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

Lit A Cynical Walk Through the NJO

Discussion in 'Literature' started by Cynical_Ben, Aug 17, 2013.

  1. DigitalMessiah

    DigitalMessiah Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 17, 2004
    There's a lot of stuff that could be done with the Yuuzhan Vong. I'm not going to presume to say what their appeal is to other folks, but I think there's a lot of interesting aspects to them involving their origins, their religion, their caste system, their connection to the Force, as well as ways to utilize them on an individual level such as something which I mentioned some time ago, which was in an alternate post-NJO world pairing a Yuuzhan Vong up with Jacen as a foil. More than that, I really like the idea of them being used collectively as ancillaries of the Jedi Order.

    But just ask yourself: how cool would it be to see Jacen paired up with a Yuuzhan Vong warrior -- perhaps one that has learned how to connect with some measure of the Force -- that has taken the name Ganner?
     
  2. Ackbar's Fishsticks

    Ackbar's Fishsticks Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Aug 25, 2013
    Mine, too.

    The X-wing authors have a thing for taking a character and making him the opposite of his people's stereotype. Asyr Sei'lar, Nrin and Ibitsam, Nawara, Tal'dira, Corran, Tycho, Voort... It's one of the things I like about their books. Scut was the latest in that line.
     
  3. DigitalMessiah

    DigitalMessiah Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 17, 2004
    So I've noticed that in Conquest, Anakin is a gardener, and he uproots some weeds to save a flower.
     
  4. Revanfan1

    Revanfan1 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 3, 2013
    Speaking in Vergere's metaphor, correct? Yeah, agreed on that account.
     
  5. HWK-290

    HWK-290 Jedi Padawan star 2

    Registered:
    Jul 29, 2013
    You are never going to convince anyone.

    BP essay going up tomorrow, finishing it now.
     
  6. DigitalMessiah

    DigitalMessiah Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 17, 2004
    :(

    It's a shame that metaphor =/= philosophy is a difficult concept to understand.

    Reading further, chapter twenty-seven talks at length about what it means to be a Jedi, what it means to serve the Force, what a Jedi's role is. The paradigm that is broken is stated by Anakin -- being a Jedi is easy when you can just cast the spell "sense alignment" and figure out if someone is light side or dark side, but real life is a bit more complicated than that, especially when these aliens are immune to magic!
     
    Revanfan1 likes this.
  7. Solent

    Solent Jedi Master star 2

    Registered:
    Aug 4, 2001
    Not at all. YV are no different from any other non-Force people. They try to harm others for no good reason, they get stopped. No need to cast a "sense aligment" first, especially considering SW doesn´t follow D&D aligment rules.

    Something I wondered about the Vong, is whether ZS restored their connection to the Force. Legacy didn´t seem to adress the issue, besides warriors still looking ugly as hell.
     
    OutsiderJediSam and Gamiel like this.
  8. Charlemagne19

    Charlemagne19 Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Jul 30, 2000
    Luceno said somewhere his theory was the Vong scarred themselves and worshiped pain as they unconsciously felt hollow without the Force. So it was a way to feel something.
     
    YeahOkayCool and darth fluffy like this.
  9. DigitalMessiah

    DigitalMessiah Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 17, 2004

    That's not what Anakin Solo thinks!

     
  10. Charlemagne19

    Charlemagne19 Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Jul 30, 2000
    Which was a dumb-dumb philosophy.
     
    OutsiderJediSam likes this.
  11. DigitalMessiah

    DigitalMessiah Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 17, 2004
    Well, evidently it was the one that Anakin was following for the first six books of the series -- albeit without really thinking about it until he tried to explain it to a Yuuzhan Vong.
     
  12. Charlemagne19

    Charlemagne19 Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Jul 30, 2000
    Yeah, Anakin seemed to have missed that Jedi supported order in the galaxy.
     
  13. DigitalMessiah

    DigitalMessiah Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 17, 2004
    The problem seems to be that Anakin -- at the very least -- feels that the Jedi need to have a mandate from the Force in order to use it responsibly. There's no "I'm taking it upon myself to do this because it's moral and it's right," the Jedi are in the paradigm of looking to the Force for guidance in what to do, and they're not finding it here because the Yuuzhan Vong aren't in the Force.
     
  14. Bullhead CIty

    Bullhead CIty Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Dec 1, 2012
    Little late to the party. This thread is awesome and actually, very timely. I have a few other novels on deck before I can restart Vector Prime. It will be nice to read recent commentary, reflecting on what has come to pass in the 14 years since it's initial release.

    I too was one of the readers that didn't embrace VP as I had Heir to the Empire in 1990. One of the hangups I had at the time was the Yuuzhan Vong reminded me of Star Trek Voyager's alien enemy Species 8742 with their biotechnology.

    I'll try not to deviate from the progressive thread. I just wanted to thank you for the discussion, and throw in my $.02.

    And like the other Force Ghost said he was from the old days, I too have been here since the late 1990's. Probably 1998. Lost account, etc. A lot of history on TF.N forums all those years...
     
