Lit A Cynical Walk Through the NJO

I wouldn't be surprised if Sekot was mentioned off-handedly as having been destroyed by Kre'fey somehow, or more likely by Bwua'tu in fulfillment of ar'krai. Or by Centerpoint Station in the 2GCW.

But maybe I overestimate Denning. I was convinced that Vergere was going to show up in the Lake of Apparitions and cackle maniacally at Luke or some garbage. But then, for all we know he could have written these sorts of things and had them scaled back by the editors.

Like his Anakin Solo resurrection fan fic. That indicates to me that things could be much, much, much worse were it not for people like Sue Rostoni.

 

Centerpoint Station.......... Yes. That would do it.
Ugh. That Anakin thing would have been nice but that is way too out there.
Agreed about Vergere.

 

I'm actually convinced that Denning plumbed the JCC Lit board for ideas, because I read the whole Anakin Solo resurrection theory here first, I read the Abeloth connection to the Ones here first, and I read the Darth Krayt being the Dark Man on the Throne of Balance here first.

The idea, or core premise to the idea, as I read it here wasn't bad, but the way that it would have been executed in Invincible was god****ingawful and made even less sense than the Vergere retcon. Even if flow-walking can only change the memory of the past, that still gives you carte blanche to actually change the past because you just retcon what actually happened because the depiction you read in novel X is actually the alteration created by flow-walking that didn't happen and it is reflective of the altered memories. Anyway despite this runaround of the no time travel rule which Denning himself established, he still broke it.

 

I wouldn't give the editors too much credit, or any credit. Nixing absolute garbage ideas is hardly worthy of praise.

Yet Tahiri molesting Ben is still a thing. Christie Golden handing in her error ridden first drafts is still a thing. I honestly wonder if any of those examples were even read at all, by anyone. How do you give torture-molestation the okay? It wasn't given the okay, it slipped by because they didn't read it.

I don't think the editors actually did much editing (especially post-NJO) other than saying yes or no to the most general ideas, with pretty much all the details slipping through the cracks. I feel like I said this before, but it seems like the NJO was this massive effort and afterward the editors were just too burnt out to put up the kind of effort to maintain that level of quality ever again.

Maybe the NJO was the journey that turned the Lucasbooks team into a nag, maybe somebody should have put it out to pasture and bought a new horse.

 

That would seem to be wise, given what happened with Coruscant Nights.

 

Fair enough. I've heard rumors that Rostoni's retirement wasn't voluntary, although considering it came three years after LOTF ended I doubt there's a direct correlation. More likely it had to do with bad sales for LOTF continuing downward with FOTJ, if the rumor is true at all.

The post-mortem of the situation is pretty clear IMO. The NJO had people involved that weren't involved with LOTF. The round robin in The Unifying Force had Jim Luceno, Lucy Wilson, Sue Rostoni, and Shelly Shapiro. Only the latter two were involved with LOTF and FOTJ.

Additionally, Stackpole was heavily involved in the story meetings, and he hasn't published a Star Wars novel in nearly a decade and a half, and he's on record as saying it's because of Shapiro. The people with good ideas from the NJO ceased their involvement, the people that stuck around weren't as good, the people that were added were terrible, and the reduction to three authors led to an echochamber where no one said "no" to terrible ideas. It's self-evident that each author was given free reign to largely do whatever they wanted, evidently without any sort of input on it from anyone else, and consequently there wasn't really a filter among the creative team that rooted out bad ideas from going to print. And it seems like there was minimal editorial oversight, likely only at the outline phase which is where the Anakin Solo resurrection fanfic was snipped at the bud.

It was almost as if the authors didn't really collaborate at all but just agreed to let each other do their own thing, and the editors didn't have oversight past the outline phase. I wouldn't be surprised if this was true. At all.

Edit: I'm really starting to think Stackpole was pretty important to the NJO despite his books coming in early and not coming back like Luceno did -- while I'm wildly speculating, I wouldn't be surprised if he was supposed to like Luceno did, and his slot was filled by either Williams/Dix or Keyes due to the issue with Shapiro. I'm led to believe his initial importance was equal to Luceno's, and that faded due to behind the scenes drama.

