Lit Sith and Racism

He wrote something like 40 odd percent of the post NJO. And his influence in my admittedly biased opinion was not good.

And yeah I did hear he could be persuasive.

Probably the sort of guy who could get agreement on force of personality combined with respectability.

Shame there wasn't an equally strong willed individual besides Karen Traviss in the writing room who could have counter balanced him.

 

We are assuming that Jacen's turn to the Dark Side, how he turned, who the victim of his sacrifice is, are all Denning's idea.

I actually liked the Dark Nest Trilogy solely written by him, took the mighty Jaina Solo down a notch, like she deserved.

 

Vergere's retcon was all Denning and he later had the temerity to call DNT Jacen's personal journey, LOTF his social journey, and FOTJ his spiritual journey despite FOTJ abandoning that plot a third the way through and at least half of LOTF not being solely focused on Jacen.

DNT wasn't his journey-NJO was arguably more Jacen's story.

And speaking of Jaina why did they put off her marriage to Jag or even Zekk for 12 RL years?

That plotline dangled way longer than it should have.

 

Regarding Jaina's SO: Perhaps Lucasbook just couldn't agree on whether it should be Kyp, Zekk, or Jag.
More and more I hate Jag as the books came out. It's very obvious he killed his family (Cherith, Chak and maybe even Wynssa, all dead. Pretty convenient. Too convenient).
Also, if anyone deserved to be "redeemed" at the end of LOTF, it was Shira Brie.

 

Luke did he say he would redeem her and ironically just before beheaded her stated "I said I would never let you fall."

Come to think of it-Luke and Lumiya's duel and relationship throughout LOTF is one of the more complex in LOTF. He obviously was smitten with her at one time and she even as a spy felt for him as well(no one can fake a kiss like that) and their lives took radically different paths.

Imagine that duel on screen-Luke enraged meeting a former lover who has taken responsibility for killing the love of his life, and Lumiya feeling a smidgeon of fear, combined with peace, and anxiety for her apprentice.

The tension and emotion in that duel is a lot better than the final duel between Caedus and Jaina in Invincible.

I can see a movie of LOTF having Luke landing on the planet to seeing a flashback of him kissing Shira, His wedding with Mara, as Lumiya waits with both anxiety and some sense of relief.

But Lumiya was a Sith ideologue or unfortunately through life circumstances could never have been offered something better. Hat is the tragedy of Shira Eira Collan Brie.

 

Oh yeah I remember when the jedi started to show a connection to Jacen, which went no where. (did they even mention Jacen after that plot got dropped?)

 

Mind you, Troy wrote Dark Nest with the explicit idea of Jacen being set up to be evil. He had a real mad on for the character, I say that purely from personal impressions.

Jacen was a good guy in TUF.

One cool fact which Troy doesn't deny is he never liked Legacy or Jaina as part of the Empire. He wanted to get Legacy turned into a "alternate future" like Days of Future Past.

 

I was cheering so hard when Ta'a Chume go mind lightning'd.

I don't know why, but Jacen was the only one who resisted the Nest call. So Jaina et al just wasn't strong enough. lol.

So more on topic of Sith and racism, please note Jacen's regime didn't care for speciesm or sexism, his apprentice was female and his ally point man was a Bothan.

 

Legends Fact:

Interestingly enough, John Jackson Miller established the pro-human racism in the Sith Empire didn't come from the Sith themselves. The Red Sith (Race) or the Dark Jedi (a mixture of races) which conquered them. According to JJM's "Lost Tribe of the Sith" the Non-Human racism comes from the Tapani Empire which joined with the Empire and brought along all their snooty Core World English accents as well as Imperialist ideals.

 

In Vortex they state the Jedi were infiltrated by the Sith(an infiltrator) by which Denning meant Vergere. Which doesn't even make sense IU even if you accept Vergere is a Sith because there is no way the Jedi would have learned this as Jacen never told them.

 

I love JJM and I wish he had been the one writing post NJO books.

Also did Denning say why he hated Legacy?

 

I think the thread is a bit derailed, let's get this back on track.

 

Pretty much the same reason people have criticized Legacy. Jaina joining the Empire, the GFFA falling, the Sith reconquering the galaxy, and so on. The irony that quite a few of those happened in FOTJ is something I can't say he's ever commented on.

 

Didn't the director of Lucasbooks Chee or someone say Jag was going to be emperor but they wanted supposedly to make the story of how he became emperor interesting? When I read that I shocked at how ridiculous the statement was-anybody who is familiar with Legacy knows Jag was emperor. FOTJ went out of its way to advertise and set up Legacy what with Krayt appearing in Apocalypse and Tahiri being implied to be the Proto-Imperial Hand. Despite being 80 years away in universe.

The GA in FOTJ was shown to be incompetent, stupid, and corrupt and I recall it being stated that in post FOTJ years spent its sorry pathetic existence being ruled by various unstable triumvirs while slowly losing legitimacy.

 

because he ended up viewing his people as a failure and hated them.

 

One thing I liked about Vitiate was they grafted a personality onto him and that virtually every single thing he said about the Sith Empire was true.

 

I think it's well set-in at this point that whatever long-lasting militaristic empire there is, it's more of ran by Dark Jedi who have Sith teachings rather than actual Sith. I do support the thought that SWTOR's Sith Empire with its rampant Game of Thrones infighting (The Tapani were brought up, and they had plenty of court intrigue, a lot more than their Northern Core Worlds counterparts who largely stayed stable. The Tapani I believe even had their own Sith cult) is pretty much the closest thing we got to how a real Sith society would function. In short, it wouldn't. Not in the long term anyway. In my mind, the Republic eventually wins the war against what was formerly Vitiate's Sith Empire because no one really ever manages to get the Sith Empire together. There are attempts, with the Light Inquisitor/Warrior and Marr and then with Acina but all of these are short-term as the normalcy of in-fighting comes back to root, and it allows the Republic to strike back.

