Lit Mara Jade - what are her best depictions, and what her worst?

These were thoughts, not words.

She spends the next fifteen or more years after VoTF, serving the people of the galaxy. Don't those actions say anything?

 

"Show, don't tell" is a good general rule, at least.

 

Not to mention, in her "regrets," she also absolves herself. She'd "never truly been on the Dark Side." And she'd "served selflessly"? No she didn't. She herself says that she got power, prestige and respect and wanted to kill Luke for taking that from her. She also said, "I want the old Empire back." She didn't rejoin the Empire after she was kicked out (she didn't leave of her own volition, though we're supposed to pretend she did) not out of principle, but because it was no longer the cat's meow in her estimation. Zahn wrote that.

Then later he chickened out of truly holding her accountable and began whitewashing her past, while at the same time, pumping her up in importance to Palps until she was practically his backup Sith apprentice. But, of course, she was NEVER DARK -- what was the namby-pamby nonsense he tried to put forward...that she was an "experiment" of Palpatine's, to see if he could have a servant who was neither light nor dark? Or maybe that was a Mara fan who claimed that. Either way, it's lame, and all it does is make me loathe Mara all the more.

anakinfan is right. Instead of showing how great Mara supposedly was, all the NJO did was tell us she was great, she was brave, she was strong. She was presented as an ideal that all the characters should live up to, but of course, they always failed.

That scene where 15-year-old Anakin drooled over her was the pinnacle, or should I say the nadir, of the revolting Mary Sue-ification of Mara in the NJO.

In another book, Mara endangered the mission she and Luke and Jacen were on, not to mention, all their lives, when she ran like a crazywoman to hack with her (actually, Anakin Skywalker's) lightsaber at the vines that the living planet they were on had wrapped around her latest eponymous vanity ship. Very Jedi-master-like of her. And what does Luke do? He rewards her with a kissy-face session later in the ship's cockpit. Jacen turns to leave, and Mara wonders if Jacen left because he's jealous of what she and Luke have. Yeah, because everyone's thoughts are centered around Mara, all the time. More likely, he was nauseated by the sight of his middle-aged aunt and uncle making out for the billionth time.

I think that's also the book in which Luke learns something about his father, and Mara of course is there to butt in, offering her unwanted, unneeded and hypocritical two cents: "The Dark Side is the Dark Side. If you'd known Anakin later in life, you wouldn't be so quick to defend him," with absolutely no sense of irony. And I wonder why, since she had no respect for Anakin (for doing many of the same things she did), she still carried/used his lightsaber.

 

It was Michael Stackpole in Mara Jade: By The Emperor's Hand.

That comic also shows Mara fleeing into hiding after the Emperor's death - since Isard wants to kill her. She still takes the opportunity to bring down a criminal organization before going into hiding.

She didn't serve because serving gave her power, though. She was raised in the Empire's service from childhood. That's established as early as TTT.

One of the problems of writing in a franchise, is that you have no control over what other authors do with the characters you invent.

So - Mara - best depiction - TTT, worst depiction - NJO, then?

 

OK, thanks for the correction. For some reason, I thought Zahn had done BTEH.

And...?

Yes she did.

And...? Not seeing what that has to do with anything. She was not kept in a box and taken out when he wanted to use her. She had lots of exposure to the outside world. Another "defense" of her that I've seen is that she got upset when innocents were killed on her missions. Well, if she was so brainwashed and truly did not know right from wrong, how could she perceive that there were innocents?

She knew the difference between right and wrong. She just pretended she didn't, because she liked the power and prestige she got for serving the Emperor. Again, she did not leave the Empire, she was kicked out when Palpatine died. And she didn't return to it only because she wouldn't have gotten her old lofty position, with the attendant power and prestige, back.

The more you try to prove how selfless and pure she was, the more disgusted I get and the more I despise her. The authors should have let her dark past stay dark, and actually had her do serious work to overcome it, instead of whitewashing it and handing her just-add-water promotions and titles. Not to mention, degrading the actual premier heroine -- Leia -- to try and ease Mara into her place, backfired badly.

Better yet, they should have just left her in Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy. She was a gimmick character, and gimmicks wear out their welcomes very quickly if one tries to expand their story.

 

It was Zahn's choice to play up the better side of Mara's character - and flesh in the details of her early career.

I can agree that Zahn overdid the whitewashing - while still feeling he was right to give her altruism.

 

Yes, it was Zahn's choice to whitewash her past and make her into a blameless innocent, and not hold her accountable for the dark past he'd established for her.

And what better side?

 

From his perspective - her dark past was not all that dark, when compared to characters like Vader, Kyp Durron, etc:

http://jadecrusades.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/timothy-zahn.html

Interviewer: How do you think Mara has been sufficiently redeemed for what she did as the Emperor's Hand?

Zahn: How has she been redeemed? She’s been a pretty good friend to the New Republic, I think. I went into that in the “Hand of Thrawn” with the fact that she wasn't really of the Dark Side because she was serving as best she knew. Many of the people she assassinated were corrupt, and were evil in their own way. Not just enemies Palpatine was trying to get out of the way, they were actually people who - I hate to say it - deserved to die. She was actually doing justice in many cases.


and also in an email to fett4 about A Night On The Town:

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...se-to-mara-issue-i-emailed-him-with.50010399/

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though personally I think Zahn overdid it some.

