Lit A Cynical Walk Through the NJO

I love that scene. Simply because I see it as the aforementioned moment where Allston was like "Ah, to kark with it" and decided to show his fellow authors just how ridiculous this whole plot was. "You want Jacen to be a whiny brat Sith? Fine! I'll karking well give you a whiny brat Sith, and throw some insanity on it just for good measure!" It was pure trolling, and he wasn't trolling us, he was trolling his fellow authors, the general plot, and anyone else involved with LOTF.

You know what? I'm going to go find that scene and read it right now. It makes me feel good about the whole thing because someone in charge realized how silly it all was, even though he didn't have the power to stop it. And you can't tell me that Allston wrote that scene fully intending for it to be serious. You can't.

 

Maybe so, but I liked it better when Revan did it. The problem I have with the idea that LOTF had good ideas is that all its good ideas were cribbed from stories that did them better than LOTF did -- they were rehashes -- and even so, LOTF couldn't decide which story it wanted to rip off more: the prequels or Revan. Someone falling to the dark side and being redeemed had been pretty thoroughly done by the EU up to this point (Luke, Ulic, Revan, Anakin), and LOTF brought absolutely nothing new to the table, except I suppose killing off its focal character in an extremely ignoble fashion in which no lessons were learned?

And that really brings up the whole characterization issue -- I think Jacen, even moreso than Luke, was an incorruptible character. He faced his dark side in Traitor and came out of it resolute about who he was. As Vergere points out in Destiny's Way to Luke, it was Jacen's "I am a Jedi, like my father before me" moment. "Jacen had chosen."

I like Abel's idea that if you really were hellbent on having a good guy turn dark, Jaina would have been the better choice.

The truth is, Dark Nest and Legacy of the Force was Shapiro and Denning writing a fix it fic for the entire NJO. When the authors treat the Expanded Universe like it is fan fiction, that's what it is. There's no integrity to the universe, only the whims of whomever is in charge now.

 

despite the scene, Ganner is ridiculously overrated. Luke would have probably won the battle, or at least escaped with injuries.

 

Jedimatteus, never change

 

Me neither, Nom Anor.

 

That eye was one hell of a Chekhov's gun.

 

I would not do that, it would be like taking Rick Blaine as an reasonable example of a citizen of U.S.A.

and like many things it is multifaceted, the dark side is just a side of the Force

 

I take every heroic Humphrey Bogart character as a reasonable example of a citizen of the U.S.A.

 

the force is one... it encompasses all opposites. truth and lies, life and death, new republic and yuuzhan vong. light and dark and good and evil. they're all each other, because each thing and everything is the same thing. the force is one.


Ulicus

 

Our focus determines our reality. Many of the truths we cling to depend on our point of view. Etc.

 

This is what google brought me so

 

No. Among many other things, that renders meaningless both the presentation of the living Force and the cosmic Force in Season 6 of TCW and the balance of the Force plotline of the PT.

 

Jacen sighs, and surfaces from the meditation.
"All right," he says quietly, a little sadly. "If you insist."

"Life passes from the Living Force into the Cosmic Force and becomes one with it. One powers the other. One is renewed by the other."

"He shares how much he loves it all: for all these things are all one thing: pain and joy, loss and reunion, life and death. To love any is to love all, for none can exist without every other. The Universe. The Force. All is one."

 

I think both ideas are bad for Jacon, or anybody in that era. I can accept it some other era but to me the post-Imperial-era should be more hopeful and doing bad deeds for the greater good is not something I find hopeful. Also I don’t find it fitting Star Wars (or at least my idea of SW) if it actually works.

What do you mean with "reasonable example"? I think I may have missunderstod.

 

That isn't necessarily how the story ends - if you aren't doing serious padding of a story (i.e. what we got), a lot can happen in nine novels. Maybe instead of killing him, Jaina redeems Jacen, and Jacen becomes a great hero in the galaxy's eyes.

It wasn't a serious response, other than my liking Humphrey Bogart movies.

 

I'm trying to determine at what point exactly this went out the window as an option. Killing Mara Jade? Killing Nelani? "Punishing" Fondor? Immolating Kashyyyk?

They didn't put any effort into making his morally questionable acts justifiable from a pragmatic standpoint, toward some greater good. After he killed Mara, he simply did stuff out of malicious caprice. You'd think that after strawmanning Vergere into "intent trumps action" that they would make that the catalyst to Jacen's immoral actions, by taking consequentialism to the extreme, but they don't even do that. They just didn't care.

 

You don't happen to have the text, do you? I never finished LOTF, and now I wish I had, just for that moment.

 

His cloak should have been swirling around him. It wasn't. Why? Oh, yes. He'd given it away. It had betrayed him.

 

Yeah, I think it was killing Mara that did it. Killing Nelani, well, you can say that was an error in judgment and he could've been forgiven for it given that he was a) being influenced by Lumiya, b) confused by all the visions he'd had that said someone had to die in this scenario, and c) possibly being affected by the dark side presence in the cave. Anything he did between Bloodlines and Sacrifice wasn't all that bad (aside from firing on the Falcon and killing Cahkmaim and Meewalh). Just questionable. The GAG raids in Bloodlines could be considered extreme but not evil. Sending Ben on a dangerous quest on his own? It wasn't anything that didn't happen to Jacen himself when he was younger. Having Ben assassinate Gejjen? Probably stupid, especially having a 14-year-old do it, but he was a legal wartime target. After he killed Mara, though, it became evident that he'd gone off the deep end. Bombing Kashyyyk just solidified that he was too far gone.

 

Probably everything except killing Nelani. I would imagine that it would be Jacen who ends up killing Lumiya, sadly noting that she was more interested in revenge than saving the galaxy.
There would probably have to be an actual threat somewhere in there - maybe merge LOTF and FOTJ, or something. Or have the Confederacy-GFFA War take center stage, and Jacen is the only one who can stop the people manipulating everyone to tear the galaxy apart (and not have it something boring like the "True Sith").

Exactly, and yet that's what they set it up with - that Lumiya provided Jacen with an example of a Sith who (whether actually true or not) wasn't a crazy sociopath. Maybe if it had been a trilogy and only written by Allston, it might've made sense.

 

We must understand that when Qui-Gon says "two", he really means "one". Then why didn't he say "one" instead of "two", you ask? Because he's just too awesome for that. It's the same way with George Lucas. He also really meant "one" all along, despite the fact that he could never bring himself to actually say the word. "Two" is close enough, it's adjacent to one, for crying out loud.

 

I don't think so. But than again I don't really like many of the decisions made during the NJO storyline so, well...

 

Speaking of the underlying metaphysics of the New Jedi Order, here's an excerpt from an essay that was written in response to Episode I (from June 2001) in which the writer recognizes that the will of the Force represents the unnamed Unifying or Cosmic Force in Episode I.

 

Of course, there's a problem: if the imbalance is itself an illusion, why is there a need for a Chosen One to restore balance? ( This aside from the popular mischaracterization of Taoism's stance regarding yin and yang. )

"Is the wind evil?"