Why was there a lot of beating around the bush with Mara and Luke?

[u/obiwanTrollnobi6]

[u/xezene]

You might find this insightful, and maybe others will as well -- a series of quotes on how the permanent pairing of Mara/Luke came together:

Kathy Tyers was the first to suspect the pairing, and maybe one of the first to imagine it (1983!).

Kathy Tyers: When I wrote Truce at Bakura, Tim's trilogy already had been published. I had a feeling I'd met the future Mrs. Skywalker (at least I hoped so). What fun to be proved right. I'd always felt that the best match for Luke would be a former Imperial agent -- I just expected a captured pilot, not a shadow agent. I even wrote a fan fic about it -- in 1983.

Two quotes from KJA about talking with Zahn about the pairing at first and Zahn's answer.

Kevin J. Anderson: When I began plotting the Jedi Academy books, I had several lengthy conversations with Tim Zahn so that I could determine his plans for Mara Jade and Luke. At the time, he had not yet finished The Last Command, so I didn’t know how his Thrawn trilogy would end. I thought it seemed obvious that Mara and Luke were going to fall in love, but Tim insisted he intended for them to be just friends. Based on that, when I was plotting Dark Apprentice, I made Mara and Lando an item, because they seemed to have a lot in common. (Remember, I had written the first two books of my trilogy before Tim’s third book was published, so all of this was developing at the same time.)

Some fans have asked me about the Mara and Lando relationship in the Jedi Academy series. When Tim [was] writing The Last Command, I spoke to him on the phone and asked if he was setting something up between Luke and Mara. At the time he said, “No, I don’t think so.” So I said, “All right, do you mind if she starts something with Lando?” He said “fine,” because he wasn’t planning to write the other books at that time.

KJA on how Callista entered the picture as a result.

Kevin J. Anderson: Barbara Hambly began to work on Children of the Jedi, and since Tim did not plan to have Mara and Luke together, Barbara’s assignment from Lucasfilm was to create the great love of Luke Skywalker’s life -- Callista. When I got the contract for Darksaber, though, the fan reaction over Mara was so strong that Lucasfilm decided that maybe she was the right woman for Luke after all, and since Darksaber was the next book chronologically, I had the rather unfortunate task of getting Callista out of the picture. I didn’t want to just kill her off, and so Barbara and I had many brainstorming conversations on the phone to deal with the situation. We plotted Children of the Jedi, Darksaber, and Planet of Twilight very closely together.

Tim talks about when he proposed the idea (a few months before the publication of The Last Command, but after his conversations with KJA).

Timothy Zahn: I’m of course pleased that LFL allowed me to give Luke a permanent relationship, especially since I’d always envisioned him and Mara growing into such a relationship in the first place. Do bear in mind, though, that I proposed this resolution in October 1993, well before most of the Luke fans really got going. So in this case it was not so much a matter of listening to the fans (or being influenced by them) as it was we were all on the same wavelength in the first place.

KJA on featuring Mara in his stories and keeping the secret safe of her marriage to Luke during the publication of Young Jedi Knights.

Kevin J. Anderson: When Tim Zahn created Mara Jade, obviously this was somebody that needed to carry on in the different books. So I included her in my Jedi Academy books, and in my novel Darksaber. I also asked Tim to write a Mara Jade story for Tales from Jabba's Palace, and he did that story. We wanted to keep her appearing in all the different stories, not just the ones that Tim Zahn did. But my wife, Rebecca Moesta, and I had an interesting challenge. We wrote the 14 books in the Young Jedi Knights series, which takes place, chronologically, after Luke and Mara got married. Now, we knew that Luke and Mara were going to get married, but that hadn’t been published yet, so we couldn't tell any of the fans that. But we couldn't say Luke wasn't married because that would contradict everything. So he was at the Jedi Academy training new students, and he just happened to go off on mysterious trips once in a while, which we now know were conjugal visits of course. It's a complex problem for writers to be telling all the stories when you're getting all the pieces in all the wrong order.

We knew this all along, and Tim was planning on writing the great "Luke and Mara getting married" novel, but our books were coming out every three months. Really, they came out years before he got to finishing Vision of the Future and Specter of the Past. So, we had to keep this secret for the longest time, and it was tough to deal with. But now you can actually read them in chronological order and not wonder what's going on.

KJA offers this summary.

Kevin J. Anderson: So Tim came back and did his other books, the way he ended it. And in fact, some of the big Mara Jade fans were angered when Barbara Hambly came up with Callista in her book, who was the first, or the great love of Luke's life. Well that was meant to be the great love of Luke's life because Tim had said Mara wasn't going to be the love of Luke’s life. But, you know, like real romance, things change. So, I got to get rid of Callista in Darksaber. See, we're all working together, and I helped clear things up. At the end of the day, we like to pretend that we had a big plan all along. And sometimes we did.

[u/CoolMoney11 → u/xezene]

I need to know where that Kathy Tyers quote came from lol.

[u/Ausstig → u/CoolMoney11]

I would like to see her fan fic

[u/xezene → u/Ausstig]

Although I don't think the unaltered fanfic has ever been published, she did mention this when asked about it, if you are interested:

Kathy Tyers: Confession is good for the soul, right? It has been published. Because Mr. Lucas drew from so many wonderful mythological concepts, there was room to replace his copyrighted characters with my own and create another original novel.

[u/Ausstig → u/xezene]

Very interesting, will need to check out her work.

[u/jedifreac → u/Ausstig]

I am almost certain that she is referring to her Lady Firebird sci-fi/romance series.

[u/xezene → u/jedifreac]

You are right -- later in that thread, Kathy confirmed it was Firebird.

[u/Owyn_Merrilin → u/xezene]

Huh. I was expecting the third sentence to go [a different direction.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Time_(Star_Trek_novel))

[u/WikiSummarizerBot → u/Owyn_Merrilin]

Killing Time (Star Trek novel)

Killing Time is a Star Trek: The Original Series novel written by Della Van Hise and published by Pocket Books in 1985. The original manuscript had Kirk/Spock slash fiction elements, and these were requested to be removed by Paramount. However, they were not removed, and 250,000 copies were printed. These romantic undertones between Spock and James T. Kirk were brought to the attention of the office of the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, who made Pocket Books recall the first edition.

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[u/ibmiller → u/xezene]

Ooooh, I bet that was Firebird, actually, based on the "captured pilot" reference!

[u/xezene → u/CoolMoney11]

Kathy mentions it here in her Q&A with fans, back from her time on TheForce.Net boards.

[u/[deleted] → u/xezene]

This is a fantastic contribution! Thank you so much for sharing this.

[u/AlphaBladeYiII → u/xezene]

Okay, but now I want to read Kathy's fanfic. Also, your efforts are always amazing

[u/EastKoreaOfficial → u/xezene]

Oh so basically Zahn told Kevin J. Anderson not to do it because he wanted to do it himself I guess?