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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Lit I think, if anything, Vector Prime should be the point of divergence from the sequel trilogy.

Discussion in 'Literature' started by IG_2000, Apr 13, 2013.

  1. JediMatteus

    JediMatteus Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Sep 16, 2008
    your so called hyperspace communication is not that dependable ou in the outer rim. And all this happened quickly. The whole war was done in 5 years. I don't think any facts came in about Sperindal until Leia mentions it. If they had concrete info from hyperpace com, then they would have known Leia was telling the truth. i still think politics played a big part in this, and i do think the core worlds are rather insulated from the rest of the galaxy. It all made plausible sense to me. But it was the force philosophies on display really for the first time with Anakin and Jacen that i thought was fascinating over all, and i loved the depth of the vong tech. There was a lot great about this series, even if you don't think it is 100% realistic. It is sci fi. Yes there needs to be some realistic qualities even in sci fi, but i think it was realistic enough. this just showed how blind and stubborn the senate really was.
     
  2. Darth_Pevra

    Darth_Pevra Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    May 21, 2008
    I don't have to like that democracy was painted in such a ridiculously bad way. If you read the NJO you are basically forced to admit the Empire would be better for the galaxy.

    I find the politics extremely implausible, both in the Senate and also in the Jedi order. It doesn't have to be realistic but not everyone in power should act like an idiot all the time.
     
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  3. Starkeiller

    Starkeiller Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 5, 2004
    I, personally, find it both fascinating and realistic. Fascinating because many people do want the Empire back after the Vong War, and realistic because, if a government like the New Republic existed, it'd be as idiotic and willfully blind as its fictional counterpart.
     
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  4. Darth_Pevra

    Darth_Pevra Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    May 21, 2008
    So you think dictatorship is a better form of government? :rolleyes:[face_not_talking]
     
  5. StarWarsFan91

    StarWarsFan91 Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 14, 2008
    He is not saying that, he is just saying democracy is flawed, and democracies can make mistakes that can lead to their own destruction. That doesn't mean democracy or a Republic (not a full democracy) isn't the form of government that should be used, it just means that in practically all forms of government, mistakes can me made which would lead to ruin.

    Obviously a democracy or Republic is a better idea then a dictatorship where only a few rule the many, and better then a monarchy, but that doesn't mean democracy is perfect.

    Remember democracy is a product of Man, but Man isn't perfect at all, all of us make mistakes, not always do the right thing, same goes for governments which are controlled by these flawed people.
     
  6. Darth_Pevra

    Darth_Pevra Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    May 21, 2008
    Of course they can make mistakes, but what Borsk Failure and his colleagues do in the first half of the war is nothing but making mistakes. 95% of their decisions are absolutely insane.
     
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  7. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    And been deemed as evil incarnate as happened in the wake of the Sernpidal attack because the Vong were hurt! All together now: Awwwwwww!

    [​IMG]

    Don't really see how anyone can defend the conduct of the NR senators in NJO. I really liked the scene in DW that addressed this - quite a few should have been lynched! Relative to their appalling crimes of pursuing self-interest at the expense of their constituents to the tune of letting millions die, it would have been merciful.

    What they deserve? Perhaps a long span in an embrace of pain or maybe that Twi-Lek solution of sticking them in a bacta vat and then electrocuting it, take it so far, let the bacta then heal them, then fry 'em again. They were, in great numbers, traitorous scum to the people who trusted them to look after them.

    Yes, Fey'Lya, this was what you fought the Empire for wasn't it? Not for any moral reason but because they were on top and he wanted to be!
     
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  8. Starkeiller

    Starkeiller Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 5, 2004
    No. But the simple fact that an even worse form of government exists doesn't make democracy good, just less bad.

    Thank you for writing all that. That's what I was saying indeed.

    That was the whole point of the prequel trilogy:

    Democracy sucks.

    Which led to the point of the original trilogy:

    Dictatorships suck way more.
     
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  9. Darth_Pevra

    Darth_Pevra Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    May 21, 2008
    If you really think this is realistic behavior of a democracy I pity you. Watch some Babylon 5.

    @ Jedi Ben
    You'd think letting the Vong win would spell doom for them tooooo. But no, all the special princes and princesses of the senate were apparently certain that they wouldn't be made slaves by the Vong. No Sir! Because as we all know, the Vong care sooooo much about the wellbeing of their enemies.

    Maybe if you become a Senator you automatically lose your sense of self preservation. Or maybe they feed you these drugs and ...

    ah, damn it.
     
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  10. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    One of the best suggestions for the Vong success is that they ran a blitzkrieg campaign and waged total war, the likes of which the NR was utterly unfamilar with.

    But this doesn't let the politicos off the hook for their idiocy. In wartime the smart politician does not interfere with military operations. In NJO, the politicians never stopped doing that for 2 years.

