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

Lit What would you guys change or keep about Jacen's fall or where would you take him as a character?

Discussion in 'Literature' started by tylrkrby, Jul 29, 2013.

  1. Trisdin Gheer

    Trisdin Gheer Jedi Master star 2

    Registered:
    Jun 18, 2013
    I don't think I could take Jaina seriously as a long-term villain.
     
  2. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Sep 30, 2012
    If you ask me, female Sith > male Sith
     
  3. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    Sinny's one of a kind but bought into the central concepts of LOTF - a lot of people didn't.

    FS - You could try, but not all endeavors are wise undertakings!
     
  4. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    Not even after that section in Traitor that blew the crap out of Dark Journey?
     
  5. Trisdin Gheer

    Trisdin Gheer Jedi Master star 2

    Registered:
    Jun 18, 2013
    Oh, I could see her going dark, I just couldn't buy her as a LOTF-style Big Bad. I don't see her climbing the command chain like Jacen did, all that stuff.
     
  6. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Sep 30, 2012
    Jacen being a Big Bad was the dumbest thing ever.
     
  7. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    (my emphasis)

    By all accounts, that stuff was very un-artistically done!
     
  8. Force Smuggler

    Force Smuggler Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    Ugh. Bloodlines is one of my favorite books ever but for Jacen to get rank of Corporal, the GAG and command of Rogue Squadron is way too much. Besides he wasn't even in the Military like Jaina who has been in the Military since the early days of the NJO.
     
  9. DigitalMessiah

    DigitalMessiah Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 17, 2004
    I enjoyed seeing Caedus pass a law that allowed him to change the laws at will. It was a really thoughtful commentary on democratic governments and so much better than Jar Jar Binks calling for Chancellor Palpatine to be given emergency powers.
     
  10. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    Or rather both are a poor relation of Hitler's Enabling Act.
     
  11. Grade

    Grade Jedi Master star 1

    Registered:
    Jan 17, 2013
    As long as Traviss or Denning involved, it could have potential.
     
    Force Smuggler likes this.
  12. DigitalMessiah

    DigitalMessiah Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 17, 2004
    Of course.

    And Anakin was a guy so there's no way that Jaina could have been the Sith Lord.
     
    Force Smuggler likes this.
  13. Force Smuggler

    Force Smuggler Force Ghost star 7

    Registered:
    Sep 2, 2012
    It might not be wise but I might just be crazy enough to try it anyway!
     
  14. Hansa

    Hansa Jedi Knight star 1

    Registered:
    Jan 19, 2013
    I thought him going to the Dark Side was a bad move. In my world, he wouldn't have become Caedus. He would have become the Grand Master succeeding Luke and continuing the Jedi order with the experience of the suffering in the Vong War. He would have inspired great Jedi like Kol Skywalker. Jaina would help found the Imperial Knights with her lover, the Emperor. Which happened. Ben himself would eventually succeed Jacen.
     
  15. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Sep 30, 2012
    Caedus is a terrible character made worse by getting a nine-book series devoted to him. He is a poison to the EU!
     
  16. DigitalMessiah

    DigitalMessiah Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 17, 2004
    The Conclave on Zonama Sekot was setting up the Jedi order to be very similar to the Je'daii order, not in the philosophical sense but in the way that it's not strictly government peacekeepers. As a Jedi, you are supposed to follow the path that the Force has set for you, which may very well involve peacekeeping in the Galactic Alliance, or it could involve myriad other possibilities. In that way, Qui-Gon Jinn is really the prototypical Jedi for the direction that the new Jedi order took in The Unifying Force. Dark Nest forcefully put the Jedi order on the track of emulating the old Jedi order, with Luke declaring himself the grandmaster and stating "Jedi first or GTFO." There goes diversity in characterization of Jedi!

    I was expecting Jacen's characterization after The Unifying Force to be very similar to Qui-Gon Jinn, and I expected him to share the relationship with Ben that Qui-Gon had with Obi-Wan. Alas...
     
  17. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2012


    Probably not but you can use it for tanning:D
     
  18. Hansa

    Hansa Jedi Knight star 1

    Registered:
    Jan 19, 2013
    Qui-Gon is my favourite Jedi, so I'm biased with your opinion DigitalMessiah

    And he was very Je'daii in his thinking.

    But yeah. He became a very usual, Jedi turned Sith. Not in an original way, either. He gets tempted. Goes to war. Gets power. Kills a loved one (Mara). And eventually falls to someone he loves. A formula. And his character was dry there, not interesting.