One thing that's funny to me is that Kaan was actually being successful. He was winning the war, he was going to genuinely take over the Galaxy. And then Bane came in and killed him because he wasn't acting Sith enough. Rather than just outright winning, Bane decided to have the victory over the Jedi take place in a multitude of centuries just so it would be done in more of a Sith manner. And this victory was delivered by a man who himself veered off from Bane's ideology and mainly used the Sith ideology in the same way he used his empire, as means of achieving more personal power. Another bit of irony is how someone like Set Harth embodies the Sith Code in its direct meaning a lot more than more famous Sith like say, Revan or Exar Kun or Palpatine himself.

 

Didn't the Sith win a major battle that nearly shattered the Jedi and Republic roughly four hundred years or so before Kaan? Mizra wasn't it?

Kaan as I understand it when he joined the Sith used his charisma and force powers of persuasion to get the Sith whose squabbles were a major reason why they had not won the war to some sort of stability.

There was a battle in the new Sith wars where the Sith triumphed and the road to Coruscant was open yet the Sith broke down into into infighting predictably over who would rule.

I get the impression the Sith empire in between 2000-1000 BBY wasn't really an empire other than being a Sith entity a bunch of dark lords that despised each other as much as they did the Jedi and Republic fighting a war of brutal attrition and there infighting and lack of a command structure prevented them from prevailing in the war when they should have.

Kaan comes into the picture gets everybody to agree to a program of nominal unity and meets the Republic and Jedi in war and the fate of the Galaxy is decided by seven apocalyptic battles on Ruusan.

 

Yes and ironically he's taken out by Bane because he wasn't 'Sith enough' while Kaan was very close to winning the war, and united the Sith into a coherent unit.

 

Weren't the Jedi prevailing in the later battles though?

In any case if the Sith four hundred years earlier or the Sith under Kaan had one the empire would have been less stable than it was during the New Sith Wars-imagine thousands of Sith Lords, acolytes, and warriors all fighting and scheming against one another on a galactic scale. Civil wars would be as regular as planetary revolutions, intrigue, assassinations and factionalism would dominate a Sith Coruscant.

Even if the Sith had a military victory I doubt the Jedi would have been entirely destroyed and they would probably hide and wait with any republic remnant forces while the Sith empire now overstretched and ruled by competing ambitious lords tore itself apart.

Though retaking the Galaxy would be a much bloodier and probably close to impossible process.

 

Even if the Army of Light had won the day through strength of arms, the Jedi would probably have gone down the path Yoda felt was so dark in ROTS. Bane kinda saved the Galaxy.

 

My take on the Sith and Jedi were both had moved toward Neutrality rather than Good vs. Evil.

The Sith and Jedi were both just armies of people.

Whoever won, it would have been just like a "normal" war.

Bane had a messianic view of Evil/The Dark Side which had fallen to the wayside. Ruusan's Reformations also moved the Jedi to an orthodox Lawful Good interpretation of the Force which was flawed because the Light is more Neutral Good.

 

I'm pretty sure thousand year struggles between force users that began with a Jedi schism and ended with the use of an arcane ritual isn't just a normal war over trade routes and mineral access.

Though admittedly both Jedi and Sith did use large conventional armies and conventional battles were fought.

The war itself was fought by two mystical religious organizations.

 

Eh, I'd argue you actually kind of ran into the fact the comic JEDI VS. SITH isn't supposed to be a comic about the Jedi and Sith at their height but is a comic about DECONSTRUCTING the principles of their conflict. It is, in simple terms, the Jedi vs. Sith at their WORST. One of the tensions of the Bioware and Jedi vs. Sith comics which the Prequels/The Clone eventually showed was something Lucas was toying around with is the fact the Jedi very often confused serving the REPUBLIC with serving THE FORCE while the Sith very often chose to disregard serving the Dark Side in order to serve their own personal power.

Kaan doesn't care about the Dark Side. It's a tool. The Dark Side is nothing more than magic to him and he couldn't care less about serving the power of evil as long as he rules.

Bane, by contrast, worships the Dark Side and wants to let him change him into an avatar of its will until he's barely recognizable as a human being. There's something in the book about how Sith might fear being changed by the Dark Side but they need to embrace that change until they're beings which only care about power and destruction and domination.

(There's a nice good argument Darth Bane is COMPLETELY mynock**** crazy and this is in the words of Han Solo, "THE FORCE DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY.")

The Jedi, by contrast, are a bunch of archaic knights and soldiers fighting for political victory instead of the Force's victory.

THE OLD REPUBLIC takes this view as we constantly see the Jedi and Sith swerve between the mystical vs. political with the Outlander being one out to serve the Force-Force by defeating Vitiate instead of blinded by politics.

 

What Charlemagne19 means is that the war started mystical but then it turned into one between two competing armies of two organisations. The arcane ritual on behalf of Bane was because he didn't like that even if the Sith were close to winning a victory, they weren't being 'real Sith'. Which is the flaw of the Sith ideology. The Sith have only taken major victories when they set aside their self-destructive ideology, which is what Kaan was doing. Bane didn't like that, so he made his plan and the idea behind it was bringing the Sith back to their roots. It was then only when Plagueis and Sheev in some ways started diverting from Bane's line of thought, becoming part of the 'galactic elite' themselves, that the Sith once again managed to take a victory.

In short, Sith succeed when they're being the Illuminati conspiracy theory personified or the Thule Society in Nazi Germany. They completely fail when they decide to twirl their moustaches as their Code decrees.