~~Official Expanded Universe Discussion Thread~~ Current Topic: Backlashes against EU characters

Why would anyone want to live on an entire planet consisting of an entire city.

 

Because I, for one, would consider it breathtakingly beautiful and wondrous.

 

I think Swan is right; in the end it all seems to come down to personal preference.

 

I think Swan is right; in the end it all seems to come down to personal preference.

Perhaps that is the true question: what is your personal preference and why?


Barbarians always dislike civilization.
No, just kidding. Please don't disembowel me.

I've heard a quote that compares architecture to barbarism...

 

Ah, yes. Tne rape of Coruscant by the scarheads. They defiled the rest of the galaxy, so it made sense that they'd ruin the heart of it as well.

I hated that. I absolutely, positively hated that. I might disagree with Coruscant being so heavily built up, but it could've been a hell of a lot worse. And then the Vong come along...

After that, even more than when they murdered Chewie, they deserved extinction. All those beings...all that history...

 

Alrighty, new topic time!


NEW TOPIC

How do you feel about the level of violence in the NJO? Do you think it was excessive? Or do you feel that it helped to further the story?


Discuss.

 

By all that was unholy, it was incredibly excessive.

This is Star Wars, not the Terminator. We didn't see Owen and Beru get killed in ANH. We didn't see Han's torture in ESB. I didn't need to read some of the...stuff that went on in those novels.

The galaxy was fundamentally burned to the ground, and there is no wood to rebuild.

 

By all that was unholy, it was incredibly excessive.

It was incredibly very light. Yeah there was a lot of violence but it was not written very descriptively like SOME novels do. Matthew Stover, for example, in his Hero's Die novel writes out violence extremely descriptive. What he did in the NJO is very, very, VERY light compared to Hero's Die.

The NJOs violence level is really not that much higher than all the other novels. The describing of the violence is a little higher than usual.

But in a way, after thinking about it for a while, Del Ray did a good thing. They pretty much cleaned the slate for new stories to be made. Seriously though, the Rebellion and the Empire are at peace now. Most of the threats in the known galaxy have been dealt with and exploring the Unknown Regions was out of the question for good now that the Empire of the Hand was discovered to control most of it. Plus the Rebellion was not interested in exploring the UR anyway.

The Expanded Universe was running out of ideas for stories with what was already there. By bringing the galaxy into its own Dark Age/Cold War, it opened up a truck load of potential stories.

 

Violence was pretty light, though in some books it was a pretty heavy dose. Traitor for example, describing Jacen's torture is very dark as well as expository.

I have found as a writer that hinting at a scene is better than showing the actual scene

 

At first I thought the violence was pretty excessive as well, but then like Mitth I read some of Stover's non-Star Wars work. Traitor seems forever tame after that. Was the NJO violent for Star Wars? Definitely. But when you look at literature as a whole, it really wasn't. And all the violence was pretty tastefully done. It served the important purpose of hammering the point-- "war is hell--" home.

 

Guns guns blood and guts.

I didn't honestly think that this was that graphic of a series at all.

Honestly, i'd want to see a book as graphic as say band of brothers or Saving teh private ryan.

 

I just didn't like it. They threw it into my face, trying to be 'cool' and all.

I've never read 'Shatterpoint'...and I probably never will.

 

in terms of SW books, the NJO was probaly more graphic than normal, but not as bad as some books I've read (MWS stuff for example) or movies I've seen, so I don't really mind it. and again, it makes the war more "real" and hellish.

 

I agree. Sure, it was an extreme change from the Bantam days, but I honestly believe that the NJO was exactly the shot in the arm that the EU needed. Whether many of you want to admit it or not, the EU was getting stale and tired and something was desperately needed to rejuvenate it. The NJO, while far from being executed perfectly, definitely went a long way to remedying this, IMO.

 

I thought they were written splendidly. They gave enough for everyone. If you don't agree that's fine. I rather like knowing what goes on. Hinting isn't enough while blatantly and graphicly explaining every small and gorey detail is too much. It gave just enough for one's imagination to fill in the rest of the details while not being overbearingly detailed. The violence is to be expected. IT IS A WAR afterall against a backwards and barbaric (by our standards) culture that has impeded upon their galaxy. Of course it's going tobe violent. Has anyone fought in a war or seen a war movie that wasn't? It's just showing everything. War is not all roses and sunshine. It's a bloody mess of violence.

 

Violence brings the reader back to earth with a jolt ? which, I think, is what NJO tried to do. It grounded us again with death etc, reminded us that the GFFA exists under the same rules as we do.

 

Wars are bloody. The NJO was just one big long war.

 

Good call.

