Jedi Council Forums - Shatterpoint: Good lord...

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Author	Topic: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
Havac Title: Lit Mod of War Registered: Sep '05	Date Posted: 8/24/07 2:21pm Subject: RE: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
	India really isn't Middle Eastern. And Depa was already established as Mace's former Padawan, with the plot clearly calling for someone with exceptionally strong ties to Mace, someone only he could take down or talk down. So she was used. So I don't find your allegations credible at all. -----signature----- "Is there a captain's hat involved in this?" "I . . . don't know what department I want. I need . . . pants."
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Tricky Registered: Jul '01	Date Posted: 8/24/07 2:46pm Subject: RE: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
	Havac posted: India really isn't Middle Eastern. And Depa was already established as Mace's former Padawan, with the plot clearly calling for someone with exceptionally strong ties to Mace, someone only he could take down or talk down. So she was used. So I don't find your allegations credible at all. I know that, but I'm assuming that the average person doesn't & with the solid push for unquestioning patriotism here in the States I see the inclusion of Depa's Middle Eastern/India appearance along with the axis of evil thing that was mentioned in some SW book recently, I forget which one, as LFL caving in. Of course I probably am wrong, but it's just how I feel about DR/LFL's continuing war after war after war strategy. I think they're making too many parallels with real world conflicts/politics, too many for my tastes when all I want to do is read their stuff so I can get away from this ugly reality of real war for a while. I mean when America wasn't involved in a huge scale war, Bantam were publishing stories like the Courtship of Princess Leia, Darksaber & the New Republic. Since the US has been in this latest war we the readers are getting tossed back & forth between the the Clone Wars, the Vong, the Dark Nest & this Corellian Insurrection. My vision may be skewed, but when I look at the bigger picture, I see Depa being demonized despite being Mace's ex-padawan & also cause she has close ties to him. -----signature----- "Six pints of bitter," said Ford Prefect to the barman of the Horse and Groom. "And quickly please, the world's about to end." We like to Suckadelic.com. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book
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Master_Keralys Title: Manager Emeritus Registered: Oct '03	Date Posted: 8/24/07 3:04pm Subject: RE: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
	Umm, hold on. Which major war was the U.S. involved in when Vector Prime was published in 1999? Or when it was being brainstormed in 1998? scratches head, mildly confused Depa was chosen, almost certainly by Stover himself, because of the existing EU ties, not because of any misogyny, gender or cultural. And as I recall, there was pretty much non-stop war for the Bantam era. Indeed, the whole point of The Hand of Thrawn was putting an end to twenty-years worth of nearly non-stop war. Maybe Del Ray has dealt with war in a more mature fashion, recognizing that war impacts people at a deeper level than Bantam did, and that it should alter the galaxy as a whole and the people living in it - but there have been more years of peace in the Del Ray era than in the Bantam era (though of course we've not seen those so much). But Del Ray is the publisher that's given us books like Cloak of Deception, which was ironically one of the least war-engaged Star Wars books we've ever seen; it was, instead, a political thriller with high stakes but no actual war involved. The fact that DR had the Clone Wars had nothing to do with wanting to parallel the real world... it was a necessity created by the plotting in the movies. I'm also confused how the war is somehow less in CoPL, Darksaber, or anything else in that era, except that it was treated more lightly and less seriously. If that's the difference, then sure... but I think that's largely a function of (1) the authors chosen, (2) the actuality of the world around us having changed and authors responding, and (3) simply different stylistic choices [rather than intentional mirroring] on the part of the publishers. Depa wasn't demonized. She fell to the dark side, and she was chosen not in spite of being close to Mace but because she was close to him. - Keralys -----signature----- God made man. Man rejected God. God became the man Jesus Christ, died and rose again to life, saving man from himself. The craziest story ever told. The truest.
