Lit Did altering the future kill Jacen?

I don't mean literally, because we all know his sister Jania did this.

What I believe is that when Jacen altered the future, he also altered the chances of him living. He changed the future, so the present would change as well.

We know that the celestial's were in charge of this current, so perhaps they were not so happy that someone altered the future, and decided that Jacen should pay for it.

We know that his actions was like a domino effect that eventually released abeloth.

Any thoughts on this idea?

 

No, because it is a load of osik to think Jacen would actually behave in that manner in the first place.

 

Plagueis and Sidious together changed the Balance of the Force - both dead!

 

When I look at the thread title I can't help thinking:

"I am altering the Force. Pray I don't alter it further."

 

I've brought it up before, but here is where I get confused: why do we blame Jacen for altering the future? All of us change the future by the very act of living our lives. Here is an example from my family's life: Back in '04, my mother was visiting us in NJ. On the day she was to leave, she decided to hop on an earlier flight. When she got back to MN, she stopped by my sister's house for a quick visit. After having lunch, she asked my sister if she could take my niece (she was two) home for a couple of days for some quality 'Grammie' time; my sister was MORE than happy to oblige. (they call them the 'terrible twos' for a reason!) On the drive home, someone ran a stop sign and plowed into her car, killing my niece.

Here is my point: by taking the earlier flight, my mother altered the future. Acting on ideas that seemed like a good idea at the time, my niece died. Do I blame my mother? No. She had no intention of harming her only (at the time) grandkid.

Jacen was acting upon ideas that made sense at the time. He saw the one person he loved more than life standing with the Sith and decided try and change that. I won't go into why I think the ideas presented in FotJ don't make any sense, but I will point out that GrandMaster Skywalker sent Jacen to Centerpoint to disable and destroy it at the beginning of Betrayal. If it is true that Centerpoint was keeping Abeloth in the Maw, why does Luke not more blame for what happened?

EVERYONE changes the future. Luke changed the future by going to Cloud City, Han changed the future by returning to the Death Star, so obviously we don't have a problem with the future changing per se, we only object when it goes south. Did Jacen know about Abeloth? I've not read FotJ, but nothing I've seen on here implies that he did, so to blame him for what happened in FotJ seems disingenuous.

 

Jacen is responsible for the events in FOTJ. His fingerprints are all over it.

 

C'mon, you're going to have to do better than that. Jacen is responsible for Luke getting exiled? Jacen is responsible for the Sith over-running Coruscant? Sith that he didn't even know existed?
Maybe we should blame Anakin. If he hadn't had the stupid idea of going to Myrkr, Jacen wouldn't have gotten captured, he wouldn't have met Vergere and he would now be Crown Prince of Hapes. Again, EVERYONE changes the future.

 

Yeah, because Luke was exiled because of Jacen's actions. How is Jacen not in any way responsible for that?

Yeah, because the Lost Tribe left Kesh due to Ship showing up. Ship was unearthed due to Ben finding it. Ben found it because he was sent on a mission by Jacen.

And of course there's Abeloth's release.

Not sure how avoiding Myrkr would've led to Jacen being Crown Prince of Hapes.

 

I am sorry for your loss, No matter how I answer this post, do know that it has nothing to do personally with you.

-Jacen Can be blamed for attempting to Change the future, to prevent something that may have happened. True we all change the future everyday by the things we do, but we don't see them ahead of Time. Jacen saw what was going to happen in the future, so he changed what he saw to prevent the future.

I know this may hurt, but If you saw the future that your niece was going to die in a car crash. would you attempt to change that out come? Wont you try to do what ever you an to prevent it for ever happening? I think you would, because it is human nature to try to redo something bad that happened.

You raise a valid point here. Jacen's passion to save his daughter is in the best of intentions, And to his mind that would be the correct action.however it does not change the fact that he attempted to play with the future. throughout star wars there are countless scenes where the future is shown, but no one alters them.

None of these shows that Luke knew that going to cloud city was the right thing, he did not have a vision saying what will happen there. Han returned to the death star because he wanted to help, not because he changed the future, for he did not see the future for him to change it.

The problem that we have is that Jacen altered the future to prevent a vision that he had. By altering the future he unknowing released abeloth into the galaxy. His actions to change the future led to her release, did he know what he was doing? best guess is no, because as many have pointed out he would not have done what he did, if he knew abeloth would come out.

 

Blame Troy Denning for Jacen's death. Author fiat for the kill.

 

I am sorry, but if your going to blame the author... then you have nothing constructive to say here. That is just a poor excuse to try and explain why a characters dies.

 

um please do not use "bold caps" when you post. It comes off on forums that you are shouting at people. thanks.

 

I'm going to disagree here because it was Denning who pitched the idea, and Denning who wrote the bulk of the story. Over on the SOS site, there is endless debate how various authors have changed Luke, and Striker was merely pointing out disgust with this particular author ruining what could have been a great post-TUF story.

