Bring Back Mara Jade Skywalker! Sign the Petition!! July 3, 2007
Posted by showmescifi in darth caedus, Mara Jade, Mara Jade Skywalker, Petition, Sci Fi, science fiction, sciencefiction, scifi, Star Wars, star wars legacy of the force.trackback
Mara Jade Skywalker didn’t have to die at the hands of Darth Caedus.
It was a wasted empty death…
Lucas Licensing apparently allowed this disaster to happen and now we should call on them to reverse it. The Sith have the power to bring back the dead and so too then does the Force.
Whether it is Ben or Luke Skywalker or even someone else I don’t care. I just want Mara Jade back.
To that end we here at ShowMeSciFi have started a petition to Bring Back Mara Jade.
Please sign in and together we can be THE FORCE that will bring Mara back.
Show Me SciFi 
The problem with that though is that prior to his being captured he was at best a poor Luke wannabe, without being captured everything would have still been black/white (light/dark I suppose). Personally I think Anakin while he could have been a reasonable character was even more of a Luke clone which is just boring, the galaxy far far away doesn’t need anymore guys in pristine white hats in my opinion. In addition to this the up to more or less just before Star by Star (the book where he sneaks around and makes a new lightsaber or whatever I guess was in there =-P ) Anakin wasn’t even really ever used, as such he was probably seen as the most disposable, if they felt the need to rewrite it from that point forward and kill someone regardless without writing in more backstory for him it would still seem like he was striding out of left field and surpassing his siblings.
As for people taking the line that “Jacen died” when he was captured I just attribute that to “fanboyism” (report that to Oxford please) who will take whatever half assed justification was handed down to them. In point of fact I recall “Traitor” as being my favorite of any of the NJO books specifically because of the varied philosophical ideas and references in it which was if absolutely nothing else was a nice comparatively intellectual side trip from the “The Yuuzhan Vong unleashed another diabolical super: clam, bug, amoeba…onto another planet and oh hell’s bells the Ranet homeworld is gone, now we’re down another side race!”
This would (could) have also led the way to a more varied force user situation (at least for some) in the newest novels were it not for the fact that the notions it espoused would seem to have flown right over the top of Denning and company’s collective heads. As for things like the Jaina/Jag sort of situation I simply look at that as fluff that could easily be forgotten by the end, I mean it’s perfectly understandable that a regular lay by someone in their early twenties during a war would fall by the wayside more than ten years later.
Of course any change in or around the NJO would presumably lead to the outcome of LotF not happening so the whole Mara situation wouldn’t even be an issue, but I would suggest that if you’re wanting to aim at a stubborn publisher dealing with an even more stubborn license provider it would be useful to at least acknowledge the practicality of the situation. What I mean by this is that for the tradeoff of what may or may not have been liked about the NJO you could try to change/get them to change: The Dark Nest, LotF, (Millenium Falcon?) and this new series would be hard to get them to swallow a workaround for without adding on another ten books or more on top of that. Besides which I hope we can all acknowledge that things like The Dark Nest and LotF which are Denning heavy (read: shallow) would be a hell of a lot easier to gloss over.
No offense Mikey, but some of what you said requires more than one read through for me to understand. But maybe that’s just me.
Anyway, I will again refer to the new Star Trek film. By creating an alternate time line, JJ Abrams and all the new story tellers will be able to create an all-new legacy using the same characters that are well known and loved, but without the constraints of having to conform to predetermined destinies. He even admitted to this in the special features of the DVD (I will admit, I’m a bit of a sucker for those. You learn so much!).
But for me, if the characters of the SW EU were thrown on to an alternate time line where their destinies are once again a (relatively) clean slate, it may very well stretch credulity, but whichever authors wrote them would then have a chance to make an entirely new series of stories, in which the characters may not get screwed up.
I mean, we’d all rather have a future where Mara Jade is still alive and kicking ass, I mean, that’s a given, right? But what about one where Jacen is not some insane Sith Lord (or wannabe thereof)? What about one where Jaina is not some crazy bitch who can’t decide which guy she ends up with, and is placed back with the guy she broke up over ten years ago simply so that the Imperial royal family has some Force-sensitivity? (That would have to be the one thing that bugs me more than anything else!)
I know drama is necessary to advance a story, but in the case of the SW EU, they seriously crossed the line.
