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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Characters Luke and Mara Index & Discussion (2.0)! *New Topic: Change is Hard!*

Discussion in 'Fan Fiction and Writing Resource' started by Luke_Mara_Index, Dec 1, 2014.

  1. WarmNyota_SweetAyesha

    WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Aug 31, 2004
    Mara with a British accent, I can see her assuming a more sophisticated one to blend in for a mission in different places. [face_thinking] I often wondered if they'd have different tiny habits /pet peeves based on their backgrounds. [face_mischief] Or just lady/guy things that are universal.

    "Pick that up won't you?"

    "You never ask for directions" or the techie equivalent. "You didn't program our route into the navcomp did you?" :p

    [face_mischief]
     
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  2. JadeLotus

    JadeLotus Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 27, 2005
    Just pointing out that *everyone* has an accent, so Mara cannot possibly have some untraceable way of speaking. What is considered unaccented in North America for example is actually very distinct to people from elsewhere, and vice versa.

    I can see Mara being very skilled at different accents to blend in different situations, but I have always pictured her natural accent as "Coruscanti" i.e. Received Pronunciation.

    The reason being is that while Coruscant itself is varied when if comes to accents (Mace, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan all have different accents despite all bring raised in the Jedi Temple for example) I don't think there's much doubt that the Imperial accent, used by Palpatine and his court, is based on RP. Growing up in those surroundings, I think Mara would naturally develop the same kind of accent and maybe even feed into her snobbery since I do think there was a distaste for the more harsh, 'Rim-like accent, as we saw in ANH when Leia emulates Tarkin's accent.
     
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  3. Briannakin

    Briannakin Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Feb 25, 2010
    I had a big long reply written, but then my computer deleted it.

    But, yes, I am aware that everyone has an accent, but some are much more distinct and placeable to a small region - IE a Boston accent or different UK accents where in some cases (IE Ozzy Osbourne) you can place the town where the person is from, as compared to like a western North American where it is really hard to place a region where a person is from based on a normal conversation. I'm sure the GFFA is similar - Anakin and Luke talk a lot like Padmé, suggesting that there are many places on the Outer and Mid-rim that talk similar. So, one could ague that it might be an advantage for a spy to naturally speak with such an accent since she could make her ID fit a number of worlds that might fit a variety of situations and not worry if someone had overheard her speak.


    However, accents in the GFFA really don't make a ton of sense. You get Palpatine and Padmé, both senators at some point in their lives, from Naboo. Both, probably at the time of AOTC, had spent plenty of time on both Naboo and Coruscant, yet we see Palps with the typical 'Coruscanti accent' in TPM, which Padmé never develops (yes, you can argue that Padmé spent more time on Naboo than Palps did).

    So, my point is, I really don't think either accent for Mara is wrong. And she could be one of those people (like my mother) who spent so much time with both accents that she just adopts which one is more appropriate for the situation.
     
  4. Jedi_Lover

    Jedi_Lover Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 1, 2004
    I say Mara has a Coruscanti accent, but in my head she talks just like me. lol! I am sure there are thousands of accents on Coruscant. If us Earthlings ever end up meeting aliens would they consider a Spanish, New Yorker, Southerner or British accent (all speaking English) collectively as "He has an Earth Accent"?
     
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  5. divapilot

    divapilot Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 30, 2005

    Excellent point. And Leia's got that slippy-slidey code switching when she goes from RP when talking with Tarkin or Vader to a different accent with ... everyone else? It would be nice if the accents made sense.
     
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  6. madman007

    madman007 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Aug 22, 2007
    How ironic that I'm currently updating one of my older stories here for another site, where I have Mara being taught a Southern accent.

    I am of the opinion that even though Mara grew up on Coruscant, she may not have originally been from Coruscant. So I don't think she would have gained the Coruscanti accent. Of course, it's all about perception. I was born in the mid-west and have never been told I had an accent. When I lived in Mississippi for a decade, people there could tell instantly that I had been born a Yankee. But when I would come back to Ohio / N. Ky from MS, people here would say I have a Southern accent.

