Some recent ads on Facebook (and one on Instagram) caught my attention, and I wanted to share.
Oh, bother.
Yes, Facebook thinks I’m still in the market for unlicensed Washington Nationals jerseys with pop culture characters. To be fair to Facebook, I did buy the Oasis Nationals jersey (and had it customized for Sean Doolittle, whom I felt would be the National player, past or present, most into Oasis), and yes, I have a deep and abiding fondness for Winnie-the-Pooh…
But no. I will not be ordering this.
Props to Facebook for knowing me.
For another example…
Really ugly Snoopy vs. the Red Baron button up shirts. I can almost hear The Royal Guardsmen singing in my head…
I would literally never, ever wear this. They are ugly as sin.
Speaking of ugly…
Star Trek ugly sweaters!
There’s something that feels really fucking lazy about these, the way they’re just cosplay sweaters with Star Trek symbols printed on them. The post-Star Trek Nemesis uniform top seen in Star Trek: Picard is an intriguing addition, but I will still pass.
Maybe I was born an old fuddy duddy, but I’ve never understood the “ugly sweater” thing. But if it’s your thing, enjoy.
Now, for an Instagram ad which shows how little Instagram’s algorithms know me…
A free Bible! You know what? I think I’m good.
And now for something that is not an ad, but I found interesting enough to screenshot and share…
Hmm. So, according to this, rumor has it that Amy Adams will be playing Mara Jade in the forthcoming film, Star Wars: Starfighter, starring Ryan Gosling and Matt Smith.
While I think that would be interesting and bad ass — I’d never really considered casting Mara Jade from Timothy Zahn’s original Heir to the Empire trilogy — this seems incredibly unlikely.
One of the problems with the “new canon” of Star Wars is that there’s no real room for Mara Jade to fit. Her literary backstory doesn’t make sense within the new canon, her literary timeline doesn’t work. Writers would have to move Mara Jade in time and change her history so much that they would be better off creating a whole new character that doesn’t have fan expectation baggage attached to her.
Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn, as he existed in the old Bantam novels, also doesn’t fit in the new canon. The timelines don’t match, but Thrawn could be fudged enough that there is a Thrawn in the new canon (Rebels, Ahsoka, six new Zahn novels), and if you squint just so they can kinda fit together.
I don’t think you can do that with Mara Jade.
Frankly, I think this “rumor” is a case of some enthusiastic fans noting that Amy Adams has reddish hair, noticing that Mara Jade also has reddish hair, and drawing a connection based on nothing more than hair color.
I’m a casual Star Wars fan at best. I will probably not see next year’s The Mandalorian and Grogu unless reviews state that Sigourney Weaver kills the Mandalorian and Grogu in the first ten minutes and the rest of the film is about her kicking ass in the Star Wars universe. Otherwise, I don’t care.
Starfighter has a more interesting cast — Gosling, Smith, Adams — and it’s being directed by Shawn Levy, so it probably will have more points of interest. But it’s still a ways off, and my fickle moods may shift a dozen times before then.
So, while I will not say, “I will eat a hat if Amy Adams is Mara Jade,” I think one can definitively state that she will not be playing Mara Jade.