[NRW] Jacen Solo: From YJK to NJO

Jacen Solo is perhaps the single most widely debated character on the Lit boards at this point. At this point, he's been a heroic two-year-old, a Sith apprentice, and just about everything in between. Yet there are some fundamental difficulties with his character, thanks to the oversight of the first author of the NJO.

In short, for those of you not already familiar with this particular bit of EU screwup, Jacen seems to completely change character between the end of the Young Jedi Knights series of young adult novels and Vector Prime, flip-flopping from a cheery, good-mannered kid with a few too many annoying jokes ready at hand to... a serious, sensitive, almost brooding, thinker, with more than a hint of a rebellious streak. This in six months.

What happened? There must be some significant event to have caused this much change in the fellow, especially at that age!

Right?

Actually, the answer is no. Nothing earth-shattering (so to speak) happened to Jacen in the five or six months between Crisis at Crystal Reef and Vector Prime. The shift in character occurred naturally. [RK_Striker_JK_5, I know you're not buying this yet. Stick with me. ]

There is a degree of sensitivity and seriousness present from the getgo in VP that simply doesn't seem to show up in the Jacen of the YJK. However, closer examination shows that the seeds of it had already been planted. Sure, he jokes all the time, and rarely muses on the philosophical nature of the Force. However - and this is important - neither of these in any way preclude those from being there. At one point in the NJO (this being as close to a retcon for this disparity as the series actually got) Jacen actually notes that he has a "sensitivity he once tried to hide behind belabored jokes." This gives us our first "in," so to speak. The jokes were a facade. Evidence for this in the YJK? "None!" cry those who have their minds made up. Not so fast, though. Who is the primary target of Jacen's jokes? Tenel Ka. The girl he has a huge crush on for nearly two years running. For those of you who don't know it, telling bad jokes is actually a pretty typical teenage male reaction to that first real crush - to be sure, the guy hides behind something; in Jacen's case it was those jokes. Sure, he jokes with others, too. Under huge amounts of stress. The joking is a facade. It's a defense mechanism. It's not who he really is. (Aside: this lines up well with his portrayal in early books as well - cf. his portrayal as fairly thoughtful [for a ten-year-old] in HoT.)

So we have some precedent for the seriousness and sensitivity. That doesn't explain what shifts him from that young teenage defense mode into the character we see in Vector Prime. This is simple, though, when you look at the whole picture. At the end of the YJK, he's promoted to be Luke's apprentice (contrary to popular belief, the end of the YJK never has the group being promoted to Jedi, only honored by the Academy and implied to be promoted - but to what is not specified). With him comes Anakin, his younger (and extremely talented) brother, as Luke's second apprentice. No big deal, right? Wrong. Anakin is extremely talented. He's also extremely serious. And Jacen and Anakin naturally end up competing. Which behavior set more closely matches Luke's? Anakin's, without a doubt. Moreover, there's a sense of near inferiority in Jacen to Anakin implied even in the end of the YJK - for example, when Anakin comes up with a solution to the Black Sun crisis, and Jacen can do no more than look on interestedly. Nothing in this situation implies competition, or outright states Jacen's sense of inferiority - but it does establish that even at that point, Jacen sees his little brother as significantly talented. And there's even teasing amongst the family (of the sort that happens in all families, of course, but stick with me and see the point I'm driving at) about how at least one of the boys is a genius. No big deal. Until the fiftieth time

 

I agree. There is not that much of a change in his attitudes that does not mirror what happens to many people in the real world

 

Exactly. We just need a coherent framework in which to evaluate it, since the one we were given isn't terribly coherent. Hopefully this helps a few of the more strident opposers of his pattern of maturation at least acknowledge how it might be possible.

- Keralys

 

Give me a chance to read through all of that two or three times and I'll try and tell you what I think.

In other words, good work.

 

Thanks. I look forward to your thoughts almost as much as I look forward to RK_Striker_JK_5's.

- Keralys

 

Not to mention he might have started questioning philosophy of the Force because of Anakin also. Anakin's good at everything Jedi related, right? Now when you can't beat somebody at something what do you do? Question how they do it, whats it all about, and their methods in the way they do it. Correct?

 

Yeah, Jacen always felt like the outsider. Jaina was a good pilot, Anakin was a good warrior, he was, well, he hadn't figured it out yet.

 

Most impressive, Master_Keralys

 

*nods* Exactly. Anakin was always the deep thinker, the problem solver, in the earlier books. His whole obsession with his name (and destiny) matching that of his grandfather pushed him to think about those kinds of things from a very young age. Jacen had it in him, and when pushed by Anakin, brought it out full force (pun intended).

Exactly. And this shows up pretty well in the YJK as well, though you have to really look at the character. Think about it: Tenel Ka is the super-warrior woman in perfect shape, Lowbacca is the mechanical genius, Jaina is the super-duper-pilot (and gets joined in the same position by Zekk), Raynar is... Raynar , and Jacen is... good with animals. Yeah. Which again plays to his sensitive thing; his empathy comes through pretty strongly in that ability.