    I perceive Mara as a great mimic, where she can hear any accent and copy it to her advantage. She could adapt to any accent she needed for a particular mission. As far as her regular everyday speech, I just never could hear her with an English accent. As far as the different accents we have heard in the movies, I figure that is because they filmed in London and employed English actors (ever hear David Prowse speak Vader's lines before they were dubbed by James Earl Jones?)
     
  7. Briannakin

    Briannakin Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Feb 25, 2010
    Yeah, I think in terms of characters played by actors, a grain of salt has to be taken, maybe not so much with the new movies because they seem to be taking conscious decisions in terms of accents (ie John Boyega - he may have been asked to play Finn in a North American accent because it seems to hint that he was taken from his family at a young age and presumably raised with other stormtroopers where the First Order operated: the outer rim), but definitely for the OT. I mean, all the actors in the OT just speak, more of less, with their own accents - GL didn't seem to care. Carrie Fisher said (and this is Carrie so more grains of salt) she only slipped into an English accent when she had scenes with Peter Cushing because of her English stage training. And for the PT, Ewan McGregor was mimicking Alec Guinness, Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen didn't have to do much to their accents, Ian McDiarmid was just doing what he did in 1983.

    So, yeah, I had a point, but I forgot.

    Accents aren't exactly a hard and fast thing in the GFFA, probably because George never had a plan and just let many of the actors speak how they wanted. So I think many of these characters can sound however you want.
     
  8. JadeLotus

    JadeLotus Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 27, 2005
    Oh I don't think either interpretation is wrong, and to some extent I suppose it is easier when we've never heard a character speak or had a particular actress associated with the role, to imagine that character's accent as something similar to our head voice or something we associate as "neutral". For me personally, RP is more neutral than American and I personally have trouble imagining Mara developing the latter when raised in the Imperial Court. And I kind of like Mara teasing Luke for his coarse 'Rim accent.

    I do think there was a definite choice in ANH to have a distinction between Imperial/British and Rebel/American for the background characters - for example Denis Lawson's voice was dubbed with an American actor.

    divapilot, code-switching was what I was think of but couldn't remember the term! So does Padme to a certain extent, her "Amidala" is much more formal than her natural accent.
     
  9. mavjade

    mavjade Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Sep 10, 2005
    I don't think I really ever considered Mara's accent, but I guess she probably had a general American accent in my head because that's what I'm used to. ;) But a British accent makes sense to me too.

    But I could also see Mara having been taught many different accents as her training as the Emperor's Hand and see her slipping into different ones really easily. That would probably come in really handy.
     
  10. Sith-I-5

    Sith-I-5 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 14, 2002
    While I think it is possible for someone to not have an accent, maybe it would be safer to say that not everyone is capable of detecting accents.

    Like when people claim to be able to smell sugar in a hot beverage. I have seen people do that, but far from a common skill in my experience.

    Some literature describes people who have learned English through the radio, or something, not having an accent that betrays their roots, and while I can tell what country or part of Britain people are from by their accents, there is quite a sizeable population where I at least, am not able to detect one.
     
  11. Irish_Jedi_Jade

    Irish_Jedi_Jade Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 2007
    I can totally imagine that Mara teases Luke sometimes. I can't really see her teasing him for the way he talks, but definitely for word choices or for certain pronunciations. [bats away plot bunny]

    Really good point about Padme being more formal in her "Amidala" role. I also agree with Briannakin that she would be adept at switching accents depending on the situation and to fit in to her surroundings.

    Also, as a total side note: I was perusing tumblr and someone had a picture of Bridget Regan as Mara...So I made a small collage. What do you guys think?

    [​IMG]
     
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  12. Sith-I-5

    Sith-I-5 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 14, 2002
    Looks good.