Seems pretty straightforward to me. Stuff like Jaina and her hopping back and forth seems silly in retrospect given the 10+ year gap from the end of the NJO. I reiterated my opinion that the Anakin Solo death wasn’t that much of a loss in the grand scheme of things. Nobody wants the screwed up nature of anything post NJO.
In any event the point being: some schoolyard drama in the NJO itself involving Jag Fel, Jaina Solo and Zek is irrelevant as who would question that someone in their late teens early twenties in the middle of a war would not necessarily be hung up over who they were screwing at that time ten years after the war is over. So that sort of drama isn’t necessarily something I think would need to be addressed in the NJO itself as in anything taking the place of the crap following the NJO it could just be allowed to fall by the wayside. Jaina could be chasing Zek or whoever and I would think the average reader wouldn’t bat an eye and wonder where Jag went. I think it’s much the same with much of the dramatic minutiae and even if it wasn’t a lot could be ignored based on the passage of time in general particularly in regards to things that happened to the younger characters.
In the case of the broader issues, rather than name them all we’ll just say the many characters killed or character assassinated since the end of the NJO, as well as any stupid plot elements in general would be a nonissue from the end of the NJO as much as from the middle of it.
Towards the point of where this “alternate timeline” would go once again I think the point was quite clear. You want (well a lot of people including myself want) them to “fix” what they’ve done somehow; with the easiest way being to simply ignore what will be over 20 books by the time they’re done with their newest series as I understand it. I’m just trying to say that from a purely practical sense that is a tall order in and of itself therefore I believe it would make more sense to ask for a “fix” to come from somewhere with a clearly defined break point in the timeline rather than wanting them to also write anew the ending of the NJO. Basically because if you tried to cut the NJO in half to save Anakin Solo, then there would be a lot of people (somewhat justifiably) wanting them to redo the entire NJO to save Chewbacca, or three fourths of it to save this character or two thirds to save that character etc.
In short, them rewriting in a sense twenty plus books after the NJO would be hard, rewriting 30 plus going back to Star by Star or 40 plus going back to the NJO would make the possibility harder exponentially I should think; particularly given that I’m sure we’ve all noticed that Delrey doesn’t shy away from taking the easiest path.
In regards to what could be done with many of the characters given the atmosphere at the end of the NJO, I would just say that if the “clean slate” leads to a return to the situations where Luke Skywalker (possibly with the aid of his son and Anakin) wearing their white hats save the day from yet another rebirth of the Empire, or another oddball superfaction that’s been lying in wait I just can’t see how that’s worthwhile.
They don’t necessarily need melodramatic crap happening to the characters all the time no, but I would think that if the tone is set too light which while good for the escapism of the novels (I imagine most don’t want to read these to be saddened).
Basically I dont’ want them to go back to the New Republic is the supreme powerin the galaxy in a detente with the Imperial Faction and blah blah blah, you don’t need to butcher characters for there still to be drama but I think a fractured galaxy full of entangling alliances between many factions would be a good atmosphere (sadly they ran from this in that LotF nonsense) and I fear that Delrey will do one of two things: Nothing and leave the EU in the sorry state it’s in or change it back to the Bantaam one and done stand alone novel approach where everything is Black and White and…boring.
Um, OK, I sort of get where you are going Michael. For the record, I am actually doing a writing course, and I learned just last night that characters need to evolve, otherwise the story itself will stagnate and essentially die. Now, in a sense, the characters did sort of evolve throughout the Del Rey period, but I think many agree that they could have evolved in a better direction. Therefore, if someone does end up rebooting the EU, the authors writing the new line would have the opportunity to make the characters evolve in a different way, preferably one that is not so screwed up. I mean, you do agree with me on that, don’t you? Anyway, I get the point.
Still, if someone were to rewrite SW history, it would be a real pain to determine where exactly to write from. I mean, with the latest Star Trek film, they didn’t just rewrite from the middle of a series or anything like that, they rewrote everything from James Kirk’s birth onwards, essentially changing the very core of the ST universe (except for that ‘Enterprise’ series, but nobody seemed to like that anyway). So, you are right in the sense that if a rewrite were to happen, it needs to be from a clean break point, like the beginning or end of a series, not the middle.
Also, I get that things cannot be too light like it was in the Bantam era, or too dark like it eventually became in the Del Rey era. If someone manages to find some kind of medium, I will be amazed!