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Tricky Registered: Jul '01	Date Posted: 8/24/07 4:33pm Subject: RE: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
	Like I said, I am probably wrong about all this. And I do love Shatterpoint, it's just trying to rationalize why Depa was basically thrown away & forgotten after the end of the book, with no OOU answers forthcoming from LFL, DR, the SW Insider or Matt Stover himself that lead me to these crazy theories. I really liked her character & am really mad about this! Of course my rant went beyond the topic of discussion with me going off about the Vong, Dark Nest & LotF, but I'm just really getting fed up with the focus on these book serial stories not being juxtaposed with more single stories in between. It's why I buy stand alones like Shatterpoint, Allegiance, Outbound Flight, Dark Lord, Darth Bane:PoD & books like that while borrowing from the library the NJO, DNT & LotF. So all that up there is my Depa theory for why they stuck her in a coma & left her there & I'm sticking to it. What're your ideas Master_Keralys, Havac & Charlemage19? -----signature----- "Six pints of bitter," said Ford Prefect to the barman of the Horse and Groom. "And quickly please, the world's about to end." We like to Suckadelic.com. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book
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CrazyOldHermit Registered: Aug '07	Date Posted: 8/24/07 6:44pm Subject: RE: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
	I enjoyed the book. I'm always happy when a stand alone book comes out. We need more books like this that delve deeper into the characters like they did with Mace. It was difficult to get a feel for him from the films, but after reading this I can now watch the films and he just seems more "real" to me. Now that we have learned more about him, his falling to his death from the window has more meaning than it did before. I think someone already mentioned this, but I was disappointed about not knowing what happened to Vastor either. I'm sure Palpatine would not have let him just run around Coruscant after the Purge began. Maybe we are supposed to assume he was killed when Vader and the clonetroopers purged the temple. -----signature----- Wraith 4 & Shadow 5, XWFC /Wraith 10- NJO/ Twin 14-TSFC e-sis: Rebecca_Daniels
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Master_Keralys Title: Manager Emeritus Registered: Oct '03	Date Posted: 8/24/07 7:05pm Subject: RE: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
	My thoughts are pretty much just that the way the writing went was that each author had a particular story to tell, and he didn't focus so much on the stories of other authors. You'll note that other than Luceno's Labyrinth of Evil and Stover's own Revenge of the Sith, there's very little reference to any of the other books or clone wars EU in general in the Clone Wars novels. Indeed, there are more references to book EU in the comics than in the other books. That was a downside to the way they chose to tell the Clone Wars, and a commentary on the authors chosen. shrugs - Keralys -----signature----- God made man. Man rejected God. God became the man Jesus Christ, died and rose again to life, saving man from himself. The craziest story ever told. The truest.
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Havac Title: Lit Mod of War Registered: Sep '05	Date Posted: 8/24/07 9:46pm Subject: RE: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
	Tricky posted: Like I said, I am probably wrong about all this. And I do love Shatterpoint, it's just trying to rationalize why Depa was basically thrown away & forgotten after the end of the book, with no OOU answers forthcoming from LFL, DR, the SW Insider or Matt Stover himself that lead me to these crazy theories. I really liked her character & am really mad about this! I think you're grasping at some rather old, worn-out straws. Depa happened to be a woman. She happened to be Indian in appearance. However, that was a preestablished fact when Stover chose to send Mace's former Padawan to the dark side. It's coincidental. Depa was put into a coma for whatever reasons Stover or LFL had. Maybe they wanted to keep her around for future villainous use. Maybe Stover didn't think Mace killing his Padawan was the kind of ending he wanted. Probably Stover thought that redemption would come off as too neat and clean in a story of rough and nasty and distract from the point of Mace's realizations about war. So, she was left in a coma, touched on in Show of Force, and people were too busy telling new stories to go back to a woman in a coma. It is, in its own way, a more interesting treatment than most villains; she falls, is rendered comatose, and simply descends into insignificance from which she is capable of later rising. To say, "It's because she's a woman and LFL hates Arabs (maybe just subconsciously)" is an unsubstantiated, illogical accusation, and I really can't see any reason to make it. -----signature----- "Is there a captain's hat involved in this?" "I . . . don't know what department I want. I need . . . pants."
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Barriss_Coffee Registered: Jun '03	Date Posted: 8/24/07 9:54pm Subject: RE: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
	^I hope that's not the case. Depa was my favorite council member (under Yoda) even back when I saw TPM, and I was beyond ecstatic that they didn't give her the ax like the rest of the Council members in the Clone Wars stories. I've been crossing my fingers she doesn't become another Kir Kanos or Admiral Dalla. -----signature----- SAN HILL LIVES!
