The New Jedi Order: 10th Anniversary Thread

double

 

I assume with this statement you're trying to justify what happened to Jacen as being logical...

But I think a better interpretation of your words here is 'the EU creative team/authors took a gamble with Jacen's character, but mischaracterized him and failed miserably.'

 

Even int he future, no matter what they touch it's just hexed.

Seriously? That's about as opposite to the message of Legacy as you could get. The Vong were betrayed, and the Jedi stood by them, knowing they had been.

Then, when the Jedi were betrayed... the Vong were the only ones to stay by them. Even the Galactic Alliance abandoned the Jedi. The Vong didn't, and suffered for it. If anything Legacy shows that 100 years later, the Vong have been rehabilitated, that there culture has done a complete u-turn.

And considering "eye for an eye" comes from Exodus, three passages after condoning the execution of children for disobeying their parents....well, I'm not inclined to treat it as any guideline for morality.

 

That Star Wars is space fantasy doesn't mean that it can't be logically consistant. Of course SW doesn't survive a critical eye with all its unscientific technology, etc., but those are things easily glossed over. Giving hard numbers to a mayor conflict lets that conflict be critically examined ( like that number of six million clonetroopers ).

Oh, well, who cares? My mayor problems with the NJO are not with the numbers, which can be handwaved, but with the writing and general tone of the story.

 

Or I'm trying to characterize redefining the Force decades after the fact as an ill-advised gamble.

 

True. Writing a better story than the guy who owns the copyright is always risky.

 

I think this is deliberate, and it's less to do with "normal" than it is to do with Alliance policy. Also, there's the fact that the Galactic Alliance ISN'T fixed, and nor is the Jedi Order, and it and HASN'T been since Myrkr/Coruscant...

As Jaina said in Outcast, "the system is irredeemably broken".

Is "normal" an oppressive miasma of scheming and fighting? If so, then that explains why "normal" is so easy to return to - if NOT, then they've not got "back to normal" after all.

And, conversely, since Invincible, there's been "peace", whatever that means - in terms of governmental unity, negotiation, and the rule of law.

Isn't that supposed to be "progress"?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

So is ignoring the typical fate of presumptive Nietzchean supermen ( or superchickens ) who don't think the laws of gravity apply to them. It's actually possible to write a good story without discarding Lucas' definition of the Force. Some authors have done it. Back in the day, before the era of the dark side refusenik, EU writers were actually expected to work within such parameters. However, it appears that the story of the OT is being retroactively denigrated a few decades after the fact. I suppose the alleged unhappiness with the OT story just simmered under the surface all this time, but it's almost as if it was never there to begin with and history itself ( like the Force ) is being boldly rewritten to suit current fashion. Just remember: Gravity exists. Fashions change. Pendulums swing back.

 

It's interesting that you reference a pendulum, because I've always seen the NJO's 'Force heresy' as a direct response to the closed-minded revisionism of the PT. If ANYONE has retroactively denigrated the OT story because of a simmering-under-the-surface unhappiness, it's Lucas.

That aside, I found Vergere's ideas to be very much in line with the OT, in which we are given a progressively more expansive view of the Force and the GFFA in each installment. The climax of RotJ is itself a demonstration of the fact that Yoda and Obi-Wan didn't know as much as they thought they did about the Force. And of course it's pretty clear that Luke by no means knows ALL there is to know about the Force. So it makes a great deal of sense that the EXPANDED Universe would feature Luke expanding his understanding, which by definition would require that there are truths about the Force beyond what Ben and Yoda taught him.

Despite the fact that its storylines supposedly required his approval to be published, Lucas overwrote a great deal of EU continuity with the prequels. At first it was relatively minor things, like making 'Darth' a title and 'Sith' the dark side version of Jedi rather than a people. And a lot of other things that could mostly be fixed in the EU with little retcons here and there. EU characters started using words like "padawan", so readers could get the message that these were 'real' Jedi just like the guys in the PT.

But then AotC rolled around with the "Jedi can't get married" rule, the violation of which was being shown as the major catalyst for the creation of Darth Vader himself. Which was a bit of a dilemma, because the main characters of the NJO were a family of Jedi, and a large number of supporting Jedi characters were ALSO married. Quite successfully, too, and with no ill effects on their Jedi abilities - certainly not to the point of turning them evil.

This contradiction couldn't be fixed by changing a detail or two and then pretending they'd always been that way. Happily, the NJO writers decided to simply say, "Fine, these things don't mesh anymore, so we're not going to play by the same rulebook," and they fashioned a story that contradicted and was far superior to that of the PT.

