive woman trained to be a part-spy part-assassin covert for the most powerful man in the galaxy - but before anyone can get around to these stories, she swaps in the dark side for the light, signs on with the Jedi, and marries Luke. Congrats, now she's utterly boring.

 

I'm in this for the rants! If this is what you're doing with NJO, then LOTF will be akin to fish in a barrel!

 

No, your reasons don't appear in the text, as I demonstrated by pulling out the text.

But it's always fun to discuss characterization with someone who is determined to hate a character no matter what is actually on the page. Because, of course, YOU'RE right

I looked up Onslaught because you mentioned flight suit and that's the only place where I remembered Anakin commenting on her flight wear. As for Balance Point, you're referring to this scene (I searched for flight suit at first, and got confused because Luke refers to how Jacen looks in his flight suit, and Jacen refers to how Jaina looks in her flight suit - boy, I guess that makes them one messed up SkySolo Family )

So, yeah, sure go ahead and read something into the "don't drool" comment - which is a joke, BTW - or realize that the eyebrow raising is a reaction to her disguise skills and Anakin is still trying to get feeling back into his face so his expressions aren't completely under his control. We're in Mara's POV, so we really have no idea how Anakin feels, and the subtext of the scene is all about Mara and Luke's relationship.

And even then that was poorly written, because she was too stupid (or rather, RAS was too ignorant of the characters) to use the Force bond to alert Luke about Carr.

The last time in the timeline Mara was truly Mara was in Survivor's Quest, although I liked her mouse droids in Destiny's Way. And I respect Kathy Tyers for trying very hard, but she was hamstrung by the overall NJO suckiness and having to write her with baggage imposed by other, lesser writers.

Survivor's Quest proves otherwise, IMO.

But It's not just Mara that suffers from marriage. Leia is depicted worse than Mara. Here's a character who was an Imperial Senator by age 19, an active participant in the Rebellion, smart, even snarkier than Mara, Force sensitive, can withstand torture, daughter of Vader, watched her entire adopted planet get blown to smithereens partially as an attempt to make her talk -

- and she turns into a politician who is sort of a Jedi, sort of not, loses her children on a regular basis, and that New Republic she worked so hard to establish? Gone, and taken over by an entity run by DAALA. DAALA, people.

Really, the destruction of Princess Leia Organa is one of the most unforgivable sins of the EU.

And let's not talk about Han the house husband, who gets out of house mostly just to run errands for Lando....

 

anakinfansince1983 Maybe I should rephrase my explanation the reactions to Anakin's death just a bit. Thought about it a bit more. I never really saw anything wrong with that scene so never really thought of it. Well we know she was an Emperor's Hand for however many years it was (and as we can guess not the best way to grow up) maybe forced her to not show emotions or keep a lid on her emotions (okay maybe not if HTTE is anything to go by). Its been many years since then so maybe she got better. I don't know. Maybe she grieves in private? Don't know.

Makes sense about the Farmboy thing, she can seem the condescending type at times but that seemed like a term of endearment to me.

 

Unfortunately, there are concepts called "reading comprehension" and "reading in context." Most people get introduced to them at least by high school.

 

Let's play nice, please, everyone. I don't mean to be a mini-mod, but going after who's "right" and who's "wrong" isn't what we're here for. This is a thread for shaking down the NJO and seeing what stays together and what pieces fly apart. And different people might see the pieces different ways. Thus far, we're all in agreement that Mara has been poorly characterized at best. But how about some positives, here? What has the NJO done well?

I, for one, am enjoying the intrigue of the two sides trying to outsmart each other. The Yuuzhan Vong are doing far better at understanding the galaxy they are invading than the Republic is at understanding them. Nom Anor, for all of his failures as a tactician thus far, has proven to be a master manipulator and spy, giving the command hierarchy appraisals of the situation that are deadly accurate. He knows, despite Nas Choka's misgivings, that the Jedi are a major threat, and sees the splintering of the political factions as something the Vong can take advantage of.

Really, thanks to Nom Anor, the Vong know more about the Republic than it does itself. And now, through Viqi Shesh, he has an agent on Borsk Fey'la's inner council. It'll take something dramatic for the Republic to be able to do anything that he doesn't foresee or have planned for.

 

Nom Anor is the best new character introduced in the series, besides Vergere. Every other exceptional character–Luke, Jacen, Anakin–were previously-created characters. There are some good characters introduced, like Ganner Rhysode and Jag Fel, but Nom Anor and Vergere are the only truly phenomenal new characters.

 

This just in! Jean Valjean is a disgusting pedophile who deserved to die for the crime of stealing a loaf of bread!

Back on topic, jumping ahead a little...

Keep telling yourself that, Jaina. Out of universe that's exactly why.

 

That's why Nom Anor is my favorite EU villain ever. Thrawn might be the best villain in EU (Thrawn trilogy incarnation) but Nom Anor is my favorite because of his character arc (wrong phrase perhaps but his role in the series is amazing), always attempting something new and bouncing back. Seems like nothing can break him.