    *Fumes off*
     
    darklordoftech likes this.
  19. darth fluffy

    darth fluffy Jedi Master star 2

    Registered:
    Dec 27, 2012
    Were you being sarcastic?
     
    darklordoftech likes this.
  20. DigitalMessiah

    DigitalMessiah Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 17, 2004
    The core problem of Jacen's fall is that over the course of the thirty-three novels that comprised the Young Jedi Knights and New Jedi Order series, Jacen had very specific relationships with his parents and his uncle Luke. In the Dark Nest, Jacen hooks up with his teenage sweetheart and impregnates her, and in the first of many parallels with the prequels, has to keep the relationship and child a secret. The problem is that this conceit that Denning introduces two books prior to Legacy of the Force then completely overwhelms the relationships that Jacen built with his parents and his uncle Luke in the prior thirty-three novels. The plot is rushed and the premise is completely unearned in the writing. It makes sense that Jacen would develop an attachment to his daughter, but he's suddenly willing to murder his parents despite that relationship not being altered in the text? We have to accept that there was some sort of strain in that relationship that was unseen, or that there was no strain at all and Jacen was completely changed as a person, for the worse, from having a daughter? Not to mention the excuse that Jacen's five year journey provided to fundamentally alter who he was off-page. Completely unearned.

    Dark Nest, Legacy of the Force, and Fate of the Jedi are bad storytelling, first and foremost, because their stories and character arcs are completely unearned. The writers are in such a rush to unveil their stories that they don't bother realistically setting them up, either from a logical or characterization standpoint.
     
    GrandMasterKatarn and Zeta1127 like this.
  21. darklordoftech

    darklordoftech Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Sep 30, 2012
    Of interest to me is that LOTF was at one point set in the Old Republic era. Does anyone else think that that's a better era for Sith than post-TUF?
     
  22. AlyxDinas

    AlyxDinas Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 12, 2010
    It would have afforded the writers a hell of a lot more creative freedom while also saving the post-NJO EU from a lot of issues. It would have been prudent, in the long run. Set up two eras that people can invest in. Give post NJO stuff time to breathe. DNT shouldn't have even happened. Things needed time to ferment.
     
  23. DigitalMessiah

    DigitalMessiah Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 17, 2004
    The Lost Tribe really isn't writing to the setting as armies of Sith are an anachronism of the movie era, and something which Lucas forbade the New Jedi Order series from using due to the de facto Rule of Two (as opposed to the Expanded Universe de jure Rule of Two). Want to write an army of Sith in the film era even though it's an anachronism? Contrive up a Lost Tribe of them marooned on a single planet for the past five thousand years. I can't complain too much because JJM's e-books were excellent.
     
    darklordoftech likes this.
  24. The Compeer

    The Compeer Jedi Knight star 2

    Registered:
    Jun 12, 2013

    ITA with this. What's more, it's also why I don't understand Denning's reason for preserving old characters solely to serve as new villains, instead of keeping supporting characters around. When any type or number of villains you want are only a retcon away from existing, what's the point of derailing existing characters for that purpose? More to the point, why couldn't Caedus have been any random Jedi who rose to prominence in the fight between the GA and the Confederation? Jacen wasn't true to himself as it was, so why did it have to be him, then? Retcon in a new Sith, or else Retcon in a new Jedi to turn evil, don't destroy what's already there and serving other, better purposes in stories.
     
  25. DigitalMessiah

    DigitalMessiah Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 17, 2004
    I wouldn't have any problem at all with Jacen Solo as characterized in Dark Nest... if he wasn't Jacen Solo. I enjoyed the characterization, but it was a cheat. It didn't follow from The Unifying Force, no justification was given for it, it was expansive character development that occurred off-page, and calling it character development is charitable because it doesn't fit the core concept of the character anymore than if The Joiner King opened up with Han Solo replacing Cal Omas as Chief of State or Luke Skywalker forgoing his role as the preeminent Jedi to become a smuggler. Jacen being a Jedi that imposes his will on people around him is completely at odds with his "I'll never turn to the dark side. You've failed, your highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me," moment in The Unifying Force in which he rediscovered the absolute nature of the Force, a unity that can only be achieved by complete surrender.

    If it's absolutely necessary for the next major story to have someone fall to the dark side, how about Kyp Durron? He's supposed to approach Luke in pure Force talent. He didn't learn a bunch of cool powers like Jacen did, but then Jacen's five year journey was an invention of Troy Denning's and not at all explicit in The Unifying Force, so Kyp could just as easily have done something similar to fit the plot. And the guy has already done some terrible things. It would be similar to Revan.