Then came LotF, and the writers began to suck the PT's metaphorical ****.

 

The climax of RotJ is itself a demonstration of the fact that Yoda and Obi-Wan didn't know as much as they thought they did about Anakin's likelihood of redemption. Their knowledge of the Force remains unchallenged by the film.

Except there was no "closed-minded revisionism" in the PT, unless you're using that term to describe Lucas not being bound by EU. The portrayal of the Force in the PT was completely consistent with its portrayal in the OT era.

Of course you did.

Lucas was never constrained to adhere to the EU in the first place. You have the situation backwards. When a writer writes something in a book, it doesn't tie Lucas' hands or retroactively destroy things which he established in the films. On the contrary, EU writers need to adhere to the films instead of the other way around. If they're not skilled enough to handle such parameters, they can stick to their own non-SW fiction.

I thought it was you, when you said redefining the Force decades after the fact was a better story. What Force heresy contradicts is the basis of the portrayal of the Force in the OT. But in retrospect I guess you meant that you didn't personally approve of the PT, so that means anything established by Lucas can now be thrown out. Got it. If only Lucas had pleased you, then he might have some relevance. It's still an extremely foolish gamble to assume that 25,000 years of experience with the Force means absolutely nothing. Every teenager thinks they know better than their elders. That doesn't make them right.

I hate to break it to you, but Vader was a Sith before the PT and he was Anakin ( and thus human ) before the PT.

 

But the 'heresy' DOESN'T contradict the Force's OT portrayal; that's what makes it such a great story development. It merely contradicts certain characters' interpretations of said portrayal. In much the same way that "Vader is Luke's father" doesn't contradict the character's SW portrayal so much as what certain characters said and/or believed about him.

 

Um . . . I hate to break it to you, but I (perpetrator of the so-called "Force heresy" you've been stamping your feet about) have actually sat in a room, with George Lucas and Howard Roffman, Sue Rostoni and Shelly Shapiro, and spent a couple hours going into considerable detail about Jedi, Sith, the nature of the dark side, and the concept of the Force.

And you . . . haven't.

You should try to keep that in mind.

It is not a violation of my confidentiality agreement to inform you that nothing in that conversation invalidates anything from Traitor, nor from Shatterpoint -- and, of course, Revenge of the Sith and Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor were both written with that conversation firmly in mind.

And if you can't see how the various depictions of the Force in those four books (and, for that matter, in 90% of the EU) fit together without contradiction, then I can't help you. I'm just trying to close this argument off before people start shouting.

Seriously (really, really seriously: I'm sorry my book ran over your dog. That wasn't my intention. I was just trying to write a good book.


Just so you know: I really, really do like you people. That's why I keep coming back here. Even people who want to jump up and down on the necks of my novels. Stryker, Arawn Fenn, Robimus. Jadesfire (think that was her name. Hated Trator. HATED it). You're all included. Especially the ones who hate me. Because you care. Even if you're angry, you angry because you give a damn.

Because the fights on this board are about the quality of story, not about who's slashfic has Luke . . . uh . . . I dunno the proper SWism.

Anyway: folks like you all are the real reason I write books.

I just thought you might like to know.



By the way . . .

I'd like to add something to the general discussion of the NJO. But i'm not going to do it rght now, as there are things to see and people to do. You know what I mean.

But I will say this, as a preview: the NJO absolutely changed my (you'll forgive the expression) kriffing life.

And I am very grateful for that.


[EXTENSIVELY EDITED: so I don't sound like snippy jackass]

 

Seriously, you just made my day.

And I say that as an Englishman who is only twenty minutes into a new one.

 

The problem with "eye for an eye" vengeance is that it often doesn't stop because both sides continue to go after the eye. It doesn't matter who starts it, because the other side will get revenge and then the original party will seek it for this new offense and so on and so on until generations later people are fighting and they don't even know which side started it or what the original subject matter of the war was. Granted, if you killed every last YV, you'd think that would settle the matter. But the risk you take is that sympathizers will rear up and stand in the shoes of those destroyed, seeking vengeance on their behalf. That is why some feel it best to be the bigger man, show mercy and stop the revenge ball from rolling before it gets going. You still risk those YV you spare deciding to undertake revenge down the line, but the idea is that they will look upon the mercy shown (realizing the total loss they could have sustained) as well the losses sustained by the other side, and consider letting the past lie so that some modicum of peace can prevail and everyone can rebuild.