 

What's wrong with it? Most novels are graphic, so why not? Personally, I think Star Wars should be a little more hard of the facts of war, unlike ANH which almost made the stormtroopers getting shot humorous, the books have moved towards showing the fact of how terrible it real is...

 

I remember a thread Sernpidal Started. He was a 13 year old user who said it was Hilarious that some adults found the NJO Scary. I'm one of the people who find the series Scary. Let me Clarify, the actual violence didn't frighten me like a child is afraid of the dark, But, the realistic aspect of War took a lot of the romance out of the Star Wars Saga. It made the War real, and gritty more grown up, the "invincible characters" were being killed, The strong at will were falling and failing. Coruscant, which was the basis of culture for no less than 3 diferent Governments, was completely and utterly destroyed. When other storys pricked at the Heart, the NJO ripped it out Vessel by Vessel. To me that is scarier than anything that goes bump in the Night.

Some scenes are so graphic that they will never leave my memory.

__The Death of Chewie: with Staring up at the moon and Howling and me crying into the book.

__The Noghri Bodygaurd dying in service to his master: I could almost feel his splash up onto me when the Vong torn him apart.

__Han sitting in a cantina drinking away his: I felt a hole in my heart like he didn't just walk out on his family, He walked out on me.

__Anakin going out in a blaze of glory: I was sweeting bullets througout this scene.

__The Fall-out of Jaina: Seeing her struggle over the lose of her family was almost as unbearible as some of my family problems.

__Jacen's Captivity: This was full of gritty and dirty images that just give me a feeling of unease.

__And many, many more.


My point is this: The NJO is violent, yes. It also has many more adult themes that are new to the Star Wars Universe. But these are insturments and tools that the series used to weave together a story that made me stay up at night and think How is it possible? The use of Violence not only killed off many characters it also killed off much of the Innocence that the EU had. With all that being said I will say that the Violence was a big plus for the NJO as a whole because it made it more realistic by opening doors to new feelings and emotions concerning the EU.

That's my 2-cents

 

The violence in the NJO, with the notable exception of Stackpole's duology, wasn't much different from what we've gotten in Star Wars and the Star Wars EU.

I believe that it was very unfortunate that the Corran Horn self-indulgence that was the Dark Tide duology came at the time it did - located in the very beginning of the series. Such a placement did irrepairable harm to the NJO saga, coloring it with a shade of violence far more vivid than nearly anything which came after it. I think the Dark Tide duology did more to hammer in the perception that the NJO was some radical departure from the norm than anything else. Only, the series didn't begin as such in VP, and nearly everything following DT was certainly no more dark or no more gritty than the descriptions of Yevethan atrocities against Han while he was held in captivity in the Black Fleet Crisis.

Traitor, for example, gave us a torture scene in colorful metaphor and hyperbole. The worst of the detailed descriptions was of his pubes getting plucked out one by one. And while, admittedly, such a thought brings tears of pain to my eyes - it's not really anything worse than what Leia faced on the Death Star or Han on Cloud City. Except, well, those two came out of it normal. Whereas Jacen became the hairless wonder. But, that's beside the point. We know that Jacen likely endured as bad or worse - but we certainly didn't get any detailed descriptions of what it was. What caused the red, the white, or the green. We didn't know what the embrace of pain actually did.

War isn't a cakewalk. And Star Wars certainly aren't either.

 

I agreed with Joda wholeheartedly,

The NJO took the EU to a new and unexperienced level. We weren't just playing with rougue warlords and their superweapon toys. This was war, and it took all of the readers in with it.

With the Yuzzhan Vong, not only was the galaxy threatened, Star Wars itself was. The violence made it all the more realistic.

I know (I don't know about yourselves) that I felt a close connection to the events that happened. I remember the fall of Coruscant, I was just stunned. How could that happen? The Capital Planet. All that planning and defense, forgone. I knew that the reprecussions of that event would echo throughout Star Wars history. It was (in a way) like September 11th. It was so catastrophic and horrible. You knew that you could never have the same story back. It was irreversably altered, and it changed the galactic order.

And at the end of the series, I hated the Yuzzhan Vong. They were taking my story away, my story. They were a hostile threat, and I genuinely feared for the safety of the galaxy.

The NJO was all so tramautic. And the violence in it was neccessary to make it so. It is a very grown up tale, and I think it adds more prestige to the EU, making it more real. And the terrible deeds of the YV were, I feel, necessary to give the situation a great urgency. They weren't just the Empire, where the change in life was just a change in political colors and rules. These villains wanted to enslave you, and plunge you into a virtual hell-like state. The barbarism is a neccessary evil.

Thanks