    Frankly, the Vong should have won NJO, but then, post-SBS the same Bozo Ray that had been fixed on the NR was turned on the Vong, thus they miraculously didn't crush the life out of the NR who they had by the throat. DW also radically scaled back the Vong from their high power level, which had been preceded somewhat by EOV2, but TUF then gave them a load of power-ups.

    For me, the long, drawn-out 9-book descent to SBS, with another 4 books before DW turns it around, doesn't make the victory all that. NJO is basically Vong attack, NR pushed to brink of extinction, rallies, Vong defeated! They had 20 books, masses of space to do something more than that. The stuff that came into it at the end was a case in point - Choka destroys the holonet, reversing the initiative that the NR had seized. Had less time been spent on the Vong road to victory, more capable politicians, a united NR/Jedi front there could have been a war worthy of the name - the Vong would have welcomed it!
     
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  11. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    That was one of the biggest problems I had with NJO. It was announced in 1999, as this big 5-year arc, just as B5 had pulled off its big coup. Thus by linking NJO to that, a statement of ambition was made that, in hindsight, could do naught but disappoint me greatly. Despite an infinite effects budget, despite the unlimited scope of what books enable - NJO was, for all its marketing and radical one-off deaths, stupyfying conservative when it was marketed as a balls-to-the-wall apocalyptic epic! Ah, if only.

    The other element is that the finale of NJO demands follow-through. Save for the Legacy comics and X-Wing Mercy Kill, it didn't get it. If you're interested in seeing how the Vong actually get rehabilitated, you're crap out of luck!
     
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  12. Darth_Pevra

    Darth_Pevra Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    May 21, 2008
    You know what would've been awesome? A real Londo Mollari character. He was an ******* traitor but at least he was believable and very, very smart.

    Oh, if only!

    Imagine a Vong war in which the Vong don't thoughtlessly destroy everything but instead play the political parties against each other, weakening the unity of the Republic in the process. Divide and conquer instead of "kill everything".

    So far they've only done this in SBS (book I'm currently at).
     
  13. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    re: Divide and conquer

    Well, they did, that's what the Jedi demand was all about. But why would you trust the Vong to honour anything after Ithor?

    DT1 established the threat more than well enough - billions of Vong invading, each equal to a Jedi and there's only 100 of them!
     
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  14. Darth_Pevra

    Darth_Pevra Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    May 21, 2008
    Jupp, you're correct.
     
  15. The_Phantom_Calamari

    The_Phantom_Calamari Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 10, 2011
    I don't think the point of the prequel trilogy was that democracy sucks. The point was that democracy doesn't work if no one involved in the process actually believes in it. And then the people who intentionally sabotaged the institution can point to its dysfunction as an excuse to replace it with a dictatorship.

    Simply saying "Democracy sucks" is exactly the kind of talk that leads to people abandoning it completely.
     
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  16. Starkeiller

    Starkeiller Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 5, 2004
    Well, shoot me, I'm not a fan of democracy. I'm not saying that it should be abandoned, but that's only because the alternatives are even more horrific, not because it's in any way a good system.


    --

    Lest there be any misunderstandings, let me make it clear that I am referring to modern representative democracy on a national level, not the original city-state version.
     
  17. Son of a Bith

    Son of a Bith Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 28, 2013
    Also keep in mind that depocracy in theory is much different than democracy in action in the real world.
     
  18. Sinrebirth

    Sinrebirth Mod-Emperor of the EUC, Lit, RPF and SWC star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 15, 2004
    Bad example. Tarkin destroyed Despayre, and nobody noticed. Tarkin refused to destroyed Dantooine, even further rimward, because, again, nobody would care.

    But didn't, because the Yuuzhan Vong had a terrific habit of jumping throughout the galaxy and attacking random targets. See; Atzerri, Fondor, Malastare, Melida/Daan, Makem Te. All worlds which were not in logical scope of being targeted and then they were attacked. The Yuuzhan Vong were able to attack anywhere. The fear factor caused the Senate to keep their forces home.

    Personally, I think dictatorship is a better form of government in a time of crisis and/or war. Which doesn't make me a nutter, btw. Parts of democracy are suspended in war. The British Government suspended democracy for the entirety of the Second World War. The Jedi suspended democracy during the last four centuries of the New Sith War. So in that respect, the Empire probably looks like a great option. We're have decades of warfare on the cards. The Republic makes a royal mess from the Mandalorian Civil War onwards. I would be inclined to side with the Empire, to be honest... And then the Empire loses the plot, and the people decide they prefer democracy, now the crisis is over. Then another crisis occurs, and the Empire comes off smelling of roses again. The Alliance ends up influenced by those pressures, and it isn't until Daala that the mentality is completely torn apart once again (I hope).
     