But he really got the ball rolling with the series with his knowledge of the franchise (which Salvatore did not have) and the introduction of a lot of elements from the Bantam fiction and fan familiarity overall, and a lot of the stuff he created in his novels came to define the series plot. Luke and Mara's conversation from Vision of the Future became their perspective of the Force and I argue that it is the cause of Luke's tepid action for the first two thirds of the series. Shedao Shai's obsession with pain was originally a feature of house Shai, but it came to encompass the Yuuzhan Vong as a whole. The Baffor pollen became Alpha Red. Jag Fel and the Chiss. The advisory council and its meddling. Jaina in Rogue Squadron. The Dark Tide duology's influence on the rest of the series was substantially greater than Vector Prime's influence.

I would say that maybe Stackpole's involvement would have benefited the subsequent series, but then on the other hand the authors clearly weren't following one another's lead so I doubt it would have made a difference.

 

what's that lol

 

I don't remember which book but the Bothans declared ar'krai on the Yuuzhan Vong which means they're OBLIGATED to genocide them no matter what. At the end of The Unifying Force, Zonama Sekot says "so long suckers" with the Yuuzhan Vong and Kre'frey chased after them.

 

No I remember what it is, but no one writing after TUF did. There might have been a throwaway mention in DNT, not sure.

Also not sure about this, VP had Nom Anor poking out his own eye with a burning stick and I think Yomin Carr enjoying how painful taking off his ooglith whatever was. The other YV thought Shedao Shai was weird because he just sat around in the Embrace of Pain all day and never got anything done. They were like come on dude do that on your own time.

 

I like the idea of the ralroost chasing after a planet is all

_Catherine_

I don't remember the part with Nom Anor, but I think the Yuuzhan Vong weren't originally so religious about pain and it sort of developed into that out of Shai. And maybe that's not Stackpole specifically and just memetic evolution out of this original idea that they're a hardcore warrior race that is completely indifferent to pain.

And Nom Anor poking his eye out doesn't really mesh with the character as he became, does it? I mean, the Yuuzhan Vong worship pain as a gift from the gods, and Nom Anor is an atheist that uses the religion for leverage. I mean it's like someone in Opus Dei or something that's an atheist, they're not going to perform self-flagellation if they don't have to.

 

I think the implication was that his atheism developed after spending decades in the GFFA? So I guess it depends on when he got his promotion. I think VP placed him poking out his eye and replacing it with that acid thing at the same time he was promoted to executor. Although the NJO Sourcebook says executor is the lowest rank in the intendant caste which doesn't seem to fit with how important Nom Anor is.

 

Oh I thought it was a scene that happened rather than a description of a past event.

It seems that taking implants was always a part of Yuuzhan Vong culture, which might be why they have no aversion to pain, and that lack of aversion developed into worship. Imagine if Shedao Shai was actually doing what his actions were an euphemism for, and that was applied to the entire Yuuzhan Vong species.


That's right, I'm shameless and I went there.

 

I'm almost positive there was. But "throwaway" is exactly what it was, unfortunately.

 

Denning didn't ignore the NJO in Dark Nest, he just sowed the seeds to use what he wanted in Legacy of the Force. At which point it was ignored. There's actually a pointless scene on Zonama Sekot in The Joiner King! TAHIRI IS WITH YUUZHAN VONG WHAT

such a travesty

 

And Danni Quee went back to Zonama Sekot instead of staying at the Jedi Temple!

Upon further consideration, this is likely why she never reappeared–she wasn't in the Temple.

 

Yeah that scene was Denning establishing the prequel Jedi. I'm not sure what he had against Danni Quee because it's not like Cilghal and Tekli aren't Jedi scientists, except that she was from the NJO and Jacen's maybe love interest. And we know how Denning feels about love interests introduced by the NJO.

It seems almost as if he's just predisposed toward disliking anything from the NJO.

 

So expected Tahiri, the Yuuzhan Vong and Zonama Sekot to be used a lot more than they were.

 

I know a lot of fans who dislike NJO because it's not Star Warsy. It has aliens with plants instead of weapons, and it's dark and gruesome and bad things happen, and stuff. I even used to be that way. I wonder if Denning's kind of like that. He doesn't even understand the point of the story because he can't see past the fact that the main villains are aliens with plant-weapons and Jacen got "tortured" and stuff. Ironically, other than the plant-alien stuff, everything else I mentioned is used by Denning in his books: I'd argue that Apocalypse and Crucible are darker and more gruesome than any one NJO book, and not in a good way.

 

If you aren't a Jedi or aren't on Coruscant you don't matter. If you are a different and not a regimented Jedi you don't matter either.
That scene in TSW did not effect me the first several times until the whole picture was realized.