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Dussan Registered: Jul '07	Date Posted: 8/25/07 12:13am Subject: RE: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
	Tricky posted: Charlemagne19 posted: For me, I'm interested in knowing what people think caused Depa to go into her coma. BTW, this thread inspired me to re-read the book. Depa going off into her coma like that was the only letdown in that book of win. I think it was a cop-out on LFL's part so that we didn't have to see the re-education of a Jedi Master gone dark. I mean she never specifically went Sith, just sorta lost her way in the midst of a bloody war, but for her to have remained alive & active after the whole ordeal would've been giving page time for redemption to a character that LFL obviously didn't think was popular enough to deserve it. She's a female member of the Jedi Council & it seems to me that even here at the dawn of the new millenium, Star Wars is just as misogynistic as ever. An old lady Jedi Librarian & nearly nekkid Twilek got more screen time that all the other female Jedi combined in the movies. I also think that secondly, Depa has a vaugely Middle Eastern feminine appearance with the skin color, facial composition & that dot in the middle of her head. It was probably with that knowledge still a bit of an unconscious decision to make her the bad girl of Shatterpoint. Anyways, I just didn't like her falling off into a coma like that, thought it was pretty weak. It's against everything it is to be a vilain, to just pass out like some kinda Rip Van Winkle. We either go from bad to worse to death or if we're lucky we're found by someone that cares enough about us to give us a chance at redemption. At least at the end of Shatterpoint I could see Kar Vastor punching up the walls of his cell & using mind tricks to kill neophyte Jedi/guards that he lures into trusting him. With Depa, I get nothing... I think the reasons for her coma and not her death, or a nice and tidy redemption spiel is to add a ray of hope in this books ending. The entire book highlights one, undeniable fact about the Jedi. They are not soldiers, and got no business fighting a war. At least the jedi of this era. The things that Depa felt she was forced to do, actually began to destroy her. It was her example and fall that allowed Mace Windu to keep himself centered throughout it all. I so love the last few chapters. The utter selflessnes of Windu's thoughts. He basically said I'm nothing, just a vessel for the Force. IF only one Jedi lives through this and is able to balance the Force then the Jedi have succeeded and they will rise again. And he was right (Until Legacy and the jedi are destroyed and everything turns pear shaped). Depa commiting suicide or her death in general would have just added more gloom to an already harshly lit book and subject matter. Her being in a coma allows for the tragedy of her loss, but gives us the reader hope that she will return.
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ConcordDawn Registered: Jun '04	Date Posted: 8/25/07 12:44am Subject: RE: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
	I can't believe some people here are actually accusing Shatterpoint of racism. Have they even read it? The entire plot revolves around the struggle between the native Korunnai (read: blacks) and the outsider Balawai (read: whites). The allegory to the problems associated with rampant and violent racism and the struggle against racially polarized imperialism is basically the point of the book. If anything, Stover has the guts to go beyond writing dastardly plots to give excuses for prefabricated characters to fly ships and wave around lightsabers in- he tackles issues a lot of sci-fi writers wouldn't dare touch, and, in a setting where many of the characters (especially the oft-used ones) are very well-defined, picks a rarely-used character and thoroughly explores him. Anyone who doubts his obsession with richly detailing the gaps in the world he's using need only read the Revenge of the Sith novelization and compare it to your average carbon-copy film novelization.
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QuentinGeorge Registered: Dec '03	Date Posted: 8/25/07 6:17am Subject: RE: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
	The Balawai aren't "white". In fact, they're not even all human. The Korunnai aren't all black, either. IIRC Chalk had blonde hair. -----signature----- Yar
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Arawn_Fenn Registered: Jul '04	Date Posted: 8/25/07 11:43am Subject: RE: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
	The Korunnai are black, blonde hair or no blonde hair. -----signature----- "James T. Kirk was a great man... but that was another life."
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Havac Title: Lit Mod of War Registered: Sep '05	Date Posted: 8/25/07 4:13pm Subject: RE: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
	I'm pretty sure Chalk's hair was red, and she was black but had fairly light-toned skin, thus the nickname. -----signature----- "Is there a captain's hat involved in this?" "I . . . don't know what department I want. I need . . . pants."