    Thinking outside the box, not confining yourself to a redhead.
     
  13. JadeLotus

    JadeLotus Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 27, 2005
    I'm not familiar with Bridget Regan but she looks interesting.

    My personal fancast for Mara is Rose Leslie.

    As for detecting accents, it's all about perception and surroundings - I don't perceive people in my life as having any detectable accent, but I intellectually know that we have Australian accents. When I go overseas and then return then I can hear it but it soon fades into my perception. When I lived in the UK everyone had detectable accents at first, but my perception changed as I got used to hearing them as "normal."

    I can imagine that Mara has a very good ear for that kind of thing and that emulating different accents and regional dialects was taught to her extensively during her education so she can detect and slip between them with ease as the situation requires.
     
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  14. Jedi_Lover

    Jedi_Lover Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 1, 2004
    And don't forget that accents can change. My brothers, sisters and I grew up in California, but my brother now talks with a thick southern accent because he lived down south for decades. My sisters remained on the West Coast so I don't notice an accent. I lived all over the country. I say certain words with a southern accents, other words with a NY accent, and to my horror I am saying some words like a person from the Upper Peninsula, eh.

    So Mara could have had a Corsucanti accent but she may have perfected various accents and the longer she stays in a certain place the more likely that her accent will conform to that location.
     
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  15. Briannakin

    Briannakin Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Feb 25, 2010
    Hm. I have never heard of Bridget Regan. But yeah, I can see it. I know why people often use redheads in fan-casts (people then often can use those people in photoshop work, ie for fanfic covers). But I like it when people think outside the red hair.

    Another thing I was thinking about regarding Mara's accent is the timeperiod. The emperor dies when she is 21, and somehow I can totally see her using a Coruscanti accent when she is young, particularly with him and in his court. After that one can assume she got as far away from the empire as possible to get away from Issard, so I can imagine that would be the outer rim (where she would consciously use an outer-rim accent), then she spends the next ~15 years with Karrde's gang floating around the galaxy before settling down with Luke. I mean, different people lose their native accents/pick up on those around them at different rates. So maybe with Mara, it would just depend on who she was with.

    I can totally see Luke bugging her about her randomly using a Coruscanti accent while on Coruscant.

    EDIT: Yeah, what JediLover said.
     
  16. Jedi_Lover

    Jedi_Lover Chosen One star 5

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    Nov 1, 2004
    [face_laugh] Don't you hate it when you are writing similar comments as somebody else at the same time and the other person posts first.
     
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  17. Briannakin

    Briannakin Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Feb 25, 2010
    Well, great minds do think alike, and I am pretty sure we have had this conversation before and you were a part of it.

    Either that, or I am going crazy.
     
  18. Jedi_Lover

    Jedi_Lover Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 1, 2004
    I think you are right, but I can't remember when. It might have been years ago.
     
  19. Irish_Jedi_Jade

    Irish_Jedi_Jade Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 2007
    Friends!!! So I have a question, and I've been mulling it over and I want your opinions. Because, let's face it, I'm pretty sure we know L/M better than anyone in the galaxy!

    Why did Mara pull away from Luke in NJO, while she was sick? And why did Luke basically flop down like a wet noodle and let it happen??

    I've been looking through my dog-eared collection of books, and there's quite a few inconsistencies about it. It the part where she's semi-healed by Vergere's tears, she uses the justification that Luke and Cilghal trying to heal her wasn't enough. But up to that point, I didn't see anything about her allowing such a thing. I got the distinct impression she was just kinda in her world, doing her own thing.

    So that begs my question...why? At this point, I feel like L/M are such a team. I mean, that was basically the point of HoT, right!? Her figuring out that Luke was someone she could trust again (after his dark side dithering) and he realized she had grown enough to let him in. And then BAM. She's sick and keeping Luke at arm's length? That seems so OOC for Mara, who preached the whole songbirds-in-ore-crushing-mines thing and basically said that you have to be open to things, and then she closes herself off. Luke, too...at this point, I get that he's married to a strong independent woman, but he's really going to let her die when he could save her, just if she'd let him? I feel like he would have forced her to sit down and listen to him pour his heart out at some point.

