More thoughts on LotF and women in Star Wars - spoilers
I have niggling issues with LotF on a number of counts, but one of the more disturbing ones is something that I've only put my finger on recently.
The dead female characters.
And not just dead, but duped, maimed, manipulated. Maybe I'm stating the obvious, maybe I'm reinventing the wheel, but the more I think about it, the more it bothers me that in LotF, whenever you have a character who is used, murdered, insane, it's a female character. Nelani Dinn comes to mind, from the first book in the series, Jacen's first kill, literally chased down before being dismembered and murdered. Mara, well-matched with Jacen up until he used a blatantly false Force-image of her son against her (because maternal instinct is always a weakness to be exploited, and an experienced warrior like Mara would absolutely not see that coming, but that's a subject for anther rant), then poisoned her. Lumiya and Alema Rar, both female characters, both physically disfigured, both killed. Not to mention Tahiri, a previously strong character who via LotF has become an emotionally unstable wreck dependent on fixes of memory from a decade ago. Oh, and completely willing to subvert every loyalty she ever had to get them. And then there's Jaina, who, despite being a Jedi and a warrior with years of experience under her belt, is reduced to vacillated between boyfriends and apprenticing herself to an ageing clone so she can learn how to do what she's been doing half her life. Why does a Jedi need to go to a bounty hunter to learn how to fight another Force user? I just... do not get it. Leia's been all but invisible in the series over the past few books, and where she is present it seems to be as little more than a cameo appearance, or as Jacen's mother, bemoaning what her son's become. How is it that one of the most powerful women in the galaxy is sitting off on the sidelines, watching while it falls to pieces?
Almost every major death in the series has been a female character, and they've consistently died in demeaning ways. It's probably not deliberate - or maybe it is, maybe the choice was made that having Jacen consistently feed off and murder female characters would lend him credence as a villain where it would be sorely lacking otherwise, I don't know - but it's still there and it's still ugly and a little poisonous. I probably sound all unreasonable and flaily over nothing, but, gah, this is annoying me. For all that Star Wars is a male-dominated mythos, for all we do have Shmi and Padme dying so that Anakin can get his Darth on, we've also got Leia standing up to Vader and leading her own rescue and Padme taking control of aggressive negotiations, and seeing the women in LotF dead or crazy or invisible makes me want to bash my head against a wall.
... and that's my rant done now. Ooh, and look, I made a Mara icon to cheer myself up.
The dead female characters.
And not just dead, but duped, maimed, manipulated. Maybe I'm stating the obvious, maybe I'm reinventing the wheel, but the more I think about it, the more it bothers me that in LotF, whenever you have a character who is used, murdered, insane, it's a female character. Nelani Dinn comes to mind, from the first book in the series, Jacen's first kill, literally chased down before being dismembered and murdered. Mara, well-matched with Jacen up until he used a blatantly false Force-image of her son against her (because maternal instinct is always a weakness to be exploited, and an experienced warrior like Mara would absolutely not see that coming, but that's a subject for anther rant), then poisoned her. Lumiya and Alema Rar, both female characters, both physically disfigured, both killed. Not to mention Tahiri, a previously strong character who via LotF has become an emotionally unstable wreck dependent on fixes of memory from a decade ago. Oh, and completely willing to subvert every loyalty she ever had to get them. And then there's Jaina, who, despite being a Jedi and a warrior with years of experience under her belt, is reduced to vacillated between boyfriends and apprenticing herself to an ageing clone so she can learn how to do what she's been doing half her life. Why does a Jedi need to go to a bounty hunter to learn how to fight another Force user? I just... do not get it. Leia's been all but invisible in the series over the past few books, and where she is present it seems to be as little more than a cameo appearance, or as Jacen's mother, bemoaning what her son's become. How is it that one of the most powerful women in the galaxy is sitting off on the sidelines, watching while it falls to pieces?
Almost every major death in the series has been a female character, and they've consistently died in demeaning ways. It's probably not deliberate - or maybe it is, maybe the choice was made that having Jacen consistently feed off and murder female characters would lend him credence as a villain where it would be sorely lacking otherwise, I don't know - but it's still there and it's still ugly and a little poisonous. I probably sound all unreasonable and flaily over nothing, but, gah, this is annoying me. For all that Star Wars is a male-dominated mythos, for all we do have Shmi and Padme dying so that Anakin can get his Darth on, we've also got Leia standing up to Vader and leading her own rescue and Padme taking control of aggressive negotiations, and seeing the women in LotF dead or crazy or invisible makes me want to bash my head against a wall.
... and that's my rant done now. Ooh, and look, I made a Mara icon to cheer myself up.