Still - his choice. Zahn probably sees the Mara of TTT as not as evil as some of the readers did.

 

Overdid it some?

I've read that first quote. In fact, I've provided it, when trying to show Mara fans who claim she was "out of character" in the NJO because Zahn wasn't writing her, that Zahn himself did her no favors either by whitewashing her past and trying to turn her into a blameless innocent. It was bad enough he insulted the SW story by creating her in the first place. Then he had to compound the insult by saying she served Palps and was VERY IMPORTANT to him, but at the same time, "not dark" and actually "doing good." Yes, it's his choice, so I blame him as much as I blame the other authors who tried to make her out to be Mother Teresa. Only with the physical appearance of Barbie. In a skintight, sleeveless catsuit. Even well into her 50s.

I think that was the same interview in which Zahn admitted that, contrary to the popular belief that Mara was earmarked as Luke's eventual wife, it was because he demanded that Luke be saddled with her (thus guaranteeing her ubiquity in future books) as a condition of his writing the final two Bantam era books -- and he encountered a lot of resistance from LFL on that.

And I've seen the argument that "other characters did worse." To which I ask, "So what?" It doesn't make Mara any less loathsome to me. Kyp doesn't deserve to be a Jedi master either, and unlike Mara, he is not embraced and adored. He's reviled. Mara is idolized and looked up to and held up as an ideal. Anakin Skywalker/Vader is still reviled. Heck, even Han still gets flack for his smuggler past, and he's done a LOT more for the side of good than Mara ever has.

Mara also felt free to pass judgment on Leia for her mothering (while Luke nodded like the marionette he is -- he always nods along when that harpy passes judgement on his relatives, living and dead), then wound up doing the very thing she'd sniped at Leia for: sending her kid away for his own protection. And did she experience a moment of reflection, that maybe she shouldn't have judged Leia so harshly? No, because she's Mara, and everything she does is right, or at least, justified and excusable.

What's infuriating is that the authors expected the audience to feel the same way -- Mara was their coddled pet whom they claimed had suffered more than anyone else in the galaxy...while making sure she didn't suffer. Not only did her "fatal" disease not mar her beauty (in fact, she emerged from it more youthful and beautiful than ever), cool off her libido, or slow down her butt-kicking, but they refused even to hold her accountable for her appalling behavior when Anakin died. They had to put in some retconned nonsense about how she "grieved deeply, she just hid it." So much for the "emotional openness" she wanted to learn from Luke. And anyway, it's bantha poodoo. She never, EVER "hid" her emotions. She always expressed them -- broadcast them, actually, so everyone could stop all that foolish "saving the galaxy" that they were doing and refocus on her, the one around whom the galaxy revolved.

 

I'll be interested to see how she's portrayed in Rebels season 2.

 

....yeah, okay.

 

That would certainly help.

 

Ok and this relates exclusively to the Thrawn trilogy how?

 

people complain about the NJo, but mara and Luke had great interactions romantically.

 

It doesn't. In fact, I was demonstrating how Zahn contributed to the Mary Sue-ism that made her so intolerable in his later books.

 

OK, except you were responding to a point I made which was a) wholly contained to TTT and expressly so and b) made it clear that her journey ended with TLC (by pointing to how they made a lot of money off the books and that's why quality was never an issue for the publishers).

So you didn't need to respond with sources outside that self-contained arc.

 

i thought most of their interactions were realistic and practical.

 

The "whitewashing" issue is why I've most wanted to see Mara stories set post-Endor, pre-TTT - when she's still building a sense of identity and trying to sort out right from wrong for the first time. It's a critical stage in the Galactic Civil War and a great potential character arc. I don't have any real hope left for her in the new canon, but that's still how I'd give a look into the state of the galaxy after Palpatine's death.
I agree with some points about her portrayal in the NJO and onwards, but that doesn't make me retroactively hate a character I'd loved for years, any more than Luke acting like a **** made me hate the good portrayals of him. I just have to hope for more well-written stories in the future. The real problem, to me, is that some of the new authors brought on board by Del Rey had no idea how to handle female characters; Jaina was ping-ponged between whichever male the author of the moment wanted her with, Leia regressed from her potential in all three aspects of her life, Mirax and others pretty much ceased to exist except as mothers and wives, and Mara was kicked to the background by illness and pregnancy until she could bear a male child, then killed to move her husband and nephew along in the narrative.
I say keep the character and get better authors rather than erase the character and expect better next time from the same writers. (Obviously, I'm not talking about the whole DR stable, JJM, Stover, etc can stay.)

 

Oh. Sorry.

Heheh.

Here's a typical Luke/Mara scene:

Luke (practically cross-eyed with worship): "I love you, Mara!"

Mara (brushing her hair): "Me too, farmboy."

Luke: "Mara said she loves me! Oh, the goddess loves me!"

Mara (brushing her hair and somehow sharpening her knives at the same time): "Can it, Skywalker. I meant that I love me too!"

 

Currently, there's a few short stories and comics, but no more than that.

In The Essential Guide to the Force, Mara talks a little to Tionne about what she was up to during that period - but it's a short conversation.