  15. Cynical_Ben

    Cynical_Ben Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Aug 12, 2013
    Glad to have you! I hope my reviews are insightful, or at least entertaining. And feel free to throw in your two cents wherever you like.
     
    Bullhead CIty likes this.
  16. Ackbar's Fishsticks

    Ackbar's Fishsticks Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Aug 25, 2013
    It's been a while since I've read Edge of Victory, but doesn't he reject that philosophy, like, immediately afterwards in his thought process? And conclude that whether or not you can sense them in the Force, what they're doing is still wrong, so he should still fight them? (Precisely what DigitalMessiah says, "I'm taking it on myself to do what's right..." and even if the Force isn't giving a clear mandate, he's gonna do it anyway?)
     
  17. DigitalMessiah

    DigitalMessiah Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 17, 2004
    Yes, it's a paradigm that is broken. Anakin decides that the Yuuzhan Vong could very well have their own version of the Force, and he contemplates the situation from the inside out, i.e. what if Sidious won and invaded the Yuuzhan Vong galaxy and they knew nothing of the light side? He basically considers that the Yuuzhan Vong could be exactly what they were as exiled Sith in earlier iterations of the NJO, a society that as a whole turned to the dark side, and that the Force consequently rejected them, or they it. He thinks this doesn't mean they're all evil anymore than those that served the Empire were uniformly evil, but it makes their collective empire worth opposing.
     
  18. Gorefiend

    Gorefiend Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2004
    Sorry to just shoot you down there, but they have no resemblance whatsoever. 8742 is a badly thought out idea to create some kind of Überrace to drag down the Borg ever further then Voyager usually did and are just so insanely out there with fluid space and their planet destroying ships the normal viewer must have wondered into what bizarre Japanese Anime one had just wonder into. ;) The Vong are tame by contrast.
     
    Bullhead CIty and Sniper_Wolf like this.
  19. Sniper_Wolf

    Sniper_Wolf Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Nov 26, 2002
    Voyager is out there in all aspects. Didn't 8742 contain five arms or something?
     
    Bullhead CIty likes this.
  20. Cynical_Ben

    Cynical_Ben Force Ghost star 4

    Registered:
    Aug 12, 2013
    Yeah, 8742 wasn't a species so much as they were just a plot convenience that allowed the Voyager writers to work the Borg into an "enemy-mine" situation with Janeway. The Yuuzhan Vong are much more fleshed out and diverse than 8724.

    If anything, the Vong are more like the Borg themselves, except that, while the Borg try to assimilate entire planets and cultures into their collective to increase their sum of knowledge, the Vong are more pragmatic; depending on the situation, an entire race can be considered "unworthy" and wiped to extinction. The Vong don't care about your history, your culture or even the survival of your people to join their own ranks. About the best you can hope for under them (unless your name is Vergere) is a quick death.

    I feel like there's an attempt to add an assimilation idea to the Vong, the whole idea of implanting coral seeds or whatever into their slaves to turn them into mindless cannon fodder. But it's not assimilation, it's not turning the slaves into Yuuzhan Vong warriors. It's just getting some front-line soldiers who can die so that the more valued warriors don't have to, something the Borg absolutely do not have (unless you count the queens).

    The Yuuzhan Vong have a culture and a hierarchy to the point where they can have fanatics, divisions and non-stereotyped characters; they are one of the most fleshed-out and detailed races in all of Star Wars. And that's what makes them one of the most interesting villains, as well.
     
    Slater, YeahOkayCool, xezene and 5 others like this.
  21. Bullhead CIty

    Bullhead CIty Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Dec 1, 2012

    Cool. I'll enjoy the re-read with a new outlook!
     
  22. Jedi Ben

    Jedi Ben Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Jul 19, 1999
    If you want to see where the PT influence is most evident in NJO, it's the Jedi outlook. Bantam might have had the idea of using the Force to gain knowledge and guidance, but I never had the sense Luke taught his students to be entirely dependent on it. Not least because he's quite aware of the ysalamiri effect! A Jedi needs to be capable, even if blocked from the Force. Plus, they were mediating the Caamas disputes, that would have required quite a bit of thought.

    Jump forward to NJO and it's all Jedi Padawans but also, more importantly, the PT attitude of: Jedi don't think, they know. Uh, how? Oh, the Force. If the Force says: Busy, come back later - what then? There was no reason for this outlook to be present, it has no basis beyond a bland desire for Jedi conformity which misses the point of what was said in the films: Luke is not the last of the old Jedi, he's the first of the new therefore the order he creates will be different. What's so hard to understand about this?
     
    OutsiderJediSam and darth fluffy like this.
  23. FTeik

    FTeik Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 7, 2000
    It is hard for the writers to come up with something different.;)
     
  24. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2012
    Jacon and the Vong-nauts!
     
  25. Gamiel

    Gamiel Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Dec 16, 2012
    Were is that quote from?