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Tricky Registered: Jul '01	Date Posted: 8/25/07 7:26pm Subject: RE: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
	Havac posted: I'm pretty sure Chalk's hair was red, and she was black but had fairly light-toned skin, thus the nickname. Yeah, that's about right. She's what we, my brothers & sisters, would call a Redbone. Anyways, I wasn't going on about racism when I was mentioning Depa Billaba, no, I was talking about American patriotism/nationalism & propaganda to villify the enemy by villifying any peoples that look like them like for example the harrassment that illigal immigrant Mexicans are facing right now is a another unconscious byproduct of that system of mindgames. Of course most people will rebel against that line of thinking saying to themselves that we Americans are beyond those kind of petty things now cause of the PC movement or whatever, but some of you will be able to read between the lines & see the hypocrisy for what it is. All I'm saying is that George Lucas & LFL are showing their pride in being Americans, just like most of us here we do not want to be seen as sleeping with the enemy. As far as we all knew until the prequels, Boba Fett was an evil white man, something that is a staple of Star Wars movies, EU & past/present real world history. At around the end of 1998 the US began sending it's 1st groups of reservists & regular troops to Operation Desert Storm in the Middle East. A few years later when ATtack of the Clones came out, we got to see Depa & Jimmy Smits/ Bail Organa as the good girl/guys & Daniel Logan/Boba Fett & Temuera Morrison/Jango/the Clonetroopers as the bad guys. By the time of RotS it was the Temuera & Bodie Taylor brown skinned, but New Zealander in origin, clonetroopers kill off all our precious Jedi to become the defacto bad guys of the prequels. Of course the Sith were the more obvious threat, but Sidious couldn't have accomplished it without his GAR. Maybe Matt Stover & LFL really didn't know what to do with Depa so they just abandoned her asfter Shatterpoint. Like I said, my theory's peobably wrong cause Quinlan Vos went dark, did some bad stuff, got redeemed & came out alright in the end, all of that quite amazing considering a bit part as a diner in an outdoor cafe on Tatooine in TPM mesmerized us fans so to convince LFL to give the character so much solid comic book time. Karen Traviss is doing good things with the Temuera-faced Republic Commandos, given free reign to do her magic & tell great stories & all that. In the end, it is weird to see brown skinned peoples being a part of Star Wars. Whether they be NZ'ers, from India, Hispanics & so on, seeing some of them playing villain roles in light of these times of wars we've been in has been a little frightening & a bit too coincidental. Ohh, conspiracies, lies & deceptions, this guy is right off his rocker, lol. -----signature----- "Six pints of bitter," said Ford Prefect to the barman of the Horse and Groom. "And quickly please, the world's about to end." We like to Suckadelic.com. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book
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Master_Keralys Title: Manager Emeritus Registered: Oct '03	Date Posted: 8/25/07 7:41pm Subject: RE: Shatterpoint: Good lord...
	Umm, yeah... off your rocker is about right. I think you're seeing prejudice where there is none. Consider that the primary villains in all major ongoing series at this point are, you know... white. Lucien and his squad in KotOR. Jacen in LotF. AnaVader and Palpatine in Dark Times, and in Rebellion, and the more immediate but less superior antagonists right alongside them. Krayt is white but tattooed. His minions are just tattooed. None of the "brown people" arevillains overall; the closest you get is the Fetts and thus the GAR. But Fett is nowhere near the level of badguy that say, Palpatine, Dooku, or Vader are, so that argument is bogus (particularly given that Dooku and Palpatine were the primary villains of Episode II, and one of the primary heroes was, you know... Mace Windu); and likewise the argument regarding the GAR - they're trained to follow orders and no more; they're not the "bad guys" of the PT: the Sith are. Depa is vaguely Indian, and she isn't a "bad guy" per se... she's an ethically vague charcter. yes, she is corrupted, but she is not evil in the same way that the Sith are; for goodness' sake, she's not even a consistent antagonist! I'm not sure why it's weird to see brown-skinned people in Star Wars, and I certainly don't see how it could be scary that some of them would be villains "in light of these times." It's neither frightening nor coincidental in the sense you use it. It is coincidental, in the original sense: a chance overlapping of phenomena. And it is the more so when you stop looking for bogeymen and realize that it's not really any different from any other time, except that the villain cast had finally diversified to match the hero cast. The prejudice/conspiracy is bogus. So is the association with American patriotic nationalist propaganda, which Lucas wouldn't buy into anyway, seeing as he's extremely liberal on most issues, including the one you're driving at. You're manufacturing something that's simply not there. Now, back to Shatterpoint, that phenomenally stellar book... - Keralys -----signature----- God made man. Man rejected God. God became the man Jesus Christ, died and rose again to life, saving man from himself. The craziest story ever told. The truest.
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