Of course I would; which is why I fail to see why Jacen is gang-tackled for trying to prevent what he saw. As an aside, thanks for your sentiment. I am not trying to get a sympathy vote, I just wanted to show that EVERYTHING affects the future.

As to Luke, I think you are drawing a fine line here. 'Han and Leia will die if I don't.' This implies that he DID see a possible outcome and acted on it. Actually, there really aren't that many scenes where people are shown the future, and Luke has more of them than anyone. He saw himself on a planet in one of the Thrawn books and then went there. Is this not changing the future? He wouldn't have gone there without the vision.

What would have happened if Jacen wouldn't have done what he did? I've brought this up before, but what if he had done nothing on that damned asteroid and Luke would've died later in LotF? The same people that berate Jacen for acting in LotF would be the same one's saying: "Typical Jacen, always afraid of DOING anything."

 

SiouxFan one of the first things we learned is that the future is always in motion. No vision is guaranteed to happen, or to happen exactly as it first appears, and Allana's future is really a perfect example of that. People get on Jacen because we've seen the fallout of his actions (War, death, Abeloth, Luke's Exile, the One Sith, etc.) Among a sea of choices he chose the extreme and to do it on his own. I don't think anyone is saying Jacen should've sat around and done nothing, but like with Anakin he chose an extreme and ended up screwing things up on an even larger scale.

 

Allana's two Force Visions (to date!) have both been acted on - it's difficult to tell if they were 'changing the future' as such or Force Warnings as to what would happen (contrary to the Will of the Force) if she didn't intervene.

 

- I will only say that it can not be denning who gets the blame here alone, his editors, supervisors and others would also have to take the blame. But this is the biggest problem with essentially Fan made content, to many authors have there own ideas as to what the character should become.

There are some out there that say that if you change one aspect of the past, your future would change as well. But Jacen had the ability to see the future, and he did not like the outcome, so he changed it because he felt that by doing so he could prevent that future from happening. Jacen is being targeted because he changed something out of fear, not because it would happen, and he payed the ultimate price for it. he basically altered a future that may not have happened at all. In real life we can not compare, because there is no one as of yet that can see the future, come back and change it, so it never happens. True everything effects the future, but knowing that future and preventing it, changes everyone's outcome.

I believe we are on two different wave links here. Seeing the future and flowing with it is one thing. seeing the future and changing it is another thing. Luke seeing that Han and leia were in danger is not the same as luke seeing that they are in trouble and altering how they got there. Jacen saw the future, and altered what happens in the present so the future can not happen. luke never changed the flow of the force by following it. that is where the differences are.

the future is always in motion. In other words I do not know what would have happened, and No one will know what would of happened.

 

Man, I read this title and thought of Jacen flow waking himself out of existence somehow....

Or just experimenting with a force power and it blowing up in his face somehow.

 

Except it's true. It sucks. And it's true. Poor excuse? No. The sad truth. A bad rehash of the PT.

 

obviously blaming an author takes away the in-universe realism. We always are trying to make an authors foolish choices blend into the multiverse in a meaningful way. Sometimes things are botched so badly that you almost do not have any other recourse but to blame an author.

 

And that's the case, here. Sometimes you gotta step back, shift into Doylist mode and say, "The author did it."

 

So am I to assume that we aren't stoning Jacen because he did something, we are only stoning him because the actions he took led to unintended consequences? Can we blame Jacen for Da'ala, Abeloth, the One Sith, all of which happened AFTER he died? I doubt that he planned on any of these things to happen, so why blame him?

Using Wise's example: We don't KNOW that he screwed things up on a larger scale. The Corellians were clearly itching for a fight. How would that war have played out? Coruscant and the Jedi were not doing much to stop the madness their, and some (Han, Wedge) were actively ENCOURAGING it. To think that they would have simply played nice if not for Jacen Solo getting involved is awfully naive.

 

I think that we should, perhaps (and if possible), come to a consensus about what Jacen actually did, and how it changed the future. Whether the changed future was on the whole, despite all that has happened since, better for the Galaxy than the original timeline.

Any thoughts?

Mine is that Luke would have died if Jacen had not killed that other Jedi at Lumila's asteroid - is Luke's survival better for the Galaxy than Luke dead - I think so! He seems to be the only one atm that can unify the Jedi Order!

 

No, because as I understand it, you can only alter possibilities. Not "The furture" ,as the future has not yet occured.

Thats the problem with stories that try to change "the furture", from the present. Doubly true for the distant future. Jacen, if Dennings newest retcon/explination for Jacens poor character development/reasoning/motivation in LOTF. Allana is some point in the furture would fall for some unkown reason, which makes no sense because as of LOTF Allana was 4. So Jacen is tryng to alter a future 10,20,30,40,50 of if you look at Dukoo 90 years ahead of him.

And 1,001 things can occur to the girl to send her over the deep ind between 4 and what ever age she expires.