    Anyone? divapilot Briannakin JadeLotus Jedi_Lover mavjade WarmNyota_SweetAyesha
     
  20. Briannakin

    Briannakin Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

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    Feb 25, 2010
    Interesting question.

    My short and simple (and depressing) answer would be that she knew she was dying [didn't every one else die of the virus. It's been a hot minute since I picked up NJO and I only did read the first 3(?) books and selections of the other NJO books] and wanted to save him that pain. My friends' mom died from MS (horrible kriffing disease) and according to my friends' older sibling, their mom really pushed away from their father in the final years. As far as they can figure, it was to save him the pain and so that he wouldn't feel guilty about moving on. Mara wanted Luke to be happy. She had seen what Callista leaving him had done to him. So she wanted him to fall out of love with him. And she did a good job with it. I see Luke as human. His love would be conditional and one of those conditions would be consent. If he thought Mara was falling out of love with him, he would let her.


    HOWEVER, My long, sassy answer would be that it is because NJO WAS WRITTEN BY 12 DIFFERENT PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T CARE ABOUT LM AT ALL :( (Okay, maybe like 3 or 4 did) but after that initial idea was proposed, authors either had to go with it, or shoe-horn in their own ideas.

    The EU in general was always mega inconsistent when it came to certain characterizations (*cough* Luke, Leia, JACEN *cough). I can't really speak for NJO since I haven't really read it, but LOTF was *only* written by 3 people and I SWEAR we got 3 different Jacens, Lukes, Alema Rars, etc. THE ONLY MAJOR CHARACTER THAT WAS REMOTELY CONSISTENT WAS BEN! (sorry for the rant).

    Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I think we need to consider the real world aspects of this fandom, particularly when it comes to writing fanfics. Unlike the HP or Stargate fandoms, our source material was not made or written by a single author or a close-knit group of creators. We don't have one image of LM's relationship to go off of. We can't consider it all "right". We'd drive ourselves mad. Sometimes we have no other answer for inconsistencies other than "Author A wrote Luke Skywalker much differently than Author B".

    I had a point, but then I forgot it.

    I'm all for trying to make fics work with canon and making things make sense. It can be part of the challenge and fun. But sometimes I think we just have to ignore what is written is canon.

    Why did Obi-Wan tell Luke "I haven't gone by the name of Obi-Wan since... oh, before you were born."? Why did the Obi/Vader lightsaber battle in ANH contain the most basic of moves? There really is no solid answer to these, other than "because IV was made 30 years before III."
     
  21. WarmNyota_SweetAyesha

    WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Aug 31, 2004
    Great question, Irish_Jedi_Jade -- and Bri brings up good strong points in both the short and sassy answers. =D= I too think Luke and Mara should have talked or discussed at least once or even a bit of introspection/exposition on Mara's part would have enlightened the fans /readers about her motivations and it wouldn't have to be pages and pages either. @};-

    I also think perhaps it took so much of her mental/emotional energy to hold the illness at bay that she had to keep Luke at a distance and/or that she did not want Luke to sense how truly hard her fight for survival was. [face_thinking]
     
  22. JadeLotus

    JadeLotus Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 27, 2005
    Okay, a lot of this is my own headcanon but here goes.

    Mara was raised in an environment where failure was worse than death, and if she couldn't fight, she was useless. Even when she was cast down after the Emperor's death, she was still able to fight, to save herself and survive. She still considered herself strong.

    But when she was infected by the Vong disease if was as if her body had betrayed her. She was weak, she couldn't even take care of herself so although she intellectually knew better, a part of her hated herself for failing to fight the disease - she'd never truly been faced with her own mortality.