Erm... thanks. Why the quirked eyebrow, if I may ask?

- Keralys

 

Or maybe he was, you know, a typical 16-year-old kid who didn't know who he was and was just trying to figure out his station in life? Not everything has to have some deep spiritual meaning. I'd personally blame his inward nature at this point on the fact that his girl has seemingly left him since Tenel Ka doesn't show up again until sometime around SbS.

 

Actually, I agree with you. What I'm trying to get at is that all of the above things I went into were basically just outworkings of exactly what you said. He's sixteen.

- Keralys

 

Pretty good retcon overall MK.

 

Best retcon I've seen since the start of NRW

I just have one correction:

 

Thanks.

Thanks! I'm glad it works.

As for your correction... nice.

- Keralys

 

Nice job, you make some good points here. When I think about how much I changed when I was Jacen's age, his "drastic change" becomes much more believable. Excellent work, Keralys.

 

Thanks. I'm glad to hear that this little retcon is helping people make a bit more sense out of it.

- Keralys

 

*Nods* I gotta admit, Keralys. Pretty nice retcon there. Good explanation there.

Doesn't mean I have to like the changes, but good one.

Oh, and checked CACR-the final YJK book. It does mention 'New Jedi' several times. And Jaina talks about talking with Luke.

"Right," Jaina added. "We all just had that long talk with Uncle Luke. You know, the one that goes, 'Now that you're more or less a full Jedi, you have to think about what you want to do in life.'"

 

*bows* If I managed to make it work for you, then I consider my task well and truely done.

I noted those as well, but at no point does it actually say that they're Jedi Knights. Even at the time I first read it, I took that as an important distinction, because most people who had become full Knights did so at a much higher age. I consider them to be Jedi - but not Knights - at that point. While I agree that there should have been a closer eye kept on continuity, we have to work with what we've got. So there it is.

Anyways, like I said, if it succeeds functionally for you, then I've met my goal of making it a rationally functional solution.

*in a whisper* You know what the best part is? I didn't actually retcon anything. I just explained it better than the authors did.

- Keralys

 

*Looks up* Whoops... Well, okay. But for being a stubborn mule's sake, 'apprentice' wasn't mentioned either.

And yeah, you did about a billion times better job making it work. The whole 'used to make jokes to hide my insecurity' thing was so kriffin' tacked on.

 

Granted. It should have been, either way. It would have been easier to retcon (and less likely to need it) if KJA had just specified it better. And he should have known that the there'd be an apprenticeship period after the time at the Academy, because Vision of the Future was also a '98 publication - and three months before CaCR. The editors themselves should have caught it, but... Like I said, it was shoddy continuity, and we're left to pick up the pieces.

As for my doing a better job explaining it, well, all I did was... explain it. They just didn't. I think you're right that it was tacked on, in the sense that LFL was hearing complaints and said, "Hey, let's try and do something to fix this, quick!" And of course, duct tape sticks out against the shiny black background of the NJO. Unfortunately, they couldn't do what I just did, because it wouldn't have worked in a book. But they could have done something.

- Keralys

 

Hmm, didn't know the first part about Vision there. I think what I'm most mad at is that except that one line, they didn't do anything.

 

Keralys - you made VP make sense (in regard to Jacen, anyway )! Nice points; flawless logic.

Now, for a more difficult question: in the context of this excellent retcon, explain to me why you aren't a profic author...?

 

On that note, the editors should have also caught that Artoo wasn't an Imperial design like Denning said in TJK, but it appears that editors don't catch everything

NEGtC?

 

Yeah, well, me too. At the same time, though, it would have been pretty tough to do anything at the late stage in the game where they would have been able to fix it - since SBS was almost finished being written before VP came out. They should have caught it beforehand. But then, there was also an attempt - in the early parts of the NJO - to make it so you could jump on there and not have to worry about previous continuity much, and that also backfired (even by AoC2, they were shifting out of that mode). It was too late to change the characterization, and awkward to do in a book what I just did. Not impossible, but definitely awkward.

Thanks. Glad to hear it! In terms of the latter question, it probably has something to do with the fact that I haven't become a published author of any sort yet. Trust me, if they're still writing SW books in ten or twenty years (at which point I hope to be a fairly well known author), I'll be doing everything I can to write for them.

EDIT: I knew somebody else was going to post.

Very true. It's funny how we'll catch continuity gaffes - even fairly substantial ones - at first glance, but the people who get paid to do it miss them. And to be fair, we'd probably miss them if it was our job, as well. But they're also not quite as geeky as we are, most of the time.

That'd have been about the only avenue to do it, but even there it would have been pretty awkward, especially because they didn't do that kind of storytelling with anyone else - it would have been glaringly obvious they were just trying to cover their rears, and probably not come off very well, either. I can understand why they didn't do more. It's just frustrating.

- Keralys

 

If you were writing, Keralys, I might break my SW boycott.