  19. Iron_lord

    Iron_lord Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    Churchill put it as:

    "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

     
  20. Mechalich

    Mechalich Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 2, 2010
    The issues of the NR response during the Yuuzhan Vong War (which has gotten rather off-topic but whatever) is not the specifics of that response, or the reasoning behind that response, but how that whole aspect of the storyline sabotaged the narrative. The way the NJO is structured the Yuuzhan Vong cannot win against a unified galaxy. The GA, with a fraction of the territory and resources and considerable war-weariness, is grinding the Yuuzhan Vong down thoroughly (one of the weaknesses of the conclusion is that TUF merely shortens a war that has already been won). The various revisionist narratives offered in post-NJO material about how the 'Empire would have crushed the Vong' are problematic because they are substantially correct.

    This whole concept undermines the Yuuzhan Vong as the existential threat to the galaxy they were originally intended to be. Instead of 'we have to all come together to barely have a chance to survive' (the Mass Effect calculus), it's 'if we'd been united we would have swatted this.'

    There's no one person at fault for this. The reason the government cracks is partly because with Stackpole writing the military narrative the soldiers are going to be at least marginally competent so something has to give elsewhere that hits in Dark Tide. It's also a consequence of how the Yuuzhan Vong are structured - because they are dependent on biotech that is completely incompatible with the galaxy's industry the New Republic is conducting what is basically a scorched earth campaign across every, single, system, by doing absolutely nothing. The utter fanaticism of the Yuuzhan Vong furthers this - considering that they, as a species, have absolutely no use for prisoners other than as slaves or sacrifices to their gods, working with them never really comes across as believable. It was many factors all building together that hamstrung the NJO storyline.
     
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  21. Starkeiller

    Starkeiller Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 5, 2004
    Indeed. But the question is: how do you get the dictators to step down after the war is over and they insist they must "ensure a smooth transition to a civilian government"? In such case, a tyrannicide must step in and kill the dictator. But alas, modern politics have become too complicated even for something as simple as the targeted assassination of a ruler who has abused their power by a small group of conspirators.

    The Jedi have been known to become dictators themselves after a war: the Pius Dea rebellion, the early New Sith Wars, and nearly the Clone Wars, resulted in a Jedi dictatorship. Anti-Jedi sentiment in the NJO is entirely justified when viewed from that angle. And to those who would cry out: "But, the Empire blew up planets!" others would reply: "The Jedi blew up suns!"
     
  22. Grand Admiral Crumb

    Grand Admiral Crumb Jedi Padawan star 1

    Registered:
    Apr 25, 2013
    Starkeiller I haven't read very much Clone Wars (only Shatterpoint really), but judging from the movies I don't the Jedi would have tried to usurp the entire Republic. We'll never know for sure what would have happened if Mace Windu had killed Palpatine, but I suspect they would have attempted a peaceful settlement with the CIS and eventually discovered the majority of the events leading up the the Clone Wars were orchestrated by Palpatine himself. Anytime the Jedi Order has taken direct control (not merely a Jedi becoming Chancellor) it has been with the preservation of the Republic's ideals in mind as far as I know.

    As for the Kyp Durron incident, I would reply: He was unskilled in the Force, and it was merely a fledging order that was able to deal with it. With the direct cause of the size of the order as Palpatine's fault.
     
  23. Starkeiller

    Starkeiller Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 5, 2004
    I was trying to express the position of the average galactic citizen. They believed Palpatine when he said the Jedi were trying to usurp power (and knowing Mace Windu, I believe that anyway -- Yoda agrees with me), and, as people usually do, they would have ignored the subtleties of Kyp Durron's situation -- which were that he was influenced by a ghost? Who'd have believed that anyway? All they'd know was that a Jedi destroyed a star system.

    Also, don't forget that what the Jedi did during the New Sith Wars wasn't benign at all. They took control of the Republic, barricaded the Core and militarized the galaxy, in a crisis that started out as an internal Jedi conflict anyway. Again, the average citizen would have understood the situation as the Jedi screwing everyone else.
     
  24. Darth_Pevra

    Darth_Pevra Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    May 21, 2008
    If they have two brain cells they must realize that defending alone won't keep the Vong at bay forever, especially as the Vong would replenish all their resources on the captured planets. You are implying that the entire Senate consists of scared animals without any critical thinking skills whatsoever. Sheep.

    Is that a view we want in books for kids?

    The OT and even the PT had completely different values and the EU authors all but stomp on these during the NJO, as the books are written to make democracy look ridiculously bad. Do these dangerous lines of thought really deserve a place in Star Wars?
     
  25. Grand Admiral Crumb

    Grand Admiral Crumb Jedi Padawan star 1

    Registered:
    Apr 25, 2013
    I think you're addressing the crux of the problem perhaps without being aware of it. For millenia the Jedi have been super secretive about pretty much everything they do, and that's caused more than its share of problems. Though I'm not sure how you might go about fixing it, like Yoda said, if they general public was aware the Jedi's powers were being diminished, by whatever means, other groups would have attempted to take advantage of the situation in their own ways. Though, given what happened I find it hard to believe that it would have been worse than what ending up happening.
     
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