Another factor is that if you practice genocide against the YV once they are defeated and at your mercy - then you place yourself on a level with them in the sense of being a villain. You are going overboard and destroying where there is neither threat nor need. I understand that one could argue the need in terms of a future threat, but there are far better ways to deal with that than genocide, imo.

There are definitely differing schools of thought on this, so it is not to say your right or wrong, but merely to offer a different view.

---

The NJO in generally offered engaging reading - like almost all of the EU for me. There were a few books that were less to my personal liking than others - but that is likely true for many. I did swear off the Star Wars EU after SBS and didn't pick up another book until I heard Stover had written Traitor. I read it and was sucked back in and re-caught up and continued reading. A lot of the enchantment was missing from the EU for me after Anakin's character was eliminated, but it still had momentary perks here and there and some of the reading remained engaging. It never quite got that spark back though, which is odd because I didn't feel all that invested in the character - but it is one of those things that hit me only after he was taken away. I hadn't realized how much he had balanced out the other characterizations for me.

Apart from that, I liked the Idea of the YV as an enemy force overall. I tend to attach to oddball and strange characters - some of the Vong included. I have no idea why Cunningham's writing of Khalee Lah made him a compelling character to me, but he was. Another to my personal long list of short-lived and (mostly) unimportant characters. There were others, but while I found some interesting, there were points where I thought the writing of various authors focused too much on the Vong to the point where it became somewhat redundant. I thought Luke was given too much of a back seat at times and I found that a number of characters developed in ways that were not to my liking. It almost felt to me like Anakin's death was all there was - and after that the creative team went back into the think tank with only Jacen in their pocket for the future. So there

 

Sorry if this makes me sound like one of the guys from the SNL Shatner "Get a life!" sketch, but would it violate the agreement to answer one of the following:

-When you wrote Traitor, was it with the idea in mind that Vergere was leading Jacen towards becoming Sith?
-Did you consider the expanded view of the Force Jacen brought by the end of NJO a positive development for the Jedi?
-Were you surprised to see Jacen become a Sith in Legacy of the Force?

And if you can't answer any of those, is there a way to rephrase the question so that you CAN answer it?

 

Thanks Matt. It's cool that you care enough to talk and correspond with the fans about this stuff.

Still haven't found Blade of Tyshalle...and I'm still looking

 

Lousy Blade of Tyshalle... I spent ages looking for that book, and finally had to bite the bullet and order an old libray copy on E-Bay. It's sitting on my desk right now, laminate, stamps and all... and given my usually fussy prediliction towards the condition of my books, that should go so way to demonstrating how much I wanted to own that damn book.

Oh yeah, NJO... um. I enjoyed it. Except for the parts that I didn't. <_< >_>

 

Amazon has it.

Not for cheap, mind you.

 

I'm a student. Cheap is a necessity.

 

There's a book, and then there's what people take from it.

Mindor has passages expressing a viewpoint which is congruent with my own.

Shatterpoint actually has the most elegant summary of how internal and external work together that I've seen in any of these books.

However, sometimes on the Internets one sees a sentiment which seems to deny the external altogether.

Haven't read it, but the street says it's good.

 

I doubt it.

I am happy to indulge in generalities, up to a point. Specifics will always be a problem. So it's better if I don't answer any of those kinds of questions.

[And for those of you with questions about my books -- the kind I can answer, anyway -- please stop over to my "Authors & Artists" thread on this very same site. I'd rather not derail this discussion, which I hope to return to with something more on-topic. Cheers! And, as always . . . pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.]

 

Whie I've got you here: are you familiar with the parable of Five Blind Men and the Elephant?

 

Yes.

 

Cool.

Now if anybody asks, you have to explain it.

 

I have to say that one of the major reasons I love Traitor and the NJO in general is the fact it strived to be different.

Stover, I love the fact you like these discussions. It was your book (along with SbS) that caused so much controversy. I think that it good because if it didn't would be discussing it how many years later?

It broke the relm of the Force. It was always so mystical for us. It's like life and religion for us. We always think that there are rights and wrongs but its how you perceive them and how you act that makes you evil or good.

I think that is what the NJO was trying to do. It was trying to say that the Force is just light and dark. It encompassed everything and the fact that the Yuuzhan Vong weren't "part" of it. From the beginning it baffled me, and Traitor in sorts explained that.

I am actually starting to re read it after I finish the latest book.

And I just remember reading it and going...wow. I never thought of it that way. I can't elaborate more until I get back to the book but I have to say I am enjoying the NJO more now than I did ten years ago when it started. It's has completely different meaning!