    She hated the fact that she had to rely on Luke, because although two woven vines are stronger, if one vine is weak it compromises the whole strand. So she pushes him away because she knows the stakes in the war are high and doesn't want him distracted from the fight.

    And Luke, even though they are married, is always cautious of overriding her will - he knows that's what the Emperor did and doesn't ever want to impose that way. He's *too* cautious of it, and lets her pull away even though it's killing him.

    Ultimately I think it was a consequence of the hasty Force bond - they used it as a crutch in their relationship and so when Mara withdraws sync the bond weakens and they have difficulty relating to each other like two normal people.
     
  23. divapilot

    divapilot Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 30, 2005
    Wow, great discussion. I think you all hit some pretty sharp insights that make sense. There are my ideas.

    1. She didn't see a positive endgame for this. Everyone else had died of the virus and she knew that it was only the Force that kept her own body from succumbing from the virus. IIRC, the virus bomb was set off to specifically get her, and everyone else was collateral damage, so I think she knew this was her death. Using the Force was just buying time.

    2. She is/was a proud woman, who learned that failure was not an option. She more than anyone else knew that. She knew the penalties for failure from the Emperor and she had become nails-tough because of it. I think she saw the Vong war as a greater loss to the galaxy than her own death, so she was forcing her body to live so that she could play out the role she felt she needed to in order to defeat the Vong.

    3. Having an illness like that is exhausting. I think (imho) that many people die from diseases like cancer because they just stop fighting, and they stop fighting because they are so tired. (They don't say "rest in peace" for nothing.) Fighting a disease like that takes every bit of strength and energy you have. Perhaps she turned her focus to trying to stay alive so much that she literally didn't have the strength to reach out and connect to Luke, or when Luke tried to connect with her, she was too tired to respond.

    4. Also, it's not just a physical fight, a person with a serious, life-threatening illness is also fighting an emotional fight. You're saying goodbye to everything you loved in your life. Mara loved Luke more than anything else, so maybe she was distancing herself from him to say goodbye to him in her own mind. He was becoming, to her, the man she used to love. She was detaching from him to make it easier for her to go, that way she wouldn't stay around past the point of her being of any use to anyone.

    :p
     
  24. Jedi_Lover

    Jedi_Lover Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 1, 2004
    I don't think there was any well thought out reason. I think Mara was expected to live and give Luke an heir. If she was in the thick of the fight it would look strange that everybody and his brother was dying horrific deaths and she wasn't. They were basically putting Mara on ice for a while. After she had the baby they made sure Ben was off in the maw where he didn't need to be discussed in the story line.

    It was just a way to put her on a shelf until she was needed, IMHO.
     
  25. Briannakin

    Briannakin Former Manager star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Feb 25, 2010
    Ah! I love this community! It wasn't my question, but all of our replies are slightly different, but they all kinda work together.

    Again, I only read the first 3 books, so my question comes from that. But was Mara noticeably out of action for the majority of her time when she was sick? I vaguely remember her and Anakin (who I know got a big role later on... with his death) skipping off to Dantooine for awhile. I can totally see the authors wanting just a random reason not to have them in the fray so they could have them shine later on. I can see the authors doing this and not thinking fans will pick up on the inconsistent details. Not to rag on the authors - most are amazing writers, but as we have seen, big epic story arcs sometimes have collateral plot damage - the infamous "forgotten plot point #23857" - it isn't unique to Star Wars (*cough* Doctor Who).



    Also, not to change the topic because it's a great one, but I just realized our last challenge was back in March (what?). Do we want another one (more propmt-y; less challenging?). Something with TFA? Legends based? Open to either? I've been liking creating people over on http://azaleasdolls.com/ (They have both male and female "Sci-Fi warrior" creators). Do we want to do something like everyone who wants to participate makes an interesting version of Luke and Mara and then another person has to use that appearance of them in a story?
     
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