So much I still need to learn about the world of writing!
In my personal opinion as far as the evolution of the characters I would be happy just to pretend Legacy of the Force never happened. The entire series was crap, not just Sacrifice and Invincible which is another thing I think will cause problems with them fixing anything in that they want to keep making these 9 book series.
I don’t have a problem with some NJO overarching plotline in that in all reality it for all intents and purposes was nothing more than single, duology and trilogies crammed into a 20 book series. However, these nine book collections of one plotline “worked on” by a small number of authors could very easily be somewhat benign but if you have someone like Denning who is just milking it like a staff writer or (in my opinion) an outfit like Delrey who would willfully paint themselves into a corner knowing that if their license was renewed they’d need to find a way out of it they can just as easily completely screw up everything again.
To that end if they were willing to “fix” what they’ve done (big if) they would also need to find some new authors (which would be bad in the case of losing some) but great in the sense of getting rid of the ones like Denning who just phone it in; as well as getting rid of Sue what’s her face who edits the crap. I hate writing (well the rules of) but letting the plotholes, piss poor writing in general not to mention misspellings and nonsensical grammar by her is an indication as well of how little Delrey’s man on the scene cares.
Truer word have never been spoken, Michael! I must admit that it is my dream to become one of the new SW authors and redo the EU from a certain point onwards (the actual certain point seeming to be a source of some debate). But yeah, I agree with you completely. And yeah, I have to admit that the rules of writing are an absolute pain. Writing the story is easy enough (in theory), but getting it accepted and published and whatnot, that’s the major challenge.
Well with the hundreds of emails (well like seven or eight different ones) I sent a few at a time to all the delrey addresses with any kind of link to anything I would remotely associate to their StarWars line I’ve never received a response of any sort except for a form mail once that pointed me to the Star Wars delrey website and all the exciting stuff to be found on there (which was about a month after Invincible came out but still had it listed as upcoming).
It’s a shame that delrey is so tightlipped about everything because frankly after Legacy of the Force was finished I simply can’t believe that they haven’t lost readers; though I generally don’t put stock in the overall feeling to be had from comments and such on the internet, when even the official Star Wars forums had a quite vocal bunch at the time which is strange considering that people on that fanboy site generally spend more time arguing about stupid crap like who shot first Han Solo or Greedo (and Solo did you bastards!) or whether Darth Vader would would beat Darth Krayt or whoever…
If they did lose readers (me for one) or if nothing else badly disenfranchised their readers to the point that they have to start walking on egg shells it seems like it would make sense to acknowledge that and find out what their customers actually want.
While it is well known that George Lucas “doesn’t care about any of that” (arrogant ass, it was Timothy Zahn and his ilk who kept people involved for something other than a fad between 1981 and 1999 not your masterful vision of a whiny Anakin Skywalker in a galaxy full of plot holes far far away…) there is one thing even he cares about from the EU (closet stealing of planet names etc for episodes I,II and III aside) and that’s the piles of money it brings in.
Towards that end I have wondered over the last year or so if perhaps the best way to get Delrey to fix their ungodly mess would be if people who want novels to be novels and not comic book prestory would be to hassle the people between Delrey (that doesn’t care) and Lucas (who cares about the scratch) at Lucas Licensing instead. They can’t possibly be as customer unfriendly as Delrey is, and they would most likely take notice of people who say they won’t be buying any Star Wars product as a result. Though I’ve not had any luck finding a reliable means of contacting them either. Which is actually what my semi lucid late night mind was wanting to point out before I started rambling.
Hey, I’ve got tons of ideas that would probably make a better story in the NJO-onward period. But try telling that to the brainless hacks working for Del Rey. They simply don’t seem to give a crap. They wanted to make it as dark as possible, and damn what people wanted! And it seems that they are succeeding. Frankly, if people still are reading this trash, I’ll be amazed. Seriously, I would be.
NOTE TO SELF: Become an experienced science fiction author and fix up this mess!
Well that’s the thing of it, I just can’t imagine that they have near the readership that they did before. The more deep into it’s own storyline that the Star Wars EU novels have gotten the more and more of a niche it’s become. The novels themselves haven’t been on the general bestseller’s list in nearly twenty years so you would expect that not chasing off readers would be at the forefront of their minds when printing something “controversial.”