Lit NJO Luke Skywalker annoying!

So I'm working my way through the New Jedi Order books again.
Luke is so annoying in this series! He won't take any damn action! People are dying left right and center and he's worried about aggression

Even when the Jedi Order itself is threatened he more worried about hiding and burying his head in the sand than actually fighting evil.

This isn't the Luke from the movies, or the Thrawn trilogy. This is a half senile coward that has lost all compassion for normal people. He sits around contemplating the force all day while the real work is left to heros like Kyp and Anakin to actually DO SOMETHING.

The Jedi of the prequel era took up the fight against the separatists. Obi-Wan and Yoda taught Luke to continue the fight against the Empire. Luke teaches his students to sit around and meditate.

What has happened to Luke?
It seems that Zahn reigned in his powers in the Hand of Thrawn books and the other authors have ran with that... over a cliff.

 

Ah. You need this thread:

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/sos-save-our-skywalker-luke-skywalker-v3.28225365/

See you over there!

 

Because the SOS is an unwieldy monster I do not wish to enter, I'm just gonna put on record I think some of the early authors of the NJO initially weren't sure what to do with him. I think there was an issue early on about whether or not to have him step out of the limelight and let the Next Generation hold center stage, or have Luke play soul hero again. And because they weren't sure, they sort of half-assed it.

 

Though one could argue that the OJO's readiness to be drawn into a war like that was their biggest mistake.
But yes, I agree that Luke was handled rather badly in the early NJO... all those Jedi Council scenes with the same debate over and over again without really going anywhere annoyed me to no end.
No comparison to my utter annoyance with Emo Luke in LotF, though.

 

I know the SOS Luke thread can sometimes be... hard to keep up with (its at 600+ pages by now), but I basically chalk the poor handling of Luke up to the authors/editors not knowing how to handle a supposedly super-powerful Jedi Master Luke Skywalker. It was a problem for the NJO, it became an even bigger problem in LotF and FotJ reached new lows with no hope in sight.

In theory, if Luke decided to go defeat the Vong, he could jump into a starfighter, shoot down every Vong ship and then hack every Vong warrior left to pieces with his lightsaber. But then the war would be over with far too soon, so instead they drag out the ethical question of whether attacking the Vong counts as a darkside action, and don't bother defending people that much except in a passive, non-direct manner, leading to the Great River of running away.

And whenever Kyp advocates actually attacking the Vong, the books portray him as a borderline darkside crazy about to fall apart that Luke and the Solos shun and/or hold up as what could happen to the Jedi if they stray from the right and proper path (whatever that is). Anakin Solo has the action hero thing down at least, but he's tripped up by whining Jacen and then later events happen and... yeah. Jaina at least had a pretty good arc going early on, aside from being part of the anti-Kyp camp.

It was annoying in NJO and its a recurring theme in most Del Rey works from NJO onwards. The Jedi can't attack the enemy or else they look evil- whereas everybody else can do whatever they want, and when things go wrong, all the blame goes towards Luke and the Jedi anyway. I think its part of an obsession with keeping the Big Three as the underdogs, even after they basically led the galactic government for several years, so we're left with mostly useless Jedi for most of the early NJO.

 

Except that doesn't make sense either due to the numbers DT1 set up, billions of Vong! All with blaster and lightsaber resistant armour and weaponry. Add in the Force-void that blocks Jedi precognition and you have an enemy that can duel Jedi one-on-one while numbering in the millions!

Invasion does have a far more active Luke but the best he's able to do is slow down the Vong hordes assaulting 1 planet.

No matter how good Luke is, he can only be in one place at once. That, to me, was a more than sufficient limitation and could easily have blossomed into a far more compelling disagreement within the Jedi: Which planets do you choose to save and not when there are only 100 Jedi?

 

That worked out so great for them, didn't it?

 

It would take a lifetime for Luke or any single person to accomplish that.

Also, perhaps Kyp's viewed that way by other characters because that's the way he's acting? He actively advocates taking the fight to the enemy and pushes for other to do the same, without bothering to think of the consequences of such actions, pushing himself extremely close to the Dark Side. Whenever the argument is brought up that it could lead to a Jedi falling to the Dark Side, he brushes it off as being unimportant in the fact of defeating the enemy, when in reality both are equally important. So lets not act as if he was 100% in the right whenever he spoke (Let's also not forget that Vong "Superweapon" incident of his.) Luke wasn't fully right, and neither was Kyp. Both had good points, points that could lead to characters disagreeing with them. Anakin noted this in Edge of Victory 1.

 

NJO was largely meant to develop a newer cast of heroes. But besides that, Luke does do stuff. And when it does, it's largely pretty awesome. When Luke ignites his lightsaber in the NJO, it has weight.

 

I think a big part of the problem was also the fact that the original plan was for Luke to be killed off inVP. After Lucas said they couldn't kill him, they really didn't have a plan or role for Luke, so they sort of "plugged" him into a role that was likely meant for someone else. The characterization certainly didn't fiit Luke. Thus, the SOS thread was started by Skydancer. Sadly, the thread is still needed, as Luke characterizations were even worse in DN and LotF, and pretty bad in FotJ too.

One doesn't have to read the tons of earlier pages to participate in the SOS thread either. Just talk about Luke and his characterizations, pro and con! All are welcome!

 

I tried and failed to think of someone there.
And don't give me this 'Ben Skywalker' balderdash -- that kid is blander than watching paint dry.

 

The Wraiths in Mercy Kill?

 

Jaden Korr & his apprentice, in Crosscurrent & Riptide?

 

As has already been suggested:

Crosscurrent, Riptide and X-Wing: Mercy Kill

 

Leia & Han seem a bit better-done in Millennium Falcon.

 

What is Luke suppose to do?

seriously the major problem with the O3 is that they were never allowed to develop beyond the constraints of their original characters. the difference between a generic movie action hero/ hero of 1,000 faces and a character with actual responsibility to a powerful organization that edges toward the spiritual is not insignificant.

 

This.

Also, I agree with the point that when Luke did something in NJO, you were going down. Remember in Dark Tide I when he dual-wielded his saber and Jacen's? Or when he single-handedly defended one corner of the Dantooine refugee camp against hundreds of enemies? Let's not even mention the final battle with Shimrra. Luke is definitely anything but annoying in NJO. Sure, it took him a while to decide to fight, but Kyp was the one being annoying. Luke was smart. Sure, it led to Anakin's death, but everyone makes mistakes. When Luke finally decided to join the war, the Vong face-planted very quickly.

 

It wouldn't surprise me if Kyp's fall in Jedi Academy Trilogy- was what made Luke so cautious during the early stages of the Vong invasion.

Or even the events of Dark Empire- sure, Leia "brought him back" - but that might not be something that can be relied on.

 

Yeah, there were plenty of things to make Luke cautious in NJO. Even discounting Kyp's and his own fall, he still had Brakiss, Desann, and Kueller to think about.

 

Mustn't forget Kyle, in Mysteries of the Sith.

 

Whilst I do sometimes wish Luke would fight Kyp just annoys me.

 

True, though at that point Kyle was self-trained with Mara, not yet Luke's student. He didn't go to Luke's academy until after the events of MOTS.

 

I wonder how much he told Luke about it.

Either way- Luke has plenty of reason to fear Jedi falling.