Lit A Cynical Walk Through the NJO

I have some questions, I hope they have not already been answered and I have missed them

Why did not Vergere jump ship and joint the Republic in Agents of Chaos I: Hero's Trial?

If I have understood right from the quotes Jacon had not felt the Force for some time until Vergere showed him the nexus. If this is right why could not Jacon feel the Force in himself?

my bold

Is that call as in summoning or call as in naming she mean?

 

The latter. Some authors, such as Dietz, refer to calling on the dark side. For reasons that should be fairly obvious this is not one of them.

 

Thanks

Can somebody tell me what she is saying? Because I just realised that I have no real idea what she is trying to say only that it somehow don't fit right with me

 

She appears (to me) to be saying that "The Dark Side" is a misnomer - there is only "The Force" and if one draws on it in an unrestrained way, the effects are that it does exactly what The Dark Side is supposed to do - gives people yellow eyes and so forth.

 

She's saying what Ganner at the end of the novel. Jacen would call it the dark side.

 

You mean:

Ganner tried for so long, tried so hard to be what everyone told him he was supposed to be, tried to control his flair for the dramatic, for the elegant, the graceful, the artistic, tried to be a good son, a good friend, a humble man, a good Jedi . . .
But in the archway, he finds the end of trying. There is reason no longer to resist the truth of himself. Playacting the hero's part is not only permissible --
It is necessary.
To hold the archway it is not enough to merely wound and kill, is not enough to be calm, and surgical, and grieving.
To hold the archway, he must not only slaughter, but slaughter effortlessly, carelessly, laughingly. Joyfully.
To hold the archway, he must dance and whirl and leap and spin, calling out for more opponents. More victims.
He must make them hesitate to face him.
He must make them fear.
He had spoken the words: he had found a magical incantation to crack the dikes within him and unleash the flood.
None shall pass.
He wields the blade of a fallen hero, but now he is the hero, and it is others who fall.
He is rising.
The Force thunders through him, and he thunders through the Force. Letting slip the bonds of control, leaving aside conscious thought, answering only the surge of his passion and his joy, he finds power undreamed of.

I could see someone like Yoda saying this is no different to how Anakin defeated Dooku: by using The Dark Side.

 

Maybe that's why it is what Jacen calls the dark side.

I'm curious, do people think Stover was deliberately having Vergere tell Jacen to use the dark side? Or is Stover simply wrong, and thus the Vergere retcon is a good thing because it fixes Stover messing up the setting?

Edit: of course, I'd also point out that it seems to me that Ganner is "let[ing] go his conscious self and act[ing] on instinct," or otherwise "feel, don't think, use your instincts." But we all know Qui-Gon is a morally spurious Jedi just like Mace. And so is Ben with his pathological lying.

 

That's an interesting question. The parallels between the Sith use of passion, and the use of passion that Vergere recommends, do seem strong enough that it may not be coincidental.

Perhaps Stover meant all along for her to be a Sith- but a Sith hero rather than a Sith villain. Perhaps an ex-Sith who loved the idea of "Use Your Passion" but hated the Darth Revan-esque idea of "Strive for Power over Others".

 

In his 2002 interview with TFN, he says Vergere taught Jacen to be a better Jedi. So I doubt it!

 

Perhaps, from his point of view, a better Jedi is one who uses both the "Light Side" and the "Dark Side" - as well as one who knows when to fight and when not to.

If Vergere got Jacen out of the state of mind he was in during the early NJO books, that might be, from Stover's point of view, "making him a better Jedi".

It's also worth noting that the interview was 3 years before he wrote the RoTS novelization.

 

And what did Vegere teach Jacen? Stover says Obi-Wan is the perfect Jedi but he doesn't use the dark side.

 

"That fanaticism is self-defeating" springs to mind.

 

But Vergere said that the Force draws on your own feelings–Ganner was feeling joy, ecstacy, and other good emotions, so even though he was technically drawing on his passions, he was drawing on the good passions. Whereas a Sith draws on the evil passions–anger, hatred, lust, etc.–so the Force amplifies that, which the Jedi call the "dark side."

In actuality the dark side and light side are only inside the Force user, and the way they uses the Force enhances those feelings–which is why a Sith has yellow eyes and is all pale and wrinkly; the Force amplifies their own negative emotions so much that they are actually physically affected by it. This is what Vergere is trying to teach. She's saying the Force doesn't make you feel anger and hate just because you choke someone with it. On the contrary, it is you who, feeling the anger and hate, amplify it with the Force and thus, use the "dark side."

 

In Destiny's Way, she tells Luke that even the "Good passions" like love, taken to an extreme, are Dark.

 

Passion is a word that has a thousand definitions depending upon who you are talking to.

 

From the passages there, she seems to be suggesting that the distinction between 'light side' and dark side' is a matter of semantics more than anything else; that there isn't an external, corrupting Dark Side, just the Force itself. The 'Dark Side' is merely a reflection of the force-user's inner darkness, and because Jedi seek moderation in their emotions and use of the Force, they never access the whole of the Force - only Dark-Siders do, since they don't care about moderation. So if a Jedi could use that power while remaining 'pure of heart' or whatever, they wouldn't fall to the Dark Side because the Dark Side only has a hold over you if you let it in.

 

"Unreasoning passion is the province of darkness," Vergere said. "But an understood emotion is not unreasoning. That is why the route to mastery is through self-knowledge." Her tilted eyes widened. "It's not possible to suppress all emotion, nor is it desirable. An emotionless person is no more than a machine. But to understand the origin and nature of one's feelings, that is possible."

"When Darth Vader and the Emperor held me prisoner," Luke said, "they kept urging me to surrender to my anger."

"Your anger was a natural response to your captivity, and they wished to make use of it. They wished to fan your anger into a burning rage that would allow the darkness to enter. But any unreasoning passion would do. When anger becomes rage, fear becomes terror, love becomes obsession, self-esteem becomes vainglory, then a natural and useful emotion becomes an unreasoning compulsion and the darkness is."

Which is pretty close to what The Potentium is supposed to say: "As long as your intentions are completely good, you can wield the Force however you want."

 

Are we going to reduce Vergere's teaching to one paragraph devoid of context outside of her overall body of teachings?

 

Her overall teachings seem to boil down to "use passion, but only for a Good Purpose - and you will achieve true greatness without becoming evil"

 

Where does she say to actually do it?

 

If you take love to an extreme it can become what Anakin Skywalker had–obsession.

 

BTW the Potentium says evil doesn't exist. At all.

Edit: does anyone have a quote where Vergere says to use passion? In the quote she's arguing against control.

 

And also, that passion needs to be "guided, not walled away" - thus - that it needs to be used:

"Greatness -- true greatness of any kind -- requires the surrender of control. Passion that is guided, not walled away. Leave your limits behind."

 

Guided by what? If there's no control, not by you. By the Force...?

 

So what is everyone's opinion on the Vong tech? I like it. Nice and alien. There has to be a non technological form of tech out there eventually right? What worked for us might not work for someone else. Just like humans aren't the only species out there in the galaxy. All we know is oxygen and water helped create an environment on this planet so we could live but who says intelligent life can't be made another way?