 

I haven't spent a whole lot of time thinking about why Denning has a problem with the NJO beyond his own admission about Traitor, which really leads me to believe that his problem with it was the same one that Shelly Shapiro said in the round robin for the final novel in the series. I find it really tacky that she's criticizing the series before it's even done, and that was really a harbinger for what was to come.

I do think Denning misses the point in the sense that he rather deliberately altered the Jedi order to mirror the prequels and did so by strawmanning the Jedi that Luke describes in The Unifying Force into a bunch of amoral people that believe that the ends justify the means. This is ironic because this is precisely what the Jedi are under Denning despite their apparent turn away from heresy. He gives the Jedi a memetic evolution of the Potentium Perspective as their new worldview in The Joiner King (this is despite the Potentium Perspective being never regarded as correct in the NJO or Rogue Planet), and somehow correlates this with the belief that the ends justify the means, or that intent governs the darkness of an action rather than the action itself, which isn't in Traitor.

What I find particularly amusing is Luke realizes he's gone astray in the midst of Force choking the hell out of Welk, and decides "the Force may not have a dark side, but we do" or something along those lines. Which is kind of the point of that mindset to begin with, it's not carte blanche to do whatever you want. I'm going to have to quote my avatar here to describe Denning's apparent mindset here:

"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward then, brother, that person is a piece of ****. And I'd like to get as many of them out in the open as possible."

Without this concept of a light side and a dark side of the Force external to the user (which I think is a rather reductive way of looking at it just in premise), there's no reason to be moral! There's no dark side hell to worry about or anything! So all the Jedi become amoral without the Force God giving them stone tablets commanding them how to behave.

Denning and Shapiro seem to have come away from the New Jedi Order believing this permutation of the Potentium Perspective that there's the Force, and that only through use does it "become" light or dark. Which is extremely reductive. Luke concludes the opposite in The Unifying Force:

"It's true that the Force is unified; it is one energy, one power. But here's where I think you and Vergere are incorrect: the dark side is real, because evil actions are real. Sentience gave rise to the dark side. Does it exist in nature? No. Left to itself, nature maintains the balance. But we've changed that. We are a new order of consciousness that has an impact on all life. The Force now contains light and dark because of what thinking beings have brought to it. That's why balance has become something that must be maintained -- because our actions have the power to tip the scales."

I'm not sure when Jacen ever espoused that there was no dark side so I'm not sure why Luke thinks he's incorrect. Luke is restating Vergere's position with his first sentence. Notice that Luke says that the dark side is real "because evil actions are real."

"It was not really a dark side act -- to a modern Jedi, the dark side was more a matter of intent than deed -- but it felt that way to him."

That's Luke's POV from The Joiner King. Huh.

"We have learned to see it more clearly than ever, to recognize that the dark side and the light side spring from the same well -- inside us."

Luke again. Denning seems to have adopted the non sequitur, or rather has had Luke do so, that because the dark side originates from the self, that makes it okay, whereas if it's something that's always been there external to the self it's bad. I'm really not sure where he got the idea that because the dark side comes from within that makes it okay. Strawmanning the NJO I guess. And espousing this silly viewpoint that without the Force God to keep the Jedi in line they'll go around choking people and stuff.

Anyway I had to look in The Joiner King for this post and that's like reading The King in Yellow so I'm probably going to go insane now.

 

DigitalMessiah, the first half of your post I got. The second half made me just shake my head, because I'm pretty sure I understand, but I don't see how Denning missed the point of that Luke quote in TUF. I mean, honestly.

 

I think he just views the Force the same way he views magic in Dungeons and Dragons. It's governed by arbitrary rules taken at face value without any thought put into them.

The whole debate about an internal/external dark side is silly and completely missing the point. "The Force is one" has more than one meaning -- "life creates it, makes it grow." Life is a part of the Force. The darkness within reflects the darkness without, and vice-versa. It's a two way street which is implicit based on the fact that "luminous beings are we, not this crude matter." If the person is fundamentally their soul/atman/Force energy, and everyone's collective Force energy is the Force, well...? Where does the dark side come from? Where do the sides come from at all? If "life creates it, makes it grow," then how could the dark side have preceded life at all anymore than the Force could? Debating the causality is missing the point to start with because they're an interconnected system. One needs the other to exist. Life needs the Force to exist (without the midi-chlorians, life could not exist), and the Force needs life to generate it. The light side needs the dark side to exist. They're complementary opposites. The Force is one. They're two sides to the same coin. So is life and the Force.

 

Dagobah dark side cave G-canon /thread

 

I'm such a fool!